Life in Alexandria Edited to Fit Today (Monday, Five Years Later)

“Wining About Something – What WAS”

Barrel 27 Rock and a Hard Place 2007 Grenache, another flavor to be nano-stored in the G-protein taste-bud memory bank.  What the world needs now is ‘light brown spice,’ and in the wisdom of a chef, in a world where sugar is both the cure and the glaze, is there a place for ginger?  Sip. Savor.  Slither. Having a transcendent head-out-of-stomach experience, devastated emotions ferment beneath the confident surface of an austere air.  Reminders precede memory loss.  I prepare my mind like an old computer hard drive that needed to free space by getting rid of rubbish of the mind/body/soul.  Nowadays, what with processor speed, RAM, and HDDs the way they are, why delete?  By then my Monday was undone.  I was unhinged, by God, unhinged!  Long looks upon blank walls, I started to draw in pencil something I knew must be erased some day in the future and wouldn’t be worth taking a picture of if I had a camera.  Inspiration was something that came from the word interstitial.  I was reading Moby Dick for the first time, knowing how it would end, and not wanting it to… Something about seafaring seemed…not more romantic, but more robust than waiting tables for a year in a random place where I knew one person well enough to call it home.  Bourne upon ancient saltwater currents, breathing hour spans, wresting writing from walls if not superimposing.  I must have made a good impression, this one that got away calls me back five years later, she wants to drive all the way from Alexandria to Buffalo to make out.  Should I encourage what seems like insanity to come to me? 

“Sloppy Second Joe”

Fast-food pick-up artistry, I set the standards for low-grade loving, poorest quality acceptable for public consumption, entirely a gluttonous mash, musty mouthful. A bottle of life in one hand and a bottle of life-altering substances in the other.  Spun like a child for fruity loops swimming in box Jesus juice.  My biggest regrets involve leaving something unattended, unfinished, or unseen.  It’s crazy though, I try to be omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient, a god-headed ideal.  Informed sources reliably relate information intelligently. Uninformed, unintelligent sources attempt to deviate my attention from what is real into memory illusion, those things that I remember to be true, but in fact, aren’t.  Hence the refresher.  I arise late, headache, memory splinters, something asymmetric struggles to fit, my shoulders are too tight for anything to be easy.  The verb to be! The verb to be! Action is more becoming to the gentleman, but I, jilted ball cap, lo ego, struggling to find clean pants, muttering, sputtering, pulse pouting, scrutinizing, and glutenizing to boot, I need a good reason to go out and suffer my abuse.

“Camels, Dude”

What exactly happened on the other side of the needle’s eye?  I will never see because I got stuck, stuck staring at the loopy end and missed the metaphor.  A spasmodic insertion concluded my vision. The end.

“Self-Addendum”

Mortal men wallowing in the shallows of dolorous demeanors, haphazard blankets on the wall-to-wall apartment floor for a bed, punctilious expressions all around.  Imagining self-mutilation and living in the moment, doing neither.  Guts. Glory. Escher? Allin.  Jesus Christ.  Quality counts individuality by ones, and to each, ownership.  Owner, boner, a sketchy loner enters a bar.  Each and every effect of ethanol on biochemistry realized multiplied by herb, spice, and illusion.  The self-indulgence of rich slaves, the struggle for abundant resources leaves idiots stuffed, self-taxidermy.  Guts in the mess hall, spilled truth serum on the hands of a self-administrator.  Robots suck. Short circuitry is a tail chase, a bitch dogged affair.  Tongue in the short-hairs, active cowlick brushing the mane of motherly vanity, living the dirty life to get clean.  Should I work harder at earning more or protest rising cost?  What do you say we get high without memory loss?

Forget your troubles!

Forget your cares!

Forget your worries!

Caution: Bears!

National Hot Dog Day

7/9/14 @ 2257

"Genderless Mentality... or is it Wymentality? Only in Wyoming."

“It’s hard to understand what’s going on in my head. What’s going on in my head is hard to understand. Maybe I’m hard-headed. Maybe I have something hard in my head. It’s hard to understand. What’s going on in my head is not so obvious,” a lady speaking, “I’ve got no direction, I’m aimless and natural. Maybe I’m artless instead...artlessly natural and directed. I’m coy; I’m selfish. I need humor because laughter drains out of me through my mouth and pores. Fear would drive me crazy. So would imagined tickles. Once I slept through the eyes of a stranger.”

Are all wizards ambidextrous or are no wands ergonomic? Why does wizard rhyme with lizard and blizzard? Strange noises coming from my bathroom, a different type of whirring this time, a higher-pitched motor, the intensity, no, the amplitude of stridation*. A scribulent* trance common to ecstasy as a moral code like the hedonist assertion that there is no moral code but PLEASURE! Lots of it, most of the time.  Aim high! Aim high on marijuana! 

stridation - compound word of stride music and striation geology

scribulent - something that a scribbling scribe would produce.

8/11/14 @ 1108

"I, Hedonist" 

I awaken after a night of delirium tremens after a week of bending straws into cocktails.  It sounds like people fucking outside my window (I remember crows).  My mind has been mocking me all night in the language of Ulysses: “They looked. Murderer’s ground. It passed darkly. Shuttered, tenantless, unweeded garden. Whole place gone to hell.” What the hell is wrong with me exploiting myself for pleasure? Because I am then exploited by others for their own pleasures too?  My body looks worse than it did the day before. I am not being by best. I don’t know what to do to be my best; this is high-anxiety.  Jeff, Connie, Noreen: names in my book of falling behind schedule (from zero to one to zero *blip*!), imaginary sine up, ten thousand things to be present for, another RSVP not responded to.  Another surprise appearance?

Lights, salary, saucesauce!

The lord of social deviants, a Dadaist.

Even dogs know to hide.

New body a slop, new soul a void,

If I had the Devil’s wit…

Eve’s part of man, that other funny bone, a seed of cartilage and knowledge, tickled Adam’s man parts.  Here come the ouroborates*, otiose ottava*, technical backbone, lunch sac lung and peanut brain.

Ouroborates - worshipers of the snake that swallows its own tail

Otiose ottava - a pointless heroic rhyme (usually Italian)

8/11/14 @ 1216

“Fruit of the Mews”

A snake ingests the double-backed feline domesticati.  The snake swallows them both at the same time.  Mornings admonish the drunkard wasting melatonin, neuromelatonin, B1, and catecholamines.  Fucking catecholamines in my eroding synapse alleys, collapsing cell walls, and bleeding onto cellular sidewalks.  Cats yowl; catecholamines y’all!

                Cartoon shitface wolfman Jack, quail egg sea urchin vodka, shooting mollusk, special operations octopi.  Colorful hibachi Iphone games hone generalized ideologies, collections of gardens of imaginary flower estates, direct audio-visual stimuli: eye-drunkennesses.  “IDs please,” at Seabar, Colt 45, pinky up. “Woke up in my own New Year’s Tullamore baby vomit.  Felt like Hendrix had he survived?  Vomitus asphyxiation.  Chemical cause still a mystery.”  Pierce Bricks, Jeremy, and Cal.  House of spackle.  Moving offices, 15 computers, human resource moments.  Liberty hounds the unchaste.  One guy at the bar, a lawyer, knows all about beer, hops, and the surly tender.  He gives schizophrenic advice. Cougar impasse? Shotgun wedding? Rational fear? Sur la Caesar!  Ongoing semantics validate laughs, validate slaughters. It tells the truth about uncentered foci* (chronic distractions), staying trapped in seasons of suffering, circles in circles, fly swot? Antihistamine?  Here kitty!  Tend the till.

                High-speed Buffalo buffalo connections buffalo.  They send many a man flying high against gravity, waiting on tip severance from their diner, another day’s prating ends in rum.

8/22/14 @ 1219

"Sour Soul Salsa"

A soul, disregarded by atheists, is still a word that bears recognition.  In that sense it is undeniably real. What weight a word carries is essential to the bearer.  What qualities might a good word bearer embody?  Conventions of truth, justice, and humility, and the ability to nurture souls.  Perversions cripple the spirit, soul’s synonym.  If the space between things compel, free the spirited!  My noisy chamber of mush, I slug through, feeling hurled.  Weep ray; we pray prayers full of sorrow to ward off the heathen, society’s menace. 1) The chronically knocked-up freeloading loin laborer.  Drop the bundle!  Have offspring!  How far gone? Some manifestations sing to themselves.  Take my wave-riding, coal-mining friend, town drunk #2, Mike’s Hard inebriant, pale, white-grey hair, moustache, glasses, lives with his aunt down the avenue bus route, a real chucklehead.  Buried under the urban alcoholic’s concretisms*, the goods of evil, fruits of his idle hands and pleading eyes.  He has the tic gene of a chronic flincher.  Counter that with the composed older gentleman commanding the attention of the bartender half his age, getting away with sunglasses and a panama hat indoors.  Somehow his spirit seems less pure and more satanic, the way he makes his personality fuckable, the fuck dabbler, urbane cunt connoisseur, fresh to death and close to it too, as the last liquid soul leaves the body, she stirs with her hot hunger under his receded life-force and his rock hard rigor mortis.

Concretism – any type of hardened belief, usually in spite of rationality

8/31/14 @ 1100

Innocence blown by a zephyr (taken away by a light breeze), I feel pleasure around my junk east of Eden? West, God (the One)’s one story ranch in Texas, home of evangelicalamericans who pray so hard their shit blooms smooth-stalked roses.

                What is high school equivalency? What is the highest equivalency? An elevated/excited plane/orbit, Pluto and the violent death of nine probably Arabs.  Crack the Charmin code of ass jammin’ to Signs and Signifiers on jazz cigarettes.

                Digital clock starin’, seeing parallel separation between elevens, block gaps, mass between openness.  Meat sauces melt inside the cold cock and ooze out with auditory hallucinations setting in.  Here come the hip tricks leading susceptible persons into neon nights.  I would like to shut it off, but being employed to keep it up has its percodentals (managing nagging pains, man).

                What is dry country bliss? What desertified clustermonkey decides between God and Allah?  One and the same people who blow themselves up to compete.  The pride of the righteously inclined hangs from their necks, an AK-47. “Naked virgins, Dude.”

                Careless deeds’ seeds’ dharma of difficult experiences, respond carefully, and as if care were easy.  I can barely take care of myself! My own business! What should be of relative ease?!  The child regards the machine.  The man manages his personal relationships. Wrong so often, wrong as policy, incorrect institutions circumvent so often and what is the true cost of ink?  Consider value per volume.  Think, think…

9/12/14 @ 2226

"The Reason Ability"

“Distance, n.

                The only thing that the rich are willing for the poor to call theirs, and keep.” Bierce, A.

    “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”

                “Know your enemy and know yourself and you will always be victorious.” Sun-Tzu

                My friend, the closest, always there, lurking in the shadow of loss and regret. Time and unprofitable energy expenditure, leeching lechery into the pit with your coal and pick-ax-nicker.  Fossil, that old timepiece, fueled sunset activities.  Carbon date me? Measure my radioactive bone. Ah, my head!

                I’ve been consistently tired lately, I know what it is, I’m bored, and it’s all my fault.  I’ve got to do something about my boring nature or I might stay asleep.  I think about where my soul might be going and then I shake my dick at it. She wants my soul (to Spoon), another succubus.  I do my best to give it to her but such a thing is hard to describe. It’s also difficult to explain. Metaphysics and organic chemistry restructure my cellular biology.  What part does the mind play? I psyche myself out, drink, and dream of nothing. You and I together? What is that? Do the math. It’s all in your head until it isn’t. Let it out, all of it or as much as you can, motivating myself as much as I can.  It’s easier to hinder, but what is progress? Determination of self and the individual’s ability to achieve higher standards, or higher degrees of good measure, high-society’s men on the central planning board or committee govern psyched-out country people, city and town folk.  Flag waving flagellates whip themselves into a frenzy of whipping one another and their submissive wives.  Why not?  Who has the reason ability?

--

"Poor People Plants"

Shades of eraser;

To care what some people think!

Twenty-eight blushes.

                 Psyched-out haiku: Twenty-eight colors, why not?  Shame redder. Honor bronzer.  Kiss and make-up; kiss the makeup.

                Sometimes it takes a very long time to finish something that has been started.  Sometimes I think to myself, perhaps it never ends that it will never be finished, but then I realize my unreasonable wishful thinking.  Of course it has to end.  Of course it needs to be finished before I die!  Time might not last forever!  Forever enough!  I have the comparative ability.  Compared to the rest, the best comparer was the discoverer of novel duality, truth of over half of all multiverses, and accepted by just half of all those with the Second Edition of the Comparative Universal.

                Meanwhile, historical objectivists objectify artifacts, fuckin’ urns ‘n’ vases.

                This one came from the Holy Scripture:

                “And he shall take to cleanse the house two birds, and cedar wood, and scarlet, and hyssop: And he shall kill the one of the birds in an earthen vessel over running water: And he shall take the cedar wood, and the hyssop, and the scarlet, and the living bird, and dip them in the blood of the slain bird, and in the running water, and sprinkle the house seven times: And he shall cleanse the house with the blood of the bird, and with the running water, and with the living bird, and with the cedar wood, and with the hyssop, and with the scarlet: But he shall let go the living bird out of the city into the open fields, and make an atonement for the house: and it shall be clean,” Leviticus 14:49-53

                He pardoned the turkey? Thanks, Obama.

                Central planners neglect lepers, preferring to throw welfare money at problems that could be solved by tossing hyssop instead.  It’s this type of orthodox thinking that’ll get this country out of the gutter and into the earthen vessel!

                Humaniterrorists (humanitarian terrorists) – people who truly believe in the fear that we all must have.

Twitter Profile

@odjdu <- the letters make a funny face.

021414

I am disengaged.  My disengagement is pronounced.  I love, but I don’t trust anything that I love.  Everything that I love plots to kill me.  Everything that I love seeks to take advantage of that love and use it to make a game out of me, to harm me, to do me wrong.  I don’t trust anybody or anything.  Therefore, I myself cannot be trusted.  I can’t even be trusted to take the blame.  I can’t even be trusted to know when I’m wrong or accept my faults because the things that I am attentive to may not always be the things that are right, but I attempt to be impeccable regarding the things that I am attentive to. 

I am attentive to detail.  Every little thing has to be perfectly aligned before it can go out.  It’s not that I’m OCD about it, I just need to know that I did a good enough job that it will go out.  My boss can trust me.  In that sense I am a tool.  I am a trusty tool.  My manager will say to me do this and I’ll do it.  My manager may say to me do that and I’ll do that too.  My manager, however, may not have my most long term interests in mind, I wear out.  My manager is only human.  My manager is not even just a man, she’s a woman.  I need to burn her, but I haven’t found the opportunity yet. 

If I could find the opportunity to change the way I am, wouldn’t I?  I am in Hell, bound for further Hell, and St. Valentine is not at my aid.  Why?  I can’t get a fuck.  I can’t fucking fuck.  Is a willing participant not legally required to fuck?  Love.  Who do I love?  I can’t say who I love.  I am not tenaciously in love.  I want to be tenaciously in love, but I get distracted, so I’m not.  I think I love somebody else.  I think about one person and then I think about another person.  If anyone close to me were to die, I’m not sure I would cry.  I’m not sure I would feel sorry.  I’m not sure I would give a fuck.

Why don’t I love?  I expect something in return.  I expect everything to always be even when the balance is generally not.  If I have the advantage I’ll keep it.  I want to be up and stay up.  I want to be buzzing.  I want to say the right thing at the right time and have control of the crowd.  I want to be a comedian.  I think I am a funny man.  Can a comedians love?  They laugh at tragedy.  It’s an attempt to feel good always.  The result is a depression punctuated by a few high highs that keep chasing an infinite plateau of  universal platitude.  The sad thing is, I don’t even remember all the few good times because I was drunk.

The sad thing is, I have lots of ambition.  I have plots and plans to pull my eyes through.  I have staggering luck.  I can get out of potentially rowdy situations.  When the going gets tough, the tough get going.  I can recognize a scene I don’t want when I don’t want one.  No, I don’t want another drink here, my prospects are limited, I’m playing the odds, and they’re not looking good.  There’s some old bag I could have in the bag, but do I want her?  Not with my eyes closed.  I’m a young buck and I want a young fuck.  Is that so much to ask?  May I have a young fuck?  May I have her with teeth?

The sad thing is, I have standards set too high.  I expect more of the world than I expect of myself.  I process what passes my desktop utopia unthinkingly, thinking about not this object under my nose.  Every time I sign my name to something, it says something about me.  What?  That I catch and release.  Time and space correlate.  I fish.  I am a fish.  I am a sponge.  I am an amoeba.  I am a protoplasm.  Stock photographs of every thong around, stock Victoria, KILLJOYKILLJOYKILLJOYKILLJOYKILLJOY!  Serious laughter with tears, the end of something lovely or awful. 

In the future, I fast forward.  Kerning boredom.  What can I do to make this go faster?  Do it quick!  RADOFF, the pride killing injury, yawning, fades into a blink stare.  Impulse tells me to take more out of regular force of habit to action.  All of a sudden I think this is smart, which is scary because of karmic justice.  Revealing intelligence limits excuses.  All of a sudden I’m all out.  I’ve played my last held card.  I’ve gambled every deck before I finished every bottle.  While they restock, I have another go around.  Casinos hyperbolize the American system of corporate capitalism.  Rich in one lifetime?  Quick!

ASAP’s Fables: A Reality Consideration;

Anything that exists as a part of one man’s phantasy can be made to resemble reality through art, but that one man’s reality can also be made to resemble phantasy through art. Thus considering the latter part, a surreal quality of happenings can be imparted upon daily happenstance through detail and delineation (or energeia and ergon).  This occurs especially with digital news media, where objective facts are repeatedly commented upon, thus spun. This excess deliberation results in a paronomasia of facts that becomes a sentient paranormality. The inculcated ideals of free-market-enterprise concoct a historybook of organized competitiveness both in the public and private sectors, to the extent that becomes a preoccupation of family life, a sacred microcosm in the sway of these tides. The private (business) sector where goods are generated and the public (governmental) sector where rules are produced, introduced, and enforced (in the name of regulation) bleed together at the party-lobby interface. Taken as a body of bodies and subjected to Freudian psychoanalysis, it could be said that the private sector (pun) is the libido and that the public sector is the ego of a country like ours. The libido focuses on obtaining its desires for power and reproduction of self (see conglomerates). The ego focuses on rules and defines identity (see conformity) and also power, which leads to the conflict or struggle between the two opposing parts seeking moderation by reason of best interest logic.  Best interest logic is examining what course of action will most likely lead to optimal optinormality.  Optinormality is a consistently beneficial state of being wherein one is buffered from extreme lows, but is uninhibited when it comes to peaks, where reality and phantasy intermingle, join forces, and merge or merger, emerging emergent seeing where thoughts pop into existence through the front door.  As math goes to Gauss and physics to statistics, there’s a good probability that you’ll need to know.  The basis is written on the stars where (typically southwestern) men of agreeable cogence assemble (usually in Vegas) to agree upon what is written exactly. 

What man is found both perfect and not dead forever? Jesus!

Betelgeuse was never dead, nor did it live a typical human existence, being a star.

The area of no leaving, that point on a map could be a veritable universe for an individual in a group-thinking culture.  What it is, what it is to become, and most importantly to most: what it used to be, all play a strained hand in the buffalo alternative outdoors, the end all.

111313

The Vietnam application program will put Vietnam on the map.

The Major Achievement program for fifth graders, not architects, will help a sergeant rank abroad for killing just children, not women and/or Jesus Christ to O’Reilly factors of seven or older target demographics who act informatively, but truly they bear false witnesses to the books, pressed to impress, not to add insight to superstition.

Max Fro Ward cut his hair. Maximilian F. Roward wore it long. Neither knew the difference. Adventurousness skips a generation.

A passerine parasite flies over a nest egg and when a tree leaves the forest it is fall by definition.

Contrary to common belief, contrary believers contrive consensus in the company of inner demon advocates, inner lawyers of conscience who work judgment into vice and vice into good judgment.

As the plagues upon North Africa, Biblical times remain in Biblical places where they belong to folk who fight to survive in vain. O vanity of vanities, all is vanity! Northern Amici of North Americans put plagues on vanity plates and blankets. No one knows who knits or sows rows for the children in North Korea.

In new rhetoric, Quintilian’s uncertainty provision assumes that God and man are not one and the same, so that if the audience’s stance on a speech is acoustically muggled or made party political, enemies will insist that sound logic is meant narrow-mindedly, only to garner good favor amongst compatriots or for personal gain; not correct! Logic speaks not to the philosophically uninitiated, the pearly swine, sharing space with prodigies on the house or senate floor. Logic speaks, at worst, to God’s dead face.  Why?

Desertification diversification manifests vegetabula rasa.

One intended one in ten dead, stick knit tomb.
Recheese the reachees’ three cheese sauces.

Dan is stirring up dust dusting. A dancer stirs up dust by dancing. Dan is a ‘roid ragger on the weekly rag.  He Pledges to particles to collect and relocate.  He moves his belongings, bed and all, into the room adjacent, and gets down to work.   (Today).  My butt bleeds when I diarrhea.  I think to myself, but he’s my friend! He’s my friend, my housemate, and my financial companion, but not for long.  He does not respect the needs of my friends and therefore does not respect my needs. A friend in need is a friend indeed. Let’s make for stormy weather.  There needs to be a reason for the season.  There needs to be a chill for there to be ice.  If he wants snow, he can have a snowy city.  I’m not taking skin off my back to accommodate the inhospitable. Let’s take the sugar pill.  Let’s imagine something’s happening and then do something about nothing. 

Machines handicap machines handicap man’s natural survive abilities in such a way as to render them both ineffective and ineffectual. Machines belittle men.  Machines are unnatural outcroppings of man’s desire to control and to render into submission creation, for creation cannot be ordered without disorder and order cannot be maintained without those disordered masses relying on maintenance for welfare.  Warfare punctuates; noise, heat, and light followed by darkness, cold, and silence; creation undone.

CitySolve

I awoke at 730 with no alarm to drive to Rochester, NY from Buffalo to participate in CitySolve, an Amazing Race (CBS) style scavenger hunt.  It was a difficult crunch for me because the previous night, Friday, 6/21 I was out until about 300, from the Sportsman Tavern on Amherst St. to watch my buddies the FolkFaces play a few songs for a Steve Earle tribute.  I had skated over with my friend J (she biked) at 2330 and the FF’s went on about 0030. A group of musicians stayed afterward for an acoustic citsuoca (palindrome).  I had five Rolling Rock 12oz. cans before I left for the show, then one Labatt Blue bottle, and two Stella Artois pints at the bar.  I also smoked some American Spirit cigarettes that J was offering me, then a chillum of some kind herb with a kind gentleman on the upstairs outdoor patio there.  This hit me especially hard because I hadn’t smoked any smokable in over a month because I have been seeking employment and drug testing is common procedure for new hires in New York State.  I do enjoy a good smoke now and again, but not in any fiendish kind of way.  Anyway, I hitched a ride part of the way back with R, J’s boyfriend and then skated back to my place exhausted on 6/22…

                Dehydrated, I stopped at the Spot Coffee on Elmwood for one of my hangover cures, a coffee and a bran muffin. Taken on the road, I sleepily took to the thruway at 70mph and arrived an hour later at my destination at Corn Hill, Rochester.  There I met S, the coordinator. T+J arrived shortly after.  Part of CitySolve involved a costume contest that S was gunning to win, and we prepared to become the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  S was Donatello, T was Michelangelo, J was Leonardo, and I was Raphael.  The outfit involved green tights, brown underwear worn on the outside, a green athletic tee (painted yellow abs), and a shell made out of a large baking tray and green-painted paper mache.  We had strips of colored fabric that wrapped around elbows, knees, wrists, and the one with eyeholes for our face.  We had plastic mock weapons from Toys ‘R’ Us: a bo for Don, a nunchaku for Mic, a sword for Leo, and sais for Ralph.  The whole thing took about an hour to get into, but we looked good.  We called a taxi to take us to Murphy’s Law, a bar where the race started and finished, and our driver was the first to take a picture of us with his iPhone.

                When we arrived we made quite a scene, not that we had to do much acting, but heads were turning.  I knew I was in for a hell of a day when Don was getting aggravated that the bartender wasn’t serving drinks at 1100 and Leo was outside smoking a cigarette (a child’s cartoon hero, aging).  I only knew one other person there, a friend from elementary school with his wife, but the CitySolve event coordinator said that it was the largest turn-out he had ever seen.  It was a big crowd; it filled the parking lot out back and the sidewalk just outside the parking lot.  Once congregated, the costume contest took place.  People came up at random, stood on chairs, struck a pose, and the crowd voted based on applause.  My favorites were a couple girls who dressed up as minions from Despicable Me (they could even do the voices), and another group called Too Legit To Quit who wore gold ultra-baggy pants, black tank tops, gold chains, and a fake inflatable beach boom-box they danced to.  Our costumes were the best because we won the costume contest, we got the most applause (Don would later say that they were cheering for 5, nay, 10 minutes), and obtained a pair of JammyPacks for 2/4 of us (not I), in the snail mail.

                The race began and the first question was “What New York based team has gone the longest without winning a league championship?” Rangers, Knicks, Islanders, or Mets?  Each answer had a corresponding intersection of streets.  The correct answer would yield the packet we would need to perform our tasks to complete our quest, the wrong answer a dead end.  Unfortunately, no turtle knew the answer to the riddle; fortunately, we were able to just follow along with the crowd that was generally heading all in one direction.  Myself being the only runner in the group was somewhat frustrated because I find that I will actually get more tired walking than running long distances, and there was no way we would ever be able to win the overall event at a turtle’s pace. But we satisfied ourselves in our early victory, obtained our question packet, and meandered over to Hogan’s Hideaway to hash out the clues and have a much deserved first drink.  Don had a double vodka-soda, Mic had a vodka-soda, Leo had two double Jack and cokes, and I had one double vanilla rum-spiced rum and coke with a cherry and an order of fries.  So, Leo got drunk, I got soberer from the night before, and the Utahan bartender took our first pictures in front of a ‘Love Art’ painting hanging on the wall, thus satisfying a bonus requirement for the game.

                From there we found a golf-tee sculpture outside Parkleigh and took a picture in front of it.  Check that off the list.  We had to take a group-selfie because some black old bee waiting for the bus wouldn’t push our button.

                Walking north on Goodman now, a car pulls over and a very pretty black young bee gets out to take a picture with us.  She had just graduated from Wilson high school and was still wearing her mortarboard from the ceremony.  We crossed University and Leo decided to take a couple pictures at a construction site near the art gallery: one coming out of a port-o-potty, and one sitting in an unattended backhoe.  We then crossed to the other side of Goodman and into the Village Gate complex to find Village Idiots Improv.  There we had to do an improv-game where as a group we had to have a conversation using every letter of the alphabet consecutively.  It started out something like, “Allison is such a bee-sting,” to “Bitch better learn how to respect my authority,” to “Cunt needs to wash herself,” etc. pretty harsh and not always witty, we thus completed our activity, got another picture, and moved forward.

                Now was mostly walking: University Ave. to Towner’s bike shop to play a roll-a-tire game for a pic, back University to Chocolate & Vines for a pic, all the way down University to E. Main St. to the YMCA to play a memory game for a pic (Don couldn’t remember the suits of her two cards at this point), East Ave. Spot coffee to play flip-cup for a pic, across the Genesee River to Exchange to Nathaniel’s to throw darts for a pic (I got three bulls-eyes on my sixth try).  Many of the people driving in Rochester that day were honking, calling out ‘Hey!’ and Turtle catchphrases, and taking pictures and videos of us as we walked.  We stopped a number of times and posed for people along the way.

Since we were in the home-stretch and not really in race contention, we had a couple drinks. I had a gin and tonic and a shot of Patron Reposado with Don and Leo.  Don and I then went across the street and Don picked up a bottle of whipped-flavor vodka.  We were near Corn Hill so we went back to her place to have a couple whipped sodas.  We took a picture with Don’s dog Hollywood, and Don held Hollywood as if she were a football and struck a Heisman-trophy pose for a pic.  We filled up a water-bottle with more whipped soda and after a nice mover-lady took a pic of us in front of New Taj, we went back to Murphy’s Law to finish.

Here things get a little hazy.  I had a Guinness there, but the amount of vodka, and the fact that I had eaten very little all day were starting to hit me.  Don called a taxi and after we all clambered in and started driving she realized that she had left her bag, so we turned back to retrieve it.  I forgot the credit card holding my tab open until later.

So after a long day, we were finally able to change out of our sweaty costumes, we said our first goodbyes, and Mike and Leo left.  Don was planning on going Out, so she was changing clothes/putting on makeup.  I didn’t have anything nice to wear, so S (I’m going back to Don=S) rustled up one of her dad’s button-down mustard-yellow silky collared shirts.  I was sipping on another whipped soda, reading Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace. I got through the first three pages that constitute the first short story when I woke up to S calling my name from the top of the stairs. I had a puddle of drool forming on the open pages of the book on the table because I had fallen asleep with my head in my hands.  Granted, when I awoke I felt much better, but I definitely realized my need for something to eat and that my drinks weren’t adequately performing this caloric function.  I climbed the stairs in response to S’s calling and relate that need to her.  Her response was to pop open a black-painted prescription vial and hand me a broken, generic Adderall, and says “Here, take this, then you won’t need to eat.”  I recognized the orange 30mg tab, I had taken a few in the past, and it was broken four ways, so 30/4 = 7.5mg would make me feel alright for awhile, it wouldn’t kill me (right away), and it would curb my appetite.  The taste was vaguely reminiscent of orange-creamsicle.  I thought that it must have been designed that way on purpose to market to child-geniuses, thumb-suckers.  At this point I started to balance myself out with a couple magic mushrooms too, I suppose there could be a number of reasons for or against this decision, but whatever the case, I found it to be pleasingly acceptable, for I began to feel energized, aware, and not hungry.

We took a cab back to Gibbs/Main where the main action of Rochester’s Jazz Fest was occurring.  There was one large tent across from the Eastman Theatre I would find myself in later (The Unity Health Systems Big Tent (UHSBT)).  There was a larger two-story tent at the end of Gibbs St. blocking the street off for walkers and we walked this way passed the tent and through by the row of food vendors (I wasn’t even thinking about food at this point).  At this point I realized that I didn’t have my credit card and I forgot what happened to it, so S called T and she remembered where it was and reminded us that it was back at Murphy’s Law, so we trotted ESE down East to get it.  We had another drink there (I had another Guinness) and closed the tab.

We wandered back and I found myself on a street that was behind the UHSBT.  We were near a club with a line out the back twenty deep (Abilene), and the rear of the UHSB tent lent VIP access.  S was making some calls, looking for her friend H who had a couple extra club-passes for the two of us.  We met them around the corner at Salvation Army parking lot.  We met with H, her boyfriend SL, and her mom AM, H&SL smoking a bowl of some kind.  I made water behind a dumpster (the first since I woke up in the morning, sweating all day) and we took our club-passes and went inside the UHSBT where the Shuffle Demons were playing.  We moseyed along the right wall of the interior of the tent, passed the bar, and settled to some area close to the stage where there was some space and danced.  Because there were chairs, despite the fact that the band was the Shuffle Demons and it was really good dance music, the grand majority of people in the tent were seated, looking up at the stage as though appreciating an opera, not what it was.  That was fine though, I had my dancing druthers and even a piece of cheesecake on a stick.

                The five of us wafted like the breeze out after the show was over, sat for a second to collect ourselves completely then sauntered back down Gibbs to rejoin the crowd on East.  We went one block to Chestnut St.  There was one of the free outdoor stages set up pumping good music all around, and we fluttered like moths to some bright lights at Xerox tent where they were testing some 360 degree experimental photographic technology on enthusiastic participants.  We danced while waiting in line.  Some lady standing behind us complained about S’s skanky skirt, but she was skankin’ it easy and paid no mind.  I wasn’t really into the whole picture-taking tent scene, I was there for the music, but like I said, I was having fun, and dancing over the whole lot with AM.

                H, SL, and AM parted ways with S and me.  I parted ways with S after walking a ways down East with her because she was planning on staying out all night clubbing (and not eating), and I had my mind on getting back to Buffalo so I could get a good night’s rest, relax Sunday, and go to my job interview Monday fresh.  Thus I walked the final mile back to my car and successfully drove back.  R, S’s brother called me when I was on Buffalo Rd. getting gas and tea, he wished I had stayed with her to take care of her, but he knows how she is and that she always survives.  I munched on a few mushrooms when I got tired on the thruway, just enough to keep me stimulated, washed down with Arizona green tea with honey.  Dangerous, perhaps, but I was determined.  I was determined to get a Lloyd’s burrito from the taco truck that was waiting for me near the house when I got back.  It weighed a pound and tasted like heaven.  I died happy and it was only midnight.

                While this sort of action would be considered enough for most people, it was hardly for me.  Though still quite hungry in the morning, I waited until my home crew gathered together for Mythos brunch.  J,C,M,A, and I settled in for an a.m. Bellini followed by breakfast. I had an Italian sausage omelette with homefries and rye toast, yum!  Back to the house, slathered on SPF15, packed, and then J,C,A,D,L went in two cars after B showed up to go to Woodlawn beach on lake Erie.  Now the last time I was at Woodlawn had been a couple summers before and I remember having fun, but generally being unimpressed by the Butt-Stop sand and lack of activity.  This time however, the sand was cleaner and they had installed a beach-side bar that was pumping good old-school hip-hop, hopping with bikinied booties.  So I slept, I played three games of volleyball (won one out of three), had two Tecates, threw a Frisbee around, slept again, swam, and left.  One thing that struck me there was the array of wind turbines spinning about a half mile down the beach, the clear sky, the active people, a few boats (one with a pirate flag), and even the seagulls floating between the water, the beach, the people, the windmills, and the sky filled the scene with activity.  B drove A and I back through South Buffalo, looking for food though most restaurants were closed because it was Sunday.  We eventually hit Allentown and walked a few blocks east to Don Tequila’s for a pitcher of Dos Equis and dinner.  I had another superb burrito.

                Monday I woke up late, went for a 3.5 mile run, got dressed in a suit and went for a job interview at TestAmerica Inc., an environmental chemistry lab in Amherst.  I had an enjoyable interview then went home.  J was there and he promptly asked if I had any plans for the evening and if I wouldn’t like to go see Wynton Marsalis at Artpark?  Heck yes, J had free tickets because C was sick and C’s parents weren’t going.  We all had a few beers and then M,A,J, and I drove to Lewiston for some hep jazz!  I noticed it was predominately an elder crowd, but today I didn’t mind sitting.  We all got a 16oz. Molson and then took our seats in row B, only five rows away from the stage!  Being able to see the faces of the musicians playing up close definitely added to the enjoyment because they all seemed pretty laid back and enjoying the scene just as much if not more than we.  There were a couple numbers by Miles Davis, one by Cab Calloway, one by Dizzy Gillespie, others, and then a few numbers written by the band members, my favorite called BaBa Black Sheep, my friend’s favorite being a Spanish sounding number written by the bassist.  I got a 16oz Mike’s Harder Lemonade for the second set, (diabetes in a can), though honestly, I felt that the experience was un-enhance-able, I was so uplifted by the music where we sat in the cut that I grooved.