i left work an hour early, but i don't think anyone will notice. i just got sick of sitting around that damn place. i guess we all know why it's called "work," huh?

so i got home and i've been working on that proposed top-secret project. you can expect more from that space as it develops.

develops. joycam. polaroid. get it?

nevermind.

it's one of those mornings where i felt like i didn't even want to crawl out of bed. i only had a couple of hours of sleep last night, and i think i'm kind of a trainwreck, at this point. i probably look the part. i've opted, once again, to forgo coffee, this morning. it's the day before payday, so it was more of a funding issue, i'd say.

so…we have a lack of sleep, a lack of coffee, and a lack of money. doing pretty damn good, this morning, if i don't say so, m'self.

this weekend i'll be sitting in front of the computer, working on a top-secret project that should see the light of day sometime next week. at least a teaser, anyway.

have you ever had an incredible amount of things on your mind, but no way to really express them? yeah…join the club.

why can't my dsl be hooked up, oh…now? i tell ya what, that sure would be nice.

one source of happiness: liberty meadows. every day. in color. can't beat that with a stick.

i wish i would have burned some things i was working on, and photoshop, onto a cd to bring to work. that way i could occupy myself in these dead moments of nothingness. nope…instead, i'm alone with my thoughts that are really conspiring to beat me down, at every turn. it's what one would call a "giant pain in the ass." some one get me a lobotomy…stat!

"stat!" being one of those things they yell on hospital shows. it makes me think that it's just their way of saying "quick, you fuckin' goon!" except they were able to shorten it to one little syllable, that way they can just bark it out. "stat! stat!"

god that could get really fuckin' annoying.

after driving through tennessee on the way to atlanta, recently, and then up to chicago, this past weekend, i've noticed an alarming trend:

the names of fireworks stores. i mean…you've got nervous charlie, krazy kaplan, and sad sam. now…these just aren't very happy sounding names. they imply worry, sorrow, and even mental illness. these just aren't things that make me think "fireworks!" actually..they're not very inviting names for any kind of consumer activities. who wants to buy a coke from someone named krazy kaplan? and what the fuck is charlie so nervous about, anyway? another alarming thing about this: two of those places (sad sam and nervous charlie) advertised the selling of alcohol on the premises, as well. well…let's see…sam got drunk and blew his hand off with a couple of m-90s…guess we figured out why the hell he's so damn sad, huh?

i'm pulling material from emails that i've written….the barrel is damn close to empty, people.

work.

bored stiff.

dying.

second by second.

i burned a new copy of dear you by jawbreaker, last night. i bought a great jawbreaker live disk, this weekend, so i was in the mood to listen to it again. i somehow misplaced my previous copy, so i hope i can manage to keep this one in plain sight. the same thing happened to my copy of the newest pj harvey cd, as well. i still don't know what happened to that onw. poof. gone. case and all. i can just burn a new copy of it, as well, i guess.

so i'll probably eat chinese for lunch. i may opt for a sandwich from the place that always gets my sandwich wrong. that actually sounds pretty good, now that i think about it. maybe i'll phone it in and tell them exactly what i want. nah…better to do it face to face. that way, if they screw it up, i'll be there to put an end to it.

in searching around for the dsl service (mentioned earlier today), i noted that telocity (now directv dsl) offers service in my area. i didn't find this out until after i signed up for the bellsouth service, of course. i decided to maybe try to sign up for the telocity account and just cancel the bellsouth order. snag in that plan? even though bellsouth says i can have the service now, telocity is showing my number as still not qualified. telocity just runs over bellsouth's lines! it's the same thing, just a different name! cripes! these people need to get their shit together, i tell you.

moral of the story: as soon as telocity tells me i can have their service, i'm switching. they offer an external router and a static ip, all for the same damn price. you can't beat that with a stick.

work. bored stiff. dying. second by second.

no coffee, this morning. call it a grand experiment. i'm actually drinking coke, right now, so i think the grand experiment is a bit of a failure. that usually happens when the grand experiment isn't clearly defined.

another failure for the morning: i went out and searched every snack machine in the building for dunkin' stix and came up with nothing but a chocolate chocolate chip muffin. so i spent more and now i'm dying of chocolate overload. sometimes, i tell ya, i can't hang with all this chocolatety goodness. you know…this muffin sure would go great with some coffee.

damn it.

here i am on tuesday, one of my former days off. i miss having that day off in the middle of my week, kinda like a stress reliever. now…now i have to rely on other outlets.

piss off factor of the day: when matt moved out, he took his phone number and the dsl service. jess and i decided, a couple of days later, to go ahead and get the dsl line hooked back up. well…same house, different phone number…bellsouth tells us we don't qualify anymore. i tell them "we just had the shit 3 days ago!" well they didn't even acknowledge me. "click!" now i browse over to the bellsouth site, plug in our number and bang! we qualify. fuckin' idiots…some people, i swear.

well, regardless, consider our order placed. finally…back to the land of screamin' internet. consider me a happy man.

scott, jason and i drove up to chicago this weekend to see shellac and fugazi play. it was a fun weekend, to say the least.

it started off rather slow, with scott being an hour or so late. i took a picture of him with the joycam, and every time we shuffled through the pictures i said "look…it's scott looking an hour and 15 minutes late." ha ha. let me tell you…that was much funnier in the car.

we got up to chicago and found the venue with only a couple of wrong turns. i forgot my handy chicago street map, so there was a lot of wrong turns. this was a constant theme. i just wanted to make that note.

the show was huge. there were easily more people there than there was for the weezer show that i went up for a couple of months ago. so we're talking…in excess of 7000 people. or something like that. pretty damn packed, to say the least. we waited out front for an insane amount of time, waiting on several people were supposed to meet us at the venue. they finally showed up (except one) and we headed in. we got settled in some seats in the balcony and sat through the ex's set. i wasn't a fan, let's just put it that way. while the ex was playing, i overheard someone saying that shellac had played first. what?! i drove 5 hours and we missed shellac?! because we were waiting for people outside?! needless to say, i was a little put off. i got over it. i heard they played a really short set.

and that's what fugazi proceeded to do, as well. a short set that was made up of a great deal of new songs and only a few of the gems i was hoping to hear. they played smallpox champion, but it was a small concession. what they did play, they played exceptionally well. i'm hesitant to call it a disappointment, but i'm thinking that that's where my feelings are lying.

hey, bob…i paid $5 for a beer, as well. piss warm, even. i justified that extra buck because it was heineken. i wonder if the bud was cold…

we went back to my friend george's apartment after the show, picking up some cold ones on the way. it was a drunken joycam, chicago style pizza kind of night, to say the least. we ended up having quite a bit of fun, and i ended up sleeping for four whole hours on a hardwood floor. ouch.

when we got up, i started the day off with a bang by discovering this. take that, paul…i am the proud owner of a 2-liter. and you said they didn't make it anymore…

the drive home started out rather uneventfully, but scott decided he was going to spice it up, real quicklike. when we were on a random piss stop, scott spied a large two bus group of people. they abandoned their busses to eat at a bob evans across the way. their big mistake: they left one of the bus doors slightly ajar. scott and i took it upon ourselves to pry said door open and take pictures of the interior of someone else's bus.

and then we took a picture of some girl at a stop light, and scott was going to run over and give her the picture, but our light turned green.

and then scott was leaning out of the car window at 75mph to take a picture of some shirtless old man in a shitty station wagon.

and then night came on and we were under millions of stars out in the flatlands of indiana.

and then we were home, safe in our own beds.

and now i'm at work. talk about a shitty ending…

today started out pleasantly enough, with rolling thunder and pounding rain in the middle of the night (or terribly early morning, however you want to look at it) waking me up and giving me some prime thinking time before drifting back off to nice dreams.

then i woke up with the alarm. that's always where the day hits the downslope, isn't it?

i did the morning rituals and headed out onto the still wet streets. i hit the highway and was immediately forced into a place that i'd be stuck in for the rest of my interstate experience for this morning: behind a pokey bastard in the fast lane.

let me just get into my theory of "life in the fast lane," for a few seconds… i guess it really stems from that old "lead, follow, or get out of the way" scenario. my theory is, if you're going to speed, great. if you're not going to speed as much as the guy behind you…if you can't hang…clear the way for the more impetuous lawbreaker. it's pretty damn simple. if i am going faster than you, get the fuck out of my way. survival of the fittest. or at least "survival of the most brazen lawbreaker."

and then i get into work, fully aware that all the ceos and vps of this and that are here today. i decided to do my part and wear a tie, but i think things have gotten a little out of hand around here. they came in and turned all of our desk lamps on, citing "they like light! they like things bright!" well…guess what? i don't. consider my desk lamp turned…off. my shirt is bright white. that should count for something. they have all of the window shades open and tons of little smiley-face balloons on people's chairs. it's just a madhouse. all to impress the suits. i guess that's the way the traffic in the pond flows, huh?

and i probably won't be seeing radiohead. not in chicago. not in atlanta. and most likely not in new york. joy of joys. that's what you get for trying to be adaptable.

just a note…the m.a.s.h. has spoken:

You live in a Apartment.
You're married to [the girl].
You drive a BMW.
Your car is the color Silver.
You live in the state Kentucky.
Your honeymoon is Japan.
Your occupation is a Writer.
You have this many kids: 4 (2 male; 2 female).

i got lucky, ladies and gents…

some notes on this:

my other two girl options were winona and gwynneth. i much prefer apartment living, anyway. the other two cars were both hondas, which could have ended up black or red, as well as silver. the other states are unimportant. the honeymoon was between spain, italy, and japan. japan wins. i guess i have to get used to being a writer, huh? and plenty of kids is fine by me…

3 posts in one day? word lust, i say…

an afternoon in hell…

i ditched out of work for a little while to do that whole cat thing, this afternoon. i was able to arrive at the homestead well before the terminex truck, so i felt good and safe. i was able to stash the litter box and food dishes, as well as the assorted cat toys that were gifts to clyde from the girl. i stashed clyde in the cat carrier and rushed her out to the car, which she hates. clyde has never been a fan of the car. we drove around for a bit, and i picked up lunch. i pulled the car into some shade around the corner from the house and made sure the windows were down. i rushed upstairs to try to remain inconspicuous and to make sure i knew the exact moment the pest control people actually left. i sat around in front of the computer, chit-chatting and scarfing my lunch until the terminex truck finally pulled away from the front of the house. i rushed down to the car and clyde was panting and bitching at me for being gone so long. i drove around the block, snatched her out of the car, and rushed her fussy ass back upstairs.

she climbed out of the cat carrier, walked around for a little bit, and plopped down into the floor like nothing happened. all that bitching for nothin', huh? that's life, i guess.

in all of the confusion, i ended up only eating about half of my lunch. now i'm sitting around hungry. damn the man.

i just want to go on record as saying that clyde took to the girl like i've never seen, curling up in her lap like crazy. the girl is this incredibly nice person who brought cat toy up on her very first visit. these things just reinforced my feelings about how she was someone that i really wanted to be with, despite whatever challenges lay before me. how can i not want to be with this girl? really now…it's just principle, you know.

i guess i'm just waiting around for her to realize how great i am, at this point. i already know how amazing she is, after all.

but i guess that would require me being great…

oops.

i woke up this morning from a dream about choking. i don't remember how i was choking. couldn't remember whether it was food, someone's hands, or a punch to the throat that was causing my lack of air. i know that i woke up gasping for breath. that's never fun.

i rolled out of the house this morning and straight to the coffee joint. after my night of fitful, strange (and bad) dream laden sleep, i needed something that was going to put a spring back in my step for the day. one (1) medium mocha with three (3) squirts of chocolate definitely filled the bill. expressway to nervous jitters, dead ahead.

i have to go home for lunch today. i have to take the cat out of the house and ride around the neighborhood while the landlord has the house sprayed for bugs. normally this wouldn't be an issue, but jess informed me, via note, that the landlord doesn't really know about clyde. we don't want to step on any toes, so this is gonna be a nerve-wracking afternoon, to say the least. i'll just have to pick up some quick food to make my tummy stop grumbling.

still trying to iron out the travel plans for this weekend. we're headed up to chicago for a big shellac and fugazi show. should be, well, huge. we're debating the merits of driving up friday night versus saturday morning. maybe we'll just hang out here in town friday night and go bowling or something. either way, it should be a fun weekend.

i'm extremely hungry, at this point, having had all of my energy burned out of me by my beloved morning mocha. i need to start eating more. this one meal a day plan is for the birds. i have much respect for the snack machine…

what is massivewasteoftime.com? what is bob talking about? only time will tell…

time for me to pretend to do some frickin' work…

i woke up this morning feeling like my life was a prison.

i looked up at the wall and just thought "this isn't right." i felt, for the first time in a while "this isn't home." but i guess the strangest question that's running through my head right now is…where is home?

i don't have an answer to that question, at all. i was really happy to have all of the space that i now call my own when matt moved out, but honestly…it feels wrong. i'm essentially living alone again, mostly because jess is never home. i'm coping with some fresh heartache. i have cable tv. i have a playstation 2. they both sit dead silent. i barely use my own computer, anymore. this is, mostly, due to the fact that we don't have the dsl line at the house anymore, so it's become more of a chore than an entertaining diversion.

speed. flashing lights. whatever we want, whenever we want it. funny how you take convenience out of our lives and we go nuts. it becomes less interesting.

so…is louisville a prison? i don't know. i've never really escaped it for more than a week at a time. i go on a lot of trips, these days. weekends in other cities. usually i'm happy to be home. i can say that the last couple of trips i've taken, seeing louisville again was kind of a downer. i've been thinking of moving away from here for a while. my main problem is that i haven't a clue where to go. i have friends in a lot of major cities. i could move virtually anywhere. but, honestly, would that city become just another prison?

is my attitude on life really my only prison? i've spent a few years, drifting from heartbreak to heartbreak, wondering if it would never end, not really thinking about how to put an end to it. i feel like i was just involved with someone who changed all of that for me. i was able to see things how i hadn't seen them previously. that a lot of my issues from the past were really what's been holding me back. they were, essentially, holding me back from her. i made decisions to not have this turn out the way things of my past have. i did a lot of soul-searching. i dug under every rock in my mind, looking for clues as to how to put an end to this.

and i came up with an answer. and i made the resolve that this was going to change. and i set about making it change.

and i still want to make those changes. and i still want to make them for the same reasons. but now i'm in an entirely new situation and i don't really have any control over it. i'm trying to make the best of things the way they are, currently. i know that if i don't stop my usual trainwreck before it happens, that i'll never be able to salvage more than a token friendship out of this, if even that. and to be honest, i want so much more from this.

i just hope i don't get stuck in jail again.