The Bloggy Blogface!

   I was just finishing up with dinner at a friend's house yesterday when I heard the news. I wasn't particularly shocked by it so much as saddened. Robin Williams was a fantastic entertainer, performer, and one of the best comedic improvisers I have ever seen. All of us should be grateful we were around to have seen him now, in the moment, instead of settling for bygone Youtube highlights. In the coming weeks, we can expect considerable dialogue about the severity of depression, which is what ultimately took Williams' life. It is already happening across many forms of social media, where faux-machismo tends to reign supreme. There, tough guys exert their bravado and call each other a pussy , or a fag , for not being "man enough" to handle something such as whatever it may have been Williams struggled with throughout his life. It's comically sad, but very much not surprising. All one should do in order to witness proof we're still among some of the lowe...

   My grade school education was one of considerable peaks and valleys that I have since managed to tuck way in the back corner of my mind. In other words, I don't often reminisce my time with it. It was there, it happened, things were learned, and then I left. I'm always grateful for all the teachers, coaches, guidance counselors, and hell, even the janitors along the way who made sure I kept my mind fresh, focused, and relatively out of trouble. Like most grade school kids, I may have made a few mistakes from time to time, but I left with no regrets and quite thankfully, a diploma in my hand. The most difficult adjustment I faced throughout my education in this town came at the hands of the district itself. I can trace it all the way back to the beginning of third grade. My father had recently been laid off from a railroad company that was rapidly losing money and other services to the opposition. Both my sister and I were enrolled in Catholic school at the time, obliviou...

   I returned to my old stomping grounds in upstate New York just a couple of months ago, seeking relief for whatever was ailing me down in the hills of North Carolina. A slight challenge readjusting to the norms here, with that banal way of life always tugging at me to get the hell out of here time and again. For now, it's a good place for me. A self-imposed sabbatical to get my mind fresh again. As with many of my occasions here, returning home comes the inevitable opinions I form concerning the state of decay with this particular town. Streets I walked to schools - once filled with vibrant families, nice cars, and toys scattered on front lawns - now sit boarded up, condemned by health departments and HUD inspectors. Buildings completely disappeared from where I thought they were, now nothing but barren, shoddy parking lots with weeds bursting through asphalt cracks. My own childhood home is now inhabited by folks who seem too incompetent to own a home, tearing apart and ...

      Summer is about to blitz all up into your glaucoma-ridden eyeballs with lush amounts of sunshine, so you might as well get yourself some shades soon before it's all too late. I've yet to see Noah's Ark these last few days here in upstate New York. I'm expecting to soon, given the gallons of rain we've endured the last few days. The sun has refused to make an an appearance, much like it does here in the fall. Great! More time to do things outdoors before humidity might as well take a rusty jackhammer to my sinuses. The jackhammers wouldn't have been necessary in the great southwest. I'm talking Phoenix. Desert. Sun. Dryness. People that STEAL CARS YOU FUCKING ASSHOL...er, sorry. Anyway, that town was nuts, man. A good nuts. Hot nuts. Yeah, really hot. That's it. That town needed something, man. On one particular newscast, a local station featured an interesting story. A random gal severely disinterested in motherhood decided to say fu...

    I was, to put it mildly, an absolutely disgusting high school cross-country runner. No, disgusting is not slang for good. I mean bad. Real bad. A teammate - who wasn't a very proficient runner himself - often competed in what appeared to be casual street shoes or cross trainers. During some races I finished behind him. This happened for a variety of reasons, none of which have to do with him probably being a better runner than me. The most critical reason why I often found myself in the middle or close to the end of the pack of meet competitors is the fact that at some point during the races, I just stopped caring. I mentally shut down. Gave up. Waved a white flag. Why the hell am I even here? , I'd ask myself. Literally hundreds of runners have passed me already, and I'm barely halfway through. There may have been a race or two where I actually stopped running once we got into the woods and knew there was no chance of anyone seeing me. I'd walk a couple steps,...

     Recently, one of my housemates received a chair in the mail. A 1970's art deco chair, faux-white snakeskin with a chrome bottom. The chair was not in a package, but rather completely assembled. No stickers, no packing slips, nothing attached to it. It sat there right outside the main door, fully put together and just hanging out waiting to be used. Or maybe it was already used? Could whomever delivered a couple Amazon boxes with it have simply been returning the chair, as if they borrowed it? I dragged the boxes and chair inside, perplexed. I sent a picture to my friend, inquiring if he knew anything about the chair. Initially, he did not. A few moments passed where I began to make some sort of connection with the chair. It looked remarkably similar to one of the chairs in my bedroom. In fact, it looked exactly like that chair. What sorcery is this? , I asked myself. Someone did borrow the chair! Could she have just bought the exact same chair? Given the rare s...

     From 2001-03, I called the northwest corner of Louisiana my home. My initial foray into the real world was met with a trip halfway across the country - a trip that consisted of a thirty-six hour bus ride (with plenty of transfers in sketchy towns in between) and a friend in Little Rock who took me the rest of the way to the Pelican State. Prior to this, my only moment spent in the state was interviewing for the position. That was early June, where I hopped aboard a couple planes and was whisked away to campus for hours upon hours of interrogation. The interview process wasn't really that bad, but what was bad was my ill-fated idea to take a walk around campus shortly after the interview ended. I was drenched in sweat upon my return, completely oblivious that the humidity there stuck around much longer than it did back in upstate New York. Regardless, I was in love. I was in love with this idea of continuing (starting, maybe?) my life elsewhere. The first few weeks...