Life just sucks, I lost the one. I'm giving up, she found someone. (Day 129)

Just happen to wind up here again, and again...and again.

I miss her with all my being, and there's a million things I wish I could've said. You found clarity, and that's something I'll never have. I'll miss those night I felt that tinge of being something special, or more than I am.

But anything I have to say wouldn't change a thing.

But there's nothing I could say. I just hope you continue to be happy. There's a lot of solace in that itself.

I watched her putting on make up tonight, and looking so excited. It dawned on me that that would never be for me again. Such a bittersweet moment.

Thank you, Velvet. At least I existed for once.

"Ease away the problems and the pain
The girl chose the guy that makes you wanna kick and scream
All along, you wish that she would stay
Fuck the guy that took and ran away, yeah"

-Until tomorrow.

Please come home. (Day 128)

So here's the second part of "Of Fortune, For Avi". Hope ya hate it:


The sky turned on her.

At first she thought she was dillusional, that she had sat in the sun for to long, or that she simply was dreaming.

Twenty minutes ago, the earth was calm, the skies serene, and gently dampered with clouds, lazily tugging into the early August sky.

But something was wrong. The air felt electric to her lungs, to her skin, to her very bones. Her sense of fear seemed frozen.

"Hell came alive that day" Dya wrote in her journal. "The eyes of Satan replaced the sun, the flames of Hell laped at the sky, the clouds became an ember storm of first white, then orange, then red...then black. Almost as if night had sprung to life to hide Nagasakis revelations from the Eastern world."

She remembered running away from the radiation storm. Just running, as fast as she could until her lungs felt like evaporating.

She heard a sound admist her blood rushing like flood water in her ears.

"It was as if the sounds of humanity, the clamor, the laughter, the sounds you hear every day just walking down the street haulted entirley, for what seemed like an eternity, but only stood as a moment...then collapsed into ghastly sounds."

She first saw her neighbor, Yuki Mita, or what she recognized as him.

"As I passed Yuki", she recalled "he'd collapsed, in an almost cartoonish way. His skin bubbling right in front of me, his face ashen, and his hair, his beautiful black, sleek shiny hair, now so white. As if he'd aged in moments."

She sobbed in horror, but forgot about her evaporating lungs. She moved faster, not breathing, not thinking, just seeing, and regalling in horror at the ones she'd knew since she was a little girl.

"Elderly or young, rich or poor, meak or shrewd, proud or guilty, death spared no one person of any class that day. For once, unity was the most horrific detail of my life" - Dya Nyung, September 16th, 1953.

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"SHIT!" thought Ryia. "I cant be this late AGAIN!"

She rolled out of bed and scanned her room fervently. Something was wrong.

"Fiu! Fiu...where the hell are my pants?!" she yelled into an empty room. "Fiu...where are you? Hello....anyone here?"

Suddenly, she made a beeline for the bathroom, and threw up. She sat slumped against her bathroom wall, yet still ballencing against the sturdy toilet well. A few more tempting pulls from her slowly enlarging stomach, and then her body settled for gentle dry heaves.

"Morning sickness...".

She reached up to the handle, and flushed away this mornings heap of vomit. She looked at herself in the mirror, recollecting herself. Today she would be too sick to go to work.

She walked back to her bed, as if dancing on two broken heels, and slipped under the covers. Fiu had not been one to just leave in the morning without so much as a "Get up, you lazy ass" remark. She reached for the phone to make the call, when she saw a piece of paper taped to the reciever.

"Dear Ryia, did you forget about today? Its Saturday, so dont bother calling into work."

She laughed, and went back to sleep.
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"Lt. Xing, can I get you anymore coffee?" asked his secretary, Julia Hughes.

"No thank you Ms. Hughes." Fiu said, and then let out an exasperated sigh.

"Permission to speak freely, Lt. Xing?"

"Permission granted", said Fiu and he motioned for her to close the door. they had become almost allies in a world that revolved around decoration to exemplfy ones status in humanity.

"Fiu, you look like you havent slept since you were born" Julia observed loudly, "whats keeping you up these nights"

"Julia, Im not ready to be a father." Fiu responded frankly. "Im not Julia, I just cant...Ryia, shes...shes so much more than I couldve ever bargained for. this...this is too much for me."

"Have you discussed this with her?"

"I cant discuss things with her. She thinks shes the emperor or the land, that shes Thor or...or something. I...I cannot have a child with someone i love so much, yet hate just as equally."

"So whaddya think youre options are."

"Julia...I need to to take a message for me."

Fiu Xing stood up, and kissed her on the cheek.
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"Officer Knight, Officer Knight....do we have any motive?" asked a bloodthirsty reporter. "Have you identified the deceased, Officer Knight?"

"One at a time gentleman, one at a time. We've got nothing but that right now, so dont blow your wad just yet." Officer Knight said, away from the microphone. "We uh, have no motive, and we have made an identification, but for the time being we can say theyre are two, um bodies. One female, one male, and we are waiting to release any more information until the familes have been notified and all parties have been one hundred percent I'ded. no further questions."

"Officer Knight, Officer Knight! Can you tell us anymore? Please, Channel 6!"

Nathan Donald Knight stepped back into the crime scene, and looked at the floor.

"Such a shame."

He reached into his pocket, pulled out his first cigarette in three months, and lit it.
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"Ma, would you watch the baby for about an hour, Im supposed to go down to 5th street--" Ryia bit her lip.

"Go child, I understand." Dya nodded, with remorse and pain in her eyes.

"Ma, I...I love you and Im..Ive not always been the best kid but--" she choked on the last words, making them unintelligible.

"Ryia Ann, Go now. I hear you, okay. But me and my Grand child have some catching up to do. Now go." Dya instructed.

Although she felt alone, she felt comforted be her mothers sterness. She got to the door, and comfort began to blanket her. The door closed.

"Avi, dear...you dont know what awaits you. You dont child. Just know that within these walls lies the comfort of the greatest civilization. The memories, and the knowledge that textbooks dont supply." Dya spoke to to Avi.

Avi began to coo, and had a pondering look in her eye.

Dya made her way to a chair, and clicked off the television. She held Avi in her arms, and she put her in her lap.

"Avi....before anyone tells you differently..." Dya began to tell Avi her story of Nagasaki, August 9th, 1946.

"Avi dear....Ive lived threw the Apocolypse."

I got pages of dreams, they're covered in piss. (Day 127)

A week or so ago I mentioned that I wanted to share the very first story I wrote, and I think the next few updates are gonna be it in it's entirety.

In a way, I've really come a long way from where I was when I was 17 years old. Before that I used to write punk rock songs, which I'd done for most of my life. I think it's been a gradual growing process.

Cut me some slack with this, it's rife with inaccuracies, but whatever. I just want to show how bad I used to suck, and how much that really hasn't changed in the slightest.

The story itself is called, "Of Fortune, For Avi" and it's a non-linear story focusing on three generations of Japanese women, with the eldest struggling with her identity as a Japanese woman adjusting to living in America, especially having been present in Nagasaki when the atomic bomb was dropped.

Her daughter is a bit rebellious, and tries to stay further away from the paths of traditional Japanese families as a teenager, and eventually runs away from home. She gives birth to her daughter Avi.

Avi is struggling with the how she was raised by her mother, and how much respect she has for her grandmother, and how often those two stubborn women's views collide, often times leaving her square in the middle. She's a lot like her mom, but has much more of her grandmother spirit inside of her than her mother would like, or that Avi even knows.

So, hope ya hate it:


"The first time I ever had Yogurt was the day the Americans bombed Nagasaki" said Dya Nyung. "I sat beneath a willow at the Voita creek, the sun--"she broke off, lost in the moment that was etched into her eyes, which were worn with crows feet that tugged at the corner of her slits.

"Gramma, why'd the 'Mericans bomb Nagasaki?" questioned her granddaughter, Avi Xing.

"It's just sometimes, people become lost in themselves, they loose faith in paitence. Its...its to much to explain."

Avi visited her grandmother once a week, to drop off essential supplies. They usually sat for a few hours and talked about the weeks events. Dya didn't get out as much anymore, she'd become aged.

She hated to look into the mirror, as it defied her so blatantly. How could an attractive girl of 19 become the withered, aged elderly sham of what she once was. It depressed her horribly.

"Avi, Do you know what you are?"

"Yes Gramma. Im the daughter of Ryia, and the brave Luitenent Fiu Xing, who gave his life in...

Dya cut her off.

"I asked girl, if you knew what you were! I did not ask for facts of heritage, I did not ask for the heroics of your lineage! I asked do you know what YOU ARE!"

Avi, slightly perplexed by her gentle natured grandmothers sudden outbursts replied quietly, and quite confused "Im afraid, Gramma, that I dont know what you mean."
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Ryia Nyung laughed at the sight of him. He looked like an adolescent, a mere teenager in his fathers suit and tie. She caught a look at him dead on in the eyes, and he coyly smiled and said: "Good evening, Ms. Nyung"

"Why Fiu, they've postivley turned you into John Wang!" said Ryia, and she immersed herself behind a wall of laughter.

She was calm, witty, and smart. Sometimes to smart for her own good.

In the December of 1984, she left San Francisco, where her mother portested little, but guilted her daughter with "What am I supposed to do now, become silent, alone, a widow with nothing to love but cats?" but Ryia only kissed her mothers cheek and headed towards Arizona.

"Mother, Im but a hop, skip, and a state line away, what makes you think you are to become alone" she smirked. "By the way Ma, you live in the city of Fags, they dont allow pussycats in your building."

And on the note, she calmly sat in her car, turned on her cassette tape of Adam And The Ants 'Kings of the Wild Frontier' and sped off down the hill.

That was three months ago. She now lived in a one bedroom loft in downtown Phoenix. She didnt think much to the town, it was kind of empty but growing seemingly every day. Thats where she met Fiu. He was a thin, lanky kid with the inability to grow a beard or moustache. At the raw age of 18 his parents passed away in a car accident, leaving him to fend for himself, and thus far, the best he could do was join the Military.

"You know, John Wang or not, youre not exactally Ms. Land of the Rising Sun yourself!" He smirked.

She spat an ice cube at him.
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Dya fumed over a glass of water.

"How could she just...that stupid girl!"

On her dinning room table there lay a note, slightly crumpled in a fit of blind anxiety.

"Hey Ma, hope all is well in the city of rice, trolleys, and HIV providers. Im kidding mother. Anyways, theres no subtle way to put this, so I'll just be blunt. I love you very much. Come visit soon. Also, enjoy the cactus.

P.s: Im pregnant.

- Love always, Ryia."

Dya poured out the water. It was four in the afternoon, but at this point, it couldve been sun rise for all she cared. She pulled out a bottle of Whiskey. After tossing the cap aside, she poured a healthy level into her cup and and stared at it momentarily.

When that moment was up, she poured the glass of burbon into the small potted Cactus Ryia had sent her. She fared it in poor taste to have recieved all of this as a mothers day surpise.

She picked up the lonely bottle of Whiskey and sat in her den, with the TV blarring.

20 minutes later she looked into the mirror and rationed.

"I cant be a Grandmother...." she slurred, the giggled.

"Dya, you lonely son of a bitch....you look like Betty Ford..."

She then passed out.
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Avi sat on the porch, feeling the scorn of her Grandmothers biting remarks.

"Your mother and you are so....so FULL of being AMERICAN that you might as well ride a bald eagle to Washington fucking DC!

She began to cry.

I'm gonna say what I need to say in my very last letter to you. (Day 126)

I've been going through an identity crisis as of late. I don't know what direction my life is heading, or what exactly it is that I'm doing now.

For the better part of yesterday I had a lengthy discussion with two of my closest friends. I think that one of the most important things I've learned from this, which was something I'd always know but never actually...knew, if that makes any sense at all, but know I do know...

Like, okay, let me try to explain that. You ever know somethings bad for you, instinctually? Like when you're a kid, and everyone tells you not to touch the stove when it's on because it's hot and it'll burn you? You still wind up touching it, and then even though you knew and people warned you a long the way, you still touched it and you learned for yourself? That's what I'm getting at.

I always knew like...two things. One, never date a coworker. And I did that once, and the end result was that I wound up quitting and moving to New York after a humorous instance with a phone flying at my head. The second one though, is never fall for your best friend. And unfortunately I had to wait until I stuck my hand on the burning stove to find out for myself.

As a result, I've been a huge source of stress and tension for two people I've cared about, who've meant quite a bit to me over the past few years.

I don't let many people in. Friends whom I've had for the better part of a decade still aren't really "in" so to speak, because every person I've ever invested a lot of trust and faith in have wound up hurting me in some way. And a lot of the time it wasn't done purposefully, and I can't blame many, not even these two friends, because I allowed it to happen to me. I should have been more alert, but instead I was selfish and only really tried to serve myself, and the thing is...you can't do that. And normally I'm not that of person. But I was just really selfish. And I've been nothing selfish towards them. You have no idea how sorry I am about that.

I've been thinking a lot lately, and I've decided it's about time I got to moving on. With anything, anyone, honestly. I seem to always stir up some sort of dramatics, or cause tension/stress. To put it in the context of a question: "Is the juice worth the squeeze?" No. I'm rotten fruit, baby.

But I decided to basically just learn how to properly fuck off, and take a more limited role in peoples lives. When I think about it, I always seem to just cause discomfort to those I love the most, or people who trust me (Dillinger Four/Racket/Fat Wreck, anybody?)

I've got a lot of thinking to do about this.

I've been seriously looking into becoming a monk, or something. I have an "interview" coming up with a bunch of Greek Orthodoxs'. It's kind of funny in an ironic sense, because I don't even believe in God. But whatever, they don't really need to know all that. Besides, I know the bible pretty well, I'm sure I can bullshit them pretty easily. I took four years of theatre, it's not exactly that hard. Plus, I can be a pretty smooth talker. Just some razzle dazzle, "I love you Greek Orthodox dudes", and blam! Black robe and a cool little hat, and some Jesus bling.

Free room and board and food. It's like prision minus the threat of prison rape. The American Dream realized! Plus I think I get to learn Latin, which would just be fucking rad.


-Until tomorrow.

In passing I'm asked, "Do you believe in a God?" I shrug off the answer, continue to get high. (Day 125)

Today was rough as shit.

I just want this situation to fade away. But I'm continuously tossed under the bus so someone else can feel better about themselves, and have their cake and eat it, too. I'm sorry I'm not mature, I'm sorry I'm a shitty person. I promise you, though...I'm not exactly Gandhi.

Today I recieved a letter. The intro reads:

"Dear Mr. Hale:

My editorial staff has completed the review of Kathy, In Red Heels. I am pleased to inform you that think your work would make a positive addition to our list of titles."

So yeah, there's that.

-Until tomorrow.

Daylight whipped me into shape--I must've been asleep for days. (Day 124)

So I found out today that I will be having surgery on my knee. On May 4th I will be going in for a surgical consult, and then from there I'm not sure where we're going to go with it. Truth be told, my knee is in extremely horrid shape.

So I'm gonna start harvesting some more guest updates. I'm pretty much not looking forward to the surgery, honestly. And when I get it, there's absolutely no way I'm going to be able to update for a few days, mostly because of high medication, and the inability to really move around very much.

That means if you'd like to do a guest update, please contact me! It'd be really fun. I'm going to be working out how this is going to go down, but just contact me and we'll work it out. I'm hoping I can coerce someone to update the blog for me while I'm incapacitated.

Other than that, life's pretty alright.

-Until tomorrow.

This hate is fucking real. (Day 123)

My head is throbbing.

I went over to a friends house last night, and we watched Planet Terror which...she couldn't get over I hadn't seen before.

See, I'm one of those guys. Those film nerds, who latches on to certain directors, and has to see everything they write, direct, make a cameo in, co-direct, produce, or even look at while it's being created. It all started with "Pulp Fiction", and as such I've seen everything Tarantino has had his hands on (or in, in the case of Uma Thurman--oh no I di'nt!) and some how I just haven't seen Grindhouse.

Don't ask me why, I'm not quite sure what I was doing two or three years ago that made it something less of a priority. I knew how they'd filmed it, as far as the style of it and what they were aiming for. Gory, cheesy and grotesquely funny. That's what I'm all about!

So I revealed last night that I'd never seen Planet Terror, which is the second half of Grindhouse. It's Robert Rodriquez' contribution to Grindhouse (Death Proof was Quintin Tarantinos', if you somehow didn't know, which I still haven't seen) in which Tarantino makes a cameo. God, I love the guy, but he needs to stop pretending he can act. His death in Planet Terror is proper, because it's quite gruesome, and truth be told...he had it coming for his atrocious acting.

But the movie is AWESOME! They added gritty film pieces, and there are just so many nuances that I couldn't help but LOVE.

I also realized like...holy shit, my friend and I are going to Hell.

There's a part in Planet Terror where a mother, who's like a nurse or doctor as well (he husband is a doctor) and she gets caught with her tongue in the heart shaped box so to speak. So he stabs her with this numbing agent (It's one of three needles--I won't explain further) and she winds up escaping when one of the EMT's calls the doctor over to see that the corpses had come back to life. She was stabbed in the hands, and she barely makes it back into the car when all Hell breaks loose at the hospital. Her hands are all numb, and she can't use them, so it's interesting what happens there.

But where I found out we're going to Hell (and also very grotesque) was when the mother had picked up her son, and they were going to escape. They make it to her fathers house, and she gives her son a gun and tells him, "Be careful where you point that thing--you'll blow your face off." And then she goes to knock on the door. Then the camera pans over to the car and you see a flash and a bang, and I don't know why, but we both started laughing!

Like, okay...the audacity of it. She told him he could blow his face off, and he did. I don't know, there was something ludicrous and preposterous about it, I mean...she did warn him! And I know that Rodriguez and Tarantino are fucked up like that, and they put it in there for a spot of black humor (the whole film is basically black humor) but I can guarantee no one else laughed at that kid blowing his head off. I feel kind of bad, but then I realize two things: 1) She told him. He was a kid who wouldn't listen to his mom, and brought all his pets, including putting a scorpion and a turtle in the same cage, even when she told him not too. He didn't listen, and thought his mom was retarded, and paid the price. And 2) He was better off dying. all the crap he was lugging around, with all these mutant zombies (including his father) trying to eat his brains, or kill him...and they have no faces and stuff...he was bound to have a more horrible death being eaten alive. Or, he could have survived and been scarred for life at what he saw that night. Especially his father.

I realized we were grotesque when a scene in the movie had some gooey blood splatter, and she said out loud: "That makes me want one of those 59 cent cherry pies" and I had been thinking the exact same thing. I mean, it LOOKED exactly like the filling, and those pies are delicious!

I had no idea some people were as fucked in the head as I am. I'm just glad there's still people who enjoy cheesy slasher/gory funny horror films as well. I know Austin does, but I never get to see him. I hate all the CGI nowadays for the most part. Give me buckets of corn syrup and special effects that look like pancake batter falling off a face any day over the vampires in Will Smiths' I Am Legend (for the record I really liked that movie, but the fact that they CGI'd everything, including the vampires really made me want to hate it). But I don't know. I feel like I've revealed a lot about myself here, and I think a lot of it is really alienating, but whatever...don't judge me.

Karma already paid me back for laughing.

Like I said, I woke up with my head pounding. Now, it could do with the fact that I drank a lot of Gin and Juice last night, true. But, I've never had a hangover in my life, so I suspect it has more to do with the fact that when I was sleeping (and what woke me up, coincidentally) I moved my head.

Now, anyone who's ever shared a bed with me knows I just...do. not. move. It's like I got shot in the back of the head. Blam! Done. In that respect, I'm a good person to sleep next too, because I don't do the fucking cha-cha when I'm sleeping. I know you might be thinking, "Come on, everybody moves a little." But I promise you I don't.

So I heard the phone ring, and I looked over at it, and then decided I'm not paid to care, this is why God invented answering machines. So I moved my head back over, and miscalculated.

Let me set it up for you. I sleep on a futon on the floor. When I moved to New York, my parents turned my room into a sewing room. As a result, there's a big, huge metallic (made of fucking steel) drawer right next to where I sleep. I've banged into it a few times, but never anything terrible.

Except for this morning. For a second, I didn't realized what happened, except my ears were ringing, and I wanted the number of that truck.

This is the second time I've sustained head trauma whilst sleeping. Earlier this week, Arizona had winds reaching up to over 90 mph. I sleep with the windows open, because it's still really nice out. Also, on my window sill are glass bottles. Empty glass Jones soda bottles. The wind blew the window so hard, that the shades hit a glass bottle, and caused it to land on the back of my head.

Why, Sparticus...why?


-Until tomorrow.