I walked into my favorite coffee house this afternoon. Not necessarily because I needed a fix of caffeine but mostly because I just needed some time to decompress and putting off driving home. The midtown Caribou coffee is usually filled to the brim with assorted hipsters, random gay guys, young college students, and older professionals like myself.
Today, the only open seat was on one side of the fireplace in one of the leather chairs. These are not the connected types, but the regular ones. They were just pushed closely together as if a couple had been sitting together earlier in the day. I quietly settled in, opened up my laptop, and started reading some emails as I sipped my Americano. The guy sitting next to me instantly gave me this dirty look as if I was invading his personal space just by breathing the same air as he was. Each time I sat my cup down on the end table, he would let out this long sigh and roll his eyes at me. For the next twenty minutes, I made no conversational attempts or acknowledge his constant sighing. The only sound from my side of this rather uncomfortable seating arrangement was the tapping of my keyboard. Yet, I got the under his breath "shessh" as I came back with another cup. Eventually two cute girls finished doing their homework by the window and left. He loudly gathered up his belongings and moved to the chairs they had left empty.
A little while later, he got up for a refill and left his seats open. A couple people in front of him in line was a young mother and her adorable fussy toddler, who was upset that he couldn't get a cookie or something. They came toward me and asked if the second chair was taken. I was about to happily welcome them down when apparently someone she knew called her over...directly next to the open seat next to the dick head. The rather annoying man came back to his book to find a screaming toddler would be his new sitting area companion. I sat for the next half hour watching Junior play games on an Ipad at full volume, cry about his missing Rice Crispy treat, and make himself at home by laying across his mother's lap while picking his nose. The man was not amused at all. When I left, he was still giving everyone the stink eye for being on this planet with him. I finished my work on the laptop and had an enjoyable conversation with an exchange student from Paris who took light next to me.
Lesson of the day: Do not be an asshole to strangers. Life can come back to bite you in the ass.

20 worst songs of all time according to ME

These are going to be mostly rock (If you can call them that) songs because the new popish songs are just too easy to pick on as well as too plentiful. This list will most likely going to change as I drive this weekend. Don't judge me.....

• Snow - “Informer” Screw this fake jamaican accent white boy.  
• Limp Bizkit - “Faith” Yes, I went through a Limp Biscut* phase when I was in my 20's. It was a phase and eventually the hormones evened out and I learned that there was no need for violent screaming in songs. 
• Baha Men - "Who Let The Dogs Out?"  I have always hated this abominably foul example of what passes for popular music. 

Paradise by the Dashboard Light - Meatloaf
November Rain - Guns N Roses
Hotel California - The Eagles
Pretty Fly For a White Guy - The Offspring
Fly Away - Lenny Kravitz
Pour Some Sugar on Me - Def Leppard
Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin
Old Time Rock and Roll - Bob Seger
I’ll Wait - Van Halen
Born in the USA - Bruce Springsteen
Love in an Elevator - Aerosmith
Uptown Girl - Billy Joel
Kokomo - The Beach Boys
Amber - 311
Semi Charmed Life - Third Eye Blind
Rock Star - Nickelback
Open Arms - Journey
Every Morning - Sugar Ray
Dani California - Red Hot Chili Peppers
I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That) - Meatloaf

I cut my finger open with a serrated bread knife while trying to slice up a salmon and tomato poppy seed bagel.
Yup.

This would be labelled as "Zach Cooks" but I'm a moron. 

Music time: What better to do when working late into the evening.

Meme: Worst roommate

While on active duty, I lived just off base at Fort Leonard Wood. The apartments were cheap. They were dirty. But most importantly, they were close to work. I only lived there because I could be in my office within 12 minutes of walking out of my door. The way the apartments worked was that there was no single lease upon an apartment, but you as a renter would sign a lease on you having a room of your own. This way, if your roommate was deployed, there would be no problem making the rent. The bad side to this was that you didn't really get a say in who lived with you. As long as there was an empty bedroom, someone would eventually be living with you.
A couple weeks after I moved in, a young private from Rhode Island moved into the adjoining room while he waited for his clearance check to come through. The first thing, the very first thing, he did when he came in was to light up a cigarette in our communal living space. I had quit smoking not long before this so I was really sensitive about the smell. The room was rented out as a non-smoking room. So, when I asked him to smoke out in the outside gazebos, he flipped out on me. The third day, he woke me up on my day off at 4am, to complain that my 32" television was too small for him to enjoy. When he hooked it up to his video game system, there was a conflicting video decoding error and he blamed me and my television for breaking his old system. Also, he thought that my "Pump up the Volume" movie poster should be taken down from the kitchen wall since the movie was about how a kid broke the law over and over, thus would be a bad influence on his well being......really.
I did try to be his friend. I really did. The first weekend that he was there, he complained that there was nothing do in the area so I invited him to hangout with my (at the time) girlfriend for a night of putt putt and movies. All night long, he did nothing but complain that we were forcing him to do what we wanted and he just wanted to go home. Fine, we did and took off on our own. That Sunday, we invited him to join us in the living room for a night of old school NES Mario, PBRs, and meatball sliders. My girlfriend, Tracy, even invited one of her friends to join us in hopes that he may like her. About 30 minutes after he had eaten a lion's share of the sandwiches, he hid a case of the beers into his room, yelled at us because he was being "smothered". A week later, I was sitting at my bedroom desk when I overheard him talking on the phone to his family about how I was a horrible roommate because I had made him feel unwelcome here since I had stopped inviting him to anything. The next week he left one of his god awful smelling frozen pizzas in the oven at full blast while he went on a walk to "talk to mother nature". When I came into the apartment, the room was full of smoke and the oil from the pizza was dripping down onto the heating element building a fire with each drip. He would later blame me for the destruction of the pizza and smoke damage because I should of checked on it while we was gone. The last weekend, before I left FLW, a great friend from Georgia came in for the going away party. She and her partner slept in my room on Friday while I crashed on the couch since their hotel room was not available until the following night. All night long, and I mean ALL NIGHT, he would randomly come out into the living room, wake me up, only to complain to me about how it was rude of me to allow them to do this in his apartment. We went into St.Roberts for drinks and a dinner before the party so I thought that this would be one last olive branch to be nice to end our relationship on. I bought everyone dinner that night. He sat at the corner of the table, didn't talk to anyone else, and just got incoherently drunk off his ass on the most expensive ouzo on the menu. At the party, he pulled Tracy aside and told her that I was going to hell for supporting sin in his home.
After I left, a few of our mutual friends told me that he had complained to them that I had left him with a cleaning bill of 1000$. He refused to let Tracy into the apartment to get the stuff I had left behind for her and sold it all to make up the money. I know I hadn't left anything wrong in the apartment. It was so clean that I had gotten my sexurity deposit back which was rare in the complex.
Now everyone has personality conflicts sometimes. I know this. But, there was just not one redeeming quality to this person. He was lazy. He was closed minded to new things. He was anti-social. He was just a plain dick. I have never lived with another roommate since then for the reason that I don't want to take the chance that I may run into another person like him.

Monday has come:

My major grant is being pulled from me in the Spring and given to someone from a more ethnically diverse background because the American educational system needs to "support the education of those that cannot support themselves".

Fuck this. Looks as if I will be paying out of pocket.

Woke up thinking you were next to me.
I hate this feeling. I miss talking to you. I hate that you think that I am going to lie to you. I wish that I had never been so insecure at the time in myself to think that you wouldn't like me for who I really am.
There are mistakes which we make in our lives that can never be forgiven. This is the mistake that I hold upon myself.
Good night, Sweet Dreams.
Wherever you are. 

Better lipsyncing than Glee..

Growing older and being responsible sucks.
 I have a meeting in the morning so the customary birthday dinner and drinks out has been postponed until Friday night.  Instead of partying like a 20 year old, I'm relaxing on the couch with Netflix (Airplane the movie), Buffy laying on my feet, and takeout Cantonese. 

A little girl just sold me a solo cup of homemade lemonade.

It was delicious. 

As I was driving home this afternoon and stopped at my usual gas station, North of Macon I saw a symbol of my own childhood which warmed my heart. 

This afternoon was one for the record books. The sun was out for once, my windows had been down since I passed through Forsyth, my favorite music was playing on the radio and that the day couldn't of turned out better. That was when I noticed two little girls setting up a stand as their mother sat in the shade behind them. They were selling for their school, supposedly for school supplies. As soon as I saw them, they started smiling from ear to ear, beckoning me to come buy a cup. I pulled up and gave them a couple bucks for a solo cup worth of overly sweet lemon juice. Then just thanked them for the delicious cup, congratulated them for being so ingenious for their idea and cruised away. They were so happy. 

I know that this is not very news worthy. But, they made my ride home very enjoyable. 

Spending the night in my home office, no one else is home, time to turn on some music.

Good Night. Sweet Dreams.
Wherever you are..... 

Zach Cooks

http://instagram.com/p/dKnsGayZmb/

Why the hell are Americans the stereotypical "rude and stupid tourists"?
I left Arlington this past Friday, completely disgusted with the way we, as Americans, represent ourselves in public. On my off hours, I like to explore our capitol's monuments and the Smithsonian Museum. During my mini adventures, I have noticed that every single American tourist I see does pretty much the same damn thing over and over again, while people from other countries are getting pushed out of the way by their overbearing nature. The American tourist are dressed like crap. (Baggy jeans, t-shirts, dirty clothes) While the nice French woman I met this past week pointed out that she could identify people from her country just by the way some of the tailored dresses were worn. (It was weird but pretty much dead on)
Side note: Americans have this need to touch. Oh look a priceless artifact from the Paleozoic period, lets rub our grubby hands all over the glass and hope that we can share how dirty we really are with the rest of the world. If the sign says don't touch the glass...DON'T TOUCH!
Now, I am not the best dresser in the world. I wear 12 year old blue jeans on my days off, I regularly wear combat boots that have been worn so many years that I have replaced the sole on them twice, and there are quite a few shirts in my dresser older than all but one relationship I have ever been in and are still the most comforting to wear ones I have. But, when I am out in the public eye and am going to be seen, I at least try my best to be an example of proper behavior. American's have this mentality lately that it is okay to cut in line, litter, and act like a jackass to some in need. The only other nationality I have noticed this behavior from are Indians (dot head). I love travelling the world, but there is no way in hell that you would ever get me off the plane in that country and have to deal with their interpersonal issues there....
Sorry, I didn't mean for this to turn into a rant.
If you are at a museum, don't run your hands over the glass. If you are walking through town and see a group of foreign nationals coming down the sidewalk your way, at least pull up your god damned pants. If you see a nice couple with their kids trying to take a picture in front of a monument, stop trying to barge your way in front of them. Just give them a second, this is could be a trip the kids remember for the rest of their lives. Do you really want another generation of people to hate Americans as much as we are hated now? Speaking of monuments, how ignorant do you have to be when you think it is a good idea to climb up onto a national memorial and take a selfie for your FB feed. And one last thing,  please.....If you are in a crowded touristy area, don't light up a stinking Marlboro red!
This shit pisses me off! Show some respect for yourself and your own country!

Did I miss September totally?

Good night, Sweet dreams.
Wherever you are.

Had to go back two exits, take an access road, crawl through a barbed wire fence, and was attacked by a mound of fire ants but it was worth it.

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This is epic!

Stories:

Many years ago while at UGA, I had a pretty tight group of dorm mate friends. After our freshman year, we all moved around town but remained close enough friends that we would still hang out on the weekends and special occations. Every 4th of July we would pool our pittances together and a few of us would make the journey up to South Carolina for as many fireworks we could muster to pack into my truck cab to put on our own show in my or another person's backyard. I'm talking about when it comes to a home display, we did a HUGE show. The last year before we all dispersed across the country, the count was three mortar boards with 8 tubes each, around 30k firecrackers which we hung up in the pecan tree branches, hundreds of the saturn rockets, and everyone had at least 10 boxes of roman candles to shoot from my back porch at Gumbo as he and I set off each bank.
So, after a afternoon/night of..... many PBRs, smoking out the neighborhood, and terrorizing every single squirrel within range of the roman candles the party started to wind down. Neal, Amelia, and I took the ones that had partied a little too hard back to their homes and came back to the house to clean. It was around 2 in the morning when everything had been cleaned. Myself, was still drunk, and in my infinite wisdom thought that it would be a great idea to not keep the leftover fireworks and instead light the last string of 500 blackcats out in the street. Amelia and I went out into the road next to the house to see if anyone was still around. I lit the fuse... Just as the sparks started to fly, then around the corner comes one of ACPDs finest.
The first firecracker goes off just as his car pulled up in front of our driveway. I remember seeing the first explosion throw up the whole string and loop it on the front of his bumper brush guard. As we stood there in the gravel of my driveway, I could see the cop's face each and every time one went off. The shredded paper was spraying all over the ground, the lawn, and on the hood of the cruiser. The blue lights from the bar on top made it strangely pretty as the smoke wafted in the night air.  As the last pop went off, the cop rolled down his window and gives the two of us this look. Like a, you can't be that stupid, look.
Cop: What are you doing?
Me: We had some leftover fireworks from a party and wanted to get rid of them.
Cop: Do you realize what time it is? People are sleeping.
Me: Yeah, I knew I was in trouble as soon as you came around the corner.
Amelia: We could of run.
Me: We live right there!
The cop at that moment started laughing and asks if that was all we were going to shoot and tells us to get to sleep.
That was the last time I ever set off fireworks in a city limits.

Music to calm the savage beast:

I stopped by a bar at 1:30 AM to seek solace in a bottle and/or someone to talk to.

I can't sleep. I don't want to take sleep medications. My head is killing me. Johnny Walker, be my friend. 

Morning Music

Woke up late to discover six messages from HR.

" Mark has a family emergency. Would you mind taking his place as the Welcoming Management Liaison for the new hire indoc this weekend?"

How about another since I can't sleep.

        I ran away from home a couple times in my youth. It was not that I had a bad home life, my father was always at work to be able to give us whatever we needed in life and my mother was as loving and caring at one could ever hope or dream for. We may not of always gotten along throughout our lives together, but in the end we were happy. When I ran away, I didn't do it out of spite, I just have always had a nomadic urge in me. Anyway, I watched some random  Afternoon Special , A "very special episode"about how kids would run away and be taken in by drug dealers or something like that to get hooked on the dangerous joints that they were passing out to everyone. I don't really remember, but I just wanted to get off of the farm. Running away seemed to me at the time like camping out anyway.
        Being from my small town has it perks and cons. Most of the time, I just ended up walking into Commerce and playing the Joust arcade game at the laundromat behind Parhams restaurant since that was considered fun to me at the time. This was the perk. It was close enough that I could walk the 6 miles easily. The con was that since the town was so small, everyone knew my mother, everyone knows my grandmother. EVERYONE. I wanted to get away from what I knew, only to be welcomed by friendly smiles and conversations as I walked down Main Street. This was not what I wanted. I wanted to be a loner. I wanted to be mysterious. So, I would give up and walk home. Most of the time, Mama didn't even realize that I had even gone far. The longest I ever stayed gone was when I attempted to walk to the Firebird Truck Stop, or at least attempted to. I somehow got lost on Hospital Road and went to Will Golden's house to call Granny when the bugs from the lake were annoying me so much that I just wanted to go home. That trip got me a nice whipping.
        Once Jill Bridges and I decided to we were going to run away together. Her mother asked us where we were going and we flat out told her that we were running off to Athens to live at the Mall with Tiffany, the singer Tiffany by the way. She laughed as she called my mother and asked that I make sure Jill was home by dark. (She was)
I don't specifically remember doing this but Mama often told the story about how she walked into my room once and found me packing up a suitcase. She asked what I was doing and I told her my usual "Running Away". She then proceeded to help me pack up my toys in the suitcase. She made me a brownbag lunch of some PB&J sandwiches, made sure that I had my Cookie Monster stuffed animal, and some bug spray, and wrapped them all up in a bundle on the top of a broom handle. She then insisted that I sit down for a last meal and a cartoon or two before I went out to make my way in the world. I agreed and sat down in front of the television just in time for my afternoon cartoons. I was so completely distracted by baby Kirk, Thundercats, and my sandwich with chocolate milk that I completely forgot about wanting to leave. While I was distracted she had gone back upstairs and completely unpacked everything since I had completely forgotten about the whole thing.

I feel like telling you a story that I should of a long time ago.

If anyone ever talks to my father about raising cattle, he will eventually bring up the infamous, Gus the horrible. Gus was a huge Santa Gertrudis bull (This is what he looked like) which Uncle Jackie had bought in hopes of starting his own breeding program on the farm. I don't know why, but Gus hated my father with a passion that would echo down through the states history. He put my father in the hospital once with a severe concussion after knocking him through a fence , broke his ribs a couple times, he rammed the broken down dumptruck my father was working on so hard that the door was crooked on it's hinges, he stomped at him what seemed every time we would do the farm wide inoculations. Gus hated my father and my Father hated Gus equally.
Now, I was around 5 or 6 when Gus came to the farm. At the time I knew no fear of any living creature. I also really didn't have any close friends to play with. I would entertain myself by playing with the animals on the farm in the times when the Kitchens were scaring me and Jill, the little girl down the street, was busy with her Girl Scout troop. Every cow on the farm was taught that I was harmless I guess and would come up to me for a salt cube that my Papa Jack taught me to keep in my pockets while in the fields. Gus to me, was just another large cow. A really really large cow... I loved walking out to the fence line near the garden and sneaking Gus a broken corn stalk. He was never aggressive toward me at all. So when Daddy would compain to Mamma about how much he hated that cow, I felt as if he was insulting my friend. When I was down about something, I would go out to the field and talk to Gus, or any other cow about my problems. (I was 5ish, don't make fun of me.)
One day, Gus wasn't in the field for one of our little talks. Daddy had been threatening to shoot Gus for a while, so I instantly assumed that he had gotten drunk again and did it. I cried all the way up the gravel driveway  to Mama's arms. She called Ann and found out that Gus had gotten out in the night and was in the Bridges' field until they could all get home and transfer him back to his home field. He never came back though. A couple days later, Jackie decided that Gus was too much trouble for his worth and took him to the Round Barn Auction House. I never saw Gus again. I also didn't eat beef for a couple months after that. I was afraid that I would be eating my buddy.

It's inconsequential and rather pointless, but I wanted to share this memory with you.

Brunch without some sort of booze, is just a sad late breakfast.....

In a meeting and should be taking notes, instead I'm doing a meme:

What I desire:

• To stand in the sun on a deserted beach, watching the waves crash onto the sand, feeling the salt water wash away the sand from beneath my feet.  
• To smell homemade Chicken and Dumplings cooking in my great grandparents’ house. To see Big Granny, Little Granny, and Mama all sitting at the kitchen table snapping green beans for a family dinner later in the evening. 
• To run through the forests of North Georgia again. I miss the way the land underneath me felt. I miss the way the air smells in the evening. I miss the sounds of the forest just after twilight. 
• To know my loved ones are safe. 
• To linger over a cup of coffee' on a busy Spanish street again. To feel the heat coming from the cup into my hands. To smell the aroma in the steam just before putting the cup to my lips. 
• To see blue eyes look at me lovingly once again. The way the sun made those eyes sparkle, looking up at me with her head in my lap, was set firmly as one of my most cherished memories. 
• To be able to sit and talk late into the night without the fear of anything. 
• To feel as though I am enough. To believe in myself that what I have to offer, what I have become, the person that I am is enough and to stop convincing myself into believing that I have to be something or someone that I am not. 

Take a little trip. Take a little trip. Take a little trip and see...

Good night, Sweet Dreams.
Wherever you are.

Soundtrack of the day- Nine Inch Nails - 2013-07-26 Niigata, Japan, Fuji Rocks Festival - Compl...

F- it. Pill time. 

So I went to the doctor today and had a talk about the fact that I haven't been asleep in days in god knows how many hours. I started having these weird hallucinations at the edges of my field of visions today so I went to see the GP and discovered that my blood pressure was through the roof.
The doctor prescribed me Xanax, but due to my past and fear that I will become addicted to them I turned down the pills flat out. He told me that if I want to cure my insomnia without pills, that I should do what sets me at ease before bed since that is what used to work for me. I didn't tell him that I am not able to do that anymore.....

I'm screwed.  

I just had a horrible thought. All the NSA analysts which are combing through everyone's internet history, they have to look at hundreds upon hundreds of ugly kids photos from the people that they are investigating FB feeds. That is just really depressing to me.