Weird day, dear reader. Nothing weird happened. Just feeling a bit…off. Just wanted to say hey.
Hey.
N.P.: “Western Ground” – Samael
Category Archives: Lucubrations
This stupid aloe plant may finally be dead. There were originally 3 stalks in this pot. One died almost immediately, the second hung out for a couple of weeks before dramatically collapsing and oozing aloe onto my table like blood at a crime scene. This third and final stalk has hung on for 2 months now, and I thought maybe it was starting to thrive, especially since it was no longer having to share the water and soil with 2 other stalks. I’ve even been putting it on the windowsill so it could get more sun…it seemed to like that. But then yesterday, it just collapsed. It’s kind of holding on today, but I think this is plant hospice at this point.
This winter is bullshit so far. Not a cloud in the sky. The weather app says, “A good deal of sunshine.” No, asshole, this is a bad deal of sunshine. Pleasant daytime temperatures. Disgusting.
N.P.: “Funky Town” – Pseudo Echo
Okay, intelligent reader…let’s get back to it. There are one or two more thing I should mention before we get started. The first thing, which applies to pretty much anything political or cultural I discuss, at least in this context: when I talk about these topics, I generally don’t address them from the perspective of “this is what I think is right and the other side is wrong.” Though some of the cultural issues I have very strong and clear opinions about, but that is rarely what I’ll be talking about. Unless stated otherwise, I’ll be addressing methods, as opposed to the “cause” itself. As for many of the cause themselves (particularly the political ones), the truth is I really don’t care. The transient politics of humans are silly and inconsequential (from a certain perspective). There are some issues whose causes I publicly support and am completely behind, but I will be brutally critical of the methods chosen to attempt to advance the agenda, simply because the method doesn’t work and is thus a waste of time and resources.
For example, if I say something like. “In present day America, all marches protests, pickets, unofficial petitions, colored lapel ribbons, themed frames or filters on social media profile pictures, and hashtag campaigns regardless of cause, are completely masturbatory, pointless, and utterly ineffectual,” it should be obvious that I mean that about any march, for any cause, including my own.
I’m sensing you would like a bit of justification for this potentially provocative statement (though it really shouldn’t be). So here’s why marches are a waste of time and effort: Marches and mass political protests are useful in certain environments and situations: if you live in a society where you are not allowed to vote, or there are no elections, then it is time to take to the streets. If you are officially forbidden from from gathering, from free speech, from pursuing an education, running for government office, bringing a lawsuit, or filing for divorce, then it’s time to organize and “march.” If your government is internationally recognized as an abysmally corrupt failed narco-state, then yes, collective political action in the street is called for. But in those situations, I would not call for a march. The people who are maintaining a constitution which specifies fewer (or no) rights for any race- or gender-based group (in our present world, 2019), a non-violent march is not going to suddenly cause whomever is in power to change their mind(s). You’re going to have to get much more “hands on” to affect any real change, and staging any kind of “march” to draw awareness to your cause or air your grievances only gives the government in question an opportunity to assemble lists of names and get to know the people involved.
But we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about the United States in the 21st century. And though marches had their place and were effective in the past, that mode of political expression and change is outdated and inappropriate for current times. The reason is that there is simply not much, societally, that is keeping anyone from going out and implementing actual change, whatever that change may be. For example, police protests have been en vogue for a while now, and those seem to have really ramped up in the last 10 years or so, sometimes turning into community-destroying riots. Totally pointless. Somehow, this “us vs them”” mentality has developed, where citizens view the police as somehow “other” (not unlike that nonsense we were talking about a couple weeks ago about thinking that humans are somehow outside of or “other” than nature). Once that false dichotomy is created, trouble is soon to follow. It’s not “Them vs. Us,” It’s just “Us.” You and me. So if you have a problem with how your city is being policed and you absolutely cannot tolerate it any longer and you want to see real change, you can put in application with the PD, and if you can make through the academy, you can determine how at least part of your city is policed because it’s you doing the policing. If you disagree with the way policy or legislation is being written or implemented, then you can run for office and do things the way you want them done. Rather than congregating with like-minded lemmings and bitching meaninglessly about how sad you are about something, or how upset you are about the job that someone else who actually showed up to do the heavy lifting of policing or governing is doing, why don’t you become a police officer or run for office? It’s a rhetorical question, but we all know the answer: Because as outraged as you may pretend to be, you’re not upset enough to actually do anything about it yourself. And that makes you feel guilty, because you’re feeling outraged, but you don’t want to actually do anything about it, but you can’t just not do anything, you have to do something, anything, whether it has any actual impact on anything or not, because at least then you can say you did something so hashtag campaign or march after work or write a little check. And deep down you know that whatever you did was a futile, symbolic, and empty gesture, but it made that pesky guilt go away and that’s all you can reasonably asked to do.
I have a lot of friends and people that I love who have participated in marches and I’m sure will do so again. I get why people do it…it’s pretty much the same as believing in God: it is very difficult to accept that there are shitty things in life that you are completely powerless to do anything about. So you believe in a God and you say prayers and thus you are able to convince your subconscious that you actually are able to do things to deal with your problems. And that’s fine. But you can’t expect other people to go along with your delusional coping mechanisms. If they work for you, great, but don’t expect me to say that there is a Santa or a Jesus or a hashtag campaign with any real world results.
Here’s the deal: stay informed on all of the issues and candidates and vote. If you don’t like the outcome of the election, stay informed on all the issues and candidates and vote in the next election. If you don’t like the outcome of that election, maybe it’s time to run for office yourself.
N.P.: “Ordinary” – Train
I spent an unduly long time today working on something i was going to post here, but the work was slow, and it’s just not ready yet, so it’s not here. Instead you just have me saying Hello.
Hello.
Today was the first day of shooting on my friend Mark Steensland’s new feature film, The Special. (Get the book here.)
So we got together tonight to discuss the first day. I saw a few stills…that’s shaping up to be a very cool project.
Alright…back to it. I’ve got to say, I’m very disappointed in the weather thus far this winter. Just kind of boring.
N.P,: “I Am a Pig” – 2wo, Rob Halford
What is the plural of Prius? Prii? I think Prii get a bad rap. Jeremy Clarkson has given them all manner of abuse since their arrival, but I’ve spent some time behind the wheel of a Prius, and if you know what you’re doing, those things can rise to most occasions. But it has never been my Prius that I was driving. Because it’s highly unlikely I would ever own a Prius. And I think that’s where the bad rap comes from: it’s not that the Prius is an inferior or particularly slow car. It’s that the person who is most likely to intentionally buy a Prius is likely to not be inclined to routinely and egregiously violate speed laws. They are more likely to drive in the fast lane simply because it means the fewest lane changes, not giving the slightest thought to the concept of “fast lane.” But honestly, the number of Prii that I find myself cursing in the fast lane are far fewer than non-Prii cars, so I do think a lot of the grief Prii get is largely undeserved.
But you know who deserves absolutely every single bit of grief and wrath and contempt and hatred and vitriol and yelling and middle fingers and Molotov cocktails they get? Goddamn minivans, and I’m assuming their drivers. I don’t know. I’ve never driven a minivan. But holy shit…I don’t know whose fault it is, but these things are just a menace and should probably be taken off the road. Or at least banished to Oregon. Most of the time I have the misfortune to have to deal with one, they are lumbering obliviously down whatever roadway they’ve chosen to cause traffic in just then. Every once in a while, though, I’ll see a minivan come tearing ass up the slow lane, the driver apparently having had (in addition to a big breakfast of bacon and meth) enough of these slow-asses in the fast lane, so they get in the slow lane and just punch it. But they fuck this up too, and they end up having to slam on their brakes and end up stuck behind a truck or merging traffic. Why is this? Are these vehicles just difficult to drive? Is there sometime about them that renders the driver moronic? Is there some engine or design flaw that keeps them from driving in an acceptable way? Regular vans don’t have these issues. SUVs don’t have these issues,
Okay, enough of this bilge. I need to get to work on the book. I’ll try to get us back on track with the discussion we started a week or two ago, about some of the issues you’ve been mentioning in your mail.
N.P.: “Hypothetical” – Emigrate, Marilyn Manson
Ya know what’s funny? I’ll use big ass complicated Greek words that I haven’t used in a while, and spell check will underline it as a misspelling. It’s a polysyllabic entanglement that I could very easily misspell, so I click on the thing for recommended corrections. But the word I’m using is no where in the suggestions. So I look the word up, and I had it spelled correctly. That’s not the funny part. The funny part is the abuse a hurl at whatever artificially unintelligent robot that dared to edit my beautiful goddamn prose. So many fuck words directed at a machine. Pointless, perhaps, but cathartic nonetheless. Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programming of whatever the hell it was I was trying to say before I had to go to war with that idiot editing bot.
Oh yeah:
I don’t think what I experience would qualify as synesthesia [spell check is still insisting redly that I have misspelled it {it apparently has issues with “redly” as well}] per se, but I do experience words (either written or spoken) in a different way from most people. It’s not that I experience it as music (which is what synesthesia would be) but I am significantly more sensitive to the musicality of words than most other members of the herd (who are apparently totally unaware of any musicality present in language). When I read and write, it is the rhythms that I am most aware of, and I think it’s my “ear” for such things that people are talking about when they compliment my sentence structure. The spoken word, however, is substantially more musical, with not only the rhythms of the written word, but also now actual musical notes. Even though you are not intentionally singing, the tone of every word you speak falls somewhere on the musical scale as a note. And that’s how I hear it. And for the most part, it makes being in public fairly hellish. That is a big part of why I try to avoid being in public as much as possible: it is as if everyone is walking around honking moronically on rusty trumpets attached to fronts of their faces.
But you know who’s just the absolute worst? That evil goddamn charwoman that’s always lurking darkly in the hallway. Her voice is like listening to a deaf child with anger issues and a meth habit bang on a grotesquely out-of-tune piano in the middle of both a migraine and and a hangover. And she’s talking to her stupid dog, which dog doesn’t know a single fucking work of English, Spanish, or any other language and has shown exactly zero interest in engaging in conversation and complete interest in this woman shutting the hell up and making with the kibble.
I may seek more suitable accommodations elsewhere. Who do I know who has a heavily fortified compound?
N.P.: “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” – Revolting Cocks
Okay, dear reader, tomorrow is the first of five days I’ve blocked off for working on the book (and a couple other projects, probably, which is fine). I’ve been looking forward to this.
N.P.: “Dead is the New Alive (Manipulator Mix) – Emile Autumn
I was talking about the ubiquity of porn, or at least hypersexual images one is exposed to in everyday life now without making any effort, or even when trying to avoid such images. This led to further discussion about how effortless it is to view any actual porn movie you want for free immediately, which led to further discussion of how valuable such pornographic access would be to a virgin who is looking seriously into changing that status. Which of course led to discussion of how goddamn difficult it was to attempt to educate oneself on exactly what to do when The Time Comes. And yes, of course, the argument that virgins getting of what loving, meaningful sex is supposed to be like it fraught with peril and disinformation. No argument there. However, I posited, the alternative, which is what I had to deal with, was not much better. We had jack shit. The sex ed we all went through in school was clinical enough to pointless and helpful only if you wanted to know the completely unsexy biology of how babies are made and disease is contracted (which, I remember thinking in the class at 11 years old, were pretty much the same thing…both best avoided, so so much for sex ed). I had a couple friends of course, but they had no more idea of what the hell was going on than I did. I mean, we knew the most basic mechanics of what was supposed to happen, but none of us had seen an actual functioning vagina, up close and personal, live in concert. How the hell do you prepare for that. What if I freak out? And even if I don’t freak out, I’d really like a better idea of what I’m doing…it just seems like your first time is a big moment, and not the best time for OJT. It was just a whole thing.
So not having ready access to porn, we were left to try to extrapolate whatever information we could from any source that seemed even remotely promising. One significant source for me ended up being the song “Dance Hall Days” by Wang Chung. Sure, it seems like a pretty silly source of sexual inspiration now, but back then, we were grasping at straws. And why wouldn’t Wang Chung be sex experts? I knew what a Wang was, and I guess I just optimistically assumed that “Chung” was Mandarin for “”advice” or something similar. Fortunately, when the time came, things went swimmingly, and I ended up not relying on any of my “research” and was just in awe of how naturally things seemed to happen. It was a wonderful experience for both of us, which, as I’ve learned from talking to pretty much everybody since, is a very rare thing. Most people’s first time seems to fall somewhere between disastrous and permanently traumatizing. And had I heeded the advice of Wang Chung, my first time would have not only not have been wonderful, but would likely resulted in criminal charges. Have you ever actually listened to the lyrics of this song? Holy shit. “Take your baby by the hand.” Okay, cool. We’ve held hands, and she seems to like it. I sure do. Alright…we’re off to a good start. What’s next? “And make her do a high handstand.” Hmmm. I mean, I guess. She was in an aerobics class at the time, so I suppose a handstand wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility, but what then? She’s doing a handstand and I’m just, what, standing there like an idiot? Am I still clothed, or was I supposed to nude up before I took her by the hand. This is shit I needed to know. “And take your baby by the heel.” Okay. Can do. Not sure what the hell else I’m going to do…she’s doing a handstand that I made her do. Does she still have her shoes on? I’m so confused. “And do the next thing that you feel.” If this was the scenario, with the headstand happening instead of, i don’t know, kissing or something, I suspect I next thing that I’d feel would be an extremely humiliating confusion and cluelessness accompanied by the overwhelming urge to run out of the room without explanation and disappear forever. Then comes an absolutely bewildering chorus that doesn’t seem to apply to the situation under discussion, so let’s just cut to the next verse. “Take your baby by the hair.” Is she still doing the handstand? Am I still wearing clothes? “And pull her close and there, there, there.” Okay, so that was part of my original plan, but my original plan did not include making her doing a handstand and then messing around with her airborne heels. When do I get to take off my pants? I figured she would have something to do with that, but her hands are right now pretty occupied with holding her in this ridiculous position so she doesn’t break her neck. God. What next? Help me out, here, Wang. “And take your baby by the ears…” Okay, now we’re talking. I mean, probably a bit forward, but this is at least tangentially in the same proverbial ball park (heh) as what I’d been guessing would happen. Okay, got her by the ears. Now what? “And play upon her darkest fears.” For fuck’s sake, Wang Chung! I really love this girl. She’s nice! And at some point very soon, probably within the next minute, love me deeply though she may, she is going to protest all this jackassery and just leave. Which won’t be particularly dramatic since she is still fully clothed, This is not going well at all. But I already drank Wang Chung’s Kool-Aid: I’m committed. On we go. “Take your baby by the wrist.” Okay, I’m just gonna lose the clothes and get her back on her feet. Maybe we should even get in the bed or something. “And in her mouth an amethyst.” Oh come on! I don’t even have a condom…I was supposed to bring precious gems? I’m guessing she’s confused and not a little pissed off about that headstand nonsense that just happened.
Yeah…I’m glad things happened the way they did.
Also, holy shit I’m old.
N.P.: “Pride” – Syntax
Someone who knows me about as well as anyone these days convinced me to binge watch the Netflix Original YOU. I was initially dubious, but I ended up being quite impressed. It’s based on the novel YOU by Caroline Kepnes, which I have not yet read, so I don’t know how much of the great writing is directly hers, or what was contributed by the two scriptwriters, but yeah…well done.
So after I watched the entire series in one sitting, I was discussing it with the Recommendette, who said, “Yeah…he really reminded me of you…he’s just so….”
I think the word you’re looking for is…
“…ruthless.”
So close.
N.P.: “Make Me Feel” – Janelle Monáe
She: But you keep a sword in your bedroom.
Me: You say that like it’s a weird thing.
She: It is a weird thing!
Me: What’s weird about it? Where do you keep your sword?
She: …. [drinks deeply of Jameson’s Irish Whisky]
Me: The cleaver in the kitchen doesn’t seem to bother you much.
She: We’re not talking about your kitchen.
Me: Perhaps we should. Perhaps you’d be more comfortable there.
She: Maybe. Less swords.
Me: Fewer.
She: What?
Me: Fewer swords. There are fewer swords in my kitchen than in my bedroom, but vastly more cleavers.
She: There will be fewer women in your bedroom, but more proper grammar.
Me: It’s actually more of a usage issue than a grammatical one. If we’re being technical.
She: Has anyone ever just lit you on fire? Just like here, now, in front of a herd of witnesses, just doused you with Jamie’s and set light to you?
Me: Nobody’s ever cared enough. Until now.
N.P.: “Ready To Die” – Andrew W.K.