Life is a prison.

Life is a gift that far too many people don’t understand or appreciate.

Life is fleeting, far too short in the interest of fairness.

Life drags on and on.

Life is an open journey with infinite pathways to explore.

Life is a straight line to death.

Life sucks.

Life is not a choice.

Life is choice.

Choose life.

Life is for the living.

Live fast, die young, and let god sort out the underwear situation.

I’m standing outside my office building, iPod drowning out the world with whatever is on the shuffle at the moment — a little of the new OSI, some Dark Lunacy, Colin James Hay. The air is perfect, dry, cool, carried on a constant but shifting breeze from the west that seems to push the constant flow of traffic past me. I light my afternoon cigarette, and as Waiting for My Real Life To Begin segues into William Orbit’s Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, the breeze becomes a steady gust, and the world is filtered through effects that every independent filmmaker wishes they had in their computer. The color is firm and pristine, every gradient smooth, every border fine and distinct. The light coming through the layers of tree branches and spring leaves creates beams that you can’t see but know are there nonetheless.

And then the shadows on the sidewalk begin to dance, a kaleidoscope of shifting sand chaos patterns, levels of shadow moving independent of one another, an abstract music video for a non-linear piece. I’m all-too-briefly caught in what I can only barely describe as a hallucinated shared memory as the world passes at it’s usual rate all around a magical display in back and white at ten frames per second.

Life is in between moments, small details, things that you find between ticks on the clock and inside of individual breaths. Life is in the here and now, and it’s easy to miss if you’re too busy thinking about the then and there, whether coming or gone. Life is infinite potential, defined by perspective, shaped by experience, shared by forever too few.

Even in a world that has too few hours in the day, too few days in the week, too little time to accomplish a tiny fraction of everything that I hope, life goes on all around me, and anyone who thinks that I’m missing out on something simply sees things through different eyes than mine. And that’s okay, because they’ve got life, same as me.

Life deserves more appreciation from a distant standpoint.

Even if it’s just a dream, or the product of a far-away brain in a jar, or a collective memory, or an accidental side-effect of too many micrograms of lysergic acid diethylamide taken fifteen years past, life is full of anything you want to find, if you know how to look for it.

I can never submit to all the things you’ve said God
If you want me dead, I’m right here God
But fear is a funny thing God
In that it gives you the strength to resist just about anything God
–Pain of Salvation, Diffidentia

Life is. And that’s enough for me, today.

From MSNBC.com:

Following a report that the U.S. agency in charge of a domestic spying program is building a database of every phone call made in the country, President Bush on Thursday told the nation from the White House that all anti-terrorism efforts are within the law.

I’d like to make it known that all the things that I do, whether considered by the rest of the nation to be legal and valid or not, are within the law. This includes but is most certainly not limited to drug use, sex with minors (as long as they are really hot and could pass for over eighteen in dim light), theft, destruction of church property, fraud, tax evasion, and wearing white pants after labor day. All my efforts in these and many other innumerable areas are, like your anti-terrorism efforts, well within the law. No matter what anyone else says. Even those pesky “lawmakers” and “courts”.
…

My gosh, W. You’re amazing! I really do feel better, and rationalized as well.

I sure hope this counts if you say it from outside the White House and don’t have more money than you could ever hope to spend in one lifetime. And if you’re not a Republican.

This originated, I believe, last October. I have no idea where it originally appeared, but it should now appear everywhere. In fact, I’m considering having it tattooed on my forehead. Thanks to Lydia by way of Greg Martin — somehow, even with my amazing and thorough (ly sad) knowledge of the contents of the Interweb, I missed this until it was sent to me in an email today.

In light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (excepting Kansas, which she does not fancy).

Your new prime minister, Tony Blair, will appoint a governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

• You should look up “revocation” in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up aluminium, and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. The letter ‘U’ will be reinstated in words such as ‘favour’ and ‘neighbour.’ Likewise, you will learn to spell ‘doughnut’ without skipping half the letters and the suffix ize will be replaced by the suffix ise. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up vocabulary). Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as “like” and “you know” is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as US English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter ‘u’ and the elimination of -ize. You will relearn your original national anthem, God Save the Queen. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.
• You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you’re not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you’re not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you’re not grown up enough to handle a gun.
• Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.
• All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.
• The former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline)-roughly $6/US gallon. Get used to it.
• You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.
• The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be refer to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat’s Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.
• Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as Good guys.
• Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie MacDowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one’s ears removed with a cheese grater.
• You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies).
• Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable.
• You must tell us who killed JFK. It’s been driving us mad. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty’s Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776)

Thank you for your co-operation.

More McSweeney’s brilliance:

Me know there something wrong with me, but who in Sesame Street doesn’t suffer from mental disease or psychological disorder? They don’t call the vampire with math fetish monster, and me pretty sure he undead and drinks blood. No one calls Grover monster, despite frequent delusional episodes and obsessive-compulsive tendencies. And the obnoxious red Grover—oh, what his name?—Elmo! Yes, Elmo live all day in imaginary world and no one call him monster. No, they think he cute.

If there’s one thing that stands out in my head about the days I spent on the sets of Hide & Creep, it’s the cold. I remember standing in the cemetary just outside of Montevallo, in particular, filming the scenes that feature the first meeting of Chuck, Chris, Michael, and the mysterious government agent F. These scenes, along with others, spotlight Michael naked (having lost his pants in what may or may not have been an alien abduction the night prior) — and we didn’t have any sort of budget on this film. No special effects, no body doubles — that’s really Michael Shelton naked on screen.

Here’s a behind the scenes factoid to keep in mind next time you watch the movie: it was around 20 degrees the day we shot those scenes. I was suffering from the peak of my peripheral neuropathy at the time (a side effect of my CIPD, peripheral neuropathy is the loss of sensation in your extremities – hands, feet, nose, etc.) — walking only with the aid of a cane, since I couldn’t feel when my feet had hit the ground and thus was prone to falling down a lot — and within an hour, I could feel (through two pairs of socks, heavy boots, and nerves that worked as well as George Lucas’ idea of prequels) the pain of the cold.

All this to say: don’t be too hard on Michael.

I had worked with Chance and Chuck before, doing the score for their short film The Seven Year Switch; they, in turn, were kind enough to kick start my filmmaking resume by providing invaluable assistance with the making of my first short, Goodnight Moon. And that’s the way the Birmingham film scene is — lots of people with varying abilities and degrees of experience, pitching in to help out other people of varying abilities and degrees of experience.

The Crewless Productions group — Chance Shirley, his wife Stacey, and Chuck Hartsell — had shot a couple of shorts prior to the undertaking of H&C, and so they knew what was coming; they’re not called Crewless for nothing, and that’s one of the reasons that working with them is so rewarding. Keep in mind that a big-budget film shoot is a unionized affair of specialties: everyone has their job, and their job only. Costumes, set, direction, camera. A small budget independent film, on the other hand, has no such room for titles, and it’s nice to see the director and producer doing the grunt work as much as anyone else.

My credit on H&C is for “Boom Operator” (guy who holds the microphone just out of frame) and “Sound Mixer” (which is misleading, since I didn’t actually do any mixing that I can recall); I also knew in advance that I would have a small role in the film, as Chance had written myself and my (now ex) wife Melissa into the script playing ever-so-slight-deviations of ourselves. Things change, of course; Melissa ended up getting one of the starring roles, and I play the complex bit part of Kenn, a guy who goes to a church for the first time in years to borrow money and curse a lot.

(Yeah, I know. Big stretch. And I still don’t pull it off very convincingly. Though I did get the best death in the entire movie, hands-down — I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t seen it, but I will say that if I had to choose a way to go, this would be on the list.)

Over the course of the months of shooting (mostly weekends only), I also played three different zombies, shot behind-the-scenes footage, handled props, helped recruit extras, cleaned up fake blood, recorded sound effects, cleaned up audio in post, and recorded the soundtrack for the film with the Exhibit(s). And everything I did, Chance did, too, and then some, as did Stacey, and Chuck, and everyone else involved with the film. It’s nice to be a part of creative ventures where no one is a diva, and everyone involved is ready and willing to do any job (no matter how mundane or banal) to get the best end result possible.

All the hard work paid off. Hide & Creep debuted to a huge crowd at the opening night of the 2004 Sidewalk Film Festival, and has since gotten DVD distribution (there’s something slightly surreal about pooping in to a Blockbuster in Chicago and seeing your movie on the shelf), made it to tens if not twenties of Netflix queues across the world, and gotten reviews that range from scathing (those people just don’t get it) to painfully flattering (those people got it — it being the cash I and others sent along with the review copies). None of us got rich off of the movie, but that was never the point (at least, not for most of us).

In the end, we helped Chance and Chuck and Stacey make their first feature film — and as a short filmmaker, I’ll be quick to point out that that’s a huge accomplishment, in and of itself. That the film is fun to watch, even after spending as much time as we all did reading and rereading subsequent drafts of the script, getting up at 4:30 AM (after playing gigs until 2 AM the night before) to drive fifty miles to backwoods Alabama locations in sometimes brutal cold, and watching edit after edit of the movie; that’s a miracle.

Not quite on par with coming back from the dead, but hey — at least none of us have a hunger for human flesh.

Not one that’s associated with being undead, at least.

Hide & Creep gets its world cable television premiere Thursday night on the SciFi channel at 7 PM, EST. That’s right — me and Starbuck, just two peas in a pod.

Seriously, you guys: this version of MAGIC is so freaking addictive. I think there must be a subliminal message in here somewhere. I can’t stop listening to it, over and over and over.

There is a certain amount of playing to the audience when creating, whether it’s writing, painting, filmmaking, or any other medium. Rare is the artist that is capable of baring his soul with absolutely no awareness (even if it’s not conscious) of the fact that other people will have reactions to the work. On the one hand, you have the shock artists, those who are on some level hoping to get a rise out of the audience, to offend or provoke or cause some sort of — let’s say unpleasant reaction, for lack of a better encompassing term.

And on the other hand, you have people like me. I’m wide open about my life, here in print and in person, but there are things that I find myself unwilling to say. There are numerous reasons for this — I have some ideas that are not ready to be unveiled, other ideas that I want to protect until they are either useful to me or not. There are some things about my life that, while I don’t hide, per se, I don’t particularly care for the whole world to know about (context is important in a lot of things). And there are some things that just piss people off.

I’m not sure exactly how I feel about that. On the one hand, I’m no angel in this respect. I’ve read things on other people’s blogs (etc.) that have really angered me or hurt my feelings. Sometimes, the pain recedes fairly quickly when I realize that things that are put out for the public eye are done so with a mission, and that sort of pasive-aggressive behavior makes it a lot easier to wave away.

Other times, though, the emotion behind the hurtful words is honest, and not communicated directly to me for some valid reason or another. Those are the times that it’s hard to just ignore or move past.

Fortunately, I’ve gotten really good at shifting my perspective over the years. I no longer off-handedly dismiss criticisms levelled at me because the speaker is an asshole, or deluded, or a moron. Even those people — who I like to think of, collectively, as the Religious Right — have some reasoning behind their complaints. And I find that taking those things into account has done me a lot of good as a human being; considering those points of view helpes me understand other people a little better, and sometimes can help me understand myself on a deeper basis, as well. Why I do things that I do, or perhaps seeing things that I do or say for the first time, a new awareness.

That said, sadly, most of the rest of the world doesn’t choose to take criticism like this. There’s a tendency to blame everything on anyone but yourself — worst case scenario, you can turn things around on your attacker, making them sexist, or racist, homophobic, bipolar, jilted or jaded.

If I call you an assclown, it’s not because you’re of a different gender or sexual orientation or cultural or ethnic background than I am. It’s because you’re an assclown, and to blame it on any other reason (allowing that I might just be a mean-hearted prick) is really undercutting your chance for self-examination and self-improvement.

But shit happens, and the principle of accountability should force each and every one of us to question what part our actions and words played into every situation we might find ourselves in. If you get dumped, sure, the bitch might just be crazy; then again, you might have precipitated her insanity, or been the trigger for her episode. If your significant other cheats on you, she might be a whore — or maybe you’re a neglectful-bordering-on-emotionally-abusive boyfriend. If you lose your job, yeah, your boss might be a homophobe who was just looking for a reason — but then again, your tendency to prove yourself as the least productive employee of any company is going to keep giving you reason to call your bosses gay bashers if you never stop to think there might be a reason behind your track record.

We all want to be good guys, I think, and even those who would claim otherwise want to be respected, if not liked — good guy is fine, stand-up guy will do in a pinch. But we can’t be. We all have a win-loss record, and at the end, careful examination will probably show a fair balance for each and every one of us. The exceptions, of course, are those who choose to believe that nothing is their fault, and so never change or even attempt to do so — the loss column is going to be a little weightier — and those who choose to examine every situation, accept the fault which is theirs, learn and apply those lessons, and hopefully get a little better next time around.

And so, until the people in the world — even the people in my world — get a little better about accepting accountability, there will be no talk of ex-girlfriends, weekend coke binges that end in dramatic interrogation room scenes straight out of seventies television shows, the number of sexual partners I’ve had in my lifetime, homicidal rampages through suburban apartment complexes, ex-boyfriends, the progress of my training for a career as a Lucha Libre, exotic recipes involving Habanero peppers and human flesh, or where the body of that stripper I was allegedly last seen with might or might not be buried.

Nope. It’s nothing but rave reviews of cover versions of 80’s hits for you fuckers.

One of the best albums of the 1990s was a (sadly) unknown disc, the debut album from T-Ride. They’re a strange group — I liken them to a perfect melding of Queen and Van Halen with a heavy power groove. It’s the anti-guitar solo guitar hero album, a reimagining of heavy pop rock for the 21st century. Geoff Tyson, the guitarist (who later went on to play with another band deserving of far more recognition than they ever got, Snake River Conspiracy), said in an interview that he always felt the album would have been huge in the late ’80s, in the Def Leppard era, and I’m inclined to agree, except that I think that the music is still more than what most people in the radiovideo world are capable of simple processing.

I was fortunate enough, through small-world circumstances, to meet a girl named Terry in the fall of ’96. She was a crush of mine, Terry — who also, somehow, had just come to Birmingham after spending some time in California, some of which was with one Geoff Tyson. I don’t know what happened to Terry — would love to, now that I think about it — but I do still have the strange proof that this random girl I knew for only a few weeks had spent time with a random guitarist that is still sadly unknown — a demo tape from Geoff’s studio. There’s nothing on the label outside of a handwritten date and Geoff’s initials, but on the cassette (which I transferred to CD as soon as I had the chance, in the summer of ’97) are 20 unreleased tracks, rough and sometimes unproduced, but brilliant.

I think it’s possibly one of my greatest treasures. Imagine finding a one of a kind manuscript by your favorite author, or a demo of a movie that was later discarded by your favorite director — something unique (or might as well be, as for availability) that you just happened to find… It’s things like this (and the sheer number of them) that have happened to me across life that lead me to believe that you either have to accept the existence of synchronicity or fate.

I did a little surfing to find out what Geoff’s up to these days, and found that he’s been working with a new project for about 2 years or so now. Stimulator is — well, they’re interesting. Very 80s new-wave pop with a light sheen of industrial darkness. It’s like, I don’t know — what if Garbage did the soundtrack to Blade Runner? You can check out samples and download the entire debut disc here (seriously, you have to listen, if nothing else, to track eight, their cover of Olivia Newton-John’s MAGIC, originally heard in — anyone? — Xanadu, which also featured the brilliant work of Electric Light Orchestra). I hear rumors that there’s a second Stimulator album on its way soon, too…

I feel like I’m time travelling today. Not in that drank too much and woke up three days in the future way, although not entirely dissimilar, now that I think of it… But damned if MAGIC isn’t the perfect song for this feeling.

One of the benefits of not calling myself a writer (at least, not in any professional sense of the term) is that I don’t feel funny at all about ignoring the rules. My screenplays don’t take the three act route; half the time, I don’t bother with proper sentence structure, especially in my fictional writing. I’m not being a rebel and trying to break the formal rules; that’s too punk for me to attempt to claim.

I’m just putting down the stories that come to me, in the words that come to me.

But cliches are repeated ad nauseum for a reason, and stereotypes take hold because, while there are exceptions to every expectation, certain experiences are mostly universal.

You can fit any situation into a pigeonhole, if you squeeze hard enough, too.

Driving around Irondale and Crestwood this evening, after emerging from the dramatics of the past month (not just mine, but everyone’s), it struck me that act III is about to begin.

I would say that the lights in the lobby went on and off to signal that, but then they’d take away my driver’s license and put me on anti-seizure meds, which doesn’t sound nearly as much fun as I’d hope it would.

It’s time for a change. Life feels very stagnant, despite the turbulent waters that I place myself in. I can create change, and I will. But I’m hoping that soon change will happen to me, as well.

In the words of my senior year AP English teacher, “Sometimes a whale is just a whale.”

Ah, yes, you see the glories.  But have you thought about the flip side?

Have you considered that you will be on your feet non-stop from 9 PM until 4 AM or so, carrying case after case after case of beer, changing kegs (I don’t know if you’ve ever lifted a keg, but after the third of the night blows out, past and future hernias will start talking to you like only best friends and lovers do), and leaning over inside of coolers until your lower back is bigger than your wallet?

Granted, your wallet is pretty big.

Then there’s the people, constantly screaming out your name, snapping, waving, shouting their drink orders out (incorrectly, last night), and making snide comments just inside your peripheral hearing that you must be ignoring them (which, for the record, is the quick way to guarantee you’ll get ignored).  Sure, there are also plenty of really good people — people that tip you thirty percent on their tabs, which never fall below $100; people that include you in every round of shots they buy; gorgeous women; well-connected guys who make sure you get taken care of outside the bar.

Have you ever had to clean up a bar after a night like Saint Patrick’s Day, New Year’s Eve, or last night?  I’m trying, but there’s really no positive side to throw in next to this one.

Breaking up fights, maybe?  Of course, that’s a positive for a lot of people, especially in my bar.

I’m not complaining, mind you.  Even after working 40-50 hours at my day job, and another 10-20 on freelance work, band gigs, and whatnot, I wouldn’t trade my 20-25 hours on the weekends at Bailey’s for anything.  The money, of course, is phenomenal, even on a bad day.  The women are beautiful, the guys are good-humored. The best thing of all is the family that I work with — these guys are truly the best staff I’ve ever worked with, and we all form this secondary rag-tag post-nuclear family unit.  We’re all allowed to be who we are, which means that Marielle can flirt, Jason can tell the customers that that’s the wrong fucking way to get a drink, and Garth can moon the crowd.

I didn’t say we were for everyone.  But I can guarantee that we’re not boring.

Tyler last night made a crack about hating this place and wishing we could go back to Ruby Tuesdays (where we both used to work, many moons ago).  And I laughed, but cringed on the inside — who could ever work for a corporate hash factory after being cut loose in a place like this?

You know what?  You probably do want my job, actually, though I’m betting that the back pain I’ve got right now and will carry into work with me tonight never occured to you.   But even if you take that, the occasional stress-filled night ,the drama, the garbage and broken bottles and angry customers and the random full-moon fighting into account, and still decide you want my job:

Well, you can pry it from my cold, dead fingers.