Sometimes it feels as though I can do no right. What happened in my past lives to be cursed so? I lost a cat yesterday. I gave him everything he wanted. I gave him everything he needed and then some. It makes no sense. I can still feel him. I can still see bits of him in my vision. I can still smell him. His ears smelled like french toast sometimes. He was only about two years old. I have to remind myself that I didn't kill him. I wonder if I did perhaps by accident. I flushed my fish down the toilet a while back, but that was because I shouldn't have had them to begin with.
I thought I did pretty good with him. He was my chief officer on board my ship. The other guy was my first mate. The first mate has been promoted. I'm sure he didn't want to get his promotion that way. He keeps meowing constantly to call up the deceased. He doesn't understand that our chief officer is gone for good. I kind of don't understand it either. As soon as I touched him I knew he wasn't just sleeping. He was my cooking buddy. I'd meet him in the mess hall to talk about our course and how to squeeze a little more oomf out of the engines. He was my napping buddy too. My sleep in pal. He'd lay on my phone so I wouldn't have to hear it.
No, no, no, sweetie. Come back to me. I need you! My first mate needs you too. We had a good crew. Was the music too loud? Was the bass too heavy? Did I not keep the temperature high enough? I couldn't turn it up any higher. It made my nose bleed too much. What did I screw up? Who's going to wake me up in the morning now?
I thought about burning his body for a very long time. Give him up to the air and the stars. I'm giving him back to the city instead. It's where he came from. If I gave him to the stars, he wouldn't know what to do with himself. I am from there. He is not. He'll be home. I am glad our paths crossed. I do not know how to explain it to my first mate. If I spoke cat, I might be able to. I'm not sad. I am angry. Why didn't you tell me? Did you? Did I kill you? Involuntary manslaughter? Agent 001 Jack: K.I.A., Mr. Morton codename "Lauren": K.I.A., Chief Officer Torus: K.I.A., First Mate Boots "Hatswitch" Mustachio: T.B.D.
I am happy though. One of the last things I remember doing with him is letting him climb up my jean leg and hook his claws into my hoodie all the way up my back so he could get a good perch on my shoulder and ride around up there while I walked through the ship and pointed out the things he liked to sit on from the view of his colossus. We were a fabulous team. I thought we'd have more time to enjoy our voyage. He loved to sit in my lap while I wrote in my notebooks. He'd rub his face on the corners of the pages and make little wet nose prints on the backs of my hands and the paper.
Each week, each month, each year, I am trying to break the horse. I am trying to break myself and exercise control better than I did the year, the month, the week, before. Sometimes with success. Sometimes with failure. Some of the voices scream "somebody has to pay!!!" It is unreasonable. It is irrational. I want to cut you open so badly. I want to hook my hand into your mouth and press my fingertips underneath your tongue until the break through the skin behind your chin and rip as hard as I can and hear the sucking pop of your jaw breaking away from the rest of your skull and listen to you drown bleeding into your own esophagus. Somebody has to pay. I am trying to break that horse. I am trying not to hurt myself to show you what we want from you.
Happiness is fleeting. Pain endures. Pain is infectious as is happiness. I am not broken. I am tired of dealing with death. The horseman that rides with me. Our ghost army behind us. Having to continually modify not by choice, but necessity.
I know I have to use my words more. Not just more, but with greater frequency. I have to use art more to break the locks and the seizing to escape the killing fields. I have to pay more respect to the blast radius and recognize that it is not a game and if I take it too lightly, if I lull myself into believing it will sort itself out without careful and constant monitoring I will wake up too late and infection will spread far and wide defeating the entire purpose of closing the cycle of violence began a generation before my birth. I am trying to break myself. I am trying to limit myself. Meta-jail is real and I have to do my part too. You are there for a reason. You can manufacture happiness. The children are always present, do not listen to them, no matter what they say. While you've been ignoring it, the factory floor has been busy and now coming to that basement and seeing the stockpiles of things you only imagined existed my heart falls. Where the hell were you when the furnace fired again? Where the hell were you when the new blueprints were spread out and the flywheels started turning again? I tried. Try harder! This is not a game!
It is good that some mobility has been lost. There are those you cannot reach and it is good. It is important. Remember why you laugh, jackal. The freedoms you have were hard won, do not give them up easily. Do not give them up lazily. Take time. We have been patient and we will not shed it. A crew of two instead of three may not be so bad a thing as you imagine. The first mate will adjust and embrace his promotion, regardless of how it came about. Know that, do not say it, know it. You did not skin him. You do not wear him. He will be remembered. Bury the tools and keep an eye on us. I will. Somebody has to pay, but not today.
I took a long walk around the city. A very long walk. Control rage. You were born. Get over it. I was born on the twenty second of April in nineteen eighty five. Remember what you are doing. I was born into conflict. I was born into violence. I was born into love too. I was born onto a battlefield not of my own making and that is okay. That is alright. We learned, we grew, we got stronger, we learned how to kill and how to eat, how to feed ourselves, how to breath, how to hide, how to fight, how to see in the dark, how to trap, how to sleep, we learned and we grew. We learned our genealogy was a lost cause and our history before our time will never be mapped. We figured out the tree was a hangman's and the damage was already done well before we opened our eyes for the first time on Staten Island. We understood hunger and the sound of an empty stomach and the shiver. Do not forget the mission. Lay a road map for those that are coming after you are gone. Do not forget what it is you must fulfill. Even though your heart is kind of small you were built for something more. Embrace it. Learn the truth and love your life because you only get one shot at it.
Your shipmates will help you. Your inmates. Your internees. They will help you along the expedition through space and time. They are part of the fold, jackal. Use the words, not the weapons. The child will come and go. Supernature is simply part of the spectrum you were born with. They are not demons or angels or phantoms and errors. They are not only that, please stop crying sweetheart. You will die and you will take all of them with you and they will be gone for good too. That's okay. I don't know if Torus saw them too. I don't know if he felt them. I kissed him before I let him go. I rubbed his fur into my nostrils and ate some of his whiskers before I put him back in the trash where he came from. I hope you're happy you disparaged him saying he came from a dumpster. Pluto used to be a planet. We want to name a constellation after him.
I dislike my bad wiring so much. I know I cannot increase my strength, my power. I cannot be allowed to break down the electrified fences and razor wire atop. I cannot let it go. I cannot be allowed to make more money, it will turn into more combustion chambers, more cylinders, more lead, more trigger mechanisms, sights, and chemicals. More wires, dead man switches, boxes of nails and washers, nitrogen, ammonia, and springs. More casings and pellets and carpet knives. Bang on the left ear so it all falls out of the right ear. With greater knowledge comes greater responsibility and I am not sure I am to the task. We absolutely are. For the love of God, get the hell away from me.
Who massages your shoulders? Who plucks your eyelashes? Who sets your makeup? One gold tooth. Break that horse. Change those shoes. Wash those gloves. I need more power. No, you don't. I do! NO YOU DO NOT! Imagine the kingdom we could have. No. Do not lie to me. I am not lying.
I definitely wanted to become a musician. A composer. A librarian. To get lost in the stacks and get paid for it because alphabetical order never lies. Growing up, so many have lied to me. Washing dishes and playing the bubbles like a battlefield always put a smile on my face until standing on a milk crate on Brighton Avenue I heard them screaming at each other and I tried to wiggle my ears to remind them that I was standing there and they started to say he's listening and they took it upstairs, but I could still hear them. My nose is running again. No blood though, that's good. I haven't pissed blood in a while and that's good too. I know how it ends, I do. I am halfway home. Remind ourselves not to do anything stupid. Remind ourselves the visions are just that, visions only.
Time will fly and before we know it we'll be polishing my skull and looking at the healed fractures and running our fingertips over them like welds on an engine block trying to reverse engineer the forces and machines and hands that made them. Do you have a torque wrench? A shoeing hammer? An arc welder will do in a pinch. A continuous retrofitting. We were built for a war, but the war is over. It is not. We were built in war time and repurposed. Built not to feel. Built to not need to see. I got out. I got out. The horse must be broken. Distance must be kept. Do not lose heart. Finish the deal.
Enjoy the view from the edge of the arm of the Milky Way and do not curse Sol or Terra. Aboard the ship we are secure and secured. Take care of the equipment and don't stay long. Coexist. Someday you too will shut down, but understand there are many paths to that end and much to be explored before the channels go dead. Do not forget where you came from, do not be consumed by where you're going. I am not broken.
///Chairlift - "Guilty As Charged" ...footprints on the carpet....go on and punish me...
///El-P & Killer Mike - "Early"
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.
Showing posts with label el-p. Show all posts
Showing posts with label el-p. Show all posts
11/4/14
3/17/14
Sequencer
It's been a very long time. I have no apologies (I do). The growing distance was daunting and becoming a thing alive all it's own. Retreating crash zoom, but we're safe again. Contained. Able to love and much more importantly to pick up threads of circuits and lay them new against the board and chips that have melted, over heated beyond recovery, and reached the end of their service lives and that's good. It's a beautiful thing to open the panel and watch sunlight dazzle every which way against the gold and green and know every thing, multicolored, bent, pinched, blackened, and water seized can go directly to the heap for recycling or trash.
What kept me? What kept you! We've been here forever. If you didn't want me to slam reverse for ten feet and then floor it while you sped ahead to the first hairpin, you shouldn't have said the first one to cross the finish line wins. You could've mentioned... ah whatever, it's a joke, but I'm not funny.
Control is not my strong point, but I try to make it a stronger point and that's something. I'm beginning to understand anew that I will never reach a point where we all agree on anything on a consistent basis. I'm not okay with that. Are you?
I saw him again today. I am not happy about it. I have to be more careful. I think I may have slipped up before and mentioned him by name to a friend again after I told him it would never happen again. He was not happy about it. If I'm not careful we will have to pay for it. I will be. Let's kick things forward. Snap the key off in the ignition. What are you waiting for? You creep me out when you stand still. You look like you're not breathing. You look like you're drowning and I can't swim, hon'. I'm sorry. I should know by now and I don't. It's not going to be alright. Can I snap a photo of my face on the water atop your head? I'll get the angle right so my phone is not visible and it'll be me with Thursday's overcast over my shoulder. I'll make it look good this time around. Not like the first time you made my skin crawl away from my ribs like a window shade when I had to touch your face to be sure you were still there and not a fried up bit of my retina.
Let's enter the sequencer. Let's wind it up. If not now, when? Forget the God damned mission for a minute. Never forget, but do not let it overwhelm you. These are very key pieces. These are very important stages in construction and becoming and missteps will cost, but not more than ghost steps. Engage the sequencer and do not fear yourself. Fear is the mind killer and aboard a destroyer as capable as yours, fear cannot be afforded safe passage.
///El-P - "A Christmas Fucking Miracle" they can never take away what you were born with
What kept me? What kept you! We've been here forever. If you didn't want me to slam reverse for ten feet and then floor it while you sped ahead to the first hairpin, you shouldn't have said the first one to cross the finish line wins. You could've mentioned... ah whatever, it's a joke, but I'm not funny.
Control is not my strong point, but I try to make it a stronger point and that's something. I'm beginning to understand anew that I will never reach a point where we all agree on anything on a consistent basis. I'm not okay with that. Are you?
I saw him again today. I am not happy about it. I have to be more careful. I think I may have slipped up before and mentioned him by name to a friend again after I told him it would never happen again. He was not happy about it. If I'm not careful we will have to pay for it. I will be. Let's kick things forward. Snap the key off in the ignition. What are you waiting for? You creep me out when you stand still. You look like you're not breathing. You look like you're drowning and I can't swim, hon'. I'm sorry. I should know by now and I don't. It's not going to be alright. Can I snap a photo of my face on the water atop your head? I'll get the angle right so my phone is not visible and it'll be me with Thursday's overcast over my shoulder. I'll make it look good this time around. Not like the first time you made my skin crawl away from my ribs like a window shade when I had to touch your face to be sure you were still there and not a fried up bit of my retina.
Let's enter the sequencer. Let's wind it up. If not now, when? Forget the God damned mission for a minute. Never forget, but do not let it overwhelm you. These are very key pieces. These are very important stages in construction and becoming and missteps will cost, but not more than ghost steps. Engage the sequencer and do not fear yourself. Fear is the mind killer and aboard a destroyer as capable as yours, fear cannot be afforded safe passage.
///El-P - "A Christmas Fucking Miracle" they can never take away what you were born with
5/27/13
Year End Playlist 2012
The music that made life a little easier to comprehend through 2012. I told ya I was gonna put it together. Got my "nyaahhhhhh" face going. But seriously, this is what brought me through. Instead of going by statistic logging I decided to go with the actual tracks I flagged through the year. Sometimes the song you listen to the most is not a real indicator of what hit you the hardest. I really do believe this is an accurate reflection of what punched my heart in the nuts through last year.
Dec RJD2 - Moonlit Skies Go
Nov Skrillex - Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites Go
Oct Lo-Fidelity Allstars - Valentine Boast Go
Sept El-P - Stay Down Go
Aug War - Baby Brother Go
Jul Bjork - Pluto Go
Jun Aphex Twin - Waxen Pith Go
May Tosca - Oscar Go
Apr School of Seven Bells - Loveplay Go
Mar Starkey - Eris Go
Feb Kinny and Horn - Sacred Life Go
Jan Paul Murphy - Soul Call Go
This is the official tax return for 2012. The books have been, after a fashion, balanced. Five months late, but better late than never. I feel pretty good about it. Making next year's list, I can already bet on it, will be Death Grips. I know I'm behind the curve of music, but I don't care all that much. I'm just happy I have time to digest everything that comes across my plate as thoroughly as I care to, and that's what's up.
///Death Grips - "Guillotine" ace high, chuck
Dec RJD2 - Moonlit Skies Go
Nov Skrillex - Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites Go
Oct Lo-Fidelity Allstars - Valentine Boast Go
Sept El-P - Stay Down Go
Aug War - Baby Brother Go
Jul Bjork - Pluto Go
Jun Aphex Twin - Waxen Pith Go
May Tosca - Oscar Go
Apr School of Seven Bells - Loveplay Go
Mar Starkey - Eris Go
Feb Kinny and Horn - Sacred Life Go
Jan Paul Murphy - Soul Call Go
This is the official tax return for 2012. The books have been, after a fashion, balanced. Five months late, but better late than never. I feel pretty good about it. Making next year's list, I can already bet on it, will be Death Grips. I know I'm behind the curve of music, but I don't care all that much. I'm just happy I have time to digest everything that comes across my plate as thoroughly as I care to, and that's what's up.
///Death Grips - "Guillotine" ace high, chuck
9/15/12
Cell By Cell
Had a bad run in with myself. I'm laughing just saying it and hearing that phrase come out of my mouth and wondering how it is still possible. Still possible to mount surprise attacks on my own fortress. Woke up today in a fine mess of pain. The important thing is the drought is over. I had to break some ground to get at the well. Wake myself up again. The dreaming has been fantastic. I wish I could sleep forever, but that's unreasonable. Not irrational. There's a difference sometimes. Even in my country.
It is odd, I do suppose. The sensation of being outside yourself and watching the sublet drive it straight into empty air on the wrong side of a cliff. It's nice to be back. It always is, even though I know it won't last and never does. Pull the circuit board out and wave it in the wind until it stops smoking. Pop out the fried resistors and solder in some new ones with the same ratings; their the biggest baddest ones you can get on the street. Slide the board back in and fire it up. Note the time and date. Log the lost information and missing sectors. Build new ones in the virtual environment. Repopulate. Repeat as necessary.
Reconstruction. It's like a gunman went cell by cell through the complex. Cell by cell through the prison and gunned down every inmate. It's an unfamiliar quiet. And then you remember you told someone you were a sociopath trapped in a citizen body. I wonder what Jeff's doing right now. I wonder if he'll take my call on a Saturday even though I'm not seeing him anymore. I don't know what he would have to say. He said if I ever thought of a good joke I should drop him a line. Psychiatrists. I've been trying since our last meeting two years ago to think of one and for the life of me I can't.
He'll laugh anyway, to make me feel less awkward and it'll work. Maybe I just want to hear him laugh. He'd be proud of the work I was doing. He wouldn't entirely get it, but that's fine. Poetry is a fickle beast. Half the time I don't get it either. He'll put it up on his fridge if I wrote him something on the couch. He'll take it down after I leave and add it to my file. I wonder if he still has that file. Probably not. I vaguely remember him telling me, when I told him I was thinking about joining the army, that he is obligated to destroy records older than seven years.
I miss him. I had a bad run in with myself. I'm laughing just saying it out loud. How did this happen? Why? I don't understand. I like to think it's somewhere down that rabbit hole. I used to wonder if I was color blind. Then I stopped worrying about it. I think I scratched my eye ball yesterday. I miss his note taking. You might be out of your god damn mind. Eventually he stopped taking notes. Which was fine. It is kind of a tall order getting to know someone that close out of nowhere without taking notes. I wonder sometimes what he was doing or expecting his week to be like that first Monday I walked in there. I wonder if he still thinks about me too. If I still populate his cells.
///El-P - "Stay Down"
It is odd, I do suppose. The sensation of being outside yourself and watching the sublet drive it straight into empty air on the wrong side of a cliff. It's nice to be back. It always is, even though I know it won't last and never does. Pull the circuit board out and wave it in the wind until it stops smoking. Pop out the fried resistors and solder in some new ones with the same ratings; their the biggest baddest ones you can get on the street. Slide the board back in and fire it up. Note the time and date. Log the lost information and missing sectors. Build new ones in the virtual environment. Repopulate. Repeat as necessary.
Reconstruction. It's like a gunman went cell by cell through the complex. Cell by cell through the prison and gunned down every inmate. It's an unfamiliar quiet. And then you remember you told someone you were a sociopath trapped in a citizen body. I wonder what Jeff's doing right now. I wonder if he'll take my call on a Saturday even though I'm not seeing him anymore. I don't know what he would have to say. He said if I ever thought of a good joke I should drop him a line. Psychiatrists. I've been trying since our last meeting two years ago to think of one and for the life of me I can't.
He'll laugh anyway, to make me feel less awkward and it'll work. Maybe I just want to hear him laugh. He'd be proud of the work I was doing. He wouldn't entirely get it, but that's fine. Poetry is a fickle beast. Half the time I don't get it either. He'll put it up on his fridge if I wrote him something on the couch. He'll take it down after I leave and add it to my file. I wonder if he still has that file. Probably not. I vaguely remember him telling me, when I told him I was thinking about joining the army, that he is obligated to destroy records older than seven years.
I miss him. I had a bad run in with myself. I'm laughing just saying it out loud. How did this happen? Why? I don't understand. I like to think it's somewhere down that rabbit hole. I used to wonder if I was color blind. Then I stopped worrying about it. I think I scratched my eye ball yesterday. I miss his note taking. You might be out of your god damn mind. Eventually he stopped taking notes. Which was fine. It is kind of a tall order getting to know someone that close out of nowhere without taking notes. I wonder sometimes what he was doing or expecting his week to be like that first Monday I walked in there. I wonder if he still thinks about me too. If I still populate his cells.
///El-P - "Stay Down"
4/12/12
Seventy One, Count Down to Twenty Seven
Ten days until the clock ticks over. I don't expect anything fantastic. It will be nice to be one again. I don't like being old. It takes too much energy, too much reflection, even the effort to look forward. A time consuming affair, the growing old. The metering. The constant gauging if older is keeping pace with wiser and if wiser is keeping pace with double faults and if ... how many times did I almost die this past iteration?
Let me see if I can recall. Not going into detail, but trying to recall. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Hmmm. Eight. The ninth time is a stretch so I won't count it. It was just before the tenth time, but even that one was more of a panic than a definite thing. So we'll leave it at eight. I believe I did say at one point that if you're not nearly dying more than ten times a year, you're not living hard enough. At the same time, though, that was a much more reckless me. Not careless. There's a difference. Intent is plastic explosive.
Not that I am that much more reckless then. Maybe, more unconscious. I do have some things to take care of in this body before I go skipping off in my next one. The seventy first birthday step. I definitely miscalculated how many birthdays I could pack into one year. Seventy one sounds about right. Well, seventy three, come day zero. Nothing like a midlife crisis at your twenty sixth iteration. Mostly I suppose I am trying to work out a way to celebrate my last iteration in tandem with my last birthday, so it'll take some fine tuning. Some years of fine tuning.
I think this year I'll go for eight day spacing. See how that turns out. I can't remember what happened on my last birthday so I assume nothing. Checking... no results found. Nothing is right. This iteration I want, I want to be a real trip. A real jumping off point to wake face up in a river with nothing but stars, beloved. It's going to be great. It might be my delusions of grandeur. My all knowing, all loving, stupidity with no regard for real or reasonable conclusions. Maybe I'll go get my ears pierced or something. There must be something to mark the occasion this time. Maybe a 27 shot poem. I was thinking about a 54 post facebook status. Maybe both. Because I know no one is taking me out.uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum, <<< thats what my kitten typed. His mark for posterity. I'm not going to die. Because I have a kitten to take care of now until he is at least a cat. So that's good timing. No space for oopsies for a while. So I'm kind of forced to commit to another year. Happily so. Apparently kittens don't like less than 55 degree weather. The little bastard keeps shivering. I can see my breath. Which means I should probably get to bed soon. But anyway, where am I going with all of this? It's been a long time since I had reason to be excited about a new iteration. A lot has changed. A lot has stayed the same. I'm going to continue to reflect on it as the days tick down. Hopefully with more clarity than I am mustering now. Trying hard not to muss new year resolutions and birthday wishes. Trying to aim low and let the reciprocating action of my mental Kalashnikov land me a headshot this time around. Don't force it. Be the leaf. Be the leaf in the wind, and for eulogy's sake don't die before dawn. In terms of goals though, gotta set goals, I have a few for the upcoming set of birthdays. Finish the crappy book I started to write. Make the mistakes I don't need to make when writing the second book. Get laid by people I can remotely care about. Embrace the dark side, and by dark side I mean myself. Consider flaunting it. Take more pictures of myself and distribute accordingly. And take a fantastic drug trip on something, anything, without dying halfway through. And finish the tricky dream hunt. Because that kind of big game hunting blows back and backfires way too easily. Not huge goals. Just real ones. We'll see what happens. ///El-P - "The Dance (Instrumental) ...one more year at the never ending prom
Let me see if I can recall. Not going into detail, but trying to recall. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Hmmm. Eight. The ninth time is a stretch so I won't count it. It was just before the tenth time, but even that one was more of a panic than a definite thing. So we'll leave it at eight. I believe I did say at one point that if you're not nearly dying more than ten times a year, you're not living hard enough. At the same time, though, that was a much more reckless me. Not careless. There's a difference. Intent is plastic explosive.
Not that I am that much more reckless then. Maybe, more unconscious. I do have some things to take care of in this body before I go skipping off in my next one. The seventy first birthday step. I definitely miscalculated how many birthdays I could pack into one year. Seventy one sounds about right. Well, seventy three, come day zero. Nothing like a midlife crisis at your twenty sixth iteration. Mostly I suppose I am trying to work out a way to celebrate my last iteration in tandem with my last birthday, so it'll take some fine tuning. Some years of fine tuning.
I think this year I'll go for eight day spacing. See how that turns out. I can't remember what happened on my last birthday so I assume nothing. Checking... no results found. Nothing is right. This iteration I want, I want to be a real trip. A real jumping off point to wake face up in a river with nothing but stars, beloved. It's going to be great. It might be my delusions of grandeur. My all knowing, all loving, stupidity with no regard for real or reasonable conclusions. Maybe I'll go get my ears pierced or something. There must be something to mark the occasion this time. Maybe a 27 shot poem. I was thinking about a 54 post facebook status. Maybe both. Because I know no one is taking me out.uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum, <<< thats what my kitten typed. His mark for posterity. I'm not going to die. Because I have a kitten to take care of now until he is at least a cat. So that's good timing. No space for oopsies for a while. So I'm kind of forced to commit to another year. Happily so. Apparently kittens don't like less than 55 degree weather. The little bastard keeps shivering. I can see my breath. Which means I should probably get to bed soon. But anyway, where am I going with all of this? It's been a long time since I had reason to be excited about a new iteration. A lot has changed. A lot has stayed the same. I'm going to continue to reflect on it as the days tick down. Hopefully with more clarity than I am mustering now. Trying hard not to muss new year resolutions and birthday wishes. Trying to aim low and let the reciprocating action of my mental Kalashnikov land me a headshot this time around. Don't force it. Be the leaf. Be the leaf in the wind, and for eulogy's sake don't die before dawn. In terms of goals though, gotta set goals, I have a few for the upcoming set of birthdays. Finish the crappy book I started to write. Make the mistakes I don't need to make when writing the second book. Get laid by people I can remotely care about. Embrace the dark side, and by dark side I mean myself. Consider flaunting it. Take more pictures of myself and distribute accordingly. And take a fantastic drug trip on something, anything, without dying halfway through. And finish the tricky dream hunt. Because that kind of big game hunting blows back and backfires way too easily. Not huge goals. Just real ones. We'll see what happens. ///El-P - "The Dance (Instrumental) ...one more year at the never ending prom
2/24/12
Year End Playlist
I almost made it out of 2011 on my own. That statement is a huge exaggeration. It wasn't even close, but I'm getting there. Still spent as much time in the depths of space as I did in 2010. A lot of it took a lot of time to remember and reconstruct. To allow the construction of a playlist. Last.fm and scrobble helped a lot. There were several dead spaces of weeks where I was nowhere to be found and they were like wildlife tags, homing beacons to where things really fell apart and even that negative space, the nothing, could tell me a lot about what I was listening to on my headphones, apart from my desktop and sometimes here and sometimes gone internet connection. Wild.
It was difficult and joyous combing through the year week by week and trying to sum up months in a single song. Here it is, though. The music that made life a little easier to comprehend and, frankly, live through last year.
Jan 2011>> Menomena - Muscle N' Flow Go
Feb 2011>> Björk - Wanderlust Go
Mar 2011>> El-P feat. Camu Tao - Oxycontin Go
Apr 2011>> Mono - Mere Your Pathetique Light Go
May 2011>> Matthew Dear - R+S Go
Jun 2011>> Hot Chip - No Fit State Go
Jul 2011>> The Black Angels - Better Off Alone Go
Aug 2011>> Gorillaz - To Binge Go
Sep 2011>> Mouse on Mars – Circloid Bricklett Sprüngli Go
Oct 2011>> Cold Cave - The Great Pan Is Dead Go
Nov 2011>> Lo-Fidelity Allstars - Weather 2 Go
Dec 2011>> Daedelus - You're The One Go
This is the official tax return for 2011. The books have been, after a fashion, balanced. The door is officially closed on what was a year of unexpected highs and grim marched lows. Looking forward to doing another one, but no promises. Hopefully something there connects with you, but it is, kinda selfishly, mostly a record for me. Validated parking? In a way, yes. But hopefully, it'll paint the year, my year, for you.
Massive thank yous go out, regardless of what it is, to the people who left and came back, the people who left and never did return, the people who made life great, and the people who made me wake up some days with that twinkle in my eye that said "today is going to be incredible." Extra special thank yous to the people who got me out of doors when I least expected to be called out, to the people who shared drinks, and the people who made sure, as I went down in flames, that I had somewhere to land where there would not be any collateral damage to other lives. Thank you to the rescuers, and the warners, and the policemen and policewomen without badges, the damage controllers, the picker-uppers, and the cheerers. The shooters and the hand claspers. It was a transformative year like few before it. An enlightening, disheartening, nearly dying more times than I would like to admit go at being more human than the human I was the year before and I'm sorry it took so long to put together for many a several reasons I don't need to get into right now.
I'm happy it's over, but more than that, I'm happy I'm alive to see it go.
///múm - Dancing Behind My Eyelids ...see the fog on the horizon
It was difficult and joyous combing through the year week by week and trying to sum up months in a single song. Here it is, though. The music that made life a little easier to comprehend and, frankly, live through last year.
Jan 2011>> Menomena - Muscle N' Flow Go
Feb 2011>> Björk - Wanderlust Go
Mar 2011>> El-P feat. Camu Tao - Oxycontin Go
Apr 2011>> Mono - Mere Your Pathetique Light Go
May 2011>> Matthew Dear - R+S Go
Jun 2011>> Hot Chip - No Fit State Go
Jul 2011>> The Black Angels - Better Off Alone Go
Aug 2011>> Gorillaz - To Binge Go
Sep 2011>> Mouse on Mars – Circloid Bricklett Sprüngli Go
Oct 2011>> Cold Cave - The Great Pan Is Dead Go
Nov 2011>> Lo-Fidelity Allstars - Weather 2 Go
Dec 2011>> Daedelus - You're The One Go
This is the official tax return for 2011. The books have been, after a fashion, balanced. The door is officially closed on what was a year of unexpected highs and grim marched lows. Looking forward to doing another one, but no promises. Hopefully something there connects with you, but it is, kinda selfishly, mostly a record for me. Validated parking? In a way, yes. But hopefully, it'll paint the year, my year, for you.
Massive thank yous go out, regardless of what it is, to the people who left and came back, the people who left and never did return, the people who made life great, and the people who made me wake up some days with that twinkle in my eye that said "today is going to be incredible." Extra special thank yous to the people who got me out of doors when I least expected to be called out, to the people who shared drinks, and the people who made sure, as I went down in flames, that I had somewhere to land where there would not be any collateral damage to other lives. Thank you to the rescuers, and the warners, and the policemen and policewomen without badges, the damage controllers, the picker-uppers, and the cheerers. The shooters and the hand claspers. It was a transformative year like few before it. An enlightening, disheartening, nearly dying more times than I would like to admit go at being more human than the human I was the year before and I'm sorry it took so long to put together for many a several reasons I don't need to get into right now.
I'm happy it's over, but more than that, I'm happy I'm alive to see it go.
///múm - Dancing Behind My Eyelids ...see the fog on the horizon
8/3/11
Manifesto (just kidding)
It's tempting to construct manifestos when things don't go your way. Tempting to take the bum raps you keep getting and try to think of a way to correct everything wrong that's happened to you, letter by letter, number by number until you arrive at a list of things and virtues that can correct the world once and for all and make it, not only a place in which your alternate self who experienced all of the positive outcomes you have been deprived truly exists, but a world in which everyone's alternate selves experience every positive outcome they possibly can while only actively subtracting the negative and leaving the ceiling open for the positive (perhaps they won't experience as positive an outcome as they would have previously, but the potential would still be there).
So enough about that shite.
Everybody's different. Some people will never understand how to be people. How to be human. I myself am much closer to being feral, to identifying with the senses and sensibilities of the higher functioning animal kingdoms than the lower functioning partitions of society. I don't know if I'm the right person to ask what it is to be human. I'm comfortable there. I suppose if I had to choose which side of that fence I wanted to stand on, I know what side I'd pick. I can't hold it against the people that have never been down that end of the spectrum if they don't understand how to relate. I can fucking still hate them though. For a little while. And then I get bored because I can howl as hard as I want into that wind coming down from where they are, and they'll never hear me clearly. And then I get back to rooting around my woods for things to eat and things to do and other wolves with which to play.

Ire. It's there. There is no ire extinguisher. I can break all the glass I own, but inside those cases there is only an ax with which to fight the fire. Swing away. Go find a patch of grass that is not burned to crisp ash. Roll around for a bit. Run off into the burning woods again after the scent of the something gorgeous, eyes wilder, mouth drawn back from teeth and hungry for something fat and slow. And happy to feel my lungs beating against my smoke stained ribs. Just break glass.
Don't invite me to your pity party. I'll drink all the liquor and toss back all the punch and go dancing on rooftops singing praises to the moon and starry ash smudged sky. I'm not without compassion. It's just something that's hard for me to understand. To feel and synthesize and give back. Sympathy yes. I can understand that. Sometimes I feel like my heart is the bleeding heart of a broken little girl fallen into a ravine in the Black forests of Germania, but my head is screwed on with steel lag bolts and filled with enough warheads, .50 cals, and trigger happy children to stage a military coup in darkest Africa and enough warpaint to terrify the most elaborate and landed samurai. I do my best to feel. And then I take what's left and make sense of what I read back from the dials and switches.
///El-P - "Love Theme" ...love though, I guess that's one thing that stays the same, but even that... the understanding fractures. As if the symmetry alone is a prescription to live. The world is busted, learn to live in it and treat people right. No manifestos necessary.
So enough about that shite.
Everybody's different. Some people will never understand how to be people. How to be human. I myself am much closer to being feral, to identifying with the senses and sensibilities of the higher functioning animal kingdoms than the lower functioning partitions of society. I don't know if I'm the right person to ask what it is to be human. I'm comfortable there. I suppose if I had to choose which side of that fence I wanted to stand on, I know what side I'd pick. I can't hold it against the people that have never been down that end of the spectrum if they don't understand how to relate. I can fucking still hate them though. For a little while. And then I get bored because I can howl as hard as I want into that wind coming down from where they are, and they'll never hear me clearly. And then I get back to rooting around my woods for things to eat and things to do and other wolves with which to play.
Ire. It's there. There is no ire extinguisher. I can break all the glass I own, but inside those cases there is only an ax with which to fight the fire. Swing away. Go find a patch of grass that is not burned to crisp ash. Roll around for a bit. Run off into the burning woods again after the scent of the something gorgeous, eyes wilder, mouth drawn back from teeth and hungry for something fat and slow. And happy to feel my lungs beating against my smoke stained ribs. Just break glass.
Don't invite me to your pity party. I'll drink all the liquor and toss back all the punch and go dancing on rooftops singing praises to the moon and starry ash smudged sky. I'm not without compassion. It's just something that's hard for me to understand. To feel and synthesize and give back. Sympathy yes. I can understand that. Sometimes I feel like my heart is the bleeding heart of a broken little girl fallen into a ravine in the Black forests of Germania, but my head is screwed on with steel lag bolts and filled with enough warheads, .50 cals, and trigger happy children to stage a military coup in darkest Africa and enough warpaint to terrify the most elaborate and landed samurai. I do my best to feel. And then I take what's left and make sense of what I read back from the dials and switches.
///El-P - "Love Theme" ...love though, I guess that's one thing that stays the same, but even that... the understanding fractures. As if the symmetry alone is a prescription to live. The world is busted, learn to live in it and treat people right. No manifestos necessary.
2/15/11
Amongst Myselves
Trying to parse so much conflict. There are only so many channels available. At work I have to deal with awful music being piped in through the ceiling, physical demands, emotional demands, mental demands, and managing inconsistencies and as the day rolls fatigue takes its toll on the number of channels available. That's an analogy that works sometimes. The problem with channel failure is that things connected and monitored and capped through the channel are left to grow and die on their own. Sometimes its all cross chatter and all I have to do is select and confer or revoke access rights to my mouth parts. Sometimes its active denial and that takes up a channel. It's always monitoring sound as my eyes aren't always trustworthy under physical stresses. Well my eyes are but my vision is not. Sometimes a channel gets eaten up entirely by the effort required to make sure I don't shred my skin on some incorrect call to a memorized movement. Often times a few are taken up by keeping track of how I'm spreading loads and pain responses and how often I'm lifting what and with which muscle group. Today was so long a day that I limped out of there with so many failures it was all I could do to pay attention to how I was placing my feet so not to re-aggravate an ankle rolled earlier in the day. I was thinking if I killed them all then they would all be my friends because if they're dead then they can't not be my friends. I was thinking a lot of other things too, but the rest is lost to the dust on the linoleum tiles. Maybe I'll remember it later. My spine is burning. I did too much again. I have a dysfunctional relationship with my job. I don't hate it. I just wish it could be better. I just wish I could be better. I dropped a case of two liter jugs of bleach today and it exploded. Wasted thirty seconds with conflicting courses of action. It's like everyone put their hands up at once and started talking before I could call on any particular one and half of them had nothing to contribute to the solution which ended up being 'clean it up, dumbass'. I don't know how I feel today. At the end of yesterday I was pretty fucking depressed and I still don't know why. Maybe trust issues? I went running yesterday and some fat sows were outside with their lye ruined hair wrapped up while they killed the afternoon attempting to grill (it smelled terrible) and they were making fun of me for jogging. I have no idea why. I want really badly to explain to the people that I work with the importance of their cooperation and the generation of well knit atmosphere of trust because I am struggling mightily to keep all my parts moving in one direction without the whole thing smashing itself to furious pieces, but I know they wouldn't understand and if anything it would probably end up costing me the job. Maybe that's what's got me blue this afternoon while I'm trying to sleep. There are lots of 'I's in this one and not many returns.
There's one. Because I care. If only everyone cared just a little more. If I were a dictator the options would be friendship or death. Then I thought maybe exile would make it easier for me to make friends or at least delay the assassination attempts that would inevitably come along. And the extermination of the families of the exiled I would have to pursue to end the cycle of retaliation. Because I just want to be friends.
There's two. Am I that fucking hard to get along with? I asked an old woman if she needed help finding anything. She said 'no, but there is something you can do to help me out, champ.' She was adorable. She couldn't reach the back of the top shelf so I grabbed her fruit cereal for her. I guess I'm rooting for the world's current format, or at least America's current format, to completely collapse. Partially so I can finally get to work on my list of people who need to end, and partially so I can travel freely, but also partly so everyone who's security is based on finances and bullshit jobs will be cut loose to die and I can pick their bones for good meat. I walk past a lot of nice homes on my way to work. Outside of a conspicuously wealthy complex of four shared homes was a pile of nice things interleaved with their trash pickup. Why would they not simply donate it to somewhere? Don't most places have a pickup service? Oh well. It was stuff I couldn't use, but I'm sure someone else could.
There's three. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's what I'm training for. That's why I run and work my body till it breaks and stitches and then I break it again. I'm working toward the end of the world. You can come hang out with me when it's over. I'll take care of you. We'll kill lots of zombies, smoke some doobies some afternoons and hike to South America for the winters (the douchebags of America will probably bloat and ruin Cali when it's over). Shit'll be ridiculous, I promise, but stupid fun. For us. Because we've already been to the end of the world. Twice. I guess that's what makes us different.
///El-P "Oxycotin"
There's one. Because I care. If only everyone cared just a little more. If I were a dictator the options would be friendship or death. Then I thought maybe exile would make it easier for me to make friends or at least delay the assassination attempts that would inevitably come along. And the extermination of the families of the exiled I would have to pursue to end the cycle of retaliation. Because I just want to be friends.
There's two. Am I that fucking hard to get along with? I asked an old woman if she needed help finding anything. She said 'no, but there is something you can do to help me out, champ.' She was adorable. She couldn't reach the back of the top shelf so I grabbed her fruit cereal for her. I guess I'm rooting for the world's current format, or at least America's current format, to completely collapse. Partially so I can finally get to work on my list of people who need to end, and partially so I can travel freely, but also partly so everyone who's security is based on finances and bullshit jobs will be cut loose to die and I can pick their bones for good meat. I walk past a lot of nice homes on my way to work. Outside of a conspicuously wealthy complex of four shared homes was a pile of nice things interleaved with their trash pickup. Why would they not simply donate it to somewhere? Don't most places have a pickup service? Oh well. It was stuff I couldn't use, but I'm sure someone else could.
There's three. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's what I'm training for. That's why I run and work my body till it breaks and stitches and then I break it again. I'm working toward the end of the world. You can come hang out with me when it's over. I'll take care of you. We'll kill lots of zombies, smoke some doobies some afternoons and hike to South America for the winters (the douchebags of America will probably bloat and ruin Cali when it's over). Shit'll be ridiculous, I promise, but stupid fun. For us. Because we've already been to the end of the world. Twice. I guess that's what makes us different.
///El-P "Oxycotin"
8/4/10
Golfcart Flamingo Logo
=_= very tired. The state of perpetual collapse that plagues my absolutely fucking retarded family life had me so angry and out of sorts I literally could not function and then the wonderful flip side of that situation was that I've been erased by someone I thought was a best friend (more about that later) so I had the unique pleasure of getting fucked from every direction at once. So its back on the smokes, collar up, stiff upper lip, and into that fucking wind.
This is what I managed to accomplish in a few hours of dedicated work when the bewilderment calmed down.

Three more to go. Dear god, if you're out there... please don't shit on me again today. I like getting work done. You aren't helping so just stay the fuck out of my way, okay? Thanks.
///El-P - "The League of Extraordinary Nobodies" '...and we haven't even gotten to the part where it's a joke..."
This is what I managed to accomplish in a few hours of dedicated work when the bewilderment calmed down.
Three more to go. Dear god, if you're out there... please don't shit on me again today. I like getting work done. You aren't helping so just stay the fuck out of my way, okay? Thanks.
///El-P - "The League of Extraordinary Nobodies" '...and we haven't even gotten to the part where it's a joke..."
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