Damn Rolling Stones

"You can't always get what you want. But if try sometimes you might get what you need" If you don't know the song, crawl out from under the rock you've been living and catch up on pop culture before the 1990's. For the rest of you, I'll get to the point. This song blows. More precisely, the lyrics blow. I have been in a funk living in a life that is nothing like what I want. I have all but given up up on what I want to settle for for what I've got. I've accepted the hand that I've been dealt and have every intention to bluff the shit out of it until the end. So I realize that I will not get what I want. So how is this exsistence anything close to what I need? Do I need to be unemployed? Do I need to see my saving gone and my checking account dwindling to nothing? Do I need to feel constantly streessed and exhausted? Do I need to wake up every morning wishing that I hadn't? Do I need to have my closest friends be fictional television characters? Is this "life" really what I need? Go to hell Mick Jaggers.

Something New

There are not many things in this screwed up world that really make me feel alive. For instance, there's the first big wave that crashes over my body and knocks me right on my ass and makes me take notice that no matter how big my head may get or how powerful I may have felt, the ocean is a shit load bigger and more powerful than any man. It's better than a cold shower first thing in the morning to get the senses going. Then there's the quiet wonder of being alone in the forest with nothing but the birds and the leaves as my soundtrack. I may be a completely modern man, surrounded by LCD TVs, game systems and computers, but when I am in the woods with no fellow humans meddling in my bliss I feel that primitive connection to the world that all the electrons and circuit boards steal away. Today I stumbled upon a new one. I replaced the brakes on my bike today. This required a test drive to make sure everything was assembled correctly and that no air snuck into the lines. It was threatening rain and the forecast was calling for thunderstorms, but I decided to chance it and sneak in a quick test ride before the heavens opened up. After a few starts and stops around the neighborhood I decided to hit a more open road and get up a bit of speed to really set the pads. So I headed on the road a few miles, turned around and headed for home proud of myself having correctly changed the brakes on my bike for the first time. I was maybe a mile and a half from home when my luck with the weather ran out. I was cruising at roughly 60-miles-an-hour in wholly inappropriate riding attire. Namely tennis shoes, shorts, a t-shirt and my trust Icon helmet. It was, after all, a quick test ride and I didn't want the hassle of donning the fell leathers. And like a brick wall I hit a sheet of rain, hail and win that would make Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton pay attention. I was soaked head to toe in seconds and pepper with precipitation that felt like innumerable needles being shot into my skin. After a minute of "oh shits" I had a strange thought pop into my helmeted head, "I can't remember the last time I played in the rain!" And suddenly "oh shit" became "woo hoo." I could feel everything drop string my skin, I could feel the spray off the rear tire up my back, I could feel the growing puddles in my shorts legs (from the rain, gutter mind)- I could feel every nerve of my continuously aging body alive with electrical energy. It was, in a word, awesome.

My Summer So Far

My summer has been crazy (at least for my otherwise boring life). I've been working my ass off everyday trying to finish up a documentary I'm editing for CSU/STO. And I was able to squeeze in a roadtrip to Richmond, VA with The Cuz and DLee. I'd share all the great stories about the beer bong fun in a Day's Inn on VA Beach or the 5 mile drunken crawl through Cary Town, but why make this blog entertaining now?

How I Spent My Easter

Grandpa has been having light-headed spells that the doctors originally tried to blame on medication reactions. So last week they had him wear one of those take home over night heart monitor things. Turns out that his heart (in the short 24-hour period he wore it) had actually stopped twice for approximately four seconds each time. For those of you not acquainted with human anatomy, when the heart stops it is a very bad thing. So off we go to Mercy Medical Center in Canton for a pace maker. This is a small device planted under the skin with leads that, well lead, to the heart and basically tell it to "wake the fuck up!" when it decides it wants another four second nap. It is now Sunday, Easter Sunday, and I am at hospital passing time with Grandpa, the Twins and some random Western on AMC. We're having a nice chuckle at the lame little Easter Basket handed out by the hospital. I can best describe them as what the Easter Bunny would hand out if he/she/it worked for WKYC or for one of big three. It was tiny, didn't have enough grass in it to make a joint out of and contained a whopping five jelly beans. During the discussion, Grandpa complains that he is feeling a bit light-headed and lays back in his nifty recline-o-matic hospital bed. Has anyone ever thought about those beds before? It's not like they have a brand new bed for each new patient. They just hose them down (I hope), throw on some crisp laundered sheets (again, I hope) and throw the next victim onto it. Those beds have been used more than Rosie O'Donnell's vibrator. Think of all the nasty fluids and death those things have seen. (Or the afore mentioned "personal massager" for that matter) Anyhoo, hopping back to my fun Easter Adventure... So as soon as Grandpa lays back two nurses and a doctor come hauling ass into the room with panic on their faces and a portable defibrillator in their hands. Neither of these things is somethings you really want to see in hospital. In fact, I'm pretty sure that if there exists a list of things you never want to see in hospital, those would be near the top- probably even above projectile vomit and explosive diarrhea. Turns out that as we were sitting there he had had a heart attack. The hospital staff type people were sitting at the nurses station and happened to see that his heart monitor had gone a bit dodgy. Proving again that the news lies. There was no chest pain, no shooting pain in the arm, no shortness of breath- NOTHING. Just said he was feeling light-headed and continued the conversation. Damn good thing that those hospital people were keeping a close eye on those monitors. Next time you're at a hospital and feel like getting annoyed at the gaggle of nurses hanging out at their little nurses station- DON'T. Well, the "cardiac incident" put the pace maker plan in a holding pattern and threw a heart catheterization into the approach pattern. To make my long post less long: Monday was the heart cath. which was clean, Tuesday was the pace maker and Wednesday he was home. He's fine now. Sore as hell from the surgery and has already attempted to raise his left arm above his head (one of the things on his to-do-list, also known as the list of restricts from the hospital). Needles to say, but I have now added Easter to my growing list of holidays that I will no longer celebrate for the reasons the rest of the world does.

Bartender

There are girls who spend way too many years behind a bar. They were once beautiful and sought after, now they are desperate and sad. They have an aroma of dashed dreams, stale beer and acrid cigarette smoke. Their outfits give the appearance of being carefully selected by a blind mute with no sense of direction and their costume jewelery looked good on Ally Sheedy 20 years ago. At closing time you'll see them obviously flirting with whatever soon to be not lowly dreck that was sad enough to make it all the way to closing time. She'll pretend he's who she wishes he was and swallow her pride and his wad and dream this is not her life. What she tries to ignore is the aching in the back of her mind that futilely tries to remind her that she was meant for so much more. The obstacles of fun times and her father's curious drunken hands diverted her path. Now she has more than lived up up to their expectations and fallen well short of what she was meant to be. Life will be hard and sad for her as she tries to push the ever heavier days by. She will spend all her remaining sunsets behind the bar pretending and the unseen sunrises with the latest hole filler trying to convince herself that this is how it is supposed to be.

Logorific

So I found the time to design a logo. I went with old old wood-cut look. I figure it makes a nice contrast to the very high-tech type nature of what I do. That and I just like old-timey shit. (If a border shows up, blame Blogger. It's not supposed to be there.)

Just call me Bill Gates minus the money

So I started my own company. Not for any high or mighty reason, just to make tax season next year a little easier. I've been a busy unemployed boy editing a Cleveland State University documentary about their run in the NCAA Championship, so I haven't had a chance to design the site or even the logo yet. (If any creative types out there want to volunteer a cool logo on black feel free.) It does have a name though, Escape Digital Productions. Pretty fancy, huh? I'll keep y'all posted when the logo is done and the site is up until then I'll be staring at an Avid with a slowly growing hatred and disgust for all thing college basketball.