Now that Presidential primary season is getting underway, I'll probably be noting ridiculous facts about the various candidates on this blog as well as the occasional bit of introspection, youtube clip, or tasteless comedy.

How about this little nugget: Senator Hillary Clinton recently announced her bid for the Presidency online (as though anyone had any doubt as to what her intentions were, really). Now, I'm not the biggest fan of Hillary, and I actually think the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton (and possibly -Bush, since they're still talkign about convincing Jeb to run one day, or his half-hispanic son George Prescott) progression would be a little too reminiscent of dynastic rule for my tastes (especially considering how tight HW and Bill are now.)

But I watched her announcement video, figuring I would at least give her a chance.

Here is my verdict, and since I have a blog again I can once more self-importantly declare my opinions to be the truth.

But it is the truth, dammit! ;)

I have a preconceived notion of Hillary as being the ultimate canned candidate -- and I know they all work off of a script, but she seems much less able to conceal that fact than some others (both Edwards' and Obama's announcements both seemed remarkably off-the-cuff, though obviously they weren't.) I was hoping that her video would do something to change this opinion. In fact, it only reinforced it.

Aside from her general wooden presence, there was this absolutely horrible moment wherein Hillary said, "So let's talk. Let's chat." I cringed; it was obviously intended to sound like the sort of thing she'd come up with and say herself on the spot, but it was so horribly forced I was actually embarrassed for her.

A couple of days later, I'm trolling political news sites, and I find this little gem:

"Let's Chat"

From the department of Scrutiny We Only Apply to the Clintons, But They Make it Easy By Having Their Staffers Brag to the Media, we now learn that the "So let's talk. Let's chat" riff in Hillary's speech was the brainchild of ad man Jimmy Siegel, who produced the ads for Eliot Spitzer's gubernatorial juggernaut.

Three questions:

1) Isn't it a problem that a guy who just started is already feeling the need to say he came up with particular lines in the announcement video, like he's auditioning for another job? Shades of "axis of evil."

2) Don't Clinton's people realize it completely defeats the purpose of supposedly authentic language for behind-the-curtain writers to go and tell the media, "by the way, that was my line"?

3) Is that really such a great turn of phrase that you'd want to go out of your way to claim credit?"

So not only is it a pre-written canned line, the guy that wrote it is so freaking proud of it that he had to leak his role writing it to the press? Please.

I don't think we can afford to go down this road again. I'll vote for Hillary if she gets nominated, but I know a lot of Democrats who won't (and, of course, plenty who will.) I also voted for Kerry, hating every second of it. They both have the prepackaged establishment aura that I think a lot of Dems don't like.

Who do I like right now? Well, there are actually an amazing number of good candidates in the field right now, including wunderkind Barack Obama, a much more polished and believable John Edwards, experienced Senate stalwart Chris Dodd. But the one I'm most interested in right now is New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.

Why? A) He's a governor -- governors traditionally do better than Senators because they don't have the vote trail to be smeared with. B) He's been secretary of the UN and is well-respected abroad, and has shown that he has the ability to exercise real diplomacy with all kinds of horrible regimes and get them to bend to his will. [he brokered a ceasefire in Darfur recently when the Bush administration wasn't doing shit.] C) he's Hispanic. D) He's from the West, which everyone keeps saying is the new battlefield for the Presidency as it's starting to trend Democratic.

I'd be really happy to support Obama or Edwards, but at this early stage, Richardson is my guy.

All that being said, the more I see of Obama the more I like him. I've already made a donation and will most likely continue giving to both. Richardson is a big underdog, so I think it's only fair I should be allowed to back a couple of the horses in this race (did I just compare them to dogs and horses in the same sentence? oops.)

Re-adjusting

No, I haven't abandoned this blog as I have all the others. I've been up here in Asheville concentrating on recovery from two very different and yet completely interconnected conditions that have been plauging me for a long time -- one for almost 21 years, one for 7 years.

For the first time, I'm seeing that my future is completely under my control, and the decisions I've already made under duress have affected it to some extent, but it's never too late to make changes.

The biggest realization I've had in the last couple of weeks is that I'm afraid of success. I have these deep-seated feelings of doubt in myself and guilt over a situation for which I really should bear none. I've been limiting myself in all ways because of these insecurities. The fact that I managed to graduate magna cum laude despite all the crap I was subjecting my body and mind to is something that has heartened and even excited me in these last couple of sober weeks.

I'm in a position to actually *do* something with my life. I have already accepted the fact that I probably will not make money as a writer -- and possibly might not even get published (but I think if I get on the ball I'll have a decent shot.) I am okay with that, and I'm even okay with working some shit job to support myself as a writer. I've realized more and more over the past months that there's nothing else I want to do -- nothing else in this, the real world, comes even close.

My whole life I've entertained this fantasy that I'd be able to get through the absolute hell of my childhood and the seismic waves some of that stuff sent through my adolescence and early 20s, and still be intact, in one piece, still have my voice. I always imagined that once I was in such a spot, I'd be able to tell my story, and that was ALL I wanted to do. I'd always shoot that fantasy down, though, with the sad realization that I'd never get past all this stuff.

By some grace that I only am beginning to feel deserving of, I am actually getting through it. I've revisted the worst depths of that pain in my past, completely sober, have confronted those feelings and really FELT them for the first time.

And the most exciting part about all this is I'm just beginning to realize how many stories I have to tell.

I'm about to be 24. Life is a blessing. I'm moving forward.

RIP Yvonne De Carlo. I did like the way CNN Headline News did a Quik-Eulogy of her. They said "Fans knew her as the beloved wife of Herman Munster on TV's 'The Munsters'. She also played Moses' wife in The Ten Commandments."

When being Herman Munster's wife was a bigger deal for you than being Moses' wife, you know you fucked up somewhere.

Just gonna free associate, Mike.

I give myself crap for too many things, and apparently the need to write overwhelms all. I don't know what the fuck the point of anything is, I'm just lost in some abyss traveling at a rate of 3444 four miles per second on the Thomsonomic Reactor Scale, Thomson being this guy who had a hard time and was taken away in a white coat to a lab where he was put under a microscopoe and studied for four hundred three years until he was discovered by a moon bat wearing a radar sensor sent on a mission from flying electric mill operators. Robots, really.

OK, I'm going to now try to write an entire short story in three sentences off the top of the dome, and make it as depressing as possible.

After a day of drinking hard liquor, Thomson heard a knock at the front door of his dingy efficiency apartment.
"Who is it?" he called out, but he was already preparing his sleeping bag for the night.
"I'm an insurance broker," came the hopeful muffled response.




(I wrote this last night. Lack of sleep does wonders for one's sanity.)

I FOUND IT!!!

"ARE YOU A BUG, BILL MURRAY??!?!"

Seriously, this is the best scene ever from any movie ever made. Starring RZA & GZA of the Wu-Tang Clan and Bill Murray.



Thank you, Jim Jarmusch.

My old roommate, Richard -- some call him Chardasaurus Rex, others argue that he's evolved into a more refined Chard-bird -- is over here taking a shower because he hasn't had hot water in our old place for days. DAYS. It was originally due to a gas bill issue, but that was resolved immediately I understand, and... still no hot water. Mrs. Crum, the landlady (yes, that is her honest to God name, the whole time I lived there dealing with her I felt like I was in a warped neo-Dickens novel of some kind) responded to this problem by leaving Richard a business card with the following written on the back: "We came by to look at your water heater. You do know the water heater is in the hut out back."

And still no hot water.

Man, I've got to say, nothing beats having your friend as your landlord. Whenever there's a problem at our apartment, Dre and I just kind of look at each other, go "shit," and then the shit is handled. Too bad most of life will be spent dealing with the Crums of the world. Oh well. Gotta go.

Last night the good Reverend Hill and I went bowling. (Reverent in name only.) In our ongoing "Battle for the Wooden Grail" he was up 3 games to 2, and it was my chance, my big chance. I could have been a contender, a big shot. Could have been throwing craps in heaven with the angels. (Not sure what that means, but it came so I went with it.) At first things looked good. I got my exact average, 133, while Andrew scored a disappointing (for him) 106. I confidently threw another Yuengling into my empty stomach while Andrew remarked that a different ball might serve him better.

3-3. The match was tied. The trap was set. The game was on.

Yeah, I went and blew the next 2 while Dre threw strikes, 9s and spares. What kills me is just two months ago I was bowling like that, and now I can't get back on that level. I think the only answer is practicing more.

NEXT TIME, HILL... NEXT TIME!! (said a la Dr. Klaw from Inspector Gadget cartoons)

test 2 sibilance

Set it Off

Welcome to my new blog. My old blog became worn out, a once-amusing device that had become an annoyance, like an old bowling shoe; or a hula-hoop frayed from five years of frenetic bullshiting. Every time I'd take that shit out for a spin, I'd be left feeling bruised and empty. Well, maybe it wasn't that bad, but truth be told, I got kind of sick of Cosmopolitan Tang. I couldn't start a new blog without giving it a shout-out, though, after five years posting there. I posted with friends on that site, but I decided it was time to branch off and make my own bloggy way.

I couldn't think of a better title for this site, so I'll change it when I do. Mostly I just wanted to have a place to create blog entries to later import to a better site when I get around to registering a domain name.

About me: I'm twenty-three years old, 24 in August (holy shit.) Outside of BlogLand, I write fiction, mostly, and sometimes essays. I'm working on a very strange novel, which I guess you would describe as comic fiction. I've been writing what I'd call "serious attempts" at short stories since I was fourteen or so, and I have a storied history of delivering absurd narratives into tape recorders as a child. When I was in the third grade, I wrote a "novel" that I insisted upon reading aloud to my classmates. It was five chapters long. One of the chapters was five or six sentences long, the other four were either one or two. The story was about a robot detective and a dog with an implant allowing it to speak English who had been assigned by robotic higher-ups to assist in "sniffing out" evidence. The dog was able to find the stolen "robo-jewels," hidden, of all places, in vat of cockroach poison. I believe the dog's name was McGruff. That's how stuff happens in the future, man.

I just got a BA in English and I'm now going balls to the wall at an MFA. Meaning, I applied to a hell of a lot of programs, and I'm spending a lot of my time writing while I wait to hear something. I figured going back to "blogging" (I never could bring myself to like that word) would help -- an outlet to let my fingers keep moving, keep the rhythm going, when I'm too sick of the characters in my novel to deal with them any more. Trust me, they're really easy to get sick of. I really want the next thing I write to be a celebration of humanity rather than a condemnation of it, but the thing I'm working on now has pretty dark undertones, at least to me.

See, this is the part I don't like about blogging -- the tendency to ramble on and on about oneself. I hope to minimize that kind of stuff on this blog and try to make posts that will be entertaining. I will probably post some short fiction here (or possibly somewhere else, on this site I'm thinking about registering), but only stuff I know will be amusing to others. (Trust me, I wouldn't want anyone to be forced to wade through 90% of the crap I have saved on my hard drive that I've written.)

I'll probably just also do the general bloggage -- (how many variations on that "verb" exist. anyway?!) -- writing about funny stuff that happens in our apartment (and living with a fellow connoisseur of the absurd, Andrew Hill, we have our share of funny conversations/situations).. uh... bowling scores?... and... music reviews? Oh, and book reviews, too, maybe. Sorry, I'm just kind of making this up as I go along, hope that's not a problem for anyone.

I have been reading Emma Who Saved My Life by Wilton Barnhardt, the guy that gave the faculty address at my graduation. Makes me wish I had taken a class with him at NCSU, because the way the book is written is very similar to the way I try to write.