January 2006 Archives

It's only the middle of tuesday and and I already feel like I've had a week. Out of my five person team, two are out; manager and our do-everything technical lead guy, so I'm point man for everything my group does.

Which is good because I was sort of out on the edges for most of the last year. I need to be the glue that holds it together, I work better that way. I forgot how much quicker a day goes by when you're up to your eyeballs in things that have to be done now.

Only problem is that it cuts into the shit I want to work on - writing, blogging, blog setup and hackery. I've got three blog projects for lovely ladies I am helping with and I would far rather be doing those than conducting a perforce training class for electrical engineers. Yet that is what pays the bills.

Good thing I don't need sleep.

This just completely rules.

To steal Cory's description from BoingBoing:

Scratch n Spin is a very amusing short video advert that combines footage of a DJ's hands working on a set of turntables with footage of a streetscene; when he grabs a car and moves it around the roundabout, it is synched to the sound of the record from the original shot scratching back and forth. It's intensely clever and laugh-out-loud delightful.

I've been meaning to post about this since thursday - when it was going to be a sorry excuse for a half-nekkid-thursday post. Only I wound up not having time to even fuckin' think the last couple days. It was then only an after-thought, since I wasn't really feelin' half-nekkid so much on thursday.

In any case, I was gonna post this on thursday because that's the day I got a fed-ex shipment with this simply amazing DeadRingers Classic Skull Ring:

I could stand the sight of worms
And look at microscopic germs
But technicolor pachyderms
Is really much for me
I am not the type to faint
When things are odd or things
are quaint
But seeing things you know that ain't
Can certainly give you an awful fright!
What a sight!
Chase 'em away!
Chase 'em away!
I'm afraid need your aid
Pink elephants on parade!
Pink elephants!
Pink elephants!

There's a brilliant remix of Sun Ra's version of that song, mashed-up with the original Disney video - BoingBoinged here.

This story has very little to do with Pink Elephants, Sun Ra, Disney, or the DTs. But you'll see in a moment how it all connects.

(forgive me for a work interlude)

Typically, I'm the guy at work who knows everything.

The guy who's got it all in his head, the guy who gets the phone calls with obscure questions at 3am. The guy who's gotta write out a novel of process when he goes away on vacation for more than a couple days, and who still gets called in Hawaii or Turks and Caicos or Fiji.

Only it's not true anymore.

One of the things that happened to me this last year is that I had a horrible year personally, the same time that my group at work got completely re-purposed. We used to be all about chips, and then one day last april, my employer stopped caring much about custom ASICs.

We were the guys who kept the chip designers working, and suddenly we didn't have a job. So we had to convert to being all about boards. We did it - and we did a great job. The proof is in our latest - and next - products. But to do it, my team had to learn a new business from scratch. And for the first time in years, I wasn't the guy who was in deepest, first. I've been playing catchup ever since.

There are a lot of reasons why, and that's a much longer, more painful story, a story for some other time and place. The part that's relevant now is that I'm finally catching up.

I'm catching up because the guy I work with, the guy who wound up in my usual role, the go-to guy, the technical leader, the guy who knows everything, is leaving on a month-long trip to africa. And I have to learn everything he knows and everything he does in about two and a half more days.

This is good - in theory. I need to get back in fighting trim, work-wise. I need to get back to the point where I can manage fifteen things at a time, keep on top of everything, know who's doing what where. And this forces me back there. Writing it down (thank god for wikis, they make documentation so fucking easy), training people, solving problems. That's what I do, so having to take over again as the focal point gets me back into the mind set I need.

But god damn, I wish I were taking off for a month in africa. I want to tell him, take me with you.

I woke up with the need to go incredibly strong in my mind, the need to be out the door. The need to feel the weight off my shoulders, the need to be warm and free and open.

There are moments where I hear something out there call me so loud it's everything I can do not to answer. I woke up thinking, quit my job, quit my job, quit my job. The kind of voice-in-my-head moment where I feel like screaming shut up shut up shut up at the inside of my own head.

My head's finally getting back in the game, and yet, the call gets louder and louder. I need earplugs on the inside, or I need to listen to the call. Some days it's a hard choice not to listen to it.

Satin Slippers - one of the net's best erotic sites, is (temporarily we hope) off line. I'm trying to get details from the People Who Know about if/when it will come back.

This is the site where my stories (Wanton, Man with the Bag, etc) were hosted, though I've got 'em here now.

This is the Best Blond Joke Ever. I promise.

Sure it's an old one, but some things are classics.

You know, not that many people watched Rock Star INXS, and there seems to be a negative critical buzz around it. But anyone who watched and wasn't caught up simply missed the point.

Sure, it's teevee, it's a game show of sorts, so it's a little silly and very contrived. It has to be in order to make something like this work. But the core of it is that this guys who called themselves INXS lost a lead singer in a weird and tragic way, but they're not done yet. They're not done being a band. They're not done making music or performing.

Lots of bands have faced this - Van Halen, Queen, Judas Priest, oh hell, dozens. And almost always they wind up with some celebrity who doesn't really fit.

Ok. It smacks of sellout. But how are you going to find your right guy, and get your audience to accept him, and get them to care?

I watched the show expecting to hate it, hating the idea. And yet it caught me up - party because INXS themselves are such likable guys. I got to care about them and their search as much as about the contestants in this game show. I wanted them to find the guy who'd give them back their identity as a band.

I saw INXS tonight in Oakland, and once again, it's clear they've found the guy they were looking for. I honestly can't say that they were any better with ol' Michael Hutchence. The guy they found, against all odds, is as perfect for the role as anyone could possibly be.

JD's a superior frontman, one of those guys who's made to be on stage. He's got the look, they style, the sound, the charisma. He's got the voice, and sounds incredibly good singing the band's old hits. He sounds as good to my ear as Hutchence ever did, and is as dynamic a performer.

The thing that makes it work though, more than anything else, is seeing how dammed happy these guys look. Not just JD, who's about as lucky a guy as you're gonna find, but the rest of the band, who not only found a singer and jump-started a career, but who are back to being a band again. You can tell how much it means to these guys.

It was a good show. I've never been a giant INXS fan, so these songs don't have a huge emotional resonance for me. But having watched the re-birth of this band in that curiously voyeuristic way, I have come to care and root for them the way you do for a friend's band. It's that sort of pride when you see them do well, that absurd personalizing of something.

All I can say it, they put on a good show anyway, but if you watched Rock Star INXS, go see 'em live.

My deadringer classic ring just shipped, or so they tell me. So I should have it soon. I'm not sure HOW SOON since it's coming all the way from New Zealand (Carried by hobbits, I should think), but soon.

In other news, after many, many people told me I should, I finally went and watched 24. And - how'd you put it, Chelse? It's like crack in teevee form, or something like that. And so it is. I just watched the two hour opening episode of this here current season, and wow, does this start off with a bang or what?

I don't even know if it's good. But I know I crave more. More. MORE.

I fear a monster has been created.

Stop me before I add all four seasons to my netflix queue.

I give up. I can't resist a stupid quiz.

You Are Scary

You even scare scary people sometimes!

This is what happens when I can't blog, yet feel like I need to update.

Ok, I need some reference.

Anyone out there ever been in the Village Vanguard in NYC?

I'm working on something - a jazz-flavored piece set in around 1960, 1961. But I need some reference for what the area of NY is like, and what the club looks like inside. I'm just trying to fill in the scene in my head, the specific details don't matter so much as background texture.

Anyone?

(It's either that or make this shit up. Which I can do...)

Yep. That's me, on a family beach trip to Capitola, CA. I'm guessing, 1968-ish. Maybe '69. Then, like now, always playin' with my gun.

Actually in the original photo I was entirely nekkid but I'm not puttin' that photo here un-cropped.

(Happy HNT)

Some small things make life good in a big way.

And you know who you are.

No, wait, I'm not talking about that kinda things. I'm talking about these kinda things:

I think I've said this before but I seem to have hit one of those phases where I can't seem to communicate. I stop sending email, I don't call, I don't always respond to IM. I'm suddenly not stunningly clever and seductive.

It's funny, I crave contact when I get like this, but I seem unable to maintain a conversation and don't reach out. It seems to be a periodic phase. Sometimes I stop blogging as well, but honestly sometimes these phases lead to more writing so I try not to fight it.

I just lose the ability to stay in contact from time to time.

The final conclusion - up front, newspaper style: When it comes to Batman on film, there's no pleasing me.

I finally got around to watching Batman Begins, after hearing over and over, from everyone from Olivia to the video store clerk what a great film it is.

I can't say it sucked. I really didn't suck. But it sure didn't rule either.

Do you have feelings of inadequacy? Do you suffer from shyness? Do you sometimes wish you were more assertive?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, ask your doctor or pharmacist about Tequila®.

Tequila® is the safe, natural way to feel better and more confident about yourself and your actions. Tequila® can help ease you out of your shyness and let you tell the world that you're ready and willing to do just about anything.

You will notice the benefits of Tequila® almost immediately, and with a regimen of regular doses you can overcome any obstacles that prevent you from living the life you want to live.

Shyness and awkwardness will be a thing of the past, and you will discover many talents you never knew you had. Stop hiding and start living, with Tequila®.

Tequila® may not be right for everyone. Women who are pregnant or nursing should not use Tequila®. However, women who wouldn't mind nursing or becoming pregnant are encouraged to try it.

Side effects may include dizziness, nausea, vomiting, incarceration, erotic lustfulness, loss of motor control, loss of clothing, loss of money, loss of virginity, delusions of grandeur, table dancing, headache, dehydration, dry mouth, and a desire to sing Karaoke and play all-night rounds of Strip Poker, Truth Or Dare, and Naked Twister.

(I don't know WHERE this comes from originally, but it rocks - props all the people who sent it my way)

Well, as much as I tried to get myself writing yesterday, it wound up being mostly football and lethargy. But it was pretty good football, I forgot we're in mid NFL playoffs.

I have the advantage of not caring which teams win since my teams all sucked ass this year. So I'm choosing who to root for game by game.

My total for the weekend:

Broncos vs New England - didn't watch but I would have rooted for Denver cause I like Jake Plummer. The 49ers fucked up royally when they let him slip away in the draft a few years back, and it's finally showing.

Seahawks vs Redskins - easy, Seahawks all the way. They played a great game and I'm likin' them for the superbowl.

Pittsburgh vs Indy - you know, I like Payton Manning and I like Tony Dungy, but Indy ain't as great as people think, and Payton's not the second coming of Joe Montana. He's at the top of an incredibly weak league, and while he's certainly the best QB playing right now, he's very very beatable. I'm a Pittsburgh fan from way back, they're my third team, and they beat the Colts pretty completely (despite a forth quarter comeback by indy). First time I've ever seen Manning look desperate. If Bettis can just keep running like he did this weekend (and doesn't drop any more footballs), this team will be hard to stop.

Carolina vs Da Bears - who cares? I hate them both, but rooted for Da Bears because I hate Carolina more. Stupid cat teams.

So I'm likin' a Pittsburgh vs Seattle superbowl. Carolina looked good against the bears but honestly I don't think either team belonged in the playoffs that much, they're both uneven. Denver might take Pittsburgh down but the way Pittsburgh shut down Indy, it's hard to see them getting beaten right now.

And if I was a bettin' man I'd bet on a good superbowl with Pittsburgh on top.

Now, watch me be completely wrong, which is usually what happens.

So when the football was all over, I tried to do something, but lethargy won out. So I tried to write, but THE BLOCK got me. So I decided to edit.

I've moved all my stories over from SatinSlippers to my own auxiliary writing blog (at least the few things that were up in public, but the formatting got goofed up so I've tended to point links to SS. I finally fixed that (mostly) so all my writing links are to my local stuff.

SatinSlippers used to be a pretty dynamic site but it's wound down through neglect, so I figured I might as well host locally. My stories are still there for as long as it stays around, though.

I wound up doing minor editing, but if you find something fucked up in one of my stories, leave a comment and I'll make corrections. One of these days I need to go back and do a hard and thorough edit on all of it but I always find that difficult, I start to re-write and that just bogs me down. My hope, though, is that by editing, I start to think in writing terms again. I have a couple germ ideas for short stories but I can't seem to actually get my hands on a keyboard when the moments of inspiration strike.

Darling remember from when you come to me
that I’m the pretender,
I’m not what I’m supposed to be
but who could know, lf I’m a traitor?
time's the revelator, revelator.

          --Gillian Welch, Revelator

I wish I had an mp3 of that song so I could put it up for you to hear, it's beautiful. I only have a m4p version I got from the itunes store and they're not sharable. I'd bitch about that but (looks at paycheck) it's not in my best interest to do so.

Better, I wish I could put up an mp3 of my friend Ken's version of it. Welch's is pretty, but Ken's, with backup by Heather Courtney and (hell, I guess her name is Lyndie Way, but I'm not sure about that). Ken's is intense and passionate. A case where the song writer and the cover artist combine to make something wonderful that the songwriter alone doesn't deliver.

Today marks two years of blogging for yours truly. And as with last year, I feel I should be saying something about it. I failed last year. But I have very very strong feelings about anniversaries, commemorations of dates and events. I remember these things, have marked them on myself with tattoos. I'm the one who says "You know, one year ago today, we met". I already mentioned that this year marks 30 years since my first piercing. So these things matter to me.

In so many ways Welch's lyrics, above, say more about my feelings here than anything I can come up with. I’m the pretender, I’m not what I’m supposed to be.

My long-time readers (um. both of them) know I started this to talk about writing, because I couldn't think of anything else to blog about at the time. I had hoped, after writing Wanton earlier that year, to use this blog to help me hone my writing skill and harness my creativity.

Best Laid Plans and all that. In fact this blog has been something completely other than that. An ego monument, a place to express myself, an anchor around my neck, a listening ear in both good ways and bad. It's gotten me some good friends, though in fact many of them came via orkut, or other sites like the erotica forum where I posted my novella. It's in many ways helped me be more open about my feelings. It's taught me some new technical skills, but it's also given me a huge distraction and time suck.

I don't know, in the end, if this is good for me, or bad. I flip-flop on that weekly, and as I've said, three or four times I've given it up and torn my blog down and said fuck blogging, it's all over. I've written almost nothing since Wanton, only put up two stories (a silly piece about santa and a sex-dream story inspired by a long-ago celebrity crush). I spend more time in a state of writer's block than I spend writing.

It's been an intense two years. I've learned more about love and hurt the last two years than I think I ever knew in my life up 'til that point. In many ways these last two years have encompassed some of my highest highs and lowest lows, and the shock waves from all that will not dissipate for a long while yet. In many ways I found myself these last two years, or let myself be myself, stopped being what other people expected of me.

Maybe the pretender is the shell on the ground behind me. Or maybe I'm fooling myself again and what I'm doing is simply killing time and not doing anything.

In either case, this marks two years in my life where everything changed and yet everything is the same, and I'm the worse for the wear, with new scars inside and out, only some of them self-inflicted.

I feel like I should be proud or angry. Yet all I can manage is sad.

Time's the revelator.

Um.

48%?

Wow. What's wrong with me, man?

I scored a 48% on the "How Texas are you?" Quizie! What about you?

(Sorry, comments were broken for this entry (pointed out to me by Ray). Fixed now.)

Family are taking off on one of those quick weekends away with another school family (Who also have the dad-who-has-to-work issue) The kind you can do when you get things like MLK day off. Not like us workin' stiffs. Which means I'm all by my lonesome this weekend. I'd like to picture the moms goin' down to the strip club while the kids are sleeping, a kind of moms gone wild weekend, but I'm more thinking it's going to be a fireside cocktails and ice cream weekend.

So my agenda:

In my imagination: Wine, women, song. Debauchery. The kind of weekend you half wish you could remember, and half wish you could forget. The sort of weekend when you wake up with a wedding ring you don't remember getting, or half a set of handcuffs, or a tattoo on your face, or knife wounds across your abdomen, or in bed next to someone you've never seen before, who hopefully isn't dead. The kind of weekend that leaves permanent scars and breaks hearts.

In my hopes: Maybe I'll get some writing done. I'll go the the gym and re-start my workout routine (I faltered over the holidays).

What it'll really be like: Work (work-work. I have so damned much I need to finish). Blog work (Yeah, Hiromi, I'm gonna try and fix your little problem). Rent a couple movies, take down xmas lights, put up temporary fencing where the tree took my fence down. Do a lot of laundry. Clean my hot tub. Cooking for one. Porn. Try and find a book I actually feel like reading in my huge to-read shelf. I'll stare at my computer for a while, trying to think of something to write, then blog something pointless instead and go watch Bones.

And you know, that doesn't sound bad. Other than the take down xmas lights part, because I always say you only have to leave them up 'til june to call it up early.

In your eyes I see a thousand lives,
Where do you come from,
Where do you belong.

     --Dave Davies, Where Do You Come From

I look at my logs all the time - because I'm that kinds of guy, part OCD, part detective, part complete geek - who likes to see the man behind the curtain. The kinds of guy who needs to know how it all works.

Anyone with a sitemeter knows what I'm talkin' about, though I also have urchin installed on the server, and run a couple other web-based counters and have in the past used tools like mint to track hits.

But whatever you look at, whatever slice and dice of the data you have, it's still the same shit, who's visiting, when, from where, and how did they get here?

There are several useful, interesting or amusing data points to be had from looking at web server logs.

The one that's usually good for the most mirth is the google search string (and I use the term in the generic sense because we could be talking about hits from yahoo or msn or aolsearch or any one of a hundred other search pages). People search on the silliest, most amazing things, and someone, somewhere has to be collecting it all and will produce novels or art or poetry all based on such things. I look at my log now and see 'wrist and had tattoos', 'dorothy parker', 'dirty stories', 'Everything up 'til the killing will be a gas', and 'pyro junkies'. And that's just one sitemeter page. This can make me giggle any day.

But there are other things that are useful. I get to know certain hits by location. I know who's likely to be getting me from illinois, from eugene oregon. A few from Austin. Certain key spots in Florida. Vancouver. A couple in town here, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, San Jose. Key users in europe. Couple buddies in New Mexico and Arizona.

I know who these are by the ISP and the location (not always the location you'd expect, my home IP shows up as coming from a totally different end of silicon valley than I actually live in, something about how the ISP has things configured). I know by (sometimes) browser type, OS. For most of my friends, I sorta know when you've visited. I know partly because you're the ones who hit without a reference from a search engine, or sometimes because you show as referred from your own blog (clicking from your blogrolls).

The ones that I ponder over though, and the reason for this post, are the ones I see regularly whom I don't know. I puzzle over certain entities. Someone who hits me from Sunnyvale CA with an ISP listed as inktomi.com. No idea who you are, but I see you regularly. Hits from San Francisco, or from San Jose. You're not in my mental list of readers I know. Readers in New Zealand. Readers in Texas who are not the usual gang of blogger-freinds (People from Dallas or from College Station). Kent, Washington. Buffalo, New York. Blackpool, Lancaster (I want to say, how's that count of holes coming, but no that's blackburn).

It's funny because I feel like I should know who's reading. I get a lot of hits from some of the strangest places, google and other blogs I'm bloggrolled on, places where someone will link to some entry like my one on jessie combs, or on driving my jeep in a kilt, or my old 'what's fifty-six' entry. Those I understand though. It's the ones who are clearly regular readers, yet unknown that always makes me wonder.

Let's hear it for Half-Nekkid Thursday.

My Right Nipple. You only get one nipple today because it's half-nekkid, not wholly nekkid.

You know, I was thinking about this earlier when I was talking to the very lovely and extremely talented chelsea girl, about when I got various tattoos and piercings. And I realize that the first ear piercing I ever got is thirty years old this year. And thus, a bonus HNT pic to go with my right nipple - here's my left ear.

I was fourteen when I got my ear pierced for the first time. Not that big a deal for today's youth I guess, but this was in 1976. Only one boy I knew had his ear pierced, and he was a hippy kid who lived in a winnebago with his mom, a stoned-out hippy artist. I can't recall the kid's name or the mom's name, but the winnebago was called "The elephant".

So when I decided at fourteen that i really, really wanted my ear pierced (inspired in part by kirk douglas in 20,000 leagues under the sea, but more by a scene in Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz in which the young king has his ear pierced as part of a magical ritual to unlease his latent powers), it wasn't easy to find a place to do it - this was before the days of piercing pagoda at your local mall. And when my mother (who did not understand my urge to punch a hole in my ear but went with me anyway) took me to a local jewelry shop, the creepy old lady who pierced my ear looked like she was just about ready to refuse. She'd never done a male ear and seemed to deeply disapprove of the whole idea. She charged for two piercings even though I only got one, and honestly I think her disapproval did more to win mom over to my side than anything else about the experience.

I've had seven more ear piercings since then, and still have a total of six including that first. I've pierced nipples, penis, scrotum, with varying degrees of success. I've pierced my ear to show someone it didn't hurt, to commemorate a particularly memorable trip (my first trip to london), and sometimes just for the fuck of it. None of the piercings have really been planned, they're all whim items that just sort of happen.

Sometimes you just have to poke a hole in yourself. And every once in a while, I meet someone who just understands that.

Ok. Fine. I give in.

Lust wins out every time with me. Which should not come as a great crashing surprise to anyone.

I have a ring on order from Deadringer. Mark and Steve, the main men behind Deadringer, made me an offer I couldn't refuse.

They don't have a pic of exactly what I'm getting up on their site yet, but it's basically a combination of the two rings pictured below. The ring itself is the classic skull (the one on the left), but with the 'shadow finish' from the super-high-end armageddon (The one on the right).

These rings are made custom, so the lead time was quoted at about two weeks for production, plus whatever it takes for shipping. These guys are way the fuck down in New Zealand, so this will have the distinction of being the best-traveled of my skull rings, at least until I myself get south of the equator again. My other two rings are made in the USA.

The thing I love about this particular ring is that it's the most realistic skull ring I've ever seen, beating out even my clapton skull from Serious Silver. Steve Gillespie, the jeweler behind Deadringer, clearly sat down with a real skull, or at least an anatomically correct replica, and made a ring that re-created the shape almost exactly. I don't think you're ever going to find a better, more exact, real skull ring than this.

It's wholly different animal than your classic rock 'n roll skull ring, of which my favorite in the universe is the one made by my friend Tony Creed - my Elvis Lives skull. That's a creature of rock n' roll and horror comics, bikers and pirates, a thing born of artistic imagination.

The rock n' roll skull ring has a vast range - most of it ugly, much of it stupid. The standouts though, Creed's work and Crazy Pig, some of Bill Wall's work, are a distillation of a Motorhead/biker aesthetic.

Different things. Different ends of an artistic spectrum. I love them both, the realistic skull and the rock 'n roll skull. And I can't wait to see this Deadringer piece.

The tree butchers are here dismembering my fallen tree.

A moment of silence. Plus chain-saws.

(I can't help it, whenever I think of a chain-saw I hear Ash's voice saying "Tool Shed")

You know I'd gotten used to this monstrous fallen thing in my street. I kind of liked it. It gives my street corner a primeval forest forest look. If you, you know, squint n' shit. Maybe it's more Prime Evil.

But anyway, it has to go, not least because it's on my fence, which will need to be re-built, and because it's half on a city street. And while my city may be your perfect corrupt, up-scale suburb, I'll run outta bribe money way too soon to get the city to ignore this for long.

Ok, now who's goin' into the wood chipper? I have a few candidates. It's not the same without snow, though.

More tree removal pictures are over on flickr

It takes a lot of sexy to make me lust for a computer.

Now, lusting after the flesh and blood, well, you know about that. And lusting after certain inanimate or mechanical objects, sure. I mean, look at my obsession with skull rings, or something like the car from Supernatural.

But computers - well, you know, I've never owned a computer. I have one, but it's a tool for work and pleasure, it belongs to my employer, and that's fine. I've always gotten by with what I can scrounge from work.

For the first time ever, I looked at this machine and said to myself (Self, I said), I want that.

The new Apple MacBook Pro:

This is the outcome of the super secret product I couldn't talk about last summer. This is what my team have been working on - the intel based macs - since April. And it's cool to see it come out, and even cooler to think, this thing we make, it's good and I want it.

Moving day.

We're doing one of those pointless corporate re-shuffle where we all move from one office to another, many of us in the same bldg.

I've been in my current job for almost six years now - a while, in my time line, only one job I've ever had (cisco) was longer and that was because stock chained me to the salt mine.

Most of the tech companies I've worked for move people from cube to cube and bldg to bldg all the time. Here at this fruit-flavored company it's different. First in that I have a hard-walled office, a novelty, nearly a first in my career. Second, I've been in the same office for almost five years.

You get pretty settled in five years. You get from friont door to office to restroom to break room on auto-pilot. You can do it blind.

It's easier when you move to a different building. You have to utterly break habits. Moving in the same building actually winds up being more disorienting. I moved up a floor and over about three offices, so the view out my window is almost the same, the office orientation is almost the same, still facing east over the santa clara valley.

I feel like I'm in the same office yet when I turn around and look out my door, I'm in the wrong place and I have a moment of utter twilight-zone confusion. And you know, I kind of like that feeling. It's a flash of mental free-fall, all the connections cut loose.

This usually lasts a week but who knows, I've never been in the same office this long before.

Now I have to go look for my chair and my Sun keyboard and figure out where I packed my perl books. And then I have to figure out where the hell my co-workers wound up...

I got this from Whirly but I monkeyed with the questions a little because I fuckin' felt like it. Following Whirly's lead, I won't tag you (though I might goose you.)

Some of these it's hard to think of seven. Some, hard to stop at seven.

The 7 Things meme.

Brutha Ray told me yesterday that my recent entries seem kind of on edge.

And he's right of course. Ray's always right, except when he disagrees with me. Then, he's only right half the time.

Yeah, it's true. I've been a little edgy lately. I could give you a catalog of the minor and major stresses in my life, the projects at work that are due to get announced next week at MacWorld, the things at work that provide a daily frustration and leave me thinking about a nice quiet, sane job at the funny farm. I could catalog the minor aches and pains and colds and allergies that come with the holidays. I could talk about wants and dreams and desires versus cold, stony reality.

But fuck all that whinin'. I got no patience with it.

Instead, let's talk about LSD.

There's a wonderful interview with Albert Hofmann, the man who invented LSD, in the NY Times.

...It was as he was synthesizing the drug on a Friday afternoon in April 1943 that he first experienced the altered state of consciousness for which it became famous. "Immediately, I recognized it as the same experience I had had as a child," he said. "I didn't know what caused it, but I knew that it was important."

When he returned to his lab the next Monday, he tried to identify the source of his experience, believing first that it had come from the fumes of a chloroform-like solvent he had been using. Inhaling the fumes produced no effect, though, and he realized he must have somehow ingested a trace of LSD. "LSD spoke to me," Mr. Hofmann said with an amused, animated smile. "He came to me and said, 'You must find me.' He told me, 'Don't give me to the pharmacologist, he won't find anything.' "

It's a wonderful interview with the sort of person who reminds me of the scientists my father used to talk about. The sort of people who were both scientists and philosophers. Deep thinkers, people who seem to look at the world and just see more than the rest of us do. I pretend to be one of these people, but I'd have to be a scientist to pull it off.

I'm too young to have been in the acid culture of the sixties. I can imagine my father having been there though, if he'd been in the right circles. He never dropped acid, but he was a huge pothead (my first experiences with pot were stealing from his stash and taking it to school). He would have loved the heightened perceptual experience.

Oddly, even though I started smoking pot way too young, I managed to not encounter acid at all as a teenager. I wanted it, would have tried it. When I was fourteen or fifteen, I would have tried anything, any drug I could have laid hand on, any sexual experience with anyone of any age. I was already drinking, though not much (A stolen beer here or there, a sip of a drink). But I was already seeking experience and sensation. I wanted it all, now.

It wasn't until I was around nineteen that I stumbled, almost literally, onto LSD.

It's another Half-Nekkid Thursday already.

I was trying to take a decent photo of one of my scars. But the funny thing is, my skin just doesn't really scar that much. I'm trying to find scars that photograph well and most of them are too flat and faded to show up in a photo.

Two knee surgeries and I can't find a mark from them.

A wicked slash across my face that I used to say was from a knife, but was actually a cat scratch, and you can barely see it. It used to look like a dueling scar, from right next to my left eye all the way down to the side of my mouth. Almost all gone now, but boy was it cool when I was ninteen.

The time I almost cut off my fingertip with my first pocketknife, only the barest white line.

Even the slash across my knuckle from last july when I was home alone and and hacked my hand when I was sharpening my favorite knife is faded to almost nothing.

The one I was going to post is on my foot, and I can just see it, but it doesn't show up in the pic below, so all you get is a little bit of furry hobbit foot with no visible scar. Yet, trust me, the scar's there and there's a story worth telling.

I been running like a man who's been running in place
I been actin' like a fool who can't remember his place
I been thinkin' bout the day
when I'm dead and gone
won't you scatter my ashes and remember this song

     --House of Freaks, Lonesome Graveyard

I've been listening to that album - Monkey on a Chain Gang - most of the day, and remembering when it came out. I played the vinyl to death, wore out a cassette. 1987. I'm trying to remember what I was doing in 1987.

I must have been working at Sun Micro at the time - I would have been twenty-six or thereabouts. I would have been in the middle of my music scene period, hanging out in downtown clubs most nights of the week, roadieing for several bands. Lotta schlepping amplifiers and a whole lotta drinking. The days when I could drink halfway til dawn and still go to work. The days when the 'net was still new and I was figuring out how to seduce people with words sent over a wire. Around then I made my first try at writing erotica, a story that embarrasses me now but was remarkably good for a first try, all style but no substance.

Monkey on a Chain Gang was one of the albums I was playing those years. I'm trying to recall what else I was listening to, but not much of it stayed in my heavy rotation. Gun Club stayed, Thin White Rope stayed, and so did American Music Club, and of course Violent Femmes. And this one, more than any of those others. It's one of the first albums I dropped on the new iPod I got for xmas.

I dunno if Bryan Harvey's death would have hit me this hard if it was just the music. I mean, I haven't followed his career since Freaks. I didn't even really like their later albums that much. But it's the absolutely horrible image I can't get out of my mind. It's not just him. It's his kids. It's the fact that his daughter, his little four year old, is like my daughter named Ruby. It's the fact that they were murdered in their own home.

I can't get the image out of my mind. And I can't stop listening to the songs.

...won't you scatter my ashes and remember this song...

Oh, god.

Here we go with our musical heros dying.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Bryan Harvey, singer-guitarist for the two-man '80s rock band House of Freaks, was found dead with his wife and two children in the family's Richmond, Va., home over the weekend.

House of Freaks. One of my favorite bands of the eighties, and the maker of one of my favorite albums of all time (Monkey on a Chain Gang).

Harvey and his family, including daughters Stella and Ruby, were found dead in the cellar of a burning house over the weekend.

UPDATE:

Rumors are circulating that the family were found in the basement, bound, with throats slit. I have not found that on any official announcements, but I'm running across the same story several places. This wasn't a house fire, it was something much worse.

(I was working on this new years day before my power went out and my tree fell down, but find that it's worth posting)

It's another new year. 2005 is behind me, and god, does it need to be.

Some day I may write about all the things that went badly off track in my life this last year, or better yet, some day it will filter back out in the form of fiction, turned backwards or inside out or distilled or exaggerated. If the fiction is anywhere near as good as the stories that drive it, be ready to buy my novel.

But now it's a new year. And I don't make new year's resolutions (or maybe I just don't keep new year's resolutions). Yet, there are things I want, need, from this meaningless turn of a calendar page.

I need to take care of myself. For too many years of my life I've given up everything. I need to focus on my own sanity and my body. My health, physical and mental.

I need to focus on my job. For too much of the last year I've fooled around and coasted. I used to be a pretty good engineer. I used to be the glue that holds it all together at work, the way I am at home.

I need to be more open with my friends. I hide too much, I build walls. The people who truly know me could be counted on one hand with fingers left over. I need to not be afraid to hurt. Physical pain is nothing to me, but when I open my heart a knife goes through it. I need to not fear that.

I need to strive for what I want, and not ever give up. The HOLD FAST tattoo on my hands mean that; like joe pike in robert crais' elvis cole novels, who has arrows on his shoulders meaning never give ground, never retreat, never back up, I need to stand and fight. I can have what I want, it's out there to be taken. I must take it, and not let life's small obstacles defeat me. I must look you in the eye and tell you how I feel, each one of you that really matters to me.

2004 was a year of glory and love and friendship; 2005 was it's inverse, a year where I could feel my soul being flayed, where I could feel the things I wanted, needed, slipping between my fingers, evaporating like smoke. I won't see another year like 2004 in the near future, and yet, if I do not see another year like '05, that will be ok.

It's only the turn of a page, a digit, another day. Yet the year turns and marks a unit of time that defines an incredibly bad series of events, bad choices, bad times, bad feelings. It needs to be over and I need to find a way to make my life what I want it to be, rather than what it's been made for me.

Hello, 2006.

I'll have more pictures on flickr as soon as I can upload them (flickr's being a bitch right now), but here's the tree that almost fell on my house new year's day (click the pic for detail).

We had what is, for northern california, a major storm come through new years eve. Major winds and flooding rain (I'm glad I live in the foothills, no flood watch within miles of me - it's still pissing down as I type this). We woke to power out new year's day, but then about 9:30 am our neighbor came to the door and said "Did you see your tree?"

We didn't even hear it fall. Missed my house by a few feet. You can't really get the scale of this tree from the picture, but it goes way past what you see here.

No one was hurt, and the cars that are usually parked here were missed completely. The only damage is to my fence and the play structure in the back yard.

The phrase dodged a bullet comes to mind. My kids and my friends kid were playing on the other side of that chimney you see in the picture when the tree went down. This could have been a very different entry if the wind had shifted a little.

I've never done a food porn posting. I figured it's about time. Pictures and recipe below the cut.