Bullpencatcher

Blog

  • New Idea

    Happy?
    A happier place and time?

    Okay, I haven’t been posting much here lately. When I started this blog I had just been through the first of two layoffs that I have experienced since starting it. My at-the-time girlfriend had just moved to Vermont and I was at home alone. Oh, also there was copious amounts of Seagrams 7 being consumed on a nightly basis, and out of this burgeoning alcoholism, the muse began to speak to me regularly (go figure!). I spent nearly a year trying to decide whether I would move to Vermont where I knew one person, or stay in Atlanta, unemployed, where I knew many more people. Inside my head was a rough place to be, and the battleground that was there, combined with the aforementioned alcoholism, led to reglar blog postings of a cerebral/fantastical/metaphorical nature. I was working a lot of things out, and you guys had to be the victims of that process.
    Much has changed in my life. I decided to stay in Atlanta. Found a job at the newspaper in town. Found a new girlfriend. Moved… twice! Went through a tough process of trying to cut down on the sauce, six months of therapy and more. I still struggle with periodic depression goblins and have yet to find that elusive paradise of being. In fact, I have become increasingly concerned that such paradise may not exist at all. Overall, however, I have found some way of making a little sense out of it all. I have found a place, where not always happy, I don’t seem to emotionally bounce back and forth all the time.
    My friend and sometimes bullpencatcher author, Jeremy, just lauched his personal blog/web site and has been pretty active posting some great stuff there. Through the inspiration of his site and the fact that I have been missing writing a lot, I was pulled back to the bullpen. Through all of the months of inactvity on the blog, I have labored over ideas, felt that I had no time with my ever-expanding work schedule – basically found every excuse not to sit down at the keyboard. The happier place I found myself in didn’t seem to make writing as automatic as it was before, and because of that I couldn’t find the energy to work at it. I am hoping to change all of that a little now.

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  • ‘s Best of 2004

    I saw some good shows; I saw some bad shows. I listened to some good albums; I listened to some bad ones. So, here�s my �Best of� list. It�s not really exhaustive and everything is either in chronological or alphabetical order. I prefer not to get into what is �best� really, everyone knows that since Radiohead didn�t release an album or tour in �04 that there is no best. So, here you go. Click on album covers to purchase from Amazon
    BEST CDs


     Artist:
    Album:

    I really have no idea what to say about this one, and I think that�s why I like it so much. It�s really like nothing else I�ve ever heard. Maybe if Talking Heads had more instruments, more background choirs, more drama, joined forces with Roxy Music and moved to Canada. I don�t know.


     Artist:
    Album:

    This is on here for no other reason then she�s just so damn cute. Seriously, sometimes experiments like this don�t work�think Bobby McFerrin�but this is great, weird, spooky, beautiful music.

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  • 01289

    The kids in Austin are bobbing heads. Heads fully-clad with trucker caps, yesterday’s style; it seems as if it stays in Austin and Athens, probably, where I used to live. An aging rock star of the minor variety sings a swan song. I am sitting in a house in a city and the lights are turned low and an artificial fire is burning across the way. Frozen precip is called for and already accumulating and we bought bread and beer – a Gen X modification on our parents’ call. It’s been a rough one. What was supposed to be movie night has turned into a movie itself. If I look up, I don’t know what I am saying. Three big beers and I am out of it, when it used to take a full bottle of rye. Of course I am melancholy. I know she want sto leave; she’s just trying to figure out the way to do it. Soon she will, and I will be talking to you all a little more. I guess that’s the way this cookie crumbles.
    Bright and shiny it looks good in all lights, even the one at the bar when your tab is due. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. It would light up the night as we walk home on this icy night. Is it VT, GA or TX. An odd triumvirate. Maybe a cactus house with three stray cats lounging in the yard. I drove purposefully past the old house tonight too see where I have come from… so as to attempt to determine where this all might go.
    I will be writing songs for strangers soon. If I can make it through to tomorrow. I will write the love they couldn’t put to words. Many will engage and marry to my words. Some will be put to rest. You can’t hear it on the radio. The stories are much too complex. More like a Vegas act. More like me.

  • Small Mercies & Little Miracles

    I spoke on the phone to my father today. The difference between the way he answers the phone now and how he did three weeks ago is marked: where there was fear, where there was pain, where was the acceptence of the worst, there now is joy. There’s a smile in the voice that only a couple of weeks ago sounded leaden and careworn. You see, my mother walked today. This morning she shuffled along the burns unit corridor with the aid of a Zimmer frame, and then she did it again this afternoon.
    Dad is buying a new bed for her return; he’s dercorating the bedroom; he’s shampooing carpets; he’s shopping for new clothes; he’s looking forward to what, at our family’s lowest point, seemed to be the impossible: Mum’s homecoming.
    I raise my glass to the NHS. Thank you Mr Bevan! Thank you.
    I know you have all been thinking of me. You cannot know how much that means to me. You should know that I have been thinking of you. And that always helps.

  • X-mas Entry

    I got Jenny a tit job for Christmas. I can’t say it was completely altruistic. She had always been bitching about how small her tits were and I always said they were perfectly fine. In truth, I had always enjoyed the tits of women a little more well-endowed. But I loved her, so what was I to say. So I got her a tit job… for Christmas.
    Her mother had thought about giving her one for her college graduation. She wanted to be a TV reporter back then, and Jenny and her mother both thought larger breasts would be a benefit. I imagine while she’s at home her mother will ooh and ahh at how she now fills out her sweater. Her father will suspect that my intentions in giving such a gift were not truly altruistic. He’s never liked me. So she and her new breasts are gone, and I am left here working out the last few days of the year.
    I never figured out why the “man” always plans the biggest projects for this time of the year. The best I can figure is that the “big man” back in January or February said, “this will get done this year,” and everyone that controls me twiddled their thumbs for a good 10 or 11 moths and then said, “oh shit!’ And thus I am stuck here working double time for single pay to get a project done so these people, who have all already left for the holidays, don’t catch any shit. I guess that’s the way it goes. At least, once the scars have healed Jenny’s tits will look good, and that will be something to come home to every night.
    So with the boss on vacation, and Jenny out of town, I have taken to drinking the leftover Budweiser in the refrigerator from when the boys were in town a couple of weeks ago. I took to that, and then met Billy at the burger place to eat a late dinner. I still cannot figure out how to cook for just one. I thought abut going to get Jenny a couple of CDs of this band that she heard on the radio recently and fell in love with. But I realized after dinner that I was swerving a little too much for all of that, so I just came back home.
    I came through the dark rain and past the little restaurants in my neighborhood where a skeleton crew is holding down the fort for a few patrons. It seems as if the whole town is becoming deserted. As if everyone has gone to places far from here, with their children and loved ones in tow. As if everywhere in the world has decided that they’ve done enough for this year – go ahead and enjoy some time off. A few older people drink cocktails at the bar and wait for their sons and daughters to arrive over the next couple of days.
    I am dreaming of a white Christmas. Something to drastically change this landscape. A dream world in which I can live for a few days. Snow banks around my house so thick that the mail man gets lost trying to wade through them. But we just seem to get a cold dark rain that prohibits nothing.
    I think I’ll go fire up the fake logs and turn on the Christmas tree. Hell, I may even pick out a round of ‘Rudolph’ on the guitar. I’ll have another couple of the leftover Budweisers and then go to bed. When I awake I will have about 8 hours until I can head out to a little patch of land in North Carolina, that my parents bought years ago, that I am still trying to call home.

  • Intensive Care

    I am just about to make the phone call. And even though I’ve dialed the number every day this week, the thought of it ties my stomach in knots. By writing this I know, in a way, I am putting off the moment when I must pick up the handset, tap in the area code, then the number, and wait until a nurse answers at the other end: Hello, Burns Unit.
    My mother is in a pitiful state: She has lost seventy per cent of her skin – face, arms and hands, chest, back, tummy, thighs and feet; her breathing is aided by a ventilator through a tracheotomy; tubes come in and out of evey orifice for food, blood, piss, you name it. She is very ill. And all this from a drug allergy.
    When my father rang to say that the doctors had given her a less than fifty per cent chance of survival, I dropped everything at work, rented a car and drove the 170-mile journey to her bedside.
    The medical staff are amazing. I can’t even begin to express my admiration for, and gratitude to, everyone who is working so tirelessly to save my mother’s life. The nurses are constantly monitoring, testing, adjusting and tending. Registrars, consultants and surgeons are honest yet encouraging in their counsel, answering any question with patience and warm sensitivity. She really couldn’t be in a better place or in better hands.
    There is no end to this story; no one knows how it will end – all we can do is hope. Now I’m going to make that phone call.

  • You Idiots

    A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk.
    FDR (1882-1945)
    Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
    John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
    A conservative is a man who sits and thinks, mostly sits.
    Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)

  • Peel Session

    Oh, and if it isn’t bad enough that my thoughts continually go to the fact that I have severe doubts about Kerry winning the presidential election… John Peel is dead. Who will save us now?

  • Our day in the sun

    Out of loneliness, time is going to turn back on itself. Time is lonely and I am too. All of the friends have moved on to the promise of better lives far north of this place. Nothing good ever happens south of here: abductions, mass mudrerings, rape, disappearance, infidelity…
    I am working on an atomic machine that spins out of whack, to help time in its quest. Nothing is funny about this. If certain rhythms are reached, waveforms are created, the wheel of time will spin backwards – irregularly – the same way the spinning wheel of a hot rod seems to do when you stare at it while cruising beside down the highway. This atomic machine wil take away all bad things. The last four years included.
    I don’t know what you all were thinking. I have decided not to write much lately, at least not here, but this is a call to anti-arms. A call for you to bring your asses home. Whether or not you heed, you will be here in the end. It is the nature of the machine. I will be a 12 year-old boy when you arrive. You will all be relatively the same – twelve or so, pimpled, and in the throes of hormonal upheaval. You may not understand at all now, but understanding comes slowly under the auspices of the machine.
    I have made time my friend. I have turned the bastard foe that takes my weekdays away from me, deposits me in the arms of the “man.” I have taken it all and placed it into my little machine. I have placed it around my machine. I have realized how to make friends out of mud, cow dung, assorted broken stereo parts. Suddenly you will not be able to walk forward properly – legs wobbledy, kneeks knocked. You will return to me, to here.
    You will fall in love all over again with whom you have chosen to love. (The nature of the erratic machinery.) And you will file bills of sale, and bails of hay, for action figures and comic books and tether ball sets. There will be no need for law and success and promotion. You will have a 2 week uptake cycle on education in the mandolin, cello, harpsichord and silk screening process. You will not leavve or feel the need to leave.
    This is not a dream, for you are alive and we are all at Denny’s with wiatresses carrying fluorsescent bouquets. Poker can be won for pride. The grand slam breakfast for us all. The machine shaking on the table doesn’t even disturb the babies in accompanying carriages.
    You will all return to me, to here.
    Sherman will retrace his steps, rebuilding all of the structures of Atlanta. We will all move back to this place. We will start a commune in Candler Park.

  • Public writing

    This is public writing. Like radio Clash. Twain is observing over my shoulder, and there is a picture across the way of the the courtroom in the movie version of a book written with Truman Capote loosely the originator of one role.
    I am becoming notes tonight. Little blips and bleeps – and it is football season. Your friends are mighty I would say to you if you were here. I will become heat and rising and little pieces of cotton candy. You ate them. I am silly still. I want to fill a page. It is way too late, but not early enough. What will happen in the end.
    Even Thelonious Monk’s wife wished the jam to be over sometimes – that all of the boys would go home.
    This is stopgap.