Already In My Phone

I had my first dream about you. I was at a party, in a neighborhood that felt like the Cove I guess. I was at a house party and only kind of wanted to be there. You touched me and i turned around and immediately planted a wet one right on my lips and held it there for what felt like a pretty long time. Long enough for anyone at that party to notice. We talked for maybe a minute or two and then you immediately asked if i wanted to ‘go somewhere’ so i said sure. Of course, given your dramatic introduction. 

We walk around the neighborhood. I can’t remember if we were holding hands but it felt romantic. We found a grove on a hill that abutted peoples’ backyards. We sat by a tree. You walked away, presumably to pee or something, and came back after a couple of minutes. There was a large bed in one of the adjacent backyards and you recommended we lay down, insisting the homeowners wouldn’t notice or care. We lay down for a minute or two but we don’t sleep together there or anything. This whole dream the only time we do anything is just that first kiss, actually. 

Next you insist the homeowners aren’t home, so we go inside. It’s a really big house. i remember it’s kind of messy, just things thrown about here and there. I ask if you’re sure this is a good idea and you say you live there, but for some reason i don’t really believe you. Sandwich is with me. I take his harness off. He roams around. We’re not there long and then your phone, something happens. So you leave without warning, leaving me there. I stay there waiting for you to come back, kind of nervous because I know I shouldn’t be there, but you said you’d come back. 

I get a text from you, and I realize you’re already in my phone though now that I’m awake, I can’t remember your name. Even in the dream, when i go back to check my phone, your name has changed. Throughout the dream, I can’t remember your name except whomever I had it first saved under. Well guess what, you never come back and then a woman walks in the door. She’s startled but not alarmed. I go run towards the dog to put him on the harness, and as I make the excuse that I didn’t want to pee in her yard so i was just in there to use the bathroom but I’d be leaving. But upon leaving i explain that I was with this girl, and she said she lived here, but she left me there alone and I’d be leaving. She lets me leave. 

Next I’m at a different kind of fancy house, I must have been invited. I think you texted me to meet you there. You also texted me what i thought was the funniest response to my predicament from the breaking and entering experience earlier in the day, but throughout the dream, my phone and my ability to read it and remember things from it is very unreliable. 

Dan from Da Legna is in the kitchen, there’s some kind of grandiose experiment going on in there. I say hi to him first, even though i see you in the room, I give him a pat on the back and ask for some reason if Bun is around. He says no, and I’m relieved. You walk up and we embrace but not kiss for what feels like a pretty long time. It’s the first time really holding the shape of you, and in my dream i get the feeling that it just feels right. I tell people in the room the story about the break-in earlier in the day. Then you tell me the woman that i met who came into the house is your mom, and you do actually live there, and you think it’s funny that i didn’t believe you. 

You’re still doing this flighty thing where you seem preoccupied and frequently leave the room, wondering if I’ll chase you or follow you or whatever, which of course I will. You leave to go swimming and i walk past and see you in the pool. I casually walk to my car. Not sure where Sandwich is at this point, he’s probably in the house with Dan, who is still cooking. At my car, i get ready to go swimming. I empty my pockets. I have more cash in my wallet than i remember. I find a lot of things in my pockets. I’m sorting through all of this stuff, trying to hurry up so i can get to the pool and join you. There’s something i want to tell you, but i can’t remember it now that I’m awake. 

That’s just where it ends. But there are some themes here. Throughout the dream, whenever i find you, immediately you warmly greet me with passion; and then you walk away. It intrigues me, so i follow but I won’t chase you, and things get in my way. But you’re still really new, even though you’re already in my phone, i can’t remember you from before; but i must know you from somewhere. 



___________________AI INTERPRETATION___________________

1. The Setting: The Party, the Cove, and the Houses

• The Party: You “only kind of wanted to be there.” This points to a sense of disconnection from social scenes — you’re present, but not fully invested. The kiss here arrives as a disruptive force: sudden intimacy in a setting where you weren’t engaged, suggesting a desire for something real in an environment that feels shallow.

• The Cove / Neighborhood: Familiar but slightly uncanny. This liminal backdrop frames the whole encounter — you’re not in alien territory, but not fully at home either. It’s about crossing thresholds.

• The Messy Big House: This is her — her life, her world. The mess represents complexity, lived-in chaos. You’re invited in but don’t quite believe you belong. That tension (is this hers? do I trust her?) echoes throughout.

---

2. The Kiss and Its Echo

• The first kiss is bold, prolonged, and very public. It sets the tone: passion, intensity, a spark that doesn’t need buildup. But it’s also the only kiss in the dream. After that, intimacy is withheld, exchanged for embraces and fleeting touches.

• This creates a push-pull dynamic: immediate connection followed by distance. The subconscious is reflecting a pattern of attraction where the other person is magnetic but elusive, sparking warmth and then leaving you in suspension.

---

3. Sandwich the Dog

• Dogs in dreams are symbols of loyalty and grounding. Sandwich’s presence is a stabilizing force — a tether to reality and responsibility. You remove his harness, giving him freedom, but every time tension rises, you return to him. It’s as though he is your anchor when the dream edges toward disorientation.

---

4. The Phone and the Changing Name

• Phones represent communication and connection — but here, yours is unreliable. Her name keeps shifting, unreadable, ungraspable. This screams of a subconscious wrestling with memory, identity, and uncertainty. You know she exists, she’s “already in your phone,” but you can’t pin her down. This is archetypal dream language for someone who feels both familiar and mysterious.

---

5. The Mother Revelation

• When you tell the startled homeowner the story, it turns out she’s the girl’s mother. This flips suspicion into belonging — you were in the right place after all. This could symbolize the subconscious craving reassurance: the need for confirmation that the attraction is not just fantasy, that you’re not trespassing emotionally.

• Mothers in dreams often symbolize authority or legitimacy — the dream saying: “Yes, this is real; yes, you belong here.”

---

6. The Flighty Behavior

• She greets you warmly, then disappears. Over and over. This is the heart of the dream: the rhythm of connection and withdrawal. It reflects your attraction to someone who is magnetic but inconsistent — or the idea of someone who cannot be fully possessed.

• Your refusal to chase, but willingness to follow, suggests self-respect in balance with curiosity. You won’t debase yourself to chase, but you’ll stay intrigued, drawn forward.

---

7. The Pool and the Pockets

• Pools are about immersion — emotions, the subconscious, vulnerability. She dives in while you are stuck at your car, emptying your pockets, sifting through what you carry. This is classic dream imagery: you want to join her, but you’re slowed down by the weight of what you bring with you (cash, items, baggage).

• The sense that you had more money than you remembered could point to undiscovered resources — potential in yourself you haven’t fully tapped. You’re “sorting” through what matters, but while you’re doing that, she’s already in the water, beckoning you.

---

8. The Unremembered Message

• The thing you wanted to tell her, but can’t remember, is powerful. It’s your subconscious holding back something important — perhaps the real key to what she represents. This is a classic dream trick: leaving you with the ache of the unsaid.

---

9. The Core Themes

• Magnetic Connection, Elusive Presence: She appears with warmth, then disappears, over and over.

• Trust vs. Suspicion: Is this her house? Does she live here? Do you belong?

• Belonging vs. Trespass: You’re welcomed, but you never feel fully entitled to be there.

• Anchoring vs. Disorientation: Sandwich keeps you tethered while phones, names, and directions blur.

• Readiness vs. Delay: She swims while you’re still sorting pockets. You want to join, but life’s clutter slows you down.

---

Interpretation

This dream reflects your longing for a connection that feels fated, magnetic, and right — but also your fear that the person (or the idea of the person) may remain elusive, flighty, beyond reach. She is your type, she’s already “in your phone” (in your life, somehow), but she slips away, leaving you chasing fragments of memory and sorting through your own baggage before you can fully join her.

It’s the subconscious staging the paradox of intimacy: the allure of someone both deeply familiar and yet perpetually just out of grasp.

---

✨ If I were to condense this into one line:

You’re dreaming of a love that arrives with blazing clarity, then drifts into mystery, forcing you to decide whether to trust, to follow, or to let go.

Other Rare Finds and Artifacts: The Ball Jar

Fun fact… Lately in the mornings I walk through Grove Street Cemetery and walk my dog, drink my coffee from Willoughbys and smoke a joint. Fred and Rocco the groundskeepers are friends I know from the skateboard scene. Fred came out of the building as I was leaving, just to say what’s up. I had just picked up a ball jar full of a light yellow liquid, which at that point was undefined. I was planning on keeping the jar as long as it wasn’t full of piss. The ball jar was on the fence, near the dumpster, so I assumed it didn’t belong to anybody. And finding a ball jar is better than losing one. 

As I was walking back, I was thinking about internet security. If someone really wanted to see all of your text messages, it really doesn’t matter what app you’re using if they have access to unlock your phone. Which isn’t that difficult. Anyways, I was thinking that if all text messages were presented in the form of links to a website, it wouldn’t matter at that point because the website could be manually deleted if privacy for whatever reason became an issue. 

It’s also more convenient to write long-form texts in the form of posts. I guess if it’s public, then it’s not really a text to an individual but more of an outward expression of news updating. Perhaps a form of mental processing with regard to the world around. 

I’ve been experimenting with this for quite some time. I find that the Blogger platform right now is what resembles the original MYSPACE that we presently still have access to. It’s a marvel that Blogger hasn’t been mothballed, like they did to Google Plus and Google Reader, Google Pages. Picassa. People really lost data when Google decided to pull the plug on those items, and really lost data. I would have a rather difficult time preserving this information if Google decided to shut off blogger. 

Thankfully I have the Stereomedia server and there’s plenty of room over there. But I don’t have a tool which allows me to write long form on the go, meaning that I’d have to be at a desktop currently to create a post the same way that I’m able to with Blogger. 

There are several apps in the store related to posting to Blogger but most of them don’t really work. There’s one that does, and it also allows me to post photos from my phone, which is ideal. 

The thing about Facebook that i detest, aside from it having capitalized on the concept of the high school yearbook, sweeping over society in the late 2000’s with every sign-up, we’re now stuck in a system that doesn’t really benefit us in any significant way, in a model which is being used to create artificial intelligence, that’s designed to target us for marketing stunts on a level of psychological manipulation envious of a CIA operation, which can shut you up if you even so much as mention the wrong person, and won’t even let you bold or italicize words. Which is insane. 

So from now on, rather than posting to Facebook, I think I’ll post here. And if I feel like sharing, then I’ll add a link. It’s easier that way. 

I’ll also post videos here too. Maybe substack would be a healthy alternative… I’m still trying to figure this out. All i know is that one of the main changes that I need to make is to write more, just to the 11 people who actually read my stuff on facebook, but to whomever wants to read it. Mostly so that I can get through these thoughts, “export” them, and to stop being afraid of expressing myself, for fear I’ll be ostracized and told that I have the wrong ideas. 

Dream / Concept for "The Resume"

 In my dream last night, i was on a lake, in a camp like environment. And my father arrived, at first I welcomed this and talked to him kindly at first, but then it escalated. But i ended up running away from him until he caught up to me, and cornered me, and then I needed to fight back. I murdered my father in self defense last night. 

There were a series of other components to the dream, as well. I woke up at 3am in between segments with a slight headache, realizing that it had been more than 24hrs since caffeine. I thought I could just tackle that addiction with an ibuprofen, but then I think about how much more wonderful my morning could be with that cup of coffee. 

Coffee became representative of the sense of community I found in others. In my childhood, there was a coffeeshop known as the Daily Cafe. 

I feel like writing a book called "The Resume" and it would be a list of everything I had done with myself throughout my life. 

Song Review: Soccer Mommy - Still

Before I started doing graffiti, I would climb buildings and dare myself to jump off. I'd find fire escapes to climb, and look out at the lights in the distance and think about my life. It was the view of the world around me, and the possibilities of the lights in the distance that kept me from making that mistake. 

Life is a precious thing, and we are not here forever. It can be difficult and very painful at times, but at least we aren't slugs or sloths (although who knows what those experiences are actually like). 

At age 19 or 20, in that time period, I was a college dropout living in New Haven, Connecticut of all places. I was an overachiever with abusive parents who could not afford to provide me with the life I wanted to live, based on the experience that I was witnessing from the people around me. FOMO apparently was a thing, even back in 1999. I thought that I wasn't going to be able to live the life I wanted to live. 

From Verse 2 of this song: 

Okay, you win, I'll end my life

Drive to the bridge just to overthink it

I never jump, it’s a crutch of mine

Drive to the bridge just to stand there thinkin’

My life stands still

So, yeah. When I heard this song, it reminded me of my experiences as a young adult trying to figure out my life. Thinking about the possibility of just simply ending it, when it felt too difficult. Believing in an afterlife, where I could just start over from scratch; an optimistic view from a suicidal person. 

The lights in the distance kept me alive. The hope that there was something later that was worth sticking around for made it possible for me to set aside those feelings. I think they're more prominent when you're younger because life is newer and we are less experienced. We haven't forged our path in reality at that point, per se, and just ending the whole thing right then and there seems to be a viable option. 

I found freedom climbing buildings, even if my immediate interest was not positive. I found adventure, knowing that I could sneak up a fire escape late at night, watch the city, think about things like I was Spiderman. Every time I would walk back down that fire escape, rather than feeling a sense of defeat for backing down from my own horrid personal challenge, I decided that I would plant the flag. Like the guys on the moon. 

I would plant the flag and make my mark on this society before breaking my reality from it. I would show this world what I was made of, and challenge myself to make a difference before surrendering to defeat. 

That's when I decided to write graffiti. 

6am in January

I woke up alone in her bed for the first time, wrapped in her blanket, wondering where she was and when she'd be back. The house was first quiet, then there was the sound of a group of people, all women, who had come to the house to visit for the night. I could hear them talking in the kitchen, and I heard her voice mixed in with theirs. I contemplated emerging from her room to include myself, and began to concoct an imaginary question I could ask her which would justify my presence; but I couldn't think of one. 

Before I could leave the room, she opened the door slightly and peeked in. "Hey," she said. I asked, "Would you like me to stay the night?" and she said "I'm not sure if tonight is best, and there's something else we need to talk about," and without a kiss goodbye, she left me pensive in thought.

So I gathered my belongings. I recalled the day before, flying my drone through a factory with her, paddling around the shore with my dog, and spending last evening listening to the waves on her back porch, getting to know her better. It was the first time in a long time that I could remember feeling at peace, and at home; perhaps falling in love.

So I looked around for something to leave behind a note for her. I found one, and started writing a letter. As I began the letter "Dear....  " I realized that I couldn't remember her name. And as I started to assemble the rest of the pieces, I also realized that I was already at home in my own bed, because I was waking up from a dream and I had made the whole thing up. 

It was just some strange amalgamation of previous experiences.

Local Shakespeare Co.

A Shakespeare Co. AfterParty

After a performance in a local park, a group of cast members and producers for the Local Shakespeare Co. meet at a house nearby for the afterparty. 

Everyone is jovial, in the mix. Especially Allen. 

"My god, Paolo, your portrayal of Alan Dershowitz was outstanding in tonight's performance."

"Why thank you, Allen. That's awfully kind. Second only to your Bret Kavanaugh... impression."

There was an awkward silence. K paused the motion of the shrimp in her hand, waiting for the reaction.

"What's that supposed to mean, Paolo?" 

"Oh nothing, Allen. I'm just saying, you did a phenomenal job."

"Now that sounded sarcastic."

"On the contrary. Nothing could be more sincere."

K said,  "Paolo, quit it, you're really setting him off."

Said Paolo, as he poured himself an espresso, "We wouldn't want to see that, would we."

At that point, Allen exploded. Charlie had to hold him back. 

Charlie was the screenwriter, a portly gentleman with a quiet disposition. He could see what was happening, and felt the need to intervene. 

At that moment, Gerald spoke up from the corner, "Sounds like you have some issues."

"And what would you know about that, Gerald?" demanded Allen. 

"As a leading psychoanalyst in today's science, one would think I might know a lot," said Gerald, as he got up from his chair and walked over to the bar. "Though not from personal experience!" He says, as he takes a sip from a drink and laughs.

K intervenes. "Now would you guys just quit it? Paolo, you sound like you're either the most sarcastic or oblivious person in the universe. Please, pick one. Gerald, cool it. Face it, you were terrible. You base every politician you ever play on the way Paul Giamatti played John Adams. Do your research, honey. Maybe google a YouTube video or something," her voice trailing off into the hor devours. 

Paolo said, "I know what the issue is here. You're all drunk, that's what the problem is. That's why none of you are making any sense! I wasn't even the one to start with the sarcasm, either," he said, directing his attention at Allen. 

At the peak of the conflict, as all are evidently about to escalate to physical altercation, they all laugh out loud and congratulate one another for such a good encore performance. 

The Importance of Mixed Media

Volunteering my personal information on Facebook is no longer a viable way to interact with others or portray myself on the internet. I would rather prefer to be reduced to a profile picture and a series of archived ones. 

There are many limitations to Facebook that don’t really need to be all listed, but what I like about the Blogger format is that I have more control over the look and feel of the content that I’m creating. On Facebook, for example, you can’t italicize something for emphasis. And maybe while that might not seem like enough to abandon a platform, it highlights the aspect that I find the most discouraging: it’s not creative enough for me. 

One of the things that I liked about MySpace was that it gave you the ability to hack the behind the scenes HMTL of your own page so that you could make it look and feel however you’d prefer. You weren’t just relegated to white background, black text. 

So I’m experimenting with a new way to communicate. Instead of posting to Facebook, which often requires little to no thought, or even posting to Instagram for that matter, I’m going to work on putting more effort into communicating in the form of a blog,  such as this. 

I’m on a train heading to Baltimore for a work assignment, and I’m writing on my iPhone because Amtrak WiFi is terrible. I have my wireless keyboard hooked up to my phone, so I’m not typing this with my thumbs. 

But I’m trying to put something together in this article which contains some mixed media.

It’s really simple to reference any video from YouTube. The reason I filmed that is because later there may be a time when we could potentially use that footage for a future project.

The Strangest Rock Star

Charlie was the strangest Rock Star. He lived in his van and traveled place to place, playing shows. He got on stage, played a few songs, shouted out his stage name a few times, and went back to his van. 

He didn’t like interacting with people. Other than emails to the venues to schedule shows, he hardly dealt with anyone at all.  He’d park as close to the venue as possible, then walk on stage nearly when his set began, and would leave straight back for his van after his set after spending about an hour at his merch table, usually while another band played. 

I’m not sure why Charlie was so averse to people, but his music became extremely popular. And no one could really figure out why it was so popular. I guess it’s because he was so removed from the world at large, that it sounded a little alien, unlike anything else that others were making. 

I don’t suppose Charlie was really listening. He didn’t even really do music for the music; it was an excuse to travel. It helped him afford it. 

He produced all of his music in his van, parked watching beautiful sunsets. He used the scenery around him at the places he found for inspiration. There he was, on a beach in California, by himself all afternoon without a soul in sight. 

A few nights later, he played that song in front of a rather busy crowd in San Francisco. The crowd was mesmerized. When the song was over, there was nearly a 10 second pause before the applause. Charlie didn’t measure success by the roar of the applause but rather by the time it took for the crowd to accept that the song was over. 

The Tao of Pinball

WHen I was young, my father would take me to the arcade on Friday nights, which as also the night we’d do the grocery shopping. In the summer, we would go to the arcade first, but in the winter we’d leave the food in the car and play after the food shopping. 

At the arcade, my father gravitated toward the pinball games and would station himself among a group of about three games that he would periodically rotate between. In any case, I always knew where to find him. And I would return back to base when I ran out of coins. 

He usually handed me about two dollars. I think that there were times when he would get a little pissed off if I came back too many times asking for more coins. This was because not only was I costing him more money, i was distracting and interrupting him from his game. So in order to prevent myself from having to return to him empty handed, I learned to focus on only the games I was good at. 

I would run game on SF2, beating large crowds of people. But if there were someone else playing SF2 or even a few people playing who were better than me, then I’d defer to the tedious task of swatting space bugs in Galaga. Between these two games, I was capable of handling my business on nights at the arcade. 

ABOUT GALAGA

The first time I exceeded a million in Galaga was in 1997 at Cutler’s Records on a Sunday. I had just finished a shift at Claire’s Cornercopia and the Shubert had a show that afternoon, so everyone and their parents and their grandparents were out and about, looking for an order of the acclaimed risotto. It was a busy shift, and I was done by 4, with two hours to spare before the Record Store closed. So I drifted over there, still heightened by the fast paced demanding environment I had just departed from. 

Galaga is a game set in patterns which increases in speed only at three points in the game. The first two rounds are slow, and it then picks up immediately. That speed only noticeably increases at one other time in the game. These speed increase can be customized within the programming of the game, so that if you go to one arcade, your ship may move faster or slower, the extra ships would be set at higher or lower intervals. That sort of thing.

Generally, one plays video games for points, and Galaga is a game which rewards those who can handle the grind of repeating the exact same tactics,  round after round, with room for several different types of variation depending on the patterns of the game, which rotate within a pattern of their own. 

The grind of the game is as follows. Galaga often gets mistaken for Space Invaders, and it’s actually really similar but with a few more nuisances. The ships don’t immediately appear in the block that approaches you. And rather than get closer to your ship, the enemies (bugs, as we may call them) fly at you in various patterns. The blue ones do a loop at the bottom of the screen. The red ones bomb dive towards you. They both shoot projectiles which will end your turn, as well as contact with them as they loop scroll and reappear at the top after they’ve made their pass at you. 

As the ships appear on the screen, Once they arrive in their set location,  they move from side to side in a patternistic glide. 

And there were way more points from completing each bonus round, which cycled between five variations, each differing in patterns and characters. You get extra ships for surpassing certain points milestone, and there does come a point where no amount of extra points is going to win you any more free ships. La 

What it Is

Ian O# · Is What It Is

 
Through college school, college pro

Didn’t have nowhere to go;

Except for pro

But the poem’s gone, and all i’m left is prose.

And the school is gone, and now I suppose

That it is what it is.

I’ll get divorced and have two kids.

I dream about a different life.

Dream about having a different wife

But there’s no escaping this existence in life.

Cause it is what it is.

And there’s no escaping it.

I dream about one day on the basketball courts I play

I shoot the three pointers from long deep

And they all sink into hoops, everybody would want the scoop.

There’d be reporters and video recorders.

They’d be shooting me, watching me

As i was shooting three’s

But that would not exist

It didn’t happen like this.

Because it is what it is.

And that is all that I can see.

That's all that exists.

That’s all that exists.

Instead, I’m just a drunk.

Living in the drunk tank at the college Funk

All the kids look at me, they’re the worst enemy.

I’m like their uncle, they’re so glad they’re not related.

But I see them inside of the courtroom

And they are so elated to see when I get locked down

In the infirmary and there’s no escaping.

Because it is what it is, when there’s no escaping

The ecstasy of infirmary and incarceration

Spending your whole life in a different form of education

Infirmary; there’s just no escaping these 6 foot walls.

An infirmary.

I was famous, I did a million things.

I made a million bucks.

And everyone wanted to be on top of the game

They all wanted my beautiful looks.

And one day there was a woman, and she entered inside of my life

And she wanted to be my wife. She made my children for me

but I was still on the inside of the infirmary, inside of my mind.

I was still locked down deep inside, I was so deeply unkind.

There was no escaping, there was no erasing the past.

The past can not be erased, it will last.

Because it is what it is.

Is what it is, yo.

Because it is what it is what it is, yo.

Cause it is what it what it is.

The Robbery in Westville Dream

Had another strange dream. Two kids tried to rob me while I was distracted on my phone. I was down by the west river in westville. They almost had me at first but I broke free. Then they basically chased/followed me up west rock avenue until I got to the Knezek's.

Even in the dream it seemed evident that I hadn't been at the Knezek's in a long time. I knocked on the window and Paul and his mom answered the door. At that point I admonished the kids, telling them I didn't believe in punishment but that they needed to find some work, and trying to grab my wallet is not a real job.

Right then TL walked out of the house as two people I didn't notice were sitting at a table on the porch. She was serving them food and as soon as she appeared, I instantly started cursing the air (wtf) and left immediately. Even in my dreams I do this now apparently. It's more out of disgust than fear. But there was still an element of fear, because what if I see her and remember all of the good things about her? Can't. Had to cut the conversation short.

I went back through the park. In dreams, often natural features are exaggerated. In this one, the West River was much wider and Edgewood Park was more forested.

I went back a bit later to get the rest of my belongings. Paul was there. He asked me about a song he liked, and how to play it. Steve was there and chastised me for calling him Mr. Knezek. I almost made a joke but thought that TL was still there but within ear shot. I got back to collecting my things and got ready to leave.

My favorite part of the dream though was that when I got home, Walker was there. I found something interesting to climb and it gave a really great view. I was trying to demonstrate how awesome it was and what a nice view that it gave of the Farm River. He climbed it with ease as though he'd done it many times, and pretended to enjoy the view as though it were something he had never seen before.

Gov't Cheeze (Lyrics)

Ian O# · Govt Cheeze Mikshake

 

Gov't Cheeze

They implemented some structures

and told everyone to follow the rules

they told them you will be cool 

you won't be a fool if you follow all of our rules

so they asked us to, and we followed them

they told us to stay inside of our house

they asked us if we had enough food

we said we had enough food and we would figure it out. 

And the year went by and we did nothing

and we sat on top of our thumbs

and our thumbs all lost circulation 

and so now none of us have any of thumbs

and the thumbless were all imbeciles

and they couldn't even go to school

they didn't have a laptop they only had a phablet

and it was a tablet they shared with their family. 

The distractions were all everywhere and there was no escaping them.

so we had to escape with our lives and our livestock and we went down to the farm

we watched them sound the alarms but we weren't harmed because we were hiding on a farm

where we had everything we could ever need right in front of our own faces

we had lumber to keep us warm and wool to cover up all our faces

when we went into town to see the spacemen and all of their friends

they had their astronaut suits, their hazmat suits, their masks and their goggles again

and we traded them for a couple of handshakes 

and we had ourselves a good laugh at the dairy queen 

when we were drinking up our milkshakes

you drink it up. 

And so this guy was down by the river 

he was eating some government cheese

and i asked him if there was a purpose

for the reason behind the disease

and he told me there was not a reason

for him to be eating government cheeze

except he was living in a van by the river

and he actually had a pretty nice life

he was happy with his mix of cranberry and vodka 

and he thought he had a very nice wife

but he was too drunk and crunk with all of that skunk

to smell the funk inside of the government cheese

so please don't answer me when I have to have questions of these

I don't know. 

Back When Things Were Relatively Normal (Journal from Summer 2019)

I woke up at 5am this morning, and fell back asleep to a dream. This one was about how I was living in Jimmy Day's factory building, kind of squatting. And one day he dropped a whole load of equipment on the floor that I was living on, which was a whole vast loft. Mechanical equipment that looked like gym lockers full of ancient electronics. And I was not pleased, because I enjoyed the organized way that I controlled the space. It was Jim's way of saying that he ultimately was the one that was in control. It was also our own thing, about how we both have different ideas about how to curate the aesthetic, which is inevitably something we'll come face to face with in real life. Marina was my girlfriend in this dream, and we were having some kind of issue, but it was resolvable. It was a scheduling conflict. I was busy trying to try to figure out where Jim should move the stuff he put in my loft, and she had some other issue about an event we were planning. It felt confusing and it was difficult to plan both at the same time.

I woke up from this dream at approximately 8am. I watched John Oliver's schtick on Amazon as I prepared to leave my bed. Sandwich was resting his head on my legs. I knew it was going to be warm out but I was incredibly comfortable. Got lazy and watched an additional YouTube video about the capture of Whitey Bulger. After that, I got out of bed.

Without taking a shower, I put on the clothes I wore the day before and made my way out the door. I fed Sandwich before we left, and put on my headphones. I didn't charge my phone the night before, and it was awfully low on power, but I listened to Townes Van Zant's song about Pancho and Lefty, and headed over to Willoughby's.

I get my coffee at Willoughby's every morning. I latch Sandwich to a staircase nearby with a carribeaner clip at the end of it. I got an iced coffee. It was three bucks and change. I took the change and tipped the barista. It was warm out so I filled a plastic cup of ice water and brought it to Sandwich. He was sniffing the ground, but waiting for me at the same time. He drank half of it. I threw the water into the bushes and discarded the empty cup into a nearby trash can and we made our way down the street.

Down the street was the Jitter Bus. I usually don't go in there often because i always get my coffee at Willoughby's. I have a thing about that. I love the Jitter Bus. It's run by Sam and Dave, two kids who have a business which is an old school bus they sell coffee out of. I love that, but I'm just an old dog and I can't learn anything new. The time I got hit by a car when I was a teenager and I didn't want to go to the hospital? I went to Willoughby's and got an iced coffee that afternoon to help me feel better. That day, it tasted exactly the same. It's hard for me to switch coffee shops, just like it's tough for me to trade towns.

Sam and Dave were there. So was Susan and Nari, her dog. Sue is an EMT, she's super bad ass and so is Nari. Sandwich likes Nari because my go-to dog sitters, both Zoe and Andrew, take him over to their house and he hangs out with Nari when I'm not around. They're super good around eachother. Sue and I made half-hearted plans to do some kind of hike or something, and she took off. I boarded the Jitter Bus and talked to Paul about potentially asking him to help me with Sandwich in case my work took me to Texas next month. He didn't seem too interested until I mentioned the twenty five bucks a day part. I feel like a jerk, walking on the Jitter Bus with my Willoughby's coffee. That's just how it is.

After that, I completed the rest of my walk. Usually I use my empty coffee cup to pick up after Sandwich but I must have left it on the Jitters, which is double embarrassing. I half heartedly picked up a single turd with a leftover napkin. The security guard from the Yale Library watched on.

When I got home, I checked my work emails. I emailed my boss to tell him that work was slow but I would be keeping an eye out for assignments and I had 30 hours of requested work, within a 2-3 week deadline. He wrote back, 'cool' and we were good after that for the day. The 4th was on Thursday, and seeing as it was the first week of July, nobody seemed too interested in working too hard. Neither did I.

Except Dan.

Part 2

At 11am, I went to the Pizza Spot. My friend Dan owns the restaurant. A couple years ago, I painted his logo on his walk-in cooler. It got moldy though and it needed to be redone.

He wasn't there, though. He texted me to say he was at the commissary. Now, the term "commissary" refers to a kitchen in a military or penitentiary situation, but he refers to it with endearance. I drove my car back to the Square, walked to the commissary, and rang the bell. Trina answered and told me to go around and find Dan at another entrance, so I did.

The commissary is an interesting experience. It's extremely clean and well organized. It has a glass backboard basketball hoop indoors, and two basketballs with a jug of spring water in between. Dan's office has gym lockers and is also sports themed. The rest of the place is impeccably clean, to the point where, as Dan said it, you can eat off the floor. But it's true, it's that clean. It looked like a movie set, which is also interesting if you look up the definition of commissary.

Dan was out of sorts. He was busy as hell. I was there to help him with this painting but I kind of felt responsible for why it needed to be redone in the first place. I knew it needed to be better. It was not symmetrical. It was getting moldy. We talked it over, and I hopped in the van and we got the power washer from one of his restaurants and brought it over to the Pizza Spot. We were supposed to have this guy on the street do the work, but he was there earlier and then was nowhere to be found, so I ended up doing the work myself. I didn't just power wash the surface, I did everything including the walk in cooler and the handicap ramp in the back. I just found power washing so satisfying.

I went home, checked my emails. Found that I needed to redo a graphic, so I did. Sent it out in an email with 2 different versions. Went to Barcade to play Adams Family and Dialed In. Had a pint and played about a couple dollars in games. Returned home and took Sandwich up to Beacon Falls to play this ridiculous frisbee game called Kan Jam. He loves it out there, and he likes the ride. We listened to a mixtape in the car, got there and sat in the field and enjoyed the whole thing. I'm not particularly good at Kan Jam but my graffiti buddy Eddie is there, and I had a bunch of questions about this pizza mural thing, so in between games I asked him questions and he was super helpful.

Afterwards, I went back home and then went back out again. I went back to Barcade for more Adams Family. More about that elsewhere, for sure. I stopped at Cafe Nine before going home, and there was a show happening. I had a conversation with my friend's sister, and we talked about combined products like Mentodent and Pert Plus. I saw Max Heath and his wife, and he told me about how he finally sealed his basement with polyurethane so now he could have a recording studio.

Then I went home, and wrote this.

Interesting Henry Stories

Henry's still around. He moved to Branford a few years ago. Back when I knew him, he lived above a bar called Humphrey's, on Humphrey Street in New Haven. He would walk to the coffee shop I worked at, and would arrive 15 minutes before we opened, sometimes in the freezing cold. We'd let him in, and he'd sit there, hanging out, occasionally getting stuff for free and dropping by for conversation when things got slow.

I learned a lot about life from getting to know Henry. At one point my whole apartment was decked out with his artwork. I remember when I got hit by a car while skateboarding on State Street when I was 19, back in 1999, I showed up to work a few days later with a plastic back brace on. Henry always called me "Homeboy" because that's how I introduced myself. He was like, "Hey, Homeboy- what happened to you?"

And I replied, "I don't know, man. I guess I'm a turtle now." He found this so hilarious. Just kept going up to every single customer, saying "Homeboy's a turtle now."

It became clear that he liked to write and draw, so I got him some markers, construction paper, and crayons. I kept it behind the counter and I'd offer him a free coffee in exchange for some drawings. We would only serve him decaf, as a rule. He'd ask if it was decaf, and we'd tell him no, of course not. And he'd sit there and draw, at the coffee shop, for hours and hours all day long. He drew things like angry bears, Santa Claus, and of course himself, often as Santa Claus for some reason.

The other interesting thing he would do was that he'd repeat the same numerical pattern, notebook after notebook. 1210. It wasn't obvious what it meant, or anything. But I kind of figured something out about it: if you graphed it, 1 - 2 - 0 - 1 - 2 - 1 - 0 is actually the direction of a sine wave. I thought that was kind of cool.

The hardcore kids used to take him to shows back when, in the mid 90's. He became kind of a staple, at shows. He's still the coolest guy that I know.

Helvetica in NHV

Some people say that the world is going to hell. Actually it's going to Helvetica. You see, after the war, we realized we needed something that was not offensive, not defensive, but actually created the illusion of inexorrable truth. In the face of all the fogs of war, we needed to clarify.
Helvetica in #Nhv from New Haven, Connecticut on Vimeo.

The latest in a series of recurring dreams about Short Beach.

This morning I woke up from a dream about Short Beach. In this reality, I still lived there and I never left, but Tom was gone and Walker was there, so this is kind of a whole new era of dreams.

In previous recurring dreams, there was a small space in a closet on the second floor, which led down to a hallway and into a wide open area where there was an underground cave and a waterfall beneath the house. In this dream, there was an opening elsewhere in the rocks in the background, which led to an underground, cavernous lagoon directly beneath the beach out front.

In this dream, also, a replica of the Barn had been attached where the house next door used to be. It looked and felt just like the original barn, but it was different in many ways. It had a balcony and was set up to resemble a kind of performance space. It was connected to where my room used to be. My room had been moved over to the side, beyond where it normally was. I would imagine that the barn was kind of behind the house; another structure built into the rock wall between Johnson's Beach and the Farm River, on the other side.

I really enjoy dreaming about Short Beach.

Dreams Lately

This morning I woke up from a dream where I was about to be married to my first cousin. I definitely felt forced into it, and was really embarrassed about it because everyone knew we were related. This nerdy musician guy wanted the first song to be something I didn’t want. Then I realized just how much I didn’t want to be there at all. I didn’t even know any of the guests. We walked around the aisles of a bookstore trying to find music. I thought “Yesterday” by the Beatles would be fit for the occasion. Then i realized it’s a song clearly about regret. So I went with “In my Life” and it seemed more appropriate but the situation still did not feel right. I woke up before walking down the aisle. 

Homemade Heated Clothing

Battery power $31.
Heating Pads $3/ea.
Dissipation Fabric: also cheap.

Subconscious Concepts

Recent weird dream was buying a car and getting a key which was essentially like the same kind of ring you’d get if you were married to it, like a wedding ring which was supposed to be a key fob. My reaction to this novelty? “Great, another small thing I am not supposed to lose or misplace.”

Then, I started a company called “Bummer” which was a combination between “Bumble” and “Tumbler” where there was just a rolling screen of people you were only marginally interested in getting to know better. The more you scrolled, the more you realized you really didn’t want to be friends with any of them and that’s how this app got its illustrious title.

First Dreams About Since

Had my first dream about my brother since he died. Last night, had two consecutive dreams. The first, we had a very vast space that our family was using. It was more space than we actually had when we were kids. It was rural, as it felt like a barn, yet urban, as though we were in the middle of the city in a time that honestly felt a little bit like a time of crisis.

I realize now that the space that I was imagining was the barn, of course. There was a red building across the street from where I grew up. I call it The Barn. You can find it in my other writings. In this dream, we owned the barn, there was no "Roger" and my dad was nowhere to be found, either. My mother brought me in there and told me to rearrange it.

We were planning on making my brother into some kind of music star. That apparently seemed to be the plan in both of these dreams. In each of these dreams, my job was to make the situation ideal for him. In the case of rearranging the barn, the goal was to turn it into a recording studio for he and his band.

I remember in this dream he sang a song rather loudly as I was planning all of this out for him, and at the end I encouraged him to stop playing, or to not play another song so that we could discuss planning, and he seemed somewhat perturbed by it, and that's not far from the truth in dealings with my actual brother. Only in this case, I was able to do much more for him.

I built him a fantastic studio in the attic of the barn and helped him find friends and they made great music. It felt like a dream at times, although I knew how close to the real situation this dream actually was. I knew that although in this dream I was in a better position to help him, the end was going to be the same.

In the next dream, I was instructed to renovate a van to become a camper for my brother to tour the country in. I had a great design and looked forward to developing this mighty vehicle. I took time to carve out all edges and make it look as though it came from a factory, even though it was custom made. As he drove away with hardly a thanks, I knew that he would trash it, and it broke my heart just a little, because I wondered why I hadn't built that for myself. I would haven taken great care.

In real life, I knew that my brother, since he took his own life, is unable to channel himself into the living world and challenge reality the same way that other spirits can. That's due to my religion (Jedi) although in dealing with that faith, I also understand now that souls can have a change of heart in the afterlife. In that, they can free themselves from whatever is harboring their existence to the spirit realm. I hope this dream is a sign somehow that he has begun to liberate himself from the psychological and spiritual chains he found himself in here in the real world. Death is no escape; for sure, it's a continuation of sorts. We'll have to figure that out.