I Turn Me Off

And leaning on the hallway wall
I watched you put your eyes on
I thought I felt my heart enlarge
You walked out and it shattered

Excuse me while I turn me off

Your airplane flies the friendly skies
Unaware that I am fading
It lands and you move somewhere else
With new sights through your window

Excuse me while I turn me off

(spoken)
"The traffic rolls by
slowing to a stop
and I'm reflected in chrome and glass
and I can't see my face
it was stolen by you
and when I call you the line is dead"

You're running with the roaring crowd
I'm quietly meowing
The dream falls and some parts are lost
I can't find the instructions

Excuse me while I turn me off...


(for Gary Numan)

Donald? Duck!

it's official. i am totally sick to death of that asshole donald trump. what the fuck? it's bad enough i have to see that dipshit in magazines and on talk shows, now i gotta see him in commercials? that rich white money mad comb-overed mother fucker can kiss my fucking ass. the voice on that cocksucker could peel fucking paint, for fuck's sake. look: if you buy products because you see that spawn of satan on your television you should be smacked in the side of the head with a goddamn paperweight. the donald? fuck the fucking donald.

My Eighth Day On Zoloft

i'm gonna try to spare you most of the details here
but
i feel this should be mentioned...

masturbating has been a real task lately. something that i've been very good at for a very long time (it was my major in high school) has become an olympic event or something. it takes a lot more time, a lot more work, and a lot more concentration. it'd be great if i had a partner

(you blonde chicks on my friends list know who you are.
*winks and flashes you a thumbs up*
how ya doin'?
call me!)

but
being alone it's a bummer.
sometimes i just give up.

and you know what?

i don't get angry about it.

it wouldn't bother me half as much if the pay off was equal to the work involved. i think when the orgasm finally hits it ought to make me pass right the fuck out and, when i wake up i should know the secret to cold fusion or how to fly by using just my arms. another language at least. but when i do get off (if i do) it's a let down.

i mean
it's good
(it's always good)
but
not as good as i think i deserve.

the last time it was such a monstro chore that i slapped myself on the back after.
sure
maybe i should have washed my hands first
but
i figured it was a rented tux so
you know
fuck it...




(from 'The Zoloft Notes')

Total Babes

it must be a real bummer to be a total babe
you know
to look like
jennifer tilly
gina gershon
or
tara reid
or whatever

"i'm sorry but you aren't allowed in here."

"really? check out my cleavage."

"fuck! i'm sorry! what was i thinking? go right on in. help yourself to anything you want and, if you'd like to kill the president or anything i'll be sure to say that i never saw you. oh! um...do you need any money?"

god
us guys are dumb...

People Who Should Be Shot

Oh, man!

Some people really piss me off.
Like, people who say 'man-aise' for example.
What the fuck is wrong with these assholes?

It's not 'man-aise', it's 'mayonnaise' for cryin' out loud!

It's a French word!
It's prob'ly pronounced 'may-oh-naise-eee' or 'may-oh-naz-ah' or some shit.
That's a big pain in the ass through, so here in America we say 'may-naise'.

People who say 'man-aise' ought to be killed to fucking death!
They should be fucking shot in the kneecaps!

Say you go into a deli and you don't want any of the white creamy stuff.
What do you say?
Do you say, "hold the 'man-oh'."?
No! You sure as fuck don't!
You say, "hold the 'may-oh'."

Why?
Because it's short for 'may-oh-naise'
That's why!

Suppose you don't want any of the yellow stuff.
What do you say then?
"Hold the 'man-stard'."?
No! You don't!
There's no such thing as 'man-stard'!
It's 'mus-tard' and 'may-naise' you dim bulb motherfuckers!
Get a grip and get out of my face or I'll kill you!

Fuck!

These assholes prob'ly drink Coors Light too!
I hate Coors Light!
Coors light?
Gimme a break!
What?
Like a regular Coors is too strong for these people?

"Gee? I like a can of Coors now and then but that aftertaste! Yow!?"

Silver bullet?
How'd you like a silver bullet in your fuckin' chest?

Ball Park franks too!
They plump when you cook 'em?
Big fucking deal!
The ads don't say a goddamn thing about how they taste, man!
All they say is that they plump when you cook 'em.
What does that mean, anyway?
Does that mean that some schmuck at the Ball Park factory beams more hot dog into your hot dog when you heat them up?
I don't fucking think so!
I think that the water in them makes them expand when they get hot!

That's what I fucking think!

And those low fat Oreo's?

Fuck you!

Don't even get me started with those low fat Oreo's!
If you can't handle a fucking regular Oreo now and then, it's time to end your fucking life!
You pussed out, post yuppie motherfuckers!

Fuck fucking you!

You wanna know what's wrong with this country?

Have a Ball Park frank with some 'man-aise' on it, wash it down with a Coors Light, pound a couple of low fat Oreo's, and give me a call.

I'll tell you what's wrong with this fuckin' country...

Truth

Alright...

Lemme get this totally straight

If we all believe in something it'll come true, right?

All we have to do is believe in it hard enough? Just be positive?

Well...

I don't know if you've noticed

But...

The emperor has no clothes!

He's naked
And fat
And I have no desire to see his dick flopping around

Fuck positive
You can believe anything you want

But

As for me?

Gimme truth any day of the week

It sets me free

Fish

My dad was the kind of guy who would spend more than the cost of dinner on a fishing pole hoping that he could catch enough fish in his lifetime to make the cost...um...work out in his favor. He wasn’t a very spiritual guy, he was a moron who actually thought that "the system" could be beaten if he could just figure out "all the angles" and latch on to the "right one".

Back in the very late fifties he drug me to the Santa Monica pier on just such a fishing trip. I was about three or four years old at the time. I seriously doubt I was even into TV Guide at the time.

We sat on an edge of the pier and cast our lines into the wind. Somehow (and I don’t even remember this) I reeled in a fish that was roughly the size of a nice "sammich".

There was another kid about my age, bored to death as he hung out with a father who was about the same age as mine. Another asshole who was hell-bent on "beating the system" just like my father was. This poor kid didn’t catch a fish and his dad was more than a bit peeved at this. Fucking fathers, man. You got me on that one. His kid was a fucking KID for Christ’s sake.

This kid’s dad kind of laid into him. "Geezuz! Can’t you even catch a fucking fish?", that whole vibe, so I reached into my dad’s bucket and gave the poor little fucker the fish that I had caught. He and his dad were amazed and both got real happy real fast, the whole point of life (at least in that moment) being "FISH!!!!" and not at all connected to real life at all.

My dad smiled and "let things slide", saying something sage like, "Kids? What you gonna do?" and let the dad and the now happy kid stalk off into the night.

On the way home he threw the fucking book at me and called me a pussy. Many, many, many times.

This is how I deal with my friends. Both in real life and on line. I give away my fish.

It’s left up to you to figure out what I mean by this. I’m not a professor. I’m an asshole with a ton of fish and it’s up to you to pick out the bones.

4-puff

i've just said something funny. a perfect face on a body built like both sizes of marshmallows in perfectly stacked puffs is smiling. then laughing. then speaking in flirty tones as fingers brush my shoulder. the marshmallows are soft and warm like fresh out of the bag and microwaved to an almost liquid state (but not exactly). virtual scoops of the stuff speaking in visual girly rhythms. fluffy and bouncing and next to dancing as it laughs. almost too painful for a simple human to look at. somehow more than alive and flowing with it's own inner heat as it moves warmly through both time and space at the same moment. on a trip across a timeline without either limits or a worry. then i watch and melt a bit myself as you pass me in this narrow doorway. sometimes my hands reach out to caress you. sometimes they don't. i'm never sure of the impending reaction. i'm willing to take a chance at least half the time however. it goes either way. you hold me close or squirm to freedom. both feel fine as i'm not all that forceful or determined. but my heart always reaches. sometimes when mearly aware that you are in the next room. or a town or two away. and when you laugh hard enough your head moves foreward and back in near jerky nods. your hair bounces as well. it dances on it's own to the music of your giggling. then your tongue wets your lips. and that is why i often bark at you like a dog in a bad cartoon.

Ed Would

I first saw a little movie called "Plan 9 From Outer Space" in high school. This was around 1971 or so and in those days high school meant exactly that, at least it did at my school. One night I smoked a nice sized joint and saw the movie at about three in the morning. I had no idea what it was (or who Ed Wood Jr. was, for that matter) but, as a young and hungry science fiction and horror fiend I thought I'd check it out based on the title alone. I couldn’t believe it. It was the sloppiest and downright lamest thing I'd ever seen.

I laughed my ass off.

Nobody really had a VCR back then so if you wanted to see a movie a bunch of times you’d have to wait for a rerun. It would replay every six months or so and I'd see it every chance I got, often making friends and people at parties sit through it as well. There was no two ways about it, you either loved it or hated it. Most hated it. That was their loss as far as I was concerned. I was hooked and the most amazing thing was that it got better with each viewing. It didn’t take very long for it to become one of my favorite movies.

These days it seems that almost everybody with a quirky taste in cinema loves it and it has reached the height of cultdom. Books, magazine articles, and a comic book all sing the praises of what has been called "The Worst Movie of All Time".

But is it really the worst? I don't think so. Have you ever seen "Gone with the Wind"? "Mrs. Doubtfire"? How about "Pretty Woman"? Those are some bad movies, pal.

I mean, look, at least "Plan 9" has a message: "Stop playing around with weapons or we'll come back and whack your whole damn planet!” Pretty heavy stuff. Sure. I know. Robert Wise said the same thing in the film "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and he said it better too.

But here's the thing:

The reason the aliens come to earth in "Plan 9" is to stop us from discovering Solaronite, particles of sunlight so small they can't be measured. If we create a Solaronite bomb it will blow up the sun and then follow the sunlight, blowing up everything it touches thereby blowing up the whole universe. Now, here's no such thing as Solaronite but there are neutrinos, teeny tiny particles of sunlight. If a neutrino bomb were created and set off would the sunlight explode setting off a chain reaction that would destroy the universe?

I'm no scientist but it sure seems that way to me.

And what about Ed Wood?

Did he "discover" neutrinos long before whoever is credited with the discovery only to pick a really stupid name for them and use them in what has been called "The Worst Movie of All Time?

As Criswell, the guy who narrates it says, "Can you prove it didn’t happen?”

Bring The Boys Down South

i've got a great idea

why don't we get the hell out of iraq
invade mexico
turn it into a state
clean it up
and tax the fuck out of those people?

there's got to be oil there somewhere

besides
if we had a war the soldiers could go home on the weekends

why am i the only one who thinks of this stuff?

Flick This!

ever meet someone
and they seem really cool
getting along
and everything
and then you notice that their bic lighter still has the warning sticker on it
and you just want to smack them in the fucking head with an end table?

i mean
if you swung it up from the floor you could really get a lot of power on that downward arc

i hate that...

Beach Blanket Life Lesson

it's summer in california
frankie and annette are together
right?
everything's great

and

then
this other chick shows up on the beach
she's new
she ROCKS!
everybody thinks so
even frankie

so frankie thinks
"whoo-ah! whatta babe!"

and

he strays from annette
he's got thighs in his eyes
(that whole darwinian thing going on)

so

he strays
annette finds out
it don't take long

and

she strays too
she starts to hang out with another guy
"i'll show that frankie, goddamnit!"
she's just being a chick

so

about 90 minutes later
they get back together
they learn that love is all that matters
that they were both wrong
that the most important thing is to be true

be honest and everything will be okay
love is the REAL THING
anything else is crap
don't be a dick
or a bitch

and

your world will work out fine

sure

it's just life on the beach

but

why waste it?

and that is really all you need to know...

New Pair Of Shoes (a song from the 1920's)

I'm gonna up and pick and choose
Go to a store and ditch the barefoot blues
Drop some money, gonna pay my dues
And buy me a new pair of shoes

I saw an ad in the morning news
Believe me, buddy, I ain't no fool
So I caught a bus, had no time to lose
Now I got a new pair of shoes

They've got black laces and they match my pants
It says on the box that they were made in France
Gonna take my honey to the springtime dance
This ain't no time to snooze

Then it's up the aisle between the pews
We're both gonna say our yes I do's
A wife, a house, and a baby too
'cause I gotta new pair of shoes

Dude

I gotta new pair of shoes

Game Shows You Will Never See

You Bet Your Ass!

The Check Bouncers

Ooh! My Back!

Twenty Thousand Dollar Pink Belly

Let's Make A Sandwich

Wheel of Blisters

Make Me Puke

Celebrity Bar Room Brawl

Tic Tack Bleed

Bowling For Blowjobs

Squish That Zit!

Fishing With Pistols

I've Got a Chainsaw

Name That Wound

Are Those Real?

Win, Lose, or Die

Who Threw That Brick?

Underwater Checkers

Shoot the Stars!

Drinking and Driving for Dollars

Beat Your Mom

The Price is Fucked

Some Lame Ass Back Story

About a bazillion years ago the Earth cooled. This was a good thing. If it hadn’t we’d all be jumping up and down a lot and screaming about our feet more often than we do now. The air would also hurt our lungs and there wouldn’t be any clean water.

Can you imagine living in a world like that? I just barely can and I have a rather colorful history of drug usage.

There were these pools of water laying around back then and, through some electro-chemical process that I don’t have a lot of knowledge about these tiny fishy things came to life. Chemistry tends to vex me on a daily basis. If you take some motor oil and lemonade and toss in some cotton balls you get retsin? How does that work? I mean, there can only be a finite number of chemicals, right? How the hell do those research guys come up with new ones? I had a chemistry set once and if I mixed up a bunch of stuff all I ever ended up with was a tube of blackish slop. I just don’t understand it in the slightest.

This may tend to explain why I write. I may be trying to understand things.

Ah, well...

Whatever...

Some weeks later dinosaurs stalked both the surface of the Earth and each other. These were dangerous times for the more fragile life forms who were mainly walking snacks and sandwiches for these dinosaurs. The whole world was a giant Burger King and you didn’t have to deal with money.

One day a chunk of what was basically iridium zipped through space, got caught in the Earth’s orbit, and smacked into the ground with a resounding boom. The impact of this smack and boom caused a huge cloud of dust to blanket the sky, blocking out the rays of the sun and making things rather chilly for the dinosaurs and snacks that lived here. The plants died, the plant eaters died, and the meat eaters followed suit rather quickly.

Things were looking bad.

However, some of those snacks had fur coats and they hid out in little caves and hollows and rode this badness out. They kept warm, ate when they could, and had a lot of little furry snack sex.

Such is life.

These little furry things evolved and after spending a couple of years in the trees they lost their tails and walked tall on the ground. Cave people had arrived.

Now…

I don’t know about you but I would have made a lousy caveman. Most of my leisure time would have been spent crawling around nearsighted looking for something to read. I doubt my tribe would have been into my sense of humor either. Some burly cavedude would have crushed my head with a rock just to shut my ass up. “Yeah. He was an asshole and now we don’t have to hear his fucking whiney voice! What’s for lunch?”

I’m not real hot with history but, if I remember right those guys and gals didn’t even have Dr. Pepper! Barbaric? Don’t get me started! Have you ever seen a TV Guide from back then? They weigh in at about seven thousand pounds. You had to do the crossword puzzle with a hammer a chisel. And if you made a mistake you were just fucked and that was all there was to it, man.

But enough about me...

Somehow the more aggressive caveman tribes grew up in what is now known as Europe. These were serious hunter/gatherers who just had to have more. And more. And still more after that. They built ships and crossed oceans and got to work setting up what is now known as The East Coast. Not content with that they pulled this thing called “Manifest Destiny” out of a hat and moved west, hacking their way through viscous plant life and a few million Indians. Once they got to The Pacific Ocean they chugged Margaritas, beat the living shit out of a bunch of Mexicans, and said, “Wow! If we had some well built blonde women here we could make television and movies! Let’s do it!”

So they did.

This sort of wanderlust still pretty much exists even to this day. Tons of people who really have no business being here move to Los Angeles every month. They seek fame and fortune in what is sometimes called “Show Business” (although other times it’s referred to by it’s more rightful name: “A Motherfucking Pain In The Ass”). These people don’t kill each other or anything (not too much anyway) but they do play their stupid little schoolyard games with each other and make life a big old bummer for those of us who were born here and really just want to tell stories and get paid for it.

Oops!
My bitterness is showing!
Sorry about that!

Anyway...

Some people moved here from other places to try to carve a life for themselves and set about finding meaning in the face of their assorted neurosis.
We all want love and good things right?
And there’s really nothing wrong with that at all.

You know.

Unless you're a total asshole or something.

Bee-Bop (an old episode of 'The Outer Limits')

I took shape
And moved into your world
I was curious about humans
And about love

I tried to break up your homelife
With newly discovered charm
Because I needed offspring
Your wife caught me feeding

Transforming back into myself
It frightened her
Deep and black
It must have been illusion

But when she found me
Talking with my drones
I had no choice
But to release them

To do my bidding
To bring her death
And at last we were alone
Just you and I

I made my move
In a long white dress
I thought you'd like me that way
But you turned me away

With a declaration of devotion
For your wife
And all that it stood for
And so I fell away from you

Off the balcony and back into myself
You'll never see me again
But I have learned about love
It stings…




(for Joanna Frank)

Seeing Orange

It’s been going on for years, man.
The age old question.
Is the glass half-empty?
Or is the glass half full?
We all want to know the answer, we all want to know.
We all have opinions but we can’t be sure.

Me?

What do I think?

I think the glass is half-empty.

I also think that if you look around you just might find a faucet. And there may be some ice in the freezer. Look in the refrigerator. Is that a bottle of 7-up? And over there, on the shelf, I think I see a bottle of bourbon! Wow! There’s a bag of Doritos on the table and somebody has left out a bowl of salsa!

Too cool!
I love this place!
Where’s the stereo?

Yep!

That’s what I think.
That’s me.
I’ve got a jaundiced eye and I’m looking through rose colored glasses.

I’m seeing everything in orange.

Scene From An Unwritten Movie

FADE IN:

INT. SUPERMARKET - DAY

DAVE, a rather normal looking guy in his mid twenties, is standing in a aisle trying to decide between two boxes of doughnuts. He talks to himself.

DAVE

Hmmm...these are plain and plain is good. I like plain. Doesn’t get in the way if you have ‘em with chocolate milk. These however are chocolate and chocolate doughnuts are always perfect with regular milk... I’m vexed yet again.

PETE, another rather normal looking guy in his mid twenties, drops a couple of bags into the shopping cart. He and Dave are roommates and close friends.

DAVE

Chips?

PETE

Nothing but. I went for nacho. You cool with that?

DAVE

I can find no fault with my favorite style of crunchy thing. These doughnuts are giving me a headache though.

DAVE

Plain or chocolate? Again?

PETE

The age old question.

DAVE

You have got to get a girlfriend, my man. I’m being serious now.

Dave picks up a box of doughnuts and shows it to Pete as if trying to teach him something very important.

DAVE

Pete? These have sprinkles. Don’t you like sprinkles?

PETE

I love sprinkles.

DAVE

Sprinkles rule.

PETE

It is a known fact that sprinkles are one of the basic cornerstones of capitalism. In some cultures they are considered a way of life.

DAVE

I’ve read that. Sprinkles also fit in perfectly with any beverage you could possibly mention.

PETE

Except for gravy, Dave. Be honest.

DAVE

I’ll need to do some more research on that but for now I’ll take your word for it.

PETE

Thank you. My thanks surround you and follow you whenever and wherever you happen to travel in this crazy world. This is my pledge to you. Don’t take it lightly or I’ll be crushed.

AL, a third rather normal looking guy in his mid twenties, steps up to them. He is also a friend. In fact they all went through school together.

AL

You guys are nuts, you know? It’s never going to work. Not in a million years. Do you hear me? Not in a million years.

A long pause.

DAVE

So... We’re going to go for the sprinkles then?

Pete drops the sprinkled doughnuts into the cart.

PETE

Fuckin’ a.

(for Kevin Smith)

E-Life

i feel connected
is a small
yet moving way
like threads
(or whatever)
little tugs
flashes of light
notated moments
written thoughts
captured images
spanning miles
flying through phone lines
splashing on screens
electric life
and all of that
it's not so easy to explain
and i'm not bad with words

i've heard it said that being on line is false
that it has nothing to do with real life
that you don't have to deal with other people
and that it's stupid and empty

it's like having someone who only listens to mozart
telling you that the beatles suck
having a thought is one thing
backing it up with knowledge is another

then again
i'm just stating feelings here
thare's a pretty good chance i have no idea of what i'm talking about at all
so
clocks tick
and the world spins
and i'll post something different tomorrow

toong! Boof!! SPLAT!!!

I knew this guy named Newmar, right? He worked in construction, heat sealing plasti-beams for the MondoCorp building downtown. He was an average guy. Kept to himself. Never caused any problems or nothing. What you might call a square egg.

So...one day he's up on, um...I dunno, like the two hundred and thirty fourth floor or whatever and he stops for lunch. Opens his lunch pail and starts munching on an egg salad sandwich with bacon bits. Real bacon bits, mind you. None of that fake stuff for this guy.

And he's gulping down his chow with his feet dangling over the edge of the building and this swinging crane pops him in the head with a beam. Right in the fucking head. He's not looking behind himself and he gets whacked it the head. And his helmet goes TOONG! That was the sound it made when the beam hit him. TOONG! Like a tuning fork or something, right?

And BOOF! He goes flying over the edge of the building! And he's falling and screaming and suddenly he can't see anything. His eyes go black and then his whole life goes reeling by. He sees himself being born, and growing up, and going to school, and all these old girlfriends, and houses that he lived in and such. All the way up to being smacked in the fucking skull and falling off of the building.

Then...and this is the weird part, he sees a baby being born. A little girl. And she grows up, and goes to school, and has some boyfriends, and some houses and jobs, and she dies in a plane crash.

And Newmar says, "What the fuck was that?"

And then this voice enters his head. Deep in tone and rather soothing. It comes from inside and outside of him all at the same time.

It says, "Scenes from next time."

SPLAT! He hit the pavement at about nine zillion miles an hour and was buried in a sponge.

The end.