Synthetic Culture

Heavily armed window-dressing

2010-03-11T09:08:00.000-08:00

I went to the courthouse recently - to get the approval of some mammal in a black robe - and had to pass through the security checkpoint at the door. The cop looked at my keychain with it's tiny, red Swiss Army knife and told me I couldn't take it in because it was a 'weapon.' He had a waste-basket ready to receive it.

"Ok, then," he says... "You can go stick it on the wall between the bricks outside, then get it again when you leave. So that's what I did... but oops... wrong courthouse. I collected my knife from the crack, then ran to the other courthouse. By the time I got there I'd forgotten about the 'weapon' in my pocket and passed through the metal-detector without a single beep.

I coulda carved up all they all's carcasses when I was in there.

Bicycle diaries...

2010-03-08T20:03:00.000-08:00

It's been a long, flabby winter, but I'm back on the road.

My ass, once a magnificent specimen, is now soft and doughy. My lung capacity is embarrassingly tiny, and I get winded at the slightest provocation... I could say it's for money, the environment, to prevent crowding... it's really because of exercise. I was fearing a long break-in period (and goodness knows, I'll be sore) but my first day out felt as if I hadn't put my bike away at all. Then it started snowing.

I like the idea that I get my exercise from my simple movements from here to there... like a wild animal. Driving makes me feel so domesticated sometimes.

It's a real 'seat of the pants' experience around these parts. You take your life into your hands riding a bicycle on the street in this city. There are two ways I can ride my bike to work, and neither of them are any good. Both have extended portions where the streets make no room for bikes - and big segments of these don't even have sidewalks to ride on. Hands down, I feel safer on these streets on a motorcycle than I ever have on a bicycle.

We're not welcome on the roads by most of the drivers around here (even when there's a bike path,) and in Salt Lake proper it's illegal to ride on the sidewalk... last I heard. The reality then becomes that you ride wherever you have to just to be safe. I stick to the street when I'm not going to work, and use my best manners with traffic so's to help avoid a brutal squishing.

But no... I will not sit at a stoplight with the car people when there's no cross traffic, I'm going to keep riding. I yield to pedestrians on the sidewalk, but those who don't want me there are invited to fuck off. (Like that guy I always see 'round 9th South and West Temple who likes to shout, "Ride on the street!" You ride on the street, dumbass, and if you don't get splattered like a grape under an SUV by some idiot on a cell phone, then you can lecture me.)

Yes... I'm feeling a little pissy today, but I promise, it's completely genuine.

I came across this picture today on the internets. The same amount of people with cars, bus, and bikes... three pictures are worth a thousand words.

Move with the energy...

2010-03-07T10:44:00.000-08:00

A torrid affair with a new phone... consumer electronics make me horny. Fending off Bouncing Betty... 'crazy bitch' it turns out, is not just a locker room pejorative. Falling off my schedule how many times? Methinks there's something rotten in Denver.

When has there not been something rotten in Denver? It was two years ago since my depression subsided, but even then I knew full well I'd go right back there if things didn't change. I began writing, adressed my medical problems, came out from under my girlfriend's bed and figured out what it feels like to be 'happy.' I kept the dead-end graveyard job for the security and the freedom... And why not? It's a scary world out there and I'm one of the few I know who actually has health insurance.

So for the past year, at least, I've been attempting to do my creative projects while working a job with no potential for satisfaction while dating casually. It's clear to me that my schedule is really putting a damper on my creative energies, and no matter how good the sex is, my relationships are (very) far from satisfying, and socially, I've only succeeded in alienating the interesting people I've met.

I did have one failed attempt as the bold entrepreneur, one that gave me a taste for working with my hands at something artistic, that ended when my partner ripped me off. I've even been in and out of school in that time.

But last weekend, after much soul searching, defining what I want out of life, and consulting the oracles (presided over by my most favoritest Moon Goddess...) I finally internalized a notion that came to me when I first snapped out of my depression: I have quit my job.

If I'm trying to maximize my energy, then I need to be sleeping at night and getting up in the morning. I have to move with the energy and not against it. As it turns out, I've an excellent opportunity for learning a real trade with artistic overtones and unlimited potential for expression. I'm going to apprentice in my roommate's shop (which is about 50 feet from my bedroom door) and do all I can to make myself indispensable to her. When they roll out the latest round of lay-offs in what I expect will be the next year or so, I'll volunteer. I'll get a couple grand in severance and will drop into my new work full time.

That's the plan, anyway.

My writing projects are still there in my mind, of course. I work on them when I can - which is all I've been able to ever do anyway.

Part of this realization came a few weeks ago when I became entranced in the gaze of Big, Green-Eyed Trouble... If you've never had the experience of looking into a girl's eyes and suddenly figuring out what's important to you, I recommend it highly. It put the image in my mind of my last LTR, all the closeness of shared goals and a shared bed, doing nice things and nice things done for me. ...And a real 'bed' too, and not some afternoon nap together because I have to be at work by 10pm... a relationship not weighed down by years of depression. All that sounds like home after the last two years...

It would definitely be what I'd call a leap of faith, but I'm certain that my health, mood and energy will do nothing but improve. I've just never had the courage before.

It's been my experience that nobody really knows what will make them happy, and this realization is speculative, just like any other. And if it is that the rest of my life is to be spent flailing about trying to find something that fits... so be it. But if the last two years have been any indication, I'm on the right track and only getting closer.

The last few months have been the happiest I've ever known. I emerge from my little shack and see the purple-orange sky and I'm filled with such gratitude that I can't contain it. The moon overhead stirs my soul and opens my mind to accept a world I've so long rejected. I entered this life with all the advantages, got mangled, mutilated and spat out the bottom with virtually nothing, but still I can't believe my luck. At my age, with my past, it's almost as if I've been granted a new life completely.

I'm healthy, happy, and have spread before me many fat, succulent opportunities at which I can succeed or fail spectacularly with minimal interference from all the old, bad things.

So it is true... wonders will never cease.

Desisted...

2010-02-22T07:38:00.000-08:00

I can pay attention to one thing at a time, at least.

So... through legal wrangling I've been able to get my garnishment stopped for now. For a week after the court desision it felt as if I had a gallon of extra lung space. Each breath felt like a rebirth, or a college graduation or a new job...

I took deep breaths until I couldn't contain my emotions... I deserve those good feelings.

Hidden behind little girl's eyes...

2010-02-03T18:42:00.000-08:00

Evil, women, irony, money…

Here I sit in my favorite coffee shop next to a hot, mug of green tea. The one solitary dollar I had left in the world - supplemented with the Kennedy half-dollar I’ve had sliding around in my ashtray for the last two years - went to pay for the tea. Payday isn’t for another seven days, and all the food I have at home is a half-bag of Bachelor Chow and a half-jar of peanut butter.

I had another hearing with the implacable gods of the kleptocracy… Last time I was able to squeeze out a concession that stopped the garnishing of my pay for now. In return they demand tribute. Fine… tribute. Only they did NOT stop the garnishment, but still the tribute was demanded… Irony bites back sometimes, I had won the right to pay less, and as a result, I was paying even more. This last hearing was just a formality, but that doesn’t put cash in my hand.

It took six weeks before, finally, the tax services stopped carving up my paycheck. My lawyer’s secretary told me that they are bound by law to pay that last six weeks garnishment back. I’ll believe it when the check arrives.

I’ll get paid soon, a real, no-foolin’, non-garnished paycheck. And my refund should be enough to catch up on my bills and maybe even go to see a real dentist, but until then, this is probably the worst off I’ve ever been.

And so here I sit… thinking on all that’s happened, and it reminds me of a woman.

She swung those big eyes around like spotlights, that first day we met. She had a manner and a mind that would have slain me anyway, but it was those eyes that clinched it. Before I knew what was happening, I was in love with her. Before that had a chance to sink in, she was gone.

Once we walked in City Creek canyon on beautiful fall morning before she had to be at work. At more than one point in the hike she stopped me in the middle of the trail and threw her arms around me. She said it was a kiss she couldn’t resist.

This is how I remembered it:

In her name is a melody 

That rises and falls with quiet breath. 

I sing to myself when no one can hear. 

Close my eyes and feel the music.  

Her heart is as old as the earth and sea 

Hidden behind little girls eyes.

The fact that what happened next was not a HUGE red flag for me is a testament to my mental state.

Down the last stretch of the path before the guardshack and the parking lot… we were trotting happily and smiling puppydog love when suddenly she froze, looking off into the distance, her mouth slack, “Is that my husband?!” she said. I looked up to see a tall man disappear around the corner.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I found myself wondering how well I could hold my own if the shit came down right there on the path in City Creek. It was a kamakaze daydream, however… He had been teaching Kung Fu for fifteen years.

Well, it wasn’t her husband that day. And it wouldn’t be long before she came to her senses – and by the time I came to mine, those eyes were for me no longer.

We had many connections and quite a lot of that magic that only comes out when the connection clicks and the air is thick with that exuberant, mammal energy. The moment that’s most on my mind now is one day when she took me to lunch. She knew of my IRS problem and was very supportive in my futile efforts with lawyers… as we stopped for gas, she rummaged in her purse and pulled out a Tesoro gift card. She said she didn’t know if there was anything left on it, but here… buy yourself some gas or something. It was a very sweet gesture, but I ended up never using it.

Eighteen months later and a few levels deeper in poverty, I have come across that card again. It still had $50.00 on it.

Now, swimming in irony already, the only reason I have food in my stomach and gas in my car is because I had the temerity to kiss a married woman.

So, with tongue firmly planted in cheek (...that Tesoro sandwich was the worst tasting thing I've ever been glad to eat.) I say: Wonders will never cease.

Bachelor Chow

2010-02-01T08:16:00.000-08:00

I'd sit in art class and want to write letters, In English I'd draw pictures, in church I'd write stories... I never wanted to do homework.

Just about the moment on Thursday when I thought I couldn't type another word, it was suddenly the weekend... the schedule says, 'manual labor.' Just what the doctor ordered. My job completion rate was about 20%, but there were other factors... a sudden, ugly dust-up with the ex-wife. I was confrontational and mean and I made her cry. Then I felt like complete shit for the rest of the day.

Then, a reexamination of my finances (dip into the pocket, un-wad the bills... is that all there is?) put my grandiose painting plans off until more money appears. I went to Smith's instead of Home Depot and spent all my money on Bachelor Chow.

I wonder if it will stretch for ten more days?

Back on the schedule, I go. Tonight, draft vision of the sultverse and animated character v2.0.

Blogging for the ages, right here.

Wounded and Smoggy.

2010-01-29T10:38:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I just felt detached and reclusive. I started writing, drawing AND painting yesterday, at various times... and I just didn't feel like doing any of it. So consequently most of that time was spent sitting, looking at my materials, while some kind of video droned away in the background.

I feel like this some days, I'm sure everybody does... but it puts me in mind of the time when the whole world was just a black pit of hopeless blackness without hope. There was no outlook, no prediction, no daydream that wasn't swimming in doom, no spring morning worth a notice, no full moon that wasn't faded, run down, tarnished... did I say hopeless.

It's hard, as you might think, to maintain any kind of livable life when everything smells of decay and death. I hadn't been 'contemplating' suicide, as much as just thinking about death a lot. But even that was not lost on me, I've worked around the mental cases enough to know that's a really bad sign. Go on like this long enough and you'll be left with entire forgotten years of time, and whole repertoire of bad habits. Take 2003, for instance. I don't remember anything from that year that doesn't involve the ceiling of my room, the television, or wishing I had more energy for my loved ones... I don't think I did a single piece of art, attend any cultural events, nor wrote a single passage that didn't begin with, "I think I'm losing my mind."

Finally one day, as I was complaining about something else, somebody said, "Well, here's your problem..." He reached into my central nervous system, felt around for a switch, click.

The lights snapped on, the moon was beautiful, the spring was magnificent, the future couldn't get rosier. The world had changed for me. But it wasn't the world that changed, was it? It had been that way all along and I just didn't know it. I had been building my thinking and entire worldview upon what I thought were the more objective parts of my perception, but I was way off. If the chemicals aren't right, then nothing else will be.

I could spend hours contemplating what the meaning of that might be. Like being unplugged from the Matrix, except the 'real world' is just like the Matrix, but better, brighter and happier. It put my human perceptions of reality into a very different, and more realistic context, I think.

A few weeks ago I was reminded again of my whole legacy of depression, and how I'm not depressed now, but the seeds are still there... I had been stressed to a boiling point over the hemoraging of my life force... a melodramatic way to put it, but accurate when I'd work 50 hours a week just to live the life of the semi-homeless. I went into Ms. DeMille's back yard and lit up a big fat one.

Normally I don't smoke the whole thing in one shot, but this time I did. There was nothing I could do about the situation at that moment except just calming the hell down, so I did. As it worked it's magic I vividly remembered when I was living every few hours like this. Four or five a day... it was expensive, unhealthy for any number of reasons... not even to mention the diminished returns of high tolerance.

Standing there in the yard, I was very glad those days were past...

The world is a beautiful place, wounded and smoggy as it is... and I'm one of it's biggest fans.

Sleepandpee later!

2010-01-27T15:50:00.001-08:00

Numbers today, 100% and 60% respectively… lists of regular tasks and list of fires to put out. I didn’t get the one I really wanted done, but that’s just a 40 minute drive, first thing in the morning. I came out swinging, at least.

It’s ok, just the numbers look better than I feel like they should.

The ‘mint on the pillow’ of my divine captivity the other night… Ms. DeMille and a text: “Sundance! Right now! You in?”

Sweeet. We saw an animated shorts program that was about half brilliant and much too loud for my taste… but we had to sit in front. Then there was tea, turkey, and gay men with dainty tea cups… we walked in the brisk air, had some standing in line for nothing… Ms. DeMille will festival until she drops, I think she went to three more movies that day. I imagined her dragging herself up some frozen Park City steps, “must… see… Documentary… sleep and pee later… the director was my boyfriend!”

I quoted Point Break to her, “It is not tragic to die doing what you love.” She looked slack-jawed for a second – as if at a revelation, then agreed enthusiastically. And who can blame her? (And here I am writing about her as if she isn’t here… she might be the ONLY one here.)

She’s remarkable to be around… so gregarious, and more friends than she can count, but I’m seldom with other people when I see her. I don’t mind being a dirty secret… She’s got those blue eyes that can only come from California… but she wasn’t born there, so I don’t know what happened. Shape-changing hair and a face that can have the gravitas of Angry Mama Bear one moment and the smile of a cartoon squirrel the next. I like her because she’s a believer and a romantic – a lot like myself if you squint just right.

We spent long evenings on the couch, chatting, reading, watching… I wonder if she knows which times I was just stoned and laconic, and which that had me bound up with emotion so that I daren’t speak? There were a few. I always enjoy her company.

Anyway… she still smiles at my over-wrought, unctuous words and my tragicomic thrashings about. Perhaps I’ll knock over a liquor store and join her for a flick tonight?

Intention to the Slutverse.

2010-01-26T12:35:00.000-08:00

So... whatever they call it, that big roiling masss of energy/will/force that's bigger than us all, that we are part of, that we come from... Some people insult it by calling it 'God.' Most people hamstring it with all kinds of human characteristics, some more apropos than others, and just like a lot of huge, incomprehensible ideas, most people think they're experts.

Well, all the speculation can end... she came to me the other night. She revealed her true nature to me, the supplicant, and DAMN, she is a slut!

Ages ago my mental symbol for god, the universe, and everything was the kindly old man with the white beard, remember that one? He'll nod and smile as you pour out your soul, but just try to get him to open his mouth. What a tired, awful, useless conception that was? Now when I picture the universe made human, I see that nubile girl with the great skin, big, round eyes, hair like a wild creature of it's own, a mind like a steel trap and gams that I'd follow to hell and back. She came over for a visit, I asked her to come after all... We had a great conversation lasting into the wee hours - she's so full of confidence and insight. She folded, spindled and mutilated me in a way I'll not soon forget, and left me with a gift I'll always treasure.

I'll relate the whole episode later...

But right now there's some business to take care of. I won't go into my eccentric psychology here... but I'll just say that I'm trying to find the balance of freedom and structure that allows me to work more and better. The only real solution I've found are lists, schedules... and following them like a robot. Otherwise I can't seem remember to do anything. (My mother pointed this out to me when I was less than ten...) My existence is itemized and chopped into chunks that can be done in one sitting. Prioritize and execute. Sounds simple. Off time, creative time, chore time... it all gets scheduled in a way that allows for flexibility but encourages routine. Otherwise I bounce from appetite to appetite, from obligation to obligation and never do anything for myself in between.

Each day gets a list, and at the end of the day I can calculate how much of it was successful. I kept this up while I was getting my case against the IRS together, and it worked pretty well. I'm thinking this is my only chance against the dominance of my ass-sitting genes.

So I'll be reporting about this on these pages. A symbolic act more than anything, but an important one, I think. This blog represents an intention to the universe (that slut that she is...) so even if nobody (except you, Ms. Demille, of course...) is reading this, it will still serve it's purpose.

These aren't exactly the metaphorical animals I imagine... but you get the idea.

Life-enriching?

2010-01-21T08:51:00.000-08:00

Uggghhhh.....

I took a stack of forms to the local IRS office recently. Turns out they 'lost' half of it.

Of all the little bits of bullshit paper they've managed to save, keep and lovingly archive for use in hanging me... the ones they lose are the very ones that I need to prove my innocence.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I'm not an anti-government crackpot... (ok, there may be something to debate there...) but I'm having a difficult time believing, with my sensitive, over-wrought persecution detectors, that this was accidental happenstance. I'd bet every penny they've taken that this is a 'hide-the-ball' tactic to confuse and delay. If you frustrate enough people often enough, some of them give up. I might not even think this if it weren't for the bureaucratic passive-aggressiveness of the whole thing... I turn in a stack of papers an inch high, then they move to dismiss because I didn't turn it in.

I could talk to somebody, I say to myself... but there isn't anyone. The conversations are either, ‘give me your money,’ or ‘we’re coming after you.’ (Almost the same as the lawyers.) I want to fantasize revenge, but I couldn't even imagine what that would be. Who would I rub out? Which building would I have to blow up? To whom will I administer the Karate-chops to the neck? Which bureaucratic mammal needs the carefully placed red-laser-dots to the forehead? I could threaten to quit my job...

I’ll get about $650, all told, for this last pay period… about half of what I’d normally get. Immediately, $550 will vanish into thin air leaving me with $100 to stave off starvation and hypothermia until two more weeks go by and I get my next $100 to play with... One hundred dollars for one hundred hours. Forget catching up on bills. Forget going to the dentist. Forget Sundance.

So do I admit to the internets that I'd already be dealing drugs if thought I'd make a good drug dealer? Do I confess that ripping off the IRS or some fat-ass bank would be an experience I’d consider life-enriching?

Hell… six months of armed-robbery on the lamb followed by a thorough machine-gunning sounds more honorable - and certainly more interesting - than this.

Don't get too panicky...

2010-01-20T08:24:00.000-08:00

Where am I, anyway?

Cast about and there’s so little that the animals inside recognize. The Earth is a shadow of it’s former self – altered from it’s natural state to within an inch of it’s life by yours truly and company... Granted, there’s enough familiar about my environment that the animals don’t get too panicky, but that in itself is an artificial state.

It’s inescapable. I live in an inert structure that doesn’t interact in any way with the environment, my food – unless I’m very careful – is made in a factory. The air I breathe is heavy with pollutants, the water I drink had to be cleaned and adulterated so I won’t get sick, and work is a by-product of our shallow cultural whims. Even my marijuana is grown in a lab.

My metabolism (and thereby, my sanity) is maintained in a tolerable manner by medication. I’m insulated from nature, from death… from the very pressures and consequences that shaped our existence. Indeed, our needs, desires and proclivities are adapted to a world that we no longer inhabit.

Our culture, as well… led by the descrupleized, gasping behind the sprint of technology and obstinate to the revelations of science. What does a moral-code filled with references to ox-goring really have to say in a world of social media, gene splicing and institutionalized ignorance? Is ours a warrior culture? A consumer culture? A slave culture? There are elements of all three, certainly, and sticking only to one is just asking for trouble. Their fragmens lie strewn everywhere like a giant mirror, smashed in a shame-fueled rage. I have no choice but to assemble one for myself.

Hence, Synthetic Culture.

The gods and heroes I worship, the stories and poems I pass, the hymns and homilies I sing, the celebrations I live, the personal codes I follow… the love I make and the necks I break… I’ll draw them from the pile and keep them for my own, and wherever the many gaps lie, I’ll do what humans do best: improvise.

Banannaguts

2010-01-13T11:49:00.000-08:00

So I got this in an email from my mother the other day:

Two magazines, Country Living (95.99 % white readership) and Ebony / Jet (99.99% black readership) did surveys on ........

"WHAT DO PEOPLE FEAR MOST?"
The results were interesting, to say the least..
Country Living magazine's top three answers were:
     1. Nuclear war / terrorist attack in U.S. .
     2. Child/ spouse dying / terminal illness.
     3. Terminal illness self.

Ebony / Jet magazine's top three answers were:
     1. Ghosts
     2. Dogs
     3. Registered mail

No Kidding! These are the people who elected Obama, what would you expect !!!! AND, TO GO ALONG WITH THIS, 2 QUOTES: ONE PITIFUL, ONE GREAT!

"My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world.   I hope you'll join with me, as we try to change it.."   -- Barack Obama

''Life's tough......it's even tougher if you're stupid.'' -- John Wayne

First of all... who is the arbiter of worst fears? Who says fearing death is in any way morally superior or less stupid than fearing dogs. It seems to me, from my somewhat unique outlook, that fearing dogs would be time better spent than fearing death. One who fears dogs at least has a chance of avoiding that most feared of fates... not so much for whitey, apparently.

I did some quick and dirty checking... There were about 67 million people that voted for Obama. Ebony/Jet has a circulation of about two million. That's less than 3% and that's to say nothing about survey techniques or statistical samples... Any semi-sentient mammal that takes a second look can count the ways this fails as any kind of information.

Here's the Snopes angle.

The point of this is not to correct ignorant factoids, but to bitch about the level of dialogue in this civilization. People make decisions and pin loyalties based on angry-mob-grade ideas like this one. And even that's not the point... The mentality of the mob is part of our nature. It will never leave us. Really, it's a consequence of networking soft-brained cave-men by means of shallow, ambiguous verbal signals filtered through all kinds of individually wrapped biases, typically while being led by someone who isn't thinking straight either. The only ways we have out of that rut, short of lobotomies for all, is altering the culture to disparage the mob mentality, and educating children in critical thinking skills and the pitfalls of human behavior... and even that will only postpone the inevitable. At least we've been smart enough to attempt separation of the mob from things like crime and punishment. It's a start.

As for Barack Obama, He's more handsome and well-spoken than your average elected official... and was in the right place at the right time. Other than that, I don't see how he's anything other than a garden-variety politician that fools himself (and the voters) into thinking that he's new and special and not subject to the temptations and expediencies of power. I get the idea he fully intended to keep all those big, ripe promises of his, but that since the election he's come to realize that he's not really in charge.

By way of emphasis, I offer the following non-sequitur.

Why does the air taste of 'tennis ball?'

2010-01-12T11:08:00.001-08:00

What am I, here on the Information Super Highway? A shambling rust-bucket? A half-restored, almost-clasic? More like a flat piece of gum.

Remember when they called it that? If you'd told me then that such a device would make it easier, not harder, for the average citizen to stay isolated and uninformed... head below sand... I would not have believed it.

We've known for a long time that the opinions and outrage of a massive audience can be manipulated. It didn't take long to figure out that a fragile, entitled and uninformed audience is more vulnerable to this manipulation. Now they're seeing how much faster and easier it is when the audience only pays attention to one source. Soon, I think, somebody will realize that this kind of control is well worth the price of broadband, and start handing it out for free.

I know how addicted I am to the internet. Imagine it was all pervasive and completely mobile... indeed a logical and not-too-far-off proposition. Who would go without?

I was imagining my parents walking around with Glenn Beck whispering in their ears, or trying to have a conversation with somebody who has talking points scrolling past... right next to my face on his head-up-display.

I'm too sleepy to be thinking out-loud in print for all the Internets (ha!) to see. That last sentence proves it's own point.

And yes, this was Salt Lake City yesterday. It looks just like today.

Bullshit and Evolution.

2010-01-11T08:56:00.000-08:00

So is there anything on this planet that isn't complete bullshit?

In the way of 'human instituions,' that is? Are there any that aren't a scam? And I'm not even feeling particularly cynical today.

When I was in the Army, we took an 'unarmed self defense' course... At the beginning of the class the instructor told us that we would never use any of the techniques that would be presented. It was a decision by the brass, you see. The sergeants had no control of the curriculum.

I was in a hearing recently for my tax situation. Of all the people in attendance for my case, not a single one but me knew my circumstances or the real reason I was there. I was not given a chance to say, and nobody asked.

My lawyer has turned out to be a lazy, inarticulate toad. He pumped me full of confidence and then might as well have drooled on my paperwork. I'm glad his staff is sharp. How many is this now?

When they have to peel the sheets off old folks' bedsores, they can never punish the perpetrators because the corporate structure is engineered like a collapsing car frame. The building is owned by a different company than the one that provides the services, which is different from the one that provides the staff etc, etc. Dispersal of corporate liability is a fine-tuned science.

I went to an technical school that will remain unnamed (ITT Tech... ahem...) They cast a wide net and do cartwheels to get funding for any moron that walks in off the street. 70% wash out and the school swoops in to collect the whole kit & kaboodle. Common practice nowadays.

My news sources are propaganda, my health care is somebody else's bloated cash cow, my leaders are thinly veiled stooges, the political process is performance art, airport security is window-dressing, our religions are tools of control, CraigsList ads are all fake, our military is a vector for Christian power-hungry nutjobs and exploding weddings, our intelligence agencies don't know what's going on and they don't tell us when they do. Our food industry is poisoning us. My last girlfriend is a psycho...

I could go on.

Not a day goes by that something like this doesn't come up and I'm reminded of that naturalist I heard... He said that baboons were much smarter as individuals than they could ever be as a group. Imagine all the plans and ideas they might concoct... only to be foiled because one of them can't go ten seconds without biting a comrade on the ass.

That feels like a familiar intelligence gap. Has there ever been a human society so packed with mechanisms specifically designed to frustrate the system? Imagine all we could do if we weren't biting each other in the ass.

These are times when every belief counts as well as every mistake. We won't be able to maintain a civilization using Pleistocine social engineering technology like flattery, shame, flirting, cajoling, threatening, and the leveraging of pain, fear and death. We have to find out who we are and what really makes us tick - that recognizes our nature... our needs and weaknesses... then build our world to play to that.

That's why I don't think we're going to make it. There's plenty of room for disaster, but still lots of room for evolution.

I have some thoughts on that.

In Memoriam...

2010-01-10T19:57:00.000-08:00

Tue 11/17/09 8:35 PM

I remember that girl, the one you wouldn't expect, the one who peeks around the columns. She's the image that moves close to my side, animated with sultry energy in my memory... She pauses after a spirited point, eyes search entranced for a moment as if at a glad memory - until she notices the steadiness of my gaze. I watch, fascinated. Study her from angles and distances, volumes and resolutions... No artifacts that fancy her image could ever capture the experience.

You're always in a skirt with stiletto boots, though I'm not sure I've ever seen you like that. Maybe in pictures. They're all vibrant and deep in the warm wood of my dreams...

That girl will always be there, friendly and dazzling, between my first love, an Earth angel of smiling repression, and the perpetrator of my first (that is, non-self-inflicted) orgasm: that willful fourteen year old Latina. Indelible, she is. If I come to visit and climb back where nobody else can see, I find her sliding soft and warm through the flickering mid-tones, surging with luscious gravity... the most magical creature of all. Purring with pleasure, dominated by passion... sparkling with lust.

She's the second greatest gift I could ever get. She's the mark of the witch's magic. Come murder, plague or meteor, she will always be mine.

I miss you truly. I want to join you in the mammal's circle, in range of depth perception, stereo hearing and unscrupulous pheromones... where we lock eyes over the fidgety din of our body language. I want the warmth of my gaze on your upturned face and hear those words that come from all the way down.

The best gift indeed.

* * *

Well... it didn't work that time

Yup, she dumped me. She dumped me months ago. Today she finally admitted it... 'as-good-as' admitted it... There’s so much boring and regular and run of the snooze conventional in this world… The literature will bear out the fact that I predicted it, I planned for it, I even begged for it… I knew it would happen and still I jumped… every berserker knows he’ll one day be a bloody heap. Fond memories, of course, but the tenderness behind my fist in her hair is now the hurt behind the impenetrable smirk…

It's more than that, though... She was special in a way that would be difficult to explain. She wasn't my first time, and she wasn't a first love, but there were certainly elements of both. She was an insight I wouldn't have known to ask for, and an experience that I can no longer imagine myself without. She was the Witch... my Tisbea with the last word... A blessing in the truest sense, though the most ironic sort that a loving diety could ever bestow...

I’ll do my damndest not to hate her… nobody get’s out of a mammal’s mind with no violence done to the memory. Trying won't matter, however... I’ve never been able to make it stick.

...yeah.

She still has to be killed and eaten.

I'm Michael Goddam Jordan

2010-01-04T17:02:00.001-08:00

Well, it's the new year. The ritual of informing the public of your future failures has never held a lot of interest for me, but one can't help looking down barrel of a new year, fresh off the showroom floor, and feeling that better things are afoot.

Everyone is gifted in this life…. At least that’s the touchy-feely crap I tell myself. My gift is inactivity. Throw some moving pictures and light intoxicants into it, and I’m the Michael Goddam Jordan of ass-sitting. Long swaths of concentrated effort have always had to have a stern taskmaster on my heels – and the refreshing thing is that I’ve been doing just that. Yay, problem fixed, right? I’ve been in this place before, but have never managed the gumption to really finish anything to be proud of. Well, sometimes…

I can wrap my fingers around the energy… it’s obsession, really, but in my mind, that’s a good start. If I get into a project I end up throwing my entire being into it - to the exclusion of all else. I reach deep down inside and feel the switches on the inner control panel. Apparently it only has two settings, ‘masturbation’ and ‘obsession.’ After six hours of continuous wrestling with 3D animation software the other night, I remember looking up and thinking, ‘oh, yeah… I started a blog.’

But frankly, I can’t remember the last time I had a project that I wanted to do so badly that I’d spend that kind of time on it.

Nine times out of ten I fool myself into thinking that wheelspinning is progress, that frustration is the end, that my ambitions are beyond me… that I’m the only one with this problem. Who knows? How many times have I flipped through a sketchbook or a diary and run across something that was just so engrossing and consuming, only to have forgotten about it completely? More than I’d care to say, but certainly less now that depression is not scattering my brains…

The frozen air feels like opportunity, the blank screen makes me want to dive in… and poverty is a gentleman’s challenge. I know my own recalcitrant brain can be motivated, and that my deteriorating body is still strong. I fan out my fingers and close my eyes… don’t you feel the crackling energy? It’s a flowing pulse, a swelling, shimmering field with all the familiar signatures of life... my perception of teeming humanity? The boundless energy of the Earth? My simple, monkey imagination? Perhaps all three.

The sky has never lied to me. Tonight, I liked what it was saying.

vortex...

2009-12-18T10:08:00.000-08:00

The world is frozen solid under the soupy, 3-am smog. Everything is diffused and grey, silhouetted against mercury-vapor orange of the horizon, this is my world. I can’t help but just stroll around a take it all in. It’s a beauty that comes more from security than from any primal connection to the environment. The half-mile surrounding me probably contains ten trees, fifteen people, and a million tons of concrete.

This is a new life for me, and I'm not speaking of the surroundings, but of experience. It's one of waking up in the world, looking around with eyes that are new but memories that are familiar. Everything stripped away, all connections, associations, and meaning shaken out like cobwebs, and each piece picked up, examined and lovingly set back in place. Blood connections, emotional connections, treasured concepts and sacred cows... Some came unbidden and settled into their familiar spots, my daughter for example, others had to be revisited.

An eye to the sky, an ear to the ground - breathe deep the sumptuous energy and I see that my corner in the metaphorical dark begins to feel less like home. I want to step out into the light and stake a claim amid the tumult of the datasphere. Participate in the vortex of stories and ideas, and maybe yank on some nerve bundles in the proto-brain of the superorganism, the real ruler of this planet.

I have my brains, my will, and the support of a few good friends, and no real talent to expend energy on my own behalf... That I'll have to learn along the way.

I have habits to develop, energy to mine, and a huge amorphous, half-baked blob in my brain that I want to drag into the light.

Wish me luck.

CaffSleepDep

2009-12-17T07:52:00.000-08:00

It's gone to my legs, the coffee's jitter
But my eyes still want to close.
Turn me over and shake me like a
Cartoon thug. The change
Falls from my pockets, but maybe
The caffeine will finally go to my brain.
Drop me on my head if you like (please do)
So then you can kiss it better.

* * *

Caffeine and sleep deprivation... my two favorite drugs.

Jettisoned the boyfriend...

2009-12-14T09:42:00.000-08:00

I told Ms. DeMille to be careful, that girls fall in love with me. She didn't believe me. She told me, "It's all good." I believed her. We were both wrong.

Bouncing Betty told me it was all in fun... that I shouldn't get emotionally involved. She dumped me a week later to 'go steady' with her erstwhile boyfriend. Ms. DeMille's feigned sympathy was endearing.

A day or three later I'm showing Ms. DeMille the door after a disagreement about sex. Not twelve hours after that Bouncing Betty is again on my doorstep, having jettisoned the boyfriend, wanting to run away with me. This is the one that wanted me to make a sandwich out of her with the pool boy. Fifteen orgasms later, she's ready to bear my children.

I don't blame either of these two for anything. They were as open and honest with me as they knew how to be... and I have my own blindness to consider.

Is this why some guys kick women out of bed the moment they're done with them? How about the complaints I've heard from women about how men can be so distant and mean... how much of that has this as it's behavioral antecedent? Is this how a guy learns how to be so amoral in seducing some young, tender, vulnerable girl... because no matter what, it's going to end up a big, gory mess anyway? Is this the real reason nice guys finish last?

Sounds good to me. Universe, I stand reproved.

Your Zeit is in my Geist

2009-12-12T10:40:00.000-08:00

I am nothing, I have nothing… sometimes I type.

It’s a Saturday morning, the world is cold and crusty outside, I’m picking he sleepy grains out of my eyes and sipping down a positively manly cup of coffee. All's well, I s'pose... except for that one thing. Did I tell you that the Mafia is forcing me to pay for a Lexus that I'll never get to drive?

I make about $13.00 an hour, I’m a single parent, I have no property, no savings and at this moment I have $150.00 in my pocket to feed, clothe, heat, and entertain myself (and also insulate my drafty dwelling) for the next two weeks. I’ve have to completely turn my daughter’s safe-keeping and support over to her mother and step-dad… I work 50 hours a week - last month I had to borrow money to eat. I'm behind in my doctor bills and sometimes I have to let my phone get disconnected because I can't keep up. I drive a car that might get me $500.00 if I sold it, and I live in a converted storage shed.

I wouldn't have any of these problems if it weren't for the damn mob and their pitiless greed.

What did I do to piss off the Mafia, you ask? It was a case of mistaken identity... being in the wrong place a the wrong time, but that's neither here nor there... especially with them. Every time I've talked with them there has been no interest on their part in why I 'owe' this money... just that I spend my every waking moment trying to pay it off. The consequences are never elaborated as much as simply hinted at.

If this were a movie, there would be a point where the character would have to take matters into his own hands... and the audience would be sympathetic. What would he do? You can't scare mobsters away, you can't fight them legally, and there's nowhere you can go to run. He might have a Matrix style "guns, lots of guns" moment - but then that's when the movie abruptly ends and I realize it's just me here in the world we all have to agree is 'real'... The one where shooting people and blowing up buildings is obviously not the answer.

Now replace 'Mafia' with 'IRS' and the whole thing becomes clearer.

I could heat my flat all winter with the pile of cash they've taken from me, so would the carcasses of all the lawyers who have fucked me over this. All my legal avenues have been blocked with a 'Fuck-you, pay up' sign, and all attempts to 'compromise' have been shown to be just as fake as the actual debt in the first place.

(By the way... do not EVER hire J.K.Harris & Co. to handle your tax problems unless by 'handle' you mean 'set up a payment plan and ignore you.' More on that later.)

I have a new lawyer and a new strategy... if this doesn't work, then... well... I've never seriously considered illegally changing my identity and making this star-crossed 'me' vanish like that third of my take-home pay does every month...

I've read recently of the IRS and it's quiet policy of targeting the weak. Here's a particularly egregious example.

Populations of the poor, weak or powerless have historically been leveraged against their misery to boost the powerful. Republic or dictatorship, this pattern repeats itself and finds new niches to hide in. Whatever ideology holds the loyalties of the masses, no matter how protected they think they are by their politics or their religion, they will be exploited by the cynical, the powerful and the greedy. Today it continues with little change. Then, we were sharecropping under the thumb of some feudal lord as we feared hunger and death, now we're forced to pay through the nose for health care by those who wish they were feudal lords.

What revolution has ever been undertaken by humans where this was not the issue at its heart? All my avenues of escape... all of them... have destitution or prison at their end. With every passing month conventional morality looks more and more cartoonish against the play of all this.

And now that I've written myself into a corner... I'm gonna go smoke a joint on a street corner at one in the afternoon in Salt Lake City. My rebellion will no doubt bring a new shift in the paradigm, a new zeit in the geist...

I'll write later if I'm not in jail.

Now.

2009-12-08T10:01:00.000-08:00

Now.

That ephemeral moment when all there is to do is look around at the world, see all that it's become around you and say, "Here I am..."

I entered this world by way of a fair amount of privilege. All the advantages were mine, backed up with plenty of brains and loads of potential. By means of bad advice, bad luck, misdirection, missed opportunity, laziness, depression, and yes, stupidity... with a helping of monolithic, banal evil inflicted by the powers that be... here I am. No money, no useful education, no marketable skills and no earthly possessions as I slide down the back end of my prime.

I haven't hit 'rock bottom' exactly, but I can kick the pebbles around down there as I perch on the lowest rung of local civilization. Call it reaping what I've sewn, call it Collateral Karma, call it my just desserts. Whatever the assessment, I'm finding that this position, as I might also describe backhandedly as 'privileged,' has afforded me opportunities that I'm beginning to see as irreplaceable. Down here, at the ass end of society - the bottom of the social barrel, there is not only room for happiness, but growth and progress by any human definition.

Indeed, now: here I am.