A Comet Appears

We can blow on our thumbs and posture,
but the lonely is such delicate things,
the wind from a wasp could blow them,
into the sea,
with stones on their feet,
lost to the light and the loving we need.

Still to come,
the worst part and you know it,
there is a numbness,
in your heart and it's growing.

_ The Shins

Read more

Better than indifference.

It was hard not to give up. And I think some part of me wanted you to give up. Then I could go back to feeling like I’ve always felt: not good enough.

Not good enough. In life. As a son to my father. As a friend to my friends. As a lover to my lover.

It’s where I’m comfortable. It’s where I’ve accepted myself.

But you didn’t give up, even after the claims I made, stipulations, and accusations I put on our relationship. The things we said. Even after I tried my hardest to push you away, you stayed. You fought and didn’t quit. You stayed.

We are more than the stupid stuff we buy, the TVs, the meals, the toys and games. More than the places we go, the things we do. The good times we share, the quips we trade back and forth, the pillow talk. We are more than the sum of our parts.

We’re not perfect. But neither is anyone. And sometimes we fight just because feeling pain is better than indifference. Because sometimes our lives get boring, and being in this skin for some 90+ years can get old. But that is the strength of what we have. We are never too far gone that we can’t be hugged, or kissed. Held and loved. When one pushes, the other pulls closer.

Clawing, slobbering and cold, biting and growling in our darkest hour, there we are, standing in the blinding light of an open doorway. Not two silhouettes, but one.

Read more

I've been reading these.

"Martin Sloan, age thirty-six, vice-president in charge of media. Successful in most things but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives - trying to go home again. And also like all men perhaps there'll be an occasion, maybe a summer night sometime, when he'll look up from what he's doing and listen to the distant music of a calliope, and hear the voices and the laughter of the people and the places of his past. And perhaps across his mind there'll flit a little errant wish, that a man might not have to become old, never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth. And he'll smile then too because he'll know it is just an errant wish, some wisp of memory not too important really, some laughing ghosts that cross a man's mind, that are a part of the Twilight Zone."


"A word to the wise now to the garbage collectors of the world, to the curio seekers, to the antique buffs, to everyone who would try to coax out a miracle from unlikely places. Check that bottle you're taking back for a two-cent deposit. The genie you save might be your own. Case in point, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Castle, fresh from the briefest of trips into the Twilight Zone."


"One time in a million, a coin will land on its edge, but all it takes to knock it over is a vagrant breeze, a vibration or a slight blow. Hector B. Poole, a human coin, on edge for a brief time in the Twilight Zone."

Read more

Anime is capitalized.

"how much do you know about Anime?" A message stated, waiting inside my inbox.

Sent yesterday, it sat there overnight -- cramped up against the other bloated bits of spam and wine reviewer nonsense I receive at my work address. I have to ask myself: how much can one really know about anime? Was he in essence asking me if I was "cool... man?" Hey man, are you -- you know -- cooool?

"Enough," I reply. "Why do you ask?"

The addresser is a guy down in the mailroom. He shuffles around the FedEx shipments to various people in the office. He's got kids and a brand new non-ipod MP3 player. I like him, he's one of the people here I get along with. When he's in my office we usually discuss things of videogame nature sprinkled with music and a dash of technology. He's interested in the 360, in Ghost Recon. Black, Halo, Rainbow Six. Shooters are his deal, a topic on which I can expound. He knows, with me, to keep the sports talk to a minimum. I guess I just radiate an anti-sports cologne.

"you ever heard of Mezzo Forte?" He replies.

"No, is it any good?"

"hell yeah but there's supposed to be an uncut version of it but I cannot find it"

Doing a google search and popping up with a Wikipedia page it's no wonder the guy can't find it. It's Hentai. That's japanese cartoon porno for the uninitiated. Not really a work topic by any stretch, but I think it's great he felt he could come to me. Even if I had to be felt out first.

You cool man?

He's looking for the Japanese version though, the one you can't get over here. Since I know what he wants me to do without really asking me, I check the torrent sites -- well, the ones I can check at work anyways. A cursory search brings up nothing so I go over to AnimeKrazy. Sure enough, there it is, in all it's uncut glory, for $19.85.

"cool, I knew I came to the right person"

And out it comes, the reason for the seemingly random inquiry. I am, in this office, the man you go to when you need something done right. The man who knows how to get you things.

I love when something comes at me sideways and breaks up the day.

- Holdin' Caulfield

Read more

Child's Play Update:

This just made my day!

Via Penny Arcade

"Wednesday's Child's Play Charity Auction and Dinner was (I believe it is fair to say) ridiculously successful - photographs of the ridiculous success in progress may be discovered here. Powerful winds took out power to the office, making Kiko's update of the official bar difficult - we'll do it as soon as we're able to. But the new total, as of yesterday, now sits at $760,000. That's Earth Dollars, not shells or bottle caps. Yes, that's just this year. My hope is that we will top eight hundred thousand, because the rhetorical payload is simply too potent: Child's Play will have, officially, raised "millions" of dollars. Specifically, you know... two million. I was going to downplay that figure, but then I remembered that it was two million dollars.

(CW)TB out."

Read more

I am a tornado

I have a tendency to get so anxious and nervous and filled with dread, that I stir the shit a bit too vigorously and only make matters worse. This is my obsessive behavior. I get all worked up and feel the need to apply a salve to everything that in my compulsive tornado I don’t stop to look around at what I’m actually doing. I’m not making things better; I’m making them worse. I need for everyone to be happy so bad that I make myself unhappy in the process and thus produce an outcome that is opposite of my intensions. I desperately need to come out of my funk if I am going to hold on to the relationships that mean the most to me.

I fear that in my attempt to make everything right, I've made everything wrong.

This is the adult equivalent of the "Christmas Breakdown" I used to have as a kid. A couple of weeks before Christmas I would become standoffish, unmanageable and mean. I would push my mother, who loved me, away. I’d get so worried about what I was going to get for Christmas that the anticipation would keep me awake at night and literally send me into an uncontrollable fit of tears. To my eight-year-old mind the presure was just too much.

Honestly, and that was over GI JOES!

I need to just relax, let it all play out, and remember that I only have this problem because I love these people and these people love me. And that, above all, will carry us through the tough stuff.

As my Mom told me a long time ago: It either doesn't come at all, or it all comes at once. And that's just the way life is.

Read more

Problems

Yesterday we streched it as far as it would go. We streched it so far I'm worried it will never go back to it's original shape. We almost ended it, until we realized that neither one of us wanted to. We each thought we were ruining the other's life, when in fact, it could not be further from the truth. We need to work at it, but I believe -- her and I -- we'll get there.

Now, everything else is going to get streched.

Again, anyone who tells you relationships aren't work is trying to sell you something. Everything worthwhile takes work. I will work on it -- I will work on it with everyone -- but I need time.

Read more