So, I get in the car this morning to go to the doctor's office to get my blood sugar level checked because it's been high recently and I put my foot on the car's clutch and there is no clutch; the petal just moves to the floor in a very limp manner telling me that I'm fucked; telling me that I'm not going to the doctor; telling me that I'm back on my bicycle for a bit, because I'm not putting another dime into that car. I bought the 1993 Honda Accord, about seven months ago, for $500 and I've put somewhere between two grand and twenty five hundred dollars into the vehicle and that's it. I stop.

It's 4:07pm on halloween day. I have no candy in the house, except for the six bags that my girlfriend put together for the six kids that live in this apartment complex: the six noisy kids who play in the driveway out in front of my apartment day in day out, like they were playing somewhere that wasn t a driveway. You know what I'm saying, these kids don't care that they are playing in a driveway. They yell and scream and laugh and run and chase each other like they were young millionaires playing in the finest playground on the planet. Kids are like that, aren't they; they don t start to realize that their parents are broke until they get older?

My son is in New York City. He called and said that he was looking for a pea coat. I'm having trouble remembering what a pea coat is. Isn't it that navy blue coat that you can find in army navy stores because they were worn by the guys and girls in the navy?

John McCain said today that you don't have to be stupid to join the army and go to Iraq.

I wonder if any of these politicians really believe what they say or if they just say whatever they think that they should say to get a vote. I wonder if any of them have any balls, operate with any principles?

I bet Americans get more into halloween, today, than they will get into the upcoming election. Snickers bars for the kids are simply more important than what some man or woman who wants your vote so that they can tell you what to do once they get to Washington.

The cat has eaten the half can of wet food that is his allotment for the day. I won't see him until tomorrow. Time to take the dog out to piss. Happy Halloween.

I was running late in picking my daughter up from school to take her to the horse stables for a weekday riding lesson that she had earned by working at the stable all week. I was surprised that she hadn't picked up her cell phone and called me. Perhaps her cell phone was beneath the couch at her mother's house or tangled in her bedding at her biological poppa's house.

She did call, finally, and said that she had forgotten that I was going to pick her up and that she had gotten on the schoolbus, like she usually does. We arranged a meeting place, on the busline, that place being the coffee shop that she likes because they serve these killer smoothies.

She was waiting for me on the patio, when I got there. I reached into my wallet. I had a ten dollar bill and a twenty. You have to be careful what size bill that you hand to my daughter, because she will spend most all of the bill, whether you hand her a one, a five, a ten or a twenty. I handed her the ten and five minutes later, she was back saying that she needed ninety cents more.

"What did you get?" I asked her.

I have this friend who used to be bad off on drugs and alcohol when he was young. Well, he's not old, now, but he does have a number of years clean and sober. I am proud of him. He has really turned his life around. Awhile back he got married. His wife and he bought a beat up house in a downtrodden part of town and with lots of hard work turned it into a jewel. His wife just graduated from Medical School. My friend played stay and home daddy with the baby, while his wife went to school. Yes, they had a baby, about a year ago!! What a beautiful child it is.

And now...they are opening a restaurant. They have invited me and my family to come for a pre-opening meal to check the place out. Imagine that. One moment strung out on drugs and alcohol and in another moment a happy family man.

It wasn't easy. There were steps that this man had to take to get happy, joyous and free, but, he took them. I am proud of him. I took them, too. He and I have watched each other grow in so many ways.

We are blessed.
Keep coming back.

Morisson(my dog not the rokstar) is scratching himself silly. One vet and the ladies at the dog wash place say that there is nothing wrong with him. No fleas. No dry skin. Recently, he had him a nice bath, complete with a hot oil wash and an oatmeal treatment. For a couple of days, he seemed to be better, but soon he was right back at it, scratching away at those invisible enemies. Morisson also has this habit of jerking his head back to his buttocks area and fiercely licking this region, as if he is being bitten.

This behavior is aggravating, not only to him, but to me. I don t know if it is psychosomatic or what, a nervous behavior, of some sort, on his part, but I have to find a way to end it. I'm going to make an appointment with another vet.

I'm tired of having to take my dog's collar off because he is making so much noise scratching himself. I'm tired of feeling guilty because I know that my dog is miserable while scratching himself.

My son has my bad habit of biting at his fingers. I was a fingernail biter for years. These days, I mostly use clippers, but my son is constantly biting the skin around his fingernail. Could he and the dog have something in common?

You've heard me bitch about my son not doing the dishes. Well, a little birdie must have whispered something in his ear, because my boy has, over the past few days, showed more interest in helping me out in the kitchen.

I'm not saying that he has washed any dishes, yet, I'm just saying that he has shown more interest in helping me out!!

I cooked a turkey breast this evening, a warm up maybe, for the holidays. I made stuffing, the kind that you pourfrom the box into water boiling with butter. I made green bean casserole, my recipe was to pull the frozen plastic packet from the box and stick it in the microwave for the two minutes that the instructions said to cook it for, although this serving took four minutes to heat.

I had halfway thought that my son would be sitting down to the table with me to eat this meal, but of course, being that he is a senior in high school, he found better things to do like skateboard with his buddies and go out for pizza with a pal and his pal's mom. There is something kind of sad, when you think about it, about me sitting home alone eating this great meal that I fixed and my son keeping his friend's mom company over pizza, sharing his dazzling smile and keen wit with her, instead of me.

But that is just the way it goes at this time in the life cycle of my son and I.

His sister was here, still. She spends the weekday afternoons with me. I asked
her if she wanted a plate and she excitedly said, "Yes."

She doesn't eat meat, so I fixed her a plate with this great bread, leftover from
this great meal out that me my son and my girlfriend had the other night. Next to
the bread, I put some of my now world famous green bean casserole, yummy hot out of the microwave and plastic bag and then I scooped a hefty helping of stuffing onto her plate.

Right as I put her plate on the table, the young lady disappeared into her brother's room, where she had been watching t.v. with the dog.

The two of them, dog and twelve year old, were quite a site. Somehow, the dog was laying back on my daughter figure with his belly face up and his eggs straight in the air.

I said to her, "Do you still want this plate?"

She said, "Yes, I do, but I want to watch the end of this t.v. show."

The dog looked at me expectantly. I knew that I could count on him to eat a plate with me, even if I couldn't get the kids to.

It's a simple thing, maybe; something that I should be able to overlook and something that he has, obviouslly, overlooked: washing some dishes.

He came up to me and four times while I was washing the dishes, he said, "Love you."

Well, show me some love, pal. You know that I have asked, over and over, for you to stick your nose in the kitchenc for something other than some pizza or a soda. I have asked you to help out with the dishes every once in awhile. I'm not asking for you to wash all the dishes all the time, in fact the dishes are really not the root of the issue. The issue is that you are being asked to do a very minuscle thing about the house and you re too good for it.

Fuck you.

Earlier tonight, as I was once again washing the dishes, I bit my tongue about being very pissed off about never getting any help with the washing of the dishes from my seventeen soon to be eighteen year old son.

My son says, "I love you," all the time to me, but he never helps me out with the dishes.

I want to say to him, "Saying you love me is one thing, but showing me that you love me is another thing. Of course, this will just lead to him not saying, "I love you." It will not lead to him washing the dishes.

As I was washing the dishes, tonight, I wanted to put a note over the sink that said, "when I'm dead, you'll wish that you had washed more dishes, because that was the only thing that I asked you to do for me while I was alive. Oh yeah, except for my request to help me out with the trash,also."

In heaven there will be no dirty dishes and no trash to take out and I'm certainly not going to hell, not with all these dishes that I've washed for this kid.

My last cat was named Madonna. My oldest boy was living with me and he called from work to ask if he could bring home a little kitten that needed a home.

I said, "sure."

Well, Madonna, despite living with three dogs at the time, never took to this kitten. The kitty would blindly follow Madonna around the abode, despite getting hissed at and having claws thrown in its face.

Well, Madonna started staying outside for longer and longer periods of time. I guess this was her way of getting away. I missed her, but what could i do? If i forced her to stay inside, she was miserable and mean.

One day, one of my neighbors said, "Dyou see Madonna?"

I said, "No, have you seen her?

He said "Yes, one of the cars in the complex ran her over."

I felt as if someone or something had hit me. My Madonna was gone. she would no longer crawl into my bed, at night, to get her head scratched. She would no longer come to me when I sent her kissess. She would no longer be the mean queen of our scene.

I got home from taking Scout home, last night, and when I pulled the car in front of the abode,the front door was wide open. This scared me. At first, I thought that maybe there had been a burglary, then I got scared that there was a fire going on inside and where was my young 17 year old son, Graem?

I went inside; Graem was standing there with a very frustrated look on his face, holding a red bandana.

"What's wrong?" I asked him.

"Cobain brought home a bird and the darn thing has been flying about the place and now he has hidden himself behind the shelves in the kitchen and I can't get him out," said my son indicated not just a bit of anger at Mr. Cobain, our cat.

I was greatly relieved. Mr. Cobain had once brought me home a huge rat and deposited it at my feet while I was writing, so I wasn't surprised by this developemnet.

"Just let the bird alone and we'll see what happens," I said, but my son was undaunted. He wanted that bird out of his living space.

I went in the kitchen and pulled the shelf out. The bird flew into the living room, where my son was able to wrap the red bandana around it, carry it to the still wide open front door and let it go free.

Cobain watched all this with a bemused look on his face and then headed to his little in and out window that is afixed within a window in the back of the living room and climbed out, surely heading to find more rats and more birds to bring home to his loved ones.

My oldest son came over the to the abode, the other day, and told me that he had torn up his voter registration card. I started to tell him that I thought that that wasn't the smartest thing to do, that voting is important,that it is his right, that his vote mattered,until he inititated a discussion about "who owns the voting machines."

This is an interesting thing to think about. If they are stealing your vote anyway, why go through the long and boring process of standing in line somewhere to touch names on a computer screen, the names mainly of millionaires, who it seems to me act in each others' best interest and not in the interest of you and me, the common man and woman, when the names you touch are not guaranteed to receive the votes you gave them.

I ran across a Sex Pistols My Space site, today, and there was a You Tube video on there of the band singing "Anarchy in the U.K.," in the early days. Somehow, tearing up your voter registration card and screaming "Anarchy" seem like, if not sensible, then somewhat or somehow liberating things to do in kind of very unliberated times.

I mean, business, as usual, just ain't happening for the ninety nine percent of us who are holding one percent of the cash jack and tearing up your voter registration card and screaming "Anarchy," whatever that word actually means, seems like kind of having a choice and at least trying to have a voice during these times of very limited political choices.

Anyway, this was not to be a political discussion, but rather a look at one of my favorite bands, Brain Box, who were playing at, of all things, a political benefit. This benefit was for The Libertarina Party. I don't know if the three gentlmen in Brain Box are Libertarians, but I do know that their music is liberating.

One last aside before we get to the show folks: there was this guy at the benefit running for the Public Service Commission and when he came up and shook my hand I told him that Neil Boortz was enough to make me run fast from The Libertarian Party. He shot me a weird look and headed back to his table.

Gosh, I was only kidding. Just as I was only kidding about screaming "anarchy." I am not an anarchist, I don not advocate anarchy, I am just expressing a frustration with the political process as it exists now. I want to meet the new boss, not the same as the old boss.

Dig?

Now, to the band Brain Box...

The Bass Player in the band Brain Box looks like he was in the Clash. He's got this thin mohawk, pinstriped pants and some loud and wild red shoes on. He holds his bass like it's a weapon, like if you got up onstage with him and you messed with him that he would take you out with his bass.In other words, he looks like he takes his gig as a bass player very seriously and has put much time into not only learning his craft as a bass player, but he has also given some thought as to his appearance on stage and has not wandered up there like some Seattle grunger who just rolled out of bed or had just pulled the needle out of his arm.

The Singer might be a gemini. He has multiple voices and many personalities, while he is up there working the microphone. One minute he reminds me of Lee Ving, lead singer of the L.A. punk band, FEAR, and the next he is singing sweetly like Paul McCartney. In other words, the guy is versatile and enthralling. As much as anything else, you follow what he is doing on stage to see what he will do next, what type of song and delivery of that song he will pull out of his song bag next. The Singer also wields an axe, a weird axe, like three quarters of an axe. He plays it like the whole guitar is there from angry guitar to happy smiling guitar, exhibiting a wide range of sound and emotion on his guitar, just as he does in his song.

The Drummer is one of those kind of drummers that you don't notice. And you know why you don't notice him? Because he is not playing too loud, becauss he is completely in synce with the other two members of his band. He's not frustrated that he's not the lead singer. He's not crying out for attention. There is no me me me, about this guy. He could be said to be from the Ringo Starr school of drumming: do your job, do it happily and let the other guys in the band do their job, without trying to take over. I didn't see the drummer tear up his voter registration card or hear him scream "anarchy.," but I did hear some fine drumming.

"It's all the same...It's all the same," sings The Singer over and over in the band's first song. Coincidence or reference to busines as usual in American politics?

There is no pause between the first and second songs thea Brain Box play. The band didn't give the crowd a chance to applaud. "Take back the system," shouts the singer, smiling at those in front of him at the end of song two.

I'm on a new pill today: cymbalta. Yesterday I went to see my therapist at the shrink's office.(Funny, I've only seen the shrink once, the first day that I visited this office over eight years ago.) I told my therapist about the rough time that I had been having over the past five days and how, at least once a month, for three to five days I was having a similar rough time with massive depression.

Normally, when I related these lingering bouts with the blues to her, she just looks at me and says, "Gosh Mikel, we've got you on just about every kind of pill you can be on at massive dosages."

She didn't say that today.

She said, "have you ever heard of efexor?"

I said, "Yes, I've heard people say good things about it."

She said, "Well, I'm going to take you off Wellbutrin and put you on this new pill that is kind of like efexor and has the same thing in it as Wellbutrin.

My face lit up. I was willing to try anything.

"Do you hear voices?" she had asked me.

"No," I said.

"Do you think about killing yourself? she asked.

I made sure to clarify my response to this question. Years ago, on a Friday, I had felt very manic, so I checked in with the therapist who I was seeing at the time. He had asked me the same question, about whether I was thinking about killing myself and I had made the mistake of telling him "yes."

I really wasn't thinking about killing myself. It was just that life felt so awful at that moment, that anything seemed better than it. Well, by saying yes, I wound up on a mattress for three days under a bright light, in front of an office where someone could always watch me: I was under suicide watch.

So, I knew that if I said to my therapist, today, that I was thinking about killing myself, that men in white uniforms might show up again and take me away to the funny farm.

I told my therapist this and she laughed. I said I feel awful during these three to five day periods of depression, like anything would feel better than living, but I don't want to kill myself.

She smiled and scribbled on her clipboard.

Anyway, I'm glad to be on a new pill.

Like the L.A. punk band Black Flag once sang, "Depression got a hold of me, depression, man, I got to break free."

Scout has the day off from school, today. Yesterday afternoon she asked me what I was doing tomorrow. I said, "nothing," and she said, "oh good, can you drive me to the horse stables?" Scout started out taking a lesson on Saturday from this stable several years ago and then, because she showed such a keen interest and great attitude, she was asked to be a helper at the stables, which meant that Scout now had an excuse to practically live with her beloved horses and was now able to get her riding lessons for "free," if you think working 12 hour days on the weekends during the school year and 14 hour days most everyday of every week of the summer is getting your riding lessons for free.

Anyway, when I said, "nothing" Scout knew that she had me, "Good," she said, "you can take me to the stables in the morning."

"What time are you thinking?" I immediately asked her.

"Oh, between eight and nine," she said.

"Dang," I said.

"What," said she.

"I was wanting to sleep in..."

We looked at each other for a minute or so and I said, "Ok, I'll take you."

She smiled. She always wins in these situations. I am a sucker for helping a kid pursue their passion. Especially this kid; and she is passionate about her horses. It amazes me to see such a small young lady up on top of such big horses riding so confidently. I wouln't mount one of those things.

I said to her, "There is a word that applies to why I said yes to you. Do you know what it is?"

She looked confused for a few seconds and then she said with a big smile, "love!"

"Yes," I said. "Love is the word."

I'm a small fish with big plans; won't you lead me to a promised plan.

I've always thought that I was going to "make it big." It's only recently that I've started to look at what "making it big" is.

Today is October 12. Christmas, unless they have moved it without telling me, is still on December 25. There is a local(Atlanta) radio station that is playing Christmas songs already. This confuses me. It's not Halloween, yet. It's not Thanksgiving, yet and, yet, they are playing Christmas songs. There is something intrinsically wrong about play Christmas songs on the radio before I have carved my pumpkin, before I have eaten my turkey.

Who do I complain to?

Caucasian is a funny word.

I just signed up to be on the mailing list of The Art Institute of Chicago and there was a box marked "ethnicity." When I opened it, the choice that I knew that applied to me was "Caucasian." Where else but in a place where they want to know what color I am would I find myself being called a Caucasian?

I was really looking for the opportunity to click on the choice "white boy." Or, "the white man." Or "the white man who be keeping me down." But, they didn't offer those possibilities, though they are the ones that I hear most in my day to day life
running about the skreets taking care of my daily affairs.

I have never heard, "hey Caucasian, you got a cigarette?"

Or, "Yo, Caucasian, you got a dollar?"

I think that this museum and others that find a need to find out what color I am, should get with the times.

Caucasian is out. White boy is in.
Are you down?

I don't have to feel a deep guilt if I don't fix my daughter a snack when she gets home from school and I let her fix it myself, do I? I don't know where these pangs of intense guilt over silly little things comes from. Was such guilt instilled in me by the nuns and priests in grades one through five in Catholic school. Shouldn't I have gotten over any guilt indoctrination that they had instilled in me by now. I was eleven when I left Catholic school. I'm 49 now.

I was thinking this morning about my youngest son. I'm often thinking about my youngest son. He is a senior in high school. It is a big time for both of us. I mean what the fuck does he do next. He wants to go to the expensive and hard to get into Art Institute of Chicago. I'm not sure why he wants to go here, but I suspect that it has something to do with wanting to get out of the house. Plus, this other kid told him that it was a good school.

I looked it up on Google. The Art Museum next to it rocks. They have a Picasso. They have a

I've got to get this off my chest, it's been bugging me all day.

My dog and I went to a coffee shop this morning. My dog and I pretty much go everywhere together. I figure that the dog is happier out there with me tieing him to a pole here, a fence there, than he is staying at home by himself all day everyday.

There is a big puddle of mud along the side of the coffee shop that I discovered at the end of our last visit to the coffee shop. My dog was covered in this nasty smelly mud concoction when I got done with what I was doing in the coffee shop, which was, as it usually was, basically writing poetry.

My dog stunk, so this morning I was not going to tie him up near that nasty ole mud puddle again, though it is the best place for me to tie him so that I can watch him and so that he can watch me while I am inside drinking coffeeand writing poetry. It is important when me and my dog go out in the world, that we can watch each other. It makes the separation anxiety easier on both of us.

This morning, I tied my dog up a little bit around the corner from the coffee shop in some real nice shade. I knew that he would be happy there. People would walk by and pet him. I would not be too far away.

When I finished my day's work, I headed back to see my dog. (His name is Morisson.)Morisson was happy to see me. I noticed that someone had placed a large blue water bowl near my dog. Well, I thought, that is nice, though I usually see people armed
with water bowls as an intrusion into the relationship that I have with my dog. I mean, come on, does the dog look like he needs a drink? And if you look at him
closely,does my dog really look like he needs or is missing out on just about anything?

People, some people, like to point out that you are an inadequate dog owner, when you are not. Given the same chance with your kids, they would probably point out the same and similar things to you.

"Hey, your kid needs water." "Hey your kid needs a haircut."

Anyway, as I left the coffeehouse, I looked over my shoulder and saw the gal who had
just come on shift looking over her shoulder with kind of a look of attitude on her face.

I didn't realize that the facial look of attitude was aimed at me until I checked a voice mail that had come while I was inside the coffee shop neglecting my dog, not giving him water and all.

"Hey, this is Steve," said the person who left a message. "I'm out here by the coffee shop with this real nice dog and I'm wondering why this really nice dog is out here. Call me."

Steve must be an idiot. The dog is tied up outside a coffee shop. If you are so concerned about the dog, why don t you ask the people inside the coffee shop who owns the dog. I guess Steve leaves his dog at home alone all day, if he has a dog.

Anyway, Steve and the gal from the coffeeshop are both a pain in mine and my dog's ass. I think I'll go beat the dog to make myself feel better.

ps Would I have left my phone number on the dog tag around my dog's neck if I was abandoning him. Get your laws out of my uterus.

It appears that a pitcher on The New York Yankees baseball team, today, drove what he called "the safest plane on the planet" into a building in Manhatten, where people have paid a million dollars for the apartment that they call home.

My son came home to our six hundred and sixty dollars a month apartment in Atlanta quite freaked out about this plane wreck. His girlfriend lives in NYC. I decided to not much try to calm him down. I mean he is entitled to do things his way, for the most part, now being only five scant months from being 18 and thus an adult.

I remember being in love the way that my son is in love. I remember that burning feeling that ripped through my heart and my head like some early Bruce Springsteen song. I remember thinking that love would last forever and I'm sure that that is how my son feels.

Why should I try to ruin it for him? Maybe love will last forever for him.

Why should I try to tell him that there are millions of people in New York City and that most likely his girlfriend was not one of the two people killed. I mean, surely he would have known it if his girlfriend was hanging out with a member of The New York Yankees. And, besides, his girlie lives in The Village and not in Manhattten, unless, again, there was something that she hadn't told him about her living situation.

I'm being a bit cynical here because I hate to see my son wrapped around anyone's finger, no matter how much he is enjoying it! Maybe I'm jealous that I'm not young. Maybe I want a chance to do it all over again, to see if I can not make the blunders in and of love that I did the first time around.

A son doesn't have to follow in the footsteps of his father. He doesn't have to experience the same lows that his father did; nor should the father try to make him.

That way, maybe they will share something in common called happiness.

Scout came home from school today, as usual, and as usual I asked her how here day was.

"The usuual," she said as she usually says.

"Nothing fun or exciting," said I.

"Well this kid puked in my first class and they took their time cleaning it up," she said. "And then we had second period in the same classroom and it stunk just as bad as it did during the first period before they cleaned it up."

I said, "do you want me to call the school and yell at somebody?"

"Yes," she said. "I do."

My oldest boy lived here with me and the other kid for awhile. A voter's registration card came in the mail for him the other day and I saved it for him.
He came to visit last night. I had had to run his sister over to her mother's house and when I got back I told him about the card.

He said, "I know, I already tore it up."

I think that my first reaction was to get pissed off and say, "hey, you should be voting. It's your right."

But, then I, immediately, realized that it was the kid's right to not vote.I hate voting myself. The whole long boring process of standing in line and punching holes seems so ancient.

And like my son, I have this naguing feeling that my vote doesn't count, that my vote is being stolen by whoever owns the voting machines.

Maybe I'll tear mine up, too.

My son just pointed out that if no one was spelled as one word, that it would sound like noon. I can never remember if no one is one or two words. Noone looks somehow right to me. Before my son interjected, I had asked my daughter if she knew how the word was spelled.

"Look it up," she said, sounding like a mirror image of me talking to her whenever she asks me how to spell something. We want to teach our children how to fish now don't we, but we, ourselves, don't necessarily want to head out to sea every time we want sushi, now do we?

What's good for the goose is not always good for the gander, when I'm the gander anyway, baby.

I have resentments today: my kids are growing up way too fast, especially my son.

Segue...

I have a turtle, now, like I did for a bit when I was a kid. There are a few differences, though. The turtle that I had as a kid was a real one. It came from a pet store. I would feed it. I would pet it. I would talk to it.

The turtle that I have now I don't feed, I don't pet and I don't talk to; not so far, anyway. And though I don't talk to it, this turtle that I have now somehow gives me a bit of comfort, even if it is made out of clay.

My dad took my living turtle from me when I was a kid. We were at the beach and he set it free somewhere amongst the sand dunes. He said that I didn't take care of it.
He was full of shit then, as he was often full of shit, but what can a son do about a father who is full of shit?

The only thing that he can really do is not be full of shit, himself, to his son. I need to remember this. I also need to remember that my Dad did the best that he could and that the turtle on my desk is made of clay.

I don't know what I was babbling about earlier or why.

Fathers and turtles.

It's bedtime now. I feel like I should write something here, before I go to sleep,
but I really have nothing to say. There are so many others out there with the answers. I don't have any answers, today. Today, I don't even have questions.

Good night. God bless. Thank you for keeping me off drugs alsohol cigarettes, whoever it is that it is that is keeping me off drugs, alcohol, cigarettes: The Lord, The Creator, God, etc. etc.

I'm too tired to try and figure out the god thing right now, also.

Ta ta.

The Daily K is mostly poetry, these days, so I'm going to start blogging here and see what happens....

Monday October 9, 2006

Me and the gal got back from the beach on Friday and I have been mildly depressed every morning waking up since then. I took the dog out for a quick piss, this afternoon, and when the sun hit me, I realized that my depression might be caused by the fact that virtually no sunlight gets into my dismal little apartment. For the previous seven days I lived in a space covered in sunlight, from sunup to sundown.

God, I hate the word "condo."

Anyway, I see the shrink for the first time in three or four months on Thursday and it sucks that I will have to go in there and say, "weeeeeeell..." when my therapist asks me how things have been. I am so pill oriented that I want a pill to make this and every lousy situation go away. Sometimes, on very, very rare occaisons, these days, the thought quickly flashes across my mind that it might be nice to swallow all the pills and see what happens. I am usually able to chant, "thank you Lord, for letting me see the new day, breath the air of a new day" to make any depressive feelings go away, however.

Graem and I went out for sushi tonite. I don't know what to think of my son, right now, and of me, as a father, right now. It seems that he has more and more of the answers and that I have less and less of them.

I am learning how to let go.

The kid will be 18 next March and that makes him old enough to be a soldier, but not old enough to vote if I am doing the math. correctly. He wants to go to The Art Institute of Chicago, which would significanly put him out of my reach. I don't know if that is his goal or not, but, hey, like I said a minute ago, he's almost 18 and don't most eighteen year old boys want to get away from their fathers?

I have a girlfriend, now, the "gal" referred to in my opening sentence. I think that much of me is still in denial. She's a good girlfriend, but I still can't believe that she is my girlfriend. I'll be fifty next June and for most of those years, it has been just me. I have been alone longer than I was in the familly that I grew up in. The longest I've had a girlfriend was three years, and she and I were so drunk during the time that we were together that the actual time that we were together might actually be less than what I thought it was. It's somewhat hard to measure love from a blackout.

I got an instant message from someone while I was out having dinner with my girlfriend, the other night. When I got home there was this instant message on my laptop computer screen saying, "xo call me." I did not recognize the screen name.

I have let go all past laisons now that I have the gal that I have, so I was really
perplexed over why this message was staring at me from my computer. If my girlfriend had seen it, it could have caused an uncomfortable moment or two.

Or three or four.

I added the screen name to my buddy list and the name popped up again, tonight, on my buddy list. I had to do some investigating...

Wordmanmikelk: who are you anyway?
JohnO49: John Owens
Wordmanmikelk: you said "call you" and i have NO idea who you are?
JohnO49: well that was a misguided IM
JohnO49: not as bad as the Congressman's
Wordmanmikelk: gotcha
Wordmanmikelk: and
Wordmanmikelk: ha ha

We're living in a time when people, maybe, are starting to see how lousy their "elected officials" are to them. This bastard from Florida, a fifty something year old Congressman "in charge of" the house committee charged with stopped fifty something year old men from pulling their pants down in front of our teenage girls and boys was caught with his pants down, so to speak, talking like a pervert to male teenage house pages over the internet in instant messages, last week.

"I'm an alcoholic," was the congressman's first excuse, errr, explanation for his weird and unacceptable behavior. He offered this to the nation through an attorney, of course.

"I'm going into rehab because I'm an alcoholic and I've got mental problems," he told us.

Well, fuck you former Senator Foley. I'm a bi-polar recovered alcolic and I find your excuses insulting.

"I'm gay," and "when I was a kid a priest molested me," were the next two excuses offered by the Senator through his attorney. What an asshole. What a complete piece of shit. He's starting to make Allen Ginsberg look like one of the choir boys that he so openly worshipped and campaigned for his right to worship.

And many of his fellow Senators let him carry on with his business as usual. What a nice little comfy club for millionaires they have up there in Washington. Is it "for the people?" Me thinks not, but I'm not going to open my mouth too wide open. I don't want to wind up like Politkovskaya in Russia.



"You are living a reality I left years ago..."--Crosby Stills Nash and Young

I used to really hate the word "blog." I wasn't a "blogger," I was a "writer," gosh darn it. And yet here I am, part of the pop culture, "a blogger." Well, I guess that there are worse things that I could have turned out to be, like say a serial killer or a congressman from florida with a desire to depants sixteen year old boys over the internet.

News that I was fit to be tied for when I heard it...

ABC News has been riding John Carr around in limousine and took him to at least one school where he used to teach. You must be fucking kidding me. Carr has also hired an entertainment attorney to help keep him in the limelight. What a dickhead.

Remember that show in the '60's called "Laugh In?" They had a segment where they said, "Ladies and Gents Laugh In Looks at the News."

Well, the news is fairly laughable. Har. Har.

ps I've got to mention that John Lennon was born today and I've got to post this
little poem-email that my gal-ee sent to me. I might elaborate on it more tomorrow, but right now I'm tired and I have to be up early than usual to go to the Doctor. She wants to do an early a.m. testosteron check to see why I'm needing those purple
pills to maintain an erection. Aren't you glad that you stuck around for this part of the blog. I also need to get my sugar level checked. I m a type II diabetic.

Would you like to hear about the rest of my physical ailments?
Stick around. Welcome to K Blog.