rifleriver

11:35 pm: I've walked across the sun. I've seen events so tiny and so fast they hardly can be said to have occurred at all, but you... you are a man. And this world's smartest man means no more to me than does its smartest termite.

01:12 pm: i don't even know where i've been...
in the basement, hugging the gas main.
something's been left out of this game.
god, did you remember to render everything?
i've seen 1078 sundays and seven borders where the liquid meets land.
i've even seen stars, now where the fuck (now where the fuck)
is anti-emptiness? (is anti-emptiness)

04:55 pm: Book entry
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 56.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next seven sentences in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

The bride's father's uncle -my great friend-seemed to have disappeared completely. The Matron of Honor, too, seemed suddenly to be somewhere else. "I'll get you all something to drink in just a second," I said uneasily, still trying to force the switch button on the air-conditioner.
"I could use something cold to drink," said a very familiar voice. I turned completely around and saw that she had stretched herself out on the couch, which accounted for her noticeable vertical disappearance. "I'll use your phone in just a second," she advised me. "I couldnt open my mouth anyway to talk on the phone, in this condition, I'm so parched. My tongue's so dry."

12:17 am: 12:17
A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally, there's no discernible difference. Life and death are unquantifiable abstracts. Why should I be concerned?

11:55 pm: tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

tomorrow morning i have my bullshit 5 minute probation meeting that costs me 40 dollars. after that i will be going out to breakfast with craig and then we will drive to kathy's and begin weeding. and i'm not exactly sure what we'll be doing after that but we'll think of something.

i feel like getting back into writing considering i havent written anything in months. although i dont like anything i write but i guess nobody likes what they write. whateverrrrrr. I'm actually feeling pretty nostalgic right now, i think im going to watch Blue Velvet again.

this weekend is going to great and different. i love different.

12:29 am: days worth mentioning


yesterday i hung out with kyle and alex during the day. we JAMMED at kyle's. it was really nice playing music with them again after a year or so of not. we played some classics and made up some new ones under the name of "flangers"

later on i biked over to relay for life to see kathy. we then met up with katie and rachael and had some awkward encounters with others. except bernie. bernie's tight. it was great seeing her and her friends but i didnt get to spend enough time with her and had to leave fairly early after we ate at the dandy gander.

i biked over to alans afterwards and played future headlines catch with kevin and alan. where you shout out a made up future headline right before you throw the ball to the person. we played with a baseball and catcher's gloves. PRETTTTYYY FUNNN

this morning i woke up early for JAMS. drank way too much beforehand and felt sick the whole day. so it ruined my entire experience at the eastern market downtown. it's such a wonderful event and i cant wait to go next year and actually enjoy it.

plus some other things i forgot

09:45 pm: Self Portrait at 28 by David Berman (my favorite poem)

I know it's a bad title but I'm giving it to myself as a gift on a day nearly canceled by sunlight when the entire hill is approaching the ideal of Virginia brochured with goldenrod and loblolly and I think "at least I have not woken up with a bloody knife in my hand" by then having absently wandered one hundred yards from the house while still seated in this chair with my eyes closed. It is a certain hill the one I imagine when I hear the word "hill" and if the apocalypse turns out to be a world-wide nervous breakdown if our five billion minds collapse at once well I'd call that a surprise ending and this hill would still be beautiful a place I wouldn't mind dying alone or with you. I am trying to get at something and I want to talk very plainly to you so that we are both comforted by the honesty. You see there is a window by my desk I stare out when I am stuck though the outdoors has rarely inspired me to write and I don't know why I keep staring at it. My childhood hasn't made good material either mostly being a mulch of white minutes with a few stand out moments, popping tar bubbles on the driveway in the summer a certain amount of pride at school everytime they called it "our sun" and playing football when the only play was "go out long" are what stand out now. If squeezed for more information I can remember old clock radios with flipping metal numbers and an entree called Surf and Turf. As a way of getting in touch with my origins every night I set the alarm clock for the time I was born so that waking up becomes a historical reenactment and the first thing I do is take a reading of the day and try to flow with it like when you're riding a mechanical bull and you strain to learn the pattern quickly so you don't inadverantly resist it. II two I can't remember being born and no one else can remember it either even the doctor who I met years later at a cocktail party. It's one of the little disappointments that makes you think about getting away going to Holly Springs or Coral Gables and taking a room on the square with a landlady whose hands are scored by disinfectant, telling the people you meet that you are from Alaska, and listen to what they have to say about Alaska until you have learned much more about Alaska than you ever will about Holly Springs or Coral Gables. Sometimes I am buying a newspaper in a strange city and think "I am about to learn what it's like to live here." Oftentimes there is a news item about the complaints of homeowners who live beside the airport and I realize that I read an article on this subject nearly once a year and always receive the same image. I am in bed late at night in my house near the airport listening to the jets fly overhead a strange wife sleeping beside me. In my mind, the bedroom is an amalgamation of various cold medicine commercial sets (there is always a box of tissue on the nightstand). I know these recurring news articles are clues, flaws in the design though I haven't figured out how to string them together yet, but I've begun to notice that the same people are dying over and over again, for instance Minnie Pearl who died this year for the fourth time in four years. III three Today is the first day of Lent and once again I'm not really sure what it is. How many more years will I let pass before I take the trouble to ask someone? It reminds of this morning when you were getting ready for work. I was sitting by the space heater numbly watching you dress and when you asked why I never wear a robe I had so many good reasons I didn't know where to begin. If you were cool in high school you didn't ask too many questions. You could tell who'd been to last night's big metal concert by the new t-shirts in the hallway. You didn't have to ask and that's what cool was: the ability to deduct to know without asking. And the pressure to simulate coolness means not asking when you don't know, which is why kids grow ever more stupid. A yearbook's endpages, filled with promises to stay in touch, stand as proof of the uselessness of a teenager's promise. Not like I'm dying for a letter from the class stoner ten years on but... Do you remember the way the girls would call out "love you!" conveniently leaving out the "I" as if they didn't want to commit to their own declarations. I agree that the "I" is a pretty heavy concept and hope you won't get uncomfortable if I should go into some deeper stuff here. IV four There are things I've given up on like recording funny answering machine messages. It's part of growing older and the human race as a group has matured along the same lines. It seems our comedy dates the quickest. If you laugh out loud at Shakespeare's jokes I hope you won't be insulted if I say you're trying too hard. Even sketches from the original Saturday Night Live seem slow-witted and obvious now. It's just that our advances are irrepressible. Nowadays little kids can't even set up lemonade stands. It makes people too self-conscious about the past, though try explaining that to a kid. I'm not saying it should be this way. All this new technology will eventually give us new feelings that will never completely displace the old ones leaving everyone feeling quite nervous and split in two. We will travel to Mars even as folks on Earth are still ripping open potato chip bags with their teeth. Why? I don't have the time or intelligence to make all the connections like my friend Gordon (this is a true story) who grew up in Braintree Massachusetts and had never pictured a brain snagged in a tree until I brought it up. He'd never broken the name down to its parts. By then it was too late. He had moved to Coral Gables. V five The hill out my window is still looking beautiful suffused in a kind of gold national park light and it seems to say, I'm sorry the world could not possibly use another poem about Orpheus but I'm available if you're not working on a self-portrait or anything. I'm watching my dog have nightmares, twitching and whining on the office floor and I try to imagine what beast has cornered him in the meadow where his dreams are set. I'm just letting the day be what it is: a place for a large number of things to gather and interact -- not even a place but an occasion a reality for real things. Friends warned me not to get too psychedelic or religious with this piece: "They won't accept it if it's too psychedelic or religious," but these are valid topics and I'm the one with the dog twitching on the floor possibly dreaming of me that part of me that would beat a dog for no good reason no reason that a dog could see. I am trying to get at something so simple that I have to talk plainly so the words don't disfigure it and if it turns out that what I say is untrue then at least let it be harmless like a leaky boat in the reeds that is bothering no one. VI six I can't trust the accuracy of my own memories, many of them having blended with sentimental telephone and margarine commercials plainly ruined by Madison Avenue though no one seems to call the advertising world "Madison Avenue" anymore. Have they moved? Let's get an update on this. But first I have some business to take care of. I walked out to the hill behind our house which looks positively Alaskan today and it would be easier to explain this if I had a picture to show you but I was with our young dog and he was running through the tall grass like running through the tall grass is all of life together until a bird calls or he finds a beer can and that thing fills all the space in his head. You see, his mind can only hold one thought at a time and when he finally hears me call his name he looks up and cocks his head and for a single moment my voice is everything: Self-portrait at 28.

12:52 pm: Jonathan Richman
I can't get enough of this man.

02:15 pm: FBO
I forgot to mention that yesterday at work i found a hairless squirrel mingling outside of jets in the parking lot. i tried feeding him carrots and cucumber but he just wouldnt have it. so i tried sub buns and he liked those. i ended up naming him turner, after kathy's last name and because i think it fit him well. eventually he crawled up into our driver's car's engine and wouldnt get out. he had a delivery up so he decided to take it while turner was all up in the mechanics of his jeep cherokee.

i wonder what happened to poor ol' turner


p.s. it's FBO now bitch and my life is getting better

09:27 pm: 5t, 6th, 7th
5th: I arrived in novi tuesday night. Courtney came over with her bike and we biked around village oaks. we went back to my house and signed up for Stickam, hahahah. That was pretty entertaining while it lasted.

6th: The next day i woke up to ben calling me around a quarter to 7. We drove over to mcdonalds and got breakfast because lately we've been talking about how we're never up early enough to get it. It was pretty good except they only put sausage on my mcgriddle, so that was gross. We then proceeded towards the Novi DPW to pick up garbage, sit around for two hours, then ship food into a nursing home. It was a special 10 hour day even though we only worked for about two hours. Afterwards we headed over to alans. On our way there we called wovi and requested Major Tom by David Bowie. They didnt fucking play it. Thanks WOVI. around 4 kathy came over and we walked around village oaks talking for a while. we also went house hunting in this really great sub near Village Oaks elementary. There were some great houses. She left around 930. I fell asleep around 11 and that is that.

7th: Ok well first off ben ditched me that morning so i had to do comunity service by myself. Which i dont mind at all its just he didnt let me know. Actually i dont remember ever being as happy as i was thursday morning. I rode my bike to the United Methodist Church and vacuumed the whole place for about two hours while listening to ipod. Afterwards, i went to 711 and got a banana and coffee. i sat outside of the 711 eating the banana, drinking the coffee and smoking a cigarette. After i was finished i bought another banana for the road then rode my bike back home to do yard work. After the yard work i rode over to craigs (but left the house with a banana) and i basically just couldnt stop smiling. I saw craig for a lil. we sat in his attic and talked. then kyle showed up and we went to my house (craig had plans). while at my house we did impersonations then left to 711 where we both got BAWLS energy drinks, then drove to alans. i then proceeded to do nothing at alans until i had to go back to allen park.


now i'm here again.

11:55 pm: Brick
So tonight i finally decided to watch the movie Brick. Kyle has been telling me how great it is for a couple years now and i have to agree with him.

Its such a refreshing plot. I mean, these days not many actual detective films are made, at least good ones arent. Most that are released now are all the same and blend in. This was truly film noir at its finest.

It takes place in present time (when the movie was made so i guess 2005) but the great part about that is there is no real way to tell it takes place in the present. For example: there isnt one cell phone in the movie, they use payphones mostly and there are a few home phones used. just cool little things like that. They even use some slang terms that were often used in the 1940's and 50's.

The strange thing is this movie really made me miss high school (which i didnt think was possible) and made me wish my life was more interesting. It also got under my skin in this really weird way and got me to go on a night walk earlier.. just to get out and see things.

damn, just makes me want to be a director even more

05:58 pm: PFFFFF
Where have i been?!?!?!?! I don't think any of my friends use this anymore but it would be pretty funny if i just started it again.

- I'm on 12 months probation
- 35 hours of community service
- working at jet's
that's all i'm doing with my life right now.

i hate to say this, i miss weed.

But i miss my friends more.

08:32 pm: Back with a vengeance
well here i am once again of livejournal after months and months of absence. There is not much new to report. I'm still struggling with school and i still dont have my license. Although i have decided to go to schoolcraft for college.

I started taking online night school classes but they are making me take them AT the building. Which makes no sense at all because if its an online class you should be taking it at home but whatever.

Also i have recently but easing my way into finishing my community service at the retirement home. Where i will be talking with senior citizens and playing games with them and such.


it is indeed 2008 now and i must say that this new years had to be one of my best and i met some really great new people.

my classes are as follows:

1st - Sci Fi
2nd - Michigan Studies
3rd - Short Story
4th - Child Development


the last great films i have seen:

No Country For Old Men
The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford


Last great albums i have heard:

Heretic Pride by The Mountain Goats




thats really about it. there is a lot im leaving out but i dont remember.

from now on i will tell you about my day instead of recapping the past few months



with love and squalor

Robert S. Sheridan

08:35 pm: im going to get a tattoo that says "hey, stop being a fuck up and do some shit" maybe that would help me remember?



a skull would kick ass too.

07:23 pm: good

Last night i watched knocked up and felt very happy. then i went to bed after about 10 minutes of pacing. i went to first block this morning. MATH. i really hate that damn class. all people talk about is halo 3 and they all have really disgusting laughs. I rested my head down to try and fall asleep but all i heard was these fuckers talking shit about me while they were right next to me. they have a lot of nerve doing something like that. so i pretended i didnt hear them and accepted what they had to say. then they got down on their knees and said "look his eyes are still open!". thanks guys. then i picked my head up and pretended i had just woken up. then i looked down at the surface of my desk only to find that "DIE" was carved right in the center. that cheered me right up. i dont think anything has ever given me as good of advice as that desk did. i mean thats what i wanted to do most at that point. its like the desk could read my mind. the rest of the day was ok.  We are swimming in gym..... I HATE IT. its like swimming in other peoples filth and skin and gross. i feel very uncomfortable about being half naked around 25 other half naked kids. then getting out and showering with them. thanks high school. well now i have to finish my short story rough draft. if anyone wants a copy of the final draft just ask! i want some opinions. after that i will probably watch knocked up again. movies, nightcrawlers, and yo la tengo are the only things that make me happy anymore.

03:34 pm: Favorite Movies???

this is hard


Blue Velvet

The Godfather Part I

One Flew Over The Cukoos Nest

Deer Hunter

Dirty Harry

Oldboy

High Fidelity

Magnolia

Once Upon A Time In The West

Zodiac

Psycho

The Shining

Dog Day Afternoon

Pulp Fiction

The Godfather Part II

Young Frankenstein

Platoon

Children Of Men

03:19 pm: Favorite Songs as of today

These ones i have really thought about. these are my favorite songs of all time.....currently. (no order)


Ben Folds - Trusted

Jim Yoshii Pile-Up - Silver Sparklers

Pavement - Carrot Rope

Ugly Casanova - Hotcha Girls

Modest Mouse - Lives

Yo La Tengo - Our Way To Fall

Cloud Cult - Sage

The Mountain Goats - Up The Wolves

Brand New - Okay, I Believe You, but My Tommy Gun Don't

The Mountain Goats - New Monster Avenue

The Faint - Worked Up So Sexual

The Mountain Goats - Against Pollution

Cloud Cult - Transistor Radio

Bright Eyes - Easy/Lucky/Free

The Mountain Goats- Jenny

Cloud Cult - Your 8th Birthday

Bright Eyes - Haligh, Haligh, a Lie, Haligh

Pixies - Where Is My Mind?

Cloud Cult - Washed You Car

Kimya Dawson - The Beer

01:06 pm:

I'm trying
I'm trying to drink away the part of the day that i cannot sleep away.

04:57 pm:

In crowded bars, at subway cars

Whenever you are next to me,
center of gravity,
can't feel both feet on the ground

Walking home after dark, past the softball park

It's clear to me, according to a rule I learned one day in school
Basic geometry: two halves of a circle, you and me

It's a familiar song we've known so long

Your clever cuts into me
as long as you're next to me
I can't feel both feet on the ground 

04:55 pm:

What's the matter, why don't you answer
What's the matter with me
Cause it's so hard to be
Free and easy, we'll disappear completely
Hardly as I've known it's glad

You're heart is broken, and the doors are open
As you're hoping to be
There's brighter places to see
Hands need warning, early in the morning
Hardly as I've known a surprise

No, don't warn me
I know it's wrong, but I swear it won't take long
And I know, you know,
It makes me sigh; I do believe in love

Another season, but the same old feelings
Another reason could be
I'm tired of aching, summer's what you make it
But I'll believe what I want to believe