Wood Handling Man

It would appear, by all good measures, that I am getting lazy. Well, while it is true that warm weather and good news slackens my angst, believe in the core of your very bones that it is not that I am getting lazy - it's that good news makes for bad literature. Sure, I could regale you with tales of how I've convinced an insurance company to give me more money than I paid for my car to fix it or how a neighbor just gave me a lawn mower and how in my quest for a DSLR camera I've finagled a free one... but where's the conflict? These things on their own are uninteresting. Onward toward victory, right?

This past weekend I was enlisted to distract my good friend, sculptor of young minds and all-around wood handling man, Mike, as his girlfriend prepped for his surprise birthday party. We went to the Hooker Brewing Company in Bloomfield and gorged ourselves on several tiny cups of their Blonde, Irish Red, excellent Munich and candy-sweet Watermelon Ale. Ah, nothing like a bright and sunny summer's day to sit inside a dark warehouse drinking fresh beer straight from the tank. This, followed closely by pizza and a pitcher at the Fireplace in Southington... the weather was perfect for deception.

And of course, the party. A few more gallons of beer and some tequila, and as you could imagine, I was deeply engrossed in a conversation with Mike's mom, who just-so-happened to be in town in time for the party. It was at about ten o'clock when I told her that I was going to kick her son's ass. At about ten thirty, Mike and Lory had gone to bed and it was time to go home. Long day.

The Banana, Challah, and the Poetry of the Diner

I can safely say that the most poetic thing ever uttered in a New England diner during the last fifteen years was mine, and I say this humbly, because, how else could something stick in my mind so clearly for all these years?

It was probably 1998, maybe 1999, we were so much younger then - more idealistic, less cynical. The world was still exciting during those early college years. It was a Saturday night and we were at the Gold Roc. I personally haven't been there in years, as just walking through the door is like being bathed in early Judeo-Greek  mediocrity. We sat and ate like kings that night, over-zealously, as teenage boys do at a diner. Looking at the menu, I was entranced by the promises set forth by the French Toast. It was elaborately described as being made from Challah bread - whatever that was... it sounded mystical. I had that.

When it arrived at the table it looked and tasted just like any other ordinary french toast. I was surprised and disappointed, and felt that delivery had fallen grossly short of my expectations. "This french toast is boastful at most," I exclaimed. And I was right; I had succumbed to the moment and was left with average french toast. But it was memorable french toast, because now, thirteen years later and in a cubicle in Portland, I'm thinking about it.

Eh, whatever, those were poetic times. We used code; we used to shoot at people with a BB gun from our fifth floor dorm room window with the accuracy of True Marksmen, calling it the Banana so as not to arouse suspicion, evading the ongoing police investigation. We flushed whole drawerfuls of socks down the toilet. We crawled through the ceiling to break into dorm rooms just to play video games. We always bit off more than we could chew and threw the rest to the dogs.

Live Fast, Die Eventually

I came to a disheartening realization the other day - in exactly two months, when I turn thirty-two, I will no longer be eligible to Live Fast, Die Young. It was bound to happen sooner or later, but the prospect of Live Fast Die Middle Aged or Live Fast Die Old and Decrepit, smelling of gamey free-range jerky and covered in a thin layer of waxy keratin, like an apple, waiting for the machines that keep me alive to error out so that the life cycle may start anew - is a brand of bullshit I was not prepared to face. I'm starting to reassess burning down the highway on my motorcycle doing ninety miles an hour in heavy traffic, bobbing, weaving and swerving between cars, my mind now flooding with thoughts of sliding at high speeds under tractor-trailers and buses, tumbling and flinging until what is left of me looks like barbequed spareribs. Fireworks indoors seems foolish, swatting unsuspecting friends in the balls seems cruel, general hell-raising, which once tasted so sweet, now tastes bitter like the top a nine volt battery...

There used to be a time when my epitaph would read: He tasted life, ran as fast as he could and kicked god square in the balls. He was a champion on the tops of mountains, and he communed with the yipping wild dogs. He took no shit and died with his teeth clenched and his fists balled. Here lies a True Warrior.

But now I fear it will look something like: Beyond his youth, he lived out his days in front of the television, eating microwavable burritos, watching reruns of Spanish soap operas, withering away until he was a shadow of a man, eventually dying of white guilt. Here lies some curds.

Oh, but all of this is starting to sound depressing. Now that I think of it, growing old and dying just isn't for me. Yes, fuck it - I've only just begun. Perhaps I can Live Fast Die Eventually due to Misadventure.

Everyone IS Taking Crazy Pills

I don't care if Anthony Weiner took a picture of his dong and photoshopped an angry headshot of Hillary Clinton in place of it's usual helmet, used it as the profile picture for a blog he ghostwrote about his angry short-haired penis' and it's attitudes toward offensive rap lyrics or Africa's ties with Moammar Gadhafi. Nor would I care if Steve Jobs did the same. Nor would I care if Newington Mayor Mike Lenares did it. Or the guy who works at the gas station. Because it doesn't effect they way they do their job until every national media outlet is bullying everyone into pretending they care about it, saying in an angry, doofy voice: "Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself."

But what can I say? Everyone is out of their goddamn minds; the only thing left to do is buckle up, close your eyes and wait for the crash. Hell, just this past weekend I showed up to a friends birthday party with a quart of serious heavy duty poison and raised no eyebrows. There's just no pleasing these people.

The American Dream 2011

Here is a notion that has become confused, one that I spent a good deal of time pouring over during a recent personal chautauqua of self exploration. Some say the Dream is dead and we are spiraling down a dark and gruesome toilet from which America may never return, where the ideals we were built upon are soiled, poisoned, and left to rot in the effluent. Something occurred to me while I was tapping into that explorative part of my mind the was so wild and active during my college years - entitlement has tainted the American Dream.

Off the heels of the Great Depression, our grandparents and great-grandparents worked themselves beyond death so that they might provide for their families, eventually achieving their Dream and providing unprecedented level of comfort along with it. By the time our parents' generation came along, that cradle of white suburban comfort offered them the luxury of pursuing the more quixotic goals of social equality and a higher level of civil consciousness. It was the Sixties and although it's easy for anyone who grew up in the Eighties to wave an ignorant, dismissive hand at their parents' battles and write it all off as some modern version of manifest destiny, the fact is they pushed harder than even they could've imagined, and for all their effort the fourth wall finally came down and society was changed much to the benefit of the disenfranchised. That was their Dream. But now, all these years later, their entitled children gaze back in a post-ironic way, weary of nothing, posturing eco-friendlyist hipster throw-up. Which, of course, makes it all so easy to discount.

With such a seemingly withered base, it's easy, now, to lose sight of the American Dream. We have grown up easily, and even the term American Dream has been translated into a sense of entitlement, a privilege, something consumable. This is not true. It's still something that needs to be worked for, and it certainly isn't stuff. The Dream is of an easy life - and not easy when compared to working, easy when compared to surviving.

So the Dream has been tainted by entitlement, but only insomuch as entitlement to stuff, purchasing power, excess - the diarrhea of ownership. This is a false birthright, smoke and mirrors; there is no satisfaction there. There is no lotto ticket, and the prize is not millions. The prize, is comfortable fulfillment.

The American Dream is still out there. It is borne on the backs of those who toil, it is permeated with the stink of their sweat and has grown malleable from their labor. It is in the quiet nights and rowdy weekends. It is in the anticipation. It is when the windings of the air are thick with electricity and there's a static charge in the circuitry. It is the Good Times.

Let this be our new Manifesto: Fun is King, and death to those who oppose the Fun Club!

Frothy Weiners

I turned my back on politics for Ten Minutes, and surprise, it's lost all self respect and virtue, and is now nothing more than a buggered and dusty old flea circus. A guy named Weiner is twitting pictures of his wiener, which if you follow his team's approach to the situation (i.e. - not directly denying it), it is a picture of his wiener, but he probably didn't send it or mean to send it. "Those are my boxer briefs, that is definitely my wiener, but there is no way to tell whose legs those are, and I certainly didn't take the picture. You can tell because it's upsidedown."

And now, of course, Rick Santorum has thrown his filthy, excrement stained hat into the ring to make a run at Boss of the US 2012, somehow forgetting that his harsh anti-gay stance has gained him some notoriety as gay anus juice, as indicated by a quick web search. Sure, he's been the victim of what is possibly the single most malicious and arguably the most effective (and possibly laudable) bit of passive aggressive behavior on record, could we as a country, a Leader of Nations, really elect someone whose name now elicits such a frothy connotation? The answer is, of course, no, which is good news - from what I understand (and mind you I haven't had the time to properly research this yet), he actually is frothy ass juice.

Looking out at the field in anticipation of November 2012, I look forward to it, if for no other reason than pure, verminous entertainment. Let the rats run the maze, then may the fittest and most grotesque fight for the cheese.