I Know I Shouldn't, But...

I will be getting my tax refund in just a few days. I filed last week after refiguring my return multiple times in hopes of finding another few cents worth of deductions. I should know better, though. Despite the fact that I got a whopping 2% raise last year, my gross adjusted income for 2005 was somehow less than for 2004. Sadly, I'm too tired to make a big deal of it. I'm sure that someone out there has an obscure and obtuse rational for it - and I really don't want to feel the hot air streaming from their pie-hole.

The point, though, of this particular entry in my web journal, my online confessional, my electronic sandwich board, is to make public my intention to do something foolish, unsound from a financial point of view but something that will make me a happy, happy boy.

I'm a gonna buy me a guitar.

He's a handsome cuss, ain't he?


Solid mahogany body, rosewood fingerboard, active pickups for a hot, low buzz sound and looks that can kill. To compliment this beast, I'm planning on getting a Line6 PODxt LIVE effects bay with more integrated digital gizmos than you can shake a stick at. Basically, this will allow me to modify the sound in a multitude of ways without spending lots o' cash on individual effects pedals.

I've been playing this guitar in a local shop for over a month and it sings beautifully. It fits up against my body like the perfect dance partner and when I finger the neck and pluck those strings the sounds of satisfaction fill the room.

Who says you can't buy love?

Falling In Like - a reprint

Earlier this year I set up a page for myself on MySpace. I am not an addict in any sense of the word, but I do enjoy it and have met some interesting folk and have had more than a few interesting conversations.

Oddly enough, I have found that one of my blog entries has gotten some attention from some people and, in fact, they have mentioned reading it and re-reading it.

Wow. My first classic blog. And because it is restricted to MySpace users and I would like to possibly get some feedback from others, I reprint the February 27 missive here and now.


Originally posted in MySpace Blog by me.

Falling in Like


I know better than to think that one can "fall in love" with someone over the internet. Falling in love, anyway, is a suspect occurrence as far as I'm concerned. We can "fall in lust" with someone; realize that based on pictures and detached text based conversations that we want to do the nasty with that virtual being that may be half way around the globe, but love, in my book at least, love takes time. Time to get to know, to share space, to become familiar with the various moods, scents, sounds and masks of the other. All that being said, I have discovered that it is very easy for me to "fall in like" with someone with nothing more than phone lines and data packets between us.

Yet, from time to time (and now is one of those times) I meet guys that make me feel kinda warm inside. I discover that I'm checking my email over and over again in case they may have messaged me. I go to their own web page and look at their pictures and try to imagine them in instances not bound by the rasters of the http world. And what is more, I find myself imagining having coffee with them, going to movies with them, cooking breakfast together, meeting their friends, their families. I imagine all of these things and more, I imagine not just having sex with them, but making love with them. These are very distinct things in my estimation - they often can go hand in hand, but not always.

It's not love, but isn't it more than just "like?" In many ways it is so....so domestic. It's not just lust because I've realized that I'm attracted to what that person says and how he presents himself. That can be just as (if not more) attractive than bulging biceps (though there's nothing wrong with bulging biceps...or bulging just about anything!) I can read their posted list of general interests, favorite movies, TV shows and books, and it's not just the subtle clues and queues to his erotic tastes (favorite TV characters: Grizzly Adams or Bill Goldberg, favorite occupation: cruising musclebound leatherbears) but the innocuous interests like Dungeons and Dragons, Rilke, geeky SciFi TV shows and unpopular (yet really cool) music - it is those things that feed my imagination.

I've met quite a few great people since I set up a MySpace profile for myself. It's a pretty neat system, despite its flaws. And of those great people, more than a couple have gotten the juices flowing. And of those that have gotten my juices flowing there are a few: three, two, one...that make me really want to have a taste - I want to be more than just virtual friends, I want to hear and tell more than just glib aphorisms that cater to a general population. I want to maintain the "lust" and explore the "like" and keep the possibility of "love" alive.

What is this?

I installed some of my painting in the Boone County Government Offices Building yesterday as a part of a local "community art program" that puts the work of locals in businesses and government buildings in our area. Not a bad deal, really. I've been doing this for about a year and I've sold some work as a result.

What I'm displaying are not difficult pictures at all. Nothing too challenging, but neither have I offered up images of crying clowns or big eyed waifs. Perhaps I should.

The space is a modern rotunda of sorts. There is an open round area where there are offices and payment windows, and there is a stairway with a landing that's about 10 steps up then splits into two staircases that lead up to the second floor. On the landing there is a wonderful space for paintings and I chose to hang Ocean Interface there. I thought it was beautiful!



From the comments that I heard while installing the rest of the pictures I guess I was wrong.

"What...what is this?"

"I could do that!"

"They call this art? I call it 'stupid'."

I bit my lip. I wasn't going to say anything - and I didn't.

Now, I know that I'm no Rembrandt. I know that there are those who have the ability to capture even the most base imagination, the most uncultured neuron, and I may not be one of those people, but I'm no hack.

I didn't think it would bother me, but see...I'm writing about it the next day. Obviously, my skin ain't nearly as thick as I thought it was.
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The exhibition continues through the end of June at the Boone County Government Office Building, 803 E. Walnut St. Columbia, Missouri, 65201