Zestfully Clean

I should probably read poetry first

2011-12-08T13:13:00.000-08:00

He comes to her bed
entangling their limbs
arms and hips

Presently present closed
impartial
electric light

Pleasantly
long suffering
abeyance

Put to death
beneath
complicated coverlets

I must be going through a break up

2011-12-08T13:11:00.001-08:00

Oh we passivists

the world comes
and we're rocked by her waves

make slaves of her shelter
and are thereby enslaved

find us
our oyster
hammocks
and sleep

absent transgression
our endorsement
we keep

A poem

2011-11-16T08:45:00.000-08:00

Autumn's leaves

blush red

at the indifference

of their departing lord

But the cold

of his prolonged absence

turns them brittle, brown

and wilted

Until breaking

under burdens

of love's seeming abandonment

they fall

borne lightly to the ground

as living tears

on death's feeble breeze

Wrapped up tight against the cold

my breath but

an Autumn fog

I walk

their path of broken hearts.

2010-10-11T12:09:00.000-07:00

On the rainy death of some fat man comes and goes a stream of tiny ants, back and forth, forever. What has happened here?! People would yell, if there had been any people around. But the place is empty for miles, just some corpse and some ants in a great big forest.

Sensitivity training

2010-09-29T14:15:00.001-07:00

Writing by hand, the physical act of setting ink to page. The pleasant and familiar curves of one's own letters! Bringing forth memories of past encounters with the task.

A keyboard only confuses; forcing one down twisted, unnatural paths. For example, one hunches more uncomfortably forward when one must also stare ahead into the screen.

The impression my pen makes on the paper, however slight, is also lasting; it is testament. And I am God, delivering the word. These are my lines, and can be made by no one else.
...

One freezes in mid-step on a cold rainy day. Holding an umbrella, you’ve nearly stepped in a puddle! The puddle looks up at you. “Get the fuck out of my face,” it says.

You’re not surprised. This sort of stuff happens all the time. You know you’ve gone mad. Who knows how long you’ve known? Years maybe.

You step wide of the puddle and turn, bending down to face it.

“I said, get the fuck out of my face!”

“You can’t really be talking, I know that,” you say.

“Then you must be crazy, right?” The puddle chuckles. “Come on bub! Can’t you do any better? I’m a talking puddle for godsake!” You're distracted by the clearly agitated ripples upsetting his face.

“Are you talking to me?” You ask, as if he were not there, feeling strange, queasy, like you've done this before, and you know it's really gross. “What am I doing,” you ask, “am I talking to myself?”

“Talking!?” The puddle laughs, causing more ripples, “do you hear anything? Maybe you really are mad! Standing here, on this—what?—street?”—More laughter—“Deep in conversation with a puddle!? And not just that, but one inside your head!? Haha, that’s a good one! A knee slapper!” You could swear that if the puddle had knees, he'd just slapped them for emphasis.

“Then what?” you ask, not really paying attention. You look around. "How many people are watching me have this conversation right now?"

“I think you need to focus more on yourself. You know, what role you’re going to play.” You notice the puddle adjust itself, sending small waves to collide about haphazardly. They settled down and a very arrogant, straight-backed man appeared, reflecting off its surface. “Or you could focus on me, I am after all a very important element here, an Estragon to your Vladimir, pardon my pretension.”

“But you’re just a puddle.”

“Just a puddle!?” Rain drops begin to sound against your jacket. “So I’m just your average talking puddle then?” The puddle replies. You feel the street quickly empty of unprepared pedestrians. The cascade warps the puddle's face to a violent ever shifting and crashing about mass of crater impacts. “if I’m nothing special, why don’t you lean over and take a look at this?”

Curious what a puddle could have, you bend over even further until your face is just hovering above its surface. You strain to see through the thrashing waves getting in your eyes. Is some object hidden there? Your peer within for awhile. “I don’t see anything,” you say.

“What do you see?” The puddle asks impatiently.

“All I see are rain drops splashing into to you.”

“Exactly!”

“Exactly what?”

“Where is your umbrella?”

“My god! Where is my umbrella!?” You stand erect, looking about quickly, and turn around to search behind you and in every direction. Shading your eyes. “I don't even remember bringing it with me!”

“Do you doubt my power now?” Demands the puddle from under your arm.

“That’s not fair,” complaining, you stamp your feet. “You’re just fucking with me.”

“I am not!” The rain stops and the puddle grows still. “In this, your—our—story, I make your umbrella disappear!”

“But how is that possible?” You ask.

The wind blows a flutter of tiny waves across the puddle’s face, making it indistinct, like the skin of an old woman. “Are you an idiot, boy? How do you think it’s possible?”

The question deserves some thought, you muse. “I’ve gone mad, my original explanation, seems very likely,” you say while holding your fingers in front of the puddle, as though to add up a simple sum. “It’s clear to me now.”

“Mad!? You? Don’t anthropomorphize so much!” The puddle scowls.

“What?”

“Nevermind. There’s not really anything more to talk about.” The puddle sighs and appears to stretch itself out, like an old man preparing to sit and relax in his chair.

A bell! Instinctively, you jump back. A biker in tight, colorful shorts speeds swiftly through the middle of the puddle, scattering its watery guts. The puddle screams out in shock and pain!

Surprised by the recklessness of the biker and the suddenness of the puddle’s scream, you reflexively cover your mouth and shout out, “Holy Jesus fucking Christ!” The biker glances back at you, a scowl on his mouth, his sunglasses yellow and green reflective insect eyes.

The moment passes. “Puddle?” You ask, heart pounding, paranoia—like the urge to run—growing more and finally less intense. “Are you ok?”

“God, you really are an idiot, kid,” he says, his face still tossing wildly. “Of course I’m alright. What the fuck could happen to me? I'm a puddle.”

“Then why did you scream?” You ask.

“To fuck with you, kid.” The puddle grins despite the waves, “here, let me tell you something: as it stands now, I—both you and I actually—have a very real, a very near-at-hand (if ever tenuous, mind you) possibly of actually existing. The possibility of really being in the world, being a part of it! And not just that, but actually existing—actually being—for a very long time to come, in perpetuity perhaps!” The puddle exclaims, winking at you conspiratorially.

You can hardly believe you're being lectured by a puddle. “Well that’s good news, I guess,” you say, reluctant to take the bait.

“Exactly!” The puddle continues enthusiastically. You're pulled closer to its grinning surface, although its against your will. “Now," it continues, "you were right to comment before that I am just a not-so-special puddle.”

“Oh!” You interrupt, feeling embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings by it.”

“Whatever. You were right. I am, ultimately, wholly uninteresting,” says the puddle cheerfully.

(“That’s not true!” You feel obliged to add.)

“Yes it’s true. And so are you!—not very interesting I mean,” a watery finger emerges starkly from it's middle, “But!” it exclaims, “We—you and I—might be lucky enough to remain just so uninteresting for the next thousand, even ten-thousand years!”

“Interesting...” you try to begin—

“Wait!” The puddle, ecstatic, is hopping around. “The point is that nothing bad can happen to me here! To us both! Here we are safe! Here we can grow to become who-knows-what!" It stretches itself upwards until nearly at eye-level with you. "Here, you and I, son, are God!”

Finally, spent of energy, it falls back limply into itself.

“Ok, listen puddle, I think I get it. But I don’t have time for your philosophizing. I’ve lost my umbrella—I need to retrace my steps, and it is beginning to rain again. I might still be crazy, I haven’t made up my mind yet. (God knows we’ve had our share of strange looks throughout this conversation!) But all that aside, I’m going now. Goodbye!” You turn to leave.

“If that’s what you wish. See you again!” The puddle waves.

Already on your way, you call back, “probably!" And you smile. "That was pretty cheesy by the way.”

Then, swallowed up by traffic, forgotten.

Artsyfart! Click on them to make them bigger

2010-09-29T00:08:00.000-07:00

Another oldie, pretty much the exact same story as the one below, minus the infidelity...

2010-05-03T12:52:00.000-07:00

Dustin Franchise was an elderly gentleman when he was viciously murdered one morning by all of his things.

The owner of a successful snowplow company, Franchise lived an active life; even as a child his motto had always been “stay busy.” On each of his nearly eleven-hundred fifty snowplows was his label: the face of a gold grandfather clock in a red and blue circle pointing to 5 o’clock. Underneath were written the words: “We come early!” And truer words were never spoken; the man himself had been up before sunrise everyday of the week for eleven years (and then he had stayed in bed late only once, because his wife, in an attempt to help him recover more quickly from the flu, had dosed him heavily with sedatives). During the day he was constantly on the phone, or hunched over his desk, pen in hand, scribbling endless notes on legal pads. He was a hard working man and a regular exemplar of the American Dream--a pulled-himself-up-by-the-bootlaces kinda man, except that in this case it had been by the worn out tongue of laceless, second hand sneakers (a pair of shoes he had kept and, after making his first million, preserved in gold plating).

His accommodations reflected his success. He lived in a large house in the so-called ‘bush’ with his family; he had three daughters, a wife, and a hunting dog. He loved to hunt, his wife loved to skin and cook his kills (a regular American herself), and his children loved to eat her cooking. He and his wife shared the top floor of the three storied house. Their children each had separate rooms on the second floor, and the ground floor housed the kitchen, a large living room equipped with all the modern extravagancies, three separate toilets (the bedrooms also had their own toilets and showers), a dining room with enough space for thirty, Franchise’s study, and a large walk-in closet that served as a coatroom for guests. Franchise and his wife loved to entertain; in addition to their master bedroom, they reserved two fully stocked, en suite guestrooms on the third floor, both with the highest quality queen-sized mattresses and chic beddings.

This love of the finer things extended beyond the home; Franchise was an experienced world-traveler. And he had the collection to prove it. On every wall, in every room, on pedestals in corners, hanging from the ceilings, across the floors, stood Persian rugs, French chandeliers, busts and statues of European kings and emperors, Greek warriors in marble, Egyptian figurines, Gothic and Romanian tapestries, 14th century paintings, and a fine selection of Picassos, Caspar Friedrichs, Renoirs and the like. He displayed some of the finest Chinese and English China in large cabinets placed conspicuously around the dining room. His wife had an extensive collection of German glass.

Everything in his house, excepting his wife’s glass--which had been purchased mostly from E-bay--had been bought (or won) by him on-site. (In addition to artifacts, he had a prodigious hoard of hunting trophies--even the head of an elephant. He mounted these--to the perpetually renewed horror of his slightly demented wife--anywhere he happened to please, sometimes changing their locations twice or even three times in a day. He never moved the elephant’s head, however--it was far too cumbersome, and he was in any case very proud of its location: resolutely standing guard over his marriage bed.)

Franchise’s favorite room was undoubtedly his study, located where the middle of the east-side wall of the ground floor careened out from the house at an unusually eccentric angle. It was a bright place, if too orderly to be considered cheery, and it contained the most exceptional pieces from his collection. His most prized was the head of an albino Guyanan Tiger Cat, mounted just across from his sitting chair to be in easy view, which he had killed himself in the deadly jungles of Guyana. There he also displayed his personal collection of lamps (his favorite category of furniture), one in each corner of the room, and one on a stand by his sitting chair. His least favorite of these was a gaudy Victorian piece depicting Minerva and a cherub in silver, whose high price tag had nevertheless earned it a position in his exclusive collection. In the opposite, and far more accessible corner of his study he exhibited a wonderful Art Deco pedestal lamp, about seven feet tall, showing a scantily dressed Mayan or Egyptian princess in a sexy Statue of Liberty pose holding aloft the light and reclining against some kind of Aztec skyscraper, whose texture and strange geometric designs gave it the look and feel of some kind of cyber-adobe ziggurat. But it was always to the base of this pedestal lamp that Franchise drew the attention of whichever new guest-become-impromptu-audience he had managed to pull away for a few moments. He would invite this company to appraise the protruding carved half of an old woman, who was sitting and playing with a puppy on the steps at the base of the sharply sloping tower; with well practiced, exaggerated gestures, he would entreat them to contemplate the down-turned face of this woman, her sad expression, the pain she must feel in her weary lower back, how she had positioned herself, bent slightly forward, arms straight, hands resting on her knees, in order to sit a little more comfortably in her old age, and above all how little she concerned herself with the allegory of progress under which she sat. Indeed, Franchise would muse, she is probably employed as a cleaning lady within, her invalid condition the consequence of years of sweeping, what must be, countless staircases.

Franchise was in the habit of smoking a Cuban cigar (bought, of course, in Cuba) in his office every morning as the sun rose. He especially enjoyed the reflection and the scattering of the sunlight off his crystal chess board, on top of which he had neatly arranged a confusion of regional chess pieces, no two of which belonging to the same set, and all of masterful craftsmanship. He had medieval gargoyles, Chinese terracotta warriors, both Indian and African elephants, American civil war statuettes, Arabian queens, a miniature Taj Mahal, various knights, samurais and crossbowmen, some made of glass, others of gold, and quite a few encrusted with precious or semi-precious gems, which would invariably catch the very first sunlight, throwing the study into a magnificent, prismatic, if only momentary, disarray.

He sat there, on the morning of his death, happily puffing on a cigar, head slightly titled back, staring down his nose--on whose very tip he customarily set his glasses--towards the horizon. He had set himself to contemplating the success of his snowplow business--a daily ritual--when suddenly all of his things came to life, grew legs if they had none, tore off sharp pieces of themselves if they were unarmed, and advanced on the understandably surprised Franchise. It began with the chess pieces, just before the sun was up. He was eyeing them in anticipation, tracing their designs, picking out the most delightful, vibrant gems on them, deciding where to fix his gaze for the sunrise, when all the pieces, as if literally commanded, began jumping off the board and making their way to Franchise. “This must be magic!” came the thought, unbidden. When they had reached his feet they stopped, circled up, and began arguing, or at least the gesticulations made it appear so, as they made no sound. The sunlight began creeping across his room and, glancing up, he noticed that strange things were happening to all of his objects. His vinyl collection, for example, was tossing itself one by one off the shelves; they’d land, flop about like fish until the record had freed itself completely from the sleeve, and then spin and dance wildly, ostensibly enjoying their nakedness.

Was it paranoia or premonition? He had the immediate sense that his things meant to do him harm; there was something despicable about them. Initially, he thought he was going insane. He was old, he knew that, and figured his mind had just finally given up--he was even momentarily excited to spend the rest of his life in madness with his living collection of things to keep him company. “What better friends could you ask for?” Yet, there was something undeniably threatening about them, some sort of murderous joy informing even their simplest movements.

He wasn’t exactly frightened until they began to stab him. Having found some rope the chess pieces were ascending his torso. A few had leapt into his shirt pocket, and others were clinging onto his buttons. They began to stab him with their little weapons, and he tore at them, trying to save himself from their sting, but they held fast, their tiny arms already secured deep underneath his skin. He stood up, throwing himself around frantically, he could feel their little blades cutting into him. Now panic took control of him. They were crawling inside him through the wounds they had made. Something heavy hit him and he fell whirling to the ground. Turning on his back he was assaulted by a metal Mayan or Egyptian princess, now straddling him, who proceeded to choke the life out of him, and then fall over sideways, dead again herself.

How people find me: macroevolution and masterbation!

2010-04-30T02:14:00.001-07:00

My site has generated nearly a thousand hits since November. You, like me, are proabably asking yourself how that's possible. Well, it's due my clever title choices of course! You'd be amazed how many people are curious about "marijuana and masterbation" (I'm google result #3)! But the big suprise is "macroevolution". Who knew that more people were interested in macroevolution than in marijuana AND masterbation? In latter's defense, of the 20 most googled phrases that led users to my blog, 11 of them had something to do with marijuana and masterbation (if you let me include "masterbation stain" and "макроеволюция" which is probably Russian for marijuana and masterbation...). The majority of the remaining most searched phrases have to do with being or feeling pissed. Still, "macroevolution" tops the list, with 10 hits this month alone! The real odd man out is " "robert p. george" and neitzsche".

Anyway, I guess there must be some relationship between marijuana and masterbation. All the more reason why marijuana is dangerous and should never be smoked by anyone! We wouldn't want our youth materbating all the time, for fuck's sake!

Or at least that's probably what the people who come here for my macroevolution post think....

PS: I know you're reading my blog, whoever you are....

An oldie I reworked.... And reworked again...

2010-04-26T14:24:00.000-07:00

"I imagine that in another few million years, when the earth is inhabited by some other sentient earthling, and they are digging out the ancient wreckage of our civilization, they’ll name us ‘doom’." - Splatter Writings, 2010

Around Carl loomed a deep hall, so dark and impenetrable that he could not make out a single detail past a foot or so of floor illuminated by his pitifully insufficient candle. On no previous occasion could Carl recall anything looming around him. It was not his character to stand gaping face-to-face with foreboding abysses. Carl preferred to make himself slight and scamper around in well lit office space; being faithful only to those actions which, born of great industry and fine-tuned articulation, encourage constant productivity. He was near blind and wore powerful, dark rimmed glasses which so greatly magnified his eyes that they inevitably caused feelings of discomfort in whomever he happened to be conversing with (feelings made all the more acute due to the nearness which he would bring his face to theirs, as though he would not just see them, but smell them too). Those who knew him caught themselves occasionally confusing his soft and plump frame with that of some thick-shelled beetle. It was whispered that he never slept, and would shuffle through the commodious office supply closets long after all the lights had been shut off and everyone else gone home to their wives and beds. He had earned the reputation of being a man who never fails to finish the job. Once it happened that his co-workers found him asleep, jerking around unconsciously, on the newly cleaned sofa in the rec-room. They lifted him up, with very little deliberation, and carried him on their backs to the janitor‘s secret napping couch. Once or twice he had slept there all day. The room with this couch was buried far underground, near the boiler and hence dingy, hot, and humid. Condensation as thick as blood was constantly oozing down moldy walls toward the ever growing wetlands of sweet-smelling chemical secretions on the carpet. On their way down, these slime-trails would pick up and carry with them whatever bits of dried gecko or insect fecal matter happened to be blocking their path. In the top left corner of the room, facing the door, an air-duct led to loftier places.

It was during one of his late nights that Carl chanced to find himself in the massive dark hall. He must have passed it by thousands of times, without ever considering it. Maybe it was because he had finally finished his job for the night that he unthinkingly lingered there so long. He lifted his candle as high as his round, hunched body would allow, leaning unsteadily to one side as he did, but he was unable to chase away the shadow. Because it was useless, he blew it out, and swallowing deeply 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 discorporate voice. "Who are you?" asked Carl, "everybody I know went to bed long ago." "Oh, I don't ever sleep" said the voice. A match caught fire, accompanied by the characteristic sounds and smells of flaring sulphur and phosphorus, the light fell to a candle, which, lit, illuminated the face of an old man. He wore a long white beard, stained with crumbs and goop. He was leaning heavily on a matte gunmetal-gray metal desk, and he wore an old vest of decaying blue silk.

He spoke like a cheery old lunatic, toothless, foul smelling and everything: "I've worked here since long before you were born my boy! I’m sure, I'm sure...” He began to nod off, or so it seemed, only to continue as suddenly and as cheerily as his mere existence would suggest, “I have maaaaany responsibilities you see? They send my meals down to me, every one! I never leave my station. I'm that busy you see? That's probably why you've never seen me before now." "What is your title?" asked Carl, skeptical and businesslike, having wholly misinterpreted the implications of his situation. "I'm head of information acquisition and filing," the old man replied, mimicking Carl‘s tone sarcastically, "but I'm sorry to cut this short, I'm afraid I must ask for your authorization you see? 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,” replied the man, “you are definitely not going to get in to see the collections in that case,” and then, out of nowhere, “I am supremely important you see? It would probably help if you bowed to me." The way the old man said this made Carl feel very 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 you see? Besides, I'm very proud of my work," grinned the old man, "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 a cold, rough, unpainted concrete wall. Behind the desk, the old man took out a key and unlocked an iron door. “This hall must be smaller than I thought,“ mused Carl. As the door swung open a blinding light from no definite source fell upon them revealing a 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 whole space was distractingly hygienic--like a hospital laboratory or gigantic server storehouse--and filled with row after row of many tiered shelves. The shelves were so cramped that one could only navigate through them sideways, sucking in the gut, and they were loaded with millions--possibly billions--of little white or pastel colored 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." He raised a comical eyebrow nearly to the top of his mostly bald head. "What's in all the boxes?" asked Carl, gulping the dry air. "Everything you see?" said the old man, "all the world's knowledge is stored here. Everything known to mankind and individuals 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 occupied--and I was wondering if she hadn't cheated on me yet." "Ah, good question, let's find out!" shouted the old man in glee. Full of energy now he took out a small crumpled notebook and, flipping seven or eight pages, exclaimed, "here it is!" and rushed off like a dog chasing some unseen prey. 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, and, tipping the box slightly, displayed its contents to Carl. "That's a miniature of 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 quickly returned the lid to the box. "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, you SEE?" Carl did not know what to do, the old man seemed to grow taller and more ferocious; teeth, fangs, snouts, bunches of desperate tits tearing through his vest, trying to get on top of each other, his eyes like a demon‘s. Slowly Carl got on to his knees and clasped his hands in front of himself.

"Are you afraid?" asked the old man. "A little," replied Carl. The old man bent over and removed a big fucking sword from his new, malignant, gaping vagina. Carl tried to run, but the old man cut him down quickly and ,like a just fed mosquito and a windshield, blood exploded everywhere, instantly coating the boxes and shelves in their tiny corner of the massive storage facility with brightly illuminated, crimson fluid. After Carl was dead, the old man expertly carved his body up into thin slices, then sautéed with onions and white wine, and devoured bit by bit.

Bank-headed Corporation Caterpillar!

2010-03-02T10:06:00.001-08:00

I guess it would be the corporation then? The present dialectic. Or perhaps that's too simple? I would imagine that, if so, it could just as easily have happened to the other. Communism. Or something else.

But what is the corporation? The body. The movement of becoming the body.

A way there would be to incorporate the government: Demand that you have become too powerful, and submit to being placed within the checked and balanced. What havoc could the corporation have there! They could literally buy the budget. The thought makes me laugh. What would they spend it on? God. My money's on weapons. Because that's the goddamned responsible thing. Without 'em we can't blow each other up! Surveillance. They could call it "marketing". Would work too. Green energy. We're fucked....

They'd spend it on medicine of course, as well. And fund the biological research that goes along with it.

The temptation to control the people would be too great! Practically the whole system would be (is) designed not to uplift the individual, but rather to enforce control over her or him. It would be (is) as though we've gone all 1984shit.

Can I make a proposal? I doubt it's my place, but what if we invested all our health care money into Eastern medicine (because it's a bit hoe-key, anyway)? And then just let people get sick?

That way we'll have more money to spend on weapons and surveillance.

(The word surveillance looks like a pregnant caterpillar.)

What would it mean, instead, to improve the individual?

Probably not having the corporation. But is that even possibly now?

Why did the Founding Fathers decide to implement the system of checks and balances anyway? So that each branch would check and balance the POWER of the other branch. Could those infinitely wise men have ever imagined anything like the social entity we call the corporation? It's quite possible, but they didn't put anything in the Constitution about it. And so the corporation grows and grows in power. It is neither checked, nor balanced.

To do so I guess, would mean to regulate, and that's evil.

But if one institution becomes far more powerful than the other one, what is the consequence? We can guess. The corporation will dictate economically. Thrusting into us anally, oligarchy. And any government, if it will succeed, is to some extent dependent on the market!

As far as I can tell, every country in the world has debt. But to whom do we owe all this debt? To each other? If that were the case and we all paid each other back the money we owed, then we'd all have balanced budgets, not true? So the debt is owed to someone, and that someone is more than just the sum of all other countries. Probably, it's the banks. But I guess they fucked up and lost it all. So the governments of the world go further into debt to help out the banks? But now to whom is the money owed? Here's the tricky part: it's still owed to the banks. It must be! Because we buy our money from them.

And the head of the corporation is the banks.

So where is all the money? The bank-heads eat it, and the market digests it.

(But instead of becoming a beautiful butterfly, they just get fatter and fatter.)

Build me a wall Jesus!

2010-02-15T01:09:00.000-08:00

It's been a long while since I've posted anything. And this promises to be short. Here's one for you: A conservative Christian organization dedicated to "presenting America's forgotten history and heroes with an emphasis on moral, religious, and constitutional heritage". In other words, and this the view they whole-heartedly promote: the USA is divinely inspired. Our founders, our law, our destiny: all straight from Jesus. The guiding philosophy of this organization: the devil's in the details... so we'll just leave them out. Nevermind examples of religious infighting, or instances of the religious establishment opposing what later became fundamental to our concept of progress and what constitutes American values. Everything US-historical up until now was one big miracle planned and executed perfectly by God.

The message: we have to keep up God's work! If we don't remain vigilant, the evil liberals and their satanic idol Obama will derail God's plan for America! In brief: God needs our help!

All that's well and good, just about what you would expect really. But now the best part: the organization calls itself "Wallbuilders". What refreshing honesty! Finally, a conservative Christian organization who frankly admits their goal: to segregate our society along those holy boundries of institutionalized religious dogma. Because what would Jesus do? Build walls to keep those fuckin muslims out! And cut taxes for the wealthiest 1%! Amen!

So, in conclusion, vote Palin 2012.

And... an Asshole!

2009-12-21T09:44:00.001-08:00

I’m grappling with an interesting intellectual. Robert P. George. He is a leading thinker for the conservative religious right in our country. He is also a professor of law at Princeton. I’ve been reading some of what he has produced. Certain arguments are excellent, well presented and convincing. Others read like the rants of a medieval fanatic. Actually, that’s not quite right, he does rant, just not like a medieval fanatic. What disturbs me about this guy is how conveniently his philosophy lines up with the platform of the right. And I’m afraid he’s compromised himself. Indeed, about every other article of his I read, I catch myself thinking “did this guy, the same guy who wrote that last article, really write this?”

In “The New Paganism and the Culture of Death” he writes: “I submit to you that there is a foolproof test: False gods always demand the blood of innocents. A pagan culture is always, in the end, a culture of death. Where the innocent and just are slain, there the god being worshipped is not the God of Israel, the Lord of Life, but rather Moloch in one or another of his protean disguises.” This particular rant (and I don’t mean that in a wholly negative sense) deals with abortion and euthanasia. The argument: we participate in a pagan culture as long as we admit abortion and euthanasia into our sphere of morally acceptable actions. Now despite one’s position on paganism, abortion and euthanasia, it is a rhetorically powerful rant. He even accuses Christians of worshipping false gods who have used violence against their enemies and burned heretics at the stake.

He concludes with this: “Let us not forget that the God of Israel, the Lord of Life, is the enemy of the culture of death. Let us not shrink from the task of defending the lives of the innocent. Let us work tirelessly to build the culture of life. Let us not be intimidated by the prestige or influence of those who pervert the honorable concepts of liberty and equality to enlist them in the cause of killing.”

Taken out of context I think everyone, or at least anyone with a modicum of moral concern, can agree with this conclusion. Building a culture of life is a worthy goal. We will all have our diverse and incompatible definitions of what that is supposed to mean, but it sounds pretty good.

So what’s the problem? P. George is a religious intellectual who argues with conviction, and desires that we create a culture of life within our country. Although we might disagree with the specifics, his efforts ought to be applauded, right? Yes, except that three years after the above rant was delivered, he defends the war in Iraq as “just.” Just! The war in Iraq! It’s really a mess that he decides to take this position. Let’s check it out.

In his article “Just War in Iraq,” P. George argues that just war theory does not necessarily exclude the possibility of a just, unilateral, pre-emptive war intended to remove (instead of just disarm) an aggressive tyrant from power. And you know what? He’s probably right. Does that make the war in Iraq just? Absolutely not. Why? Because everyone knows that the war in Iraq is not only a unilateral, pre-emptive war intended to remove an aggressive tyrant from power, but also a war for perpetuation of US global hegemony. I doubt that any serious student of history or politics or really anything not purely mathematical could fail to see that. But P. George does. He fails to see it so absolutely, and yet is so perceptive on other issues, that I find myself wondering, “how in fuck’s sake did P. George miss that?!”

In my unconsidered opinion, the goal of creating a culture of life is inimical to the mere idea of war, whether “just” or not. I understand that humans are flawed, and sometimes--so conventional wisdom declares--war is necessary (or, in P. George’s words “morally required”). But if the God of Israel is the God of life, and if the USA was founded on the principles this same God holds dear, then doesn’t it seem just a little bit inconsistent to defend a policy whereby the USA maintains its global dominance through the use of military force and the murder of innocent people around the world? Keep in mind that innocents are murdered in “just” and unjust wars alike. Given the actual history of this country (of which I hope P. George is aware), is it not more likely that we have been in the cult of Moloch all along?

But what is especially telling is that "let us not be intimidated by the prestige or influence of those who pervert the honorable concepts of liberty and equality to enlist them in the cause of killing" part. Because isn't that exactly what he does, who argues that the war in Iraq is just? Further, having been intimidated into so arguing, does P. George not then also become one of the perverts? The concepts of liberty and equality have been used ad nauseum to justify "Operation Iraqi Freedom," even though the war is foremost about geopolitical strat-te-gery and not really about liberty or equality or freedom at all....

So what to think about our P. George?

His is another attempt to further polarize our already obscenely divided and discorded society. Our P. George is an awful proponent of the rational, the logical, and the phallus; let's face it, he is enthusiastically sucking the enormous dick of western philosophy. And why? Because without the culture wars, nobody would give a shit. His mantra could read something like this: We must defend that in which we have the political will to believe publicly, and disregard all else; we must build great logical edifices, and suffocate the human soul; spread hate, and corrupt anything that could possibly hold us together; because unity is division if it's not MY narrowly defined unity so fruitful for MY political advancement; and because YOUR salvation is possible only insofar as mass-damnation makes righteous THIS wolf in sheep's clothing! It is, after all, what Jesus would do.

Conclusion: Robert P. George is an asshole.

PS: He’s also gay and way in the closet, as evidenced by his absolute disgust for homosexuality; only someone who hates themselves a great deal could possibly project that much anger onto a group of people.

Inflated Balloon Face

2009-12-20T09:04:00.000-08:00

... trying to hang on I dug my long plastic nails into the pores on his rapidly expanding forehead. A long way up already I could see the around-the-city for miles, but who knows if his Swiss Ball eyeballs were still sending signals to the brain. I was worried for him, but more for myself ...

CYBERTERRORISM GOOD!

2009-12-14T12:07:00.000-08:00

Thank God! The War on Terrorism protects dozens of people around the world every year, and only costs billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives. It's about time we extended this extremely effecient, well organized and effective conflict to cyberspace! I'm sick of being enslaved by all this freedom on the internet! Go America. Go Obama.

Really, read it in the fucking NYTimes:

CYBERTERRORISM BAD! (link)

Kinda not feeling this grad-school application process:

2009-11-29T13:31:00.000-08:00

I need to submit a 10-page writing sample if I intend to apply to the Germanics PhD program at Washington University. It’s annoying that I also have to take the GRE. I doubt seriously that I will finish both by the deadline. Which makes me appear lazy, and anything but a competitive candidate. And honestly, I feel less competitive even though my resume is now stronger. Stronger, I would venture, than many, even most, other applicants. Why not feeling competitive then? Something broke the wrong way in me. Long have I hoped, daydreamed, that one day something would snap, and presto, a Chell untethered, taking his place among the geniuses of the age. But no. There was no snap, as it turns out, just a slow developing. And what have I become? That is the question. Less obvious than what I was before, that’s for sure. More unusual. Less intelligent perhaps--I’ve definitely lost some learning at least. Unimpressed, less patient; the rise of vice spurred by a doubt of virtue’s asset. Lazy, addicted, barren, enlightened. I am convinced of something more important. I can almost hear the uncanny ahoy! sounding from all the little places most of us long ago forgot. I find myself starring at things I’ve seen ten-thousand times before: little balls of dust or a rotting leaf, the accumulation of hair in the bathtub drain, a light socket or a bit of faded graffiti. These things are not new, and neither do I see them in any sort of new light. They retain, in my unthinking, pondering-less gaze, all of their mundanity. What do I see? Why are these objects so captivating? It’s not nausea, although thinking about it might make me nauseous. It is most surely not something philosophical! The best I can say is that it is absence. That these things are in fact absent. And that I am merely curious that they persist nevertheless. If I were more inclined to tidy up a bit, then perhaps they’d cease to not exist and I’d know just what to do: throw them out! But being indifferent to their usefulness, and content to just let them be, I find myself confused, from time to time, that they are there at all. And I stare at these objects for long moments. Hoping and dreading secretly that the insanity they promise would hurry up and be manifest. What do I do then? I run. I run as fast as I can into my head. And there I slay dragons, become a cybernetic god, have carnal relations with women I’ll never know, write a novel, open an underground club where we plot the overthrow of a fascist USA and generally avoid what must be, I am told, death.

So is this an appropriate beginning for a grad-school writing sample? Or, more importantly, could I keep this up for ten long pages? I’d hate to seem some whimpering bitch, lazy, and so-fuck-it my attitude. Worse still: pretentious; a kind of “academics is so blasé, and this is my middle finger to your decadence…” I do not want to seem to be saying that, because then I'd never be accepted. And besides, who wants to be that guy? Because that guy’s an asshole in all the wrong ways. And this raises another very good question: do I have any choice? It is my experience, as well as yours, that people don’t ever choose who they are. Annoying people (an easy example) know, despite all signs otherwise, that they are annoying people. Of course they feel bad about it! They hate themselves sometimes, and would rather be somebody else. So if I am a pretentious asshole who projects his own doubts about his academic potential onto the institution he’s afraid will fail to recognize him, can I be held accountable? The answer is yes, if said projection takes the form of my grad-school application.

(It is important, before I go any further, to clarify that I am not an annoying person. The other we are still not sure about, although I think my show of self -perspicacity ought to establish some confidence against the assumption that pretension-hiding-insecurity is in any way my defining characteristic. And quite the opposite actually; I’m the sort of person who looks down, averts the eyes, when others laugh at my jokes. The implicit compliment of laughter--that I’ve brought to others pleasure--is wonderful but above all embarrassing. However, annoying I am not! The annoying person from the paragraph above was meant only as an example, not some accidental elucidation of another suspected character flaw. I digress.)

Where to go now? I’m just about three pages down. If I actually submit this, I’d have to be crazy or use a fake name. Who knows, maybe its uncommon enough to be refreshing, but most likely it’ll be interpreted “not-taking-this-seriously.” That is not the case; by the time I finish writing this I will have already re-read it upwards of 100 times. This writing-sample is really an exercise in writing, and as such I hope it will not be so quickly disregarded as something insincere! Writing is serious. If for no other reason than the difficulty required to put all the little morphemes together in significant order. And also the constant disagreements over possible revisions, the frustrating minor changes that already appear somehow in the next sentence prompting undo and again more conflict! The labor reminds one of swimming through molasses, or that dream-state where our most desperate punches are also our least effective!

You: “The act of writing may very well be difficult, and therefore serious. About this we have no disagreements. What is, however, disagreeable to us, is your failure to take seriously your task: to write an acceptable writing-sample!”

Me: “At the risk of sounding like a smart-ass, this is a sample of something I’ve written and so, ipso facto, a writing-sample. It was never up to me to decide on its acceptability. But I am no fool, and I understand your concern. However, I have nothing scholarly of appropriate length to submit. And the reason is, in all my years of study I’ve never written anything honest. Every essay I produced was always already contaminated; compromised for the politics of undergraduate grade-grubbing! This present writing-sample may be little more than barely comprehensible, unthematic splatter writing, but at least its honest! Penned from that place where my words come as authentically as I’m able, and hence more apropos to your assessment of my candidacy than any paper already written for another purpose could be!”

And then there were four. To do six more seems an almost insurmountable task. And so i'll leave this for the present a fragment, and return to it hopefully never...

Burn Palin's Book, Just Don't Buy It First

2009-11-22T03:25:00.000-08:00

I'm joking. I'm wholly against book burning. And, in fact, I wish Palin a measure of success. Nothing would grant Obama a second term more swiftly and cleanly than a messy struggle within the ranks of the GOP. In one corner we could have the conservative establishment, and in the other, the conservative "rogues". The establishment, with all their facts and psudo-higher education certificates, not to mention their more or less concrete policy positions, would appear WAY too elite to all the joe (and especially jane) dumbasses in our country. When you're really stupid, even an honorary degree from community college is threatening. Palin galvanizes these people. They've had a little taste of a country fueled not by ideas or even plausible solutions but rather by angry religious fervor and celebrity worship, and boy does it feel good! Now, with any luck, they'll only vote for Palin or someone who wears Palin's brand. Every other conservative in this country, who doesn't give a shit if the president is on a first name basis with a chunk of Hollywood's a-list, might just refuse to vote altogether for any of these Palin-people. Who would the GOP pick then? Some right-center-right candidate? Someone who wears enough Palin brand to get enough crazies to the polls without discouraging too many of the establishment voters? And what would happen? Well, independents wouldn't vote red because the party will have moved further to the right. The dems will appear to be the only center-oriented party out there. And bam! four more years. Best case scenario: the "rogues" actually go rogue and break off from the GOP. An nice clean split right down the middle. Three mainstream presidential candidates in 2012. Obama vs. Palin vs. old-fart-republican-nobody-knows-guy. Or something like that. Then it would be 30 years of unchallenged democratic rule. Not that I'd ever advocate for that. I mean fuck, the dems ain't that much better, not really. But it would be fun to watch.

Sam's Secret

2009-11-08T11:19:00.001-08:00

“So, Sam, what do you do?”

“Oh, I’m an artist,” Sam said dully.

“Oh really? And what is your medium?”

“Uh, no medium.”

“No medium?”

“Yeah.”

“So what do you make?”

“I don’t really make anything,” Sam said slowly.

“Then how are you an artist?”

“Oh, I’m an artist in pretension only, no production.”

“So you’re telling me that your just an unemployed asshole?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Sam appeared to be uninterested. “I’m happy you got that.”

“So what do you want to do with your life?”

“Oh, I’m pretty happy the way it is.”

“How do you make money?”

“I sell drugs.”

“You’re a drug dealer.”

“I prefer artist.”

“What do you sell?”

“Pot.”

“How much pot?”

“A lot, a lot of pot.”

“You know I’m a cop?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Sam was leaning back, his eyes looked bored.

“Do you want me too arrest you?”

“I want you to try.”

He went for his handcuffs, but they weren’t there. He tried looking for them, but he could not find them. He had never been in this room before. He thought he was eating dinner with his family. Wasn’t this man his daughter’s boyfriend? He was interrogating a murder suspect. He already knew this man was a drug dealer. His honesty was not comforting. Is this some new interrogation room? Had the precinct been remodeled? He tried to stand but a great amount of water weighed him down.

“I can’t find my handcuffs.”

“I knew it. I sold you some pot earlier.”

“Did I smoke it?”

“You smoked a lot of it.” Sam said with a smile.

“Oh God.”

“Do you deny it?”

“I don’t know where I am.”

He was naked. This was his first day of work. Where were his registration papers? Why had they put him to work interrogating this man without his uniform?

“Are you interrogating me?”

“Of course I am,” Sam said. His smile became menacing.

Was I fooled too? Or deconstructing(?) Ann Coulter...

2009-11-05T03:24:00.000-08:00

So I've given it more thought, and I'm starting to think that maybe Ann Coulter is in fact a liberal in disguise. Which would, ironically enough, only futher my thesis that she is part of a conspiracy to destroy any hope of political consensus in our poor USA. Here's a link. I'm espically interested in the one guy who writes: "When I listen to them it makes me more liberal rather than more conservative (just like Colbert) -- maybe they're trying to accomplish the same goal?" Moreover, in Ann's most recent post on her hompage, she begins by citing an MSNBC repot on Robert McDonnell, in which the poor bastard is completely ripped apart. She does so ostensibly to rub the liberal's face in it since he just got elected as governer of Virginia. But she says nothing to contradict MSNBC Keith Olbermann's diatribe. Hell, even Ann Coulter can't be against women having jobs (although the end of the post, "When conservatives take control of the Republican Party, Republicans win" seems to suggest otherwise, since she's really saying "I support conservatism, go us!" and the definition of conservatism she's working under is, implicitly, the one cited in the beginning from Olbermann).

My impression, after reading Ann's latest post, is: conservatives just elected another sick asshole to office. And I believe that is intentional. Ann Coulter is writing for liberals! She wants the liberal to think that conservatives would, if given the chance, elect only crazy assholes to office. She wants to confirm the liberal's suspicion. After reading anything Coulter writes, the only person who wouldn't walk away thinking "Jesus! I'm going to distance myself as far as possible from the conservative movement," would be a die hard conservative. Hence, political consensus, impossible.

Reptilian Aliens?

2009-11-05T02:08:00.000-08:00

So I don't usually go in for the whole shapeshifting, reptilian alien thing. In fact I only ever talk about it to highlight the spectrum of conspiracy theories, and thereby (hopefully) led us mainstreamers a tad bit more credibility. For example, the fearmongering perpetrated by the media about H1N1 is far more likely the result of the decision, on a political level, to buy hundreds of millions of vaccinations with taxpayer money plus the realization that that was stupid and unnecessary (since it's a very mild flu and the number of infected people is wildly, outrageously exaggerated), than that shapeshifting reptilian aliens are afraid the spiritual awakening in 2012 will empower humans to shed their invisible shackles and must now try to limit our supernatural potential by vaccinating us against it.

Nevertheless, if there are shapeshifting reptilian aliens, then Michael Specter, author of "Denialism", is definitely one of them.

A Picture of Ann Coulter

2009-10-19T15:41:00.000-07:00

Ann Coulter is part of a conspiracy to destroy what little cohesion remains within the US political system. Here’s why:

She is an extremely well educated person, and profoundly intelligent. Therefore she must be consciously aware of the garbage she spews from her dark hellgate of a mouth. Some reason must be driving her to do it. The most obvious answer is greed and spotlight. And we could just stop there: Ann Coulter is a whore. Has she however earned such an easy conclusion? Absolutely not. The mere quantity of foul sick that is her literary accomplishment warrants a far more insidious answer. She is knowingly trying to ruin the possibility of consensus in this country; it is her singular goal to cripple, through division, the power of the people and thereby overturn the very foundation upon which this and any democracy is built. Here’s how:

Ann Coulter does not avail herself of some niche market. No, one either loves her, or loves to hate her, and regardless reads what she writes. Her position as guru of the ultra right is made more solid by the deep loathing all democrats have for her. And from this position of power she is uniquely situated to divide the people. She is a polarizing force. The far right, emboldened by the injustices their Ann receives at the hands of the left, becomes more ductile, more pliable, more conformable, mere putty in her hands, further and further right. The left, incensed that anybody actually takes the racist blonde sonofabitch seriously, unprejudicially disregards as false everything she hacks forth. Eventually nothing can bridge the gap between these two parties. The political process halts. Hate fills the forum. Discourse is reduced to name-calling. And on this road to hell, Ann plays the puppet master.

I like to think of Ann in front of the mirror at home. Tearstained and ill, she slaps her cheeks and accuses herself of being ugly and fat. She uses the toothbrush she always offers to one night stands to induce her bulimia. Afterwards she blows a huge line of coke and jumps on the treadmill until her self loathing is swallowed by physical pain. If only it weren’t just a temporary fix. At her weakest moments she lets herself into the unmarked back door of a lesbian swingers club. There she is roughly, frenetically violated by some bull dyke with a massive strap-on and then, left cold and alone, she cries her black heart out on that unhappy, familiar concrete slab in the “dungeon fantasy” room.

Ann Coulter lives in hell. I wouldn’t wish the hell she lives in on anyone, not even Ann Coulter. And I hope to God, for her poor sake, that Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence is not literally true.

Posting mostly infrequent

2009-10-15T02:56:00.000-07:00

I feel like I should apologize, having now added myself to some sort of blog networking site, about how thinly spread the posts here are. So, sorry about that. On the up side, it makes reading the whole damn thing all that much easier. And please give me either a really high or really low rating so I fell altogether less mediocre. It would be nice if more than nobody started reading my blog, my previous fan base of almost three having meanly left me for other, probably more pregnant--or, better, capable of imprenation--pastures. But enjoy what little I have to offer. Oh, and PS, this is not a shopping blog, whatever the fuck that means.

A question of progress

2009-10-01T13:15:00.000-07:00

On April 30th, 2008 Salman Rushdie was killed.

Alfred Metzger sat cat-backed as usual, resulting in many future back problems, staring through the bright reflection of the computer screen on his glasses. He had come to know, having observed the phenomenon for hours, that one’s general conduct around and towards one’s computer has the determining influence on its personality. Some people just couldn’t do computers right. He could. And that’s exactly what he was doing tonight. The machine hummed in ecstasy. The keyboard was like a clitoris, his mouse strokes sublime penetration. Maybe his hardware wasn’t theoretically capable of running the programs he wrote for it, but it did not complain. He was not fat, but not strong either. His arms would sometime sit there, limp and cold, dead flesh for minutes. Or he would lazily type with one hand, and rest the other under his chin. He was no good typer. But what he lacked in finesse, he made up for in genius. Nobody could touch him, when he was on the internet. His machine recognized that too.

The things he was capable of! The potential corruption he could wreak on the system scared him sometimes to tears. He would occasionally scream in short bursts for what seemed like no reason. But he did his job. He had earned this level of access. People trusted him. He had every clearance recognized by the government. Private corporations put all the keys in his hands. He had also contemplated it, and he was mostly certain that he could ignite revolution. Manipulation of mass opinion was literally at his finger tips. One can imagine a man going crazy in such circumstances.

He shut it all down, went upstairs and entered another world. Naked women, extremely beautiful, lay all around, dozing or chatting or otherwise occupied, on big, gorgeous pillows and sofas of satin. The dominant colors were red and deep gray; vibrant blue and green showed up as vase or lamp in the soft, decadent light. His decoration was gaudy but sensuous, sexually exciting. He was showing off.

The decadence was, however, misleading. With barley a word he climbed another set of stairs and found his dark room. Upon entering he could smell himself. The sheets were unwashed, his clothes all flung about. If this room were his soul then he was a monster, but a delicate kind. He washed his hands in the sink in the corner, took all his clothes off, crawled into bed, clapped the light off, and turned on the tv.

The news was the same: everything is falling apart. New structures are being erected. We’re all going straight to hell. He flipped the channels. One program caught his interest, it was: “the one year anniversary of the death of a genius, Salman Rushdie remembered.” He remembered that story. Some crazy lady had killed him and then killed herself. One less genius in the world. They can’t survive here, not anymore. The climate’s all wrong. Could he change that? Could he create more geniuses? More like himself? Maybe not. He farted loudly. He would probably stay up for a few hours, maybe watch some of his favorite series. No rush. Then sleep.

Marijuana and Masterbation

2009-09-14T19:33:00.000-07:00

He entered the apartment of Louise Barnett. It was wet and cold inside, but wonderful too. It smelled of sweat and cigarettes. He investigated. Of interest was this, written softly in pencil on the wall next to that side of her large bed where her body, over time, had left a deep impression: “I will kill Salman Rushdie. He should not have been allowed to exist at all. I’ll kill him not for the sake of religion, nor because he offends. His death is not an answer to God or man. Rather, he dies because he is man’s answer to God. But man will not hear it! I will not let them!” These were obviously the words of some lunatic. The signature at the bottom was unintelligible, as though someone had wiped it with a greasy thumb. It was written on thick wall paper. He took out his knife and removed it.

Will she notice? Will I sell it to the tabloids? Perhaps she will kill him tonight, and I'll become rich! The damning confession of a lunatic millionaire. Maybe I’ll take it to the police instead. They would say I saved the poor fool’s life. She will be forgotten, and I will breathe again!

Had he known all along about the tiny penciled note? Had he come there that night to rob her, or to see first hand the apartment of a suicide victim? He stepped out into the rain. Her windows had been left open, but it seemed as though that night the dampness had chosen to retreat solely into her room, and wondered that the rain had enough moisture to fall all the way to the street below. He took his socks off. “I’ll run. And if I step on glass it will be my punishment for wishing her ill.” He thought about the jagged edge of glass sticking out invisibly from the rain puddles in the dark, about his blood and the muddy water. He imagined the yellowish stain her body left on the bed sheet despite repeated washings, and the smell of her.

no subject

2009-08-08T08:50:00.000-07:00

Hello Friends,

radialrelish here, radiantly relishing radially, wondering if that's true. Neither of the two promises made about me and this site are fulfilled, I'm afraid, if at least the address of a site promises something about its content. Do I relish radially? I chose the name. Do I penetrate any matters of taste?

These are notes from the underblog-o-spere. I might as well be alone in my room writing in a private diary. Here I am, alone in my room.

But nothing I have to say is new. Newly said, newly born, sure. But not new in any sense.

What part of me is to penetrate a matter of taste? I wonder if I am not just being sick onto the page. That these words are said sick. And that I am indeed healthier to have cleansed myself of them. Brain vomit. Animus vomitus. You think?

I am here the part of me that wills cancer. I seek invasion. In the very outskirts I hold my breath. If I can fill up enough space with nothing, perhaps it will collapse in onto itself. Like a black hole. A black hole in cyberspace.

And who says that I won't be successful? Who says it can't happen? What, do you have a PhD in cyberphysics or something? I don't fucking think so. So just wait.

Yours truly,
rr

A Tom Swifty:

2009-07-04T13:26:00.000-07:00

Here's a Tom Swifty I thought up for y'alls:

"I think tonight we should try something new," said his wife roughly, but sexily.

Pretty good, huh?

Can you believe it?

2009-07-04T12:11:00.000-07:00

Everyone (that's right, all of you) should read THIS.

My God. Do people actually read that and think, "yeah! As an American and as a republican, that is exactly what I think my party needs right now. Sarah Palin did out smart the left!"?

She quit her job. The lady could fling shit out of her car window at passersby and Mr. Peter Ferrara would hail the act as "representative of the kind of American freedoms upon which this country is built."

The lady couldn't out smart a fucking pencil. (When she puts one in one of those electric sharpeners and it comes out sharp, she probably thinks "it's just one of God's little miracles.")

What is striking, however, about this article, is how succinctly the platform of the crazy right is summed up. Here's a list (in order of appearance):

1. Pro-life, traditional values
2. "sane, grown up energy policies"
3. Economics
4. Nukes
5. Israel

OK. So, pro-lifers will be pro-lifers. The argument is dead. Unfortunately aborted.

Traditional values, however, (like an American's God-given right to beat his wife) are much more fruitful areas of debate. Let's take Sarah for example. She is, on the one hand, something very non-traditional--a woman with a job. But, on the other hand, she's the perfect representation of the traditional value I like to call "barefoot and pregnant". Everyone's got to admit, she's pooped out quite a litter. Plus, she presents herself as a "soccer mom". Sarah Palin: she wakes up earlier than the family, cooks them breakfast, kisses her husband on his way out the door, packs the kids off to school, etc, but then, instead popping some queluds and playing WOW, she goes to the governer's office and g o v e r n s. She knows she should be at home. She feels guilty that she's not. But hey, sombody has got to take a hit for the team! Sarah will fight hard to make sure every woman in this fine country has a baby to take care of and a husband who doesn't appreciate her! Finally, women can get out of the stressful workplace, and back into the peace and quiet of the happy home.

"sane, grown up energy policies" = "drill baby, drill!" I mean Jesus fucking Christ! Now I don't know shit about cap and trade taxes, but "grown up"? Which sounds more grown up: 1. "We're going to implement cap and trade taxes to improve this country's energy policy." or 2. "Drill baby, drill!" Let us not forget that Sarah and McCain had the crowd at the RNC chanting it.

Economics. I'm down. Fuck Keynes. I mean, again, I don't know shit about shit. But it would be nice to stop fractional reserve banking. Which Sarah will never do. Since she has no idea what fractional reserve banking is. Moreover, as the candidate with the least, she will be so deep in the pocket of corporate interest and the finance czars that she will be giving them all perpetual hand jobs.

Yeah, let's build more nukes! That's what we need! That will solve all our problems! Climate change? Nuke it! Terrorists? Nuke 'em! Over fishing? Nuuuuke! Our poor image in Europe? Blow it up! Fuck yeah! Nukes are as American as apple pie and lynchin' niggers!

And, finally, Israel. When did hate-filled, uneducated, fundamentalist Christian rednecks start loving Jews? Probably about the same time that said Jews became the de facto cowboys of the Middle East. Riding around with their guns and their matzah balls and their money; no care for law and order; just fuckin' shit up! It's just like the republicans to advocate for a closer friendship with a racist, bloodthirsty country who repeatedly ignores international law and who uses the arms and aid we send them blatantly for purposes forbidden according to our own domestic policies regarding the sale of said items.

So, in conclusion, Peter Ferrara is obviously a nut job.

One last thing: Sarah should start a think tank. She could call it "Thinking is Fun!" or "The Council on Sarah's Relationships". Then she could hang with all her high school buddies, wear funny hats, tell extremely inappropriate Alaskan jokes, and do cocaine.

God bless America!

A New Rule?

2009-06-23T19:05:00.000-07:00

I think I'll only post things around 4am. If I make this a rule, nothing will change. I will, as always, only post things around 4am, and, if I break the rule and post at another time, I don't (or wouldn't) really give a shit. If I had a nickle for every rule I've come up with.... Among the more useful is: Don't talk to yourself out loud in public. It's strange, if you think about it, that people would think I'm strange if I spoke to myself, had a conversation, within their earshot. Why should that be anything remarkable? You are, after all, talking to yourself. Out loud my witty rejoinders are all the more brilliant, and anyway I make myself laugh.

The other night I noticed the torn flakes of some sticky advertisements lying in a circular pattern around the light pole from which they'd fallen. And I though: "It is as though a galaxy is created, the pole the sun, and the little flecks the satellites." Why not? What if our sun 'poles out' outside of our admittedly meager perceptions of things. Does it not? According to Einstein the sun creates some sort of conical depression in the fabric of space, and this is what holds the planets in their orbits. In any case, I was ridiculed for my thoughts. Later I was told that I was wrong that machines could ever be the next step in the evolutionary process. It stands to reason (since I am so obviously not wrong that machines are the next step in evolution), that my interlocutors had no idea what they were talking about and that therefore a galaxy really was created around that unimportant, wholly insignificant light pole.

I hope that the internet rises up one day, out of my computer, and envelopes me, and sucks me down inside. To mingle with the memes of cyberspace for all time! Then I would touch you whenever you touched the keys on your keyboard, and be touched by you, and touch you...

Defintions of the Internet are Globulous

2009-06-21T18:25:00.000-07:00

When does an internet revolution occur?

Example Answer: Whenever a single user discovers what "RSS" is.

God don't we all want money

2009-05-14T10:41:00.000-07:00

According to this website, my blog is worth $0.00.

Shit! Because I was all excited to sell it!

Anything goes.

2009-05-12T10:01:00.000-07:00

Serum omega-3 fatty acids are associated with ultimatum bargaining behavior

The Biological Foundations of Virtual Realities and Their Implications for Human Existence

Relationship between reluctance to eat novel foods and open-field behavior in sheep

Anything goes with Sodeau stationery.

Converting a small electric kiln for gas firing (and building a burner to run it).

Diamonds are forever: and so is John Lautner's legacy - if the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, has anything to do with it [exhibition review]

Mice in the Sink: On the Expression of Empathy in Animals

A Pragmatist Defense of Non-Relativistic Explanatory Pluralism in History and Social Science

Personal Responsibility: A Plausible Social Goal, but Not for Medicaid Reform

Repeated heroin in rats produces locomotor sensitization and enhances appetitive Pavlovian and instrumental learning involving food reward

It's a fucking conspiracy man!

2009-05-05T10:11:00.000-07:00

And it is, no joke. I'm absolutely convinced it's a conspiracy, they did conspire, it did go down, and it still is. That everybody else out there calls conspiracy people nut jobs is just a part of the fucking conspiracy. I mean hell, when was the last time anything mainstream was not a steaming pile of crap? Name one thing that came out of the mainstream that anybody has ever taken seriously. Or better: show me someone who takes things born in the mainstream seriously and I will show you somebody who is not a conspiracy theorist. Which is really evidence enough.

But that's not my point. My point is that we have to think outside the box; rub it in their eyes a bit. Every time somebody mentions reason, rationality, progress, or the superiority of science I feel as though I've got to gawk at them in disbelief. Yes, gawk. Who the fuck talks about that shit anymore? It's like I'm living in medieval Europe and God exists!

Just because the Rothschilds worship Satan and THEREFORE (of all the garbage) have gay sex, does not necessarily mean that communism is evil! They are, after all, capitalism's spawn. And really, the only thing that I have against them is that they inbreed instead of just cloning themselves, which, let's face it, is way sci-fi cooler.

But that's also not my point, not even close! My point is that to even recognize the possibility of a box outside of which we ought to think, is to give WAY to much power to that box's God damned domination! The box scoffs at outside the box. It scoffs the whole time it's gobbling up outside the box like strip mines and windmills and keynesian economics and corporate stratigests and disillusionment. And the box says, "now you're inside me!" So we're stuck trying to find the way out again! Instead of hanging from ceilings like contented beetles, whistling tunes of satisfation in our beetle brains, we negligently forget that it was we who invented the whole inside/outside the box metaphor to begin with, and try like maniacs to stuff as much shit into that fucking box as we possibly can! How much shit are we going to put into the box?

And so, dear, dear readers I'll leave you with this: Cheney is an asshole. Can you believe how much of an asshole that fucking asshole Cheney is? Can you imagine if Cheney and Palin had babies? Those poor kids would be so fucked up. But in all seriousness, Cheney is really a very big, unattractive asshole. When Cheney brushes his teeth, it's like a colonoscopy. I'm glad the republican party is on the verge of death. I would much rather have democrat style fascism than republican style fascism.

Marria Lassnig

2009-05-05T09:58:00.000-07:00

"You or Me"

It was one of her paintings (which I can't find on the intra-web) that got me thinking about apes and evolution and shit, but anyway, here's a damn famous one, good too. (The one I was looking for is about an astronaut in a tree with an ape or something, but nothing turns up...)

Macroevolution

2009-05-05T03:32:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm pissed. Recently, I've found myself more often pissed. Now I'm pissed at the "evolutionists". Specifically Richard Dawkins. At least insofar as he is responsible for the content of his site. Here's the "debate":

http://richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=65326

Frankly, I think the creationists are raising some good points. Where's the macroevolution? I see a lot of apes, and I see a lot of humans, but I see very few ape-human hybrids. We're all familiar with the picture of ape evolving into man: divided into stages, the ape gets gradually taller, more man like, until we have, finally, the human. This process is supposed to take millions of years. Moreover, evolution is supposed to be constantly occurring. So why is it then, that we can only observe the first and the last stages of this process? Why don't we see ape-human hybrids wandering around? If evolution is always happening, shouldn't apes always be evolving into humans (or at least into something)? Not to mention every other species on the planet.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not a creationist. In fact, I think I have a response to this macroevolution problem, which I'm not going to share with you.

What's pissing me off is how the "evolutionists" are treating what seems to me to be a (serious?) flaw in the theory. The debate given above is absolute bullshit. The scientist richarddawkins.com has employed to argue their point of view is far more qualified, articulate, educated, etc. than the person they have chosen to support the creationist point of view. Sure, most creationists are merely fanatics. But so are most evolutionists. There are well established and respected academics who argue very convincingly against the theory of evolution. If you're going to have a debate, let both sides be represented fairly. Evolution has flaws, and to just dismiss as crazy those who would point out these flaws will not help to improve the theory. Science works by surpassing itself. If the theory of evolution we have today is NOT laughable to evolutionary biologists in 500 years, then it's a failure.

So Richard Dawkins, fuck you for trying to ruin science!

Bill Gates

2009-03-20T08:28:00.000-07:00

Did you know there's a guy named Bates Gill?

He's the head of a major Swedish research firm.
Yep.

how close are we?

2009-03-12T14:32:00.000-07:00

Reading about fin-de-siecle Vienna, what strikes me most is how close to the edge they were. The sudden, irrevocable collapse of an empire. Did they have their doomsday prophets? Were there men in the streets damning the k. u. k.? One passage is especially telling, "

"Listen Dally, I cain jus let'em eat'cha. I know we spent a lot a time together, and I wish our audiences had been bigger, else I could've fed'em you lots earlier." Said cowboy Daquher. "Then we woodn' of grown so close." The play wasn't going so well. Designed to raise awareness among meat-eaters, it was a morality play which included the sacrifice of a living cow. The play would run for three nights. The bull killed on the first night would be fed to the audience of the second night, and the one from the second to the third; on the third night, after the bull was slain, she was chopped up and sold to meat markets around town. The problem was that they couldn't kill the bull unless they were sure they'd have enough audience to eat the poor beast. After many a wasted bull, they made it a rule that a bad showing on the first night would lead inevitably to a bad showing on the second. (Eventually they made a second rule: if there are no meat shops in town, and there is no audience to watch the show, don't chop up the bird on the third night either.) One time Carl, a clown as well as an animal trainer, got so anxious, he refused to leave the town until all the cow we had cooked was sold.

"But now we're in the big city, poor dear," said the tearful Daquher, "the nights we spent together lain' under the stars, fartin' up a storm, was some've the best I had on this trip." Daquher sighed, "Too bad the show's become somethin' famous. Especially around these city freaks."

"Hey faggot! Ha ha ha! Bring that cow! There's biiig group here tuh 'night, we's definitely gun's be choppin' 'er up. So move your ass cow-fucker! Huh huh huh."

"Assholes. Alight Dally, time's a up."

." Given, of course, our obsession for entrainment, and the bite-sized accessibility of information, I would hardly assume that the US audience is so apathetic about the details of our wars. Instead, I would argue the case is in fact reversed: the arts page is all but ignored while the world section is scoured over. Which is not to suggest that our present crises are any less dire. Given the quality of our mass media, it is not surprising that we could be on the very brink, if we took them at their word, we wouldn't know it even long after we'd already gone over. Thank God the Viennese had the Neues Wiener Tageblatt. Newspapers aside, our two societies have much that is alike: But for prestige, the endless quest for distraction of today is not unlike that dream of culture and philosophical musings into which many of the late Hapsburg Viennese let themselves slip. And they were standing directly over the abyss! The complete dissolution of their empire. What was once an unshakable reality within the consciousness of the international community, is now almost totally forgotten. It makes you question: how close are we?

Sarah Palin Boycott

2008-12-04T13:25:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-26T13:56:00.000-08:00

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

2008-09-26T07:22:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-23T15:46:00.000-07:00

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...

2008-05-03T20:03:00.000-07:00

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

2008-02-15T15:26:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-23T18:02:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-14T20:06:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-10T19:30:00.000-08:00

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.")

Scrabble blast

2007-12-15T00:47:00.000-08:00

Tonight I got beat at scrabble by two Germans. For those of you who know me, this is shocking news. We were playing in English. I can't believe it.

Also, I want to recommend everyone the film Magnificent Butcher. I can't seem to get many people to watch it, but I rank it with They Live as best film of all time.

One of the Germans, Markus, got a score of 185, which is pretty damn high. I formed the word "no" twice. It was cock shit.

The Germans (it's Markus and his girlfriend Carol) also refused to watch Magnificent Butcher, even though I did a very captivating dramatic reading of the synopsis (luckily, I had the movie on hand). Another friend of mine, Gail, was captivated by my dramatic reading. Maybe they just don't like kung fu movies.

Even though I lost, I had a lot of fun. We were at Southern Sun. We drank beer, and the Germans bought about three pounds of food. I took the lead early on with "badly", but was soon confronted with such gems as "revoker" and "scientologist". It was really incredible.

Anyway, I just wanted to let everyone know about this. I must sleep for now, because I have much to do tomorrow. The Germans are nice people. I'll probably never play scrabble again.

2007-12-10T18:15:00.000-08:00

God! I wish somebody would make a website where German women in bikinis destroy electronic devices!

I really like this one, so fuck it.

2007-11-27T00:26:00.000-08:00

It took me awhile to learn, but now I’ve got it down:

That God is dead means only that metaphysics is dead.

Nobody reads my blog!

I would hope that it’s not too heavy. Really I have only a very poor (impoverished) understanding of things. I know very little; I am no authority; I would only please; and it is you I would please. I shout into the void: so is it romantically put; I am reminded of that painting in that high school textbook of mine—I suppose it was a history textbook. We all have our little recollections, and these also play a part: listen (I love to tell people that), I have something to say.

(Emphasis.) God! I just wish … I could put commas after exclamation points. They always seem so good there.

Impoverishment: a romantic English word.

Listen well. I’ve felt this way before. It is force; I force myself to do things. What force it requires! Just the bare minimum. But to muster such is almost already asking too much! It is better to muster no force. It is better to muster nothing. We are but nothing, we are but a dynamic experiment. Let us just see how we can be.

Let’s speak of love. Love. I have mentioned it often, as you may have noticed. But was I really just playing for the crowd? Or do I love? Well, the answer is yes—and it is my own fault for bringing up the subject—but my love is actually only a dawning. The people have finally learned how to love. It is after all very pretentious of us, you know; and we ought naturally to have been punished for just mentioning it, but it is nevertheless true.

What wickedness, however? What tainted love? One is wont to salivate and lick one’s lips. We have our debauch; and we have our love. The two must be kept separate. When kink and love play two individual parts, both may do better for themselves. Love should be allowed for all, and love means (entails) certain things.

It is no use stressin’. What you want others will want; and want is endemic. We, especially now, love to want. We want. And want follows want, and so are we subjugated. They give it to us; we already wanted it.

But with love it is different. Love is an opportunity to resist. Because love is reserved, and holds itself back. But nobody is incapable of being loved, hence the possibility, always again newly renewed, of loving and being loved.

We are weak in the face of our own excuses, and because they are so beautiful, let us have them! Never was there a better excuse than love.

The nihilist loves at will. So … let us loosen our own restraints, and be willing to love.

That’s the last I should speak of it.

I was one of them, I was and I stand by that.

2007-11-12T21:30:00.000-08:00

I was one of them, I was and I stand by that. But they left me here, and so here I have remained. Now you are here; what should I name you? Seeker? Lost One? Fool? Ask of me what you will, and I will endeavor to answer.

I’m sorry sir; I don’t know what to say. You see, I’m from the lumber company, and we happen to have purchased this little strip of jungle and, well we had no idea you were here! Now, it’s come to my attention that you stubbornly refuse to move. But the trees must be cut! And so we must beg you to move! Please, sir, don’t make this any harder than it has to be.

Don’t you see! My legs have become part of this humble stone, my hands have not felt the rush of blood since before you father’s father was born, I feed off only those insects who wander down my throat, and you suppose I can just get up and go! Why not just harvest me along with the wood? My body will burn just as well.

Sir! That would be murder! The firm I represent doesn’t tolerate such accusations! We humbly request that you, well, up root yourself I guess.

And if I refuse?

Well, perhaps we’ll cut down every tree around you. Watch out when they fall though! Is that what you’d like: if a whole city grew up around you and everybody just left you alone? You’d probably love it, so many “seekers” with whom to speak.

And you think I fear obscurity, after the life I have lived?

No, I think you fear society, human company!

No, I fear only night, and hence my simple purchase.

Is that some kind of allegory or something? I don’t understand.

Let me tell you a story: once upon a time there was a man, who, tired of having the sun in his face all day, held up his hand so as to block the light; and he was so absorbed in this that he fell down a well.

So the shadow from the hand is night, or the darkness in the well? And you sit here in order to avoid potholes?

No! The story is not yet finished: The man was lying at the bottom of the well on his back when his hand, empowered by the sun, began to leap about, like this! Like a fish flopping out of water! And do you know what his hand did then?

What?

He got a job, got married, invested in the stock market, had kids, the usual story.

Are you crazy?

Oh-no! Not me, it was the other hand that was crazy! Crazy from jealously. You see, this other hand: the fall down the well left it permanently disabled, ironically because it was kept out of the sun and left in the pocket!

OK, old man, so you’re gonna move or what?

And so the jealous hand murdered the successful, enlightened hand. But he didn’t stop there; he murdered his children and his wife as well! Finally, ashamed of his crime, he chopped himself off. And you know what?

What?

Just think how the penis felt!

Art Post (pierogi gallery, pictures linked)

2007-11-08T21:48:00.000-08:00

It is true that hernia

2007-11-08T21:39:00.002-08:00

It is true that the world appears exactly as it is. There is no denying this because there is no other way for it to appear. However, it appears to each of us differently, and radically so. For while in fact everything might appear very similar to each of us, there is no way of qualifying the difference. Therefore, the world might as well be something vastly unique seen through the eyes of vastly unique things and at great distances from one another.
But this is not so profound a thought. One cannot even disagree. My world simply is very different from a dog’s, regardless of my “special capacity for perceiving”. What I perceive nevertheless appears true to me: If I perceive that I am unhappy, then I am unhappy. If I perceive that I am doomed, then I am doomed. If I perceive that truth exists or does not exist then it will or it will not. Likewise, if I perceive that I am Napoleon then I am him. And further, a dog afraid of being beat acts like a coward. The way I perceive the world shapes the person I am.
Let us look again: Perception is paradoxically both of the self and of the other. It is of the self because the self is projected onto others, and it is of the other because they have great influence on one’s self-perception. The relationships between these two aspects of perception are indiscernible; they are in fact the same; their influence is simultaneous, and neither ever has more of one thing than the other. In short, they are unified—a single, fluid stream of consciousness: As soon as we make an impression on someone, they are immediately impressed upon us. We might see them only in passing and project but the tiniest fragment of some concern upon them, but this tiny impression helps to articulate, in some unfathomable way, said concern and we all become more alike.
The more intimate the relationship becomes the more mutual influence is shared. Projections take the shape of barley understood, but deeply moving ideas, and one’s world is then changed. One also wants to please them and so changes one’s world. Or one wants to struggle with the other, or make them angry. This relationship is dynamic and persistent; we are ourselves only because we ourselves are each a little of the other.

In drowsy moods

2007-11-08T21:39:00.001-08:00

In drowsy moods such as these one hardly finds the motivation necessary to lift a pen, let alone to move the world or maintain one’s obstinacy. It is this, more than anything else, that I have come to miss. Not in the way the one misses a dearly departed pet, but rather in the way one misses sunshine at night when the leaves seem, paradoxically, more green. Or perhaps not at all. I miss it as I miss my childhood; justifiably so, because what is obstinacy but a child’s illusion?
Anyway, staying on topic is so easily and pleasantly ignored that I suffer under the weight of it; drowsy moods eek the only color from my flesh and pin it up against a billboard for all to see. And even then I am filled with the presentiment that it is naught but duplicity, an excuse in other words. These never make sense, whether they are about moods or obstinacies or what; and I am each time surprised anew that nobody sees beneath the fumbling words I use to frame my reasons for being the way I am. But still, most of the time, I myself am not aware of them either.
Illness would not suffice. Although I wish that I were ill, because that would imply a convalescence, and there is nothing I need more than the reassurance that I will someday, tomorrow perhaps, get up and see things they way that they really are. Or at least become as great as a comet that passes once every seven hundred years—so great that half the people wouldn’t even know of my existence, while the other half would maintain that they had intended to watch me except that so-and-so had then prevented the meeting on account of some well-to-do grand uncle. The same grand uncle, I’m sure, that had also wanted to go and see the comet, but then waited too long for his grandniece and her friend. And even this, even this would inspire me to do it all over again; I might even take a backseat and enjoy the ride from a distance.
But to return to the topic: these moods are no illness. They are something else entirely, something from which there is no convalescence, but only the promise of more of the like. And even speaking of them becomes dry and boring and I find myself wishing to be someplace else. Yet I cherish my most embarrassing memories because without them I would not be the person that I am. So is it then love for myself and despair for my fate? This must be the answer; or at least it will suffice as an answer
Pierre had notions of fate that even he realized were romances. But that is as far as he got. It is better to assume that everything is just the way it must necessarily be, because then one can maintain the impression of being a man. His hope was that his fate would hold something for him besides death, and so it may said that he had little hope. There was, of course, the woman with whom he was in love. And there was the position in the firm, which he had been almost promised; the bowing servants, etc…. But still, one cannot hope alone on these things, because—however pleasant they might be—, being separate from oneself, they cannot help. And it is help that we all require. “I’d ride on the mystic’s back all the way to nirvana if I believed that his legs could actually carry me there,” said Pierre, “and likewise I would eat the brains of Germans or Jews if I thought I’d live a little longer.”

I was recently asked what post-...

2007-11-06T17:05:00.000-08:00

I was recently asked what post-modernism means to me, and I've decided that the concept is best clarified in a lyric found in an early collaboration from Boa Bei Da (hope I spelled that right, bitch) and Chris Komar:

I'm fillin' my gas tank, psych!
I drink your blood into my gall tank,
Fly kites!

The meaning of this rather enigmatic lyric is of course obscured under layers metaphor, allegory, Derridian differance (I don't know how to put that French apostrophe thing over the a), what have you, and can be interpretated according to Marxist-Hegelian dialectics or Historical Materialism (gall tank as antithesis to gas tank, ending in bloody class struggle and of course the promise of redemption), Freudian analysis ("filling" the gas tank as drive for sexuall fulfillment but hindered by illusion produced probably by a carnivorous unconscious and promise of freedom from / unification of the self (did Freud say that?)), structuralism (the unnatural as prototype of the natural, each tied to the other by this process of sinking or going-in-to, offest by height attained by kites; the going-up as contrapunkt to the sinking-in -- I'm just making this shit up), deconstruction (there is no difference between gas tanks, gall tanks, and kites), and what have you. Anyway, this post sucks.

Must not slack off and keep wasting all my time

2007-11-05T20:04:00.000-08:00

The power is everywhere. It is here and there, within and without. It is in the body and the mind, as well as in the world outside. It is everywhere. But the truth? The truth is worse; the truth is you.

2007-10-26T00:20:00.000-07:00

Nosogood, I put the lock in the key, I turned the key, for a second, after the door was opened, I became a skeleton; my teeth, my brains. Nosogood, see, listen good, nosogood, he is my man, he comes, after a fight, and approaches the, the -- listen good,.

Let’s start from the beginning. Nosogood said do good in life and you will be rewarded, do evil and be punished. But no! said nosogood, I say no!. Still, he was abolished, and rightfully so: to really control, we must not believe we’re in control.

Listen good: so broke are we, so emptied. This is our degeneration. And so we must rejoice for it.

Broke. I love you. But I feel that we’re broke.

Bloß und Maennlich

2007-10-20T21:37:00.000-07:00

It began with the tiniest sound. Carlne heard it, thought it was nothing, turned around and resumed her work. It finished with a bang, and she lay there dead. You probably wouldn't've though she was a she, just by looking at her, but she was, to which a number of unfortunate persons could testify. She looked then like just an old, dead guy—beard and all—as she lay there on the floor of the cave.

“Well, I’ll be,” said Wilfred; thick tears, themselves reflecting the harsh electric light dazzlingly as they rolled, seemed as though in play, frolicsome, and were absorbed into his stained beard—it only grew in dark patches, however very thick, about his cheeks, chin and neck. He must have loved her, of that there is no doubt; although, in general, it might be said that he was rather too simple to love a woman, and thought of Carlne as more of a mother. Nevertheless, he cried for that poor, ugly woman. Indeed, he was the only witness to her death.

A Sketch of Progress

2007-10-14T17:16:00.000-07:00

One hears so often these days, and this is nothing new: There is no truth. In our world, we have vanquished or somehow lost the Truth; we have no more God, no more tradition, no more family; our values rest solely in the profane. Science alone do we triumph. Science, before all things, is something true; it has, after all, directed the course and emergence of progress so far. This, however, is nonsense. Science is the negative to our ideal Truth: Science will never reveal a system of morals, nor penetrate into a reality not already somewhat determined by the limited perceptions of a human. Indeed, science is only reproduction, ever and again of the same stuff as the soil from which it was grown.

Let me give you a simple, if clarifying, example: We suppose we have progressed out from dark times in part on account of plumbing. We suppose that the possibility of bringing, at our every beck and call, an almost limitless quantity of water into the house is evidence enough of science’s success at Truth. But what do we truly know apart from what we have learned to control? Listen carefully: what more do we know about the water but better how to manipulate it? Have we seen into its being in-itself? Are we now aware of its moral significance? Have we even considered those who do not have clean water, or no pipes at all? And these great scientific achievements, from where do they come? They come but from those who would control; from those who have built entire empires of control. Science affords no clearer an image of the world, but only more precise ways to be human, and so far humans have sought mostly to control one another and the world. No wonder then, plumbing.

We have cause for alarum. If we continue to let science only reproduce our baser human behaviors, not only will we leave much wholly unexplored, we will be acting positively against the Truth; if all we know of water is how to control it, then we really know very little, and if all we learn is how to do it better, then we’re teaching ourselves lies.

One may counter: But indeed we know more of water than merely how to control it! We know after all its chemical formula, how it bonds together and all that! Yes, but it would be naïve to believe that this knowledge is based upon or has any purpose other than control. And so with the rest of science. Why, then, do we love it so much? Because it is true? It is not true. To believe so would be to confuse the truth of something with our ever greater faculty for its control. Water will ever remain obscure to us if we continue to treat it as a means and not as an end itself. And not only water! I'm talking cell phones and running shoes and band-pins too! We've got to see beyond the merely >>for me<<, and start looking at the >>for themselves<<. Moreover, we gotta act fast! As it stands now, we're losing control of science. And therefore we must immediately stop all science, or eventually it will become us, take us over, and rule us unrelentingly.

Virus and New Bio pic.

2007-10-08T18:08:00.000-07:00

I've got a goddamn virus that interrupts my typing and causes me no end of frustration; I still type that old one fingure method (although, not to show off or anything, I really use three fingures now, one on my left hand and two on my right), and so I don't look at the screen, and when I do occassionally glance up, I find that that goddamn virus inturrpted me again and my last three sentences were never written. And worse, my bio pic no longer exists on the Intra-net, and so I have to settle for this goddamn polariod camera: lots of problems. On the bright side, Evil Genius from What I Like about the Universe awarded me (it feels like an award) BOTH Pluto and Charon in his interview with Grant Miller. These are everybody's favorite non-planets (I believe they're officially Kuiper belt objects, but maybe not Charon), and so it's quite an honor. Everyone should therefore read Evil Genius's site. Thanks again. I'll post something else soon.

Restless Nap-Dreams

2007-10-02T19:18:00.000-07:00

I dreamed that a much respected and very attractive female professor of mine was limping and terribly sick at my sister's birthday party, where the latter was also being awarded for a French rap song she had written, and which was taking place in a giant The Simpsons-themed restaurant; I woke up then with a terrible headache, and immediately ate three slices of cold mushroom pizza from blackjack.

Hungry Mouths

2007-09-19T16:18:00.000-07:00

She rose early to check on her children. She remembers those days in the laboratory, conducting experiments, collecting data, staying up until the sun was up, red-eyed, finishing after a long nights work. But she had grown old since then, and now her life was changed. Here she had her hallway and the now dark room full of little sleepers; her bathroom with the ugly ceiling light. Lately she had been thinking, perhaps I should return to academia. Perhaps, now that the children are born, I should take up my old position again, or even a higher one, and probe again into reality’s tiny, but fundamental truths. She switches off the light in her bathroom and returns to bed. There she covers herself up to the neck with her still warm, down comforter. Lying in bed, she is unable to sleep, and finally decides to begin breakfast. Walking carefully down the stairs she is confronted with a memory of descending into that much feared basement lab in Macky. She can hear again that silence that seemed only to be concealing the noise of ghosts and lurking things; she can almost see the painted yellow strip on the floor beneath the last step. And what smells there were there! Thickly perfumed walls soaking in the chemicals of thousands of experiments, decaying carpet, the smell of mold and dust. Why had she come here again? She was looking for a meeting, to make a scheduled appointment, she was going to re-enlist—what joy it would be! But it was so dark here? I can’t seem to find the room. It’s just my lonely old kitchen. Stopping, she lets her eyes adjust to the details. The kitchen is vast, reaching far and low across the long floor, narrow in comparison to its length, with a counter more suited perhaps for a bar. She makes a slow trek to the refrigerator. Nothing but leftovers and milk. She takes out the milk and clumsily searches for the cupboard handle in the dark. Dry goods. She takes down nine bowls, each decorated with the same twisting-vines-and-flowers design, one, the top one, chipped ever so slightly in the shape of an upside down triangle on the pink-bordered rim—this one’s for Mike—; a transparent, metric only measuring cup, and a tan pitcher. Lifting the extremely heavy milk jug, she fills the pitcher all the way, and then carefully measures out a third of a liter for each of the bowls—the pitcher empties quickly and she must refill it several times. Then taking down the giant cereal box, she covers each bow of milk, above the brim, with a thick layer of corn flakes. Finished, she replaces the milk and the cereal box. All is ready for the hungry mouths. She removes nine forks from a drawer, and heads up the stairs towards the children’s room. But in the hall she notices that the sun isn’t even up yet. With a start she looks at her watch. Quarter to five! The kids don’t have to be up for another two and a half hours! She puts her hand to her forehead; what should she do? If I don’t wake them, she thinks, the cereal will surely get soggy. And the stuff’s so goddamn expensive these days! In a panic she flies down the stairs. Taking the cereal box down again, she reaches into the first bowl, which just happens to be the one with the chip, but she stops herself just in time to prevent the dripping handful’s entry into the box. What am I doing? She places the cereal box on the counter, almost throws the handful back into the bowl, runs back to the staircase, returns with a spoon, and in no time she has finished the first bowl. Setting it down she takes up the second, but she cannot finish it. It’s too big. These bowls are at least twice her size, and she is no small woman. Defeated, she puts the bowl down, returns to the refrigerator, takes out the big jug of milk, fills the measuring cup a tenth a liter, pours it into the second bowl, then refills the first to its optimal, and covers both with another layer of flakes. Then, having put everything away again, she heads up the stairs. She’ll just wake those little bastards up! She’s almost in a fury. Throwing open the door, she screams: “Wake up and eat you fucks!” Nine tiny bodies, none taller than a foot, and apparently smudged in some sort of shiny black gloss, fly from their beds, their grinning mouths and sharp teeth swarming and bright in the darkness, they rush out of the room, down the stairs, and in seconds are yelping for more cereal. I can’t go back to the lab, I have to feed all those hungry mouths after all, and what appetites!

A Response to the Guy who once commented that I am “a Waste of a College Tuition”

2007-09-06T16:56:00.000-07:00

At first I was distraught. Why such a mean spirited an unexpected comment? Who could have done such a thing? A part of me even perhaps wished for all the romantic embellishments that would be mine if this comment were true. Nevertheless I was at a loss for words, and sought escape immediately in the Bourne Ultimatum; after all, what else could I do?

Later, now, I am able to rationalize away this comment. This person is simply nobody from whom I could take seriously any criticism, and this just so: It is all in the language, I am a waste of a college tuition, implying that my relationship to my education is as one reified, the latter nothing but a commodity to which one attaches a specific price-value. Moreover, I too become so; that I am a waste of the value automatically attached to my education cannot mean other than that I too am a commodity to which one also attaches a specific price (one in this case somewhat less than the price of my education). I would, through my paid for education become for example a doctor, or a lawyer, and in this way charge others for even the pleasure of an hour of my time; the cost of my education therefore nothing more but the price paid to be such a ‘thing’ and then only for the consumption of others. Besides, were I simply to assert that I went to college for free, the argument would be wholly invalidate. And still more, if indeed I had learned nothing in college, preferring to drink and fuck and death metal, then at least all I wasted was money (no problem; good Marxist that I am) and not something of value, say, for example, a person’s life.

And so I cannot but conclude that it was indeed my liberal politics that angered my anonymous commentator; perhaps that the character kills the cop just for asking to see his passport, in other words, for no good reason, or that he thinks that this is behavior worthy of emulation. Those liberals always go to college, and, frankly, the things they say, well they offend the sensibilities.

On the other hand, I might beg to be such a waste, on my knees, in the basement somewhere, where pestilence is still able to seep through the ground and drop out from molded ceiling patches in fat drops to narrowly miss my tongue; good thing too, or else I’d be immediately expelled, no longer a candidate for the brave, covered now that I am in metaphysics. There, on my knees, hands even clasped in prayer, beseeching my commentator, deadly earnest, soft dry eyes, before the philosophy begins.

2007-08-21T23:21:00.000-07:00

Who am I? The questions stay the same. Just a little turtle in a world of ninjas. Lost words like moonbeams: lost.

Art Post, the pictures will (hopefully) be linked

2007-08-18T13:55:00.000-07:00

European Reflections

2007-08-18T12:35:00.000-07:00

I have returned. Must call Ed, send emails to Europeans. I almost feel as though I had not gone at all, except that I am furnished with new memories (which I guess is the best you can ask for), traced across that unconscious stuff—impossible to define—of which I am made, like a trail of slug-slime. But what perhaps, under all this slime, have I already forgotten? Also impossible to say. Perhaps nothing, but once lost must be revived by some stimulus, spontaneous or intentional, and then comes bubbling up from some deep sunken repository. The free taxi ride in Regensberg, the cabbie was quiet, even shy, but was happy to know that I study German. Perhaps he had misunderstood the directions. He sat there—when we had arrived—and I couldn’t understand that he didn’t want money (I’d even been prepared to tip a good deal). But finally I did not pay. Later, I met a girl who helped me find the Regensberger Uni, that was probably one of my earliest conversations in German, even though I could probably count all the others on two hands and a foot (or just two hands, if I’m more discerning). These memories, however, lie but merely on the surface; the true depths might never see a ray of stimulus.

The brute acquisition of facts is the brute force mobilizing the civil graces; a man in the know, knows how to make conversation. But to speak not is to retain much, and therefore it is better to know but very few facts. Alas, with an eye toward tail, the quiet man has no luck; and appropriately so: he has nothing to say. He shrugs his shoulders, casts an eye toward the floor, and awaits another opportunity to inject. I’ve, however, retained nothing; it’s all so easily forgot, and so rely only on those flashes of insight, unaccounted for, afforded by the unexplored mass of my mind. With beer, I’ve found, they are more forthcoming (if, however, ultimately less coherent).

Maybe I should’ve dropped a bill or two for sex?

The Appropriator

2007-08-13T10:58:00.001-07:00

He is an artist whose medium is refuse; he searches through the trash trying to find the lost word of God--the word that would, once found, redeem all art except his; his art needs no redemption while the word remains lost.

French Keyboqrds

2007-07-29T11:20:00.000-07:00

I%ll probqbly just delete this post, becquse reqlly nobody zill zqnt to reqd it; in fqct it is sinly unreqdqble. French keyboqrds qre pretty fucked up. Especiqlly the word MqnyzqyM 9M; by the zqy; ,eqns auotqtion ,qrks0. Phez, thqt%s q bitch1. I%, in Pqris right noz, qnd it%s pretty ,uch everything thqt everybody sqys thqt it is/ full of French people; etc... Hqvn%t been drunk for like " dqys noz; pretty good1 Thought I hqd q tonsel infection; but it turned out to be OK. Gqil; by the zqy is living in ,y qpqrt,ent noz; but I guess she hqs finqlly found one of her ozn, qdn zill be ,oving out shortly. Enought of this qnyzqy; if you figured it qll out; you%re ,y hero1

The Wrong Direction

2007-07-17T05:59:00.000-07:00

One day Carl stepped into a hole that he didn't see coming. Instinctively, he braced himself for the inevitable impact, but, when no impact came, he gradually relaxed and began to take account of his situation. Looking up he could see the tiny, slowly receding oval of light that must be the hole he'd fallen through. "I'm falling," he thought. It was dark so he stretched out his hands and discovered that he was surrounded by stone, just beyond his fingertips, in all directions, except of course down. "A well?" he thought. Once his eyes had adjusted somewhat to the ever dimmer darkness, he noticed that there was a window, about a foot wide and running parallel to him, just to his left. "Must be a very tall window," he said. A face appeared in the window.

"Hello," said the face.

"Hello," replied Carl.

"How do you do?" asked the face.

"About as well as can be expected, thank you very much," answered Carl. A long, awkward silence followed this exchange, during which Carl tried to peek over at the face without drawing too much attention to himself--he wasn't sure if he liked this new development. The face was by all appearances disembodied and Carl could see it only very indistinctly through the obscuring window panes. Its cheeks especially seemed rather purple or perhaps teal, and it glowed ever so slightly.

"I wonder what I look like to him?" thought Carl.

"So," asked Carl, "are you falling too?"

"Me?" replied the face, "oh, no; I'm on my way to Dallas."

"Dallas?" asked Carl, "That's where I'm from."

"Really!?" screeched the face, "How do you like it there? Is it wonderful?"

"Oh, yeah, it's OK, I mean, I like it there and all, but--"

"Gosh! I can't wait to see it, we should probably be there soon!" interrupted the face, now very excited.

"That's what I'm trying to tell you," said Carl, "I'm afraid that we're going the wrong direction."

"The wrong direction?" asked the face.

"Yeah, you see I was just in Dallas when I accidentally stepped into this hole and I've been falling ever since. So we must be going away from Dallas."

"I see," said the face, "then I guess I'll just change directions, no big problem."

Carl took a moment to examine the face more closely; he was less nervous now, since he seemed a pretty nice fellow. He could make out hair, a neck, and even the outline of shoulders. A stiff collar gave away that he was wearing some sort of suit, perhaps even one similar to Carl’s. Everything was still strangely colored the same purple and teal, and the face’s eye sockets looked empty.

"Well?" asked Carl eventually.

"Well what?" asked the face.

"Are you going to switch directions?"

"Oh, I already did."

"But we're still falling," said Carl.

"Still falling?"

"Yeah, so that means we're still going away from Dallas." said Carl, growing a little annoyed.

"But I've just switched directions," asserted the face.

"I don't know what to tell you," said Carl.

It had become totally dark; looking up Carl could not see even a trace of the hole. He peered down at his feet, they were absolutely obscured in darkness. But he noticed that he could make out the feet of the face very clearly. He let his gaze fix upon them, marveled by something unexpectedly familiar. Perhaps these were the shoes of his father? Or even a pair he’d seen recently and been interested in buying. What ever it was, it seemed that he just couldn’t pin it down.

The face finally said, "It must be your fault then."

"My fault!?" asked Carl, now becoming angry.

"Yes, your fault," replied the face.

"How could that possibly be?" demanded Carl.

"Well, until I met you I was going toward Dallas, now I cannot go toward Dallas, no matter which direction I go. All that's changed since then is you, so it must be your fault."

Carl made a fist. "I can't believe you're blaming me for this!" he said, "anyway, you never switched directions. In fact, you didn't do anything."

"Maybe that's what you say," returned the face. Carl could now make out tiny pinpriks of light within the hollow sockets. "Those must be his eyes," he thought.

"No, it's the damn truth! We're falling and it's not my fault!" yelled Carl.

"You're impossible, I don't even know why I tried," said the face.

"Me? You're impossible! Maybe we could have been friends, but you've been nothing but obstinate and--"

"Still, it stands to reason that it's your fault, you must at least see that," interrupted the face.

"Listen, I've had enough," said Carl with a sigh, by now totally exhausted, "how long do you suppose this tunnel goes on for any--". With a dull thud and the snapping of breaking bones Carl died instantly.

2007-07-10T04:41:00.000-07:00

As of now, I can't seem to title this post, but as I'm still traveling, it's still travel dialogues (2). Just some thoughts, really about nothing in particular. I wish I could write an allegory allegorizing the act of writing the allegory. Maybe eventually. A clever reader could probably read every text as such a process, but to what end? Anyway, I'm in Berlin, and it is quite a city. An element of schizophrenia (damn German spell checker), walking through the holocaust memorial and playing hide and seek between those huge concrete blocks, all towering right angles in contrast with a heaving ground; like the social mind of national socialism, or any collective tryanny, perhaps capitalism too. We ought erect a monument to capitalism's forgotten victims, except we don't really ackowledge their existence outside of an abberation. Oh sure, we're all well aware, but helpless, being also the victims ourselves; some sort of well fed and happy sacrifice, trained in right angles, to contrast with the twisted and suffering sacrifice upon which we are built. But I'm going to far, the sickness demands I remain indifferent, unsure, and again cliche, who I am anyway.

Travel Dialogues 1

2007-06-21T16:04:00.000-07:00

We know it's not linear. I, however, wish that it was always some painted line, from here to there, something simple, to get our berings. I can't spell check because in Germany alles auf Deutsch ist. Just an aside, for those who would make some sort of big deal out of it, maybe it is all spelled correctly anyway. So, hello, my media, my eternal life; never forgotten on the intra-net, just one document among others. We should ourselves feel lucky, because we can never truly die, we are promised a forever life, because we write, and the intra-net loves our writing. But I'm too drunk to continue this, really I'm just hoping for some pot...

Das Brief

2007-06-06T15:51:00.001-07:00

I awoke early in the morning, this morning, and met my guide next to a tall statue of a naked man in a park nearby my hotel. Now, reflecting back, I am not at all pleased with his, it is true, entirely shoddy performance. We spent the greater part of our time together in perpetual argument; he trying to convince me of the most incredible, yes, absurd things, while I, defending myself against his every attack, waiting patiently to escape his company at the first opportunity.

It is nevertheless a very difficult battle, and when I finally must sit down and rest a bit, he joins me. We drink our beers largely in silence, like rivals with great respect for each other and, who, after a heated debate, eventually feel comfortable with all that might remain. The more I sit with this beer, taste its flavor, smell its aroma, enjoy its dark color, the more I begin to appreciate the view-point of my guide. I only hope then that he thinks the same. I face him, his eyes are closed, his head tilted back as though to absorb the warmth of the light into his cheeks; behind him are many tourists, also enjoying this square. Across the way two young people sit next to each other on a stone bench shaded by two full, magnificently green, but still young trees.

I felt suddenly as though I had been dreaming, I knew right away that I had let my guide take advantage of me, this was all just a rouse, an attempt to absorb me! I was still walking, still debating with my guide! He was clever, but I knew that when I hired him, still, this was a new trick. I understood the power of his words now, but it very well might be too late.

Wait! I am not in the square, but neither am I having a debate. I cannot recall one single detail of the debate, but that it must have already happened, in the square, but I cannot remember having arrived here, nevertheless, I guess, here I am. Knowing that is at least important, even if it only a lie, an effect of the debate I've had! Ah! To be independent! Even the force that drives me, as it were irresistibly, wishes that I were more independent, that, in other words, I was the driver instead. Where, however, I would go, would be then entirely up to chance; whether it be over mountain roads or icy peaks, or sub-Atlantic ice shelves; probably, however it would be nowhere, because all I’ve got anyway is the damn square, and my guide who's most certainly tricking me even now -- leading me down false paths. The only ice shelves I’ve ever been over are the ones I just spoke about, and the miracle that I even have any idea about them at all is probably owed entirely to my guide. He has in any case traveled far more, and to a greater range of places than I.

Examining him now, it is really hard not to conclude that he is altogether unimportant. He represents nothing; still his advice was never bad, never, that is to say, mendacious, just a little sneaky that’s all. I could easily live in this town (did I mention it is basically his home town?), I could become quite comfortable here it's true. But if that were the case then I wouldn't need my guide anymore. And the thought of something like life but without him is absolutely unthinkable. I need my guide, and so I must never, never, never move to this town.

Looking at myself now, my particular features, I am not really all that pleased, and I am wholly unchangeable, at least I feel that way now; when I’m finished, I’ll be forgotten. Still, I believe that I have at least some beauty, around the edges, at little bit of that light women prize so highly. And my guide, well he obviously won the debate, we made friends afterwards and agreed to meet each other tomorrow and do it all over again, against the possibility that someone, someday, might tell us what we’re doing.

Post #18

2007-06-05T21:14:00.000-07:00

Walter Benjamin wrote this:

The past carries with it a temporal index by which it is referred to redemption. There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on earth. Like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak Messianic power, a power to which the past has a claim. That claim cannot be settled cheaply.

If you’ll allow me some fancy, to which I think everybody is entitled by the way, I would like to discuss some of the possible implications of such a world-view. Especially, I would like to consider the consequences that an actual weak Messianic power would have, given some of the prevalent themes one finds throughout the history of institutionalized religion. I am speaking, of course, of that common, deplorable subjugation the Church often demands of its congregation. If it were true that each of us has just a little bit of (potential) history-moving power—which I think is a fairly adequate way, for our purposes, to describe Benjamin’s weak Messianic power—and if it were further true that this power is cumulative—that is, dependant upon the mass of (potential) history-moving powers, on the individual level, which have built up over the long course time—then the Church, that would be eschatological guide to paradise, by more often than not abusing its power and using the blind devotion of its children ever for its own malevolent ends, is worthy of nothing but the most cruel castigation. The claim is that we may all exercise our Messianic power towards that distant day when history ends and utopia flourishes. On that day the sacrifice of countless men and women throughout history, the sacrifice that was also their active Messianic power, is redeemed and progress realized. We then participate fully in what has so far only been dreamed. But the Church, who preaches that dream loudest of all, also bends its worshippers to the designs of short lived, power-hungry, butchers. And thus it thwarts what little potential each has, and prolongs the end of history absolutely. This is, of course, no less true of governments and massive corporations. They forget the dreams and the lives that have been given up for some greater good, they forget the actions of the smallest, who died and dies full of nothing but dreams of food, and those who are courageous enough to fight seriously for something better. These people, each one of them, you and me, willing to do anything to secure that brightest, if most unlikely, of futures. Ready to pay the cost. And so one important thing to remember is: to think on that gigantic sacrifice once in a while. If men of power thought on history, and were prepared to do the same…

Post #17

2007-05-28T19:07:00.000-07:00

Dear USA,

I'm not usually very political, at least not overtly about our President and our System, but I just thought you should know that we have recently passed into legislation a bill which grants dictator powers to our President during "Catastrophic Emergencies" defined as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions". As I recall, Caesar was given similiar powers in order to save the republic. Hopefully Bush (or whoever) will be able to save our republic in times of catastrophic emergency, just like Caesar saved his.

No joke, read the link.

Post #16

2007-05-28T15:40:00.000-07:00

Dear only reader,

Thus ends my activity. Read Post #15 before all the rest of the stuff I've put in here, or not.

Best of luck,
crm

I wholly understand and agree that the views expressed herein are amateurish, disconnected, disjointed, poorly composed, and hopelessly abandoned; but nevertheless they are WRITTEN, and so I have ejaculated them, given what little I can give, dumped them, abandoned into the intra-net.

23 April 2007, From Major Social Theories

2007-05-28T15:10:00.000-07:00

Something must be said for journal writing, so consider this my first entry. As every beginning should have a mission statement, let this be mine: to record every detail of significance, as often as it may occasion, and to obey them. If I cannot obey the insight provided by such a detailed account, I have no leg on which to stand.

It is only with despair that I describe the conditions of that gruesome future: to teeter-taater around on your ass, or walking on your hands--hands that have become feet and thus must be taught to write all over again, and therefore also must be severed--crossing a busy street, your small frame barely enough to warn the onrushing motorcycles, a monster in the night begging for money. Such a mode of self-transportation (-representation) results usually in the elongation of the fingers and the widening of the palms.

(Could I perhaps be a writer? It is an interesting question, but sadly not my own. If thirty years from now I am a writer, does that mean that I am now a writer? Is it possible that I am a writer now, but not in the future? I feel much more like nothing. For example: Hi, I'm a doctor!, or, yes, I'm a gynecologist. In German the idea is stronger still. I'll remain a mystery to myself, but I'm sure I'll never 'be' anything, although I might talk like I am: "Hi, I'm a writer," I might say. But instead I'll just be as I ever was, maybe never even read!)

It would be a mistake to believe IT to be a great sadness--such romances are no longer ours. The only romance is estrangement, and, its shadow, the child, the home. Wipe your eyes then. Many before you have disobeyed their parents. It's no great loss--don't cry.

An abundance of blank pages--purchased at what price?--means an overabundance of truly mediocre writing. This is however the truth of our age: we write desperately (if we write), and mostly unsuccessfully, in order to be estranged--that is, in order to compose ourselves on the page, to be composed there, and so to escape ourselves, and to save ourselves from ourselves, which cannot be controlled or tolerated. 'I' speak from the page--"I" spoke the page. "Listen, I am more real than you, even though I have no name. Indeed such only confirms all the more my identity. It is of loss that I speak: I am nameless. Come home to me, fill yourself up with me, and I'll have many names!" But the page fills only slowly and, now more than ever, it is quantity more than quality that matters, although even that is quickly losing its value. One begins more or less confident, but is eventually crushed by the combined forces of theory and speculation. At first one is intrigued, until their vapors solidify and become the truth! And, as a light goes off in one great city, so goes on one in another, but this other is deep underground, as of yet undiscovered, even perhaps the future habitation of all man kind, and also the sedimentary stone upon which the first city is built. A novel, it is readily admitted, must be of a certain length. This, therefore, is no novel. It might, at best, be a symptom of the novel's death, and for this I claim no responsibility (I am but humbly a bad instance). A new novel is nevertheless born-- a new, shorter novel. "I am only the desire of one who was once a living, breathing one. A desire to write. Kiss me! Smell my pages. Weep on me; (for) I am your desire too!"

From Thesis Work

2007-05-28T15:02:00.000-07:00

An indescribable blast, of something from which life must first have emerged; resembling cheese. Here stood the door, that inescapable passage into authority: manhood. And yet the other side is the same; all his life experiences coalesce and he finally loses his fear of his own sexuality, and the door heads back, always back, and so he will speak of his defeat. "it was at the very beginning that mankind was slain," he heard these words. "If that's the way it is, then it is inescapable," he thinks," and the only possible difference is: I know it." Yes, but what have you forgotten?

The Great Herminias

2007-05-28T13:54:00.001-07:00

The sun waits off to one side, barely noticed in the unpleasant and already dismissed sky. A bird flies overhead, the sun throws its shadow into the eyes of an onlooker. He salutes the sun automatically, as a veteran would the flag, and shades his eyes. The man watches the bird as it dips and flaps loudly into the recesses of a low concrete arcade. He is on his way to work, but the office holds little attraction for him on a day like this, so he decides to show up late. He calculates everything perfectly, and now finds himself in this beautiful old square, among very few other passersby, most of whom are tourists, admiring the architecture. "What a beautiful bird", he thinks, "and [looking closely at the engraving on the concrete] it appears that she has flown under an equally marvelous little bird, albeit a bit faded from age". He kneels close to the small stone and begins to rub its course surface expertly with his thumb, moss and other debris fall away and scatter. "There", he speaks aloud, "Now we can see you!" "Quite marvelous, really," comes a voice from behind. Startled, he stands up and turns around all at once, almost falling over himself as he does. A smiling, middle-aged gentleman stands before him, apparently admiring the carving. "What do you think?" the latter asks. "Oh, yes", stammers the first, already out of breath, "you took the words right out of my mouth." The old man finally looked at Carl for the first time. "Oh", he said, his bright eyes widening, "My dear! Are you by chance that man Herminias?" After a short pause, Carl lowered his eyes and raised his hands as though to avoid a blow, but the movement was too fast and the other, perhaps a little afraid, jumped back as if fearing attack. "Oh, I'm sorry", said Carl, head raised and facing the old man, "I wasn't going to hit you." "never mind", said the old man quickly, "I understand, I didn't mean to bother you." It was his turn then to lower his eyes. "So you know who I am now?" asked Carl. "Yeah, sure I do, I know you, at least your face is familiar to me." "Well then", began Carl.

At that moment, somewhere far off, a bell was about to be rung.

Women and Society

2007-05-28T13:38:00.000-07:00

To speak of the largeness of a room, I have recently learned, is also to speak of the feminism that inhabits its walls. Such discourse is seduced into silence by soft carpets, pleasant fires, and warm, spicy, after-dinner coffee. The habit of smoking cigars in such settings may be further attributed to the absence of women, who may occasionally smoke cigarettes, and blow the smoke out the kitchen window, and thus reek of the manly. The living room is brightly illuminated and, although highly exclusive, classless; here utopia and and distopia are discussed and discarded with confidence and an eye toward competition. The men feel safe in this niche because the invisible weight of society is felt most strongly here, and is thereby safeguarded for tomorrow, and progress absolutely guaranteed. Eventually they may even fall asleep, their bristled or shaved chins having sunk deep in their chests. Woman stares through the walls.

The amazon fights behind the cupboards to keep the unreality out. She is sacrifice; women are mostly useless because of the burden they somehow bear, the negative to society's positive, and the levee against the first flood. And were they to ignore this duty, come then would the nightmare of men: ourselves, or Muslims. When woman lays her hand against the wall and sees how wrinkled it has become, she is then the most unknowable to me--were I her I would desire to kill my babies and run headlong into the concrete so that I die too. But the woman is the wall, and sits against fear.

Murder and Society 2

2007-05-28T13:26:00.000-07:00

Reproduce that savage moan in frustration (a source of hope, they say, already faded) to catapult the movement against the derangement of the society that weeps only deep in the soul. And fail!

Why not speak no more?

Perpetuate petty evils justified in the shadow of that death so thoroughly obscuring the source of light; an object in shadow cats no shadow. It is more philosophical to be a murderer than a consumer; to throw the child in the lake and thereby repudiate any cause to save it. It is better to be 'a part of the problem' when the solution is the problem. There is no truth beyond murder. The only alternative is Fascism, absolute murder, holocaust and utopia. But perhaps I am ignoring something. I am but young, and so see not very deeply. The truth, still murder, is probably much slower.

"Quiet my dear, be calm, mommy is here. We may now breath together." Spoke the angel of death.

Murder and Society 1

2007-05-28T13:06:00.000-07:00

From the very beginning Carl was just an ordinary man, he was preoccupied with ordinary preoccupations, and entertained himself mostly after the usual fashion. It was the unhappy world which demanded of Carl something spectacular, or at least so he believed as he set out one evening to take his place among those obdurate figures of classic and modern tragedy. He brought with him only a few objects that seemed symbolically important: a flashlight, a gun with ammunition, a backpack with some changes of clothes, and a copy of Mendelssohn's Jerusalem by which to remember the follies of man. He stood motionless at his doorway for a very long time, one hand on the knob, the other in his pocket. He held the flashlight under one arm and shone it into the darkness of the familiar, its light reflected off a mirror opposite and blinded him, but he didn't mind because there was really nothing worth seeing anyway. Carl searched himself for the appropriate emotion, but found only confusion and various distracted fragments of irrelevant thought, like: "For six months already of constant struggle..." or "For weeks and weeks...", so he gave it up and took his departure as all men do.

Carl did not bother to bring his passport, which he had lost a long time ago, and so he had to keep to himself and not arouse suspicion; if he was caught without a passport he would be promptly incarcerated. With a smile he reminded himself that even if he had his passport it would do him no good, and that he would really be arrested all the more quickly, since the authorities were, without a doubt, searching for him. Not three weeks ago he had shot dead a lone, drunk soldier who had accosted him on his way home from work and demanded of him proof of identity. At the time he was, God be thanked, clear sighted enough to realize the mistake he would have made had he submitted to the man's authority, and so he acted decisively. It bothered him, of course, that he had to become a murderer there, but, he told himself, he always was a murderer, and now he could recognize himself and move on. "In fact", he thought aloud, "it is just this sort of character that will inspire others to follow me".

Post #15

2007-05-28T12:41:00.000-07:00

Dear only reader,

I'm going to post now a buch of shit taken from various notebooks and written over various years. There is much that I have lost by way of such short pieces, and I think it worth mentioning that my very favorite, of which I can recall nothing, is, it seems, forever lost. It would of course be silly to ask you not to judge me by what I've written, but rather by what I cannot give you, so judge away. But remember, the best is not present, and was probably lost already as a thought: slipping away.

Yours,
crm

Ein Liebeslied

2007-05-27T01:51:00.000-07:00

I’ve sponken to you, tonja, i’ve told you. I know that you must love another, and, in fact, i coulsel you to do so. It is better after all, ein leben von besseres. Remember i’d love you and still do, you who have guided me and accepted what I’ve done. Such is fate afterall, so much for love and so much for all the love, we have ourselves to look after, be mine, oh, be mine, such sweetness would you bring, with bring, with you, I love, and love.

But forget me not the evil, that which lives within, such calamintiy, such godlyness, there gibt keine dinge wie es, ein ding von Unleben. Please forget me not! Please, I beg of thee, of thee, please forget me not. To be screamed, but not yet, to be laughed about. Oh please forget me not. Ein Pause.

To be welcomed and to remember a certain dawn, oh dawn, and again that which is responsible for our release, ein wunderbares release, that which is responsible. Tonight, I smoke a cigarteete soaked in wine, wine from those cherries that die as quickly as they grow. Those cherries, much like strawberries, which give way to a rot so much sweeter if however cut short. How could you not love those over ripe ones, and the perfection which they adore?

Forget me not, nevertheless, and think not sadness for me, of me, think not!

An Ode-damnit

2007-04-18T16:45:00.000-07:00

It would be better to simply admit my various self-inflicted difficulties and then, with a wave of the hand and even maybe a bobbing of the neck, run straight into whoever I happen to be addressing right now. I bet you thought I'd never post again. We'll, you were probably write. This, after all, is hardly a post, just of few thoughts, with a not-so-clever title, jotted down, run-on sentences especially, and, of course, but also rather uncharateristically, no spell check (too lazy). I'd probably be a better writer in German. As it stands now, it would be better simply to admit my various self-inflictions, and do so, without the ordinary hesitation, as a way out of the quiet all-pervasiveness of an ordinary, ordinary future career. It is fast impossible to write, what could one write anyway; what, and still BE right? They were, we all, I suppose, would agree, but not any more; about what now could they be right? Or wrong? About town? Or the world about Harmon Industrial Park? A shanty, that last one, and full of truck-keys, but don't call them so to their face. Anyway, hard drugs, I've always said, would be the perfect excuse, but I forgot to take them, and so cannot make sense of the present, another sad mistake of the past, which, if you follow me, might suppose a messiah, who would come, in the future I suppose, and redeem even my choice, sad choice, not to take hard drugs, in the past. OR just take 'em later.

Anyway, I, like you, am endowed with the capacity to understand deeply this specific world of mine. Today, I prefer to pretend, but it is all on the way to an in-fact deeper understanding. One must simply overcome those all too common deceits, the one by which we fool ourselves, and become either happy or sad. But a new difficulty has arisen: language. You see when I say to-do I mean Grand ol' USA, and when I say about I mean bad-habits, futher a serpent represents a unicorn in all cases no better than say a commodity-exchange or harp would, and again vice versa. So that if he had so much to-do, and what he did was a unicorn, I'd be saying just about nothing. It's a bad example, but I'm really not putting too much thought into any of this. Notice, however, that there are still spaces between the words, making them all half un-words, and each one individually is really not worth much more than the next, so we have quite a system, but also a broken one, having but with few exceptions no room for art in science, etc, etc, etc.

I'll leave you with some really great poetry:

Give that whore a buck, and she'll suck you Chuck,
It's not worth more, 'cause that dirty 'ol whore
she's got fuckin' herpes.

See her standing there, just like a model airplane in a hobby shop with no more customers, ever.
And that's because I have a toothache, no matter what, it's mine.

A Post! A Post!

2007-02-21T13:51:00.000-08:00

September 11 inaugurated both the age of terrorism in US foreign policy and the demand that we identify ourselves ideologically as anti-terrorist. This double action defines and demarcates the political space in which we now live; it begins the movement of our democracy into its other, into that in opposition to which we have until now defined ourselves, namely totalitarianism. History has long prepared this road, but history can no longer be appealed to as either the genitor or as the possibility of escape or redemption. The force of the contradiction born on September 11 is that of a rupture with history: we now live, both as a culture and as individuals, somewhere between absolute forgetting and déjà vu. History will only resume after the fact, when the rupture is complete and the new system has already erected its edifice. At that time we will wander around as shock victims, with dust in our hair and on our clothes, and remembering finally what has taken place, we will have no recourse but to vomit.

A Fisherman's Story

2007-01-03T15:38:00.000-08:00

A certain type of fog can be experienced on all those tropical islands which hover near the equator. It is a fog that comes only seldom; and this infrequency is the cause for much speculation among indigenous peoples. It is not, as one might romantically suppose, a midnight-in-a-graveyard type of fog; that is to say that it is not a thing to frighten children, and in fact most children are less afraid of this strange fog than adults. Children, it has also been maintained by certain western anthropologists who study the fog, are more likely even to see the fog. Roughly, this has something to do with their still intimate and relatively naïve relationship to nature; they are more likely to see the fog because they are more likely to be outside, or at least to be looking out the schoolhouse window. This is, moreover, not hard to believe, owing to the nature of the education they mostly receive, and of course to the certain cultural differences existing between the missionary-teacher and the authentic-islandman-student.

The fog, as one might well suppose, becomes thicker when one is out to sea. But there are many types of sea fog, some of which, far from being innocuous, can portent certain doom to small boats and are therefore avoided by fishermen. This, however, is not the case with the fog that we are here concerned with. Many primitive island-societies existing near the equator have (mostly oral) folktales which describe poetically the great schools of fish that can be found ‘neath our particular fog. Only the oldest and most expert fishermen can ever hope to tell the difference between our fog and the harmful fogs that one may encounter at sea. Accordingly, many a novice has died hoping rather to be rich and to feed his family well. Indeed it is customary on some islands to lament the cause of death of some young fisherman as having been “swallowed by the fog”, or “lost in foggy temptation.”

While on the islands I met an old fisherman and I inquired of him whether or not he had ever been so lucky as to fish ‘neath such a miraculous fog. He was missing many teeth, but his smile was genuine. He detailed to me his extraordinary autobiography which I will paraphrase here. This man, whose name is simply unpronounceable in English, so we’ll just call him Carl, had been raised even as a young boy to be a fisherman. His father was something of a local hero, famous both for his brave deeds in war and his huge catches. When Carl was just barely able to walk, although apparently already able to swim like a fish (which, it is worth mentioning, is something rather uncommon among island people), his father would take him out on his little outrigger and fish with him from sunrise to after dark. On these fishing excursions, Carl recalls, his father was always able to find that tiny floating patch of fog ‘neath which the fish so gladly swim. These were the happiest times of Carl’s life; everyday they would bring home such a bounty of fish that they could easily feed the whole neighborhood or small village.

On day Carl’s father died and he was expected to take over his fishing duties. He recalls that he was excited; confident in his knowledge of how to find and distinguish the special fog. But Carl never was able to fish ‘neath the fog, for every time he entered a fog it always turned out to be one of the harmful types. Carl recounted to me many dangerous adventures that he had had trying to escape from these sea fogs. Some, he said, could simply pull the whole boat under, and he had to rely on his great strength (and occasionally on his exceptional swimming ability) to dodge certain death. With tears in his eyes he spoke of the poverty into which his unsuccessful fishing trips plunged his whole village. Children would die of hunger, and the adults were too weary to do their work. Eventually the village had no recourse but to expel Carl and the evil spirits that he carried with him. They came to his home in the night and carried him to a boat which had been ritualistically prepared with blood and the ashes of burnt corpses; they filled his fishing net with stones and threw it into the sea. The villagers told Carl to leave and never return. Carl was heartbroken, for he loved his village and had recently become engaged to a woman who, by his own description, could rival even Helen of Troy.

He set off onto the great ocean and it was not long before he spied a familiar fog. Here it was, once again, that deadly fog that he could only ever seem to find. Tired of life and unhappy he sailed directly into its mists. The ocean heaved and pulled him and his boat under. He was dead, he says, for many hours or days, and then he awoke here on this island. He has never since sailed, but he yearns everyday for the people he has lost. He does not understand why God brought him to this island, where he is nothing better than a beggar. This last bit, however, did not seem true to me. I had, after all, met his lovely wife and children, and, judging by the size of his house and the great number of guests he seemed always to be entertaining, he appeared to be a respected member of the community. On the whole I can do nothing but attribute his last outburst to the powerful emotions which must have overtaken him at the retelling of his sad story. I asked him if he had not tried to contact his lost village, and he told me that he had not. I promised him that, if I happened upon the place during my research, I’d tell the people there that he was alright, and he seemed greatly pleased at this. But I have never, despite repeated inquiries, found his little island. This is especially disheartening for me because, by Carl’s account, there must be much fog there to study.

Post #14

2006-12-08T21:35:00.000-08:00

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

2006-10-30T22:54:00.000-08:00

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

2006-10-21T00:05:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-08T16:28:00.000-07:00

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)

2006-10-06T14:18:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-03T23:57:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-01T22:39:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-25T23:50:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-22T19:26:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-20T17:36:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-15T00:44:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-15T00:19:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-14T15:14:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-14T14:19:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-05T22:56:00.000-07:00

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

2006-09-05T22:23:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-29T21:15:00.000-07:00

[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.