It may as well be late September, except for the fucking heat.

Once in a blue moon (not coincidentally, I write, as we just had one), I get this feeling. It’s a good feeling, shiny, translucent, harmonic and cocoonlike. It’s not unlike the post-hangover clean feeling that I used to get every Monday when I was still doing the Sunday night karaoke thing, and yet it is. It’s two parts nostalgia, one part transformative. Nothing’s really different today — I’m still dateless and alone, soon to be unemployed, have two cats and too much debt and my share of problems, iDVD still runs too slowly, my bass needs an amp. But it feels like something good is waiting around the corner, ready to pounce when I come into view.

Do I really think good news is in the air tonight? Nope (not that I think it’s *not* — but best to expect the worst and hope for the best). But that feeling is in my gut and chest and head, and I’m going to enjoy it while it’s there. You never know when it might come back, if at all.

Recommended listening: the soundtrack to MONSTER by BT, preferably the 5.1 DTS mix. You can almost hear the autumn approaching.

Ye Gods, the office refridgerator smells like a gigantic dill pickle died in there.

SO… what am I looking for in life? I’ve spent too much time saying that I don’t know what I’m looking for, just what I don’t want. But maybe it’s time to make lists.

Because, if you weren’t aware, that’s one of the best ploys for putting off doing what needs to be done while making yourself feel as though you’re accomplishing something.

In a job, I need: Stimulation, both intellectual and creative. Nothing rote, nothing that feels like it’s going through the motions day in and day out. Flexibility in schedule — not to a severe degree, but enough so that I don’t feel like a prisoner. Room to advance based on ability and aptitude, not willingness to politicize and brown-nose. At least enough money to live comfortably — which is to say, being able to save, and not having to live week to week like I have for too many years.

Optional: I’d like to feel like I’m making a difference in the world, no matter how small. I’d llike to feel like I’m in a field where I can excel to recognition.

Wow, that was fun. No, really. I say that with no sarcasm whatsoever. Seriously.

So, why didn’t they take advantage of the alphabetical hurricane naming system, and go from Bonnie to Clyde? Then Florida would still be soaked this weekend, but at least headline writers everywhere would breathe a little easier for a day or two.

I can feel the cooler air coming, yes I can. It would be perfect weather to cuddle with someone. So I’ll settle for memories.

Things will be looking up shortly. That’s what I think today.

I know I’ve put all this up here as a way of helping myself to remember — but why didn’t anyone tell me that I sounded so whiny?

Jesus.

km

APOD: 2004 August 2 – Spicules: Jets on the Sun

This is the sound of the new wave of thinking.

Sometimes, though, I’m just not sure how to interpret what I’m hearing.

As of August 31, my job no longer exists, so there’s that. The official line is that I’m being laid off, which is good for my resume; the truth behind the official line is rather unimportant to me. So I get to get my resume back in working order, and start that process that I love so – the job hunt. Argh.

Much easier when it’s a laid-back, replacement sorta search.

On the one hand, I’ve been trying to get away from this job for a long time — over a year, maybe longer. On the other, I’m now one more reason short on why it is that I stay in this town, and one less exterior definition of self. It’s a tough juggle in my head.

Plus, I hate hunting for work.

And for the first year in three, my short script isn’t a finalist for the Sidewalk competition.

But on the bright side, I’ve got the cover story this week in the Birmingham Weekly, my piece on local film / Hide and Creep. So that’s coolish.

To the resumemobile, Batfucker.

Stumbled across a Google cache of a certain crazy part of my past — well, part of my past’s past, I guess, is more accurate.  And it’s strange how something so peripherally connected to anything can bring back such strong emotional memory.  Emotion Sickness, says Daniel Johns.

And other such nonsense: music is either a passion or a job, to bring it down to the binary world where things are or aren’t.  If it’s a passion, you love it, you have no choice but to do it, and while there are bad nights and good nights, the overall experience is one of pleasure, no matter what the surrounding climate is.  Even the worst nights are, for the most part, filled with something positive that you focus on.  Or it’s a job, in which you are a freelancer, looking for an audience that is interested in paying for what you provide.

If it’s a passion in which you constantly find you have nothing pleasant to hold on to, then you’re a miserable person.  If it’s a job that you have suffered through time immemorial with no supporting audience, it might be time to find another job.

For years I’ve heard that there is nowhere in this town to play music / nowhere that supports music / no audience / etc.  But I’ve also seen bands like Lynam and Vallejo and Downright pack bars out. I know many a musician who does nothing but play — the guys in Roosevelt Franklin, and Stuart McNair, to name but a few.  I’ve played many shows with good crowds who dug the music I was playing. 

If you don’t like what the town has to offer, move on. Stop bitching and whinging, and do something to change, instead of waiting for change to happen. 

But don’t be surprised if this world you live in is a microcosm of the bigger, more real cities.

The only businesses that exist in a city are those that the inhabitants will support.  If a given business has failed time and again in your locale, you are part of an audience that is too small to reasonably support said business.  If you can’t live without said business, move.  If you can’t move, learn to cope.

Currently listening to: Somewhere Over The Rainbow / If I Only Had A Brain (Tuck Andress).

Coincidence?

I am never again dating a Christian.

Thank you very much.  Good night.  I’ll be here all week.  Try the lamb.

How is believing in the possibility of ley lines any weirder than believing that a hippy died to clear the way for you to sin as you deem fit to interpret your Bible? And how can you claim I generalize when you spout on about all Catholics and all Jews and all Muslims this and that?

I used to criticize Melissa for implying that I am anti-Christian, based on my lack of organized religious profession.   In a few more months, I’ll have to ‘fess up to it, though.

Either that, or I’m going into the ministry.  I can’t possibly do any more harm than your leaders are already doing.

Fuck me if Tori Amos isn’t right.  Sunshine State my faux blonde head…. It rained literally from the moment I crossed the state line on Friday and has been sunny for about three hours since then. And those hours occured in other time zones.

The soundtrack for MONSTER is brilliant, and has been the only high point of my vacation.  And that’s sad.  Oh — wait.  I forgot about ANCHORMAN and KING ARTHUR.

I have 99% crossed the state of Florida off of my list of places to live.  Not only is it too fucking hot here (seasons?  what seasons?), and the tourist to human being ratio is incalculable by my educated self, but the ley lines south of Alabama are against me, to be kind. 

Every vacation that I’ve spent in FLorida has been marked by some really bad moments — last year was my mental state (my fault, purely and unabashedly, but not fun, regardless), this year seems to be a steroid/Effexor withdrawal (or a series of really bad decisions, but that’s a call for someone else to make)… Even the summer that Melissa and I went to Destin with the family was less than pleasant, especially after that wonderful fight. 

Ah, what would true love be without that first memorable fight?

More pleasant.

I don’t care what anyone says: Van Halen is a wonderful cure all.

Later this week: I interview Norah Jones, which should be nice.  I’ve only recently discovered her music, out of my catalog as it falls, but I find it a nice change of pace from everything else that would fall into my iPod, could I afford one.  She’s got a beautiful voice, first and foremost, and her music is very intimate and passionate.  She’s very fortunate, not only to be making a living pursuing her passion, but to be doing so with her music, not some record execs. 

Also later this week, thanks to Wade: I’ll call back the producers of a new reality TV show called DOUBLE OR NOTHING.  One email later, and it’s entirely possible that I could lose everything I own to one spin of the roulette wheel.

What the fuck, right?  Can’t be too much worse off than I am now.  And at least then I would well and truly have the reason to move wherever I choose and start over.

But there’s no starting over knowing what I do, is there?  And I can look at that as either brilliant or not.

I would want to go home, but I know it’s no better there — there’s nowhere to hide with a sickness inside.  Or somesuch.

Oh, good, the neighbors like rap.  Now, I go to kill random Floridians.

Well, no so random, really.

Cloud Connected
Originally uploaded by abstract visionsound.

Angry. Grr. With big pointy teeth, even.

I love the colors that sun and clouds can combine to make.

Of course, without sun, the clouds wouldn’t really be visible, or even there. So, yeah.