.funny ways 

2) Mr. Schmitz 3) Black Scootie.

Here another hit

6 \1

5 2

I was in Denver, Co. last week to attend a surgery (not for me). Denver is weird, has excellent weather, and too much driving.

download denver

Before I became an adult, before I became… what I am now, I had a friend who was so kind to me. Kevin was a rock, man. He was my dad. We were all trying to figure out how to make this situation work (Single mom, me the kid, Kevin).  I remember when I was young, really young (about 5), and we were living on Sherman st. and we were having dinner. I had a favorite glass that had Dino from the Flintstones on it, and he got up from the table and knocked it over and broke it. He was really upset(upset with himself), and I got up from the table and walked over to him and said something to the effect of ” It’s ok, It’s only a glass.”      And he started crying, and he said “Well, thank you, Josh.”  I never knew what that meant, but this has stuck with me my entire life, one of those jarring things that sticks into the ribs of your soul, that you’ll always remember. And I still don’t know what it means, but it’s a point of pure empathy that he had for me, and I for him. Why was he crying? Why was I crying? Why am I crying when I write this? We took a trip once that lasted for 2 months, which If you’re 5, is about 2 years. We went to California. We took several trips to Montana. We went to Arizona. We went to the Grand Canyon. We went on bike rides.  I puked on his jeans in the four corners.

We went everywhere, man, we went everywhere. For about 7 years in my life, I had that thing of family, and he was the glue.  The last time I saw him we went on a trip, in the spring of 2008. He came out to Oregon with my little sis, we went to the coast, and we were there during low tide. We were running on the rocks during low tide (which he cajoled us into doing), and we encountered a group of sea lions. He and I ended up in between the females and the males (Which is bad luck, and fairly dangerous). I was trying to impress upon him the fact that we needed to get out of there(Actually ,I think I said ” uhh….I think we should get the fuck outta here, man), and he said , as he was laughing “ya, this isn’t too smart!” But damn if he wasn’t having fun, so we walked back to the beach, and then promptly went to a more dangerous tidal pool a few miles down the road. 

I miss that man, mostly. I mourn the time we never had in between the Dino glass and his death. But I’m happy, happy that he had people in his life to run around the dangerous tidal pools with.  I  was worried that he didn’t have that. But …awh, one of those things where you’re wrong, chief. I miss that I didn’t see the in between. The in between is all that matters. All we are is the in between.

Kevin had model trains in his basement, and I tore the track down, so my little sister could live their, and make the house something new, for her. So here’s some music I wrote with trains.

Model trains 8-19

I recently bought a used book the other day, and inside was a notecard that said  ”A ≤ B”. And on the reverse side it said “Interpreted: A is a subset of B.” I love it when I find things like this in used books. Inscriptions like “Happy bday, Al, from all your friends at work.” Or, one time I bought the Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and it said “Something to get you through your troubled time” or something like that (as an aside, do not buy that book for someone going through a troubled time). I once bought Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Neitzsche , and inside were all these meticulous notes in the margin like “WHAAAT?” and “…..this is wrong”. My favorite was “Disturbing, yes.” Disturbing as it was for the former owner, the notes ended around page 85 or so, which is pretty much where I gave up, too.

I just found out that a co-worker of mine is the international, undisputed Space Invaders champion of all time. He’s soon to be featured in the movie Chasing Ghosts, about the video game world in the early 80′s. How rad is that?

3/27 A < B

It’s a hard lesson to learn, especially if you’ve bought into it your entire life: This country isn’t supposed to give a fuck about you. That’s not it’s job. It’s job is to get your money. And I don’t mean the government, I mean the people who live here, the strangers around you, they don’t give a fuck about you. It’s your job to find allies, people you can trust and enjoy, and to convert some of those strangers into allies who won’t fuck you.

It’s a difficult job acquiring people, especially when people you trust screw you over. I learned to not trust a good portion of my family when I was young(which I recently forgot, like an idiot). Just because they’re related to you doesn’t mean they give a shit about you or are there for you. You have to go with your gut a lot of times, and try to find out who cares, and build your own system of people.  You gotta build your tent city of outcast friends and homeless step siblings and stray-dog people, and the remnants of families poisoned and fractured by money and lies. Cause were all just bums in tent city.

download 3-10 tent city

Jens and I used to play this game where we would try and combine the least famous part of a band with another. An example: Hall&Oates + Huey Lewis and the News= Oates and the News. I think the best we did was Morris Day and the Range.

I recently got a new computer, so this track was all mixed on laptop speakers. Terrible/awesome.

The Soft-ons 216

I did some thinking on my neighborhood. When I was living there, it was a bit rougher than it is now. We had a hostage situation across the street, when some guy killed his wife and then came to his brother’s house. Ours was the house across the street from the hostage drama, and we were woken at 3 am by cops who told us to go out the back door and down the alleyway. We then went to our friends house where I got to watch speed racer and miss half a day of school, so I was psyched. Turns out the guy didn’t take anybody hostage, he just got drunk and passed out.

So it was good to see the neighborhood got a bit nicer. That said, Denver is a town of Lobos. Lots of young men looking to get into fights abound. In the span of 4 days, I got fucked with 3 times just walking down the street. A question: If you say “Nice hat, you faggot.” Should I take that to mean you like my hat? I got it at H&M, and it is a nice hat, so thanks. I believe it was about 12 bucks.

2-9 hostage situation

I don’t wanna have sex with your kids

Hey new mom, I’m just having a jog through the park. I have every right to be in this public space, same as you. This isn’t just a park that overprotective parents can come to; It’s also a park for regular people who jog. Look, I know you watch a lot of Dateline and The View and shit, so you think that any adult male within 100 yards of your kids is going to try and have sex with them, but trust me: some of us are just here for a jog. You needn’t corral your kids in a hushed, panicky tone whenever I run next to the playground. Honestly, it’s probably husband #2 or your weird cousin who will have sex with them, not me. My jogging routine just involves……. jogging. I haven’t the time, nor the desire to have sex with children in the park. The next time you see an adult male jogging in the park, please try and resist the urge to pull your child off of whatever apparatus they’re playing on so you can make them “safe”. It’s our public park, too, and we don’t want to have sex with your kids.

I recently read some of the follow up comments, and some people were mad. Apparently, I was wrong about people going to parks. People mostly go to have sex with kids. I was told that I needed to watch the news sometime, and that kids are getting abducted by the thousands (I should get cable, because I guess they don’t carry the kid-sexing on the local affiliate). Also, I needed to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes before I judged them. Thanks for clearing that up.

I used some bleepy pinball samples in the track today. I hope you likey

125 local affiliate