Sorry for the title, it’s unworthy of HST this week, albeit accurate to my emotional state.

I’m at least plowing through some mental and/or housekeeping shit in order to embark on my great adventure.

I just got off the phone with VW service, where I’ll drop a couple of bucks to get a complete tune-up and all my fluids topped (I love that visual; I could use my own fluids topped on a regular basis.) I also joined AAA, which is incredibly belts and suspenders, since my VW came with some roadside assistance. But, I also ordered one of their famous “Triptiks,” for America’s highways.

Made sure to tell them I wanna see Santa Fe, NM and Arizona and the Grand Canyon. By the way, if anyone I know who lived in Santa Fe has recommendations on sights, sounds and food, I’m all ears. (Though, I won’t be picking fungus off cow patties no matter how good you say that shit is.)

I’m also trying to figure out what I’m doing performance-wise in the next couple weeks (or less, gulp). Nothing like the perversity of comedy karma to kick in the minute you plan on leaving.

I got two unexpected invites for shows this week, which almost never happens. One of them was even from someone whose email I didn’t have, so I couldn’t invite her to my various exiting galas, and she said she had to ask around to get mine for the show. I ain’t never been so popular as when I announced I was out of here.

Other than that, my mantra is “Think Different.” Among my Silicon Valley relocation fantasies would be to work over at Steve Jobs “house.” Although, I gotta say every time I think of the “think different” slogan, it grates a bit. Even though I realize that the phrase can be read two ways, my ear waits for the “-ly” to correctly form an adverbial phrase. Yeah, I’m an annoying grammar douche.

Meanwhile, Apple is running this picture series on their website:

Seeing the series together like that, I may have to work toward completing my set, which doesn’t go all the way to the right, yet.

So last night I successfully upgraded this part of the website to WordPress 1.5. Then, while playing with the changed features and trying to make my site look like it used to, I broke it several times.

So far, it seems pretty cool. I checked it across browsers and with PC and Mac and so far so good.

Other than that, I’m continuing to hyperventilate that I won’t get all of my shit together. My emotional response whenever I feel overwhelmed is almost complete and total inaction. I sit and do nothing and curse my lazy, fat ass.

Now that I’ve told everyone I know I’m going, though, I guess I’ll just have to get my shit together.

For now, I’ll hold in my head the image of my mother not killing my sister over one of her many moves. Since adulthood, my sister has had the most wanderlust of anyone in the family, relocating at various times to several different states and jobs and adventures. After helping with packing or moving or whatnot one time too many, my mother decided to pony up the change for professionals to grunt through the heavy lifting.

Nonetheless, there were last minute details and goodbyes, so Pat and I hauled up to NH to help out. We arrived to find a whole lot of stuff left unpacked, my sister hovering over various piles and a group of men waiting to lug boxes to their truck. In the end, accompanied by a dense and constant harangue from Pat (which, thankfully, I am spared) and, I’m sure, more than a few expletives on my part, the stuff got out of her condo and on the road.

If order was eventually made from that chaos, there is a pinhole light of hope for me.

This post is hella boring. I upgraded some shit on the software running this here weblog, and I’m trying to make it mostly look the same and work the same.

Not sure if I got it yet.

Hard to mourn a 67 year old man who lived and then died on his own freaking terms like no other.

I do mourn one crazy, rather uncompromising, deeply non-conforming voice no longer tossing some much-needed outrage out there.

For me, he was sneak reads of my older brothers’ books and envy when my middle brother brought the one closest in age to me on an outing to hear Hunter S. Thompson lecture at Salem State College. I was too young and way too unhip to hear his rambles, cocktails, cigarettes and couch on stage.

In my deepest fantasies, these pages are a nod to his gonzo style, when I try to go deep and go crazy and speak honestly. Funny that tonight I had dinner and worked on a couple of comedy sketches related to my own fuck you choice, defending my writing as something other than evidence of violent psychoses.

(Man, I was re-reading some of the most outrageous shit I wrote about the daily work grind. Some of that shit was fucking funny. Like this line:

If you’re sitting in a meeting and you can’t decide whether to stab yourself in order to get out of the room or stab whoever is inanely nattering just to make the noise stop, it’s a bad meeting.

I almost regret the unemployment, since not visiting such an asylum as that gig on a daily basis means less fuel for my funniest righteous indignation.)

But, back to Dr. Thompson. In ESPN’s obit they had the following quote from an AP interview in 2003:

Fiction is based on reality unless you’re a fairy-tale artist. You have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you’re writing about before you alter it.

That pretty much sums up a lot of things for me, including why I’ve arrived so late at the comedy/writing table. It also relates to why my eyes roll back and I feel painful pressure from exploding veins in my gray matter everytime I listen to the “insights” and wordplay of the countless, banal 20-somethings littering the comedy-club landscape. In my fairy tale, the kids would be getting laid, drunk, fucked up, broken, hurt body, soul and heart, and dragging themselves back up again. You know, living.

I worked on a website, I talked on the phone, I scrubbed my, I hope to sell, couch (why the fuck did I ever think I could own white furniture?), but I haven’t packed as much as I should have by now. (Although, I have packed most of my dishes. Then, I broke the small plate I had set aside as my single cup, plate, saucer place-setting meant to hold me for the next couple of weeks.)

I also sent out a massive email inviting people to any of my final festivities. It’s pretty un-fucking-characteristic of me to contact ~80 people at once. My insecure nature tells me that about 0.01 % of that number would actually opt to hang with me. Probably not true, but, alas, my natural thought.

So, yeah, to review: Feb 24, Braintree Show; March 2, I continue to age; March 3, M. continues to age; March 3, My last Cambridge show; March 4, My party for myself (I don’t think I have ever had one of those) and I HOPE, HOPE, HOPE, I am behind the wheel on March 6.

If you have been trying to read this shit and have been having problems, please let me know. I’m aiming to punch my hosting service. My email has been slightly whacked and pages haven’t been loading. Now yesterday/today my statistics indicate no visitors, but comments (including SPAM) say otherwise.

GRRR. Fucking technology.

Man, I fucking hope I wake up tomorrow alive and kicking.

I was just trying to clean up some of the dirtier corners of a white couch with some kind of upholstery whitener and brightener. The jug the shit came in mentioned goggles and gloves prominently, but it said nothing about the need for a gas mask.

It’s about 2:30 a.m., a briskly cold, New England in February, as in below freezing, kind of night, and I’m standing on the back porch wheezing and trying to get something good inside my lungs. Whatever I’ve been breathing, all I feel is the pervasive smell (despite a wide open room with a door to the outside opened).

Maybe this poisoning is a close kin to the fabled, dental poisoning of 2004.

To ward off death by asphyxiation, I’ve left the ventilation fan running in the bathroom, and I’m sleeping with a bedroom window open. I just ain’t ready to go yet.

Dropped the boyo at the airport, talked on the phone with a friend and took off to the only comedy show I’ve been making time for with all of the shit I gotta do yet.

Now, I’m home, and there is no life or sound here at all. Probably shouldn’t have killed that wee, teenie mousie back at the beginning of the winter. Then, at least, a creature might be stirring.

Even my upstairs neighbor who I can usually hear a bit when I stay up too late and he’s getting up too early (by my thinking) is away.

Yikes. Got that old kozmik, empty bed, woman left lonely Janis-y blues thing going on. Except, if I don’t go missing somewhere on the mean streets of x-country driving, it should be short-lived.

In a convention center full of stress-ball-frisbee-penguin giveaways (and goddamn goofy looking pirate hats), the subtlest and most wasted on the nerd crowd is from a Romanian company.

BitDefender, an antivirus software company, is giving away small boxes with their logo and advice to “secure your every bit.” Inside the box is a condom and a set of instructions.

The pullout information/instruction sheet for the condom is a well-written goof on their computer virus security product, indicating stuff like the BitDefender prophylactic is licensed for only one installation and for use on only one “terminal” at a time. As a extension of the virus metaphor it’s well executed (not surprising it’s not a U.S. company).

Further, on close examination of the fine print, I discovered that the condom was made in Malaysia (much like a certain man I know). At my surprise and amusement over this fact, I was informed that in fact most condoms come from Malaysia, the world’s largest exporter of rubber and latex.

You’re never too old to learn.

Turns out the boy’s visit is going rather nicely. (Well for me anyway. He’s been having some work headaches, but luckily nothing that’s run past about 5 p.m.)

If this is what life will be like when we’re together in Cali, life shouldn’t be bad at all. My only complaint is one of us should have the grown-up instinct to go to bed at a grown-up time, so the mornings wouldn’t hurt so much. Together, we’re not real “hey kids, time for bed,” kind of people. Maybe I should reconsider having a TV in the boudoir?

In the midst of his visit, I had my own little happy, proud moment. In the baby steps patheticness of my trying to be more writerly, I finally entered a writing contest in time for the deadline. 450 shitty words by me.

At least I did it. The funniest thing is I set out to write a humor piece, but because of a series of unrelated things bubbling in my skull pan it came out all poignant and boo hoo fucking hoo. I think the 450 word limit kept me from veering too far into sappy, maudlin territory, though.

It’s the kind of thing coming out of my brain that keeps me from committing 100 percent to the comedy thang. Life ain’t all jokey jokey fun time.

And, from the floor of LinuxWorld, here’s what I can report: White, soft, squishy-looking, soft boys of all heights and hirsutisms. Except for the sprinkling of Indians.

I did have my uber-nerd moment, which makes me consider that in a past life I must have been all pimply and re-enacting scifi adventures in my basement with my loser geek friends, completely unaware of anything below my waist or in the quote-unquote real world, since 12-sided dice don’t factor in there. While walking across the exhibitors hall, chock full of colorful booths giving away toys and pens and keychains and software samples, I spotted a guy with a stress ball in each hand, a furrowed brow and the clear look of awkward concentration that is sign of someone trying to teach himself to juggle.

I stopped and gave him a few tips on slowing down his throws so it wouldn’t feel so rushed, and I gave him a quick demo of a slowed down three-ball cascade that was an achievable goal in learning to juggle. In response, he gave me the three stress balls we were using.

There may not possibly be a sight quite so nerdy (or sad) as the completely unsexy act of juggling at a computer convention.

Thanks to A/X at Copley Place, I was able to redeem my spastically unhip pre-birthday present.

This time, there’s black leather in a lean-looking, upscale biker style. Phew.

It was so easy finding a good replacement jacket, I’ll at least stand by my decision to buy a placeholder jacket that was fully returnable.

What a fucking awesome day, too. It was about 50 degrees and I walked around the Back Bay running errands (like returning the bad jacket) and meeting up with M. at LinuxWorld. As I walked around (listening to mostly Cowboy Junkies on my new iPod Shuffle) I couldn’t help but think about how I won’t be strolling through Boston again real soon.

Yesterday, I paid a deposit for some cross-country moving action. Unfucking real, but soon I’ll be in my car starting up a new thang.