Fixin' life

A couple of weeks ago Dennis and I drove fourty-five minutes to a place alcoholic poets only write about in long sonnets. A place known only in decrepit texts, weathered and torn by time.

Unrequited burgerlove will lead you down inordinate paths. A treasure map marked with a giant red 'X' pinpointed our destination. It lay in wait for us in Waldorf Maryland.

Then, there it was -- like an oasis of my heart, there it was -- surrounded on all sides by the unclean. Roy Rogers, free-standing and unsoiled by progress. A choir of light beamed from the heavens.

In the beginning of this journey we had made a pact, my compatriot and I. To not stop believing, to never give up, to reach our "fixin' bar." We had embarked on a time-warp to the wild west of burgercraft and come from it, stronger. With a holster of fries on our hips and a cup full of pickles in hand, we mounted trusty steeds and rode off into the pastel sunset.

That day, burger patties rolled like tumble weed across the open plain. There really was nothing like it.

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Bandwidth for days

I just got my bandwidth allotment upped to 50gigs a month and I don't have to pay any extra for it! In celebration I decided to throw up a new splash page for www.petyonuggets.com. The new page now houses links to such wonderful things as my resume (!excitement!) and our project greenlight videos (!1,2,3!), as well as links to this place here, and my deviant page.

Fancy, I know.
Please, for the good of mankind, try to contain yourself.

I also decided to up the finished version of The Secret Room, the one with the redone sound and full credits. All videos are now of a higher quality as well, meaning their file sizes are larger and the videos themselves are more respectable in dimensions.

True, this is all shameless self-promotion but what the hay.

And as always, there is a permanent link to 'teh nuggets' over there (-->) in the sidebar... that I have no doubt no one pays attention to.

In other news, there was a very special trip to a restaurant with the initials R.R. that i'm excited to share. More with that later.

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My Batmobile muse

I've been keeping busy. Doing some real photography and not just drunk stuff in bars. It's been longer than I can remember that I've had someone beautiful in my life that would actually let me take pictures of her. She's pretty amazing to say the least, even if sometimes, she doesn't think so herself.

There are a few more shots up on teh nets but I'm not telling you where they are. I will not link them here because, well, she's in her underwear. Heehee. If you know me, they shouldn't be that hard to find.

We had fun but now she's in Vegas and I miss her immensely...
More than I could ever hope to express here.

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Little. Chocolate. Different.

There are few things on this mortal plain that my powers of conviction are useless against. Good Mexican food, sex, french fries, pepperoncini peppers, hotdogs, a new videogame, DVDs, chocolate milk -- sure those things are hard to resist, but if called upon, I can muster up the strength needed in each of those situations.

I've heard the siren call of the wanton sea-maiden, the lady in the lake, temptation incarnate. I know it well. She's beautiful and she'll drag you to a gruesome death into the suffering of the briny deep. It's hard, but still, I can resist that.

I cannot however resist little, chocolate, donuts in the work vending machine.

You know the ones. They come in the perfect sleeve of six. Six mini waxy donut coatings leaving chocolate rubbing on the inside of a perfectly transparent cellophane cocoon. Waiting, waiting to trans-mutate into something wonderful inside the warm internals of your husk.

How they got there -- in that machine -- is a mystery. Overnight the travels of a wayward stock-hound found his or her path to the depths of my subconscious. Knowing my every thought. My every desire.

I guess my mistake was walking past the malevolent contraption of self-indulgence in the first place. I should know better. There is nothing in its eternal fire of complex carbohydrates and saturated fat that one -- in his or her darkest hour -- could even rationalize as healthy.

God Damnit!

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Hullabaloo

My birthday comes the day after Groundhog's Day, February the 3rd. I've always associated the two. The ritual of watching a rodent come out of the ground -- seeing whether or not he's going to be afraid of his shadow -- it all seems apropos around this time.

Not unlike the movie of the same name, this past year has shown me a lot. Everyday I would wake up and feel stuck. Stuck in the same day over and over again, until one day, I get it right. Only for me, it didn't mean turning around and finding the one I love -- it meant being left behind. It was the kick in the pants I needed to start living.

This year, on my birthday, I saw my shadow and I wasn't afraid. I was embraced by friends and family alike. And maybe, if Punxsutawney Phil was greeted the same way I was, he wouldn't have been so quick to bury his head back in that hole.

These people in my life, they're irreplaceable. They're everything.

For me, right now, the harsh winter is over.

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Friday is my birthday.

And I love this poem, so it's getting posted.

40 poems in 40 years and 40 mules thrown in for good measure

Another century older,
my, my, where does the time go?
I can remember the good old days
when PM meant Post Mortem
and BC was short for Beelzebub's Crabcakes,
and I lived with 40 mules in the same house
with 40 wives
with 40 children each,
and when you killed somebody
they stayed dead
oh, the sweetbreads of nostalgia!

Now all it means to have a birthday
is another year facing the same failures:
children who never call,
40 ex-wives who call all the time
because the support payment's late,
insurance men who call
just to make sure the premiums keep coming
and to see if I'm maybe slipping
just a little bit,
and the people from the IRS
or the IRA
(I never could keep them straight)
who threaten me with nearsighted lawyers
with bad breath
and guns
and the lady who calls night and day
about that subscription to Time magazine
I ordered but haven't paid in years,
I tell them all the same thing:

It's not the years that give me chest pains,
chest pains and arthritis
and lumbago
and pins and needles so bad
I call them Caesar's spears
it's all the damn phone calls
the phone calls and the birthdays.

If I could afford it, I'd take a vacation,
by God I would,
someplace warm
with nude beaches
and a nightlife for when the sun goes down
and those fruity drinks with the umbrellas.

But who can afford it
when there's back rent
and taxes
and so many mouths to feed
and the goddamn phone ringing every five seconds,
who's got the time?

Maybe I should call in sick a day or two
make the old man take up the slack,
for a change.

Just lay in bed
all day long
and watch the news on TV,
nothing like a nice train wreck
or a double murder
to soothe the nerves
maybe the odd political debate,
or an old episode of Dark Shadows on cable,
even if it is
only a busyman's holiday
I could sure use a change of pace,
or maybe snuggle up with my 40 mules
and catch up on my reading.

Say,
I might even get to like this,
I might call in the next day too
and the one after that,
and the one after that,

don't tempt me.

- Craig T. Hathaway

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Grind

This morning I found a snail on my windshield. It's little tongue-like body sticking to the cold of the glass. A tiny shell that couldn't have measured more than a quarter of an inch nestled on it's back. Moving along, making an insignificant trail only visible if the sun hit it just right.

How it got there, I don't know. Uncharted territory for sure. Making it's way across what must have been -- in relation to us -- the expanse of the arctic tundra. To snails the earth must be like the universe, infinite. You're never going to see it all and you just have to accept it. If snails even have a concept of such things.

There are all these places I read about or see online or on TV, these countries and cities I've never been to. How do I know they really exist? Right now, to me, the world is too big. I need to go. Leave and come back with stories of foreign lands.

I decided to take him/her/it to work with me. I was going to help it expand it's horizons. Live vicariously. I'd let it go in the garden out front of my building. It's better than anything our apartment complex has to offer. Maybe it'll make friends with some DC snails. Who knows, we were going on an adventure, this was good for us. A mercy kidnapping.

I couldn't imagine what was going through it's little snail mind. New places, scents, scenery, location. Has it ever been in a car before? Is it happy? Sad? Scared? Packing up and leaving the only world you know for what will probably be ever is pretty heavy. Being taken somewhere and forced to make a new home for yourself. Making a new you. Unable to see loved ones ever again. Change man, it's a head trip.

Still, it's better than the whiteknuckled commute I make everyday, alone. Surrounded by assholes, going to a job that only fuels my unhappiness. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy.

And it dawned on me, this situation I'm in, I can't let her come back just for me. If she comes back this has to be for her, because she hates it and is home sick. It has to be made clear. She's doing her dream and that dream has nothing to do with the same route everyday. Traveling, that's what it's about. Being free and going on adventures. I can't be the one who ruins that. I'd never sleep at night.

I'll check on Carl at lunch. That's the snail's name. Carl.

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