Today someone told me that I've gotten mean.  I don't know if I have.  Perhaps I've gotten a bit harder.  Then I guess hardness tends to go hand in hand with meanness.  I was not particularly thrown by the accusation, but I was perplexed.  How does one avoid forming calluses when they exist in a world full of sharp edges?  What is the alternative?  Remain soft and bleed to death from a multitude of deep, clean cuts?

I am strange today.  I am distant, and confused, and feeling like I am in water.  Suspended in an amnion ruse that is more poison than protection.  Hearing, seeing, talking, touching, cumming, typing, but not feeling anything beyond profound confusion.  I am connected to the world by conduits but the conduits have gone all wonky, cut and re-attached at the wrong junctions, throwing me into a seeming drug induced dullness that offers only more confusion when I seek answers.  I do not even know how I got here, only that I am here now, and that I am not at all the person I used to be.

I've been falling for a while, grasping here and there at bright bits of life to stop myself - connection, lust, understanding, friendship - any combination of the four or any one of the four.  I may have slowed my descent - perhaps even stopped it for a while, but all of these things are pulsing, distorting, dimming in my vision.  Is it my vision that is failing, or the spaces of hope themselves?

I am looking for relief.  So many mundane things that may have once given me an out have slammed shut so tight that even the seams of their doorways have vanished.  Booze brings depression, hard drugs hold no charm.  I could start smoking again I suppose - its been a long time since I've had a good drag on a cigarette, a long time since the inhale and the heat and the down spread through to the blood and that soft full body sigh going through me with its momentary peace.  Yes I could do that, but the cost and the inevitable fade and morphing of relief into necessity lowers the attractiveness of the prospect.  Yet from my current position, it is attractive still.

Yes I know - I bitch much - that is what I am telling myself.  I bitch and bitch and bitch - but it is all truth.  This is how I feel, this is where I'm at, and thats pretty much as flat out and blunt as it can't get.  However ugly it may be, it is the truth.

| Download | Duration: 00:19:45

Direct Link Here

-second podcast this week
-loss of sequence
-talking out some moving stress
-closing coming fast
-altered states
-stress that hides underneath us
-visiting my home town in June
-drop kicking my mellow father
-it's time
-loving the old places
-mean comment about goth folks (apologies folks - raw podcast here!)
-end of the world or avoiding mortality?
-focusing on living in the world
-all we have is each other
-that's SOUND file by the way

Quite a long vidcast - some around the house, some out back, me talking about moving, deciding what to eat, making strange monster noises at the end...  enjoy folks!

Hi ho everyone - just thought I'd throw up this YouTube clip from Young Frankenstein while I wait for my new vidcast to jump through all the hoops required for its posting here.  I figure just about anyone can use a laugh regardless of their situation, and this particular scene has never failed to bring me some falling-out-of-my-chair laughs.  Hope you like it folks - check out the whole movie for a hell of a lot more to laugh at!  Stay tuned for a Vidcast #7...

*if you aren't reading this on my site chances are you're reading an outdated version - I usually make more than a few corrections after I've done an initial post of a text blog - but the updates don't show up on thefreaknetwork.com*


Good evening my friends, or morning, or afternoon - whatever applies to you.  Here it is evening, whoops, make that morning, just after midnight.  I had a great evening and was about to go to bed a few hours ago when I realized the only thing I'd eaten today (yesterday now) was about six pimento-stuffed green olives and some diet soda.  I've been forgetting to eat lately, and while I've been doing my best to get back on track with it I fucked up most badly today.

So the wise thing to have done would have been to cook up a cup or so of the whole wheat ziti in the cupboard and eat it slowly.  What I decided to do, however, was get a burger from McDonald's and eat it quickly.  Not surprisingly I am now feeling ever so slight ready to vomit.

Now there is a list of things I hate doing, and very close to the top of that list, just underneath getting surgery, is throwing up.  I hate doing that.  I HATE it.  It is one of the most vile experiences one can have with their flesh.  And that is saying a lot, because as we all know, flesh can be pretty damn nasty.  It can also be pretty fucking hot, but thats another topic, and mixing the two is a whole different kind of whole lot of nasty (unless you're into that - more power to you if you are - but I'm not, at all)

Here I am now, trying to maintain my non-sick composure and breath deeply until the nausea passes and I can get into bed and drift off thinking happy thoughts.  I do very much hope I succeed.  I do very very VERY much hope I succeed.

I am being comedic about this, which does help in dealing with the issue, but it isn't really funny.  My relationship with food has gone to some very strange places as of late, and though I am fighting the weirdness to get a regular schedule of eating in place, there is a strong impulse in me to avoid food as much as possible.  I burn over five-hundred extra calories a day on the treadmill, but I still get down on myself for eating one fucking burger!

I've avoided the more flashy addictions in my life (perhaps because I've been on prescription drugs since the age of nine, which tends to dull the luster of recreational drug use and causes alcohol abuse to be downright fatal) but I believe what I'm dealing with now is a sort of addiction to control.  The food is control, not eating it is control, being stronger that it is control.  I want control.

Now I am not doing terrible by any means, I have help, the issue is on the table, so to speak, and I am working each day to be more healthy about eating.  I've also got a thirty or so pound buffer to work with before I hit an ideal weight that I could drop too far below.  I'm confident I am improving and it'll work out, but tonight as I sit here ready to toss my cookies, thinking about spending an extra hour on the treadmill tomorrow to work off the burger, it is a bit of a low point.  Not a terrible point, not a hopeless point, just a bit of a low in terms of my struggles with food.

I'm going to have to make a banner and stick it over my computer monitor - "No More Stupid Food Tricks" it'll say - and I bet it'll help a lot!

Shockingly I believe the nausea has started to pass, I'll just stay up a bit longer to iron out the typos here in the blog and then I think I'll be good to head into sleep.  It is nice when things work out better than you thought they would.

Greetings my friends.  It may seem that I am a bit of a soft-hearted, pink bellied vulnerable weakling from my emotional podcasts.  It is also possible that it does not, but that is the sort of image I feel myself putting out there in the emotional state I am in at this moment.  Regardless of whether it is an image born of my own perceptions of what I've posted up to this point, or a legitimate representation of how I actually appear, there is one thing that is most certainly true - there are times when I am not at all a nice guy.

For instance, this morning.  I hate mornings, or rather I hate loud cheerful mornings.  I need quiet when I wake up. Jokes, cheerfulness, and people demanding my attention are as far from what I want to deal with as it is possible to get as I sit up trying to get myself conscious enough to go forward with my day.  I am what you would call grumpy in the mornings, very, very grumpy.

This very morning another thing I despise was thrown into the hazy confusion of my first few hours of consciousness - a very big crowd.  A very big crowd and a very big mall, one of the biggest malls in the United States.  These two things, mashed together and shoving themselves in my face like a bratty child (look at me! look at me!) turned me into a very nasty guy.  A guy who could even be called a misanthrope, a guy who wants everyone to get the fuck out of his face.  A guy who, from what friends past and current have told me, is pretty scary.

That was me this morning, grumbling my way through the Palisades Center, glaring straight ahead and purposely avoiding eye-contact.  Apparently when I'm in that state my lower jaw juts out something fierce, my brow goes furled, my eyes go cold,  and I look pretty god damned mean.  I've scared a few friends, seriously scared them.  That is nothing to be proud of.  Scaring people, particularly friends, is not a personality trait people gravitate towards.  But scare them I did.

There is anger when I go into that state, anger mixed with panic and perhaps even fear.  Anger at the intense feeling of alienation crowds fill me with.  Anger at looking around at other people and seeing nothing I recognize or relate too.  Anger at having put myself into the situation in the first place.  Whatever the cause, what I feel and, from what I've been told, what I put out is aggressive and loud.  Stay the fuck out of my way, and stay the fuck away from me.

And yeah, that's my god damned father all over the place.  That's my father terrifying us in the house, terrifying us in the car, embarrassing us in restaurants.  If I had a son, it would be me fucking him up in all the same ways good all dad did me.  I'll never have a son or a daughter of course.  Not because I fuck men, but because I refuse to ever put a kid through the shit I went through - the old chain is broken here.  I'll let my sisters carry it on if they like, but I won't be the one doing more damage.

It sounds like a fun, desirable thing - but scaring people isn't fun at all.  It is shameful, it is isolating, it is self-destructive, and it leads nowhere.

To be fair to myself, there were no scenes this morning.  I did not get into any fist-fights or altercations.  I did not make a fool of myself.  I was not rude to people who did not deserve the aggression I was blasting at them.  The worst thing I did was scare a guy enough to move to the other side of the hall while I was passing him by.  That is nothing to be proud of though.  That kind of energy spreads, and it spreads quickly - and I sent it to this stranger who did nothing to me.

It's crazy in a way.  I'm usually so god damn sensitive.  If I get nervous I still have all the conversational grace of an eighteen year old shut-in during face-to-face discussions.  People in general scare the living hell out of me.  But perhaps that is where the anger that propels me into these rages starts - fear.

This morning though, all there was in me was that anger and hate.  It is disturbing when you realize how much like your parents you have become.  Nobody ever falls far from the tree I guess, no matter how hard they may try.

| Download | Duration: 00:26:52

Direct Link Here

note: I forgot to thank Tigger of TiggerCast for his kind message - thanks man!
         Also thanks to Weegie & James for their comments.  Where the hell have you been James?!

and now, on to the shownotes:

-when you're alone in a room, you're alone in the room
-yesterday's vidcast
-a certain shape-shifting membrane
-what paranoia is all about
-how the membrane can trap you
-how I came to podcasting
-a jump-start in development
-encased in the membrane
-reclaiming my life-force
-that's not them, that's me
-feeling like I have a chance
-podcasting has changed my life
-I don't have, or need, to be famous
-how little of the hatred has come from outside
-I'm already worthy
-free for the first time
-don't let the membrane con you
-early with this podcast
-thanking Matt, Weegie, and Pizzababe
-anything is possible


05-09-08: note that the vidcast I refer to in this episode has been removed

| Download | Duration: 00:22:24

For when you're having a nervous break-down but still want high energy dance music that reflects your mood...

Visit Bit Rationale at Pod Safe Audio


Track List

1- One More Under
2- Katherine Sleeps Katherine Dies
3- Waiting For Me
4- Waiting For Me (Destroyer Mix)

| Download | Duration: 00:26:52

Direct Link Here

a few notes about the vidcast:

- contrary to what I said on the vid, the ducks are actually a couple (well the duck and the drake for hair splitters)
- I don't begin talking until about two or so minutes into the vid

and a final note (at least within this post - there will be more posts and podcasts and so forth to come):

I'm violating my self imposed weekend podcasting keep away, but I was very moved by the experience out back today so I wanted to share it.  After I shut off the camera and went back down from the deck I saw blue jays, robins, cardinals, and a ground-hog scurrying by on the other side of the river.  I leaned against a tree and stayed for quite a time watching.

The experience opened my eyes to a few things while I was out there.  It has been a strange week folks, very difficult and very confusing.  I have been relentless in my own self judgement regarding things I've done and the very dark nature of things I've posted here lately.  Standing out there in the yard, leaning against the base of an old tree, I realized that it is impossible for me to make decisions based on experience and wisdom that I do not have.  All I can do is use my own experiences and do my best to make the right choices.  I cannot do any better, even if I want to.  I cannot be what I am not, or have not yet become.

I'll be back next week folks.