Another Lesson.
Current mood: Quite well, thanks.
Category: Quite well, thanks. Writing and Poetry

"Li Po died a death worthy of a poet," I say. "He got drunk and tried to embrace the moon in a river."

His eyes still too large in his head, he doesn't understand, but his response is so cuttingly incisive that I'm suddenly rooted to the spot on this pockmarked wasteland of deforestation, held in awe at my sudden appreciation and admiration of this child who has no idea of what kind of a man he might one day become. "So you think that's beautiful."

I'm a moment in the words. "Yes," I say. "I do, but that's not what I meant. A poet is always reaching for the moon, but a poet is also both smart and stupid enough to know that maybe reaching up isn't the right way."

"But, it killed him."

I'd like to respond that everything will, eventually, but I can't bring myself to so dour a statement in light of this potentiality before me. He doesn't understand, but, maybe I never meant him to; maybe it's important that he doesn't. "Yes, yes, it did," I say.

He picks up a stick taller than he, but dead and brittle, accentuating his vitality all the more. He swings it like a golf club at stones and says, "If a bad guy came up now I'd hit him with this and then stab him on the ground so we could get away."

Again I pause, wanting to tell him that the only frontal attacks I've ever had were effectively parried away with humour and incredulity. The harshest and most violent attacks were quiet and unassuming and showed the wounds only much later, like a dormant poison. And they came not from the bad guys, but from the very best. Some of the greatest harm came from the very fact that they never intended any harm at all. But why should I burden him with this? "Go for the knees or the top of the foot and we'll run like hell," I tell him. He smiles and swings until his stick breaks and he throws it onto one of the large piles of trees, his part in this ordering of destruction.

"You know what I like?" he asks.

"Nope. What?"

"You don't treat me like a kid. And you answer my questions when I ask them."

And I wonder, do I really? To an extent, sure; more than others obviously. But now I'm a little ashamed of the small moments that I don't expound more. Censoring of any sort raises my hackles and I feel the fool for letting it creep into my behaviour at all. A few more years here or there my answers would have been different. I can see plainly that as much as I want to treat this child as my own, I can't. It would be irresponsible of me to do so. I could very well be one of those good guys hurting another without the intent of doing so. So I smile, say, "Well, I like you and anybody with a question deserves an attempt at an answer, at least."

"I like you, too," he says and, 'though he doesn't take my hand as we walk away from the darkening skies, I can feel the touch in his voice.

Maybe one day this man will grasp the moon, I think to myself, and not drown in the river, half laughing. I hope he does it in part because of me.

The rains descend only later when I'm home alone, but they're steady, slow, and pleasant. The streets are empty in the midday dark and the breeze sings through the trees. Suddenly the world feels like a womb and I await the distant thunder with a smile.

Currently listening : Bach: The 6 Unaccompanied Cello Suites Release date: 2006-06-06

6:08 PM - 14 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

Bad form and filling space.
Current mood: complacent, at least.

I've no idea whatsoever about what it is that I wish to write about.  So, fair warning, the drivel and dribble that may or may not follow could well be lacking in both substance and form, but will, no doubt, be contrived from past sources.  In all fairness, The DaVinci Code was far more popular than Holy Blood, Holy Grail.  There may be hope for me, yet.

Currently, I'm interested in the speed of gravity.  A certain school of thought attributes the effects of gravity to the instantaneous; that is to say, that gravity shifts occur immediately across vast distances.  I can't help but think that that is pure shit and poorly wrought mathematics.  I think faster than light tachyons are simply a mathematical loophole and that to allow gravitons the same limitless expanse of travel time seems to me bad form.  That the pricking of my thumbs may encompass negative time is alright with me because we are dealing with perception.*

I've got this thought that maybe the macrocosmos acts a bit like us.  The present is continually affecting and warping the past.  I thought I knew something and new information makes me question every postulation previous.  Why can't I be right twice, even if the information completely negates former findings?  Is that a sound question?  Answers should be four dimensional as well as mass.  It's all about right time and place.  Things change, worlds spin, the universe expands.  Time goes on (albeit slower at higher velocities).  Ah, laugh at me, laugh at me; my struggle with absolutes still ends in relativity.  I can't escape that bitch any more than gravity.

I'm trying to trust my instincts more.  You know that moment when you meet someone and you feel as though they don't like you?  You know why you feel that way?  Because they don't.  Simple truths are easy only on the surface.  2+2 only equals 4 on paper or in binary language.  Once the complexity of the mind and the ego get involved you're dealing with imaginary numbers (and human language, designed against a faulty backdrop of the idealism of a constant state, of universal understanding).

There's this further idea that math is the language of the universe.  Poor form, indeed; egocentricity on a global scale.  It's merely the language we use to describe the universe as seen by us.  It's as fallible as English with its relentless idioms and inconstant slang.  Right on, Dawg; I'm 5000, G.  E=Mc squared.

So, words and math all fail us.  Where do we go from here?  Well, nowhere, really.  It's the cosmic conundrum.  If you're at a party and only three people speak your language, how long until you pantomime?  Eventually, in demonstrating dihydrogen monoxide, you'll revert to throwing water in someone's face.

I'm proud of touting my former Mensan status.  How I landed that $52-per-year card was by not second guessing my answers.  Go with the first impulse; more than likely, you've already hit it.  Granted, the test was largely multiple-choice.  One in four is not bad odds, considering.  Instincts and gut-feelings; there's best seller books devoted to the cause.  I believe in them.  I won't say they're right, but I will say they're decent.

The bitch about this is that anything not tested I regurgitate and second guess, or third and fourth and so on.  I wallow in constant anything to find an answer.  Even when there are no answers.  I love form when it suits my fancy, when it coincides with my idea of an outcome.  When asked why it matters, I couldn't answer.  It just does, somehow.  Somebody has to ask, at least.  Nobody need ever respond.  The question's the important part, I think.

So where was I going with this whole language barrier, false math train?  I don't know; sorry, I really don't.  I'm just filling cyberspace as not writing is harder than not throwing monkey shit against the void.  And, all monkey shit and conundrums aside, the porch calls and a book waits, time passes perceptively constant for this height of sea level. 

In any language, that's decent.

*I've talked of this before.  There was an experiment in the pricking of a finger and the direct impulse sent to the same area of the brain.  The signal traveled faster with the pricking than the direct impulse into the brain.  It could be that we misplaced the proper area of grey matter, but it is possible that the brain could be sending a signal back in time to relay the feeling of the thumb being triggered.  It's a pretty question with a nice little bow (and as many verifiable facts as global warming).**

**Which I think is a load of false information being verified poorly with an interest in grant money, employer's expectations, and pure emotions.  Thank you, Al Gore, Michael Crichton, and The Jasen.

Currently reading : State of Fear By Michael Crichton Release date: 2005-10-25

3:28 PM - 14 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

Witless Verbosity or Too Many Titles
Current mood: Alien
Category: Alien Life

I had recently forgotten that any artist, even a self-titled one, loves destruction; is, in fact, wedded to it. Every wielder of the pen looking to invent words and create ideas looks to destroy something, somehow. In art or philosophy birth always accompanies death. Can you see my destructiveness even now? I'm speaking in absolutes, for Christ's sake.

I'm still not into objectivity; it continues to strike me as hopeful tyranny. But, so too now does subjectivity; which, for the purely scholarly sound, I would like to henceforth refer to as relativity of knowledge (some things never change). I'm worried now that reality might really just be communication, which is a hell of a thing for the likes of me, who pours his libations to the god of interpretation, the lover of puns and vagueries. It's a pretty thought that puts me in a hell of a spot.

I thought I saw a feather,
but then it was a wall,
crushing beyond measure
everything beneath its fall.

Rhyme schemes and rhythms, I'd kill free-verse today given a sharp enough sword. Prose suffers as many blows as I separate author and narrator, making third person omniscient into third person knowing some things occasionally. I'd have characters defy me on page, quills sliver away like the waning moon, ball-points bleed ugly blots across the work of days, paper mewl inaudibly in its servitude. I'd have this goddamned blog itself throw the snail and sneer at me. Maybe even kill an Arab and have an 80's Cure sneer and throw curses at me as I ascend the scaffold to some ignoble but meaningless end. I'd have strangers accost me for no reason. I'd have this sudden realization of the necessity of destruction echo back on me that I might play the fool with some appropriate wounds; that, in the American way of things, I might burn Sherman to the ground while limping and holding my side. All heroes have an obligation to be beaten and down-trodden.

Properly put upon I could more easily embrace this idea of demolition. I could start small with petty statements to strangers who act rudely in queues, follow inattentive drivers and berate them outside their own homes, empty my trash on the lawn of litterbugs, working up to tackling idiot youths in the mall, to letting loose on lackadaisical librarians with their poor attempts at building better book houses and no-customer service approaches to their job. With enough practice I could eventually become Occam's razer, pulling apart the most likely hypotheses like the wings of flies and throwing the remains to carrion birds, take this Tower of Babel I've created in definition of myself and throw the stones to the sea, denounce my own awareness as fickle and catachrestic, even bounce the whole chaos theory back on itself.

The butterfly's death
brought on by my breath.

If you're going to do something you might as well commit, right? And I don't like café au lait, anyway. What's a crooked beak without talons? By the rules of literature and drama, carrying a big stick means you have to beat the hell out of someone sometime; a gun in act one means a shot later. Even if you completely strike the set in act II, the heavy shit still happens in act III. Polonius (idiot, maybe, but never fool) dies somewhere in there. Only closers get coffee in that act. If I am to destroy again (like in my, oh, so fervent youth) it should be with pin-point accuracy but without prejudice. I should be far-ranging in my attacks but start fully on my own pedestal; baseless, I can be deadly again. I'd need to relearn to embrace absolutes. Relativity of knowledge shows its patient belly for a rub and lets the buildings fall in their own ruin. Absolutes find the key log and release the jam. Absolutes not only know where to find the weak spots to place the charges, but do so.

Graham Greene would understand, but would mock in an under the breath satiric sigh. Shakespeare would break iambic pentameter for the character, but Tom Robbins would love him within limits. Hemingway would make him speak small words, manly, and Vonnegut would caricature him in some autobiographical manner, Thompson would have him be on too many drugs. Aesop would have had him win, despite naïveté and inability (I don't get that cat, incidentally). I'd have him be too good, personally, and then have him fail himself. I'd have him break the fifth wall and lie to his audience, have him act contrary to his nature and regret it endlessly. I'd have him destroy utterly something, anything, to make room for an undefined and unknown improvement. And I would never state it clearly.

But, then, just then, as I'm fantasizing about slaying innocent metaphorical giants and crushing the head of some undefined idealism, a Sigur Ros documentary comes on and ambient near-Icelandic gibberish grabs me as Sophie the dog nestles in between pillows, as Hector the cat lounges in that larger-than-man feline fashion, and Felix the given kitten attacks a tennis ball with a vigor unattainable at any other age, and I'm ashamed of my sadistic hopes, of my anger, of my mechanistic desire to be seen as right. In the unforgivable sin of communications of lack of better words I remove myself another degree. I creep further and further away from this sphere of accepted reality I see around me, from the idea that what I'm searching for has already been spelled out for me, that eight-fold paths or twelve-step programs have a firm grasp of my needs. I think that maybe I can rebuild my deepening moat and crumbling towers with cleaner water and gun turrets. Maybe my Rosencrantz and Guildenstern can meet Godot in act V before being poisoned, hanged, and generally Rasputined. With idiocies such as these I want my breakings to be for better things. With my hopeful glass hammer, I just don't want to be human anymore.

Currently listening : Ágætis Byrjun By Sigur Rós Release date: 2001-05-22

3:36 PM - 10 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

The foole at the edge of the universe or Old jokes, New laughs.
Category: Life

Times is hard, friends. No lie. But, what use is a joke of hopefulness who just mopes around entertaining thoughts that he deserves more? Any proper fool (or George Carlin's preferred Foole) laughs and looks for the next joke. Shakespeare's fools always knew the score and laughed sadly with Puckish understanding at the foibles of human nature. We should all hope for as much.

I was born five days too late to give my father a much desired tax write off, just before sex turned deadly for people across the world (a tisket, a tasket, a condom or a casket). I was born when musicians were still bitching that the Moog synthesizer would ruin the very fabric of music and they still hadn't figured out just how much it could really do; when remotes were clickers, when cable television had no commercials, and when the earth took the appropriate amount of time in its trip around the sun instead of rushing us through the year. We had proper time in my youth.

I wonder today, the same as Jesus when he died, older than Mozart, and younger than John Lennon, about the future; an act which could hardly be construed as a habit.

As quantum physics and common experience so readily point out, the future, on a macrocosmic scale, is unknowable. I prefer to leave it to itself. I adore enigmas, but the future is not an enigma. It's an inevitability. Tomorrow comes every day. I don't have to peek at Christmas presents as soon enough I'll know what rattles in what box.

The future's always been something of, "oh, er, yeah, it's over that way," for me. But, lately, it scares me. And why shouldn't it? It's been terrifying countless others since the dawn of this spinning, speckled bead.

What I can't answer is why. Longer than the life of Amadeus I've held the belief propagated by so many children, that life is not serious. We prepare and plot, we make meticulously planned and poorly wrought mistakes and learn from them (juggling flaming tennis balls is a neat idea in theory). We gravely acknowledge pain and tribulations, broken hearts and promises, missing parts and things we lost in the fire.

But, I remember years ago when it was found that coloured toilet paper was causing rectal cancer. It's difficult for the likes of me not to laugh at a universe that allows the action of wiping your ass to turn deadly.

And, yes, we bomb people from great heights who don't even have plain, white, one-ply to remove the unsightly from their cancer free nether crevices, while we vote more for poor singers than poor politicians, tyrannical or socialist (but, in all fairness, you can only vote for a poor politician once and the dead don't get to vote for poor singers at all).

So I laugh; at myself, at the world. Sitting here, continuing the quite arguably pointless act of stringing meaningless collections of letters together, not having a good day, decidedly not at the top of my game, I laugh.

I smirk and chuckle because I know, despite ancient texts written in very nearly indecipherable languages with no spaces or vowels, without the complications of reason or logical devices, telling me that man is holy and destined for greatness, that man is an animal.

Dichotomy is my virtue in this. Man is holy and pure. He's also made of the same stardust that encompasses the holy cow and the equally holy and loathsome cockroaches and fleas. Man just has a much wider set up for a punch line in the universal joke of life.

It's my opinion that the universe is closed, but expanding, allowing Modest Mouse singer Isaac Brock truth in his assertion that, "The universe is shaped exactly like the earth. If you go straight long enough you end up where you were." In this not quite infinite, but mind-boggling vastness I consider it a matter of fact that hurtling through space at monstrous, unfelt speed is another living joke asking, "Um, what's, uh, the deal here?"

That other living joke should be laughing, too, because the deal is precisely whatever he needs it to be. No matter how demented, lazy, funny, or harmful your answer may be, you're absolutely right. Why that frightens some, I just don't understand.

As for me, I love (an action that I can only define by its opposites of apathy and hate); through happy springs, through pained hearts and feelings, through fountains and deserts (life may not be serious, but its actions could be important). And I laugh, because I'm one of billions terrified that their nightmares might come true; while no one drops bombs on me or my loved ones, while I wipe my ass with carcinogen free toilet paper made from stardust trees after eating a stardust burger, occasionally speaking in orgasms and undefined terms, maybe too foolishly forgiving, patiently working and wading through to some better future; reaching for things well beyond this closed, but expanding reality, namely for the biggest joke I've ever heard. I want to be ready to laugh at it when it comes.

Currently listening : D-Sides (Deluxe Edition) By Gorillaz Release date: 2007-11-20

9:59 AM - 14 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

Bisexuality is for fags.
Category: Life

Where the hell have I been? Good question and I'm glad you asked. Honestly, I don't know. At best, I can tell you that I've been in that Lennon conundrum of "life is what happens when you're busy making other plans."

Not too long ago, I'd read that were light to be given the quantum physics life giving power of observation, it would experience the universe totally at once; that time would not exist for this massless, wave/particle duality. It would simply be wherever it was going and where it came from and, due to the uncertainty principle, every possible pathway in between, theoretically watching a rude tachyon passing on the right.

I've also recently been told that Einstein has been proven wrong and general and special relativity are lies propagated by some uncertain heathen masses in a world that is four thousand years old, that the Flood wiped out the dinosaurs, and a high oxygen content allowed Old Testament people to live for centuries and run for miles without losing their breath. Personally, I missed that memo. Maybe I shouldn't have read between the lines on that whole book of Job and studied Koine Greek more.

Meanwhile, I've been stuck on the conundrum of what the smallest piece of reality might be. Poor math skills and a focus on western philosophy haven't helped much with this question. You see, there's this nice theory that not only does observation collapse the probability wave into a particle of experience but also that the intent of a future observation collapses the wave, or, even, in circumstances, the lack of observation that leads to an assumed probability. It would seem that the tested electron or photon or whatnot knows where and when you're going to look and acts accordingly odd. You dig? I'm blaming time and gravity, personally.

-Insert segueway here.-

I'm not a parent. (Is that a sigh of relief I hear?) Lately, I've been learning some of that unteachable lesson. I stood surrogate at a parent picnic full of five year old excitable collections of electrons bouncing with conversations completely comprised of "Hey!", "Hello!", and "Lookit!" and did quite well, thank you. I couldn't shake the likeness of a flock of seagulls over a morsel of bread and a fleeing tourist at the beach. They swarm and crow and scream and caw at deafening decibels. I'm told this is normal. I liked them, though, with their probing questions and wide-eyed interest and their damned selective hearing (Heisenberg had nothing on this uncertainty). The parents spooked me, however; manicured toed women all and disinterested men. I introduced myself to the teacher, thinking some thirty year old strange man at the playground might be disconcerting. I needn't have worried. I didn't even get to the first pedophile joke before she had wandered off, without bothering to feign interest or concern; no doubt busy with her job of looking busy with her job.

I wonder if my new friend would tell me that children were better mannered before Noah's flood. Socrates (who spoke better Greek than the Septuagint) told me that the youngins around him were the worst the world have ever seen. In this Georgian notch of the bible belt, students and teachers and parents are all aflutter about their poor testing on the recent standardized test to demoralize a plethora of preteens. It would seem that the state knew that the test covered things not covered in their general curriculum. So much for the parents teaching their kids a thing or two. Some adult mistrust of the government might do our children a bit of good, I think. I don't know who to blame, but there's this nagging voice in the back of my head stuttering, "School taught me good enough." Can you hear it, too? "Beats me why I ain't getting no better grades in English."

It's no surprise, I should think, that government schools fail us continually. A registered nurse stood in front of my entire junior class (well, those that bothered to show up) and averred with total honesty, "Drugs can't be no good for you; they gotta' turn your brain to mush." A teacher later told my class that he wasn't afraid of an overdose, but that he was terrified she might be the nurse to treat him.

But, I was talking about reality, wasn't I? There's evidence of a photon behaving as a particle and a wave simultaneously now (not that my Job quoting friend would buy that) and that special relativity may well be wrong (what's a theory without that relentless bitch of gravity, anyway?). The nicest theory I've found yet states that everything affects everything; that some unobserved electron on the other side of the universe has a direct correlation to an electron transmitting its charge to a chemical reaction in one of the many synapses in my head right now. It's pretty and it's neat and I like it, but I can't shake the observation bit.

It's a worthless question. I know that the five year old hand that held mine at that picnic can throw a rock and forget about it and that I can find that same rock later, its atoms and electrons in roughly the same harmony as before. I won't argue that the rock ceased to exist in the interim of his throwing and my finding. But, how far down does the real of the rock go? Can we shoot electrons at it and kill a cat? And why can't I fit words to this question?

In the meantime, I'm gonna' play with some little kids and teach them not to trust the government, their schools, or whitey, for that matter.

Currently listening : Cease to Begin By Band of Horses Release date: 2007-10-09

1:56 PM - 24 Comments - 14 Kudos - Add Comment

An unnamed magazine will not be publishing this,
Current mood: rejected
Category: Music

and with no righteous indignation from me, but, rather than leaving it to sit on its haunches, gathering virtual dust, in the dim coffers of my hard drive, I thought I'd foist on you vastly kind and unsuspecting readers.

I hope you dig at least a little.




Junkies know that the fix gets harder. Thurston Moore once said that "a hundred dollars used to be more than enough." You get older (like it or not, it beats the alternative) and you find the highs more difficult to obtain. You sneak, you creep, you search and you reach, but that thin horizon shrinks away just like time starts to roll along faster and faster, greasing its already silent wheels until you realize that nostalgia really is an art form. The old highs were the best simply because you hadn't yet learned what they were. Forget youth, newness is wasted on the young.

I know you're out there. Audiophiles with the same itching twitch as me. Our spike hitting vinyl at thirty-three and a third, wondering why it's so damn hard to find the same joy that came out of The Cure's Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Me. It's not asking much, is it? To be surprised again, wowed again? The first time I heard Concrete Blonde I wondered where the hell I was for the first album. The same for The Beta Band and Einsturzende Neubauten; for Elliott Smith and Low, for Porcupine Tree and Morphine.

I'm old enough to remember that Nine Inch Nails once sounded like a synth break-up and that Tool held promise; to remember when Korn didn't sound like any other metal, when G. Love was something else, when Soul Coughing dealt with "True Dreams of Wichita" and not "Circles". I remember Mark Sandman on stage before the self-defense, coping mechanism of Orchestra Morphine; recall Johnette Napolitano drunk on stage before the Blonde became blood on the tracks, shot the shit and some pool with the Squirrel Nut Zippers before they sang about Hell; old enough, in fact to have seen Alice In Chains during their "Man in the Box" craze and not think much of the show at all (breaks my heart now, as I never caught them during their Dirt or Jar of Flies days).

But, music makes you old, man. Have no doubt about it. You run and run; you keep up with the new ones and the odd ones, the ones that will one day be something like Elbow or Gomez, and the ones that will go the way of Tenderloin, The Jody Grind, or Granddaddy and you look up one day to see that the kids around you listen to Him and not to Hem; they can't be bothered with that mellow, slow (God help me, country) sound.

And that moment of panic comes. Am I so old?

I remember a moment when I worked in a music store (a job thoroughly unavoidable for the likes of me) when a customer asked for a band neither my coworker nor I knew of at all. "Oh, well," she said, "it's before your time." My compatriot (and erstwhile mentor) in music store rudeness responded, "I know Tchaikovsky. He was before my time. You know why I know him? 'Cause he's worth knowing."

I've become that customer. "No Orange Goblin on the books, at all? How many Soft Machine albums are you showing?" Like that lady that insists on wearing the same hair from 1978 while touring the grocery store's many aisles, I'm walking around with my spiffy new mp3 player spinning old Jesus and Mary Chain tracks, wondering just when my multi-faceted interests and mind-wide open approach flew out the window. TV on the Radio just doesn't make me throw my hands up and say Yeah! Animal collective just doesn't move me as much as that second Fruit Bats album. Tapes 'n Tapes makes me work back through my old, concert-bought b-side .45's.

Thankfully, they do surface still, stoking that spoon-fed fire of hope that is all junkies' desire. Japancakes slid under what I thought was my finely tuned radar for years and years before reddening the dropper's neck with an homage to My Bloody Valentine. The Black Lips knocked me down with "Vini, Vidi, Vici". Battles reminded me that electronic music doesn't have to be emotionless and Matmos insists still on teaching me that music is science. Joe Lally is proving that a band leading bass player doesn't have to be Claypoolish to work a little magic and out there still is the "Sad Song" pop beauty from those cat loving members of Psapp.

Any proper junkie would tell you that making do only works in a pinch; you can't subsist on it, it will never truly feed your hunger, and radio has become something of an open methadone clinic (and methadone is the death of a junkie; kicking is healthier than its substitute). Radio has become a maddening cul-de-sac in the back road searching many of the itch and the twitch neophiles of sound. I remember thinking that Mr. Bungle's "Desert Search for Techno Allah" was the future of metal until Disturbed proved me wrong. Tool's still a bastion of thrash, but A Perfect Circle has slowed the bills from my wallet on Pussifer. Death Cab for Cutie taxi'd in on major play runways, but Low still hasn't been cleared for take-off. Cat Power has found her spotlight, but Sun Kil Moon is still playing in the shadows.

Atlanta's college stations WRAS and WREK have persisted in their pusher status of peddling surreptitious goods, but the junkie, a joke of hopefulness, like Janus, looks forward and focuses behind. Any junkie worth their salt will tell you of their hey-days, of cheap shows littered with unknowns with unheard of promise and then will lament their decline. Meanwhile, younger users tout names unrecognizable and appropriately gloat on stumping their elders. China White, sure; but was it early nineties Seattle or mid-nineties UK? The eternal recurrence of the junkie is the birth of the connoisseur and the inevitable narrowing that comes with anything that might be confused with taste.

And there's the rub. What kind of music do you listen to? If that question doesn't cross your eyes with exasperated annoyance you're simply not trying hard enough. Where do The Thirteenth Floor Elevators fit between Beethoven and Barry Adamson? Is it even worth mentioning Lick the Tins or The Jody Grind? Do you even really like Diamanda Galas or Sheila Chandra, for that matter? What about that one song by Ross Golan and Molehead? Should you omit your Scatterbrain and Faster Pussycat days? Are The Beatles and Floyd a given, now? Most junkies are known less by what they like than by what they don't (and their all too true-to-form caricatures from high Fidelity), but every one of them (us) is still scouring out that other sound not heard in the world, in the street, on the radio. A junkie's only as good as his last hidden hit. By finding the unknown (s)he becomes a greater part of its creation; lamprey whores, the junkies suck out the esoteric as best it suits them. Snobbery is par for the course. Knowing four different versions of "In Heaven (Everything Is Fine)" carries with it a certain pride; "The Lady in the Radiator Song" isn't quite as exciting as mentioning Miranda Sex Garden and if somebody tosses you a Modest Mouse reference, you've always got the BBC version of the Pixies in reserve. Knowledge may be power (it's arguable that power without knowledge is de rigeur), but it's most definitely a fix.

The junkie is a funny little creature, shirking and shrugging off anything off the top forty rack; tailor fit may not hide the tracks, but it looks smarter. We're an incorrigible bunch, but pride and perseverance are their own reward. We enjoy not liking easy things. Albums that don't hit you until three spins in are gold; albums not released are pure platinum. Gluttons all, we are never sated.

Though, possibly as a cosmic compensation, with time's harrying and harrowing ascension and speed descends a certain patience unimaginable to the twelve year old that first wet his gums on that sweet smack of music. My inner junkie still sweats and shakes with DT's in times of thin, but there's an ever-growing rotation of balms and salves to soothe him through the night. Digital, burned, magnetic, and grooved, the fixes sit waiting for their inevitable call. That junkie knows best what starts a weekday for work and weekday off (which should never be confused for a weekend off); knows the proper album to smooth the course edges of a tough day; knows which tone will silence a room or start it up again, building a past as sure and as fallible as the Tower of Babel, building a future twice as unsteady as the tower at Pisa. The other face of Janus hopes that Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds tap a new vein with Dig, Lazarus, Dig and keeps on looking, searching, knowing that something new is on the horizon somewhere and he cannot wait to hear what it sounds like.

8:09 PM - 11 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

Thoughts on a scene.
Current mood: Work prepping
Category: Work prepping Writing and Poetry

There's a cold calculation in her movements as she holds him close to her breast, as she consoles and eases him towards sleep. His movements greedy and staccatoed as he returns her embrace and moves quickly to kiss her neck and mouth. These she accepts and reciprocates with a tenderness not entirely born of a lover. She knows, even now, that her body is as much a tool as her mind; her breasts and her thighs as much the care and the cure as her concern.

Her eyes too complex for thoughts and reason as he pulls down her blouse; as she moves away to free herself and holds him close to free him. This coupling, this passion deepening from the well and the weal of their sorrows; the tangle of their bodies the bleeding and leeching of bad spirits, nightmare promises, and haunting memories.

Their past and futures wedded to the godhead of this physicality, this loving consolation. Without asking of love, she knows that every woman is a mother and a lover. Every woman is a physician.

He touches on the infinite and again falls on bad dreams as she looks after his sleeping form, again like a child.

7:39 AM - 41 Comments - 13 Kudos - Add Comment

Lubricated dolls (bitching about work).
Category: Jobs, Work, Careers

The lesbians grow younger and younger and more and more prolific everyday. It’s spring break somewhere and buses off load children by the scores. They amble and shuffle in orbital clusters of confusion and bravado. They touch, they dissemble, misplace, misquote, and cackle; they sing to songs my aged brain can never place or name. They pry and quiver at my edges like a knife in an oyster shell.

Fergie has stopped spelling and some man utters gutturally while his band mate squelches behind him in a song that sounds much the same as the next one coming. I leave my coworker to watch the front beneath his purple mohawk as I walk to the back room where I find my boss on the floor, emptying eight ounces of edible lube into an inflatable woman with a large gash in her head, beside him a massacre of partly pilfered gift products and broken sex toys.

The tableau is momentarily too much. The lubrication draining viscously slow into the toes of this doll seizes me and I can’t look away. It’s like the antithesis of an epiphany and I wonder where I am and what I’m doing.

Flying for ten hours to Alaska, I remember the plane shrinking and my seat becoming too confining, my legs aching, my addictive personality wondering where the hell was that cigarette, that one-too-many drink; anything, anything at all, other than the small, hallow shell of this fuselage. I remember a pride in the dealings and the forced comfort I found. And, suddenly, I’m on a non-moving plane, distressingly sea-level and my financial obligations turn an ugly albatross as I flounder, grounded and downed; this lifeless doll rhythmically infused with lubrication before me becoming more and more an avatar of unrealized capable ability. I think of Ed Gein and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, say my piece, and back away, back to the registers, to the young lesbians, to the crowd of people I don’t understand, to the tethered airship of my compromise.

Sitting here, with my lap-dog and her spots, with my ice and its scotch, I hear Roger Waters admonishing, "You’re nearly a laugh, but you’re really a cry," and I wonder. I really do.

See me now, as I would have you see me: an intelligent adult, capable, able, accepting and acceptable, answerable, responsible, idiotically assured, masochistically flawed, who I am perceived to be, while still my perception(s) of me, and a vast amalgamation of experiences, all tragic, beautiful, worthless, and strong. Feel free to see me as I am, but, when all is said and done, I’d rather be a prosperous failure than a man plagued by lubricated dolls. Where does one go to sell out and who’s buying? The kids are quick to blame, but slow on the definitions. Can’t say I blame them, ’though; but, damn, you know? Where does our youth go?

10:21 PM - 9 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

Ego-driven ego drivel
Category: Friends

Should you like something to listen to while you read the following, this tune’s nice.




I’ve often wondered if I should feel like myself. Or, at least, more like myself.

It was inevitable that I would buy a Buddha of some sort, given my general philosophy of acceptance. My first Buddha was a whimsical purchase; a glow in the dark candle. I marveled at the redundancy of it and simply could not pass by a candle that by its very construction negated the necessity of actually lighting it. Its enlightened, iconic form was utterly erroneous, but a suitable perk, nonetheless. Soon, I found myself awash in Buddhistic gifts, books, figures, ideas, and etceteras. I find it endlessly amusing that a (seemingly) major factor in my life has been brought about by little more than a two-functioned useless souvenir (and, in Heaven, Buddha, Vonnegut, and Clark laugh with me).

Some time ago, I tried repeatedly to steal a small rubber duck from my girlfriend’s youngest child. The groovy little shit consequently gave it to me for Christmas. Since then he’s given me five more rubber ducks of varying sizes.

To date I am a fan of Buddhas, ducks, Jesuses (Jesi?), religious candles (preferably of the Latino persuasion), and owls. I know random offhand statements have made some friends of mine fans of dogs playing poker, mental retardation exploitation films, midget porn, and chick fights. And I wonder how much of ourselves is simply the perceptions of others slowly leaking in.

I’ve long known that who I am depends on who I’m with. I never told the ex-nun science teacher the two guys are fucking an owl joke (who?). But, I get older and a little farther away from the rock of identity that was me at eighteen, carelessly flippant and so self-assured. I am, more and more, your response to me.

Truth be told, I snicker a bit at Buddhists revealing the profound desire to be rid of the sense of self. Self-proclaimed egotist that I am, I’ve yet to define precisely what it is that I love about myself, or what part of me it is that loves that other part so goddamned much. The whole circle makes me laugh. It’s like dieting when you can’t tell fat from muscle. Jack Spratt and his Mrs. have a lesson if you’re looking.

"Pity this poor monster, manunkind,/ not…"

I can’t fault anybody for trying to shirk this enigmatic behemoth. I myself have shushed many an internal voice. I think, now, less of escaping (or even embracing) myself than maybe simple definition. And that’s where all the lines cross with non-related synapses and the whole thing goes swiftly to shit. The closest I get is to call myself a pattern of learned responses to stimuli. (How romantic is that? The scholar voice gets shushed in me often when he can’t find a pun, at least.)

I’ve written this blog before (albeit without the inimitably quotable and extemporaneously misplaced cummings) and got no closer to an answer than this spinning missive will find ("The wheels on the bus go round and round"). But I like the question. I like the jeering, taunting noise it makes as it flits by, both elegant and awkward. I like its arguable uselessness and seeming necessity. And I love that its myriad answers have chimerical wings and hydra heads, devouring itself like the infinite serpent, mocking and Dr Spocking philosophy. I like that I won’t believe what people will tell me it is. "Uh-uh," I’ll say. "It’s turtles all the way down."

As for me, I like Buddhas, ducks, Jesi, midget porn, all forms of exploitation films, and things of questionable taste. Care to share what your friends have made you?

8:53 PM - 19 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

Who was the Greek God of mucus?
Current mood: sick
Category: Life

I’ve got morning sickness. Everyday this week I’ve roused from fitful, truncated slumber to a head full of snot and cotton and an annoying cough that never quite kills the itch and tickle that precedes its raspy draw. Fuck all. Today my head sings in a dull, monotonous drone of a low misery; the Gregorian monks would approve, but, like Hildegard von Bingen, I’d prefer some high notes.

And thank god some industrious Ethiopian thought to grind up those beans in the highlands in the 9th century. Coffee’s been keeping me moving. You say dehydrator; I say broncho-dilator, nectar of the gods, and sweet music in a cup. Right now, my libations are black, thick, viscous, and, most certainly, not laid out for that Greek bastard Morpheus, who hasn’t been holding up his nocturnal bargains for shit lately. Once my head clears, I may throw a bucket of Kentucky Fried to Asclepius, even though these flu-relief tablets may as well be a placebo. But, that’s not quite right, is it? Placebos commonly work. Again; fuck all.

I’m thinking about blaming the barometers.

The good news is that this afternoon will find me decently enough. The snot will slow to a trickle and the cough will hide behind a façade of ease. I’ll function in the guise of a guy who seems just a bit tired and not someone who’s ready to submit himself to a nice little bout of tear gas just to clean out the sinuses. I’ll eat honest-to-god food with relish and my stomach won’t tell me to go to hell. I’ll catch a second or third wind, despite the sun hiding behind clouds like William Blake’s father of jealousy. I’ll help that groovy girl who pampered me this morning move her myriad belongings house to house. This evening I’ll open a beer and my body will tell me it’s good. I’ll smoke a cigarette and my body will know it’s poison, but accept it gratefully and I’ll amble to bed with the false hope of uninterrupted sleep. Tomorrow morning will suck. Again.

I should count my blessings. I haven’t been sick in a while and, as far as being sick goes, doing it in five hour shifts isn’t too bad, considering. I could be pulling day-long bed ridden sweats and retching over invectives; the headache could be a pounder instead of a muffled thump-thump-thump of blood vessels oxygenating; the body ache could roll up into a tense cramp and my white blood cells and serotonin could all take the weekend off, leaving me to the morbid unhealthiness of daytime tv.

I’m tired of being sick. I’m going to go blow my nose in the hopes that this time it’ll make a difference. Fuck all.

Currently listening : Fairytales of Slavery By Miranda Sex Garden Release date: 28 June, 1994

8:00 AM - 10 Comments - 5 Kudos - Add Comment

Pork chops taste good.
Category: MySpace

"Of course this land is dangerous. All of the animals are capably murderous. One must eat the other who runs free before him; put him right into his mouth, while fantasizing the beauty of his movement; a sensation not unlike slapping yourself in the face. La, la, la, la, la, la," sang a nice Jewish boy who changed his name and did copious amounts of heroin with a decent amount of fame.

"Well, we ain't sure where you stand. You ain't machines and you ain't land. And the plants and the animals, they are linked. The plants and the animals eat each other," sang some other guy ('though a goy*) who also found a measure of fame without changing his name.

I once heard an argumentative vegetarian call a morning show dj. "It's common knowledge," he started, stated, avered, "that carnivores lap their water while herbivores sip theirs. How did you have your water this morning?"
"With a steak," replied the dj.

I once had a rather large goldfish that ate brine shrimp like popcorn. Somebody told me that they're not supposed to do that. In so far as my abilities in figuring scaled joy, the fish seemed to be happy with downing the little many legged swimmers. So, I Judas shrimped many of those little fellows to their freshwater doom.

Lest the previous reference throw a shadow of senselessness, the Judas goat is employed in a slaughterhouse to lead his brethren casually to the abattoir. Incidentally, goat screams are chilling and sound remarkably like a child being torn apart with a certain viciousness. A suburbanite lady once called the police on her Latino neighbors who were butchering a goat bought for the purpose of their cookout. She was afraid the sound would scar her child. Little Clarice in The silence of the Lambs was right to have nightmares. If you've never heard that ovine howl in the presence of the fear of death, this may seem pure exaggeration. If you have heard it, you know that a cat fight is a mere squelch comparatively.

Every deer season here in the south I hear some one complain about the senseless violence of hunting. I refer them to the holy cow of India and the rigors of bovine overabundance (which leads me to the hardcore vegan who told me that drinking cow's milk is wrong. "Cow's milk is for cows." That's a logic with which I cannot argue, but I still go for a glass of calf fodder now and again).

Geese have no liver, so we force feed (or gavage, if you're checking facts) them to grow one so we can pate up some nice foi gras, which is quite fun to say, no matter what your dietary or animal rights preferences.

"Meat is murder," sang one unhappy white boy.

I can't post bulletins for some reason and I'm a little angry at the time and energy spent in formulating this worthless tidbit of information. I had some bullshit to share, but now I'm reduced to just eating crow (and pig and cow and other animals regarded as holy by someone, somewhere). Damn it all, man. Can't a man spew nonsense in whatever medium that happens to suit his fancy at whatever time?

And when did Howard the Duck become popular?




*Goy is a Yiddish term for a non-Jew male. The old joke plays out that my father was contacted to mediate a dispute between two irate Jews who refused to deal with one another. Finally sick of it all, my father said, "Enough! I'm sick of being the goy-between."

Currently listening : Who Can You Trust? By Morcheeba Release date: 24 September, 1996

10:19 PM - 6 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

MacEzra speaks stupid.
Category: Life

"Jesus died for you...and you have a call." Sorry, someone was trying to sell me Christian ringtones and I can't shake that from my head.

Charlene's done it again. She keeps making me think. She's been blogging about stupid people ( a topic that few cannot admit to an understanding or interest). My own idiocies aside, I, all too often, comment on the stupidity of people in general. I think we all do. I've known many a stupid person who talked of other stupid people and the stupid things that they've done. I've known folks with all the emotional depth of a mango offer relationship advice to someone older in the pangs of heart-wrenching angst. I've had to stop someone from trying to correct another's mistake incorrectly. (And, lest my big head not fit through this portal, let me assure you that I have been all of those people, as well. Morony may as well be listed in my hobbies.)

What I think, though, is that it's a rite of passage to look around and fear the dreadful future before the world with the upcoming generation. I believe that any self-respecting human being has to one day peer around the corner and gasp, "What the fuck is wrong with all these kids? With their pants and their velcro and their intolerable music and language and their needy heedlessness?" Socrates said it; well, something close to it, anyway. I think it's an unavoidable situation.

In high school they made me read Catcher in the Rye. I was interested, it was an iconic book, after all (still is, I suppose), but I didn't much care for it. I couldn't identify with it.* Years and years later I reread it to see if it echoed any better on the backside of my skull. It didn't, but that time through I understood why. It was an adult's attempt at childhood. In youth that didn't register for me because I thought and spake as a child. As an adult I saw it, but also saw that the two would never meet (for me, at least). Therein lies the rub. I can remember my childhood (some of it, anyway), but I can't really remember being a child. I think this is why I don't understand generation y or whatever the next ones after are called (I think I'm lumped in with generation x, but titles always make me leery).

Philosophical meanderings and alma mater remembrances notwithstanding, I have to allow for sheer numbers. More people on the planet and easier life styles make for more stupid people, more pampered people, more anything whatsoever people. There are today more stupid people alive than there ever has been before. And more smart people. I wish I knew the ratios.

You know, when the renaissance was all the rage and leeches and bleeding were on the out, while juxtaposition and secular writing were on the rise, a man could be many things (indeed, a renaissance man), but, as knowledge grew, doubled, trebled, and so on we had to form niches and create specialists. While Americans (and you can read that as fat and lazy, if you'd like to) test poorer in mathematics than just about any other country that's not ravaged by war or AIDS, they process a hundred or more times information in a day than Everyman from a hundred years ago (you may want to look that up, though; you know how I am about facts).

I saw a documentary once in which a nice scientist said, "You only find what you're looking for in nature." I like that. The queries blind and bind us and 'what's good' is such a misleading question that it's damned difficult to be able to point it out without prefacing it with what's bad (so many things are defined through their antithesis).

Personally, I think the future generations are a bunch of braying yahoos (can I get a Swiftian Amen?), but I think they'll come around; after all, my friends and I did- to some extent, at least. The world's got a way of biting you in the ass and calling you Sally that makes you learn some duck and cover moments. All learning comes from mistakes in some manner and even though he was a complete and utter asshole to Tesla, I'll (mis)quote Edison here: "I didn't learn one way to make a light bulb. I learned a hundred ways not to."





*One part appealed to me, though. He broke the goddam record. For some reason that moment still hits a note for me. I liked the loss in that bit. ..>..>

Currently drinking : Bombay Sapphire Distilled Dry Gin Distilled in Cheshire, England Recipe established 1761

10:20 PM - 10 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

Instant karma is going to get you.
Current mood: Schadenfreudian, I suppose.
Category: Schadenfreudian, I suppose. Life

I was at the mall, smoking, therefore, outside. Fifteen years ago I would have had to make specific mention of my location. Fifteen years ago you could stand on the second floor of the mall and blow smoke into Bubble Magic bought at the dollar store for a dollar to the floor below and watch the smoke billow outward when the bubbles burst on the tile beneath you (it was something of a hobby). Fifteen years ago smoking was only a secondary detriment next to my youth. Oh, Jesus, I just realized it was longer than fifteen years ago. The problem with getting older is that you just keep on doing it.

Anyway, I was outside when I saw some kid with his friend, their backs to me, stop a passing car and flip her off, vehemently, first with one, then both hands. Two fingers of ten (or of eight, if you're counting that way) raised defiantly and proudly. He lifted and lowered them alternately to be sure that she understood he was telling her to fuck off. Then, while walking away, he pushed them closer to her to be certain she saw them still. Despite the fact that few monologues endeavor so hard on so simple a point, he then lowered his pants and mooned her, his lily-white ass hanging out of his shorts. He ass-cracked a fifty-odd year old woman who had done nothing but stopped from hitting him with two tons of slowly moving steel.

I could hear nothing of the whole altercation, the distance allowing the assurance of his reflective skin, but doing nothing for the carry of his voice, but I'm certain he was mouthing astoundingly amazing invective statements. He looked like that kind of fuck-tard. (You know the kind, some fifteen years or more younger and much, much more clueless than you ever were.)

The lady drove on, stoically. Shame. I wish she'd seen what followed.

Goofy bastard (or, if you prefer, the fuck-tard mentioned above) and his friend amble slowly in pants still too low to their ride which turned out to be a truck with a tool box on the back. I had no book so I watched behind my sunglasses and underneath my hat (did I tell you I found a hat? Finally. It's a comfy, rugged type; wool, with a wide brim. It's like a fedora on an action-adventure. I'm quite fond of it). Once at the truck they start screwing around with the tool-box doing something while not letting slide their relative cool, when the friend closes the box suddenly eliciting a scream from glow-ass, who still has his hand inside the steel box. His scream of pain actually reaches me across the distance (apparently his vehemence wasn't quite as vehement as his victimization).

Bad Buddhist that I am, I delighted in his discomfort. I enjoy it still, with no qualms or guilt. Here's to folks that don't show their ass erroneously. Yes may have Seen All Good People, but I got to see the dumb one get hurt. I dig that (maybe too much).




This song has nothing to do with anything. I just like it.

Currently reading : The Dark Tower (The Dark Tower, Book 7) By Stephen King Release date: 29 August, 2006

7:54 PM - 22 Comments - 16 Kudos - Add Comment