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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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…?

First and foremost to anyone who knows me and actually visits Stonegauge from time to time to see what’s on my mind or what else I am up to… I’ve stayed off here a lot lately because I’ve been bored with it a bit — Boltsmag gives me a topic to focus on while Stonegauge asks me to focus on me and my life is rather boring.

Oh yeah, and the fact I don’t want to bitch about personal things knowing people know this is my personal blog.

But I gotta bitch today because I’m looking for an old family friend… Or friends more like it.

In 1984..? I think that was it… I moved into a house in Blue Point, New York with my family… Nice ranch place with cedar shingles and brick accents. There was a nursery next door and it was a quaint, small town on Long Island… There’s a plethora of details about Blue Point or that house but none are pertinant to this tory besidse what I want to talk about.

One afternoon after moving in, I was inside doing one thing or another and my brothers were out back — giggling and acting really weird by the back fence. I went to investigate what was going on and I found out they were making a fuss about a girl (and her friend) in the next yard. Mike and Andy were acting anti-social in one way or another and I thought “What’s the big deal?” and started up conversation with the girls… This was the begining of a great neighborly friendship between the Fontana family and the Reilly Family.

The girl in question was Shannon. Shannon H. Reilly if I do so recall her middle initial. She was about the same age as my older brother and went to Blue Point elementary school (while me and my older brother were attending Sylvain Avenue Elementary in nearby Bayport)… Shannon was basically the fourth child of my parents while me and my brothers became children of Shannon’s parents. We really were interchangable children and would spend time playing at each others houses all the time (except when I got tugged into some type of disagreement between my older brother and Shannon). I believe her parents names were Mary “Mussy” Reilly and Rich.

Shannon would later have a little brother, Brian, who became the fifth partner in crime. Of course, Brian would be too young for most of the -adventures that we’d undertake but he was none the less part of the equation when we did something.

At any rate, I moved away from New York to the Tampa Bay area in January 1989. The Reilly’s were there to send us off. They’d later take a trip from their home in New York to Florida and make sure to stop to see us along the way.

But time and distance made things fade. We did end up visiting the Reilly’s after they moved to Massachusetts during the 1990’s (not far from Foxboro if I do so recall) … But after that I can’t recall much of anything – news or what not – of the Reilly family. I did not see Shannon at that mid-1990’s get together because she was still in New York, finishing school while staying with relatives. I do remember Brian was playing offensive line in football but… eh.

I wanna know whatever happened to Shannon? I want to knwo what’s up with the Reilly family and I hope everything is ok. It’s a shot in the dark trying to write a blog entry about them — but after I did research on various platforms trying to find them and failed… I thought this was at least worth a shot….

If anyone hasn’t watched TV and seen the faces and heard the stories of people who have been effected by Hurricane Katrina, you’re fortunate.

If you’ve blamed them for staying in New Orleans or where they are — all the while being happy with how the Government has cut your taxes or happy that Corporations are racking up huge profits… you’re part of the problem…

You might have caught Kanye West tonight on NBC’s concert special to raise relief money for victim’s of Hurricane Katrina. If you missed it, Kanye said on air (before a hasty cut by NBC to Chris Tucker) “George W. Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

Though I can grasp Kanye’s sentiment and where he’s coming from, he’s shooting with the wrong gun by making this statement. The race card doesn’t have to come out as-so-much a more observant look at what is gone wrong with this country.

The weak / slow response to Hurricane Katrina (to put it simply) represents how the separation the President and most of the government from the people (both parties are guilty of this at current). There is the aristocratic class of businessmen and politicos, donors and blind supporters that get top-of-the-line treatment with focus on issues that are concerns of theirs (wedge issues that do not effect day to day life – Abortion, gay marriage, FCC decency standards, etc) while the issues that effect the general populous (being of any race, creed or color) get ignored. Infrastructure is falling apart in the US, schools are in atrocious conditions, health care and insurance are domineered by for-profit corporate interests that keeps people from protection and medical care they need. Poverty is on the rise (and has been the last 4 years) yet you are told a rosie economic picture from the government or talking head economists because the only thing that matters is the statistics or the investor class… Not the people working, not the pay rates of the blue collar class. Not the fact minimum wage has not been raised for 8 years. Just profit margins.

I don’t think it’s a black-and-white thing that Kanye said (and other African Americans are going to agree with) as-so-much a rich-vs-poor thing. Aristocrats-vs-commoners thing. Many of us commoners can’t even begin to comprehend how bad poverty is… You can hear it anyplace they talk about the tragedy that is New Orleans: “They should have gotten out! They should have gotten to Superdome, they should have… they should have…” We can assign blame but we can’t understand the logic. We can assign blame but we can’t grasp their lives. We can assign blame but many of us would take the same route in our suburban homes that these people did in their urban apartments and houses.

We truly don’t understand shit with regards to poverty and the plight of the working class if we’re going to keep allowing corporate interests and special interests to control the country with their interests at heart, not the interests of the citizens of the United States. I don’t believe Bush can grasp what the common person suffers. I could never believe John Kerry (or Hillary Clinton) would be able to comprehend it either, or Al Gore… It’s the same-old aristocrat class that is so out of touch with America that we suffer at their ineptitude.

In fact we’re dying because of their out-of-touch status.

Kanye’s blast at Bush is a blast at the fact the government has turned a blind eye on these people — and they’ll continue to do so from both parties unless we wise up and vote with our heads… We need leadership in this country, and we’re not going to get it from someone who doesn’t understand what it is to live among the people.

It’s been a while since I decided to read any non-ficiton. Usually it’s biographical works on icons of the Entertainment industry (ie: Beatles or the Doors). Keeping with that trend, I decided to pick up Ray Manzarek’s Light My Fire, it’s a Doors autobiography I’ve been meanign to read for some time.

And yet, as I’m still in the early areas of the book, I’m trying to understand why I thought it was a must read? Probably because of all the positive reviews of the book when it originally was released. Can’t be bad at all then, can it?

From a writing standpoint, it can be all that bad. And worse. Though Manzarek has a unique perspective on his tail…. He’s not a writer.

The book comes off much like a personal journal would, I guess… Reporting the mundane as well as the gripping, life-altering events of Ray’s life… But Manzarek loses focus and direction on any given topic quite easily. At one moment he’s about to discuss finding a live performance of the Blues in the south side o fChicago, and the next moment he’s rambling about attire he wore to graduation from the 8th grade…. One moment he’s about to get into his first exposure to Beat poetry, the next he’s laying the smackdown on facism and intimidation of the California Highway Patrol. He goes off on the broadest tangents and does not focus on the event that inspires the tangent thought.

Another instance of Ray veering wildly is a recounting of Jim Morrison’s UCLA film school student film… While trying to detail Jim’s non-linear movie that Rya found “poetic”, he begins recounting Oliver Stone’s version of the student film that he made as part of his feature film on the Doors. Ray goes off on Oliver for makign an innocent film into something with anti-semitism and Nazi inneundo. He attacks Stone (as he has since the film came out in the early 1990’s) and lets the UCLA film school experience vanish from the story.

It almost comes off like a conversation — one that varies wildly as those who partake in the conversation ramble on into the night. Yet, having to read this conversation is painful… Especially with gramatical errors of repeated run-on sentences, short sentences that woudl be better combined, repetition of adjectives, etc….

Ray’s book, while from the heart, has nothing on John Densemore’s Riders on the Storm autobiography.,

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….

Random Christmas Eve rants —

I hate having to play the dick but that is what happened a littler earlier today – maybe I didn’t exactly play it but listening to someone start falling all over themselves for the umpteenth time and putting themselves into a shit situation — a dick is all I could be.

This very person had remarked about going with your head and not with yoru heart and how things will be nifty right at the start… This person also happened to tell me, a few minutes later, that she was “in love” with an abusive, controlling, insecure prick who wanted to keep her as a possesion and not as a person.

Over a couple of weeks chatting with this girl, I’d feed her logic and a few days later she comes back with “You were right.” And yet her own self-hate, self-loathing and low self-esteem leads her to punish herself… “This is the best I can do.” “I don’t deserve better”, “I’m not good for anythign more.”

I was also told by this same little girl that I shouldn’t settle for anyone or anything, that I seem like the person who would strive for just what they want… That’s true in a lot of ways but if there is anyone in life that has been resigned to the fact he’s got to settle in the end – its me. You can have personality up the waazoo, you can be sweet and romantic and a really funny guy… You can be selfless or benevolent but it really amounts to shit with people if you got a few things wrong with your person, or don’t meet the market ideal of what a lover should be.

…

And for the record, you don’t write off people and leave them in the cold (or — even worse — confess to avoiding them) at times when they need your friendship… Or to pull that act 3 or 4 tiems and expect continued benevolence. You can’t expect a friend if you can’t be one… but that’s a cold November story so we’ll just leave it be.

…

Maybe someone needs to get typing lessons for Christmas. I type fast and don’t copy edit and what happens? I look like I don’t know how to spell anything (typo after typo).

….

Anyone who tells me they don’t deserve, is full of shit. Anyone who puts up with someone’s abuse is either too in-love or just too insecure to go back to what they had with nothing. Anyone who falls in love with someone else but gets engaged to the guy they are dating just becasue she wasn’t ready to break up yet… Well, that’s just fooling everyone and setting up for problems. You can want to share a bed with someoen but, dear God, you’re REALLY setting up to get screwed by drawing it out like that!

…

And by the way… Bryan? Not that you read my blog but you really shouldn’t get so upset over Liz. Yes there were a few misteps there but give it time, buddy. Just be a friend or try to be and be content with that. Keep your eyes open as well, you never know what else is goign to come along (and actually be clear about their intentions instead of wishy-washy like a middle-school girl.

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.