I spent the next five years playing hide and go suck as her vampire cabana boy

aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhgurgle. I stayed home from work today. Every since I picked my brother up from his school in michigan, oh, about a month ago, I have been sick. Mostly cold kind of symptoms that fade out like they're going away and then rear their ugly little heads a few days later, crushing my relief. The most pernicious of the symptoms, and the most worrying, is the sore throat, the very symptom that convinced to call my boss at 6AM in his car and let him know that I would not be present today to wear a respirator and impact hammer masonry shit out of walls all day. He was fine with the whole thing, I mean after all, this is memorial day weekend (this means that I'm off work for the next 4 days) . So now I'm at home, writing shit in this blog thing and waiting on my appt. time at the doctors.

This desicion of mine has likely complicated a few things for my brother; his college girlfriend is here, and the family is supposed to all be safely at work, wink wink. Of course, of the family members to be home, I'm a good one, because I don't care if they screw their brains out, I just don't want to be privvy to it, whereas my mother and father both care very much whether or not they're screwing and also do not want to be privvy to it. 1-1 vs. 0-2 I win. in anycase, I have to be careful as I stalk around the house sniffling in my boxers, lest I disturb something that should be left undisturbed.

I am trying to decide whether to go biking today. About two weeks I purchased a nice mountain bike on ebay so that I could tag along with my brother when he goes off xc riding. I've gone once so far, and excepting the part where I ended up throwing up because i couldn't breathe, it was really awsome. My bike didn't fit real well at first, but after about 150 USD of part upgrades, I have finally have the handlebars and stem high enough and long enough to fit my rather unorthadox frame (body, not bike). Heres a pic of what it looked like when I reveived it. it's purrrrdy.

It is fantastic excersize, as while you are riding you feel ok, and excited, but the minute you stop and get off the biike, it's like a ten pount maul is slammed on your chest and you collapse. My case is worsened by the fact that I have been smoking, regularly, for about two+ years now. The good news is that after my fun breating experience on monday biking, I've decided to show cigarettes the door, and have started to quit. Now I'm only four days in, so I'm not going to make any blustery statements like 'I'm totally off those fags now!' butI went from smoking about half a pack a day, with the help of my mother, down to no more than one or two. I made it through the entire construction work day yesterday without nic fitting or bumming a cigarette from anyone, which for me is an acheivement, because without smokes, the jobsite is a much much harder thing to endure. I have a semi-developed theory about what cigarettes are to me that I thought up over the last couple days. I have always operated on a sort or incentive/reward system. Which means that I balance hardship or things that make me unhappy by looking forward to good things, or treating myself. So for instance when I'm not very happy, I buy a lot of stupid materialistic shit, because it gives me momentary jolts of small happiness, etc. thats nothing new, shopping therapy. but for the same reason that when I get a coffee it's a treat, but a soda is mundane, smoking a cigarette is a treat to me. It feels good, it allows you to set aside whatever it is you are doing and relax, calm down just sort of step outside of the normal world. I started smoking when I was in a pretty bad place back in school, and have kinda used it in the same way ever since. In the construction stuff, it was a way to break up the day into little pieces and sorta refresh myself every so often. I've noticed this week, while I've been trying to be commited to quitting, that my stupid boring tasks are so much harder to deal with now. Part of it is probably being on edge from wanting nicotine, but as well, now there is this sense when I'm doing some task that I don't like of there being nothing to break it up, nothing to look forward to. Middle of a wednesday afternoon, on a ladder covered in dust and pounding into a wall with a too-heavy tool, sucking dust, knowing that you're going to be doing this for the next three hours, and the next two days, and that theres nothing to break that up, or make it better. It's been a challenge. I should find employment where I don't have to mentally wrestle with myself all day not to quit. the question 'what the fuck are you doing here, doing this for?' scrolls across the inside of my skull like a marquee board. I don't have an answer to it either, the closest I've come is laziness, or apathy or fear of the next or the unknown, but thats all kind of vague. how can you hate something so much during the day that when you are at home you don't do anything to change it? I'm glad I stayed home today, even if it does cost me 96 dollars.

p.s. a music recommendation to pass on for El Fongarino. when i was in toronto last, he played me this badass underground rap album from MF Doom and Madlib. And it is certainly badass.

hot or cold, hot or cold?

hot music vids:

First one: satisfaction by benny somone. I've used all the construction equipment in this video, except the tamper. but the girls are so so so hot.

second one: call on me by some other dude. catchy club tune, hot hot hot. who says the eighties were all bad?

third: hear my name by armand van helden. waspy chicks spanking everyone and breathing heavy! sign me up!

thats all for now. you can tell I don't get out much, eh?

and what can I get for ten dollah, anyting you want!

wow, I haven't put anything on here in like three months. I won't make excuses, I was bored of it a bit, and I was being to whiney and melodamatic, and whenever I actually notice myself being that way, I cut my self off.

still rocking the carhartts and doing construction. I've been working six day weeks actually because for better or worse I purchased a nine hudred USD mountain bike on ebay a week or two ago, and I need to figure out how to pay for it. it's a 2k4 Klein Attitude XV, which as it turns out is a totally sweet bike. I'm excited.

check out the artist M.I.A. If you like the idea of a really good looking sri lankan girl beating sean paul and his cronies at their own game on the dancehall floor, all while adding lyrics about terrorism and gold diggers in a dizzie-rascal-esque british brogue, than this may be for you. As the pitchfork guy, or the guy pretending to be a pitchfork guy said, Roll over and die Britney, this is the new pop, and IT ROCKS. yeah.

Read the moviegoer, at Rory's behest, and it was very good. I can see why he likes it, the main character liteally is talking to a person named rory, so his name is all over that book. but it's a good image of like middleclass suburban malaise, the kind of life full of money but nothing else, and the search, as the character calls it, which I read as something philosohpical or metaphysical. I'm starting into In Cold Blood, and it's really good so far, though I'm only about 20 pages in.

I got very angry at my boss a couple weeks ago and told him to fuck off, to let me finish what I was doing and called him a condscending prick. well luckily the guy had a sense of humor about it. and he really was being a condescending prick, which I think he realized, so I didn't get in any trouble, but I noticed today that there is a new bit of art on the bathroom wall. it's a picture of my boss with a dictionary in his lap, looking up condescending, and instead of condescending it's conner-sending. I finally made the wall! and not in a bad context! whoever made that is a clever dude. I think it must be an electrician.

I worked over the weekend with this 50ish carpenter dude down on his luck, and he started out his introductory speech when he met me about how bad his day had been. He hd seen his neice, who looked like a runway model, in his brother's stolen truck. she was strung out on heroin and this guy called the cops and got her locked up but he felt kinda bad because she was his neice and stuff, but since she was pregnant it was probably better that she was off the heroin in jail, because when it was just the one year old, that was ok, but pregnant isn't so good, and you know what man? she is so hot, damn, and I mean theres nothing she wouldn't do for me for some heroin, [wink]. [shudder on my part.] scumbag. and that was just the beginning, he went on to describe his numerous drug expereinces and at one point he's talking about smoking hash in europe, so I lamely ask 'were you in amsterdam?' and he goes 'heh, no, but surpsrisingly I was with this amsterdam whore once and I was going down on her and I stopped and asked about how much I should pay and she said John, you don't have to pay me anything I feel so good, just keep doing that and I did!' [shudder, again]. I mean wow. I'm not a prude or anything, and I'm really really fucking wide open compared to the conservative dudes I work with, but this was kinda too much. I mean to tell me about how he fucks his neice in exhange for heroin and then his story about giving head to a amsterdam whore, who was really 'perty' by the way, just seemed a little too open. Who knows, maybe I'm really gullible and this guys likes to spin tales. But he did this shit all day, and did it in front of everyone, and he got fired from his last two jobs for drugs, which is why he is now a temp carpenter, so I'm inclined to believe him.

in quick summary of my life ordinaire in baltimore, nothign much has changed. I picked my brother up in mich from school, saw wolf eyes (sucked) and animal collective (partially sucked due to loud noises) and have been uhh, doing not much else in my spare time. I still go to my guitar lessons, I still clean my room most sundays, I still smoke and I have switched from the winter scotch to spring and summer vodka tonics and gin and tonics. breezy times. the weather is awsome, my house looks like a botanical garden, thanks to my wacky parents, and I'm starting to make some mild headway against my terrible fincancial habits. Alex Orwin will be in DC at the end of may, and Rory will be back in TO in late June early July.

on a happy note, I am off friday to go to ohio to see my great-great-aunt who is turning 100 on saturday. fantastic. I saw her a month ago at a funeral and she's sharp as a tack. knows exactly what my brother and I are doing, even though we are not close relations, and creepily has a picture of me and my ex girlfriend from like three years ago. I have no idea how she got it. it was in one of those grandma rooms that are nothing but wall to wall pictures. It kinda made me feel bad, but not for long. It's weird, I mostly don't think about that girl at all anymore, but everyonce and a while she'll just be there in my head and it will be like that song that you can't get out of your head. can be kinda annoying at work where it sucks. oh well, TO THE FUTURE EVERYONE!

also heard a new bit of slang for a homosexual on the jobsite; they call 'em Swordfighters (ex. Conor: Bill is so gay it hurts. Chad: Yep, he's definitely a swordfigher. he just doesn't know it yet.)

which reminds me of some hilarious stories from teh salon that go to here, in the gayborhood, but I'll save that for later...