Author: elvis

7even Things Meme

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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.

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.

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“LSD spoke to me,” Mr. Hofmann said

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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 […]

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.

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Half Nekkid Scar Stories

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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 […]

It’s another Half-Nekkid Thursday already. HNT_1

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.

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Lonesome Graveyard

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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 – […]

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…

Bryan Harvey, RIP

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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 […]

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.

Another Fucking Year

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(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 […]

(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.

if a tree falls on my house, will anyone hear it?

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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).

Img 1274 2We 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.

Beauty Killed the Beast

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I’m not gonna write a whole long detailed review of King Kong. Go read yahoo movies or someplace like that for your recaps, though you can ignore the one from the SF Chron, Mick LaSalle obviously spent three hours with his head up his ass, not actually watching the movie. But in a word – […]

I’m not gonna write a whole long detailed review of King Kong. Go read yahoo movies or someplace like that for your recaps, though you can ignore the one from the SF Chron, Mick LaSalle obviously spent three hours with his head up his ass, not actually watching the movie.

But in a word – it’s fantastic.

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