Punched in Face: Depression-Fist

Hello dear one(s). Again, we find myself at the edge of a junction and an intersection where I am drinking full pint glasses of Depression, letting it course through my body's arteries and veins and then once it has been processed and excreted I drink yet another pint glass down, straight no chaser. Why does the Depression-Fist hold such sway over me and have such powerful punches? Let's explore it in the following way: I am an artist. With a mother-effing day job. These two things should not exist in the same sentence, much less two sentences back to back, and yet there it is. There you have it. How can the world have somehow not gotten the summons that I-am-creating-art-down-here-so-I-get-a-free-pass!?!? This un-realization sometimes brings me to the brink of anger which mutates and gets transformed into Depression. As if that weren't bad enough (it is Taffy, i hear you all screaming, it is!) then we must explore and penetrate the deeper indignities and daily machinations of said day-job, wherein I - your hero - finds himself engaged in meaningless banter about office reorganizations, the best hue of file folder, the range of tastes in a corporately-processed yogurt, something called Lady Gaga, and, most punitively, the best new show on tv featuring a gang of models who pretend to go on a reality cooking show and design shoes for an ox-merchant. Whatever!! I cannot be bothered by it, by any of it.

Hey Universe: Listen up!:
I am a mother-effing artist! With a mother-effing day job!!

Midweek (R)evolutions & Amazing Thoughts come a-Drippin' down!!

I often find myself asking what is the deal with very hip young people. Granted I - and society - counts myself among them certainly by age but also by elocution and diction and an X factor we'll call poise. But still, I find a wide chasm between their pursuits and mine, these great unwashed swaths of youth. Here are some cases in point: I have no interest in hearing DJ Slapdaddy spin discs at a new fusion thai restaurant that serves drinks they've invented called 'honeysuckle teats'. I have no interest in going to an "art" show where a man in a dirty t-shirt and glasses and a chain on his wallet plays ukelele along with grim medical photos looping on a slide projector. I have no interest in going to a reading at a local independent bookstore featuring a 'writer' reading out loud a 'memoir' about how hard it was to grow up wealthy and summering on the cape when people were starving in Mongolia and so they began some annoying non-profit company that aspired to 'help' people to offset their white guild. Enough with all this hipness!!!

But, all that said, and if i'm being honest the thing that gets my goat the most is very hip young people riding bicycles and not wearing helmets at the same time as they're text messaging and listening to ipods with giant bose headphones listening to the latest bit of Grizzly Bear droppings. Why do you do that? It's so stupid!!! You could die. You really could!

Tuesday: Hot Wind Blastin'!

Man, when you walk outside you can feel it: an electrical blast of hot wind, hitting you smack in the face, like the slap of a walrus on his ample belly or the belch of a lion after he's been masticating an antelope steak with a side of baby giraffe. This is what happens when the indian summer arrives. In short, I have been consumed on this day by hot wind, a-rumblin' and a-tumblin' out of my sides. (note: if you can't tell, there is a song in progress and I have just beta-tested the lyrics on you! ha!) ha!

Things are slowly resuming the contours of their previous shapes as far as my life gets concerned. I was at the library yesterday (as I am right now!) using their computer and going on craigslist (which was slightly complicated since they block it at the library, along with some of my favorite sites) and I found a nice couple who was giving their couch away. I went and looked at it and they were up front with me and said that their dog had vomited all over the cushions the previous day and some of the vomit had seeped and soaked down into the seams but that they had cleaned it all up as best they could and now they wanted to pay it forward and give the couch away for free. Sold!! They drove it over and helped me get it inside. I offered them some beers and/or a microwave taco but they claimed to have appointment at the urologist so they couldn't stay. It was a little musty and dirty but once I through a blanket over the couch it became the new home of my head at night: where I sleep!

And those hot winds kept a-blowin'!!!!!

Thursday: Soarin' On an Eagle-Drawn Chariot!

sweet-hot and buttery biscuits, this here Thursday finds me - your humblest of humble announcers - announcing the very sturdy and strong fact that is that I am beginning to feel better. After my inter-dealings with "Dr." Albert Tubman left me swindled, bamboozled and emotionally flapping in the wind, operating - as Tubman might say - "like a little baby pansy, trembling with fear". There is no denying these things. It hurt and it stung and left me bereft of my money, my posessions, my dignity, and - most important of all - my honor.

Now, the hazy fog and detritus of my past is lifting, slowly but surely and in a steady fashion. Aided and encumbered by a kind soul at work whom let me take two advance paychecks out (at a mere 15% for his trouble) I was able to avoid eviction to the sidewalk at the Regency Tower. Granted, I don't have any furniture or anything (to be resolved soon!) but I have a toilet and running water - or rather I do now, after I had to pay through the nose to get the water re-turned on after I missed a payment (dear City Water, I was in jail! Hello!). Point being, if a man has a place to lay his head, whether it's on a pillow or on an old brown dessicated carpet w/ cracker crumbs in it, he has a home. This is a fact.

The most important piece of the puzzle as far as my artistic-ness goes for those of you who miss dearly my songs and songcraft, is this: Where is the guitar of Taffy "Sunburst" McKittrick? I'm certain it's been pawned and fenced and traded like so much rotten cornmeal throughout the seedy underbelly of this town. All by way of saying: its gone and that's fine but if i'm gonna rock this party like I'm Taffy-Old-School, I need a new guitar. When I have appropriated or found or stolen one, you better believe that my songcraft will be all over the internet again, like so many powerful viruses. This is how I give back. This is how I pay it forward.

peace
Taffy

Wednesday: Birth of a MadMan's Rantings

Well Well Well, and then Well how do you do? That is the question du jour (which means 'of the day" like say a soup or an entree at a fine restaurant). How do you do? Meaning me. How do I - Taffy Sunburst McKittrick - find myself at this particular juncture wherein it is now September and the whole of the August teat dried up and shrunk into the rearview mirror. Where does the time go? (note: yes that is another question, but it is not the question. The question is "How do you do?"). You - a member of my storied and voluminous blog-reading audience have probably given up on ol' Taffy, right? You've thought that I just slunk off somewhere under a tree and maybe part of you even gave up on me. That is fine. Let me announce to you that I have been places in the past few weeks and I have grown in an accelerated manner, like an infant or a baby or - at my most extreme - like an infant baby.

Ah, I'm stalling. Let's get to it:

It goes without saying that Dr. Albert Tubman was a fraud and a much better swindler and bamboozler than life coach. Oh, he indeed taught me some life lessons: don't trust people, don't let people into your heart, and - above all - don't take out a line of credit in your name and sign over the control of said line of credit to a bald, seemingly well-intentioned aspirant orthodontist who promised to help you become a better artist. I won't get into all the sticky details but lets just pretend that I'm saying that I spent several days in the county lockup and upon my release came home to find all my furniture had been sold on craigslist. Even my crockpot.

In short, these are dark and furious times. And I am, by extension, a dark and furious man-beast, howling in the blackness, my gnarled claws to my scarred visage, wailing up at the sky in a guttural and booming roar: why? Why? why?! Mothereffer Why why Why!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?