rock and roll musings by Tim Byrnes

Almost West Virginia: The Revolving Doors of Perception Roll Once More

   I'll dispense w/the usual appy-polly-loggy about being away for so long, I was working, 'nuff said and does anyone really care anyhow? Well, yes of course we do to one degree or another. Hey, you know what one of the greatest things I ever heard during my alcohol rehab experiences was? For those lucky enough never to have lived such a life as to require the rehab experience, let me open a little window: most mornings and afternoons are spent trying not to fall asleep in a little combination schooldesk/chair dealie while the same guy you listened to yesterday drones on and on giving essentially the same lecture each day. Repetition apparently works and is needed when trying to drill the obvious into that numbest of skulls, that of the drunken drug addict.

     Well, this one guy, let's call him George 'cause that's his name (Hi, George!) had basicallt 2 riffs: A) "Healthy people aren't any better than sick people, they just have more power" and, my favorite B) "Do we really care about you here in rehab? Yes, just not much."

     He had me w/the 2nd one. It had the ring of truthful sarcasm and, like any good trigger, made me think. 'Well, yeah," I thought," Folks do care in the sense that most would, were you on fire, put you out, but would leave the cleanup to the professionals. The 'nobody loves me' excuse gets lost when you really see that, well, nobody loves you, but we'll show you good things you could do so maybe you can love yerself, but really, Skippy, it's (as usual) up to you. NEXT!!!"

    I bring this up because, let's see, oh yeah, my apartment. As noted above, the little ghetto I've been living in had become something of a madhouse. CPS still hasn't shown up, the kids are still running around all night, smells like they're boiling fucking ammonia in the apartment next door and syddenly the guy next door can't afford to feed the GOLDEN RETRIEVER he keeps chained up on a 3 FOOT chain and I'm finding myself supporting half the resident's animals while being continually annoyed by the other half, who just act like animals.

     So, I'm torn between being judgemental (my specialty!) and trying to just bring a little good to the situation (3 burritos in the morning for the Retriever, a pack of cigarettes to his owner, maybe don't call the police one night etc.) when suddenly a third option opened up. Dig: when my house burned down 6 months ago, the old landlord rented me a new, smaller apartment for the same exact rent, guaranteeing me 1st shot at my old place once it was remdeled. That was, again, six months ago. In the meantime, he hired a drunk to fix my place who's 1st official act was to diamantle the shower in my new place. He was goi9ng to repair it, even had the new walls and fixtures laid out on my sidewalk. Then he gets the bright idea to 'wait until I finish yr old place' then he gets arressted. Twice. Then he leaves the state. Then the new landlord tells me it'll be another month. That was 4 months ago. The last straw came 3 days ago when the new landlord asks me if I'll help in move the aforementioned walls and fixtures from my sidewalk (they've been there 4 months now, remember) to a shed, thus assuring my shower will not get fixed and again promising me that he'll do it after I 'move back into yr place.'

    Later that night the universe hooked me up w/the possibility of a rental house 3 blocks south of where I am now except this time I'll have a fenced yard for Buster and Sara, a full basement for Flashback rehearsals, a garage for a cathouse (and I mean actual cats, don't get all offended) on a dead end street surrounded by old people. Almost West Virginia. (It's a John Denver reference and I don't believe in heaven. Do the math.)

     It's not a done deal and I don't want to jinx it, but it looks real good. In the meantime I'm figuring out a way to leave the ghetto gracefully (who'm I kidding, I want to crank Flashback up at 4 in the morning the day I leave, but I don't think I 'm really that immature. Or would be able to keep Dan or Kenny up until 4 in the morning!). I'll have to come back night after night, rounding up the straycats who love me and as such are those I cannot abandon. I really want to call the new landlord something dirty, but he is after all, a businessman and cares about me, just not much.

     Wish me luck. It feels like a graduation. Between the upcoming move, the tree cutting job (and I've worked 6 days and haven't fallen out of a tree yet, so whoever lost the pool, pay up) and my actual job, Ima gonna be pretty busy and among the missing, but all in a good cause. Gotta go email the Envelopes and let 'em know I'm not dead. Keep whatever faith you like, buy "Fight With Tools" by Flobots 'cause it rocks and stay tuned for more adventures 'cause life just keeps rocking and rolling.

     I wonder how much trouble one can get into for Grand Theft Retriever?

tb

Posted by: timbyrnes at 20:38 | link | comments (4)
am for the exact same rent only

Sorry It Took a While: We Were Just Tuning.

     I am, alas, one of those old men afflicted w/a trick back. I have no idea how it happened (although I tell all and sundry it's an old football injury: 'Yeah. Fell off a bar stool watchin' a jet game'.  What can I say? I'm a card. Deal w/it.) but every so often I turn my skinny frame like the wrong way and the pain comes down like a freeway and I wind up walking like Groucho Marx for weeks at a time and, basically, that's what happened 3 weeks ago and that's why I ain't been here.

     I am not dead. And ain't nobody won nutthin'!

     Has been a busy 3 weeks work wise and home wise and even music wise. Have finally settled into a consecutive 4 day work week and will be starting to help a friend cut down some trees at his sister-in-law's on my days off. Apparently I can make enough money in a week or so to pay for that sexy digital 8 track I've had my eye on. The living situation just keeps getting weirder and weirder; drunk all the time mom leaves her 2 kids (ages 5 and 7 and you know I'm guessing) w/the alleged crackheads next door who party all night and blast bad disco on the stereo.

     And before anyone gets too outraged, don't worry I've already called CPS.

      Because that's what a responsible person does and, let me tell ya, these people were a lot more fun when they were just annoying alcoholic sociopaths. Before these kids got involved the situation was manageable, even fun in that it gave me something relatively valid to bitch about, as opposed to another antiFloyd screed, and I loved the irony of being the one who called the cops for once. But the other night, 'bout a week ago. It's 2 in the morning. I don't get home from work till 11:30 pm, have to walk the dogs, feed the cats, unwind, watch Charlie Rose so I'm not going to sleep until 2am, right? I no sooner get under the covers when the headlights from their incoming van (bars just closed, remember? This is a Tuesday night, btw) flood my bedroom, followed by the noise of 5 drunks in their early 2o's falling out of the van and into the apartment next door, which shares a wall with, you guessed it, my bedroom.

BOOOM BOOOM BOOOOOM goes the most insipid bassdrum track I've ever heard. Through the wall and through my skull for I'm not kidding like the 4th night running (and why is it people who insist on making me listen to their music never play anything I like?) so I get up, dress accordingly and march out like a skinny policeman and knock on their door. I actually have to knock 4 times before the occupants hear me. Anyway, post 4th knock, the door flies open and here's this guy (my next door female neighbor always has a guy) I've never seen, striking a drunken bare knuckles fighting stance. He somehow knows my name and proceeds to use it 15 times in one sentence, asking if it's the music that's too loud or them. I lookes past this and him to see 3 other glassy eyed males and my neighbor, she who shall remain nameless, looking at me like I'm the enemy 'cause I guess in this case I am. There on the couch sat these two children taking it all in and processing it who knows how but does anyone here think it could remotely be good?

     So I told the drunk guy to'... just do it' after the 13th apology and promise to be quiet. I've learned from my own fieldwork that you can't reason w/a drunk. So idiot me wrestled w/it for a few days, each night I heard those kids yelling in the parking lot. Now they weren't getting beat y'all, they were yelling out of sheer abandon. Or abandonment?

     I don't know why I decided it was my call to make. Probably because everybody else in the complex was commenting on it was a shame the way those kids etc and the ever popular 'something's gotta be done' which for once I not only agreed with but acted upon. Well, not to blame America first, but I made that first call a week and a half ago and nobody's been out to check on those kids yet In the meantime our local police have been turning around in our driveway a lot more lately (Thanks, Jim!) and 2 other neighbors have taken up the task of calling the cops when the party goes out of bounds and stand there outraged when the cops show up, so at least now I'm getting a little sleep. Talk to y'all soon, I gotta make a couple of phone calls.

Viva la France!

tim

Posted by: timbyrnes at 19:32 | link | comments (2)

Ghosts in the Answering Machine: Something Creaky This Way Comes

    1st off I was wrong, as usual. The Tension Envelopes reunion will not take place in January, but in April. All other previous info still applies.

     So, who are these Envelopes, and why are they so tense? I was talking to guitarist Rick Neblung the other day and he commented that bassist Carl Simmons has' a memory like a steel trap' and I agree. His historical reminiscences re: Tension Envelopes on burninglight and elsewhere are likely yards more accurate than anything I might vaguely remember beyond feeling.

      But, oh, what a feeling.

     Anyway, it was 197something and I was like 6 months away from my second divorce, alcoholism was a comin' to git me, I was working as a receiveing clerk for a Great Metropolitan Communications company and playing 'Sweet Jane' in one lousy barband after another.

     Enter Rick Neblung. Introduced to me by a female guitarist friend Allison Ruta(who helped me realize I had no business being married and for which has never been properly thanked or apologized to). It was this introduction that set the stage for Tension Envelopes.

     The start, of course, was false. Rick and I and Allison and Tom Fraunberger (remeber Tom?) made our cbgb debut under the Envelope name and were rickety, drunk and split down the middle between my and Allison's songs. We also turned into kinda a punkdrunk Fleetwood Mac as Tom hooked up w/my not-yet-ex-wife and Itried, pathetically and unsuccessfully to hook up w/Allison.

     Allison, if yr reading this I am sooooooooooooo sorry. Truly.

     Anyway that version imploded. Rick and I hooked up w/drummer Don Gunning for essentially 6 months of power trio basement jams. A great 'woodshed' period but Don wanted different thinbgs than Rick and I and we all realized it and that band split up as amicably as pie making room for the ACTUAL Tension Envelopes.

     Enter Carl Simmons and Mike Hegger. Carl plays bass so Rick moves to guitar. Here's what I remember.......

     The 4 of us 1st set up as strangers in Neblung's loft. I'd just written a 3 chord slice of psychodrama called 'Danny Miller', a death ballad for a fictional idiot who snorted a boatload of heroin 'cause he thought it was coke and, as a result, died. It starts...

'i think you better sit down, Ii got some news, Marie

About the man you loved and I wish you didn't have to

Hear this from me.....'

     The riff, in Rick and Carl's hands was suddenly huge and commanding, like a giant stepping down a mountain in the silverain of Mike's cymbals and the thunder of his toms. Electric blood flooded the room. I crouched my best Johnny Rotten and continued to the chorus, which swung it's song of doom

 '.... someone sold pure smack to Danny Miller

Thought it was cocaine..... but he was wrong.....'

     Each powerchord accent became the tinsel explosion of the punch to the eye. I grew a backbone and believed the words I was singing as never before......

' Stoned celebrities urging kids DON'T DO DRUGS!!!!!

Someone's dealing death out by the playground swingset

Someone's turning our children into ghosts.....'

     Everything got louder and taller and smarter and hipper and finely tuned just right. Guitar chords crashed like jetfighters, the drums generated a freakin' magnetic field and I started swinging that mic stand, guitar forgotten. I'm a singer now, dammit, trying to dress up empathy as sympathy.....

'Somewhere somebody's visiting theoir own private heaven

Huddled in the cold w/a needle in their arm

And maybe for 20 minutes thay ain't got no problems

Finall, sleeping like a kitten in some kitchen

Comfortable ........... and warm.'

    At this lull w/no prearrangement other than knowing it had to be this way,m the 4 of us crashed on the downbeat, ponding that riff like we were nailing it to a cross. It was that perfect and important. I improvised the lyrics we ended the song w/ever after....

'If you can love me black I just might love you back

Love me back, mommy.'

    Crashburn, slow cymbal dissolve. Neblung picks up the riff in a ticktock rhythm. Carl's bass slides across sympathy notes like grace on skates, Mikes rolling down an endless flight of stairs while my guitar speaks in tongues of flame and feedback. It ends w/a crash that echoes in the vast space like waves on a beach.

     Mike looks up w/that 100000 watt smile and, as Rick reported elsewhere, asked 'Well, am I an Envelope?!' Truth is, in that moment we were all of us, finally Tension Envelopes.

     We've lost Mike Hegger and it truly breaks what heart I have that he and I never got the chance to know each other sober, to talk as men and perhaps settle differences; to forgive and be forgiven. I was a mess and yes, made messes, may of which I still regret (sorry again, Allison, you deserved better) but I wouldn't trade a day becausee there was such glory in the noise.

     It's that noise that kicks the ass of the James Taylor/Confessional crap that soaks the spirit in self-pity, sending it sounth towards self-destruction. It's that noise, those songs (and new somgs) played by those people that right now signals if not redemption, then a pretty funky form of vindication.

     A second chance. To not just do what we do best but, I daresay, to be who we are best.

     The beast is awakening. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Posted by: timbyrnes at 20:57 | link | comments (5)

Sherman, Set the Wayback to I Don't Remember

Random thoughts: Ok, either it's reality or it's television. It can't be both. Now there's a grand, sweeping statement (yeah, it tells the world ya ain't got a clue). How's the weather up there? I don't get to ask that question very often 'cause I'm like 6 foot 2 damn tall and people alays ask me that stupid question and Groucho Marx once said that the best way to answer that question was to spit on the guy and tell him it's raining, but has yr weather been as hot as ours? 102damn hot for the last 3 weeks. Or, oh my god, is yr place llike underwater in the flooding? I'm so sorry to be bitching about heat while people's lives float and drown and change irrevocably . From experience all I can say is, it sucks but that's all.

Try to find the good. Apparently that's what makes us human.

Wonder what makes a human torch?

  Feel like I'm living in a bad movie of the week about rural southerners and Hollywood's interpretation  of same as a kind of cartoon gothic opera. Suddenly my already seedy ghetto's been invaded by, and I'm sorry to say this, but ,,,,,,,,, stereotypes.

I myself have sunk to the stereotype of the grumpy old man who yells at the kids to 'turn that shit down' and while it breaks my heart on one level as I suffer not from an irony deficiency but in my defense it usually is shit and it's always too damn loud. And big ol' German Sheperds tied up all barking madness and teethteethteeth. Hank Sr blaring from the car radio at 1 am. Drunken howlings at the moon. A loud .love of life from louts who havn't learned that life is largely levels of loss.

When you choose to look at it that way. I guess.

And guess what? The (legendary) New Jersey barband Tension Envelopes will be reuniting sometime in late December/early January in the rocknroll hotbed of Fowler, Colorado. Ex Paul McKinney Band drummer Paul Costello will be filling in on drums (but not said drummer's shoes) for the late Mike Hegger. Still in the ridiculously early planning stages of this but suffice to say the more it hits me what we're actually going to do, the more twisted and excited this page is gonna be. Expect some type from both Eric Flesch and Speedy Firbank on this one.

Growing old in public.

tim

Posted by: timbyrnes at 21:36 | link | comments (14)

Bo Diddley Was a Gunslinger: On Mortality and Bomp Bomp Bomp Ba Bomp Ba Bomp Bomp

     Bo Diddley is dead. Long live Bo Diddley! Long live the spirit and the memory of the young heart articulating it's sorrowjoylovehatesexandmadness by spouting gibberish atop some driving beat. Long live the superherodom attained by strapping on a Stratocaster and plugging into the Marshall stack of collective conciousness. Long live the hopeful hopeless in their mission to get someone, anyone to LOOK AT ME and somehow register as more than a blip on local radar. Long live the attempt, through sound and words, to transform the randomness of the semi-wasted life into a culture. Long live the garage. Long live the cheap guitar. Long live the street dance. Long live the corner bar. Long live the idiots yelling out for 'Free Bird' when you've been slamming out Clash covers all night. Long live the woozy, frowzy drunk chick who can make you feel like Hendrix w/just one unfocused look and perhaps a lick of the lips. Long live the mixtape, the anarchist's answer to lousy radio. Long live the open mic night. Long live punk rock.

     Long live the blues.

tb

Posted by: timbyrnes at 22:46 | link | comments (2)

Themes for an Imaginary Western

    Viva Obama and his little old Mama and that's all I'm gonna say about it.

     For now.

     What I'd like to play around with is what kinda theme songs will the candidates choose. Obama's been pumping 'Beautiful Day' by U2 through his victorious speakers, while I believe Hillary was still using Fleetwood Mac's 'Don't Stop" and Old Man McCain was playing 'Glycerine' or 'Sixteen Stones'.

    Something by Bush. Get it?

     OK, it's patently obvious that I have nothing to write about and am simply sitting in the library typing at y'all and that ain't fair. It's a beautiful day - and speaking of which, I heard that Bono (not Sonny) has asked the Obama campaign to cease and desist using the tune of that same name, although no reasons were given. Or needed.

    Oh yeah, I have an empty head and busy fingers this morning. So how y'all been?

     I recently left one job to go back to another, the convenience store I almost had to manage. But now I'm the late shift (2 to 11) utility guy. I'm getting lots of hours and almost staying out of the politics, but you know what happens when you put 3 people in a room. They might not pick a leader, but they'll surely pick somebody to hate. That's from an old Star Trek and the best description of the birth of Politics I've ever heard. So far.

     Buster and Sarh say hello. Camille and the 100 cats all say meow. I say Watson whatever happened to J.F Murphy and Salt?

Be back when I have something to say. MMMMMMMMWWWWWWAHHHHH I Love you all!

tim

Posted by: timbyrnes at 20:24 | link | comments

We Need a Bigger Piano, Phil: How Sonny Bono Invented Feedback

     Once upon a time, back in the 20th century, there lived a homicidal record producer by the name of Phil Spector. Running his own Philles record label, Spector specialized in teenage girl group mini-symphonies; kinda like Roy Orbisson records on helium. He heard, in mis mind, what he called 'The Wall of Sound'. A typical Spector session would consist of 5 or 6 guitar players 4 or 5 piano players, 3 drummers, multiple percussionists and just about everybody in the building at the time on background vocals and handclaps.

     Still, Spector felt the sound was still not huge enough.

     Legend has it that during the sessions that resulted in 'Be My Baby', Spectors, and perhap's rock and rolls 3 minute high point, that Spector was frustrated that the sound STILL wasn't big enough.

     Enter Sonny Bono. At that time a promotion man for Philles records and as ambitious a rack jobber to ever marry up and into stardom as ever strolled down the pike, was hanging around the studio trying to position himself in such a way as to bask in the great man's glory. At this session he was struck by an idea of Newton vs. Apple proportions.

    'Phil', he said - and I paraphrase - ' here's whatch do! Look, ya got what? 7 pianos here. Open the lids on those babies and hear the difference! Ya see, piano's being essential stringed instruments, are prone to what we at the Acoustical Institute call 'sympathetic beatings...."  etc. etc.

     Basically, Bono was referring to the acoustic phenomenon known as 'transient harmonies'. Dig: 88 keys times, say 7 pianos. Piano 1's 'c' note will be microscopically out of tune w/say, piano #5's. Multiply that, adding the natural tonal variance acheived by 7 piano players pounding out the same simple rhythm and suddenly the air will be filled w/harmony notes that, while heard, are not actually being played.

     Acoustic feedback, Brought to you by Sonny Bono into yr radio, yr llife, and as a result, yr history. Legend also has it that when the rough mix of 'Be My Baby' came into the control room Bono wept. Legend also has it that Spector said 'Hear that? That's GOLD coming out of those speakers. So once again it seems that for every Elvis Presley dancing the holy dance there's a Colonel Parker changing money in the temple.

    Ii prefer to line my chips up w/the likes of Sonny Bono, who only saw/sees the beauty that results from the mechanics and ain't so focused on the reward.

Authors Note: Social experiment time here at prb. As we all know Jim and I have been having this circlejerk 'debate' for far too long. As a result I am going to boycott responding to him and would like yr help. So from now on, for purposes of pest free writing here at OUR punkrockblues Jim Muglia no longer exists. Thank you. Tim Byrnes/punkrockblues.

Posted by: timbyrnes at 19:38 | link | comments (5)

Regular Posts: Life, Death, rockandroll and the Problem That is Jim

   Hey Limine, I also miss you and the regular posts. Remember when this page was filled w/flamboyannt prose extolling the sea of Patti Smith's possibilities or the populist dreams of Mott the Hoople?  Oversentimentilized memories 'burned to the sheen of science fiction"?

  Oh, yeah, this boy used to be able to write.

  Then came the on air breakdown, the divorce, the Denver fiasco and prb became 'All About Tim', over indulgent, sure, but I'd like to think it was part of growing up in public (and besides in Denver, the 'net was my world) and representative of the narcissistic honesty that has probably kept me from being any kind of success, but at least helped me to sleep at night that, raw or whatever, I put it out there fearlessly.

  Oh yeah, this boy used to be able to write.

  It was in Denver that I was introduced to Jim Muglia. A little history: Simmons and some friends reviewed one of my CDs on a messageboard for a band called Daniel Amos. Not a contemporary Christian band as I was told in no uncertain terms, but more like the Christian underground. Anyway, a bunch of the posters were slamming this Muglia guy and being the underdog loving buttinsky I am, I started defending him. Mainly because he was getting slammed after being banned (from a Christian site! This should have been my 1st clue, huh?) .I couldn't imagine that anyone could be as annoying as Jim Muglia was being painted by these folks.

  As anyone who's even skimmed this 'debate' he and I have been having these last 3 (!) years can see I was wrong. Jim, much like I, is a mindless pundit in love w/the sound of his own voice. Our main difference, I think, is that I have never presented myself as anything more than a crackpot theorist while Jim maintains that he is the Voice of Truth.

   To which I, of course, say bullshit.

   So now I have folks like you, Limine, suggesting I set up a new blog and 'not tell this Jim person'. As much as the little peckerhead annoys me, I think that that would be cowardice on my part. Yes, I wish he'd go away. I've asked both viciously and almost politely to, alas, no avail. Thought we'd come to something of a truce these last weeks but after maybe 3 days of civility he comes right back w/the 'what you ought to say...' crap. I realize that there is no way to tell this dumb motherfucker that I'm not here to debate. I'm not even here to entertain, I'm just here.

  In the midst of coming to terms w/Mike Heggers death and Tim Byrnes' life and the sorry state of rockandroll and the wholesale slaughter of what I perceive as the Amerikkkan dream (and I don't hate America, Jim, just what it's become. Much like this page) I've lost all energy for the fight, good or ill, that Jim insists on continuing.

  Let an old man rant, you weasel, you are obviously no longer welcome here. But I will not take the totalitarian approach of banning you or blocking you as that is not the (spiritual) anarchist's way. I will simply abuse you because yr a balloon that needs to be deflated w/yr Truth and yr God (and apparently only you have this god character sussed - once again, bullshit) until you find another house to haunt.

 Neither will I go away, letting this terrorist win.

 Oh yeah, this boy used to able to write. but right now I'm kinda stunned. Between my housefire, job change, Mike's death and this annoying little mosquito of a man pissing in my cyber wheaties, claiming victory "driving (me) back to (my) cave" and all that shit I'm just tired. And sick. And, no Jim, the answer is not 'getting right w/god'. I don't believe in god and no amount of yr crap will change that. If anything your tripe has strengthened my atheism so, good job, Saint Asshole.

  I've really let you ruin what was once a place of solace for me, a place that was mine where I could explore and share my thoughts and feelings. It's a shame that it's become the Tim and Jim show.

  The saddest thing to me about Mike Heggers passing was that none of us (Rick, Carl or myself) knew until 5 years later. We'd all lost touch w/Mike for different reasons. It's just sad that we had to learn this way, that we weren't there for him. But as Simmons said 'it was time to grow up and move on'. I'll go along w/the 'move on' part, but I still see 'growing up' as a capitulation. From what Rick's told me Mike never took any shit and I know from experience that that's a career killer. But not taking shit or kissing ass (be it job, school, god or the police) is the one thing in my life I'm proud of, for better or worse.

  But it occurs to me that someday, probably soon, one of my 6-week hibernations will simply never end. That one post here will be the last one and who knows how long it'll take before somebody knows I'm dead and posts a notice to the few friends I'd have left in cyberland? Man now I'm even depressing myself.

  In any event, if this is indeed my last post, if I'm struck by a stroke or a speeding tractor on my way to work this afternoon, I'd like to say thank you to most of you for reading this crap and even for taking my side. And if I have any last words, if these are the last words, as much as I hate to waste them on the pox that is Muglia, here goes.

   Don't die, Jim, but do fuck off.

tb

Posted by: timbyrnes at 20:32 | link | comments (9)

Here Now the News

     First off, Jim did not drive me away from this page. My work situation has changed. The convenience store where I used to work offerred me my old job back and I took it. While it affords me more hours and as a result more money, it lacks the Internet access I had at my last job so I've been unable to post. And you know what, I barely missed it. I emailed Simmons and Neblung and got sad news regarding Mike Hegger, a mutual friend and drummer for our old band Tension Envelopes. It appeats Mike succumbed to leukemia in December of 2003. I just got the news not 10 minutes ago and am still reeling. So do I write about our history, as ugly as it got at times, do I reminisce about someone I remember faintly through an alcoholic memory?

    No, not right now. Too much to process. Too many lost memories surfacing at once. And this page offers no comfort anymore now that it's been reduced to the useless and endless arguing between Jim and I and any/all takers. All I have to offer is pain and maybe a little humor. All you offer now is god, god and more god, which I've gone down on record repeatedly as finding useless.

     So fuck you and fuck god and fuck me for the person I've become. Claim yr victory Jim. Yr gonna anyway. See you in hell.

     I'll be the one w/the nicer apartment.

tb

Posted by: timbyrnes at 19:36 | link | comments (4)

Not That It Matters Or Anything: The punkrockblues Presedential Endorsement

      My girl Arianna Huffington recently nailed the Republican party w/the following characterization (one which I'll never top): 'A party that believes in torture but not evolution'. Now that is, of course, a sweeping generalization, but essentially sums up my problems w/the Bushwhackers, especially John "George the Third" McCain, what with his 100 years in Iraq, which while not quite the baldfaced 'deaf to America' move as Cheney's "So?" in response to the FACT that over 70% of Americans are against the Iraq war, but too close for my tastes and, anyway, the man (McCain) did say that people's economic problems are 'psychological', did he not?

     And it pains me to say that this type of foolishmess has gotten elected (well, inaugurated) not once, but twice, and I expect that come January 2009 they'll be playing 'Hail to the Chief' for McCain as America will always put the old white guy in office over the brother, no matter how intelligent the brother might be, or how out of touch, or evev evil, the old white dude is. You can look it up.

     So it's safe to say I'm not backing McCain. Which leaves the Democrats. Hillary, what happened? Sniper fire in Bosnia?!!  'Shame on you, Barak Obama?!! And has anyone else noticed that, in her infamous '3 am phone call' ad, that she let the damn phone ring 6 times? Just asking. I'm left w/the feeling that this woman wants to win more than anything else, including doing what might be best for her, and my, country, and will apparently stop at nothing to do so. Deception, method acting and smear tactics. Shame on you, Hillary Clinton.

     So, whither Barak? Smoother than smooth gets smooth, so slick he don't sound slick, which is as slick as you can get, I want to believe he believes what he's saying, but the whole 'aide goes to Canada and nudge, nudge, wink, winks' the whole antiNAFTA stance of the campaign as empty promises for the populace leads me to believe that Obama ain't as above it all as he so convincingly speechifies himself to be. Clearly the best of a pretty bad lot, and probably the man I'll actually vote for, Obama's also probably a lost cause due to America's tendency to not vote for folks who make them feel stupid, and of course the whole 'old white dude' problem.

     But if I were to truly pick a person who unflinchingly sees America as the great idea gone horribly wrong that it's become and has the courage to point out painful, but obvious, cracks in our beloved system then there is only one man I see on the horizon as an honest leader, courageous enough to scream that the emperor has no clothes and that it actually was (and is) our foreign policy that's responsible for 9-11 and refuses to jingo dem bells in false patriotism while the ship is not only sinking, but on fire. A man that sees American complicity in torture and puppet regimes as what's truly anti-American, not the engaged dissent of those genuinely disappointed in what the current administion represents so reprehensibly. A man who I see as a true patriot, unafraid to stand up and decry what America has become in the view of the world.

     Ladies and gentlemen, the punkrockblues Presidential endorsement goes to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. And before you call him a traitor (or worse) remember, America was founded by traitors. And worse.

Wright in 2008

god damn america.

Posted by: timbyrnes at 03:21 | link | comments (38)