Thursday, December 31, 2009

Announcement: Happy New Year!!!

My peeps!! Aloha and Greetings to you all. May I tell you that you are beautiful in several different ways? There is a certain shimmering glory in the item I'm about to say to you so you'll need to prepare yourself: ready? Then here it is: This is the end of a remarkable year, filled with creative leaps and bounds for me - much like the gazelle in the forest, nibbling leaves and detritus one moment, darting through so much brush the next - but also, you have to admit the lows. Yes, there were some lows for me. But the deal is I am saying so long to the lows and erasing and putting highs in their places, if you follow that.

As you're well aware I battle forms of depression, mostly in the form of being depressed because my songs and art are not yet celebrated on the globular level. This is something every artist - from Picasso to Dan Fogelberg and every guitar strumming mothereffer inbetween - must contend with. It will come in time I know this. Let the coming year bring me world-wide celebration and introduce my songs to hundreds of people who previously did not know of it!!

The second depressing thing that happened this year was me putting my trust in "Dr." Albert Tubman. Because of this I lost all my posessions and now have a County rap sheet. Thanks jerkwad! (note: sarcastic). Let the coming year erase the memory of this snake-oil merchant in the guise of an aspiring orthodontist!! Begone!!

The third and final dark and morose depressing thing is that I am still alone in this crazy mixed up world. I know there are girls and women - either really - out there that will find me a charming little fancypants and be eager to warm themselves in the glow of my presence and art but, and this is a big but, I have yet to meet them. Let the coming year have women throwing themselves at me!! All forms and varieties of love will be attracted to me!!!

happy new year to one and all, but especially to me!!!

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Scrambled Eczema!

Hello peeps, those of the facebookery and/or blog-reading stripe, you are now encountering your number one fan: Taffy McKittrick! Can I inform you that the post-holiday ennui and utter despair I referred to in my last blog post has continued and has begun to manifest itself on my skin: that's correct, my eczema is flaring!

To be sure, this unsightly and uncomforting disease gets little play in the press. People would rather blather on about saving starving people or using my tax money to give homes to abused mountain goats but let me be clear when I say this: eczema is no laughing matter. It is one of the most serious and deadly (at least socially) of the dermatological disorders currently facing this nation. How does the afflicted person carry on with his day? How does he bathe, clean and loofah himself without rubbing his arms and legs raw? How can he prepare hot delicious meals without falling prey to rabid scratching? Some of these answers are not available, and some won't be available until there are patents pending but lets be clear: there are lotions, salves and unguents available over-the-counter. When you apply said lotions on your body, you must exercise caution lest you begin to scratch (take my words for it) and your arm quickly resembles a red raw bleeding hamburger meat patty resting gently upon a lightly toasted hairy bun.

We need to address dating for a moment. As you're well-versed on my lifestyle choices and overall love life you know that I currently am not employing a lover, lady lover, paramour or girlfriend. Don't despair and presume that this condition is promoted by eczema for it is not. However I cannot deny the internal throb of shyness that causes me to stare at women - beautiful and plain alike - on the bus or at the mall and not be able to actually approach them. I can't do it! I just stare and stare until they either stare back or get creeped out and move on. It's awkard as hell! Plus, my arms - my best feature I was told once - are generally covered up to hide the unsightly nature of my disease.

Look, this isn't pleasant, any of it. But I want to be honest with you. I want - no scratch that - I need you to 'get' me. If I am indeed your Taffy-man you will take me warts and all. Note: merely an expression, I contain no warts.

God Bless You!!

Monday, December 28, 2009

Post Xmas: Malaise & Degradation!

Dear reader, does today find you in a sort of moribund and morose post-holiday malaise, wherein you question the unnecessary ordering of holidays such as they are to provide you with a blast of shining goodness and then allowing you to slide back into the morass of everyday life? Oh dear, it makes me sigh so. Down come the shiny baubles and trinkets and doo-dads reminding you of a fat man slithering down your chimney and the shiny twinkle of light-wrapped trees.

I know you have burning questions as regarding my last blog post so lets get to it: no, I did not ever find out what happened with regard to that van of women. I do not know who kissed me. It has kind of made me sad but there's not much say about it. I ran into Sprinkles on the apartment walkway the other day and he seemed curious, unable to look me in the eye, muttering something about 'under the advise of my probation officer I'm off to a meeting'. I looked at him and said "Oh, well what about that van of women?" and I swear his eyes began to tear up - most likely due to the memory of what we experienced that night, which he can recall and I sadly cannot. He stammered for a second and then said, as if it were well-rehearsed "I'm sorry. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't think we can be friends" and then he got in his little Chevette and motored away. Very curious indeed. It's not particularly painful I suppose, I happen to be cut from a slightly anti-social cloth as it happens, this is the purview of the true artist, but still having a neighbor friend was a possible prospect that I considered for the coming year. Ah well, gone, like a puff of smoke.

On the actual holiday I woke up and played guitar, ate some cereal, wandered absently around the apartment with my bathrobe open. I live alone so I have that luxury. I decided that maybe the best thing to do would be to clear my head and enjoy the fresh air so I went to the mall. The cineplex was packed - everyone was all a-twitter about some movie that's the sequel to Titanic (? is that right?) but I could have cared less: I was going to see sweet Sarah Jessica Parker in "Did You Hear About The Morgans?" which did not disappoint in any degree. It was light, funny and charming which had the effect of drinking two cosmopolitans in quick sucession which is funny because that's my drink of choice after watching so much Sex in the City lately which naturally stars SJP. Perhaps you're judging me, thinking "hmm, Taffy that's not the most manly television option is it?" and I'd like to tell you that my response is: "Sir, I am an artist. I go where the heart takes me not where you're demographic literature and pinwheels and concentric graphs do". After the movie was over I wiped my tears with my popcorn napkin and sat up: the theater was empty. Noting my tears and sobbing body, an employee said: "Are you okay?". I took a deep breath and said: "I'm fine. I've just watched an amazing piece of cinema. That's all". The employee didn't quite know how to handle me so he merely said
"You're gonna have to go".
I got up and went back out to the ticket counter.
I cleared my throat and knocked on the glass. I said with a glint in my eye and Christmas spirit rushing up my body:
"One for "Did You Hear About The Morgans?" Please".
The ticket employee shot me a look, she could tell that I was in the throes of cinematic rapture, humming and vibrating with a sort of etheral charm.
She said "Didn't you just see that?"
I looked her in the eye and said "Yes m'lady. I most certainly mother-effing did"

Monday, December 21, 2009

Frenzy of Mania: A Madcap Look at One Man's Xmas Journey

Dear ones, pull up a stool and gather ye round as your much-adored and self-adulating blog host and erstwhile writer/narrator spins you a yarn packed with the noughaty goodness of holiday cheer! That's correct: today finds me in a rare good mood. This is likely due to a slight down-tick in the work that's required of me at the day job. No one is really here today except the white-hot fire of middle managment and their inferiors, of which I am one. Where to begin but to tell you about the weekend I found myself crawling into on Saturday morning?

I awoke feeling awash in beer and too much good tiding, having spent the previous evening at the apartment two doors down, where I had been invited to take part in a holiday soiree/fiesta of the sort where people you don't really know but you feel like you do by virtue of living in the same box (read: apartment building) invite you places. This time it was a recent addition to our building, a gentleman who goes by the sobriquet Sprinkles. (apparently no last name). I ran into him at the laundromat across the street the other day and he said for me to come to the party friday night at his house. I had planned to stay in that night and maybe get some songwriting done - it's been a time since my songs have graced your ears - but it was not to be because I accepted Sprinkles's invitation.

I knocked on his door. He opened the door with a strange and curious grin that announced he had already been drinking and was wearing a T-shirt that said "Unwrap your present" with an arrow pointing down toward his beltline. "Hiya Taff" he said.
"Come on in". It didn't appear that anyone else had arrived yet but I entered anyway and sat on the couch. "Where is everybody" I inquired. Sprinkles cracked open a couple beers and said "There's a van full of women on the way" and then gave a laugh like he couldn't believe his good fortune at having a van packed with women en route. We were both pretty excited so I replied "Cool, can't wait".

As Sprinkles sat down, throwing his arm around my shoulder and putting his legs on the coffee table, I looked around the room. There were tiny litle sparkling lights twinkling everywhere, in and on the curtain rods, over the refrigerator and so on. I said "It looks like a little faerie lives here". Sprinkles coughed and then said something that sounded like "That's not far off" but I am uncertain of the meaning.

I was about done with my first beer and can I inform you that I don't recall much beyond that? You are correct: I passed out. While I am not proud of this occurrence, I would be lying if I didn't also mention that something amazing must have happened with one of the women in that van. I know this because - though I woke in my own bed, wearing the clothes I left the apartment in - I found several lipsticky smooches all over my lips and cheeks. Must have been a hell of party!!!! God I wish I could grope my way to a memory of it. A van full of women coming to party with you is the kind of thing that only happens in dreams but listen world - it happened to me. The lipstick kisses prove it. Take that haters!!!!!!!!! All of you who claimed I was destined to be alone forever, guess what: Taffy McKittrick is about to have some love entering his world and body!!!!

Now, I just need to find out which woman/s it was that involved themselves with kissing me!

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Yuletide Maelstrom: The Storm Thickens!

Friends, how best to address something as inimical and magesterial as a holiday buffet in the workplace? Look yonder, it's a serving bowl filled with lima beans and bacon! Godspeed, it's 4 varieties of fruitcakes and nut-logs! Glance hither, it's a co-worker wearing holiday tree-trimming balls as earrings! Take your eyes south, it's a putrid concoction of marshmellow and beef dribbling red and green food coloring dyes! What festivity! What merriment! What absolute bullshit!!

Yes, my last sentence threw you for a loop because let's get real: I lulled you into a sort of placid objectivity that you didn't see coming. You should know by now that I - your humble blog narrator - has no love for The Man (as represented by the agents and enforcers of all things day job) and that in fact he contrastingly has distate for The Man, particularly when agents of The Man - in this narrative represented by one Ronny Guttensmerch from tech support - sit at buffet tables gobbling down putrid piles of 'food' with a sort of abandon most easily associated with rabid animals mating in the dark forest. Ronny had rivers of gravy splatting onto his shirt because he couldn't seem to stop himself from singing along to "Jingle Bell Rock" as it played weakly over the PA system (note: here 'PA system' is misleading because it was in fact a boom box circa 1990 with a microphone hooked up to a speaker circa 1980), but getting most of the words wrong. I felt a slow gut burn in my belly but it was quickly supplanted when the song selection moved to "Holly Jolly Christmas" and the rapidly chundering food in Ronny's mouth caused it to sound like "Hoggy Joggy Christmas". I wanted to flip the table over and scream "good god Ronny, get a hold of yourself you putrescent animal!!" but I took ten deep breaths with my eyes closed and by then we had move on to "Silver Bells".

That sound you hear is my heavy heart, aching as it wishes for the end of the work day and the end of these holidays. Do you see why I lament? Do you see why the real world - with its foul holiday celebrants - tugs so at my heart and also my heartstrings? Put another way: you are glad you are not me.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Holiday Steamrollin': The Bells are a-Clangin'!!

Hello, my sweet and cuddly peeps! It's been too long since typed out my thoughts to you, hasn't it? I'll answer on your behalf: yes it has!

Today I want to address the unadressable: the holidays! What can be said about the arrival of the yuletide corridor, coming as it usally does with all the grace and dignity of a greased walrus slithering onto an ice-floe barking insistently to fornicate? Wherein we find a bevy of walrus cows trying to get way from him and go back to their meals of warmed carrots and sea-scallops. This is a question not easily answered.

I'll tell you what I can do without: the repetitive and squawking nature of commercials on the television blaring and bleating and rudely asking me to bow to the church of commerce and give my money away to buy diamonds and clothes from the gap. Let me clue you in to a little something jewelry industry. Move in closer and let me whisper my hot breath into your ear as I say this: I currently am without a lady lover or soulmate or woman but even if i become the person that obtains one of those 3 I want you to comprehend that I will not buy them jewels or diamonds. One, because they're expensive as all get-out and two, because I saw Blood Diamond w/ my main man leo dicaprio and as he famously retorted in that piece of cinema "In America, it's bling bling. But out here it's bling bang." Not only is that an incredulous and amazingly jaw-dropping piece of dialogue it happens to be tremendous and, now, famous. Take that jewelry industry!

In a related note, I drew Ed Poon for Secret Santa in the office. I'm considering giving him a box full of my morning excretions but I'm convinced that HR will have a fit about it. Let me put it this way: that's what he deserves.

New idea for holiday cocktail: The Basmati Maserati
2 parts beer, 1 part vodka and coke. throw 3 pieces of maserati rice in the bottom.
Drink up and enjoy!!

Monday, December 7, 2009

The Marinade of Depression: A Curtain Rains Down

Dear Taffy fans, you've probably suspected as much because I have been slightly silent in the moments that suceeded and came after my last blog post. When there is a silence you might wonder Is everything okay with Taffy? or you might wonder I wonder what Taffy's up to? or you might not wonder about a thing at all except the beer in your hand and the woman on your mind and I want to be up front with you that any and all of those selections are alright in my book. But, here it, without further ado and a drumroll to announce it: I am soaking in the salty brine that is my depression-marinade.

Part of this began the other night watching more Sex and the City. (Is it me or is Carrie sometimes acting like a diva? Why won't she just cling to Aiden like the handy fixit man he is who can redo her floors without blinking? note: rhetorical) While watching all these ladies trot around for cocktails and footgear I found an immense cavern opening inside of me that no amount of alcohol or Turkey poppers could fill: I realized I am for the most part a friendless man. This made me so sad I wanted to tell someone but when I realized there was nobody at all to inform of this it reinforced the original point I presented to you.

Now what? I am deep inside a slimy hole, grasping at the muck and murk just trying to pull myself up and out and back up out of the marinade. Where do you turn when you have no one to turn on? With all this crashing against my head I made the grave error of taking the #16 bus down to Safeway to reinforce my foodstuffs and drinkstuffs and saw a street person sitting there alone at the back. My first thought (after 'what is that smell?') was Here is a potential friend for life so I went counter to logic and instinct and sat next to him.

I took a chance.

I went for it.

I said "Evening, I'm Taffy".

A moment went by. Then another.

The man looked at me up and down as if he was sizing me up
or seeing who would win in a wrestling competition and
then with no warning, shot up
and walked to the front of the bus.
I heard him lean down the bus driver and say "Freak at the back"
and then exit.
Oh woe! The Marinade is a bubblin'!!!!

World, notice me!

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Tuesday: Birthin' Ideas! & Rockin' tha Mic!

Yo yo yo! My peoples! My hot and buttery blog-reading aficianados! Those masses whom love my words and songs: how are you! I had a great thanksgiving holiday because they gave me Thursday off at work and when I came in on Friday the only people there were those whom had to come in. As Priscilla Pulch put it (we call her 'Scilly') "only the dipshits, halfwits and underlings have to come to work the day after Thanksgiving" and I couldn't agree more.

(note: sidebar, she uses the nomenclature 'Turkey Day" instead of Thanksgiving and I really hate that so I changed what she said to Thanksgiving. Why do grown people call it Turkey Day out in public when they talk to other grown people? Like they're little infants or something! I hate baby talk so maybe I'm the problem??? Like when people say 'potty' instead of 'toilet'. That drives me bonkers. Donna, two cubes over, squeezed out an infant 5 months ago and now feels compelled every time she heads to the restroom to say out loud "I gotta run to the potty" instead of what she used to say which was: "I gotta run to the toilet". Hey, guess what Donna? How about you eat at Turkey Day and then go potty while the rest of us adults will be on the sofa watching VH1. Cool, you feel me? end of note and sidebar)

the great thing was though that I had absolutely no demands or plans on Thanksgiving. I got some turkey burritos and some mashed potatoes (just add water!)
and sat my thankful ass down to watch the 1st 3 seasons of Sex and the City in what I'd call "a Sex and the City marathon"! It was joyous!! Watching all those girls drink fancy drinks gave me a couple ideas:
1) I should be making up my own drinks and drink ideas and try to sell them to local bars and restaurants.
2) when in doubt refer to 1)

point being: I am going to make up my own drinks and drink ideas and try to sell them to local bars and restaurants. People really seem to get involved behind a great drink, don't they? So, drumroll, here are my ideas for two well-named delicious and easy to fall-in-love-with drinks (ie alcohol) that many local bars and watering holes will soon (fingers crossed) soon be serving.

I am soo excited about these!!!!! Here they are:

1) The Supersonic Gin & Tonic
this is like your standard G&T except it has a lime wedge on the side of the glass! so simple

2) The Burrita Margarita
b/c i love burritos so effing much, I thought: why not combine it with alcohol? This is a margarita that has some black beans mixed in w/ the ice and a dollop of sour cream on top. so effing delicious!!!!

What do you guys think? Please let me know!!!
I love you guys