Statcounter

A while back, I installed Statcounter on this blog. I mean a long while back. It was almost a year ago.

The reason was that I thought I was being stalked. Which, as it turned out, was absolutely true. So, keeping in mind that blogging is almost entirely about ego, I began checking daily to see if I was still being stalked. I was, and it was great. I know if I was some hundred pound chick blogger, I may have been worried, but trust me, anyone who blog stalks could not take me in a knife fight.

So I studiously made sure that I was not forgotten by the creepy person for months. At some point, I did get bored of the whole deal. There are plenty of psychopaths attracted to me in bars, the internet attention was superfluous. I didn’t check the counter for six months or so. But I did just now. And I have concerns.

There are a lot of discrete IPs from my town making regular appearances. This is worrisome as I generally try to be as anonymous as possible. It took me years to even use my real first name on a website, and I do not ever give out my last name. It’s fairly uncommon and easily recognizable. But I have what amounts to fans in this town. I haven’t been as careful as I used to be using location names in my writing. So, I’m sure google queries led a few locals here.

Another conerc is the fact that some ex-girlfriends know about this site, and judging by the IP locations, visit fairly often. I don’t have too many exes since I try to keep my intimate relationships one night or less, but there are a couple. Most are harmless, but I worry that I may have let slip something they would be offended at. Or that they may read a horribly constructed sentence like that last one.

Now the biggest concern is this: repeated views from a “Colorado State Government” terminal location. That bothers me a lot. I know I am paranoid, but is it ever good to have someone repeatedly visit from the deep sweltering crotch of The Man?

So, for me and my curiosity, do this:

• If you read this from The Town Which Shall Not Be Named Ever Again (my home), leave a comment anonymously and let me know how you got here.
• If you are an ex-girlfriend, do the same, just keep it clean. Or not.
• If you are The Man know that I seek every day your destruction through less than legal means.

Craigslist Friday

So, after I was thoroughly outclassed in my own comment section in the funny department, I decided to temporarily ressurect an old running joke. Craigslist Friday is simple. Make an ad, make it funny, give it a link. The reason I stopped, in case you were curious, is that I ended up feeling bad for all the responders and, in fact, felt guilty for leading them on. I got very heartfelt responses to some of the ads and ended up deleting them. The ads, that is. In the course of human events, I did meet a couple of the responders and we had a pretty good time together.

Also, an ex-girlfriend (a title I am not comfortable with, it sounds crass) gave me a little shit about it.

Anyway, I think this one should be obvious enough as to avoid me having to answer any actual responses. Again, if the responses are good, they’ll be posted. And in case any of you women from the last post hink you’ll be able to just channel more crazy and email a bunch of fake responses to this CL post, you got another thing coming. I want you to do that in my comments.

Later.

http://westslope.craigslist.org/m4w/1094615940.html

Invitation

You know, one of my greatest regrets is that I have never really had an unhealthy relationship. I mean, I’ve been in bad ones and I’ve had some end horribly, but I’ve never really had any reason, even before there was Facebook, to say “it’s complicated.” This is unfortunate. So much of being a grownup is centered around these defining car torching psychopaths everyone else meets.

Really, where are the psychos? I haven’t had a legitimately crazy girlfriend in my entire life. Ok, so my former wife was bipolar among other things, but still, I got out of that one pretty easy. I have been stalked numerous times, blog wise. It never occurred to me until recently that keeping a years old internet handle as an email address and a blog title was that big a deal. I mean, who googles someone’s email address? Or who expects it, I should say. Now that I think about it, that’s a reasonable thing to check out.

So yeah, I have statcounter, I can tell when I’ve acquired a new e-stalker or have simply regained an old one (assuyming I check that shit, which I haven’t in months). But I haven’t had to get a restraining ord3er once in my whole life. Sure, I’m pretty much a badass and so have no real worry about physical threats from girls, but no slashed tires? No dead kittens in the mailbox? What the fuck.

So, hey, I figure I’m single*, available**, and mostly awesome***, so I offer this challenge. Think you’re crazy? Let’s have a bad e-relationship. Let’s fight about your alcoholic parents’ expectations. Let’s be goddamn crazy, because so far in my life that is missing. Shit, I am still friends with four of the last five women I have dated. That ain’t cool.

So please, somebody volunteer. This is only available to girls (sorry GSR) not in my town. This is an internet only invitation. We’ll make one of those irritating couple blogs and have mysterious Facebook status hinting at problems (the plural of ‘status’ is ‘status’). We’ll have virtual trailer park fights. I’ll hate all your e-friends, and you can hate all my contact lists. It sounds fun, right?

No?

Then fuck you. I’ll slash your fucking e-tires, bitch.

*Single as in, married to rocks, books, and books about rocks.

**Obviously not that available.

***All the way awesome.

Smokestack Lightning

There’s something lonely about the quartering in light of day in a dark room.  I barely notice being alone until the sun, rolling around heaven all day, cuts through the pulled down blinds and the arch of glass above my door.  White shafts of light, like elevators laying on end, cut through the dark and let me know that outside the walls, held aloft in light, is a world I don’t want to be part of.

So, I sit here with the jag across my thigh and the tubes warm and glowing, but I don’t play anything.  It just feels good to have it.  It’s my own room.  It’s my own twelve bar progression.  Not some jumpy root-fourth-fifth nonsense.  It’s a slow languid creep into those minor chords and hammered on sixths.  It’s the curl of dust and smoke around my head and nothing on in the whole house but the guitar. 

And then you find your notes.  A few stings, a few runs.  This guitar picks out the dynamics of your string attack like a sommelier, mulling your intentions over its alnico palette.  Curl your fingers into a paw and walk up to play a flatted nine chord.  Whichever one. 

I never know what to do with myself.  I should be going out, but I got a lot on my mind.  A thousand different things.  It’s like when Etta James said she would rather be blind.  For her it was a blackness she sought, an encompassing and merciful holy dark, and lord knows I been there.  I want this ebony fretboard, full of pointless extrapolated notes made from a million different harmonics.  And as those sine functions compound into infinite complexity, it’s all I can think about.  It’s all I can feel.

I would rather be distracted than think, like Ms. James would rather be blind than see. 

That woman can burn me down with that song. 

I jewelled the frets on this guitar. It come to my house a little rough.  Now you can’t feel the frets sliding by under your thumb as you run your hands along the blackwood neck.  The girl’s all smoke. 

Some guitars are twang and some are testosterone made manifest.  Some are a Hemi rolling a Roots super charger.  It’s a character.  Like the harmonics in Howlin’ Wolf’s voice.  You can’t separate it from the instrument. 

She rolls through the tones like scotch over ice.  It’s never a rough transition from one selector switch or pot roll off to another.  Some people want a bunch of tones from a guitar.  This one has the same tone a hundred different ways.  Some guitars just bleed it out.  The 12ax7 in my amp is redhot glowing like the cherry of my cigarette and the sun may be on its way down. The dark room is darker and the shafts of adamant white are just columns of gray.  Fuck the sun. 

I haven’t drank a drop since Monday.  I haven’t spoken to a soul about anything in my head for longer than that.  Nobody would understand, even if they really tried.  It’s not sadness driving me away.  It’s not heartbreak or loneliness.  It isn’t even being a little bit sad.  I just want to be alone with whatever boils out of me through my fingers and on to the nickel strings. 

And when I’m done with this time, I plan on going back.  Going back to spilling whatever boils out of me through my fingers on to some very human skin.  Not a twelve bar, just a straight juke.  Stop your train. Smokestack Lightning. Howl, baby.

I sent a clip of me playing guitar to someone once on a day like today.  I told her all the technical reasons it was what it was.  She listened and said: It just sounds like you’re horny.

Indeed.

Cover “Art”

So, this is a Friday time waster.

Read this quick post to understand the rules.

One of the points Anaglyph makes is that human creativity is still the driving force since you’re using creativity and sourcing the skills of others.  He is right, to a point.  But wait until you see my ‘good’ cover before you make that call.

I swear to Jeebus, this is the random one.  Note shittiness added by using Windows Paint!

Yeah.  I think the silicon faeries are on to something.

And, no shit, this is the one I got with method one.

Last time an image I posted made words fail me, it was boobies and a guitar.

To Find My Wooden Leg!

“Dude, did you call my ex last night?”

“Um. Yeah, that sounds sort of familiar.”

“Like, five times?”

“Huh, I think me and Adam tag teamed her voicemail box. You told us to call the first time.”

“She said someone with a really deep voice did the entire milkshake monologue.”

“That sounds like something I would do.”

“Then you guys sang ‘Shipping Up to Boston’.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah. She called me this morning and wants to hang out.”

“You’re welcome.”

“With you.”

“Oh. Awesome.”

“Asshole.”

“So, can I get her number or…”

“Man… Fuck you.”

Happy Irish Hangover Day!

Pistolgrip Pump On My Lap

At all times.

I ran two miles the other week in 10:42.  For a 28 year old, 5’9″, 200 pound guy, that is impressive.  But I still want to change some things.

One of the summer jobs I’m considering has fitness standards.  It gave me slightly lower self esteem* to hear that for my height, I need to be 184 pounds.  I’m not sure I can do that.  I’m irritated because I can max out every military service’s personel standards in the run/pushup/situp stuff. I am more athletic than most of the six-pack showing GNC stockholders walking around my gym.  But I am over-weight. I’m not too concerned, I’m pretty sure this company uses the same BMI methods the Navy did.  So I should be OK.

I remember back when I was a kid in school, the teachers would talk about how hard it was on the girls to see actresses and models and Barbie dolls that were championed as beautiful.  Because, I guess, the girls were average and couldn’t ever match up to the celluloid universe standard of attractive.  Meanwhile, it didn’t cross their minds that my Ninja Turtles looked to be losing a kidney a day to anabolic steroids and that movies in the 80’s and 90’s were dominated by creepy cyborg weirdos covered in vaseline sweat.  Remember that thoroughly gay scene in Top Gun** where they’re playing volleyball?  Yeah, those sorts of guys may have ruined us.  Go to a gym and see the crazy cases trying to turn themselves into Daniel Craig.  I find it funny that women so often think they are alone in their body image drama.

The hottest women I’ve known had the hardest time with their looks.  Consider also that  I, the pinnacle of conditioning and aesthetic appeal, sometimes find myself wishing I could drop a couple extra pounds, never mind that going to the gym for me is a sure way to put on five pounds a week.  I build muscle faster than I can lose weight.  Not bragging here, just saying I still have stretchmarks on my shoulders from the last time I tried to ‘get in shape’ and ended up being 220 (see aside) by the end of that six months.

Oddly enough, those people that seem to care the most about their bodies in the gym are some of the least developed people I know.  I wonder what people aspired to be before the celluloid universe came about.

I think they should aspire to be me.  Except the not drinking part.  I have to cut back on booze if I plan on losing 20 pounds in three months.  I think I should cut back anyway, honestly.  Have you been reading this shit the last few months?

Aside

When I was pushing 220, I had single digit body fat.  By any standard, I was in very good shape.  Oddly enough, I have never felt shittier about myself, aesthetically, than I did right then.  It’s odd how that works.  I wouldn’t even walk around the beach with my shirt off for a long time.  Then I got over it.

*I hate the term “self esteem.” Let’s just be honest, I felt unattractively, morbidly obese.  Then I realized that I would make morbidly obese look pretty good.

**For future reference, every single aspect of that movie is completely bullshit EXCEPT for how irritatingly gay fighter pilots are.  Really.

Regulators, Move Out!

I am anticipating being gone for the first part of next week on another excursion of awesome, so I thought I would share a quick thought this weekend.

So, Saturday is pozole day at El Tapatio near me casa.  I am somewhat of a regular anymore, enough so that I get a weird look when I say no to the Negra Modelo.  They have kickass coffee and food.  The coffee is the good kind that can take a little cup of half and half and barely cloud.  Cowboy coffee.  Or vaquero coffee.  Or caballero coffee.  Not sure, really. 

Anyway, while I sat working on the gallon of glorious red liquid with about a pound of hominy and what I would estimate to be the hock of a 1,200 pound sow, I watched the muted Banda music videos.  I think the music video as a cultural reference is much under utilized among sociologists. 

Or maybe not.  In my brief education via the cathode tube universidad de Mexico, I got the general idea that potato farmers are screaming hot lanky girls wearing halter tops and that chubby unibrowedmen have a hell of a lot better chance with super models south of the border than they do with average looking entitlement queens up here.  Me and my brothers are packing the Scout and getting international service on our cell phones as I type.  Also, there seems to be a great racket in trading side of the road Volkswagen repair for affections of even hotter looking, but somehow wholesome, lingerie models in distress. Again, the Scout is packed (with a tool box and a Chilton’s Manual, Volkswagen Beetle ’55-81) as well as a tutorial on how to put out magnesium fires. 

In between what seems to be a retrospective on the career of said potato farmer/lingerie model, there were the same awful sorts of commercials known the world over.  I noticed the word dolores kept coming up in the ads whenever an old lady rubbed her hands together.

This is important because A: Dolores is a major contributor to the watershed of the Colorado River System, and B: I was baptized into the Household of Faith* therein.

I was curious what the word meant, so when my waiter returned I asked in horrible Spanish for a definition.  He couldn’t find the words, but he made the same hand wring motions and grimaced like the fat lady in the commercial and said “Ay yi yi!”

Pain? I asked him.

Si. He said.

I had always been told the Rio Dolores was the “River of Sorrows.”  Apparently, it is actually the “River of Pain.” 

This is important for this very reason:

I will find before I die, I swear to you, some reason to respond to some query thus, probably while smoking a cigarette and staring menacingly/broodingly/handsomely into some bandita/senorita/English major’s eyes with whiskey voice baritone:

“Sweetie, I was baptized in a river of pain.”

And so for now I wait…

Back

I’ll write about it when I can.  I have a poor ring bound hip notebook about beat to fuck and three-quarters full.  Some of it’s about sound. Most of it isn’t.

And I picked my guitar back up out of hock today after returning.  So the pining in that last post is concluded. 

I made a beer that is so good it makes me want to get saved, quit drinking, start back sliding, get re-saved, get married/start family, slide backwards into a bottle and eventual take that last glass bottom boat ride to homelessness with a growler of this baby sloshing down my shirt. 

I made mead that has similar effects. 

Running water and the sounds of people make me twitchy right now. 

The full moon last night was amazing and outstanding and I couldn’t stay out in it long enough. 

Saw a coyote.  We shared.

Broke a driveline (propeller shaft in some countries) and had to bust out the toolbox on the trail.  It was sort of cool.  Drivelines seem to be my bane.

When Sigurd was christened “Fafnir’s Bane,” did he ever say, “Why the fuck did I kill a dragon with a name so fucking lame?”

If I killed a dragon, I would just tell be it was named Bloodfury.

That is a kickass name for a band.

I think when I weld together a new driveline, I’ll remember to fill it with polymer sand, thus never having to balance it. 

I want to take the longest shower in the history of all showers, but I know I’ll be bored with running water shortly.  And life moves different out in the desert. It makes you wonder about a lot of things.  Like water.

I saw a glut of pictographs.  So far I get the general idea that thousands of years ago people wanted to warn you.  Mostly about horned flying men in blankets. 

That seems reasonable.

A million miles away right now

Long gone lonseome blue

Already gone, the Eagles one.

Why can’t I think of any other song quotes with gone?

Fly on my sweet angel?

Doesn’t count. Also: is lame.

That song is not lame.

That is the lamest song he ever wrote about a chick.

The song on Axis: Bold as Love about the medieval chick, much lamer.  Don’t say chick, it’s not nice.

You’re my conscience not my uterus, punk. 

Long gone, gone when they rolled away the stone.

That dumbass country song.  Gone.

Gone.

Gone.

Gone. Together now: Gone like a freight train, gone like a runaway. Gone like a soldier in the civil war. Bang. Bang.

Wait, are you drunk?

So.

What the fuck.

I have feelings, too.

Menstrual feelings. Bitch.

Agression is unattractive.

True.

This one getting to you?

Indeed.

Beer helps.

You are fucking fired.

Give it a week.

And in my mind I see the red rocks and Mormon tea spread out into the…

Stop writing a blog entry.

Yeah.  I suck at them, lately. Goddamn VA.

God. Damn. V. A.

You know how much I hate ending every word with a period as a rhetorical device. 

Orson Scott Card does it.

Did it.  Once . Also: it is SciFi. 

I’s not as bad as elipses in the place of silence.

…

Got me there.

…

I want to kill a bear.

.243 would struggle with it.  What with your total lack of practice.

My conscience is a passive-aggressive drunk. 

Takes one to know one. 

I want to kill it with an axe. 

Do you really need me for this one?

Not really. I know it’s a bad idea. 

Thank God. I would hate to have to get reassigned this early in my new job.

You’re that new? I mean, what did you do a few years back to be qualified for this?

I was fired as a botanist.

…

Huh.

Yeah. Beer.

Beer.

And. One. Week.

Gone.