Category Archives: mindpod

Tom and Zack

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Sometimes its just like that… You are sitting at your favorite place for potato juice then you realize you don’t even fucking drink that anymore. So you order some bourbon and start to relax when you just can’t. There is tension… so you do some social media bullshit. Then it hits you what a mistake that is because the world seems to be going to hell in a handbasket- oh wait just us.

After the bourbon settles and I stop looking at news, I am actually thankful. I force people to listen to whatever I want on the jukebox by using my phone to override the next pick. It’s the little things. It dawned on me as I usurped some slash-my-wrist 80’s emo bullshit with some Rage that holee shit! 25 years ago when you were doin whatever the fuck you were doin like oh ya trying to finish high school while navigating teenage motherhood-ish…oh wait, I didn’t have my own kids but I had some my parents made so that was just me. Anyway a pivotal moment in music happened. I can always count on this album to tap my feelings with all the intensity I feel. I don’t need to know the same exact things, that happened – I just need the Rage.

Killin’ in the name of

quarter century of lives lived through pain unheard of

Where was I when things goin down

Kickin’ it safe in my skinny albino alpaca town

Beat a girl to the ground or did you just fuck around

No idea what those boys been through

How those girls feel shamed

All the times we cause the pain

I’m a silly white girl with privilege

Such as it is today

I work for less pay than the pyramid’s top

but what the hell have I to say

Complaints

I make myself sick

I want for nothing

Full belly

Shelter

What more could I wish?

Who am I to complain?

WHO AM I TO COMPLAIN?

Who am I to feel pain?

Who am I to be pissed, when much is denied to so many

and I am the one who took it away

My starting matters not

Nothing

No

Thing

The skin I wore with luck galore

It kept me safe and whole nobody’s whore

but it couldn’t protect the rest

Ask my bro… he’ll protest.

His shape, His life

Mold my love and passion

His skin was no protection

Nor his gender from action and detection

Sad fact is we ARE human

Our race plays only plays a part

but our being our soul… it comes from the heart

Our drive

Kill-love-hate-protect

We have a choice each one

We are the metamorphosis of our choices

We choose what we become…

Do we become the forces?

The same that burn crosses

Let them cause holes in our spirits

Causing tears and fears

Are we inferior

am I in fear of years

Does skin matter so much

Or does our heart determine us

Do we let the established tell us

Or do we

Me

You

Tell them who we are

Do we stand up and testify

Do we take the power back

Take the Power Back

(a really good) holiday challenge

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Is it just me or do the holidays start earlier and earlier every year? It seems to me that if Samhain has not yet passed, then stores should not be allowed to put up decorations for magic baby day.  If I haven’t even given thanks for the pilgrims giving smallpox to the indigenous peoples yet, then that shit ain’t right. Maybe if it were Fear’s Fuck Christmas, I wouldn’t be so offended.  But i’m not likely to hear that while picking up diabetes in a bag for the neighborhood ghouls.  Why don’t stations play a better selection of holiday shit? Why must they always go with ye olde golden christmas oldies a la bing? Why can’t we get some hard rock or punk or ska or Queen???

So faithful friends I present a challenge. Most specifically to my favorite diverse type music loving friends; DJ joshpsmsc; The Social Assasian, Mr Atomic, Miss “Jen” e sais quoi, Mr (I use that loosely) Jody Neil Ruth, Miss (morethana) ShoeWhore,  TravisISivart and the original mini (t)hug Liz aka FloRich… Don’t be offended if you weren’t named by name. I love you none the less and will happily listen to your crap selections as well.

Make a list, or better yet, a youtube playlist of your favorite holiday tuneage. It can be traditional if that’s your bag but the angrier, the louder the harder…. the better!!  I expect a shitload of variety. A minimum of 5 songs would be appreciated but knock yourselves out… Go big. Give me a playlist that will make me the shame most awesome ever of my office when I “accidentally” play it at the company holiday party. 

In fact let’s make a contest out of it. I shall challenge myself as well and have mine up within a week. I know my friends don’t like to pass up a chance for free shit so here goes.

My favorite list/playlist will get a shiney gift wrapped goodie from me.  Sent directly to your door. Go forth, play music and be merry bitches!!!

posted from my tablet thingy

do not invoke the pop…

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I do not like pop music. This may seem like a little thing, but it isn’t. For me pop encompasses a wide range of shit (really, SHIT) and none of it appeals to me. You can have all that candy coated teenage bull shit and I will take a hard driving baseline. I will have some Tool with a side of Iron Maiden and enjoy some Rage Against the fucking Machine for dessert. I’ll take some soul, some rock steady, old skool awesome shit to make me shake my groove thang. Some Ray Charles, some Etta James, some Al Green, some Otis with a side of the Specials, the Skatalites, Mighty Mighty Bosstones and some Gaylads (no pun intended) and Johnny Nash for a finisher. I will admit I have become a huge fan of Mumford & Sons, Florence and the Machine, The departed, and XX. But, you can keep your Bieber and Taylor Swift your Beyonce your bull shit boy bands and wanna be’s fakin’ the vibrato (I’l keep Justin Timberlake though. He’s fucking hot and well, do I need another reason?? okay, he’s talented too). I have tried to give this shit an honest go but I can’t do it. Give me Master of Puppets and some Zeppelin IV. I’ll take some Holy Diver, In the Absence of Truth, Mondo Bizaro and some Danzig. And anytime you can give me Tool, hit me hard.

Tool… Parabola
“…Twirling round with this familiar parable.
Spinning, weaving round each new experience.
Recognize this as a holy gift and celebrate this chance to be alive and breathing.

This body holding me reminds me of my own mortality.
Embrace this moment. Remember. We are eternal.
All this pain is an illusion.”

Had too.

How about some Otis too, because um, it fucking rules.

posted from my tablet thingy

bluffing…

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You are overwhelmed, tired, feeling like the walls are closing in and all you want to do is go… go for a drive and have time to think… Listen to music, angry, soft, loud, emotive, piercing, any music to calm the mindPod… but no. Your keys are in your hand. Your tank is full (well, sorta, you never can tell since you tend to run out when the gauge reads in the neighborhood of half tank), you have a little cash for snacks and a plan, or rather non-plan, but that is the plan, but no. None of it matters, you are fucking stuck. You can’t just go. Can’t go to your favorite breakfast place to read a book and people watch. Can’t just drive and sing loudly to the same song over and over because it is what you feel right that moment. Can’t spend the day hiking along the bluffs or go kidnap your best friend to get lunch somewhere he’s never been.You no longer have that option.

Sometimes its just like that…. you sit. With your head in your hands. You sit with your head in your hands because no matter how many reasons you can find to blame someone else, the choice that brought you to this place was yours. You put yourself on this stoop with your keys in your hand next to a vehicle that is completely unsafe to take more than 15 miles without AAA and telling everyone you care for where you’re going and which route you’re taking. You made a poor choice and it was not the first time, its just visible to more people than the rest have been.

Sometimes its just like that… the ripples in your pond- the decisions you’ve made, those choices you have found ways to put band-aids on and share blame with others; or pawn off on them completely, or better yet, decisions you’ve chosen to ignore all together…. those are making the ripples in your pond. They have started to clash into each other and make bigger ripples and even waves at this point. So much so that you can’t ignore the ripples and you can see those fucking waves from your stoop. The truth is reflecting back in a way that is certainly not as pretty as it was from the glassy pond…. but reality, you threw those fucking rocks, help or no, they left your hands before hitting the water. River rocks, giant stones, small pebbles, chunks of concrete, tar from the road… they all came from you and you have to feel the effect. You are responsible for the fact that all water sports have been suspended until further notice.

It’s time to to calm the water and bring it back to a glassy pond. Time to find the bluff that lets you look down at your reflection and forgive yourself because try as hard as you like… you can’t jump in and pull out what you threw in. You can’t undo the past. You can only forgive yourself and realize it will take work to calm the waters, to trust yourself to hold a skipping stone. It will take time to find the calm and face your reflection once more.

Sometimes… its like that… you must climb to the top of the bluff to find forgiveness. It is difficult and steep.  It’s taken a long time to even get here… you’ve stopped a few times (even threw another pebble or two). But you are here now. The top of the bluff is within your reach. When you get there and see your reflection clear from the peace forgiveness brings, bring back the water sports… jump off the bluff on a sunny day, into the glassy water and make a new kind of ripple.

singing man

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This week, well the last two, have been about as much as I can take on this ride. But its fortunate I have a vast collection of music to shuffle through my mindPod (and actual shite too if you must know… between the collections is about two solid months of non stop tuneage) and I happened to land on Austin Lucas. Ahhh Austin Lucas. Not a well known musician, though he should be. And today, he is my hero. His style may not be for all but he was exactly what I needed. Most specifically his song Singing Man.

The past few weeks have been that of feeling weak and inadequate. Regardless  of what anyone said or did I wasn’t going to get it. That is the nature of the little car that whirrs me round. But when its quiet and I can’t hear anything I tap my dbase of songs and here it is… Austin Lucas. So today was my dad’s birthday (dude! 69 – he’s gonna throw that around all year because he’s dirty… GROSS!). I hate family events for more reasons than I can tell you today but the short version is because my sister somehow  – with her super powers (do you get those during child birth? if so I may have to rethink shit) – flip-floped me in the line of birth order and is now the oldest instead of youngest and has a complete vulcan mind-meld hold over my mother. I think its because she is married and has a child and I myself have neither, in fact I do not want child and I am divorced, thus I am broken. so there’s that… So I couldn’t go. I just couldn’t. I know I disappointed my bro, and I hate that. But to be fair I was unwell on Sunday but, it was made all the worse by my anxiety. I felt well…. weak and small and like I mattered little. My solution was to say hey, I’ll come over on his actual birthday! So the last three days I kept hearing the words…

‘I had followed her on
Until breathlessly she said
Here’s my hand, won’t you take it, won’t you?
Oh
You are not weak
And not small
In my eyes you are mighty’

I realized its only in my own eyes that I am weak and small. I may not be the singin man but I cause my own shit storm sometimes. I need to realize she is the youngest, I am the oldest, I am not weak and not small but rather a person who is mighty…

 

this is just him which to me is more pure, because if you are struggling within – you don’t hear harmony. I sing and I don’t hear harmony. Though the link above has the harmony’s with the female voice (who I’m ashamed to say I don’t know).

[youtube]http://youtu.be/F41Ddw1Czuw[/youtube]

 

Thanks Austin, needed you this week and thanks for the tweet…

 

WoW: Exercise 22 – Select a piece of music that reflects the mood of writing you’d like to aim for. Press play. Start free writing. Write the first words that come into your head. When the music’s over, so is the writing. I’d recommend finding out how long the song is before you start the exercise. You may feel cheated in your writing time if you pick a song by The Ramones. Of course, if you feel like writing a short, punky piece by all means, go for it!

musical tourettes

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I’m not sure about you, but anytime I sit down to write, or read, or cook, or clean, or pick my eeer um movie… anything for that matter, in my head there is a song… I call it (for those of you new to my world) my mindpod. And when the little jack thingy isn’t pushed in all the way, and random lyrics suddenly escape through my piehole as the chick drops off my pay stub -think Johnny Kemp ‘just got pay-ed, Friday ni-eet. Party’s jumpin.. Feelin riiite..’ yeah, totally went there. no. I really went there a couple weeks ago. And the best part is only one person in my office was old enought to have heard that song so I had to send a link to the youtube video to several of them (the ones I like enough anyway) So it then becomes musical tourettes without the odd twitching. Its a family thing the musical tourettes, my brother’s version has lots of obscure punk and my moms has a lot of Eagles, Mama’s & Papa’s, and Little River Band and my sister’s has a lot of well shit, yeah, not gonna lie, it has shit. Then I take a amalgamation of all of them, including the shit, and just spew lyrics at random all over you when you least expect it.

So the last few weeks, the mindpod has been on overtime. But in an I’m-gonna-shufle-you-into-the-recesses-of-shit-you-forgot way. Hence the Johnny Kemp. Today and as I made my way to the barstool, er writing desk, I found myself in a Tom Petty time warp. Nope, not Mary Jane, though maybe that would calm the shit in my head yo, and not American Girl, though I could use some lotion right now. Nooo, I had Refugee… nothing to do with anything at all!! I haven’t even heard that song in for-fucking-ever. Well, the mindpod doesn’t lie so maybe my bipolar sensibilities are trying to tell me something? Or maybe it’s ADD. Because just as I decided I needed to figure out why I was trying to live like a refugee, I no longer felt the need. What the fuck yo??? I need refuge! Shelter! Something, I certainly need calm, Xanax maybe? Is my prescription current? I was at the drugstore. hhmmm. then as soon as it came to my mind, the car was on (it actually started which was a feat in and of itself) and the pod did a mad shuffle and threw me into a totally different place entirely …

“Take a drive baby up the coast, yea highway 101
I’ll pass Ventura and Santa Barbara too, just as fast as my motor runs
Gotta pocket full of memories, some happy and some are sad
Gotta girl standin’ by my side through the good times and the bad
Follow the palm trees under the California sun
I believe in love now, I believe in love again”

Now that’s better. I need a break! Work, life, work. I need to get away and take a drive! Take refuge!!! Holy shit, I’m not crazy and my mindpod did not blow a fuse. Excellent!

See you had this fear I injured my funny bone in a freak pizza tossing accident or my sarcasm font had been disabled, Fear Not! I merely took a break from my usual ranting and shit to contemplate the direction my roller coaster has been veering. Its not always easy adjusting to the sudden gee force changes that come with the bi-polar express ticket. I’m going for a ride this weekend.

yay.

WoW: Write the Music

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So I stumbled across Write on Wednesdays. I’m gonna make an attempt to sharpen my skills and get some writing done. We’ll see how it goes…
 

Write On Wednesdays Exercise 5: Write the Music – A bit of choice this week: Pick your favorite song and write down the first line of lyrics OR turn on the radio and write down the first line of lyrics you hear. Then set your timer for 5 minutes and write the first words that come into your head after your writing prompt.  Stop when the buzzer rings! Do this exercise over and over if you wish. 

“Mark out anything that takes no time….”

I was reading one of those psycho-babble, analyze yourself and then you can fix your own bullshit books. I sort of think of those like chose your own adventure, but I’m not sure that they ever really help myself. Today, however, I think that one of the things I read may have merit. (please do not fall off your chair, I will deny all liability) The passage had to do with whether we seek instant gratification, delay gratification or have a healthy self-discipline when it comes to what satiates our own needs. All this is illustrated by how we eat cake – frosting first, frosting last or with the cake simultaneously. When I first read it I decided I was a self denier but enabler of others (I don’t usually eat the frosting at all, but give it to the person who likes it. This usually corresponds with a person of girth, thus the “enabling”.) This may be partially true, but really, I think I have been living with my speed lever switched to 45rpm, even though I should be running on 33rpm. Its like this intense desire pushes me to make sure everything is done as quickly as possible so that everyone is taken care of. (Did you hear the ah-ha and see the light-bulb?) I do not delay or deny, I bypass completely!! There are things that take time that I’ve not completed for myself. I’m too busy. Until I sat and really thought about it, I didn’t give weight to the idea that the reason may very well have nothing to do with my own gratification at all… but more that I don’t like cake! Okay maybe I need to finish the book and get a better picture or listen to the rest of the song…
 


Denali: Relief

Write On Wednesdays

yule blog (with a side of fd35)

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Another year has passed, and we are one week from the magic baby day when the flying fur-beasts buzz about on the super-sonic, high powered, wonder-sled carrying the fat man that never seems to develop any kind of coronary disease… even though he spends his entire life gorging on the “four food groups” of candy, candy canes, candy corns and syrup. Not to mention the 24 hour cookie eating binge that would cause even the Guinness World record holding cookie eating champ to turn and run. (Can you imagine some of the hockey-puck nastyness he must be forced to choke down?? So gross) Okay maybe the fat man and the magic baby aren’t bffffs, but if they were… maybe that would explain how the fantastic 24 hour world cookie tour of sooty cylindrical conveyances actually occurs.  Maybe the star shining in the night gives the super-sonic sled some umf and maybe the fat guy isn’t fat at the beginning of the night – pre cookie binge… he just gets that way as he wolfs them down house after house.

Okay, so I don’t so much believe in magic babies or flying fat men. Whatever… that’s another day. I do believe that winter is wonderful in that the cold reminds us to care for each other… Reminds us to be good humans even if you can only muster it for a day. Whatever it is, believe in what you want, believe in something…. I believe I have been loved and cared for beyond what I thought was possible.  I believe I am a lucky girl who has many things to be thankful for and much goodness to repay.
I have some friends to write good things about, some beer to drink (I believe beer is proof of life being great), some SRV to listen to, and some yule tide to make gay.
Happy solstice.

here we are now, in containers

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So I was listening to the radio while I puttered around the office this afternoon. And AC/DC came on with their classic Dirty Deeds. Not necessarily my favorite song but one that you hear all manner of random lyrics for… my personal favorite being dirty cheese and the thunder chief. This, of course, made me think of all those other songs people screw up all the time (songs I don’t even like that magically become funny because someone is singing the wrong words at the top of their lungs) like, Addicted to Love & Losing My Religion & Bennie and the Jets and on and on. Being the girl I am I had to see what was on line because I started thinking about all manner of crap like the afore mentioned Bennie and the Jets and how many times have I heard electric boobs?!? Boots people, BOOTS. I digress. I ended up finding a website: Kiss This Guy and spent the next too much time laughing my ass off. Holy crap! I love it! Yeah, I’m so gonna start using some of this stuff. I can’t decide my personal favorite so far…

Might as well face it you’re a dick with a glove (Addicted to Love – I laughed pretty good at this one)
Let’s pee in the corner, let’s pee in the spotlight (Losing my Religion – I know some people that would do this with or without religion)
I want a duck shaped like a triangle, you get me closer to bob (Closer – really? Someone heard this?)

I could go on and on… And I have to admit I used to crack up when my friend’s daughter would walk around singing dropping my guitar, droppin my guitar. It was cute. She was also the one that would sing “it’s getting hot in here, so cut off all your toes” hhhhmmmm. That’s disturbing. But I probably have to go with the misquote of the Manfred Mann Band song (Blinded by the Light) as my favorite. And I actually knew this before I found this website because I couldn’t bring myself to believe anyone would want to talk about being wrapped up like a douche. And what the hell does that mean anyway?? How do you wrap up a shower? Or what dude wants to handle the feminine cleansing item and “wrap it up”? None that I know. It’s revved up like a deuce. Just sharing. And that’s caring as we all know.