naming a baby

Blasting Turgonegro’s “Retox” album has become my favorite pastime. It’s especially fun when driving onto the campuses of the assorted Christian schools in town.

The smell of dog shit fills the air inside my 2010 Hyundai Accent. Apparently, stepping dog shit has become another favorite pastime. The waffle of my Sambas appears clean, but, they are brown in color and one could easily miss shit when just looking quickly.

If you’ve ever had bad teeth, you will always have bad teeth.

Was talking with someone at work the other night. A conversation that lasted two-plus hours after deadline. Finding your passion? Ha. A study said you’re happiest as a grownup if you followed you first true love. I wanted to be an archeologist. I didn’t follow through. In fact, I never really pursued anything until I decided to move across country and see what newspapers were all about. What a knuckleheaded decision that turned out to be.

I’m seriously debating quitting my job and being a stay at home dad. If I didn’t have so many stupid bills from stupid, yet fun, times, I would already have made up my mind. Never knew it was so hard to find a part-time position when you’ve been working the same job your whole life. Well, except for the few years in between.

The dryer is spinning around and around. Drying clothes seems silly. Washing them too. What’s wrong with smelling? If we all did, we wouldn’t feel so bad about it anymore.

Wearing shoes without socks is a good idea, until you take off the shoes.

Netflix has made me a lazy filmwatcher.

Eating snails does not appeal to me.

Redheads still make me wonder.

“Have you ever been to Spokane?” she asked.

“Why no, I’ve not been to Spokane,” he replied.

“Too bad,” she said.

“Yep,” he replied.

They both returned to their drinks, never to speak again.

Marvin is a horrible name for a kid.

Not having anything to write about  is painful. But so is writing about what you want to write.

I’m going to go on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, gangbangsrus.com etcetera and rant about something some celebrity did/said or fucked. It’s cool, and gosh, it’ll get lots of views.

Why are we all so mad at each other, but pretending to be oh, so happy? Is it the food? Probably not, but maybe. Who knows.

I stare at the window

And wonder where you are

You don’t.

I wonder if Mickey Rourke’s plastic surgeon looks like a bladder?

“I’m not surpised, I knew about it,” all the sports media folks are saying.

“Shame on you NBA,” for not doing anything about it.

Fuck all of you. Why didn’t you expose it in the 1990s when you “knew”?

George Clooney is engaged. So?

He’s also a bad drunk.

Do you have any more gum?

More gum?

More gum?

Do you have any more gum?

When you take a shit, do you look at it?

If you do, are you satisfied with what you see?

Or are you scared to look.

Hoping it’s not bloody. Full of worms.

Don’t worry if it is. We all end up with worms in our shit.

In our head.

“Do you like drinking in this place,” I asked.

She turned her head and looked at my shirt.

“Do you like wearing that shirt?” she snarled.

“Of course,” I said. “I don’t have to worry if I leave it at your place later.”

She smiled.

Why shit like that works, I’ll never know.

--- Something scribbled in a notepad years ago.

She wasn’t going to take it anymore.

He never made a decision. He just let things “happen.”

So, one night, she answered the phone when he called and told him: “It’s over.”

He never understood.

Until now.

Well, not really.

Benzene in my veins.

Fracking on my brain!

Punk rock is easy.

I wonder what it’s like to chew things without feeling pain?

It’s been so long, I don’t remember.

That is the thattiest that that I’ve thatted.

Microsoft Word does not believe thatted is a word. Fuck you Bill Gates.

The name Syl is kind of cool.

Darn it, man, he said.

“Darn it?” his buddy said before chuckling down a beer.

He punched him seconds later.

Who is he? He is who?

Donkey Kong high score in high school while getting high. That’s the opening to a script.

If you smell pot, are you cooking?

Laser beam eyes. They don’t lie, they kill.

Sleep.

why bother, you pee blood...

The fucking Police was playing when I walked into the bar.

“God damn I hate the fucking Police,” I yelled. Then I remembered something important, I was at the bar because a friend invited me. That friend? He’s a cop. And the bar was filled with cops.

So, like Tim Roth says in Reservoir Dogs, you’ve just got to jump right in and swim. That in mind, I walk up to the jukebox, just as Sting finishes saying something stupid over a backbeat provided by a drummer who appeared in a reality show about storage unit auctions. I put my dollar in. I picked my song.

“Right about now, N.W.A. court is in full effect…”

A few seconds later, a couple hundred cops were chanting along with Ice Cube, Easy-Z and Dr. Dre.

I watched this scene for a few seconds and thought back to 1988. I was a teenager who wanted to be James Hetfield. I drank like him. That was about the end of similarities. I had more of a Dave Mustaine mullet. I don’t think about high school much. Nothing much happened.

Kind of like this party. It’s at a strip-mall bar. It stinks like pee. I want to go home.

But I don’t. Why? I don’t know. Maybe something will happen.

I order a shot of Jameson and a Miller High Life to chase it down. I gave up drinking soon after my stroke. Well, I didn’t “give it up” as much as I just stopped because it hurt to drink now. That made it silly to do. Yeah, I still think about the girls and women of my past. And now, I don’t fight with them anymore. I just look at them and nod. Yep, still here.

Then I eat some unsalted nuts out of a can from CVS.

I take a sip of the beer. Fuck, it tastes bad. Then I take the shot. It tastes worse. But the beer, now it tastes OK.

Why am I friends with a cop? I’ve never had a good experience with one. It’s weird. Except that guy who showed up at my apartment in New Bern at 3 a.m. one night. I was blasting The Faces, signing along with Rod and Ronnie, and drinking way too much. I guess one of my neighbors complained to the police. Instead of just knocking on my door. Of course, I opened the door when the cop showed up in my shorts only. Beer gut hanging out, bottle of Shiner in one hand, devil horns in the other.

“Yes?”

“Sir, could you turn down the musi….Hey, is that a Jump in the Fire Metallica poster?” he said.

“Well, yes it is,” I said slurring just the it.

“Soooo awesome, man.”

“It is?”

“I never got to see Metallica, but they’re my favorite!” he said, to me, I guess still.

“Saw them twice in a month back in high school,” I said, puffing my chest a little bit. I have seen some good music, even though when SHE happened, I mostly stopped.

“Cool, cool,” he said. “But man, can you turn down the Rod Stewart? Neighbors complained.”

“Yeah, not a problem. Gotta be at work in the morning,” I said, fully knowing I went to work when I wanted. Some days at noon, others at 5 p.m., and still others never. Being the boss at that point of my life was a good, and bad thing.

“Night officer,” I said, slamming the door behind me and turning off the stereo. I drank the last half of the Shiner in my hand and threw the bottle in the trash can. It hit another bottle. “Clank, cla, clank.”

I went into the bathroom and peed … blood.

Probably should have paid closer attention to that stuff, I think, now back in the bar in a strip mall in suburban Raleigh, North Carolina, surrounded by cops I don’t know wondering where the fuck the one I know is?

Probably getting a blowjob in the bathroom, his brother says to me. I guess I’d been narrating stuff out loud again. It’s a bad habit of mine. I’ve been punched three times because of it and slapped twice. And got a girls number. Why? Because I fucking asked for it. Who’da thunk that actually works?

How the fuck did Sting get so damn rich? I think.

I order another beer and another shot. It’s going to be either a really long night, or a very short one. I hope for the latter, but know I’m in for the former.

“She’s here,” my buddy, not the cop, but the other one at the party I know says.

I look over my shoulder and yep, there she is, not HER, but instead her. She stole my heart for a moment because I left it out to rot. She kept if from rotting, and poisoned it instead. And her mom told me she liked me best.

Like mother, like daughter.

I look at her and then I smile. Why? Because I figured it out before it was too late.

I scratch my balls and think about cancer cells and Miller High Life bottle caps. This, I think, would make a great fucking story. And then I realize this is exactly why I don’t write for a living. Except for that newspaper thing any more.