Surfing Blurs

Surfed the expressway on my way home, relived the blurs.
I went looking for it this time.
I hadn't driven that way since after going mutually oral in the university parking lot with Shaileen.
I smoked a clove that day,
Drinking a coffee,
The bittersweet aromas lifted the elation; she was that damn good.
We blurred.
I was tired of driving,
It was time to surf again.
Surfing brings back blurs.

Responsibility in Action

I had never experienced anything like that avalanche. Watching brothers dash their heads past the sheltered hut, losing their lives; all pointless.

Luckily, the rendezvous was buzzing a-plenty. We had taken the daily opportunity to invite every single, potentially lesbian female throughout the base to this shindig.

 Making out with a Lieutenant isn’t everything it should be. Sometimes they’re better, even worse; but rarely are they dull; so I have only high-octane explosives to think about.

The ocean’s THAT way….

Smelly Digits

Enjoy this. .....

Whilst you read this....

I didn’t feel like cheering for the Knicks. The Melo trade didn’t burn much because it became inevitable, but when I found out Chauncey Billups was going as well – DAMN.

Denver’s win was a proud one last night.

Bulls beat dem Heat. AROOH! Deng backed it up tonight.

Watched Big Willie’s Hancock – see what I did there – really enjoyed it.

Exchanged conversation with a recognized number, but oblivious to the name. I’d lost the number in a swimming pool during the summer.  

YES, you are all numbers to me.

Picked up Dylan Dog Casefiles...the movie made me do it. It's Buffyd up, but I'm still watching it; am also wondering which story to read next. I'm non-fictioned out, could use some make-believe now.

Now leave, you smelly, meaty digits, got Regular Show to watch. Do not deny yourself the greatness of Regular Show....

....numerous numerical bastards. 

The Thrill of the Hunt

Before instant gratification through mass media, internet, and downloading, there was the treacherous, dismal, forced association prison known as high school. Throughout these years I was blessed to be surrounded by some of the best friends I had ever known. We all took pleasure in different genres of music and respected everyone’s own personal musical abilities and all around intelligence, although some of us chose to shadow our skills and our smarts when an outsider disrupted our circle.  

Another musical commonality we shared was our passion for the underground. The undiscovered, the unaired, and the unheard of bands of that time, and with this being the mid-nineties the stuff we preferred hearing was harder to find than a car phone.

One of the hardest records to find was Racer X’s Second Heat (and to a lesser extent,  Extreme Live: Volume 1 of their two live albums).

The internet was about to boom in a few years but back then, one could only find these rare and precious gems through magazines,  record stores, and other personal collectors who usually took out ads in the rock magazines.

On the easily available Extreme Live Volume 2 was a song called Heart of a Lion. That turned out to be a Judas Priest song that Racer X had covered, but Jimmy being the biggest Judas Priest freak was clueless as to which album this song existed. We searched every one of our known resources, mainly other collectors and more magazines, but we were without luck in finding the song but did discover an older Judas Priest album that Jimmy didn’t own – Rock & Rolla.

Hastily, Jimmy ordered the album, and while it was a good one, Heart of a Lion was nowhere to be found. We felt betrayed; we felt nearly raped and splayed for the entire world to stare and laugh at our hapless high school doinks.

Neither of us was sure if this song was even on Racer X’s Second Heat album, but it was our mission to find out.  Racer X Had released only four albums at that time – two studios and two live albums.

Monthly, we scoured the rock and metal magazines in hopes of finding Second Heat in the back-catalogues sections, and monthly the ad that contained the album for purchase always read “SOLD OUT”, and whenever we tried ordering it through the record stores the clerk would tell us it was out of print.

Our disappointment wasn’t so enraged that we wanted to thrash the record store clerks because they were actually very cool individuals who usually praised us for listening outside of the norm, so we would enact our primal anger on our musical instruments because, quite frankly anyone could kick our asses back then.

On a fateful trip to San Antonio, or maybe Houston, or perhaps even Florida – Jimmy and I were two grumpy-go-happy teens wandering a mall that was bigger than the neighborhoods either of us lived in when inside a record store Jimmy cried the elated rocker’s cry – “Duuuude!!”

Racer X – Second Heat, Track 6: Heart of a Lion. And, that’s right; ON CASSETTE.

In accordance with our group’s unwritten law, the first one to find it was the one honored in buying it, unless they were broke; then usually all bets were off and it was first come first serve, but we were all typically broke anyway so the law usually stood firm. But Jimmy did have the funds on him and we both quickly rushed to counter for him to make the purchase.

But our mission was not yet over. As soon as Jimmy bought it we tore the packaging like vultures through a rotting vagabond’s corpse in an Australian desert.  Jimmy opened the cassette case and flipped through the cassette jacket. The bi-lines informed us that Heart of a Lion was originally set for release on Judas Priest’s Defenders of the Faith album but remained unreleased. It was a thrilling dead end conclusion.

I love technology, but I don’t put my faith in it, and I don’t have too much fun with it; and while I do enjoy immediate knowledge at my fingertips and having the capabilities of locating any album that I choose to, technology will never replace the thrill of the hunt. There’s just something invigorating about the feeling of disappointment, the agony of a fruitless pursuit, and the excitement of browsing a room’s entertainment offerings and finally unearthing that lost treasure, that priceless gem that you know you will covet and cherish as a unique conversation piece.

Fuck you internet. Fuck you and goodnight.  

New Tunes and Some Sickness

I am currently perousing through my newly acquired Dagoba albums; a French metal-industrial-very damn heavy band introduced to me by a friend. They're definitely one of the better new headcrushers that I've heard in quite a long time, fusing the ambient electronics with the soul-stomping riffs while the vocals aren't the average, instant growl-to-melodic transition. The singer likes to experiemnt in between while basing the foundations of the vocal melody on either ends of the extreme.

I am also battling a virus that I probably brought on to myself during a four day "happy juice" binge. It crept up on me, and before I knew it I was 3 days into editing my book, 2 bottles down (not to mention the drinks consumed during the friendly outings in between), and 5 drawings done. I wondered why I stopped but then I recalled the chunk of meat inside my chest called a "heart" that was ready to explode. Even now with every hacking cough I feel my chest tighten, like it wants my chest cavity to develop fault lines.

The book I'm editing is still my Parrish character and his band of night club and noire misfits, but I'm ready to start working on my Drunken Monk concept. Maybe this last weekend was a subconscious soul searching tool, hoping to inspire ideas for the Drunken Monk story. And if it wasn't, too bad because that's what happened.

7-10 Skull Splitter

I remember when my sister came home. My parents didn’t seem to notice the everlasting change morphing the household, but I do. I remember that they no longer interrupted my sleep, no longer interfering with my dreams. I was always a quiet child, never giving them reason to assert their authority over me. Yet, two years later, there she was, crawling into the midst of the hallway, the young tiny treasure that eclipsed the older large ruin.

Her chubby hands emphatically slapped the worn wooden floor as if she was trying to launch herself into sprint with every progressing crawl, and there I stood, looking at her thirstily absorb her surroundings while I cupped dad’s bowling ball with both of my arms without anyone aware of my intentions, not even myself; I just knew that one object was heavier than the other.

Death on the Brain

I think about my death at least twice an hour. How will it happen? I’m not caught up so much as on the when because I could die before finishing this bloody piece. But still – I often think about:


• How will it happen?

• Will it be painful or subtle?

• Will I linger or will it be quick?

And most important of all:

• What song/album will I be listening to when it does finally happen?

I was exiting the expressway one evening on my way home from the university. I crossed the underpass where a truck chose to ignore the Stop sign and nearly plowed into me, but I – an actual driver and not a simple car steering oaf – was able to swerve out of the way and speed my way ahead of the fool.

During the incident I was listening to Our Lady Peace’s album “Healthy in Paranoid Times,” which was already one of my favorite albums from any band. Through the rest of the drive home all I could think about was that if that truck had hit me and I died, I would’ve died listening to this particular album.

That’s fucking awesome.

I think about all of the different forms of suicide I could perform. I have no intentions of killing myself, so I don’t mind thinking about all of the different methods; and, no, I’m not going to describe any of them either because they are all pure genius and reserved only for me or my characters.

Usually, I try to outdo myself with each new deadly episode. I don’t think it really matters how I go, just as long as the music is right.

Silent Sirens

The sky was as enlightened as the introduction to the Big Bang. Fireworks erupted everywhere and she kept her best known associates closely by.


The daughter didn’t want to speak to the mother – the uncle was too amused by the facts of it all to even really care about any of it, and everyone knew a cake was being delivered on Monday.

The sirens sounded but remained silent until there was someone appropriate enough to hear them – to interpret them – and inevitably, to damn them.

Every sentence begins with an idea and ends as a statement. Death makes a statement. Death remains an idea.

Flesh Finicky Feline Furies

Meandering the city streets during their prime nocturnal heartbeats is a dangerous thing. Linkward knew this quite well, but his most solemn conscientious moments occurred only during these ruthless hours.  

The hint of danger and human waste irked his senses throughout every block. To escape the sense-provoking swill, he would glance at the moon – the only celestial entity capable of being observed from the street floor. The city’s streetlights and blinking, neon temptation messengers were obliterated any chance of undisturbed, natural night sky.

The cats could see it though. They could see the sky better than any human ever hoped they could. The other things cats could sense, smell, see, and taste were the downtrodden souls in Linkward’s unkempt community.

During the previous week at the apartment complex, Linkward’s downstairs neighbor – Mr. Edgerow, the man with urine stains trickling down his front shirt that he attempted to pass off as careless coffee splashes had lost his job at the insurance agency, probably for frequently extending his lunch periods in order to get the elderly Yemen prostitute on Montrose avenue to piss on his chest while he chewed on his necktie and strangled his dick with dental floss.

Those nutritious facts made their way to the forefront of his social notoriety after he was found dead. Rather, when what was left of him was found, confirming his death. His former boss feigned concern for his mental well-being, but really hoped to ensure that Mr. Edgerow wasn’t planning any form of legal or illegal and violent retribution towards his office or remaining employees and potential clients.

When the police rigorously entered his home, dozens of cats fled from the apartment leaving behind only scraps of soggy flesh consumed up to the upper torso. His head was completely intact, aside from traces of cat fur draped across his thoughtless face.

The police found a suicide note in the kitchen, but he had planned to sexually asphyxiate himself to death. The cats sensed his despair – they got to him first.

Like everyone else, Linkward didn’t believe any of the stories about the man-eating cats, but after the scene witnessed by dozens of onlookers at the fate of Mr. Edgerow, now and again during his nightly perambulations through his industrial lover, Linkward would now look to the moon and then into the alleys, and occasionally he would find cats lingering within; sometimes feeding on something behind the cluttered mass of malodorous darkness, and Linkward knew that nothing in life was worth losing faith in yourself over because he had no interest in being consumed by soul-sniffing, moon-gazing cats.

Creating Shadows

I work. I'm not sure what it is I do exactly, but I know I get a paycheck for it. Sometimes I'm called to the forefront, but usually they need me in the background, behind the darkness; creating the shadows while quickening the pace.

Even the shadow-mover has off-days.

They found a used shell. Apparently, it had my fingerprints on it.

I tried recalling the night I loaded the cartridge but that was useful for only about forty-five seconds. The weather was supposed to be clear all night, meaning I should not have heard anything less than ten pounds scrawling over my rooftops. The spooky bastards they sent after me were at least one-hundred-and-fifty-plus.

They were all dead weight once me and mother nature were through with them.

Craving Ghosts

It's 3 a.m. in the cold.

I lost the bid and watched your breath get sold.

I tore up my written notes, scattering them into the fire

To keep warm our running joke.

Time makes me miss your sighs,

Time enough to have been a long time;

Long enough for me to miss even your lies.

Your windows have begun

To lose their reflection

While a haunting breath still stains the pane,

Yet I'm allowed to see you only when it rains. 

Concrete Heartbeat

Prancing across powerlines,
Listening to the signs of the times; forward is forward
Even when progress incidentally declines.
Losing velocity and devaluating property,
Hearing the heartbeat; feeling the pulse
Of My City...
My sweet city.

Rest Well

Discovered this afternoon that an old acquaintance passed away; I didn’t dig for details because I knew this person for several years and during the latter parts of our association, everyone that knew him could see him slipping deeper into bad health created by a life of self abuse.

He was a good person, however, even good people have bad habits and he allowed those habits to control which avenues most of his life took. He was highly intelligent, gifted with a vivid imagination and a knack for entertainment which he never fully pursued. He and I shared parallel demons at one time, and I knew what  I needed to do to make a positive difference in my life, and I had hoped a light switch would click inside his brain, but he was set in his ways and if he did want to change he wasn’t going to do it willingly anytime soon.

When someone asked if I had heard about this person recently, I already knew what they were waiting to tell me – he had died.

Quite frankly, I’m not interested in the whens and hows. I’m just thankful that he is finally resting peacefully; without pain for the first time in what I am sure were several decades, no longer  chased by demons. He was always kind, as generous as his means allowed him to be, and loved making people laugh. That is how I will remember him.

My Friend D

I had a friend named D. I hope I still have a friend named D.


She manipulated time and music. Previously, I thought she flexed her depth, but once time started swerving before mine own eyes – FTW – this one might hurt.

Every time we rode together, we always finished songs.

You feel those moments when you find that you are where you’re supposed to be, but the song’s not over.

Cruising with D, the songs lasted until the end; she made sure of it. She’s magic, she manipulates your patience; she’s the shit.

She’s D.

I hear tales of this DB. On El Dio de los Muertos, supposedly his strength equals his rage, and if he kicks a man's crotch both testicles end up in one sack.

Backhand

He was no longer accustomed to awakening this way. The hangover threw him for a loop, but his past alcoholic instincts kicked in and he quickly scrounged around the kitchen cupboards for his sister's weed.

He found the pipe.

After placing it on the petri dish he resumed scrambling for the goods.

BAM. Right behind the foreign coffee, not the Maxwell House stuff; like she always did.

The terrace provided all the types of freedom available before she moved in. He loved his sister, but the trick she pulled to move herself into his apartment was a cunning feet worthy of either only Satan or Santa Claus - and he hated them both because each represented his father's fist against his face while his sister was abusively relinquished under holiday cheer.

He hated her too. But he loved her. She was his sister, and every time he saw her he could not help but think about all of those years when he was knocked around the house by their drunken father while their passive mother stood by and watched until she was born - then all three of them watched while the drunken father knocked his ass from room to room while their passive mother never said a word, never lifted a hand to protect him; never disinfected the cuts running crimson downside his body.

But it all came back in that sadistic evening. His greatest girlfriend told him to meet her there. The love of his life was expecting him to be there. He walked into that bar, only to see the love of his life kissing the ex-boyfriend of her life.

She saw him.

He walked out.

She ran after him.

He dipped into the soul of the only spirit that ever knew him. He dipped into the city's shadows. She ran right past him, calling his name. Maybe she was sorry, but he didn't care. He knew what he saw. He knew what he felt. It was dad's backfist all over again.

The Bane of Detective Alvarez

The moon tried hiding behind a blown over valley of saddened clouds, but the night was too young and in tune with the excitement of the city, so that astral speck of supposedly lifeless rock shined brightly upon that damned California city.

Detective Windsor Alvarez stubbed out his cigarette on the forehead of the lifeless bum passed out on crystal meth in the alley's corner entrance before making his way to the crime scene. He could smell the murderer from ten feet away, not because the bastard was near but because the douchebag had left that condescending scent behind.

After dressing his hands with the latex gloves, Detective Alvarez pressed his hands upon the descended driver's side window, peering his head through the opening, knowing that The Strawberry Slasher had struck again.

The alignement was different but the murdering premise was the same. The corpse was splayed out across the front seats. Its left arm had been thrown over the passenger's side seat. The killer wanted the visual to make more of an impact this time. The bastard was gaining confidence.

Downward, all along the chest and stomach area was where the victim had been sliced open, probably again with a razor, but this time the wounded area was surprisingly clean. Strawberry Slasher had cleaned up the slaughtered areas before implanting the freshly picked pseudofruits, outlining the trajectory of the brutal incisions. The fact that the killer had enough time to execute such a detailed scenario made Detective Alvarez hate the city even more. But not as much as he hated Florida. And not as much as he hated his first name.

Pick Your Poison

Leave it to me. I just finished watching Lucio Fulci’s New York Ripper for better than a third time, yet the film still tantalizes me; quacking, gutting, and all.

I left the homegrown theater that was showing it, and upon entering my car, I immediately recognized the scent of strawberries, plunging me into an evolution of paranoia. I fashioned myself into my personal driving position.

Instantly, my meandering wonderments struck an anonymous diatribe amongst personalities – “THIS IS IT? THIS is how I’m going to die? I couldn’t be butchered by some inbred, chainsaw wielding psychopath; NO – I’m getting killed by the Strawberry Slasher?! - A deranged serial killer that kills victims while distributing a strawberry scent.

I’ve spent half of my life trying to convince my mother I’m NOT gay, and the other half trying to convince my friends that I was too busy to hang out, hoping that they would think I WAS gay and leave me alone, but here comes the Strawberry Slasher. This slayer doesn’t care about sexuality or situations. This one’s an impromptu killer. He or She hates everything and everyone while indulging in the finer scents of life.

I was really hoping for the garden tooled maniac; instead I got the pleasantly smelling black sheep psycho.

Echo Sprints

I had been running.

I awoke on the highway, sprinting past a drop-top BMW as the driver chatted on their cell phone. Instinctively, I knocked it from her grasp, flipping her off before the curse words had a chance to echo up to the blue sky.

What direction do echoes travel? Upwards I presume.


I was travelling forward, and that’s about all I knew. The previous night I had been working the door at The Firewall. I couldn’t recall anything out of the ordinary happening, but I couldn’t recall anything that happened after locking up the front, but as I gasped for breath I could feel a slight striding pain at the base of the knap of my neck; like someone had pierced it, probably injected me with something. Whatever was it had to have some ephedrine in it because my legs felt like badly worn semi-truck tires ready to blow out. My quads were pulverized, ready to snap; luckily my hamstrings were holding it together, and my dick was harder than a diamond.

Turning the mountain’s corner strained my body but there was nothing within me that suggested I should stop, because if I did I feared my heart would explode. The blood needed to keep rushing, I needed to keep running.

Suddenly, Last Summer - Movie Review

The wealthy widow, Violet Venable has lost her only son Sebastian. While vacationing in Europe with his cousin Catherine Holly, Sebastian was murdered. Catherine witnessed the entire ordeal and has since slipped into madness, uttering incoherent rants for which Violet requests her to be lobotomized. It is up to Dr. Cukrowicz to agree to the procedure, but first he hopes to help Catherine come to terms with exactly what it was she saw which will also uncover the secret that Violet hopes to keep hidden.


Suddenly, Last Summer is originally a one-act play written by Tennessee Williams and is a monologue orated by Violet, so in order to turn this single person play into a full length feature film might seem tricky but director Joseph L. Mankiewicz and legendary screenplay writer Gore Vidal along with along with the original creator Tennessee Williams made the material transition from stage play to the silver screen in a smooth fashion, extending Dr. Cukrwicz’s involvement in the ordeal and expanding on Catherine’s character. The only issue that felt slightly forced was the growing romance between the Catherine and the doctor; it seemed out of place but Elizabeth Taylor was one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood back in 1959; I lost my breath a few times while watching this movie, so I’m sure Montgomery Clift didn’t object much.

As Violet, Katherine Hepburn turns in yet another memorable performance. Whenever she is onscreen she unleashes her talent upon the world and everyone else is just trying to keep up, even making everyone around her better actors. That year both Katherine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor were nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars for this film. Taylor does indeed shine as the emotionally vulnerable and mentally tortured Catherine while Montgomery Clift plays Dr. Cukrowicz with a granite-like expression as he acts powerfully with his mind and through his eyes throughout most of the film.

Suddenly, Last Summer is a powerful piece that keeps the mystery fresh, the tension high, and the audience engaged.