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Monday, August 11, 2003

"Substitute your lies for fact..."
-The Who


Shouldn't that lyric be the other way around? fact for lies? Didn't write much this weekend. did do much either. was supposed to meet that girl friday and here's what happened: i got in the car with a mapquest printout to the location, two cds (Social Distortion, "White Light White Heat White Trash" and Bruce "The Ghost of Tom Joad") and a bottle of water. left about 10pm and started driving through downtown Pittsburgh even though that's not the most direct route. well, i'd never seen Pittsburgh at night since i got here. sounds crazy but i've been typing or running areas that orbit the city and if i was ever downtown at night i didn't notice it. so Friday, i'm listening to music, windows down, stuck in construction, and i noticed it. and i actually didn't mind being stuck in construction. Detours sent me through two tunnels and around two mountains just to make two miles that should have been a straight line on the map and i didn't care, i was having fun. also, this tunnel system and bridge layout here in Pittsburgh? totally reminds me of Grand Theft Auto III. i knew that map pretty well and even some of these names are the same. i wonder if the game designers modeled Liberty City after Pittsburgh instead of New York as was rumoured. anyway, if i'm right, Friday was the first time i've ever driven through the tunnels into Liberty city without unloading a clip into the SUV next to me, watching it flip over in my rearview mirror, then stepping out to lob Molotov cocktails into the nine car pile-up while burning cop cars try to bash their way through the screaming woodpile of destruction (damn, i want to play that game so bad right now my shorts are around my ankles).

so i'm downtown, looking at the lights and it's quite a sight seeing how i'm used to Toledo's sad little skyline. Maybe it's the construction and the machines combined with the rows of lighted sidewalks on the hills across the water but i never got out of that construction loop. just kept circling. i drove around the city looking at shit, listening to construction workers argue, listening to music so long that one cd played through at least twice and by the time i looked at the clock to change them, it was 12:30. oops. too late to meet her (i don't think i'll ever know whether she was there or what) and now i have to piss so bad from that bottle of water that suddenly i'm on a mission again. problem is i'm stuck doing 10 mph through another construction detour. i eventually get off at Monroeville (thinking i can scope out the location of the "Dawn of the Dead" mall to come back to it later, so the drive wouldn't be a total bust) and the first gas station i stop at doesn't have a "public" restroom according to the angry clerk. however, it does have a happy little black man who holds the door and greets everyone who comes and goes. he pleasantly slaps me on the shoulder and says "how you doing bud!" and for some reason, even though a stranger touching me usually flips a angry defensive switch, i'm in a great mood after that. i want to talk to him and see who he's waiting for at that corner, and what car is his, and what was the last cd he bought, but two people would clog up that door he's holding, and it's a busy Friday night gas-station. so i temporarily forget about the piss and drive home at Mach 3 trying to imagine his life and if he spends the weekends holding the door at the gas station trying to connect with strangers. he won't know it, but that's exactly what he did.

see the pictures i put on the website? that picture was taken by my friend Rachel, who even framed it for me because i'm "the only one who would appreciate it." i guess she saw this thing on the sidewalk right outside her office in downtown Toledo. it's hanging above my computer for inspiration and, since it can't be hanging above the laptop when i'm not here, i thought i'd make it a permanent part of my work area by sticking it on the blog. big thanks to Rose for all her help teaching me how to copy her blog-photos set-up, that template stuff scrambles my brain. and read her "real men of genius" tribute (i used to love those commercials) and train-birth post while you're over there.

dude. look up there. look at those fucking wings. check that shit. what the hell did that? i'll write a story about it eventually. for now i just can't stop looking at the photo. think about this, what if those wings were six feet long? i can see the headlines:

"Atheist Shotguns Angel Out Of Sky! 'Sell That Shit Somewhere Else!' he declares..."

reading my fellow blogs and fishfry is now at the top of my list of favorite reads. see, in my favorites column i shuffle shit around depending on who i think i want to check in the morning before the other ones. i got a lot of links on there but it's fun to imagine a little competition for my attention that they aren't even participating in. example blue59 was at number 3 with a bullet last week (read in announcers voice) with his impressive stack of angry gradeschool flashbacks. but fishfry's trip to the bookstore and her cockroach incident were just what i needed to start typing this morning. check it out, good stuff, i felt like i'd spent the day with her looking for books. and that sounds great right now seeing as the only bookstore i've found in the area was the usual B&N (i sure miss Pauper's in Bowling Green. one time i asked that Spin Doctors looking-motherfucker who owned it, "you got any Gordon something, about a man wrongly accused of rape who goes on a rampage in a small town and it all takes place in a day? isn't that fucking great, all taking place in a day? it's like a low-brow Ulysses or something, i just love those books and..." here i'm thinking Spin Doctor is zig-zagging because he's trying to lose me in the stacks and he stops, kicks through a pile of brown paperbacks, reaches into an industrial strength black garbage back and whiplashed a book up in my face like a cop flashing his badge. wrong book but still, it was a nice try. hell, maybe he was just making a alternate suggestion. i couldn't see the connection between what i wanted and what he found but fuck it, that's why i don't own a bookstore. he's the professional.

back to fishfry's post about the cockroach. you know what's fun to do? not to take away from your story but i like to do this (fun with computers!): take that paragraph and substitue "puppy" for "cockroach." changes the whole tone don't it? gets a little more disturbing.
OR substitute "3 year old boy" for "cockroach" instead. very disturbing now. especially with the giggling and "eeking" from the other patrons 'cause there's a 3-year old boy on the wall, then his corpse under the table?!? that was cracking me up this morning over my cornflakes for some reason.

i sometimes do a similar thing when watching reality-based shows. now, don't think for a minute that i'm equating fishfry's post with reality-based programming (not that i'm ashamed of my addiction to all that is Road Rules) but here's what i do: you know how the shows try to add drama and conflict by steering it towards "voting someone off?" well, substitute the word "sacrifice" or "execute." and pretend like they aren't just sending that weepy little idiot home to watch themselves on TV. pretend like those votes are really life or death. see how much more enjoyable it gets? now when they gather and start wimpering and sobbing about leaving the house or the mobile-home or the island, they have a good fucking reason. this person isn't going home, they're going to get marched to the end of a cliff and POW! bullet in the back of the head. now the intros, when they show all the smiling faces and list the names, that shit is much more powerful because, see that girl frolicking on the beach? (serious voice) she isn't around anymore. she got "voted off." i'm serious. try it. since those shows have taken over anyway you can stop resisting and enjoy them just by substituting a word here or there. make your own Shirley Jackson's "Real World" and you can even cue up music on your stereo to drown out their carefully chosen "hit" songs. when the racial conflict comes to a head between the angry black girl and the stupid white boy, and they're having a serious talk about the "house meeting", instead of listening to Papa Roach yapping, "shut up when i'm talking to you!" as the music cue/advertisment for that scene, you push the button and hear the words, "they're going to send you back to mother in a cardboard box, you better RUN!" from Pink Floyd instead. see, reality-based shows control the TV now sure, but you have complete control over them.

i see now that i've been kind of link happy today. i can't resist it. one more.

::: david - 12:29 PM [+] :::
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