Nyquil Dream Scenes

What I think is that if you ever were in jail I would bust you out, especially if you were in for going over on your cell minutes. What I'd do is tattoo your name across my chest so that if I went down everyone would know what I stood for, and then fly a helicopter right into the excersise yard during "outdoor time", guns blazing, dressed like John Rambo in camo pants and boots and a tank top with a huge fuck-off knife strapped to my leg. I'd jump out of the chopper with it still idling, grab you up with one arm and toss you into the back where you'd man the rear gun as I lifted off and flew us to South America and freedom where we'd live happily ever after with the natives, wearing leather loinclothes and feeding the birds in the trees.

Some of my Recurring Dreams

I have this recurring nightmare that someone is trying to attack me and I have this shotgun with virtually unlimited ammunition and I keep blasting them in the face but they keep coming - the shotgun knocks them back but doesn't penetrate their skin. It's one of those impotence dreams, I guess. Actually, I don't remember having had it in a long time, so that's cool.

I also have this recurring nightmare that I'm trying to run up a hill but the harder I try the less my legs move. Also an impotence dream, and also one that I haven't had in a long time. That's good.

I used to have these crazy dreams every time I had a fever. Picture those old computer monitors where the screen is black and everything is drawn on it in green - a green on black line art drawing of an airplane slowly landing on an airfield. The plane is moving impossibly slow, and it is accompanied by a smooth sensation - I can taste the smoothness. As the plane is about to touch down, the smoothness is replaced by a roughness in my mouth and then lines break up and the plane crashes into the jagged earth and crumbles into a million pieces. I had a fever last night and didn't have that dream. So I've got that going for me.

I used to have a recurring dream that I bought a house (it's always one of two houses every time - one's a house in the woods and the other is in an apartment building in the city) and it has so many rooms that I can't decide what I'm going to use each room for. So I just keep walking from room to room saying "this will be for me books" and "this will be for my turntables" and "this will be where I put the TV" and so forth - each room having one specific purpose. I stopped having that dream when I started living alone two years ago, so that's pretty sweet.

All of these dreams just started popping into my head tonight, about a half hour after I took the Tylenol with Codeine cough surup my doctor gave me. Other than that I don't feel any different (and am still coughing), so that sort of sucks. I'm thinking about having another teaspooonful.

Question: Why in the world would they tell you not to drink when you are taking this cough medecine "because it may intensify the effect of drowsiness"? Sounds to me like they WANT you to drink when you take it.

I wonder what dreams I will have tonight. I haven't remembered any dreams lately. I hope I remember them tonight.

Goodnight moon.

Goodnight stars.

Goodnight Froozle-mama, I'll see you tomorrow night!

Goodnight Brian, I'll keep trying to find your Holy Cow records, I promise.

Goodnight sinus infection, you can kiss my black ass.

Goodnight antibitoics, heal me for my trip on Friday please thanks.

Goodnight everyone else that I didn't talk to today...

Advantages of a bigger pen!s are innumerable

I'm really getting tired of SPAM implying that I am inadequately stocked in the penile department.

And anyway, are the advantages of having a longer d0ng really innumerable? I mean c'mon. Let's give it a try:

1. Chicks dig it. 'Nuff said.
2. D!ck slapping. How awesome would it be to be able to give someone a mushroom print on their forehead while they're standing up?
3. Reach things on the top shelf. OK, I'm not sure where I was going with this one.
4. Pee-ing out the window of a car. Protip: pee-ing into soda bottles is for sissies.

And it's not all ponies and strippers for the well-endowed, is it? Let's consider the drawbacks:

1. Ever wonder where all that blood has to come from to fill out a big c0ck? I'd probably spend more time wondering about that myself if I wasn't always so dizzy.
2. Chicks fear you. Nobody wants to hear "That thing's not going in my mouth.".
3. Doing number 2 and toilet water. People instinctively try to avoid the hot dogs that fall into the grease trap under the rollers at the 7-11.
4. Lack of anal sex. See item 2.

So you see boys and girls, SPAM isn't always right. I believe that the advantages of a bigger pen!s are, in fact, numerable. I also believe that the disadvantages are numerable as well, perhaps even to the point where they cancel each other out. I guess the morale of this story is to be happy with what you have, and never EVER buy anything from a SPAM e-mail.

6 in the Morning

6 in the morning, police at my door,
Fresh Adidas squeak across the bathroom floor
- Ice T

It's not quite 6 yet here and the po-po do not, in fact, have any interest in my little stamp of land in the woods (and if they did my bathroom window would not be conducive to escape), but here I am nonetheless, wide awake and trying to chase down and lasso my mind. Protip: if you are trying to fall asleep and having trouble, do NOT (I REPEAT: DO NOT) listen to Prince's Raindbow Children CD - that shit is some fucked up shit. Now I feel like I might be going a little bit crazy. Thanks Prince, you crazy fucker.

Speaking of crazy, my crazy aunt called me from the asylum last night (for realzies) and left me two crazy-ass messages. Actually she left one, but apparently after saying what she had to say the first time through she hung up and called back (all in her mind, because in realzies she didn't even miss a beat) and left a second , even more crazier message as if she had never left the first. It's pretty cool, I saved it. I probably have a little more of that to look forward to this week since my dad (who normally plays catcher to her psychotic phone pitches) is out of town at a convention for work. Good for him, I say, he could use the time off from teh crazy.

No, I'm not calling her back. I like to dip my toe in the pool of crazy to test the waters, but I don't know how to swim in it. I'm afraid I might drown.

OK, it's less than an hour before I have to get up for work, so I should be able to fall into a dead slumber now. Peace out, bitches!

Saturday Morning Mind Dump - Whizzle Shits

Sometimes I jump back, wanna kiss myself. MWAH!
Lost in translation, lost in frost, whoops - did I just say that?
Booty, booty, a pirate's booty,
Fruity Rudy fresh and frooty,
Like a spider I lick a biter,
I could eat a peach for days...
Senseless or nonsensical?
It's not a musical.

I think...

I think that compassion, strength, love, and all of the other good parts of being a person have their own special accounting. I think that if you give them away, you actually end up with more than you started with. I think, though, that if you keep them to yourself or ignore them, they actually diminish, percentages being ticked away like negative interest in the bank.

I think that hatred and anger and rejection use the same accounting. I think that if you give in to them and release them, they grow inside of you. I think though, that if you stop for a minute and think about where they are coming from - exposing their source - they wither away and disappear, like a vampire exposed to sun.

I think that this accounting system also uses balanced books - the positive and negative are inversely linked. I think that good emotions like strength, compassion, love, and happiness are Accounts Receivable, while negative emotions like hatred, anger, rejection, and despair are Accounts Payable. I think that when the value of your positive emotions rises, it subtracts from the value of your negative emotions, and vice versa.

I think that I will start each day from now on inside my mind, putting aside my body and my surroundings for a time in an attempt to balance my books. I think that during this time, I will send some of my positive emotions to people in my life that can use them; today I sent Brian some of my compassion and Dawn some of my strength, hopefully they will get them and be able to use them.

I think that I can feel the accrual of compassion and strength inside of me already, and I think that I am ready for my day now.

Christmas Morning

I can remember being about 5 or 6 years old, the night before Christmas, and wanting to get to bed as early as possible figuring that the sooner I fell asleep the sooner it wold be Christmas morning. Of course the problem is that all of the excitement of what the next day might bring made it nearly impossible to fall asleep, so I'd toss and turn with a big grin on my face thinking about what might be waiting for me under the beautiful-colored paper the next day. When I'd finally fall asleep, my dreams would be wraught with visions not of Sugar Plum Faries, but of the day ahead as I would envison it.

And then of course, because I had gone to bed too early, I would wake up before dawn the next morning, knowing that I had a few hours before it was reasonable to wake up the parents and get the day started, and the anticipation of knowing that today was the day would be almost unbearable. The suspense, time spent picturing myself ripping the wrapping off of my presents - the presents that were carefully and oh so beautifully wrapped just for me - imagining what could be underneath, and wondering whether I would be getting everything I thought I was going to get (or more); the suspense was maddening.

But somehow, the suspense, the time spent day-dreaming and waiting, all served to make the day even sweeter and more memorable.

I loved Christmas as a kid. We get so few opportunities to relive that feeling as adults that when we do it's oh so important to cherish them.

Merry Christmas!

Don't Forget the Syrup!

I'm off to see the Wizard, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
You'll find he is a whiz of a Wiz, if ever a Wiz, there was.
If ever oh ever a Wiz! There was The Wizard of Oz is one because,
Because, because, because, because, because.
Because of te wonderful things he does.

Nah, but I am going to Boston to see a new friend and hopefully an old one as well.

Namaste, bitches!

Sick. Call the Wah-mbulance.

I'm bedridden-sick today. It's not the flu, just a little cold, and as such admittedly I'm being a giant pussy but that's my perogative since I'm so goddamn manly the rest of the time (*takes giant bite of tree trunk*). Seriously, I feel like two-day-old ball sweat. To clarify, I don't HAVE two-day-old ball sweat (but will by tomorrow), I FEEL AS THOUGH I AM two-day-old ball sweat. If you WERE two-day-old ball sweat, you would feel the same as I do. That's all I'm saying.

So I'm not getting out of bed today. If anyone would like to go pick up my dogs for me and bring them to me so I can snuggle with them and maybe also you could rub my head and make me some soup or tea, that would be fine, thankyouverymuch. I'll be here, tucked into bed, watching movies on my laptop. First up: Rob Zombie's Halloween (Director's Cut). Next on deck is Children of Men because I've seen that before and know it's good so if Halloween sucks my ball sweat at least I can follow it up with a home run.

God I'm one sexy animal when I'm sick.

Update: Halloween was suprisingly good, I'm impressed. I've been craving a ham sandwich for the past 2 hours, gonna go run and get one.

Update: Children of Men is a great friggin' movie. "Bazooka? I was just getting used to Froley..."

Exclusive pen!s increasing preparation!

I had a dream about rolling papers last night. I almost never remember my dreams, and I don't really remember much about this one, but in it, rolling papers were very important to me and some other guy. I think the other guy was Clive Owen, but why he needed rolling papers so bad I can't tell you. I also can't tell you why he thought I had them.

Tattooed Again - W00t W00t!

I was feeling a little imbalanced because of a certain something that transpired in my life over the past few weeks, and decided to symbolically bring balance back to my life by getting a second tattoo, once again from Jen over at Body Graphics. It's the same size as the one I got a few weeks ago and is placed directly across my body from that one on my right shoulder. Here it is:

It looks a little skewed because of the posture I had to adopt to take the picture; I assure you that Jen did a fantastic job and that it's actually quite symmetrical.

Edit: It's a Japanese mitsu Tomoe symbol (representing the earth, sky, and humankind) surrounded by a sun.

Now I've already got my next 3 tattoos planned. I still want the dragon in the shape of an "S" on my right forearm (but I want it to have lizard's legs to look like it's crawling down my arm), and I also want the word "Balance" (in Kanji) on my left shoulder above the dragon yin-yang and the word "Harmony" (also in Kanji, obv) over the Tomoe on my right shoulder.

I'll probably hold off for a while at this point, maybe I'll get the forearm tattoo for myself as a birthday present this summer.

Sunsets, Love, and Grocery Shopping

I'm so glad I went grocery shopping today instead of skiing. As I was walking my cart back to the corral, I glanced up at the sky and was taken in by the magnitude and beauty of the sunset streaming through the clouds. For a moment, I saw the inter-connectedness of everything around us, and the earth and heavens and our place in it seemed huge and momentous and yet within grasp. It was a stop and smell the roses moment, but it made me realize that you can't take in the world around you on purpose, the world around you takes you in when you are ready for it.

It probably sounds like I dropped some E earlier today, but I swear I didn't. I've been reading this book that my new friend Colette turned me on to called The Way to Love by Anthony De Mello. The ideas in this book have completely turned my mind around with regard to how I perceive the world and the other travellers in it, and couldn't have come at a better time for me. I'm not going to summarize the book or its ideas, for each of us will get something different out of it, but I will say that I'm starting to feel as if I'm getting closer to happiness as a result of being exposed to the ideas therein.

I have a long way to go with this new philosphy but I really do feel liberated, or perhaps more accurately: I feel as if I am on the path to liberation. I feel closer to the people in my life than I ever did, and as contradictory as this might sound, it's a direct result of releasing any feelings of attachment I might have been harboring towards them.

Like I said, this all fell right in my lap at the right time - the book is a guide down a path that I had already been trying to get on (for some time now, dating back to my interest in Buddhism when I lived in Boston). I recommend it to anyone else who feels as though something's just not right with the way society has programmed us, but everyone is going to take something different from it.

This Limo Ride is Higher Than Giraffe's Nuts

Las Vegas - and I can say this with authority now having spent New Year's weekend there - is a hotbed of manic human behavior. Walk anywhere, on or off the Strip, in to, out of, or through the various casinos, and everyone you see is in either a state of complete euphoria, absolute dejection, or a weird flux between the two that can only be described as a mixture of hope and desperation. This is true for each person you will run into whether they came to Vegas to gamble, party, fuck, or to do any combination of those three things.

Brian and I went to Vegas this weekend to party and we did it old-school-style, therefore spending most of our time falling into the first aforementioned stage: complete euphoria. At some point on Monday morning I figured that the ratio of hours I had spent drinking in Vegas against the hours I spent sleeping in Vegas was over 4 to 1. That ratio didn't change by the time I left. In fact, I'm typing this up after finally getting home but still being stuck on Vegas time - which has nothing to do with the offset from GMT, but has more to do with the fact that if you're drinking then you're awake and time is immemorial. In other words, I have no idea what time it is but I can tell you exactly what I've had to drink (two shots of Tezon Blanco and two beers). That's Vegas, baby!

The whole time we were there we were constantly trying to figure out what time is was back home, mostly because it makes it crazier (and therefore cooler) if you're still partying at 4 AM when 4 AM is really 7 AM. Each night we went to bed no earlier than 5 AM PST (that's 8 AM here) and slept no longer than 4 hours. I can't tell you what fuel is keeping me going at this moment, but Vegas does that to you. I got home to Connecticut at 10:30 PM and was genuinely disappointed because not only were all of my friends in bed, but the bars were all closed. It's going to be a tough adjustment period for me - Connecticut is pretty much the opposite of Vegas in every way imaginable.

Oh, and the players that made our Vegas trip complete, to them we owe a toast. Some became fast friends like the guys (and girl - 'sup Colette!) from Destructoid, or Toledo Tom - my favorite perpetually drunk construction worker who took me to Cirque Du Soleil because his girlfriend had passed out and therefore couldn't use the ticket. Others were peripheral characters like Sugar the Blackjack dealer, the drunk dudes from Canada, the guy who had wrecked his motorcycle days before and whose girlfriend had a premontion about meeting a guy who had been bitten by an alligator, Rodney the limo driver (whose ride prompted Brian's quote from the bottom of a shot barrel: "This Cab Is Higher Than Giraffe's Nuts"), and of course Richard Cheese, who rang in our New Year's in such swanky style.

While there I watched the Patriots go to 16 and 0, learned how to play casino table games, had dinner at the world famous Nobu restaurant, and rung in the New Year in a way I haven't dreamt of in years. It was the best weekend I've had in recent memory, and is going to be a hard vacation to top.

Note: Hard to top, that is, until next month when Brian and I go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras...

Vegas Pictures

Before heading to Vegas, I went and bought a shitty little 7.1 MP Sanyo pocket camera. I wish I could have lugged around my Canon Rebel, for if I had I would have been able to bring back much better pictures, but the logistics of carrying that thing around without looking like paparazzi or figuring out how to configure each shot after having a dozen cocktails would have been a bit prohibitive to say the least. So here's a brief photo journal of my trip, taken at a much lower resolution that the images I usually post here. All pictures are work safe.

 

I stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, a few blocks off of the Strip, and by "a few blocks" I mean "don't even try to walk it, especially if you are wearing dress shoes". I wish someone would have told me that when I checked in. I ended up walking pretty much everywhere the first night I got there (because I was still operating off of normal sleep levels at that point) and I found out that the blocks in Vegas are each about a mile long. Everything looks deceptively close there, maybe because of the lack of landscaping or because of the mountains looming in the background no matter which way you look.

The Hotel was awesome by the way, I highly recommend it.

I got to Vegas about 10 hours before Brian, and the Patriots were going to be on TV creaming the Giants to go to 16-0 for the season, so soon after arriving I set out to find a bar to watch the game. The sun was setting and the palm trees in the foreground made for a nice visual touch outside the hotel, really bringing it home to me that I wasn't in Kansas (or CT) anymore.

I took a cab to the Imperial Palace because the concierge suggested that would be a good place to watch the game. He was wrong. I ended up walking the entire strip looking for a decent restaurant / bar that had the game on, and after passing by the ESPN Zone because it was too packed, settled on a decent little Mexican restaurant in the New York, New York Casino.

 Despite being the only Pats fan in a bar full of Giants fans (ahhh, just like being back home in Connecticut), I made some friends at the bar and had a great time taking some good-natured ribbing from them the whole time.

One of the friends I made at the bar was Tom from Toledo who was in town with a friend and their women.

After the game I ended up seeing Cirque Du Soleil's Ka show with Tom, who had found himself with an extra ticket after his buddy passed out in the hotel room. Awesome show, glad I was able to do that, so thanks Toledo Tom - good times!

After the show, I walked back to the Hotel to meet Brian. Bad move that, as the walk ended up being a two mile trek around a giant empty fenced-in lot, this after already walking the strip.

Brian and I partied it up that night, crashing back at the hotel at around 6 AM. That's 9 AM EST, bitches. This is me after a night of debauchery:

This is Brian after the same:

The next night we dressed up all respectable-like...

...and went out looking for a dance club. We never ended up finding one that we wanted to go to, but did get to explore more of the casinos on the Strip and of course drank our faces off.
New Year's Eve found us at AJ's Steakhouse, partying with Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine. We made some new friends there, hanging out with Yanier, Colette:

...and Raul for the rest of the night. Not pictured are the drunk Canadian dudes who were also a blast, and the guy that Brian was doing shots with at the bar who had just been in a motorcycle accident and whose girlfriend claimed to have predicted that they would meet a man who had been bitten by an alligator (Brian was bitten in the leg when he used to wrestle aligators down in Florida). The show was all I had hoped for and more. I just wish I had gotten better pictures than this one:

...but you get the idea (that's the band in the corner).

The trip home was mostly relaxing, but punctuated by moments of abject terror related to landing in a snow storm in Pittsburg 10 minutes before my connecting flight was to leave, and consequently being driven by the airline at what could not have been less than 65 miles per hour on the back of a golf cart through the terminal (next to a really cute girl from DC who I would have loved to have been able to keep talking to, but sadly we were quickly ushered onto our respective flights and had to part ways).

This is the last thing I saw in Vegas:

...but I took so much more away from it. I'm not going to forget this trip for a long time. At least, I'm not going to forget the pieces that I can remember.