more of the same

after clocking myself in on the computers at work, i called out what i always do: "i just need a bank, and a manager's password (managers have to actually punch in their password to clock the drivers in--apparently we can't be trusted on our own)."

"ok." says one of the managers.

then under my breath to s, another driver who has a cool sense of humor, "...and a bottle of pills, some alcohol, a length of rope, a few razor blades, maybe a samurai sword."

s laughed, as i knew she would, then asked "how wood you lige do close todighd?"

"about as much as i would like being mauled by hungry bears, or gang-raped by angry prison guards."

"aboud as buch as you wood lige to be sig? cause i coug mage that happen if you choose to nod close."

my turn to laugh.

lakewood has a seedy, dark underbelly. well, actually, it really isn't an underbelly at all. it is pretty well known. it is called south tacoma way.

last night, i made one of many deliveries that i have made to deja vu (100's of beautiful girls, and three ugly ones) on south tacoma way. i never make it inside. the doorman always pays. ((matter of fact, i have never even been in there on my off time. hmmmmm, weird. me and my buddy s may have to rectify that before we move) and speaking of that, my wife's clearance is done, and gone through, and we should be leaving for florida in early jan. yay!) he always tips really well. occasionally, some of the girls are out front smoking, their near-nakedness blocked by long and heavy overcoats. only once have i gotten to see one of the girls in her "outfit" (or near lack thereof) and that was because she forgot to give the money to the doorman and was actually on stage when i showed up. i lounged around the doorway like a complete perv and then there she was, in some little black thing made of string and pirate eyepatches. oh, and fringe. yes, fringe. she had a really cool tatt on her lower back as i recall...

god alone knows how many of the runs to the motels along south tacoma way have been either "hungry hooker" runs, or pizza to allay a bit of the aftereffects of too many illegal drugs. i have a funny story or two about those that would require their own post, if i am up to dredging up those otherwise-blocked memories. i think one time i was delivering to a small crew that was filming a naughty webcam out of one of the rooms. lots of flashing lights, those silver umbrellas set up, cables running all over the floor, and a nerdy looking guy on a laptop. the lady paying wouldn't open the door wide enough for me to see anything in the vicinity of the bed, and i am just enough a gentleman not to try and look.

another of the drivers delivered to one of the "spas" along south tacoma way. he was lucky they even opened the locked safety cage, heh heh. might've had him pass the pizzas through a mail slot or something.

that is more or less it, today. nothing too exciting. oh, well, except getting everything into place for this move. that is so exciting that right now i can't even deal, so i will tackle that at a later date.

darth sardonic

desperate deranged talking in my sleep again

should my family ever be required to escape from a prison camp, we would surely be shot.

yesterday, my wife and i were laying on our bed, (fully dressed, this aint that kinda blog!) half asleep and attempting to figure out what we were going to do with our day, when the sprogs came into the bedroom.

no. 2 begins to drag himself onto the bed. the top of our mattress is probably about three feet from the floor, and no. 2 is barely taller than that, so needless to say this was no easy feat. my wife says, "grab my foot." shrieking ensues. but we're no closer to having no. 2 safely on the bed. "no. 1, push him from behind." more shrieking and laughter. louders pleas and shouts. still no closer to having no. 2 with us on the bed. the whole scene quickly disintigrates into some kind of laurel and hardy skit, and i drolly observe that we would be doomed if we were ever trying to quietly scale a wall, say.

being tired, and moody, this somehow skips to that movie (several years old now) with the little italian fella that is terminally optimistic (life is beautiful) who ends up with his family in a nazi camp, who then proceeds to turn it into a "game" for his young son, in hopes they will survive and get out.

as you can well imagine, this movie made me cry. like fucking crazy. the only movie that has made me cry more is the green mile (oh my god, that goddamn movie. good for a huge purge when i am in desperate need).

and leaping quickly from this bittersweet movie to me, and my own kids (cause this is easily how my brain works) and how massive is my love for them. how easily i would trek through the darker basements of hell for them. and simultaneously, how amazed i am daily as i look into their eyes, that i am even here.

"here" meaning married, with kids. how strange. how beautiful and odd and wondrous to find myself reminding my kids that i love them after having lectured them loudly at length. how amazing to me, it feels as if it is someone else's life sometimes, or a dream. and yet it is mine.

if you had asked me as a kid, i woulda told you someday i would be married with kids. matter of factly, without hesitation. but funny how nebulous that concept was. how incredible and unreal and powerful and life-affirming and -changing the reality is.

am i the only one that finds myself wondering how i ended up here, and simultaneously pleased that i did?

darth sardonic

I'm not sick, but I'm not well

although my wife is off work today, it is still a bit of the ol' after the ball is over, today.

cleaning the house, unwinding from the fun of the holiday. funny, how a day that is intended to be a holiday is often busier than your average run-of-the-mill day.

j and i were chatting the other day, and in the ill-advised way that i sometimes do, i attempted to make a joke relating to my father being murdered. it was funny in my head, really it was. of course, j had no idea, and felt bad immediately, which, naturally (as you, the beloved non-existants like to point out in comments, i really am a big softie, though with the occasional core of raw fuck-off steel) made me feel horrible and like a complete ass.

i wish everyone shared my same twisted and bizarre sense of humor, things would be so much simpler.

i just want to say here, in my inimitable fashion, that i am always doing my part to keep alberta rat-free.

am i the only one that can't wait until we have teleport machines? drop the kids off at school, pop into the teleport to grab some tea in morrocco, and i am sure that the rest of you would be welcome as well. we will be discussing the string theory and miracles versus choices, or some such thing. not really sure. but the big key is teleport machines.

i have been putting together a guitar for my friend, g. except for strings, and the fine-tuning i will need to do to the neck and bridge, it is all done. i kicked it into high gear after we found out we were gonna be moving. the cool thing about this guitar is instead of a painted finish, it is completely covered in pictures from playboy, and penthouse. at the same time i started putting the guitar together, i also acquired a rather large-ish stack of porno mags, and had the crazy idea to cut out naked chicks and glue them to the guitar's surface. not a speck of the original finish remains visible. i was quite proud of the outcome, but want another shot at a similar kind of thing, to apply valuable lessons i learned from this one.

none of this was really going anywhere.

and that being the case, i am going to just drop it like a hot piece of lead, he he.

thanks for playing along.

darth sardonic

sometimes coming up with a suitable title is a royal pain in the ass

first, happy thanksgiving one and all. here's to being thankful for the things in our life every day of the year, and not just on the day marked on the calendar. and now, the post i've been meaning to post:

every so often you find yourself in a location and situation and time when things seem simple, when life is mostly smooth and bearable, and whose memories you will always view with rose-colored glasses.

such was our time at eielson afb, ak. this wouldn't actually always be the case. we hated fairbanks. the cold. the lack of things to do. the long (8 hours) drive to the nearest decent-sized city with things to do.

but when we left, we realized that never since have we had such close friends, and such good times, as we did while we were living in north pole.

the winters were harsh. harsh like rubbing a sore spot on your arm. with a zester. then washing it with bleach and lemon juice. 50 below, snow in the first weeks of september and piling up constantly till may, two hours of daylight harsh.

thrust into this, virtually against their will, several hundred active duty military people from all climes and walks of life, and an interesting thing happens:

they told us that our squadrons would be like our families. i sneered, since previously my sqadrons had been about as far-removed from family as humanly possible. and considering the people i had so far met in my own squadron, i doubted i was going to be very close to my "family" here as well.

but in alaska they are fond of saying, "it's not what you know, it's who you know." i made friends with this person, who knew that person, who roomed with this person from ammo.

and ammo were the partyers. if you knew an ammo person, your weekends were chock full of drinking and silliness, shouting matches, telling a funny story in front of twenty people who would laugh their ass off not just because you're funny, but because you are family.

that is not to say that all these friends were the kinds of friends you would have forever. many of them were good friends while we were all there. a handful are still excellent friends with whom we have bent time and space to maintain contact.

somewhere between the "alaska only friends" and the "forever adhesive mates" fell f.

f worked in my wife's squadron, and could be counted on for funny stories, and good discussion. he was simultaneously extremely intelligent and very street-wise. his lingo would crack me up, being from an inner city. (i once told him that i used my own slang, rather than trying to talk "street." because me being a white guy made it difficult for me to say things like "a'ight" and "bling bling" and not sound ridiculous and poser. f being who he is, he smiled and laughed and nodded knowingly, and said, "you gotta be yourself, man, and everyone can respect that.") f always laughed at my stories, finding my droll-to-frenzied manic dry style very funny.

my wife im's me from work and says: guess who i just talked to on the phone

ghandi? william shatner? my mom?

f!!

no way

yes, i KNOW

no fucking way how is he?

he is here

here here?!?

for an inspection

it went without saying that f was coming over for dinner that night.

how wonderful it is when you can sit down with someone you haven't seen in several years, and it is as if the last time you talked was a few weeks ago. so much has happened in our respective lives in the interim, but there i was telling a story about battling with the kids to get them into bed, and there was f, laughing loudly and slapping his thighs and saying, "darth, you haven't changed one bit, man, one bit."

and coming from f, this is a great compliment. we laugh and swap stories, past present and future. looked at photos, reminiscing, discussing where the paths our lives have followed since we parted ways.

and somehow those long friday nights in another state in another time were combined with the tuesday night here, and we laughed and drank and smiled and chatted and it was as easy as it used to be.

darth sardonic

madame librarian...

i walk through the double doors and turn to the desk, walking slowly.

the very first thing my eyes fall upon is a full two-inch wide strip of smooth soft tanned skin between the top of a pair of (tight) jeans and the bottom of a (snug) black t-shirt.

o thou jezebel eyes that wander so freely, seeking out the perverted flesh that makes the brain think such things. i would pluck thee from thy sockets did i not need thee so desperately.

my eyes climb quickly from the bit of (bitable) hip to the (deep hazel) eyes that correspond with the patch of skin, taking in the bigger picture as they go. the librarian is on the phone, standing with one thumb tucked into her back pocket, the opposite knee bent, waist thrust out, almost as if she expected me to walk through the door, almost as if she knew the very place my (benedict arnold) eyes would fly first, and wanted to provide the landing strip. she watches me approach the desk from the corners of her half-lidded sockets (not sure how something that our brain would otherwise register as "tired" or "inebriated" began to fall into the "erotic" category, but at the same time, i am not really complaining), a wicked little smile playing across her (full) lips.

as i return the book, and negotiate the loan of another, every time my (hungry) eyes shift from bits of her (unbelievably tight and smooth) exposed flesh back to her green eyes and pouty smirk, i am shocked by the look that i meet there. i feel as if i am fully exposed to her, bare, naked and on display in the middle of the library, but not in a way that she finds unpleasant. to the contrary, the small smile denotes a hint of pleasure and even humor at finding me so easily open for her viewing. her smile is the same that i find on my own face when i have a (wicked) thought that i am loathe to share. i wonder momentarily as my eyes wander her (luscious) body again if it is on my face right now, and if she is wondering the very same thing about my smile that i am wondering about hers...

each time she stands or moves there is a certain sinuous and sensuous air to it. she stretches like a cat to lift herself from her seat, and as she walks to retrieve something from the printer, her hips sway, giving me peek-a-boo shots of the skin that my (bastard) eyes so greedily devoured upon entering the library. her fingers trail languidly across the interlibrary loan slip that i have filled out, her hand takes the pen softly, cradling it as if she is taking...

o thou evil and pernicious brain, how thy thoughts wander, creating lust where there is nought but surfaces reflected in light. how thou dost take the input of the treacherous eyes and build electricity and fire and desire to tease the lower extremeties. i would remove thee from thy skull did i not need thee so desperately.

i am sure she is well aware of the effect that she is having on me, despite my best efforts to appear aloof, cool, and collected. each time her eyes land on me, i am again sure she is seeing right through me. i am also sure that knowing how her attention is effecting me, and suspecting the very things passing through my (wicked wicked) mind, made manifest by my smile, only pleases her more.

i leave with my book, my overactive imagination, my lascivious thoughts, and little else.

***one part reality, and nine parts active imagination and too much time on my hands, o beloved non-existant readers, heh heh. i will leave it to all of you malchickiwicks and ptitsas to decide which parts are which. in the time when i still wrote erotica (before i decided it was mostly uninspired) this would've been the mere beginning, with much more lechery and lust to follow. as it stands though, i think it is made more erotic by the simple fact that it feels real. these kind of situations are, more often than not, more sensuous than any sex that might follow, either imagined or real. well, at least in my head. you be the judge. this still isn't the post i wanted to post, that has been floating in my head for days, i just got sidetracked by this one, so hopefully tomorrow i will get to the other. thanks for playing along.***

darth sardonic

cause you guys are so fucking cool...

just a quick one today to let you, the patient and long-suffering beloved non-existant reader, know that i have decided that since i am so shitty about commenting on many of your own sites on an even semi-regular basis (as miss pixie is wont to point out, heh heh), and because you folks are beyond stellar at commenting on mine, the very least i can do is reply here to all of your comments as many of you do with your own blogs. so if you leave a comment to which you were hoping to get some reply, lo, and behold, circle back by at a later date, and at the very least i will have acknowledged you.

cause if nothing else, i wouldn't be much of a writer without a readership, and that's you guys out there. seems i could quit being such a lazy basard at least enough to reply to your comments.

a proper post real soon, promise. already know what it is gonna be, just need the time to do 'er up right!

darth sardonic

i got yer to-do list right here!

life can be frustrating in the extreme sometimes.

no. 2 is having relapses with potty training, which i think are more likely the result of sheer laziness (no idea where he gets it) rather than any other more logical reason.

no. 1 has declared himself no. 2's "dictator for life and sole commander in chief" as well as "double agent and informant" to the parental units. he likes it when no. 2 is in trouble as it deflects some of the heat from himself. when we are mad at no. 2, no. 1 is ingratiating in the extreme to us. this drives me fucking batty. know why? cause i did the same fucking thing when i was a kid!!

for the first time since i took my return ferry ride across river styx to go back to work at the pizza joint, my tips were good last night. i have been working there now for two months, and most of the nights have sucked. my boss continues to be twaterrific and cuntacular in ways that boggle the normal mind and can only be explained by a massive case of sociopathic and criminal genius. beelzebub pales by comparison...

my back is still stiff and crusty from the latest three-hour stint at flaming dragon. seems to be healing up faster this time though. soon as it heals, i will get a pic posted here, i promise.

then when i sign in, i notice that one of the previous blogs of note is going to be made into a book. that is cool. it lends me hope that someone will stumble across this moldy crumb stuck in the world wide web and think, this guy is brilliant (sorry, give me a sec, choked on my coffee... ok, think i am bett-- no, wait, laughing fit coming on. there, ok.) and hand me a book deal.

wait, what? this is a book of other people's to-do lists? emailed in to the author? they're gonna publish a book about other's to-do lists? you know, the only, and i mean fucking onliest blog of note that ever ever spoke to me, and had anything of import to myself, is sparx' blog.

and now this blog of other people's ideas (and i am dubious as to how interesting most of them are going to be) is getting published. (yes, yes it is sour grapes. i happen to like sour grapes. now, let me have my sour grapes, continue laughing with, at, or near me, and let me get on with it, heh heh. thank you.)

i guess i will have to continue with my original plan of cultivating a healthy drinking habit, writing prolifically barely-understandable drivel interlaced with the occasional witty little anecdote (to keep you hanging on, o beloved non-existant readers), hide all these writings in plain site (while constantly pointing them out to my kids and saying things like, "thish ish going to be your legacy, sonsh. thish right here ish gonna make ush rich one day. right here! look, goddammit you ungrateful lil bashtardsh! here. and the password is tangueray."), then die of pneumonia or some other malingering alcohol-related disease that has a certain romanticism to it, after which the kids will get my crap published everywhere and i will be hailed as a "great american (god i fucking hate that, we are yanks, america is a huge fucking place. why the fuck do we get to call ourselves american and everyone else calls themselves canadian or mexican or what-have-you?!? goddamn we are pretentious fucks! end rant.) author."

(now, it seems a few of my beloved non-existant readers occasionally take things i write here waaaaay too seriously. (or who knows? maybe they don't and i mistake their dry-humor retorts as serious. either way.) so i leave this disclaimer: the vast majority of the above paragraph is a play-by-play of how most of my favorite authors went about it. i've no intention of going about it in that manner. thank you for your time.)

follows is my to-do list:

1) clean house
2) beat children
3) lose mind
4) buy gin
5) write piss-poor prose through veil of gin-scented tears
6) glower at boss and mutter evil-sounding things under my breath when he is present
7) go swimming naked in a downpour
8) do not scratch back, do NOT scratch back, do NOT scratch back
9) sleep in gutter
10) toss pizzas in bag, leave store, drive, return to store, repeat
11) show kids location of folder of writing, as well as journals
12) buy voodoo doll resembling creators of blogspot (not that i was ever gonna, but kiss any chance of becoming a "blog of note" good-bye now)

thanks for playing along.

darth sardonic

am i a nail in your coffin?

did you deserve me? i ask as if i am a punishment that must be overcome to avoid the gates of hell, the fiery pit. we took long walks through a desert paved with rusty surgical instruments and dull kitchen utensils. you are my tetanus blanket, she replies offhand, not even looking in my direction. underneath the mutilated skies of this vacant city, buried beneath carrion, through broken glass windows furtively, across the empty seas to distant crude oil beaches. we will splash in the toxic waste, frolic in the plague, we will have agent orange coctails and dream of cruises to the molten surface of mercury. we were drug across hardscrabble fields covered in broken gravel, until the scars on our back congealed and coagulated to create a map to escape this fate. we drink mount vesuvius, we lay down to sleep under cinder and cement, hugging ourselves close without ever touching. what color are my eyes? i ask. she looks paniced, what?! why would you ask me that? what kind of question is that? it's a fair question. i reply. she wanders further away, drifting off, distracted by a burnt ochre sun. they're the same color they have always been, she says to a cockroach below her feet, they are black. black hole black. they are a vacuum from which none ever escapes. then she turned her head away from me, and shuffled away, her footprints leaving fallout dust clouds to mark her passing.

I Sink Deep 30,000 Feet Into My Window Seat..Electric Chair

the first time i talked to j, i was drunk and naked.

during the time that the wife was gone, i chatted alot at sg, and am always on cam when i chat. this particular night, i was lonely, bored, maybe a bit attention-starved, and drinking.

i usually have the same viewers, people i chat with regularly, and they goaded me into taking my clothes off (honestly, they didn't have to goad very hard), and it is really symbolic more than anything, because excepting an occasional flash of my butt when i am off for another drink, they only see my bare shoulders. my wife just laughed (we were swapping emails, and i told her) and asked me if i was "driving the chicks wild?"

on this night, through the gin-haze, i saw a new viewer.

i always talk to my viewers, which usually scares them off, but j chatted back.

from these humble (and extremely dubious) beginnings, a strong friendship was built on mutual understanding, meaningful conversations, and similar senses of humor.

meeting j in person in vegas only strengthened this friendship, and plans were made for me to take a long weekend to visit her again in texas.

and so it was that i found myself at seatac, a mere two gates down from the one where my wife and kids hugged so hard and we all cried just a few months prior, properly equipped with dressy clothes for taking j out for sushi (i owed her from vegas, i got too stupidly drunk to take her out for late night sushi), a camera for recording our silliness and shenanigans, and hunter s. thompson's the rum diary.

i feel i should write the weekend down, until i see that pads of paper were pushing three dollars at the little convenience store nearby. everything is ridiculously expensive at the airport, so strangely confined is it once one passes through the security gate.

i text j from denver and then miss her return call while i wait for them to call out the number for my large but overpriced chilli cheesedog and chips.

i tell her my flight out of denver was delayed twenty minutes, which would actually work out perfectly since her evil boss won't let her off work a little early to pick me up from the airport.

and then there i am, bag in hand, on the sidewalk outside baggage claim, talking to j on the phone as she rounds the corner behind some taxi vans.

we smile, and hug, and set off in her car, laughing and catching up quickly on events, j dashing and dodging crazy texas drivers while i repeatedly grab the oh shit handle despite my best efforts to pretend to remain calm.

after picking up her kids, we decide to get some dinner, j still smelling of work and me still smelling of airplane.

i play hangman with her oldest, share my crawfish ettouffe, we listen to a skinny kid with glasses and a goatee play heartfelt songs from the late 90's on an acoustic guitar sans applause or cheering, while j's youngest repeats "pizza. pizza." as he chews tiny pieces of the house pepperoni.

after a quick stop for sailor jerry rum and tom collins fixings, we clean up, invite one of her friends, a, over for drinks and hanging out, and set to launching the evening.

a is a pleasant-enough guy, and we talk and drink and smoke and attempt to chat (it is on, and the cam is going, but we aren't really paying much attention) while watching slc punk. because j had made the mistake of a.) having me fix her first two drinks and b.) telling me she liked them strong, she was clearly entering the danger zone of being too drunk to enjoy the remainder of her evening. luckily, my wife has sent her cookies vacuum-sealed into plastic bags in my luggage, and the oatmeal and raisins and a few glasses of water bring her back from the brink of disaster about the same time a has to leave so he can sleep. (he has a band thing the next day--he is a music teacher at a school in dallas.)

j and i stay up talking, until it is clear we should get some rest. despite the fact that j had said it was cool, (bring a jacket, it is getting cold. little did i know, it was going to be in the 80's and mostly sunny the whole time i was there.) and the complete comfortableness of her couch, i am warm, and keep waking up.

the next day, we go to the stockyards, an old fort worth bit of history, and take pictures of ourselves in front of a statue of a bull being wrangled by a cowboy, dodge a train, joke about how drunk i got in vegas, watch a real c&w band in a record store, j asking me if i wanted to dance, and me telling her i would two-step her ass all around the store. to which she replies that if i try to dance her ass around, she will kick mine.

her oldest drags me into a human-sized maze they had set up there and promptly ditches me, only to appear on the observation deck later and try and talk me through it.

then home, to get dolled up and go out for the sushi that i owe her.

after dinner, we go out to a's place in dallas, me whistling the theme from the old nighttime soap while we drive between the tall buildings.

a and i play alkaline trio tunes on his guitars, until it seems to me that j was getting a bit bored, then it is time to get back and get j's kids.

as we drive down the street that used to be the happening place for the dallas music and art scene, j confides in me that she feels too old to be involved in the hep stuff, not pretentious enough to be a scenester. i have never considered myself a scenester. i like what i like. then i point out that the lady's nose on the painting hanging in a gallery window was poorly drawn. "this from the guy who hasn't even drawn or painted anything serious for about five years, and has never had a painting hanging in a gallery at all." i quickly quip, hoping to soften my criticism.

but i feel a shifting in the mood of the evening. with me. in general. i'm not sure.

at j's house, we drink, and talk. but it isn't lighthearted as it was the night before. j keeps saying she wants to do something fun as a and i talk about politics and conspiracy theories. because she keeps bugging me about it, and in an attempt to bring some levity to the evening, i don one of j's dresses.

it doesn't change the darkening mood, however. i am trying to decide if the mood is just within myself, or in general. but i am tipsy, and tired.

j has me take pictures of her tattoos to send off to a magazine, but because we are both drunk, and the lighting is poor, and i am not a photographer (and she forgot to take the tag off the top she had picked up earlier at the store), she's not happy with any of them.

then a is vehemently attacking boxing and modest mouse (both things that j loves) and calling one of my chat friends "fat", and j is getting upset, and i find myself getting angry and belligerant, partly because neither one of them are letting me get to the point of what i am saying, which is causing j to misconstrue my explanation, and in turn is causing her to lump me in with the things that a is saying.

the mood is getting ugly. deep within myself i am realizing i am too tired and tipsy to continue like this much further. a backs down some. j calms a little.

a is too drunk and tired to drive back home, and lays down in j's bed, who will take the floor in one of her son's rooms, and i put on my jammers to lay on the couch.

j is going to come back out in a moment to talk to me some before i go to bed, but i am angry. with myself. for getting argumentative. for not being my usual jovial self. while she is getting a and herself settled, i decide i might need a smoke and a moment to talk myself down.

she finds me in the garage. we both admit that we are tired (it is now nearly four in the morning). i am trying to keep the nastiness of my mood hidden. in my head i am having flashbacks of rudehead and austin, and simultaneously trying to convince myself that i am overreacting and that none of this is on that level (and it isn't--i need to make an aside here and point out that when i get very tired, even without the presence of alcohol, i begin to overthink things, and i get a certain angry paranoia. i know this about myself. i hate this about myself), but part of my brain is pissed and won't be calmed.

i finally convince myself that sleep is the best thing, but it takes me some time to settle, and during that time, i get suddenly and inexplicably homesick for my family.

i wake up in time for j's oldest to make me toast, and catch a before he leaves. despite the lingering shades of last night's moodiness within my own head, i smile pleasantly and shake his hand and say how nice it was to meet and we will talk again soon.

j says ihop is in order, and we head out.

after we order, j says, "you sure are salty this morning."

"what do you mean?"

"i was trying to talk to you in the car, but you were snappy."

i am embarassed. i really wanted to keep last night's stupidity and this morning's leftovers of said stupidity to myself. but i love j for having tackled the very thing that was weighing on my mind this morning.

"i was only kidding about some of the stuff i said last night." she continues, "and when i found you smoking in the garage, i thought you were mad at me. i didn't want to be hanging around."

"i wasn't mad at you. i was mad at myself. for being such a prick last night."

"yeah, that whole thing just came out of nowhere. you guys were picking on me."

"i wasn't picking on you. well, maybe some at some points. but mostly i was trying to agree with you."

"hmm. yeah, you were. you got so mad because you said i wasn't letting you make your point."

i smile sheepishly and hang my head. "that was around the time i decided i was really tired and needed to get to bed. sorry."

and as simply as that, even before our food had arrived, everything that was bothering me the night before is fixed, and gone, shrugged off.

j needed to do grocery shopping, and so i accompany her to wal-mart. she says, "'oh what a fun time i had with j, shopping at wal-mart.' how boring."

i laugh, tell her it is ok.

after we put the groceries away, we load my bag in the car, and head to cabela's to wander around their superstore. j gets a roast beef sandwich, and i a wild boar sandwich. we decide to trade one half of our sandwiches with each other, and while we eat, j's oldest talks about the shooting range they have set up. it is a diorama decorated with targets that are lazer sensitive and equipped with "rifles" that emit the lazers.

j brags about how she had bb guns as a kid, and how well she can shoot.

we hit the range. j asks me if i want to have a competition. i smile and say sure, and we choose adjacent guns.

i am not necessarily the best shot. i know it. i also tend to not be very competitive. but i have fired guns ranging from small semiautomatic pistols (for shooting halibut when you are deep-sea fishing so they don't tear up the boat, or that is the story i got from my scoutmaster) to .45 caliber black powder revolvers, to 30-06's, to .270's. i qualified on the m-16 at basic. our scout troop owned two black powder rifles.

"i got 120, beat that." j says.

i have 80 points, and 8 shots left.

"there," i say, "one-sixty."

"whatever." j says, rolling her eyes.

"again?"

this time the score is j-140, me-160 again. i smirk my smile.

j and i have a last smoke of the weekend, and then i regail her with stories of "daddy, i don't wanna fut off" and broken pees, and string hanging from butts as we all laugh and barrel down the freeway.

hugs and smiles and waves and promises that the wife and kids and i will visit on our way through to florida in a month or two, and then up the escalator to my flight.

in a strange twist of fate, i fly into the same gate in denver that i flew out of two days prior.

to my beloved non-existants

the other day i was going through old posts and copying them to paste them into the work in progress that i often refer to as my magnum crappus.

it's been awhile since i have done this, and i started to get into the months that my wife was overseas. this also coincides with the influx of new non-existant readers and pals.

o my beloved non-existant readers, my droogs and only friends, it was beautiful to see, as i plowed through painful posts that had me reliving every ache and pain and desire and emptiness, that all of you were there to lend a word of comfort, a virtual hug, a commiseration.

in a word, my non-existants, thank you.

thanks for being there for me. thanks for listening (well, technically, reading, but hey! what difference does it make really?). thanks for mountain of comments. were the world a smaller place and money not an option, you would all be invited over for tea and cookies and the swapping of funny stories.

just needed to put that out there.

darth sardonic

Just give me medicine prescribe me anything

today's title is from a great song by alkaline trio (i really can't stand their music at all, heh heh) entitled (cleverly, and with a sardonic tongue-in-cheek wit so similar to my own) take lots with alcohol. i really wish i had thought of that. instead, i wrote a song entitled pills and shots inspired by an old "friend" who had a tendency to walk the razor's edge between this world and the next...

i have been--well, not really busy, so much as, well, reclusive. i have to admit, i haven't really been doing a fair job of either posting here or reading all of your posts, o my beloved non-existant readers, my droogs and only friends.

why? good question. partly because i am still (yes, still) recouping from this evil cold, and i am tired all the time. partly because november just seems to be a rough month in the sardonic household, and holding true to novembers past, we've been having some fun times around the place. nothing unsurmountable, or over-the-top. just little stuff that piles and piles. i always said if i was going to snap and go on a killing spree, it would easily be the little niggledy shit that would do it.

i actually asked a friend recently why i was never allowed to be the one in the family who had the "breakdown"? he informed me that i was the "strong" one. again, this is similar to my mother saying that i have always been comfortable in my own skin: what the fuck?!? me, the strong one?

i guess. but i actually think that my wife and i compliment each other so very very well, that when i do have a "breakdown" she is in the right frame of mind to deal with it quickly and efficiently, and when she has the "breakdown" i am in the right frame of mind to deal with it quickly and efficiently. i am also a bit of a perky little annoying glass-half-full motherfucker most times (shhhh, don't tell anyone). usually. this time around, i was low (with being sick and tired, literally) and then she had her little moment, and wham bam thank you ma'am, my little moment happened right on top of that one.

am i saying that i believe men have "periods" too? well, i cannot speak for all my external-genitalia brethren, but this bastard sure does. and wife's and mine coincided recently on top of other concerns. fun times. the kids decided it would be fun to chime in too.

where am i going with all this? shit, i don't know. god, you non-existants expect so much, geez. postings and such, and on top of that, actual meanings and reasons?!? all wrapped up in a pretty package?!?

hahaha, just kidding, just thought i would ramble, try to explain why i haven't been as "active" (at which, no doubt, i have failed miserably), maybe set the stage for a more normal post of my usual style (do i even have a usual style? i mean, honestly. some days i write a story either mostly true or completely fictional, some days i rant, some days i cough up random nonsequitors like ee cummings having a verbal dual with salvador dali and david lynch providing the play-by-play, some days i just piss and moan (like today) about stupid shit whilst my inner monologue says, "quit yer fucking whining, ya pansy! you've got it so good, and yet here you sit griping about things that others wish they had!" is there an actual genre to cover all that? if there is, i would love to know what it is, so i can have an idea of how to describe my someday-soon-hopefully novel. it's a bit hard to actually explain right now).

wow, i have gone off on such a tangent i am afraid i can't even find my way back to the original point, so i am going to do what the aforementioned mr cummings would do, and just drop it completely. on another side-note, i have always loved ee cummings' writing. i never really realized how much he had influenced my own style until i recently purchased a largish book of his poems. so many witty little tricks that he tries i have stolen, and unwittingly pawned off as my own.

was i going anywhere with any of this?

not really.

darth sardonic

hallowe'en

i asked for the night off from hell to take my personal demons out trick-or-treating.

we walked around our neighborhood, safe as houses, considering we had two invincible superheroes accompanying us.

we bumped into samhain, who could do nothing but laugh maniacally at us. i am pretty sure he delivers our papers during the week. odd, everyone has a job they don't like...

the night was warmer and drier than the past few on which i have ventured out with my progeny to beg for refined sugar and high fructose corn syrup. the boys are finally getting old enough to not just enjoy halloween, but really get into it. their excitement was catchy, and even my wife and i were having a good time.

and the kids even managed to mostly remember to only ring the doorbell once and say thank you.

overall, a good time was had by all.

darth sardonic