I Am Taffy McKittrick, Hello!

Cats and Dogs are Still Fighting!

2011-06-29T10:39:00.000-07:00

yo mother-effers! You wonder where Taffy got to but Taffy has been right here all along ya'll!

cats and dogs are still fighting by Taffy McKittrick

Earth Day!: The Cusp of Greenery

2010-04-22T12:25:00.000-07:00

Ladies and Gentlefolk, my goodness gracious I apologize for taking so long to update my bloggery! Unacceptability! You should be aware that I was on unpaid administrative leave at my (putrid, hellhole) day job for reasons of a mental variety that I shall not go into further, except to say that one man's firm and reasoned response to office drudgery is (apparently) another man's 'ear-piercing series of girlish shrieks that disrupt daily business". Can I get a 'whatever!'? The time off gave me ample opportunity to reflect on my art and art-making and further how I can conceive, promote and make money from my art. Mostly this entailed me laying on the futon in my bathrobe and watching a series of putrid television shows while gobbling microwave burritos with the reckless abandon of a feral tree-sprite, which is to say I didn't actually write any songs but my mind is always churning. You know this.

In any case, I start back on Monday and it'll be a good thing. I can't wait to see what my right-wing nutcase teabag lunatic cube mates think about stupid Arizona voting to bodyslam any and all human beings of Mexican extraction as well as the AZ legislature voting to demand a birth certificate from people who run for president. I've said it before and I'll say it again: most people are f*cking idiots!!!

Happy EarthDay my lovely angels! Go buy a garden and eat sustainable cheeses
this week!!

random thoughts

2010-04-01T15:28:00.000-07:00

I for one was pretty excited about health-care passage last week. You may recall a little bit of germaine info: Taffy McKittrick is a mothereffing artist! And artists need healthcare! In all seriousness it means that I can one day soon - or at least by 2014 - quit this stinking, festering blowhole of a day job, wherein I continue to suffer the indignities that come tied with filing, re-ordering, stocking supplies and the malaise disproportionate to my general well-being and thought streams. In short, I don't like my day job. You read this blog alot so you know this. But I like it even less after healthcare passed and so now I am forced in the break room to listen to Ed McGurkle and Timmy Sparks bleat about teabagging and socialism and how this country is going down the tubes. btw Ed and Timmy are real dumb

new song: Awful Falafel

2010-03-19T12:49:00.001-07:00

Oscar Fever: Boils and Nausea!

2010-03-09T10:29:00.000-08:00

dearest Readers,

if you're like me you ingested that foul concoction on Sunday evening known as America's Elegance Pageant, aka Glory Hole Time, aka The Oscars. This is a time when the famous and attractive and famously attractive don elegant flowing robes and celebrate cinema and themselves and their excellent plastic surgeries with a long booming ecstatic celebration party.

Now I have no beef with the red-carpet coverage (except that it could/should be an hour or three longer) and no beef with the red-carpet hostess duties served nimbly and ably by one Kathy Ireland who employed grace as she held her body at curious angles all evening long and shouted enthusastically at her interviewees, and I have no beef with the charm and elegant double-team of Mssrs Martin and Baldwin as they wove a sonic tapestry of extremely funny jokes and pierced the parts of my heart that had previously lain un-penetrated.

No, none of these things bothered me.

So, I imagine you're asking, what then Taffy, is your beef? Reader, the answer is coming.

Here it is:

There were zero, count them, zero (ie donut hole, ie 'the big abyss', ie nothing, ie not one) award nominations for what you'll agree with me is probably the year's best film, if not the decade's , an soul-shattering and heart-blistering, sweet and tender little gem entitled "Did You Hear About The Morgans?" whose title could be directed at Academy voters but w/ a slight addenda to make it more of a probing inquiry so it goes something like this "Hey, you nearsighted and selfish Academy voter: Did You Effing Hear About "Did You Hear About The Morgans!" Or were you too busy congratulating yourself on tiny movies nobody cares about!!!" I mean really: Precious? (an inner-city story about inner-city problems like drugs and rape? Yawn!) Up? (an old person dies and goes ballooning? Pass)! The Hurt Locker? (wartime and bombs? kind of a bummer isn't it?! ie, who cares!)?! Up in the Air? (George Clooney has sex in airplanes with minors?!) Is this the best Hollywood could do?

If you're like me you were slightly mollified by the inclusion of Transformers 2: Rise of the Machinist in the sound editing effects category (runner-up for most amazing movie of the year!)

But no plug of any breadth or girth can fill the gaping orifice that is left behind by the not-recognition of SJP as Best Actress (who btw can act effing circles around Sandy Bullcock!) and DYHATM as Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Score, Best Everthing, Best Tonic For What Ails Ye! You blew it Academy voters! You effing blew it!!

Heartbroken Until The Clowns Came!

2010-03-02T12:04:00.000-08:00

Sweet reader, the Olympics are gone! The soaring has ended and my gilded hovercraft has crash-landed back on planet earth, sadly into a thicket of swampy, mossy evergreens, from wherein very little light can shine onto me. It was so bad that I had to phone in sick to work yesterday (note: if you are from HR this is a personal blog and you may not employ it for work related persecution!) and lay upon the futon in my own filth and watch Oprah. I didn't even have the strength to get out of my undergarments, bathe and/or play guitar. Eventually evening settled around me like a heavy blanket made of deep-sea fish. Law & Order came on and featured a man killing people with a hatchet but the man was odd because he listened to a genre of music called 'horror-core' wherein clowns rap about dark things. It really got me thinking: I could do a clown rap. Yes I could. I could rap about all things clown-like and clown-related in a manner that was respectful to all species and genders! I started to get excited! I pushed up off the futon and started writing ideas down with my purple sparkly-pen!! Whoohoooo

More to follow gentle readers. More to follow!!!

Health Care Bonanza: Mental & Otherwise!

2010-02-26T12:06:00.001-08:00

Beloved Readership,

you are no stranger to my recent burning infatuatory glee at the throbbing sensations provided by that carnival ride in Vancouver (ie, the Winter Olympics!) and you are aware that my attentions are there of late 24/7. But let me share with you the fact that yesterday there was something equally as invigorating: the bipartisan health care summit!! My cube-mate had it on stealthily so I listed to some of it as well and I learned many things, primarily among them that Republicans don't like the 2400 page Congressional proposal or President Obama's 11 page proposal (which can only mean they don't like to read!)! Also, according to that curiously orange-hued man from the House, John Boenher, we have the best health-care system in the world! He actually said that. Well, hold the press(es) sir because at this juncture I would like to jump in and contest with that fact Mr Bohener and I will do so by sharing a story with you:

Now, let's be clear, this did not happen to me but to a friend of mine. This friend was having pains in the backside area rearward, (ie, anus) and there was bleeding when he (or she) defecated. This is not a good thing and there was lots of straining involved. Not knowing what to do my friend went to the emergency room and waited in urgent care for hours (!) while other people who came after he (or she) did got to go in first!! Reached for comment, my friend says: I understand that a kid with a broken arm gets priority but do you not see the man out there pacing up and down and squirming in the plastic seats!!? He is in such discomfort that he can't sit and he's inadvertantly barking at small children "it hurts!, ooh, it hurts!". At long last, they let my friend in to an examination room and he (or she) was attended too by an unkind health-care worker who appeared to sneer at his concern (granted the friend was sobbing profusely at this point) as she said "It's just a hemorrohoid, jeez relax". She then sent him home with a pat on the back and a tube of cream that he had to apply to his parts (ie, anus) in a very undignified manner!

So, that's the tale. It is quite unfortunate! I would urge you to share this story with your Congresspeople and let them know that there are Americans with serious medical issues that demand attention, not disregard and laughter and tubes of ointment. Healthcare needs more than just slathering some medicated lotion on it and calling it a day. No friends, healthcare needs gentle massaging and nudging and probing. Republicans should know that! (note: I am an independent!).

Dream Fantasy: Twizzles & Bits!

2010-02-23T11:46:00.000-08:00

Dearies,

were you to let your gaze fall into the confines of that humid, dark box I call my head you would surely find an endless loop of bounding, leaping, triple-axled, sweaty-bodied mania. That's right: I am still in love with the Winter Olympics! (note: this despite the semi-constant hovering of that elfin creature they call Bob Costas who pops up at the most inopportune times saying things like "let's cut away from ice dancing and go back to Whistler for the men's ski jump flip-o-rama". hey guess what Costas? some of us don't want you to cut away from mother-effing ice dancing! some of us are just now falling in love with mother-effing ice dancing!) Which brings me to my point: I love mother-effing ice dancing!!!!

Yes, you probably thought that with the appearance in my dreams a few nights ago of the shimmering tree-sprite that is Johnny Weir that it was all sewed up, and that I had found my calling (or at least the luring trills of a potential BFF) and that the Winter Olympics had soared to the highest roost possible but my god, after watching a few minutes of ice dancing, my jaw fell into my lap, my skin broke into goose-pimples and I heard myself making involuntary little chirping sounds as a microwaved burrito lay untouched on the paper plate below me. Which is to say: I was transfixed, transformed, transgendered and transported! (note: not literally on the third one). It was a glorious, body-quaking event, one that I felt resonate to the core of my being with such a strength and potency that I have not felt since Christmas time when I saw a double-feature of "Did You Hear About the Morgans" and then a few minutes later "Did You Hear About the Morgans".

Here's what happens: 1)Boy and Girl enter ice rink in fantabulous costumes, some with feathers and boas and straps. 2) Boy and Girl ice dance!!!! and then, hours later 3) Taffy McKittrick lays awake, still quaking with delight.

This morning I am not quick to anger. This morning I am happy to be steeping in the heady brew of incompetence that my day-job supervisor fosters like so many fertile eggs. This morning I am a-soar as I listen to my cube-mates discuss the banalities of their lives. For you see gentle reader, this morning is not like other mornings. This morning I have ice dancing.

Me and Johnny Weir: Olympic-sized BFF!

2010-02-19T11:18:00.000-08:00

Friends,

the glorious shimmer of the white-hot winter Olympics is blazing in my heart!! Everywhere there are bodies hurtling through half-pipes, slaloming down bunny slopes, twirling in triple-axle fantasy-lands in amazing looking stretch pants! My body trembles and my heart explodes! Last night I dreamt that I was taking part in the festivities. I was rink-side, cheering my best mate Johnny Weir on. He was wearing a large doily with a pink ribbon tied across the waist, making him look much like a hyper-masculine french maid. He skated vigorously and was sweating profusely like a lean water buffalo and then he won the gold medal! Afterwards, he got on the podium and said "I could not have gotten this far without my main man, my shining beacon, my vibrant sunburst: Taffy McKittrick!" (!). Afterwards we both hugged and went out boozing and whoring on the streets of Vancouver!! We drank a lot of drinks and met a lot of nice people but none of them were good enough for us so we left them alone. At the end of the night Johnny patted me firmly on the shoulder and said, in his tender dulcet tones: "Whatta you say we skate awhile Taffy"? and so he and I put on matching outfits and went out onto the rink. And we spun. And spun. And spun. Until I was gooey with bliss, like so much spun-honey!! Oh, this life!!

Olympic-Mania!!

2010-02-16T11:59:00.000-08:00

how long has it been since your hefty eyes have lain upon my bloggery? My witchy words have tucked themselves out of view, between my proverbial legs, where the sun refuses to shine. There are multiple reasons and intersecting data-points to point the blame at certainly. I won't get into all of it but let's just say I needed a little time away from the constant contemplation of my own perceived greatness and also needed time away from the computer because I was googling inappropriate things at work (note: since when is it a crime to google the name of a hot receptionist just so you can learn more about her? bafflement!)...

When last I left you you'll recall that I had dreamt of the glorious she-yeti and then by sheer coincidences befriended her on facebook. things got weird from there. things were said and misinterpreted on both sides but I am happy to report that I have moved on from she-yeti and that she is a piece of dust in the wind to me now and the reason for this, as you can probably tell from my gurgling and excited blog title post: I have olympic-mania!!

As I sit here in my cubicle taking crap from people, listening to my supervisor order a soft-drink dispenser and reading information she's sent about her imminent stroke, I wish I were elsewhere: namely in front of the television, so I could lose my self in an endless ribbon of skating coverage, frosted with so much snow, like dust from fairies world-wide. Can I admit something to you: If I were not a musician and songwriter I would most certainly be a figure skater, a steely man who has charm and elegance and who's masculinity is never in question! Oh to be twirling on the ice, tossing maidens hither and thither into the sky as I bound and leap through the air with all the grace and force of a gazelle eager for a meal! The spinning! The twirling! The sensible but form-fitting pant-suits! Oh it's all too much. I am suddenly transported. My arm is quaking as I type this and I'm afraid that I can't wait to get home to collapse onto the futon. I'll man up and admit this: I sobbed last night watching the figure-skating pairs. If it wasn't for such a beautiful reason you'd probably think there was something wrong with me mentally!!

Further Entanglements with She-Yeti: Tickles

2010-01-26T12:18:00.000-08:00

Hello glorious buttery readership! here again we find ourselves at the outskirts of something ephemeral and quicksilvery, not unlike an herb glaze over a pot roast, and that is, no surprise: another of my blog posts! There are so many lovely things to begin to address but I don't know where to begin.

Let's begin here, with a sentence that will befoul and besmirch your sense of what's possible in this land: I am now friends with She-Yeti on facebook. That is mother-effing correct. I don't know how on earth she found me but she did. Now I will confess here to a slight internal adjument to my inner feelings, call them my micro-sensors, because the She-Yeti in reality (ie Facebook) is a different beast than in my fantasy (ie, dreams/fantasy).

Don't misinterpret me here, she is no less beautiful because she is most definitely still not like anything that I've seen. Ever. But her tone is very playful and aggressive, almost angry-agressive not quite the tender and gentle person (do I say person for a yeti?) that I mated with in my dreams. For a spell I considered that it might not even be her but one of her sisters, cousins, or friends (do all female yeti go by the handle She-Yeti? It can't be answered) but then I came to finally understand this: her public persona had to be coarser so that she could hide the very nature of what occured between us. When two people come together and don't want to announce it to the world they use trickery to pretend like they aren't madly in love. That is what she's doing.

Oh bliss!!! Can I tell you that I am soaring again? I am like the ostrich, flapping wings madly through puffy clouds, squawking and chirping at the fullest capacity of my wing-span, and if you held a translator chip up to my beak you would hear this: I am so mother-effing in love America! So in love am I!!!!

I Mate With Yeti

2010-01-22T10:42:00.000-08:00

you'll do well to remember that the dream I had about the she-yeti found me mating with the she-yeti. This is a sonic exploration (read: song) of that blissful co-mingling. I have breached my normal etiquette and have included the lyrics of the song so you can enjoy them alongside one another. so, enjoy them!

morning w/ the she-yeti
I hope she ain’t forgettin me
we mated by the fire however briefly

hairy fingered sweet caress
she-yeti’s one who I love best, the rest
aren’t worth conquest at all, just she-yeti

a roaring fire she snores awake
our eyes they meet and then they break, they take
my breath my aching heart, my she-yeti

we dine on squirrels and birds and such
and then ingest hugs and heartfelt touch, so much
is happening now, and then we’re mating.

when two are one, then one shall be
a furry yeti reverie, we
roar so loud I wake up in my lonely bed.

at the window in this world
of cement and no yeti-girls, I hurl
my cereal bowl against these dirty walls

where is she now, those ears those hands
those lips, those hips not in these lands, the plans
of she and I smolder with the end of my dreamtime mind

and I recall, I always will recall

morning w/ the she-yeti
I hope she ain’t forgettin me
we mated by the fire however briefly

What a Whisper Whistles: Love-Beats!

2010-01-15T12:11:00.000-08:00

In this fractured cosmos of time and space we here on the planet earth, like so many homo erectus creatures that came before, find the fragmentary and illusory nature of existing put on our doorstep. As you are aware I am an artist and the concerns of the artist lay mainly with issues of the heart, of love, and with the heart of love but how then can the artist address the necessity of living, which is to say, paying bills. Further, and this is my main point, I don't like paying bills. The necessity of bills is a further means of diminishment available to the establishment to put the screws to the little guy. Put another way, if I'm sitting in my apartment playing guitar in nothing but a soiled bathrobe, it's my proprietary right. If said bathrobe is wide open and a neighbor happens to look in the window as she passes, that an entirely different concern (but at bottom, it cannot be my fault but hers for letting her errant eye-scape wander curiously to the happenings of one Taffy McKittrick). Do you see what I'm saying here? Is it as clear as a sun-swept sky to you? The artist is allowed to do whatever he needs and wants, and this is my bigger point, paying bills interferes with artistic natures and undertakings. If I'm lost in a reverie of songcraft and bill collectors call constantly, then it disturbs my mind, which may have been exploding with a series of deep thoughts, set to music.
Ahh, this life!

I Dream of Yeti

2010-01-08T11:40:00.000-08:00

This morning I awoke to find my body shuddering and my throat squealing with little yaps of what I can only call delight. There is much hesitation in me admitting this out loud, much less in a public forum like the blogosphere (of which I am a noble participant) but here it is: I was dreaming of Yeti. I'll pause a moment to let it seep into your thought process. And then I'll say it again: I dreamt of Yeti. The beautiful hirsute creature that roams the tundras and forests, eating a mostly omnivorous menu of nuts, berries and small rodents, running and leaping off boulders, bathing in fresh mountain streams, occasionally growling at the sky and above all, proving elusive to all photographers except the ones with telephoto lenses.

Now, this is a little hard for me to say but I am going to man up and say it: in the dream I was a male Yeti and I was cuddling with a gorgeous she-Yeti in a cave. It was early morning so the sky was still blue-black. Birds whistled. We lay by a roaring fireplace and I listened to she-Yeti as she snored ferociously, shaking in her sleep, as she dreamt of god-knows-what. Suddenly her eyes opened and she drank me in as if to say "my love, there you are, my handsome Yeti". I will exclude the details of what occurred next for the sake of the faint of heart or the puritanical or the shy but the general gist of it is this: I mated with the she-Yeti. And it was glorious.

I woke up face down on the futon in my grimy apartment. Crumbs of an unspecified previous meal lay beside me. Tear rivulets were wet on my face. I did my daily regimen of 2-3 pushups and walked to the window, looking out at the world, this world of concrete and cement and failed promise. My heart was soaring and broken all at once. Where is she now, I thought. Is she waking up in the woods somewhere in Canada or upstate Michigan, somewhere above the treeline, in a cave? Is she cold and lonely and wondering where I am? I pictured her walking out into her world, eating her breakfast of pigeon or squirrel all alone, remembering the intimacy we shared, however briefly. Ah, here come the tears again reader. As I type this out. Here come the tears...

C'mon and Celebrate: The New Year!

2010-01-05T12:18:00.000-08:00

Dear Lovelies - how nice to find you again, all cozied up with a mug of mulled cider, reading my blog, like a kitten in the arm of a sleeping man! It's that time of year again, which is to say, Happy New Year! I trust that the close of 2009 was as spectacular and explosive for you as it was for yours truly (read: me). In the early hours of the evening I strummed my guitar and googled ex-lovers to see if they were lonely or now tethered to lesser men. Sad to report that none were available any longer. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not with those ex-lovers for a reason and the reason is that we were not "a good fit" (at least that's how they put it) but my heart despaired to find that my best hope at reconnection - Rhonda Gumm - has now apparently wed an orthodonist from Milwaukie, WI who specializes in "reconstructive and adaptive dentistry" and who has the unfortunate last name Spanker. Meaning Rhonda (while no longer attractive in the least) is now known as Rhonda Gumm-Spanker. Why should this depress me, while I am still young and vibrant? I'll answer you: It should not!

Hence, my young and vibrant unattached self wandered into the night, to drink down the last of 2009 with a bunch of friendly strangers in a bar near the edge of town. There was pool playing and bear hugs and raucous merriment! There was communal vomiting and unwarranted (but accidental) touches! At the end of it all was me, Taffy McKittrick, raising a glass up toward the spider-web strewn rafters and howling at the peak of my lung capacity: Okay Universe, this is my year!!!

Announcement: Happy New Year!!!

2009-12-31T12:15:00.000-08:00

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!!!

Scrambled Eczema!

2009-12-29T14:50:00.000-08:00

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!!

Post Xmas: Malaise & Degradation!

2009-12-28T13:03:00.000-08:00

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"

Lesbian Christmas!

2009-12-24T11:26:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-21T12:47:00.000-08:00

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!

Yuletide Maelstrom: The Storm Thickens!

2009-12-16T11:53:00.000-08:00

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.

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

2009-12-14T12:22:00.000-08:00

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!!

The Marinade of Depression: A Curtain Rains Down

2009-12-07T16:25:00.000-08:00

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: Birthin' Ideas! & Rockin' tha Mic!

2009-12-01T14:47:00.000-08:00

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

Snack Attack: Front and Back!

2009-11-10T12:07:00.000-08:00

Let me begin by introducing a series of observations that may entice, amaze, flatter and astound you: I do not like having a day job. There, I've said it. Last evening found me on the couch in a sort of stupefaction while I watched something named Kelly Osborne on Dancing with the Stars, twirl around and mangle the foxtrot. She most resembled a drunken horse looking for oats at nighttime, flopping and flailing with reckless abandon. It was at this point a tickle of depression washed ashore and let me bathe in it. The only thing that would cleanse my palate of this was a program of microwave burritos and beer which tasted even better than I just made it sound.

Life is a cloud of cottony goodness with varieties of fragrances and tastes. They all surround you and you give yourself over to them in little ways. Come on, think about it!!

Alarm Bell Ringing: Friday is Here!

2009-11-06T13:51:00.000-08:00

Good afternoon to you ladies and gents, it is your humblest of humble guitarist/singer-songwriters/nascent famous person/bloggers here again to regale you with the happenings of all things and such regarding one Taffy "Sunburst" McKittrick, aka yours truly, ie me. Can I inform you of the warm glow that spreads through my insides when Friday arrives? Like a warm saline bath shooting through every hole in my body, ending in a sort of fantastic, spritzing spray in a pool wherein that lady from the 50's dives off diving boards and swims to the music of someone in the 50s in her bathing suit. Yes, that kind of day! Utterly amazing and jaw-dropping.

Today I am in the clutches of my evil day-job, doing some anodyne but misery-inducing data-entry, listening to idiots talking about a sale at JC Pennys wherein a giant serving tray ("would be great for this upcoming turkey day!") can be purchased for a small amount of dollars. Need I remind you that this sort of rampant consumerism is a vile blight upon my american sensibility? If you want to give your money away give it to artists (ahem, hint hint, ahem) and musicians (cough, ahem) not to turkey trays. Get with the program people!

Office Luncheon: Halloween Version: Friday!!

2009-10-30T12:45:00.000-07:00

Holy shitoly ladies and gentlemen I am fresh from the annual holiday lunch party at my place of employ (and by holiday I mean halloween) wherein Jim Coggins from accounting is dressed as a bloody accountant and Tammy Ledbetter from HR dressed as a bloody wraith that closely resembles Tammy Ledbetter from HR. Also, it's something of a potluck so right now my stomach is rumbling and gurgling in a ferocious manner because I have just injested cakes and pies and salads and little dainty ham-sandwich squares. Oh, and my boss's boss brought something that was a dip for tortilla chips that tasted fair enough but then I overheard the recipe ("2 cans of chili, one brick of cream cheese") which to my thinking didn't sound particularly healthy-minded and as I sit here and type these lines I am pretty certain that the layer of chili dip has settled to the very bottom of my intestines like so much black
deep-sea sludge. I, your humble narrator and blog-post updater, did not dress up and so was taken to task by Ed Poon (something of an ass) who said loudly for the benefit of the room "what are you supposed to be Taffy? an incompetent office aide?"
This got the whole room roaring and set the tone of the mood for the rest of the fiesta. For awhile my ears were steaming but I consoled myself with some sugar cookies that were shaped like jack-o-lanterns. (They are currently resting on top of the sea-sludge). The scariest thing of all, no surprise, was the conversation. Man, my co-workers are real effing dumb. (no offense!). The best part of all this was the different ideas for songs that it gave me ideas for songs. Another way to say it is: Happy Halloween!

Thursday: Put on your Punching Goggles!

2009-10-29T13:07:00.000-07:00

Prepare to be punched ladies and gentlemens! A punch of the sort that hits your throat and windpipes so you can't do much but stagger backward into a store display of canned peas and corn, knocking it backward, cans a-twirlin' because you can't freaking believe it. Yes, that's the kind of punch that Thursday is delivering to me with a ruthless power. For some reason I have been travelling down well-traveled corridors of ancient memories and lost loves and women I slept with but who don't sleep with me (or near me) any longer. Why!? This is a question that I can't answer. I did my best to provide a sturdy structure of love to hang my jacket on so that bliss could erupt and flower, like so many erupting flowers in the dew. But, sigh, no, it was not to be. Can somebody explain to me - please - why certain people choose to love you and how certain people get as far away as they can from you? I am beginning to take it personally.

Oh, what a bother. I should probably just let this all go. I mean frankly it's been many a moon since anyone chose to lay their head near me (and no, my 3 nights in County jail are not in this equation) and I find myself wondering 'how come' and also 'why'?. I have many things to give and provide to the table. Where love is concerned I am a waiter with a silver platter and a towlette draped over my arm, bringing juice glasses flowing with palate cleansers and light sparkling wines to a bounty of women but they are all ignoring me, choosing instead to tear into their pork loins and potatoes with a carnivorous and animal-like oblivion. Hey Ladies! Don't forget who is here to serve you! Like you've never gotten served before!!!

Rainy Monday!

2009-10-26T11:29:00.000-07:00

Dear beauteous and well-groomed blog-reading audiences, hello! It is a Monday morning and I am typing this lines to you surreptitiously from my perch at the day job where again I am assaulted by rivers of banal conversation (sample, just overheard: "Oh my God, this dry erase pen really rocks!") and rivers of fragrances, most of the putrid variety as factotums and corporate slaves microwave their coffee or their Jimmy Dean Breakfast Bowls and gobble their bananas ceaselessly, like so many garden monkeys. Well, as I have said to you about one-million and one-half times, I am an artist and I should not have to work so moments like this really activate a sort of office-rage in me. But we don't need to go there because you know where I stand on that issue and further, how it makes me feel.

Let me instead bring in a new modality of conversation and that regards the weather: rain. Buckets and sheets of gooey rain came a'rainin' down this morning early-like. I awoke in the autumn dawn, face down on the sofa, dvd still frozen on that triumphant frame at the end of "the mirror has two faces" where that lady runs out into the street to tell that man not to go. (side note: what can I say, I am an artist and I won't prejudge what I take into my body artistically speaking but I can hear you sneering from here about that movie. Well, I love it. So there). My bigger point - and I do have one - is that the rain awoke me.

Is there anything more like angels crying on your shoulder than rain-drops? It's one of those questions that can't be answered.

Delectable Monday: A Promise

2009-10-19T14:47:00.000-07:00

Today Monday is playful with me, rubbing me under my chin like I am a good servant but also giving me hints of goodness, like the promise of perfection akin to a freshly-purchased chewy granola bar. This is how good it feels to be here in this planet on the present day. I am announcing this to you!!!

My 'day off' last week afforded me a rare perspective and allowed me to look inside my own head and heart, an introspection of epic and sonic proportion. A deep and penetrating inventory, not dissimilar to a body probe or colonoscopy, where it hurts yes, but afterwards you have discovered beautiful things about your self, your body, your world. I came to realize - after all those waffles - that there are certain things I enjoy about being alive. Waffles are one of them. Myself is the other. There is no enriching gift to yourself like your own self. Go on and look in the mirror and then begin to create art. It's the only way!

See You Next Tuesday!

2009-10-15T09:28:00.001-07:00

Waffles on Wednesday: The Arrival!

2009-10-14T11:39:00.001-07:00

Good sweet morning to you my friends! I have recently arisen. Today, as you most likely are not aware, I have the day off from work. This is a cost saving measure wherein once a week people whom are classified as 'support staff', such as me your humble blog creator and reporter-on-all-things-Taffy, is - are given one day per month to go off and enjoy themselves and boost morale. This is an unpaid day and has the further indignity of counting as a vacation day so HR is bleeding me of vacation while at the same time gift-wrapping it and setting it delicately upon my lap. Put another way: I am enjoying myself today!!!

I woke up and decided - after the furious glory of yesterday's post might give indication of - that perhaps I might side-step the usual breakfast intake (microwave burrito) and explore some of the other bounty that Mother Nature has plopped from her womb onto the planet: which is to say I had waffles!! So freaking good!!! I dove into a plate of them, literally. My face and fingers right now are smeared and dripping with maple sauce but I don't mind. How could one mind really especially when they had put something flacky and delicate into their body, listening to the beautiful rumbles and gurgles as it made its way through canals and corridors?

Also, it's easy to make. It breaks down like this - first you open the carton of microwave waffles, then you put it in the microwave, when it comes out you slather it with their homestyle maple syrup and a hunk of it's-really-not-butter. let it melt for a second and then dive your face into it! Literally! How on earth can the rest of my Wednesday measure up? Anyone? Anyone?

Burritos Were His Muse: Tuesday!

2009-10-13T11:10:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning, like I do most mornings. Swimming in the forefront of my consciousness was the thought of a burrito, slathered with tapatilo sauce and squirting out cheese like so many gooey rainbits. Long-time readers of this blog are well aquainted with the notion that a burrito is among my favorite group of foods, if not the favorite group. I don't believe that I can name a day - even when i was in county lock-up last month - where a burrito did not enter me. And that's a fact.

I keep hearing about this slow, local food movement but I don't know of anything slower or more local than buying a carton of microwave burritos at the plaid pantry down on the corner. I mean, think about it: I am contributing to the local economy and paying for the salaries of the burrito-makers, the burrito-packagers, and the man who drove the truck to bring them to my mouth. That's a lot of people I'm paying for!!

Monday: Wasp-Stinging Rear-ward!

2009-10-12T15:23:00.000-07:00

Yes my friends, a thousand times yes. Today the sun was a glistening orb in the guzzling sky and rain clouds threatened me but moved on as if to say "not today good sir! you carry on and continue creating songcraft and light and spread it across the world like so much savory nut butter". Sweet reprieves are wonderful things to receive: they provide you with the information that whatever you did or are doing is correct and appropriate. My point, as behooves the title of this post, is that I feel like i've been stung on the backside by a hive of angry wasps and I am now running away from them and toward the arms of Destiny.

To be more specific: things have quieted for ol' Taffy since "Dr" Albert Tubman took leave of me. I learned a lot from our interlude certainly. I think I've addressed some of those items in previous posts so I won't start testing your patients by doing it again. Here is a laundry list things that have rained out of the sky on me since he departed: furniture is back, check. able to buy groceries again, check. job is boring as usual bursting with people who think they know all about life and living since they can afford a mortgage or an electric car but who don't appreciate the simplicities of life like apples or buckets of fried chicken, check. a gorgeous honey-haired creature interning at the reception desk, check. Taffy mothereffing McKittrick about to unleash a malestrom of songs and bewitching tunes on top of your face like a turkey pot pie slathered with country-gravy, check!!!!

2 Chocolate Hearts

2009-10-05T09:33:00.000-07:00

Punched in Face: Depression-Fist

2009-09-24T15:01:00.000-07:00

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!!

2009-09-23T11:08:00.000-07:00

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'!

2009-09-22T16:57:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-09-17T11:27:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-09T11:39:00.000-07:00

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?

Glorious Tuesday: I Am Shimmering!!

2009-08-04T12:02:00.000-07:00

Dear sweet and buttery blog reading audience, can you believe the depths and intensities that this thing - life, that is - can grow and expand to? Sort of like a giant blimp that gets bigger, encompassing more and more hot air. Oh, bliss!

When I left you last I was informing you about my meeting at the Lakeshore Mall with Dr. Albert Tubman, aka my Life Coach. We had a grand and glorious day of walking and observing, looking at storefront displays, sharing ice cream samples etc. The day ended with me giving Dr. Tubman a ride to a local 7/11 where he was set to meet another client. Can I tell you that a pang of jealousy shot through my trunk and arms when I heard this. But I talked myself down, realizing: he is a Doctor with many patients of which I am one of them. He provided me with some homework: cataloguing my darkest fears with aims to confront them, making a list of what I want out of life, and researching dock fees at local marinas. (note: I am still not sure what the last one has to do with me but I have full faith in the good Doc's methods. He teaches thru metaphors the way another doctor might teach through hands on guidance or, for example, dirty language or something. Point being, I trust Tubman with the fullest heart I can muster!!).

It's funny how once you begin to make changes in your life, the rest of the parts of your life will change along with it. For instance: I was at the laundromat across from the Apartments on Sunday and I saw Ron Mealeman again (or "Fat Ron", as he prefers) and you may recall that he was a man that used to annoy me but I found that he did not. He was at the back pulling his clothes out of the dryer and laying them on that rolly-cart thing and I walked right up to him and said: "Glorious day Fat Ron!"
He looked at me and said: "I guess. What's your name again? Butterscotch?"
"Ha!" I said. "Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha! No it is not Butterscotch."
There was a long pause.
He looked at me and said
"um, okay. So what is it?"
I took a deep breath, like a man drinking from a soda fountain after he's been in the dessert for weeks, and then I said: "Taffy Mothereffin' McKittrick!!"

Large Announcement: Yesterday My Life Began: Day One!

2009-07-31T11:43:00.000-07:00

Whoa and Wow! I can hardly type this because my arms are quaking and my body is moving, squirming around like that breakdance The Centipede. I am alive with an electric white-hot sugar beam, swirling over and around me as I fully contemplate all manner of existing and what it truly means to be Taffy "Sunburst" McKittrick!

Okay. Deep breath. I don't want to get all rambly on you. Therefore, I will center my thoughts and excrete a calm and cogent stream of data toward you, as I instruct myself to do, and I will tell you all about yesterday, which was Day One of the rest of my life! It was my first full session with Dr. Albert Tubman.

Here is how the day went down:

I woke early from a thick sleep that had me dreaming about living in a castle made of stone, with torches and knights and what have you. The sun bled thru the blinds and I was half-asleep as I walked from the futon toward the kitchen and so I picked up my guitar. Yes, it was early, not quite 7am but I remembered that a big key being a recepient of Life-Coaching is to recognize the urges that compel you. (Keep in mind I am an artist so it's a one-two punch). The guitar was speaking to me so I picked it up and began strumming a loud and sturdy strumming shuffle in the key of E7with a walk-up to G#m and then over to Bb#7diminished, all the while my foot counter-tapping in syncopated bursts. And then the lyrics: they fell out of my mouth like so many baby birds: Livin' in a Castle made of Stone/With Torches and Knights and What have you...and so on. It was like I was another person, like the dream Taffy was controlling the awake Taffy like a marionette. Before I knew it I was shrieking out more lyrics at the top of my lungs: Dead in the Castle/Sorry for the hassle! over and over, until it became sort of a meta-self-referencing thing and before I knew it my neighbor in the next apartment was banging on the wall (keeping perfect time with my syncopated foot)!! Such is the power of unguarded art!!!!

Whew. Okay:

I bathed and dressed and drove to the Lakeshore Mall. I was to meet Dr. Tubman in the Food Court. I sat for an hour or so and there was no sign of him. Plenty of commerce-minded people were shopping and carrying bags and eating sausage biscuits and whatnot but no Dr. Tubman. Just as I was getting nervous and thinking that perhaps I had my days mixed up, he arrived. He was wearing a backwards baseball cap and a leather jacket and a pair of denim shorts that went to his knees. I don't know a lot about fashion but I don't think many people could pull that look off. Dr. Tubman did. He had a suave nature about him, gliding across the food court, like a gazelle. He approached the table and snapped his fingers:
"Waiting long?"
"An hour"
"Good, I was afraid it was much longer. It's been one of those days already and it ain't 9:30" he said.
I began cackling out of empathy but he shot me a look that urged me to cease this line of laughter.
"Shall we begin" he asked.
"Yes" I said.
He sat down and looked at me. It was quiet for a moment and I thought he was doing some jedi-life-coach staring thing so I didn't say anything. Another moment passed and then he said:
"You know, a venti latte would be frigging killer right now".
I went and got it for him and sat back down. He was calling the shots so I watched as he blew on his drink and sipped it. More time passed and then he looked right in my face and uttered:
"Taffy" he began "Tell me about your fears"

Well, as you can imagine, this is like getting punched in the gut with a sledgehammer and a jackhammer all at once. I think my reticence was glistening on my face because Dr. Tubman looked at me and said: "This isn't going to work if you don't go to the dark places Taffy".
A whole minute passed. I swallowed. I couldn't meet his eye! Finally I moaned:
"I'm afraid of the dark" I said.
"Good" he said. "That's real good to hear. Let me ask you a question. You're an artist, right?"
"Yes"
"Just like Jim Morrison?" he said, referring to the singer from the 80s band The Doors.
"Yes"
"What'd Jim Morrison think of the dark? Did he run away from it like a little girl?"
I thought about it. "I guess not"
"Did he prance away like Little Lord Fauntleroy? Did he put ribbons in his hair and wear a dress like a little girl at a tea party"
I thought some more "I don't think so"
"No dipshit, he didn't. What did he do?"
"I don't know"
"I'll give you a hint: He sang about it".
There was an awkard moment here because it appeared that what Dr. Tubman said was the whole of what he wanted to say, not a hint. I wasn't sure what to say, if anything. So I reapeated his last words, as if they were a question "He sang about it".
Dr. Tubman broke into a fancy grin here, from cheek to cheek.
"Pardon my french" he said "But you're starting to get the hang of this shit Taffy"

Presenting: A Huge Announcement!!!

2009-07-30T12:40:00.000-07:00

Well, my sweet and sun-kissed blog readership, I have news of an epic nature to present to you for your current consideration. You have probably been wondering why my epic gush of songcraft has dwindled to a mere mountain stream, a trickle that can benefit no one really and I'd like to tell the reason for this: I have been up to something.

Yes, I am being deliberately mysterious at the present moment and I'm merely teasing you, not unlike some fish-stuffed cat using sharp claws to bat around a catnip-mouse (or whatever metaphor you deem suitable to insert here) and I know I'm stalling so here it is:

I, Taffy "Sunburst" McKittrick do hereby solemnly admit to swear that the reason for my going into hiding in the month of July is as follows:
- In an interest to better serve my listening (and blog-following) audience, I have procured the instruction and tutelage of a Life Coach.
- After a couple attempts with various Life Coaches whose approaches did not mesh nicely with my artistic and creative sensibilities, I have at last landed on the best Life Coach: one Albert Tubman, a former Navy SEAL and aspiring orthodontist who has used his muscles (mental and physical) to get me into shape.
- Yesterday was in fact the first meeting with Dr. Tubman and it went effing swimmingly!! (note: though not an actual MD yet, Tubman prefers I use the sobriquet "Dr." because he is the architect of his own existence, because he sets the perception of his own self, because he wants it this way).
- We met at a Starbucks. He arrived late and sat at the table and asked for a Venti Latte. I retrieved it for him and we began discussing my agenda as a human being but more importantly as a creative entity.
"How bad do you want it Taffy?" he asked me.
"Pretty bad" I said. "Like the hummingbird wants the dew". (note: I'm not certain if hummingbirds want dew or are maybe allergic to it but it fell from my mouth and Dr. Tubman seemed to agree.
"Well then." he said "You are on your way".
And an electric tingle surged up my leg, all the way to my head and heart.
"What next"? I asked.
Dr. Tubman looked me in the eye and said: "Are you committed to putting all your trust in me"?
I nodded vigorously.
"This isn't an easy fix necessarily" he murmurred. "It can take time".
"I realize that" I said.
"And money". he said.
"It takes money to make money" I shrieked, not quite certain how I meant it.
And at that Dr. Tubman broke into a grin. He knew in that moment that he had me.
That I now belonged to him....

To Be Continued

update: not belonged to him in a bad way, but in a cosmic Navy Seal way.

Carnival of Horrors: The Party I Attended

2009-07-08T11:04:00.000-07:00

I am an artist so it goes with out saying that sometimes I do'nt want to be around other peoples, (not that there's anything wrong with that!). Sometimes the Artist needs to sit at home and marinate in his own juices, creatively speaking, and not worry about the vagaries of inter-personal annoyances (ie hygenie, ie politeness, ie diction) or how much small-talk you can spew out in a quarter of an hour. Sometimes the Artist needs to just sit and eat burritos and have a beer or three and play around on his guitar, taking firm note of what may (or may not) plop out. Okay, where am I going with all this? Look no further than the next paragraph.

I went to a party last night that I could not get out of. I don't want to name names or be specific because the many people who read this blog regularly will be able to discover which party I meant but let me just call it "Sandra's" Party. "Sandra" is a person that I know, maybe thru work or maybe not, and "she" decided to throw a party for "her" cousin "Rudolf" last night. There was no way I could squirm away. My whole point being, the Artist doesn't want to go to parties in the first place but when forced the Artist will attend (if only for free food and alcohol) and then slip out the back. Well, the Artist found himself cornered in the kitchen, between the fridge and the table, away from the alcohol while "Rudolf" yammered away ceaselessly about French Movies. Sorry French Cinema. Are you effin' kidding me!?

"Rudolf" apparently considers "himself" a nascent screenwriter/director which is all fine except that "he" has a habit - birthed from his ambitions no doubt - of tieing every possible bit of conversation into a film reference. Herein and hereforth follow some examples to putrefy and turn your stomach:
Me: Good party, eh?
"Rudolf": Eh, yeah like a Rohmer film by way of Assayas.
Me: Okay...So..."Rudolf" how do you like it here?
"Rudolf": Ah, you know. I feel a little like Antoine Doinel in "Bed & Board"
Me: Oh. Actually I don't know what that is --
"Rudolf": You don't!!? Oh My God!! You have to immediately - like tonight! - go onto netflix and put all the Antoine Doinel's in your queue. They are so mother-effing awesome!! Oh My God!!
Me: Huh. I'll have to check that out.
"Rudolf": You know what Godard said to Melville about "checking things out", right?
Me: No.
"Rudolf": This was back in the "weekend" days, oh wait, it wasn't Melville it was his DP Raoul Coutard...

And on and on and so forth and so forth. One of those people who only talks about himself and has no consideration of other people's feelings and thoughts and Artistry. never once was I asked what I did or about the songs I've written or which songs I think are my best, only if I've seen this or that and do I get the Truffaut reference in "Jules & Jim" and where do I rate Agnes Varda and which Godard heroine is most unlike the others and yammer yammer blah blah madness!!!

At long last I was able to squeeze out the back door, pretending to run to the car for just a second, a bottle of wine under my arm (my due, methinks!) and I made it safely home and am now working on a new song about this horror-show party which I will most certainly share with you when it comes.

Holy Crapola: The Artist Thinks Aloud

2009-07-06T18:24:00.000-07:00

Dear sweet gummy-bear textured and sweet and delicately wonderful blog-reading audience, hello!! My thoughts have begun to gush like so many underwater geysers, spraying steam and heat and steam-heat and I am afraid at times that the parameters of what contains my mind has a minor tear or perforation and that I can no longer be contained. It's frightening but also wonderful! This is what it is to be an artist.

Right now I am having a mother-effing love affair with this thing we call America. So sweet and tender and soft but also delicate. This is a fragile thing with tiny shoots and buds, not fully yet grown, but we continue to celebrate the majestic nature of it on every July 4th! This is the day, you'll recall from history's annals, that the Constituition was caesarian-sectioned out of the collective birth-canal of the fore-fathers. Can I be fully honest with you? I get a little moist around the eyeballs ever year around this time. This effing country allows me to be me and me to be you. I can dream and think and say whatever I want! I can walk up to you in the supermarket and start spouting song lyrics or my private thoughts and guess what, you can't do a effing thing about it, because this the American Dream!!!

Sarah Palin: Au Revoir & Bonjour Heartache!

2009-07-06T18:21:00.001-07:00

Angel Breath, pt 2 (wherein the artist explains)

2009-06-24T18:22:00.000-07:00

Okay so I will go ahead and admit that there is the teeniest sliver of unscrutability in my previous post. I get that. The hummingbird burrito probably threw you. (note to self: possible song title: hummingbird burrito) and you most likely require the artist to lay out all the specific strands that go into weaving this ornate sweater he is now wearing. I get that too. You're thinking I can't even see the sweater but let me promise something to you: there is a sweater.This is part of the artist being here and alive and right here in this moment.

You probably remember my post some weeks back, right? It was a post about my sometimes loud neighbor Ron Mealman (or "Fat Ron" as he prefers). We ran into one another inside a laundromat. It was a juncture wherein I for the first time loudly and unapologetically shrieked the triumphantness of my adopted nomenclature: Sunburst.
It is a very good post and you should reread it because it will provide you with so much understanding about the person I am trying so hard to be. Here is a link to that post. Now are you getting this thing people??

Angels Breathe on My Shoulders

2009-06-24T16:35:00.000-07:00

Oh my friends! My delirious and fantabulous honey-soaked collection of bipedal organisms, what can I tell you? Where can I begin? What sort of endeavors will I endeavor to begin sharing with you? Which gift of mine will I employ to discuss the way things have been going? How many questions in a row will I ask?

Firstly, first things first: yes, I have been remiss in my upkeep in this blog that you love to read so much. Or let me amend: I have been remiss in terms of written updates. My sonic (meaning musical) upkeep has been at a respectable clip from hour one.

Secondly, I am humming and vibrating right now as I type this with the wondrement of hummingbird calls. Do you understand?? I wrapped a hummingbird inside a wheat tortilla and swallowed it down (metaphorical!)

Thirdly, angels keep breatheing on my shoulders. More to come.

I Go Fruitcake

2009-06-18T12:21:00.000-07:00

I Go Fruitcake from Taffy McKittrick on Vimeo.

Pretty Please

2009-06-12T12:11:00.000-07:00

Pretty Please from Taffy McKittrick on Vimeo.

Here Come's Taffy McKittrick!

2009-06-12T12:10:00.001-07:00

Friday: And I am a Lovely Man!

2009-06-12T12:00:00.000-07:00

Hello Team -
It has been far too long. Well guess why:? my nose has been up on the grindstone and I have been twirling about (metaphorical) and leaping (actual). Things in life sometimes bound around like a fleet of deer, skirting praries and grazing in meadows. This is the places where you'll find my head.

Items of a amorous nature - meaning love - have been popping up repeatedly like so many untreatable acne scars: I continue to be smitten with the idea of being smitten. I want to love and be cuddled so freaking bad. To that end I have written 2songs this week which I will be posting forthwith and forthward. The first is intitled: Here Come's Taffy McKittrick! and it announces me as a person of leisure, one to be reckoned with. The other is called: Pretty Please! and it deals with a woman who does not want me in her life but I think i can be if I ask nice. They are both solid songs!!!! Enjoy this gift of breathing and living love and life!

Don't Put That In Your Mouth! (Toxic Popsicle)

2009-06-04T18:55:00.001-07:00

Light in My Loafers!

2009-06-01T18:55:00.001-07:00

Light in My Loafers! from Taffy McKittrick on Vimeo.

Monday: Love Arrives Again Like a Whinnying Horse

2009-06-01T12:25:00.001-07:00

Ah, my heart, how it doth ache and thump and pittery-pat-pat inside my skull! It is partially due the glorious sunburstin' weather which is what I really respond to in a huge way but also the receptionist, let's call her 'Nessa, who I have fallen for in a gargantuan and mammoth sort of way. She is my rainbow, my wet hug in the water. I've spent all weekend, head reeling, because of what happened on Friday, which was this: I entered the breakroom and she was standing at the microwave oven, heating up what I later learned was a Jimmy Dean Breakfast Bowl (note: freaking delicious!). I was just sitting there staring at her back and she wasn't yet acknowledging me. So I coughed and murmured, "How's the weekend looking? Cause mine's wide open". She turned and looked me up and down and said with a glowing smile "you're too light in your loafers for me". Can you believe it! She thinks that her darkness would bring me down!!? Unreal. At that moment I was smitten, like a flea-bit gutter cat who comes across a tin of tuna in the dumpster. Alive, my blog reading friends, alive!!

I let her eat a couple bites and then I left the room. I could not stop thinking about her this weekend! Oh sweet 'Nessa!!!!

Beautiful (Non-Aggressive) Love!

2009-05-28T12:37:00.001-07:00

Beautiful (Non-Aggressive) Love! from Taffy McKittrick on Vimeo.

Wednesday: A-Gurglin' & A-Whisperin'

2009-05-27T12:14:00.000-07:00

Oh my sweet lovely blog-reading friends (however many hundreds of you there are): How today my heart does soar! It fills with fluid and then expands and then releases and then fills with fluid all over again! How lovely is the heart, especially when it is nudged along into growth, in this case because of a very pretty intern now sitting at the front desk. My god I am sweating and my hands are pounding as I type these lines. I'm looking right at her, well actually, I'm pretending to look behind her at the wall (at the framed "Teamwork!" poster showing three people scaling a mountain in subzero temperatures), like I'm deep in thought so if lets say she does look over at me she her eyes will fall upon someone deep in thought, a man with many gifts who happens to be pensive and contemplative. This is a very handsome person she will think! Oh man, she has a pretty sort of appearance and she is laughing on the phone. Cute little laugh. Oh, Sweet mother of pearl! Steve Coggins (Accounts) just walked by and made little eyebrows at me because he can propably tell that I am wickedly consumed by her already. He better not attempt to make a run at her too, particularly because he's married and has 4 kids, but you see my point. I am all a-twitter and a gushing! What do I do?? Do I just walk up to her? Maybe I'll borrow her stapler!!! Maybe after lunch I'll get up the gonads! Stay tuned!!

Step Off Sara Roth!

2009-05-25T00:05:00.000-07:00

My Bad, A-Dog!

2009-05-22T11:01:00.000-07:00

It's The Pits

2009-05-18T11:51:00.000-07:00

It's The Pits from Taffy McKittrick on Vimeo.

Get In My Van!

2009-05-14T11:52:00.001-07:00

Thank You: A Thursday's Whispers

2009-05-14T11:43:00.001-07:00

Hello Team! It is your humblest of humble Taffy Sunburst McKittrick here and I want to go ahead and inform you that I am missing the parameter of the datapoint. Ha, you probably don't know what that would mean. How could you because you don't work at a putrid day job like me or with me. I rolled in this morning and grabbed a cup of Maxwell House (that's all they brew here!) and sat down at the computer. I began tinkering and fingering the database, that's my job after all, and guess what: go on guess: I spilled my cup of coffee on the keyboard. Ugh!! It's times like this that I want to climb in my van and pull up to a street corner and ask the beautiful-est woman on that corner to climb in and run away with me. To a place where pony's gallop and billygoats graze and the sun blasts away. Enough of this madness!!!

Hey guess what Wednesday?:I have depression!

2009-05-13T15:27:00.000-07:00

Man o' Man. It comes a-whistlin' off the plain, curling and blowing and moving and flowing like so much thick cloud. A grey paste that you cannot use to stick papers together with or that you'd cook with. No, this is a paste you inadvertantly apply to your hole body, as if it were lotion or unguent. Once it hardens well then you just sit there and think, now what? If you haven't figured it out my blog-reading friends, I'm talking about love. Hard love. Rock Hard Love Sensations. They are rippling like the first step of that dinosaur in the water glass.

Last night I came home from the terrible horrible unfortunate putrescent day job. I had hoped to talk to my friend but, big surprise, she didn't respond to my phone calls, emails, texts, or sexts (again!) which send your's truly into a tailspin of tallboys, microwave burritos, and some kind of chef show marathon. I don't know what it was. I was lost, alone, afraid. I did a lot of wondering and muttering, in that order. How do artists manage these terrible things like love and confusion? It is a question with no answer but I won't stop asking it. Ever.

Baby, whut do u want????

2009-05-11T16:19:00.000-07:00

baby, whut do u want?? from Taffy McKittrick on Vimeo.

Well, I found the gal. She called me on Saturday night and said not to freak out but that she was sick and maybe it wasn't swine flu after all but that I might want to take a step or two back from her. I got the sense she didn't mean because she was ill but rather because she believed that I was crowding her, in an emotional sense. Fine, I thought, just fine. At this point I asked her to tell me how she thought our date went down last Tuesday and she said something about how she wanted me to "be less of a lady and more of a caveman" which I have no idea what that means. Probably something about being rude and misoginous instead of polite and tender and delicate. In any case, I didn't know what the heck she was going on about. Baby, I said, what do you want????

Sad, Sad, Sad

2009-05-08T12:52:00.000-07:00

A Tale of Two Fridays

2009-05-08T10:29:00.000-07:00

Glum bum sadness bubbling up and around me like so much thick gooey lava. Last friday, as I'm certain you recall gentle blog reader, was a banner day. A time of fervor and all-out excitement. This was codified in my tune "It's Friday, Motherf*cker!" which was like me roaring from the rooftops all about how grand it was to arrive at a Friday. Today. Well not so much. Sigh.

As you know from my song "Swine Flu Blues" I had a date the other evening. A first date. A glorious first date. Or so I thought. Or rather it was on my end. So to speak. I've called. I've emailed. I've left texts and sexts and there is no apparent response from the beauty lady who I dined with Tuesday night. All that is left, I presume, is my sadness and the memory of what happened over that hot artichoke spread. Magic was created there. A powerful and virulent magic that has never been matched. Where are you and why won't you call me back??????

I know you feel it too. Please call me back baby. :(

OMG! OMG! OM MF'ing G!

2009-05-07T13:05:00.000-07:00

My day job is among the more challenging portions of a human being's day. I cannot take coming here and working here and breathing the same air as these people, some of whom are putrid in both a stereotypical and also empirical manner. I don't enjoy putrid people; I'll go ahead and be upfront with you about that. My supervisor in particular is a person addicted to pain-killers. This incorporates a lot of questionable judgement calls regarding all sorts of items from the high-level to the medium range and also the banal. Can I share with you that I am an artist and - yes, I know, I know, I am lucky to have a job in this button-hole economy - I don't want to have to go to work. I need to be laying in bed still with the dreamy state of dreamtime floating around my head like so many fat cherubs. This is the obligation that society has to pay to the artist: not making them work!

Swine Flu Blues!

2009-05-06T13:11:00.001-07:00

Welcome to Wednesday: the Love Greet

2009-05-06T11:45:00.000-07:00

Wow and big buttery wham-bam wow! What a day I had yesterday. It is still moving and cursing through my veins, reminding me that I am right here breathing in the ether and how good does that feel! First things first: I stayed home sick from work yesterday and watched The Legend of Benjamin Burton (the brad pitt movie) which I am still bamboozled and reeling from in awe-faced stupefaction. So amazing that I am going to start crying if I think about it. A sweet natured black lady takes care of brad pitt when he is old and then he falls in love with Cate Hudson when he gets younger. There's more to it than that but that is the general thrusts. It's all about living and dying and breathing and how it means that you become an artist through the magic of life. You never know what's around a corner. Sometimes it's a nice black lady and sometimes it is you dying. Man, I'm not doing it justice because it's deeper than that though. Whatever, just go see it!!

The other big thing was that I had a blind date last night!! I met her online through the internet. We hit it off a lot in ways that I won't go into because I respect her privacy but she just came back from Tijuana and had a little bit of a cold. I know, I know, I probably shouldn't kiss ladies who visit mexico when swine flu is bubbling around this planet but I wanted to kiss her bad. This could be the start of something liquid and lovely. And yes, there is a song coming about her. Keep your ears pealed!!!

"It's Friday, Motherf*cker!"

2009-05-01T10:55:00.000-07:00

Fantastic Friday!

2009-05-01T10:47:00.000-07:00

Greetings gang. The end of the work week has come to a blissful and eruptive halt, thank God! What a terrible time I have had working this week. Yes, I understand that I am grateful to have a job but I implore you to spend 1/2 hour doing what I do with the people here, who have maladies that range from 'smells like cheese' to 'blisteringly incompetent' and everything in between. Whatever, this is part of my life so this is part of my art-making. Everything goes in!!
New song in a bit.

"Good Mornin', Lady!"

2009-04-30T14:32:00.000-07:00

Wednesday: An Affront to Modern Love!

2009-04-29T11:24:00.000-07:00

Good warm and nibbly Wednesday to you, my blog-adoring audience. My mood of late has been ping-ponging round and round like so many options on a lazy susan at a restaurant of chinese extraction. Why, you ask? Life, I answer. Life. You will recall that last week around this time I was body-surfing gigantic waves of bliss due to the crashing tidal pools of all the friends I had made on facebook. What a ride it was! But naturally that wore off a little and here I still find myself: miserable at my day job as I tinker in the database while my pain-killer addicted boss trundles around the office looking for the pen they misplaced (hey dipnuts, look behind your freaking ear!). Then I crawl back into my car and drive through the traffic-strewn streets, back to the Regency Towers apartment complex, back into my unit, #8 wherein and whereupon I find myself sitting on the couch quite a bit and enjoying a beer or three no matter the evening or occasion. It is a wheel inside a rat-race inside a floating molecule, if you follow that. But yes, these are the items that confound the modern artist. You can sit and play nintendo and get a good buzz on OR you can get your fat ass off the sofa and create some blissful art.

Well, I did the latter the other night. I wrote a new song called The Unicorn Stampede. This is a song that finds me, your humble hero, attempting new and terrifying things. For one, I took an old folk legend and made it a song. [This is an approach that has worked for that band that Jim Coggins (Accounts) told me about. This band does a lot of prancing and uses fancy-pants words and bases whole albums around cute little tree-sprites and rabid ponies and such. (I don't want to bash anyone public-ly but let's just say their name is not The Novemberists). In any case, I took a page from their operating manual and hand-crafted a song from folk-lore)]}. For another thing, in keeping with the purity of my intention, I had to move into a horrifying zone where I use the accents and vocal registration of an old Irishman in 1104 AD as he tells his son, little Bobby Fitzdoodle about the thunder in the sky. "It's when the horse-lord mates with faeries" he tells young Bobby. It's The Unicorn Stampede.

Man, I hope you dig this song! Let me know if otherwise!!!!

the Unicorn Stampede

2009-04-27T23:25:00.000-07:00

The Unicorn Stampede from Taffy McKittrick on Vimeo.

The Glaze of the Magnificent Dance: Friday!

2009-04-24T15:17:00.000-07:00

Yes my friends. This is what I have to say to you in so many words: Yes! It is a re-assertment of principals and ideals and wheretofores and whether-tos. I am riding high on four fingers of caffeine as well as the recently upped dosage of meds (courtesy my shrink, Dr. Block!) and I am suddenly tasting possibility in my arm. That came out funny but I know what I mean. I mean that my arm - along with the rest of me - is coarsing with fluids, alive and bursting like so many dewy seed pods. This is living and a part of life. No denying it.

My songs are now out there in the world, staggering like little hobbled orphans asking you to put some love in their tin cup. "We are ever so hungry guv-nuh" they plead with their round pie-eyes. What they want is simply to be held and adored. Feeling the thick hot glow that comes with mass approbation on a global scale. "Please" they bleat "Won't you stick your love in my cup?" Well, won't you?

"Sunburstin' Love"!

2009-04-22T12:05:00.000-07:00

I Don't Want To Go To Work!

2009-04-17T18:34:00.000-07:00

Momentous Mountains: Friday!

2009-04-17T15:28:00.000-07:00

Do you ever get that feeling, that tickle in your bones and loins, like some giant exotic bird of prey has landed on your shoulder, drifting down like a giant flapping piece of detritus made from a starlight explosion? Well, of course you do, you're human after all! But check it: I am all abuzz and atwitter this Friday. It's part caffeine, part Friday, part that people across the land are having a tepid love affair with my songs!!! All that hard work, from inside the walls of my apartment, all those burritos, all those dates that didn't happen and the pain they wrought. Now look and see! Just look!! I am on a mountain top and I am shrieking this to the world like some feral coyote who has just feasted on lamb (note: possible song lyric). Whew, it's nice to feel so good for a change. Yes sir.

Why Don't You Like Me?

2009-04-16T18:25:00.000-07:00

Sweet Wednesday Blessings

2009-04-15T15:05:00.001-07:00

Hello to you! I am typing these lines on the sly at my place of employ but I am so giddy with wavering excitement that should my boss trundle over I might just look that boss in the eye and say "yeah, I'm on the internet, what of it? You're on painkillers, I'm on the internet. Fair?" I don't know if I'd have that A-game at my disposal when it came time to put up or shut up but I've chosen to share with you that bit inside my head. Why you ask? Well, I have no answer.

One possible reason that I am bubbling and burbling with excitement is that I now have several friends on Facebook! It is quite wonderful. One of them appears to be a dog but I am not yet facile enough with the interface to determine if it is an actual dog with an account or someone feigning dog-ness in an effort to spread comedy around the internet like so much thick mayonnaise. A benefit of this Facebook deal: my music is now out there in the world! It is being evaluated and loved. I cannot tell you what this does to my insides. Or rather, I won't (tee-hee).

Monday: New Tickles of Beginings

2009-04-13T16:14:00.000-07:00

Hello and good afternoon. I am preparing to have your mind blown: I have joined Facebook!! I know, I know. Before you get on my case for having "a blog" and joining Twitter you should understand that bringing myself out of my dark hole and up and into the light is not the easiest of tasks. I want to share so many things with you. Beautiful things. Sometimes disturbing things. In some cases things you would probably prefer to not know about me, or anyone for that matter. But that said, this is all a way and means to an end if you follow that.

I had a shiny, and glorious weekend of beers, microwave burritos, songwriting etc. I am still marvelously ensconced in my tortilla of bachelorhood (if you will!) but I am beginning to sense that spring will create and provide a young woman to enter said tortilla and join me. All things for a reason, right? Think about it.

Hips on Hips

2009-04-09T18:36:00.000-07:00

Tremendous-ness!

2009-04-09T11:33:00.000-07:00

Greetings to you my fine blog reader! Today is another delicious morning and I am well-caffineated and ready to do amazing things. Of course, I am stuck in the day job today so that is sort of a neutralizing agent for my shimmering excitements if you follow that. A reader left a comment on my post new song! stating that she - for I believe the reader is a she - enjoyed the new song but felt that it lacked a certain brightness, or immediacy or pungent nature more associated with the earlier works I have shared with you on this blog. Okay, I will grant her this. I gambled on that song and lost! I admit it! (Actually I didn't really gamble, my hand pressed on a button inadvertantly and it froze my voice and guitar for one moment, making it go into a sort of transcendant loop. You can hear it at the link for new song!). The reader, as well as you gentle reader, will be energized and stupefied to know that I will be posting a new song late this afternoon. You will find it a return to my prior, unguarded and unpolished stature. Thank you.

A Glory Day: Monday, April 6th, 2009

2009-04-06T11:45:00.000-07:00

Sweet buttery good tidings to you! Raining down from the sky like so much golden margarine!! When the weather gets like this it does things to me. It is so shiny and glorious, like some glory hole I've disappeared into! Wonderful!!!!!!

Had a nice weekend! I drank too much on Friday and Saturday night and slept in on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Made it out of the apartment to re-up my microwave burrito supply on Saturday afternoon. Birds were singing and my heart went clackety-clack even though I had to wait again in the express lane.

You may have noticed that my posting and songwriting was lacking last week. For that you have my apologies but if you need or want to assign blame to a person or set of persons I don't know what to tell you. The artist must unplug and live life sometimes and then return to retrieve himself. There's no way around that.

Well, Looky Here! (No, over here!)

2009-04-01T11:37:00.000-07:00

Greetings and sun salutations to you my blog-reading audience! It's the kind of morning where the dew covers the mist-strewn flowers and birds buzz around your head like tiny bumblebees. Can you feel it? Where a energy shake of fish parts and gumdrops sounds like just the ticket! (note to self: what does that mean exactly?!) In any case, no more asides or exclusions. I am high on caffeine and today the day job is humming along, if not exactly at a razor's edge, then maybe a mild to lowgrade sort of clip. You follow?

For awhile I've been hearing about some band that makes songs about little british chimney sweeps and victorian women in corsets. This is the sort of band that does a lot of prancing onstage and also gurgling and has a lot of costume changes. Steve Coggins (Accounts) keeps telling me - ever since he heard my song last week - that I would absolutely love them. Yesterday he brought me a copy of their newest offering and I listened on the drive home. Can I tell you something? I don't get it!!!!! It reminds me of the AV club in high school, who the whole school mocked mercilessly. (Now granted I was in the AV club but still...). Plus the singer uses a lot of words that force you to draw attention at him. I don't get that. Not sure what the lesson is here. Probably to stop listening to Steve Coggins.

This is April 1, 2009 and it is time to enjoy things!

Went into the Seagrass

2009-03-31T18:13:00.000-07:00

Graciousness and Thanks: A Beginning

2009-03-31T12:41:00.000-07:00

Many great and glorious triumphant shout-outs to the individual who commented on my blog post below. Firstly, thank you just for laying your eyes on this blog. What I am trying to do here - as you may have noticed! - is to document the artistic lifestyle and all its attendant unprettiness. What you have just witnessed is part and partial of this. Not everything in this pursuit will be dripping with daisy-chains and sunbeams and little monkey-hearts dotted with rainbows. No, only a naive person or a lower life-form would even begin to ponder it in this way. Instead, know this: Art is a painful thing to manufacture. As I have said before: to make art one must reach into his nether-regions and using brute force extract a giant chunk. That is art. That is the artist's life. In keeping with that. Later today I will be release another video bit. I want you to stay tuned. I really really do.

Woe & Darkness: The Sadness has Arrived

2009-03-30T13:01:00.000-07:00

Well, I called that, didn't I? I knew last night as I was putting the finishing touches on "i ain't even playin'!" that there would be a massive type of emotional repercussion. That repercussion has washed ashore with such volume as to make it hard for me to breathe. This has multiple points of intersection that needs addressing but the place where I would even begin is fuzzy and hard to see.

Point one: wherein I sign up for Twitter and get a Twitter account (I know, I know!) yesterday. I presumed this would steer a massive populace to the blog but it has not. All I have managed to do was infuriate and stupefy a gentleman whose blog I had read. I found him on the Twitter application and added him and he wondered "who the hell I was"?!

Point two: wherein I wonder why I don't have more friends on Twitter or elsewhere?

Point three: wherein I sign up for an application called Feedburner which will provide the metrics and page-views of my blog. This is a tool for the nascent and eruptive blogger to tell how his work is being received by the general population at large. Well, color me ignorant and sad like a chicken, but I signed up expecting to see, say, tens of thousands of page-views. I did not see that reflected in the numbers. In fact, the number was in the low 20's. My grief was compounded by my sturdy realization that I and I alone was the only person repeatedly reading and scanning and enjoying my own blog!!! Like the worm in the tequila bottle, over and over.

Point four: wherein I go onto my Youtube page and see how many times my videos have been viewed. Again, color me naive like a bag of coins but I was expecting thousands and some of my videos have been watched less than 10 times!! Most likely just by me!!! Can you imagine the heavy thumping ache that pounds my beating heart?????

Point five: wherein I re-watch my video for "i ain't even playin'!" and I find it tortured and unwatchable, like the wail of some lost dingo on the prairie. Yes, the intent is there, but the execution falls flat and my final improvisatory "Boo-ya!", while well-intentioned, appears to undermine the central thesis of the song in the first place.

Point six: wherein I find a hole to crawl into. Sadness! Despair!

i ain't even playin'!

2009-03-29T21:29:00.000-07:00

Happy today (for a change!)

2009-03-29T21:00:00.000-07:00

Greetings gentle reader. It is the Sunday night after a most productive weekend. Had the grand misfortune of running into Ron Mealman (or "Fat Ron", as he prefers) out in the parking lot on Saturday but that was a momentary event and henceforth one that I was able to shake afterward with little trouble. Can I alert you to the notion that I did some good and active creative songwriting this weekend?? Well I did. Now granted the song that I am about to post may not be the cutting edge of monumentality but there is a certain heft and force to it that finds me, your gentle host, writing at the edge of his limits, pushing boundaries. And damn! If that don't feel right, then what else can??? I'm sure some of this will wear off in the morning but right now, I feel so good my friends, so deliciously good!

Random Assortment of Hodge-Podgery: Thoughts

2009-03-25T15:10:00.000-07:00

Those of you attuned to the Taffy frequency may have noticed a new permutation and iteration of my creative output in the form of a new song, Wasteland: A Fevered LoveDream. What can I say ya'll? It arrived in my head yesterday afternoon and I delivered it to you shortly thereafter. It spattered out of me like so many gallons of turkey chili. I was a mere vessel, you see. I was the Universe's instrument. I was like the man on horseback, galloping across some dystopian mindscape where a night can last for weeks and the food is a watery gruel unsuitable for bathing, much less eating. Which is another way of saying: I didn't ask for this assignment. But I will accept the challenge. Oh yes sir.

Drumroll: This is a song where I take risks. Big risks. Mammoth and chunky, often unpretty, risks. In Wasteland: A Fevered LoveDream the narrator (or, gentle reader: yours truly) wails for lost love. This is something we all can relate to. Everyone has felt the white-hot electric shock of burning and unrequited affectation. There is no sensation similar.

Wasteland: A Fevered LoveDream

2009-03-24T21:02:00.000-07:00

Sunbursting!

2009-03-24T16:17:00.000-07:00

Good afternooniest of afternoons to you ladies & gents. I am scribbling these notes tucked safely between the warming teats of my day job. (Are you sick of my moanings about such yet?) where a typical post-mania pre-going home lull has descended across the office like so much black foam. People shuffle in and out of the kitchen, carrying cans of carbonated sludge in their giant meat-claws, sighing, breathing too heavy, pretending to do actual work of importance, nattering, muttering, coughing and on occassion, wheezing. Generally I pay little heed to these people (and they to me) but when the black foam rains down I find myself oozing into a sort of sadness for their little lives. My heart rips open and out pours a river of compassion. How lonely! How Sad! Also, at times like this I become exceedingly glad that I am me. Meaning, I have a way out. Meaning, my songs are like shovels that make underground tunnels and that burrow. My future sits before me like a brilliant orange magnet, pulling me out of this prison of doom and despair. When I think like this sometimes I break into wide smiles, sometimes the air tastes crisper. My co-workers have, more than once, looked over and muttered "what are you smiling about"? To which, what can I do? To which I want to tell them that I have my future firmly in my hand and I am stroking it gently. Only a matter of time my sweet, I whisper, only a matter of time.

Staying with that level of confidence for a moment let me offer you this: I know that I am currently alone and without a female mate. And while it eats at me sometimes, grinding through my guts, I have to say it doesn't bother me one iota. The glory will come and with it will come the fawning admirers. This is just the way this one is going to go down. All things for a reason.

Ah, everyone is shutting computers down, leaving early to hear the President speak. Me too. Signing off

Sunburst

Droppings & Leavings

2009-03-20T11:16:00.000-07:00

Ah, sweet madness, this life! I am here at work (ugh!) on a Friday - thank you merciful gods - counting down until I can go home and wrap my self in the sweet membrane of my solitariness. I've watched the Cuddle Me Ferocious video a handful of times and I always feel exposed, like a leopard out in the forest or something. Did I do too much or did I not do enough? It's a riddle without an answer. You must embrace this when you bathe in art. It's the only way!

Yesterday one of my co-workers (Steve Coggins, Accounts) happened by my desk as I was watching my own self singing. "What the hell are you watching?" he shrieked, which surprised me. I quickly minimized the screen and said "Oh, ha ha. I don't know. Just messing around". His face turned to stone and he said "Not on the internet I hope. On company time? That would be time theft". He stared me down. We were like two mudslingers at the OK Corral and a tumbleweed blew through us. This is it, I thought. I am now fired. Then his face changed and he started laughing "Oh, ha ha ha, I had you McKittrick! I had you! You think I care what you do? I'm on Facebook all day long". Yes, he had me. Whew, I exhaled a big one. I revealed to him that it was me singing. He couldn't believe it and had me send him the link. At the end of the day he swang by my desk again. I was a little nervous and shy about it and he could tell so he said "Hey my man. I have never heard anything quite like that. Ever." Which I took as the compliment he meant it to be. So that was good.

Cuddle Me Ferocious

2009-03-19T13:11:00.000-07:00

new song!!!!

2009-03-18T10:42:00.000-07:00

Alright people, how about a blast of sunshine: I awoke this AM with some new lyrics bouncing in my brain like so many pinballs! Just a verse and a chorus so far but man if that doesn't taste like the sweetest nectar from a juice-dripping nectarine! The music is still being hammered out and when it arrives you can better believe that I will post me singing it. Drink up:

Cuddle Me Ferocious

Well it's true that I ain't made like most guys babe
And it 's true that the rain bleeds into puddles
And it's true that most guys just want to bang your drum babe
But I prefer to defer lust to cuddles.

Cuddle me once
Cuddle me twice
Cuddle me un-atrocious
Cuddle me queen
Cuddle me lean and mean
Cuddle me ferocious

status check: alive and living

2009-03-17T09:28:00.000-07:00

I recognize the inherent oddity in announcing this to you and myself but here goes: Taffy has been MIA for a few days. I entered a type of mind-swirl, bogged down by despair and good weather, which caused me to stray from the computer. Some things in life cannot be enjoyed with a computer and that's a fact. Things convene in one place and then present you with nuggets of contradiction. Think about that for a second.

Alright, I'm stalling. Out with it Taffy: I went for a walk down by the river the other day. It was glorious and happy with sunshine and goodwill but the path was strewn with diet sprite cans and beef jerky wrappers. Who could be in this world, this fine and sunburst world, and litter? It's unanswerable I know but it's a question that I refuse to stop provoking. Ah, I'm stalling again. Here it is: I am alone. I walked on this path and I am alone. I have so much love to give the ladies of this town but none of them, apparently, are interested. This is like an icepick to the face, or say being trampled by feral barn-rats. Which is to say, it hurts. A man with so much love and creativity to give with no receptacle is an aching gentleman. All I want is for a lovely creature to sit with me under a sprawling oak or a knotty pine on the sunniest of days, listening as I strum the guitar for her, as she feeds me fresh strawberries from the basket we've just picked. I want to be stroked and held and told that I am fantastic, like no other person or thing out there. That's it. Is that so much to ask?

This is all by way of saying that I have been marinating in these juices for the last several days. That is where I have been. Part of me knows this is crazy, all artists ache for a noble companion to shepherd. And another part of me just aches.
Sigh.

An ill gentleman arrives in your sights.

2009-03-12T11:26:00.000-07:00

Yes friends, Taffy has been prostrate on the couch for two straight days, reduced to drinking fluids and watching talk shows, energy sapped, defenses down while his guitar and notebook mock him from the corner, leaning against the wall. The upside of this is - need I even say it - not being at work. Every moment away from there is a moment that I savor, much like a ravenous carnivore diving into a plate of lunchmeats with a sort of carnal abandon. I am coughy. I am sneezy. I am exhausted. But I am not entering data at work. So there is that, at long last. The flip side of that goodness is that my supervisor, under the paper-mache thin guise of 'checking up on my employee' has phoned here every couple hours to see how I "am doing". I want to scream into the phone "Leave me be!" but I haven't the strength to even pick the phone up so instead I scream it inwardly, as if to my own self.

Had a rather interesting event transpire yesterday though. Since I had the day to myself and further since I am - look away ladies - on day 3 of no clean underwear, I decided that the time had come to arrive to do some laundering. I grabbed fistfuls of dirty underthings and t-shirts, stuffed them in a giant potato-sack and toted them across the street to "Tucker's Laundry". I walked in and to my great surprise and horror, with whom did I see, but the tiny rat-like tenant of apartment 8 putting items into a washer. Yes, this the very soul who agonized me last week by his careless and inconsiderate partying but whose terrorizing deeds also aided my birthing of a new song (see below, Dark Monsters in the Complex). My initial instinct was to run across the street, back to from whence I came but it was too late. He spotted me and waved me over.
"Hey Bro" he muttered, with a sort of sick satisfaction. "Don't you live in the C"?
Assuming this was some putrid bastardization of the Regency Towers, our shared residence, I nodded glumly.
"Sweet ass digs, don't you think? he asked. I wasn't certain how to respond, if at all, so I began to extract items from my potato bag and insert them into the round slot in a vacant laundry machine. My head was spinning, urging me onward to the arena where I'd just say something to him. Anything to take him down a peg. What came out was this:
"Not working today then?".
This caused him to cackle hideously, like some underwater garden creature. I could see the sharp uneven canine teeth protruding from his gums.
"Naw Bro. I don't need to work. Work is for fools".
It took a second to realize he wasn't kidding and then a slow lazy burn began to gurgle in my stomach. This is the exact embodiement of everything that is wrong with the current situation in my life.
"Oh" I said "And why is that"? I asked this
"My dad has so much money bro. I am set up. Once I hit twenty-five it is all mine". And he continued to cackle, like some evil witch or some plaster of paris she-beast. And my nightmare continued. Jets of white-hot anger blasted across my face like a wave of unhappiness. The garden rat stuck out his hand.
"I'm Ron Mealman".
His hand was dainty. And moist. But I stuck mine out anyway and shook it, wondering how quickly I could get to a sink.
"Mealman?"
"Yeah, but you can call me Fat Ron". As if to address the silence he anticipated coming from me, he added "Cause I roll 'em fat". He gave me a wink as he said this as if I was suddenly a part of his conspiracy to do bad and wage annoying parties. Then he said: "What's your name bro?"
And normally I might pause here or get self-concious or something but I looked him dead in his little rat eye and said immediately:
"Taffy. But you can call me Sunburst".
His eyes were confused and frozen, so I said
"Cause sunshine ain't a bad thing".
My heart was suddenly thumping, not able to believe that I just said my new name out loud. He looked at me as if I were wearing a shirt made of lettuce fronds. Then he said: "Your first name is Taffy?"
He was a baffled mule, one of lesser intelligence, and I was the one cackling, laughing on the inside, so hard it hurt. HA! I thought: HA!

oh my dear sweet god

2009-03-09T11:17:00.000-07:00

Back in the knife-sharp clutches of this abysmal joke of a day job. A few minutes in and I knew I was in trouble as my supervisor, who shall remain unnamed lest she one day stumble across this site, is using a cane today because this weekend she slipped and fell onto "the concrete ribbon of sidewalk that they never maintain" at her condominium. She didn't add the part about how she's on muscle relaxers and how that was probably the main contributing factor to her errant foot-fall. It is only Monday and I am in a hellish dungeon, a circle of hell that no one can know with the intensity that I do. This will sound extreme to some ears but let me announce it anyways, as it is a firm belief: The Artist should not have a day job. Let me say that again, lest your eye drift past that and on to other things: The Artist should not have a day job. The reason for this is thusly: The Artist already has a job, and that is presenting his gifts to the world in whatever form, in my case a sonic form. Others paint, some dance, some write, some act, whatever. The point I am summoning is that to create is a job; to reach into one's own nether-regions and extract a chunk of art is no small feat. It is, in fact, a feat of epic proportions. Am I really meant to sit here and endure mundane tales and insights from my co-workers? Am I really meant to sit here and "access/input data in the database?"! It is practically a felony crime to have one who creates stuck in an environment where he cannot create. (In fact he can hardly even get onto the internet because his supervisor keeps hovering and clucking nearby). Some things in this world are ephemeral and girded with starlight and moonbeam. This is the realm where I aim to hover.

On the "Sunburst' appellation

2009-03-08T11:25:00.001-07:00

I've had a couple emails already asking me "Why do you call yourself "Sunburst"?". This is a fair question and I'll grant you that. No one at my day job really is aware that I've dubbed myself that yet but it's only been a couple weeks. Put it this way, I am rebranding myself as a beacon. A shimmering light in these troubled and punishing times of harrowment. A whisper that is written on the wind or as the great Bob Dylan has suggested "My love she speaks like silence". Think on that for a second. My point being: there is an abundance of darkness in this world. It's filled with bad people and thugs and and those who live in apartment complexes and those who shop at walmart and eat doritos and those who have not yet realized that we are all one. Yes, I said that and yes I believe it. We are all interconnected beings, like a spiderweb of magnificence. This is why we need a beacon of light at this point in time. If I can make people laugh with my comedy then I am injecting them with brilliant bursts of sunbeam. If people enjoy my little songs then so be it. If that brings them more pleasure and relief than anything out there at all then I have done my job.