I intended to finish this, but the weather changed. In a matter of minutes, steel wool filled the sky. Now it's cold. Spring is having a hard time establishing a beachhead this year. No tears shed here: Spring was invented to mock me. Rebirth, renewal, reinvigoration. Ha. How soon we forget what follows. Is nobody paying attention?

It was cold this morning. Some of us had a warm place to be. Some of us didn't. Doesn't make them not us.

The story here is that my pal Wayne, who had his name legally changed to Harry, if you can believe that, found this picture in the trash and saved it from certain destruction some 20 years ago. Uh-huh. I guess a freak gust of wind just whisked it right out of my portfolio and into the wastebasket, where Wayne was lucky enough to find it. He disappeared the next day, coincidentally, and turned up in Atlanta years later with guess what hanging on his wall. The thing is, I would have given him the painting if he had just asked. Well, no, I wouldn't have, but still. When I expressed my disapproval, as would anyone, on a recent visit, he sent me a none too subtle message by taking me to a cemetery and showing me a plaque with my name on it. So I clammed up, cause I knew what was good for me.

Late last night I peeled my eyeballs from my monitor and staggered into the bathroom, and on the bookshelf was a vase with a beautiful red-orange flower bursting from it. And I thought: someone has surprised me and snuck into my apartment and left me a wonderful gift. And I thought, I sure hope it wasn't a maniac of some kind, in fact I'd just as soon it not have been a male at all, and I sure hope whoever it was they didn't stick around, like in my closet or whatnot. Despite those worries, I was reluctant to rub my eyes and focus into a realization of what it really was, because even for a maniac it would have been a nice gesture and maybe a small step on the path toward rehabilitation. I did focus soon enough, though, and of course it was a bottle of spray cleaner employing the recently-discovered power of oranges as a cleaning agent. Who knew?

Just playing with new watercolors.

Is a dead leaf prettier than a dead spoon? Why?

Of course, it's deceased only to our limited eyes. No, I'm not going to get all philosphophical today. fuckit. It's just a leaf. No need to think too hard or strain my mental eyebells, it's only Monday.

This here's the Disney Wonder, and it's here in drydock to get all the mouse poop scraped out of its smokestacks. But mice aren't my concern. I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that there are pirates lurking on board somewhere. You know, Disney? Captain Hook? Hello? I can't believe how blasé everyone is about this. I mean, sure, they've probbly got those big pirate-guard disks on the ropey things that hold the boart still, but let me clue you in on HEY I wrote "boart", didn't I. Like when you're talking to somebody and a burp comes up and distorts whatever word you're saying, and if it's a girl you're talking to, they're like "ew" but if it's a guy he's like "kewl". So, kewl. Anyway. Okay. Regroup, Sparks. Oh yeah, let me clue you in on a little something. Just because they're missing teeth and eyes and legs doesn't mean pirates are stupid. You have to be pret-ty damn smart to train a parrot to sit on your shoulder and say interesting things. So I'm just sayin'. I forget what I'm sayin', but I'm sayin'.

Oh, hey, did you know they're having a festival in my honor at the Chesapeake Bay Academy? It's called "Sparky: A Creative Arts Festival" and I'm kinda speechless. Cause I had no idea this was in the works.If I had known this was in the works, I would have tried to clean up my act a bit, and not insulted that English guy, although on the other hand that was kind of fun, so maybe I would have anyway. And the people who thought up that honor probably wouldn't have noticed because like all Merkins, they're too busy putting up flags all over the place. When they could be traveling to foreign countries to stomp the shit out of innocent sports fans, because they're like all weepy cause they lost some silly game--what is it they play, badminton? Oh yeah, soccer, where they run around kicking a little ball around and the score always ends up one-nil, and if you're on the nil end, you get to riot. Which is where "nihilism" comes from, if I'm not mistaken.

You know, if you read this blog carefully enough, you can get an idea what kind of brother I was growing up. Just insufferable. Right, Gack, Ly3n & Robbit?