Thank you and welcome to my blog. This all started as random posts discussing my addictions. Please start with the first post and go in order if you can. I’ve really grown to like more music than I used...
Thank you and welcome to my blog. This all started as random posts discussing my addictions. Please start with the first post and go in order if you can.
I’ve really grown to like more music than I used to, but I still don’t like a lot of popular bands etc, that I actually hesitate to mention because people take that shit crazy personal. Like they were playing the bass themselves or had a family member who wrote the songs for the band. I’ve enjoyed making music and being part of some forums etc. Online groups or forums can be hit or miss depending on the subject. Anything car related is a bloodbath, way beyond the RTFM of some groups, some can just be brutal. I belong to a Chevy group and some music related groups, instruments and shit, but I’ve joined many for a week or less. Hop into a group about cars… good luck… depending on what type of people in there but damn it can get rough. Funny, funny as hell sometimes, but bullies can be hilarious at times. That sucks. When you’re getting bullied by someone that’s actually funny while doing it. Weird to get punched or wedgied while your bully has set-ups, punchlines, and impeccable timing. Mom jokes are usually a great opener for a bully. I love mom jokes.
I tend to get up early, I think that goes with getting older. Looking at the dog napping on my knee brings a slight bit of playful jealousy to my mind just watching him breathe and then as fast as that he heard something and was awake. He’s a good boy. I’d hate to think of where my life would be without a dog. I wouldn’t sleep as well. I’m 50 and I still get a little scared at night. “what was that?” going through my head. I’ve seen too many movies, news stories, documentaries… look dogs are great for walks, sitting on the couch, playing with outside, but also just to be able to fucking sleep a little without waking up to every fucking noise. It’s like there’s no break from the worrying. There’s always something to worry about. A dog takes away so many worries. “What was that noise?” The dog seems fine… his eyes become a litmus test. But then you have to worry about the dog, but those thoughts are best to be explored when the moment demands it and really not much before then. Plenty of time later.
Music creation can be extremely rewarding. I don’t know any full songs on guitar, but I know some cool parts to songs… a riff of this… a chord of that… it’s enough to feel kind of bad ass for a minute. It works amazingly well for a short-term good mood boost. I’ve enjoyed every groove box or drum machine that I’ve touched, but I’ve sold the vast majority of them. I’m not a collector… I can’t afford to be a collector. I might mess with one for a month, week, day, year, two years and then sell it. I usually make a few bucks, but not much more to be honest. I’m not moving the type of volume or quantity of gear for profit really… just a short-term relationship with a neat guitar pedal or low-level sampler, drum machine, but my experience with these things and seeing what works for me has been worth it. Trying to develop musically is difficult when you’re a hater. I don’t like most of my music. I like a bit of this or maybe how I did something on a track, but I love the process. I love that there’s still so much to learn and that I can do it all by myself.
I’m sure you’ve heard the Dick Clark quote that goes kind of like “music is the soundtrack to our past… or to our memories” or fucking something close to that. It’s true. That can be good and bad. Songs can trap moments with them… almost like a weird time capsule or Hellraiser box… filled with who the fuck knows. A song can bring a smile or an eventual flood of emotions either happy or sad.
I’m deactivating as much social media as possible. Well, I’m deactivating it for a while. Or at least the ones that are just poison for my sanity. FB and Nextdoor. I feel like I’m doing ok. I’m fine, but with a slight bit of not fine. “Everything is good”, but I feel like things being good is surrounded by a glass bubble and on the outside of that glass bubble is an infinite amount of space occupied by “everything is not good”. It’s fragile. I’m working hard to try to strengthen that. Eating right, trying to get sleep, but I’m getting a little less than usual.
I went out and saw some art. At night… ahh yeah. It was an outdoor thing with art for sale that had price tags that were out of my budget. Like the tag itself. Couldn’t afford the tag right now. Ha ha the ebb and flow of life. Getting through the pandemic it feels, I’ve had the funky cold moderna shot twice and will miss that joke immensely. Funky cold moderna… I’ve been trying to be positive as I mentioned above. I’m doing good, but I’m having to keep myself from dwelling on the past, which is difficult when doing this… but I like writing. And I’ve missed it. But it can take its toll due to the nature of memories. Time can fuck with your head or can really clear the clouds away where the reality of the former situation becomes clearer. How nice you were one day… or how truly mean a comment was that you might have said to a person or 2… in front of 200 other people… while being on stage. Some people can gloss over their past actions or indiscretions but mine haunt me like a motherfucker. It’s awful. A lot of the memories that play in my head day after day are bad little comments that I’ve made to people or times that I’ve fucked something up. That happens a lot and honestly I don’t know if everybody else has that much of a negative loop of self-hating content consisting of past times where they were the bully in a verbal sense. I miss stand up, but I don’t miss the atmosphere and culture of it. I don’t miss who I became when I was getting ready for a show, during, or afterwards. I do miss feeling that special. The temporary love from a stranger that doesn’t know your name, but is wanting to buy you a drink because you made them laugh. I really miss being told by a stranger that I’m good at something. Maybe that was something about school that I liked. I haven’t really thought about it until now.
Oh yeah… I’m leaving FB and Nextdoor. FB is toxic as fuck. Rowdy Rebel is right about computers man. No shit. What he says can be applied in different scenarios, but holy fuck I’m tired of FB. I look at my feed and its filled with comments that friends of mine have made on different opposing viewpoint pages, groups, whatever the case may be. So, now I get a brief snippet of their argument or debate on whatever the fuck it might be… political usually… and both way off base… according to me (not an expert) then I get trapped into reading, get pissed off and find myself having an internal argument, in my own head mind you… with someone from the FB chat that I’m not even part of… but now my imagination is going wild, I’m in a fantasy debate with two people, one that I’ve never met and now Oprah is moderating? What the fuck and how did this happen? And please remember this is all just in my head… mental theater that is written, directed, and produced my myself in my cranium. Fuck… yeah so Oprah is making me give up FB. Good fuck. What is wrong with me…?
Oh, Nextdoor… got to GIVE that shit up. Holy fuck I hate Nextdoor. It’s nothing but sadness, madness, stupidity and a few nice posts about dogs finding their way home. I’ll give ND that for sure… it is like a fucking Disney movie sometimes… Lady and the Tramp type of shit, but… that is the outlier. Nextdoor is filled with hate, small mindedness, awful fighting, and abandoned dogs… maybe your neighborhood is different, but holy fuck I just can’t take the arguing anymore… Honestly, I don’t want that shit in my brain. I don’t want to know the political thoughts of my neighbors or what they wanted to share… every ten minutes, of what they’re interested in… I like my neighbors to smile and wave if they want to while I’m walking my dog. That’s it. Well, if they have a dog and it’s nice, cute, and gets along with my dog they can butt sniff and we can chat about their flowers or yard or whatever college team is represented in their front yard by a banner, flag, gnome, bumper sticker… I’ll find something to break the ice while my dog starts to poop. I’ll be picking up brown eggs left by my fuzzy bunny while scanning like The Usual Suspects movie… looking for something… oh, you went to Tech? My brother… blah blah blah… did you ever go to Fat Dawgs? Blah blah… speaking of fat dawgs I better get this little guy on the rest of his walk…
I want that relationship with my neighbors. That or just nothing. No talking. That’s cool as fuck to. ND sounds cool when you first start using it. Get to know your neighbors… community… fuck that shit…
I’m just going to take some time away from FB and ND for a while. Probably never go back to ND, but we’ll see. Having so much information about friends and neighbors allows for this magnified micro judgement to occur, but it’s really not accurate. The accuracy is dependent of the information. The information is just comprised of posts from friends and neighbors. Can friends and neighbors articulate their true feelings in an effective way? Probably not. I know that I can’t a lot of the time. We all spew shit from time to time I think.
I have so much to write about and I want to get back to some San Diego, working at The Comedy Store, Ocean Beach Comedy type of stories but I also don’t want this post to go on forever.
Holy fuck I found a tiny kitten trying to cross a stretch of road that is usually quite busy… there was a weird lull in the traffic as I saw a piece of black plastic bag, or maybe one of those small, really small black plastic shopping bags that get handed out by the clerks at a head shop right after they pack the bowl or pipe in a paper bag rolled up around it, maybe some tape to attached the very end of the rolled up paper bag with the pipe inside for there to be a seal, then the pipe inside the paper bag is placed in the small black plastic bag. I thought I might have seen one of those crossing the road, but then as I got closer it looked like a rat. “Holy fuck, a rat” I was thinking to myself… “even in the nice areas” I think again. Then a car almost hits the rat… I turn and glance over but it’s not a rat… it’s a little, tiny, teeny, kitten. It has tiny teeth and can bite the fuck out of a nipple. Probably the nipple of a bottle also… ha ha I kid… I kid… no, she / he (not sure) is bottle feeding but has tiny teeth. I saw that it was a kitten and I turned my truck around as fast as I could… stopped the truck diagonally intentionally blocking two lanes of traffic. Now, I was going to grab the kitty… I grabbed it off the street and it hissed at me, I laughed a little, saw its eyes and knew that I had a new kitten. “Do you have a towel?”
I look over to the left and there’s a car slowly stopping, but not really. “Do you have a towel” and from inside this well taken care of, but just regular maintenance, cheapest oil changes, fading paint older Mazda 626… 90s model. It’s only still on the road because she has always paid for the regular maintenance to be done, cheapest tires, drove slowly, and took the bus mostly… biked around town when she could probably. Low miles, but sun damage as if it had been parked outside of an apartment complex since it was new… maybe it was a graduation present from grad school many years before… the face without makeup or features that I can remember, but with a welcoming sense that exuded an empathetic aura, as if she had been the first responder to a kitty in the street situation before… she also seemed busy… on the way to a meeting of fellow whatever she did… artsy… maybe… I’ll never know. She handed me the towel and I wrapped it around my new friend. In all of the stress, in all of the chaos, the moment of trash, rat, tiny kitten face I had forgotten that I was depressed. I had forgotten that I was busy being down about what I had thought was going to be happening in my life right now. I’m still working towards a business goal that has a good chance of failing as businesses with very little capital tend to do, but I’m going to enjoy the moment whatever it is… because it will be gone and will be turned into a memory. I’d rather remember failure than remember me be too scared to fail. I should have that down by now. Debating whether to proofread. Probably just listen to it.
Isabelle is her name. My new cat… kitten. Tiny kitten meow meow face might be said every once in a while. I love making up little songs that have my pets names in them, and I guess that most pet owners do. Isabelle is 4-5 weeks old and eating a mother -babycat food regimen. The vet recommended it. This tiny little kitten face looking up at me has been really good… therapeutic. I react well to tiny kitten depression therapy it seems. I’ve been remembering and thinking about San Diego and Ocean Beach a lot in the past week, but then Isabelle happened. Now, I have this tiny, helpless, kitty… but not for long, I mean I’m keeping her but she will grow up soon and then become a spoiled demanding kitty. That’s kind of the plan so as I’m getting meowed at several times a day by the other cats that I’ve turned into family members, I’ll try to remember that this was the goal… to spoil a kitty that needed to be spoiled… they had already been through enough really scary shit for a little meow meow face.