07.25.01 I have been up and down as of late. Last night was a good night. Went to The Brass Mug last night, so find sadly that they had no draft beer. The solution: get pissed at another bar and return. And, joyously, that I did. Sunshine could not accompany me last night, but she came over this afternoon and will return again tonight. I miss her already, even though she just left. Call me smitten, if you wish.

Last night: good night. The taps at the Mug dried up early, so there was no beer aside from bottled. As poor as I am (send contributions through PayPal if you can) we left to a different bar, this fucking Redneck joint called Charpelle's. In walk thirty old school punks to this bar, and we just took over. 'Twas fun. Then, when I was good and pissed, I went back to the Mug. Early night for me, I was in bed by 3 AM (for a change).

Still recovering from Monday night. Finished off most of a bottle of Jack and several beers. Jen and Craig were recovering, so they did not join us at the Mug last night.

I'm feeling a lot better. I have been up and down as of late, but my Sunshine always seems to bring me back "to life".

Tonight's plan, wait for the Sunshine to show, wake up Tampa Jay and head down to historic and silly Ybor City to hit a small club called The Fly Trap. Horrid name, yes, but Wednesday night is punk night.

Short update today, I apologize. But, at least it is something, eh?

07.23.01: I have a lot to relay and not much time to type. I will bullet point here and explicate on a soon-to-come update. Here goes:

Spent the last week joyous, which followed a monster sized depression. The rollercoaster is still rolling, it is just slowing down when climbing the big hill.

Met a girl. She is great. I don't want to screw it up. I probably will. More details to follow, once I'm comfortable relaying details. I will be referring to her simply as "Sunshine" (which is a horrid pet name for a punk, but it is somewhat fitting). For now, what needs to be said: she makes me smile as much as Tanya and think as much as Lisa.

Jay is brilliant. Any doubts can be addressed to me, and I will argue fine points with you. For fear of betraying confidence, I cannot divulge the best peice of empirical evidence for this claim. If you dispute my case, then either believe me or don't. Most of you know that I don't expell meaningless dogma, just meaningful dogma.

I'm going camping this weekend with Crissy and Jessica. Should be fun. Details next Monday.

I'll be gone all weekend. Leave your messages.

Reading: Heinlein, "Stranger in a Strange Land." Everything else is on hold.

A&E is re-running the entire series of "Northern Exposure" again. Hopefully I can get them all on tape this time.

Went to Orlando on Saturday. Barbarilla's again. Details to follow.

I've been drinking an awful lot with Tampa Jay as of late. I enjoy his company to nearly all of the people I've met in Tampa (excepting Hud, Jenn, Criag, Crissy, and Sunshine; maybe a few others). That really turned into a back-handed compliment, didn't it?

I'm getting low on funds for the summer.

I think my library books are overdue.

Haven't been driving in a while. Legal problems. Details to follow.

I heard my website described as "depressing". There is a fine line between ddepressing and honest. If you'd rather, I could write in a font with smily faces dotting the "i" or "j". Quoth the great philosopher Popeye: (phoenetically spelled, to capture the joke) "I yam whats I yam"

New Bungle side projects out soon: new Faxed Head, new SC3, new Estradasphere, new Fantomas. September is going to be a good month.

Big thank you to the following list of people who actually give a fuck. If your name is not on this list, it is not without reason: Sara, Nydia, Tanya, DBH, Wendy, Jay (NY). To all: thanks for waking up to talk to me if you did; fuck you for going to sleep instead of talking to me if you did!

Need to eat somthing, so I must go. I'll try to update tommorow. I know I've made a lot of promises. I'll try to make good on them all.

07.12.01: Sorry dear (or not so dear) reader that I have been neglecting my duties as your local town crier. I have been preoccupied by a few things, amongst them fine literature, my MA thesis, and the bottom of many, many glass containers from whom intoxicants magically disappear. SDF has been down for a few days, so if you can find this page (which might be hard, being as I am using SDF as my name server with a refresh link) you are doing pretty well for yourself. Hopefully I will be up again soon on my usual link, http://faith.freeshell.org. Thank you for finding me once again. Come back soon.

As of late, I have been on a proverbial emotional roller coaster. I have sunk to the depths of depravity and then risen to the height of the eagles almost every day for about two weeks. My life recently has been candy coated in arsenic.

I have been not returning the calls I have been receiving, and hoping for calls from people who never do. Sorry state of affairs, I know. I will get back to you, sometime soon. Keep leaving the messages on my answering machine so that I know you care. I will return your calls soon. Promise.

I have been occupying myself with a good deal of reading. Here is a partial list of my recent accomplishments:

• J. W. von Goethe, "Sorrows of Young Werther"
  
• Huey P. Newton, "Revolutionary Suicide"
  
• Andre Gide, "The Immoralist"
  
• Jean Paul Sartre, "Being and Nothingness" (in progress)
  
• Plato, "Protagoras"
  
• Plato, "Gorgias"
  
• Bertrand Russell, "Unpopular Essays" (in progress)
  
• David Foster Wallace, "Infinite Jest" (still!)
  
• The Tampa Tribune
  

I've been staying away from Bobalouies in favor of a small dive called Beer Belly's. Oddly, the name is apt. They have karaoke every night there, and a very good selection. Although, I despise most of the crowd. If I wanted to hang out with fraternities and sororities, I would hang out with my students.

I have decided that my problem with relationships has been that I settle too quickly. I need to hold out for someone I really understand. Or someone who really understand me. Stop laughing, it could happen.

Time to go, dear reader. I will write more tomorrow. Must go check my messages to see if the person I'm looking for has called . . .

07.04.01: Welcome to Amerikkka. Today, we celebrate 225 years of economic tyranny and repression in the good old USA. Now, before you discount me with these trite phrases that were implanted in your mind in grade school, hear me out. I will deal with your fucking platitudes later.

Our country, despite popular myth, was not founded on freedom for all. Just freedom for the rich. We live in a country whose laws were built entirely to protect property rights. Read the original Bill of Rights if you deny that. Personal liberty and capitalism are contrary doctrines. Capitalism promotes the system of wage slavery which removes the freedom of decision making from us. Instead, the decisions are made by the large syndicates, the banks, the lobbyists, the stockholders; in a word: the rich. We have no direct say in our so-called democracy about ANYTHING. Decisions are made by representatives (the rich) who are influenced by corporations and PACs (the richer). There is nobody who represents me in my local, state or federal governments currently. Representatives represent two things: their checking accounts and the idle masses who are univocal about everything. Every once in a while, on very special issues (abortion, capital punishment, etc.) the masses are polarized on two sides of an issue, but they usually favor one of the two polar opposites without much thought or reason. Nobody listens to the racial, economic or political minorities in this country. We have no voice, we have no justice. And don't begin to cite this last presidential election as "proof" of the minority voice: if my choice is between a rich George W. Bush and an even richer Al Gore, then there is no choice. The choice has already been made narrowed down from 6,000,000 to 2. That gives me NO freedom of choice.

We live in perhaps the most repressive regime on the planet. I keep hearing all of this dogma about human rights violations in China. While Huey P. Newton was being hunted down by our government, he noted that the safest he had ever felt is in the People's Republic of China. America wrote the book on repression. For every horror you can name in China, I can name three horrors which government has unleashed on its own citizens in the past fifty years. Nixon's "Enemies List", the concentration camps for Japanese Americans during World War II, the FBI's COINTEL-PRO program, the state sanctioned murder of Fred Hampton, the political prisoners Leonard Pelitier and Mumia Abul Jamal; there are countless acts of indiscretion in the past fifty years alone which our government has advocated. When I was a kid, people would always say, "Be glad you don't live in Russia, people go do jail for disagreeing with the government over there". Revolutionaries get murdered in the USA for disagreement.

So celebrate July 4th with fireworks. Large, large fireworks: bomb your local Fleet Bank, tear down a GAP billboard, vandalize Wal-Mart, boycott Disney, confront police officer who violates a traffic law, interrogate a US military soldier, do something ANYTHING which will send a message that this Independence Day, we are celebrating our future independence from capitalism. Until the we are dependent. Celebrate your independence, not being in dependence.