today I saw a car downtown with a Guam liscense plate

My folks were in town today and I met them down at Graycliff. Pretty interesting. Wright used a lot of straight lines but it was more about proportion than anything else.
That house it beat. Leaky roof and I don't think that it was ever really built to last. The buildings need a lot of work but what I think bothered me the most is the way someone had mowed the lawn.
Isn't that wierd? I mowed a lot of lawns as a younger lad, and I hate seeing someone butcher grass like that.
They had scalped all around the trees and their pattern was just way off on the open sections.

Yes, I am a douchebag philosopher about mowing lawns. That was probably the sweetest job I ever had.

Tonight's Fear & Loathing theme: I talked to one my cousins. We were decently close growing up, we did a lot of fun stuff growing up and got in trouble together, etc. He's my homey and I'd give him at least (1) kidney, maybe even (2).
But goddamn if he isn't an odd fellow. No need to elaborate on that, besides the fact that he's recently really religious.

OK so I would never question a man's chioce in a woman, dog, or religion/faith, so I'm not judging anyone here. But this whole thing is really wierd.
This stuff hit him hard, like a shot of whiskey to a toddler. I mean talk about a violent change.

He's into one of these churches (I think they call it a church) where God is responsible for everything. Lke your shoelaces come loose, its because you did something unGod-ful, or you get an extra bag of peanuts in the vending machine, its because you prayed correctly.

That shit turns my stomach.

He was in this conference this week in DC about important Christian whatever-the-fuck issues . Gay marriage, et al. ITs a good thing to see people spend so much time focusing on such important issues. Jesus totally spent so much time railing against gay marriage. This is a cool comic.


I don't know but it just strikes me as a bunch of humans trying to impress a bunch of other humans. Talk and talk and talk and shell out money and buy people's christian/religious shit. But its good though, its good that you go to religious darien lake day and that you have 50 crappy religious CDs and have a bookcase half full of phoney religious claptrap. Just as long as other people know where you stand.

God, the dude that got the universe going, set up the solar system, the motions of planets, the intricacies of atoms and the first professor of electro-chemistry. The guy that invented the orgasm, the light bulb, and saw fit to sprinkle some consiousness into the grey gloop in our domes.

Yeah I think he's great! Lets make the shittiest music we can think of! We can emasculate ourselves and play on tamborines!
Lets write newsletters and judge other people and project our self-hate onto the WORLD!!!


I don't know: this isn't the whole scoop on what I think about this stuff. Mostly its none of my business.

In Orchard Park

I'm thinking about going

about a year ago I was at the high water mark of discontent at a job that was pretty fuckying awful.
It was my first job out of school and I was pretty damn dumb. I still am goddamn dumb, but maybe a little bit less young-dumb.

A lot of people can laugh at all the fucked up stories I tell about it, I do too, but I kind of hate telling them, because its such an ugly thing.

Just thinking about that pit and the waste it was actually makes me feel relieved. Relieved that I'm not there, that I survived, and that place went to Mexico. I lost my job, I lost a lot of money, a lot of sleep, and lot of friends (12,13 days in a row, 5AM start times, night shifts, 12 hr days etc) but I'm still ticking.
I feel like I could just lean foward and float. Thats how good it feels to be here.

Right now I work in a crappy factory, but I think I like it. The people I work with are ok, my bosses are ok, we laugh at each other and bust balls, and the place probably isn't going anywhere. I like what I'm doing right now, for the short term. But I wonder if I can ever get back to engineering the longer I stay away. Fuck it; I just want a job to pay for the cool/stupid things I do.

Whether its engineering or celery farming.

cider season for me means rum season
They go hand in hand.


(thsi is another boring one btw)


I got my raise at work. It was pretty much what I was looking for.
So no more being late to work in the morning.
$10K for 10 minutes, sounds like a deal to me. (well, actually less than 10k, and more than 10mintues, but whos counting)


So what now? I think, hm yes, I think a Miller High Life is in order.

I was sittin at the light in front of Filmore hospital on Deleware. I looked over past the sidewalk, theres a bench, some grass, and some shade-trees. There was a dog chilling out in the grass. He was attached by a leash to his Man, who was just kinda standing there.

He was an old man, he had on old man shorts and old man sunglasses. Y'know, like old people wear: kinda visor like. He probably could have welded with those things, or at least viewed an eclipse.

The old man was holding a bag of crap. It was good to see that the dog was eating/shittng well, he was probably past the point in his life to chase sticks.
It looked like the old man was just standing there, not waiting but just standing there. I couldn't see what he was looking at because I couldn't see his eyes through his vault glasses. So maybe he was just standing there, staring into space, or time.

But on closer inspection, he wasn't just standing there. Servo valves in his ankles reacted to feedback from gyroscopes in his inner ears. The servos were old so they only moved a dozen or so times a second, and the gyroscopes had slowed down to 12,000RPM. Old but ticking, his head pendulated no more than a quarter inch from vertical, well within operating specifications. The wind picked up and his feedback loop compensated for the .014 psi juggernaut.


I never saw the dog or the man move much. Maybe they were just enjoying the shade.

The light changed and I drove home.

Do you or someone you know enjoy the fuck out of Rock&Roll?

Do you enjoy breaking drumsticks and beating through drumskins?

Do you enjoy tolerate shit-hole bars, load-ins, load-outs, and getting ripped off by promoters?


If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you should consider becoming a drummer.

You should never admit publicly that you are a drummer or that you are interested in drumming, but instead leave me a post-it and we can figure out about a jam/tryout session.


Nope, no MP3's right now, cause our drummer is too much of a flake to make it to practice.




I;ll probably elaborate on this at some point; I'm kinda tired now.

24 party was cool. I snuck in kinda late but it was cool to meet the people I did.






Matt: this is that link I was telling you about in the backyard. About the trains down on the waterfront.
I really want to go down there now if those trains are still there and scope the place out for some urban exploring.

I was kinda bummed out Thursday driving home from work.

A guy I work with was found dead Wednesday.
I hadn't seen him since Friday the 11th. He said he had cellulitis in his leg and he was limping around
His tongue was swollen and he looked like he was in pretty bad shape. I was giving him a hard time, trying to get him to go to the Drs.
He had skipped a Doc appointment, so I was trying to get him to the hospital, just to get on antibiotics.

So I wondered if that was the cause of death but now theres pretty raw rumors about him doing himself in.
Fucking sucks. Dude was going to Mexico in December, and I don't think he'd taken a good chunk of time on in a long time.

The other guy who plans with me has had some hard knocks in life. One of the crosses he had to bear was that his wife had an anyeurysm some years ago.
He had her in a nursing facility and she passed Thurs monring.
I feel awful about that, this guy is one of the awesome-est guys.
At least its closure.


I was rather bummed Thursday night and just getting started into a G&T when my mom called.

My grandpa had an aortic aneurysm. Based on the prognosis, the family decided to keep him on life support until we could all get there.

So I drove out to Rocehster. When I got to his bed in the ER, my aunt was in there with him. She was his legal proxy and the one who made the call.
She was already struggling with the decision.
She looked at me with tears in her eyes and asked me if I though she made the right choice. I could only nod.

She needed a break and I was left alone with my grandpa.


I closed my eyes and wet my face.

He did not go quickly.
I was at the hospital from Thrusday night through Saturday night. Between cat-naps on chairs and coffee and the totality of the situation, it almost doesn't seem real.

Because it took so long, it was kind of interesting to be alost comfortable with death.
The family spent hours and hours and hours in that room around his bed, talking, sometimes laughing, eating pizza, crying, remembering, writing the obituary.

I cried one other time; after being up all night I was one of the last to go to sleep. All the spots in the room and in the waiting rooms down the hall were taken. I slept for 2 hours out in the parking garage.
When I woke up I felt awful for leaving him.

I wasn't really sad, because this happened quickly and he didn't suffer. He had Alzheimer's for 8 or so years now and didn't like that. He lead a good life and I am proud to have known him.
I made my peace with this and thanked him over and over this weekend and told him how proud I was of him.

When the priest came, he was dressed all in black and we said prayers in the same monotone moan that made me want to give up religion when I was a kid.
It was such a sad situation, I had to leave.
I didn't feel that it had to be so sad.


They said it can take days. It has been days.
When I left the hospital today, he was breathing, gasps, maybe 5 or 6 a minute.
Thursday night it just sounding like he was sleeping, snoring away. But that slowed.

Its very shallow now.
His heart keeps going. The aneurysm must have clotted.
I think once his kidneys stop, the heart follows.


He had a good life. I'm glad I knew him: he taught me a lot.


Thats all I have to say about that.

you tube is great for watching videos of people beating each other up.

don't tell anybody about my favorite video though: my favorite is the sigh at 0:13