AUTHOR.CALHO: If I didn't write it, I would be hitch hiking cross country to Maine and then Alaska in that order. While taking frequent breaks to spread leaflets. And sit in diners. And write on things because I wasn't at a computer. I may still do that in a few years. Writing this also helps me forget about and better understand the limitations of being human, and keeps me busy enough to allow me no free time to burn the world down.

THEMATIC.ABOUT : Collapse often. The things that hold people together and hold them apart and scatter brains. The things that make thoughts go boom. The things that ooh and aah and [expletive deleted]. Sometimes poking around the margins where responsibility ends and the only one to look to is the Original Equipment Manufacturer and say "but, I already pressed 9 for more options and the menus are exactly the same. Can you just replace it?" The answer will be: "please hold." Sometimes hanging out in dark corners. Sometimes following the train tracks. Looking for ways out and ways in and all the while sharing the things seen and heard and done and drawn and written and scorched and healed and teased and caged and dreamed along the way.

9/8/10

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.

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