Redact

Sorry, I just didn't like this video anymore. Puppies rolling over can only be cute for so long before you just want them to get up and go away.

Virtue or Vice?

This picture came from the collection of Two Blocks Square yesterday and I just wanted to say... I am proud of this 40 year old body.

This may be vanity or pride, but that is the cross I bear.

Funny

If this funny doesn't make your day, then there may not be any hope for you today.

http://www.dump.com/2009/10/12/imposter/

Enjoy!!

Two Blocks Square

Feeling ill, but needing to get out of the house for even just the briefest of moments. So I am starting this "Two Blocks Square" series in order to document some of the neighborhoods here in Holland, or anywhere else in the world I find myself.

For those not familiar with the concept of a city "block", according to Wikipedia, it varies but there are usually 8 blocks to a mile (1609.344 meters), making a block 660 feet long (201.168 meters).

I prepare to leave my place, and then walk "two blocks square" and document what I find. This is just a little bit of the life around me, as I see it that day. Each day changes, which is why I chose my neighborhood first. I hope you enjoy.

(click over image to view it larger)

Latitude 52.07507	Longitude 4.28175

Real Life, In Training

Caren, Cathy, me and a little Seagram's 7....we have all learned to stick with the "soft" stuff, but that feeling....even back then....can't be ignored. I can just hold dear to my heart that I was that last one down....cause even then I knew how to hold my liquor.

Living with my Totem

I received this today from a new-found friend, one who has known me since my formative years. I can not even begin to do justice to these words by attempting to paraphrase them, so I offer them here, unedited, for your understanding...and my own remembrance.

"There are men too gentle too live among wolves. Who toss them like a lost and wounded dove. Such gentle men are lonely in a merchant's world unless they have a gentle one to love." James Kavanaugh

You came to mind immediately. Reading it over again. This is where my thoughts led me......

I sense two parts of you. The fierce side, and the gentle side. Contradictions with in the same soul. A lion and a lamb.
The Lamb, loving, calm...protective, satiated. The Lion. Fierce, longing, tearing at its own flesh. Self created pain in order gain growth and wisdom.

The Lion appears. Many, many women have tried to coax the Lamb back out. They are foolish, selfishly wanting your protective love. That is because it is a protective energy that is addictive. A love that wraps around you...
I think you may fight with this yourself at times. Especially while in a new relationship.

My intuition tells me that riding the wave....is better than fighting your nature. The Lion has his attributes. He has an intense fire. He seeks growth and wisdom. And after tearing at his own flesh he always sinks back and licks his own wounds...providing healing.

Accepting that part of you is very important.

Back in the Saddle Again....

Time changes little, regardless of geography.

I am home now after spending too many weeks away from the "real" world. It is nice to be away as much as it is nice to be home; sometimes a little more of one than the other.

I feel, at times, that these long trips of mine are designed less for my work efforts than my mental ones. It is as if I have six weeks to sort out things in my head; to focus on what is left behind after many weeks of a regular routine in my Netherlands life.

What I am left with is a sense of renewal and some trepidation. Returning to stacks of mail, problems to solve, some to create, and money to throw around seems to fill most of the few days back. It is ever so pleasant though to get the chance to escape it for at least one weekend before heading back into the fray. Now that Monday is upon me, I find that my time is spent unpacking and finding the energy to keep myself from bathing in gin and cigarettes.

I have returned a bit more determined to maintain my focus and motivation for all things good in my life. I am making plans for my coming holiday, which I will talk about more later.

Just wanted to let the internet mice know that I am back. I have given them a hiatus and have fed them their cheese. Time to get to work kids......

One More Beginning

I believe I have had a change of heart. So much of my life has been about fulfilling immediate fascinations and needs, that the lessons learned from long term challenges has escaped me. Knowing that "this is how it goes..." can mean anything and as I continue to learn about myself, that is what I want to share.

This may mean I post some difficult content from time to time, but that is more who I am than anything else.

This story I saw today has given me a change of heart. I want to share it with you so that maybe you too can be influenced by it. There really isn't much to say....because the content speaks for itself. Take from it what you will, but know that I have been redirected by it.

Preparing the Long Goodbye

As it goes with my inanely tempermental existence in Dutchland, I am on the way out again. I normally only go in one direction (East) and stop just short of every country except the RF. It has been since March since I have been there, so I can only relish the thought of another bit of time off when I am done. Six weeks will pass like a seven year old at bedtime....S.L.O.W.L.Y with a few temper tantrums thrown in.

My enjoyment of all things Red for six weeks is fulfilled in the first few days. Casual "hello's" and "goodbye's" to colleagues and friends, and then it is buckle down to the monotony that follows. With each trip I ask myself why I keep doing this; bad food, bad attitudes, bad working conditions, bad times missing friends, family, and lovers. It is amazing what I will do for the lifestyle I keep. It is difficult to appreciate how the days drone on to others. Those with dead-end jobs and boring lives think that the travel and experience is "fantastic". Well, it is, once or twice. Yet when your bed is only as big as you are....

This will be my fourteenth trip to the RF in under three years, most of them never lasting less that three weeks at a time. That's a minimum of 24 days (21 on site, 3 for travel) of being treated like a political prisoner. I have tried to convince the RF that even prisoners have cable television and internet as well as edible food, to no avail. There just isn't any reasoning with them.

So I will lose a minimum of 7 kilos, will abuse the pathetic gym equipment they have, and will do my best to find the cameras that are hidden in my room. Oh yeah, and to not masturbate until I do; find those cameras that is. It is either that, or YouTube here I come (pun intended).

If you have read the previous post

To those who have partaken of the didactic candy that was in this last post, please consider yourselves somewhat fortunate. I have had a change of heart as to the direction of this blog. Call it buyers remorse, beginners luck, or what ever turn of phrase that suits. I want my words to be more that just a way to remember how I "got off" when I was "___" years old. I will always have that in my mind, and when my mind goes...I would not know what I was missing anyway.

So, if you have looked to share this story with others, I am flattered...and I do hope you return here for more inspirational stories.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

"Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. I have tried prudent planning long enough. From now on I'll be mad."

"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."

Thought Moments

Chairman, Department of Redundancy Department

It only seems fitting to return to this blog a year after it's inception. To revisit the goings on would be moot. So...let's go forward, shall we?

I called in sick today after stubbing my toe whilst extracting myself from a purple latex thong I wore to bed. It seemed only fair. I couldn't wear it to work again. Too many people taking notice of my man-toe. That is embarrassing considering the effort it took to cram it all in there. I did buy a small after all, so it only seems fitting that it not be fitting.

Had a morning-mare of me yelling at my mother for letting herself into a house I have never been in, after she had taken my ex-wife's dog to the vet to get another chip placed in his ear. He already had one, but that didn't matter to her as she had been sent on this errand by the ex herself. She wouldn't listen to me and had chosen to be on the side of my ex, who oddly enough was not there. Hell, why was I there? Mother had chosen the ex over her own son, which is why I was yelling.

"Some mornings it is just not worth chewing through the leather straps" Emo Phillips

I am having an "Emo" sort of day. Random, meaningless, apathetic...but in a comical, falsetto sort of way.