in the wee, small hours of the morning, or; who knew that generic tylenol had caffeine in it?

another sleepless night at la zona. we went out to dinner with my whole family, which is rare and very special to me. my youngest brother had his 19th birthday and we celebrated with a sushi dinner. afterwords, ms. giles and i returned home and tried to watch game 7 of the ALCS, but due to a very fun weekend and several zombies and kirins with dinner, we quickly fell asleep and missed the last game of the year for our beloved red sox.

after sleeping a few hours on the couch (and wasting a sam addams brown ale), we retired to bed. i slept well until about 3am, at which point i got up to use the bathroom and let the cats out. my head ached, and i didnt want to wake up that way at 6:30, so i decided to take two tylenol even though i am not supposed to because of a dormant kidney disease that i discovered in 1999.

i felt ok, got into bed, and about 20 minutes later i was still awake. then an hour later, still awake. fully two hours passed before i came into some semblance of sleep, and that was troubled by the kind of restless, repetitive dreams that drive me insane. they seemed to revolve around me not being able to figure out what time it was, although it was obviously far later than i needed it to be, and not being able to take a shower because of construction or uninvited guests in the house. to make it worse, i believed that i was actually awake despite sharp differences between my experience and what i know to be reality. at one point i went out to go to the office and was forced to return home when boston was destroyed by a cluster of massive tornados. wtf?

anyway, i think i'll go to bed early tonight.

Free Soup; or, in the Good Old Days, everyone was broke, and it was OK

this seems largely to be a time of verging. everything seems to be poised on the edge of one thing or another. last night the Red Sox squoze under the door of the ALCS, thankfully buying us another week or so of perfect entertainment. and, we are going to need it. the news comming out of manhattan, and now most of europe, is dire indeed. those of us, myself included, who have been thinking for years that our course of action has run far to closeley paralel to that of the Roman empire, are wringing our hands in near panic, because we learned this before in a high school history class. the overextended military, the crumbling infrastructure, the rampant political and economical recklessness, it all adds up to what the romans themselves called hubris, and historicaly speaking, it always preceeds a fall. This has been repeated in more recent times by the british, and then the soviets, and now, apparently, our own empire has begun to slide. Once it starts you cant stop it; the only hope is to ride it out and learn from it.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. True, we are all going to have to tighten our belts and get used to the way our grandparents lived. But how many of you have ever heard your grandparents claim that times are better now than they were then?

The most recent cover of Time magazine summed up nicely, if (probably) unintentionally, what I’m trying to get at here. The cover is a photograph from the Depression of the 1930s, a picture of a line of men outside of a soup kitchen. The headline is “The New Hard Times”, and it is a picture I’ve been waiting for them to run for about 3 weeks now (at least they have stopped the damned Obama-McCain-Palin bobblehead theme that ghey got stuck on last month sometime). Anyway, take a look at the picture when you get a chance. The men are lined up next to a building with a large window. On that window is a sign that reads “FREE SOUP”. Take a minute to think about that.

After 9/11, everyone was talking about how strong the country was, how together everyone felt, etc. I was cynical and thought that it would all change pretty quick, and I was right, although looking back, I feel that things may have been different if bush hadn’t begun to sodomize the COTUS right away. But try for a moment to remember that feeling, that idea that no matter what happened, everything would be OK because we were all Americans now and forever, and we were going to stick together and get through it. The Free Soup sign reminds me of those days, those brief couple of weeks when it almost seemed like the attacks had had a bright side, in that they had caused such unprecedented (at least in our collective amnesia) solidarity.

So if we go crashing into financial ruin (and it seems that we will, my friends), if our standard of living gets set back about 80 years, if times are tough, if luxury grows scarce, we will grow stronger as a people, even as our empire weakens to the point of irrelevance. We will start to see things in our character as Americans that will remind us of what it used to mean to be an American, of what is good about this country; not it’s might, not it’s hegemony, but the ability of it’s People to pull together and surmount any obstacle, to get the most out of “hard times”, and to come out the other side wiser, stronger, and better for it. Remember, money isnt’ everything. It isn’t even close. We stand to loose vast sums of it in the coming months, and perhaps we deserve to, and perhaps we need to.

BTW, I am having a hell of a time quitting smoking.

Nicotine Dreams; or, sleeping with a patch on will send you on a roller coaster ride through the very bowels of hell itself.

So I’ve decided to quit smoking cigarettes again. Ive tried this twice before. Once I went 8 days and then bought a pack on the way home from work. The other time, I went three days. The problem both times (I think) has been facing the difficulty of the task; months (if not years) of cravings, irritability, and general discomfort is not an appealing prospect. This time I’ve armed myself with a box of nicotine transdermal patches (the patch) couressy of the Commonwealth of massachusetts.

The patch system works thus: You have four different strengths of patch in the box. An average smoker (pack-a-day plus) starts with level one for X weeks, then weens down to level 2, etc. Smokers like me, who smoke less than 10 per day on average, are instructed to start at level 2, which is a 14MG dosage over 24 hours. I think my biggest difficulty is that I tend to smoke less that FIVE a day, except on weekend nights at parties. So even the 14MG dose is pretty strong for me, especially during the day, when I tend not to smoke at all.

Anyway, the first night was a complete disaster. Despite the warnings of just about everone I know, I followed the instructions on the box and left the patch on overnight. Do not attempt this. EVER. You will be rewarded with the worst, least restfull night of sleep you have ever had. As an extra bonus, your night will be chock full of the most ball-shrivellingly terrifying nightmares you have ever had. Your dreams will be filled with images of such pure, unadulterated evil, that your mind’s ability to withstand them without snapping will force you to question the existence of god, the devil, and your mortal motherfucking soul.

So yeah, try to avoid that.

Then last night, I slipped and smoked three butts. (don’t worry, I took the patch off first). This leads me to believe that my smoking habit has less to do with an addiction to nicotine, and more to do with a compulsive habit. (insert your best “oral fixation” joke here). Luckily, I am not discouraged by this lapse. The literature that came with the patch stresses that you will lapse and smoke, but that you must not give up. Having one (or three) one night doesn’t mean that im not quitting. It just means I fucked up.

So I’ll keep you up to date, my dear Zona, with my progress. Hopefully I can do it this time. I’m tired of butts anyway. As Renton said, “with God’s help, I will conquer this terrible affliction”.

Dr. Catlove; or, how i learned to love the bomba and stop worrying

first of all, i'm proud as hell of that title. if you dont get it you are missing out on one of the best movies ever made.

so yesterday, Bomba went missing. for those who havent met him, he is the black one. in the picture on my profile, i mean.

we let him and Doolin outside at about 5am because they wouldnt stop jumping on our heads as we slept. usually, they both come home after a few hours to grab a snack. but by 11:30 i was on my way to work and still no sign of Bomba. this was very worrysome, especialy since it was raining hard all day.

once it got dark and he still wasnt home, i really started to worry. I called animal controll and reported him missing. I posted on craigslist, and i used my office printer to make missing posters. It was at about this time that i realized that i am rediculously in love with my cats.

now, i know men arent supposed to like cats. we are supposed to think of them as efeminite, for some reason. but my cats arent. they are little badasses who tear the heads off of everything in their path. i mean that quite litteraly.

so i was freaking out, to put it mildly. i left work early and biked around my neighborhood for almost an hour looking for him. then i went home and decided i had to try to get some sleep somehow. luskily, Cobb and Weathers had come over to keep Katelyn company. Katelyn was worse than me; a complete wreck. After Mike and Jess left, we had a few beers and tried to stay positive. We were just getting ready to go to bed when we heard a distinctive "mew...mewww" at the front door. and just like that, our boy was back. soaked to the bone, but no worse for the 20 hours of wear.

i realised two things last night. One, Bomba can take care of his shit and i shouldnt worry about him. Two, I really do love those cats. Between them and Katelyn, i have an axis of stability that keeps me ballanced, happy, and sane.

To Bomba and Doolin: may their whiskers never fall out.

Holy Fucking Shit, Batman: or, i honestly think Dark Knight is the best movie i've seen since Jaws

so i just got back from my local theater to see Dark Knight. I've been a fan of Batman all my life; even the old serial when i was a kid. Needless to say, the later installments of the franchise that Burton started in '89 didnt sit very well with me, but Batman Begins I liked.

this, though. Jesus. Until now there have only been two sequels that were as good or better than the orriginal film, and those are The Godfather II and Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Until tonight, I thought T2 was the only trully good action movie since French Connection, but this shit makes T2 look like a fucking power rangers movie.

its not that its an excellent action film, which it is. Its not that its a good superhero movie, because its not really a superhero movie at all. And its not Ledger's preformance, although that guy is a fucking scary actor. Was. Sorry.

Anyway, i cant put my finger on it, so i'll have to go and see it again when Giles gets home. Maybe if i watch it in IMAX ill figure out what makes it the best goddamned movie since Star Wars.

OBAMA = McCAIN = BUSH; or: i cant remember why i used to say i would never vote. seems a silly thing to... oh. right.

well folks, i gotta tell you, they nearly got me this time. my guard was down. i actually registered to vote this year. went right to the belly of the beast and gave them all my info, as if they didnt know it. i was gonna vote for Senator Obama, as you may have guessed. Actually, i was going to vote for Ron Paul, but it seems that that ship has sunk.

and thats totaly beside the point.

many of you (both of you) may remember me saying that voting was pointless, waste of time, waste of energy, waste of innocence. I used to say it all the time; that everyone was the same and if they were different, the game was rigged, loaded dice, no point at all. i turned my back on democracy and started wearing an anarcho-syndicalist flag on my chest and writing a blog that two people read and typing out angry, borderline suspicious letters to my congressman (Markey) on a 1956 Hermes Rocket manual typewriter, like some kind of goddamn revolutionary. I even sampled the old school and wrote "THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS" in sharpie on the typewriter case. Jesus.

sometime in the spring, i seem to have had a lapse in judgement. this Obama guy seemed to really have his shit together. not only that; he seemed to know exactly where this country was needing to go, providing we were still playing by the rules. so i was gonna vote for him. i wanst going to encourage anyone to do the same, or get a yard sign or a bumpersticker, because a) those are tacky as fuck, and b) im not a goddamned missionary. But i was intending to cast my vote as a good citizen.

well, the events of this past Wednesday took all that momentary hope and flushed it down the toilet. then, they fished it out of the septic tank, shot it full of holes, raped it in all orifices, soaked it in whiskey and set it to burn on my fucking porch.

On Wednesday, July 9, 2008, Obama turned to the Bush camp. He turned to the Dark Side. and if you think im exaggerating, you'd better check your facts.

OK, lets break this down, in simple terms, and without too much bullshit.

Remember a few years back when the news broke that the department of homeland "security" had been reading our emails, listening to our phone calls, and opening our motherfucking mail?
the bumbling man-child who is our president had to admit that he had authorized this, and that it was illegal, based on a 1978 FISA law and a little thing called the FOURTH GODDAMN AMENDMENT to the COTUS. (from now on, i'll refer to the Constitution of the United Sates as COTUS, cause it's cute.)

now, according to the oaths everyone has to take, at that point king george should have stepped down, and if he didnt his vice president should have forced him to, and if he didnt, then the US Marine Corps should have stepped in and forcibly escorted them out of the capital building and into a prison to await trial on charges of treason and corruption of COTUS.

but we all know that's just make-believe. oaths mean fuck all these days. there is WAY too much money to be had.

instead, several years went by, and the ACLU, among other, decided to sue the telecom corporations for their role in turning over said emails, phone calls, etc. to the government (they've allready got your mail, unless you use UPS or FEDEX exclusively and never go to the post office). Well, bush, or more likely, someone he hired to think for him, realized that if the telecoms went to trial, eventually it was all going to wind up in the laps of the administration, and then they would, if the law was followed, go to fucking federal prison. so, they decided to write up a bill known as HR 6304, the title of which, i shit you not, is

To amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to establish a procedure for authorizing certain acquisitions of foreign intelligence, and for other purposes.

did you catch that last part? yeah. thats the part that says that the law as it stood last Tuesday, including the FOURTH AMENDMENT OF THE COTUS, no longer applies. by the way, if you havent read the fourth amendment (like i told you to, damnit), its the one that promises that the government will never come into your home and take your shit, search your purse, or hold you without probable cause. Yeah, thats all gone now. better find a really good place to hide your weed.

anyway, why did all this change my mind on the whole voting thing? well, i think the voting record speaks for itself. Thats right my friends, Senator Obama voted in favor. He voted "yea". he raised his hand and said that, in essence, the "change" this country needs is the removal of our bill of rights, one step at a time.

So, i knew it, i should have never let them fucking talk me into registering. in fact, i should never listen to these fuckers at all. litteraly everything they say, ever is a fucking lie. i'm never voting for anyone, ever again. I used to tell my self all the time that "anyone who wants to be president is suspect", and i cant believe i forgot that. seriously; why would anyone spend upwards of $50,000,000 to get a four-year job that pays $400,000 a year?

im so angry right now that its retarded, and im angry at myself. for being duped. for forgetting my stance. those fuckers tricked me. i said they allways trick you, and then i let them trick me.

well, thats not going to happen again.

if you are going to vote in November, if you must vote, take a line from one of my favorite movies; Brewster's Millions:

VOTE "NONE OF THE ABOVE".

evildoers beware! or; how i became a crusader for truth and justice

i've been riding the bike to work for the past few weeks. seemed to make more sense than running a strait-6 that gets 12.5 mpg and getting fatter by the day. Anyway, bicycling is great. one of the things i like about it most is that you get to see things you dont notice driving. and you can stop and interact with situations as they happen.

today in harvard square, a hit-and-run took place right in front of me. In fact, the jerk who caused it nearly hit me and then he sideswiped a red sedan and then just kept on going. Luckily, his license plate was clearly visible since i was like 2 feet away from it. So i followed the sedan into a side street while the driver got out to check the damage, which consinted of pretty much the whole rear bumper being fucked. She was pissed, and when i gave her the dude's plate number, i saw a gleam of anger in her eye so righteous that it would have scared me if it hadnt been fucking awesome.

No need to thank me, ma'am. All in a days work for... THE SHITTY MOUSTACHES BICYCLE CLUB.