Ventrec

12:11 am: My Day in Court
For those of you who do not know: A few weeks ago GPD came into the club and asked who was in charge. Being the oldest there, I stood up and and said, "Me". When asked if there was a licensed crowd manager on duty, I replied no, as I had never hear of it before. He might as well as if I had a Mutgubway. Do you have a mutgubway? "No?' The police took me to the substation and gave me a notice to appear in court, on July 16.

So today I got a taste of the justice systen. It tastes like soot and poo.

I showed up in court at 9:00 AM. Edina (God or Gods of your choice, or none, bless her) sent the head of Venue security with me. I am or perhaps, am not, charged with running a public assembly without a crowd manager present. The Venue head of security (hereinafter, Mark Rowe) was present on the night in question. He had a crowd manager certification.

There were perhaps 50 people in the court room facing charges. On our side of the bar there was exactly one person wearing a button down shirt and tie, me. I was shocked, some of these people were up for time in jail and they couldn't show the court the respect to show up well dressed? WTF? What's worse, I think it may have come to the point that being well dressed is equated with being a shady character.

We were sworn in as a group and then a list of names were read. These were the people offered DP, deferred prosecution. I was on the list and we, as a group, were lead upstairs to another court room. I was handed a document offering six months unsupervised probation, $50 in court costs and some hundreds of dollars in fines. I just handed it back unsigned. So, was asked to return to the court room where I was now last on the docket.

Mark Rowe and I sat thru some entertainment. It's a bit embarrassing, but at one point, I fell asleep. The bailiff woke me up and asked if I was all right, and told me they'd get to me soon. It was fucking boring, one open container case after another. So I fell asleep. I have to say, the bailiff was awesome, all smiles and friendly, judge Ferrrero was pretty cool too. She was very polite.

After I got woke up, I was treated to some entertainment. A redneck who had caught three fish that violated some slot limit. He had priors, not related to fishing, but the judge threw the book at him and charged him about $1,000 a fish. Poor bastard. He tried the, 'I was only taking my mother fishing' defense. It didn't work very well.

Then there was this dude who was about 60 odd, there for starting a fight in a bar. Part of the state attorney's deal was him writing a 500 word essay on why he shouldn't antagonize people and start fights in public places, along with a big fine and 15 hours community service. When the State attorney read out "500 word essay", everyone in the court laughed, including me.

Then there was a long period of calling out names alphabetically. It would seem, anyone with a Scottish name is a criminal. I thought I was about done when they started on the M's. Nope. There was an extra-long list of Mc's and Mac's (Fucking highlanders).

They finally got to the Mitchells, us normally law abiding low-land Scots.

I was called to the stand while the state prosecutor was busy going thru his notes and consulting his laptop. The judge asked, 'What is Mr. Mitchell charged with?". The prosecutor, without looking up, said, "That's a DP (deferred prosecution) your Honor". She said, "He's standing right beside you, what's he charged with?" Neither of them had ever heard of the law I had supposedly broken, and I never did get a really clear picture of what it was I had done wrong. The state prosecutor hemmed and hawed about this coming from the city and being a Section 9 offence and crowd manager related. The judge decided it had to do with overcrowding a club and asked me how I was to plead. I said, 'Not guilty" and "May I make a statement?" She said "No", that will be for your trial scheduled August 3rd and you need to decide between now and then if it you want it to be a trial by jury.

It was pathetic. Being Libertarian and a strict Constitutionalist, I don't think I was ever presented with the charges against me. When a judge uses the words, "something to do with", that's not being clearly presented with charges. So, I'm charged with "something to do with overcrowding a club".

I stayed to speak with the public defender, or rather his young apprentice. He suggested I get the state attorney and Mark Rowe in touch with one another and the case might be dropped. I'll try that.

You can be sure that if this goes to trial on August 3rd, The first thing I'll say is, "I don't know what I'm charged with".

And here's the real kicker. The law reads, that whenever 50 or more people are assemble for any reason, that constitutes a public assembly and a crowd manager must be present. There were over 50 people assembled in that court room and I seriously doubt that without me or Mark Rowe present, there would have been a crowd manager.

01:28 am: Some Days
Some days, life is just really not worth the effort.

01:12 am: Quotes
Later in life, you don't regret the things you did; you regret the things you didn't do. - Grace Slick

11:32 pm: Where you will be Saturday Night
An awesome show, of awesome bands that are worth WATCHING, with a low cover charge ($8) and the lowest prices at the bar.

Imagine going to a local live music show and coming away wondering if it is their music, or their stage performance that has made you a fan.

Here's a sample of what you will see...



Learn More: http://www.myspace.com/bellamorte

Don't You Forget (About Me)


Learn More: http://myspace.com/phoenixnebulin

02:37 am: Saturday May 10th

10:50 pm: Floaties
I'm struck with a clear memory from 2000. I was sitting on the rocks overlooking that beach on Oahu made famous in "From Here to Eternity". I was looking at Molokai, barely visible on the horizon.

At the time everything was going to hell. I was unemployed in one of the most expensive places in the U.S. My relationship was in trouble. All I wanted was out; out of Hawaii, out of the relationship, out of the mess I had made of my life.

I sat there and thought I could swim to Molokai if I had some floaties. If I had some floaties, I could swim to California. I could be away, I could be free of the mess, if only I had some floaties for my arms, because I don't swim well. And if I didn't make it, so what.

If I had been magically endowed with floaties at that moment I might have climbed down and marched across the sand, where actors had pretended to make love in the surf, and started for California.

Of course, the current would have swept me around Oahu to the southwest in the general direction of Guam and across the shipping lanes where the sharks lurk.

And that's always the reality when I look for a quick escape from my troubles: straight to the sharks.

08:47 pm: Dance It Off
When you are thoroughly tired of your family...
come dance!!!

03:00 am: Rut
It's the rutting season again. On the way home tonight in the fog I drove up on a small buck with magnificent antlers, just standing, stupified in the middle of the road. Ten miles per hour faster and he would have been venison. It was the gleam of his well polished antlers that saved him. I've seen this time and again in my life. These normally shy and retiring animals acting drugged or insane from rut. This one was definitely in the drugged and lost stage of rut. Lucky bastard, he gets to shed his antlers in a few weeks.

07:58 am: Me's a dumb'un.
So here I sit, victim? of insomnia. It's a beautiful morning with the light of the sun peaking over the trees onto Papa's Pond. Odd, this is how I expect my parties to end, champagne breakfast at sunrise, but it never seems to work out that way.

It's been a good long night and it's going to be a short sleep and a frightfully long hard day, but that's the joy of life. I've radically screwed up my schedule over the last two weeks and I wonder if there is any possibility of getting it back in line. Not so long as I drink caffeine. I had a coke, I'll be awake for hours on end.

I should be working 12 hour days and it's turning out to be more like 3 hours days. It's hard to make a living like that.

I'm questioning what I'm doing now. I gave up any other ambitions to have my own business doing what I love, what is to me, art. And that alone is answer to everyone who says to me, you have an MBA and you are a carpenter? Yes, I do have an MBA and execudroid work sucks. I create space, I build dreams.

But the thing is, I find myself placed in the same category as used car salesmen. Everyone thinks I am out to fuck them. That's just odd to me, over the last two years, my partner and I have been lost in the details, she more so than I. I remember coming into a bathroom we were remodeling and she was touching up the walls with a small portrait brush she had brought from home.

She had to take up full time work with a mobile home factory to have steady insurance for her daughter. It's just sick. I've actually laid on the floor to watch her hand texture a ceiling and it was far more interesting than watching the clouds, I could see far more in what she was doing, giants, fairies, monsters, angels. Such artwork wasted on storm repair to section 8 housing.
Living space as art is not even recognized.

But who pays for such time? Even if you could, would you? Would you pay the $8,000 or $10,000 to have a bathroom in your house that would just WOW anyone who came into it? We've done exactly one $10,000 bathroom in three years and we probably lost money on that one. The shower alone cost us $2,000 and it amounted to a giant sex toy. That's the one she touched up the walls with a portrait brush.

So, here I sit, with an artist as a partner and artists at my disposal, I am an artist at with wood trim and my partner Viva is an artist with texture, but I also have Bethany and Princess as artists painting. Along with Mac there's not a commission on Earth I'd refuse. But we are just not there and I honestly have no idea how to get there. Living space as art is not even recognized as art.

So, I've abandoned being some sort of wage slave to have my own business and I've ended up absolutely hating it because instead of being viewed as an artist, I am viewed as a used car salesman. That is absolutely true. I have to negotiate prices with everyone, even when I drop prices to the minimum because I just want to do it, or to help out a friend, I'm still treated just like a used car salesman.

Having my own business and having everyone approach me, or react to me in the way they have, to use me in the way they have, has done much to make me the Satanist that I am. So, here I am with the attitude of gig everyone for all I can get. Viva hasn't picked up a six inch knife in over a year, she sprays everything she does. I have no interest, because I 'm expected to match the industrial sameness of any place I work on. Clarence and Sara can testify to may ability to match the sameness of your average dwelling.

So what do I want? Not Lucinda's solid gold shitter, but the place where Princess and Bethany lie on their backs for a week on a scaffold painting angels on the ceiling. Where Mac and I spend lot of time getting the trim work just right to frame the art on the ceiling and walls. Where Viva actually has to struggle to make the texture of the walls match the mood of the room. Where the whole, from the artwork on the ceiling to the tile mosaic on the floor of the bathroom is one whole integrated work of art.

Life is a canvas, and I am still painting little insignificant black and white squares on it.

03:11 am: Elusive sleep and the illusion of a rested mind. I long for peace in oblivion. Clouds soft mist a veil before my eyes watching. Short acts of unresolved subconscious desires and yearning. Clouds lifting to song and light and newness.

Me, the restless undead awaiting reburial. An age in a grave and a clawing ascent to hell of burning light and unwelcome wakefulness. Damned to stumble through another unlived life until the ground swallows me again.

04:25 pm: What Heat?
I love summer in Florida, it's so mild here.

For anyone who thinks it's hot, I recommend you go sit in your attic for twenty minutes. I took four of these trips between 9:00 AM and 3:00 PM. When I came out the last time, it was like plunging into a pool. I had to come home and sit for a bit after that. And now I'm shaking with a slight loss of motor control. It's fine, I've been thru it many times before and only passed out once.

06:06 pm: Computer Stuff
I've had so much trouble with my computer lately that I had to make a post about the geeky stuff. My Emachine died at the ripe age of three months. The Compaq I replaced it with came loaded with Vista and so much trial software that it would barely run and froze constantly. So I divorced Bill Gates after a 16 year relationship. I'm running the Ubuntu version of Linux now. It runs fast and fantastic. The only hang up I've had is learning some Linux commands to load some software. Not a big deal, I had to do that with DOS back in the day of Windows 3.1. And I haven't had to load much software. Ubuntu came with OpenOffice (like MS Office), Mozilla Firefox, something called GAIM that functions as AIM and ICQ together and a movie/music player. All it needed was a P2P and printer/scanner drivers. Limewire was impossible to load. The Linux P2P, called Gnutella, reads from Limewire and others at the same time. The scanner driver was already there, it just took some time to make it recognize an Epson CX6000. All done with that now and it's flawless and no worries about viruses because they don't exist in Linux. Happy. I recommend Linux to anyone who can deal with learning a few terminal commands.

03:15 pm: Happy
I'm happy today because I have a new gator.  The landlord had the eight footer and the six footer removed recently but today I spied a smaller one, about four feet long.  I like having one or two here, they tend to keep people away.

01:45 am: 1978
And sometimes, everything is just fine.

06:32 pm: Ha, I'm Unique.

03:16 am: Hostel II
Just got back from Gainesville, opening night of Hostel II.  

I walked out.  Is there something entertaining about seeing women abused and mutilated against their will?  

I'm glad the acting was bad.

Maybe it's just because of the way I was raised that I don't like it, whatever, I'm glad of it.