"Some motherf****rs are always trying to ice-skate uphill"

I suspect that this has been the case for some time. But having just been forwarded the video to Silversun Pickups' "Lazy Eye" by my good friend Dan, I've finally realized just how prevalent it has become.

The "it" in this case is not easily definable. It's a tendency. A zeitgeist, perhaps, though it's more physical, less abstract. A construct may be most accurate, though the word instantly brings to mind terrible images of neo-feminist post-Marxist academics dipping my testes in a vat of liquid nitrogen. But I digress.

I'm talking about the modern hipster, and his or her almost ubiquitous manifestation as the waifish, sad eyed slacker thoughtfully shaking his greasy hair out of his face while somehow managing to front a popular band or make a movie. For examples, see bands like: the aforementioned Pickups, The Field (sorry Cosmo), Shout Out Louds, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and (it kills me to say it) the Strokes. And, of course, movies like: The Puffy Chair; Four Eyed Monsters; Me, You and Everyone We Know, and the perversely concurrent The Chumscrubber and Thumbsucker.

The thing is that I actually like most of these artists. And even among those that I don't, I suspect that many of them are pretty interesting and unique - at least as much as any of us can be. I'd like to believe some asshole producer somewhere is telling them to really bring out that "slacker" look by not eating for a week, or bathing only at gas stations. Or at the very least that these guys were the only ones from Topeka High who wore white Chuck Taylors and skinny black jeans and carried a copy of Rimbaud in their back pocket. But the truth is that even if the Monkees were the first kids in their hometowns to sport mop tops and weren't just a completely manufactured product of the National Broadcasting Company, they'd still go down in history as a shitty alternative to the Beatles.

Creative and consumer markets reward those who are the first to make a trend popular. Note that this is different from saying that they reward those who actually create the trend (if that were the case, all the kids (including me) would be throwing out their copies of Rushmore and "Siamese Dream" in favor of Five Easy Pieces and The Jesus and Mary Chain's "Psychocandy"). So all you contemporary artists, take note: it's time to try something new.

Unlike most critics, however, I have a solution - at least in the Silversun Pickups' case. Namely that during the song's climactic bridge at minute 2:47, the entire smoky club's population sprout fangs and have a go at each other's jugulars. In addition to providing a superficial level of entertainment reminiscent of the opening rave sequence in the Snipes/Dorff masterpiece Blade, it would also function on a beautifully self-referential level i.e. the slacker malaise reaching such depths that it literally requires an act of vampiric mass suicide in order to attain that holy grail of hipsterdom: being cool.

The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent

I was listening to "Taking Tiger Mountain," the final track on Brian Eno's Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, when I read that Kurt Vonnegut had died. The song's opiate guitar plucking and simple lyrics [We climbed and we climbed, / Oh, how we climbed / My, how we climbed / Over the stars to the top / of Tiger Mountain / Forcing the lines through the snow."] seemed sentimentally appropriate.

I read most of Vonnegut's books when I was younger, and to be honest they've all kind of blended together. The one image I will never forget is a sketch he made within the text of Breakfast of Champions, in which he mentions a "wide-open beaver." He proceeds to draw the semi-aquatic rodent, then indicates that this is not the beaver of which he writes. Below it he draws a woman's vagina, which is, in fact, the beaver in question.

I must have been about thirteen, which would explain any errors in my recitation. It also explains the tremendous fascination with, and fear of, female genitalia I've had ever since.

God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut.

Sex, drugs, and Envirokidz Organic Gorilla Munch (Gluten-Free) Cereal

My pop cultural observation of the day:

Gwen Stefani has had a remarkable career given most of her songs sound like she's spent the past decade wintering in Siberia. I wonder if her friends are grossed out by the trails of snot she must leave on all the microphones, bottles of Cristal, etc.

No, no, no (aka It's Not Small, Part II)

The children watched with fear as Big Bad Moe finished his last bite of cereal. "All right" he sputtered, milk cascading down into his beard, "since none of you will tell me who the fuck I'm looking for, I guess I'll just have to kill all of you."

He ignored their screams, slaughtering the children one by one until he was down to his final victim: a curly haired blonde in overalls. "Please don't" she begged, Moe responding merely with cold laughter. Only as he raised his rusty, blood spattered axe, a pair of yellow eyes blinked to life among the shadows of the Honeycomb Hideout.

"What the…" But before he could finish, a telescoping arm blasted out with shotgun speed, tearing a hole through Moe's larynx and pinning him to the wall. His cricothyroid muscles dripped down his neck like slugs descending a window, denying him the possibility of uttering the last words he so desired to speak ("I'm... not small").

HC920X rose, his various robotic parts beeping as his microprocessor executed the self-diagnostics preprogrammed to run in the event of physical damage. "HoneyBot, you saved me. You saved my life," the girl sobbed, overwhelmed by the sight of her massacred friends and the evolutionary joy that inevitably accompanies coming within moments of losing one's life.

HC920X pointed to the Clubhouse's trap door as five more Harleys roared up outside. "I can't leave you, HoneyBot! They'll break you!" The robot beeped, pointing once again toward the trap door as the cancerous, lunatic voices grew in volume outside the door. "What am I going to do without you?" she cried.

HC920X then did something the scientists who programmed him would have denied as possible. He extended his bloodsoaked arms. The child stood there in shock for a moment, then took a step forward. Then another. The robot held the child to its processor, its tactile sensors detecting the human heart beating against crude metal. Her pulse slowed, likely indicating a sense, however temporary, of comfort.

As the door began to cave in HC920X pointed for a final time toward the trapdoor. The child knew she had no choice. "I… I love you, Honeybot."

The words on the robot's chest, which had always read "Big Taste Honeycomb" rearranged themselves:

"A BOMB NICE GET THY SO"

"A bomb?" she spoke, then understood. She slipped out the trapdoor just as the motorcycle thugs broke into the cabin.

The explosion echoed throughout the valley, wildlife rushing into the safety of their caves, their nests, their burrows, as bits of flesh and bone and circuitry rained down on the trees. HC920X had served its purpose, traveling back in time to alter one single moment, to save a little girl's life.

This wasn't the end, though, for young Christina Arrow. Big Bad Moe was only a pawn in GeneCorp CEO Rex Peabody's game of chess—the stakes being the survival of the human race. There would more men to face, men far worse than Big Bad Moe could have imagined.

Only, next time, she would be ready.

Recently (Already) Dead: A Poem, Commemorating Super Bowl XLI

While the others high fived and dusted their lips with Cheetos, I went rollerblading with you, Jeremy,
both of us preferring the ocean's salty breath to the high definition tyranny .

But then I accidentally dropped you - my hands sweaty from the California sun and petroleum jelly - and crushed you in my wheels.

I know we are apart now, Jeremy, but I promise I'll see you again in heaven when we're both angels
as long as humans and hermit crabs have the same heaven,
or they're at least close to each other.

Et tu, Barbaro?

In regard to the thoroughbred Barbaro’s being euthanized, Harvey Araton opines in today’s New York Times that our supposed cultural obsession with the horse is perhaps due to the fact that “Barbaro, as the fallen champion, was reminiscent of a country that was seriously wounded on 9/11 and has been wobbly ever since. Maybe the horse’s medical roller coaster struck a chord at a time when a great American city, ravaged by nature and neglect, still can’t stand up. Maybe only in such context can we rationalize such widespread passion for the health of a horse that has exceeded that for any single American soldier killed or wounded in Iraq.”

Or maybe it has something do with the fact that we live in a country in which we’d rather watch a game show host—who, by the way, is mysophobic to the point of having shaved his head and refusing to shake hands with any of his disgusting, germ-infested contestants—try to look serious as he stands before twenty-six live mannequins with briefcases, while contestants, the studio audience, and audiences across America lose control over their bowels because the monkey on stage is one step closer to winning a game of statistical probability… wow, this sentence is getting long.

The point is that America needs to get its priorities straight: horses, briefcases, and the war in Iraq are all temporary; Tina Fey’s adorable nerdiness and ineptitude at finding true love on 30 Rock are eternal. Sure, in “real life” she’s “married” and has a “child,” but that doesn’t change the fact that we are both from Pennsylvania, have Greek mothers, wear glasses, and are destined for each other.

(Thanks to Noah Rachlin, King of Kings, for bringing the article and quotation to my attention.)

La trahison des images

This is how students used to recite the Pledge of Allegiance before the second world war. Seriously.

To point out the fascist associations would be obvious and unnecessary, especially given the fact that Hitler et allii likely appropriated the stance from the US, and not the other way around.

Less obvious is the fact that the young man in the front is definitely checking out the hottie in the white dress's t-bombs.


(n.b. the image and original research come from Wikipedia, but were verified by the conservative Cato Institute, just to preempt any accusations of bleeding heartedness, or the occasionally justified misgivings of Wikiphobes).

You don't have any more information, do you, Nina?

A former senior FBI agent specializing in tracking terrorists has condemned the latest plot twist in the Fox series 24, about low-grade nuclear explosions being detonated in the U.S. Jack Cloonan told ABC News that trainees in al-Qaeda camps had watched U.S. movies "to get ideas." The show, he remarked "ups the ante for everybody. ... We saw what Columbine did. Fox may think they are doing a public service, but I don't see any redeeming value at all."

I just hope the FBI isn't on to my plot to transport a cyborg super-assassin back in time to kill my enemies' mothers before they can give birth.

I don't spend 60 hours a week slaving away in my Skynet cube for the f'ing dental.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair

If Schuyler Patterson, 16 year old Myspace blogger, had delivered a famous speech on 28 August, 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial:



i looked around me, and it was like they’re waz freedom everywhere. from every town and village and , um, Hamlet? and everyone was getting along good, black dudes and white guys and jews and everybody, you know? and they Where all holding hands, but not in a gay way… not that therz anything wrong with the gays but it just wasn’t like that… and they were all singing this old negro (can I say that?) song:

free at last! free at last!

thx god almighty, we’re free at last!

then my eyes snapped open with a gasp. I wiped the sweat off my face, then rolled over to find my girlfriend Meghan sleeping next to me. and that's when I realized – it was all just a dream :)

Happy 2007!

I'm going to sleep.


Wake me up when it's safe to eat spinach.

Thought for the Day

There is no better way to study the hydraulics of insincere smiles than leafing through an US Weekly in a crowded airport.

Question of the Day (in two parts)

Is “Venus in Furs” every sadomasochist’s favorite song? Or do they consider it passé?

The Calendar Year

Michael stared at the shirtless man in overalls as he lifted the hydraulically mechanized safety bar at the end of the roller coaster ride. He’s not really lifting, Michael though. And he wasn’t. But it did lend a sense of purpose to a man who could, and in strictly economic terms, should have been replaced by the far more reliable machine. A machines which, after all, did not show up to work an hour and a half late, breathing the stale remnants of Pabst Blue Ribbon and waitress vagina into the faces of small children.

Michael’s mother conversed with the insurance company photographer, asking if he worked for DistribuLife fulltime (“no”), then what his personal work consisted of (“Mostly cats, I guess. Kittens”). She nodded, politely, then looked down and noticed her son had disappeared.

The announcement was lost in the noise: “Just once more Look pleaeeeeaaase!!!!! at that fucking giant rabbit Three dollars for a bottle Michael of Crain water?! Easy as onePlease tworeport thrreeto the Kiddie You Kingdom looking for someone little fella? Hop up on Grandpa’s lap, whaddya say?”

Michael stared at the man, who was not his Grandfather. “I lost my cotton candy,” he declared, and scuttled off. The man eased back onto the green bench, asking God for forgiveness and for strength.

Michael walked past people, hundreds, maybe millions of people. People in white sneakers and jean shorts and tube socks, people with chocolate ice cream on their faces, people holding hands, people with stains beneath their arms and on their bellies and on their backs.

“Every one of these people is going to die,” Michael said aloud. He heard that on tv, on one of his mother’s soaps. He did not know what it meant.

He smiled as he found the escaped wisp of cotton candy, resting atop a hedge. He smiled again as his mother hoisted him into her arms (“I was so…!” etc.), and once again as he tasted the cumulous sweetness.

He pointed. “Look, Mom!” he shouted. “It’s flying!”

“Smile!” the DistribuLife photographer called from the base of the roller coaster, snapping a photo—THE photo—of mother and son, of Mary and Jesus and his recovered cotton candy.

Two faces in front, smiling, yes. But it was those sixty-four faces behind the image, those sixty-four faces of surprise and anger and a kind of joy as machine separated from machine, dropping down, down, down toward a shirtless man in overalls picking at the bacteria which had found a home in his body, and toward a photographer, who was overwhelmed with the satisfaction of having made a single moment last—at least in human terms—forever.

That was what Michael remembered.

(All up in your) Brane Cosmology

Michael Crain woke that next morning to find his sheets cold and sticky. And, for an instant, he wondered if perhaps life - specifically his twenty-two years of existence, his forty-four visits to the dentist, his 37,324,800 hours of yawning in classrooms and daydreaming of fingerblasting a female archetype whose breasts grew over the years at rate far out of proportion to Michael's own (four) sexual experiences - was like that. He wondered if life was no more than the sticky remnants of last night's wet dream on one of the infinite number of colliding, sheet-like membranes of our ten dimensional multiverse.

He began to strip the bed, intending to dump the sheets outside his sleeping mother's doorway for her to wash between her 1 and 3pm shows. "Fuck it," he said aloud, abandoning his effort halfway and finding no small amount of joy in the sheet's crisp phwack as elastic and cotton rejoined the foam and polyester mattress.

Michael walked across the room, and sat naked on his computer chair. He adjusted his genitals. He signed onto the internet to check if any of his online friends had posted a message on his Myspace page.

They hadn't.

Stop it MOM!

I was just chillin', puttin' out my vibe, about to krush this fine little ho' named Lydia or some shit, when my MOMS rolls up, and is like, "PHILBERT, your tie is crooked!" So I'm like, "NAH, shut up, HO! Yo face is krooked, SHIT WOMAN!" And then she SLAPS me, and I's is like, "WHAT THE FUCKS, MOM! You can't be doing that in front of Yanti and Tyreesha, now my GAME'S all FUCKED up, DAMN!" The thing be, she don't even give a SHIT. A playa can't even GET NONE no more, DAMN. YO! Where the crab cakes at?

YEAH!!!!

Said Mookie "PHILLIP, THESE DUDES PARTY"
Check out the Rontis Vektor for a good weekend story:
NickTarantoIndo.blogspot.com

Woolsey is on fire

From a pre-Iraq war article in The Atlantic:

"This could be a golden opportunity to begin to change the face of the Arab world," James Woolsey, a former CIA director who is one of the most visible advocates of war, told me. "Just as what we did in Germany changed the face of Central and Eastern Europe, here we have got a golden chance." In this view, the fall of the Soviet empire really did mark what Francis Fukuyama called "the end of history": the democratic-capitalist model showed its superiority over other social systems. The model has many local variations; it brings adjustment problems; and it encounters resistance, such as the anti-globalization protests of the late 1990s. But it spreads—through the old Soviet territory, through Latin America and Asia, nearly everywhere except through tragic Africa and the Islamic-Arab lands of the Middle East. To think that Arab states don't want a democratic future is dehumanizing. To think they're incapable of it is worse. What is required is a first Arab democracy, and Iraq can be the place.

"If you only look forward, you can see how hard it would be to do," Woolsey said. "Everybody can say, 'Oh, sure, you're going to democratize the Middle East.'" Indeed, that was the reaction of most of the diplomats, spies, and soldiers I spoke with—"the ruminations of insane people," one British official said.

Woolsey continued with his point: "But if you look at what we and our allies have done with the three world wars of the twentieth century—two hot, one cold—and what we've done in the interstices, we've already achieved this for two thirds of the world. Eighty-five years ago, when we went into World War I, there were eight or ten democracies at the time. Now it's around a hundred and twenty—some free, some partly free. An order of magnitude! The compromises we made along the way, whether allying with Stalin or Franco or Pinochet, we have gotten around to fixing, and their successor regimes are democracies.

"Around half of the states of sub-Saharan Africa are democratic. Half of the twenty-plus non-Arab Muslim states. We have all of Europe except Belarus and occasionally parts of the Balkans. If you look back at what has happened in less than a century, then getting the Arab world plus Iran moving in the same direction looks a lot less awesome. It's not Americanizing the world. It's Athenizing it. And it is doable."

While I wholeheartedly agree with Woolsey's fundamental premise that the Middle East is nothing but a bloody firetrap, I can't help but wonder about his tactical approach. Somewhere around the part about casual flirtations with Stalin I began to question the idea of the democratic nation-state as a viable model for the continued progress of civilization. If his logic is drawn out to its inevitable conclusion, it seems to me the world will come to resemble the utopian geopolitical vision of the creators of "Risk": political sovereignty concentrated across broad swathes of land, seamlessly bridging ethnic and cultural divides with an arbitrarily designated color.

The Australasian and South American landmasses would be very much the same as they are in the game. Predictably, they would be unified under the relatively benevolent leadership of the Mongols who, though [fiscally] demanding, are just trying to party. Europe would be either merged into Eurasia or acquired by a savvy, fast-talking oil-man from West Texas, goes by the name of Edward TEE Willups, thank you very much. Flawlessly executing the old rope-em-punch-em-sally maneuver (from his high-school football days), Ol' Tee can spread democracy like butter on toast, believe you me, yessirree. So far, nobody's hurt and the US-Europe-Russia axis of justice is still spinning merrily. But...

What, then, of the Middle East and Asia? Europe left a lot to chance when they concentrated all of their cannons and cavalry on the now compromised Soviet border. Now their military prowess has been diluted throughout the Eurasian landmass, the Iron Curtain melted down for helmets, spears, and espresso machines. All the while, China has been using lean manufacturing techniques and cutting back on nutritional intake for centuries; their long-suffering, culturally sterilized diligence in pursuing this strategy is coming to fruition RIGHT THIS INSTANT as they stockpile piece after plastic piece of artillery in a now giddy preparation for a momentous roll of the dice against the makeshift defenses of their Western neighbor, the Middle East.

Fortunately for us, Woolsey and his crack team of pediatric geneticists have devised a counter-offensive so ingenious it defies explanation. That's right, folks: the ATOM BOMB.

But seriously, what is going on? Who won the Cold War? What war is this?

-FSyria, I wanna talk to the Ayatollah

I'm through with "New Media"

I'm buying a microfiche reader for my room and reading nothing but historical Sunday Styles articles. The "invisible hand" of open-source media is the tactical wing of a vast and unconscionably evil cabal of dudes with a series of fluff Masters degrees and a tendency to describe every facet of their life with an acronym.
Grip this for more insight: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier06/lanier06_index.html

Does anybody know any good jokes?

A Rational Decision

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered government and cultural bodies to use modified Persian words to replace foreign words that have crept into the language, such as ''pizzas'' which will now be known as ''elastic loaves,'' state media reported Saturday.

Among other changes, a ''chat'' will become a ''short talk'' and a ''cabin'' will be renamed a ''small room,'' according to official Web site of the academy.

ZOG AMERICA

Upon Googling the phrase "zog america" (sans quotes), I received links to:
1) A Wikipedia entry for the Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG)
2) A Wikipedia entry informing me that ZOG "also has the account User:BaboonMouth, several contributions from which have already been deleted for being in blatantly bad taste (e.g., adding photos of monkeys to articles on prominent African-Americans)."
3) Frosina.org, a self-proclaimed Albanian immigrant and cultural resource
and
4) The Al Franken Show

On the eve of my departure for the most populous Muslim nation on Earth, all I have to say is, God Bless America.

Vote or die.

The above advertisement is from www.Dictionary.com. I was too distracted looking up "precipe" to follow the link. I did, however, save the image, and now can't help but wonder...

Vote for Anne Coulter as what?

Modern ideologue most akin to Adolph Hitler?

Woman most likely to have a perpetually enraged cobra living beneath her clitoral hood?

The possibilities are endless. Regardless, Ann Coulter – you have my vote.

I'm doing something with my life...

Oh wait, no. I had myself confused with John Lennon.

Straight from the Gut [archives]

The Cereal Generation
By R. Lance Martin
Published on Friday, November 19, 2004

Courtesy of Kellogg's

Though experts still consider butterscotch the comfort food of choice on America's college campuses, a cover article in Sunday's New York Times reveals that young adults now account for a "disproportionately large share of the breakfast cereal market." Research conducted here at Dartmouth appears to confirm this finding.

Recent polls indicate that stressed Dartmouth upperclassmen, sporting semi-permanent winces (as if victims of botched Botox treatments), reach for Fruit Loops in times of need and statisticians correlate the recent on-campus spike in Cinnamon Toast Crunch sales with heightened Terror Alert levels.

"Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Fox News are all I need to feel better [about the steady boil in Iraq]," noted Andrew Caspary '06.

Though cereal may provide comfort in times of war and neo-conservatism, aggressive marketing campaigns during the late 1980s may also explain its surge in popularity among members of our generation.

"Honeycomb's big -- yeah yeah yeah. It's not small -- no no no," exclaimed Alexis C. Jolly '05, recalling the jingle that elevated Honeycomb cereal to God-like status back in 1988.

"The Trix rabbit played a formative role my childhood development," yelled Charles Baron '05 as he stared longingly into a bowl of pink-tinted milk with only a few remaining specks of fruity cereal.

Unconvinced by characters used to market cereals to the pre-school set, Isaac Kardon '05 said he always "detested the Leprechaun's affected smile," but enjoyed "picking out the marshmallows" from Lucky Charms.

Though some associate cereal with childhood memories, others associate cereal with overprotective parents: "My parents always wanted me to be wholesome like Quaker oatmeal," said Dan Correa '05, laughing with a mixture of superiority and sadness.

While it's nostalgic significance may be disputed, overwhelming evidence indicates cereal's popularity when mind-altering substances forcibly distort the senses, making preparation of more complex dishes (such as spaghetti) impossible.

"Even when I'm repeating sounds over and over again, I can recognize objects such as bowls, spoons, milk and cereal boxes," noted John Helmstadter '05, who added that he was just kidding about his ability to recognize spoons.

True -- cereal is comforting, well-marketed and convenient -- but television's influence on our generation may also explain its popularity. Because MTV introduced so many pop-culture archetypes over the course of the late 1990s, many members of our generation still experience considerable confusion with regard to self-image.

"I don't know who I am," said Neel Shah '05, "but I can mix my cereal to send different yet simultaneous signals about my multiple identities."

Conscious of his fiber intake and his image, Shah covers his daily bowl of Raisin Bran with a thin layer of Frosted Flakes so as to imply "carefree, hipster" while masking "intelligent, sensitive."

Seated nearby, Bobby Zangrilli '05 added that Special K is "good for face-time [with the ladies]" because "eating a chick cereal in public shows that I don't care [about image]."

Too occupied with work to trouble himself with image, Dan Robinson '05 countered that cereal provides a sense of power in the wake of an intense corporate recruiting process replete with statistical case studies: "I can control the milk-to-Smart Start ratio in the morning. You can't take that away from me. No, you can't ..."

While some seek cereal for image-enhancing or control purposes, others find that it reflects their individuality -- my attempt to fool anti-Establishment icon Nick Taranto '06 by noting that Lockheed Martin recently acquired General Mills was met with a smack upside the head.

Enjoying his daily bowl of Grape Nuts, the calmer Jesse Blom '06 defended his sophisticated breakfast selection: "I will have the good life one day -- McMansions, Southampton, air-kisses -- and my sensible bowl of Grape Nuts in the morning is a step in the right direction."

Evidently this overlooked breakfast product now has a unique role in the lives of a generation that grew up surfing the web and playing with Super-Soakers during economic boom times.

"Your it man, you're my best friend," said Blake Johnson '05 as he stares affectionately at an image of Captain Crunch on a nearby cereal box during a brief respite in an intense game of online Halo. "Cap'n Horatio Crunch was born on Crunch Island, which is located in Milk Sea," added Dan Madigan '05 as he checked his BlitzMail.

Though the Cap'n likes us, perhaps a more dynamic online avatar running through three-dimensional virtual worlds occasionally wonders how our generation will be remembered.

"We didn't protest like the Baby Boomers, but we ate mad cereal in College," noted Matt Miller '05, gripping a box of Count Chocula as if holding an infant.

Marketers concerned about profits and mothers concerned about vegetable intake may try to understand why our generation eats cereal for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but the answer may be simple.

"Because I can," said the jubilant and massive Norwegian Viking Erik Richardson '05 as he poured a large bowl of granola in Collis Cafe. "And that's good enough for me."

To the long-haired, Asian man at my gym:

Won't

you

tell

me

your

secrets?

Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful Jesuit!

10:35pm-12:16am: He sinks into the dusty, secondhand chair, crippled with a writer's block he was certain wasn't supposed to set in until he'd had a least one work of genius. Checks testicles for lumps. Cancer would be a good excuse.

12:17am: He rises, deciding now is the time to finally fix that clogged bathroom sink. He grabs the bottle of Drano from the supply cabinet, then watches with satisfaction as the mucusy liquid glugs its way down the hole. Might as well scrub the mirrors and the tile, while we're at it.

12:56am: He returns to his writing chair, a pleasant dancing sensation in his fingertipsietoenailskullhairs, thanks to a lack of ventilation in the bathroom.

1:15am: In a fit of chemical ecstasy (Wordsworth defined poetry as the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings) he writes, writes, writes - ideas flowing from his fingertips like a milk jug knocked over from the table. This is it. This is the script that will change everything.

1:34am: He realizes he's outlined a film almost identical to Rob Schneider's Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigalo.

1:35am: He reaches for the bottle of Drano.

The Breakroom: Trip 8

Trip 8: Discovering that niether the tea nor peach #1 were significantly cooler, I placed the Hot Tea bottle in the freezer.

The Breakroom @ 2:00 PM: Trips 1-9

A sequence of trips to the office kitchen occuring between 1:58 PM and 2:20 PM

Trip 1: Decide I need more tea and fill empty Arizona Iced Tea bottle with Bigelow mint tea and hot water. (return to desk)

Trip 2: Noticing my Iced Tea is now hot tea, I return to kitchen to place hot tea bottle in fridge. (return to desk)

Trip 3: Remembering that I have peaches in my backpack (now warm), I carry both the kitchen and place peach #1 in fridge with Iced Tea and bring peach #2 back to my desk to be eaten later. (return to desk)

Trip 4: After reading one sentance of a report on India's nukes, it occurs to me that cold air sinks, and thus the fastest way to cool my hot tea bottle and peach #1 is to place them at the bottom of the fridge. (return to desk)

Trip 5: Wanting to eat peach #2 I realize I will make a mess all over my desk, so I return to the kitchen for paper towels. While searching for new paper towels, I eat peach #2 and make a mess. (return to desk)

Trip 6: Bathroom

Trip 7: After eating peach #2, I decide that for peach #1, I really would prefer a cold treat. I decide to move peach #1 to the bottom of the freezer. (return to desk)

Trip 8-9: Tentative. I am planning on retrieving my soon to be Cold tea bottle and iced peach treat. Invariably, this will take two trips.

Happy Fourth!

These are the opening lines of Allen Ginsberg's America. I recommend you finish the rest of it here.

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.

Definitely not grilling a summer vegetable medley

Mike Crain had a real interesting evening...Went to the opening of a new pizza place owned by an art gallery fellow, real gay scene inside what looked like a bombed out warehouse but it was cool because they played a few choice 80s cuts (Nu shooz, I can't wait). After a few slices of pie and 3 miller lites straight to the neck, the night began. My bosses' daughter (17 years old, nice t-bills [sell to China], don't worry about it) starts doing moves real close with sister/boss looking on. I can't be an arse, but I also can't plaster myself on someone 6 years my junior.

In an effort to diffuse sexual tension, the filler breaks out weird-guy knee cross-ups and other moves that are best left to MJ circa Don't Stop Til You Get Enough. We go to a bar afterwards, younger sister awkwardly touching my thigh (both hands) while I simply refuse to make eye contact and make asanine comments about an old couple that danced next to us.

Also, this pizza gig made me realize how much of an imperative it is take away all of the cultural capital that hipsters have accrued as soon as possible. Dudes with long hair on coke=not that cool, even with seersucker jacket.

Superman

Arms apart like a proctologist's, spreading wide America's collective anus.

Of course, I'll still see it this weekend. But I'll wish he were Batman.