The Tommy Lee Jones Manufactured Podcast from Western Wyoming Pennsylvania (not Really)

There are people downstairs talking again. Talking alot. They're drunk. The Monday drunks are much more lively than the Sunday drunks. At least in East Rutherford. At least this week. Maybe there was a better game on tonight.  Anyway, I just heard some guy talking say (something) like this:
"I mean out of all of them Tara probably fits my life-style the best, but is that the kind of fucking criteria I want to be judging this on? Is that what I want from my life?"

He went on but they were headed down the street towards the diner that is closed for renovations. I got worried for a second because I thought it was some past flashback of me drunkenly ranting about girl problems to poor ol' Reinhold Hadrich or Headmaster Porr of Slytherin. But I don't know any girl named Tara, at least not one that I've ever had any existential, alcoholic fits about. Maybe it was me from the future.

I didn't give this too much thought because Tommy Lee Jones just showed up to tell some of these "biker types" to keep things down because people, good people, are trying to sleep around here. But he did it in a 'no-nonsense' folksy way. He called one guy Junior and the other guy "bub" which lead me to wonder if in his younger days Mr. T.L. Jones would have made a good Wolverine. It must've have worked on the bikers because they kept it down. And Tommy Lee Jones went back to New York to finish making Men In Black 3 which from what I read is going to be quite a hot commodity at the box office.

So now that there were no more movie stars in the area and the drunks had all been warned about their antics there is very little to do.

Here is the perfect blog link for today, don't think I forgot about all that nonsense:
The Alexxcast
Alexx Bollen has a podcast.
I had one that is currently being excavated from the vaults of the New Jersey State Podcast Archive and will perhaps be available to public soon. But until then more of this.

Dispatch from the Kitchen Table

It's not that late. People are sleeping here in the apartment, the bars are getting out a little bit but it's really not that late. I don't have to be anywhere in the morning so what do I know. But I used to have to wake up with the alarm and even then I never considered midnight to be too late. I can't sleep anyway.

I saw the movie JFK  when I was a kid, 12ish I think. I have no idea why. Maybe I was a Costner fan. Anyway it scared the shit out of me then and it still does now. I realize there are terrible inaccuracies and fictions in the film that even people who believe in a conspiracy point out but it's a topic that's always fascinated me. So on a jaunt over to Barnes and Noble to birthday shop for Ms. Falk I came across a book in the bargain bin arguing some of the points in the Warren Commission report. This was the first real book, (according to it) that discussed the potential of a conspiracy ("with over 1 million copies sold!")  and was a catalyst for some of the scenes in Oliver Stone's film. So I read the introduction where the author pretty much talks about why he thinks the movie is bullshit. I won't mention the name of the book or the author, partially because after looking him up it is possible alot of what he cites could be out context, and maybe partially because he's already sold a million books and I haven't so what does he need me plugging him for.


Anyway, I read the first couple chapter and the shit is just too heavy. Too many ghouls involved. Too much talk of bullet trajectories and shadowy men and cover-ups and it's too much to have dancing on your head on a Sunday night. I'm convinced there's a team waiting to take me out downstairs disguised as drunks.
I have more immediate problems like complete and utter lack of money, lack of stamina for doing anything to change that, and the decreased tolerance of being around any one else I know so I doubt trying to enlighten myself on a 50-year old alleged national mystery is really something that should be at the top of my to-do list.

But anyway, this really has nothing to do with that. I've put that book down in favor of something more fun like Notes From the Underground. The main gist is that I can't sleep. Not at midnight, or half-past midnight as it appears to be, so all this leads me to the perfect blog post.

I got an email from a writing site that I enlisted with a while back that sends you "Daily Writing Tips". Some of them are helpful some of them are useless, last week I got the "10 Tips to Creating a Perfect Blog Post" email.

Now, we here at Bleak.Blogspot do not have a strong following, sure if we link a post to Facebook or Twitter we'll get some extra hits, but to be honest 12-20 hits is a lot here so we are certainly not above taking some advice on how to get our numbers up. So think of how happy I was to find that I now had in my possession the ten ways to create a perfect post. Think of all the followers I can gain after I employ these tips with my own winning brand of neurosis!

Well I'm not going to go ahead and list every point they gave me because for one I would be giving away all the tips and then how would my perfect blog post stand out from all the rest? But I can reveal that a good, ahem, perfect title was key. So after shooting down several serene sounding handles, I chose what I chose because I can see there being more entries like this if the old apartment is going to be lights out this early.


I was also advised to add a video, to give the whole thing a "multi-media" feel to it.
So, in honor of Mr. Horgan moving his children's car seats out of the back of his Dodge Ram in order to watch a burned disc of the Bobby Heenan Show in the back of his truck in the parking lot of the Orange Lantern.  So  here is a video for your viewing pleasure.

Now, this was probably not the perfect blog post, I can be self critical, but I think I'm on my way and once I compile all my notes of what the drunks fumbling their way down the street to diner are saying I think I might even have a few masterpieces in me.

From the Heat Outside.

I saw this girl I used to date walking across the street towards a baseball field, large duffel bag slung over her shoulder.
She wasn't a girl anymore.
She'd filled out into an adult.
Someone who looked like someone's mother.
At a baseball game.
None of this is true.
I just thought it was her, but it wasn't.
I don't really think about her at all.
I certainly don't miss her.
It's just strange thinking about how quietly the world swallows people up.

That Suburban Brat Thing

Awkward pauses and all.
It's all cute on paper and in the internet.
Sorry baby, tried to warn you, this is what it's like.
I'm full of shit and so are you.
Just in case you were wondering.
I'm half drunk on a weekday and I'm kind of o.k. with that.
Pretty O.K. with that.
It's a little thing that makes me feel all right when everything else feels all wrong.
And some times I'm not sure what the hell you're talking about.
And respect and disrespect are all bullshit.
Disrespect sounds like a legitimate insult.
It's all cute on paper.
I don't mean no disrespect baby, I just don't know what the hell you're talking about.
I'm just afraid of the future.
I've always been.
I can't help it.
Cardboard box homes or ulcer glistened envelopes going to the tax man seem all too real to me.
I've seen people go mad over dollar signs.
It's sick and it's sad and it stuck with me.
I wish it hadn't.
It's all cute on paper.
I like a quiet night full of wind gusts to blow away on.
All by myself.
Head as loud as a thousand voices.
This is what it's really like.
No peace of mind.
All second guessing.
I don't know what the hell you're talking about.
That's probably a problem.
It's so suburban.
It's so bratty.
It's so everything I was until met you.
Until you got your hands on me.
Until you fixed me.
Write it up and print it.
It's all on me.
This will be the story when people ask.
It's that suburban brat thing.
He drinks too much.
He talks too much shit.
He's a brat.
It's all true.
Maybe.
But I still don't know what the hell you're talking about.

I Doubt They'd All Notice If We Never Arrive

Hey man, back off. I'm having a bad day.
A bad week.
I'm exhausted from nothing.
Staring at the blue glow screens.
Making plans/Hoping for things to happen.

No one ever announces the future is here.
I don't want to believe I'm only some giant pile of mush; soft enough to get bug-stomped and squashed or rotted out from mounds of cells turning on each other.

No, no, no. I don't want to believe that.
Not now. Not while I'm about to start doing things.
No for real this time.
I've been all talk for so long that it's hard not to feel some sense of foreboding doom now that things are quietly starting to move on.

Those black thoughts don't wash out so easy though, you know?

Maybe you don't.

I've been dropping my stock by diagnosing every ache as a death sentence. One day it will be something but being on guard for an eventual blood-piss is an easy way to wear everyone out and corkscrew yourself deeper into the crazy tunnel.

So I'm going away from the ocean.
No more cool, salted, midnight breezes that remind you of all those hopeful, teenage nights; enough to make you think maybe everything isn't over yet.

Part Three: bourbon street

No matter what day you set off to come home it always feels like Sunday. Life beckons around the corner. The world, your world kept rotating while you were gone and now you’re going to have to catch up and re-assimilate. Sure you could stay in New Orleans walking around town with a paper-bag-wrapped bottle in your fist, but sooner or later that gets old.
Driving home the list of things you have to do starts flashing in your head and you start wondering why the hell you thought it would be okay to disappear for a week and blow a ton of money. To get away from a girl? To get away from yourself? I wanted to think there was a chance I wasn’t going to come back. Like there’d be a dramatic moment where I’d say “You know what guys, you go, I’m going to stay here,” like some cowboy movie where one of them mixes with the natives in the village and decides to live among them. But I’m not that kind of guy I guess.
A night in Virginia and few more uncomfortable restaurant stops peppered the dismal ride home. O’Leary drove almost the entire way back. He enjoyed it, and I think he wanted to get home and two nights later we were. My ears hadn’t stopped ringing but now I was standing in the house. Alone. Quiet. I thought this is what had been missing the last week: a moment to myself. It was 8p.m. on a Friday and I had to get the hell out of here.
I started making calls: Anyone was an option. Is anything going on tonight? Anything at all? There had to be one last weird drunken night I could squeeze out of the universe. I’d make up for it tomorrow , once I had some proper sleep and a day to re-adjust I’d be fine. But not now. Not the first night back in Jersey. I knew she was out there with big plans and there was no way I was staying home and the panic of staring at four walls, inside my head for an entire evening made for a terrifying reality.
I got in the car and drove south. I just had to be out. The radio blasting, windows open anything to try and summon the faint enthusiasm that somehow, mystically, everything was going to be alright.
Elliot Krause called back. He and his girlfriend were meeting some of her friends. An hour later I was sipping a beer at a bar called Bourbon Street in Westwood New Jersey, barely able to hear myself think. Finally burned out.

the regroup

already an uremitting failure.
we'll get somewhere, just never thought it would take this long.
wasting youth on more ammo for the great big whatever.