The strangest things happen at work. 
Today I stepped out for a smoke and found a hubcap on the ground.  Then I wrote a poem about the experience.  I very seldom let anyone read my poems and this one isn't even really finished yet, so I'm feeling pretty gutsy right about now.  And screw you people if you don't like it.
 
I found a used hubcap today
and plucked it up from where it lay
after winter's snow had melted away
and left it, lost and soiled.
I'm sure the owner didn't know
he'd lost a hubcap in the snow
until the melt began to flow,
and by then its gleam was spoiled.
The lonely hubcap must have cried 
or thought, perhaps, that it had died
retired refuse, cast aside
in spite of how once it toiled
to get the car from here to there,
to hold the tire or the spare
to ensure that the driver needn't care
if the concrete froze or boiled.  
 
 
I'm going to take home this hubcap and clean it up and make it into something new, like maybe a hat, and give it renewed purpose.  I don't know why I couldn't bring myself to just leave it there on the ground or to throw it away, but I'm very glad to have this hubcap for some unknown reason and since it has given me a purpose for the last 30 minutes, it's only fair that I call it found art and give it a purpose too.  I love my new hubcap.
 
By the way, if anyone lost a hubcap near Kirkwood, let me know before I start in with the steel wool and spray paint.  Wait too long and your other 3 hubcaps will be jealous and start suicidally flinging themselves at my workplace.  

I ate a Big Mac today.  Sometimes that just has to happen.  I was reminded of a joke, which I'll share now, with a warning that this particular joke is best told orally.

So the Sesame Street bus driver was making his usual rounds.  Waiting for him at the first stop was a pair of identical very very fat women.  The pair entered the bus and simultaneously said "Hi!  We're Patty!"  The driver greeted them and they sat down.   At the next stop, a pleasant fellow with an obvious handicap was waiting.  He entered  the bus and said "Hi I'm Ross!" but his disability made the R sound like a W and the two fat ladies giggled.  Ross sat down and the bus moved on.  At the third stop there was a dapper elderly gent in a fine suit and hat.  He got on the bus and said "Good morning sir, My name is Dennis Reese."  Dennis then sat down, took off his shoes and started picking at his bunions.

When the bus driver got home from work that night his wife asked about his day.  He said "two all beef Patties, Special Ross, Dennis Reese pickin' bunions on the Sesame Street bus."

I got an email earlier this week from my friend Katarah, saying that he is now doing Reiki sessions from his apartment for a very small fee.  Well I had never heard of Reiki, but he said it was about healing energy, and I knew I could use some of that.  I'm happy to support my friends and I'll try anything once.  I did some brief research and found that Reiki involves the laying on of hands to infuse the body, mind and spirit with positive energy and realease the negative.  As a die-hard skeptic and with little scientific evidence in it's favor I thought it was probably some more flakey new-age bullshit, but I couldn't find any scientific evidence against it either and decided that since I need some healing, and since he is my dear friend and cares about me, what could it hurt.  I went into it thinking that some meditation would surely do me good and I've been pretty desperate to relax anyway, so off I went.
In general, I really enjoy being right, but today it was awesome to be wrong.
I remain a skeptic, but I also recognize that there are things science cannot explain just yet and I simply like to believe that I am more than a series of chemical reactions.  I can no longer call it flakey new-age bullshit because it worked.  I got what I needed, and afterward he told me about some visualizations he had that revealed his skill at seeing through my facade and right into my soul.  The man has a gift.  He found the source of all my sorrows, tapped it and let it run.  Walking home I felt lighter than I have in years, like I was made of air, and I realized that I'd been carrying alot of very heavy stuff while trying like hell to continue to be the rock that everyone else can lean on, when in truth I was being crushed by all that weight.  True spiritual healing is still a long way off for me, but I took the first step and I can see the end of the path from here.  I've been so busy drowning in the present that I forgot about all there is to look forward to.  I've spent so much time defining myself in terms of  "we"and "us" that I forgot what "me" is.  Eventually I will be thouroughly purged of all that and I am looking forward to meeting me.  I think I'm gonna like her. 
So the skeptic is becoming a believer, although I'm not sure in what, and I will be going back for more.  In the meantime, I don't always have to be as strong as I am.  My family and I have been through a lot, and not just recently, there are old wounds reopening as well, but it's ok.  We've been through it all, name the tragedy, I've survived it.  And that's exactly what I'll continue to do, but after this morning's meditation I've come to realize that I do not exist for the benefit of others, and it's about damn time I learned to let go.  I don't need to be a rock, sometimes I can flow with the tide and not worry that I'll be carried away by it if I just relax.  Stones will eventually be worn down by running water simply because they refuse to float. 

So I posted some pictures of some dolls, which was good.  One of them included a nipple, made of muslin, painted pink and pierced, which apparently was bad.  I got a message from Myspace saying that my picture had to be deleted.  Perhaps my mistake was the use of the word "nipples" in the  caption.  Perhaps my mistake was in my distinction between art and porn.  But, seriously, I mean come on, it's an 18 inch doll...with some piercings and some slutty clothes.  I just don't see how it's masturbation material, so perhaps my mistake is in my lack of imagination.    

I meant to write about this a few months ago when it happened, but I didn't get around to it until today.

I was at the second-hand store looking at books.  There was a fabulous sale offering a paper bag full of books for $3.  I had no trouble filling a bag with books.  There were some cookbooks and some novels, books on restoring and reupholstering furniture.  I found a hundred year-old-reference book called 12,000 Words Often Mispronounced, which is the revised and expanded version of the once popular 10,000 Words Often Mispronounced.  I took my books home happily.  Then it got interesting.

I open the word book, because I surely do love me some words, and being published around the turn of the century the book had some nifty examples of changes to the language over the last century, but I was only a couple of pages into it when things started falling out.  Newspaper clippings from the first World War tumbled onto my lap.  There were more clippings as I flipped throught the pages, about the War and Women's Suffrage and about words.  There were poems and announcements about the goings-on in the lives of people with whom the book's previous owner was probably aquainted.  There was a photograph of what must have once been a very unusual woman wearing a very unusual gown.  There were no less than 3 four-leaf-clovers.

A hundred years ago, an educated woman who loved words and language, who wanted to vote and worried about world politics tucked her secrets and her passions into the pages of a book.  A hundred years passed and an educated woman who loves words and language found her book and all it's treasures and had no one to thank.

Whoever you are, thank you for leaving behind a tiny piece of yourself.  I found it, and in it I found pieces of me and felt a kinship that neither time nor death could stifle.  If we meet in the afterlife, let's do lunch. 

For those who aren't aware, which is the majority, I am currently working on a  feature film with the coolest independent filmmakers in Iowa, Prescribed Films.  As if that alone isn't cool enough, Linnea Quigley is in this movie.  Some of my dear readers are asking themselves "who?" but those in the know just peed in their pants.  Legendary scream queen and star of such groundbreaking horror classics as "Night of the Demons" and "Return of the Living Dead" is actually in the same movie as I am.  How cool is that?  Beyond words. 

I met her last weekend and did a few scenes.  She is an extaordinary talent and I did feel completely out of my element at first, but she has this way of putting those around her at ease.  She is not only a talented and beautiful actress, but she is also a wonderful example of the finest things that humanity can offer.  She is kind, gracious and funny.  She makes everyone in her presence feel good about themselves and maintains a kind of sunlight in her personal bubble which warms everything she stands near.  It was an honor and a privledge to work with her.  She is not just inspirational, she is the very spirit of inspiration itself. 

Yeah, I really liked her.  Can ya tell?  Nice lady.     

OK, maybe the sky isn't exactly falling, but with a story like this there could be no other title.

This actually happened to me a long time ago but has never been written down until now.

So one day several summers ago, I decided that since my car was broken and I'm generally lazy it would do me some good to walk to KMart. It's all residential between here and there, so I meandered slowly along in the blazing heat down winding sidewalks, enjoying the shade of the trees as I passed beneath them. I was under such a tree, minding my own, when a frog fell from overhead. Yes, a frog, on the sidewalk in front of me. It seemed to be unhurt so I just kept walking, but it's a very strange day when frogs are falling from trees directly into my path. I almost stepped on the little guy.

The frog is odd enough. Imagine my surprise when, a few days later, out of a clear, blue, treeless sky, a french fry hits me in the forehead. I look up and see no birds, although this is not to say that there were none, merely that I did not see any. I was about 2 blocks from Wendy's at the time, so the origins of the fry were no big mystery, but why the sky wants to throw frogs and fries at me is mystery enough on its own.

Nothing has fallen on me lately, and for this I am truly grateful.

Here is why MySpace rocks...

Elvis Costello is here you guys Elvis Costello is here!!!!

I was just renewing my imaginary love affair with the Rock God/Poet when I stumbled across his MySpace. Bull, I didn't so much stumble across it as go looking for it. I was hoping he'd give me a song, but he won't. I wanted "Indoor Fireworks" because it's been stuck in my head for days, which is way cooler than the time that stupid Brittney Spears song was stick in my head.

Anyway, I knew that MySpace was good for my friends' bands and all the struggling up-and-comers who I clearly love so much, but I didn't know I could also find Elvis bloomin' Costello! You should see his friends list cuz it's way cooler than yours or mine. Willy Nelson is in there! Cuz Willy's on MySpace too! And Van Morrison!

What a Wonderful World!

So I was at Hot Topic today with my friend Jaime. She needed dressy clothes for her new job, so instead of doing that we went to Hot Topic where she bought a Buffy shirt. I liked the Buffy shirt, but I have a cardboard Spike in my living room and it'll do, I don't really need a Tshirt too. But I do need other kinds of Tshirts, like the one that said "MySpace ruined my life" or "Tom is my Mom." I didn't buy a T-shirt, but I might have to if this new thing of mine gets any worse. It's taking up alot of my time. I did buy some shirts without words on them and a new dress that makes me appear smaller than actual size, so it was a good day.

I don't know what has come over me. I spent the first 28 years being largely unsociable and now I'm suddenly the little social butterfly. Sure, I always had my few good friends who I hardly ever talk to, and maybe it's really all about getting older, but I never really felt the need to maintain a large social network. A few years ago if I had been throwing a party the guest list would have included a half dozen of my dearest. Nowadays I fear the idea of throwing a party cuz there's no way to fit all these people in my tiny apartment. And who are all these people? I dunno but I've accepted many friend requests in the last few weeks. To all the bands who requested my friendship, I don't know you guys and I hope you don't suck, but as long as you're not famous enough to irritate me with your suckage then you shall have my full support, even if you do suck. And to all the guys who sent a message that says I'm hot, thanks and all but if ya scroll down you'll see I'm married and you're wasting your time. And to all of you ( all 5?) that I actually know, it's great to see you guys. Take care all!