The mermaid girl rode the F train standing up, one glittery hand wrapped around a steel pole at the end of the car.

I don't really think about any of the time I spent living in Big Lake when I was younger. Big Lake, Texas. It was named during a wild rain storm that filled a huge land depression in which dried up not too long after. They got stuck with a name and nothing to really show for it, forcing a lot of people to move away. We moved there in the eighties. We lived there for quite a while, I went to school there for several years, Seth was born in San Angelo. I thought we'd live there forever, and I was happy about it. My dad was offered a job eventually and it was to two different places: Big Spring, TX to continue working for Champion Technologies or to Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa. Apparently we chose the former.
Having to move was really traumatic for me, becuase my world was confined to those streets and my only friend Chad who had a treehouse in a land that practically had no trees. This not only just made him my friend, but the most popular kid in fifth grade and I was his best friend. I had commodity. Value. My parents taking that away has pretty much left a permanent scar on me. Still, I miss Chad, and that treehouse.
We moved without any fanfare or sobbing, we just left one morning and the next week I was in a new school in a different town with different kids who all seemed smaller than me and all had acne. Where had my youth gone? I spent the next few years wearing my jacket year round and drawing Wolverine and Spiderman on every available space I had. I was pretty good, except I couldn't draw hands. Still can't. All those drawing so Cyclops and Storm and Venom, they all have their hands clasped behind their backs in the most unassuming attack position.
It was after a stint in the seventh grade and failing a class I can't recall (probably something to do with Science, as my Dad, Super-Chemist, shakes his head) I ended up in Summer School. I was lumped in with fifth, six, seventh and eighth graders so that made me older yet without the air of an eighth grader, who all seem to wear their pants a little longer.
I guess this is leading up to my introduction into wanting to be a writer. We had a class loosely based around English fundamentals (i before e and whatnot) that offered a "creative writing group". I joined becuase I just wanted to sit closer to the window so I could watch the birds(!). We had to write a short story based on something historical, my foray into historic fiction. Everyone wrote about WWII or something like that. I wrote about Mt. Vesuvius and a pottery maker that thought he could make it by hiding in one of his big vases. I'll spoil the ending for you, he didn't make it.
Well, my teacher read it, and then for some reason shared it with the other summer faculty while probably smoking outside or considering a career change. They all liked it, so much that I had to read it aloud to them. What fun! The teacher, a humdrum Mrs. Bost with apples and rulers on her vest, typed it out and gave a copy to my parents who promptly put it away somewhere without glancing at it. I think then I knew I wanted to dedicate more time to writing. I'm not going to be cheesy and say I want to be a writer so my parents notice me, that's only 96% of it. I just want to do it. I feel compelled to do it, a hidden force pushing me. I remember writing that, and everyone noticing that it was good, typed up good, and that didn't make me wear my jacket as much, or draw comics alone in my room as much.

Although I still don't take my jacket off while in class and I still want to draw superheroes when I see fresh white sheets of paper, I still want someone else to type for me.

Barry stands in the back garden, talking to feathers as they float to the ground.

I ended my myspace account this morning.

I just realized that I checked it over and over and over througout the day. I just lost interest in it. I value time, and I think that I could spend my time better reading or cleaning or writing rather than seeing how many friends everyone has and constantly reading surveys that I really don't care about.

I started reading The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, a persian book of quatrains about life. It's really good, I have to constantly re-read it to process what's going on. Omar Khayyam was an astronomer and a mathematician who later became a mystic and wrote over 1,000 poems.

Yesterday we went on a forest trek out behind Alton Bridge in Hickory Creek. To be lost in the woods is always something that gives me a shake, in a good way. I like being out there, get deeper and deeper and further away from everything. It's just nice and quiet, birds and trees and rocks and anthills. It was just nice to be out of town for a while and wandering around. Greg and I tried to follow a dry riverbed that had been previously used for some people who enjoyed Shiner and folding chairs. We walked as far as we could until it was just impossible, all the detritus and undergrowth made it hard to go any further. I should get out there and do this more often.

He says he found her passed out in the hallway of their apartment complex, a small pile of blood next to her.

I watched Silent Hill last night. I was once really afraid to play the game at night, alone. Scratch once. I still am afraid to play the game at night, alone. It's hard being afraid of something that's digital, a series of colors and codes and numbers. Something that you could easily solve by turning on a light or making a phone call. Whatever happend to when people were afraid of being eaten by a Lion or falling off of a bridge? It's somehow been replaced by technology, I hope I don't get a virus or I hope my Ipod still works tomorrow. Maybe we should just have more hungry lions milling about to really move people back to square one.

Anyway, Silent Hill was really bloody and loud. There was a lot of gratuitous violence and mayhem, coupled with cardboard dialogue. Many unfortunate circumstances.

I wasn't used to being looked at persistently, and they were looking.

My wanderlust has yet to be satiated. I guess I'm doomed to roam the planet, helping those in need, doing right to what's wrong, David Carradine style.I got three passports, couple of visas don't even know my real name. I guess I've got time. I was thinking today that I wish Jupiter had a real surface, not just gas, so I could put a mailbox there.

Fry Street Fair was awesome. We played at 1pm, well, more like 1:30pm becuase they didn't have the stage setup. Some guy I see at Andy's (Who oddly enough was dressed like a Wizard) worked the sound. I couldn't hear anything, Shea couldn't hear anything, But apparently the crowd did. It started of with about ten people milling about, then when I looked up it was a full house. It was enjoyable, people popping in off the street to see us play. We got invited to play next month with a couple of the other bands that were after us (Rats and Children, Fra Pandolf) and were going to play at TJ's again. I spent most of the afternoon wandering around, drinking free beer for the bands and taking pictures. I helped out Warren and Mike setup for The Spitfire Tumbleweeds, met Kinky Friedman. He's really old and really brash. He was funny though, but he just kind of repeated all the stuff that he's said before. It's amazing how many people don't know his background, or who he is or what he's written. Everyone is more like "Hey, a weird guy who's running for Governor. Let's vote for that guy." I really like his articles in Texas Monthly.
We played again at The Mulberry Street Fair (a.k.a another yellow house show) with Lazer, The Undoing of David Wright, Attractive and Popular, Sarah Reddington. I think that show went a lot better, more of our friends. It was free, so that means it was all of our friends. I was asked to join Crusader (A Luke Spann production) and I'm seriously mulling it over. Could be fun.
Here's all the pics of the Last Routine Therapy show and Fry Street Fair. Please to enjoy.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kill_pop_radio/

Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.

I'm dealing with a constant since of wanderlust right now. I feel like getting out, getting up, going and going. I don't know why though. I want to drive, I want to see strange streetlights in strange cities. I want to drink coffee at 3am and wonder when I'll stop again. I want to watch sunrises and sunsets from the highway, eat bad diner food. I think there are too many highways maybe. Caught up in some solar wind storm.
I told Jane the other day I feel like my life is a Talking Heads song. It's bigger than life You know it's all me My face is a book But it's not what it seems. Some weird melancholy yet catchy life span. When people talk, "Hey, that's my/our song," or "This song is like, on the soundtrack to my life," I wonder if it'd be their hit single or buried in a mess of other songs. I wonder if their soundtrack would be on a Top Ten list somewhere or would it just be an obscure number of songs tucked somewhere in an audiophiles collection? I think everyone has outside points of reference in their lives, be it pop music or pop art, film noir, furbies. Something that acts as a building block. Forget atoms, forget blood and lungs and valves and muscles. Peoples bodies are more likely to be filled with snippets of songs on the radio,(How Bizarre, How Bizarre) bright colors, T.V. commercials. Cut someone open and out pours Oreck Vacuum ad placements (It's so light!) and coupons for teeth whitening products. I hope someday doctors will be baffled.
Rompiendo la monotonia del tiempo

There were only like twelve in the package anyway.

I've been reading a lot about the politics of Turkmenistan today. They have a president for life, a man named Saparmurat Niyazov, who basically has decreed himself a mortal God there. A few things he's done to promote Turkmenistan culture:
Renaming bread after his mother, Gurbansoltan edzhe. (I wonder if he feels bad when people are like, "boy, I'm stuffed. I just ate roast beef on Gurbansoltan edzhe.)
redefining the stages of life, with adolescence extending to 25 and old age beginning at 85
banning news readers from wearing make-up as Niyazov had difficulty telling male and female readers apart

The thing is that the people of Turkmenistan are collectively happy about all of the changes. The United Nations recognizes Turkmenistan as "most favored nation" because they trade everything they produce for really low prices. They want to disassociate themselves with every facet of the Soviet Union. The man had a gold statue of himself that's head and arms rotate around as the sun progresses.

In other news, Fry Street Fair is this weekend, Camella is on her deathbed, and Jacob is yelling at everyone because he's afraid we'll make him look bad.

Everyone else’s hands were normal.

I haven't been to a BBQ in a long time. Even yesterday, when it was advertised on Myspace as a BBQ and it turned out to just be a cookout (this was debated as we were stuck in traffic on I-35N).
I had never been to White Rock Lake before, but it seemed nice. The cookout went well although it was a little windy. Tish has turned 24 with bravado. Tina and I went to the shore to feed the ducks, which I hadn't done in years. I should probably do that more, but I'm afraid it'll get the best of me. I'll soon be that older man with a walking stick and some week old Mrs. Baird's bread, tied with a knot in a plastic sack, sitting at the pond at all odd hours of the day. What a life.

Jane Greg and I watched Steven Soderbergh's latest public offer, Bubble. I liked it if everyone else didn't. It was very true to life about how people try to make ends meet, and that life is pretty much continually mundane. No one in the movie really had any aspirations or anything, they just lived. It made me think of how I spent many nights in the breakroom at BSSH, eating a turkey sandwich while listening to weather reports on the radio and watching the clock.

I'm sure I'm far from the first person to think these thoughts, but it's not something that I've come across before.

Where mystery, the paranormal, drinking and boredom meet, there's almost no stone unturned at 2:30am. Although the wind was cold and the clouds were thich there was just enough moonlight to be able to see as we drove to Old Alton Bridge.

I've heard several different stories about Alton Bridge, the best so far being that a man was hanged there for killing his family some years ago, and they did it wrong. Apparently the 'wrong' produced the man's head to seperate from his body leaving what I would probably believe a bloody mess that no one would want to clean up. The man finds a goat's head (attached to a goat, we'll never know. Maybe they also hanged a goat the wrong way?) and puts it in the place of his missing one.

Well, this reversed Pan never showed his face, whether goat or man. Amy lent me a pretty strong penlight which I just shined in the trees and bushes along the shore of the river. There really is nothing out there. You also can't shoot fireworks.

Stuff like that has always interested me. My mom and Seth swear that the house we live in is haunted, it's been there 100+ years now, but I don't believe it. Who or what would want to hang around there? It's even boring for the living, and I'm sure the other worldly spirits have got a lot of better things to do. I know they supposedly don't get to choose where they are forced to spend eternity, but maybe they can put in for a transfer.

I'll be posting a couple of new stories in the other blog.

I wait outside the father's law office with the boy.

So, the weekend past pretty uneventful.
I stayed mostly at work, less two hours of our embarrasment at the Coppel YMCA. We only played four songs before we were asked to leave. We laughed it off, but you could tell the dissension in everyone's face. Maybe Fry Street Fair will be a grand rebound.

I came home after whistling past the graveyard and collecting flowers. Jane had surprised me with Jack Kerouac's recordings, which I'm enthralled with. I've been looking all over for a copy of The Moon Her Majesty for a while.

This weather puts me in a better mood. It makes me feel at home.

“One chicken sandwich,” I replied.

I am 98% sure that the world that surrounds me vis-a-vis the MHMR Center is full of cult members who worship Casualism. So many things there happen by accident, always leaning towards the positive. A conversation overheard while rifling through a desk for extra ink pens:
"So, do you think that someone will be there?"
"I don't know, he's been at the bus stop for about...I'd say an hour now."
"Well, you know he can't be in direct sunlight. He's taking Keflex."
"Yeah, well, I'm busy. Hey.."

At that point the person who apparently was standing at a bus stop somewhere on the other side of town without any supervision or way of getting home walks through the door.
"Hey, there he is."
Everything resumes as natural as that place can be.

It can’t be! The perfect search and destroy toasting machine has been canned.

I found myself lost on a bright Saturday afternoon, driving along the bricked streets and ancient cenotaphs of a town that professes itself as the "Cowboy Capital of The World". I was lost, yes, but I knew my destination: The fascination with older small towns across Texas. Although raided constantly by the painted Comanche and the impact of the Civil War, Stephenville lives on boasting many neon lit bowling lanes, a Piggly Wiggly and of course, Tarleton State University.
I was there for my birthday. Twenty-five brought steaks and chicken, older people who, over an ancient fire, relayed their histories to me and how the world was when they were my age. It seemed that things were a whole lot better. Maybe we sold the simplicity of our lives for the fortune of technology? My grandmother still uses an Apple II and her husband is proud of the fact he's never touched a keyboard and a mouse. It was a good recess away from the hustle and bustle of Denton.
Jane was able to accomplish the one thing I was never able to do, which is organize and plot a party for me. My adult life had been fettered away without parties for my birthday, and Jane really made this one for me. Amy came out of left field and now I am going to immerse myself in the first season of The Oblongs, an exquisite buy. Weird, Texas now sits on my couch, the book I've been rubbernecking every time we walked by the Barnes and Noble's sales tables. Everyone brought beer, and I'm doing my best to finish it.

While much of my life has been spent obsessed with the things that I want to do, learn and be, I plan on spending the next quarter of a century doing it.