Happy New Year. In 45. At This Location Anyways.

Tonight in the store was lonely and black and sucked. G'night cretins. The gate is closed.

The dogs are afraid of the wind that is cold and howling outside. There is something cold and howling inside as well, and the shapes have synchronized and come together and cold and howling seems altogether appropriate for the occasion.

I can't watch the ball drop. For the same reason I can't watch those talking heads blab on about something worthless to pass the time until the new year.

A rotten end to a rotten year.

(Except for the creative output.)

Winter. On The Eve Of The New Year. Almost.

My posts are approaching 200. I am watching the number. But the speed at which it approaches seems to be lessening by half every time I check. Maybe I'll never get there. Like that mathematician in that old joke with the engineer.

But who the hell cares about that shit anyway. This has been a strange winter break. Work and family functions and not really thinking about anything. I awoke one morning and my head was swimming with poetic imagery and dialogue and I rode it out for a while before getting out of bed and starting the day, but that was it. There is not much to dread anymore because I am already in it.

I'm too lazy to start a story. I've been too lazy to write even a paragraph or two. Or to put together a musical piece, or to photograph something that looked worth capturing. But I think about it and I'm not sure if it is laziness or just full-blown motivational decay. And I don't know how much longer I can stand retail. This motivational decay. It is getting dangerous. And I am getting to the end of my sheltered scholastic career.

I was in Mexico for a day and it was something special. Tijuana and Rosarita and the Baja Californian coast and whatnot. Whenever I am in a car with someone down there all I hear about is how unfortunate these people are and how awful and dirty and pathetic everything is. And maybe in terms of technology and health and all the bit...you know...all the modern calculations of a country's aptitude...maybe part of it is true. We took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up 15 minutes deep in Tijuana shanty town and I looked out of the windows and realized how terrible it would be to break down and have to stay there.

Nevertheless there's something gorgeous about that place and I get the sensation every time we pass through. Maybe it is the way they build. Without much planning or prudence or anything like that. They just build all over the hills and all over the various cracks and crevasses and valleys and canyons and they build the most peculiar looking buildings with the most strangest colors and they slap them on top of each other like a bunch of pancakes. You take a look over the coastal hills and they are just covered in all sorts of buildings in various shapes and you just don't see that in the states.

And these small tourist spots just kill me. The strips of stores with everyone selling the same crap and you wonder how in the world they make it. And do they make it? Every day they set up their store, or their tent, their little niche off the side of the road and there are streams of Americans with their cameras and baseball hats marveling at the sites and haggling this cheap shit to even cheaper prices. They'll certainly need those extra dollars they saved to pay the toll to get back to their clean, heated suburban house. I suppose that would be me.

The place fascinates me and there is something going on in the life they live. At least in the places I've seen. The food is killer, and the margaritas a dollar a piece. And they've got condos there overlooking the coast in high rises newly built for dirt cheap. And I think about it. But going back and forth over the border for work would be hell. And I am not conditioned to live like that. I would contract the first disease that knocked and die a miserable death. The comfy suburbanite. But maybe not....

Oh the woes of the reflective thinking...sometimes.

The Noise Blanket

Cover yourself in the grooviness.

Happy 50th At The Alamo

No...christ, I hope we don't go in there. That can't be where the party is. An Ameriwashed Mexican extravaganza of a building dubbed "The Alamo". The irony was barely sinking in as we got closer.

Bad basslines pulsing out into the frigid night. Bad lights inside the makeshift weather curtains. Crowds of people inside, unrecognizable behind the blurred sheets of plastic. Bad dancing. Baaaad.

But we go straight in of course. Well, this is the catered party. A DJ, colored lights, a projector, a dance floor shaped like the hall closet. The works. She went all out. It really was remarkable. Too bad I'm not of the disposition to enjoy these things.

The warmth was already bleeding out of my shaved head and I had the shivers in a perfect room temperature atmosphere. Naturally I went straight for the pitcher of mango margarita or whatever the hell flavor it was. Who cares. And then there were the pitchers of beer. Laid out on the table for any 8 year old to come by and pour a glass. It looked like lemonade. I brought this to my cousin's attention. Good influence.

Getting drunk was necessary to survive. That's just what I did. It helped the shivers a little. But not much.

After a few cups of beer I was lost in my own slow mover thought rotor and for long periods of time I would just stare out of the frosted plastic window at the blurred lights in the parking lot.

Well yes, you are a foxy lady. No no, I am quite interested in you, it is just that I approach a sort of autism at times like these. I'll just continue to watch you out of the corner of my eye. I hope you are a friend of the family. Same gene pool would be a little disconcerting. I'm pretty sure of the former. They tell me this anyway.

I watch them dance. How do they move so lightly? No, they are not movements of grace. But they are movements of a social freedom that I rarely enjoy with 20 people I don't truly know. I try to understand the behavior. I try to envision myself dancing along, singing the karaoke. It seems impossible. What is a human being?

A 2 hour drive past LA to get here. Was it worth it? Don't ask me. It meant something to them at least. And I suppose that makes me feel alright.

Bedtime for me.

Ah...Christ

50 minutes to midnight and I've got a take-home final to do. One of the worst feelings in the world.

Other than impalement or something.

Make that 48 minutes. My eyes are empty black red streaked coal pits.

47 minutes.