The Human Stain

So we did the Halloween Pub Crawl. Lots of drinking. After nights like that, I'm always amazed when I wake up with all of the things I started the night with.

Phone. Keys. Wallet. Jacket. Cooler. Cowboy hat. All that shit.

Portyed hard, got it good and turnt. And I held on to all of my stuff. The thing I wanted the most, though, that wasn't mine to begin with- I  lost it. Let me explain:


At the end of the night, I found a parrot on the ground. A pirate's parrot, no doubt. Fake, but it was fucking gorgeous. The plumage, the eyes, the quality of construction- I was in love. Tucked it into my jacket. It barely fit, but it fit. I was too stoked for words. It was going in a bookcase in my bedroom and it was really gonnna tie the room together.

I call it a night, and I start walking. I walk fast- big strides.

Caught up with a crowd. In said crowd were two dudes, and they were jawing. Shit-talking. Well, one was, anyway. He was the aggressor, and he was obviously a prick.

"You just better leave it alone, dog. 'Cause tonight ain't your night. For real, you don't wanna see me go there."

Shit like that. On and on and fucking on. You could tell he was a reader.

I decided I was gonna bump into him. Not dead-on, just give him some shoulder. So I do. Caught him with the shoulder, knocked him off kilter a bit.

 He turned to see whodunnit, and I'm standing there- and he didn't say shit. Not a word. Just turned back around and kept going. Stopped him from bad-mouthing the other guy for about three seconds. But then he was back on him.

So I start walking again, and I'm laughing about it. Walking and giggling. Didn't notice until I was practically home- I had lost the fucking parrot. It could only have happened when I bumped into that dude.

Karma, I guess. Shouldn't have done that, so I didn't get to keep my new pet. If I could go back, I would do it differently. I felt kinda cool for about thirty seconds. The parrot would've lasted a lot longer than that. Definitely wasn't worth losing that bird.

At Both Ends

Kim baked brownies. My friends sang happy birthday to me. I wished to make it to seventy. Then I tried to blow out the candle- but I didn't get it on the first go.

Guess seventy isn't gonna happen. That's okay. Fifty would be nice.

Supernaut

"We sold our sole for rock n' roll."

Through and Through

There's this quote that I really enjoy, from John Waters. I've told most everyone I know, but I wanted to type it out anyway. Set in in visual stone.

He says, "If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em!"

Houston is a cruel and crazy town on a filthy river in East Texas with no zoning laws and a culture of sex, money and violence. It's a shabby sprawling metropolis ruled by brazen women, crooked cops and super-rich pansexual cowboys who live by the code of the West- which can mean just about anything you need it to mean, in a pinch.

-HST 

"Contrary to what I'd expected, my father did not gloat and my mother did not yell. They were too worried. Both their boys were way off the playground, and nothing they had done had fixed things. After a while, Dad slapped his knees and said we ought to hit the road. He led the way with my suitcase, while mom trailed a step behind. At the bottom of the front steps, Dad suddenly dropped my luggage, turned around, and grabbed Mom by the arms. Because she was still on the steps, they stood at eye level, looking at each other intently. Then they began to shake their heads and cry. My mother sank into my father and they kissed for what seemed a very long time. I had thought that Millie and Nathan Berg hated each other."

When I read that paragraph for the first time, it jogged a memory. I probably re-read it eight or ten times that night, sometimes reading it and other times not really seeing it because I was focusing on that memory. 

Life has, for me, and so far- been impossibly fair. The mercies heaped upon me and mine- too numerous to mention. I'll try one day. 

  But there has been a time or two when, while performing some action, in some place, I've had some thoughts- and among them:

What's happening right now is very big.

My doing this is going to change things. 

These changes may be for the better, or they may not. 

After this, things will never be able to go back to the way they were.

I have to be okay with that, or I'm not gonna make it.

One viewer- A Mr. Dionne from California, who likely didn't consider himself part of the "lower strata"- fired off an angry, rambling letter, complaining haughtily that 'the most disciplined attention I could give [The Cube] was a belch from the grave of Marcus Aurelius, occasioned, I might add, by the dead weight of its own dust caving in on itself.'

 Two weeks later came Jim's one-sentence response:

           Dear Mr. Dionne:

                    What the fuck are you talking about?

                                                      Yours truly, 

                                                                   JIM HENSON

 

Inferno

Kara is Cory Van Loozen's sister. Krystal bit Kara, back in the day. Only person that dog ever bit. I was maybe 5 or 6 at the time, and instead of being mad at the dog, I was very much wondering what Kara must have done. Like, "I thought you were an okay person, but fuck...Krystal bit you. What aren't you telling us?"

Remember in Death Becomes Her, when Meryl Streep falls down the stairs? She snaps her neck. Of course, she didn't die. So her head was on backwards. She just gripped it firm, gave it a twist, and that bitch was on straight again. Oh, and she had several vertebrae jutting out of her fucking neck. It was pretty gnarly, and I remember, the first time I saw it, I was eating. And then I stopped eating.

The whole just close your eyes thing? Never worked for me. Like, the first time I watched Stephen King's IT. Of course I closed my eyes when the clown went aggro in the storm drain and ripped off Georgie's arm. But that didn't do shit! It was like my eyelids were made of saran wrap. I could feel myself employing the  muscles requisite to close my eyes- but I still saw everything on that fucking TV screen. Kyle and I have talked about this phenomenon. Point is, if there were snakes in her hair, I'd have been turned to stone.

I only played one year of high school basketball. The games were nerve-wracking. I don't think I ever really enjoyed a game, because I was so fucking nervous.

Practices were different. Not nerve-wracking. Intense, though. One drill the coaches made us do was to pile onto a loose ball. Not onto every loose ball, just the ones the coaches decided. The way it would work was, someone would lose control of the ball, it would end up skidding away, and then one of the coaches would lay on his whistle, screaming, "LOOSE BALL, LOOSE BALL! PILE ON THE LOOSE BALL!"

At that, every single player had to throw themselves on top of the ball. Hunt it down, and throw yourself onto it. There were, at any given time, at least twenty-five dudes at practice. Of course, after three players threw themselves onto it, the ball was covered. Shit, after two. Didn't matter. Every single player had to get there and become a part of the pile by legitimately leaving one's feet. It was intense, chaotic, and painful. If you were nearest to the ball when that whistle was blown...shit.

Dragged your feet, pretended you didn't know where it was, pretended you were deaf- you did something to delay your arrival to that fucking piece of sports equipment.  Because if you were on the bottom of that very, very large pile...well. Shitty fucking day.

"Sexy is in the eyes." Rod Stewart said that. There are, honestly, very few statements that I am in such complete and total agreement with. Doesn't have anything to do with this image but whatever fuck you I haven't run into many cloaked figures in my life I'm sorry for saying fuck you it's a defense mechanism.

Back in the day Mr. Jones, my Orchestra teacher, was bitten by a bat. One afternoon me and Kyle and Trent and Kim and Megan and Matt and probably some other tightbros were hanging out in his office and he was dropping some life-wisdoms on us, as he was both wont and apt to do.

I remember he looked at me and said, "Kevin, if you're ever bitten by a rabid bat... just call it a life. Just throw up your hands and walk away. Because the medicines and treatments that I've had to put up with as a result of this thing have been absolute hell. Just pure hell. Don't know that it's been worth it. I have never been so uncomfortable, my body has never been so out of whack and just constantly and physically sick, in all of my life. It's just been too terrible for words."

Prior to that incident, Mr. Jones had been shot in the shoulder by a gang-initiate after pulling over his vehicle in an attempt to render what he thought was some very needed aid.

Years after the bat-bite, Mr. Jones would be in an incredibly serious car accident, getting hit by a woman who ran a stop sign. He was placed in intensive care, and then a body cast. She did not survive.

Yesterday Kim told me that he was recently bitten by a venomous snake.

Christ, Mother Nature, Sacred Spirits, someone- give the cat a break. He is running out of lives.

I have to say,  Judas got a pretty raw deal. Chewed upon, gnashed upon, torn to pieces and eternally and unending-ly consumed, forever and ever, by one of the three mouths of Lucifer himself? Shit.


So...we have free will. But of the things we do, the thoughts we think, the sins committed, the good deeds done, and the life led- the Lord knows all. We are free to choose, but whatever we choose, the Lord knew that it would be so. Omnipotent and omnipresent. God was, is, and remains... very unsurprised.

A question is asked- you contemplate the answer. As is your right. You are free to answer YES or NO, but understand that God knew the way in which you would answer before you were ever born. Before your mother was ever born. Before the mother of your mother's mother was ever born.

In the garden, Christ asked that the cup be passed from him, if it could be. But it couldn't, because that was not the deal! The deal was, he had to die for our sins. But if he had to be betrayed, and he did!, then  someone had to betray him. Just as he needed to die that the covenant be fulfilled and we be forgiven, SOMEBODY HAD TO GIVE HIM UP. 

"Woe to the man who betrays the son of God. It would have been better that he was never born."

Bullshit! Flashy words. Judas could no more refrain from betrayal than Christ could from being crucified. It was foretold that one among them would betray the son of God, so it absolutely had to happen. Had it not, God would have been proven to be fallible, which I can only assume would have led to the speedy (and utter) unraveling of all existence. If not Judas, then someone else. Point is, it had to be someone. 

He didn't, but I could see it being argued- that he jumped on that grenade because it just had to be done. Judas was, cosmically speaking, following orders. I don't know if it's supposed to be called predestination, or not- but then, I don't know what else to call it.

 And yeah, he got paid. And then he killed himself.

Fuuuuuuuck. No comment.

A longer ladder still is to be climbed;

it's not enough to have left them behind;

if you have understood, now profit from it. 

Goddammit! Who Flashed The 'Scared Expression'?!

The subtitles are distracting. But in the other vid, the audio was way the fuck off. And I just don't play that shit.

When They Rolled Away The Stone

Caught him Live. Cross it off the list. Cross it off the fucking list!