I still:

- play WoW. But I transferred off of Deathwing. I couldn't stand PvP anymore.

- love my girl.

- live in the same place.

- don't respond as much as I should.

- suspect that it was SG that re-upped my membership, not some mysterious benefactor.

- occasionally post, even though the forums here are pretty much dead.

- am mad crushing on Morgan.

- haven't fully recovered from the accident I was in a couple of years back. Pins in my ankle piss me off and make it really hard to run.

- walk with a noticeable limp. Goddamn it.

- puff puff pass.

ZOMG!!

Whoever you are that was kind enough to re-up my membership, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. That was very, very sweet of you.

Where are all these stupid people from?
And how did they get to be so dumb?
Bred on purple mountain's range
Feed amber waves of grains
To lesser human beings
Zero feelings

Blame it on human nature, man's destiny
Blame it on the greediocracy
The fear of God
The fear of change
The fear of truth

Add the Bill of Rights
Subtract the wrongs
There's no answers
Memorize and sing
Star spangled songs
When the questions
Aren't ever asked
Is anybody learning from the past?
We're living in united stagnation

Father what have I done?
I took that .22
A gift to me from you
To bed with me each night
Kept it clean
Polished it well
Cherished every cartridge
Every shell

Down by the creek under brush under dirt
There's a carcass of my second kill
Down at the park under stone under pine
There's a carcass of my brother William
Brother where have you gone to?
I swear
I never thought I could
I've seen so many times
They told me to shoot straight
Don't pull the trigger, squeeze
That will insure a kill
A kill is what you want
To kill is why we breed

The Christians love their guns
The church and NRA
Pray for their salvation
Prey on the lower faiths

The story book's been read
And every line believed
The curriculum's been set
Logic is a threat
Reason searched and seized

Jerry spent some time in Michigan
A 20 year vacation
After all he had a dime
A dime is worth a lot more in Detroit
A dime in California
Just a 20 dollar fine
Jerry only stayed a couple months
It's hard to enjoy yourself
While bleeding out the ass
Asphyxiation is simple and fast
It beats 17 fun years
Of being someone's bitch

Don't think
Drink your wine
Watch the fire burn
His problems not mine
Just be that model citizen

I wish I had a schilling
For every senseless killing
I'd buy a government
America's for sale
And we can get a good deal on it
And make a healthy profit
Or maybe tear it apart
You start with assumption
That a million people are smart
Smarter than one

Serotonin's gone
She gave up
Drifted away
Sara fled the process gone
She left her answering machine on
The greeting left spoken sincere
Messages no one will ever hear
Ten thousand messages a day
A million more transmissions lay
Dead victims of the laissez faire
Ten thousand voices
A hundred guns
A hundred decibels turns to one
One bullet
One empty head
Now with serotonin gone

The man that used to speak
Performs a cute routine
Feel a little patronized
Don't feel bad
They found a way inside your head
And you feel a bit misled
It's not that they don't care
The television's put a thought
Inside your head
Like a Barry Manilow jingle
I'd like to teach the world to sing
In perfect harmony
A symphonic blank stare
It doesn't make you care
Make you care
Not designed to make you care
Make you care
They're betting you wont care
You won't care

They'll place a wager on your greed
A wager on your pride
Why try to beat them when
A million others tried

We are the whores
Intellectually spayed
We are the queers
Dysfunctionally raised

One more pill to kill the pain
One more pill to kill the pain
One more pill to kill the pain
Living through conformity
One more prayer to keep me safe
One more prayer to keep us warm
One more prayer to keep us safe
There's got to be a better place

Lost the battle
Lost the war
Lost the things worth living for
Lost the will to win the fight
One more pill to kill the pain

The going gets tough
The tough get debt
Don't pay attention
Pay the rent
Our next of kins
Pay for your sins
A little faith should keep us safe

Save us

The human
Existence
Is failing
Resistance
Essential
The future
Written off
The odds are
Astronomically
Against us
Only a moron
Or genius
Would fight a losing battle
Against the super ego
When giving in is so damn comforting

And so we go on with our lives
We know the truth
But prefer lies
Lies are simple
Simple is bliss
Why go against tradition when we can
Admit defeat
Live in decline
Be there victim of our own design
With status quo built on suspect
Why would anyone stick out their neck
Fellow members
Of club "We've Got Ours"
I'd like to introduce you to our host
He's got his and I've got mine
Meet the decline

We are the queers
We are the whores
Ammunition
In the class war

We are workers
We love our queen
We sacrifice
We're soilent green


- The Decline; lyrics by Fat Mike

No shit, there I was all snuggled into bed, reading Laurel K. Hamilton's Bloody Bones with the TV tuned to Discovery. The volume was fairly low so as not to wake my sleeping sweetie. She, unlike me, can fall asleep at the drop of a hat. I, on the other hand, am up half the night unable to sleep for whatever reason. At any rate, I was reading while commercials were on, and watching about the deadliest snakes in the world.

Now I don't like snakes. They are slithery and cold and you can always seem them plotting the death of some thing behind their beady little eyes. I won't go so far as to say that snakes are evil - they're just animals, after all. But they are a head full of schemes wrapped in a tight, limbless coil. Icky.

I'd already seen the fer de lance, the king cobra, the western diamondback, and the roger's viper. The host was on to tracking down a wild black mamba. Apparently black mambas are "excitable" and "easily angered." They're also a milky white. The black comes from the insides of their mouths, which are darker than a Republican's heart. They're exceedingly deadly, too. Their poison will kill an adult within 20 minutes if not treated immediatley. They're also really fucking fast for a snake, and spend most of their time in trees, waiting to drop on their next meal.

See? Told you they were schemers.

Anyway, show host and his assistant were trying to get a less-than-pleased black mamba out of the tree. And the thing was almost too quick for them. Either that, or it had recently bathed in Astroglide, as they couldn't seem to keep the snake from slipping out of their catch pole things. Eventually they got it out of the tree it was in, and onto the ground. That's when it reared back and struck at the camera in super slo-mo. Two angry looking fangs jutted from it's blackened upper jaw, filling up the screen of my tv one agonizing frame at a time...

*SNAP*

The power goes out.

"HOLY FUCK!!!"

I think I jumped 8 feet off the bed. My girl slept right through, oblivious to all in her slumber. I have no idea what happened to the cameraman. All I know is that the last image I saw before everything got dark was an angry black mamba trying to bite my face off.

I don't like snakes.

And so I'm back from outter space
I just walked in to find you here
With that look upon your face
You should have changed your stupid lock
You should have made me leave my key...


Hehe... bet you have that song stuck in your head now, huh?

I Know How You Sleep At Night

I've often sat, lost in thought, trying to figure out how people like you can sleep at night. Because if I had done half the things you have, I don't think my guilt and shame would allow me the peace of a good night's rest ever again. Just thinking about the things you have done the last 6 years keeps me up at night, and I have no control over it whatsoever.

But that's not getting at the heart of my question; how do you sleep at night?

And one day while I was in the shower (of all places), it hit me. A bolt of realization as powerful as a slap to the face. It occured to me how easy it must be for you to go on with you life like there is nothing wrong, and the destruction you have left in your path never eats at you.

Not unlike Alfred E. Neuman, you have a, "what, me worry?" attitude. And it's not because you're ignorant or unaware of the things you've done. On the contrary, you are much smarter and more shrewd than most people give you credit for. And it wasn't until I reached my shampoo-induced epiphany that realization occured to me as well.

You can sleep at night because those close to you are safe. They sleep in their own beds, warm and content every night. They don't have to worry about mortar attacks killing them in their sleep. They need not fear the hellish nightmares of the things that they have seen and done over the course of the day eating at them.

And neither do you.

Your daughters are safe and sound, even if the DUI laws and pedestrians in their place of residence are not. Never will they have to worry about where their gasmasks are when a chemical attack alarm goes off. Never will they have to worry about being victim of an IED attack as they slue drunkenly down the road in their Mercedes Benzes. They won't ever have to gear up and get their precious little faces dirty with the grit and sand and blood of daddy's war.

Your wife is at your side and sleeping soundly next to you every night. She knows she'll never have to kiss you goodbye and march off to a plane ready to take her to a hostile environment for the next 12-to-18 months. She's ignorant of the fear of insurgent attack. She'll never have to see her own shattered limb being amputated in a field hospital. And she'll never come home in a box draped with an American flag.

Your friends are safe, too. They eat from your trough, patting you on the back and telling you what a great job you're doing. When you make a mistake, they're there to cover for you. They might not fall on an enemy grenade for you, but they'll take the blame when you err. When all us ungrateful, impatient and hateful people are calling you out on your policies and outright lies, they're there for you. And they always will be, so long as you keep making them rich and as long as those you lord over stay apathetic.

Except that one fellow. The one who dropped you like a bad habit when the finger was pointed at him over your justifications for war. Remember him? Does his defection bother you, I wonder? I don't think it does. There's still plenty more to take his place. People who won't ever turn their backs on you, no matter what raw deal you stick them with. Or so long as you give their business interests huge no-bid contracts.

But what about the hungry children living in the streets right here in your own nation? Who's there to bring democracy to them? Who's there to protect them? What about our floundering economy? What about our inability to even beging to attempt to control the damage this nation is doing to the environment? What about the outsourcing of jobs? What about the outlandish price of designer medication? What about... what about...

"Hush, my fellow Americans," you say with confidence and a slight good 'ol boy grin, "look what we're doing in another country. We're so great. We're so wonderful. We're bringing democracy to those that never asked for it. And if you keep asking me questions like the ones above, I'll have you dissappeared and locked away in a cell so dark, you'll be convinced your underground."

And the old saying is true - no matter what the reality of the situation, if you keep telling yourself it's not so bad eventually you start to believe it. You've started believing your own ridiculous assertations. You go through your days with blinders on, oblivious to the real problems we face right here at home.

And that, sir, is how you sleep at night.

If this weren't reality, what a fantastically tragic Shakespearian character you'd make. The little dictator, convinced his unbending, unyeilding way is the right one, consequences be damned. I'm just not so sure I want to be there for the final act. What may happen before the last curtain is anyone's guess at this point. Most of are pretty sure it's going to be pretty bad. But, tragically as well, we sit and marvel at the spectacle, doing nothing to alter it's course. This, despite supposedly having the power to do so. The audience can't tear their eyes away. And you continue to sleep at night.

Safe and sound. Just like those you love.

Fool enough to almost be it
Cool enough to not quite see it
Doomed
Pick a pocket full of sorrow
And run away with me tomorrow
June

We’ll try and ease the pain
Somehow feel the same
Well, no one knows
Where our secrets go

I send a heart to all my dearies
When your life is oh so dreary
Dream
I’m rumored to the straight and narrow
While the harlots of my perils
Scream

And I fail
But when I can
I will
Try to understand
That when I can
I will

Mother weep the years I’m missing
All our time can’t be given
Back
Shut my mouth and strike the demons
Cursed you and your reasons
Out of hand and out of season
Out of love and out of feeling
So bad

When I can
I will
Words defy the plan
When I can
I will

Fool enough to almost be it
Cool enough to not quite see it
Dumb enough to always feel this
Always old, I’ll always feel this

No more promise no more sorrow
No longer will I follow
Can anybody hear me
I just want to be me

When I can
I will
Try to understand
That when I can
I will

Most days, I don't know why I bother or what the fuck I'm doing anymore.

And, tempted though I may be to leave that cryptic and decidedly negative assesment of my current state of mind stand without explanation, it wouldn't be fair to those that do come to my page.

So I propose a thinly veiled (at least for those who know my situation) hypothetical question to you:

If someone claimed they loved you, and you went out of your way for them more times than you can remember, sent them packages, wrote them letters, sent them money and took care of all their bills, and yet this person can't be bothered to write you a letter for 4 months, would you be hurt? Suppose the only communication you got was sporadic IMs and the occasional five minute phone call. Would it sting?

If you were hurt, how would you express that hurt without sounding needy and clingy? I trust this person. I love them very much, and I really do know they love me, too. I do not want to lose them over something that probably sounds highly trivial to an outsider. But I can't stop the tears and I can't turn off the hurt. I can't help feeling like all the things I'm doing and all the things I'm feeling are for nothing. And I truly don't want to be resentful when this person is finally able to come home.

So I say nothing. I pretend it doesn't matter. I go on with my life and hope that weeks of silence mean they're too busy to bother communicating with me, rather than live in fear that they're lying dead in a ditch somewhere.

I don't know how much longer I can do this.

Emotions should have an on/off swtich.

It's just another day. Yep yep.