Though it should be covered due to the four stories posted on Sunday. I've been working on my uncle's truck to get the clutch fixed, which is done but now I have to stick the drive shaft back into the transmission. Comical momentary thought, ever notice in the movies when they cut someone's brake line for their car it's a rubber hose? Brake lines are metal tubes, not hoses, and there's four of them. You'd think someone would speak up and say "Uh director dude, that's not the brake line," but I guess not. Just goes to show how few Hollywood writers have actually worked on their car, fucking pussies.

If you came here expecting "Sengoku Jidai" you're no doubt wondering if you're in the same place. Well you are. I'm in the midst of a bunch of personal changes and thought I'd redesign the ole blog as well. The dark green was getting depressing, so much so I loathed stopping by to update it, funny how colors can do that. Anywho some updates.

My uncle, Conceptual Guerilla, is relaunching his site with a new format and he's hired alot of his forum visitors to be authors for it, including me, though I still have no clue what I'm going to talk about. The guys on his forums are extremely smart and know alot, and they each have different interests so every section should be well written and well researched, which is good for his site but for me, ehhh not so much. I'm more of a "do it all" person, which means I have a good basic knowledge on most subjects and can tell you how they all interconnect and work together but I'm no expert when it comes to individual topics. I also like writing on what I see, and that's usually how people behave and how things interconnect. I'm good with systems (thus the new blog subtitle!) so I don't know how I can work that in for CG's site, any suggestions?

On the personal front, I had the conversation I've been waiting to have with the ole man for years, and I'm extremely satisfied. The most important thing was that he admitted he was a fuck up and that I had it hard. The next important thing was finally seeing how much he really doesn't know about me, it was like taking a weight off my shoulders because I no longer feel his gaze on me, it's like he's looking at someone else entirely. It's amazing how that one little feeling fucked with me for over 20 years and I won't say I'm completely better, but my dealings with people in the real world are less stressful and I feel more confident now. I no longer mumble my words when speaking to someone.

Another thing, this is going to sound funny coming from me for those of you who know me, but how you present yourself really does affect how you feel about yourself. I used to have my hair down to the middle of my back but I got it cut short recently so, one, my hair on top would fill out, and two, I can spike it up once it gets longer and fuller. The long hair just had to go, it was no longer a symbol of rebellion but a symbol of depression and not caring enough about myself, the thinning on top didn't help any either.

So big changes all around and I'm still working at it. I've got a number of political/cultural pieces I've been working on for the past two months but haven't finished which I'll probably finish and put up here some time soon. Though I'll probably release one per day.

Without further adieu, welcome to The Node!

Ya know, a couple years ago you could have heard me saying "The prison system is too soft, we're paying shitloads of tax money to allow these people to eat regularly, sleep, and watch TV all day." However, now that I have an uncle in the prison system and I got a taste of what it's like in there having visited him this past weekend, I have to say, I was wrong... partly.

To be sure, I still say we have far too many people in the prison system, we have the highest percentage of people in prison in the entire world, including China which is supposed to be a more fascist state than the US. Most people in prison are there due to drug related charges, of course that wouldn't be so if drugs were legalized and the government stopped telling us what we can and can't do with our own bodies. When the prisons get full do they release some people with these bullshit charges? Nah, they just build more prisons! There's alot of money to be made off the prison system so it profits alot of people for there to be alot of people in jail, but I digress, that's not the injustice I want to focus on today.

"The prison system is too soft" is not an uncommon argument to hear from hardliners on the right, and some on the left, but ya know, it's bullshit. My uncle is currently in minimum security, remember that because you have to keep in perspective that everything I'm about to say goes on in the supposedly less restrictive level of the prison system. When I arrive at the prison (which only deals with medium security and below) I immediately notice the ten foot or so fence with rows of razor wire on the entire fence, on the bottom it's more like a triangle with three rows on the bottom level, two rows on the next level up, and then evens out at one row per level all the way to the top. It's pretty clear you are not getting anywhere near that fence, and that's if you get over the inner fence which has razor wire on the top third or so of the fence. I later learned that in the eight foot gap between the two fences there's a truck which routinely makes it rounds and sensors buried in the ground. So no digging out and no climbing the fence, you're in there.

I finish my smoke and walk into the prison once the family infront of me walks out and the guard waves me in. I have to empty my pockets and walk through a metal detector. I tell the guy my uncle's name and give my name because you have to be approved to see him before you even go to the prison which took over 3 months to get done. Everything clears so the guy starts inspecting my stuff and tells me I can't take my Zippo in and I'll have to leave it there. I asked him if the unopen pack of smokes is alright and he says yeah and everything else is cool too. Then he takes me into a room, shuts the door, and frisks me, but he could've strip searched me if he wanted to (it's on the form you fill out for visitation rights that they hold the option to). I'm clean so he leads me back out to the lobby where they take my picture for future reference. Then, and this shocked the hell out of me, they have a hand-scanner for taking your hand print. I had to stick my hand in the scanner three times for a proper reading and then I was given a little card with my visitor pin number (more on this later). OK all of the preliminary stuff done so this young black girl, had to be my age, escorts me through a number of secured doors which we have to be buzzed through one at a time. Then she leads me through this picnic area outside and into the prison wing which is a long straight tube with all of the prison dorms attached to either side but the visiting room is right in the front so we didn't see any of the dorms.

Once in the visiting room they have all these shitty folding tables and uncomfortable chairs set up. The girl I'm with hands a guard in there a piece of paper with my pic and my uncle's pic and the guard tells me to sit at this small table against the wall looking out the window (not much of a view, but better than staring at the wall). This whole process has taken about 15 minutes. I wait for about 30 minutes until my uncle comes in, apparently he was taking a nap so it took him a little while to get up there. It's been over four months since I last saw him and almost two years since we had any physical contact or something not between us with someone listening in so I hug him and we sit down. First I ask for and get the truth about the night he was arrested, which I don't want to get into at this point in time, then I ask him what's it like in the clink. Now understand in all of his letters he's told us how professional everything is and stuff that just sounded a little too easy, well that all went out the window. He said to read his letters and ad "not" infront of all the shit like that.

He says that you catch alot of humiliation and degradation the first few months or so you're in there because the guards don't know you and don't know if you're going to cause any trouble so any chance they get to put a boot in your ass they take it. If you're anything less than polite they'll give you shit. To illustrate what I mean, when we went out for a smoke break once my uncle took a drink outside with him when he wasn't allowed to, the cop called his name and nodded his head back towards the door, my uncle said "Yes sir, sorry sir" and took the drink back inside. Later he told me "Now imagine if I had said no to that guard. First he would insist that I take it back inside and if I still said no he would've beaten me over the head with his baton, then they'd throw me in the box (commonly known as the "hole") for awhile, and give me a year or more of close management." Close management is solitary confinement. All that over a fucking drink. Oh yeah and get this, you'll get six months in the box for horse playing, you only get three months for fighting. So I asked him more, "well other than that what's it like in the dorm?"

There are many dorms going off the long tube which I mentioned before, his is a smaller dorm that holds about 60 people and they all sleep on bunks that have lockers for their stuff. There's no air conditioning. Imagine that, being in a cement box in the south during the middle of summer with no air conditioning. Now also imagine 60 other hot and smelly sweaty guys in there with you, the funk is unimaginable. So what about TV? It's useless, they have the sound jacked all the way up to the point that you can't hear anything even when you're right underneath it. Not to mention the bass is so loud that you feel it through out your entire body and you never get used to it so the TV becomes a tool of psychological torture rather than a break from the situation you're in. You are constantly reminded where you are at all times and you're broken down until there's no hope left in you whatsoever and it's exactly the same every fucking day, what we call "Groundhog's Day." Also remember that this is minimum security prison.

I've never seen a man so happy to have an ultra light menthol cigarette and air conditioning in my life, you know it's bad when you see a man's eyes light up as if he were entering heaven over things we take for granted.

We talked for over four hours when they yelled that it was time to wrap it up. They seperated us into two lines, visitors and prisoners, but before my uncle got in line I asked him "So was it better than Groundhog's Day?" Again his eyes lit up and he gave a simple "yeah" that was heart breaking. I gave him one final wave while they escorted us out back to the door we came in from. Each visitor had to enter their visitor pin number and then place their hand in the scanner for ID verification before they were buzzed through. Once through I picked up my license and went outside to wait for my ride.

Anyone who wants to say that the death penalty is necessary to punish someone is full of shit. I'd like to see them last a month in prison and come back out saying the death penalty is still necessary. However, I also see now why alot of ex-cons are not reformed like they're supposed to be. Prison is a place to learn how to be a hardass with discipline, it's boot camp for criminals and is even refered to as "camp" by many. How can we expect them to come back into society and be decent citizens when we're giving them the training to be better criminals and teaching them that with certain amounts of power you can get away with anything?

Dedicated to both my uncles, the one who's confined to this world and the one who's not.

Yup, three weeks of entertaining company.... thank fucking god it's over. I'm so tired I could sleep for another three weeks. Carting my 15 year old cousin around to different clothing stores with her boyfriend was boring and obnoxious to say the least. Not to mention the little fit they threw because we didn't go see "Hustle and Flow" (we saw Land of the Dead instead, did I mention I'm a big living dead fan?).

Anywho, I have a topic in mind but this Valerian herb is kicking my ass and making me tired so I'm just making this a checking in post.

A cousin's been in town for the past week so naturally we've been going to the beach, the springs, water parks, and all that fun aquatic shit to do in Florida. I'm tired as dog shit and my eyes are Satan red from all of the chlorine and salt they've been exposed to, it's making checking out the hot lifeguards difficult. Oh well, it's at least given me an idea for a summer job next year if the military option doesn't work out.

On a similar topic, college students, by default, should have their licenses ripped up. I'm driving back from the water park today (got my license recently) and I'm not but a few blocks away from home, the SUV infront of me is being slow as shit and I can't see it's brake lights so I decide to change lanes to get around this bitch. We're coming up on an intersection and I look over my shoulder to see if my blind spot is cleared when next thing I know my uncle in the passenger seat yells "WATCH OUT!" I look back ahead and slam on my breaks to find the SUV infront of me just stopped in the middle of the intersection making a left hand turn.

Now normally, that's no big deal, but dick didn't have his fucking blinker on, at all! Not before I turned my head to check my blind spot and not after I slammed on the breaks, and you couldn't see his brake lights for shit because of the glare from the sun due to some dumb ass engineer who put the brake lights way up on the middle of the SUV. So I had no indication this asshat was slowing down, or stopping for that matter, to make a turn and came just inches from slamming into her. Naturally the bitch in the SUV was some young blonde bimbo from the university yacking away on her fucking cell phone, none the wiser that she just almost lost the rear of her status symbol car. Thank god the Lincoln has good brakes.

When we have computer driven cars I'll be happy. Wicked fast speeds, no accidents, no traffic, and dumb ass blonde cunts can yack away on their fucking cell phones without being a threat to society.

I try to use this for political ranting but I feel like shit so I'm going to get personal.

When you're in your teens and twenties you hear some of your peers say things like "There's no such thing as love, it's a figment of the imagination written up by poets." It's quite telling though that those same people are the ones who've either never experienced it or have been rejected by their heart's desire. I on the other hand know it exists, I suffer from it every day, and the person who said it's better to have known love and lost it than never knowing it at all is a fucking fool. I know I'm not saying anything new but cut me some slack, I'm emoting here and damnit, let me emote.

I met my love in 2000 on the net at a message board. We quickly became friends and both ended up in LA which allowed our relationship to go from cyber-fantasy to reality. There was a catch though, she was twice my age. The family naturally had their cautions about the relationship, and my love lied to her friends about my age. Which wasn't really a big deal since I could pass myself off as any age around the early 20s. We were together for four years, we had our problems but we always managed to get through them. Over time she not only became my lover but also my best friend, we shared almost everything in common including our humors, religious beliefs, what we enjoyed doing, everything. Due to some personal demons I had to let her go because I could see that I was dragging her down into my personal hell with me. That was four months ago. We didn't talk for two months after my stupid drunken phone call which broke it off and it has taken us another two where we can talk like friends again. Still though, whenever I do something thoughts of her pop up, when I tell a story it usually involves her, I see my uncle and his girlfriend together and it reminds me of her and I.

Imagine waking up and dreading it because you know you're going to feel that familiar twang of pain that feels like a knife's being stuck in your chest. She says I'll get over it, I'm still waiting. It's not like I haven't had opportunities to pursue other people, that's not my problem, I just always see something that reminds me of her and I compare every woman to her. Try as I might, I can't get her out of my heart, I can't simply detach. Talking to her on the phone helps to escape the reality of it but near the end of the call reality sets back in and I so desperately want to tell her how much I love her and miss her but I won't because I promised her I wouldn't. She got pissed with me once because I was pining away for her, so sue me. I'm sorry my emotions and feelings aren't like a light that I can just switch off. I lost not only my lover but also my best friend who I did everything with. I miss just sitting on the couch watching the shitty programs on VH1 while the cats play and the windows are open. I miss going to Starbucks and just hanging out chatting until they close or we get bored and go home. I miss walking around China Town looking at all of the clothes and herbs stopping to get some real chinese food. I miss playing puzzle games together and watching the latest zombie flick she found.

I miss my friend.

I have a goal to regularly update this for the sole purpose of advancing my writing ability. So uh, here I am, updating it and shit. I'm a little bored at the moment seeing as how it's eight in the morning and everyone's still pretty much asleep. I've been sick the past week with a cold which means my sleep's all fucked up and I've gone through a carton of smokes faster than I would have liked. So to pass the time this boring Saturday morning I've been going through the pk3 files of Jedi Academy looking for the script which decides what saber type you can use from the start of the game and doesn't allow you to proceed without choosing a new force ability. I'm still dicking around about getting my license, I really hate driving because it requires a certain trust in your fellow humans not to be idiots behind the wheel. Unfortunately I know most humans are idiots, especially humans my age, and I know this after having driven with them.

Regardless though my license is quickly becoming a necessity as lending a helping hand to my grand mother could cost me my life some time soon. She's progressively getting worse as the days go by at driving, so going to do the chores with her can damn near cause a heart attack. Just last night I was asked by uncle to go with my grand mother to get him a watch and drop it off in his property at the jail, he wanted me to go because it was late and dark out so why not. All was well for awhile, we bought the watch and dropped it off at the jail and headed home. We get near our turn to our street and my grand mother turns too early and heads right for the drainage ditch until I yell "DITCH" and she quickly corrects the car. In the span of a month I've damn near shat my pants at least ten times from similar incidents driving with her, some which could've been fatal.

I love my grand mother but goddamn, she needs to get off the road before some kid becomes a hood ornament, and this is why it's my civil duty to get my license, to protect kids from becoming hood ornaments for a Lincoln Continental. I hate driving, but anything for the kids... and my bowels for that matter, I don't know how much more they can take.