Category Archives: Lucubrations

Happy Sunday, most intelligent reader…
Guess what I didn’t do today.  Go to church.  And why didn’t I go to church, attractive reader?   For the same reason I didn’t go to the mall in December and plop down on some pedo Santa’s lap and read my Amazon wish list at him.  ‘Cause they’re ain’t no Santa and there ain’t no god and I’ve got better ways to spend my Sundays than acting delusional.
I mentioned yesterday that one of the benefits of this whilst navigating this world is that you don’t have to worry about any god’s plan, divine providence, none of that.  And if you come across someone who is doing ridiculous things or conducting their lives based on religious beliefs, it becomes effortlessly easy to dismiss them and their opinions.
Another benefit of realizing that there is no higher power controlling everything is never finding yourself wandering around the aftermath of a tornado or drowning in the tsunami that is presently where your town used to be, you don’t have to bother with the pointless question of “Why, oh lord, why me?”  Those questions are totally inappropriate and make you look like a dolt on CNN (speaking of which, if you’re going to believe in some omnipotent god, great…like I said yesterday, I envy you…but don’t go on goddamn CNN after your house and everything you own is obliterated and your baby loses a limb in a tornado and thank the almighty for keeping you both alive.  Who do you think sent the tornado?  If he wants the praise, he also gets the blame.
Okay…enough of this…you get it: no god.  Moving on.
Philosophic assumption (I don’t know what else to call them) #2: We are fundamentally and always animals.  This is where a lot of our society, most notably the politically correct, are going horribly wrong these days: they see humans and animals (a.k.a. Nature) as two totally separate things, with two totally different agendas.  They aren’t .  We humans are absolutely animals, in every way.  We’ve evolved successfully to become exceptionally good at being animals, but make no mistake: you are an animal surrounded by other animals.  All the mammal members of the animal kingdom are born in the same bloody, disgusting way,  They all spend their entire lives eating and drinking and pooping and peeing and sweating and stinking  until you contract disease or become infected or suffer any of the other weaknesses that compose the mammalia and then you die and decay and worms and maggots and stink and that’s that.  Just like the whales or the masturbating, shit-throwing simians.
Here’s the mistake most people make: we have evolved into an unbelievably advanced species (still firmly within the animal kingdom) that invented things like ethics and morality and justice, and while all of that is certainly one of the most amazing things to occur in the known universe, we are still, fundamentally, in every significant way, animals.  This matters because failure to understand this leads to a failure to understand (and thus predict) human behavior.  I’ll explicate this relevance tomorrow.  Right now I need to go play in the storm.
N.P.: “Wolf Totem” – The HU

What it is, dearest reader…
Much of your mail for the last couple of years has had to do with contemporary societal issues which, traditionally, in more civil and genteel times, I have generally tried to avoid wading too deeply into.  There are just usually much more interesting things to talk about.  But these days are different and your questions and issues keep coming  And I’m very limited in what sort of detail I can go into here about work on the books, outside of just general stuff like the going is slow or today was a good day or whatever.  So what the hell…we can look at some of these issues, if that’s what you want to do.
I have to deal with this nonsense every day whenever I’m teaching college, that unabashed bastion of political correctness.  Half the battle in composition classes is getting the students to boldly express their actual opinions rather than parroting the opinions of their instructors whom have been all too willing to share said opinions in lieu of actual subject-oriented instruction.  I could usually break the students out of their pernicious PC habits in a few weeks, though some were more more challenging than others.

Rather than address each issues as it comes along, it makes much more sense to first explain a few aspects of my thinking that may be different than yours.  The first characteristic that might be different is that I’m an atheist.  I’m not happy about it…I was much happier when I Still Believed.  And I really wish I could believe again.  I’m envious of people who have Faith.  But it’s like finding out about Santa: once you know, you can’t go back to not knowing, as much as you may want to.  But yeah…I looked into The Abyss, and nothing looked back.  There was nothing fucking there.  Nada.  Not only do I not believe in any god, but I believe in nothing supernatural.  No ghosts, no magic. no nothing.  So when I’m analyzing/discussing something, divine will, providence, or any kind of diving order do not enter into the thought process at all.  Just so you know.

Okay…more tomorrow.

N.P.: “Barra Barra” – Rachid Taha

Just angsty as hell today, dear reader.  A series of unrelated and very minor things went wrong today when they could have just as easily gone right.  Like people that you’re kind of counting on to say the exact right thing say the exact wrong one.  It’s my fault…expectations and such.  No biggie.  Nothing a reset from going to bed can’t fix.

The word count has been pretty respectable lately.  I’m hopeful for a productive day tomorrow.  There’s a storm coming.

N.P.: “Mr. Brownstone” – Guns N’ Roses

Too many people today, dear reader.  Too many voices.

Hell is indeed other people.  Props to Sartre, though he meant something else when he said it.

Maybe tomorrow will be better.  I hope so.  There will be even more people, even more voices.

This calls for desk whiskey.

N.P.: “Ring of Fire” – Social Distortion

And that, intelligent reader, is a very close, late entry, contender for favorite headline from 2018.  But as much as I love it, and as much as I’d love to buy the Santa mentioned supra whatever cocktail he fancies, it doesn’t beat hearing about how blown out Uranus is.

I’m going to keep things brief today, as there’s a rather lengthy screed I’m trying to finish this week.  A couple things…one for here, one for the book.  So back to it.

N.P.: “Range Rover Bitch” – Taylor Hawkins

That, dear reader, is my favorite headline from 2018, and actually sums up the year perversely well.

I don’t do well with goodbyes (I don’t do particularly well with hellos, either, for that matter), so I’m not inclined to spend much time saying goodbye to any particular year, and this one is no different.

I understand that people need things like this – holidays – to celebrate.  Catharsis, psychological release through altered states…I get it.  Nobody’s bigger.  Just be careful not to put too much emphasis on time.  Don’t give it too much power.  In my experience, time has not done much other than be unpleasantly limiting.  Don’t get me wrong: I depend on an alarm clock and a calendar just like everyone else.  But centering most of one’s celebrations on the passage of time…well, okay, I guess. If it works for you, then by all means…

Okay, fuck it, here’s what I’m trying to say: time is always against us.  It wouldn’t occur to me to celebrate any of its victories.

Whatever.  Never mind.  I think too much.  I do hope all of your new years are better than the years just past.

Now go to bed.

N.P.: “Graveyard Shift” – Battle Tapes

Holy monkey, attractive reader…it is goddamn cold outside.  I’m guessing you’re in the same frozen boat, or at least a similarly chilly dingy.  Unless you’re one of the handful of Aussies who reads this nonsense, in which case I saw some headlines from down under yesterday: 120F!?  Jesus.  Perhaps consider summering in wintry California next year?

Anyway, just another Sunday around here.  Started with some pretty grandiose visions of hyperproductivity.  I got a few things done.  How the hell is it already Sunday night?  Agh.  This sucks.  I’m trying to implement a more calendar-based approach things this year.  Just to try to avoid this annoying Where The Hell Did The Whole Year Go feeling I seem to have almost constantly.

Anyway, back to it.  Bottoms up.

N.P.: “Pretty Tied Up (The Perils of Rock N’ Roll Decadence)” – Guns N’ Roses

So I’ve mentioned the small place I’ve got over the liquor store at the corner of Bedlam & Squalor, in Fecal Creek…I usually refer to it as Hotel California.  There are actually 4 apartments up here, and the other inhabitants are just weird as hell.  One of the apartments is occupied by this awful charwoman that is just Part of the Deal around here.  She “cleans,” which, well…let me explain.  This woman has about the worst case of OCD I’ve ever had the displeasure to deal with.  She puts Mexican bric-a-brac on every available flat surface.  It’s ludicrous.  But then, when she “cleans,” especially in the kitchen, her prime directive, indeed her only directive, seems to be “out of sight, out of mind.”  Anything that has been left on any counter top, stove top, or basin area is immediately seized and shoved into the nearest drawer cabinet or “unvisible” space there is.  Unless, of course, she happens to get in any way distracted between the time she picks up a given object and the time she places it in an “unvisible” area, and then God only knows what will happen.  Oh, and ovens and dishwashers are considered valid storage areas.  Yeah.  So I have learned to pull all the shit out of the oven before preheating it.  I have opened the microwave to find foil wrapped mysteries or metallic silverware hiding in there.  Meals have been delayed hours because I could not find my cast iron skillet anywhere, and it was only when someone incidentally went into the laundry room and found that the skillet had inexplicably placed in there, on top of the dryer could dinner proceed.
We’ve had our problems, she and I.  For a while, I could hear her prowling around outside my door anytime I was on the phone, presumably trying to listen to my conversations for her own dark and perverse reasons.  To put a stop to this, I started giving fake and rather malignant tech advice to “friends” on the phone.  One time when I suspected she was listening, I told my friend of my new time-saving trick: placing your cell phone in the microwave for 65 seconds will fully charge the battery.  Twenty-four hours later she had a new phone and was awaiting delivery of a new microwave.
And but so anyway this morning I was awoken by ridiculous bangings in the bathroom next to my place, which bathroom this beazy has apparently elected to paint today.
Usually she hires shady and swarthy gentlemen of extremely dubious Visa status from the parking lot of Home Depot for such things. But not today, thank Christ.  For these smaller projects, she has a couple glasses of breakfast wine and channels Frida Khalo and paints it herself.  But super slowly and carefully, as if painting a portrait. It is horrible to watch, and inspires visions of strangulation in the wine-dark psyche of your humble narrator. But once she gets bored and starts getting really drunk, she hurries to get it done and sloshes paint everywhere, adding several hours of clean-up time to the entire nightmare.
All of that nonsense disrupted any sense of rhythm I’d hoped to achieve today.
How was your day?
N.P.: “Strange Machines” – The Gathering

“I’m on a bus, on a psychedelic trip
reading murder books, trying to stay hip.
I’m thinking of you, you’re out there, so
Say your prayers.”
~ Billy Idol

This is it, dear reader…crunch time.  There are 158 days left to complete this book and determine its publishing fate.  I am so woefully behind schedule that I can’t bear to think about it whilst sober.  This is typically my most productive time: the dead of winter, long and icy nights..  And things have been picking up.  It’s just bewildering and disorienting to not have a clear vision of the end product.
Okay…back to it.

N.P.: “Cat People (Putting Out Fire)” – Giorgio Moroder, David Bowie

Jesus, it’s already Wednesday.  How did that happen?  It feels like I’ve had a lot of travel days lately, but I’m not sure why.  I haven’t gone anywhere.

Today is Boxing Day if you live anyplace where the queen is on the money.  Boxing Day is the day set aside for duct taping  up any unpleasant guests who darkened your door on Christmas (usually children), sealing them in boxes (usually cardboard) and sticking them in the attic with the rest of the awful Christmas decorations that have been cluttering up your existence for the last few weeks.  It is a rather dark European tradition that, much like the siesta, I think we colonists could benefit from adopting.

I was watching footage of what appeared to be a boy band performing in Indonesia when the tsunami hit on Saturday.  I know it’s not funny…it was quite horrible, actually…but I found myself chuckling as I watched it.  It;s just that I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on stage doing whatever – playing in a band, doing a reading, delivering a lecture, dancing in a bondage club – when I thought to myself (having no one else to think to), “Oh dear god this is a disaster…I would give anything for a huge fucking tsunami to come absolutely barreling through here and wash me and everybody in here out to the watery depths so this can just be over.”  Maybe one of the band members simply  has (had) more pull with the divine than I do.

N.P.: “Lazy Eye” – Silversun Pickups