Seattle had a window of sunshine this afternoon that lasted about two hours. Before that was hard rain, unusual for this region, and a goddamn lightning storm, which happen here so rarely that I think I can count all the lightning strikes I've seen in seven years of Seattle residency on my fingers and toes. Last night, I filled an entire hand: five flashes, five house-shaking booms. It was wonderful.

I haven't much to report beyond that. I went to Arcane Comics and bought nearly forty bucks worth of titles, something that is all too easy to do. My old girlfriend Katharine used to spend something like fifty bucks a month on comics back in 1992, a sum I thought to border on the profligate; truthfully, it ain't shit. Granted, I've mostly been buying compilations instead of individual titles (though I'm hooked on "King City" and "Chew"), but goddamn, those funny books add up.

And that's that. It's raining again -- and I just saw a flash of lightning outside. That's the left little toe.

I love Shiner Bock. It's my new go-to beer. I've had exactly two other go-to beers in my lifetime: Sam Adams and Schlitz. I ascribe this meager selection of fall-backs to my religious upbringing, and also because I never really had the college experience. I had a favorite gin before I had a favorite beer. Still, there's nothing like a beer to chase a burger, and the People's Pub -- my go-to bar -- has Shiner Bock on tap.

I love Seattle and the people who live in it, despite the fact that in the last bar I visited before this one, these assholes were cheering the Yankees.

On a related note, I love a bar that's perverse enough to blast ABBA records during the World fucking Series.

I love writing, though I've been kind of sucking at it lately.

I love Las Vegas, the city that gave me the roots I'd always wished for.

And I love quitting while I'm ahead.

Here, if anything, is concrete proof of the law of averages. I took more than 500 photos at this year's Summer Solstice parade, and of those I like maybe a dozen. (The full set is here.) They're popular shots -- it's the only one of my Flickr sets to have garnered more than 10,000 hits -- which I'd chalk up to the fact that many of the images contain boobies and peepees, rather than to the artistry of the shots. The shots have no artistry, you see; I just pointed and shot and shot and shot.

But that doesn't explain what happened in this photo. This one is a moment. I don't know who this dancer is and she doesn't know who I am, but she recognizes that she's in a frame and is actively helping to compose it. In actuality, all the dancers were fanning the crowd with that fabric, but in the context of this photo she's working with me directly -- creating a kind of intimacy in the middle of one of Seattle biggest, loudest parades, and painting the lens with a resplendent wash of color. It's the best shot out of hundreds, and it proves something I've long suspected: You may stop trying to make art, but the world around you never does.

Happy Hallowe'en, fools. Before I get into ... whatever the hell it is I'm going to get into, I feel compelled to send you to my Monkey Goggles article on Halloween songs. And Gregory Crosby's wonderful Monkey Goggles piece on Halloween costumes. And this gallery of photos from a zombie dance party I attended last night. I don't know who the guy in the lucha mask is, but he's one handsome rudo.

Google-hacking aside, I don't have much to report. Publically. One of my freelance projects is pushing ever closer to a launch; another is growing in popularity by the day; yet another one is about to receive a top-to-bottom redesign. I wish I could tell you which is which, but I don't want to jinx any of them. I'm at that sensitive stage of freelance empire-building -- the stage at which just one person could lose faith or change their mind and knock one of the legs off the table. I aim to have some good news to tell you, and soon -- but I've got to keep it close to the mask right now. Er, vest.

By the way: Many thanks to Mark and Susan Shaffer for donating that wrestling mask to my wardrobe. It's become one of my most prized pieces, next to my tearaway pants. The fact that it's never fitted me right -- it's about a size too small for my big fathead -- is an insignificant one. And belated thanks to Geoff Carter circa 1990, who didn't throw away that bola tie upon realizing he hadn't worn it in more than a year. That venerable accessory, older than anyone in the cast of "Twilight," really brought the whole ensemble together. Totally made up for not being able to breathe, to hear, to see or to think. Who needs to do all that dumb shit when you look this good?

Also: PLEASE, GOD.

Unmotivated to write today -- or more accurately, to write well. You're getting the autowriting I dish up whenever I feel like I should be writing something but lack the desire, and lucky bloody you.

I guess I could think about Halloween today, and I'm once again unprepared for it. I don't have a costume, or the vaguest notion of what kind of costume I'd like to wear to the Halloween party that I, in a moment of foolhardy optimism, recently committed to attend.

This happens every year. I always say "Ooh, next Halloween I'm gonna do this and that and the other," but I've yet to do this or that or anything at all. I could continue to lay down the usual excuses -- my face hates makeup; I was raised a Jehovah's Witness and never got used to celebrating Halloween; I simply don't like dressing up -- but this year, I'll come clean with you: My imagination doesn't work that way. I can write a sentence or take a picture that represents something beyond what is immediately visible, but I don't know how to make myself into something else and look like I believe it. Can't pretend, even for a moment, that I'm anyone or anything other than the olive-skinned meat sack pictured at above right.

I wouldn't really care about this but for the fact that two people near and dear to me -- my girl Lorien and my old friend Gregory -- can whip out Halloween costumes for themselves as if they were nothing. Gregory has shown up to Halloween parties dressed as a Ouija board or the entire Velvet Underground; Lorien has been Houdini, a zombie truck stop waitress and a picnic table. Both have offered many times to help me to come up with an All Hallows' Eve getup, but I've always refused. It has to come from me, and it has to be something so damned clever that I won't feel self-conscious about wearing it. Hasn't happened yet, and it's looking like it's not going to happen this year, either.

Maybe I'll go as autowriting.

That's pretty much the whole story right there, in the title and image. The Demolition Doll Rods were a killer garage band outta Detroit; they "went on hiatus" in 2007. I took this shot in the middle of the band's Februray, 2003 set at the world-famous Double Down Saloon in Las Vegas. Not pictured is guitarist Danny Doll Rod and drummer Christine Doll Rod, both of whom are rockin' hard in their leather undies. Worth noting: The back of Margaret's leather bikini briefs is stamped with the word "LUCKY."

I was working with a tiny point-and-shoot at this time -- a Kodak DC4800 -- and I'd learned all kinds of tricks to make the photos that it produced more organic and interesting. In this case, I popped the flash and held the shutter open an extra second or so. Because, you know, a tough punk-rock babe in a leather bikini isn't enough somehow.

I am a recovering addict. For several years, I carried a camera with me every single place I went, and shot photos of every person or thing that occupied dimensional space. I was ever concerned that something might happen out in the world, and I wouldn't be able to remember it without photos. In recent years I've scaled back; I now carry a point-and-shoot in my laptop bag instead of my full D80 rig, and on some choice occasions I've ventured forth without any camera on me at all. (The shitty camera phone doesn't count; I almost never use it.)

It works and it doesn't. I'm shifting the lens of my cognitive abilities back towards the retention of people, places and events through writing, which is what I'm supposed to be doing in the first place. (I only got into photography to give me something to do when my writing gets stuck.) Friends who never knew I that I made my living as a writer have begun to read the stuff I do for money, and the stream of requests to photograph weddings and the like is thinning out (though I still consider every request). I'm beginning to trust myself to remember things without photographing them from every angle.

And yet, if I hadn't had a camera with me on an August, 2001 trip to a Henderson, Nevada TGI Fridays franchise -- the last time I visited a TGI Fridays, I think -- I wouldn't have caught the pictured mini-monsoon at its peak. It lasted scarcely a minute, barely a drop of time in an ocean of memories. But I did bring the camera, and I can look at this photo and remember the sudden, violent fury of Las Vegas rainstorms -- the house-shaking explosions of thunder, the fingers of lightning digging into the earth, the streets and parking lots flooding within seconds. Seattle doesn't get rainstorms like that, and I do miss the destructive beauty of desert rains. They can even make the patio of a TGI Fridays look somehow romantic.

You get bonus points if you get the double-reference of the title.

We had just come from an art opening at Raven's Gallery Erotic. The Funhouse is a Rat City Rollergirls bar, specifically a Throttle Rockets bar; that Rat City squad had thrown debauched parties there whose particulars deserve to be taught in the more liberal colleges. Needless to say, when a bunch of rollergirls walk into the Funhouse, the crowd tends to re-angle itself to become their audience, no matter which band is on stage.

In this case, Sara Problem? is showing someone out-of-shot how that glowing toy works. (It only lights up when you twirl it.) I noticed that Selma Soul was framed by the action and snapped the photo just as Sara concluded her demonstration. The "star" on Sara's top, created by the flash, was pure luck.

My favorite photos of the Rat City Rollergirls are the ones in which I've caught them out-of-character, helmets and pads off, doing what they got into rollerderby for in the first place: having unabashed good fun. It takes a hundred shots to get one of these, but I do manage to get one every now and again -- and this moment is just as fresh and as lighthearted now as in the instant the photo was taken. Shots like these are the ones that keep me reaching for the camera, hoping to play an angle.

I took this photo from the O Deck of the Space Needle about three weeks ago. It was fairly cold up there -- the top of the Needle being in Space and all -- but the skyward trip was worth it. That $25 annual pass to the O Deck has proven a shrewd investment indeed; cliched though it may sound, I benefit from the perspective that comes from leaving street level. I'm able to look down at the Seattle Times' 1000 Denny building, a tiny square on the map (not pictured in this photo), and to imagine myself into the even smaller space I occupied inside of it. That was my entire world for six years; for all that time I literally did all my creative thinking inside that box.

Today, almost a year after I was laid off in the Great (and continuing) Media Apocalpyse, the entire world is my entire world. I may be dirt-broke and scrambling, but I'm using my skills to pay the requisite bills. It's tough to get that into my head sometimes without the occasional trip into the Touristsphere.

I had nearly forgotten about the "ROCKS LAS VEGAS" sticker on Billy Idol's guitar in the "White Wedding" video until a friend reminded me of it on my trip home last week.

Idol stayed in Las Vegas for extended periods during the recording of his 1982 solo album, and he snaked the "ROCKS" sticker from local AOR station KOMP -- a rock station that, in those days, wouldn't have played a Generation X track if the fate of the world balanced upon it. And yet this last week -- in the course of flipping stations, smack in the middle of drive time -- I heard "Rebel Yell" on KOMP. That's one of the things I love about my former hometown --it doesn't make lasting judgments or hold onto old grudges, unless you own the town money. Or if you're Criss Angel.

I lived in Las Vegas nearly 12 years before moving to Seattle in 2002, and I've been back several times a year since. As it is for Billy Idol, a part of me belongs in Vegas. There I made lasting friendships, learned the trade of journalism through practice, and had experiences I'll never have anywhere else. I also drank enough hard liquor in the course of a working week to intoxicate every soul reading these words for the next week to ten days. Sometimes I dream of that bygone era and I get the bed-spins.

When I visit Las Vegas I have very little time to plug myself back into its beautiful madness, and I always leave it feeling like I didn't do everything I wanted or needed to do. There are too many good friendships to revisit, too much to see and do. I don't need to apologize to the buildings, but the people... There's never enough time to see everyone, or to see everyone enough. For that, I'm profoundly sorry.

Anyway, let's make with the people and places I did see.

I stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel. I wanted to stay in the hotel where John Entwistle died of a cocaine overdose whilst entertaining a stripper. The beds were nice and fluffy and the lighting was conducive to the making of low-budget pornography; unfortunately, that I didn't have the time or the personnel to do. Could have made a big production of it, too; the shower is big enough for six people and you can order lingerie through room service. I didn't make inquiries on that latter score because I knew they wouldn't have my size.

No trip to Vegas is complete without a visit to the Pinball Museum and Hall of Fame. More than a hundred vintage pinball machines and video games, all playable for twenty-five to seventy-five cents. I can easily lose a couple of hours there despite the fact that I suck at pinball. Unlike my friend James (pictured), I drain like scubbing bubbles. I suck at pinball so you don't have tooooooooooo!

I paid four visits to Frankie's Tiki Room. That's one per day. I drank Lava Louies and Green Gassers until I hallucinated John Entwistle getting it on with Thor Heyerdahl. I also procured three of Frankie's customized tiki mugs ...

... but one of them shattered in transit. Wasn't this handsome fellow, though. He made it all the way back to Seattle, and my girlfriend drank coffee out of him this morning. Just to piss him off.

Here's an obligatory shot of a go-go bartender:

And one of the skyline at dawn:

Don't say I never gave you anything. By the way, I never met the girl, and I woke to see dawn over Vegas; I didn't beat it back to the room. I have trouble sleeping in desert air now; I'm lucky to get five hours' sleep a night.

I also mixed it up with some good friends:

Mary and Robby. They're just that goddamn cute, too. You wanna pick 'em up and hug 'em.

Staci, James and Fig. We spent an afternoon whackin' off.

My sister Jahmai and me, taken by my friend PJ, whose picture I failed to get. I also failed to get pictures of PJ's lovely girlfriend Sara, or my favorite funk drummer Frank, or my old editors Bryan and Mr. Doodles, or German, or Sarah, or ... Look, that sugar and rum wasn't going to drink itself.

I made the trip to see my aunts, whom I haven't seen in years. Terrie's on the left; Janet's on the right. They're absolutely wonderful people. It's really cool, the way all of us have met in the middle. I'm now able to use undignified cusswords in their company, and to show up to family gatherings hung over.

One more thing: This Shag-designed "Vice Tester" tagged me with "Greed," and my sister with "Smut." I was positive I'd get "Booze," "Sex" or "Bad Television," but no, it's "Greed." That's another swell thing about Las Vegas -- it tells you when you're not trying hard enough. In the midnight hour, it cries more, more, more.