Confessions of a Starving Artist

Fa la la la la, la la la … fuck this ….

With the various debacles of my apartment slowing fading off into the Oklahoma sunset (my power is turned back on, my car is fixed, my heat works, my window is repaired, my bed has linens, my bathroom can be refered to as ‘cute’, etc) my limitted attention span now turns to the more pressing issue at hand; the Christmas season.

For those of who are unaware, I am not a fan.  This perhaps isn’t all the way true, but historically it is accurate to a tee.  I’m one of those people who never gets what they want, things never work out they way I invision, no one truly gives me the feeling of appreciation that I feel my gifts warrent, and there is never enough god damn snow on the ground to make a descent snow fort or go properly sledding.  To surmize in my grandfather’s words, “the turkey is too dry, Gene…”  Further, with the advent of being a successful (this term is used looser than a woman who would sleep with Steve Brunner) young man come the responsiblity to purchace the season.  Personally, I would rather just ring those silver bells rather than buy and wrap them up, but unfortunately, I have thrown far to much of a verbal stink about the holiday and the ‘not getting what I want’ to pull out of the race now.  So you live with the times, and you’re check book gets a little lighter, one page at a time. 

So beside having to dip my chestnuts just a bit into ye ol’ savings account for plane fare, presents, clothing, and whatnot, I am actually hopeful about this season.  This being my first homecoming to the State of Maine since my departure in summer of 2004, I am excited to see the the Alder Swamp Farm again as well as my grandparents.  There also seems to be a general air about this year that seem to offer up a limitted gift exchange among relatives (no, this won’t apply to me) due to gas prices, fixed incomes, and a general lack of giving a shit.  The theme, for once, seems to be just the season… and I can appreciate that with unrivialed zest.  However; I may just be being fed a line of horse shit from my old man - I come home, and things are as unlike they are in my mind as ever.  Maybe I should just not set myself up for disappointment and keep with my usual Grinchy outlook.  … who knows, I might just get what I want.

My shopping has been initiated, of course.  Secretly I find this to be the most fun part of the holiday, and forgive me if I find the day after Thanksgiving to be a hundred times for fun then a holiday that I prefer to as The Christmas Pre-Game Show.  I woke up at 8 o’clock the day after Thanksgiving, was checking my bank account by 8:30, and was shopping by 9.  I started on the west end of this town and worked my way east, finally calling it a day around 7 pm.  I only found a few things for the family, but what was most important to me, was that I didn’t buy a single thing for myself (besides toliet bowl cleaner, but that was a ‘need’ not a ‘want’).

That’s the hardest part of the holiday for me, is see all the shit that you want, knowing full well (in my case) that no one is going to get it for you, and yet, not buying it on the freak chance that someone just might know you well enough to read your mind.  Once upon a time, I would not have had the will to do this; I would have bought and shopped for myself to my little hearts content.  But not anymore.  No no, I have learned that such a purge is good because it allows for more to happen on St. Christmas’ Day, more room for error as well as success… that and more often then not, that shit will be on sale come December 26. 

The best dressed prisoner in Folsom.

One word can sum up James Mangold’s new film, Walk The Line; Haunting.  Joaquin Phoenix has gain new and profound levels of respect from me as an actor.  In this film he truly came into the spirit of the man in black.  Every time he went to the microphone and whispered into it that sweetly ominious introduction of, “Hello.  I’m Johnny Cash.”  well… haunting.

The film itself was brillant as it was true to the tale in as many ways as film can hope to capture it.  Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon proved to take on these demanding roles with a seriousness and honestly that is rarely seen from in general, and to be honest, both surprised me with just what should up on the screen.  Further, with the enormity that was and still is ‘Cash’, the two had to realizes going into this film just how much they would be scrutinized for their protrayals of these American icons.  James Mangold, however; never fails this cast, which is far more star studded than his two leads.    Mangold, long having studied and written about the life and times of Johnny Cash and June Carter, has been attempting to undertake a project like this for some time.  Wanting the most purity to come from the piece as possible, I found it interesting that Mangold was insistant that both Phoenix and Witherspoon do all there own singing for the film; not one line was dubbed from from any of Cash’s recordings.  As Mangold sprinkles into the cast actual historical members of this saga with the likes of Shooter Jennings as Waylon Jennings and Waylon Payne as Jerry Lee Lewis. 

The story makes you truly understand how Johnny Cash was both an outlaw, a poet, and a prisoner, and just what a rare individual becomes when comprised from these qualities.  Nothing stirring in this film, no great lesson, no inner secret, no warm fuzzy at the final credits.  But revealing into the inside of a man dressed in black; that it is.

There is no fence to sit on between Heaven and Hell.  There is a deep wide gulf, a chasm, and that is no place for any man.  - Johnny Cash

Here come the men in black…

This weekend, minus the busted out drivers tail light (all information regarding this should be sent to be straight away at guttersnake@aol.com), didn’t turn out to be all that bad.  Saturday rolled up with an invite to a small house party that was going on just a mile or so down the road.  How did I get this invite?  How do you think…

Now, I know nothing, other than my ‘in’, about this party, and with all assumptions about Lawton house parties, I decided to dress conservatively (sweater from Old Navy, I don’t know why I have this; jeans, and sneakers) in order to better fit in with the locals.  The townies don’t appreciate the ‘vintage’ look.  Anyway, I get to this o’festivah only to find that I have wandered into one of the more intellegent (and I use this term very loosely) areas of Lawtonius Major.  The boys and girls who are already present are dressed mostly in black, have enough facial hair to sculpt into working models of most 1970’s grooming trends (the men only, thank good), piercings in places that I have only scene in various forms of media representation, and a rather British Euro-trash vibe coming from just about everywhere… except from the beers in their hands, which was inevitably from the large stock of MGD in their frigerator.  For the first time in my stay in this fair city, I was under-dressed…  and I have worn my p.j.s to Applebee’s.

So no shit, there are people with a touch of class, though this class was hopelessly ingrained within the okie mind frame no matter how much they may try are run from it, in this burg.  I did have a good time, dispite the middle aged drunk Indian who stayed on the porch all night, drank beer, and told us about being in prison; and with the majority of them being just down the road, I think that I could get used to private party’s from time to time.  Definately gets me away from the military setting as did the lush smell of weed burning in the back room.  All in all, I’m fairly pleased, even if it does come on the heels of vandalism the night before.  I think sooner rather than later I will introduce these interesting new friends about the glories of Beirut, or what you lesser, ‘public school’. Steve Brunner intellegence level, kind of ADHD chuckleheads might know it as; beer pong.

Broke into the old apartment…

Kids, it has been one fuck-hole of a week.  The horror (…the horror) revolves around the pit of sin that is and, I fear, will continue to be this deal of an apartment that I have wandered into.  I was forced to move in on Monday, the same day that the previous tenant had moved out as I had to start my CCC classes on Tuesday.  In this madcapped week I have been unable to put in work orders due to my landlord’s non-existant work schedule, spent one night freezing my ass off in my apartment due to my inability to operate a gas heater and it’s pilot light, purchased near three hundred dollars in bedding stuffs because I can’t tell the difference between a King Sized and a Full Sized bed, had to wake up at the ass-crack of dawn on a Saturday to have the carpet cleaners clean the various cigarette burns and blood stains off my carpet, and finally (and this is the capper) this morning I woke to discover that someone for some reason had decided to smash out my driver’s side tail light on my new Thunderbird convertable.  Yup, it’s offical - I fucking want to be deployed to Iraq again… at least there I can shoot back.

True, some of these are my fault.  As it is, I am nearly 26 years old and this is the first time in my life that I have had to sign a lease.  I have always had living quarters provided to me by an institution of some kind be it college or military.  A lot of this is new to me so I can smile and take my lumps.  However, this recient vandalism concerns me.  Of course, I am annoyed at the time and money and not being able to take my ride for a ride that this experience inevitably comes to, but moreover, I am extremely worried that this may not be an isolated experience.  My car, while not in a garage, is rather concealed from the road and thus it takes effort to get to.  Your average Steve Brunner would be hopeless to find it; like a Where’s Waldo book or a woman’s clitoris.  I hope that this was just some really drunk hoods walking home late on Friday night doing some stupid shit (the vandalism had to have occurred between 3 am and 9 am as that the hour I got home and when I discovered the damage) and not somebody with a level of malicious intent.  I don’t know how I will react if it turns out to be the latter, but I do know that someone won’t like it.  Really, they have no idea who they are fucking with.

Regardless, not having my car is a major set back.  I still have not finished up-dating records for the military, completed my monitary affairs, gotten all services (both necessary and frivolous) put into my apartment, finished moving in completely to my appartment, or bought any food to sustain myself; not that food would matter as I don’t have anything to cook it in.  The joy to all of this is that my car is more or less not road worthy until sometime Tuesday.  And oh by the way, I have class until 5 and the dealership closes at 5:30 and it is a half hour away from work.  These are the rubs that I loath about this town and the lack of flexablity of military schooling.  …sigh… oh well, once more into the breach… 

Mendes presents a defining film on the sheathing of true warriors

Today, I went to watch the movie Jarhead at one of the local mall’s twelve theaters.  I am not a Marine, though I have worked with them, almost equally as I have with the Army in my short tenure have served under both 1st MARDIV and 2nd MARDIV.  As the credits rolled, I was forced to sit sullen in the theater in reflection, and further, had to take a lap around the mall to return to the here and now.

Jarhead is a poignant film, not only because it displays a very true and sobering depection of what the initial experience of what the initial US conflict in the Gulf must have felt like, but also it deals with many other facets of this war… and the one that continues.  Two most intense come to me.  First was that those men (not women) who have most trained for combat may never see it even when close enough to smell the enemy, and second, the fedility of their women who are found lacking.

The former, I feel, while it may not be “The Point”, is the broad brush stroke that paints the silver screen green, if just for a momment.  It is fitting that director Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition) be the one who wields the brush.  Like Lester Burham, Anthony Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal) comes sees the role he plays in his own life as one without action or ultimately control.  These are the men who mentally and physically are training to kill more than any other, and like dogs, they are whipped and goded and whirled into a frenzy time and time again never to be unleashed, never to do what it is they are supposed to do.  Sexually, you can think of it as fucking and never coming.  The madness for Swoff, for those of you who have not been over, may be difficult to understand as you may be looking at this Marine and saying, what insanity, he did ‘do’ anything.  Anticepation will drive a man mad just as quickly as fear or horror.  Nonetheless, the horror here is that our truest and most reliable warriors are being put to pasture by, to use Peter Sarsgaard’s (Allen Troy) words “desk jockies”.  The scene where the JTAC MAJ comes into their sniper position with a lawn chair to blow away the entire airfield, which their single personnel target is having coffee in, is choice of the film.   

However, that feeling was over arching, I felt.  The more subtle, and what stayed with me just as long, was Swofford’s girlfriend back home.  Maybe, I’m too close to this one seeing relationships and marriages fall apart again and again as well as it being the major catalyst for good men to leave service in order to perserve that which has become fragile from something that was strong.  I understand it at time (poor relationships to begin with, etc), but it hurts me to see a woman leave a man like that.  Some of the bravest, strongest, most caring men lose their lovers to what?  A retail sales man at an outlet store?  A college student?  The guy at the bank?  I have no words for it.

Jarhead says this is what we are did and continue to do… for you.  Jarhead says there are those who are still Marines.  Jarhead says it should not be called ‘the service’.  It should rather be referred to as ‘the sacrifice’, because no matter what, even if it is just your time (which it never ever is) you are giving up a fraction of your life.

Welcome to the Suck. - LncCpl Allen Troy Jarhead

Excedrin really is the headache medicine… that and fast food.

First nights of true weekend drinking are down, folks, and let me tell you what I told my roommate / confindant upon return home last night:  It’s not you, it’s this town.  And it’s true, there is nothing wrong with either his or my technique to meet people.  The simple fact of the matter is that this place, this Lawton, is a hole filled with social broken people who live in some sort of warped version of forward progressed MTV and National Lampoon.  I will elabroate.

First of all, for any good fledgling writer regardless of obstacles, personal and monitary problems, or wake-up calls; the drinking week starts on Monday.  So monday night football at Gertlestones with some buddies turned into some of my buddy’s friends joining us for more drinks, which then turned into watching Fight Club at 11 pm.  Not exciting, but not uneventful either.  Tuesday was movie night (we saw DOOM so that you don’t have to), but we got to the theater a solid hour and forty-five minutes before the feature.  So we went to the Korean Kareokee bar near the theater for a Soju Kettle before the film.  I didn’t improve the quality of the feature.  Wendesday had to be a ladies night somewhere… we looked in every somewhere we could think off… and nada.  Thursday… well… I should start a new paragraph on Thursday.

So Big Time and I decide that we need to get out into the scene by trying a new place called Duvall’s.  I will save the details for those of you who feel inclined to call and ask about them, but these are the facts that stand alone: I did drink fifty dollars worth of gin.  No, I do not remember anything after 12:30.  Yes, I did call alot of people.  Yes, I did appologize to the all the next morning / afternoon.  Yes, I did attempt to order “boobies” at the McDonald’s drive-thru (I had to be told that I did this… I have no memory of it).  There was more, but there are the highlights. 

Which brings us to last night, friday night, which really is the true test of your medal as a dude.  And to be quiet honest, if my medal after Thursday could be assessed in levels of charisma and good-looks, it would be the Steve Brunner of medals.  It then goes without saything that I was nursing my beers all evening.  We went to three bars about town before realizing that we would have to return to Duvall’s if we wanted to so much as share air with a fellow human.  I know now, that this makes for a bad, bad trend beginning to form. 

The few choices that you have in this town for (and I bite my tongue for even awarding Lawton this word) “the scene” are, of course, your basic small scuzzy bars with the initials of of the drunks from 1985 still carved in the bartop.  These places are nice for talking with the boys and watching the game, but not much else.  Another other choice at your disgression is the large scale cowboy bars, which look like a converted warehouse filled with really really confused ravers in flannel and ten-gallon hats.  The last choice are the pseudo-dance clubs which play songs from three-to-five years ago several times through out the evening and offers the majority of the cracker-ass trash that attend these bars the only real chance to get some exercise all week.  Whoo-hoo, look at that blubber fly!  Seriously, my outfit from last night cost more than probably 90% of the patron’s monthly truck payments… and my good shit isn’t even here yet.

I asked my bartender if there were any martini bars or English or Irish pubs about… you know, someplace where the men wear blazers, sport faux-hawks, and don’t have one of those god-awful ‘okie’ accents.  Someplace wear the women attempt to engage you in conversation, not an immedate bump and grind; someplace where the twenty-three to thirty year olds might, just might be single and not have a child (or four); somplace where a woman would order a cosmopolitian rather than a Bud-Lite and perhaps would know of an imported beer other than Corona.  At anyrate; the bartender laughed at me.

So you see kids, here my skills at meeting people are more or less put to bed in a place such as this.  Women here have based entire relationships on not talking to there men, so why would I assume that one would come up at attempt to start a relationship off with such an untempered skill?  Further, with the nearest Guess? being in Dallas (3 hours away) and the local GAP outlit closing for lack of business, one has to realize that a town who’s fashion sense is built around Wal-Mart, K-Mart, and Hot Topic is a town who has no real idea of what an attractive man (or woman for that matter) looks like.  It’s like taking Ray Charles to Toronto Fashion Week…

So in conclusion; it’s not my fault.  I have done nothing wrong.  I will not change my tatics.  I am better than this town.  I will look myself in the mirror and give myself the same pep-talk that I gave myself three years ago: “… Lawton sucks.  …. okay… let’s go do this again.”

So as a change of pace we decided to start today off by examining the under belly of Lawton, the pawn shops.  It is amazing how when you actually want to go find a pawn shop in Lawton, you can drive for nearly two hours and find a grand total of four.  Do they migrate in the day light and like vampire’s who sell used shotguns only coming out during the twilight and dusk?  Normally, you would think that I am being a ‘okie jokie’ here, but I am not.  I say this in seriousness because there was actually a place in Cincinnati called the Avant Garage that keep the most wild hours in the world.  It’s completely off topic, but I thought that I’d throw it out there, anyway.   Hours are listed at the bottom…

…is not Scientology.

Before I forget my train of thought you should check out what I would like to think is the only real fan web site for our favorite Hollywood crack pot who constantly has to marry / trick younger and younger women to further his sad and awardless carreer (no, not Steve Brunner… he couldn’t make it into Hollywood as the serial killer in the next Wes Craven film).  I hope that you all enjoy this.  Let this just a humble Pantheist’s way of passing the funny on to you.

Where did the money go…  Nobody seems to know…

So I finally get around to checking my on-line banking yesterday as the server at the place where I am staying is encrypted-password challenged.  To my extreme surprise I discover that my monitary alottment / paycheck that I recieved for the Army is all but gone until the fifteenth.  I am honestly dumbfounded at this loss of capitial.  What the Christ am I spending a 0-3 (Captain)’s pay on?  It’s not alcohol (see previous posts) and it’s certainly not women.   So what is it?

Lets break it down, and maybe you’ll come to the same conclusion that I have come to.  First, most of my investments come out of the first paycheck of the month, and that is about a third of the money right there.  Second, plane tickets for the holidays came out of this cycle so that’s a chunk as well.  Then of course there was travel from Colorado Springs to here, not to mention about three days of going away parties, girlfriend to buy gifts for, etc.  Sigh.  I guess the bottom line is, I’m not being frivolous with my money - the holidays and Steve Brunner just suck…

And that is my spin on the matter.  I will go into my shotgun formation, and live like a popper for the next few days, which isn’t that much of a stretch as I am crashing on the floor of a dorm until my apartment opens up.  Not having shaved in nearly a week and living out of three travel bags; these are helping me get into character as well.  So I guess that means I am off to a smokey breakfast diner for another lunch that comes out cheaper than a Super Value Meal at Wendy’s.  There is something wrong about your priorities, I will admit, if you show up to said diner in your freshly washed 2002 Thunderbird convertable.  Hey, this is Lawton - all the rules are off.

Why scoring in London did not check the block…

Before moving on with this K**l Tale too far, I will preempt with the fact that their really are three very good stories to come out of my ten day excursion to the British Isles.  Also, this is probably the tamest, but it bears on the other post of today as it came up last night at the bar and thus is fresh in my mind. 

So in London, it was all about what I was drinking.  Really, it was the turning point as far as my personal sophistication of alcohol consumption.  In the before-time; in the long, long ago there was college, and those of you who have been know, as do I, that good beer is free beer and visa versa.  The next best is cheap beer or beer from a house party which had a very low cover at the door.  Basically, the law of the land is, does it get you drunk and / or laid and you didn’t have to take out another student loan… then drink it, son, drink it up.  Oklahoma the first time around was a continuation of sorts in to which I learn the term “NASCAAR beer”, which means any type of beer that may or does show up on the hood of some racing automobile.  Regardless, not a grand step-up.  Korea offered more of the same, though I did get acquainted with a few imports only because they are as readily available as American domestics.  But it was my trip to London that really pushed the preverbal drinking envelope.  The Imports are Domestic, and the restaurants are pubs, the pubs are bars, the bars are clubs, and the clubs are all in Germany so it all works out really. 

On the first night I was introduced to my new drinking buddies.  My friend, Ms. A. August, was my hostess as she was studying abroad and allowing me to crash in her flat; her five female friends, all Americans; an English couple who were very average London transplants; an Indian guy raised in London who was a laugh riot; and finally a Turkish fellow who worked in a movie / book store who was quite easily one of the more intriguing, obnoxious, and intelligent people that I have every had the pleasure of coming across.  It was capped by the fact that every time that we met as a group to drink (which was nearly every day for at least an hour… London rules, coincidentally) he always beat me to the pub / bar and was always wearing a black suit with a white dress shirt, two buttons down, tie removed, with tossed greasy black hair and a five-clock shadow that he looked like he had been cultivating since sometime around noon.  That and I think that the fellow could win a game of Trival Pursuit on the first go.  It was with these individuals that I truly began to explore how to drink.  First, I was introduced to an English delicacy called “Red Beer”, which is one part cider (Strong Bow), one part English Lager (can’t remember the exact label), and one part blackberry cordial.  It is very yummy.  From there, we learned about Black and Tans, mixed ciders, and other concoctions.  Of course, we did graduate (after a day or so) to harder alcohol.

Now I consider myself a man born of New England gentry.  One such indicator of my Yankee Aristocratic roots would be my serious ad version to Whiskey and it’s like brethren.  Leave that drink to those south of the Mason-Dixon who lost the war.  It was that week in England to which I discovered the drink that sets me just a pay-grade higher on the metaphoric bar shelf of life – Gin.  London Dry Gin truly is unparralled as a drink, and it is one that I find agrees with me in a very classic manner.  One can sip it mixed with tonic and a lime and look distinguished enough for any party even while enjoying it in it’s most simple form.  If one would like to go more highball, there is always room for a Martini, which can be tailored to any taste.  And lastly, if one is having a nasty run in with some classless individual who claims to be some sort of ‘consumer’ and challenges your ‘abilities’, drinking a dry gin straight will often times cower even the most hardened whiskey, bourbon, or tequila drinker.

Anyway, to the point of the matter.  So we are out drinking this one night, but unlike most nights this is a weekend, which means there are ladies about.  Now contrary to what you may have heard from your rich pot-smoking friends who went to Amsterdam on daddy’s dime or from what you may have watched in Rocco’s “Ass Man” videos, not all European girls just want to jump in the sack.  Sure, maybe the German ravers do, and yes, I’m positive that those from the eastern European block will just on the off chance that you might leave some American currency on their night stand, thus vastly improving both their social and economic status; but English girls at a pub on a Saturday night… not so much.  Now it just so happens that of my fun and humus filled ten days, this was to be one of two where I had the off chance to meet and ‘shag’ an English woman.  I was not about to lose this opportunity.  So when one of these fine blonde women offers to buy me a drink (a sapphire and tonic…. when in Rome, right?), I gladly except.  Now, I’ll be honest with you: up until that point in my life, I had always found the British accent to be very sexy and attractive and something that, under the right circumstances, I would love to spend the rest of my life with… up until that point, that is.  For the next hour and a half, I tried my absolute hardest to understand what this woman was saying over the ruckus of the background music and between parting glances at her extremely large chest and her extremely messed-up front teeth.  The only reason that I didn’t leave, is that she kept buying my gin and tonics.  I swear to God – boys, you know how hard it is when you have to look like you are paying attention to a woman when you really don’t give a shit about what she has to say, but yet you want to see her breasts at the end of the night so you put up with the conversation in the ol’ in-one-ear-out-the-other fashion?  Now, imagine that every other word that this woman says is in the native tongue of Burundi.  It suddenly becomes an effort to feign interest and yet not listen… which completely defeats the point!

So I eventually break away; randy as hell, but I get away.  All I know after that hour and a half was that she was a nurse and she really liked cats (I think… or she liked something that she “can’t” do, I’m not sure).  But I’m really looking forward to breasts at this point, and oh, by the way, it’s twenty minutes until closing time.  So I go into my hurry up offense and grab up this girl who has been eyeing me from across the way while I was talking to the ‘nurse’.  I make it a point to not let her say more than a word at a time because I don’t want to hear the accent any more if I can help it.  I quickly discover (in fifty words or less) that she has a flat and yes she would love to take me back for a glass of wine or two.  Deal being sealed, I suggest we leave, and within half a glass of Pinot Noir, I have this sweet little thing over her leather couch.

The next morning, I’m a bit hung over, but I realize that I am within walking distance of my hostesses flat.  So I ask were the shower is as to get a bit cleaned up.  It should have hit me then, but it didn’t until I got out of the bath and offered my services for a morning romp.  It wasn’t her answer that was surprising (it was yes, of course), but rather it was her voice.  No, she wasn’t a man, but rather a Californian.  Yup, that’s right, your faithful hero managed to find the only other American tourist in the entire bar, thus losing my opportunity to sleep with an English woman.  And while I regret never having heard that horrid accent moan in bed, I did reaffirm that Californian breasts are among the most exquisite around. 

You’re just not terribly important to me…  - Patrick Bateman, American Psycho

I am just a new boy / stranger in this town / where are all the good times / who’s going to show this stranger around… 

First Saturday night back in Lawton, Oklahoma has come and gone.  I was sickened at myself as to how much I remembered not only my way around this grid-work of quick changing stoplights and one-story homes but also the way that these people fall into one of two categories – Hicks or Thugs.  This is better outlined by a careful observation of the various dance floors at any given bar in this (literally) one-horse town.  Strange but true, DJs here will shift between twang-rich pop country hits to beat-heavy R&B and gangsta rap approximately every twenty minutes.  And no shit; there was a DJ who referred to himself as “DJ Pick-Up Man”.  So yeah…. 

The cost of living though will definitely be in reduction from the Colorado Springs area.  As I was saying, the first Saturday night has left us with very little to speak of in the way of adventure and excitement, however; it has been a lesson in the re-education of trailer park economics.  While all beer bought in Oklahoma is 3-point beer (that is, beer that is half the normal alcohol percentage from regular beer.  Oklahoma is one of those fun Christian states that thinks that this will make us somehow more moral or perhaps, closer to God.  I fundamentally disagree.  I think that it will just force us to drink twice as much beer, and thus force me to have to work out for an extra hour a day to get rid of the empty calories… but I digress), it was nice to buy two beers for under three bucks.  Actually, last night at this particular watering hole, all “NASCAAR beers” were fifty-cents.  Let me tell you, drinking $10.50 worth of fifty-cent beer between two people and still being able to drive home because it feels like drinking water… well, that’s just short of the definition of awesome.

Regardless, the night was spent telling stories of Korea and Iraq and drinking and women and what have you; basic reminiscing.  I realized that there are “categories” to this blog that I am leaving out, namely past K**l Tales.  Sorry, but the name has been edited to protect the less-that-innocent.  I can’t have certain individuals “googling” for this site, so my name is not affiliated with it in any way.  Please help keep this site clean of women who might have my baby and / or the CIA… thank you… Anyway, one Tale in particular came up last night, and I will post it in order to share it better with you. 

But as for the rest of this burg, there really isn’t all that much offered.  The town of Lawton feels like a giant strip mall, and while I have spent the last two days apartment hunting, I haven’t so much as found a place were I would feel comfortable caging up Steve Brunner.  Still, like most weekends, with Monday comes the chance for salvation and beginning again.  I have this week to gain ground, and those who know this place best know that Lawton is not a place you want be caught rocking on your heels.  Here is to the morning and masturbating in the girl who won’t put-out’s bed… and yes, I’m staying at her apartment right now.