y'all can't all be wrong: Faves

People go out looking to get hurt and people go out ready to give it to them. We live in a dark world where saints and sinners squeeze truth into a mold to alleviate all the fears that are taboo to the modern dialogue. It's amusing watching someone pissing his life down the drain. Oh, you could step in and be all macho and maybe empathetic, but if you chase someone into icy waters, you're dead just the same. There's a caveat here. Beauty is just as comfortable working in the mediums of suffering and despair as it is with compassion and elation.

I walk around downtown during lunch looking at all the buildings and all the memories from buildings that my path crossed, thinking that I should do this, that or the other thing 'cause I got my career to worry about. But my career is a mere manmade subset life, and life is where things should really matter. Why do so many people miss the point? Why am I so scared when I know I'm totally in the wrong spot and yet I feel helpless walking away from it 'cause the wrong spot pays a lot of my bills? And why do I crave D* when I've had a ton of other great dates this summer? I heard this line from a BoDeans tune, "And the hardest thing about it is knowing that she was right." Out of context I took this as she was right for me and then in context it was beautiful to discover that it was really, she was right all along. Everything haunts. Everything. And I'm wasting my intellect inside an office cube, but I am too enervated to go out and (once again) prove my intellect to the world, too cerebrally and emotionally broke to roll the dice one more time (When your day is done).

Why do I play my part? Fuck me. I look at stars through city smoke and urban haze. I try not to give a fuck and then I always do. Then what -- what do you get? I mean, the only advantage that I have in life -- and I'm going out on a limb here because I know some geniuses (not self-described ones either) -- is (maybe) intellectual advantage. But I play stupid alot (fuck you) 'cause it allows me to clandestinely assess my immediate environment and keeps me out of harm's way. But really, everybody's a goddamned genius, so I really got nothing. Sober life is all about differentiation and drunken life is all about communion -- it's a little fucked up if you ask me. Everybody's looking but nobody is trying -- except when it's bar time and "Dancing Queen" does its thing on the juke box and then we're all friends. ABBA for Christ's sake -- we've got people killing each other for religion and asshole leaders starting wars 'cause their daddies have a family feud and we've got a lot of great intellectual texts about this that and that other thing, but y'all are leaving me with ABBA to cure my ills. Well, hey, just to spite you -- I'm going to move to Sweden.

I'm not sure if it's my romanticism or my quest for aesthetic purity [and superiority ;-)] that makes me detest twist-tops on soda or beer bottles. There's no way you are going to go for the gusto without a bottle in one hand and an opener in the other. Plus, no man alive has ever not drank a beer for lack of an opener.

What would be cool is a car that has an "oh-shit" handle on the driver's side (it would at least satisfy my desire for OCD completeness)...

I got to work early today. In addition to having less distractions, it's kind of cool, 'cause it's like arriving early to your own execution -- a nice psychological test. If you commit suicide on death row are you selfish or helping out society?

A few years ago I lost my job and subsequently traveled to Ghana. If you think "Beavis Does West Africa," you'll get the picture. At that time I was really down on "travelogue" stuff as it reminded me of imperialism in journal form: "I came, I saw, I conquered" (you know?). How about "I visited, I assimilated, I reflected?" I guess there's not enough adrenaline in that. Anyway, upon my return, I was loath to write about my experience to my friends. One friend prodded me enough to do a rush write on the trip. This was before I maintained a blog, and I never intended to make it public. However, since I'm in a bit of a (public) word slump, I'm posting it in its unedited and very-vini-vidi-vici form.

* saw the southern cross for the first time
* saw elephants and baboon
* puked my guts out with a 102 temp while watching the elephants
* walked atop the jungle trees 120 feet in the air
* kissed a black woman for the first time
* drank a lot of gin and cokes -- gin is cheap ($1.25 a bottle), and coke is the best mixer available
* befriended the locals where matt lived -- shed some tears on goodbye
* ate local food -- with my hands, no utensils
* fell in love with 3 peace corp volunteers
* missed all of the american football playoffs including the superbowl
* invented the new sport of drunken satellite wrestling in the attempt to watch the superbowl.
* didn't find the answers to the universe
* did see at least 5 fatal auto accidents and probably remnants of hundreds.
* did get in an auto accident, thankfully, not fatal
* missed and dreamed about my cats often
* craved for american rock and roll
* didn't take a hot shower for 4 weeks
* used methods of transportation that were unimaginable, the worst of which was a japan style mini-van in disrepair with 23 adults crammed into it.
* never got diarrhea but my stomach rumbled often -- it's rumbling now.
* learned to one-cheek a tro-tro seat for four hours without losing my sanity.
* learned more than I can ever imagine -- too much to write about now, especially without digestion.
* attended a ghanaian funeral
* found a great quote in a hut in matt's village, "in times of difficultly, lovers are few." -- I saw the quote and then realized why I made my trip.

"When you see the Southern Cross for the first time
You understand now why you came this way
'Cause the truth you might be runnin' from is so small
But it's as big as the promise, the promise of a coming day"
-- David Crosby

But with pocket change heading down the path of 8-track tapes, the passenger pigeon, and (soon-to-be) the Bush dynasty (there's no way in hell the twins are beating Chelsea once they all turn 35), I think progressive cities should enact legislation to provide credit card swipers for pan handlers. The city could tax each transaction and then nobody would be cut out of the loop.

But what sort of an idiot am I now when I know myself that people take me for an idiot? -- Fyodor Dostoevsky

Insanity is the result of the mind dying before the body... And the anonymous they will tell you it's all in your mind and all you can say is "right."

The exceptionally potent delusional forces of the ego are best manifested in its ability to turn personal flatulence into a pleasant experience and turn fragrant defecation into amazement. Then, without the hesitation of guilt, the ego can immediately deny what it found so fond. When the cock crowed twice on Peter, it wasn't because he was dissing the Jesus, it was because he just let one rip and someone busted him taking a good sniff of it.

Every now and then a Kente-Cloth-of-a-mushroom-cap grows on the crusted and insipid precipitate of a cow defecation of the world's collective consciousness. Thing is, the pot of gold despises effort and deliberation (although, it's hard to imagine edification sans conviction). Fuck. Fuck, I don't know -- my friend says I sound uneducated when I use the word fuck. I don't know, some people build buildings and other people tear them down. The rest of us (im)passively occupy them, neither hot nor cold, waiting and not waiting, carefully minding the bypass for revolutions that can never be consciously joined, but are effortlessly skirted...

Bet I'll be damned
Built the debt
I turned 2's up today
-- From Talk Talk's Ascension Day

... that callous grin with which people sometimes so casually and unceremoniously express their pleasure at the misfortunes of their fellow men.

Having touable holding menttal tihngs together but maybe it's just thte new house. Axnitey is a fun game, it used to scare me, now it just bemuses. I'll have to burn a little white pill tonoight, to sleep, not to chill. Whichs sucks, 'cause I'd rather have something lesse, something like vlaium, 'cause valium fdoes help that dash; alas no valium... I had this thought tongith: \"if you're gonna live in the house that I lived in, then you'd better be good to it." I'll hold it together; I too chikcen shit to llook behind curtains that we can't udnerstand.

I finally plunged the final knife into Hesse's Wolf last night. I could say I completed it, but with all of its strange recursions and subtle, yet exigent philosophy, it's hardly a book that can be finished on its first read. One certainty: all of my subsequent encounters with looking glasses will incite a double take to ensure the reflection didn't have fur and fangs. I'm no wolf, but hyper-empathy has me barking, howling for the moon's pallor, daydreaming fire hydrant fantasies.

Harry Haller -- Hermann Hesse -- Hermine the lover -- Herman, his "boyhood friend, the enthusiast, the poet, who had shared with ardor all (his) intellectual pursuits and extravagances." My ass and left foot too (with a smile). The autobiographical presumptions that can be drawn are too slapped-face obvious -- too big a dose of spoon-fed Hesse deliberation. Hesse complained of misinterpretation, but it almost seems the desire of the novel. But maybe you read your literature wearing a blue collar riding a pro bono publico bus, or maybe you read your literature sitting at an oak table of some Columbia library (or was it Cornell?)? Isn't every interpretation a little misguided?

I play a game of describe-a-novel-in-one-word-or-phrase. The word or phrase must appear in the novel. For Demian, the word is intimate(verb sense). For Steppenwolf, it's problem of existence. I'll rest on my simple sugar one word summaries and leave the correct interpretations to intellectuals as they strive to join the immortals, in or outside the magic theater.

Side note 1: intellectuals do not have sex. There's a lot of horror in the latter half of the novel when the middle-aged, intellectual Haller, err Hesse, err half-man-half-malamute-thingy goes through and describes his sexual awakening,

who on an autumn evening beneath a swaying elm gave me her brown breasts to kiss and the cup of passion to drink.

Yuck (unless a naked-Bill-Gates-cross-naked-Connie-Chung thing does it for you).

Side note 2: America has never made a mistake. I'm sure I'm in the minority, but doesn't self-examination and behavior towards others (read: foreign policy) define your acceptance and sociability?

Now and again I have expressed the opinion that every nation, and even every person, would do better, instead of rocking himself to sleep with political catchwords about war guilt, to ask himself how far his own faults and negligences and evil tendencies are guilty of the war and all the other wrongs of the world, and that therein lies the only possible means of avoiding the next war.

Of course, I've found that when you beat the living shit out of children, they generally submit and do what's asked of them -- maybe ass kicking is the only answer, err, (final?) solution.

Is it incredibly egocentric and wallow-istic to want to return intelligence to your maker (or to banish it if you have no maker)? What does intelligence get you? It nets you the ability to perceive and comprehend how fucked you are. If ignorance is bliss, stupidity is crème brûlée and a snifter of cognac. What's needed is a temporary suicide -- kind of like a Christ thing -- you get to go away for two or three days, check out hell and heaven (maybe do a little angelical ass kicking), and then return to earth if the post life accommodations aren't too hot. But no big commitments to offing yourself, no Steppenwolf sized dilemmas -- just a total easy way out *and* easy way in, just like America should be.

[note: check out all the different meanings for wallow. In my pedestrian life I've only heard definition #5]

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.

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.

It's a disease. I have unquenchable adoration for pet pronunciations of words. Every time I hear one that zings me in a laughable and funny-feeling kind of way, I adopt it and uncontrollably use it. Of course, when you are talking to someone who is trying to suss out your intelligence level, it isn't the best time to pull out a pet pronunciation. Therefore, in a effort to mitigate the world's already-heading-towards-doltish-but-let's-not-make-it-worse assessment of my linguistic prowess (jesus-h-verbosity) -- (dash dash) -- I propose new pronunciations for the following words:

Con-see-urge-ee. Yep. Try that one out in a business meeting. So we'll just change it and make the world a better place.

Another destiny quote? Another Lethem quote? Another Hesse quote? Man, it's like I'm forcing you to bite my literary nails and ride my OCD train. Well, the song I wrote for SOTW Volume 9 doesn't have lyrics -- so it was either make something up or borrow something:

If you weren't funny, you didn't quite exist. And it was usually better to be fully stupid, impotent, lazy, greedy or freakish than to seek to dodge your destiny, or layer it underneath pathetic guises of vanity or calm. -- Jonathan Lethem (from Motherless Brooklyn)

I can see that your thoughts are deeper than you yourself are able to express. But since this is so, you know, don't you, that you've never lived what you are thinking and that isn't good. Only the ideas that we actually live are of any value. -- Hermann Hesse (from Demian)

Ahh, the wretched curse that music places on me, the four fingered bassist. I have been vociferously criticized and surreptitiously ridiculed. Some critiques were warranted. Some were complete bullshit. Eventually, I quit. And it would have been a complete quit, but my life has always been music and words. So, in my personally bleak musical landscape of the past 7 years, my words kept my music in a nurturing quiescence.

I realize I'll never be the top-shelf virtuoso. I've got way too much ADD, OCD, and lately, a bit of IDD (Intelligence Deficit Disorder) -- and these things are pretty effective virtuoso roadblocks. Nevertheless, there are tunes within me -- a fierce desire to create music, and I've neglected it and have been ashamed of it for many years. The song I wrote for SOTW Volume 9 is a great example. Admittedly, it's a loose performance. I'm still struggling with my transition from bass playing to guitar playing, and I still trip over those concentration hurdles -- which can really wonk my sense of rhythm (It's been with me my whole life. If you want me to play in 7/8 time, just ask me to play in 4/4). So, there's a bit of slop in my performance, and the recording is super noisy since I can't isolate my computer's fans which means they get recorded on every thing I track in my room (drag!). But, I just love the piece -- it's something that makes me happy. And sharing my music with my blog readers is even more thrilling.

In regards to the Lethem quote I've never been calm -- so let me stop trying to mask it. I don't like it, but I go to my Yoga classes and whittle away at it week by week. In the meantime let me be freakish and have a good time finding a channel for my music and words. That's where the Hesse quote steps up to dance. I need to live these ideas in my head -- even when faced with that dangnabit-vociferous-criticism and that dangnabit-surreptitious-ridicule. I don't care anymore. Laugh. It's what's in my head. The blog -- *my* blog (y'all can't all be wrong), has really pushed me in line to live what I am thinking; and this, as Hesse might say to me, "is good."

And God knows if anyone is really reading this thing. I read it and laugh and post quotes about how good it feels to toot my horn, and I comment on my own comments and laugh about that, and I write run-on-and-on sentences and laugh about that too. One guy surfed into my site on a web search for the best Laundromats in Queens, NY -- maybe he read some and laughed. And I've got one ostensibly faithful reader out there on the East Coast. So that's three: me, some confused guy in Queens, and a faithful New England reader. For tonight three is the perfect amount. What the hell, you know? Have a good laugh; checkout some of my words and a bit of my music (SOTW Volume 9). If they inspire you -- cool. If not, at least I can feel happy being the Mutant Freak leading the parade and living what I am thinking.

Or maybe the jack of the nword. What's a jack anyway? I want to be a jack -- put it on my résumé: "TQ: Jack, July 1999 - December 2001." What's a nword? New word, of course. Perhaps n'word? Wait -- let me do Google search… Yep, already been defined. It's a different definition, but really, nword! how passé, How Blasé, HOW INSIPID.

Here's yet another idea: how about a Walkman jammer for when you're riding the bus and want to read but the dude (is dude gender neutral?) sitting behind you has his on maximum volume? C'mon dude, just bring your freakin' boom box on the bus and turn that up instead. At it least it would be full audio spectrum and not the ultra-distracting-high-end sibilance of s t s t s t s t s t s t s t s t s t s t s t s. I don't care what you play; I don't care how loud it is. Just give me full spectrum, 'cause the crap that is spilling out of your earphones sounds like my dentist sadisticizing my teeth and I can't read when I've got that image in my head.

Oh yeah. Nword. The whole point was to test my TrackBacks and to tell the world how much I enjoy my first and second posts. Hey man, my horn sounds better than your horn -- sounds even better when I get to blow it.

Y'all should read Motherless Brooklyn just so I can say Eatmebailey and have it make sense.

My words begin plucking at threads nervously, seeking purchase, a weak point, a vulnerable ear. That’s when it comes, the urge to shout in the church, the nursery, the crowded movie house. It’s an itch at first. Inconsequential. But that itch is soon a torrent behind a straining dam. Noah’s flood. That itch is my whole life. Here it comes now. Cover your ears. Build an ark.

Freaking pound my thin brain and its half-wit understanding into fallow ground on exhaustion on excuses and on another trip to NYC. I think I'll just sit here until the words come out right. Five days of vacation, one day of work, and back into a lifetime of burnout. Tip the bottle a little heavier tonight. I am fumbling towards the weekend and when it arrives I will stumble through it and on Monday my dishes will remain unfinished.

NYC: I'm in the middle of the International Center of Photography (ICP) and I start to freak out about all the allusions I don't know and all the words I can't comprehend and how there are 8 million nearby people disposed to cut my throat in intellectual-dog eat intellectual-dog fashion.

One exhibition at the ICP was "Cuba on the Verge" and God, what do I know about that? I know that Castro was born the same year as my dad. I know that Cuba is currently the in place to go to. This -- by the words of all my friends who ride on the outer envelope of the avant-garde -- and curse -- I can barely say beer in Spanish. Castro -- crazy fuck. He got out of jail, went to Mexico, returned to Cuba with 81 men and started a revolution (but don't trust some lame blog for your history facts). Eighty-two men to start a revolution? You'd better be a genius in psychology to lead a revolution, but then you'd better be stupid enough to believe it all. Viva Fidel! But don't freak. Whatever. One of the pictures in the exhibit had that approving message spray painted on a rock. Viva George W! Is that better? Don't think now -- just punch multiple holes in your voters' ballot, or better yet, don't vote at all.

Number 9. Anyone can start a revolution on a bad idea, but it takes a true genius and true thinker to revolutionize a great idea. OK, that quote has been in my cerebral phlegm for a while. I finally coughed it out. Someday I'd like to go back to school and find the roots of that quote as I'm sure I lifted it from some long-ago-smarter-than-me philosopher (not that I ever formally studied philosophy). And not some school like the University of Minnesota and its à la carte, look-don't-touch educational methodology. I want a school where I can conquer academia and then get my ass kicked by knowledge and understanding. Ravishment for queries, lust for dialogue, rush for consumption. And even if I get A grades, I'll ask for Cs, because I'll know my educational truths with or without letters appended to them.

NYC: I trekked up to the Upper West Side. Columbia University baby. I just wanted to experience what it felt like to walk around an Ivy League institution. I walked through College Walk (what else would you do on it?). The path is flanked by Low Memorial library to the north and Butler Library to the south. The front facade of Butler is inscribed with names like Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, and Vergil. Honestly, the inscriptions shook me with reverent intimidation (allusions and words will kill us all [update: this, this, this is how I feel: words shift too quickly]). Although, they also struck me with curiosity and want: a mind to be tapped is a journey to be gained. Low's inscription had some blah-blah-blah about "for the public good" or something close to that. Yeah, well, at $30,000 per academic year, what public is it good for? Hey, I am a too-small-town boy way out of his element. I'd gladly go back, but my brainy sin's been let out of my school bag and I want to run with all the academicians. Oh God, chop off my legs and spray me with ridicule, I hate being out of my element. Especially when I write a paper and don't include big words such as obsequious, decocting, cupidity, voluble, remonstrance, polymath, gasconade, and/or coruscate.

I so dream of an intellectual, yet altruistic coterie that bends and accepts ideas, making malleable every thought I give to them… [more here soon]

I'm eroding, beating nighttime waves senseless, looking for switches in darkness.

But If that's what it takes to get it out, then pound the fuck out of me until dirt and flesh become one. I'm living my life of allusions, waiting to impress the guy with the bigger desk and longer pen, "Welcome aboard Mr. Berg, we need someone just like you."

I put my Evergreen State College license plates on my car on Monday. Officially it's The Evergreen State College, but "my The Evergreen..." sounds terrible. My plate number is 0279 so if you are driving around Seattle, you'll know exactly who you are giving the middle finger to.

Admittedly, collegiate plates are a wank idea. But it's Evergreen (no grades, no glory), so the plates really fall into the so-wrong-it's-beautiful category. Another entry in that category is Evergreen's collegiate basketball program (M's W's). That's so wrong, well...

I love the blindness of blogs. I feel like I'm getting the inside content of people's brains without all that cosmetic static that we tend to paint our bodies with. Of course, cosmetics also extend into the blog world. However, regardless of what font gets used, the order and arrangement of words prevails. Yep, even big-ugly-white-guys can have their blogs.

I can be fine
I can be free
I can be beautiful without you torturing me.

Tonight I will roll on tranquilizers. If I don't, the world will despise everything I say and I'm in such a mood to say it. I'm not afraid to spite my existence to spare those who are innocent (and even those who are less innocent). I'll stay in my happy-go-lucky tamped groove and y'all can smile around me. I'd rather be shit on than spit on. I'd rather be punched in the face than smacked in the back. I'd rather have my head blown away than have my nose blown off. That's just who I am -- even if it's puerile and wrong and selfish. Do what you feel. Doowutchyalike. Extreme apologies to being jennifer garrett. I'm not sure if I ever think. I'd like to think I do... Psychoanalytic theory is composed of the id, ego, and superego. Blog reality is composed of writers, voyeurs, and narcissists. Tonight I'm letting the narcissism and ego channel me in undesired ways. But soon I'll be on my tamped groove and y'all will never know. We'll all be celebrating the solstice, talking about nothing, and pulling David Crosbys on our livers. But, we'll all be happy, so what the fuck. If former vice presidents can invent Internets and current presidents can point fingers at history revisionists -- while their writers are long in the editing room, then it was *me* who invented the word paroxysm. And the thing is I'll use it. Just not tonight. Tamped groove.

You know that you've achieved serious bachelorhood when you have an empty pizza box in the garbage, an empty pizza box in the fridge, and a soon to be empty pizza box on its way. It reminds me of my friends who would run out of toilet paper and paper towels -- it left little to explain when you saw a stack of coffee filters in the bathroom. Man, what's the cost-per-wipe on that?

The title of this post is a thought that kept popping in my head while designing my site this past weekend. Our technical progress has made it possible to identify good bars and restaurants by their lack of neon (unless, of course they are beer signs). I mean, check out these hands:

I spent forever adjusting the height of each of them -- shifting them one pixel one way or the other. What's funny is that nobody has sent me an email remarking how well the hands are aligned on my homepage.