Sarah Palin Boycott

Stop reading! You liberate a conservative when you make her angry. You allow them to unleash their rhetoric, which is frighteningly powerful. This crisis could easily turn against the liberal and cause a rise in conservatism not just at home, but internationally. Especially if Sarah Palin leads the GOP. Christ! That would not be fun. Hence we must boycott all Sarah Palin media. Hopefully, if we just stop paying attention to her, she'll go away. The world has enough problems.

Really, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves. Instead of growing up and acting like adults, instead of looking for real long term solutions, instead of spending our money on the most horrible of human ills, we persist on behaving like children at recess, thinking only of ourselves, and gobbling up every word Sarah Palin says.

We have the power to kill each other, all we need is the excuse to use it. Implicitly, we are killing each other everyday. Who looks at that situation and says: "Well gosh, if we try harder we can kill more people!"?

I mean, that's what Bush said.

We're fucked! Our leaders are insane! I mean, my God! Why are we not better at this?

It's money that pisses me off.

Anyway, I'm off topic. Boycott Sarah Palin. It's all the rage. She's a bitch. Yep, Sarah Palin's a crazy bitch. Hot though. Well dressed. So, no more Sarah Palin, ever. No more internet Sarah Palin, no more realnet Sarah Palin, no more blog-o-whatevernet Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin, gone.

Another Brick in the Wall

That genetic disorders are hereditary is evidence of something much more uncomfortable than any theory of evolution; we were, after all, created in God's image and likeness. Such heresy could, ironically, redeem institutionalized religion. Like a child with his imaginary friends, God's flaws would be inexorably played out on the human stage. Cursed, we would be doomed to bend to His manic will, doomed as manifestations to enact forever the unhappy vicissitudes of His twisted conscience. For us, He would be perfection; the single inhabitant of a misanthopic, cynical Platonic Heaven. All of religion's misdeeds could then be excused as entirely appropriate extensions of God's Kindom into the world. His personality disorders made, again and again and again, flesh. A sure sign of divine schizophrenia: that so many believe in the same one God, and yet fight so brutally over the politics of His identity. No wonder He favors the sick: He must not open Heaven's tiny door to them--they are already inside.

Pot Smoker Kills Dozens

And it is nevertheless romantic to be one of the disillusioned, unaffected, young American intelligentsia. Vitamin C supplements may do me good, but if the lid is too annoying to open, I’ll just watch TV. I was told I could be anything, but they left out the “within reason” part. For the most part it is true: I can be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a politician. But if it’s “anything”, I’d like to be the next messiah, or the leader of the world revolution (or at least on the board), or God. Failing this, how can I just settle on a career? I am very much against “settling”. Dreams of Rock-Stardom and seducing beautiful women around the world hang over me as unyieldingly as a giant, falling, unhappy rock—I cannot refuse. To become a mere just-another-guy, no matter how “successful” or content, is an impossible caveat. But there it is: unspoken, unthought, immanent. (We believers in the individual: how silly of us!) “You can be anything, within reason”. Its authority is absolute. And I know it. I tell myself I ought to have faith in mediocrity! I tell myself that there is a new magic somewhere deep inside our mass culture, a tiny kernel that redeems an otherwise faceless and repetitive system. Where is greatness? How can I distinguish myself from everyone and be remembered by all history? Find that kernel. Descend into the depths of the collective zombie and uncover, beneath it all, that cantankerous, malignant pearl called Salvation, Everlasting Fame.

And so I smoke pot, wake up late, do nothing. Earlier I smoked a joint sitting on my windowsill. I flicked the roach, still burning, into the street below. The mind caught it, and, with a series of acrobatic maneuvers, carried it under the hood of a car. Almost immediately smoke began to billow out from within. Minutes later the car exploded, hurling burning debris onto the apartment complex across the street. The wind gave life to the flames and before the fire brigade could even arrive the building had burned completely to the ground. Dozens were killed.

This is a rant

How about comparative politics. Policy is in the air these days, forgive me!, so the topic is a-pro-pos. I have monarchist leanings, and they came after all first, so let's start there. A crazy, inbred few ruled over those monarchies. (This terrible aristocracy.) All they made were bad decisions; and the people--who had no freedom--suffered always for it. Democracy? Thank god for democracy! Now many crazy inbreds rule, the few have been reduced to the majority, and we all suffer for it. Majority, minority: these are a joke, since we have only one policy. The exception should be the rule! A policy of exceptions. When you color something black against white, gray immediatly creeps in. Gray is the border between black and white, and it is disputed. This gray essentially defines a battleground. But when we do not color it black against white, the gray is unlimited, and there is no black\white battleground. A gray system means means the participation of the fewest: those who have a well educated and compassionate opinion. The two tend to work against each other, and merely for this reason it is necessary it have them both.

Ironically, monarchies appear to be the more able of the two to accomplish this. It would be easier, after all, to concentrate all one's efforts on raising a few educated and compassionate individuals than on raising many. And the rest would probably lead better lives for it. Bad decisions! No freedom! Pfah! We make far worse decisions and we have far less freedom! We are not restricted by something as arbitrary as blood, but we are restricted by arbirary conflicts of ideals. The individual cannot manipulate the system as once was possible. Freedom is not having the choice to take drugs or not--or vote--it's the ability of a single player to influence, with his actions, the system as a whole. In a sense therefore, freedom already does not and cannot exist. We live in an age of think tanks, research teams and boards of directors. An individual has no direct influence. Ideals mislead their devotees into narrow mindedness and exclusivity. Even the ideals of love and bridge-building find themselves in constant struggle with those of racism and brutality. One enlists oneself for one side or the other, and then finds oneself in both camps. Would it not be far better to embrace our ugly truths, and seek, in all cases, reconciliation?

Perhaps monarchies had this as well: sitting by the king's sickbed; or hiding the traces of some depraved, sexual obsession. The king is the king after all; and as a man he must be accepted.

A good deal later...

A silver cap worn not so recently by all sorts of kings and queens decorates their parlor and observes as testament to their impatience. Looked upon by some black garmented fool who plays at fuck and waits. The floor is mother of pearl and the furniture is made of glass; so delicate one would not sit on it. The ticking sounds of slow decay unsettle and echo and build one to anger. So mild is the air here, one has already forgotten it and breathes in silence. Over a great deal of time dust collects in the nostrils and hardens to clay. One picks, and imagines tweezers to grasp the tiny, sticking-up end with in order to peel it all back in one great corkscrew strip down the throat, past the esophagus, all the way to the anus. One giant booger, made of man's insides. What would that be like?

One thinks, and is distracted. One is so only because of them. But I am I. So really it's we, right? One eats sushi and thinks of us. We shit. We scratch between our legs. And we drive cars. All the while doing nothing, elsewhere, that deep void of absorption and concern, wherein dwells us, even to begin with.

What is our problem? Caught within an eggshell with a tiny paintbrush and incredibly amused. Meanwhile the birth we never asked for and they death always about to happen stand as bookends and mock the pathetic, but deeply, deeply beautiful attempts we make to grasp it all, even if all of it is only just a tiny part.

The revolving doors were there and then gone. You hardly noticed it because you were thinking about the affair. Those legs and that ass, so firm, so unlike your wife's. And she wants your money! Ha! At least it'll never get old.

Cigarettes and Beer

Chapter 1: Cow-town cowboy

There was that one time: a moldy bun from Wendy’s. The replacement had a hair in it, but he was too timid to complain a second time and he ate it. He’d kept it in a long time; at night the view from his townhouse was something extraordinary: McDonald’s, Blockbuster, Qdoba, Starbucks; here, out on the plains, things were really desolate, really cow-town; everything one needs, if one needs a heart attack. A world constructed, intentionally by all appearances, merely to distract. “Distraction is happiness in the mid-west,” he had a theme, not long and he’d have a gallery too. Attractive women, piddling fame, broken hearts. His father was a cowboy, raised on the farm and then in the city, a man with principles, disciplined to the root of his life-long-already gray hair. “No son of mine is gonna be no artist,” and so he was technically fatherless, and, by extension, family-less. The impulse to migrate tugged his chest as though somebody had tied a rope there and carried the other end all the way to India, or China, or Madagascar. He resisted it: that was his passion: to resist himself. He’d therefore never given up on that eternal-life dream. “My Self is locomotion-towards-death, and so, since I’m philosophically anti-self, I might as well live forever.” He fancied himself “mac the last cowboy”; deathless in dreams and lukewarmly cynical, an artist fallen somewhere between an old computer and a new Ferrari. He worked on a typewriter (when he wanted to write his letters), his clothes were all stolen, and he was devotedly public transportation, so he figured he was an atheist by default: mac the atheist-artist-cowboy. He painted naked people because he was really just clothing all the way down, and horses, and sunsets. “Cow-town suburbia,” he thought, “my town, holy crap.”

Chapter 2: Broken Paintbrush

“It looks fine to me.”

“Nah, it’s broken.”

“I’m not sure if paint-brushes can break, I mean as long as they pain—“

“It’s broken.”

It lay there, still wet, unable to paint a thing.

“I prefer it broken.”

“How’s that?”

“The world changes when it’s broken, more colorful, vibrantly painted-like, as though I jus’ seen it for the first time.”

“How’d you figure that?”

“Shit, just an observation.”

“Listen, ‘mac’, you’re an artist by profession. You need to pick up that stick and earn your livelihood, broken or not.”

“I’m a terrible artist.”

“Don’t I know it, but that don’t change a thing.”

Nothing was visibly wrong with the brush. Red paint had bled from the bristles onto the table; dy(e)ing, it’d be permanent soon. It was, in reality, little more than a shit stick. Warhol painted with piss. Human excrement had been on the artists’ minds, so he figured. “Cow-town cow-pies.” He’d paint with shit if he could stand the smell. He couldn’t. He had to take a shower after every BM not because he felt unclean, but rather because he wanted his bathroom to smell of shower and soap instead…. “Those Fancy New-York types and their ideas, the art-world’s really taken a turn.” The plains would be livable even now-a-days if one had a tank—horses won't do to jump all those fences—and maybe a telescope too, else one can’t see the stars. His balcony overlooked a stretch of pseudo-highway, and he’d get honks when he’d stand there butt-naked, which is how he liked it anyway. He was in a garage band when he was younger. They played a few gigs, but were mostly thrown out on their asses—their loud-noise-spine-rattling-split-screaming-cuss-words-and-drunk not going over too well with the `billies. He was there for the heroine epidemic, never tried the stuff himself, “Now all’s it is, is jus’ suits and greed, probably still the heroine, but fancy, crystal droppers and the like.” He probably just needed to get laid, except his ED was acting up, on account of his age, not even forty, but sex requires something he’d lost—maybe the whole mid-west had lost it—but besides, he preferred it broken; it made the world somehow new again; occasionally he’d even watch those sunsets again, pink clouds like winged angels illuminated at the dawn of Apocalypse, the intermittent seas of grain blowing the colors up between reflecting buildings of glass, the pinks and yellows and oranges caught up in the silent unity of land and sky, which, hurricaned together and yet perfectly still, trespassed into one another as currents through the deep and never failed to bring tears to his eyes. He never did do much anyway, “‘mac’ the cowboy, right?”

heidegger

Well, I'm taking Heidegger, so lucky you guys.

The anti-traditionalist revolution takes place on the level of the self. It is a rejection not merely of societal mores and scientific truths, but, more importantly, of the being that inheres beneath these things. The revolution is already underway. The history of western philosophy is and has been rejecting itself. If there is no single way the world is, no correct interpretation, and if the world always depends on us for any interpretation what-so-ever, then we are free (or at least potentially free) to focus on the different ways the world can be in relationship to ourselves. So, being occupied--when the world is almost not there--is one way the world can be; or when I am happy, and the world is a happier place; or in love, and it glows. The manner in which I hold myself out to the world defines the being of myself in relationship with the world. I must therefore recognize, and activly incorporate the recognition of, the multiplicity of being-in-the-world: that the world is capable of supporting and reflecting back an unlimited number of interpetations, or modes of projected self-being-in-the world, means that I am neither limited by, nor necessarily sure of, myself as something unified and persisting in time. I am, in other words, free to be, if I can master the power.

The anti-traditionalist revolution, however, threatens to destroy us. It is incompatible with the commune and therefore will not afford us progress. It also has a morally relativizing characteristic, which would sooner lead to fascism than utpoia. And it could promise a radicalized individualism, what with probably nobody would know what to do.

And so, consider this:

At first she couldn’t believe it. He had just exploded, on their first date, sort of into a thousand colors, and there, at the bar, in his place, was a demon spectacular to behold. Large and dark, wings outspread, dripping seduction, fervent, and practiced, he drew her up to him, and offered himself to her. The offer was simple, she saw it plainly, as though in a vision.

“Just because you’re fantastic, doesn’t mean I want to end up old and fat in some trailer some day.” She said, obviously disappointed.

The demon held up one finger and tilted his head just so, as if to show respect for her decision; his display made it plain that she had passed an important test.

With one long claw he tore himself right down the middle, beginning at the very crown of his head. The wound radiated a golden light. His black skin fell away, spreading out like paint, turning the small room into the night sky, the stars aflame, the vacuum--like the song of the sirens--beckoning one into its void. A god had emerged from the demon, standing there atop his corpse, burning, and beautiful. Gently, but full of hypnotic, masculine strength, he drew her to himself, and spoke: "if you choose me, this is what you'll have:" and, supporting her spotaneously limp body easily with one hand, he waved his other before her rolled-back eyes.

"You fucker!" She said, jumping to her feet, "just because you put on this big show doesn't mean that I'm now, suddenly, going to decide that I want to be some fat trailer-trash bitch! What the fuck is this anyway?!"

Kissing you

HE went online to learn Spanish one day. “What a magnificent tool,” he thought. Unfortunately, he was an idiot. He exercised powers far beyond his control, wielded them with fearful sincerity, shaking under their weight. Under the influence of his excitement, he managed to successfully learn Spanish. Although he struggled with but the simplest problems, he had a knack for languages. Soon he had conquered them all, and he spoke each one with verve and confidence. His mind bent under the strain—like steel beams crippling—and he went mad.

One always loves an idiot; their docility, their humor. Then there is the average person. He is fat and stupid, just believes whatever he is told. He sits and he thinks, and he understands the reasons why he believes the way he does. And you and I ought not exclude ourselves from this group. After all, has our life story been much different. One may substitute sitting around for working one’s ass off, lots of us do that; thinking happens however pretty much as frequently in one of us as in another, and so it may stay. And we all feel wholly justified believing the way we do.

(And even if we are biologically fat and stupid.)

This is, in truth, an easily forgivable sin. None of us is biologically programmed to be a fascist or a democrat, we are brought up to be the people we are. Can you really blame another that she or he is a fuckin’ retard? Indeed, must you not either blame yourself, or God? The average man is us; we are he.

A mad man is not so easy to love. Insane, he commits crimes. They, rising up inside him, throw him about and smash his arms and legs, as though he were caught on the reef of some island in stormy waters, until the thrashing becomes too loud and he thrashes without—always careful to sink away afterward into oceans of guilt and paranoia.

IS the average man not in his own right mad? Mad that he is destined to be ultimately forgotten? Mad that he does not know? Mad that he knows this and never stops believing?

Probably, since those of us who are mad are actually the sane ones and etc. It’s perfectly true.

No Smoking

Shake your skinny fist at the sky
Jealously rides on the back of my lust

A nihilistic reason to quit cigarettes: If one has nothing to believe in, then one is left with nothing but the immediate and perhaps an occasional back pedal into memory. One does not believe, and, so shed of this burden, one has no choice but simply to be. Cigarettes, if used habitually, define a person. What then if one chooses not to believe that one is a smoker? One quits, naturally. “I am not a smoker: I be.”

Live on the coast, and quit for sure. Jesus!

("I wish I were just slightly off. Like the toilets in the south that just flush straight down too quickly to go the wrong way.")