So what happens when two messages or two images appear as one?

What do you do?!?

I have experienced a lot of growth and reward of journey these past few years. I have gone as far as I want to go with most things and have become accustom to the mild mannered-hard working fellow that I am. I have faith in my mantras.

Mantra One: “Things have a way of working out.”

Mantra Two: “I am over it.”

Mantra Three: “I am not here to save the world but rather save my self and in doing so I save the World.”

Here I am with my mantras and a keyboard and wondering why someone would decide on a certain picture bonding and binding into one image of display; an absconder of attention with a song. I mean, I can see the point of view but find it to be a personal parallel to my own.

These are heroes with an unsuited constant image that occasionaly shimmers.

Jethro Tull:

And that is a chilly Southern California talking; Southern California indeed.

Somehow the British rockers impregnated this dimension with allegiance.

It’s ok by me because I sleep better knowing that I have faith and wake up ready to enjoy it.

Faith is a very important thing.

So were Doogie Howser's computer diary entries.

Godspeed …

So, I am tired. More tired than I have been in almost half a decade.

When I was in my mid twenties I always worked two or three jobs. I had my overnight grocery clerk position for the Boston based ‘Stop and Shop’ and then always did something during the day. I owned my own landscaping business, called ‘The Lawnmower Man’. I worked at a Marina as the Assistant Store Manager. When I first started third shift work, I still held my daytime gig sanding and refinishing hardwood floors.

The year leading up to my marriage to my ex-wife, I slept for an hour in the morning and an hour at night and busted my fanny the rest of the time. Seven days a week; I was always working. It helped pay for an elaborate wedding of dreams and funded an amazing seven day honeymoon to the small Tahitian island of Moorea; plus thousands of dollars spent on meals, gifts, clothes, jewelry, activities and tattoos on Moorea. When I left that little island, I was ready to learn French and move!

I am now working a much different pace, but think that it is well worth it since I am convinced that I have found my new workplace ‘home’. I am still at Vons (a division of Safeway - the national supermarket chain that owns Randall’s, Genuardi’s, Domick’s, Carr’s, and Tom Thumb). I work the third shift there as a dairy second man (essentially the back up manager to the department - acting department head when the manager is away for any reason). I work five days a week and have been there for a year. I have gone nowhere with this company and have been over-all treated like shit, regardless of my experience in the business and my over-all desire to excel and work hard.

                          

I am surrounded by ILLEGAL immigrants and jaded bastards that think they are inventing devices and procedures of cataclysmic proportions, as opposed to merely operating a grocery store providing food. False stature is fun until it is offered authority.

This picture emphasizes what they do to their employees; mash, bake and toss:

http://shop.safeway.com/superstore/default.asp?page=corphome

My new found job (of three weeks plus) is at Bristol Farms which is a local California company with fifteen locations which are mostly in Los Angeles county. I work in one of the exclusions to that L.A. county rule. The store I am a clerk at is the Mission Viejo establishment that is found in a galleria-type mall called the ‘Kaleidoscope Center’. Here is where I work in the afternoon (mostly from 1:45 to 10:15 - there is NO third shift position):

                       

I ABSOLUTELY LOVE MY JOB AT BRISTOL FARMS!

It is what the business used to be. Everyone is upbeat and helpful. Even the ‘disgruntled’ or ‘challenging’ employees give the ol’ college try and strap on a smile for the sake of the game. I really walk away from there feeling blessed for having the opportunity to even just be there, never-mind actually participate. Here is a shot of their store in Hollywood:

                              

I get to help customers with recipes and advice (I cooked in a five star restaurant for three years). I am allowed to offer input and am faced with challenges that I greet with the opportunity to overcome. I am actually thanked, THANKED, for my work - this is an AMAZING reception standard for an employee in the grocery industry.

http://www.bristolfarms.com/home.html

I finally feel like I have a future; an amazing future.

Oh, by the way, the reason I started with schedules is that I just finished a forty hour work week in 54 hours between both stores. I slept poorly on Thursday night and was up at two a.m. watching 'X Files'. I grabbed a poor set of two or three hours on Friday morning before doing a 1to 10 and a 10:30 to 7. Then, off for four hours and starting Saturday at noon when I woke up was the last time that I slept until now. I charged five back to back shifts with no sleep and a hugely surprising level of productivity, especially considering the hectic-ness of this season .

Guess where I smiled the most and was appreciated?

Guess where I will be going places?

Guess who makes me happy?

Mantra One: “Things have a way of working out”.

Thank you Layton Rawlins!

"As long as we live, it's you and me baby, and there ain't nothin' wrong with that."

Be good and smile.

Godspeed …

I am trying my best to maintain and stay optimistic with my crazy work schedule. It is almost as my ‘free-mind’ is being transported back to days of fun and frolic. I miss being free and having nothing to be accountable for beyond what comes from my mouth.

Something about living from the seat of my pants (or at least the pockets or contents of pockets) that has left me filled with enough reflection to cast a youth into a daze of story telling. Beyond thinking of Wockets in My Pockets and the Nookcase in my Bookcase, I think of America:

I wish I could find more of the German performance featured here. Alas, I can not. There is a clip of ‘Ventura Highway’ that is listed on YouTube from the same performance but it does not view all the way and so I offer you this live performance of one of my favourite America songs:

There is, of course, the standard of “A Horse With No Name” which was featured on the essential 60’s compilation called ‘Freedom Rock’. I tend to stray from such fan fare and walk into the realm of the oldies radio station standard of “Lonely People”. Something about the piano and the harmonica touches my soul:

These guys all look like the geeky guys that I used to play Dungeons and Dragons with. This may be why I love them beyond their flavored acoustic delectability. Here is a great live performance of their hit “Sister Golden Hair Surprise” which used to rock my world and make me think fondly of lost days sitting around a patchouli stencher and a nice two foot tube:

This brings me to where they were just before they entered the battle for the fairground circuit. Trying to compete with Steve Miller for the ‘magic’ circuit didn’t play too well but payed just fine, yet these guys still rock my world and I wish their music was continued to rock my world with the subtle simplicity of intellectual bliss that these boys offered us back in the day. Here is them dumbed down for moment, although they still hold tight to being elusive, just listen to the words:

Either way, or wonder way, I find that this song means more to me than most. It is a continuation of my wonderment with justified reality. It makes me smile and realize that brains and hearts are needed regardless of how much and how often we try to destroy them:

Raspberrytoast, I put these all up for you. I wanted to do this before, and after you had made mention that you had not heard the boys, I figured that I would put it at easy access for you as they need to be recognized and listened to and I was surprised to know that you had not loved them!

Another post today will come, but this should be reveled in as well.

Be good, rock on, smile.

Godspeed …

I was looking to put up a post revolving around the 70's rock group 'America'. I went to YouTube and hit the search archives. I almost puked.

Here is what comes up when you type "america" and not a song title by the band of such said name:

Awesome, huh?

I need a bile bag!

Some one call the airlines and see how I can direct those little vomit sacks to my abode for use after gazing at such vile manipulative rubbish.

I mean, come on, the U.N. HATES the U.S.; why on Earth would you assume assumption of the U.N. connection, when even conspiracy theorists assume that the U.S. is only in there to fund the U.N., not control it?

Just a thought.

Off to spew bile!

Godspeed ...

                     

I am one tired Son Of A Bitch. Fatigue and lack of consumption and delusion lick at my heels and I am beginning to feel like the poor sorry bastard above! I think the quote on the card does right by me, my existence, and my breathing being of heart beat.

                                              

It is funny how we think of stages and periods of our lives and what each little sectional/pull-out world provides us beyond an unsatisfying night of rest. Lumpy, thin mattresses with bars in our backs aside, we do find the adventures of life’s couch surfing a relevant series of re-reads and revisits enough to supply our daydreams with enough napalm to torch the modern world, now don’t we?

Yes, that is right, napalm to inject thought, to praise re-birth, to contemplate destruction and all the other causes and definitions that we chaw on, day in and day out. Nothing a good screw wouldn't unfold or unfurl!

Our intertwined worlds of ‘who was that’ and ‘why were they here’ moments cascade into a mirage of un-separating droplets creating the frothy foam of the barrel bottom that licks our heels around every stepping corner. Coincidence and consequence don overcoats of tweed and carry plastic badges to shove in our faces with every move we make.

Like DNA, our realties collide and combine into an incest ridden globe or gorge and grind that gyrates into gelatinous gauntlets of garish gaunt; guaranteed to guide our gilded lily to guided gorges of garrulous gripe and glee. Yes, far too many ‘G’s’ to want in a two sentence paragraph! For a second, this paragraph was looking like ‘Tha Hood’!

‘Tha Hood’ is where this conversation with no one goes. I am missing my youth, my free-wheelin’ days of yum-yum-eat ‘em up and down/the bastard down with a bottle of something to make the lines snort up quicker and the pills settle easier(the parties would go for days and the women would smile). I am missing the crazy sex. I am missing the no consequence moments of self-indulgence. I long for the days and hours of senseless self-destruction.

They are gone.

No more. No mas.

At least I still remember the fashion and the soundtrack.

Bring them back before I die.

Can I be the 90 year old man who lights up a Pall Mall and snorts a line of Peruvian Pink, with a gummer to boot, before they throw me in the box?

Just make sure that you all stomp down hard on the dirt after they shovel over because I will, WILL, claw my way back up to party.

Nothing says ‘lovin’ like a ghost with an addiction!

                                                        

I suppose I should just dance on and be myself, as it hasn’t really done me too wrong in the past. I do alright, I survive, I smile; I do tend to have great sex! I will do a dance to that and know that all things do work out and that I am an active role-player in my reality working out just fine!

SMILE

Be good and Godspeed …