Friday, May 29, 2009

magnum crappus

the latest on the book:

i got a little tired of waiting, and at dj kirby's suggestion, bothered the powers that be at the place that is supposed to be cranking out my book.

well, apparently, they shuffled this job off onto somebody else, and i missed the email telling me i needed to resubmit. but, they tell me, since i got it in initially in the time allotted, i get to resubmit and they will publish.

so i am proofreading the ms (essentially i need to find vowels with accents over them for the castellano stuff and put hard page breaks in after the chapters) and sending it back off, and then i am hoping it will be available soon.

i'll let ya know.

darth sardonic

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Wednesday, May 20, 2009

on burnt bridges and sailed ships

i don't know what they are expecting after nearly 15 years, in some cases 20.

facebook has afforded an opportunity to many people with whom i have lost contact a second chance to catch up on what is going on in my life.

but ofttimes, they have a preconceived notion of what they will find.

they think they will find the same skinny, gawky bespectacled kid who attended church every sunday faithfully and never stepped out of line. the kid who was always polite, did his homework, who made his parents proud. the kid who was a budding pillar of the community, always pleasant to be around, a shining example of what is still good about the youth today. the oppressed, lying, angry, sniveling, unhappy, two-faced, depressed, deranged, back-stabbing, whiny little cunt who hated himself and wanted to die on a near-daily basis.

someone, they imagine, who will still have something other than decades-old memories in common with them.

i am, in this case, proud to disappoint.

in so many ways (the important ones), i am the same person. i still try to be nice. i still try to be an example of what is good about the youth today; maybe not always in the way the world thinks, but in the ways that actually matter. i am still bespectacled more often than not.

and with a great many of my recently-rediscovered old friends, they are pleasantly surprised to find i am not the same rather dull person i was so many years ago. and we immediately commence building a new friendship upon the foundation of the old.

in so many other ways, i am nothing at all like the kid they remember. and it is shocking, perhaps, to seek out my facebook friendship with an idea based on the me of twenty years ago, and discover that my current status post says: "darth sardonic is as cute as chainsaws and battery acid" just a few days after my status post was "darth sardonic is der unk. nuff said." perhaps they imagine all kinds of evil debauchery and wicked goings-on occuring in the wreckage of my life as i spiral ever downwards into the depths of hell.

but that isn't my problem. assume what they will, because i am not the one with the issue. and frankly, my beloved non-existent readers, my droogs and only friends, o thou steady and on-going malchiks and ptitsas what stop by here on a semi-regular basis to peruse my insane ramblings, i could give a walloping fat flying fuck whether they think i have my shit together, or whether or not they think i am heading to the fiery hot place in a wicker baked-goods receptacle, or whether they think that i am a drunk and a bastard.

because i am happy as is.

and they fucking looked me up, and sought my friendship. not the other way around.

darth sardonic

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Friday, May 08, 2009

tourist-free traffic

i dozed fitfully on the six-and-a-half hour flight. there was no one of any interest near me, and i didn't want to finish my book too early.

i guess florida is the place other than the pacific northwest that i have been the happiest, because i didn't notice the wet pine/mountain air smell right off. of course, it is raining, and mt rainier is shrouded in cloud cover (as she somehow manages to do even when there is no other cloud cover in the sky).

the rental car place gives me a pt cruiser, about which i grumble to myself, and as i drive i find numerous reasons to hate them even more (...the space inside is allocated poorly, my cupholder is situated that i have to lean down almost to reach it, it's ugly...), but it is a car, and cheap, so off i go.

my appointment for my back was yesterday, and there was a general air of levity and humor in the shop. despite this, i am not really looking forward to six hours of aggravating pain.

"darth, have i used a rotary motor on you before?" scott asks.

"no, how are they different?"

"well, alot of the customers say they don't hurt as much."

and he is right. the more he does, the less i feel i need to tense up. the less my skin feels like hamburger. the less my jaw aches from jamming my chin into my cupped hands.

we talk about the rotary motor, how it does about the same job as the electromagnetic motor, but he did have to change his technique. the rotary motors always got written off as shit because they made them in prison out of cassette player motors. how one of his friends that he respects turned him onto them. i agree with him that it hurts considerably less, that it was "almost like a massage compared to the other motors."

we talk about skinny puppy and old ministry. how the only reason anyone knew lane staley was dead for two weeks is because his accountant noticed that his 9,000 dollars a day for heroine was no longer being taken out of his account. how 27 seems to be the magic number for these artist type's burnout.

"do you think it is just that that certain genius hits some point where it has to self-destruct. better to burn out than fade away?" i ask.

"i think it is a helluva lot simpler than that. i think when you are that popular, everyone wants to be your friend. and they will bring to you the things you like. 'you like alcohol jim? here ya go.' 'have some more heroine, kurt.' they don't even have to leave to get it anymore."

this seems like a brilliant, albeit less romantic, reason why we lose some of our possibly greatest minds before their time.

time rolls on.

"i'm definitely going to finish the angel's body today. then we could do the wings in dallas, and another to do the background, cause i can probably just get a mag and wash it in, and then one more, if you wouldn't mind, to just kinda put my blessing on it."

"yeah!" i am just thrilled that there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel.

i know i have really impressed scott with my diligence in coming back to finish my tattoo up. i somehow see, in his 20 or so years of tattooing, a long list of unfinished projects.

i hang out with s, my old friend from the inner circle of pizza hell, and we have a couple drinks and ride around lakewood looking for something to occupy our otherwise tired minds.

i know, i failed to post pics last time. but i promise (especially to you, byrd) that i will get them up as soon as my back is healed.

more to come, i've no doubt.

darth sardonic

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