Yo my wackazz playa, next time you tip a 40, pour one out for two fallin hommies from the 100 acre wizzoods.

Tigger and Piglet or the actors who portrayed them I should say, both passed away this week within a day of each other. Don't act all cool, you know you loved those books and cartoons when you were a kid. Mourn ya till I join ya.

It seems like life comes in fits and spurts of complication and lately, despite having a lighter load minus school work, I’ve been swamped. Part of it has to do with soul searching. It seems that I always have some new obstacle to tackle, even when some other areas fall into place. Perhaps things never get settled or content. Maybe when they do human nature makes us kick up some dirt and cloud the waters.


Right now I’m deep into the quest to figure out what I want to be when I grow up and with 30 less than 9 months away, I’m feeling the pressure. Teaching still keeps coming up as the top contender. I’ve been one to give an honest go at things such as writing and being a DJ. I may not have been the wacky morning zoo guy, but I did land a respectable DJ job at a corporate alternative station and I have been published a few times nationally. Neither is amazingly impressive nor would I be called the “King of All Media” but I have done enough to say I gave it a “go.” So now the last step is teaching. I will not rehash the old horror story of my first experience, but lets just say I have unfinished business working in education and I’m not ready to admit defeat just yet.


The other thing that has been on my mind lately is my SUV. I’ll be careful not too go off too much on the thing, because I may not be able to afford to get rid of it. I have just been driving a lot more lately and with gas expected to reach $3 a gallon by summers end, I’m really getting hit hard. It isn’t a gas guzzler by any means, but if I get the chance to trade the thing in for a manual Civic that gets nearly 40 MPG, then I will do it. Wish me luck, because my wallet and my conscience makes me regret ever buying the thing. I would hate to think my lifestyle is contributing to our actions in the Middle East, but the truth is every last one of us depends on oil to live the way we do. Personally, I just feel an obligation to suckle the OPEC teat a little less these days.

This is just sad. I don't see what roping someone up and putting them in the basement would do for demons anyway. Check out the priest. He is suppose to be 29! He's lived a lot rougher than I have.

Great song form The Postal Service with a video directed by the man behind "Napoleon Dynamite."

Check out this week's Onion.
Very clever indeed.

Wow, I didn’t even know this was debatable.

Scary thought. It seems like these days we have the worst of communism (IE minimal individual rights) with the worst of capitalism (supporting big business at all costs). Now our good friends at Wal-Mart can decide to build on your family’s farm and there is jack you can do about it. Is it just me, or is this place going to hell in a hand basket? I guess there could be a positive side too it. Maybe all these rich folks that supported the measure will find their neighbor’s house demolished and a nudity bar in its place. Better yet, maybe they’ll get their cul-de-sac mowed down for a Bennigans.

I guess I’ve been slack on the blog. Sorry. Seems like I am forever apologizing for it. Work has just been somewhat busy, my personal life is busy and of course, I’m just lazy by nature. Speaking of which, I’m finding the battle to not be a fat a$$ (or as big of a fat a$$) to be a loosing one. I gave up soda a while back and started avoiding sweets and I gained weight. Screw you Dr. Atkins! It seems like there are so many messages about what is the best diet that you can probably find justification for eating or not eating damn near anything.

I’ve never been skinny, but I’m taking a firm stand that I don’t want to get any fatter. I’m in the last size pants J Crew sells on the rack (36). That doesn’t exactly mean I’m morbidly obese, but I’d like to think of myself as the kind of person who could buy clothes off an upscale rack. Perhaps I’ll get a muumuu and commence to gaining another 85 lbs. Then my health insurance can pay for gastric bypass and I’ll probably score disability in the meantime.

I'm not feeling too talkative today. So enjoy a great cover from someone who died too early.

In the universe of bright ideas, this star is dimming. Somewhere along the way I decided to give up caffeine. That somewhere was yesterday when I awoke from a horrible nights sleep. Lots of nightmares and tossing and turning and about 5 hours of restless rest. So I woke up and declared caffeine my enemy. I took inventory of the day. I drank two cups of coffee the morning before. Had a Diet Coke with lunch and two glasses of ice tea with dinner. It was a pretty average caffeinated day. Yet it screwed with my sleep. Maybe the fact I had the two teas at a late dinner at Carrabas finished me off. Maybe that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Whatever the impetus was, I knew I slept poorly from drinking too much caffeine. So I have sworn the stuff off.


Anyone want to take bets how long this will last? Right now my typing is shaky and I have to keep going back to correct it. My mind isn’t as focused and of course my good solid nervous twitch is missing. That will probably translate to fewer calories burned. As I write this, I wonder what’s so funny about coffee, tea and understanding? My brain is like goo today.

Suddenly I feel less crazy for wanting to name my son Obi One.

Hmmm, this throws a rock in the gears of our "Culture of Life."


Looks like she was brain dead after all. Hmm. I guess it could have gone either way, because no one could be 100% certain. I just think it is ironic (I would say funny, but this isn't funny) that the same folks that lined up around the corner to "Save" this vegetative woman will:
Torture prisoners against every wartime accord ever written (they did after all call it a "war" on terror)

Execute prisoners without giving them every exhaustible avenue to prove their innocence (oh yeah, this is the same court system that let Michael Jackson walk yesterday, despite the fact it’s obvious to everyone he is a molester.)

The same so called "culture of life" is causing death and destruction in Iraq. How do they do it you ask? By sending our own young people over to serve as sitting ducks for suicide bombers.

This could go on all day. I just feel vindicated because I believe in my heart of hearts this woman was kept alive artificially, but was just a vegetable. I hope her spirit left that body years ago, because making someone suffer like she did is the cruelest act anyone could inflict, especially someone claiming allegiance to a culture of LIFE and the ultimate act of playing God. Having faith in God doesn't mean you get to speak for him and it certainly doesn’t mean you have the right to act on his behalf.

see also the Taliban
see also the Crusades
see also the Holocaust
see also the Salem witch trials.

Hopefully, as a society we are starting to come to our senses instead of supporting everything that gets labeled "patriotic" or "Christian." Try reading the Bible yourself for once instead of believing everything Pastor Ron and our C student president tells you. I guarantee you the Jesus you see there would more likely be behind a protest sign than a grenade launcher.

Michael Jackson is free.

I’m in awe. My jaw just dropped because if his prior victims could have testified, there’s no doubt in my mind he would be in jail. They couldn’t. The other accusers (some we know about some we don’t) took settlements and were sworn never to speak of their abuse. No one can slight them though. It is easy to point at some 20 something guy and tell him he has a duty to testify. The fact of the matter is when these adults where children, they along with their parents made a decision to take a settlement and not pursue the charges they planed to bring on Jackson. Now as adults, they could be prosecuted themselves for testifying against Jackson.

Who can blame them for their decisions? Look at the current trial and imagine being a child and going up in front of all those people to talk about something horrible that happened to you. YOU have to prove the person who abused you as guilty, instead of the other way around. In the end it will always be your word against theirs. What kind of message does this send to children who are watching this and trying to decide if they should tell someone about some adult who sexually abused them? If for some reason you stumble across this blog and are wondering if you should take a chance and tell an adult, please do. Find someone you trust (which is hard when you have been abused) and tell them what has happened. This isn’t your burden to carry alone and you did nothing wrong. There are adults out there who can and will help you. If the abuse is in your family, tell a teacher or school counselor. It isn’t easy, but it is far easier than carrying this secret around the rest of your life.

Finally, someone is taking a stand on the "patriot" act. Of course, while everyone is distracted, Big Bird will be forced into a life or prostitution.

Great American novel here I come!

Seriously, I have no excuse now! Yesterday I turned in what could very well be the last piece of academic fodder I squeeze out of this poor tired soul of mine. The masters is done, or at the very least out of my hands. I’m wrapping up the masters with somewhere around a 3.7. Not to shabby for a kid who was almost held back in kindergarten. See what happens kids when you stop eating paste?



OK, so now I’m on to life goal number two…write the novel. As with most artists, once you start to settle down with someone you want to spend your life with, it zaps the creative mojo right out of you.


See also David Gray
See also Dave Matthews


Guys really don’t do a whole lot unless it is in pursuit of two things…sex and food. Great art, most wars and thousands of inventions were brought to life because some guy was trying to get laid. I’m not saying women don’t contribute to all of the above, because they do. Their motives are often more benevolent. I have 6 months of livable residual body fat and an awesome girlfriend. So what is left to motivate me?

I hope, should I ever become a key player in the future, I’ll send my future self or at the very least a cyborg back to the present to prod me into actually doing something, because I have a couch and a case of morbid obesity with my name all over it.


I ate the lotus.

So what is going to happen to the Gloved one today? It seems so weird that he has come to this point. I remember as a kid always hearing Michael Jackson on the radio and wondering why, if this guy is so loved, no one admits to owning his music. After “Thriller” of course. Before that, he actually was good and black and normal. Maybe the guy has been a freak all along and once he got the fundage to do whatever he wanted, he flipped out. The beauty of the story is that he represents the American dream. Where else can a boy from a small town and a huge and very poor family grow up to own his own theme park. He came out of his mother a black boy and will likely be laid to rest a white woman. If he does manage to get out of this current situation (I claim no side on this. I hate pedophiles, but we don’t honestly know that he is one) here is a short list of things MJ needs to get to work on:

1) Admit you’re gay. Embrace it. Dude, no one cares.
2) Stop sharing your bed with anyone under 18. It is just creepy.
3) Get your old nose back. It just looked a lot better.
4) Throw on some SPF 45 and leave the ranch once in a while.
5) Accept that you never had a childhood and get over it
6) Then be a parent to the kids you have. They don’t need a fairy godmother
7) Make an album that doesn’t suck, maybe get the Dust Brothers or Rick Rubin to help you out
8) Sell the Beatles catalogue to Paul. You really screwed him on that one.
9) Grow the fro back
10) Donate Neverland ranch to some charity group for kids and get a real house
11) Eat something. Dude, you weigh less than a middle school aged girl.
12) Have LL Cool J show you the weight room
13) Stop dressing like you are the attendant at a Hitler youth carousel ride
14) Call Webster and tell him you're sorry. Call Mack too

Perhaps this will serve as a warning to any young people who are thinking about having a smoke. I started when I was 16. I remember buying my first pack because A) I looked old enough to pass for “legal” and buy some and B) all the older and presumably cooler kids where doing it at the grocery store where I worked. The funny thing is it never dawned on me that these guys I looked up to where 18-22 and still, for the most part, lived with their parents and bagged groceries for a living. Hardly role models, but in your teens you don’t always look up to the best people.

So I smoked, a lot. I smoked when the teachers were not looking, and I even smoked when I was playing golf on my highschool team. I smoked on field trips and I even went out to my car and hotboxed a Marlboro or two between classes. I thought I was cool.

Somewhere around 22, the world turned on me. Smoking was pretty much banned everywhere and cigarettes where approaching $3 a pack. So I spent the next 5 years quitting on and off until a couple of months before I turned 27. Then I quit and I’m proud to say I have had maybe 2 cigarettes since then and I regretted them both. Yet here I sit, two years smoke free, wanting a cigarette. Today has been a rough day. I’m Neurotic By nature (You Down With OCD? Yeah, You Know ME) and today has been one of those days where I would like nothing better than to go down to the 7-11, by a pack of Reds and chew the damn filter off ever one of the 20 cigarettes in the pack and smoke them real slow.

Ok, I’m smart enough to know they would taste like the sweaty ass of a marathon runner, but the fantasy is so ingrained in my head how fantastic that first blast of nicotine would feel as it courses through my veins. I would be light headed and maybe a little winded, but it would be worth it. Worth it that is for the 30 seconds before regret kicked in. Not only regret, but disappointment and an outright sense of worthlessness. If I wanted that, I’d go buy a bear claw from the vending machine right now and engulf it. In fact, that’s what I’ll go do. These days it seems to be more socially acceptable to weight 300 lbs than it is to smoke within 500 feet of any pinks lungs.

My uncle is a doctor and when we saw this lady on TV, he immediately diagnosed her as having a hyperactive thyroid.
That can sometimes cause mental issues as well. My unprofessional opinion is she is just crazy. Honestly, I don't understand why her fiancé is still standing by her. He must feel like a real fool for going on television and pleading for her life. Didn’t she say some brown people took her? As someone who has roamed the mean streets, I can tell you suburban Atlanta is a scary place. No wonder she ran away.

Be on the look out for these terrorists. it is only through working together that we can defeat them.

It must be cartoon wav day. This is from "Family Guy" showing how two Smurfs are force to converse.

Someone giving you a hard time? Snatch their a$$ up in a bear trap!

I’m not proud to say I watched this, but…Anyone watch that “Hit Me Baby One More Time” show last night? Basically, it takes washed up artists and has them come back and do their hit and then a current pop hit. Finally the audience votes on the winner. Arrested Development landed the big prize and decidedly so. They did a rendition of that song “How Far is Heaven” that I thought was great. I was also happy to see their spiritual advisor is still making his way around the world with the band. Maybe I’m partial in my judgment of how great they are because I actually met Speech once and really liked him.

As a side note, Tiffany still has quit a rack.


So this morning I woke up with the cloud of depression hanging over me. Honestly, it has been creeping up on me for days. Yesterday I hid from the world as best I could. Sometimes you just have to sort through things yourself and I was definitely at that point. So today, of all things to help me get a handle on things, my car stereo was making me a mix. I had it on random and out of the dozens of albums worth of mp3s it could have played, it was picking the exact songs for me.

The most poignant moment for me was when I drove by a beautiful field of wild flowers. Then…I noticed the sign. “Luxury Office Condos Coming December 2005.” It was just starting to sink in that this beautiful field of wildflowers would be an office condo complex before the year was out. Instead of playing host to the sun happy flowers that make our oxygen, it would instead become the new home away from home for hundreds of miserable yuppies who hate their job. I have become said yuppie. Then the wise stereo played “No Suprises” by Radiohead.

The funny thing is not 5 minutes later I was in line at Starbucks. I appreciate the irony of this. Of course, I NEVER go to Starbucks. I just needed a coffee fix fast, because the usual organic awakening wasn’t happening. Despite never going there, they somehow elected to write my name “Jon” on the cup. How they knew I was a “no H” Jon is beyond me. As I was standing there waiting for my drink, I began to notice that through all the corporate planning that went into the place, it did still have a genuine hint of the coffee shops in Seattle. Despite Kenny G’s influence, there was a glimmer of King county and rainy days and the spirit that made the chronically depressed produce great music.

As I got back into my yuppie box to finish my commute, what pops onto the stereo but “Heart-Shaped Box” by Nirvana. For a second, I contemplated making the journey that scared me so much when I was 18. Back then, I wanted to move to Seattle and play bass in a grunge band. Now grunge is dead, I’m almost 30 and despite owning one for years, my bass skills would hardly qualify me for a slot in a local middle school punk band. So much for the dream I guess.

She eyes me like a Pisces.

I guess we all get old. check this out.

Guy from that "Enter the Fist" Kung fu comedy


Trent reznor these days