Saturday, March 26, 2005

Why don't dogs or cats need Viagra?

Just wondering.

What if it's raining out?

Kick back and watch the latest Miranda Lambert video.

Makes me think I should move from the Left Coast to the South where all the southern gals are.

But Bangkok was nice too.

The ugliest drainspout I've seen.

Which me is me?

The drunk me? Or the sober me? A tavern owner once told (the sober) me "I like the drunk you better" then last night a karaoke master said he read my blog and discovered a me he didn't know existed. Amazing!


Mostly the sober me rules this blog (though some might take issue with that), but sometimes...ah...well...you know...the blog entries are stranger than usual, less constrained and more passionate. Less beer talk. More beer drinking.


Yet really the question I have for myself is: If I must have two me's, which me is more valuable? Or to put it another way: Which me would I quit should I choose to quit a me?

Friday, March 25, 2005

I wanna surf smells.

I wanna Google salt breezes and rose buds.

Essentials.

Remember when "going postal" was all the rage?

There is a commonly accepted myth that because we've all waved flags, put "support the troops" ribbons on our cars, had parades and prominently featured a few of our soldiers on MSNBC, we can repeat the Viet Nam war but NOT repeat the disastrous social effects which followed. Guess again. We see them here first. It's not a pretty sight sometimes. They pass through here in the hundreds and thousands on their way to YOUR community...cities and towns all over the country.


Prepare yourself people. They're bringing their war created baggage: rage and and depression and alcoholism and homelessness to a neighborhood near you. As if the national psych were not insane enough...what goes around, once again, will come around.


It's always puzzled me how we think we can brutalize our youth with the horrors of war and not reap the consequences.

Bachelor fridge.

You can see it in their eyes.

I met this lady at the bar last night. Young...in her twenties...short, dark hair, cute in an unassuming way. I casually asked how she was doing. She looked me dead in eyes and said she returned from Iraq last week.


Ooops.


You see that alot around here. Fort Lewis is about a hundred yards away. But here sitting next to me was an Iraq war vet who also informed me she was a combat medic. I took a double take and, yes, the sadness was there, the withdrawal, the vacant stare.


Her sixteen ounce beer (and the five or six beers which followed) took on new meaning.

Sunrise and coffee.

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Ah sweet victory!

Our tavern won and I now feel the need to relax and listen to a little "Momentary Lapse of Reason." I'm really not very competitive...I much prefer the couch to the chaos of combat.

Weekly tavern pool league

your erstwhile man-about-town is obligated to play pool in a genuine sanctioned pool league this evening. So...after about seven p.m. left coast time...I'll be locked in head-to-head combat with some of the best minds in the Northwest...winner take all.



I'm playing Pink Floyd right now to prepare myself.

God's latest Mona Lisa.

Blog peeves...

I consider myself a normal blog surfer and here are some things which make me drive by in a big fat hurry!


1) Sites with (usually loud) uncontrollable music. If I wanted music, I'd turn the stereo on. Besides the baby sleeping next door doesn't appreciate it either. Some call unsolicited music free expression. I call it annoying.


2) Sites where style and design trump content. It should be obvious by looking at my site that geeky html pyrotechnics and professional style aren't my forte? Some call it style. I call it cosmetics.


3) Sites in a foreign language. Pretty simple. If I can't read it, there's no point in sticking around.


4) Sites with misspelled words and gross abuse of the English language. Some call this cool. I call it too close to George W. Bush.


I'd be curious what blog peeves others might have.

It's the content, baby!

this is an audio post - click to play

I've got my hearing aid turned way up...

but I don't hear any whining or hand wringing over the 100,000+ Iraqi deaths that our good "right to life" Christians have inflicted on that sovereign nation.

This Terri Schiavo political and executive circus...

is particularly offensive to me. In 1976 at twenty-one my wife was diagnosed with a reemergence of a very deadly form of bone cancer. At the time, she was five months pregnant with our child. She and I had to make a very personal, very emotional decision: a) begin chemotherapy which would result in a late term abortion or b) withhold chemotherapy and hope the baby could be born (most likely resulting in my wife's death due to delayed treatment). We chose chemotherapy and, tragically, both my wife and baby were lost.


Thinking back to those times...they were INTENSELY gut wrenching and personal...immediate family and doctor in confidence discussing and deciding on life or death issues...a time of shock and grief piled on top of grief. I shudder to think how much more painful it all would have been if we had been made the pawn of right wing Christian religous fanatics who had not the slightest clue of or care for our suffering. Simply outrageous.

You get more news in five minutes

from radio than you'll see with hours of Cable News. Cable news is news on the cheap. Look at how they replay the same tired video clips over and over and over. Weeks and months go by (Iraq is a good example)...suddenly ancient film clips are dragged out of their musty storage bins and replayed again ad nauseum so you can have some eye candy and hopefully not pay too much attention to the shoddy nature of sounds bites you're hearing. But what the hell...this is cheaper than hiring and paying a film crew to actually shoot current video from the hot war zone.


When you combine cheap with obsessive...you've got a total news disaster. Terri Schiavo...for example...nonstop for days...the same clips nonstop for days. So when the MSM obsesses, droning on and on with pundit after pundit (on nearly a daily basis) the first question I ask is: What is the REAL news? It seems clear to me whatever other agenda items (hidden or otherwise) Cable News has...using twenty four hours to present as much national and international news as possible is NOT one of them.

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

I haven't learned to laugh hard enough yet...

haven't seen through to the jiggling, cackling core...havent felt strongly enough the utter futility of taking myself seriously. The right side of my brain and the left side of my brain haven't seen that either could be either. I haven't awakened and frightened myself into a belly laugh. I STILL think there is a world that matters.

Party time again...

this does NOT happen every night (but more than many people might expect). Tonight I'm drinking Busch beer in honor of George (and praying I wake up in the morning with my faculties intact) and celebrating all my Republican(sic) friends. Just to show what a back-down-on-the-range kind of guy I am...I'm listening to VH1-county and swapping in NASCAR. We're thinking about the BIG issues tonight. We're waxing intellectual. Indulging in a bit of critical thought. And thinking of how just possibly Church might save me from hell and Republican hypocrisy all at once this very Sunday.

Nice bike....eh?

Returned from the tavern just now...

too early to tell if the world is still functioning in my absence. One thing I learned while I was out...if you don't pay attention to politics and just drink your beer...you can talk to Republicans just fine. When you start thinking...oh my...you're in trouble then.

A few personal snippets:

In Nam as a newbie I'm burning shit. A lot of newbies did that. The same night I drink Black Label beer. It helped with the perspective. In Mai Loc and other exotic locales I escape with what passes for my life then later...more Black Label. In Japan, alone, oh so friggin very alone, bawling tears into my pillow for my wife and four year old son which even now I hate myself for driving away. I reach for the very same bottle which put me on that lonely pillow in the first place. I weep for that second woman...the one legged woman I married. I weep for our dreams. I weep for the baby boy we almost had. I weep for the supreme irony...that a woman who at sixteen learned she must surely die, struggled back, found a guy who loved her for who she was, became pregnant, shared the joy which only knowledge of an expected child can bring...only to discover in her seventh month...she must surely die...and with her...the child. More beer. And then the ultimate folly. Another marriage. This time two children...a boy and a girl. A family. This too gone, divorced, after six years of politically correct sobriety and gainful employment. More beer. Not sure if reality or beer is the problem.

None of this is particularly unique. In fact it is so UN-unique I know dozens (hundreds?) of people with similar historically interesting baggage. Are they all drunks? Nope. Not all of them. Others smoke weed. Others snort hallucinogens and still others get a special release from working and doing...constantly...busy...busy. There are as many escapes, it seems, as there is baggage.

Someone Sitting In Greg's Brain Writing Cute Sentences

Here's where my head was at in October 2003:

For the last week things haven't seemed quite right. Depression? Or worse...a wierd, low intensity feeling of loss, without direction or motivation. The bar scene is no longer fun. Nor is the beer. Yet the beer beckons, promising a more primitive, hazed acceptance of this slime-pit of a life I've conjured. I look out the front window, leaves falling, grass wet-green, a cat prowling, a crow flapping workmanlike one tree to the next...and here? Here "The Wall" plays and plays. It seems all I have, and maybe all I ever had, is me.

I tell you love can be as dangerous as a bullet. The bullet at least strikes quickly. Love strikes without a sound, shattering the psyche, creeping in quietly surrounding its target with ill conceived needs to give, to share and to live, needs which cannot possibly be met alone. Illusion wrapped in delusion, reality buried before truly dead.

And the poor victim? By the time he realizes the illusional, one-dimensional, unrequited joys are a fraud...wounds hurt in places which cannot be found or cured. Having tasted fraud, reality will no longer do. The victim clings desperately to his destructive illusion, realizing, finally, his realities and fantasies are equally absurd, equally poisonous. Purpose devolves into mere survival, yet another ironic absurdity. And on and on.

Meanwhile I spin isolation into solitude, a prematurely opened heart into a brick wall then, in my rage, step back and hurl rocks at the brick. Satisfied the wall will stand, I vow not to be suckered, to sit painless but lifeless in the shelter of the wall.

Comcast burped

this morning for forty-five minutes. My universe nearly stopped. No Vonage phone. No email. No blogging. No archived talk radio. No Sea-Tac Air Traffic Control internet scanner traffic.

With regard to Terri Schiavo:

What would Jesus do? To really know...Bush, Tom DeLay, the Republicans, and the religious (not necessarily spiritual) right should stop playing God and have more faith in the POWER of their God! With "life" support stopped one of two things will happen...either (a) Jesus will do a Lazarus miracle and Terri will awaken to full consciousness or (b) Jesus will take Terri home.


I don't think Jesus needs a bunch of do-gooder, yet themselves morally and ethically challenged, rich, right wing politicians stepping into His territory.

Tree though fence.

Lots of cobwebs this morning

which might require Excedrin and massive quantities of coffee. First you play. Then you pay.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Well that's a wrap

and I had a great time drinking with the keyboard tonight. Good night, folks!

Pink Floyding Myself To Bed

this is an audio post - click to play

I personally think

the VA ought to prescribe a case of beer a week for all us old vets. Why fight the obvious? I'd settle for a small co-pay.


...but...damn it...here's the question...the question that no super gilded ph.d. can answer...and has never answered: WHY would an old vet fart insist so on drinking himself to death. WHY? Surely there must be some rational explanation.


Well..America...a tsunami is coming your way. You name it. Depression. Iraq. PTSD. Iraq. Rage. Iraq. Murder. Iraq. The boys are coming home.


Run for the high ground...and pray.

Don't know how that coffee cup got in there.

Drunk blogger update...

Not too bad. I can still feel my toes. The empties are on the kitchen sink organized all neatly like.


I'm switching to Pink Floyd. All bets are off.

Party of one...Part Two.

this is an audio post - click to play

Do you think Christ himself would wear a suit

if he came to my door? Just asking. Actually I've never thought of Christ as particularly clean cut. I don't think he would ever confuse godliness with cleanliness.


Ok..I'll quit now. Enough religion for one night. Back to the music.

Then of course

as soon as I posted the silly "party of one" audio entry...wouldn't ya know...two Christian evangelists showed up at the door. They saw the beer in my hand and the cigarette hanging out of my mouth and left real quick. Chickens.

Party of one

this is an audio post - click to play

It's going to get a bit drunk out

for the rest of the evening. Please disregard any deranged ramblings you may read for the next several hours. Thank you.

Cameras and guns

have a lot in common. You gotta aim em. You gotta reload em. You gotta not be jerky and SQUEEZE the trigger for best effect. AND you gotta get a good sight picture. I rest my case.

Lakewood Watertower At Dawn

While the entire nation wrings its hands

over the mercy killing of a brain dead woman, while politicians hammer home their right-to-life talking points and meet in the middle of the night to accomplish some absolutely essential thing...a freaked out high school kid from middle of nowhere American goes to school and guns down nine people...then pulls a mercy killing on himself. Helluva numbers game.

Squirrel Interstate.

I used to hock cameras like crazy

when I was young and in the Army and overseas and drunk and underpaid and mostly broke. This was in the early 70's when I would spend my entire paycheck in two weeks then hang on for the next payday eating free mess hall chow. This was the beginning of my irresponsibility. After I discovered hock shops, I never recovered.

Destined for the trash.

I wonder why a student

would kill nine people in Minnesota then kill himself? On the other hand...why would an "adult" survive several years in a penitentiary, go to a tavern for his first drink as a free man, toss his penitentiary i.d. on the bar and brag about doing time? Seems to be no end to the strange twisty roads the human mind can follow.

Monday, March 21, 2005

It's kinda sad

but the "animal corner" at Don's Den Tavern is no more. Hell...the tavern itself is no more...bankrupt...gone...and most of the mean hombres who hung out there, Nam combat vets all, the snarliest, most psychologically unbalanced, most genuinely macho bunch of drinking buddies I've ever shared suds with...are no more too. Time takes its toll.


Just a quick note to P.J. in heaven: A few of us are carrying on. Bobby J sends his regards. Big Bob says he promised not to rip any more bar doors off hinges. Big Rick has reduced his four day binges to only two...it's hell getting old. And Little Jimmy is still wearing that funky cowboy hat, still cutting hair...on the days he ain't got the d.t.'s.


We miss you.

Don't be fooled...

that sweet looking girl in the previous post is really a total hellion. I cropped out her wrist bracelet which says simply: Bitch. But I love her anyway.

My daughter - Tina.

Here's what really happened...

You guessed it. Wine, women and song...

And that other, much maligned vice: gambling. Phew! I dropped seventy bucks on the pull tab bowls, won fifty back, bought beers all around then after much good cheer (i.e. adult beverages) staggered giddily home.

So much for agendas.

Here's what did NOT happen yesterday:

walk briskly a few blocks to the local, rustic, much repaired, cluttered and cozy VFW...attend a monthly meeting processing an orderly, effective agenda...then return immediately home to continue blogging.

Nope. Nothing like that.


There are many stories here.

Sunday, March 20, 2005

Never mind!

...occasionally...a person with no moral scruples will infiltrate this blog..he will say things no "normal" person would ever say...place himself in a a totally untenable position with respect to the rest of humanity. Disregard him. It's the beer. Beer does that to a person.
When you wake up it will be ok.

It's not just the music video...

It's the way her lips move and her hands...imagine fingers embracing guitar strings with such love...and those eyes...My God!...how could eyes have such rhythm?

In Praise Of Filth

When they cart my cold lifeless body to the morgue
fur balls in the carpet won't matter,
the mega hour AOL frisbees will sit where they are
unmolested near last year's rat droppings,
the shower curtain will evolve on its own,
bedsheets too
linen dreams, cotton passions
rumpled, smelling of past nights and past adventures
best left uncleansed lest we lose the memories
will in the end refuse all our best human efforts
at human sterility.

Attitude can, indeed, be VERY important...

Take for example this evening...if you got in my face tonight...you might be in dire jeapardy of getting your crap returned...directly to your face...in spades...like a mirror perfectly reflecting stupidity. On another night, though, I might look beyond the cheap karma which spawned you and possibly pluck a chord of sympathy...and wonder.

Night Sky

you scream
beyond night skies
past galaxies,
silhouette leaves
tree black on grey,
yesterday's shimmering
like love
too hot
awaiting the Fall
...
then you sit,
all humble small,
alone
tiny dark grass shards
stretch for yards
Your dog
oblivious
dancing blind
with ignorance
...
you realize the stars
haven't heard a word.

First (and possibly last) audio blog entry

this is an audio post - click to play

A track to somewhere.