Freakin' myspace.

After being pestered enough, I have finally crawled up behind the bandwagon. Looks like they finally have enough servers running now.

Task Density Overload.

I love surfing the edge of just enough work to nearly kick my ass but not quite all the way. The shop rocks along and somehow manages to just barely almost not lose money. We accumulate supplies like a squad of paranoid squirrels convinced that nuclear winter is around the corner. Emily plays an old tape of cowboy songs bought at a truckstop years ago, which I had hoped was gone forever. I can count on hearing this tape 2 times most workdays. The New Kid, who is Billy McClanahan, really can screenprint. And I guess if there's anything that will make standing between two four-hundred-degree dryers sound good, it's the same setup with pizzas and more interaction with the public. Sean Griffin plots his domination of Scribble Jam this weekend, printing a bunch of shirts every night. Damon gets to laugh while I nearly pass out at systema.

It's the sleep deprived version of the American Dream.

there's this buddhist concept called maitri. It basically means to radiate compassion towards all conscious entities on the planet. as a practice, it means turning suffering into understanding and releasing anger. as we see how we react when in pain, it allows us to understand the closedness of others when they are in pain. maitri means being cool with others, even when they piss you off or do ill shit to you. or at least, that's my limited understanding. I'm not much of a buddhist, too much dogma, too much ritual. There's words for it in every religion. Yoda had it down.

I'm not as good at it. But better than I was ten years ago, that's for sure.

Background information: my lovely abode.

Saturday nights are interesting around my home. It's a single room at the end of a shotgun shack converted to an art gallery, nestled lovingly between three Irish bars. In the heart of the Baxter Avenue corridor in Louisville, my main domestic issues are:

1) thumping bass until 4am on weekends
2) alcohol induced domestic squabbles
3) "Hey, dude. Don't pee on my house."
4) woooooooooooot!

It's enough to make one disrespect the bar scene. I happen to know the owners of most of these places and the O'Shea brothers are actually some of the coolest small business owners I've ever dealt with. I can't tell you how many things I learned just from watching them run their spots. Constantly upgrading. When other places went for flash they went for custom built varnished woodwork, old school style. Their chef is an anarcho-conservationist. So for the sake of the owners being cool, I try not to go out and assault their customers even when they break up with their drunk girlfriend on my doorstep at 3am on Wednesday.

There are advantages. No neighbors once the gallery closes. No one complains when I drop the bass. And a lot of the time the vast drunken mob is pretty entertaining. Somehow it's like being right up on the pulse of the city. Make no mistake- Bardstown and Baxter are the soul of Louisville.

I do need a better place to live though. Hmmm.

hi there!

So no one knows this thing exists. It's early August, 2005. I've been thinking of doing one of these things forever, but have been lazy. Eventually, the desire to BS outweighed the laziness, so here it is.

It's been a wierd couple of weeks. I had the archetypal thing happen where the Man Thinks He Is On Top of the World. Fans of archetypes will recognize this as Man Who Is About To Get Schooled. Doh!

I'm 35. I'm going back to school this fall(*) to finally get a college degree, after something like 8 years of rather weak attendance back in the early nineties. I used to say that "I wanted to render myself unemployable, so I'd have to start something of my own." It worked. I have a small business, which will require rambling about later.

When something lousy happens to me, I always try to do three impossible things. It serves as a way to usually get maybe one of them done. The three things this time are: work out every day, go back to school and get my degree, and go to systema and get beat up by my screenprinter.

I have a strange feeling that school is going to be the thing that hurts least.

JJ Haws = j2

(*) should the bureaucrats oblige.