Is two more seconds too much to ask for?

Who who who knows?

Too too too many tasks.

Why why why should I care?

My my my end approaches ever faster.

neat treatz

Chick'n'Chili Monsturrito with hot-peppers and tomatoes fresh from the garden and featuring some of the best HOT sauce Colorado has to offer. Yes, it's vegan.

10/65: Self-mutilation

Nope, still sick

But grilled "cheese" and veggie sammich - complete with spicy, yellow peppers fresh out of the garden - along with a delish Southwest style veggie soup and Kumbocha tea drink sure ought to help!

name on the map vs. career resurrection

>



?

A point made only in passing

Just because you left behind a genuine love of good music in your never-ending search for the Next Cool Band doesn't mean I have to or anyone else should.

heavy rotation 10.10.10.-10.15.10.

10.1.10.

Fantasy Films Friday

Okay, so, here's the deal. If you have a twitter acct - every Friday you come up w/some awesome films/film names you'd like to make/see made. They can be a clever play-on-words or just an all-around awesome ideer. You tag it with #FantasyFilmsFriday. See my #FantasyFilmsFriday Twitter posts for examples. GO!GO!GO!

Click here to see what I'm sayin'!

NOTE: scroll slightly down the page to see #FantasyFilmsFriday examples

The Good and Evil Sisters of Journalism

This entry is brought to you by yet another example of Responsible Journalism beset by her ugly step-sister, Unethical Reporting. You might have heard by now about Oklahoma Republican Senator Steve Russell authoring a bill to opt Oklahoma out of the federal law protecting people from hate crimes based on, among other things, their gender and sexual orientations. In other words, he was voting to take hate crime protection away from the GLBT community. That story on that can be found here.

That in and of itself is straight up ridikulus ("ri-dik-uh-luss") but, to take matters from abominable to comical, Senator "Gays are the New Necrophiles" Russell mislabeled the statutes in the bill and actually took hate crimes protection away from people based on their religion, not sexual orientation. The story, broken by Oklahoma Daily reporter Ricky Maranon in late March of this year, can be found here.

There's the most rudimentary version of the background on my rant.

National GLBT newspaper The Advocate published an oddly similar version of Ricky's story just six days later. Ricky received credit for breaking this story from both other local and national news sources that followed up on it. However, The Advocate reporter Michelle Garcia used an unattributed quote Ricky said came directly from his story - "a legislative error". Except for the last paragraph and quote, her entire report reads like a summary of Ricky's original yet nowhere in Garcia's story does she give him one bit of credit, either for breaking it or for the information he said she took from it. You can read the stories and be your own judge but, since this is a blog, I will go on record as saying that it looks to me like some Grand Theft Byline went down on Michelle Garcia's part.

You can read Ricky's Cease and Desist letter to The Advocate for further explanation on the background and exactly why/how he believes Mrs. Garcia done messed up.

Dear Ignorants,

America is not, nor has it ever been, a Christian nation. The very idea of this country basing itself on any one religion is so erroneously against the purpose of its founders' original intent that to call it unconstitutional should be a job left solely to Captain Obvious. That said, if you oppose the building of the Islamic community center and mosque in New York, you do so only on the grounds of personal dislike for another religion. There is no standard of patriotism grounding your arguments. Washington, Franklin and Hancock are not only on the other side of the debate from you but thanks to your falsely arguing in the name of nationalism, they're setting world records for the number of consecutive rollovers done in a grave.

That was (mostly) fact. This is opinion backed by fact:

Building an Islamic community center is more than appropriate. It's essential. Although many, including myself, have explained this before, it bears repeating that the extremist attacks on 9-11 are not representative of the majority of moslems in this world and especially not in America. For conservatives, especially Christians, to act as though other religions exist only for the purpose of war-mongering against their God and country is not only ignorant, it's hypocritical. Lest we forget, Christianity has a long, and I do mean loooong history of immoral, ungodly violence acted out in the name of God. See: The Crusades (1096-1270 a.d.), the Catholic church's conquering, I mean, converting of South America's natives. The list goes on but not here.


Despite its blood-muddled history, many still think of Christianity as the peaceful standard by which our government should make its every move. This causes Christians to act as though any other faith is not just a direct threat to their religion but to their country. John Locke called for the separation of church and state with good reason. It was to keep jingoists like Sarah Palin from associating their personal, unconstitutional beliefs and bigotries with the rest of this country. If you feel moslems should not enjoy the same freedoms you do, fine. That's your opinion. It's a terrible one but it's yours all the same. Running around screaming it at the top of your lungs while waving an American flag doesn't make it patriotic. Just idiotic.

::edit::

8-5-2010

Despite Eric Rothwell's implications to the contrary, Michael Moore did not write this blog entry. Also, yes, it is extremely opinionated and is not riddled with facts. It's based around one central fact and the rest is just me ranting sharing my thoughts and yes, feelings on the subject. Also, Kristin Frosco says I'm right.

When Asthma Attacks, Metaphorically Speaking

[originally written for The Vista]


“Cash rules everything around me. C.R.E.AM. – get the money. Dolla dolla bill, ya’ll.”
- Wu-Tang Clan

The rain has finally died down from a throaty roar to a lethargic, haphazard drizzle. The wind has picked up a little but not enough sweep away the wet, week-old grass clippings still sprawled in clumps across my yard. It’s hard to remain mad or even cynical on a beautifully overcast day like this. But somehow I manage to press on in the face of such adversity to find another gripe I’d like to bring to your attention.

This week’s ramble concerns a subject that has nagged at me for a while now. “Nagged” is really too subtle a word. Poked, pricked, hen-pecked and incessantly rat-a-tat-tatted at the soft spot in the back of my head – where the skull curves down to meet the spine – is more like it.

We college students are born and bred to focus on one thing more than any other in this entire universe – our future. At the beginning of the Fall 2009 semester I was convinced I had an early leg up on mine. A friend and I had started a company in an up-and-coming field and we knew we were destined for success. Despite my best intentions, at almost exactly 12 a.m. April 6, 2010 – my 23rd birthday – I found myself telling my friend-and-business-partner that he could take the company name, equipment, debt and every last bit of the its future and do with it what he pleased.

There are many reasons why I left but they pale more than an albino with a hangover in comparison to the causa de facto. I had become so tautly wrapped up in this company so that I could achieve my dictionary definition of success that I had completely lost sight of the world around me. The whole idea behind this company was that my friend and I were creative people and we would combine our collective creativities to make one heaping helping of success.

Yet, the more I focused on the business and making it profitable, the less I found myself able to create anything worthwhile. Trying to conjure up even the smallest amount of inspiration was like trying to pull a tooth from Great White Shark with my bare hands. The harder I pulled, the more bloody and painful it became till I had severed every last muscle and tendon and no longer had the strength to even grip the damned thing.

From an outsider’s perspective, I am now where so many college students end up after graduation – waiting tables and selling bone marrow on the black market to pay bills, with no definite job prospects and no guaranteed track to success. Then again, if the past few years and this hellride of an economy taught us anything, it’s that there’s no such thing as guaranteed success.
Why then do we wrap achievement like a chain around our necks and anchor it to this Everest-sized mountain we call our future? The more you struggle to pull that massive mount along, the tighter your chain will squeeze till it suffocates the very life out of you.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t strive to attain our goals. I mean, that’s why we’re in college, right? Study hard and work hard but for chrissakes, don’t enslave yourself to some terrible standard of accomplishment that keeps you from everything else in your life.

As for me, I have ambitious, perhaps even lofty plans for the future. For now, I’m as content as a restless mind can be waiting tables and writing verbose ramblings for your student newspaper. Most importantly, I’ve taken that chain of achievement from around my neck and hold it firmly in my hands. I haven’t breathed this easy in months.

An open letter to my King Kongressman

You told me

To follow my dreams

But in my sleep

All I can see

Your teeth

Grinning like knives

Back at me

I forgot to remember

This is my past:

I hope it's not raining @NMF

Bike rides



Mowing got cancelled



Norman Music Festival preparation





Rain makes sleepy pets

Intellectual conversation at its finest

[last night, in the last few seconds of the 2-3 minutes standing on Clint's front while he drunkenly jams the wrong keys into the wrong locks]

CLINT: Did your twat let you...?
ME: My what? My twat?
CLINT: Your twat girl.
ME: My wife?
CLINT: Yeah, she let you out of the house?
ME: Yeah, to come take care of your dumbass.
CLINT: Exactly!

[Clint finally unlocks door and kick-swings it open]

CLINT: Bitch!
ME: Who?
CLINT: Fuckin' bitch!
ME: Yes, you are.
CLINT: Yep! That's what I'm sayin', man! Fuuuck yoooou!

[Clint stumbles into house and falls on floor as the door swings closed]

ME: G'night, Clint.

Dear Professor Clark,

I was running late to class but as I cranked the key in the ignition, I discovered my car battery's deader'n a gay marriage bill in the Oklahoma legislature. So, now I'm just absent. I understand we do not have class Thursday due to advisement. I will email you this week the unorganized mess of prose and notes that is my feature-so-far.

You'll notice I'm not as far in actual for-print writing as I'd hoped. I have been dealing with an intense and intensely frustrating bout of writer's block and not just on this story. I literally sat down a week from last Thursday to work on some creative ad writing for my business and found I just could not come up w/anything. I switched to my feature story and then my film script, both with the same result. I was able to write non-creatively (tests, business memos, etc) but nothing requiring any amount of formative thought. I tried every trick I know in the book to pull myself out of it. Nothing worked until this past Sunday when an idea for another film slowly crept into my head over the period of about an hour. I started scribbling and soon found myself moving onto the ad and my feature story. So, I'm back on track but late as usual.

Sorry, again, for missing class today. If it makes it any better just know I'll be on my porch, whiskey in hand and computer on the lap, sculpting the ramblings of a stoned trainrider into an explorative essay on one man's idea of freedom.


-ryan

Thank Christ I’m not a bird dog.

I’d be wrangled up, taken out behind the tree line and shot dead where I stood because I was apparently no longer able to sniff out a pile of my own feces two feet in front of me, much less moving, hiding prey. A one-time master of my craft, I would now be more worthless to Farmer John than a willing virgin to a eunuch. I would have no voice with which explain my simple, temporary problem– I have fallen a tragic victim to a terrible, unrelenting head cold.

My sinuses are crammed fuller than 2nd Street at four in the afternoon and, despite all the Kumbocha tea, green tea, black tea and whisktea chugging and vitamin C huffing, there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. Yes, thank Christ my life does not depend on my for-now defunct olfactory.

It is because of my plight that my tongue now squelches and squirms against the roof of my mouth in a desperate attempt to relieve the burn from my most recent waste of $2.10 - the Starshmucks “Highway Robbery” flavored green tea. I’m not even in a real Star-gimme-all-your-bucks drinking a real “Highway Robbery” tea.

Although, I’ll admit, this student-centric façade in the Nigh Center does a damn good job of imitating the real thing – overpriced drinks, overloud music and overfriendly slingers. I’m talking the kinds that wear such a god-awful, toothy gape of grin that, as I approach, I don’t know whether they’re smiling or baring their teeth in preparation to let out a throaty growl warning me to stay away from their precious ground bean juice. “Take ‘er easy there, Killer. I’m not after your hot-enough-to-melt-the-sun coffee. No, instead I think I'd rather scald my already raw throat with some of your green, boiling water. What’s that? Why, yes, I would like to pay the price of a vacation home in The Hamptons for it.”

The scene continues in my head, or it would if I didn’t have “Lean on Me” blaring so forcefully in my ears that the only appropriate way I can think to describe it is “auditory rape.” It’s taken me a great deal longer to write these 474 paltry words than it should have, thanks solely to the suffocation my poor thought processes suffer at the hands of such a musical menace.

Ah, to be free of this place and out in a field or a forest, sprinting from bush-to-tree with not but the blinding sun in my eyes and the wind whipping my ears. No expensive faux-remedies torching my tongue. No ironically retro “college playlist jams” beating my eardrums senseless. Just the sun and the wind and, finally, the bullet. Perhaps life and death as a sick bird dog would not be such a terrible thing after all.

A working definition

"You know what the correct definition of 'art' is? I'll give you a correct definition of 'art' and I think you'll agree with it. 'Art' is short for Arthur. You can't argue with that."

[Jim Watson]

For more on design professor and all around troublemaker [Jim Watson], go here and here.


Read it and weep:

life from the glove's end

It's a sopping wet morning/afternoon outside. The view from behind my half-open blinds is breathtakingly simple. Two adirondack chairs on the front porch that just yesterday gleamed a brilliant bleach-white in the sun, lounge lazy and dripping wet in a dirty-cream tone accentuated by the fiery red brick surrounding them. The wilted, patchy-green-but-mostly-salmonella-yellow grass that is my front yard does not lie complacently. It heaves and squirms like a giant earth-sponge that has greedily soaked up every last dripdrop of sweetly toxic rainwater. The behemoth earth-rag rests in a bloated sprawl, waiting desperately for The Almighty Hand to reach down and wring it dry so that it might go about soaking up the excess aqua that has bled over into the streets and sidewalks. Hey, what's that?! The oven buzzer screams like a colic-ridden baby and the smoky sweet smell of bbq chick'n pizza hits my nostrils like a fifty in the hand of a cheap hooker - my hard-earned reward for almost thirty minutes' pleasurable work.

That reminds me of this little ditty...

"Tell me, how is excess measured
Mixing business with pleasure
When pleasure is your business
You don’t have to ask forgiveness"

I've been called a sinner

Wrong doer
Evil doer
Worker of iniquity
Transgressor



Bad example
Scoundrel, villian, knave
Miscreant
Viper, wretch, the devil incarnate



Monster, demon
Fallen angel
Murderer and thief
Lost sheep



Black sheep, black guard
Loafer and sneak
A good for nothing
Ass fucking son of a bitch



I'VE BEEN CALLED A SINNER

["daughters spelled wrong" lyrics by alexis s.f. marshall]

What she don't know

It won't hurt her
But it might give her cause to wonder
"Where did all this blood come from?"
What she don't know
Is I'm at the end of my rope
I tried to climb back up
But it's a slippery fuckin' slope

Play with fire
And the burns are free
But this life'll be
The death of me

[all photos by yours trudy]

Feeling so neat and complete in the executive suite

I've found that one of the greatest curses God can bestow on a man is the gift of debate, and even more so the desire to utilize that gift whenever the occasion, however slight, arises.



I'm trying something neu [Whiskey-Orange Juice-1/4 Fresh Squeezed Lime Juice]

No flags, no patriots

Man, it sure is dark in here. The only light, cast in soft shades of green and white, falls gently across the comforter under which my legs twitch nervously. The chaotic dribble and drop of rain is soothing but in no way puts my mind at ease enough for sleep.

That's why God made jokes <<<< CLICK LINK FOR THE FUNNY

Disaster Au Naturel

Monetize...monotonize...when applied to art/life/sex, the former usually leads to the latter. It has also occasionally been known to lead to the ladder.

Edit: I stumbled upon this horrific scene one gray, January morning last week on my way to visit der Feuergabelung.

The man beneath me needs to die and who the hell remembers Jars of Clay?

Frozen to death...

...in a blizzard of existentialism on my summer vacation.

Testing...testing...1, 2, tres...? Once again, no sleep yet. Alex hurt her "tummy" somehow - thinks maybe it's her I*E*D or...pancreas?

Thanx, Greg. This was super relaxing.


Asa Nisi Masa.