take a deep breath and count to ten

A Top Ten of Lyrical References to Anger

10. Anger got bare knuckles / Anger play the fool / Anger wear a crown of thorns / Reverse the golden rule -- Kid Gloves, Rush

9. Scissors cutting out your anger -- Shallow, Porcupine Tree

8. Human bodies soon will know our anger --
The Return of the Giant Hogweed, Genesis

7. And then, in a fit of anger, I pounced, and I pounced again -- Nanook Rubs It, Frank Zappa

6. Hot colour melting the anger to stone --
Long Distance Runaround, Yes

5. Your pain and anger is in the howling dark of every corridor I walk -- The Last of You, Marillion

4. Anger is a gift -- Freedom, Rage Against the Machine

3. Anger, he smiles / Towering in shiny metallic purple armor --
Bold as Love, Jimi Hendrix

2. Anger and coffee, feeling mean -- Black Coffee, Black Flag

And in the top slot, from the vitriolic sneer of Mr. John Lydon:

1. Anger is an energy -- Rise, Public Image Ltd.

i am what i hate

The Shadow Knows

I'm beginning to see myself as others see me, and I'm seeing aspects of myself that I've denied for years. I can be petty, moody, vindictive, stubborn, and narrow-minded; I can be a real jackass. Yet I merrily scorn other people for exhibiting these very same traits.

I am what I hate. When I encounter bags of garbage wrapped in flesh, I recognize their putrid stench much like a dog sniffing his own behind. Their flaws are my flaws, their sins my sins. I merely magnify their shortcomings to deny my own.

For years I have struggled to find the right way to express anger. I have always linked being assertive with being aggressive. Being assertive felt like being a bully or a spoiled child--it made me feel ashamed. So I became a pleaser and a compromiser instead, wanting everyone to be happy always and to like me always.

So how does a pleaser express anger then? For me, there are two ways: passive-aggressive comments, and full-blown fits of rage. The passive-aggressive crap doesn't worry me that much. I'm learning to recognize when I'm about to start some serious trash-talking, and I'm trying to keep it to a minimum (if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all--does that make Marcel Marceau the angriest man alive? but I digress).

However, the occasional rage-fueled shitstorm is still a problem. I joke that I have anger-induced Tourette's Syndrome. When I'm furious, I cannot control my mouth, and every other word is MFer (something I never realized until it was pointed out to me by bemused friends). A few years ago these fits went beyond mega-cursing straight into kicking trashcans over and physically shaking with rage. At my worst, I picked up someone's chair and crashed it down onto a nearby desk. Scary.

I haven't kicked a trashcan in quite a while--yay for me. But I still get to the point now and then where I'm so angry that I feel ill. So how do I get beyond this irrational behavior? I decided to embrace the random last week and visited an interactive I Ching website. The question I asked was "how can I avoid stress at work?" The answer was "Fellowship."

Now I have never been good at sharing my negative feelings with others. I preferred to keep it all bottled up inside rather than burden others (again, the pleaser). But the flip side is that I'm a great listener. People seem to feel very comfortable with me and thus tell me very personal things, even if we've only known each other for a few minutes. I'm the proverbial shoulder to cry on, and that's fine--I haven't rusted yet.

So if listening to others' problems doesn't bother me, shouldn't it follow that listening to my problems won't bother them? If I'm happy to help an angry friend talk his feelings out, that happiness will be reciprocal, right? Right--yet stubborn, bull-headed me never really saw it that way, instead preferring to build walls around my anger, alienating those who care for me.

This isn't going to be easy. I recently told a friend that I would sooner drop my pants in public than talk about myself, and I wasn't kidding. The naked body holds little terror for me--the naked soul is another matter entirely.

I am what I hate. But I am also what I love, and that may just make the difference.

photoshop phun

This is what I'd look like if I were in the film Begotten.

counting on one hand

My Top Five Songs about Masturbation:

5. Cyndi Lauper -- She-Bop
4. Chuck Berry -- My Ding-a-Ling
3. The Vapors -- Turning Japanese
2. A Perfect Circle -- Thinking of You

And at the top, a cryptic ditty about self-pleasure during Leap Year:

1. Robert Plant -- 29 Palms

names for bands

I used to think that most band names in the 80s & 90s were incredibly pathetic, and I was right. However, those names seem downright brilliant compared to the no-imagination, formulaic put-two-unrelated-words-and-a-number-together band names of today.

So with acknowledgement to Jello Biafra, here is my first installment of Names For Bands. Feel free to use them as you see fit. Go so far as to force a local band to adopt one of these names, in a sort of cultural-eminent-domain kind of way. Thank you.

--Roast Locust
--Backseat Genius
--Token Slovak
--The Tungsten Trio
--Klaus Barbie Doll
--Whippet God
--Gene's Wig
--21-Son Galoot
--Private Hat Dance
--Billy Milligram
--Beer Commercial Logic
--Advice Grip
--Fig Neutron
--Falco for a Day
--The Mutant Stare
--Jolly Rauncher
--Thrustpuppy
--What We Lack
--Celebrity Half-Life
--Hometown Grudge

More to come...

standing on the verge of a format

So I started this blog and promptly came down with a virulent dose of Writer's Block. Go figure.

However, this case of WB seems to be clearing up, finally.

Watch this space...

ssssshhhhhhhhh

You're listening to the Marcel Marceau Radio Network--
all day, all night, all mime.