Essssss...

The ride's almost over. Closed up the shop for the holiday. Suffering from weird adrenaline rush + exhaustion. Am dirty and watching Jay and Silent Bob on TV. Merry Xmas, all.

The best phone call you can receive from work at 10:21 am, Sunday morning:

"Don't even try to come in today."

Weeee!

So, I've kind of grown this vague interest, it's kind of like an occasional giggle, really, in meeting someone with the same first name as the protagonist in my book, mostly because I never have. Ever. I work in fucking food service, I see hundreds of people a day and I know far too many of their names anyway, plus now we take names for drinks so we can call them out when they're ready, so I encounter every name you can think of once a week, but never ever Ellis. Came close once, said "Ellis" on the screen over a ticket, I got all excited, made the drink extra good, as if it was for my narrator himself. I turned around to call it out, searching for the namesake, grinning like a five year-old, and turns out the cashier had misspelled "Elise." I tried to explain my disappointment to the blonde girl the latte was actually for. I shouldn't have. See, the problem with being crazy is that you aren't always aware that you're acting crazy because you're crazy. Only later, sometimes, if you're lucky, can you look back and think, "At least the drink was good."

I got in a rare googling mood today, and while I was at work, checking to see if our office mascot, Brody the chihuahua, is actually the fattest chihuahua on record, I got the idea to google "Ellis O'Neill." Turns out, there is one. I know. He's a young scientist earning his PhD in England. This is his webpage. He's an English scientist! Into gene splicing and all that crazy shit! Cover your ears, I'm squealing like a little fourteen year-old girl at Shea Stadium for the Beatles. EEEEEEEEE...!

I kind of want to email him.

Dude, this woman had two vaginas.

So, I'm on the bus, kind of in the middle, the last row of forward facing seats. When we stopped at the Pawtucket station, a few people were getting off, maybe four or five people passed by on their way from the back, I barely noticed, I was spacing with my headphones on. The last guy stopped at my row and said something to me. I took half my headphones off. "What?"

"Take care of yourself." He had longish hair, baggy hoodie, late-twenties. By my initial impression, I'd say he enjoyed both rap music and marijuana. I'd never seen him before.

"Uh, I'll try, thanks."

"I mean it. Take care of yourself." He looked concerned.

"Okay."

"Take care of yourself."

"I will, sure."

He nodded slightly and got off the bus. I had to indulge in the ridiculous metaphysical ramifications, the more fantastic the better, then the more reasonable explanations. In the end: I have no idea.

Shane is shooting at my Burger King talking Simpsons toys with a spring-loaded pellet gun. Oh, the humanity.

Shane calling Playboy:

"So, my girlfriend has been reading your publication more than I have as of late, and I know this is a content issue and not a billing concern, but I've noticed more and more that there are way too many fake boobs..."

Me: "Tell 'em I don't like it either..."

"Well, she's been reading it more than I've been looking..."

Me: "Tell her I've been looking, too, and I want real boobs."

"She says she's been looking, too, and the boobs... oh, sure, okay, well..."

Me to Mark on the couch: "She didn't want to hear about the fake boobs."

Long story short: The Playboy subscription is now in my name.

Ever since Stephen Colbert made fun of that ridiculous Miracle Whip commercial, not only is it more annoying than ever, but it's been completely undermined because my first thought is always that it's about mayo. I think my brain has substituted the satire for the reality. Good job, brain.

The mania, paranoia, delusion, and depression that followed finishing the book seem to have subsided. Now I'm just bored. I've got two books up in the air, one that I made a vow to take my time with and is reliant on a bit of a research trip to Los Angeles that I'm planning for January. The second was supposed to be a diversion, but I haven't quite found my foothold in it yet, and I'm more compelled to write the first one anyway. I'm actually going to clean the house today, that's how bad it is. I made coffee even though I rarely drink it anymore because I was bored. I just don't know how to relax anymore, what I'm supposed to do without some overwhelming goal with a foggy but definite end, an activity so compelling that it obliterates all other existence. I don't know how to float instead of swim.

So, like your average, everyman, geek recluse, I fell asleep Saturday night watching a Mythbusters marathon. When I woke up early to the dogs barking downstairs, I found out the Discovery channel plays the Jesus shows on Sunday morning, just like the UHF stations did when I was a kid in Houston. Here's how those shows went:

A guy with a wide, toothy grin and a lady with big hair and too much eye makeup would be sitting in a well-to-do-looking living room set with a phone number superimposed at the bottom of the screen. They would extol the comforts of faith and the awesome powers of Jesus and then ask for money. Then sometimes they'd show a video about some reformed crack addict or prostitute who'd turned her life around, her soul freshly douched by the Lord, and then they'd ask for money. There was also an entire channel devoted to what I've just described, all Jesus, all day and presumably all night, at least until the rainbow bars took over.

Then there were the preacher shows, where an older guy with a garish suit and big grey hair would pace back and forth behind the pulpit. I found those boring, so I don't have much description to give, except for the familiar phone number, always at the bottom of the screen, and at some point or another, there was always a plea for money.

As a child heathen, raised without religion, it didn't strike me as much different from any other infomercial. Even at that age, I could wrap my head around it. You send them money, you feel artificially better; I was savvy to capitalism, I could understand that game. God, no wonder I drink so much.

This is how the show the other morning went:

Some twenty, twenty-five year old fresh-faced preacher stood behind the pulpit, no garish suit, just a blazer and a yellow shirt, and as I tried to go back to sleep, his young, enthusiastic voice pleaded with me to reach out to Jesus, and if I did, all my ailments would be cured. "There are things modern medicine can't do for you that Jesus can." His version of "reaching out to Jesus" was envisioning him in your mind and giving him a spiritual bear-hug. I didn't actually hear the word "repent," which was a mainstay of the shows that I remember. Odd, very odd this world we live in.

This is funny on a couple of levels. One, that the Discovery channel, which plays science shows, sells block ad time to Jesus-lovers who recommend thinking your diseases away. That's just a great one liner.

When I discussed this with Tony later, he told me a longer, older joke that he heard a priest tell during his extensive Catholic upbringing. "There's this flood coming, and everybody's evacuating except for this one guy who's sitting on his porch, waiting for his patron saint to save him. A four-wheeler passes by, and the driver says to the guy, 'Get on, I'll help you get out of here.' But the guy won't leave, says his patron saint is coming and he'll be just fine, and the guy on the four-wheeler leaves without him.

So the flood waters are rising, and there's still some people making it out, and this guy comes by in a boat. 'Get in,' he says, 'we'll make it out of here together.'

But the guy still refuses, says, 'It's alright, my patron saint is coming.' So, the guy in the boat leaves and pretty soon this poor asshole's on the roof and a helicopter comes by.

'I'm here to save you,' he says.

And again, even on the roof, the guy's like, 'No, my patron saint is coming.' So, of course, he dies, and he's talking to his patron saint in heaven, and he's like, 'I waited and waited, and you never came! What the fuck?'

And his patron saint says, 'I tried three times, asshole!'"


- - -


On a related note, last night I dreamed that some kind of winged bounty hunter dragged me to Hell. We were playing a gig in a classroom, and a bunch of friendly acquaintances were there, the whole room was filled with dirty oi punk rockers. My chord was buzzing and the crowd was getting restless. We finished the set and they all attacked us like zombies, and I can't remember the details, but they were collecting some kind of payment for something we'd done, been doing, I'm not sure what. Shane and I ran to his car as some of them sprouted wings and flew after us. We held out in his blue Scion as they tried to break in through the windows. For some reason, he left, and I was supposed to stay in the car, but I didn't, and I forced myself awake just as one of them was about to pluck me from the parking lot with its clawed feet. I went back to sleep after a few minutes, but by then the dream had moved on, and, alas, I never got to see Hell. That could have been a useful peek into my subconscious.

So, Brown University has renamed Columbus Day "Fall Weekend" for the purposes of their academic calendar. Italians are protesting. The name change came about from earlier protests from what the local news called a "Native American group."

Personally, I don't care. On one hand, yes, all sorts of atrocities were committed by Columbus himself and the myriad of people who followed him, and lets not forget poor, forgotten Amerigo Vespucci and the Vikings before him, none saints I'm sure, but you see, I can't care. For better or worse, I'm sitting on this patch of earth, two stories high, in a computer chair, typing into the ethers of cyberspace on an American-made computer, and had those atrocities not taken place, I might not be. So, for me to hem and haw over the semantics of a bank holiday is the most phenomenal waste of time I can imagine. I might as well be at work, for how utterly banal this topic is. I don't even know why I'm writing about it.

Other woman on the news: "Well, I know what Columbus Day is about. It's about kettle corn!"

Of course.

Last night I dreamed I was on this modernist Frank Lloyd Wright of a cruise ship with the Obamas. All four of them, although I mostly hung out with Barack. I've never had a dream about hanging out with a president before. I remember being charged with watching the girls for a few minutes, and begging the smaller one to sit forward in her seat like we were on the city bus. We sailed from Rhode Island to Los Angeles in a matter of hours. Even in the dream state I was trying to wrap my head around that one. Did I miss us going through the Panama Canal? Eh?

Apparently Jim Carroll died on Friday.



He gave me a cold once. We went to see him at the Columbus, maybe a month after it stopped being a porn theater. He read, he chatted with us, he kept sneezing and needing to blow his nose, eventually he asked the audience for some kleenex. Some lady pulled some out of her purse for him, as I recall, it was cute. He played a couple songs, too. I brought my camera and waited around to say hi to him afterward. He was kind enough to shake my hand and let me take a picture of him and tell him that he's awesome, even though he obviously felt like shit. He was signing autographs anyway, and just generally being nice and human and most of the things you might expect from having read his prose and poetry. But especially his prose, and especially Forced Entries. Then a couple days later, I came down with a horrific cold, as did Jon, who went to the reading with me, and we proceeded to spread it throughout the RISD freshman dorm.

He's been one of my idols since I was about sixteen or seventeen. I don't even know what else to say. He was a fucking poet rock star. He hung with everyone, all the greats of his generation. He was a brilliant writer, he made me want to write, really, he was the first to have that effect on me. He was really fucking funny. There's this great bit in Forced Entries where he and his girlfriend race the crabs they pluck out of their pubic hair. Crab racing! Hilarious!

Well done, Mr. Carroll, for what it's worth. Thanks for sharing.

So, I'm trying to take a break from reading the same 61,500 words over and over. Writers everywhere will rejoice when chemists invent a pill that will erase their ability to remember what they've just written. A button would work nicely, too, some kind of switch. I just need to know that it makes sense. It feels like it does, but that kid's been talking out my mouth for two and a half months, so, really, all I know is it makes sense to him, but he doesn't exist, so that's not the help I need. Here, let's ask him, see how much good it does:

Ellis? This what happened to you? Did I capture it truly?

Nothing happened to me, I don't exist.

Ah, yes. But is it a compelling story with all those wonderful elements that Stewie talks about in a high-pitched voice in that great Family Guy sketch that's a thousand times funnier now?

I never saw that sketch. You never wrote me watching it.

Oh. It's a great bit, really.

Okay.

But is it good, dear? The book?

I don't know. I didn't have much fun. I hate you, by the way.

Yeah, sorry about that.

Whatever.

K. Talk to you in a couple days when I can grow some fresh eyes.

Write me another sex scene.

Eh, probably not, buddy.


See? Useless. Killed some time, though. Ed said I need to take a break. I told him I couldn't. I'm going to really try today. So far, there's only been three days since May 31 that I haven't worked on it, and I actually conceived a pretty important scene in the car on one of those days, so I guess only two. I think Shane's getting lonely. I only work four days now. Wednesday and Friday, the band practices, I drink, we close up shop about ten thirty after staring at each other between songs for two hours, all the time I'm thinking about the book, I can't help it. Then I write or revise until I'm too drunk to type in the dark. Thursdays and Sundays, I come home, I drink, and then I write or revise until I'm too drunk to type in the dark, which is becoming a later and later hour, I've gotta say. My skills are improving. Monday and Tuesday, I get up, eat some food or don't, and write or revise all day long, into the night, until I'm too drunk to type in the dark. When I'm at work, I'm thinking about it. Every cigarette break, while I'm making lattes, I've taken to ducking into the back to write notes to myself on my arms and legs under the sleeves and pantlegs in permanent marker. I sit down to pee and I've got illegible lines of dialogue staring at me, and also a note to call Joe who produced the album so we can schedule another session, separate from the album, before he closes his studio in the fall. The note used to say, "CALL JOE." Now it says, "REALLY CALL JOE ASSHOLE."

I should call Joe today. There's something.

I had a dream within a dream last night. By that I mean, in my dream I was having a lucid dream, but the reality behind it was actually a dream as well, and this dream, the real dream, wasn't lucid. In the dream's dream, I was very slowly and effortlessly fighting off an intruder in my parent's kitchen with a set of bamboo fireplace pokers. In the actual dream, I was fighting to wake up, but I couldn't talk. Shane was getting frustrated because he didn't realize I was still dreaming. I could hear him, but I could only open my eyes a little.

Ellis was there, too, although I can't remember in what capacity. I had a dream a few weeks ago that I was walking down an apartment staircase, dark wood, second floor of a tenement. He was walking up, and I passed him on the stairs. I said to him, "Go on up. It's your turn." That one was weird. The human brain kills me.

I should do laundry. I haven't washed my pants in two months. For the past three days, I've been wearing the same shirt, one that I don't wear often because it's at least a size too big. If I don't do some wash today, I'm gonna have to resort to the offensive T-shirts. I can't go to work tomorrow, Sunday, wearing a shirt with a cross in a circle with a slash across it. Last time I wore that to the Dunkin down the road, a guy actually stopped me to ask me if I thought the cross was, indeed, bad religion.

I wasn't even awake yet. "It's a band."

"Bad Religion is a band? But do you feel that way?"

I just walked away. I almost turned back around. Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. But I can't really get into picking fights with religious types anymore. The bloom's off the rose of my indignation. I'm old enough now to know that everyone is crazy, and most people are their own worst enemies, and antagonizing them is a waste of time. Oh well.

The best moments of the whole thing were the mornings I'd wake up with some twitch of dialogue in my head and it'd fuel something perfect but completely bizarre. There were a few mornings when I woke up and wrote before work just to get it out of my head before it was lost. I had to take a cab one time because I wrote up until a half hour before my shift.

It's also fun when you write things with no greater intent than to fill the page and you realize three days later that it somehow connects with something else in an interesting way. Also: batshit drunk writing, good and bad. Could be brilliant, could be overindulgent crap. Total crapshoot. Well, not total, sometimes the bad ones contain good ideas.

I guess that's the main question, since I pretty much wrote the whole thing in some degree of inebriation. Was it all just a wank? Ellis?

Probably. Is that a problem?

Hmm. I don't know.

So, I wrote a book. I'm in the last stages of revision. It's in first person perspective, which means that for the last two months, if you'd asked me a question, I'm not sure who answered, me or the narrator. It's okay; sometimes our answers would be the same. He's so far in my head that he's starting to call the shots. That's also okay; he's pretty mild mannered. If I try to pee standing up, that's when I'll know there's a problem. Or if I suddenly leave home and start bumming around the midwest, drinking Wild Irish Rose out of discarded fast food cups on park benches in Terre Haute, Indiana. That's worst case scenario, though, I doubt it would ever get that far. Drinking Wild Irish Rose in Pawtucket is bad enough.

When I convert it to pdf, who wants it?

I'd like to preface thjs with: I'm wrting this on a phone + whiskey. This superbowl sunday, comcast viewers in tuscon were treated to a clip of a woman going down south right as the cardinals took the lead in the fourth quarter. Supposedly this was coincidence, crossed wires.

My faith has been renewed.

I'm pleasantly surprised that so many people who posted on here a couple years/few years/some of you almost a decade ago are still doing it. There are other sites with journal options, but nobody reads the entries on those pages, myspace, facebook, too, I suppose, never used that one. They merely exist to remind you of how many people you're acquainted with and to network. Myspace is great to tell a bunch of people you know in the area that you've got a show coming up. Absolutely awesome for bands. Good for finding people you knew in highschool because everyone on the planet seems to have one. But what do you do... you comment to them and say "HI I USED TO KNOW YOU" and you feel better in the knowledge that you've found them, reconnections and what not, but that's the gist of it usually. "Hey I'm going to be in town next week, want to get a beer?" "Wanna play this show next week at [venue] with, etc, etc." Great for that.

But this thing is unique. There's nothing but words. There's no faces, you don't see a current friend-count on the first page. The "post" page, even though it's changed, compels me to write. I learned to write here, really write, conversationally, comfortably.

I didn't stop writing here consciously. For a while I didn't have internet, then I did have internet, but I didn't have time. Then I did have time, but I didn't have anything to say. Then I forgot. I don't know, I read some of the last things I posted and it was all bitching about the hot dog joint anyway, chasing my own greasy tail. I think I needed a break.

Thanks to everyone who's still here. Glad you didn't let it die. And thanks to livejournal for not deleting my journal like I always figured/feared you would.

That's okay, blogging is huge now, so I'm sure you could log on any number of places to hear:

1. Barack Obama is awesome and sexy, let's all hump his tiny black ass in one big country-wide love pile

2. DAY-AM the economy sucks!

3. Sarah Palin is stupid, but also hot

I can't think of anything else that happened last year. There was something about polar bears, but that falls under 3., uh, groceries are astronomically expensive and nobody who doesn't have work or would like better work has a chance in hell in this state but that's number two, uhhhhh errrr

But back to number one: Isn't it FUNNY that during the campaign Obama was accused of being a celebrity, which of course any presidential candidate is bound to be, but he wasn't REALLY, but now that he will be president in a matter of hours I have to hear about what his daughters are eating for lunch and and what kind of dog he's going to get and "Watch Barack and Michelle's first dance! Right here on ABC!" and yes, Virginia, there is a new Camelot... Don't get me wrong, I like him a lot. I just think it's funny.

On a personal note, the band all lives in one house now. Our drummer lives underneath my bathroom which has most of a floor that is only the tiniest bit composed of cardboard boxes. This is not only funny but has also increased the intimacy level within the band. There are three levels involved in coping with another person being able to clearly hear you whizz and shit:

1. Whizzing and shitting anxiety, accompanied by guilt, shame, and promises to improve ones diet.

2. Acceptance/ambivalence.

3. HILARITY!

Throwing things down the hole is also fun. I never did dangle a dollar bill on a piece of fishing line above his bed, but everyone lives with a certain amount of regret.

Two other bands practice in the basement, so "going to the laundromat" amounts to going downstairs in my jammies and listening to a punk band and drinking beer while I wait to put my shit in the dryer. Score. Our bass player owns the house, but sometimes The Landlord is a separate entity, like when the electric company comes to read the meter and I need to be at the bus stop in five minutes and don't have time to monitor some stranger lurking around the basement. "Naw, landlord's not here. I don't know, man, I just rent the place upstairs. Can't help you, I don't have a key for that door. Bye now." It's fun to pretend.

Last summer-through-fall-through-winter we recorded a 23 track album with Joe Moody, who is a fucking saint and extremely gifted behind a sound board. All that's left is putting the liner notes together, which is a kind of daunting "all that's left" for the in-house graphic designer. I HAVE VERY FEW IDEAS AS OF YET. I didn't mean to scream that, sorry. If anyone out there is interested (is there anyone out there?) we've got a little myspace with some songs on it at myspace.com/almostblindband.

Cool, my game's done loading. Bye whoever still uses LiveJournal! It's still better than myspace! WOOOOOOO

1. I'm in L.A. (just visiting)
2. At 5:30 this morning, I was waiting in line outside CBS Studios along with over 600 other people to get in to see The Price Is Right.
3. Looks like (fingers crossed) our party will be in the studio audience for the 4:30 taping.

Right now I'm at K-mart checking out the prices of electric stoves, power tools, and Prep-H. Wish me luck!

Shane and I have been in Houston for the past few days, more on that later when I have time, but I felt a civic duty to report this:

Sasquatch and the Sick-a-billys, local Providence band who recently won the prestigious WBRU "Raw Cunt" competition, were detained by Secret Service for six hours after a show at the Ocean Mist in Matunuck. It is unclear if Secret Service were present at the show or if they were called in via TIPS just after the show.

Lesson to musicians: Don't tell the crowd to kill the president. He posted something on his myspace, too, which I understand he was questioned about, proving my point once again: Livejournal is way better because nobody reads it.

Okay, so what does it mean when you've reinstalled Windows 98 and everything seems to be working fine except that your display is maxed out at 16 colors and you can't expand beyond 640 X 480?