Some Prefer Nettles

There are times when I am happy
Smiling in and out of phase
My teeth are stained
But I am not embarassed

There are three words I would say
To any doubting thomas I meet
Lick my wounds and feel my breath
I am alive

What does it mean?
Please forgive me
I didn't mean to get
All existentialist
But these things sneak up

There are times I am a child
Armed with chalk and endless blacktop
But we both know
I'm not cut out to be an artist

More and more I am an adult
Living life like you can win
Or more importantly
Something you can lose

What a story
We will have to tell
Our children's children
All the things we actually felt
But they won't see it

There's a formula I follow
I guess it's possible you've picked up
But you should stick like glue
To what or who you know

Who am I to give advice?

What bears repeating
Is something I'm not sure
I've got a good grip on
So what right do I have to put a chorus in my songs

Sing along, sing along
With egos proud and voices strong
Sing along, sing along, sing along

Ways FDR and I are different

1. I don't and probably will never have polio
2. He was good at spider solitaire.

It is a good thing I don't believe in profundity. It's 2:12 AM and I have been trying to arrange two deck's worth of virtual cards into numerical order by suit. It is maddening and I am giving up and I am blogging about how it is maddening and about how I am giving up. There is something to be said for banality, specifically when soundtracked by nice headphones in turn soundtracked by Cursive, Okkervil River, and Margot & the Nuclear So and So's. Someone should say something.

This song needs a title

http://www.mediafire.com/?jym3wtijqwq


On the cloudiest night through a satellite's eyes
You can see it
The people below throwing stones
Sleep in attics and basements
There's a war we all know and we're scared
That we'll have to go fight it
So for several years we have done all we can do to spite it

The final frontier has been cleared
Now it's closed so we're clinging
To what we've got left
Our few honest attempts at a living
And halfway around the world
People are dying
And on birch street the leaves on the trees
Laugh but look like they're sighing

I want to know
Where you think you are going
And god help your soul
If that's what you believe
For a couplet I sold
What was left of my integrity
And I don't have goals

But I will have an apartment
In a city full of people
And a subtle, sinking feeling
We're all equals

I wouldn't expect to hear those words from you
So I bid a fond farewell with this excuse

I want to know what I don't know
I want to know what no one knows
I'll learn to swim so I will float

Or I will tread water and gracelessly sink below
Like death is a puzzle and I learned where the pieces all go

So on every goddamn cloudy night through every eye of every satellite
I am foaming at the mouth
And with every stone you people throw at bleeding hearts and broken bones
I am laughing
And that war we'll one day have to fight is as visceral as a synapse fired
I am waiting
I shook the hand of father time I spit in my own and I looked him in the eye
I am not sorry

I am the only one who thinks I'm going crazy

Today was a showerday which was a good thing because my hair was sticking up in ways that would have made my seventh-grade self green with envy. In addition, even though I use the Official Deodorant of the NBA (TM), I feared I would begin to smell. How do they even know the formula works the same on a near seven foot black man as it does on an overweight white kid? I probably sweat less than him in any case.

Either way, that's not what this post is about. It is about shampoo; specifically, it is about Head and Shoulders Anti-Dandruff shampoo. Last time I showered, I ran out of the shampoo I like to use, which smells like citrus, which is good because people love when people peel oranges and clementines in their general periphery. I was forced, then, to use my back up bottle of shampoo. I wet my hair, which is, in full disclosure, a fairly new showering habit. I squirted some of that sweet stuff into my hand and it felt fucking bizarre. I've never touched that slime that snails leave behind when they snail around, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say the textures are one and the same.

Alarmed, I checked the expiration date. This needlessly sent me into an existential crisis. My shampoo expired in November of 2007. This meant, among other things (like why it felt so weird), that I bought it -- well, my mother bought it -- before I left to come here. Dubious hygienic practices aside, it dawned on me that these 40 fluid ounces have watched maniacally from the top shelf on my closet everything I have done since August 23rd, 2007. It has borne witness to every blowjob and every breakdown, every friendship and every failed friendship, every time I've made a bad decision and every time I've made love. There's more alliteration and parallel structure where that came from, but you get the point.

It's my backup bottle of shampoo. It knows it will never be the most loved, but it knows it's the one I'll come crawling back to when my sweet citrus has died at last. So it waits. And it remembers.

My hair was wet and so I bit the bullet. Washing the shampoo out of my hair gave way to one of the more disgusting textures I've ever felt, but war makes people do terrible things.

True Fact

True Fact: If I never shave again, eventually I will have a FULL BEARD

Spring Break (Part One)*

Spring break 2009 began yesterday for me, and here I am writing from Cancun, Mexico, already drunk and working on my tan. The weather has been beautiful, as have the bitches. Woohoo!!!!!!

Spring break thus far:
-I went to DSW with my mom and got new shoes. They are made by Mark Ecko. I'm 1/4 Cuban, so I'm comfortable with the choice. I will try to find my camera and take a picture of them. The tips of the shoes (BRAIN FART!!) remind me of a duck-billed platypus. You will see in the picture if I post it
-I have downloaded an album by every band on the first two pages of my Last.FM recommendations. Here is where I promise I will post my thoughts on them; you and I both know that won't happen.
-I am watching what will likely turn out to be the entirety of the Adult Swim series Home Movies. It is funny like "haha."

I leave you now with a passive aggressive riddle/paradox.

Given:

1. Sister City is clearly not a real band (make up your own reason for this)
2. The University of Maryland Baltimore Campus is having a Battle of the Bands for which thirty (30) bands entered and only eight (8) can compete.

Here is my question:

If Sister City is not a real band, how did this happen?! Don't the judges know it's just a Bright Eyes rip-off? Jeez...

Wish us luck!

*A note on the tone of this text: MOSTLY SARCASTIC

The Goings-On or RANDOM FACTS LOL SO RANDOM

Fact one: It is Sunday, February 1st and it is five minutes to 3PM. I am in pajama pants.

No, but wouldn't it have been so annoying if I made this one of those Facebook things people have recently been doing? They aren't random facts if you're taking precious time to decide each and every one of them. You're not fooling anyone into thinking that you're interesting. Or maybe you're fooling everyone else as desperate for attention as you are because then THEY get to make one of their own!

Now if you'll excuse my diatribe against people who do things for attention, I'm going to write a new blog entry.

Today is the first day of February and every February a website called RPM issues a challenge to songwriters to write and record a full length album in one month. I signed up last year and I ended up with five solid songs. I'm going to try again this year and possibly submit my short story project by the end of the month, assuming I've got enough songs done. As of now I've got a song about "Young Goodman Brown" and a song about "The Cask of Amontillado." I'm going to try to make it into the studio within the next few days to record them; I'll post the MP3s up here once I've got them.

In other musical news, Funion is taking over the world, or at least the quad. Our newest song has been winning awards left and right. A little birdy might have mentioned something about a Grammy for best spoken word/Latin/children's toys hybrid... It's ours this year, Costello!