...on postponing the universe

the bastard had business in the fhills yesterday.

so after waking up at the crack of noon, the bastard set out in his lil blue pill towards the williamsburg bridge.

traffic on grant street.

asshole in an acura decides that the rules don't apply to him.

goes around everyone by heading into the wrong lane.

he's a danger to us all, i think.

underdog by kasabian queues up on the stereo.

tooling along the nonsense i end up next to him and i have to move in.

he doesn't want that.

so the bastard makes it happen. somewhere in my caffeinated chest, predatory behavior ensues.

he goes around the crowd again and i give him the finger.

flashback: a man who owns a restaurant near my office passed some advice along to a friend of mine. he says to him, "give your problems away to the universe".

it's a very hindu phrase.

the bastard like this phrase. it makes it easy to make your problems less stressy. make the rigors of the day less, well, rigorous. makes your problems less...yours.

give your problems away to the universe.

OK flash forward: fuck that noise.

threatened, jerkinatruck makes a right from the left turn lane. he feels caught up in his own road rage. missed his turn.

the bald man in the little car is shaking his fist at me.

he must be a nazi.

but, actually, i'm not. you're just a dick. and a crappy driver to boot.

chase ended, the bastard makes his right, left, right, to get on the willy bee.

and there he is.

and now he's maneuvering to get in front of me for what would appear to be the "sake" of it.

i laugh.

he's ridiculous.

i make my right to the inner lanes.

jerkinatruck makes his right into the outer lanes making a mess of his chase.

he's caught, i'm not.

sailing over the bridge at 80, i stick out my hand and wave at him in the distance as he becomes part of the intenet and i become a scary story he tells at the dinner table later.

bastard: 1

jerkinatruck: 0

i'll give my anger away to the universe tomorrow. petty victories feel too good this time. what can i say, i'm petty.

—the bastard

...on the wait

there's a storm coming.

not in the metaphorical sense.

but an actual storm.

hurricane my uncle is coming tomorrow.

gonna be a hell of a Saturday.

or not.

—the bastard

...on eclipses

walking down prince street.

doctors appointment.

"how's about this one, ladies and gentlemen", a shout from behind.

left onto mulberry

"once upon a time there was light in mah life. now there's only love in the dark."

"is that?"

"yeah. it is", the bastard replies.

"once upon a time I was falling in love, but now ahm only falling apart."

"say it. say it" the bastard mutters, audible enough for his ladyfriend to hear.

"say what?"

"you'll see."

this deep voiced bard of soho clears his throat,

"turn around bright eyes"

"turn around briiiiiiiight eyes! ha haaaaaah!"

thus made the bastard seriously consider giving this guy a twenty so he'd walk up to Astor place with us.

made my evening.

—the bastard

...on nagging

the bastard is a little concerned about his brain lately.

I'm forgetting too much.

there was a time when my short term memory problems were the stuff of humor amongst my friends.

but,

it's starting to turn into near misses that may harm me greater than being made fun of for forgetting what I had for lunch today.

we were at a tiki party today. that's hawaiian for adults dress up in flowery shirts to drink.

it was good times.

when we got home, I had to park the car.

quick sidebar: due to my weekends being busier than usual with a baby on the way, the bastard hasn't been able to take the car back to queens so coupled with that and a new area to park that is kind of grief free by manhattan standards, I've been parking on this side of the river for close to a month.

anyway, I drop my ladyfriend off at the door and go park the car which was between these two large trucks. after I get two blocks away, i get the nagging feeling that I didn't lock the door. i get back and decide that since someone else moved, I take their spot as the bastard didn't relish the notion of pissing off two people that needed to get out of what was an awful spot with me and the middle.

happy with my new choice I walk away

two blocks from my apartment I get that nagging feeling again. and I shrug it off.

it persists, so i walk back to the car to realize I left the damn window rolled down. I don't recall doing this but, I must have.

I'm very uncomfortable with these little holes in my short term memory now.

—the bastard

ok... this is gonna sound stupid

...but the bastard just saw the film julia & julia

and it may have restored my faith in what I'm doing.

talk about it later.

i'm sitting in the crapper in a theatre in kips bay.

yeah. ew. go to hell.

—the bastard

...on men of letters

someone the bastard knows felt slighted recently.

and it got me to thinking about the power of these tubes we crap out information in we call the Internet.

hell, the first time the term cyberspace, it was banged out by william gibson's typewriter.

anyway, my former editor at selling bullets seven times a year had brought up a times article about the book "the dumbest generation" which was written by a university professor. a man of letters. in a nutshell, he says to not trust anyone under 30, because they're dumb ad stumps with their twittering and blogging and lolcats and such.

the bastard disagrees.

it reminds him of a story a music teacher friend of mine told me as part of the reason he left our fair shores for the western sands.

classical musicians thumb their nose at jazz musicians.

jazz musicians thumb their nose at blues musicians.

and blues musicians thumb their nose at rock musicians.

it is it's own form of elitist darwinism.

so this man of letters thumbs his nose at say, bloggers. does if make their message any less valid?

people thumbed their nose at matt drudge because he's essentially an aggregator. but does he deliver the news any less efficiently than tom brokaw?

the bastard doesn't know. all he knows is for the last four years, he's been banging out nonsense and maybe some of it sticks. maybe it helps him sleep at night.

right now I'm using my thumbs to bang this out on my iphone while waiting for the benedryl to kick in. does it make this any less, ida know...readable?

whateves, I'm gonna switch to solitaire until the pills kick in. stupid cat allergies. 9_9

—the bastard

...on hunting

...and gathering

at some point in time, red beard talked me into this idea he had.

part of it involved hunting.

so when the hunter safety course was being offered for free in the office. the bastard was all upons.

did the bastard mention it was free?

you see,

it's like this.

i figured out after the prince of sales gave left hand rob and i a big assed bag of frozen caribou steaks (which were pretty goddam good by the way), the bastard thought, hell, knew, that he would have to give back to the karmic till.

so it was to be done.

anyways, two very generous guys showed up and told the bastard all sorts of shit about how to politely ask a guy if you can hunt on his land. and how you can eat muskrat and it's tasty and all but, it'll give you some diarrhea which sort of defeats the purpose of eating muskrat quite frankly.

day two had us meeting in the baby magazines area. when you need a conference for a full day, you can't be a chooser. it did make for good times when we did firearms safety training with inert firearms that were still nonetheless...firearms.
the bastard is sure that it made for interesting lunchtime talk for the baby mag people.

long story long, i passed the course. hunting licenses get issued in october.

—the bastard

...down one click

...pin the throttle. let out the clutch.

as I settled down for bed,

the bastard thought about the show he was watching.

Charlie and ewan were gonna go the long way around Africa.

and ewan broke his ankle 9 weeks before the trip.

healed up.

and right on time, they left for parts unknown.

and the bastard thought, "hey, you fat old sack of crap, you need to get back on the horse."

I though about a photo I found of my son I found on the way through the photo library on top of pichaco peak mugging triumphantly at his climb or just showing off for his dad.

and i thought about the little girl who is growing in my ladyfriend's belly right next to me right now and I thought, "you gotta be just as fulla life for her as you were for the boy."

and I thought about a joke that scoop and i tell each other all the time.

my hate makes me great.

it don't.

what makes me great is my desire to do it again.

my desire to get out there and hit the pavement.

tonight, the bastard wants to dream of open roads and the roar of the machine.

and the fucking wind.

I want it back. badly.

—the bastard

trudge...

the bastard was late to getting home last night.

spent a good bit of time down by the mystery science offices.

chatting about the nature of the future.

the bastard has these kinds of conversations with people.

you see my friend stuff, he has plans.

and he has skills.

i told him yesterday as he was playing loops in garage band that watching him work is like watching circ de soleil

"howso?", he says

"well everytime i watch circ de soleil i feel like a fat load because, really no one can do what they do. seeing what you do in your spare time makes me feel like i'm not doing enough with my spare time."

he had laughed and followed up on how this is something he's been doing on the clock.


and it hit me that since running out of the devil's work, i haven't been very productive with my spare time. hell, i spent my lunch hour watching two episodes of bullshit and downloading an anime called nausicaa.

we're shipping killing stuff and the bullet book is way ahead of schedule for planning reasons.

i'm just not using my time wisely.

time for some thinking. not the boring kind of thinking. the interesting kind.

yeah, good luck with that.

—the bastard

ambiguous...

i've thought about this a bit.

and the bastard doesn't like it.

i don't talk about it anymore because no one believes it.

"you shouldn't even be that way", said one, as if knowing all of the circumstances

another just yells louder than the rest claiming authority over the discussion.

another concedes to agree to disagree privately and is myopic publicly,

and even know i'm not that, it's still disappointing to read.

all of it is really.

the bastard has grown tired lately.

tired of monstering.

digging,

finding,

opining.

doesn't matter. no one's listening anyway.

—the bastard

ascent

as our man strolls off of the f train,

towards points that used to be home but isn't any longer,

he remembers a night where he met a man who was a boy once when the bastard was a boy as well.

the boy was a hacker, and the man was out of the joint when the bastard ran into him.

the sins of our youth usually come back to us when we're older,

but, he wasn't so lucky.

we spoke briefly and in an awkward moment, the bastard had mentioned to him that he saw his picture in the paper the weekend when his youth ended.

"oh yeah, thanks", he said.

shouldn't have brought it up but, the bastard suffers from diarrhea of the mouth sometimes.

i always regretted bringing it up that night.

I hope the man turned out ok. he was always a good kid as i remembered.

god dam, this bus driver is awful.

—the bastard

the bastard's lessons for flying

number562:

when the airline screws up and offers you a free drink as compensation,,

always ask or the most e pensive thing you can get on an aircraft.

epic win for you.

—the bastard