Mother

"Mother! Tell your children not to walk my way. Tell your children not to hear my words, What they mean, What they say . . ."
- Danzig

Yesterday as I was arriving home, I passed my mother. She waved frantically at me with a big smile, I waved weakly back. I guess that run-in had me thinking enough of her to have caused the following dream . . .

I find myself with her and her husband. She's driving to her business just outside of town (as far as I know she doesn't have a business) and drives up to a mail box where she punches in a code and she gets her mail. I know what you're thinking. You've never seen computerized mail box. Neither have I, which was weird but it's a pretty good idea!

Anyway, it appears her business is supplying convenience stores. We walk in to her warehouse and there are teens working inside. One of them drops something and I help him pick it up. The place is buzzing with activity. Everyone knows what to do. My mother still has that big smile on her face while she explains what's going on.

We go to another section of the warehouse that appears to have been converted to a shelter and chapel. My mother leaves me to prepare for her sermon. Her husband appears and begins telling me that they help the community by hiring the teens and help the homeless with shelter and counseling.

I wake up.

Now, as far as I know none of what happens in the dream is real. I don't believe she is involved with stores, warehouses, shelters, or chapels.

I don't talk to my mother. I don't know her.

GD

The Pixies

Well, last night I found a whole crapload of cd's I'd bought when I was in high school and a few years after graduating. I think I was the only one listening to The Pixies at my school. Everyone else was listening to KDON, a popular top 40 station. You know the kind, MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, Boyz II Men . . .

Anyway, I just found some cd's I thought I'd lost or had stolen. I'm especiallly happy to have found all my Pixies cd's! I've just ripped them onto my pc. I'm ashamed to say that I also have some of those shameful top 40 albums (cough)hammer(cough)!

Since last night, I've probably listened to "Hey" about 20 times. That song just kicks ass! At work I just had my Rio Karma going all day with all the albums. Probably my favorite album is Death To The Pixies. It has some truly great live versions of their hits. The live versions of both "Hey" and "Where is my mind" are mind blowing. I get goosebumps every time!

I was also surprised to have found Nine Inch Nails' "Pretty Hate Machine". I gave a listen to it. It'd been a while. I finally listened to the lyrics after all these years. Pretty powerful stuff. That Trent sure had no luv for the guh'ment!

In the same genre, I also found Ministry's "Land of Rape and Honey". Boy, was I into some weird shit! I guess I was the typical angry youth. Of course, I was the quiet angry youth. My parents really had me in check then! I couldn't get away with almost anything.

Almost . . . >: P

GD

I luv my baby! <: (

For the last few months I've been putting off changing out my sparkplugs. I mean, to have it done at the stealership, it would'a run me almost $800!!!

At first, I didn't have the money. So I purchased everything I needed little by little. Then it was not knowing how to do it. So I went online and visited my New Beetle family on NewBeetle.org and searched the forums. Finally it was excuse after excuse: it was raining, it was too hot, it was too cold, I was too tired, I had to go to a party, I had to go to Penny Farthings (a pub) . . . excuse after excuse.

Well Tesla ,my New Beetle, finally said "ENOUGH!!!"

She put me in check. Literally! Her CEL came on. For those of you unfamiliar with automotive technical terminology, a CEL is a Check Engine Light.

When that happend, I nearly crapped my pants. I knew I was pushing it. That same day it was raining and cold, but I still changed out my sparkplugs. My fingers were raw and numb from the cold.

I know that once you've taken care of a problem, the CEL will clear and you can go about your merry way. My hadn't cleared. It took a whole week of driving and and reminding myself that it would eventually clear. It finally did.

But now I have an intermittent CEL. It's either my gas cap not tightend properly or the MAF sensor. The MAF is the Mass Air Flow sensor. It basically tells the computer how much air is available for the engine to use. Apparently the MAF is sometimes a problem in New Beetles.

I'm gonna wait until the CEL lights up again so I can take it to the stealership to read the code and figure out the problem.

Wish me luck!

GD

You're money, Baby!

Friday after work, I had dinner with mom. Later I was having a beer with a friend (Ernie) at Applebee's. A couple of hours after that I was on the road to Vegas . . . on a whim.

I got to Applebees a little after Ernie had arrived. I hadn't even finished my first beer when he gets a call from a friend of his asking if he wanted to go to Las Vegas. Ernie half-jokingly asked me if I wanted to go. We paid our tab, finished our beers and split!

We picked up some clothes and things, and left to pick up Ernies' friend, Raf.

When we got to Rafs' place, Raf and Mike were waiting. I've never met Mike, but he was coming along as well. We had room in Ernies' Vitara, so we all boogied.

We arrived in Vegas roughly at 3:30 in the morning. The Strip was kickin'! I mean the place was packed! People were cruisin' the Strip, music was blasting, people were drinkin' . . . and we had just arrived from an eight hour drive with no idea of where to start.

After cruisin' the Strip ourselves, we decided to head off to the Luxor (the black pyramid w/the Sphinx). We wandered a bit, hit a card table, lost some money, won some money and we separated into two groups. Ernie and I were done for the morning and we went to the car to nap. Raf and Mike were just getting started and kept on.

We woke up a couple of hours later and hit up a breakfast buffet next door to the Luxor, some castle looking casino that I can't remember the name of right now (great scrambled eggs). We hadn't seen Raf or Mike in a while and got back to the car for another nap. Raf and Mike arrive and woke us up and figured we should find a place to stay. We drove around some and found a ratty place for cheap.

Mike stayed to crash, Raf wanted to be dropped off somewhere and Ernie and I had slept enough to keep us going for the day.

After dropping off Raf at some chicks place he knew of (long story), Ernie and I took off to check out Fremont street. Now Fremont street is that one place you see in some movies/shows/commercials that has the ceiling that's a giant big screen. During the day, it's used as an awning. Nighttime is when the shows begin. As fortune would have it, we had arrived there at ten in the morning. No big screen shows for us.

We did the tourist thing and checked out the various shops and the clones of those shops and the clones of those shops. It was fun! We played cards at the Horseshoe just to say we did and lost some more money there. About three o'clock we called it quits and took off to the hotel to sleep some.

After a few hours of sleep, we took care of the three S's and had breakfast at Denny's. It was dark now and we figured we should be able to check out the Fremont street show now.

When we got there, the place was packed! All the kiosks were open now and selling their wares. There was this kick-ass artist there that would make awesome, detailed paintings with spray-paint. There were a couple of bands playing that were quite impressive. And the best part of all, some casino was selling monster cans of Fosters for a BUCK!!! Boy, did we take advantage of that! Whooo!

Well to make this long story short, we got back to the hotel about 1am, got some sleep, woke up about five, were on the road by 5:30 and arrived home at 1pm.

There's some more to this story but, I wanna have more material for later.

So much for the Histories!

GD

The Histories

I purchased a book about a year ago. It's probably something someone would read in Lit class. It's a book by Herodotus called The Histories. I like the era, I've read other books from about that time. I've picked it up several times since I bought it and I never get passed page 5.

Now, I've read the Oddysey say, ohhhh about fifty times since I discovered it in elementary school. I've read about ten different versions of it. I've read it with the protagonist called Oddyseus and Ullyses.

I've read the Illiad when I was in Junior high (not as good as the Oddysey). I've read Dantes' Inferno (GREAT read).

Julian (Gore Vidal) is one of my more recent re-reads. I've read that one about 5 time in the last two years. You pick up little details you missed the first (2nd, 3rd) time through.

What I'm trying to get at here is that I like that broad time period. So, why can't I get further than page FIVE in The Histories!

I am going to make the attempt this weekend to finish it. No, not an attempt. I AM going to FINISH IT!!!

GD

Hmm!

This is almost a perfect description of me . . .

You Are 55% Normal (Somewhat Normal)

While some of your behavior is quite normal... Other things you do are downright strange You've got a little of your freak going on But you mostly keep your weirdness to yourself

How Normal Are You?

Who would'a thunk?!

GD

Boy! I'm feeling productive today!

I usually only post once in a great while. This, I believe, is the first time that I'll be posting two in the same day!

The reason for the second posting today is that there are a couple of blogs that I read during work breaks. One of those blogs led me to a personal friend of the bloggers blog that I read regularly. The blogger had posted about a Zellers commercial (according to that blogger 'awesom oh', Zellers is a cheap Target rip-off). The commercial had a diddy in it that called to 'awesom oh'. 'awesom oh' had to find out who sang it and what song it was. The song is by The Be Good Tanyas. I myself never heard of them, but the blogger posted a link to the original video for the song (not the commercial). I must say, the blogger was right. It's very fun and addicting.

Now this brings me to another obscure band. Trailer Bride (Bloodshot Records).

Trailer Bride plays what I call Alternative Country. Please, don't get me wrong. I'm not a big fan of country music. But Trailer Bride is VERY different. My favorite album is Smelling Salts. My favorite song in the album is Graveyard.

You may recall a show on Fox called Freaky Links. One episode dealt with the ghost of a girl that would possess a pregnant woman who would play at her piano at some superhuman speed. At first everybody thought it was an original song. But the shows star (lets call him Dave) took a recording of what the pregnant lady was playing to an audio expert. Turns out after the expert analyzed the recording, that the tune wasn't one song. It was a medley of several classical songs from Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi . . .

After some investigating, Dave found out there was a high school girl who happened to be a piano prodigy who would play that same medley as a finale of her recitals. She had been expected to go to Julliard, but had disappeared from the face of the planet.

After receiving some clues from that girls ghost(lets call her Ann), they found out where the accident occured. They also found out Ann had been pregnant. Initially Dave thought the boyfriend had done it. But when they found him, he was so emotionally drained that they figured that he couldn't have done it. He had been despairing all this time over the loss of his soul-mate, Ann. Dave visits the mother a couple of times during the show. That's how Dave found out she was supposed to go to Julliard. The mother was very proud of her daughter and her abilities.

Well to get to the short of it, Dave finds out the mother did it. The girl hadn't wanted to go to Julliard. She had found her soul-mate and wanted to live the rest of her life with him and her baby. The mother was so upset at Ann being pregnant and what her daughter was giving up that she picked up the nearest thing at hand and smashed it up against her daughters head (the object she picked up happened to be a trophy the daughter had won in an International piano competition). The mother then took Anns body to an old gas station that was being rebuilt and dumped her daughter in an old empty oil tank and closed the lid.

The mother had thought Ann was dead. But Ann had woke up in a dark container. She was so horribly injured and had lost so much blood that she didn't have the strength to get up, let alone get out of the tank. And the worst part about it was that people were working right next to the tank, but Ann couldn't be heard because she was IN a tank. It took her days to finally die.

When they told the mother what they found out had happened, the mother was completely devastated. She had killed her daughter in a state of rage. But she didn't know that it had taken so long for her daughter to die.

In steps in Trailer Brides' Graveyard. OH! MY! GOD!!!

With that song and what had occurred, I got totally and thoroughly choked up. I almost started blubbering. That song made the episode. It finished it. I became a HUGE fan of that show after that episode and I was upset when they cancelled it. Duh! I should've realized that was gonna happen. It's Fox!

Trailer Bride. GET IT!!!

GD

New Book . . .

Last week I started reading Jack of Kinrowan. It just happens to be another Charles De Lint book with two books combined. Jack the Giant Killer and To Drink Down the Moon (I think). I read the first half of it (book one) in two days.

So far excellent read.

I began the last half (book two) last night. The character I thought was gonna be the main character was . . . well, let's just say she didn't make it past the second half very far. Totally and completely took me by surprise!

I got a feeling I'm gonna be hating tomorrow morning after only getting 3 hours of sleep.

GD

My Quirks

As usual, I've taken my time updating this thing called "The Try". Try as I might, circumstances get in the way of things and I can't keep up with what needs to be done. Well, "need" is not really the word in this case. More like "want".

I want to keep up this blog just so I can look back on it and see where my temperment and thoughts happen to lie at that particular time. I find it hard at times to write because I'm always thinking ahead and sometimes my typing can't keep up with what's on my mind at the time. If I just typed what was in my skull, the words wouldn't make sense. It'd be gibberish. And having a tad of OCD, I'd have to correct it before I could go along and lose my train of thought . . . or just get completely derailed and continue on a completely different track.

I try to think of ways to go a little quirky on these posts, but it never works out. I always get a chuckle from reading some other peoples blogs. Why can't I write like that? In person, I'd probably be one of the quirkiest people in your general vicinity. I'll try to be a little more quirky here!

GD