Weblog Entry - 07/07/2003: "[16:34:09] <@arioch> I shit bats"

[16:33:22] <@jon^c> how would you like it served?
[16:33:54] <@arioch> cold and bloody
[16:33:57] <@jon^c> "i shit bats" goth-style or "im a socially capable family get-together real awesome guy!"
[16:34:09] <@arioch> I shit bats

Already mad that my guitar would not be delivered on the fourth, I eventually left my house around nine or ten in the morning. About half a dozen times I got stuck in near standstil traffic on either I-495 or I-95. Only once was there even evidence of a serious accident, and since I saw no blood anywhere I got even angrier that these fucks would slow traffic down for miles to stare at a person standing on the side of the road. Also it was something like ninety degrees fahrenheit _before_ my car ovenized that to over a hundred im sure. I like heat don't get me wrong, I was more worried about the car overheating. I just had my window down and turned on the "blend" fan setting on high (that stops it from overheating I think, or Im just an idiot). I was wearing jeans, a t-shirt, a long sleeved shirt, and another t-shirt over that. I could live in the desert.

So then I stop at my aunt trish's house first; there's no one there. So I drive down the road a couple miles to my grandparents' house and hang out with them for a few minutes before the inevitable call from trisha comes through (nana and her call eachother at least a dozen times a day, its ridiculous). A few minutes later I'm back at her house, and there's another woman there who I know I know, but I don't know who it is right at that moment. I bullshit though and say "oh yeah hi how are you great you could make it..." A few minutes later I deduce that it's my uncle phil's mother (phil is married to trish), and she is also a very cool woman. They start doing some gardening crap outside, and somehow I end up helping. I dumped some miracle grow + water mixture on a few plants, broke some mosaic stone that my aunt trish's students (3rd grade) made her (trish told me to place it on some stepping stone in the center of a little plant setup thing, and I swear the thing snapped clean in half from the tiny amount of force that was exerted upon it). Then I had the privelege of hosing down the plastic lawn chairs and table. Ive found that the chances for me to drop the hose nozzle and have it land handle side down, so as to spray water straight in my face, is about once for every one time that I attempt to relinquish the bloody thing. God this sucks, finally we go back inside.

What follows that is one of the most boring conversations ever. Trisha is pregnant after her and phil have been trying the whole pipette the gravy into the 'gine, sprinkle with fertility drugs, rinse and repeat for a few years. So for what seemed like an hour trish and phils parents (bob and margo) talk about baby names utilizing this way too pointless book with 20,000 names or something obscene like that. My contribution to the conversation was asking trish to look up Marion. A half hour later I just looked the fucking thing up myself once they started assembling some baby changing table (I hope it changes it into a newt). I don't remember what they had to say about Marion but it wasn't worth remembering. Evidently anyway.

Fucking about time, phil shows up. Phil used to have hair down to his ass (until he wanted a date with trish) and listens to metal. Can play drums though he doesn't own a set these days. Now he's learning guitar, and he is the best student anyone could hope for (he just listens and asks the right questions). He offers me a beer but I decline, mentioning that I've given up drinking and he thinks this is a cool thing too. He offers food and I decline that as well, beginning a long trend of my declining all the meals everyone insists on presenting to me. Fuck I might just be anorexic, not the actual ridiculously thin part (quite yet anyway) but the skipping meals etc part. It's fine with me, there are worse disorders to embrace. I always have my bottle of water. It's a worn out plastic CVS sports bottle, one dollar. That is my sustenance.

Going outside phil shows me his new mountain bike, worth some few thousands of dollars or something. I think it looks alright, but past that I know nothing about the things. I listen to his explanations anyway because it's way better than going back to trish and his parents' company; they might make me garden something. I don't remember much after that. I agreed to stay the night there so as not to call my stepmom Rita when she gets back to their condo at 10:30pm and inconvenience them. The room I'm set up in is nice and warm, but feels stale, so I open a window. There are no screens on them though, and it had to have been open about three centimeters, and of course, a huge fucking moth bolts right through in the two seconds I had the thing open. Now one of trish's teddy bears that was sitting in some wicker chair thing has moth on its ass. Read some more of that Journey to the End of the Night book (im trying to savor it, make it last) and woke up at seven the next morning.

Ok yeah I remembered this weird dream as soon as I woke up. Wait wait, not weird as in this wont make any sense, stay with me here. I'm in the back office at kb toys, but its the back office at the old one in new hampshire i worked at, but with my current stores manager and staff you know? My RL friend chris is sitting on top of the safe, my manager derek is wandering around as usual, and im sitting on some boxes with joanna. Joanna the polish girl i might have loved from my old restaurant job if i could only fucking remember (my memory is horrible, ill bitch about that some other day). Chris is yelling at me, saying something like he "cant believe id just give in that easily to mediocrity" or something. Chris is also friends with kat, and he's one of the only people I've had any serious conversations with in a long time. Great guy and I'm trying not to piss him off by being myself too much you know heh. So that dream sucked, but the whole time I was dreaming it I felt very relaxed and didnt really care that I didnt want to love kat and had no problem going after joanna instead. Ok sorry about all that, back to reality...

"want some breakfast?" 'no thats ok im not hungry' "but were going out to breakfast.." 'oh ok yeah sure' Destination? White Mountain Hotel & Resort. I worked there for a week as a Houseman. It's a fucking janitor job dont let anyone bullshit you otherwise. A couple days of cleaning toilets over and over because this fuck Nelson who works six hour shifts instead of eight because of some dramatized neck injury (he also lives right above the liquor store) didnt approve of my methods. Admittedly I hated fucking cleaning the bathrooms, but I didnt just ignore it, but I also didnt go in there and lick the fucking bowl. Fuck that, I've never left a job without notice, or let someone else get to me at work like that, but at the end of the week I told the manager I couldnt do that shit and left. It was made worse by the fact that my nana works there and got me the job, then I just leave like that. Whatever its not worth it heh. So Im stuck going to hell. Walking through the door I see Nelson cleaning the lightbulbs or something (the fuck). I dead stare him in the eyes and he looks away like he didnt recognize me. Hes a dumb drunk asshole but he wasnt that out of it. I ordered a little box of cheerios, and used the milk that was brought for the tea. I dont know that nelson could get away with spitting in my food or anything but i didnt make any effort to be friends with the kitchen staff that week either. Better safe then sorry, and the vacuum sealed bag of toasted oats made my breakfast that much more enjoyable. I got to hear lots of stories about my uncle phil growing up in Ipswich (he's only thirty years old or something) and all the polish, greek, and french families in the area. Good stories, and I learned that Margo was a cool person to talk with. No bullshit and knows what shes talking about.

When we got back to the house, trish and phils parents went to go shopping, and phil ended up going to see friends (to smoke pot and bike a bit i believe). I sat around for a while alone in the house, and though my dad and rita were supposed to be there at noon, and it was 12:15 by now, I went down to the basement to practice guitar with phils amp and such. Everyone came back and so I went back upstairs. They started preparing and there wasnt much for me to help with. An hour or so later I ended up back downstairs since no one else had arrived still. A couple minutes later my uncle kevin and his wife vicki came downstairs. Kevin is the last child from my nana of four. My dad was first, then my uncle brian, then trish, then kevin. He broke her, nana wanted at least six kids but she had to stop after him heh. He went to college, and failed miserably since he opted to go out drinking and have lots and lots of sex with many women (the majority of which were unattractive, physically and mentally, as i understand it). He eventually went back and got some degree in nutrition or physical education, and somehow got an intelligence job with the government (involving computers) and is now caring for old people at some nursing home or something. Yeah I swear its a fucking mystery what is with this guy. No one thought he would ever get married, then he showed up with some woman and married her in my grandparents living room. Then he had a remarrying ceremony thing at the white mountain hotel so uh, people could see it besides my grandparents. Very strange. They also had a place nearly an hours drive away (a significant distance considering my grandparents children have all followed them up to new hampshire). Well anyway now kevin and vicki are staying with my grandparents in their house, yeah fucking odd im telling you. So they came downstairs and talked about some random things, vicki is really nice but very quiet too, so she might be totally crazy i have no idea. She doesnt like to interact with the majority of the croce's so she must have enough common sense anyway.

Anyway my dad comes downstairs and then phil has returned, then uncle brian and his wife megan, then pop. I'm still standing there, now with the volume knob on the guitar lowered to zero, practicing a bit more. Theyre all talking, and then theyre back upstairs. Then rita comes downstairs. She is so fucking nice and a cool person too. Best thing to ever happen to my father and her and I always end up separating ourselves from the rest of the group. Even though this is sort of my graduation party, the july fourth holiday makes it so I dont really need to talk about high school at all or anything. Rita and I sit next to a chair next to the bunny cage and talk. My aunt meghans niece or something is there, she's 20 I believe. Rita wants me to talk to her but I tell her I'm not interested, even though I've probably talked with this girl before on a few occasions and so its not like it would be the first time meeting (technically anyway). Whatever, over the course of the day our interaction was limited to watching brians daughter robin (a couple years old now I think) look through the books on the coffee table. I might have said something but I probably just smiled and went on my way. Rita kept me close to her because she feels weird still what with her being from brazil, having the accent and not quite having rid herself of some english hurdles. She feels a little out of place and so we just go outside on the patio for a bit.

Phil is out on the grill, Brian, his son ben (demon seed), pop, and dad are playing badminton or something. At some point during the day ben was being the little asshole he is (7 years old maybe now, or 6 I forget) and trying to stick his fingers into the fan. Margo said something to him along the lines of "stop trying to put your fingers in the fan" and benjamin spit at her and gave her the finger. Margo stuck her tongue out right back and then said something. Meghan got all upset that someone was disciplining her son, and Brian got embarrassed and apologized for his sons asshole behavior, tried to get a punishment to stick but meghan let up on it after a couple minutes. The demon seed wins again. As always.

I ate a little salad, and a tiny bit of cake (it being mine and all heh). I got a bunch of cards with money in them and all that good stuff. Eventually people dispersed back home from the heat and lack of air conditioning. I helped clean up a little bit, then went over to my fathers condo to spend the afternoon and night there. I faced the horrors of aol to see if i got an email from the woman shipping my guitar. Turns out she shipped it USPS, not UPS like she said, and a tracking number is basically useless since they scan it once when it leaves and once when it arrives. I try and forget about that whole thing, and end up watching my father show me all his recording equipment and such. Some cool things he put together as midi with his keyboard, lots of zappa heh. I dont really remember much afterwards that day. He had me watch this dvd Miller's Crossing. It was an ok film but I was exhausted and finally went to bed. Woke up a little after seven the next morning. Had showered and gotten ready for another summer day in the mount washington valley before either my dad or rita had woken up.

Rita and I go to this little restaurant "Bee's" nearly every time I go up there. It's ridiculously cheap and a good breakfast. My dad doesnt want to go there, figures it will be packed with tourists or something. Instead we go to this place called Gunther's. Up this long thin staircase in the center of conway by the train station and big park area etc. The waitress certainly wasnt the "pleasing" type. Not that I really care, I've worked at restaurants long enough to know it sucks and if she can get a job being a waitress and be marginally rude while still getting paid, thats great. The menu had nothing that looked unhuge or undeadly as far as the whole dozen eggs fried in fat that was previously fried in crisco or something. I could have ordered the fruit cup, but I didnt want to make the whole eating disorder thing that glaringly obvious or anything. I picked the thing with the most fruit and least eggs. Blizzard cakes. Pancakes with lots of blueberries, kiwi, and strawberries. Instead of the home fries I got applesauce, and orange juice. It was actually pretty good, and these college aged women at the table across from ours kept looking over at me. True valley girls..Id rather masturbate.

From there it was like a battle to get my father to show me some african import place he knew down the street. Eventually we went down there, and this place was just fucking awesome. A ton of hand carved ebony figurines of animals, people, etc. Little instruments and huge fucking sculptures. Lots and lots of stuff. The woman there, Adamma, goes to Africa all the time and buys things to bring back for her shop. She goes all over the world for some artwork. She is over sixty years old but you would swear she isnt more than a day over forty. Life of the party type of woman with an amazing laugh. After we all browsed around for a bit, I met rita up at the register. I had chosen this saucy ebony turtle and a small carved ring of the same material. I looked over and saw that she was buying a turtle too. Adamma gave us discounts for being "special customers," likely because my dad goes in there often or something, though I didn't see any african stuff in his condo. I grabbed a business card too so I wouldn't forget. Ill have to go back to that place again, I saw this saucy chess set with these fucking awesome hand carved pieces and board and everything. It was $200 or $250, and though I don't think I'll actually buy one I want to see what other things she gets between now and then.

Then we went to the old navy outlet. My dad buys clothes there apparently and him and rita got a few things each. There was one beach girl there with shorts that were falling off her non-existent ass. That was amusing. Other than that I just wanted to get the hell away from that place. We got back to the condo and dad asked me to show him how to "play guitar faster." After maybe fifteen minutes of showing him proper form for his left hand (i.e. dont have your thumb wrapped around the top of the neck with your hand slanting like that), I realized that twenty years is a lot of stuff to unlearn, and soon he was back to his minor pentatonic scale he knows and loves. Oh well, I tried. For the next hour I prepared a lesson for phil for guitar. It was basically something I learned from Jon Finn at Berklee last summer on learning pentatonic scales. He breaks it down into small shapes on groups of two strings at a time. After you look at it you see the little patterns and it was really cool the way it worked. So from memory I made my own version of it, then copied the big diagram and such by hand for my fathers copy (just in case). Phil asked me when I first got up to his house a couple days earlier to give him a lesson that sunday afternoon, so now I was all set for that later on. With this ready my dad and I sat down and watched What About Bob?

Nana and Pop came over for tea and such because the ninth is my dads birthday, and though he said he just "wants to be left alone" they gave him some t-shirts (from old navy) and visited him. Trish was also there, as her and rita had gone out shopping earlier and had returned shortly beforehand (we watched some mr bean, and family guy episodes on dvd while we waited heh). I sat on the edge of the couch with my water bottle and declined the desserts rita had bought for pop (he likes boston cream pies apparently). The whole language barrier thing interfered though and no became yes as she handed me a small plate with a piece of the pie on it, and the fork sticking upright in the center. Now, its very humid at the time, and the fork is in a cream of sorts after all. So yeah, big metal fork instantly tumbles off the plate onto the rug. I swear some food went with it but I couldnt see anything when I returned to the spot with paper towels. Oh well heh.

Once nana and pop left trish said she was on her way, I told her I would be on my way to her place for that guitar lesson in a moment. I got my stuff together and drove down there. I got there a second after trish pulled into the driveway, and phil had also taken a quick drive around the street (its a big oval type thing). Now, on friday one of the neighbors whose house is sort of around the street behind phils back yard, his daughter threw a party. The neighbor was on vacation somewhere. There were a ton of cars, and phil at the time predicted disaster when the guy found out. Well, as we got out of our cars we heard the screaming. They were telling eachother to fuck off, she was hitting him (he had to get stitches once before on his lip from her), and then the really loud smashing sounds commenced. Following that we heard something along the lines of "hows your car look now you fuck!" She fucked up his miata apparently in a petulent frenzy. Then I guess she drove off and so we all went inside.

The lesson went real good, he listened as always and absorbed what he could. He'll study the things I gave him and hopefully avoid making the mistakes my father did by teaching himself, and the ones I made doing the same. Unlearning things after a guitarist has reached a certain level is a big blow to the ego, which is an integral part of guitar players. Then we heard a big bang sound and so we went upstairs to see what trish did this time. Turns out she had made a little spaghetti for herself, then knocked over the tray it was on in the living room. Glass of water all over the coffee table, and pasta with tomato sauce on the carpet. I gathered the paper towels, and after that was cleaned I said thanks for everything and goodbyes.

Back to the condo. Dad was watching Ice Age, and so I watched the rest of it with him. Funny fucking movie really. Then rita came back from her walk (over to megan and brians house down the street I believe) and that show Scare Tactics was on. I thought it was lame but whatever, it was 11:30 and so they left me to go to bed (I was sleeping on the big comfortable couch they have, its awesome). I set my alarm for four in the morning (4:05 technically because this alarm clock only goes one way when you adjust that, and 55 button presses was wayyy too much exercise for me at that point). Regardless, I woke up naturally at exactly four. Brushed teeth, grabbed water bottle and alarm clock and went out the door. I drove like a madman all the way home. Seriously, like 95mph dodging through 4 lanes of traffic on I-95. I saved about 40 minutes on a normally 3 hour drive though, so I consider it worth it. I got back home and bummed that my guitar wasnt there (I called the house saturday night to see if it had been delivered that day but it hadnt). Then the cat was bothering me for food so I went downstairs to feed her. Then I notice one (1) huge box by the front door, sort of tucked into the corner. "Well fuck."

So I just grabbed that and tore the bloody thing apart and spent a good few hours just messing with my new baby. I havent named it yet (yes we do that sort of thing, were crazy guitarists) but im calling kat tomorrow (probably) and ill see how that goes. I had lots of pictures I processed with photoshop earlier from this weekend but photoshop didnt save them right, so now i need to redo it from the originals all over again. It took a couple hours the first time so Im not exactly jumping at the idea of doing it now. Especially since I just got back from work a couple hours ago, after driving from new hampshire, after sleeping 4 hours, after eating next to nothing. And now I've written this fucking thing. Jesus its huge. This story is long as well. oh haha hahahahahHAHAHAHHAWHAUEkyehs-\a34=0ik-l ]\