William Lee Meredith...May you rest in peace.

Last night, I found out that a very dear friend of mine died. After 3 months in Iraq, he was killed by a car bomb.
I always did my best for him, but I couldn't give him the kind of peace he needed, so he enlisted and went off to a glorious death.

Lee...I begged you not to enlist. But you went ahead and did it anyway. You were always doing that: taking chances, pushing your limits. Some have told me they thought you had a deathwish, and that might have been the case.
I know you were troubled, and I always did my best to take care. Funny to see a boy calling a girl 3 and half years his junior 'Mom,' but that's the way it was.
Time and circumstance pulled us apart, but we always tried to stay close.

And now you're gone.
I miss you and love you, and hope you've finally found the peace that so alluded you in life.
And I'm so sorry I couldn't save you.

I hate everything today.

I can't wait for you to shut me up and make me hip like BADASS...SHUT...IT...UP!!!

So there will be a distinct LACK of Sunseeker this weekend, as I can't possibly afford to go. Sadface.
Instead, I may be stomping around uptown...could be fun, could be an absolute DISASTER.

We'll see.

So I have a few songs I can't keep from listening to over and over lately:
- Schweine by Glukoza
- Christfuck by Wumpscut
- Shut Me Up by MSI
- Bloodletting by Concrete Blonde
- The Running Free by Coheed and Cambria
- No World for Tomorrow by Coheed and Cambria

*shrug* All pretty sexy stuff.

I am unable to sleep...it sucks. I'm gonna have kind of a long day tomorrow...involving doctor's and needles.
But a possible weekend of stomping around Uptown, sleeping on either Dutch Oven or Zombie's couch could be relaxing.
More than anything, dancing so much on VB spoiled me...so now I want to dance 24/7.

In other news...I really want a pair of pleather pants. No, really. Low rider, hug my ass and thighs like it's their job, loose below the knee into a nice bootcut pleather pants. Cuz it'd be HAWT.

For now we see through a glass, darkly...ourselves.

I have become disgusted with the idea of Saint John society, people-wise.
I meant, look at it logically: I know of 2 girls who are considered "nice girls"...and they fuck everything that holds still long enough! I mean sure, they might be nice to talk to or hang out with (which they're not, BTW, they're horribly rude, self-centered, and just generally vindictive); but they were referred to as nice girls by a person I shall refer to as Cumstain in comparison to me, who apparently has "tarnished my reputation beyond repair because I keep picking apples from the same shitty tree. First [The Ex] and now [The Joke]."
Now, I'm surprised by this. On the one hand, girl A (who will be henceforth referred to as Emergency Stop (I'll tell you the story behind that at the end of this post) has had sex with no less than 14 of my male friends. Count 'em. But Cumstain still said "I think [Emergency Stop]'s cute, she's a good girl. Not like you come off..." On the other, girl B (her code name will be...The Noisy Crab; once again, story will be forthcoming shortly) is known for being dumber than a box of hammers, monumentally unfaithful, and for contracting curable but disgusting venereal diseases. Once again, Cumstain referred to The Noisy Crab as "cute," and implied that she was well-spoken, even poetic, which is ridiculous, because I've heard her speak and I'm not even sure she knows what a consonant is, much less a metaphor. Strangely, I never saw Emergency stop out with The Ex again. They might have been sitting in the same group, but they weren't together. She followed me around town for a while, going to bars and shows she knew I'd attend, but apparently gave up whatever she was going for after a couple of weeks.

I must admit, I have a special dislike for The Noisy Crab. The first time I met her, she took one look at me, The Ex (who was standing not too far away, trying to make me feel uncomfortable), and TFWM (The Fling Who is Missed) and her eyes narrowed, her nostrils flared...she then proceeded to flirt shamelessly with them...BOTH of them. Boobs ON them. She went home with The Ex that night, as Cumstain made sure to tell me the next day, and I at least LEFT with TFWM. I saw her not long after at some party, and she STARED at me the whole time, while whispering and pointing at me, puking whatever she thought she knew about me in the ears of her little "posse." I stopped running into her not long after, but I know several people who've known her since childhood, and none of them have anything good to say about her.

The point of all this swill was to make the point that the above 2 specimens are considered nicer and less slutty than yours truly.
Given, the only people who have referred to me as slutty are males I've refused to sleep with and females who don't like me hanging out with their males. But while the males defend these 2 cum receptacles, as expected, the females don't attack them like they do me. They befriend them. *shakes head*

I'm not sure this is the social scene I want to join if these are their standards.
Like a friend recently told me: "If you've been interacting with the likes of and especially [The Noisy Crab], you're running in the wrong circles."

One other thing bothers me about Cumstain's comments...and I leave it to my, like, 3 readers to answer the question and refer others to answer, so I can get a concensus.
An almost direct quote (grammar and spelling have been cleaned up considerably):
"Sure, you might be good, but [The Ex] is cute, and funny. For the shallower girls, he's got money. He can have a different girl every night, and does. For a guy, it doesn't matter if it's good, as long as he comes it's awesome. It's all about variety. And really, what guy would give up THAT much variety for a girl like you?"

---------------

Okay, the story behind Emergency Stop's code name:
My buddy Dutch Oven is one of the 14 males of my acquaintance to have had her. By his description, she doesn't even MAINTAIN her pubic hair, which gives her an vag-fro. The combination of the vag-fro and how completely AWFUL she was caused Dutch Oven to have to STOP THE SEX. Yes, folks, this male STOPPED HAVING SEX without his life or sexual health being threatened. She was THAT BAD.
Holy crap.

The Noisy Crab, on the other hand...well...
The noisy part is obviously. The bitch yells everything.
She was living with some friends of her brother, and they were hangin' around, havin' a drink, playin' some XBox or whatever. Relaxin' with no g's.
Anyway, she comes mincing in, and says "Can I tell you guys something?"
As one, they answer "NO!"
She replies "But you guys are my friends, I feel like I can talk to you."
"No, you can't! We don't listen!"
"But I know I can trust you guys to keep a secret."
"No, we'll tell everyone! EVERYONE!" (Which they did, obviously.)
She goes on to say: "I just wanted to say, I fucked this guy the other night, and I think he gave me crabs. I've been itching."
Who tells people that???

Tracing me with pretty fingers

I woke up in the middle of the night to scratch this out...I'm not sure if a dream or just recent events have spawned it, but well...here goes...

Everyday you put the lie to everything you say, even the untruths

Don't play dice with me, but I guess it's 6s and 7s tonight

You maintain a little less than your customary 3 feet of distance

I hope one day you know how bad you hould have wanted me, not because I want your regret

I'll probably still be here, not waiting, but here

Even if you just never find some one who moves like I do

I hope it's something else, but I suppose that'll have to do

True hate only comes from real love or real friendship

But all I hate is me

And truly being yours when you don't even want me

Never has science fiction seemed such a welcome escape

Parallel universes born out of different choices made

But it's only a dream

You even dream of me, or so you say

Staring out progressive windows at me

I should have let it be, left myself

Forever driving away in your memory

Instead I played the toy

Desperately wanting to be yours

Hurt me so I can feel better

Cunt

Firecracker, firecracker

I realized that my romantic life can be summed up by a thought that occurred to me a couple of years ago, sitting on my back porch, listening to the neighbors light Christmas/New Year's fireworks..."I can hear the firecrackers, but I can't see them..."

I'm tired of being able to hear the fireworks, but never see them. Tired of lighting them for other people and watching them chasing them off into the dark.

I wish some one would light me a Chinese lantern and watch it burn with me.

Grandaddy used to light me Chinese lanterns off the dock in his backyard when I was a kid. When they were done sparking and started burning, they'd fall into the river...which always pissed off the fish that swam up to the surface because of they were attracted to the lights.

There are people who fish that way, you know.

For some reason, that reminds me of one of the times I ran away. I ended up in this hotel in New York...we were out on the balcony, having a few drinks...and when they passed the...well, I'm not telling you what it was...I didn't decline. Anyway, we were really stupid, so no one stayed sober enough to babysit. Ryan always took it easy, though, so he came back to himself first.
And I was gone. They all freaked the fuck out, too. My clothes were still in the hotel room. Where was I going to go in a wife beater, Spiderman underoos, and my knee socks from soccer? They looked EVERYWHERE...
Anyway, fast forward about a half hour, and they find me on the roof, smoking a cigarette. They're all freaked because I was sitting on the edge, I guess they thought I was gonna jump. And while I was, indeed, suicidal on and off during that period of my life, that's not why I was up there...I just wanted to see the sunrise. It was so beautiful...watching the city lights go out one by one, and then the horizon turned grey...and then purple...and then pink, orange...the stars faded out so slowly.

I smoked my last Newport and watched the sunrise a couple of months ago...made me sad for some reason. All I have are Canadian cigs now.

You guys...I miss my kids. Somehow, this whole entry is partly about that. It's about other stuff, too, but...
I don't know.

Light me a sparkler?

'Night, kids.

Ah, Frankie...you are missed...

The following essay on Cheese and the people who chose it appears on the inside of the cover to Frank Zappa's album, You Are What You Is. It was submitted to Newsweek magazine for their guest feature column, but was rejected on the grounds that it was "too idiosyncratic."

It's been suggested that the Gross National Product is perhaps not the best indicator of how well we are doing as a society, since it tells us nothing about the quality of our lives. But, is this something worth dwelling on as we grovel our way along in the general direction of 21st century? When future historians write about us, if they base their conclusions on whatever material goods survive from present-day America, we will undoubtedly stand alone among nations and be known forevermore as, "Those who chose cheese."

As you will recall, folks, nobody ever had as much going for them in the beginning as we did. Let's face it; we were fantastic. Today, unfortunately, we are merely weird. This is a shocking thing to say, since no red-blooded American likes to think of his or her self as being weird. But when there are other options and a whole nation chooses cheese, that is weird.

Our mental health has been in a semi-wretched condition for quite some time now. One of the reasons for this distress, aside from choosing cheese as a way of life, is the fact that we have, against some incredibly stiff competition, emerged victorious as the biggest bunch of liars on the face of the planet. No society has managed to invest more time and energy in the perpetuation of the fiction that it is moral, sane and wholesome, than our current crop of modern Americans.

This same delusion is the mysterious force behind our national desire to avoid behaving in any way that might be construed as intelligent. Modern Americans behave as if intelligence were some sort of hideous deformity. To cosmetize it, many otherwise normal citizens attempt a particular type of self-inflicted homemade mental nose-job designed to lower the recipient's socio-intellectual profile, to the point where the ability to communicate on the most Mongolian level provides the necessary certification to become "one of the guys."

Let's face it, nobody wants to hang out with somebody who's smarter than they are. This is not fun. Americans have always valued the idea of fun. We have a national craving for fun. We don't get very much of it anymore, so we do two things: first, we rummage around for anything that might be fun; then, since it wasn't really fun in the first place, we pretend to enjoy it, whatever it was. The net result? Stressed cheese.

But where does all this cheese really come from? It wouldn't be fair to blame it all on T.V., although some credit must be given to whoever it is at each of the networks that "gives us what we want." You don't ask, you don't get. Folks, we now have "got it." Lots of it. And, in our infinite American wisdom, we have constructed elaborate systems to insure that future generations will have an even more abundant supply of that fragrant substance upon which we presently thrive.

If we can't blame it on the T.V., then where does it come from? Obviously, we are weird if we have to ask such a question. Surely we must realize by now, except for the fact that we lie to ourselves so much that we get confused sometimes, that as contemporary Americans we have an almost magical ability to turn anything we touch into a festering mound of self-destructing poot. How can we do this with such incredible precision? Well, one good way is to form a committee. Committees composed of all kinds of desperate American-types have been known to convert the combined unfilled emotional needs and repressed biological urges of their memberships into complex masses of cheese-like organisms at the rap of a gavel. Committee cheese is usually sliced very thin, then bound into volumes for eventual dispersal in courts of law, legislative chambers, and public facilities, where you are invited to "eat all you want."

If that doesn't fill you up, there's the exciting union cheese, the most readily available cheese-type offered. The thing that's so exciting about union cheese from a gourmet's point of view is the classic simplicity of the mathematical formula from which it is derived. In fact, it's difficult to avoid a state of total ecstacy if one contemplates the proposition that no import quota yet devised has proven equal to the task of neutralizing the lethal emissions generated by the ripening process of this piquant native confection. Should we not be overtaken by some unspeakable emotion, when we consider the fact that the smaller the amount of care taken in each union cheese artifact, the more triumphant is the blast of the vapors streaming forth from every nook and cranny of whatever it was that the stalwart craftsperson got paid $19 per hour to slap together?

Still hungry? Union cheese might be the most readily available, but no type of cheese in America today has achieved the popular acceptance of accountant cheese. If it is true that you are what you eat, then surely our national willingness to eat this stuff tells us more about ourselves than we probably wish to know. Obviously we have found the cheese to believe in. Why not? It's manufactured by people who count money, endorsed as nutritionally sound by civic leaders, and delivered by the media door-to-door. The quality of our lives, if we think of this matter in terms of how much of what we individually consider to be beautiful are we able to experience every day, seems an irrelevant matter now that all decisions regarding the creation and distribution of works of art must first pass under the limbo bar, a.k.a. "the bottom line," along with things like taste and the public interest, all tied like a tin can to the wagging tail of the sacred prime-rate poodle.

The aforementioned festering poot is coming your way at a theatre or drive-in near you. It wakes you up every morning as it drizzles out of your digital clock radio. An arts council somewhere is getting a special batch ready with little tuxedos on it so you can think it's precious.

Yes Virginia, there is a free lunch. We're eating it now. Can I get you a napkin?

-FZ

Look at your face like you're killed in a dream...

Theres a letter on the desktop
That I dug out of a drawer
The last truce we ever came to
In our adolescent war
And I start to feel the fever
From the warm air through the screen
You come regular like seasons
Shadowing my dreams

And the mississippis mighty
But it starts in minnesota
At a place that you could walk across
With five steps down
And I guess thats how you started
Like a pinprick to my heart
But at this point you rush right through me
And I start to drown

And theres not enough room
In this world for my pain
Signals cross and love gets lost
And time passed makes it plain
Of all my demon spirits
I need you the most
Im in love with your ghost
Im in love with your ghost

Dark and dangerous like a secret
That gets whispered in a hush
(dont tell a soul)
When I wake the things I dreamt about you
Last night make me blush
(dont tell a soul)
And you kiss me like a lover
Then you sting me like a viper
I go follow to the river
Play your memory like a piper

And I feel it like a sickness
How this love is killing me
Id walk into the fingers
Of your fire willingly
And dance the edge of sanity
Ive never been this close
Im in love with your ghost

Unknowing captor
You never know how much you
Pierce my spirit
But I cant touch you
Can you hear it
A cry to be free
Oh Im forever under lock and key
As you pass through me

Now I see your face before me
I would launch a thousand ships
To bring your heart back to my island
As the sand beneath me slips
As I burn up in your presence
And I know now how it feels
To be weakened like achilles
With you always at my heels

This bitter pill I swallow
Is the silence that I keep
It poisons me I cant swim free
The river is too deep
Though Im baptized by your touch
I am no worse than most
In love with your ghost

You are shadowing my dreams
(in love with your ghost)
(in love with your ghost)
(in love with your ghost)

Is the moon as big from your window? Or is it covered in fog, as it often is there?
Do you still think I'm beautiful? Did you ever think it in the first place?

I was finally happy. And you took it away. I wish that you'd never given it to me in the first place...if you were just going to take it away.

So it's sink or swim...and I'm dropping like a stone.

So here I sit, with nothing.
I mean it, kids...NOTHING.

I can feel my guitar looking over my shoulder, taunting me because I can't seem to master C#m...
I can feel my sketchbook calling me, scolding me for not working on my commissions...

But I have nothing today. Except words...and we all know how useless those are.

I've been okay recently...trucking along. As long as I have something to occupy me, I'm fine, really, I am. Kind of like a shark...as long as I keep swimming, I won't sink like a stone. Or think too much, because that would be equally hazardous to my health.
But today...all I can do is think. And feel. And it SUCKS.
I mean...really?

I hear the staccato of rain...but I washed my hair already. The rain does nothing but keep me from comfortably walking to the park to sit on the swings and ruminate with my headphones on.

I find myself lonely, today. The kind of loneliness that has pushed me into relationships before.
I guess we'll see where I am when the dust settles.

Here's hoping I survive the weekend...
<3 me