Um, I think someone at SG HQ has been looking at my profile... the last three sets: Sash, Anigone, and now Lumi, are all among my faves!

Time is ticking, and I haven't made a single decision or plan. The last one was the most painful and empty I've ever had. The one before that was among the best I'd ever had, at least as far as presents are concerned... though it didn't quite live up to the hype. How is this next one supposed to find a place to call it's own? I'm not asking for much, hell I haven't actually asked for *anything*. But there are those who will go out of their way to see to it that *something* happens... /sigh

A week ago today I lost my wallet. That is to say, I couldn't find my wallet a week ago today *after* I had already come home from everything I had done that day, with a solid and complete memory of handling it (and my change) the last time I dealt with money last Friday. There was no way in hell it jumped up and ran away. Next to no chance in hell that it *fell* out of the pockets in a pair of Tripp pants (if you own any, you know how deep the pockets are). The only other possibility seemed to be that it had perhaps stayed in those same Tripp pants, gotten into the laundry which was done that same evening, and either gotten separated and re-owned by someone in the laundromat (with a whole $16 in it at the time), or flat out stolen by someone who *maybe* saw it spinning around in the dryer. None of these thoughts made any sense at all. No way.

I simply don't *lose* things. Sure, we all set something in the wrong place, get distracted, etc. and not know where something is for a short bit. Sure. Except for my keys, my phone and my *wallet*. They all three always go in the exact same place. Every fucking time! The keys and wallet go right on top of my left side EV 1512 speaker cabinet with the front-loaded 15" woofer and full range horn. And the phone docks to one of the several computers to charge and sync. *sigh* Except this time obviously. Did I mention that I never lose *anything*? BTW, did you know that OCD is contagious? My ex-wife gave it to me. :p That's why I'll never leave the apartment without my keys ever again. Plus, my ADD coping mechanisms are such that I know where all my Shit (in the George Carlin sense) is all the fucking time, so I never lose track of it and lose a whole week replacing it. Did I mention that I lost my wallet a week ago today?

So after the chore of going to the bank, finding out that you can't replace your ATM card without a *valid* ID (i.e. unexpired driver's license) but they will give you a little bit of money at a time cuz they know it's really you on your expired DL, going back to the DMV, filling out the renewal application, finding out it's 28 bucks that you don't have on you because you lost your wallet, going back to the bank, getting that little bit of money I mentioned (that I didn't have anymore from the last time they gave me some the day before because I needed to spend it on stuff such as food and gas), going back to the DMV, paying the 28 clams, getting my interim license papers, going back to the bank, getting a temporary ATM card (no Visa logo, so no purchases at most major retailers), being able to only get $60 the first day for some stupid banking policy reason that no one could explain even though I had a valid ID, going home, getting my checkbook, going back to the bank, writing a check for 300 bills and making them cash it on the spot, and THEN, knowing I had enough money to get by and no rush need for the rest of what was in my missing (I still refused to believe was missing permanently) wallet, I go through the rest of my week.

Now before I continue, you probably need to get another beer and maybe go pee. So I'll wait... OK, ready? When I couldn't find my wallet last Friday (which is why I wasn't at Das Bunker last week, even though I finally had my Element back form the collision shop after some douche bag rear-ended me while I was minding my own business waiting at a red light) I did what I normally do when I run my inventory and suddenly think something isn't where it should be: I freak out for a split second, and then my IT analyst/combat/ninja monkey/spidey senses kick in and I methodically tackle the problem. And I did. I looked all around where it should have been, around, under, behind, etc. Even in my Case Logic Automotive Large Trunk Organizer which was sitting right there, with tools, jumper cables, etc. ready to load into my Element which I mentioned above I had just gotten back from the shop. I looked in it, thinking I can't imagine how it could have gotten knocked off of the speaker cabinet where I normally set my wallet, but I'd better check there to make sure. Nope, I didn't find it in my Automotive Large Trunk Organizer. Never mind that a Honda Element has no trunk. My 2 Jeep Cherokees before the Element also had no trunk, but they accommodated this cool organizer nonetheless.

So here it is Friday night a week later. This has been a stressful, long and hard week. It wasn't without it's fun, blissful pleasures, and productivity, but it was not the easiest week to get through. And I have to be up early tomorrow to go to Corona renfaire site to help my guild with construction for the upcoming season, so I'm not going to go to Bunker this week either. Perhaps next week.

So I began the simple task of cleaning out my Automotive Large Trunk Organizer to get rid of some stuff I don't need to be dragging around in my Element. And low and motherfucking behold, there's my goddamned motherfucking missing wallet! Right where I didn't look quite hard enough to make sure it *wasn't* there. *sigh* So does anybody who doesn't have enough actual education on the subject, but has lots of hearsay and conjecture (which are *kinds* of evidence as noted on The Simpsons) want to argue with me about whether ADD is a real disorder? believe me, I've spent my whole life just *knowing* that all I have to do is try harder, care more, work harder at it, and I'll be fine. This time, not having the focus or attention span to be thorough enough cost me a whole week of aggravation.

Hey, at least I got my wallet back. Which makes me right about not losing anything, and knowing there was no way in hell it was actually *gone*. And there's nothing wrong with having a new DL or ATM card, right? I mean, I haven't had a mohawk in 8 years now anyway... Grrr...

New Year's Day is been and gone, and my manifesto is now safely out of immediate view. Things are going really really well, just as I have authoritatively dictated. With any luck, it should now be safe for people to say hello here again.

And with that said, here is a silly pic of me and a guy named Matthew who, apart from our involvement in the LA Goth/Industrial club & BDSM scene, and martial arts, also happen to have the same ex-girlfriend in common. :p

OK, so let's blog this sucker out. About how it seems that most everyone I know had 2007 plain old kick them in the ass pretty much the whole way through the year. It's certainly what happened to me. Even those who did the kicking have their shit to deal with. It seems that almost nobody came out of 2007 on top. Instead, things just got torn down all over. Well, except for Bunny (Tara, my ex-wife and still best friend in the whole world). She seemed to have everything this year go just right, right down to her Christmas trip with Matt to London!

There was good as well as bad, but the bad took so much energy, took so much from me, that I don't know if I have it in me to write out a big manifesto, but here it comes anyway.

I can sum up the year with these thoughts:

• Never before 2007 have I had a year with so much financial prosperity yet with so much uncertainty hanging in the balance threatening to ruin me at any moment and without warning.


• Never before 2007 have I had so much potential manifesting in various projects yet with so much uncertainty threatening to cancel funding, delay progress, or halt production.


• Never before 2007 have I felt such a complete and all-encompassing love for someone with so much uncertainty threatening to tear my heart out no matter what I did. And in the end it did, in the most cruel of ways. Note to the kids: never fall in love with someone who is bipolar unless they're already getting the help that they admittedly know they need, no matter how well you thought you knew them or know them now. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, no matter how much you want it, no matter what you say, or how you say it, the other person (bipolar or not) is always going to do what *they* are going to do... /rant

Fortunately, some of this uncertainty panned out in my favor. I'm a pragmatist, a realist, not a pessimist after all, and I was able to take the successes and turn them into powerful resources that will continue to help prepare me for what's to come. Because while so many other things broke my heart, or stole my credit, or misrepresented me, my interests and/or intentions, or were simply the result of someone else showing that they didn't have the guts to look at their self in the mirror (or me in the face to talk it through), the pot of gold was at the end of the rainbow just as it was foretold: my deal working for IBM after they acquired FileNet (because we kept handing their asses to them in the marketplace with our better product offerings) ended as it was supposed to. Not early or later than expected, and not without the severance package they promised when the deal was agreed to. That left me pretty (OK, *very*) flush for the final quarter of 2007, which allowed me to have a degree of comfort and safety that I'd never known before, and which helped a great deal with seeing that life will in fact go on, and that I can in fact make it though anything, just as I have so many times before.

So I took this bounty, and I spent the last quarter of 2007 building new armor, sharpening my blades, pressing new shells for the big guns, fine-tuning my sensors, recalibrating my targeting reticule, and drawing brand new lines in the sand. In 2008 I'm going to be ready for the fight like never before. Because when it's all said and done, this fight is on familiar territory. Nothing new going on, I just wasn't ready for the sucker punches thrown at me by the weaklings in my life, which was a flaw I admittedly had created for myself. But a flaw that has now been corrected. Cuz hey, if you're a real warrior of any status or caliber, you can never stop training. And you have to be ready for *anything*, not just the enemy in your forward sights. For 2008, I'm not making any declarations of resolutions. I'm instead going to continue to follow through on the work already in progress...

And in 2008, I may burn yet more bridges. But every one that's been burned had someone on the other side who did nothing to prevent it. They did what *they* were going to do, or they hid their true intentions/selves, or they hid altogether instead of facing the challenge head on. And if I didn't like it, they made it clear by their actions/in-actions that it wasn't going to be *their* problem. And so, I no longer give a rat's ass what they think. Introducing the 2008 model "The Fin": kicking ass, but not bothering to take any names. Just leaving it in the past. Always forward, never straight.

But let me be clear about this part: I'm not heartless, and I can and do forgive even the greatest of betrayals when it can be seen that it's worth the effort to try. A couple of those bridges, for one the wreckage of which had lay cold and dead for many many years, is now in the process of being built anew, based on a new understanding, a new set of rules, a new relationship with different goals in mind. Because true love never dies, it just sometimes has to take on another, stronger form. And there's some great things going on lately that will gel in early 2008 that show that the way forward has love and trust and prosperity and other fluffy fuzzy stuff that suggests that I may be doing something right. And still other bridges were never actually burned, the road too important, the destination too valuable. Those bridges will just have to lay unused for the time being, until the time is right to once again make contact with the other side.

And yes, with this kind of a hardware/wetware upgrade, I know I have to do a Saving Throw vs. Inhumanity, because if I do this wrong, I'm just going to end up being an ass and pissing everybody off. But I get sweet dice modifiers for high natural numbers in my Empathy, Spirituality, Awareness and Determination attributes, and I've got Contacts and Fixers you can talk to who will swear that I'm a good guy with a heart of gold. Things have just been tough, ya know? And now it's time to bounce back full force. But on *my* terms...

So hello 2008, whatcha got?

Stuff has been happening but I haven't shared. In fact a world of shit has succeded, blown up in my face, worked out, near-missed and payed off since my last post.

So this is a placeholder for soon, when I'll have the chance to sort out what I should and shouldn't share.

[Class "A" Priority Override]

Chemlab returns for their first show in Los Angeles in 10 years!

November 30th at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood, with Idiot Stare (that's me!),

USSA (Paul Barker's new band), Skeleton Key and The Shaolin Signal.

Click the flyer to buy tickets now!

Buy Tickets for Chemlab, USSA, Skeleton Key, Idiot Stare and The Shaolin Signal!


This should easily be one of the most important shows that my band has ever played. And we've done some big stuff just this year. And if you know from guitar heavy Industrial music and you're old enough to have been going to shows in the early 90s, then you should remember Chemlab and definitely would almost certainly be a fan of both Ministry and the Revolting Cocks.

Chemlab hails from the east coast (as do I) and they haven't played in LA in 10 years. Before I moved to California, I was in DC for two years. Jared, the leader of Chemlab was then known for a band called Furnace (which was already a legend, but finished, and I never got to see em), and I knew and used to trade samples with a guy (Mark Kermanj who had a project at the time called Seed) who later became one of the original members of Chemlab, playing on their first album. So this is almost a homecoming show for me personally.

Paul Barker (AL Jourgensen's better half of Ministry and Revolting Cocks fame) will also be on stage showing off his new band USSA. And this is seriously good stuff. I hear Deftones, Tool, Ministry and several other heavy and strong influences in USSA. Seriously good stuff!

Um, yeah. So I check SG almost religiously as close to twice a day as I can at the scheduled times because I just can't stand not seeing the latest set as soon as I can, even though my personal tastes are not satisfied far too much of the time these days... But I haven't updated my blog here in a good year or so.

I have to get ready to leave for Tijuana in the morning. To find out why, and to get a general overview of where my head has been and what's going on in my life, I offer you my LiveJournal: http://the-fin.livejournal.com/

If you are clever, or lucky, you might find the god's honest truth in unexpected places. I someties go back to old entries and create replies to myself to reflect on what I had written and to explain where it came from so no one gets an email about the update. I do this partly for myself and partly to reward those who want to know me badly enough that they will dig, or go back far enough to when I wasn't as wise about what I would and wouldn't write. I just finished one of those tonight. Mostly, though, my journal is these days just a corkboard for my major events... And one is happening tomorrow night.

Reposted from my LJ:

Old contract job = new employment job ~or~ I'm finally a real boy (again)

For those who were interested and bothered to keep up on my absence from the real world (for whatever nefarious purposes you may have had); you might know that for the past whole year I'd been contracting for FileNet Corp. in Costa Mesa. The schedule, distance and continuing temporary status of contract work had largely kept me from living a real life. Even though the money was fantastic, there was a certain anxiety about never knowing when I was going to have to stop everything and hold onto whatever was still in the bank at the time. Well that's done now. FileNet hired me and now I'm permanent. Huge raise, benefits on day 1 (today is my third day), and serious job security. I'm now officially an Applications Systems Analyst. I'm not doing web development for a living anymore (most of my work wasn't dev anyway), but this is quite the step up. Supporting and developing for professional applications that will keep me working for the rest of my career. I've just been promoted to my level of incompetence. I'll still be doing development, and some of it will be web development as it relates to the applications I'm responsible for, but for the most part, I'm going to be doing a completely different job, learning a completely new skill set built on the knowledge I already have. The same *kind* of work (high level support and development), but none of it will be like anything I've done before. The first phase of my employment is having Java and Oracle jammed down my throat in intensive crash courses.

And for the San Francisco friends: August 12 - August 18, I'll be in "The City" for training at SalesForce.com. A whole week should be plenty of time to see everyone and hit the clubs, etc.

One upside to the new permanent status is a schedule change. More specifically, schedule flexibility. I can now start as early as 7:30 AM if I want which allows me to beat the bulk of traffic northward on days I want to do that. This greatly shortens my drive time and ultimate exhaustion when I finally get home. In turn this has allowed me to start having a social life again. This will be evident tonight at Das Bunker. I seriously think that I haven't been there in almost a whole year, maybe longer...

Extra special thanks to everyone who popped in and said hello on my birthday. This year I only asked for one thing. I pretty much stopped playing with most substances a few years ago. So there's only one other forbidden path left for me to explore that I have any interest in... It was a very good birthday because I got that one special thing that you need two to give. It seems like everyone I know had already checked this one off their lists when they were younger. Call me a late bloomer...

What the hell happened to my SG favorites settings? I don't recall there being a timer. OK, now I have to admit that I don't know how long it's been like that and I really should have come up with a better reason to post something, *anything* besides bitching about realizing that I have to pick new fave girls and the fact that a new SG friend request is gonna expect to see something now that I've accepted...

Quick update (and I'll quit bitching ) on life as Fin:

Things have been just as nuts as they ever have been since starting the contract gig in Costa Mesa that just won't quit. At present, my contract is extended yet again, this time through June. The money is great, and I've been spending it on all kinds of nice new computers, software, music equipment for my revamped studio, a sword, Maximillian armor, renewed dojo membership, lap dances, proper dating rituals, etc.

I have been busy as hell but really enjoying things for a change. If this is what absolute power feels like... more please.

I'm feeling especially empowered today, so I think I'll hit the groups next and see what's cooking in Tuesday Night Dinner land... With a whole day's notice I might just be able to make it and prove to GCLA that I in fact have not blown off the whole world. I'm just busy and focused on other things for the most part. I do read all of your posts though. Seems like most everyone else has been busy as well for the most part.

PS I just added MySpace to my profile, so feel free to add me up. My current friends are a mishmash of some of the best and most interesting figures in the LA underground club scene and the renfaire crowd... Couldn't possibly hurt to throw in a bunch of SG regulars too. But I did take off all IM accounts. Since I never log in to them anyway, there's no point in baiting anyone. Soon again though once I get my new pocket PC phone configured for it...