Monday, August 25, 2008

jolene...

[..play the song here..]

Cocaine flame in my bloodstream
Sold my coat when I hit Spokane
Bought myself a hard pack of cigarettes in the early morning rain
Lately my hands they don't feel like mine
My eyes been stung with dust, I'm blind
Held you in my arms one time
Lost you just the same
Jolene
I ain't about to go straight
It's too late
I found myself face down in the ditch
Booze on my hair
Blood on my lips
A picture of you, holding a picture of me
in the pocket of my blue jeans
Still don't know what love means
Still don't know what love means
Jolene
Ah, La, La, La, La, La
Jolene
Been so long since I seen your face
or felt a part of this human race
I've been living out of this here suitcase for way too long
A man needs something he can hold onto
A nine pound hammer or a woman like you
Either one of them things will do
Jolene
I ain't about to go straight
It's too late
I found myself face down in the ditch
Booze in my hair
Blood on my lips
A picture of you, holding a picture of me
In the pocket of my blue jeans
Still don't know what love means
Still don't know what love means
Jolene
La, La, La, La, La, La, La
Jolene
La, La, La, La, La, La, La
Jolene

Monday, August 18, 2008

for lovers and dreamers...

this is a monologue from the movie WAKING LIFE, and if you love discussing the meaning of dreams you should definitely watch this movie. anyways, this is something that reminds me of the difficulty of words, and also the beauty of getting them just right...

"Creation seems to come out of imperfection. It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration. And this is where I think language came from. I mean, it came from our desire to transcend our isolation and have some sort of connection with one another. And it had to be easy when it was just simple survival. Like, you know, "water." We came up with a sound for that. Or "Saber-toothed tiger right behind you." We came up with a sound for that. But when it gets really interesting, I think, is when we use that same system of symbols to communicate all the abstract and intangible things that we're experiencing. What is, like, frustration? Or what is anger or love? When I say "love," the sound comes out of my mouth and it hits the other person's ear, travels through this Byzantine conduit in their brain, you know, through their memories of love or lack of love, and they register what I'm saying and they say yes, they understand. But how do I know they understand? Because words are inert. They're just symbols. They're dead, you know? And so much of our experience is intangible. So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. It's unspeakable. And yet, you know, when we communicate with one another, and we feel that we've connected, and we think that we're understood, I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion. And that feeling might be transient, but I think it's what we live for."

Choose Me

    Here are the answers to your essay questions replied to in my usual, helter-skelter method:

  1. I have often been told things about the DHC. You come off as a nefarious band of misfits prancing about trying to capture the soul of college fun and make sure everyone gets their bite. That being said, I am enthralled at the notion that I might join your ranks and commit pleasantries while conjuring up innocuous gatherings that will be the hearty stuffing of DeVry fables to come.
  2. I know the DHC has a varied purpose and basically assumes the position for whatever leftovers cannot be handled by clubs and organizations the school already has in place. The members of the DHC are a mythic gateway between the imaginative, dream-seeking student and the resources to make those very dreams come true. Those dreams may be many, but I hear the DHC focuses on fulfilling the fantasies of delicious meal plan dining, inspiring events, and providing ways to beat the status quo boredom running rampant throughout housing.
  3. I believe toppings are not necessary if you have the proper ice cream. Ben & Jerry's crème brulee is my personal fave.
  4. My talents are many but my favorite is my way with words. I use my wordsmith skills to psyche people up for the best of times, and I am also pretty good at balancing out different types of charismatic people to the point where people can get along. I am constantly falling in love with the romance of a moment. So, I just like making things fun and entertaining for the masses while trying to get people to have an intimate attachment with what is going on around them. Long live the memories.
  5. My friends are highly interested in the upcoming ski/snowboard trip, and I would like to work with prior members in making that better this year than it ever was before. I also envision DeVry & community (meaning to include neighboring schools) nightlife events (clubs/concerts/fine dining), gaming nights (possibly Dave & Buster's), cultural trips (Art Museum, First Friday's, Ben Franklin Museum) and things of that sort. I have seen how many ideas and events that have flopped, and I have only been here a short time. My way of pulling off a better success/fail ratio is paramount to why I should be retained as a member of DHC, but until selection that method remains my secret.
  6. This is the easiest question for me to answer out of them all. I have planned events and worked within the planning. I am great at getting people together, and that shouldn't be the trait/talent on trail here. The one thing I hope to develop as a member of the DHC is how to make this renegade, Party Boy behavior into a fine-honed, marketable skill.

I hope that this more than answers why you should choose me. Now all this and more can be yours for the simple membership selection into the almighty DHC.

Thankfully,

Johnathan K. Johnson

"If you're good at something, never do it for free…" –The Joker

Saturday, August 2, 2008

another whispered story

*** // www.jhny-drko.blogspot.com // ***

Jim sat on a coarse, wet curb of some back alley street with no name. The rain had just let up on this sleepless, worn out industrial town.
Pulling his last American Spirit cigarette from the pack, and folding open an old copper zippo, he rubbed the flint up the shin of his jeans and sparked a flame.
Peering through the orange-red flame and first cough of wispy, exhaled smoke he saw the faces of his six tiny soldiers. Being dangerously close to the line of molotov cocktails thrilled him. An unfortunate fall of hot ash would ignite him in a kamikaze blaze of death.
Playing with fire is what he did best. He did nine months in county with no furlough, the last three months an extension for punching some fag and breaking his nose.

He caught the fag (whom we will call Denny so I can stop using homophobic connotations such as queer, Nancy, or butt pirate) biting his lip while giving him longing, inviting glances and a quick nod & wink. Looking downward, a rule the straight inmates in prison would never be caught breaking in the showers, he saw Denny massaging a full, throbbing hard-on at a pace that mimicked slow, passionate love.
Raging, as suds burned in his eyes, he crossed the shower. Taking slow, deliberate steps across the tiled, grimy floor he went to Denny. The fag (sorry, had to do it) let go of his cock with the belief that his current fantasy was coming true. Denny stretched out his arms in hopeful embrace with his forbidden love. The six other inmates from gen. pop. now breaking from their 3 minute shower were making various convulsions of repulsion. Some even wanted to shout for the guard at either end of the shower to come and save them from the gay cowboy romance unfolding before their eyes.
Denny never saw the flash of the fist. The loud slap of crumpled flesh hitting the wet shower floor stung the eardrum. Sighs of relief and the stomping clap of guards' boots on wet tile rushed through the room.
Grappled simultaneously in full nelson and chokehold, the guards dragged Jim away. Looking back, he saw the fallen queer's body laying motionless in the corner. Blood leaked from Denny's nose onto the floor and pooled as if it were a gunshot.
The guards were hauling him off to the nearest seclusion room, and the only was Jim could gauge where he was while being dragged off was to feel what flooring slid beneath his ankles and heels. First, the tiled shower floor, then the rough concrete of an adjacent hallway into his calloused flesh. Finally, a fine polished concrete floor the inmates were responsible for waxing at least once a week. Various spheres of light reflected and overlapped on the floor. Halogen bulbs reflected up off the floor like distant orbs of flickering ball lightning cast their dim haze. This was the far side of the block reserved for the worst-tempered assholes of the prison, and being hauled through naked, openly paraded in his birthday suit, invited shouts and whistles of public humiliation. I said I'd try not to use them, so I'll just say that suddenly the cell block joined in assaulting Jim as the new gay in town. It was an archaic choir with people singing and overlapping their homophobic solos in operatic fashion.
As the door opened and Jim was pushed into the isolation cell he finally realized his own throbbing hard-on. To everyone, Jim was the latest queer to get dragged out of the showers.

(Thank you to my friend who I will refer to as Dean Martin. You're a crazy S.O.B. and we gotta chill again soon. I love hearing your tales, even if I make them way more twisted than they ever were. Try to stay out of trouble, and promise me you'll never torch a trash dumpster again, please.)

Friday, August 1, 2008

buy the ticket, take the ride

***// www.jhny-drko.blogspot.com //***

"You could have all the money in the world the world, and not be able to afford moments like these." -Romeo Crennel, after winning a Superbowl as an assitant coach of the New England Patriots

I have needed time to think. These past few months have brought about many decisions that I choose to make in deep secrecy, but like any writer I beg and push you to break through the code. Crack the cipher. Read these words. Enjoy a smile.

I have been enjoying a grateful audience lately, and the gaping mouths and shocked faces have given me all the absolution I have found to be necessary to continue. Maybe... just maybe, I've been holding on to all the words you've been dying to read.

Life has been pushing on in its usual, unforgiving way. I have been in a state of blind reality mixed with drunken nights and poured over rocks. My pill bottles are still shaking silent and empty. There's always more than one thought boiling in my head as I sit on the banister of my balcony smoking cigarettes. Among today's thoughts are grim realizations that I have no model examples to follow; I draw most of my self-loathing not from a jealousy of you, but from a faded spark de vie of a former John E. that I cannot reclaim; and finally a calm acceptance that even someone as pissed off and jaded as me can use a little love everyone once in a while.

Maybe I need a sunrise. I'm tired of the sunset. I've been having these Chasing Amy moments lately and I mean that in a way that has to do nothing with my supreme love and adoration for lesbians. I think that makes sense. But it's that cipher I'm laying out for you again. Good luck.

I am in need of a change of style. Maybe that, or maybe just a shift towards a reliving former version of me. I can't be stuck on some idealistic vision of perfection. I have found it. I have hunted it and there is a trophy case of mine that would make you drool and ponder one EPIC WTF. But instead I am back on the hunt for that 1 billionth percent difference in you (whoever you are) that makes you perfect to me. I'm out to break equations. Solve for johnny = r-h, if h = hopeless and r = romantic. Who says math can't be romantic? (Thank You Kumar Patel)

Anyways, time to turn in my angsty/love sucks ballads. Time to race the sun to rising at the shore. Time for that solace in sadness feeling to end. H.S.T. said to take the fucking ride. So the romantic is on board and ready to storm his newest warpath. Find me sleeping on a Jersey shoreline. I'll be dreaming while the ocean whispers me benediction to laugh and wear a fine smile on my face. The ocean will whisper to me that you are happy and to let me know I'm not forgotten. I will kiss that salty Atlantic breeze and you will know that I have never forgotten you.

I raise a toast to myself. It's healthy, for real. "To Johnny Johnson: this juice is definitely worth the squeeze."