retrieved my Roland Juno-106 from storage today. i have yet to find a place to set it up, much less to see if it even still functions.

i’m going to go watch Bowling for Columbine now. and then (maybe) Beatles Anthology, and then i’m going to write a song or two. i will probably be online at some point.

my hair is starting to curl up again a little bit already.

ah, a few days to myself. i shall use this time to catch up on writing fiction and verse, and writing & recording music.

and maybe someday, something good will come of all this.

and i just honestly cannot express how i’m feeling right now. it’s blue, blue, blue. Johnny Cash was a punk rock hero and one of a select several “country & western” musicians i’ve always dearly loved (as opposed to merely appreciated).

there is a black pinprick in the sky forevermore, where his star once shined so brightly, and i feel almost as if no other star or constellation can ever guide me Back Home now. i will miss that great and tender hooligan so sorely. few other songwriters could ever capture such honesty and such emotion and such turmoil. and what about his bravado in the face of turmoil? my god, will we never see such a man as this again?

my chest swells up and my eyes well up and i think of June and Johnny and their burning ring of fire and the only consolation is that perhaps they are together now again, finally.

what a dark sky overhead.

when all of our heroes have fallen, been lost, or have left us, who will replace them? who? it’s now Our Time, kids. like it or not. i know that most of us Generation X slackers just weren’t ready to take up the mantle, but the death of Johnny signals a REAL end of a bygone era. so now we’ve got to start really pulling our own weight, haven’t we? we’ve got to step up now and start making it all on our own. we’ve got to make it up for the ones who can no longer do it for us, and we’ve got to start NOW. a ship without a captain doesn’t stay lost at sea for long. it sinks.

goodbye Johnny. goodbye forever, sweet rebel.

R.I.P. Johnny Cash.

Man In Black, 1971

Well, you wonder why I always dress in black,
Why you never see bright colors on my back,
And why does my appearance seem to have a somber tone.
Well, there’s a reason for the things that I have on.

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
Livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
But is there because he’s a victim of the times.

I wear the black for those who never read,
Or listened to the words that Jesus said,
About the road to happiness through love and charity,
Why, you’d think He’s talking straight to you and me.

Well, we’re doin’ mighty fine, I do suppose,
In our streak of lightnin’ cars and fancy clothes,
But just so we’re reminded of the ones who are held back,
Up front there ought ‘a be a Man In Black.

I wear it for the sick and lonely old,
For the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold,
I wear the black in mournin’ for the lives that could have been,
Each week we lose a hundred fine young men.

And, I wear it for the thousands who have died,
Believen’ that the Lord was on their side,
I wear it for another hundred thousand who have died,
Believen’ that we all were on their side.

Well, there’s things that never will be right I know,
And things need changin’ everywhere you go,
But ’til we start to make a move to make a few things right,
You’ll never see me wear a suit of white.

Ah, I’d love to wear a rainbow every day,
And tell the world that everything’s OK,
But I’ll try to carry off a little darkness on my back,
‘Till things are brighter, I’m the Man In Black.

R.I.P. John Ritter too.

right now i’m going through every. single. fucking. goddamn. file on my BLOG system to try to find every single instance of the words “blog” and “page,” both of which are variables that are already in use by my main site’s backend. for various reasons, it is actually better for me to change 1,000+ of those than to change a couple dozen in the main engine.

this is nuts. no, it’s really, really, really, really, REALLY… nuts. i am driving myself crazy. just so i can have a fullsized, independent, portable BLOG.

i don’t know how long this is going to take, only that there are literally scores and scores of files, some with hundreds or even thousands of lines of code to sift through.

more answers from the question poll:

why am i invisible to you now?

you’re not. i’m just stepping back from everything because my life is so out of order lately and i need to focus on getting my shit back together before i can get anything else settled with any degree of satisfaction. sorry if i seem distant! it’s not meant that way, i can assure you. i’ve just narrowed down my contacts to my closest friends for now.

what is your deepest wound?

i’d have to say that growing up while gradually coming under the impression that i personally am not as important [to my parents] as heroin, alcohol, drugs, and partying is my deepest wound.

another thing that’s always driven me to frustration, and, frankly, rage, has been the knowledge that i have been given a set of conditions which were supposed to be TRUE, but which are actually anything but, and in fact very much FALSE mostly. let’s see… The History of White People does NOT equate to The History of The World. Jesus was not a white man. and no, we do not, in fact, know with any degree of certainty a god damn thing about god, the afterlife, or the nature of the Cosmos. and nobody ever told me that dreams don’t come true by simply dreaming about them alone; and yet i was never ever given the tools or techniques to rectify that dilemma. so i feel like i’ve been stuck in the wrong world for my whole entire life. or given a map to a place i’m not even in, a place that doesn’t even appear to exist anywhere.

there are more wounds, but you only asked about the deepest, so i’ll not go on. suffice it to say that while i doubt that any of my wounds will ever heal fully, at least they are no longer infected and dripping with pus (contrary to how i no doubt often make things seem).

what does wkcc.com have to do with Malaysia?

my one and only guess: their webmaster is Malaysian.

an astute reaction! the best review i’ve gotten for my story yet!

how i love fuckheads named “CLINT.”

next time:
a) at least have the balls to sign your pathetic name,
b) say something worthwhile, and
c) kill yourself in as painful and degrading a manner as possible first.

really, i don’t mind taking shit off of people who have a point, when they have a point. but i have yet to see a valid argument for why i should stop all this senseless making-of-things.

somebody should buy me a bus ticket so i can take away all his pain and misery forever.

i am going to try and write this entry about stupid old transmothra.com’s redesign, fighting back the urge to scream and cry over the loss of one of the most unique and bleakly optimistic artists to have ever graced the needles of phonographs across the world. Warren Zevon, ah-ooo! i will miss this great and humble and wonderful darkhappy songwriter so very much.

read this first, and download the song, and cry a bit with me, and then i will finish this up.

on friday, i FTPed the whole new site to www.meat-thing.com/proto, a temporary address. i had to leave, though, so i couldn’t troubleshoot a problem that it has: the blog doesn’t work quite right.

so if you go there, and you get warnings and errors, and the page doesn’t load, just type in “sitemap” into the URL (after ?page=) and you’ll be able to see more. the blog however, and possibly even the main page (which connects to the blog via PHP includes), will not work until i get it fixed.

the only really new content is just the new short story.

i have 2 other shorts already written in my head, i just have to find the time to sit down and scratch them out. they’re called “Eleven-Part Roy” and “Bedbugs” – and there’s a slightly too-romantic vignette based on a dream i had just a week ago. i’ll have them up and the site fixed by the end of the week.

for now, it’s just the new story and the selectable layouts.

a cool new feature: no more opening Flash page, if you return after having accepted the cookie that sets your preferred color scheme.

that’s all, i just can’t write any damn more. i’m going to go and listen the hell out of Warren now.

and now the darkness comes.

farewell, Warren.

i’ll have to do that whole whatever the hell thing some other time. i’ve got far more important business to attend to. like verbally dispatching a walking pile of shit. trolls are so lame.

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh boy!

i’ve got the b2 blog set up on the prototype site (not live on the internet yet, just locally). i had to change one variable throughout all the blog files, because both mars ultra+ and b2 use the variable “$page” – so there was conflicts. nothing serious, but my use of $page was overwriting theirs, which had the effect of causing only titles of blog posts to display, rather than the full entry.

now i have to upgrade to the amazing b2evolution. that might get tricky, especially since i have just replaced a variable.

the other tricky thing was just getting all the code to match up correctly, which required a bit of massaging, but nothing too terribly major. b2 is used to being run from the URL yourdomain.com/dir/, where i use yourdomain.com/?page= (whereupon it gets all fussy and refuses to eat its carrots, hence all the spanking noises you hear coming from the computer room tonight).

this feels like it’s going to be a bit of a hat trick to pull off, but i’m quite sure it’ll work itself out.

come on! ask me something hard! make me tell you something i shouldn’t want brought out into the daylight! force me to reveal things i am not comfortable revealing!

“Officially the weirdest quiz I’ve taken.”

from _hellion (the Tom Tomorrow and Bob Harris of LJ-Land):

originally pointed out by thomryng on :

The Patriot Act now has its own web site: LifeAndLiberty.gov

The site’s graphic contains this quote from the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted …

but notice (gasp!) that they leave out the next bit:

…among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

For another view of the USA PATRIOT Act, check out the ACLU’s response.

be a Patriot. overthrow the United States government.

elevator opens.
a steep hill rises straight up, very high, front and center.
to sides of hill are walls, each with alcove; one left, and one right.
talk show to left. hang out there on silksheeted bed with Greek host or famous poet guest.
end up somehow on hill, where are entrances/exits, or alcoves of some sort.
with a friend, parachute down, more or less nake. she in front; back to front.
there is also old friend from high school band who used to grope me behind the Fender Rhodes.
she gropes my ass. it’s a 180° change from before at least.
back to my friend and one of the jumps (there were two): rubbing, humping, thighs pushing into thighs, on the way down; her arms behind my head in backwards passionate lusty embrace.
also at some point talked to man on other side alcove (possibly the Famous Poet).
something about gear-y machines or other.
travelling from side to back of cliffhill (exeunt all?).

i just woke up from a 2 hour nap (because i haven’t had a full 8 hours in 2 or 3 days now, and this is prolly it for today ‘n fact).

i dreamed about parachute sex.

must try to remember to write more about THAT.

my good friend, who has only ever worked part-time jobs at college, got called into work today. she’s constantly working 10 hour days, nine days a week, and some god damn lame punkassed dipshit co-worker cheesed out last minute today. on her first day off in forever.

and i was going to surprise her by coming over to see her today. i don’t even know her address, so i can’t even stop by later and surprise her when she gets off work.

poor thing. i wish she’d get some fucking time off. she’s union, for chrissakes, and doesn’t even get her bennies for like 8 months! what kind of shit is that??! union dues and no benefits?! just goes to prove my theory: half of all unions are good. the other half can kiss my ass on burrito day.

surprise, sweetie. sorry. hope you get some time off so you can relax soon.

i am changing over some of the old content to the new, cleaner format.

i am liking this new 311 song. i haven’t listened to “modern rock” radio in many, many months. ClearChannel sucks my pee-pee.

i am thinking of this beautiful King’s X song called “The Difference (In the Garden of St. Anne’s-on-the-Hill).” it’s such a beautiful song, and some day i am going to HAVE to sit down and figure it out on the guitar. i’ve loved that song, and that band, since their album Gretchen Goes to Nebraska first came out. they used to be a sort of Christian heavy rock band – think Black Sabbath meets CSN meets Yes. their lead singer, Doug Pinnick, came out a few years back, caught some flack, and basically turned atheist. (that’s just the simple version of the story – even before all that, his lyrics reflected some deep questions, which is one of many, many reasons why i admire the cat.)

oh, and they are playing Indianapolis on my birthday. dear “Bob”, somebody please remind me to go.

i believe in Love.

not categories. whether we are having sex, or just friends, or whether we’re related, or one of us is the other’s deity, it’s Love. it’s all the same.

screw C. S. Lewis!

(and that last sentence may be The One Thing that my good friend Lisa L. and i agree on.)