Eht’s SHITE bein’ Scottish! Weh’re thae louest ay the louw! Thae scoom ay the fookin’ erth! Thae moost retched, miserable, serrvial, pathetic trash that was e’er shat intae civlization. Soom heht the English-I doon’t. They’re jest wankers. We, on thae oother hand, ere colonized by wankers. Cannae even find a decent coolchur tae be colonized by. We’re rooled by effehte erseholes. It’s a shite steht ay affehrs tae be in, ehn all thae fresh ayr in thae wirld won’t make any fookin’ deffrence!

“Let’s not start sucking each other’s dicks quite yet.”

Indeed, Winston. Oh sure, the news from Berlin is fantastic (how often do you get to type that one?), but if my calculations are correct, it’s still July 24, 2008-not January 20, 2009-and the junior Senator from the great state of Illinois is still a long, long way from his desired November election result. None of that “thirty minutes in ten,” “three months in one” shit. Not only that, but we’re all still an eternity away from the much-vaunted “realignment” election result we all desperately, maniacally crave. Today, the Germans merely saw us get our hands wet, not wash them.

So apparently some people missed the FISA vote protest. Well…shucks. You snooze, you lose. Not me, though. I was there, and it was AWESOME. 100,000 bloggers stormed the Capitol, dressed in preppie business suits, carrying pocket Constitutions, and wielding their laptops like deadly maces. People trampled each other to kick Harry Reid in the balls. The old coot put up a hell of a fight, but in the end the numbers were against him, and he submitted meekly, like we knew he would.

Some say it begins with trauma. Others swear that it’s as spontaneous and pure as two hundred Danish virgins. Still more insist that it’s born of malignant ego or raging id. A smug few are convinced, and cannot be swayed, from the position that it’s only deity-bestowed. They are all correct in small, insignificant ways, but for the most part they are hopelessly Wrong. It begins because it begins, a perfect storm of the above plus that one, fatal spark of initiation, that desperate, naked retaliatory impulse to emulate with extreme prejudice, to hack and slice and tear one’s own permanent space of posterity into the great void of nothingness that each of us is banished to upon the inversely fortuitous day of our birth.

I didn’t notice it at first. I was under the all-consuming headphones, demolishing my remaining hearing with an album called Diamond Hoo Ha, deep within the selfish recesses of my own warped and spoiled suburban mind. It was the night of yet another dipshit, two-bit primary in some states, and an even skimpier night of civic duty here on the Central Coast, so the low whine was indistinguishable from Gaz Coombs and Measure G and Proposition 99 and the rest of existence’s dull roar.

Then I recognized it, processed the foul frequency in my debilitating cerebrum, and promptly dismissed it. Popular vote Florida Michigan in to win why’d he back when I was president blah blah fucking blah. Another primary is lost and yet won. Another goal post is moved and yet there are still points scored and funds raised and egos stroked and babies kissed and blood sucked and brains fried in this stupefying death march of a Democratic primary. The ciphers croaked on. The mirrors kept reflecting. The desperate projection couldn’t stop thinking about tomorrow.

It’s really all about me.

I know, I know, I’ve said it before, and many times, but this time, I mean it oh so much more. Honest. So yes, it’s come to this, a phone-in diary that nevertheless must be connected, because while there have been some valiant attempts to revive a rabid addiction to meta among the raging hordes of Soapbloxia (yes, I coined that term), none has really seemed to take a permanent hold upon my crotchety sensibility. I used to live for meta, man. I used to suck it up like 1980s-moms snorted “Days of Our Lives” or “General Hospital” and other such genially geriatric baubles. I used to live for it, just like that, and since I have not been able to satisfy my perverse urges with the efforts of others, I shall subject myself to the merciless jaws of the Nostalgia Beast. Most of you won’t care. That’s absolutely fine. For those who do, though, you get a rank compendium of stale Liner Notes. Yep, for every diary I’ve ever written (pre- and non-DD* diaries linked in orange). Re-issue, repackage, revival. Don’t worry, it won’t take up too much of your time. Come and see…

As a recovering political junkie, I was prepared for Campaign ’08 to showcase all sorts of horrible visions that would threaten to throw me back off the wagon. Needless to say, I assumed these would all be thanks to the candidates, but nooooooooo. Their supporters have got in on the act as well, seemingly immune to that which Dr. Thompson once called “Campaign Bloat”:

Many appeared to be in the terminal stages of Campaign Bloat, a gruesome kind of false-fat condition that is said to be connected somehow with failing adrenal glands. The swelling begins within twenty-four hours of that moment when the victim first begins to suspect that the campaign is essentially meaningless. At that point, the body’s entire adrenaline supply is sucked back into the gizzard, and nothing either candidate says, does, or generates will cause it to rise again…and without adrenaline, the flesh begins to swell; the eyes fill with blood and grow smaller in the face, the jowls puff out from the cheekbones, the neck-flesh droops, and the belly swells up like a frog’s throat…The brain fills with noxious waste fluids, the tongue is rubbed raw on the molars, and the basic perception antennae begin dying like hairs in a bonfire.

Roy lives just a few streets away from me, across the park, but after I drop him off it’s not that late, my headache has dialed down to a mellow hum, and I don’t feel like going home yet. The scenery change I was looking for when I left UCSB earlier today has already degenerated in my mind to an endurance test comprising my depressed mom and annoying little sister, so I drive down Santiago, making my way out of the old neighborhood, passing my house and others identical in form and function. Twenty years has aged some of them gracefully, but most are not flattered by the passage of time. When I get to Caracas I go left, opposite from where Colin’s old house is when his family still lived here in SoCal. He wouldn’t recognize it now, rendered gargantuan with new additions, so I don’t bother glancing that way as I go, daring someone to barrel down the blind turn. No one does, but I can sense the fog filtering in as the night ferments in that unique suburban stillness.

Peter and I came back from Ortega one Friday night at the end of March to find a message from R.J. on the machine, asking me to call him on his line at home. My roommate tossed his jacket on the bed and, with a perceptive nod, took off for Alex’s room to begin the all-night idiocy we’d been anticipating for days. I sat down on the bed and dialed the number that, until I’d moved out, had been mine all through high school, when Nadia and I would talk until 3 a.m. while R.J. was trying to sleep.  He answered the phone after three rings, sounding relaxed.

It’s all about having something to do, really. About how you keep your creative brain churning when it’s already spent the entire workday creating for other people. About how you can make music by yourself when the guys in the band have all moved away so gigs & rehearsals are rare and special. About being selfish. About lying your fucking head off. About writing what you know, with deliberate mistakes. About lots of things that won’t be crammed into a riffy list. Abou…yeah, well, you know.

The backstory is not important. It will only get in the way and make readers guess at motivation when they should just enjoy the story. Because hey, even amateurs and dilettantes never let the truth get in the way of a good story, right? That’s right, buddy. The rules are likewise less than important. Oh really? Fuck yes. Maybe not made to be broken, but made to be bent. Bent to your will. Bent to what suits the story. Third person not honest enough? Ditch it for first-person narrative. Why trust those narrators, anyway? What have they ever done to earn that? Point A to B to C plots too boring? Duh. Okay then, how about some medeas res, dude? Eh, okay, I guess, but what else you got? Split narratives, man. Split narratives and alternating tenses? Damn, give me a goddam headache, whydoncha.

Disclaimer: I conducted this “interview” in June 2005 but for some reason never posted it on DKos. I hope that it brings some reality back to the silly infighting of the Dem Primary. You’re welcome.

Not too many people, outside of soldiers’ families or political junkies, seem to actually pay close attention to the war in Iraq anymore, even two years into it. Getting people to notice anything these days other than their own little cognitive-dissonance-world is like pulling teeth from a rabid yeti, and I get pretty batshit crazy about it sometimes. I haven’t exactly become a raging hippie as far as war-protesting goes, but I just got tired of being judged by people who didn’t know what they were talking about and who didn’t know anything about me, simply because I disagree with the war and everything it truly stands for. Of course, I guess if everyone did think about this rationally all our heads would explode and no one would be thinking about anything important anyway. Maybe that’s already happened.

Tangle with (#&@)_^%($* video/DVD authoring software in an effort to make, basically, a 10-minute Glorified Home Movie about one’s band that rocks:



The Honey White History Mix, 2002-2007