I've got a hive of bees. I sneeze and pull stunts like MacGuyver.

I've started the graduate school crunch. The vice grips are on the University of Missouri-Kansas City. I'm not going to let up, ever. Sorry. I'm going to this school. Sent out the warning calls to a few former professors. Looking for letters of recommendation.


So yeah, did you get the hint? I'm moving to Kansas City. I want out. I want Louisville to turn into an escape, not some guilty vice. I drive to work everyday, look at the skyline and say, "That's it? Where's the spires that super heroes could fly around? Where's the sewer drains belching steam so the roads won't crack? The buildings don't seem desparate. The Ohio River is too dirty 'round here, and that just doesn't sit well with me."

It's time for a change. A real one. Already sent in my application to UMKC. Preparing my writing portfolio over the next few weeks, hopefully getting some of those letters of recommendation, taking the GRE, etc. I want to live somewhere quaint.

**

Alright, I'm gonna dig up all the David Carradine facts I can. You know, since he's dead now, it's gonna be all Hoover Dam and flow super slow with power until something major gets loged in the wall, pushes slow like mother's labor then BOOM.

You know... like this one. It's a start.

**

Okay, I was going to post up an article about nudist gardeners, but there weren't any visual suppliments. Fuck that, right? Right.

Coming October 2009.

Hello, Kansas City. From a future resident.

Come over here, I'll show you how to fake it.

I had a great idea for a blog. Now: it's escaped me. I think it was about the books I've been reading.

**

A few goals for tonight

• Mad shower. Not mad, like Sweedish Chef chasing the hen. But mad as in, "No dirt will survive." My body feels like sewage plant.
• Bark at the moon, Ozzy-style.
• Play Super Nintendo.
• No Chinese food.
• More water (at least three more glasses, my insides are sandy)
• Sleeping in a semi-circle

**

Alright, so I'm broke. Not shocked. My salary is river breeze: through your hair and off in ten different directions by the end of the day. No good. I mean, part of it is my fault, which is fine. Live and learn. Part of it is the economy. Part of it is the economy not letting me get a better job or take risks. Shittttt.

I want to go back and watch me spend money that was never there. I want to be standing behind myself whenever I blew 2 grand on carburetors, a throttle linkeage and a transmission. I mean, who does that? Seriously, a husband cringes when he does that for his wife's Camry, minus the carburetors. You add the carburetors, and that's bad math, sir. Maybe if I was able to be six inches from myself, it'd make a lot more sense now. Because, as I stand here at my work computer and type this, I'm making this really wry face. Probably photo-worthy, but no.

**

Wait a minute....

Alright, I don't judge people on their sexual activity, but umm, isn't auto-erotic asphyxiation supposed to simulate being choked? So like, my man David Carradine was pretending to die, then he actually did? Shoot, I'd say mission accomplished.

**

I'm really, really sick of seeing Jack-In-The-Box commercials when there isn't one within like 500 miles. Quit it. Your food doesn't even look good, suckers.

For Mark Wallace.

There's definitely a closeness between us,
yeah, a closeness,
the kind expressed with the rings
an empty glass of beer leaves on a counter.
The kind of closeness
that can only be explained with me
thinking about us being friends before we were friends.

So, if we would've been friends during junior high,
I'd invite you over to show you
the long list of metal I downloaded on Napster,
and we'd listen to ...And Justice for All on loop
with my bedroom door locked,
dominate dungeons on Diablo
while spending two hours trying to burn a mix CD.

Even if I would've known you before last summer,
I would've called you at two in the morning,
to tell you the same story that,
"Yeah, the part of my head right behind my eyes
really hurts. Burns, even. I don't know why it always hurts."
I'd thank you for listening,
come over and tell your mom she's a babe.
Come over the next day and clean your pool
and empty your fridge.

We'd go in your room and talk
about girls we love and had loved.
Like, you could've talked about
that time you and an ex
were coming home from the movies,
ready to lay on a ripped futon,
rest your head in her lap
and have her hum something Top 40
until your eyelids went clunk.

But no.
Instead of the humming,
the ripped futon nap,
she decided to try and go down on you
the same time a deer limped bow-legged
from a ditch, dropping its shoulder
right before the hood of your Celica
bent inward like a folded accordian
going for soft crecendo.

And in that instant,
what scared you the most
wasn't the penis dangling
in your ex's mouth like live bait
or the B-movie hatchet face
the deer made against your windshield,
but the fact that you realized
your windshield wipers didn't work
as you flipped the lever up and down
trying to scrape the clumps of hair from your line of site
so you could putter home
and nap.

I want to have this kind of power, or at least succumb to it.

Could you imagine being in front of that stage, trying to comprehend that kind of power? Deer in the headlights, maybe? Sideswiped by a drunk at the bar with a half-opened palm/fist concoction that makes your face all kneaded dough. Yeah, I really can't either. Hell, this picture is making it hard for me to breathe. I'd imagine each chord would melt the fibers wound together to make the strings on their instruments, then float through the air like some Noble gas, downing people like the plague until it got to my skin and made tiny cuts, Crucifixion whip-style, until only air was being pumped through my veins.

**

Lots of new music lately. I'm going to wager that....50% of it was produced by DJ Premier, 10% is from England, 15% was produced between 1980-1986, and the rest can't be categorized with really generic stats like that.

Okay, I use ellipses a lot. Sue me. Please, take me to court for it. It annoys me that I do it. But, it's like, I do it as a way to carry a train of thought.

**

So, I'm going on vacation with the lady. July 3rd through the 7th. Kansas City, then Chicago. Umm, barbecue? Yeah. Pizza, and hot dogs? Ikea? Maybe a baseball game? Yes. Lake Michigan with shopping? Duh.

Somebody please, I need a new job. It's a sinking ship.

The best thing Apple did was add the "Pop Art" feature to Photo Booth.

Well, that's not entirely true. The 'sepia' tone always look spot on though.

I'm trying this new thing with the books I own that I never finished. I'll pull one off the shelf, open it to a random page and go. It's worked. Well, once. It's like trying to create flash fiction out of somebody else's fiction. People should start writing like this. They need to think, "Alright, so if somebody reads half the book, can they pick it back up at some point and just... read whatever in it?"

**

Man, this new Iggy Pop? Fuck, I know right? Great. Definitely better than that... "other" Stooges album. I'm still pretending that never happened. Hindenburg of should've been really good music. Damned from the start.

**

I just spaced out for at least a half hour.  And I just did it again for another five minutes. Blogging is so hard whenever you had three hours of sleep. Oh well. Distraction. Here comes my new shoes:

Love 'em. And just like Smacks: dig 'em.

Shit's classic.

First off.... this:

That right there.... it's, "Mom, I need twenty bucks for the mall," shit. It's two sodas coming out of the vending machine. Wham. Your day is better. Thank you, karma.

I wasn't supposed to be alone tonight, but that's the case (as of right now). So, I'm saving myself. Mmmm, vinyl collection. Like cracking open two, three sodas and only gulping a few times. The Doors Greatest Hits is on right now. You can look at the disc and tell it's probably been played six or seven-hundred times. Still sounds smooth. Really, really light hiss, like when the waiter is like, "How much parmesan?," and you say, "That's plenty," after only two or three strokes on the grater.

Quit being soooo conservative.

**

So, Doors are still rolling. It's a joint that never ends. The bottomless beer. Wait, hold on a minute, that keyboard solo is about to tear through my basement and eat my being.

That was justice right there. Jim Morrison is kind of like every good thing: dead/will come to and end eventually.

Weak. Thanks reality.

**

Yeah, that's a real gun. Dude, look at that picture of me! I look so fucking tough. Too bad that gun wasn't firing. Trust me, there was a clip in it. Full clip. Somebody needs to Photoshop a huge, hand-rolled cigarette in my mouth, or like.... a bullet actually coming out of the gun. It'd be enough to freak your mom out. Hard.

I'm not that tough of a guy, though. Don't let the gun fool you. Or let the gun fool you, and gimme' your money.

Sometimes friends do shit, and you're just sitting there on the couch thinking, "What the fuck?" That's kind of happening to me right now, think of it as reality television... or reality blog.

Drama. Sucks.

I wish I wrote all of these songs.

That's right. Every single one of them. Or even wrote the lyrics. Or a chorus, a reprise. I don't know, I want to feel like I've touched every single person that listens to them in some way, even a really small.

My God, let me mix your master tapes. Christ.

Theory for mix CDs, etc.

So, the worst part about making a mix CD for somebody is that after you burn it, pop it back in your CD player/computer to make sure it works.... you always end up wanting to keep it for yourself. That's the case with the last one I made.

I made rules:

1. Soul Coughing songs are okay.... not Mike Doughty solo stuff- Couple of reasons why: he actually used an anagram of his name (Haughty Melodic) for an album title. That either means he's really, really smart, probably too smart for his own good, or one of his drunk friends scored big during a stupor. Either way, I could never get that lucky, score one up for jealousy. 

Second reason: listen to his solo work... he the kid 

standing on the high dive at the summer pool with a line twenty kids long jeering him to make a funny face and just jump in. Sorry though, he's got flamingo legs. Shaking in opposite directions, afraid to make a half-flip too much and land on his side. Come on! Jump you wuss. Quit being scared and just go for broke. That's what Soul Coughing was about. Doing a jackknife for 20 feet up and over rotating, but it didn't matter because the splash was big enough to get all the moms by the vending machine wet. Kids gasped in at the same time, tugged their pockets filled with water. They gloated, they saw chubby Mike make a day worth writing about in your journal. "Soft Serve" will definitely do that. "No Peace, Los Angeles"? Hardly.

2. Exclude any songs you've ever listened to having sex- See, the problem is you're setting yourself up for bad memories, blue balls or both, especially if it's for a lady friend. What if you listened to "L.A. Woman" while you pounded a former fling into submission from behind? The thought crawls from the back of your head. Yikes. You're stuck in the car with this girl. No air conditioning, the smell of burnt oil. On your way to Chic-fil-a. Well... what now? You want head but, pal, it's not going to happen. You can drop all the hints you want. Nip this one in the bud and actually make a separate list of all the songs you can hear over the sound of your bed frame shifting itself loose.

3. Never have two hip-hop songs back-to-back- Damnnnnn. See, I really messed up on this latest mix with a Lupe Fiasco/De la Soul/Slick Rick trifecta. What sucks is that all three of these songs are so fantastic that you find yourself cutting through them three or four times on loop and never listen to the seven songs after it. A quick fix would be just hitting the shuffle button.

4. Make sure the mix is at least 10 songs- Seriously, why waste a CD? It's pointless. Stretch that shit out. A full 80 minutes, please. I'll even take some filler, like an interlude from Chronic 2001. You know, that "Pause 4 Porno" song where it's just a bunch of people having sex.

5. If you can actually proclaim a favorite song, leave it off- This'll help avoid any argument that might arise when you blurt out how much you love the song on a road trip. It's a fight you won't win, sorry.

6. Back to Slick Rick: he better be on your mix- I don't even care if you just put "Adults Only" on every single mix you make, that song is on point. Quick tangent....I wonder who produced that song? I'm looking at the album credits and DJ Clark Kent and Kid Capri are both listed as producers. Maybe Ringo Smith? I know he did some production on this album. Christ, I have no idea. I'll PayPal you 10 dollars if you find out for me, no joke. I'll even include the 3% fee. That's love.

***

I have other theories. Sometimes you need to just keep those to yourself. I need a vacation. I just had one, but it was just an "extra weekend day" vacation. I need a "500 miles away from home with your cell phone off" vacation.

**

Love might be

 the worst thing in the world. Maybe because there'll be a time when you realize there are a finite number of things in existence that can be arranged in an infinite number of ways. Just like a sentence can go on forever, just add a comma.

You'll be sitting there one night. I know it'll be night. Something will happen. I don't know, you'll be listening to a song, she'll get up and move a different way to the door. You'll cough and she'll turn over and break your heart. I don't know, I just know it's going to happen. It's going to eat you insides.

Hope/pray/have faith in something so you get beyond all of those things and propose. Like hide your ring in a rose, boys. Hide it under the pillow, by her toothbrush, on the dash of her car, put it around your cock. Who knows? Either way, you're going to make her cry and she'll say yes and you'll show a large group of people how in love you are, because it's the way things are.

All I know is, I'm in love, and the only way I want it to end is if my heart stops beating. I want to outlive everyone in my family and be there alone in a room holding her hand, my organs oxidizing because I'm like 140-years-old, and cars hover and sound like blenders moving through the streets. I found somebody I'd build a house for, play Monopoly with, take the trash out in the rain, groom the dog, clean the toilet and shower back-to-back, clip their fingernails, make mixed CDs for, eat seafood, watch the Food Network, etc.

Don't look at my face, it's all covered in soot.

First this:

RIGHT THERE, THAT'S A FINE SONG. Sorry for all-caps. Either way I get screwed.

**

Well,

we started a band

and things didn't end well.

Remember?

Van broke down

on the night we were supposed to

unveil our lounge act.

So, instead of

panties dropping in the front row

and the record execs said,

"Now that'll fill some seats

at an east coast venue."

We pushed a maroon Econoline

into a K-Mart parking lot

and cleaned the dust from a Marshall stack

while tuning a Gibson,

drinking bottles of Genuine Draft

that floated in two-day-old cooler water.

Sitting in a circle,

humming the songs

that were supposed to get us laid.