A long time ago, I was browsing the aisles in my local Blockbuster when I espied a movie called The Professional. The cover of the video (this is before the advent of DVDs) was so compelling, I never forgot it. It featured a man's face hidden behind small round sunglasses, wearing a tight knit hat. He was backlit by flames.
As the years went by, I kept seeing that movie in various video rental stores, but never picked it up. I found out it was about a hitman, which made me want to see it even more. It features an all-star cast including Jean Reno, Gary Oldman, Danny Aiello, and a very young Natalie Portman.
Finally, I had Netflix send me a copy which I just now watched. And to my dismay, the movie was rather disappointing. Perhaps some of my disappointment had to do with years of being built up in my mind. Or maybe it just sucked. It had a saccharine 90's flair for stupid side characters and absurd antics beyond the realm of Hollywood foolishness. I know, I know I tend to have too-high expectations for realism that Hollywood usually doesn't provide, but this was just beyond reason. They could have done much better.
The storyline was good. Jean Reno was great. The 90's, however, I'm beginning to believe, were as bad as the 80's. God help us.

Groooaaaaannnnnnnnn I'm so bored. And it's really hot. My family arrives tomorrow evening, which should be a lot of fun. Then after that, Andrea pops in for a visit. The next couple weeks will be quite a treat, and a nice breather from work. I'm excited. But bored.

Hoo wee, yesterday was a helluva day. Started the morning with a nice long sleep-in to catch a few missing zees. Then meandered on over to start my volunteer shift at Lobsterfest, which consisted of sitting in the shade drinking free beer and reading my book. Then, I got to eat a free lobster. I sat with two dudes who'd ridden their bikes from Aspen (30 miles give or take) and ended up going to a bar to play pool with them.
One of them was gay and started hitting on me, which was flattering and awkward. What do you do when a guy says, "You have a really nice ass," or "Judging by your swagger, I'd say your package is thick though not long" ? Just nod and say you're content with your beautiful girlfriend, I suppose.

Today was sweet. I went climbing and ended up finishing the clean-up of my project. I then climbed it, nabbing my first first ascent. I'm calling it Leighway. There's a piece of history for this guy. Score one.

The folks will be in town day after tomorrow! Excited.

Shit. I just realized I used almost the same wording to talk about my new climb in two consecutive posts. How lame! My apologies. Here's a lil something a bit more interesting.

A long time ago there lived an old witch. Her ramshackle cottage crouched in a clearing in the woods protected by a strong and ancient magic. The witch had long since given up on luring succulent children, and instead just gathered roots and nuts, and lived out her remaining days in solitude.
But she was very lonely.
One day, a knight errant strolled along a faint path in the woods. As it happens, it was the very path the old hag used to get to her clearing. The knight saw no sign of the magic-hidden clearing, and he continued on his way, head nodding in exhaustion.
The witch, stooped and tired from a morning of gathering, noticed the wandering man-at-arms. Ah ha, she though, here is an opportunity for some company. She shucked her sack of roots and herbs and rubbed her hands together to warm up for a spell. Closing her eyes and muttering, she extended her arms.
Her creature lumbered onto the path, nearly tripping the knight's horse. The stallion reared, and the knight grabbed wildly at the reins, startled from his doze. He dropped his lance as the magical creature growled and slobbered, rows of teeth flashing in the dim forest light. The creature leapt up and dragged the knight from the saddle, clawing and gnashing at his throat. After a struggle, the knight managed to sink his dagger deep into the beast's heart. But he was badly wounded and lay bleeding on the soft forest floor as the beast's body melted into a rancid puddle.
Gasping for breath, the knight tried to remount the horse, but couldn't gain his feet. At that moment, the witch appeared before him.
"Good sir knight," she murmured, "stir not, lest ye worsen the injury."
He groaned.
The witch selected a particular root and chewed it, as she gently untied the knight's breastplate and moved aside his blood-stained tunic. She caught her breath. The creature had caused more damage than she'd planned. A sweat broke out on the knight's forehead and he mumbled incoherently, eyes flickering in febrile heat. The witch cursed her clumsiness and gently stuffed some of the chewed root into each puncture. After a moment, the knight's brow smoothed, and he slept.
The witch used magic to transport the man to her shack and laid him on the bed.
For many days, the witch treated the wounded man as he balanced on the knife edge of death. She constantly berated her over exuberance.
Finally one day, the fever broke. The knight managed to eat solid food. And though he was grateful, he refused to stay, for he had important business to attend to. Saddened and angered, the old witch stalked into the woods. When the knight strode outside, he was unable to find a path leading out of the clearing. His horse was gone. His armour lay against the hut, rusted through.
"Egad! How many days have I lain here?"
The witch appeared at his side. "Days, bold knight? Ha! Time knows not such boundaries in this place."
"Then you seek to imprison me here?"
A hurt look crossed her face. "Imprison? Nay. Enchant perhaps." She smiled coyly and sidled up to him, holding his gaze. His eyes lost focus, and he suddenly saw her as a beautiful maiden. She grasped his hand and led him inside. Heart aflutter, he let her push him onto the bed. She peeled of her dress and straddled the knight. He stared up at her, utterly lovestruck, as she pulled aside his tunic and eased onto him. Knowing the spell would soon break, she rocked furiously until he could contain himself no more and burst with a soft cry.
She pulled a dagger from the pillow, thrust it into his throat, and dismounted. With a sad sigh, she built up the fire and prepared the spit.

The End.

Oh man. Long day at the office. Sometimes I think I've learned just about all I can get out of this internship. Usually I'm just sitting around cruising the net looking for climbing news. Staring at the same old websites day after day can wear on a fellow. On days where nothing happens, I'm bored. To tears.
I wish I could edit more features, but with an issue about to head to publication, there's really not much for me to do. Speaking of the issue, this is the one with my article. Accident Report. The issue should be out in a week or two--but who really knows what goes on here?
It looks like I'm not going to have as many articles in the actual magazine as I'd hoped. Most of my work is just online news. Ho hum. At least I've had a lot of time to read out here. I've ticked more than nine books since I arrived.
I'm working on cleaning up a new route at the crag. Once I get all the dirt and plants out of the crack, I'll get to climb it and name it! Then I'll be in the guidebook as First Ascent. Oh yeah.
Last night I watched No Country for Old Men. That is a hell of a movie. So intense. The acting of the killer is phenomenal! I watched it before bed and had a slew of bad dreams. That's what I call a great flick.
Thanks, Sam, for your comments. You make me feel loved.

Today is a beautiful day. Above the cloud cover is an expansive azure sky, reaching down and around to embrace the world. I'm leaving the office in an hour to head outside to do some landscaping.

Sometime this week, I'll be heading up to the crag to work on cleaning the new route I'm developing. I have to dig out all the dirt from the crack and clean away the lichen before the line is ready to roll. I'll have my name in the guidebook as the First Ascentionist! And I get to name the route.

I've started writing for this online magazine at www.suite101.com. Go ahead and check it out. Just plug my name in the search. Also, I'd love any suggestions for articles. No one is making use of the comments section of this blog--makes me feel lonely. Is anybody out there??

Next post (barring some big news) will be about sex. Maybe that'll catch your interests.

This morning I got to move some trees around with the Machine. Big and burly as it is, it didn't come close to filling this empty space, but tons of fun nonetheless. I really hate feeling sorry for myself. What a drag. Landscaping is a welcome distraction, but there really is no escape.
Four hours at the office seemed like forever. Time is really a fickle master. Don't like doing research unless I'm really interested in the subject. At least I'll have a good byline though.

Holy hell, how could I forget? Something momentous happened yesterday while at work landscaping. I got to drive a Caterpillar track loader! Sweet-tooth Jesus was it amazing. Talk about a piece of machinery built from necessity and testosterone!
You sit in the seat and grasp the handles. Buckle in. Like mounting some kind of futuristic war machine. Ease the throttle forward. Disengage the safety features. Feet operate the pneumatics; hands forward moves forward; hands backward moves backward; one hand forward, one hand backward turns. A throaty rumble accompanies every primitive jerking movement. Steep hills and loose dirt bow before your might. I felt like I could drive the thing all day. You've got to try one!

Last night I had a dream that I was on El Capitán. The scenery wasn't remotely similar to the real El Cap, but my mind knew it was. I started up top in some kind of cave. More like a clubhouse for the Valley dirtbags. At some point, I lowered down and climbed the top 50 feet or so. Also someone started tossing a rugby ball around. Keep in mind, El Cap is 3000 feet high. All in all, it seemed rather dangerous, though not remotely realistic.

It's late. Well, not late at all, really, but late considering I'm waking up hellishly early tomorrow to earn $96. It might be a mistake to read On The Road at such a late hour because of the odd frenzied pace. I got the original scroll version which has no breaks--paragraph, chapter, or otherwise--and I think the effect is similar to some sort of benzedrine. So anyway, I think I'll just tell a story to amuse myself and perhaps lull myself into some kind of soon-to-be-not-enough sleep.

Once upon a time, there was a man who became addicted to yawning. He'd worked so hard his entire life, that he never had enough time to sleep. And so he yawned. He yawned and yawned and yawned. While he was working, he yawned. Before he ate and after he ate, he yawned. Eventually, his wife had to stop looking at him because he yawned so much. Every time she looked at him, he yawned, and she--of course--couldn't help but yawn right back. And so it went.
Though tired, yawning helped him get through long days of work. He'd gotten so good at it, in fact, that he was able to fall asleep for the brief second his eyes closed to make room for his expanding jaws. That one instant of rest enabled him to work again for a few minutes until his next yawn.
His boss and his coworkers often wondered why they felt so sleepy at work, though they'd gotten good nights' rests. One afternoon, his boss walked over as the man was mid-yawn, and asked him to finish a project that a recently-resigned coworker had left undone. As he instructed the man, who'd just finished a yawn, the boss felt his ears pop and was unable to resist a cheek-straining, jaw-stretching yawn.
Damn, he though, must get more sleep. He left the man to his project and returned to his boss office, stifling another yawn.
The man worked on the project, stopping every so often to catch a quick wide-mouth snooze.
As time went on, his jaw muscles strengthened and grew thicker. His yawns became wider and more efficient, pulling him into a deeper rest each time. His eyes were constantly red and watery from the strain.
Some time later, he arrived home, greeted by a note from his wife:
Dear yaa-aah-ahhh-aaawwn, it said,
I've gone to stay with my mother. I think I've become infected
by your yaa-aah-aawn constant yawning. It's become such a
problem that I must escape and figure out how to yaa-aaaawwwwn
get more sleep.
The man, of course, yawned several times during the reading of this letter. It didn't mean much to him: because of his continuous mouth-stretching, he hadn't much time or energy to devote to more mundane matters. He went about his chores, doing what he did best, and yawned himself into bed.
A few hours later, he woke up for work. Tying his tie, he yawned so wide, his mouth became stuck open. He couldn't see and he couldn't hear. Knot forgotten, he felt his way to the phone and dialed 9-1-1.
"Emergency operator," came the curt reply.
"Ah yahh haaww. Haaww!"
"Sir, I cannot understand you."
"Haaww. Ah yahh haaww!"
"Sir, where are you? Do you need help?"
"Yaaahh, yaaaahh"
"If this is a prank call, you'll be in trouble, sir."
Exasperated, he slammed the phone into its cradle. Still nearly blinded by his upraised cheeks and almost deafened by his down-turned jawbones, he stumbled out the door.
He hasn't been heard from or seen since. He's probably still yawning to this very day.

The moral of the story, if you missed it, is: get sufficient sleep. Or else you're doomed to wander in dark silence forever. While yawning. Which is a very cumbersome word to write over and over and over. And if you didn't yawn while reading this story, it means either you were sufficiently rested or sufficiently rapt in the intensity of the plot. Either way, I commend you. YAAAAWWWWWWWWWN. Bedtime.

I was in the gym today, doing my part to cut some of the fat from this overweight country when I heard an odd scraping noise over the volume of my headphones. I looked over to ascertain the source of the sound. To my surprise, it was an old man hobbling slowly into the weight room, leaning heavily on his walker. A quick double take assured me I wasn't mistaken. Surely this chap was lost.
However, he sat down and started working his wrinkly biceps, nearly-useless legs dangling beneath him like the empty scrotum of a gelding.
My workout ended, I didn't hang around to see the rest. But I'm baffled, unsure whether to be proud of the fellow or dismayed that he'd neglected his legs in favor of beach biceps. I'll have to get back to you on that one.

My lengthy experience with the unforgiving, uncompromising, unaccommodating, unfailing, unmanning, unflinching, uniform court system has, I think, made me a more forgiving, compassionate person. This is deeply, deeply troubling, because that means the System has succeeded, though in a rather roundabout way.
I'm much more likely, now that I've faced the unwavering Machine, to recognize the individuality of the transgressor, and see that, in a similar circumstance, I might proceed the same way. The very nature (as we have built it) of the Beast does not permit it to take individuality into account. The System is all-encompassing, all-sweeping, all-binding, all-powerful, and we have made it that way. Laws do not treat people as people. Laws treat people as units or cogs in the vast Combine of civilized society. Operated and oiled by a relatively tiny plutocracy, the rest of the flock becomes as un-unique as any sheep in an enormous flock. The sheep knows he is One, but when viewed from above, he's no more than a wool-producing, self-warming blob, just like all the rest.
Laws, so convoluted throughout an entire history of overlapping and overlapping, adding and adding--never taking away, just adding more to countermand--have stripped the majority of people of their rights as individuals. Ironically, our uniquely identifying fingerprints are gobbled up and stored in the blind memory of the Machine.
Sadly, there is no way to fight the System. You can't outsmart omnipotence. All one can do to try to scrape away the wool that they've encouraged us to hide behind is to understand the looming presence of that which we've eagerly helped to build. All one can do is try to avoid capture in the cold, impersonal, mechanized grip of the Combine. And to do that, one must blend into the surrounding foliage and hope the law enforcers--the power-corrupted, trigger-happy, duped minions--don't peer with squinty, dead-serious eyes into your hiding place. Because they will get you. The Indian never wins. The revolutionary always succumbs to the sucking strength of power and becomes the Pig.

It was a rainy day in Scotland. William burst in the door of his cabin with a sheep under his arm.
"What are you doing?" his wife asked.
"I want to introduce you to the pig I'm fucking," Willy said.
"Willy, you're drunk. That's a sheep!"
"Woman, I was talking to the sheep."

Here from a king's mountain view
Here from the wild dream come true
Feast like a sultan, I do
On treasures and flesh never few

But I would
Wish it all away
If I thought I'd lose you
Just one day

The devil and his had me down
In love with the dark side I'd found
Dabblin' all the way down
Up to my neck, soon to drown.

But you changed that all for me
Lifted me up, turned me round

So I
I would wish this all away

Prayed like a martyr dusk to dawn
Begged like a hooker all night long
Tempted the devil with my song
And got what I wanted all along

But I
I would if I could
I would
Wish it away
Wish it all away

No prize that could
Hold sway
Or justify my giving away
My center

So if I could
I'd wish it all away
If I thought tomorrow
Would take you away.

You, my piece of mind, my all, my center,
just trying to hold on one more day.

Damn my eyes!

Damn my eyes!
If they should compromise the fulcrum:
If wants and needs divide me
Then I might as well be gone.

Shine on forever
Shine on benevolent sun
Shine down upon the broken
Shine until the two become one

Shine on forever
Shine on benevolent sun
Shine down upon the severed
Shine until the two become one

Divided, I'll wither away

Shine down upon the many.
Light our way, benevolent sun.

Breathe in union

So, as one, survive
Another day and season
Silence, legion. Save your poison.
Silence, legion. Stay out of my way.

--Maynard James Keenan

http://youtube.com/watch?v=b-9w7GBcd00

I have a serious need to vent. Everyone out here is so Zen and peaceful, but oftentimes, you can see some pent-up exasperation and anger. Bottled up and disallowed escape.
You can't help it; you're human.
I think, despite all forms of meditation and calming and all that junk, that people need an outlet. A punching bag. A shooting range. A piece of gadgetry to smash. A down pillow. Whatever it be, people need some token violence. It's much worse to pen up anger under the guise of calm. We come from such violent roots--by way of survival--that it's inescapable. Of course, there are those few individuals who are really capable of separating themselves from the chaos of the world. Certain Buddhist monks. Gandhi. Jesus. People in comas. Those of us who can't achieve that enlightenment need something to hit once in a while. And I'm sorely lacking right now.
I'd almost be willing to buy a new Xerox machine for the office just so I could take this perfectly good one out back and treat it to a baseball-bat facelift. Goddamn, can you imagine? Little bits and pieces flying all over the place, ricocheting off your forehead, making such a satisfying sound! The leverage of the bat just bringing destruction like something sent from hell to do god's dirty work. Vicious vibrations with every blow until your hands go numb, and your shoulders ache. Tendons and veins stand out like ropes as you grip tighter, swing faster, hit harder, rage deeper; until anger you didn't even know you had bubbles up to the surface to get its hit on. Fuck you! your mind screams, as your breath becomes ragged, and sweat breaks out at your hairline. Die, worthless lump! Channel, focus, aim all aggression at this one inanimate damnit-doll, this whipping boy, this piece-of-shit technological target that didn't actually do anything to deserve this terrible treatment. Or did it?
Just abandon all reason and give in to that wonderful, instinctive animal ferocity. Let the adrenaline take hold and bellow its unholy mantra of havoc. Faster, faster, faster! Grit your teeth, flare your nostrils, narrow your eyes. Give in; let go; have at it! Growl and howl with each downward arc. Never; never; never stop! Plastic, metal, glass cringes before your might. Again. Again. Again. Again. Shred, stomp, snarl and roar.
And Oh, but it feels good! The mess you've made, the energy expended. Muscles throb, and pulse pounds...
Something suddenly makes you stop swinging. A smile. And perhaps you chuckle a little. Giggle some more. Bark with laughter. Double over, helplessly gasping for breath, ribs aching, stomach tight. Exhausted.
And no longer angry.