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Rick

3 Headed Elvis Clone Discovers Jesus Tortilla

About Me

I'm a writer.

Some people write for a living and they're writers because writing is what they do to pay the bills. I'm a writer in the sense that the voice inside of me has no other means of escape than through my fingers.

I picked up a guitar when I was young, and for a long time, its strings gave my fingers the means to let that voice get out what it could - to the extent that an average talent allowed anything at all. For three decades, that guitar was how I communicated with those around me. My mouth, merely adding more confusion and complication to an already disheveled existence - it came down to my fingers, working across those strings for order and a calming structure, to blunt the mania of a life in constant threat of a complete collapse into full blown anarchy.

Still, there was only so much that those strings would allow my fingers, or that my fingers could deliver even if the strings gave them more than what they possessed in themselves. After all, there were more than 12 notes screaming inside my head. Even if you factored in every potential for accents, timbre and rests providing those 12 notes with proper context and environment, that voice was seething with frustration at being trapped within a skull that had no idea how to give it the kind of liberty it craved.


Then, one day my brother set a laptop in front of me, and offered me a job tossing together market-speak to prop up his end of the corporate PR free-for-all. All I had to do was learn how to use the damn thing and come up with a bright idea every now and then.

That cheap laptop. That Sophie's Choice of white collar idiocy or the hell of crap day jobs to pay for a life of well established creative frustration. In the end it became the best thing anyone has ever done for me.

After a life of maddening failure, my poor fingers finally found the means to let that writhing beast out to get a little fresh air now and then. That keyboard, with the simple capacity to instantly change what I'd just typed without a major physical disruption in expressive flow, was the transformational genesis I'd needed since the day I mangled my first word to the appreciative response of whoever it was that caught it at the time. That cheap piece-of-shit keyboard gave me the rest of my life. It's literally been the difference between what was my life and what is my life.

I'm a writer. Not so much in the sense that I write in order to make a living, but more that I write in order to make sense of life itself. My thoughts come together through my fingers. They always have. It was like that, long before I ever tapped a keypad. I still play my guitars, and I still love them. I think I love them even more, now that I've taken the burden of my whole life off them.

Yeah, I'm a writer. I'm H.P. Lovecraft with a crowbar under my jacket. My Kurt Vonnegut with a body count. I'm Mickey Spillane with a thesaurus and a little range. My hell is a darker hell. My heaven's a more grateful, and a bit more surprised, heaven. My god is a god that really doesn't give a shit whether you're saved or not - just so long as you deliver on the promise of your existence and try not to fall into the gear arrangement while you're in play.

My dream is to someday take the kind of shit that'll finally show me just how hungry I've been all along but was always too full to realize. My goal is to go out fighting and leave a mess that makes the EMTs blow chunks all over each other. Then again, I'd trade it all for a good punchline to walk out the door with when it's all over. I make no apologies for anything I write. After all, that monster has been trapped inside there for 40 years, and it's got a lot that it's been thinking about during that time. Frankly, I'm fed up with the goddamn thing, and it's time to let the rest of you deal with it.

I wish you all the luck in the world with that.



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My Interests

I love all things metaphysical and philosophical in nature. If it's mysterious in any way, it's got my attention. Sadly, that goes for messed up people as well since people who are screwed up are the biggest mystery of all. To say that this has been an undoing in my life would be an understatement but what're you gonna do.

I work out a lot but mainly to keep from falling apart. I wouldn't call it a hobby. More like fighting off undead monsters in my own personal life long version of "Night of the Living Dead", only the living dead are the years of me being old and fucked up that will get me if I don't keep working out. I have no alternate plan for getting old. Certainly no plan that includes growing old gracefully. Age is going to have to win this one and I'm not going to make it easy on the bastard.

I love blogging on the web about political topics and pissing off rightwing trolls with even more trollish behavior. I wish I was better at working on the many personal projects I have going but, as has been the story of my life so far, my goals are a lot more important to me in theory than they are in reality. I'll die before I ever get anything actually done. Your loss, as far as I can tell.

I'd like to meet:

I'm looking for total MySpace trash. Predators, pedophiles, shit stained crack whores, meth heads with trailor skank ground into their peach-pit souls. I want to meet the dregs of the human condition and I want to meet them here on MySpace. I want the spinner chicks with the plastic boobies and the gold toothed, thugged out, 15 yr old suburban gangstah wiggers and all them pathetic so-hip-it-hurts scene jockeys to line right the fuck up and let me know what they got to sell, because if it's totally messed up then I'm buying.

Give me your poor, your cold, your tired, your huddle masses yearning to breathe free and I'll give them a moment of whatever time I got left after clearing what's on my plate for the day. Just so long as they don't bore me, because God help the bastards if they bore me.



Music:

I need to investigate music again. I'm like the cobbler who makes his kids run around barefoot. I don't even listen to the radio in the car. Not even on a long trip. Just my thoughts ringing in my ears. I don't know what to say about that.

What I do like is human sounds. Organic sounds from simple instruments and human voices. I have an old acoustic guitar that can only be played with a slide because the neck is so useless. The dusty midrange sound of that ancient Harmony guitar is just the most devastating experience. And it only sounds that way with a stainless steel slide. It's priceless as a perfect voice for the kind of expression it encourages through being exactly what it is. On a porch, as the day cools down in shades of blue, gray and silver, that guitar becomes a primordial soup of gorgeous sonic life - bringing forth raw visceral existence effortlessly in any set of hands - like an angel sent straight from God's council on all that is and will ever be wonderful for the enjoyment of humankind.

Yeah, I got my music, but it's not like I can easily describe it.

Movies:

I like movies. In fact, I get seriously affected by movies. It's like when I was a kid and "became" Sinbad the Sailor for a week after seeing the movie. I worry about what's going to happen after I see the next Batman movie and that Joker infects my mortal soul.

Maybe I'd best plan to be in a 3rd world country for that one. Dealing with it all would be less...complicated.

Television:

I watch MSNBC and ghost shows.

That's about it. Ghost Hunter, Medium, Ghost Hunter International, - I won't watch Ghost Whisperer though. That's the dumbest shit I've ever seen. Dr Phil for ghosts, with a Lifetime Channel twist to it for the Midwest housewives.

Ugh

I also watch that Travel Channel ghost show, Most Haunted. I like the accents, and that one guy, David Wells just kills me...unless it's all a fake with his being able to discern information in places he's supposedly never Googled before. The last medium they had got caught fluffing it up a bit and the show's parapsychologist exposed him across the Internet as a fraud. Good times! I'm assuming he'd do the same to David if need be, but we all know at least one scenario where a guy's buddy sets up another guy to get canned so his buddy can get the job. I try not to think like that all the time though. Life sucks enough already without making it even worse with a bad attitude

I do have a complaint though.

How come Most Haunted started to run into ghosts who throw rocks after 4 seasons of ghosts who never threw rocks? Is this some sort of metaphysical Hundredth Monkey thing we're supposed to swallow with all of this spectral stone throwing that's taken over every friggin' show since the beginning of the 2007 season? Someone needs to call those folks up and tell them that we're not buying it and that we want to see shit levitating, or a full body apparition every now and then.

Books:

I've been reading my ass off lately. Everything from Dean Koontz novels (what's with him and his parents anyway?) to short stories by everyone from HP Lovecraft to unpublished writers on various writer's forums, to Flash Fiction - which I didn't even know existed beyond my weird Pulpist posts on various messageboards.

I'm still looking for someone that can scare the hell out of me, and I'm losing my optimism about ever finding that author. Maybe words on a page are too passive for me, and I need horror to be aggressive. I'll keep looking though. I need to learn from this author (whoever he or she is) so that I can feed the beast within me what it needs to live.

Most authors suck. Maybe I need to find new authors.

Heroes:

I love people who put their asses on the line for whatever it is that they honestly believe in. Even if they honestly believe that I need to be locked somewhere for the good of society. Of course, that doesn't prevent me from taking them out if need be, but I'll do it with a loving appreciation for the commitment that they have as I rip into them and scatter them around as a warning for anyone else devoted to anything as foolish as that.

I have few heroes, but the few I have are men and women of integrity, strength and committed endurance. I do realize, however, that there are many others that I'd be just as impressed with if I knew about them. It's easy to die for something, and a terrible burden to live for something.

This earth is blessed with countless people who soldier on in service of something, and without them, we'd be lost. They're as weak and inconsistent as any of us, but when they fall, they keep getting back up and pushing it all forward just the same. They may not be heroes, but more than any hero, they are what makes everything - including heroism - possible.

My Blog

Dawn Patrol

"Jesus, I'm fried."   I looked over at Chester and shook my head.  He said that same thing every friggin' morning.  You'd think he'd come up with something new, but then, it being Che...
Posted by Rick on Sat, 26 Apr 2008 08:09:00 PST

Only For You, Sheila.....<groan>

Tag.....you're it! Here's how you play: Once you've been tagged you have to write a blog with 10 weird, random, facts, habits or goals about yourself , at the end choose 10(or more) people to be tag...
Posted by Rick on Sat, 08 Mar 2008 11:52:00 PST

The Liar

My name is Ben Waltman, and I'm a born liar.  I lie for a living, and I believe in nothing and nobody.  Well, that's not entirely accurate.  I do believe in ghosts.  It's the only ...
Posted by Rick on Fri, 15 Feb 2008 01:25:00 PST

Trajectory

He'd heard the click, which had surprised him.  He didn't think he would have heard anything at all.  Certainly not the click of the hammer as it engaged the end of the shell, but then again...
Posted by Rick on Sat, 26 Jan 2008 06:51:00 PST

The Critic

He lifted his head as soon as he smelled it.  He coughed.  It was a horrid smell.  Like rotted meat. He knew that he'd have to deal with him...with it....yet again.  He dropped the...
Posted by Rick on Fri, 25 Jan 2008 06:00:00 PST