I don’t know how the blogs started. I don’t remember how private conversations climbed into the prolific public and threatened the pulse of intimate relationships. I claim I did it for the sake of my art. I claim it was an experiment with form and a practice session in dialogue. I claim that I wanted a departure from the abstruse poetry everyone criticized for being too difficult to understand. I claim that the narrative evolved from my interest in exploring the narcissistic culture of online journaling and YouTube. I claim that I only continued the narrative because I was fascinated with the idea of writing chronologically in reverse chronology. But to tell the truth, I know how they started. The truth is my truth. The truth is, the blogs started.
***
“Oh, that reminds me, I just discovered this band from Canada I think you’d appreciate. They blew me away the first time I heard one of their songs,” he rises from his chair to upscale his beer and the background music, “They’re called the Arcade Fire, do you know them?”
“The Arcade Fire?” I punctuate my ignorance, “No, but I like the name.”
“Yeah, isn’t it original? You can definitely pick out their influences, but they aren’t like all those other indie bands, you know?”
“You mean indie bands that are trying to be indie bands instead of just being an indie band?”
“Exactly,” he rhythmically concurs and plays the only sound that has ever changed the course of my blood, the sound I had anticipated my entire life, that would soon be my addiction, my tragic flaw, my faithful companion on midnight bike rides through the empty neighborhood streets of memory, between “the click of a light/and the start of a dream,” the sound that would fibrillate my sound into a defibrillated rhythm.
***
The process was messy. The title to the collection, “defibrillation,” was born in one of the first blogs with a pulse that I shocked to life again. Although I didn’t know it at the time, the initial lines I used to introduce my father and the fate of his heart disease would determine the fate of what would become an obsession with exploring my bi-polar disease through fictionalizing private conversations with friends and family; it would determine the fate of a pulse that finally felt like my voice but that would disrupt the rhythm with every person who desperately wanted my heart, and with those who had it:
"My father is dying. His heart--shocked alive by his defibrillator 11 times in the last month-- is dying. Shock after shock, surgery after surgery, medical science has kept my father alive since he was in his early 50's. My mother called yesterday to tell me that the doctors in Birmingham wanted him back for tests. I could tell she'd been crying by the tell-tale nasal echo and sniffles. "It doesn't look good," she says, attempting to hide her emotion. My father is dying. My mother is crying. I am ashamed to say I feel nothing."
I don’t know how the debacle started, or if it ever ended. I wasn’t well. Depression had plagued my fragile mind…again. I had been reading a lot about bi-polar disorder at the time because my mother wanted to understand me through a shared reading of one of the worst “self-help” books I’ve ever half read. That’s the half truth; she wanted to blame my anger and depression on someone, some thing other than herself. That’s my truth.
I wanted to give my brain a rest. We argued. Her plea for me to stop yelling brought back memories that were too painful, that had always been a part of my too much pain. All I ever wanted was for someone to understand the depth of my disease. Or, is it a disease? I wanted to prove a point:
"Don't you think he deserves to know the truth about his heart?" I ask, knowin g she won't recognize the double entendre in my question.
"Well, what do you think I should do? I mean, he can't talk about anything, Ashley. He doesn't know how to communicate, you know that."
I think of the story about my dad and the butcher knife that she revealed to me yesterday, when I complained to her about not hearing that story years ago, because perhaps it might explain some of my fucked up behavior, and perhaps I could have caught it early enough to do something about it.
"You still have time," she had said in tears. I've never seen my mother cry so much. "You are 28 years old. At 29, your daddy thought his behavior was perfectly acceptable."
I can feel old man anger swelling from all the familiar places, stomach, heart, teeth. I try to control it. I can't.
"Yes, I'm twenty-fucking-eight years old, and I'm not getting any better. I know my fucking behavior is unacceptable, but I can't change. I've been to therapist after therapist, tried every fucking drug on the market, and I'm still a fucking child, just like my fucking father."
"Don't yell at me," she pleads.
"Who the fuck do you think taught me to yell!!!!" I scream over the phone. I can hear her quietly sobbing, but I can't stop now. "Do you know how many nights I sat in my room trying to drown out your yelling and arguing with music, praying to God you would just shut up or get divorced? Why the fuck do you think I'm an atheist? And for years, about the only thing you didn't call dad was "dear" or "honey," so how do you expect me to suddenly switch "lying, cheating, son-of-a-bitch" to "regretful father who does love me but doesn't know how to show it?"
I am done now. I know she can't handle anymore, and I don't think I can either. That was yesterday, before she reminds me once again that he can't talk about anything because he doesn't know how.
"Don't you think he'll be relieved, if you tell him?" I decide to answer.
"What do you mean?"
"Aren't you relieved? I mean, you sound relieved."
"Are you saying I'm relieved that he won't have to go through surgery?"
"Well, yes, and that the suffering might be over soon."
"What?! I don't want your daddy to die."
"I didn't say that, all I meant was..."
"I have to go in and check on him so I need to go," she cuts me off.
"Mom, don't be immature and blow me off because you don't want to face this."
I talk for a few more minutes before I realize that she has already hung up the phone on me. I don't know what she heard so it doesn't matter what I said. It never mattered. I turn the music back to full volume. I turn back to my writing.
Or was it my writing? It was my writing, but was it something more? I’ve had to use this Socratic irony on myself several times in the past week. I’ve been traveling, listening to music, imagining myself as someone outside this miserable life, as I did when I escaped into music when I was a child. Something changed around 1987, when I was nine, when my soul died with my ability to dream.
***
Last spring I purchased the newest Arcade Fire album, Neon Bible, at a small music store in Chico, CA, a purchase inspired by someone who believes that artists should get paid for their work. Although I wrote a blog defending the album as a brilliant commentary on the current political climate, it has proven to be a significant commentary on my life as an artist. Perhaps my favorite lyric from that album is in the title song: “Not much chance for survival/if the Neon Bible is right.” I know I have no chance of surviving if I don’t learn how to be that child again, if I don’t stop believing in endings written with sorrow.
During my travels, I made an overnight stop to hear Walter Sickheart and the Army of Broken Toys play at a small café/restaurant in Salem, Massachusetts. I watched more than I heard, because they performed more than they played. Past Walter’s seductively raucous voice, beyond the green suitcase of broken toys spilling, no, exploding onto the stage into a volcanic pile for Edrie’s hothanded rummaging, even past the most remarkable ludic strides she made through the audience, sometimes ending up in someone’s lap or on a table unfurling her fishnetted leg to the drone of the child’s accordion, was a lubricious art, and an audience watching a couple performing the process of their art more than the maracas and monkeys could possibly procreate.
Walter and Edrie, the broken toys and the broken hearts, were making love to each other, and to the audience; even more, they were making the private public. I was fascinated with the audience’s reaction. Some were mesmerized by Edrie and watched every move she made with wide Sargasso eyes they could not close. Some were visibly uncomfortable and tried to watch their hummus wraps and the heads of their Belgian whites but could not hide the tale-tell signs of their voyeuristic desire. Husbands looked away from wives, tops looked away from bottoms, didn’t matter. The point I wanted to prove in my blogs, perhaps, is what I saw in that town of tale-tell scarlet letters: they were looking even when they weren’t.
***
I am eating at a small café/restaurant in Maryville, Tennessee, where I earned my BA in English at a small liberal arts school, the school that changed my life. I watch a professor greet his students when he saw them sitting at a table crowded with chairs, at the close of the semester, “Studying for finals?” he jokes, and they look up to him with that look of knowing they inspire him as much as he inspires them. Last night, I begged my best friend from school who teaches at the college now to call the security guard to let us in Anderson Hall, the first building on site, the campus light, the one that lit the fire in my belly that I’d let burn out. I wanted to relive a moment, I wanted to click on a light in a third-floor classroom and touch the chalkboard that fibrillated my heart for the first time. Where I heatedly argued with a Yeats poem and the idea that love is work. I wanted lightning to strike again, and when my friend couldn’t reach security, I realized, finally, that I didn’t need Anderson to shock me back to me…again, because someone else, in another third-floor classroom, already had.
The truth is, this is how the blogs started, during a storm that hit, when I was looking even when I pretended I wasn’t. I couldn’t stop staring with blind eyes. That’s how they started. And that’s my truth. It’s the only truth I know how to tell, and perhaps the only story I want to tell. It’s the story of my life. It is the ending I needed to finally answer that question all artists are asked at least once: How do you know when the piece is finished?
When it feels complete.
***
may my pulsing heart never fall from god’s blessing
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Monday, November 26, 2007
Please tell me Garrison Keillor's Woebegone days will be gone soon.
Normally, I can't stand reading nettlesome and self-righteous blogs by swaggering writers who use the medium to display their disdain of everyone but themselves and to showcase their ability to successfully use condescending language and sarcasm to offend anyone who doesn't have the intellectual facility to read between the lines, with the exception of the ones I write, obviously. But as soon as I read Dan Savage's article in The Stranger about Garrison Keillor's hypocritical piece on marriage and family, I immediately signed onto gmail and sent the link to all my friends who would appreciate an article entitled, "Fuck Garrison Keillor"-- a title that eloquently introduces a classic laugh-your-ass-off article criticizing the ignorance and homophobia of white, wrinkly-faced autocrats who have no savoir faire, despite their Ivy League educations and blueblood breeding. Neither could I resist using Savage's article as a point of departure to amplify a well-established belief that Keillor is an absolute failure as the host of NPR's Writer's Almanac. Every morning I have to listen to that arrogant voice hiding behind the pantleg of white patriarchy read the shittiest, most uncreative, unoriginal, and pointless poems that have ever been written. The lack of any semblance of poetic language, imagery, or sense of rhythm in his reading choices speaks for Keillor's poor taste, both in his own attempt to write satire and in poetry (if you can call that crap prose chopped into lines Keillor spews over national radio waves poetry). Check out Savage's article and Keillor's apology letter:
http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/03/fuck_garrison_keillor
http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/03/garrison_keillors_apology
In the fabulously succinct words of Dan Savage, "Oh. My. God." What the fuck was that, Keillor? Savage has every right to be unsatisfied and more enraged by Keillor's apology letter, which smacks of an attempt to save his career and his ass. I should know, since I've had to eat crow many times in my short career. But my main complaint about Keillor has less to do with his lack of sensitivity toward the gay community in a satire about marriage, though that does cause its share of outrage. What I can’t believe is that this is a piece written by seasoned writer who, by the close of his career as a well-known radio host (let’s hope it ends soon), should know the difference between delivering sarcasm to a live audience and writing satire for a larger crowd that mostly consists of people who neither understand nor appreciate sarcasm. Even I-a wet behind the ears, unpublished writer-have figured out at the tender age of 29 that you can't use highbrow humor to point out the ignorance behind all the isms that exist in our society, because, to put it bluntly, the people who need to hear it are, well, ignorant (in the original sense of the word, not the word as it is read now with centuries of pejorative baggage). In other words, Keillor, I know people back home in Alabama who would definitely nod their heads, and hum a rhythmically judgmental, "Mmmm Hmmmm," to every phrase of yours about how us gay folks are ruining the sanctity of marriage. So I must give a pre-apology for the freshman tone in my voice when I add my own, "Fuck you!" to this conversation.
How the hell did you think people would respond to your flimsy excuse in that letter? For instance: "The column was done tongue-in-cheek, always a risky thing, and was meant to be funny, another risky thing these days, and two sentences about gay people lit a fire in some readers and sent them racing to their computers to fire off some jagged e-mails. That’s okay. But the underlying cause of the trouble is rather simple"? Well, thank you Father Shithead for blessing us with your approval and the "okay" to race to our computers to "fire off some jagged emails." What the fuck did you expect when you yourself admitted, "My column spoke as we would speak in my small world and it was read by people in the larger world and thus the misunderstanding"? Do you think all those folks in Alabama are rushing off to their computers to google "tongue-in-cheek" so they can bone up on their cheeky lit. in the latest Iowa Review or Harper's Weekly to prepare themselves for your brilliant take on their prejudices? Puh-lease. Although you did follow that statement with, "And for that, I am sorry," you deftly destroy any sincerity it had with the next sentence, " Gay people who set out to be parents can be just as good parents as anybody else, and they know that, and so do I." Gee whiz, Mr. Keillor, you really think I am fit to be a mom? Golly, that's great news, and here I was worried about the fact that my lesbian partner and I actually have to plan out having children because, unlike some of our heterosexual counterparts, we can't pop out a rugrat every time we fuck. I didn't know how all those years of growth and maturity we will gain before we decide to have kids would allow us to trust those maternal instincts, or if our emotional stability would give us the sense not to have kids when we aren't ready for it. I thought all those lesbian moms turned kids bad. Is your letter part of the fucking joke, Keillor? If so, I don't hear many of us gay folks laughing. If your article has half the satirical genius as your letter seems to have, then you've written the next Gulliver's Travels. Hear that sound? It's Jonathon Swift rolling over in his cliche. Before I start to sound like Keillor because of my unbridled anger, let's move on.
I must include in my exegesis of Keillor's work, his presumptuous attitude about his gay chums, "Ever since I was in college, gay men and women have been friends, associates, heroes, adversaries, and in that small world, we talk openly and we kid each other and think nothing of it. But in the larger world, gayness is controversial. In almost every state, gay marriage would be voted down if put on a ballot. Gay men and women have been targeted by the right wing as a hot-button issue. And so gay people out in the larger world feel besieged to some degree." You think? I feel so grateful for having a privileged white male, whose small-world gay friends talk openly with him about their sexuality, speak for my feelings about my controversial gayness. Too bad none of them pointed out what a fucking dick slap you are. Don't fucking tell me what I might feel about being targeted by right wingers who use my civil liberties as a ticket to the white house, lining their silk pockets with donations along the way. Your condescending use of the phrase, "gay people out in the larger world feel besieged to some degree" is not only utterly offensive to all gay people, in the BIG or "small" world, but I must say it is also more ignorant than anything our fucking moron for a President could mispronounce on national television. At least Bush doesn't hide his bigotry behind pseudo-intellect; we are all perfectly aware the man is a fucking idiot. And, Rupert Murdoch, if you're reading this on MySpace, fuck you too! Before I end this miscellaneous section, I must respond to Keillor's most urbane reference to his relationships with those gay people (are you paying attention, Gari boy? the use of "urbane" is what we call "sarcasm," dickface). He claims that since he was a strapping college boy, "gay men and women have been friends, associates, heroes, adversariees, and in that small world, we talk openly and we kid each other and think nothing of it." Haven't we heard this before, perhaps in reference to an old ism that still exists in this country even though we pretend it doesn't: "I ain't racist. I've got lots of black friends. Why hell, just the other day one of them affectionately called me niggah." Again, FUCK YOU KEILLOR, and your fucking failed attempt to be gay-friendly! If you have to preface your non-homophobic attitude with, "Ever since college, gay men and women," then you're overcompensating for your insincerity.
To fully establish the bigger picture that Keillor's prickness represents, let's look at some of the equally asshole comments made about Savage's original article in the blog. As I was scrolling down, I noticed that #412 says, "hey #34. eat a dick," so I wondered what #34 could have possibly said to warrant such a request. Here's what #34 had to say about Savage's article: "I don't see what the problem is. These stereotypes are PROMOTED by the gay establishment. They are the people claiming to represent gay people. Go on a gay forum somewhere and try to challenge them that they're hurting gays by doing this (you know, the same thing you're doing to Garrison here) and they'll rip you to shreds for being a bigot." Hmmm. Well, yes, #34, because I AM GAY I suppose I do claim to represent myself, you fucking moron! I must say that I concur with #412, eat dick, arrogant bastard!! In fact, why don't you eat Keillor's dick, since you seem to be so fond of that particular cock. Moving on. Number 32 remarks, "I'm a little stunned at how few people seem to have a clue about what Keillor does. He's a satirist, people. Gentle and folksy, yes, but he's not idealizing the past, he's making fun of the idealized past. I think too much hip and edgy comedy has rotted your brains. This last bit is a bad failure, though." I think too much pot has eroded your capability to put together a coherent comment. Have you looked at a dictionary lately? Don't you think that "hip and edgy" is the fucking antithesis of this "idealized past" you and Gari boy seem to unidealistcally idealize? Take a few minutes with that last bit #32 before you consider the failure of your attempt to express an intellectual opinion. Here's a tip: get a proofreader before you post another comment on the internet. Let's see what #24 has to say. "Dan, didn't your kid pick out your "weird, little dog?" Um, what? What the fuck does that even mean twenty four? Use my tip for 32: proofreader. Number 147 seems to have an interesting take on all this: "His point seems to me that when anybody becomes a parent they need to defer their own interests to the interests of their children. While he may use the stereotype of the flamboyant gay man to make this point, he also basically says that all people need to get over themselves in order to be good parents. Apparently getting over themselves is too tall of an order for some." Grammar anyone? You want to tell me which Strunk and White guide you used to construct,"His point seems to me that," hm, 147? Using the stereotype of a flamboyant gay man is the fucking center of the issue, in case your homophobic craving for a flamboyant dick up your ass has obscured your ability to pay attention to the crux of Savage's entire argument. So, how about it numbnuts? Want to get over yourself? Or is that too tall of an order? Finally, number ten gives us a little hope with this comment: "Don't worry Dan, his fucked up hypocritical generation will be dying off soon. One by one, those asshat bigots of the Boomer Gen will either die of obesity related death, or become mentally incapable of rendering any more harm on society." Asshat, now that's more hip and edgy than a hipster at Goodwill. Let's hope ten's prophecy is fulfilled before we all die in a nookcleyour war.
Keillor only perpetuates the hatred toward all those goddamn gay people ruining our society and causing AIDS. See Garrison, my straight and narrow chum, satirizing gay people doesn't work unless YOU ARE GAY, so why don't you stick to those stale, casserole-eating Lutherans back home in Wisconsin, and that's not satire, just pure bitterness toward a heterosexual-driven society because elitists like you don't hand out smoking jackets to all the peeps outside your "small-world" glee club. If the kind of bullshit that Keillor pulls in his "satrire" about marriage doesn't piss you off to the living end, YOU ARE NOT PAYING ATTENTION TO WHAT IS GOING ON OUTSIDE YOUR NARROW FRAMED DOORWAY! This society isn't going to hell in a hand basket because of gay people, (you, know since we've only been around for a few decades) we are going to hell because we are slowly allowing our government to turn us into a nation full of docile idiots. Want more proof? Take a look at the poem he read today on Writer's Almanac:
My Dream
Here is a dream.
It is my dream—
My own dream—
I dreamt it.
I dreamt that my hair was kempt,
Then I dreamt that my true love
unkempt it.
by, Ogden Nash
This is not a joke folks. This was the actual poem he read between BBC news and Fresh Air, or one of those other pansy NPR shows used to disguse the fact that NPR is now advertising for WAL-MART. Oh, yes, the bastion of liberal radio has buckled at the knees my friends. Do you realize the kind of shit disguised as artistic integrity that you are inundated with every day? And we wonder why we all hate each other. But I digress. On to the poem.
Where do I begin? How about that catchy, creative title? (the use of satire is at work here, so pay attention Keillor). Now, I may just have an MFA from one of the best programs in the country, but if I brought a poem like this into workshop, it wouldn't make it past that hallmark greeting, freezer-phrase title, "My Dream." If this is an attempt to honor the great William Carlos Williams and his Red Wheelbarrow, you have failed Mr. Nash. Failed, failed, failed. If you've written it to honor the Imagists, might I note you seem to have forgotten the staple of an Imagist poem and the center of the entire theory behind Imagist thought: the fucking image! If you want to be Keillor's protege by satirizing the Imagists, might I point out another folly of writing satirical poetry: untalented schlubs like you who write them. Before I continue with this brutally unconvincing poem, I want to say that I don't enjoy tearing down the work of another poet, if that work is genuine and will get published on its own merit and not just because Robert Bly invites the poet into his man club. No, I'm not kidding. Every summer, somewhere deep in the woods of Michigan, that equally untalented jackass Bly hosts a gathering just for men, the ones who are in his "man club," a club where men can be men. As if their heterosexual maleness ever stuck out like a gay man in chartreuse pants. Oh, I know, poor Robbie and all the other rich, white boys have been marginalized all their lives. Fuck you too, Robert! You and your cronies are fucking hacks and you know it! I can name a dozen unpublished poets who have more talent and dignity than your entire fucking club. Have you ever just thought about how ridiculous a "man club" sounds to normal people? But I digress. Back to the task at hand, ah yes, Nash's piece of shit poem. It would take two minutes in an MFA workshop to render this piece unrecognizable, and for good cause. If I included a poem like that in my thesis at Goddard, I don't think they would have given me a degree. I love the sad nod to tradition with the capital letter beginning each line, even if it is enjambed. Ooohhh, how 1940s of you Nash. If you are trying to play tennis with a net, better learn how to put the fucking thing up first. Even more offensive than the fact that this poem was chosen for Writer's Almanac in the first place, Keillor couldn't read it just once. No, no, he had to defame the name of poetry twice, so the people who can't tell the difference between art and shit can continue to live in blissful ignorance, while decent poets continue to remain bewildered by the constant decline in the crap that makes it to the bookshelves and into Kellior's spotlight. Check mate, old man. It is time for generation consumer to step aside.
Fuck this. I'm moving to France where John Kerry and I can have an intellectual conversation over our freedom fries. Anyone know a French lesbian willing to marry a penniless poet from America?
God bless blogs, the internet, and the advertising media. God bless us. God bless us, one and all. (Hey Keillor, if I change a few syllables around in that, would you read my poem and call it a brilliant haiku on the next Writer's Almanac?)
http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/03/fuck_garrison_keillor
http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/03/garrison_keillors_apology
In the fabulously succinct words of Dan Savage, "Oh. My. God." What the fuck was that, Keillor? Savage has every right to be unsatisfied and more enraged by Keillor's apology letter, which smacks of an attempt to save his career and his ass. I should know, since I've had to eat crow many times in my short career. But my main complaint about Keillor has less to do with his lack of sensitivity toward the gay community in a satire about marriage, though that does cause its share of outrage. What I can’t believe is that this is a piece written by seasoned writer who, by the close of his career as a well-known radio host (let’s hope it ends soon), should know the difference between delivering sarcasm to a live audience and writing satire for a larger crowd that mostly consists of people who neither understand nor appreciate sarcasm. Even I-a wet behind the ears, unpublished writer-have figured out at the tender age of 29 that you can't use highbrow humor to point out the ignorance behind all the isms that exist in our society, because, to put it bluntly, the people who need to hear it are, well, ignorant (in the original sense of the word, not the word as it is read now with centuries of pejorative baggage). In other words, Keillor, I know people back home in Alabama who would definitely nod their heads, and hum a rhythmically judgmental, "Mmmm Hmmmm," to every phrase of yours about how us gay folks are ruining the sanctity of marriage. So I must give a pre-apology for the freshman tone in my voice when I add my own, "Fuck you!" to this conversation.
How the hell did you think people would respond to your flimsy excuse in that letter? For instance: "The column was done tongue-in-cheek, always a risky thing, and was meant to be funny, another risky thing these days, and two sentences about gay people lit a fire in some readers and sent them racing to their computers to fire off some jagged e-mails. That’s okay. But the underlying cause of the trouble is rather simple"? Well, thank you Father Shithead for blessing us with your approval and the "okay" to race to our computers to "fire off some jagged emails." What the fuck did you expect when you yourself admitted, "My column spoke as we would speak in my small world and it was read by people in the larger world and thus the misunderstanding"? Do you think all those folks in Alabama are rushing off to their computers to google "tongue-in-cheek" so they can bone up on their cheeky lit. in the latest Iowa Review or Harper's Weekly to prepare themselves for your brilliant take on their prejudices? Puh-lease. Although you did follow that statement with, "And for that, I am sorry," you deftly destroy any sincerity it had with the next sentence, " Gay people who set out to be parents can be just as good parents as anybody else, and they know that, and so do I." Gee whiz, Mr. Keillor, you really think I am fit to be a mom? Golly, that's great news, and here I was worried about the fact that my lesbian partner and I actually have to plan out having children because, unlike some of our heterosexual counterparts, we can't pop out a rugrat every time we fuck. I didn't know how all those years of growth and maturity we will gain before we decide to have kids would allow us to trust those maternal instincts, or if our emotional stability would give us the sense not to have kids when we aren't ready for it. I thought all those lesbian moms turned kids bad. Is your letter part of the fucking joke, Keillor? If so, I don't hear many of us gay folks laughing. If your article has half the satirical genius as your letter seems to have, then you've written the next Gulliver's Travels. Hear that sound? It's Jonathon Swift rolling over in his cliche. Before I start to sound like Keillor because of my unbridled anger, let's move on.
I must include in my exegesis of Keillor's work, his presumptuous attitude about his gay chums, "Ever since I was in college, gay men and women have been friends, associates, heroes, adversaries, and in that small world, we talk openly and we kid each other and think nothing of it. But in the larger world, gayness is controversial. In almost every state, gay marriage would be voted down if put on a ballot. Gay men and women have been targeted by the right wing as a hot-button issue. And so gay people out in the larger world feel besieged to some degree." You think? I feel so grateful for having a privileged white male, whose small-world gay friends talk openly with him about their sexuality, speak for my feelings about my controversial gayness. Too bad none of them pointed out what a fucking dick slap you are. Don't fucking tell me what I might feel about being targeted by right wingers who use my civil liberties as a ticket to the white house, lining their silk pockets with donations along the way. Your condescending use of the phrase, "gay people out in the larger world feel besieged to some degree" is not only utterly offensive to all gay people, in the BIG or "small" world, but I must say it is also more ignorant than anything our fucking moron for a President could mispronounce on national television. At least Bush doesn't hide his bigotry behind pseudo-intellect; we are all perfectly aware the man is a fucking idiot. And, Rupert Murdoch, if you're reading this on MySpace, fuck you too! Before I end this miscellaneous section, I must respond to Keillor's most urbane reference to his relationships with those gay people (are you paying attention, Gari boy? the use of "urbane" is what we call "sarcasm," dickface). He claims that since he was a strapping college boy, "gay men and women have been friends, associates, heroes, adversariees, and in that small world, we talk openly and we kid each other and think nothing of it." Haven't we heard this before, perhaps in reference to an old ism that still exists in this country even though we pretend it doesn't: "I ain't racist. I've got lots of black friends. Why hell, just the other day one of them affectionately called me niggah." Again, FUCK YOU KEILLOR, and your fucking failed attempt to be gay-friendly! If you have to preface your non-homophobic attitude with, "Ever since college, gay men and women," then you're overcompensating for your insincerity.
To fully establish the bigger picture that Keillor's prickness represents, let's look at some of the equally asshole comments made about Savage's original article in the blog. As I was scrolling down, I noticed that #412 says, "hey #34. eat a dick," so I wondered what #34 could have possibly said to warrant such a request. Here's what #34 had to say about Savage's article: "I don't see what the problem is. These stereotypes are PROMOTED by the gay establishment. They are the people claiming to represent gay people. Go on a gay forum somewhere and try to challenge them that they're hurting gays by doing this (you know, the same thing you're doing to Garrison here) and they'll rip you to shreds for being a bigot." Hmmm. Well, yes, #34, because I AM GAY I suppose I do claim to represent myself, you fucking moron! I must say that I concur with #412, eat dick, arrogant bastard!! In fact, why don't you eat Keillor's dick, since you seem to be so fond of that particular cock. Moving on. Number 32 remarks, "I'm a little stunned at how few people seem to have a clue about what Keillor does. He's a satirist, people. Gentle and folksy, yes, but he's not idealizing the past, he's making fun of the idealized past. I think too much hip and edgy comedy has rotted your brains. This last bit is a bad failure, though." I think too much pot has eroded your capability to put together a coherent comment. Have you looked at a dictionary lately? Don't you think that "hip and edgy" is the fucking antithesis of this "idealized past" you and Gari boy seem to unidealistcally idealize? Take a few minutes with that last bit #32 before you consider the failure of your attempt to express an intellectual opinion. Here's a tip: get a proofreader before you post another comment on the internet. Let's see what #24 has to say. "Dan, didn't your kid pick out your "weird, little dog?" Um, what? What the fuck does that even mean twenty four? Use my tip for 32: proofreader. Number 147 seems to have an interesting take on all this: "His point seems to me that when anybody becomes a parent they need to defer their own interests to the interests of their children. While he may use the stereotype of the flamboyant gay man to make this point, he also basically says that all people need to get over themselves in order to be good parents. Apparently getting over themselves is too tall of an order for some." Grammar anyone? You want to tell me which Strunk and White guide you used to construct,"His point seems to me that," hm, 147? Using the stereotype of a flamboyant gay man is the fucking center of the issue, in case your homophobic craving for a flamboyant dick up your ass has obscured your ability to pay attention to the crux of Savage's entire argument. So, how about it numbnuts? Want to get over yourself? Or is that too tall of an order? Finally, number ten gives us a little hope with this comment: "Don't worry Dan, his fucked up hypocritical generation will be dying off soon. One by one, those asshat bigots of the Boomer Gen will either die of obesity related death, or become mentally incapable of rendering any more harm on society." Asshat, now that's more hip and edgy than a hipster at Goodwill. Let's hope ten's prophecy is fulfilled before we all die in a nookcleyour war.
Keillor only perpetuates the hatred toward all those goddamn gay people ruining our society and causing AIDS. See Garrison, my straight and narrow chum, satirizing gay people doesn't work unless YOU ARE GAY, so why don't you stick to those stale, casserole-eating Lutherans back home in Wisconsin, and that's not satire, just pure bitterness toward a heterosexual-driven society because elitists like you don't hand out smoking jackets to all the peeps outside your "small-world" glee club. If the kind of bullshit that Keillor pulls in his "satrire" about marriage doesn't piss you off to the living end, YOU ARE NOT PAYING ATTENTION TO WHAT IS GOING ON OUTSIDE YOUR NARROW FRAMED DOORWAY! This society isn't going to hell in a hand basket because of gay people, (you, know since we've only been around for a few decades) we are going to hell because we are slowly allowing our government to turn us into a nation full of docile idiots. Want more proof? Take a look at the poem he read today on Writer's Almanac:
My Dream
Here is a dream.
It is my dream—
My own dream—
I dreamt it.
I dreamt that my hair was kempt,
Then I dreamt that my true love
unkempt it.
by, Ogden Nash
This is not a joke folks. This was the actual poem he read between BBC news and Fresh Air, or one of those other pansy NPR shows used to disguse the fact that NPR is now advertising for WAL-MART. Oh, yes, the bastion of liberal radio has buckled at the knees my friends. Do you realize the kind of shit disguised as artistic integrity that you are inundated with every day? And we wonder why we all hate each other. But I digress. On to the poem.
Where do I begin? How about that catchy, creative title? (the use of satire is at work here, so pay attention Keillor). Now, I may just have an MFA from one of the best programs in the country, but if I brought a poem like this into workshop, it wouldn't make it past that hallmark greeting, freezer-phrase title, "My Dream." If this is an attempt to honor the great William Carlos Williams and his Red Wheelbarrow, you have failed Mr. Nash. Failed, failed, failed. If you've written it to honor the Imagists, might I note you seem to have forgotten the staple of an Imagist poem and the center of the entire theory behind Imagist thought: the fucking image! If you want to be Keillor's protege by satirizing the Imagists, might I point out another folly of writing satirical poetry: untalented schlubs like you who write them. Before I continue with this brutally unconvincing poem, I want to say that I don't enjoy tearing down the work of another poet, if that work is genuine and will get published on its own merit and not just because Robert Bly invites the poet into his man club. No, I'm not kidding. Every summer, somewhere deep in the woods of Michigan, that equally untalented jackass Bly hosts a gathering just for men, the ones who are in his "man club," a club where men can be men. As if their heterosexual maleness ever stuck out like a gay man in chartreuse pants. Oh, I know, poor Robbie and all the other rich, white boys have been marginalized all their lives. Fuck you too, Robert! You and your cronies are fucking hacks and you know it! I can name a dozen unpublished poets who have more talent and dignity than your entire fucking club. Have you ever just thought about how ridiculous a "man club" sounds to normal people? But I digress. Back to the task at hand, ah yes, Nash's piece of shit poem. It would take two minutes in an MFA workshop to render this piece unrecognizable, and for good cause. If I included a poem like that in my thesis at Goddard, I don't think they would have given me a degree. I love the sad nod to tradition with the capital letter beginning each line, even if it is enjambed. Ooohhh, how 1940s of you Nash. If you are trying to play tennis with a net, better learn how to put the fucking thing up first. Even more offensive than the fact that this poem was chosen for Writer's Almanac in the first place, Keillor couldn't read it just once. No, no, he had to defame the name of poetry twice, so the people who can't tell the difference between art and shit can continue to live in blissful ignorance, while decent poets continue to remain bewildered by the constant decline in the crap that makes it to the bookshelves and into Kellior's spotlight. Check mate, old man. It is time for generation consumer to step aside.
Fuck this. I'm moving to France where John Kerry and I can have an intellectual conversation over our freedom fries. Anyone know a French lesbian willing to marry a penniless poet from America?
God bless blogs, the internet, and the advertising media. God bless us. God bless us, one and all. (Hey Keillor, if I change a few syllables around in that, would you read my poem and call it a brilliant haiku on the next Writer's Almanac?)
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
publish post
"The beginning of it cannot be identified. So slow and small, it started like anything ordinary starts. But after some time, the ordinary nature of it was traversed by its own desire to spread. This is why I cannot put a finger on when happiness began. So much isolation and desolation have covered over the feeling that I wasn't sure what it even was. I can point to the exact time and date of the beginning of the sadness, but happiness, like fog, rolls in on you unsuspecting and only until you are completely enveloped in it can you recognize that it was rolling in on you in the first place. The feeling does not rule out all others, in fact it can sometimes make the other feelings that much more acute when you happen upon them as your stumbling through. But enveloped, as you are, in this blanket, you come to recognize that the reality of everything will be coloured this way. Thank god there are no drugs for this as there are for the opposite feeling. Pure and simple both should be appreciated, even strived for because like twins, Janus, the ideology of mirrors, without one image the other is pale and meaningless."
-one of the broken toys
PUBLISH POST saving....SAVED Draft autosaved at 3:52 AM
"Perhaps that is why I am so much more appreciative of everything now...I had often heard people say that they would give everything if only that thing had not happened to them. For me, I did give everything and it still happened and I am unbelievably grateful."
--one of the broken toys
-one of the broken toys
Wednesday, October 31st, 3:41 am, wide awake,
t____ not awake enough for sex,
decide to stave off depression by catching up on bt's blog,
saved by her fucking brilliance again,
The end of it cannot be marked. So insignificant and quick, it ended like anything ends. But after a while, it's opposing twin asserts her need to consume your life at once, as a wildfire swallows a forest before anyone knew it was there. This is why I can't tack my pin on the time line of depression. Was it during one of the world wars? Was it after the civil rights movement? Did we even have a civil rights movement? So much television and electronic music and the arrogance of prose has obfuscated a basic need for a connection to others who will own up to this numbing malady through the conduits of unassuming poetry. It is this Poetry that fibrillates the rhythm underneath a bi-polar order. Sadness lurks underneath everything that causes happiness, from the leaves that burn the autumnal hillside with the brilliance of defying death, to the fog that slows all movement until the first crack in the spring-thawed ice. There is no order without disorder. There is no disorder if we understand the postmodern capital t in True, order. Ensconced in our safety blankets, we fail to recognize that this is reality and not a dicoloured perfection causing false ideologies. Thank modern science for the drugs to treat this order, because our failed twin focuses on the false idolatry of the disease and not the cause in the mirror.t____ not awake enough for sex,
decide to stave off depression by catching up on bt's blog,
saved by her fucking brilliance again,
Create New X
PUBLISH POST saving....SAVED Draft autosaved at 3:52 AM
"Perhaps that is why I am so much more appreciative of everything now...I had often heard people say that they would give everything if only that thing had not happened to them. For me, I did give everything and it still happened and I am unbelievably grateful."
4:20 am, no pot to smoke,
hate that inane and arbitrary designated toke time anyway,
get up to feed the cat instead,
Perhaps this is why I am so less appreciative of everything now...I have often said that I would give everything if I hadn't done that thing to her, or him, if I hadn't broke her heart, or hers, or his. If I hadn't said that stupid thing that I didn't mean, or that stupid thing that I did mean. I've given nothing but pain and everything has fallen into place and still I am unbelievably ungrateful.
PUBLISH POST saving....SAVED Draft autosaved at 4:22 AM
"Things in my life have taken an interesting turn. I have been more public then I ever have been. Out there and open but still private as my upbringing and background warrants. I have met so many new individuals, I know a good deal of it is one-time-only and tangential, but realistically I would never have had even those kinds of experiences if it weren't for the suffering that had come before...it was a soul ripping hair tearing serrated-edged liturgy into the abyss. You think I am being dramatic, and perhaps I am, but what in your life has made you utterly broken? I have a few instances now and I can say with some measured and humble authority that this was the worst."hate that inane and arbitrary designated toke time anyway,
get up to feed the cat instead,
Perhaps this is why I am so less appreciative of everything now...I have often said that I would give everything if I hadn't done that thing to her, or him, if I hadn't broke her heart, or hers, or his. If I hadn't said that stupid thing that I didn't mean, or that stupid thing that I did mean. I've given nothing but pain and everything has fallen into place and still I am unbelievably ungrateful.
PUBLISH POST saving....SAVED Draft autosaved at 4:22 AM
--one of the broken toys
5:04 am, t___ still asleep,
no longer innocent,
no longer guilty,
no longer willing to fulfill impossible expectations,
no longer the new girlfriend who lives in boston and wakes me at 3 am to have sex for the 11th time in two days,
no longer the sustenance that keeps me awake during the entire six-hour drive back to new york,
something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue
Things in my life never change, never take a different route, and if they do, they get lost with me on a back road in Vermont. I have never been more private than I am now. Closed off as my background and secret as my family history, but out and open as my new surroundings will warrant. I haven't met any new individuals and have ostracized myself from those soul ripping experiences to avoid all the suffering that has come before. You think I am being dramatic, and I admit that I am, because the chaos in my life that has made me utterly broken is the worst addiction. Even worse than the addiction to push people away by ripping the metronomes from their chests and occluding the passage of the pendulum, because this provides the one-time-only and tangential belief that I have achieved facility through the range of my tempi tempered with the temper of my rage. While my sightless counterparts listen to the cite-less authority of wikipedia: "There has been an effort to attach musical rhythm with some innate biological rhythm, although they have not been met with much success. One sparse correlation is that the beats per minute in a song have been known to affect heart rate, and (coincidentally?) fall roughly in the same range of a normal human heart beat. A fast song can make the heart beat faster, while a slower paced song can make the heart beat slower [citation needed," which I needn't bother to cite since the basic premise of wiki is as follows: "Visitors do not need specialised qualifications to contribute, since their primary role is to write articles that cover existing knowledge; this means that people of all ages and cultural and social background can write Wikipedia articles."
As someone who helps spread the bias behind wiki's worldwide knowledge, I believe I have the authority to say that this practice of creating authority from one's own experience and not from "specialized qualifications" to cover "existing knowledge" is a frightening mirror image of Fox News and the authoritative regime that controls it. After all, this most noted of all scholarly sources quotes the unknown and discredited scholar, Luke Jeremy, as saying, "Spreading knowledge is worth a donation." Yes, Mr. Jeremy, and so is spreading shit, but you don't see decent writers getting rich now do you? I don't know who the fuck Luke Jeremy is, but I do know Lenny Bruce. Do you know Mr. Bruce, Mr. Jeremy? You should, since you both share two first names as your full name. Here's a Wikipedia entry for you, and this one is on the house...consider it as a donation for the new wikimedia: Lenny Bruce was a comedian who was repeatedly arrested and jailed for using "foul" language on stage, for what he knew to be True--his 'authority' on free speech. He once said, "If you can't say FUCK, you can't say "Fuck the government!" His career was never utterly broken [citation needed for the utterly broken phrase, sounds too good to be this contributor's words], and if wiki had been born during his cursing on stage days, he would have said, "Fuck wikipedia for misquoting me, and fuck the contributor who assumed authority on my life and words." I say fuck you for misleading your readers, and fuck you for failing to temper the tempo of the current rate of a capital-driven deterioration of freedom with any sort of Truth. --author unknown, citation: authorial intent [citation pending].
Perhaps this is what bt means by the suffering that comes before. Any dark age must be followed by an enlightenment. Any dip in human relationships must surrender to a free lift. But what the fuck do I know about suffering? After all, I'm no specialist on depression or human behavior (even though psychology is not rocket science), and I'm certainly no prophetic lyricist.
"I'm living in an age
where darkness is light."
--Arcade Fire
PUBLISH POST saving....SAVED Draft autosaved at 7:56 AM
The illness presented itself off and on for another blog. Very high fever of 106, and a body gone haywire and lymph nodes so swollen that a litany of PhDs could only take out the problem with a knife. And the copycat bloggers could only cut and paste with the plagiaristic price of a devilish device.
From forbidden control c's to vanished verified v's, her alliterative wounds would not be barraged with a gauchely gauze. Her open neck nicked neither with stitch nor stichomythia.
PUBLISH POST saving....SAVED Draft autosaved at 8:12 AM
The ending of it cannot be identified. So slow and so fucking small, it ended like anything extraordinary ends. But after some time, the extraordinary nature of it was traversed by its own desire to suffocate. This is why I cannot put a finger on when sadness began. So much isolation and desolation have been covered over by the feeling of happiness that I wasn't sure what sadness even was. I can point to the exact time and date of the ending of happiness, but happiness, like fog, rolls in on you unsuspecting and only until you are completely enveloped in it can you recognize that it was rolling in on you in the first place.
PUBLISH POST saving....SAVED Draft autosaved at 8:33 AM
Depression is like the ending of a great song.
The beginning of it cannot be identified,
until the repetition of that magnificent fucking song
has drilled every decrescendoed note into your head.
PUBLISH POST saving....SAVED Draft autosaved at 9:47 AM
PUBLISH POST X
---
god bless autosave
no longer innocent,
no longer guilty,
no longer willing to fulfill impossible expectations,
no longer the new girlfriend who lives in boston and wakes me at 3 am to have sex for the 11th time in two days,
no longer the sustenance that keeps me awake during the entire six-hour drive back to new york,
something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue
Things in my life never change, never take a different route, and if they do, they get lost with me on a back road in Vermont. I have never been more private than I am now. Closed off as my background and secret as my family history, but out and open as my new surroundings will warrant. I haven't met any new individuals and have ostracized myself from those soul ripping experiences to avoid all the suffering that has come before. You think I am being dramatic, and I admit that I am, because the chaos in my life that has made me utterly broken is the worst addiction. Even worse than the addiction to push people away by ripping the metronomes from their chests and occluding the passage of the pendulum, because this provides the one-time-only and tangential belief that I have achieved facility through the range of my tempi tempered with the temper of my rage. While my sightless counterparts listen to the cite-less authority of wikipedia: "There has been an effort to attach musical rhythm with some innate biological rhythm, although they have not been met with much success. One sparse correlation is that the beats per minute in a song have been known to affect heart rate, and (coincidentally?) fall roughly in the same range of a normal human heart beat. A fast song can make the heart beat faster, while a slower paced song can make the heart beat slower [citation needed," which I needn't bother to cite since the basic premise of wiki is as follows: "Visitors do not need specialised qualifications to contribute, since their primary role is to write articles that cover existing knowledge; this means that people of all ages and cultural and social background can write Wikipedia articles."
As someone who helps spread the bias behind wiki's worldwide knowledge, I believe I have the authority to say that this practice of creating authority from one's own experience and not from "specialized qualifications" to cover "existing knowledge" is a frightening mirror image of Fox News and the authoritative regime that controls it. After all, this most noted of all scholarly sources quotes the unknown and discredited scholar, Luke Jeremy, as saying, "Spreading knowledge is worth a donation." Yes, Mr. Jeremy, and so is spreading shit, but you don't see decent writers getting rich now do you? I don't know who the fuck Luke Jeremy is, but I do know Lenny Bruce. Do you know Mr. Bruce, Mr. Jeremy? You should, since you both share two first names as your full name. Here's a Wikipedia entry for you, and this one is on the house...consider it as a donation for the new wikimedia: Lenny Bruce was a comedian who was repeatedly arrested and jailed for using "foul" language on stage, for what he knew to be True--his 'authority' on free speech. He once said, "If you can't say FUCK, you can't say "Fuck the government!" His career was never utterly broken [citation needed for the utterly broken phrase, sounds too good to be this contributor's words], and if wiki had been born during his cursing on stage days, he would have said, "Fuck wikipedia for misquoting me, and fuck the contributor who assumed authority on my life and words." I say fuck you for misleading your readers, and fuck you for failing to temper the tempo of the current rate of a capital-driven deterioration of freedom with any sort of Truth. --author unknown, citation: authorial intent [citation pending].
Perhaps this is what bt means by the suffering that comes before. Any dark age must be followed by an enlightenment. Any dip in human relationships must surrender to a free lift. But what the fuck do I know about suffering? After all, I'm no specialist on depression or human behavior (even though psychology is not rocket science), and I'm certainly no prophetic lyricist.
"I'm living in an age
where darkness is light."
--Arcade Fire
PUBLISH POST saving....SAVED Draft autosaved at 6:12 AM
"Even the cancer (I loathe to call it that out loud or in print, but there it is) that I suffered 10 years ago was not a match for this unbalancing. I have written endlessly about _____ so perhaps we should talk about that cancer. It does give some perspective to the entire episode."
--one of the broken toys
"Even the cancer (I loathe to call it that out loud or in print, but there it is) that I suffered 10 years ago was not a match for this unbalancing. I have written endlessly about _____ so perhaps we should talk about that cancer. It does give some perspective to the entire episode."
--one of the broken toys
6:23 am,
stunned by bt's bravery,
by her stunning awareness of herself,
by the cunning way I create an abstruse au fait of myself with an arcane list of characteristics and esoteric talk of linguistics
stunned by bt's bravery,
by her stunning awareness of herself,
by the cunning way I create an abstruse au fait of myself with an arcane list of characteristics and esoteric talk of linguistics
Even the chronic depression, the ADD, the bi-polar disorder (I love to call it that in silent print, and fuck all, thar she blows), I suffer still is no match from this balance of acting like I know what I want and knowing what I know how to act. I have written endlessly about _______ so perhaps we should talk about that fucking daughter of Zeus. She does give some charm to the entire fucking perspective...
PUBLISH POST saving....SAVED Draft autosaved at 6:37 AM
But that was really just the start of it. To tell the whole tale would take a book and perhaps someday it will be in that form, but for now here is a shortened version. My father died two days after I was released from the hospital. I was out from work for 3 weeks. It also happened to be the week my partner decided he could no longer cope with someone who was both quite ill and completely heartbroken over her father's death. The death of his own father haunted him and to be constantly reminded of it was too much. It took one more year for the finale of these feelings between the to of us, but we both look on that month as the instigator.
PUBLISH POST saving....SAVED Draft autosaved at 6:37 AM
But that was really just the start of it. To tell the whole tale would take a book and perhaps someday it will be in that form, but for now here is a shortened version. My father died two days after I was released from the hospital. I was out from work for 3 weeks. It also happened to be the week my partner decided he could no longer cope with someone who was both quite ill and completely heartbroken over her father's death. The death of his own father haunted him and to be constantly reminded of it was too much. It took one more year for the finale of these feelings between the to of us, but we both look on that month as the instigator.
6:44 am,
fucking A, I/m no believer,
no fucking authorial intender,
nothing in the sheets of my contender
fucking A, I/m no believer,
no fucking authorial intender,
nothing in the sheets of my contender
But that was really just the start of it. To tell the whole tale would take a fucking blovella, and perhaps one day it will knock down my short-doored version of my strawberry-shortcaked, paternaled version of my partner's decision that she can no longer cope with someone who is both quite ill and completely crestfallen over her childhood's death. The death of her own childhood haunted her and to be constantly reminded of it was too much. It took more than we could predict for the finale of these feelings between the two of us, but we both look on that decade as the instigator of the power dynamic of the q & a:
Q.i hate teachers and they're everywhere, what should i do?
A. Learn to love them.
Q.i hate teachers and they're everywhere, what should i do?
A. Learn to love them.
PUBLISH POST saving....SAVED Draft autosaved at 7:56 AM
The illness presented itself off and on for another blog. Very high fever of 106, and a body gone haywire and lymph nodes so swollen that a litany of PhDs could only take out the problem with a knife. And the copycat bloggers could only cut and paste with the plagiaristic price of a devilish device.
From forbidden control c's to vanished verified v's, her alliterative wounds would not be barraged with a gauchely gauze. Her open neck nicked neither with stitch nor stichomythia.
PUBLISH POST saving....SAVED Draft autosaved at 8:12 AM
The ending of it cannot be identified. So slow and so fucking small, it ended like anything extraordinary ends. But after some time, the extraordinary nature of it was traversed by its own desire to suffocate. This is why I cannot put a finger on when sadness began. So much isolation and desolation have been covered over by the feeling of happiness that I wasn't sure what sadness even was. I can point to the exact time and date of the ending of happiness, but happiness, like fog, rolls in on you unsuspecting and only until you are completely enveloped in it can you recognize that it was rolling in on you in the first place.
PUBLISH POST saving....SAVED Draft autosaved at 8:33 AM
Depression is like the ending of a great song.
The beginning of it cannot be identified,
until the repetition of that magnificent fucking song
has drilled every decrescendoed note into your head.
PUBLISH POST saving....SAVED Draft autosaved at 9:47 AM
PUBLISH POST X
---
god bless autosave
Thursday, October 25, 2007
ok, ok, simmer down, i'll write another blog already
PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE PERSONALITY CLUSTER
[passive (paternal)-agressive (matriarchy) clusterfuck!]
Persons who act in passive aggressive ways do some of the following:
*Frequently is involved in fibbing, omitting information, or lying to avoid direct confrontation ("no, I don't have my mother's antique furniture stored in that tent,")
'hmm, that's strange, but I thought...'
*Often has challenges paying bills in a timely manner and may have poor credit history. ("Mom, the phone company shut off the phone today. Do you know why they would do tha--but we--yes, but--I--but mom--you didn't--I know, but--but you--but I--can I--would you--could I--would you let me--please, mom, I--but/hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm/beep.
"She," she begins as she moves tenderly toward me, and I interrupt like the slam of a bilco on a cellar door, "--hung up on you?"
"Yes."
"Yes?"
"yes.")
*Will make dates and stand people up.
("How long has it been? "I don't know," she clusters her frustrations.
"Hello?" we hear a voice from the door below our second-floor window
"Hang on a minute," I yell below and turn to Tiff, "or as Ed Izzard says, 'Klammern Sie an eine Minute an,' and run down in a clandestine robe.
"Is G_____ here?"
"Um, she doooeessn't live here, well, she does, I think, that's correct, right?"
"I had an appointment with her at nine am."
"Sorry, I wasn't really awake; it's nine am after all...you mean G_____."
"Yes."
"Yes!"
"yes," she pauses.
"Oh, for fuck's sake, come in, come in...sorry, I'm half asleep, and I had no information about this meeting." [insert sarcasm]
"I'm J____, the clutter consultant," she extends her olive-branched hand.
"OOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,"
[insert inner thoughts--oh, for fuck's sake, this explains a lot]
"Do you know when she'll be back?" [insert inner joke: is this a trick question?] "no, but let me check."
[insert song lyrics]
"you come from parents wanton
a childhood, rough & rotton
i come from wealth & beauty
untouched by work or duty
and oh, my love, my love
and oh, my love, my love
we both go down together
[violin solo]
"Hello, G______, this is A_____,
[and my parents will never consent of this love,
but i hold your hand]
"You missed your meeting with J______. If you are there, please pick up," I parenthetically plead with parental ploy. "She's only agreed to stay for five more minutes."
*May be in denial about passive aggressive behaviors, claiming only good intentions.
"Ohhhhh, I meant to be there, but I was at the place~where I had to put the thing~and then I had the~intention~of, and I just forgot to~oh, T____ knows what I mean. I didn't write it down because I didn't have a pen."
*In relationships may complain about partners to third parties instead of discussing issues directly with their partners.
"I hate it when R_____ drinks all day, and he's never motivated to move his stuff, even though I've said, very clearly, 'R____, move you things.' It makes me so mad." [heads nod in conjunction with a disorderly disorder]
*Chronically "forgets" to do important tasks wither for self or others.
{truck door slams, man enters drive....
'hi, i'm ______, here to discuss the propane tank installment,'
"you MUST be looking for G_______."
'yes, yes i am.'
'she's not here,' [enter a sarcastic, under-the-breath, 'as usual']
'where can i find her?'
'you can't,' [enter confused propane man look] 'this is a recurrent theme for her,' [enter confused propane man who never paid attention in english class look] 'i have to go, but you can go up to the house on the hill [enter irony] and inquire with the unsupervised workers who are expected to take care of their needs when they are gone, but are reprimanded when they make a poor 'informed' decision [enter sidestitchig irony].
'when do you expect her back?''
'HA!'
[her, back; her chronic behavior]
"OHHHHH, I meant to do that, I'm sorry, I just forgot."
'me, just fine, just dandy, just fallinginfuckingline...me.'
*Holding back on important information.
'ok, T, this is my non-negotiable, no-holds-barred list of demands:
1. The house is overrun with mice. non-negot-attn.
2. The house has a dangerous mold infestation. same as above.
3. The house has a chimney that is crumbling as we speak. same.
4. The house has no working smoke detectors. oh, you better fucking believe it.
5. The house is run by three little piggies whose brick, straw, & stone may break my bones, but their passive-aggressiveness will never hurt me.
*Sensitive about having requests made to them.
'could we have a working stove?'
*Giving mixed signals: unclear yes and no's
"Yes, of course! Do the research, get the oven YOU want."
'could we have a convection oven?'
"No, yes, no, what d'you want? just keep giving me these chocolate eggs! But the answer is no, yes, but only if you get the oven that I want"
*Wavering on courses of action
G: "Kill the mice, at all costs!"
R: "Don't kill the mice, think of the environment you killers!"
G: "Kill the mice, only if it is cheap!"
R: "Ok poison the little fuckers for all I care, just don't bother me, because I can't seem to leave my small plot of land to do anything, so what the fuck do I know?"
G: "I'll pay for it, but don't get criticize me if I write the check as if I have a mafia-like vendetta against the pen.
*Arguments and temper tantrums coming out of nowhere.
A: "I'm not angry at you, but we need do need to discuss boundaries if T&I plan to stay."
G: "BOUNDARIES! ALL I HEAR ABOUT IS BOUNDARIES? WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT? WE'VE GIVEN YOU A PLACE TO STAY, $5.000, AND PAID FOR THE BILLS....
*Lack of commitment.
"We don't mind paying the bills for up to a year, to help you regain footing, and we don't expect anything in return...
*Claim to "do too much" for others.
...AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE EXCEPT COMPLAIN?...
*Angry about being powerless, yet not able to assert this.
*Often lagging in education and careers.
...A_______, GROW UP! YOUR EMAIL MAKES YOU SOUND LIKE A SPOILT [his misspelling] BRAT!
*Submissive,
"oh, that's the rug I gave you,"
on the surface,
"too bad it's discolored."
*I know I promised, but things came up.
I know, I promised a new blog, but things came up.
*I must be approved and accepted, but not controlled or dominated.
I must have the approval and acceptance of my readers, but I'm writing a new blog, despite the fact that I have five readers and, "things came up."
-A_____ W_____, recovering passaggressaholic
---
god bless glasgow's leadership
[passive (paternal)-agressive (matriarchy) clusterfuck!]
Persons who act in passive aggressive ways do some of the following:
*Frequently is involved in fibbing, omitting information, or lying to avoid direct confrontation ("no, I don't have my mother's antique furniture stored in that tent,")
'hmm, that's strange, but I thought...'
*Often has challenges paying bills in a timely manner and may have poor credit history. ("Mom, the phone company shut off the phone today. Do you know why they would do tha--but we--yes, but--I--but mom--you didn't--I know, but--but you--but I--can I--would you--could I--would you let me--please, mom, I--but/hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm/beep.
"She," she begins as she moves tenderly toward me, and I interrupt like the slam of a bilco on a cellar door, "--hung up on you?"
"Yes."
"Yes?"
"yes.")
*Will make dates and stand people up.
("How long has it been? "I don't know," she clusters her frustrations.
"Hello?" we hear a voice from the door below our second-floor window
"Hang on a minute," I yell below and turn to Tiff, "or as Ed Izzard says, 'Klammern Sie an eine Minute an,' and run down in a clandestine robe.
"Is G_____ here?"
"Um, she doooeessn't live here, well, she does, I think, that's correct, right?"
"I had an appointment with her at nine am."
"Sorry, I wasn't really awake; it's nine am after all...you mean G_____."
"Yes."
"Yes!"
"yes," she pauses.
"Oh, for fuck's sake, come in, come in...sorry, I'm half asleep, and I had no information about this meeting." [insert sarcasm]
"I'm J____, the clutter consultant," she extends her olive-branched hand.
"OOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,"
[insert inner thoughts--oh, for fuck's sake, this explains a lot]
"Do you know when she'll be back?" [insert inner joke: is this a trick question?] "no, but let me check."
[insert song lyrics]
"you come from parents wanton
a childhood, rough & rotton
i come from wealth & beauty
untouched by work or duty
and oh, my love, my love
and oh, my love, my love
we both go down together
[violin solo]
"Hello, G______, this is A_____,
[and my parents will never consent of this love,
but i hold your hand]
"You missed your meeting with J______. If you are there, please pick up," I parenthetically plead with parental ploy. "She's only agreed to stay for five more minutes."
*May be in denial about passive aggressive behaviors, claiming only good intentions.
"Ohhhhh, I meant to be there, but I was at the place~where I had to put the thing~and then I had the~intention~of, and I just forgot to~oh, T____ knows what I mean. I didn't write it down because I didn't have a pen."
*In relationships may complain about partners to third parties instead of discussing issues directly with their partners.
"I hate it when R_____ drinks all day, and he's never motivated to move his stuff, even though I've said, very clearly, 'R____, move you things.' It makes me so mad." [heads nod in conjunction with a disorderly disorder]
*Chronically "forgets" to do important tasks wither for self or others.
{truck door slams, man enters drive....
'hi, i'm ______, here to discuss the propane tank installment,'
"you MUST be looking for G_______."
'yes, yes i am.'
'she's not here,' [enter a sarcastic, under-the-breath, 'as usual']
'where can i find her?'
'you can't,' [enter confused propane man look] 'this is a recurrent theme for her,' [enter confused propane man who never paid attention in english class look] 'i have to go, but you can go up to the house on the hill [enter irony] and inquire with the unsupervised workers who are expected to take care of their needs when they are gone, but are reprimanded when they make a poor 'informed' decision [enter sidestitchig irony].
'when do you expect her back?''
'HA!'
[her, back; her chronic behavior]
"OHHHHH, I meant to do that, I'm sorry, I just forgot."
'me, just fine, just dandy, just fallinginfuckingline...me.'
*Holding back on important information.
'ok, T, this is my non-negotiable, no-holds-barred list of demands:
1. The house is overrun with mice. non-negot-attn.
2. The house has a dangerous mold infestation. same as above.
3. The house has a chimney that is crumbling as we speak. same.
4. The house has no working smoke detectors. oh, you better fucking believe it.
5. The house is run by three little piggies whose brick, straw, & stone may break my bones, but their passive-aggressiveness will never hurt me.
*Sensitive about having requests made to them.
'could we have a working stove?'
*Giving mixed signals: unclear yes and no's
"Yes, of course! Do the research, get the oven YOU want."
'could we have a convection oven?'
"No, yes, no, what d'you want? just keep giving me these chocolate eggs! But the answer is no, yes, but only if you get the oven that I want"
*Wavering on courses of action
G: "Kill the mice, at all costs!"
R: "Don't kill the mice, think of the environment you killers!"
G: "Kill the mice, only if it is cheap!"
R: "Ok poison the little fuckers for all I care, just don't bother me, because I can't seem to leave my small plot of land to do anything, so what the fuck do I know?"
G: "I'll pay for it, but don't get criticize me if I write the check as if I have a mafia-like vendetta against the pen.
*Arguments and temper tantrums coming out of nowhere.
A: "I'm not angry at you, but we need do need to discuss boundaries if T&I plan to stay."
G: "BOUNDARIES! ALL I HEAR ABOUT IS BOUNDARIES? WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT? WE'VE GIVEN YOU A PLACE TO STAY, $5.000, AND PAID FOR THE BILLS....
*Lack of commitment.
"We don't mind paying the bills for up to a year, to help you regain footing, and we don't expect anything in return...
*Claim to "do too much" for others.
...AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE EXCEPT COMPLAIN?...
*Angry about being powerless, yet not able to assert this.
*Often lagging in education and careers.
...A_______, GROW UP! YOUR EMAIL MAKES YOU SOUND LIKE A SPOILT [his misspelling] BRAT!
*Submissive,
"oh, that's the rug I gave you,"
on the surface,
"too bad it's discolored."
*I know I promised, but things came up.
I know, I promised a new blog, but things came up.
*I must be approved and accepted, but not controlled or dominated.
I must have the approval and acceptance of my readers, but I'm writing a new blog, despite the fact that I have five readers and, "things came up."
-A_____ W_____, recovering passaggressaholic
---
god bless glasgow's leadership
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
onymous collective
[roll opening lines]
Do you find yourself sending text messages when you aren't alone?
Do you send more than 10 text messages a day?
Do you assign text messages to a distinct ring tone?
Do you wake up in the morning and check your phone for text messages before hitting the snooze button?
Do you get angry when you miss a text message?
Does your text messaging interfere with relationships?
Do you ever have the urge to send a text message during sex?
Do you send text messages under the table while attending staff meetings at work?
Do you hold up the restroom line in restaurants to hide text message delivery from your dinner companion(s)?
Do you deliver and drive?
Do you use text messages to alleviate depression, anxiety, or any other instinctual reaction to the technologically advanced yet disconnected society we live in?
[roll hook]
If you answered "yes, but only when..." to any of the questions above, you may have an addiction to text messages.
If you answered by laughing in that self-deprecating way, you may be a step above the people in the first category, but your reaction is a telltale sign of using your awareness as a way to create a confidence that smacks of a false sense of security, which could only alienate the people in the first category, who would support your mission impossible if they knew your superiority was actually caused by their own fears of worthlessness.
If you appreciate both answers, then you probably recognize that the motivation behind the addiction is the real addiction and not the substance itself, and you probably know that knowledge itself isn't freedom, but that freedom is providing access to the wealth of knowledge for everyone rather than viewing people as categories, since you know that the "only" box for ethnicity on job applications is still a category. Although you may not have an addiction, you could benefit most from our program, since you have the talent, the awareness, and the freedom to create freedom for others.
Despite what category you fall under, here's your chance to recover the use of your fingers again by "digging down" to ground yourself in our 12 easy steps to recovery:
[roll sinker]
1. Criticize your partner for replying to text messages from friends during a serious conversation about your relationship, while conveniently forgetting all the times you checked your phone during sex to read the latest text message.
2. Deny that you have a problem when you are faced with an intervention but privately recognize that you will never be able to kick this habit.
3. Admit you have a problem when you finally receive your astronomically high cell phone bill, since you didn't sign up for a text plan because of your original criticisms about how nothing, not even the invention of call waiting, is as rude as this new technological distraction.
4. Declare that you are going to fight the urge to send a text for a whole month and send an email to your friends asking them to refrain from sending you texts, and take a deep breathe of freedom.
5.Respond to the text that arrives 30 seconds later.
6.Admit that your fatalistic background has screwed your ability to establish a genuine relationship with reality and your self-esteem, "Whoah there, missy, you're from Alabama, so scale it down a bit," and aim for a five minute chip.
7. Show up at an AA meeting and tell them that their twelve steps are stupid while brandishing a 15-minute collection of five-minute chips in one hand and reaching in your pocket to answer a text with the other hand.
8. Decide to stay for the AA meeting because everyone points at the sign on the door, "Absolutely NO cell phones. Please place your cell phone in the box before entering, and yes it must be turned off, Mr._____.) You may be subject to a strip search for smuggled cell phones, in accordance with Section BS, Article 'wakeupamericatakingbackyourrightsispatriotic, Particle 0dashniner um, did I really win again, damn dick you sure is smart to git all them people to alect me again, yes i met with my grammar coach today, he whooped me at horse, oh you mean that coach, I had him placed in a prison camp for calling me a bumbling moron,' of the United States Patriot Act (this means you, Ms._Watson____ ). Violators will not get coffee OR doughnuts, not even the maple ones that are always left on the tray when the meeting is over, and no, this isn't why they are always stale; we've told you, they come like that from the bakery.
9. Begin your own group with Mr.______, since obviously you both have a problem. Get rid of the "no dating other anonymous members," so that you can sleep with Mr._____.
10. Reinstate the "no sleeping with other members" rule when you and Mr. Hemmingway can't decide between your idea for the group's name, "Texaholics Onymous: The first step is not hiding behind your anonymity," and his, "Text Addicts: Feed all your other addictions so you won't need this one," and he begins drinking at noon and demands sex every time he's tempted to text someone.
11. Break the group into factions, like any great club that people attend religiously, and continue to fight over whether or not cell phone companies should offer text control and free clinics to people who can't control their urges and don't have enough money to pay their bills because the companies failed to properly educate their customers in order to feed their own addiction to capitalistic greed.
12. Say fuck all to the group, despite their undying support for your cause, and run for the office of United States President, promoting a platform of more education and less taxes (banking on the fact that the history of suppressing knowledge will ensure that the American people are too dumb to realize that you can't have one without the other, and on the hopes that you will get both the vote from the working class--because they want their children to have a better life, despite the fact that a PhD won't give them more monetary wealth or the fortune of being an intelligent human being because they will exist in an ironically insular college town, hoarding the wealth of knowledge out of the fear of you and your cronies' ridiculous laws against free speech and the proper use of grammar and punctuation, and from the filthy rich class--because they want to hoard their money in a vain attempt to gain the American dream of happiness with more money, despite the fact that no matter how much money they own, they can never be happy until they realize that you and the cell phone companies, along with the Fox Network, have conspired to flash images of happy people wearing expensive clothes and driving expensive cars to create a false sense of happiness when really these commercial actors are just unhappy artists who take crap roles to gain a sense of accomplishment in a society that devalues art, and when their genius isn't appreciated, they join the tradition of the participatory roles in the status symbol smoke screen. Or, until the rich realize that they create their own net worth instead of the stock market. So you win and distract your citizens from the the real issues (such as the fact that earth's resources will not sustain the insane rate of consumption you promote) with silly notions of hating someone because of their sexual preference, or with declaring a senseless war for the good of the nation because it will protect what little oil supply is left, without revealing that you don't actually intend on sharing a drop, not even the oily-residue, of your wealth with the people whom you claim to represent, according to the initial purpose of the important office you hold, because of your hubris and your own fear of criticism. Then someone at a bar sends a text message while her friend is in the middle of telling a story of great value to her, and the woman sending the text only half listens while demonstrating her deft dexterity with T9 words. It finally hits the friend that this disconnection from people is the reason we are so unhappy and have elected such a terrible President. She decides that now is a better time than any to start a revolution, so she leaves her friend, staring at the flashing screen and nodding to an empty stool, and heads for the bathroom where she flushes her cell phone down the toilet, takes out a pen, and writes, "Want to know the key to eternal bliss? Call 1-800-the-prez." After changing her home number and disabling call-waiting, she answers caller after caller with the same phrase: "As your country's representative, I am vowing to never again imprison your potential by usurping the power you have to create your worth and your reality," and hangs up without further explanation. Then one day she has more calls than she can handle, callers from places she's never heard of, like Hanksville, begging to hear her words. And soon she finds herself managing dozens of volunteers, armed with sharpees, flooding the bathrooms of America with the Gospel of Saint Fearless, and eventually drones of people join her cause, which demands that the rich give to the poor by sharing our wealth of knowledge that we must disarm the unstable and dangerous system that is polluting our ability to maintain life and provide people with equal opportunity. You kindly step down from office without a fuss since you fear what you know to be true, much like a homophobic homo, and return to leading Texaholic Onymous meetings, where you can take out your emotional pain at the expense others on a smaller, more manageable scale.
13. You amend your original twelve steps and add the 13th Amendment Act, which grants you the right to take actions to protect the onymous rights of the twelve-step members, even though this requires that you deny their right to be publicly-known members of a club that really has no need for anonymity since we're all in the same club, whether we recognize it or not, but those pesky AA people told you to proselytize your beliefs in order to get people to change their habits, and so you decide that you must force your beliefs about anonymous behavior without regard to your own members and reveal their identities in order to help the poor, ignorant people living in squalor and sin experience freedom from the chains of addiction, which is really a decision based based on your fear of the mirror and not the narcissistic pomposity that many members claim as the cause of your insanity (sanity, as deemed by psychiatrists who have the same issue, despite their framed credentials hanging proudly on the walls of their expensive office that you only get to see for fifteen minutes a month, long enough for them to write a scrip while sending a text message under the desk). These members form a band of rebels, which you attempt to quietly suppress by using a spy with a beard and a protest sign, but your attempt to thwart their attempts with your predictable, trojan horse plot is thwarted by their cunning sense of awareness. They decide to start an underground newspaper criticizing you for your behavior as an ingenious counterattack, but instead of you take care of this by googling "bad words for people who are smarter than me," and the results include a hotel website and a blog criticizing the reliance on Microsoft Word, created by another greedy genius, for your grammar and spelling needs. This gives you the idea to call your advisers and ask for the teleprompt archives." Anything that makes me look good and them bad," you say. So they do some ten-second research in the annals of their brains and come up with the slyfox move of using the existing pejorative meaning of certain words along with a trusted, major Media artery to report that the "rebels" are attacking the president with "radical" ideas. To escalate the process of squelching the fanfare of these guerrillas and their irregular spelling of the your ancestors' names, you hire a major criminal syndicate to assassinate the leader of the movement and disguise the murder as a suicide by planting a forged note and an empty bottle of pills, but you had to dip into the 13-step budget because the first officer on the scene read your name on the bottle. This forces you to borrow money from AA's petty cash, not because its members agree with your philosophy on anonymity, but because they are known pacifists. Despite your attempts to maintain control of the onymous collective, which you and the goons and Fox tried to negate by re-naming it the "ominous prospective," a member who isn't afraid of criticism or rejection decides to run for office of group leader and wins the vote by a landslide. On her first day in office, she restores the original principles of the organization to each and every onymous patriot.
[roll non-satirical ending]
***
The group remained a success until the stock market crashed and no one could get service on the farm anyway.
[roll credits]
***
Do you find yourself sending text messages when you aren't alone?
Do you send more than 10 text messages a day?
Do you assign text messages to a distinct ring tone?
Do you wake up in the morning and check your phone for text messages before hitting the snooze button?
Do you get angry when you miss a text message?
Does your text messaging interfere with relationships?
Do you ever have the urge to send a text message during sex?
Do you send text messages under the table while attending staff meetings at work?
Do you hold up the restroom line in restaurants to hide text message delivery from your dinner companion(s)?
Do you deliver and drive?
Do you use text messages to alleviate depression, anxiety, or any other instinctual reaction to the technologically advanced yet disconnected society we live in?
[roll hook]
If you answered "yes, but only when..." to any of the questions above, you may have an addiction to text messages.
If you answered by laughing in that self-deprecating way, you may be a step above the people in the first category, but your reaction is a telltale sign of using your awareness as a way to create a confidence that smacks of a false sense of security, which could only alienate the people in the first category, who would support your mission impossible if they knew your superiority was actually caused by their own fears of worthlessness.
If you appreciate both answers, then you probably recognize that the motivation behind the addiction is the real addiction and not the substance itself, and you probably know that knowledge itself isn't freedom, but that freedom is providing access to the wealth of knowledge for everyone rather than viewing people as categories, since you know that the "only" box for ethnicity on job applications is still a category. Although you may not have an addiction, you could benefit most from our program, since you have the talent, the awareness, and the freedom to create freedom for others.
Despite what category you fall under, here's your chance to recover the use of your fingers again by "digging down" to ground yourself in our 12 easy steps to recovery:
[roll sinker]
1. Criticize your partner for replying to text messages from friends during a serious conversation about your relationship, while conveniently forgetting all the times you checked your phone during sex to read the latest text message.
2. Deny that you have a problem when you are faced with an intervention but privately recognize that you will never be able to kick this habit.
3. Admit you have a problem when you finally receive your astronomically high cell phone bill, since you didn't sign up for a text plan because of your original criticisms about how nothing, not even the invention of call waiting, is as rude as this new technological distraction.
4. Declare that you are going to fight the urge to send a text for a whole month and send an email to your friends asking them to refrain from sending you texts, and take a deep breathe of freedom.
5.Respond to the text that arrives 30 seconds later.
6.Admit that your fatalistic background has screwed your ability to establish a genuine relationship with reality and your self-esteem, "Whoah there, missy, you're from Alabama, so scale it down a bit," and aim for a five minute chip.
7. Show up at an AA meeting and tell them that their twelve steps are stupid while brandishing a 15-minute collection of five-minute chips in one hand and reaching in your pocket to answer a text with the other hand.
8. Decide to stay for the AA meeting because everyone points at the sign on the door, "Absolutely NO cell phones. Please place your cell phone in the box before entering, and yes it must be turned off, Mr._____.) You may be subject to a strip search for smuggled cell phones, in accordance with Section BS, Article 'wakeupamericatakingbackyourrightsispatriotic, Particle 0dashniner um, did I really win again, damn dick you sure is smart to git all them people to alect me again, yes i met with my grammar coach today, he whooped me at horse, oh you mean that coach, I had him placed in a prison camp for calling me a bumbling moron,' of the United States Patriot Act (this means you, Ms._Watson____ ). Violators will not get coffee OR doughnuts, not even the maple ones that are always left on the tray when the meeting is over, and no, this isn't why they are always stale; we've told you, they come like that from the bakery.
9. Begin your own group with Mr.______, since obviously you both have a problem. Get rid of the "no dating other anonymous members," so that you can sleep with Mr._____.
10. Reinstate the "no sleeping with other members" rule when you and Mr. Hemmingway can't decide between your idea for the group's name, "Texaholics Onymous: The first step is not hiding behind your anonymity," and his, "Text Addicts: Feed all your other addictions so you won't need this one," and he begins drinking at noon and demands sex every time he's tempted to text someone.
11. Break the group into factions, like any great club that people attend religiously, and continue to fight over whether or not cell phone companies should offer text control and free clinics to people who can't control their urges and don't have enough money to pay their bills because the companies failed to properly educate their customers in order to feed their own addiction to capitalistic greed.
12. Say fuck all to the group, despite their undying support for your cause, and run for the office of United States President, promoting a platform of more education and less taxes (banking on the fact that the history of suppressing knowledge will ensure that the American people are too dumb to realize that you can't have one without the other, and on the hopes that you will get both the vote from the working class--because they want their children to have a better life, despite the fact that a PhD won't give them more monetary wealth or the fortune of being an intelligent human being because they will exist in an ironically insular college town, hoarding the wealth of knowledge out of the fear of you and your cronies' ridiculous laws against free speech and the proper use of grammar and punctuation, and from the filthy rich class--because they want to hoard their money in a vain attempt to gain the American dream of happiness with more money, despite the fact that no matter how much money they own, they can never be happy until they realize that you and the cell phone companies, along with the Fox Network, have conspired to flash images of happy people wearing expensive clothes and driving expensive cars to create a false sense of happiness when really these commercial actors are just unhappy artists who take crap roles to gain a sense of accomplishment in a society that devalues art, and when their genius isn't appreciated, they join the tradition of the participatory roles in the status symbol smoke screen. Or, until the rich realize that they create their own net worth instead of the stock market. So you win and distract your citizens from the the real issues (such as the fact that earth's resources will not sustain the insane rate of consumption you promote) with silly notions of hating someone because of their sexual preference, or with declaring a senseless war for the good of the nation because it will protect what little oil supply is left, without revealing that you don't actually intend on sharing a drop, not even the oily-residue, of your wealth with the people whom you claim to represent, according to the initial purpose of the important office you hold, because of your hubris and your own fear of criticism. Then someone at a bar sends a text message while her friend is in the middle of telling a story of great value to her, and the woman sending the text only half listens while demonstrating her deft dexterity with T9 words. It finally hits the friend that this disconnection from people is the reason we are so unhappy and have elected such a terrible President. She decides that now is a better time than any to start a revolution, so she leaves her friend, staring at the flashing screen and nodding to an empty stool, and heads for the bathroom where she flushes her cell phone down the toilet, takes out a pen, and writes, "Want to know the key to eternal bliss? Call 1-800-the-prez." After changing her home number and disabling call-waiting, she answers caller after caller with the same phrase: "As your country's representative, I am vowing to never again imprison your potential by usurping the power you have to create your worth and your reality," and hangs up without further explanation. Then one day she has more calls than she can handle, callers from places she's never heard of, like Hanksville, begging to hear her words. And soon she finds herself managing dozens of volunteers, armed with sharpees, flooding the bathrooms of America with the Gospel of Saint Fearless, and eventually drones of people join her cause, which demands that the rich give to the poor by sharing our wealth of knowledge that we must disarm the unstable and dangerous system that is polluting our ability to maintain life and provide people with equal opportunity. You kindly step down from office without a fuss since you fear what you know to be true, much like a homophobic homo, and return to leading Texaholic Onymous meetings, where you can take out your emotional pain at the expense others on a smaller, more manageable scale.
13. You amend your original twelve steps and add the 13th Amendment Act, which grants you the right to take actions to protect the onymous rights of the twelve-step members, even though this requires that you deny their right to be publicly-known members of a club that really has no need for anonymity since we're all in the same club, whether we recognize it or not, but those pesky AA people told you to proselytize your beliefs in order to get people to change their habits, and so you decide that you must force your beliefs about anonymous behavior without regard to your own members and reveal their identities in order to help the poor, ignorant people living in squalor and sin experience freedom from the chains of addiction, which is really a decision based based on your fear of the mirror and not the narcissistic pomposity that many members claim as the cause of your insanity (sanity, as deemed by psychiatrists who have the same issue, despite their framed credentials hanging proudly on the walls of their expensive office that you only get to see for fifteen minutes a month, long enough for them to write a scrip while sending a text message under the desk). These members form a band of rebels, which you attempt to quietly suppress by using a spy with a beard and a protest sign, but your attempt to thwart their attempts with your predictable, trojan horse plot is thwarted by their cunning sense of awareness. They decide to start an underground newspaper criticizing you for your behavior as an ingenious counterattack, but instead of you take care of this by googling "bad words for people who are smarter than me," and the results include a hotel website and a blog criticizing the reliance on Microsoft Word, created by another greedy genius, for your grammar and spelling needs. This gives you the idea to call your advisers and ask for the teleprompt archives." Anything that makes me look good and them bad," you say. So they do some ten-second research in the annals of their brains and come up with the slyfox move of using the existing pejorative meaning of certain words along with a trusted, major Media artery to report that the "rebels" are attacking the president with "radical" ideas. To escalate the process of squelching the fanfare of these guerrillas and their irregular spelling of the your ancestors' names, you hire a major criminal syndicate to assassinate the leader of the movement and disguise the murder as a suicide by planting a forged note and an empty bottle of pills, but you had to dip into the 13-step budget because the first officer on the scene read your name on the bottle. This forces you to borrow money from AA's petty cash, not because its members agree with your philosophy on anonymity, but because they are known pacifists. Despite your attempts to maintain control of the onymous collective, which you and the goons and Fox tried to negate by re-naming it the "ominous prospective," a member who isn't afraid of criticism or rejection decides to run for office of group leader and wins the vote by a landslide. On her first day in office, she restores the original principles of the organization to each and every onymous patriot.
[roll non-satirical ending]
***
The group remained a success until the stock market crashed and no one could get service on the farm anyway.
[roll credits]
***
Today's programming is made possible by the support of readers like you.
***
_____ bless america
***
_____ bless america
Monday, October 15, 2007
do you want me to flush?
"Oh!, sorry," I back away from the plywooded-plaque/paste-boarded-green mountain clapboarded- capital bathroom doorway, "I didn't know anyone was in here."
"It's okay, come on in," she beckons me as she zips and smiles.
Why the fuck would a stranger ask me in the bathroom with her? "That's ok I can wait."
"Do you want me to flush?"
"Um, there's no need, I guess, saves water," I say like a true Vermonter who runs her car on vegetable oil and bathes in the river when it isn't too cold.
"Ok, then," she glides past me in the doorway, brushing against me a little too purposely.
"Did you want to wash your hands?"
"No, saves water," she smiles my words back into my mouth.
---
"Are you ok?" She messengers me from the back of the room.
"Yes, I just had a weird encounter at the bathroom," I reply, feeling a bit silly IMing her from ten feet away. "Well, maybe it wasn't that weird, considering where we live."
"What happened?"
"I'll tell you about it later. I have to finish this cover letter."
"Don't take the job if you don't want it. I want you to be able to work on your writing."
"I'm not writing anyway, and we're broke. Plus wouldn't you rather hear my voice announcing the Vermont Public Radio sponsors and your time and weather?"
She sends me a smile, broadcasting my regrets across the room. I smile my words across the web before they choke the source in my mouth.
---
She moment agoes me from the front of the stage, "do you want me,?" she question marks my home with a look.
I am in a capital position. The Vermonter/New Englander/Englander's frontal lobe/mountainer's index/image of what I think the left index/pinky/index, and a right index/left middle, finger looks
like when she punches the letters for 'v' 'a' 'g' 'u' 'e'
I don't know/if I miss her or if I am a vague word that broadcasts itself over my world wide mouth.
I don't know anything.
"Are you a student or something?" she questions after I remove my earphones and ask her to repeat the question.
"Oh, no, um, I am working on a cover letter, well, I was working on a cover letter but I can't really think of anything good to say about myself so I gave up. Now I'm just writing."
"Oh, what are you writing?"
"I have a blog."
"Really? Where?"
"Two places. Blogspot and MySpace."
"You have a MySpace account?"
Doesn't everyone, I think but say, "Yes, here it is, I show her my screen."
"Nice, well, I will let you get back to your writing. I just saw you sitting here alone and thought I would approach you."
"Do you see the person sitting in that booth?" I point to the dressed in black, glassed in the back.
"Yeah."
"That's my girlfriend of two years."
"Oh, sorry."
"It's ok, how would you know? I'm flattered but--"
"Wait, why are you sitting at two different tables?"
"It's a long story."
"Oh, well, I will let you get back to your blog. I see that the bathroom is free."
"Don't forget to flush."
"Huh?"
"Long story," I say as she nods and smiles her way across the room.
---
"My pathetic life is one long story," I begin but quickly delete. I begin again.
"do you mind if i'm in an octobered-bathroomed, front-porched forum? a deliberate listener sinister?" I delete. I don't know where to begin.
And so I begin again. I repeat. I plagiarize, "i'll probably feel better if i stay at home and play with myself." I delete the entire damn thing. I don't smile.
---
"Why did you take down that blog?" I smile for the first time in years.
"It sucked."
"Repost it, or I'm never speaking to you again," she empty-threats me from another dream.
I find its remnants from another space.
I repost and broadcast love as an empty trace.
"It's okay, come on in," she beckons me as she zips and smiles.
Why the fuck would a stranger ask me in the bathroom with her? "That's ok I can wait."
"Do you want me to flush?"
"Um, there's no need, I guess, saves water," I say like a true Vermonter who runs her car on vegetable oil and bathes in the river when it isn't too cold.
"Ok, then," she glides past me in the doorway, brushing against me a little too purposely.
"Did you want to wash your hands?"
"No, saves water," she smiles my words back into my mouth.
---
"Are you ok?" She messengers me from the back of the room.
"Yes, I just had a weird encounter at the bathroom," I reply, feeling a bit silly IMing her from ten feet away. "Well, maybe it wasn't that weird, considering where we live."
"What happened?"
"I'll tell you about it later. I have to finish this cover letter."
"Don't take the job if you don't want it. I want you to be able to work on your writing."
"I'm not writing anyway, and we're broke. Plus wouldn't you rather hear my voice announcing the Vermont Public Radio sponsors and your time and weather?"
She sends me a smile, broadcasting my regrets across the room. I smile my words across the web before they choke the source in my mouth.
---
She moment agoes me from the front of the stage, "do you want me,?" she question marks my home with a look.
I am in a capital position. The Vermonter/New Englander/Englander's frontal lobe/mountainer's index/image of what I think the left index/pinky/index, and a right index/left middle, finger looks
like when she punches the letters for 'v' 'a' 'g' 'u' 'e'
I don't know/if I miss her or if I am a vague word that broadcasts itself over my world wide mouth.
I don't know anything.
"Are you a student or something?" she questions after I remove my earphones and ask her to repeat the question.
"Oh, no, um, I am working on a cover letter, well, I was working on a cover letter but I can't really think of anything good to say about myself so I gave up. Now I'm just writing."
"Oh, what are you writing?"
"I have a blog."
"Really? Where?"
"Two places. Blogspot and MySpace."
"You have a MySpace account?"
Doesn't everyone, I think but say, "Yes, here it is, I show her my screen."
"Nice, well, I will let you get back to your writing. I just saw you sitting here alone and thought I would approach you."
"Do you see the person sitting in that booth?" I point to the dressed in black, glassed in the back.
"Yeah."
"That's my girlfriend of two years."
"Oh, sorry."
"It's ok, how would you know? I'm flattered but--"
"Wait, why are you sitting at two different tables?"
"It's a long story."
"Oh, well, I will let you get back to your blog. I see that the bathroom is free."
"Don't forget to flush."
"Huh?"
"Long story," I say as she nods and smiles her way across the room.
---
"My pathetic life is one long story," I begin but quickly delete. I begin again.
"do you mind if i'm in an octobered-bathroomed, front-porched forum? a deliberate listener sinister?" I delete. I don't know where to begin.
And so I begin again. I repeat. I plagiarize, "i'll probably feel better if i stay at home and play with myself." I delete the entire damn thing. I don't smile.
---
"Why did you take down that blog?" I smile for the first time in years.
"It sucked."
"Repost it, or I'm never speaking to you again," she empty-threats me from another dream.
I find its remnants from another space.
I repost and broadcast love as an empty trace.
Friday, September 21, 2007
ps - the meth lab down the street blew up this morning... :)
"I gave him a tip, that's why."
"You what, mom?" I leftt-to-right-ear shift my phone.
"I told officer Willis that those people who moved into Dr. Lowrey's home were cookin' up meth," she long-vowels her E with a southern 'gossip without a cause' emphasis.
"How do you know they are cooking meth, Mom?"
"Because you can smell that shit when you walk past their house, Ashley, and I walk around this block every night, since you were big enough to stand, and I know I've never smelled that stench before...they are cooking that shit, I know it."
"First of all, how do you know what crystal meth smells like when it is 'cooking,'? and secondly, how do you jump from narcing to some local goon's flirtations?"
"Aaashhley," she begins her home-brewed lecture of sticks & stones, "any idiot could smell that poison a mile away, and he wasn't just flirting with me because I turned in some druggies," my mother's judgmental tone takes a violent turn as I turn east on 17th toward my Tucsonan metropolitan home.
"Why was he flirting with you?"
"Your mother may be old, but she can still turn heads," she jokes without the joke.
"Well, I guess your lab partners will be turning nothing but glib flattery your way."
"I don't care what they do, as long as that shit doesn't blow up...those meth labs can take out entire neighborhoods, you know?"
"No, mother, I didn't know. I don't read 'Suburban Biddy Weekly.' "
"You hate me, don't you?"
"Yes, mother, I spend my lonely days drawing blueprints of your mental demise by the hand of my mental superiority."
"I knew you thought you were smarter than me!"
"Mother, don't ever use exclamation points, even in speech; it's a pat use of punctuation, and furthermore, sarcasm has yet to register with you...can't you tell when I'm using irony to express my contempt for the general public?" I say before I can fully utilize my mocking tone of ridicule and scorn.
"Ashley, you are so weird, oh!!, my walking buddy is here.., yes we're going to walk by the druggie's house and report any changes."
"Mom, you are 22 across on today's crossword puzzle."
"Whaaat?"
"The clue: person who turns in known drug users. The number of spaces in the puzzle: 4. The answer: NARC. That's what you are."
"I may be a narc, but at least those druggie's are OFF the streets," she yells into the phone, a lifetime NIMBY member re-staking her flag on the property that was always no one's.
---
"Do you want me to stop at this gas station?"
"Yes.,.,.,no,,yes, no, yes,"
"Jesus, what's the answer?
"Well...what do you think?"
"I think you need a decongestant."
"I think you're right. Ok, stop."
"Oh, for fuck's sake!" I exclaim with the threat of exclaiming every second of my 90-degree-turn right into the wheel of my misadventured life.
"I love you," she smiles her soon to be de-congetsted smile.
"Make sure you bring your ID if you are buying Sudafed."
"Why?" she marks her question without the guile.
"Because that's what people use to make meth, so you have to be eighteen to buy it now."
"Even in Vermont?"
"Honey, meth labs are all over the country, even in Vermont," I edit, the expert editor who knows nothing except what she hears from unreliable sources and wikipedia articles,
"But, what the hell do I know?" I ask, an earnest target, an unreliable genius.
---
Dear M,
I received your letter and CD today; thank you for the mix. I honestly thought you were on crack when you wrote the letter, but after a second reading, I could finally piece together the random thoughts. I couldn't listen to all of the CD for some reason. Maybe send another copy. Anyway, I don't think I could advise you on your problems with women, as I seem to have my own waiting on my sleeve. Speaking of tough advice, I received yet another rejection letter in the mail for my manuscript. Ah well, there's always theater, right?
Take care, and we hope to see you sooner than next October.
Love,
Ashley
---
"Hello, is Ashley there?"
"This is she," I respond in my grammatically correct response.
"Hi, this is Patrick," he responds in his gay director voice, "How are you?" he ask as his non-obligatory gay choice.
"Fine."
"Good!" he goody-two-shoes his next word, "Well..." and his non-obligatory pause presents the obligatory non-accidental clause, "unfortunately," followed by my preparation for the rejection that hurts the most, "we decided that we couldn't use you."
BULLSHIT!!!! That's a lovely euphemism for, "We are not sorry that we didn't have the balls to cast a young, talented, and budding star, even though I said you were talented and had lots of natural ability."
Instead he says, "Thanks for coming out, and I hope to see you in a future show."
---
"Are you bitter?"
"Has a cat got a fucking ass???"
She laughs.
I mourn.
She asks if I'm OK.
I ask if she's been around for the last three months of my life.
She says that isn't fair.
I imagine my response, just as I've imagined the entire conversation until now. I say, "The entire fucking world isn't fair. If it were, I'd be published or a famous actor, or a member of the Arcade Fire, hopefully one of the strings or accordion players."
"Ashley--"
"What?"
"You know what. You're--"
"What? Talented?"
"YES!"
"Fuck that. If I had a chance to die, I would."
"No you wouldn't"
"Sum, I'm talking to myself right now. How desperate do you think I am?"
---
ps. the meth lab down the street blew up this morning :)
She gently places her smiley face after the postscript, as if it were part of the channel nine morning news's "in other news," or as the musical afterthought of an amateur musician...
---
"Oh, honey, I'm sorry, I--"
"Don't fucking placate me...I don't need a fucking cheerleader right now, OK?"
"Yes."
"FUCK!" I slam the hammer against the cement floor, just as my father would have done as a 28-year-old-unknown-dissident. I throw a fit. I want to slam the metal tip into my temples. I throw the hammer. I throw my love and anger around like a sledgehammer. I throw.
---
or as the one who thinks experience comes after the notes, the director who thinks acting comes after the production.
---
ps. post script. p. I forgot to tell you. s. I don't know how to express how much I adore you
"You what, mom?" I leftt-to-right-ear shift my phone.
"I told officer Willis that those people who moved into Dr. Lowrey's home were cookin' up meth," she long-vowels her E with a southern 'gossip without a cause' emphasis.
"How do you know they are cooking meth, Mom?"
"Because you can smell that shit when you walk past their house, Ashley, and I walk around this block every night, since you were big enough to stand, and I know I've never smelled that stench before...they are cooking that shit, I know it."
"First of all, how do you know what crystal meth smells like when it is 'cooking,'? and secondly, how do you jump from narcing to some local goon's flirtations?"
"Aaashhley," she begins her home-brewed lecture of sticks & stones, "any idiot could smell that poison a mile away, and he wasn't just flirting with me because I turned in some druggies," my mother's judgmental tone takes a violent turn as I turn east on 17th toward my Tucsonan metropolitan home.
"Why was he flirting with you?"
"Your mother may be old, but she can still turn heads," she jokes without the joke.
"Well, I guess your lab partners will be turning nothing but glib flattery your way."
"I don't care what they do, as long as that shit doesn't blow up...those meth labs can take out entire neighborhoods, you know?"
"No, mother, I didn't know. I don't read 'Suburban Biddy Weekly.' "
"You hate me, don't you?"
"Yes, mother, I spend my lonely days drawing blueprints of your mental demise by the hand of my mental superiority."
"I knew you thought you were smarter than me!"
"Mother, don't ever use exclamation points, even in speech; it's a pat use of punctuation, and furthermore, sarcasm has yet to register with you...can't you tell when I'm using irony to express my contempt for the general public?" I say before I can fully utilize my mocking tone of ridicule and scorn.
"Ashley, you are so weird, oh!!, my walking buddy is here.., yes we're going to walk by the druggie's house and report any changes."
"Mom, you are 22 across on today's crossword puzzle."
"Whaaat?"
"The clue: person who turns in known drug users. The number of spaces in the puzzle: 4. The answer: NARC. That's what you are."
"I may be a narc, but at least those druggie's are OFF the streets," she yells into the phone, a lifetime NIMBY member re-staking her flag on the property that was always no one's.
---
"Do you want me to stop at this gas station?"
"Yes.,.,.,no,,yes, no, yes,"
"Jesus, what's the answer?
"Well...what do you think?"
"I think you need a decongestant."
"I think you're right. Ok, stop."
"Oh, for fuck's sake!" I exclaim with the threat of exclaiming every second of my 90-degree-turn right into the wheel of my misadventured life.
"I love you," she smiles her soon to be de-congetsted smile.
"Make sure you bring your ID if you are buying Sudafed."
"Why?" she marks her question without the guile.
"Because that's what people use to make meth, so you have to be eighteen to buy it now."
"Even in Vermont?"
"Honey, meth labs are all over the country, even in Vermont," I edit, the expert editor who knows nothing except what she hears from unreliable sources and wikipedia articles,
"But, what the hell do I know?" I ask, an earnest target, an unreliable genius.
---
Dear M,
I received your letter and CD today; thank you for the mix. I honestly thought you were on crack when you wrote the letter, but after a second reading, I could finally piece together the random thoughts. I couldn't listen to all of the CD for some reason. Maybe send another copy. Anyway, I don't think I could advise you on your problems with women, as I seem to have my own waiting on my sleeve. Speaking of tough advice, I received yet another rejection letter in the mail for my manuscript. Ah well, there's always theater, right?
Take care, and we hope to see you sooner than next October.
Love,
Ashley
---
"Hello, is Ashley there?"
"This is she," I respond in my grammatically correct response.
"Hi, this is Patrick," he responds in his gay director voice, "How are you?" he ask as his non-obligatory gay choice.
"Fine."
"Good!" he goody-two-shoes his next word, "Well..." and his non-obligatory pause presents the obligatory non-accidental clause, "unfortunately," followed by my preparation for the rejection that hurts the most, "we decided that we couldn't use you."
BULLSHIT!!!! That's a lovely euphemism for, "We are not sorry that we didn't have the balls to cast a young, talented, and budding star, even though I said you were talented and had lots of natural ability."
Instead he says, "Thanks for coming out, and I hope to see you in a future show."
---
"Are you bitter?"
"Has a cat got a fucking ass???"
She laughs.
I mourn.
She asks if I'm OK.
I ask if she's been around for the last three months of my life.
She says that isn't fair.
I imagine my response, just as I've imagined the entire conversation until now. I say, "The entire fucking world isn't fair. If it were, I'd be published or a famous actor, or a member of the Arcade Fire, hopefully one of the strings or accordion players."
"Ashley--"
"What?"
"You know what. You're--"
"What? Talented?"
"YES!"
"Fuck that. If I had a chance to die, I would."
"No you wouldn't"
"Sum, I'm talking to myself right now. How desperate do you think I am?"
---
ps. the meth lab down the street blew up this morning :)
She gently places her smiley face after the postscript, as if it were part of the channel nine morning news's "in other news," or as the musical afterthought of an amateur musician...
---
"Oh, honey, I'm sorry, I--"
"Don't fucking placate me...I don't need a fucking cheerleader right now, OK?"
"Yes."
"FUCK!" I slam the hammer against the cement floor, just as my father would have done as a 28-year-old-unknown-dissident. I throw a fit. I want to slam the metal tip into my temples. I throw the hammer. I throw my love and anger around like a sledgehammer. I throw.
---
or as the one who thinks experience comes after the notes, the director who thinks acting comes after the production.
---
ps. post script. p. I forgot to tell you. s. I don't know how to express how much I adore you
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