daily shriek

Sometimes inspiration comes as easily as josh’s mom.

(link to make your own)

okay, so i am pretty inured to the smell of urine in the human plumbing connecting the various trains, subways, trolleys etc. under philadelphia, but this morning was my first experience of seeing what happens when someone who needs to take a crap and can’t find an open bathroom despite the large number of hotels in the vicinity.

walking up the stairs out of patco this fine but somewhat muggy a.m., i had to walk past a pile of what i can only assume was some sort of booze-induced pile of crap on the landing just outside of where the gates lock up the station at night. i assume it was the booze, because it looked like one of my whiskey shits, or the infamous shit-puke — a story for another day.

it reminded me of the time when my cousin ned came to visit me one saturday morning in the shitty basement apartment i called home for a year during college and had to walk around a big ol’ turd on the walkway that led to my door around back of the building.

so of course we went out and bought a roll of black and white film and took pictures of it. we snapped my cat at the time sniffing it; we put a brick next to it (’shit a brick, heh) , as well as can (shit can that idea, heh) and a couple action figures i had found in the backyard. oh, and we posed with it too of course.

those were the halcyon days that my cousin ned and i used to call “lost weekends” where he’d come and pick me up and drag me around to go see shows that no one his age wanted to see, like X, The Blasters, etc. and drink like madmen from friday happy-hour all the way through to sunday afternoon. oh, and i’m not exaggerating — we’d start drinking at breakfast and keep it up all day. i woke up one morning my niece’s tree house. good times, good times.

he’s about 10 years older than me and my whole life, he’s always just sort of swooped in, snatched me up and dragged me on adventures, to amusement parks when i was a kid, and to bars as i got older. my friends have always been surprised at how hard i can drink when i put my mind to it, but it’s a family thing, a german catholic family thing.

he was always quick to remind me how full of shit i was, made fun of me writing poetry, made fun of my long hair, but only because it was a good laugh. and that one day when we took pictures of shit was what came back to mind as i climbed past the human waste in the city’s people-plumbing, and reminded me how my cousin kinda prepared me for real life by vacationing from reality with me.

    so my wife tells me that the reason i lost my shirt in atlantic city playing poker this weekend was the endless amount of whiskey i imbibed all day sunday, but i dunno

my brother-in-law tells me i played well. the hands i won, i got paid off on really well, but i kept getting suckered into hands like a-10, a-q, a-k that never hit, it was freakin brutal

i couldn’t win a hand for hours at a stretch and that’s what really killed me. oh well, so much for the dream of going pro.

hahahahahahahahahhahaha, i hate poker

but, there’s always next time… heh

i don’t want your fucking gold services whatever the fuck that shiny turd is, and i really don’t wanna listen to you blather on about how to buy a house — i’m by no means an expert, but i’ve done it before.

i want you to shut the fuck up until i see the house.

you see, i’m not going to bother getting pre-approved until i see the house — moving sucks all ass, and the idea of having to sell my house scares the shit out of me and you going on about “we like to offer all our customers our gold services…” really just fucking irritates me.

and btw, “gold services”? are you fucking kidding me? what the fuck is that kind of name is that? sounds totally weak.

i mean, i’m not completely stupid, i know you only named it that to make it sound spiffy, and you’ve already told me that you offer it to everyone, which means it’s nothing special, and if it were so fucking special, why are you working so fucking hard to sell me on it?

for crap’s sake, don’t insult me so blatantly if you want me to use you to buy a house.

if i want that house, i’m gonna make you work plenty hard for your commission, sparky, don’t you worry — but for now, fuck off.

President Bush has signed a directive granting extraordinary powers to the office of the president in the event of a declared national emergency, apparently without congressional approval or oversight. (link)

great, just fucking great — guess i better stop complaining about the government, i’m sure dissidence will quickly be quashed once w really gets the noose, i mean reins, in his hands.

truly a sad day for our republic

“like someone knew just what to do, poison the masses and catch the running few”

from: life is pretty cheap
by: flipper

sleepless nights don’t agree much with me these days and i had one last night and my brain is focused in a laser like way that is rare for me, but my brain’s feeling as fuzzy as it would were i have imbibed a pint of liquor. maybe i should have.

brains don’t make a freakin sense

i keep walking around muttering to myself sentence fragments like ‘ok, we gotta take a look at this’ or ‘this has got to stop’ or ‘where am i and what am i doing?’ that don’t really express any real thought that i am having, or have any real meaning. almost like tourrette’s or something.

anyway, it’s kind of making me feel like i’m crazy. i know i’m not, but when i go off the adhd meds i take, i often wonder how in the hell i ever made it as far as i am in life, but i get a clear picture of why it’s taken me so long.

damnable thing, this adhd.

i once told a co-worker that she needed to watch office space over the weekend, hoping it would enlighten her just one tiny iota to the fact that she had become indistinguishable from the machines.

it turned out to be a fool’s errand — she came in on monday, and without the slight hint of irony told me the she had a case of the mondays.

i have encountered lots of clueless people in my journey through this world, but it is rare to see such cluelessness in such raw form.

it was kind of breathtaking.

true story

back in the day when i was driving cabs, i took my future wife on a driving tour of the spring grove cemetery in cincinnati, a cemetery noted for its beautiful and vast grounds, famous er, inhabitants, and impressively artistic headstones and mausoleums (including one small gothic cathederal). it’s as much a sculpture garden as a necropolis.

further back in the day, i lived around the corner from the place and used to take near-daily walks there, strolling the grounds and found my favorite quote “there is a sound from the tomb that is sweeter than song” inscribed on the mantle of a large marker that was held 10 ft in the air by two large columns.

i used to take naps there to see if i would have any weird dreams. sadly i had none, but the respectful quiet of the place made for blissful slumber.

anyway, while we were driving along through the winding roads admiring the markers, we came to one near the road that apparently marked the final resting place of a couple — i wish i could remember their names — for atop a 4 foot tall pillar were mounted two bronze busts of whom i can only imagine were the two interred below.

they were both very austere looking people a la american gothic, and as i recall they passed in the late 19th century. i joked to my future wife that “they look like they must have been the life of the party.” a wisecrack that she chuckled at, more to humor me than anything.

but then the weirdest thing happened, the volume on the radio in my cab (the am/fm, not the dispatch) started going up on its own. i shit you not. it freaked me straight the fuck out. and if it wasn’t spooky enough that the the volume started to rise, the volume nob would not turn the radio down — it was one of those knobs that you pushed to turn off so the knob turned freely.

i am not shitting you, it wasn’t till we drove away from the grave that i was able to take back control over the stereo.

needless to say, my better half and i beat a hasty retreat for the exit — not an easy task in the byzantine labyrinth of roads that wend without signs through this small city of the dead.

i’ve never been back, it’s been 8 or so years since that day. i will get back one day, and i will have changed, grown and raised a family, and they will still be there, stoic and frozen in time. and i will be more respectful.