here is an old track by me which was never really properly mastered: mixed feelings about now.

i am working on a final mix for it, and i would not be terribly unreasonable to expect (re)mixed feelings about now sometime in the future.

i talk about sex again (again!) or blame it on the camera man.

someone scraped the ice from the upper right hand corner of my windshield off in the shape of a heart. i suppose i would be well advised to keep my ear to the ground from here on out.

as the temperature slowly rises above freezing and everything begins to melt, my dreams are more and more frequently about sex. today, a good friend called and woke me up just as i was about to do some things i probably shouldn't in my dream. it was a good thing, too; when i dream about sex it often has serious effects on my perception of my partner when i am awake. when i spend time with them it becomes difficult to avoid thinking about the possibility of making the aforementioned circumstances actual, especially if they were enjoyable.
luckily, this usually only lasts a week or so. on the other hand, if i actually begin pursuit of the person in question, it's an entirely different story. god only knows what kind of trouble i might get myself into unsupervised. it boggles the mind.

since the best ideas that i have often come to me when i'm driving a car, i have taken to carrying a small memo pad in my pocket on which to jot them down while at stop lights or in parking lots. sometimes i feel impeccably clever, but in retrospect realise that the ideas i wrote down would have been better left alone. i have, however, been known to produce something worth rereading from time to time.
tonight i was thinking a lot about the past few easter sundays, which for some reason have fairly consistently meant crazy sex and debauchery in recent years. here is a sample of what i wrote:

"we'll have a chocolate egg and
fuck each other silly this easter sunday.
it would bring me great joy to
lie there amidst those sugary treats
in a post-coital haze, contemplating
just how little relevance jesus has
to me in this situation.
even the bunny himself i could give
two shits about.
so bury me alive. in three days i'll
be back to bring it all around again
in some kind of self-indulgent tirade."

second thoughts: you're better off without.
a dream which was somewhat enlightening but mostly entertaining.

marie and i were moving in together.

it was a turn of events that i couldn't even begin to understand. for one thing, it was apparent that we were dating, but i have no idea under what circumstances this was initiated. on top of that, it's extremely uncharacteristic of me to even consider living with a person with whom i am or have the potential to be romantically involved. it just seems like a bad idea all around.

in any case, we entered this new apartment and i helped her move her things in. the paint on the walls was nice and even and the rooms were small and efficient, which is how i like it. there were overhead lights in every room and i made sure to change mine to a twenty watt post-haste. the apartment itself put me slightly more at ease; i could imagine living very comfortably in it. i have often fantasized about staying up all night eating popcicles and smoking cigarettes on the linoleum floor in good company, which seemed readily available there. i know, i'm a hopeless romantic. but i'm pretty sure i could salvage just about any relationship worth salvaging with enough lime popcicles and cigarettes in the correct context.

after we were finished moving her things in, i started to ask if she wanted me to spend the night. as i did, i felt the key to the house (my house!) in my pocket, and reason returned.

i was feeling afraid of commitment at that moment and seriously wondering what i had gotten myself into. this wasn't overwhelming or anything, but i've had a bad experience or two, and i felt a twinge of apprehension as my hand sat there in my pocket. sweating. feeling the edges of that small metal key. i have a tendency to look too far ahead, which is almost never good. it's a nervous habit that i have- a listless characteristic that causes more troubles than it has benefits.

marie was leaning in to kiss me. i was immediately wrenched back into the present tense as i noted how flushed her face, and particularly her lips, looked. i relaxed, pulled my hands out of my pockets, and sent a quick prayer to whom it may concern that i would not slip back into old habits. now was suddenly very okay and i tried not to have any more second thoughts.

recurring themes. and ineffable chinese wisdom.

the big lights flooded through the room. the walls were white and the room was full of some kind of illuminated haze. someone (my mother?) confessed that i had been south of the border at a young age but didn't remember and she had never told me. i couldn't help but think that this was some kind of setup, but i had no idea what kind of response anyone would be hoping to get. i kept any confessions that may have come to mind to myself.

i embraced geometry and it seemed like a pretty big step for me at the time, but upon further reflection i realised that i've always been enamoured of straight lines and even curves.

amy was sitting there quietly with her hair in braids waiting for things to make themselves known. i thought she was missing the point but knew enough to keep my mouth shut. we drove around for hours and she couldn't decide on a suitable place to eat. i asked where she wanted to go, but she wouldn't give me an answer. she denied every suggestion i made. eventually we ran out of gas, and i left her there along with my car, which seemed long overdue.

maybe it's my fate to relive this same situation over and over. it doesn't really matter which girl it is; they all do the same thing.

my ex is apparently trying to sleep with my roommate (different ex and roommate this time). she stopped into his workplace and asked to hang out with him. he went for brunch at the chinese buffet and got a fortune which read something like, 'a love from the past will return to steal your heart.'

i got chinese later that evening. my fortune read, 'serious trouble will bypass you.'

i tucked it into my wallet with all the others like it and thought about how envious all my friends would be.

i abandon form for the sake of convenience.

i've just been such a mess of loose phrases lately that writing anything resembling a narrative really seemed like a ridiculous idea. instead of attempting to tie these phrases together in any kind of cohesive fashion, i think i will just offer a brief summary.

i dreamed that a girl was rushing violently through my vestibule with a crowbar in hand, ready to lay waste to the inside of my apartment. i noticed her sliding her fingers along the beveled edges and the tick to the right side of her cheek as her mouth formed a half grin.

she jumped right on top of me, which was not entirely unexpected (i'm getting used to this now) but this time i was pretty excited about it as well.

i almost drove my car into about eight drunken college students. they started screaming at me when i got out, but i calmly explained to them that they should stay on the sidewalk and look both ways before stepping out into the street.

i got a phone call and things were a mess on the other end. she was pretty hysterical and crying. i was reasonably sure it was because she was lying in bed with my roommate (which is unsurprising) but she was unwilling to elaborate. i told her i wasn't mad at her and she said she wanted to get off the phone. i wondered if she wanted me to be mad, which made my stomach uncomfortable for a minute.

i spent an evening with a girl i know, and it was kind of strange. i felt much less clever than i would normally, and i suppose this is indicative that this is a very different kind of crush than i am used to. the topic was raised (by her) of people using alcohol to initiate sex. i admitted that i am pretty much clueless as to how this is done with no alcohol, and told her that i could not honestly remember the last time that it happened as such within my friend group.

upon further reflection, i still can't remember a time when no alcohol or other substance was used with the exception of people who never drink to begin with.

i was having trouble shifting gears in my car, but when i went out again later everything seemed okay. after thinking about it, i realised that it was because i had changed boots and the soles were very different in size. this seemed like a pretty big revelation to me at the time.

i smoked a cigarette and it tasted like peroxide. i considered quitting, but that's a thought i never entertain for long.

evasive behaviour.

i was driving down the road very fast. at the time i could not have told you how fast without referencing the speedometer, but suffice to say, it was well beyond the legal limit. things played out pretty much as they have in a multitude of paranoid fantasies; the loud and bright lights flared up in the rearview and i realised that it was much past the time when i could have turned a corner and gotten out of my car before the police could catch me. i pulled over to the shoulder and patiently waited to see how this would play out.
the officer approached my car and asked if i knew why he had stopped me. i replied that i had been speeding but was not sure by how much. he smirked at this, ran my license, and returned with a ticket. apparently i had been doing 153 in a 45, which is the kind of speeding that they take you straight to jail for. i was a little upset about this, and also quite surprised. the fastest i've ever managed to get my car with the pedal to the floor was about 115, but i suppose that was no longer really relevant.
luckily, there was a very attractive girl sitting in my passenger seat. the police were going to have to escort me to a holding cell, and meanwhile had to deal with taking the girl home. the officers seemed much more interested in her than me, and i made excellent use of this opportunity by sneaking into the nearby high school, which, incidentally, i had attended.
i headed for the band locker room, thinking i could easily enough snatch another set of clothes and no one would be the wiser. i figured that if i was pretty cloak and dagger about this, i could figure out what to do with myself from a more secure location. when i reached the band room, however, i was greeted by one of my former classmates. she was also a member of the drama club, and at this point seemed very interested in sleeping with me.
i tried to avoid her advances as tactfully as possible and escape into the band room, but when i entered the drama club was waiting for me inside. there were lots of other people with them who were not in drama club, but are still very dramatic people. among them were karen, who appeared to be having some kind of nervous breakdown, phil and brad, who were in the middle of some kind of argument about their relationship, and rachel, my ex girlfriend (from high school) who looked about six months pregnant.
this group of people (and karen in particular) seemed to have a lot of useless things which they were really eager to say to me, but i wasn't interested in any of it. the girl who had tried to seduce me back in the hallway was simultaneously bitter and clingy, and was trying to somehow maneuver her feet toward my hands for some sort of erotic foot massage. i must admit that they looked very alluring at the time (she was wearing some lovely stockings) but i wanted nothing to do with her or anyone in the room, for that matter.
i quickly changed shirts, figuring that my blue jeans were already innocuous enough, and exited the building. karen was trying to follow me because she obviously had a lot to say, but i pointed out that she had a plane to catch. she supposed i was right and exited.
by the end of the ordeal i found myself wondering if i would have been better off back with the police, and wondered what kind of stunt i might have to pull to get my car back.

the revenge of saint valentine. or i probably could have thought of a better title but didn't.

last night i went to a party. i've never really understood what to do at parties, but this must have been different or something.
i had managed to worm my way out of work a whole hour early, and having done so, i went straight to the bar. i had missed the first two bands, but the third went on and played an excellent set. there was a lot of dancing and jumping around, but i did not participate, which is par for the course. after a night at work it always takes me at least an hour to regain my sanity, and this was no exception, but in the meanwhile i smoked an awful lot of cigarettes and enjoyed the music. i ran into marie there along with a slew of psychotic girls (who have been immortalised in my dreams due to their habit of jumping/climbing on top of me) and a handful of other peripheral people.
when the show was over, marie invited me to join her and her drunk friends (who she wouldn't stop apologising for) at an after hours, which i gratefully accepted. when i arrived, someone was playing jewel very loudly, and no one could figure out why. eventually someone put in the smashing pumpkins, and order was restored to my world. i decided at that point that the theme of the party was 'intoxicated with the madness.'
i drifted around the party, and saw, among other things:
an unconscious girl. there was speculation that she might have a concussion.
a very morose guy talking to a ~50 year old man who claimed to be hauling one hundred pounds (!) of cocaine in his truck. morose boy later informed me that he had purchased some of the aforementioned cocaine.
lots of well dressed hipsters literally on top of each other and making out.
a group of people running through the house frantically trying to warn its inhabitants that the building was on fire. a group of disinterested kids walked into the part of the house that was said to be aflame. we speculated that they were going to smother the flames with their bodies. they knew their time was up.
a psychotic looking twentysomething with a hoodie up (unabomber-style) stomping on the floor, throwing furniture, and playing beck's 'loser' over and over again.
after this raucous display of hedonism and depravity, it was determined that we would return to marie's house. things were pretty quiet there, and the two other girls who had come with us went upstairs to gossip about boys. the conversation was pretty fun and steady, and eventually some other kids showed up and i showed myself the door.
if you were waiting for a punchline or something profound, you're shit out of luck.

a guest contribution.
as written by del fishie

Boyfriend and I are going to be on a reality tv dating show. It's the kind where you go stay on an island with a lot of other couples and much debauchery ensues. Lil Kim is the host of the show. Shortly after everyone arrives, there is a disease outbreak, the island is quarantined, and the US Army shuttles 8 people at a time off the island to another US planet where they currently possess a cure for the disease. There were slightly less than 30 of us.

They take the sick and most exposed first. It's a serious disease where spores get into your lungs. If they spread you will suffocate and die. Boyfriend and I only have a mild infection and miss the first shuttle. Everyone left behind is afraid and nervous that they might die or end up single. Boyfriend is a very hot commodity on this island but is being quite lovely to me. Per the norm, he is largely uninterested in the many advances.

For some reason I am also in my home. I must select the items I want to take with me because only so much can fit into the shuttle, and the shuttle only comes once every four days (the time that it takes for the one shuttle to travel to the other planet and back). No matter how many times I go into my room I find more things that I'd like to bring with me and have to exchange them for others because they simply cannot all go.

The second shuttle comes and leaves again. Boyfriend and I are yet again left behind. Another woman has started hitting on Boyfriend excessively, and I feel she is hostile towards me. I am afraid she might try something crazy.

It occurs to me that perhaps the disease and shuttling is all staged by the reality show and completely psychosomatic but I just can't be sure.

Lil Kim comes back with the 3rd shuttle. I am to board it so I run to my room to collect my things. I find makeup that the evil woman has left laying on the floor and I touch it. Once all my things are collected I run back to the boarding gates but the shuttle has already gone. I discover that evil woman placed deafing powder in the makeup and I cannot hear. I didn't hear the boarding call and so it, along with Boyfriend, departed without me.

I sit in a nearly empty tropical paradise and look about the other 5 or 6 people (including evil woman) and wonder how many of us will last the next four days. Some people are getting weak and even I am finding it a little harder to breathe. Again I question the possibility of psychosomaticy but as I am now wheezing when I breathe I think it is probably real.

Another girl left behind and I cuddle together on the benches. We decide that we may be sick and suffocating, but we should have some fun unlike the others. We make big plans that involve flying (not with a plane. Like flapping your arms flap flap flap), swimming, and sleeping close together. It doesn't matter. It's only four days. Surely we can live for just four more days. Soon it was just two more days.

It is harder and harder to breathe. But that's okay. We are having a lot of fun and soon the shuttle will be back. Soon I will see Boyfriend. Soon we will all be well.

cassie.
an excerpt.

cassie told me that the toughest lesson she ever learned was how and when to keep her mouth shut.
she was one of the craziest ones; i never really understood how she did it. the idea of her accomplishing basic daily things like laundry or taxes at any point in her life is laughable. how she ever achieved anything or paid her rent just mystifies me.
she always seemed to know what she was doing, though. completely surreal events seemed to follow her around, and she took them in stride as though nothing ever surprised her. i suppose that's why it's hard to explain the duality involved between her obvious insanity and perpetual calm. she approached events which would leave you or i a complete wreck on a good day casually.
we had never been terribly close, but i suppose because of her remarkable poise that i trusted (expected?) her to point out things i might not have realised.
i asked her once what she thought would happen between me and daphne. i remember it like i filmed it and watched it a thousand times over. we were sitting and talking over coffee, and she looked me straight in the eye patiently, as if she was waiting for me to ask.
she replied, 'even if i answer that question, you won't believe me.' i could see the corner of her lip twist into a sort of self-aware half-grin, baiting my preordained response.
i followed suit and pushed the question, which she answered unfalteringly. i couldn't tell whether she was smug or exasperated.
everything she said came true, but the part that stands out best in my mind is how correct she was on one specific point.
i did not, in fact, believe her at the time.

a week in the dreams of your favourite communist menace.
bear with me, here.

i was screaming in the aisle of the supermarket. i was causing some kind of a ruckus. i was telling everyone what i thought. i climbed through the cliches or concrete jungles and softball fields to scream at you what i think, which is long overdue.
i stole a van, some credit cards, and ripped pretty much everyone i knew off. i did these things with the understanding that if i ever came back i would get the shit kicked out of me and probably thrown in jail. i drove the van to utah and abandoned it in the salt flats, which was a wholly self-indulgent and cinematic thing to do. it even seemed like it at the time.
i was standing on a soap box or a kitchen counter elevating myself over the disinterested observers to purvey my sermon. i could feel my skin coming off in large brittle chunks. it seemed mostly innapropriate. the shouts of 'how could you?!' letting me know that you are more indignant that worried, which is a pretty big relief. i was in an awkward position to be regarding my own self worth, i suppose. and who knows what to do with that, anyway? not me. if you're seeking the neccessary wisdom to surmount your problems, turn elsewhere.
let's put it to a vote. like a square peg in a round hole i was trying to jam my nonexistant credit card into a slot where it would not fit, resulting only in frustration. i was overcome by a flood of numbers; more dead skin, a baggage claim not knowing which suitcase was mine, and other things which are far too heavyhanded and arduous to mention.
pretty soon everybody was fucking each other and no one knew what was going on. rather than intervening, the government quarantined us and hired a team of scientists to conduct a behavioural study. in a small space and without cigarettes i reeled in fury and misunderstanding until i was ready to tear the walls out, but i just wrote about it and had pleasant angry dreams instead.
i was just hoping that whatever you were trying to prove was worth the big mess it caused in the process. i'm not the kind of guy to get in the way of someone else's selfish agenda.
she climbed stealthily into my bed and any cries of protest that i could muster before being overcome fell short of whatever attention i might have been hoping for. there are worse fates, i'm sure, but none come to mind right now.

true stories from real life part four or a trip to the teeth factory.

when i was seven or eight years old i tripped on some ice and broke my front teeth. i was pretty sad at the time, but i went to the dentist and he filled them in with some kind of temporary teeth-matter and told me that i would have to get crowns when i turned eighteen. that seemed like a long time away and i didn't worry about it too much, although i was told that it would hurt a lot.
when i was seventeen i went to the dentist (a different one this time) to get my crowns. the dentist took a mold of my teeth and then drilled them down to bare pulp (which was pretty uncomfortable) before taking a second mold and affixing a new temporary piece of teeth. he then told me that some time in the next two weeks i would have to go to the place where the crowns were made so a 'stain' could be taken. the idea here is that my teeth are very yellow from years of smoking and drinking coffee, and i would look pretty silly with two pretty white teeth and a bunch of yellow one surrounding them.
i went to get this stain business taken care of, and the place that i was directed to go looked like some kind of fancy office building. i waited in the lobby to be called back. when i was, i was lead through a room with five or six cubicles on either side, and in each cubicle was a man or woman in a lab coat with a mold of some teeth, a chisel, and i piece of tooth that they were shaping to be properly fit into someone's mouth. it was pretty neat. i really wanted to stay and watch them make teeth, but i had some staining to take care of.
a man and a woman came in with some pieces of paper. each piece of paper had a shade of yellow on it to match the shade of someone's teeth. the two of them bantered with me in a ridiculous and surreal way as they tried to match up one of the sheets of paper with my teeth.
after that was taken care of, i tried to linger in the teethmaking area, but i was obviously not supposed to be there, and thus ushered toward the door. in the meantime i did, at least, get to see some people finely manipulating little teeth pieces with chisels and an array of strange power tools no doubt engineered for this specific purpose.
since then i've occasionally considered that making teeth for a living might be right for me, but i have no idea what kind of training would have to be undertaken for such an occupation, and i doubt i have the patience for it.
i can still dream, though.

things getting out of hand.

i went to the grocery store with john, barry, todd, and eric. i was there to get toilet paper and chocolate, which i am terribly addicted to. this morning, in fact, i woke up and searched the house rather frantically before showering and going out for no purpose other than to buy more chocolate, which i had run out of.
at first, things were pretty normal in the grocery store. i was greeted by the oppressive glare of flourescent lights which probably put out more lumens than the sun, and the brightly coloured array of products on the shelves doesn't help. john wandered off to attend to his own shopping agenda, and barry grabbed a bottle of liquor from the shelf, opened it, and began to drink. todd followed suit and offered me a hit, which i declined. i was starting to feel slightly nervous, as this sort of behaviour is both uncharacteristic of my friends and not so much approved of by the general store-going public.
barry swung his bottle up and launched it across the supermarket. i imagine somewhere around aisle fourteen there was a crash and quite a bit of alcohol and broken glass. i thought about asking them what the hell they were doing, but thought better of it and decided it would be better if i just made myself scarce.
on my way to the front of the store, i encountered john, who was on a rampage of his own. he had managed to actually knock one of the shelves over by some feat of strength that was quite impressive to me. in addition, he had managed to maim the packaging of several of the products which were now not so aesthetically littered at his feet. he looked pretty busy with what he was doing, so i decided not to interrupt by asking what the hell was going on.
at this point i was more than a little put out and confused, but regardless, i went to the front of the store and waited for security to usher my friends to the front so i could drive them home. one of the cashiers asked me if i needed assistance, and i told her that i was just waiting for my friends to be escorted out, as it would be unkind of me to leave them. some kind of alarm abruptly started blaring, and the cashier's eyes widened, but she kept looking straight at me.
when my friends did finally show up, i was amazed that no charges were pressed. it was, however, fairly clear that they (and i) would not be welcome inside this establishment again. i was not very happy about that, and i let them know it.
when i woke up, i was still amazed that we didn't get hauled off to jail. go figure.

rock stars, reincarnation, and car trouble.

often times it all starts with sex, and this one is no exception.
i'm not sure who she was exactly, but she certainly wasn't a random girl who had thrown herself on top of me in a pub or somesuch. i got the very distinct impression that i was dating this one. she must have been about thirty. she was cute, blonde, wore glasses and spoke with a slight accent. yeah, i know what you're thinking. where in the hell did i find this one?
her house was really great. i couldn't help but comment on how much i loved the blue trim and furniture, the fireplace, and the well kept bathroom. it was pretty spacious; it even included a screened in porch on which the aforementioned sex occurred.
the sex itself, i suppose, isn't really worth mentioning. (anticlimax!) so i'm going to skip that part. sorry if you wanted to read it, but i can't imagine what purpose it would possibly serve.
afterward we took a quick shower and left to return to my home. my roommate (john), my ex (karen), and a girl who i believe was fabricated exclusively for this dream named chris were there. i remember wondering whether she spelled it 'chris' or 'kris,' and deciding on the former. she was very cute, but not as cute as the girl who delivered sandwiches to my house last night. i digress.
so john, karen, chris, and some other kids who i don't feel like supplying pseudonyms for at the moment were all going to some city to the south. maybe it was cincinatti or columbus or something. i'm really not sure. my girlfriend and i would be accompanying my mother to somewhere in another direction. i really have no idea where, but suffice to say it was pretty far away.
we arrived at our destination and my mother's friend took us to a local bar. she said she didn't know who would be playing, but that it was usually a pretty good band. i asked one of the employees, who informed me that it would be none other than elvis costello who would be performing. i was overjoyed, and i dashed over and grabbed a seat in the very front.
he started his set and played one of his older songs ('no action,' i believe). about halfway through the second song my mother received a call on some portable device which has never existed in real life. she quickly informed we that we had to go. as we got outside she told me that she had just gotten a call from her mother (who has been dead for a number of years) and that she needed to go see her immediately, as she never gets to see her anymore.
i was pretty put out by this, but my mom did buy a rental car for the girl and i, and we drove back into town.
after dropping the girl off, i ran into another friend; carol. she was having car problems, which was in no way surprising. she asked for some assistance, but i was unable to do it for lack of a specific tool (i.e. tire iron, jumper cables, etc.). she was very unhappy about this and remarked that she would have to call her father. i nodded and decided to be on my way.
i arrived at home and got out of the car. chris, john, and karen were all standing outside looking angry. the snow was melting and the grass in my front yard looked very vibrantly green. chris walked up and said something very derogatory to me. she turned around and started to walk away as i asked why she was mad at me. john answered that it was because the previous night at one a.m. i had smashed all the windows out of karen's van with a baseball bat. i did my best to argue this point, as i was in a faraway city at that time, but to no avail. i even told them that elvis costello could vouch for me, as we'd had a brief conversation. this, however, did no good. fortunately, i woke up shortly thereafter and everything was okay.

content to keep you occupied.

on days like this my head just floods. all congested with record reviews, financial situations, ever-present girl problems and my possible resolve to do whatever. my will is mostly concentrated on trying to stay afloat, and hope that amidst all this something brilliant will come out.
yeah, i know. it's hard to believe.
i hit play again and listen to some bewilderingly well-crafted pop music as i take a respite from the track i'm working on. the last week has been spent working on various tracks and collecting samples. i hope to have something worth showing to my audience in short order, but i suppose it remains to be seen. i would be lying if i said that i haven't been known to leave my projects half-finished, regardless of my initial excitement and the resolve that stems from it.
my week has been filled with insomnia, a relapse into this ongoing illness that i seem to have contracted, and a flurry of strange dreams in the sleep that i manage to accrue. included are the repeated themes of girls accosting me and literally throwing themselves on top of me, knocking me and my resolve to 'do the right thing' to the floor. and today i am meeting up with one of my exes to talk about some undoubtedly heavy shit involving my lack of communication to her in the past week or two.
talk about foreshadowing.
perhaps there will be more on that later. i know, i keep saying it.
okay, back to work i go.