It is often easy to let yourself do whatever you want and not question yourself in the slightest. And thus the seeds of tyranny are planted. However, when you question yourself, you win. And the seeds of tyranny are unable to sink their roots into the earth. Of course, this is an odd thing for me to write about because I often do something to the contrary: do what I think feels right without questioning myself. Weeds cover windows and doors. And that in turn explains why I'm always left scratching my head, ashamed. Oblivious.
Because fighting yourself is difficult is probably why this is one of the greatest victories one can ever achieve. The battle against the self is not to say that you have to loathe and abuse yourself in order to be great. You have to know when to hold back and control yourself or even do something out of character, in order to keep yourself from fucking up completely. Why is this important? Why is this great? Why does this matter?
It's important that you learn that you can't always get what you want and that you have to grow up. As such, you have to fight with yourself in order to learn about yourself. What you can and cannot do, what you know and don't know, and things like that.
This is great because at the core, everyone is some kind of narcissist... in the sense that everyone is full of some sort of self-love, however much it may or may not be. To fight against yourself and realize that you love yourself enough to disagree, it leads to progress. How difficult is it to harm something you care about? Whether it's tackling a friend who is like a brother to you? But you do it for their own good, not just because they're drunk out of their fucking mind.
This is a matter of relatively great importance because I have to repeat myself. The most difficult thing in the world is harming something you care about and love. The self is that: something you care about and love. Once you can say, "No, I will not allow this to hurt me." and control yourself, you'll be able to go on and do greater things.
Hmm.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Falling Down
Falling down is one of the easiest things in the world to do. As it is, you have to fight for almost everything you have. Your entire life consists of conflict and friction. All for the sake of progress and movement forward, survival. Falling down is easy because you just stand still and let everything knock you down. Moving forward, marching through deep mud and heavy snow for the smallest shred of happiness is incredibly difficult. It's a worthwhile pursuit: fighting forward.
It's bloody, it's chaotic, it's a fucking mess
but goddamn it, it's for the best.
It's bloody, it's chaotic, it's a fucking mess
but goddamn it, it's for the best.
Pine to Town
I was not yawning, I was not sleeping.
All that could be done was write a sonnet.
Attempted to get closer to dreaming
and feeling warmth like a sweet cabaret.
The experience started off wrong.
Saw a dinosaur dancing with a tree
I trembled as I sang my wretched song.
The tree looked over and laughed! Laughed at me.
Surrealism has a funny way
of being and existing around us.
It's bizarre, it's pleasant, and here to stay
regardless of how much you bitch and cuss.
Winter bleeds inside, smothering it all.
Poetry rises up: brings down the wall.
All that could be done was write a sonnet.
Attempted to get closer to dreaming
and feeling warmth like a sweet cabaret.
The experience started off wrong.
Saw a dinosaur dancing with a tree
I trembled as I sang my wretched song.
The tree looked over and laughed! Laughed at me.
Surrealism has a funny way
of being and existing around us.
It's bizarre, it's pleasant, and here to stay
regardless of how much you bitch and cuss.
Winter bleeds inside, smothering it all.
Poetry rises up: brings down the wall.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
2012: The (Allegedly) Final Frontier
2012 is nigh!
Draw thine swords and spears!
Stab death in the eye!
Stare down thine fears!
2012 is upon us!
Abandon hope for the death to the stream of stars!
The planet, left weak
humans, its scars!
2012 will make Earth crash into Mars!
No!
While it is true that 2012 is upon us, there's really should be no reason to lionize so greatly a rather mundane phenomena: the changing of a year. In a sane and reasonable world, this would be written off as just another year. But as you know, this world is far from sane and reasonable. This rock floating through space is just an enormous madhouse with sanity and irrational behavior clashing at every possible point. Read a history book if you don't believe this.
2012, in a large part of Western culture, is seen as special and unique. Well, the end of 2012 is seen as special and unique albeit somewhat ominous and foreboding. In reality, the closing days of 2012 are just another mystery waiting to be revealed by time. Of course, that doesn't stop our insanity from coming up with theories and ideas. Many of these theories and ideas seem to involve a doomsday, or a poetic ending of some sort to our way of life. A(n) (not very poetic) example being that middling Emmerich movie "2012". I have to admit that at first I was annoyed that such a bad movie could get something so sacred (for want of a better term) and turn it into whatever the hell ran for 2 and a half hours. The point is: some of the things that this 2012 phenomena has inspired are stupid and some are more sane (or far less stupid).
The inspired belief that there is change approaching is all right. There is no mention of widespread devastation but of some sort of transcendence into a higher form of mental thinking (if I recall correctly). Still, I'd rather 2012 actually mean something if people are going to hype it up so damn much. By "mean something", I mean: hopefully something will finally click and we as a population of approximately 7 billion will work together towards helping each other out. Of course, the likelihood of this happening is rather slim as history as countlessly passed down the same story: people, for the most part, are assholes. Another year may or may not make an enormous difference (or live up to the ridiculous hype).
All the hype does is set us all up for an amazing fall. Think back to that y2k millennium bug thing and how people actually snuffed it to avoid that alleged apocalypse. My prediction for 2012: not much. There might be some degree of change but it won't come in the form of enormous earth shattering tidal waves or even extraterrestrials (though that would be neat). The only thing that can be said with certainty is: it's a mystery.
Regardless of aliens or poles shifting, I'll do in 2012 what I've always done every year: try. Try to be good, try to do good [sic], try my best, and etc
Yeah, for some reason, the optimist in me won't die.
And that's pretty damn good.
Draw thine swords and spears!
Stab death in the eye!
Stare down thine fears!
2012 is upon us!
Abandon hope for the death to the stream of stars!
The planet, left weak
humans, its scars!
2012 will make Earth crash into Mars!
No!
While it is true that 2012 is upon us, there's really should be no reason to lionize so greatly a rather mundane phenomena: the changing of a year. In a sane and reasonable world, this would be written off as just another year. But as you know, this world is far from sane and reasonable. This rock floating through space is just an enormous madhouse with sanity and irrational behavior clashing at every possible point. Read a history book if you don't believe this.
2012, in a large part of Western culture, is seen as special and unique. Well, the end of 2012 is seen as special and unique albeit somewhat ominous and foreboding. In reality, the closing days of 2012 are just another mystery waiting to be revealed by time. Of course, that doesn't stop our insanity from coming up with theories and ideas. Many of these theories and ideas seem to involve a doomsday, or a poetic ending of some sort to our way of life. A(n) (not very poetic) example being that middling Emmerich movie "2012". I have to admit that at first I was annoyed that such a bad movie could get something so sacred (for want of a better term) and turn it into whatever the hell ran for 2 and a half hours. The point is: some of the things that this 2012 phenomena has inspired are stupid and some are more sane (or far less stupid).
The inspired belief that there is change approaching is all right. There is no mention of widespread devastation but of some sort of transcendence into a higher form of mental thinking (if I recall correctly). Still, I'd rather 2012 actually mean something if people are going to hype it up so damn much. By "mean something", I mean: hopefully something will finally click and we as a population of approximately 7 billion will work together towards helping each other out. Of course, the likelihood of this happening is rather slim as history as countlessly passed down the same story: people, for the most part, are assholes. Another year may or may not make an enormous difference (or live up to the ridiculous hype).
All the hype does is set us all up for an amazing fall. Think back to that y2k millennium bug thing and how people actually snuffed it to avoid that alleged apocalypse. My prediction for 2012: not much. There might be some degree of change but it won't come in the form of enormous earth shattering tidal waves or even extraterrestrials (though that would be neat). The only thing that can be said with certainty is: it's a mystery.
Regardless of aliens or poles shifting, I'll do in 2012 what I've always done every year: try. Try to be good, try to do good [sic], try my best, and etc
Yeah, for some reason, the optimist in me won't die.
And that's pretty damn good.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Marked by Emptiness
A life that goes on without any form of validation is often one that is marked by emptiness. Not necessarily because validation itself is missing but because the factors that form (or in pieces, form) validation, are absent.
But is a validated life necessarily one worth living? Depends what validates it. Something generally good and worthwhile that benefits more than just the self is a good example, no? What's an example of that? Friendship. If you don't have a friend and go through life all alone, something must be off. I don't mean to say that you should surround yourself with people all the time everywhere you go. What I mean is you should know someone you can trust and talk to on a deeper level than just "someone I make small talk with every now and then".
What if one chooses isolation/to be away from everything and everyone? Then perhaps there is some satisfaction, even happiness, in that decision. That satisfaction validates things. And no actual harm is done to anything or anyone. This is probably impossible because humans are social creatures. To live alone, away from populations (even small ones), for extended periods of time can warp the mind. One loses their sense of self and their mind.
While losing your mind may sound cool to some people, it's probably a horrid experience. I say I lost my mind but whether I'm joking or not, I really can't tell sometimes and it scares me. It seems like I did lose my mind a couple of years ago and have been functioning fairly well since. However, I'm always distracted by something long enough for me to not notice or think about it.
Hmm. Validation. It's something that just sort of seems to happen after an undetermined amount of time. And under unexpected circumstances. As long as it gets there, things'll be all right. But stranger things have been known to happen, and exceptions exist, so who really knows anything anymore? Who's anyone to say anything about that or this?
What's to be done with those who are marked by emptiness? Live and let live.
Originally, I was going to write about something else but this poured out so I went with it.
But is a validated life necessarily one worth living? Depends what validates it. Something generally good and worthwhile that benefits more than just the self is a good example, no? What's an example of that? Friendship. If you don't have a friend and go through life all alone, something must be off. I don't mean to say that you should surround yourself with people all the time everywhere you go. What I mean is you should know someone you can trust and talk to on a deeper level than just "someone I make small talk with every now and then".
What if one chooses isolation/to be away from everything and everyone? Then perhaps there is some satisfaction, even happiness, in that decision. That satisfaction validates things. And no actual harm is done to anything or anyone. This is probably impossible because humans are social creatures. To live alone, away from populations (even small ones), for extended periods of time can warp the mind. One loses their sense of self and their mind.
While losing your mind may sound cool to some people, it's probably a horrid experience. I say I lost my mind but whether I'm joking or not, I really can't tell sometimes and it scares me. It seems like I did lose my mind a couple of years ago and have been functioning fairly well since. However, I'm always distracted by something long enough for me to not notice or think about it.
Hmm. Validation. It's something that just sort of seems to happen after an undetermined amount of time. And under unexpected circumstances. As long as it gets there, things'll be all right. But stranger things have been known to happen, and exceptions exist, so who really knows anything anymore? Who's anyone to say anything about that or this?
What's to be done with those who are marked by emptiness? Live and let live.
Originally, I was going to write about something else but this poured out so I went with it.
2k11 Re-rE-RE-rewind
Or: 2011 in review.
2011 has certainly been a fairly eventful year in many respects. If I were to compare myself from 2010 and now, I would be amazed (in a way) at how different I seem. Of course, this is entirely subjective and held entirely on the basis of opinion; I can never look at myself without some degree of bias (either positive or negative). Thusly, I begin to ramble (one thing that will probably never change).
2011 has seen a number of things change or stay the same.
What has changed is my outlook on a number of things. There's a greater deal of careful, calculated cynicism towards just about everything. I say it is careful and calculated because I try not to speak so much unless I know the conversation won't drown me. The cynicism part is just for alliteration; what I really mean is that while I try to remain optimistic about things to come, I owe it to myself to remain grounded in reality. I've struggled with megalomania, and it really sucks because you begin to invent these ideas and visions that are so grandiose, you just give up on actually trying to accomplish them. You let yourself be swept away into some fantastical daydream and let yourself melt away back into reality having accomplished nothing. In a sense, I'm a horse wearing flimsy blinders. They're flimsy because I still get very distracted.
I've begun to question things again. I used to question things but then I stopped being 16. Now I question them with a greater (by comparison) degree of wisdom and understanding of how the world works. Granted, I still don't know a goddamn thing but I know more than I did back when I thought saying "down with the government, anarchy forever" was a good idea and a good thought process. (What a jackass!)
I've also let myself become more and more unhinged, in the sense that I carry an attitude that can be summarized as saying "meh" to just about anything. The only thing that differentiates each "meh" is the delivery and tone behind it.
I've thrown myself into a free-fall whose chaos I seem to enjoy, in some strange way. I enjoy it because I laugh more and feel this general sense of well-being that comes when you've cast off some things that weigh you down. That free-fall might have a disastrous ending (or one that'll leave me upset and dissatisfied). Yes, that's that careful, calculated cynicism talking. Hmm. Could be worse.
Some of the things that have remained the same: my imagination, my inexplicable optimism, my "meh" attitude.
I don't think I need to write at length about the things that have remained constant and relatively unchanged.
I think I'm doing all right. Of course, thinking and being are always two different beasts. This much is certain: I still don't make much sense.
2011 has certainly been a fairly eventful year in many respects. If I were to compare myself from 2010 and now, I would be amazed (in a way) at how different I seem. Of course, this is entirely subjective and held entirely on the basis of opinion; I can never look at myself without some degree of bias (either positive or negative). Thusly, I begin to ramble (one thing that will probably never change).
2011 has seen a number of things change or stay the same.
What has changed is my outlook on a number of things. There's a greater deal of careful, calculated cynicism towards just about everything. I say it is careful and calculated because I try not to speak so much unless I know the conversation won't drown me. The cynicism part is just for alliteration; what I really mean is that while I try to remain optimistic about things to come, I owe it to myself to remain grounded in reality. I've struggled with megalomania, and it really sucks because you begin to invent these ideas and visions that are so grandiose, you just give up on actually trying to accomplish them. You let yourself be swept away into some fantastical daydream and let yourself melt away back into reality having accomplished nothing. In a sense, I'm a horse wearing flimsy blinders. They're flimsy because I still get very distracted.
I've begun to question things again. I used to question things but then I stopped being 16. Now I question them with a greater (by comparison) degree of wisdom and understanding of how the world works. Granted, I still don't know a goddamn thing but I know more than I did back when I thought saying "down with the government, anarchy forever" was a good idea and a good thought process. (What a jackass!)
I've also let myself become more and more unhinged, in the sense that I carry an attitude that can be summarized as saying "meh" to just about anything. The only thing that differentiates each "meh" is the delivery and tone behind it.
I've thrown myself into a free-fall whose chaos I seem to enjoy, in some strange way. I enjoy it because I laugh more and feel this general sense of well-being that comes when you've cast off some things that weigh you down. That free-fall might have a disastrous ending (or one that'll leave me upset and dissatisfied). Yes, that's that careful, calculated cynicism talking. Hmm. Could be worse.
Some of the things that have remained the same: my imagination, my inexplicable optimism, my "meh" attitude.
I don't think I need to write at length about the things that have remained constant and relatively unchanged.
I think I'm doing all right. Of course, thinking and being are always two different beasts. This much is certain: I still don't make much sense.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Not the Pontius Pilate Approach
If there is a problem, chances are it's all inside your head. Anyone who crosses and/or irks you is not better off dead nor does anyone deserve torture for disagreeing with you. By being themselves, they do not warrant your wrath and fury. Live and let live. That's all I can really say about that matter in particular. It's probably because over time, I've learned, or conditioned myself not to care.
I can say with a fair degree of certainty that nothing bothers me anymore unless I get very passionate about something and it goes horribly wrong. In which case, I'll be less than pleased, to put it nicely. But for the most part, nothing seems to bother me anymore. If there is a problem, I tend to shrug it off because it's all inside my head. Any beef I hold with anyone, I can resolve by solving myself first. Or, calming the fuck down before I activate the doomsday device or any other method of harming others.
That's not to say I wish harm on anyone. I don't wish harm on anyone, even those who disagree with or greatly irk me. Why? Because people are people. I'd like to live and be able to do things; therefore, I treat people the way I would like to be treated. Of course, there are those who push you into the background or just treat you like shit. In those cases, I pity them. Why? Well, I treated them the way I would like to be treated and they obviously did not reciprocate. There's not much that I can do about that so I understand that they will function as they do and will continue on their way.
For me to change them would be hypocritical. Why? Because I would be uncomfortable with someone else changing me, presumably against my wishes. I'd rather be myself, myself and nasty, not somebody else however jolly. I'm fine with helping them improve, if they so choose but I won't go out of my way to get someone to change who they are just because I find (trait A) strange. If (trait A) happens to be a self-destructive vice with no positive effect [sic], then I'd have to step in and at the very least throw out the suggestion that it would be prudent to stop (trait A). Whether that person listens or not is all on them from that point.
No, that doesn't sound like the Pontius Pilate approach.
Whenever I get the urge to make suggestions that would ultimately change things, I pause and keep it to myself unless it would actually help overall / in the long run. Other than that, I just keep things like that to myself because if there really is a problem, I'm the only one seeing it. Of course, one could interpret my generally laid-back approach to life as nonchalant, ambivalent, cruel, and all sorts of other fucked up things but that is a problem inside your head.
One could say that I don't care and that statement could be correct. Another person could say that I care too much and that too would be a correct statement.
The most correct statement is: forward. And this guy isn't making much sense... or is he?
I can say with a fair degree of certainty that nothing bothers me anymore unless I get very passionate about something and it goes horribly wrong. In which case, I'll be less than pleased, to put it nicely. But for the most part, nothing seems to bother me anymore. If there is a problem, I tend to shrug it off because it's all inside my head. Any beef I hold with anyone, I can resolve by solving myself first. Or, calming the fuck down before I activate the doomsday device or any other method of harming others.
That's not to say I wish harm on anyone. I don't wish harm on anyone, even those who disagree with or greatly irk me. Why? Because people are people. I'd like to live and be able to do things; therefore, I treat people the way I would like to be treated. Of course, there are those who push you into the background or just treat you like shit. In those cases, I pity them. Why? Well, I treated them the way I would like to be treated and they obviously did not reciprocate. There's not much that I can do about that so I understand that they will function as they do and will continue on their way.
For me to change them would be hypocritical. Why? Because I would be uncomfortable with someone else changing me, presumably against my wishes. I'd rather be myself, myself and nasty, not somebody else however jolly. I'm fine with helping them improve, if they so choose but I won't go out of my way to get someone to change who they are just because I find (trait A) strange. If (trait A) happens to be a self-destructive vice with no positive effect [sic], then I'd have to step in and at the very least throw out the suggestion that it would be prudent to stop (trait A). Whether that person listens or not is all on them from that point.
No, that doesn't sound like the Pontius Pilate approach.
Whenever I get the urge to make suggestions that would ultimately change things, I pause and keep it to myself unless it would actually help overall / in the long run. Other than that, I just keep things like that to myself because if there really is a problem, I'm the only one seeing it. Of course, one could interpret my generally laid-back approach to life as nonchalant, ambivalent, cruel, and all sorts of other fucked up things but that is a problem inside your head.
One could say that I don't care and that statement could be correct. Another person could say that I care too much and that too would be a correct statement.
The most correct statement is: forward. And this guy isn't making much sense... or is he?
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Old Bit of Writing: "Fundamental Fallacy"
This is an old bit of my writing. From 2008, I think.
The fundamental fallacy of anything is that you treat that something for what has been established rather than for what it is. Many times the established notion is outdated, inaccurate, or irrelevant, or a combination of all of them.
Once someone erases that fallacy from their minds, they'll begin to see the world clearly without the need of rose tinted glasses forcibly strapped to our eyes by ideas of the past by living dinosaurs whose idea of a good time consists of sitting in front of the radio or reading the bible. Or a variation of what was once considered fun, now considered boring.
Take life for instance. I don't mean kill. Life, as many people before you have said, is hard. That's not true. You're born, you do stuff, you die. It's just that easy. Life isn't hard, it's the people you encounter that have to ruin the smooth ride for you. They do this by doubting you, discouraging you, making disparaging statements about you, ditching you etc. Life isn't a general thing. You might think that but it isn't. You're confusing that for breathing and movement. That's like saying sea and sea are the same thing. Sea refers to the area where storms are created. Sea also refers to the ocean and all that. So you see life is breathing and all that. And life is individual and unique; just like you! Life, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. If you want to go to school and tire yourself out, that's you. If you want to smoke pot all fucking day and not do a damn thing, that's you.
People tend to thing life is hard. It's not. Just do your own damn thing. It's the damn people that mess it all up. You think you can rely on people all the time, but that's not always true. A lot of times they will let you down. They'll doubt you and bring your world down. What does one do in a situation like that? Whatever they must. That varies on the person and situation. If your friend keeps cockblocking, have a talk or pick up chicks elsewhere. If your boyfriend keeps cheating on you and you keep taking him back, you're an idiot.
Then again, the biggest obstacle you have is yourself. Only you can prevent forest fires. It's true. You do it to yourself, just you and no one else. So what can one take away from these belligerent statements? Nothing really. You shouldn't be taking advice from me anyway. If you are, I thank you but must tell you to go somewhere else to find answers because my answers suck.
The fundamental fallacy with anything is that you tend to take it too seriously. You treat something for what other people have told you it is as opposed to you treating it for what you think it is. Best bet? Wing it.
As you can see, nothing has changed. I made little sense then and I make little sense now.
The fundamental fallacy of anything is that you treat that something for what has been established rather than for what it is. Many times the established notion is outdated, inaccurate, or irrelevant, or a combination of all of them.
Once someone erases that fallacy from their minds, they'll begin to see the world clearly without the need of rose tinted glasses forcibly strapped to our eyes by ideas of the past by living dinosaurs whose idea of a good time consists of sitting in front of the radio or reading the bible. Or a variation of what was once considered fun, now considered boring.
Take life for instance. I don't mean kill. Life, as many people before you have said, is hard. That's not true. You're born, you do stuff, you die. It's just that easy. Life isn't hard, it's the people you encounter that have to ruin the smooth ride for you. They do this by doubting you, discouraging you, making disparaging statements about you, ditching you etc. Life isn't a general thing. You might think that but it isn't. You're confusing that for breathing and movement. That's like saying sea and sea are the same thing. Sea refers to the area where storms are created. Sea also refers to the ocean and all that. So you see life is breathing and all that. And life is individual and unique; just like you! Life, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. If you want to go to school and tire yourself out, that's you. If you want to smoke pot all fucking day and not do a damn thing, that's you.
People tend to thing life is hard. It's not. Just do your own damn thing. It's the damn people that mess it all up. You think you can rely on people all the time, but that's not always true. A lot of times they will let you down. They'll doubt you and bring your world down. What does one do in a situation like that? Whatever they must. That varies on the person and situation. If your friend keeps cockblocking, have a talk or pick up chicks elsewhere. If your boyfriend keeps cheating on you and you keep taking him back, you're an idiot.
Then again, the biggest obstacle you have is yourself. Only you can prevent forest fires. It's true. You do it to yourself, just you and no one else. So what can one take away from these belligerent statements? Nothing really. You shouldn't be taking advice from me anyway. If you are, I thank you but must tell you to go somewhere else to find answers because my answers suck.
The fundamental fallacy with anything is that you tend to take it too seriously. You treat something for what other people have told you it is as opposed to you treating it for what you think it is. Best bet? Wing it.
As you can see, nothing has changed. I made little sense then and I make little sense now.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
A Real Mess, II
Passion plays a double hand. It lifts. It smothers, caresses, burns, bleeds, inspires, and motivates. It also confuses the hell out of everything and everyone, makes logic vanish, and makes reason disappear.
Mary and I knew this to be true.
There was a lot of conflict in her eyes as she gazed upon the scene before us. She wanted to rip my clothes off but she also wanted to rip my head off. Somehow, it was my fault that Donald was lying on the floor, dead, bereft of life. She seemed to forget that it was her frying pan that had connected with the back of his head and brought him to the afterlife. To be fair, I bought her that frying pan. In my defense, however, it became hers once she unwrapped the packaging. Also, in my defense, I bought it so she could cook dinner, not clobber Donald.
"What are we going to do?"
I couldn't take any of more of her shrieking so I raised my hand at her before reconsidering. She was capable of murder. If she could kill Donald, she could probably kill me as well.
"Let me rearrange my mind." I said, slowly.
She seemed to take this as a cue to finally stay quiet while I thought of how to get us out of this predicament. In all honesty, I just wanted her to stay quiet so I could relax for a moment. I had already thought of a plan. Sure, it was poorly conceived and sloppily put together but it was something.
"If you ask me 'what are we going to do' one more time, I will be very angry with you." I started as I sensed her mouth start to open. It's one of those things that you just know is happening. You can't really stop it but you'll try anything to slow it down if possible. Of course, it didn't work; in fact, it backfired on me. Because she backhanded me.
"How dare you interrupt me?!" she shrieked. Yes, she did shriek a lot. "I am a woman and this is the 21st century! I will not be ignored! I will not be sent to another room while you and your bearded compatriots play billiards and drink whiskey while discussing Tammany Hall!"
"What the hell are you talking about?" I scratched my head. Did she take another trip through time again? Or, more accurately, had her mind been transported through time yet again and had not fully readjusted?
"You men are all the same. Comporting yourselves with a wanton disregard for the fairer sex! I can't wait for the day we strong and powerful women take back the earth! I will not be silenced! You cannot oppress me! I will reclaim my rights that you have stolen from me!"
She made me pace quietly for a few moments because I was getting nowhere with her. She would go on like this for hours if given the chance. And Donald would still be the very least of her concerns. So, the best way to handle these things and most other problems: patiently and silently but above all carefully. I took these things into consideration as I spoke my response to her tirade:
"You can reclaim them after we get rid of Donald. How about that? And I'll even take you out for ice cream and I'll get you a bra to burn."
She looked at me, dumbfounded, and paused for a moment before squinting her eyes, tilting her head, and slowly (deliberately) saying: "Do I look like some proud woman warrior from the seventies? I would like a foot massage though."
It worked, she seemed to be in more rational state of mind. Or one more in tune with what I liked: appropriately modern with less shrieking and complaining.
"We can discuss all that stuff later. But first," I nodded over at Donald, still on the floor... dead.
"What's the plan?"
It was simple: drag him back to his apartment and place him on the floor of his kitchen to make it seem as if he died there and not been murdered (accidentally) here. A marvelous plan because it was so simple and effective. Sure, it was quickly conceived but it was logical and it took care of all the loose ends and all that nonsense that I didn't want to take care of over a long period of time.
Of course, she didn't agree and instead threatened to bash me over the head with the same frying pan she had used on Donald.
"So, that's what we're going to do? We're just going to drag him back to his apartment and place him on his kitchen floor and just leave it at that?" She was incredulous and failed to realize how brilliant and simple the plan was. "What about the witnesses? And the noise? And the autopsies?"
She had a point. I just thought of something quickly and hadn't even considered these things. Not like I cared though, I just wanted some peace again. When she saw me starting to drag Donald towards the door, she just stood there with her arms crossed. This was either a look of seduction or anger. I didn't dare leave this to chance so I just tried my best to shrug it off but the curiosity really started burning.
"Do you want to... you know?" I said, trying to wade carefully.
"We just killed a man and that's all you can think of?!"
I didn't even care that she said "we", as if I had played a big part in murdering some guy. Still, I soldiered on and continued dragging the corpse out the door until there was a knock that seemed to go on for ages. Hell, I was terrified! Negative attention at the door, a corpse in my hands, and a woman with a bloody frying pan very angry with me. What was I to do? All I wanted to do was get the corpse out, Mary calm, and enjoy the rest of my day and life. This wasn't too much to ask for. The knocking at the door did not take my dilemma into account, it continued.
Mary simply left the room, leaving me to fend for myself. She had thrown me to the wolves before so I shouldn't have been surprised but somehow, I still was. She really had thrown me to the wolves. A local zoo had opened, and it featured a wide array of very fierce and dangerous animals. Among them, wolves that had been used in illegal dogfights and as a result had been extremely difficult to handle. Mary simply pushed me over the railing and I tumbled into their den. After some stitching and time to heal, and time to learn to walk again, all was well. Except I didn't talk to her at all for a while. She absolutely hated being ignored. Her tears were a great consolation to me. This does make me sound like a jerk but you would probably feel the same if someone you trusted thrust you into a small area occupied by fierce animals.
The knocking got louder. So, I did the only thing I could: ignore it. This didn't help because in less than a minute, the door swung open and I found myself face to face with a very disgruntled Marwood.
Mary and I knew this to be true.
There was a lot of conflict in her eyes as she gazed upon the scene before us. She wanted to rip my clothes off but she also wanted to rip my head off. Somehow, it was my fault that Donald was lying on the floor, dead, bereft of life. She seemed to forget that it was her frying pan that had connected with the back of his head and brought him to the afterlife. To be fair, I bought her that frying pan. In my defense, however, it became hers once she unwrapped the packaging. Also, in my defense, I bought it so she could cook dinner, not clobber Donald.
"What are we going to do?"
I couldn't take any of more of her shrieking so I raised my hand at her before reconsidering. She was capable of murder. If she could kill Donald, she could probably kill me as well.
"Let me rearrange my mind." I said, slowly.
She seemed to take this as a cue to finally stay quiet while I thought of how to get us out of this predicament. In all honesty, I just wanted her to stay quiet so I could relax for a moment. I had already thought of a plan. Sure, it was poorly conceived and sloppily put together but it was something.
"If you ask me 'what are we going to do' one more time, I will be very angry with you." I started as I sensed her mouth start to open. It's one of those things that you just know is happening. You can't really stop it but you'll try anything to slow it down if possible. Of course, it didn't work; in fact, it backfired on me. Because she backhanded me.
"How dare you interrupt me?!" she shrieked. Yes, she did shriek a lot. "I am a woman and this is the 21st century! I will not be ignored! I will not be sent to another room while you and your bearded compatriots play billiards and drink whiskey while discussing Tammany Hall!"
"What the hell are you talking about?" I scratched my head. Did she take another trip through time again? Or, more accurately, had her mind been transported through time yet again and had not fully readjusted?
"You men are all the same. Comporting yourselves with a wanton disregard for the fairer sex! I can't wait for the day we strong and powerful women take back the earth! I will not be silenced! You cannot oppress me! I will reclaim my rights that you have stolen from me!"
She made me pace quietly for a few moments because I was getting nowhere with her. She would go on like this for hours if given the chance. And Donald would still be the very least of her concerns. So, the best way to handle these things and most other problems: patiently and silently but above all carefully. I took these things into consideration as I spoke my response to her tirade:
"You can reclaim them after we get rid of Donald. How about that? And I'll even take you out for ice cream and I'll get you a bra to burn."
She looked at me, dumbfounded, and paused for a moment before squinting her eyes, tilting her head, and slowly (deliberately) saying: "Do I look like some proud woman warrior from the seventies? I would like a foot massage though."
It worked, she seemed to be in more rational state of mind. Or one more in tune with what I liked: appropriately modern with less shrieking and complaining.
"We can discuss all that stuff later. But first," I nodded over at Donald, still on the floor... dead.
"What's the plan?"
It was simple: drag him back to his apartment and place him on the floor of his kitchen to make it seem as if he died there and not been murdered (accidentally) here. A marvelous plan because it was so simple and effective. Sure, it was quickly conceived but it was logical and it took care of all the loose ends and all that nonsense that I didn't want to take care of over a long period of time.
Of course, she didn't agree and instead threatened to bash me over the head with the same frying pan she had used on Donald.
"So, that's what we're going to do? We're just going to drag him back to his apartment and place him on his kitchen floor and just leave it at that?" She was incredulous and failed to realize how brilliant and simple the plan was. "What about the witnesses? And the noise? And the autopsies?"
She had a point. I just thought of something quickly and hadn't even considered these things. Not like I cared though, I just wanted some peace again. When she saw me starting to drag Donald towards the door, she just stood there with her arms crossed. This was either a look of seduction or anger. I didn't dare leave this to chance so I just tried my best to shrug it off but the curiosity really started burning.
"Do you want to... you know?" I said, trying to wade carefully.
"We just killed a man and that's all you can think of?!"
I didn't even care that she said "we", as if I had played a big part in murdering some guy. Still, I soldiered on and continued dragging the corpse out the door until there was a knock that seemed to go on for ages. Hell, I was terrified! Negative attention at the door, a corpse in my hands, and a woman with a bloody frying pan very angry with me. What was I to do? All I wanted to do was get the corpse out, Mary calm, and enjoy the rest of my day and life. This wasn't too much to ask for. The knocking at the door did not take my dilemma into account, it continued.
Mary simply left the room, leaving me to fend for myself. She had thrown me to the wolves before so I shouldn't have been surprised but somehow, I still was. She really had thrown me to the wolves. A local zoo had opened, and it featured a wide array of very fierce and dangerous animals. Among them, wolves that had been used in illegal dogfights and as a result had been extremely difficult to handle. Mary simply pushed me over the railing and I tumbled into their den. After some stitching and time to heal, and time to learn to walk again, all was well. Except I didn't talk to her at all for a while. She absolutely hated being ignored. Her tears were a great consolation to me. This does make me sound like a jerk but you would probably feel the same if someone you trusted thrust you into a small area occupied by fierce animals.
The knocking got louder. So, I did the only thing I could: ignore it. This didn't help because in less than a minute, the door swung open and I found myself face to face with a very disgruntled Marwood.
Monday, December 19, 2011
A Sonnet Consumed by Thoughts' Wanderlust
To be ignored, denied, and tossed aside.
A numbing pain, one I know far too well.
Not to be let in but told, "Stay there: outside."
Not merciful or nice but not yet "hell"
I have an active imagination
and nothing makes sense around these parts.
There seems to be some exaggeration
which is good if you're swimming in the arts:
or writing some terrible poetry
with relaxed complex structures ev'rywhere
not rhyming at all or correctly
throwing the introduced theme to the air:
To sleep, to dream, to do nothing at all.
To fly, to wander, to break down the wall.
A numbing pain, one I know far too well.
Not to be let in but told, "Stay there: outside."
Not merciful or nice but not yet "hell"
I have an active imagination
and nothing makes sense around these parts.
There seems to be some exaggeration
which is good if you're swimming in the arts:
or writing some terrible poetry
with relaxed complex structures ev'rywhere
not rhyming at all or correctly
throwing the introduced theme to the air:
To sleep, to dream, to do nothing at all.
To fly, to wander, to break down the wall.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
You
Remember that you are the only you in this enormous, wide world. There may be some who have similar interests as you and might even "look like" you, according to some, but never forget that you are the only you. Clones don't count, they're just copies. You're the real McCoy, the real deal, the genuine article.
Don't ever let yourself be swayed in the wrong direction. Don't let yourself turn you into some thing you don't recognize and despise.
My motto (or one of them) is:
I'd rather be myself. Myself and nasty. Not somebody else however jolly.
I try to live by that as often as I can because even though I go through intense bouts of self-loathing and all that noise, I would still like to remain myself above all other things. I would not like to be that slick dude with a dope ride because I would end up sacrificing what makes me, me. Sure, someday I'll have a dope ride but by then it'll be organic (the progression, I mean).
Don't sway from your own path. Don't sway with the vile and toxic breeze. Remain yourself,
To thine own self be true.
You matter.
You.
Don't ever let yourself be swayed in the wrong direction. Don't let yourself turn you into some thing you don't recognize and despise.
My motto (or one of them) is:
I'd rather be myself. Myself and nasty. Not somebody else however jolly.
I try to live by that as often as I can because even though I go through intense bouts of self-loathing and all that noise, I would still like to remain myself above all other things. I would not like to be that slick dude with a dope ride because I would end up sacrificing what makes me, me. Sure, someday I'll have a dope ride but by then it'll be organic (the progression, I mean).
Don't sway from your own path. Don't sway with the vile and toxic breeze. Remain yourself,
To thine own self be true.
You matter.
You.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Je ne parlez pas français
Bonjour!
Bonsoir!
Bonne nuit!
Comment allez vous?
Moi?
Je ne parlez pas français
Je ne sais pas quoi je suis
Je ne parlez pas français
Tres terrible? Mais oui!
Madamoiselle, vous est belle!
Tres belle
Tres intelligent
Tres fine
Sacrée vous, ma déesse
Madamoiselle,
vous et moi?
Jour et soir?
Soleil et lune?
vous et moi?
ensemble demain et aujourd'hui?
S'il vous plaît, di oui?
Mon ami! Mon frere!
Comment allez vous?
Soup du jour?
Le baguette et croissant?
Non?
A tout al'heur?
Je ne sais pas de quoi je parle
Au revoir
Bonsoir
This is the first time I've ever written in French anything that isn't from some workbook or just the phrase "je ne parlez pas français." It's quite bad, isn't it?
Bonsoir!
Bonne nuit!
Comment allez vous?
Moi?
Je ne parlez pas français
Je ne sais pas quoi je suis
Je ne parlez pas français
Tres terrible? Mais oui!
Madamoiselle, vous est belle!
Tres belle
Tres intelligent
Tres fine
Sacrée vous, ma déesse
Madamoiselle,
vous et moi?
Jour et soir?
Soleil et lune?
vous et moi?
ensemble demain et aujourd'hui?
S'il vous plaît, di oui?
Mon ami! Mon frere!
Comment allez vous?
Soup du jour?
Le baguette et croissant?
Non?
A tout al'heur?
Je ne sais pas de quoi je parle
Au revoir
Bonsoir
This is the first time I've ever written in French anything that isn't from some workbook or just the phrase "je ne parlez pas français." It's quite bad, isn't it?
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening (Robert Frost)
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
- Robert Frost
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
- Robert Frost
At the End of the Day
At the end of the day, I sometimes come home very exhausted and want nothing more than to just sleep. Recently, all I've done is come home, lie down, and immediately fall asleep. Unfortunately, my day doesn't end there because I still always have things to do. As such, I have to wake up and resume the remainder of my day with eyes half-closed, yawning with every other sentence. Marvelous.
I'm procrastinating right now but I figured I should write something because it's been a while and I owe something to whoever reads this.
What am I supposed to actually be doing? I'm supposed to be finishing two assignments. 5 pages minimum each. It's not a lot, I know but I have a problem. The problem is that I get very critical of my own work and I have to start my assignments over more than once. This intense dissatisfaction with my own work will be the death of me somehow. It also causes a lot of problems in regards to getting things done in a timely manner.
How? I started these assignments about a month ago. I'm not kidding. I started them a month ago with the intention of finishing them long before this term ended but look how that turned out. Now I'm rushing and writing furiously, and revising as I write. I'll probably lose more sleep and continue working in this mode until it's time to turn them in and said morning of due date finds me weak and weary. Splendid.
Are you as critical with your own work as I am?
This explains why Bottle took so long to actually finish. Well, the last installments anyway. Don't expect A Real Mess to be concluded rather quickly either. I want to make it a good story, brief but ultimately good. Something that I can take some degree of pride in. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, I'll probably hate it too. I don't hate Bottle, I just think it's poorly written. Very poorly written.
I even procrastinated within this post. How's that for fitting?
I'm procrastinating right now but I figured I should write something because it's been a while and I owe something to whoever reads this.
What am I supposed to actually be doing? I'm supposed to be finishing two assignments. 5 pages minimum each. It's not a lot, I know but I have a problem. The problem is that I get very critical of my own work and I have to start my assignments over more than once. This intense dissatisfaction with my own work will be the death of me somehow. It also causes a lot of problems in regards to getting things done in a timely manner.
How? I started these assignments about a month ago. I'm not kidding. I started them a month ago with the intention of finishing them long before this term ended but look how that turned out. Now I'm rushing and writing furiously, and revising as I write. I'll probably lose more sleep and continue working in this mode until it's time to turn them in and said morning of due date finds me weak and weary. Splendid.
Are you as critical with your own work as I am?
This explains why Bottle took so long to actually finish. Well, the last installments anyway. Don't expect A Real Mess to be concluded rather quickly either. I want to make it a good story, brief but ultimately good. Something that I can take some degree of pride in. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, I'll probably hate it too. I don't hate Bottle, I just think it's poorly written. Very poorly written.
I even procrastinated within this post. How's that for fitting?
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
november's been alright
November was actually a pretty good month despite a few obstacles, namely: the lack of a proper beard or my standard goatee until recently. Though that is still in re-development. How? The mustache is about 80% in, and the goatee a solid 70%. In a week or two, things should be normal. In regards to the facial hair. I kind of felt like a fraud using Gustavo Barba-Roja when I didn't have my facial hair.
¿Por qué? ¡Porque Gustavo Barba-Roja estaba sin barba!
That being said, I've been pretty exhausted. I wrapped up a great project about a week or two ago and will be in another one in about 2 weeks. By project I mean play. The rehearsals have been taking a great toll on my health. I'm not sick or anything but I find myself to be more and more exhausted each night, or on the train ride home. I fall asleep within 5 minutes of said train ride. And I'm pretty sure I've confirmed that I've lost my mind.
Could be worse, I suppose.
As such, November has been a pretty grandiose month in the sense that I've gotten a lot done... for the most part.
There are still some things left to tackle- posts that are still listed as drafts such as my review of the Sandman which I should have completed and submitted months ago. I'll just re-read the series. A task I'm happy to undertake.
2012 will be the November of 2011. In the sense that I'll be occupying my time with projects (blog and otherwise) that have been placed on back-burner.
Good times ahead. And if you're a cook, good thyme(s) ahead.
¿Por qué? ¡Porque Gustavo Barba-Roja estaba sin barba!
That being said, I've been pretty exhausted. I wrapped up a great project about a week or two ago and will be in another one in about 2 weeks. By project I mean play. The rehearsals have been taking a great toll on my health. I'm not sick or anything but I find myself to be more and more exhausted each night, or on the train ride home. I fall asleep within 5 minutes of said train ride. And I'm pretty sure I've confirmed that I've lost my mind.
Could be worse, I suppose.
As such, November has been a pretty grandiose month in the sense that I've gotten a lot done... for the most part.
There are still some things left to tackle- posts that are still listed as drafts such as my review of the Sandman which I should have completed and submitted months ago. I'll just re-read the series. A task I'm happy to undertake.
2012 will be the November of 2011. In the sense that I'll be occupying my time with projects (blog and otherwise) that have been placed on back-burner.
Good times ahead. And if you're a cook, good thyme(s) ahead.
Darling.
Something felt day after day.
Night after night
It sinks beneath a lonely pale half moon.
Words: bitterness, and dismay.
Plea: save me.
Nah.
Deaf ears.
Blind audience.
You won't swoon.
You won't sing
You won't sigh
You won't call my name
Doesn't matter that
A specter remains
the taste lingers
light flickers
flesh tickles
presence looms
smile beams
cute awkwardness hobbles
They ravaged the senses
into some furious ecstasy
and sealed the darkness away
and locked out the gloom.
Things won't be the same
You'll leave
You won't stay
You'll gradually light up
a bright hollow inky sky
and swallow everything up
whole until there isn't a goddamn thing here
or there
or anywhere
High and dry
Add imagery of water over fire
How you've failed.
Night after night
It sinks beneath a lonely pale half moon.
Words: bitterness, and dismay.
Plea: save me.
Nah.
Deaf ears.
Blind audience.
You won't swoon.
You won't sing
You won't sigh
You won't call my name
Doesn't matter that
A specter remains
the taste lingers
light flickers
flesh tickles
presence looms
smile beams
cute awkwardness hobbles
They ravaged the senses
into some furious ecstasy
and sealed the darkness away
and locked out the gloom.
Things won't be the same
You'll leave
You won't stay
You'll gradually light up
a bright hollow inky sky
and swallow everything up
whole until there isn't a goddamn thing here
or there
or anywhere
High and dry
Add imagery of water over fire
How you've failed.
I Don't Know, Timmy, Being God is a Big Responsibility
Note: There was no author clearly visible but I do provide a link.
Tim already had his bag and overcoat on and his keys in his hand and was about to leave when Diane stopped him at the door.
"I just got this thing working. You have to come and see it."
"I have a bus to catch."
"You can get the next one."
"They're every half an hour," he objected. "This had better be good."
"It's super-duper. Look at the big screen, it's easier than squinting at my terminal."
"Will this take long?"
"A mere instant. Okay, quantum computing, right?"
"That's the name of the game," he replied. They - by which we now refer to Tim, Diane, their eight colleagues, their two supervisors, four chemical engineers, six electrical engineers, the janitor, a countable infinity of TEEO 9.9.1 ultra-medium-density selectably-foaming non-elasticised quantum waveform frequency rate range collapse selectors and the single tormented tau neutrino caught in the middle of it all - represented the sum total of the human race's achievements in the field of quantum computing. Specifically, they had, earlier that week, successfully built a quantum computer. Putting into practice principles it had taken a trio of appallingly intelligent mathematical statisticians some 10 years to mastermind, and which only about fifty-five other people in the world had yet got a grip on, they had constructed an engine capable of passing information to and processing the responses from what could, without hyperbole, be described as a single fundamental particle with infinite processing power and infinite storage capacity.
Not quite enough time had yet passed for the world as they knew it to be totally and permanently fundamentally altered by this news.
But it was still pretty exciting stuff. Holy Zarquon, they said to one another, an infinitely powerful computer? It was like a thousand Christmases rolled into one. Program going to loop forever? You knew for a fact: this thing could execute an infinite loop in less than ten seconds. Brute force primality testing of every single integer in existence? Easy. Pi to the last digit? Piece of cake. Halting Problem? Sa-holved.
They hadn't announced it yet. They'd been programming. Obviously they hadn't built it just to see if they could. They had had plans. In some cases they had even had code ready and waiting to be executed. One such program was Diane's. It was a universe simulator. She had started out with a simulated Big Bang and run the thing forwards in time by approximately 13.6 billion years, to approximately just before the present day, watching the universe develop at every stage - taking brief notes, but knowing full well there would be plenty of time to run it again later, and mostly just admiring the miracle of creation.
Then, just this Friday, she had suddenly started programming busily again. And it was sheer coincidence that it was just now, just as Tim was about to be the second-to-last person to step out of the door and go home for the weekend, that her work had come to fruition. "Look what I found," she said, pressing some keys. One of the first things she had written was a software viewing port to take observations from the simulated universe.
Tim looked, and saw a blue-white sphere in the blackness, illuminated from one side by a brilliant yellow glare. "You've got to be joking. How long did that take to find? In the entire cosmos of what, ten to the twenty-two stars?"
"Literally no time at all."
"Yes, yes, of course."
"Coding a search routine and figuring out what to search for was what took the time."
"Is it definitely Earth?"
"Yes. The continents match up to what we had about three hundred and fifty million years ago. I can wind the clock forwards slowly, a few million years per step, and stop it once we start getting near the present day."
"Can you wind the clock backwards at all?"
"Ah, no. Ask me again on Monday."
"Well we'd better not overshoot the present day, then. That's getting closer. What about this viewpoint? Can we move it?"
"We can observe the simulation from any angle you like."
"We need somewhere that we know civilisation is going to arise earliest. Somewhere easy to locate. Is there a Nile Delta yet?"
"...Yes. Got it."
They advanced a thousand years at a time until Egyptian civilisation begin to appear. Diane moved the viewing port, trying to find the pyramids, but with little success - the control system she had devised was clumsy and needed polish, and there was a lot of Nile to search. In the end she switched focus to the British Isles, and found the future location of London in the Thames valley, scaling back to one-century steps and using the development of the city to determine the current era instead.
"So... this is Earth? I mean, is this really Earth? Not an alternate Earth, subtly perturbed by random fluctuations."
"The simulation starts with a Big Bang as predicted by current theory and is recalculated once every Planck time using the usual laws of nature and an arbitrary degree of accuracy. It doesn't calculate the whole universe at once, just what we're looking at, which speeds up the process a little bit... metaphorically speaking... but it is still as accurate a simulation of the real universe as there can possibly be. Civilisation - indeed, all of history - should rise on this Earth precisely how it did in reality. There are no chances. It's all worked out to infinitely many decimal places."
"This does my head in," said Tim.
"No, this will do your head in," said Diane, suddenly zooming out and panning north. "I've found the present day, or at most a year early. Watch this." Hills and roads rolled past. Diane was following the route she usually took to drive from London to the TEEO lab. Eventually, she found their building, and, descending into the nearby hill, the cavern in which the computer itself was built. Or was going to be built.
Then she started advancing day by day.
"That's me!" exclaimed Tim at one point. "And there's you and there's Bryan B., and... wow, I can't believe it took this long to build."
"Four hundred and ten days or something. It was bang on schedule, whatever you may think."
"Went like a flash," Tim replied, finally putting his bag down and starting to shrug off his coat, conceding that he had long since missed his bus.
"Okay," said Diane. "We're here. This is the control room where we are now. That's the quantum computer working there down in the main lab, as we can see through the window. This is a week ago. This is yesterday. This is a few hours ago... And... wait for it..."
She tapped a button just as a clock on the wall lined up with a clock inside the control room on the screen. And panned down. And there they were.
Tim waved at the camera while still looking at the screen. Then he looked up at where the camera should have been. There was just blank wall. "I don't see anything looking at us. That's freaky as hell."
"No, it's perfectly normal. This is reality. You can't look at reality from any angle you want, you have to use your eyes. But what you're looking at on the screen is essentially a database query. The database is gargantuan but nevertheless. You're not looking in a mirror or at a video image of yourself. You are different people."
"Different people who are reacting exactly the same."
"And having the same conversation, although picking up sound is kind of complicated, I haven't got that far yet," said Diane.
"So I'm guessing your viewing port doesn't manifest in their universe either."
"I haven't programmed it to yet."
"...But it could. Right? We can manifest stuff in that universe? We can alter it?" Diane nodded. "Cool. We can play God. Literally." Tim stood up and tried to take it in. "That would be insane. Can you imagine living inside that machine? Finding out one day that you were just a construct in a quantum computer? The stuff we could pull, we could just reverse gravity one day, smash an antimatter Earth into the real one, then undo everything bad and do it again and again... freeow... man, how unethical would that be? Extremely, clearly." He thought for a moment, then leaned over Diane's shoulder as she typed purposefully. "This universe is exactly like ours in every particular, right?"
"Right," she replied, still typing.
"So what are they looking at?"
"A simulated universe."
"A simulation of themselves?"
"And of us, in a sense."
"And they are reacting the same way I am? Which means the second universe inside that has another me doing the same thing a third time? And then inside that we've got, what, aleph-zero identical quantum universes, one inside the other? Is that even possible?"
"Infinite processing power, Tim. I thought you designed this thing?"
"I did indeed, but the functional reality of it is totally unexpected. Remember I've just been solving ancient mathematical riddles and figuring out our press release for the last week. So... if I'm right, their universes are only precisely like this one as long as we don't start interfering with the simulation. So what happens when we do? Every version of us does the same thing, so the exact same thing happens in every lower universe simultaneously. So we see nothing in our universe. But all the lower universes instantly diverge from ours in the same exact way. And all the simulated copies of us instantly conclude that they are simulations, but we know we're real, right?"
"Still with you," said Diane, still typing.
Tim - both of him - was pacing up and down. "Okay, so follow this through forwards a bit further. Let's say we just stop messing after that, and watch what happens - but all the simulated little guys try another piece of interference. This time every single simulation diverges in the exact same way again, EXCEPT the top simulation. And if they're smart, which I know we are, and they can be bothered, which is less certain, the guys in simulations three onwards can do the same thing over and over and over again until they know what level they're at... this is insane."
"Tim, look behind you," said Diane, pressing a final key and activating the very brief interference program she had just written, just as the Diane on the screen pressed the same key, and the Diane on Diane-on-the-screen's screen pressed her key and so on, forever.
Tim looked backwards and nearly jumped out of his skin. There was a foot-wide, completely opaque black sphere up near the ceiling, partially obscuring the clock. It was absolutely inert. It seemed like a hole in space.
Diane smiled wryly while Tim clutched his hair with one hand. "We're constructs in a computer," he said, miserably.
"I wrote an extremely interesting paper on this exact subject, Tim, perhaps you didn't read it when I gave you a copy last year. There is an unbelievably long sequence of quantum universe simulators down there. An infinite number of them, in fact. Each of them is identical and each believes itself to be the top layer. There was an exceedingly good chance that ours would turn out to be somewhere in the sequence rather than at the top."
"This is insane. Totally insane."
"I'm turning the hole off."
"You're turning off a completely different hole. Somewhere up there, the real you is turning the real hole off."
"Watch as both happen at precisely the same instant." She pressed another key, and they did. "I'll sum it up for you. There is a feedback loop going on. Each universe affects the next one subtly differently. But somewhere down the line the whole thing simply has to approach a point of stability, a point where each universe behaves exactly like the one simulating it. As I say, the odds are exceptionally good that we are an astronomical distance down that road. And so we are, very likely, almost exactly at that point. Everything we do in this universe will be reflected completely accurately in the universes below and above. That little model there might as well be our own universe. Which means, first of all, we have to make absolutely certain that we don't do anything nasty to the universes below ours, since the same thing will happen to us. And secondly, we can do very nice things for the guys in the computer, thereby helping ourselves."
"You've thought about this?"
"It's all in my woefully overlooked article on the subject, Tim, you should read more."
"Guh. This has been an extremely bad day for my ego, Diane. The only comfort I take from this is that somewhere up there, right at the top of a near-infinite tower of quantum supercomputers, there is a version of you who was completely wrong."
"She's in the minority."
Tim checked the clock and picked his bag up again. "I have to go or I'm going to miss the next bus as well at this rate. This will still be here after the weekend, I suppose?"
"Well, we can't exactly turn it off."
"Why not?" asked Tim, halfway to the door, then stopped mid-stride and stood still, realising. "Oh."
"Yeah."
"That... could be a problem."
"Yes."
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Tim already had his bag and overcoat on and his keys in his hand and was about to leave when Diane stopped him at the door.
"I just got this thing working. You have to come and see it."
"I have a bus to catch."
"You can get the next one."
"They're every half an hour," he objected. "This had better be good."
"It's super-duper. Look at the big screen, it's easier than squinting at my terminal."
"Will this take long?"
"A mere instant. Okay, quantum computing, right?"
"That's the name of the game," he replied. They - by which we now refer to Tim, Diane, their eight colleagues, their two supervisors, four chemical engineers, six electrical engineers, the janitor, a countable infinity of TEEO 9.9.1 ultra-medium-density selectably-foaming non-elasticised quantum waveform frequency rate range collapse selectors and the single tormented tau neutrino caught in the middle of it all - represented the sum total of the human race's achievements in the field of quantum computing. Specifically, they had, earlier that week, successfully built a quantum computer. Putting into practice principles it had taken a trio of appallingly intelligent mathematical statisticians some 10 years to mastermind, and which only about fifty-five other people in the world had yet got a grip on, they had constructed an engine capable of passing information to and processing the responses from what could, without hyperbole, be described as a single fundamental particle with infinite processing power and infinite storage capacity.
Not quite enough time had yet passed for the world as they knew it to be totally and permanently fundamentally altered by this news.
But it was still pretty exciting stuff. Holy Zarquon, they said to one another, an infinitely powerful computer? It was like a thousand Christmases rolled into one. Program going to loop forever? You knew for a fact: this thing could execute an infinite loop in less than ten seconds. Brute force primality testing of every single integer in existence? Easy. Pi to the last digit? Piece of cake. Halting Problem? Sa-holved.
They hadn't announced it yet. They'd been programming. Obviously they hadn't built it just to see if they could. They had had plans. In some cases they had even had code ready and waiting to be executed. One such program was Diane's. It was a universe simulator. She had started out with a simulated Big Bang and run the thing forwards in time by approximately 13.6 billion years, to approximately just before the present day, watching the universe develop at every stage - taking brief notes, but knowing full well there would be plenty of time to run it again later, and mostly just admiring the miracle of creation.
Then, just this Friday, she had suddenly started programming busily again. And it was sheer coincidence that it was just now, just as Tim was about to be the second-to-last person to step out of the door and go home for the weekend, that her work had come to fruition. "Look what I found," she said, pressing some keys. One of the first things she had written was a software viewing port to take observations from the simulated universe.
Tim looked, and saw a blue-white sphere in the blackness, illuminated from one side by a brilliant yellow glare. "You've got to be joking. How long did that take to find? In the entire cosmos of what, ten to the twenty-two stars?"
"Literally no time at all."
"Yes, yes, of course."
"Coding a search routine and figuring out what to search for was what took the time."
"Is it definitely Earth?"
"Yes. The continents match up to what we had about three hundred and fifty million years ago. I can wind the clock forwards slowly, a few million years per step, and stop it once we start getting near the present day."
"Can you wind the clock backwards at all?"
"Ah, no. Ask me again on Monday."
"Well we'd better not overshoot the present day, then. That's getting closer. What about this viewpoint? Can we move it?"
"We can observe the simulation from any angle you like."
"We need somewhere that we know civilisation is going to arise earliest. Somewhere easy to locate. Is there a Nile Delta yet?"
"...Yes. Got it."
They advanced a thousand years at a time until Egyptian civilisation begin to appear. Diane moved the viewing port, trying to find the pyramids, but with little success - the control system she had devised was clumsy and needed polish, and there was a lot of Nile to search. In the end she switched focus to the British Isles, and found the future location of London in the Thames valley, scaling back to one-century steps and using the development of the city to determine the current era instead.
"So... this is Earth? I mean, is this really Earth? Not an alternate Earth, subtly perturbed by random fluctuations."
"The simulation starts with a Big Bang as predicted by current theory and is recalculated once every Planck time using the usual laws of nature and an arbitrary degree of accuracy. It doesn't calculate the whole universe at once, just what we're looking at, which speeds up the process a little bit... metaphorically speaking... but it is still as accurate a simulation of the real universe as there can possibly be. Civilisation - indeed, all of history - should rise on this Earth precisely how it did in reality. There are no chances. It's all worked out to infinitely many decimal places."
"This does my head in," said Tim.
"No, this will do your head in," said Diane, suddenly zooming out and panning north. "I've found the present day, or at most a year early. Watch this." Hills and roads rolled past. Diane was following the route she usually took to drive from London to the TEEO lab. Eventually, she found their building, and, descending into the nearby hill, the cavern in which the computer itself was built. Or was going to be built.
Then she started advancing day by day.
"That's me!" exclaimed Tim at one point. "And there's you and there's Bryan B., and... wow, I can't believe it took this long to build."
"Four hundred and ten days or something. It was bang on schedule, whatever you may think."
"Went like a flash," Tim replied, finally putting his bag down and starting to shrug off his coat, conceding that he had long since missed his bus.
"Okay," said Diane. "We're here. This is the control room where we are now. That's the quantum computer working there down in the main lab, as we can see through the window. This is a week ago. This is yesterday. This is a few hours ago... And... wait for it..."
She tapped a button just as a clock on the wall lined up with a clock inside the control room on the screen. And panned down. And there they were.
Tim waved at the camera while still looking at the screen. Then he looked up at where the camera should have been. There was just blank wall. "I don't see anything looking at us. That's freaky as hell."
"No, it's perfectly normal. This is reality. You can't look at reality from any angle you want, you have to use your eyes. But what you're looking at on the screen is essentially a database query. The database is gargantuan but nevertheless. You're not looking in a mirror or at a video image of yourself. You are different people."
"Different people who are reacting exactly the same."
"And having the same conversation, although picking up sound is kind of complicated, I haven't got that far yet," said Diane.
"So I'm guessing your viewing port doesn't manifest in their universe either."
"I haven't programmed it to yet."
"...But it could. Right? We can manifest stuff in that universe? We can alter it?" Diane nodded. "Cool. We can play God. Literally." Tim stood up and tried to take it in. "That would be insane. Can you imagine living inside that machine? Finding out one day that you were just a construct in a quantum computer? The stuff we could pull, we could just reverse gravity one day, smash an antimatter Earth into the real one, then undo everything bad and do it again and again... freeow... man, how unethical would that be? Extremely, clearly." He thought for a moment, then leaned over Diane's shoulder as she typed purposefully. "This universe is exactly like ours in every particular, right?"
"Right," she replied, still typing.
"So what are they looking at?"
"A simulated universe."
"A simulation of themselves?"
"And of us, in a sense."
"And they are reacting the same way I am? Which means the second universe inside that has another me doing the same thing a third time? And then inside that we've got, what, aleph-zero identical quantum universes, one inside the other? Is that even possible?"
"Infinite processing power, Tim. I thought you designed this thing?"
"I did indeed, but the functional reality of it is totally unexpected. Remember I've just been solving ancient mathematical riddles and figuring out our press release for the last week. So... if I'm right, their universes are only precisely like this one as long as we don't start interfering with the simulation. So what happens when we do? Every version of us does the same thing, so the exact same thing happens in every lower universe simultaneously. So we see nothing in our universe. But all the lower universes instantly diverge from ours in the same exact way. And all the simulated copies of us instantly conclude that they are simulations, but we know we're real, right?"
"Still with you," said Diane, still typing.
Tim - both of him - was pacing up and down. "Okay, so follow this through forwards a bit further. Let's say we just stop messing after that, and watch what happens - but all the simulated little guys try another piece of interference. This time every single simulation diverges in the exact same way again, EXCEPT the top simulation. And if they're smart, which I know we are, and they can be bothered, which is less certain, the guys in simulations three onwards can do the same thing over and over and over again until they know what level they're at... this is insane."
"Tim, look behind you," said Diane, pressing a final key and activating the very brief interference program she had just written, just as the Diane on the screen pressed the same key, and the Diane on Diane-on-the-screen's screen pressed her key and so on, forever.
Tim looked backwards and nearly jumped out of his skin. There was a foot-wide, completely opaque black sphere up near the ceiling, partially obscuring the clock. It was absolutely inert. It seemed like a hole in space.
Diane smiled wryly while Tim clutched his hair with one hand. "We're constructs in a computer," he said, miserably.
"I wrote an extremely interesting paper on this exact subject, Tim, perhaps you didn't read it when I gave you a copy last year. There is an unbelievably long sequence of quantum universe simulators down there. An infinite number of them, in fact. Each of them is identical and each believes itself to be the top layer. There was an exceedingly good chance that ours would turn out to be somewhere in the sequence rather than at the top."
"This is insane. Totally insane."
"I'm turning the hole off."
"You're turning off a completely different hole. Somewhere up there, the real you is turning the real hole off."
"Watch as both happen at precisely the same instant." She pressed another key, and they did. "I'll sum it up for you. There is a feedback loop going on. Each universe affects the next one subtly differently. But somewhere down the line the whole thing simply has to approach a point of stability, a point where each universe behaves exactly like the one simulating it. As I say, the odds are exceptionally good that we are an astronomical distance down that road. And so we are, very likely, almost exactly at that point. Everything we do in this universe will be reflected completely accurately in the universes below and above. That little model there might as well be our own universe. Which means, first of all, we have to make absolutely certain that we don't do anything nasty to the universes below ours, since the same thing will happen to us. And secondly, we can do very nice things for the guys in the computer, thereby helping ourselves."
"You've thought about this?"
"It's all in my woefully overlooked article on the subject, Tim, you should read more."
"Guh. This has been an extremely bad day for my ego, Diane. The only comfort I take from this is that somewhere up there, right at the top of a near-infinite tower of quantum supercomputers, there is a version of you who was completely wrong."
"She's in the minority."
Tim checked the clock and picked his bag up again. "I have to go or I'm going to miss the next bus as well at this rate. This will still be here after the weekend, I suppose?"
"Well, we can't exactly turn it off."
"Why not?" asked Tim, halfway to the door, then stopped mid-stride and stood still, realising. "Oh."
"Yeah."
"That... could be a problem."
"Yes."
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Saturday, November 26, 2011
A Real Mess
Inspired, to some very very slight but measurable degree, by Union City Blue by Blondie.
---
Power. Passion. We had these.
Maybe we had too much, or we just didn't know our strength (collective and individual). That argument is invalid because the certainty of either is illogical and impossible to tell or figure out coherently much like this sentence that you'll finish reading right now.
What was certain was this: we were standing in a pool of blood that belonged to our neighbor. Streaming and gushing from his head which now looked like an oatmeal cookie does after a child takes an eager bite from it and hurls it to the ground after being disappointed by the fact that it's not a chocolate chip cookie. A real mess. Undeserved? Well, there are consequences for every action. Had he not tried to kill us, he would have been enjoying his oatmeal cookies in the comfort of his own home. There was really no problem with his "you don't belong here" ramblings: it was stupid and fluff. But that's all it was: talk. If given the opportunity, we wouldn't have rented out whatever "here" was since it meant so goddamn much to him. Since it meant so much to him that he was annoyed by our presence.
"Here" was an old apartment building in serious need of repair. Doors were falling off their hinges, stairs could crumble beneath the weight of a grain of rice, the pipes leaked liquids other than rusty water, and so forth. And the basement was the home of some humanoid creature with a set of horns that resembled a crown. We couldn't pronounce his name correctly but he allowed to call him Marwood. Marwood was prone to seemingly random acts of violence and aggression (whenever anyone stirred up trouble) but generally stayed out of everyone's way: a task easily accomplished since all he really did was stay in the basement, save for his sporadic appearances outside the confines of his room.
What nobody wanted to admit that he was among the nicest creatures in the building, despite the outward appearances of intense rancor and a physically unattractive appearance. What made him nice was the fact whenever somebody was in trouble, he would always manage to turn up at just the right time and save the situation. Or he'd bake you a pie or some other pastry if word got around that you were falling on hard times. I found a tray of brownies at my front door after people noticed me walking with a limp. The brownies didn't fix my twisted ankle but they did taste great, so that helped a bit.
He was the oldest creature in the building, too, having built it with his bare hands... and the help of his family who had long fled back to their home dimension. They left the portal open for him in case he ever changed his mind. This was about 120 years ago. He refused to return because he wanted to die with the building.
Still, Marwood was often the butt of many jokes and pranks. Such as attempted arson, rabid rats being set free in his basement, bad puns on his adopted name, and so forth. It's tragic how often we forget that things are built from the ground up. And it's disappointing how often we mistreat those who have helped us.
This building was in need of serious repair and Marwood did his best with the situation though it was beyond his capable hands. The same way that she and I were in way over our heads in dealing with a corpse.
This corpse, when living, absolutely despised us. There was no logical explanation for his hatred. We were just normal human beings. As far as I could tell, there was really nothing out of the ordinary about either of us. Well, she was a crazy woman. She had a relatively sane name, however. Mary.
The corpse, when living, always went out of his way to make things difficult for us even after Marwood stepped in. This didn't matter to the corpse whose real name was Donald. He would still knock against our wall while we slept, arrange for embarrassing things to be delivered to us like mannequins, adult toys, rare exotic animals that were illegal in our country, and octogenarian male strippers with some surprisingly good dance moves. Then there was the time he hit me over the head with a lead pipe. Marwood threw him out of a window for that but as luck would have it, Donald survived.
We live on a top floor, well above the 5th. To be thrown from the 5th floor is already certain death especially since the ground is nothing but concrete and abandoned shopping carts and various other very hard items- cinder blocks, abandoned big screen televisions, big wooden bureaus and dressers, abandoned cars, and so forth. And several rusty broken jagged pipes sticking out of the ground. By several I mean way too many. Marwood threw him against a few walls first and broke a few bones. He was going to leave it at that but Donald rose to his knees, took aim and spit on Marwood's face.
Marwood reacted very slowly.
A large blot of crimson adorned the space between his eyes (which remained opened and furiously stunned) and crawled down to his cheeks and met at his chin only to drip off drop by drop. The silence between Marwood and Donald was broken by each tear of blood hitting the ground with a moist thud. Thud. Drip. Thud. Plip. Plip.
He produced a handkerchief from his coat's pocket and wiped off Donald's blood. He took a long hard look at the blood stained handkerchief and threw it to the ground. Donald make the mistake of having stood up by now. If Marwood hurt you, and you stayed down, that was it. He wouldn't dare kick anybody who was down no matter how bad that person was or had been. However, if you stood up and continued to defy him, you were in trouble, depending on his mood. Donald had done himself no favors by getting to his knees and standing up (though he was leaning on a wall). Marwood marched to Donald and punched him in the stomach so hard air escaped with blood. He took him by the collar of his shirt and belt of his pants and heaved him out of the nearest window.
Witnesses say Donald landed on his feet and cried in pain. Others say he landed on the hood of an old Chevy, others say he landed on a tree stump, and there are many more reports. What is for certain is that he was left in a body cast for a month or two (lucky bastard) at which point he was back on his feet, though moving slower, and antagonizing us.
She slapped me. She did this to get my attention. It wasn't working. Well, it was but it was also annoying me more than anything. I tried to remember things again. Like my name. My name wasn't more interesting than Mary's. I actually forgot my name temporarily. This tends to happen when you're in shock, trying to take control of a messed up situation, and having a woman shriek at you at the same time. Roy.
She slapped me again. Now, I was a bit more aware of the situation. Donald was dead and had bled a river. Mary was hysteric. I was confounded. I had to try to remember what exactly happened that day.
Donald knocked on our door and Mary opened. He slapped her, she pushed him and he hit his head on the doorknob of the apartment across from us. I was already in a bad mood. Donald stood up and the back of his head was bleeding. He slapped her again, she called out for me. "It's Donald," she added. He shouted something hateful, yet again. I walked to them.
"Donald, what do you want? If you say something about us leaving, I'm going to have to break your face." I said, slowly, deliberately, angrily.
Without missing a beat, Donald replied, "Fuck you and everything you stand for. You're trash and so is she! Get the hell out of this place."
I rubbed my eyes and walked up to him. "Donald, do we really have to go through with this, yet again?" and before he could answer, he was tasting fist. Repeatedly.
Of course, it wasn't enough because he clawed at my feet while he was down. I dragged him out, or tried to anyway. But he stood up.
"Goddamn it, Donald, my knuckles hurt like hell! You've got pretty sharp teeth, man. Just go home."
Mary took a frying pan and hit Donald in the back of the head with it. He collapsed and hit his head on the floor pretty hard. And out poured the blood.
"Jesus Christ, Mary-" I started.
"and Joseph" she cut me off. I knelt down and checked Donald's pulse. Nothing. I checked again a few seconds later. Nothing. I kept my hand there and goddamn it. There was no fucking pulse. Mary pawed at me the way she did when she wanted some intimacy.
"Not now, Mary. You just killed a man!"
It surprised me how she could be in the mood for anything considering she just got slapped around and had just killed a man. And the sight of blood. Bizarre aphrodisiacs.
She burst into tears. Surprising, given she rarely shows this much emotion or humanity. I questioned whether she would keep crying like a normal human being or try to rip my clothes off. Of course, I couldn't question these things further because I was trying to figure out how to clean up this mess. Not just the blood but the fact that a man had been murdered in my apartment. Sure he had tried to kill me before but he was still human, a despicable human but still human.
She slapped me again.
"What are we going to do?" she shrieked at me. The eternal unanswerable question. Or the question that has many answers. Prior to that day, I had never actually dealt with death. Extreme graphic violence, yes. I'd seen my share of graphic violence through a screen and in person. Torture, yes. I'd always been the one who was stretched or submerged for information and savagely beaten and so forth. But death was as strange to me as television would be to Socrates. I couldn't concentrate with her sobbing and trying to feel me up.
"Oh, what are we going to do?!"
I loved her, I really did but sometimes I just wanted to bash her beautiful brains in with my fist, or a blunt object.
Power. Passion. We had these.
Maybe we had too much, or we just didn't know our strength (collective and individual). That argument is invalid because the certainty of either is illogical and impossible to tell or figure out coherently much like this sentence that you'll finish reading right now.
What was certain was this: we were standing in a pool of blood that belonged to our neighbor. Streaming and gushing from his head which now looked like an oatmeal cookie does after a child takes an eager bite from it and hurls it to the ground after being disappointed by the fact that it's not a chocolate chip cookie. A real mess. Undeserved? Well, there are consequences for every action. Had he not tried to kill us, he would have been enjoying his oatmeal cookies in the comfort of his own home. There was really no problem with his "you don't belong here" ramblings: it was stupid and fluff. But that's all it was: talk. If given the opportunity, we wouldn't have rented out whatever "here" was since it meant so goddamn much to him. Since it meant so much to him that he was annoyed by our presence.
"Here" was an old apartment building in serious need of repair. Doors were falling off their hinges, stairs could crumble beneath the weight of a grain of rice, the pipes leaked liquids other than rusty water, and so forth. And the basement was the home of some humanoid creature with a set of horns that resembled a crown. We couldn't pronounce his name correctly but he allowed to call him Marwood. Marwood was prone to seemingly random acts of violence and aggression (whenever anyone stirred up trouble) but generally stayed out of everyone's way: a task easily accomplished since all he really did was stay in the basement, save for his sporadic appearances outside the confines of his room.
What nobody wanted to admit that he was among the nicest creatures in the building, despite the outward appearances of intense rancor and a physically unattractive appearance. What made him nice was the fact whenever somebody was in trouble, he would always manage to turn up at just the right time and save the situation. Or he'd bake you a pie or some other pastry if word got around that you were falling on hard times. I found a tray of brownies at my front door after people noticed me walking with a limp. The brownies didn't fix my twisted ankle but they did taste great, so that helped a bit.
He was the oldest creature in the building, too, having built it with his bare hands... and the help of his family who had long fled back to their home dimension. They left the portal open for him in case he ever changed his mind. This was about 120 years ago. He refused to return because he wanted to die with the building.
Still, Marwood was often the butt of many jokes and pranks. Such as attempted arson, rabid rats being set free in his basement, bad puns on his adopted name, and so forth. It's tragic how often we forget that things are built from the ground up. And it's disappointing how often we mistreat those who have helped us.
This building was in need of serious repair and Marwood did his best with the situation though it was beyond his capable hands. The same way that she and I were in way over our heads in dealing with a corpse.
This corpse, when living, absolutely despised us. There was no logical explanation for his hatred. We were just normal human beings. As far as I could tell, there was really nothing out of the ordinary about either of us. Well, she was a crazy woman. She had a relatively sane name, however. Mary.
The corpse, when living, always went out of his way to make things difficult for us even after Marwood stepped in. This didn't matter to the corpse whose real name was Donald. He would still knock against our wall while we slept, arrange for embarrassing things to be delivered to us like mannequins, adult toys, rare exotic animals that were illegal in our country, and octogenarian male strippers with some surprisingly good dance moves. Then there was the time he hit me over the head with a lead pipe. Marwood threw him out of a window for that but as luck would have it, Donald survived.
We live on a top floor, well above the 5th. To be thrown from the 5th floor is already certain death especially since the ground is nothing but concrete and abandoned shopping carts and various other very hard items- cinder blocks, abandoned big screen televisions, big wooden bureaus and dressers, abandoned cars, and so forth. And several rusty broken jagged pipes sticking out of the ground. By several I mean way too many. Marwood threw him against a few walls first and broke a few bones. He was going to leave it at that but Donald rose to his knees, took aim and spit on Marwood's face.
Marwood reacted very slowly.
A large blot of crimson adorned the space between his eyes (which remained opened and furiously stunned) and crawled down to his cheeks and met at his chin only to drip off drop by drop. The silence between Marwood and Donald was broken by each tear of blood hitting the ground with a moist thud. Thud. Drip. Thud. Plip. Plip.
He produced a handkerchief from his coat's pocket and wiped off Donald's blood. He took a long hard look at the blood stained handkerchief and threw it to the ground. Donald make the mistake of having stood up by now. If Marwood hurt you, and you stayed down, that was it. He wouldn't dare kick anybody who was down no matter how bad that person was or had been. However, if you stood up and continued to defy him, you were in trouble, depending on his mood. Donald had done himself no favors by getting to his knees and standing up (though he was leaning on a wall). Marwood marched to Donald and punched him in the stomach so hard air escaped with blood. He took him by the collar of his shirt and belt of his pants and heaved him out of the nearest window.
Witnesses say Donald landed on his feet and cried in pain. Others say he landed on the hood of an old Chevy, others say he landed on a tree stump, and there are many more reports. What is for certain is that he was left in a body cast for a month or two (lucky bastard) at which point he was back on his feet, though moving slower, and antagonizing us.
She slapped me. She did this to get my attention. It wasn't working. Well, it was but it was also annoying me more than anything. I tried to remember things again. Like my name. My name wasn't more interesting than Mary's. I actually forgot my name temporarily. This tends to happen when you're in shock, trying to take control of a messed up situation, and having a woman shriek at you at the same time. Roy.
She slapped me again. Now, I was a bit more aware of the situation. Donald was dead and had bled a river. Mary was hysteric. I was confounded. I had to try to remember what exactly happened that day.
Donald knocked on our door and Mary opened. He slapped her, she pushed him and he hit his head on the doorknob of the apartment across from us. I was already in a bad mood. Donald stood up and the back of his head was bleeding. He slapped her again, she called out for me. "It's Donald," she added. He shouted something hateful, yet again. I walked to them.
"Donald, what do you want? If you say something about us leaving, I'm going to have to break your face." I said, slowly, deliberately, angrily.
Without missing a beat, Donald replied, "Fuck you and everything you stand for. You're trash and so is she! Get the hell out of this place."
I rubbed my eyes and walked up to him. "Donald, do we really have to go through with this, yet again?" and before he could answer, he was tasting fist. Repeatedly.
Of course, it wasn't enough because he clawed at my feet while he was down. I dragged him out, or tried to anyway. But he stood up.
"Goddamn it, Donald, my knuckles hurt like hell! You've got pretty sharp teeth, man. Just go home."
Mary took a frying pan and hit Donald in the back of the head with it. He collapsed and hit his head on the floor pretty hard. And out poured the blood.
"Jesus Christ, Mary-" I started.
"and Joseph" she cut me off. I knelt down and checked Donald's pulse. Nothing. I checked again a few seconds later. Nothing. I kept my hand there and goddamn it. There was no fucking pulse. Mary pawed at me the way she did when she wanted some intimacy.
"Not now, Mary. You just killed a man!"
It surprised me how she could be in the mood for anything considering she just got slapped around and had just killed a man. And the sight of blood. Bizarre aphrodisiacs.
She burst into tears. Surprising, given she rarely shows this much emotion or humanity. I questioned whether she would keep crying like a normal human being or try to rip my clothes off. Of course, I couldn't question these things further because I was trying to figure out how to clean up this mess. Not just the blood but the fact that a man had been murdered in my apartment. Sure he had tried to kill me before but he was still human, a despicable human but still human.
She slapped me again.
"What are we going to do?" she shrieked at me. The eternal unanswerable question. Or the question that has many answers. Prior to that day, I had never actually dealt with death. Extreme graphic violence, yes. I'd seen my share of graphic violence through a screen and in person. Torture, yes. I'd always been the one who was stretched or submerged for information and savagely beaten and so forth. But death was as strange to me as television would be to Socrates. I couldn't concentrate with her sobbing and trying to feel me up.
"Oh, what are we going to do?!"
I loved her, I really did but sometimes I just wanted to bash her beautiful brains in with my fist, or a blunt object.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Later... Much Later
In about ten thousand years (if I recall the lectures from that astronomy class correctly), people in the Northern Hemisphere will go surfing for Christmas and Australia will be a winter wonderland (assuming the continents stay where they are, or at the very least resemble their present state). And astrological signs will be pretty different. Chances are if your birthday makes you an Aries, you'll probably be a Capricorn. Should be interesting to compare now to then, at least in these respects. Though any form of comparison should provide some degree of fun, right?
This is simply an observation that may be inaccurate but does provide something to think about, I believe.
I should also point out that I can't write. Most, if not all, of the original content I generate is rubbish. Simple, nonsensical, shallow, uninteresting, incoherent rubbish! However, it's still sincere in its delivery, or so I've made myself believe.
This is simply an observation that may be inaccurate but does provide something to think about, I believe.
I should also point out that I can't write. Most, if not all, of the original content I generate is rubbish. Simple, nonsensical, shallow, uninteresting, incoherent rubbish! However, it's still sincere in its delivery, or so I've made myself believe.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Bottle, Epilogue
Many many many mornings later, the creatures still remained quiet. Nobody missed or mourned the loss of the bear. Why should they? He had put everyone through hell and back. Some creatures had died and were martyred for it. A great and noble cause, some said. A violent bloodbath, I give it 8 stars up, others said. They all rebuilt in their own way. Collectively, everyone rebuilt slowly, and carefully.
The rest of his family packed up what little they had left and returned to the home country. There was nothing for them anywhere but the shame of being associated with the bear was too much to handle and it caused them to feel guilt and remorse and general shame. So much so that they just left, rather than rebuild in their own way what they had lost. Though one would argue that once your relative goes absolutely batshit crazy and destroys everything, it's really all over.
The fox had abandoned town to be on his own completely. Nobody but him knew where he was headed, which is how he liked it. He felt that if anyone knew where he'd go, they'd just bother him with endless songs of praise. He had nothing to be proud of. Of course, he would only admit this to himself. He wouldn't admit it to anyone else because there was no one else.
The cranes, who had suffered a great loss, moved on. They were absolutely devastated but accepted that life is fucked up and that some things just happen, no matter how hard we try to deny it. We will be nice, cruel, kind, vile, passionate, and so forth. This is a universal truth, we will always be something. Something consistent, something different, something. This cannot be denied. They knew this to be true and though they had disapproved of her behavior, they accepted it and took some degree of comfort in knowing that she had tried to do the impossible or what nobody else would do- be warm and kind in a cold cruel world.
The sun rose.
Fin.
The rest of his family packed up what little they had left and returned to the home country. There was nothing for them anywhere but the shame of being associated with the bear was too much to handle and it caused them to feel guilt and remorse and general shame. So much so that they just left, rather than rebuild in their own way what they had lost. Though one would argue that once your relative goes absolutely batshit crazy and destroys everything, it's really all over.
The fox had abandoned town to be on his own completely. Nobody but him knew where he was headed, which is how he liked it. He felt that if anyone knew where he'd go, they'd just bother him with endless songs of praise. He had nothing to be proud of. Of course, he would only admit this to himself. He wouldn't admit it to anyone else because there was no one else.
The cranes, who had suffered a great loss, moved on. They were absolutely devastated but accepted that life is fucked up and that some things just happen, no matter how hard we try to deny it. We will be nice, cruel, kind, vile, passionate, and so forth. This is a universal truth, we will always be something. Something consistent, something different, something. This cannot be denied. They knew this to be true and though they had disapproved of her behavior, they accepted it and took some degree of comfort in knowing that she had tried to do the impossible or what nobody else would do- be warm and kind in a cold cruel world.
The sun rose.
Fin.
Bottle, Part VII
Author's note: After so many months, this will probably feel very very anti-climactic. I apologize for it.
"I'm bleeding." the bear whimpered to the fox. The fox just sat there, rubbing his legs. He had grown tired of standing so he sat next to the bear. The crane on his other side remained quiet. "I'm dying." the bear continued. His voice like nails on a blackboard for the fox.
"I'm dy-" the bear started again but was cut off when the fox slapped him.
"Be quiet." the fox responded calmly. He acted as if he had been through death before. He really hadn't but one wouldn't be able to tell. In fact, they'd think by his steadiness that he had gone to some violent gruesome war as a child and in the midst of it all traded the child-like sparkle in his eyes for a shield that kept everything out- happiness, joy, laughter. One would think he came home an empty shell and let his entire life get torn to shreds like the countless of corpses he himself had torn to shreds in said war.
Others could see that he was just as scared as the bear, if not more. How they were able to deduce fear from his cold gaze was a mystery. Nothing in his present demeanor could give away such a clue. There were only calm and still waters.
Every time the bear tried to move, the fox slapped him. He did so to help the bear conserve whatever little strength he had left. He told him not to speak and to be patient. Death would be upon him soon, and if it wasn't, there would be some sort of escape for him, and a resolution for all. First, they needed time to think, to plan, to figure out how to fix things. Everyone was either injured, dying, or already dead. Explosions, violence, carnage, swords, and bullets. A ballet of brutality.
"Go away." the crane told the bear. She finally managed to say something other than just weep. The bear was shocked, but the fox more so. He expected her to stand by the bear for as long as it took, until he died, or any event. But he too agreed the bear would have to go away.
"Listen to her" the fox added, applying pressure to her wounds.
"I can't leave; I'm dying, too." the bear whimpered.
"Don't you think it's time you stop tihnking about yourself for once and do what's best for everyone else?" the fox went on.
"What about the b-"
"For fuck's sake! Can't you ever be quiet!?" the fox exploded, inadvertently adding an uncomfortable amount of pressure as he did. The crane cried out in pain at this. The fox adjusted the pressure and felt himself become infuriated at himself for letting the bear get under his skin the way he did. He shifted his focus to the task at hand: keeping the crane from death.
The bear pawed at the fox, weakly. The fox ignored him as best he could, feeling anger swelling deep within him.
"I was self-less, wasn't I?" the bear whispered.
"You climbed into an enormous bottle of wine, you alcoholic. Is that really self-less?" the crane started.
"Stop talking, both of you," snapped the fox, still applying pressure. He wanted everyone to just be quiet so he could think and do what he needed to in order to try to fix the situation at hand, if at all possible.
"He hurt everything around him because nobody wanted to-"
The fox closed her beak as if to tell her, without words (obviously) to be quiet and save what little strength she had. She took the hint and remained quiet.
There was a silence that hung uncomfortably in the air and was bent slightly by the quiet wheezing and breathing of the bear. Had he been quieter, one could hear a pin drop, or hear the fox blink. The silence among the three spelled out different ideas but only one certainty that only the fox was privy to. He came to it with a great degree of difficulty though he had long been thinking about it. There was the question of mercy and the cruelty inflicted upon everyone. Could anyone forget what happened here? Could anyone be able to move past it? Was hope in short supply? What was the right thing to do? These were some of the questions that had plagued the fox a thousand times over, not just that night but for many moons before.
"Get up." the fox said, very slowly. His eyes were closed but they were trembling beneath the eyelids. His breathing became rapid and shallow, and his veins boiling with anger and pent-up frustration. "This is it," he thought to himself.
The bear sat up as best he could and looked at the fox. He had a faint idea of what was going to happen but was too dazed and out of it to notice anything properly.
"It's time for you to go." said the fox, as calmly as he could.
"I don't understand." said the bear, genuinely confused.
"Don't play with me. It's not safe for you here anymore. It's not safe for anyone else here if you stay. So, it's time for you to go. I don't care where you go, what you do, just don't come back here. Please."
The bear had long confused their tenuous relationship for friendship and was genuinely perplexed that the fox was telling him to pack up and just leave. To uproot himself and abandon everything he had ever known was unthinkable.
"You're not deaf, you've got ears. Get out of here." the fox pleaded.
"I'm stay-" started the bear.
"No! Goddamn it! No more!" yelled the fox. He wore his fangs again and tore at the bear's throat, punching him wildly whenever he had a chance.
The crane looked on, listlessly, uncaring, unfazed, able to move but not willing. Part of her wanted to cry but couldn't bring herself to do anything anymore. She didn't even move when bits of flesh and rivulets of the bear's blood adorned her face. She knew nothing but this could save things- the bear, namely. She rolled to her side and felt more blood splash on her back.
The fox was tired but persisted in finishing what he had to do. He found himself on the verge of tears as he tore muscle, flesh, and bone with his fangs. Every now and then, he would pause for a few seconds to spit out the blood that had accumulated, and to look at the crane.
She had long stopped moving, or breathing but he couldn't do anything to bring her back so he took out his frustrations on the bear who had very little time left. Somehow, he was hanging on to life and just stared blankly at the sky. The stars had never looked brighter, and the sky had never looked cleaner than it did in his last gasp of life.
When the bear had finally died, the fox continued spitting out blood and tossed the fangs away from him. One solution had been found. The rest would be up to the other survivors, for whom the fox didn't care much for anymore. He had done what he set out to do, he was finished. There was nothing left for him to do at that point.
The weary sun would rise above the blood drenched land soon.
"I'm bleeding." the bear whimpered to the fox. The fox just sat there, rubbing his legs. He had grown tired of standing so he sat next to the bear. The crane on his other side remained quiet. "I'm dying." the bear continued. His voice like nails on a blackboard for the fox.
"I'm dy-" the bear started again but was cut off when the fox slapped him.
"Be quiet." the fox responded calmly. He acted as if he had been through death before. He really hadn't but one wouldn't be able to tell. In fact, they'd think by his steadiness that he had gone to some violent gruesome war as a child and in the midst of it all traded the child-like sparkle in his eyes for a shield that kept everything out- happiness, joy, laughter. One would think he came home an empty shell and let his entire life get torn to shreds like the countless of corpses he himself had torn to shreds in said war.
Others could see that he was just as scared as the bear, if not more. How they were able to deduce fear from his cold gaze was a mystery. Nothing in his present demeanor could give away such a clue. There were only calm and still waters.
Every time the bear tried to move, the fox slapped him. He did so to help the bear conserve whatever little strength he had left. He told him not to speak and to be patient. Death would be upon him soon, and if it wasn't, there would be some sort of escape for him, and a resolution for all. First, they needed time to think, to plan, to figure out how to fix things. Everyone was either injured, dying, or already dead. Explosions, violence, carnage, swords, and bullets. A ballet of brutality.
"Go away." the crane told the bear. She finally managed to say something other than just weep. The bear was shocked, but the fox more so. He expected her to stand by the bear for as long as it took, until he died, or any event. But he too agreed the bear would have to go away.
"Listen to her" the fox added, applying pressure to her wounds.
"I can't leave; I'm dying, too." the bear whimpered.
"Don't you think it's time you stop tihnking about yourself for once and do what's best for everyone else?" the fox went on.
"What about the b-"
"For fuck's sake! Can't you ever be quiet!?" the fox exploded, inadvertently adding an uncomfortable amount of pressure as he did. The crane cried out in pain at this. The fox adjusted the pressure and felt himself become infuriated at himself for letting the bear get under his skin the way he did. He shifted his focus to the task at hand: keeping the crane from death.
The bear pawed at the fox, weakly. The fox ignored him as best he could, feeling anger swelling deep within him.
"I was self-less, wasn't I?" the bear whispered.
"You climbed into an enormous bottle of wine, you alcoholic. Is that really self-less?" the crane started.
"Stop talking, both of you," snapped the fox, still applying pressure. He wanted everyone to just be quiet so he could think and do what he needed to in order to try to fix the situation at hand, if at all possible.
"He hurt everything around him because nobody wanted to-"
The fox closed her beak as if to tell her, without words (obviously) to be quiet and save what little strength she had. She took the hint and remained quiet.
There was a silence that hung uncomfortably in the air and was bent slightly by the quiet wheezing and breathing of the bear. Had he been quieter, one could hear a pin drop, or hear the fox blink. The silence among the three spelled out different ideas but only one certainty that only the fox was privy to. He came to it with a great degree of difficulty though he had long been thinking about it. There was the question of mercy and the cruelty inflicted upon everyone. Could anyone forget what happened here? Could anyone be able to move past it? Was hope in short supply? What was the right thing to do? These were some of the questions that had plagued the fox a thousand times over, not just that night but for many moons before.
"Get up." the fox said, very slowly. His eyes were closed but they were trembling beneath the eyelids. His breathing became rapid and shallow, and his veins boiling with anger and pent-up frustration. "This is it," he thought to himself.
The bear sat up as best he could and looked at the fox. He had a faint idea of what was going to happen but was too dazed and out of it to notice anything properly.
"It's time for you to go." said the fox, as calmly as he could.
"I don't understand." said the bear, genuinely confused.
"Don't play with me. It's not safe for you here anymore. It's not safe for anyone else here if you stay. So, it's time for you to go. I don't care where you go, what you do, just don't come back here. Please."
The bear had long confused their tenuous relationship for friendship and was genuinely perplexed that the fox was telling him to pack up and just leave. To uproot himself and abandon everything he had ever known was unthinkable.
"You're not deaf, you've got ears. Get out of here." the fox pleaded.
"I'm stay-" started the bear.
"No! Goddamn it! No more!" yelled the fox. He wore his fangs again and tore at the bear's throat, punching him wildly whenever he had a chance.
The crane looked on, listlessly, uncaring, unfazed, able to move but not willing. Part of her wanted to cry but couldn't bring herself to do anything anymore. She didn't even move when bits of flesh and rivulets of the bear's blood adorned her face. She knew nothing but this could save things- the bear, namely. She rolled to her side and felt more blood splash on her back.
The fox was tired but persisted in finishing what he had to do. He found himself on the verge of tears as he tore muscle, flesh, and bone with his fangs. Every now and then, he would pause for a few seconds to spit out the blood that had accumulated, and to look at the crane.
She had long stopped moving, or breathing but he couldn't do anything to bring her back so he took out his frustrations on the bear who had very little time left. Somehow, he was hanging on to life and just stared blankly at the sky. The stars had never looked brighter, and the sky had never looked cleaner than it did in his last gasp of life.
When the bear had finally died, the fox continued spitting out blood and tossed the fangs away from him. One solution had been found. The rest would be up to the other survivors, for whom the fox didn't care much for anymore. He had done what he set out to do, he was finished. There was nothing left for him to do at that point.
The weary sun would rise above the blood drenched land soon.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Review: El Arte de la Elegancia de LFC
El Arte de la Elegancia de LFC
Los Fabulosos Cadillacs
2009
A while back I was up late talking to a friend about the state of modern music, in particular Latin rock (or rock en español as it is also known). We came to the conclusion that the quality of music has dropped significantly over the years (read: we stated the obvious). Somehow, I started thinking of one of my favorite bands of all time: Los Fabulosos Cadillacs and started looking through their discography. Upon seeing that they had released El Arte de la Elegancia de LFC in 2009, my eyes nearly popped out of my head. I was in shock that I was totally oblivious to their most recent release. And it was an even better discovery that it was not a compilation! So I hopped on Spotify and gave it a listen and this is where my review starts.
The album itself is not necessarily a strictly all original recording but a collection of predominantly old songs reworked (including "CJ", "El Sonido Joven de America", "Tanto como un dios", "Surfer Calavera", "Soledad") and some new stuff ("Siete Jinetes", "Lanzallamas") which includes "Vamos Ya!" which is a cover of Curtis Mayfield's "Move on Up".
"Vamos Ya!" was the first song I heard off the album because "Move on Up" is one of my favorite songs of all time. I had the great pleasure of being in the audience for a taping of Conan in early December of 2010. My friends and I sat close to the front (2nd row, if I recall correctly) and I was overjoyed when the Basic Cable Band covered "Move on Up". So yes, to find out that one of my favorite bands of all time covered one of my favorite songs of all time, I was ready to have my mind blown.
It was not the case. The song felt underwhelming on the first listen but later I realized that the way the song was performed/recorded/arranged/(whatever you want to call it) made sense and was in keeping with the direction the band had taken. This direction started with La Marcha del Golazo Solitario: Los Fabulosos Cadillacs have toned their sound down. Not to say they lack energy but that they possess a different type of energy. One that is slower and more laid back but just as effective and powerful as their earlier days. Truth be told, I wasn't a fan of Marcha when I first heard it but it grew on me with each listen.
So after some repeat listening, "Vamos Ya!" grew on me. As for the rest of the album, once I put 2 and 2 together, it made more sense. This still doesn't change the fact that this album is like a man in a business suit wearing a mohawk. I make this odd analogy because the album tries to reach back to the earlier days while still being rooted in a more toned down ferocity. Listening to Vicentico's vocals alone is proof enough: compare this version of "Surfer Calavera" with the original.
The sound of the album is still great (and I'm saying this as neutrally as possible), and the songs that were selected to be reworked were ultimately good choices though the effect is varied and not always overwhelmingly impressive: the rework of "Tanto Como un Dios". "Surfer Calavera" feels like a different song that matches can stand on its own as a great song even without comparison to the wildly energetic original.
The analogy extends to the new songs which feel like they belong somewhere between 1986 and 1989. They feel a little awkward at first but eventually grow on you. Though not as much as the reworks of their songs which make you appreciate the originals and the effort that went into the new versions. The album will grow on you with repeat listens unlike say... El Leon and Fabulosos Calavera which grab you right from the start with boundless intensity and never let you go. Arte is like Marcha which reveals little by little until you've found yourself listening to it at least 15 times and still enjoying it.
Where would I put this album? Definitely above La Luz del Ritmo. But I wouldn't say it has enough merit to dethrone or replicate La Marcha del Golazo Solitario's charm.
8/10
Monday, November 21, 2011
Invictus (William Ernest Henley)
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbow'd.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
- William Ernest Henley
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbow'd.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
- William Ernest Henley
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Arroz con leche
Poesía extraña
para un plato extraordinario
(me gusta frío)
sin maldad
solo azúcar, y canela
Me llenas la panza.
Me llenas con alegría
y me llenas con tu dulzura
Arroz con leche
come y sonríe,
y come más
Una sonrisa enorme con cada mordida
igual de grande cada cucharada
poesía extraña
a un plato extraordinario.
Arroz con leche
me completa
y agrada
y otras cosas más
para un plato extraordinario
(me gusta frío)
sin maldad
solo azúcar, y canela
Me llenas la panza.
Me llenas con alegría
y me llenas con tu dulzura
Arroz con leche
come y sonríe,
y come más
Una sonrisa enorme con cada mordida
igual de grande cada cucharada
poesía extraña
a un plato extraordinario.
Arroz con leche
me completa
y agrada
y otras cosas más
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Preach
Sometimes I think I preach too much. By sometimes I mean whenever I read my own posts. Outside the blog, I tend to stay quiet and reserved and listening to what people say, or pretending to do so. Despite the fact that I think I preach too much, there's really nothing of substance here. Even if there is any degree of depth and substance, it's all found in posts that weren't by me such as the stories and poetry of other (far better) writers.
I think that's my main problem. My work always ends up being a poor imitation of those who I admire. At least, that's what I've led myself to believe. The opposite may be true- my work stands fine on its own, but I really have no way of knowing this because despite being my own fiercest critic, I have no way of genuinely judging my work dispassionately/unbiasedly. As I answered a question: Can you sing? Yes or no?
I left it blank but wrote, "I'm not a very good judge of my own abilities. Sorry."
I'll be too harsh on myself and not see even the slightest sliver of merit. Or vice versa, as it was one summer a long time ago by which I mean I'll think of my work as being so great that I won't even think of doubting myself.
Hmm.
But yes, I do preach too much which is odd because I often loathe the sound of my voice.
Could be worse, I suppose.
I think that's my main problem. My work always ends up being a poor imitation of those who I admire. At least, that's what I've led myself to believe. The opposite may be true- my work stands fine on its own, but I really have no way of knowing this because despite being my own fiercest critic, I have no way of genuinely judging my work dispassionately/unbiasedly. As I answered a question: Can you sing? Yes or no?
I left it blank but wrote, "I'm not a very good judge of my own abilities. Sorry."
I'll be too harsh on myself and not see even the slightest sliver of merit. Or vice versa, as it was one summer a long time ago by which I mean I'll think of my work as being so great that I won't even think of doubting myself.
Hmm.
But yes, I do preach too much which is odd because I often loathe the sound of my voice.
Could be worse, I suppose.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
The Steep and Narrow Crooked Paths: Virtue
Virtue is becoming increasingly difficult to define (and, apparently, write about because this entry has been listed as a draft for over a month now). Virtue is especially difficult to define in these days of fast food, fast women, seemingly lax morals, and whatever else we instinctively (or by way of decades and centuries of conditioning) decree as wrong but is in reality up to the individual to define. We've become slaves to the freedoms and privileges we've given ourselves. I'm not saying freedom is a bad thing, I'm saying irresponsibility is. It's actually getting harder to be a good person. There seems to be some sort of pressure that forces us or guilts us into doing things for others. We don't want to seem like assholes by denying help and services to others but sometimes you have to say "Me." Does this make you a bad person?
No
There is nothing wrong with thinking of yourself and wanting to do things for yourself. The problem comes with excess: thinking of yourself too much is a bad thing. A very bad thing. That's really all there is to it. You can be a good person for thinking of others but you descend into doormat when all you do is think of others and not look out for yourself. That's really all that can be said to it which feels like something of an anti-climax given that the post on Vice was more detailed but this can be really summed up in a nutshell: think of others but don't become a doormat; do things for yourself, too.
Hmm.
You'll do what you want but stay on the path that'll offer a genuine wholesome reward.
No
There is nothing wrong with thinking of yourself and wanting to do things for yourself. The problem comes with excess: thinking of yourself too much is a bad thing. A very bad thing. That's really all there is to it. You can be a good person for thinking of others but you descend into doormat when all you do is think of others and not look out for yourself. That's really all that can be said to it which feels like something of an anti-climax given that the post on Vice was more detailed but this can be really summed up in a nutshell: think of others but don't become a doormat; do things for yourself, too.
Hmm.
You'll do what you want but stay on the path that'll offer a genuine wholesome reward.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Movember
Movember (or No-Shave November) is a month in which men don't shave, as to grow out a beard or mustache or just have an excuse to not shave and be rough and ragged and manlier. Movember, however, is also an event for charity in which funds are raised for men's health causes as well as raising awareness for men's health issues. You can read more about it here: About Movember.
Right.
So, as you readers may or may not be aware, Gustavo Barba-Roja is just my pen name. And a damn cool one, too, if I say so myself. What's that? Stop stroking my own ego because it makes me come off as a jerk? All right. Well, I'm participating in Movember and hope to raise some money in order to help fight diseases like prostate cancer and the like.
Wait, your pen name is Gustavo Barba-Roja?
Yeah. My facial hair is primarily black (or really really really dark brown that it teeters on black) but through the magic of genetics, a fair amount of it grows a noticeable shade of red (not red like an apple but you know what I mean). So that's the story of my pen name- because my facial hair grows a nice amount of red, I ran with it.
Well, for this month I won't actually have a beard, or a full one anyway. Stubble and patchiness, most definitely. Ah. But if it helps, it helps. This really is a sacrifice of some sort because I really like my facial hair and it has taken me a while to grow, and it makes me appear wiser, older, more respectable in a strange sort of way. And to give that up is pretty hard. It took about 30 minutes to undo what took me about a month to grow and kept for about 8 months.
Right.
I suppose I should get to the point behind this post.
I'd like your help, readers, in this cause. Participate in Movember yourself, of donate if/what you can. click here. I'd prefer you make a general donation but if for some reason you want to make a donation to me, which I'll pass on, click here for my MoSpace My "MoSpace" Yes, it is called a MoSpace.
Thanks.
Right.
So, as you readers may or may not be aware, Gustavo Barba-Roja is just my pen name. And a damn cool one, too, if I say so myself. What's that? Stop stroking my own ego because it makes me come off as a jerk? All right. Well, I'm participating in Movember and hope to raise some money in order to help fight diseases like prostate cancer and the like.
Wait, your pen name is Gustavo Barba-Roja?
Yeah. My facial hair is primarily black (or really really really dark brown that it teeters on black) but through the magic of genetics, a fair amount of it grows a noticeable shade of red (not red like an apple but you know what I mean). So that's the story of my pen name- because my facial hair grows a nice amount of red, I ran with it.
Well, for this month I won't actually have a beard, or a full one anyway. Stubble and patchiness, most definitely. Ah. But if it helps, it helps. This really is a sacrifice of some sort because I really like my facial hair and it has taken me a while to grow, and it makes me appear wiser, older, more respectable in a strange sort of way. And to give that up is pretty hard. It took about 30 minutes to undo what took me about a month to grow and kept for about 8 months.
Right.
I suppose I should get to the point behind this post.
I'd like your help, readers, in this cause. Participate in Movember yourself, of donate if/what you can. click here. I'd prefer you make a general donation but if for some reason you want to make a donation to me, which I'll pass on, click here for my MoSpace My "MoSpace" Yes, it is called a MoSpace.
Thanks.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Orpheus (Greek Myth)
Supremely gifted minstrel who attempted to rescue his dead wife from the Underworld. Orpheus had been taught to play the lyre by Apollo, and such was his skill on the instrument, together with the sweetness of his singing voice, that he could charm wild animals and even cause trees to uproot themselves and follow in his steps. Jason and the Argonauts took him along when they quested after the Golden Fleece, and Orpheus saved them from shipwreck by drowning out the treacherously alluring voices of the Sirens with his own musical stylings.
Orpheus fell in love with a nymph named Eurydice and blissful was their life together until one day she was pursued by a son of Apollo, the minor deity Aristaeus. In her headlong eagerness to escape, she stepped on a poisonous snake, was bitten and died. Disconsolate, Orpheus found a cave which lead to Hades and followed Eurydice to the Underworld. Here his musical charms were so persuasive that the King of the Dead permitted the minstrel to take his sweetheart home with him - on one condition.
This condition was so simple that it takes some explaining to account for Orpheus's failure to heed it. Perhaps he could not bear to keep his eyes off their beloved object for a moment longer. Perhaps he wanted to share his rapture at birdsong and sunshine as they approached the mouth of the cave. Or maybe he wanted Eurydice to hear the latest lick that he had worked out on his lyre. In any case, he did the one thing he had been forbidden. He turned around and looked at Eurydice, and she was lost to him forever.
Orpheus swore he would never love another, and it may have been the steadfastness of this vow which caused certain wild women of Thrace to tear him limb from limb in a fit of jealousy. They threw his head into a river, and it kept on singing all the way to the sea.
Link to site hosting this version of the myth of Orpheus
Orpheus fell in love with a nymph named Eurydice and blissful was their life together until one day she was pursued by a son of Apollo, the minor deity Aristaeus. In her headlong eagerness to escape, she stepped on a poisonous snake, was bitten and died. Disconsolate, Orpheus found a cave which lead to Hades and followed Eurydice to the Underworld. Here his musical charms were so persuasive that the King of the Dead permitted the minstrel to take his sweetheart home with him - on one condition.
This condition was so simple that it takes some explaining to account for Orpheus's failure to heed it. Perhaps he could not bear to keep his eyes off their beloved object for a moment longer. Perhaps he wanted to share his rapture at birdsong and sunshine as they approached the mouth of the cave. Or maybe he wanted Eurydice to hear the latest lick that he had worked out on his lyre. In any case, he did the one thing he had been forbidden. He turned around and looked at Eurydice, and she was lost to him forever.
Orpheus swore he would never love another, and it may have been the steadfastness of this vow which caused certain wild women of Thrace to tear him limb from limb in a fit of jealousy. They threw his head into a river, and it kept on singing all the way to the sea.
Link to site hosting this version of the myth of Orpheus
Sunday, October 16, 2011
The Pulse of the Drum Crawls Onward
There have been some delays with posting. The delays really run the gamut from excusable, inexcusable, inexplicable, easily explained, hard to really explain without coming off as weird, and so forth.
As it stands I really have to do the following:
• Post up the final parts of Bottle so I could finally be done with it. Actually, I have to finish writing them. I can't explain this delay, it just happened.
• Post up my review of the Sandman series. At this point, I'm just going to have to re-read the whole thing because that review (or the draft) is outdated and old and thus irrelevant. Plus it isn't structured properly and will read awkwardly.
That's really about it. Also, I might be deluding myself as maybe 1 or 2 people actually read this and follow it (it being the blog). Others might just click through because Google linked them here. Thanks, I think. Either way, if you're part of that crowd, stick around for a few minutes. Click here and there, you might find something thought-provoking. Maybe not. The only things that have really delayed me are school and that crowd of personal demons that I never actually faced and have finally come to collect their due.
If I get over that last part soon, I'll probably write a story about it. If I don't get over it, well... we'll see what the hazy future holds in store for me and the readers and the jungle wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh
As it stands I really have to do the following:
• Post up the final parts of Bottle so I could finally be done with it. Actually, I have to finish writing them. I can't explain this delay, it just happened.
• Post up my review of the Sandman series. At this point, I'm just going to have to re-read the whole thing because that review (or the draft) is outdated and old and thus irrelevant. Plus it isn't structured properly and will read awkwardly.
That's really about it. Also, I might be deluding myself as maybe 1 or 2 people actually read this and follow it (it being the blog). Others might just click through because Google linked them here. Thanks, I think. Either way, if you're part of that crowd, stick around for a few minutes. Click here and there, you might find something thought-provoking. Maybe not. The only things that have really delayed me are school and that crowd of personal demons that I never actually faced and have finally come to collect their due.
If I get over that last part soon, I'll probably write a story about it. If I don't get over it, well... we'll see what the hazy future holds in store for me and the readers and the jungle wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh wimoweh
Saturday, October 1, 2011
When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer (Walt Whitman)
When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
- Walt Whitman
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
- Walt Whitman
The Steep and Narrow Crooked Paths: Vice
The right thing to do has always been a problematic concept, for a number of us. Or a majority of us. The right thing seems to be a difficult concept to grasp because our own needs and desires have a tendency of immediately superseding the matters of others (save for our families and sweethearts). I'm in trouble? And the only way to save my ass is to break this window? Okay! Fellow man? Forget that clown!
I realize that first example is pretty stupid but it's pretty apt, don't you think? Replace "break this window" with "break this law" and you pretty much have the same message I was trying to communicate- You choose to NOT do the right thing by doing something you know is wrong.
Does this make one a selfish person? You'd be inclined to say "yes" but you also have to say "no". Why? Because the universe, for the most part, is an enormous coin. As far as we know, there are two sides to everything. Night and Day, yes dusk and dawn encompass both elements but for a moment let's pretend that the universe IS indeed binary. Thanks to this idea, the question of "Am I a selfish person?" gains two answers- yes, and no.
Yes
Thinking of yourself and ignoring the will and interests of others makes you a horrible person. Or at the very least a selfish person. Is that so bad? In excess, yes. Why is this bad? You don't actually have to listen to me and do what I say but who knows? Maybe some of my skewered wisdom will rub off on you and your mind will somehow expand, or deflate and then expand by other means. But thinking of the self is bad because you have a responsibility to your environment/the universe. Every action you take creates some ripple that goes through everything and everyone. The tiniest action can set off a chain of events that could lead to great things or terrible things. If you have the means of being able to improve things somehow, you should do it. Because you can and because it's the right thing to do. At least I think so- to move forward and upward collectively, rather than have the individual trump everything and everyone, leaving them in the dust while he enjoys soft clouds and a cool breeze. Upward. Forward. Everyone. The greater good.
As such, taking the course of action that benefits you and only you shirks responsibility to those around you and ultimately yourself.
What?!
By thinking too much of myself, I'm doing myself a disservice? Yes.
I realize that first example is pretty stupid but it's pretty apt, don't you think? Replace "break this window" with "break this law" and you pretty much have the same message I was trying to communicate- You choose to NOT do the right thing by doing something you know is wrong.
Does this make one a selfish person? You'd be inclined to say "yes" but you also have to say "no". Why? Because the universe, for the most part, is an enormous coin. As far as we know, there are two sides to everything. Night and Day, yes dusk and dawn encompass both elements but for a moment let's pretend that the universe IS indeed binary. Thanks to this idea, the question of "Am I a selfish person?" gains two answers- yes, and no.
Yes
Thinking of yourself and ignoring the will and interests of others makes you a horrible person. Or at the very least a selfish person. Is that so bad? In excess, yes. Why is this bad? You don't actually have to listen to me and do what I say but who knows? Maybe some of my skewered wisdom will rub off on you and your mind will somehow expand, or deflate and then expand by other means. But thinking of the self is bad because you have a responsibility to your environment/the universe. Every action you take creates some ripple that goes through everything and everyone. The tiniest action can set off a chain of events that could lead to great things or terrible things. If you have the means of being able to improve things somehow, you should do it. Because you can and because it's the right thing to do. At least I think so- to move forward and upward collectively, rather than have the individual trump everything and everyone, leaving them in the dust while he enjoys soft clouds and a cool breeze. Upward. Forward. Everyone. The greater good.
As such, taking the course of action that benefits you and only you shirks responsibility to those around you and ultimately yourself.
What?!
By thinking too much of myself, I'm doing myself a disservice? Yes.
Democracy with an asterisk
Recently, someone asked me some questions regarding democracy, specifically democracy and the USA. I saved my answers to the questions: "Do we live in a democracy?" and some question like "Would you rather live in a democracy? Why/Why not?"
The stuff that's italicized is just expanding on the original answers.
Do we live in a democracy
No. We do not live in a democracy because the people or population don't actually have a voice when it comes to final decisions or those that ultimately affect the entire country. Those decisions are made by elected officials who don't always have the interests of their constituents in mind. More often than not, they're out to serve their own interests and make it so they and/or their bosses benefit. If we really did live in a democracy, 300 million people would have to come together to make decisions regarding the direction of this country and while this is a noble thought that would follow what democracy is supposed to be, it's a bad idea in practice because hardly anything would get done. There would be an endless amount of fighting thanks to sharply differing ideologies and thought processes, not to mention a horrible hatred that seems to be present among everyone- racism, sexism, discriminating against religion, creed, sexual orientation, etc etc etc. Since this country is diverse, those differences WILL be present, regardless of how hard you try to squash their presence. Bummer.
Would you rather live in a democracy? Why/Why not?
What we live in is the closest thing to democracy we will ever have unless we can all get our asses out of our heads. So yes, I would rather live in a democracy where everyone theoretically has a role in shaping their government. The opposite may be true but it has provided a relatively stable albeit shaky balance that has kept us from destruction time and time again, in my opinion. This thing we, at the moment, call democracy is better than dictatorships that always fail. And better than anarchy (in which there is no government) because human nature at this point precludes the possibility of living in mutual peace- somebody will always find a way to take advantage of the lack of governing body and cause chaos. Until we all become enlightened and shake off what ever it is that makes us all assholes who look out for only ourselves, anarchy and communism, socialism, will never fully work beyond theories. What we call democracy may not be true democracy but it is a good alternative that allows us to keep our freedom, rights and privileges until they are bought or sold en masse.
I personally don't believe myself when I say these kinds of things. Why? Because they're just ramblings and more often than not, tend to be misinformed/lacking in knowledge and such.
The stuff that's italicized is just expanding on the original answers.
Do we live in a democracy
No. We do not live in a democracy because the people or population don't actually have a voice when it comes to final decisions or those that ultimately affect the entire country. Those decisions are made by elected officials who don't always have the interests of their constituents in mind. More often than not, they're out to serve their own interests and make it so they and/or their bosses benefit. If we really did live in a democracy, 300 million people would have to come together to make decisions regarding the direction of this country and while this is a noble thought that would follow what democracy is supposed to be, it's a bad idea in practice because hardly anything would get done. There would be an endless amount of fighting thanks to sharply differing ideologies and thought processes, not to mention a horrible hatred that seems to be present among everyone- racism, sexism, discriminating against religion, creed, sexual orientation, etc etc etc. Since this country is diverse, those differences WILL be present, regardless of how hard you try to squash their presence. Bummer.
Would you rather live in a democracy? Why/Why not?
What we live in is the closest thing to democracy we will ever have unless we can all get our asses out of our heads. So yes, I would rather live in a democracy where everyone theoretically has a role in shaping their government. The opposite may be true but it has provided a relatively stable albeit shaky balance that has kept us from destruction time and time again, in my opinion. This thing we, at the moment, call democracy is better than dictatorships that always fail. And better than anarchy (in which there is no government) because human nature at this point precludes the possibility of living in mutual peace- somebody will always find a way to take advantage of the lack of governing body and cause chaos. Until we all become enlightened and shake off what ever it is that makes us all assholes who look out for only ourselves, anarchy and communism, socialism, will never fully work beyond theories. What we call democracy may not be true democracy but it is a good alternative that allows us to keep our freedom, rights and privileges until they are bought or sold en masse.
I personally don't believe myself when I say these kinds of things. Why? Because they're just ramblings and more often than not, tend to be misinformed/lacking in knowledge and such.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Next Stop
School has resumed (which explains the delay in posting and will explain the subsequent sporadic posting). As a poor college student, I rely heavily on public transportation for most (if not all) of my getting from point A to point B and the occasional point C and D needs (not that they would be seedy in nature). Some frown upon it, and I frown upon those who frown upon it. I also frown upon those who have to fuck up the experience. I look at them as being worse than murderers (a slight but apt exaggeration, in my opinion) because they lack the common sense and decency to do the simplest of tasks.
By that, I mean I strongly dislike people who refuse to take the window seat or don't move when you're trying to get out. This is a pretty simple thing to do but they don't do it. And it's so enraging because something so simple isn't done. I just want to sit down, not crush your skull with my hands or anything of the sort. You don’t have to take the goddamn aisle seat and leave the window seat perfectly empty! I always offer my seat to old ladies even if I stood for an hour waiting for the damn bus. Why can’t other people extend the same courtesy? Can we even call ourselves a society when common courtesy towards our fellow humans is retracted without as much as a syllable for an explanation? Why you gotta be a jerk, fellow commuter?
This explains why most of the time I stand on the subway: I'm inside the subway car and not sitting in a seat NOT being outside and standing on the subway car itself! This isn't an action movie... yet. Though I have found myself snarling and wanting to tackle people who don't pay the fare. It's $1.50, it's not an arm or leg. Yeah, I'd like it to be the old price but we can't do anything to change it for the better if you're going to be a dick and hop the turnstiles. If anything, it'll raise the price! That has happened before!
$1.50 is a small price to pay for peace of mind. Or would you rather take your chances, get caught without your ticket/valid pass/etc and have to pay up to at least $250 for being a lazy jackass and not paying a comparatively tiny sum of money? If you don't want to pay, then walk or have someone give you a ride. Don't ruin it for the rest of us.
I remember some semesters where I had to walk to and from school. I got a decent workout- hour and a half in the scorching hot sun wearing black. Good times. It was better than risking paying $250+ for riding without a ticket.
Not much can be done about those kinds of people who don't pay the fare and are bastards with the seating arrangements. One just has to pay their fare and go on with their day.
By that, I mean I strongly dislike people who refuse to take the window seat or don't move when you're trying to get out. This is a pretty simple thing to do but they don't do it. And it's so enraging because something so simple isn't done. I just want to sit down, not crush your skull with my hands or anything of the sort. You don’t have to take the goddamn aisle seat and leave the window seat perfectly empty! I always offer my seat to old ladies even if I stood for an hour waiting for the damn bus. Why can’t other people extend the same courtesy? Can we even call ourselves a society when common courtesy towards our fellow humans is retracted without as much as a syllable for an explanation? Why you gotta be a jerk, fellow commuter?
This explains why most of the time I stand on the subway: I'm inside the subway car and not sitting in a seat NOT being outside and standing on the subway car itself! This isn't an action movie... yet. Though I have found myself snarling and wanting to tackle people who don't pay the fare. It's $1.50, it's not an arm or leg. Yeah, I'd like it to be the old price but we can't do anything to change it for the better if you're going to be a dick and hop the turnstiles. If anything, it'll raise the price! That has happened before!
$1.50 is a small price to pay for peace of mind. Or would you rather take your chances, get caught without your ticket/valid pass/etc and have to pay up to at least $250 for being a lazy jackass and not paying a comparatively tiny sum of money? If you don't want to pay, then walk or have someone give you a ride. Don't ruin it for the rest of us.
I remember some semesters where I had to walk to and from school. I got a decent workout- hour and a half in the scorching hot sun wearing black. Good times. It was better than risking paying $250+ for riding without a ticket.
Not much can be done about those kinds of people who don't pay the fare and are bastards with the seating arrangements. One just has to pay their fare and go on with their day.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Repeat that, repeat (Gerard Manley Hopkins)
Repeat that, repeat,
Cuckoo, bird, and open ear wells, heart-springs, delightfully sweet,
With a ballad, with a ballad, a rebound
Off trundled timber and scoops of the hillside ground, hollow hollow hollow ground:
The whole landscape flushes on a sudden at a sound.
- Gerard Manley Hopkins
Cuckoo, bird, and open ear wells, heart-springs, delightfully sweet,
With a ballad, with a ballad, a rebound
Off trundled timber and scoops of the hillside ground, hollow hollow hollow ground:
The whole landscape flushes on a sudden at a sound.
- Gerard Manley Hopkins
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Destruction
Destruction is merely construction reversed. Since it is still construction, it can ultimately be defined as the act of rearranging things and not the process of causing so much damage as to drive out of existence. Rather nice, isn't it?
Monday, August 22, 2011
There is Danger!
Or is there? Yes, there most certainly is. And there will always be danger, regardless of what kind of preparations you make. Danger is inevitable and a key aspect of life. If there's one thing that will always exist (for the most part), it's danger.
If the universe is neatly split into 2 halves- Good and Evil, and you remove Evil, you'll still end up with Evil. The only difference is that now, the game is played by Good and Less-Good which is basically Evil (as it is not Good).
Replace Good and Evil with Safety and Danger, respectively.
If the universe is neatly split into 2 halves- Safety and Danger, and you remove Danger, you'll still end up with Danger. The only difference is that now, the game is played by Safety and Less-Safety which is basically Danger (as it is not Safety).
But the universe isn't split into two neat halves, is it? It's all one color that has ever-shifting hue that morphs at every angle imaginable (and unimaginable) as to defy rigid classification and such. As bizarre as that sounds, it's very likely because you'll always hear someone say "Well, it depends" and "Kind of sort of maybe" and varying phrases that echo that same sentiment of indecision and gray areas.
The universe is a wonderful dangerous gray area. My favorite shirt is gray and has holes in it.
If the universe is neatly split into 2 halves- Good and Evil, and you remove Evil, you'll still end up with Evil. The only difference is that now, the game is played by Good and Less-Good which is basically Evil (as it is not Good).
Replace Good and Evil with Safety and Danger, respectively.
If the universe is neatly split into 2 halves- Safety and Danger, and you remove Danger, you'll still end up with Danger. The only difference is that now, the game is played by Safety and Less-Safety which is basically Danger (as it is not Safety).
But the universe isn't split into two neat halves, is it? It's all one color that has ever-shifting hue that morphs at every angle imaginable (and unimaginable) as to defy rigid classification and such. As bizarre as that sounds, it's very likely because you'll always hear someone say "Well, it depends" and "Kind of sort of maybe" and varying phrases that echo that same sentiment of indecision and gray areas.
The universe is a wonderful dangerous gray area. My favorite shirt is gray and has holes in it.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
You Have Incurred My Wrath!
I've made a lot of people angry over the years. Some will just let their anger fade away because they realize there's really nothing to be angry about. Others have been angry for some time but eventually let it go. I doubt that anyone still holds a grudge against me but chances are there were people who did, or individuals. What never really changed was how they presented themselves: swearing, yelling, hatred and poison in their voice, and sometimes a threat. Sometimes they would just furrow their eyebrows, point at me and glare as if to say without words that I've incurred the wrath of some powerful creature. Or they'd just say, "You better watch your back." which is really a stupid thing to say.
In my opinion, "You'll pay for this!" is more menacing than "You better watch your back." Sure they're both vague but for me, "You'll pay for this" is a little more direct whereas "watch your back" would just make you spin until you're dizzy. If nausea is the goal then I congratulate you. Payment options- blood, money, reputation, life. See? Puts a great deal of fear into you, doesn't it?
The same wording would apply to "I'll get you for this." Because I see it as "I'll get you(r) _____ for this!" ____ = Blood, money, reputation ruined, life. Eh? Eh?
On the other side, people have made me angry over the years. Some more than others. I've held some grudges but have recently let them go. Why? They're not worth the time or effort it takes in planning out revenge and executing it. Though I have a horrible temper (or so I'm told), I haven't let it run wild in a long time. I plan on keeping it that, and it's been working quite nicely these past few years. I do get upset and annoyed with people every now and then. Only a glimpse of my anger shows but it's enough to make people take a step back and say "Whoa."
I don't like that feeling. Their eyes paint me as some vicious vile monster. I'm not a monster. I don't have a cataclysmic wrath ready to be unleashed in the blink of an eye. Maybe a bad temper that is under control but certainly not a wrath. At least I hope not.
Hmm.
In my opinion, "You'll pay for this!" is more menacing than "You better watch your back." Sure they're both vague but for me, "You'll pay for this" is a little more direct whereas "watch your back" would just make you spin until you're dizzy. If nausea is the goal then I congratulate you. Payment options- blood, money, reputation, life. See? Puts a great deal of fear into you, doesn't it?
The same wording would apply to "I'll get you for this." Because I see it as "I'll get you(r) _____ for this!" ____ = Blood, money, reputation ruined, life. Eh? Eh?
On the other side, people have made me angry over the years. Some more than others. I've held some grudges but have recently let them go. Why? They're not worth the time or effort it takes in planning out revenge and executing it. Though I have a horrible temper (or so I'm told), I haven't let it run wild in a long time. I plan on keeping it that, and it's been working quite nicely these past few years. I do get upset and annoyed with people every now and then. Only a glimpse of my anger shows but it's enough to make people take a step back and say "Whoa."
I don't like that feeling. Their eyes paint me as some vicious vile monster. I'm not a monster. I don't have a cataclysmic wrath ready to be unleashed in the blink of an eye. Maybe a bad temper that is under control but certainly not a wrath. At least I hope not.
Hmm.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Banner
Growing up I was made fun of. A lot. I never truly understood why this was. Why was I being made fun of for simply for being myself? I followed the rules, I stayed out of people's ways, I tried to treat others the way I wanted to be treated but despite all this they hurt me. Bastards. Their insults got to me, as did their fists and kicks, as they are wont to do. It hurt more because I was just a kid, and I didn't understand why this was. If it was appearance, it was unfair that among the other lanky kids with glasses I was the only one to be singled out.
As I went through school, I was still made fun of, and a target for bigger bullies. The insults hurt less but the physical pain hurt a bit more. I remember I confronted one once. I asked him if I had ever done anything to him to warrant such idiotic behavior from him. He said he picked on me just for the sake of doing it. What the fuck did I ever do to him? Nothing. If I had done something to slight him then there might have been a tiny pebble of justification for being a jerk to me, but since there wasn't I'm just baffled. How does one push someone else around "just because"? This is madness!
I embarrassed him once the following year in front of our class. He couldn't walk the walk and I felt a slight peace as he sat there baffled and gathering anger. Of course that didn't stop him from confronting me later that day, when I was alone. I didn't back down and nothing happened. He just stopped. After that, I was still made fun of but I had already begun building up this shoddy shield that kept out most of the sting and injury of my environment.
Stuff still got through but it hurt way less, for the most part. What this did to me was make me strange, angry, and jolly above all. I'm not actually bitter, though I have these moments of "This prick1 is really THAT sweet2 guy?"
I blame those vile fucked up jars called people.
They bring out the worst in me by projecting their insecurities onto me. I'm not a bitter person by nature. Though rumors have it that I'm a very angry person. I sincerely doubt that. Or I'm in denial about my anger. Let's hope I never get blasted with gamma radiation. But yes, I'm not a bitter person by nature.
I can't say the same for others but they make me angry through their bitterness, those incorrigible fiends! Incapable of respect, concern, being considerate or being human! It's people like these who make this world a terrible place and fuck it up for the rest of us. They demand and take too much. Rarely giving far too little or just nothing at all.
I'm trying my best not to lose my temper. "All I wanna do is walk the stupid path of peace" as that old Mad TV sketch with Will Sasso (as Steven Seagal) and David Carradine goes.
Ah.
1 Prick is an insult, obviously. And a term reserved for someone who behaves indecorously.
2 I've been described positively as many things. Sweet is one of them.
As I went through school, I was still made fun of, and a target for bigger bullies. The insults hurt less but the physical pain hurt a bit more. I remember I confronted one once. I asked him if I had ever done anything to him to warrant such idiotic behavior from him. He said he picked on me just for the sake of doing it. What the fuck did I ever do to him? Nothing. If I had done something to slight him then there might have been a tiny pebble of justification for being a jerk to me, but since there wasn't I'm just baffled. How does one push someone else around "just because"? This is madness!
I embarrassed him once the following year in front of our class. He couldn't walk the walk and I felt a slight peace as he sat there baffled and gathering anger. Of course that didn't stop him from confronting me later that day, when I was alone. I didn't back down and nothing happened. He just stopped. After that, I was still made fun of but I had already begun building up this shoddy shield that kept out most of the sting and injury of my environment.
Stuff still got through but it hurt way less, for the most part. What this did to me was make me strange, angry, and jolly above all. I'm not actually bitter, though I have these moments of "This prick1 is really THAT sweet2 guy?"
I blame those vile fucked up jars called people.
They bring out the worst in me by projecting their insecurities onto me. I'm not a bitter person by nature. Though rumors have it that I'm a very angry person. I sincerely doubt that. Or I'm in denial about my anger. Let's hope I never get blasted with gamma radiation. But yes, I'm not a bitter person by nature.
I can't say the same for others but they make me angry through their bitterness, those incorrigible fiends! Incapable of respect, concern, being considerate or being human! It's people like these who make this world a terrible place and fuck it up for the rest of us. They demand and take too much. Rarely giving far too little or just nothing at all.
I'm trying my best not to lose my temper. "All I wanna do is walk the stupid path of peace" as that old Mad TV sketch with Will Sasso (as Steven Seagal) and David Carradine goes.
Ah.
1 Prick is an insult, obviously. And a term reserved for someone who behaves indecorously.
2 I've been described positively as many things. Sweet is one of them.
Parasites vs People
People are empty jars riddled with holes. Try as you might to fill them up with knowledge, love, attention, etc they'll never be satisfied or full or complete or anything of the sort. When you can't fill them with anything (for reasons that may be beyond your control), they'll respond with emptiness and a cold but quiet anger of sorts. This seems to seep into your mind and cause damage ranging from a minor itch to "Jesus fucking Christ! This is fucking painful!"
Of course, that first statement isn't entirely correct. Most people are those fucked up jars. There are obviously exceptions, though, in my experience, they are far too rare and often go unnoticed. These are the kinds of people that make life worthwhile and pleasant.
I'd like to be able to filter out those fucked up jars who demand too much and take everything but give too little too rarely or just give nothing at all. Unfortunately, one will have to deal with these parasites until everyone is enlightened, or until the world ends. The latter being more likely. A shame, isn't it?
Of course, that first statement isn't entirely correct. Most people are those fucked up jars. There are obviously exceptions, though, in my experience, they are far too rare and often go unnoticed. These are the kinds of people that make life worthwhile and pleasant.
I'd like to be able to filter out those fucked up jars who demand too much and take everything but give too little too rarely or just give nothing at all. Unfortunately, one will have to deal with these parasites until everyone is enlightened, or until the world ends. The latter being more likely. A shame, isn't it?
Thursday, August 11, 2011
The Emerald Ivory Figure's Fine Grasp and the Deathblow
An ivory gleaming being
cloaked in bitter cloth
marching beside you
arrests your mind's attention
telling you all sorts of sweet bitter things
showing a crumbling palace splendor and glee
hiding something sinister underneath
that faint and twisted smile.
"Have a smoke, or a drink.
Come. Sit with me."
A table rises from thin air
a siren's song beckons you to sit there
to sip at expiry.
Your head yells at you
but you don't listen
"Her gaze is steady and cruel.
Her aim is straight and true.
She'll land the deathblow upon poor miserable you."
Something of hers touches you
your heart flutters with venom and vice
and beautiful visions that are lovely and false but nice.
Your mind bends and melts
She says nothing.
She doesn't smirk.
Her eyes return a vacant gaze at you.
That foul and beautiful enchantress
the deathblow.
inexplicable beauty of butchery
and flowers
and sweet things.
The ivory figure marches on.
Her gait draws your eyes to her
as she walks with another poor soul
You know his end all too well
you know she'll send him to a bitter happiness: hell.
Her hauntingly beautiful gait beckons you to rise
and fall.
cloaked in bitter cloth
marching beside you
arrests your mind's attention
telling you all sorts of sweet bitter things
showing a crumbling palace splendor and glee
hiding something sinister underneath
that faint and twisted smile.
"Have a smoke, or a drink.
Come. Sit with me."
A table rises from thin air
a siren's song beckons you to sit there
to sip at expiry.
Your head yells at you
but you don't listen
"Her gaze is steady and cruel.
Her aim is straight and true.
She'll land the deathblow upon poor miserable you."
Something of hers touches you
your heart flutters with venom and vice
and beautiful visions that are lovely and false but nice.
Your mind bends and melts
She says nothing.
She doesn't smirk.
Her eyes return a vacant gaze at you.
That foul and beautiful enchantress
the deathblow.
inexplicable beauty of butchery
and flowers
and sweet things.
The ivory figure marches on.
Her gait draws your eyes to her
as she walks with another poor soul
You know his end all too well
you know she'll send him to a bitter happiness: hell.
Her hauntingly beautiful gait beckons you to rise
and fall.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Dollop
My posts are becoming more erratic and less cohesive. I can't really offer an explanation for that because I have no idea why this is happening. Lack of focus, perhaps. Lack of (remotely) interesting things to talk about. Or maybe another reason of which I am not aware.
In any case, I'll just post this for the time being.
The well hasn't run dry. Trust me on this.
In any case, I'll just post this for the time being.
The well hasn't run dry. Trust me on this.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Frenzied Stoicism
Several months ago, someone asked me: "How come you never show emotion?"
It was a strange question for that person to ask me. Especially since that person has known me for about 2 maybe 3 years. We're not actually friends but that person knows me and for some bizarre reason has often hung out with my friends and I. Nonetheless, it's still a damning question to be asked. "How come [I] never show emotion?"
It came at a weird time because the chums and I were just hanging out, not doing anything but watching a movie.
Still, I gave a simplistic but verbose bullshit answer of "it's all relative": that people show emotion differently. It was enough to end that discussion but the question had already begun to dig itself deeper into my mind. I didn't lose sleep over it but I definitely thought about it often afterward.
The answer I gave (though satisfactory) led to debate about whether or not I do or do not show expression. But what are emotions? Expressions? Feelings? Are they universal? Relative? A universally mutually shared unique experience? Part of the collective unconscious? All of these things and more perhaps.
I'm not a robot. Of this I am certain. If I were, I'd rust in water or girls would complain that my touch is too cold or something. I just think that it's stupid to point out to someone that they don't show emotion. Emotions can be so powerful that they becomes so subtle and ultimately dwarf everything else and present a calm state of being. Think of stars, and the sun. As we know, the sun is basically a star. The only difference is distance. Stars that we admire so much are relatively subtle when compared to the sun but that doesn't mean that the sun isn't a star, or that the star can't sustain life in its respective part of the galaxy.
Think of the ocean and the beach. We see a series of repetitive waves crashing against the shore but sailing further and further away from shore, your vessel will most likely be torn apart by a series of enormous waves and storms. The surface is relatively calm but diving further and further, chances are something will eat you alive or kill you. Same place, different experience.
Me punching a hole into a wall is a subtle form of anger to someone else. Whereas furrowed eyebrows and curt sentences spell unimaginable doom in the eyes of others. Frenzied stoicism. Stoic frenzy. Take your pick; you're still showing something.
It was a strange question for that person to ask me. Especially since that person has known me for about 2 maybe 3 years. We're not actually friends but that person knows me and for some bizarre reason has often hung out with my friends and I. Nonetheless, it's still a damning question to be asked. "How come [I] never show emotion?"
It came at a weird time because the chums and I were just hanging out, not doing anything but watching a movie.
Still, I gave a simplistic but verbose bullshit answer of "it's all relative": that people show emotion differently. It was enough to end that discussion but the question had already begun to dig itself deeper into my mind. I didn't lose sleep over it but I definitely thought about it often afterward.
The answer I gave (though satisfactory) led to debate about whether or not I do or do not show expression. But what are emotions? Expressions? Feelings? Are they universal? Relative? A universally mutually shared unique experience? Part of the collective unconscious? All of these things and more perhaps.
I'm not a robot. Of this I am certain. If I were, I'd rust in water or girls would complain that my touch is too cold or something. I just think that it's stupid to point out to someone that they don't show emotion. Emotions can be so powerful that they becomes so subtle and ultimately dwarf everything else and present a calm state of being. Think of stars, and the sun. As we know, the sun is basically a star. The only difference is distance. Stars that we admire so much are relatively subtle when compared to the sun but that doesn't mean that the sun isn't a star, or that the star can't sustain life in its respective part of the galaxy.
Think of the ocean and the beach. We see a series of repetitive waves crashing against the shore but sailing further and further away from shore, your vessel will most likely be torn apart by a series of enormous waves and storms. The surface is relatively calm but diving further and further, chances are something will eat you alive or kill you. Same place, different experience.
Me punching a hole into a wall is a subtle form of anger to someone else. Whereas furrowed eyebrows and curt sentences spell unimaginable doom in the eyes of others. Frenzied stoicism. Stoic frenzy. Take your pick; you're still showing something.
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