desperate deranged talking in my sleep again

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

darth sardonic

tagged--18 and...

dj kirby tagged me with a musically-inlcined tag this time around. i'm sposed to travel back in time to when i was 18, wax nostalgic about the music i listened to, and tell you all about it. this oughtta be lots of fun:

the university. it was my first time out from under the oppressive thumb of my uber-conservative dad and stepmom, and by god, i was going to enjoy it. i grew my hair out and ratted it into a snarl a la robert smith, of the cure (and frequently wore the white base, black eyeliner, and garish red lipstick to complete the ensemble), dressed in nothing but black nearly every day (shit, i still do that a bit), and wished i was dead 90% of the time.

i wanted to be different. i wanted to be the same. i wanted to be liked. i wanted to be despised. i desperately wanted to date as many girls as i could (in high school, due mostly to the aforementioned looney folks, i had had one, and only one, official date), but i didn't want to belong to the mainstream. so i did what any 18-year-old does when he wants to be a noncomformist: i conformed to the popular subculture (hahahaha, we all think we are so fucking cool, that we are doing something that has never been done, that we are proving our independance, when in reality, we just pick option "b", buy the appropriate uniform (with one or two "personal" twists), and hang out with people exactly like us.

so you, o beloved non-existant readers, will hopefully forgive me if my list of songs isn't familiar to any of you. i will also point out that the bands/songs i list here are all songs i still listen to today. these are not the songs of a fleeting moment, these are songs that affected my life.

the very first song that came to my mind when i read what was expected of me this time around, was dear god, by midge ure. this song is actually quite like a soft pop song, building in intensity towards the end, with expansive and epic feel. a beautiful song, i recommend it for anyone. the former lead singer of ultravox takes on spirituality vs. humanity. and don't worry, the god of the title isn't being railed against, if you listen close, we as humans are: we had it all, and we threw it all away/give me, love for the lonely/give me, food for the hungry/give me, peace in a restless world.

so this would fall at the top of my list, and i recommend everyone check it out, i think it will be a crowd-pleaser.

as for the rest of the list, well, take your chances, heh heh.

i fell asleep listening to skinny puppy once (the album cleanse, fold, and manipulate), and had horrible and strange nightmares and woke feeling anxious and paranoid. i still love old skinny puppy, but make a habit of not sleeping to their music.

anything by bauhaus, but especially all we ever wanted was everything, it's a simple song, but something about it fit my general mood of "what's the fucking point?" that i had at 18.

the cure, obviously. a night like this was a good one, i was "coming to find" her if it took me all night, i thought, hahaha. also, inbetween days, which is sort of a break-up song, but with surprisingly upbeat music. odd, i was listening to that kind of stuff the other day and posted about it, hmmmm.... a running theme, maybe?

joy division. ah, one cannot begin to capture how connected i felt to joy division. the lead singer had killed himself after they had been a band maybe 2 or 3 years (the rest of the band went on to become new order), and their songs were mostly dark, and brooding. i loved it. i love it still.

a plethera of punk bands: the clash, sex pistols, minor threat, 7 seconds, the exploited, dead kennedys, et al.

and finally, and to keep this semi simple (too late), the smiths and morrissey. morrissey has never written a happy song in his life. and while i find some of it a bit whiney now, i really felt that morrissey "got" me at the time, new the pain i was going through (it's called "teen-angst" ya dippy, and nearly everyone goes through it, god i was a pain in the ass to be around at 18!).

as far as who to tag with this, i will have to get back to you on that, as i have to get ready to take the kids to their therapy.