well good morning ya bunch o' motherfuckers!!!! and whorella rises at 2:47 am today. my entire body hurts from doing enormous amounts of yard work. cutting down more trees. moving cinderbricks. planting stargazer lilies, honeysuckle and lilacs and some phlox. the wind is so warm for so early i stood in the yard while the street sleeps and feel ... almost safe i stood feeling almost safe is that better? but the sky the wind the quiet the streetlights wow ... wow ... i'm ... feeling all golden aw man ... okay listen. this time right now ... is like ... i feel like i'm in the most important time of my whole life. i guess i always feel that way but this time i feel like i have just one adjustment to make and it all falls into place. like ... this time is so important but not hard ... so it feels very different. it's like a furlough. i don't know. i just feel ... like god's smiling at me right now. as much as i hate god, i can't help but smile back or ... like 'now that my belly's full, i expect to get some something done' thing. i don't know ... i feel like the angels oh shit no did i say angels. jesus no. stop. i just can't describe ... this peace because it's so exciting and everything's beautiful. i have a state of material comfort that is unsurpassed. never imagined even. and i still rent! but these times right now ... writing this book ... god i can't describe it my son is 18 and just got this insurance money so he can afford to move out and he will be. i really don't want him to go and he knows that. i really will miss him because it's just nice to have him around. but lolo is here every night now and her mom and the other girl aren't friends anymore and CYS came to take the heroin baby back and it's all a nightmare. but lolo's here and i drive her to school every morning and that's actually pretty fun. she's pretty funny but is sometimes wretched. anyway ... dennis miller's sister ... kim ... her phone call ... did something weird to me. those were really great times. i just think it was amazing that she called and thanked me for the best summer of her life. the best summer. it's like ... one of the best compliments i've ever gotten. i mean. wow. wow. so that all inspired me to get going on those chapters. when she and i were friends. her boyfriend, after they break-up, well he ended up ... raping me actually but that summer he was this big biker dude, totally fucking beautiful yinzer dude with this big old chevy you could hear for miles. i knew it was time to go when we heard his car. but wow the joys of young yinzers with cars and jobs. i feel so very grateful is all. that i got such a great story. it makes it all ... not seem so random. and i've been thinking about it and writing this book and my god. my god. i am so grateful for the music of my life. it was her getting a CD burner and downloading tunes of the net, that made her call. and my god that was a half-life ago and just ... wow. but i just want to say that i am so very grateful to have a little peace in my life. even a lot. i never dreamed i'd have such a great stereo. or how weird it is to be driving in my own fucking car. and it's brand new. with two huge hello kitty car seat covers. the whole seat looks like hello kitty's head. and they match the car. got 'em on ebay. and yeah sure sure oh man ... i got a new remote control for the denon unit that will let me send test tones and set the "large" or "small" quality of each of the 6 speakers. and i'll use that remote to program this other one i got that will control everything exactly like i want. you can hook it up to a computer. i think it's so funny. madge is totally impressed. i'm making all my CDs from albums. you can't copy all CDs and i can't afford that. i can get a record for a buck. i am going on a tune-making binge this weekend. and i'm going for all the tunes kim talked about. all the tunes from the parts of my life in the book. then, to return her gift of thanking me for the summer of '77, i will give her tunes. she didn't even remember that we loved the sanford-townsend. forgot about segar. so ... yeah ... and kansas. all i am and all that i was ever meant to be in harmony shining through aw man. i can't wait to get these CDs made. the records are in pristine condition. i should get a new stylus for the turntable. it's a nice one. and yeah ... yeah. from records. and neal young. CSN&Y ... buffalo springfield ... we had so many records. my brother turned us on to lots of tunes, too. aw man. me so lucky. i mean i went through a pop phase when i was 12, 13, 14. but i started getting high at age 12. and that meant hanging out with older people and that meant new tunes. me and kim miller went to see stanley clark with al dimiola and was it jean luc ponty? ... no another guitarist ... chick corea well we'd be there one night and at a bob seger concert and then charley daniels we got to listen to it all. and the music just had such a great feeling about it. take the highway ... i mean ... so okay. i don't know. hi. but i guess writing the book does put the past in order somehow. and kim calling ... makes me so happy just to be able to tell the story of our times. just to know that meant so much to her makes it suddenly mean so much to me. it's so beautiful. i am so *touched* and it's really amazing. how poor we were. how our families fought. and the millers were a rowdy bunch. but we were so happy that summer. well i mean ... she had a boyfriend and was all in love so it was a little different. i had a boyfriend i guess. well this guy i saw almost every night. i know i told you about him. his mother had an affair with a black man up the street. they were both married but so in love and they killed themselves! in a parked car. so that fucked this kid up. so they send him to the army oh gosh i just remembered his face. yeah so he wasn't right ... and he lived just blocks from here now. weird. but yeah we'd fall asleep at his house and then wake up at the crack of dawn and get in the car and smoke bell airs and head home to get ready for work. it was fucking great. we always had endless amounts of shit to talk about. and it was all funny and exciting. aw man. and danny ... well trying to figure his shit out ... forget it. so yeah ... he wasn't right ... i wasn't either. i thought oral sex was kinky and wouldn't let him go down on me. a couple quaaludes cured me of that one night with a stranger. and those were the real deal. the rorer 714s. dang. never been the same. bastard anyway sorry. wow wow it makes me want to be back there me and kim miller smoking cigarettes and we drove around all over this place. where i live now. but we had lived way over in castle shannon. and here i am ... my apartment is so fucking nice. it's scary. i have every yard tool in the world. everything's organized. the grass is already amazing. there are tons and tons of tulips, huge ones, too. the roses had a mild winter so they have gone nuts and we will have millions. okay i still have student loans but ... things seem perfect. well not everything. i mean physically, i'm a wreck. but in one day, all my meds will be gone. then all the swelling will go down. i feel like i gained every pound back that i lost. i gained 20. easy. and it feels horrible. and then doing all this hard labor and struggling for breath. it blows. so okay ... you know i can't smoke bowls with madge when i can't breathe. and i can't do xanax again because that shit is too weird and i do respect drugs. i just ... no. no more of any of that shit. but i have ... an adjustment to make. i have to make all these CDs and get this wireless network installed and ... i have to put myself on a writing schedule. i need a chapter a week. and i need to say "okay this week is over, this chapter is over" and move on. i've been on the second chapter for too long. but i do go off into other parts of the book and spew. it all works out. but i'm still not focused on that book enough. i mean ... it's scary. my great american novel. so on one hand, if it doesn't perform as i'd like, then i can still write books and do computer work and have the life i have right now, which i truly love. but i will never be content in this life unless i'm in the public eye admitting what an ass i am so that other people can feel good about themselves. so i try not to think of that and just focus on the beauty of the story and how lucky i was for my friends and for everything that happened to me, even the brutal shit just because it is such a great fucking story. so i don't know. i feel like i'm in some kind of infancy that comes after some maturity that punches you into some other ... i don't know. but i feel so very blessed. aw the spring the yard the kids the swedish fish and pelligrino water oh yeah i eat fruit and drink 4 bottles of pelligrino water a day. but my belly is so big and round and it's truly heinous to feel so awkward and the pain ... i dug cinderbricks out of the dirt. moved tons of huge rocks. well i mean not huge boulders. but still. but wait until you see the honeysuckle growing up the trees or pick raspberries off the hill man this is my life. right in pittsburgh. just 5 minutes from the rivers. from downtown. station square. so i am so grateful to have been born in pittsburgh. adam duritz said there's nothing to do here but there's just no viper room and we consider that a selling point but ... it is so colorful in some bizarre way. i mean there's only a small goth world and like hardly any raves and not as many freaks as new york with weird ass hair and shit but being teenagers in the 70s and all that sweet but weak (thank god) acid and those tunes dear god dear god okay you suck but you have provided me with tunes ... and now the money for the best stereo i mean shit i never even dreamed of. my own subwoofer. wow ... i'm going to record CDs like mad. i got this incredible new remote control. it learns commands from your other remotes. i was going to kill someone by the time i was done but ... i'll get the RF unit and will be able to use it from the yard and shit!!!! and it will also run the new air conditioner i'm getting. leo gave me a bunch of his insurance money. and he's all proud of it. so ... i spent a ton of money just on bulbs for the yard. already started making planters for the porch. columbine and impatiens ... weird mixes of color. and the columbine will come back. i bought tons more perennials this year. but wow ... the whole front yard and porch is lined with tulips. it's some amazing shit. i have gerbera daisies to mix with fuscia for the window boxes. i mean ... i know to have money is a lot of why i'm happy. whew hew!! so yeah. i'm ... happy. i can have tons of tunes and me and kim miller, who had such uncertain starts, well look at us now. i have a home office. she's been married for 22 years. i mean i always still feel like a teenager impersonating an adult. like i'm the babysitter, not the mom. like 'wow look at us kids running the world' but wow wow wow coming off some blotter acid while the birds song mixes with your favorite music and the sun is coming up and you're glad. you're still glad. and yeah each day was another chance to have a blast and we always did and that runs through-out my life. even with me and madge ... well i was in the yard and leo was playing his tunes. the ozman cometh. now he's into ozzie. i'm digging away in the yard, cleaning debris and shit, and madge is like 'you're listening to ozzy' but it was leo. but it was weird. but he cut the grass so he got tune control. aw i love him so much. so to me this feels like the moment of my life. like ... this time of writing and remembering and understanding and thanking ... i just don't think publication can feel this good. even if i get shitloads of money for the book, how could anything feel so *good* as just remembering and be able to write about it in such a way as to honor it forever and i never want it to end. it's just the sunlight on newborn leaves. just being here. right here. and my son and madge and just ... aw i know this must sound boring. but just remembering what i've done, who i am ... wow. kim's call did a lot for me. well it makes the future look so happy. here i am ... 41 years old. writing a book. which is a huge project which spans years because in the meantime i have to have a job but i haven't been in work for a month. working from home thank god because it's so hard to breathe. but ... yeah so i have to do yard work. go to the grocery store and get all the electronics right around here. aw man ... but the morning walks. oh just here. the allies. the hills. the trees. the old brick houses and cobblestone streets. i just feel so lucky to have landed here. I LOVE PITTSBURGH WHEW HEW it's just that yesterday ... i had just done all this work and the weather was perfect and the grass had just been cut and i was thinking about what to plant where and listening to ozzy and seeing how happy leo is with his new tiny moto cell phone and i just got this feeling that i knew i was going to get everything i needed to do this book. that it was all happening right. that it was all right. it's just not something i feel often i guess. so okay well now i gotta go work on the thing but just have to spew. when you gotta go, you gotta blow me first ah ha ha sorry you know i don't mean that i mean most of you, i wouldn't even let you blow me. how's this for a gordon downie sig file: "i'm here to suck you all off tonight," gordon downie that's the first thing i heard him say in pittsburgh. how he opened his first show here that i saw. jesus fucking christ you canadians sure are friendly me and madge would go drink and talk to men like filthy whores, go on and on about giving head and shit and say we were from canada and everyone gives head up there aw man. man. SEE? you all call me crazy but i know when i'm old looking back, i'll have a smile. all wrinkly one, too. aw man do yinz watch the daily show with jon stewart? it's the funniest fucking thing i've ever seen. man. man. okay anyway. if i don't date, i can do anything. aw i want to see kim but me so scared. okay well shit gotta go thanks for reading. thanks for loving me, canada good morning, canamerica!