Courteous Miner

I do. But I haven’t played in weeks. FOR SHAME. Turbine tricked me.

I was kicked out of the Air Force.

I was homeless.

I have been a father.

I won awards for my writing, and one for my cartooning.

I have been to a political convention.

I have met a handful of mid-level celebrities and a couple of big ones.

I essentially taught myself to play guitar.

I have written almost 400 songs.

I have written 50 songs that don’t outright suck.

I saw glaciers, swam in two oceans (and a gulf), flown over Canada, and built snowmen.

I have been married twice.

I have one piercing (left ear) and no tattoos (yet).

I have been Episcopalian, Lutheran, Baptist, Lutheran again, agnostic, Deist, Taoist, and now atheist.

I can cook rather well.

I can type upwards of 95 wpm.

I have been a waiter, grocery store clerk, hotel night auditor, columnist, radio news reporter, record reviewer, cook, web designer, rock musician, rapper, illustrator, and a support technician.

I have been in Wired magazine, mentioned in a published book, been in 5 different commercials on TV, on the radio, and all over the Web.

I have been arrested three times.

I’ve been drunk 10 times. High five times.

I’ve never done any drug harder than alcohol or weed.

I play most of my video games with the cheats turned on.

I use a Mac and I like it.

I have been dirt poor, working class, and middle class.

I have only one official education-related certificate of completion (my high school diploma).

I lost my high school class ring years ago.

I am 5′6″ and weigh about 256 lbs.

I like swimming and bike riding, but I’ve done neither in years.

I developed arthritis at age 14, shinsplints at 19, and gout at 32.

I have been blogging for more than eight years and have been online for almost 15.

I carry a laptop bag with a portable DVD player, a 60GB iPod, a mobular phone, a PSP, and a digital camera almost everywhere I go.

I am not as hip as the web kids or the indie kids or the photography kids, and by kids I mean you people who are my age or thereabouts.

I hate my first name and have been seriously contemplating legally changing it for all of my adult life. My latest possible name change? “Kane.”

I am a grammer/spelling/punctuation pedant.

I can dance.

I have nice, if rough, singing voice.

I cannot play sports worth a good God damn but have wished I could almost every day since I was 3.

I am a depressive.

I have tried to kill myself 5 separate times.

I abhor alcoholics, the right-wing, the religious, addicts of almost any stripe, and the people who think they’re cool because they’re contrarian.

I hate what my parents have done to me but sometimes I still miss talking to them, even though we haven’t spoken in 12 years.

I love cats and dogs alike. I am not a fan of fish or birds as pets.

I am 34 but I am still very much a kid in my own mind.

I love Star Wars, Star Trek, and loads of sci-fi.

I am a fan of TV as a form of entertainment.

I am bold, brash, confrontational, rude, but very much insecure much of the time.

I am Chris Gruber.

(and I’m fine if you want to turn this into a meme and do it yourself.)

You don’t understand, ’cause I’m not like you
Had my own struggles, do what I had to do
Never compromise my principles, though it seems like I did
Waited ’til I was graduated before I had a kid
You tried to shelter me well, keep me from the game
But frustration gave in and it brought me pain
You never had faith in me, you expected too much
You made me just like you, but wonder why I am nuts
It’s perfectly simple to see, when you look at me
It’s not my ego, no equal, I’m the first of your three
You can’t deny that I’m here, you progeny number one
I’m a reflection of you, but now the prodigal son?
This shit kept you up nights, but you acquiesced
To your temper and lack of maturity; me too, I confess
My only excuse for those times when I acted bad
Is that I was kid. What’s your excuse? You were the dad!

So here we are in the Ft Lauderdale airport, laying over for our flight to New York. We should be in the air, but thanks to the brilliance of Delta flight technicians our flight will be leaving Ft Lauderdale later that it was due to arrive at La Guardia. That’s a three-and-a-half-hour delay.

So it’s nice that they gave us a meal voucher, but buying me dinner is not nearly as good as getting me to New York within a few minutes of the time I paid you to do so.

Lisa’s got her Gameboy Advance (upon which she terrorizes the spider enemies in Centipede; no-one’s better at Centipede than my wife) and I’ve got my PSP (now homebrew-hacked and with Hot Shots Golf and NCAA Football 07 among others) and we both have watched an episode of season 3 of the new Doctor Who. So be it. We’re both overweight adn arthritic, so at least this beats being crammed into the itty-bitty airplane seats for a while. we can get up adn stretch if we so desire. (And we do, believe me.)
Hopefully, our next missive will be from within the New York area or thereabouts. They’ve just told us fantastic news: we’ll be boarding at 6:30 instead of 6:40! Oh that ten minutes!

Til next time.

Well, it’s been a while since I said anything of substance, but here goes.

A few things have occurred in the last few months (and preceding year) that have really been worth mentioning. Aside from the accusation of child abuse by my ex-wife (a notorious spanker who would physically attack me when we were together) and the ensuing legal actions which still hang over my head (and the fact that I haven’t seen my son Mikey since October (save for 20 minutes)), there have been a few other items as of late that are worth a breakdown.

1. My friend Pat, whom I’ve known since 1987, has decided to move on with his life and remove himself from his Nashville home (where he’s lived the last few years). He texted me last Thursday, saying he was ready to take me up on a long-standing offer to put him up at my place if he so desired to move to Tallahassee. This past Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, my wife and I drove to Nashville, rented him a truck, helped pack and load his belongings and then moved him down to TLH. He is now living with us in the bedroom that was originally Mikey’s. He’s begun acclimating himself to our domestic lifestyle to some extent. Pat’s been used to living the free-and-easy bachelor lifestyle (whatever that really means) all of his adult life, and I think it may take some adjusting for him to dig on our middle-class, seemingly-boring day-to-day lives. We now have a new 6′1″ mouth to feed, and it’s a little odd. I don’t hate it, and it doesn’t really bother me all that much. But naturally, it’s different.

2. We got a kitten a while back. He’s an all-black Manx-mix I named Simon Robot. He’s cute and fun to play with. Although, he does need to learn to chill out at night.

3. My wife and I are leaving for a vacation to New York City tomorrow afternoon. We both love the city and are excited to both visit our friends who live in the area and to see all the New York stuff neither of us have ever seen (like Yankee Stadium!). We will be spending a week there, and hopefully I’ll get to at least have a meal with some of my NYC friends/acquaintances/LJ buddies (you know who you are). This is kind of our precursor to the execution of a longtime plan in which my wife and I (and hopefully Mikey) would move to New York. We love New York and all that it has to offer. If you read that essay I’ve just linked to, you can see that I’ve had a hard crush on the city all of my life. I haven’t been there since a stopover during the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Kenny and I (accompanied by Amber Smalley, a fellow member of the Tallahassee Community College Democrats) visited there and both came to the same conclusion: that’s where we belong. He’s been back at least once in the ensuing period of time, but for me, this is the first time I’ve ever been where I can spend all day and come back the next. It’s very exciting.

So, what’s snoo with you?

Mingle² - Online Dating

All three entities (myself, the rock band I call Geese, and of course the Cap City Mob) are now on this new site called Virb. It’s like this:

Virb:MySpace::Target:Wal-mart

It’s free, it’s clean, it’s classy, and they let you upload more than four songs. Get over there and check us out! And while you’re there, sign up and friend all of these!

* Grubi
* Geese: with an entire album ready for download!
* Cap City Mob: with all 9 of the songs we’re working on!

Gotta love reading this today:

I have had “Aquamarine” by Geese in my head all last evening and this morning. Damn! What a catchy tune!”

That made my week.

The new Cap City Mob album, Saints of Tribal Science, is coming along nicely. You wanna hear some? Well, dig it:

* “Cap City” demo 5 4.8MB 3:26 - Sly.One, Grubi, T-Juice
* “Up to One” demo 7 5.5MB 3:56 - Grubi, Sly.One, T-Juice
* “Cause/Effect” demo 2 4.6MB 3:18 - Grubi, T-Juice
* “Coming to Getcha” demo 7 5.5MB 3:59 - Grubi, Professor Rex, T-Juice

Re: this…

On the 29th of December (that’s in a little more than a week, man), I will be hosting at the crib the First Worldwide COnference of the Cap City Mob, with every single member of the Mob in the house:

• Grubi/X.G./The Maestro/Kester Logan/Clockwork [myself]
• Daddy B/MCYT/Killa B/Irish/Aldo Cocinas/Monkeywrench [Brian K]
• Random/Randaddy/Mace Randu/Randizzle/Connor McCoy/Rapid Fire [Randy K]
• T-Juice/DJ Talossatronic/The Celtic Threat/Tavish Lanergh/The Celt [Thomas Leigh, who’s visiting from CT]
• T Rex/The Rex/Professor Rex/T-Wrecks [Kenny, who hasn’t confirmed yet]
• Sly.One/Tampa Slim/J-Cole/Jake Neri/Obsidian Tiger [John Cole]

Also there, but not confirmed for recording are:

• LD50/Lise Creux/Elizabeth Ferrer/Arctica [my wife Lisa; she won’t be recording]
• Mikenobi/MCG [my son Mikey; long story]
• DJ-D/Chilly D [Donald; he may be there]

Dig. We will be recording at least one album’s worth of songs (which are being written) and over the next few months, I will be producing the whole album track by track. It’ll be nice to finally have more than one voice on these tracks for once. To tide you over, here’s a handful of older ones.

Edit: Everyone (save Mikey) made it on either the 29th or 30th. As of today (the 30th of January), only DJ-D has failed to be recorded. LD50 has no plans to record, so no worries.

Steampunk-inspired? Maybe. All I can say is it is a big bag of gold-plated awesome.

Apparently, you, too, can pick one up at Vianney-Halter, for the low,low everyday price of $64,000. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want one of these RIGHT NOW.

I swear, if I ever get rich, this is going to be my timepiece of choice.

Click the pic to zoom in. AWESOME.

Remember the reason we celebrate Christmas: because the Christian church wanted to enroll in their organization some pagans who refused to relinquish their holidays  so they appropriated said holidays. THAT is the reason we celebrate.

And keep it in your heart all year long.

I met her online through mutual acquaintances and consequently we were reciprocally added to Friends’ Lists. She always came across as wise and funny to me, someone I had already admired for her design work. Even though I didn’t figure out that the clever and funny person was the SAME person who could whip out some awesomely clean design and hell, the cool Advent calendar every year. I was LJ pals with her? Cool!

One favorite memory of her was when I used to have my iChat announce who came online to chat. My wife, in another room, heard “Leslie Harpold” as “Lovely Horrible.” I immediately laughed when she told me, so I IM’d Leslie. She got a huge kick out of that. For the next few months, her LJ user nickname was “Miss Lovely Horrible.”

Another favorite is when I was gong through some rough times with my confidence and my divorce from my first wife, and she chatted me up and we talked about it. She made me feel that much better, mostly because she actually seemed to care. And considering she didn’t owe me a second glance, that was huge to me.

I only knew her for a while, but she seemed so awesome that I was glad she would take the time to make one more friend… and that I got to know her that way. I wish there was something else to say. I wish I got to hang out with her, as so many other lucky folks did. And I wish I could have said goodbye.

Yet another song recorded. Let me know if you care for it. Let me know if anything stands out as just plain wrong. And here’s hoping you enjoy!

“Magic” [The Cars] 5.5MB 3:56

Critiques always welcome.

How’s this for a weird and haunting story? A little boy, only four years old, sees his family being held at gunpoint by burglars, confronts the “bad guys” and they leave:

The robber was holding a gun to 5-year-old Mary Long’s head when a 3-foot-tall Mighty Morphin Power Ranger leapt into the room.

“Get away from my family,” 4-year-old Stevie Long shouted, punctuating his screams with swipes of his plastic sword and hearty “yah, yahs.”

F or some reason, this story really got to me. This little boy, full of bravado, takes on a handful of adults, no, scratch that: armed adults, and is no worse off But the danger of the child taking on armed people scares me. Especially when I know my own son so well, and wonder that, if that age, might he have done the same thing? I know that now, at age ten and a half, he wouldn’t dare, but at four? It frightens me to think what might have happened had these burglars been a little more focused and flat-out brazen.