Hate alone is not enough to nourish. But there’s rage too.

i do believe that julio gonazlez showed me some peace tonight. and i am sure that he didn’t use human growth hormone or pay an easy G per hour for a hooker. he probably did a bunch of other stuff that i don’t think i agree with. but he gave me what i was looking for. which wasn’t people flying planes into a building or a scapegoat or an easy way out. just peace.
and he quieted a bunch of other people. and peace and quiet seem to go together. much harder in new york than other places (i’ve been). but he shut them up. well.

made me question if it is more powerful for an individual to bring a crowd to speak or to silence.
or is it more powerful for an individual to speak than to be silent.
balance is the answer

oh i saw him very near to my current plot. a building that i was curious about. sensory pleasing all around.

i am thinking that #2 and #5 are most important

there’s a bunch of hubub about a fare hike by the MTA. this has me vexed about something i noticed a few weeks ago. every weekend, the MTA make a shit load of changes to the train lines to allow for repairs and stuff (http://mta.info/nyct/service/subsrvn1.htm). they post signs everywhere on the trains and on the platforms. they used to be 8.5x11 simple black and white notifications of the line being affected and what to do about it. a few months ago i noticed that they have pretty good quality color signs. sounds expensive, perhaps excessive. so i say to my self, maybe they chose color so that they could color coordinate the color of the subway lines. but no. they are all black. i’m sure it doesn’t even make a dent in the colossal bureaucracy that is public transportation but it seems unnecessary to me.

i seem to have fallen into a bit of a medically challenging pot hole on my inspiration superhighway. endured another frisbee injury which is sad. very sad. feels like maybe i sprained my wrist or something. luckily this time i was not the only participant in my injury, there was a collision involved. So i was figuring on getting it checked out when a few days later, after enjoying a delicious eggplant dream wrap, my lower lip began to swell. big. like bubba gump big. this isn’t the first, nor the worst, incident so, being prepared with some meds, i popped a few benadryl and the swelling stopped. so did my dosage. later that night i had, of all things, sushi, with soy sauce running down my larger than usual lower lip. probably not the best choice in foods after an allergic reaction but i never claimed to be all that bright. before i turned in i popped another med just to make sure that things were cool. about 2 or 3 am i woke up and had a strange sensation in my upper lip. staring back at me in the mirror is what looked like a cross between bart simpson and a fraggle (i don’t know if those were noses or upper lips). i finally broke down and called an allergist who happened to also be listed under internal medicine (two birds, one stone?). he shot me with a few things (roids) and ordered a few tests and checked my hand and ordered an xray. he tested me for a few things and confirmed things i knew make me itchy (cats, mold, mites).
next i called my insurance company to find out which facilities accepted my insurance and the girl on the phone searched around and confirmed that i was going to facilities in the ‘plan’. she mentioned that in the future i could call the facility for more up to date information because their systems are not real time. get a sense o satisfaction because i’m finally using the benefits that i’ve been working for over the last six years.
went and got an xray yesterday. blood tests this morning (filled at least ten vials). i’m starting to think this taking care of medical stuff is not that bad.

now it’s friday afternoon. i’m tired from the drugs and extra effort needed to operate with a limp arm. home from work and looking to relax with a book and i get a call from an toll free number and answer. empire blue cross blue shield has hired an independent auditing company to conduct a survey regarding their customer service. 3 days after i called them about where i can have blood tests and xrays done. i can’t imagine that anyone calling customer service locate a place to remove their colon or breast might have reacted to this but i for one was a little pissed off. leave me the hell alone. let me heal. and put some of your survey money into lobbying for universal health care or something.

everytime the iroomba comes up on woot! i hesitate for a few seconds and the let it sell out while i read reviews and manuals trying to figure out if it’ll be worth while. everytime, that is, until the last time. i bought one during the last woot-off.
i didn’t even own a vacuum so the cost of a vacuum helped me justify the purchase. i suppose most purchasers justify the purchase based on the claim that it will save them time. i cannot make that claim.
when i set the thing up for the first time, i spent 20 minutes perfecting the location of the home base (it fits nicely under my bed). once that task was complete, i pressed the clean button on the remote control and proceeded to watch the robot navigate under and around the 9 legs of my desk and chair and move to the next room bouncing from wall to wall. i probably watched for 40 minutes. hows that for a time saver?
i’m not a super busy person where i can say that i don’t have enough time to sweep my floors and my place isn’t that big so it isn’t a huge production to pull out the broom and clean the floors.
so i guess this is really just a productive form of entertainment for me. the $99 cable package that i pay for but haven’t watched in two months doesn’t clean my floors, just my bank account.

http://money.cnn.com/2007/03/13/magazines/fortune/pluggedin_murphy_terror.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2007031311

this article explains that successful suicide bombers usually have a better education than the ones who are caught. i take two things from this: 1) success in education does not imply intelligence but is more probably a sign of a mind that follows rules and is easily controlled, 2) the poor are too occupied with survival to succumb to the fear tactics of religious/political fanatics.

while starting my car yesterday, i heard squealling rubber for a moment which stopped and then came back for good about 10 seconds later. i disengaged the ingintion and popped the hood to investigate. somehow the belt had worked itself loose and was stuck between the pulley and the engine block.
i noticed something long thin at the bottom of the engine compartment coming out from beneath the radiator. figuring it was part of the belt, i reached down and picked it up only to find that it had some weight to it and it was furry. as my urban instincts kicked in i realized it was a rat so i dropped it. this new information in hand and a closer inspection of the “grease” is noticed scattered around the engine compartment revealed that the grey and red substance was probably rat guts. with the help of bobby, local beggar, i got the belt back on to the pulleys.
now it’s time to clean up the mess, so i equipped myself with a shopping bag to pick up and dispose of the remains. turns out i was only able to find half of the victim. i’m guessing the other half will reveal itself gaseously.
i’ll probably need to get the engine steam cleaned.

i sometimes justify my gloomy outlook on not wanting to be disappointed. expect the worst so when it happens you’re not disappointed. doesn’t make for a very hopeful outlook. i made the mistake of being happy last wednesday. i was wrong. oh well, in a way, guess i was actually right.

i’m completely stressing about the building. i know it’s a good investment and this and that but we’re about to take on some more debt and we don’t have a lot of cash in the kitty. just repaired some flooring and what not and cleared out a nice piece of padding. i’ve been sitting on my ass the last year and a … uh I guess almost two years in october. so i own that failure. i haven’t been saving money or working on my place. so if i get priced out of this place i need to be able to rent it out. to do that i need to make major modifications. to do that i have to have motivation or money. so that means it’s time to stop spending and start working. i don’t have a plan. never do. i tend to shoot first and ask questions later. or probably more accurately, don’t shoot at all and don’t ask questions later, just worry and brood. so anyways. i own it. not the building but the situation.

tired. had a great weekend with family goings on. got completely fragmented. bent. split. polluted last night at awis’ 21st birthday. oh it was jules’ wedding too. great time. they threw a good pary which is something i figured those two were good at. just seemed like they have a good time. i was binging pretty hard. got to a point where there was karaoke and long heartfelt confab with my bro. i actually tapped out. that never happens.
so anyway got a wakey from kris and things were not looking good for an honorable lift-off. i haven’t been hung over in a while which means my body has just flown the white flag figuring there’s no use, i’ll always fight back by tipping the bottle again. so a little later deej and bexter came in to awake the beast. i wasn’t tryin a hear dat scene. so she went and foraged for some addy to shrink my grey a bit. then i woke up and voided my bowels then my gut. by the time i completed my floor routine, bex and dex showed up. i popped it then asked her for a few more minutes. planned to leave at 11 AM it was 10:25. Round a bout 10:45 moses and dex showed up for the final lift off. matt packed my crap while i de-loused (another life saver). was feeling better. got on the road with john and dom by 11:08..late.. but respectable. stopped off for a coffee and a few glazers for the ride.
we took a pretty long ride and arrived at dina’s two hours later. bit into the hair of the dog and hung with the other side. had a great homemade pasta dinner. lined the stommy something fierce. left for NT and hung with the boyz on the porch once we got settled. nodded off a bit. good speaks with the gents then took another shower.
left for bklyn. got here. played some terrible guit and having some night cap. trying to bring it down. tired. not sleepy but real tired. I’m glad i have work tomorrow so that i can catch up on some sleep and get ready for next weekend. it was great to see everyone this weekend.

phew. lot’s of bright and cheery posts not so lately. a lot has happened since my last. i was bombarded with family for three weekends in a row. first my wiw sister came in and we had a nice visit. took a trip to the statue of liberty and ellis. spent a lot of time but we were both intrigued. then i met my dad in sleepy hollow for a birthday dinner for my uncle dom. he and e had a long involved conversation about religion. not exactly what i would have chosen for an 81st birthday party but they enjoyed sparring (and reveled in the fact that they share birthdays).
then my bro, sis-law, dex, cuz and wiw sis came down for a weekend. walked the bridge with the ladies, got some maggie brown fare. good times there too. never long enough but that’s my fault either for living far away or not having a nice enough place to make it uber desirable to visit. then the elder came with her kids. had a great time there too. made some music. made them walk the brooklyn bridge. all in all a great success. and i only had to give the place a stern cleaning once.
other than that, i’ve been extremely mal-motivated with work and un-work. haven’t made much headway on the imbibing front or the mitigation thereof. probaby contributing to me not getting my stuff in order. been reading a bit more so that’s good. buying and seeing music.

where do you go when you can’t find beauty in anything? all you see is decay? do look into the future? the past? the present? when you don’t pick a course because you have no hope. it all adds up to a loss. we all have a past present and future. the future and the past are held together by this instant we call now. and the direction that we chose is based on the past to avoid being where we don’t want to be and guessing where we think we want to be. no matter how wide you zoom the lens you have to ignore the blurry region that is death and doom and nothingness. it’s the only way to choose a direction. because all directions lead to it. albeit in different timeframes but they are all the same path. to the grave. that’s why it’s important to keep the past and future in balance so that the present is as good as you can make it.
i have a terrible time with…well…time. i evaluate it incorrectly. i fail to enjoy the present. let go of the past. hope for the future. i need to enjoy, let go and hope. without it there isn’t much left. and that’s the whole point.

i had to return E’s bke to here yesterday cause i don’t have enough room for it here. it’s a small frame, awkward for me to ride. Oh yeah, she’d also left her keys at my place and was thusly locked out. She took up some eats at an eatery local to her and i said i’d meet her there. i got to her neighborhood and found the place she was at. i was late. So i finished up her dish and we jetted. i was riding her bike and fooling around in the road and stuff and around the corner from her place i was up on the side walk. i see this black impala (read unmarked popo). He slams the car in reverse and stops pretty much in front of me and e. this napolean prick of an officer gets out of the car and excuses himself but “riding on the sidewalk is an offense”. i pony up my id and he runs it. while he’s running my license i see a delivery boy up the road pulling onto the sidewalk. figures. truth is i agree with the law. it’s purpose being preventing pricks like me barreling down a sidewalk full of people and causing a safety hazard. but wait a minute. in brooklyn? at 11:30 on a monday night? besides the fact that i’m sure there’s a bag of something changing hands in front of my apartment at this very hour, is there a real risk when there’s no one out on a 45 f blustery mid-may night. the guy comes back with a summons telling me i can show up at the precinct on such and such to viddy a safety tape. the typical post-confrontation scenarios entered my mind. could i have reasoned with the guy? taken a shot at his crackpot detective work? asked him if this was a productive use of my tax dollars? ask him if he realized that i was walking with a hooker and the bike was stolen? blah blah. but the lockdown was on and i clammed up. oh well. maybe i’ll make the summons date but i’ll be enjoying plenty of nachos, refried beans and buffalo wings the night before to maintain ripeness of air in the viewing room.

Just got back from a family vacation. It’s been something like 18 years since the last time we all went out. Lot’s has happened since then. I’m more than twice as old as I was then. Our family is more than twice the size. Everyone got a long real great and it was pretty tight confines and there was massive deluges which kept us all pretty much housebound. I think it’d be a good thing to repeat once a year or two. Things like holidays are hurried and sort of chaotic with the older kids having other obligations. I guess it took the old guy turning sixty for all of us to synchronize our watches but hopefully we can continue this until it becomes a tradition.

so i worked this evening and being that i still dont trust the Gizzle train (although ive seen marked improvement) i opted for a cab {company sponsored of course - see lebanon, my main memory being about how much it sounded like elevenon. freshman year there was a kid from lebanon named masud which i thought was cool and he had a tattoo of lebanon. enough about me. he said he moved to the city when he was 17 in 1984, alone, very little english and shit. real life shit. none of this american blah blah blah those crazy thises and thoses. sounded like a good guy.
he happened to cut some honda off just as we were driving under the bqe and they honked. he continues on and we continue talking and i see the car pull beside us and two, um, lets be politically correct here….. thugs….. yeah i think you get the picture…. brandish a nice shiney pistole. a gat so to speak. first thought is if they’re in such a big hurry then why do they have time to drive along side us. very counter intuitive.
i chose to ignore and continue the conversation and decide not to react because that would just give the thugs what they want. attention. cause if they wanted to shoot they would have.
i also decided not to inform the driver in case he got spooked and reacted. after we lose the thugs i ask if he saw what they were waving.
sez he /yeah happens all of the time/.
sez iandi /you servived lebanon, those punks arent’ going to spook you, huh/.
sez he /civil war started when i was 9/
america (especially white america) has a lot of learning to do about how the world operates. things can get real bad. our government, media and society are real good at isolating us from the realities so that they don’t lose productivity from us. the less we know, the harder we work, the more they make.
not real succinct but truth is i needed a Jack and beer after that so I’m tired.

So I didn’t fag out. Did the open mic and played Woke Up and Use Me. Messed up the first verse of Use Me but pulled it together. Hands were rubbery so I didn’t attempt the embellishments I’d worked out for woke up. Ef and Nk were there which made it cool. Thought I’d get some feedback from them. It was warm. “At least you got up there”, “It’s not all about the singing.” I got the picture that it was mediocre. I followed a bunch of pretty talented singers so that was differnet from last time when there was some newbies. Also, I didn’t fuck up last time like I did this. But, my perspective was that I was slightly more comfortable this time although, surely, visibly nervous. I could swear people were clapping to the beat of woke up, I thought it was Nk and Ef but she said she didn’t hear it. Anyway, I’m mostly just typing this down to document my challenge to keep this up and nail down some more repetoir. There’s mic’s in redhook on Thursdays. I;m going to try to get two under my belt in a week.

Well it’s time for me to do the open mic thing again. I did it once, almost 6 months ago. I did ok. And it gave me something to talk about. But I didn’t follow up. Haven’t done it since. No good excuse. Sloth maybe. Not feeling real confident right now. Voice sort of sucks. Tried to make a few changes to the songs. Not really working. But I just have to get up there again. Time to live up to the smack I talked about having done it once. ewwww. big deal. Time to get it done.

Two separate friends have made the comment in recent months that I just won’t allow myself to be happy. So am I all that’s standing in my way? I suppose. I don’t have a passion to keep me active and focused so I just lull and exist. I’m mundane by choice. Nothing’s good enough even though it should be.

I’m pretty ineffective these days. I’m terrible at closing things out. I’m good at getting halfway into something and then getting distracted or lost. My ability to define or even complete tasks has deteriorated. Chances are I wasn’t ever really good at it but man have I worsened. Simple things too. The only thing I can effectively accomplish is laundry. Oh, one accomplishment I can claim is superior half-assed-ness. Work, Music, Life, Home, Family, Friends, Love, Hate, Happiness, Anger-All half-assed. They say you get out of life what you put into it. I’ve been graced with getting more than I’ve given.

It’s starting to catch up with me. I need to identify if I’m just plain lazy or if I’m just terrible at defining what stokes me about the things I do (if they stoke me at all). Or maybe I just have a miserable attitude. I don’t seem to take pride in anything that I do. Or maybe I’m just a pussy, too afraid to risk anything. Seems like I’m spiralling but at least I got all of this out. Me me me me me, I I I I. Maybe I’m too self centered and selfish to consider anything else but my self-loathing.

Gotta post more when I’m on top of my shit. This place is looking gloomy as hell.

I just got an email about a strategy to control gas prices from the consumer side. The email suggested buying gas from all but the two largest gas companies, Exxon and Mobil. My first impression is that this movement wasn’t well researched, as Mobil is owned by Exxon . A quick visit to their websites is convincing enough.
I don’t claim to have great perspective on the impact of gas prices because I don’t pay for my own and I live in a city with extensive public transit resources where driving isn’t economical because of traffic and parking. The only way to hurt the gas companies is to buy less, not change where you buy it. This means walking, car pooling, consolidating trips, leaving the SUV at home and driving your new Prius. Unfortunately, the only way to encourage the masses to think this way is to hit them in the wallet (the same tactic the email wanted to take on the gas companies). If things costs too much, people change their behavior or alternatives (hybrids, fuel efficiency technologies, public transit) become more economically attractive.