“And he had them hung from five trees until evening”

My xany link of the week.

Happy news #1: I’m going to see Social Distortion. And Tiger Army. And you will know us by the trail of th dead. I don’t mean the band called “And You Shall Know Us By the Trail of the Dead.” –I mean, I’m going to get SICK fucked up after the show and you will know us by the trail of the dead, in a literal sense.

The show is in Denver, and we’ve scored free sleeping berths in town, so all the money I would have spent for a hotel room will go into the deep, deep coffers of a number of downtown Denver taverns…the friend we are staying with is a horrible beast of a sex pervert, and I have high hopes that he will take us into places of filth and moral abadonment.

Happy News #2: I bought a digital camera and will start posting pictures of stuff that amuses me soon. As well as pictures of me . . . althought I’m having trouble finding an angle for a self protrait that doesn’t leave me looking kinda out of it…but I always look kind of look kinda out of it, much the way dolphins always smile even when enraged…

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Know that it would be untrue
Know that I would be a liar
If I was to say to you
I didn’t set your house on fire

But it’s just the way I am
Have to take it for a fact
Life can really burn you up
When you’re a pyromaniac
So…

If you love somebody
Better set them on fire

–If you love someone, set them on fire,
The Dead Milkmen

The following is a downer. On top of that, it’s a downer where I plug a charity at the end, with guilt as my weapon. You’ve been warned.

A lot of people are atheists. They belive when you die, that’s all. You’re gone, poof.

If they’re right…well, all we have is each other and the things we do while alive.

How many of you have been to the post office?
You know that wall you walk by, where the bright cheerful eyes burn out of misplaced school photos?

You know most of them are dead, right? You walk by a thousand child murders and worse every day, on your way to pick up your junk mail and cell phone bill, on your way to send back that defective Tivo. Subconciously you know that they are dead, hauled into a strange ice-cream truck or big rig or civic hatchback (what – you think there’s no economy-minded serial slayers?), and you know every poster represents an unpunished killer, an anonymous brutal parent or dark stranger that ended someone’s life the way you’d throw out a sticky blow-up doll….

You can’t hear their voices anymore. Screaming, “I never saw anything. I never did anything. I never made love. I never flew in an airplane. I DIED BEFORE I WAS OLD ENOUGH TO PICK OUT MY OWN FUCKING CLOTHES, LOOK AT THIS GODDAMN SCHOOL PICTURE I GET FOR A TOMBSTONE, SO ENJOY YOUR MOTHERFUCKING TIVO”

If the atheists are right, dying without a name is the worst death of all. Because the only imortality we have is in each other’s mind.

If you’re bored at home or work, you really like CSI, or you had a friend that just never came back to class, and you still remember her name…you can just do whatever…or you can go here.

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I don’t think it was worth it
the last thing Stanley said to me
Twenty four years then a bullet in the chest and
I still see him in my sleep
Fifteen dollars in the purse He could not save
Her family didn’t buy a stone to mark his grave

What I see

The other morning I was walking out of the wal mart at about four oclock and across the avenue rain was falling through the sodium arc lights in the mall parking lot, deliniating perfect cones of falling crystal against the uniform velvet dark of the nearly moonless night.

There’s a strength in the night, something quiet that isn’t in the sky during the day.

The day is the matterhorn ride at Disney world. It looks like it goes up and down, it looks like it rushes and roars – but it’s not really much of a climb.

The cold night is Everest instead, the real thing, with real heights…and climbing the onyx surface of the night to stand unscathed in the light of dawn means something.

Something more then standing in line, handing over a ticket.

————————————
Johnny was a weirdo
So what did you expect?
I ain’t no fucking hero
I’m just trying to survive myself


I should have known you went through it alone
I wonder why did you even try?
You could have come to me
I would have helped you see
You could have found a way to carry on
Second guess
Did i do my best?
There was a friend I had…

Back in the booth – I’m in Master Control again, where it’s quiet and calm and I’m alone with my thoughts.

Poker’s been running my way, I’m up 83 something in my last three games…I played a game late last night where I took a bad hit early and fought back from almost nothing to take second in the tournament…I brought my ‘a’ game to that one, baby.

A girl I know, that I used to know better is coming by later for the obligatory return of possesions…I don’t know how I feel about seeing her again. I’ve been talking to her again…it’s all so strange. I liked her, a lot. I liked her more then a lot of girls I’ve dated longer, and when she left, it left me with a gap where she used to be, like a punched out mouth.

I miss her, and I’d take her back if we weren’t so proud.

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Stephanie Says
She Wants to know
Why She’s given half her life
To people she hates now

—Velvet Underground, Stephanie Says