Member: ChrisSick

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FEBRUARY 15, 2012 @ 09:59 PM | 2 COMMENTS


So, what kind of day has it been?*

Take the guitar player for a ride
He's never once been satisfied
Thinks he owes some kinda debt
It'll take him years to get over it

When you feel so green
Turn to your movie scene
And you won't know what I mean
But you don't know where I been
--Peter Laughner, "Amphetamine"



I. On the Subject of Long Overdue Updates

SPOILERS! (Click to view)
I'm thirty-one.

The number has a numbing effect in its own right. Thirty was an exciting number, a seeming achievement given the manner in which I lived my teens and twenties (see: here, also: here). Thirty-one feels less, in some deeply existential way I haven't puzzled out entirely yet.

A representative conversation:

Dustin Jude: (Speaking loudly, over the bar din) Drinks are on me tonight.
Sick: (Also speaking loudly and sarcastically) Well hooray.
Dustin Jude: Don't worry about it. It's your birthday. What're you having?
Sick: Ginger ale. Or Sprite. You?
Dustin Jude: Seltzer with lime.
Sick: Oh, fuck me. You're not going to be one of those alcoholics are you? Drinking seltzer in a bar so no one knows you're sober?
Dustin Jude: Actually, I really like seltzer water. I like the taste of it.
Sick: (With a small amount of venom, aiming at playful) Bullshit. No one likes the taste of seltzer walter.
Dustin Jude: (Subtly changing gears and hoping I wouldn't notice**) So how is turning thirty-one? I've been thinking about trying it sometime. Any different?
(Both laugh)
Sick: Yeah, actually.
Dustin Jude: Really?
Sick: Yeah. It was really largely meaningless. I got up, I went to class, I came home did some work, went to the mentoring session. Y'know, it was just another day.
Dustin Jude: No big deal.
Sick: Yeah, people were asking me what I was doing for my birthday, like I have the time or energy to do something above and beyond what I'm already doing.
Dustin Jude: Yeah.
Sick: So, y'know, you might want to hold off on it, don't rush into it. That's all I'm really saying.



Which about sums it up. If not very succulently or even coherently. One day I was thirty, I did a bunch of things that I do every single day of every single week. I went to bed, the next day I was thirty-one, and I did all the things I do on that day every week and felt more or less exactly the same as I did every other week while doing those things. But the number lingers in my head. Like there's a hidden message to it, something lurking within the curvatures of its digits. But there probably isn't and I'm just thinking on it too hard. Thirty-one isn't all that different from thirty, which was different from twenty-nine, but because external changes forced internal changes, and my life was radically altered in many--almost overwhelmingly positive--ways. And twenty-nine was different from twenty-eight because I wasn't passing out in a drunken stupor in anymore surrounded by burnt-black heroin spoons. Thirty-two will be different and it will be the same. I'm largely all right with that. Forty-nine will probably be largely the same, with more morning smoker's cough and less hair. Which, okay, I can live with that.

Getting old(er) isn't anything like what I thought it would be when I was young(er). It's largely been enjoyable and fascinating. For the most part its been a process of pushing the corners of what my brain can think and process out further and further and knowing things with an ever increasing level of certainty, limited only by the only really intelligent thing I know with any certainty: there's always something new I can learn. The most enjoyable thing about aging? The increasing ease with which my abilities can achieve the demands of my ego coupled with the increasing reasonableness and self-control exhibited by that ego.

It's quite nice, all told.



II. Long Overdue Details to Long Overdue Updates

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

Work, work, work, work, work, work. Hello boys, have a good night's rest? I missed you.
--Mel Brooks as The Gov, Blazing Saddles



Work:
I am still working. Still trading precious labor resources for seemingly inadequate wage-monies. Ah, market forces. More on this later. But in the meantime, the salient details are this: I was out of work for an entire month. Then I was rehired in a new capacity at reduced hours. My new job is managing a small, suburban business improvement district . One of those not-quite-but-almost Rust Belt, blue collar towns, with a quaint downtown shopping district dying on the vine, white kids playing with heroin, and police arresting black teenagers for vandalism that gets labeled as harmless fun when the white kids (on heroin) do it. Pretty common sort of place in my working experience, although the local politics of the joint are shockingly brutal and petty, even by small-town/small-mind standards.

But the experience has been, overall, fantastic. Tonight I'm working late into the night on the first major event, which I pretty much put together from nothing. New experiences this week include manipulating news coverage and placing large ad buys. Which is surprisingly easy. Had I known I would've started sooner.

Things that are not Work:
With extra hours on hand (and the complementary less money such hours provide) I decided to go back to school. Thinking--obviously--it would be like that fantastic eighties comedy starring Rodney Dangerfield. What was it called? Caddyshack. Instead it's been like that horrible eighties comedy starring Rodney Dangerfield called Back to School. I keep calling Kurt Vonnegut's people to see if he's willing to make a guest-starring appearance in my life, but they haven't gotten back to me. Possibly because he is dead.

Actually, school's been fantastic. I link and quote Atlantic senior editor Ta-Neishi Coates a lot, mainly because in the dying days of my wilderness years, when the best my ravaged brain could summon was the intellectual capacity to acquire more whiskey and the barest vitamins necessary to keep from lapsing into a vegetative state (typically found in bar nachos) he was one of the few places I still found intellectual stimulation. But also, and more seriously, because the guy is just a drop-dead beautiful wordsmith, and rarely a week goes by that he doesn't put some emotion or thought I've been struggling to vocalize into just pitch-perfect summation. Relevant example:

There are many rewards along the autodidact's road -- but those who hail from a certain socio-economic background often find themselves without fellow travelers and respected interlocutors. My Pops often says that one of the best things about the Black Panthers was that it was the first time in his life he'd been surrounded by thinking, literate, politically-minded young people.



I didn't come from the soci-economic background Coates is referring to there, and would be lying if I tried to front that I was struggling towards intellectualism in a household or cultural milieu (middle class suburban white) that didn't foster and encourage it. But at the same time, my intellectualism turned to bitter cynicism early on, and I purposefully left behind those homes and that culture to explore--at varying points--homelessness, violence, criminality, substance abuse, and a modest working class existence. I acquired enough knowledge for it be dangerous and rejected concepts of actual knowledge or truths, and went out looking for--at first--radically different lives and lifestyles to what I had been raised in, and when those proved ultimately unappealing, easy shortcuts to rewards that mainstream society offered without having to put in the work.

And all those journeys and seeking mostly led me to depressing dive bars and dope spots filled with people mostly exactly like me: barroom philosophers and addict autodidacts. Which should, and are (at least by me), to be respected. Nothing gets me interested like listening to the sixty year old x-junkie tending bar expound on why Gabriel Garcia Marquez*** wrote the best novel of the 20th century. But, sadly, that doesn't confer much. It doesn't open doors to jobs populated by people like that, or let you put something on your resume that commands a 5 to 10% bump in salary, or even really give you the knowledge and deeper understanding that just reading Marquez's work on your own. Which isn't to say it has no value. It's just to say that there are other ways to achieve that value that confer their own rewards with it as well.

All of which is the long way around the barn to saying: I was a remarkably arrogant teenager and young adult. I rejected the notion that society had anything to teach me and embraced nihilism. When nihilism didn't accomplish anything lasting, I rejected that and embraced, in essence, goals and plans predicated on the notion that I was inherently smarter and therefore better than every one else and that I could uncover some heretofore unknown path to success or riches or something that would make me happy. When none of the worked I chucked most of what I was doing, started doing things different and saw that not only is there always something remarkable and new and exciting to learn, but that the learning of it is a reward in and of itself, regardless of what status, wealth, or access it eventually grants you.

All of which is an only slightly shorter, but still quite long way of saying: I'm enjoying higher education immensely. I achieved a 4.0 my first semester, and have been recommended for the school's honors program, in addition to picking up some (minor) awards for my fiction writing. I could fall back on cynicism and dismiss these achievements by citing the fact that it's just a small city college, and that in the academic (and professional) world it might not amount to much, but it's a start and it does matter. It matters to me.

And if this sounds vain or self-serving, or meglomanical, or--yes, still, probably always--arrogant. Well. Fuck you. Because it wasn't until I was sitting here typing it that I fully realized many of these things about my own life. So this--at least this section, here--isn't so much a blog as it is my own belated birthday present to myself. If you enjoyed reading it, well, so much the better. I remain an arrogant adult, inclined to giving myself late birthday presents that serve as reminders of how fantastic my life actually is. Lest I forgot.

Now, moving on.



III. The Ongoing Adventures in the Sick + Hatefuck Romance

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

You seen my black boots
in leather?
The point of their toe
could pierce your flesh.

Oh yes,
I'm really so young
Yes, I'm really so young
So young and so cruel.
--The Deadly Snakes, So Young + So Cruel




(Sick + Hatefuck being classy and mysterious, somewhere in downtown Pittsburgh, New Year's Eve 2011)

It's been almost a year since this thing started. On church steps and in church basements (at a Jonathan Richman show, actually), and various other places. Circling each other like sharks swimming through blood-red water****. In the nine + 1/2 months of it there's been long talks in the dark and tears and raised voices (for various reasons) and cute nicknames and funny (to us) in-jokes and all the things that happen in good relationships and some of the things that happen in bad relationships, but mostly there's just been a lot of time spent holding each other and feeling something resembling contentedness.

This is probably the closest I've ever come to an actual adult relationship.

I've been in bad relationships, and I've been in bad relationships that--often through sheer desire and godawful will--have been forced into vaguely resembling working relationships until they finally exploded in a horrorshow of hurt feelings and recriminations. I've done really horrible, fucked-up things to people I love. Not past tense. People that I still love to this day, that I think of and smile, even through the terrible things that came between us, because I've been lucky enough in my life to meet an incredibly broad variety of people and, in the grand scheme of things, lost very few of them for any reason. The ones that I've lost through my own general ineptitude at being human, I can at least be happy about the fact that--jesus--they exist in a world full of amazing and interesting and fascinating humans that, on the whole, make the world a better place for having them in it*****.

And Hatefuck is one of those people. With the added benefit of always being able to make me smile and laugh and having eyes (not pictured) that I can just lose myself entirely in. And there's awful shit, too, and moments when I want to scream at her over something she's done that makes me angry (and times I have), and times I want to just be left alone because she's hurt me and I know all the same things are true for her, as well. But most times, more often than not, she makes me unbelievably happy.

I think the trick of it (And really, sorry if the existential self-exploration leading to deep realization is grating by now, but I kinda don't give a fuck. I am old[er], and prone to self-reflection regardless of age. Also? Get off my lawn.) is that I long thought good relationships were effortless, in the sense that the lack of work required was what made them good. I was relatively convinced that a good enough mate meant synchronicity to a degree that precluded arguments and fears and scars all running into one another and triggering deep-seated paranoias and panics. Which, I suppose, can and does happen. Mainly to white middle-class people who marry the first person they fuck before they get all scarred up by living life and they die in their seventies ranch home after a lifetime lived in off-white and beige tones having boring missionary sex every other Friday night after ABC's family hour sitcoms go off and before their kids start to resent them or after they get home before curfew.

What do I know?

My point is, at least for me, this isn't true. Relationships require work and patience and actually being committed to the person you're with and putting in the effort to stay with them. Which is probably something you figured out a long time ago, but I better late then never, right?

And that's where her and I are. And it's glorious.

And at the end of the summer Hatefuck is (most likely) relocating to the west coast to attend law school in San Francisco, the city that makes her happier than this city.

And I, well, I'm not.

Maybe more on this later, but it doesn't warrant dwelling on these days. Just know that most of the time, The Sick + Hatefuck Romanace feels a lot like this:



And every night is another great one night stand. And it looks like nothing like LA. So, really, win/win.



IV. Miscellanea

SPOILERS! (Click to view)
On Blogging:
I never blog here anymore, but when I do, I try to make it worthwhile. My last meaningful update was almost a year ago. And I notice this in the people on my friends list and on any other blogs I happen to stumble to. There doesn't seem much use in concentrating updates into long, time-sucking posts when you can just constantly update the MySG stream. Or Facebook, or Twitter, or whatever the newer, better, shiner thing is.

But--in case you haven't seen me say it one of the hundreds of times I have on blogs or boards--I use these forums as a place to give shape to thoughts. I think aloud a lot. I try not to do it in too declarative a tone of voice. I often want to append a warning to my postings or comments: thoughts subject to constant revision.

So, for me, there's value in doing these long form, segmented, annotated blogs. I hope there's value or interest, or hell, something, anything, to be found in reading them. I probably won't stop if there isn't, but knowing there is makes it easier to write one whenever I have the time.

Which thus far has been about once ever ten months. Maybe I can get better at that.

On Consumption of Culture:
Reading has gone all to hell. Mostly it's comic books and news when it isn't textbooks and readers. Some standout stuff:

Checkmate v.2 by Greg Rucka (hat-tip to motorfirebox)
How to Archer by the writing staff of Archer (convinced this is the funniest show on television, which i never watch, so the hell do I know anyway?)
Read some Flannery O'Conner and James Baldwin for a class, which was nice, like meeting old friends in an unexpected place.

And--hey!--speaking of James Baldwin, were you aware that you can download filmed debates from the Cambridge Union Hall for free from UC Berkley? Here's the Baldwin/Buckley debate. I don't want to ruin the ending for you, but, uh... William F. Buckley was a pretty big asshole. Also James Baldwin fucking amazes me and sort of makes me wish I was his type. And that he were mine, by which I mean living. Maybe I can get him and Kurt Vonnegut together.



Seriously. Don't you want to just give him a kiss after watching that? And a highball? He deserves it.

Because of the aforementioned Checkmate and the aforementioned motorfirebox, I've been watching The Sandbaggers pretty religiously lately. Sandbaggers, anyone? Yes/no? If you like spy fiction and complex plots driven through well-written and paced dialogue and action, then I highly recommend it.

Nothing to recommend music-wise. Going to see The Magnetic Fields with Hatefuck in a six or eight weeks or something like that. It was actually a sort of combined Valentine's Day/Birthday present to her. Which made her smile. So there's that.

Also going to see Jesse Michael's (OPIV/Big-Rig/Common Rider) new band, Classics of Love in a few weeks. We'll see how that goes, I'm not wild about everything I've heard thus far, but what I did like I'm pretty enamored with.

This feels kinda useless. As though anyone's going to go watch the Sandbaggers cause I said so. But, y'know, hope springs eternal.

In Closing:
Its 1AM****** and Principals of Macroeconomics starts early and I am tired and have to return reporters' phone calls. Why are you still on my lawn?

No, but seriously, how're y'all doing?



V. The Annotated Chris Sick

SPOILERS! (Click to view)
*Consider this something of a companion piece to this.
**I noticed.
***This is actually drawn from multiple interactions I had with a local bartender over the last year of my drinking, in my favorite dive bar in the city, two blocks from my house. It is, sadly, closing. Soon to be replaced by a high-end concept restaurant. It all makes me very sad and, while I rarely--if ever, miss being drunk or drinking, I miss spending hours in that place, talking to the staff, learning from them, hearing their stories, and generally being allowed into their lives. I still consider a lot of the staff friends, as they do me, and try to find time whenever I can to hang out and listen to them ramble drunkenly, this time able to remember it and enjoy it without worrying about making last call.
****I also considered writing "sexy chum". But there's only so far you can take a metaphor. This one was a short trip from almost-poetic to disgusting.
*****Mostly this descriptor applies to the people on my friends' list as well, just so's y'all know.
******A bald-faced lie. It was 12:59AM when I first posted. Then came edits. Then came additional text. Which required further edits. It's 1:38AM and I think I got rid of the most glaringly embarrassing stuff, the it's/its and your/you're mistakes. The rest? Well fuck it. Just take my word for it, I'm actually quite good at writing despite these hideous mistakes I occasionally make.

DECEMBER 4, 2011 @ 05:59 PM | 14 COMMENTS


[placeholder].

OTIS.

RESPECT.



That is all.

Hope you're having a good holiday season, SGians.

[/placeholder].
OCTOBER 14, 2011 @ 09:39 PM | NO COMMENTS


I'm down for runnin' up on them crackers in they city hall.
--Dead Prez, Hip-Hop



work, school, sleep, work, school, sex, work, school, sleep, sex, work, school, sex instead of sleep, getting backstabbed by greedheaded wardheelers, work, school, work, school, fucking my political enemies in their lungs with long knives, work, school, sleep, reading China Meiville's Embassytown, sleep, work, sex, school, The Aggrolites @ Union Transfer, sleep, work, trying to find time to write (for things other than work/school), sex, sleep, sleep, sleep, making up missed school/work, making up for missed sex, deep thoughts on Occupy & the Tea Party, shallow thoughts of sex (at work), sleep, school, work, poetry, spending time at Occupy Philadelphia, listening to lots of conscious hip-hop.

That should bring everyone up to speed.

Things for you!

Some Aggrolites, they make everyone feel good:

There's something that's vaguely comforting to me about a postmodern reggae band made up of three Mexican dudes, two white guys, and a fourteen year old drummer covering The Beatles.

Some Dead Prez A capella:

Because, y'know, you should listen to Dead Prez if you're not, yet.

For good measure, some added Lowkey:

I don't agree with everything he says, but I enjoy the direction of his thoughts. I spend unhealthy amounts of time thinking about what's more important/effective to affect change: the revolutionaries who refuse to accept half-measures and compromise, but in doing so radically shift the Overton Window closer to their preferred policies/views or the moderates who do the actual work of accepting small victories and pushing string up (what often appears to be an insurmountable) mountain. The truth is, most likely, that they're complimentary to one another, not competitive. We need our revolutionaries. We need our bomb-throwers and shit-starters. We also need people who are willing to be pragmatic, moderate, and willing to compromise. Think of Malcolm X and MLK-- it isn't that one accomplished more than the other, its that what each accomplished was dramatically different, and accomplished through dramatically different means. This is worth thinking on more.

Just posted this to Facebook:

‎"We're deathly afraid of that stabbing word 'pretentious,' the word that students use to curse each other's ambition. It's a young person's word, a shortcut-to-thinking word. I'm a big fan of pretension. It means "an aspiration or intention that may or may not reach fulfillment." It doesn't mean failing upward. It means trying to exceed your grasp. Which is how things grow." --Warren Ellis.

I've been thinking about this all week as I struggle with concepts and actions that are entirely new to me. I'm not failing upwards. I'm expanding.



There are many things I strongly dislike about Warren Ellis (and, frankly, based on my personal interactions with him, many things to dislike). But he couldn't be more dead-on with that.

So that is what I will leave you with.

Real update (possibly) soon (ish). How are all of you, my dear internet friends?

MAY 9, 2011 @ 11:15 AM | 15 COMMENTS


Well, don't have no money cause I don't have a job
don't have a job cause I ain't got no skills
ain't got no skills 'cause I was not trained
I was not trained 'cause I didn't go to school.
Didn't go to school 'cause nobody told me
nobody told me 'cause nobody knew shit
nobody knew shit 'cause nobody knows nothing
nobody knows nothing and that's just it.
--The Hives, Square One Here I Come



Blogging, Blogging, Blogging.***

I. My Future Career in Terrorism and Science Crime

SPOILERS! (Click to view)
So, end of the month, I'm out of a job. If you don't know what I do for a living, don't sweat it. Most days I'm not entirely sure, really. Moreover, I spent a significant amount of time and energy creating safe places and shell personalities for myself on the internet. Compartmentalization, as James Ellroy would say. The goal was always to immanentize my own personal eschaton, which is a fancy way of saying that Chris Sick was always more about figuring out who I wanted to be and trying to go and be that. Which didn't leave much space on the wide, wild Internets to be who I actually have to be forty hours a week to continue eating and having a roof over my head. For better and for worse, the last few years has seen quite a bit of bleed-through on both ends.

None of which answers the original question, which is, of course, the goal. I work in the field of urban redevelopment, a statement that tends to illicit either rapt fascination or utter boredom in whomever I tell it to. I am-- at least until June first-- on the private side of the equation, working for a private consulting firm that hires out to various government departments, agencies, and quasi-public/private partnerships (cf: business/special improvement districts, Main Street organizations, and Community Development Corporations). This private consulting firm is something of a family business, founded by my father, his wife, and his best friend of twenty-some years (nearly my entire life), it employes but three people, myself, my younger brother, and the son of the only partner I'm not related to.

The best way to characterize us is a scrappy little upstart, began in my father's basement, and originally employing me more out of a consideration of who can be trusted to work in their living room than any innate talent, experience, or education relating to the field. I've done this-- with some minor interruptions thanks to True Love, California, and heroin-- for about five years. Which is just an amazing number to me, still, despite it accounting for roughly only a sixth of my life. It feels like forever, and I was totally unprepared to countenance it ever ending. On some level, despite the signs, some part of my had the blind faith that only a son can have for their father, I was always sure he would pull us through.

But, the reality is that when your entire business model is built on government-funded economic development, a Republican executive in the capital who promises to hold down taxes and balance a wildly-in-the-red budget doesn't bode well for your bottom line. Gov. Christie has eliminated one of our primary source of clients (the New Jersey Urban Enterprise Zone) and the statehouse is eying the other (Business Improvement Districts) for elimination. We had been on the path to branching out, picking up a major client in New York City, and although they assured us (just last week, in fact) that they intend to put out another bid for the program we've been running for them-- this is par for the course, even though we designed and implemented the program, they have to rebid it every fiscal-- their budget is facing a 60% reduction in funding, which means the chance to build on it is minimal.

Which all adds up to Chris Sick without work. Which for some reason makes me start humming Elvis Costello's "American Without Tears". There's a host of different moves I can make, most likely if I land anywhere it'll either be on the public side or back at the firm once they've scaled back costs and signed up new clients. It might be rough going, I'm dangerously under-credentialed in a field that loves nothing more than theorists. I'll be going up for part-time gigs paying $22k/yr against people with advanced doctorate degrees in urban planning, economics, and sociology*. Me? I never graduated college. There's some silver lining, however, I have a lot of real world experience and among my references will be the executive director of the country's oldest Community Development Corporation, which was founded in part, through the efforts of then-Senator Robert F. Kennedy. And I'll be sitting in on some high level meetings this month between the partners of my firm and a few big wheels at the Philadelphia Department of Commerce (which is the organizing department of Philly's economic redevelopment efforts). So, hope springs eternal, y'know?

Of course, in the meantime I have fall-backs layered upon redoubts. For those of you who have yet to meet me personally, I'm a pretty big guy, and I figure when all else fails, I'd have a frighteningly successful career in some type of petty crime and minor felonies, politically-motivated terrorism, or pulp-style science crime. After working in this shithole of an industry for half-a-decade, I'm not going to start being choosy about my source of income now.



II. Don't Go Home With Your Hard-On

SPOILERS! (Click to view)
We were sitting on the steps of a church. The whole thing had all been so seventh grade, but I didn't care. Earlier, when she put down her money for the bill and then ran up the street like lightening because she didn't want to be around [REDACTED] and the other girls, I thought she was gone and the moment was lost, but of course it wasn't. It was always there, and the only way it was out of reach was because I never know what's going on until it's on, or rather, until right before it happens anyway. But it was definitely on. Thinking about it, it was probably on the minute I tapped "post" on the Missed Connection, sure she would never read it, or-- if she somehow stumbled onto it-- she wouldn't ever put two and two together. Stupid, really, I couldn't have signed it any clearer without putting my full name, address, and phone number on it. It's been a little over a week, and I'm still getting emails. Sad-eyed craigslistgirls, chipped teeth and all-- hoping against hope that I'm the man they meet on the train, or in line for coffee posting sweet nothings to the dark internet, just for them. But I'm not. They were just for her.

And she called me on it. And Friday we were in a church kitchen while I found myself improbably washing out a coffee maker just before midnight and-- she would tell me later-- she felt like melting into the floor. Afraid of what? My heart's always on my sleeve, anyway, but I had taken the further step, taken it off my sleeve, laid it at her feet. "I'm seeing someone**" she told me. And later-- back on the church steps, after we spent the better part of our Saturday together, disguising our desire with other people floating in and out of focus-- we both knew that never mattered. The conversation died away, like it does when it's between two people who are slowly getting more and more comfortable around each other. And we sat there like seventh grade, just looking at each others' faces, trying to read the moment. Her hand was on her knee, I put mine over it, around it, and held it for a few seconds, both of us looking at it then each other. Then we kissed. Totally seventh grade.

(...)

Later, together in the dark, in my bed, wrapped up in darkness and blankets and cigarette smoke and each other, I told her about Bucky Sinister and Dorthy Allison and what I've been thinking about all week. Thinking about their stories of love and fear, of being alone in the dark, of lovers' fingers tracing the scars on your skin, or the ones underneath it. Of feeling totally vulnerable to someone, of opening up your head, your heart, your body, your bed to someone and then sure that the moment is coming when they'll reject you. When they'll see through all your tough poses and I-could-give-a-fuck faces to the broken inside of you. And find it wanting, lacking, not enough, never enough. And I fingered the scars on my knuckles, exhaling my voice around Lucky Strike smoke hoping she understood what I was saying. Hoping I understood what I was saying.

We were scared because there was something wrong with us and we didn't know what

(...)

I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us.
--Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son



She kissed me and said she understood, and then we slept, comfortably wrapped up in one another.



III. Just When I Thought I Was Out They Pull Me Back In

SPOILERS! (Click to view)
I really should stop treating The Dirtbombs' "I'm Through With White Girls" like a guide to life of some kind, since no matter how often it seems true, it never-ever-ever really is.

It's impossible to understand everything. Life isn't long enough to enjoy and understand all at the same time. You have to decide which is more important.
--Pedro Juan, The Dirty Havana Trilogy



IV. Morning In America

SPOILERS! (Click to view)
Is the name of a blog I've been thinking about starting for the longest time. One of these upcoming days of funemployment, I might even do it. The basic premise is that on any given day in American Politics, there's something ridiculous worth pointing out, mocking, and discussing. Today's would probably have something to do with the on-going debt ceiling debate, and the complete insanity of it (detailed at the link). I should probably get on that, the reality is I'm just utterly exhausted.

My last foray into political affray ended when the "libertarian" I had spent the better part of a week arguing with about light bulb legislation (specifically, how it doesn't constitute "tyranny", no, seriously) stated that he felt that the LGBT community would be better served in their quest for equal marriage rights by just chilling out, and letting public opinion catch up with them in another ten or twenty years, since securing and defending their rights in courts, which, y'know, are what the courts exist for, just engenders ill-will towards their cause, whereas long term trends favor their acceptance and eventual inclusion.

This is the stated belief of a man who thinks that government interference in his selection of light bulbs constitutes a rank injustice and is just another example of our slide towards tyranny. Seriously. How the holy fuck do you engage with someone who can profess and-- evidently-- believe such strange things?

My plan? Mostly by being snide about them on the internet. Anyone who reads this be interested in reading something like that?

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
--H.L. Mencken, A Little Book in C major



V. Status

SPOILERS! (Click to view)
For the moment, still employed. I started a book club, and mostly reached out to other people in, ahem, cough, AA. Oddly enough, after creating the Facebook event page, the first response I got was from my old bartender. We just finished Song of Solomon which I choose because it seemed downright criminal that I had never read Toni Morrison. Next up? Clockers by Richard Price, who remains one of mine-- and apparently our President's-- favorite modern authors. After that I'll be forced to open it up to the democracy of the group, which is evenly split between people who want to read about nothing but crack rocks, horrorshows, and virgin murders, and refugees from Oprah's Book Club who are still stinging from reading ten pages of Cormac McCarthy on her recommendation. Leadership is clearly called for. Personally, I've been enjoying, in so much as one can, Dorthy Allison's Trash, and slowly working my way into Keynes' General Theory on Employment, Interest, and Money. Hands down the best book I've read this year has been Camden After the Fall: Decline and Renewal In a Post-Industrial City. Important for two reasons: one it's pretty clearly directly in my wheelhouse, and two, I grew up hearing the horror stories and seeing the White Fear of this City, while reading year-after-year about it being the murder capitol of the US. The story of how it transformed from an industrial powerhouse and engine of economic mobility and source of social capital*** for minorities and immigrants into the lost hope it is today is utterly heartbreak, but required if you really expect to have any understanding of, and eventual engagement of these problems. Other than that I've stolen snatches of Jim Carroll poetry here and there, as well as short fiction by JG Ballard, did a quick (1-day) rereading of Jesus' Son and was relieved to discover it left me with no desire to drink or use, and I'm oddly excited about having some free time to do proper reading this summer, even if it comes at the cost of food.

Music has been good to me, and continues to salve, if not specifically save my soul. Since the first of the year, I've seen The Kills, The Ravonettes, Johnathan Richman (this may actually have been last year, and serves as the very beginning of the Sick + Hatefuck romance), Haley (a friend's band that has a little notoriety), and a handful of other acts I can't be bothered to look-up. I've been listening to a lot of hip-hop, mainly the Blakroc album that combines the Black Keys with a ton of hip-hop stars. Personally, I'd recommend the video for "What You Do To Me". I could watch Billy Danze rap for days, for reals. I've also been listening to Pharaoh Monch's deleted first release "Internal Affairs". There's been a lot of Wu-Tang mixed in there, as well as some White Folk music, specifically the Reigning Sound's Love and Curses from '09, and both Chain and the Gang albums, because one can never have enough communist garage rock.

I've also been reading and rereading a lot of comics. New stuff has mostly been Johnathan Hickman, which has been very hit or miss, but I have to love it for the stylistic flourishes if nothing else, see: Nightly News for what I'm talking about. As for blasts from the past, I've been laughing myself to sleep reading Howard Chaykin's American Flagg!. Highly recommended if you have a sick sense of humor and any living memory of the eighties.



VI. Disclaimers

SPOILERS! (Click to view)
*This is actually True Fact, we encountered a woman a few years ago who briefly considered hiring our firm, she was the part-time manager of an Improvement District in Brooklyn, putting her doctorate in economics from the London School of Economics to good use and earning $22,000 a year for her trouble. How do you compete with that? Mostly with gumption, which I have plenty of. I actually stole a sizable portion of my fire in the belly from Harley Barbour, which is why he's not running. You can thank me whenever.

**You know, you say this and you generally get one of two reactions: A, you're a bastard for stealing another man's girlfriend or B, you're an idiot because if she cheated on some dude with you, what makes you think she won't cheat on you.

These are terribly foolish for a number of reasons. Let's deal with "A" first. One, she wasn't some other man's whatever. She's her own person, and I suspect she'd be as offended as me trying to claim some manner of ownership as she would be anyone else doing it. At some point, as the free agent in the equation, it isn't entirely incumbent on me to make her relationship my priority. Add that to the fact that it wasn't an exclusive or committed relationship I was breaking up, just a casual one. Okay, okay, I protest too much, obviously. But this statement from her makes it seems all okay, in my head at least: "I don't feel too horrible about it. He was a nice guy and I didn't want to hurt him, but we weren't exclusive. It wasn't... what I would need for an exclusive, committed relationship. And besides, this [Sick + Hatefuck] was going to happen sooner or later."

"B" By and large, women don't "cheat" on me. In part because I don't like placing strict rules and exclusivity contracts on relationships, adding constraints and labels just gives people something else to chafe against. The other reason? Despite my many (and public) failings, I'm actually pretty awesome to be in a relationship with. For reals.

*** This blog is actually a day or two early. I was going to handle it press release style, giving Suri the exclusive over coffee sometime this week, before typing it up for general consumption. But I had a hole in my schedule and-- quite obviously-- the need to talk in a totally vain and megalomaniacal way. Mostly, I blame y'all. For encouraging this sort of sick and twisted behavior. But, truth told, I love y'all for it. How are you friends? Since there can't possibly be anything left you don't know about me, assuming you've read this far.

JANUARY 30, 2011 @ 03:02 PM | 30 COMMENTS


Thank you for the flowers
I threw them on the fire
And I burned the photographs that you had enclosed
God, they were ugly children.
--Elvis Costello & The Brodsky Quartet, "I Almost Had a Weakness"



Welcome to the Chris Sick Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Blog & Carnival Show.

I. By Popular Demand

SPOILERS! (Click to view)
I am done. Done engaging with those that believe that torturing terror suspect is a moral imperative, but that marginal tax increases on the wealthiest citizens is not only not civic minded governance, but tantamount to financial tyranny. That government spending at a time of flat-lined private investment is somehow criminal. Done debating with those that feel that government mandating increased fuel economy is a drastic overreach, but denying human rights to gays & control of their own bodies to women would bring about the End Times.

I'm so very tired. Tired of those that would assume it is okay to express bitter disappointment in the President for not believing what they would demand all members of the President's ethnicity believe in light of the history of slavery in the US. And while we're on the subject of slavery, I cannot find it in me anymore to summon the strength to explain-- again & at length-- that the Confederate States of America was founded on the principals of white supremacy & chattel slavery. That the economic engine of the South was built on an endless, reusable supply of labor, &-- regardless of the actual number of households which were slaveholders-- slavery was a deeply ingrained way of life in the South. That simply because those who were poor & had little investment in maintaining slavery (& could, potentially benefit from its end) died defending it does not obliviate it as the root cause of the Civil War.

I can no longer find the words to explain, over & over again, that a President raising taxes & legislating to offer better & more affordable access to healthcare for all citizens is less despotic & fundamentally unconstitutional than a President authorizing torture (in the name of protecting myself & my fellow citizens), preemptive warfare, warrentless wiretapping, suspension of the Fourth & Fifth Amendments, & trial of civilians by military tribunal.

I cannot talk to people who believe the No Child Left Behind was acceptable under a white Republican, but that the Department of Education should be defunded & dismantled under a black Democrat. That unions using collective bargaining to secure the best possible benefits for their members are destroying the US' economic base, but corporations that triggered a global economic meltdown through high-risk, zero accountability investment strategies are suffering under too many regulations & too high a tax burden.

I am, quite simply, done. There is virtually always room for debate, value in seeing another perspective, in listening to someone you fundamentally disagree with. But there is no value in engaging in the politics of children. No value in arguing with those who disregard facts that disagree with their worldview (the DoD study on gays in the military), disparage any institution that doesn't reflect their values (Ivy League universities, the Nobel Prize), & denigrates those they disagree with, denouncing them as traitors, criminals, & dangerous. There is no value to be had in debating the merits of a more civil & honest discourse with those whose first reaction to an assassination attempt is to ensure that blame can be safely deflected from them, & given time to reflect, merely search for ways in which to place that blame on their political opponents.

So I am done. Those that want to shout in my face are free to remain, & scream at the walls. Just shut the lights off when you're done, because I'm already out the door.



II. Throwaway Fiction

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

I learned to talk by going to the movies. Which, on the whole, I wouldn't recommend for most people. My parents didn't talk very much. Not to each other, & not to me. The more time I spent outside of their home, the more I realized that speech & language seemed like important skills to develop. So I began to go to the movies.

Understand: My father read a lot of books, & my mother drank wine, smoked cigarettes, & cried. When they did speak to one another they were very quiet, & very, very close. At four I began to plan my escape. At the beginning of every week, my father gave my mother money for her wine & cigarettes. The most difficult part of the plan was figuring out how much I should take. There always seemed to be more than she needed & I knew it wouldn't be missed, but I neither knew how to count nor read, & the sum required for a trip to the movies was in the existential realm when it came to questions.

I stole a dollar, one Monday.

The next, I stole another.

I did this for one year. As such, I had taught myself the basics of counting & mathematics, but that lesson is another story entirely. I was now five years old. While stealing the funds necessary, I had worked out the other angles quite nicely. My father left the house every day at noon. My mother began to smoke cigarettes at two. At four, she began to drink wine. At six she would sleep, at the table where she drank & smoked, until midnight, when my father came home & carried her, silently, to bed. I didn't sleep at all, or, at least, I slept very little.

At six PM on Tuesday, the 27th I prepared to make my escape. The hardest part was not making a sound, but it was a skill I had mastered by age three. Silence was observed reverently in this, my parents' home, & of all the lessons I had learned, it was the earliest. I crept, from room to room, without a sound, & escaped into the early evening, the sun settling on the horizon. I caught a taxi at the corner & was on my way.

The movie was a revelation, a revolution. Silver angels with faces ten feet tall moved their mouthes, & glorious words escaped from shimmering red lips. Gruff men in hats & trenchcoats moved their mouths around cigarettes, & whole worlds slid out with steel blue smoke. I walked seven miles home on short legs with a wide mouth, under dark skies.

My parents divorced two years later. My father died six months after that. My mother quit smoking & never spoke again. I guess it was love. I never spoke one word in our home. But outside, I used my breath to create whole worlds in invisible vibration. I talked as though it was the only way I knew how to breath, & for many years, it was.

To cut a long story short, this is all by way of apology. I learned to talk by going to the movies. It's made me overly dramatic &-- occasionally-- ridiculous. I try not to think about the things my parents left me, but I only ever understood love as just whispered words, impossible to overhear. And for that, I'm sorry, because it can never be enough for you. (theoretically copyrighted Chris Sick, 2011.)



PointBlank is one of those people very careful about posting fiction/copyright material online. I am not. Even if I were, I wouldn't spend more than the twenty minutes it took me to write the above story stressing it.



III. From the Heart

SPOILERS! (Click to view)
I've been well.

How have you been?

It's been a while since I've really talked here at all. So then, two years ago this month, the woman I was engaged to marry (whom I had met through this website) & I formally ended our engagement with lots of collateral destruction & acrimony. In all honesty, while the relationship had many, many problems, the way it ended was entirely my fault, & one of my many sins in our circumstances. For the next eighteen months I basically lost my mind, & went about as far into nihilistic self-destruction as I ever hope to get. Six months ago I decided to stop. I haven't used drugs or alcohol since, & I'm oddly excited to be celebrating my thirtieth birthday in a few days as someone entirely different than I've been for the past ten years.

Some of you might've noticed my bizarre, symbolic name changes over the last few months, & it what it really comes down to was not wanting to be Chris Sick anymore. Being Chris Sick had become a lot of work, & the effort was simply killing me. So I stopped. But recently I realized that, the tricky thing about names is, you can let them define you or you can define them. When I first christened myself Chris Sick, I needed the magic of a new name to define me. But that's kid's stuff, the sort of bluff a small boy not content to be, say, Dick Lester Meyers, needs to make himself into the Richard Hell he always knew he could be. But I'm not a kid anymore, & I'm not going to let a name boss me around. So Chris Sick it is, & it's up to me to see what I can make it.

I debated what, if anything, to say in this kind of forum about what's happening in my life. Of course, in the old days, I never thought twice about talking openly & honestly about mainlining heroin, snorting coke, & drinking my weight in whiskey. I thought, of course, that I was so cool. Living like a rockstar & never reminding myself that most of my heroes died younger than I am now. So this is an offering. Here's to the realization that the only person who really thought I was so cool with the needle in my arm or the bottle in my hand was me. And that being honest about being better might actually be as cool as bragging about being worse.

That's how I'm doing. So tell me, friends, how are you?



IV. Status

SPOILERS! (Click to view)
Listening: Elvis Costello & the Brodsky Quartet; The Juliet Letters, The Pixies, Death To the Pixies; Gangstarr, Full Clip: A Decade of Hits.
Reading: Camden: After the Fall by Henry Gillete Jr (fascinating), Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke (slightly under duress), recently finished The History of Sexuality, Vol. One by Michel Foucault (very interesting, recommended by someone I'm dating)
Watching: Inception & The Social Network, finally. The American Astronaut. Generation Kill.
Wearing: A fedora & trenchcoat that has young ladies asking about my marital status from passing cars (no lie!)



Please check back next month for another installment of the Chris Sick Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-Blog & Carnival Show. You are now leaving Pittsburgh, please keep your arms & legs inside the vehicle & never, ever return.

APRIL 30, 2010 @ 04:09 PM | 121 COMMENTS


You can't conceive, nor can I, the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.
--Graham Greene, Brighton Rock



He's such a sweet sensation, he's got you right in your place
been traveling all around the nation, you can hear his name but you can't see his face
he's got the time & he's got the motion, he's got his head on but it's not quite in place
he's got a fever & a foggy notion, they call him baby lightening cause he's right out of space.

He made some bad decisions, some may call them flat-out mistakes
but he's done the long division, now here he comes & he's ready to shake
--The American Death Ray 'Baby Lightening'



This is a a very short update, for the sake of updating, for the sake of change.

I am lying in my bed, lighting cigarettes from matches lit from the exposed brick wall the bed sits against, basically fucking luxuriating. It's been a busy month, a busy series of months, taken me up & down, from Philadelphia to Manhattan & East New York, Brooklyn, spent some time in Seattle, spent some time in the gutter, some time in the rain, some time in the sun, & finally some time to catch my breath.

Missed some interesting conversations on SG, I'm sure some interesting updates from my SG-land friends, & generally just the interaction I generally enjoy on this site. So, let's work on that you & I.

Me: Busy, busy, busy, tired, catching up, fallen in love with Richard Price novels, rereading some of my favorite short stories from Phillip K. Dick to Denis Johnson. Relaxing right this very second, not going to see The Losers until tomorrow, going to see Peelander-Z later on tonight at Philadelphia's The Khyber.. Catching up on whatever I've been missing in the meantime in SG-land.

You: ...?

Early Afternoon Update

So... that Peelander-Z show I mentioned? Holy christ was that amazing. I consider myself to be a fairly intelligent, creative Human, well-educated, erudite, expressive... I don't have words to express how incredible that show was last night. Not because my words fail me, but because such words do not exist in any human language.

Goddamn, what a show.

It was exactly what I needed right this exact second & it was beautiful. Coming out of The Khyber D- slapped me on the back & said 'I think they just made everyone in there a better person.' And it was true.

Since I find myself fumbling & failing for words to explain the wonder of Peelander-Z-- nevermind that I'll never be able to explain how great that specific show was-- enjoy some videos of them below.





OCTOBER 15, 2009 @ 01:33 AM | 33 COMMENTS


Fate seemed to be playing a series of extraordinarily unamusing jokes.
--George Orwell, Down & Out in Paris & London



"First of all, what is it really all about? What is it you object to? You want to abolish Government?"

"To abolish God!" said Gregory, opening the eyes of a fanatic. "We do not only want to upset a few despotisms and police regulations; that sort of anarchism does exist, but it is a mere branch of the Nonconformists. We dig deeper and we blow you higher. We wish to deny all those arbitrary distinctions of vice and virtue, honour and treachery, upon which mere rebels base themselves. The silly sentimentalists of the French Revolution talked of the Rights of Man! We hate Rights as we hate Wrongs. We have abolished Right and Wrong."

"And Right and Left," said Syme with a simple eagerness, "I hope you will abolish them too. They are much more troublesome to me."
--G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday



The Vine had no jukebox, but a real stereo continually playing tunes of alcoholic self-pity & sentimental divorce. "Nurse," I sobbed. She poured doubles like an angel, right up to the lip of the cocktail glass, no measuring. "You have a lovely pitching arm." You had to go down to them like a hummingbird over a blossom. I saw her much later, not too many years ago, & when I smiled she seemed to believe I was making advances. But it was only that I remembered. I'll never forget you. Your husband will beat you with an extension cord, & the bus will pull away leaving you standing there in tears, but you were my mother.
--Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son



And I was gripped by that deadly phantom
I followed him through hard jungles
As he stalked through the back lots
Strangling through the night shades
--The Clash, 'Death is a Star'



And just like that, someone turned a switch & summer stumbled into fall, red & brown leaves, cool night air, breath fogging in the morning, mixing with smoke exhalation. In the mornings the car buttons up, no top-open-sunroof joy of lazy sidestreet-driving-stereo-blasting, windows closed, heaters on. No matter how far or far gone, the winters always seem to bring an edge of struggle with them, this year so far only has the heaters struggling to warm up the entire interior of the sedan just for me. Sometimes the stupidity of everything is enough to make you cringe.

These are days of stunning monotony & tedium. There is nothing in the office but spreadsheets & price quotes, endless boredom. On the balance, better to have a job than to not, except for those that prefer exciting hunger to secure boredom. Boredom can be dangerous, & in the dark, lonesome hours between sundown, sleep, & rise all the vices know my name & exactly what I'm looking for. Tonight nothing but warming whiskey, cigarettes stolen in the cold, & Alan Ginsberg singing with the Clash, all of it turned to dust ten years before my mouth could shape the words of their greatness.

From this distance even the landscape looks dull. Watching entrenched arguments play out over circular logic, you can see the same debates taking new shapes over the millennium. Could all political thought be divided into simple categories of 'conservative' or 'liberal'? Could we really be this incredibly slow? The Cold War's been in the can for two decades & we still find ourselves drawing lines in the sand over socialism & capitalism, as though either ideology-- on its own, simple merits-- were worth the time spent defending it.

In the dark wood booths, under ambient red shift lighting, even the interpersonal seems stale & worn. New faces appear, sliding in & out of old roles, doing the same things. Its a harsh judgment & in the morning light it will be entirely unfair-- some of the best people I know I first met in bars-- but for the moment nothing seems new or interesting.

The holding pattern holds. Your horse is tied where you left it. You drink this tonight & you'll feel worse in the morning. Like you always goddamn do.

This is only temporary, you know this. But then, isn't everything?

Isn't everything only over the horizon, just a breath away? The troubling aspect of this theory being those that spend so much time chasing the horizon they fail to enjoy the moment. But I live breath-to-breath. So where does that leave you when this breath is as nominal & uninteresting as the last? There is a time & a place to tear shit up, & a time to build it all back, but what do you do with all the in-between moments? The seconds between seconds, when you're just watching the clock tick by, you know tomorrow brings something better-- & in fact you've already laid all the necessary groundwork for just such a something better-- but that doesn't make today any less daunting, any less dragging, any less fucking depressing.

Boredom is a killer of men, more dangerous than wars, guns, women, whiskey, & heroin. Potentially more dangerous than all of them combined. Given that I've whiskey in front of me, women all around, heroin at arm's length, guns in everyone's pocket but mine, & war only a short form (okay, & a few continents) away, what chance do I have, really?

What can you say?

As ever, you just have to tip back the glass at the right angle, smile like a switchblade knife, & get on with getting on. Whatever you say probably won't be enough, but if you're bound & determined to be miserable, the best you might be able to do is carry it well.

(...)

(xxx)

(Thursday, 15 October, 4:33 AM, in the wilds of Southern Jersey)

Morning Edition Edited to add:

I'm in need of someone to throw some software (Wordpress) onto a website for NO MONEY, & then occasionally update/repair it as needed. It sounds like a thankless task, & mostly it is, but the project is interesting, I just can't give details publicly, People with an interest related to comics might be especially welcome. Private message me or email to chrissick[at]gmail[dot]com for details. Cheers.

OCTOBER 3, 2009 @ 06:06 PM | 5 COMMENTS


Update to the Update v. 1.2

write you a letter tomorrow
tonight I can't hold a pen
someone's got a stamp that I can borrow
I promise not to blow the address again
--The Replacements, 'Can't Hardly Wait'



I said Mama,
you must create
a terrible baby they all fear
who destroys the State.

She delivered a bundle of joy
so full of righteous hate,
but by delivery time,
they spanked my behind and it was too late.
--The Make Up, 'Born on the Floor



One thing about music
when it hits you feel no pain
white folks say it controls your brain
I know better than that
that's game.
--Dead Prez, 'Its Bigger Than Hip-Hop'



Well, all my problems are officially what's known as good problems.

I'm still technically homeless, but I'm spoiled for choice with apartments. Three beautiful places to choose from, in three great locations, all easily affordable, & all with lots of space & wonderful features (hardwood floors, exposed brick, decks, fireplaces, things such as this).

At the end of the month I will find myself down Texas way for some jackass's wedding. A celebration of old friends & substance abuse.

And there's a certain young lady very much interested in me (okay to be fair, there's several, but one in particular that I'm pretty interested in) that I will soon be spending a great deal of time with.

Does it get any better than this?

How goes it with you, SG folk?

Further updates:

Helpful bar fighting tips no. 036: If you're so drunk that you're unable to throw a punch without falling down, its probably best not to throw a punch.

Helpful bar fighting tips no. 037: If you wake up after getting into a bar fight & the worst pain on your body is your knuckles where you hit your opponent in the teeth repeatedly, you're probably doing okay.

(For the record, it is my knuckles that are sore, & I am entirely capable of throwing a punch without falling over, just for clarity's sake.)

(God, that was funny. Dude hit me & then fell on his back. Like a turtle. A giant turtle with a big target spot drawn on his face.)

(Does anyone actually check/comment on announcements? I don't, so I shouldn't be surprised if I'm not alone on this one.)

(That is all)

(xxx)

OCTOBER 3, 2009 @ 06:16 AM | NO COMMENTS


Haven't got time to worry about the future
When I'm too busy covering up my past
I started to consider a life of silence
Because at this rate my voice will never last

I can hit the bottle and the depths of despair
And come up fighting like the best
And I can tell myself that I'm winning the war
But then again
I'm different from the rest.
--Soft Cell, 'Insecure, Me?' (Dirtbombs cover ver.)



Hardwood floors? High ceilings? Neighborhood where there aren't constant gunshots or helicopter searches? Fireplace (WTF!)? Check & checkmate, motherfuckers.

I would say I've arrived, but I've been here all along, its just the world finally catching up with me.

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009 @ 06:09 PM | 13 COMMENTS


I'm not updating this (not for real, anyway) until my living situation is a little more stable & I'm back to something resembling my life as I used to know it, which is not, you know, staying on a mattress in someone's spare bedroom while I apartment hunt & fight with my cunt-mouthed landlord who wants almost a thousand bucks because I forgot to clean the oven that I've used four times in the last thirteen months of living there. For the moment I'll leave you with a Pinhead Gunpowder quote:

This is how we learn from our mistakes
Repeat them over + again
Put them all together, that's what we do
With a little curtain separating each room
Argue, bicker and fight
Everyone plots their escape
But in the end there's nowhere else to go
This is all we have, this is all we know
--Pinhead Gunpowder, 'Landlords'

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