failure weblog

here are a couple of images of my first pair of new shoes. they are black and red "hot rod" shoes made by joe's garb. which evidently is no more, as their website pages redirect and/or comes up with errors.

from poking around online, joe's garb was a mid-range brand based on shoes designed by esquivel. it was around and active in the early 2000's. esquivel also made high end shoes, and evidently he caught the attention of the right people and became well known for his shoe designs (and expensive ones at that). so i guess the joe's garb line was shuttered at that point.

anyway, here are a couple of pics of my shoes before they get all scuffed to hell, taken in my '55 bel air. first, lounging in the front seat:

then, behind the wheel:

joe's garb made at least two color combos in the men's model, and i actually wanted the black and white version. but when the pickings are slim, sometimes you have to compromise. (just don't tell the ladies you say that about them. and they won't tell you they say that too.)

the shots and pills appear to have worked. my sinuses feel as normal as they usually do (which is still probably not quite normal), and my sleep patterns have gotten back to as "normal" as they usually are.

i went back to the doctor on monday morning for the results of my blood test(s). no mono, nothing abnormal except the expected elevated cholesterol levels (overall a bit high, bad cholesterol too high, good cholesterol too low). the doctor was able to utilize his years of experience in studying and understanding the human body to deduce this: i'm overweight and should exercise. i was shocked. shocked, i tell you! however, unlike my ex-wife's year-old analysis of the root cause of my body weight, he didn't come to the conclusion i am overweight due to "self-loathing". he seemed to think it might be because i eat too much of too many rich/fatty foods, don't exercise, and lead a sedentary lifestyle. what a quack, huh? seriously though, my ex has proven she does struggle with issues directly tying her body in harmful and unhealthy ways to her self-perception, -value, and -worth. unfortunately, i don't think she can be fair or rational about me regarding this issue. maybe others too, but pretty definitely not me. that may be the way her horse and cart works, but she's got the cart in front of the horse for me. i don't manipulate my weight to match the way i feel about myself (either in a rational and healthy way, or an irrational and harmful way). although i would like to weigh less, the "short cuts" are rife with problems (and many of them rather scary), and the legit ways to do it don't seem as enticing or enjoyable as being able to eat the things i like and not having to devote chunks of time to being bored exercising, even though the end result would be nice, good for me, and help my opinion of how others perceive me. of course, shaving more often, paying to get my hair did, and wearing nicer clothes might do that too. perhaps my cost-benefit analysis is out of whack, but i know i'm not alone in the world. i doubt most people smoke because they hate themselves either...but maybe i'm the crazy one.

completely off-topic: for the last week or two, i keep hearing some bird outside of my house. sometimes when it sings, it sounds just like that bit of the song "peanut butter jelly time" where it goes "where he at, where he at" "there he go, there he go". (i.e., the tones the bird sings are the same.) then i get the stupid song stuck in my head. thanks, bird.

this past friday evening was the geek gathering. i had to go straight from work, so i didn't really get to do some stuff for the gathering i'd planned to. but i did drop by the house and pick up kojo's books and the toothbrush i brought back from taiwan for jamie (it was a hotel disposable toothbrush and toothpaste set, and the toothpaste was called "j. me"). i need to step outside my normal bounds of waiting for people to come talk to me. there are sometimes people i'd like to meet and maybe get to know, but i rarely take it upon myself to make it happen.

saturday i was woken about 9am by brad calling to see if i wanted to go riding. brad and i met up with four other guys and we rode around the tomball area for a couple of hours. then a couple split and the four of us left rode to washington-on-the-brazos. afterward i hung out at brad's and talked for an hour or two, then we rode around some more and eventually ended up at antidote for some coffee. from there i met the potts at a five guys burgers (which i'd never eaten at, but is good) and then went to their house and hung out until late.

i was planning on buying some new sha sha shoes (different color, same style -- i wanted the black flames on white shoes), but once i started trying to buy them i figured out they must not be making them anymore because they were hard to find and i couldn't find my size. ain't that how it always is...i search around forever disappointed with my choices until i find something cool, then it's not available or not in my size or whatever. even my second and third choices were not working out. so i gave up on the sha-sha's.

i'll use that as a segue to talk about my recent emotional struggling. you see, this last week was significant for a couple of reasons: [1] friday was the hrc's birthday, and [2] the same week was a two-year marker of sorts. so those things just gave me extra reason to think about the loss of her in my life, and the current lack of anything new. when my mind is positive (which isn't that often:) i like to imagine she bailed on me by quietly slipping away because she knew she didn't have the ability to be the woman she felt i deserve. i mean, after all the things she told me and said about me and such, just ceasing to care about even interacting with me at all seems rather incongruent. but as samuel jackson (as jules...a bit of a coincidence) says in pulp fiction: "and i'd like that. but that sh!t ain't the truth." i don't know the truth obviously, but i imagine it's not really any reason that's good to/for me. whatever. the problem for me is i'm not one to cut and run and move on. i'm slow to commit / get into things, but once i do it runs deep. i can't just move on. i have a hard time giving up, accepting loss, and forgetting about it. (see: the time invested in me trying to deal with and get over tamara and my marriage.) still, i guess it's probably for the best. it'd just have been nice if something good could have come out of it. (other than the time itself.) i think, like jennifer before her, i was really good to julia. (it'd be nice if i could find someone to actually legitimately appreciate that, and me.) still, as much as there were so many things i really loved about the hrc, she probably would have consumed and destroyed me. (that doesn't change the fact such a thing is kind of my ideal relationship i guess...watch true romance to better understand.)

back to the shoes...i thought about buying some new vans old skool shoes, but as usual i can't find color combos i like that much. you can make custom ones on their website, but the end price is about $85. i'm still trying to decide if i can make myself believe having canvas shoes custom-designed (the color choices) by me is worth that. i do think the ones i made look pretty cool though. we'll see. in the meantime, i did manage to find some shoes that compete with the sha-sha's so i ordered them. as well as three retro-50's / lounge / rockabilly / greaser button-down shirts. then i ordered a new pair of doc marten's. then i ordered a new pair of motorcycle boots, as i haven't had any motorcycle boots in some time. i'll provide more info about all of these once they come in.

a couple of days ago when i was looking for vans i went by soundwaves to see what they had in-store. nothing exciting. but i did pick up a couple of cds:

• the beat farmers - van go (curb)
• johnny cash - american vi: ain't no grave (american)

today i am going into work late, so this morning i called the shop edelbrock had gotten in touch with for me. they told me i could bring the car today for them to look at, so i drove up there this morning. they're near beltway 8 and 249, pretty far north-northwest. i got there, they came out, i turned on the car, all 3 of them said "yup, it's the lifters", i turned it off, i gave them my info, then i made the drive back home. he's going to call edelbrock and then get them an estimate, so he'll hopefully be calling me back pretty soon so i can drop the car off to get the work done.

i went to the doctor monday morning. i explained what was going on and that i figured i had a sinus infection, but was concerned my constant exhaustion and sleeping was more than just jet lag. i told him i thought it might be worse allergies to my cat after having been away from her for a couple of weeks, and that i didn't think so but i wanted to be sure i wasn't having a relapse of mono (as mono sucks). he looked me over and said he thought it was sinusitis and jet lag. he said jet lag can last a couple of weeks. so he gave me a shot of cortizone and an antibiotic shot, as well a z-pack antibiotic prescription. he also went ahead and had blood drawn to do a normal blood test as well as test for mono.

i went by h.e.b. and got the prescription filled, then -- as they were on my way back to my house -- i stopped by old navy and bought two new pair of blue jeans, and stopped by microcenter and bought a fairly cheap sata hard drive so i have one to put into my desktop at work. i've been waiting to get a second hand bigger hard drive from work, but one never has turned up, so i finally gave up and bought one myself.

i went into work after lunch. in the afternoon i had some conversations with a couple of my friends at work about my recent difficulties in dealing with life. i really don't feel like i've got much that i'm content with or happy about right now. i mean as far as big picture things i care about. i'm not particularly happy with my opportunities at work, i don't feel like i have any valid plans or goals for the future of my life, and while i enjoy having time alone i really hate being alone all the time -- i miss companionship and closeness and intimacy, and i would like to be moving towards marriage and a family if possible. these things/feelings i don't have and want tend to overwhelm me during the many hours i have to think about what i don't have. i currently don't have to worry about more basic things some people worry about like failing health, having working transportation, a job at all, having a roof over my head, food. i know i'm fortunate to not have to worry about these things, but it doesn't make me feel better about the higher things i want but don't have (some of which i don't feel like i have much control over). ash mentioned in a comment that he refers to my way of thinking as "dtl: depressed terry logic". i completely don't deny there is truth to that. i want to have faith, i want to have hope, i want to believe, but i find it very easy to be self-critical and self-defeating. i have been that way most of my life. i think i'm a good person, when i view myself by my own standards i'm more likely to like myself -- i just find it really easy to think negatively about myself when i'm considering how other people view me. or if not negative, then that they don't think about me at all...that i have no value or meaning to most people around me...i'm just some odd background noise. and that tends to overwhelm my generally okay perception of myself by my own standards. someone recently mentioned to me (i think it was ash) that germans come across as stoic, but they are really very sensitive. i feel that way a lot. (i'm only "german" by heritage, but i still feel some level of kinship to aspects of the culture/people.) i think most people think i'm stoic, or stuck up, or don't give a fsck about most things, but underneath i'm sensitive and emotional and scared of hurt and rejection. another friend, when talking to other people about me, used to trot out the old cliche: "still waters run the deepest". i wouldn't deny that.

anyway, after work i was still feeling pretty down, so i contacted jack and sue to see if one of them would be interested in having supper with me. sue was at work, but jack and the kids were "in town" so they met me at a chick-fil-a. jack and i talked while the kids played. talking doesn't really ever seem to resolve anything for me, but it at least gets the stuff out of my head for awhile, and i have to explain myself to someone else. that forces me to collect my thoughts and see if they seem reasonable or not, and it also allows me to get someone else's perspective.

i know some of my extremely heightened feelings of melancholy and depression could easily be related to my being sick, my sleep patterns being totally jacked, and post-vacation blues. (i don't take long vacations much...well, almost never.) but i know even beyond the current intensity levels, these are all still issues that i wrestle with normally.

i went to bed around 1am and my sinuses were feeling some better. unfortunately, i woke up at 5am this morning and couldn't get back to sleep. but at least my sinuses don't feel as messed up now as they had been.

shifting gears, while i was in taiwan i bid on and won an album on ebay. i got it in the mail a few days after i got back.

• limited edition (976/1000) - adult. (ersatz audio)

it's a 7" vinyl with a fold-out poster piece of photographic art done by nicola (one half of the band). catalog ez017, released 2002. at this point, other than the decampment series (3 very limited edition 7" vinyl pieces each with a full-color glossy photo by nicola, collectively telling a story, and not cheap), i'm missing about 4 or so of their releases, pretty much all of which are out of print and somewhat difficult to come across.

i also called edelbrock this last week on thursday or friday about the warranty work on my engine. they, of course, had dropped the ball again and not followed up with me at all during the two weeks i was out of the country, or the week before or after. they didn't really even mention anything about not following up, they just said they couldn't use the place they had originally planned on using. so they called around and found some other place, and i talked to the guy on friday, so i'm supposed to be driving the car up there (he's way up north/nw on 249) soon to have him look at it and get an estimate for edelbrock. hopefully all that will go well.

i mention the potts often in my blog, because they are close friends and i hang out with them quite a bit. it's not often i get to create links to something about them in the news. (okay, maybe ever, actually.)

jackson (the oldest son, 10 years old), a budding photographer -- following in the footsteps of his old man -- did an art piece for a stations of the cross installation for the xnihilo gallery (which is directly connected to the ecclesia church). they really got more than they bargained for, and the image has actually created some controversy. the houston chronicle ran an article about it today (monday): friction over young photography whiz's art, plus the gallery has set up a blog about it: station 7 by jackson potts (the blog version has a bigger image, plus jackson's explanation of why he chose what he did and what things represent)

i've discussed it with several friends and a number of them seemed unfavorable toward the content and intent, but i really think it has value as an artistic piece. plus it brings up a number of big questions about any number of things, which is really one aspect of what "good" art can/should do. instead of rewriting things, i'll just repost my comment i left on the article on the chronicle website (which i doubt will win me many new friends, since as is my wont i tend to piss off everyone at some point while meandering longwindedly through all of the points i want to make...but i'm used to that, so oh well):

----------< my chron.com comment >----------

phliKtid wrote:

(disclaimers first: i am a close friend of the potts family, and have been good friends since before jackson was born. that said, i do not unilaterally support people just because they are my friends. believe me, my friends will vouch for that.)

outside of whether this is an appropriate piece for the specific church and their purpose and desires (disclaimer: i have no love loss for ecclesia, but it's their bag), i want to talk about this as an art piece depicting a station of the cross in and of itself (which is what many people here seem to be commenting on, not its value specifically to the church's context.)

the fact is, it makes a lot of sense as a modernization of the most basic theme of that station of the cross: an authority figure beating an innocent as a crowd passively watches. the process of logic is completely there. stripped of that context, as some people here seem to be doing (perhaps they have no clue what the stations of the cross are, or what that means for the purpose of the art pieces), it's a cop beating a child. they don't see the art, or the metaphors, or the symbolism -- they see their own issues and fears and prejudices in the piece, and they knee-jerk react before they have time to process it in context it was created.

of course, isn't that sort of one of the purposes of art? to confront and provoke thought? (although i do believe confrontational/offensive art without a good purpose is not good art. and i don't think all art is all-ages appropriate.) otherwise it's just thomas kincaid paintings and precious moments figures -- cute pablum fluff saying nothing but "how cute/pretty/precious". to me that doesn't seem exactly accurate for pieces that are supposed to blatantly and specifically represent the story of the beating and crucifixion of christ.

perhaps for those people taking affront, jackson could take a picture of a naked, beaten, adult jewish man with a crown of thorns smiling, holding hands, and dancing with an easter bunny in a roman military uniform. that way they could have the station aspect *and* the happiness that is the true point of lent and easter. plus they could keep the event at a detached cultural reference point instead of having to confront it in a context that their minds can immediately relate to. (seriously...have these people seen some of the traditional stations of the crosses pieces)?

yeah, i'm kidding, i know they'd be pissed about that too. but it sort of makes a counterpoint to their reaction to this piece. how should one go about creating a modern interpretation of the stations of the cross? creating post-modern abstract "meditative" pieces is neato and all, but the stations of the cross sort of have a cultural and historical weight to them that really should be considered to, it seems to me.

to be honest though, the picture is somewhat inaccurately modernized. a roman guard would have been more of a military figure than a cop. and the romans were an outsider occupying the middle east. so, really, the figure doing the beating should have been in a u.s. military outfit -- and the innocent christ figure should have been jewish / middle eastern. yes, that would have gone over *much* better. :)

better to just take a pic of black shadows and some red paint splatter and maybe a piece of some gold roman-ish looking helmet, tack on some lacquered text...maybe bible passages, or burned/manipulated pics of the traditional station of the cross imagery to the point they can't really be made out, throw in some grape leaves and/or vines (for the symbolism), and the topper...a barely visible shadowy face of a haggard, bearded, homeless-looking man who looks sad which you can only see if you really look. oh, and a dove feather. perfecto! now let's all meditate on christ being beaten by a military authority while a crowd watched. can't you almost imagine the scene? (heh.)

my sleep monday lasted from around 5pm until 7am tuesday (14 hours). i wouldn't say it was quality sleep. i got up and took a shower, checked my email and such, then decided i'd lay down again. so around 10am i started sleeping again.

i got up around 5pm and met the potts at an ihop at washington and i-10. this was the first time i'd driven a vehicle in two weeks. it felt a bit odd. (i took my pickup.) the potts were going because ihop was giving away a free short stack of pancakes to anyone that day. the martin-webbers were there too (i'd met the daughters at the potts before, but never the parents), as was eric hartley. later, tiffany showed up (who used to work for jack, and i hadn't seen in some time), and then later her fiancee showed up (whom i'd never met). all in all, there were about 8 adults at the table and as many kids (from just two families). i was the only one who got something to eat outside of the requisite short stack. my bill was as much as the rest of the table's. and i left double my bill to help with a good tip. while we were there, it snowed outside for about 30 seconds. never saw it again.

jack came back with me in my pickup to my house. i picked up my laptop and did a final sync of my phone and camera to the laptop, then we went over to the potts house. i hung out there until around midnight or 1am, then came home. i got to bed around 2am.

wednesday i got up and went to work. part of the reason i'd gotten depressed in taiwan the second week was because i'd read an email from work detailing the various promotions and new job responsibilities. several times over the last couple of years i've tried to break into some new areas that seem interesting to me, but it's never really happened. i've watched a lot of people go around me over the years. sometimes it doesn't bother me, but for some time now i've felt like my position is becoming more and more marginalized. i knew about some of the goings on before i got the email, but not all of them. so that was upsetting. enough that i felt like just emailing them to tell them i was quitting when i got back to the u.s. but very rarely do i ever behave rashly, so i gave myself time to think about it and talk to people. anyway, i got to work and talked to a manager who is a friend and he didn't seem to think things were like i saw them. i took his advice under consideration, but i didn't buy it. i left work, then went and did the radio show. it was nice to see the guys and do the show again. i came home and went to bed. i had felt tired in the day, but i felt like things were normalizing as far as sleepiness and sleep pattern.

thursday at work there was a wrinkle thrown into the promotions/opportunities situation. our main aix guy, who had just gotten promoted from senior to lead, gave his two weeks' notice. this left a huge hole in the aix world, and based on other moves that had just occurred i wondered if they would ask me about trying to get into that area. and they did. aix is big business, in demand, and usually good money. the problem is i don't really care to do it. they trained all us unix guys in aix (a flavor of unix) a year or two ago, and i saw enough to feel i wasn't too interested. i intentionally avoided getting involved in most aix-based projects. i prefer the feel and culture of linux and the bsds, or even mac os, to the aix mentality/culture. and if i take this, i'll have to throw myself in head first. i was ready to immerse myself in exchange, ad, ocs, ms pki. i even stated interest at work a couple of times. but nothing ever came of it. now, instead, i've got this opportunity i'm not excited about. plus, i feel like if i don't take it, i'll be viewed as not stepping up and taking charge and grabbing opportunity and i'll be even further marginalized at work. it all kind of sucks.

before i left work, chris came by to let me know they were going to be cooking out and hanging out that evening at his complex for his birthday. i planned to go, but when i got home i sat down at my computer to check mail and such and i fell asleep. at some point i groggily moved to my bed. around 8:30pm jack called and i woke up enough to have a half-coherent conversation with him. after that it was fitful sleep until about 4am, when i woke up and wasn't as tired. i got up around 7am and shaved and took a shower. then around 8:30am i headed to work.

friday after work i took a nap for a few hours, then sue came by and we went to coffee groundz. they closed down at midnight, so we left. i got to bed around 1am. i was awake for awhile on and off around noon and early afternoon, but then i was asleep again and stayed that way until around 10am today. i basically lost saturday. so i'm beginning to think it's not just jet lag. my sinuses have been messed up, so i probably have a sinus infection. i'm wondering if i'm having allergy problems after coming back, perhaps from my cat. she's been desperate for attention since i got back and every time i'm in bed she sleeps close to my head. or maybe i've relapsed my mono from being too run-down and tired for too long. i don't know. i just know i feel a serious lack of energy all the time.

also, during my extended sleep saturday and saturday night and sunday morning i had a series of bad dreams, one of them continuing through at least two points where i woke up for awhile. not scary dreams necessarily, just sad, depressing, and/or frightening. one involved a divorced friend and their kids, the multi-part one involved me and julia (the hrc). i don't really need my mind creating new scenarios to make me angry, freaked out, upset, and sad -- i've had plenty of those in real life over that stuff already, thanks. i'd kind of mostly dealt with the emotional fallout from the hrc (although i still miss her fairly often), but now all that stuff i had mostly resolved and/or put away has spilled out and is active in my head again.

man, some sleep would feel good right now. *sigh*

"all i ever wanted was a good job,
and some busfare,
and a rocket,
and a bomb"
--mike knott "rocket and a bomb"