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Head of Cauliflower

A mysterious package, ain’t no head of cabbage

It’s a head of cauliflower with its own brain power

Why the hell not? It’s got a bumpy texture

The kind of head you’d see in a medical lecture

What kind of thoughts are sweeping across?

A silver screen show of the decapitating blow

And now this head is in my shopping cart

In this cinematic trauma, I’m still taking part

Soon this head will be boiled in a pot

Covered with cheese sauce, a whole damn lot

Dandruff flakes and a cerebral cortex

They’re pieces of fiber in my colonic vortex

All that potential for academic genius

Shat away like the flood of melty cheeses

Every head in that grocery superstore

Was capable of brilliance and so much more

Now they’re swimming in stomachs full of gas

Destined for a water slide ride out of the ass

Am I the crazy one for having these thoughts?

Maybe my head is produce one day to be bought

Feels weird carrying severed heads around

But who cares when fiber is good for shedding pounds?

They came from the garden, not the cemetery

But what’s the difference when shit gets buried?

Seeds and corpses grow the finest veggies

Why find the meaning when I can just be edgy?

I’m the only one who can find the connection

These bowel-shaking thoughts are my own invention

Wouldn’t be the first time I didn’t resonate

I’m the only one who gets my own jokes as of late

Grocery Store of Broken Dreams

Roses and chocolates for the not-so-happy couple

When it comes to the law, they’re constantly in trouble

Black eyes, long cries, and cocaine covered nostrils

Only broken bones will be found in their fossils

A frozen pizza can feed a family of four

But not when the mother isn’t alive anymore

A single dad with gray hairs and noisy kids

He bottles his anger with the tightest lid

A bag of cheddar cheese sour cream potato chips

Is a fat man’s only friend when his self-esteem dips

He breathes like a windstorm, his T-shirt is damp

But life itself isn’t worth giving a single damn

A bottle of Advil in the hands of a grandma

Looks natural after the loss of the grandpa

A cell phone in her purse the size of a brick

But nobody calls, not even when she’s sick

A price gun in the hands of a check-out clerk

Will get a lot of mileage in this endless work

Take home a skinny paycheck, be a wreck

One dollar away from the homeless trek

Screenwriters, actors, and the bleeding hearts

Are part of this community that’s falling apart

It’s called the grocery store of broken dreams

It’s easier to fail and chow down on ice cream

How am I any different from my fellow shoppers?

I too have a cart full of frozen cheese poppers

I too was a dreamer once upon a long time

I too live in a town where stars never shine

I too have a stomach that stretches my shirt

I too have a mind full of trauma and hurt

I too have a heart that’ll never beat again

I too will never know if I’ll breathe again

Recycling Buildings

***BEFORE I BEGIN***

The last journal was about how I went to the Pain in the Grass festival in Auburn, Washington’s White River Amphitheater. In case you were thinking of asking, it was a badass concert from top to bottom. Three Days Grace was fucking awesome. Lamb of God was REALLY fucking awesome. I’m glad to be introduced to Bullet For My Valentine. But Slipknot? They were badass on a whole different level. The masks, the pyrotechnics, the devil’s mirror background, and most importantly, the music itself was a shit ton of fun. Aside from riding the shuttle bus with a bunch of drunken fans who butchered every jingle on the planet, I had a good time last night. I even had the cute clerk at the convenience store, Chelsea, tell me that she was jealous earlier today. That’s a damn good sign. Hehehehehe!

　

***RECYCLING BUILDINGS***

Apparently, going to a heavy metal show with a bunch of kick-ass bands inspired me to have a strange, yet poignant dream. In this dream, the QFC grocery store in my town was converted to a concert hall and Pantera got back together to play there. The freezers were replaced with seats, the checkout isles were ticket scanners, and the deli was replaced with one big ass stage where Pantera played “This Love”. And then I woke up and had a topic for a Deviant Art journal in mind already: recycling buildings.

When a business becomes defunct, it would seem like such a waste of construction to demolish the building. If you’re not going to use the building for a grocery store or restaurant, why not use it for a library or a toy store? This actually has a lot of merit in today’s world. In the cop dramas The Shield and NCIS: Los Angeles, both agencies use old churches and convert them to a fully-functional headquarters. Old churches, for shit’s sake. In Texas not too long ago, a Wal-Mart was closed and the building was abandoned until someone started using it for one big-ass library, thus turning Wal-Martians into wallflowers. The old headquarters in Wisconsin where Dungeons & Dragons was born was turned into a candy shop and a hotel after Gary Gygax lost the rights to his game.

Using old buildings for bigger and better things isn’t a new idea, but it’s one that should be spread more often. It would take a shit ton of imagination to convert something like a butcher’s shop into a nightclub (which has been done on an episode of Seinfeld). It’d be a lot of work, but it could technically happen. That QFC dream isn’t far off from reality. It technically could be converted to a concert hall and we could bring some heavy metal to Port Orchard, a city not known for such things. And what about the abandoned Taco Bell building on Mile Hill? Is it just going to sit there and do nothing or can it be converted to…a gaming shop! Can you imagine holding D&D sessions and reading graphic novels in a building that used to be Taco Bell? If your creative energies and imaginative juices aren’t flowing like a raging river, I don’ t know what to say.

Maybe this is all stemming from the fact that I see artistic merit in pretty much everything around me, including reusing condemned buildings, house flipping, and home improvement in general. In this case, the artists in question are working with a tainted canvas and making something beautiful out of it. It would be the same thing if I drew my picture of Daron Campos on the page of a Disney coloring book. It would be a tainted canvas, but it could be done….and it would be creepy to think about considering what Daron Campos is capable of.

Do you have any old buildings that could be something better in your neighborhood? Can you make a college out of a Wal-Mart? Can you make a wrestling school out of a Burger King? Can you make a barbershop out of an abandoned warehouse by a dingy dock? If your imagination is big enough and you’re having a constant flow of nerd-gasms, all of those things are possible. We’ve got ears, say cheers!

　

***COMMERCIAL QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“You will howl like a happy hound dog over these hushpuppies!”

-Popeye’s Spokeswoman-

　

***POST-SCRIPT***

Actually, no, I won’t. Popeye’s food is so bland and boring that I can picture one of their restaurants being converted to a record store slash punk clothing emporium. And we’ve come full circle yet again!

Work Ethic

On my Facebook page, I follow a group called “The Writer’s Circle”, which posts quotes from various authors about their work ethic when it comes to piecing together a novel. They love to use words like “creative spark” and “white heat” while driving home the point of never taking a vacation from writing. These are all very inspirational and true quotes, but here’s where I’ve got a problem. There used to be a time in my life where I would write every single day like an endless dynamo of creativity. There used to be times when the words “white heat” meant something. Those days are over, though I hope they return soon. The reason those days are over is because my schizophrenic brain began to grind so slowly and painfully on me to the point where I’m always mentally exhausted. I’m exhausted when I wake up in the morning and I’m still seeking answers on how to get out of that hazy state. The things I do to try and wake my brain up include going for long distance walks to the grocery store, drinking caffeinated diet sodas, eating meaty foods to get by blood sugar up, etc. Even then, there’s no guarantee that when I get on my computer to write something I won’t be stuck sitting there like a complete idiot while I stare at my screen. Some say it’s writer’s block, but I blame it on my overly exhausted schizophrenic brain. Instead of getting everything down on the computer screen in one epic fiery flow, I have to pace myself to the point where it’s several days before I write anything again. Mind you that this only applies to three-page chapters of Hardcore Hate 2 and not to blog entries and DeviantART journals. Knowing that I’m not a mental or creative superman, when I see these quotes about work ethic on my Facebook page, I always think that they’re secretly implying that I’m a lazy bum because I don’t pump something out every single day. Let me ask you this, Writer’s Circle: do lazy bums have multiple first draft novels to their name? How about double digit short stories? Didn’t think so. My work ethic is unquestionable. My desire is even less questionable. My mental endurance, on the other hand, is extremely doubtable. There’s a difference between desire and endurance. If you don’t have the endurance, desire means nothing. That’s why I’m always giggling through my nose whenever I hear about a pro-wrestler or MMA fighter who is “struggling through the pain”. Eventually, the pain will be too much to bear and there will be no choice but to either tap out or lie down. It has nothing to do with desire and everything to do with science. Get it? Good. I’m out of here.

　

***COMEDIC QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“Bobby’s parents don’t understand why he can’t hold a job, because in school he was always on the honor roll. What Bobby’s parents don’t realize is that in today’s schools, everybody’s on the honor roll, because in order to be on the honor roll, all you really have to do is maintain a body temperature roughly in the 90’s.”

-George Carlin-