I woke up today with full understanding of the hackneyed phrase "waiting for my ship to come in." I'm standing on the shore of that desert island -- the one where you get to listen to that one CD of choice for the rest of your life. My choice was Talk Talk's Laughing Stock, but, of course, someone forgot to give it to me upon my island arrival. So, I sit musicless and meaningless on a beach without rum and sunshine, waiting for sight of the masthead of purpose -- the provisions and sundries of fulfillment. I've got two choices on this island: sit and wait (for Godot or any other non-entity), or take a risk and swim for my ship and don't wait for the fucking thing. Oh, it's cool that God helps those who help themselves, but c'mon, these two choices are just long and short versions of the same suicide. Maybe I'll hit the Panacea Lotto straight on the head (or maybe the Club Med corp comes and buys me out). Then, I won't be depressed any longer -- I'll just be rich and depressed...

http://tqed.com/ -- a storage house for my writes and rewrites of different takes of the same depression.

List, to tilt to one side in a state of equilibrium. I love that word. What happens when your brain lists? Do you travel through life with an elephant man head -- wishing to succumb to cuckoo cuckoo, but never getting to escape the retard corporate hash? Ah, 2004, what does it bring? A great, growing, pulsating, and thirsting body of knowledge (BOK!). And jeez, look at the intellectuals with their sticky forks and high-powered cerebral vacuum machines. They're going to examine that BOK and make it bigger. You and I will just grow another year older, succumbing to the ever-expanding list of cable choices... Oh, there's justice, but it doesn't feel good. You'll find that no good feeling on a very clever recursive wheel, one that proves that the biggest boon to intellectualism is not to be intellectual at all... God forbid I start 2004 out on a complaint... Sans the preceding words, the simple pleasure of returning from my vacation and having my cats lick my bare, showered feet -- that's all I've ever intended to say.

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]

Addiction affliction, affliction addiction, I'm going fuck-all insane. I keep looking for things and I can't find them. Not things like keys that generally stay where you last left them. That's easy. I want to find someone who can critically discuss David Coley's story, "The Reach Of Wonder" (republished in Harper's October 2003), and give me insights about his use of overt symbolism juxtaposed with autobiographical-realism. I want to find the god-source of literary knowledge so I can understand the difference between symbolism and metaphor -- so I can actually describe something as autobiographical-realism and have it be something more than personal, cerebral ass smoke.

I want to find new blogs to link to -- blogs that give me essays, implicit philosophy, and impetus for me to reach for my Holt Handbook. I don't want to find another blog that talks about last Tuesday's bus ride. But, if you want a paradox, a conundrum, a fucking mystification, try escaping Insipid's grasp. I think that's why God invented Man and in turn Man created drugs. In essay form: that is why God created Man and Man created drugs -- is that more convincing? It's also why hookahs have more than one valve. But, for sanity I'll forego the insipid thing for the remainder of this essay (vocabulary and experience are codependents, so my recurring infatuation with the word insipid makes me wonder if one of my feet [I believe that is grammatically correct, but holy shit does it sound weird] is in a very dull grave?). Anyway, the static of the blog world is worse than watching a 1975 Zenith TV when your roommate is vacuuming, and I just pissssed away my entire night looking for a blog that has the ability to reach into a tomato sack and hurl one at my middle American face and rock-star hair and make me soil myself for all my wannabe aspirations, land-of-make-believe philosophy, and cream-of-cornstarch delusions that I sell to myself and to others all the time. Ah, this reminds me of two words that I've impressively used, but have since forgotten: abrogate and abscond. For those who don't possess WMDs or a disposable battalion, but do possess the need for unlimited ego fulfillment (for unknown reasons, Ron Jeremy's organ on W's silver platter comes to mind) -- you can be mighty imperialistic by vocab and vocab alone. So, I didn’t find any links, but I am linking to waxy.org -- 'cause every fifth idea of Andy's usually hits me in a musing way and because of his link to a Todd Rundgren article (and fuck Todd Rundgren, but you know, it's a rock-and-roll thing). I'm also linking to waxy 'cause I think if he and I met, we'd be diametric totally (in an intellectual, valley-girl type inflection). Or maybe not. I similarly wonder about my other links (picklejuice and bjg) -- who I now refer to as my font and electron friends, but would they be corner-bar-friends, or goto-the-game friends? I'm also linking to Bookslut, 'cause the site came up on a search for literary blogs (although, I should have been searching for opium-tinged-essay-blogs, but I wasn't fast enough), and 'cause I might actually learn something from Bookslut content. Which reminds me...

I also want to find someone that will tell me, "hey TQ, you'd be a lot better writer if you tried X," or, "your musical abilities would improve if you did Y," or, "your career wouldn't be so sideways if you just Z'd." We hide behind euphemisms like Saddam hid his WMDs and somehow we have managed to taboo all personal critical analysis (which I think is different than critique; which is different than critique). Just fucking tell me -- tell me not to swear, tell me I'm going to hell. But start a dialogue, aim for dyadic embodiment. And why the hell not -- if you can't find anyone to listen -- I'll fill those shoes.

I also want to talk to the person who's been reading Hesse on the #5 Seattle bus 'cause I'm convinced that Hesse should never be read alone (attained by 2 years of being a loner Hesse reader).

Angst in its own window (which it prefers).

Probably need Windows and a new browser for the intended effect.

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?]

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.

I'll write something meaningful when you stop ironing your clothes.

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

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.

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.

I sit next to the microwave now; I get the joys of burnt saran wrap on 2-day-old chop suey with misplaced green pepper overtones. My 5-volt, 3-amp power supply for my hub died. It's now running on a 5-volt, 2.5-amp power supply. A half amp short, the story of my life. Plus, a bone between my ear and my brain feels like it's getting assaulted by a dental-hygienist-plaque-scraping blade -- kind of a muted, but unpleasant pain. Pause a second; back up one sentence. Look at the damn thing, that damn gerund sitting right in the middle of that overextended sentence: getting. I don't like verbal nouns: standing, squatting, picking, plucking, dicking, ducking. Make up your mind -- one side or the other.

I'm watching this PBS thing on President Nixon last night (I watch PBS because my standards are higher than yours). Looks like Nixon had a little heroin-like attachment to the power swords that you can wield out of the oval office. Of course, W-Bush knows it as the squished circle office, but really President Nixon (if you can hear me across the CIA-tapped death wire) -- did you think that the (slightly paraphrased) "I am a monarch and therefore above the law" defense was your best course of action? The PBS special ended with a bunch of interviews with important people who said that we have largely and regrettably forgotten the lessons of Watergate.

A Gore Vidal special (undoubtedly, deliberately) followed the Nixon special. One of the first statements was Vidal's phrase, "United States of Amnesia." Now, with or without the aforementioned Watergate forgetfulness, I still give a big ole amensia to Vidal's admonishment.

Aside: I always thought Gore Vidal was a trash romance novelist, largely because of the placement of his novels on grocery store check-stand end-caps. Oops. I also could have been thinking "Gore Vidal Sassoon", and god knows how that that could have shaped my sub-conscience. Anyway, I might give City & the Pillar or The Last Empire a try. The guy's a good freak; a welcomed fly in the ostensible-do-no-wrong soup of American government.

I'm feeling the way East Coast bloggers were feeling last Sunday night. With little doubt the country is metaphorically balanced by blogs in the West and blogs in the East. To be sure, check out the unrelated, unknown, and purely unplanned synchronicity between this post: Needed: Back up, company, inspiration and this post: SOTW Vol 9: What The Hell, You Know? And if our blogs disappear, what happens next? Are we all off to the great next? Yeah, let's do it!!! Imperialism until we’re geographically and universally incestuous. Oh-oh, I'm saying shit that isn't See Spot Run.

See Spot Run??

Oh God, it's the Aventinus. This stuff should require a waiver before you drink it (it's on tap in Seattle at a place called Prost [previously called Kismet] -- all dreams end at Prost). Yeah, yeah, the perfect night. I may lose myself, but I never lose the thread. OCDs know where you are and what you are doing all the time; they never lose the thread. So the perfect night is one episode of All In The Family and a half-liter of Aventinus. This is happiness for intellectual isolation and spiritual fatigue. How the hell did All In The Family obtain Top 40 status? It's a brutal show. So we either got more stupid since the 1970s or we got absolutely stupid since the 1970s. Pick one. Damn. We went from All In The Family to Charles In Charge.

Eh... No point in thinking really. God and/or Evolution (don't want to exclude anyone) are wrong! Big brains aren't for thinking. Big brains are for bullshit. Big bullshit receptacles. Run a red light; run someone over; run me over, send your pets to the shelter when they no longer fit your career; smack your kids around when they don't think like you do; and absolutely don't forget to Pollyannize the worst of the worst: you can always move to the suburbs.

Jonathan Lethem took the (irreverent) words right out of my mouth:

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."

My posts will not get easier from here.

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.

Happy post will arrive tomorrow. Promises promises.

I acknowledge that I am on the threshold of pale exhaustion and some kind of whiny forever-sickness that's got me hacking up black particles. Regardless, that doesn't change my polar experiences with the Seattle Metro bus process.

Today's experience ran on the foul side. I wanted desperately to arrive home and grind up some dried tofu and mix it with chicken by-product. I'd throw the concoction into a stainless steel cat bowl that was two days tuna-encrusted and I'd get down on all fours and plant my face straight into it. I'd consume the fodder ravenously and without conscience. I'd clean my face, not by napkin -- but by rapidly flapping my head side to side. The bits and chunks of tofu mash with chicken by-product would be flung from my face, freckling the surrounding walls and carpet.

Then I could freely snarl and spit, sneer and growl, and ride angry buses or drive angry cars and run over people ignorantly. Then I'd have subject-verb agreement between my neo-cortex and flesh and the bus thing would never tweak me again.

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