Learn From It

Stupid busy. Stupid stressed. Stupid in love with the boy.

That is all.

Posted by Jeff at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Can memories be of things that never happened? Of people that never were? Maybe it's the thinking-of that makes the possibility-to. And in recalling the thinking-of of the never-weres, the passing-of of the chances-for, memories fuse with fancies, tied up in an idealized past that never came to pass, a present built on stone and clouds, mortar and rainbows. Elegiac whispers from fictional characters accroach themselves to the psyche, conscript the soul, exhaust the possibilities-to.

To? To escape? To a where? To a reality? A surreality, an ideality, a hyperreality?

This dispositional inversion layer is an ambuscade. A landmine. A booby trap. This is what taught you to hate surprises. God (of Biscuits) knows what makes you remember the joy of the unknown, the process of the yet-unfleshed, but you remember, you remember the joy of the thrill, and the thrill of the unplanned-for. Serendipity-doo reactivates in the flash rainstorm.

Does it matter where it all comes from? Fictional isn't fictive. Actual is rarely factual.

Once upon a then. Twice upon a now. Thrice upon a never.

Posted by Jeff at 01:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was watching Queer as Folk tonight, one of the last episodes of last season. Tomorrow night the new season starts, and so there's a marathon on...and there's was a "Behind the Scenes" on VH1...and and and...

And all I could think was that I can't wait until that hot little fucker of a boyfriend of mine gets his butt to San Francisco so we can, among other hot and unsavory things, watch QaF together like we did at his place last time I was down there. Except it will be in our house, and I won't have to think about having to leave him again.

I'm feeling so domestic it's dirrrrty. And feeling so dirrrrrty, it's domestic.

Posted by Jeff at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From him, who got it from others, etc., u.s.w., ad nauseum,...

Search for the word 'free' in your iTunes Library:

Posted by Jeff at 01:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I spent most of this week back down at Apple Computer, at a Workshop (nee "Kitchen") for Cocoa software development. (I've been a Macintosh software developer for over 16 years). Now, a big part of the time spent in one of these things is working on your own code while having bonafide Apple engineers stopping by, on-demand, to help you with whatever problems you might be having. It's pretty damned cool, and it's free. Apple completely rocks when it comes to personal interaction with its engineers. And Apple employees, in the main, are a pretty spectacular bunch of people. They're smart as hell, they all seem to absolutely love being where they are. And, I should also add, there are a TON of hot minnnnnssss who work there (like my buddy, Frank and like this guy).

I vacillate on wanting to work there, going back and forth between the above plusses and the one large minus of having to schlep 50 miles each way, each day. Also, I rather enjoy being a contractor.

But I've been to Apple Campus (1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA) a bazillion times for personal reasons, professional reasons, and for odd, in-between reasons, and so the place is utterly familar to me. It's also, after so much time spent being the odd-man-out Macintosh developer in companies that purported to be Mac-friendly (more often, they hired me to try to make themselves Mac-friendly), a frictionless place where everyone uses a Mac. The odd-persons-out are the random PC folks (like the great engineers of the iTunes for Windows team and the WebObjects support folks). It's a place where I don't get strange looks for preferring a Macintosh or for hating the stupid UI of Windows and baffling inconsistencies of PC hardware.

You know, the way the world should work.

Anyhow, it adds up to this workplace that I'm eminently familiar with, in which I have never been employed. Strange.

I think I'd like to change that. I think. Except when I don't think so. Go figger.

Posted by Jeff at 03:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Feeling like utter crap today. Been coming for a few days now.

Satan lives in my sinuses, dressed in green.

(I know: ewwww!)

Posted by Jeff at 05:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So I finished up this evening of cleaning, laundry and reorganization—and reading more blogs than I care to admit—by listening to an album entitled Price of Progression (Geffen Records), by The Toll, the best live band that ever was, and some damned fine friends of mine from way back. The lyrics are posted here without permission (I hope they won't mind).

This song is apropos of a blog I was introduced to, written by a guy who "used to be" gay, who is now restored to his "relationship with Jesus". Mutual Exclusivity and Either-Or Fallacies are tools of the Devil. Or Republicans. (remember when there used to be a difference? Me neither.)

My take is that there's enough prejudice in the world without also being tedious about it (although there is a delicious lack of irony in his statement, "San Francisco is God's City!").

Anyhoo, here's the mp3 of it, too. It's over 11 minutes long, because there is a section in the middle (what they used to call a 'rap') where he goes off on a narrative tangent, something that in live performances differed (sometimes wildly) from night to night.

Living in the Valley of Pain

And the river moves my mind...and the river moves my mind today....

Rain meets the River,
River meets the Valley,
Valley meets the Rain...

Living in the Valley of Pain

Child of wax, Votive Soul sing the hymns they left unsung
Resurrect the quintessential truth sealed in catacombs
I confess I left the Church, armed with pen and blatant sin
Consumate and consecrate, the purist prayer that the contaminate

River and the Rain
Rain that plays the River's game
River and the Rain
Living in the Valley of Pain
Should I do or should I die?
Living in the Valley of Pain
Don't you know what I mean when I say
Everybody living in pain.

Priests and poets juxtaposed till the Judgment Day
Blood-stained monks making marble out of junk
Takin' their tithe and walkin' away

Cloaked in cassocks, black and gray, Innoculating fear
All the guilt and years abstained,
Ejacuate Immaculate Rage!

River and the Rain
Rain that plays the River's game
River and the Rain
Living in the Valley of Pain
Should I do or should I die?
Living in the Valley of Pain
Don't you know what I mean when I say
Everybody's goin' insane

Rain meets the River
River meets the Valley
Valley meets the Rain
Everybody's going insane.

Living in the Valley of Pain
Should I do or should I die?
Living in the Valley of Pain
Don't you know what I mean when i say
Everybody's going insane.

Posted by Jeff at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I wrote not so long ago, or spoke not so long ago, about one of the trivial benefits of living with LOML after he moves up here from Tucson. That particular benefit, one among the myriad, would be a house filled with music.

After a minor kerfuffle the other night at the Lonestar, and a blog-preserved mutual button-pushing session, I decided to jump the gun and make a point of having some music playing. So I did, while I did some random stuff around the house and in the back yard, continuing to put my house back in its resting state after the big birthday party here a week ago. "Where Were You Hiding When the Storm Broke?" is an interesting song—part anthem, part homage, part call-to-arms. And like most of the 5000+ songs currently residing in my iTunes Library, it's an esoteric pointer into certain memory locations. Having the vast storehouse playing on Shuffle makes for an interesting ride, to say the least. I've been all over the map, all over history, all over the spectrum of human emotions.

It's going to take some time, this time. Only the heart may know. It's 10:15 on a Saturday night. And the tap drips under the striplight. If I loved you, words wouldn't come in an easy way. Merry Christmas, Darling. Make mistake #3. Shiver and say the words of every lie you've heard. If you will dare, I will dare. October, and the trees are all bare of what they wear. Do I care? What would we do without all these jerks, anyway? Besides all our friends are here. Sing us a song, you're the piano man. Aphrodisiac Jacket, Napoleon machine gun. Point me in the direction of Albequerque. The mutants, creeps and musclemen are shaking like a leaf. I no there is a heaven, no there is a hell. When are you going to come down? When are you going to land? As long as there's stars over Texas, darlin' I'll hang the moon for you.

See what I mean? And not only sequence comes into play. Where is the sound coming from? Am I listening with intent? What kind of stereo? Tonight Joseph stood out in the yard, as Debussy played from the kitchen. Listening to an abjectly random song-by-song stream has its particular qualities, as does hearing your favorite single from way back when on a tinny little clock radio coming from the next room. The effect of listening to an entire album without stopping has its merits. So does having to flip over the tape or wait for the mechanical clunking of the program-change, or having to flip the album over and clean the surface before beginning Side 2. It's more than nostalgia, it's color. Situation. Mood. Feeling. Ambiance. You can't generalize any of it, except to group these moments into a lump of things you can't generalize.

Sing along. Hum in silence. Grab an old instrument or sit down at the familiar keyboard. Tap the kitchen countertop or your own thigh. Try a new thing. Scratch at a turntable. Derive a circle of fifths. Quantize that drumtrack you just laid down. Program a new sound. It's all the same. You're making music.

Sometimes I think we do an injustice to certain qualities of reality by assigning an external label. "Music". "Humor". "Love". These are things in our lives, these are things of living, things we respire.

Things we forget we need.

............................................................
For the language of longing never had words,
so how did you speak from your heart?
Yet here is a box that swears it has heard that
ideas are like stars.

Posted by Jeff at 06:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

No, that's not my nickname for the boyfriend....it's more like an old friend....an original NeXT Cube.

My good friend, Lee, who used to work for NeXT Computer, had an old Cube in his closet (closets are for clothes!!!) and gave it to me for my birthday. What a helluva nice guy.

Currently, your friendly neighborhood godofbiscuits blog is brought to you by the glyph  and the number π, under the ample power of a 500 MHz G4 Cube running Mac OS X Panther Server.

I'm going to try to get apache built on the NeXT Cube and maybe host myself (without going blind) on it, just because, yes, yes I am that much of a nerrrrrrd.

Hey, it's better than being out on the streets gettin' into the pot and the boys while the LOML lives so far away, id'n'it?

Posted by Jeff at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So I had a big-ass birthday party at my house on Saturday, which was officially my 40th birthday. It was a party for a bunch of us whose birthdays landed in the same vicinity, actually, including Michael and Vince and my friend, Oz. Tiaras were worn—on-demand—by all of us birthday-thangs (I would be the "Birthday Princess" in the middle).

This one was a big deal to me, not because I hit a new decade-mark, because i've done that 3 times before. No, this one was special first and foremost because the Other Half got here last thursday morning (when we immediately proceeded to get there). I know I speak about him in superlatives quite a bit, but trust me, it just suits. He's spectacular, he's beautiful, he's smart, he's funny as fuck (Helloooo Kitty!...but that's not water-based frosting!) and he's all mine (I can show you the deed if you like).

As he and I were cleaning up the house, getting it ready for the party, I found the album that my mother had put together for me a few years ago. In it, there was a polaroid of my mom and dad, at my own father's 40th birthday party. It's a little blurred, but you get the idea. I was a wee lad of 14 then, not much younger than the Other Half is now (kidding! kinda.)

That doesn't really imbue the whole thing with a sense of dread and age, so much as it provides a comfort in the continued march of generations. That I am so much like my father, so lucky to have so many wonderful friends and loved ones around me. That I like to think I am, at least a times, worthy as he is of so much good fortune and so much love. That his was (and continues to be) the most effective way of instructing: by example. That all those "that"s came together on Saturday in my old house that has become "our" new house, a house newly re-opened to friends and friends of friends after so long of being shuttered out and down.

So my 40th birthday stands as a beginning of a new era, of sorts. A return to the better parts of who I have been and the adventure, with the man I love, of figuring out what comes next, of who and what I'm capable of being.

And just in case you were wondering, the only time I felt old was when I was browsing the Other Half's iPod, by Genre, and discovered that he'd classified the Counting Crows as "Adult Contemporary".

Posted by Jeff at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A special big birthday wish to the DogPoet , who's seven years and two days my junior, which is to say, ain't so junior no mo'. :-)

You're a terrific man, a great friend and one brilliant writer.

Posted by Jeff at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The best birthday present I'm going to be getting this year arrives at 09:29 today. The good people at AmericaWest airlines are delivering it to SFO.

I can't fucking wait.

Posted by Jeff at 07:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)