Saturday, September 27, 2008

done

fuck yeah, motherfucker!!

the magnum crappus (or The Unfinished Work, as i guess we really oughtta start calling it) is done. that's right. done. i know, i can't fucking believe it either.

i told dj in an email that i wasn't gonna work on it cause i had a narsty head cold. well you know what? fuck that. i couldn't leave it alone, and once i got going on it, fuck me gently with a chainsaw if i didn't find the hours falling away and suddenly i was at the happily ever after.

now i really oughtta get dressed, have a drink in celebration (head cold be damned) and maybe clean some or pay some attention to my kids, play my bass, or any other number of things i have let slide over the past few weeks.

more soon, promise.

darth sardonic

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Thursday, September 18, 2008

I think I'm dumb...

Or maybe just happy

i haven't even touched my bass in over a week. my friends from sg chat are wondering why i don't come in anymore. the cove thinks i am being a cunt. my wife comes home from work and is a little disgruntled at the disarray, the dirty dishes, the piles of laundry. i barely do enough laundry to keep us all in underwear and socks, and sometimes we have to grab it out of the wrinkly pile dumped violently on the couch after the dryer dings.

but today, i went through 60 pages! and i have maybe 140 left to go. less. then arrange the order of some chapters better, come up with a few better more clever chapter titles, and maybe write a page or two here and there to tie some things together, and hey, presto!

the light at the end of the tunnel is there, o my beloved non-existant readers!

and dj, if you are reading (which i doubt), i am almost done, i will be bugging you soon. (though in all honesty, she really oughtta not help me cause she already did and i did a good job of working at it but then started this job, got tired lazy and unmotivated, sluffed, pissed around, and only recently got my shit back together, i'd be rather pissed with me if i was her!)

thanks for sticking with it with me, my droogs n only friends

darth sardonic

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Tuesday, September 16, 2008

more tatt




as promised o beloved non-existant readers. the devil girl is all done and the wing of the angel girl is started.
sorry i have been neglecting you all. not just you, but nearly everything else. it is because i have really been dedicating myself to my magnum crappus to try and bang it out once and for all.
this means i have let this blog slide. i have let the laundry slide. friends of mine ask me what the hell is wrong.
nothing, just plugging away at my book with a dedication that is really unlike me.
hope to be back very soon.
darth sardonic

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Tuesday, September 09, 2008

You spit-shined my corroded halo,

Then left it to decay.

sometimes when i say, "i don't want to be here" i don't just mean the place i am in, but this whole fucking planet.

i get a burning urge to scream, punch someone, break something expensive, kick an endangered (and preferably cute) animal, burn a rainforest to the ground, press THE button.

as luck would have it (and this is the big reason i believe in higher powers), i was tasked to do things today that allowed me to listen to my ipod loud enough to be annoying to anyone who might get close, by myself, with the sun beating on my back and the sweat in my eyes.

i can ride my bike with no handlebars...

and:

we rise together, we rise together, we rise together.

back soon when i ain't such an ass, o my beloved non-existant readers.

darth sardonic

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Monday, September 08, 2008

6x9 in

i am 3 hours early. i am seated with a group of people who won't even be on my flight because they are all bound for minneapolis on a plane that currently occupies the gate that my plane will occupy eventually.

this is due, in most part, to my wife being a worry-wart.

she must've told me four times in the last few days, "don't miss your flight."

and i am susceptible. i get bent out of shape. i let it infiltrate my consciousness. it feeds on the logic centers of my so-called brain.

that, and partly because i have spent very little of the past five days alone with my thoughts, i just decide, fuck it. i'll give me some "me" time, albeit at the sea-tac airport. suffice to say, it would take an act of god to prevent me from making my flight.

no one writes anymore. not "write" like stories and novels. i think even more people are doing that than ever before. and not well. and about subjects that probably interest very few readers.

but in the snack/magazine shop near gate s6, i had to search like a cryptologist/archeologist to discover a pad of paper n pen.

$4.44 later and i am seated on the end of a series of seats with cracked vinyl, back to a large window with a view of the movable causeway jammed against the side of a jet that doesn't appear large enough to carry all these people to minnesota.

it is the ideal place to kill three hours doing two of the things i enjoy most: writing, and people-watching.

the latter affords little to occupy my mind. the seats are mostly filled with the standard travelling fare: businessmen trying not to look like bussinessmen, flying out to facilitate that next big merger that will skyrocket their career, elderly couples headed to weddings, families on vacations they don't really want to take.

the flight is overbooked, and as they begin boarding, the airlines employees are frantically trying to find volunteers to get "bumped" for which they will reasonably compensate.

one man complains loudly that he has already been at the airport three hours.

yeah, i am gonna know what that feels like.

the pages in my cheaply-expensive little writing pad are already coming loose, and i wonder if this five-dollar experiment is going to survive the journey.

i have a momentary desire to write something all out, then leave it in the seat back pocket in front of me, imagining that someone would find it, be curious enough to read it, love it, wonder who wrote it.

it seems more likely that it will find itself at the bottom of a plastic bag under empty miniature bottles of alcohol and spent coffee grounds.

which is probably a fitting final resting place for it, actually.

my handwriting is atrocious. i am attempting to keep up with my stream-of-conscious, and tired to boot, which makes me wonder how long it will take me to transfer my longhand into the harddrive of my computer. judging by other writing adventures, a couple years would be a safe bet.

the waiting area of gates s6 and s7 is now relatively quiet, the plane boarded, leaving behind a few people who, like me, have wives that worry too much.

i try to decide if i am hungry. the truth is, probably not. with the looming and daunting three-hour wait, i am bored in advance. i ate a heavy breakfast of eggs benedict and hashbrowns with toast and having blown five bucks of my nearly-depleted funds on this ill-fated writing endeavor, i think i should really tough it out till memphis, where i must try the bbq according to one of my friends.

writer's cramp and the aforementioned breakfast necessitate a break.

back from the earthtone-tiled bathroom with the motion sensor faucets that rarely sense my motion, to my seat that still bears the imprint of my cell-phone and wallet chain.

in memphis, on the way to seattle, waiting to board my plane, was a lady with a monkey. this seemed so random and surreal as to completely tickle me pink. i wondered if she had checked a hurdygurdy with her luggage.

i wonder if the plane serves hot tea. then wonder if hot tea might be a bad idea in a narrow, cramped seat with a clipboard-sized table which will, when i am not dozing, be occupied by this rather silly pad of paper.

a clearly high-maintenance lady of unkown ethnicity asks two matronly white travellers if they would watch her all-leather carry-on while she goes to buy an over-priced coffee.

it gives me pause momentarily to ponder about levels of trust. neither party really knows the other, and the sweet older ladies might be high operatives in some new terrorrist group, and take advantage of the other woman's assumption that they are harmless.

then i think: and i would be on the plane! but as i think this, the sun beams through the clouds directly on me, and i think: nope, today is not the day.

it is about an hour until the flight leaves, and the waiting area is beginning to bustle.

this is usually the time when i begin to pick out the people i wish i was seated next to, and the people i will actually be seated next to.

wish: the two matronly terrorrists. one is talking on the phone, and has a tennessee accent, and they are probably from memphis, and they seem like overall nice people, even though they seek death for the american infidels and want to blow our plane from the sky.

wish: the high-maintenance lady, who appears to to have a small tattoo on her instep, and is eating yogurt from a plastic seattle's best cup while she surfs gay male porn on her laptop.

wish: two female college freshmen who will laugh at the stupid, laconic things i say in a valley-girlish way and regale me with stories of spring break in cancun, where they drank three times their weight in margaritas and had sex with each other, the men's water polo team from lsu, and possibly a donkey.

actual: the pudgy bald guy with glasses, who is closetedly gay in a creepy sort of way, and will be playing scenarioes of sodomy and submission with yours truly in the back of his head while he tells me about the cute puppy paint-by-numbers his wife does.

actual: the tall, pocked-face man with the greased-back hair, who will grunt in reply to anything anyone says to him, snore loudly, and wreak of garlic for the whole flight.

actual: the well-built, clear-eyed gentleman with the van dyke who will turn out to be a cop in a big southern city and will go on and on about the many painful ways to restrain "perps" which he will say like a racial slur.

my flight is actually overbooked as well, and for a split-second i contemplate bumping myself for a later one, but i am reminded of the four seperate occasions when my wife warned me against missing my plane. bumping myself would be a death sentence.

the polychromed scabs on my back are beginning to itch something fierce, and i wonder how difficult the four-plus hour flight is going to end up being.

for fun i watch the other passengers surreptitiously to see if anyone is putting me on their wish/actual list.

high-maintenance keeps looking my direction, no doubt thinking, "i hope i don't get seated next to him, he looks ill-mannered and unkempt." other than her, i seem to have flown under the radar with my fellow travellers.

i had been tired, with an impending bit of moodiness looming on the horizon, but the sun has burned off the clouds, and as i wait to actually board the plane, a fresh breeze blows in through the space between the fuselage and the edge of the jetway.

my last whiff of home before i go.

darth sardonic

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Friday, September 05, 2008

6th n proctor

my tattoo artist actually spent the night in shivers n shakes due to the flu, and was all set to cancel the day's appointments, when he realized that this domeless wonderboy that he has been working on for ages (and who is a bit of a whiner) is actually flying in from fucking florida to get some more work done.

he pops two advil, sucks it up, and gives me the absolute best he can do, which turns out to be about 4 hours on the original 6 we had planned. all with frank zappa playing incredibly long and convoluted solos in the background. i had never heard frank zappa before. but i'm fucking digging it. that's right, straight from the rat rod, fifties-tough culture to a seventies, psychedelic drug culture within a mere 24 hours.

the devil girl is done, and a sizable chunk of the angel girl's wing is colored. pics to follow (in a week or so, you know, after it is healed).

then out and about in downtown tacoma with m, from the old pizza slinging days, where we pop into a nice bar and get an immense burger and a tom collins and i flirt harmlessly with the ridiculously hot bartender who should model or something.

back to m's dad's place for more drinks and wii golf. m is leaving for germany in a little over 20 days, and i have been gone from washington for three quarters of a year, and yet our hanging out is casual as it has always been, unplanned and easy.

how simple it was to forget just how cool my old stomping grounds are while i was here. how caught up in the day-to-day i became, that i somehow didn't notice the indian summers as much, the mountain, the crispness of the breeze.

i know i was sad to leave, but i think it was a good thing, and being back is making me love this place more and more.

darth sardonic

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Wednesday, September 03, 2008

space coast to space needle

it is quite likely that this blog will disintigrate into a stream-of-conscious randomfest. a randompallooza, if you will. enjoy. and just remember, i am as lost as you.

observations from a quarter of a day spent in travel, in no preferential order, and completely nonsequitor:

3:00 am is too early to be up. memphis is extremely proud of their musical heritage. and their bbq. i live in the most southern state, but had to travel considerably north to tennessee to actually hear a southern accent.

ever notice how when you ask a guy for his id, he slaps his ass like he just suddenly realized that despite the fact that his wallet has been with him all day he isn't really sure if it is still in his pocket? like the words "can i see your driver's license?" make him think that it is possible that his wallet has vaporized right under his very bum? a guy will even have a brief look of relief cross his face when he feels it. i do it too. i take it one step further. i not only slap my back pocket, but suddenly and maniacally check for my keys, too. like, if my wallet can magically disappear, what's stopping my keys from doing the same?

in the town of orting, wa, pierce county, there is a bell tower, erected in the center of town in 1989 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of logging and the moving of coal down from the mountain (also known as orting's centennial), and under this bell tower is a time capsule to be opened in 2089, and in this time capsule is an orting centennial calendar, and the majority of the artwork depicting scenes from orting's 100 years, and the things that it is famous for (namely, logging, the shipping of carbon (later to be used as fuel), and daffodils) were drawn in pen and ink by yours truly.

oh how disappointed the future openers of said time capsule are gonna be on that day.

i stop at orting's liquor store to pick up the fixings for tom collinses, and not far in front of me parks a classic car. out pops an older gent, resplendant in pegged 501's, black boots, and slicked back pompador. "sweet ride daddy-o" i say, without the slightest hint of irony. "what is that, a '50, '51?" "'51." "niiiiiice." we shoot the shit about rat rods and early fifties caddies (my favorites) and later when i leave, it occurs to me that despite my apparent lack of sufficient hair for a duck's ass, and the skinny puppy t-shirt i was wearing, i still was pulling down a fair bit of street cred in my dorkboy glasses, dickies, and converse all-stars. the devil knows his own.

there should be an "annoying" section of the plane, where the people who want to be annoying can go be annoying together, and not bother the fucking people who fucking want to fucking sleep cause they had to fucking get up before fucking 3 am to fucking get to their flight to fucking make the fucking connecting flight so that they could fucking sit next to the fucking annoying fucking people who won't allow them to fucking sleep in the first fucking place.

the day was clear and bright, and as i looked out of my window i see mt st helens. at least i think it is mt st helens. well, it must be cause there to the south is mt hood. which would mean that mt rainier is somewhere off to my ri--and as i think this, the plane banks some and there it is: my mountain! there are mt rainier (in all of its pierce county country hick glory), mt st helens, and mt hood, all lined up in a straight row, beautiful. and i know it is near.

but it doesn't fully hit until i am outside in the indian summer breeze and i get the mountain-lake, fresh-fruit, evergreen, clear-stream smell that i always equate with home, but had somehow managed to quit smelling till i moved away.

fuck, it is nice to be back.

darth sardonic

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