sometimes i wonder what if i never had distractions? what if we never had distractions when we needed distracting?

something that happens without enough distractions is envy. a lot of people say that envy is green, but i think that green is earthy and wholesome, and that a better color for envy would be blue, because it means that there’s no oxygen nearby.

i think that envy is probably where evil grows roots from. you know, if it were a tree.

an evil tree.

menacing, like in halloween decorations.

i don’t know where good grows roots from. or what, i mean. i think there is definitely a word for it, but i am too tired to think. it’s something that santa claus and grandmothers are the epitome of. and jesus. because even though i’m not religious, you have to admit that jesus was a standup guy.

sometimes the only way to distract yourself from envy is to remember that there are plenty of things that other people should be envious of you about. like if you’re laid back and you don’t complain too much, or if you’re really good at playing the piano or making masks out of paper mache or if you make the best cheesecake ever.

or if there’s no abilities that you have that other people would envy, then you could distract yourself from your own envy by learning how to play the piano or make cheesecakes or doing wheelies on your bicycle, or maybe just going to bed, because nobody feels envy about anything in the morning, ever, because they’re more interested in just taking a shower and drinking a cup of coffee and watching the weather. envy only happens at night, so you can kind of shirk it, especially with a little bourbon and ginger ale.

anyway, my original point was going to be that if we never had distractions, then the world would be a wicked place full of wicked people, and that’s that.

no one would ever take the time to kill time looking through telescopes at the blue moon, which is supposedly made out of green cheese. Which means that there’s some mysterious yellow hiding somewhere in there.

speaking of, when’s the last time you saw a very large and healthy dandelion?

i’m just wondering, because i can’t remember the last time i even noticed a dandelion. it all gets taken for granted, or else it’s truly disappeared. we should find out for sure.

dear billy,

you seem like a jackass nowadays, but you’re still probably my favorite. you’re my favorite jackass, billy.

i read your thing today, where you said you were going to get the band back together. there was a teensy tidbit in the paper about it. i think nearly everyone almost missed it, so it was a good thing that you made it approximately two feet wide by two feet tall.

it’s such a relief, because when the band broke up, i had to get into indie rock, and the whole indie rock scene. and it’s full of lots more jackasses who wear girls jeans and make me feel bad about myself by being so smug that it makes my testicles hurt. because they can pass judgement via ESP, which is pretty cool except that it is evil. and everybody’s mopey and elitist at the same time. and we collect emotions like baseball cards and we keep scores and we rate our depth against one another. and when we get to the club, most of us aren’t even listening to the music, which is weird because it’s supposedly what got us to show up. i guess we weren’t ever seen enough before, so we have to keep on trying to be seen more and more. extroverts in denial are still extroverts and i dont like them!

let’s be the ignored, again. the piss ants. like 1994 liner notes!

fuck all that noise, billy corgan. fuck bright eyes and deathcab. i am ready for the return of giants!

but, oh, i guess it was too late to recall the monstrous newspaper ad after realizing “oh damn! there are three other people in that band and at least two of them want me to eat shit!”.

d’oh!

nevertheless, if it can happen, it’ll be just like siamese dream. everyone hating everyone else and all that vitriol!

have you heard music over the last ten years? we miss the old vitriol! bring that k.c. masterpiece shit back! distill the life that’s inside of me!

i don’t want to have to listen to the fiery furnaces and try to make myself realize that it’s a really awesome record, anymore. save me!

you made me believe that the only people that can write a decent song are the ones having nervous breakdowns. and i still believe!

should you torch your soul to show the world that you are pure, deep inside your heart??

definitely!

you’ll probably have to leave behind the dumb goth outfits and the new-age jibberjabber and all of the born-again stuff. wear a tee shirt and jeans and a scowl and a chip on your shoulder, for fuck’s sake!

remember, before you were famous, everyone hated you and noone liked you! remember??

we could relate to that!

and your distortion pedals. if you didn’t use it on “silverfuck”, throw it out!

the ones you’re using now? the Killers are using all of those!

to better effect!

your new album? i was sort of surprised, because i only don’t like maybe a quarter of it, instead of all of it, like i was expecting. i like most of it, which is good for you!

but i already got off on this stuff with depeche mode or whatever! good for you, bad for me!

you created “starla”!! son of a bitch that was a freakout!

jimi hendrix was shaking his ghost-ass fist at you!

then you created “drown” and you made him cry!

ghost-ass tears!

you channel bitterness and loneliness better than any rocknroll star ever! and you turn your back on your skillset?

if you do this thing and start churning out songs that can be boiled down into the phrase “we love each other and together we can succeed!”, then you should stop yourself and re-learn what shame is all about!

what happened to the shame!?

by the way, zwan sucked!

exclamation!

!!

now that all of that is out of the way, i would like you to know that you have my blessing, until further notice!

your friend!
-tim.(!)

p.s. i stayed up to watch you on letterman last night. what am i, eighteen? you were the best part of the show, but a lot of that is attributable to dave becoming a blathering and unhumorous fool (which is tragic) and a temporarily edgeless christopher walken. congrats!

I dont really feel like writing things down today, but I guess I have nothing better to do.

Yesterday I did a lot of things. First I rode my bicycle for many hours, mailing things from post offices, stopping at Dunkin Donuts, because you must fill yourself with the energy of toasted bagels and hot coffee when you are riding your bicycle, and also returning Blockbuster videos, whose wild ride of jack-ass-ridiculous late fees has apparently come to an end, with Netflix posed to wreck them. But I returned the Blockbuster videos on time anyway, because I had nothing better to do.

Then it started getting really hot outside, which is not conducive to non-athletic guys riding their bicycle around town. But I went to the record store anyway, and I got some trashy vinyl copies of Renaissance, the Stones and The Nice, which features a young Keith Emerson with not too much wank yet, but just enough.

After the record store, it was too hot for words and so I went home.

I also went shopping, and I should tell you that I went out on a limb and purchased okra and turnips, thinking that I could create some more interesting side dishes than just rice with cajun seasoning poured on it. Oh, and steamed asparagus, which I have as a side for just about every meal, it seems.

Because it is fucking delicious.

But so I got the okra and turnips, and I enjoy okra, but I can’t recall ever having turnips ever, in anything at all. I didn’t have a clue what to do with them, really.

But it turns out that turnips are a lot like potatoes, and so I peeled them and chopped them into manageable diced cube shapes, and then I boiled them for about a half hour.

They were delicious! All I did was put butter and salt and pepper on them, and they were great. Kind of a lot like potatoes, except just a little bit different.

The best part was, they were pretty cheap. I don’t know if they were cheaper than potatoes, because I can’t remember the last time I ever bought potatoes. But they were like two bucks for four big turnips, so that can’t be too bad.

The okra I put into a mixture of corn and tomatoes and onions, and that wasn’t too bad either.

But I was too impressed with the idea of turnips in general to have my socks knocked off by the okra/corn/tomatoe/onion thing. Too bad.

And then I took a deep breath and gathered my new hockey equipment, generously and graciously sold to me by fogdog.com, and I grabbed my Christian USA Pro-1000 hockey stick (*1 see footnote for a detailed history of this stick), and I played hockey for the first time in five years, I think. ANd I would have thought that I could hold my own against a bunch of Florida hockey-playing fools, but I cannot, and I was easily the worst player on the ice, even though most of my old skills were coming back to me. I did not perform great, but goddamn it was great to be back. It was a great thing.

I had one assist.

I have found out that I like to play sports, but I have always been and continue to be a bad athlete. This would be just fine if most great athletes were not complete dicks, but sadly most of them are. Otherwise, we would just play for the fun of it.

Before I had left for hockey, Miranda had invited me to go out with her group of friends, and so I did, and the group ended up splintering into three or four groups, and my group consisted of Miranda and a guy named Johnny, who might be one of the coolest guys on the Earth, because he is friendly and social and knows everybody but his ego is in check. We went to a dive bar and then we went to a hipster bar. Everyone was drunk except me, which was fun and funny. The best part of the night was when we closed down the Matador, and then house/techno music was shut off, and at precisely 2:00AM the bartender took over the stereo, and proceeded to fucking crank War Pigs, and it was the loudest, most fucking awesome moment of the past week or thirty. Leave it to me to pick the moment that has everything to do with this or that song, but that’s just the way I work I guess. Otherwise, there was some attempts at conversation and things, but I think everyone knows, including people I’ve only just met, that I’m not much of a bar or party person, despite my limp attempts sometimes, and so I mostly watched people, tried to listen in, and bopped in place.

After the bars we went back to the Miranda and Ben house, which is where lots of anonymous people come after everything has shut down, to drink and party and inhale assorted smokes. The purpose of the house is more for parties than habitation, and so there are rules posted all over the walls, usually three per wall, which say “no smoking inside the house” and this and that. And so I eventually found myself alone in the living room, and there was a group of people talking on the porch, and a group of people drinking out back, and a group of people in Miranda’s room doing bong hits, and so I decided I was tired and I walked home.

I also decided that my life isn’t so boring and monotonous, if things like this were considered the pinnacle of living-it-up. I mean, it was all alright, but nothing truly groundbreaking or life-path-altering was going on with any of these people. It was all something that I would have been okay with missing out on, now that I knew. And that was really comforting. I went to bed at quarter to 4AM and I was alright. I am old and I do not want my youth back, but just something different altogether. Perspective is everything.

Next weekend I am camping in the woods of Virginia, then through the fourth of July I am going to Boston, Maine, Rhode Island, Boston, Rochester, Medina, Buffalo, back to Orlando. I will not have a pace car. It will be a marathon.

*1 The Christian USA Pro-1000 hockey stick is my only surviving hockey stick, and also my first. I bought it in 1989, which is the same year that Disintegration came out, and this is a ricockulous notion of time when you are talking about hockey sticks. It is heavy and awkward, and it is probably magical and made out of an oak tree that was blessed by a Cardinal and struck by the lightning of Lucifer, and it is the perfect length for me now, which must mean it was two feet too long in 1989, and it has probably outlasted all of my other hockey sticks because of the heavy deposit of shellac I covered the blade with, and I also poured resin into the fretted underside as it became worn, because you cannot afford to buy more than one $12 hockey stick when you are on a junior high school salary of maybe eighty dollars a year, which you only get when taking care of the Rau’s ducks when they are on vacation, or when you are pulling weeds out of your fifth-grade teacher’s flowerbed, whose daughter you are nuts about even though she is way out of your league (she got married yesterday, I think, as a matter of fact), but eventually you had other obsessions to attend to, but anywayyou cannot afford too many $12 hockey sticks, so I poured resins and shellacs on it and it has lasted an incredulous amount of time, and it is probably in the running for the most total amount of hockey time as well as the oldest hockey stick still in use, and I think that the legend is so severe that the unlucky man who busts this stick (even though I think it might be impossible) either by breaking the blade when I stop their slapshot with it, or if they hack at it with their stick and my stick breaks, I think I would have to assassinate them, not because I would want to, but because it would be as if they had killed religion, or spirituality, or mathematics. And that is all that I am going to write about my Christian USA Pro-1000 hockey stick. I’ll write more in another sixteen years.

On Monday it was late and I was burnt out on working and I pulled my car up to my piece of the curb outside my apartment, and I began gathering my stuff and things within my car, because I like to keep my car clean, and then out of the corner of my eye I noticed someone approacheth, and I did not make eye contact, hoping they would go away, but they seemed to be waiting for me to exit my car, and so grabbed my things under one arm and I opened my car door, and there was this girl with red hair, and she said “Hello I’m Miranda we live across the street we make a lot of noise sometimes let me give you my number” to which I replied “….okay” and she told me to go into her house so she could find a pen and a paper and she said “This is Ben” about the guy that was Ben who was standing at the door and I shook his hand and their place was filled from trinkets and musical instruments and they said they were way into making music and playing improvisations, in gatherings and parties starting at 2:30am most of the time, sometimes going until 7am, and they said I could come over for a beer anytime, and I said “…okay….okay… I never heard a peep… okay… yeah… I’m an engineer… no, the boring type… oh yeah? like drone, shoegaze? … like windy & carl? slowdive… oh, loveless is the best, definitely… oh thanks… alright… wow that is the smallest pinkish dog ever” because they have a very small cat-sized dog who had a fake pink stripe along its back and it was yippy and then they showed me the house rules on the front door which said things like “don’t steal stuff” and “no sex in the bathroom, please” which made me wonder if it was alright everywhere else, and then Miranda handed me a slip of scrap paper with their number, and then I said I had to go because I was tired and it was late and I had to be up early, which was all true, so we all said it was good to meet us and I left.

So I thought at first that it was the first ever instance of a girl giving me her number because she was totally turned on by me and my look and the way I carry myself, which I have to admit is pretty seductive, but then I wasn’t so sure they weren’t just looking for more friends who happened to have glasses and slacks and button-up shirts and moppy george-harrison-circa-white-album hair, which gives me away as a totally cool dude, ultimately, and so I wondered if they were desperate to get me involved in their orgies, and I wondered how I would ever be able to cope with being that promiscuous, what with my christianity and all, but then I remembered that I was not christian or even lutheran and I am in fact soulless and a heathen, and I thought that it was alright, but then I remembered the thing about love and morality and setting world records for abstitence or however you spell it, and remembering that I only have a year or two to go before being re-classified as a virgin again, which is too awesome to screw up now, but then I thought to myself “Wow, you’re into yourself, aren’t you? Don’t you think they just wanted to be friends?” and I thought “oh…”.

And then I turned over the scrap of paper with the phone number on it and it was a print out from internet explorer which listed types of angels like yerathel and yetzirah and the url destination was http://www.meta-religion.com/Paranormale/Other/angels.htm

Also, I have decided that it is not necessarily awesome that Pink Floyd is getting back together, despite all of the youths revamping interest in dark side of the moon teeshirts and underwear, and also I have decided that no jacket required is the best fucking cassette of 1985, especially since u2 or the cure did not release anything that year.

alternating pissing and blistering sun. this is what vietnam must be like. it has rained every day since i got back from the memorial day weekend. i asked co-workers about it, and they expect the trend to continue until december.

you learn quickly that you cannot go anywhere without an umbrella. you might deceide to do some shopping inside a target store, for instance, and as you park your car and decide to enter, the sun is beating down something ferocious, and there are the beetles buzzing, yknow the beetles that only buzz when it is very hot and there are mirages on the roads and waving air above asphalt. and so you don’t take your umbrella with you.

that is a mistake. you should always take your umbrella with you.

surprise attacks are common, and so they shouldn’t be regarded as surprises.

today i have decided to do some bicycling. i should go to a park with trails. but i will not take my umbrella. i will just deal with it. i will martyr myself with unholy wetness. i will bring a towel for the carseat.

lately i have not been finding perspective, because it takes me two years to adapt to new situations (which incidentally kind of sucks when new situations only last for a period of 1 second up to 1.999 years), and in the meantime it helps if i have someone tell me what it is i should be doing, like a teacher or an instructor or a mom, but in lieu of all of that i need to write myself instructions while i am feeling assertive.

they might say “you are o.k.. today you should do the laundry. while the laundry is going, organize the living room and bed room. find an empty box, and everything that does not yet have a proper place, throw it in the box, and then we will find a place for the box, and maybe later sorting can happen. get this done and i will treat you to some outdoor activities. we can go for a drive like you like to do, or even take the bicycle to a park and find trails. you are o.k..”\
“btw you should never compare yourself to characters or movies and books or songs or historical figures and fables or don quixote, who is actually probably covered when i wrote ‘characters’ or also ‘books’ and maybe ‘movies’ too. i sure could use some distraction.”

there is a church playground directly adjacent to my apartment. the children are not playing this morning because of everything being wet and crummy, and because of the possibility of further surprise showers.

here is a picture of a playground character that i do not trust:

i am calling this untrustworthy character “Teeth McQuack”. just because.

regardless of the name, this guy is shady, and the children know it too, because they pay no attention to him.

i am going to map out my bicycle adventure now.

i am theweakestlink. goodbye.

This is a picture of my fifty-mission cap, except that they weren’t actually missions, but there were a fuck of a lot more than fifty of them:

Here is a picture of the inside of my cap:

I originally bought the cap in a mystical city called Toronto, during a seventh grade field trip that I cannot really remember the purpose of, except that it was completely responsible for the sonofabitch that I have become today.

That was in 1990, and I wore it all of the time and it became grungy and smudged and well-worn, and at some point I was convinced that the constant presence of the cap was wearing a rift into my scalp, precluding my hair and luscious bangs from being able to be molded properly, and I also was beginning to believe that constant cap-wearing would cause premature failure of hair follicles, yknow because of the lack of sunlight and all, and so I stopped wearing the cap, and my big dufus head got too big for it, anyway.

When I was back in my hometown for a brief visit last week, I counted three or four young persons wearing Toronto Maple Leaf memorobilia, and it made me want to kick them in the eye, because I was first, and probably the only reason I became a Maple Leaf fankid in the first place was because nobody else liked them, not even in Toronto, because they were awful.

Those weak fuckers. The new fankids, I mean.

They did not feel the lean times of Gary Leeman and Vince Damphousse. These were times when the most glorious moments were the ones where Wendel Clark ate Chunky soup with a fork on Global’s Got It!

The best Jeopardy question ever would be:

“The last goal he ever scored won the Leafs the Cup. They didn’t win another ’til 1962; the year he was discovered. I stole this from a hockey card I keep tucked up under my fifty-mission cap. I WORKED IT IN TO LOOK LIKE THAT! IT’S MY FIFTY MISSION CAP! I WORKED IT IN! (WORKED IT IN!) AND I WORKED IT IN! (WORKED IT IN!) III WOOORKED IIT IIN TO LOOOK LLIKE THAAT!”

“Who is Bill Barilko, Alex.”

“Correct!”

“l33t for $800, Alex.”

“It’s a Daily Double!”

I am such a fraud, it hurts.

As righteous as I convince myself that I am, I am still a desirous little pugilist like most everyone else.

So my luck has run out, and after my first tumultuous month in my new apartment, my free cable gets shut off. Endless salt & pepper television screens, from channel 2 to 102. I know, because I checked.

“No big deal, I dont care anyway” was the attitude I was able to front to myself for the first two and a half hours, but in the third hour I was scavenging unused items for eBay, to counter the $50+ cable bill that I can expect from here on out, because I am fucking bored as hell, and my mental health suffers when I am not constantly bombarded with distractions.

Example:

television off – “What am I doing with my life? Why am I here if I am not crucial to something or someone??”

television on and tuned to Daily Show – “Haha!… Heeee!… Gagglegaggle hee-haw! Hehe!”

I have decided to get the cable internet as well, because my landlord’s wireless is a slut, plus I have to have my computer in the spare room to even sense the wireless, and I hate the spare room because there are no screens or speakers, and so it is a geography devoid of distractions, and I find myself questioning my meaning and wondering why no one ever falls in love with me, and I am not nearly dashing enough, or witty enough, to try to pull off the whole Morrissey thing…

–

In other news, I think my vacation plans are solidified. Probably New England for the fourth of July weekend, to hopefully see Mike and Miss and Adam and Manda and Madeleine and Billy Corgan, even though only five out of the six still have talent, and then starting mid-July, it’s Chicago for the Intonation Festival, then New Zealand for twelve days with a Contiki group, because solo traveling should not be performed by introverts, and I find that even if I never make soul-melding connections to others in my peergroup, they still make good distractions for a week or so. And New Zealand is supposedly as close to Middle Earth as I’ll ever get, although if you know the geography well enough, you would notice that there is a striking resemblance between Middle Earth and Europe/Asia/Africa, and if you were to transpose, then you would find that the Shire is somewhere around France, and I have been to France, and Forochel is part of Scandanavia, and I have been to Scandanavia, and Mordor transposes to the Middle East, and I will probably never go to Mordor, and nothing of importance transposes to New Zealand, so isnt that ironic?

That was the longest paragraph maybe ever. Apologies.

I have been circularly anxious and lonely this weekend, in contrast to last weekend where I got to show off my ability to maintain campfires and play beer pong and sleep on wooden floors and supply liability to a frisbee football game. I also got to see Adam for ten minutes and Chad for many hours and my parents and my grandmother and the Memorial Day parade, where the Mustang band played the Superman theme song and it was shocking to see how high schoolers look like babies, now, whereas they sort of looked intimidating while we were in high school. How the shit does that happen? I also think that I saw Jeremy M. in the marching veterans, and if so, I am pleased that he swings his arms naturally at his sides now. I am pretty sure it was Jeremy because this guy was young and tall and had Air Force dressups and looked like he was going out of his way to look like a pompous ass.

Enough negativity for now. More in the evening.