Business Plan

I do not understand it and forces my laughter:

We'll withhold your degree until you pay us.  You have completed everything you need to complete your requirements to receive your degree.  We will withhold it without regard.

Granted, having your degree will allow you to pursue lines of gainful employment that will permit you to set aside funds that will allow you to repay the costs of seating you in classrooms, we will not allow you to receive the paper until you remit payment.

We feel restricting your ability to employ yourself, having already invested in us, will help to motivate you to pay us our monies due.  In so doing-

What the -expletive deleted---------------------------------------------deleted------------------------------------deleted---------------------------------------------------------------------deleted--------------.

Signs are up because someone did something that warranted a sign being placed.  I get it.  However, I will never understand the debt game and generating funds through it so I will always be a few steps behind the promise of gateways to success through college for the other 75% of the population not indigenous to their school/district/state, on trust, or already locked and capable and loaded to murder their major and minor in their spare time (scholarly), or gifted and/or supported athletes.

The crux.  The crux?  Is that the right word?

Boil it down:

we will force you to pay us by making it impossible to pay us,

then have a laugh.




Nero - "Doomsday"  ... the year is t + 2007

Proliferation Theory

If you do enough, something is bound to stick favorably.  For a time I approached writing with an arrogance.  I thought, because it was the only thing I got decent marks in, I must be good at it.  And then I got bad grades.  Still got good grades from time to time, but bad grades just as often, usually related to the technical composition and not the ideas.  And then I got good technical marks and bad ones on the formation of ideas.  Sometimes I did well with both.

It was a strange time.  I transitioned from writing on my own time and going to class and writing instead of doing homework to higher grades where writing was my only homework and all I did in classes.  The arrogance of perceived innate talent faded quite a bit with one failed attempt to win awards after another and I blamed closed communities and the like, the department was exceptionally cliquey.  I believed the profs liked what they liked and you liked what you liked and it was your job to jump the gap, not theirs.

I don't know what my problem is exactly, but I do believe it is that the people that I idolize make it look so effortless and what they make feels like hit after hit after God damn hit.  Maybe proliferation theory is failing me.  It's difficult to say either way.  Maybe I am genuinely no good.  It's tough to digest.  Without some kind of schedule.  I rolled up a dollar bill.  It's just strange, I guess.  Proliferation theory.  Asking when is good enough for me good enough for someone else.

The theory begs a lower standard, but how much is compromised in terms of value and personal expansion? Is the cost appropriate to the value of the product, the life time stamp I put my name to?  I don't know.  I do it predominantly for myself, at least that's what I've convinced myself of.  I don't know.  Would I kill to go back to school?  How many people?  Could I plea bargain my way out of life sentences and would the offer still be good when I got out?  I'd have to think about it.  Hypotheticals.

Yeah, it drives me crazy.  A little bit.  I try to think about what else I would be doing, could be doing.  None of it appeals to me the same way.  Everyone, including myself, well maybe not everyone, many people talk about being their harshest critic.  I may be my most passionate lover.  Delusions of grandeur coming with the territory, but I don't always see it so clearly.  The Fantha.  Losing focus on the mission.  I just want to die knowing I was good as I could possibly be, not knowing I was good as I was going to be.  Who wants that?

I think believing that I'm great keeps my engine running.  Keeps the clutch down and a hand on the shift knob for when I come running.  Beyond that, I don't know how much credence I give it.  I butcher language and muddle image on a weekly basis.  I talk like broke nosed sailor all too often and argue like a fifteen time concussed politico's son.  Pretty sure my mental dictionary has "turn to page 345"s on it and on page 345 there is a crayon hand drawn hairy dick in the corner.

Purpose is a fine commodity.  Take a digger.  Fire off the magazine, discharge, and throw it as far as you can.  Sometimes panic can be beautiful.  Never outwardly.  Did I tell you that I was you?  Don't be silly.  Don't be silly little king with your crown.  Let me polish that for you; you dropped it skipping puddles in gutters without your galoshes.  You know the ones with He-Man and Skeletor printed all over?  I'll remember for you.

Just behave, okay?

The project was, the final project was, to make a visual that encompassed everything you believed poetry to be.  Everything you believed poetry to be and the purpose it served.  They came in with their power points and dream catchers and God's eyes and a diorama of a village and someone made a painting and someone made a collage from printed magazines and there were a handful of abstract sculptures and even a figurine, but you made a life sized naval mine with trigger switches and detonators and wires out of empty wine bottles and paint brush handles and spray painted it black.  That was a fun walk across campus with that hugged to your chest.  Cutting across the grass, because the people on the sidewalk could go f--- themselves that early in the morning.  You worked on it all night after thinking about it for a week.  Everyone talked about their things and you talked about yours.  And that's where it ended.

Officially.  I suppose, the project is ongoing.  I hate myself.  I love myself.  I hate myself.  I'm sorry to drag you into it.  I don't know how else anything changes.  Contemplating the validity of ProT.


///Starkey - "Spacewalk" infolatice diver with a bad respirator.  the city is so vast and so uninhabitable so far beneath the waves

from a similar born year and different circumstance, but very little I haven't enjoyed while there: alicja-w-krainie-czarow

Crying and Everybody Gets One

Sometimes I feel like all the tears I did not get to cry from the age where my memory starts in patches, five and sometimes six, to where it starts to form a continuous timeline, ten and on, are coming now.  Balancing books and things.  I've been thinking about it somewhat hard nosed and what I came to was, especially given what came down the pipe at twenty, I'd rather have them now than not at all.  

Playing emotional catch up.  

I'd rather be emo now, however, than be emo at age fifty (assuming I can make it to fifty iterations.  that's a pretty tall order, nah mean?).  Part of what I was taught, in writing classes that were worth their weight in gold when they weren't taught by tenured dick faces and holier than though masters ph.d cock tip cum nuggets whom I would still like to punch in the craw and who prevent me from going back to the English department because I will try to strangle them with their own belt, was that you have to exorcise the junk first and everything else will come with time.

That's what she said.  Still, there's some merit to that.  Problem is I have junk for years.  When did everything turn into a fifteen year plan?

Anyway, when I'm rich and famous I'm going to work out my short list of simple assaults.  When I'm set for life I'll start chipping into my kill list.  First things first.  Gotta lay down the work first.  Get the junk out of the way.  Everything else will come in due time.  I can abide by that principle.  The hard part is not letting other people jump your gun.

///Vangelis - "One More Kiss Dear"

Juan Carlos

Just remembered the death of my goldfish, Juan Carlos.  Killed by a white cat named Red, back when I was living in a frat house.  Loved that fish.  Happened years ago. Dunno why that came back just now.  He was a good fish.

Those were weird times.  Weird, happy, times

women with children 03/15/07

Subject : women with children (a.k.a. young'ns)
Posted Date: : Mar 15, 2007 2:32 AM

alright... so walking through the old food court today around 2 in the afternoon after a hard days shopping for some sexy man pants (for myself) and some tighties (for mr. wangthony) and a duffle (for my shotguns) I realized something that other people have probably noticed too: the vitality of younger mothers with their children. I mean seriously... the food court is a pretty shitty place most of the time... especially the one at the mall near my house. Every five to ten seconds someone is thrusting some free sample in your face and the dumb thing is 4 out of the 7 places to eat are all asian food so they basically sell you the same thing at varying price points.

I usually hate it but today was different. really kind of weird in a fun way. instead of the usual dark, dingy, fat people, consumerist, gluttony that usually hangs in the air i felt a kind of lightness... like standing between two statically charged sheets of plastic... or maybe to state that better... like entering a pet store and finding all of the critters had something to say to you about how good you looked. alright well, anyway, the point is, what was different was that the place was full of mothers and their little kids running around and playing with eachother and taking care of eachother. the whole place just effused life.

I always thought pregnant women were pretty hot. yes ive seen pregnant porn... its not very good most of the time. pregnant erotica is more the ticket. but this was on a whole separate level. I think pregnant women are hot because of that feeling i cited before... that sense of utter, glowing, vitality that colors their faces and their voices, even when they're puking or complaining or just feeling awful. It comes out even more when they're in a good mood. It's like walking through a rainy day and suddenly finding yourself in the presence of a sun shower though seconds before everything was cold dark and rotten.

i wanna have kids some day. two of them. a boy and a girl. right now i want to see my girlfriend become my wife and have my kids. i want to see her smile at them and wipe the ice cream off their faces when they decide to use their hands to eat from the bowl instead of their spoons. i want to see her getting rest when she's full with them and taking off from work. i want to cook dinner for her when she cant and change the channel for her when they're born and growing and stealing the tv remotes to use them for space ships.

women with children (inside or outside their bodies) are beautiful. they are beings capable of producing transformative experiences with their mere presence, but to put it differnetly, they are love personified on so many different levels and through so many different relationships and interactions that it would be silly to list them here, so i will shut up and think about my future and hope that it incudes one in a few years. im sure you've probably heard the above before from someone else... so just let this be confirmation to you and stick your snide commentary about "heard it before" up your nose, swirl it around, and when you pull it back out i hope your frontal lobes are dangling from the end of it.

disclaimer - they are not all beautiful. there are some that are frieghtening, repelling, and just plain gross (for reasons that need not be enumerated here). so here's to hoping that the latter (the most recent statement) is //not// in my future... cuz that shit will be difficult to deal with keeping in my mind my dreams and ambitions. sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyit.

on another note... my next and last year of college is shaping up to SUCK ASS. thankyou. that is all.

///pink floyd - "wish you were here" just a lazy, rainy, maryland thursday by the marsh and the train tracks kinda song. i havent thought of the deeper meanings of the lyrics. i havent even heard the song recently, but i keep thinking about that chorus fragment... because well... i wish my country mouse was here right now and i wish i was in pittsburgh and ... im just feeling full of wishiness (sans washy. i dont get washy... i get wistful... jerk).

its that time of the year again 01/23/07

Subject : its that time of the year again
Posted Date: : Jan 23, 2007 7:41 PM

writing contests. the two big ones at Carnegie Mellon University. oh boy. another chance to get stiffed by my favorite group of insiders at the X review (insiders meaning the circle of friends i dont have at the journal's core that run the submission selection process including the professors) and ignored by the wonderful Y judges. i think my writing just doesnt quite fit here.

i mean two years running ive gotten polar comments on everything. either its over written or its under developed. its too dense or its too cliche'. its too "in my own world" or its too simple. that last one is my favorite though. i take that last one as knowing im doing something right. im aware of what other poets have done. im aware of what other story tellers have done. i might not be aware of what everyone else is currently doing, but if i was i would be less aware of what i want to do. one thing ive learned about myself as a writer is that i like what i do. what i do has changed and continues to change over the days and months. i know im not writing well when im writing the same things i wrote at the same time last year.

still though... these are the dread hours. will this year end with more dissappointments? probably. in fact... almost assuredly. im pretty sure who the favorites already are. im pretty sure of where the student bodies work has a proclivity to wander (usually toward work that makes pittsburgh or city or just college life "come alive" or sad tidbits about family and rent hearts or the difficulty of "growing up") but im still going to write my way, my stories, my poems and if i dont win i may give them all the murderface for a few days... then a look of hurt puzzlement... but ultimately i'll be just as happy as if i did win. cuz i wuz last year. im not graduating anyway so i dont even have to worry about resume' padding.

i think im actually looking forward to this. win, lose, or draw. i still hate them though.

philosophy phucks 01/23/07

Subject : philosophy phucks
Posted Date: : Jan 23, 2007 5:13 PM

so im taking philosophy courses. two and unfortunately two too many. on the one hand there is an overview course called "what philosphy is" and the other hand there is "the philosophy of language and thought."

the first course is too shallow for my tastes. apparently its only goal is to teach you how to think as rigorously as a mathematician in your everyday reasoning. a worthy cause i suppose. few things can be more frustrating than dealing with people that have illogical jumps to ridiculous conculsions but at the same time... part of being human is taking leaps because there is rarely time for rigor. i guess thats probably why people live to be more than two years old. time enough to learn to think with enough rigor to not get yourself killed (at least not easily) but certainly not more rigorously than that.

its not the point though. the class keeps poking at ideas and examples of rigorous thought (like plato's touching on how to define justice ... or was it socrates) but there is no delving into a questioning of the thoughts that are posed. all the professor wants to do is raise questions without discussing them. ah well. i understand he has to push things forward so i guess if iwanna know more ill have to go lavar burton on his ass and read a book myself.

the other class jsut sucks. its about the logic of language not the philosophy. its lame. its basically doing logical proofs to explain language. i mean its neat and all but certainly not teaching me what i want to know and furthering my illogical frustration with philosophy. it hurts my fucking head sometimes. people are not more or less just and justice is not a skill and even if it were a skill then surely there can be people born without it so what do you do with the people that cant cultivate the skill of justice, socrates! what do you do! shoot them off into space! thats what you fucking do. no harm. no foul.

philosophy sucks.