Post #14

Let us be realistic. Let us invent for ourselves, from our most sincere observations, a system of values which is, above all, applicable. Let us, first, be satisfied to torment ourselves with the non-fulfillment of groundless and empty desires. Let this superficial torment our souls. But simulteanously, let us avoid the temptations of materialism. Rather, let us be as Robin Hood, let us live as beggars do, and yet demand, to the boundless appetites of our stuffed bellies, boundless satisfaction. That is to say, let us require ever more and more, and let us yearn for only expensive delicacies, then let us lament our unsatisfaction as the poets do; it is not enought to be wanting, we must also be throwing away. We may then, if we are successful, prostrate ourselves before the crying god, wail and bemoan our unhappyness, and find solace in each other's arms. We may then have the excuse to touch each other. Let us envy every poor man, every religious man, for his depth, the depth we sacrifice to live more truly (more or less according to our nature), in order to be better in both fiction and reality, namely in suffering, than those unfortunate men who suffer only narrowly, from hunger and at the hands of greedy men.

This is the foremost value of our new age. Any modern system of values must have suffering at its center. The world itself is more alive where there is more suffering; more dead where the people are satisfied and thereby made dull. All man made worlds are built on suffering, just like the Great Wall is home also to the bones of many poor labourers. Suffering losens the toung, lending fire to tears and words, and art to the general. Satisfaction, on the other hand, losens the sexual organs, and lends itself primarily to impersonal, passionate, contraceptive sex.

Final Quiz Review Sheet

Before Carl's face loomed the hallway, so dark that he could not make out one detail past just a few inches. Only rarely had anything loomed before Carl, he not being a face-to-face person anyway. Carl preferred to make himself slight and scamper around, holding always before his eyes only those actions, of the greatest industry and articulation, which entailed constant production. He resembled a thick-shelled beetle, but softer and plumper. He would not bow nor scrape--he was no yes man, believing instead strictly in the truth--and he prided before all else his ability to finish the job. Behind open-faced hands it was whispered that he never slept, and would rummage through the commodious storehouses long after all the lights had been shut off and all the people gone home to their wives and beds. It happened occasionally that his co-workers would find him drowsing, shaking back and forth, on some dirty sofa in the rec-room. They would lift him up, carry him on their backs to some cot secreted in the janitor's closet, and deposit him there. Once or twice he had slept their all day. The room was, despite being so far underground, dingy, hot, and humid. Condensation as thick as blood was constantly gravitating toward the ever growing wetlands of sweet-smelling mold on the carpet. On their way, these snail-trails would salvage for themselves whatever bits of crap happened to be trying to block their path. In the top left corner of the room, facing the door, an air-duct led to airier places.

It was on one of his late nights that Carl chanced to notice the looming hallway. He must have passed by it thousands of times, never once considering it. Maybe it was because he had finished finally his various odd-jobs, that on this particular night he found himself feeling nervous, and lingered there so long. He shone his flashlight all around, but he was unable to chase away the conglomerate, jumping shadows. Because it was useless, he turned off his light, and swallowing deeply he headed straight into the darkness. Not ten steps later he bumped into somebody. He was afraid; he knew that nobody but himself stayed around so late. Pensively he called out a hello. "Hello" echoed some invisible voice. "Who are you?" asked Carl, "everybody I know went to bed long ago." "Oh, I don't ever sleep" said the voice. All of a sudden a match was lit, accompanied by the characteristic sounds and smells, the light fell to a candle, which, once lit, illuminated the face of an old man. He wore a long white beard, stained with crumbs and goo. He was leaning on a grey metal desk, and he wore a old, decaying vest and a blue silk tie. "I've worked here since long before you were born, I'm sure. I have many responsibilities. They send my meals down to me; I never leave my station I'm that busy. That's probably why you've never seen me before now." "What is your title?" asked Carl. "I'm head of information acquisition and filing," the old man replied, "but I'm sorry to cut this short, I'm afraid I must ask for you authorization. I'm not even allowed to speak with you unless you bear a signature from the chief." "Excuse me," said Carl, "I came here entirely accidentally." "Well then, you are definitely not going to get in to see the collections in that case. I am supremely important, you know, it would probably help if you bowed to me." The way the old man said this made Carl feel uncomfortable. "I guess I'll leave then." "No. Wait, it's been so long, I really want to show somebody my work. I'm not such a square that I cannot disobey a rule or two every once in a while. Besides, I'm very proud of my work," said the old man with a grin, "come on then." "Thank you," replied Carl, "I was really hoping to see it, I guess."

The old man led carl around the desk, they had to squeeze because it was pushed up so close to the wall. The old man took a key out of his pocket and unlocked a rusty iron door. As the door swung open Carl was blinded by a light which seemed to stream without any definite source from the terrible storeroom beyond. The ceiling was easily fifty or sixty feet high--"it must be pushed up right against the surface" thought Carl to himself--and the space was filled with row after row of shelves. The shelves were so cramped that one could only navigate them sideways, and they were loaded with thousands and thousands and thousands of little white boxes, each equidistant from the next, and none bearing any distinguishing sign. "What's all this for?" asked Carl. "This is my work," replied the old man, "it's great, worthy of some bowing and scraping I'd say." "What's in all the boxes?" asked Carl, with a gulp. "Everything," said the old man, "all the world's knowledge is stored here. Everything known by man-kind and individual-man alike." "Really?" asked Carl. "Yes really," said the man mockingly, "Go ahead, test it." "OK, I haven't seen my wife in over a month--my work keeps me so--and I was wondering if she hadn't yet cheated on me." "Ah, good question, let's find out." The old man took out a small crumpled notebook and, flipping seven or eight pages, finally exclaimed, "here it is!" He rushed off like a dog chasing some unseen vermin. Eventually he came to a small white box with no obvious label, Carl followed, trying to catch his breath. "It is really remarkably well organized," said the man as he lifted off the lid. "That's my bedroom!" cried Carl. "Ha! I guess it is," returned the old man with a laugh. Carl watched in wonder as a figure entered. "That's my wife!" She was followed by another figure. "That's our neighbor, Bob!" And another figure. "That's Bob's wife!" And another figure. "That's Bob's gardener..." Carl watched as all four figures began undressing. First Bob helped Carl's wife out of her clothes, while the gardener helped Bob's wife out of hers. "Oh my God!" exclaimed Carl. Then all four climbed into bed with each other. "I've seen enough" said Carl, and the old man shut the lid again. "Are you going to kill her?" he asked. "No, I'm actually not that surprised, and I'm even happy that she's found some way to keep herself busy. This gives me the opportunity to return to my work all the more diligently." "Good. Then you should get on your knees before me and humble yourself for this knowledge which I have given you." Carl did not know what to do. Slowly he got on to his knees and clasped his hands in front of himself, the old man seemed to grow taller and more ferocious looking. "Are you afraid?" asked the old man. "A little," replied Carl. The old man bent down and removed a sword from a drainage pipe under his feet. Carl tried to run, but the old man cut him down quickly. After Carl was dead, the old man cut his body into thin slices and devoured him, his mouth as big as a bulldozer.

Post #13

I was, in my youth, something of a traveler. And so the story I'm about to tell you comes from someone who is able to judge things for the most part correctly. If you have had any experience traveling, and if you had happened to speak the language of the place you were traveling in--or simply had a friendly curiosity--well then you'll probably understand. I've said maybe a thousand times before, that really we have no recourse, and really anything goes. Slave as we might, I said, slave as we might, we will never see those heavenly lights. Only the dark ones will ever appear to us, and beautiful as they may be.... When we do nothing. Say it again, if we do nothing.

I saw a woman wearing the pelvis-bone of a horse for a necklace. I will not lie and try to claim that such accessories were fashionable at the time. Far from it, you yourselves could have not been more schocked than I was then. She was old, and quite ugly, and wore nothing but an unfortunate neglige. Becuase I shared with her even my most treasured secrets, she appeared to me as my own kin. But so many years is a long time to talk about the weather and eventually she had the desire to discover whether princes really exist. God grant her the best luck. I stayed, not really of my own volition, but because I was so much younger than she, and, afraid that I would squeal, she had yes tied me up. When the old crone arrived she assured me that eventually another pretty young lady would come along. Sure enough, when I was too old and too awkward, another unanounced princess showed up--they really seem to appreciate nothing. She was so old that she had teeth missing, and she insisted on trying to kiss with those deflated lips. What could I say to her? I had recently developed a theory about crickets, but all that was simply nonsense. I'm glad that I just sat so quietly in the corner. It gave me time to ignore her. Eventually she died. I was an old man by then, and so wild looking that no person would willingly approach me, when the old hag showed up and once again promised fresh virgin pricesses.

But I died and decended into hell before she ever arrived. There I was allowed to do only what I really wanted to do, so I spent my days lamenting all the days I would eventually spend lamenting. But hell is not so bad; we all call each other 'poet', and are convinced that everything is beautiful. In hell everything is beautiful, we can really be ourselves here, we are naked and godless--at every beginning tiny bells ring out, and angels, who look very happy, are scratched on the walls. Before long you forget yourself. On history day we are apes. What a good thing to say. On history day we are apes. On history day we are apes. On history day we are apes.

Post #12

Tryin' something new: a picture! I've also just recently got my site a hit counter, and have successfully installed it myself! And I changed the layout and then played with the colors, but I'm not sure if the new color scheme took...we'll know after I post this. I have a lot more of that "practice with dialogue" to post, but I'm not sure if I'm liking it, but I'll probably post it anyway.

I really don't have much to say, I just wanted to put up this picture. I don't remember who painted it, Jack something I think, it's OK. Why is she showing her tit? And why is the guy both holding and smoking a cigarette? And, is that a mirror in the backround? Because if it is, then I'm not sure if it is doing a very good job of reflecting. Altogether not great, but I'm hoping that naked tit will attract some more attention to my site.

The last person to visit this site with whom I am not acquainted, was from Britian and searching blogger for the word "circumcision".

Some Practice with Dialogue: Exhaustion and Miscommunication (Part 1: The Meeting)

One thigh lays flat against the cold sidewalk, the foot of the other leg balances precariously on its heel, an elbow and a forearm are also pressing on the concrete, the corpulent vagrant awkwardly tries to lay himself out, to fall asleep. The late night is disturbed only by the sound he makes inadvertently scraping pebbles against the hard surface. He has been making-his-way all day long, and this lonely patch of sidewalk seemed a good place to unburden himself. Lowering himself then, on shaking limbs, his cheek has almost found the ground, his large, round behind wagging in the air, almost tasting that vanishing bliss of sleep, when a friendly voice booms from within the darkness: “Charles!”. Immediately he is on his knees, prepared for the worst, his ten fat fingers pushed into his thickly clothed chest, leaving an impression. “I’m sorry Charles, don’t have a heart attack please,” rolled on the manly voice, “don’t you remember me?”

“You stand all the way in the back of the shadows my friend, I cannot see you, let alone determine whether I know you or not,” said Charles cautiously. “I’m here all alone, I’ve found a nice spot. I’m not such a miser that I need it all for myself, so you can come on out and take a nap here too.”

Pastures

Monthly comes the farmer, his grain to sell, his friends to meet. Bales and bushels of wheat and any vegtables he might have grown. His red face full of smiles under the sun, his missing teeth a long time joke among friends. The dirt road which runs through his small town is yellow all day long, and he remembers when he was a kid, streaking the dust with his stick, no shoes no shirt. And the first time he fell in love. And the evening dances in summer, under the moon and the stars; the heavens pushing the limits of the horizion, he would sit on some rickety old chair and lose his soul amidst the stars, until his boyish cheeks were streaked with tears. And how he'd wrap himself in his mother's apron, or work all day with his father. And he'd wander. Out, out, out over the green pastures, until he found something new. And wandering again home he'd trudge along that good ol' road. Just past this self same road, out into the distance of the unclaimed land, lay tiny wild flower blossoms reaching after the sun. And nothing really ever changes these rich landscapes of meager but haunting life.

But beneath the soil dwells an angry monster, terrible to describe. His finger nails are contaminated lead pipes, cut lengthwise, and sharpened from digging in the bedrock. His skin is the color and consistency of concrete, and he wears the cap of a German academian, now long ago ruined. His legs are hairy and thick and his stomach is always empty. He would eat, but every living thing that he touches turnes slowly into cold, beautiful, marble statue, so he can never manage more than a few bites. His eyes are blue and completely normal, and he has long since stopped pitying himself. Underground, he has over the decades carved out a small gallery, which no human eyes -- save his own -- will ever see. There he displays the half eated corpses of worms and dogs -- they somehow produce their own faint light, so the viewing is rather pleasant; one may contemplate all the intricacies. In the remotest corner, a virgin, perfect in form, his eyes linger on her body, he would still kiss her if he had lips, but his toothless mouth is dry. Instead he writes bad poetry to her in the mud; and waits for the water to wash these away. Beauty, he calls her, my dear wife, he says.

Post #11

I don't think anybody new has been to my site for awhile. Still only 16 hits to my profile, I should get a general hit counter, but I don't know where, and I don't have the energy to find out tonight. I can't remember the last book I finished, I guess it was For Whom the Bell Tolls or Waiting for Godot, one of those. I'm slowly making my way through Kafka's diaries, I think they're poorly translated, but to find out and read them in German would be too much like homework. I really ought to read more often, it is stupid to play computer games instead. Now it's Fallout 2, before that Mech Commander 2, and I just brought Baldur's Gate 2 and Arcanum out of storage at my parent's place. I have a wall of books, compared to which I am only very small, and to apply what powers I have to them would be the very best thing, but instead I waste my free time, if with nothing else then with idle fantasy: I'm going to learn German, I'm going to write a thesis, I'm going to get all As, I'm going to travel; or: Civilization 4 needs more resources, and if only we could trade arms, and is it just me or do all the AI players follow basically the same track, it is almost there but it needs...etc.

What, afterall, is easier than picking up a book and reading for an hour or two?

Tommorow night is Nosferatu with the score by a live orchestra, at least that's something great. And I intend to stay on campus and do homework until it starts. If one pays attention, one finds that somedays one is more oneself, as though I were alone in my bathtub watching a large black spider on the wall, and somedays one exists not so much mechanically as like a reflection: just another person in the eyes of all those other people. Somebody, a stranger, might speak to me then, and I would just answer satisfactorily, like he would have answered too.

Night Walks

The night-time shade is thick and concealing like ink. It is penetrated in front of his widened eyes by a long, angular face, corpse-white, with sparkling blue eyes and a smile. The face passes by, other faces can be seen, cracking through the dimness, their all-too-familiar pallor. he sits and he walks, he avoids the formal prescriptions of social interaction, he is comming from a party; he would like to be walking now arm in arm with a friend whom he could lean in close to and whisper something, whose eyes would be vacant, big-yellow like lemons, and watching the passers-by. Recently he held a dog brain, smaller than one might think, in his cupped hands and smelled the blood. If he could smell his own brain it would smell the same.

It is summer time, but the night is so black and the street lights so orange that he can almost see the fat, white snowflakes falling beneath them, reflecting their light all the more powerfully for the wind which blows them quickly slantwise. Thousands of golden shooting-stars comming on like a train, falling a thousand miles per hour, knocking him down with their wanton, dizzying, unrestrained momentum. He shivers. He thinks. His thoughts turn to dust. France is a really strange place, what sort of party was that anyway? I should have never gone, that is true, but why did I leave so early? Pink and white tulips as big as buffaloes with marbled streaks of white swallow up store-fronts whole. Why all the goddamn flowers? So bright one can hardly sleep.

Post #11

I think the purpse of mankind is to create a game so perfect that it presents the expirence of being a human exactly.

Post #10

What would it mean anyway to try and speak about ourselves and the world we live in? There are plenty of words that we could use, but has anything really been said? We talk about our seperation from things, and when we hand something to somebody we do so graciously. We are nevertheless forced to speak of relationship, to analyze the pressing against of our extentions on the floor, the space we take up, and the influences of the seductions of Thing on our sped-up world view. The sickness we never feel, our desire for unreality. The swollen, felty feelers of our lying language contaminating everything they feel so delightedly and with such rapid abandon. We still speak and, more importantly, criticize. And there is much to criticize. But is relationship still one such possibility? Are we not rather something more superficial; animals perhaps all along? Our bodies press against the floor and it is nothing special, we take up space, we forget always what we look like, the thing, invested with all its corporate intentionality, remains boring. (Warhol elevated his soup can to art, and we all clapped our hands, "good job".) Our language points us towards changing horizions, we step and we end up at the border of nothingness. Argument fails because we aim to convince each other of a feeling we all feel, but cannot analyze or repair.

I think the only thing left to write is cultural catch phrases.

Is this not correct? Is it too pessimistic? Have we left something out? What the hell are we talking about anyway? Is equivocation a stylistic device? Can we continue in this vein with justification? I imagine we wrote the above note while zipping around like a heavy light-beam in a walnut shell. Are we finally just dicks if we call it a light-beam of language?

Addendum

Upon reflection, what I've said about mankind is not true, or it is, but only one side of the coin: death, afterall precedes birth, and forgetting paves the way for new remembrances. The philosopher must truly remain silent, but the artist might still have a chance! That new culture appears first to be merely banal might simply be its nature. Praised in its lifetime by pedants, and awed later by forlorn poets. Progress is still to much to hope for, but the end, I think, is not yet in sight; the brave may therefore still embrace action!

Post #9

Video games are perhaps a real means of cracking through reality which I like to think of as resembling an eggshell, only finely painted. That reality is really that fragile really ought not to be doubted: death gives us ample evidence to believe so. Either we become nothing, or our soul carries us somewhere else, yes? That's what Plato thought anyway, but in either case reality is shattered. Reflections of this sort lead me to hope that my present form of existence is actually a game also. That perhaps I am actually a famous historical figure of the past whose expirences I am now living, as though they were mine and with no knowledge of any disparity, with the aid of some super advanced mind-and-body-overwhelming game system.

But such is mere fantasy and really doesn't help anyway. For I must still die, no matter how many times I play the game; that is, how many different lives I am programmed to live. We could talk about the philosophical implications of such a possiblity, but in fact there are none. True philosophy, that which occurs under staircases and in broom closets, where angels live as dust and balls of twine, has already taught itself to be silent. Sadly mind you--the lesson was full of anger historically, and you would yell too if, after so many years, you discovered you were mute--but now only sadly. And the excited still do philosophy in the light, but they seem only to be adults who have decided to be children because it is easier.

The artist is the real grown-up. For the first time maybe has he the true raw power of the philosopher; he may be naked and still evil, hold out his fist with fire reflected in his eye and actually mean it in some important way. But this power is reversed, or negative: it comes not from above or behind things, but rather it belongs to the bones of the philosopher: to his words that he has sworn no longer to speak, that is, to his unspoken words. The artists' power then is no longer the power to redeem, but indeed the last vomit-green rays of human truth. A scourge demanding that mankind yield!

On the bright side, there is no mankind, and therefore no artist with the will to this power. What remains seems to be the slow forgetting: the soup of culture has run dry and we're not hungry anymore, it did taste good at the time, but with full bellies that delight is forgotten. Like the squirrel who ate bubble-gum, we'll starve to death fully satiated. And it will take so long that on our deathbed we will have forgotten that we ate anything at all.

The analogies are all breaking down now: the squirrel might now explore his world, no longer consumed with hunger. But our soup was our exploration, and yet in reality we would still explore if we could; we are therefore satiated only because we must be and we forget only because we die.

Post #8

Seven was a good number to stop at, but I changed my mind, which I'm allowed to do. Changing one's mind is the bedfellow of lying through one's teeth, therefore, if Bush changed his mind everybody wouldn't care. Anyway, I'll probably stop at 9 because that's a good number too.

So I've discovered a word that justifies anything, and that word is: literally. I'm not joking, it literally justifies everything.

I intend to eventually post and attempt to analyze a poem by Gottfried Benn that I think you all should read. I'm writing this now to remind myself to post it.

That's it. Mazur, I dedicate this post to you for convincing me to change my mind.

Three Notes about God

It is about time somebody says what everybody has been thinking for awhile, namely that the Greek and Roman gods do, in fact, exist. By inference to the best explanation I tell you: they exist. Of course, it is not really correct to call them the Greek and Roman gods, they only resemble these gods. And we can't afterall know anything about them anyway, so it is pointless inventing silly cosmologies. Xenophanes told us that if horses had gods they would resemble horses. But he was wrong: horses do have gods, and they do resemble horses, which means that they mostly like to fuck and eat hay. Likewise do our gods resemble us. Also, they like to watch the Olympics and get high and shit.

One plain and not unusual day, although it was to become strange and unusual because of what happened, God's voice boomed over the sky in every spoken language and informed poor mankind thus: "My dear children, during my long sabbatical you have truly astonished my expectations; I am pleased and very displeased, and in my infinite wisdom I have decided to reward you with the curse of an elevation in status. Henceforth, you shall all be immortal. None of you shall age or bear children--those now pregnant will carry their little thinking burdens forever, and though the bodies of all children will not develope, their minds will. I grant to you, my children, an infinite depth of mind and memory, so that you will never exhaust your capacity. And I will protect each one of you from the gun and the guillotine; you shall never die. But I will not protect you from the sins of the flesh. In this way only will you not be my angels. Until the end of time you will be, and yet remain otherwise free. Praise my name."
At first nobody believed it, except the literally hundreds of thousands of people who emerged unharmed from the thousands upon thousands of car accidents all over the globe caused by God's unexpected voice.

Would the world be harder or easier to understand if it were not uncommon for children born out of wedlock to have the features of animals, or if say paintings would occasionally be animate and walk around horrified? Or if in war the dead were known to rise and slay the living? Or buildings turn and warp on their foundations, change colors violently, and then come to rest more or less normal and with a few casualties? And if solid ground would suddenly digest a pedestrian and excrete the stinking remains smelling of wet earth? We could imagine any number of things like this. But would individual man be then more easily satisfied? It is not altogether illogical to suppose so. Eating the dried cake of hope and query in vain cannot really be less satisfying than a nonsense world. The existential nightmare, pardon the cliché, is afterall the regularity and banality of existence. Rather should existence be really terrifying. War is important to mention here, because in war are things as unpredictable as described above possible. War would make more sense then, if the world itself conformed, and really, we'd all be a lot happier I think.

My Copper Elephant

A child who grew up all alone had for company only a miniature copper elephant. Supposedly his parents had left it for him, before they disappeared. The child lived in a pleasant, if boring, place and had all the nourishment that he could desire. While most children were eating oatmeal and grits, this child feasted on sushi, barbecue, and all sorts of exoctic vegtables. He learned to read and think in many languages, and had access to a vast variety of thought provoking books. He was, however, without mother and father, and he missed them dearly like other children about whom he had read, even though he did not understand very much.

The castle he lived in had many rooms, and one had to be crafty to see them all. The child had counted: twenty, everyday, each one with something new in it. He lived in a magic castle, of this he was certain. Soft white light poured always from the hollow, reverberating walls. One had to get on one's hands and knees and crawl through small tunnels to get to the other rooms. Everyday he wanted to see the new things. Sometimes there were trap doors and they were hidden, one had to solve a riddle or puzzle before they would open. At night he feared that he had missed one; in all the days he must have missed one; what could he have missed? An object priceless without a doubt. Some news about the war? Or something French? The French soul. He loved to think about the feeling of the book in his hand when he read Sartre, he would pretend to be sick all over the little black words.

Only the copper elephant remained the same. Everday something new, and one thing the same. He always left the little thing in the main room, although he dearly wished to put it in his pocket. But he was naked, he had figured that out, naked since the day he was born, so he had no pockets, no pants either. Maybe pants will be a new thing someday. Maybe they have already, and you just didn't know how to use them. This was another of his fears; there had been many times when something simply did not make sense, and try as he might he could not fix it. None of them were pants, I would recogize pants, but one of them might lead to pants.

When he was angry or bored he would toss the little elephant hard against the noisy walls. He imagined that was what thunder sounded like. The hard elephant would scratch the tender walls. The scratches never stayed, he had heard about scratch remover, so it probably happened when you were asleep. Lots seemed to happen when you were asleep; the whole world sometimes changed.... Even the walls change, new walls. Lots of new things everyday too. I've kept books overnight before. Sometimes they come back. It all always changes. New things. Walls. But I don't know why, I ask, and I really don't know.

When I'm dead the copper elephant will still be here, it is because I am organic and therefore decay quicker. I wonder if the walls will change for him?

Post #7

I'm thinking I'll only from now on write prose. It is aferall the style I wish to practice. Yes, prose in general, a specific style maybe; insomuch as any style is particular to its auther. To practice a distinctive style, one with known rules, not yet, even if I make them up myself. Only a general outline at best, but something still to strive for. I'll title them also.

I'm kinda drunk, so the fist one (see above) might not be so great.

Post #6

[edited for content by author]. I believe that dream began with a football game and with me as a player. I was doing very badly, and I kept telling myself "if you stop worrying about doing badly, you'll do great", and I finally did, uplifting music began to play, and we won, or ate hotdogs or something. Later on there was also something about a construction site / hippy commune, and they refused to share. Altogether strange, but I'm happy to be remembering them, my dreams, again.

I'm smoking too many cigarettes these days. I probably wrote that to justify lighting up right now, but I'll refrain--better to wait until bed. Smoking in doors is gross and I blame non-smokers. If we all thought it was cool to do, it would be cool to do, and healthy too.... But who cares?

When Carl quit smoking he was dying of rectal malfunction, and it only aggravated his condition so that he died more quickly. But perhaps he was not displeased; it was torture to shit on subway cars and while giving speeches at weddings. The children would tease him, calling him "Shits his Pants". It follows, of course, that his father, unable to impregnate his mother, had in fact prayed one night for a son "even if he shits himself all the time". And it seems to have come true, even though Carl had not begun to shit himself until he was in his later thirties and his parents already long dead. Carl, of course, knew nothing of the curse, and so he cursed God and his misfortune. God, in return, shit uncontrollably all over Carl. For this God became quite embarrassed and defensive and so cursed Carl all over again with recal malfunction. Meanwhile, Colorado passed a law disallowing smoking inside bars and restaurants, and to get the message out a commercial was published depicting a lobster claw, moving as though animated by political will, snipping off that obnoxious lit cigarette. Carl eventually came to terms with religion, and died in a smelly puddle of his own crap.

Post #5

Maybe I have bubonic plague. I'm waiting for my lymph nodes to swell, I hope they don't, but really they could be swollen already. The more I think about it, the harder it becomes to close my armpits comfortably. Do I have a fever? It's curable, but maybe the treatment will leave me thin, like Kafka, shadow-like and intense. I would wear only white or off-white silk then, with a scarf and no glasses to hide my sunken, bloodshot eyes. I'd have a cain too, something straight and uncompromising. I'd hoard all my money and eat only raw rats, still wriggling on a stick. I'd shave off all my hair, decide to become homosexual, and fuck often just for the sin of it...

I've just spent probably 10 minutes trying to think of some way to either amend or mitigate the possible offensiveness of that last sentence--someone might afterall read this--and, since I'm too afraid to advocate presidenticide, this is the best I could come up with.

Anyway, I feel better now. And really I'm more afraid of being cliché than I am of bubonic plague. But I can't do anything about it either way. I could go to the hospital; but it is easier to just embrace my shortcommings, write them off as intentional, and insist that everything I do is perfect. The semi-colon in the last sentence is especially enigmatic. But enough, I'm confusing (in the transitive verb way) and this is exactly why I don't like to talk about myself.

I'd rather talk about you, dear reader, and the enjoyment I would have having sex with your brains and skull. And vomit... That was a joke. Really, it's all very funny, HAHA. Just listen to yourself reader (what garbage!), you're nuts.

This is the worst post yet.

Post #4

Dear Reader,

You should check out my links. "Mazur and friends" links to and interesting site run by my friend Andrew and some of his friends from back home. They blog about music, movies, and culture. Their tastes are each very eclectic, and their opinions sound. "Hanna E." links to a wonderful site run by my friend Hanna, who has recently moved to Indonesia to teach English. She writes well, and her story is captivating. Both of these blogs are highly recommended. "Google news" is just what it sounds like, and it comes standard anyway.

I still have not told any of my friends about this blog. You're probably the only person who's read it! The internet is an awfully overpopulated void. One can at least, in a real shopping mall, scream, although one never does...

Post #3

My mute page inspires nothing, it is, in fact, less than a journal because I cannot touch it and I can edit it without leaving any trace. Nothing is holy therefore, nothing is unadultered. It is really fabrication. And yet such ought perhaps to provoke a smile; a mirror sterilized so much to become refuse, reflects refuse sterilized to be a mirror. Which is correct; I believe firmly that to mirror our American Life we must indeed sterilize some refuse and then present it at the gallery. But at the same time incorrect because, when a certain point has been reached, with imagery: a high-water mark, language disintegrates into a mere collection of unrelated and diffuse meanings. By language I mean simply the sentence. A sentence can, of course, be constructed to mean just about anything. But when a sentence is constructed (grammatically correct) to mean nothing, it takes on a life of its own, spreads its literary wings by its own volition, and soars into Heaven. It becomes, in short, perfect. And it becomes perfectly meaningful. Which means that it must also bear that burden in common to all perfection, namely meaninglessness. And this sounds stupid, except it is very funny because the sentence was initially constructed to mean nothing anyway. An artist of nonsense thereby accomplishes his own goal: he is simultaenously an artist and a buffoon.

I am not a Nonsense-artist. But if I were, to say that "a mirror sterilized so much to become refuse, reflects refuse sterilized to be a mirror", could really mean any number of things. But I am more concrete, I believe in concreteness. So, what is actually meant, is that blogs reflect today's american way, and I was simply commenting thereupon.

And so consider this my circumcision: I have spoken now about blogs through the medium of a blog. I am therefore a blogger. And my covenant--to the American Life! Next time we'll discourse on its prescriptions.

Post #2

Here is a quick overview of the english indicative tenses (for ease I will use the verb "to play"):

She plays. She is playing. She was playing. She played. She has played. She has been playing. She had played. She will play. She will be playing. She will have played. She will have been playing. (The last one may be called "future imperfect".)

Now in the passive:

She is played. She was played. She has been played. She had been played. She will be played. And, she will have been played.

We may also perhaps include: She will have had been playing, and she will have had been played. But personally I don't think that they are anything but redundant.

What is interesting is that english, weaned on both the sperm of her romantic conquerers and the spilt blood of her raped mother tongue, refuses to be pacified when it comes to her abiltiy to find the right time. Using no less than four helping words in the indicative, she slays the lonely brute "Tergiversator". And yet, for that, is only all the more impossible to use!

Post #1

My dear friends, this perhaps begins a meager and wanting stroll through the black-topped, baffling bypaths which advance beneath our poorly turpid morality, ever only to find themselves fornicating on the doorstep of a mutant, aboriginal god, to whom we owe all reverence and neverending praise; a beast who afterall gives meaninglessness to all of our most profound inquiries, and boasts a mighty sack of heads.

Years ago, when I was a younger man, rather a boy, I lied upon returning from micronesia that I had in fact learned to speak the language. Assuming a nobility of stature give with ease only by children, I'd atop a stump, one hand upon a bent knee the other arm bent, forming that infamous "spout", with fist fast against my hip. And I'd spout some gibberish and translate it for my ethinically diverse (one was adopted and black) group of very interested neighborhood friends. They were very impressed, I recall, over the story of that school-yard micronesian bully who threw a pocket knife so that it stuck, hilt deep really, in the palm of some poor thief's hand (who would to make off with the bully's older sister). A story so terrible to tell that I was sorry to be uanble to narrate it in the original micronesian in which it had occured.... I'm more of a purist now so I won't even try, as much as I would enjoy writing an entire page of bullshit.