11/18/2009
Every time I stare at this screen
Mostly there is the waiting, and the empty space, and the strangers in the coffee shop if I'm out on the road looking for inspiration, and the guilt at not writing. The writing happens in about 2.5 minutes. The rest of the time is wasted, or maybe praying is what they would have called it 150 years ago.
Do you know what ultramontanism is? It's the sort of crap I look up on the Wik instead of facing this job: write a crapass FIAC blog post that don't make no sense. Which is we both expect. Ex pectin. Like the man who gave up strawberry jam was ex pectin. Argh.
I have almost deleted this blog entirely about 57,000 times. But the other 2,454,000 times I didn't so who cares right?
Last night I met this huge tall Asian dude who wants to open up a bake shop in Nashville, Tennessee--a Christian bakery in Nashville that serves discount baked goods to starving country music artists and pays them decent wages to perform, because there's so many GD musicians in Nashville that they don't get paid. Ha. Just like the blogosphere. Such is the landscape when 99.9% of your colleagues are barely 1% distinguishable from you. Ability to discern is victimized by Hick's law, whereby increased infomation prolongs decisionmaking time, and by corollary, apathy. Low barrier to entry. High cost of breaking through the dip. Know what I thought about the Asian baker? I thought this guy has it figured out. Good for him. There are still saints out there.
11/06/2009
Digit Wails
We don't learn by doing but by staring, and we don't learn very well.
We weren't meant to stare all day. We need a treadmill or we'll wither away.
We cry with our fingers. Loud fingers are angry spirits. We tickle the scroll bar in search of love.
The man with shortcuts is an angry man, his keystrokes more ambitious, he wants to use less so he can do more. The shortcut man scares the scrolling, clicking man. Those who master shortcuts become king.
Outside they breath oxygen. It makes us afraid, desperate for electricity again. We need to be on and off and on and again, because we are digits ourselves, processing signals to serve the end user. Our job is to be the current. The process is always being written, for the end user. We wish we could ask him if he likes it. If he doesn't like it we are aborted.
We no longer talk. Our fingers become smaller, hands like pin pricks, we apprehend it by staring. We see everything but feel nothing.
10/30/2009
Exacting
Read to channel something, to make to think, to believe in potential. I couldn't persuade a dog to come out of the rain with a raw leg of lamb. I don't know how to debate. I have no point to prove, I am editing everything the best I can, deciding what to keep and what to lose.
10/23/2009
Things that are easy
puns
Things that are hard: everything else
10/15/2009
Hotel Supramonte
My captors might not be cruel while they awaited their pay, driven by hunger more than malice and aware that the beauty that clung them to this barren land would captivate me too, and they would let me wade in the river in the morning, where hundreds of minnows would chase my feet, so that my footfalls would overturn enough dirt to feed them too. I would maybe try to carve a flute from the driftwood to play a sorry tune, and make a joke about scaling the sheer rock face of the cliffs when they looked away, how I would spirit away to Tiscali, the 6000-year-old hideout in the high part of the mountains where ancient peoples hid from bandits too.
And when we finally parted ways I would forgive my kidnappers too, the way De Andre did in 1980, not begrudging the price you pay living at the Hotel Supramonte.
10/07/2009
That one song over and over
I met this lady, I love her, lovely, fair. I'd go for days about her hair if you'd let me. I promised I'd write her but have been swaddled in sacred feelings for a couple years. I made provision only for burps or farts, no knowhow to explain those dimples that bring me tears.
***
There're only seven songs in the universe, and I've gotten used to one
I do like variations on a theme, but
if there's only one way to flatten out into a runway, carry all your friends
so we land with dignity
if there's still a reason to blog
if someone on this passive intelligent planet hasn't learned to read then
I'll gladly stay stodgy if it means I can pay an entrance fee to see
a lone lost tourist find a reason to fall on his knees
and I'll wait to hear minds click, my
mouse is making me sick;
you there,
too entertained to realize your boredom
too sustained by routine to fall down running
on empty
you there, I need lost little lambs like you! we need a lost little land like ours. we live lost lives, learning to get big, know ye not that ye are gods? and
the kingdom's within you
there's that ancient wisdom burning through, I thought technology'd let me forget where I came from? the definition of a fool
10/06/2009
15 minutes of focus
I've been admiring the bricks of my finished mansion, afraid to meet the press, I've been poring over pictures on Facebook, obsessed with how I'm dressed. I always wait until the last minute to squeeze this bottle through the tube, but it seems I'll be up till midnight glued to what I'd already conclusively proved to be "what is '1 + 1 equals 2'?".
I can't wish better things for my reflection, the universe I saw last night happened 4 billion years ago, we can't let that be our life story, we have to build another universe to grow, we can be so much better than our demographic peer group analysis would predict was the way we vertigo.
So I'd like to promise never to think so much before putting finger to key, that's been my problem with this blog for oh for about a year; a problem with everybody. Everything created is a miracle, and we've been in awe of all the miracles, until the miracles made us small. I've got to make friends with giant aliens, massive creatures, influential blue whales or something, somebody with a blowhole big enough to toss all the self-consciousness into, somebody with the garbanzos to toasterize every little worry and kerblontz all thin-haired pale quiggling into salty smithereens.
I am a weirdo overdone by words, I have polished many dancing turds, they make me giggle and I overindulge, but undone if by nothing else but the bulge. At 31 I'm in my prime, yet all these words aren't worth a dime if we aren't tumbling headlong into truth - that we can't mind striking out so much, as the Bambino would often do. No use sitting in a germ-free oxygen booth, and hey did you know cancer of the mouth is probably what killed Babe Ruth?
8/24/2009
Woohoo
We are swollen shrimp in the catch-drain of the sink, thank god for a dripping faucet, an Econo-lodge amid the forest, middle class dreams with an unvarnished support beam, factor in hidden expenses and, it seems, we are better off with Mr. Clean.
If I ever tried to paint I would make your children faint. I don't breathe when about to burst; in fact I'll pay the limo driver personally, so get your hands off my purse.
Instead I'll write ten thousand terse two-word rejection letters to all my creditors, ask my debtors to hand me an Ontario peach: in fact I'd trade everything they owe me for a 30-second speech!
7/27/2009
Mass Email for New Years 2001
Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 07:36:33 -0500 (EST)
From: ##### <####@qlink.queensu.ca>
To: ##########
Subject: Mass email for New Year's
Dear People On This List,
I swore I'd never do it again, but newly ingrained habits die hard, harder than old habits die hard. Yes, this habit of making everyone feel depersonalized via the odious mass email is dying hard with a vengeance.
I blame the cold weather. You might say it has frozen all the human feeling that is left in me. Some of you might also say that I was a soulless monster anyway, what with already having sent three other de-individualizing mass emails out in the past eight months anyways (I reluctantly recall a May 6 mass email and September 8 mass email, and a short, some would say nasty and brutish Dec 13 mass email). If you have already dialed up your OPP bureau, asking for my head on a plate, and demanding that my email-writing fingers be cut off and preserved in a jar as a symbolic act of retribution, then I understand.
Yes, I understand if you would do that. Just know that I am wilier than any of you.
Yes, I am both foxy and wily, and if you think I will lie down and let you cut my fingers off without some evil payback of my own somewhere down the line, then think again, peasants! I will reveal nothing more. Revenge is a dish best served cold. With a side order of humiliation. Go ahead, enjoy my severed fingers preserved in a jar! I still have my very capable and evil reptile brain to plot and hatch future machinations (indeed, the brain is the root of all email, 'mass'ive and otherwise, and even a stumpy-fisted evil mastermind can have tricks up his sleeve, though there be no mittens on his on hands). Maybe you should be thinking long term with your acts of retributive justice, instead of scheming these near-sighted and downright petty digit-severing childish acts of vengeance. You ought to think these things out before you start brandishing a saw willy-nilly and demand my fingers in a jar. I just admitted (my facade of wiliness breached in a moment of openness andtruthfulness, probably sparked subconsciously by the one remainingcompassionate sector of my brain, the one part not yet wholly consumed by reptilian evil, the one part of me fighting to break free from the rest and proclaim itself human, and good), that my brain is reptile. If my brain is evil and reptile, why wouldn't my fingers be reptile as well?
Like the wily salamander who's had its tail cut off in a life-or-death 'imbroglio', why couldn't I simply regrow my fingers in time and recommence writing mass emails, continuing the evil all the more, adding to it like a small child adds Lego bricks to a castle, until the castle (and, in my case, the evil) reaches the heavens and thereupon only God Himself can stop me! Oh, the wickedness of it all!
If the harsh Canadian winters have taught me anything (and they rarely teach me much--indeed, the sub zero extremities of the season usually slow down the blood flow in my brain to a Saharan trickle, resulting in an evil mastermind who, though wily, is at his most relatively dull-witted in winter-time, hence the possibility of having his fingers cut off and preserved in a jar becomes a veritable concern, whereas in other climates an evil mastermind of comparable scale would never have fear of getting part of him amputated, because the warmer weather would allow blood flow in the brain to be at maximum, and such finger-chopping conspiracies would be nipped in the bud, perhaps by an evilly-masterminded pre-emptive counter-offensive, plotted and hatched by a smoothly functioning reptile evil brain. For example, before you had the opportunity of dialing up your local police bureau and calling for my head on a plate and my fingers separated from my hands and displayed, label and all, in this now-clichéd finger jar, a warm-weather, brain-well-lubed evil genius would have done something evil to prevent you from accomplishing your goal of retributive mass-email penance, before you even picked up the phone. Say, for example, that I fire-bombed your house. Good luck amputating my fingers then! I would think that rescuing your cat and your loved ones from the charred inferno would be higher up on your 'to do' list than making examples out of workaday evil masterminds! But I am completely abusing this parenthesis. Remember, I was trying to make a point before all this talk of how a warm weather evil mastermind would fend off a finger-chomping conspiracy much better than I would be able to, in my frigid 'lukewarm if I'm lucky, blood flow at a trickle' state...here goes what's on the other side of this bracket. Props to my friend ####...'if the harsh Canadian winters have taught me anything..') it's how to die hard with a vengeance.
Wow, I have now been writing this email for an hour and a half. That's how much this topic concerns me.
To sum up my introduction to this email: All of you can kiss my ass!
ON TO THE REST OF THE EMAIL:
I just wanted to say Happy New Year to everybody on this list, and Happy New Year to everyone else too. I hope you still love me. Forgive my hair-trigger tangents. Let this be my belated XMAS
present to you. I know mass emails aren't a unique gift, but at least you don't have to fight off crowds in the GAP to exchange it. Small consolation...
Lata
####
7/15/2009
11 Tantalizing Headlines (for future posts)
- 1 Year Plan for World Domination (including mid-plan sabbatical because it's really easy)
- I'm Actually Not As Crazy As I Was Five Minutes Ago (and other discouraging trends)
- Words I Will Now Refuse to Read
- What Mild Rejection Has Taught Me (aka 1 year plan to settle for a boring desk job)
- If Only I Could Hear at Canine Frequencies ...
- Beyonce Is My Cousin?? Eww, That's Travolting!
- I Never Wash My Hands (But I Do Wash My Fists... With The Blood of Aliens!)
- How I Greened My Nightmares
- Facebook, The Movie? Meet Cupcake Man, The Smiling!
- Ear Wax: Why Those Who Have It Just Don't Care, And Those Who Don't Are Jealous
- Please...Talk To Me When I'm Listening
7/07/2009
This blog
To find invisible cracks, you have to listen.
You listen for echoes.
To make an echo, you have to speak.
Speak what?
Anything.
As long as it's out loud.
But, if there is too much noise, you don't hear anything.
6/16/2009
Keytharsis
5/22/2009
Imagine
Now imagine a fat policeman, one who gives a damn.
Imagine a tortoise, feathers in beak, drinking liquids from a coat sleeve in a sorghum silo... midweek.
Imagine a polka dance cross state lines,
or a fantasy camp owned by Larry Fine.
Imagine a streusel fan with a plateful left to chew,
or twenty blackbirds contemplating early curfew.
Imagine a hairless nomad left to solve a Rubik's cube, and dragging sons and daughters to the mouth of the Danube, and he says "Imagine me in front of a screen.
Check your neck for pimples and ensure your nose is clean."
And if you imagine that, then welcome to my dream.
5/21/2009
Ask me about my hobbies
"I’ll cut to the cheese: I had a you reeka moment while reading an article in Ass Choir magazine.
It said that though Western peoples are controlling their emissions, there are still vast buildups of natural gas, held in tense grip between belligerent Cheeks in the Mid East.
This has led to methane-ous crimes among Arab arsetalkocracies, including the assgassination of the Blue Angel, leader of the Fartsee people, which has the hole region under a terrible cloud. The stealth bomber let loose in a crowded theatre hot box; it was John Wilts-the-Booth, a has-beans actor, aka Jack the Ripper, who suffocated his victim in the dark.
Since then, nonstop stench warfare: silent-but-deadly rocket blasts (outside the Qatar embarrassee) and the cries of aerate sirens. Ol factories have been odoured shut down for safety. In Krakow meanwhile, Eeeeewww leaders have held nothing in there but talks for days– many high rank officials are holding their noses in response to the colon of doody.
Egyptian statesman Atef Ebeid (Burrito) also scented a strong message: He let one slip recently, boasting “In Egypt, we have ‘toot’ in common. We created the mysterious Sphinx, which baffle the world. Now we have a mighty Force of Air. Let smell-odious trumpets sound! Let the infidels sulphur!”
I’m no Nostrildamus, but my analysis? Throw caulking to the wind, and plug holes in these terrorassts: That would help rectumfy everything before it goes any farter!
Thank you, it’s been a slice."
~aired May 16, 2009 in Austin, Texas. Visit the source.
5/07/2009
4/20/2009
Facebook thoughts
4/14/2009
Drink yourself silly
3/29/2009
Ranting from the top floor across the city
I switched where I sat, and that is the source of this scat. When I peek across the city, bombarded by baroque, as towers grow from mounds of dirt, where faroff sun-dried cyclists prompt mental microflirts, you get perspective, or maybe just discrete novel excretive blarghblectives, whatever - I can't be against anything new - as I rub the velvet of my button-down shirt.
3/11/2009
God uses a Mac
Go, shout it out, rise up
Oh, oh
Escape yourself, and gravity
Hear me, cease to speak that I may speak
Shush now
Oh, oh
Force quit and move to trash
~Unknown Caller by U2
3/09/2009
Meltdown?
From my few years observing the cosmos, here's what I've learned of how the Canadian economy works when things go bad: Those closest to the Government are able (via lobbyists and their friends) to line up first at the trough to save their skins. Those closest to the trough (CBC, car makers) are the ones who deserve the money least, because they have been coddled the longest. [This includes the government workers themselves who basically control the trough, who ARE the trough - and who are most hysterical about a downtown in the economy, because it means we may actually wake up and demand accountability for our vote and our money.] Those who have been coddled the longest are theoretically most able to withstand the downturn because they've been getting the money all along, but they are also the ones who cry the loudest when things go bad.
This recession is not a tragedy in and of itself, but only a tragedy of relative expectations and disappointment. Our society is ridiculously wealthy and incremental decreases in GDP will cause no suffering that compares in any way to the great depression of the 1930s. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, because the squeaky wheel is the one that doesn't do any work. Those who suffer most are also the most accustomed to suffering when things go bad are furthest from the trough, because they have learned to live without government support. Call it the virtue of honest work, the spirit of capitalism - the lack of honest work, the prevalence of cronyism --> This is how the establishment remains the establishment: by milking honest workers, honest workers who have learned not to depend on government to bail them out but to work to find a way no matter what. This is also why voting is important, so we can deliver justice at times of reckoning which are right now.
So...
1) Online readers love to read news
BUT
2) Advertisers no longer want to advertise with it
SO, WHO WILL PAY FOR THE NEWS? ANSWER:
3) Telco/Cable Monopolies
WHO
4) Buy up newspaper organizations (already doing so and will increasingly pick up the remaining scraps, dirt cheap)
AND
5) Charge subscribers in their monthly bill.
So instead of reading newspapers for $100/year subscription, we’ll pay min $500/yr (in Canada) to read news online (and Twitter, and Facebook, and watch porn) via our internet bill, and an extra $600/yr to get it on our mobile phones. Instead of $100 for news, we pay $1100.
Wow, our generation is so advanced. We just agreed to the biggest upsell in history.