Steve Gilliard

Steve Gilliard over at the News Blog makes for some great reading, but also for some fun photo editing:


If I can get my ass writing again, I'll tell about the friendly honky tonk near my place that I went to last night.

Just A Kid

One part was in Madison, but Madison was run down and had very cubist architecture. There was some thing on the Square, like an art fair, and I was running around trying to find a Coke, I think.

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I was four years old and thought that it must be 1978. I wrote Johnny Rotten a letter talking about something. I hoped that he might come over to my house. He did (to my Sun Prairie one). My parents, who we're not my parents but more like Fred Willard and some Stepford wife, answered the door. My father (Fred) asked who the hell he was and my mother said “Oh, he was our waiter at Denny's last week!”

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I forget most of this. I was going to some theme park, but the theme park was kind of post-apocalyptic. I remember being in my sleeping area, but then walked around. There was some 70's game show going on. The was a stand full of B- List celebrities, including Dick Van Patton (he was on all of them!) There were also disco dancers, kind of like Solid Gold. The celebrities would pick letters or something and grid would place them. The answer was “cockroach” written several times in different languages.

Headaches and Back to Work

I took almost two weeks off of work because my tremors came back again. Another medication switch and some time has taken care of that. Now I'm no longer on any OCD medicine, as that makes it worse, so I'm dealing with stress headaches here and there. I'll have those under control in due time, but that is after another ER visit (#4) , a ton of doctor's appointments, and another MRI (#3). Some people have trouble finding the right job, or have shit friends, or a family that they can't stand. I don't have that; I have weird brain functions. Thankfully, I have good people on the case.

In better news, I've finally made a damn podcast. I had to split it into two parts as Garage Band only lets me use 66 minutes per. Got me.....

Happy Darwin Day!!!!

Secularists Unite!

Die Krieg Ist Abgeschlossen

It was World War II and my father, a couple of others and I were in Normandy. We found a hole in the ground that led down into a unfinished, suburban American-style basement. We went down into the whole and I kept throwing grenades through the studs and blowing up Germans. My father said not to do that as we needed to find information. Then Germans behind the counter in the unfinished basement threw red bottles of ketchup (the old, restaurant type that showed no brand) over at us in means of surrender. One crazy lo0king German walked out with a rather large rifle. I walked over. I can't remember if he shot at me, but I don't think so.

Then the dream rebooted. I told everyone to let me go down by myself. I told them that if I wasn't back in ten minutes to blow the hole. I went down there and shot a couple of them. Another came out and shot me in the back, but I was invincible. I told him that it is rare, but that I'll give him a second chance. Then I yelled that the war is over (in German) and that they should stop. I heard one say something, then another and the other shot the first one. I went over and killed the one who shot the other. The first one was shot in the abdomen.

I walked up the stairs/ladder with the two of them, the shot one over my shoulder. They started telling my group that I speak German and can't die. I told my group that I didn't know what they were saying. They left and I guarded the Germans. I took a piece of wire, wrapped a hook in it, and took the bullet out in the injured German. My perspective in the dream turned to the wire going into his body and pulling out the bullet. The other German was freaking a little and I told him, in German, that the war was over for him and that I was 10,000 years old. I also told him that I was born American, but ended up back 10,000 years ago and killed more people than were in the war. I said I was tired of the death.

Kind of How I Feel

These songs reflect what the last few days have been like. Ugh....

Optimistic - Radiohead

Not Going Anywhere - Keren Ann

Eon - Supergrass

Valediction - Richmond Fontaine

Y Teimlad - Super Furry Animals

We're Just Friends - Wilco

Isolation - Mercury Rev

Solace for Pain - The Gentle Waves

Bar Italia - Pulp

Ocean - The Velvet Underground

Renew & Restore - The Gentle Waves

Not Going Anywhere - Keren Ann

I Cried Like a Silly Boy - DeVotchKa

Why? - Slumber Party

I'm On Fire - Bruce Springsteen

Heaven - Talking Heads

Undone - Imperial Teen

You're The Storm - The Cardigans

No Lonesome Tune - Townes Van Zandt

Hidden Song - Cyann & Ben

Ghosts of Things to Come - Clint Mansell

High, Low and In Between - Townes Van Zandt

Don't Follow - Alice In Chains

Ripple - Grateful Dead

Long Way - Queen

Crown of Love - Arcade Fire

All Alone - Mad Season

Return to Oz - Scissor Sisters

I'm Set Free (Closet Mix) - The Velvet Underground

Lua - Bright Eyes

My Head Falls Softly - Kitty Craft

Behind Her Smiling Eyes - Cyann & Ben

Hell Is Chrome - Wilco

I'm Going Slightly Mad - Queen

Plastic Jesus - The Flaming Lips

Harvest Breed - Nick Drake

Pretty Things - The Gentle Waves

Wise Observations

I found this here:

A Boy in a Barbershop

I took my youngest sons to the barbershop Sunday afternoon and, as usual, my 6-year-old brought a book. While the 4-year-old was getting his hair cut, Michael knelt on the footrest of an empty barber’s chair. He propped the book on the seat and, with perfect obliviousness, rotated the chair by pushing against the floor with one foot. In that unlikely posture, he read Strange Museum for the 10 minutes it took the barber to cut his brother’s hair.

I would have been crippled had I done what Michael could do without thinking. His body and mind are elastic. Story enters his consciousness and fills it to the exclusion of sore joints and a too-loud radio. He is open to words and narrative in ways I can no longer imagine. Story displaces cares and conventions – a gift of which he is unaware, that he will some day lose. Remember the wistful opening lines of Randall Jarrell’s “A Girl in a Library”:

“An object among dreams, you sit here with your shoes off
And curl your legs up under you; your eyes
Close for a moment, your face moves toward sleep . . .
You are very human.
But my mind, gone out in tenderness,
Shrinks from its object with a thoughtful sigh.”