Ever heard of some old dude get soaked in gasoline whilst trying to carjack an old lady at some backwoods Texas gas station? Like dude just said “fuck it, I’m taking this old bitch’s Tahoe back to my mobile home so the dogs can have something fancy to live under”?
Well now you have. (if that crazy link bothers to work) What a piece of work. Nobel winner, that guy.
My truck, quite fortunately, is not likely to ever be a target of such wanton thievery. No Denali trim package over here. Oh hell no. I just got my rear view mirror glued back on, and that’s got me pretty excited! Now I can see the urgent gestures of the people I accidentally cut off on the freeway because my steering is so damned loose! Alright! If only the windshield wipers, CD player, and differential would magically fix themselves, it’d be perfect *!
Red rocket, red rocket.
It entertains me to learn how people are judged by their car. If you drive a late model Lexus, you’re a posh asshole. If you drive an Eclipse convertible you’re a titty dancer. And if you drive an older, beat-up pickup truck with four cracks across the windshield, you’re a garbage man.
Apparently.
I gather this from the fact that every day there is new garbage that has been deposited in the bed of my truck. It just appears there, like magic! Trash sorcery! Beer cans, cigarette packs/butts, fast food packaging, dead birds, whole branches, and other unnamed, general detritus refuse. Stankin’ up the joint.
This is done because I obviously enjoy throwing other people’s trash away. I really do. I especially like throwing away food related items, like half-eaten hamburgers and apple cores. That’s awesome. Makes me delirious just thinking about it. In fact, I like dealing with other people’s shit so much, it might be comparable to how much Canada must loving dealing with ours.
Because I KNOW we toss shit in the back of their pickup bed like it was an abandoned apartment dumpster. Like, fuck it.
So, keep that in mind kids: anyone driving a pickup truck is a garbage man. Whether they like it or not. Feel free to drop trou’ right in there to help with the compost!
Fantastic.
*Safe and drivable.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Standards Are Awesome.
Hey! Guess what’s really NOT important?! Readability Level Statistics!
It’s called the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Level, and it’s so awesome I want to commit violence on myself! You see, F—K system does this voo-doo on paragraphs of words and then applies a statistically wow-erific model to fit that set of words neatly into a categorization which (big shocker) correlates to grade school reading aptitude! As in: a score of 5 = 5th grade reading level. 4 = 4th, 3 = 3rd, and 12th = you get the picture.
Unless you, yourself, are a 1. In which case, you’re totally confused by now and wish that your mother/brother wasn’t your sister/grandmother. Or you’re just drooling and searching for horse pr0n.
Back to the F—K method.
Apparently, in the same voice, and while speaking ostensibly on the same level (I only have one level of intelligence, presumably), I can write at a 6th grade level AND an 11.5th grade level! Simultaneously! That makes ALL the sense in the world! I checked it myself using Microsoft Word! It’s so easy to judge nowadays!
I’m sooooo glad we have these rating systems in place to tell me that in order to bring a paragraph from a 6th grade level to a 12th grade level, all I need to do is add run-on sentences and long, multi-syllabic words! Even if I fuck the grammar all up, jumble all the paragraphs into one long-winded douche-wheez, and use big, fake words in all sorts of impracticalishnistical ways! Smartness!
Flesch-Kincaid grade level 1.6 (so, you don’t even need to know English really):
Flesch-Kincaid grade level 7.4 (what almost SIX more years of education can guarantee! Apparently!)
Standards are awesome. We need more.
It’s called the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Level, and it’s so awesome I want to commit violence on myself! You see, F—K system does this voo-doo on paragraphs of words and then applies a statistically wow-erific model to fit that set of words neatly into a categorization which (big shocker) correlates to grade school reading aptitude! As in: a score of 5 = 5th grade reading level. 4 = 4th, 3 = 3rd, and 12th = you get the picture.
Unless you, yourself, are a 1. In which case, you’re totally confused by now and wish that your mother/brother wasn’t your sister/grandmother. Or you’re just drooling and searching for horse pr0n.
Back to the F—K method.
Apparently, in the same voice, and while speaking ostensibly on the same level (I only have one level of intelligence, presumably), I can write at a 6th grade level AND an 11.5th grade level! Simultaneously! That makes ALL the sense in the world! I checked it myself using Microsoft Word! It’s so easy to judge nowadays!
I’m sooooo glad we have these rating systems in place to tell me that in order to bring a paragraph from a 6th grade level to a 12th grade level, all I need to do is add run-on sentences and long, multi-syllabic words! Even if I fuck the grammar all up, jumble all the paragraphs into one long-winded douche-wheez, and use big, fake words in all sorts of impracticalishnistical ways! Smartness!
Flesch-Kincaid grade level 1.6 (so, you don’t even need to know English really):
The dog ran very fast. But not fast for dad. I like it when the dog gets beat. My dad beats dogs with his hook hand. His hook is made of metal and rubber. Like my mom’s left leg.
They were in a combine fire together. Mom says they were making me. Two bums came by and found them on top of the other. The bums did their thing. Then burned the combine. Mom’s leg got ate by coyotes after she passed out from the pain.
I don’t like it when dad opens my coke with his hook. It sounds so bad. It makes me cry. Like he just used that hook to open my brain instead.
Shut up stupid dog or I will hit you. With my third leg.
Flesch-Kincaid grade level 7.4 (what almost SIX more years of education can guarantee! Apparently!)
The dog ran very fast, but not fast; for dad. Precociousness. I like it when the dog gets beat because my dad beats dogs with his hooktasticalfullness hand. His hook is made of posthumously metal and rubberfishnets, just like my mom’s left; leggoristicality-o. They were in a combine fire together where mom says they were making me; fistedpainfully when two bums came by and found them on fiddlesticks top of the other. The bums did their thingsteriousnicity; then burned the combine forcedinstitutionalization. Mom’s leg got aten by coyote politicians after she passed out from the painstaticness. I don’t like it when dad opens my coke embroidering with his hook because it sounds so bad that it makes me cry; like he just used that hook to open my brain instead. Shut up stupid dogmaticalstatistician or I will hit you with my third leg bombastic.
Standards are awesome. We need more.
Monday, December 04, 2006
I Came So Close To Respect. But No. Not Today.
He tried to make sense. He really did.
You know, I just can’t get behind all this religious posturing. It ruins a potentially decent message. It’s utter shit to me, but a message as simple as “killing doesn’t seem to be solving any problems” just gets all kinds of RUINED when it’s mummified in the used toilet-paper of religion.
Ahmadinejad’s open letter to Americans is a fine, fine example of what’s wrong with allowing religious rhetoric to lay waste to sound concepts. Here’s a guy, who, best of intentions, simply wants the American people to know that he and his country are not just some gaggle of miscreant sand-dwellers, shooting dogs for sport and spending their every waking hour plotting to destroy the next Freedom Tower. I guess there are idiots, probably in my own neighborhood, who still labor under the delusion that the entire middle east operates that way. But they probably also think Destro and Cobra Commander are real too, as active but silent members of the Al Qaida network. So it's likely that his intended audience isn't into "reading long stuff that sounds all complicated". Like fire extinguisher instructions.
Regardless, dude’s letter is well intended. And for the record, I wanted to hate what he had to say. I intended to be fully biased, and have all my pre-notions of how small-minded a man had to be in order for his eyes to be so small and close together. Like two ear studs inserted a centimeter apart on a full-sized potato.
But for the most part, his sentiment is decent and appears to be an honest appeal to the good nature of the average tax-paying American Joe. But then he had to go fuck it all up with a slew of god talk. Man, what a shame.
My issues, with this specific letter of text, in the order in which they grated on my goddamn nerves:
1. Continually claiming that one’s audience should be “God-fearing, truth loving, and justice seeking” is blatantly disingenuous. Either one IS, or they ARE NOT “God-fearing”. Placing repeated reminders in the letter is little more than obnoxious prodding. He might as well have said “remember kids, God will fucking lightening your ass if you don’t side with me, a fellow God-fearer!” He was only talking to others of religious motivation. Not science. Not logic. Not fact-based reasoning. According to Ahmadinejad, only those of faith are capable of solving/not-starting issues such as modern day imperialism and wanton murder.
Ehhhh... What? That's some double-fucking-speak if I've ever encountered it.
It’s quite possibly the stupidest stretch of vacant common sense I’ve ever had to endure, but, okay then, I’ll pretend it makes sense for the sake of making fun of it. You know, since he went to the effort of writing it all down or whatever.
So… what about those of us who don’t “fear” whatever “God” is being tossed around so irreverently? Are we the problem? The non-fearers? Are we what’s wrong here? Are we the reason why everything is (pretty much always) all fucked up? Well, last time I checked, the only “Godless” leaders of ANY known nation, or any other set of murderous humans, incorporated or otherwise, for that matter, were Communists. The EXTREMELY RATIONAL reasoning behind removing religion from that socio-political structure, while wholly impractical and extremely oppressive, was to ensure that there would be no MURDER along religious lines (which is a guarantee as long as religions are allowed to practice competitively). But, as is human nature, if any communist did indeed shed their religion, then they simply picked up bureaucracy instead. But for the most part, they were all religious as hell anyway. Secretly. They simply played the part of non-theologians to keep from having their heads lopped-off by competing closet-theologians.
Now that the Soviet Union is gone, everyone is super-religious again. Shocker. And the Chinese are split between a return to their respective Eastern Philosophic routes and the coastal worship of an exploding Market Economy. And of course, violence along lines of delineation is beginning.
N. Korea is black hole of who-knows, so I'm not sticking anything in it here.
I don’t think it unfair, or a stretch to state that the injection of religion into a political text of any kind will be IMMEDIATELY POLARIZING. Until every living human being honestly and truly believes the exact same thing about everything (perhaps as programmed robots, made by programmed robots, which could only have come from some imagined universe somewhere far beyond current human comprehension?) any disputing of this polarization FACT, ironically, simply proves that it’s true.
Let’s face it, if a Muslim even says the word “Jew”, people get upset, regardless of the context. Like “don’t talk about my people! You aren’t allowed!” or “dude, I don’t think it’s appropriate that you be mentioning them. Ever.” It doesn't matter what they said about "the other" group. Just mentioning names ruffles feathers.
And don’t get me started on how atheists feel when they’re even MENTIONED by ANY other religious group. If the pope were to say “there’s nothing wrong with being an atheist,” which he would never say, but if he did, there’d be a large coalition of atheists who would react with “DON’T PATRONIZE ME YOU OPPRESSOR OF THE MIND AND FREE THOUGHT. I WILL PAY NO TITHE TO THE SPAGHETTI MONSTER! Ever.”
Fools get upset over beliefs. Even without provocation or reason. Maybe it’s the caffeine. I don’t really know. Regardless, the polarization occurs.
2. I’m tired of the over-misuse of the term “immoral” between cultures. Any staunch follower of Islam stating that a non-follower of Islam was acting “immorally” is ridiculous. They’re “immoral” because their “morals” are different than yours. Stop acting like morals are finite and carved in stone. They aren’t. They’re liquid, and can be VASTLY different from one population, group, gang, prison block to another.
You might as well be trying to tell a sea otter that it’s activities are “immoral”. It's ridiculous.
This will always bother me. The semantic arguments that surround morality. It’s the newest lazy-man’s approach to making any random-ass point into a touchstone argument. Telling someone who is far outside your culture that they should believe something because it is “moral” is just as ridiculous as someone from Mozambique telling Alaskans that drinking tap water in Anchorage will definitely result in African dysentery.
Morality is contextual. Locally and culturally so. There’s no definitive.
You realize that in some cultures, what we deam as "innappropriate" homosexuality between boys and older, married men is PART OF THEIR MORAL CODE? As fucked up as that sounds to me, they honestly believe knowledge surrounding what it means to “be a man” can only be passed on this way. So they have these rituals surrounding it. To an outsider, it’s all kinds of crazy pedophile-sounding. But to them, they’re like “whatever man. This is how we roll.” They might consider our preference to just let boys figure shit out on their own as “immoral” and “irresponsible” in terms of youth education. And based on their moral code, hey, guess what? They’d be right.
To be clear, I AM NOT ADVOCATING THIS. I’m just sayin’ it exists, and according to their own compasses, passes for “moral”.
So, Ahmadinejad’s tossing around of any “morality” related words is meaningless in the given context. Probability says that he’s not talking about the same “morals” as those held by his audience (but by pure coincidence, he could be, one never knows! Aha. Ha.).
Again, with religious folk, who are likely under the erroneous impression that only one set of morals exists, all one has to say is “doing ______ is immoral. Do you do ______?” and motherfuckers will be falling all over themselves to say “oh good lord no! NEVER! I’m a god-fearing moral person, I am!”
Touchstone arguments. Lazy shit.
3. Then, of course, there’s the ever-popular “justice and truth” claims. Wow. I figured by now, no politician, regardless of their revolutionary roots, would be so asinine as to claim this as an aim. Governments cannot guarantee this. You know why? Because statistically speaking, it would likely involve the removal of that same government which is supposed to be providing the guarantee. A government hand over authority/power? Oh, right. And understandably, that has never happened. Nor will it. How would a self-serving government honestly know when it was stepping beyond the bounds of "justice and truth"? I don’t think it’s a stretch to state that all governments, over their entire course of existence end up making sacrifices and compromises which amount to injustice and manipulation of SOMEONE/thing. It might be a stated “goal” in the bylaws, constitution, or whatever. But it’s the first lofty pipe-dream to get shelved as soon as real governing starts happening.
I won’t delve further into that one. It’s just so stupid it makes me want to cry.
You know, I just can’t get behind all this religious posturing. It ruins a potentially decent message. It’s utter shit to me, but a message as simple as “killing doesn’t seem to be solving any problems” just gets all kinds of RUINED when it’s mummified in the used toilet-paper of religion.
Ahmadinejad’s open letter to Americans is a fine, fine example of what’s wrong with allowing religious rhetoric to lay waste to sound concepts. Here’s a guy, who, best of intentions, simply wants the American people to know that he and his country are not just some gaggle of miscreant sand-dwellers, shooting dogs for sport and spending their every waking hour plotting to destroy the next Freedom Tower. I guess there are idiots, probably in my own neighborhood, who still labor under the delusion that the entire middle east operates that way. But they probably also think Destro and Cobra Commander are real too, as active but silent members of the Al Qaida network. So it's likely that his intended audience isn't into "reading long stuff that sounds all complicated". Like fire extinguisher instructions.
Regardless, dude’s letter is well intended. And for the record, I wanted to hate what he had to say. I intended to be fully biased, and have all my pre-notions of how small-minded a man had to be in order for his eyes to be so small and close together. Like two ear studs inserted a centimeter apart on a full-sized potato.
But for the most part, his sentiment is decent and appears to be an honest appeal to the good nature of the average tax-paying American Joe. But then he had to go fuck it all up with a slew of god talk. Man, what a shame.
My issues, with this specific letter of text, in the order in which they grated on my goddamn nerves:
1. Continually claiming that one’s audience should be “God-fearing, truth loving, and justice seeking” is blatantly disingenuous. Either one IS, or they ARE NOT “God-fearing”. Placing repeated reminders in the letter is little more than obnoxious prodding. He might as well have said “remember kids, God will fucking lightening your ass if you don’t side with me, a fellow God-fearer!” He was only talking to others of religious motivation. Not science. Not logic. Not fact-based reasoning. According to Ahmadinejad, only those of faith are capable of solving/not-starting issues such as modern day imperialism and wanton murder.
Ehhhh... What? That's some double-fucking-speak if I've ever encountered it.
It’s quite possibly the stupidest stretch of vacant common sense I’ve ever had to endure, but, okay then, I’ll pretend it makes sense for the sake of making fun of it. You know, since he went to the effort of writing it all down or whatever.
So… what about those of us who don’t “fear” whatever “God” is being tossed around so irreverently? Are we the problem? The non-fearers? Are we what’s wrong here? Are we the reason why everything is (pretty much always) all fucked up? Well, last time I checked, the only “Godless” leaders of ANY known nation, or any other set of murderous humans, incorporated or otherwise, for that matter, were Communists. The EXTREMELY RATIONAL reasoning behind removing religion from that socio-political structure, while wholly impractical and extremely oppressive, was to ensure that there would be no MURDER along religious lines (which is a guarantee as long as religions are allowed to practice competitively). But, as is human nature, if any communist did indeed shed their religion, then they simply picked up bureaucracy instead. But for the most part, they were all religious as hell anyway. Secretly. They simply played the part of non-theologians to keep from having their heads lopped-off by competing closet-theologians.
Now that the Soviet Union is gone, everyone is super-religious again. Shocker. And the Chinese are split between a return to their respective Eastern Philosophic routes and the coastal worship of an exploding Market Economy. And of course, violence along lines of delineation is beginning.
N. Korea is black hole of who-knows, so I'm not sticking anything in it here.
I don’t think it unfair, or a stretch to state that the injection of religion into a political text of any kind will be IMMEDIATELY POLARIZING. Until every living human being honestly and truly believes the exact same thing about everything (perhaps as programmed robots, made by programmed robots, which could only have come from some imagined universe somewhere far beyond current human comprehension?) any disputing of this polarization FACT, ironically, simply proves that it’s true.
Let’s face it, if a Muslim even says the word “Jew”, people get upset, regardless of the context. Like “don’t talk about my people! You aren’t allowed!” or “dude, I don’t think it’s appropriate that you be mentioning them. Ever.” It doesn't matter what they said about "the other" group. Just mentioning names ruffles feathers.
And don’t get me started on how atheists feel when they’re even MENTIONED by ANY other religious group. If the pope were to say “there’s nothing wrong with being an atheist,” which he would never say, but if he did, there’d be a large coalition of atheists who would react with “DON’T PATRONIZE ME YOU OPPRESSOR OF THE MIND AND FREE THOUGHT. I WILL PAY NO TITHE TO THE SPAGHETTI MONSTER! Ever.”
Fools get upset over beliefs. Even without provocation or reason. Maybe it’s the caffeine. I don’t really know. Regardless, the polarization occurs.
2. I’m tired of the over-misuse of the term “immoral” between cultures. Any staunch follower of Islam stating that a non-follower of Islam was acting “immorally” is ridiculous. They’re “immoral” because their “morals” are different than yours. Stop acting like morals are finite and carved in stone. They aren’t. They’re liquid, and can be VASTLY different from one population, group, gang, prison block to another.
You might as well be trying to tell a sea otter that it’s activities are “immoral”. It's ridiculous.
This will always bother me. The semantic arguments that surround morality. It’s the newest lazy-man’s approach to making any random-ass point into a touchstone argument. Telling someone who is far outside your culture that they should believe something because it is “moral” is just as ridiculous as someone from Mozambique telling Alaskans that drinking tap water in Anchorage will definitely result in African dysentery.
Morality is contextual. Locally and culturally so. There’s no definitive.
You realize that in some cultures, what we deam as "innappropriate" homosexuality between boys and older, married men is PART OF THEIR MORAL CODE? As fucked up as that sounds to me, they honestly believe knowledge surrounding what it means to “be a man” can only be passed on this way. So they have these rituals surrounding it. To an outsider, it’s all kinds of crazy pedophile-sounding. But to them, they’re like “whatever man. This is how we roll.” They might consider our preference to just let boys figure shit out on their own as “immoral” and “irresponsible” in terms of youth education. And based on their moral code, hey, guess what? They’d be right.
To be clear, I AM NOT ADVOCATING THIS. I’m just sayin’ it exists, and according to their own compasses, passes for “moral”.
So, Ahmadinejad’s tossing around of any “morality” related words is meaningless in the given context. Probability says that he’s not talking about the same “morals” as those held by his audience (but by pure coincidence, he could be, one never knows! Aha. Ha.).
Again, with religious folk, who are likely under the erroneous impression that only one set of morals exists, all one has to say is “doing ______ is immoral. Do you do ______?” and motherfuckers will be falling all over themselves to say “oh good lord no! NEVER! I’m a god-fearing moral person, I am!”
Touchstone arguments. Lazy shit.
3. Then, of course, there’s the ever-popular “justice and truth” claims. Wow. I figured by now, no politician, regardless of their revolutionary roots, would be so asinine as to claim this as an aim. Governments cannot guarantee this. You know why? Because statistically speaking, it would likely involve the removal of that same government which is supposed to be providing the guarantee. A government hand over authority/power? Oh, right. And understandably, that has never happened. Nor will it. How would a self-serving government honestly know when it was stepping beyond the bounds of "justice and truth"? I don’t think it’s a stretch to state that all governments, over their entire course of existence end up making sacrifices and compromises which amount to injustice and manipulation of SOMEONE/thing. It might be a stated “goal” in the bylaws, constitution, or whatever. But it’s the first lofty pipe-dream to get shelved as soon as real governing starts happening.
I won’t delve further into that one. It’s just so stupid it makes me want to cry.
Monday, November 20, 2006
Some sort of book or whatever
No No No. I haven’t mentioned anything about my book on here yet. Why? Because I’m not trying to pimp it wide-scale. It needs to marinate for a minute. Incubate. Crouch before the pounce. Something else clichéd and milquetoast. I’m doing a reading-type thing at a bar, and then I’m going back home for Thanksgiving. I don’t want to be stressing this shit whilst vacationing in beautiful Houston, TX.
Man, what a shiiiiiiiithole.
Can’t WAIT.
So, until then, I’ll leave a link up here to the site that’s publishing it “on demand” which translates to “fucking expensive as hell per copy”. But, them’s the breaks when a writer doesn’t go to a large-scale publisher from the start.
That will have to come after some traction, by my own definition, is found.
Word and all that goodness. Happy Turkey Day to any/every.
Man, what a shiiiiiiiithole.
Can’t WAIT.
So, until then, I’ll leave a link up here to the site that’s publishing it “on demand” which translates to “fucking expensive as hell per copy”. But, them’s the breaks when a writer doesn’t go to a large-scale publisher from the start.
That will have to come after some traction, by my own definition, is found.
Word and all that goodness. Happy Turkey Day to any/every.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Pants In The Mist.
I used to be a HUGE fan of clothes shopping. Long ago. Back when I thought I could change the world simply by employing the perfect pair of corduroys. But times have changed. Drastically.
Now I almost LOATHE shopping. The racks full of chemical-scented brand-splayed single-stitched trashwear that must be thumbed through. The lines that must be stood in. The changing rooms with the pin-riddled floors. And then, of course, there’s the loads of cash required to fancify oneself, cash which could easily be poured into a glass and drank instead. Drank and drank and drank.
Until there is but change with which to exchange for whatever falls from the frothy tipped taps…
But today, I’m actually considering a clothing run. In my haste to be less late than I normally am, I neglected to note that the current pair of pantaloons on my person have a rather conspicuous hole in the crotch. And not at the seam, where it may only be seen when I’ve got my legs splayed-out like a Thai hooker about to blow out some birthday candles with cooch air. Oh no. This hole, about the size of a cigarette burn (uh heh-heh, heh) is more frontal. To the right. And pretty much visible when I’m standing straight up.
I know this because when I entered the parking garage elevator and looked in the mirror on the wall (I’m guessing the elevator has a mirrored wall to give the riders a sense that there is more space, magically, beyond the walls of the box they’re in) to see part of my boxers showing through.
Awesome.
Awesome, and rather professional.
So I’ve been gallivanting around the office, taking note of how many people stare at said hole. I’ve counted three so far. Two couldn’t take their eyes off it. The other simply grimaced after a brief glance, but she’d probably grimace at me even if I were wearing a three-piece with top hat. She’s just cup-half-empty like that.
We get along fantastic.
Based on the rather pathetic condition of said pants, I’ve decided that they must go the way of the free-ranging buffalo. That is to say: from the comfort of a railway car I will shoot them with a ridiculously large gun and then skin them for their valuable fur and horns. The local Comanche tribe will write me a nasty letter within a week of this event.
My reasoning for this is pretty much the same as that of the new Alpha Male Lion who has conquered a new den of Lion Bitches, and feels the need to kill off all the previous Alpha’s cubs. Sure, it’s messy business, but how else are the ladies going to get all hot and bothered for new relations if they’re still futzing with their previous babies’ daddy’s babies?
So I’m ousting these pants, assuming that their vacancy in my weekly pant-rotation will force my shopping hand. I’ll be self-pressured into getting back out there and finding another perfect pair of leg sleeves.
I’m just not so sure how I feel about those matchstick-legged Euro-jeans that are out now. How do they fit their feet through the leg holes on those things? Shit’s crazy in a Parachute Pants kind of way. Ooooooh... Parachute Pants...
Now I almost LOATHE shopping. The racks full of chemical-scented brand-splayed single-stitched trashwear that must be thumbed through. The lines that must be stood in. The changing rooms with the pin-riddled floors. And then, of course, there’s the loads of cash required to fancify oneself, cash which could easily be poured into a glass and drank instead. Drank and drank and drank.
Until there is but change with which to exchange for whatever falls from the frothy tipped taps…
But today, I’m actually considering a clothing run. In my haste to be less late than I normally am, I neglected to note that the current pair of pantaloons on my person have a rather conspicuous hole in the crotch. And not at the seam, where it may only be seen when I’ve got my legs splayed-out like a Thai hooker about to blow out some birthday candles with cooch air. Oh no. This hole, about the size of a cigarette burn (uh heh-heh, heh) is more frontal. To the right. And pretty much visible when I’m standing straight up.
I know this because when I entered the parking garage elevator and looked in the mirror on the wall (I’m guessing the elevator has a mirrored wall to give the riders a sense that there is more space, magically, beyond the walls of the box they’re in) to see part of my boxers showing through.
Awesome.
Awesome, and rather professional.
So I’ve been gallivanting around the office, taking note of how many people stare at said hole. I’ve counted three so far. Two couldn’t take their eyes off it. The other simply grimaced after a brief glance, but she’d probably grimace at me even if I were wearing a three-piece with top hat. She’s just cup-half-empty like that.
We get along fantastic.
Based on the rather pathetic condition of said pants, I’ve decided that they must go the way of the free-ranging buffalo. That is to say: from the comfort of a railway car I will shoot them with a ridiculously large gun and then skin them for their valuable fur and horns. The local Comanche tribe will write me a nasty letter within a week of this event.
My reasoning for this is pretty much the same as that of the new Alpha Male Lion who has conquered a new den of Lion Bitches, and feels the need to kill off all the previous Alpha’s cubs. Sure, it’s messy business, but how else are the ladies going to get all hot and bothered for new relations if they’re still futzing with their previous babies’ daddy’s babies?
So I’m ousting these pants, assuming that their vacancy in my weekly pant-rotation will force my shopping hand. I’ll be self-pressured into getting back out there and finding another perfect pair of leg sleeves.
I’m just not so sure how I feel about those matchstick-legged Euro-jeans that are out now. How do they fit their feet through the leg holes on those things? Shit’s crazy in a Parachute Pants kind of way. Ooooooh... Parachute Pants...
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Like the Corners of My Mind
I just remembered a long-passed moment, this morning, as I was showering. As I’ve mentioned before, I get CRAZY flash backs of obnoxiously random shit whenever I allow the hot water to blast the back of my neck whilst getting my morning scrub on.
It’s like there’s a hot-water-activated random memory generator button on the back of my neck. Perhaps I’m some sort of mutant?
That’d be pretty nice, actually. I believe that knowing I was a mutant would make other life experiences that much more refreshing and new. But I’d need to know what I was a mutant FROM. From a duck? From a bowl of porridge? A bad racist joke?
So the hot water was beating the shit out of my neck when this vibrant scene blasted across my internal etch-a-sketch:
I was running from someone, although I can’t remember exactly who, and I broke into the street. Just as my feet hit the hot, evening pavement of my old Alief street, I was almost hit by some brown Japanese model car. A poorly-bleached blond yelled out her car window, something along the lines of “hey you stupid little boy, stay out the fuckin’ street! I don’t want to hit any damn kids!”
I kept running. My shoes were pretty new, so I felt like I could run fast. Dusk was coming. It was near Halloween, just like it is now, when kids get all excited about the coming of “the seasons”, where all the cool projects involving hand turkeys, baked Christmas ornaments, and costumes arrive in quick succession. Plus, even though the Houston heat was still stifling, there was a scent in the air that always preempted cooler weather and extended stays away from school.
I was happy, laughing even, when I almost got hit. I did a sort-of-hop over the front driver’s side quarter panel of the woman’s auto, and kept on truckin’. My pursuer stopped. The woman cursed and drove away.
I have no idea was happening that lead up to that event, or what followed it. Hopefully the hot water will remind me.
It’s like there’s a hot-water-activated random memory generator button on the back of my neck. Perhaps I’m some sort of mutant?
That’d be pretty nice, actually. I believe that knowing I was a mutant would make other life experiences that much more refreshing and new. But I’d need to know what I was a mutant FROM. From a duck? From a bowl of porridge? A bad racist joke?
So the hot water was beating the shit out of my neck when this vibrant scene blasted across my internal etch-a-sketch:
I was running from someone, although I can’t remember exactly who, and I broke into the street. Just as my feet hit the hot, evening pavement of my old Alief street, I was almost hit by some brown Japanese model car. A poorly-bleached blond yelled out her car window, something along the lines of “hey you stupid little boy, stay out the fuckin’ street! I don’t want to hit any damn kids!”
I kept running. My shoes were pretty new, so I felt like I could run fast. Dusk was coming. It was near Halloween, just like it is now, when kids get all excited about the coming of “the seasons”, where all the cool projects involving hand turkeys, baked Christmas ornaments, and costumes arrive in quick succession. Plus, even though the Houston heat was still stifling, there was a scent in the air that always preempted cooler weather and extended stays away from school.
I was happy, laughing even, when I almost got hit. I did a sort-of-hop over the front driver’s side quarter panel of the woman’s auto, and kept on truckin’. My pursuer stopped. The woman cursed and drove away.
I have no idea was happening that lead up to that event, or what followed it. Hopefully the hot water will remind me.
Monday, October 23, 2006
Shared Consciousness Sucks
I’ve never been much for reading up on the exploits of others. Or the philosophical rantings of whoever. Most of the time, I feel like writers get all tangled up in their own pretexts that it just takes too damn long for them to make a point.
I realize how hypocritical this is, but it doesn’t change how I feel about the lot of it.
I remember in college, there were two instances where I felt almost robbed of my own intellectual radar strength. The first time was when a dear friend INSISTED that I read Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. It’s a pretty thick piece of politifiction, and I had never been interested in either politics nor fiction, so I shrugged Shrugged. But he continued to insist. At times, it felt like pestering. He felt very strongly about me reading that goddamn book. He kept claiming that I’d “really enjoy the concepts she expresses” about the form and operation of modern industrial civilization. The political ramifications of money votes. The “doers” versus the “critics”. All that anti-socialism jargon and whatnot.
So I cliff-noted that motherfucker. Just breezed through the little pamphlet in some bookstore I happened to be wasting time in.
Bitch took a huge sampling of my own observations, and had already molded them into a fiction template. Senseless entitlement. Relativism. The fair rule of the moneyed class. It was all there, amongst a trippy 1984ish plot. She stole my life philosophies right out from under me. Long before I was even born.
I never read her entire work. I was afraid to learn of what else I hadn’t actually thought up on my own.
I preferred to continue living under the delusion that I was capable of truly original conceptual constructs. Delusions are fantastic.
A couple of years down the line, and I had grown tired of my own conservatively righteous views concerning the purpose and meaning of civil society. After busting my ass for a couple of years, working for The Man while trying to play His Game with the whole College Thing, I started to turn proletariat. Never a Red Star, “kill the scientists!” variety of labor defender, but definitely more “progressive” in my thinking.
Coming from Alief in Houston, where there were very few, if any racial or socio-economic divides between peoples, I was not fully aware of how prevalent such divisions are in the rest of the US, and the world. In Austin, these divides were more apparent, and as I moved along through my little life, they made me increasingly upset.
Then I took an Econ course that revolved around Marxist theory. Motherfucker had already come to all the conclusions I was building in my head at that time, and synthesized those theories into several brick-like volumes: Das Kapital, over a hundred years before I was born, round about the time that slaves were being freed here in America.
And I was JUST finding my own way around to his theories. His 100 yr-old + theories, which were based on even OLDER theories that I hadn’t even come close to self-discovering yet.
As much as I enjoyed melding Marxist theory with modern-day capitalism, and all the philosophic snafus that pepper that process, I was highly miffed at the feeling that once again, I had been robbed of my own purely original experience.
The cogs in my head were simply churning out a reasonable facsimile of what someone else had already tired to produce, long before I became a genetic experiment. I was re-treading someone else’s tires. Following pre-marked trails. Inadvertently re-tracing the lines on someone else’s masterpiece.
It bothered me to the point where I stopped reading philosophy altogether (except for a handful of works on the theories of consciousness and dreams, because that shit’s badass) for fear that it would cause me to stop bothering with my own philosophizing. After all, what’s the point in trying to figure things out on your own if there’s a host of popular theorists who’ve already done it for you? Just read their ramblings and act like you thought that shit up all by your lonesome. Like every other book-smarty Psycholar out there.
But I couldn’t do that. Not to myself. Plus, I’m too lazy to read all that shit and again, it takes too goddamn long for any of them to break through their pretext fortresses to make a fucking point.
[again, hypocrisy observed]
I decided that it was the process that I was more interested in. The process of forming opinions is actually more interesting and important to me than the resulting opinion/theory. So I stopped reading other peoples’ opinions and theories and just set out to form my own. In its most vibrant mode: by way of life experience and reality warping.
And up until 15 hours ago, I was pretty pleased with my results thus far.
Last night, I watched the Bukowski documentary: Born Into This…
………
………
Motherfucker. Now I KNOW I don’t have an original bone in my goddamn body. But I’ve decided that I don’t care. I guess I can go ahead and read Johnny Cash’s autobiography now too. Fuck it.
I realize how hypocritical this is, but it doesn’t change how I feel about the lot of it.
I remember in college, there were two instances where I felt almost robbed of my own intellectual radar strength. The first time was when a dear friend INSISTED that I read Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. It’s a pretty thick piece of politifiction, and I had never been interested in either politics nor fiction, so I shrugged Shrugged. But he continued to insist. At times, it felt like pestering. He felt very strongly about me reading that goddamn book. He kept claiming that I’d “really enjoy the concepts she expresses” about the form and operation of modern industrial civilization. The political ramifications of money votes. The “doers” versus the “critics”. All that anti-socialism jargon and whatnot.
So I cliff-noted that motherfucker. Just breezed through the little pamphlet in some bookstore I happened to be wasting time in.
Bitch took a huge sampling of my own observations, and had already molded them into a fiction template. Senseless entitlement. Relativism. The fair rule of the moneyed class. It was all there, amongst a trippy 1984ish plot. She stole my life philosophies right out from under me. Long before I was even born.
I never read her entire work. I was afraid to learn of what else I hadn’t actually thought up on my own.
I preferred to continue living under the delusion that I was capable of truly original conceptual constructs. Delusions are fantastic.
A couple of years down the line, and I had grown tired of my own conservatively righteous views concerning the purpose and meaning of civil society. After busting my ass for a couple of years, working for The Man while trying to play His Game with the whole College Thing, I started to turn proletariat. Never a Red Star, “kill the scientists!” variety of labor defender, but definitely more “progressive” in my thinking.
Coming from Alief in Houston, where there were very few, if any racial or socio-economic divides between peoples, I was not fully aware of how prevalent such divisions are in the rest of the US, and the world. In Austin, these divides were more apparent, and as I moved along through my little life, they made me increasingly upset.
Then I took an Econ course that revolved around Marxist theory. Motherfucker had already come to all the conclusions I was building in my head at that time, and synthesized those theories into several brick-like volumes: Das Kapital, over a hundred years before I was born, round about the time that slaves were being freed here in America.
And I was JUST finding my own way around to his theories. His 100 yr-old + theories, which were based on even OLDER theories that I hadn’t even come close to self-discovering yet.
As much as I enjoyed melding Marxist theory with modern-day capitalism, and all the philosophic snafus that pepper that process, I was highly miffed at the feeling that once again, I had been robbed of my own purely original experience.
The cogs in my head were simply churning out a reasonable facsimile of what someone else had already tired to produce, long before I became a genetic experiment. I was re-treading someone else’s tires. Following pre-marked trails. Inadvertently re-tracing the lines on someone else’s masterpiece.
It bothered me to the point where I stopped reading philosophy altogether (except for a handful of works on the theories of consciousness and dreams, because that shit’s badass) for fear that it would cause me to stop bothering with my own philosophizing. After all, what’s the point in trying to figure things out on your own if there’s a host of popular theorists who’ve already done it for you? Just read their ramblings and act like you thought that shit up all by your lonesome. Like every other book-smarty Psycholar out there.
But I couldn’t do that. Not to myself. Plus, I’m too lazy to read all that shit and again, it takes too goddamn long for any of them to break through their pretext fortresses to make a fucking point.
[again, hypocrisy observed]
I decided that it was the process that I was more interested in. The process of forming opinions is actually more interesting and important to me than the resulting opinion/theory. So I stopped reading other peoples’ opinions and theories and just set out to form my own. In its most vibrant mode: by way of life experience and reality warping.
And up until 15 hours ago, I was pretty pleased with my results thus far.
Last night, I watched the Bukowski documentary: Born Into This…
………
………
Motherfucker. Now I KNOW I don’t have an original bone in my goddamn body. But I’ve decided that I don’t care. I guess I can go ahead and read Johnny Cash’s autobiography now too. Fuck it.
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