The Stonegauge happens to be my personal web log. That’s it. Nothing fancy… Really.

OK, let me try to give you some backstory: I’ve had a web site at one place or another since late summer 1998 entitled “The Stonegauge”. I never much planned for the site to be anything more than something where I could do my personal stuff online. First it was at FreeYellow, then Tripod, then…

In July 2002 – after a little altercation with a small, rinky dink entertainment group — I had to jettison a domain name I once owned and put my site on a different domain. Stonegauge.com was born on July 20th, 2002. Since that time it’s been a mix of personal rants, poetry and photos. There isn’t much method to the madness. I use this site as I see fit and reap all the rewards for it (WHAT rewards?!).

But just what is a Stonegauge?! Don’t you mean Stone Gauge?!

Stonegauge is a play on words. The actual name was inspired by wanderings through Palm Harbor, Florida. One night, sometime during high school, walking near SR 95 and US 19 in Palm Harbor, I came across Stonegate Apartments. I don’t know how or why I changed the name to Stonegauge (perhaps anatomical, perhaps I just misread the apartment name), but I thought it would be a cool band’s name. I can find references to the name in a poetry notebook I wrote in during the 1996-97 school year.

Whatever the case, it stuck. 10 years later, Stonegauge lives on.

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OK, so lets start with soemthing short and undetailed: I graduated high school ten years ago back in June.

Yup, that’s right, it’s been ten years since the summer of 1997 — when the Spice Girls were still somehow relevant, when that little probe touched down on Mars and shocked and awed the US and the rest of the world (OK, that was July… I’m just referencing the past here).

Well, next week will be my 10 year high school reunion from what has been announced over and over again to registered alumni on MySpace. Some people are out of this world excited about this. On the other hand, I had a former classmate tell me in person (and I am paraphrasing here) “I don’t want to see those people.”

Me? I’m the latter but at the same time, I’m a bit of the former. I’d love to see or talk to some people that I knew and were friends with again – touch base and what not…. Then I remember how odd High School was for me socially: not the normal variety of High School awkwardness that most go through but try being hearing-impaired to a grand extent on top of it.

This is where I should insert a colorful anecdote or two about social awkwardness without ones hearing — like thinking someone asking me if I worked at Publix was asking me if I supported abortion, or the time someone simply asked if I was going to a homecoming dance and I had no clue what they said and just guessed they wanted paper — but I’d rather not. Besides, both those aforementioned encounters were with people above and below the Class of 1997 and this is supposed to be about those people.

You know, over the years in my online endeavors, I’ve hoped to come across some of my friends or past acquaintances by chance and sometimes less by chance and more deliberately. I’ve hoped to hear from some people through this web site or through some of the alumni directories that I’ve been registered with… But mix in the social ineptitude from my high school days and you don’t have that happening.

That’s why darling, it’s regrettable, that you are so god damned forgettable…

On another note, I had someone else contact me on the night of their ten-year high school reunion…. Someone I hadn’t heard or seen in close to 19 years… An old classmate and friend from my childhood on Long Island (who was taking the same position as I — not attending her reunion). So my cynicism about people not getting in touch with me over the past does get muted just a bit from that. Not just that but it made me feel better knowing I wasn’t, ahem, so “god damned forgettable”.

east Lake’s graduating class of 1997 was somewhere around 700 — give or take — and only 75 are committed to the reunion. Me? I’ll be in Los Angeles and on a jet plane home during the reunion events next weekend – so nix the idea of me and my shadow being anywhere near this.

Of course, I’m not sullying those who are attending or those who wish to attend…. I’m not trying to knock high school reunions in general either. I am trying to point out that sometimes, the link to a past you didn’t enjoy isn’t going to be popular. And me as a link to the past tends to be highly unpopular.

Since my sophomore year in High School back in 1994 I’ve done my share of writing rhyming verse and what one may or may not call poetry. Some of the following prose was written between 1994 and the present and will be marked accordingly after. Some are romance, some are broken hearts, some are stories, some observations, some anger and some despair. It’s subjective if any of them are good or not…

Right now the sub pages (which are the poems themselves) are unorganized. I’d like to alphabetize them in the future but right now it’s just what I post, when I post them that the order will be shown in. That doesn’t give any semblance to when or where these poems were written, how I feel about them or personal priority… They are just words.

So where was I?

Oh, yeah… Dwelling on inevitability. Surgery. All that joyous stuff that makes life grand for me. August 7th, 2007 was an extremely surreal experience in that my focus had to be elsewhere instead of impending doom and gloom (thank you Oren Koules, Jim Sherrin and Doug Maclean). Surreal may be a strong word for it. A grand, welcome distraction might be a better phrasing. Having a friend come over to spend some time with me and further distract me only aided to things.

The next day was no better – wanting to deal with that story and yet lying in a hospital gurney most of the day while waiting an angiogram: the pre-operative procedure as bad as I dreaded (but with a great staff of physicians trying to deal with my issues and some medical breakthroughs since my last angiogram that kept me from being bed ridden).

You know, I feel like I’m being shallow in the details but at the same time — there weren’t many meaty details before I was trucked off to the ninth floor at Tampa General Hospital where I stayed overnight before surgery. Besides pain issues with thanks to the angiogram, everything went swimmingly.

And how can I properly term my stay at TGH besides saying I was surrounded by good omens and positive energy? Days previous to surgery, I’d gotten a religious card sent to me with the only Patron Saint I identify with. It’s sorta grim but after I learned about him (and wrote about a poem where I invoked him) I didn’t see it as an ill omen as-so-much familiarity. I can deal with familiarity.

When I got to the ninth floor, who greets me warmly but an old friend from High School who works as an Registered Nurse on the floor? It was good mojo to see her, realize who she was and have come right up to me and say hi.

Another thing that was positive and yet drenched with negativity was a nurse I had overnight who I couldn’t understand due to her accent. She was warm, pleasant and tried her best to overcome things and I foudn myself mad that I had gotten frustrated with her.

(more…)

I talked about For Better or For Worse’s swan song last year year and there seems to be more wrapping-ups going on if that’s the case:

• Grampa Jim had a stroke this week in the strips. You could see something dreadful was coming when Elly was on her way to visit him.
• Becky seems to have made a sort of peace with April, and though April still resents the snide sentiment, I still think it may lead her to soemthing with hitting it big with music. April also showed her love of animals this summer — Vet School anyone?
• Elly sold Liliputs like she was foreshadowing last year. Her and John have both made “final arrangements” over the past few months as well as looking at smaller houses
• Michael is writing a book in his “spare” time.
• …and while Elizabeth is in love with a cop from the North, it looks like she is going to end up with her High School sweetheart, Anthony, in the end

Elizabeth is really the only character that doesn’t seem to be set up for something big. Maybe nothing will come for Michael, April, Elly and John (though I am pretty sure about Grampa Jim taking a dirt nap soon) but of all the Pattersons — Elizabeth is going no where. Living at home again, love life in flux…

Man, how can I be wrapped up with a comic strip like this…?

So Josh and Michelle are getting hitched Sunday and now that I have some time to cram on the gift — I’m hitting a wall creatively. Not hitting a wall but my first intuition is that the poem I was going to give them, framed and with art, isn’t going to cut it.

I originally wrote this thing with a girl named Jamie Rose and her boyfriend from High School in mind. I wrote it because I felt guilty for having a crush on the chick when she was so in love with her boyfriend.

So now I am wondering what I should do — edit it where need be? Keep it as is? Bah! Choices, choices!

And let no one put assunder, for together they are a whole….

A lot of people might be noticing and wondering why most of the comment sections aren’t open on some of my posts on here lately. The reason isn’t because I don’t want to hear from people — though I have to be honest, you kids bragging about High School Football is something I can live without. It’s because of SPAM. Lots of spam. Spam spam spam spam spam eggs and spam… Without the comments, there is less of an opportunity for spammers to spam.

Yes, those who are on MT will tell me to use the MT blacklist… I already have it in place. Still, I’d like another anti-spam buffer I guess. Either I stick with this or perchance I convert to Wordpress and fight spam through that. Oh well.

I decided to spin some tunes and do some writing – which hasn’t come easy the last couple of weeks — today. After some audio bullshit and sound card problems I finally got everything running smooth and I had a re-awakening from a song I used to love in Middle and High School —

Aerosmith’s Living On The Edge

I had written a paper about it years ago for my English class (Ms. Manson always supported us being free spirited and such… And encouraged us with music, poetry, writing, etc) and had taken the song too seriously, in a way, when I stated that one message from the song that could be taken was that we are living on the edge of sanity and sobriety.

Anyone who sees the pop culture and news headlines knows this to be true, so that was one thing that is very true about the lyrics of the song.

But then there’s a refrain that comes up twice in the song that I never really put two and two together with, even though it should be obvious for everyone.

If Chicken Little tells you that the sky is fallin’
Even if it wasn’t would you still come crawling
Back again
I bet you would my friend
Again and Again and Again and Again and a-

“Crawling back again” was the line that first hit me for social reasons when I listened to the first instance of this in the song, but then it started weighing on me about Chickie Little and the Sky falling. It’s talking about those who are determined to say that things are all wrong with the world — they’re too this, too that. Too much pollution, too much taxes, too much drug use, too much sex, too much media, too little intelligence, we’ve strayed to far from the church, we’ve got too much greed, too little oil, too few resour—

Hold it right there.

Something actually happens to be right in the world and even when we throw out politics and politically correctness and religion up to our asses. Everyone on either side off an issue knows the issue is wrong because they are experts on the issue and don’t want you to see the truth if it doesn’t fit into their billing. I don’t want to bring up any of my own political beliefs with this because I believe the song right now more than I believe in politics. More than I believe in government. More than I believe in religion and more than I believe in people.

Livin’ On The Edge

Hudson, Tyler, Perry

There’s somethin’ wrong with the world today
I don’t know what it is
Something’s wrong with our eyes

We’re seein’ things in a different way
And God knows it ain’t his
It sure ain’t no surprise

Livin’ on the edge
Livin’ on the edge
Livin’ on the edge
Livin’ on the edge

There’s somethin’ wrong with the world today
The light bulb’s gettin dim
There’s meltdown in the sky

If you can judge a wise man
By the color of his skin
Then mister you’re a better man than I

Livin’ on the edge
(You can’t help yourself from fallin’)
Livin’ on the edge
(You can’t help yourself at all)
Livin’ on the edge
(You can’t stop yourself from fallin’)
Livin’ on the edge

Tell me what you think about your sit-u-a-tion
Complication – aggravation
Is getting to you

If chicken little tells you that the sky is fallin’
Even if it wasn’t would you still come crawlin’
Back again
I bet you would my friend
Again & again & again & again & again

Tell me what you think about your sit-u-a-tion
Complication – aggravation
Is getting to you

If chicken little tells you that the sky is fallin’
Even if it was would you still come crawlin’
Back again
I bet you would my friend
Again & again & again & again

Something right with the world today
And everybody knows it’s wrong
But we can tell ‘em no or we could let it go
But I’d would rather be a hanging on

….

Livin’ on the edge
Livin’ on the edge
Livin’ on the edge
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Livin’ on the edge
{You can’t help yourself)
(You can’t help yourself)
Livin’ on the edge
(You can’t help yourself at all)
Livin’ on the edge
(You can’t help yourself)
(You can’t help yourself)
Livin’ on the edge
(You can’t help yourself)
(You can’t help yourself)
Livin’ on the edge
(You can’t help yourself from fallin’)
Livin’ on the edge
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, you got to that now

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