My name is Josh, there are some aliases but they only make sense to certain groups. I’m 28 years old, and I feel and sound like a 90-year-old when I get out of bed in the morning. Probably something to do with bouncing bars, working restaurants as both waiter and cook for half my life and five and a half years of active duty military. Spent two years in Kuwait and Iraq. And there are a lot of days lately I miss the desert in some form or fashion. Finished my body piercing apprenticeship at 17. So there are the professional bits.
Writer, slam/jam poet (yes, there is a difference between a slam and a jam, I’ll explain it if you like, but no one really cares), artist, photographer with no camera, painter with no canvas or paint/charcoal. I love books, movies, fiction and non, every last bit of it. I like happy songs, but sad songs make more sense to me. I think perhaps one of the greatest songs ever written is Miles Davis’ Blue on Green. On a beautiful day, it’s beautiful to hear. But on a sad/bad day, I can always tell myself, “Today might have sucked a bucket of shit, but at least it wasn’t bad enough for me to write this.â€
I love food, and I think that butter and bacon fat are better than olive oil and margarine. I think red wine is better than white, although I love Rieslings (the wines, not the candy). I’m a trained cook, not chef. The difference is between having to wear that stupid ass jacket and toque (no offense to you real chefs, you guys rule, just the uniform is dumb), versus a nice comfortable snap front dishwasher’s shirt. I like to make up recipes as I go along, and have created two or three of them that take their name from William Gibson novels (my favorite is called Ghetto Chef Beef Bowl).
And now it looks as though I’ll be heading back to the military shortly, and for another several years. I’ve got an appointment with the prior service Naval recruiter next week (1July09) to determine how to move forward with this. Hopefully it will turn out I get the EOD slot that I’m after, because that’s what I want, and the incredibly huge signing bonus doesn’t hurt either.
I’m sure this is too long and boring, and you probably haven’t/won’t read it all, but here it is.
And due to conversations I've had recently, that usually started to dry up around the time I lit a cigarette, let me say this: I smoke. I smoke daily. Cigarettes that is, drugs to me are fucking retarded and I have no use for them and/or those that do them. But I am a polite smoker, and apparently this is becoming more and more rare. I will not light up in your house/apartment/car/whatever unless I ask permission and get it. If you don't give it, I don't light up. No blood, no foul. I know it's a horrible habit and what it does to the body, so save the lectures. I'm a trained EMT and have no illusions about what it does to me. But I won't suddenly light up and ash in your drink or blow smoke in your face and if you ask me politely to put it out or not smoke around you, I'll probably do as you wish. As Bear Big Ears put it in the documentary Modify, "No one has the right to tell me what I can or can not do with my own body." I'll make you a deal, you don't tell me to quit smoking and say how you won't compromise on that or whatever the deal is, and I won't tell you how alcohol will kill you faster and how no one ever smoked too many cigarettes and got behind the wheel and killed one of my best friends.