My landlord’s got a new girlfriend and I can tell she’s trouble. I saw them walking down the road tonight to get a slice of pizza. She was in these black skin-tight shorts and he was in that same old baseball hat that hugs the skull like balding dudes like me and him like to wear these days. She kept on having to pull the little black shorts out of her crack as they walked ahead of me. I just paid the rent yesterday, so now he acts like he doesn’t know me. My experience with the landlord is that he has a bluebird made of plaster on the back wall of his front porch. He also has a kitchen sink, and easy chair, and a large roll of copper tubing on the same porch. Once a month I go to his house across the street, usually in the cover of darkness, and leave the largest check I write every month in his mailbox, in the process committing a federal crime. His experience with me is that I leave that check and he let’s me live in this house that he got for a steal, and that he occasionally fixes a leaky faucet. Under my landlord lives a British guy named George of whom I know little. He loves Princess Diana and hate Charles and Camilla. He takes my recycling out to the curb, usually three days before the city picks it up. George works for the landlord and, according to the neighborhood homeless guy, handed in his two-week’s notice a few days ago and is moving on to...
After being beaten decisively in N.C. and not winning by the desired or expected margin in Indiana yesterday, Hillary Clinton today vows to fight on, stating in so many words that “she must continue to stand up for what she believes in.” Is it me or has what either of the candidates “believes in” become more and more difficult to discern as this campaign has gone on? We know that both candidates are solidly “democratic” in most of their stances, but, as far as I can see, there’s little that separates either of them on most of the issues. They have similar approaches to many issues (e.g. health care), and both have yet to propose any substantive plans for other issues (e.g. the economy). As the campaign has gone on longer, issues have taken a back seat to personal attacks. The energy put forth by both campaigns is purely being used for spin, media manipulation and smear. That energy could, and should, be being put toward developing a real platform and agenda that can be used to defeat McCain in November. It’s time for Hillary to step down and let the general election campaign to begin in earnest. It’s time to start making plans and figuring out how we are going to really handle the mess in Iraq, the failing economy and it’s international ramifications, the economic disparity between the rich and (increasingly) poor, environmental protection, etc. For Hillary to continue the contest at a point in which it is mathematically impossible for her to get the nomination (unless she manages to pull strings within the party and gain...
So I was lending this book to K the other night. It’s a book about Jackie O. Cultural studies. She and her mother saw the dresses at a museum once and she’s all about it. I met the author once right after I was of age. We were both drinking at a party in his honor. I spent the rest of the night in the corner, planning my escape route. When I gave her the book I briefly flipped through the pages an realized I had stowed photos in between the pages. I think they are photos that you saw once: Amanda in bra and panties, Robert with more hair, Amanda’s prom picture etc. I think you tried to show my mother the more interesting of the photos once. I took your picture once while you had on less clothes than that, and I believe you were un-encumbered with the whole thing. You don’t look happy, but not sad either. I don’t know. Those pictures are gone, but not in my mind. I can conjure with ease. But tonight I first got weepy, like I can do at times, about Amanda again. It wasn’t the half naked pictures. It really was that prom photo. The one of her before I knew her, but the one that looks like her about the time I met her. I guess I am getting so old. I really knew her shortly after a prom photo? When did I come to know you? Seems like ages ago now. The bra and panties was taken while on the Outer Banks. I used to take trips...
There’s too many dudes that feel the way I do about you. Are you worth all these songs? It would be easier if what Chris says is true. She thinks you love me. I ain’t that man, or am I? I know I deserve you as much as you deserve me. And that’s flipping this whole thing on its head. Take me to your friends and let’s be married. Let’s be married and be happy. And when we’re happy there’s nothing beyond us. I miss you when I sleep. Especially these...
You, see I awake, but not really. This is a dream. I have marshmallows in my ears and I am trying to roast them, but I keep singeing my sideburns. There’s a topless mermaid trying to put on a sweater, and two kids bouncing on an abandoned box spring. A dude, 6’3″ and blonde, tosses a racquetball at my head, and I violently shift and avoid being hit, only to lose the marshmallow which falls into the fire, and promptly melts. I can hear whippoorwills in the trees some half mile off. I am taking a walk in the woods with a gray figure. I climb a poplar tree, or what I believe to be a poplar tree, a 100 foot sapling. I lose my grip and start to fall again. I awake and it’s the back of your head I am looking at. Then I awake and it’s that damn down pillow...
A man walks into a bar; this not a joke. He first asks the bartender for a glass of water, at which point, the bartender explains that if you ain’t paying, you ain’t drinking. The man bursts into tears. The bartender asks why the long face. Really, this is not a joke. It seems that the old guy’s wife had run off with another guy, leaving early this very same morning while he was still in bed. If that wasn’t enough, the Camaro-driving sonofabitch ran over his what-would-be-best hunting dog, if only he ever hunted. The dog could climb a tree and throw the raccoon to its death, or say he said. So his old lady is gone, and his favorite dog is dead, and all he can think to order is a glass of water, because she took the money in the Maxwell House can in the kitchen that they had been saving for a trip this summer to Panama City Beach, and she took the bank card from his wallet on the dresser, and the checkbook which was also on the dresser, and the credit card was long overdrawn, and to top it off, it’s Veteran’s Day, a fucking bank holiday, and the old guy fought in the first Gulf War, and through much VA therapy had just learned to manage his PTSD, but he couldn’t get any cash out to buy a drink after his woman ran off with another man, who ran over his favorite dog, as they made their getaway. Lord knows how he’s going to afford the colonoscopy and all, especially after being...
I am still so in love with you. When you leave, I don’t want you to. When you are not with me, I want you to be. When I am away, I want to come back to you. I am ashamed.
Tornadoes tore through downtown and a few surrounding neighborhoods here in Atlanta last night. My experience with it was just of some hail falling at my house with heavy rain, a cancelled trip to the bar, and not much else so far. Apparently my office, the CNN Center, was heavily damaged, but when I checked my work email just a few minutes ago, I was told that we would be back open for business on Monday. I hope all of the news will just hold off until then. If you were planning to do something newsworthy, please wait. The upside of this is that the electricity at my house did not even blink during the storm. This in a neighborhood where the whole power grid will often fail when just one neighbor adjusts his or her thermostat in the summer. Not even a flicker during this storm and it was one of the worst I have seen in the 4 years I have lived here. And now, since it is an election year, we have to find someone to blame for the storm, and I am pointing our finger at the Georgia Governor, Sonny Perdue. If you do not recall, back in November the governor held a prayer vigil on the steps of the capitol to pray for relief from the drought that is going on in Georgia. A few days later, lo and behold, it rained. My friends joked that of course Sonny had consulted with weather.com before deciding when to plan his vigil so that he could increase the likelihood of his “rayers” being answered. It all...
After much thumb-twiddling and general time-wasting at my new job, I was called into duty last week just days before I was to head off to the warmer climes for a few days of spring training baseball (more on this coming soon). The result of a couple of full-day-late-night-early-morning shifts is CNN’s delegate counter game which launched sometime late on Monday or early on Tuesday morning of this week. It allows you to speculate on how the democratic race for the nomination is effected by different outcomes in each of the remaining primary states. I was not at work on Monday or Tuesday, but while at home on Tuesday I was floored early in the morning to see the thing being used live on the CNN TV broadcast. As I am a TV virgin this was a total thrill to me. In addition, when I checked the traffic numbers we have had to the game so far, we are nearing one million visits. Considering that most of my projects at the AJC were lucky if they received traffic in totaling 5 digits, this is a much bigger stage. So, check it out and make it one million one visitors. Addendum: So I don’t try to toot my own horn too much, but I haven’t been feeling as naturally full of myself since starting the new gig, so I will use the blog here to inflate my ego. When I arrived at work yesterday, the second in command for CNN.com had left a thank you card and a $50 gift card to Ted’s Montana Grill on my desk. That’s 4...
At the end of the night this is what there is: you there wanting something; me here wanting you. The whole world of this galaxy in between. Maybe one day the will all amount to something. At the end of the day, or perhaps, the very next morning.
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