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About Today

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Readability Index: Unreadable

Ok I finally put in some laundry. I had to try to shove the quarters into the machine like three hundred times. I set a timer for my French Press before I went down into the basement, four minutes, and it went off not halfway into my struggle. But it finally worked. There’s a note on the wall from 2001 saying that we tenants should let the landlord know if there are any problems with the machine, but I feel like we should probably have said something by now, so I’m definitely not bringing it up at this point.

I had some thoughts:

I should be a journalist

I should just read books all of the time

I should be a famous bartender

How did that guy on Top Chef get to be famous

The owner of that noodle place

He makes me think I could do some shit too

He just wants to have a good time

Wouldn’t it be funny to start a story with this guy’s next door neighbor lets him in the house, like inivites him over and the guy is kind of weary of the situation because he pretty much likes to be by himself anwyay…but then the neighbor says, “You want a beer?” and he says, “Well, by God, I would like a beer!”

Ok I’ll talk about that stuff later. Maybe.

So I left out of here to go get some shit done and I gotta say it did feel good. Getting shit done just feels good. I don’t know why. I was thinking about it at Stop and Shop while waiting for the bus. It’s like that Bob Marley song, Pass It On, “Live for yourself, you will live in vain, live for others, you will live again.” Well, I really don’t understand that shit at all because you are the only person you know, but then again, we’re all made out of the same elements so we’re really all the same thing, we’re all one, the universe just experiencing itself subjectively. I am everything that has gone before me. And yet I have an ego and can block the world out if I want to, and parts of me want to, one part. You know I’ve never read Freud or Jung. Should fix that. But I did read some Ruth Reichl on the bus, and you know I never have before. Well it was great. She’s awesome. But so Bob Marley, I should watch that documentary again. Marley was the creative title and it was the shit.

But I was thinking, that some of these errands, well I wouldn’t run them if it was just me. I wouldn’t probably run any of them if it was just me, but it was for my girlfriend. Well, not exactly. Like I had some stuff at the library, but so did she, so that was sort of for her. Really I only went because she asked me if I was going to go and I felt stupid saying no since she’d probably be like, well what the hell are you doing all day then?

So being productive. I’m sure it feels good because my mother was always all about being productive. Rather she still is. And so I grew up in an environment that reinforced my getting things done, or however Dr. What’s-his-face would say it. Skinner. BF Skinner. That was a fascinating read, Beyond Freedom and Dignity. If we’re not controlling the environment then we’re simply leaving control of the environment to someone else, because the environment will control the public. Or the society. Something like that.

All the muddled notions one arrives at by way of a thousand books one only read as fast as they could so they could say that they read them…could they be dangerously incomplete? Well. In reality I didn’t read them so I could say…well some of them, perhaps as many as half, could’ve been read that way…for that purpose rather. But mostly, like today, I just start a book and I get so wrapped up in “what happens next!?” that I can’t slow down to appreciate the way it’s done. Like the first page of Garlic and Sapphires, I was like, wow look how she does that, and look at all that alliteration and consternation, this is a beautiful piece of writing, and look at that formatting, but by page 3 I was like hot damn this shit is intense! Is she going to give Le Cirque a 3 star rating? 2 stars? Will she fold? Shit! And before you know it I finished the damn book and it’s two weeks from Friday and I don’t remember a damn thing.

Well I had to take a break here because my girlfriend came home and now I feel less on a roll. She’s pretty awesome, she just walked right in and made chicken stock. And gave me a chicken taco. Then I washed the dishes. Now she’s taking a shower. I made some more coffee because she said she wants some. She has a lot of reading to do which is awesome because it means I can just keep writing and writing. And finishing that damnable laundry.

But shit, what was the point. Yeah so just going out and doing errands, running them rather, well that was enough to make me feel pretty accomplished. At this point that feeling is starting to wear off. But at the time I didn’t feel anxious about whether I was wasting time and whatnot. I guess those are the kinds of things I feel are important. Daily drudgery type things that have nothing to do with art. I don’t know where I got the idea that working at art was a waste of time but I guess it’s down somewhere in my psyche because I don’t make time for it. Of course I have made plenty of time to blog. But then that’s not true, I had all the time there anyway. I just stopped doing a lot of other things like sleeping late, watching porn, watching movies, and washing the dishes, not to mention eating and reading about cocktails, and then all of the sudden I had all this time to blog. So I guess it is true, then, that I made time by clearing away those activities. What is it about blogging then that makes it ok?

Well I guess I haven’t given up entirely the idea that one can make money at writing. Even though by God I have tried. Merlin’s beard. I’ve tried to give up the idea. But it just seems right that I should make my money writing, even though I’ve never sold a damn thing I’ve written, or even tried to. Shit that’s not even true, now that I think about it! I sold a story on Amazon. I think I sold two of them for 99 cents each. Well there you go. That’s progress for you.

One of my favorite proverbs goes something like: Be not afraid of moving slowly, be afraid only of standing still.

Of course I spent most of my time going backwards. Or so it seems.

Where is all this leading to? What’s next?

Reminds me of that scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Damn that was a good movie. Hunter Thompson is everyone’s favorite. And Johnny Depp is my favorite actor. The scene at the hotel when he’s tripping out and trying to check in. “What’s the score here? What’s next?”

Well, I was thinking I could become a food writer. Or a journalist of some kind. I love writing, but I just love typing and typing and never looking back. Maybe I could send it in and someone else could edit it or something. Ah shit. But that’s how Thompson did it. Just let it go. Maybe if I spent enough time practicing, I could do it something like Jack Kerouac. But well that’s completely misunderstood. He worked really hard. I just finished reading a biography that came out recently called The Voice is All and it was by a Carol…something…Carol Johnson..shit I don’t know but it was damned interesting.

I shudder, I sit at my own dining room table, someone else’s dining room table for that matter, this furniture is a rental from the real occupant, I sit shuddering here listening to the demons all around. And by demons I mean those bastards that live upstairs and those bastards who live downstairs. I can hear their every breath. It’s a good thing they’re not big talkers or I’d go mad. No chance of that now. Not at all.

But God damn it. What is going on. I’m positively giddy with the notion, the idea of spending hours just typing random bullshit. I could even get down with typing Random Bullshit Random Bullshit Random Bullshit over and over again. You know, that’s a damn good way at getting better at typing, because the more you type one word the harder it becomes to do it without fucking up.

Positively giddy, where did I pick that phrase up? Either a book movie or TV show that’s for damn sure. Used to be I would pick a phrase or a mannerism up from one of my best friends. But I have moved away from them now, so whatever I say is probably from books or moving pictures.

Everything is unimaginable.

Ah, but damn, I need to get good at everything. Read all kinds of books about food and educate my simple palate. It doesn’t pick anything up at all. Lemongrass? What the fuck. I’ll tell you what an apple tastes like if you can tell me first. Like Ruth Reichl says, food writing is very subjective, to the point that I can’t be absolutely sure that what you taste when you eat an apple is the same thing as what I taste. Just like with colors and all that.

Well, shit. I think I’ll look at comments for a while.

I’m obsessed with myself. That’s for damn sure. Everything on this post has been for damn sure. I’m tired of that.

You know I really like looking at my stats. What for? Shit the writing is the fun thing right? But really, we only write so someone else can read. I never knew that before. And you’d think I didn’t know it now, the way I spew shit on the page like something I don’t want to talk about.

Damn, and I had a million ideas I wanted to talk about. And they all were me. I should write something that adds value to someones life. How do you spell someones? I don’t know. But I learned what a consomme is.

Oh yeah, but I was at The Breakers in the gift shop looking at all these boring ass books and thought, shit, I could be entertained for years just reading these dumb ass books. I should just bartend, make money, and read books.

Random Bullshit Leave a comment

Hot Damn I Can’t Get Anything Done in Life

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Readability Index: Weak

Well I been home for about an hour, and I was productive as a bitch out there in the snowy wilderness, but now that I’m home, well shit I meant to do all kinds of stuff. And stuff that was fun, too, nothing crazy. Although I keep forgetting about my laundry. Like I meant to make some coffee. And also…something else that I forgot. And I barely took my coat off, I just had to sit down and check what was going on over here. This may prove to be an unsustainable addiction. Ok I’m going to make coffee for real now. And breathe deeply.

I’ll listen to the Frank Ocean song afterwards! 😛 Or wait what the fuck…the whole post has disappeared. Carmen, you’ll have to get that right before I come back.

Random Bullshit, Things Happening Outside , , , , Leave a comment

Holy Shit It’s Snowing Again

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Readability Index: Moderately Readable

Well this is pretty crazy. I’m sitting in the office, just reading shit and writing more shit and feeling like shit…no not really I feel pretty good. But I look up and there’s snow just falling like pieces of Styrofoam…or that stuff that falls out from the sky in a nuclear winter. I don’t know but it looks great, because I have no lights on in the house and it just got dark and the flakes are shiny and it’s cold as a bitch out there and it’s warm in here. So it’s pretty sweet. It was snowing the whole time I was outside, but not this heavy, and when you’re in the thick of it you don’t have much time or attention to devote to looking at it. And even if you did it’s a completely different perspective.

Journal Type Shits, Not Fit for Public Consumption 3 Comments

Well, Shit

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Readability Index: Weak

I haven’t started the god damn laundry yet. I guess that’s not a big deal, because normally I would have to work, and I think last Monday I…wait I just remembered I have to write down this story about a squirrel that died outside a few days ago…stayed in bed until like 12 or 2:15. I just received a mysterious text: “Under the silverware by the last well.” So I guess I’m not wasting all that much time. As if time was something one could waste. Damn and I haven’t called to cancel my Wells Fargo account…oh but then again I did try to do that, it’s just the deposit hasn’t cleared yet. Fuck it.

I did manage to read some new blogs and comment on some shit again. Commenting is fun than a mother fucker. Reaching out to other minds and shit. We’re all just minds in this bitch like it’s the matrix.

Ah Christ. It’s cold in the living room. I’m going outside and go to the library and shit like that to get some books about a different country. And some more coffee.

Had to start typing on my girlfriend’s computer because mine started acting crazy, displaying websites all fucked up.

Journal Type Shits, Not Fit for Public Consumption , , , Leave a comment

Reading About Jazz, Listening to Swing

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Readabilty Index: Unreadable

This morning I woke up around 8:30. I had some kind of weird dream. Ah fuck I don’t really remember what it was. But at the time it was very vivid. I stood out in the kitchen just staring at shit for a while. I don’t know why. I didn’t know what to do. I always feel like I should be doing something important. But there’s nothing important to do.

Yesterday my girlfriend and I went down to the coast for our anniversary. We went to this Turkish coffee shop called Sofra. I got this orchid root drink that was too sweet and flowery for me. She liked it. She got a hazelnut latte that actually tasted like hazelnuts. I got an egg sandwich on bread that they made there. It was super light and flavorful. There’s got to be a better word than flavorful. Zesty. Nah. But fuck it. Then we drove to Newport and toured The Breakers. Then we went to lunch and had oysters and beer and chowder and a burger and talked about taking a trip to Europe instead of Asia. Then we drove around and went home. We were supposed to go out to eat but instead I got us some takeout from Bon Chon Chicken. It was delicious. And flavorful. So fucking flavorful. And we watched The Pirates! Band of Misfits (interesting quote from the Wikipedia article: “In January 2012, it was reported that the latest trailer of The Pirates! attracted some very negative reactions from the ‘leprosy community’.”). It was funny. I watched the end twice because she fell asleep halfway through. But then she fell asleep before the end again.

This morning I still had the Zipcar so I told her I’d take her to the train station before I dropped it off. Then I was going to go to the bank and then the library on the bus and get some more coffee, but once we got in the car I realized I had left my bag inside with the books I had to return and the cash I had to deposit, so I said fuck it. I came back here and started reading Blues People. I was looking for this other quote I’d seen and it didn’t take me too long to find it. Just about half an hour or…more like an hour I guess. I’m trying to just calm down and enjoy doing one thing instead of worrying about the things I’m not doing.

The quote was on page 199: “…the music by the mid-forties had also begun to get tagged with that famous disparagement art (meaning superfluous, rather than something that makes it seem important that you are a human being).”

It’s interesting because he’s talking about how the music was a way for black people to think and express themselves in a culture that wasn’t their own. Music was just something you did to get through. It was a necessary part of life. Whereas art is contrived. Or something. I guess in the 1940s the word ‘art’ had different connotations than it does today, because today it’s viewed positively. But I can still make a connection to my own life because I worry that what I’m doing isn’t art. But art, at least according to Kurt Vonnegut, is just something you should do to deal with life. In A Man Without a Country, one of my favorite books, it’s a book of essays about divers subjects, he says:

If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

I think I’m definitely going to get in trouble for just quoting these books. Or at least I hope so. I just hope they don’t want any money, because I haven’t got it.

Ah shit speaking of that I was supposed to close my Wells Fargo account today before American Express tries to take some more money out of there and overdrafts the damn thing for the eighth time in two months.

But anyway. Why wasn’t I on here writing up a storm on Saturday? Well, shit, my girlfriend and I spent the morning together. Walking down to Oak Square and then back up to Treats bakery on Washington Street. Then I went to work and it was crazy. I missed the one bus, then I had to run up the street to catch a different bus, and it crossed the road just out of reach and I ran after it and it stopped at the next stop to pick up like five people. It was right in front of a stoplight that had been green for a while so I thought it would stop…hoped it would anyway. So I kept running in my thick boots and closed in…but that damn light didn’t change. And the bus went right through and then the light changed. So I walked the four miles to work. Ran the last mile because I was running out of time. Then we had a huge party and I made like four hundred bucks. But it was another one of those situations where people were getting drunk by the end and we were about to have to cut people off. Thankfully we were able to just close the bar at the appointed time and didn’t have to do that. It’s the one part of bartending that I really suck at. And then four of us got into a car and my friend took us all home, which was fucking suite.

Ah shit. But today I’m supposed to do the laundry too. Yesterday my fellow bartender texted me and asked me to cover for him today. I guess I pissed him off because I asked if he still needed me to cover for him…I guess it was because I texted him like ten hours after he texted me. Because I had my phone off all day because I had gotten like three straight calls from some bill collector. Oh that’s what my dream was about. My friend who went to Afghanistan came back and stayed with me and my mom at my childhood home, but he was still pissed at me but we were supposed to hang out a lot and I knew my girlfriend was not going to like it. Yeah.

So that’s what’s going on around this motherfucker today. Shit I better get to it.

Analysis, Not Fit for Public Consumption , , , , , 1 Comment

Caffeine and Bartending

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The last three days at work I’ve had a redeye and been really talkative for the first part of the evening. Being talkative is important at a bar. Normally I don’t like to talk at all. But you have to engage people at the bar or they feel like you’re snubbing them. And if you’re not snubbing them, they’ll think you’re just a bad bartender. And if you don’t like to talk you probably are.

So the caffeine was working out when I was working doubles, because I would get off at 8 or 9 and be good, starting to come down. Though I would still be up and frenetic for a little while afterwards. Last night I couldn’t hardly get to sleep because I was too excited thinking about what I was going to blog about today.

I’m supposed to take a shower before work. I didn’t take one last night, got home too late and said fuck it.

And last night I had a redeye but then I had to stay until 12 or so cleaning. That was one of the reasons I got it, figured it would be good energy for that. But in the beginning I felt like I was working against the caffeine, like in the beginning of the shifts I was wiping the shelves down and the mirrors behind the bottles and all of that shit, and it felt like it was becoming more and more difficult to work the more I was drinking the coffee. Which is pretty counterintuitive. But there it was.

Plus, I have to spend four dollars on that shit. Tonight I’m going to try it out just drinking the regular restaurant coffee again. It’s shit, and I’ve had some bad experiences with it. It’s strange to think that different kinds of coffee can give you different kinds of buzzes, but I find it’s true. I also find that mixing stuff in changes the effect of caffeine. I don’t know if this is placebo or what.

But yeah the four dollars is some real bullshit. Last night I made a lot of money in cash though. Shit tons of cash. Everyone was tipping cash and on guy tipped 80 dollars cash on like a fifty dollar tab. But none of this has anything to do with the caffeine.

I was talkative like a motherfucker and it was working out, but at some point in the night my eyes started watering and shit and I was like what the fuck is going on. Well, it wasn’t something I wasn’t used to because that kind of shit often happens to me. But I would prefer that it didn’t. Just stay clear headed to the end.

And the damndest thing about my job is I’m the slowest cleaner around, I guess, and I can’t seem to close the bar down fast, which is a desirable trait for a bartender. I mean I don’t give a good shit as long as I’m out of there before 1:20 so I can catch my bus and all, but the managers like to be out of there. Plus the owner doesn’t want to be paying overtime because I can’t clean faster. So last night I was going to work on that and I think I did a pretty good job, but I don’t think the redeye helped anything.

So I think I’m going to retire that redeye shit. Fuck it.

How else can I improve at bartending? I don’t know, it’s a weird thing, I was trying to figure out how to improve and reading and shit and memorizing cocktails and such, but none of that is really helping in the face to face interactions and the real nuts and bolts of bartending. I’m still pretty bad at it. I can make good drinks and I’m a hard worker, but I dont’ have the real finesse. If only I could get drunk at work. Or at least just steady drink the whole time. Fuck it, I’ll just pretend I’m drunk. I pretty much did that last night and it seemed to work out.

Shit. What the fuck is going on with today? What have I done. And it’s 1:21 PM now so it’s almost time to get on that bus and start figuring that shit out. Have I improved from yesterday? I don’t know.

Tomorrow my girlfriend and I are going to prep the room for the first AirBnB guest. And she has some reading to do so hopefully I will get more chances to write. Ah but what the fuck is the point of writing all this shit? I don’t know I really don’t. Ah Christ these motherfuckers are still trying to bring the whole house down, those bastards downstairs.

Books Leave a comment

Blues People

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Readability Index: Readable

I’m reading a book called Blues People by LeRoi Jones AKA Amiri Baraka. It’s really good, but I am rushing through it. I just keep rushing through books lately. I had to look for this one passage I liked for like ten minutes just now because I couldn’t even remember where it came from, and as I looked over the pages I didn’t remember reading half of them. Here’s the passage:

“Music, as paradoxical as it might seem, is the result of thought. It is the result of thought perfected at its most empirical, i.e., as attitude, or stance. Thought is largely conditioned by reference; it is the result of consideration or speculation against reference, which is largely arbitrary. There is no one way of thinking, since reference (hence value) is as scattered and dissimilar as men themselves.”

That’s some deep shit right there. The book isn’t mostly about that kind of thing, I think it’s about how Jazz and Blues came from the perfection of the way black people thought about their place or lack thereof in American society.

I’m going to have to read it again I suppose. Is it better to read more books or know more about one book?

 

Other Minds 2 Comments

Thanks

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Readability Index: Readable

Yesterday I had the chance to interact with some really cool people. So I just wanted to take some time to publicly thank my first readers.

djmatticus of The Matticus Kingdom with some funny shit to say about Wallaby and life in general, and I can’t express the thrill at having received my first comment. I never thought it would be so good. But it was.

Eyoälha Baker of JumpforJoyPhotoProject for having cool pictures and quotes and for following my blog…for reasons as yet indiscernible, but I am nonetheless grateful.

The Sensitive Storm for comments and for her similar taste in music.

And I can’t leave out Rizqy Hidayat, the 16-year-old Indonesian computer programmer who designed this sweet ass theme.

Aw man, shit, I’ll never forget you guys. What a crazy road it’s been.

Religion , , , , 1 Comment

Why I Don’t Participate in Religious Debates

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Readability Index: Readable

Yesterday I read a Freshly Pressed blog post about Thought Catalogue…wait what the fuck was that blog called? I don’t know shit I’ll look afterwards. The post I read was a reaction by a gay Christian to an article about how Jesus was gay.

I was very interested to read the reaction, as were many other people, and was even inspired to write a pun for the first time in my life. But that’s not the point.

I respect the blogger for his well thought out opinion and engaging post. Ah what the fuck, it’s not like he’ll have time to read every blog post reacting to his blog post, so I might as well stop hoping not to upset him.

The point is I don’t know why a person who’s both gay and intelligent would want to be known as a Christian. I can respect what Jesus said at the Sermon on the Mount, but Christianity in general…as a cultural…thing…oh I mean institution, well I wouldn’t want to align myself with that at all, even if I did believe that Jesus was the son of himself and also the Holy Ghost.

But the point of this post is that I was thinking about it on the way to work, I thought, well shit, I’m going to ask that dude why he wants to, because he’s a smart dude and therefore probably has a legit reason to want to be identified with the Christian Church. I said hell yeah I’m going to ask that dude.

But then I thought shit no I’m not going to ask that dude! First of all he has a lot going on with all those comments he’s getting, he hasn’t got time to talk to me. No actually that’s last of all. First of all is that shit, even if I were to talk him out of being a Christian (not bloody likely) what good would that do him or me? I don’t have anything better to offer him.

Carl Sagan is the mother fucking man, that’s for sure. I watched his series Cosmos last summer and it was the shit on many levels of being the shit. He doesn’t believe in God, but he marvels at the universe and seems to be happy than a motherfucker doing that. Me I’m like shit son that shit is fucking awesome…but what the hell am I supposed to do now? Propogate the species so we can go out and conquer that shit next? Fuck I don’t know. I’m supposed to just sit there and be awed by that shit, and I do…but I can’t say that it’s an alternative to being sure that your purpose in life is to serve God…meaning that you have a firm belief that you’re supposed to be here.

So since I have nothing better to offer the guy (who I’m not linking to on purpose because I don’t want to debate him or his supporters for the reasons I’ve just outlined), I’m not going to say shit about his post and I’ll just wonder idly why he wants to be associated with the Christians.

It’s like Bokonon said about fake religion being better than no religion…can’t remember exactly what he said and for some reason I don’t have Cat’s Cradle in this office.