The other side of the record

Regrets

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 09:50:00 +0000

Did I play it too safe? I've been asking myself this question for a bit now. It used to be that I thought I was too loose, too rebellious when I was young, and that it hampered me later. If I could just go back, really concentrate at school, ask out the girls I wanted without hesitation, whether it worked or not, not drink as much but write twice as much. I thought I wasn't serious enough. Then I watch Star Trek tonight.

The episode is "Tapestry" of ST:TNG. It begins with Picard being brought onto a medical table, Crusher desperate to save his life. He dies and is met in the afterlife by Q. He is given the chance to go back and relive his youth. So he plays it safe. Doesn't get stabbed by the Nausicans. Sleeps with his best friend. Saves his buddy from making a fool of himself. All is good.

And Q brings him to the present where he is no longer Captain of the USS Enterprise, but instead a Lt. Astrophysics officer who spends his days filing reports and charting stars. He never took a risk and now he's bereft of passion and imagination. All he wants now is to die on that table the man he wants to be than live out his years a man he could have been.

I wonder if all I do is chart stars, rather than braving them.

Things I find surfing the interweb

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 08:43:00 +0000

Talawsohu

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 03:38:00 +0000

So I'm beginning a novel. Here are some of the tidbits that are driving me:
Asrai biography

A phase out of step with most people, Asrai grew up under strained environments. Her mother was a caricature of emotions, so asphyxiated by responsibilities that Asrai was left without her. Her father tried his best, but she grew distant from pained people. She liked to explore as a child and constantly read books beyond her understanding. At one point, her father abandoned all hope of sheltering her innocence and allowed her mind somewhat open grazing grounds. She had trouble understanding why people acted so irrationally or hypocritically, but their rhythms inspired her. She often played with frogs and toads and water bugs and other animals that existed in-between. She genuinely disliked television. It never told her why. Asrai was very pretty, but often muddy.
In school, she began to hum slight rhymes about her slips of mind, to the amusement of her friends (but not her teachers) and always with a small drop of honey breath. High school was easy and without rivalry since she never crossed with the competitive people. She kissed a boy, maybe two, and made out once after drinking a beer, but it bored her. She had no incentive, only a flirt. Boys never understood why she always smiled and laughed, but always the same to everyone. Her father’s health declined. Asrai didn’t want anymore room for pain.
From her first morning unpacking at her dorm room, she was well-liked and ogled. I should point out that Asrai was now in full glory, a punk skirt without the aggression. She was a bit tall, but only that people could not avoid her eyes. It can be argued that she was slight in everything. Slightly tall, slightly aloof, slightly amused, and slightly dangerous, although Asrai didn’t know this. Her hair was short and cropped and gypsy dark. Asrai’s jeans were always patched and her one clothing possession that wasn’t disposable was her red leather jacket she received from her father many years ago as a way to single her out in a crowd (as he was very protective). The only make-up she could stand to bear was glitter above her eyes. Asrai liked the distraction it caused in others. Distraction was her hobby, a friend once said. She smiled in such a way that only she suspected it was for an audience and not a guide to her own state.
Asrai dabbled and flitted around many classes, but it was history and art that brought her into herself. She began to perform at coffee houses and small open mics and even dorm hallways on loose Sunday evenings, since that was expected of artists. Once night, and her only night attempting it, Asrai picked up a guitar and sang out her poem, “Another heart’s claptrap.” The strings cut very deeply into her fingertips, causing scars that grew bold with age. She refused to accept that pain is a necessary part of experience. Good things could remain soft and still function.
She became infamous among writers, artists, and drive-by dabblers in the liberal studies. Only half of them were in love with her, the other half understood why they couldn’t be. Her fraternity party occurrences were brief and not repeated, but surprisingly friendly. Among her workshop class, however, there developed a small cadre of folk who attempted to discourage her probes into others through language and rhythm. They thought her dishonest and worse, naïve. They wondered how she could comment on raw emotion and relationships when she was so barren in both. Asrai responded very simply that “our personalities are like oil slicks on water; always beautiful and vocal, but could only survive in one medium.” The mystery she was curious about was why certain fruits were preferred over others. As usual, the teacher defended her, although in his defense he thought only once about sleeping with Asrai, and that was after a long whiskey night over his cross country wife and son.
Because she trusted no one fully, Asrai turned adown housing and roommate offers; instead, she found a crippled house on the shore of the bay to rent and explore. Her father was very scared, but let her go. She was not very scared.

They are all different, and all the same.

100-word Story a Day Challenge (pt. 3)

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 02:43:00 +0000

Story 3

For a day the queen and vagrant posed as each other. The queen smelled pigeons as the vagrant bit into strawberries. For lunch the queen was kicked in the ear; the vagrant had the eunuchs. Orchids showered the park as her Majesty found relief under the petals. Ink splattered treaties while Turk ambassadors dogged the vagrant. They did this every season.

At supper, the queen bathed in the tavern toilet water. The vagrant fainted into the Baths of Gratzi with their thousand swans under the lunar eclipse. Behind the gates, they made love knowing it would next be under snowfall.

100-word Story a Day Challenge cont.

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:18:00 +0000

Story 2

A single blue crab gripped the inside of the cage Eric hauled out the Chesapeake. His boat mimicked the dance he made around Nati-Boh cans, sloshed in starlight. Eric dropped the cage onto the deck and did not care it was broke open.

The 20ft vessel shook as its outboard started. Eric darted between buoys and slurred his daughter’s name into the spotlight. She would be in front, waiting for another boat ride, if he could say her name sober. He focused into the distance and opened his throat. Eric yelped as the crab’s pinchers tore into his sandaled toes.

100-word Story a Day Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 02:06:00 +0000

The fine folks at the Fabulist have issued a challenge to their readers, the writing portion doing with posting a 100-word story a day (for how long I do not know). It sounds like way too much frolic and fun to pass up, so...

Story 1

Silas jerks the stirring wheel and pain rips his shoulder. He stops the truck; the slender figure from the trail darts into the underbrush. “Goddamn deer,” he exhales, climbing out of the Rover. He turns off the CB as park chatter spills out. Silas hears faint, rushed breathes, smells jasmine on the air, feels humidity between trees.

Silas carries his first aid kit to where the bush quivers. Instead of snout he sees small white palms. Instead of antlers he sees moth wings. He falls into the laughing woman. Crows avoid his corpse long after the woods fill with flashlights.

A little something...

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 02:31:00 +0000

I've been trying to do some songwriting but I get distracted by poems that don't want to complete themselves, like Golden Gate Bridge suicides.

Kitchen
after Frida Kahlo

Refrigerators envy me
for my ability to preserve passion
and serve it chilled,
proper on its plate, a lime slice neighbor
best hinted at, rather than thrust
burning onto the tongue.

Stoves envy me
for my ability to cook at the precise degree
and never let pink the pain,
unless someone feasts too early,
nor blacken its meat
when they forget to turn me off.

I envy the sink for its relief
at being emptied and attended to
when looking its worst.

I'm also on a huge Laura Marling kick at the moment:

But then I get distracted again.

Farm kitten

A year or two after the divorce,
living with my dad in the officer’s neighborhood
of Aberdeen Proving Grounds,
he brought home a farm kitten.
A black coat and white fur underwear
And eyes that feared shadows
And paper bags.
She would sleep at my feet, my blankets thin
(my father next door, my brother a yard away),
and play catch with my toes
and her claws.
6 ft high in the bunk bed, I tossed her
like a Molotov cocktail
believing she would ignite the anger
I dared not on my mother.
She would shake and climb again
the slight wooden frame
that was my fort above the unlawful world.

And I would think of my mother
coming home from the vet clinic
where she volunteered,
taking soft steps towards the closet,
peeling open the fake bamboo shutters,
and pouring the oval package meats
of cat-square bits and hard dog crumbs
into the dishes.
After stroking their fur,
she would smirk at my brother and I, slide
the can-opener towards our small monkey thumbs,
and gesture at the cabinet.
She thought we were smarter than our pets
And, thus, deserving of less pity.

My farm kitten nestles between my covered
calves and waits for a twinge of toes.

Before she ran away into the artillery hills
0f rundown Russian tanks and leaking condiment gas,
I began to wear heavy blankets
even during the summer.

I had more to fear from winter
Than any fire.

Fast Hands

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 06:26:00 +0000

Valentina Lisitsa plays Rachmaninoff Etude Tableau Op 39 No 6.

To Possess.

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 07:20:00 +0000

What makes the human species different from the rest of the animals? A question asked throughout our history and never really popularly answered. It's a question that's vexed me from the first time I held a fire ant in my palms. Are we different, or do we want to be to make it easier to reconcile our restless minds?

Possession, my friends. Ownership. Follow me on this.

We were the first species to mentally make the leap from "This is mine." to "What are the limits of what is mine?" We created boundaries. From boundaries came territory. From territory came the mental gymnastics of words, for what are words but sonic division lines? To say, "This space, this mammoth, this bone is mine." creates boundaries of what constitutes a mammoth, a bone, a space. Words define, and yet words are imperfect, for many unimaginable things exist between, among, spliced, across the word.

Temporal acknowledgment only abetted our aberration. Words created past, present, future. Only present really exists, but our triumph of time invented the past and future. With time came better and worse, with better and worse came leaders and followers. We became so trapped within our language that we forgot it was but a tool to serve our life. Instead, we allow language to dominate. It can be seen in every utterance I type. And such beget suffering. We assume that a bottle holds liquid, that a body is not a collection of working cells but itself a cohesive whole; we assume there is a difference between body and soul only because we are raised by our species to accept boundaries. The "soul" lies in our head only because we accept most of our information visually and the eyes connect directly through our brain. Imagine what language we would speak if we our primary sense was touch! But as the brain processes most information, we assume that's where the soul resides.

I will not even go into the ancient belief that the heart holds love.

The majority of our bodies is constructed with either cells with alien mitochondria or bacteria. The DNA that we assume consumes our cells is in the minority. We keep on trying to find our self, but the very notion of self is outdated by biology and cosmology. Our brain cells do not replace themselves, yet our bodies, even on a cellular level, are different and distant from how we were born. The pictures we see of our youth are of alien beings, entirely not what we know except by appearance. Yet we consider ourselves I.

Collected Quotes (Everyone's got 'em)

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 03:25:00 +0000

As I prepare my next blog, here's a sampling of some quotes that I've collected over the years.

"Boredom, I think, protects the individual, makes tolerable for him the impossible experience of waiting for something without knowing what it could be."
- Adam Philips "On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored"

"The most merciful thing in the world... is the inability of the human mind to correlate all of its contents."
- H.P. Lovecraft

"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."
- Anton Chekhov

"That trite little whimsy about characters getting out of hand; it is as old as the quills. My characters are galley slaves."
- Vladimir Nabokov

"Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music."
- George Carlin

"The best minds of my generation can't make bail..."
- Ani Difranco

"What is man but an ingenious machine for turning red wine into urine?"
- Isak Dineson

"There is nothing new in the world except the history you do no know."
- Harry Truman

"Whenever I'm asked what kind of writing is the most lucrative, I have to say ransom notes."
- Literary agent H.N. Swanson

"Difficile est saturam non scribere (It is difficult not to write satire)."
- Juvenal

"Whenever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings."
- Heinrich Heine "Almansor: A Tragedy"

"The purpose of a story... is not to fulfill some crazy formalistic Aristotelian rule, but to get the fucking reader to read the fucking book."
- Erica Jong, quoted in "Interviews with Contemporary Novelists" by Diana Cooper Clark

"I have no time for lies or fantasy and neither should you. Enjoy or die."
- Johnny Rotten

"We can pray over the cholera victim or we can give her 500 mg of tetracycline every 12 hr."
- Carl Sagan

"'Rehearse death.' To say this is to tell a person to rehearse his freedom. A person who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. He is above, or at any rate beyond the reach of, all political powers."
- Seneca, "Letter XXVI"

"Reality is that which when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away."
- Philip K. Dick

"Io rido, e il rider mio non passa dentro:
Io ardo, e l'arsion mia non par di fore.
(I laugh, and my laughter is not within me:
I burn, and the burning is not seen outside)."
- Niccolo Machiavelli

"Music and singing do not produce in the heart that which is not in it."
- Abu Sulaiman al-Davani

"Everyone thinks of changing humanity and nobody thinks of changing himself."
- Leo Tolstoy

Caturday III

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 21:19:00 +0000

-from Simon Tofield, "Simon's Cat"

Caturday II

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 15:09:00 +0000

Nashville ain't jus' country

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 02:07:00 +0000

Here are two music videos done by Team Genius. I wish I was this creative. The first involves the best use of drawings on sticks to convey emotion I've seen since, well, third grade. The second is just emo puppets; thus, brilliant.

And RIP Omar.

Howl

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 03:00:00 +0000

"Don't take refuge in the false security of consensus." -Christopher Hitchens

The phenomenon of Oprah's book club has been bothering me of late. For every Love in the Time of Cholera there is a The Secret or A New Earth. Such books as the latter two sow such unfounded hope. They take the grain of truth about the beauty of life and our innate ability to control our fate, for lack of a better word, and twist it into a marketing gimmick. And yet is it so bad to give hope, even false hope, to those who want it? And who am I to decide what is right for one to read and one not to read?

These books do not traffic in pure truth or logic. They deal the drug of wish fulfillment. They tell someone, without specifics, that the universe is created for them and that it is only their weakness that stops them. The Secret, for example, when taken to its logical conclusion states that genocide victims were at the wrong end of a machete or gas chamber, not because of their circumstances, but because they wished themselves unconciously to be in that position. This is a monsterous proposal, yet is accepted without criticism.

A New Earth proposes a wishy-washy, half ass interpretation of Daoism, ignoring the hard choices of balance and acceptance of cycle, instead focusing on how one can become better by, bare with me now, simplifying their existence.
Maybe it's the few beers I've ingested, but I find it hard to tell the difference between actively selling such books for profit, when I feel they can only bring destructive memes to an individual, with when I helped build weapons for the military. Death by shrapnel, or death by faulty, hollow words.

Today Show Parody by the Onion

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:08:00 +0000

Expert On Anteaters Wasted Entire Life Studying Anteaters

Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 03:39:00 +0000

http://www.indianajones.com/site/index.html
Indiana Jones defined my childhood. Enjoy the trailer. And yes, I can quote all the movies verbatim. "You were named after the dog?!"

The Somnambulist by Joseph Barnes

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 23:08:00 +0000

What ties 19th century London under-society, sleepwalking giants, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's American utopia? Apparently, Edward Moon, the protagonist of Joseph Barnes' The Somnambulist.

A illusionist and former detective, Edward Moon longs for the day for a case that interests him beyond the mundane crimes and petty thefts of Victorian London. Moon spends his evenings performing rote magic at his theatre for a diminishing audience; the pinnacle of his act a performance with his friend the Somnambulist, a pale, bald giant of a man who drinks milk by the gallon and cannot be harmed by sword or bullet. After a hack actor falls to his death in exotic circumstances in a seedy part of the city, Moon is enlisted by the police to find the killer. Where this leads Edward Moon is the very destruction of what he holds good.

I read the first 200p in one sitting and I still cannot convey what made me. The sentences were tight, the language strict, but the sheer audacity of the characters made me want for more. An example is a man, I won't spoil who he actually is, who Moon meets at a society dinner who claims to know the future. Not that he's from the future, but that he lives backwards in time. His yesterday is your future and vice versa. The Somnambulist, a gentle mute who communicates only through his chalk and portable blackboard, is loyal, immune to harm, and causes fear only in those who pose a threat. A pair of assassins who dress in school-boy clothing hold no fear nor mercy, the most evil of characters, end up saving London. From what? A zombie Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I kid you not.

For those that like their fantasy seeped in reality, savagery and all, I recommend this book. It reads like a bottle of Neil Gaiman, Jim Butcher, and Susanna Clarke all jumbled together and poured into a shot glass. Itself a satire of fantasy and also a homage, The Somnambulist balances on the odd edge of not taking itself too serious, yet the characters all matter during its reading. Only because I know not everyone will get it do I recommend this as a Borrow from Library, but it is engrossing enough to be a buy. Really, you miss half of it on a single reading anyway.

Caturday

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 21:51:00 +0000

Old Poetry

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 04:34:00 +0000

I published this in Bittersweet back in 2003, an old favorite of mine.

By the Baseball Bat
for Mark Doty

I believe in the wolves of memory,
how they force us,
like gold diggers far in the Yukon woods,
to build a ring of fire around our sleeping bags
to keep the wolves away from our dreams
and soft, smelly flesh.

I believe you can love someone
even more in their death;
the mind's tendency to domesticate
these wolves
makes it safe to love again,
safe to watch in the arena the dogfights
between our memories and our mutt desires
(a muzzle and switch kept hidden in our hearts,
just in case).

I believe in the naivety of age
and that a wolf-dog can be trained
to sleep at your feet, by the baseball bat,
and to never question your dominance
over the past.

Random Quote

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 22:50:00 +0000

"Our love of what is beautiful does not lead to extravagance; our love of the things of the mind does not make us soft. We regard wealth as something to be properly used, rather than as something to boast about... Here each individual is interested not only in his own affairs, but in the affairs of the state as well... We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all... Others are brave out of ignorance, and, when they begin to think, they begin to fear. But the man who can most truly be accounted brave is he who best knows the meaning of what is sweet in life and what is terrible, and then goes out undeterred to meet what is to come."

-Pericles of Athens, general and statesman (c. 495-429 b.c.)

Stupid Design

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 04:56:00 +0000

Garfield is dead, and we have killed him.

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 22:48:00 +0000

Garfield is renowned for being the pinnacle of cookie-cutter comics, willingly sacrificing originality and intellect in order to craft the largest market presence. However, leave it to the internet to turn this mediocre strip into existential and surreal post-mo text. Three amazing sites:

Garfield Randomizer
This site randomly selects three different panels from the strip to create something both absurd and hilarious. One could spend days doing this.

Garfield without Thought Balloons
This thread from Truth and Beauty Bombs explores how Garfield becomes existential literature when the thought balloons are removed, recreating Jon Arbuckle as a lonely, desperate man who finds retreat from the world through his pets.My favorite:
Lasagna Cat
Garfield comic strips in live action, I kid you not. Garfield, Odie, and Jon all played in costume by actors, along with laugh track. That's not all. After the re-enactment is over, a tribute song (determined by date of strip) is played with a cut of all the action. Really, is doesn't get more post-modern then these videos.

Finally, I leave everyone with why Jim Davis is the man (in more ways than one).