Inanities...

I bought my first CD in a while. I don't get a chance to purchase many luxury items (clothes, CDs, DVDs, gadgets, etc.), so this was a big deal for me.

It was my second foray into the mall, this time flanked by my sister and three-year-old neice. I managed to stick to the music store, and I searched the aisles for Jet's "Get Born". They only had an import for $23.99. No freakin' way. So I found The Killers' "Hot Fuss" on sale for $12.99 and bought it, instead. I made a good purchase.

The only way I can describe the Killers is by amalgamating The Cure, New Order, and The Smiths with Orgy (whatever happened to them?) and maybe a pinch of indie arena rock. They use that really catchy "bass-as-lead-guitar" sound that New Order and The Cure pioneered so well. Even the lead singer's voice reminds me of Robert Smith and Morrisey. If you like that kind of music, I suggest you listen to them; I think you'd like them. The CD package had a sticker with the word "Grammy" slapped across it, so they're industry-approved. Besides, "Somebody Told Me" is my current cell-phone ring-tone.

However... If you're looking for the greatest love-and-heart-break albums of all time, ever, then check out The Cure's albums, "Disintegration" and "Wish". If you've ever loved a girl in high school or had your heart nuked to dust... Robert Smith knows... and he understands...

...

God said not to covet. But I'm a sinner.

The 120' roll of Teletype paper that contains Jack Kerouac's original manuscript for On the Road is still on tour. He wrote the entire novel in a 3-week creative binge using nothing but a giant roll of paper (so he "wouldn't have to waste time changing the page").

It's currently being displayed at Iowa State University. Word to the General: If you're anywhere near this exhibition, you'd go and visit for me. Just for me. For nothing and no one else but me. If I can never see it for myself... At least you can...

It's being displayed in one long glass case that contains the entire length of the manuscript. Supposedly the last "page" was chewed off by a dog. Heh.

My best friend Adam White got to view this utterly priceless piece of treasure in D.C. (I think it was D.C.) For that I'm also guilty of incredible envy.

I would walk 500 hundred miles, and I would walk 500 hundred more, just to be the man who walked 1,000 miles and viewed the f*cking manuscript to On the Road.

Sha-da-da-da, indeed.

...

Learning what a girl likes or dislikes in the first couple of phone conversations is really difficult. Especially when you tend to over-analyze everything and talk a mile a minute. Jebus, help me.

Gisele-O-V-E LOVE

There's something in Brazil waiting for me.

I've been saying that for years and years. I don't know why. I just feel magnetically drawn to Brazil for reasons inexplicable. A subconscious connection, maybe? The echo of a voice I've never heard... Maybe there's something dark and mysterious brooding in the jungles, or an old holy man called El Tiburon awaiting my arrival... Or maybe it's just

Gisele freakin' Bunchden.

Gosh. She is a Brazilian supermodel, and she's like the most gorgeous female I've ever seen, ever (a close second would be Monica Belluci, from the Matrix movies). My sister gets Victoria's Secret catalogs in the mail all the time, and I cut out all of Gisele's pictures like a 14-year-old boy. And her nose... I absolutely love her nose... It's her most distinctive feature, like Cindy Crawford's mole or Kate Moss' skeletal heroin-chic. Gisele's nose reminds me a lot of my good friend Janelle Provenzano's, from Florida. It was broad and specked with freckles. And she was hot, too.

But what blows my mind the most is she's only 24! Twenty freakin' four! I'm a year older than her! It says here that she was born on July 20th, 1980. I was born a year and sixteen days before her! And she's like 6 feet tall. She'd tower over me a good five or six inches. But I could handle it.

Conan O'Brien shares my feelings, too.

Ah, if girls like Gisele roam the world... it's a much better place to be.

Sigh.... 

Look at that gorgeous nose. 

After Thompson's suicide, attorney saw clues...

After reading this article, some of the anger and confusion has settled.

Here's the link to the official article.

By David Abel, Boston Globe Staff February 22, 2005

If one of Hunter S. Thompson's last wishes comes true, the body of the late maverick journalist will be cremated this week and his ashes blasted from a cannon across his sprawling ranch in Woody Creek, Colo. [EDIT: Rock n' roll, even after death. - Me].

That will be the extent of Thompson's funeral, as he told friends and family, said George Tobia Jr., a Boston-based entertainment lawyer who has represented the author for the past 15 years. Tobia said he has spent a few hours every week, often in the wee hours of the day, fielding requests from and chatting up the man who created gonzo journalism.

In a phone interview yesterday, Tobia said only in retrospect does it makes sense that the 67-year-old author sat in his kitchen Sunday afternoon, stuck a .45-caliber handgun in his mouth, and killed himself while his wife listened on the phone and his son and daughter-in-law were in another room of his house. His wife had no idea what had happened until she returned home later.

The former Rolling Stone magazine contributor, known for his self-styled, freewheeling writing, chronicled the downfall of President Nixon and authored books including "Hell's Angels" and "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."

Tobia, 43, who said he spoke to Thompson at least five times in the last week, as recently as the day before he killed himself, said his client and friend did not leave a note, only conversations and obscure directions he had issued to friends and family in recent days.

"This was definitely not spur of the moment," said Tobia, who plans to fly to Colorado today to help carry out Thompson's wishes. "He arranged to have things dealt with, and he wanted his family close by, but he didn't want anyone to know -- he didn't want anyone to try to stop him. In a weird way, he wanted it to be, I think, a celebration."

Was there anything specific that led Thompson, the model for a character in the comic strip "Doonesbury," to commit suicide? Tobia said he did not know, but noted Thompson has written about suicide and talked about it with friends.

The decision, he said, had nothing to do with the reelection of George W. Bush or the current trend in national politics, which provided a certain grist for Thompson's mill. Nor did he have significant financial problems. With his land, archives, royalties, and other valuable possessions, Tobia said, Thompson's estate is worth millions of dollars.

The best explanation, perhaps, is that in recent months Thompson had chronic pain from back surgery and an artificial hip. He also broke his leg on a recent trip to Hawaii and was limping, which made it difficult for him to travel.

"He didn't want to waste away," Tobia said. "He did not want to exist as an invalid or as someone who needed constant care. It wouldn't suit his sense of self."

The one clue, in retrospect, that something changed recently was Thompson's decision that it wasn't so important that his papers and archives be sold to the highest bidder, money that would help him in later years. Last week Thompson told friends and Tobia -- one of the trustees of his estate -- that it was more important his archives not be sold piecemeal and that they find the proper home, such as at a university.

"There was no one thing you would point to and say, 'Oh . . . he's going to kill himself,' " Tobia said. "It wasn't clear last week suicide was imminent, but now it adds up."

"I was numb last night," he said yesterday. "But when that settles in, the phone calls, things start to come back, and things begin to make sense. . . . We all had hints, but none of us had the full picture."

The two planned to work together on the third volume of Thompson's letters, Tobia said. Just the faxes Tobia received over the years, he said, stack up about 5 feet high. There was also the unpublished novel, "Prince Jelly Fish," which Thompson hoped to have published.

Tobia first met Thompson while working on a benefit for the estate of Jack Kerouac.

"I represent the estates of many eminent writers like Jack Kerouac," Tobia said. "But [Thompson] was alive; the others, I never knew. I got to know him. I read him in college. Forming a relationship with him was a dream come true."

Hunter S. Thompson Memorium/A Poem

Hunter S. Thompson Memorium

A poem I wrote in remembrance of HST:

A moment
of profound confusion
and a burst
of gunpowdered fury
Brought down a mind much stronger than this.
Who would've known?
Who could've known?
Did he love us and miss us so much
he just couldn't, couldn't live?
Or did he despair and remember
a different time... another age...
Was he the last, the left behind,
the loneliest author?
What was the final thought
that convinced the Strongman to
release his hold and let go the
gates?
Some say he lived long enough
to watch all he'd touched,
he'd seen, he'd believed in, he'd known,
be rivened to separate threads
by Monster America Today.
A heartbeat dropped,
a connection yanked,
and what he knew applied no more.
No one cared anymore.
Others think, "mental note:
the Fiend knows too much."

I think, I will miss you,
you scurvy bastard.

Rest in peace. 1938 - 2005. 

Hunter S. Thompson dead at 67 - Feb 20, 2005

I first read about the news on-line after dropping my father off at the airport. The headline read, "Hunter S. Thompson dead". That was it. I cannot explain the sensation that came over me. Shock, pure, unbridled shock; I re-read it, then re-read it again, to make sure that's what it said. But it really said it. Hunter S. Thompson, dead.

It truly is the end of an era.

I read the report and was shocked even more to learn that he'd committed suicide. Self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. There was no note, or final statement of any kind on his behalf.

His son, Juan, found his body Monday morning. Friends and family are in shock.

I have several problems with this. One, Thompson was not the kind of man who would take his own life. As a matter of fact, Thompson personally denounced the act in several passages, calling it a coward's death. Quite frankly, he had no sympathy for the likes of Hemmingway, et al. Suicide was not his thing.

Two, he had shown no signs of depression, mental illness, or symptoms of suicide. Of course, I've never met the man, so I can't say that for certain. But in all of his late appearances he seemed to be as fiery and acerbic as ever.

I, too, thought Hunter S. Thompson was immortal. It's the same childish feeling I have when I think about my aging grandparents. They won't die. They can't die. They're going to live forever. But Hunter... he was one-of-a-kind. The truest of the true originals. He was a mutant. He was the Keith Richards of journalism. He sought for truth and found it; he stabbed people with it. He didn't ruffle feathers, he plucked them. His essays and articles were sharper than a surgeon's scalpel, and he pissed off a lot of people.

I spoke with my friend Jeremy Price, in Chattanooga, who said, "You do realize, Bill, that the government has killed one of our heroes." And my other good friend, Matt Dyer, thinks Thompson may have finally found out the truth, and was subsequently erased from the equation.

It's no secret that Thompson was a dope and booze fiend from the beginning. I mean, just look at the opening parapraphs of Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas: "We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold ... We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-power blotter acid, a salt-shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of uppers, downers, screamers, laughers, a pint of rum, tequila, a case of Budweiser... and a quart of raw ether. Not that we needed all of that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as it will go..."

He also loved firearms. He had an arsenal at his Woody Creek compound outside Aspen, Colorado. He used to fire at nickel-plated bombs with shotguns. He accidently shot and injured his assistant in 2001 while chasing a bear off his property. He would often arm himself with a cattle-prod and descend like an angry Mongol on the local tavern.

In the 60's, Thompson risked life and teeth by willingly throwing in with the Hell's Angels for over a year; he got a serious stomping for it.

He hated Nixon with a passion that rivaled Jesus' love.

In the 70's, he ran for sheriff of Aspen, Colorado, in the 70's, on the Freak Power Ticket.

No one will ever know what those final moments for Hunter were like. At this point I can see a number of different scenarios. A maltav cocktail of Wild Turkey and a galaxy of possibly (no, probably) illegal and lethal pharmecuticals can bring a man to the brink... But Thompson... he's cradled guns in his hands before, and under the influence, too... But what could he have possibly been thinking?!

But none of these possible scenarios make me feel any better about this tragedy. On one hand, I want to believe he was killed in some sort of wild conspiracy involving the FBI, the CIA, the drug czar, and the warlords. Hunter made a lot of enemies during his tenure as the world's foremost gonzo journalist, and he rubbed the underbelly of society often. On the other, I'm left with fact: self-inflicted gun-shot wound to the head. It almost makes me angry... Why did he have to do it? He still had so much left to say... So much more to do... And could he have done it? Really? Evidently he did... but did he??!!

Was this the sort of shock and confusion he wanted to leave behind?

I can't really think of words to apply to this situation. It's going to take a day or two to really ingest this... and accept it.

Please read my friend Matt's blog post. He says it better than I can, right now.

"... I wanted to stay in the shadows and act like I was dead, and others tried to act the same way. Mistah Thompson, he dead... We all understood that their work and their lives and their long-range professional Fate would be a lot easier if I went out on a slick Ducati motorcycle one night and never came back..." - HST, Dec. 13, 1996

Hunter S. Thompson. Rest in peace.

Trawler

The Daily Show, hosted by John Stewart, is one of my favorite TV news programs. I think it's my only favorite TV news station, as I find every other network news source obsessed with death, famine, war, chaos, crime, and general all-around destruction and evil. Nightly news reports are nothing but murders, rapes, riots, suicide bombings, train derailments, kidnappings, beheadings, and the occasional political commentary filled with re-hased political jargon and socio-political mumbo-jumbo that your basic American TV view cannot translate, much less understand.

So when TV news is injected with a shot of fresh comedy, it comes as sweet relief. Somehow, John Stewart manages to deliver apocalptic news each and every night (all of it factual) while at the same time layering it with enough puns and wit to make it not only palatable, but enjoyable.

I'm not sure how many Emmy's they've managed to win over the past several years (a lot), but I do know they should have at least twice as many as they do now.

I could go on and on and on about how much I love The Daily Show, but I'll skip right to my point.

I was watching the show last night and Stewart had a really interesting guest on, an English author named Redmond O'Hanlon (kick-ass name). I've never heard of him before, but from what I gathered, he's a pretty popular writer among the world's hip-elite. And he's damn funny, too. Hilariously funny. He totally stole the show and left Stewart, usually the witty one, in his dust. O'Hanlon's appearance was traditionally British: round, ruddy, and cherubic, with round rimless spectacles, two tufts of white hair, and rather large snow-colored muttonchop sideburns. He had a very likeable appearance, sort of like the archetypal British pint-swiller.

He was on to plug his latest book, Trawler. It's about a crew of commerical deep-sea fishermen who take a trip out to sea at the most dangerous time possible -- during a hurricane. You'd think it was a drama, but in fact it's a hilarious look into the lives of deep-sea fishermen ("trawlers"), their loneliness onboard ship, and their nefarious activities port-side.

I grew up on Ft. Myers Beach, Florida, a seven-mile-long island right off the south-west Gulf coast. I have a special affinity for the mangrove forests and barnacled docks and Indian Mound Keys of Estero... canals, inlets, manatees, rafts of styrofoam... My ex-stepfather, Al, was the manager of a deep-sea fishing marina, and captain of the Tarpon Hunter's Club. He had a beautiful 34-footer, the Summer Love II, which we used to take to the Florida Keys during the summers to hunt lobster. Al was a deep-sea fisherman, all his buddies were deep-sea fishermen, and I grew up around boats, marinas, docks, and water. I've known shrimpers, dock-wallopers, chum-cutters, bait-sellers, and boat mechanics. They all have a story to tell.

Anyway, that's why this book, Trawler sounds so interesting.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com:

Bad trips are the best. Would you rather watch a home movie of the perfect holiday or hear how it all unraveled? For hardcore fans of wretched travel, Redmond O'Hanlon is as reliable as Imodium. An erudite English writer, expert in natural history, he's known for jungle misadventures whose very titles -- No Mercy, In Trouble Again -- promise biblical woe: leeches, vipers, malaria, piranhas. Where other travelers relish olives in the Tuscan sun, O'Hanlon sucks eyeballs out of monkey skulls in the Amazon.
Trawler, O'Hanlon's latest, begins with characteristic masochism. The study-bound writer decides he must take the worst boat ride on Earth -- aboard a commercial fishing vessel in the far north Atlantic -- in the worst possible conditions: a winter hurricane. As he leaves his snug Oxfordshire home for the Scottish port of Scrabster, the reader braces for punishing winds, epic seasickness and foul-mouthed fishermen who park gutting knives behind their ears, all of which O'Hanlon delivers with darkly comic effect.

But what separates Trawler from other hellishly funny travelogues is its vision of working conditions so extreme that trauma and shock are routine: simply an occupational hazard. Trawlermen don't just lose their lives with regularity. What they risk losing each time out are their minds.

It "occurred to me that I might be going mad," O'Hanlon writes, sure at one point that he's just spoken to the crew when he was, in fact, asleep with his face in a plate. "It's so frightening," he tells his shipmates, "because I thought I was talking to you!" To which one of them replies: "Oh that . . . we all get that."

Before going mad, O'Hanlon must endure an awful initiation aboard a rusted "death-trap" whose skipper is so deep in debt that he fishes in a hurricane when every other captain stays in. O'Hanlon, overweight and over-aged at 51 (he could be father to most of the crew), instantly gets sick, flops into walls and gores his palms while gutting fish. The only calm, of sorts, comes in his turbulent bunk or in the stifling galley, where the men tuck into haggis, fried pizza and fried Mars bars. His shipmates also offer O'Hanlon soothing advice. As one puts it: "The weather! Who cares? You either die or you don't -- and you die all together."

Most sea tales suffer from romance. In Trawler, there's none. The rare view of ocean is menacing, not majestic: a wall of icy froth and dark water that's as claustrophobic as the gutting room where O'Hanlon spends almost all his time, assisting a marine biologist named Luke. Through him, we meet the phantasmagoric array of creatures the trawler's nets drag up from the deep: rabbit fish, sea-bat, snotfish and the hagfish, which suffocates its prey with slime and bores up the anuses of drowned sailors. As amusing and educational as much of this is, readers who prefer their fish battered or grilled may tire of Luke's exhaustive dissections.

The book's human specimens are more enthralling. Trawler, at its best, reads like a black-box transcription of minds trying to stay afloat while crushed by remorseless labor, cold, stress, sleep loss and fear of sudden death. "Your body thinks there's a battle on, and so it's packed you full of adrenalin," Luke says, a few days out. "So the brain tries to order itself for survival, to sort its memories, to clear itself for action by talking instead of dreaming." What results isn't conversation; it's manic, stream-of-subconscious outbursts from the psychic depths. After a week, things get worse. "The brain, memories, pictures, they shut down, they go all dead and dark, they don't care any more," Luke says. "You'll see! We'll be unable to speak. Zombies!"

O'Hanlon is just the man to guide us through this meltdown. A Prozac-quaffing depressive who once wrote of ingesting a jungle hallucinogen called yoppo, he knows the bad-trip sensation of watching his own mind unhinge. "I've never felt like this before," he jabbers at Luke. "The boss, the organizer, you know, the internal tough guy that we sometimes resent and always obey, the Mister Big who directs our thoughts, Luke -- he's gone! He's ceased to exist!" O'Hanlon also contrasts the fear he feels in stormy seas with his fleeting terror in the jungle of arrows and machetes: "this, this massively weighted indifferent murderous pounding all about us -- there's no romance about it, nothing personal," he writes. "And it doesn't stop, it goes on and on. "

And so does O'Hanlon. His fevered, exclamatory prose and Tom Wolfe-like bursts -- "wop!" "pow!" "ping!" "zap!" -- suit the lunacy of his trip. So do the high-octane confessionals that run for pages, broken only by the occasional "aye" uttered by whoever is listening. But this kind of writing loses flavor at book-length. Ultimately, O'Hanlon overcooks an intense but brief adventure of two weeks or so that would have been fresher with a third of its contents filleted.

The nonstop talk in Trawler -- Luke and O'Hanlon banter for whole chapters like mad dons in an Oxford dining hall -- also can't be read as strictly nonfictional. Most of it occurs while the author is frantically gutting fish in wild seas with so much noise that everyone shouts. O'Hanlon is so deranged by fatigue that his rational mind barely works. Yet he repeatedly renders, verbatim, rapid-fire and pitch-perfect monologues of several thousand words, often laced with Orkney and Shetland dialect, on subjects as knotted as European Union fishing quotas and sexual selection by hedge sparrows. This simply isn't credible, and it needlessly camouflages O'Hanlon's virtuosity. He should have taken long passages out of quote marks to make it clear they're filtered through his supple intellect and ear for language.

Trawler nonetheless paints a memorable and unexpectedly tender portrait of men who perform one of the world's most demanding jobs. In the end, even the ship's rock-solid first mate falls apart, confiding that he weeps each time he returns to his wife and worries that he'll lose her by loving her too much. Then there's Robbie, who boards the trawler bandaged after a drunken brawl his last night ashore. Mid-storm, he describes the loveliest passage of his young life: a jail stay for decking two cops in a pub. "Prison -- I'm telling you, marvelous! A holiday! A hotel for trawlermen!" Robbie exclaims. In the brig, he enjoyed regular food and sleep and, incredibly, "No cold at all." The idyll ended prematurely when he was released for good behavior. They "owed me three full months!" he indignantly concludes.

By the time Trawler docks, the reader knows exactly how Robbie felt.

Reviewed by Tony Horwitz
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved

The Mall Test (Hotness Scale)

I got a chance to go the mall on Sunday. Usually I avoid the mall at all costs, for reasons too numerous to list. The main thing I hate about malls is how they seem to be a cross-sectional representation of the American culture. In high school and the first few years of college, when I still had the tenacity and quick mind of youth, the mall was the perfect place to go to observe and comment upon the hilarious oddities of society. But now I just see it as a parking hassle and a crowd of obnoxious noisy humans that must be waded through. Amazing, isn't it, the older we get, the more like our parents and grandparents we become? Well, maybe not all of us... But I can definitely see some of my grandfather's traits popping up in me, which is odd because he and I never really had much in common in the beginning. I attribute these traits to genetics; it's true, a lot of quirks are inherited. I can see my ancestors from 400 years ago being anxious and anal retentive while at the same time ponderous and emotionally tweaked.

I was at the mall by myself, so I had a lot of time to think. When I was younger, I used to be able to look at a person and think of something witty and scathing to say about them. Most of the time I'd share it with a friend. But now I was alone, and it was many years later, and I was suddenly shocked at my thoughts. I could no longer, in good sense, comment upon these people around me; because, for once, I was aware of myself, of my place in society. I had a history now, a past complete with mistakes and major f*ck-ups. I'd won, and I'd lost, I'd tried and I'd failed. I was no longer the fresh rocket; I was almost out of gas, petered out, riding on fumes.

Everybody around me was beautiful. Everyone around me had style. I was wearing blue jeans, a white t-shirt, and a denim jacket. Classic, I thought. But noone appreciates classics, anymore. And that became obvious as I looked upon these gorgeous ladies, young and old. And the guys... they seemed to be wearing everything I wasn't. Since when did guys know fashion? Unless their ladies dress them... or they're gay... Do men really pay attention to what's in these days? Where are they learning this stuff? I refuse to watch a show where it takes four gay men to dress a single straight man. What does that say about us?

I'm off on a rabbit hole here. The point of the whole story is, don't go to the mall unless you want to know just where you stand on the hotness barometer.

I think I'm somewhere at like a negative four, or five.

Also, to reinforce my self-deprecating nerd image, I actually bought something at the mall. I wandered into Electronics Boutique and happened upon an old computer game I used to play maniacally in high school... Starcraft. It came with an expansion set, Brood War. I don't know about you, but I think Starcraft is the greatest game ever invented. I couldn't care less about video games in general, but this is the only game I've ever been addicted to. It's basically a Civilization-type game, except it's in outer space, and everything is in real-time. The game was only $20.00, so I bought it, drove home, and played it for seven straight hours. I had to forcibly remove myself from the computer Sunday night. I've avoided it for the past 24 hours. I'm scared to play again...

Ah, another Valentine's Day, come and gone. Does anyone else who's single out there think this day pretty much makes them feel like crap? I'm a server at Outback Steakhouse, so I had to pander to these noxious lovebirds all night. (Humorous observation: the single couples, that is, the ones without kids, seemed to be having a WAAAAAAY better time than the couples with children: a supposedly romantic night ruined by another screaming match with the rugrats). First of all, it's a day for Hallmark, candy companies, florists, and teddy bear manufacturers to hi-jack the market whole-sale. This is no surprise, however. Holidays are now marketed and franchised. Celebration in our society is the equivalent to, or is practiced by, the act of spending money. Secondly, if you love someone, why do you need one special day set aside to remind them? I mean, yeah, I guess it's nice and all, but women see it coming a month away. Don't you think your lady would appreciate a little more spontaneity?

And I'm not bitter!

I guess it could be fun when you're in love.

No Wheels Blues Chorus # 6

To quote Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, "I'm a binge writer." I'm also exceedingly lazy.

Those are the only two excuses I'll give for my lack of productivity lately.

Actually, I've been off-line, laboring on my space opera universe, tweaking it here and there, doing away with some old things and adding new ones. But I'm sure no one cares about space operas, much less my own, and it's hardly blogging, as one of my best friends, Matt, has pointed out.

Truth to tell, I've just been really uninspired lately. It's as if some invisible force has bound my hands, or shut off the valve inside my brain. And it's taking sheer effort merely to type.

Part of the reason for this is the banal routine that is my life. For those of you who don't already know, I don't have a driver's license. My mother kidnapped my car in a fit of worry over seven months ago. So I've been without wheels for quite some time. I don't know about most of you, but if you've gone without a car for an extended period of time, the effect is something like being on house arrest. And trying to get rides from people... the hassle!... especially when you live 30 minutes away from everyone else. Every day it reinforces the fact that you're a loser who doesn't have a car and mooches off the grace of others... Plus I can feel tension creeping in... Mom's getting irritated at having to ferry me back and forth to work 5 days a week, and rightly so... I would get a better job, but without a car, how would I get to interviews? Or how would I get there to even apply?

As it stands, the collection agency that's holding my license, Campbell & Campbell, a lawyer outfit in Chattanooga, Tennessee, will release my license if I send them a cashier's check for $500 and a conditional release form. They'd fill out the form, send it back to Ohio, and I'd be able to get my license back. And my car. And my life. Yesssssssssssssss. Blue skies. Barth burgers. GIRLS.

Sounds like plan, right? And it is. Unfortunately, however, I work at Outback Steakhouse, in Centerville, Ohio. And while the job is quite lucrative at times (usually averages out to $10/hour), it's only enough to break even every month. Given the fact that I don't have a checking or savings account, and the only money I have is what's in my wallet at any given time, it's kind of hard to get ahead.

But there's good news. My sister, Maleea, told me if I came up with $250 by the end of this week, she'd match me the other $250, and I could get my license back that much sooner. I gratefuly accepted her offer, and I've been saving everything I make each night (save a few dollars for smokes here and there).

To all of you who may think I'm a gigantic loser, well, I am. Only a scrub rolls in his buddy's car. But the utter humiliation I feel every time I get out of my mother's Chevy Lumina at work, or the sadness I feel at waking her up every night to come get me... that's punishment enough, wouldn't you say?

It all hinges on getting back that damned driver's license.

Believe nothing, Question Everything

I just left a profound spiritual conference.

I've made friends with this amazingly intuitive Christian young man named Eric.

The guy's one of the least book-smart fellows I know (and usually that means you're outside my bubble, my sphere of reference)... but for some reason, he's got a gift... a talent... an ability to speak to people, to reach out to them on their level, to make the truth of Christianity make sense.

We've just concluded another one of our weekly sessions. I consider myself a profound thinker... That is, I enjoy engaging in mental exercizes that a) bring my beliefs into question, and b) require me to defend them.

But after engaging in a spiritual sparring session with Eric... I feel battered, bruised, broken... made poignantly aware of my own shortcomings. Eric is three years my junior, but he's got a profound spiritual awareness that far exceeds my own, even though I've been a Christian for almost 12 years.

Take, for example, my biggest struggle, my mental addiction to marijuana. I don't need Eric to point out the fact that I've made it a mental crutch, a quick way to achieve (temporary) peace of mind. I'll be the first to admit that I have a serious problem with anxiety... But should I self-medicate? Especially with something that will eventually pollute my lungs and rot my brain? Or should I seek the One who purifies all?

Eric raised some interesting points. How much does God really mean to me? I mean, really mean to me? This very night, could I take my eight-five dollar glass bong and shatter it against the ground, while asking myself, "Is an $85 dollar bong really worth a human soul?"

God has all the ability in the world to satisfy our lives. And yet we -- I -- limit Him by choosing to seek solace and peace in... in a plant. Or a beer bottle. Or a husband, or a wife. A girlfriend, a boyfriend, whatever.

I have a lot of things to change in my life. And if I can face these obstacles, overcome these hurtles, and relinquish the authority from myself back to God (who has the map)... Maybe then everything might start to make sense...