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MY HEART LIES TO ME, I’M FULL OF SHIT

There are many places you can find desperate men. Many times you’ll see them lulling around gun stores. You can always tell the types. They’re the ones who look at the cheap handguns, because even though they want to kill someone or themselves, they’re frugal and want to do it as cheaply as possible.

Look for them sometime.

There will be an old man with Vietnam War tattoos behind the counter asking if he can help them find anything.

Know what they’ll say?

“Oh, I’m just browsing.”

Browsing? Please. Browsing is something that is done at leisure for nothing but the pleasure of looking at things you will never own or use. If you want to shoot someone or yourself, why would you just say, “Oh, I’m browsing?”

Because desperate men aren’t thinking men.

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LITTLE OLD LADY GOT MUTILATED LATE LAST NIGHT

stewymcstewstew: is david even still alive?
TheRobotMonkey: no.
stewymcstewstew: ohh ok
TheRobotMonkey: not since I killed him.
stewymcstewstew: when was that?
TheRobotMonkey: a couple days ago
TheRobotMonkey: it smells pretty bad around here now
stewymcstewstew: where are you keeping him?
TheRobotMonkey: I started blending his body parts
stewymcstewstew: what are you making?
TheRobotMonkey: and flushing the remains
TheRobotMonkey: but the blender broke
TheRobotMonkey: and now I have half a corpse and a backed up toilet
stewymcstewstew: ouch
TheRobotMonkey: so I’ve just been shitting in Boo’s litter box
stewymcstewstew: i have a lime pit
TheRobotMonkey: don’t bother.
TheRobotMonkey: I’ll be in jail soon enough.
stewymcstewstew: someone misses him?
TheRobotMonkey: everyone became suspicious when I started returning his calls for him
TheRobotMonkey: and answering his phone
stewymcstewstew: who calls david??
TheRobotMonkey: I can’t tell you
TheRobotMonkey: you don’t wanna go down with me
stewymcstewstew: ok, deal

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I’M GONNA STAND ON THE CORNER AND SCREAM AND SHOUT IT “I CAN’T STOP THINKIN’ ABOUT IT!”

I heard there’s two ways to get out of this town: one is a uniform; the other’s a casket. I keep wondering when it will be my time to choose this or my time to be chosen.

Will they stamp my pass or punch my ticket? Will they send me packing?

A man at rest or a man with a knapsack, trudging through the mud in some godforsaken campaign across some godforsaken place.

It’s raining here right now. I love the rain. I love to lie awake at night with the rhythmic pitter-pat jazzing it’s way across my window.

I can hear it.

I can feel it.

It’s like Miles Davis is the god of thunder and lightning.

I stand on the front porch, arms spread like Christ with the rain on my face, running down my body. Enveloped, is what I am. My glasses are fogged and my shirt is damp. I don’t care, I’m a free man.

Have you ever watched a sun set in a rain storm? I’m trying to think if I have and I am fairly certain that the answer is that I have not.

I wonder what it would look like. I’m imagining an orange and gray sky that becomes redder and blacker at the same time. I want to watch a sunset in the rain.

I’m losing myself a little more everyday. To what, I’m not exactly sure, but I feel less and less like myself. Perhaps I’m changing into another person like I change into another pair of clothese. Perhaps I’m just getting older and even more cynical.

Perhaps I’m just giving up.

I want to sit in a room full of Holden Caulfield’s and Dean Moriaty’s and interrogate them one by one.

“Show me the phonies!”

“Thumb me a ride!”

“The bell tolls, but whom is it for?”

My joints are tired and sore and I feel like I could sleep for days or even years.

I want to hibernate some winter. I want to dig a hole in the earth and sleep for many, many months.

If you’re asleep for months and months, are your dreams more real than reality? Are they more tangible? Can you learn from them? Can you fall in love? Or do you wake up with a headache and feel like you’ve been hungover for four months?

I heard there’s two ways to get out of this town: one is a command and the other’s a sentence.

Which one will you get?

Five will get ten.

Ten will get fifteen.

I’m in for sixty but I’ll be out in twenty, and the lifers won’t tell you any different. Mr. Warden, Mr. Warden can we be friends?

The circus came and went.

Winter turned into spring.

I grew two full beards and shaved them out of spite and disgust, while memories were spinning on the turntable in my bedroom into a pile of clothes sitting on the floor.

I drank every night all winter long and didn’t even think about it.

I passed out every night all winter long and didn’t even think about it.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. More than I’d care to admit.

I heard there’s two ways to get out of this town: one is rejection, the other’s acceptance.

I used to be angry. Imagine that, an angry young man. It almost seems laughable. It always seems predictable. And every now and then I’ll go back and visit.

Is that apathy or acceptance? Or is it both? Am I just tired of kidding myself?

I am tired.

I’m so tired sheep are counting me.

What do you think you would dream about while hibernating? Escape, maybe? The past? Sunsets in rainstorms? or would you maybe just sleep and not dream at all?

I’d like to know, I think.

Escape would be dramatic. Written in blood and told by fire, I imagine. Escape would be thrills. Escape would be chills. Escape would be kills.

I’m going to drive nails into the walls when I leave. I’m going to paint all the doors black. I’m going to stand on the roof and scream into the night.

Then I’ll be free.

I heard there’s two ways to get out of this town: one is a uniform, the other’s a casket.

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I LIKE CONFRONTATIONS, I DO. I GET THIS THRILL OUT OF SAYING WHAT’S TRUE.

I’m an American.

You’re an American.

We’re Americans.

It’s kind of like that maybe God exists and he’s got a bastardly sense of humor. Communion becoming hot dogs and beer in paper cups, forgiveness a four letter word. Father, forgive me, I have sinned.

We’re Americans.

What if there is a heaven and when we die and get ready to enter the pearly gates, God points his finger at us and says “HA! I got ya!”? Wouldn’t that be perfect? After all of the time spent worrying about the nature of God and meaning of life, all he’d have to do is point his finger at us and laugh. It’s a great cosmic joke.

It makes a lot of sense to me. It truly does. And I’m an American.

I was drinking at a bar the other night, talking to a 70 year old man. He was smoking camel filters and drinking vodka and tonic.

Do you want to know what he said to me?

He said, “I’ll never live to be as old as my father. I just don’t take care of myself.”

He was 70 years old. He had a grandfatherly smile, and a hearty laugh. He seemed to be a very gentle old man. I bought him another drink and we talked about storming the beach at Normandy.

Before you can ask, no he wasn’t there. He was not a veteran. We were talking about storming the beach at Normandy for a second time in history. A follow up as it were.

As it was.

As it will be forever and ever Amen.

I’m an American.

I say that the same way I say “I like coleslaw” and “this room is cold.”

It’s not an oath. It’s not a statement of pride. It just is.

And I just am.

Isn’t it funny that people created God, the assumed creator of people? People created Mickey Mouse. People created Bugs Bunny. The only difference is that no one gave them any credit.

God damn, God. Is that even possible?

I’m an American. TAG! YOU’RE “IT”!

If you could have any terminal illness of your choice, which would you choose? I’d want something brought on by too much sex and too many drugs. That way, at the very least, I could reflect on the fun times I had.

I’m an American.

Charlton Heston resigned as President of the NRA. He has Alzheimer’s. I have a hard time remembering how to spell that word, an irony which I assure you, does not lose itself on me. Let’s just save the confusion and call it “Old Timer’s”. It makes sense after all. The thing that frightmens me the most is that perhaps Charlton Heston won’t remember what he’s shooting at.

That makes him very dangerous.

I’m an American.

I shoot first and ask questions that are not the correct ones for the occasion.

I’m an American.

I’m a small time con-artist at the unemployment line.

I’m an American.

I hear voices in my head.

I’m an American.

I voted for Tony Blair.

I’m an American.

I drink beer from paper cups.

I’m an American.

I refuse to quit trying, because I want you to start paying attention.

I’m an American.

You’re an American.

We’re all Americans.

“HA! I got ya!”

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SOMEONE LEFT THE CAKE OUT IN THE RAIN

I woke up today and I didn’t want to go to work. So I said to myself “Self, figure out how to not go to work AND get paid today.”

Thank science for PTO time.

I slept two hours later than usual, and was on my way to have lunch with my pal Jordan when I found out what kind of man I am: midwestern.

See, my tire hit something in the road or had a slow leak or something, but it popped and went flat. So I had to pull over and change my tire. If I were like Dave Barry, I’d be writing about how hard and difficult it was, how much I hate getting dirty, and bitching about why I couldn’t just pay someone to change it for me.

But I’m not like Dave Barry.

I pulled my tire iron and jack out and was glad that I paid attention when my dad’s truck blew a tire when I was twelve. I went to work on that sucker, and 20 minutes later had the spare tire on, the old tire on the back, the jack folded up in my back seat, and went and enjoyed a well deserved lunch buffet at Valentino’s.

Tonight, feeling inspired, I went and cleaned my car out, finally removed and assembled my bike from the back end, filled my tires to their correct 35 lbs of air, and replaced my thoroughly beaten floor mats.

I’m on a goddamn roll. Nothing can stop me. Don’t even try. I’ll take you out.

F’real.

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GOOD BYE BLUE SKY

Have you ever been laying on a floor, talking to another person, while you each lie in opposite directions so it appears as if the other person is upside down? When that happened, when this happens, focus directly on their mouth the same way you would on their eyes were you both sitting up or standing.

It’s as though their mouth is a third eye in their forehead.

I want you to read this standing up.

I want you to read this upside down.

I want you to read this doing handstands.

This is all to say, that I want you to read this from a different point of view.

I want your perceptions and I want your opinions, because at this point, I don’t know what happened to mine. I want to see things in my world from your third eye.

Case in point: I’ve been thinking about my parents a lot lately. There was a realization that I don’t know them very well.

I know who they were. I know what they were like ten, fifteen years ago even. But Before that and for the more recent years I am perplexed. There aren’t a lot of stories of things they did or places they went. There aren’t stories of them growing up. They don’t have hobbies.

It perplexes me.

I suspect my confusion comes from being too much like my father. He’s a quiet man, you see. I too, am a quiet man. I don’t always know what to say when surrounded with people. I don’t know how to open my mouth and open myself up. I know how to sit and listen. I know how to accept. I want to learn how to share.

My memories of my father are very similar. Constantly driving places, him in the driver seat, I in the passenger, and dead silence. It was that way when I was seven. It was that way when I was seventeen. At 21, it’s still no different.

I want to know my dad, but I don’t how to start. Let me tell you what I do know about him:

He was born in Council Bluffs in 1948, the son of a railman I never met and my Grandma Bette, the sweetest woman I’ve ever known. His father died when he was 18 during an accident at the railyards. He went on to school at Wayne State College in Wayne, NE where he got his degree in Education. He met my mom while teaching at Bloomer School in Council Bluffs, they married in 1977, and in 1981 had their first child, me.

I’ve never really talked to my dad about his father, my grandfather, who I never met. I can only imagine what losing him at such an age did to my dad. In some ways I think it’s effected our father-son relationship as my dad doesn’t have a model to follow after that age. I don’t know. Perhaps I’m rambling.

It’s been said that our fathers are our models for God. I would agree with that. The idea of God is a mystery to me. My father is a mystery to me. There’s an absurd kind of synchronicity in that. My father is approachable and tangible, and yet I don’t know how to start knowing him.

I want to know what my father loved.

I want to know what my father loves.

I want to hear the culmination of his life experiences.

I want to know about all the things he did and thought, and the things he does and feels.

I want to hear about the mistakes he made and how he learned from them.

I don’t want to sit in silence around him and not learn. I don’t want to sit in silence with him and not share. I don’t want to do that with *anyone* ever again.

If your father is your model for God, and you don’t know him, how could you ever know God? I ask this, given my history of atheism, in all sincerity. I’m not the angry atheist I once was. While true, I have no faith still, I’m not trying to talk about that now. I’m past the angry stage of that.

The anger I have now, is directed inward more. I’m angry at myself for not knowing how to talk to the man. I’m angry at myself because I can sit down and write about this, but I don’t know how to do anything about it.

This isn’t just about my dad. This is about me and how I don’t know how to know people. This is about me and how I don’t know how to verbally share myself. This is about me and how I want to be able to talk to you about everything and I don’t know how to do that.

I want to share the world through my third eye.

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1, 2, 3

If you close the door
The night could last forever
Leave the sunshine out
And say hello to never

All the people are talking and they’re having such fun
I wish this could happen to me
But if you close the door
I’ll never have to see the day again

But if you close the door
The night could last forever
Leave the wine glass out
And drink a toast to never

Someday I know someone will look into my eyes
And say “hello, You’re my very special one”
But if you close the door
I’ll never have to see the day again

Dark party bars, shiny Cadillac cars
And people on subways and trains
Looking grey in the rain as they stand disarrayed
Oh but people look well in the dark

If you close the door
The night could last forever
Leave the sunshine out
And say hello to never

Someday I know someone will look into my eyes
And say “Hello, You’re my very special one”
But if you close the door
I’ll never have to see the day again
I’ll never have to see the day again (once more)
I’ll never have to see the day again

-After Hours; The Velvet Underground (and incidentally, my favorite V.U. song)