31 July 2008

radiohead concert update: 03 august - indianapolis

For the lucky chaps going to the Radiohead concert on 03 August 2008 at Verizon Wireless Music Center in Indianapolis, you may find interest in the following:

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

RADIOHEAD with GRIZZLY BEAR
Parking Open: 4.30PM
Gates Open: 6.00PM
Showtime: 7.30PM

CAMERA/RECORDING POLICY
Instamatic, 35MM, Small Digital Cameras, Disposable Cameras ARE PERMITTED. No professional cameras with a detachable lens. Audio and Video recording will not be permitted.

LAWN CHAIR & BLANKET POLICY
Lawn Chairs are permitted, however they must sit no higher then 9 inches off of the ground and the back should be no higher then your knee. Blankets/Tarps will be allowed as well.

TRAFFIC INFORMATION
Traffic for this event will be very heavy. Please expect some delays on all major roadways leading to the venue. Delays can be expected. We recommend that you come early when the lots open at 4:30 to cut down on delays and enjoy all amenities that Verizon Wireless Music center has to offer!

FOOD & BEVERAGE POLICY
A 1 gallon bag of food per person is PERMITTED. It must be in a sealed clear plastic bag and is subject to inspection. A 1 liter factory sealed bottle of water per person is also PERMITTED.

ONCE INSIDE THE GATES
Please take time to enjoy many of the amenities that we have available to you. Should you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to let the nearest show team member know. They will be happy to assist you!

PROHIBITED ITEMS
No inflatables, laser pointers, signs, banners, knives, weapons of any kind, aerosol cans, laser pointers, coolers or video equipment.

**This information was provided by Live Nation, the company promoting this concert

30 July 2008

britney spears, paris hilton and john mccain!

When a man realizes his defeat is near, a primal urge sparks his brain and he refuses to return to his darkened corner without a fight.

Case in point: John McCain. Mr. McCain's latest political advertisement, which was posted earlier today on his official YouTube space, opens with flashes of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. McCain attempts, however futile, to attach the aforementioned "celebrities" to the popularity, or celebrity-like status, of the next President of the United States of America, Mr. Barack Obama.

McCain has flipped on the Iraq timetable issue (read the story HERE) and now he has produced a "hip" ad featuring two "glamorous celebrities." (Tongue firmly planted in cheek.)

Mr. McCain, you are a sad and desperate man -- and your darkened corner awaits you.

McCain's latest political ad with Britney and Paris

(Direct link to Mr. McCain's YouTube site: http://www.youtube.com/user/JohnMcCaindotcom)

26 July 2008

24 July 2008

holden

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
Holden Caulfield from J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye

23 July 2008

"in the beginning ..."

I feel the need to write ... strike keys and compose ... apply words to the thoughts and feelings. But the words will not surface ...

Can I recover what I have lost? Can I retrieve the girl I foolishly tossed away? At the very least I have reclaimed our friendship, but I want more. I want what we had -- in the beginning. That spark of excitement ... the prospect of a tomorrow together. I want her to embrace me with the untainted eyes and virgin heart of a woman who dreamed of a future with me -- before I shattered the image of what I could be. I'm ready to be that man for her. And for myself.

But she is in the company of another man. Perhaps the possibility of losing her forever had to strike my heart before I could realize what she meant to me. Perhaps the possibility of losing myself (forever) had to light my soul before I could realize what I wanted, what I needed.

And now? This man finds himself in limbo. My head is awash in uncertainty. Will she see what I see? And if so, can she trust the very heart I have shattered? Can she trust me? Yes. Yes. Yes she can. Because I have faith in myself. I'm ready to walk into tomorrow -- together.

(Can you hear me, Love?)

xx

Wilco "Pieholden Suite"

There's a whisper
I would like to breathe
Into your ear
But I'm too scared
To get that close
To you right now

There are dreams
We might have shared
And I still care
And I still love you
But you know how I've been untrue

In the beginning
We closed our eyes
Whenever we kissed
We were surprised
To find so much inside


Jeff Tweedy "Pieholden Suite" (Live at the Vic)

21 July 2008

in december

It was 95 degrees
And the brilliant blues and radiant reds were bleeding
From billboards and graffiti-stained alleyways.
I was searching for a used sedan
With low mileage and pristine plastic
And that new factory smell.
The hood ornaments glistened like chrome plated saviors
Planted in metal and crucified for consumers
Prepared to lead drivers down the predawn highways of desolation
And into the horizons of redemption and reclamation.

It was 95 degrees
And I was searching for a used sedan
But I found her --
She said her name was Shelly
And she looked like an ornament of salvation --
My menstruating Christ
And she looked like an ornament clinging to the artificial
Limbs of indoor trees in December.
She was a Christmas light
Blinking
Flashing
Blinking
And her brilliant blues and radiant reds were bleeding --
She was a victim of the stars.

"Get in the car, baby.
Let's go for a ride and hide from the artificial
And that god damn sun.
We'll have a countryside road kill romance
And we'll fuck in the backseat
In the backseat on refurbished upholstery."
"Take me," her words.
"Take me," were mine.

I drove out of the city
Away from the crystal skyscrapers and bleeding billboards.
I drove out of the city
And into the countryside of wildflowers and withering stalks
Searching for seclusion --
A site for our bodies to scream and receive
A sweet and unholy benediction.
The backseat was our carriage
A temporary womb
Where we would slither and swim
And discover our bodies and the flesh
And she was a Christmas light
Blinking
Flashing
Blinking
And I captured her in the rearview mirror
Rising from my body
Sinking into my skin.
Organs of the sex
Coalesced
And her flesh
Tasted like artificial fragrances tested on animals
And her lips
Were red, chapped from licking in the wind
And her vagina
Was an impeccable wound
That I dressed with immaculate movements
And complimentary remarks.

She was locked inside the rearview mirror
Flesh ascending from flesh
The muscles and the fat
The skin and the bones
The eating disorders and supermarket tabloid complexes
Her eyes were blank
Like arcades out of order
And she was a Christmas light
Blinking
Flashing
Blinking
Taking
And
Draining ...
Me.
Her chapped lips graced my scarred chest
My neck
My lips
And she climbed out of our carriage --
A stale and broken womb --
And disappeared
Into the wildflowers and withering stalks.

She was my menstruating Christ
Dry and out of season
Gone and out of grasp.
Her taste lingers and clings
To my tongue
Like flashing lights on artificial trees
In December.

xx

20 July 2008

fractured

The following Associated Press story is about Iraq War veteran Joseph Dwyer and his struggles upon returning to the States. It's a long story but well worth your time. As you read this heartbreaking tale, ask yourself, "How many more Joseph Dwyers are there? And how many more are being created every day?"

Soldier in Famous Photo Never Defeated 'Demons'

By ALLEN G. BREED and KEVIN MAURER, Associated Press Writers

Officers had been to the white ranch house at 560 W. Longleaf many times before over the past year to respond to a "barricade situation." Each had ended uneventfully, with Joseph Dwyer coming out or telling police in a calm voice through the window that he was OK.

But this time was different.

The Iraq War veteran had called a taxi service to take him to the emergency room. But when the driver arrived, Dwyer shouted that he was too weak to get up and open the door.

The officers asked Dwyer for permission to kick it in.

"Go ahead!" he yelled.

They found Dwyer lying on his back, his clothes soiled with urine and feces. Scattered on the floor around him were dozens of spent cans of Dust-Off, a refrigerant-based aerosol normally used to clean electrical equipment.

Dwyer told police Lt. Mike Wilson he'd been "huffing" the aerosol.

"Help me, please!" the former Army medic begged Wilson. "I'm dying. Help me. I can't breathe."

Unable to stand or even sit up, Dwyer was hoisted onto a stretcher. As paramedics prepared to load him into an ambulance, an officer noticed Dwyer's eyes had glassed over and were fixed.

A half hour later, he was dead.

When Dionne Knapp learned of her friend's June 28 death, her first reaction was to be angry at Dwyer. How could he leave his wife and daughter like this? Didn't he know he had friends who cared about him, who wanted to help?

But as time passed, Knapp's anger turned toward the Army.

A photograph taken in the first days of the war had made the medic from New York's Long Island a symbol of the United States' good intentions in the Middle East. When he returned home, he was hailed as a hero.

But for most of the past five years, the 31-year-old soldier had writhed in a private hell, shooting at imaginary enemies and dodging nonexistent roadside bombs, sleeping in a closet bunker and trying desperately to huff away the "demons" in his head. When his personal problems became public, efforts were made to help him, but nothing seemed to work.

This broken, frightened man had once been the embodiment of American might and compassion. If the military couldn't save him, Knapp thought, what hope was there for the thousands suffering in anonymity?

___

Like many, Dwyer joined the military in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

His father and three brothers are all cops. One brother, who worked in Lower Manhattan, happened to miss his train that morning and so hadn't been there when the World Trade Center towers collapsed.

Joseph, the second-youngest of six, decided that he wanted to get the people who'd "knocked my towers down."

And he wanted to be a medic. (Dwyer's first real job was as a transporter for a hospital in the golf resort town of Pinehurst, where his parents had moved after retirement.)

In 2002, Dwyer was sent to Fort Bliss, Texas. The jokester immediately fell in with three colleagues — Angela Minor, Sgt. Jose Salazar, and Knapp. They spent so much time together after work that comrades referred to them as "The Four Musketeers."

Knapp had two young children and was going through a messy divorce. Dwyer stepped in as a surrogate dad, showing up in uniform at her son Justin's kindergarten and coming by the house to assemble toys that Knapp couldn't figure out.

When it became clear that the U.S. would invade Iraq, Knapp became distraught, confiding to Dwyer that she would rather disobey her deployment orders than leave her kids.

Dwyer asked to go in her place. When she protested, he insisted: "Trust me, this is what I want to do. I want to go." After a week of nagging, his superiors relented.

Dwyer assured his parents, Maureen and Patrick — and his new wife, Matina, whom he'd married in August 2002 — that he was being sent to Kuwait and would likely stay in the rear, far from the action.

But it wasn't true. Unbeknownst to his family, Dwyer had been attached to the 3rd Infantry's 7th Cavalry Regiment. He was at "the tip of the tip of the spear," in one officer's phrase.

During the push into Baghdad, Dwyer's unit came under heavy fire. An airstrike called in to suppress ambush fire rocked the convoy.

As the sun rose along the Euphrates River on March 25, 2003, Army Times photographer Warren Zinn watched as a man ran toward the soldiers carrying a white flag and his injured 4-year-old son. Zinn clicked away as Dwyer darted out to meet the man, then returned, cradling the boy in his arms.

The photo — of a half-naked boy, a kaffiyeh scarf tied around his shrapnel-injured leg and his mouth set in a grimace of pain, and of a bespectacled Dwyer dressed in full battle gear, his M-16 rifle dangling by his side — appeared on front pages and magazine covers around the world.

Suddenly, everyone wanted to interview the soldier in "the photo." Dwyer was given a "Hometown Hero" award by child-safety advocate John Walsh; the Army awarded him the Combat Medical Badge for service under enemy fire.

The attention embarrassed him.

"Really, I was just one of a group of guys," he told a military publication. "I wasn't standing out more than anyone else."

___

Returning to the U.S. in June 2003, after 91 days in Iraq, Dwyer seemed a shell to friends.

When he deployed, he was pudgy at 6-foot-1 and 220 pounds. Now he weighed around 165, and the other Musketeers immediately thought of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Dwyer attributed his skeletal appearance to long days and a diet of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat). He showed signs of his jolly old self, so his friends accepted his explanation.

But they soon noticed changes that were more than cosmetic.

At restaurants, Dwyer insisted on sitting with his back to the wall so no one could sneak up on him. He turned down invitations to the movies, saying the theaters were too crowded. He said the desert landscape around El Paso, and the dark-skinned Hispanic population, reminded him of Iraq.

Dwyer, raised Roman Catholic but never particularly religious before, now would spend lunchtime by himself, poring over his Bible.

When people would teasingly call him "war hero" and ask him to tell about his experiences, or about the famous photo, he would steer the conversation toward the others he'd served with. But Dwyer once confided that another image, also involving a child, disturbed him.

He was standing next to a soldier during a firefight when a boy rode up on a bicycle and stopped beside a weapon lying in the dirt. Under his breath, the soldier beside Dwyer whispered, "Don't pick it up, kid. Don't pick it up."

The boy reached for the weapon and was blasted off his bike.

In late 2004, Dwyer sent e-mails to Zinn, wondering if the photographer had "heard anything else about the kid" from the photo, and claiming he was "doing fine out here in Fort Bliss, Texas."

But Dwyer wasn't doing fine. Earlier that year, he'd been prescribed antidepressants and referred for counseling by a doctor. Still, his behavior went from merely odd to dangerous.

One day, he swerved to avoid what he thought was a roadside bomb and crashed into a convenience store sign. He began answering his apartment door with a pistol in his hand and would call friends from his car in the middle of the night, babbling and disoriented from sniffing inhalants.

Matina told friends that he was seeing imaginary Iraqis all around him. Despite all this, the Army had not taken his weapons.

In the summer of 2005, he was removed to the barracks for 72 hours after trashing the apartment looking for an enemy infiltrator. He was admitted to Bliss' William Beaumont Army Medical Center for treatment of his inhalant addiction.

But things continued to worsen. That October, the Musketeers decided it was time for an "intervention."

Minor, who had moved to New York, overdrew her bank account and flew down. She, Knapp and Salazar went to the apartment and pleaded with Dwyer to give up his guns, or at least his ammunition.

"I'm sorry, guys," he told them. "But there's no way I'm giving up my weapons."

After talking for about an hour and a half, Dwyer agreed to let Matina lock the weapons up. The group went for a walk in a nearby park, and Dwyer seemed happier than he'd been in months.

But Dwyer's paranoia soon returned — and worsened.

On Oct. 6, 2005, when superiors went to the couple's off-base apartment to persuade Dwyer to return to the hospital, Dwyer barricaded himself in. Imagining Iraqis swarming up the sides and across the roof, he fired his pistol through the door, windows and ceiling.

After a three-hour standoff, Dwyer's eldest brother, Brian, also a police officer, managed to talk him down over the phone. Dwyer was admitted for psychiatric treatment.

In a telephone interview later that month from what he called the "nut hut" at Beaumont, Dwyer told Newsday that he'd lied on a post-deployment questionnaire that asked whether he'd been disturbed by what he'd seen and done in Iraq. The reason: A PTSD diagnosis could interfere with his plans to seek a police job. Besides, he'd been conditioned to see it as a sign of weakness.

"I'm a soldier," he said. "I suck it up. That's our job."

Dwyer told the newspaper that he'd blown off counseling before but was committed to embracing his treatment this time. He said he hoped to become an envoy to others who avoided treatment for fear of damaging their careers.

"There's a lot of soldiers suffering in silence," he said.

In January 2006, Joseph and Matina Dwyer moved back to North Carolina, away from the place that reminded him so much of the battlefield. But his shadow enemy followed him here.

___

Dwyer was discharged from the Army in March 2006 and living off disability. That May, Matina Dwyer gave birth to a daughter, Meagan Kaleigh.

He seemed to be getting by, but setbacks would occur without warning.

On the Fourth of July, he and family were fishing off the back deck when the fireworks display began. Dwyer bolted inside and hid under a bed.

In June 2007, police responded to a call that Dwyer was "having some mental problems related to PTSD." A captain talked him into going to the emergency room.

Later that month, Matina Dwyer moved in with her parents and obtained a protective order. In the complaint, she said Dwyer had purchased an AR-15 assault rifle and become angry when she refused to return it.

"He said that he was coming to my residence to get his gun back," she wrote in the June 25, 2007, complaint. "He was coming packed with guns and someone was going to die tonight." She declined to be interviewed for this story.

In July 2007, Dwyer checked into an inpatient program at New York's Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He stayed for six months.

He came home in March with more than a dozen prescriptions. He was so medicated that his feet flopped when he walked, as if he were wearing oversized clown shoes.

The VA's solution was a "pharmaceutical lobotomy," his father thought.

But within five days of his discharge, Dwyer's symptoms had returned with such ferocity that the family decided it was time to get Matina and 2-year-old Meagan out. While Dwyer was off buying inhalants, his parents helped spirit them away.

On April 10, weary and fearful, Matina Dwyer filed for custody and division of property.

Without his wife and daughter to anchor him, Dwyer's grip on reality loosened further. He reverted to Iraq time, sleeping during the day and "patrolling" all night. Unable to possess a handgun, he placed knives around the house for protection.

In those last months, Dwyer opened up a little to his parents.

What bothered him most, he said, was the sheer volume of the gunfire. He talked about the grisly wounds he'd treated and dwelled on the people he was unable to save. His nasal membranes seemed indelibly stained with the scents of the battlefield — the sickeningly sweet odor of rotting flesh and the metallic smell of blood.

Yet despite all that, Dwyer continued to talk about going back to Iraq. He told his parents that if he could just get back with his comrades and do his job, things would right themselves.

When Maureen Dwyer first saw Zinn's famous photo, she'd had a premonition that it might be the last picture she'd ever see of Joseph.

"I just didn't think he was going to come home," she said. "And he never did."

___

An autopsy is pending, but police are treating Dwyer's death as an accidental overdose.

His friends and family see it differently.

The day of the 2005 standoff, Knapp spent hours on the telephone trying to get help for Dwyer. She was frustrated by a military bureaucracy that would not act unless his petrified wife complained, and with a civilian system that insisted Dwyer was the military's problem.

In a letter to post commander Maj. Gen. Robert Lennox, Knapp expressed anger that Army officials who were "proud to display him as a hero ... now had turned their back on him..."

"Joseph Dwyer who had left to Iraq one of the nicest, kindest, caring, self-sacrificing and patriotic people I have ever known," she wrote, "was forced to witness and commit acts completely contrary to his nature and returned a tormented, confused disillusioned shadow of his former self that was not being given the help he needed."

While Dwyer was in the service, Minor said, the Army controlled every aspect of his life.

"So someone should have taken him by the hand and said, `We're putting you in the hospital, and you're staying there until you get fixed — until you're back to normal."

But Dr. Antonette Zeiss, deputy chief of the VA's Office of Mental Health, said it's not that simple.

"Veterans are civilians, and VA is guided by state law about involuntary commitment," she told the AP. "There are civil liberties, and VA respects that those civil liberties are important."

The family would not authorize the VA to release Dwyer's medical records. But it appears that Dwyer was sometimes unwilling — or unable — to make the best use of the programs available. In an e-mail to The Associated Press, Lennox, the former Bliss post commander, wrote that Dwyer "had a great (in my opinion) care giver."

Zeiss said the best treatment for PTSD is exposure-based psychotherapy, in which the patient is made "to engage in thoughts, feelings and conversations about the trauma." While caregivers must be 100 percent committed to creating an environment in which the veteran feels comfortable confronting those demons, she said the patient must be equally committed to following through.

"And so it's a dance between the clinicians and the patient."

Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, feels the VA is a lousy dance partner.

Rieckhoff said the VA's is a "passive system" whose arcane rules and regulations make it hard for veterans to find help. And when they do get help, he said, it is often inadequate.

"I consider (Dwyer) a battlefield casualty," he said, "because he was still fighting the war in his head."

___

The Sunday after the Fourth of July, Knapp attended services at Scotsdale Baptist, the El Paso church where she and Dwyer had been baptized together in 2004.

On the way out of the sanctuary, Knapp checked her phone and noticed an e-mail.

"I didn't know if you had heard or not," a friend wrote, "but I got an email from Matina this morning saying that Joseph had died on Saturday and that the funeral was today."

Knapp maintained her composure long enough to get herself and the children to the car. Then she lost it.

The children asked what was wrong.

"Joseph is dead," she told them.

"You said he wasn't sick any more," Justin said.

"I know, Justin," his mother replied. "But I guess maybe the help wasn't working like we thought it was."

The kids were too young to understand acronyms like PTSD or to hear a lecture about how Knapp thought the system had failed Dwyer. So she told them that, just as they sometimes have nightmares, "sometimes people get those nightmares in their head and they just can't get them out, no matter what."

Despite the efforts she made to get help for Dwyer, Knapp is trying to cope with a deep-seated guilt. She knows that Dwyer shielded her from the images that had haunted him.

"I think about all the torture that he went through when he came back, and I think that all of that stuff could have happened to me," she said, stifling a sob. "I just owe him so much for that."

Since Dwyer's death, Justin, now 9, has taken to carrying a newspaper clipping of the Zinn photo around with him. Occasionally, Knapp will catch him huddled with a playmate, showing the photo and telling him about the soldier who used to come to his school and assemble his toys.

Justin wants them to know all about Spc. Joseph Dwyer. His hero.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE — AP Pentagon reporter Pauline Jelinek also contributed to this report.

14

Photobucket

18 July 2008

15

I'm in dire need of sleep, so this post will be brief. Its length, however, is not indicative of tonight's earlier event: my first depression/bipolar support group meeting.

In the hour preceding the meeting I paced anxiously throughout my apartment. I don't recall the drive but I suddenly found myself in the parking lot, my eyes staring at the front door. I entered the quiet building and found the room -- room 15.

Everyone (including me!) introduced themselves and I mostly observed and listened. I made a few comments and shared some personal experiences. Every group member spoke about his or her medication(s). I, however, didn't tell the group about my choice to tackle my "diseases" without medication. (I hope to speak about this issue at an upcoming meeting.)

Everyone was very kind and at no point did I wish to leave. The two hour meeting ended and I shook hands with several of the group's participants, all of whom encouraged me to attend the next gathering. As soon as I exited the building several feelings -- all of them positive -- flooded my senses.

I felt relieved. Less alone. Strengthened. I felt as though I finally had the upper hand on this ... this thing. I felt empowered. And I haven't experienced that sensation for quite some time.

Today was a good day. A very good day.

xx

17 July 2008

post 424

Two hours until the meeting. I'm nervous as hell. Scared. My anxiety has climbed out of my bloodstream and manifested physically. Shaky hands. Fingertips sticky with perspiration. I feel as though I'm going to crawl out of my clammy flesh. Legs are trembling, restless. My chest pulses to the rhythm of my heart. Thump.Thump.Thump.Thump.Thump.Thump.Thump.Thump.Thump.Thump.Thump.Thump.

Christ, I don't know if I can do this. But I must.

How will I introduce myself? Will I recite the lines I've composed internally?

Room 15.

How many people will be there? What will they look like? Will they see the pink and swollen scars on my arm? I've thought about wearing a jacket ... something with long sleeves ... something to hide the lines. Those moments in time etched and recorded. But it's 92 degrees outside ... too hot for long sleeves.

Fuck it. I don't know ...

xx

16 July 2008

this morning

Before my eyelids cracked open this morning my belly was churning with anxiety.

Tomorrow night ... bipolar support group at 7PM ... my first meeting. I'm going, right? Are you going? Yes. Are you sure? Are you sure you won't find a parking space, trap yourself inside your car and drive off like a coward? No. I can't. The meeting is an opportunity. This group could offer me refuge. Hope. Of course it could, but we both know you are your worst enemy. Salvation sleeps in the cold sheets of death; redemption rests in the hollows of your heart. It's so much easier to turn away and fall into the solace of silence. Place gun to head. Pull trigger. Game over. No. I can't. Self-preservation is the opiate of the masses, you said it yourself. I'm going to this fucking meeting. I'm going. I'm going.

I have to ...

Give myself ...

H o p e ...

However tenuous that specter may be.

xx

15 July 2008

french kids and grandaddy

Earlier today Grandaddy's "The Warming Sun" (possibly my favorite Grandaddy song), which I hadn't heard in many months, crept inside my skull.

A flashback washed my mind and I recalled my introduction to the band: it was the autumn of 2000 and I had just watched "The Crystal Lake" video on MTV2 (yes, kids, MTV2 once played music videos like its retarded mother, MTV). The song's infectious hook hooked me and I purchased The Sophtware Slump the following day.

I knew the band disbanded in 2006, so I decided to scour the interwebs to see what had become of the group's members. I discovered their MySpace page and found the most unusual of treats -- "French kids" singing Sumday's "I'm on Standby," "Stray Dog and the Chocolate Shake," Saddest Vacant Lot in All the World," and The Sophtware Slump's "Underneath the Weeping Willow." Check out the songs on the expired band's MySpace page here.

Grandaddy factoids:

= Grandaddy perfected the art of campy, indie pop. (OK, that's more opinion than fact.)

= Grandaddy opened for Elliott Smith during his Figure 8 tour.

= "A.M. 180" (from the band's debut album, Under the Western Freeway) was featured in the film 28 Days Later ... it's the song playing during the supermarket scene.

= Some Wikipedia douche bag has called The Sophtware Slump "the American OK Computer." (Don't get me wrong, The Sophtware Slump is a good album, but is it on par with OK Computer? Ummmmm, NO. Damn you Wikipedia! Damn you to hell!)

= I do not own the band's final album, Just Like the Fambly Cat. (Is it a decent album? Someone give me some feedback on this ...)

xx

13 July 2008

predawn musings

Chain-smoking cigarettes and drinking (again). A brilliant thunderstorm passed over Bloomington a couple hours ago and now the skies are black and silent. I'm alone and writing while Interpol's Turn on the Bright Lights fills my headphones.

I'm struggling to find inspiration. My previous post, "Audiolog One by William Rockford," is the first part of a series of fictional audiologs I hope to continue. Blame Chuck Palahniuk, but I find something intriguing -- and, as a writer, freeing -- about tackling subjects some might find disturbing. It's easy to gloss over issues the "general public" would rather deny. I prefer to rip off the Band-Aid and let the wound bleed. I prefer to scour the flesh and mind and find the scars. Uncover the perpetrator and delve into his or her mind ... search for the motives ... the causes and effects of one's actions. Release the demons. Let them float and fluster, then pin their shadows to the wall and observe. Put pen to paper and document their movements.

Moving on ...

The postman delivered my newest pair of kicks: New Balance 574s. You'll find my complete shoe collection below:
Photobucket
(I'm bored, OK?)
The 574s look and feel great, but Saucony produces the most comfortable shoes on the planet.

Moving on ...

Albums on heavy rotation AKA Albums for the manic-depressive:

Taking Back Sunday - Louder Now (For the emo boy trapped inside this 30-year-old body)
Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights, Antics and Our Love to Admire (For comfort)
Songs: Ohia - Impala (When I wish to hear songs from a midnight highway)
Joy Division - Closer (For my reflection)
Holy Fuck - Holy Fuck (For DFA 1979 withdrawals)
Episode 359 of "A State of Trance with Armin van Buuren" - Live at Amnesia in Ibiza (For moments of hope, optimism and unfettered bliss)
30 Seconds to Mars - 30 Seconds to Mars (For the emo boy trapped inside me [again])
Patton Oswalt - Werewolves and Lollipops (When I need to laugh -- hysterically)

Moving on ...

Unless I lose the courage, I'll attend the depression/bipolar support group, which I mentioned in a previous post, this Thursday at 7PM. Since this will be my first meeting, I'm unsure how much I'll participate, but I'm definitely looking forward to this new experience.

Moving on ...

I recently purchased Eric Paul's latest collection of poetry, I Offered Myself as the Sea. Paul was the frontman of the now defunct band Arab on Radar; he now fronts The Chinese Stars. I won't attempt to define his unique writing style, but, like pornography, you know it when you see it.

"The Parking Lots of You and Me" by Eric Paul

Being friends with you is like being friends with one of those smashed-up cars they put out on the front lawns of High Schools a week before prom night to warn students about the dangers of drunk driving,
or
the dangers of being your friend while you binge eat on candy bars, get drunk everyday on gasoline and sleep with empty girls that live in parking lots.

Although it's frightening and very sad, it keeps me from getting in the car with you.
Moving on ...

My head needs a pillow, my body a blanket. Good night and good luck ...

xx

11 July 2008

audiolog one by william rockford

The following is a transcript of William Rockford's first audio journal.

Well, I've decided to begin a journal. A record of my feelings, thoughts and observations. I've chosen to record my thoughts to audio tape instead of writing them in a traditional journal because my mind tends to race beyond the pace of my hand.

Why have I chosen to begin a journal? Well, this is a difficult question to answer. I suppose we all seek to be immortalized in some fashion ... document our existence to prove we once occupied a moment in time. Like a photograph. Like initials carved into a tree or etched on the plastic wall of a telephone booth.

Will anyone hear these audio tapes? Will anyone hear my voice? I do not know, but I feel some strange desire to record ... to record my life ... my experiences. Perhaps I will return to these tapes and attempt to reconstruct my life into something ... something meaningful. Perhaps I will find a resolution -- salvation if I'm lucky -- to the unsolved issues ... the wounds from long ago that haunt me to this very day.

I awoke this morning from a dream. Actually, it wasn't even a dream. It was a flash of a face that rattled me from sleep -- the face of a nine-year-old Kelly Johnson.

As time passes, faces change ... the memory converts the hair, the eyes, nose, cheeks and lips into something intangible -- a moment, an experience.

It was the third grade and Kelly was nine, I was eight and she was my first crush. I was a shy boy and never revealed my "love" for her, but somehow she discovered I liked her. It was the third grade ... recess ... and Mrs. Wright, my third grade teacher, was on recess duty. I was playing kick ball when I heard Kelly yell, "Hey, William! Come here!" I removed myself from the game and, nervous as hell, approached her. "Let's go behind the shed. I have a secret I need to tell you. Quick. Mrs. Wright isn't looking."

"Um, OK," I replied, my belly boiling with butterflies. I made sure Mrs. Wright wasn't looking -- we weren't allowed to leave her sight -- and hurried to the shadow of the shed.

The janitor's shed contained a lawn mower, tools, paint and other things. I had never been behind the shed, but I had heard the stories: first kisses, sixth graders smoked cheap cigarettes, girls gossiped. Many myths were born behind that shed. I can recall the shed's appearance as if it were yesterday: white paint peeled from the rotting wooden walls, the shingles were in disrepair and a rusted padlock secured the shed's contents.

"So," she said. "I heard you like me."

My hands were buried in my pockets. My feet were restless. "Um, I don't know ... I ... who told you?"

"Have you ever kissed a girl?" she asked, ignoring my question.

"Um, yeah. Maybe ... yeah," I lied.

It's so much easier to lie. Just bury yourself under a blanket of falsehoods and fabrications ... sheets that will keep you warm from the cold truth ... the reality of your circumstance ... your reflection. And these days, this age of Wikipedia and online profiles, it's easier than ever to construct a make-believe reality. With just a few keystrokes we can change history, distort the facts. If we don't like who we are we can recreate ourselves in cyberspace via an online profile -- a new name with a false shadow. But I digress ...

I admitted I had never kissed a girl and she said, "Well, I'm going to show you how. I know you want to kiss me, William."

I couldn't look her in the eyes. My eyes were bouncing. I remember the sun glistening off her pink jellies. The PVC plastic. Her tiny toes. I thought I was going to piss myself ... so nervous. I was about to kiss Kelly -- my first crush. A preadolescent infatuation ... empty and baseless.

"Close your eyes," she instructed me.

"Um ... I ... I don't know. Mrs. Wright might catch us," I said.

"C'mon, William. Don't be a loser. C'mon, it'll be fun," Kelly reassured me.

"OK ... OK." I closed my eyes and I could feel her presence getting closer and closer until her lips met mine. She began to kiss me. My lips imitated her's.

A kiss.

A kiss.

A kiss.

Her breath tasted like strawberry bubblegum.

And then she ... I felt her hands on my waist ... hands moving to my belt buckle and through our connected lips I said ... a whisper, "What? What are you--"

"Shhhh, this is part of kissing."

She ... she unbuckled my belt. She unbuttoned my Bugle Boy jeans. Her hand reached inside ... her hand ... inside my Superman underwear ... fondling my private parts. And her breath tasted like bubblegum ... the flavor of strawberries. Our heads and lips were frozen. Still. Like department store mannequins. But her hands ... her hands were very much alive. And I ...

I tried to bury myself under that third grade sun. Make-believe. Pretend this isn't happening.

Flecks of white paint clinging to the decaying walls of that god damn shed.

Her pink jellies.

Her artificially flavored breath.

A preadolescent crush, shattered.

Me, clinging to ... myself.

And then a whistle and Mrs. Wright yelling, "OK, kids, recess is over! Form a line in alphabetical order next to the water fountain!"

And without a word, without a glance, Kelly scurried away ... from the shed ... from me, unbuttoned and unbuckled. Embarrassed. Ashamed.

I quickly collected myself and followed Mrs. Wright's instructions.

That ... that's all for now. End of entry. April 23rd of 2004.

End of transcript.

xx

06 July 2008

last ditch

Over the past 2-3 days my emotional well-being has steadily deteriorated and I now find myself trudging through the familiar, stale waters of apathy and self-loathing.

I could write about my feelings.

I could write about my thoughts.

I could douse this post with the tired words of a manic-depressive.

But why would I choose to expel more of those god damn cliches?

If you want to know how I'm feeling peruse the T.S.TV.S. library (located on the left side of this page). Visit the early entries of this blog, which I began nearly three years ago, and you will find that very little has changed since this blog's inception. Yes, there have been moments of joy. Sparks of hope. Flashes of optimism. But just beyond the frontiers of promise and confidence a darkness has seemingly always been present, masked by shadows. I've struggled with my emotional problems for so many years that the darkness is all that resonates. It's difficult to enjoy the pleasant moments because I'm aware of what lies just under the surface of a smile. A laugh. Those fleeting bursts of peace and contentment.

If I can gather the courage I'm going to join a local depression/bipolar support group. (Meetings occur on the first and third Thursday of every month.) A support group is the only therapeutic method I haven't tried. I've been a patient in a mental hospital. I've seen a psychologist and tried her "paint by numbers" technique. I've seen a psychiatrist and consumed the medications, which were prescribed irresponsibly. I've tried "god" and the various forms thereof (see: Christianity, Judaism, Islam and New Age spirituality). But I haven't tried the group approach. And just for the record, I have no preconceived notions about support groups (aside from the manner in which these groups have been portrayed in novels and films) and I will enter this next chapter with an open -- and hopeful -- mind.

Consider this the last exit of an empty highway.

Consider this the final bend of a rickety roller coaster.

Consider this a last-ditch effort to save me ... from myself.

xx