Porn King, Billboard Queen Enter Calif. Election

Pensive tonight. Abjure the intellectual ego builders, those who punish the stupid to push their pride. So tired, so searching. Soul tired, soul searching. I see six billion rowboats; I see a big swift-moving river; I see a dam, a falls. I see indifference.

Life was better when people used a barrel instead of an SUV to precipitate their crappy lives over a dam into fifteen minutes of media coverage that they'd never get to see.

Modern communication sucks. People can't turn words into meaning and that hurts the thinkers. In turn the thinkers tip the bottle hard -- inebriated congruence.

Song of the Week volumes 8 and 11 will arrive soon. In the meantime checkout the subtext that I've added to my blog (in the right side panel or the full length version). I am excited about the subtext section as I can share details about the origins of posts, or perhaps just my feelings in general. It will work its way out. Also, I added a new necklace, and, a Faves category. Those are at least a few things to check out while I stumble to regain my grace of words and knock out some blog worthy Songs of the Week. For now, I sleep. Tick-tick-tick is scaring me.

Artist: Rebekah Del Rio
Song: Llorando (Crying)
Album: Mulholland Drive Soundtrack
Year: 2001
Bonus Song: A Long Goodbye (756 KB)

And that's it. Mingling in the presence of legit art leaves you wholly naked -- a sudden, unapologetic, and irrevocable nakedness with no quarter. Conversely, pedestrian art revels in the one-burlesque-strap-at-a-time, pirouette around some once-shiny pillar of culture that pines for its audience to wholesale believe that effective imagination lies in what is not revealed. Legit art just takes your underwear and hangs it high in a tree.

I first experienced this phenomenon when my mom thought it was a good idea to take her 8-year-old son to see Raging Bull in 1980. Oh-fucking-ambush-shit-storm. Anything -- Debbie Does Dallas -- anything would have been a better choice. Forget the popcorn on this one for sure. At least with Debbie Does Dallas, the plot absurdity would have eventually quashed any uncomfortable feelings I had about watching gratuitous anatomy mingling while my mom was in the adjacent theater seat. Who knows, after a Debbie sub plot or two, maybe my mom and I could have made a run for Junior Mints and popcorn after all.

But Raging Bull. Turn the Aesthetic Page:

At age 8 I couldn't comprehend the art contained within the violence and language of the preceding script excerpt. I was reasonably street smart. I knew fuck and shit and cunt and all that stuff. But I knew them as imitation-swears and cool playground words (think imitation bacon bits for fledgling vegetarians).

Now, when Cathy Moriarty's Vickie says, "I sucked your brother's fuckin' cock!" That phrase gets packaged with all of its denotation and all of its connotation and gets wrapped into a potent singularity of legit art (especially with her lines being bounced off of Robert De Niro). It was a singularity so fierce that it stripped off all of the theatergoers' clothes who accompanied my mom and me. Of course my mom and I were naked too. So I couldn't jump into her lap for protection (extended innocence?) and my pride wouldn't let me cover my eyes or ears. I had to face Raging Bull straight up and naked -- to examine the saint -- to examine the sinner.

I was most recently naked at the movies while watching Mulholland Drive in October 2001. Being an awkwardly tall guy, I either sit in the very front row of a theater (legs can extend as much as desired), or the very back (nobody behind me to crack tall guy jokes -- being tall, conspicuous, and super self-conscious really sucks a thousand and two sucks). Anyway, for Mulholland Drive, I was alone (for a Lynch flick!), wearing my orange Chuck Taylor high tops, and I sat in the very first row: a self-conscious disaster invisibly effervescing. Then Jesus!

Rebekah Del Rio made her entrance giving a soliloquy of sadness by singing an a cappella lament. Her lament did not comfort. It demanded, it screamed, it suffered, it hated, it shuddered. Her sorrowful melody started deceptively sweetly, but after a few recursions of a crescendo-ing wail, the fury is released. She is God and her audience is left scrambling to hide their selves -- ashamed to show their banal nakedness in the presence of her sublime creation.

Certain artists make fortunes bearing lame crosses of suburban angst. In contrast Rebekah Del Rio bares the souls of her listeners to make fortunes in the exultations of art. When she sings (check out the bonus song, "A Long Goodbye") the embodiment of truth is entwined in her timbre, breath, and phrasing. She is a true artist, one that will make you naked without regard to your objections or resistance.

Addendum. It's a collective societal imperative to ensure that artists like Del Rio can live their lives without obstructions to their creative processes. Hmm, hear the naysayers? One way to support the aforementioned Utopian vision is by seeing live music. Fortunately, Rebekah Del Rio will be playing in the Seattle area at the Twin Peaks Festival August 15th - 17th 2003. If anyone wants to go to this, let me know.

Now you know.

2003-08-06. The only thing clear tonight is my cognizance of my wholesale inability to say anything to anybody in the manner of my intent. Sure, you can't control what others think, but almighty-kreestay-almighty, the phrase this is beyond absurd is meant for something. This is beyond absurd. The only thing clear is the gigantic gap between literal and literary. I think I finally understand that bum in the beyond-absurd-expensive-parking garage who is sitting in a pool of urine (not-necessarily-his-own) giving out sub-fecund perpetual, yet free-meandering-going-nowhere monologues (he's no threat, just a nuisance to his surrounding concrete and rebar) -- yes, the same bum that we'll bitch about in the morning -- maybe not him, but at least his odor. I understand him 'cause I'm not trying to be weird. I'm just trying to say tah-tonka -- making horns on my head with my fingers. But y'all keep saying platypus or orangutan, which is pee-in-the-pants-frustratingly-off-base. Granted, it isn't easy, but it isn't classified as difficult either.

That's about it, really...hardly worth the time typing, and certainly not worth the time reading.

This post brought to you by the letter Q, number 5 + 4, ale Arrogant Bastard "You're Not Worthy," and a little pickle juice.

First, apparently life is going to suck. Second, apparently you're going to die.

Out on the road so sorry if I'm remiss in email responses. Well, not out on the road, not physically, not metaphorically, not even close. I'm just being a ghost in my hometown full of ghosts. Coming home depresses me. Not because it sucks -- I just realize how small I was. And that's a cruel mind trick, 'cause I'm still so very small now but I don't acknowledge it, hence the depression. At least I got away from here (Waukesha, WI, bourgeois suburbs). It feels good knowing that humans can escape environments that run counter to the health and philosophy of their individualism... I keep running into drunk people (apparently, according to MS Word, it's drunken people, not drunk people) who insist on sharing whatever they feel necessary to share with me. It's annoying till I realize my blog traces subtlety down the same vein... Really struggling here. Really really struggling. Can't write it away, can't wish it away, can't drink it away. I did, however, take this note (meeting my friend at Perkins this Sunday morning) on this paper (rectal foam promo) in my parents house (definitely don't ask definitely don't tell) and it made me snot silly:

Laughter aside -- back to brooding:

It's so liberating leaving Seattle to visit some other US cosmopolis, say Minneapolis, New York City, or really, any place where the city council respects the intelligence of its citizens to cross against a red light or cross the middle of a street when no cars are present (I think even Millerwaukee bests Seattle in this category). If Seattle let its citizens jaywalk, there'd be a lot less Seattle-sucks and a little more credibility to this 1st-class-wannabe city. But until then, you'd better keep a third eye scanning for police-on-bikes before you cross against the light here.

If jaywalking tickets exist to alleviate budget woes, then I would rather have the city hand out random-$40-we-need-a-little-budget-help tickets. Sure that's absurd, but at least you could smile -- at least the ticket's name and function would be in harmony.

If jaywalking tickets don't exist to help the budget, they sure can't exist to ensure pedestrian safety. If you have a brain, it's far safer to cross an intersection when no cars are present, rather than wait for the light to turn green (which entails all the lights first turning red). Waiting for the green light only ensures that the most cars (statistically) will be present at the intersection. If you live in Seattle and want an easy proof, go watch left-turning, southbound cars on First at Jackson during the afternoon rush hour. Frequently, these cars will try to make their left hand turn just as (or a little before) the light turns green (no left-hand turn arrow exists). The turning cars usually can beat the oncoming traffic, but they usually can't beat pedestrians in the crosswalk. It's a ker-splat waiting to happen; but the ker-splat factor would be reduced if the pedestrians weren't there (i.e. they crossed against the light), or if the police focused on cars-attempting-to-run-over people instead of people-attempting-to-run-through-empty intersections.

What about cars making right turns on red -- don't jaywalkers interfere with them? Yes, absolutely. This is the most valid argument for disallowing jaywalking in Seattle. However, at most of the intersections in downtown Seattle, in order to make a right hand turn on red safely, a vehicle needs to pull far out into the intersection to see oncoming cars. When they do this, they must illegally cross the pedestrian crosswalk that has the green light and right-of-way. The solution? No right turns on red in downtown Seattle. But we don't do that here, because it's more important for Bellevue bound Mercedes to get home as quickly as possible, even if that means a loss-of-pedestrian-limb (or two).

But here's the real kicker. Many Seattle streets contain mid-block crosswalks. Ostensibly, cars stop for people in these crosswalks, allowing pedestrians to cross safely. Unfortunately, the only way to get a car to stop for you is to walk out blindly into the crosswalk and pretend you don’t see the cars barreling at you. In most cases you get a holy-shit reaction and cars will stop to let you by. In the other cases it's ker-splat. Of course, as a driver, it's sometimes impossible to see people in these crosswalks. The solution? Let pedestrians jaywalk so they don't have to confront vehicles that may not see them.

Proposal. I want to find out how many jaywalking tickets are handed out to Seattleites each year. Then I want to determine how many tickets are issued to drivers who violate crosswalk regulations. If these numbers are not equal (or at least pedestrian/car proportionate), then I propose that the city of Seattle cannot issue further jaywalking tickets until a similar number of crosswalk citations have also been issued (assuming that jaywalking tickets are now issued disproportionately higher). But better yet Mr. Mayor -- we've got brains here. Let us cross freely so we don't have to look so dorkish to out-of-towners who always look perplexed when they see us stand at red lights when no cars are coming in either direction.

"Players only love you when they're playing." God, I hope Stevie was coked out of her mind when she wrote that.

Conan's at ten! [I was into him before anyone :-)] Thus, potentially proving that good things can happen to ostensibly genuine people. But, someone please email me and tell me he is personally an ass, just so we can keep the universe in order.

If Hermann Hesse wasn't dead, I would swear he was immortal (Oops, in the context of Steppenwolf, apologies if that quote is tinged with pukable irony).

But was Hesse racist?

His description of jazz:

J. Frank Parnell: Have you any machines?

Kevin: You don't want to eat from a machine. Look, there's a nice Del Taco across the street. They've got enchurritos and everything.

J. Frank Parnell: But I do want to eat from a machine. Vended food contains all the necessary nutrients for survival. Taste damn good too, by golly. And plus, on any given evening, the machine that last night gave you cheetos might dispense instead... Doritos. Yohos. Oreos. Toscitos. Or Lorna Doones.

Kevin: Lorna Doones? I love Lorna Doones.

From Alex Cox's TV version of Repo Man

I need an insurance policy to cover nights out when I'm booked for multiple musical engagements. Drunk as a skunk. Why do people say that? Drunk with a skunk sounds much more like a mafuctinsanity evening. Give it a shot if you disagree... Oh my God though: Randy Neal on slide with Neon Brown. The only thing that makes that better is if Randy is wearing a slam McDonald's t-shirt. Wait, he was wearing a McShit shirt. Awesome.

Neal and Brown were followed by a short drive downtown to see the Revolving Jugglers release a Bullet Train to the masses. And it's always fun on a 6-drink minimum. So fun that I yanked a cigarette out of a very cute woman's hand, smoked a bit of it, and then gave it back. All without getting slapped. But I'm terrible at the flirting thing. I was just enjoying the few smoke-puffs and the philosophical moment, while the cute woman escaped -- me without her name or phone number.

Last call, "you don't have to go home but you can't stay here." Yeah, yeah, we've heard it all before. But, oh shit, I haven't eaten since noon and I have no food at home. No food except popcorn. I made a grocery sack of it, put on a Wiskonsin sized slab of butter, and complemented the portentous gastrointestinal concoction with half a cherry Coke. Ten minutes later, after eating the sack of corn, my body falls asleep without discussing the idea with my mind.

I wake up 4 hours later, finish the other half of the now warm cherry Coke, pop 3 aspirin, and head for the coffee shop for an iced-double-tall-mocha. The dietary rewind: 20 hours, no food, 4 beers, 3 rum and Cokes, a sack of fat drenched popcorn, 1 cherry Coke, 3 aspirin, and 1 double tall mocha. The results aren't quite in, but I am feeling funny.

Shy bachelors -- it's what we do to our stomachs and don't do to our toilets that keep us recursively single.

This post's title courtesy of Merle Haggard [source]. Well, Merle, me too. Me & Gram, cosmic pussies.

Don't need no hits.

Artist: Gram Parsons
Song: A Song For You
Album: GP
Year: 1972

One thing that arises out of unemployment is surplus time to ride, burn, and smoke the midnight oil to wherever it takes you. My surplus blessed me with spending many witching hours listening to barrier-bending DJ-Larry Metro on KEXP, Seattle. Another thing that arises from unemployment is the gift of a personal full-length Mirror. Between the two I hammered away at my egocentric, unilateral approach to music appreciation. When I was younger, I constantly touted the phrase "open minded" and then usually followed it with "I like everything except rap and country." Fortunately, Metro and the Mirror taught me to approach music with a find-a-value-in-it attitude. And like Frost at the fork in the road, this has made all the difference (although by now, ironically, both paths are probably very well traveled).

So, when the Gram Parsons revolution hit me two weeks ago (via my purchase of his fist two albums), my intellectual ears were attuned and ready for the Cosmic American Music sermon. I knew of Gram Parsons as a youth. I even knew of his mystique and legend. But when I heard his music as a youth, it scream-shattered the crystal imago I had built for him. Jesus, his stuff sucked. And so I believed, and so it went. On and on for nearly twenty years. But I've always felt some weird and perhaps delusional affinity and communion with Gram Parsons (obviously stupid because he's dead). I really like his name, so maybe it's all based on that. Regardless, I never let his mystique fly by, and it was a wise decision, because one play of his two-on-one packaged CD rearranged all of my semi-hardened music appreciation brain neurons (softened a bit by the aforementioned DJ Larry Metro and Mirror).

This Gram Parsons revolution is so strong I feel that applying words to it will only cheapen it and cause a great failure in the intention of my words and my execution of arranging them.

Gram Parsons died of a morphine and tequila overdose on September 19, 1973. Normally, this wouldn't spur any pronounced emotional reaction in me. In fact I prefer the Gene Simmons school of thought --that if you can't handle the fame and feel the need to suicide yourself (deliberately, accidentally, or otherwise) -- there are plenty of other suburban youth-rock-star-wannabes who'd be willing to swing that same fame bat for you.

Parsons's case is different because he didn't hit stratospheric fame and he wasn't playing rock-and-roll (and we all know about being country when country wasn't cool). There's something about his Harvard theology studies too. Searching. It recalls a Hesse quote that I recently posted. Was Parsons "a beast astray who finds neither home nor joy nor nourishment in a world that is strange and incomprehensible"?

On a bad night for me in high school, the evening ended with my friend writing the following letter:

I wonder if Parsons's last night was a "scary, depressing evening," or just another rock-and-roll party turned into a media goldmine? I hope for the former; I hope the last lyrics Parsons thought of were from his song "$1000 Wedding":

I say that not to be morbid. I just want his death to be as real as his life and his music. I mean, "country-rock" would have worked just fine, but Parsons wanted "Cosmic American Music." Laughable, lovable, geniusable. Four minutes and forty-three seconds into track 17 (a live track) on the GP/Grievous Angel CD, a woman screams something like "I don't like you -- you're ugly." If that's truly what is said -- and the engineers caught it and Gram left it in -- then that's keeping it real. That's the Gram Parsons revolution. [Oops-update: I just read the liner notes. The audience was canned on track 17. So much for keeping it real. Now I can go to bed crushed. At least it wasn't my Ph D thesis]

Aside: imago is one of those words with two pronunciations. Some say tomayto, some say tomahto, and some say imaygo, some say imahgo. Now that the Internet makes it possible, a site should exist that standardizes the way words roll off our tongues. Then we could get rid of crap like Warshington and alleviate silly arguments in the vein of whether it's JIF or GIF when pronouncing the acronym for Graphics Interchange Format... Oh wait. I forgot that the world perpetuates on silly arguments. We really shouldn't do anything that would get rid of those.

Y'all know that game where you get a little looped and start offering points to your friends to steal conspicuous items from your party's environment? The scoring continuum runs from, say, one point for a saltshaker or candle to ten points for a lamp, framed picture, or something ridiculous like carpeting. Ten is always the max too. There's no going higher, even for complex and preposterous steals.

My friend taught me this game when I was a freshman at the University of Minnesota. Now, outside of my often-soaped-but-still-irreverent-potty-mouth, I'm about as straight-ahead-forthright-and-virtuous as they come { hey, that's what nice guys are ;-) }. But when it comes to this kleptopoint game, I have no self-control.

Last night I got backed into drinking a few boots at Prost! and I klepto-one-pointed a fancy beer glass when I left. No big deal really -- I mean, I once got a whole-goddamned-ten-point-padded booth out of a McDonald's (even did that without being drunk) -- but I'm feeling a bit guilty about last night. It's an Aventinus glass, so there's no way in hell I'm giving it back. But the wait staff there is cool and I definitely don't want any avenging sludge to come sliding out of the cosmic hopper knocking me into atonement.

It's my friend's fault anyway. He taught me the game.

All right. Screw this. I'll send a $1 check to the first 5 people who
leave a 12-or-more word comment on this site. It's come to this and I
bet I only have to give away 2 or 3 dollars...

OK, I've stooped to pandering for comments, but when it comes to suddens, I'm grateful that we usually get all of them.

New recipe and a pretty damn good one... Broadcast apology. I'm being personally negligent and incommunicado to a million people. It isn't deliberate; it's brain AWOL. It's too many click-fuck emails and not enough domestic responsibility. It's trying to assimilate new words like comminute and then getting comminuted by the process. To top it off I illegally tracked-backed tonight. And while I am handing out linklove, let me not forget Natalie. She minded my business just long enough for dis...integration. But I don't mind, I'll suffer for traffic...

Finally, I just called to say I love you, but then totally forgot who I was calling.

:-~)

Just having fun.

Leave it to Frito Lay to create artificially flavored salt-and-vinegar potato chips. Is it the salt or the vinegar that is artificially flavored? Maybe it's the potatoes?

I've been hiking instead of posting. Tonight, I am hoping to finish the ideas I have for my subtext section. And maybe (but a just-maybe) I'll rip out a new Song of The Week (or, even more miraculously, finish Volume 8).

Harper's is the original blog. Granted, it's in paper form and often-multi-authored-excerpted, but it's still a blog. And with a born-on date of 1850, there's little argument it wasn't the first.

The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector

⁹To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: ¹⁰"Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men--robbers, evildoers, adulterers --or even like this tax collector. ¹²I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.'
¹³"But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'
¹⁴"I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."

Addendum, my subtext is updated. My pers-fessional life is going to hell (not you J), but my subtext is taken care of. Life's just a bunch of ironic subtext anyway.

Although "separation of church and state" is a horseshit piece of rhetoric that's really only good for creating modern useless debates, if anyone wonders why it might be a worthy idea, they might want to look at the example of Islamic nations. Especially people aligned with the right wing who passionately support the ass kicking of any nation Islam. Of course, they don't see the irony because they are the ones who are right... People in the US should be thankful that they can worship whatever concept of God they have and they should be equally thankful that their neighbors can worship whatever concept of God they have. All of this and with (nearly) free broadcast "The Price Is Right" (and if you're a little more lucky and a little more bourgeois -- relatively cheap cable TV). That's why stuff like this two-ton monument thing is stupid. It reeks of idolatry, which is probably, ironically, more Greek than Christian. But you know, if that judge digs that thing enough, unless he lives in one of those gated communities with mafucta aesthetic rules, he could legally and safely install it in his front yard and mediate on it all day -- and I'd give him kudos for it.

I had so much gas last night and I was so bloated that I could feel my stomach/intestines trying to cut a deal with my lungs for an easy way out. The deal was stalemated. That was unfortunate since the doubling-every-minute-but-going-nowhere-painful-and-offending gas had to make its way down the how-ever-many kilometers of intestines the average human has (at least it felt like kilometers). Of course, had the deal gone through, I'm sure my breath would have suffered immensely.

All of this was apparently caused by a half glass of Safeway Card Club special red zinfandel. Really think twice when the little sign says full bouquet.

While waiting for life that sucks to die, why not listen to my favorite unsigned bands: TQ's Garage Band Playlist.