Plug me in

As I skipped rope I noticed a small herd of mma jocks entered the gym. Their backs were covered with elaborate asian tattoos and their ears were cauliflowered terds. In the world of martial arts the MMA guys seem like the stupid jocks who try to beat up the dorky kids in high school.

"Man its getting hot," jock number one said.
"How hot is it in oakland" asked jock number two.
"I bet its pretty hot. Man the whole world is getting hot. Did you hear about the earthquake in Greece," said jock number three.
"Yeah, and now Greece is on fire too. There is something going on with this world," jock number one said.
"If it gets too hot we're gonna go extinct like the dinosaurs," said jock number three.
"Dinosaurs? Maybe we can bring back the dinosaurs," said jock number one.
"Man it would be awesome to fight a dinosaur," stated jock number two.

Summer of violence

I rode down ritch st. in san francisco coming to a stop by the entrance to the club. After dismounting I locked up my bike and stood in line behind two 16 year olds who were scheming to gain entry into the 18 plus club. Having gotten my wrist band, a beer, and checked out the venue I sat down in a booth reading until my friend showed up. It didn't take her too long to arrive and then the dancing. Most of the music was modern hipster fair with some smatterings of new wave. Peaches, the Rapture, the killers, all boomed as acne marked kids let their hormonal bodies shake. It'd been a while since I'd been dancing, maybe as long as a year. Last time was probably at the beauty bar in vegas. As I danced I felt my hands curl themselves up into fists. The bus ride home took an hour and I was in bed by 3 am. I woke up and went to the gym. Making my hands into fists again.

In another month or two will mark a year in my fighting life.

I feel like dancing

I had a dream some years ago that at first scared and frightened me but as the years go on and I occasionally think of the dream... I'm no longer horrified to look at myself in the mirror.
In the dream, my younger brother was crippled and a beggar tyrant. His nasal whine pierced my ears every few moments. He shat himself, he gagged on his spit, he constantly needed attention. I pushed him around in his wheelchair around the lawn of our white house in Cornwall vermont. Towards the edge of my dream landscape was a small cliff. We were sitting at the cliff when he slowly rolled out of his wheelchair and off the cliff. I lept to the precipice and grabbed at his hand. He salivated and rolled his eyes, incoherent of the nearness of death. My eyes stared into his as his arm detached from his body. I held his arm in my hands and smiled. A wave of moral filth filled my soul as my lips turned upwards. I stared down at my broken brother's body, shattered on the ground far below. I felt a perverse satisfaction at his demise. No more complaints, no more groveling, no more forced pity...
When I woke up in the morning I was horrified at my subconscious immorality. As I've gotten older and engaged in more visceral amoral activities I'm no longer as morbid about my moral status. Many people think that deep down inside they are good people. If salvation comes they'll be on that train because really they are pure. The wrongs they've done outweighs the good. When I look at myself I realize that morally, I am ambigious, at best. Neither frightfully evil, nor all that good. Under the slavish morality of today I wonder if my soul would balance out between good and evil...

Cheating

The process of my father's second divorce was distant to me. Off in college at the time, the everyday factors of the split didn't influence me. My stepmother had been having an affair with another music school teacher at her workplace. My father was oblivious, trusting in her. He tried to work things out with her on a number of occassions during the period in which they were breaking up. They had spent five or six years building a life together. They had a nice house, a yard, and us kids were out of the nest.

My stepmother said that she needed some space and got a separate apartment. One evening her coworker's girlfriend beat the shit out of her for cheating with the coworker. I remember my older brother getting some cathartic joy out of it. My father has always been a stoic man who is generally honorable and fair to the people he's around. When my stepmother got beat up for her infidelity it seemed like poetic jusitice to my older brother. I couldn't help but think it was like an episode out of Jerry Springer.

The whole thing was hard on my father. Like many working class men he's never had many emotional outlets other than those provided to him via romantic relationships with women. During the fallout period my father continued with his normal routine and then added more work to busy himself. He's one of those people who has to be doing something. He helped the old lady down the street with her house. He'd refurbish things for coworkers (he has experience in carpentry). When my sister's car would break down he would fix it. Still to get to sleep at night he drank a couple cans of milawaukee best and swallowed another anti-depressant. When he first began taking anti-depressants he told me that depression ran in the family. Most people who worked their entire lives and routinely have that life shattered will be depressed.

My poignant memories from that period of my father are of car rides. He would pick me up from college during breaks where I couldn't be on campus. Sometimes we would chit chat about my siblings, or how school was going. But mainly it was silence. It was nice spending time with him but those times made it clear to me that I didn't want to live his life. I didn't want to break my back for nothing, I didn't want to always take the higher road when people fucked me over. Now I wonder if I'm not a little more like my father than I thought. I wonder what good it did him, because working more and being the bigger man doesn't make me feel all that great.

Art schmart

I've been making stencils off and on for about four or five years now. I've been expanding the size of my pieces as well as attempting to incorporate more intricacy. My latest prints have been muay thai related. Here are a series of my prints and the stencils themselves.
This is of Lone Wolf and cub. In between chapters in the manga series are pictures of Cub. I enlarged and copied one of those pictures.

This is the cover of the meat is murder album without the album title. My original intention was to sell this stencil at the morrissey show I went to recently. Unfortunately my ability to upsell is quite dismal.
This is vulture picture I took from a sandman comic I believe. IT was one of the first large stencils I did. The actual print is about 4 feet by 5 feet. Initially I intended on doing this on the street thus I made it two stencils. The dividing line can be seen by the wings.
This is my durriti stencil. Behind that is a dynamite stencil.
This is a print of Emo. Emo was Darkwater's dog while we were in Vegas. I liked him a lot.
This was my second large stencil, or maybe fourth. I can't remember. It was made for a girl.
This is the anarchy magazine logo. Huzzah!
Look someone drinking. This came from a noir comic book.
This came from the same comic. Sort of looks like foucault.

Jack Attack

The street was empty except for the small bits of garbage blanketed that the curb sides like dead leaves in the fall. My bike leaned against the gym wall while I stared into space waiting for Jon to arrive. Jack and Paul opened up their car doors and started walking down the sidewalk towards me. Jack ran in front of his father with the robust energy of his 6 year old body.
"We got here before you did," Jack said excitedly.
"Hurray. Have you been here for a while," I asked.
"No. Not that long."
My mind wandered back to the events of the recent week. My mind has been looping over and over. Like a scratched cd, the song lingers on one beat, the same sentences repeat, the same questions still linger, the same feelings of disappointment, insecurity, and grief.
"Jack, why don't you put on your coat? You're going to get cold," Paul said.
"Okay, hold onto my backpack. Look at this telephone wire, I bet if we cut it down it will electrocute everyone." Jack gave the telephone support wire a firm shake. He paused and looked around.
"Why is Oakland so disgusting?"
I laughed, wanting to reply with some sort of anarchist aphorism about wealth distribution in society but let the moment slip. Why be didactic all the time? Why be didactic at all?
"They really speak their mind don't they," Paul commented.
There were no other kids in the muay thai class today so I spent my hour with Jack doing pad work, and shadow boxing. He was rather excited about it all. It was nice for me to have just one high energy pupil rather than five or six to keep an eye on. Usually I assist Nelson in with the kids' class but he was at the doctor's for the day. Volunteering to teach the class is fun for me, I get to spend time with kids in a way that doesn't involve parenthood, nor a ton of responsibility.

I've been spending more time alone. The solitude is a nice break. Most people don't seem to spend any time alone. Their individualism is more about accessorizing through various banal activities. Strong people should be able to stand alone, but maybe I'm just saying that to make myself feel better.

Tits and Ass on Shattuck Ave.

"Hey, wherrrre is myyy baaeerrr," James slurred. He turned towards me and glared.
"I drank it. Let's go."
I walked out of the front door of the restaurant where I bar tend. James stumbled behind me haphazardly pushing his bicycle along side of him. Looking behind me I noticed his labored mounting and shrugged as I threw my leg over the front bars of my ride and took off down the street.
We rode down the street to a nearby bar where the karaoke was blaring out loudly. I bought the two of us a round of drinks. He took a seat at a bar stool and swiveled towards the karaoke singer.
The singer, a mid thirty year old white male, was crooning the latest heart wrenching alt rock garble. He gyrated his hips towards his lady friends, pushing his pelvis into the microphone. As his song ended I noticed James had gained the favors of a young lady. She was leaning on his broad shoulders and had her nose sunk into his hair, obviously lusting for his natural man musk. James' eyes got wider as the repercussions filled his mind. The embarrassment of slipping in a puddle of vomit after a night of forgettable fornicating put James off. His shoulder shrugged; the woman bobbed off him like a buoy and swayed over to the man sitting on her right. Having rid himself of possible std's, unwanted pregnancies, and the cost of a condom James focused on his White Russian.
"Let's doooo a shut." James said through his milk mustache.
"Two shots of Jagermeister and a lagunitas IPA," I asked. "The tab is under Matt Lucas."
"What?" the bartender responded with a harried look.
"Lucas, Matt. Its a gold card with a Visa logo."
"Dumb bitzsch. What is with all these biotches," James exclaimed with masculine vehemence.
I grabbed the shots, knocking mine with his.
"For male solidarity and the superiority of our sex. Huzzah," I toasted. As the jagermeister slid down my throat like children's cough syrup, I felt three kinky hairs sprout from my chest.
"I can't believe that bitch lied to me for so long. Fucking cunt," James lamented.
"I'm sorry dude."
James had recently been dumped by the only girl to ever share his tent. He'd been scumbagging it in the woods of Yosemite all summer living off a diet of ramen noodles and chocolate milk until the girl came into his life. She swept him off his feet with her ability to buy groceries and her working motorized vehicle. James was starstruck. He never noticed that the minivan was complete with car seats and that on the kitchen counter was a picture of a balding white dude.
"AAAh, girls will just make you fat and lazy anyways," James stated.
Noticing that James would soon dive into a didactic sermon on the ill state of women's morality I looked over at the drunk lady sitting next to him.
"You've had enough," the bartender said, trying to take back the beer from the drunk lady.
"No! Fuck you!" shouted Drunky Mcdrunk. She grabbed the bottle to the right and threw it across the bar at the bartender. Then she snatched an empty pint glass and showed off her pitching arm to the crowd of onlookers. The glass smashed against the bottles of liquor wobbling them. For the finale she pushed over the remaining glasses and bottles on the bar. Drunky had a look of both sedation and stupor as the bouncer grabbed her.
"You get out of my bar!" The bartender screamed with potency.
Shrugging I looked around for the karaoke book. I really hoped that they would have a Smiths song that I could murder. There were none. Life is a disappointment and in the morning its a hangover.

The pen

My writing has been sporadic lately, a little here, a little there. Even my letter response time has been lagging as I've gotten caught up in a relationship, the gym, work. All the things that make me put off my *cough* artsy hobbies. Having just ended one of the major time consuming relationships in my life I'll be writing more regularly again. Hopefully I'll be able to revive my once a week short stories series as well as do some miscellaneous writing as well. This tuesday I'll be restarting the short stories series. Any suggestions?