"Gelukkige verjaardag te u,
Gelukkige verjaardag te u
Gelukkige verjaardag mijn lieve, zoete, fantastische on,
Gelukkige Verjaardag te u..."

eh... close enough, anyway...

so... what do you like on your pomme frites, anyhow?

Blecch



Damn... I don't like temperatures like that when it's still September... considering that it's currently 20 degrees warmer in Portsmouth, right now... blecch...

Having an Oktoberfest celebration in late September is an interesting thought, don't you think?
I went to the one up in "Old Town" (the historic district a few blocks up the road), tonight... Had a good brat, some peaches & cream corn cooked in milk, and some really good micro-beer (I canna think of the name offhand, but it was tay-stee). Saw a pretty okay band called Newcomers Home, too. I mean, they were coming off to me as something sort of like a "Nickel Creek meets the Sundays with a pinch of Edie Brickell" kind of thing, and I like those acts (even though the mandolin player from Nickel Creek totally gets on my nerves in a huge way)... my only sorta complaint would have been when the violin player girl (oh, yeah... I guess even in newgrass-speak it's still a "fiddle") busted a string and the rest of the band tried to do some kind of improv instrumental thing while she fixed it... well, it was so nasty that I was tempted to go up to the stage and take the two mandolins from the guys playing them and beat them about the heads in an effort to get them to (please) never try something like that, again... but other than that, it was pretty good entertainment for the night...

Get with it, Sharemation... It's been's two days, now... that's almost unprecedented. I mean, if you don't want me to host my graphics there anymore, I guess I don't have to and stuff... but that would be a tremendous hassle... so I prefer you get your servers back to being stable and get on with it... 'kay?

"I am
surrendering
to gravity and the unknown
Catch me,
heal me,
lift me back up to the sun..."

I went to see Underworld, tonight. I was preparing for it to suck (as most "vampire movies" over the last couple decades have)... Much to my relief (and the relief of my $7.50... not to mention the $13.50 for popcorn, chocolate thingamajigs and a vat of root beer), the movie was actually pretty cool... a surprisingly decent storyline... a couple cool effects, good cinematography, cool "low color" (it was nearly black & white)...
I'm sure that all the flakes that think that they actually are vampires/lycanthropes (I think I recognized a couple of them coming out of the theater after me) that sit around and play Vampire: the Masquerade and think it's real will find all kinds of stuff to criticize the movie about (they seem to live and die with the actually-pretty-crappy Interview With the Vampire)... but y'know, they're flakes...
So, I had a pretty good time, tonight. Good times are... always good.

I was walking through the mall the other day... I passed a table with two guys sitting, eating pretzels and talking... I overheard one of the guys telling the other about how good of friends he thought they were. That really hit me as strange, I guess. I mean, I can't recall ever sitting with any of my closest friends talking about how good of friends we are. We just are, and we know it. I think our actions have always spoken louder about our friendships than any words. To hear that guy saying, "...yeah, I think we're great friends because..." sorta made my hair stand on end... it made me wonder if he was getting ready to ask him for money or something, y'know? It was just weird...

Maynard: "Go back to sleep..."

Tony: "okay..."

"...pale angel go away
come again some other day
the devil has my ear today
I'll never hear a word you say

promised I would find a little
solace and some piece of mind
whatever, just as long as I don't feel so

desperate and ravenous,
so weak and powerless
over you..."

"I formulate denials of your effect on me..."

"Close my eyes just to see you..."



"...so rare to witness such an earthly goddess..."

"Show me openings to lead me closer..."

This is the neighbor kitty...
Despite the look on his face, he is a very nice neighbor kitty...

Damn...

I love the idea of being "free..." I haven't been so in a long time... by my own choice. I mean, I was the one who chose to watch over my dad... until he passed away in June. It was the right thing to do... let my brother go off and get his doctorate, get married, become crazy successful, win an Oscar, drive awesome cars... and I'll stick around town and try to watch out for the old man... He needed someone to keep an eye on him. His health went downhill a lot after he had his first stroke in '84... maybe it wasn't all the stroke's fault, but nonetheless...
Now, sadly, my dad's not around for me to watch over. It's a kind of weird feeling... I still have dreams all the time where I'm looking out for him... Like my mind is trying to convince me that he's still alive. I dream about going back to Ohio, to my old house, and trying to get the rest of the stuff that I left there to bring back out here... and he'll be there... sitting in his blue La-Z-Boy... just hanging out... and a lot of the time, I don't even question the fact that he's sitting there. Other times, I'll tell the people I'm with in the dream that the man sleeping in the chair has to be a ghost, because I have his ashes in a box... and I wake up and feel guilty for thinking that he's dead... He told me in a dream once that he was glad that I was around to help him out over the years... and that he loved me... He rarely ever said that to me in my life... I told him I loved him, too... 'cause I did... and I do...
Now, I am free. Free to live my life for myself...
There's someone I wish I could hang around with... just because... because I think they are one of the cooler people possibly on the entire planet... Knowing them how I have known them is fine... I can handle it, and all... I could have never met them in the first place. But oneday, I got all ballsy and said hello... They are far away, but it's not like it has to stay that way forever and stuff... after all, I'm free... Free to do what's right... for me... aren't I?
Maybe not tomorrow... but maybe one day...
Damn... I know it's almost 6am, but I could use a good hit of scotch...

Where I Am, Now

Okay, I wanted to show you a pic of where I live, now... When I lived in Ohio, I lived in a pretty part... we had some "big hills" and stuff... but this is just a bit better... The pics don't really do the "spread" justice...
Dont' get me wrong... I definitely live "in the city." This is just what happens when you look west... ;)







Basically, that's the "foothills" of the Rocky Mountains... The "hill" in the front is referred to as Coyote Ridge. Pretty cool, aeh?

More piccies to come...

Reality TV is SO Strange

I hate to admit this... even to myself... Recently, I have found myself watching Elimidate and The Fifth Wheel. Not because I think the shows are any good... No no... quite the contrary. They are the two biggest piles of garbage on TV... On Elimidate, basically all that goes on is a bunch of catfights and name calling crap between really stank ho girlies fighting for the opportunity to be with a complete loser waste of space... and on The Fifth Wheel, it's usually guys trying to get girls to make out with each other (which they will do a lot of times) and trying to impress girls by showing their weenies to them... and then, on both shows, when things don't work out for the people, they are always given the opportunity to talk more shit about the people whose ass they were just kissing... totally lame... lame beyond lame...
I guess I watch it because I really can't wait to see how totally ridiculous these people are going to act in an effort to impress some skank (male or female, mind you)... and I am always disgusted after I watch them... which I expect to be... if I wasn't, I would have to question my sense of ... good taste & morality... or somethin'...

More on John Ritter

I watched the ABC special on John Ritter a little earlier tonight. It was very good, I must say... I was wondering where Joyce DeWitt was during all of this (I had figured she was totally staying out of the issue because of her extremely deep admiration of Mr. Ritter (whom she lovingly referred to as "Jonathon")). But she did actually come out and speak about it all tonight and, as I had figured, she was a complete wreck. She was trying to keep it together, but you could tell she was having a rough go of it...
I don't really know what else to say about it all, besides still being really shocked about it all... Besides... Three's Company is on Nick at Nite now, and I'm gonna go watch...

John Ritter

Yeah, Johnny Cash died, too... but y'know, I hate to be all shitty, but I didn't really care a whole heck of a lot for Mr. Cash. I mean, he beat the Hell out of his wife at one point and acted like an asshole to a lot of people in his life...
John Ritter on the other hand...
I remember watching the very first Three's Company when I was probably seven or eight... and I watched nearly every other one afterwards until it ended. It was one of the funnier things to ever grace the television screen at the time. I have recently rediscovered them on Nick at Nite, probably about a year ago, and I forgot just how funny it was (and how much I knew about life and sex and stuff when I was eight). "8 Simple Rules..." was probably the best sitcom on television, currently, and I watched it every chance I got. John Ritter made me laugh... a lot... I love to laugh. I will miss watching him in the future, but I am thankful to have had the opportunity to watch such a genuinely happy guy work so hard at something he loved so much...

I was talking tonight about some of the conversations I had with my father in the months before he got sick and passed away... One night, I was watching a movie about growing up in the '50s (which he did). He came and sat in my room and told me about the time he met James Brown in a recording studio in Cincinnati one day, back when James was recording "race records." Then another day, when I was listening to Dean Martin (yeah, I listen to Dean Martin... wanna make something of it?), and he came in and we proceeded to have a long discussion about the Rat Pack and Dean and Sammy (Davis, Jr.). And there was one Saturday morning when I was watching a Jerry Lewis movie that had (jazz drumming legend) Buddy Rich in it... I hollered for him and he came in and watched the rest of the movie with me... and we laughed... and laughed... I always loved old Jerry Lewis movies, and he knew it, too... He asked me if I ever thought that maybe I grew up in the wrong decade and I told him that yeah, in fact, I did. But y'know, if I had then most likely he wouldn't have been my dad (but I betcha we would have been good friends).
I felt kinda crappy for a while after he died, because I thought I didn't get enough "good time" with him, but I am realizing that I actually had a lot of "great time" with him... It makes me miss him a lot more, and it tends to get me sad, but y'know...

Greetings... from Fort Collins, Colorado...
"Where?"
That's right... Colorado... I just moved there from Ohio... I really like it here, I must say... It's some pretty territory... there's, like, an assload to do... something different everyday... Anhyow, I have a lot of stuff to talk about, but I don't really have the time to do it at this second, because I am still in the process of setting up residency and all that fun stuff... SO, as soon as I get all that garbage straightened away, I will be back in full force, letting you know what's been going on in the land of Tonus... See ya soon...