This Week: Fear 1, Me 0
Current Score: Me 33, Fear 16

I may have written about this one before, but it came up again on Friday of this past week. I was thinking of doing something, and held off because, if I did, I’d have to walk downstairs past people, and probably explain what I was doing before I did it. What I was going to do wouldn’t have been a problem for the people at all, so there was no problem there. Explaining myself, though, even though it was just making conversation? That would’ve been a huge, ugly pain in the ass in my rat’s nest of a head, even if it would’ve been maybe a minute’s worth of conversation. Hate that. Sometimes, I need to just do things rather than making announcements about them, and I haven’t mastered that yet. So, fear got me this week (last week was totally uneventful), but I’ll try harder next week to get past it.

Ran until I didn’t feel good doing it. Walked until I felt better.

Did about a mile and a quarter in 24 minutes.

Pretty lackluster, but fuck it, I got myself moving again.

Onward to whenever I feel like running again, hopefully very soon.

In other news, thinking of dropping the gym. It’s nice and all, but I’m travelling too much and sleeping too oddly to establish a routine, it’s an added cost when I can’t afford many, it’s a mental transaction because it’s a 15 minute car ride rather then “OK, I’m running” and going out the door, and it’s being subsidized by people who could use that subsidy to pay for someone who’d make it in there more, particularly a kid. There’s a few gyms closer to my place. If I decide I really need a gym, I’ll go talk to ‘em.

This Week: Me 2, Fear 0
Current Score: Me 33, Fear 15

Got a flat tire on Saturday. Rode over a nail, just like in the cartoons. That’s always kinda stressful, but AAA made the best time they’ve ever made on a roadside assistance call (Thanks, Dave!), and since I needed to get the spare out of the trunk, I used the opportunity to sort out and get rid of a bunch of crap that was in my trunk, something I may have been putting off for years.

My sleep was royally, royally fucked up this weekend (it’s been that way a lot recently, after a month and a half of it being legitimately great in the spring), and while I was afraid that I would hear a lot of grief about it from the person I was staying with, it turns out that they were OK with it after all, and had no intentions of throwing tantrums, making me drive when I wasn’t awake enough to do so, or doing anything else to make my rather serious physical, mental and emotional health issue about them. I’m going to take a second to say “thank you” now, and then we’ll get to just how loaded that last sentence was.

Unfortunately, this is kind of how I’ve let myself spend most of the past decade being treated by people. That’s kind of a weird thing and a huge admission to see typed in front of me right now, because in print, it looks like the words of someone who’s been the victim of abuse. Hopefully my writing this does not cause any of the people who may have treated me like this (because, quite honestly, it’s not any one person who treated me this way; it was actually a few, thinking about it, and I don’t think there was any real malice behind most of it, just a lack of understanding of my own problems and theirs…still fucking sucked, though!) to get all crazy on me yet again, but if it does? Fuck it. I’ve handled it before, and I can handle it better now, because I’m well-rested today and I’ve got the benefit of perspective. So, while I’d truly appreciate it if no one behaved ridiculously in my direction over what I’ve just written, I’m not really afraid of it anymore, and I’m not going to tiptoe around how I feel or what I’ve experienced on this front, either. (When have I *ever* done that, aside from this? I can’t even begin to explain how it makes me feel to know that I have.)

Folks, if you haven’t gotten it already from reading a decade and a half of my shit or from knowing me for however long you have, people with sleep problems have very real, very serious health problems that can’t just be Red Bulled or Xanaxed to death in order to keep the party going. Be decent and compassionate to us, please.

Huge admission and public service announcement aside, we’re done for this week. See you next time, boys and girls!

This Week: Me 1, Fear 0
Current Score: Me 33, Fear 15

Remember when I mentioned that my electric razor was shot a few weeks ago? Well, it literally got to the point where I was afraid to use it. Yes, a household grooming appliance caused me fear. So, this past weekend, even though I couldn’t really afford to do it (things are still very tight over here), I bought this. I confronted worn-out appliances and financial worries in one shot, folks. The reviews on Amazon are lukewarm, but for me, at least for now, it’s night-and-day from my previous shaver.

Talked a little about getting things in order over here at the end of last week’s edition, and that’s coming along, with no real anxiety tied to it. Not a lot to report, though.

More next week. Only 21 more weeks to go! (Christ.)

Man, I suck at keeping up with stuff lately. Shame on me!

Weeks 29-30: Me 2, Fear 0
Current Score: Me 32, Fear 15

If it’s any consolation to those of you still expecting weekly updates, I’ve been slacking largely because there haven’t been any new fears. When I’m confronted by scary these days, I generally shift rather quickly into “OK, how do I deal with this?” mode, and then I just do the best I can from there.

The wedding wasn’t easy, just on sheer sleep fuckery combined with early hours, but I got through it, as did my date.

I’ve actually been wrestling with huge, existential things for a long time, that whole “eventually, I’m going to die, and I have no idea what will happen to my things, whether my affairs will be in order, how my loved ones will deal, how I’ll be remembered and what impact I’ll leave behind” train of thought. I’m not entirely sure if I’ve gotten into that on here, which is surprising because it’s sort of huge. Again, doing the best I can there, but a very specific part of this train of thought that’s been stumping me has to do with one’s legacy, vain as that is. Not just mine, but everyone’s. How do we put our big, complicated, messy lives into a context that entry-level users can understand and navigate easily? We’re talking everything from deep thoughts to pictures, video and sound, to recipes for pot roast. I may have the early answers to this brewing. Of course, it could just be that I blew another $10 on a domain registration I’ll do nothing with, but hey, it’s a start, and I have options. Hopefully, I’ll figure out how to make it so that we all do. If this is all kind of vague, apologies, but the process behind all of this is just starting, and very new to me. At the very least, I vainly feel like I’ve gotten a foot in the door on this huge, universal kind of fear, so I’m going to finally put one in the plus column here.

Looking ahead to the rest of this week, I’ve kind of let my entire life slide for a little while (yes, even before the fucking World of Warcraft), so the mission is to get things back on track without freaking out. Wish me luck!

Man. World Of Warcraft is evil. Actually, it’s not just that I’ve been playing WoW (God help me), it’s also that I’m rarely in the same place for more than a few days at a time, and when I am, I’m running around like a crazy person. At any rate, apologies for the service disruption, and on with the show.

Weeks 26-28: Me 3, Fear 0
Current Score: Me 31, Fear 15

No problems meeting Andre Dawson or Darren Daulton. Made it to everywhere I needed to be socially. (+1) Managed not to freak out when some lady tried to make a left in front of my car on wet roads and I missed her car (holding her and a kid who was probably her grandson) by literal inches. (+1). I responded to a possible roof leak (which could’ve seriously fucked up expensive belongings in my attic) positively and proactively by grabbing a ton of Sterilite containers, replacing cardboard boxes, sorting things as I went, and just plain throwing some of it out (3 huge lawn bags worth!). Been meaning to do that for almost 2 years. (+1) I did take half a Xanax last night to slow down my racing brain, but that was more that my brain was racing for no good reason than because of any tangible or even intangible fear that I’m aware of. I’ll check back with the people around me, but right now, I really can’t think of a single thing that I let fear beat me on in the past 3 weeks. That could be a good deal of why it’s taken me so much time to make an update, too.

Anyway, more than half a year in the bag on this, beating my fears by more than a 2 to 1 margin, not bad. This week coming up, I have a wedding to go to, early start time with some fairly crazy early morning travel involved, and there’s a little anxiety involved in dealing with the process of getting there, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be fine. I’ll keep y’all posted on that.

I swear, I really need to manage my time more effectively.

This Week (and last): Fear 1, Me 1
Current Score: Me 28, Fear 15

During Week 24, I had one of my weird, existential “Life’s going by too quickly and we’re all going to be dead soon” moments in the middle of the night, laying in bed. I talked myself off of the ledge eventually, but it wasn’t all that pretty until I did.

This past week, I had to deal with a huge amount of bullshit involving my car. Brakes went sideways on it (fixed now), oil change people forgot to put oil in it (I shit you not; amazingly, it handled about 45 miles between two trips on what was left in the engine and the car’s fine after all of that, but the last few miles of the 2nd trip made me feel like Han Solo holding the Millennium Falcon together with duct tape), and then some poor schmuck kid fell asleep at the wheel and hit it at 1:30 in the morning when I was parked on the street on Saturday (kid’s OK, car’s a little less pretty but the damage was minimal and cosmetic). With the exception of that one trip that ended up being without oil (and anyone would’ve been nervous about a trip like that) I was actually as cool as a cucumber and in fairly good spirits when it came to all of this nonsense. I’ve dealt with worse on all fronts with cars, so while stuff like this sucks, it’s not the end of the world.

Looking ahead at the remainder of week 26, I’ll be trying not to stammer like an idiot when meeting 2010 Baseball Hall Of Fame inductee Andre Dawson tomorrow (I actually saw him on the street in Cooperstown during ’05 induction weekend, and FROZE…). Stay tuned!

This Week: Me 1, Fear 1
Current Score: Me 28, Fear 15

Kinda freaked out Thursday night when I thought that my still-pretty-crappy but consistent for nearly a month sleep pattern (by far the longest period of relative stability since I started keeping track 3 years ago; still pretty regular late wakeups and a ton of naps, but it’s been mostly “normal” day-night) was about to go into the toilet, but I managed to come down from the ledge and not throw the current pattern into the toiletski somehow. I honestly can’t decide if the fear makes me lose a point or overcoming it makes me gain one. Given that the supportive folks who comment will probably vote for the latter, I’ll grudgingly do the same, but the level of panic that a grown man who’s been down this road before had over being up until 5 in the morning really kinda bugged me.

I’m also kinda panicked about my car, which may be starting the 100,000 mile fuckups a few thousand miles early. That shit could be expensive. Trying to be Zen about it all, but there are definite limits to my ability to do so. Point off there.

Tune in next week for more of the same shit! Hey, at least I was on time this week.

Wow, I totally dropped the ball there, didn’t I? Shit.

This Week (and last): Me 1, Fear 1
Current Score: Me 27, Fear 14

Aside from money worries, which are pretty much constant (and probably not that unusual for anyone), I’ve really only run into 2 things in the past couple of weeks that’d qualify for my little experiment, and I had to think about them. No wonder I didn’t update.

The first was yet another in the long series of “This seems awesome, but do I want to put the effort in and go to this?” struggles. Was it worth the effort? Yes, it was. If I ever sound like I’m waffling about a free Morris Day & The Time/Biz Markie show again, slap me upside the head. Holy crap.

Second item was just me struggling to get my sea legs, now that I’m involved with someone again. (Normally, I do not discuss these things on the site, as you know, but this experiment and that policy clash somewhat.) Still trying to find my stride there, and my insecurity shows through kinda often lately. Something to work on and grow into, I suppose.

Tune in next week (on time, ideally), when I deal with getting old and return to dealing with my hatred of bureaucracy!

So, as some of you know, I’ve got a birthday coming up in a week. Normally, I make a big to-do about my birthday (and maybe this post is that big to-do, I don’t know), but over the past year, I’ve been thinking that I’m kind of a dick about birthdays. I’m not great at remembering other peoples’ birthdays, wishing them a happy birthday, celebrating their birthday with them or (this one’s a little beyond my control because of my money situation) getting folks birthday gifts these days, and I feel bad about that, but doubly bad that I trumpet “Holy fuck it’s my birthday stop everything!!!!11111″ every year. I mean, granted, I do like celebrating my birthday, but I think I’ve been kinda one-sided about it for a long time, and am not entirely sure how to correct that consistently, especially since, in my defense here, I do know a lot of people, and could spend a good chunk of my day wishing people a happy birthday just about every day. Suggestions are of course welcome. Really feel a strong need to work on this.

That having been said, I’ve had folks ask me what I’d like to do on my birthday this year, and also had folks ask me what I want for my birthday, so it’s not just me bugging you guys to make a fuss about my birthday. If anything this year, it’s been quite the opposite, but it keeps coming up, so here goes.

As for the first part, the “celebration” thing, I’m really thinking that I want to keep it quiet this year. It’s not that I want to punish myself for being The Birthday Dick or anything like that, but the idea of doing very little at all on my birthday proper tickles me pink at the moment. If there are any surprise parties in the works, though I don’t think there are, throw the brakes on and don’t put yourselves out, folks. I’m good.

As far as the second part goes, the gift-giving thing, there are a few answers that are self-indulgent in a variety of ways, so please accept my apologies in advance for that.

Right now, I’m actually trying like crazy to pare my belongings down, and I am making some progress, so random stuff, unless it’s the best random stuff ever (the Batman vs. Hulk Treasury Edition I got last weekend, that my friend Vassilios was holding for me from my last birthday does qualify) is probably a bad idea. I do have a Wish List that I’ve revised recently and added some things to (despite the fact that I rarely get to reading books, there are a lot of them I’d like to read), and that’s probably the best bet if you want to get me “stuff” as I’ve put a lot of thought into all of it (Yes, even the “Norbit” Blu-Ray; seriously, the car washing scene BEGS for hi-definition!), though if one of you has a working Rom The Spaceknight doll with all its accessories, I’ll probably hump your leg for it. That’s basically the last Holy Grail for me among toys that you’d find on the collector market, barring me losing my mind and replacing all my Megos (I have pictures, memories, and The Mego Museum to keep me from doing that).

Being that I’m broke and am probably a year and a half from a hearing in my SSI case, judging by what I’m hearing about the backlog, money’s hugely helpful too (there’s a donation button, as always, on the top left corner of My Big, Black Cock, but I understand peoples’ aversion to just giving folks cash (in person or via PayPal, whatever the case).

OK, here’s where things get fun and slightly less self-indulgent. If you want to do something else awesome for my birthday that involves neither giving me money or buying me stuff, I’ve got a few options, all of which would make me very happy and also proud of you for helping out those in greater need than even my sorry ass is. No need to make a huge public fuss over the fact that you’ve helped these folks in any way. I strongly believe that the best kind of help is given quietly, though I do feel like it’s important to at least get the word out for the causes I mention below. However, if you’d like me to know that you did, you can drop me an email, that’d be cool.

First up, my pal George Tabb is still in very bad shape, and could really use any help you can give him. George is one of the kindest guys I know, a talented musician, writer, and all around good person who’s been stricken by a litany of illnesses since 9/11 (he lived in lower Manhattan and volunteered at the WTC site). The government is still doing everything they can to avoid taking care of George and other heroes like him who risked everything to help, so for the time being, he’s barely able to take care of his food, medical expenses, and living expenses for himself and his 2 dogs, Scooter and Jett (who work as therapy dogs, with George bringing them around to hospitals to cheer folks up; even now, with George pretty seriously ill and being screwed over by our government, he’s still volunteering to help people however he can). I’ve been doing whatever I can to bring George’s situation to yours and everyone else’s attention for a good long while now, but he still needs our help, as do the other folks suffering from 9/11-related illnesses (he’s been trying to establish a charity for them for a good while, but he kind of has to be healthier to do the heavy lifting there). Anything you guys can do for George is greatly appreciated.

Second, my friend Deb McGee‘s annual charity race, The Race For McGee, is happening on June 19th, 2010. It’s a 10K run to benefit the ALS Association. Deb is a terrific lady, regular commenter on My Big, Black Cock and a distance runner who has ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. ALS is a disease with no known cure that claimed my grandfather’s life, as well as the lives of Catfish Hunter (one of my favorite baseball players) and of course Lou Gehrig, whose name the disease commonly bears. Even if you’re not local and not a runner, you can support the Race For McGee. Donate via the race entry form (warning, PDF), or online at Deb’s local chapter of the ALS Association.

Finally, my pal Brad Meltzer has been throwing the support of his awesome charity organization, Ordinary People Change The World behind another charity called City Year of late. According to their site, “City Year unites young people of all backgrounds for a year of full-time service, giving them skills and opportunities to change the world.” Beyond the fact that Brad’s endorsed them, I am not too familiar with City Year, but I do trust Brad’s judgment, and if they sound like a group that you’d like to help as part of my birthday celebration, feel free.

That’s about all I’ve got on this subject, beyond that I thank you in advance for being happy that I was born, and that I’ll try to be a lot less of a dick in the future about showing you that I’m happy you were born, because I really do feel like I’ve been one.

1 minute jogging/2 minutes walking x 8
1 minute walking
1 minute jogging
30 seconds walking

Total Time: 26:30
Total mileage: about 1.85 miles (pedometerless at the moment, but I know the course)

Not as good of a run today, despite the lower temperature, because of the humidity and some knee pain. Still, got through some of it and knew when to quit.

Onward to Tuesday.

1 minute jogging/2 minutes walking x 9
1 minute jogging

Total time: 33 minutes (I guess I counted slow)
Total mileage: about 2 miles

Yes, it was hotter than Satan’s nutsack out there, Charles. Great run, though. Minimal leg pain, a minor stitch in my side that went away after about 5 minutes, and my longest distance into my usual course in a long time.

Onto whenever I get around to doing this next. I’ve been bad lately, because of sleep, diet and extracurriculars, so the gym’s been kinda tough to get to. Running does honestly feel purer, though.

This Week: Fear 1, Me 0
Current Score: Me 26, Fear 13

This week had me trying to balance practicality and common sense (which sometimes spiral out of control into fear) and frivolity (which sometimes spirals into awesomeness). Some folks would applaud me stopping just short of going to meet Paul Levitz at a comic signing in New Jersey, because I was broke and exhausted, and maybe they’re right. Alas, I found out the next day that both Jack C. Harris and Keith Giffen showed up at the signing! Sometimes, common sense does not pay. Ah well, hopefully they’ll be at Wizard World NJ later this year.

Bald Mountain Party by Richard C. Hackley and Scott Crawford is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at: http://www.mybigblackcock.com/

This means you can play it on commercial and non-commercial radio, remix it, copy it for your friends, put it on your web site, whatever, as long as I am properly credited, this license information is included wherever you choose to put my music, and, if you sample it, remix it, etc., your music containing any part of my music must be released under this same license unless you contact me specifically to negotiate other terms that I agree to.

Here’s the song, in both 320k MP3 and WAV format. (Sorry, FLAC nerds, but you’ll just have to convert your own. Consider it your punishment for the years of y’all being snobby to people on torrent sites, while posting “lossless” copies of things like Sammy Hagar albums. As I’ve said in the past, “When you post Sammy Hagar albums to torrent sites, EVERYBODY loses”.)

Bald Mountain Party: 320k MP3 | WAV

Right-click these files (or Control-click it, on a Mac) and go to “Save as…” to save the. If you want to play them first to hear how they sound, click the play buttons next to the mp3 download links.

Bald Mountain Party
original music by Modest Mussorgsky, adapted by Richard C. Hackley (vocals and keyboards) and Scott Crawford (drum programming, sampling and mixing)
lyrics by Richard C. Hackley

It’s just a lifeless rock
where nothing ever grows
But ev’ry Halloween
a strange event unfolds

Bald Mountain party
Bald Mountain party
Bald Mountain party

No living thing goes near
Bald Mountain party
Even the vultures fear
Bald Mountain party

The party starts at night
attended by the dead
Who frolic in the dark
while humans are in bed

Bald Mountain party
Bald Mountain party
Bald Mountain party

The spooks and skeletons
the ghosts and goblins
They gather at this place
most of them float in

They leap and dance about
a deep and fiery pit
And in the jostling
some of them fall in it.

But no one cares ‘cuz it’s their type of fun
They know it ends with the morning sun

Mayhem and wild abound
Bald Mountain party
No sign of letting down
Bald Mountain party

Some of the creatures fly
up high above the rest
They see an evening meal
and snatch a party guest

That’s how this party goes
there is no courtesy
And everybody knows
“Don’t turn your back on me!”

But when the day begins
Bald Mountain party
This party always ends
Bald Mountain party

‘Cuz they can’t stand the light.

Some info about this song: this is the song that took 143 years to finish, 4 plus of which were my fault! Thank you to Richard, first and foremost, for being patient with me while I took my sweet time on things. The first mention in my inbox of this most unlikely collaboration of ours in my inbox was on April 30th, 2006. That whole “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” thing applies here. Ironically, Modest Mussorgsky’s “Night On Bald Mountain”, the framework we stretched our song over, also had its share of problems getting finished and released to the public. Mussorgsky didn’t live to hear his composition performed, in fact. Rich and I have at least heard the finished product, and will hopefully live for a good while past it, so we may come out ahead here, knock wood.

My contributions to the song were the drums, all the weird, scratchy, panned out sounds you hear, and I also spent a fair amount of time getting the mix to where it is right now, which mostly involved making Richard’s awesome harmony vocals come to life as the monsters you hear them as now, and staying the hell out of the way of the original piece as much as I could. I gave some serious thought to additional instrumentation, but decided not to put my foot through a Van Gogh, so to speak. Maybe if we do remixes, I’ll have another go at it. Hopefully, you all enjoy what we came up with.

And now, for a bit more on the song, I turn the floor over to the man, the myth, the legend…Richard Hackley.

“Around 2000, I started pondering writing some songs based on the questions, “What if famous composers from history had been prolific song writers instead? What would their famous works sound like in song form? What would their lyrics say?” What held me back from actually putting something together was taking the time to do necessary research of a composer, his life, times, passions, etc. Then, a couple of on-going things dovetailed together.

It’s been a slow and arduous labor for both of us. But, if the child is indeed a bastard, we are both happy with him.”

From here, as mentioned earlier this week, I still need to re-record the vocals on “If I Could” and the slow “Something True” to finish the “babykiller.” album. Gonna try and get this stuff done before the Mayan calendar ends so I can get on with my life and maybe finish writing/record/release some new songs, perhaps even perform some of them live.

While I’ll be doing all of this free of any kind of mandatory charge, and I think I’m going to move forward with that plan for the rest of the time I’m making music, donations of any size above $1.00 USD (below that, and PayPal fees make your donation kind of useless, sadly; if you want to give me less than a dollar, do it in person) are greatly appreciated. Donations will enable me to compensate the people who work on this music with me as best I can (in this case, if you’d like part of your donation to go to Richard, please say “for Bald Mountain Party” on the PayPal form), as well as perform much-needed repairs and upgrades on my aging home studio. Ideally, this will result in more music being made and released, though I’m trying to take this music thing one tiny act at a time these days. In the meantime, thanks in advance for your continuing support, as well as for all the support you’ve given my music and I over the years. As always, if you have any questions about this release or anything else, suck@mybigblackcock.com. For any questions directed to Richard, he can be reached at richardhackley@mybigblackcock.com, or you can contact him via his Soundclick page.

This Week: Me 1, Fear 0
Current Score: Me 26, Fear 12

I was in a really awkward, difficult social situation this week (I’d go into detail here, but it involves other people, and protecting their privacy is the right thing to do), and while others may not agree, I feel like I handled it with grace, compassion and bravery.

That aside, things have been pretty quiet, so this one’s going to run short. Tune in next week, when I’ll hopefully have more stories about being afraid of things available for your reading enjoyment.