yep 30, ho-hum-ho-hum 30 candles to me iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

We were watching 'Indiana Jones and the temple of doom' in the 'house' the other day (yay) , and I said (out loud) god I don't remember Kate Capshaw looking so young, yep, you guessed it I'm now old, trust Indy to make me feel like an old lost relic! There is always one good thing that I have to remind myself at 'birthday time' and that is, my brother Cameron will always be 1 year older! Ho-hum

isn't that right Cameron?

Yarkk

I am writing, yes, writing, songs for my lovely wife to sing, or anyone else if they choose!  however the more I write the more I feel I should be singing them, I yes I, as I am so angry when I think about what I am writing about, hmmm.  Yarkk, Yarkk anyway here is an exert for your amusement:
 
couldn't stop the words today, couldn't help but read the news
tv off, feeling sick, poisoned from the anchor, who doesn't know
only caring about which way the ratings go
want to strike out, punch and kick, tv off, going to be sick
 
another day another incarnation of what was missed
another betrayal of trust
another never-ending story
another news full of pomp and glory
breaking the news, breaking the story
 
 
it is about the media really, I now live it the 'states' and I have to say it, the news coverage over here is CraP, if you watch CNN for longer than 5 minutes you feel like panicking as if the world was about to end, RIght NOWWWW.  If you watch NBC of NBC ABC or what-ever the heck it is, you feel like screaming at the TV at the ignorance AND as for the Fox news network, it gets kind of miss-treated most people think it's awful, however the true horror really has to be seen to be believed, as small minded people make there points on the airwaves (should that be YOur air waves) and literally shITE inside your head with such vigor that you almost go blind with rage! 

This is my official vent blog

I normally tend to vent in a mildly humorous way. It's nice to see the happy side of things. But I think I've reached my threshold.

There is something in the water. I remember when I returned to New York (after going through 9 months of cancer treatment in upstate New York), I felt so light-hearted and easy-going, very optimistic... regardless of what I'd just been through, and the crazy things happening mentally and physically inside me, I could walk the streets of this city and smile, just being here. Before I left NYC to go home for treatment, I remember saying to everyone I was happy for the opportunity to go home, because I'd needed a break from the city. I was stiffening up, stressing out, and generally not a happy camper. I attributed a lot of those feelings to the physical effects of having cancer and not realizing it (itching my legs through most nights left me without a lot of sleep for.. oh.. about a year). But having been away from the city for so long, then being back for a few months, I suddenly felt those old feelings return. I remember getting on the 7 train to go to a temp agency one morning, and swearing at commuters on the train, when just a few weeks earlier, I'd smiled at everyone I saw.

I could feel the angst setting in. It really upset me. Was it force of habit? Was I a horrible person? Did I really hate every single person on that subway car? It felt like it at the time. It feels like it every time I walk through Times Square. Every time a telemarketer calls.

Today I wrote a request for materials to someone at one of nyc's deputy mayor's office for a place I'm working right now. He's being honored at an event. By some strange freudian slip, I'd written the last name of the Deputy Mayor wrong, completely changing the name. I got a single-line reply from either him or his office: "Why don't you get the name right first". Obviously after I'd realized what I'd done, I'd felt pretty stupid. But I'm surprised how that one sentence really ruined my night. What upsets me the most is that if I were the person that wrote me back, I probably would have said the same thing, rolling my eyes, imagining some idiot temp with no serious career prospects dawdling all day on the internet. Why should he respond to me with any amount of respect?

It's funny, you'd think you should approach a new relationship with a human from a positive place, giving people the benefit of the doubt, and if they suck, then they go down a notch. But my psychology has conditioned me to assume everyone is already a bastard before I've even met them, and it's only after the fact, when they've proven otherwise, that I can accept them. Is that a defense mechanism? Is it because there are so many people here it's overload, and our brains have to filter it out? Is it this city? This country? This generation?

Maybe it's just me. Defensive insecurities. How do people function in jobs where they have to deal with people all day? Makes me want to be a recluse in the mountains somewhere, where I never had to interact with anyone I didn't already know again. Which is completely irrational and unrealistic. Can you imagine this deputy seeing hundreds of people every day, having the obligation to interact with all of them, and needing to smile the whole time? Then getting my email and being a complete bastard. Seems really sad it takes more effort to be nice than to be an asshole. Not that I'm the first to explore that sentiment.

Ah well, I suppose I'll get over it.

I remember after September 11th being glued to the t.v., not to see images of horror, but to hear someone say something meaningful. I didn't really have much of an opinion on Guiliani, not having lived in the city through most of his time as mayor, but I remember needing him to be on the set, giving us instructions, being confident, being a leader. I felt so much better thinking someone was in control of the situation that I had no control over. I needed to put my faith in someone. At the same time, Bush would appear on t.v... I wasn't thrilled he got voted in, but at the same time, I REALLY wanted him to do a good job. I REALLY wanted him to know what he was doing, to say something useful. I kept watching, hoping his speeches would get better. But everything he said was rhetoric, and made me feel so much worse. I gave up watching after a couple weeks. Now I just wonder what the process is, who decides what is said, what committee designs an outline for an opinion, and all the steps A-Z that end up with a final result of: a completely meaningless statement.

Oh well, now I have to get back to honoring someone who is trying to put a massive building that will only house 10 condominiums that cost 25 million dollars each on an entire lower manhattan city block.

But I'm sure it will look cool.

From the mystic of love

Ok, I am the great 'Sight See-er', prevarication is my game, I am the ultimate embodiment of all that you want to be, for I have been created from two opposing wills, the FOx news network and what's left an organic humanity. Yes that's right I can see the truth through the blue screen of hate while taking the moral high ground at every opportunity. I have harnessed this life power and my new purpose in life is to make you feel good/bad based on how I am feeling. This will be a regular occurrence on the house site, so if you can't bare to live your life from day to day, tune in for more fun and frolics at your impuissance (look it up people it's a freedom word).
So today I am feeling quite lyrical, full of all the things immigrants feel on a daily basis, at having to live our lives through meaningless paper work and standing in lines for days. To quote the great American icon that is Courtney Love 'so people be careful what you wish for'!

and on a more positive note, onto your future......... this is coming at ya from da language of da street

Aries
Oh I woke up tonight I said
I've gotta make somebody love me
I've gotta make somebody love me
And now I know now I know now I know that it's you
Lucky lucky- You're so lucky

Taurus
I know I won't be leaving here with you
I say don't you know
You say you don't know
I say... take me out!
I say you don't show
Don't move, time is slow
I say... take me out!
So- there you go Taurus

Gemini
if I knew now what I knew then
I'd wonder how not wonder when
There's something going wrong again
With me and mine
It's only ever what it seems
Memories and might have beens
Heaven's scent: the smell of dreams
We'll never find
Tell me... tell me... tell me...
What are you going to do with your life?

Cancer
Seven lies, multiplied by seven, multiplied by seven again
Seven angels with seven trumpets
Send them home on the morning train
Well who's that shouting?
John the Revelator!
All he ever gives us is pain
Well who's that shouting?
John the Revelator!
He should bow his head in shame

Leo
The great intoxication
The mental generation
Sound effects & laughter
Stupid ever after
Hoping' it was cranked up
Loud enough for you to hear

Virgo
Ah, but who saves you?
Who craves you?
Who Heartbreaks?
Who love makes?
Look into the eyeball of your boyfriend

Libra
Listen to my tale of woe,
it's terribly sad but true,
All dressed up, no place to go
Each evening I'm awfully blue.
I must win some handsome guy
Can't go on like this,
I could blossom out I know,
With somebody just like you. So...

Scorpio
You can't seem to face up to the facts
Your tense and nervous and you Can't relax
You can't sleep 'cause your bed's on fire
Don't touch me your a real live wire
Psycho Killer
Qu'est-ce que c'est
fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better
Run run run run run run run away
Psycho Killer
Qu'est-ce que c'est
fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa far better
Run run run run run run run away

Sagittarius
This is the story of a country girl
Back in town from her country house
She came to me with her muddy boots
She destroyed all my carpet
You know how to do it

Aquarius
Hello Spaceboy, you're sleepy now
Your silhouette is SO stationary
You're released but your custody calls
And I want to be free
Don't you want to be free
Do you like girls or boys
It's confusing these days
But Moondust will cover you
Cover you

Pisces
When I was a child:
Running in the night,
Afraid of what might be
Hiding in the dark,
Hiding in the street,
And of what was following me...

Mc-Friggin

To anyone stalking me and my blogs, get ready to read the same thing twice, I have the bit between my teeth today about Scotland's fat tax, it sounds like a highly thought-out, well motivated and rounded idea inspired by open minded people who are highly educated and inspired to help out modern society's glutinous flaw, OR could it just be a lazy ASS way of making money out of poor people rather than tax bastards like Ronald Mc-Friggin Donald's!



Every time you take a bite out of a McDonald's chicken McNugget, you could be taking a bite out of the Amazon rainforest. The Amazon rainforest faces many threats -- loggers and cattle ranchers among them. Now, massive soya farms are doing the damage. Rainforests which were teeming with life are cleared to grow soya. This feeds animals in Europe that end up in fast food outlets and supermarkets.

It took our activists a year to track the 7,000 km (4,200 mile) journey of soya beans grown in the Amazon to fast food outlets. We used satellite images, aerial surveillance, previously unreleased government documents and on-the-ground monitoring. Now we're exposing the global trade in soya from rainforest destruction in the Amazon to McDonald's fast food outlets and supermarkets across Europe.

If McDonald's trashing the Amazon super-sizes your anger, then take action now to get McDonald's to take the Amazon off the menu!

As much as I said I wouldn't be political on this thing, I lied faster then a UK politician on an election campaign. I really wonder sometimes, People just don't buy the crap it's a sick and dying world, but it doesn't have to be.....


coming soon, your monthly star signs, direct from an ethernet and onto your soul, from the house's resident profit of doom and gloom................... I will play with your mind for a month, firstly filling it with rubbish before a slow and agonizing 3 more weeks of wonder on your part, as to wether I am actually right or not. So throw out your secret diary, turn off the goggle box and bin that damned mobile phone (you know you never needed it before and now it just leaves you feeling sad) and get ready for the future

and PS!!!!

I can't believe NO ONE had a comment on my Dave Foley / Isabella Rosselini "seperated at birth" post!!!$$@!! C'mon!! Someone had to laugh!!!! That was brilliant! I spent hours screen capturing and photoshopping, for the record.

-Maria

A Pepper Grows in Jersey

First thing: Beth Ann posted last week, but the time stamp got screwed up, and got placed behind old posts. So check it out below if you haven't yet already! and for the record, I love sappy blogs.

Now, before I forget everything he told me, I'm going to write down the excellent tips the garden guy at Home Depot enlightened us with:

1. Water your garden in the morning. In the summer, it's coolest in the morning, and the water has a chance to settle down and stay cool. otherwise, the water will sit on top and be heated by the sun, eventually, well, boiling your roots. bad news!

2. Sprinkling black pepper in your plants will keep the neighbor cats away. that, or a $300 high-pitched sound-wave machine. Guaranteed to keep any animal at least 50 feet away from your garden. However, Basil and Olivia might never forgive us for that one.

3. Dark soil is good soil. If you throw it and it drops heavy, it's good soil. If it sort of floats, and acts dust-like, it's not so good, and you need topsoil. In general, you shouldn't need top soil if it's very dark and heavy. But every year, maybe in August, throwing a little topsoil into your garden will add (and preserve) nutrients. I was reassured we had good soil, because I brought a small sandwich baggy of our garden soil in my purse and showed him. He promptly smelled the dirt, then threw some on the floor and said, "that's good dirt."

4. Even though your soil is dark, you don't know the pH. It could be acidic. the Black Forests are almost gone from acid rain. Along with many other forests, like the rain forests in the northwest, and the redwood forests. All starting to fall apart (he used to work for national geographic, apparently). If you notice your plants aren't growing as well as you'd like, make this concoction out of protien based items in your kitchen:

-chopped banana peels
-milk
-eggs
-coffee grounds
-chopped orange peels

Mix 'em all up in a blender, and spray the mix on your top soil. It'll add much-needed nutrients for your plantees! also, adding a sprinkling of limestone pellets onto your soil will help balance pH.

5. Miracle Grow is steroids for tomatoes. and all other plants. It's like they are from Mars. Okay, they are large, but they are from another planet. They aren't real plants. Do you want to eat a mutant tomato? Use miracle grow.

Okay! That's that. So Moray, Beth Ann and I took a trip to Home Depot on rt. 440 today, and after many weird NJ misleading road signs (such as: a big sign saying "truck rt. 1/9 next left" right over the exact exit it was really refering to, not another one further down the road, as one might think when reading "NEXT left", not THIS left! yyarrr!) I'd like to give a shout out to Beth Ann and her excellent skills driving a standard shift car on a crowded Jersey truck route. with lots of retarded u-turn exits. And her ability to stay calm by waving to people in cars stalled in the opposite flow of rush-hour traffic. Anyway, we went crazy, and bought a world of seeds and plantees and garden utensils. tomorrow we will make an attempt to clean out our garden, and start growing some seeds. wish us luck. more luck than i've had inside, in any case. Although I'm actually reminded of the time Beth Ann's mom had me dog sit, and she entrusted me with some seeds to plant in her garden. I remember thinking, "Wow, I hope I know what I'm doing. I wouldn't trust me with a garden." I can't remember if they grew or not! I hope so.

Also, I will be playing piano for a small production of Cabaret up in the Bronx at Fordham College all week, if anyone is interested. It's free! And if I didn't mention it before, that restaurant I was playing piano at? well, their piano was repossesed pretty quickly after I started playing there. But luckily, Moray's brother Cameron was here in time to see the piano being played before it was reposessed. Then the next night they called me and told me. But anyway, David and I had the pleasure of playing some tunes with Cameron at a benefit concert there a few nights later (on the bartender's rented keyboard).

I will now post Cameron's reaction to the news that my Gianna's piano was reposessed.



And just in case anyone has forgotten how cute these two are: