The Black Forest

Random blaghness...

Furry Friends and Walmart...

Furry friends and Walmart. This is what is on my mind today. I'm planning a video shoot with my super-woman-friend-DLW-Stacie Huckeba for my song "Friends Fur Life" from my Los Feliz EP in East Nashville. All I will say is that I'll be laughing my ass off the whole time. Images of bear and bunny heads, a little seediness, and little 70's and a lot of....well...you'll just have to wait and see.

Now add those images with images from the website of www.peopleofwalmart.com and you'll have an inkling of what is swirling around my head. It is scary, very scary. Please help me. Someone please wash my brain out with soap. Anyone stupid enough to mix Fluffies with Walmart is fucking crazy and I stand guilty. I plead the Fifth! I plead the Fizzy! Fifth! Hawaii FIVE - OH I plead the Fizzy!!! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Do I hear a Hala-fallujah?!!

See..this is where anti-psychotic medication would come in handy.


My Magic 8-Ball and the Chaos Theory...

I love my Magic 8-Ball. All life's questions can be answered in a quick shake. Maybe not the best answer, but an answer none the less! I decided to take a whole day and only let my Magic 8-Ball make any choices I had to choose. It was awesome! I laughed at every shake. Talk about a stress free day, my Magic 8-Ball had me cancelling plans with good friends, watching old movies, eating food I didn't want but liked, hanging out with a virtual stranger, and drinking rose flavored lassies. It wasn't what I had in mind at all. That's the point! Putting a day of your life on random.

I enjoyed that day so much, I have a web page that had a Magic 8-Ball program on it that I get to from my phone. I've been using it out occasionally. Talk about pulling the trigger, taking a shit or get off the pot, choosing a side of the fence and fall off, stab it and steer, hit it or quit it...you get to doing or not doing fast! I will say that when it gives me the non-committal reply it is a little frustrating...they need a Robert Mitchum version that gets rid of all that "Maybe" crap.

See....we can't do random. We need external forces to give us random. Hence flip a coin, roll some dice, close your eyes and let your finger fall randomness that we use all the time. Random should not be confused with chaos, chaos is a powerful force in nature. Random is kind of like a bounded chaos. It has set number of variables like my Magic 8-Ball.

As I see it, yes
It is certain
It is decidedly so
Most likely
Outlook good
Signs point to yes
Without a doubt
Yes
Yes - definitely
You may rely on it
Reply hazy, try again
Ask again later
Better not tell you now
Cannot predict now
Concentrate and ask again
Don't count on it
My reply is no
My sources say no
Outlook not so good
Very doubtful

Chaos Theory is the science of how things change. Acknowledging the chaos in our lives can be scary and unnerving, but can do us a world of good. Accepting we really have little control over our lives and the world, does not go down easily. We simply need to let many things go and swallow a chaser.

*cough* *cough*

"Whew! That's some strong but smooth stuff!"

"Hello officer, yes...I am under the influence of random and chaos and I just rolled past that stop sign, crossed the double yellow line, did a donut in the parking lot and urinated on the Wells Fargo bank ATM machine..."

"Yes officer...it was completely random's fault, not me. See this Magic 8-Ball? Yea...those old toys...yea...that one...see...hold on I'll show you. Should I flip off this officer and haul ass out of here?"

*shake* Yes - Definitely

"Bye-bye mother fucker!" SCREEEEEEECH!!!!!

(2 hours later in jail)

"Ummm...Magic 8-Ball when will I get out of here?"

*shake* Ask Again Later...Much Later





Hot and Sweaty Bars...

Aaahhh...hot and sweaty bars. I love performing in them. Packed with people, low oxygen, high humidity, swimming pheromones, estrogen, testosterone, whiskey, little on light, heavy on sound...mmmm!!!!

We started late. Our drummer whilst owning a bitchin' '78 Ford two-tone truck that he bought from me and I bought from an old man in Memphis, Tennessee, is after all a '78 Ford truck. It didn't wanna start. She finally relented..."Velma" is her name. She's a solid gal that needs a little coaxing once in a while. A twenty-four volt spanking from another truck battery was all it took, and off she went to meet us. Waiting for her. Everyone was waiting for her. Us, the other band, the people in the bar, and the angels and devils.

Finally when we got to go and we went! Jumping, laughing, fucking up, nailing it, doing stuff we never had done, and stuff we've done for years. A show. A sound system that can't take all we were giving it and everyone forgiving it for something the poor P.A. couldn't deliver. Hell, we're in a small sweaty bar, we have our icy drinks, our friends, our soon-to-be-new-friends, former friends and lovers, current lovers and wish-we-could-be-lovers. This is the reason we go out. This is why we spent what little cash we have and relinquish what little left the week hadn't taken from us. Even the angels and devils weren't fighting. "Ah hell..." they say, "Let's dance, then go outside for a smoke and grab some fresh air." Only to get back inside, fill up and let it loose all over again.

This we were are a part of, the human experience. Looking for those small, rare out-of-body experiences we pay good money for, through illegal drugs, alcohol, prescription drugs, lack of sleep, lack of sanity, lack of propriety, lack of a fucking filter that we use most of the day. Thank God and the Devil that in these small moments we can put down the war flags and have a good time for a little while until the newspapers, television, family, preachers, politicians, friends, salesmen, bosses, and lovers tell us what's wrong with us in the morning...


Once Upon A Time...

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, there was a hunter who lived in the Black Forest. He had no idea how he got there, or whether it was really a forest or just the dark crevices in his mind. But one thing for sure, he got lost in it. After a few years he started to know pathways and trails. He started to be able to get around enough that he kinda liked this Black Forest. Even with all the wild animals, enchanted tree stumps, and crazy maidens that made his days quite adventurous indeed.

One day he came upon a sword. A sword with seven deadly edges. It was so sharp he accidentally cut himself just picking it up. "Damn" he thought..."One could do quite a lot with this sword..." Yes Hunter, you could do quite a lot. And he did. He slain many a beast and monster...almost a maiden or two, but good fortune and quick thinking on both their parts saved unnecessarily injure and harm. It can be tough in the Black Forest, and lonely too. Sure, the elves are fun, but they get on your nerves after a while. The occasional old witch would knock on the door, but he'd just pretend to be not home. If that didn't work then it's just off with her head. That's how it is in Fairy Tales. Lots of violence with seldom meaning or moral. Most everybody here in this forest are just crazy. Good crazies, bad crazies, and pure and simple delusional crazies. All crazy because that is the price to admission to be in this forest. The normal people live in the village and the way-beyond-lunies live in the castle.

Every once in a while some giant or dark wizard will come into the land and everyone would band together to vanquish their mortal enemy...but that rarely happens, so everyone just bickers between themselves and gossip about who's doing who and who said what. Aaahhh...just stuff to pass the time away.

The princess was found convorting with the hunter and the whole Kingdom was out talking about it at all the wells, written on walls and whispered at the fences. The heralds would tell and retell the stories so much that the stories grew into stories of other stories. That's where fairy tales came from, and this one too. Complete and utter bullshit because we're just kinda bored...

To be continued on another quiet and mischievous night...There will be XXX fairies, violent ogre blood baths, magic, and comedy from the village fool...me.


Sent from the Black Forest.

Rambling About Future Histories...

Our future history is now. No wait...now! Right then! And now! I say now to signify the time's past, it's ending. It's history. But what is history? Is it what we write down? Or is it as it really happened? Or does that even really matter?

In the truest sense, it is as it really happened, but until we can gaze unclouded by skewed perception and prejudices, we rely on what's written. A very scary proposition, especially in these days of unchecked facts and Wikipedia. Though I must say, I had extreme misgivings for Wikipedia and it's public entered information without the prerequisite of fact-checked data, and while I know there is a lot of misinformation, if you look at it statistically, the longer the Wikipedia pages are updated, the more true the information becomes. The extremes get slowly overwhelmed by the middle, and a better more honest representation is shown through. Granted extremes are a natural part of life and deserve their moment in the sun, but as in all things, extremes are a much smaller part of the whole.

The next question is, is the middle the truest path? No. In fact there is none. It seems that at the end of the day, all paths seem to lead to it. Of course, that is the inherent problem with linear thinking. It always gives way to circular movement....and give that a multidimensional framework and you're on to something else entirely. One that we can visualize, but cannot really express easily. We have put it to words. Religion, Philosophy, and Poetry. We have put it to equations. Math and Science. The best way to get a handle on it, is to FEEL it.

Have I lost you? What am I talking about? I am saying that we know all our answers inside ourselves. We just either don't want to pay attention to them because it might be painful, or we deny it's existence because it would shatter our core beliefs. We want to look to others, or outside of our world for answers that we already have inside us. Sometimes those answers are ugly....but in that ugliness, if we acknowledge it, we can overcome it and grow from it, into something greater than we have ever been.

Why is it that we want our "outlaw heroes" to escape capture and live, and our prophets/teachers to die? You can say "It's not me.", but we all have to take credit for the good and bad in this world. There are ugly answers to this question. Going against the grain/status quo is highly revered as long as you don't force people to deal with their ugliness. We don't want to truly improve our world. We are scared, lazy, selfish children. If we can acknowledge this, we are on the way of overcoming it. When I see all the fear, greed, and hatred some people have, I feel sorry for them. I cannot change their minds. You cannot change their minds. It must be found within themselves to be extinguished.

Our future histories depend on us to take a real hard look inside and bring all that ugliness out in the open, expose it. Us and the light will kill it. This world has always had the greatest expectations and abilities in it, we just have to let them out.

Speaking for one's self as only anyone can do, I know that I know very little of this world and out of it. I know I am scared. I can be selfish. I can be immature. I am weak. I am just smart enough to rationalize anything, making my thoughts dangerously illogical. I am a man, proud, humble, good, bad, intelligent, ignorant, strong and fragile...always on the verge of breaking...because someday I will break, and be set free.