NEW DEAL

Well I have passed from dealing to coping. The woman I want to be my partner through the coming years has been so beaten down by the world around her that I cannot reach her. I do not know what to do. She has told me she needs "space". In my experience that comes just before they tell you to go away and never come back. I have seen sadness and despair take too many people from me, to lose her would be worse than all of them combined. Still I need to move foreword and hope that she comes back. I don't want anyone else.

On top of this is got a phone call just a few minutes ago from my first girlfriend, she is in the hospital dieing of psoriasis of the liver and is not expected to last until her birthday in November. EVERYTHING that is wrong with her she did to herself, all of it was preventable, all of it was because of Sadness and despair. The funny thing is that she is the one who once told me that the world is controlled by two emotions, fear and love. I guess the fear was too much for her in the end.

So here I stand it seems, outside the scope of the romantic portion of my life to date, the first woman I thought I loved is passing from the Earth and the first woman I REALLY loved is passing from my life, for a time maybe but perhaps for good.

Helluva situation.

You can't hurry Love...or anything else

Those of you haven't any sort of addiction won't understand a damn thing I say. FEEL LUCKY.

I have an addictive personality. I find something I like and I want more of it, all I can get, MORE than I can get! I WANT YOURS! GIVE IT TO ME!!

((Sorry, lost control there for a second))

SInce I stopped drinking I can safely say that a day doesn't go by that I don't think "Man I could use a drink", or "I have been a good boy, I deserve a reward" or some such other nonsense. During the past few month especially, as one project I was working on took over my life and killed off several others I was counting on for funding for the rest of the year, I was especially vulnerable. After 15 hours of grinding through other people's mistakes, or after a 4 hour conferance call, or after talking to a translator on the phone from Belloruske who sounded like Robin williams in MOSCOW ON THE HUDSON I could have ALMOST justified it.

The problem isn't the first drink, it is all the ones that come after it. See they often say that an addiction is like a "Monkey on your back". That is usuall said by people who have never had one. Addiction is more like your best friend, or better. The guy or gal who pats you on the shoulder and says "there there, poor lad" and uncorks a bottle of those old jax spirits. Addiction is the Devil, played by Bruce Campbell in a velvet smoking jacket, who tells you everything is gonna be cool if you just drink THIS.

The trouble is that having an addictive personality you can apply it to ANYTHING, even people. ESPECIALLY people you love. Addiction looks for that "state changer" that is going to make you feel better about yourself and your situation. You go from being a loving partner to an all enveloping jellyfish of devotion, a cloying blanket so wet that you cut off the air to the one person you shouldn't. Suddenly you are the abominable snowman in the old Warner Brother's cartoons who gets his hands on a puppy and LOVES it to DEATH. If you are unlucky the object of your devotion will run from you like they are on fire. If the gods smile on you though they will just push you aside for a time so you can work things out.

The nice thing about kicking one addiction is that it gives you tools to deal with other addictions. It also gives you a new level of strength to deal with things that make you unhappy, even though it is difficult. It may not be fun while you are doing it and maybe you gibber and drool a bit while you are doing it but you deal.

I am dealing right now.

So are you happy?

Someone who is very near to me is unhappy. That is the only way this person can describe how they feel, and they don't know what they can do about it. Being ME my first urge is to try and make them happier, but then I have to ask myself;

"How can I make someone else happy when I am not sure what happiness is?"

Charles Schultz said happiness is a warm Puppy
The Beatles say that Happiness is a warm gun
Dennis Leary says that Happiness is momentary, that is is a beer or a warm cookie or a ten second orgasm.
George Carlin talks about the expression "More than happy" as being a metaphor for insanity ("We had to put Bill away...he was...uh... MORE than HAPPY!").

I have asked several people I know if they were happy and the responses ran the gamut from "I will live" to "I guess so". No one was every absolutely sure if they were, some seemed to know what it was though.

Emotions are like looking at mugshots in a book, you are never quite sure what they are until you see them, or find them. If you are lucky when you do find them they are so OBVIOUS to you they you feel like a dope that you never spotted them. I have felt that way about love ever since I met my current Girl Friend, like everyone else I had used the world but the taste of it on my tongue was never quite complete until we met.

I guess my feelings about happiness these days are like working in pastels, there is no absolute. When I work in pastels I always work on a colored paper, a mid ground color that supplies the visual yardstick for the dark of shadows and the light of highlights. That mid tone, that grey, is where we live out lives. When we are sad or depressed the hues tend to darken as the blackness takes us for awhile and we fall into a pit, when we are excited or happy the colors brighten and we are shifted towards radiance.

The thing we have to remember though is a simple thing I noticed a long time ago...we have to stop looking at our shoes and look at the stars. I came to this conclusion one day while watching people on the street bustling to and fro. It was a pleasant California afternoon and the weather was mild but I noticed so many of the people I was watching were shuffling their feet along with their heads down and their backs arched against the chilled wind of an imaginary storm. Their were also a few looking totally skyward, but a lot of them seemed of the "just visiting this word for a day, leave a message" variety.

Then there were the people who fixed their gazed foreword, as if they could see not only the taxi stand they were heading for but the end of the day and the joys that is promised. As if those moments of happiness were a tangible thing, a fleshed out and real as the doorman who opened the cab door for them. They weren't looking down, closing out all the people around them, or looking to the heavens as if they could avoid all life's pain and woes by ignoring it. Those people were living NOW but looking for THEN. THEN is where they get to taste that little bit of nectar we call happiness.

I understand that simply looking at the stars is not the answer all the time, we cannot ascend to an astral plane and hope to pay the rent, but when we are at our lowest that is the time we need to turn our eyes heavenward. The only way to get out of a hole is raise our eyes towards the goals that will give us the happiness we want. In the light of their promise we will find the handholds that might just get us to where we want to be.

At least for awhile.

DEREK FLINT RUINED ME FOR LIFE

So have you ever seen the "Our Man Flint" movies? If you haven't you are a barbarian and I am amazed that you are reading this BLOG. Only hip people read this BLOG and baby, you ain't it! Get thee to NETFLIX and don't comeback until you have rented them, watched them and GROKKED what really COOL means.

I have never understood why a whiney dilletante like James Dean is lionized and someone REALLY HIP, Steve McQueen, is almost forgotten. In the same way I have never understood why James Coburn is never spoken of in the same manner as Sean Connery. I mean Bond was COOL but FLINT...man he could do EVERYTHING!

Well, at least that was what I thought when I was 9 and the SPY FLICK was at it's peak. As a child whose parent routinely exposed him to the works of Charles Addams at an early age I understood full well what satire is. I knew FLINT was SUPPOSE to be satire but the inherant coolness that poured from James Coburn like bra sweat from a fat waitress on a hot summer day just overwhealmed the satire. To me Flint was too cool NOT to become a role model. I mean the guy could tell where a certain vischysousse was made with one spoon full, stop his heart on command and TALK TO FRIGGIN' DOLPHINS fer chrissake! How COOL do you have to be for a kid to start wanting to BE YOU??

So I set out to be Flint, I wanted to do EVERYTHING I wanted to KNOW EVERYTHING I wanted to be THAT COOL! Trouble is NO ONE can be that cool and what you wind up being in the fat boring guy at the end of the table who has a story or a bit of trivia to interject into every conversation. Some people find it amusing for a time but eventually they want to pour gasoline on ya, set you on fire and dance around you like the kids in LORD OF THE FLIES.

Other people blame this sort of behavior on ADD, I blame Derek Flint.

I got a new hero

So a couple of trips to New YAWK ago my Gilfriend Teresa's oldest child, her son Thomas, was browsing YOUTUBE for World of Warcraft videos and he came upon one that made everyone in the house laugh like gibbering boobs for hours. The song was CODE MONKEY by a guy I never heard of.

Now you have to understand that I have been accused of being a NERD or a GEEK on occasion. When I was growing up (back when we rode dinosaurs to school) being called such a thing was an insult, a taunt, a gybe. It was grounds for running out and hiding behind the backstop for a jolly good cry.

(OK I was a SENSITIVE KID as well, a combination that made it simpler for all involved for me to carry around a rubber hammer for the other kids to smack me with. I was also considerate...or stupid)

Anyway with the advent of the digital age...(I hate using buzzwords so let me get a grip for a sec)...it was inevitable that I wound up working in computers. I mean hell, my Mom was a UNIVAC programmer and I was the only kid in the third grade with a pocket protector (which was still cool back then). When I was starting out as an artist in science fiction fandom it naturally followed that I wound up hanging out with engineers and scientists.

Yes...in a word of Nerds I naturally hung out with the ALPHA NERDS. I have strong herd instincts. This was helped along by meeting my life long PAL Gordon Garb, one of the most intelligent and mysterious people I have ever known. It also led to sleeping on a CRAY computer, getting called out of a KILLER Thair meal so Garb could wade knee deep in muck to clear the filter of a shipping ontainer that had been converted to part of the air conditioning unit of said CRAY. It led to conversations with Robert Foreward about containing Fusion Plasma in bottles of crystalized Hydrogen molecules (he was funded to study that, I complemented him on the quality of his waistcoat as it was the closest I get to sounding like we were in the same conversation). The thing is that I have had all these REALLY COOL incidents in my life and my earlier playground instincts (re: being a NERD) have kept me from rolling in them like a dog in wet grass.

That is why I have to thank Jonathan Colton for supplying me with an anthem in CODE MONKEY. It helped me through the horror of my last gig with Mattel toys and discovering his work (and reading about his taking control of his life to become what HE wanted to be rather than what he had happened upon). He has made it hip to be a nerd. His music is folky at times and at other times...it's not. He writes love songs to Fractals and Christmas Cards from the enslaved minions of Robot Overlords (I mean protectors).

To all of you who have ever worked in CUBICLE WORLD, I defy you to NOT identify with Tom in RE: Your Brains . Personally I can see a former producer speaking those words, usually on a Friday night just before I am suppose to get into my Subaru for the 3 hour commute home through San Francisco.

...or maybe he was just asking me to work that weekend? Oh well, same thing I guess.

Ok so some of you might know me from my earlier life...no I am not going Hindu already I had a BLOG based on my exploits as a white knuckled formula car driver but I am not posting there anymore.

Why not? Well basically because what started as a commercial blog to look for sponsorship became more of a rambling exposition on the vagaries of life and love in a simple world that is far too complicated beneath the surface. In the end I had to ask myself:

"SELF? (I have to do this to get my attention as the ADD is merging with senior moments) Do you REALLY want the owner of "Joe Blow's Tire Service and Dog Adjustment Center" to know what is going on in your personal life?"

Ultimately the answer came back in the form of a question:

"...I still don't understand why you feel compelled to talk about your personal life to strangers on the net in the first place!!"

((Sometimes I can be a real jerk to myself))