Food Addiction

From time to time I find myself addicted to certain foods. Right now I'm addicted to these Pilsbury chocolate-chip cookies. I almost hate to buy them because I cannot control my eating of them. However, I gave in last week because they were on sale and I couldn't resist. Saturday my dinner consisted exclusively of milk and cookie while I watched "The Two Towers" on pay-per-view.

Rebekah's addiction is the chili 3-way from Steak 'n Shake. When we go out to eat and I ask her where she wants to dine; she always wants Steak 'n Shake. To which I always make the same lame double entendre "I believe I'm in the mood for a 3-way too." She tried to make this fabulous item at home using the canned (yuck) Steak 'n Shake chili that they sell at the supermarket. It didn't quite work. Her sister made this awesome chili at the family reunion which was a real close match. So I suggested she attempt it again last night using that recipe. It was about a 95% match! I think if she just used less cumin and we ground up our own steak it would be dead-on.

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This is not really related to the topic. Rebekah and I started working on what I thought was the next 6a2 song. However, it is way too mellow and breazy to fit in on second thought. ATMOS 206, our last song, barely fit the 6a2 style. And then we have other songs which won't work as 6a2 songs as well. So I suggested we record them and set them aside for something else. We'll probably just use a temp drum track to keep beat and then sub in my sister on drums when she has the chance to come down and record (you are reading this aren't you?). This project really needs to be guitar, bass, and drums with slight embellishments of other instruments here and there. The plan (right now) is to have a theme EP (or record depending on our productivity.) I'm stingy with the details because I always fear they'll get swiped up.

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This isn't on topic either. I'm about ready to lay my novel aside for two months as per a suggestion by Stephen King. I don't really see him as any ideal to reach toward however this one bit of advice made sense. After you are done with writing put the book away for a while and then look at it later with fresh eyes when you are going to start the edit. So in the meantime I'm gearing up for my 3rd screenplay, working title is "Mental Note". When I set out to write a script I usually try to write it so that if I had the time and means later I could film it. Well this story involves a girl with down syndrome and two spider monkeys so it's immediately out of the realm of possibility for a future production. The genre is dark comedy along the lines of Solondz "Welcome to the Dollhouse." I'm hoping it will be a fun write. The novel has been such a long, dreary chore that I need something refreshing.

Excert

At about eleven o’clock we stopped at a dim diner. A little greasy-spoon affair with truckers winding down and moonlighting housewives pouring coffee thick and black like used motor oil. Smoke hung in the air and had stained everything nicotine yellow. Everyone fat, everyone slow-even the flies could only mange a precursory float, barely hanging, drifting on the air like bloated zeppelins. Christopher and me walked in looking like lithe aliens. We took a look. We took a booth-ripped of course and hastily “repaired” with green duct tape.


Christopher surprised me an ordered the entire menu like a death row inmate on his last night. Granted it was only a worn single page (yellowed of course) but it was still impressive. I raised my eyebrow quizzically. He shrugged it off.


“I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten since…. this morning?”


“Yeah and even then you had mine too.”


“You’re not hungry are you?”


The secret is that I am hungry. I could snap at any time. I could eat the layers of grease off the griddle in this pit. Every second is a fight against flesh.


“No Daddy, I’m not hungry. Although I could go for some gum I didn’t think to pack a toothbrush.”


“Drink some coffee.” He nudges a mug toward me and the content seems to jiggle like Jello.


“This late? I need to sleep.”


“There’s still a long drive ahead of us.”


“Where are we going?”


“The City.”


“Why?”



“To find you a place to stay.”


Christopher has been beating around the bush ever since we left the church in the morning. I’ll all for adventure but I’d at least like a handle on my destination. I think he senses my apprehension.


“Don’t worry, I think I know of place where you can hang out for a while and clear your head. You know, get your wits about you and prepare for your ministry. Kind of like me. When I got out of the seminary I spent a year wandering around Europe. Even Christ needed his forty-days away in the mountains.”


I smile for his sake and shrug off my wandering mind. “I just wish I could’ve went home for my toothbrush.”

Art

Mina's art teacher is impressing me. Somehow I pictured Kintergarden art class as construction paper and paste turkeys or something. However, Mina is coming home and talking about perspective and horizon lines and such. So school isn't a complete waste of time.

She was playing "artist" last night. She did this neat little mixed media piece with clay, water colours, and Christmas stationary.

Arbitrary Thoughts

Rebekah's always good for an interesting thought now and again. She was talking about how white trash people have a similar look that goes far beyond mullets and acid wash jeans. She believes that their skeletal structures are similar. She talks about such things as eye shape and placement and stubbiness of fingers. She theorizes that even when a person gets the glamour treatment that can't shake the "white trash" look they were born with and goes on to site Sheryl Crow as an example. I don't guess that it is too far fetched. If over time enough people breed within a select group they'll start developing characteristics that are unique to that group. That's how we got all the "races" in the first place. And if you mix the degenerative effects of alcohol and drug use during pregnancy you seal the deal.

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Belle and Sebastian are coming to St. Louis in November ... on a meeting night ...

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Mina wants to go on a picnic. Once upon a time I would say "no problem" and grab a ratty old blanket and a plastic grocery sack full of cold cut sandwhiches and go to the park. However that "Queer Eye" show has me convinced that I need a picnic basket and picnic china if I want to call myself a man.

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The company I work for just secured a 3 million dollar contract. If there was ever a time to try to get a raise it's now.

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Recently I've heard several people mispronouncing bestiality. It's "best" not "beast", people! Another commonly mispronounced word is menstruation. It's "menstrOOation" and not "menstration". And don't even get me started on "propitiatory". 99.9% of all JW's butcher that word.

Food Woes

When I get my first paycheck of the month we usually set aside $400.00 to cover our food and gas expenses for the next four weeks. The goal is $100.00 a week which we usually end up fudging the first three weeks leaving us stretched thin on the fourth week.

So on the fourth week it's time to get creative. Time for oodles of ramen noodles. Time for government cheese.

Time for deep discounts. We picked up three of these incredibly discounted Red Baron pizzas at the grocery store. Mind you, incredible discount does not equal incredible taste. I think they were practically giving them away to see if there was an interest in obscure flavours such as tomato and bacon, ham and pineapple, three cheese and garlic.

Time to scour the cupboards and pantry and pull out the unlabeled tins hiding in the back. I had some black beans and tortillas hanging around so I decided to make some burritos. Chicken, chorizo, and red pepper. Black beans, jalapeno, and onion. Roasted salsa. Here is the part where my tear ducts get tortured. First by the onions. Then by the roasted jalapeno peppers. Then by a habenero. And finally by chorizo. And here is the rub. Literally. Scrub all you want and the accumulated oils of it all will not come off your hands. So throughout the rest of the night and on into the morning everytime I rub my eyes I'm lit up all over again.

We've just got to make it to Friday...

Family Reunion

I went out in service Saturday with a Benadryl hangover. My year-long allergies start to perk up upon the onset of fall so I spend most of the autumn months in an antihistamine haze. We were working in the nice, new suburban neighborhood (of the we already have our paradise right here we don't need yours, thank you, variety) and along the road I saw a paper grocery bag filled with dead birds. Weird and eerie.

Afterward I ran home at noon to go to Rebekah's grandmother's house for their annual reunion. Needless to say these are generally a waste of Saturday. But, it's important to Rebekah so I go along. Her family is not very sociable. No one talks to each other. It's basically just sit around and drink beer, eat dinner, sit around and drink, build a bonfire, sit around and drink beer.



They rolled out the Sponge Bob pinata which I allowed Mina to beat with a clean conscience after reading that new Awake article. Rebekah's Mom butchered the cartoon characters name and kept calling him "Sponge Job".



I relax with beer #2 on the hammock.



This is Rebekah's cousin Tony with his two kids and his friend Krista.



Mina's feet at the end of the day.

Updates and Mic Hass

So we figured out the deal on the peanut incident. The cookie I ate was a chocolate cookie with chocolate icing. However when the sister made the icing she put a spoonful of peanut butter in with the icing. It was hidden and concealed. So when I took the initial bite the levels were too low to alert my peanut sense. It was only after I ate the entire cookie did the levels accumulate and throw my system into a frenzy. So now all my archenemies that read this know how to kill me.

Last night at the meeting I'm dozing because I couldn't find my Circuit Assembly notes so I really have nothing to contribute to the last part. So in a stupor I barely hear them announce my name for concluding prayer. This was a surprise. Usually I check the schedule and know about it weeks in advance; but this one slipped by me. My heart starts beating frantically and I spend the song trying to calm my nerves. I walk up and give a quick prayer thanking Jehovah for his creations and just barely get through it.

I caught the Folksmen on Comedy Central's repeat of Conan O’Brien yesterday evening. I like how they kept up the continuity of the the Mighty Wind movie going. The bass player was still dressed as a woman like the movie left off. After they played a song Conan did a brief interview with them. They stayed in character and Conan was tripping up trying to talk to them. It was the most awkward interview. Mighty Wind comes out on DVD in a few days and I will definitely be buying it. If it is anything like Guffman or Best in Show it will keep getting funnier with each viewing. (Waiting for Guffman is still the champ in my book.)

I woke up today and fired up the Mac and had six Spam e-mails containing the new "Swen" worm. Since my Mac is immune to such nasties I simply deleted the annoying e-mail messages. However, I started worrying about my network at work.

Television news is almost too comical at times. I watched it just a bit while waiting for the Simpsons to come on. It was ridiculous to see all these news reporters standing in the middle of some hurricane getting blown all over the screen and wind whipped and soaking wet. It's so over-the-top but I guess it makes for exciting TV or something.

Seeks Interesting Videos!

Well I'm working on having an event in October or November. I've been thinking of what I want to do with it. I haven't thrown a party since I was 16 and had a grad-party. I want to do some sort of video installation for atmosphere. I have access to the company Video Projector so I want to have some neat visual images projected on a wall. I was thinking something like these:

Lemongrass
Piano
Happy

So what I'm looking for will be merely decoration, no sound. So if anyone knows of where I could get a hold of a DVD (or even VHS) of some experimental/art film project or maybe even something else (obscure educational films, ancient home movies, cartoons, ? ? ?) to play, please comment or e-mail me. Any other ideas? Thanks!

Bible Study

One thing I've observed about the organization is that a bible study with your child is given less importance to a bible study with a random person you meet at the door. It's not so much an official stance as it is the attitude of some people.

Like when they throw out a statistic like "x amount of people come into the organization each day". I get the feeling most folks view that x as people outside the congregation. But it seems to me that a good portion of those "coming in" were already in as children of JW's. All organization figures that are given only take into account active publishers (baptized or unbaptized, they don't differentiate). The majority of children of JW's become publishers, maybe around age 10 or so. They may not go on to get baptized and make a commitment but they usually become publishers. I speculate the bulk of statistical growth is being provide by the progeny of Witnesses.

When asked to give a reason why "the end" hasn't come yet, some will point out all the growth that is still taking place. But if the growth is underage children of Jehovah's Witnesses wouldn't these skirt by destruction any way under the merits of their Witness parents? There is still tremendous growth but it may not be quite how people picture it.

So I'm not trying to dimish the importance of making return visits and conducting bible studies with outsiders. We conduct studies with people we meet in the ministry and maybe one a year become a publisher in our congregation. It still works and is necessary. I just think that bible studies with your children should be held in the same esteem. Perhaps they are viewed as easier so it's not as impressive or something. Or maybe they are so common that they lose there perceived value.

I guess the whole thing was brought on by the service overseer who visited our book study last night and pointed out that our bible study rate was "technically" with the national average. But he went on to say that if we didn't count the bible studies with our children then as a group we wouldn't have any studies. Why compare apples to oranges? The national average takes into account bible studies with children of JW's so it would seem right on target.

Not-So-Sweet Dreams

I really hate it when people tell me about their dreams. It bores me silly. So it is with great hypocrisy that I state the following:

Last night I dreamed that I visited an old teacher of mine who was afraid that I was there to kill her. "Why else would you return?" she asked me with tears in her eyes. I dreamed of being in the deep, dark service tunnels of the NY subway system where vagrants had made their homes and turned into silent shadows who tried to rob us. I dreamt of offering drugs to an addict and being chased up a flight of stairs and beaten. I dreamt of being in the rebuilt World Trade Center and was berated by a security guard when I didn't pay proper respect to the memory of the terrorist attack. Werewolves and vampires had chased me up a tree as my situation was being discussed on an alt-science AM radio show. And there were super heroes flying through the hi-rises fighting for domination.

And between each little scenario I awoke and stared at my alarm clock. The digital readout glowed bright read in near blinding luminance.

--

Growing up I regularly used to suffer from sleep paralysis. Somewhere between wake and sleep I would become paralyzed and unable to move. This was accompanied by a sinking feeling as if my brain was a bathtub drain and all my thoughts were water funneling down inside. I would become aware of an evil "presence" just outside of my field of vision. During these times I would try to fight it believing that if I could just move my foot I could break the spell. I would also pray frantically. It only lasts a minute but it is the most awful feelings I know of. In the aftermath I would be so terrified I couldn't go back to sleep for fear it would happen again. Fortunately, these episodes have diminished to maybe once a year. I used to think I was being attacked by demons (or aliens) and that horrified me. Now that I understand that it is a "natural" bio-chemical experience it's not so bad once the episode passes. But it still leaves behind this feeling of dread that is hard to shake.

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I've often given thought to why we dream. As far as I know science hasn't provided a definitive answer. I speculate that perhaps it's our mind's way of organizing our mental hard-drive. Perhaps the brain is reviewing the day's experiences located on the desktop and moving them into to various file locations throughout the disk as well as chucking some of the events into the recycle bin.

Graduation Party

Lacey had her graduation party at Hartford park. I made a Potato and Chorizo Egg Custard with New Mexican Chile Sauce which is the only thing remotely "potluck" that I know how to make. I avoided all cookies like the plague not wanting a repeat of last weekend. I played some bocce until the brothers broke off for baseball so I retreated to a remote area of the park with my laptop and did some writing and editing on my novel. My father-in-law bought me a new cowboy hat after listening to me bemoan the loss of my original one some years ago. So I've been sporting it again new depression style. All the young boys had their skateboards out. Fresh off a viewing of "Dogtown and Z Boys" I grabbed one and tried to emulate those 1970's skate moves just about breaking my wrist in the process.

The whole day was kind of a downer because the band was supposed to playing until we couldn't get approval. It suckes to practice and practice and not be able to do anything. I talked to Brandon about renting the Wood River Round House for a night so that we could play before we start getting rusty again. I've been wanting to rent it anyway to have a dance party so I guess I'll just combine the two and do something in October. I might check around and see if Mikey Ramono wants to do a DJ set and then I could do one and then Mostly Minus could play. Rebekah can work the NA drink bar. It could be fun...but I always worry that some kid will do something stupid and their parents will get all hot at me because it's my event. I don't really know any of the kids around here to know who to invite so I'll end up just relying on giving the girls in my hall some invitations and telling them to pass them out as they see fit. That's scary.

ATMOS 206

To an extent our new song is done. I think I could tweak it some more; but, I'm ready to move on to other things, at least for the time being. It is definately my favorite so far as it is closer to the type of music I listen to. To sum up: girls and guitars. Rebekah gets to share the writing credit because she came up with the melody and really helped me to lay out the whole thing. Plus she kills the vocals. All of them. I have a big smile on my face.

Kool-Aid

After seven years of marraige you run out of things to talk about to your spouse and end up debating the minutia of pop-culture in effort keep the lines of communication open. In my relationship Vh1's "I Love The 70's and 80's" series have been a godsend for this reason.

Last night we got on the subject of Kool-Aid. Some families live and die by Kool-Aid. You open their kitchen cabinets and the little packets spill out from overflow. They are seldom without a fresh pitcher in the 'fridge. The children's upper-lips are always decorated with a Kool-Aid mustache. We are not one of those families--12 packs of pepsi to the point of overflow but never Kool-Aid.

I grew up on Kool-Aid. So did my friends. Each family had their favourite flavour. My buddy Casey always had lime. My sister's friend Laquina always had what was referred to as simply "red" as if the colour indicated the flavor like my least favorite, "orange." At our house it was usually lemonade.

So why no Kool-Aid now? I can think of two things that make me cringe dealing with Kool-Aid. Bad memories that provide a critical Kool-Aid impasse. First, the ghetto girls in grade school that used to carry around baggies of Kool-Aid powder and sugar and spend the day dipping their immortally stained fingers therein and sucking them with an unnerving slurping sound. Disgusting.

The other event was when I was out in field service once. This lady invites us in by yelling from her living room bed. It is a basically a "Gilbert Grape" scenario with this chronically obese, bed ridden woman in a thread bare nightgown that revealed too much laying and watching Soaps. She looked like a puddle, a pancake, a flounder. Her fat son walks into the room and interupts, "Mama. Look I found a packet of Kool-Aid!" He waves it about gleefully. "Now I can dye my hair!" The mother proceeds to tell (yell at) him that they need to save it to drink and the son is protesting that he needs to dye his hair Kool-Aid green. Disgusting.

--

Rebekah helped me work on our new song last night. It's turning out to be a catchy pop-rock song like the later Lush albums. We even got the rad two-part vocal harmonies in there. I'm really happy with this one I can't wait to share it.

I had an epithany with my book. Yesterday I woke at 5:00am and the ending that I was struggling to weave together from various plot threads had materialised in my brain somehow overnight. The book is done. I just have to finish getting it down on paper.

Early Graduation

This article relating to early graduation on CNN sparked my interest because I graduated shortly after my junior year. It wasn't nearly as easy for me as the school in question is making it. I think during my Freshman year I got to looking at the school rule book and started working the credit graduation requirements and deduced that if I played my cards right I could get out after my Junior year. I didn't love school and couldn't wait to get out.

I ended up taking these brutal 7:00am advanced science classes for extra credits and barely awake, barely skated by with D's and low C's. I skipped the basket weaving classes in favor of the core requirements, reading, riting, rithmatic. By the end of my Junior year I had numerically met the credit requirements but I had to pick up a summer school government class to meet the academic requirements.

Afterward I entertained the idea of going ahead and doing my Senior year. The way I looked at it I could only go to school one day a week and still graduate after having met the requirements or I could just go to school for fun and fail all the classes or do an entire curriculum of home economics. But in the end I just decided to write a letter to the School Administrator asking for permission to graduate early. I was perceived as bit of a rebel at the time due to my publication of a pissy little journalism rag so I think they were probably glad to give me the stamp of approval that sent me on my way.

At the ripe old age of 16 I graduated out of public high school.

Picnic in the Park

Our Congregation was giving a going away party for two of our pioneers who are moving at the park. Mina is still sick so I was going alone. Today was such a beautiful day I decided to ride my bike the eight miles to the park.

Food was served and I had the misfortune of grabbing a cookie containing peanuts in some form. I have bad peanut allergies. Usually when I eat peanuts accidentally there is just a little discomfort or maybe I throw up. Nothing too dreadful. Well today was not normal. I started feeling really bad, really fast.

I jumped on my bike and rode back home which nearly killed me. My chest was tight and my skin was itchy. My heart was pounding furiously. Finally, I made it home and grabbed my emergency asthma inhaler and took some puffs hoping that it would go away. It didn't.


Rebekah decided to go out shopping with her mother so I found myself home alone and quickly feeling worse and worse. So I called Rebekah to let her know I was driving to the hospital. I should have called an Ambulance; but it felt like overkill. I could barely drive and almost hit a pedestrian and then ran a stop sign and almost hit another car.

Upon making it to the emergency room my face had turned ghost white and my arms were bumpy and red. They checked my breathing and rushed me to the back where they started an IV and fed me some benadryl and some epiniphrine They plugged me up with some O2 and administered a couple albuterol breathing treatments.

I've had this allergy all my life and the only other time it landed me in the hospital was the very first incident as a small child. Usually it's no big deal; I can't fathom why this time was different. Usually when I bite into something I can tell it has peanuts in it and spit it out. This time it was only after I had ate the whole cookie. But even when I've had experiences like that it didn't almost kill me.

At 6:30 I was released from the ER and Rebekah came and took me home. I have insurance but I'm still set back $75.00. But I guess $75.00 is worth it to be alive? There was a couple seconds when I was worried that I wouldn't get to finish my book.

In retrospect it would have really been nice if they shoved a breathing tube down my throat. I still have to write something like that for my book and it's so much easier to use real life experience over what you read about. I don't like to fake it. The good is that I got a nice ER experience in my head for a couple of parts. I was sleepy because of the drugs they were giving me but I still tried to pay attention to the sights, sounds, smells, and feelings.

Mostly Minus; September 14 @ Hartford Park; 7:30p

An ode to hip-hop

I grew up in the ghetto. Rephrased: I grew up outside the ghetto where the white people lived. So at that point in my childhood where I developed musical tastes seperate from my parents I turned to hip-hop or rap as it was commonly reffered to. I think this might have been because it was what I was exposed to. Or maybe I was just trying to be down so that I wouldn't get shoved in the lockers. Maybe not.

I started with the crossovers like DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince and M.C. Hammer and RUN DMC who were getting pop radio play. But it soon lead me to the greener pastures of groups like Tribe Called Quest and Brand Nubian.

Back in that day there were no JW rock bands going around but there were rap groups. In a neighboring congregation a couple of [physical] brothers (one being Brandon who I play with now) were rhyming over pilfered beats. (Back then when you bought a rap cassingle the b-side was usually just the music so you could rhyme over it.) Their cassette started working its way around the circuit and by the time I got my seventh-generation copy the sound quality was so bad I had to turn my stereo up super loud to hear it. But it was cool none the less. I still remember some of the choice lyrics such as "when it comes to dresssing, I'm not in the middle. Put on my best suit and tie my tie like Brother Little."

My first attempt at making rap records was a nice failure. I didn't know what a sampler was so I was manually creating loops with old disco records and a cassette deck. Me and my friend Derek were going to try rap over it but ended up just giving five-minutes worth of shout outs. "I'd like to give a shout out to the carrot! Yo carrot you taste good." My first time performing was when we started rhyming at these teen parties under the moniker of Tone Def and D-Wreck. Usually one cover, Das EFX "They Want FX" and then one original.

Meanwhile Ice-T and NWA were getting media attention because of their songs "Cop Killa" and "F*** Tha Police". Rap's days were number as far as JW's were concered. When the governing body dropped the blade on rap they also sliced in half my musical ambitions. I gave it up and didn't look back like Lot's wife. I can't complain at all because when I left hip-hop the alternative thing started happening in the mainstream which lead me to Belly and then to Throwing Muses.

Now I look around and Witnesses kids are listening to hip-hop again. I knew it was only a matter of time before it started becoming acceptable. If you look at old magazines you'll see that both "the twist" and Disco dancing were at one time outlawed. Now these are JW wedding reception standards. Even the elderly widows are out there doing the twist--hip replacement and all.

The problem is that mainstream rap hasn't become any better. The violence/gangsta element isn't as prevelant as it used to be; but, it's been replaced by an emphasis on sex, drugs, and partying. The materialism (bling, bling) is still there as well as the self-centered attitude and boasting. (I know that there are exceptions to this but they are exceptions and not the rule.)

I don't have any hip-hop CD's anymore. I got rid of them shortly after that first article came out. But lately I've been downloading some of those old tracks. I really like that jazzy hip-hop like Tribe and Digable Planets.

Me and Brandon both have a common musical background even though what we listen to today is different. We both grew up on hip-hop. I guess that explains why the hip-hop beats keep creeping up when we start working on songs. Brandon almosts raps in his new song. Awww shucks it's almost old times. That got me thinking about all of the above. I'm almost coming full circle. I think we have both outgrown hip-hop for us to come out with something that's just straight rap but at the same time I don't think we can shake the elements of it. Case in point is Brandon's new song trENDsetters. (As a whole I don't really like this one that much just bits and pieces therein.)