Holy Crap.

7 days and 2 hours! I'm freakin out..... in a good way!

Can't wait to see all my "road friends": Tommy, Sarah, Nikki, Lisa, Dave, Kerry, Jayson, Eric, Marissa, Mike...... and all the others I'll meet along the way! Here's to living life like it was meant to be!

the sound of an empty promise
echoes like a penny in a steel bucket
reverberate clangs mocking me
"you trusted us but we got you again!"

the devil on my shoulder says "leave, save yourself"
and for once I think the angel may have just chosen to wear red today
because the devil's at the bar ordering another round

that song that made me love you said, "it's hard to say you love"
it also said "it's hard to say you don't"
but so many echoing pennies drown it out and make it easy.
And brake lights will be the only thing you don't see in the end.

The Sad Passing of Common Sense.

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape.

He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as knowing when to come in out of the rain, why the early bird gets the worm, life isn't always fair, and maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend morethan you earn) and reliable parenting strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place.Reports of a six-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job they themselves failed to do in disciplining their unruly children

It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer Panadol, sun lotion or a sticky plaster to a student; but, could not inform the parents when a student became pregnant and wanted tohave an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the Ten Commandments became contraband; churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims.

Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar can sue you for assault.

Common Sense was dealt another blow after he was banned from the courtroom during numerous trials of white collar criminals, who looked overworked, underpaid jury men and women in the eye and tried to convince them that their salaries were 400 times those of their secretaries because of a careless accounting error.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust; his wife, Discretion; his daughter, Responsibility; and his son, Reason. He is survived by three stepbrothers; I Know My Rights, Someone Else is to Blame, and I'm A Victim.

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.

FUN PICS!!!

FRIENDS!!!! John, myself, and Johanne ;-)

She be so cute!

UGH.

I am sick and I hate being sick and being sick sucks.

More Pics from Camping ;)

WOW, my man is HOT!

From the top of the falls

Jesus Loves Cali Girls

From the bottom of the falls.

Greg: "Whoa. Whoever paid someone for that billboard paid way too much."

Jessica: "Either that, or the savings were so incredible they had to add extra letters."

LOOK BELOW FOR MY CONTEST!!! ENTER AS MANY TIMES AS YOU LIKE!!!

A Contest.

Okay, kids, it's time for some audience participation. Boredom at the office is reaching an all-time high and, frankly, I know some of you out there are better writers than myself. So I'm sponsoring a contest for the best author tag-line.

You know those 2-3 sentence paragraphs at the end of freelance articles, the ones that say, "Jessica Johnson is the author of *blahblah* and enjoys rock-climbing and omelets. She is currently working on *yaddayadda* and *ladeeda*."

So I'm challenging you to write the best Jessica Johnson author tag-line your little heart can muster. It can be true or completely fabricated, just use your imagination. Post your entries as comments or email them to me at jajka80@hotmail.com . The winning entry will be submitted to a publisher along with my next go-round of freelance articles, even if as a joke. You will also win the satisfaction of knowing that you are fabulous and amazing and a recipient of my unwavering love and affection. Hell, I may even throw in a gift certificate of some sort.

So get your pens and pencils ready, my dears, and send me some reading material!

Here's an example, if you're still lost:

"Jessica Johnson is a freelance journalist and author whose works have appeared solely in her own diary. She is currently on pins and needles waiting to hear back from several editors. Hotmail executives wish she would stop overloading their servers by checking her email every three-and-a-half minutes."

Pics from Camping ;)

Greg and I went camping last weekend near West Virginia. I can't seem to load all the pics but here are the ones I was able to. Enjoy!

Bumbles! This is a mouse that I found near our campsite. He was convulsing and his eyes were swollen shut. He probably got into some poison. I picked him up, put him in my shirt, and Greg and I made a little house for him in a box with newspaper. We fed him some bread and cheese and soon he was good as new!

So handsome!

i'm so emo.

Bumbles again, after he was all better! How cute!

See him? He's so tiny compared to my foot!

Mission Statement, Revisited.

I’m quitting my job. I’m moving into my car. I’m driving around the country alone. And I’m not lazy.

I’m not just doing this because I like taking pictures. I’m not doing this to get away from my boyfriend or my family. I’m not trying to shun responsibility.

My responsibility lies within the ability to focus on the life within the people that I meet. My job is to absorb. This society has slipped into a dangerous rut of cultural ketosis, absorbing nothing and allowing any knowledge to simply pass through, unwanted and wasted. Youth is squandered on couches and in front of computer screens, while middle age is spent scrambling to make ends meet in the land of prescription drugs and three-dollar gas. We pop pills like band-aids on bullet holes and wonder why we still bleed. We buy out farms to build McMansions with no yards, as though being able to lean out one’s window and touch a neighbor’s house is an amenity. Disney makes a movie about animals being squeezed out of their habitats by big-name construction and they market it at Wal-Mart. Irony is lost on sheep.

Yet it’s no wonder we discard intelligence when we are forced to merely eke by at the hands of a government that has doled out nothing but sophistry and cares more about protecting the rights of frozen embryos than children dying in the streets from hunger or violence. Rich people can buy hybrid cars to escape fuel prices but the poor still drive their lemons, uninsured, and barely make it to the gas station. Wal-Mart grows because it’s all most can afford, and even those that work there are below the poverty level. Hot dogs are cheaper than vegetables, so when the food budget goes to Little Billy’s Ritalin, the whole family gets fatter. Parent’s good consciences are tested as their young sons peddle drugs from the front stoop – at least it’s money coming in. And what is left at the end of the exhausting day but the sweet soma of sitcoms?

There’s more to America than this, anyone who looks closely enough can see that. Hidden by shame and sadness, the eternal pursuit of the dying American dream, the country itself is alive and rumbling just below the surface. It’s my job to be that microscope, the literary bullhorn that shouts at the sky, “We’re still here! We’re more than the sum of our parts! We’re more than what you see on MTV!” The underbelly of America is exposed for all to see, it’s in the White House and on Fox News. What’s not as evident is the good stuff. My responsibility to my country is to wipe away the orange dust of Doritos, listen, absorb and tell the stories of its people.

a great quote.

"Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car."

Happiness is....

.... your friends showing up to surprise you.

.... realizing the day you'll be in Chicago is the day of the Blues Fest.

.... good remarks from editors.

.... Al-Anon.

I write bad poetry on my lunch break.

When a heart burns white-hot like tempered steel
And reflects a sheen that transcends skin like layers of dust,
The delicate pain that rumbles like fireworks exploding in the chest,
Embers flying through the eyes and spilling over,
Smoke the scent of lilac trickling out the mouth,
It is enough to light the nighttime with sheer love.

But what of the times when love cannot weld itself to common sense?
The temperance of steel still burning in its stubborness
While the chill of doubt wraps icy crystals in any crevice it can,
What then?

Bloodless Relations.

Now here's the part where I start manipulating what I've got so far and making it into something submittable. This will probably be sent to several publishers when I feel it's the right time. Bear in mind, the details are slightly toyed with, to make it more digestable without being wordy. So if you find yourself saying, "Hey, that's not the way it happened!", read the previous sentence. And if it really pisses you off, comment and tell me and I'll see what I can do about changing it. Thanks!



I was out of money. The ATM spit out a tiny white receipt like a child sticking out its tongue, singing, “Nya-nya-nya-nya!” The scrap of paper read, “$5.84”.

I knew the moment was coming, but I wasn’t prepared for how naked I would feel, as though my clothes were whisked away and soon creditors would be feeding on pounds of flesh. I had been living on the road for five months at that point, a modern-day Jackie Kerouac looking for America. I had found it many times over, in the small-town parades and renditions of “The Star-Spangled Banner” warbled by shy children into shoddy microphones at town festivals, in the face of a 14-year-old rape victim who I fed some of my instant mashed potatoes, the Ethiopian parking garage manager who took pity on me and didn’t charge me for 26 hours worth of parking in downtown Boston. And now I had found the other modern-day America, the greedy, capitalist one that doesn’t look kindly on twenty-something women who shun work for five months of galvanting. But here I was, in the sweltering backwoods of Tennessee, dirty, hungry, broke and trying to convince the gas station cashier that I shouldn’t have to pay for the Slush Puppie if I only took the ice and not the flavor syrup.

Three months earlier, I had been perched on the edge of a tributary of Lake Erie, right outside Sandusky, Ohio, furiously typing away at my laptop. A father and son rolled up in a white truck for some afternoon fishing and we fell into conversation. Their names were Earl and Christopher. “Where are you sleeping tonight?” Earl asked. I pointed to my car and laughed. “No, that won’t do. If you’re hell-bent on sleeping in your car, at least do it in our driveway.” That night, I slept on their couch.

Earl is a single father who adopted Chris at the age of four. Both are black, which made for some interesting conversation. In a society ferociously struggling with the stereotype of the black deadbeat dad, here was a man who not only stepped up to the plate, but for a child that wasn’t his own. I soon realized that Earl’s generosity didn’t start and end with his son.

Days later, as I was hugging Christopher goodbye, Earl watched with a smile and said, “If you ever need anything – money, stamps, anything – just call.” I thanked him, of course, but never thought I would get to such a desperate place where I would have to make that call. Fast forward to Tennessee and down to my last $5.00. Tears in my eyes, I picked up the phone.

“Sure, you can have whatever you need,” Earl said. “But there’s a catch. I can’t keep wiring you money every two weeks. You have to move in with Chris and I until you get back on your feet. Come here, get a job, and then you can move on. Plus, you won’t be the only girl in the house because Lisa just moved in with us!” Lisa was Earl’s girlfriend, a beautiful blonde with blue eyes.
“I don’t know…” I trailed, wavering on the idea of living in Ohio.
“How about this?” Earl offered. “Remember that petting zoo we went to when you were here, and you loved those little pot-belly pigs for sale? Well, I’ll buy you one if you come up here, how about that?”
“Oh, sure, bribe me with swine!” With that, I was on my way to Sandusky.

I moved in with my new family on a rainy Tuesday in September. I had been looking for America, and I found it in a family where no one was related by blood. The black man, the white girlfriend, the adopted son, the random white hobo chick, and the little black pig. God bless us, every one.

wisdom from beyond the border.

This is from an email that one of my editors sent to me. Well, I say "one of" because it sounds better than "the only". Anyway, this is from Tony Seed, editor and publisher of a magazine in Canada that I'm going to be freelancing for. Tony lingers on maniacal with his wording, which I love, and I really enjoy our cross-border discourse on American politics. This paragraph in particular struck me, and I wanted to relay it here.


"The next generation of writers from the US who will be of any use to the people in the sense of clarifying and enlightenment will be only those, and those alone, who have consciously broke from the philosophy, culture and psychology of American imperialism, of pragmatism, of the truth is what works and the means is the end and of a-historicism. These writers will carry a deep sense of shame, a shame of what America has done to the world's people including the American people and amongst whose ranks and unquenchable aspirations they will find their voice, their subjects and their heroes and heroines, their narratives. I follow the American magazines but I find them full of nausea, ennui, self-absorption and -promotion and even self-exaltation. There are 3+ billion people in the world. What do we care about all this angst! There was writing like this that came out of the US in the 1920s and 1930s but it was suffocated by reaction the force of which was such that many capitulated or compromised."


I understand the sense of shame he is talking about, guilt for what our country has become to the rest of the world. I can't blame other cultures for turning up their noses in disgust when the main American exports seem to be Cheetos and re-runs of MTV's 'Super Sweet Sixteen'. No wonder we have a reputation for being crass, obnoxious and self-centered! And the American writers from this new political landscape who will last will be those who question, those who seek to explain and those who do it in a way that is not apologetic, but multi-layered in their approach, seeking the Americans who don't live by the creed of McWal-Martbucks. Someone has to do it. And it might as well be me.

the most perfect heartbreak song ever written -- thanks, The Spill Canvas.

I had the feeling that you'd open up my eyes
To a whole new world that had since been in disguise
But that day will most likely never come for me
And it's just my luck to end up getting stuck to everything you are
So tonight I'll sit and pick apart your pictures
And overanalyze your words
But the truth is that I've never fallen so hard
It's taking everything in me just to forget your sweater so far

I had the feeling that those looks you gave me were real
What if I ripped your heart apart at the seams
Maybe then you'd know how I feel
But that day will most likely never come for me
And it's just my luck to end up getting stuck to everything you are
So tonight I'll sit and pick apart your pictures
And overanalyze your words
But the truth is that I've never fallen so hard
It's taking everything in me just to forget your sweater so far

I can honestly say
That I never, ever, ever felt this way
Your lips, your eyelashes, your skin
These are the parts of your body that cause my comatose to begin

I will sleep another day
I don't really need to anyway
What's the point when my dreams are infected
With words you used to say?

I will breathe in a moment
As long as I keep my distance

-- I wouldn't want to go messing anything up --

So don't go worrying about me
It's not like I think about you constantly
So maybe I do, but that shouldn't affect your life anymore
So don't go worrying about me
It's not like I think about this constantly
So maybe I do, but that shouldn't affect your life anymore

I'll let you get the best of me
Because there's nothing else that I do well
I'll let you get the best of me
Because there's nothing else that I do well

I'll be the giver and you'll be the taker
I guess that's how this one's gonna go
I'll be the giver and you'll be the taker
You've got me down on my knees and I proclaim
All hail the heartbreaker

And the walls of the administration came a'tumblin' down...

Okay, so Fox News is reporting that CIA Chief Porter Goss is officially resigning from his post, which is interesting because he hasn't even held the position for two full years. While Bush has said that Goss' "tenure" is one of "transition" and that he has a "five-year plan to increase the analysts and operatives", does anyone else see this as something completely different?

First of all, less than two years doesn't exactly strike me as "tenure". Secondly, this comes one day after an AP poll found that even 31% of conservatives want Republicans out of power! For the sake of arguement, let's list the recent White House black sheep: Scott McClellan. Michael Brown, who later bit the feds in the ass during a senate hearing. Chief of Staff Andy Card. Claude Allen, who had his own reasons. Even H. James Towey, the head of the White Houses "Faith-Based" effort, bailed out in April to become the president of a tiny college in Latrobe, PA.

Um, hi, Mr. "President"? Can we just call a spade a spade and say that everyone on your side is jumping overboard without a paddle rather than go down with the ship?

HAPPY TWO-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF MY DUI!!!

Oh, yeah.... and Cinco de Mayo, too.

MORE PICS FROM OHIO!!! (and home, too)

The Best Friend

The Other Best Friend

The Co-Workers

The Dog

The Dad

The Brother

The Brother From Another Mother, my Ohio baby brother Chris!!!!

PICS FROM CLEVELAND!!! (about damn time...)

Look at me, I kicked George Bush in the nuts!!!!

But unfortunately, I was inside the Federal Courthouse when I did it, so my friend Brad threw me in a cell..... fucking Brad.

The Biggest Mistake I Ever Made, or, The Gun-Jumpers Guide to Hindsight

It was three months ago today that I opened my big, fat mouth, took a ring out of my pocket and asked the love of my life to join me in wedded bliss.

If you're reading this, DON'T EVER DO WHAT I DID. Just trust me on that.

Dear Rob,


Every so often you still pop into my head. What's it been now, like, four years? Can you believe it's been that long since we shared that stupid apartment?! It still amazes me to no end that you and I became so close so fast; it was like I opened the paper, called you, showed up to look at the place and found a new best friend in the process. You were a godsend. Even though things worked out the way they did and we ended up refugees, I still think that.

Those nights while we lived together were hard. Once the sun went down it was like I was on a perma-bender, all strung out on coke and martinis and blacking out all over Manhattan. But you never judged me and you stuck by my side, jealous that I could wake up the next morning with no hangover, all sunny and happiness, and laughing because my bra was in the tub and my shoes were flung everywhere. I was a mess at night, but you didn't care.

What I may not have told you when we lived together was that the daytimes were the happiest times I could remember during my entire tenure in New York. I had a place, I was out of my abusive relationship, I had you for a new BFF, we had Alaska, the prettiest dog in the city, and we had each other. My favorite memories of living there are with you, taking Alaska to the park, traipsing through Bed Bath and Beyond pretending we could afford things and feeling all cool because we were eating at Cosi's. Remember the time we saw The Dell Guy on the corner and laughed at him for acting all Hollywood? Or the time we went to Jones Beach and burned our feet? Sean's car got hit on the way there and we listened to Nelly while speeding on the BQE.... don't think I've forgotten. Remember when Alaska got into all that chocolate and tried to hide it behind your desk? Or how we used to watch music videos on your computer back when that was a "new" thing? I still have that old camera you gave me, I use it a lot. I always think of you when I do, lining up the focus, and I wonder where you are.

I mean, I know where you are in general. You're in California now. You work in a motorcycle shop. But I don't know which one and I don't know where. I don't have your new number. I still have my same one from years ago, but you don't call it. I know you have a friendster profile, but it won't let me send you anything. It's nice to look at your pictures and all, but it's such a tease. I want to ask you how you've been, and tell you everything that's been going on with me. I want to tell you that I'll be in San Francisco within the next few months, so can't we please get together and remember what it was like when we were different people, when I was a drunk and you were a dance instructor and we lived in Queens in an apartment that was too close to the 7 train and had a dog that crapped on the floor but dammit, we cared about each other, even after we were evicted, even after we fled the building through the creepy neighbor's window, even after we lost touch?

I wish I could send a Bat Signal into the night sky over San Francisco, only instead of a bat yours would have a cigarette, a motorcycle and a huskie dog. Would you see it and know it was me?

Are we still friends?

I hope so.

Love,
Jessica

hmmm....

What does it mean when you have a dream about your promise ring literally rotting and falling off your finger? And then the next night you have a dream that you tried to grab his hand and run and his hand fell off? And then you sign onto your myspace profile to hear the Panic! at the Disco song you love so much but instead your profile song magically changed and it's now called "Say Goodbye"? And you don't even remember changing it?

What does that mean? Am I reading too much into things or just ignoring my instincts?