Confessions of a Starving Artist

I like must like getting wet…

…because I spent the last few days taking a 500 dollar bath.  That’s right, kids, for those of you out there who aren’t the biggest fans of the G.Snake, this is your read.  I will be the first to admit that from time to time I am a bit on the more ‘human’ side of the deistical scale of omnipresence, and because of this I do in fact have one or two lesser and unrecorded errs to my name.  This one, however, is a bit much even for me to wrap my arms around, but in the end our hero does come out on top.  I guess in that respect, if any of your are out there waiting for me to look like a total ass, you’ll have to wait for another day… or just get me drunk off some Bombay and Tonic and let me go in the strip clubs here in L-Town.  Same effect.  Either way, at least I’m not this guy.  Sorry, had to share that one.

So this weekend I decide is my weekend to buy a stereo.  I’ve been sitting on a pair Bose 601s that I got for a steal about three months ago that I haven’t heard since I took them out of the store.  It was high time they get some good sweet lovin’ pushing through them; no dry humping, the real shit.  The good shit.  Like something badass.  Like REO Speedwagon or STX.  (…okay so maybe I’m am that guy in the link)  My initial plan was to get the Bose Wave system online, but I figure, let’s go to the pawn shops where I found the speaker and maybe I can save a bit of money.  By that, I mean that I need to shoot for under 500 bucks.  This should have been the part where Homey the Clown brains me with a sock, but in this story the ony clown was yours truly.  After an afternoon of searching, I find a home entertainment receiver and multi-CD changer for just that price.  I think, so I now I can have the piece-meal makings of a nice surround sound system which can be along more versatile than just the Wave, which casues the bit of Diamond Dallas DNA that I have trying to do hand stands in the shallow end of my gene pool to wet it’s pants in creative excitement.  So I spring for it.  You can assume the facial features when I get home and find there is no right side output .

To say that I was pissed doesn’t quiet do it justice.  Frustrated with a hint of annoyance would be closer too it.  I honestly thought that I had eaten a lemon on this one, and since I couldn’t go back until Monday (I diagnosed the problem on Saturday after they closed), I spent the weekend fretted around the apartment staring at my mono mound of black plastic.  By the way, there is very little in this world that is more frustrating that looking at 500 bucks that you can’t spend, especially when it is smack in the middle of your living room.  Maybe not being able to watch a new porn because your friends won’t leave your house… anyway, it’s on that level.

But “Honest” Harry was a great help.  He set me up with a new system (same model and everything… who knew the guy had two just lying around?), and lo and behold, I have the exact same problem when I set the thing up.  Now, I realize that there is no way that you can have two separate receivers from the same pawn shop that have the exact same issue.  I know that the problem is on my end; operator error, as we say in the military.  So with my head hung a bit low, I go back again to the pawn shop and ask them to show me it working because I am obviously a moron… which they gladly do.  I can’t figure out how I am this stupid, and apparently, neither can they because we are both stumped by the time I leave .  Everything they are doing, I am doing.  No speaker issues, no speaker wire issues… it’s red to red and white to white - not exactly rocket science.  Except when I get home, I realize… they are playing the radio… and I’m playing a CD. 

Yup, it was the connector cable.  Simple little connector cable.  Just a little wiggle, and I’m back in business.  This is why I belong in a Think Tank and not a troubleshooting arena.  I’m a theory guy; if there is something to fuck up (even a wet dream if the situation calls for it) I can fuck it up.  At any rate, I’m listening to some new shit, and for once, it sounds okay.

Let’s call the whole thing lame…

Ah, the splendor that is the 2006 Winter Olympics.  Or as I like to call them; Games That Nobody Plays.  Strange, when I was younger I can remember absolutely loving the Winter Olympics, cheering for the American favorites; really feeling the American essence of defeat, victory, broken dreams, and dominance.  Maybe it had to due with growing up in Maine and being surrounded by snow and ice all winter, every winter.  Maybe it had to do with only having CBS because the cable lines didn’t run up our dirt road and nothing else was on for a few weeks.  Maybe it was because those male figure skating costumes were as close as I got to being sexually confused; I don’t know.  But I do know that at this Olympic Games, I honestly wonder is something other than the torch was lit before this whole sha-bang-a-bang kicked itself into a snow bank. 

But like I said, really, what the Hell are these games about?  I’ll give you all an example; have you ever gotten this phone call?  “Hey, Bruce, what are you doing right now…  …. dude, tell her you got a family emergency or something.  Bob and Ken and I are down here and we need a fourth for the bobsled!”  The answer is a resounding, fucking Hell no.  Who the Christ bobsleds other than people training for the bobsled in the Olympics?  No one, that’s who.  We are watching the only four guys in the USA who can bobsled play the four other guys from their respective countries who can bobsled.  There is more of a competitive pool at the local YMCA for a game of pick-up basketball.  So what if they are all within a couple fractions of a seconds of each other - am I missing the variable that can effect it more than a second or two even if their were monkeys in that hollowed out Soviet rocket on skates?  It’s not an Olympic sport, it’s a couple of drunk vandels on Christmas with your kid’s boxcar racer on a frozen waterslide from a summer fun park.

Of course there is the ever popular Luge.  Really, even extreme athletes are like, fuck the Luge man, that shit is crazy.  Again, not a sport, but a drunk bet.  (Floyd, I dare you to race down this icy mountain road on a runner sled, face first… okay, you can wear a helmet you sissy)  This is a common theme that runs through the majority of the events at the Olympics.  I mean, for recreation or athleticism, who does 90 percent of this stuff?  I see a guy wearing a latex suit so tight that women in the audience can decide his date potential at a glance speeding around a frozen race track with one hand behind his back and a two razor sharp blades that would be better suited for a Mexican knife fight attached to his feet.  I don’t remember doing or seeing anything like that ever in childhood athletics.  Must of missed that day in PE. 

Also, I’ve taken to using the Winter Olympics as a model for why we don’t let the world make any of it’s own decisions.  I’ll explain; we got our turn a while back to add a sport to the Olympic bill.  We added Snow Boarding - Boarder Cross and the like.  Yes, we brought the X-Games to the Olympics, and rightly so as most of the world watched it anyway.  Maybe it’s a showing of the times, but I don’t think so.  Skeet Shooting came from the people of Denmark smuggling Nazi gold through the wintery eastern front during WWII.  But who the fuck cross-country skis with a gun on their back nowadays?  The DC sniper used a van and he was certifiably nuts.  What does that say for Skeet Shooters?  I digress…  the point is the following Olympics after introducing Snow Boarding, the Scottish, in all the wisdom of the European Union, brought us - that’s right - Curling. 

Do you know how many black people ask me what that game is when it’s on the TV at the gym?  And I know that I’m only being asked because I’m white and the majority of them think that Curling has to be some crazy white person game that white folks play all the time when black folks aren’t looking.  I’m always like, I have no idea, it’s Scottish - not white… they have sex with sheep in their country too. 

And have you noticed that Curling is always on?  Isn’t there a Hockey World Cup or something going on to… wasn’t that once the biggest Olympic sport of them all, Summer or Winter?  I guess a multi-national league-regulated professional sport takes a back seat to suffle board on ice. 

Anyway, another thing:  What is up with the pure lack of guts of some of our more controversial Olympians?  Bode Miller doesn’t even finish?  Come on, I get it, he’s a pot head, he’s a bad boy, he doesn’t care, I got it.  But does anyone out there remember Alberto Tomba, the Italian Slalom star.  He was a party boy too, even showed up drunk to his heat, if I remember right in 1994.  Smoked out and partied up and was, well, Italian.  But he fucking got Silver!  What the fuck is Bode?  A lame-o, a quitter, and wonderful representation of one of America’s most notable Gold hopefuls… and he’ll make a million dollars when he gets home off of some endorsements or some other stupid shit that makes me think how completely unfair the hoopla around some of these sports are.  Being the best at something that less than a tenth of a percent of the world does doesn’t make you a champion; it makes you fucking weird…  like the guy if the office who can drink a pint of milk and blow it out his nose.  Not an Olympian, no matter how hard he trains at it, just a freak with a decent ability to project snot.

And lets not forget the other huge name that didn’t compete, Michelle Kwan, the protégé that was skating in the Olympics when she was what, 14 years old?  So she pulls her groin and pulls out of her last shot at Gold?  Unless she has a tendon sticking out from her vagina, I can’t even believe she didn’t skate.  I mean, it’s not like someone hit her in the knee with a crowbar or something?

Speaking of skating.  Where the Hell was Scott Hamilton?  He’s been announcing that shit since I was three; he’s possibly the greatest male skater ever… and he’s busy doing Celebrity’s On Ice.  There you have it.  Scott Hamilton is, if anyone is, THE Winter Olympian, and he wasn’t ‘doing’ Torino because he was busy ‘doing’ reality TV.  So explain to me why I’m tuning in again?

You know what’s cooler than being cool?

Let me bring you all up to speed on a problem that has been continually perpetuated in my ever frustrated evenings.  No, nothing frustrating in the normal ‘guttersnake’ sense of the word, but rather a more annoying renderance of meaning.  It’s twisted tale of negligence, natural gas, and one man’s struggle to understand what it means to rent.  I’m going to let you all in on the saga that was and is the reason why I am so damn cold… literally.

Rewind to the first of the month.  Big Time Tommy Dakota comes over for dinner, and as I start to cut up the chicken, I come to the understanding that my gas range won’t start.  Now concern for my eyebrows keeps me from trying to light the pilot under the broiler with too much fervor.  But then the date hits me.  As does the fact that for the last three months of living here I have never received a gas bill.  Hense, I have not paid one either.  In my own defense, I was under the dubious impression that my landlord was paying it in the same manner that he was the water and sanitation bills.  I figured if I had to pay for it I would get a bill or a phone call or at the very least a nudge to place a call, that is, a specific company to sign my shit over to me in name.  Not the case, and I take this as a lesson learned in the next renter’s matrix that I enter into.  But lo, there are blessings in disguise.

So I call my landlord, an ex-Special Forces guy from Vietnam and Desert Storm, who explains to a very irate me that this is my fault and not his.  He’s right, even though I wasn’t having that at the time.  I think I blamed him for not realizing what a cherry I was to this whole ‘leasing’ thing.  Regardless, I end up doing all the leg work on getting a guy from the gas co. over to turn my life back on.  Keep in mind, without gas in Lawton, you have no hot water, no heat (in February), and no stove to cook on.  And oh by the way, it was Monday the 6th before old-boy came over to hook me up as the company was Union, which is a four-letter word for me now.  I find it increasingly ironic that while the gas co. said that this gas bill had not been paid in eight months (previous tenant), and they knew right where to come to turn my gas off; how is it that I never got a bill to my address in anyone’s name, let alone mine?  No matter.

So Monday comes, and I’m thinking no more showers at the gym.  No more microwave dinner dishes.  No more blankets.  Old-boy is lighting the pilots and everything is hunky-dory… until he gets to the heater.  I have one of those old-as-Walter Brimley gas wall heating systems.  Old-boy says, there is a lot of soot here.  Is that normal?  I say, yeah.  He says, the flames always come down this low?  I say, yeah.  He pokes for a bit and finally says, “hey man, this thing is dirty and quite frankly is a fire hazard.  I can’t in good conscience light the pilot for you.  I’m going to write you a recommendation to give to your landlord to get this cleaned before you turn it on.  If you want to turn it on, it’s on you, but if you burn the place down, the gas co. isn’t responsible.”  … ain’t that about a bitch?

Now it’s back in my landlord’s hands.  And a give him the ball with a grin.  Wednesday afternoon, the cleaner-man shows up to find me doing homework wrapped in sweatpants and my blankets.  Santa Claus would have had to wait in line for this guy as far as people I was waiting around for.  So he goes on the roof, in my attic (making one hellavah racket), dragging all his shit around and whistling like he’s the lead in some Okie version of Mary Poppins.  He comes in and says, “hey man, I cleaned your heater, but you’ve got a bigger problem.  The clay pipe, that is basically your exhaust pipe, has a substantial crack running the length of it.  The only reason that you didn’t have flames going straight into the wall before is that all the soot was acting as a patch.  So… it’s clean… but I wouldn’t run it.”  My landlord contacted me within the hour and told me to go rent some space heaters (at his expense of course) because it might take a while for him to find someone who could fix the heater / find the part. 

So I got a space heater.  I got two.  Two bad,bad Leroy Brown motherfuckers.  It has been eleven days without heat at this point and I am sick (almost literally) and tired (literally) of being cold.  I plug them in… and flip the breaker.  That’s right, the wiring in this placing dates back to before the birth of Diamond Dallas, and it can’t handle two of today’s massive voltage space heaters.  So I have to take them back for something more moderate, and even now I can’t run them both on ’high’ at the same time. 

Today is the two week mark.  Things aren’t so bad.  It’s warm in here… not hot, but warm.  I got hot water and hot stove.  For the record, at no point was I as ghetto / desperate to attempt to heat my house from my stove; burners on, oven door open and lit.  My landlord told me that it would probably be tomorrow or Thursday when the part-fixer-heater-repair-guy would be here.  But then yesterday…

I’m getting my oil changed up at the Ford dealership, and I decide that now is as good of a time as any to get a new CD player in my car.  You see, my CD player has never worked since I bought the car, and it’s under warranty, so I think, fuck it, time for tunes.  The mechanic informs me that due to the price of my stereo ($487) that the warrantycompany will not just ship a new one here; rather, they want me to send them the broke unit to see if it is cheaper to repair or replace.  Which means that I have a massive hole in my dash for a week or so.  Here’s the kicker.  As I’m watching Maury in the waiting area when repair dude comes to me with my gutted stereo… except it’s bigger than my stereo… it’s my car’s heater too.  He says, “hey man, we are going to have to send your heater with the stereo.  Seems they are connected.  Still want to do this?”  I wasn’t having the best day, but that was really the clincher.  I nodded, considered the priesthood for the third time this month, and he apologized for the inconvenience.

Needless to say, morning drives to PT at 0445 hrs are a bit brisk this week.

Sticking it to The Man when you are The Man.

The whole past week is like some Orson Wells novel gone terribly wrong.  We’ve gone back to ten hour days (if we are lucky) and with your’s truly at the helm of our small group endeavors for the last ten days or so, one can only imagine the frustration that was had on all levels.  I understand that I am perhaps in some lights (usually candle lights…) a fairly charismatic guy.  However, when a task is placed in my stead, especially in the matter of a military mindset, I see no reason but to accomplish the task to the highest potential.  “…100% and then some.” as the Ranger Creed points out, and as any good Ranger should I look to my comrades to look out for me as I would for them.  That’s just how it works.  As far as relaxation within the work environment goes, I think the Terrible Terry Tate said it best:  “Ain’t nothing wrong with chillin’ when the chillin’ is right, but when things ain’t happenin’ the ways they supposed to be happenin’… well that’s just not Terry’s game.”

So maybe I had some “constructive debates”.  And so what if some of the debates went my way regardless of who made what point.  That’s the benefit of being in charge.  At the end of the day when the last notional bullet was fired in the JCATs simulation (a really giant simulation center on Ft. Sill used for wargames and training.  Millions of dollars… millions) my battalion achieved it’s mission better than any other group, suffered the least casualties, killed more of the enemy, and did it just as quickly as every one else (about three hours).  Some people even came and spoke to me about stuff that hand gone down in the week afterwards, smoothing shit over. 

So I’m good at my job.  I knew that, this is just reinforcement and accolades.  My concern is that as a “Fire Supporter” I will never achieve a job higher than a supporting role.  This now makes two Battalion sized missions that I have planned and executed (more or less), which by the way is a Major’s job, with damn little negative to complain about, and these skills will never be used.  As far as the Field Artillery is concerned all I have done is adequately demonstrated an understanding of maneuver operations in so far that I can support them.  An understanding?  I am fairly certain that my ‘understanding’ is at the very least on par with most maneuver guy’s ‘proficiency’. 

The glass ceiling again.  And it’s a military glass ceiling so it’s bullet proof.  All I have ever wanted to do for the Army (and myself… no reason to be too over-dramatic) is be all that I can be.  I want to be a soldier’s officer, lead by example, say and do, walk with my men into battle, engage the enemy in close quarters, rah rah rah.  So far I have trained to that end in every opportunity that I can.  And when the Army placed me at its’ need, and those needs did not match up to that goal; I made the proverbial Army Lemonade, if you take my meaning.  I am as fit to lead soldiers into combat as any Infantry, Armor, or Marine Officer in today’s military.  But for the last year, the Army has given me the digital middle finger.

I know I’m an Artillery Officer, which means we support the maneuver.  I got that.  But we don’t even do that anymore.  No guns are being fired in anger any longer.  There are no more smoking piles of empty artillery rounds along the gun line, no more cities in ruin by massed effects of Divarty and Corps Artillery Fires, no responsive calls for fire on a known enemy location.  There are many reasons, mostly political, but the fact remains; we do not support the maneuver.  I know it… and they know it.

For the last year, and most of you know this, I have been trying to get into something a bit more… accommodating to my skill set.  I do not think that I am behind any of my peers in and fashion, far from; I would go so far as to say I “Lead the Way”.  But the Army does not think so.  All of my attempts to move into a more offensive-minded group within the Army, any offensive-minded group mind you, has been denied for reasons unclear to me.  I do not know if it’s paperwork or this or that or what.  My question:  when do I cut bait on waiting in line / wasting my time personal achievements in order to further other doors that are open?

I’ll say it again.  This has always been Goal One.  And while there is no fourth quarter clock in life, I think we can all agree at some point or another the clock does run out and doors start to close.  My concern is that by the time I open up out of this tunnel vision that I will find that I’m stuck as a supporter who doesn’t support.  You understand?

So I’ve started some things in motion.  Nothing that can’t be reversed, but I think maybe it’s time to start looking at some other areas of training.  I dropped a packet for PSYOPs training and I’m looking at doing some ROTC work to get back into the University environment to working on research and writing that I have been sorely neglecting.  I know, it’s not closing and killing the enemy.  What’s worse is a lot of the bones in my body tell me that it’s a path for one who can’t, and that it should be better left to those who can’t because I know that I am one who can.  But that brings me back to the issue; no one is letting me.

The night is about a little man… called Oscar.

Well, another year of movies that I didn’t see.  Of all the movies nominated for best picture I have seen one (Crash) and I didn’t like it.  I that that it, like Syriana, was over drawn and offered little to each individual actor, though I will give Paul Haggis directorial props.  But that is neither here nor there.  I simply mention it because it is one of the few films that I can comment on without sounding like a jackass.  So what if I haven’t gone to see Brokeback Mountain?  It not about the gay cowboy thing, which I do think is a ridiculous premise for a movie, but hey, Howard Stern gets a good audience doing similar stunts.  Personally I don’t like romances, wether there is butt sex or not.  I didn’t watch Legends of the Fall until this past autumn, and I liked it good enough.  Just have to be a special mood to sign away two hours to that sap… which may be indicative of my relationship issues… hmmm…

What is kinda funny is that Brad Pitt has (according to sources, of course) told his agent that he wants to play a gay man.  Reason?  He wants to get in on all the acclaim these other actors are getting playing gay men on screen.  I do not know what to say to this.  I do wonder if Tom Cruise will look at this the same way; perhaps a little queer scene with Tom Cat will finally get him an Oscar, who knows?

I do think that Health had to have really been “unable to quit” Jake in order for his performance to top Joaquin’s in Walk the Line.  He and Witherspoon deserve highest honors even if the academy didn’t think the movie did. 

Have you heard this one?  Judi Dench was reported as being snubbed for interviews regarding Mrs. Henderson Presents because she did not fit the demographics?  This is Judi Dench, right?  She’s in line for a friggin’ Kennedy Center Honor, in my book, but she can’t be on Good Morning America?  We suck, Gen. Xers, but you Gen. Y faggots… you suck worse.

Surprise nod to Batman Begins on for best cinematography, which I think, is warranted.  Other surprise;  Best Make Up:  Naria, Star Wars III, and Cinderella Man… seriously?  How did that one slip in?  Oh, and what is up with Pride & Prejudice getting the nod for just about anything?  I mean, I got that it was a Focus Feature, but that doesn’t mean you get a little gold statue just for coming out?  … that and I hate Jane Austin.

Really though, Walk the Line and Munich  need to walk away with everything they get nominated for.  I haven’t seen Capote or Good Night, and Good Luck, but getting beaten by them, from all accounts seems reasonable.  Some of this other fluff is just Hollywood propaganda.

Hail to the Chief, baby…

I didn’t go to the gym.  I ate an early dinner and took a nap.  I popped popcorn.  And I popped it with the intent of throwing it at the television set at the State of Union address.  I did, however, forget a napkin.  Because I spent more time clapping and cheering then I fully expected to.

Brilliant.  Not only did he talk about literally everything that I wanted him to (and I thought that my list was extensive), Pres. Bush did it with the tone and order that I felt that we needed.  Most importantly; Energy.  For a few minutes, I thought that this Texas oil man was a Green.  That right there, provided that this isn’t lip service, is a firm level of leadership into what I can only hope is a bi-partisan step into solving the problems that the President outlined.  It was like the chair of Robert Morris getting up and saying, you know, cigarettes are bad.  Shit, it was almost tri-partisan.  There really was so much.

Some keynotes; the pledge that the military in Iraq would be handled by the Generals and not beaurcrats.  I clapped and screamed and gave my life-size cut out of Hulk Hogan (The Real American) a hi-five.  Of course, the Energy initiative which I have spoke of; but also the call for a joint effort, Democrats and Republicans, to deal with the growing amount of senior citizens as I believe that Bush sees that it is necessary after not having Social Security passed.  Unlike the Democrats, who seeming only put out fires then relight their own torches to this matter with agenda laden matches (you can see this by the Democrats practically dancing in the isles when he mentioned his bill getting shot down); again, I see Pres. Bush pleading for bi-partisan efforts to solve this problem.  Perhaps I’m missing something here, but if we take his words as intent, I don’t see how anyone can really be that upset at this address.

Sure, he pushed issues that the Republicans favor.  He’s a Republican.  And perhaps this apparent swing to a bit more middle-of-the-road is based on the fact that he is more-or-less turning the page into a lame duck, which always seems to soften up the hardliners a bit.  But for me, I did like his stance on Iraq; and while I can hear the FOX News chirping in the back about how he called out “Isolationists” in a sort of “If you’re not for us, you’re against us” status, I think that it is necessary.  We need to support the issues that he is bring up now, not dwell in the past.  And every Democrat who is scoffing at this saying he’s just talking while Bush leans over the fence and says, hey, lets come over here and hash this out; well, I think they are the ones that are going to throw away the next three years.  Pres. Bush is talking about setting the standards for some high-profile bi-partisan projects that will lay major ground work for which ever party takes the next four years.  I am frowning now that the minority party has now chosen to deliver a response in rebuttal, something that this completely in harmony with the partisan ideologies that the President warned about. .

And ooo, ooo!  Did you see the who Sen. John McCain (R) from AZ was sitting next too and gabbing with???  Sen. Susan Collins (R) from the great State of Maine. 

Now the dead Marine’s family, I thought, was a bit of a ploy, but then again, the proverbial ‘they’ always do something like that, so in that manner, I can respect it.  But that Marine’s words about knowing honor, understanding purpose as an American, and (his words) fighting over there so you would not have to fight here.  Those words where epic and something that every citizen should embrace, not just words, but attempt to incorporate said words into your life… like Jesus, except less politically motivated.

Anyway… I had a good time.