Roaring N’ Red: Piggy Bank.

First gathering I attended up there… in there… I got razzed hard by a group of businessmen. Jokingly, ‘course. Maybe my eyes played me, but everything and everyone were covered in blue-ish grids and a polish. Like fresh brass. A cat called Tom Miller – South Dakota business owner/operator, purveyor of fine liquor and finer woman, The Bella Union, wealthy everyman – especially gave me shit. He strolled up to me, fairly smooth, with a 1867 bottle of bourbon and a holster-less pistol in his pants. “Ya know, Sonny, I din’ have it like you didd.. [urrrp] I worked through fires, riots, duels and whores for errythin’ I gots”, he went on the tell me how kidding he was. I didn’t care; hell, I was lucky to be alive in some bizarre way. Maybe not officially “alive”.

My life honestly wasn’t like that at all. Ain’t no glamor in traveling Jazz. Some a these musicians will tell you that. The ones who don’t play the curtain game. All show, no heart man. They’ll tell ya, it ain’t glamorous now, and it sure as shit wasn’t then. No sir. I used to feel like I was wastin’ my pay by sleeping under a roof in the South. Booze huts to barns full a paranoid chickens and a sleeping ox. We’d find some tin out back – at least I would, Tony would stay up days at a time – and steal a make-shift for the night. Funny thing is: most these runners probably’d let us anyhow. Imagine that routine nearly 300 nights/year. Nights off, sometimes, but modestly. History plays at its own pace time to time man, don’t even care what the rest a the band is doing.

Now, I didn’t live until Black Tuesday in ’29. I didn’t see the crash first hand, no. Nor the depression or the following chapters. That don’t mean I didn’t see it at all. I saw it all right, clear as day through that grided blue filter I still see occasionally now. Believe it or not, way I lived wasn’t too far from that. Choice, that’s the word here. The difference, man. I choose to travel from tin-roof to tin-roof, in a 10 dollar pinstripe suit blowing into a shining golden horn until I died. (I miss Mable) Folk learned self-control during that time, somethin’ I never knew.

A Lucid Death.

I had perhaps the most lucid dream of my life days ago.  I should have written about right after I woke, details would have been more numerous and sharp.  I’m not sure quite how circumstances led me to this point.  But there I was, backed out onto the edge of a cliff.  A cliff so high and deathly that the ground wasn’t even visible.  A stranger was approaching, after beating the shit out of me for what seemed like an eternity.  Faceless.  I kept back peddling until my heels dangled off the edge, the stranger kept advancing on me.  Dust swirling.  The stranger stopped right in my face, grinned eerily.  Out of nowhere, it didn’t even feel like it was ME who was speaking, I said: “Go ahead.  Do it.  Push me off.  It doesn’t even matter.  I’m going to wake up in about 5 seconds anyway.”  So he did.  The stranger shoved me in the chest, and I went free falling, twirling and flailing, the dust and wind hitting my face, into the abyss.  Then, just as my counterpart claimed, I woke up.  Looked at the clock, it was about 3:30.  I sat up and immediately felt the same sensation again, free falling.  When I stood up, I felt a the strongest vertigo I’ve ever before.  Everything was spinning.  Nothing made sense.  I went to the kitchen and got water, eventually calmed myself, and my senses, down.  But that was a first for me:  telling someone in a dream to kill me, cause it didn’t matter, I’d be waking up soon anyway.  If that isn’t lucid dreaming I don’t know what is.  What’s strange is this happened a couple days after I watched Waking Life.  Which, as most who’ve heard of the film know, is about lucid dreaming.

-Sonny

[Scious] Con vs Sub.

Once, not long ago, NONE of this happened to me. At all. Today it happens all the time. Not sure why. Am I worried about things? Damn straight I am; but I’m certain this isn’t my problem. No- the mentality isn’t an issue here. So what then? I’m thinking my subconscious and conscious jostle for mental control like the two parties do for control of the Legislative branch. In my confusion, nothing else CAN result from this besides blatant insomnia. Surprising this is not, however. My subconscious rattled around my head, shuffling for supremacy, since I was young. My dreams especially, always threatened the real world Sonny to the point of Rene Decartes’ philosophies on the nature of this “real” world. I’ve done it all in my dreams (like many of us have): killed/been killed, ruled/grobbled. And as I sit here on this computer at this unfortunate point in time, I can’t help but think my subconscious is beginning to take hold, and my very human conscious is being lost. Only via occurrences like these, is my conscious standing a chance against the onslaught. But it isn’t even fair fighting: these are sneak attacks, by and large. One day they won’t work at all, and I’ll be paralyzed consciously in endless sleep. Motionless and peaceful. I suppose that’s nothing but INEVITABILITY. To the bone. But if death is permanent sleep… then in the end, the SUBconscious wins, correct? That is, of course, assuming he/she/it lives on while the conscious rots in the Earth. Decomposition is its most beautiful physically though, not mentally. In a way this whole battle is pointless: the sub will win in the end. With everyone. All the con can do is hold on…. cling on to some meaning before it becomes nothing along with our human corpses.

-SSonnny

A Hollow, Evening Post.

These three “pinned” figures are really starting to rattle my cage.  Friendly NO one; The Cleveland Specials.  The Iron & Wine dog seems to be noticing them too.  The middle of the three seems more apathetic than anything, staring off into space; it looks like it’s reminiscing, or introspective, but it’s only carelessness.  Those other two fuckers are looking at me, I know it.  The one, the leader, has a damn pin right in his shoulder.  It’s pissed off, and about to release.  On me.  It feels like I haven’t been here in a long time.  The air is so fresh right now.  Beautiful.  There are two fetus-like figures, and one’s poking the other’s beady red pupil.  These faces reoccur throughout.  Bottom to the left: this same face expands into individual streams of greenness.  And I’m sitting here wondering weather or not any of this means anything.  To me or to anyone or to anything.  I’ll take comfort in the fact that even if it doesn’t, it still EXISTS; and that’s something.  I need sleep.

-Sonny

Self Obloquy; Games Too.

Well- this turned out as expected. Getting back into the daily grind proves challenging right now. It took me three alarms until the sluggishness began. On the wattage side, it’s getting warmer here. Mother Sun seems to be peeking out more and more these days, and for longer. Some crackly, fucked-up, old white man ran into me today on the street. He looked confused; confused and defeated somehow. He apologized in a nano-second, and I told him not to worry about it.

So the President’s plan for stimulation seems unlikely to work well in the long run, but I’m still excited to get a $600 check from the Feds. And you know what? I’m probably going to save most of it. They want us to spend, spend, spend; tickle that economy like a sex organ. Maybe I’ll just tease a little. Spend around half or so. I’m being pushed into the direction of an XBox 360 by a certain crowd. I’m a little hesitant with the newer systems though. For 1) I don’t know which one I prefer (played all of them). Although, we do have a PS3 in this house, so I won’t be going that route. Isn’t this exactly how inflation soared to begin with though? Economics aren’t my forte by any means, but printing more money, and just giving it away doesn’t help in the LONG run. It’ll make the dollar more weak than it already is.

Four forms of international currency currently outweigh the US Dollar. With three or four nipping at its heels. The dollar is dying a slow death. Imagine its little green, paper thin body being mangled from the bottom up. Maybe the killer stops somewhere around the mid-section, and really takes her time. Out pours the green, running into the Pacific and Atlantic. Its thickness congests the oceans, rivers, seas, and lakes enough to stop the tankers in their tracks. And the guts spill in the form of commodities, resources, and power. It falls to its knees, shadowing the east. Then collapses over the entirety. DEAD. BEFORE. IMPACT. Meanwhile down on 66th St. somebody marks themselves with a tag on the far side of the building. And the world goes on without USD’s (probably better than ever).

As far as horror goes, why is it so hard to find some good horror shorts or novels? Movies, Comics, even Music, have long traditions of various horror. But I want some PROSE dammit! Horror prose. I know… Stephen King. But Stephen King stopped writing good horror by the start of the 90s. The Stand can’t even come close to matching The Shining for a reason. That reason = Drugs. King used to take acid with his friends and go watch movies, drive, explore, listen to music, all the time. Apparently they loved 2001. No doubt he continued usage into his career, but I suppose everyone gets too old for that shit. Besides Syd Barrett of course. Whom we all miss very much. He started that monster Floyd, Gilmour and Waters perfected it. Syd’s usage destroyed him. But anyone who trips regularly on stage is, needless to say, walking a fine line. Coincidentally, Dave Gilmour’s probably my second favorite guitar player. If subtlety played guitar, it’d look, walk, and talk like Dave.

A friend of mine spoke very highly this weekend of Thievery Corporation, a electronic outfit out of Washington DC. I’d heard of them previously, but never gave them much thought. It’d be hard to get into that sort of thing now though. As I’ve had my brushes with Electronica (I like it a lot; probably as much as blues), the phase I’m in now is a stubborn little prick though. Maybe my second helping of the Giraffes will powerfully end it. Not putting the nail in the coffin, more like: pushing the board game to the back of the hall closet. So that the next time it comes out, everyone’s ready to play some fuckin’ “Stratego”.

I used to play this AWESOME board game, a role-player, called “Hero Quest”. Check this article out. It talks about how this was the ultimate dungeon crawler board game. The full games are going on eBay for around $150 now. Hmm. I didn’t remember this little tidbit, but apparently the “Quest Master”s name was “Zargon”, which sounds more Sci-Fi-ish than Fantasy-ish. The ruler of a planet, not an evil sorcerer. Another game I loved back in the day: X-Men Alert! Holy, that shit was cool. It featured a rather impressive group of playable mutants, each with their own very well rendered model. The biggies were there: Storm, Cyke, Logan, Iceman. But some obscure characters made the cut: Cable!, Psylocke, Kitty Pryde, Havok, Banshee, Archangel. Archangel and Cable both kick a lot of ass. The game allowed one to build small teams of mutants to take on villains (including the Shi’ar Gladiator); which is really how any X-Men game should be. Video, board, etc.

The entire X-Men concept is very much a TEAM concept. This isn’t Superman, Daredevil, Batman, or anything like that. These are people who find a common bond among each other, no matter how much they hate one another. Rich Johnston, over at CBR, was given a copy (I’d assume by Warren) of Warren Ellis’ first X-Men script recently, and it does sound intriguing. A permanent residence in San Fransisco? Applying existing technology? Word.

I turned into a complete jackass this weekend. A trip to Hennessy Vista ended in a mistake. The distance grew from Her, and now I’m trying to pick up the pieces. I’m such an idiot though; I’m hurting myself just as much. And with that comes literally hurting myself, which probably isn’t good at all. I’m trying though. Yeah, I am. Don’t wanna lose this one. Woah, going from almost anything to Reel Big Fish is really weird, but from MF Doom especially. Doom should be releasing a record this year. Hopefully under his MF Doom guise. Another concept album from him probably wouldn’t hurt the upcoming year in music. Gotta get some sleep tonight. And SNL still sucks balls.

-Sonny

Awake, Getting Gone.

Waking from a slumber can feel strange. If you’re dreaming of baseball, violence, and misplaced identities, and waking to darkness in an unfamiliar place, the more the feeling. This time it was more control than anything. Or lack of. I knew I had just been dreaming, I knew I was now awake, I knew where I was; but I wouldn’t accept that, as if I had no control. I swiveled, and my feet hit the carpet (still not used to the carpet either). I made my way to the window, it seemed like absolute darkness. For whatever reason, I opened the curtains fast, and I saw civilization. LOTS of civilization. I saw busyness. Everyone, and everything, scurrying along to their/its daily plans, duties, curiosities, etc. And as odd as this seems (because I thought I was the opposite), this comforted me. But why shouldn’t it I guess? I’m a part of all them, and they’re all a part of me. It’s sunny out for the first time, but still around 50. Tomorrow we’ll hit 70, and I’m gonna eat that up. So I’m about to go for a walk, which could or could not be the end of me. Alright.

-Sonny

Gain An Hour, Lose An Hour.

Last night I’m pretty sure I made up an hour of sleep. Doesn’t matter though; eventually I’ll lose that hour (tonight, if the world works with normality). I lost around 3 or 4 hours a couple nights ago, so I guess overall I’m behind. I’m losing the battle. Maybe if I’d some Valium…. ah; or Vicadin. Today is Valentine’s Day. My Lady loves it. Its ok. I love love (speaking of, I just heard Oasis’ “Let There Be Love”, what an amazing song. It makes me wanna make a “love” mix. You know: True Love Will Find You In The End, All You Need Is Love, No Excuse For Lovin, Love Boat Captain, etc.); I just don’t like consumerism. Just like so many other national holidays, this one started out as a weird pagan ritual. Involving warewolves and blood (hence the red), and something with the heart (maybe they ate it) originally, the Christians ruined the celebration. Now we’ve got little chalk hearts, TONS of chocolate, and roses. Win some and lose some.

We’re headed to a steak-house tonight. No class today. I received Batman 673 from the USPS. Not UPS, USPS. There’s a difference dammit, a huge difference. Lots of internet folk trashed it. It’s very weird. It would seem at a quick glance that this issue has absolutely nothing to do with the previous, and the next: not true. On the surface, maybe; but this arc hearkens back onto, and into, itself in mysterious ways. Things are at work here. Greater themes and subtexts which might go unnoticed to the dipshit-reader. There’s a whole lot going on here. We still don’t know who the fuck, or what the fuck, this crusty thing behind Bat-mite is. Green eyes? Did you know there’s a loaded gun at all times on the International Space Station?? I didn’t.

-Sonny