Bullpencatcher

Author: admin

  • Guilt?

    Despite the years of therapy, Doris still felt tremendous guilt when clandestinely eating chocolate.
    Despite the years of therapy, Doris still felt tremendous guilt when clandestinely eating chocolate.

    I was walking to the local shops the other day – a journey of two minutes – to buy bread or fresh chicken for a curry, or possibly I needed batteries for my front bike-light, I don’t remember. I’d just rounded the corner by the post office when I was overcome by a pervading paralysis. It’s happened to me before and on many occasions. It starts in the heart with a jolt – the kind of sinking feeling you get when you realise you’ve locked your keys in the house or forgotten to feed your neighbour’s cat for the third day running – and spreads to the stomach; then comes the dizzying swirl of blood in the head and the accompanying prickly flush to the skin. It’s very debilitating. I’m sure that passers-by can see my cringing posture: my limbs tensed and my face contorted into some comic semi-rictus. Sometimes I might be standing at the bus stop waiting for a number 3 or 4 to take me to town; I could be loading the dryer with freshly laundered underwear, or I could be doling out alms to the local homeless. No matter what I might be doing at the time, I’m feeling guilty.

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  • Lips

    Tissues asked for by the afflicted may be found in boxes of this sort.
    Tissues asked for by the afflicted may be found in boxes of this sort.
    Winter has finally arrived here in the United Kingdom. As a smoker of hand-rolled cigarettes, the main hazard this most dismal of British seasons presents to me is the increased likelyhood of the rolling paper fusing itself to the lower lip. There is no way of knowing that this has happened until it is far too late. That is to say, one only becomes aware of adhesion when the cigarette has been removed from the mouth along with a sizeable square of skin and a minor, yet still alarming, amount of blood.


    Don’t be mistaken in thinking that the cigarette has actually been frozen to the lip – the winters in Britain rarely get so cold as to freeze bodily fluids. No, it’s the paucity of lubricating saliva associated with this time of year that causes paper to bond with labial skin.
    The only methods I know to avoid such an injury are: i) to keep the lips moist while smoking, which can promote chapping and render the cigarette damp and unsmokeable; or ii) to refrain from smoking while outdoors – not an option to a true nicotine devotee on his way home from the pub.


    So if you see bloodied cigarette stubs in the gutter, or notice bohemian types with bleeding lips, you’ll know the cause. All we ask is sympathy and maybe a tissue to staunch the flow.

  • Patio Umbrella

    A yellow umbrella.
    A yellow umbrella.

    My patio umbrella is exactly the right size. The bar-style table that rests underneath is a circumfrence that allows for just enough coverage that on rainy nights like tonight I can go out, barefoot, onto the porch, and have a cigarette, without wetting my shoulders, or really getting my feet wet. I can walk out the back door and to the shelter of the vinyl yellow thrift store ($9) umbrella and it will shelter me from the storm for the duration of one Winston Light.

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  • Late Night Phone Calls

    A whale bone not unlike the one in my recurring dream.
    A whale bone not unlike the one in my recurring dream.
    I guess there comes a time in every person’s life in which you find yourself with no friends to call after midnight. I mean, I’ve got friends that live from coast to coast, and some even in farther lands, that will not answer the phone at 2 AM. I guess I need some friends in southeast asian islands, because that seems where my internal time zone is firmly planted in recent weeks. Asian whorehouses and guys dealing contraband western CDs and shit like that. I don’t really know what the deal is, but I just can’t seem to get a good night’s sleep even though I work a 9-to-5. Just as everyone else has start to spill back in from the streets of this lonely city, I seem ready to spill out. I make a call at 11 PM that keeps me in for awhile, but sooner or later those with kids and the wife and the dog, and 12 cats have to go to bed. There’s way too many mouths to feed in the morning, and for me it’s just the one, and I probably don’t feed it near enough, even though my gut might tell a different story.


    I guess even as I have grown up, I haven’t really grown up too much. I rail against the bed and bath still. I do like feeling rested, and the clean feeling after bathing, it’s just the process that gets me down. Kind of like eating as of late as well. I like not being hungry, but the food finding and the consequent eating just doesn’t seem to appeal.


    My therapist keeps telling me that these are all things that point toward a deep depression. He’s really a brilliant guy. I think he has read at least half of the books on the Self-Help Psychology shelf at the local Barnes & Noble. He even wrote a book about adolescent angst and depression entitled Mommy? Are You Listening to Me, Mommy?: Adolescent Angst & Depression, in which he goes into great detail about how most of the deviant behavior of children these days points to an underlying “angst and depression” that the contemporary adolescent feels, and that in turn points to the common feelings of abandonment that said adolescent feels upon beginning the transition into young adulthood. I haven’t read the book yet (all of the above was derived from reading the flap as I fell asleep one night) but I will just as soon as I have read Ulysses, the Bible and Don Quixote from cover to cover again. I am sure it really is an outstanding book, but back to the point.


    My therapist says that my problems with growing up point to a depression (I am taking the medication in case you reading this, guy!), and I believe he is right because every time I make a call at 2AM and don’t get an answer, or even worse, get a groggy response on the other end, I do indeed fall into a depression that keeps me up for a while pondering all of the little things about myself that I don’t like, and reassuring myself that they are indeed issues by the fact that no body wants to talk to me. Everything from belly button lint to toenail fungus come under the mental knife. I lay awake listening to the morning birds, spanish speaking voices arriving on the job site next door, the sounds of cars cranking to warm and thaw the frost… the city coming to life. Then, and only then, do I drift off to dream the recurring dream of a whale bone descending.

  • Observations/Wishes

    Logo created for upcoming weekend with Hank Vegas.
    Logo created for upcoming weekend with Hank Vegas.
    All that I am saying is she got married ’cause it is convenient.


    I wish the Chicago Bears would get an offensive line.


    I wish that ABC would pony up some dough to get people who could spell to do captions for Monday Night Football so I could listen to Guy Clark during the game and still read what Madden had to say.


    I wish that Madden would say something in the first place.


    I wish that Madden would keep on stating the obvious, because that’s what I love most about him and expect out of him, and if he ever did anything more than that, I would be rather confused.


    I wish airfare to Burlington wasn’t so expensive this time of the year.


    Lap dances should cost 5 dollars so you could then leave a 5 dollar tip.


    The war on Iraq will happen… again.


    The war on Iraq is overrated.


    Whiskey makes my words more flowery, not gin, it makes me mean.


    Whiskey gets in my heart, gin in my head.


    Hank Vegas (link to MP3) is cool.


    I love New York.


    And Chicago.


    I don’t love the Yankees or Mets.


    I do love the Cubs.


    When baseball season ends, I get depressed, and write posts like this one.

  • Art Parties

    I heard he even felt out of place at his own parties.
    I heard he even felt out of place at his own parties.
    Art parties are mostly excruciating. People dressed in black, or better yet, black leather. Matching jackets on cold nights like last night. I went to one last night hosted by the artist R. Land, and although I am sure he was there, I didn’t meet the guy. Didn’t really meet anyone as a matter of fact. Saw some folks I hadn’t seen for awhile and that was nice. The local politics writer for the local entertainment weekly who was the girlfriend of a guy I used to be in a band with, and another woman who has reached virtual legend status with a group of friends that I met living in the town I lived in before. It was cold outside and way to hot inside in the studio. One smattered from wall to wall with the art I would call ‘unique’ – manipulated photographs of kittens one with a paw brandishing its middle finger etc. A TV in the corner played artist manipulated videos complete with subtitles of men and women in passe undergarments in sexually provocative poses and scenarios, doing things that at a glance looked like sex but really wasn’t upon further investigatin. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, and in the end decided that that was precisely the reaction that was intended. Despite the fact that it was so cold outside, the party had reached a critical mass and sent people spewing out the door with cold Black Labels in hand. My claustrophobia in such situations got the better of me and I found the cold outdoors, complete with King Crap (Port-O-Let) to be refreshing after about 6 or 7 minutes of the party. Besides that’s where the smokers always are and the party conversation alwasy seems to be better where the nicotine intake is occuring. The strange thing about it all is that the ones of us that were inappropriately dressed for the weather, only at best with a long sleeve shirt and the occasional sweater, seemed to be the ones that found the outdoors to be the best place. All of those black leather coats (there was no coat check girl) filled the space before it was all over and even getting to the bar was difficult to do over or around the wallish mass of cowhide. Ther were no mylar pillow cloud balloons. Even the mention of Andy or the factory would have surely gotten sneering glances and jeers. To be honest, it was good to see the people I saw, and as far as art parties go, this was one of the better ones (conversation managed to achieve a modicum of genuineness. But I can never seem to get around the odd feeling at these things. that everybody really wishes that they have the life that they act like they have at these things. That we are all really that cool. I guess I gave up on ‘cool’ a while ago, and being there made me feel as odd as I imagine the snails on my porch feel this time of year.

  • First Love

    Teddy Roosevelt on horse not disimilar from one ridden at Ann Marie's 13th birday party.
    Teddy Roosevelt on horse not disimilar from one ridden at Ann Marie’s 13th birday party.

    My first kiss was with a redneck, non-catholic girl named Ann-Marie who lived in a ramshackled old farm house off of Wake Forest Highway between my house and my grandmother’s if you went the long way. It was her birthday, and although she was turning 13 and I was only 11, we were in the same grade together at Oak Grove Elementary School.

    She was the biggest fan then, and probably forever, that the artist (formerly?) known as Prince ever had. It was because of her that I bought the Purple Rain album, the first time. And because of her that I searched out, in the dictionaires that came with the World Book Encyclopedia, the precise definition of ‘masturbation’ after listening to and reading the lyrics in the liner notes of Darlin Nikki. It was all downhill from there. It was also because of her that I bought the heinous purple sheen bookbag that plagued me for the better part of my 5th and 6th grade years.

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  • Salvation

    Mural in high school cafeteria near the scene of the incident.
    Mural in high school cafeteria near the scene of the incident.
    Yesterday afternoon, on my way home from the office, a Salvation Army truck almost sent me shuffling off this mortal coil, as I turned the corner from 10th onto Monroe and started to cross the railroad tracks where I have never seen a train, just down the street from where Jeremy used to live, and across the street from the high school where I can hear the band playing on Friday nights during home football games, and sometimes on afternoons, if I cut out of work early to go home and sit on the porch to wait for the snails to come out on damp nights.

  • Adult-ness

    Still photo from film 'Waking the Dead'
    Still photo from film Waking the Dead

    I can’t seem to handle adult emotions anymore. I swear it’s the truth. The older I get, the less I seem to be able to handle these things. Job pressure, romantic strife, friends coming and going, some even dying. When I was younger, all I wanted was to be old, or at least, to adopt the mantle of elderly men. I wore cardigans (still do, come to think of it), support socks, sansabelt trousers…

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  • Snails

    Evolutionarily, snails have developed their shells due to their proclivity for tarrying on wet, slippery, vertical surfaces.
    Evolutionarily, snails have developed their shells due to their proclivity for tarrying on wet, slippery, vertical surfaces.
    Out on my porch this morning, still waking up to get to the office, there were snails stuck to the concrete pillars that serve to hold up the latticed fence. It rained last night, and the preceding 24 hours come to think of it. But at some point the temperature turned colder and the rain began to stop and now these snails are just stuck, wilted, to the concrete pillars there. A couple have even fallen off paralyzed to the 2x6s that make up the floor. Strange thing is, I have seen this happen before. In fact it has been happening more and more as of late, and I know that I will get back in from the office today, another rainy one, and not a snail will remain.