Viva la Chick-fil-A!

Feliz ano nuevo, compadres!

First things first, let me lay the appropriate smack down.

It is on like Donkey Kong in 2009.

Got Lesticles? We do.

Oh yes, in case you forgot, STILL the only team with TWO BCS TITLES,

and a big shiny SET of crystal balls to prove it.

Florida has a chance to join our club. OU...keep dreamin'.

Ohio State...too late. TU...go hook yourself.

Penn State, sorry JoePa.

Bamalama...somewhere over the rainbow, my friends.

And then there's the Trojans.

F.U. S.C.

Get off your rocking horse & get a conference championship game or two in you.

It does a student body good.

LSU Tigers Football has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, again,

that no team can handle their A-game in the postseason.

Unless your team's football fetish consists of being utterly and totally dominated.

6-0 in the Peach Bo. Purple & Gold porno. Crack that whip!

The Georgia Dome is Mike the Tiger's home away from home.

TIGER BAIT!

Chinese bandits in effect. SCOREBOARD BITCH. Again.

Wrambling Wreck is right.

Bumbling stumbling wreck is more appropriate.

That mismatch was over before halftime.

So, that being said, best of luck to the contenders this year.

We'll see you at the top this time next year.

BRING IT ON, TIGER BAIT!

n'm'out. With clout. Victory for LSU!

Only 3 things.

This ain't no kinda country for old men, addicts, or dysfunctional cowboy poets. It's hard, at best. (pause)

Caliche: a crust of calcium carbonate that forms on the stony soil of arid regions (Webster online)

For months now, I've been reviewing and reciting a scene from my fave film, No Country For Old Men, specifically parts of the conversation between Tommy Lee Jones (Sheriff Tom Ed Bell) and Barry Corbin (Ellis, Tom Ed's father). And since I've been on sabatical here in the great Texas hill country, it seems to bubble up like natural spring water several times each day, everytime I hike around the perimeter of the reservation, on the stony cactus-thorned cliff walls or in the bottom of the dried up creek bed through the gulch below. I imagine being buried under this "hard old caliche." Or burying someone else, pick-axing thru the shale and dusty rain-starved terrain until my hands bleed. And the lines repeat, and my heart feels as hard and dry as the very ground I'm traversing. (pause)

And it goes a lil' sumpin' like kiss:

Ellis: "Well all the time you spend trying to get back what’s been took from you, more is going out the door. After a while, you just have to try to get a tourniquet on it."

Ed: "I don’t know. I feel overmatched. I always figured when I got older, God would sort of come into my life somehow. And He didn’t. I don’t blame Him. If I was Him, I’d have the same opinion of me that He does."

Ellis: "I believe it was that night. She buried him the next morning. Digging in that hard old caliche. (pause) What you got ain’t nothin’ new. This country’s hard on people. You can’t stop what’s comin’. It ain’t all waitin’ on you. That’s vanity."

12 days, 12 steps. I went to another AA meeting last night, underneath the exciting Friday Night Lights.
It was a small meeting at a little country church, but about 6 good ole boys...plenty of cussin' and fuckin' crazy stories. Aren't they all?
But I had an epiphany, in just one simple phrase, that this dude told me straight in my eyes about this "cold-blooded deadly fucking game" as he so eloquently put it to me.
Only 3 things happen to an alcoholic/addict, like me and them:
1. Locked up.
2. Covered up.
or
3. Sobered up.

I barely missed #1, a felony drug traffic rap a few years back. (lest i forget 2 DWIs over the last 20 years)
I have countless times barely missed #2, driving like a coked-up bat out of Hades, ummm-hmmm, 1 wrong move from an accidental suicide.
I've chosen #3. (pause)

I have to put a tourniquet on it. Or I'll be snorting this "hard old caliche" as a young dead man. That's no shit country.

n'm'out

"Using" dreams.

Well, it finally happened. I figured after 12 days, I had gotten past this inevitability.
Wrong again, my free-falling friend. It's your lucky day #13.
"Using" dreams...vivid, tastebuds, color recognition, faces and familiarity.
A narcotics nightmare of my favorite kind.
The experts were dead on.
Christmas night, for Christ sake.
Now I must admit, contrary to my underlying self-speak, my bruised brain & bony body is nothing more than a bleeding, pulsating, nerve-shattered textbook, Psychotherapy 101, as predictable and transparent as a sheet of windowpane acid.
The names & faces I won't divuldge to protect the guilty. But there we were, wheeling, dealing, scraping, crushing, lining it up, snorting and cohorting. Higher than the Wright Bros.
And then I woke up. Instantly thinking how this dream felt as real as any other countless time I was conscious, or semi-conscious, as one can only be when copping a $400+-a-day habit. I didn't want to come down.

Got Bush? ComeDown

love and hate, get it wrong
she cut me right back down to size
sleep the day, let it fade
who was there to take your place
no one knows, never will
mostly me, but mostly you
what do you say, do you do
when it all comes down
cause i don't want to come back down from this cloud
it's taken me all this time to find out what i need
yeah i don't want to come back down from this cloud
it's taken me all this, all this time

there is no blame, only shame
when you beg, you just complain
the more i come, the more i try
all police are paranoid
so am i, so's the future
so are you, be a creature
what do you say, do you do
when it all comes down
cause i don't want to come back down from this cloud
it's taken me all this time to find out what i need, yeah yeah yeah
i don't want to come back down from this cloud
it's taken me all this, all this time
shoot up, shoot up, shoot up, you're high



"It's the train that kills you, not the caboose."
n'm'out

Resolution slips away again.

Back and forth, I sway with the wind
Resolution slips away again
Right through my fingers, back into my heart
Where it's out of reach and it's in the dark
Sometimes I think I'm blind
Or I may be just paralyzed
Because the plot thickens every day
And the pieces of my puzzle keep crumblin' away
But I know, there's a picture beneath
Indecision clouds my vision
No one listens...
Because I'm somewhere in between
My love and my agony
You see, I'm somewhere in between
My life is falling to pieces
Somebody put me together

Layin' face down on the ground
My fingers in my ears to block the sound
My eyes shut tight to avoid the sight
Anticipating the end, losing the will to fight
Droplets of "yes" and "no" in an ocean of "maybe"
From the bottom, it looks like a steep incline
From the top, another downhill slope of mine
But I know, the equilibrium's there
Indecision clouds my vision
No one listens...
Because I'm somewhere in between
My love and my agony
You see, I'm somewhere in between
My life is falling to pieces
Somebody put me together


Faith No More (Falling To Pieces)

still no sign of Santa

From the view in the jacuzzi tonight, you can see damn near every star known to man. Except Robert Downey, Jr. But really, I mean all of them. I never realized how big Orion the Hunter's dick is, but it's right there, hanging right down below his belt, twinkling and straight as the north pole.
Cosmic viagra.

Speaking of intergalactic hardons, if you ever feel like overdosing on shitty coffee and salt peter, check out an AA meeting on Christmas Eve. It's like a damn wake for your inner child that while stringing Christmas lights on the mailbox out by street was accidently run over by a drunk-driven semi with a big ass holiday wreath on the front grill. East bound & down, loaded up & mother truckin'.
Red & green roadkill cookies.
Everyone brought a covered dish to 12step tonight. And by covered dish, I don't mean a chick with a hat on.
Badda freaking bing. "Did you write that one?" No seriously, it's like joining some secret club of rehabilitated sociopaths to go on a maniacal shooting spree with double-barrel nerf guns, and then turning one on yourself. And if you are a newcomer, you might want to consider wrapping your whole body in the Sunday comics using a whole role of tape, and laying down under the wobbly fake Christmas tree in the back of the room, cleverly disguised as a crappy present with no nametag, or matching bow or ribbon.
Otherwise, the sobriety mafia will be on you like a pride of lions on a sick antelope. But I digress.


You should see how the wild whitetail deer come up to the swimming pool here to drink at night. I wish I was a bow hunter sometimes.
But I am glad I am not. I can just see some drunk hillbilly bastard pulling out his 12guage for not one trophy buck, but 8 of them at once, frantically trying to reload before Santa can skedaddle off the roof of said redneck's doublewide.
So don't be alarmed when on the roof hoof's patter, as you open the sash to see what's the matter.
Deer season IS officially open!

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a bud light.
Happy Hanukkah! (drink gin&tonica, smoke marijuanica, snort whatever else rhymes with that shit)

n'm'out

Where there's a will, there's a way.

Shit.

I'm a casket base today.
I knew something had to be wrong when after reading till about 1 am this morning, I popped up out of bed at 5 minutes before 7, made my bed, and was showered & dressed and ready for breakfast by 7:30.
Then one of the R.A.s, Steve, didn't meet me for meditation. Everyone was somber & quiet.
At first I thought it was the dreary misty fog that had settled into the gulches overnight, leaving a layer of dew on everything, even the underside of the seat cushions in the smokers' gazebo.
But, when my "Boss Lady" arrived at 8, jabbing me with kid gloves about how our morning schedule was going to be interrupted & just bear with them...I began to get a sinking feeling.

Apparently, during only my 3rd full night's rest, there was an episode right outside my door last night, that I heard not 1 peep of...I mean, I'm never one to be clueless, but I'm in the dark.
In more ways than one.
And then there were two, has now been whittled down to one. It's just me now. My only cohort lost it during the night. I won't go any further into it than that.
But he discharged, and drove off into the thick air. I rarely connect with anyone in only a week, and this is why. Cause I have to disconnect before I am ready.
And goddammit I'm sad, and pissed, and worried for the dude.
And now I worry about myself. Again.

So, there goes our trip to Marble Falls to play basketball tomorrow.
There goes a whole lot that I don't even understand yet.

But it feels like, well, it just feels like darkness, and pain, and relapse.
so what's new.
n'm'out

broken record in my head today

When I woke up this morning, I heard a disturbing sound.
This raspy tensed voice singing over & over the lyrics to Nothing Compares To You.
I can't tell which version it is, playing repeatedly in my head. But it is accapella, no music.
Sinbad O'Connelly or The Artist formerly known as

also formerly known as Prince.

But it is haunting me like some sick coyote down in the valley gulch just beyond the designated smoking area, with the gentleness of a state fair carney, and the plodding morbid consistency of Anton Chigurh. Why is this song suddenly stuck in my head? "You don't have to know everything, Carla Jean." Where did it come from? "The comin' from place." But how come? "quit yer hollerin'" Anyway, that reminds me, to tell you about this reoccuring nightmare I've been having for a few months. But meanwhile, that song goes a lil sumpin like kiss...

It's been seven hours and thirteen days
Since you took your love away
I go out every night and sleep all day
Since you took your love away
Since you been gone I can do whatever I want
I can see whomever I choose
Eat my dinner in a fancy restaurant
But nothing
I said nothing can take away these blues
Cause nothing compares
Nothing compares to you

It's been so lonely without you here
Like a bird without a song
Nothing can stop this lonely rage
Tell me baby where did I go wrong
I could put my arms around everybody I see
But they'd only remind me of you
I went to the doctor, guess what he told me
Guess what he told me
He said rosie you better have fun
No matter what you do
Cause it's the blues

Cause nothing compares
Nothing compares to you

All the flowers that you planted
In the backyard sugah
All died when you went away
I know that living with me baby was sometimes hard
But I'm willing to try, said I'm willing to give it another try
Cause nothing compares
Nothing compares to you

n'm'out

808 state, pt. c & d

From the bass in your trunk to the base of your hypothalamus, the 808 state is great!
Let the base kick, one time for your mind, then you'll know just what to do.
Nuke it for forty years, for a jimmy'd up buffet of brain stew.


(Church of the Rock hymnal pg 808 pt. C)

Brain Stew * Green Day


I'm having trouble trying to sleep
I'm counting sheep but running out
As time ticks by
Still I try
No rest for crosstops in my mind

On my own...here we go

My eyes feel like they're gonna bleed
Dried up and bulging out my skull
My mouth is dry
My face is numb
Fucked up and spun out in my room

On my own...here we go

My mind is set on overdrive
The clock is laughing in my face
A crooked spine
My senses dulled
Past the point of delerium

On my own...here we go

My eyes feel like they're gonna bleed
Dried up and bulging out my skull
My mouth is dry
Face is numb
Fucked up and spun out in my room

On my own...here we go...





(Church of the Rock hymnal pg 808 pt D)


Jaded * Green Day

Somebody keep my balance
I think I'm falling off
Into a state of regression
The expiration date
Rapidly coming up
It's leaving me behind to rank

Always move forward
Going "straight" will get you nowhere
There is no progress
Evolution killed it all
I found my place in NOWHERE.

I'm taking one step sideways
Leading with my crutch
Got a fucked up equilibrium
Count down from 9 to 5
Hooray! We're gonna die!
Blessed into our extinction

Always move forward
Going "straight" will get you nowhere
There is no progress
Evolution killed it all
I found my place in NOWHERE

You're nowhere, you're no-oh-oh-o-where.


Amen.
Please take your seats and welcome the Right Reverend Leviticus Falwell.
Halle-freaking-lujah!


n'm'out

Sunday Morning Coming Down

Welcome to Church of the Rock. We are pleased to see you here this morning, on such uberglorious critical mass meeting of the mind, body and spirit, a virtual call to arms for the sick and confused. We wish you desperation and a bottomless Christmas, & another happy blue year notched on your black bible belt of insanity.

We ask you to please rise, open your hymnals and join us in reading of song. Turn now to page 80, which will be followed by page 808 parts c and d. Come, stay, lay or pray, whatever happens, keep those toes a-tappin'!

All together now...

_____________________________________

Well my daddy worked in the coal mine

'Till the company shut it down

Then he sat around and drank hisself blind
'Till we put him back underground

Now nothin' grows on this mountain

And what's a poor boy to do?

Except to wander these hills forgotten

With the oxycontin blues

Well I never cared much for whiskey

'Cause it only made daddy mean

Wrapped a little bit tight they tell me

For the methamphetamine

Then my cousin came up from Knoxville

And he taught me a thing or two

Now I'm headed nowhere but downhill

With the oxycontin blues

Got a dollar bill in my pocket

Got a half a tank in my truck

I'm gonna go and pawn grandma's locket

Hell, maybe it'll change my luck

Ain't nothin' gonna be right no how

'Cause I know I can't ever lose

This devil that's draggin' me down

Called the oxycontin blues

(Steve Earle*Oxycontin Blues*Washington Square Serenade)

SoulScrubber 3000

You have just entered the SoulScrubber 3000.

Please place all personal possessions, including your CrackBerry, in the incinerator before you.

Place brain on the conveyor belt to your right.

Place core belief system on the conveyor belt to your left.

Slowly slide wrists in to the cuffs that will drop from above shortly, and slip feet into stirrups.

No need to panic, you should feel a euphoric sensation any moment, as the truth serum will deliver you into a semi-conscious state. Failure to comply will result in immediate extermination. Believe that, we implore you.

Your condition will be monitored closely, as homeostasis is reconditioned for optimum performance. Do not resist entry into the approaching brightly lit doorway...it is not a death state.

Assimilation will begin now.

Thank you for selecting the SoulScrubber 3000, a product of WalMart Corp., where you can always "KEEP IT REAL! Haaaaa-ha ha-ha-haaaaaaaaaa. Heee hee hee..."

Rusty Heartstrings

"In a trivialized, homogenized, sanitized world of chain stores, chain restaurants, and chain people, he was one of the few individuals who was still in tune and in touch. Willie was a life spirit and his guitar was strung with rusty heartstrings that had magically brought love into people's lives." Kinky Friedman

In the twilight glow I see her

Blue eyes crying in the rain

When we kissed goodbye and parted

I knew we'd never meet again

Love is like a dying ember

And only memories remain

And through the ages I'll remember

Blue eyes crying in the rain

Someday when we meet up yonder

We'll stroll hand in hand again

In the land that knows no parting

Blue eyes crying in the rain

"Nothing can destroy anything that doesn't want to be destroyed," said Willie, taking another long hit on the salami. "I don't believe in death. It's just a part of life, part of country music. It's just like winning or losing a game of chess as you're moving through somebody else's time and space like the highway men on horseback painted on the back of this bus. How do you thing they feel?" Willie Nelson

Happy trails, yall. Time for me to mosey on down the starlit trail. I shall return.

ps - "Jesus Christ." "That's what Willie said. Only he mentioned his middle name too." "H.?" I said. "No," said Just Bill, "Fuckin'."

n'm'out

Know your dosages.

"Lord I hope this day is good." Don Williams in the morning, that'll soothe what ailes you for a stretch.
Warm cup of joe, and a Filter King. Morning sunshine, you look like warmed-over dogshit...how do you feel?

Baclofen, Trazodone, Clonidine...alpha agonists, anti-depressants, muscle relaxants, and any other physician-approved anti-venoms. Always know your dosages.

Poison on the run, scrambling for a happy place deep inside...they are coming for you.
Terminate with extreme prejudice. Release me from this death grip, so that I may live to fight another day.

It's an option.

n'm'out

excerpts from "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac

"The poet becomes a seer through a long, immense, and reasoned derangement of all the senses. All shapes of love, suffering, madness. He searches himself, he exhausts all poisons in himself, to keep only the quintessences."

"The only people that interest me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yearn or say a commonplace thing...but burn, burn, burn like Roman candles across the night."

"What's your road, man? - holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It's an anywhere road for anybody anyhow. Where body how?"

"Emotionlessly she kissed me in the vineyard and walked off down the row. We turned at a dozen paces, for Love is a duel, and looked at each other for the last time."

"Isn't it true that you start your life a sweet child believing in everything under your father's roof? Then comes the day of the Laodiceans, when you know you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, and with the visage of a gruesome grieving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life."

"He seems to me to be headed for his ideal fate, which is compulsive psychosis with a jigger of psychopathic irresponsibility and violence."

"And as the river poured down from mid-America by starlight I knew, I knew like mad that everything I had ever known and would ever know was one." Sal Paradise


n'm'out

Cyrus, the Great Dog King

would someone please go hug my dog's neck?

I am sure he's wondering where I've wandered off to now.
It's ok to sleep in the bed now, Cyrus. I shall return.

When the walls come crumbling down...

Well, imagine this, me...at a loss for words. Not actually, but just suffering from a virtual sense of lockjaw for the last few weeks. But I have been uprooted from my comfortzone like a resident of the lower 9th Ward, NOLA.

First off, let me express my gratitude for all the positive feedback and comforting thumbs-ups I got from those of you that did such, after reading my blog in its infancy. Just as I got some momentum and wits about me to really give you all something worth reading, something worth clicking into, it seems that one thing after another went down and I was overwhelmed in a sense...so much material to cover, not knowing where to start, wanting to offer up substance on all counts, like my name was Faulkner or Hemingway or something literary and high-brow. C'mon jackass, just write what you feel, or what you are hearing in your head, you are not trying to win a damn Pulitzer here. If you type, they will come. Like Field of Dreams, huh? "They" being the readers and their lovable comments or better than that, the quotable gems that you are sure are what you can feel twisting and writhing through the corridors of your chemical-addled brain. So, I dropped the ball. Got wrapped up in another mediocre season of LSU Tiger football, all the while lamenting over things like our tanking economy or reality TV or Paul Newman's death, or terrorism in Mumbai, or how our country finally set aside racial prejudice long enough, or at least far enough to the curb, to elect Barack Obama as our next President. Suddenly I was even ignoring the post-it note reminders I strategically placed to remind myself to "BLOG TONIGHT, STOP BEING SELFISH AND SCARED OF CRITICISM" or "HEY DICKHEAD, YOU HAVEN'T BLOGGED IN OVER 6 WEEKS. YOU EMAILED ALL YOUR FRIENDS TO READ YOUR CRAP, AND NOW YOU CAN'T EVEN FOLLOW THRU." You get the idea. Well, maybe I will get back to all of those issues, or maybe I'll just bite a bullet over what ever comes along over the coming weeks. Either way, I look forward to hearing from some of you, one of you, any of you. Please leave a comment if you stop in, even if it is to say hi or to offer an opinion, or to just tell me that entry sucked. I just want to know if you are there, and of course, I value your input, feedback, or addendums. But either way, this will be the least I can do to channel some of this unbearably heavy caca. I see things all the time that have so much meaning and significance to myself and others, but it seems to fall by the wayside if not pointed out, choked out, slit open & bled out, however & whatever it takes to let you see a glimpse of how said chemical-addled brain interprets all the crazy shit going down every day...it is too much to store within. My liberal bleeding heart is as wide as all outside, but it seems of late, my emotions are getting the best of me, and I've just been shoveling all of these thoughts into a virtual Pod parked just outback of reality. And truthfully, I knew that was only a temporary fix. I knew in time that temporary storage of such raw emotion and waning intellect would eventually reach a state of critical mass & would all be lost and unavailable for interpretation, all gelling together into one big-ass exposed nerve. Those virtual Pod walls would burst at the seams, much like those of my heart and mind. My soul feels like that evil rotten bastard from Terminator 2, all liquified and splashed into droplets and pools, all with an instinctive drive to be reunited as a solid mass, but unable to move toward each other, frozen in a pool of liquid nitrogen (that was a kickass movie, back when Guns & Roses were still cool). I've never been one to stay within the lines when coloring, as hard as I tried. But this time I have drifted WAY out of radar range. Wandering Paleface is definitely off the reservation. No longer fit for primetime. But I have a plan, which I will let you in on slowly, but surely, on a need-to-know basis only, of course. All I can say right now is this (well, 2 things):

1. I am glad to be back, and I'm gonna kick my shoes off & stay awhile.

AND 2. It's cold in them there hills.

Hasta la vista, baby.

n'm'out