y'all can't all be wrong: September 2003

Ed. Note: This is without edits. From a maniacal journal entry from earlier this year. I'll probably take this post down as soon as my jaw starts hurting -- but since I've been gone all weekend, at least it's something. Read this as fast as possible to get the full effect and to gloss over the mistakes...

<2003-02-15> Bayzha 2003 -- Disjointedness -- One way, then the other. Blondie. Deborah Harry, Debbie Harry, NYC, CBGBs, the Bowery. See, there you go. Ten degrees Fahrenheit, perhaps the difference between life and death. Beauty to the right of you, history to the left of you, destiny in the front and back. The W The W The W The W The W The W. SEE! There you go. Blue collar bombardment -- unintellectual BS; Intellectual BS. Give me the words, give me the inspiration. In clothes I don't want to wear. Tethered to a brain I can't understand. Driven by forces that make little sense. There's hypocrisy in every statement; there's friends in every beer. There's virtual pauses, there's madness, there's euphoria, there's catharsis, there's drunkenness, there's madness again. Letch Letch Letch Letch Letch Letch. Give me my daily letch. Licentious Dust, Licentious Dust: the orgasm of some unknown writer -- buried in some bullshit 10th grade text. There's amphetamines, there's anxiousness, there's agitation, there's spiders on the souls of my feet. There's bad puns, there's misunderstanding, there's psilocybin monologues, there's constructs before meaning, there's cigars on editors' desks. There's rum, there's rum, there's rum, there are things that come in three. There's cathartic Yoga, there's triadics, yes triadics, yes neologisms, and yes, neologisms that come in 3. There are things in my left hand, there are things in my left brain. There are Lou Reed aficionados, there are Velvet Underground freaks. There are pauses great and small, there *are* essaical and contextual corrections. There are autonomic reactions, there's understanding, there's misunderstanding -- there's standing metaphorically naked. There's misuse and unuse, there's waste and neglect. There's unfinished, there's unpolished, there's unfocused, there's misguided, there's emotional separations, there's sloppiness, there's entropy, there's a place no one wishes to visit. There are truisms and platitudes and there's everything you've ever learned at one dinner. There's interpretations, there's misinterpretations. There's memory and there's everything I've ever forgotten. There's nihilism, there's subtext. There's subtext better than 2 million years of orgasmic evolution. There subtleties, there's desire, there's unshielded desire, there's jazz both aesthetically appreciated, and jazz, "look at me, I'm hep." There's what I want to say but I can't say it, 'cause ridicule is the jester that stands taller than all generations laid out end to end, around the equator, around the Tropic of Capricorn, around the Tropic of Cancer, around Henry Miller's long list of American banned books. The jester dances tall and pervasive -- in scientific dialogue, in intimate conversations, in Frito Layed useless conversations. Some ignore him; some completely succumb... There's emotional reaction, both inductive and direct. And there's --once again, everything I've wanted to say. I'd give all my words to a savior, great or small, male or female, at arms length, on moments immemorial, perhaps soon to be forgotten forever -- which sucks, but it leaves the Jester frenetic, dancing happily.

Fe-Fi-Bo-Diddley-Dum. Y'all keep ironing your clothes. What for really? It's all so very silly (my favorite phrase). Ho-hum-diazepam-ingly-dance-around-the-prickly-pear at five o'clock in the morning (my favorite metaphor). If you're not understood, you'll be ignored. The jet engine was ignored for a few years after it was invented. I wish we would have ignored irons. No, I like irons. We could have ignored silver spoons instead.

As for the others and the world around him he never ceased in his heroic and earnest endeavour to love them, to be just to them, to do them no harm, for the love of his neighbour was as strongly forced upon him as the hatred of himself, and so his whole life was an example that love of one's neighbour is not possible without love of oneself, and that self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, and in the long run breeds the same cruel isolation and despair. -- Hermann Hesse (from Steppenwolf)

Just totally on the (good) run. I can't remember if I have posted this before -- it's an excerpt from an old email:

There's plenty of irony to go around to make everyone happy eventually. -- tqb (circa 2002)

Is it under some rock that some philosopher might metaphorically turn over and talk about -- or -- actually turn over and then talk about metaphorically?

Man, you just can't escape personal retribution. I mean, depression is a very wide rake, it's an all-knowing god, it's a (Pixies) wave of mutilation, and it's (David Byrne) water at the bottom of the ocean.

Worse, depression is the sore loser -- that is it prefers to win. It prefers furtive introduction. It hangs with hangovers and detests the causal revelry.

So you punch it and punch it, 'cause that's the only way it subsides. You take a few punches; you take everything it's got, but you keep punching back. Patience, punches, and (if you need it) Prozac.

In the end depression rarefies. Tonight I ride on that 'cause tomorrow finds me happier.

Verizon Wireless changes their billing system, turns off my credit card auto pay, charges me a late fee, and then tells me I need to delete all of my cookies to re-register on their website. That's customer service Enron style. Gotta love big business. Oops -- I forgot to mention that their website response time is terrible.

Or nword as I have previously mentioned. This time it's constensible, which would function as the converse to ostensible (i.e. the word would mean demonstrably true or real instead of plausible).

I overuse the word ostensible. It's tough not to. Recently, I was re-telling a story about a homeless man. However, before I labeled the man homeless, my mind thought, "what if he isn't homeless, what if he's just wearing ragged clothes and is a bit disheveled for other reasons?" So, before my mouthed plopped out "homeless," it plopped out "ostensibly homeless."

Which make me think -- when it comes to people and behavior, isn't everything ostensible? If so, ostensible should be implied, and constensible should be used in cases requiring delineation of authenticity.

Before the Green Bay Packer home opener last weekend, my sister's boyfriend remarked at how tame the tailgating was in relation to his expectations. I almost agreed -- until my sister and I trekked across the Lambeau Field parking lot on our way to the pro shop early Monday morning. The place was a minefield of dried puke rings. Nearly every eight feet it was necessary to dodge the remnants of some spectator's previous day's excess. Pretty damn gross.

Apart from looking like a bad Photoshop edit, this was a real photograph snapped by my friend in 1992 at the Punch Bowl near Menomonie, WI (alt link: Paranormal Punch Bowl).

I had heard that simile on SportsCenter tonight. I loved it -- best (new to me) simile I have heard in a while. A Google search yields that fresh, the simile is not. Regardless, I remain ecstatic that somebody else possessed enough creativity to mark that sensation. On the other hand (the four fingered one for me) it's just another notch in the nothing-new-under-the-sun bedpost.

Pity, because I reach for that unobtainable uniqueness and sophomorically believe the task comes without torture. But, to publish (or blog) anything is to suffer small deaths; and, like the hum of a rainstorm on a metal-roofed hut in the jungle, eventually the small deaths dull all the senses and drive away the want of continuation. Why try to create something original when it's absolutely not possible? Why take the path to guaranteed failure?

The irony here is that with everyone pushing towards specialization, the collective agitation is causing homogenization.

Yet even more irony (YEMI) is found in my desire to read books (i.e. other authors' torture) to soothe my unoriginality and to inspire me to find new thought patterns (regardless that they too will be unoriginal).

[This your brain and this is your brain on tqed.com. Now go vomit in a waste paper basket or in Lambeau Field's parking lot. Why suffer alone when you can suffer in company?]

I'd like to do (or read) a study on the effects that email has had on relationships (in particular romantic relationships, but not limited to them). Does the convenience of email edify a relationship by increasing communication? Or, does it hinder them by its often frivolously tinged content? Of course the hard part here is quantification.

I received a résumé from an individual with 9+ years IT experience wishing to "secure a position with my firm." He sent his résumé to careers@tqed... Hmm, well, my firm is going pretty strong: tqed.com receives nearly 100 visits a day (most are robots) and it could use someone with 9 years of IT experience. It would help if he could also clean bathrooms and do dishes (this would help my blog immensely)... Ah, really buddy, it sucks. I was 19 months stuck in the thorny Bush of unemployment. Keep your head down, feet moving forward, put on that REO Speedwagon (for levity), and "keep pushin' on."

It's funny when people begin phrases or sentences with "it's funny when." What follows is rarely funny. What they are really saying is "look, I'm about to ramble here, so sit down and shut up and listen to what I have to say, even if you are disinterested."

It's funny when people say they are at a crossroads. I'm at a crossroads in my life right now and there just isn't some other extant intersecting (and nicely paved) road that provides two more options to explore. No, my (metaphorical) crossroads is more like traveling on one of those supreme-middle-of-nowhere (and massively wash-boarded) roads. The kind where you think your destination is no more than 5 minutes away (but you've been thinking it for an hour) and you get to a point where you don't know whether it's best to go forward, turn around, or start blazing a new road that's orthogonal to the one you are on. Crossroads, my ass.

Ouch, six days without a post. I wonder if my blog's danger of de-linking has gone from level yellow to level orange on the blog-de-linker meter? Eh, fuck, I like orange better anyway. Nope, I haven't gone away and here's subtext proving it (although it is a maze of crypticrap)... Eh, this post is really just for pingy-ping-ping so Natalie and Jen (my font and electron friends) know that I am alive.

Artist: Mitsou
Song: A Funny Place (The World Is)
Album: Mitsou
Year: 1992

Writing instead of zzzing -- so what, you know? Maybe I'll over-sleep and get fired? I do want fries with that. Why the fuck not? Fucknot. What a waste of a mind and I'm not even wasted. Waist of a mind -- I like that better. Hmmm, I'm writing ycabw Vic Ferrari but the plan was to write a new Song Of The Week. If you take a big enough bong hit you can stay stoned the remainder of your life. It's true.

Half of the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election
Half of the people are drowning and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction
-- Paul Simon gifting words to Leonard Bernstein (It's also true)

Jen once asked me if I was ever happy (under the guise of asking me, "When is the last time that you felt alive. Really alive."). Alive, me? Yes. On travel-trips that spread me thin and push me to find perspective. That and listening to Ivan Doroschuk. Especially when he's telling me "the world is a funny place." Funny indeed -- corporate climbers take heed. Sharing a meal with a good friend is pretty stellar too. Writing without any form cracks me up and almost makes me feel alive. Although, I'll wake up and hate my writing in the morning and maybe I'll work at hating every moment in between. It's the sick mind, the idealist. But even in the martyred hell that I've ascribed to my brain, if you can't get up and dance to Mitsou's take on Ivan Doroschuk's A Funny Place (Song Of The Week Volume 13) -- well, think of it this way, "your friends (probably) don't dance, and if they don't dance, they're no friends of mine."

Last week at work, I had to give up my only computer with a sound card. No more "listening to the radio" during the work day. It's a little tough to take, but I'm also a bit eager to test Robert M. Pirsig's theory:

The radio was a clue. You can't really think hard about what you're doing and listen to the radio at the same time.

[Similarly, you can't eat a Sam's Club bag full of Smarties for breakfast and think hard at the same time.]

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