One of my friends at work has started this blog where he posts cartoons I've drawn depicting a young friend of ours.

everything: a little off this a.m.



couldn't get comfortable in bed or fall asleep from 12:39 a.m. forward after missing the top of a thrilling 9th inning though the Sox eventually



lost on a shitty fucking call of ball when it was a strike



(and, oh yeah, to George Steinbrenner: go fuck yourself, old man. I waited on you once in New York so can personally



verify what a cocksucker you are. I hope you fall down and hit your fucking head on the sidewalk, bitch.)



couldn't get obscure, circular, useless, bizzare consideration of this stupid blog off my mind



was too warm in the sheets and residually angry at my female counterpart for foolish (I admit) reasons



and, oh yeah, heartburn was in heavy effect



finally fell asleep for some time, then my female counterpart arose first, which is rare, so I had to piss like the racehorse and



that was a piss deferred for some short, unbearable time



then the black German Shepherd wouldn't eat his breakfast

and wouldn't take his morning shit

all he wanted to do was gently sniff one of 13 freshly planted arborvitaes

which was fine

except it highlighted, for me, the increasing unruliness of the grass

but it's been rain rain rain

except this morning is beautiful

sunny, ripe

I suppose I should be happy the dog at least peed



then I took him for his walk

and, wouldn't you know, suddenly now I was all bound up with having to crap

but what can you do?



when we got back from the walk,

we had a round of cat chasing

the smallest one, Harley, taunting him from under the bed

not really taunting, just there, and he can't tolerate it,

not when in his crate, which is where I had to put him,

the better to go shit and shower

because at only a year he's still a baby

and would get into mischief



well, finally I was ready to go to work

but had to take that boy, I mean that dog

back out yardward for one last dance,

but again: no shitting, just the gentle sniffing of the

freshly planted arborvitae (one of thirteen)



and I had the thought of calling in sick to work

but no, no



finally I got out of the house and the truck was nearly out of gas

so I had to stop on the way

and I banged the door of the truck on the fucking thick iron bar, the painted one,

so you don't accidentally back into the pump,

and I'm standing there fucking pumping gas on fucking credit,

'cause it ain't pay day,

and worse, at fucking Mobil,

and I'm looking at the store window with the cigarette logos

thinking, at least I'm not doing that any more,

at least I've got that going for me



anyway, I realize this is all very, very small and petty bullshit

compared to the plights of most other people in the world

and worse, it's very boring,



but suffice to say, when I rounded the corner to this building where I work I was thinking,

boy, I wonder if anything is going to happen NOW



but all I'm doing is typing this crap out now and, frankly,



I'll take it.



but, no, shit is still off, shit still keeps happening



god damn



I thought I was over being neurotic like this,

but, evidently, no



not totally



and while I'm at it

there is nothing more annoying than a kid

who's a hunt-and-peck typist

who spends all day on the phone

and speaks with this forced, phony

"Bostonian" accent



worse, the dude is actually from around here

and he's affecting this fucking accent



and it just sounds like crap

found one



Called my ace down in Gomorrah

He wasn't home so I spoke

to the machine



Said, how's things at Ground Zero

You're my hero

You should be in a magazine



Mental pictures, hard predictions,

how would I

have ended up?



But I knew

I'd had

enough



Not cynical enough

to not want to hold

in the end,



but if I tell

the companion thoughts

I won't sound like a friend



Our generation's

tribal identity



is so much

smoke in a drain



Walking blues

is dead and gone,



so drive like rain

I just ate some peanut M & Ms



but then I got the call saying that they were reincarnated souls

of clinically depressed 17th century nobles and thier ladies



and I was all, but that's just



stupid



then I placed the call to Facilities asking



why are they pumping this special gas into the central air system



that is making us all so groggy and dumb



and then a man came over with some jingoistic Marketing speak and I summarily decided right there I would jackknife his fucking tires



if given the chance



but then I got the call saying we are taking your fucking blog away on the grounds of you are a dumb ass



and I was all, "But can you translate that into dumb-ass for me?"



and then it occurred to me that while all reading this will be looking through the window of my dullness



no one will be placing the call for the bricks



and then I was all,



Ah, shit, Vincent, you're going to have to amp up your damn game your ownself, and even then



your outcome is uncertain



And then I read this and I was all,



yeah, but if this is true (and it is) then we're all fucked anyway



but then this other part of me was like,



Yeah, but that's why

cheap beer in a green can @ 10:08 a.m.



saw a female deer this morning

floating angular just beyond the pine trunks

in a neighbor's yard



this morning also smelled a creek

running deep and low far below the culvert

canopied with wet new green leaves



it smelled charry beer-like

the way I remember these creeks

smelling 19 years ago

when I was as much a kid



thanked the wet mist sweet May

morning air for the thousandth time this

season for the revelation of oxygen



in absence of

mass accursed

addiction



though all the news in the world this morning is bad bad bad

with evil is afoot in the land

heavy and strong

much, and perhaps a little worse, than

it always has been,



the secret the Evil Men don't know

is that their rule is not

mine



and neither

need it be



yours

I'm feelin' a little listy today.



Top Beers of Late



Beck's (Light or Dark)

Dos Equis (Clear or Amber)

Michelob Light

Rolling Rock

Bass Ale

Coors Light (hot days, outdoor duty)

Pabst Blue Ribbon (ditto)

Miller High Life (bottle, ditto)



Next Behaviors to Curtail



Morning Irritability

General bullshit-intolerance

Slacking

Speciousness

Covert ambition

Total Ambivalence

Aimlessness

Drunken yelling



Most Hated Cliches



"It's time to pay the fiddler."

"You snooze, you lose."

"Five finger discount."

"With liberty and justice for all."

the drawback of deferred honesty

the ineptitude of hostility



hard dark chitinous kernel in the head



the laziness of waiting and seeing



treading in thick dark green water

in the stasis chasm



empathetic dream hands driven through

and nailed to a plate

with rail spikes of unchecked black hole cynicism



what's on the other side?



I had a vision of the Buddha once.



He came back and started eating people.



I was stuck on Greyhound in Wilkes-Barre, West Va,

but I heard you all screaming via



my cellphone

the power of realizing Monday is a holiday



the power of thereby deciding to take a vacation day Friday



the power of iced coffee



the power of my boss is working at the other location today



the power of thinking these fuckers up in here are all basically OK...as long as they stay away from me



the power of Sox beat Yankees 10 - 7, and are again tied for first in the A.L. East



the power of David Ortiz breaking it open in the 7th



the power of it looks like it might rain today, but that's fine with me, because it makes it easier to subsist in here



the power of not thinking about what they're doing to our country



the power of the quitmeter



the power of oxygenated blood



the power of dopey poetry

There is regret, and there is potential regret.



He called himself Roy. He was unburdened by any sense of morality or conscience.



His partner, similarly unburdened, called herself Annabelle.



Their symbiosis - how they came to be, how they found each other - is one story.



Suffice to say, though, that their moving that summer into the rental townhouse immediately next door to people as fundamentally naive and curious as Marnie (a sheltered past) and her boyfriend Steve (hail fellow, well met!) was equivalent, in potential disaster, to a target shooting range being located right next to a golf course.



Facing it.



Overlooking it.

The Zen of Oh crap, maybe the problem is me.



The Zen of Oh crap, maybe the problem is me.



But just remember: you know what kind of maneuvers all the other motorists are apt to pull. And, well, here they all are.

And, oh yeah, this is what I meant by  "the world's major malevolence."

too much god damn chattering bullshit up in this big re-conditioned

motherfucker this morning



i want to be home with the 3 cats and our getting-out-of-hand lawn which is like the best rough field you ever saw



i am glad i am relatively distant from the world's major malevolence but god damn



i want the cool air like water on the skin and the smell of blooming gentle violet and white lilacs in the nose and throat,

not this nothing carpet smell



and i am so tired of listening to the fake, devastatingly boisterous chatter and yammering of these picayune ass farmers around here



i command all of you to read fucking Catcher In The Rye or do something or just shut up



arrgh



it does me no good to splash around in my little puddle of venom



better to be on the water, trying for fish



tomorrow morning is Saturday morning when we shall drink a Bloody Mary or 3 and then hie to the river



where the cold bass

lurk and dart,



dark and true

Twin fish

like sunburst alabaster hands

dart and cut

OH FUCK IT



if you want, scroll to the very bottom and regard the Stratocasters

no, no, no. that's not what I meant at all.



It was nourishing a sense of deeply covert catatonia.



It was sublimely mediocre Chinese food.



It was a widely publicized picture of gross cellulite on celebrity booties.



It was the feeling of spontaneous onset of clinical depression engendered by entering any of the "-mart" stores.



It was a fussy little man (a "Marketing" personage) waxing his teal blue BMW motorcycle in its parking space in front of his condo.



It was that same man mincing down the street after a "really great" first date unexpectedly having his fucking head bounced off a plate



glass window and then him falling down and losing conciousness as his head hits the edge of the fucking curb all because some big



drunk asshole, perpetually enraged because his girlfriend will fuck anyone, doesn't think he likes the fucking looks of him.



It was the podiatrist greeting you with a meat cleaver.



It was laughing at the bar before getting hit in the temple by a stray dart.



It was skin shavings in the Thanksgiving gravy.



It was a dead fish in your mailbox.



It was a new wife fisheyeing the mailman.



It was warts on your dick.



It was "Jarts" - from conception to final, horrifying lawsuit and settlement.



It was everyone's genitals blithely sailing along at 35,000 ft.



It was a $300 handjob that everyone gave themselves.



It was the calculus of road rage.



It was a rabid fox on the fairway.



It was crusty residue on your last clean shirt.



It was a misdemeanor committed in a public restroom.



It was whatever the computer said.



It was you sitting and suddenly feeling you might cry watching a developmentally disabled woman with purple sacks beneath her eyes cleaning and re-cleaning and re-cleaning again the drink station at Burger King.



It was a man with a car for every mood pretending he thinks he's level with you.



It was persisting in its cubicle, wondering how long it could continue to get away with it.



I take it out to the parking lot and slap the fuck out of it like a bad movie of brutal losers and their loudmouthed wenches hanging out at the local bowling alley



and still it grins gamely up at me

Future Google searches I will own:



in public apply company defibrillator to own head



suck own arm nutrients



fill with pee too lazy to get up



cynicism overload jerk-off Golem



dark rough outlandish bullshit



semaphore ocean hand quest

Dept. of Low Cry Emissions



I encountered the new guy in our company commode, clenched before the urinal, emitting a low, continuous cry.



"Hey, fucker," I said. "What's dope on the porno-scope?"



He moaned and gestured down with his free hand to the blackish clot of seeming fish guts and human gristle he'd drawn from his open zipper.



"Yo," I said, clucking my tongue, "It happens."



Mounted above the row of urinals, marquee lights flashed in a ring around a banner-sized, beatifically smirking portrait of our corporate commander-and-cheiftain.



The new guy's slick, balding pate gleamed sickly in the reflection.



"What about my family?" he whined, yanking at the sorry, bleeding, runny mass hanging from his pants like a crushed fistful of earthworms. "What about my unborn kids?"



"Dude!" I snapped. "You're spattering the floor!"



The new guy just gaped.



I thought of the Martha Stewart Living Camp Hatchet lying in my file drawer since last year's X-mas party, a gift from my secret Santa.



"You better not look in my eyes," I said. "You better not look in my fucking eyes."



He whimpered something. I wasn't listening.



My supervisors had been on my ass about kill counts lately.

this morning



mental paralysis,

reductive mobility,



games of such,



highlighting

a need for coffee,



preferably iced



It wouldn't be so bad in here

if we could just open the windows



but that ain't how it works, now, is it?



vertigo



the hidden orgasm of the world

bombing down the freeway

of everyone's



one shining chance for glory

like a Mack truck

on fire



If I can just find the time

(you will see)



I will be that blood-covered

one standing

in slick

glorious

repose,



feline,

spraddle-legged



over the fresh-killed foe,



gore drooling

from the tip

of my broadsword



all a motherfucker wanna be

is paid,

laid



and

unafraid.



Or if none

out of three,



then

still OK

My Country 'Tis Of Thee



elusive

meandering

promiscuous

telling

you



shall

heed

every

loud

lie

solicited



alright?

now



eat

another

rueful

feast

under

labia



of

fearful



extreme

murderous

puta's

tarnished

yesterdays

"In the mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men." - Daniel Webster



Can no one realize?



Can no one see?



The Old Man, weary of artifice,

has now drawn his cloak.



Now see here the thievish visage

and mask of the paladin.



Now discern the monk's cowl,

the hood of the devout.



Understand the profound timing

of this transformation

if you would understand

these times.



And let it be said to corporate excrescence,

callow plutocrats masquerading as government,

who threaten to impose their cheap,

mawkish wills upon this still hallowed rock:



Do not.



The hand of God wreaks no abomination.



Know that His hands are not yours.

then this happened



When I discovered

some Confucian analects



taking up residence

in my mesothelial cells,



what struck

me



was how the blazing yellow sun

of morning blew strange purple

hues



all along the dewy grass

and ruined asphalt ways



of a particular street



and how this portended

sort of a cool

world,



one I decided to

go



into

1.

We are going

to the mountain,

agreed,

and there

to drink

the magic

water.



2.

The sun that day

fell like heavy

rust on their bare

necks and shoulders,

as they sweated and swore

over that god damned ruined tire

and that god damned

ruined rim.



3.

Her letter was the very

pentacle of distress,

like a blood-dipped

Chinese star.

In an earlier, less doomed era, Kerry Leith Johnson, custodian of one dubiously refurbished, 2-tone 1972 Ford Ranchero GT, would've been the most feared power pitcher in baseball's Major Leagues - Roger Clemens on angel dust, high heat like a vendetta. As such, his interest and ability as an aficionado of throwing edged weapons including Chinese stars, or shuriken, was not unprecedented.