Ground Zero and Thereabouts....

So, one question that I seem to asked frequently by far away friends is, "Are you still liking it in Denver?"...which strikes me as kinda funny....funny in the way that they might know something that I don't, like I might wake up one day and realize that living in a higher altitude has made my genitals shrink to the size of a squirrel's (yes, I DO realize that by the mere mention of genitals here I have doomed this blog to yet another onslaught of penis conversations within the following comments....damn you all in advance!), or that nobody has yet informed me that Denver has the highest population of Canadians outside of Canada and they are all very, very pissed off! But, until I discover either of those situations (or any other that is comparable) to be true, the answer is: Yes! I'm loving Denver.

I think my social hiatus as of late has been due in a good part to having finally been feeling comfortable with my life and surroundings after such a long stretch. Anyone who has known me personally for any length of time knows this to be true, that I go through long stages of inwardness, working on my own projects, living in my head and forgetting for the most part that the outside world is there until it marches into my room and demands money from me at gunpoint.....in which case I usually wet myself and never report the event to the police. Really, have you ever had to try to describe 'the World' to a detective? It's embarrassing......the looks they give you in the precinct.....judging me.....but I digress.

Part of what makes your immediate surrounds seem comfortable (or at least in my case) Is not only the environment that you create for yourself, but the environment created for you, that is. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I'll try to explain.

There's my little corner of the world right now....my home is in the cross-hairs, in case you want to send me puddings. I love this neighborhood, even though I'm not quite sure what neighborhood it is. Depending on who you talk to, I either live in Capital Hill or Wash Park. From what I can tell, there are two sets of arguments going on about this area: Either people from CP or WP trying to claim it as part of their's, or people from CP and WP trying to deny it and push the responsibility onto one another. Basically it comes down to the fact that I live in a Denver void, which seems fitting. I think I'll just name this place Void Park, make a flag and declare war on the border neighborhoods.
Like I said, it's not just the environment that you create, but the environment that you are a part of that becomes part of settling. For me here, that constitutes a lot of little things; such as the fact that I live in a North facing apartment that keeps me out of any direct sunlight, but still gives me enough light to grow some of my favorite Low-Light plants (I actually bought a damn fern a few days ago! Holy Shit! I've become one of 'those' guys! All I could think about when purchasing it was Steve Martin....and for that reason, the fern is now known as "Larry the Fern', with apologies to Wunk). During the late evenings, or as scientists like to refer to as 'night', I can hear the ghostly sounds of the trains in the distance, which is one of my all time favorite sounds, and one of the things I missed most about moving away from Louisville.
There is a fox that frequents these streets. Now your run-of-the-mill normal Animal Planet type foxes, no. This one is a mutant lab-experiment escapist giant fox. He has followed me home on a few occasions, when walking late at night, and I've come close to getting it's trust enough to almost pet it. Maybe we'll become friends soon.
My new upstairs neighbor wants to be a rock star. The people who lived there before him wanted to be porn stars, so I imagine that this room above me exudes some sort of alternative inspiration, or harbors a muse with a sense of humor. The porn stars were hilarious due to the sheer volume and content of their fucking. The place I lucked out in moving into is fairly well sound insulated, and I usually hear very little.....but I heard EVERYTHING that went on during their frequent Rail Sessions (as did most of Denver I suspect)...and Holy Shit!! honestly, on a few occasions I could also hear other neighbors of mine break out into laughter, which made the whole situation that much more humorous. But, they moved away. The new neighbor I find as equally as entertaining as well as far less intrusive. Yes, he wants to be a rock star, but instead of playing guitar and singing, picture clarinet and singing. Yep. Really. I mean, this would be just as funny even if he didn't suck! One minute of clarinet followed by a few off key verses of lyrics, and repeat. After two or three of these comes.....THE CLARINET SOLO!!! I can't wait for the cd to come out.
And finally, we come to my new favorite neighbor I have lovingly named the 'Fuck Guy'. I don't know if he is a newly transplanted addition to this area, or if he just went unnoticed during the closed window months, but I do believe that he is to be a regular daily fixture....seeing as he is going on a week straight now. I can't tell exactly where he is. He's not in my building, and I don't know if he's actually in a nearby building or outside hiding in the shadows, but every evening, near the same time of day, he emerges. Actually, he's been going strong the whole time I've been writing this entry.
What his shtick is seems to be yelling 'Fuck' in a variety of ways for 2 - 3 hours every evening. "Fuck you!" "Fuck this!" "What the Fuck!" "Come the Fuck on!"....and you get the point.
I was talking to Christina about the Fuck Guy earlier today and we were coming up with a few theories: He has a rare form of daily-short-term-tourettes; He works in an environment that denies him his daily allowance of letting off some Fuck; He's doing his best to argue with the voices in his head....and we all should fear the day that he actually stops yelling.
Personally, my favorite idea is the second one, if for no other reason that the picture I have in my head - "I'll be back honey, I have to go let off some Fuck, I'm completely backed-up with it!"

I realize that I haven't really mentioned much about Denver itself here, and quite honestly it's because I still know very little of it. I have only begun to scratch the surface of this city after my stressful and disorganized move and social hiatus. I am hoping to change that during this summer and fall....learning more about the city and it's corners, the events and culture.....but, then again, that requires actually making friends here and being social....the very thought of which gives me the heebie jeebies.

Maybe I'll just go outside and yell Fuck a lot?

Two Things that should Never Touch the Ground...

Keeping with the penis theme of my last post, here's a cool little fact about Denver for you all:

As I do everyday, I checked today's weather online this morning to see what the day had in store. Why I do this? I have no idea, seeing as the meteorologists for Denver were obviously sent here after failing too many times in Louisville (and that's an impressive feat!), just habit I suppose. In any case, a roll of the dice in the weather-room apparently called for evening thunderstorms, and like any form of gambling, if you play enough you will eventually win one.....unless you are in Vegas. Below is a pic of the conditions right now for my little corner of the globe:

Yep. Not a raging Burma of a storm, but it's there. Do I hear thunder? Why yes I do. So, yeah....technically it's a 'thunderstorm'. Is the ground soaked with rain? Nope. Bone dry! This is the interesting Denver factoid that I was getting to, and it's called 'virga'. Virga is the weather anomaly that happens when the conditions are just right to cause the rain to evaporate before reaching the ground. And it happens here all the time! There was a good stretch of the summer last year that I saw it rolling in from the mountains on a daily basis. Long tentacles of rain stretching down from the clouds, only disappearing near the halfway mark....which, I suspect, is further fuel for my new fascination with the idea of Air Krakens....which I'll get into in another post.

How does this keep in theme with the penis talk from my last post? Well, a simple misspelling of the term, that is, using an 'e' in place of the 'i' in virga turns it into verga....which is a Mexican's cock. Clearly you can see the caution needed when broaching this subject in public....especially in Denver.
"Hey, did you see the great Virga today?" "Que?!"

Letters Trapped Under Glass

I really haven't been totally gone during this last communication hiatus, that is to say, I WAS working towards changing my blogging around a bit. I had been toying with the idea a long while of doing away with my MySpace Blog altogether and HOLY SHIT my neighbor is listening to a recording of dogs being tortured WAY TOO LOUD!!! I have to go knock on a door real quick, be right back.

(this space represents the time spent away from this here blog as well as time spent staring at the monitor in utter amazement of the interaction that just took place with noisy fuck-stick of a neighbor)

Ok, let's try that again.....I had been toying with the idea a long while of doing away with my MySpace Blog altogether and continuing on under one of the many blog sites, bla bla bla. So that's one of the things that I started working towards, having chosen Blogger to host them seeing as I already have a Google account and profile regardless of whether I wanted one or not because they are taking over the world and it's LAW!! And yes, I did say "host THEM", because having more than one changes the pronoun of "it" into the plural adjective.......Rachael. Oh, and because I decided to branch out and work on more than a single blog, seeing as I'm doing such a bang-up job keeping this one updated as-of-late. That's sarcasm....look into my eyes.

For those willing to take a peek at said blogs in progress, here be the links: new manifesto and crumbly nevertheless.

The first, of course, is this one because this post was originally written for my MySpace Profile which is basically the same blog just re-worked and transplanted here...while the second is completely without content. Why you ask? Because at almost the very moment of it's creation, before I was even able to add a description for it, it was locked by Blogger as a potential Spam Site....which is completely understandable, seeing as it has "Do You Want a Bigger Penis" and "Learn to Satisfy Her" written all over it! I received an email from the Blogger Bots with a link to use for the purpose of proving my devotion to the one true God who is Google, who would then unlock my blog and smite my enemies. This, of course, did not work. My new blog remained locked and my enemies flaunted their not smote-ed selves like hookers on Colfax (Denver reference).
This went on for the past several weeks. Every few days I would receive another Blogger Bot email with a link to follow and a request for a pound of flesh as a sacrifice to the One True Light and Way who is Google, succeeded by me trading cigarettes with the homeless for mentioned flesh pound, followed by avoidance of authorities inquiring about the number of transients bleeding out in front of my apartment.

Finally, my worth was accepted by the Grace of Google, and Crumbly Nevertheless was unlocked. Unfortunately, I found the whole situation so exasperating that I still haven't been able to bring myself to finish the layout and start posting the content.....which is what I should be explaining anyway. Yeah, uh, so forget about everything I just said....I was just ranting to fill my "Rant Quota" early this month.

The reason for the second blog is simple: I intend to spam the FUCK out of all of you!!

Ok, no. I'm lying, and I now owe All That is the Light that is named Google through which is the only True Path to Salvation another pound of urchin flesh. So I'll leave the story of Crumbly Nevertheless for the next entry.

Google Bless You All.

And So It Begins....(insert Squishy Sounds Here)

I know that I've been terrible with this here bloggy type thingy that I have been known to use in the recent past to communicate with all of you about my adventures as well as my what-can-be-considered-as-adventures-but-is-nothing-really-more-than-just-made-up-fodder-usually-ending-with-hating-Canadians, and the reason for this a few of you might already know: Canadians are spawn of the Devil and cannot be trusted.....as far as my lack of blogging and communication in general: I have been pacticing my new blog technique which is entirely telepathic. Ok, that's a lie, but it would explain these frequent headaches instead of what my doctor tells me is a result of dehydration due to living in a higher elevation, and that I should drink more water......only to slap me when I bring up the fact that coffee is made with water. And by "my doctor" I mean to say "Guy on the Street who just asked me for change and a smoke", which, I have to admit, makes it all the more infuriating when he slaps me!

Truth be told, I really have no good excuses for why I've been absent as of late. In all honesty, I've just been living in my own world, where I would have my moments where I would consider blogging or responding to messages, only to have them disolve away in my coffee while I continued to get lost for hours with drawings and writings. That, and Canadians ARE the spawn of Satan and should be stopped!!!

So, to try to catch up, what is to follow over the next few days or so is a series of short blogs consisting of what's been going on lately as well as what's been going through my pudding head. As far as the neglected emails and such, I don't know you people!! Who are you and how did you get in my house!!?! I mean, uh, I'll do my best to catch up in that department too.

Praise the Goat!

Within the Folds of a Cloud of Meatloaf...

Sometimes it's the little victories that make me remember why I enjoy breathing....other than the fact that breathing is a completely involuntary activity, which is good for most people, including myself....otherwise I would have died years ago instead of coming-to with my face in the dinner plate and my furious mom who still made me finish every bite of the meatloaf.
In any case, the victory in question here is the fact that I discovered two large scale drawings I had been working on that, until tonight, I had believed to have been destroyed! For those of you just joining this program, let me catch you up: Several months ago, while I was in the process of moving away from Louisville Kentucky (for obvious reasons) to Brooklyn New York, and then to Pennsylvania, and then to Denver by way of Kansas City MO....where the hell was I? Oh, yeah...during all of that I was forced to live off of ramen noodles and raw pillow cases, as well as having to put almost all of my belongings into storage. It was while in this storage hibernation that most of my belongings took it upon themselves to bath in the water of a burst pipe to a water heater for the better part of a full weekend! Hot damn! Long story short, pillow cases actually have NO nutritional value whatsoever, much to my chagrin.....and I lost my entire portfolio of artwork from the past 15 years in just one weekend. Or so I thought.
Well, basically, yeah....I still lost my entire portfolio, just now minus two works in progress.
Recently I have been going through the transition from writing to drawing (which I seem to do every year as the spring approaches) and decided to go through my surviving box of large print and water color paper to start some new work, when I discovered the two hidden between the sheets in the stack! I can now remember putting them both in there to help flatten them out, before forgetting about them altogether when packing up and leaving Louisville without so much as a "Goodbye" (which makes me wonder if there are still friends there that haven't even figured out that I moved away, seeing as how I'm such a hermit and all....but that's a question for another day).

This whole scenario came about due to being able to see my friend Duncan read from his new book, Super Cell Anemia, at his release gathering. Duncan is an old friend from Louisville, one of the handful of people I met my first year there, who moved here to Denver about 7 or 8 years ago, and is definitely one of the pluses of coming here myself (even though I hate to admit that I've only seen him TWICE since I came to this city....see what I mean about being a reclusive hermit?). He has been involved in several bands, one of the most notable from the past would have to be Endpoint, and I have had the opportunity to see him on stage more times than I can count. But, I have to say that I was never privileged to see him like this before, reading his own work, his book, that he has been laboring over for two years now, give or take. And while seeing his perform before has always had a personal aspect to it (if you know Duncan and the music he's been involved with, you know what I mean), it's still different. This was just him, Duncan, alone on the stage reading his own work the day it was released, and I can't tell any of you exactly how happy I am to have been here to be a part of it!

Duncan Barlow with Milque Toast

Like I said, this is what led to my sudden inspiration to draw again, which is how I came to find my two lost drawings. See the full circle aspect here?

Here's what I don't understand: if a child honestly hates meatloaf, I mean, REALLY hates it, and it is an ordeal to make this child eat it every time you cook it (or defrost it more often than not)....why, WHY would you force that child to eat it time and time again under the threat of violence until he is crying over his own sick?!
Here's what else I don't understand: why is it that I get inspired to write after going to an art opening, and I get inspired to do artwork after a reading? Why am I so ass-backwards in this regard.....or any regard for that matter?

By the way, congrats Duncan!!