not even star-crossed, just unlucky

junk food

2011-09-22T03:48:00.000-07:00

yesterday i had a long day at work. patients went long, i fell behind on the peripheral duties, and by the time i had clocked out at the end of the day i had nearly ten hours of being on my feet running around. i was exhausted, mentally and physically.

a half-hour drive home, fighting to stay awake. in the kitchen, i immediately see that no. 2 has been doing sentences. they read, "i will not use leftover money from the book fair to buy junk food at lunch." since no. 2 is in the other room playing, i am guessing he is done writing.

so my wife and i have a talk while i have a drink (she is already halfway down a drink of her own), and apparently, no. 2 was given a ten dollar bill to buy books at the book fair. when my wife asked for his change, he said he didn't have it. he told her he accidentally spent it. she said the only thing he might've "accidentally" spent it on would be junk food at lunch. he said that is what he had spent it on.

as she thinks about just how much sugary shit an 8-year-old boy can buy with five usd, she becomes livid, and makes him write sentences, then tells him he is grounded from games and tv for two weeks. he replies, "am i grounded from legos?" to which she answers, "no, you're not grounded from legos." and he cheerfully says, "well at least i can still play legos." she says, "glad you're seeing an upside to this."

"you need to have a talk with him." she tells me.

i decide i am gonna need a moment to decompress, sip my drink, and get in a calmer frame of mind to deal with the situation.

when i am finally ready, i call no. 2 in to talk with me. he stands in front of me, and i ask him why he blew the five bucks on something like junk food. with the idea of teaching him the value of money, i ask him what he could've spent the five dollars on that he might still have to show.

he looks at me with a strange sort of smile. his eyes are glittery, and his big buck teeth are on display as if they are holding back a laugh. i stare at him, waiting for him to tell me what sorts of things he would spend money on that last longer than a few minutes. he stares deep into my eyes and says, "it's in my pocket!"

and proceeds to pull a neatly-folded bill out of his pocket. "and two pennies!" and places them all carefully in my hand, while still smiling that weird smile.

deranged chuckles begin to pour out of me. i stare at the money in my palm. the chuckles roll in ever-increasing waves out of me. "go play, you're fine no. 2."

"wife!" i shout to her in the other room, "come in here and talk to me!"

we try to figure out why on earth he would willfully lie about buying junk food and then take the ensuing punishment when the key to freedom was in his pocket the entire time. the only solution we can come up with is that he was messing with us in some sort of elaborate and convoluted practical joke that is only funny to himself. all the while, the maniacal chuckles spilling from my frame.

if nothing else, it was the exact amount of the surreal to fix my day.

darth sardonic

ass burgers

2011-09-11T05:15:00.000-07:00

so no. 1 has been diagnosed with aspergers. 95% chance, according to the test he took with his therapist.

this means no. 1 isn't very good with feelings and emotions and things that cannot be touched and seen.

it means no. 1 is very logical, and thinks in terms of black and white, right and wrong, yes and no. he doesn't see all the gray areas of life.

it means he is very egotistical. it is what he wants when he wants it, and he has a very hard time empathizing with you, or understanding why you would be upset when he kicks you off the video games so that he can play again.

it completely explains the conversation that he and i had about grandpa lloyd and his passing and where he would be now that he is gone. no. 1 has issues with death and heaven mainly cause they are the nebulous kinds of illogical and faith-bound concepts he would have trouble with. so it now makes perfect sense that he would so intently ask me when we were talking about heaven, "but is it true?!!?" he needs it to be concrete, a place i can point out on a map, an address we can plug into the gps.

it means that no. 1 will know everything and anything about the things that interest him. the video games he plays, the dates man first walked on the moon, biology and science. during the summer, he would come home from his science camp, and from memory tell me all the ingredients of that day's experiment and how to mix them and why those ingredients mixed in that way created the result i was now holding in my hand.

it means the things that are not important to no. 1 do not matter in his world, at all. he is perfectly ok with waking up and heading off to school with ridiculous sid vicious bedhead and a rumpled, misbuttoned shirt. it means he has a low tolerance for other people's curiosities and opinions. his opinions are right, others' aren't. he already understands why something works the way it does, and he can't be bothered to explain it to you if you don't.

it means that much of my "creative" approaches to parenting and attempting to get him to understand why something might be important have been wasted effort. it would be simpler if i just said, "don't do that cause it is bad and wrong if you do." than all my attempts to link it to others' feelings or vague concepts of the future.

no. 1 and i go to his therapies together whenever possible, him to learn how to consider other people's feelings and to remember personal hygiene, and me to learn how to guide him properly into a productive and fulfilling life.

n in some ways it means that my idea of a productive and fulfilling life might not be his ideas of a productive and fulfilling life, n i need to learn to be ok with that.

thanks for playing along, o my beloved non-existent readers.

darth sardonic

very briefly

2011-08-10T04:09:00.001-07:00

i promise i will post again. i have been working and getting ready to move to a house off base, and that has consumed much of my time and energy. stick with me though, o thou beloved non-existent readers, and more will follow.

on burnt bridges and sailed ships

2011-06-30T05:12:00.000-07:00

it is your choice. it is your choice to continue careening angrily through life like a tarnished errant pinball. it is your choice to snap like a rabid dog at the hands that would help boost you up.

it is your choice to hold grudges like blankets made of tetanus and barbed wire, clutching them close till they disease your blood, and lock your jaw.

it is your choice to pick friends who will tell you what you want to hear over your true friends. friends who worry about you and aren't afraid to tell you that you are maybe making poor choices. it is your choice to leave these true, but sometimes painful, friendships behind like rotting leftovers of savory dishes that you have enjoyed until they no longer served your tastes.

it is your choice to douse the timbers in gasoline and strike the match. it is your choice to stand, hand on hip, the line of your mouth set hard, back turned; on the docks as the cruise line pulls away, blasting its final farewell air horn into the dark, empty night.

darth sardonic

happy birthday/father's day

2011-06-19T05:26:00.000-07:00

today i am 40 years old. it feels alot like 39 but with a headache and an icky glenlivet residue in my mouth.

40, n while i feel i have come a long way, i constantly remind myself how much growing i have to do, and how much of that skinny, whiny little twit who thought everybody hates him still resides somewhere inside me.

i'm a lucky motherfucker. i've got amazing kids, a gorgeous, wonderful wife who puts up with my bullshit. sometimes more than her fair share. n yeah, i put up with bullshit from her too, that's the nature of relationships, it all balances out.

i miss my dad today. don't ask me why. i've no idea. but i do, and it hurts.

i thought i had more to say. i guess it just boils down to that.

thanks for playing along, better posts (and my views/thoughts/observations about aspergers) to come.

darth sardonic

memoirs (by no. 2)

2011-06-08T04:35:00.000-07:00

found in no. 2's backpack at the end of the school year, and repeated here without any editing whatsoever.

October 19, 2010

I got my costume on Sunday. I will go trick or treating in my Incredible Hulk costume. You get your costume on and in less than two weeks you get ready to go trick or treating. You get your bucket and Poppy dresses as a zombie. I went to Boo at the Zoo dressed as Batman. [No. 1] dressed as Obi Wan Kenobie. You dress up and ring the doorbell at your neighbor's house and say, "trick or treat!"

November 9, 2010

How to make a pumpkin face:

First, you make the lines on the pumpkin. Then, you cut out the lines. Next, you cut the top of the head off the pumpkin. Finally, you have a jack-o-lantern.

Feb 9, 2011

One day it stormed. It was super stormy today. So we went to our tree house. It was stormy so I went to the house.

in other news, no. 1 has been diagnosed with aspergers, the knowledge of which will make handling him properly a little easier perhaps. i definitely will need to post further on that in the very near future.

i now have 13 followers, most of whom have never commented or with whom i have never interacted. why? where do they come from? what is it about this little hep b hypodermic needle in the park grasses of the world wide web that would attract followers in the first place?

thanks for playing along,

darth sardonic

There is another world There is a better world...

2011-05-20T03:12:00.000-07:00

as promised, life is back to as normal as life can be, and i am done being morose for the time-being. i guess i didn't really have much else to say at this juncture except that the funk that was clouding my post about my graduation is gone.

in a completely unrelated topic, why is it that a woman who could easily be my daughter (street-legal, as it were, but still in the late teens/early twenties and therefore young enough to be the firstborn of a dude who is going to be 40 (yes! 40! (?!?)) next month) make coquettish eyes at me and flirt? and no! no, no, no. saying something like, "you're hot" et al is not really answering the question for me. i am curious as to what the driving attraction for her would be, not necessarily to me specifically, but to a man who is obviously older. as a writer, i feel i need to at least have a basic understanding of what is going on in her head.

and yes, a young blonde with a lip piercing who was graduating with me was doing exactly this before the crowd expanded and she was pushed away to find some other guy to flirt with. i was simply being polite back, o my beloved non-existent readers, lest ye think in some way my heart is straying from my lovely wife. but in all honesty it is a weird combination of emotions involved for me: i am flattered (i mean, after all, i am a dude. a dude who doesn't really think of himself as sexy. or hot. and everyone wants to feel attractive. this is completely set apart from my feelings for my wife.), and at the same time, i automatically think, why the fuck is she flirting with me as i am obviously much older and there are at least 50 hotter younger buffer guys nearby?

my wife simply says (as she does, matter-of-factly, as if it should've been so clear to me) "it's cause you're sexy." i sure do love her.

and when i pose the same concern about what is going on in a woman's head to my wife, she just as matter-of-factly says, "security."

can the woman's thought process really be boiled down to one word? was this lady thinking that by making eyes at me we would have a long conversation, fall in love, and i would take care of her till i grow old and die and then leave her to pine for another 20 years until she herself is finally old too?

somehow i doubt that.

comments from anyone (but especially women) as to what sorts of thoughts, however random, back this action are most welcome. it is not necessary to make confessions, i am not asking anyone for their sordid past. generalities are sufficient. i would just like to approximate an understanding of the woman's mind on this. thanks.

darth sardonic

Deep in the cell of my heart I really want to go...

2011-05-15T11:35:00.000-07:00

some part of the scrawny, gawky kid who hated himself and never fit in still lingers within me, and that fucker has a knack for doing and saying the wrong thing.

this should, i spose, be a happy post about my graduation from community college with an associates of science in drafting design. and it is. but it's funny how whatever i write is colored by the mood i am in at the time. so it will seem a little incongruous when i say i am feeling a bit like a failure.

now, come back and talk to me tomorrow. all will be well, i will have cast off this funk caused by lack of sleep (i used to be permanently exhausted due to the kids not sleeping and now i am permanently exhausted because after i do what i have to do, i do what i want to do and there just isn't enough hours in the day.)

so, back to my graduation. i thought my grades in more recent times would be more than sufficient to bring up my cumulative gpa to graduate with honors. i had an abysmally poor showing at my first year of college, where i barely went to class let alone read or study. well, apparently how i do the math and how they do the math are not the same and i came in just below the "with honors" cut off.

small matter. i was still excited (in my ben stein kinda way) to be graduating, and proud of myself (in my self-deprecating manner) of my accomplishments. it felt good to walk across that stage in my robe and mortarboard, tassel tickling my ear. it's taken me an incredibly long time to sort of "come into my own" so to speak, and my graduation ceremony was a sort of culmination. and i got to have my wonderful, lovely wife (who told me i was the hottest guy up there) and my two boys (who cheered and kept shooting me thumbs up or double index finger pistol shots combined with winks) there, and that was at least as important as getting the diploma in the first place.

i am looking for jobs, but the prospect looks bleak around the area, so further into summer i may look for a job on base that is unrelated to my actual degree but that would at least afford me a paycheck. can't be too picky these days, can we?

i don't know what to say about the tiny misfit riding along inside me. i'm never gonna be fully rid of that guy. and i couldn't be, or i would cease to be me. i wish i could suppress him more. but then, again, i would cease to be me. as i said, this too shall pass, let's focus on my graduation.

darth sardonic

buying a copy of catcher in the rye to leave the house...

2011-05-04T08:19:00.000-07:00

i'm not a conspiracy theorist. i don't believe 9/11 was engineered by big businesses worldwide. i doubt truman did deals with aliens. i have trouble imagining the freemasons constructed every aspect of the burgeoning government of our fledgling nation to secretly control this country from behind the scenes.

but this whole "bin laden's dead" thing seems just a little too trite and easy.

first of all, in my opinion, it doesn't make a shitlick of difference. there's probably another 50 guys in turbans and beards ready to take his place and engineer another attack against us. know why? cause we have been fucking about in their country and blowing up their families for no-shit nearly fucking ten years now. and not just their country, but iraq too. and thumbing our noses and tossing taunts at iran. and threatening to beat up pakistan if they didn't let us enter their country looking for bin laden so that we could fuck about in their country and blow up their families as well.

but all that aside, right? i mean, for nearly ten years we didn't have the foggiest where bin laden or most of his next-in-commands were, and actually thought they might've all hightailed it to pakistan (see above paragraph) and all of a sudden, with little warning whatsoever and seemingly overnight, we know exactly where he is, and have shot a smartbomb in there to blow him to bits, then collected a piece of him off a wall and checked it against his dna (what? when the fuck did we get bin laden's dna prior to killing him to have something to check against?) to make sure he was, in fact, dead.

seems a bit like a publicity stunt created by politicians who are really none too popular right now (let's face it, with anyone who doesn't have their head buried in their iphone, no one who considers themselves a politician in this country is very popular right now, regardless of affiliation) to try and boost some ratings.

i mean, why didn't they bring him somewhere to stand trial? like hussein.

but let's pretend for a moment that he really is dead. and that no one else is champing at the bit to take his place. can we bring the troops home then? from iraq, too? (i mean, what the fuck are we still doing there really? besides still dying off?) we should be able to. i mean, our purpose was to get bin laden, alive or dead, and we have, apparently, gotten him dead, so let's fuck off then. mission accomplished. job well done. pop the corks and light the cigars. ding dong the witch is dead.

somehow, i seriously doubt this will bring our soldiers home anytime soon.

thanks for playing along, o my beloved non-existent readers.

darth sardonic

well, it's been a bit...

2011-04-19T08:23:00.000-07:00

i don't really have any sort of literary plan for today's post. but it has been a little while, so i am really trying to be as good as my word and update this for all you beloved non-existent readers (all three of you, which i think have taken to switching off, which means only one of you for this post and the next, and someone different for the next two!)

well, as you have no doubt heard, the military is getting paid. they stole the money from schools and god knows what other important places. i can guaranfuckingtee that none of the senators or congressmen offered to take a paycut to make sure the military members and their families would continue to receive the pittance we do to keep this country safe for the acquisition of more oil.

i am scared for next year's election. one of the favorite runner ups for the republican party sounds like a borderline nazi. i seriously doubt obama will even be picked as the democratic candidate, so annoyed is the general populace with how little he has actually done in his presidency. (all these people have conveniently forgotten that the only thing dubya had done in the first couple years of his presidency was take more vacations than any other president in the history of the united states of america!) i am not saying obama is amazing. he's just... there. he gets the honor of being the first black president.

but in the meantime, the country is polarized. it feels like it's borderline civil war again, except this time it's democrats against republicans. and no, the tea party is not the answer. those guys are considerably more right wing than the majority of the republicans, and i can only foresee book burnings and youth rallies in our future, followed by marching those of ethnicity onto cattle cars to roll off into the night.

i said this last election, and i am saying it again: we need a strong president that will focus on the shit going on at home!! someone who will repair the rift between conservative and liberal, and really work on fixing our economy, lowering the deficit, and restoring us to the united states of america, not the divided states of america. iraq is fine, they can manage. bin laden is no longer in afghanistan. let's forget those guys, let's let them run their own countries in the way that they see fit because, hey! let's be honest: we're in no position right now to be pointing fingers and offering advice in how to run a country.

in news on the home front, no. 1 is going to be repeating the third grade. it's not cause he outright failed, it's because he only barely passed. and it is because a) he still struggles to pay attention enough to grasp all the concepts he has had thrown at him (concepts that weren't thrown at me until the 6th grade, when i was fucking 12! everyone seems to think that feeding all these kids algebra and science and shit so young is good for them, but i am not convinced!) and b) his rebellious and headstrong nature makes him think he is always right in how he does things. the kid is smart. he's got the brains. he lacks maturity. and my wife and i need to revamp our thinking so that failing isn't considered such a horrible thing so much as a stepping stone for learning from mistakes and attacking the problem with a renewed vigor. i am pretty sure there is an einstein or ghandi or tony robbins quote that would be appropriate here, something along the lines of failure being part of success or something.

i am nearly done with classes, and maintain my 4.0 average, and will graduate with honors and then be forced to quit being lazy and find a job and work for my daily bread.

and there isn't much else to tell around here lately. life goes on, we keep smiling, and i just don't have as much clever shit to say as i used to.

darth sardonic

where'd the money go?

2011-04-08T03:30:00.000-07:00

this is the second time this has happened that i can remember.

once before, during the clinton administration, and while i was active duty, it seemed the government had misallocated its funds, and was threatening to not pay the military. that lasted a couple days before they figured it all out and everything proceeded on as normal.

at the time, i did stand up comedy, and made a joke about how they were going to make sure the postal workers got paid because they were known to go off with semiautomatic weapons when stressed, but the government was forgetting we had jets, bombs, and tanks.

there is a similarity between then and now: both of these seeming lacks of money (i say seeming, because congress and the senate are still getting paid--or, not to put to fine a point on it, they are making sure they pay themselves!) occurred when there was a democratic president and a majority of republicans in the house.

one big difference this time around is we are still recovering from one of our worst economic slumps in history. nearly as bad as the great depression.

and they are talking, even more now than i remember then, about making mission-essential military members work without pay.

here's the thing: thing 1) if the military isn't getting paid, what is to keep them doing the job they signed up to do, namely protecting the country (to and including the politicians who repeatedly fuck them in the ass)? what is keeping young guys who haven't seen their families in months in trenches in afghanistan from just tossing down their guns, and leaving for home? thing 2) with the government in an obvious shambles of late, and the country not doing so hot right behind it, and in this age of separatism and right-or-wrong and never any gray area, what is stopping a group of military folks from doing just exactly what i joked about when clinton was president, and effectuating a military coup?

and most importantly, how on earth to rich, fat, corrupt politicians expect to continue getting away with the shit they have for however long, if the military isn't getting paid? that's like telling your personal bodyguard, "i'm sorry, dude, i spent all my extra money on cocaine and whores this week, but you've got a contract with me, so you need to keep people from harming me, all for no pay."

i am already learning korean, i should add mandarin and cantonese to the list.

darth sardonic

talking out my ass

2011-03-21T18:20:00.000-07:00

(written under the influence of william faulkner.)

some time ago, we took in a stray cat, a declawed, neutered black and white male we named binx after the human boy/cursed cat in the kid's halloween movie, hocus pocus. clearly, he had been some coddled lap pet cum street thug after having been dumped prior to his old family's move.

my soft-hearted wife had to put out some food for him, and the rest, as they say, was history. he assimilated well, playing much too roughly with pele, the idiot, and not taking any shit from pepper, the queen bitch. he felt an undying need to prove his "street"-ness by going outside any time we opened the front door to roll around in the driveway, mad-eye the birds, and come back in with tales of, "see? i'm still fucking tough. i'm dirty and skinny and i don't take no shit from nobody."

once we put in an automatic cat feeder to prevent him from waking us up at four a.m. insisting loudly that he was starving to death, he had to quit adding the "skinny" part.

tonight, while i am enjoying some black cavendish in a decidely mid-2oth century american style pipe and reading william faulkner's "a rose for emily" so that my wife can pass her english composition ii class, i hear a very angry, enraged bird, or something similar. slowly dawning into my concentrating, and mildy gin-befuddled brain like daybreak over a swamp, this noise increases. a mad, frightened, unhappy chirping/squealing noise that builds and builds. i realize it is getting closer. i realize that it is probably being drug against its will by sharp teeth and clawless black front paws.

"oh, good boy, binx! good boy!" i say my bullshit line like some panama-shirt clad fifties dad in a straw fedora patting his son on the head after shooting all the neighborhood mockingbirds with the bb gun he received for his birthday. and then, through deft sleight-of-hand, i disengage the cat from shrieking--what is that, a mouse? fucking huge!

of course, binx bolts back after the escaped prey. by now, my wife has broke upon the scene. i am explaining that binx has just brought some live, decidedly overlarge mouse to the front door to present as his contribution to the family, when the repetitive shrieking begins again.

all with "good boy"'s punctuated with smoke stack blasts of light grey smoke, as we again create a diversion for our cat that seems bound to prove he has not, in fact, "gotten fat" as we claim, but is still 100% "street." and then we realize, it's not a large mouse, it is a baby bunny.

well, of course, my wife can't have this. off again (third time's the charm!) binx goes to track down his prey, and bring it, chirping in anger and embarrassment, by its hind leg to our front porch. i don't laugh until later that the clawless, overweight, dirty thug cat is all the while getting his face kicked in by the other, unfettered, hind leg. this time, we are successful in rounding up the cat and locking him in a downstairs bathroom, behind a constant litany of "good boy, good boy! good job, binx, good job, buddy." while the baby bunny rabbit beats feet for somewhere safe.

and, of course, as you, the beloved non-existent reader might imagine, the wife cannot let nature take its course; she goes out with a flashlight to make sure the bunny has made a clean getaway, while i insist that if she fucks with it too much its own mother will kill it for smelling like a human.

the bunny has gotten away, sans human smell, or a big black cat anklet. binx, judging by the look in his eye and the lashing of his tail, is not buying my bullshit empty praise.

all in a day's work at the sardonic household.

darth sardonic.

by way of an update...

2011-03-15T14:53:00.000-07:00

to quickly tie up the loose ends from the last two posts: a police report was filed. we met with the principal, who expressed great concern, said she would follow up on it and talk to the teacher to see if this was perhaps a trend of which no one had become aware. she also informed us she would have to call the mother and talk with her. we said that was fine.

a few days later, no. 1 gets off the bus and said, "dad, i think me and [charles manson] are friends now." well, o my beloved non-existent readers, it goes without saying that i expressed great consternation at this, but asked him why he felt that way. he told me that the offender had apologized to him, and they had shaken hands. i attempted to be magnanimous, and said, "well, that is very nice of him." but here my graciousness ended: "but i still don't want you hanging out with that kid, or talking to him, understand?" no. 1 nodded assent.

on that front, let's hope that i never have any more to report.

in other news, school keeps me busy, the two classes i am taking having abnormal homework loads, but i keep on top of it. i got my graduation paperwork today, and if i maintain a's in both (we're halfway through the school year and i currently have a 100 in one and a 97 or 98 in the other, without any signs that this should change in the next two months) i will graduate with honors, despite an atrociously poor showing my very first year of college at byu. (they wanted to stick me on academic probation!)

s the drummer and i met up with a couple guitarists, one friend of mine, k, and one friend of his, m, to try and create a new band from the ashes of the old. apparently, s the drummer didn't like k, or his musical style, or something, as he only wants to jam with m. and apparently s the drummer and m are ok with just jamming in my garage and not really doing much to branch out further than that. k is more than interested in fleshing out the veritable cornucopia of original songs i have been dutifully jotting down over the years, with the intent of playing out. so i had one fun jam with s the drummer and m, where little was accomplished beyond blowing off some steam and having a good time, and then another weekend had a jam with k and another of our friends, sc the drummer, in which we nailed down two songs, one an original of mine, and the other a potential cover, and they agreed that emptyhead was a perfectly good band name, and we discussed regular practices with plans to work on a setlist. and, at the same time, we blew off some steam and had a good time.

the boys have, overall, been doing pretty well in school lately; as well as in life. i feel like they are making headway in following my directions and accomplishing the things i want them to accomplish. no. 1 is talking about cub scouts, and while i think i might get roped unfairly into doing much more as a scout leader than i really want, i think the benefits might outweigh the grumbling aggravation this might cause me.

not much of a post really, but for now, better'n nothin'.

darth sardonic

addendum

2011-02-28T12:53:00.000-08:00

if you are (which seems very likely) stumbling across this post by sheer happenstance, please take a moment to read the previous post, as this one will otherwise make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

well, if i am not one to trifle with when it comes to threatening my family, my wife is that times a gazillion.

after i recounted everything (she was out of town for work), and spurred on by this woman's negative reaction and a serious lack of any kind of apology or explanation as to what was to be done to prevent this scrawny little dungheap from building pipe bombs in the garage and torturing small animals, she decided to text a friend who worked for the local police. that friend recommended to get it on paper (as in file a report) in case anything else was to happen.

as she was doing this, i was chatting with the friend living on their cul-de-sac, who informed me that the dad's way of "handling it" was to leave the kids with a sitter that very night and take his screaming banshee of a wife out on a date; meanwhile, the sitter lets the kids tear around the neighborhood till well past dark, and eventually locks them out of the house. then on saturday, he banishes [charles manson] to his bedroom for a half-day by way of punishment. sunday, the entire family goes out kayaking. cause nothing says, "i aint fucking around!" like good clean family fun on the water.

sunday night, after we filed the police report, and while we are having dinner with the friends from that cul-de-sac, and shamelessly badmouthing this family and their ill-fated offspring, the doorbell rings.

it is another mom from that circle, who wanted to let me know that she too had had problems with this kid. he had been saying sex-related things to her sons, and she (like me, and i fear this might be a bit of a disturbing trend amongst parents world-wide) had told her boys to just ignore him. until the day they came home and said he had suggested to them that they "fuck their mom."

at which point she dealt with the mother in no uncertain terms.

the interesting detail in this bit of information is that she did not swear or lose her cool with this other mother, or try to blame her kids, or in any other way display the kind of behavior she displayed to me friday night.

odd, right? because if one parent had already complained about my kid's gobshite, and i had sort of accepted that story, i surely wouldn't tell the next parent to complain that my kid hadn't done anything and it was their "fucked-up" kid's fault.

i told the busdriver this morning that i didn't want either one of my boys sitting within two rows of this brat. i said that if he had something to say to my sons, i wanted him to have to shout it so that everyone on the bus could hear it. i also suggested that perhaps the sweet girl who corroborated my son's story should be included in this seating shift, as the future serial killer might try and harass her as well.

she simply nodded in a knowing way, and called out his name as i was getting off the bus.

my wife and i have an appointment on friday to talk with the principal as well.

essentially, she and i agree: you don't threaten my family, stand there and lie about it, and then act like it is my kid's fault and just walk away with a slap on the wrist.

or as my wife said over and over the whole weekend: "that bitch fucked with the wrong family."

oh, yeah, she did. and her pestilent progeny as well.

darth sardonic

i handled it

2011-02-25T15:10:00.000-08:00

i frequently (maybe too frequently) joke in here about how much my kids aggravate me. it is a fact of my nature, and the nature of a parent/child relationship in general. and my way of handling stress is to joke. and raising kids is a big stress under the best of circumstances.

but i like to think that if you, the beloved non-existent readers, have been reading here regularly for anything longer than a few months, you will know that i really love my kids and my wife. i also like to think that you know that despite being verbally very violent on occasion in this blog, i am a big softie.

you will also know, however, that i have a thick core of raw kiss-my-ass steel and battery acid.

and i will not let anyone fuck with my family.

now, a few months ago, no. 1 got off the bus very upset. crying, in fact. i asked what was wrong, and he replied that [worthless waste of sperm and egg future serial killer] was telling him that he, [serial killer], was saying on the bus that he had escaped from jail after killing a manatee and a cop.

now, i think i handled this bit of info improperly. i told no. 1 that [sociopath] was a jabbering little idiot in need of a.) attention, and b.) some good adhd medication, and that no. 1 should not believe anything he said, and do his very best to ignore him, or at the very least, not get upset at the twaddle that this puling little whelp shat out of his gob.

in a way, no. 1 took my advice, as today when he was recounting what this kid had said, he seemed almost scarily calm.

"um, dad, you know what [check the crawl space for bodies] said today? he said that on my birthday he is gonna kill mom."

the record skips, everything on the planet gets immediately cut down to super slow motion.

"he said what?"

no. 1 repeats back exactly what he had just said again.

if i had not needed to immediately get no. 2 to a therapy appointment, i would've been at this slug slime's parent's door. lucky for me, and no. 1, and them even, i had that appointment.

in the car i tell no. 1 not to sit by this syphilitic boil anymore. i tell him i will talk to his parents. i tell him i will talk to the bus driver, and make sure she knows he is not to be anywhere near either of my kids. i tell him that if this kid ever tried anything with my wife, she'd fuck his world up beyond his ability to comprehend.

the drive, and hour long appointment work in my favor in several ways. i text my friend that lives on the same cul-de-sac as the offender and his family, and make sure i am thinking of the right kid. she confirms, and even says i am not the first parent with complaints about this diseased little pustule. i also get extremely angry. something i am gonna need to tackle this situation just as it needs to be tackled. but i also get extremely calm. something that ended up working to my advantage when i finally stood on these people's front porch.

i told no. 1 to let me do the talking, and i had to remind him a couple times. i was firm. i didn't want the parents of this larva to see me being wishy washy with my own kids. when i pulled up, the dad is sitting on the porch, and it is like he already knows something is up. so do his kids, who come over from playing catch, and his wife, who appears at the door from somewhere inside the house. even the neighbor kids come over, standing around in a semithreatening semicircle.

there we are, me and my boys, like last stand at the ok corral.

when i explain why i am there, he says, "well, that sure doesn't sound like anything [jeffrey dahmer] would say." (it never sounds like something our sweet little angels would say, does it, o my beloved non-existent readers? so many parents own property on a river in egypt.) and his diseased hole of a wife says the same thing, attempting to imply my kid made it up.

i say, in a no uncertain terms kinda way, say, "well, it sure isn't something no. 1 would make up."

the putrescent womb that shat out this gobbet of rotten okra is so incensed she declares this whole conversation "bullshit" and both of them are insisting that unless an adult can collaborate my story, it didn't happen.

of course their lying pond scum of a son denies it completely. even before he knows what he is accused of (which i point out in a voice that cuts through the other chatter happening around me.) they call in the boy who sits next to [john wayne gacey], and he says that the kid talks to my son, but he doesn't know what he says. we drive down two more cul-de-sacs to find the girl who sits next to no. 1. the mom has declared my kid "fucked up" and gone inside. but the dad is gonna ride this thing to its end, either to rub my face in it, or (i like to think) because he secretly knows that this shite is, in fact, the sort of thing his cesspool of a kid would say.

the girl who sits next to my son is older, and a bit of a chatterbox. i ask if her mom can come out so that her mom can kind of chaperone the conversation, and once her mom figures out exactly what's going on, she kind of keeps her daughter reigned in.

the girl says that the only one who really messes with my son is [ted bundy], and that he does in fact say some "sorta mean things." it is clear she doesn't want to say what sorts of things exactly. but after we tell her we need to know, and without any prompting at all, she says, embarrassed, "he said like he would kill no. 1's mom."

the father says he'll handle it.

i take my kids home, and tell no. 1 good job, and thanks for telling me.

now that it is over, i stand in the kitchen fucking shaking with rage. i smoke. i text my wife. i fill in the friend that lives on that circle on the outcome.

but, o my beloved non-existent readers, my droogs and only friends, i handled it. i never swore. i never implied that their kid was "fucked up" like that female goat had done about my own son. i never implied anything about him matter of fact except that he had said this to my son, and that i wasn't going to back down in the face of their apathy and hostility.

and i still won't. not sure what the long-term repercussions of this will be, but i am ready, and i am readying my kids.

because you do not fuck with my family.

darth sardonic

life is unfair

2011-02-16T18:15:00.000-08:00

sometimes i think it is unfair how deeply i feel these things. perhaps i should've never had kids. perhaps i should've never fallen so deeply in love. perhaps i should've never kidded myself about my own worth in this vast universe. perhaps i should've listened, and accepted these dark moments that well up in my life.

now, allow me, o beloved non-existent readers; allow me to wallow. if you've been listening to this discordant little note in the great symphony of the world wide web for any length of time, you know the bend in the corner is coming soon.

and no, because some of you will worry, nothing is wrong between me and the wife.

but i am feeling the stresses of my life, o my beloveds, my droogs and only friends, o thou ptitsas and malchicks who keep coming back here and tolerating my incessant whining.

the oldest, apparently, is too smart for school. he can't be fucking bothered. schoolwork gets in the way of more important things (i.e. video games, drawing, writing stories, and building lego creations that are mind-boggling in their detail.) and while all those things in and of themselves are also amazing and have their place, i have to sit across the table from a surly, glowering nine-year-old and explain to him that if things don't change, he will be repeating the third grade, and then watch him shrug like it's no big deal.

and after futilely fighting that battle, i get to drag myself, exhausted and sapped of energy, to my own classes where i was promised several hours to work on a project to find out the teacher changed her mind, and in fact, i will indeed be going back to the school for most of tomorrow to get the project where i want it to be.

it is time. it is time for the overwhelming sense of failure to bear down on me like a stone might weigh upon a swimmer's back. i will flounder. i will sink. i will accept my fate.

perhaps i don't deserve these gifts. perhaps i am not one to the task. perhaps i never was.

and i have always secretly held that when the drowning man accepts his fate, he reaches an enlightenment beyond our ken; a simple peace and glory in knowing that he will in fact die at the bottom of the ocean with lungs full of water. and he will smile as it happens.

but you know what? i also believe in some supreme spin doctor who is turning this universe on its axis. and i believe that that motherfucker, for whatever reason that is beyond my ability to comprehend, that bastard believes in me. that son of a bitch gave me all these goddamn gifts in the first place.

and i don't fucking believe in going down without a fight. ok, maybe the sinking swimmer reaches some fucking enlightenment. good for him. i am just too fucking thick for that shit. i am the dumb cunt who will fight it till the very last breath is ripped from my lungs and then spend the first few weeks in heaven bitching about it.

fuck these tears that course my cheeks. a means to an end, nothing less. and i am not drowning, i just need the sun to shine again, i just need to feel that this momentary lapse is over and i am standing upright and tall again.

life is unfair. that might be the whole fucking point. and i don't have anything i have without being the luckiest dumb twat who ever walked the face of this whole green marble in all its history. westley said it best, in the princess bride: "life's not fair, highness. anyone who says differently is selling something."

a few more hours of listening to codeine, and crying, and i will have sorted which parts of the stone belong to me, and which parts i need not carry, and i will kick strongly to the surface, and exuberantly shout: "look at the pretty rock i found at the bottom of the ocean!"

thanks again, o thou, the long-suffering, for allowing me to get there on my own.

darth sardonic

emptyhead (more commonly known as darth sardonic by himself) covering codeine's "cigarette machine" (this blog's namesake)

2011-02-11T06:16:00.000-08:00

mathematics suck

2011-02-01T12:19:00.000-08:00

no. 2 brings me his math homework to look over. he is in the latter half of 1st grade, and they have moved from adding to subtracting.

any time no. 2 brings me his math homework to check, i have to take a very big deep breath. i have to let it out slow. i have to consciously register my voice at a level that is tolerable, pleasant, and upbeat.

because no. 2 does not get math. he does not get math like i do not get nuclear physics, or quantum theoretics.

i have already told him numerous times that you cannot subtract anything but zero from a number and get the original number as the answer. this is a hard and fast rule of subtraction. and yet when he brings me his homework to look over, he has gone through everywhere and put the first number as the answer: 4-1=4, 6-2=6, 3-0=3. i calmly go through and erase all the answers where zero is not being subtracted and patiently tell him (yet again) that you cannot subtract one or two from a number and get itself. to help him, i say, "ok, this one here. three minus one. what is one less than three?"

he stares at me for a moment as if i have asked him, "donde se entero el cuerpo de hoffa?" then he says, "umm, three?" i sigh, and try a different tack. "what is the number that comes before three?" again, "quantos dientes tiene el tiburon grande blanco?" "umm, one?"

now he is just hitting all around the number hoping to land on the right answer. still cool as a cucumber, i go over to the whiteboard and draw him a numberline, as i have numerous times before, and explain that you count to the left in bumps however many you're subtracting and the number you land on is the right answer. i remind him (yet again) that he himself can draw this numberline right there on his paper and use it to correctly answer the problems.

then he uses the numberline efficiently, and answers the other problems correctly.

but here's the deal, o my beloved non-existent readers: no. 2 appears simply unable to understand that, for the sake of his first grade math homework at least, numbers are constant and unchanging. he seems completely unaware that three comes before four and will always come before four. that five plus five is always ten, and that one of his own hands always contains five digits, and the other always five as well.

and the reason that i must travel into some zen fugue state to help him with his math homework is this: one particularly bad bit of addition homework, on a day when no. 2 was particularly tired and lazy and not wanting to think, ended up taking us two hours to do. two. with tears. with shouted guidance that was neither constructive nor helpful. with exasperated declarations of, "fuck it, i just don't fucking care! turn it in all fucked-up, and fail. i don't give a shit!" which we all know is straight up bullshit because i would go stomping back in there within seconds to try and explain it again in a different way, to be met yet again by the same (teary) blank stare of incomprehension.

and the bigger disconnect that is there can be tied to before, after, above, around. for no. 2, things just seem to happen willy nilly without rhyme or reason, devoid of connections to one another of any sort. "how many days is it till friday, dad?" "well, today's thursday, so how many days?" ("cuantos anos tenia methusaleh?") "umm, three?"

and on that day when the homework was finally in the backpack, and the kids were playing more or less harmoniously and i was outside shakily smoking, i called a friend from high school who i had been venting to about the math. a friend who struggles even to this day with dislexia. a friend who does not do her budget because she is never sure she has done the addition or subtraction right, or even gotten the amounts entered correctly in the first place.

and though i am sure that he will outgrow this, it is yet another by-product of being born early, of getting sick, of being pumped full of narcotics. here he is, 8, and still suffering delays that find their seeds in a four-months hospital stay that started at 30 weeks gestation.

i don't expect him to necessarily be a rocket scientist. or an engineer. then again, maybe he will. i just want him to be a productive, active member of society.

and i want him to one day realize without thinking that three comes before four, that one of his own hands always contains five digits, and that friday always follows thursday.

darth sardonic

voyeurism isn't always sexual...

2011-01-30T10:38:00.000-08:00

or maybe it is? what the fuck do i know?

if i haven't come out here and bold-faced said it before, i have definitely alluded to it: i am a voyeur. (and yes, because i am also a big bucket of contradictions, i too am an exhibitionist.)

i like to sit quietly and watch people in their natural habitat. generally, they do little of note, and i get bored and watch someone else. but occasionally, they do something that piques my interest, regardless of how ordinary it appears.

recently, i was out smoking my pipe on my front porch, and about a quarter mile away, i see a woman in her back yard. why did this woman catch my eye at all? well, probably for the usual reasons. she was tall. the distance between us made it hard to judge, but i bet she would be a good six inches taller than me, and i am not short. she was black. she had long thin legs that were on display as all she was wearing were some brightly-colored booty shorts and a tshirt. beyond that, i had no idea what she looked like. so perhaps my initial reason for watching her was sexual: i guessed (as much as i could tell from such a distance) that she was a very attractive woman.

but as i watched her, she became more interesting to me. she apparently was on the phone. one arm kinked at the elbow to meet her head. it wasn't hard to imagine a cell clasped in that hand. she paced back and forth over and over, occasionally gesticulating with the other hand.

i knew why i was outside in my yard. smoking is prohibited in our domicile, even though both my wife and myself are smokers. we don't want our home smelling like it, and we don't want our kids exposed to second-hand smoke. but why was this woman outside? wouldn't she be more comfortable inside her house having this conversation. i tried to see if she too might be smoking as she talked. i would have no way of knowing if she had a cigarette in her hand, but her movements indicating that she was not smoking.

what kind of conversation was she having? she was pacing quite a bit. was this a heated discussion? was she getting some bad news? was she in an argument with a significant other?

as i watched her from a distance, i began to do what i generally do when i people watch: i make a story. "baby, i aint comin' home tonight." "what you mean you're not coming home tonight?" "i just can't do this anymore." "what you mean you can't do this anymore?"

after a bit, a dog ran up. ah, so this is why she is having this lengthy phone conversation outside. she is probably catching up with a family member. perhaps chatting with her best friend about a man, or work.

but she lets the dog in, and continues pacing.

maybe it is like my original story, only several weeks later. maybe there are little ears inside the house that shouldn't be exposed to what she is saying: "you motherfucker, you can't just go off and leave me for that slut and not expect some repercussions. no, i will not cut you a break on the child support. fuck you, you can discuss it with my lawyer!"

but this conversation would burn out too quickly, and the stance of this woman is not one of anger, or of shouting. i play through other possible scenarios in my head.

after a bit, i am not even focusing on the woman any longer. i am wondering if i am the only person that watches someone of interest and makes up stories about them. it's not sexual for me. i will not replay this in my head during a shower. but it is fun to sit there and watch her and imagine what is going on in her life right now. i wonder if the people-watching spawned the writing, or vice versa? did i begin to write as a method for capturing the tales i created around people i watched, or is watching individuals a natural by-product of wanting to write successfully? do my fellow writers spend as much time just watching incidences and persons out of context of anything and creating elaborate tales in their head about what led to that moment, or what was going on behind the scenes?

as i tap out my pipe and notice that the woman is still talking, and still pacing, i come to the conclusion that while the particulars may be a chicken/egg conversation, the crux of the matter is that being a successful voyeur and being a successful writer/storyteller seem to go hand in hand.

darth sardonic

...and elderlies are like children

2011-01-23T05:00:00.000-08:00

i have often held the view that overexposure to my mom gets to be frustrating.

so when my wife said she was going to fly my mom out for christmas/new years for five weeks, i said, "oooookay." with my eyes wide and a certain lack of confidence.

my wife was going to be gone for a week of that time, early in the visit. now, o thou beloved non-existent readers who have repeatedly returned to watch the decay of this tiny rotting carcass in the woods of the world wide web will know that i never do well when my wife is gone. it isn't as bad as it was the four summer months that she was away to parts east. i learned alot during that time. i give myself a routine, a purpose for each day. but i still spend however long she is gone generally exhausted, and mildly hungover.

the point is, when my wife is gone, i have a routine, and it works for me.

having my mom there completely messed up my routine, and i spent the days while she was gone trying to figure out how to keep my mom entertained.

the five weeks slid rapidly down from there.

in many ways, my mom is like one of the kids. she waits to pounce on something you say so that she can interject with a story she is dying to tell that really has nothing to do with the original conversation in the first place. matter of fact, much like the kids, she is barely listening to what you say, except to find that moment when she can talk about something wants to talk about.

my mom has long eaten her meals and told stories at the same time. everyone does this. but my mom, in a neat and gross twist, rather than saying a sentence and waiting to tell more until she has chewed her food, or at least tucking partially-chewed food into her cheek and hiding her mouth while talking, my mom will chew and talk, and move the food around her mouth. i learned a long time ago to be looking elsewhere when we eat and she is talking. however, that doesn't stop whoever is across from her from occasionally getting pelted with bits of chewed food.

my mom doesn't know how to eat at home. what i mean by that is, if she is hungry, she immediately thinks, "let's go out." i had met my weight goal of 195 (and surpassed it actually) and then frequent meals out gave me ten pounds back.

i like to drink. this comes as no surprise to anyone who has read a couple of these posts. my mom enjoys being on vacation with us, because she will have a kahlua and cream or two every night. but as a couple weeks go by, my mom start making little digs about how much i drink. now, i wait until the kids are in bed. on weeknights i might have a couple. one day, i am getting a nasty cold, and skip the nightcap. since i wasn't making myself one, i forgot to ask mom if she would like one. a few minutes later, i hear, "you're not drinking tonight?" in an expectant kind of way, as if to say, "i want a drink." you can't have it both ways, mom. i either drink or i don't drink.

despite the fact i clean every day, she seems to think i live in squalor. pointing out that i need to clean this, or pick up that, or put those away. usually while i am already busy doing about ten other things. one day while i was making lunch for the kids, for instance, and trying to bus the kitchen at the same time.

but the big one is when she starts involving herself in how we raise the kids. no. 1 had a very bad day at school. he acted out. several times. then he was acting out at home when he should've been writing out the punishment paragraphs that he scribbled all over earlier at school. he's scribbling on them again. he is blaming anyone and everyone else rather than taking the blame for his own actions. i have calmly, collectedly, and with a bit of wit and humor (thanks, dad), tried to rectify the situation, tried to get no. 1 to understand the consequences of his actions, and he simple wasn't having it. what am i left with? well, from experience i know that the only thing that is going to get no. 1 to break through his funk is a solid display of dominance. and yes, when i do it, the wiseacre part of my brain runs a picture of two wild birds, their feathers flared in an attempt to look bigger than they are. and that is almost exactly what it is: i get in no. 1's face, i yell at him loudly, my chest is out, my arms are back. it is almost surgically effective.

but behind me i hear my mom, "honey, i think maybe you need to go upstairs for a moment."

no. no. what i need to do is impress on my oldest that things don't always go his way, and that choosing to act out against others when they don't is the wrong choice. and the only way to do that is to step into the bastard dad role. i am not hitting the boy, or touching him in any way. i am not calling him names. and i have already tried the calm, loving approach, and it failed miserably. i tried it a few times. i am left with the dad whose eyes flash lasers, whose voice booms like thunder, and who is clearly not allowing any leeway for goofing off, acting out, or in any other way defying what he is saying right now. i sure as fuck don't need my mom diving in mid-tirade to call me out like i am still the age my oldest is now.

my display is effective with the boy, and he does his homework calmly. he is relaxed. he turns his day around, finally. and i tersely and succinctly explain to my mother that i was never not in control at any point the entire time.

which didn't stop her from butting in again a few other times.

i love my mom. and despite the scathing nature of this post, i still will. i always will. and i accept her shortcomings, and as a result, try to stay away from her enough so they don't become the kind of issue that they did this last visit.

thanks for letting me vent here, which is sometimes the only place i can get it off my chest without hurting feelings that don't deserve to be hurt.

darth sardonic

a political rant, kids!

2011-01-21T08:14:00.000-08:00

i know i owe you other posts that i have previously alluded to, but i haven't done a nice political rant in quite some time. again, this is a political rant, and i know a few of you non-existent readers don't like those, so give this a miss. or read it and call me horrible names loudly at your computer screens, it's a free country.

here's the deal: i have been thinking alot lately about our country, and our governing body. i have come to the conclusion that absolutely no form of government actually works indefinitely. because governmental bodies are ideals, and, unfortunately, the world is populated with human beings.

what's that mean? well, let's look briefly through history, shall we? (we're gonna anyways, might as well play along.) there are some basic governmental ideas: monarchy (royals are the rich elite, whose problems have nothing to do with the common man who ends up actually making their country run. add to that the fact that they are generally encouraged to keep the bloodline pure, and eventually you have imbeciles who are married to their cousins trying to run a country full of people they cannot relate to in any way shape or form.), fascism (one guy runs the show, and eventually even his close friends get sick of his shit, and someone offs him, and steps into his place, ad inifinitum--and again, the man upon whose backbone the country runs has nothing in common with the guy running the puppet show.), communism (the only two countries left that claim to be communist are cuba (a dictatorship actually) and china (the most capitalist country in the known universe). all other communist countries gave up the ghost quite some time ago.), democracy (which i personally have been watching tank for the last few years.) and socialism (which might be the one governmental style that goes about its business quietly and actually offers everyone a chance at having a decent standard of living.)

we, the people of the united states of america, in order to form a more perfect union, wrote the declaration of independence and the constitution. we had amazing ideas. they were revolutionary for the time. a government by the people, for the people?!!? these guys are batshit crazy.

but look at us now. there is no more by the people for the people in our democracy today than there is in my morning coffee. that's because my vote counts for so little, depending upon the state in which i reside. but, even if my vote counted for alot. even if the us tallied up every vote of every person and counted it as one and the president was picked by a majority of people nationwide, what? still not working exactly as the founding fathers had hoped, and here's why. to run for president costs money (it shouldn't, but again, we are human beings, greedy, selfish, and bastards all around) and the only people getting money to campaign and get their names out there are the people being backed by their parties. and their parties get the money from special interest groups. big tobacco, big business, the oil companies. people with money who want to get away with murder and who will give you money to make sure they can continue doing what they have always done. which is fuck us in the ass, and line their pockets.

once the president gets into office, he/she doesn't do shit anymore. well, unless it serves some need for them and/or their special interest groups. what has obama done? not much. tried to push through a nationwide healthcare bill that was deemed "socialist" by the blind majority and therefore considered "bad." dropped some stimulus money in apparently the wrong places from where i am standing. he will go down in history as the first black president of the united states of america. unlike dubya, who i still feel fucked us soundly in the ass while drawing in coloring books as he sat on the toilet, obama will probably not be voted in for a second term.

and if you squint enough, if you let your vision go blurry enough, what's the difference between the democratic and republican parties? if you see past the rhetoric and he bullshit, and the stuff they say to make us like them, are they any different? no.

but our other option is the american nazi party. i believe they are calling themselves the tea party for short. these guys, oh jaysus. they want to go back to the original constitution. women, you should hate and despise this party as much as the minorities already do. you know why? because the original constitution treated you (along with the blacks and indirectly any other person of ethnicity) as 3/5's of a person. you will lose your vote (well, you probably won't cause they really want and need it to get anywhere, but you can see that the point i am making is there is absolutely no way to go back to the original constitution without traveling back to the late 1700's. as far as the original intent of the constitution goes, well, i think we are doing our damnedest to keep that alive as is. the only thing that might improve the situation is if we took money out of politics completely. not gonna happen.)

the original tea party was a protest against exorbitant taxes and tariffs place on us by great britain, and spawned a revolution. you know what countries that have a revolution against their own existing government end up with? communism or fascism.

sorry, ladies and gents, no answers here, really, just worries and loudly spouted words delineating what should already be obvious.

darth sardonic

2011

2011-01-10T09:55:00.000-08:00

*darth walks in and looks around*

oh, oh my god. it reeks of neglect and decay in here. damn.

*darth walks over to the windows and throws open the blinds. light floods the room*

good lord, look at the dust! oh my. and who pissed in the corner over here??!!?? that's just sick and wrong.

*darth grabs a broom, a pail, and a duster. he puts on an apron (and i think you out there, the non-existent readers who would particularly find that amusing know who you are!) and begins to set about the difficult task of tidying up*

someone left a shoe. and who do all these rum bottles belong to? pigs, the lot of 'em, geez.

*darth lugs several overstuffed bags of trash outside the door. he brings in paint and brushes, lays down a drop cloth, and sets to restoring this blog to its former glory*

well, i think we all know; me, and you, the remaining non-existent readers (i have 11 followers! 11! most of whom i have never talked to, received a comment from, or even know anything about!) that when i say "former glory" i might be overexaggerating some. and i don't think overexaggerating is even a word, as the "over" part is already implied in the very word "exaggerate" so seems like a bit of a ridiculous hyperbole to tack them both together...

where was i? oh, yes. i still write. some. in my head more than anywhere else, of course. apparently 2010 was a bit of a bad year for me, blog-wise at least. i dunno.

but i do know that i need to clean out my pals list yet again. and i need to frequent this little tetanus nail in the playground of the world wide web (and yep, i keep coming up with less-than-savory euphemisms to describe this little blog i have nurtured like a malevolent mutant cat o! these many years now) a bit more frequently.

for now, i am gonna get back to dusting this place, but i am writing (in my head) a couple blog posts; one about my mother, and another about the inherent voyeuristic tendencies in writers, that i will share very soon, along with whatever other vomitus that spills forth from my awkward, demented, and yet well-meaning imagination.

to those 11, and to you the true non-existent readers (and a few of you are both), thanks for sticking with me, and i hope to make 2011 the best year yet!

as if i was running for president or something, geez.

darth sardonic

lucidity has its price

2010-12-27T05:27:00.000-08:00

if one strives to truly be self-aware, then life; and everything in it, is a highly complex thing.

the human mind simply cannot accept and process the sheer magnitude of the gray scale that then presents itself. boundaries must be drawn for the sake of sanity.

not everything can be forgiven; not everything can be despised; not everything can be loved; not everything can be remembered.

there are different versions of the truth; and one is no less true than another.

sometimes i choose to leave the glass empty on the counter.

i can be benevolent and magnanimous and in the very next breath vitriolic and selfish.

why did the gods bless us with the ability to see an array of colors if we are supposed to look at everything in either dark black or stark white?

this is not a missive; this is not a manifesto. this is not an answer; this is not a question.

this simply is.

i'm alive, bert!

2010-12-24T04:56:00.000-08:00

merry christmas to you and yours. and yeah, i know it's a little early.

no major essay on life today, just little tidbits of the day-to-day by way of catching those of you that still stop by up on what has been going on.

i'm still pulling a 4.0 in school, with only two more classes left before i leave the hallowed hollowed halls of learning to find a "real job" and finally, once and for all, become a productive member of society (but i think we all know, o my beloved non-existent readers; my droogs and only friends, that it would take more than a regular 9 to 5 and a paycheck to make me a so-called "productive member of society"!) frankly, i am not real keen on the whole job idea. i am, however, keen on the paycheck idea.

i do continue to write on Pierce County (and by "write" i mean "cut and paste" other stuff i have already written elsewhere to it) and think i might have it ready to send off to the publishers soon. i also have most of The Island of Misfit Toys mapped out in my head, but i haven't actually written anything on it for quite some time. which means the other ideas that i have will probably never hit the page ever. if you want to write a novel, and think you'd be good at it, but need an idea, shoot me an email, i am a sharing kinda fella.

the kids, over all, are doing well. both take high blood pressure derivatives for their adhd now, and that seems to be going well for the most part, but we still have our days. these generally seem directly related to a heightened lack of sleep. we did try no. 1 back on an amphetamine-based one on thanksgiving, and the come-down from it was as bad as any of the others we have tried, so we immediately nixxed that. it was so bad, no. 1 was acting out, and knew he was overreacting and being uncontrollable, but wasn't able to do anything about it. he apologized the next morning. we told him it wasn't his fault, and that we wouldn't have him take that pill anymore.

s the guitarist leaves middle of next month, and i am actually going to drive cross country with him, hang out for a day or two, and fly back. no doubt i will have a longish post about the shenanigans and debauchery we have along the way.

in the past, we have been very scrooge-y and grinch-y when it comes to the holiday season. we have very decidedly not decorated, or put up a tree, and most of the boys' presents have been sent from grammy, or nana n boppa. our attitude was always that the boys received toys and such from us all the time, and didn't really need a glut of extra toys and games on one day of the year.

well, since nos. 1 and 2 are 9 and 7 respectively, i decided that this would be the year that it would begin to sink into their consciousnesses that christmas is a big let-down, so i put my foot down and we got a tree, some lights, and some inexpensive tree balls, and voila, christmas reigns at the sardonic household. and considering the overage of presents the newly-in-the-spirit wife picked up from the store, not one the kids will soon forget.

that's pretty much it for me, o thou stalwarts and trues. hopefully more to come soon.

darth sardonic

lying through my teeth...

2010-12-02T17:22:00.001-08:00

it's not really a lie. but it isn't the whole truth.

life is a rollercoaster, with its ups and downs; its highs and lows. the only sure thing is that the biggest highs are precedent to the massive lows.

not that lows are always bad. in fact, in a rollercoaster, the lows are the part that gives us the greatest exhiliration, ripping the screams from our mouths, tossing us into loopty loops and twists and turns that cause us to laugh out loud. the highs lure us into the complacency that make the lows twice as exciting. or twice as agonizing.

to say that my wife and i are perpetually happy isn't really a lie. but it isn't the whole truth.

sometimes our relationship is one of complacency. the day to day takes hold, the classes, the job, the doctor's appointments for the boys, homework and parent/teacher conferences. this is not unhappiness, it is mundanity. it is life.

to confuse my analogy a bit, i consider these the lows in the rollercoaster of our existence together; my wife and me.

these lows generally coincide with highs in another part of my life. in this case, the band, big dumb animal. in the somewhere near 8 original songs we have mastered and perfected. in the hours spent with s the drummer and s the guitarist in the garage drinking and playing through our setlist and laughing and the euphoria that follows a rollicking rock song performed to perfection when three distinct individuals read each other's signals exactly and the song thrums to its climax in such a way that makes the heart beat faster and the fist pump involuntarily, ending in a steady hum of that final guitar chord that wrapped everything up so magnificently.

even the momentary lows of a pourly-performed song are their own version of highs, punctuated with humorous and harmless ribbing: "i fucked that one up." "yes, yes you did. have another gin and tonic, lush."

and without instruments in our hands, these highs are continued in conversations only found amongst those select few who are truly kindred spirits that fate or god or the universe has inexorably pulled together to be present in each other's lives at this time.

and this is how guitarist s and i found ourselves having a drunken conversation at a cuban sandwich joint in downtown ybor city on a random tuesday night as we waited for it to be time to watch roger waters perform his legendary "wall" concert.

this is how s told me he had been talking to this old friend of his for some time, how he felt connected to her, and she to him, which was really saying something considering what they had both been through individually prior to the moment they began talking again. and he isn't just whistling dixie. i can't speak for her, but personally, i have watched s battle with himself over the loss of his wife to another man, the woman he expected to be with forever. the woman he would pine over (until this sainted friend reentered his life) and with whom he would share custody of his daughter, the apple of his perhaps tainted eye. i know how huge this confession is. i know how hard; how tentative and unsure and yet needing-to-be-there-so-badly it all is for guitarist s. i also know how much i have moved into his inner circle of closest friends as he shyly, watching closely for my reaction, admits they sleep together--

"till our phone batteries die."

in the back of my head, i hear the death knell. not of my dearest friend and kindred spirit, s. but of something that i selfishly think of as all mine, even though it involves two other individuals.

the woman who has made s believe in love again is some 3000 miles away, in arizona.

and i know that big dumb animal is terminal.

what i didn't know is that the doctors would give it such little time.

it's been months since we have met in my garage with drinks and a plan for wowing audiences. life for one or another always gets in the way. we were on the verge of playing our first gig of all originals complete the three of us on our own instruments in front of a real (and not culled from friends and acquaintances) audience.

but chances seem good that s will be in arizona, perhaps for good, the end of this month.

this low in big dumb animal's rollercoaster coincides with the high; the rekindled spark, i think is the popular phrase, between my wife and i.

when s breaks the news, i am all for it. through our many and varied (and often inebriated and uncensored) conversations, i know this is something he must do. and i want him to. and i am always a proponent of love.

i tell him, "dude, this is your fucking happiness. if you don't play this hand out, you will regret it the rest of your life."

it's not really a lie. but it isn't the whole truth.

because i am happy for him, and i really want him to go, and see where this fork of his road takes him. but in the same breath, this fork takes him away from me. and i wrestle between the selfish desire to have this friend who actually gets so many aspects of myself that no one else would, and whom i get in kind be truly happy, and the selfishness of having him here, and available, and in my garage helping me see through the boring patches of my own life with a placebo excitement that can be derived from a small group of like-minded individuals playing music together in a way that most bands only dream of.

i pass a couple days being sad to the point of tears on the inside, and smiling on the outside.

until my wife asks me about something seemingly innocuous. at ten thirty at night. as we lay in the dark bedroom, my fingers against the skin she feels is "too fat" but which my body only registers as electric and smooth and pleasurable and i laughingly say a sentence that is light and airy. that leads to a comment about s' impending move. that leads to a half-hour discussion of how happy i am for him and at the same time so unhappy for myselfish self.

it's not really a lie. but it isn't the whole truth.

and she laughs when i say that i would be lying through my teeth if i didn't say that it just plain sucks ass that he is moving, for me. but she also knows it's the truth when i say that i am happy as can be for s.

and in that simple unplanned spontaneous shared conversation when both of us should've by rights been sleeping, i worked out my issues with the demise of something that was beautiful and as ephemeral as the final big plummet/loopty loop/twisting spiral that precedes the braking, clicking entrance back into the terminal of the rollercoaster, followed by the laughing, adrenaline-fueled conversations of the individual experiences that brought the different riders to that spot at that moment.

thanks for playing along.

darth sardonic

and o thou beloved non-existent readers, thou stalwart though silent few who continue supporting me even as i myself only pass by this rusty nail in the sandlot of the world wide web on occasions when i am seeking answers only i can give, should you seek to see big dumb animal at the height of their career, performing their greatest hits as if there were no tomorrow, ask me how, and i will point you in the right direction.

"how to drop a tv on yourself in three easy steps!" and other useful items for life in the sardonic household

2010-11-03T12:45:00.000-07:00

a lazy sunday afternoon, when from the kids' bedroom my wife and i hear a rapid series of dull thuds followed by a much louder crash.

we are halfway up the stairs like sprinters at the olympics as my lyrical "what the fucking fuck?!!?" finally stops echoing from the walls and a new sound begins: a wail. a wail that forms words. a wail that sounds like, "oooooh nooooo, i am in sooooooo much trouble!" in a rising crescendo that breaks wetly at the end.

i burst into the bedroom and my heart fires off like a dragster at the green light at the sight: no. 1 is buried under his dresser, the tv that was atop it, and the dvd player that was atop that.

he is still wailing about how much trouble he is in, his face screwed up with tears, as adrenaline spikes my brain like a white-hot sixteenpenny nail. i dive in and lift up the dresser that is lying across the instep of his right foot like it is a piece of paper.

my wife is on her knees by his head, and we are both shouting "are you hurt? are you hurt?" over his keening lament for the broken tv and the loss of video game privileges he surely faces.

"move your foot!" my stern voice, amplified by my racing pulse, cuts through the the peripheral noise, and no. 1 complies.

"does it hurt?"

"no, my foot is fine. but i broke the teeeeveeeeeeee..." he winds back into the siren of his original concern.

"fuck the tv!! are you alright?"

this seems to cut through the fog of his mental anguish, and he gulps down a sob, looks me in the eyes, and says, "i think so."

"does your foot hurt?" this is the only body part i had seen with an actual furniture object on top of it when i had arrived on the scene.

"no. my wrist does, a little. the tv fell on it..." he looks again at the tv on its screen beside him on the floor, and looks like he might be getting ready to recommence the high-pitched mourning.

"move it like this!" i command stoutly before he can.

he dutifully rotates his left wrist and hand like he is twirling bolas over his head to bring down an ostrich, and looks at me expectantly.

"does that hurt?"

he shakes his head.

i survey the damage while his mother explains to him that we are, in fact, more concerned with his well-being than that of the tv, dvd, or dresser. he seems a bit incredulous, and i feel a momentary pang that we might've misrepresented our reasons for laying down certain ground rules for existing.

"what happened?" my wife asks.

"i was climbing the dresser..." he says, again expecting a barrage of angry yelling.

"oh, honey. what have we said about climbing furniture?"

"not to, cause we might break something."

for the first time, i feel a brief flash of anger: anger at myself for having led my son to believe we cared more about material possessions than his own well-being, anger at how hard my heart is still pounding, anger at finding myself in this situation in an otherwise uneventful day. as a result of this burst of frustrated ire, what i say is a little more forceful than i intend:

"yeah, you might fucking break yourself!"

he looks abashed, and i soften some. "anyhow, it appears that the only thing that got broken is the wall plate the cable comes through. if anything else is actually broken, we can replace it. we can't replace you so easily, buddy. yeah?"

he nods.

"i'll take him downstairs and put some ice on his wrist." my wife says.

"'kay."

i put the room back in order. other than the aforementioned broken wall plate, which probably saved my son's life by creating negative tension to the downward trajectory of the heavy dresser and television, the only other damage i can see is a bent cable input in the back of the dvd player. i raise the dresser, place the tv back on top, settle the player atop it, and reattach all the wires. everything plays as if nothing had ever happened.

"so, what'd we learn here today?"

"not to climb on furniture."

"why?"

"i could get hurt."

"yes, buddy, you sure could."

my wife and i go outside to smoke, hands still shaking, and count our new gray hairs and the years that have been removed from our respective lives.

the next day, we run no. 1 through his paces again:

"move your foot."

he does.

"hurt?"

he shakes his head.

"move your wrist."

he again does the rotationary action with his hand.

"hurt?"

"no."

"make a fist."

he does, with his ring finger extended.

"lemme see that hand."

he holds out his hand, and i inspect his left ring finger. it is a little swollen, and i notice bruising at the joints.

"is it bad?" my wife asks.

"well, not sure. it doesn't seem too b--holy shit!"

i flip his hand over, and the bruising at the joints on the palm side of his finger is a luminescent shade of deep purple.

"bend that finger, bud?"

he does only slightly, and winces. "hurts, dad."

i sigh.

a phone call, doctor's appointment, xray, and visit with the osteopath later, and his ring finger is splinted and he has a piece of paper displaying his hand, the fleshy parts represented in smudgy gray halftones, the bones stark, the bend in his intermediate phalange glaring to share with his class on the next show-and-tell day.

"good news is, doesn't seem to be slowing him down any." the osteopath, who should switch to decaf, smiles as my son skips rapidly away. "hey, kid! no more climbing on furniture!" he calls after no. 1.

from his mouth to god's ears.

i stink

2010-10-14T10:19:00.000-07:00

my wife has a bionic nose.

no kidding. it's as if she had some tragic accident upon reentry and lost her olfactory nerves, and nasa dropped six million bucks to put in super sensitive bionic ones.

for example: i can smoke a pipe. nothing too obnoxious; some black cavendish, perhaps, or maybe some whiskey cured. i can then enter the house, strip off, toss all my clothes in the wash, take a shower, scrub my hair twice, clean every inch of me, floss, brush my teeth, swish listerine, put on deoderant, don fresh clothes, give myself a spritz of kenneth cole black, and when she gets home will announce after kissing me and wrinkling up her nose: "you stinky like pipe!"

this is also the woman who, upon my announcement that i had been considering taking up the pipe cooed: "ooo, i love the smell of pipe smoke!"

not on me apparently.

when you have a bionic nose, and a pipe-smoking, sweaty husband, and two boys who are fascinated by dirt and bugs and grass, and three cats, the house can be a painful place to exist.

luckily in this day and age, there is an entire supermarket aisle dedicated to removing all residual scents of everything you love from the carpet, the walls, the furniture, and the air. and their target group for sales is my wife. well, and maybe a couple of other wives who have lost their sense of smell to some sort of bizarre accident and then had them replaced with mechanical means. we have oust and febreze and candles and whathaveyou. but perhaps the thing most present in our house are the plug-in style air fresheners.

i see them in the commercials. some sort of oil or pad or other such thing that you shoot a small trickle of electricity through and it emits--"old man cologne!" "that's not old man cologne, it's lavender!" "lavender? that's crap. it smells like some sorta really bad aqua velva." and they keep cranking out new and better ones. "lasts longer!" "smells better!" "now with less aqua velva and more lavender scent!" i keep loose screws and nuts and nails in ziploc bags in a box in the garage. my wife keeps outdated plug-in air fresheners.

she was overjoyed to discover the latest and greatest in air freshening technology: little statuettes that have built-in sensors and sneeze out a spray of essential oils to make the atmosphere pleasant only when it is necessary. they are a bit larger than the plug-in versions, but are not limited to a place where a socket is readily available. they have sort of an art deco look, and can be placed on any shelf, table, or on top of the tv.

they blink one baleful yellow eye at me, and i am immediately distrustful of them. there are three throughout my house: one on a shelf in my bedroom (near my side of the bed), one on the end table at the end of the hall (and near the cat litter box), and one on top of the tv (where the kids, cats, and myself end up spending the bulk of our time.)

i begin to notice a disturbing trend: any time i pass one, it spits its spray venemously as i pass. every time. without fail. but never when my wife passes.

"hey, what kinda sensors you say were in these things?" i ask casually one night.

"motion sensors. they sense when someone is near, and if it has been awhile, they spray the smelly stuff."

"motion sensors?"

"yeah, why?"

"you sure it isn't stink sensors?"

"what?"

"well, every time i pass one, it goes off. these things are giving me a complex. like they can smell me and no matter how good i think i smell, they think i stink, and are doing their damndest to counteract it."

my wife, the bionic-nosed woman, just laughs, and calls me "silly."

but i see them eyeballing me. they know. as soon as i get close, they are going to cough out their combination of lavender and aqua velva, or rose and old spice, or whatever it is. they will even try to spit it directly on me.

and i begin to wonder if perhaps this new technology is created by some subsidiary of nasa after years of extensive research based on nanite scent detectors they placed in the noses of wives who lost their olfactory nerves in horrible space shuttle accidents.

or maybe i need to start wearing old man cologne.

if i've said it once...

2010-10-09T18:48:00.000-07:00

i have said it before, and i will say it again: i am one lucky motherfucker. i remind myself of that daily. that is not to say that i haven't had rough times in my life. times where i wanted to cash in whatever chips i had left and call it quits. times when i wondered where god was hiding that he could no longer see me and the mire of shit i was wading through. but i have always had the good fortune to come out the other side clean and smelling like roses, and beyond a little experience, unscathed.

i see others around me. some who are in something that for me counts as a real trial. my friend melly, same age as me, battling cancer, for example. family members who have battled cancer in the past. people i never got say proper goodbyes to, perhaps, and with whom i may never get the proper closure, until the day i tearfully remind my own loved ones that, regardless of what was going on at the time, i have always been one lucky motherfucker, and then transfer from this existence to the next, where i will meet them again, and say the things i should've always said, except that you think you have forever to convey those feelings that will hit you at midnight on some random thursday a good ten years after you have missed that opportunity.

and i consider myself doubly lucky that i have this awareness of my own luckiness. now, o my beloved non-existent readers, this is not me tooting my own horn. i didn't always feel this way. there was a time when the world was fucking falling apart if the girl i loved didn't love me back. where something as simple and insignificant as that would have me throwing in the towel. i hate to admit it openly, but yes, i have matured. i have realized just how fucking precious this gift we call life is, and just how much of it i have been blessed with.

and again, it may sound like it now, but i am not tooting my own horn. i am not full of myself. if you, the beloved non-existent reader, have been here more than twice you will know this is not my style. i am just a guy, trying to make it happen, trying to be happy, on this little blue marble in the big fucking universe that looms over us every night.

i am trying to remind us that those people who make us aware of just how lucky we are need to be reminded that we have noticed. that we are there for them. that when they wade through that swamp of shit we will be the ones putting out a hand to pull them free, clean and smelling like roses; so that they too may stand on the edge of some cesspool and drag the next lucky motherfucker free with a warm hand and a smile.

none of us are perfect. none of us are happy all the time. i am learning to forgive. i am learning to forget. but happy is the man who is surrounded by the kinds of people who stand ankle-deep in putrid waters (or better yet, come in to the armpits to walk a bit alongside) to cheer us on to whatever finish line awaits us. and i, for one, must say: happy is the man who knows just how fucking lucky he is; just how blessed; just how gifted and happy and cared for he has been his whole life, and how important it is, as one who is a lucky motherfucker, to pass that luck along. how important it is to be willing to wander the swamps lending hands.

i pray, o my beloveds, for i know you are still out there; still wander my way when you find a quiet moment; that you also will pass this along. that you will reach out to those around you who are in need; that you will thank your lucky stars, or god, or whatever power you submit to and in the same breath reach out to the others around that need that.

we are all in this together, and there is nothing more god-like and divine that realizing it, and sharing it.

darth sardonic

teachers...

2010-09-28T10:57:00.000-07:00

a friend of mine on fb linked this video from youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxsOVK4syxU&feature=related and i began to think about the teachers throughout my formative years that inspired to me to do something greater.

sad to say, some of the names have been forgotten. but i remember every act, and how it affected my life.

i had a young kindergarten teacher with long brown hair who taped my mouth shut till recess once. (in retrospect, she had probably warned me over and over and over again to be quiet, and i just wasn't paying attention.) at the time, i was embarrassed, appalled, and angered. but i tried in the future to not yammer on quite so much. this is the same teacher who hugged me for what seemed like hours after my first attempt on the monkey bars which ended with me covered in mulch and crying (or, at least, once i had gotten my breath back.)

my first grade teacher had a sort of page-boy bob haircut in blue eyes, and told my mom that i was showing incredibly advanced talent in art and drawing, and that she should keep pens, pencils, and a never-ending supply of paper handy. my mom still proudly tells this story when she shows the plate that was made from the drawing i did of the pink panther and the inspector. i still draw and paint.

i had a second grade teacher, probably middle-aged with curly hair, who all but checked books out of the library for me. i still love to read. she also let us write and enact elaborate plays (mostly stolen from star wars) to our hearts content and which usually involved the majority of the class, and to which only she, and possibly one or two other teachers on break, would be audience.

my male third grade music teacher pretended not to notice that singing peter, paul, and mary's "leaving on a jet plane" would cause me to cry and cry.

mr. jensen let me draw in class. he even gave me sheets of the expensive carbon paper, and if i drew something suitable and he liked it, he would mimeograph them and hand them out to the whole class to color during quiet times.

mr. weller (who looked a little like chuck norris) indirectly taught me that it is ok for grown men to cry, cause he had trouble getting through the last chapters of where the red fern grows. he would later be my cross country and track coach, and would inspire me with his personal interest in my life outside of sports and the classroom. i have actually tried to find him and contact him, as he once said when i was a junior in high school that if i ever wrote a book, he wanted a signed copy.

mr. steffens would read the short stories i wrote at home or outside of class. he would offer constructive criticism. he still teaches and is the high school librarian at my old high school. he read several chapters of The Unfinished Work when it was still just more of an idea than an actual book. he was perhaps the first teacher who really made me feel like my stories and writing would be interesting to someone besides myself.

mr. mccree most recently helped me to realize that while i write prolifically, and am not a bad writer, i still have much room for improvement. he has also proofread at least two of the chapters from my someday upcoming book, Pierce County.

but the teacher that i will never forget, and to whom i dedicated a whole chapter of The Unfinished Work, and who i liked the least and for the longest was mr. bruce graham. he seemed to hate us students. me in particular. and i never passed any of his math classes with anything higher than a b- (geometry, and all the algebra classes i took with him were straight c's.) but on the day when i aced my college algebra class, and was smiling and dancing around and thinking, "fuck yeah! never have to take another math class ever again in my life!" i immediately wanted to run out, and be able to show it to mr. graham, and tell him, "thank you, sir. and i am really sorry i was such a bastard to you for so many years."

without our teachers we are nothing, and we generally, as a society, treat them like shit. thank a teacher today.

darth sardonic

metaphysical fiction

2010-09-14T17:43:00.000-07:00

i am like the breath through a harmonica: sad, and lonely. my toes still try to dig into the soil, afraid to let go. afraid to change. afraid of what lay beyond the tops of the highest mountains. beyond the increasing hole in the ozone.

afraid, perhaps, of what becomes of all that remains of me when i sever ties with the mud and dirt and the crawling worms to explore the vastness of space without bounds.

but the sun is warm. the sky is blue. my skin is raw. and i need to sail beyond the swirling pain of this existence.

and i let go. at first i only see my yard. the green grass, needing to be mowed. the tree preparing its leaves for a trip just as far in the opposite direction of my own. mossy rocks. crawling beetles.

i spread my arms wide as i pass the top of the fence and begin to see my neighbors and their unmowed lawns, their shrubs, their dying flowers.

i kick hard, like a swimmer evading a shark. these are known to me, familiar; i long to pass beyond this to the unexpected, the unprecedented, the unknown.

the tops of the trees give way to the tops of mountains, and i see the lonely few who travel to these heights to see god and still fall so short. i sidestroke past them on my own rapid trip to the center of my being and the center of the universe.

my being begins to flake as i leave the atmosphere; not due to the extreme cold, for i am no longer capable of feeling it, but as i push past each lightyear into galaxies beyond the scope of our technology, my self is beginning to give away to the forces that have no play on the planet i once called my own.

tendrils of my self wind away like loose threads from an old sweater; warm, fuzzy, and pulling my form into formlessness. these tendrils intertwine with those of my father, and my father's father, and my father's father's father. the familiar stars wind down to holes punched in a frail piece of black cloth as i am now drug by the cosmic fabric into a gap like a patch to fill a void and lose all sense of self in a mesh that becomes a blanket that warms a baby as it sleeps in its crib.

darth sardonic

just more of the same...

2010-09-05T04:45:00.000-07:00

what can i say? life continues along, often with nothing to report. so i don't.

what's happened in the last few? well, i am 39 now, though honestly i don't feel it. except maybe for my knee. and the encroaching gray, especially in my goatee.

my wife and i celebrated our 11th year of marriage, and our 12th together. we are still madly in love, and enjoy each other's company.

i've sold quite a few of my books, but apparently not enough to add up to the requisite 25 bucks or whatever it needs to be for the company to send me a check. i honestly may never get one, but that is much less important to me than the fact that i have a book rubbing shoulders with naked lunch, on the road, tropic of cancer, and running with scissors that has my name in the author's slot. i am still working on another memoirs, as well as my fiction novel. i keep telling myself i am going to mail out stand-alone chapters from The Unfinished Work and the upcoming Pierce County to literary magazines and such to drum up interest, and eventually i will.

big dumb animal practices on a regular basis and our main setlist is getting tight. we probably have 20 to 30 songs in the works easy, but are choosing to focus on about 10 until we can play them without thinking. we have an fb page where we post pics and videos, so if you're interested in checking us out, just search facebook for big dumb animal. or friend me on fb and check it out from there. i am actually amused and surprised at the fb friends i already have who i know as non-existent readers.

we have another cat now. a black and white stray we named binx after the cat in "hocus pocus." some family formerly loved him, as he came to us healthy, neutered, and declawed, and he is more friendly than either pele or pepper, and overall, more well-behaved. you do, however, have to watch your dinner with him. we have been spoiled by pepper and pele in that neither one of them has ever been interested in human food. binx, on the other hand...

add him in with the two other cats and our two beta fish (7 and ponyo) and we are close to being ready for forty days and forty nights of rain.

i am doing well in school, and am down to my last four classes. it's pretty exciting, but at the same time, the job market is a little daunting. hopefully there is a big boom in the need for drafters in the area before may.

and that is pretty much it, o my beloved non-existent readers. overall, not much to tell. hence the major gaps in posting.

i cleaned up my pals list as well, as more people have gone leaving their respective blogs (or perhaps me as a reader) behind.

darth sardonic

Tell me all your thoughts on God?

2010-08-23T03:08:00.000-07:00

...'Cause I am on my way to see her.
So tell me am I very far?

"is it true?"

the intensity with which the boy asks me this question, the burning need to know, to be reassured, causes my throat to tie itself into a knot, making my eyesockets burn.

the evening was any other sunday evening. the kids need baths before they go to bed, in preparation for another week of school. as they climb into the tub, the younger one asks what has happened to all the bath toys.

"we threw them out, buddy. they were old, they were yucky. you didn't play with them anymore."

as my youngest insists that he liked them, the oldest is quiet, turned away. behind me, my wife says, "oh, buddy, what's wrong?"

and my oldest turns, his big brown eyes filled with tears. "you could've at least talked to us about it! you shouldn't've just thrown them away!"

i'm taken aback. i couldn't possibly have expected this reaction. as i get them in the tub and help them with the soap, my oldest goes on to say: "it's not just the toys, i am upset with life! i am mad at life cause we get old and then we die."

and oh, the conversations you never want to have with your children. the things you never want to hear, the things you never want to say.

i say, "oh buddy, yes that is true, everything gets old, everything dies. it's not the dying, it's all the living we do before then. we get all this time together that we should enjoy."

the tears are coursing down his cheeks now, and it is clear this is something that has been eating at him. he has been asking me about the soul recently. about heaven. and because i want him to go with his own ideas of the soul and heaven, to follow his heart, i am loath to offer too many details. "i want us to be together all the time."

"we'll all be together again in heaven, and then we will have all the time we want."

"is it true?"

suddenly, i am not sure i am one to the task of helping my son deal with his angst towards death and his insecurities as to heaven and where he goes. i feel tiny. i feel insignificant. i feel if i do too much talking, i will burst into tears and he will misread my emotions as a disbelief in what i am telling him.

but i know there is a heaven. i know we go there. i know there is a god that loves us and wants the best for us, and i have talked with him many a time. how do i know all this? well, i have just known, without any reason, ever since i was a little--

"what does your heart say? do you know there is a heaven where we will all be together again?"

he nods, still staring into my eyes with an earnestness borne of needing a confirmation that what he already feels to be true really is.

he wants to see grandpa lloyd again. he misses him still, though it has been several years. he isn't ready for grammy or nana and boppa or mom or myself to go yet. he wishes his soul would let him go to heaven for a visit, so he can see grandpa lloyd, so he can see what heaven is like. he is still crying when i put him to bed, and i am too as i reassure him that grandpa lloyd is fine and probably gets to see how we are doing. he confuses the death of my own father with the death of grandpa lloyd and inadvertently reopens a wound i thought had healed completely; a wound that i thought had ceased being a source of pain. i reassure him that we will all be together in heaven when the time comes, and that it is more important right now to enjoy the moments we have together here.

he is asleep almost as soon as his head hits the pillow.

i can't even relay the conversation back to my wife without choking up and lamely spitting out unfinished sentence fragments. in her typical sarcastic pragmatism, she asks me, "what the hell is wrong with you guys?" and causes me to laugh.

but i mull this over in my head the rest of the night. these are similar conversations i have had with myself. i was afraid to talk to anyone about my own fears and confusions towards life and death and heaven and god. and now my oldest is going through a similar phase.

and while i ultimately feel like my efforts to reassure him are lame attempts and sputtered trite answers, he has felt confident enough in our relationship to open up to me, to share his concerns. our relationship is such that he feels comfortable coming to me to discuss the greater things of life and death and the universe.

and for that, i am forever grateful.

darth sardonic

A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together

2010-08-17T03:27:00.000-07:00

i've mulled this post over in my head for a few days. in the past i have been a bit reactionary; running straight here to whine like my world is falling apart because i didn't get some job or some whatever that i was really counting on, and then alluding to the ensuing inebriation.

i applied for an extension to my gi bill (it ended 1 august--ten years since i separated from the air force) under the idea that i had mitigating circumstances (i.e. the need to be home as at least one of my kids due to their special needs and appointments for seven years).

maybe it's because i had sorta already decided i wasn't getting it. i hoped i was, but some part of me knew. turns out, they only do extensions for medical reasons if i am the one with the medical situation, not a family member.

now, here's the part where i turn away from doing my usual whining and puling. i got the rejection letter, sat down, and thought about it. where has most of my gi bill gone? guitars, basses, parts for said guitars n basses, lighting for the bandroom, pipes and accessories, trips to get my tattoo worked on, and alcohol.

i was at least savvy enough to save my last two gi bill checks, and they more than cover tuition and books for this semester and next (also my last). so the really important thing, my education, is covered. furthermore, i was awarded a pell grant (it won't be much at all, but still...)

and then i thought about friends of mine who live at home, and who make the pittance they get from scholarships or the pell grant last them a whole year while they attend school. friends who have been driving the same car since they were teenagers and just limping it through. friends who haven't gone to the theater to watch a movie in years because ten bucks is just too much to drop on something not necessary.

i have said it once, o my beloved non-existent readers, and will say it again and again: i am one lucky motherfucker. my bills, they're covered. i don't have to worry about where my next meal will come from. i have everything i need, most things i want (and an unfairly amount more of the things i want than many of my friends--but my wants list is so fucking huge, o my beloveds!) and i have a support system behind me that has my back come hell or high water.

and i have spent alot of time and energy on things that are fun, that make me happy, but aren't necessary.

so it boiled down to this: no more alcohol whatsoever on the weeknights (and i didn't even do an exorbitant amount on the weekend. our friend e and i were watching "true blood" and i had a scotch, went into the kitchen to make another, waffled, and ultimately walked back out with a big bottle of water), this weekend was my last big binge on ebay. and my wife has been gone for a week (traditionally a time when i would drink more and buy more frivolous shit on ebay, or wherever else!)

this denial is an opportunity for me to exercise self-restraint, something i haven't been very good at all lately.

my tattoo might have to wait some. i don't need to drink all the time. i don't need anymore bass or guitar parts right now (i actually need to sell a bass and a guitar really).

and this is spilling over to other parts of my life as well. i haven't been as interested in porn of late. i am ok with a good book, or a movie, i don't need to be out painting the town red.

now, in all fairness, o my droogs n only friends, these are the cycles i go on. this isn't going to be a new lifestyle. but for now, and under the circumstances, i need to buckle down to saving my money and spending it wisely on the things i really need rather than the things i desire.

is that growing up? i sure hope not.

darth sardonic

a quick follow up...

2010-08-10T07:25:00.000-07:00

i declare rye to be excellent. smoother than bourbon, not quite as smooth as jamesons or a canadian whiskey, but definitely sippable. and less expensive than jamesons, though slightly more expensive than a comparable bourbon. considerably less expensive than a palatable scotch, however. there you have it, o my beloved non-existents.

darth sardonic

a story about whiskey (whisky) fueled by gin...

2010-08-06T19:25:00.000-07:00

o my beloved non-existent readers (which is what?!? three of you?), if you have gotten to know me at all at this sharp bit of broken bottle in the sandy beach of the world wide web, you know that when i accept something as part of my life, i also like to know at least a passing intelligent bit about it. the different aspects, where they originated from, why i like the aspect i do.

it was no different when i began drinking whiskey.

i wanted to know (at least palatially (chances are good there isn't actually a word for what i am trying to say here: palatially (which i think means "palace-like" which is totally not what i am going for!) or "palatically" (which again is dredged from my own simmering brainpan) or, probably easiest: "in relation to the palate") speaking) the differences between irish whiskey and southern american whiskies and whisky (don't be fooled my beloved droogs and only friends, the long-suffering malchiks and ptitsas!--there is a subtle difference between a whiskey and a whisky--maybe m'lady macleod can back me up on this one!) so that i might venture forth with an idea of basic differences.

before i get into the story, let's reflect a moment on why i choose the bukowski/hemingway path to literary greatness in name only: most notably, because i write like shit when i am drinking. and if only you could see the typos i am fixing right now...

when i wanted to branch forth from a simple jack daniels and/or whatever whiskey was cheap and came in a plastic squeeze bottle to something a little more nuanced, i wanted to at least have a basic understanding of said nuances. the easiest way to begin to discover this on my own was to do some simple google-fueled research (and no, google doesn't pay me shit for mentioning them here or anywhere else for that matter; but they should!) and follow that up by picking up a representative "airline" (we used to call these the ninety-nine bottles, because at some point in my formative years, these little bottles cost ninety-nine cents--oh, you've come a long way baby--or some other bullshit. but continuing our story) bottle of whatever tester whiskey i was going to probe that day along with my "tried and true" whiskey bottle.

i was wanting to move from whiskey sours to perhaps a comfortable whiskey soda or even better, a sipping whiskey. so my game plan was buy something to consume with sour mix for the week along with a small shot of something to test. i would bring it all home, and crack the tiny bottle of whiskey.

i would sip it straight with nothing on my stomach and having had nothing before. i figured, if i didn't gag outright from the test, then i could completely drink it on the rocks with club soda, and if i did gag, i could toss it in a glass and bury it under sour mix and finish it off.

the tests went like this: initially, i tried bourbons. little did i know, with the exception of jack daniels (which is a tennessee whiskey and aged for smoothness through charcoal and therefore just that minute bit different than bourbons--but don't worry, i only discovered this tonight!) i had been consuming this sort of whiskey in copious amounts already.

i picked jim beam, partly due to flavor and partly due to it's relatively lesser cost. but again, i had already been pickling my liver with this particular poison for some time.

and of course, jack daniels went without saying.

then i picked up a shot of jamesons and a shot of canadian club to knock those two whiskies out of the park.

and naturally, jamesons was the very manna from heaven. or whatever. nectar of the gods? you get the picture.

canadian club was also smooth and sippable without ice or mixer. (but a funny aside, o my droogs and only friends, little did i know i had been consuming a canadian whiskey for some time in the form of crown royale. yeah. no kidding.)

then i tackled the big ones. i bought a tiny johnny walker red label and a glenfidditch (which i already wanted to like due to the triangular nature of the bottle) and eagerly brought them home. here it is, i think, o my beloveds; i am finally going to crack into what i can only assume is some sort of secret club of whisky (aha, maybe now you catch the subtle and yet significant difference?) drinkers: the scotch. yeah, my first sip of johnny walker made me think someone had filled my sinuses with lighter fluid and struck a match. into the sour mix and down it goes (and i know you puritans are losing your shit over my abuse of said scotches, but let's remember, i was but a babe...) then the glenfidditch that i had been saving till last cause i wanted to dig it so bad...

glenfidditch was the only whisk(e)y i tried that tasted as foul in the sour mix as it did straight.

well, i think, that tears it. i am not a scotch drinker.

fast forward a year (and uncountable shots of jamesons, canadian club, beam, jack, black velvet, maker's mark, and plastic squeeze bottles of cheap whiskies) to the day when the neighbor b buys a bottle of balvenie and says i have to have a glass on ice with a splash of club soda. and i don't die.

and subsequently get offered a tester shot of dewars (on sale at my local liquor store) and boldly tell the sales lady "neat" cause i figure if i can't choke it down that way, why bother? right?

and actually enjoy it!

then a week later when an older fella explains to me that these are blended scotches and don't really count, and that i really should try a single malt.

"like what?" i ask, already dreading the answer.

"like glenfidditch."

well, o beloved non-existent reader, would i be myself if i didn't run out that same day and buy another ninety-nine bottle of 12-year glenfidditch and bring it home? no. no, i would not. and actually thought, hell, i could drink this. i finished the shot bottle. without food. without prior alcohol (an aside; and those of you as drink with any seriousness whatsoever will back me up on this: there are some beverages that you cannot start the night off with. you can have several of your standard drink; of your favorite, and then follow it up with, say, jagermiester shots and be just fine. but if someone hands you a shot of jager as you walk through the door, you know you will be ill and making "the face" and trying not to die within five minutes! for me, jager shots are the "dessert" drink. i already need to be on the road to der unk to even try them.) without making "the face."

then s, my guitarist, brings over a bottle of 15-year glenfidditch one night and the two of us drunk lushes polish it off before heading to bed.

tonight, there is a special on some channel about breweries and how whisk(e)y is made. well, my beloveds, my tried and trues, o thou stalwarts and strongs, who return here week after week (or month after month though i am guessing this particular post will drive all three of you away as surely as garlic makes the vampire pick another neck), i discovered one aspect of whiskey that i have yet to explore, and will most certainly rectify as quickly as it takes for me to hit my local purveyor of imbibed spirits:

rye.

i am the sort of fella who has fallen here from some other time. though i recently updated my facebook status to "if i had actually lived in the '50's, i would've been put in an institution" (and is it ok to have paraphrased oneself? i sure hope so.) because i realize that while the '30's, '40's, '50's, and '60's have some odd kind of interstellar hold on me, i would have been ill-fitted into those eras, i also realize that forgotten items from these glamorous ages draw me in. and rye is, without question, one of these things.

while george washington himself was said to have distilled rye whiskey back in the day, prohibition pretty much demolished whatever corner of the market rye might have ever had. however, it is slowly making a comeback.

and i know that if someone says, "pick an irish whiskey right now" i would quickly reply, "jamesons, in whatever way you want to mainline it to my liver" or, "in five seconds, your favorite single malt scotch!" (hands down that 15-year glenfidditch, o my beloveds), if someone asked me about a rye, while i would've wanted to know; would've wanted to have already been sipping it at my house on my own and in the know: i have not. i don't know.

so tomorrow, when i pick up my triangular bottle of glenfidditch, i am going to do my damnedest to also pick up a bottle of rye (shouldn't be too hard, my favorite cheap bourbon, mr. beam, actually makes one) and begin test driving it. and hopefully liking it.

cause i feel i must've at least given it the ole college try. (which is also a relic from another time, not too dissimilar from myself.)

darth sardonic

the air was a-buzz...

2010-08-02T16:30:00.000-07:00

when my wife and i first arrived in new mexico from alaska, she was six months pregnant, and i was hanging out during the day in preparation for my soon-to-be career in stay-home parenting.

for the first month or so after we closed on our house in tularosa, i was occupied emptying boxes, finding suitable places for everything, and trolling the local used furniture shops for a few necessary bits and pieces to complete the place.

once this mission was accomplished, however, and without a regular job to keep me occupied, boredom set in, and i began to wander to and fro in the area, hitting pawn shops, antique stores, and what can only be referred to as "junk bazaars" hoping to find some super cheap bit of awesomeness, or at the very least, an inexpensive guitar or bass project.

on the way to high rolls, just before 82 began to climb steeply into the mountains, was one of these junk shops. it looked like a quonset hut erected to house two, or maybe three, small biplanes, with an extended porch-style roof protecting the larger items such as rusty rototillers and vintage schwinn bicycles from the burning afternoon sun. small american flags lined the chainlink fence, behind which were parked a litter of dusty malfunctioned vehicles and signs invited you in to peruse the large assortment of goods while others assured you that the owner was packing heat and would shoot you rather than dial 911 if you were caught shoplifting.

items for sale ranged from farm equipment to glasswares, furniture too new to be antique and too old to be worth anything, and old costume jewelry. as i worked through aisle after aisle of a mind boggling assortment, i found myself near the back of the store, where there were a few specialized rooms. upon opening one, i found rack after rack of forgotten vinyls and 8-track tapes by bands that no one would recognize anymore. in another, library-style magazine racks featuring "club" and "oui" and other skin mags dating from the late 70's and early 80's.

the last one in the row had a sliding glass door, like it had originally been a porch and had eventually been walled in.

so i slid the panel to the side with difficulty as time and settling had caused the tracks to run askew, and stepped into the porch room.

the light was dimmer, and it seemed to have affected my brain, as all my senses seemed dulled momentarily, and my skin was already running in goosebumps before i even realized anything was going on.

the next thing i thought was that i had finally completely snapped, and my new found rock bottom of insanity had manifested itself in a buzzsaw sound that was growing like an approaching chainsaw in my head. i actually reached up and ran my fingers over my scalp and through my hair as if i half-expected them to encounter the teeth of a blade eating through my skull.

then my eyes cleared and i realized where the sound was coming from. every available wall space in the 20x12 room was floor-to-ceiling with terrariums housing snakes. not just any snakes; rattlesnakes. and each and every one of the possibly 200 snakes was pissed off, and expressing itself by rattling its rattles to create a sound that i could only associate with an armageddon of angry hornets and power tools.

i turned back around and exited the room rapidly, shaking my head as if i had gotten water in my ears and could not get it out.

and i did not go back.

darth sardonic

wildlife

2010-07-28T15:20:00.000-07:00

(and no, i am not talking about some kinda crazy party i threw!)

in the course of my 39 years on this blue marble, i have been lucky enough to see/be near a plethera, a veritable cornucopia of animals in their natural habitat without fences or cages or a car window between us.

and now for your reading pleasure, the animals i have seen, any notes as to when/how/anecdotes regarding the situation that we found ourselves in, and relative distances between me and them:

elk-my most interesting encounter with a herd of elk was when i was about 16 at a scout winter camp out. winter camping in the cascades consists of building a fire, standing around stamping the snow with your hands in your armpits, having a brief and deadly snowball fight, and then proceeding to curse the cold and snow for the rest of the weekend. my friends and i decided to hike up into the mountains to have something to do, and hopefully generate some body heat. we crested a rise, and not 20 feet in front of us, a massive heard of elk had come down from the peaks to be fed by the park rangers. "amazing" or "incredible" is just too piddly a word.

peacock-not sure where it came from, or why it swung through our yard, but one summer day, a peacock pretty much just magically showed up in our backyard. it hung out for about an hour so that we could take pictures and watch it be narcissistic. then it headed off to other parts. i got within a few feet. apparently in some asian countries, they eat peacock like we eat turkey. good thing my poor white trash family didn't know that...

crow-they say that if a crow is hanging around, someone is going to die. or perhaps a dead relative or friend is trying to send you a message. again, one summer day in our backyard, someone from the great beyond was trying to tell us "i'm hungry, bring bread." it actually ate out of my hand, we were that close. again, lucky for him crow isn't something that had occured to my family as tasty...

llamas-llamas are indigenous to argentina, and while i never saw any just in the wild all willy nilly, they were definitely around. never got close enough to get spit on though. shame, that.

monkey-monkeys are not really indigenous to argentina, but they are in the amazon. and while the monkey i saw in buenos aires appeared to be wild (hanging out in a tree above the road we were walking down and dancing from limb to limb), it is more likely that it was someone's errant pet. for that matter, it is likely the peacock and crow were as well... hmm, so i am kinda breaking my own rules, but no matter. this rather largish creature was probably about 20 feet away. thank god, cause apparently simians can't throw their shit that far...

moose-i have no shit been within ten feet of moose on several occasions. when my ex and i separated and she moved to... wherever the fuck it was she went, i don't give a shit; i would go running for miles in the evenings. my favorite run was up to the ski hill that would have snow on it in the winter, and try to chug up it as far as i could and then back down. quite frequently i would turn a corner and be immediately confronted by bull moose, or a mama and calf. i generally moved to the middle of the road (they were usually grazing in the ditches) and run slowly past with my eyes on them until they were far behind. due to the isolated nature of the situation, i would frequently say out loud: "i mean you no harm, i am just running here, and want only to get past unmolested." if you have ever seen how massive a bull moose is, and if you knew (like i did) that moose are the only animal of that sort that can also kick with their forehooves, you woulda said something along those lines too.

caribou-same as the moose. they were just fucking everywhere in alaska, and you couldn't help but run into them at close quarters. slightly larger than elk but considerably smaller than a moose.

black bear-i was about 50 feet from a mama and her cub. i was there long enough to snap a couple pictures and just sort of watch them from afar as it were. they could completely give a rat's ass about my existence on this planet let alone my nearness to them. and i am quite thankful it was a black bear and not a grizzly.

wolf-i was about a quarter mile away, and only saw him for the briefest of moments, but it was a for real wolf. undeniably.

fox-see "wolf." pretty much the same story, except the fox didn't beat feet as fast. and my recollections seem to lead me to believe i might've been closer to it.

buffalo-this is actually twofold, and i think both cases they were domesticated. one of the farms a mile from my house growing up raised buffalo. i saw them again in alaska, but i think it was the same situation.

an assortment of waterfowl-pelicans, et al. you can't spit without hitting one at the golf course here in florida where i was employed.

alligator-i got within 5 feet of fred to snap his picture while he sunned himself and pretended to not give a shit. one of my coworkers (who i would've gladly sacrificed) was between fred and myself.

bald eagle-i have seen these camping in mt rainier, all over the place in alaska, but i had to come to florida to get within 100 feet of one. got to watch him eat his dinner of brook trout in the middle of the 11th fairway.

dolphins-no i have not swam with dolphins (unless you count the dolphins swimming a half-mile off the shore where i was body surfing; i sorta don't cause under that same idea you could say i have also swam with sharks, deadly jellyfish, and sea turtles), but i went fishing at the banana river, and as i stood on the shore, about ten feet away in the shallows a dolphin was eating our prey. we moved to a different fishing hole, but not until we had gotten our eyeful of this beautiful creature.

loggerhead turtles-i have actually held a baby one in my hand. turtle turkelson. saved his happy little ass. but today as well, i swam out to see what was floating several hundred yards offshore, and got within 50 feet of a few fully grown (and fucking huge!) loggerhead turtles that were trying to woo each other. briefly, one of their flippers looked like a dorsal fin, and i thought i was going to get to add "swimming with sharks" to this list.

corn snake and black racer-i have had to shoo both out of my driveway/garage. corn snakes are very docile. black racers, while not poisonous, will shake their tail like rattlesnakes (about which i have a different story that doesn't fall into this category but which would still be a fun tell, so maybe next post) and are fucking strike crazy. i don't like the idea of getting bit at all, so i chased him away with a broom, which got bit in the bristles numerous times, and had to be put down.

there are probably others, o beloved non-existent readers, that i have either forgotten or deem too mundane to include. if i remember, next post i will talk about the rattlesnakes.

darth sardonic

out of the frying pan and into the fire

2010-07-22T06:12:00.000-07:00

i hate doing yard work in florida.

i have recently taken up pipe smoking.

are the two related? hmm, maybe, maybe not. you get to be the judge. but if you study your psychology to any extent, you could almost say that "b" follows "a" like a connect-the-dots (so i guess that would make it "2" follows "1" but whatever.)

as i said, i hate doing yard work in florida. here's why. but get settled in, o beloved non-existent readers, get comfy. make sure you have your coffee or tea or tom collins or whathaveyou ready. without any further delays, here's why: the "grass" on my little sandbar of florida is a grass/weed hybrid that grows well on the sandy soil. as long as it gets regular water, and an overabundance of shade. anywhere else in the world, the shade would be doable, but since the only trees that grow on this spit of land are palm trees, and there aren't too many of those, the only part of my lawn that flourishes is the part that gets shaded by the three palms that occupy my yard, and the front, which is shaded by the house.

so when i mow, i am actually doing two things besides maintaining my rampant weed grass at an acceptable height (which, i can assure you, the beloveds, is a good two inches taller than your lawn, because if we cut the hybrid too low, it dies): 1) i am further killing the areas that don't grow well to begin with due to overexposure to the sun, and 2) i am kicking up an inordinate amount of sandy dust that sticks to everything on my person, mainly because it is already 95 degrees out at ten in the morning with a humidity percentage of the same, and i am already covered in sweat at the very thought of getting the mower out of the garage.

another disadvantage to doing yard work on a sandbar is the only thing maintaining ground stability is the aforementioned weed grass. anywhere that the "lawn" is not doing well is a shifting pit of sand. so turning a heavy lawnmower in these areas is extremely hard on my hands, shoulders, hips and knees.

now, for those of you, the beloved non-existents, who have been passing by this thistle bur lodged in the foot of the world wide web for several years (which i am pretty sure is absolutely no one anymore) or the ones that read my history to get caught up to date (which is one or two of you probably), you will know that i actually really like yard work. enjoy it. one could even say look forward to it. so, having said that, we know that it is yard work specifically in florida that i hate.

the yard needed some tending to bad though. so i set out. now, because it was already like a sauna at ten, this involved weeding the beds, and then coming inside for a half hour and drinking water. then going back out and edging. then coming back into the ac and drinking water. then limping back out to mow and sucking down clouds of sand whilst sweating gallons and damn near passing out from heat exhaustion as i finished up the last of the back yard. then coming inside, sitting for quite some time without moving much except to pour water down my unwilling throat. i didn't even have the energy to eat, though i probably needed it something fierce.

again, this is called heat exhaustion.

later on in the afternoon when the temperatures calmed somewhat, i was feeling better, and sat out on the front porch with a pipeful of vanilla cavendish. i took my time, savored the smoke, relaxed, beamed upon the hard work i had done and the fruits of my labors. when i was through, i tapped out my bowl in the corner of one of the flower beds nearest my chair.

our friends q n j came over to hang out with us, and we were talking and waiting for my wife to come home from work when the doorbell rings. it is one of the neighbor's teenage sons, and he says, "is your yard supposed to be on fire?"

yes, fire. yes, though technically not the yard so much that one small corner of the flower bed, which currently has a small, 8-inch diameter blaze spiking up redly from the mulch and a defunct sprinkler head that is now a black, foul-smelling wad of goo with a spring launching like a rocket from the center.

"umm, no, no it's not."

i douse the flames, and the mulch for a few inches around the burnt patch, remove the spring and melted head, and laugh with the neighbors about my bad luck.

the neighbor says, "i go out with kindling, starter fluid, dry wood, and a grill lighter and can't get a fire started, you tap out some ash, and poof!"

exactly.

so obviously an ashtray is in order, is it not, o beloved non-existent readers?

what was funnier was that i was pontificating wildly with q n j about the bruiser of a reactionary tizzy that my wife would throw upon noting the burnt patch and discovering its origin. i opined that she would probably set an immediate ban on pipe smoking of any sort, and then proceed to stomp around the house and take several minutes to calm back down to her usual jovial self.

is it bad that i am just a little disappointed that she walked right past the still-smelly black patch without noticing, and then when i outed myself in a case of complete honesty and full disclosure her reaction was simply, "well, i guess you'd better start keeping a coffee can out there, huh? goofball."

ultimately, i am happy that no serious damage was done (though i am thinking i should buy a cap for the sprinkler head just in case anyone ever decides to turn the water back on), and that no one was hurt, and that i learned my lesson and my wife blew it off like water off a duck's back.

and thanks for letting me be the doof here and playing along.

also, my friend melly is doing as well as can be expected on a barrage of chemo, and is being well-taken care of. thank you to all of you who are out there and still read who might've sent positive energy or prayers or whatever communication with deity that you personally believe in on her behalf. or just in general, cause i believe that taking a moment out of your day to think, "man, i hope the people out there that are in need of comfort, love, health, and strength are getting their needs met" counts.

damn, now the back of my throat burns. i am such a bawlbaby.

darth sardonic

for melly...

2010-07-05T16:12:00.000-07:00

i need your help, o my beloveds. this is me reaching out. well, not sure the help is for me. it is, kinda, i guess, but for a good friend too.

i dunno. words may fail. this whole post, like so many others i have left here like forgotten stepchildren, may disintegrate into tears and wailing by the end. but i sure hope not.

recently, i found out a good friend has cancer.

here's one of the many shitty things about this, my long-suffering, patient, commiserating non-existent readers: i found this out through a post on suicidegirls.com and a subsequent post on facebook.

why is that bad? it's not her fault. it's mine. i'm a fucking lousy-assed friend who has allowed himself to get caught up in the fucking stupid little insignificant details of my so-called life while someone i love and care about was dealing with real fucking issues in her own.

now, i understand, this is the nature of our lives. our lives are egocentric. this is as god or the universe intended. but at the same time, i believe that god or allah or thor intended for us to approximate deity, and to do that we need to step out of ourselves and be there for those around us. i haven't brought myself any closer to the shiny center of this big vast universe on this deal, though.

and today, she was recounting her experiences thus far, and the long-term plan (her doctors are confident it is completely treatable, but the treatment is a slow crawl through hell, o my beloved non-existent readers), and talking about how her family and friends and people she doesn't even know have rallied around the forces so to speak to make this experience as easy as it can be, and the rest of us, the listeners, are in tears.

i want to be a better friend, and i am already fixing that. but more importantly; the most important thing to me in this big fucking vast inconceivable universe of massive suns and the ensuing planets right now is that we all put our positive energies together; our prayers, our offerings, our whatever you personally call it or however think of it together for my friend melly and everyone like her who is so much in need and yet isn't playing the victim and is facing this with bravery and humor and strength. please join me in keeping her in mind.

now i gotta go wash my face, so when i tuck my kids in they won't ask me in that hyperintense way that only makes it worse: "daddy, why you cryin?"

darth sardonic

fiction (an excercise mostly...)

2010-06-25T11:56:00.000-07:00

"i'm leaving!"

he rolled over, the scattered sheets crumpling under and around him, and fixed her with a bleary-eyed stare.

"did you hear me? i'm leaving."

"ok." he rolled back over and smashed his face back into the pillow.

he could feel heatwaves of anger and indecision wafting across his back.

"and i'm taking this!" accompanied by the sound of something or other being lifted off the dresser. her dresser.

he didn't even bother rolling back over to see what she was "taking" with her.

an exasperated breath, followed by: "don't you even wanna know what it is?"

he sighed, rolled back over. took a moment to focus on the object she held in her hand. some meaningless knick knack.

"issin tha' yers?"

thunderheads accumulated in her eyes, "i bought this for you on our one year anniversary!"

"oh." he waited. she stood transfixed.

"well," he said, lamely, "you bought it, makes it yours i guess."

she cast her eyes feverishly around the room.

he rolled back over.

she hissed an exasperated noise.

he tried to go back to sleep against the ticking of the clock and the burning holes her eyes tattooed into his back.

after a few more moments of feigning sleep, he rolled back over.

"thought you were leaving?"

for a moment he thought she was going to cry; then the thunderheads broke in her features. "i am!"

"'k."

he rolled back over.

the clocked ticked. the back of his skull lit afire with her stare.

"aren't you going to say anything?"

"ha'n't plann' on i'."

"what?"

he sighed. rolled back over. "hadn't planned on it."

still she stood.

he rolled back over.

tick tock tick tock.

"oh!" he said abruptly, rolling back over, the sheets falling away in his haste.

"what?" she turned from the door where she had been lingering reluctantly.

"take the cat and the plant with you, will ya?"

lemme know what you think. what you think each character wants. if i hit my mark or not.

darth sardonic

epilogue, epitaph, epithet

2010-06-16T18:35:00.001-07:00

ultimately, i am a big fucking asshole.

the car formerly known as the interceptor now resides at a junkyard. n my neighbor was right. (though he was completely sorry, refused to say "i told you so" (despite me saying he could, as i was man enough to take it) and said he says that stuff and then hopes for the best because he knows i love the car.)

but let's be honest, o thou droogs and only friends, the beloved non-existent readers who have truly (apparently) become non-existent, when the shop called, the repair was much more expensive than expected, and would take four times as long as expected, and hey you know what? i like to think i am man enough to admit when i have had it; when my number is up.

going car shopping tomorrow, and no, i will not be looking at lincolns.

and furthermore, a simple little tagline: i'm a dick. well, sometimes. i try not to be, but like every other fucking homo sapien on the planet, i have my moments. i try to own em when i cotton to it. so this is your opportunity to say "fuck you, darth, ya cunt!"

thanks for playing along.

darth sardonic

thoughts from the inner reaches of the dark corners of my so-called mind...

2010-06-16T05:18:00.000-07:00

stephen king once said "everyone is the hero of their own story." (i'm paraphrasing of course.) what he meant that everyone thinks what they do is right and justified.

perhaps it's because i am a bucket of contradictions. maybe it's because i think too deeply about miniscule things. maybe it is because i have finally become aware of myself and all my foibles and yes, even all my strengths, and maybe it's because i never take myself too seriously, but i am a strange position of being keenly aware of all the stupid shit i do on a daily basis. but, being happy with myself for the most part, i find myself not feeling like i need to make any kind of excuses either.

it also puts me in the unique position to be aware of the duplicity of nearly everyone around me. don't worry, i very seldom will call anyone on it. unless i don't like them and they are attacking me or a friend of mine. in which case it will be the first thing i point out.

i posted a quote from mike ness (of social distortion) about punk rock music being dangerous back in the day recently as one of my status posts on facebook. one friend commented in a friendly-ribbing kinda way. another friend climbed onto her soapbox, and proceeded, in her own mind no doubt, to put us all in our place. i told the first friend, who was using my status as an opportunity to tease me (which i love) not to mind her, that she was a pretentious twat. my friend, yes. but still a pretentious twat.

i'm not gonna make excuses for her failings.

i didn't do it to her, i just explained to him to not worry about her. he's able to laugh at himself enough to not have taken her seriously in the first case.

the interceptor is back in the shop. it's been several months, and this is an easy and inexpensive fix, and if i had wanted to leave my car running 24/7 i wouldn't have had to fix it right away. but i worry about emissions and running out of gas, heh heh.

anyhow, my neighbor used this as an opportunity to ask me (rather roughly, i might add) when i was gonna come to my senses and ditch the dream of the interceptor for a reliable car.

this always puts me in a fighting mood, but i reigned it in for the sake of our very strong friendship, and simply said "never." with my trademark laconic smirk.

cause here's the thing that i know, but let him realize for himself: one of his vehicles, a newer suv, is in the shop about once every three to four months for what he ended up terming "routine maintenance." his car payment on this car alone is more every month than the most expensive thing i have had done on the interceptor. and his other car has a payment as well. his other car was in the shop for a week. it coincided with his wife being deployed, so he had two vehicles sitting in his driveway. if my wife was in the area, instead of in alabama with her car, this would have been a minor hiccup in my day.

he went on to say he just hates old cars. i replied that the 03 saturn we owned was in the shop easily as many times as the lincoln, and for longer stretches, and for double and triple what it has cost each time i have taken the lincoln in.

"yeah," he replied, "but you brought that car from the frozen north, and that was hard on it."

"nope, we got that car in seattle."

"oh."

another thing i didn't mention is the only newer cars we could afford to buy would be no more reliable, and spend more time in the shop, and cost considerably more to fix, than the interceptor. and i wouldn't like the car at all, and a little thing i know about myself since i am so keenly self-aware: if i don't like something i am forced to use, i have a tendency to be extra hard on it; to treat it with contempt and displeasure. which means it would be more likely to break down than normal.

like i said, my friend and neighbor came around to realizing on his own that for all his fillibustering and gasbagging, he couldn't really point fingers at me and my situation. and despite knowing all my friends flaws (or perhaps because i work so hard never to bring them to harsh light), i have so many people who will dive in to help me out on the rare occasion when i find my life turned topsy-turvy by a situation such as this.

darth sardonic

more inanity and insanity

2010-05-19T03:11:00.001-07:00

last weekend i was in my sexy neighbor's bedroom while her husband is gone, hot and bathed in sweat.

moving a bed is hard work.

just now, i had a battle of wits with no. 1 and lost. here's why though: the battle consisted of my oldest wanting to take star wars monopoly (my numbered collector's edition version of the game from the 20th anniversary of the original three (by which of course, i mean iv, v, and vi)) to school as this is the last week and they are spending the last few days playing board games.

of course i told him no way. over and over. in one ear and out the other. i went upstairs to the game closet to help him pick out something just as fun, and discovered i did, indeed, have two star wars monopoly games, both numbered, both 20th anniversary blah blah blah, both open.

then momentarily the battle of wits was with myself: relinquish control over some of my stuff that ultimately doesn't matter for shit in the grand scheme of things, and allow my boy to have a chance at some responsibility; or stubbornly stick with the dickhead dad schtick to maintain miserly control over a collector's item i bought with the intent to play and share with my kids and yet haven't opened in many many months?

yeah, so you, the beloved non-existent readers, can see that my loss was more of a victory.

and speaking of victories, i was at no. 2's end of school year party yesterday. no, o beloved non-existents, my tried and trues, i didn't cry. but i wanted to. cause the kid that fit in the palms of my cupped hands when he was born is moving on to first grade. cause he reads. cause he writes. cause he is that kid that everyone knows, and most people like. cause he smiles at everybody and says "hi!" and leaves no one out.

and i thought about it. will i ever not cry at these hurdles? will there ever come a time when each new step he takes doesn't put me right back into an unbelievably small room at the ronald mcdonald house in albuquerque, new mexico where i turned my tearstained face to the ceiling and told god i couldn't take another day of bad news and could we get just one day when the phone didn't ring?

no, o my beloved, patient non-existent readers. i highly doubt it. and god knows i will kick down the pearly gates to view the beautiful moments as it were from afar posthumously, and i will stand in my white robes on the edge of a cloud and i will stain the earth with my tears like warm, cleansing rain, for the rest of his existence until he is back with me, asking if he can sit on my lap.

darth sardonic

mothers day

2010-05-09T09:23:00.000-07:00

happy mother's day one and all. normally i wax lyrical about mothers and my own mother and the mother of my children. but i am tired.

so suffice to say, that while i imagine that all the mothers reading this blog (all five of you) are probably as amazing as hell, i have been blessed with world's (and quite possibly universe's) coolest mom, and further blessed with world's (and without a doubt universe's) coolest wife.

happy mother's day again, and may you all be truly blessed with the love of your spouses, families, and children.

darth sardonic

batshit stark-raving barkers (the latest on the tattoo)

2010-05-08T05:19:00.000-07:00

the angel girl and devil girl's are all done, as well as the bulk of the background. i go to a tattoo convention in salt lake city, utah (yes, that is mormon central. yes, they have a tattoo convention. yes, it will actually be fun (my tattoo artist says it's always one of the best he has ever been to, and follows that up with the phrase: "the greater the oppression, the bigger the rebellion.") in feb to get more work done, and then one or two more appointments after that, and it will finally be done. i think we are about 35 hours in, at this point.

darth sardonic

randomness is the sugar sprinkles on the ice cream sundae of life

2010-05-04T14:39:00.000-07:00

if i let her, my wife will read me the entire list of foods i am allowed to eat on whatever diet she is interested in today.

you cannot split the signals from three gibson g-3 bass pickups to three different phase switches for maximum tonal diversity. it took me a total of four hours bent over a hot soldering iron and a tangle of multicolored wires that would make the most stone-cold bomb technician break out in night sweats to figure it out.

when you are 7 and 8, repetition of one phrase in a high-pitched cartoonish voice is the height of hilarity. it might also land you in the er.

when you are 7 and 8, "daddy, can i have a kuitar lesson?" means: "daddy, can i plug one of your kuitars into the kuitar amp and wail on it like i am the bastard love child of sonic youth and tad."

(in a related story, if you turn to your wife and say, "quick, gimme the name of a guitarist known for atonal and obnoxious noisy solos." she will sputter, stutter, say "jack white." and end lamely by saying, "i don't know guitarists." (i was going to go with pete townsend and kurt cobain, until it occured to me that the obvious subtext to that would be that my kids had smashed my guitar. they treat it very lovingly, as long as you don't mind retuning it when they're done.))

in a not related at all story, if your wife says, "i'm just tired." what she really means is "i'm pissed at you about something and if you are too fucking stupid to figure it out, i sure as hell am not going to waste my time explaining it to you." disappear or look busy for about a half-hour, and whatever it was you had done will have dissipated and been forgotten.

and nothing beats a walk on the beach when it is about 70 with a light breeze blowing in your hair. well, maybe sex. ok, definitely sex.

darth sardonic

just a tidbit...

2010-05-01T15:03:00.000-07:00

honestly, i left that last post up way too long. and if that is your only contact with me, then the thinking would be i have been in a long, downward spiral now for a week or however long it has been there. this is simply not the case.

so, to banish that post to the back burner and move on to other things, i offer this short insight:

i love my wife's face when she is rinsing the conditioner out of her hair in the shower. maybe it is the way she closes her eyes, maybe it is the angle that i look down on her while she does it, maybe it is the steam cloud that surrounds us.

maybe it is the simple peace that makes her face glow; as if in this one split second, there is no care. as if nothing preoccupies her mind except washing every last drop of conditioner out and feeling the long wet hank of her hair trail down her naked back.

brief as it is; as infrequent as the chances to observe this moment have been since having children; as quickly as we shift from that one sunkissed second back to worries and cares and the grit and grime of the day to day creeps back in like vaseline smeared on a camera lens; i always have these moments to hold onto.

darth sardonic

this is not a manifesto...

2010-04-22T21:23:00.000-07:00

i am going to start this post by saying, i am however many whiskey sodas and smirnoff ices down the tubes.

so this is going to be a literary (or written verbal, not sure which is really appropriate) dump site. no one knows whence my thoughts will wander (and yes, i did say "whence" and i would gladly kick your ass if you take issue with that!)

i had a shitty day.

now, o my beloved droogs n only friends, this; this is nothing new. fuck, considering some of the classes i am having lately, and the course loads, it is a regular fucking deal. we know, right?

who'm i kidding? here i sit, alone, really. only a small group of you still stop by this dung heap on the information superhighway: but here's the thing, even the guy cleaning the port-a-pots is happy with his lot, right?

back to my shitty day, or more appropriately, how unshitty it really becomes in comparison to those that do and deal and fucking take it on a daily basis, right?

cause no one, and i do mean no one, can really understand to what depths we all fall, in and of ourselves. but. the big fat "but" that always rears its ugly head: those depths are still our depths. and the big game we play on this blue marble that has been dropped in a coal bin that fires up the train that rollicks across the universe beyond our ken is ultimately viewed within only our very own eyes.

cause that is how it is.

and those of us who are real friends, and who are self-aware, we approximate, and we do our part to make it pass easier. we see you in your moment of weakness, and we pass you the towel, or the change of clothes, or the cool glass of water, and we don't say anything. ever. never again.

cause somehow we know.

i have friends who have seen their friends blown to bits. i have friends whose friends' blood has been spattered across them. have i ever done this: whoah, i seriously take a drunken lucid moment to pause, and no, i have never held someone in my hands while they breathed their last breath.

some have.

some have been through the dank pits of hell, and only hint at it in moments of weakness. not that i am afraid of the dank pits of hell, and hey! if some of you are gonna be there, i prefer them to shiny happy times, honestly. but still. i have never actually what i would call, "been there."

and that is cause, ultimately, without a shadow of a doubt, i am one lucky motherfucker. but i am one rapt listening son of a bitch when someone who has is sharing these moments with me. i am appreciative. and i try to be the first bastard to say, "you know what? there but for the grace of god go i. and ty. thanks. thank you, cause you are stronger than i will ever be."

put your hand in mine, o my droogs and only friends, my long-suffering non-existent readers, those who return day after day or week after week or even month after month (fuck, i will even take the year-after-year's, cause really, have i been any better? no. no, i have not.) put your hand in mine and together we will traverse this monopoly game-board of life like some red-rover wall, impenetrable as long as we all uniformly and unanimously stay one to the cause.

i warned ya at the beginning of the post, didn't i?

darth sardonic

if only, o my beloveds, i could sometimes convey in a more detailed manner the tangle that occurs in my head, but i discovered something, with the help of lady macleod and a few other close friends that only one thing matters, ultimately: i have got your back. n if you could, for me (which i know is not my usual style to some of you newcomers, but i will tell you, hang around this sorry little excuse for a blog long enough and you will see happens more often than not--), find that one person in your lives who really needs that hug, and give it, without judgement, with total abandon. you may make the difference between life or death. and that is one fucking thing i won't joke about.

a real email...

2010-04-17T06:09:00.000-07:00

with only name changes to protect the innocent. or guilty, i guess, depending on how you look at it...

Darth, I love it. I received it today & have been reading it for a couple hours. I especially like "Mother's Day". Thank you for being such a special son. Not only are you blessed, but so are Wife, the boys & I.

Remember your dad loved you in the only way he knew how. He taught you a lot. How not to bring up your boys. So you will make your own mistakes. Stepmom, too, did a lot of negative teaching.

I cry when I'm happy, too. So did you Grandpa.

Much love,

Mom

a quick one before class...

2010-04-14T08:19:00.000-07:00

well, my beloved non-existent readers, we are fast approaching the end of pictorial drafting, which means i will be stupid busy finishing my final project. which means less posting here probably.

i just wrote a review for The Unfinished Work at barnes and noble. initially, this idea felt a bit uncharacteristically full of myself, cocksure, and arrogant. but seeing as no one else added a review, and most of what i am hearing about the book i am getting straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak (my friends might punch me for calling them horses), i felt it might be necessary.

however, i was honest. brutally so, actually. cause i think the book could've (and still can) be alot better. and i said that. but i added that overall i was getting very good feedback, albeit from my own friends and family.

that's pretty much it for now, though my final project for pictorial drafting is pretty fun because i get to design a zero gravity bar in space! me and my partner are having fun with that one.

darth sardonic

when we treat our kids like used cars...

2010-04-08T05:57:00.000-07:00

for literary (i use that word exceedingly tongue in cheek, o my beloved non-existent readers who keep stopping by this little grease-stain on the world wide web) fare in a lighter vein, i recommend my last two posts. this post is, in short, a political rant.

florida is trying to push a bill through the senate right now that recommends teachers be paid on a "commission" based on state aptitude test scores.

my immediate reaction to this news is: teachers are now being lowered to the status of used car dealer. regularly, in this country i call home and love so much and would die to defend, the government drops money into huge multinational conglomerates and defense contracts, and our children, and those individuals who have chosen the often thankless and difficult job of elevating our children, sometimes against their own will and that of their parents, to their full potential get shoved roughly down across a table and, quite frankly, violently raped up the ass.

i would ask anyone that will listen: which is more important? bombs or books? how do we continue as a great nation if our most precious natural resource is being treated like nothing less common than dog shit?

but this is all academic, and i digress.

as a general rule, the majority of parents in this country have decided it's the school's job to raise their children. the ones who should be a child's biggest supporters and first line of defense have abandoned them. now the youth of america's second line of defense will be stripped of their big guns and handed a butter knife and will be allowed to fall under the tank treads of apathy and disinterest, selfishness and avarice.

were this bill currently law, my oldest son's teacher would no doubt be homeless and starved. she is a teacher with many year's experience and a vast well of patience and who i know for a fact actually goes home and stresses about certain children in her class (my own son is one). she does her job not because it is a job or someone told her she should teach, but because she actually cares about the kids, and wants them to succeed, and she agonizes when they fall short. she would starve because she routinely gets the hard cases. the rebellious ones. the ones from dubious familial backgrounds, the ones with adhd, the ones with learning disabilities. and she battles daily to give them every chance and opportunity. but if one student, on the day of the fcats, were to flat out refuse to test (as my son has done in more than one instance with spelling tests or math tests), then that is one less meal she can afford.

when we treat our kids like used cars, that is exactly what we get: children with knocks in their engines, kids whose carburetors don't function as they should, an entire generation of rusty, malfunctioning, bound for the junk yard progeny who are overpriced and have been patched up for resale to consumers who don't really want them.

and when our nation is driving those clunkers, and nothing else, then we will be a nation permanently in the break-down lane.

darth sardonic

I see some old friends riding down the street/on the bikes we used to ghostride on the playground...

2010-04-07T13:06:00.000-07:00

...but I broke my bike last fall
and my parents were appalled
at my lack of respect for personal property

well, i have never pretended my powers of observation were anything but superlame. as i sat at this very computer, posting on my blog, and staring out the sliding glass doors into our back yard and the small field that slopes away and then up again on the other side and wishing i had a hill...

yeah. exactly.

needless to say, the boys and i went out in the gorgeous sun in our back yard and i put my oldest on his bike at the top of the slope, and gave him a gentle shove and watched him steer and peddle for at least a good twenty feet before cranking a hard left and toppling over, giggling the entire time.

we did this for an hour. he was sweaty and grinning from ear to ear. so was i. (grinning from ear to ear, i wasn't nearly as sweaty as he was!)

the only dark smudge on the afternoon is when no. 2 wanted to try the two-wheel bike, and went two feet before jamming the handlebars to one side and then trying to dive off the bike as it fell and landing upon one of the now upjutting bars, knocking the wind out of himself, scaring the shit out of me, and quite clinching the fact with all and sundry that i don't yet need to remove his training wheels.

and we are just in from repeating the scenario again today.

and no. 1 is just a few feet away from having discovered a freedom he has only dreamt of.

darth sardonic

All I wanna do is...

2010-04-06T11:27:00.000-07:00

...Bicycle bicycle bicycle

my mother and father divorced when i was five. my father moved out, and my mother, sister, brother and i continued to occupy the house we were renting.

this meant that he wasn't around to teach me how to ride a bike.

the neighborhood was ideal for bicycling around to parks and each others' houses, and my friends and i often did. but i was the only one of my friends who did not have a bike, due to a lack of sufficient funds. this didn't slow me down, however. i usually rode my shiny red tricycle that had survived my toddler years. at age 7, i was too big to ride it proper, but rather would put one foot on the step that crossed the frame between the two back wheels, lean over to hold the handlebars, and push with the other foot, much like a skateboard or the scooters of today.

naturally, i suffered a fair amount of ribbing for my mode of transportation.

i often passed this along to my mom. eventually, i goaded her into purchasing a used bicycle. (it is even possible someone from her work or church donated it to what they (and i--and no doubt my mother as well) felt was a good cause.) i can't remember if stores even sold bicycles with training wheels in that prehistoric time, the year of our lord 1979, or if this faded yellow, rust-pocked miscreant had ever sported them, but if so, they were long gone.

as my mother spent her spare time either cleaning house or sleeping, i needed someone to teach me to ride the thing. one of the neighbors' sons was a dashing, intelligent, mature, god-like strapping lad of 16 who was kind enough to lend me a hand. the neighbor's side yard sloped gently to a chain link fence that enclosed the back yard, and this seemed the ideal spot.

the teen would give me a shove, i would roll wobblingly down the lawn only to be brought to a jarring halt either by an unexpected impact with the lawn, or the fence. no doubt the first few runs were of the former sort due to my inability to keep the bicycle upright. but i do remember several "successful" runs of about fifteen feet that left me with no greater injury than whiplash.

yesterday, i took the boys outside to enjoy the sunshine, and they clicked helmets onto their heads, and began riding around our cul de sac. as they played, some acquaintances from school rode up, notably training-wheel free, and after making snide and snarky comments about my boys not being able to ride "two-wheel bikes," rode off.

no. 1 insisted he was ready, parroted by no. 2, and although i knew better myself, i grabbed a wrench and shifted the training wheels back so they would offer little resistance. i recommended the grassy yard to no. 2, who demonstrated an inability to do anything beyond moving the bike forward six inches with both feet on the ground pushing. i moved his training wheels back to perpendicular, and sent him on his way.

but no. 1 is 8, older than my own (rather delayed) biking lessons, so i persevere with him. he is convinced he can do it on his own, but after pedaling only a couple times before falling over, it is obvious he is going to need me to do the fatherly thing and run along holding onto him until i feel i can let him go. after several minutes of him either leaning on me heavily or only riding a few feet before falling over onto one foot, i am worn out, and think it best to continue the bicycling lessons on another day.

what i would give for a hill ending in a fence.

darth sardonic

60 and cloudy

2010-03-31T19:12:00.000-07:00

the spaces between seats are narrow, and it is impossible to navigate them without bumping someone with my carry-on.

a lady next to me is sacked out in her seat. she has herself twisted to the side, her legs tangled under her, her face pressed against one armrest. i can't help but wonder if she will end up with a nasty red, hard-edged strip across one cheek when she awakes.

i do a double take as it appears an old grandmotherly lady a few rows over is openly reading a porn magazine. i am about to applaud her audacity, but upon closer inspection i realize it is just a full-page ad depicting two scantily-clad blondes sitting very close together.

ever since i hurt my thumb and subsequently launched upon this pictorial drafting debaucle, my writing is atrocious and i can only do it for a bit before my hand begins to ache.

the sky is a beautiful shade of robin-egg blue with the sun shining luxuriently. i'm going to trade them for the perpetual gray and drizzle i love so much.

the two ladies across from me are discussing a bad experience with another family member at a family reunion from which they are on their way home. one has a mannish, mr. spock haircut and glasses, and the other's sunglasses are tucked into a feathered 80's style 'do.

the one with gray spock hair grabs her water bottle, causing one of her bags to fall over, bumping the ankle of the sleeping woman, whom i wish, upon waking, would turn towards me so i can check her cheekbone.

another lady joins spock and tina turner hair, obviously related. there is a brief exchange, and the first two leave to get something to eat. as soon as they are gone, the third gets on her cell phone and proceeds to bad-mouth the first two at length to someone on the other end.

i decide they are this flight's terrorists, with plans to hijack delta dl 2758 to minneanapolis, and crash it into one of our national monuments, mt. rushmore. joke's on them, as nobody will even miss it.

i overhear someone behind me say, "i'm dying on the inside." i fight the urge to offer to match up the rest of him.

off to get some water and a snack.

other notes of interest: while i always miss the pacific northwest, i do not miss her traffic.

my back feels like someone used a cheesegrater on it. pics soon.

to the old fucker in the truck who nearly hit me/ran me off the road when changing lanes without signalling/looking; and the metric fuckton of commuters who slammed on their breaks in unison to rubberneck world's smallest and least interesting fenderbender: if i find you motherfuckers, i am beating you soundly till my arms drop off.

that is all.

darth sardonic

a lame ass attempt at an update

2010-03-29T16:13:00.000-07:00

yeah yeah, don't even start.

i actually had a medium-sized post i had thought about doing, but after telling the details of the events to others who weren't there, and not receiving the laughter and such that i expected, i think it might be possible that said events fall into the categories: "funnier in my head" and "guess you had to be there" so i may or may not tell that story at a later date.

it's the first day of spring break. yay. bust out the six-pack surfer boys n the nubile bikini chicks (o and believe me, my droogs and only friends, my beloved ptitsas and malchicks, my non-existent readers, they are out, in full force. and yours truly isn't complaining about the bikini chick part either. pretty sure mrs. sardonic doesn't mind the increased presence of male eye candy for her daily commute as well. but i digress--)

tomorrow, in the afternoon, i fly back to the evergreen state (pierce county motherfuckers!!) to do another largish patch on the back tattoo. we rapidly approach the end of this megalithic testament to my artist's ability to create beauty in a patient person's skin.

i may post live from my mom's computer room, orting, washington. or i may give you, the beloved non-existents, a run-down of the week's shenanigans and debauchery upon returning to the land of surf n turf. i'm not sure.

however, until then.

darth sardonic

sometimes the smallest things...

2010-03-24T11:23:00.000-07:00

it really is the little things, o beloved non-existent readers.

it's the "fuck this, i've had it!" escapism drive down i-95 at speeds in excess of 70 mph in the interceptor with rainer maria emoting "you just can't turn me on and off" and the sun shining through the window and the ac blowing ice cold.

it's the pleat in a pair of my dressy pants and the looks i draw as i walk to my class (hey, i'm happily married, i aint dead! everyone still wants to feel sexy, right?) to knock the kiosk presentation i have been unduly stressed about out of the fucking park like a grand slam homerun that wins the pennant.

it's the final project for autocad 3d that won't be easy but won't really be hard either and for which i have already picked my subject.

it's the friend of mine from my pictorial drafting class that says, "you wanna do the final project as a team?" which i do. and while the teams have to do more work total than the individuals, if you divide it evenly between two people, it ends up being less than you would have to do if you did the project alone. we will be designing a bar/club for the international space station, since he wanted to do a bar, and i wanted to continue with my space theme.

these tiny things become the real life equivalents of a sit down on a hard stool and a bag of ice for my bruised face, and i know that i will be ready to step back into the ring at the bell and take a few more hits.

and what is funny is i used a line from rainer maria's song "catastrophe" for my post about being on the ropes, when in reality i should've used something from this song by them:

southpaw, by rainer maria

Cracked knuckles, and my fists
are bandaged up for the fight.
Am I ready?
There's the bell.
How many rounds can I go?
And how can soften the blows?
Can I avoid them altogether?

But my heart isn't in this.
I'm supposed to be a seasoned fighter.
It feels like my first hit.
(and it hurts like...)
I didn't see this coming anyway.
(yeah, it hurts like hell)

So don't tell the crowd...

Black eyes, black threads, and bandages for the fight.
Who are the odds on,
me or him?
How many tricks do I know?
And how can I soften the blows?
Or can I avoid them altogether?

But my heart isn't in this.
I'm supposed to be a seasoned fighter.
It feel like my first hit.
(and it hurts like...)
I didn't see this coming anyway.
(yeah, it hurts like hell)

So don't tell the crowd,
but I'm gonna let my guard down.
You're the only one now.

My heart isn't in this.
I'm supposed to be a seasoned fighter.
(I'll let you take me)
It feel like my first hit,
and it hurts like hell.
(I'll let you take me)
Black eyes, black threads, and bandages.
(I'll let you take me)
It feels like my first hit,
and it hurts like hell.
(I'll let you take me)
My heart isn't in this.
I'm supposed to be a seasoned fighter.

thanks for playing along.

darth sardonic

Catastrophe keeps us together.

2010-03-22T14:27:00.000-07:00

i am on the ropes.

a few years back i posted about how i never quit fighting though i am low, and bleeding, and hanging onto a turnbuckle for dear life.

and i am reminding myself of having said that. over and over. because, o dear beloved non-existent readers, who so lovingly commiserate with me time after time after motherfucking time and still keep cheering from the cheap seats; shouting: "get back up! keep going! you can do it!" i am reminding myself that i have said this because i am on the ropes, and i really want to toss up my hands, toss in the towel, wave the white flag and sink onto the bloodstained canvas for a very long nap.

i want to piss it all away into a mud of self-loathing and self-pity and wallow like a fat pig.

needless to say, it's been a rough couple of weeks.

i kinda don't want to dwell on the why too much. suffice to say, in the past week i have: taken my car to the shop for the third time in a month, thought i was done with my kiosk project in pictorial drafting only to find out today that the teacher failed to let us know clearly that there was still more to do, ordered a new cell phone after i washed my old one with the jeans the cats used as a litter box one morning, and showed no. 1 pictures of homeless people so that he might start getting prepared for the career his current attitude is setting him up for.

that's the cliff notes.

i am exhausted. i've lost count of the rounds i have gone, let alone the jabs and uppercuts that have landed soundly. i am reeling, punch drunk and dreaming of being normal drunk instead. i can't remember the last thing the coach said as he slathered me with vaseline and spread medication on my swelling eyes and nose.

i don't quit fighting.

i also remember a time when a very tiny darth sat in a very tiny room at a very tiny ronald mcdonald house and begged a very large god to take a very tiny break on a very tiny family and its very tiny newest member in particular.

i was punch drunk then, too. i was seeing double. i was stumbling around trying to avoid any more blows, cause i knew another one would lay me out.

i was begging for the bell like i'm begging for the bell now.

i won't stop fighting. i won't. but a nice sit on a hard stool, a swig of cold water, a bloody spit in a bucket, shouted advice from a grouchy old cuss with a stogie jutting from his gob; these might be in order.

i'm hanging in there, o my droogs and only friends, but i'm tellin ya, one more solid punch and i am going backwards through the air, my hair whipping sweat, like brad pitt's character in snatch to lay flat out on the boards, watching from a watery metaphor below as my opponent kicks me repeatedly in the ribs.

hey, god? can we ring the bell, just for a bit, please?

darth sardonic

...with fingers crossed for everything you do

2010-03-10T16:45:00.000-08:00

i had been bugging dr d for weeks. ever since i noticed the twin "vw" (as in volkswagen) buttons he had on his corkboard in his office.

"you've got two, n my corkboard in x-ray is barren."

incessantly, almost on a daily basis. man, dr d was a laid-back guy who managed to put up with a lot of shit from me.

time passed. i bugged him occasionally about the buttons, but it never really was a big deal.

eventually, i forgot about it.

then i was having one of those days. the days when it's the little things that kill. when the morning starts off with something stupid and annoying, and then moronic coworkers exacerbate the situation, and then you get a short lunch because someone else was lazy, and an unusual amount of extra patients come in and you are the one expected to get them all situated. the kind of day where i joke about ropes or razor blades. the kind of day where my eyes sag.

by three in the afternoon, i feel the unshed tears of aggravation and frustration fighting their burning way to the surface, and i go to hide out in the x-ray exposure room. this room was perfect for this purpose, as it had a regular door instead of the revolving door most x-ray rooms have. so i can shut the door, lock it, turn off the light, and anyone that might need me would have to knock so as not to unexpectedly expose x-ray film to light and render any films i might've taken useless and subsequently face my justified wrath. and after the knock, i can say "gimme five minutes" and make sure i have washed the tears away and look normal when i come back out.

i shut the door slowly. flick the lightswitch down. sit in the beat up discarded computer chair that serves as my office chair (this little five by eight room being the closest i have ever come to my own office in my entire air force career, and i get to share it with two developing machines, a counter where i keep extra films and cleaning supplies, and a sink).

i cry. i let all the frustration out in little streams down my cheeks. i hang my head and see teardops falling, glinting red in the subdued exposure room lights.

i do what needs to be done, and decide i better clean up before someone realizes i have been in here with the door shut for awhile.

as i rinse my face in the sink, i look up. on the bottom of my corkboard, oddly-colored in the red lights, a single "vw" pin is tacked into place.

i cry more, but not from frustration this time.

the other day, when i hit the cat, as i was still feeling wracked with grief and guilt, i got a text from j, my buddy from autocad classes:

what kind of coffee u want? at panera

it seems that invariably when i feel lowest, some show of support and love appears unexpected.

truly, i am one of the luckiest motherfuckers ever to tread.

darth sardonic

i mean, really!

2010-03-08T07:46:00.000-08:00

ok, if you have been reading at this tiny bit of broken glass on the beaches of the world wide web for any length of time, you know i am completely down with nudity (my own, and that of others).

it's also possible, o my droogs and only friends, my long-suffering non-existent readers, that you might've also cottoned to the fact that i am a firm believer that there is a time a place for everything.

so here's the rub: i will not be finding any new pals to add to the list today as a result of one particular blogger somewhere in germany.

i clicked on "naked lunch" in my favorite books and commenced traversing the blogsphere like a much taller and only slightly less rounder bilbo baggins. blog number four featured a not-so-slim fella who apparently held the camera just below his (rather small, shriveled, ugly, and uncircumcised) genitalia and snapped a pic upwards towards his face, so that the very first thing greeting my upon looking was his semi-erect cock.

now, again, penises don't bother me. nudity does not bother me. but when i am fucking searching for blogs to read, i really don't want to be bombarded by your dick! i'd rather not find myself positioned somewhere slightly below your scrotum like you and i are on the most intimate of terms. these sorts of things need a certain amount of warning, of prep, or at the very least, the proper mindset to start off with: "ok, it's no big deal, i am gonna be seeing a naked middle-aged man. so don't freak out." at the very least, right?

but here i am, munching on a sandwich, thinking (the truth comes out as to how i search for pals, lol): "boring, boring, full of himself, boring, way too high-maintenance, bor--holy fucking two-week old fuckstain!! what the fuck?!!? who would do that?!? fucking warn a guy, jesus christ!"

so if i have no one new to add, you, the beleaguered non-existents, might understand why.

thanks for playing along.

darth sardonic

Had a nice grip on my life 'til you twisted my arm

2010-03-06T04:37:00.000-08:00

ah, how life twists and turns and weaves and bobs. the "pals list" is cleaned up. for the most part, i removed people who don't post anymore. in a few others, i removed people i just don't read anymore, and i suspect don't read me. it was a little painful removing krissie. i've no idea what happened to her. i actually had her on my fb as a friend as well, and she is no longer there either. gringa, if you might shed some light...? i kept a few around for a bit longer to see what the authors do next. soon hopefully i will venture back out into the blogsphere and see if i might find some new "pals" to be interested in. but lately i have been too busy and stressed and here's why:

warning: long whiney ranting blog to ensue. proceed at your own risk.

when i signed up for pictorial drafting, i knew it was going to be a hand-drafting class.

what i did not know is that the class would be 50% interior design students, the majority of which have never drafted in any way shape or form, and 50% drafting and design students, most of which have only drafted on the computer. furthermore, i did not know the teacher would be disorganized and ramble for literally an hour about things that will not be useful ever, not even in the drafting job market. i did not know that she would not bother to teach us any hand-drafting techniques whatsoever, but rather; would give us our very first project to accomplish as a group in hopes that we would just pick up the necessary methods for properly hand-drafting.

i did not know that the teacher would give us our first project on the very first day of class, and that we would start project number two the same day we turned in that project, and project number three would start the same day number two is due, and so on through to the end of class. i did not know, that when i say, "this aspect of this project doesn't make any sense, and should be changed" the professor would hide behind "i didn't come up with the projects, i just teach the class" and leave us to flounder with some requirements that seem almost contradictory. are you not the teacher? is it not your class? can't you step up to the plate, make a command decision, display some guts, and say, "fuck this lame-ass project, we're not even gonna do it"?

i did not know i would spend literally every weekend, and most weeknights, since starting the class, at the kitchen table with vellum taped to a piece of foamcore, carefully and painfully mapping out floor plans or elevation drawings by hand with a t-square.

here's why it is so much more frustrating than your average, run-of-the-mill drafting class with way too much homework and a disorganized teacher:

first, the class is an elective. i didn't have to take this class. i could've taken vector graphics, or pro-e. i chose pictorial drafting because i needed to have a full time course load to get the full amount of g.i. bill each month, and this one worked with my schedule. if i could travel back in time, i would tell the then me "no way, dude, you don't wanna do this."

secondly, the teacher is a career interior designer. and the other teachers of this class are as well. which means that not only will i have to draft stuff by hand, but i will be required to design things. and not just design these objects (most recent, a kiosk like you find selling cheap jewelry and shitty cell phones at the mall), but wax lyrical about what kind of carpet or paint i might use and why the color of the plastic chairs will bring out the gold that is in the... whatever. i am not an interior design student. i will be an autocad operator. i will draft the things that are given to me. i will not decide what cloth the furniture should be upholstered in. and yet, i need to do that for one of my projects.

third, and perhaps most important: hand-drafting has moved from the ranks of necessary job description to art form. the analogy i keep using is this: let's just say you are having a great party. all your friends show up, everyone is having a wonderful time, all the guests are laughing and playing and enjoying themselves. you want to capture this moment to remember always.

now, you wouldn't call rembrandt or dali or van gogh and have them come over to paint you a portrait of the good time your friends are having at your party. that's ridiculous, it's ineffective, it's time-consuming. you would grab your camera and take a (or several) picture(s) and download them to your computer.

with the advent of computers, and computer drafting software, hand drafting has been rendered obsolete. despite how the professor goes on and on about how she thinks it will impress our future employers to see carefully hand-drafted plans; and how she thinks it is just easier and faster to hand-draft an idea rather than doing it on the computer, hand-drafting is a waste of time. in something like a half-hour, i had successfully drafted out (in 3-d, no less) my kiosk idea on autocad, so that i would have an idea to work from when i am hand-drafting the different elevations of my kiosk. it takes nearly a half-hour to get my vellum taped down properly and all the tools i need to do the task out and ready to go. forget all about actually laying a pencil line down.

this particular kiosk project pisses me off to no end. here's why, o my beloved non-existent readers: initially, the teacher said she wanted us to "design" a kiosk. in my sardonic, flip kind of way, i decided i was going to make a space-kiosk to sell tang to the astronauts of the international space station (i actually kept saying the mir space station until one of my friends said, "i think they blew that up." "no way!" "yeah, don't you remember taco bell put a big target out in the ocean, and if the mir hit the target everyone would get free tacos?" "what?!?" and yes, as it turns out, he's right on both counts), and eventually moon base alpha and then colonies on mars. i was very excited about the idea, because i wanted to use the millenium falcon and elroy(from the jestons)'s little space scooter as my main design inspirations. it was a project i was actually excited to get behind.

then the teacher told us that we had to pick from a list of (rather uninspired and mundane) objects to sell.

well, smoothies were on there, so switch it to tang smoothies. problem solved. but then my kiosk has to fit into a 7'X5'X7' cube. bleh. then it has to have 42 linear feet of display. (i ask her, "if i have a smoothie shop, what exactly am i displaying?" "well, maybe you have to display the fruit or something.") it also, above and beyond the display, has to have 70 cubic feet of storage. (again, i ask why i would need that much storage in a smoothie shop. i am told that that is what i will have to figure out. i reply, well you can't slap a one-size-fits-all requirement on kiosks selling merchandise as varied as smoothies, ties, surf boards, and hermit crabs. she says again, "well, that is what you will have to figure out." i say nothing, but think, "i have already figured it out. i have figured out that all this display and storage space would be completely unnecessary in my kiosk, but that a human operator would sure appreciate the room to move around.") i actually contemplate just finding a kiosk at the mall that is selling something on the list (ipods or jewelry), measuring it, taking a few quick sketches, and cranking out someone else's idea and turning it in as my own, so strict is the rubric. and the teacher actually says that this isn't a bad idea(!!!)

comme ce, comme ca, o my droogs and only friends: my kiosk is actually going to be in a hallway of the international space station. the makers of tang have designed a revolutionary advance in the field of robotics called the "smoothiebot 5000" that will hover over the 84 (count 'em, 84!) cubic feet of storage and create your smoothie within the confines of its titanium belly. fresh fruit as well as canisters advertising the different flavors of tang that can be used in the smoothies will equal about 48 linear feet of display, and there is absolutely no way the teacher can complain about my kiosk as it meets all her requirements as delineated in the syllabus, and i get to do a project i can actually be somewhat enthused about.

just seven more weeks of this stupid shit.

darth sardonic

big dumb animal, "i must be doing something wrong"

2010-02-25T12:46:00.000-08:00

as promised, a video clip of big dumb animal (my band) performing a song i wrote many years ago (but made a million times better by s-the guitarist's additions) entitled, "i must be doing something wrong" (and yes, i am singing. no, i am not even in the least bit sorry.)

just a heads up

2010-02-23T12:54:00.001-08:00

while i remain buried under perpetual homework from the inner circle of t-square hell (read: pictorial drafting) i just wanted to let anyone who still reads that if you order "my" book from amazon.com you will in fact receive the book pictured (three jumpers i think, by micheal marr or morr or something) but i can guarantee that if you buy it through barnes & noble online, you will in fact receive my book. i received my copy yesterday, and am already half-way through reading it, and really, honestly, i would rework at least 50% of it. probably more. some of the chapters make little to no sense outside of the confines of this blog, and many of the others are choppy and not in any kind of chronological order (or any other logical order for that matter). i'm still jazzed as hell to have a copy of my book in my hot little hands, but am a little disappointed with myself for not reworking it a little better. i guess everyone has to start somewhere.

darth sardonic

nothing special just...

2010-02-14T12:55:00.000-08:00

is it bad that i would love to write a glowing review of my book recommending it to all and sundry as the greatest story ever? so unlike me too, geez.

happy valentine's day everyone. we are simply being lazy here.

i am going to be going through my pals list soon and weeding out quite a bit. after which i will probably go on a search for new funny or interesting blogs to add to my pals list. or not. who knows?

darth sardonic

about fucking time!

2010-02-09T12:42:00.000-08:00

my book is officially available to all and sundry: google "unfinished work ron faires" (there it is i have outed myself in my blog after some 6 years or something! also, as i mentioned in a past post, my name is not ron, but it is correct on the cover of the book itself.) there are several online bookdealers that carry it, though the isbn's seem to differ so not sure why, but it is indeed the book with the plain gray cover and the blue border that simply says "The Unfinished Work" and "Dave Faires" on it.

i will eventually get a link that will take you straight to it, but i have also noticed the prices range from a slightly-higher-than-normal 17 bucks on up to 30-odd, and need to wrestle with myself to not put the more expensive link in here and therefore sell out and line my pockets with filthy lucre.

a very special thank-you to you, the beloved non-existent readers (in the book the reader is just referred to as the "beloved reader" but you non-existents that have been here through thick and thin know who you are) who have listened, laughed, cried, and commented through out. and an extremely big hug/kiss/thanks/whatever thing to dj kirkby for getting me on the path to an actual publisher.

i shall remain, as always and ever,

darth sardonic

synopsis...

2010-02-08T08:12:00.000-08:00

i have amazing friends. my family rocks. i want to punch my pictorial drafting teacher in the face. my book, The Unfinished Work, might finally actually just possibly be available to anyone and everyone regardless of color, race, religion, creed, or country of origin of said person's credit card as long as they have access to the internet and a means to make online payments. i'll know for sure in 3-13 more days. naturally, i will let you, the beloved non-existents know when i know, and most likely post a link or some such thing. i am still working on my fiction novel, but think i have enough blog posts and sundry miscellaneous stories to do another memoirs cum insanity cum essays from the inner dank reaches of my mind follow-up to The Unfinished Work that i am thinking will be entitled Pierce County. my guitarist, s, should be home in less than a month and then big dumb animal (as we have dubbed ourselves) will immediately begin preparing ourselves to actually play bars and clubs and such and take our show on the road. i might post an old video of us playing a song i wrote here eventually.

i guess that more or less sums it up for now, o my droogs and only friends.

darth sardonic

it couldn't really be helped, but that doesn't make it suck any less...

2010-02-04T12:12:00.000-08:00

this is not fiction, though i wish to god it was, o my beloved non-existent readers...

i wasn't speeding. i wasn't talking on the cell, or texting. i wasn't even distracted by any number of things that might distract a driver as he travels at 35 down a road.

which means i saw the black and white streak with plenty of time to brake hard.

but not quite enough time to prevent myself from hitting it with the opposite-side back tire.

"oh, fuck. fuck fuck fuck." i exclaim as i pull the car off ten feet further, throw my door wide, and leap out, heedless of traffic.

"oh, goddamn it. no no no! calm calm, stop." i yell at the cat as it tries vainly to run away from its own pain, the parts of its body that have become enemies and are attacking it. a disconnected and analytical part of me admires it for its fighting spirit. the rest of me goes sick to the stomach to see it spinning on its side, droplets of blood spattering across the blacktop, the grass, two trash cans that it ended up between; frantically thrashing its legs in rythmic running cycles that would carry it far away were it not for the damage to its skull.

"oh, shit. shit fuck shit. no no, calm now, calm." i place a hand on its side and it relaxes some, gasping breaths.

i should've known that even as my hand rested on its side, the cat's spirit was wending its way to warm angel arms and happy mousehunting amongst cotton-tufts of clouds, but some panicky chunk of me was playing manic optimist like nero sawing his fiddle as rome turned into an inferno around him:

"fuck fuck, who do i call. where is the nearest vet? shit, why didn't anyone stop?"

i waffle between the cat, who is renewing its efforts to escape on foot, and a nearby house.

i should've known that all the cat wanted was a warm, loving, calming touch as it expired on the side of the road. i should've known that no owner would want to see their pet in this state. i should've known the dice had already been thrown and had come up snake eyes for me and this ill-fated feline and done what i could to ease its passing. i should've known. i should've fucking known.

i went to knock on the door. no one answers. i run back to the cat, who is still but breathing, albeit increasingly shallower; staring blankly with one sunken eye and one bulging. the red blood pooling in one ear makes me dash to another house. no answer.

dammit dammit dammit. i check on the cat again, and this time i know it is no longer fighting, not even in spirit.

i want to puke, or cry; as if the ache and agony i feel is a tangible object and doing one or the other could excorcise all the bad feelings like so much bile and salt.

i still feel as if the owners of the cat should know what has become of their loved one. there is no collar. i knock another door, and an old gentleman with a refined kentucky accent and a waxed mustache answers the door. i ask him if he owns a black and white cat, or knows who might. he replies that he believes it might belong to one of the houses i have already knocked. he goes on to say he has seen it dashing across the highway many times, as if knowing this self-destructive behavior on the cat's part will ease my own anguish at having hit it.

"i can tell you're very upset about it, young man. but if you have to choose between having an automobile accident or hitting a cat, well, i think you have to go with hitting the cat."

the analytical part of me knows that this is his attempt to make me feel better about it without really knowing me or how i think or feel. the analytical part of me quietly says, "thank you for that." while the rest of me fights to not feel indignant at his words.

i thank him, and go back to the cat. there is only one final act of futility to accomplish in this, a series of futile acts: i lift the lid to one of the trash cans that will be picked up in another hour or so, lift the limp body while repeating "sorry sorry sorry sorry" like all my higher brain functions have been shut down, and gently place the cat inside.

thanks for playing along.

darth sardonic

just an interesting thought (or a bit of a rant disguised as an interesting thought perhaps...?)

2010-01-24T06:31:00.001-08:00

i am sure it comes as no surprise to the non-existent readers who still stop by this droplet of piss in the ocean of the world wide web (and i know you're out there) that i think sex is a beautiful thing.

yes, i understand that certain aspects of sex are ugly and disturbing and/or morally wrong, but for the most part, i think sex in all its different styles and proclivities is an amazing, beautiful, and yes, even exciting, thing.

except in the presence of children, i generally feel my own nakedness is not something to be ashamed of or hide. i don't feel that anyone else's nakedness is improper or inappropriate. i feel if it shocks you, bothers you, disgusts you, or offends you, you have the right to not look, leave, or even, in some cases, ask the offender to leave.

i guess in one form or another i have felt this way my entire life.

now, to the rub, o my droogs and only friends:

yesterday i was watching a movie with a group of friends. it was an effects blockbuster full of explosions, blood, gore, foul language, nudity, and sex acts. oddly enough, no drug use that i could recall, though it is implied that several of the characters are whacked out of their noggins. but i digress.

the thing that i find strange about all this is that a small group of young teen girls was also present as we watched the movie. every time a pair of boobs flashed across the screen, or characters were depicted in acts that might be considered sexual, their father would say, "eyes!" and they would dutifully cover their eyes and look away and wait for him to tell them it was safe to look again. and i am not judging the father at all for that. that's his right as a father, and in many cases the sex was what might be considered "deviant" and "wanton" and not necessarily the kind of input you would want a young teenage girl receiving.

but here's the deal: when soldiers were depicted getting blown up by rockets and their bloody parts scattered to the four winds; nothing. when one of the characters' head was exploded from her body in a scattering of gristle; nothing. when another person gets mowed down by a vehicle; nothing.

it is traditional in this, the united states of america, to be blase about violence. to be inured to it's sting. it's ok for a 13-year-old girl to watch characters on a screen not only battle each other and die, but to do so in violent and extreme ways. we almost cheer it on. and maybe that's fine.

but suddenly it's not ok for a girl of thirteen, who is already beginning to sprout her own set, to see a pair of breasts bared on the screen? to see two ladies kissing without their tops on? to see someone moon others out of the window of a car?

again, the sex and nudity portrayed in this movie had a bent to it that i also agree is not appropriate for a young teen girl. but then, i would deem the whole movie inappropriate for a young teen girl, hence the rating of "r". but i have watched many movies with this group of people and it is always the same: the violence is acceptable, almost lauded. but nudity and sex, regardless of how loving and open and innocent and reaffirming it might be, is not.

and i personally believe, o my beloved non-existent readers, that therein lies the quintessential problem with the u.s. violence is good, acceptable, the appropriate measure; love, lust, and sexual excitement never is.

i sure hope that one day we can tip that scale the other direction.

thanks for playing along.

darth sardonic

random thoughts like wounded butterflies...

2010-01-16T05:33:00.000-08:00

i have been sick the last few days.

anytime i go through a big climate change or the weather plummets and then rises again, i get sinusy stuff that then drains down the back of my throat, coating it in sandpaper and lit petroleum and making me exhausted every few hours.

the other night as i was making sure no. 2 bathed properly (you have to be on him or he will just pat soap suds onto his hair, face, armpits and crotch) and no. 1 was waiting (naked already, for some inexplicable reason) to bathe next, i look over my shoulder and no. 1 is going potty behind me.

only he's not. he's is examining himself as if he has just discovered this dangly thing between his legs and can't for the life of him remember how it got there.

"what're you doing?"

his answer should be set to beautiful print on colored cardstock and framed, to be given to new parents at the birth of their first son for hanging on wall of their bathroom:

"sometimes i am curious about what it looks like."

as if it hasn't been with him, available, so to speak, for the last eight and a half years.

"well, don't pee in your face."

a few days later, the same boy is in the bathroom, with the door open. i thought the kids had, yet again left the light in the downstairs bathroom and went to shut it off. he didn't see me, but i saw him.

he was seated, with my wife's victoria's secret catalogue open across his lap. he turns a page and says to himself, "oh, i guess mom wouldn't want anything in here."

mainly, i am guessing, because all the ladies are lithe, tall, nordic-looking mannequins with oversized eyes and long flowing hair, and mom is a short, sexy spitfire with stout body n legs and boobs that push the larger edge of vs' rather limited size range. i dunno.

we have a new addition to our clan. over the christmas holiday, we brought home ponyo, my oldest's class fish, to care for.

and nearly killed it.

well, actually, it was sick before it ever entered our care, but we thought we were going to deprive no. 1's class of their mascot through our complete well-meaning ignorance of betta fish.

so we bought medicine, and a replacement.

good news is, ponyo survived. this means, however, that we now have our own lovely turquoise and blue betta.

we passed on the names mercury (mine) and nemo (no. 2's) and chose the name "7" (my wife's) because he is the seventh member of our family. i am number 1, wife is number 2, no. 1 is actually number 3 (confused?), no. 2 is number 4, pepper the demon cat is number 5, pele the helmet cat number 6, and 7 is, well, 7.

7 is fiesty. he'll be lazing at the bottom of his tank, but if you get near he perks up and swims around, dashing back and forth almost like a dog waiting for you to throw the stick. needless to say, we like him.

i am back in school, and enjoy my two autocad drawing classes, but am rapidly becoming not a fan of my pictorial drafting class. the teacher is disorganized, and half the class has absolutely no drafting experience whatsoever, but rather than spend a couple weeks catching us up on the basics of hand drafting, she is instead dumping our first project on us (a cardboard chair we are to build in groups of five) that is due in another week. like all the other classes with which i felt overwhelmed, my goal is to do my best, pass it with a c or better, and move on to something else.

little else is happening on the sardonic home front of late, o my beloved non-existent readers. i hope to be better about posting this semester, since my writing creativity won't be getting used up to write essays.

but as the song says, "if you don't expect too much from me you might not be let down."

darth sardonic

With a face like this I won't break any hearts...

2010-01-09T11:28:00.000-08:00

...and thinking like that I won't make any friends

lazy saturday around the sardonic household, and the wii rock band hobby kit we spent our christmas money on is beckoning to the kids like a balloon of china white to a junkie, but we are forcing them to wait a bit.

so they are watching "fairly odd parents" which is rivaled only by "spongebob squarepants" for sheer idiocy and the ability to cause my brain cells to begin committing suicide.

my kids find it hilarious; i always wonder how many and what kinds of illicit materials the creators have consumed to come up with the infantile tripe that then finds its way onto the screen and into the collective memories of my offspring. long and at great length have i raved against its stupidity, childishness, and distance from anything even remotely resembling a poor facsimile of what might be described as "real life." to no avail, of course. don't we know it, o beloved non-existent readers.

next to me, i hear my wife; my loving partner; my other, better half laugh. yes, laugh. at some juvenile ridiculousness being beamed by particles from satellites into our front room.

i put on the stern face, brows knitted together and tugged down to the bridge of my nose like a sweater with one pulled thread, and level at my wife what can only be described as a glower.

she transitions quickly from giggling cutie to the innocent face and says, "what?" with a who, me? look painted all over her face like a fresh coat of white to hide the blood spatter.

my frown deepens and i say, "we are sposed to be a team. a united front. joined in one purpose when it comes to raising the kids. and you are laughing at 'fairly odd parents'!!"

the innocent look changes not into the contrite look as i had hoped but instead back to the giggling cutie face, and she says, "but it is just so silly."

clearly, o beloved non-existents, o thou stalwart and true, my droogs and only friends, i am in way over my head.

darth sardonic

passenger (fiction inspired by the deftones' song)

2010-01-06T12:17:00.000-08:00

warning: the following story is erotic fiction. it describes and/or hints at sex acts. moreso, it is easily the kinkiest thing i have written. sometimes i don't write the story, the story writes me. read at your own risk. you've been warned.

he stood beside her car in the enormous parking garage underneath her apartment building. she was slightly bent, taking her time inserting the key into the door, a wicked smirk playing across her blood-red lips.

everything about her was dark. her hair, the black sunglasses she wore in defiance of the half light in the concrete structure. she was encased in a black blouse and tight skirt; the hem riding high on her luxuriously long legs, her calves pushed up into tight knots by the heels of the shiny black stilletos.

the car was like the last cock he had sucked, sleek and black. built for speed. the flourescents cut angular lines of blinding white across the highly-polished enamel. he noted with a quick gunpowder flash of agony that the windows weren't as tinted as he had hoped. at each stoplight, passersby might be able to see inside.

much like they might be able to see him right now, should they choose this moment to leave the garage. he was clad only in her favorite ball-gag and a pair of cuffs. the cool underground air brushed his skin like dead lovers, and he agonized again over how long she was taking to unlock the car.

she knew this, and for this reason had chosen the key instead of simply pressing the button on her fob. now, one fanglike tooth sneaking out to bite her swollen bottom lip, she pushed the key into the hole and pulled it back out over and over again, watching him as he tried to shrink into himself. the more he tried to be invisible, the more his organ asserted its presence.

finally, he was in the passenger seat, the leather cool and smooth on his naked thighs. she produced another set of shiny silver cuffs and attached his wrists to the pull handle of the door, then leaned across him to buckle him in, her breasts dangling close to his face and filling his nose with sandalwood. the buckle clicked and sent an icy shiver through him as he had a momentary flash of the humiliation he would face should they be involved in an accident. his erection pushed upwards, bobbing at the thought of all those people catching him in this state.

she noticed, and laughed; a dead, brittle sound that bounced back at them from the pillars in distorted echoes.

a cold sweat broke out on his brow and shoulders as she slowed down to a crawl as she passed the guard hut. he looked straight ahead into the night, but was sure he heard one of the guards chuckle as she waved pleasantly.

his balls were aching.

the twilight and traffic afforded a certain anonymity, but without removing the obviousness of his situation. she powered her window down to smoke, and cracked his sufficiently that his face and the vinyl of the gag straps would be visible to anyone who pulled alongside and turned their head.

the thought pained him in his stomach and genitals. he feared to make eye contact, but yearned to view the other vehicles' occupants: businessmen negotiating mergers on their cell-phones, truck drivers, families eating fast food from paper bags. all the normal people passing by with their normal lives, almost too busy to notice the toy riding shotgun in the black mercedes.

she reached up languidly to adjust the rearview mirror, and he gasped past his own drool upon seeing that she had turned it sideways to watch his face as they drove downtown, where the friday night traffic and stoplights every two blocks would assure they would never drive faster than thirty miles an hour.

his pupils were dilating. his breath was burning in his chest. the head of his cock was smearing a mercurial stain across the smooth skin of his belly. his testicles were pulling tight to his torso.

he feared he might come simply from the thought of his own situation, and tried to drag his mind away from himself for a moment. she had promised him she would put her own panties on him and tie him to the hood and proceed to drive slowly through the seedier parts of town should he ever get any semen on her interior.

the thrum of the motor teased its way throughout his body. the gleam of empty lenses over the devil's smile greeted him in the rearview. the dull ache in his hands and gonads caused tiny prickles of sweat to bead all over his body.

he groaned, bubbles forming at the corner of his mouth.

"shut up!" she hissed in a twisting cloud of cigarette smoke, "or i will pull over and offer rides to people on the corner like a taxi."

he took a deep breath, trying to calm the barrage of thoughts and anguishes and needs that riddled his mind and body like a sickness.

a stoplight painted him as red as her nails, and he glanced to see what show might play in the car adjacent, only to find that the vehicle was full of frat boys who were slapping each other on the shoulders and pointing at him, laughing at the show they had discovered next to themselves.

he felt faint. his cheeks puffed in and out. sweat stung his eyes. he broke contact with occupants of the car and looked down at his lap. tears pooled with his spit on his lips, and formed droplets that joined the shining river that ran down his chest to join his precum. his glans was swollen beyond anything he had imagined. the skin of his shaft was tight and glistened in the sparkling streetlights. his sphincter and the skin of his scrotum contracted until his lower back ached.

"if you get any come on my leather, i'll fucking stop the car and shove my fist up your ass over the trunklid for all to see. you understand me?"

he nodded, his vision swimming. she smiled her venomous smile into the mirror, and reached over to brush a fingertip across one of his erect nipples.

like a dying butterfly, he felt pinned somewhere between the dazzling lights of the clubs and the soft leather of the seat. he hung there, babbling to god, like his entire body had become one vibrating sex organ, coated in the lubricants of his own spit and sweat, hard and ready to spill forth his seed. his eyes rolled back to white and he gibbered, no longer needing the thought of the other travelers or how they might point and laugh. no longer aware of the steady forward progress of the black cock piloted by the sexy demon that laughed at his torture, a smaller part of a larger whole all fucking the cunt of the city; pushing to be the tiny car that penetrates the egg; a conglomerate of men and women laughing, talking, pointing, crying, fucking, shoving, angling, fighting, screaming, dying.

"hey, you pussy, wake up and get out of my car before you bust your load all over!"

he felt coated in gelatin, too thick to comply. only vaguely aware of outward stimuli.

she slowly placed her lips around one of his tiny areola, the vampire teeth engulfing his hard nipple, and bit down.

the hard rubber ball stifled his scream and he fell out of the open door onto his knees, immediately spewing gouts of brilliant white sperm across the dirty black of the tarmac.

panting, he leaned forward, feeling like he might be sick. her hand was cool on his back. "you feeling better now?"

he nodded. she opened the trunk. slowly, he became aware of his surroundings. she had pulled down a narrow alley, with only one outside light. again, he was exposed without really being exposed.

the cuffs clicked open.

"here, towel off. god, you sweat a lot. here's your clothes. drinks and dancing at the mercury?"

he pulled the ball out of his lips. "yes, that would be amazing."

"fucking drinks and dancing though. you get us into another goddamn orgy and i'll fucking pack up and leave your ass there to get fucked by anyone that so chooses, got it?"

he smiled for the first time of the evening.

"got it."

wish i had an excuse...

2010-01-02T05:39:00.000-08:00

lately i have been rubbish about updating this thing. my posts are shitty at best. weeks go by and i don't even have a small conciliatory paragraph to offer.

and i don't have a reason really. i have thoughts. funny things happen. it's not a proper writer's block, it is a simple case of unmotivation in the writing department.

and it doesn't matter as much as i might initially think. why? well, i would guess that the majority of my non-existent readers, my faithful few, my droogs and only friends, have wandered off to more verdant plains wherein they might find the kind of regular stimuli they crave. and in complete fairness, i have been a complete dick about keeping up regular with the blogs in my pals list. i do still read. just not regularly, and i don't comment as much as i should.

those of you that still toddle by this piece of sun-baked used chewing gum on the sidewalk of the world wide web, worry not. i have ebbs and flows when it comes to all my hobbies and habits, and i will again be prolific, if nothing else, about writing here.

i am still battling with the publishers for availability of my book. it has been a rather fun rollercoaster. if you have a credit card issued in the uk, you can purchase my book, The Unfinished Work (though it is in the list as simply Unfinished Work, so you have to scroll all the way down to the u's in the list). however, i myself, as well as the majority of my friends and family, are in the states, and are still unable to purchase the book. not only that (they are working on it, they tell me, and i believe them, but with a grain of salt), but recently the book disappeared completely from the list. when i pissed and moaned about that, they restored the book to the list, but now the author's name says "ron sardonic" instead of "darth sardonic." not that there is anything wrong with the name ron i spose, just not what i would've picked as a nom de plume. (and of course it goes without saying that when listed properly my name will neither be "darth" nor "sardonic." i often contemplate just outing myself in this blog, as anyone that buys the book will know my whole name, but then it is so much fun being "darth sardonic" that i am loath to lose the moniker. i will keep it up with the publishers, and keep you posted as new details emerge. (i am letting them have the new year to start bugging them about the "ron" bit, as i have been a near-perpetual thorn in their side since they made the magnum crappus available.)

the kids have been home from school for the holidays, which means lots of wii, and few breaks for myself. my oldest and my wife both have the same personality when it comes to playing video games, and they argue constantly and try to steal mushrooms from each other whilst playing games. it's fun to watch for the first say, 30 seconds? then promptly wears one thin.

while attempting to burn down our house wasn't on our to-do list for new year's day, we managed to squeeze it in anyhow. we were helping in a cove-wide dinner for last night, and had put the potatoes that b's daughter had prepared in our oven to bake. now, the daughter, being a bit lazy and not really knowing a whole lot of useful cooking tips had poured olive oil straight into the foil with the potatoes, which meant that we had quite a surplus of oil at the bottom of the oven.

comme ce, comme ca, o beloved non-existent readers the end result was that the tin foil we had put in the bottom of the oven to make clean up lazy (err, easy. freudian slip.) got soaked in oil and ignited.

in the time it took me to ask where the gas shut off valve might be, my wife had the extinguisher (that, quite frankly, i had no idea we had) out and had shot a quick burst of spray that immediately quelled the conflagration.

which, of course, launched a gray-green cloud of noxious fumes into the kitchen. "get your goddamn shoes on and run over to mr. b's house!" the wife and i yell simultaneously to the kids.

now, a tangent. if i had a dollar for every time the wife or myself have told no. 2 to do something and without missing a beat he asked "why?" followed by a lecture from myself about how in the time it takes a rascally kid to ask "why?" the truck is already mowing him down, or the rock already crushing his skull, or the fire already removing the top layers of his skin; i would be able to produce my own porn movies.

now back to our regularly scheduled program.

"get your goddamn shoes on and run over to mr. b's house!"

"why?"

the billowing cloud of evil is already spreading from the galley kitchen into the living room and dining room and adding sandpaper to the backs of my wife and i's throats as she turns the overhead fan on and opens windows and i drag our two standing fans to the back door to draw the foul gases straight outdoors.

so naturally, our next sentences were rife with inappropriate language:

"get your fucking shoes on and get out of the motherfucking house before you start choking like a goddamn beached fish, NOW!"

we were not far behind them, and strangely, despite all the chemicals raging around them, not only are the potatoes properly baked, but taste amazing.

an hour or so later, stuffed with jamaican jerk ribs, baked beans, and the wonderful baked taters, the wife and i wander back to our house and discover that her quick thinking and my johnny-on-the-spot with the fans have assured that absolutely no damage was done to anything; not the house, not the kitchen, not even the inside of the oven. oh, well, i mean the tinfoil suffered greatly.

but some dusting, some vacuuming, and a little oven cleaner, and we are currently baking no. 2's birthday cake.

and i am pretty sure he won't ask "why?" when we tell him to have a piece.

darth sardonic

i posted this and then realized i didn't even bother with a "happy holidays and a prosperous new year!" it's official, i really am a cunt lately.

facebook friends

2009-11-28T06:43:00.000-08:00

i was chatting with a high-school buddy yesterday on facebook. again, how cool is this shit that i can reconnect with people i essentially blew off without a look back some twenty years ago and chat as if i wasn't a massive dickhead back then and just disappeared off the face of the earth.

very cool.

anyways, i added his blog to my "pals" list, and he posted a very eloquent bit about our conversation which i really dug.

i, for one, am not feeling particularly eloquent today, so i am foregoing the beautiful prose here.

what else has been going on in my life since last i posted something of worth on this little fly-speck on the world wide web?

well, let's see. this semester of school draws to a close, and i will be happy when it's done. it's not much fun to have four essays, two of which are term projects, and one of which is a final all due at the same time.

unless something major falls to hell between now and then, i will still be pulling a 4.0 at semester's close.

when this semester is done, i only have one more general education class and the rest are the technical/drawing classes, which i am quite stoked about.

about a month or so ago, as i was waiting for my turn to go in the parking lot of the college, i watched a lumbering low-brow mouth-breather of a kid get into his massive suv beside me, put his vehicle in reverse, and without so much as a backwards glance cave my passenger side door in in slow motion.

this is the second time in my life that some brainpan, someone who has lived their entire existence like an idiot mr magoo; surviving only by sheer dumb luck and the herculean efforts of others, has put their vehicle in reverse and backed into me without bothering to at least check a rearview mirror while i sat helplessly with my mouth agape in disbelief. i think i would be within my right to have clubbed both these morons (the lady who did it in alaska got out her car and actually said, "this is the second time this has happened to me!" (?!!!!?)) like baby seals, and the world might've been a better place for it.

but back to the story at hand: so my passenger side door is now more dent than door. and i am not exaggerating. the outside panel of the door actually met the inside panel of the door. the only thing that kept this kid from pushing my door even further in was at this point my car resisted the attack of his car, and he finally realized he was backing into something (yes, the synapses and reflexes of a well-trained ninja, this one.)

of course it is totalled. now, it still runs beautifully and everything, and with a replacement door on there, it would be fine again. but here's the rub, o my beloved non-existent readers, my droogs and only friends, my old interceptor has a seriously terminal case of cancerous rust, and ugly flaking paint to boot. so replacing the door would be like doing an elective nose job on a patient that has only a few months to live.

so i scrapped it and set about buying a new interceptor to replace the old one. so now i have a newer ('95, last one was a '93) silver (i know, i will paint it black with red trim someday) rust-free interceptor (you may know them as lincoln mark viii's, but i assure you, if mad max was driving the post-apocalyptic wasteland in the 90's here in the states, this is the car he would choose) with black interior that is nicer than the other's, and a moonroof as well. i am quite pleased.

the kids continue to do well and improve in school.

and not much else has really happened i guess. i am officially a published author, but i myself am completely unable to buy the book, as well as the majority of my friends and family as it is still impossible to buy the book from anywhere outside the uk. they insist they will have that remedied soon, so i will keep you posted.

darth sardonic

Safty tips

2009-11-23T15:08:00.000-08:00

Safty tip 1 Never StanD on a Swivil Chahr.

(i wonder laconically if this is from no. 1's personal experience getting into the halloween candy as i see the above sentence on a piece of homework. the rest of the "paper" is more standard fair: don't sit "wonG" on a chair, don't touch "ElatCraty" or you will most likely be shocked. then he finishes up with "StN4 NeVer Be a thieff." seems like good advice to me. the drawing of his thief has abnormally large ears and no mask, not sure what that means exactly.)

darth sardonic

the unfinished work

2009-11-13T04:13:00.000-08:00

my first novel writing endeavor is finally available. The Unfinished Work can be purchased for nine pounds sterling at http://www.newgenerationpublishing.info/home/buy-new-generation-publishing-books.html you have to scroll quite a ways down the page, and it doesn't have any glitz or glam to make it stand out, but it is there o my beloved non-existent readers, my faithful tireless droogs and only friends. finally.

i am going to see if i can post the link in my sidebar as well and on facebook too and anywhere else that i can think of, but there you have it.

i'm honestly a still in shock a little lol.

darth sardonic

finally, a funny (well, i hope so anyways, guess i will find out from your comments) post about my kids...

2009-11-11T05:11:00.001-08:00

"what are you doing?!?"

my oldest stands in the middle of the living room, watching wile e. coyote and roadrunner in their eternal struggle (a quintessential piece of both my wife's and my childhood onto which we have recently turned our children and to which they have taken a great liking, much to our enjoyment) with his recently-shorn head shining in the light leaking through the blinds (there was an "accident" between a pair of scissors and his bangs at school, the result of which was daddy with a set of clippers on the lowest setting on the front porch with the wind blowing away the tufts of liberated locks and daddy using a passel of his favorite words with his voice set to "stern") and fully a half of his arm crammed down the back of his pants.

"what are you doing?!?"

"my butt itches."

i hear my wife choke off a laugh behind me and turn to mean-mug her for one second whilst also trying to maintain my military bearing.

"does it itch on the outside? or between the cheeks?" she asks, as i marvel at the things we find ourselves saying as parents without a trace of irony that we would never have in our wildest dreams guessed we would ever say before having progeny.

he stands, round face blank and brown eyes wide, his shoulder nearly dislocated and (i can only figure in some sick and twisted inner room of my ridiculous imagination) his hand working overtime, and replies: "between."

more spits and sputters from behind me as i say, "well it just means you didn't do a very good job of wiping. come with me. and get your hand out of your pants!"

we march up the stairs, and he heads off to his bathroom, assuming of course that that is where i am going to aid him in fixing his situation.

"no, over here."

a look of wonderment crosses his face. it is rare that the boys get to enter our inner sanctum of a master bedroom, but he is about to cross the threshold of the holiest of holies, the master bath.

"now," i say, "just because you now know where these are, and because i am giving you one now does NOT mean you are allowed to sneak in here and use them willy-nilly. got it?"

"got it."

and i break out our special stash of medicated wipes.

he is still standing taking in what must appear, to him at least, to be the lap of luxury when it comes to toilettes: brightly-colored bottles containing a plethera of soaps, the nice towels, make-up, beard trimmers that look sleek and shiny like a muscle car, shelves lined with glass jars containing q-tips and make-up removal pads.

"drop your pants and sit on the potty."

it seems ludicrous to refer to such a porcelain shiny work of art as our commode with such a juvenile word as "potty" so it takes him a moment to comply.

"now, use this to wipe your bum."

he does, and then holds it out and looks at is as if he is shocked at what he has found.

"keep going, do a good job."

"k."

again, he seems surprised, as if he has discovered a small beetle in what would otherwise be an antiseptic and pristine hospital room.

"think you got it?"

"yes, i think so."

"toss that in there and wash your hands."

dreamy-eyed, he runs the tap and puts his hands under it, and almost giggles as i dispense some liquid soap that smells of lavender from an old-time apothecary looking bottle into his damp palm.

"what's that?" he asks in amazement.

"soap."

"what kinda soap?"

"just pretty-smelling hand soap."

"oh, it is pretty."

"dry off your hands."

he giggles some more as he says, starry-eyed, "look at all the bubbles."

and indeed, there is a small pile of soap bubbles slowly popping and working its way down the drain.

"dry off."

who knows what stories he will relate to his younger sibling of what the bathrooms in heaven are like. who can guess what magical and fantastical things he can't even begin to comprehend currently dance around in his head. what avarice, what luxury, what dreams made flesh.

and all because a small bit of shit didn't get properly wiped up.

darth sardonic

ps, happy veteran's day to everyone. thanks to those that serve, regardless of what country you may have served.

ok i have fucking had it--scathing rant

2009-11-09T13:55:00.000-08:00

before you read this post, read the last one i just left about the tea party express people. i just posted it because yet again these motherfuckers have spammed me with email surreptitiously asking me for donations. this post is also fueled by the hate-mongering i see on the news after the tragedy at ft hood and in general the kinda shit i have been hearing around this country lately.

ok, and here goes:

there is no "us" and "them." there is no "black" and "white." there is no "right" or "wrong." i have said it once, and will say it again and again and fucking again till someone puts a bullet in the back of my head, and if i have any pull with the big man spinning the galaxy, i will continue to say it in a spectral post-mortem voice from beyond the grave:

we are e pluribus motherfucking unum. "of the many, one." it's printed right on the fucking money next to "in god we trust" which every right-wing bible thumper will quite loudly and adamantly insist remains there and furthermore upon which our country (according to these zealots anyhow) was founded.

it doesn't say "of the many, one" in english, i might add, but in latin. as far as i know, we don't have an official language, but if we were gonna say we did, latin wouldn't be it. but there you have it, our very money is bilingual.

not all muslims are terrorists. not all terrorists are muslim (we seem to have forgotten in more recent years, but there have been all kinds of terrorists, some of which had no religious ties whatsoever). not all christians are assholes who think that everyone is gonna fry if they don't accept jesus into their hearts and return daily prayer to school and put a devout christian into the presidency and return this country to the bible-influenced world power that the founding fathers wanted it to be (oh and btw, the founding fathers wanted it to be e pluribus unum, not christian, or all white, or all english-speaking. the founding fathers wanted us to fucking compromise and get along. give a little, take a little.) not all people who aren't christian are bad people, or even misguided people, or even the kind of person whose values are that different from your own. not all conservatives are rush-limbaugh loving cunts. not all liberals are socialist subversive twats who are trying to destroy everything this country stands for. not all people who rally with the tea party express idiots are patriots. not all people who write scathing blogs denouncing the pocket-lining money-grubbing tea party express idiots are unpatriotic. not all soldiers are good. not all soldiers are bad.

we are e pluribus unum. of the many, one. remember? right after 9/11, when we were lost and confused and more scared than we had ever been since pearl harbor, the tv was running commercials geared towards uniting us as a country again. and people of all races and creeds would say, e pluribus unum. unless you are native american (and if you are, can i just say i am really really sorry for what the people who initially colonized this country did to you) then you are as much an outsider in this country as anyone who speaks broken english. only the native americans (i am including the native alaskans and hawaiians in that too) were here. everyone else floated, boated, swam, flew, scuttled, lied, stowed-away, rode bound in chains against their will in the belly of a ship, or in some other manner phanagled their way into this country. i don't give a fuck who you are, or what your color is: somewhere in your background, you have an ancestor who found himself/herself on the shores of this continent, scratching his/her ass and wondering, "what the fuck i do now?"

and i will say again, the problem with the country is this "us" and "them" mentality: the conservatives who think liberals are what's wrong with this country. the liberals who think the conservatives are what's wrong with this country. (an interesting side-note: in the start of this country, when george washington was president, the founding fathers were dead set against having "factions" or what we now call "political parties." so if you really wanna get down to the brass tacks of what the country was founded on, we'd do away with "conservative" and "liberal" completely.) the whites who think minorities are what's wrong with this country. the minorities who think whites are what's wrong with this country. the christians who hate the muslims. the muslims who hate the christians. the people who think that everyone should only and always speak english. the "patriots" who denounce the "unpatriotic" and vice versa.

and in closing, i would just like to say; if you buy into the "us" and "them" mentality, if you think that one specific group of people or beliefs are wrong and should be done away with or kicked out of our country, if you think you are "right" and everyone else who doesn't agree with your way of thinking is "wrong," then maybe you should find another country to live in. there are plenty out there that would probably agree with you, and where you would fit in just fine.

e pluribus unum, o my beloved non-existents, my patient and faithful few. this includes anyone who would work to make the united states of america a better place in some kinda way, regardless of what language they speak, what color their skin is, where and/or how they worship, and what traditions they choose to follow from some other land they left to join here in our melting pot.

and yes, it even includes the tea party express folks, who i sincerely hope honestly think they are doing a good service, though i just suspect they are your average run-of-the-mill capitalists making a fast buck.

darth sardonic

and i redirected these guys into my spam folder...

2009-11-09T13:28:00.000-08:00

i wasn't kidding when i said these guys would be glad to take your money. this time i just copied the whole goddamn email. oh, and if the video is supposed to put the fear of god in you then, well, something was seriously lacking. unless you're mortally afraid of guys with handlebar mustaches and baseball caps, or yellow "don't tread on me" flags, or giant metal barns where they hold livestock auctions. and i sorta resent the implication that because i aint emptying my bank account for these stupid fucking cunts that i am not a patriot. forget that i shook every one of the hands of the air force and army guys i saw at dfw who were on their way to iraq and tried not to choke up when i said "thanks!" wtf are these motherfuckers doing for their country? not a motherfucking shitlick thing. you know why? cause they are too busy rounding up our donations and driving to the next fucking redneck town to convince more stupid twats to part with their money in favor of some nebulous "cause" that clearly has shite to do with anything at all that affects any real person's life in any way.

Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and the liberal media keep insisting the tea party movement is irrelevant - and that it has fizzled. They think they can just conduct 'business as usual.' The video below proves them WRONG!

It's from the Tea Party Express rally in Branden, Mississippi last night. THOUSANDS of people packed the venue - it was an overflow crowd that packed the bleachers above spilled out onto the performing grounds of the Rankin County Multi-Purpose Arena.

Watch this video - and forward it along to every patriot you know who needs to see that our movement is growing and we are going to take our country back!

WATCH THIS VIDEO: NANCY PELOSI'S WORST NIGHTMARE

*** FORWARD THIS TO A FRIEND - CLICK HERE ***

Please do what you can to come out and join us for one of the remaining Tea Party Express rallies - here's the schedule: http://www.teapartyexpress.org/tour-schedule-2/

And you can help us make our final week of rallies even bigger, and help us defeat government-run healthcare by making a donation to the Tea Party Express.

Whether $25, $50, $100, $500 or any amount up to $5,000 (the maximum allowed contribution) we'd appreciate whatever donation you can make.

You can make a contribution - HERE.

You can also support our efforts by mailing in a contribution to our headquarters:

Our Country Deserves Better Committee

ATTN: Tea Party Project

770 L Street #1020

Sacramento, CA 95814

*** FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO A FRIEND - HERE ***

wtf?!? seriously?!?

2009-10-30T11:40:00.000-07:00

the following are copy/paste lines taken directly from an email (the third) i have just received from these jokers:

The national, cross-country tour titled, Tea Party Express II: Countdown to Judgment Day (www.TeaPartyExpress.org) is rolling into Washington State to host Tea Parties. ...will hold rallies that seek to educate, entertain, and encourage patriotic Americans who are concerned about the quasi-socialistic policies being pushed by the Obama/Pelosi/Reid administration.

The Tea Party Express II caravan features two 44-foot coaches along with a group of several support vehicles,...part of a national tour that will span 19 days, 38 cities, and cover more than 7,000 miles.

The Tea Party Express is advocating for less government spending, an end to the bailouts, lower taxes, opposition to government-run healthcare and opposition to the growth in the size and intrusiveness of government in general.

they also wouldn't mind it much if you n i cared to make a charitable donation to such a worthy cause. i wonder how much it costs to drive two specially-painted coaches all over hell and gone? and i wonder what exactly these tea party lunatics are actually proposing by way of lessening government intrusiveness? are they coming up with any alternative ideas to the government health plan? do they understand that the bailouts started with dubya, not obama? why wasn't anyone driving tour buses around when dubya's administration was proposing the "patriot act" that would basically invade anyone's privacy and arrest individuals based on books they checked out of the library, or searches they did on google? did they not figure that the government was being intrusive in that case? they don't seem to realize that staging a moving "patriotic" carnival that will eat up countless dollars in gas and maintenance, not to mention the initial cost of two 44-foot coaches and the support vehicles, conservative speakers and singers, etc etc etc. and blowing all this dough on an extravagant tour is easily the best way to tell us that government spending is out of control, taxes are way too high, and the government is growing and taking over our lives. i might also recommend we watch these motherfuckers cause this has all the makings of a well-scheduled recruitment for a bloody revolution.

i wonder if hitler and lenin had 44-foot coaches?

darth sardonic

part of a mid-term...

2009-10-27T14:29:00.000-07:00

in communications i class we had to write a couple short essays in class as our mid-term. i present to you, in conjunction with the last post (go quick and read it now) one half of my comm i mid-term:

the boy is about 7, lithe, with dusky skin. his earnest eyes hide behind lopsided glasses that match his lopsided grin.

he is excited as he watches his older brother play video games, and emits noises that are the sonic equivalent of shards of broken glass in my brain pan.

this skinny boy with the overdeveloped musculature used to fit in the palms of both my upturned hands like water scooped from a stream.

"daddy! daddy! loo' what [no. 1] is doon, daddy!"

"i see, buddy."

for reasons beyond my ken, he needs this constant reassurance; this sense of belonging. perhaps it stems from the four months he spent lying in hospital beds with only limited physical contact, most of which was to change iv's and bandages.

he sprawled there like a baby doll-cum-mad-scientist's experiment, tubes and monitors and gadgets encroaching upon his existence like the villain of bad 50's sci-fi movies.

and life was a nightmare for each member of his little close-knit family for these hellish four months.

you would never guess it today, however, from his ear-piercing sound-effects and the enthusiastic way he jumps up and down, his eyes intent on the screen as if he was the one playing the game.

you would never know he was dead for a full minute, flatlining like the special guest star's character at the end of an "er" episode while a battery of nurses scrambled for narcan, paddles, the crash cart.

you might guess something is not quite right from the delayed speech patterns; the way it takes him a little longer to formulate a sentence.

but, after observing his energy, his joy, and his zest for life as he dances from one foot to another and waves his arms over his head like a lottery winner, you would never be tempted to call him "dumb" or "stupid" or even "retarded."

and you would never guess he started off life being nothing more than a double-handful of his own mother and father's heart.

darth sardonic

student of the month

2009-10-25T14:12:00.000-07:00

the trick is not thinking about what we have been through to get to this point. the trick is to keep my arm around him and beam proudly and be wholly immersed in the moment. because if i think about the hospital, the tubes and machines, the appointments and doctors, the therapies, the first year of kindergarten, i will tear up in the middle of the auditorium and i will be unable to disguise the fact that i am crying, and then he will ask, "whazmadder daddy? why you cryin?" and i will sob even more, and i would really prefer to maintain my composure amongst all these teachers and students and their parents.

no. 2 received student of the month for september.

darth sardonic

smile scream always so extreme

2009-10-15T12:31:00.000-07:00

man, o my beloved non-existent readers, my droogs n only friends, i have decided: a.) i am a shitty poster, and b.) i am a lousy fucking friend.

gringa, i finally got your link fixed.

i just finished up mid-terms, in which i had four essays, ten drawings, and two tests all due within the scope of a week.

and i have been feeling pretty selfish lately i guess. hording my free time and wanting to spend it doing only the things i want to do. and of course, the creative energy i would normally spend coming up with witty posts is instead being channeled into all these essays and such in the hallowed and hollowed halls of higher learning. (say that ten times fast.)

but i do have this for you:

we have long held in my household that if you want to hide something from my view, simply place it on a shelf behind something else. i will never find it. i am sure all of you, the beloveds, are snickering because you know some other male who finds himself in this self-same category.

well, the other day i am looking for the last rock glass that hasn't been left in a drunken haze at one of the neighbors' houses, i look in the cupboard, the dishwasher, the sink, the side table by the couch; marred with moisture ring scars the exact size of the bottom of said rock glass: to no avail.

suffice to say, o my beloveds, i am kinda aggravated. it's been one of those days. i want a goddamn drink. where the sweet cherry fuckstain is my glass...?

"it's in the cabinet with the rest of the glasses." my wife is sooo helpful.

"it is not! i looked there, twice!!" i spout, all piss n vinegar as i yank open the cupboard for the third time and--

"well fuck me gently with a chainsaw! why'd you put it on this side of the small juice glasses?"

(an aside: what the hell purpose do the small juice glasses really serve? i mean, does anyone still make a "well-balanced breakfast" replete with cheerios, toast and jam, a large glass of milk, and the apparently quintessential juice glass of oj? they are sorta the right size for a gibson i have noticed though, as long as you don't make it a double... now back to your regularly-scheduled program.)

"are you serious? you couldn't find it because it was on the other side of the juice glasses?!?"

i take a deep, steadying breath, and let it out in a prolonged sigh of surrender.

"let me see if i can attempt to explain the phenomenon of my inability to find things in pantries and on shelves to you, once and for all:"

she is already starting to giggle at me. which of course, makes me want to pour on the theatrics.

"let's say you tell me to get the medicine." i say, holding up one of the boys' prescription bottles, "and this is what i see in my head. an rx bottle. but let's just say the medicine actually looks like this:" holding up a blister-pack of gas-x.

"i will look thither n yon. my eyes will pass over this little packet of pills a million times without ever registering them, because i am looking for a bottle."

the giggles are full-on laughs.

"furthermore, if i think the object i am looking for is red, and it is actually blue, same thing, it's like it doesn't even exist."

the laughs are tears and are bordering on snorts, and by christ, o my beloved non-existents, i am hell-bent for a series of snorts.

"but the biggest way to confuse me is to put something slightly out of place from where it should be. if i know it is in a certain spot, then i won't be looking for it anywhere else, even if that is on the left side of the juice glasses instead of the right. since they are glasses, and it's a glass, it was completely invisible to my eyes."

i get the crescendo of laugh-snort-laugh that i so desperately needed at this point, and smile myself as i fix an old fashioned in my newly rediscovered rocks glass.

darth sardonic

Sing for the children shooting the children sing

2009-09-25T05:47:00.000-07:00

shit, o my beloved non-existent readers, happy shit soon i promise.

another song; don't watch this and "swim" back to back without a shitload of tissues nearby:

"Sing" (dresden dolls)

There is this thing that's like touching except you don't touch
Back in the day it just went without saying at all
All the world's history gradually dying of shock
There is thing that's like talking except you don't talk
You sing
You sing

Sing for the bartender sing for the janitor sing
Sing for the cameras sing for the animals sing
Sing for the children shooting the children sing
Sing for the teachers who told you that you couldn't sing
Just sing

There is thing keeping everyone's lungs and lips locked
It is called fear and it's seeing a great renaissance
After the show you can not sing wherever you want
But for now lets all pretend that we're gonna get bombed
So sing

Sing cause its obvious sing for the astronauts sing
Sing for the president sing for the terrorists sing
Sing for the soccer team sing for the janjaweed sing
Sing for the kid with the phone who refuses to sing
Just sing

Life is no cabaret
We don't care what you say
We're inviting you anyway
You motherfuckers you'll sing someday...

...the music/That saves you/When you're not so sure you'll survive...

2009-09-16T14:29:00.000-07:00

because i have been laid off (by certified mail no less--fucking cowards!) i am assured that when i am not in classes myself, and my children are not in school, i am (over)exposed to alot of disney channel.

mostly, i let it flow into one ear and out the other. now walt n his clan like to intersperse the kids' shows with bits of rock video, usually cranked out by some preteen talentless hack (i. e. the jonas brothers) that wouldn't be anything more than a lame-ass prom band if it wasn't for the powers that be at disney in the first fucking place. i make snide comments and tell my kids not to expect me to buy them limitless brand-spanking new gibsons in every color of the rainbow.

but yesterday. yesterday i am barely paying attention and look over to launch a smartass verbal arrow at the tv when i am frozen, riveted in place with my eyes melded with the screen: this is no disney-backed tween band ripping off popular pop-punk to jump around the stage to; these guys are real.

the lead singer looks like what i imagine mr. rogers must've looked like when he was about 21, emphatically and wide-mouthedly emoting his lyrics into the mic as he wails on a baldwin in a tuneful yet punky way i have only seen one other time (ben folds five) while the rest of the band backs him up beautifully. and the words have me hooked. (don't worry, i'll post em!)

but i only get about 30 seconds of this. i need more. they flash the name of the band (jack's mannequin) and the song (swim) across the bottom of the screen and i am already typing "youtube" into the google bar.

the song (and video) are amazing (yes i'll wait while all you beloved non-existents run and watch it--i was gonna recommend you do anyhow) and i am even getting a little choked up.

i do what i always do when i feel immediately connected to a song; i listen to other songs by the band. they're pretty good. but i click on a video on youtube that actually turned out to be a news-style bit.

and the song became even more important to me.

because that skinny little lead singer/piano player with his side-part and vintage button-up shirt nearly died from leukemia after jack's mannequin cranked out their first album. matter of fact, he was so sick the band couldn't even do interviews to support the new album let alone tour.

so he battled cancer. had a stem-cell replacement (which sounds all kindsa creepy and scary and extremely fucking painful to me), and went through chemo (which i know for a fact is creepy and scary and extremely fucking painful) and survived.

survived. fucking survived, o my beloved non-existent readers. survived and wrote this song. apparently survived with enough energy to melodically abuse his grand piano while hollering out his heartfelt little gift to the world.

i watched the video over and over again. and cried. of course i bawled my eyes out, you all know i did, o my droogs n only friends, cause hopefully you've been hanging around this e coli hotdog stand in the world wide web long enough to know that this song split me like these sorts of songs do and opened me up to the beauty and strength and power and the vastness of the universe and our oh-so important place in it.

thanks for playing along, and if you haven't checked out the video on youtube yet, do, please. it really is amazing.

the lyrics to follow.

darth sardonic

"Swim"

You've gotta swim
Swim for your life
Swim for the music
That saves you
When you're not so sure you'll survive
You gotta swim
And swim when it hurts
The whole world is watching
You haven't come this far
To fall off the earth
The currents will pull you
Away from your love
Just keep your head above

I found a tidal wave
Begging to tear down the dawn
Memories like bullets
They fired at me from a gun
A crack in the armor
I swim to brighter days
Despite the absence of sun
Choking on salt water
I'm not giving in
I swim

You gotta swim
Through nights that won't end
Swim for your families
Your lovers your sisters
And brothers and friends
Yeah you've gotta swim
Through wars without cause
Swim for the lost politicians
Who don't see their greed as a flaw

The currents will pull us
Away from our love
Just keep your head above

I found a tidal wave
Begging to tear down the dawn
Memories like bullets
They fired at me from a gun
Cracking me open now
I swim for brighter days
Despite the absence of sun
Choking on salt water
I'm not giving in
Well I'm not giving in
I swim

You gotta swim
Swim in the dark
There's no shame in drifting
Feel the tide shifting and wait for the spark
Yeah you've gotta swim
Don't let yourself sink
Just find the horizon
I promise you it's not as far as you think
The currents will drag us away from our love
Just keep your head above
Just keep your head above
Swim
Just keep your head above
Swim, swim
Just keep your head above
Swim

what you've missed since last post...

2009-09-11T15:26:00.000-07:00

a brief disjointed stream-of-conscious barrage of what's been going on in my world since last i posted: with all the traveling i have done on my own for tatts n sundry stupidity, i had completely forgotten how great it feels to fly with my wife's head resting on my shoulder and her hand resting on my knee. nothing says "i love you" like lopping off part of your pinkie or your ear to give to the object of your affection. dashing through the hallowed and hollowed halls of learning like a crazed dostoevsky on crack. the interceptor corners like it is on rails and i can cloverleaf from 55 on one highway to 55 on the bisecting highway without ever letting the speedometer drop. mr mc if you are reading this; sorry, not everything i write can be magical gems of literary greatness. i don't wanna end on a downer so here, right in the middle: i promise not to forget, to never forget. ten years; ten years and every one of them a wonderful time and i can still remember how hot she looked in her cream dress on the back side of a dirty little park in portland, or. here's to ten more, followed by ten more, followed by ten more, followed by... silly hats with jdot rdot in vegas after some fifteen years of not hanging out. it's all about the onion at the bottom of the glass. sneaking out in the middle of the night to skinny dip under the full south carolina moon in full view of any neighbors who cared to look. turbulence can be fun. i am already semi-putting together another magnum crappus that will be made up of posts about pierce county and traveling back to pierce county; unfortunately for you, the beloved non-existent readers, it will be almost completely compiled of posts from this dirty little grease-spot on the world wide web. my wife's friends c&k who are cool as hell and hope to see you again in a few months. still no word on when The Unfinished Work will be available, though i have been assured there has been a rush put on it (yeah, yeah, i aint buying it either). "are the hookers there yet?"

we are the insurgents

2009-08-21T06:29:00.000-07:00

worldwide the status quo reigns. war is easier to maintain than peace. there are a million ways to feel better about oneself without ever having to change. but we are watching. we come from everywhere: every continent and every country, every color and every creed, every walk of life and tax bracket. we refuse to go down like this. we will not be sedated with commercials that sell us beauty in a jar. we won't be distracted from the coffins and the dirty lies our political leaders feed us as they sign death warrants under the table. we refuse to accept our fate. right now, legionaires are taking up pens or books, calvaliers are sitting to their computers. others will take up microphones and guitars. our weapons will only wound your mind; open it like a gash to the possibility of other possibilities. we look just like you. this is not a revolution of blood in the streets or even to overthrow a government. it is a revolution of the heart. it is a war being battled for the common good of mankind the world over. missiles loaded with the message "there doesn't have to be a right or wrong, good or evil. we are all human beings." will be targeted at each and every home. paint a bull's-eye on your television. the time is now. rome is burning and nero is playing air guitar to his ipod. break free of media fetters to allow your own self to decide what you like and what you want. make change for the better. sow the seeds of peace and acceptance. break down barriers of style and income. be happy. be so happy and comfortable with yourself that your cup overflows and you must share the run-off with those around you who aren't so blessed. the revolution will not be televised.

the expedition to the pole has been rerouted...

2009-08-12T12:16:00.000-07:00

my oldest gets off the school bus, and after a few pleasantries, i look him up and down and ask him:

"why, in one of the hottest states in the country, are you dressed like you're going on an excursion to the antarctic?"

"i don't understand what you mean."

"it's, what? 97, 98 degrees outside, and like a million percent humidity with nary a cloud in the sky, and you are wearing shoes, socks, jeans, a t-shirt, and a jacket like you're gonna race in the iditarod."

"it's in case it gets cold."

"like through some freak accident the temperature is gonna plummet some 60-odd degrees, just like that [snaps]?!?"

"ummm, i just-- i dont' wanna feel cold."

"ok, man, but drink some water when you get inside so you don't die of heatstroke."

darth sardonic

cowgirls espresso

2009-08-05T16:59:00.000-07:00

some time ago, i dunno, prolly while my wife was in parts east and my mind had gone on a temporary leave of absence, i mentioned cowgirls espresso, a chain of drive thru coffee huts manned--errr, womanned might be a better term--by ladies in bikinis and lingerie.

you, o beloved non-existent readers, probably don't really remember. it was kinda just a passing mention.

well, as things come full circle, lol, i just saw a 15 minute segment on a show on the travel channel (extreme fast food, i believe it was called) all about my favorite joint to grab a cuppa joe when i am visiting home.

of course, the camera people didn't leave the comforts of seattle for the shabbier realms of tacoma and lakewood to actually visit my personal favorite hut, but still.

nice to see a bit of something i associate with home, and that to me was a clever idea on a local level, achieve a certain amount of national acclaim.

darth sardonic

p.s. the publishers have the magnum crapp--err, The Unfinished Work, and have assured me it went in with the next batch of books to be published. just a waiting game now, o my beloved non-existents, my droogs and only friends. i'll keep you posted.

this is a true story...

2009-07-14T12:34:00.001-07:00

i promised something happier and with laughs, and i am about to deliver in spades.

but the details of this story are so outrageous that you, the beloved non-existent readers, will be tempted to say, "bullshit!" or "bollocks!" if you're from across the pond.

as would i, if it hadn't actually happened to me.

but let me assure you again, the details of this particular blog are true, actually happened, and i am even attempting to turn off my usual knack for exaggeration to bring it to you, my droogs and only friends, as uncluttered as i possibly can.

my wife was off work today, and the weather was nice, so we decided to go as a family to the beach.

we wanted to get there early, beat out the crowds and the unnatural florida heat, so we left the house tennish and headed over.

we spent some time waist-deep in the waves, enjoying the sheer emptiness of the beach.

we spotted the occasional dolphin snacking on fish about a quarter-mile off, popping in and out of the waves, and i was half-tempted to try and swim out there so i could honestly say i had swum with dolphins in the wild without it being a huge over exaggeration, but i was a little tired and not sure how dolphins feel about being interrupted whilst they dine.

seemed to me this would be the pinnacle of my day, easy. sharing the same site-distance ocean space with a small group of hungry dolphins. yeah, not quite.

then we went on a walk to collect some nice seashells. looking for unique ones, while the kids insisted on filling the bucket with the generic, run-of-the-mill white clam shells. i take my seashelling very seriously. i look for those really cool shells that would look amazing in our collection.

i see something dark and of odd shape that attracts me instantly.

as i get closer i let out an involuntary shout of excitement.

but i am pretty sure it is already dead.

then as i get closer, it jerks and tries to get away.

"hey come here check this out come here come here!!" i call excitedly to my family.

but the poor little fella is knackered, and the waves catch him and wash him back and forth and he is at their mercy, so my wife catches him back up, and we go back to my original idea that he must be dead.

until he tries to swim out of her hand.

now we are carrying him rapidly back to our sandcastle stuff and blankets. my wife fills a small bucket with water and goes to call someone she works with who is one of the wildlife people at the cape.

when she comes back, the boys and her and i sit around watching the little baby turtle float leisurely in the bucket, occasionally swimming some to get some air. over time, he perks up quite a bit, and by the time linda, another wildlife lady, shows up, he seems pretty pleased with his existence.

she assures us that one of two things will happen, if he is unable, for whatever reason, to return to the ocean, then sea world will take him. otherwise, they will bring him back at 6 am when the predators are all asleep and let him swim out to sea.

if i hadn't happened along when i did, he would've been a meal for something. or if we had just assumed that since he was in the ocean he was fine; ditto.

so today, i saved a life. and i am pretty proud. but credit where credit is due: if my wife hadn't known some numbers to call, and if i wasn't ably assisted by my two ignatz, things might've also turned out differently.

whatever the case may be, best of luck to baby turtle turkelson (i didn't name him, the chitlins did, lol).

darth sardonic

You just keep me hanging on...

2009-07-08T17:33:00.000-07:00

there are moments, o my beloveds, my tried and trues, my droogs and only friends, o thou faithful who keep stumbling back to this sodden, neglected little spitwad on the world wide web; when the wife is in l.a. for work, and the content of gin and dry vermouth in my blood is overshadowed by the ability of the extra cocktail onion to absorb it; when mark renton is dying on the screen to the dulcet strains of the velvet underground's "perfect day"; there are moments, o my beloved non-existent readers, when i aproximate what might be a rock bottom, and the tears swell, and in this moment of anguish and emptiness i free myself from the shackles of the cares of the day, and i put myself in god's hands, and my eyes open up like broken faucets and all the demons poor out of me like a wash of the soul in a backyard tub, and i am pinned to a line to dry in the sun.

i wish only the best and most beautiful for all of you out there.

oh, and better news and laughter tomorrow, my friends, si o si, come hell or high water.

darth sardonic

* the doorbell rings.

"shit, fuck." i curse, palming the tears out of my sockets with the heels of my hands, encouraging my face into a facsimile of something that belies a bawling, woe-is-me session seated lonely in front of the computer.

i believe in god, o my beloved non-existents. cause at 9 o'clock at night on a wednesday, in the dark, there on my porch, are some friends i haven't talked to nearly all summer.

and cause god knows i am a stupid cunt, and won't reach a hand out to pull myself out of my funk.

so he drops the perfect distraction on me at the very fucking instant i needed it. and now, instead of trainspotting, i find myself watching fanboys and every trace of that "rock bottom" i was empathetically touching a moment ago is all gone, and renton has gone off to die on someone else's tv for the evening, and i can honestly text back to my wonderful wife:

"yeah baby i am ok actually"

and you were here with me the whole time.

thanks*

this in place of a scathing rant...

2009-07-01T12:54:00.000-07:00

man i was hot as the surface of the sun after words were exchanged with a (stupid fucking cunt who has never had a hard day in her life) fellow classmate this afternoon.

but instead of the usual awful (full of foul language) diatribe, i offer only this instead:

you know what is wrong with this country (the united states of america)? liberals who think that conservatives are what's wrong with this country, and conservatives who think liberals are what's wrong with this country. e pluribus fucking unum, for the love of christ!

and in closing i will say this: the next person that tells me to fucking move out of the country where i was born; the country i served for 8 years and that my wife is still serving and that friends of mine have fucking died to serve; the country i would still die for today; my fucking country; the next person that tells me to move out of that country because my opinions don't match theirs is getting a faceful of fist in short order.

thanks for playing along.

darth sardonic

latest and greatest (barking mad)

2009-06-25T17:22:00.000-07:00

there it is o my beloved non-existent readers. my artist thinks about three more appointments and it will be all done. i'm pretty jazzed about that.

sorry it is so small, but my buddy took the pic and i copied it from facebook, so there ya go.

darth sardonic

nothing says "i love you" like a shoe full of swords n spiderman

2009-06-22T11:44:00.000-07:00

i am now 38. which doesn't feel much different than 37, except my book is at the publishers, our house in new mexico that has been such a pain in the ass closes out the end of this month (with enough money for us to break even on every house-related loan!) and i am making more money from my gi bill this semester than i thought because the summer semester is accelerated.

nos. 1 n 2 are doing well, except that i think we need to up no. 1's dosage on his adhd medication because his behavior is showing a lack of control that concerns me and needs to be fixed before he starts school again.

and the title? well, today i went to the gym after class and when i put on my running shoe, i felt something:

"what the--?" it was a little plastic lego sword.

spiderman was living in my other shoe.

just those little reminders from afar, "hey, i'm still here, and i still care."

kinda like this post.

darth sardonic

The Unfinished Work

2009-06-11T13:58:00.001-07:00

it is sent off, o my beloved non-existent readers, my droogs n only friends.

fingers crossed.

darth sardonic

magnum crappus

2009-05-29T04:09:00.000-07:00

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

on burnt bridges and sailed ships

2009-05-20T14:23:00.000-07:00

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

tourist-free traffic

2009-05-08T06:37:00.000-07:00

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

Sleeping is my 9 to 5...

2009-04-30T03:29:00.000-07:00

this morning (and it is early still here), i went upstairs to wake up no. 2 to get ready for school. i'm not fully caffeinated yet, but take the nice and pleasant approach:

"hey, hey buddy. it's time to get uuup."

i rub his back softly with the flat of my palm, and he stirs and he rolls over. with half-lidded eyes, he asks, "why you wake me up for?"

"cause it is time to get up and get ready for school."

"we don't have skoo on saturdays n sundays."

"what day is today?"

he scrunches up his eyes in thought, tilting his head, and taps his temple with one index finger: "lemme check my brain. hmmm."

several more seconds of this method-actor bit, while i smile and try not to laugh outright, and then:

"fursday."

"so get up and get dressed."

i think it might be a very good day, o beloved non-existent readers (a new non-existent, and avid spellchecker, has informed me that all these years i have been spelling it wrong. how bout that? she also informed me if i spelled it wrong again, she would throttle me. violently.)

and a phrase for today that we don't use nearly enough: make hay while the sun shines.

darth sardonic

catch these moments as you would moonbeams...

2009-04-20T13:08:00.000-07:00

i've gotten some hours back at work. at the same time, i am still in school and winding my way towards finals followed by the summer semester.

friday night, as the antibiotics for licking the sinus infection that had been stomping a mudhole in my ass for over two weeks were starting to kick in proper, s the drummer came over with s the fill-in-while-my-real-guitarist-is-gone guitarist, and we jammed a bit on some songs with the intent of recording them.

things were going along swimmingly, and i was into it and jumping some.

until i did a jump and my knee exploded into a blinding flash of pain shaped like a darth sardonic and i crashed onto the floor in agony.

the funny thing is that neither of my counterparts realized i had fallen out of the frame for a full 40 seconds after i did it. (a buddy of mine watched the clip over and over, trying not to laugh when i go from jumping to sprawled out on the floor, and then announced "they don't quit playing for 40 seconds" cool, thanks.)

pain etched on my face like the erosion of a cliff face, i am on the floor trying to keep playing the bass part though i don't realize that i have dropped my bass on the cable, and bent it to a point where the contacts no longer meet, so nothing is coming out.

we stop playing, i get a different cable, pop motrin, one-legged drag a chair over, and we play the song again, me seated with one leg draped over the arm, an angry look on my face (it is actually a mix of anger (at myself), concentration (on the bassline and away from the firepit that is my knee socket), disgust (again, at myself), and pain--but on the video clip it just looks like i am pissed.)

then i put my leg up with ice on it while we rewatch all the clips. i actually feel a shadowy empathic flash in my knee at the moment i see myself go down on the tv.

the next day, i am stiff and sore, but the swelling is down, and we take the kids to kennedy space center.

we are all fascinated by the rockets, launch modules, the space suits, the shuttle explorer. we watch an imax movie about the trips to the moon made by nasa, and at the end as i look into the stars and the fanfare plays around me i am almost choked up by the sheer vastness of space and the universe, and just how fucking tiny and insignificant we really are while simultaneously fighting so hard to leave something behind.

today, as i am thinking, "my kids would make job fucking kick a puppy!" alkaline trio's "jaked on green beers" (more commonly known as the goodbye song amongst the smaller of the sardonic household) comes up on the stereo, and myself and no. 2 sing along lustily at the top of our lungs, unanimously agreeing "Now all I have left is this heart in my chest,/Your dishonesty helping me cope./I hope this is goodbye." and that it is the coolest song ever.

not much later, as i am making a sandwich to help me get through my autocad class without starving to death, and the boys are watching "schoolhouse rock," no. 1 dashes into the kitchen and says, "this is our favorite song!"

and simultaneously, we burst into: "conjunction junction, wha-hat's your functiooooon?" as i even throw in some disco finger points that would make mr. travolta proud.

yeah, my kids might be hellions, but was i so different?

man i love my family.

darth sardonic

if I give you everything you'll ever need...

2009-04-01T08:28:00.000-07:00

...and it all comes down to/your half smile, country mile, angel child

no. 2 seems bound and determined to continue on his "learn fake spanish through the language menu on your favorite movies" deal, as no. 1 and i were forced to watch "the fantastic four: rise of the silver surfer" in a version of spanish that seemed to be a meld of mexican and spain spanish, that actually cracked me up because they used a word which in spain means "to grab" and in argentina is one of the most vulgar and offensive ways of saying "to fuck."

no. 1 explains to me at length how the "chopper janner" he created with his legos will cut through trees and is also equipped with lasers and crystals and a gun, so that the driver, "qantas" (who's cover is the ceo of a major australian airlines apparently) can shoot the "villians" ((a tangent: it's an odd turn of events that my son has gone from referring to the ones who end up dead in all his play as "bad guys" and switched over to calling them "villians." strange. and as far as i can tell, it happened as quietly and incrementally as the holocaust. wish i could trace this shift to some one thing. anyways...) oh, and why exactly do the "villians" have to end up dead? really. i mean, he watches superman, spiderman, batman. these guys don't kill anybody. they beat fuck out of 'em, yeah. i'll give you that. some of 'em probably wish they were dead. but still. again, anyways...) as he travels at high speeds across some fantastical landscape that exists only within the brainpan of my oldest child. i am momentarily sidetracked from the demostration of how the saw arms swing out by no. 2 stomping up and down the stairs, a goofy smile on his face as his head bounces around like one of those springy-necked dolls and says, "dolopo atto. khee ganam? apodo dolodo."

i got yet another chuck palahniuk book from the library (i am working my way through all of them) and was laying in bed reading it when i realized my wife was no longer watching tv and all the lights were off but mine.

"you going to sleep?"

"yeah, baby."

"what time is it?"

"ten-thirty."

"holy poop!" i say, and slap the bookmark into my book and shut off my light (ten-thirty is late for us old farts who spend all day mentally and physically wrassling two overactive boys).

my wife is cracking up.

cause somehow or other, i managed to say "pooewuph" or something along those lines.

"did you just turn french in the middle of that word?"

now i am laughing.

"no, i just kinda messed up the pronunciation!"

"it's like when you say 'jewLAH' instead of july." making fun of the redneck way i say the seventh month sometimes when i am not thinking about it.

"i told you, my dad was from texas!"

"jewLAH."

"july, july, july."

"pewup!"

we have both graduated from snickers to all-out laughing, in bed, in the dark, which i am pretty sure counts against you if you were making a case for your ongoing sanity.

we are cracking up now over completely silly things that aren't really funny, but we are already on a laughing jag, so what the hell, right?

i laugh so hard and fast i am not actually making any sound, just sitting with my eyes squinched together and my mouth open and my shoulders rocking, the tears rolling down my cheeks.

my wife on the other hand, is snorting between guffaws. her face approximating a grimace of pain almost, tears welling up in her eyes in the corners next to her nose as she winds down to a "*snort* kahee, tahee, tee hee."

i have said it before, and i will say it again, o my beloved non-existant readers: i am one lucky motherfucker. truly blessed. somewhere, somehow, i did something right.

cause i have the fucking coolest fucking family ever, and there aint no two ways about it.

darth sardonic