Some Further Gastronome

I ache a bit this morning. The smoke breaks are catching up to me. Or just the "mad bird flu." Heard it's spread to the chickens of Turkey now, or was it from chickens to turkeys? You gotta play with the mucus, dung, or blood of birds to get it at this point but if it mutates it could spread from human to human. Hmm. Will I have to come in contact with the fluids of other people to catch or spread it? A sneeze can travel 10 feet in seconds I have learned.

I had a full vegetarian day yesterday. We're trying to get back to that, Amber and I. It's amazing how much good food there is in this world without eating meat. It's weird though. While she was pregnant and then breast-feeding her son she was vegan, but he prefers hot dogs to anything and won't eat vegetables, her daughter will eat mostly anything, but Amber was eating everything by then (well not hot dogs). Health Care teacher says breast milk is toxic these days though. It's full of environmental toxins. Amber finds that malarkey. Who knows. I could do a big gathering of info on the subject with my search engines but it doesn't matter now.

Hello Amber - sorry if I'm giving out too much info, but I think your just about the only person reading this stuff anyway. And sorry about the cloth diaper/cruel world thing in the last post too. I think what you do is actually very very cool. If only we all could come into this world without plastic being wrapped around our asses. We've all seen the poorly disposed ones left about a car park or two. Gross. Somewhere there's a landfill near your house leaking a billion of those buggers and god knows what else into the drinking/bathing aquifer of your municipality.

Anyway, took Cassin to school, The Shins, The Pixies, Weezer, Bowie, turned around and headed east with the sun real low on the horizon. Put on my sunglasses and - "Here comes the Sun" by M.Ward came on. Perfect. So cool stuff like that. Then a very long Velvet Underground song into the driveway. This post, and I'm off to class.

b

Another Bagel Please

So, the CD finished. Sweet. The little things. Simple Random Sample Selections: first five, no lie, 1.Dog On Wheels/Belle and Sebastian, 2. something from Sonic Youth (I really can't tell one song from the next [song wise]with SY and I like it that way), 3. Laughing/The Church, 4. Hallelujah/George Harrisson, 5. M. Ward - another unknown song but favourite artist.

I was driving. I felt the urge to click forward and just see what might come next rather than actually listen to the song. Hmmm. This as if the selection process itself was more interesting and important than the individual songs. Hmmm. Bless my heart. What is reality anyway? Perception or the random selection of arostotilian perspectives, crystallised by western and european secular dogma?

My girlfriend is on the couch with her daughter. They are watching The Batch-eoler together. Grotesque. Oui, grotesque pour moi, pars que toujour une programme avec le stupid et le dim, mais ces't la vie? Je suis stupid aussi maintenant. Spelling at least I'm sure. Je regret.

She sews and surges cloth diapers, and then sells them on line, celestialbaby.com. She's retired she says, these days, but she makes a couple a day. Yogic experience I guess. A spiritual thing. Is anyone doing you a favour if they put you in cloth diapers at this point? Cloth diapers at all in a plastic diaper world is cruelty I might say. Red Yellow, Blue, Green, and Pink, whatever. The world is plastic now. Are we to survive ourselves? What a let down if I we or you were to grow out of the cloth and find a complex of plasic. No choice. A matrix of holy petroleum products. A Bagel could be a CD, a CD could be a bagel. A momento.

b

An Everything Bagel

Between trying to make this ultimate 300 track MP3 CD for my car CD player containing the best of the best of all my other compilations I got a little bit of my statistics homework done and I will do my health care homework next. This has taken me all day.

Statistics - water down or condense random or not so random data to create a desired effect for the purpose of something other than the implied purpose, so help me god. The meaning of the mean of means. Loaded questions and baked potatoez that taste like everything bagels. I intend to remain an outlier in the land of standard deviations, amen.

Health Care - Health Care is good. Sure. My instructor is a piece of work though, bless her heart. Said she delivered babies in the aussie outback after a bad divorce years ago. She's a nurse. She casually throws in that she was the Australian president of Greenpeace for some unspecified period of time. I was stoked. "Did you ever get the chance to meet Peter Garrett!?" I exclaimed. "Who is that?" She said. Hmm. One day she casually mentioned that Kevorkian put her dad under. She told us all to watch "What the Bleep Do We Know?" A hokey psudo-science flick on sub-atomic reality. I actually believe in that stuff, but can't stand this movie. Bless her heart, but health care is good.

I have 168 songs @ 64kbps so far. There are many CDs and CDRs in my collection mind you, this CD is to become "Radio Brad." The best of my best of, to played back in random mode, while on road trips, cleaning house and laying about the beach and/or elsewhere. I have a CD walkman that I hook up to my car or carry around. I think it was technology that came out just before the IPOD. But I'm not sure. Works for me. I don't like Cream Cheese. A bit of butter on an everything bagel will work for me every time though. A baked potato.

b

Good Sleep

starting to imagine escape plans again
plans to escape escape plans fail
shadows follow
got the direct notion
old game
i got a haircut
no dance in the wake of her boat
insomnia

tiptoe round the couch
can't sleep in the midst of all these bears
made a drink
made a lot of noise on accident
nobody moved
no need to creep anymore
escape escape plans fail
some insomnia

ever been up to see the 11 o'clock news repeat?
2 or so
some stations 4
i wanna get in the car and go
no sooner than gone I'll wanna go home
i always just want to do whatever it is I'm not doing
sleep then wake
wake then sleep
or insomnia

I know who I'm not before I know who I am
rooms full of mirrors
but with no light i'm just bumping around
and increasing the folds of my old luck
beats the doldrum
drums beat dull signatures
In
Some
insignia

nothing to write really
obvious i'm sure
usually if i just sit and start at it something comes up and out
not this time, just insomnia, nia, nia, nia
just me in another strange house
the same strange same town
the dull familiar body
no dreamscape
no wakening

not an upbeat post
just the mood
the one im in
and as far as I can tell
it's the only mood available
everywhere anywhere tonight
with solipsistic certainty this
as if a smiths song remixed by reznor
and i used to know a diablo without the blo
she can go and judge herself all by herself
so i see
so be it
didn't need it
just thought i did
like sleep
like insomnia

ABCNNBCBSNPROX + 1

What if you could reduce all of the information into 3 big outlets
Some of the people all the time
All the people some of the time
And all the people all the time

Pretend to be everything
Far left and let the right hate you through that outlet
Far right and let the left hate you through that outlet
And the middle blah middle blah not middle blah

A two tailed test with whatever standard deviation you choose
Or don't choose
You're in control, You're god, I mean GOD!!!
You are what and how people think
Because you're all they have to think

You can be the Media, Government, and Religion
You can be at odds with yourself
In whatever mode
You've optimised all your r factor options...

...and so the choices of the masses
Holier than thou, whomever thy might be
Lower than the lowest too, if thee prefer, too
Amen, Hallelujah, as seen on TV...

...for a limited time only, while supplies last
act now or forever hold your pieces
a slice of simple random sample
the criminals are the polizis

Push, Pull, Drag it in here, past the feelings and the facts
Past a Holiday Inn in Drag,
and your Momma's Daddy's Momma's Dad
The same flesh we had

Blue pre-owned carnations, loaned to rhythm tuxedo lies
Sold Flesh and Soul to usury
And borrowed the rock and roll heart
And the hip hop thighs

You've got to get it together (space) mAn!!
In the insane world the sane man must appear!!!!
So if you're feet smell
And Your nose is runnin'
Take a look at yourself -

You're upside down

b

Dude

The city built a skateboard park near where my mom used to live near the beach, back when I would skate all the time. I'm back in town. Used to skate in Gainesville to get around. Hmm nice ramps and transitions. I felt lucky. Little hops off the sides at first, taking it easy. This is fun! Ha. More confidence. Fakies in the halfpipe. Tailtaps and rocknrolls. Frontside and Method airs off the jump ramps. Ollie airs, getting higher. Little fella, "Nice deck," he says. I notice people stayin' a bit out of my way - getting respect at the skate park - at 32! Legs get stronger, third day out there - hot, I'm working my way around the park - small crowd. I'm getting a little show offy as more people show up, hmm, "...can't ollie on a longboard" eh? I love that one - I'll show em. Pulled that off and me hed grew a notch. Carved around past the grey ramp and wiped the sweat clear from my skalp. Up we go - frontside air - hand slipps off - down I go - crashing - coolness gone - scraped up my left elbow/left knee (I skate regular-foot). But worst of all I twisted my ankle bad, left one. Couldn't walk on it the next day. 3 weeks later it's finally to the point that I don't limp strut like a pimp from the '70s. I finally got back out, surfing yesterday. I've missed some good waves. Great waves yesterday too. I'm out of shape and been bummin' my girl's smokes. Serious low-tide grinders outside, head high. I caught two waves and came in. Water was warm though - hot in my full suit I was. Still geeks in booties and gloves because it's January. Water 58F. Air 76F.

Should have time later. I'll go try it again today.

b

Bradland

cracked open my eyes
light gets in
the milky bed and dream drain off
i stretch
coffee's in the other room

adjusted my settings
good old days
jilted and tilted friends
a step-mom with a battle axe
poured a cup

she wants a white doctor
"those Indians think they're better than us"
"us?"
i will jump in the ocean today
waves or not
no cream or sugar, black

almost 80 and it's not even 9AM
dew streaks in the shadows
shadows streak from the sun
even for Florida
quite warm
january thunderstorms

our dog
her name is Lady
she needs a doctor
Cassin had a bad night
kept hearing noises
it was lady's stomach -

Loud accross the room, like space noises of baby torture I tried to let her out the door. She's always ready. She just looked at me like she was afraid to move. Like something would give.

I finished a bowl of Smart Start. Amber and the kids are at the gym. Some much needed Bradtime. Rev by Ultra Vivid Scene is playing in the kitchen now. An open space and sound carries with a pseudo-vaulted ceiling. This is a decent album. Wallpaper music. One of those that you forget is playing for songs at a time, then something will sonically come over and tap you on the shoulder, "remember me?"

This morning lady is alive, but sitting in the corner facing the wall like she fell asleep waiting to read fine print coming through the paint from the drywall. My first fiance had a canary that died overnight, the first night I stayed over. Now I'm on my second cup of coffee. A silvermine. A coalmine. Life is only what you do with the elements around you and recognising those elements in the first place. Trapped till let out at death or enlightenment, light at both ends. But light before you if you can feel it.

A guy stopped me on the streets of Gainesville years ago. I was walking with my walkman.

You know where I cn getta check cashed 'round here?

There's a convenient store around the corner, right at that light.

I'm not gonna get nothin' from those sand niggers, he said.

I flipped. Aggravated maybe that this cat thought I was someone he could speak with in this way, or that he interrupted my peace and a good song, or my privacy with such crap or just the general ignorance and it's ready numbers.

Sand Niggers? I said, Jesus was a sand nigger. Buddha was a sand nigger. Ghandi and Muhammad were sand nigger! Find it yourself dumbass.

This felt good for a few seconds, but I failed didn't I? Peace is easy in Bradland. But reality is it's own creature. You can adjust the settings, the conditions, but you step out that door and that's where it all begins. Be the Buddha for yourself - sure no problem. It's how we handle ourselves around others that counts. Action - Actions. Now I have to keep from killing my step-mom. I still have Christmas gifts in the back of my car. Middle January. I just can't bring myself to go by her house and visit her and my fading father. I have a long way to go.

b

The Pond

Strange gloom today. Like a winter shroud, but warm, the winter that never came. Had a job interview earlier. I felt like I was gonna cry. I just got very depressed as I parked my car. Overcast, and my fiance got a new job already earlier today. School keeps me from going insane. Usually a class or two, at least, every semester, even ones I don't need for my English degree. "Introduction to Health Care" this spring, who me? I'm on a list to begin a vocational course in August as an Emergency Medical Technican. I gotta find a career. So why not, I've tried everything else. There's a demand. It would be an excellent way to keep away from my self-absorbtion tendencies, caring for others. Actually doing good. Good with a "G" really.

I wanna sit on the beach and ponder the horizon
Ponder beyond
Over the pond, where am I?
Pass myself this test: disturb my adrenachrome,
And at your foot come to rest?
Never, forever, for granted.

b

Dumfux and Dads

I drove a cab for a couple of months as a fill-in job. I did a 6PM to 4AM shift and saw more crime and criminals in that time span than when I was a cop, for 3 years. A little bag I found on the floor in the back one night. Some girl musta got her ass beat; ten little bags of powder in the first bag, a sunglasses case. Never tried it before but I did the whole thing in a week, even sold the last couple, and never touched or saw any again. That's my story about cocaine. Sorry Dad.

I worked for the post office too for a while as a "rural carrier temp." I have a deep respect for those people now. I would stand there and "case" all the mail I could for 6 hours and then go deliver it as fast as possible, gotta be back by 5. Five hours later I get back and there's a new stack at the case. "Better case this so I can handle tomorrow," I figure. Stand there and case some of that for an hour or two. Next morning - another new mountain. There's too much mail. I hated that job. They liked me though. They said I could come back whenever. They just have trouble finding people who will do that job at all. My 10.5 hour route, for 10.5 only I got paid, it always took at least 12 hours.

Steve Kilbey had a bad day blogging there the other day I see. He broke from the poetry and social rants and went cased political mail. Unusual for him, but that's the thing. What's usual for anybody? It's just a blog. You can open up if you want. Just start writing, "first thoughts best thoughts," writing down the bones. He'd like to be unpainted into that dream-pop daddy of a corner that people put him in I reckon. And a daddy he is too, to some of us. He might not that know that. Well sure he does.

He was goin' off about the bombs that we (we - the great white west wing of earth) dropped on a Pakastani dinner and killed all but the right guy. What else is new? Dumfux I'd say. The government of America: Industrial complex, Bush/Blair/Howard as figureheads only. There's a dark ugly and greedy massive machine underneath that has tenticles in my business and in my head. Commercials to make me feel less than myself, just fine as I am really. Media liberal? Only as liberal as corporate hedz allow I reckon. "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled...convinced us he doesn't exist" Dumfux, the cat who commented on sk's comment that we can't all just, "smoke pot and paint pictures." Missing the point I'd say. This was a personal attack on sk who smokes and paints inbetween vegan cookies and blogging whilst not in the music studio I reckon, or on tour, or jamming, or meditating or swimming, or...I have no idea really. If we could all live like Steve Kilbey we should. I would. I tried actually. My bands always sucked though.

Made Cassin, my girlfriend's son, a CD of instrumental Kilbey music. He has trouble sleeping. The CD his real dad made him started skipping the other night. The sweeter instrumental songs from gilt trip, catching more zzz's from JLK, and other Kilbey stuff. I migzdit all togedah in me little computer program, just overlapped the tracks really, and the kid sleeps better now. He's 7. A rough age to to try and comprehend a divorce. The CD thing is sort of symbolic of the change. We need security deep down. A basic thing. We need to know that we're in good hands. We need mom and dad. We need to know that we won't have bombs dropped on us. We need to know that if we have a nightmare that there will be someone to rock us to sleep. When he wakes up now he just knocks and stands at our door instead of screaming like he was having toenails plucked mid-dream like hid did at first. Being that protector is the most important job it seems. The Dad. Our big daddy is not our govenments. They want you to think they are.

Some of us church fans I reckon, we think SK's our dad. Yep, on some Jungian, Freudian, under-level he is. He rocks us to sleep. He has for years. He spun out in that post, just emotional, he didn't mean it. I spun out several times at the Hotel Womb message board. I even knew it was coming, for him. Can see the post there too if you want. Dumfux, the things people come up with. They can push your buttons. We can push their buttons. Should be ignored, but it's too hard. End up making a bigger ass of yourself than what they ever could have made of you. I've been there. As a wise man once said, "Arguing on the internet is like being in the special olympics, you might win, but your still a retard." I don't know the guy's name, just something I heard in a bar. But he's right.

Kilbey, I grew up with him. I've been alive for almost 33 years. Been listening to the church tree since I was 15. More than half my life. I think I hate my actual father. I was into surfing, still the case, good waves today in fact, but my dad hated surfing, and hated that I did't love golf like he did/does. He never loved me. He's nearly dead. My mom did all the work. Step-mom's got dad's ass so stuffed with prescriptions he just sits and stares, forgets where he's at. I don't feel bad for him. I replaced him with SK somehow. I can see it now. I first got that first church tape at wal-mart, third of fourth tape ever, rode up on my bike, saw the black and whites of the band on the cover, I imagined they all surfed, Aussies and all. Surfing's like baseball in Australia I'm told. But the church don't surf.

Bit by bit, over the years, the fans, myself included, unwrapped the mummies. We know who's got kids, where who calls what home, what the likes and dis-likes are, Peter's the quiet one, Marty's got a big record collection et cetera et cetera. All of em got daughter's but Steve's the dad. The fanz dad. Somebody turned obnoxious teenager on him in his bloggersphere and took off with the keys to the car. Dad'll know what to do once he calms down. 50 now in grey area 51 dad, golf, pot, painting, surfing, rock me to sleep with a poem. I suffer...not really.

b

Emergency

I'm back in Palm Coast. I move away and come back. Several times now this has happened. I don't miss Gainesville at all, but I knew I wouldn't. I don't miss Saint Augustine either but I thought I would. I used to miss Deland, but that was a long time ago. I've lived in Florida since I was 12. I'm 32 now. My girlfriend is 30 and had two kids, 3 and 7. She and I went to high school together, but never knew each other.

From beneath the clock atop the monitor it looks like a plate. No food or battery and the hands are empty. Got the kids from school. Ivy's begun her preschool. She's eager. "Coo" she calls it. I was gonna start my EMT training in the summer, but today I found that I'll have to wait till Fall. I made too much in 2004 to qualify for financial aid, the new school year will reference my 2005 income, so I should get grants. Funny how my current situation has nothing to do with how/what I qualify for. A cog on a wheel in the machine.

We got cable internet in our new house. After a few months of no internet at all in Saint Augustine it feels quite refreshing. I knew Steve Kilbey, Australian Painter/Poet/Songwriter had a blog and hadn't really looked at it much till now. Same blog site as this blog. Check it out stevekilbey.blogspot.com. So for kicks I clicked the "make you're own..." tab and so here I am.

Blogging. I hadn't ever thought much about it. I have associated it with clips in the back of my mind of N.P.Radio stories about bloggers breaking news stories first, usually political in nature. I just didn't think of it as something artistic. Reading Kilbey's posts changed my mind. I'm a poet, lah-dee-dah.

I've been an occasional poster and imposter at the Hotelwomb.com too. I often got loose, artistic, and funky writing there, unfortunately often while pissed (both lower and middle chakras if ya know what I mean). Eventually I revoked my own poetic license for a handful of mixed reasons. No big deal. I still post but I rained on my own parade till my float soaked itself into a hungry manhole (Gay joke?! - no), now when I feel a post coming on there I feel damp. Hotel Womb is a song by Kilbey and his band The Church, and the site is a message board by various aficionados.

I've been writing first person private journal type stuff, rational and non-rational, since 7th grade when my English teacher said I was a wonderful writer. Since this was nearly the only nice thing a school teacher had ever said to me I believed her out a need to believe something, and the rest is future history. I wrote a little book called "The James King Version" too. It's auto-biographical and about a possible God-Drug connection. I swear it happened a few times, real as my foot on the ground. The book is more about the lead up and the lead out to this time period though. I never bothered too much with trying to get it published, but I made a few copies while working in a copy store years ago, and sold then through Karmichit.com.

I can promise that this will be the most rational and easy to read post. No I can't. But it probably will be. If I get a lead on a big news story political or not I will share it. But I won't. This is my emergence as a blogger.

b