LSD is like the Living Theme Park,
the Rollercoaster of Human Experience.
it takes Human Life & encapsulates it,
condenses it, CONCENTRATES it.
like Life
it is at once terrifying, overwhelming, paralyzing, stupefying, immaculate, irradiated, wondrous, Divine, excruciating.
Enormous.
but most of all Impossible.
it's the ride we all ride, only @ the speed of thought plus.
a lifetime of insight, terror, heartache & bliss,
all in one bite-sized package,
delivered in lightning flashes that freeze, illuminate,
rearrange,
& then scatter like pollen in the wind.
this is consumable Experience, thus far
inexpertly marketed.

perhaps the moon is an egg
& inside is the smoldering embryo
of the terrible bird of cosmic fire
that will scorch the Earth to ash
& purify creation.

& WO, but fortunate are we
to bear witness to this
cleansing inferno.
blessed are we who are
ravaged in its deadly flames
only to awaken,
sins scabbed over,
in the arms of eternity's embrace.

"don't wanna be a farmer, working in the sun
don't wanna be an outlaw, always on the run
don't wanna be a climber, reaching for the top
don't wanna be anything where i don't know when to stop..."

these lyrics have been running thru my head like tweaked out hamsters for about 3 days now. i love the song, but i am being driven completely insane. this. must. stop.

winter has hit the Bay Area. the first 20 minutes of the news tonight were weather stories: snow in the hills! ye gods! i counted 3 stories that had at least one reference to hooky playing due to the novelty. and one reference to the movie Fargo. you'd think these places never saw snow. granted, we've had EXTREMELY cold weather for this area, and there HAS been snow at elevations that rarely get accumulation. but still, it's been minimal. i knew it was cold because i didn't wear shorts. a few winters ago, i worked in the City & laughed daily at the swarms of my fellow BART riders who would be decked out in huge parkas & scarves & big woolly mittens for temperatures in the mid-50s. but today? i was WISHING i had woolly fucking mittens. because it was cold. not Wing Bowl cold, but cold nonetheless.

(PS - the best story on the news by far today was about a ridiculously brazen B&E at the Martinez PD parking lot: someone cut a hole in the chain link fence, broke into a patrol car, & stole a rifle & several hundred rounds of ammunition. that was pretty much the greatest thing i ever heard.)

"the sun is chirping, the birds are shining. the water's...wet. life is good, sweetheart. life is good..."

having now listened to Chinese Democracy several times over the last few days, i can officially say: it isn't very good. there are a couple decent songs & quite a few excellent guitar solos. i can find a little something to like in almost every song, but overall, i'm not in love with it. that review applies to all the tracks but one, i think. that one would be the penultimate number, "This I Love." this, i hate. i'm fairly sure this is Axl angling to portray the Phantom on Broadway. it's like Andrew Lloyd Webber had a 100mph head-on car wreck with Styx. it's like a shitty outtake from a Meat Loaf record that was written by Jonathan Larson. as Brad "Iceman" Colbert would say, "that song is straight up homosexual, country music, Special Olympics gay." my point in all this being, the best part of the album may be the free Dr Pepper. and i don't even like Dr Pepper.

in other news, i recently saw Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. i went into it expecting to HATE it & instead i motherfucking despised it to the maximum degree allowable by law. it had absolutely no soul. i think i might have hated it even more than i hated the new Transformers movie, which was literally one of the worst things i have ever seen in my life. so yeah, i recommend not seeing that, ever.

on the other end of the chain, i saw TAARGÜS TAARGÜS at the Hemlock on sunday night. great little venue (kinda like an even tinier North Star Bar), sweet fucking show. ryan & i got there i guess around 10ish, just in time to see Hurts to Laugh. their drummer/singer (known forever more as the Ironman [after the Ironman shot: snort a line of salt, drink a shot of tequila, squirt lime juice into eye]) was a maniac. TAARGÜS TAARGÜS went on last & i thought they killed (despite some minor technical difficulties). i really dug adam's crazy distorted guitar stuff, that was my favorite part, but the whole thing was pretty awesome. and you probably know my thoughts on indie rock (i hate it), so their overcoming the pre-existing condition of my prejudice made it all the more impressive. good on ya, gents. see you next month at the El Rio.

i also recently watched The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford. that was a very cool movie. i loved the pace of it, it was perfect. there were some very good actors in very small parts, which i thought was a bit weird. and then there was james carville, which i thought was really weird. all in all, excellent movie. not exactly a raucous good time, but a great flick to watch in the post-midnight stillness. it kind of unfurls. it's hard to describe. obviously.

it is morning in America. i can tell because i have a hangover.

it is 9.30 in the morning. i have been up for 2 hours already. but the excitement is all over now, remnants of the past few days' madness are dissolving from memory like so much alka-seltzer (not terribly poetic, but i have heartburn). kathleen & jason have been lawfully wedded, by yours truly, in a wonderful, intimate little ceremony amidst the vineyards of rustic livermore. this morning i dropped curtis & the baker boys at the oakland airport, & jeebes is shipping our rented kilts back to arizona. normalcy descends, albeit slowly. i wish i had another day off to recover from all of this. but i do not, so it's back to bed for a quick catnap. we are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep...

i'm catching up on sounds lately. in the last few weeks i have been submerged & submersed in new things. i think it started with Erica Pomerance, and her album, "You Used to Think," which was recommended by Ryan. this is a precious little gem, a raw, acid-soaked invocation that seems like it was channeled as much as performed. it's stripped down to absolutely nothing & it's quivering nerves are left exposed to the elements. powerful shit. when i downloaded that, i also grabbed Goldfrapp's "Seventh Tree," to which i've yet to give a close listen. but i really dig the first track, Clowns. it's got kind of a lush, folky thing going on, and it makes me want to sit outside on a golden hill in early autumn just as the sun is setting. next was a Groundtruther show from 2005 & a couple of Sun Ra & the Myth Science Arkestra albums. spacey improv, old & new. then i went for a couple of Carlin's mid-70s albums, a kind of belated tribute to the great philosopher. watching a clip on the My Tube of Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue doing Shelter From the Storm from the TV broadcast of "Hard Rain" lead me to download that album. it gets bad pub & everyone says Bootlegs Vol. 5 is the far superior document, capturing the more successful fall 1975 incarnation of the Revue (which is all true), but man, that "Hard Rain" version of Shelter fucking cooks. it's much better than the album version, in my opinion. i also FINALLY got around to snagging El-P's "I'll Sleep When You're Dead," which is an instant classic. it's so good, it got me to step a toe back into the often scary world of indie hip hop. but i managed to grab 2 sweet Busdriver albums & get back out before i got hurt. good times. next was the Serge Gainsbourg compilation album "Les Années Psychedeliques." this is a collection of mostly amazing little 60s pop nuggets, soundtrack music that would make Quentin Tarantino cream in his pants. the percussion here is out of this world, almost proto-drum & bass at times. that, in turn, lead me to Serge's 1979 reggae/dub album with Sly & Robbie, "Aux Armes Et Caetera." pretty sick. all this new music had me looking at stuff i had acquired long ago & had never bothered to listen to (mostly because it has been sitting in my recently downloaded file for a year & i completely forgot it existed), which brings me to TMBG's "The Else," which might be my favorite TMBG record in 10 years. they work well with the Dust Brothers, i've always thought so. i just started getting into "Modern Guilt," Beck's album with Danger Mouse. once again, excellent pairing of artist & producer. i've been kinda cool on Beck for a few years, but i always tend to prefer his more melancholidelic albums ("Mutations," "Sea Change") & this is no exception. Orphans is a fucking amazing song. and last but not least, Mitch's posthumous album, "Do You Believe in Gosh?" it's strong. it is very funny, with many laugh-out-loud, moments & even a few eye-tearers. but it is hard to not be super sad when i listen to it. a few weeks ago when i was walking home from work & i saw the wall of posters advertising the album, just a huge wall tiled with Mitch's face, man, it made me sad as hell. "my belt holds up my pants, and my pants have belt loops that hold up the belt. what the fuck's really goin' on down there? who is the real hero?"

that football game last night left me devastated & miserable. i could have sworn we used to be known for our defensive prowess. i could have sworn that Philadelphia was a defensive-minded town. so what the fuck was all that awful dogshit? this is taking me back to like 3 years ago when they couldn't stop a run for all the heroin in andy reid's basement. i don't want to go back to those days. i can't even think about this anymore. willie parker is sitting at home, salivating.

in other news, hi. long time no see.

soft lips, eager and
filled with a lonely longing,
bring us together

"Dear Frederick:

Thank you for your nice letter. But I am actually a US Marine, who was born to kill, whereas clearly you seem to have mistaken me for some sort of wine-sipping Communist dicksuck. And although peace probably appeals to tree-hugging bisexuals like you, and your parents, I happen to be a death-dealing, blood-crazed warrior who wakes up every day just hoping for the chance to dismember my enemies and defile their civilizations. Peace sucks a hairy asshole, Freddy. War is the motherfucking answer."

- Ray Person

Generation Kill. wow, great fucking show. it's sort of like Catch-22, in its depiction of sustained, surreal & utterly complete military incompetence at a command level. but it might be even more like the Wire, in that it serves to convince you that ANY sort of grand societal structure is just a fucked up pipe dream that inevitably leads to a completely dehumanized machine of bureaucracy that destroys any possibility for sane life on Earth. can you imagine if Q ever saw either of these shows? man, we would be so dead.

but despite all of that, i am in a great mood. saturday i woke up feeling nasty. just ugly chicken-fucking miserable. it's been a long time since i'd woken up in one of those no-good-reason foul moods. the kind of mood that hangs over your eyes like a grey woolen veil, all day long obscuring the sun. as it got no better, i decided against attending that night's Virgo b-day bash; i didn't want to fuck with public trans, i didn't feel like drinking, or like taking pills. i just wanted to chill the fuck out. instead, zach & angel twisted my arm (& offered me first swat at the giraffe piñata), so i decided to go, drive, but not stay too late. i summoned up a posse & bum-rushed the show (in the parlance of our times) & ended up having a wonderful evening, getting extremely high, & breaking that giraffe's fucking neck in half with a titanium driver. i say it often, but it is truly a blessing to legitimately enjoy being around the people you work with.

and i was snug in my bed by 4am, so i was well-rested & refreshed when j arrived at 11am to pick us up for some high-intensity, pulse-pounding, senses-shattering, full-frontal tuxedo fitting action. and did you know they have Gatorade Slurpees now?! it's like 2 of my favorite beverages made hot, sweet, sticky, wet love all over each other & then froze their offspring until it reached a kind of loose, slushy consistency. and then sold that offspring for like $2 for 40oz. it's so goddam beautiful i could cry. i tell you, i love this country.

but i don't know if any of that was as good as the dream i had just before waking up. is there anything like waking from an insane, wonderful dream? maybe it's because it so very rarely happens to me (dreams i wake up remembering are usually freakish or horrifying in some way), but it just sets a tone. it left me in a beautiful headspace & i lived there all day sunday. it's like seeing some hyper-real Crayola advertisement for the Platonic ideal of yourself in glorious 4-dimensional, smell-o-scopic resolution. and somehow for the rest of the day you can BELIEVE in that dream. you can see yourself living that spun, maniacal life inside the frantic dreamworld picturetube. you can become that limitless fractal Superman. the wild, mad wizard, who's hiding in you, illuminating your mind, as the song says. a beautiful dream is like a supersonic psychegram from God, reminding you why you're so grateful to be alive.

we started kind of dark, but i brought you around, right? happy sunday.

Jesus, is it me, or is Mide D wasting away to nothing as he ages? he looks more like Perry Farrell every day. and that is not a good thing. mix in a steak, Clarence.

i've fallen in love with Miko Marks, after seeing this piece on the news last night. i have yet to fall in love with country music, but hey. one step at a time. she's at the Saddlerack in fremont on saturday night, but i have to work. if only she were playing the next day, at the chili cook off...

(PS: Candace Parker, i didn't forget about you. there's love enough in this enlarged heart for everyone...)

look you got ten, then you got ten more, then it's like, what's this? four more? twenty four, fuggedaboudit.

just now i was looking at something & i saw the number 24 & i thought to myself, "24, that's the highest number there is." i laughed. and then i typed 'mr show highest number' into the little google search box at the upper right hand corner of this window & like 10 seconds later i was watching that sketch. in the olden days of yore, i would have had to find out which episode that was from & then go get that disc from the living room & put it into the dvd player & skip to that scene. in the time i saved, i typed this paragraph. that's what i call progress.

ah, the vented wide mouth can. fuck yeah, thank you, coors. because i remember back in the day, when cans had those tiny little fucking mouths, you could barely drink out of em! i tell you, the days of slim mouth cans were like the goddam dark ages. it was like trying to wring beer out of a stone, you just couldn't get more than one of two drops into your mouth at a time. but now? o man, FINALLY i can get a whole shitload of beer in my mouth at once. FINALLY! it's like a veil has been lifted, and in lifting that veil an unrestricted flow of beer is now able to cascade past my lips & down my waiting gullet. no more will i weep & moan & gnash my teeth, pounding on the sides of the beer can like a ketchup bottle, trying desperately to liberate the highly drinkable american made beer-like beverage that waits inside. hopefully soon they will market the shotgun can that actually has 2 pop tops, because i'll be honest, i could actually fit more beer in my face than this.

i have some sort of sickness. i felt like shit pretty much all day yesterday & then i had trouble staying asleep last night (which sucked, because i was exhausted), so i called in sick today. i've been drifting in & out of sleep for about the last 4 hours, just feeling generally miserable, so i just got up, grabbed a bottle of OTC cough syrup out of the fridge & slammed it home. soon i will be in a slightly different delusional haze that will hopefully be better. in the interest of full disclosure, i am also consuming bright green gatorade & some sour diesel. radda radda.

man, i have to tell you about this crazy drug experience that i had on sunday night. i was FUCKED up, let me tell you. sweating, twitching, pinprick pupils, the whole nine. i was a spastic freak of nature. it was a bad scene. that's me these days (dramatic pause) on 2 and a half cups of coffee. (DUN DUN DUN!) let's rewind. i used to be a bit of an arabicaphile, which is a word that i think i just made up. i've always loved the taste, but during the first 5 years i worked in the Specialty Call Center, i quite literally ran on the stuff. it was a free stimulant at an often boring job, & in those days i was closing down the Station or Ortlieb's or hanging out at Rowan or the Glen until 2 or 3 in the morning & crawling into my cubicle, eyes bleeding, at 9. so coffee was more a necessity than a choice. but around that time we also had the K-Cups of Green Mountain, and those were delicious. i was good for 5 or 6 of those a day, easy. then one day, i noticed that every time i had a cup of coffee, i got a case of the bubbleguts. you know the bubbleguts. it's when your insides are churning & rumbling & gurgling & you feel like you are about to explosively vomit & shit yourself simultaneously? the bubbleguts. so i weaned myself off the stuff with various teas (Tazo wins) & eventually just stopped drinking tea as well. this was around 2003. fast forward to about 2 months ago. i was gaming with my sunday night crew & things were going quite late, as they often do with that group (which is awesome; i love long gaming sessions). etienne, as he is wont to do, had made coffee. there was about half a cup left in the pot as someone was refilling & they asked me, "do you want some coffee?" now, i hadn't answered that question in the affirmative more than a couple, three times in the last FIVE YEARS. but, with hardly a breath's pause, i heard myself saying, "sure." and i drank it, and it was fucking GREAT. i mean, it was like Folger's or something, so it wasn't GREAT great, but it was absolutely perfect. and i heard the rogue thought flit through my brain, "i could start drinking coffee again." i banished it immediately. this was a one time thing, a special occasion. fast forward to 2 weeks ago. etienne had brought a little bottle of Maker's Mark & we figured, hey, that'd be pretty damn good in a cuppa joe. so i had one medium sized cup of coffee, with about a jigger of bourbon. wonderful, delicious. the coffee, liquor & medicine seemed to be in perfect ratio. a guy could get used to this. fast forward to this sunday. like any good junkie, i decided to up the dosage. i tried to do it across the board, to maintain the integrity of the ratio, but that didn't happen. i had 2.5 good size mugs, each with about a shot of Early Times. and with the amount of medicine we typically consume, there's no way i could have kept to the ratio at the increased dosage. thus, i suffered from mild caffeine overdose. increased heartrate, increased need for cigarettes, constant motion, extreme perspiration. it's kind of fucked up, actually. because i have been in that EXACT same condition before, but it had always been the product of hours of cocaine or amphetamine abuse. not fucking COFFEE. i have absolutely no tolerance for that shit anymore. and i think that is probably the end of my little coffee experiment. at least for now.

a few weeks ago, some music channel, Fuse maybe? whatever. they had "live" Bonnaroo coverage & they did a bunch of shows with old Bonnaroo performances & blocks of videos by bands that were at this year's Bonnaroo & man, let me just tell you that it was one of the most depressing things i have ever witnessed. Bonnaroo is fucking dead, man, fuck those corporate fucking cash junkies. i felt so dirty after watching that shit that i had to dig up my Bonnaroo 03 Trip Report-slash-Day Two Review, just to prove to myself that, yes, once upon a time, Bonnaroo was the motherfucking shit. that i saw Antibalas & DJ Spooky & the Polyphonic Spree & Kid Koala back when Bonnaroo was still cool. fuck those fuckers. anyway, here's what i said then:

( BOOSH )

i have to say, Jack Johnson has definitely not grown on me since then. in fact, he has done the opposite. he has fallen off of me, or died on my vine, perhaps. although, who knows? if i were to see him now, in a utopic Bonnarooesque setting, with a headful of high powered acid? i might find that i like him still. or again. or whatever. i still love all those other bands/people, tho. anyways. that was one mighty damn good day, yeah? many thanks, Big Fella.

(i was referring to God, there, not Shaq. just FYI.)

(i'm sorry, i am totally high on cough syrup right now.)

(i should have said, "all-encompassingly high." shit. next time.)

aside from Chowder, the other thing i have been loving lately is nova science now, with Neil deGrasse Tyson. i love me some NdeGT. dude is fucking cool as hell. even when he's making a fool of himself. so yeah, i like to watch cartoons & kids science shows & eat dora the explorer breakfast cereal while i read my comics.

i think Chowder might be my favorite Cartoon Network cartoon since the salad days of Dexter & the Powerpuff Girls.

more later. must run.

chop shit: 1 vidalia, 1 green bell, 1 red bell, 1 orange bell, 1 bulb garlic, fresh herbs

pan + heat + 1 lb loose italian sausage, until browned. remove from pan.

into sausage grease, in order: green bell, orange bell, red bell, onion. crack pepper, sea salt, crushed reds. after a few minutes, add most of the garlic. apply heat until carmelization occurs. add remaining garlic, the herbs & toss in 1 lb baby spinach. once it sucks up all the grease, eat it.

you could put the sausage back into it, but fuck that, it is too good to mess with. just eat it. it is so sweet & delicious.

(that's what she said)

never. drinking. again. (this weekend.)

my brain feels like it is squeezing against the inside of my skull & my lungs are made of ragged pain, set on fire. my left hand is mostly covered in black ink, which means that somewhere, somewhere, the rest of it is staining something else. thousands of evil quick-working invisible microfairies are assaulting my eyeballs from the inside with hot needles. this parade of misery seems to come to a halt when i look over & realize that there is still a beautiful Canadienne (Québécoise?) next to me, but it promptly resumes when, on touching her cheek, she opens her eyes, looks at me, then leans over the side of the bed to vomit in my wastebasket. we are both filled with silent remorse. i stare at the ceiling & while she brushes her teeth, i guess i fall back to sleep. when i wake 2 hours later, just now, she's gone & my head still pounds & my ribs ache & my mouth tastes like burnt chocolate fur & i am thankful that the day is dark & overcast as, my hour come round at last, i slouch toward Bethlehem to be born.