To Much Talk

People that talk and talk and talk for no reason are the worst type of people. There are so many people like this that I've become really good at going to different places in my head and maintaining an interested look while they ramble on. I feel like sometimes people just word vomit all over me with no real story and no real point to any of the conversation. It's not like it's the topics these people choose either, it's the people themselves. I can get into any conversation thread and be interested, it's when people think they know all and can't bring themselves to listen or acknowledge the presence of others is when I start to consider slitting my wrist and seeing if the ropes of blood hitting their faces will get them to shut the hell up...

How many times have you been in a group of people where one jackass is dominating the conversation? Then when that person gets up you inevitably look at the remaining people and roll your eyes or make a funny face and everyone tends to commisurate because they all know what a bore this loser is. This shit happens to me every day!

If you think you talk to much, then you probably do. It's not some cute characteristic that people don't really mind.... we mind, trust me, we mind. Being long-winded is the type of trait that can inspire loathing and even force me to change my plans if I know that I'll have to come in contact with certain people who jibber jabber to much.

Who is the most interesting person you know? The odds are that this person is a great listener and when they do speak, they make their words mean something and they make their comments stick in your head, and not just go in one ear and out the other. The key here is to listen, then think about what the other person said, then measure out a response. A lot of people will start a conversation with entire paragraphs planned of what to say and they'll pause to let other people speak, though all the while they are just thinking of what they're going to say next.

Start measuring out what you're going to say and if you have nothing worthwhile to say? Just keep your mouth closed. The world will appreciate it.

Oh and stop having entire conversations over text message. If this is going to take more than 3 or 4 texts then you might as well just call....although I don't really want you to do that either. Maybe just wait til we see each other in person :)

Writing Project Update #3

(I was reading through my "work in progress" today or what I sometimes, laughingly refer to as a book. It's following a story line but there are whole passages and pages where I go off on tangents and I rant and rave and whoop and whirl across the page. The writing so far is painting the picture of a passionate, somewhat crazy, sometimes very angry young man. I'm not sure how I feel about my work so far. I don't feel bad, but I also don't feel that great about it either.

I cut and pasted some snippets below...One snippet may offend you pro-lifers out there, and I don't really care. I would suggest you stop reading now if you get easily upset by that type of thing. )


--"More heavy tears run down her face and she moves in to hug me again. I let her do so but instead of giving her a hug back, I coldly pat her on the back three times. I'm shaking with a caffeinated jolt of 6 espressos, only I'm dead sober. I’m repulsed, I’m in a state of horrific shock. I feel no empathy for her and I feel no empathy for whatever is (possibly) alive in her stomach, I only feel for MYSELF and how this would mess up MY life. My mind races with the abortion process and the money that is potentially involved. Who can I ask for advice, who has been here before? How much is it? I try to remember where the abortion clinic is in Richmond. Where do I always see the protestors? On Boulevard and Grove? Boulevard and Floyd? My mind flips and spins and my eyes blink uncontrollably. Tears are held in check, just barely. Can I scrape together enough money in the next week or so?

I walk along the streets pissed off and angry. Angry at whom? Myself? God? Her? An unborn child? I don’t know who to blame but I’m walking the streets in a white hot rage. I turn dark corners into unlit alleys and I imagine getting jumped by four muggers and I welcome the sight. I welcome a brawl and I yearn for the brutality of it. I welcome the adrenaline and the smash of my fist and elbows into eye-balls and foreheads and groins. I’m so jacked up with anger I could take on an army right now. An army of muggers or even an army of her, an army of lying, cheating, drama-loving whores.
Again I think of how much an abortion costs. I think of my mother and my father and I think, what they would they say? I think of what the fuck I’m doing with my life."


--"Oh sure, they tell me that you really start to live when you have a child and a happy relationship…
I spit on that, I spit on the whole god damn system. I whip off a condom I just filled and I wing it onto their glossy "bay windows".

Live Life Now

"When the revelation that there is nothing after this life but the illimitable black void is grasped, hedonism is the only logical answer." - Roissy in DC.

I had an in-depth conversation as I was closing up the bar tonight with a regular customer, who up until tonight I had thought of as nothing but a loud drunk.

His story (briefly), is that he got married early, got divorced 10 years later, worked in bank for 20 years and then realized that he was so incredibly unhappy that death would be a better option. He is now 45 years old. He is single and he took the money he had accumulated (it didn't amount to much) and moved to Vegas to try his hand and his dream at playing poker full time. He has ups and downs and barely gets by, and even now his mother is a co-signer on a 100,000 dollar line of credit that's his frequent parachute. He shuttles between Vegas and Richmond, and when he's not doing that, he takes frequent vacations (South America ad Aruba mostly) where he has a 30 year old Columbian girlfriend. He's far from being set and able to simply retire. In a way he lives paycheck to paycheck. He is one of happiest people I've ever met. He's living his dream and somehow he just knows that everything is going to be alright, although he does admit to being scared sometimes.

Now, I don't believe everything he says and I'm sure he glossed over a lot of shit, but the bottom line is... He regrets not taking the plunge into his current lifestyle earlier. He admits to wasting time on worthless pursuits early in his adulthood.

Again, I DO NOT believe everything he told me and I know that having a fall-back "money parachute" makes things a whole lot different, but I also know that he's happy doing what he wants to do and that he understands the fickle nature of this thing we call life.

As for the above quote. Well it speaks for itself. We're dying one day at a time.... and for some of us, we're dead within a day or a week or a year, and we don't even know it yet.

Ironman Date

*Tony Stark likes to drink Johnny Walker Blue, so does Jack Goes Forth (when it's free).

Advice: No matter how much you like a girl, do not cave for multiple bottles of half-off wine and/or multiple appetizers and then go see Ironman. The money spent for both is insane compared to rail vodka at a dive bar and then buying a six-pack and taking it to the river. (I have only myself to blame for this mistake.)

I gorged myself on crab and some sort of Cabernet Sauvignon, then I had a hard time keeping up with the rediculous plot/premise of Ironman, not to mention keeping my eyes open the entire time.

Robert Downey Jr. was great. The movie kind of sucked it for me though, although this is also coming from a guy who didn't really get into Spiderman either. Maybe it was "The Dude" in such a villainous role?

If you do see it, stay after the closing credits. There's a scene with Downey and a surprise cameo from a badass actor and it's sort of cool. I knew about it and I told my date, but the other 20 people in the theatre didn't know and got up and left. At first I felt cool that I knew this secret and then afterwards I just felt like some sort of comic book virgin nerd guy(earily similar to the "comic book guy" from The Simpsons)....which I'm not..... anymore.

RVA Blogs and Richmond Readers are Obsessed With Food and Food Critics. Maybe That's Why This city and the South are so Morbidly Obese.

.......................................................................................
......................................................................................
.....................................................................................
......................................................................................
....................................................................................
................................
.....................................................................
...............................................................................
.....................................................................................
......................................................................................
.........................................................................................
.............................................................................






This was an experiment to see how many people would click on this post from RVA Blogs because the title mentioned the words "food" and "Richmond". I have the over/under set at 20. I'm afraid if I threw in the word "baby", my server might explode with all of the new traffic.

Disregard and go about your daily web-surfing if this doesn't pertain to you.

Missing DC Metro

I love Richmond, I love the landmarks, the river, the (decent) amount of easy and/or nice southern girls, my high school friends, certain streets and certain older sections of town. I like knowing people in almost every bar I hit. Other than gas, the cost of living is much much cheaper than DC.

I hate not being able to walk or metro anywhere though. Gas is fucking my shit all up and then of course I sometimes (have) to drink and then drive, which really sucks.

I used to metro into DC from Arlington (Ballston) and just randomly get off at a stop, then I would start walking, stop for food, talk to girls, have a drink, people-watch; then if I got tired I'd just hop back on the metro and go home or find an area I knew better. I loved it. It reminded me of being in NYC for a period. Not having to drive anywhere is amazing and once you adjust to using public transportation it makes it difficult to get behind the wheel again.

I had a lot of memorable times on the DC Metro. Dates taken by metro, dates gone very arwy, hooking up with girls on the way back from the bars, being completely belligerent to and from baseball games (yes I was occasionally that guy), and simply sitting and thinking about stuff. Metro rides, even when slammed packed with people can be a great place to drift off into your own little dream world.

I also remember those morning and afternoons I had to cram my way in and fight to get on the Orange line. I definately don't miss the weary faces riding to and from their gov't jobs everyday and I most definately don't miss my weary face on that metro every morning.

This all boils down to the fact that I need to get back to a huge urban sprawl with public transportation, but like with everything else I want, I just need to be patient.

State Of Jack Address: Part Deux

"Life, as it is called, is for most of us one long postponement" -Henry Miller (this was quoted in an earlier blog post, but it just seemed appropriate for this post too. Also the above picture is actually Hunter S. Thompson.)

So in the past 5 months since I've started this blog my life has changed completely, this is nothing new to anyone who reads this blog.
I now bartend 5, sometimes 6 nights a week at 3 bars spread across my hometown of Richmond VA in an effort to reduce the debt I acrued over my first three years out of college and in an effort to figure out which direction I want to take this life. Bartending full-time has proven to be one of the best jobs and times of my life. Whatever the future holds, I expect to keep bartending in some capacity, whether it be part or full-time.

I'm currently writing a book and like I imagined, it's extremely difficult. I go stretches of days where I regret ever having the idea and convinced that my writing sucks, but then I have days like today where I bang out 15 pages of work that I honestly think are really good. The goal now is to have an (almost) finished work by my birthday (9-25) and to start sending stuff to editors, publishers, agents, and whomever will take the time to read it. Also once I get a bit further along I'm going to start studying up on the self-publishing process (Fellow blogger Roosh V will probably be a good resource for that.) Whatever happens, I will have a book with my name on it, that you can hold in your hand. I don't care if I'm the only hand that will ever hold that book, you can bet the farm that this will happen. I'm almost afraid of the first time someone else reads some of this stuff (it's not exactly PG or even R rated for that matter), in fact I'm trying my hardest to make it graphic in its detail and some of its events (Think Bret Easton Ellis meets Chuck Palahuick meets Charles Bukowski meets a softcore Cinemax movie).

I probably shouldn't say this at the moment due to current JackGoesForth events, but girls have been plentiful. Infact I've never had more girls than I've had in the past five months and for people that know me, that's saying something. I've changed my lifestyle, attitude and belief system, so there is something to be said for living a hobo,artist,bartender, free-loader, part-time asshole lifestyle. It's been fun and I expect it to continue to be fun, although I'm not ruling out something that's more than just a "fling". I know, that's soft talk, but in between all of the random slores I meet, there happen to be a few cool chicks here and there.

Other than my book project and my debt reduction project, I still don't have a clear vision of what I'm going to do. I still get calls from recruiters about sales jobs (pharma, alcoholic beverage and medical mostly) and admittedly, I still take the time to listen and think about going back to that lifestyle, although I'm almost 99 percent sure that this won't happen for some time (and by some time, I mean years).

The only things I'm saving for at the moment are trips. Atlantic City for a bachelor party, a possible Caribbean vacation (by myself), and of course the ultimate goal of back-packing Europe or South America (although at the rate I'm saving it would take a miracle for this to happen within 10 years.)

Starting next week I'll be spending as many of my off-days as possible at my families river house. I'll be on the water or I'll be on the pier typing away. I couldn't be more excited for this.

I now play the lottery along with the other bartenders every Tues and Fri nights. I've always thought it was stupid, and well, it is stupid and a waste of 3-4 bucks. I guess I just like the fun I have with everyone when we talk about what we would do with the money and then how we all gather round at midnight to check our numbers. It makes me feel real blue collar when I'm in line with a bunch of Mexican landscapers at 4 PM at 7-11 buying lottery tickets, and they of course are also purchasing a 22 oz of Steel Reserve Malt Liquor.

I've started eating a lot of bloody red meat and that, in addition to an even more grueling work-out regimen has sort of made me angry more often, but not in an angry-stressed out type way. More like an angry, I wanna blast Tool in the car and yell, stress-release type way. When I'm eating these big, rare hunks of burger I sometimes imagine that I just killed the animal with my bare hands and bit right into it's skin. Sort of weird, I know. I can now see why vegetarians and vegans are so passive. I also think bartending has sort of made me more aggressive with people. Working at a packed college bar where you are sometimes expected to jump the bar to break up fights and help the bouncers, in addition to having to deal with A LOT of assholes will tend to do that to you. I like having that sharp edge though.

Anyways, I'm still plugging away. The blog vacillates in terms of the quality of writing (obviously) and actual visitors. One week I averaged 175 readers a day, the next I averaged 85 readers a day. I don't really know where these people come from and I don't really care, I try to only think about honesty and myself when I write. I've had two people actually find one of the bars I work at and introduce themselves, so that was sort of cool. I think they went to that bar anyways and just happened to be in there during one of my shifts, but whatever.

Keep the emails coming and the positive and negative feedback coming also. I'll try not to bore anyone with lame ass posts like this to often.