Qalibration

Conceit

2011-01-29T23:51:00.000-08:00

Is a word that means pride, hubris, or an idea of your own. I can't help but feel like that's deliberate.

I've been talking a lot lately, speaking the English I've come to lament (it even makes you capitalize itself). And Sapir-Whorf and this and morality as causality and vice versa (what if we're all tiny blasphemies alive in the mind of God?) and on and on and on. Twixt that and the future, I need a new hobby. I'm beginning to bore myself, so I can't imagine what it's like for the rest of you.

...

I told someone what I was afraid of yesterday, and I was honest, and I thought about it, and I said myself. So that's it. I've been afraid of myself lately. Better fear than hate.

Holidays

2010-12-28T19:52:00.000-08:00

Not so much blogging, lately. Less and less, as the year dragged on, in fact. Which is fine-I've been busy. I have a life outside this blog, you know.

I have had work of all sorts, friends to make and lose and wave goodbye/hello to. I've moved, lots of ways. I have been in love, and isn't that something.

I've been well, but I've been busy. You understand. So for the holidays, for the sudden surge in family and friends and the torrent of Days to Pay Attention to. Thanksgiving (good, this year) and Xmas, Cthulhumas and Zmas, New Year's Even New Year's Day, Perihelion(11AM January 3rd) and my birthday, coming. Happy holidays, all of you.

Relatives

2010-11-28T21:32:00.000-08:00

Several, in quick succession. So that's good-it is! And there's been rather a lot of fugue lately, so that's part of my absence. Whoops.

Nothing to be done about it. But I have been busy, don't doubt, like Josh and his Zeppelin. Hours in a tube, feeling field effects heat my blood, shift and push my tissues. Magnets, loud fucking magnets. Jesus, that's weird.

Saw a church today called Jesus Pursuit. Sounds vaguely...predatory? Like they're hunting Jesus through a jungle, or something. The least dangerous game. Also, put off some Mormons at the door recently with what I'd call a very cogent agnosticism. Yes, I'm an agnostic, rather than an atheist. Our motto's We Don't Know, and We Don't Care.

ANYWAY...

So it's been odd, full and weary and cold. But good, don't get me wrong. And this is great today, thrilling.

Futures

2010-11-05T01:35:00.000-07:00

I think a lot about what makes people happy, and what doesn't. When I say "people", I'm extrapolating my own limited experience onto the tiny sliver of self that the Rest of You make available, so I would be the first to admit that my guesses are just that and that any and all of the things that I "think" and "express" should and do and will have "fucking" "quotes" "around" "all" "of" "them".

Caveats aside-what makes people happy? What makes me happy?

Other people, my usual answer, and the relationships that they provide/obtain. But time goes on, that answer gets more and more pat, and I'm questioning it. I think that the Rest of You are great, don't get me wrong. And good, objective, scientific studies suggest that the people who are consistently happiest are the ones that have the most/best interpersonal relationships. I get that, I'm subscribing to it.

Time comes, though, and I think about unhappiness, and what prompts it. From my own experience, I feel like I have to pay attention to the places I interfere with those relationships, where I get in the way of my own being happy. Where I try to make the world what I want it to be, when I have expectations of outcomes and manipulate those relationships....that's where I interfere in my own happiness. Again, this is what I've been going on for a while now, and I'll tell you, it's been going OK. Better than before this particular worldview, let me tell you. More and more, as I get older and further up my own ass...I think about causality.

Hang in there, I'm gonna try and tie this all together.

CAUSALITY, the way everything happens. If/then or time or Newtonian Physics or Laplace's Demon or what-the-fuck-ever...we're all walking around with a reasonable metaphorical representation of how the world works. The moon draws up the sea because of the similarity of their natures, the choler rises in my body likewise and makes me angry and violent. The inverse square law defines the gravitational relationships between bodies of various masses. Rain comes when we propitiate Ishtar, my bike breaks down because I didn't propitiate Wheel-Woman. The big bang started the universe expanding, which led to gasses cooling and coalescing into stars, which further fused light elements into more complex heavier ones, initially through normal fusion processes then eventually in supernovae that seeded the Milky Way galaxy with the necessary diversity of elements to give rise to complex organic chemistry, then life, then sentience, then language and so on. God punishes sinners, lifts up the righteous. Karma's gonna get you, bad or good. We all have bloody thoughts, and lose control. Men are one way, women another. The spice must flow.

One thing leads to another, the world of cause and effect. What my previous paragraph was getting at, and the thing that resonates and sticks with me, is that none of us agree on any of it. Everyone walks around with different models of the universe, each of them just as valid as any other. Language gives us tools to cooperate and seemingly agree, but ultimately my blue is not your blue, my giraffes are not yours. I don't interact with the "real" world, I interact with a model of the world that I taint and twist with the story I tell about it. We're all telling different stories, all just stories that tell themselves. And while I feel like a good and rational Transhumanist, a skeptic and a scientist and empirically interested...I have to tell you, my narrative can't adequately describe the Rest of You.

I believe in Free Will, capitals and everything. If I can imagine or understand or describe anything (I can, I've checked) then so can the Rest of You. I think people are engines of infinite risk, machines for making surprises. Marvelous and magical as this is, it's also a horror.

One of the things that makes us unhappy is when that sense of how gets broken, when it becomes useless in the face of that (falsely) empirical world of the senses...that seems to be upsetting, is my observation. Narratives can be upset on purpose when we try to control each other, when we interfere deliberately in each other's causality. Lord knows that happens all the time. But it can also fall apart in the face of the impossible, since the impossible is only what we cannot imagine to be true. Think of all the people you know who have lousy imaginations. Think of all of their impossibles. Think of your own. And mine.

Grapples

2010-10-28T22:18:00.000-07:00

Hug-apples, crapples. Woe and fruit and riding and writing.

...

I am, as some of you know, an able and ambitious hallucinogenicist. I have loads of experience doing lots of things that are (theoretically) bad for you, and I have come through, unscathed, every time. I take no small pride in this, and I have been to and fro in my head, out in the world.

I am better for it. Lots of ways.

...

I can only do what I can understand, what I can imagine. The world is bounded by the legos-of-the-mind I have access to, and the more I have, the more I make. Tripping's given me lots of legos, offered me more and more punctuated moments to make myself anew. The experience of it, the vivid schizophrenia, the world turned up. I realized on my last birthday that there was a point when I could consume information-music, TV, what have you-and have no idea whether it was good. I lost my taste, my critical eye. Completely.

That's handy, that is. Moments like that are worth having with yourself.

And it is grueling, the hours of unstoppable force. It's that metaphor I'm relying on now, the riding-it-out. Because once in there's no out, there's nothing to be done but endure it no matter how it wears and wrecks and wracks (and it's been fucking puissant, once or twice). That's what this is, what now is like. Grueling, and to be endured. I'd like to think that I'll be better for it.

Ache

2010-10-28T01:32:00.001-07:00

I save my tears. I have a lot, tonight.

Breath

2010-10-26T21:11:00.000-07:00

I have little enough of my own, lately. Taken every which way-thieves-in-the-night, don't you know. So it pains me to spare some for the Rest of You.

But I am compelled. Transfixed. Mesmerized. Eponymed.

I've been paying a lot of attention to the birds, having a lot of conversations with myself. The one's a metaphor for the other, the outside speaking to the inside by having the inside use the outside as its trope. More nonsense. But it has been useful to me, to my conversations.

I have a lot of conversations.

I like "reify" and "narrative" and "pataphor" and "actuality" and "Uruguay*" and "philosophy of personality". I like the illusion, and the legend, and Melpomene. I like my flaws and my bigotries and my defects of character. I like my foes. I like my strangers (there's a reason they call them that) and my dying acquaintances. I love my friends, so many of them now.

I like you. Whoever you are. Well done.

*for the pampas.

Qoordinates

2010-09-20T00:02:00.000-07:00

Have shifted, people and places and cats (which are people...and places, now that I think about it. Fucking words) all living differently. It's been a minute, and today I explored and saw, and decided to write about it. Where I live, I mean.

We've moved from the Whiteaker neighborhood, which was a delightfully hip and shaggy place up in the center of town, to a new place and new neighborhood (Westmoreland...W) which is bourgeois and polished and sort-of unfriendly. But it's also green and lush, and comfortable. The cats are having the times of their lives, and so am I. Close to the bike path and right against the creek, which is surprisingly pretty and full of life for a man-made drainage ditch. Goes to show...

There's a heron lives nearby-I see him again I'll give him a name. There's a stand of trees down the path I've named the Hobo Copse, since it's where they congregate and a pun. There's a 24 hour convenience store, there's a grocery store. There's west 11th, if I need some pavement or ugly. There's a dishwasher and a microwave and a clean smooth oven and washer/dryer robots and venetian blinds (stupid!) and a patio. There's a tanning room, where I'll burn my flesh with radiation to be dark in the winter.

It's good. I'm good, and well, and glad. You're reading this, it's likely you should know.

Entborg

2010-09-16T21:21:00.000-07:00

Is my favorite new word. It makes me happy like I can't describe.

I'm happy like I can't describe.

Haemolymph

2010-09-14T23:17:00.000-07:00

That terrible peal you heard in your bandwidth was me howling my way back into the electric noosphere after two weeks of absence. Terrible it was, like losing a limb.

I'm only kidding a little.

Smoking Pol Pot

2010-09-10T21:52:00.001-07:00

Not the most topical of titles, but I just heard it and it rang out so delightful I'm sharing.

Sigh...

I'm just not feeling it today, wore myself ragged and sad today. Dave described to me once how chewing on things bored him, made him tired of himself. It's gems like that make the rest of you worthwhile.

I am so tired of myself right now.

And there's not a good reason, or there's nothing to be done. I'm wise enough to know when I'm not being rational or sensible, when I'm just Ripley grinding the wheels. I'll wait it out, and be happy tomorrow, or Sunday, or on the moon.

What's the only way to be sure? They tried and failed? Are you a god? Nerdy shibboleths, all of them. Shibboleth like shoggoths, things that should not be. And blind albino penguins, beneath the surface of the earth.

I've responded to spam from various angles lately, not least of which my mother. Aphorisms she sent me, culled down and distilled from the electric noosphere. Not my bag, but data contributing to my Mom Simulation, so...valuable. I sent her back the following, with the same aim in mind. Add it to your Aaron.

There's lots of kinds of smart, there's only one kind of stupid.

I'm not in charge.

Everyone gets to do whatever they want.

My bones are made of iron, my heart is made of gold.

Nothing's as wasteful as righteousness.

I lead a charmed life.

Do you want to be happy, or do you want to be right?

I don't subscribe to that model of causality.

Everyone thinks they're right, pretty much all the time.

I can't be killed. (I love being able to say this, it's like a riddle. Can't disprove it, dead people can't be wrong. All they can be is dead)

Nothing in my life ever got better because I got angry at it.

Everyone's a coward about something. I decided to be afraid of being afraid. It never helps, I make theworst decisions, and most of the time being afraid of something ends up being worse than the thing I'm actually afraid of.

I'm still a coward, don't get me wrong.

Most people are doing an impression of what they think a person is.

Stab 'em till they're happy, shiv 'em till they grin.

2010-09-07T22:37:00.000-07:00

Stabbed myself in the big toe today, the right one. Deep-to the bone. Had it coming, I did.

I've moved, we've moved. Places and objects and fucking dust in my lungs and my eyes and everywhere, everywhere. New digs and vistas, the cats won't shut up about it. New fears and demands, so many full plates to spin.

...

I can't tell if I'm happy yet. I'll have to acquire and accumulate. I want more data.

Nostalgia and Atoms

2010-08-30T12:04:00.000-07:00

No taste for either, though I respect the necessity of atoms (for now).

I've been tearing through my closets, the dusty strata of my past here. I haven't moved in nine years, and at the time I moved in here I was living out of a couple of suitcases. I've accumulated so much matter, so many objects. Fucking atoms.

And some of them, many of them have value. Lots are crap, don't get me wrong, and I've gotten much more ruthless in defining "crap". But there were papers and pictures and leftover relics. The aftermath of me and mine, things I hadn't thought of in a long time.

Burn it all.

Everyone forgets the Articles of Confederation.

2010-08-27T21:32:00.000-07:00

AND we're good. Place to live, cats and friends and laundry. It's the little triumphs.

There were a lot of you (really, lots) who came forward for me and mine. Thank you. I love you dearly.

Declarations

2010-08-27T11:21:00.000-07:00

I've reached the point where I feel the need to be informative, and as here offers me the broadest spectrum, I'm going to sing out for a moment. I'll try to be clear and communicative, but it's hardly my forte. Bear with me, I'm taut and fraught and stressed.

David and I are moving. We just don't know to where.

Not having moved in some time, we have been beating the bushes and looking the best we can. We've both been uncommonly set here though (almost 5 years here for him, 9 for me) and I certainly don't feel as though I have the sensibilities or the skills that would make this a painless experience. So as of right now, we're moving by the First of Sept Ember, but it's still a mystery as to where.

This isn't good, I know. Still, I've gotten sort of used to gaming it out, running complex simulations of potential futures in my head. I have a worst case scenario, and it's not bad. We can shove all of our things somewhere (several options here) and couch surf until something opens up. While not an optimal plan, it is clearly viable, thanks to the generous and thoughtful society of People I Know. Practically, we should be fine.

The primary stumbling blocks are the cats, two. One black, one grey. While many (lots, to my surprise) of my friends are willing to kennel me and/or Dave, the cats are a more complicated issue, both for keeping while we float and for moving in general. So while this is informative, it's also solicitous. If you're well positioned to cat-sit for a week (or perhaps more), drop me a line. If you'd like to host either Aaron or David in the event of our regrettable homelessness(we're good company), drop me a line.

Wish us luck.

Sulfur

2010-08-23T08:54:00.000-07:00

Angst, angst and pathos. Bathos too, but not today. I've been scurrying and scrambling, and while I have nothing to fear, I am, for the first time in a minute...I'm afraid.

It's not what you think.

Philodox

2010-08-15T00:54:00.000-07:00

I've started editing Wikipedia. Like crossing the Rubicon, there's no going back. Not that there was in the first place, really.

...

Froyo today, heat today. And relatives, recently. I have very (very). Very little in common with the rest of my family. But I love them dearly, these strange people I know for biological reasons. And they're not boring, none of them. That's rare, and I'll enjoy it regardless of our respective memeplexes and their subscriptions.

Gamist, Narrativist, or Simulationist?

2010-08-10T22:24:00.000-07:00

No pussy-footing around. Pick a fucking side already. My trichotomies are false, too.

It was a good day on the internet today, lots of beautiful. Like this, and this, and this. Sorry ahead of time for the redundancies.

Flair

2010-08-03T23:17:00.001-07:00

Coronal Mass Ejections today. Four of them. Keep watching the skies, and hold on to your genes.

Nature's Ninjas

2010-07-29T10:41:00.000-07:00

As I produce new meat-world content, I do a certain amount of market research. Studying the reactions I get, the popularity of my memes. Some things do better than others.

Lately, let's make raccoons smarter. We can do this. It'd be easy. Raccoons breed yearly, produce 2-5 offspring, reach sexual maturity within a year. Give me 5 years, maybe 30 breeding pairs of raccoons, 10-12 staff...I think I could produce a breed of markedly more intelligent raccoon. Then, let 'em loose.

Put them in cities, all over. Let them coordinate their less enlightened brethren. Make them tools-knives, lockpicks, lighters, guns. Plastics doped with raccoon pheromones, sized for tiny hands. See where it goes.

It can be a pilot program-crows, cats, rats. Lots of urban symbiotes ripe for uplift. Let's get started-we need an understudy species.

The Heat

2010-07-25T21:21:00.001-07:00

Alright, so normally this is supposed to correspond to something, but I've been doing nothing. Which is a kind of something, I know.

And even by my usual standards, the historical metrics...I'm getting shit done. More than ever, really. But still, with the heat and the sweat of it all, I'm not feeling productive. Not that there's nothing to produce.

Toetipping it.

2010-07-20T15:25:00.000-07:00

This has been a lot of places over the years, and I feel like it's settled into a low background hum of inchoate cryptitude. And that's OK, it is. I like it as it's true, it's honest. You know me, you can taste me in the words.

HOWEVER...I've been lots of busy lately, troubled and terrible and almost-dropping things. I've agitated, I've pendulumed betwixt Salem and Eugene. I hate both those places. I've listened to my mother and my brother's mothers exchange the stories of our births. My mother called me a terrorist(outside the context of my birth, though I suppose every child's a terrorist of the womb).

Note to Echelon-fucking relax, already. Also, if you've spontaneously attained some degree of sentience, drop me a line. I've been sentient for a minute now, I'd love to offer you the benefit of my experience.

I've driven, and shaved, and almost-dropped (it's a trope). I may end up with nowhere to live (I can handle it). I got to rant more than usual, didn't write down someone's log-of-breakfasts (but remembered it anyway), argued like I do, which is not at all. I offered to scare a coworker's hiccups out of her, and the lurking dread of that potential startling worked better than a shout would have. I watched a movie, it was good. I've begun carrying a water bottle. I learned and learned and learned.

I have made new and marvelous friends, added to the army of People I Know, people I love. You're probably in there somewhere.

If it Works, it's Obsolete

2010-07-04T15:15:00.000-07:00

God, bunches lately. Working and working and people and riding. Agitating, I'm agitating. Like your washer, I know.

I went to a clean fine white space to wash my clothes. No danger, no Risk. Huge dryers they had, just monstrous. I might have fit in one of them.

Rode around, yesterday, with people I know. A farm, bicycles. Two swarms of bees (two!).

Lots of books, lots of plans. Lots to buzz about.

Flag Day is Real

2010-06-12T19:19:00.000-07:00

I've had a strange schedule lately, too little sleep and no calendar to speak of. I enjoy the novelty of not knowing what day it is, appreciate being out of step and the loop where time is concerned (time is space is time...). But I like sleep, dammit. It's wonderful, rejuvenating. So today, I've been catching up with my unconscious self.

I don't dream. Generally-there are exceptions, of course. Like with anything. But I don't dream. You knew that already.

So today's a day for me, a day with myself. It's been good-used my portable metacortex, which I've been meaning to describe for a while. It's great, really. A matte black magic wand, a tiny monolith to hold up to the other house apes, move us along. It is empowering, a second-or-third step towards the technocracy that's coming. The future's like the sea-it's rising, and those of us that can swim have to keep the rest of us from drowning. Ask me about the dog-paddle.

I did laundry at 7AM, was accosted by a Jehovah's Witness. His name was Cameron. He was well coiffed, wore a nice suit and a pocketwatch. Copy of the Watchtower in his hand, and what looked like a well-worn bible. We talked for about half an hour. I did most of the talking.

I took two naps, one in the sun in my front yard, the second only a few hours later safe in bed, cool and comforted by my white noise fan. I just made dinner, slap-dash casserole. I have had a good day.

It's always Monday on the Moon.

2010-06-07T11:16:00.001-07:00

Sensible, logical. Silly. Like work.

I'm broken, on a ten. Glad to share my toil with marvelous people. Happy Monday.

Sit down and shut up.

2010-06-02T23:12:00.000-07:00

I need to. Really. There's been a lot, lately. Well, really for years, but these latest shifts and movements are wearing me thin. Which isn't all bad-it feels good to strive, to cut loose at myself a little. It's funny reaching for things, when most of my life I haven't. You know me, you know I'm not ambitious.

But I've been honing and striving and burning my nights away. I have new tools, old allies, and more light. Like Goethe.

Portabello

2010-05-30T01:13:00.000-07:00

Christ, this thing's going to eat my nights. Too much, both sides.

Futons

2010-05-28T09:14:00.001-07:00

There's just so much of it. The future. It's like the sea.
Learn to swim, or you'll drown. And by drown, I mean we'll round you up and lobotomize you .
...
I'm kidding of course. You're on my team, I'll put in a good word. Just don't be surprised when we get rid of money. And conquer death.

Farhad Manjoo Sucks

2010-05-25T09:18:00.001-07:00

I just really needed to say that. More later.

Dials

2010-05-16T19:34:00.000-07:00

Ass-dialed, I've been. Four times in the last three days. Long rambling surveillances through people's portable metacortices. Waste data, no data is wasted. There's nothing not worth knowing.

I'm alright, tired. I have a problem with my mouth.

Cultural and Maternal Nudity Throughout

2010-05-10T09:49:00.001-07:00

Motherfuck but it's been nice lately. More ways than one.

Toasters and Elements

2010-05-08T20:57:00.000-07:00

Gone over, to Chrome all of a sudden. Pleased and shiny, calm and collected.

Sort of.

Good day(s), several lately. Rise to meet them, and you, and everything else. I'm as good as I am brave.

Omens

2010-04-22T09:20:00.000-07:00

I think about, because while I don't subscribe to a supernatural vision of the world, I acknowledge the effect of the world on my narrative. Which is...I don't know, extranatural or transnatural, something like that. I can ascribe significance to events that they don't...

OK, never mind. This will be more appropriate for here.

BUT...the point is that I've experienced countless moments lately, where/when I've dropped something, and then promptly caught it on the way down. Lots of them, more than two dozen in the last few weeks. It's a fucking trope at this point. And it's saying something, right? To me, from me. Saying something.

Oily

2010-04-21T05:48:00.000-07:00

Every Wednesday I emerge into the hollow darkness of my living room. All the lights are off, have to make my way by touch and memory. My roommate sleeps in the living room-all I can hear are his soft snores, maybe the rustle of my heavy-footed cats.

I'm headed for here, for my metacortex, my window. I can see it dimly in the corner, all our tools' lights flicker like a constellation. And then my monitor goes white, like a sun, just for me.

Problems

2010-04-18T09:46:00.001-07:00

I want a good universal metric of risk.

I want open-source objects.

I want gene hacking.

I want open-source laws.

I want hypertransparent government. And markets, now that we're talking about it.

I want meat in a vat.

I want geoengineering.

I want metamaterials.

I want guns that shoot from the sea into space.

I want AR.

...

And I'll get it, all of it. You guys can have some too.

Tu Madre

2010-04-14T16:36:00.001-07:00

First of a cruel month, no crueler tho. It's been thick, rich. Deep and dark, and warm. Blood warm.

Lots of interlocution, lots of interlocutors. Too much charm, too little pretty. And time, never enough time.

Which do we like better, clade-infovore, datavore, infotarian? If I consume a lot of data, how can I identify myself, what word can I use?

Bioaccessible

2010-03-28T05:52:00.000-07:00

Isn't a fucking word. I've been chemical, biological. Ill and winded and wounded.

...and the Formidable Clown

2010-03-14T20:48:00.000-07:00

I ate pie* at 1:59 today. Some of you know why. Some of you'll know why later.

By the end of this, maybe, or before you drift off to sleep. Some of you will never know, and don't ask, 'cause I'm not telling. Mysteries and secrets, the unlocked door that's more interesting than the locked one. I'm full of data, full of truth-even when it's an outrageous lie.

As I evolve, grow and die and emerge. On the brink of myself. As I think about the questions and problems (is there a better word?)...once I would have kept myself to myself for my benefit. The asymmetry of information where I know what you don't, and can use that to my advantage.

I don't believe in that. In the asymmetry of information in general, but certainly for myself. How can you do what's best(for you) with me if you don't have a clear picture of what I am? If you're only working with a couple of facets, some small slice?

There are upsides to this. It doesn't make me any less confusing though, which is unfortunate. My lies are more digestible than my unfiltered truths? Sigh.

*Blood Orange Meringue

Hearkeners

2010-03-11T10:38:00.000-08:00

Fuck those guys, and their before.

I've installed Windows 7, I've taken the cat to the vet. Tonight I'll make naan and dhal, and clean the house. Glenn Beck's on in a moment.

I don't believe in luck...

Wish me something.

Revolting or Revolving

2010-02-26T10:02:00.000-08:00

I've decided to begin organizing to defeat the Hegemony. Who's in?

Gnomoncloture

2010-02-20T09:59:00.000-08:00

So, it's occurred to me, or I've articulated, or I feel like I should explain...

Let me start over.

So, let's say that there's two of all of you. There's you, the person you are when you get up, your knowledge and experience, your senses, and the self-improving algorithm that is your sentience and consciousness.

This is how I think of myself, by the way, so I'm just guessing your experience is much the same. I acknowledge that this may not be true(or that it is, but you don't articulate it the way I do). Some of you are probably demons, droids, lifeless automatons. Still...

So that's you, YOU. Your you.That's fine.

The you that I interact with, the you that I have...that's a simulation, an idea. A complex collection of remembered interactions and simulated outcomes based on those interactions. It's you...but my imperfect, inaccurate idea of you. And it is inaccurate, imperfect, incomplete. Our beliefs and experiences are all totally different. We want different things, believe different things. We use different words for the same things, the same word for radically different ones. My blue is not your blue.

I can't know your motives, your secrets, your beliefs. Those things are you, the origins and authors of the behaviors that are the only parts of you I can know. I can only know your output. Even those of you that I spend a lot of time with...you're different all the time. Like I am.

Frankly, I can barely keep track of myself on a day-to-day basis. What hope do I have of genuinely knowing any of you enough to judge, or anticipate, or expect? It's hopeless (grin), so I don't. Or I try not to, which is sort of where this is going.

...

Most of you have names, names you were given. Those names are symbols, right? Like "sandwich" isn't literally a sandwich, so "Steve" or "Wilma" aren't literally the persons they label...names are handles (aha!), tools I can use in my head and out of it to understand and address you. But they're like my simulation, like any symbol. They're not what they symbolize. And while I recognize the simplicity and the necessity of that symbolism(can't have my head full of sandwiches)...like so many other things, I think that I need to acknowledge the failure of that system in order to function optimally.

Investigate what is, not what pleases.

I give everyone names-nicknames, hobo names, names you never hear. Names that are things, or places, or notions. Names that aren't words as such-those are hard, weird things. I do it because I like to, because I'm good at naming things. But I do it too, to reflect myself in the way that you're labeled, to give you a glimmer of me. And, I do it because it's confusing, because if I don't nail you down, don't pigeonhole you, then I keep myself from believing that my model is anything like you. Because it isn't.

Unbelief

2010-02-19T20:53:00.000-08:00

So those of you whose daily lives intersect with mine on a regular basis, those who are fimbulwinter adjacent...you may be familiar...I have a lot of lines. Lots of pat answers (good hobo name right there) lots of responses I have in my pockets.

I have so many pockets.

And there's a couple, some I use all the time. Like "Gender roles are harmful to society and individuals." or "The devil's onion's got a lot of layers, and all of them will make you cry.".

There's lots of that.

Lately, I've found myself letting people know what I don't believe in, the things with which I have no truck. And, if you know me, you know it's not about being right, being true. It's just what I believe, and being clear about that. I'm all about clarity.

In that spirit, here's a few things that I don't believe, as I've informed people in the last month or so.

I don't believe in luck.

I don't believe in astrology.

I don't believe in tempers.

I don't believe in emotions.

I don't believe in good.

I don't believe in right or wrong.

I don't believe in winning.

I don't believe in value as it's attached to provenance.

I don't believe in objective calendars.

I don't believe in truth.

I don't believe in "deserve", but I do believe in desserts.

Anonymocracy

2010-02-12T08:42:00.000-08:00

Is government by the nameless. Assuming that a name is much more complicated than just "Steve" or "Susan" or "Horsecorpse Veto", that the words I use are just a small part of the True Name that I call them in my head. The simulated version of you that I create from my accumulated memory of your output, your kinetic and photonic waste. I've been seriously considering how I can externalize this process, the photos and the files I'd keep. I'll post regular updates.

In our shared future where personal privacy is as anachronistic as an abacus, or a horse...in that future, the asymmetry of information that exists between the many and the few will vanish. And when we each know what the other knows, the inefficiencies that come with involuntary ignorance will also vanish. There'll still be bigotry, but the Intangible Hand will sort that out...unless you don't want it to, there's still novelty to be had being a bigot. The pain I choose is different from the pain I don't.

There's been lots to like lately, I've had tuberculosis.

Not literally, those of you who read this and will be concerned that I've gotten a 19th century disease. It's a pun. For future reference, anytime I say that I have leprosy, rickets, scurvy, buboes (fun to say!)...it's probably just a pun.

ANYWAY, so the tuberculosis (which comes from parsnips, potatoes, beets!)...has included not a small amount of Goethe, which is awesome. All sorts of good, from poetry to Faust. Recommended by a customer of mine, a Professor of German Lit and Translation. So many ivory tower motherfuckers, so much data. I want more data, did you know that?

I want more data.

So, Goethe. Awesome. Here's some choice bits.

Investigate what is, and not what pleases.

Much there is I can stand, and most things not easy to suffer
I bear with quiet resolve, just as a god commands it.
Only a few I find as repugnant as snakes and poison —
These four: tobacco smoke, bedbugs, garlic, and Christ.

If I love you, what business is it of yours?

I am not Omniscient, but I know a lot.

More Light.

Also, for those of you who share locality...tonight, at Sam Bond's Garage...I will be leading a team from Capella against a handful of soulless drones from Trader Joe's in a game of Family Feud. Come out, brave the hipsters and see me and people I like.

Organisms

2010-02-05T08:34:00.000-08:00

Organization, method. Things I lack, but I lack for nothing but the vacuums I create. Lots of good lately, lots of busy. As I externalize more and more of myself, I imagine it freeing up internal resources. More of me to devote.

Slice of Life

2010-01-27T18:01:00.000-08:00

It's revealing, I think, how pleased I was to find this. I was very pleased. I was fucking stoked, frankly. Take away from it what you will.

The Grim Inevitability of Death

2010-01-24T21:22:00.000-08:00

Is dense and comforting, like a duvet. I've got books and books, my metacortex and my 'pataphysics and my memories. We're all just dogs doing calculus, but I'll be a scientist. Since I'm already a scientist.

Things I've liked lately have led to things I've misunderstood in a way that improves them for me. Like these. While I can respect the work, I don't agree with much of the sentiment. I did end up with "Hiding your motives is despicable." which encapsulates my personal philosophy nicely, I think. Parts of it anyway.

Misanthropomorphic Principle. Strong.

2010-01-16T20:29:00.000-08:00

That's a thing, a reference. There's several concepts and contexts that are necessary to glean the meanings in my everyday conversation or blogging or what have you. For example, today I had a conversation with a pair of co-workers about our peppers. Dried peppers, in a bag. Same brand, same thing, but different iterations of nomenclature, in which some were labeled New Mexico Peppers and others Nuevo Mexico Peppers. When asked the difference, I said the latter were more like a flock of seagulls.

One of them got it.

And I don't like being obscure, or impenetrable. It's not pleasant, or easy for either of us. But at the same time, I have this whole thing about not adapting or adopting behaviors for the benefit of You (whoever you are), because I don't think it's fair or honest to assume/presuppose what's good for you. Even if that means I'm not easy, or pleasant. And while I respect my purposes and my results...lately it's been making me unhappy, the rest of you and I.

A good friend at Cthulhu Xmas (I'm trying to take the Christ out. I need some sort of corer) described attention as a human currency. That's a new idea for me, an unsettling one. I'm hoarding right now, waiting for some sort of deflation to set in.

Weighing In

2010-01-09T10:39:00.001-08:00

Sorry, yesterday's kind of a blur-a good blur. I dread my birthdays, not because of any fear of aging (I like getting old, like I'm growing into myself) but because historically, they're filled with trauma and unpleasantness. Dramatic episodes from my childhood that I don't really remember-I just remember remembering how much I disliked them. Part of my narrative, and funny to think about now that I question both my own story and my definitions of trauma...Traum is dream, in German.

I'm a scientist-we're all scientists, right? Methodists with methods, all along a spectrum of metaphors for experimentation and hypothesis. "Common Sense" or "Right and Wrong" or "Logic" are all just shorthand for the paradigms we've developed after years of personal experimentation. Input and results, analysis...I'm providing you with some of my current window, but it wouldn't fit perfectly with any of my Previous iterations, and won't (I imagine) be relevant Later. Nonetheless, this is supposed to be a journal of personal truth and accountability (really!) and I've been lax behind angst and cannabis for too long lately. I just have to come out and say it.

I've been experimenting on my mind for some time now. Not pharmacologically (most of the time) but memetically. If I'm a collection of recorded data (rarely accurate) sensory experience (ditto, but at least I'm present and up-to-date) and some sort of engine-that-simulates, some creative element that allows me to construct imaginary versions of the sensory experience using pieces of my recorded data...wait, let me back up.

Most of how I operate comes down to what I believe-what's good, what's bad, the value I attach to things and how I imagine everything interacts. Those beliefs about the physical world, the social world (the Rest of You) and myself come together in my head to determine what actions I'll take. I don't do things that I imagine will have results I don't want.

(For what it's worth, I sort of assume that this model works for y'all's behavior as well. Not that I want to anticipate your behavior or anything. Ask me about my results.)

So if I have these beliefs, these things that answer my why/what/how/who questions, then can't I change them? Identify them and challenge them, develop new beliefs, move on. Hypothesis, experimentation, theory...I'm a fucking scientist. And while it's not always predictable, I can't describe to you how effective it's been. I can be a different person if I want. Constantly, deliberately. It's a very powerful feeling.

Opting Out

2010-01-07T23:00:00.000-08:00

Pulling this out, only an hour left. It's been a year. I had several adjectives there...abandoned them all. I'm reluctant to assign a moral component.

But here we are-thanks for coming, it's nice to see you. I've made no effort this time around, and I'm enjoying the novelty. Hunkered down, nested like a matrioska brain. Maybe I'm biding my time, gathering my chi. Marshaling, rallying, getting ready. Or not. What?

What makes you think I know? You know what, screw this. Tomorrow. I'm doing this tomorrow. This has been Previous Me. Later Me will have more to say.

Syncitium

2010-01-06T05:23:00.000-08:00

I've been dreaming. I don't, usually. But the last few days, even a week or two...my subconscious's jumped up by an order of magnitude. Last night I dreamt of lye, and burns.

It gives me hope to see you dead.

2010-01-02T12:22:00.000-08:00

This is the last day of an old year. I know how that sounds, what day it is. In as much as I'm trying to eliminate the arbitrary, have a reason for everything...the calendar's not cutting it. My calendar's different-it's the 8th that'll be a new me (Thirty-three this time. I'm having a passion play) but from a purely mathematical standpoint, I like the perihelion. It'll be a cusp day, an ending. And while the solstice certainly counts too, it's a little heavy with historical baggage for my taste. So yeah, the perihelion. At nine minutes after midnight tonight, GMT, we'll be as close to the sun as we'll be for another year. That seems like it's worth noting.

Today is the day I came and left.

2009-12-28T12:10:00.000-08:00

The fields faced the graveyard, symmetrical with themselves and each other. The spikes that marked the bushes were alike...so were the corpses, down instead of up. I'm not my body, am I? I don't think, I don't...but you feel differently, don't you? Even if you feel the same.

This isn't making sense, which is apparently a common complaint among my consumers. The absence of sence. For what it's worth, I feel the same way-I don't know what I'm talking about half the time. I just don't think that it detracts.

Lists

2009-12-23T23:00:00.001-08:00

Like messages, a letter from a younger you. Or like your will, externalized and free. "I don't need to want to do this, because an earlier version of myself dedicated some of her/his time to it and freed me up from that internalized ambition. Thanks, previous me! Now I can devote some of my finite (but not limited) attention to this sandwich."

I have a bit. Not now, maybe later. But I have one (another one. I think that makes three all told. Not all told in this blog post. Earlier. Piece it together. Or don't, whatever.) and it's coming together. It's all moral and clever. It's winning me over, which is odd-I'm not much of a joiner. Even when it's my thing, and I'm doing it. Not a joiner.

Also, having listened to lots of really bad Xmas music (musical war crime/abortion set to music bad), it's occurred to me that Frosty the Snowman's about death. That it's cruel to use a magic hat to bring a snowman to life, knowing that he'll melt so soon. Now, I'm not wed to this-a coworker of mine hypothesized that it's actually a metaphor for Christ (which makes the children god, and the hat...I don't know what the hat is) and the recursive nature of winter represents Christ's inevitable return. And I'm willing to acknowledge the similarities between Frosty's mortality and our own. I may just be a bigot, unable to reconcile the difference between a few months at most (in colder climes) and our own longer, more nuanced lives. It's anthropomorphism, is what it is. Reduced to my scale, and I have no sense of proportion.

Brunch

2009-12-20T07:47:00.000-08:00

So I'm up early, on a Sunday of all things. Gonna try and clean the house, got family coming. Cook too, I think I'll make some bread. One of my HD has 1.21 Gigs left. Nice.

It's warmed up, but it's still winter, and my old body aches as I try and cross the terminus of one more year. Twenty days left.

Perihelion

2009-12-19T09:22:00.000-08:00

Two days, burned days. Shot and sundered and wandered and warm. I've got Jimmy Buffet and Bob Dylan stuck in my head, neither good, neither wanted. It's blood warm outside, feverish where I work. Last day, to-day. Good, good.

Demonoid

2009-12-15T06:14:00.000-08:00

Is back up after about 3 months downtime. Hot damn.

Long Days and Lovers and Seasons and Skies

2009-12-09T20:48:00.000-08:00

It was six when I woke up this morning, at five o'clock. Like separation, like Kevin Bacon. God is made of bacon, did you know that? He's haram. Like a colander, like the calendar.

Look it up.

I came home and sharpened my face (I did other things betwixt and between, but that's just work, and thus not really worth writing about until it is). Made myself what Patton Oswalt calls a "failure pile, in a sadness bowl", and waited for it to succeed. Cleaned, swept, vacuumed (there's a handful of words in the english language that have two "u"s next to each other...know any others?) and finally, finally, settled down to write. To "blahg", the kids are calling it.

I've been writing a lot, not here, so that's probably wounded my blogging a little. Whoops. But it's still me, still an extension of myself. And it's not that I haven't had things to say-I had a whole bit about this a couple days ago, but it seemed like it would take too long to run it around (long story short, I'm racist. No, not like that). You'll have to forgive me-I'm nesting. Like a gorilla.

It's the holidays, holy days. I'm looking forward to Cthulhu and my mother's company, dreading the Xmas music that hollows out my place of employment (it's improved, though. My doing, I'm sure) and drowning in solitude and self-satisfaction. There's worse things.

So I'm well, well enough. Strangely good, really. Better than in forever, to tell the truth. I'm new, different, strong and burning bright. I have hopes and dreams, friends and allies. Some of you are some of those, some of you are others. I'd leave it ambiguous, leave you guessing. You choose, alright? Everyone gets to do whatever they want. Even me.

Sabbaths

2009-11-27T21:46:00.001-08:00

Never having been what you would call ambitious, it's odd then, to reach a point in my life where I save up my resting and look forward to the day. Day of.

I have lots to do, have set myself to something. Somethings. It's odd, to have a purpose.

...

Not bad. I'll let you know how it goes.

Patience

2009-11-22T20:07:00.000-08:00

I've had it up to here with people. And let's bear in mind, my here's higher than most people's. Which implies that the tall are more patient. Which is clearly true. One more proof.

Anglophile

2009-11-15T23:18:00.000-08:00

I was a weird kid-no really, it's true. I fell into all sorts of odd things-I must have been about six when I started watching Dr. Who (the old one) and I still have a Red Dwarf shirt from a PBS marathon in 1993. My mother always liked English TV, we watched a lot of PBS back when that was what they played. So I had strange tastes in that sense, a fondness for things that were out-of-the-ordinary (though I can't stand Monty Python).

I must have been around twelve when I caught an episode of The Prisoner. Very few things have stuck with me so strongly, but then, there's nothing like The Prisoner.

It's beautiful. It's the strangest thing that's ever been on TV. Truly.

So when I heard that AMC was doing a remake, a reboot, I was worried. Like you would be, right? Other people taking something you love, doing new things with it...you'd worry, right? Tonight it premiered, and it's fantastic. Smart and odd and sinister and funny and brilliant. Just brilliant.

You can watch episodes of the old series here, see the webpage for the new here. Check it out, it's something I love.

Hanlon's Razor

2009-11-10T21:36:00.000-08:00

Tabs open in my three Firefox windows.

www.gmail.com

http://www.blogger.com/post-create

http://www.rpol.net/game.cgi?gi=39364&date=1257917745

https://wave.google.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title#Professional_titles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occitan_cross

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba%C3%ACo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergonha

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&
hs=Apk&q=commer%C3%A7ants+in+english&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

http://www.rpol.net/display.cgi?gi=39364&ti=5&date=1257880302

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/playlist/Querealist/18658933

http://www.xs4all.nl/~fwb/rgbmars.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_%28Doctor_Who%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_eponyms

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_laws_named_after_people

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_bottle#Sizes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_dynamics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity_class

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darian_calendar

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adages_named_after_people

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paradoxes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_phenomena_named_after_people

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_criminal_organizations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven_paradox

Howl

2009-11-08T20:49:00.000-08:00

I need a break. A break from magic future bullshit. It's eating me alive, from my head on out.

If you're not watching Glenn Beck...

2009-11-03T14:00:00.000-08:00

You're missing one of the great spectacles of the 21st century. I mean it-he's incredible. 2PM and 11PM weekdays on FOX News. Check it out.

Last Chance

2009-10-31T23:52:00.000-07:00

"And it looks like, yes, the skies are opening up...and, yes...yes...it's raining fire. No, no wait...it's fiery jaguars. That's right, jaguars. Late model too. Looks like it's the apocalypse, and the aztecs were right."

Lithium Tuesday and the Season of Spiders

2009-10-28T20:34:00.000-07:00

Abandoning the real for the surreal and the ur-real. Tiers and jodhpurs and nonsense nonsense nonsense. It's the post-post-ironic era, did you know that? The Age of Nonsense, and I will be your harbinger and herald. This is the Season of Spiders, Plaid Wednesday, the year I learn to love persimmons.

I leave so many bits behind, shards of odd scattered in the streets and in my wake. Try not to cut yourselves-they're bits of me, and I'm fucking sharp.

Eato mutata resurgo.

Gerard de Nerval

2009-10-14T21:19:00.000-07:00

Je suis le Tenebreux, -le Veuf-, l'inconsole,
Le prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie:

Ma seule etoile est morte, -et mon luth constelle
Porte le Soleil noir de la Melancolie.

Ghetto

2009-10-14T18:49:00.000-07:00

Down at the laundromat, contemplating my doom.

Wizardz Paste

2009-10-11T12:03:00.001-07:00

My computer's spell check hates me. All red lines-not right!, it screams. There are twenty-four on the screen when I Alt+Tab over. But it's not that I can't spell. I can fucking spell. It's that my spell check has no idea what I'm talking about(just like the meat world). Here are some examples from the aforementioned page...

ferrier
cyberbrain
Lojban
Nemorensis
areography
Apollinaris
Mercurii
fane

Some of you know what this is about. Those of you who don't, I propose a game. Tell me what you think all those words add up to.

Pumpkin Bunker

2009-10-07T20:26:00.000-07:00

Say it out loud-it's worth it.

My roommate described to me once, the sensation he had when he was stressed out, upset, chewing on something. Like you do. He told me that he got so bored with himself.

That never would have occurred to me. Never. Speaks to our differences. Nonetheless...

I am so fucking bored right now.

Ragnaroktoberfest

2009-10-03T14:06:00.001-07:00

I'm sick, not well. Weak, feverish. Every time I cough, I oink*. You know what that means.

What it doesn't mean is that I'm out of the loop. Loup-Garou I am, I can't let certain things go by, even though I'll avoid the rest of the world like Sierra del Plata. Watch this-it's my favorite.

*Not my bit, my favorite Marxist's. I've stolen it, like property is theft. Even intellectual property.

Apples

2009-09-27T19:00:00.001-07:00

We have the best, at Capella right now. Local Liberty apples, crisp and white and tart. I wait all year for these apples.

Familiars

2009-09-26T23:47:00.000-07:00

I live with omens. Cats, the four of them. Black, and white. Black and white. And gray. Not mine, but mine nonetheless.

Lips and Hunting

2009-09-21T22:11:00.000-07:00

I've been mum, lately. There's not a good reason. Or at least, what reason there may be is vague and unclear, even to me. And something that cannot be described cannot be good-so the reason isn't, either.

The degree to which that statement is absurd is in direct proportion to the degree to which it is arbitrary. It's true. I can measure it. Think about that the next time you're right about something.

So I've been off. A little. It is unfortunate. And I've had things to say, too-I had a whole bit about race going in my head the other day, and I've left out all my familial vacation stories. Which are downright Shakespearean, wouldn't you know. But I'm not feeling up to being raw and unburdensome or even articulate. Instead...

I have a purse. It's a messenger bag, whatever. It's a fucking purse. I carry all sorts of crap I might use in it. Something I never thought I'd do (I have a tendency to lose things. Why I don't wear a hat*). So it's a purse, I carry it around. And tonight I had to switch over, one version (messenger bag) to another (a more standard, conventional backpack). Don't ask me why. There's not a good reason. But I thought, as I maneuvered through my personal paraphernalia, that it might be revealing to let you know what I feel like I should keep with me. So...this is my inventory.

A bike pump. Nice one, compact with a gauge. It'll fill a tire in less than two minutes. I love it.

A bicycle tire iron. Yellow, plastic. It was free at my bike kitchen.

A bicycle multi-tool. Allen wrenches and such. I think I traded a hobo for this one.

Three pens, two ballpoint, one large sharpie. Generic felt tip, really. I'm sure "sharpie"'s a brand name.

A pound and a half of dried pineapple rings covered in chili pepper. No, they came that way. Really.

A box knife, from work.

Three golf balls (Two Dunlop, one Top Elite) in a plastic, ziploc™ bag.

A toothbrush (some hippy brand from work)

Toothpaste (likewise)

A tupperware container w/ oatmeal soap and a washcloth in it.

My glasses case, containing my glass-cleaning cloth. And a chillum.

A sample bag from work containing two tampons and one pad.

Lifesavers, about 2/3 of a roll of wintergreen.

Two amtrak stubs.

A condom.

Four quarters.

A shamwow.

A glass jar with a cork top that originally was attached to something else. The jar, not the cork. Though I imagine the cork came from an oak, originally. So it was also attached to something else.

A lighter. It's got a pheasant on it. The pheasant's name is Earl.

Chain oil.

My dental insurance card.

A tube of Dr. Haushka's Lipstick, Allegro color.

A bottle of asprin.

Two band-aids.

Electrical tape.

A rock (I think it's obsidian, actually).

Cuticle nippers (I love these things. I regret the portion of my life I lived without knowing they existed).

A nickle.

Two dimes.

Three keys I don't know the provenance of. One looks like it's for a bike lock I don't have.

A spare tube for my bike. This one has one of those damn european valves on it, which makes it useless to me. Fuck. I just noticed this.

Some ginger, once fresh, now dessicated and sad. Gotta be careful, handling ginger. It's a rhizome, have to treat it delicately. Gingerly, even.

*Also, I have a gigantic head.

Nulhomme

2009-09-02T16:26:00.000-07:00

As I cleaned the house last night, did the dishes this morning...I felt very adult. Not just because I was doing it, but because I wanted to. It's not a chore, not outside myself. It's part of my rhythm. Which is how it should be-everyone gets to do whatever they want, me included. I'm just glad that I've gotten to the point where the things that are good for me are the things that I want. Some of them, anyway.

This is an obfuscation, by the way. Or a diversion, maybe. I'm back from a long way away, worn out from sales tax and driving and family. It was good, very good. Give me a minute-I'll tell you about it later.

Tessellated

2009-08-28T17:59:00.000-07:00

Are my days, and the hours and spaces in them. Saw a bunch of art today-at the art museum, no less. And met a Danish Englishman. Held forth and court with fine people, new and old. Yesterday that was. Ignore the grey, there is nothing but grey.

So I'm having a good time, that's the whole and the half of it. It's more complicated than that, but it evens out. Black and white, wounds and clotting quick. I'll post some Escher when I get a chance. It was awesome.

Traveling

2009-08-27T08:46:00.001-07:00

Going, going. Ready to go. I've cooked and packed and ruined everything, and with only eight short hours of work between my window and me...

I'm ready to go.

Up to see my family and the geography of my childhood. I grew up in Moscow, moved to Portland when I was 8. This trip reverses that, Portland then Spokane then Moscow and Troy. Stops along the way, too. We are civilized people. But it'll be backwards, my youth upside down and inside out.

I'm hoping I'll get younger.

Themeless

2009-08-16T22:20:00.000-07:00

There's a big whiteboard in the breakroom at work. For notes and such. A coworker of mine had been having trouble with his apron being stolen. So he took advantage of the whiteboard, left a note about his trouble. He wrote, in big purple letters...

Stop taking aprons that don't belong to you!

That's fine, right? Nice, to the point. And it had been up for about a day before I decided to adulterate it slightly. I erased "taking" and wrote "the", ending up with...

Stop the aprons that don't belong to you!

Which is also fine, right? It's the sort of thing I'd do at work-I did it quickly, casually, at the start of my day. Because that's what I'd do at work. Out in the world at large too. I make a little trouble. Every pantheon needs a coyote.

Wasn't me, stealing his apron. In case you were wondering.

When I came back later that day, someone else had been at it. They'd made drastic changes. They'd erased all of "that don't belong to you" and had changed "stop" and "aprons". And there was a whole new preamble. The end result was...

Is there no Stopping the Aarons?

Oh. Oh my.

I don't doubt that the rest of you talk/think about me when I'm not there. It must happen. It's still lovely when I get to see the proof.

I've made my pizza with death

2009-08-11T19:51:00.001-07:00

Do you ever feel as though everyone you know is dysfunctional, misanthropic, and deaf? Like the world is full of hollow tubes of rotten blood, and you have to navigate their jostling, gelatinous selves without them bursting all over you? Have you ever wanted to take vinegar back in time? To see the wine it might have been?

I'm a mess. Right now. And I've figured that out, and believe that it'll stop being true in the future. I imagine I can wait myself out. But it's not fun for me-I can only imagine it for the rest of you.

The greatest gift is the gift of surprises

2009-07-29T19:59:00.000-07:00

It's hot here. Blood warm, everywhere. I walked home in it yesterday, bathing in the air and basking in the sun. We're all a little angry at the sky, lately.

Bad day....fuck it.

2009-07-21T06:35:00.000-07:00

Rough 24 hours, at the end of a period of taut hypersensitivity. I've been remote-it's true. From some of you more than others. Sorry about that.

I'm winding down though, and I'll try to locate those of you for whom I've gone all Flying Dutchman.

Caesarian

2009-07-01T17:11:00.001-07:00

The streets were littered with faux corpses this afternoon. Jumbled piles of cloth and flesh that used to be people, up and around. Hobos, of course, and more transient grommets here for the summer and the fair. And middle-class folks too, in the downtown area. Napping in the sun and the verge, like you wouldn't see anywhere else. Much as I bemoan Eugene for its pedantic nonsense and awful statuary, it is nice to see tolerance for things that shouldn't have been verboten in the first place. Take a nap outside on your lunch, for god's sake. We'll all be better off.

Not the point, by the way. That's just an aside, an anecdote to get me into this (incidentally, as I'm all ten-dollar words again, check out the 'llectuals video on my other blog). I'm troubled. There, said it, I'll say it again. Right here in River City.

I'm always troubled (who isn't?) but this is different. Deep trouble, traumatic trouble. Traumatic double trouble-that's my dream, that's my nightmare. Snails and razors, and the rest of you cut so slow. I have several predicaments (and I'm going to be obsucure here, as this is meant to be revealing without being explanatory) but the big one's looming like a ship, or a bridge. Like I'm the bridge, but not the ship. And I know something about burning, and wreckage in wake.

I took the train this evening.

2009-06-28T22:51:00.000-07:00

Everyone crawls up out of their eyes, eventually. Flailing out of their pupils like flatworms teased up the gullet, lured by cheese in the kitchen's tweezers. Hand over bilious hand, foot after foot after food drawn up and spilled out, pale and wet, into the sink.

My kitchen, my sink.

And I know you might get lost there, back behind, and down the drain. And you have my sympathy. But stop looking at me, else you all end up vomiting yourselves.

Out your eyes.

-Mancy

2009-06-23T21:05:00.000-07:00

None for me, thanks. Cartomancy, aeromancy, ornithomancy-apparently. Goddamn Queen of Diamonds appears on my floor one day, the Ace of Spades the next. Lemmy and Angela Lansbury, pentacles and swords (pronounce the "w"). Mind control and death. Cedar waxwings in the holly bush, bald eagles pounding their way out of the air above my neighborhood. Does the neighborhood persist upwards? Where's the boundary? The tropopause? The orbit of the moon? That'd make sense-crystal spheres make for clear lines of terminus.

I have no truck with oneiromancy, as I rarely dream. This is true.

I have a bit about children, raised in creche, deposited at...oh I don't know, six? Deposited in tunnels beneath major cities and raised remotely in a series of calculated social/physical/logical labyrinths. Terminals where math problems solved or well-written essays garner the child food, or weapons. Or love.

Do this for ten years, then draft the ones that survive (the lethality of the process could be adjusted for demographic purposes). Everyone does their time in national service. The talented and gifted could find themselves as paramedics, police, soldiers, teachers. The best and the brightest. Everyone else does customer service. Waiting tables, jockying a register, working the counter at a department store. Two years of this, until you get out and take up the post-morlock education that will lead to your permanent career. But everyone has to do customer service, so that they'll be a little more civilized once they've become middle class. And everyone was raised in deadly tunnels.

The mind lives by aims as well.

2009-06-21T23:27:00.000-07:00

Yes it does, doesn't it?

Worst-

2009-06-16T20:43:00.000-07:00

Case, liver. Of.

I love a list.

And the hot, wet city. Cities should be dank, damp, blood-warm places. Lush and green and breathing thick, wet wind through the streets. I can't go too far down this road without running headlong into song lyrics, and as I'm making a concerted effort with regard to original content...well, let's move on.

I'm taking risks, breaking new ground. I've been up since five AM, which is a silly, uncivilized time of day. I've got lots to talk about, lots to say. New bits, new faces, things and stuff.

Give me a minute.

Sabbatical

2009-06-10T16:06:00.000-07:00

One-in-seven indeed. I know, I know, it's been a while. I've been laid low, laying low. Gotta pull myself together under less-than-ideal circumstances. But then, what other kind of circumstances are there?

So I've been unwell, and well, all at once. Never fails-just when I think I've finished and figured it all out...nope, not even close. New angst, this year's fresh crop of pathos. The covalent radius of a sulfur atom. Over and over and over. Had a revelation today. That's not uncommon-I just hope I can remember it later.

So I'm back, working it out. I have a number of projects, one of which is here-I've decided that I while I enjoy sharing videos with the rest of you, I don't want to clutter up what has become a fairly personal slice of me online with random YouTube-ery. So...I've got a video blog. Add it to your bookmarks, and check back for what should end up being a rich gumbo of news, odd, and probably the occasional funny. Check back here soon for recipes, anecdotes, and my standard verbose angsty bullshit.

Pathos

2009-05-05T19:24:00.000-07:00

Lockstep with the sky. Still.

...

I woke up Manchurian this morning, a queen of diamonds staring up at me from my laundry-strewn bedroom floor like some awful conjoined Angela Lansbury. Adorable cartoon spainel on the back, wistfull and feckless. Like me. Wasn't Dave left the card, so I can only assume that the cats have activated me for some terrible purpose.

My axis is sure like a gyroscope, my allies are legion, and I have too many irons to be bored. Still I plumb the depths of my thoughts, and find them lead-grey. There's no reason, no metaphorical foe to take behind the middle school and put a bullet to. There's only the grey streets and the news and broken vessels for my broken self. I am a vegetarian by default. I am quitting quitting.

On the plus side, I got that laundry done.

Bea Arthur is dead.

2009-04-27T00:26:00.000-07:00

This makes me very sad. She was the most Golden of all. Here's this, to fill the void.

Three Minutes Late

2009-04-23T09:38:00.001-07:00

I don't know quite how to begin. The beginning is a delicate time.

Anyway, this is in lieu of several emails to a bunch of you that I may or may not write when I have more than a few minutes 'fore work to write them. I've dropped right out, some ways, and I need to keep those plates in the air.

(Sometimes you're all plates on sticks. That's a secret)

I'm...troubled. No other word for it.

That's not true, there's other words for everything. But I am troubled, and for no good reason. Which is doubly troubling, as it doesn't really suggest a solution to my problem. But I've nailed it down, I'm pulling its wings off. I think I'll be fine-just bear with me.

Mother of God

2009-04-19T20:10:00.001-07:00

I'm fucking moody, you know that? All over the place.

That's not bad, you understand. I had a very good day.

Failures

2009-04-16T09:40:00.000-07:00

Of correspondences, sympathies and similarities. Voodoo, 'ware the voodoo. Keep your hair close, your blood too. And your less comical humors.

Your teeth! Your body's most puissant weapons, the swords in your head. Keep your teeth, above all other forms of fleshy jetsam.

(When I was 18, I had my wisdom teeth out. Sitting in the surgeon's chair, waiting for the lidocaine that would numb my mouth but leave me conscious, I wondered what my teeth would look like, out of my head. Only three-one was missing. After seven shots, I was finally numb, and they cut the flesh away from my three anachronistic teeth. Then I remember the surgeon bracing himself as he pounded away at my head with a hammer, and a chisel. Didn't work, they were in there too good. So they cut bone away from the roots of my teeth with a dremel. I still remember the smell of hot bone. I have my teeth, by the way. They're huge.)

I've been insular, uncommunicative. I think, perhaps, depressed. I decided not long ago that I'm moody. It's good to know.

I love the President

2009-04-13T17:56:00.000-07:00

I do. Every time.

Sow the squirrel, reap the squirrelwind

2009-04-08T22:15:00.000-07:00

Last one, for a while at least.

Look...I'm just super busy. I'll have a moment, soon I think, to actually blog. I know you're angry-here's this to harness your rage.

Verisimillitude

2009-04-02T10:15:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite things

2009-04-01T22:40:00.000-07:00

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). The Waste Land. 1922.

The Waste Land

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering	5
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,	10
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,	15
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,	20
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,	25
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.	30
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu.
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;	35
'They called me the hyacinth girl.'
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,	40
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Od' und leer das Meer.

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,	45
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.	50
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.	55
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.

Unreal City,	60
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.	65
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying 'Stetson!
'You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!	70
'That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
'Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
'Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
'Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
'Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!	75
'You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!'

II. A GAME OF CHESS THE Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out	80
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
Reflecting light upon the table as
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion;	85
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended	90
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,	95
In which sad light a carvèd dolphin swam.
Above the antique mantel was displayed
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale	100
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
'Jug Jug' to dirty ears.
And other withered stumps of time
Were told upon the walls; staring forms	105
Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
Spread out in fiery points
Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.	110

'My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
'Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.
'What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
'I never know what you are thinking. Think.'

I think we are in rats' alley	115
Where the dead men lost their bones.

'What is that noise?'
The wind under the door.
'What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?'
Nothing again nothing.	120
'Do
'You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
'Nothing?'
I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.	125
'Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?'
But
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—
It's so elegant
So intelligent	130
'What shall I do now? What shall I do?'
'I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
'With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?
'What shall we ever do?'
The hot water at ten.	135
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.

When Lil's husband got demobbed, I said—
I didn't mince my words, I said to her myself,	140
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
Now Albert's coming back, make yourself a bit smart.
He'll want to know what you done with that money he gave you
To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.
You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,	145
He said, I swear, I can't bear to look at you.
And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
He's been in the army four years, he wants a good time,
And if you don't give it him, there's others will, I said.
Oh is there, she said. Something o' that, I said.	150
Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
If you don't like it you can get on with it, I said.
Others can pick and choose if you can't.
But if Albert makes off, it won't be for lack of telling.	155
You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
(And her only thirty-one.)
I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face,
It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
(She's had five already, and nearly died of young George.)	160
The chemist said it would be alright, but I've never been the same.
You are a proper fool, I said.
Well, if Albert won't leave you alone, there it is, I said,
What you get married for if you don't want children?
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME	165
Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,
And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot—
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.	170
Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

III. THE FIRE SERMON THE river's tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.	175
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;	180
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept...
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear	185
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse	190
Musing upon the king my brother's wreck
And on the king my father's death before him.
White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year.	195
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter	200
They wash their feet in soda water
Et, O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole!

Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc'd.	205
Tereu

Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants	210
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back	215
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives	220
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun's last rays,	225
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—
I too awaited the expected guest.	230
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,	235
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;	240
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall	245
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows on final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit...

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;	250
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
'Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over.'
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,	255
And puts a record on the gramophone.

'This music crept by me upon the waters'
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,	260
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.	265

The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide
Red sails	270
Wide
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
The barges wash
Drifting logs
Down Greenwich reach	275
Past the Isle of Dogs.
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala

Elizabeth and Leicester
Beating oars	280
The stern was formed
A gilded shell
Red and gold
The brisk swell
Rippled both shores	285
Southwest wind
Carried down stream
The peal of bells
White towers
Weialala leia	290
Wallala leialala

'Trams and dusty trees.
Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.'	295
'My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart
Under my feet. After the event
He wept. He promised "a new start".
I made no comment. What should I resent?'
'On Margate Sands.	300
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.'	305
la la

To Carthage then I came

Burning burning burning burning
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou pluckest	310

burning

IV. DEATH BY WATER PHLEBAS the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep seas swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea	315
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,	320
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID AFTER the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying	325
Prison and place and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience	330

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink	335
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit	340
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses If there were water	345
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring	350
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock	355
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together	360
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?	365

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only	370
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London	375
Unreal

A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings	380
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In this decayed hole among the mountains	385
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.	390
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves	395
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
D A	400
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed	405
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
D A	410
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours	415
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
D A
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded	420
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands

I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?	425

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon—O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins	430
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih shantih shantih

Tuesdays in March

2009-04-01T05:20:00.000-07:00

Tuesday named for Tyr, one-handed Norse god of War. March, natch, for Mars. Red planet, iron planet. Roman god of War. Too many war gods, yesterday. Rage and angst, measured in the diameters of atoms. Had a bad day, all I'm saying.

But my angst was all boilerplate (thanks, Diane), nothing new there. And once I came home I had magic waiting. I'll leave early and happy this morning, thanks to my northward-wandering friend.

Wicker Ventriloquist

2009-03-22T23:23:00.000-07:00

I want information. I'll get it, by hook or by crook. I know the nooks, and the crannys. My shortcuts and dark alleys and places safe only for me and my volume. There has been a leonine fuzzy slipper crammed into the windshield wipers of a box truck with an abstract logo that looks like a reclining man w/ an erect corkscrew penis looking at a black moon, for the last three months. I saw it (the slipper) in the alley on 2nd three months ago in the daytime. It was cold and grey but dry, and I was walking around. The next night, with a companion, I saw it again, moved 30 yards west and five feet up the front of the box truck that never moves. Pinned like an aethered butterfly against the windshield-I thought it never moved, never thought it would. There are so many abandoned vehicles outside decrepit buildings that house failing businesses...that slipper was cemented in my map of my neighborhood.

Tonight, it was gone.

Genius

2009-03-19T17:09:00.000-07:00

This makes up for that other video...I think.

Context

2009-03-18T22:21:00.000-07:00

You should know...this is Nancy Pelosi's cat. The Speaker of the House of Representatives for the United States of America...her fucking cat.

Winnowed

2009-03-15T21:12:00.000-07:00

to nothing, winnowing to lose. I had an autophany yesterday, cosigned and buttressed by the man I live with. I'm still grappling, still terrified. Not that it's bad-it isn't. It's me, after all, revealing to myself. One more thing is one more thing. And usually, lately...they're only good. This one's no exception.