Higher Resolutions

I've started this on four separate occasions and every time I've tried to get this down it has come apart in my fingers like tissue paper in a squall.

In an effort to raise the resolution of my waking life I'm cutting some things out that were essential to a life with clear boundaries. Higher resolution will mean the destruction of the bridge as much as I've loved it.



And now everything that I was going to write about why I came to the conclusion that my waking life was too far out of resolution is being called into question because there really was nothing wrong with it beyond health concerns? I guess. I don't think my extremities have been holding heat all that well. Probably a circulation thing. Random shoulder pain like pinched nerves. And pain whenever I breathed. So I guess that's pretty much it. Otherwise it's been perfect. A perfect separation of faith and solid state. Two land masses and a definite bridge I can cross at will. What more could a person want?

Not much, I don't think. So the thing is, I guess, I have to choose between a slow-ish death with a flux capacitor or the unpredictability of an unmediated existence. Which do I hate more? Hard to say. There were several days when I felt like my liver was climbing up through my throat and tearing my kidneys out with it and that pain was real and describable and diagnosable. There were several days before that, however, when the only logical solutions to the anxiety and rage and hallucinations involved jamming a pen knife up my nose until it cut through my frontal lobes and bricked my brain entirely. One costs money. Not as much as pills, but money none the less. The other is free.

So I'm going the free route. Partially because I have to, but also because my body hurts and I'll just have to suck up the turbulence associated with - lost it again.

It's like a light switch turning off. Clarity. Sanity. I don't want higher resolution. Things make less and less sense the clearer they become and I don't know if I can take it. I'm afraid of it. I'm terrified of it. I don't want to be conscious of time. I don't want to know the seconds and the minutes. If I let up on the gas and stop tearing through these wilderness roads without a map or a dog I'll start to see and feel the things between the trees that would snap my femur in their jaws like a finger in a car door and I already know what's there and I don't need to find out. People talk about stopping to smell roses and things and I don't need to. Maybe they do, but there aren't things out there trying to kill them.

I've liked the balance. Sure it's come at a cost, but that cost is unavoidable whether I'm paying out of life span or paying out of wallet. I don't want to hear the whispers in the trees. I want it to fade. I don't want to manage the caucus and round up the bits and pieces and make sure everything's working together and with the usury I didn't even have to think about it. It's all clawing back and it's like ... I don't want this. That's all. I don't want this, but in this world this is the ground state. Low resolution let's me look straight through it and even forget where and when I'm standing altogether. It's not a pain killer as much as it is a liberator or an oxygen mask in an ocean of shifting and violent shapes. So much maintenance. Higher resolution means going back to a life geared toward maintenance instead of geared toward being. I don't want that.

I guess I envy the people can simply wake up and be and never have to think about. Do other people have to deal with this stuff? Maybe that'll be me. I know it won't, but it's fun to say. No, it's not even fun to say. Some people dream about being rich or famous. These days I just dream about normalcy. I'm not different. I'm not special. There's nothing magical or glossy. I'm just damaged, and it takes so much work to get back to zero everyday only to wake up in the red in so many ways every day thereafter. Yes it can be spun and bright spots found, but to hang onto those requires so steep a reduction in resolution as to make life beyond stupid bliss unmanageable.

I want out. Maybe out will mean nothing, but how long is long enough? 25 years. 26 years. 40 years. How long do I have to search for a solution to this thing. How long do I have to spend looking for a way to understand how to interact with this world in a way that can make sense from one set of hours to the next or looking for ways to explain the decoupling of emotion, and action, and laughter, and violence, from reason or explain the terrors of things people call imaginary and hallucinations, but are sometimes real as sunlight in my eyes. I just want out, but I'm forced instead into higher resolutions.





Sorry for the ramble. Maybe it'll make sense years from now. Minutes from now. What's the difference really?

///Mum - "They Made Frogs Smoke 'Til They Exploded"

I Don't Think I'll Ever Get Used to Being Alive

Its been some time, I know,but I've been thinking about you mostly along with some other things. Quite honestly I don't think I'll ever get used to being alive. How about you?

///Junkie XL - "War" Saturday Teenage Kick shifted my musical landscape overnight. If you haven't listened to it, it's an album that is best heard from start to finish before calling out individual tracks. It's an album that uses the entire LP as the canvas and it came out in '97 when creation was the name of the game and even amongst the stand outs of the late 90s this one will stick with you just that little bit more.

I suppose I... no I don't believe so... I've thought about so many things and I know I should have been telling you about them and I haven't and that's my fault and I'm sorry. I'll try and get it together, but this place is so foreign. Everyday I open my eyes I feel like... feel like what? I don't think I'm a monster, but I suppose most monsters probably don't. Trying to see where the ocean ends and the new world begins, but it's all sea water and I don't know what it means.

dear (______):

Dear Microsoft,

I lolled at your phone commercial. Awesome show. Great job.

Fruits of a Labor and Where We Left the Bodies

I drew some pictures for you. I like the colors. I was in a kind of bloody soil mood and the taste was not to be denied so I didn't.

I don't know what to say today. It happens. I don't really know what I'm thinking tonight either, but I'm doing it with clothes on. Oh there it is. Found what I was asking for. There really is a certain security in sleeping with clothes on. It's a completely different quality of sleep. I feel a real security in the closeness of the clothing that at the same time can grow to be entrapping. Whatever. That's kind of stupid. When I sleep with clothes on I get hotter and hotter and then my dreamworld flies seriously out of whack and scary things happen in there and, not that I've been able to exercise control over the individuals and things that happen, but what security I do feel in the reality of the landscape dissolves into chaos.

Across the bridge of consciousness, the ground is just as firm and even more comforting in its expansiveness and unrestricted isness. Much more so than here. I prefer to be there. So when things get screwed up there by what happens here it becomes particular upsetting. Especially when the solution is as easy as taking off my pajamas and going back to sleep. Because the only limitation on the place is that I can't be there forever, I can't get stuck there like I get stuck here, its particularly aggravating to end up wasting valuable time. Its enraging.

At any rate, the public transportation there is strange. Not really screwy as much as it is that things come and go on the subway system that I sometimes prefer not to meet or see. Usually everyone minds there own business. I never used the trains there by myself because whenever I do I end up getting lost. Just the other day I spent the entire time I was there lost in the subway system. At one point I got so sick of trying to get the right train I climbed down off of the platform and decided to walk it and I don't know if those trains run at the speed of sound or what, but it took me five hours to walk between train stops and then, of course, by the time I got back to the stop I wanted near the apartment complexes I nearly get my legs cut off by the train I was tired of waiting for. I think that's really my only complaint about the place.

I was thinking about the best way to burn down a house with the people inside it without giving them a way out. It would take a lot of effort. It wouldn't be easy for the logistics of a floor plan and unless they were stone asleep they would probably hear you hoofing around in the grass with your arson kit and caboodle. Definitely low on the list of ways to solve problems.

We're altogether now and I'm happy for that. I hope it lasts forever, but I know it won't. Actually that's not even true. I don't hope it lasts forever. It just felt like the right thing to say to express the glowing feeling in the pit of my stomach. I know things have died up there in my head. But when they die they don't get buried. There's no cemetery up there. I should probably take care of that at some point. I wonder if that's the thing. When you finally die it's because your head is full of bodies and there's no more space for anything else to live. The casualties, relationships, dreams, efforts, ideas, whatever, all the bullshit that mattered to you and no one else that no one, including you, could resurrect with Dr. Frank and a million volts of Earth's pulse pile up and some people bury them one by one and some people have to bury them in mass graves, but they're there. I'm just glad they don't talk too.

The poetry has cut off in a new direction that I'm enjoying. It's stumbled on a rhythm I'm rather liking. Answers are as far away today as they were yesterday, but I'm not really looking for specifics anymore. I'm not sure if I should be. It's not that I want to care about concrete details of living a life, it's that I already care so much about things that so often stand defiant in the face of description and I'm focused on trying anyway because that's what is worthwhile. Maybe it's what I'm here for. That should count as something important. The cats came back. In lesser numbers this time. There was a day I thought I could see individual molecules of air. Turns out it was a whole bunch of blood vessels in my oculars. Is that a word? Things here would probably be so much more important if things across the bridge weren't equally so.



No fruits of the labor yet. Or maybe there is and I just have no idea where it lands. At any rate I'm content to keep doing dream work where the wild things are. Where up is up and down is down and I'm remembered by the people I've seen and I can go anywhere and the only limitation is my body and sometimes not even that.

Still planning the suicide diary. I know right. It is taking forever. I'm not putting it off. I just haven't been here to do it. Promise.

///Unkle feat. Big In Japan - "The Answer" ...perfect weather...

Take it Down a Notch and Classroom Politics

Does the word "it" get capitalized in that title. I'm not totally sure, but I don't think so. So what's new today that was not news yesterday? Not a whole lot. Trying to keep the language clean as a habit. The F word was mingled in there two sentences ago, one sentence before this one, and I had to perform a mental edit. I guess the thing about the mental editing is that while I may be making myself more readable I feel like I am nailing doilies to walls that I have clearly punched holes in to hide the fact that there was an extremely violent outburst and it feels stupid to do. Almost as stupid as dancing with myself in a tutu in the mirror and pretending that I, outside of the mirror, am not wearing one. That was too much.

So the poetry has gotten a little out of hand this week. This is true and entirely my own fault. Or actually, I should say, entirely my chemistry's fault. I had nothing to do with it. I should be so fortunate as to be able to assemble and plan days of literary vomit, and the thing is some of it really is just vomit, but the best thing about throwing up is that the only thing left when your bled out is the thing that matters the most. The thing that giving up in words takes away from your interior and is thus valuable beyond price tags or comparisons or in any other way that value can be assigned except in time and energy lost (the purest value).

I was thinking the other day about models of punishment and something occurred to me (I hate spelling that word). Do you remember in elementary school when the teacher would hold the entire class responsible for some little shits antics? Do you remember how no amount of collective loathing changed his ways and more often than not had the opposite effect on the little shits reasoning? I still do. I still remember not being allowed to line up for recess until everyone shut the hell up and there was always that one bastard who just would not shut his mouth and the teacher would let us go after half of the recess was gone out of sheer pity for what he/she thought the repercussions might be. Sometimes, thinking about that, I wonder if he/she would have ever let us go if she knew that unlike the 40s or 50s or whatever older and more violent and more liberal years he/she grew up in (in terms of acceptable violations of the myth of personal space) the little bastard did not receive any sort of mobocratic beat down. Sometimes the world today feels that way.

Somehow it seems that everyone should be holding someone responsible for their behavior that is damaging everyone's ability to go to recess on time, but no one does. I don't know why that it is. I guess the thing about it might be that "how far is to far" comes into play. If someone bullies you but they never make you cry and then you eventually take the time out of your day to beat the hell out of them and kick their limp body into a puddle of mud is that too far? Your cumulative suffering is still probably greater than their momentary shaming. Isn't that not going far enough. Sorry Brian. I still fucking hate you. If I ever build a time machine rest assured one of my stops will be 6th grade, Maryland, south Bowie, 12:15, my fist, your fucking face. Sorry. I just hate how that whole idea of every member of the group is responsible for every other member of the group has been and continues to be twisted in on itself in perverted ways that make the workplace hell and how it starts at so young an age that it's difficult to imagine any other way for things to be.

I'm taking the poetry down a notch from this week. I basically doubled my output in one night as a result of ... I'm not sure. It happens from time to time. Things just blow out of me like a shotgun to the back at point black range and I actually do apologize. Stability is the cornerstone of something. Just nothing I make. Here's a one liner for your next cocktail party: stability needs capitalism like capitalism needs classim. Haw. Get it? Do you see what I did there? Okay, bye :)

///Aphex Twin - "Bucephalus Bouncing Ball" I am playful tonight in ways I wish I could feel every single night of my life and share with the universe and it's bastard long faced serious denizens who think so much of .... wow that turned really angry. I am playful tonight. Stop. Love you, Aphex.

p.s. I'll draw you a picture next time.

dear (______):

Dear New York City news media,

I care as much about the Yankees in a post season as I do starving children in the heart of Africa. They both are the product of terrible systemic problems. They both will cost millions of dollars to fix from one year to the next. They will both work themselves out to a point where no one will care again. And they will both have the same terrible systemic problems next year. Yes, there's drama, but how much of it is real and how much of it is picking at a sad scab for the sake of watching it bleed until it scabs over again?

Beautiful Image and Music Launch (@ Factory Lube)

Hai,

I've got something special for you today :D "The Music that Makes the Living" is the music chronicling blog. I tried to make a feed of last.fm and it didn't track it over time. So this will. That's it. the background was more difficult to make than I thought it would be and then it took another hour to set up the colors to play nice with it, but easy isn't worth wasting time on. Had to hit the dimmer switch. The original was like a unicorn came on an automated welding machine. Which was awesome, but unreadable. And easy isn't worth doing unless it's video games. Hard video games make me want to kill other people. Next up is suicide diary. Productivity is sometimes it's own reward. Spoken like a truly conceited fuck. I definitely take that back. Sometimes distraction is it's own reward. And that reward is only as good as the alternative is potentially bad. That is what I meant to say. Suiterate.

///Four Tet - "Love Cry"

dear (______):

Dear corporate world,

Remember when major sporting events and venues had names that actually related to the history and tradition of the event and venue?

I hate you (with a passion (because you are so stupid (it makes my body hurt (that and the drinking (which is largely because of the twilight zone you've created (thanks (but not really (because you'll never have to live in it (suit jacket idiots)))))),

xo

The Fall and Collective Effort and No Cussing This Time and Craigslist (Again)

Do you ever get the feeling that you're falling and then it changes to a feeling of being pulled into the jet wash of a landing airliner feet first and then you realize that the ground isn't moving, but the sky is and you get sick anyway and you fall face first onto your front lawn and dry heave for ten minutes and then realize that you probably should have just stayed inside to begin with?

I get that feeling sometimes.

So tell me, would you tell me if I had a really bad idea? No? Great. So I was thinking about writing MF Doom a letter and including in that letter a proposal to become his intern. Would that be crazy? I think so. What if I wrote a letter to every artist and writer I admire with a similar proposal. I don't really want to make money as much as I want the opportunity for exposure and guidance.

I was also thinking about using craiglist to find friends. I think I mentioned that before. Maybe I'll meet a murderer. That would be interesting. Probably bad news, but interesting. I mean, I wouldn't be going out specifically to get murdered, but I'm not entirely sure I'd be completely opposed to it either. Maybe I'll try and use it to move my wares.

A friend of mine is kicking my ass to write a novel. I started one. I'm about 8000 words in. I'm not sure I'm going to finish it. No, scratch that. I am going to finish it. The problem is that I don't particularly care about the characters. It doesn't make it that much more difficult to write. It just doesn't make it that much more interesting.

Now that I'm back together I was expecting sunshine to come flooding back in, but it hasn't. I'm not really sure if anything else is really missing. I was thinking about emailing my old professors to show them my work and ask for pointers. I emailed them once before and they basically unanimously panned my plea for assistance. It was shocking. I don't think I've really recovered from that. What lesson could they possibly be trying to teach me by not responding at all? Well, there was one response. The response was essentially a non-response, but a statement of non-response. I can respect that. I think.

I've noticed a warmth in my skin. I can't tell if it's just the sensation of my blood flowing against the temperature difference of my cold muscles or if it's just feeling warm. I can see why they wanted to put me on medication. It's not like I don't need it. I also wonder if 30 will be any different. One thing that has stood out over the last few days is that I've been living in a situation where everyone tells me to do something other than what it is I know I am built to do and do well. I think I will still make the suicide diary and the music hit list. I'm thinking about moving north and the ways in which I can make that happen. I want to order sex toys. Actually, so I was considering posting to craigslist about my thoughts on a cross country migration. I don't want to move to Pittsburgh until I'm completely ready to die there.

I keep talking about craigslist, but I haven't done anything about it have I? Well I will. I did some drawing today. Do you like it? I kind of do. I cleaned up my language today too. I miss the hospital. They were so constructive there. And I earned the right to stay up past 9:30 to watch the video of soothing sounds and star fields by going to start your day group everyday for two weeks. I even put together a jigsaw puzzle. I got a sticker for that. Not even joking, it was a pretty awesome feeling. What day is it? Remember that song that was all about little things the narrator learned through his life? That song got played so much it became sickening.

I sent an accidental email. No response on that either. Maybe I'll shoot an email to my old therapist. He always knows when to shut the hell up. Pardon. Sometimes I wonder if I'm dragging my feet about writing because I know when I have nothing left to say I'll very likely not put up with the hassle of occupying my body. I ran through a handle in 4 days. I'm going to make a terrible father. Well, maybe not. I slept with the lights off after I stiff night of drinking. It was the first time in a while. I've been thinking about winning a writing fellowship for some time. There's a certain validation of efforts that comes from winning. There's a certain confirmation in other people telling you "yes, go forth and do this thing because you've earned it". What I've come to realize is that I'm in one. It's not ideal. It's not glamorous. It's full of distractions. The desk is terrible but, it's my desk, and it's glamor enough, and distractions are inevitable. It's my fellowship.

In my dream last night I got into an argument with someone about the word 'suiterate'. It's not a word, but the guy made a very good case. The odd thing was as we were arguing and for some reason smoking cigars while we walked the streets at midnight near the el trains, a cat, a Tabby, came tearing down the street in a motorized shopping cart that couldn't have been more than a foot tall. The little guy was really moving and the man I was talking to about the possible uses of a word like 'suiterate' had to jump out of the way as this thing came screaming past us and took a hard left. We both stood there for a while and then went on arguing as we walked down the middle of a street. It wasn't all that strange.



At any rate, I should go to sleep and try to eat in the morning. I don't know when I started to hate eating food, but I've lost a ton of weight. Used to be 189 and now I'm 170. It blows and I hate doing it, but I have to make myself eat so I can wake up and do things. I love dreaming. I hate being awake. I love you. That's why I keep on. Hoping for some hokey conclusion to whatever this thing has been.


///Way Out West - "The Fall" I don't know if I listed this track already, but it is close to my heart. "And I miss you most of all, my darling, when Autumn leaves start to fall." To my ex, I do miss you most of all though I realize it was as realistic an expectation for success as gunning for snow in mid August. The lyrics are actually from some other older song, but they play well with the, in my opinion, conservative engineering effort. No deafening use of reverbs. No auto-tones. No wind chimes. It gets a little mundane in the mid stretch, but in the end it rewards the listener with a beautiful vocal break. I look forward so much to the taste of winter air and this song in my headphones and melancholy that is so much sweeter, so much more palatable, than the bitterness of the real and present nothing.

How Long Does it Take to Spot a Terrible Idea

Four hours. Exactly four hours and twenty eight minutes.

will work

got an idea

maybe a bad one


pro bono lyricist?

yes. starting now. craigslist.

going there tomorrow

My Dream House and Suicide Letters

My dream house will have a room dedicated to smashing things and cutting myself.

My dream house will have an incredible gun room that will double as an art exhibition plaza.

I'm thinking about starting a suicide diary.

There are a lot of things in this world that I do not understand.

I found my missing piece. It was in the candy factory. I don't go there often, but if I'd thought about the mystery from the simplest viewpoint that would have been the first place I looked.

I've been gone for a while again, but this time it was an unscheduled departure.

It's been difficult not nailing my hand to my desk with the very nice knife I bought at Target. The thing is beautiful. I cut some french fries with it the other day.

I've been poking my fingers into my stomach. I'm thinking about hammering the paring knife into my temple. I think it wouldn't hurt so much that I'd fail at it. I suppose the main thing stopping me from killing myself of late is the threat of a misfire. The last thing I would want is to somehow screw it up and be a conscious veggie. The second thing stopping me is... what is the second thing?

The second thing is the fact that suicide letters never go well. I mean no matter how well they are composed they are without fail twisted and contorted in the post mortem to whatever ends and perceptions the readers had of the writer before the writer of the suicide letter opted out of the bullshit of... what the hell am I talking about.

Case in point: nope no case in point.

I was thinking about writing a will again. I did that once a while ago.

Isn't it hilarious that a Confederacy of Dunces is sometimes painted as a rags to riches story? Am I the only one laughing about that? I mean he's dead. Seriously? You're going to paint it as a fruitful suicide? Is there such a thing? If I killed myself right now and my shit got published I wouldn't read it. Or would I? Self deprecation. Self defenstration. Is that even spelled correctly. God, I hate myself so much. I want to grab my face and just rip a piece off and eat it. Why the fuck did the Army reject me. I fucking hate them. I want to go back in time and fucking attack that son of a bitch on the bus. He was talking so much shit about cripps and bloods and gangs and fags and the least natural thing, while he threw kicks in the air and cussed and spat, was to sit and do nothing. All I wanted to do was fight him. Sure I would have lost because I'm horribly out of shape and haven't thrown a meaningful punch in months, but God damn it.... that's what I was made for. I just wanted to push him right through the wind shield. Grab his fucking nuts and rip them right off his fucking body. God damn it. Fuck Jesus. I am so angry at the fiction of heaven. I am so angry at television. I am so angry at the time that's been stolen from me. What the hell am I happy about? Maybe I'll go to jail. Was there something else? I'm considering committing myself again. I clearly do not belong here. But, the main thing. Does anyone else hear bagpipes? The main thing is. What the hell is the main thing.

There is no main idea here.

Oh wait there is.

Two things actually.

First thing is I'm going to track my last.fm on a separate bloggy thingy. Stupid. Who cares. I know. Not going down that road and don't care to argue. Second thing is every day I don't kill myself I will say why. Also silly. But it'll make me feel like less of a lazy bastard if I do. Third thing. Language. Fucking 'A' I have got to clean that up.

Fourth thing. Jesus Christ, the third Matrix was awful.

Oh yeah, fifth thing.

Kid Rock. I have distilled your song writing algorithm. See below:

America + freedom + woman who left you + freedom - meaning + horses +

nope stopped caring halfway through. Do not give a shit. Fuck you Kid Rock. Baseball was better without you. Put your fucking shirt back on. I hate you. Please die in a motorcycle accident with a cutlery truck. God damn it. Fucking fuck. Is it bad to send people Christmas gifts with your blood. I was thinking about just mailing a baggie of my blood to someone for Christmas. I almost did that once and the girl yelled at me for thinking it. Well actually I lied. I cut myself up and put the blood on paper and had it in an addressed envelope and she told me it would be the same as her mailing me her period blood so I didn't. I don't see how the two would be similar.

I don't know. I'll probably do it anyway.

Is it possible to drink to protect others from

From what.

Who is out there? There's a cat in my room. Well maybe not a cat. I don't know what the hell it is. I've been trying to break a rib to see what it feels like. Multi-fail. I'm pretty sure I punched a hole in my GI tract though. Too much coffee. It'll suck to die of sirosis. Or however the hell it's spelled.

I was going to connect with former co-workers but the half of me that knows that they wouldn't like me if they actually knew me won out so I left them alone.

Happiness is contagious, but axioms are bullshit.

I just want winter.

That's what I want.

Winter.

dear (______):

Dear Montell Williams,

You look high as a motherfucker in your ad for payday loans. Just sayin'.

Whiskey Short and the Newer Braver World and No, Haven't Found Him

My brain has been white washed. There's nothing there. It's like somebody came in for lunch and took the furnishings with them when they left after dinner while I was in the bathroom. Today I kept laughing at the thought of a "race" of Asians. Is that the right nomenclature for that? It just made me think of a race of mole men. A race of super men. And all the other races of things that have graced headlines over the years.

It's amazing really. The only way to honestly cope with this new situation has been to dull my awareness of everything outside of it until the sole focus becomes the situation. If I make myself into this thing that exists for 18 hours out of the day then the thing that exists for the remaining 6 ceases to be and the conflict is resolved. Sure some blood gets shed, but Stalin's cohort put it best about the eggs and omelets and things before they got executed. At least I think I remember them doing that. Is there anything sexy about living in 1984? What about a Brave New World? I think the answers to those two questions are no and yes in no specific order. That's how life becomes manageable. If you think about it the best way to end a struggle is to simply eliminate one half of the combatants. Certainly if the struggle is what perpetuates the combatants lives than you'll end up with genocide by that logic. If you kill off everything you're fighting against you'll have to generate new things to fight against from within you.

In a society more interested in peace than war, I suppose eliminating one half of the disagreeing parties would be a means to an end. If there's no one to argue against then there's no argument. Plain and simple. The hardest part about figuring out where I fit into my own life now that my life is 75% owned by a company that wouldn't give two shits if I died by getting gutted by industrial meat hooks as long as they weren't liable to pay for damages or my funeral is trying to figure out if I'm worth eliminating or if the company is what needs to be eliminated.

Someone sent me a jesus themed text message yesterday. In fact someone else sent me a text message with the words "i hope and pray things turn out." What the fuck does that even mean. I'm sorry, excuse my language. I'm just wretchedly upset right now having recalled that second text message. Here's an idea: lets not hope, lets stop praying, and lets start doing. I am so sick and tired of hearing that bull about hopes and prayers and "I've been there before, I know excatly what you're going through"s. How about we simply appraise the situation from a logical, rational standpoint. How about societal compression. How about GDP that won't quit, but somehow wages don't keep pace with inflation or cost of living (are those the same things). How about getting more bang for your buck and the actual cost of that extra bang you're getting. The bottom lines at companies that somehow don't seem to rise nearly as quickly as profit margins.

I know everyone wants to succeed and somebody will get the short shrift (I'm full of slanted definitions today, but I hope that's the right word). At any rate, I guaran-damn-tee you the bullshit expected of some of the formerly menial jobs that have somehow crept up in demographic from appropriate for teens as a base to appropriate for 40 year olds with 6 years of experience as their base, suck more and leave less humanity in the shells of the bodies daily broken open to sell you your fucking bottle of snapple quickly and efficiently is more than what was required when you, mr. 50 year old been there done that, were punching spring loaded keys on a giant slab of plastic and metal with ink ribbon.

And I haven't found him yet. The motor is still going, but I'm just trying that much harder to hold it down no matter how much it knocks around and wrecks up the place. The week of industry came. The week of industry went. And to show for it, all I have for you is a stilted diatribe about work and a partial understanding of things that don't actually exist and a burning urge to take the steel to good use on the neighbors. Do not fucking talking to me you fucking fuck I will kill you. It's becoming more and more amazing sometimes how thin the tethers can get that hold me to a behavior steps away from thought patterns born into my infrastructure and known better and more intimately than anything learned and what's next. I'll dig them out yet.

That picture. That picture up there? It's a short whiskey. Apple top. Try it. You'll love it too. I want to feel like I should say it's the only thing that makes me feel really warm and fuzzy these days, but I'd be flat lieing if I did. And California totally sucks. Mainly because it's still twilight and happy and balmy there and I hate them for that. That's the real reason why the east coast is more pissed off than the west coast. The east coast knows. The west cost pretends to not know. Screw California.

///Wildchild - "The Wonder Years" I just wish I knew.

Worst Song Ever, Part 3:

Worst song ever # GHQQPXC1333298K6 Moby - Whispering Wind:

I suppose I probably shouldn't go as hard on people as I do when it comes to creative production mainly because I am so familiar with the inherent problems in content generation, especially when the requirement of said generation is that there be a certain amount of freshness. In fact I almost feel bad even including this because I know that every artist has a certain thematic vein that runs through their careers and even the widely disparate U.N.K.L.E albums do have a certain genealogy to them that is absolutely traceable from one offering to the next even though the actual sounds appear on their surface to be absolutely different. This song by Moby is almost able to fit itself into that thematic category. Where does it fall short? Everywhere. I even don't even feel the urge to describe so bland a thing here. In fact, even talking about it here has made this entry extremely bland. And now I hate myself for allowing myself to be distracted by so bland a blanding. I've been blanded. God damn it. I have to undo this. Immediately. But how??? Shuffle button. Clicking. Searching.

I once talked to a friend of mine about the symbolism of the search and shuffle buttons in music players and their usage. He basically told me I was complicating what amounts to a human impulse that is no more or less than the urge to stuff our faces when we're hungry and drink when we're thirsty. There's no subtext. It's simply the satisfaction of a basic impulse to feed our brains with variety. I'm inclined to believe him. I took some convincing back then, but I came on board. I still think he's probably correct.

I suppose the main thing is I'm standing at the edge of the abyssal plain again and trying to distract myself from another night of searching, but I know I have to go down there and look for my missing part whether I like it or not. He's still out there. He hasn't come back yet. I feel ridiculous going through the motions as though things are okay when they're not. I don't want to go. I'm lolly gagging. Just come back! I wish I could say that and make it happen, but I have to go and look. What's the plan then? Where do we industrialize? Bits. That's where. Maybe not. That might be shooting too high. I am so fucking angry right now. If I didn't need my face I would cut it up like a ham. Smash my keyboard into it till the keys stuck in my skin. Thinking about carving up my stomach again. It's getting hard to convince myself not to. Not hard as much as its becoming more unreasonable not to. I don't get it. What's inside of there. I want to turn out my pockets so bad.



///The Future Sound of London - "Vit Drowning / Through Your Gills I Breathe"

Missing Parts and the Person I've Never Met

It's official. Well, let me start off by saying I got very little done while I was away. Now, let me continue by saying, it's official: industry week. Not that I'm trying to make up for anything, because there's nothing to be made up for. I set off toward the horizon with the hopes of finding something and I didn't find it. What's more is I lost a member of my party. So now I'm out almost a week's good night time hours and I failed to make the creative shift and a part of me is still out there in the field and I haven't seen him in days and I'm a little bit worried because I'm heading toward a break and I need to know where everyone is before things come apart because trying to find them afterward is like trying to pick through a trailer park after a hurricane looking for a wallet. I know he's probably fine out there by himself, but I'm not fine in here by myself.

I know exactly when it happened too. He just ran off like a scared horse and I tried to convince him to stay, but that was about as successful a conversation as trying to hang on to a wet dog's tail. Now the sun doesn't come up. I've been looking for him nonstop since Friday, but even that effort has been too big a strain and parts are starting to rattle off and cease to respond and it would normally be a good thing, but the problem is that the things falling apart are the safety switches and breakers and in his absence things are fusing that shouldn't fuse and power is rerouting to things that should not be powered on for extended periods of time and suggestions are turning into directives and the committee is taking sides and no one is telling me what the hell is going on and every time I shut down and restart new things are there that shouldn't be there and there's nightly work being done without authorization. I have to get him back.

But, anyway... I don't think that's what I meant to say. What I meant to say is that this week is a week of industry and productivity. The factory floor is bleak. It feels hollow. I can hear my footsteps echoing in there and I don't like being there with who's still here. I feel like I'm working on something I shouldn't be. Like I'm building weapons, and they're calling them toasters and oven parts and slides for cabinets, but I know what they are. But, I have nowhere else to work.



I fell asleep with the TV on the other day. My dreams were horrible. They started off well enough, but violence came with a fury so unexpected I fell out of bed and hit my head on the closet door. I crawled back under the covers anyway, but that didn't last.



Eventually I was sideways again with the lights off and the television on and half covered. I couldn't go back to sleep. There were things waiting for me there so I sort of just stared at the ceiling for a while. Then I held my hand up and blotted out the tv screen and admired my lines. I like them. Then it occurred to me how lovely the moment would have been if someone else were there. If someone else left the tv on and went out somewhere at 2 AM and didn't want to wake me and I thought about how sweet it was of that person to be so kind as to not wake me as they went and oddly enough I felt loved by the blank blue glow. I didn't go back to sleep after that. I didn't turn the tv off either.

///Amorphous Androgynous - "Goodbye Sky" dreaming at the edge of this world

Structural Irregularities

Are being hammered out. Trying to front load four hours of creativity into my day and it's been like trying to pack hundred pound boxes into a moving truck with my pants around my ankles. Which is to say, horribly difficult. But I am and will keep trying until I turn from a night owl into a night owl completely out of phase and happy to be so. I won't ask you to stay tuned. That's just selfish. I won't tell you to check back often. That's even worse. So how about this:



///Sarah Vaughn - "Lover Man (Remix)" I'll be thinking of you.

dear (______):

Dear Morning Birds,

I know I give you a lot of shit, but it's only because you never tell me who and what else is on the itinerary and some of your guests and most of your plans are highly suspect.

Anger Blankets and Arguing with Foreigners on Trains

I don't know. Great start right. Actually, what I said specifically was "I dunno." Blanket anger. I've had several arguments with a man from Ghana. It started off innocuous enough. He's only a year old than me, but he looks 18. At any rate, we were going back and forth about the source of American English and whether or not it was rooted in a rebelliousness borne of the revolution that lead to the Declaration of Independence or if it was the symptom of a liberal society. Things got minced and, in my opinion, he started crossing up his own perspectives of unrelated American culture with the point of the argument and rage was subdued by confusion and ill placed seconds of laughter that lead to him chalking up my perspective to general american rambunctiousness and uncouth manners (Ghana's still pretty fresh off of British everything. Boo U.K. and Ghana, but especially the U.K. ............. and especially Bart. Had to throw that in. Sorry (but not really). I don't know. Devolving. Angry. Let's play word associations. Blankets. Anger. Ambiguity. Television. Rage. Work. Time. Dissolution. Anger. Dilution. Failure. Success. Cups. Rates. Money. Failure. Dreams. Existence. Nihilism. Existence. Existentialism. Reading. Alternates. Time. Work. Conflict. Existence. Time. Hate. Distance. Company. Companies. Cigarettes. Industry. Costs. Work. Conflict. Time. Urine. Permission. Silence. Rage. Rage. Rage. Blankets.

I am, in short upset with an omnidirectional upsettedness that is killing my ability to make words and I think sanity is suffering and all I want to do is laugh and the desire is overriding common sense in the placement of that laughter and its ripping out of me like a chainsaw with a broken throttle in hands covered with olive oill and all I want is for the whole thing not to fly out of my grip, but everyday as I'm diving deeper into this new cadence of time I'm becoming increasingly aware of how thin that grip is and it doesn't disturb me as much as it makes me wish for the love and security of involuntary internment with all of my heart and something is shiny in the dark room and its the currency of the long term care I will eventually need when things break with a permanence that defies even the most aggressive modes of corrective medicine. I just have to wait a while. And I don't want to wait anymore and watch the whole thing keep racing like a rabid horse after carrot strapped infants.



///Bjork - "Joga" time out. Please?

dear (______):

Dear Ramen noodles,

Why do we only hang out when I'm drunk?

The (Implied) Conceited Sumbitch in us All and True Love

I had more to say ten minutes ago, but I lost it because I bled out my consciousness into a poem. I laughed out loud to that because it's true. For me, sometimes writing is like a keg that I fill every day and sometimes the keg explodes and the contents are disgusting to even me and sometimes it simply pours and fills glasses so neat and tidy and sometimes it pours one glass and sometimes it pours ten glasses. Consistency is a huge deal to most artists for one reason or another. Some people feel that consistency is next to Godliness or something like that. Some people feel that consistency is simply the mark of some kind of neurosis that does not permit full development of the creative orgasm. I know it's all unverified. Doesn't it grate you when you hear other people talk about what "some people" have said and think and do. It grates me. It grates me a helluva lot. I guess I was just trying to chap you as bad as I'm feeling chapped. I guess I'm just some kind of jaded. I grinned for a while. Jaded is such a lovely and fulsome word. I love that fucking word. There's something about that's a little sexy and rivered and disgusting as vice to a religious heart. I'm jaded. Not because of you though.

I guess I'm just wondering how far I'll have to go to find love. How dorky is that? Pretty God damn dorky I know. Would I go to hell if I knew I was "fuck everything else" loved on this Earth? Fuck yeah, man. I'll go to hell twice. Is it supposed to mean that much to anyone? I guess not. How can I put this to grow understanding instead of revulsion? I think the one thing that I've been since day one, more than anything else, is a romantic. That simply has not ever changed no matter what else has actually changed within me. I'm still looking for the right words. How about a picture instead?




I love you, did I mention that? I don't say it as a grasping for an intangible and thus perfect love. I know you suck. I know you suck because I suck. I know you're terrible and a shitty friend sometimes because I am. I know you steal more than 25$ in office supplies from your jobs every year because I do. But, I guess the point is only the douche bags are keeping score. When you really really put the rubber to the road the only reason to hate the religious right and the religious left and the religious center is because they offer resistance to what you want to do and what you are now with no regard for the nowness of who and what you are. Does that make sense? How about this: love fragments time.

I think we can both agree on that.

Or can't we. Well how about this, I will agree not to fight about that premise. Fair enough? Well fuck you, I think it's fair so I'm leaving it there. Hearts and kisses. Seriously. Maybe I'll draw a penis. Am I allowed to do that? Now I feel like flying off on an analysis of full frontal nudity in cinema, but I won't because I love you and know that you don't have all day to read this and I don't have all night to write it ( I do but God damn it [I use that a lot] I'm keeping to fucking schedule).

How about this. Next time I write I'll be twice as hammered and half as love sick. I think we can both smile about that. No? Yes? There was a time when I never questioned myself. There was a time when I didn't watch my hands type like two figure skaters on a board of ice composed of laminated squares of frictionless steel. There were times when the world didn't sing me to sleep through layer after layer of drywall and pink insulation packed to the gills with muffled screams and there were times when the creaking flooring was the sound of angels walking and not the burden of yearly abuses of the tactile senses. Remember when love was a flower? I want to say I don't but even that smacks of a romance I once knew that is somehow more romantic and honey sweet than the romance to come and I feel like I'm working this God damned keyboard harder than Ray Charles and Blues Traveler on a tour of the Gulf and the rest of the formerly slave supporting sates and I'm dreaming of lines of coke in hotels and two hour stands.

I suppose the end game is that I'm fantastically horny and too tired to proofread anything that involves anything besides penises and vaginas and bare skin and I'm thinking about the hours I've spent on subways trying not to imagine vaginas and floating disembodied breasts and penises surrounding me where bodies should be and the horrendous difficulty in squelching the beads of sweat on my brow and knowing that though my face doesnt sweat my testicles are weeping salty tears into underwear too loose to stop itself from tearing as I walk to another job interview and now I'm still fucking unemployed because some bitches vagina parked itself 6 inches from my god damn face... how the fuck could she be so cruel...

///Master and Commander - "La Musica Noctturna Delle Strade di Madrid No.6 Op.30" If I should die, both feet on the ground, upon foreign soil by the fruits of my own designs I shall have died happier than the richest domestic entrepreneur and more loved than the loveliest architect of words and emotions who ever saw the coast. And balked.

P.S. I wasn't too tired to proofread a smidge. Suck it Hillary Masters, you cock gobbling excuse for a tenured professor's dick.

P.P.S. Yes I know it's straw man slander. I don't care. I hate the man that much.

P.P.P.S. "Master and Commander was a phenomenal film. Please take the time to see it if you haven't. You won't regret it. Plus Russel Crowe is ridiculously hot and also ridiculously awesome. Watch it. While I finish this fifth.

Out From Somewhere

I've been gone for a spell. I feel like I've been waiting for something that I can't explain. A lot happened recently but the good news is my black box friend is back. Repairs have been made and I can make art again finally. Been a rough few days. I saw something weird in the back yard. I haven't had writer's block as much as things simply halted. To restart though, I found a message on my phone that I have no recollection of leaving myself.

Message follows:

I called you 5 times and you never call me back. Left a video message of you putting french fries in a cup of peanut butter and then another of your spread legs and wet pussy. You blonde pink edgy bitch. Your friend brunette eats right. Hates the gross food we like. Chastises me in front of you. What are you doing. Staring at someone i have no business looking at. The cat can talk. Tells me to im to vervo. He smells like sewage. Tells me that vervo have him his idea that got him elected. Why do you keep flipping me off? Do we still have a thing going? Itll ad a seven game series. Ive seen you eat them like that every week. A toy gun in the library shooting water at perverts. Jim is dead. I killed him but no one knows. I was jealous. His body was destroyed after i pushed him into the machines gears. I ignore her calls until italk to the cat. Now i go out of my way to see her.they go to a club and invite me but dont tell me its collared shirts only they dont let me out of the car until they stop to pick up girls though i try to jump off while the car moves.its the second time. I walk home past the college campus i used to call home and see faces that dont remember me. Its frustrating but freeing. I give up on them.

I don't know when I wrote that. I was trying to sleep the other day and the whole room felt like it was vibrating and all of the blinds opened and this thing walked through the backyard. Freaked me out. I've been sleeping with the lights on since then.

Well anyway. I think the thing is I've gotten so used to watching static in my mind it's been difficult getting up the guts to reach my fingers up to the bare rod where the knob used to be and change the channel, but I'm doing it. Because I'm guts. I'm adventure. I'm the spirit of everything motivated by discomfort and the things unseen. It's not really a question of what's over the next hill as much as it is a question of how long do I have to sit here waiting for my muscles to knit from the last 80 miles I've walked. Speaking of walking I actually got sunburned from all the god damn walking I've had to do while job hunting. I don't think I'm meant to have a job. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. I've still got my wanderlust and between writing and wandering that's all my heart really wants. Trouble is the rest of my body.

///KMFDM - "Last Things"

dear (______):

Dear Braylon Edwards,

I don't usually take on things that happen in life this quickly off the bat, but that was absolutely without a doubt the single gayest endzone celebration I have ever seen in the modern era of the NFL. Please add it to your list of things to not do (you've probably got plenty of room on that list since things like "drop passes" and "grow enormous beards" appear to have found permanent residence at the bottom of said list).

love,

a concerned fan of all things NFL

dear (______)

Dear streetball,

No, he did not get dunked on. He was almost two feet away from the person dunking and was not playing any sort of defense to begin with and had the idiot not swung his legs around in the air like some kind of prepubescent gymnast from China there would not have been even remote interaction between the regions of space they each occupied when the ball went through the hoop. So for the last time, please shut the hell up. No one cares. Show me my road racing highlights, damnit.

The Farce of Human Interest

The upside of funemployment is free time. The downside of funemployment is day time television. I won't come out with a blanket statement about the demographic that watches or is available to watch daytime television on a regular basis, but what I will do is call out the insanity of the supposed human interest story featured on daytime television.

In its thinnest guise it is the paternity specials on talk shows and the daily freak shows created from people with actual problems who somehow think taking their children or families on talk shows will provide some kind of lasting solution to whatever it is that ails them on the inside or maybe just to make a buck and get a tv special pitched at them from TLC. In its thicker, more elaborate manifestations it's the two day back to back experience of the "half ton mom" and the expose' on teenage fight club sex parties and alarmist programs highlighting manufactured cultural tensions and real ones.

And I guess I'm just sick of people calling it human interest. Human interest, the term itself, seems to ask a little more of itself than to simply raise emotion and sympathy and "wow" from the viewer. Human interest should denote a desire or interest to view and understand human-ness or humanity. A term as charged as human interest shouldn't stoop to the ridiculous shallows of daytime television for any reason. Human interest should be about introspection and reflection and I guarantee you the people watching human interest stories are as interested in taking in introspection and reflection as a red head at the beach is interested in taking in an afternoon of sun bathing. Having to be around people purporting to enjoy watching human interest stories is like going to a meeting with 30 yes men. All they're doing is soaking up reaffirmation of their pre-existing beliefs. In the end though, I'm sure that's why the shows are on tv. That and to illicit all of the "wows" and "oh my Gods" from the people that are watching purely for the floor show.

Personally I like to take my entertainment from sports arenas and sit coms. Wow, that sounds snooty. You know what, I'm saying it anyway. It only sounds snooty in the context of the ridiculousness of this modern day reversal. So human interest is an enormous farce that people watch so they can say things and feel connected to problems they don't have and feel a conscience they never acknowledge for the other 130 hours of their week and feel reassured that drugs are bad and teens are dangerous and gangs live in every dark corner of every city and know that they're not so bad because "look at the tv, there're worse people than me." So what.

I don't know. I feel dumber for having brought it up. I suppose the takeaway is: at the end of the day, I just wish we could all stop conveniently naming and pretending and applying euphemisms and have lived with a smidge more awareness of ourselves. I guess it grates me to have to listen to the people that talk to each other and while one rests all they say is "yes" "oh yes" "you know, that's what they say" and then they talk and the other turns into the yes man and by conversation's end no one has actually said anything and no ideas or information has been exchanged. The thing that unnerves me the most is that as personal awareness erodes so does creativity and imagination until the person becomes part of the reciprocating cultural wheel, the ultimate feedback loop, and they're lost as though they never existed.

///Amon Tobin - "Straight Psyche"

Why I'd Rather Be Hispanic, Artificial Self Confidence, and a Root

Walking home from a training day for a job I may or may not have a thought occurred to me: I would rather be anything, but black, in today's America.

Sounds ridiculous right? The simple fact is it is still very uncomfortable being black in America. I mean, think about it, people haven't decided whether or not we can even be called black people or if we need to be called African Americans. At least with Latinos and Hispanic people it's not a choice between obviously politically delicate and offensive terms. Or maybe it is, since I've never been Hispanic or a Latino. Seriously though, every time you refer to a black person isn't there a little twinge in the back of your neck that makes you wonder if you're using the right word, or if you would look worse by using a term that throws racial consciousness in the reader's face, even if it's only for a moment?

Think about the stereotypes. If I were to make a mental list of pros and cons with respect to stereotypes, who would come out more favorably? Sure there are local pockets of better and worse viewpoints (border states, places with "little (insert south eastern country)s", and places with very visible very active gang cultures, but across the entire spectrum of America I feel like black people aren't necessarily losing ground, but aren't really improving either whereas other minorities are either receiving more than token attention or are at least viewed more favorably on the whole. I feel a lot like the very "interesting" back story of white America and black America has made the situation a lot like a landlord who needs a renter to pay on time and shut up about the property's needs and a renter who badly needs a place to rent and can't afford anything else. I guess when I think about the stereotypes, I can see positive ones for most other ethnicities that allow some type of positive integration with society beyond sports, music, sex, and street dance (you know, the things people have to do to support families and build generational wealth and own homes and cars and have stable year to year lives and retire) and absolutely none for the blacks in America.

And it's a little discouraging. It's like the problem of integration was never really solved beyond the physical interface and instead of a defacto solution, patches were administered. Patches were slapped on top of patches and policy plaster was slapped on top of the patched patches until people got tired of dealing with it. Or maybe until the job looked done enough from the standpoint of the people outside of it, but as someone who is a part of the structure of black America it's pretty obvious there are gaping holes in perception that continue to lead to gaping holes in... I dunno. I'm getting tired just thinking about it. It's not fixable. I'm not trying to be fatalist or anything like that, I just have to do my part with my kids to let them know that they do belong here.

That's it! I think I just stumbled on an answer. Black history. Being raised with such a heavy bent toward black history and it's burden on modern history and having to live every year with the idea that I'm permanently indebted to a project of acceptance that will be in progress from the day I'm born to the day I die was a mistake. Historical perspective is a good thing. Having historical perspective hammered into me with a distorted and disproportionate focus placed on the "right" and "wrong" expressions of stereotypes within that culture is what has left me with this feeling of malaise. Black history is important, but not more or less important than American history. It's not a separate story. Having the idea that I'm different and special and separated from America by black history has caused much more damage than confidence boosting good. The short term benefit of confidence has been far eclipsed by the long term effect of powerful feelings of isolation.

I guess the simplest branch, the main root of all of this is belonging may not boost individual confidence, but will ease future growth and development of identity. Telling someone they're special artificially boosts their self confidence. Someone learning they are special through time and experience and on their own allows them to build a lasting self confidence that will not be eroded as soon as the encouraging voices are taken away. Not constantly reinforcing a person's specialness and differentiating characteristics may hurt their self confidence in the short term, but will ease their interactions over time because they will have belongingness as the most basic premise of their relationship to the world around them.

If belongingness is the most basic premise of their relationship to the world around them, then they are free to pursue many more avenues of existence without having to consider questions of perception and practice, and while the questions may be there, they will not be central to the person's identity. If a person's most basic premise is that they are permanently different from the world around them they will, when (not if) self confidence fails to motivate action, be forced to constantly answer and ask and re-ask questions of perception and practice in a never ending cascade of attempts to join a world they can never really be a part of basic their most basic premise of existence is that they are permanently outside of and apart from the world at large.

So I guess the root of the problem with black America is really sourced from within every black American home and public classroom in the month of February. But, don't tell them that. They never seem to take criticism well even from "their own people". Trust me, I know. Responsibility is probably the second branch on the tree of stunted potential.

///Four Tet - "You Were There With Me" Just reminds me of thinking about the future sitting at the edge of an apple orchard and watching shafts of sunlight roll like lazy spotlights across empty fields and after the second hour noticing that the little things on the horizon aren't high tension transmission lines, but are the blades of still windmills.

Destroy Everything You Touch

A post of personal indulgence.  I'm sorry.  But in my life the above appears to hold true for the things that I value.  It seems the closer I come to achieving them, the more vehement the destruction.  I would say I hope to fix that, if it didn't get me off with the regularity of a perfectly engineered watch.

///Ladytron - "Destroy Everything You Touch"

Post Script.  Today is an exceptional day in that I have decent internet access.  You are blessed with a youtube video.  I use the term ironically.  Fuck you God, and thanks for the ever present dick in my ass.  For the record, I am not happy about it.  I hope I get into heaven just to be the fucking slacker in the back, smoking, pretending to sing, and writing open letters to political dissidents on the bathroom stall walls.

Predictive Power of the Bible, Religious Cunts, and Cowboy Coffee

Being the coffee addict I am today, I've been trying to figure out ways to cut costs from making coffee and ensure that I will never be in a situation where I can't drink coffee if said substance is available in absolutely any form.  Having read Cormac McCarthy's Cities of the Plain I have ingested another serious dose of tough guy-dom the likes of which I haven't shot into my veins since I watched hard boiled noir where every ten minutes a cigarette was being rolled, a shot of whiskey downed, and a strong man got his lights put out with a "you'll find my appointment with your boss under 'screw you', sonny."

Which brings me to cowboy coffee.  Easily on par with "badass things that will probably kill you" that I love, such as Marlboro Red 100s and high proof whiskey on rocks, is cowboy coffee.  From what I've gathered from Cities of the Plain is that they don't use coffee filters at all.  Or at least, they seem to have to throw out the last of their coffee pretty often because of left over grounds, and that got me to thinking that cow hands and outdoorsmen in general probably don't carry coffee filters out into the field.  That's like throwing light bulbs in a ruck sack and somehow believing you'll make it to where you're going without breaking a single one.  At least I think keeping coffee filters dry while being outside in the elements for weeks would be something akin to that kind of challenge.  So it must be possible to drink coffee brewed from grounds with the grounds still in the water if you let them settle to the bottom of whatever you brewed it in.  So that's what I've started doing.  I've always liked the bitter bite of black as night coffee and I've found that throwing the grounds in a big ol' mug and brewing it straight in the mug and letting the grounds settle down to the bottom seems to work out just fine.  Coffee filters are officially for pansies.  Of course drinking it this way might turn my teeth black, but lets hope I have a job and never have to rely on the quality of my smile again long before that happens.  Sure the last sips are grainy and if you swish the mug around too much it takes on the consistency of a snow globe full of pine chips, but if you've got a steady hand, and an iron gut, and like things like whiskey and Marlboro Reds and Ice grade beer, I highly recommend giving it a try.

Plus if you ever find that your co-workers have bought coffee grounds instead of instant coffee and stuck them in the common break room knowing full well that the only coffee machine in the entire god damn building is behind the key coded doors of the administrative wing where lowly salesman and customer service associates are not allowed, you can go ahead and make yourself a cup anyway.  You may not come to work in a tie, or slacks, or a sport coat, but while they look at you from the corner of their eyes in the break room wondering if you're thinking about shanking them all with a hunting knife while you watch your mug spin around in the microwave and they try not to look directly at you and your cowboy coffee sitting at the table across from them, they'll know where the real power sits between them and you.  And they'll know that the only thing keeping them on top of the darwinian bureaucratic food chain is a sheet of paper from a business school and an economy that says you have to play nice if you want to keep your freedom.

I am sick of religious cunts.  I know you are too.  That idiot who is organizing the book burning for the sole purpose of doing unto others is a cunt.  A stupid, sad little man.  All of the people who will take personal religion fueled offense to what he is organizing and proposing to do are cunts.  In this case I am defining cunt as: reactionary imbecile far too pleased with causes to examine effects.  Cunts love cunts and their relatinship simply sucks for everybody, especially when they get together for date nights.  And for the last time, the Bible does not predict the future anymore than Nostradamus or that Chinese book whose name I can't remember.  For every person who raises their child based on precedents set by the Bible, proclaiming it as the ultimate authority on human behavior, can I just say will you please stop reading and start listening to and learning about the human beings in your house that for better and worse have to rely on you for whatever reason.  Stop holding up the Bible to life and looking for answers.  Spoiler Alert: They're not in there.  When you start holding up something you believe to be a map or a blueprint, but still attempt to find you're own way or allow free expression, guess what happens?  If you answered "a shit load of self fulfilling prophecies" you answered correctly.  If you answered "a shit load of pain and suffering for everyone who does not share your special insight from heaven" you also answered correctly.

Well, anyway, sorry I just had to let that go.  I heard about someone being lectured about how their parents believe the Bible says the youngest child will do everything the older children did except ten times worse and so their parents sat them down and gave them an earful for things they've never done and never intend to do and the sheer ridiculousness of it all just pissed me off.  If you spent half as much time taking an actual interest in your children as you did combing through the all knowing scriptures you might find that you actually had a family instead of a brood of complete strangers who don't talk to you because you've become a shell of a human being replaced by selected passages of a book that happened to be relevant to you as an adolescent that grew into a sick and warped crutch as you grew older and quietly refused to mature.  I think I'll still write my own Bible, just to prove a point about the power of that kind of story telling.  Maybe I'll save the project for my twilight years so I'll have a deeper catalog of crap to draw from and smear out into images that can applied to any and all ages that involve fallible people dealing with fallible people in a search for overarching meaning, an incorruptible truth, and the reason, their own tailored to fit reason, for being on this rock.  Maybe that's what my life's work really is.  I'll get back to you about that in 25 years when I'm on my death bed from smoking Reds and pounding cowboy coffee.

///DJ? Acucrack - "Thalidomide"  Our defects are inherited from the ignorance of those that walked before us and are incorporated into our character.  That's still no excuse.  For bringing darkness instead of light.  This song rolls and burns like staring directly into a halogen bulb till your brainstem goes numb with the over powering presence of particulate everything blowing your eyes to pieces.  Only minus the permanent blindness.

dear (______)

Dear Led Zeppelin,

Forty years from now Going to California will still be the greatest song about "the interminable search" ever penned.  Not that rock is dead or anything like that.  It's just that good.  I will learn to play guitar so that I can start a tribute band and this will be the only song that band will ever play.

Sad Bunny Can't Cum

Welcome to the retrospective (cue Jerry Lewis telethon music).  It's a sort of sad time for me.  I lost my computer this past Friday.  Several outages and a lack of grounded outlets, thanks to antiquated design and moronic neighbors who don't understand that computers are more than idle curiosities and are actually essential to the younger sets way of life, lead to it turning off without warning.  Since I- I promise you this will be a "too much information" packed retrospective- since I usually do most of my writing in the dark, with a short order of bourbon, and nothing else on (electronic or otherwise), I was immediately plunged into darkness.  Dismantled the entire thing and went on a debugging, forensic, junior mortician's foray that lead me to the soul shaking realization that the mother board burned.  And now I'm slightly sad (devastated) because my computer was my best of best friends.  Now I'm stuck with my functionally challenged laptop that was dropped on its head too many times as a kid.

My writing is now inaccessible (fuck) on sata hard drives, my resume is inaccessible (fuuuck), my porn is sitting idle (fuuuuuuuck), and my music collection is essentially in a vault (FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-) till I get a new motherboard or other PC tower to- okay who gives a shit.  I do, but that's boring.  Me talking about this is like listening to someone talk about their dead cousin who you never met and they never really talked about before and trying to pretend like they have your undivided attention when it's fourth and inches in a preseason Steelers game and the gaurd they drafted is about to be put to his first real test and show you whether or not the season is going to be worth pinning playoff hopes to.  Long, long, long sigh while trying to pay attention to what really matters without looking like a complete dick.  Suffice to say, combining a tempermental laptop with a 860 bits per second internet connection and the fact that I have to write in notepad and can throw making after the fact edits squarely out the window has made me a fucking sad bunny.

Maybe I should have talked about that last.  Life has turned into a very long jerk session.  Like "just blew a rail at the bar and the chick I got into the cab with hopped out midway to my place so I blew another rail and tried to watch a movie to console myself, but couldn't get into it so I tried to rub one out and I'm three hours in and nodding off knowing I won't sleep well at all unless I at least get the small victory of cumming and all signs are pointing to a four a.m. photo finish with passing out sitting at my desk with empty cans of Natty cheering me on from the gallery."  But, yeah, you know it's dragging.  Been working hard, but obstacles must have eachother on speed dial the way things have continued to stack and you know it's no good when doing the thing you love to do becomes difficult and all you really want to do is sleep.  Good news is I've pounded enough coffee to start a coca leaf grow operation in my stomach.  Suck on that contra.  I'm not sure how the two are related, but hopefully it's close enough to let you fill in the hilarious gaps.  Personally, I didn't laugh.  Didn't even smirk on that one, but fuck it, it's out there and doing its thing.

So into it (longest intro ever).  Five years in bullets:
-started blog because I was pissed at my boss and had no one to tell about it.
-stopped talking about my boss because it was whiny as all hell.
-planned to start a career as a kept man.
-decided my beard deserved my face like modern pop and R&B singers deserve euthanisation.
-spewed hate toward beard haters.
-realized 99% of myspace writers were hacks.
-left myspace because I hated being connected to people.
-left facebook
-went back to facebook and myspace when my communication anxiety faded.

... God this is boring.  Worst retrospective ever.

I think there's supposed to be a memoir like tone to the narrative that I am completely whiffing on.  I wanted to be a fighter pilot for the longest time.

I guess I'll just skip to what's new.  I'm realizing more and more that the shit surrounding my island is so ridiculously deep that it is fairly realistic to say there is zero chance of any kind of college sweetheart reunion.  Think of it this way: what she has in common with her peers now is like two humans talking to eachother.  What she has in common with me is like a person at a zoo talking to animals.  While one may be more interesting, it's not what you'd want to spend your life doing.  What else.  I guess I'm bi.  Are there rules for that.  I guess I didn't just start one day.  If I look back it's pretty obvious.  Most people don't really give a shit now anyway which has been a massive relief, because what I feared the most was being hated.  Some people look at me differently, maybe, I'm not sure and I don't care all that much to ask them.  I'm still the same person with the same anger management issues and the same scars.  Someone asked me why I would choose to be something that "will make my life more difficult", but to be perfectly honest it's made my life so much easier to live now that I can understand myself that much better.  Even saying what I am feels strange, as though there are brands of people.  But, anyway, sex with guys is fun.  Sex with girls is fun.  Different reasons for both.  Girl cum and guy cum are pretty close in taste to me.  That's probably the only thing the two have in common for the most part.  Guys and girls are attractive for different reasons too.  I guess the oddest thing is most gay men are incredibly obnoxious and unattractive.  On second thought, not really that odd because most women are also unnattractive.  Or maybe, okay further revision: most gay men and women I don't scare away with my being myself are unattractive.  That's the qualifier I was tasting on the tip of my tongue.  Fuck em.  I just wish I was willing to let myself see it sooner and embrace it, but I was so caught up in performing to the rigid framework I grew up in I suppressed and ignored it and raged inwardly and outwardly and not allowing myself to be.  I missed out on the whole "rules and standards committee" meetings in college so now I'm still learning about it, but better late than a repression fueled suicide.  One of the hardest things to get over was feeling like I've somehow failed as a man.  That's actually been the single toughest thing in accepting my sexual self.  So much of socialization is the assumption of roles and rejecting the hetero role that framed and formed and malformed so much of my behavior like fucking foot binding was and continues to be difficult, but it's a difficulty that's building toward true normalcy for me and in so being it is worth every ounce of growing pain.

What else.  I'm bad at keeping secrets.  I've realized that so much of my life has been informed by half truths that propogating them is so extremely distasteful that I just can't do it with believable conviction.  A good thing and a bad thing, but mostly a good thing I think.  A change for the better.  There's still a little voice in my head that talks about dreams of wealth, but there's a louder voice that screams to me to write and ultimately having a nine to five and writing will mean more to me than continuing a foreign quest for status and titles and degrees.  I think that's what helps keep me sane.  I'm still looking for that elusive community of writers.  That still hasn't changed.  I came close to finding one.  Hopefully that'll turn into something.  I think I'm wandering again.  I love you.  Don't be sad.  Life won't drag on forever and that's something we can look forward to, right?  Death is going to be the best orgasm ever.  I'll still be enthusiastic about it when it rolls around.  In the meantime you just have to make the most of the little humps and enjoy the moments you get to spend cumming as much as possible.  Also, don't say that to people in casual settings.  They'll think you're weird.  Also don't tell people you're too depressed to cum.  Even as a metaphor, but especially not literally, unless they're the kind of crazy sexy person who would take it as a standing challenge.  Even then.  You know what, you probably should not be taking advice from me about this.

How's this for some summation of 200 posts:  I was born, I lived for a while not knowing there was a world outside the controlled universe of my home until college, I discovered there was a world, I dated a fantastic girl for a long time, I loved my beard, I planned to get in tight with a cougar before I dated, I revised my life mission once I realized none of that was actually going to work, I realized the only thing really important to me was writing, I accepted my creative self, I accepted my sexual self, I loved, I hated life, I had sex, I learned that I'm a violent person, along the way I learned I had real (actual) mental defficiencies that require maintenance, I learned that the best thing I could do was fight it by living with it constructively, and I realized that I'm not the greatest thing to happen to the world, but maybe a good thing to happen to a handful of people.  So that's it.  Peace.

///Dntel - "Casuals"  Walking down an overcast lane and the air is so cool on your face that you can't help looking to the sky to watch the bits of an almost storm chase eachother over the building tops and forget the shit that turned your eyes red that afternoon and feel the slippage of time and understand that you're still you and that's perfectly alright.

Cum, the Internet, Other Disappointments (Plus 200), and Friends

200th entry. Glad I got that announcement out of the way before I forgot. It's been five years with you. That ties the record for the longest relationship I've ever had. They've been pretty good years, but this isn't a retrospective so I won't dwell on it.

You should know I tried to write a poem with the title "Cum", but I couldn't create anything more charged than the title, so I didn't. Sometimes you run into words like that in the English language, words that command so much attention and make people perk up and look for context clues instead of actually reading the text and before you know it you've completely lost them because, for whatever reason,you're content doesn't line up with whatever expectations they've come to harbor in connection with your title. I'll write a retrospective for the next entry mainly because I'm pretty sure I won't have much else to say as I've been gripped by the past recently. Maybe I'll write that poem anyway and just make it light hearted. I think that's a good way to both combat the "must read for juicy bits" response and also reward both the readers and the flybys.

On to my terrible internet connection. It was so bad over the past two days that I literally was not even able to open my email. You know when you get so mad that actually mash your fist into your keyboard hard enough to break the fucking thing. That's how mad I was. If I was not head over heels in love with my computer monitor and also too poor to replace it I probably would have hurled it straight out of the window hard enough to lay a 22" square dent in the door of the shed behind my house. A friend commented that though the speed is slow I "have done a lot with it" and I wanted to say well "for fucks sake, just imagine what I could fucking do if I didn't have to settle for third rate everything in this fucking world." Seriously. I was enraged, not by his efforts to offer encouragement, but by the framing of what has become typical of my life. Ghetto rigs. McGuyver set ups. Pulling magic out of my ass hole. Call it what you will, but I cannot wait for a phase of my life when I actually have the god damn tools I want and need already at hand to do the things I want to fucking do. No more of this having to work a three mile solution out of a 100 yard walk because no one is willing to give me the god damn keys to the front gate.

I've had some really fucked up dreams lately. I'll curb the swear words from here on out, or at least try to.

So the original Cum poem was going to be about how self destruction creeps into life, but is a necessary element of life. Self destruction, I think, prevents wholesale destruction if the person purposefully destroying their self can be isolated or at least properly contained. I'm pretty sure if I left myself to its own devices it would turn into a thing bent on dismantling life and civilization as we know it. To prevent this from happening I have to actively dismantle its constructions through every means necessary. Think of it as an atom bomb. Every single day my brain is refining fissible materials and building detonators and stranding wires and explosive plates and turning bomb housings and working out the science of sending the world to its grave and every day I have to go in and turn out all the filing cabinets and shred the research and trash the labs and sabotage the refineries and explode the stockpiles. My self hasn't gotten it right yet and I'm happy for that, but also ashamed that its even become a necessity. Sometimes continued success is thanks to my own efforts and sometimes it's due to bomb range and laboratory accidents and machine malfunctions. The result is the same though. Furious action leading up to an explosive and small and temporary victory and phenomenally steep come down, because I've both succeeded and failed yet again. I suppose the easiest solution would be to simply have all of the technicians brought before a firing squad and kill them outright, but unfortunately the crew working the device committee and labor union are also responsible for the non-lethal non-destructive life sustaining committees. So when is the need to eliminate a threat greater than the need to preserve a life? I don't have an answer for that, but I'll let you know when I do.

I'm sad now. I don't know why. I do know why. Part of me just left. He was disgusted. I'm disgusted too and angry and now sad that I'm by myself again. He'll be back later. We can't really stay mad at each other. No, wait we can. I just realized that we're usually pretty mad at each other. It just so happens that we're also usually in agreement on most things, with the exception of this and some other stuff. I'm the optimist. He's the deterministic pessimist. The realist. The public relations manager is not in at the moment, but should be back shortly.
I sometimes wish my friends would tell me what they think and why they don't tell me when their visiting, but then I remember that they must have their reasons and that I don't know what those reasons are because no one has ever fucking told me. When I think about the spectrum of existence I get the feeling that there's nothing in the middle of mine and I think that hole is what makes people apprehensive. I don't have a hard time feeling. I have a hard time feeling by degrees.

I dream about things. About tiny rooms and lying in bed with someone and sadism and being awful and being loved regardless and making something, making anything, with another person and being naked and great and taking off the mask that hides the teeth and the showing the smile behind that stretches from ear to ear for all of the reasons that are on their face unacceptable for reasons I'll never agree with and I wake up from the dream and wonder if I will really be single. And then I wonder if the rest of me will allow that to change. I know the answer is no, but can you fault me for wanting it to. I tear myself apart, but they're there. The upside is I'm always in orgy. The downside is none of the attendees are there because they love each other. And I'm rambling so I'll go do something else because I already know I'm running straight for a dead end and I have an irrepressible fear of corners.

///30 Seconds to Mars - "From Yesterday" Sometimes when I fall asleep and wake up into dreaming the world is big and beautiful and unlike the life I left I am moved to a state of utter bliss and so thankful that a thing like sleep is a part of day to day life.

Fifth Grade Word Finds and (Sort of) Free Art

Remember fifth grade and the substitute teachers and their mountains of copies of crossword puzzles with subject themed words to keep all the kids busy and the game all of the smart kids played where they competed to see who could finish all of the copies and win their free time first? Remember the other game the smart kids who didn't give a shit about extra time to do their homework in class because having homework to do was a great excuse to get away from having to spend time around their shitty parents played where instead of finishing crosswords they tried to find legitimate instances of curse words, the more rank the better? That just came to mind as I was thinking about myself (as usual) and I was thinking about the things in me that are different, which led to thoughts about picture finds where you look at two pictures and try to find what's different between them and that lead to thinking about word finds and that led to all of the wonderful hours in fifth and sixth grade I spent doing word find puzzles and circling "ass" instead of being taught anything by anyone because the teacher called in sick again because the kids are a bunch of bastards. They were still passing out crosswords and word finds in 7th grade and 8th grade now that I think about it. I raced through the pile a few times, but it was bullshit. It was not uncommon to have a teacher say "put your head down and take a nap if you like" as though I didn't get sent to bed without dinner often enough. Napping wasn't high on my list of favorite things to work hard for.

There really was no satisfying conclusion to finishing all of the crosswords besides the pride of knowing that I beat the pants of Annette with her stupid times table finger counting trick that I didn't learn until last year and promptly forgot. Fuck you Annette. You looked like Meg Griffin five years before Seth McFarlane dreamt her up. Suck on that coaster thick glasses. I hated her when she beat me at anything because she was a total douche about it. To this day when I beat people at anything I can't help but feel that I should have been more encouraging or at least explain to them why they might have lost and how they could have won. That might be even more annoying than simply sticking a finger in their face and saying a hearty "booyah".

Where was I. Crosswords, check. Annette was really smart, but a total bitch, check. Oh yeah, what's different about me. So here's what's different about me now from the me of five years ago in order of importance to me (sorry, this is so me themed today, but I'm not really, but I'd feel guilty if I didn't say something to acknowledge the fact that I'm being really really narcissistic [sort of]):

1: I don't think of myself as a funny person anymore. I used to think I was funny, but I'm not. I'm easy to laugh at and I think I'm fine with that.

2: I'm weird. No two ways about it. I am one of the weird ones and will probably be thought of as one of the creepy ones when I get too old to be weird and when I'm too old to be creepy I'll be one of the pleasantly eccentric ones you try to ignore, but who somehow end up miles away from their home health aide at a highway rest stop asking you for change so they can buy a colostomy bag from the potato chip vending machine.

3: I will probably never be married or will not have kids of my own. This will happen because I've realized I am impossible to start a family with. No really. I dare you to try. My heart is fucking Thunderdome. Raising kids and being with me will be like trying to keep track of the lost kids of never never land. If you were to combine Bill Cosby's sagely aspects, Peter Griffin's story telling, Homer's scheming, Seinfeld's eye for human interaction, and a middle aged Golden Retriever's eagerness to do everything, with a Bull's eagerness to do nothing except watch the world go by and bone constantly you'd roughly have an approximation of day to day life with me. Throw in "unconventional" tastes in design and home decor and art and general errata and my home probably won't even be a safe place to raise a kid from one hour to the next.

4: I will never be a kept man. I'm too damn old. Missed that boat, but it was fun to imagine what could have been had I really stepped up the training back when I first starting writing this and my biggest concern was beards and whether or not to shave my nuts.

5: I share my work openly. In the past I sat on it because I was somewhat embarrassed by it. Now, even better than simply not giving a fuck what people think of it, I honestly feel that it is worth sharing. It's become worth more time and attention than my own. How much time and attention is absolutely up for debate (whether its 1.01 person's T&A or 100 it's still greater than 1). Why more time is needed is also up for debate. Dear universe: I am at a highly impressionable point in my writing career... send me mentors or something. Jesus does not count as a mentor.

6: I've sort of come to understand that the people I grew up with, by and large, did not grow up "with" me. That's taken a lot of getting used to. How the hell to I grow myself into their circles if, apparently, I didn't do it successfully when they were right next to me. Frustrating. It's like everybody I knew went into a hall of mirrors together and somehow I ended up outside of the building in the alley with the alley cats and half eaten funnel cakes and everyone else went out the exit proper and I have no fucking clue how I ended up on the outside of everything.

7: I don't think there's a seven, but it's there for balances sake.

I've got an idea. Send me your address and I'll send you a handwritten poem on heavy stock plain white paper. Seriously. No scheme. No game. No angle. Just some art that'll only cost you the time and effort it takes to shoot me an email. You're address won't get shared (not just because I have no one to share it with but because if I gave someone my address I would want it destroyed immediately after it was no longer in use by the specific person I loaned it to). You won't suddenly have spam roll into your mailbox. I won't randomly show up your door with a handle of Vodka and tell you to drink as you run out to go to work in the morning. You won't get signed up for... well shit I could go on for another thirty lines about what won't happen.

What will happen: I'll send you a poem. That's it. A new fresh from my mental presses poem and maybe a scribble too. Bam, done. inacinch@gmail.com. and actually, by putting that there I will probably get a ton of spam, but I'm not mad about it. I just like to send people art. It's fun.

Or don't. It's not like I'm going to kill myself or anything if no one does this. I'll just keep doing what I usually do: write poetry, whack off till I fall asleep, wake up in the middle of the night in tears, write a story, knock myself unconscious with five shots of whiskey, wake up at a reasonable hour and repeat. The question is: how much of that is true. The answer is: most of it. Lulz. Anyway. Don't forget to see if you can fill out the crossword puzzle with all expletives. What is life if not a challenge to be more awesome than you were yesterday.

///Cowboy Bebop OST - "Blue" I think my opinion still holds that some of the best music is written and heard and felt in languages that you can't understand specifically because the worst thing anyway can do to some art is make it readily understandable and take away the pleasure of dawning reason and the avenue of organic access each person has to make when no person can make an inroad for the masses. The idea of masslessness comes to mind, but I'm pretty sure that's just more errata and artifice and artifacting. Sometimes I need a good paint chipper for my brain.