random slightly offensive one-liner of the night

i feel uglier than a girl in a burqa with a lazy eye

living will

bury me under cigarette hill
where the ladies press the dirt to their lips
cuz you can't smoke in a chapel

gather all the remnants from my parents' house
sandwhich bags of old mohawks, pinned sharpied t-shirts, and broken jewelry
i don't need a coffin
but i want my vestments
i don't wanna be penned up in no box til the end of days
keep me on a slab
wait for the rains
push my face into the wet dirt and
keep pushing til it looks like this years crop of ankles have finally sprouted boots
leave them there
i want the men in my family
to dab their tzitzit in minkoil and oxblood
shine em up real pretty for the lord
i want the women in my family to lace em up real nice w/ real lace spoilt in tears
and i want the freaks in the house
to tongue them nasty
til everyone
can see their faces in the leather,
see their futures
their futures together
everything meant to come to pass

Oh, Doppler
God of Weather
grant me lightning
if you don't we'll use fuses and copper coils
to blow from their roots
the gangly trees that haunt
Illinois cemetaries

let them say that my death was the death of symbolic trees
the death of symbolism in general

the precise moment that
timber
splinters
headstones
in that mst hated of suburbs
(Northbrook)
I want the brass to strike a full jazz march
and when
they launch
their New Orleans dirty
run up of Amazing Grace
the moon should have the only white face you can see
and that honky better be laughing

don't fuck w/ no headstones
drag something out of an alley
an old door, a chunk of wood
drop an extra fin on some krylon and
graf me an epitaph
sticker it up like a 15 year old's guitar case
wrap a mausoleum around it
a place w/ no door
where squatters can rest their heads
closet cases can cruise blowjobs
and junior high kids can brownbag their vices and knock each other up

the seasons will change an the boots will wilt
snow will cover the ass ends of a million cigarettes
women will stop coming by to rub grit to their lipstick
before prayer
and the brass will return to rooved venues and decent songs for churchfolk

and in a million seasons
the sun will kick
snow will cover a whole globes worth of cigarettes
hopefully
there will be somebody
celestial bodies
to push the dead stars face into the wet earth
so that all you can see
shined by god and anointed with milk
are its two black boots

itching for a yeast infection

anonymous: i gotta get those dirty panties out of her closet and into my nostrils right now
sarah: wow, it's really not a party until you hear that

yesterday was full of that
the moon was weird
janitor jesus was tonguing boots shined
nipple putty was pastie-dropping
and everybody had a taste of oil
just to choke themselves sober
a dank haus indeed
toy xylephones to burlesque
old friends and new vices
im still not normal
sill not normal for me

i miss my friends
again
it doesn't seem mutual

[brought to you by the chicago german police association]

stick in the mud as iconoclast symbolism

Current mood: black oval

apparently
it is earth day but
(alas)
it is too late
to unlitter
all of the strawberry mike & ikes
from the $1.29 jumbo box

by federal mandate
i should be stopped

write your legislators

4/20 quote of the day

"It's Hitler's birthday, but I'd rather burn a spliff than Jews"
-Kate Cullan,
from "Take a Toke"

based on the poem "Why I smoke," by Joshua Bermont,
based on the poem "Why I drink" by Jack Calhoun

Barney Gumbel, Adolph Hitler, Napolean III, Luther Vandross, and Joey Lawrence- I hope you're having a rockin party down there in hell

i know you can't blow out the candles
but you still got your wish
a hitler youth pope

Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold- you are missed

nyuk nyuk nyuk

Colin: I like your eyeline
ELR: I'm not wearing any eyeliner
Anne: he's just pretty. I hope your kids get your eyes
ELR: I hope my kids get...um...stillborn

skerts

today i
thought that
initiation equates
sentience

i've been objectifying women in my head all day and boy are my arms tired
viva el sol

you have to write the word fight 29 times by hand nefore you notice something's wrong with it

there's an olive branch rotting in the back yard
squirrels that want to grow up to be something better, like lemurs
chew on it sometimes but it is not food

sometimes i hear families laughing on the other side of the border
because they don't have to deal with texas or california anymore
-lay lines-weird shit-it won't get better-
but still, they miss their buffaloes and hate being catholic
they mix cinammon and chiles
i can smell when i go to the window
to look at squirrels

they aren't good at hiding their food
i just keep the bike shed unlocked and they use it as a cooler
when i'm drunk and overdramatic I climb in,
yet to happen upon their
dinner parties
with raccoons and gila monsters

they chew on bags of tea lives I leave them
but they do not soak
i can't blame them
it's only Lipton
it's dangerous to live alone here
there are single women
with guns and high concepts of fidelity and me-ness, whtever those are
i'm on their land
having toast
w/ butter
or maybe fake butter
fake margarine, vegan even
it's made of magic
i try to rub it into cows

Absorb! I say

they look back and maw
that I don't have any concept of irony
so i tip them

Thumbs! I say as I walk back to
my car. They call their lawyers but
without my plate number it's useless

the cows do not get up to get it, the cows cannot get up to get it
they are covered in butter

quote of the day 4/16/05

ELR: What's up with all these concerts starting on time these days? I missed half the fucken bands.
JONATHON: Yeah, I read that shows are starting on time these days. I read it, ummmm....I read it in a blog

dirty found

this is a conversation that took place in Gringo's parents' basement a few years ago in Wicker Park

Duo: Yeah, I saw Iroc the other day, he was fuckin blown out of his mind
Kore: Wait, Iroc does blow?
T. J. : His name is fuckin Iroc. I...rock. He's a fuckin crackhead man.
Kore: Oh

Iroc was a big motherfucker; he wasn't really bigger then me but swole as hell and with this real big persona. He was black as fuckin night and had eyes that were red as sin (of course, that was probably just the drugs). I haven't seen him since that year, 2001, when he knocked up one of my friends. She was this really beautiful hispanic girl that was always high on something, usually mushrooms or coke. She lived a few houses down and I had a huge crush on her but I had a girlfriend at the time so nothing ever came of it. I haven't seen her since a little after I moved. I did her once when she got out of school, high on pot and giggling with friends. I think she was a senior at the time, but I haven't seen her since. I don't know if she graduated or carried the baby to term.

Funny thing is, yesterday on one of my forays through Ukie Village alleys I found an old cassette tape carrier with someones entire old collection in there. Fuckin Score!, right? Even more than that, on the side, scribbled over and over in silver paint marker is Iroc's old tag. This is the first random thing I've found that I can trace back to someone.

With no further ado, are Iroc's old tapes (in descending order of wackness):

-Wu-Tang Clan "Lesson 4: Tiger Style" (bootleg, stamped by DJ 3rd Rail as property of WNUR)

-Ice Cube "The Predator"

-Tupac "Makaveli 5" (posthumous bootleg)

-Busta Rhymes "Woo-Hah!! Got you all in Check" (single, does not include the
ODB remix, I had the same cassette in 8th grade)

-Kid Frost "Hispanic Causing Panic"

-DJ Honda "Snippet from HII" (with KRS-One and Keith Murray)

-Pharoah Monch "Simon Says" (single)

-the Alkaholiks (now the Liks) "40 Ounces Sampler" (they changed their name to 'the Liks' so they wouldn't be associated with alcoholism, but check out the badass logo of a guy vomiting in a toilet)

-DJ Kool "Let me clear my throat" (single with Doug E. Fresh and Biz Markie)

-Nate Dogg featuring Snoop Doggy Dogg (not just Snoop Dog, Doggy Dogg...the way the good lord intended) "Never Leave Me Alone" (single from "G-Funk Classics-vol. 1")

-Outkast "Elevators (me & You)" (clean single from "Aquemini")

-DMX "It's Dark and Hell is Hot" (featuring the epic lines

"I got blood on my hands/
and there's no remorse/
I got blood on my dick/
cuz I fucked a corpse )

-Mystikal "Ghetto Fabulous"

-Big L "Lifestylez of da poor & dangerous"

-Bone thugs-n-Harmony"Tha Crossroads" (single; I love bone but their R&B version of this rough ass song from "E. 1999" was shit)

-Tru "Tru 2 Da Game" (I rememberTru had an awesome tattoo of his own name/logo)

-"Street Jams - Electric Funk- Part 3" (labeled Freestyle)

-Canibus vs. DMX ..2 "Part 2: The Main Event" (featuring Mike Tyson)
tape labeled "Old School!"

-C-Murder "Life or Death" (currently on lock with a homicide rap)

-Trak Don Remixes "For Da Clubs ..7: R&B and Rap Mix"

-grits - samples from "Grammatical Revolution"

the following albums are worse than those by both trak don and grits, whom I have never heard
-Silkk the Shocker "Made Man"

-"sampler from Black Gangster Original Soundtrack featuring Jay-Z, a Rule, Killa, Mac Dre, Ghetto Mafia, DMX, & others" (what, you don't remember Black Gangster? It's "based on the novel by America's ..1 best-selling Black author Donald Goines." Fuckin Illiterates.)

-"I Attend" (this one is presented by The Box Television Network in conjunction with the 'be in school program' featuring clean tracks and radio edits by Destiny's Child, Wyclef Jean, Kimberley Scott, Our Lady Peace, Chantal Kreviazuk [?], Imani Coppola, Mariah Carey featuring Krayzie Bone and Wish Bone, and Savage Garden.

on an unrelated note, two weeks ago there was this big three day hardcore fest and on one of the days, they paired local band IATTACK, with New York band I OBJECT and another band I ACCUSE. I kinda wish that straightlaced I ATTEND would show up and lend a hand with clean radio friendly tracks by Madball, Raegan SS, and (x)Limp Wrist(x)

and finally the most weaksauce album to have sludging around your collection

-Tyrese "Tyrese"

you can make fun of my shit when you find it

the fall of the house of lab rat

[based on a chapter of "Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov]

He woke up with sand in his mouth, and he woke up angry so he chewed the sand hard, and he chewed the sand until it was no longer sand but glass, and then chewed the glass until blood was spilling past his lips. The blood soothed the chancres on his gums as it gurgled past, over the stubble on his neck, and onto an old grey t-shirt. He sipped some water from a cup he'd left on a counter the night before, staining both, and left the house.

With no location in mind, he left. The only purpose in leaving was that he would come back. He didn’t put on a jacket, though he had several, wore no hat and no shoes. He would not return until the soles of his feet were coal, caked, leaving black footprints across every step he took. Said steps were predetermined, and not by him. He would not leave another footprint again.

His floor was recently mopped with chemicals he didn’t know the names of. One was in a maroon bottle shaped like a woman that smellt of maroon flowers and perfumed women. The other was in a yellow bottle and smelled like death the way death smells when it happens in hospitals or government buildings. Al Capone tried acid and lye to lift the signature from his fingerprints. It was Capone’s city, and with the old dago's blessing, he would use these yellow and maroon chemicals —purchased either from witch doctors or neighborhood carnicerias, he couldn’t remember which— and surely they would peel the footprints from his feet, and he could travel the continents without leaving a mark, without being found.


He walked aimlessly over alley and pavement, over dirt and litter and the season’s first grasses. He felt eyes on him, though he saw no faces and, in fact, saw no people. At some point, in some liquor store that anchored the corner of some intersection (and what was he doing there?) he heard a little girl crying, knew it was because of him. Fully aware that he looked like hell but it wasn‘t that. It wasn’t the patchy stubble and sleepingdress that made him look like a madman; it wasn't the blood, which stretched from behind his teeth halfway down his chest; and it wasn’t the rocks of crust that formed all over in sleep, as if every opening in his body was preemptively trying to seal itself in. It was his eyes.

He had liked his eyes always. When he was a little boy, decrepit old women marveled at them. ‘What long lashes!’ they said. ‘How deep! How thoughtful!’ cooing and blessing his mother. ‘An artist!’ they said. ‘A teacher!’ ‘A doctor!’ Now nuggets of green and yellow ore held the lashes shut like some clever and waiting flytrap. ‘Nothing today, wasp sir, I am full.’ They held no morsels though, nothing anyone would want; man, beast or holder himself. They held something like death but… not quite. They were like the eyes of old blind Greeks, who sayed sooth and predicted misfortune always and everyone smart just wanted to get away.


He walked for hours or maybe just minutes, or possibly just rubbed his feet in the dirt for a few and turned around. He walked until he saw yellow bricks, and then red bricks and rod iron, and then the painted brand sprayed before his door, though it wasn’t his house. He climbed a heating pipe, onto the balcony, which needed mopping. And smashed a candle over the edge, glass rained down on the street. This signaled the beginning. He took the propane tank from his grill and dabbed a rag into it, a long one, held the far end over a candle, a lantern with the glass broken and waited. It was a stubborn lantern but took after two matches. With his bare foot he kicked through the glass, which immediately broke. He felt no pain though shards lodged themselves into the old carvings in his legs, as if by fate or magnetism. He felt no pain until his unclipped toes reached the screen door. The little wires unclasped each other and took his leg pulling him further and further until he lost his balance. They wrapped around his leg up to his thigh, tied and hugged the shards of glass and he jerked his entire mass through two doors. Little pains of wood and glass and screen. He hoped the result would be cartoon, that the hole would replicate the contours of his body in some dynamic pose but he did not turn around to look. He felt wet and cool, from sweat or blood.

He ran to his right and tossed the cages across the room at the sink. The tired lids burped up his only dependents, a 9-legged gimp spider, a greedy toad aand a million pinhead crickets. The spider climbed a wall and the frog bedded in the week-old grime on a dish. The crickets sang their freedom and sprung in every direction, mostly into vents where they would rot and render the entire house unlivable. He left his toys alone, his little collectibles that amassed a lifetime alone. He would become a rampaging Buddhist, making his life with them unlivable.

He picked up the turntable which was not his and lifted it high above it’s head, two old speakers dangled from it like pitiful testicles and trailed it like a comet as it followed the plastic cages to the wall above the sink where it smashed and fell, breaking the faucet so that water geysered up. He flipped through the records on the floor the way he flips through books he’s not reading and walked on. Under the sink, where water was already collecting, he grabbed her drill and it’s finest bits, puncturing the old olive fridge. If there was food it would spoil, but there was only a single chicken breast that had been grilled the night before. When he looked through the hole in the unopened fridge and thought about the grill, as if on cue, the tank of propane exploded, sending tiles flying up and killing the grill itself which lay like a rape-victim on the sidewalk.

Pulling pieces of brick from the back of his head and the tattoo on his neck, he squeezed the trigger on the drill and it squealed. He ran downstairs, poking everything: Twinkling little Christmas lights and video games, VCRs and DVD players, stereos and projectors, microwaves and computer monitor after computer monitor after computer monitior (in every room but the bathroom it seemed), a theremin, a casio, the skin of a drum and the strings of a balalaika that had never been tuned; a didgeridoo now looked like a flute, he ripped the stringboard of a piano and each bit of steel sang like an angel its one note song on its way to heaven.

He spun, panting, around…still hearing the sounds of explosions or perhaps the ringing in his ears. Maybe a war had erupted. Maybe he’d started one. He ran, asthmatic, passed former heroes emblazoned on walls, Salvador Dali and Frank Zappa, and Hunter Thompson, dead all and into his own bedroom. He pulled out another stick match. It broke in half as he lit it and he held it in his fingers until it burnt itself out on the old scar on his torn fingerprint. He took a second to contemplate, dropped the drill for the first time. He stood over his bed, or maybe it wasn’t his. His was in another room of the house, he’d traded it with someone and picked up a discard, but maybe that wasn’t his but an old girlfriends’. They were all inhabited by cruel and twisted demons that inhabited him too. He lit and threw a match. He’d been sleeping with the same kind of blankets he’d had when he was a kid. He lit and threw a match. The comforter caught. He lit and threw a match. An old stack of pictures he’d taken for school took up. He lit and threw a match. The desk his mother fished out of an alley for him. He lit and threw a match. A floor full of thriftstore shirts and pants he’d found after parties. He lit and threw a match. Sweat and blood drained over his eyes. Salt everywhere. He lit and threw a match, and ran out into the hall, coughing.

He heard a noise that wasn’t his. He heard a noise that was neither the fire crackling as it consumed everything nor water rushing and soaking everything else. It was not the sizzle from where the two met and grappled. It was a plaintive yell, a whimper like only a kitten could make. Fire all around he braved his roommate’s room, flushed with guilt and saw two black cats nuzzling the iris of a ring of fire. He scooped one up, then the other and walked back, not out through the front door but back to the balcony. A board loosened and nearly sending him to Hell, which now looked an awful lot like his basement. Ge regained his footing and walked out, setting the cats down.

“Your mother will be here soon,” he told them, referring to his roommate. “Go into the alley and play, catch mice and eat well. Fight opossums and raccoons but stay close, she will be here soon.”

He slowly, more methodically walked back through a broken screen that did not leave a perfect cartoon silhouette of himself and stepped over to the area that separated his living room and kitchen, where fire and water were still wrestling to no avail and with one foot in each he picked up a record. It was one of his favorites but no one else knew it. It was one of his favorites because it was one of his favorites when he drove around in other peoples cars when he was seventeen and alone. He crooked it under his arm and walked to the sink, wher He crooked it under his arm and walked to the sink, where he grabbed the frog off a floating wooden bowl and the tarantula from a dirty pink tile on the wall. He placed them on each shoulder, where you would see somebody’s moral compass and id in the movies. The faucet spewed cold, crystal water onto his arm,and he wiped the blood off his face. He walked back to the fire and picked up his boots, which had smoldered a little, stinking to high hell without being destroyed and laced them. He let the record hang over the fire until the vinyl was hot and limp and wrapped his arm and he walked out through the front door. He left the frog and spider in place. They would go with him as long as they wanted. The tarantula would probably lose his footing, and with it, another foot. The frog would probably die no matter what. He removed the still-pliable record from his arm, placing it over a nail on the outside of his front door. They will understand this, he thought, and walked off, never leaving a footprint again.

"Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Uday"

[the following is a blog I wrote that my father responded to, as you will see, he is much smarter than I am]

Me:

Two months ago, Iraq held elections that, somehow allowed voting to happen here in the midwest. Last week, it was announced that Jalal Tabani, a Kurd, was appointed president of Iraq.

Appointed? By whom?

Apparently, a vote in the Iraqi Parliament.

go to Google news and try typing in "Iraq president Jalal elect" and then "Iraq president Jalal appoint". One of the things you'll find is that the presidential post is largely ceremonial, much like the royal family in England, or our election process here...they hold no bearings.

That's only half true. One of those 'ceremonies' the new Iraqi president gets to preside over is the naming of the prime minister, who heads up the Parliament, who voted for the president.

That said, I don't know whose pockets, new Prime Minister and Shi'ite Ibrahim al-Jaafari may be in but I do want to know one thing:

Where the fuck did Iraq's Parliament come from? And what happened to the elections that rendered Iraq a new, shining beakon of freedom in the Arab world?

Where are the numbers? And why did we have long-Americanized, exiled Iraqis driving from Boise to Chicago to vote in these elections?

America gets exactly what it wants. Again. Does anybody else feel duped?


Michael:

This whole business of emigres voting here in the US on foreign elections is less Bush-intensively weird than you may think. Although you probably weren't as focused on the presidential elections for Lithuania (a few years ago) and Ukraine (a few weeks ago), people voted in Chicago for both of them (hopefully not the same people voted in both elections, but then this is Chicago). In fact, the Lithuanian President lived in Chicago for years, went to IIT, and used to work for the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Why would a foreign country want US residents -- and even citizens -- to vote in their election? The reasons are always selfish, and not necessarily in a bad way. First, they want to get folks who bolted to consider coming back to allieviate the brain drain that always is part of scenarios where those with sense run like hell until they reach the US. You actually know a guy of Iraqi ancestry who went back. (Hint: you knew his daughter quite well). And whether the skedaddlers are willing to return or not, whether you're talking about Iraq, Lithuania or the Ukraine, they want to solicit foreign investment. The election gets them interested in things "back home."

I think the whole Iraq invasion was insane, and if the Shi'ites take over Iraq, we may someday soon look back on Saddam Hussein as "the good old days." Iran's Shi'ite government has been a real gigglefest for us, and Shi'ites have been scaring the crap out of Europe for years -- so let's help them take over Iraq while we're at it, right? That having been said, the biggest problems we tend to face in the Middle East come from overly insular, wildly xenophobic and paranoid societies. Cutting the Kurds in on the deal (even if only ceremonially) and opening up the election to Iraqi foreign nationals are both good things for even the Blue Staters among us.

As for the Iraqi electorate producing whatever vote they decided to count, if it was limited to males with property, hey that's all we allowed to vote when George Washington got elected. Given the total absence of any democratic traditions or institutional memories, we can safely assume that the election was some sort of strange rigged fiasco. Can't be worse than a Cuban election. The question is where Iraq takes it when we turn over the steering wheel. We shoved democracy down Germany's throat twice -- the first time, it didn't take them long to democratically elect Hitler. They did better after they got the hang of it. Japan got it right quicker and much less painfully. But if Dubya &/or his pals weren't such doctrinaire doofuses, a democracy in a heavily Shi'ite neighbor of Iran would scare him at least as much as Dubya scares the rest of us.


Me:

Good points all but the question remains, who won the election? Why aren't we being told who won and why aren't they holding some wack ceremonial title somewhere? You know as well as I do that we're gonna have to listen to these elephants pound their chest about the election they just pulled off and everyone is going to believe it as long as nobody follows up.


Michael:

Per MSNBC: "Voters chose 275 members of a Transitional National Assembly, whose key tasks will be to choose a government and formulate a new constitution by Aug. 15. The body will select a president and two deputies from its ranks to succeed the interim administration appointed by the U.S.-led occupation authority. They will then choose a prime minister, who will hold the most power, including control of the military.
The assembly is to be dissolved and a new parliament elected according to the new constitution by the end of 2005. Elections are also planned for 18 provincial assemblies and for parliament of the autonomous Kurdish region in the north."

Translation: This is all a transitional do-over, but it was planned that way. The Iraqis (in theory, at least, since anyone who's not cynical about this just isn't paying attention) need to figure out on their own what kind of constitutional blueprint to use. You have to elect somebody to do that, or at least you should. But once they've done so, the transitional bunch have served their purpose and the Iraqis need to elect whatever government they've decided to have. There is undoubtedly a list of the 275 transitional electees somewhere on the web, but reading a list of names like that would make your eyes bleed. Thus most news sources aren't interested in publishing an excrutiatingly long list of names they couldn't possibly spell check.

In today's news, you'll see that Rumsfeld is getting crabby about how long it's taking Iraq to form a government. Of course, guys Rummy's age are pretty much crabby 24/7.

It's always struck me as peculiar that so many new democracies go for weird (to us at least) and complicated Parliamentary systems rather thana US-style system of electing a leader directly rather than electing some guys who then decide on a leader. But in a country like Iraq where minority rights have been just a bit touchy for the Kurds and gosh, even majority rights have been a bit off for the Shi'ites, maybe a Parliamentary system makes sense.

Now if you want to really achieve the appropriate level of cynicism, you'd acknowledge that it doesn't mean squat who won any of this. What does matter is who Jalal, Ibrahim, Aqchbar or whoever it is really listens to (takes orders from?). If Haliburton keeps getting contracts, there's your answer. If it seems that the Minister of Belligerance is de facto chosen by the Ayatollah Du Jour, there's your answer. If you want to know what's going on in the circus, consult the Ringmaster, not the clowns.

---

word

points of contention. notes on hangover and how i became a mean person (total diary entry rant)

1.
yesterday i was depressed
not that usual tangible life sucks because of 1, 2, and 3
I suck because of a, b, and c
they all converge in a sack full of assholes right here
(I have just created the right triangle)
but that hungover, weary, 'I shouldn't be'
that wafts in and out as tales of the previous night's exploits float in

as I brushed my teeth, avoiding eye contact with mirror
i shrugged
maybe i used up all my serotonin reserves on the dance floor last night
when the whole world was at my house and i got to smile inwards and say
everybody loves me

and i just blew a fuse

it'll take at least 72 hours for my cells to regroup and stop pumping oil
but it'll come back again

there's a standup
who refers to blacking out drunk as 'time traveling'
i like to think of it as one of those old Marvel "What If..." comics
where I follow the same linear path and veer off for a night
and can do whatever I want
free of consequence afterwards
"Oh, don't mind Eric, he started early"
'Oh, he's just drunk, he's not really an asshole'

2.
...but I am
I am a terrible human
I understand it, that's all and can hide it well most of the time

but I seriously think that I'm starting to become a mean person al day
borne out of a need for attention and personal feelings of failure
i'm getting overly cynical
feeling actual vitrol against people I've never met
for the sheer fact that they're living better than me
better than I ever will

in my sketch group
I tell Jack to stopobsessing over pop fluff like Clay Aiken coz who cares about Clay Aiken? but c'mon, who cares about the people I've been sniping
they aren't even b-listers
just local cats with big mouths and big egos (and what the fuck am I if not that?)

my mother quit her job at a preschool and
ran a daycare out of our basement just after I was born
after a few years i was older than the other kids and it was my house
my terrain
i knew the lay of the land
i had all the secrets to surpassing the safety locks
i knew what corners were susceptible to monsters and boogeys in the middle of the night
what kind of cookies we had in the ceramic cow
and naps were beneath me
so I watched a lot of television
mostly WGN, WFLD and whatever channel 50 was before it became UPN
I saw a lot of old sitcoms
and a lot of movies from the 80s
that I thought were what life was
and i still do kinda
so I'm caught in this premature slobs versus snobs battle in my head
hopin to give that speech and get that girl and unite everyone at the end
and it doesn't exist
none of it does

I'm saying mean things more often
like Andy Kauffman used to torment himself,
I'm losing my innocence
and if I don't change now
I'll be completely consumed

unnecesary weekend party wrap up

whenever I wake up this hungover without a black eye
i feel like a success

i got away with another one


if you were there
thanks for coming
if not, then next time
if i got your name, i'll be apologetic the next time i see you

there were no fights, only minor damage
and people were actually dancing

as always
other people's Jager will be my downfall
if not 'will be', then perhaps 'are' and 'often'
and i don't really remember anything after midnight
if i have wronged you, tell me
apologies will be forthcoming

sincere thanks
to nate tania kyle and pete for taking care of me and making sure
i wouldn't choke on my own vomit
when i passed out in a pile of clothes
and also to dirt cheap Boru vodka for helping with the punch

anecdote:
so at some point
I was alerted to the fact that this person
this person who I wanted to BE when I was in 8th grade,
"Superstar" DJ Keoki
was sitting on my front steps

at this point
my good idea/bad idea filter was gone and i proceded to piss on him (figuratively)
telling him
"You were my favorite dj FIVE YEARS AGO"
it's probably actually 9 now when I was listeng to Disco Death Race 2000
but regardess a poor move on my part and not the best thing to say
to an aged club kid
clinging to youth and still spinning house

reportedly him and I got into it
and I either accidentally kicked or maliciously slapped his Powerbook
good times


I don't know what it is
I'm generally sorry about it, he was a nice enough guy
and made a cd for the house that i woulda shit myself for at thirteen
but there's something inherently fun about pissing off an old hero
I'm the proudest of myself I've been
since the party at the Farragut Place
where I yelled to a bunch of cops illegally in my kitchen
"yall some bitches. get out"

I'm my own hero again

or at least that's what I can gather from the voicemails

First day of spring, a couple years back. written in the style of the time

we hit the street, a pack of animals on old Indian land
the spring of 03
halfway through 20 w/ more friends than fingers
wore through one pair of boots and at least as many legs
in pursuit of the american dream, punk rock or ponce de leon
-somesuch nonesence-
crooked forties in brown and under sleeve
when we were smart we had an extra
when we were poor we'd divide flasks
take to the streets
sunday through thursday

took it too the streets

'it' of aggression, impatience
petulant and rumbling
general hooliganry
breaking glass for the sound,
kicked walls to spite our toes
split knuckles to bruise wood, forsaking both in spit

creamed at nobody in particular but maybe the moon
barking something awful like rock n roll
picking fights w/ shopkeeps and fights unrealized
ripping songs from the pages of highschool yearbooks,
from off the walls of their parents house
songs we made up
songs w/ no names

stealing things of no value from lawns and windowsills
smashing our way through alleyways

we'd find
bench, sand
a tree that would hold us

it would start to rain and we'd duck into construction sites
head full of stars and acid, vodka and dreams
the doubt of our parents expectations

we'd sit
and someone would say (but not blurt)
'i think i might be gay'
and the rest of us would listen and
someone would start
i didn't used to ber a good person'
and tell us
'when i was in the gang i had to shoot this guy'
the rest of us would listen

and someone says 'I love you' coz he's drunk enough and
the rest of us would nod
and soon enough after somebody would fart, someone would start a fire,
the cops would shoo us home
all night diners
would beckon
calling
for coffee and potato hash
jukes w/ jim morisson
biscuits w/ gravy
and with the sun on our backs
we hit the streets

Television wins again. I don't remember real life

where were you when the pope died?

watching "Revenge of the Nerds" on WGN and writing a paper on the differences between Masaccio and Raphael

when OJ fled from the LA police?

masturbating with the TV on
(splitscreen with the NBA Finals)

during the LA riots?

watching "Muppet Babies" and playing a math-based shareware game
(nothing beats the Macintosh LC II)

when the Berlin Wall fell?

watching Cosby Show reruns as my Mom defrosted hamburgers

when the twin towers fell?

digging crusties from my eyes and calling the fuck sick out of work from my job near O'Hare

This week in rock'n'roll

a fond farewell to Mitch Hedgburg, Hideaki Sekuguchi, Johnnie Cochran, John Paul II, Terri Schiavo and the earthquake victims in Indonesia