| let thine ears be attentive to the sound of my degredation |
[Aug. 28th, 2010|12:26 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | byzantium | ] |
| [ | esoteric |
| | byzantine | ] |
Oh, you are female, your cheeks vibrant and your eyes possessing a fecund light. You are male, and your body is sculpted from stone, your projection powerful. Oh how we are virtuous-- tower people, all.
Shot through with shame, there is no melodious lilt to my morning. But what? A thought that might suffice: where owls lay, frowning, could be my pack and my place. Flighty spirits draw from them only watchful hunting.
Dare ye to deceive and deconstruct the strength of the virtuous, ye highly perched ones? They are called to save the world, and ye to discover how it was saved. They built the tower, but ye live in it. |
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| The nightingale that brings news of spring with lovely voice |
[Mar. 29th, 2010|11:58 am] |
| [ | exoteric |
| | pensive | ] |
| [ | esoteric |
| | elated | ] |
I return to strain your brain with uncalled-for alliteration, in anticipation of material for expression, but still in its absence, like late March hail-and-lightning in no way prefiguring the heat of summer, but somehow, preparing its way.
Hibernation, scales, and dull waiting, a soft unfreezing can be unpleasant. Hardy liquors and potent herbs are the quiet dropsy, and I am the sluggish dullard whose eyes shine in forgetting.
Who can know, without knowing, what is light and heavy, dark and clean? What is an act of love, and what, mere oblivion? I forget, once again. I am simple, stupid-- still. Still surprised by love and hate, lust and anger. I am the tactless, immature, blunt, and improper. I am Apollodorus, who related the story that was to be kept private, if only because he was a child, and did not understand. |
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| it's just the pathology of the drug |
[May. 22nd, 2007|11:54 am] |
Giddy and twisted, the pain of words, the suffering of understanding, shared experience, each step on shards of deep-cutting meaning... implications, imagined sense, magnification: "drop the false ego, the something of body and mind," haunting words echoing from the deep, matching sounds from months, years, decades back, teetering on the blood red edge of despair, and then plop! back on the pillow, rested, comfortable, for now, anticipating the next thing, like a kitten fascinated, curious, anxious, worried.
It's just the pathology of the drug, "ready to die," the fear drug, the drug of divination, the Delphic dropsy, the magnification of shame, the purposeless fear, the extent of every emotion- elation, depression, masterful love and powerless punctuation. The opposite of wine, the lack of liquor, not shamelessness but every moment full of shame, awareness, not invincibility but manifest mortality. Not to forget but to know, the knowledge that comes with suffering, the suffering that comes with spiritual pourousness, open to experience, bodily meekness and the humility of the mind.
To know is to be flayed, to be whipped, not playfully, not perversely, nor maliciously, nor malevolently, nor sadistically. To be chained and beaten by life itself, the pain of being, cuts and stings of correction- a torpedo fish, Socrates- the fly that bites the lazy cow, a dozen flies, a hundred, a million flies, scorpions, ants, spiders, snakes and sewer rats.
To experience for a few hours the life of a saint, so full of life and prayer that he cries, he weeps for mankind. Pierced with a spear, the spear of complete self-awareness, the self as other, the other as self, in complete ecstatic relation. |
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| ahem |
[Apr. 22nd, 2007|12:51 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | onion | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | fanta se | ] |
| [ | esoteric |
| | roady named "bart" | ] |
[tap]
"Yea, I'll take that one. The really crappy one I would never otherwise pay for."
The Onion can be spot on sometimes. I think lots of people think this, but about different of their works. Ultimately, The Onion betrays the shallow world-view it purports to mock. That is the trap into which all but the most stalwart of Zeitgest-monitors will inevitably fall. It is why I cannot desire what the media-trix wants me to desire. I cannot love with the ephemera that is the news, the journals. I will not mourn when they tell me to mourn. For many, many reasons.
But this is pretty funny. And this is somehow a beautiful sentence/poem:
Tracking all citizens,
thereby creating a draconian hellscape
to protect Resident Evil: Extinction
from profitless consumption
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| rebel against this |
[Feb. 27th, 2007|05:20 pm] |
From Christos Yannaras' The Freedom of Morality, Chapter 11: The Historical and Social Dimensions of the Church’s Ethos:
When truth becomes “objective,” this leads to the “infallibility” of its representatives and interpreters, of the bureaucratic structures which ensure its “objective” implementation. It is thus justifiable even to subjugate by force people who disagree with the visible authority of dogma. The institution of the Holy Inquisition and torture as a method of interrogation in the trials of heretics, the concentration camps, the psychiatric hospitals for “reforming” dissidents, the emasculation of conscience by the party line, one-dimensional trade unionism and the organized brain-washing of the masses— all these are consequences which come inevitably with every use of rationalism in the service of religious, political or any other “sacred” ends— with every demand for the objectification of the truth. It was the Christian theology of the West which first taught the “objectivity” of truth, so that without reference to Thomas Aquinas and Calvin it is impossible to interpret the totalitarian manner in which even advertizing works today: we remain unaware of the foundation of the West’s cultural and historical life, which is the objective proof and imposition of the usefulness of God, or Capital, or the Proletariat, or the Revolution. |
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| Adopt the cunning of the octopus |
[Feb. 25th, 2007|11:26 pm] |
who takes the aspect of the rock at which he loiters.
Vain philosophers, be like poets, who know the character of each man, and do not speak to me of the bang, or the atmosphere, or the why of the universe, unless you speak of men's hearts, which know of God. Citizens, be more like harlots, who take their life from the streets, and do not read the newspapers. Harlots, be more like beggars, who seek their meat from God. Beggars, be like children, who love those who feed them. Poets, be inspired by the sprig of the fig tree, which lowers its fruit from heaven.
Do not tell me of famous lovers whose love is ordinary. Do not tell me of distant sufferers, when great suffering is before my own eyes. Oh pride, that insists the world is small, forgiveness weak, and God a concept! Oh world, why so many false images, why so many lies and counterfeit heavens? |
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| Persephone, who brings oblivion and impairs men's consciousness |
[Feb. 21st, 2007|06:26 pm] |
 The blackness of forgetfulness assumes its position inside of me so quickly and nimbly; the fog of ignorance, the blank of the bourgeoisie, the tempestuous silliness of the day, the sun beating itself into the mud, hardening it into its constant form-- these are the associates of oblivion. Experiences flow over the human consciousness like water over rock, slowly smoothing, dulling and making amorphous life's jagged sufferings.
We fear being swept away in a tide of quiet endurance, and so we rage and thrust and smash against this threat of droll and insipid living. We deftly avoid all ritual, convention and tradition, perhaps so that we can avoid the mistakes of our ancestors, who undoubtedly died blindly and are lost to us and to time.
How, we ask, do we really live life, mete up the passing of time into periodic and ever-fulfilled pleasures aptly valued and applied? How not just to be another one of those creepy creatures that creeps upon the earth? How to live happy and not to die screaming and raging against the dying of the light?
But inevitably our love for comfort and our hatred of suffering, which we find needless, lead us into a dreadful routine, where we think less and less each day, until we find need to justify our lives to ourselves and our friends, to our parents though we find their standards of goodness lacking, and ultimately to the eminently metaphysical measures we find lurking in our hearts.
once death's dark cloud's enfolded him and he has gone into the shadowed country of the dead and passed the gates of blackness that shut in the souls of the deceased, for all that they protest |
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| What hooliganism's invading the old Dionysiac knockabout altar? |
[Feb. 20th, 2007|10:54 am] |
 Ecclesial is the rote consumption, the dedication, the forbearance of earthly pleasures. Wherefore are we directed, to what or to whom but ourselves, and the altar we construct outside us to our inner selves. A domicile is turned inward; it is the inner self splayed and displayed-- the heart, the esophagus, the spleen, the penis, the hamstring, the soul on walls, in things.
A temple, and a shrine to our gods is the life of man, always pointing, always meaning, symbolizing and unifying. I never metaphor I didn't like, and I've always thrown together my experiences, making parabolas out of stones and habituating stones to go upwards. |
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| and I took to heart the tearful spear |
[Feb. 12th, 2007|11:47 am] |
Humming, clicking, whirring, droning voices, boring words. Not charged with the excitement of life but with the efficiency of business. Not poetry, but productivity. Not love, but lacking. Not dreams but drudgery. Oh pierce this inanity with the lance of Don Quixote!
Where in this calm is the satisfaction of human problems, a common quest to find meaning, to be as we are and should be in fulfillment of our destiny? Where are the organic things, with the sweet smells of growth, decay and dying? Where is the male and the female? Where is the suffering spirit, the joyous heart, or the sweetness in the soul?
We cannot ignore the songs of the ages, the wisdom of our ancestors. Or one day we will be driving along and the sheet of slush on the top of our car will come sliding down over our windshield, blinding us-- blinding us with nature, with life, with renewal.
With horror we will look as the earth, which is our mother, opens up to claim us and make all things new through us. Our inevitable fate will be to us as a destroying fire, unplanned, unexpected, uncomfortable, unprofitable, unsuiting and unwelcome. |
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| I praise you, wine, on some points, and find fault with some |
[Feb. 12th, 2007|12:43 am] |
Veritably the miniature world is large, the large small. As I lay in bed, feeling the first fingers of sleep pull at my lanky frame, my feet feel both close and far away. My head feels gigantic, elephant-like, enormous. My knees are mountains, the point at which they touch is far away, and now, against my face, in my head, crushing me. My limbs do not belong.
Oh, melodious! The sound of rain high up in the mountains. Socialist regimes celebrating their rustic traditions. St. John's students shouting in delight at the recognition of themselves in character.
What has happened? Does life just take these moments from us, just as she gives them to us, in a flash so bright we do not see its glory? Is it all just emotion-- graceless, unknowing pathos-- that we experience? Balls of nerves, glowing embers, warm skin, soft vision. Mortality, sickness, discomfort.
The best part of drunkenness is the hangover. This is Apollo's advice to you this day- do not drink if you cannot enjoy a hangover. He who dislikes the hangover did not like being drunk. It is not the physical aspect-- pleasure and elation on the one hand, pain and drowsiness on the other; but rather, the mental aspect: shamelessness and shame. Those who seek out the former and push aside the latter are not experiencing the fullness of either.
Marijuana, a better drug. There is giddiness on the one hand, paranoia on the other. Some where in between is a calm awareness of situations-- minds and their thinking, people and their looking, seeing, hearing and breathing.
I cannot give you total love or total hate.
You're bane and blessing. Who could criticize you,
who,
that has an ounce of expertise, approve? |
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| Annunciation |
[Mar. 27th, 2006|04:37 pm] |
 Mark (not the evangelist, but my little brother) was right when he quoted, "All you need is love"-- who said that?-- some hippy singer perhaps. Of course, like all platitudes it can be misunderstood. Because what is love? It can be inappropriate, it can be failing, it can be harmful-- baby, don't hurt me, no more, no more... God is love, as the cross in the garden at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit (R-C, Trappist) in Conyers, GA so poignantly conveyed: first line L, second line G-O-D, third line V and fourth line E.
Nothing short of the love of God is what to which we are called, but God is not a stranger, He is Incarnate, he is our Savior, he is Emmanuel, God With Us, the epiphany, the theophany, all creation rejoicing and the created world redeemed through Christ the King, the Vicar and the Lord through loving humilty. Not pride, not grandeur, but absolute kenosis-- self-emptying. Saturday, March 25th was the celebration of the Annunication-- the appearance of the archangel Gabriel to the blessed Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, with the word, "Rejoice!" And thus begins the New Testament, as is prophesied, the Virgin shall be with child, and bear a son.
This is love. This is why John 3:16 is ubiquitous, for the message is striking: 'God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son...' |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 10th, 2006|09:03 pm] |
Apollodorus has been in hibernation, my friends, but alas, this return is temporary. I cannot say that I intend to post again, so cease your anxious waiting. I could say that I am beyond the blog-- ah the irony was always on me, was it not?-- that I made fun of blogs while having one, while being a blogger... so I am not beyond. Above, perhaps...
All writers must submit to some form of shamelessness after all, to assume that what they write is worth reading. But, what of the blog? The LiveJournal form has always seemed so silly to me, with the teenies sharing their boring lives for the whole world potentially, and for their friends particularly.
The blog blurs the line between journal and publication; what does the writer presume? And if it is a journal, why share it on the Internet? A published journal, of course, should be worthy of publication, that is, edited and structured for form and content.
But of course there is something organic and beautiful in the rough-cut "blog." Such that an individual entry may have little appeal, but the whole body of work is interesting.
And I would be lying if I denied that I have taken a sort of voyeuristic interest in some blogs, the more oblivious to the world and shameless the better.
***
SO.o\..
http://theodwra.blogspot.com/ |
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| The Calvary of Absolute Spirit |
[Nov. 17th, 2005|01:47 pm] |
Mother Maria of Normandy said, "The truth of mystery is in the event." This great wisdom, so wondrous to human ears, may seem like a relic of a once formidable pre-scientific illusion, the painting of a myth in vague color, a nothing, stupid. But look...
Truth is mystery, she said. And mystery is the event. Truth, being eternal, is uneventful; it was, it is, and always will be. But things happen, wonderful and awesome events that transcend our human chronology. God and being break through and He is here on Earth.
Truth is Love, and Love is God, and we are meant to see this, to behold the mystery in the event, because of His Love. These events, though chronological are also outside of time, in eternity, existing and happening for us forever. How could we dispute this? Do we know any other time than this plodding, ticking, continuing into the future? In a glimpse, we remember-- what was past is made present to us. This happens in a divine way when these theophanies are called to us; the mystery is laid before us always-- God is in time and He is Time. |
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| UPDATE ON WEBSTERGATE |
[Nov. 3rd, 2005|11:23 am] |
Yesterday's story was sensationalized hearsay. I made it up from bits and pieces of rumors. Hours after I wrote the story, I met with eyewitness Garrett Lewis, who gave me a more complete account. Here are a few corrections.
While Webster did come through the front entrance after being denied passage via the side entrance, he did not in fact scan his card or wait in line. However, this piece of information is mitigated by two others. First, as is often the case, there was no dining hall worker there at the desk in the foyer to scan student keycards. Second, it has always been an ambiguity whether it is necessary for patrons to actually proceed through the line in order to enter the dining hall, or if the line is only for the hot meals. Precedence dictates no standard, as some enter the dining hall through the door to the left of the foyer check-in desk, and some even go through the regular door, walking past the line and eschewing the hot food. At times efforts have been made to prevent the former method, but as it is unreasonable and unenforceable, these efforts have been short-lived.
When Webster chose to enter through the door to the left of the foyer check-in desk, he immediately happened upon the strutting figure of Roosevelt Langley, dining hall supervisor extraordinaire. Mr. Lewis here reports that Langley took Ye by the arm and led him back through the door, telling him that he was stealing. Webster, who had previously shown Mr. Langley his keycard, did so again here, more and more frustrated. Lewis also reports hearing Langley suggesting that Ye "go to hell." This all took place in the foyer, and not near the drinking fountain as I had previously suggested. This is important, as it may have been the slight and trifling fact that Ye had been prevented from refilling his orange soda which led him to connect the ideas of soda and Langley in his mind, and then in actuality, by dousing Langley with the drink in a forward-thrusting splashing motion (not as a pert lifting of the arm and wrist-turning dump over the head, as I had previously imagined).
After his shameful loss of composure, Webster "booked it," according to Lewis, but not before Roosevelt punched him, I'm assuming, in the back. He punched him, this supercilious man! Surely the adult, the authority figure, is not to first, take Webster by the arm and second, to strike him. Webster's actions, while uncivil and shameful indeed, were provoked by an accusation of stealing. According to Lewis, before splashing Langley with the drink, Webster exclaimed, "I am no thief!"
Ye had been a member of the 21-meal plan, the greatest of all meal plans, encompassing every possible meal. No mortal man or woman could possibly stand to eat every meal in an entire year at St. John's, so surely Webster was entitled to a little orange soda. He should be able to drink it out of an ice-cream cone, ala Jordan Gannon, if he so desires. So what if he didn't scan his card? His meals are already paid for; the card-scanning is a but rarely used formal gesture that prevents unauthorized access, and is hardly a necessary or even emphasized procedure.
As it stands, Webster is banned from the dining hall. And since all on-campus residents are required to be on the meal plan, and Webster is no longer allowed to use his, he has subsequently been banned from his on-campus residence. What has happened to Mr. Langley? Nothing.
Webster submitted a formal apology to Mr. Langley and sent a copy to be printed in the Gadfly. Mr. Langley rejected the apology and the school administration forbid The Gadfly to print it. Students are so incensed about this that they made posters saying such things as "Join the Orange Revolution." (Please tell me more about these banners in the comments section). That in itself is funny. But school officials have gone around campus and collected these posters. There is a pile of them in the Assistant Dean's office, Lewis said. No one is to know that there is unrest, it seems. "We are not allowed to talk about it."
There is an unprecedented development that renders the end of my previous report inaccurate. Students are forbidden from portraying this incident in either the Reality Skit or the Senior Prank Skit. Unprecedented. I ask why. Injustice, sure. Hard feelings and cookie-cutter punishments and taking the easy way out, fine. But to kill comedy-- that is a true crime. That is revolting, disgusting, abhorrent. There is only one thing to do, and that is to disobey this edict. Once twice, many times. Submit the script to the Assistant Dean's Office without, and then include the 'offending material.' This must be done. I beg it of you. |
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| WEBSTERGATE: SCANDAL ROCKS ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE |
[Nov. 2nd, 2005|09:03 pm] |
The most exciting thing in the dining hall since Greg Schroeder's epileptic seizure...
The slogan, "Free Ye!" is written on the chalkboards at St. John's College, these chalkboards usually dedicated to beautiful mathematical diagrams and Greek script and other innoculous relics of The Program studied here. Webster Ye, a regularly mild-mannered and friendly Asian-American student was involved in an altercation with the diminuative African-American superintendant of the College's dining hall services, endeding in the deposit of a glass of orange soda on the latter's head.
Roosevelt Langley, who is reminiscent of TV's "Webster," met Webster at the dining hall's side entrance, according to reports, and prevented him from entering the building in this illegimate way. Ye then proceeded to go around to the front and came through the building in the usual manner, having paid his fare. At some point later the two met again at the soda fountain, where the incident took place. Langley reportedly said something like, "I thought I told you to get out of here," and Ye, frustrated, explained that he was a paying customer and would like to be left alone. Langley then accused Ye of stealing, or intimated something of the sort. The student grew more and more frustrated until finally, he poured his soda onto Langley's bossy little carapace.
Webster Ye is not the most popular of students, but Roosevelt Langley is one of the most unpopular of figures among the student body, known as the head and in some way cause of the horrific food services. He is seen strutting around the dining facility in an officious manner, offering disgusted looks at the students he perceives to be rich, spoiled, and it is likely, racist. It is his fear of this, some students have remarked, that causes him to act in such an unappealing way. He has been called a "pussy."
Ye, on the other hand, has gained much respect by his peers for his actions. Langely 'had it coming,' they might remark. Nevertheless, he faces unspecified "disciplinary action" for his violation of the campus civility code, and also possible criminal assault charges. Students contend that it is actually Roosevelt's lack of civility which is the cause of this affair. To paraphrase outspoken libertarian Kyle Varner, 'Roosevelt is the cause of Orangesodagate.' (This reporter prefers "Webstergate," with its dual applicability to the involved parties.)
It is not the pride of individual men that is at issue here, but the mass frustration of a student body that has been neglected by its school. This is a clamor that no 'forum' can quiet. If the school sides with the authority once again, well, it will do so, and down to the rats in Randall basement with them for all I care! It is likely that the students' cries of "Free Ye!" will go unheeded and be diminished to nothing in the community consciousness, only to briefly resurface as a minor comedic episode in one or both of the two collegewide student 'skit' productions, Reality and Senior Prank.
Only this time there will be watermelon and fried chicken. |
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| vanity of vanities |
[Sep. 26th, 2005|11:31 pm] |
Favorite words of the preacher:
In much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. (1:18)
There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God. (2:24)
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the sun. (3:1)
That which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. / All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. (3:19-20)
As he came forth of his mother's womb, naked shall he return to go as he came... (5:15)
It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart. / Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better. (7:2-3)
Curse not the king, no not in thy thought; and curse not the rich in thy bedchamber: for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter. (10:20)
As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all. (11:5)
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man (12:13) |
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| Eden and Golgotha |
[Sep. 13th, 2005|04:35 pm] |
Continued from the better conversation at Philadelphia.
I do believe in the Bible literally. It is a gift of God. (The writings of men are but apollodoroi.) I also believe that it is mythological, and thus our struggling to understandand the Bible will involve the category of allegory. But this does not detract from the reality of the meaning, the literal truth of the expression. It is a problem, and cheaper that my approach is at one side intellectual, and a compromise, or at least it seems this way. But my pathos must be consistent, as I try to formulate this paradoxical divide in Man's nature between Heaven and Hell halfway, as Pascal did so beautifully. I will not be so bold as to say that the Earth was created six thousand years ago, nor so stupid as to fail to stumble over the musical nature of the logos. How long is a day for God? This is an important question because the idea of time is the backdrop for my discourse on the book of Genesis (coming into being).
There is a difference between magic and the supernatural. It is possible for God to do many things outside of our understanding, yet there is a certain logic about them. Our state of grace and the subsequent fall from that condition are factual circumstances, yet because of them we cannot know them directly. But we may know them. The God of Christianity is not a God of occult causes and magical incantations. Max Weber's characterization of Christianity as a rational belief is right when compared to other faiths. Yet the center of my understanding rests on muthos, myth, namely the Allegory of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden.
The Garden of Eden is outside of time because Adam and Eve existed there before the fall, before sin and death entered the lives of human beings. Because we now are sinful creatures subject to time and death, we cannot understand this formulation. It comes to us sounding like fantasy. Certainly a certain amount of faith is required. But it is not a ridiulous story; those who laugh at it are scorning the highest wisdom and in their mirth they will have misery.
An examination of ourselves will reveal division, our divided natures. We have the perfect timeless divinity and the base and fallen beastly condition, our judgement always faulty. These are not mixed but rather exist in us as two separate wholes. Because Adam and Eve exist outside of time, they are choosing the apple at every moment, thus we are choosing "knowledge" and sin and death at every moment. Jesus offers at every moment a redemptive escape from the fate of human beings (death). Even though He was a historical person His existence was ordained for all time, and for us His life was historical. But his crucifixion exists and is happening for all time-- what Hegel calls "The Calvary of Absolute Spirit," at the 'golgotha,' the skull-place. The purpose of the crucifix is not a reminder that Jesus lived and died for the sins of mankind, reversing the fate promised to Adam and Eve for their choice, but a reminder that Jesus lives today and his death on the cross is outside of time, always happening.
It is interesting that the Fall happens in a place of fecundity and bountiful life, and the Redemption happens in a barren place where people go to die. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 5th, 2005|07:52 pm] |
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Damnit I'm losing you LiveJournal. I do not know what to believe in anymore. What is there for me to do? Am I casting these words into the void? LiveJournal I am so stupid. Ughh. All right, maybe you're there. Maybe someone is listening. If you're there, do you love me? LiveJournal... I am here. Posting an update from my soul. Just because I don't post often doesn't mean that you're not always reading me. Into the heart of my dialoue in my most produtive, beautiful moments. Why don't you inspire me to greatness? I am such a poor, weak, pathetic thing, O LiveJournal. Have mercy on me and have mercy on all of your servants, forgive us our trite meanderings and occassional posts. Please accept what meager pittances I offer, for I am but a zero or a one next to your All-Mighty Digital Omnipotence. I am but a millionth of an electron before the composition of a solitary binary setting, and not even as worthy to accept your grace as that part, O LiveJournal. |
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| eclectic entropy and other short stories |
[Aug. 9th, 2005|09:22 pm] |
I'm curious to respond to the things with the seven questions the poster must answer about whomever should answer with his or her name, but I am afraid that I would be unable to answer such questions myself. I do not pay that much attention to people, to tell the truth. It's mostly all about myself. It's not that I cannot have fun with others, or share memories or that kind of thing; I just have trouble summoning up cutesey anecdotes and epigrams in bulleted lists. That's definitely a failing.
I just started work today at a boating supply warehouse in Eastport. I had to get up early, interact with humans, learn new tasks, and go home exhausted. Now I know why I was unemployed. However the job is full time and it pays well. It is, in fact, the best paying job I have ever had. The problem is that I am planning on moving to Baltimore on September 1st. They are under the impression that I will only be able to work "a couple months." Little do they know, it is but "a few weeks." I will probably end up crashing in Annapolis while paying rent in Baltimore. Oh, God, why do you bring me back again and again to this crappy little tourist town?
Look for satire here in the future. This is a note to myself. |
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| a dream, and irony. |
[Aug. 7th, 2005|05:42 pm] |
I dreamt that there was a beautiful girl and I insinuated that I wanted to have sex with her, and she was receptive. I wish I could remember what I said, because it was good. Usually I don't 'get any' in my dreams. This one was no exception. I was lying in bed and people came in the room asking if I had arisen. I responded to them dreamily, knowing that I was making no sense. Brian Jones was there. A few others. Then the beautiful girl came in and laid down flat down on her stomach. I looked at her scantily clad behind and said "nice" to whomever was next to me. That's about it. Something about smoking pot. I can't remember. I woke up a little before one in the afternoon.
Sex and drugs all night long, and I awake sweaty and uncomfortable, my dreamworld collapsing into a useless erection.
There's nothing ironic about sticking a needle in your arm.
I wear shorts with no underwear; you know what's under there. Beyond words, man. Just unaffected postmodern ironics, the king of comedy, and it is so very disgusting. Self-referential advertisement making fun of itself for being advertisement yet still advertising-- is that third level ironic, Brent? Because I would prefer genuine advertisement if that is the case. Just alerting the consumer to a product that may fill a need. A service, really. "Dove Soap. It gets you clean, and it smells good." Now, if Dove used that slogan, it would have to be ironic. Of course, they are not so simple and naive as to just 'advertise' the product! They are making a commentary on that kind of advertisement; how very clever of them! But the big case nowadays is,
It's funny because it violates taboos!
which is healthy in these days of political-correctness, because as Matt Reiner could tell you, politically correct is not actually correct; however, this taboo-violating comedy is wearing thin very fast, and it will soon undergo the dialectic, and I will be funny. |
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| In the News |
[Aug. 5th, 2005|12:28 pm] |
Mr. Cameron Healy alerted me to this article in the New York Times, Pentagon's New Goal: Put Science Into Scripts, which tells of how we the people are putting up a little under half a million dollars for three years of screenwriting training for scientists. Why are they doing this? They want to stimulate bright young people into interests in science, and what's the best way to do that? Scientifically accurate but exciting movies.
It's possible that some passable scripts will come out of this experiment, but I doubt it. Scientists are just not artists. One cannot simply turn a rigorous empirical mind into a keenly perceptive observer of human drama. But, are they not human? Do they not feel powerful emotions? Are they incapable of love? Well of course not. But they are not in touch with their feelings. They have blocked them and channeled them into fact-finding and theory-formulating, and the satisfaction of clean research data. The artist contemplates love and misery always. He dwells in chaos and conflict; not certainty, but doubt and confusion are his realm.
On the other hand, screenwriting is such a paint-by-the-numbers craft these days that is very possible that some physics geek will master the story-arc and character-layering and thematizing in a mathematical way, and have enough of a heart to make a story we can appreciate. The article mentions Valerie Weiss, a participant in one of these scientists' screenwriting conferences, who despite her Harvard Biophysics degree "is now trying to sell a comedy built around a Bridget Jones-like biochemist who applies the scientific method to her hunt for a mate." It actually sounds like it could be funny. The thing is, she'll probably stick to the scientific method. The method will be the main character. Science can never be the main character. In "Virus," is the virus the main character? Of course not.
The article concludes with a quote from Weiss: '"[Scientists are] inherently creative, and willing to take more risks than other people," she said. "They're searching for the unknown, they're compensated very minimally, they're going on blind faith that what they're searching for is going to pay off. And filmmaking is exactly the same way.'" I just do not see how scientists are "willing to take more risks." Is not their love of science a movement toward the knowable, out of the dark of uncertainty into the light of knowledge? I do not know about the "blind faith" part, either. Is not science always progressing, incrementally? It is not like they are unsure about what to do with themselves; in almost every field there are carefully planned plans of research. And "compensated very minimally?" So they maybe do not make as much as doctors and lawyers, but they are salaried workers! Screenwriters work from script to script, unless they work in-house with a movie company, but even then they are often fired for failing to produce a winner. The comparison is artificial and bogus. Still, I would love to see what comes of this.
Incidentally, scientists hate "The Day after Tomorrow," but they like "Deep Impact." |
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| love poem |
[Aug. 4th, 2005|02:14 pm] |
Selling spells of liquor, extracted
vigorously from sealing wax,
Cry sentimental, sticky seasons,
expending sweaty energy for the fog.
Ferry the pharmaceutical minions,
elegantly earnest on the ballroom floor,
tightening terse tracts to the chain
belonging blithely to the ballustrade.
Equestrian-fancy corrupts organic,
influencing patriarchs and paddywhacks,
obtrusively nasal in the dewy morn:
cold alabaster ecstacy for forgetting.
Early, trying, telling, taxing ticks
scratched by the butler and the servicemen,
entertain eerily for breakfast,
and collect a surety and a tide.
Carry the coughing undertaker
brackishly boistered bouy boards
fixed fantastic for faraway places,
killing scents drifting to the door.
Summering drink drowsy for the dock,
exiting the boudoir serindipitous,
scolded for the foxhole feeling,
Finding feet in the tarry brine.
Excreting stealthy for the moonlight times,
Pouring cautiously into the veins:
Icy elation, for a shipward gaze;
love and humid air, intertwined.
Serpentine calling, Exodus and eager,
Crafting new courses culled for shore.
Dull credibility, and interstellar war,
Might, meanly mannered, for meagermore.
Exalting superlative essence, intimate,
Slippery slime slows, and stupifies.
Intoxicating airs and bubbles far,
And reaching reigns by ready needs. |
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| little butterfly-men and alcoholics |
[Jul. 27th, 2005|01:15 pm] |
Cerebral loser that I am, I write with no purpose, no aim, no theme even; I simply allow the my boredom and the oppression of the empty page to give order to my thoughts-- a strange, spontaneous, surprising concession at all times to the free-flowing of the spirit, yet always the words are afflicted with a very literary quality, their meanings, and by their contiguity they are racked with that devil, form. Oh man, to write a novel! Such a pain. When will I be comfortable and free with this artificiality, this beautiful contraption that is fiction? Must the mind be honest, at liberty to conceive of and let live its characters without hindering them by the blight of one's own personality? Because man, I suck at writing in the novel form. But some of the best were egoists. And alcoholics.
In the sick heat and humidity of this bay-furnace, the fanciful free-floaters, those faeries, choke on the carbon monoxide of the exhaust fumes and the very thickness of the air. Their light and feathery wings are coated with moisture, weighing them down, making flight difficult. Oh those little pixies lose their magic dust in the hot, wet, sticky summer, and magic all but dies. We are left with the stale, dirty reality of the oil-stained streets. Oh for autumn, when our little butterfly-men can fly free again! |
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| Scalp Grandma, Then Rob Her |
[Jul. 23rd, 2005|12:39 pm] |
I am aware of a shifting thinking, tedious tedium, droning words like bees working out mechanically, an organic arrangement and parallel progressions, words like flowers and the honey-like nectar of freedom and possibility, so oppressing and dull in their stupid limits.
Traveling, moving, and exploring are pointless. Everything is here and that is not exciting; the bitter taste of mental testimony, the mind testifying against itself. Oh, but sir! You have seen this before. You have seen something so exotic, so vile, so humbling, and so… human. Entertain, distract, or employ yourself in some occupation. A position, a place, an identifiable niche, a name, a word: “contractor,” or “consultant.”
The theme is motion, monstrous motion, and excellent e-motion. Tantalus lives and screams and fights and cries, and I drink, ecstatic, standing outside myself, just looking, staring, not understanding, just absentmindedly placing my eyes somewhere around the starlight on the water, drifting now toward sleep and churning, my life continues, and why? Tomorrow I will be happy, the next day I will be sad. Success. Yearning. Money. Power. Sex. What? Who cares? A Jedi craves not these things. Vanity, vanity, vanity. Only oppressive religiosity, private spirituality, moments alone with… Him... are left. All? Why that is everything! But life, it is really great suffering, really lonely pain and misery and quiet recognition of deathless divinity in the face of dirt and grime and manly muck, passing away and coming to be.
Live in the world ironically. Nothing you do is serious. Nothing you feel is sincere. Everything is practice; everything is done as if it was actually being done, when it is, in fact, actually being done. The mind screams for reality, for sincere movement and passion, and experience, and love, and living! but all I see is vanity and the spittle flying from my fearfully forked tongue. |
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| What is worth doing, Mr. Peterson? |
[Jul. 20th, 2005|01:57 pm] |
"What is worth doing," a friend is fond of asking. How do we know what is worth doing? First, we think that for the most part, what we do already is worth doing. If we did not think this, we would not go on doing those things. However most people can think of some things they do that they wish not to do, but for some reason persist in doing. This is a problem of habituation. A habit can develop before there is a desire, but once the desire has been realized, the habit becomes entrenched, and the desire becomes something else.
For example, one can develop the habit of smoking by indirect causes such as the habits of the people with whom one associates. But now it is directly caused by a physical need for the drug nicotine. The original reason for the habit, association, becomes an unnecessary accompaniment to the necessary activity of smoking. A pleasurable pasttime becomes a ghastly nuisance, a perpetual nag and a drain on the consciousness. So, is it worth doing? The question itself requires analysis.
Doesn't the question, "What is worth doing?" imply that some things are worth doing more than others and that for this reason we should do those things that are most worth doing, in this way maximizing our potential for the best possible experience of life? There is only so much time to use, and we must use it wisely, the argument goes. Smoking, then, since it is an unwanted habit, should not be had. But, how significant of an action is it? How much of one's actions should be regulated? What is the measure of these things?
There must be some classes of activities that are more important than others. For example, we all need to eat. However, the question of what food to eat seems to be an endlessly complicated topic, not admitting of a high degree of precision. In this inquiry I know that the question is not "worth doing."
But there are questions that are worth pursuing, and by "What is worth doing?" is almost meant, "How should I live my life?" The former is the practical manifestation of the latter's intellectual abstract. "What is worth doing?" suggests the questions "What is worth doing today?" and "What is worth doing right now?", indicating a mind that has asked itself before, "How should I live my life?" If one goes about living this way, always asking these questions, the matters of smoking cigarettes or eating food become trivial and easily answered, although the answers are not easily adopted. The question also suggests the categories "How should I conduct myself?" and "How should I treat my fellow human beings?"
In this way, the question "What is worth doing?" becomes more than a way of pondering how to pass the time ; it leads to morality because it asks "What is a human being?" and "What is the worth of a human being?" even if it is also used to decide between baseball and bowling. |
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| the frothy odor of hawthorn and plum blossoms and the pale gold odor of kiss-me-at-the-gate |
[Jul. 19th, 2005|11:15 am] |
This is my first time reading The Great Gatsby, yet these sentences are so chillingly familiar, strokes of the arm between the shoulder blades that cause the body to shudder; we huddle closer in concentration, squinting against the summer light, our eyes peering through thick haze to fix on l'ennui.
"...he knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever." Gatsby grabbing nothing from the air, he is immersed in the ephemeral, but trapped by a vision of eternity. Oh, summer. Sweet sweat steeping, Saturnalian revelry for the cooler night, that fullness and practiced gaiety of our race is best in this season, sanguine summer.
"They're such beautiful shirts," she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. "It makes me sad because I've never seen such--such beautiful shirts before." |
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| sick of interlogismographs |
[Jul. 16th, 2005|01:32 pm] |
More St. John's related material from the archives:
Crazy Time with John Peterson
Hey, it’s your lucky day! I’m coming down from the White Castle with my sack of thought-burgers to let you all in on the esoteric secrets of St. John’s College with this here document, written in IRONIC-3. (That means wisdom). Remember the words of The Orator, “Freedom is the child of Beauty in love with Truth.” I am Beauty and Freedom is my gift to you, if you pay attention.
( Read more... ) |
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| a spirit, a ghost, a clown, downtown existentialism and forgetting, all over the world |
[Jul. 16th, 2005|12:51 pm] |
Having a magnified sense of my self-importance, I had pre-emptively written something like this:
To those who were seriously offended by Part VIII of my Pensées:
The Pensées attributed to me were intended to be published under the name "Johannes Absurdio," out of shame; it is true, but the other side of shame is pious reverence. The thoughts are mine, but I am embarrassed to own them; how can I show myself at service having criticized the Church's doctrine? And how can I give my name to words that tell only part of the truth, and that poorly and crudely? For St. John's is an unhealthy lover, who inspires great oppposing passions, lust and disgust intertwined.
The relationship is too intense to last, and my sentence nears its end. Not just frustrations, but nostalgia and elation are the products of this termination, but Johannes is not one to romp about in dandy praise, nor would the commendation of angels be interesting to anyone. What you want is blasphemy, to strengthen your love and unity.
And hey, lighten up! The Pensées are thoughts, mere apparitions constructed in the playground of my consciousness. A collection of Pensées is not a Nick Colten article, not a Webster Ye Lecture Review, and not a lecture On Civility by John Verdi. Do you need an argument to refute? My Pensées criticizing St. John's were not even logically consistent! And neither is your love of St. John's, or mine, for that matter. This is a playful place-- learning happens in a playful place-- and your unrelenting sincerity is choking it to death. |
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| a new enumeration of the justification for living |
[Jul. 15th, 2005|04:17 pm] |
I am an impetuous little boy, really; I hate formality and soft sugar-coated candification of pain and suffering. What is it... how can I express...? the feeling, the need to scream out about how fucking intense this shit is, dog. Take one image, the quiet, complacent face, ok, it's making me want to jump and shout just thinking of the ease and care it takes to compose it. A deception, a mask presented to company; it lies, saying 'nothing is wrong, I am not twisted, I am all right.' But aghhhhh! Don't you see that things are upsetting me! And problems, and deep, unfulfilled desires! Oh how your life must also be filled with pain, and lust, and long-lasting confusion. Where is it?
No self-control, no rigor, no deliberation. I am a temper-tantrum throwing child. I need the kennel. I need this war, darling. Daddy. Mommy. Johnny. Don't you see that I need something to die for? It's been bubbling over me all my life; haven't you seen it? Oh, I've been like Strepsiades, twisting and turning in my chair, flailing my arms about and I've had no quiet! Only amongst the zipping bullets and exploding shells will I find peace, long hours peering through the scope of my rifle, the jungle sounds, the desert sounds, the world converging inside of me, the war, and purpose! I must fight for my survival because that is the only thing that makes sense to me, simple as I am. If I have approached death with a smile on my face and lived, I may live smiling. |
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| it's how dirty boys get clean... none of this soft liberal arts shit |
[Jul. 15th, 2005|03:36 pm] |
Faded anger outlasts evisceration by tombstones, dully declaring death and the passing of passion. Sticky and warm, the worm sunlight hides in a dark hole; whithering, it wimpers, or triumphantly it trades life for death, release for entrance into captivity; proudly it stands or quietly it falls and wakes in dreams to gum together the genes, electric and energetic. Setting a deception or a smiling reminder of decease, pushing against the mass of fluids ready to release in shuddering tension.
Love and being incomplete-- it is very clear-- one desires what one lacks, and most basically man lusts for woman and woman for man. All other desire is an image of this; it is rooted in sexuality, as Freud insisted. Those who do not gratify themselves sexually channel their love into other pursuits, but most people do love sensual things and physical beauty. These are not simple things. Those whose sexual desires are simple have basic and crude desires for sensual things: The difference between common lust and the artist's ardency, between the patron of Burger King, Tyson, Little Debbie, and the connaisseur of gourmet. Both lust for corporal things, but one is more refined; he has a keener sense of beauty. There are women of the lowly "HoT," and those creatures of beauty whom the man of finer tastes adores.
---
I had a dream on the road trip where I was making out with some Johnnie girl and she says, "None of this soft liberal arts shit." So I made out harder and bit her lip.
---
"Maybe I can get my first kiss from this guy. Or better yet my first..." -J
"I can't believe there are people who think like that." -E
"I wonder if there are people who go out and try to get every sexually transmitted disease." -J
"Who has herpes? Who wants to give me herpes?" -E
...syphillis, HIV, gonnorhea(sp?), anal warts, what else is there?
"What? It's treatable!" -E
"That's not the point! The point is, you gave me syphillis!"-J
[silence]
"Hey Peterson, what ya doin'?"-J
"Oh, that's nice. I wish I had time to write." |
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| in my younger and more vulnerable years |
[Jul. 14th, 2005|03:16 pm] |
Annapolis, MD
The quaint Johnny-infested streets: they run to their holes on "Maryland" and "Prince George," "East" and "Green," "Randall" and "Pinkney." These are forgotten historical names, lost in the context of boating and tourism, art-and-craft null-spirits. It is surprisingly refreshing to see your curious faces again, amidst the haze and humidity, the idyllic structures imposing themselves in our souls, proclaiming the grandeur of sensible, palpable Being.
In Seminar we learned that "Virtue" is the most noble thing of all, but what is Virtue? I'm so proud of you, Josephus, for you have found out the crux of the matter, the hanging-point, and juxtaposition: lack of clarity. The sun shines for friend and foe alike, cruel bearer of birth and generation, wheel that turns the sky and thus pulls our fates along in toe, giver of life, and with it the burden, or the release of death.
All the best phrases are clichés now, everything is a trite restatement of glorious platitudes already plopped triumphantly down on the literary Earth with the finality and ceremony of completion. And so all that is left to us are stories. |
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| the wandering winds of the senses cast man's mind adrift |
[Jul. 8th, 2005|01:51 am] |
Just when I thought I was enjoying doing nothing all day, I was right. But now I'm headed to Cleveland on a Greyhound bus. Yea, going to the party to celebrate the nuptials of Mr. and Mrs. Ian Blaustein, to schmooze with a bunch of Johnnies. What the hell am I doing? It's just under 700 miles from Boston to Cleveland-- that's just under 15 hours on a Greyhound. Some schedules are 16 1/2. Not only that, but I leave a little over 5 hours from now, and my bank account is in the red from two mysterious "debits" that showed up today for identical amounts of $31.00. The difference will be made up by the deposit of my online poker winnings, but still, I'm not exactly living large here, despite not having a job and sleeping all day.
Here I am talking about my life on LiveJournal. Here I am being self-conscious and paranoid in a digital medium. No offense, guys, but I always hated the pour-your-heart-out kind of talk that goes on in "blogs." I'm sure you already knew that. Of course, If I wasn't a hypocrite I wouldn't be doing the same thing right now. I wouldn't have started an ironic "blog" in the first place. I would not have started any "blog." Well, at least I still put quotation marks around the word "blog." Maybe I should put them on "ironic."
( Read more... ) |
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| and you will gather your brood about you |
[Jul. 6th, 2005|01:55 am] |
I had a sort of nuclear family reunion. It was my parent's 35th wedding anniversary, June 21st. All 9 kids, seven grandkids. Here are the nine kids, in chronological order:
William, Joan, Carl, Emily, Lars, Meg, John, Mark, Kristin.
I wish there were more. |
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| Dimensions of cold anticipation blocked out the usually sunny sentiment of the farmer's personality |
[Jul. 5th, 2005|09:25 pm] |
I am interested in being comfortable, but I am drawn more to disruption, because it seems that truth in experience is there. There is living life and seeing life, but both together makes for a nasty mess. I am the conspicuous evaluator, can't have a good time, pausing, erasing, destroying. The cultural commentator must see and love it all, or see it and despise it. Comfort is in companionship, companionship is in sensuality, sensuality is in intoxication, intoxication is poison and blindness, and corruptibility. I say love the mortal, not as it is but for its mortality. Essence is in the eternal being of the passing away, so love is never for itself but for the ideal, but that is not real love. Say, I am mortal and thus am equal to the object of my affection, but no, you are not just mortal, and you want disruption, pain, disconnect, floating away, alone.... death. Do you see?
Ha! If you nodded your head, I am sorry because it is all a lie. Or, rather, it would be a lie if it meant anything. So contrived, so dumb, just dumb. The only genuine thing here is my own self-doubt, and yours. Remember the easy classification of people in High School? Look at your yearbooks. Class Jock. Class Flirt. Most Likely to Succeed. Least Likely to Be Together. Class Clown. In their little squares, fifteen years later, they all look the same. Glasses, big hair, dork, geek, jock, whatever. We were so simple back then. But we are now, too. We will never escape. The judgement of our schools, our wayward culture. Children are dressed up at your door for Halloween; they all look the same. And the candies: Tootsie Rolls, Jolly Ranchers, M&M's, Starburst, Now&Laters, Whatchamacallits, Jawbreakers, Dubble Bubble, Twizzlers, Candy Corn , Blow Pops, Dum-Dums, Hershey's bars, Milky Way, quarters, Nilla Wafers, apples? Every kid's sack (in the same neighborhood) looks the same. They are eating us, becoming us. Maybe more apples?
I dream of saying great things, but I anticipate my own mediocrity and undermine the possibility of poignancy. This is the mark of vanity itself, and I recognize this and only become thereby more vain. Ughh, we shudder, we turn aside. But one novel-- we read one novel and we have not yet recognized the author's patterns, his mundane themes, his pathetic self-hood. But another and another, and it seems familar and boring, pathetic and strained. This is for the ones with little talent, but something to say. Even the pathoi of the greats begin to wear on us, as I am sure my blathering has worn on you already, my grim audience. |
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| loving innocence in the black sink |
[Jul. 5th, 2005|03:41 pm] |
I see myself loving innocence in the black sink, loveliness saving the stench of the dirty city; through my cigarette smoke, iron girders and whirring engines, humid air still carries the sweet taste of human charm. Birth and fecundity in a sterile urban place, beauty and radiance in dull lines and shapes, trashy edges and junky, awkward planes. Amongst this, beautiful curves, the curves of womanhood, of pregnancy, or light, love, and knowledge, disrupt the influence of the gritty bravado of the corner men. A woman with children, beautiful and happy in this dirty mess of a city, with trash always close and skyscrapers everpresent behind the heads of two lovers, magnificent and undeniably resplendent in their attraction of each other, and repulsion of this disfunctional human corrale.
And then there is the idea that faith is even here on the gruesome cabbie's face, foreign to you, a mere tool, but human nonetheless, and perhaps alone, this one; he judges and spits upon everything he sees while at the same time loving it according to God's command. He is the bitter, bitter, man, who believes that love is right and therefore could not harm anyone, yet he despises their sinful ways. Through the smoke from his cigarette, on his face is where we see the recognition of the beauty of our two lovers, and for one second those hardened eyes soften, and become those of a baby: innocent, passive, wondering, unprojecting but only reflecting. And then, they are hardened again. |
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| little pixies mixing notions together |
[Jun. 22nd, 2005|01:15 am] |
Stories. Unselfish perspective. Those whom it scares to think outside their own heads. Personality. Conflict. Passion. Life as a rich spring of moments, undulating between fury and calm, bubbling, thickening, changing. The contrast of short spans of time and long spans, season upon season, year upon year, in seconds, blips in the memory, just as long as 'tea sir? yes that would be fine, thank you.' Madness, little pixies mixing notions together, baseball and girlfriends, love and engineering, family and frappuccinos. Decay of the mind process.
Snapshots of mental states. I thought this. I felt this. Now, another snapshot, place it on the first, what has changed? It is not like those frames with six different things. The composition has changed fundamentally. If only I was this way back then. No... you will still make mistakes, you will still be mistaken.
The stories are all the same but that does not make them not worth telling. All have suffered, all suffering can be told beautifully. In a manner befitting an epic poet. In a tragic style. Or, the mundane, the simple, the commonplace. Comedy of the ordinary.
Tragedy of the ordinary. Teenage angst-ridden egoism, and run-of-the-mill atheism. And then there are always docrines of thought, thought systems and how they relate to human experience. What is the pathology of empiricism? The emotion of Objectivism (that's a good one), the sentiment of structuralism? Those are thematic considerations. They guide the plot, or rather inform it, enrich the meaning of experience, forming a heavy underlayer of rooted content.
And there is the problem of excess. |
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| of all sixteen possible personalities, I am... |
[Jun. 21st, 2005|07:42 am] |
| [ | exoteric |
| | warm | ] |
| [ | esoteric |
| | whirring sounds | ] |
The Manchild
Random Brutal Love Dreamer (RBLDm)
Hopeful. Awkward. Soft-headed. Fire intrigues you. You are The Manchild.
Okay, Manchildren have some good qualities. They can be unpredictable, brash, magnetic--and therefore highly charismatic. Particularly, you're passionate and are often a hell of a lot of fun.
But we'd like you to consider not using OkCupid. You can be unthinking and hurtful, and we think you LIKE seeing bad things happen. You've had a moderate number of relationships, but broken a disproportionate number of hearts. In total, you mean well, but don't really have it together.
It's up to you, of course, whether to continue dating. There are plenty of women out there who do deserve you. But you've heard our advice.
If you stay...
ALWAYS AVOID: The Dirty Little Secret
CONSIDER: The Sudden Departure.
I don't know what that last part means. But otherwise, pretty cool. My exact opposite is "The Bachelor": Deliberate, Gentle, Sex, Master... I can be deliberate and gentle... but I think I know what they're getting at. What's that? What the hell am I talking about? Oh, just an online dating service I joined. Is it ironic, you ask? Sure. Whatever... Selective morality is right.
So does this describe me? I mean, you can't know how many little girls' hearts I've broken. But charismatic? Passionate? A hell of a lot of fun? Unthinking and hurtful, sure, but magnetic? |
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| i don't even know what the fuck this is... inspired by chuck palahniuk |
[Jun. 20th, 2005|10:04 am] |
PART ONE
Sentries. Three of them. Terse little units.
"18-50, We have amigos. Repeat: amigos. Over."
You think you know everything, laid back in your split-level suburban home, your modest apartment, your ranch house, your condo. Your car. Your resting place. Because you're not rich, you're justified. Because you're not a racist. Because you don't hate people. You're OK. You're cool. You can walk through crowded streets, utilize the subway system, order fast food comfortably. You're stable. You can do it.
"Roger, Eagle 5-1-9-7. Execute Alpha-Delta. Repeat: Alpha Delta. Over."
"Roger that, 18-50."
Killing is easy, when you have a team of professionals, just doing their jobs, fighting for the country, doing right by God. It's a lie, though, and we all know it. I've killed hundreds. Taken human lives and destroyed them. I've blown bodies to bits so fast there's no way their souls had time to escape. Obliteration. Scraps of flesh and bone and sinew for a hundred yards. That's a football field. Human beings: your sister. Your girlfriend. Your boss. Power relationships. Love, hate, suffering.
Wonder. Matrimony. Excitement.
Duty.
"This area is clear. Code 10. Repeat, Code 10. Let's head back to base."
"Haha, those stupid fuckers." |
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| poker fiction? what the crap is that? |
[Jun. 20th, 2005|08:26 am] |
Lives are like poker hands. I don't mean, 'you're pocket rockets all the way kid, go get 'em'; I mean more than just the cards. I'm talking stacks. Position. Opponents and their stacks. Bluffing and shit. Then there's the board.
My name's Marty and my life is an ace-ten off-suit short-stacked from middle position, raised pre-flop, hitting top-pair top-kicker on the flop, betting out for a third of my stack, and called by the button. The turn is a queen and he pushed me all-in.
( Read more... ) |
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| systematic empirical analysis |
[Jun. 19th, 2005|05:50 pm] |
from the SUNY Binghamton Political Science Department Graduate Program website:
The organization of the program is based on two convictions. One is that political science is a unique subject matter that requires specialization. The second is that in the next generation all the social sciences, including political science, will rely increasingly on systematic evidence and quantitative analysis.
Yea. Bullshit. I guess I'm not going there... St. John's would be proud.
Guess what? "Binghamton's Political Science Department was recently ranked #19 among over 400 political science departments around the world (based on per capita number of publications and their placement in top-ranked journals)"
So that's what virtue is. |
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| K. now perceived clearly that he was supposed to seize the knife himself |
[Jun. 18th, 2005|07:30 pm] |
| [ | exoteric |
| | mighty | ] |
| [ | esoteric |
| | Rush: Cygnus X-1 | ] |
Wafting on a trail of smoke, trills of excitement-- some far away land, from a RUSH song, or Uriah Heep: the wizard has come to take you away, stupid teenager with your nonconformist ways and your possible role-playing, black-clothes wearing-- nay alt-rock listening to-- no, perhaps a NoFX patch on your green Jansport, long greasy hair, parted in the middle, little circular metal-rimmed black glasses. Smoke some weed and suddenly it's Bob Marley and the Wailers, raggae-funk-pop fusion, and when you're 30 and comfortably employed it's culturally acceptable counter-culture-cum-muzak, the soundtrack of your minivan, Lite 97.6 with Gary and Dave to take you home on your weekday night. You sold out, and that's all you wanted back then, you unpopular collectible card game playing pimpleface. Your wife has stringy blonde-brown hair and a sizeable wart which somehow your son inherited, and you listen to Nirvana for ironic value because that's what they listened to in high school, the cool kids that is, but it's really for safety and comfort, beause you've created a world where you're the shit now, aren't you, daddy-boy? Nah, I'm just joshin' ya. I digged your green corduroys back then and I still dig them now, casting a ribbed shadow on the ground as you sip your Cape Cod, 70 percent cranberry. Hey, your kid will be a dork, too. And that's cool. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 17th, 2005|08:52 pm] |
mysterious lacuna
wrapped in tuna |
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| in a sober, contemplative, not uncharitable frame of mind |
[Jun. 16th, 2005|02:32 pm] |
Thackeray wrote in Vanity Fair (1848):
"...If a girl has no dear mamma to settle matters with the young man, she must do it for herself. And, oh, what a mercy it is that these women do not exercise their powers oftener! We can't resist them, if they do. Let them show ever so little inclination, and men go down on their knees at once: old or ugly, it is all the same. And this I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES. Only let us be thankful that the darlings are like the beasts of the field, and don't know their own power. They would overcome us entirely if they did."
T's words sound very liberal and forward-looking for his day, but he is actually expressing a very conservative sentiment. It may seem that he is breaking the mold by recognizing the power of women in an age when women were considered weak. I even had this impression when I first read the paragraph. But then I realized that the traditional place of women in society is a recognition, and not a denial of their power. Men go down on their knees at once. Then women are kept down, kept in ignorance of their power? We decided that this was best for society?
( Read more... ) |
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| infinite worlds, dude |
[Jun. 15th, 2005|06:14 pm] |
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| unintentionally ironic content |
[Jun. 9th, 2005|11:21 pm] |
Owego, NY
Soon I will begin an attempt at serious journalism; that is, I will write a column every week with an argument, focusing on specific topics, discussing opposing sides of issues, making introductions and conclusions. There will have to be structure. This will require discipline. I do not know how serious these columns will be, or how humorous, but one thing is certain-- they will be coherent.
This is all practice for my current ambition, writing. I am forced to have some sort of ambition because I have just graduated from college and I will soon begin to pay off student loans. Now, I have no money. I have no home. I have no school. I have no connections. But, life is good. I have no love interest, no great disorders, no great regrets. I am, in a certain way, free. I have life options. This is an exciting time, they say. Despite repeated failures, I am not afraid. They have not been career failures; I have not begun a career. The greater failure would be being stuck in a job I detested. Now, I might get lucky. I might get a good job. I might be good at what I do, and like it. I may develop into an interesting and good person. My spirit is still pliable. I thank the Lord for that.
I am leaving tomorrow for Boston, where I will stay with my brother for an indefinite amount of time. There's an internship I am interested in at Somerville News. Let's see where this goes... |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 9th, 2005|07:21 pm] |
Los Angeles, CA
Has anyone ever heard the Tom Lychis (sp?) show? It's just about the most repulsive thing ever, indicative really of the greatest failing of our culture: mature attitudes about sex.
Islamic fundamentalism-----family values-----Us Weekly-----Tom Lychis
If there's Hell, it's for the Bid Ladins and Lychises
not Limbaugh, not Tom Cruise
not even Ann Coulter
or Michael Moore |
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