gen

no one cried when she died. except for paulbaby but he was a wimp anyway and everyone knew it, even if he liked to pretend he wasn't a wimp by talking about guns and war all the time. momma said (because i asked her) that the reason no one cried was because it was hard to miss someone who spent their entire time here on earth feeling sorry and sad for themselves and i had to agree with her but it still felt wrong to think it because i felt for some reason like i should miss her and i should have cried at some point between the time i found out and when we buried her. but i couldn't.

momma and i sat up front where we could see the body because we were her closest relatives and paulbaby sat to the side with all the men because they needed an extra person to help carry the casket up the hill. part of me thinks the reason they picked paulbaby was because they wanted him to feel like a man and they knew he'd get his feelings hurt if they didn't pick him. he was thirteen and his voice still hadn't changed but he was getting muscles and walked around all the time like he had to pretend he wasn't a little boy anymore, which was pretty annoying but no one said anything, myself included, because it's hard to tell someone they aren't what they think they are.

there weren't too many people who showed up to the funeral. plenty of relatives showed up. but no one i hadn't seen before. and i think most of them showed up because they felt like they had to--which is a really pathetic reason to do something.

i told momma the night before that i didn't want to go because i could give a goddam about aunt rosie and she slapped me and told me to watch my language and that aunt rosie had her faults but we had to go because she was family and it wouldn't be right not to go. i said: but you never even liked aunt rosie, momma. you used to tell me how much of a burden it was talking to her when she called us on the phone every saturday. she told me it didn't matter, though, and that she really didn't mean what she said and that even if she got annoyed with aunt rosie sometimes that's not how she felt about her all the time and that she still loved her regardless. i told her that i still thought it was dumb and i wasn't going to go to bed early that night like she wanted me to because i didn't care how well-rested i was for the funeral. i told her it was fake to pretend like all of the sudden i cared about aunt rosie now that she was dead when i didn't like her at all when she was alive and calling us on the phone every saturday. i said: at the very least that we should go and instead of acting all sad and grieving like i knew everyone would we should act like we would if she were still alive and we still hated her just the same.

make each other dirty

there was an incident recently where a woman cut off her husband's penis and permanently destroyed it in a garbage disposal. it's been in the news. and i've heard people talking about it: both people i know and people in the media.

a lot of people have compared it to the lorena bobbit incident--an incident which made a considerable impression on my as a kid. i thought all women did this to their husbands when they got mad at them--or at least that it was a very real and terrifying possibility.

in that way: it made me unnaturally fearful of women, even to this day. for the longest time: i was afraid to say or do anything that might upset a woman because i thought it meant inevitable dismemberment. which i guess is good: in a preventative sense. but i'd like to know how i would have turned out had i never known about the incident or if it had never occurred at all.

i agree somewhat with the feminist stance that, of course, women should be treated with respect: but is it right when it's a respect earned by fear? i know there are men who command respect in this way. i know there are dictators that command respect this way. but i don't agree with it.

true: women deserve respect. but so do men. men deserve respect. women deserve respect. all people deserve respect. but i believe it should be earned: that everyone is entitled to the same amount of respect and love and genuine understanding and appreciation that they show to others. it's sort of the golden rule.

this is why i find the feminist argument kind of flawed. i'm sure it's just a few feminists on the fringe who feel that this most recent case and the john bobbit case were justified or that either incident was good in terms of progress: but i actually disagree. and i'm especially upset by a clip i saw today on youtube in which the all-female panel on an early-morning talk show called "the talk" (a b-level rip-off of the view) make light of the case with the woman drugging her husband up, dismembering him then irreparably and forever mutilating his genitals to tatters in the garbage disposal. i don't see how this is funny. or how this is something, as sharon osbourne, one of the show's hosts, someone can openly condone. it's an argument i've seen before but it's so true: if the roles were reversed, would we be joking about it? would we be joking about it on national television? would it be ok for a man to condone this sort of behavior from another man? the thing is: she didn't even have a legitimate reason? she told the police that she cut her husband's penis off because, no joke, wanted a divorce. to sharon osbourne however: this is a justifiable retaliation. a man asks for a divorce and his wife is entitled--she is justified in--permanently disfiguring him in such a terrible, cruel and malicious way. how does that make sense? i can understand if she was raped, maybe. but this?

and it's not just sharon osbourne who feels this way. a lot of women i've talked to feel this way. a lot of women openly joke about this case specifically and cases like it in the past? why? is genital mutilation really that funny? it's not funny when we're talking about helpless girls in africa getting their clitorises cut off, so why is it funny now?

i think i've felt this way for a long time: ever since i was a kid and (this probably sounds ridiculous) i used to watch movies specifically targeted at kids in which, for whatever reason, they always ended with the bad guy's genitals getting horrifically maimed or destroyed or that the "nut-shot" was always the big hilarious moment on which the story hinged. i remember sitting in the theater and feeling terribly uncomfortable and everyone around me (a few times, my own mother) breaking into side-splitting fits of laughter. i actually (and this is true) used to dread going to movies because i knew there would be a nut-shot and that not only would it make me physically uncomfortable (vicariously, being a guy) but it would make me emotionally uncomfortable as well witnessing the reactions of fellow movie-goers. i just didn't (and still don't) see how getting hit in the genitals is funny. if it were a girl, say, and she tripped along a fence (for the sake of this argument, she's walking along a fence like a tightrope walker) and she slipped and let's say she was the story's villian and she just so happened to fall in such a way that a particularly pointed fencepost sliced through her vagina, would that still be funny? would it still get the same reaction as, say, the final scene in beethoven when the bad guy is hit by a tray of twenty needles in the crotch--purposefully: all the needles are concentrated in the area where his genitals are. would it get the same reaction? it's not likely.

which is why this double-standard irritates me. not only is it stupid (like most double-standards) but it reflects negatively on how our culture feels about genital mutilation--if it's a woman, it's a terrible terrible crime against humanity. but if it's a man: it's an act of female empowerment (regardless of the circumstances) and ripe fodder for cheap jokes. no: that's not right. it's wrong either way: regardless of which sex it happens to.

this is essentially why i don't consider myself a feminist. i believe in equality for women. but i believe in equality for all people. not just women. and i certainly don't support any belief that puts one sex before the other. i believe the sexes should be treated with the same amount of respect and appreciation--otherwise you're just tipping the scales in the other direction. it really is like a game of tug-o-war: both sides struggling for supremacy over the other (and this is so true of most ideological battles) when it's to the advantage of both parties to simply agree to drop the rope at the same time, walk around the mud puddle, and meet and mix on either side, so that there are no more sides and neither party gets dirty--neither party loses. then again: there is the issue itself (the mud puddle) and it's just too damn tempting for people not to eventually want to push the other party in.


i haven't said all i wanted to about this but i got the skeleton of my heated feelings out so i'm satisfied for now.

little prince

i drove to starbucks this morning and finished the little prince. i found the first half of the book (maybe the first three quarters) exceptionally brilliant. but the last section felt rushed. it seemed like he was trying to say something--trying to create some last minute allegory--but the execution was all wrong. like i said: rushed.

it was too vague: the prince dies (he asks a snake to bite him) and then his body disappears. what i want to know is: why the prince wanted to die? he could have returned to his planet or gone somewhere else and continued his whimsical trip to different places around the universe. fist: the book says he went to earth (by his own volition). then: it says he crash-landed.

maybe it's a matter of inconsistency: i can understand if the prince felt trapped with no way of getting home--this would explain why he wanted to die and why he asked the snake to kill him. but, until the end, there is no mention of the prince being trapped or earth-bound. the book does however say that he is perplexed by the way grown-ups and people on earth live their lives--and maybe a little saddened (seeing the monotony of life on earth through foreign eyes and not being able to make sense of it--one of the things i liked about the book and something i've seen done to similar affect in other works--making human actions look alien or odd). but the assumption (at least by this reader) is that he can always leave at any time whenever he so chooses.

it could be that the author was looking for a place to end the story (death being the easiest way to end any narrative) and muddled his way through something for the sake of brevity or because he lacked the imagination to carry it into more interesting places. but i get the feeling he was trying to say something which didn't come out quite as clearly as he might have hoped--or maybe it was purposefully cryptic (like some inside joke). my initial impression (and this goes along with the allegory theory) is that the prince was a modern fantastical stand-in for the savior figure: like jesus christ but set against new-age-y ideas and preoccupations, evidenced by the message of beauty-in-the-intangible first related to the prince by the fox then imparted to the narrator (like jesus, a life-lesson related in parabolic form). this theory makes sense to a certain extent: the prince knows that he is going to die and tells the narrator not to come back so that he won't have to see him suffer. he says that he will appear dead but that he won't be dead (this is not true) because what the narrator will see is just a shell of a person (the physical remains) and not the eternal soul which the prince says inhabits the stars forever. it's a lot like the crucifixion story: in both cases, jesus and the prince know beforehand that they are going to die--not at their own hands but by the hands of others, so to speak. in the prince's case, he asks the snake to bite him. thus: infecting him with poison. this particular snake (the narrator says) can kill a man in thirty seconds. jesus on the other hand did not ask to be crucified but like the prince knew that it was going to happen--it was prophesied. so the question becomes: was the prince's death a suicide? by extension: is the author suggesting that, if there is truth to this allegory, that jesus' death was a suicide (since he knew that he would be killed but did nothing to prevent it)?

it's something i've thought about before: jesus is the son of god. even if he wasn't, he knew he was going to die. he knew that he would be crucified. but why being all-powerful did he do nothing to stop it. probably because he knew that it was god's will--that it had to happen. in the prince's case, though: it didn't have to happen. his will to die came out of nowhere and was never fully explored. i can understand why he'd want to die but i still need more contextual proof to bolster my argument. the author makes it look like a rash decision on the part of the prince, since it's still plausible that he could just as easily return to his home planet: b612. it just seems like a waste of life. which is what the crucifixion of jesus seems like, at first, until we're told that jesus died and suffered all he did and arose from the dead so that his story would be a testament to anyone needing further proof that he was indeed the messiah--his miraculous return and foreknowledge of his death tells us that at the very least he was extraordinary: and whether or not you believe any of this actually happened: the story adds up to something self-contained and logical, unlike the little prince which comes across as an ambitious attempt to convey many different powerful ideas even if they contradict each other in places.

which leads me to my wikipedia research: apparently the death of the little prince was inspired by the death of the author's little brother when the author's brother was still very young. his dying words were: don't worry. i'm all right. i can't help it. it's my body. this declaration mirrors the prince's assertion that his body is merely a shell containing something invisible (which as the fox says is where all things essential reside). so maybe this cancels out my messiah theory. but why on earth all this death? why not have the prince return home to his rose whom he's spent half the novel learning to appreciate on a more authentic level? what point is the author trying to get across?

despite it's glaring inconsistencies and non-sequiter plot holes and meandering tangents, the little prince is still highly enjoyable. i'm glad i bought it on impulse from amazon. it delivers the way i expected other children's classics like a wrinkle in time (which i did not enjoy at all) to deliver: that is without all the preachiness and enough inventiveness and playfulness to keep me engaged the whole way through.

childish

there is something
i know
that does this to me
it's a combination of things
or it is one thing
it happens all of the sudden:
my brain makes the wrong connections
or it doesn't make the right ones
i lose my grasp
on throwaway words
and a way of speaking
that once came so effortlessly
a way of speaking that
formerly defined me
or so i thought
and then i feel no longer like myself
and i am forced to either recalculate
or make an unnatural
attempt at impersonating
who i thought i was before
what i want to know is:
what is it exactly that puts me in this tight spot
and why can't i be self-assured all the time
when will i finally be me--finally
and not have to worry about losing
what i tell myself i am
whether or not that perception is true

in other news

i can't guarantee this post will be coherent. i'm not drunk or anything. i've just been feeling really disorganized in my thinking lately--spread really thin yet brimming with intangible thoughts for which i can't seem to find the words. i'm having a hard time articulating, not just how i feel, but...anything. i don't know what's happened to me. though: i recognize it as a pattern. every two months or so i get into these little ruts where i feel totally wiped out--totally stifled. perhaps i'm imagining it. who knows.

anyway: i've been thinking a lot recently (in addition to so many other things) about what i want to do now that i've graduated with a useless liberal arts degree. i'm sort of stuck: i can either try to find a job with the worthless degree i have now or go back to school for something else--either something i enjoy or something that will make me decent money--a livable income. it's sort of reminds me of when i was a kid and i went to places like chuck e. cheese's or great times. at the end of the trip i was confronted with the horrendous decision to either save the tickets i earned for the next time so that i could get a bigger prize or cash them in then because it was uncertain when i'd go back--or if i'd go back--and there were smaller prizes which were attractive because they were conveniently immediate and within my ticket range. i don't want to settle for something that will make me unhappy but i'm not so certain there's a job out there that will make me happy: even (or especially if) it's a job i "enjoy." the thing with me is: i need some degree of contention in my life. i can't feel passionate about anything because then...i don't feel passionate about it anymore. i need to feel at odds with some major aspect of my life to appreciate the things i truly enjoy by contrast. i don't want to end up doing something i love and then find myself no longer to appreciate it outside of work--or at all; not being able to enjoy it as a job either. this is why i'm considering accounting. it's so against everything i am (in theory): but it works because it's somewhat mindless and pays well. i like mindless tasks (to an extent). i like washing dishes. i like stacking boxes. the trick for me is to get into the rhythm of whatever i'm doing: then it becomes sort of trance-inducing and easier to tolerate--it goes by quicker. and number-crunching is pretty much the penultimate in mindless trance-inducing tasks: it appeals to me in the same way the idea that warhol used to paint copy after copy of the same picture while listening to the same song on his walkman over and over for hours on end appeals to me. it's the only way i can simultaneously enjoy what i'm doing (by not enjoying it--or by not enjoying it too much) and still feel validated in my career choice. the thing with me is: if everything in my life is perfect and i do exactly what i want to all the time, i, because of my nature, have to start hating something (i'm just such a natural contrarian) so i start hating the things i'm passionate about--which i don't want. i want to still enjoy the things i enjoy and the only way to do that is to not enjoy something else--something else entirely unrelated. maybe it's a sign of immaturity. that's just the way i am.

i've also thought about becoming a librarian, which would only require a few more years of grad school. the thing with that, however, is that there's no demand in today's world (and it's doubtful this will ever change) for librarians. the pay is decent enough. but i want to be more or less sure that there will be a job waiting for me once i graduate (whatever it is i decide to do).

in other news: matt came over today. it was nice. we went to fazoli's, which andrew calls "fags only" and had a good old time sitting around a table with booths on either side in the very back corner where i feel most comfortable--in public yet still pretty private and in the company of people i like.

also: practice went well. it was nice seeing my parents. and it actually felt pretty great playing music with the band again.

i realized today that everything i write has a distinctive quality to it. not good necessarily. but distinctive, which is something.

stranger

the creative impulse has been stifled. i no longer know who i write for or why i write at all--why i bother to create or what i'm trying to communicate. i see images--millions of images--i take them in and do nothing with them because i am too overwhelmed. they get caught in my throat or like a foreign object in my brain they slowly spread their idle infection.

start off with an interview.
start off with a neat little phrase.
develop the story from there--let it write itself.

i want to create something pure
something genuine true and honest
but i have ideas about how it should look and feel in the end
and i'm too afraid i think to
just write
the final product never matches the envisioned ideal
heightened language: a tell-tale sign of schizophrenia
i am unable to say what i am thinking
without carefully weighing each word
for affect
let's hope i never find myself in a situation where life or death
means talking
means writing
means communicating

let's just hope that never happens

i sometimes worry that i'll be wrongfully convicted of murder because i am unable to tell my side of the story intelligibly

i am too stupid
too distracted
to keep myself out of trouble

ltr

the cashier is racing to get every item scanned as quickly as possible. there are five checkout lines open out of a possible thirty-two checkout lines in the store. through each of the five open checkout lines, the same relative number of customers are being funneled, widening out at the end of the lines into the young ladies' clothing section. the woman unloading her cart dillydallies--offering commentary on each item she puts onto the belt, seemingly unaware of the swarm around her--the heated looks of the customers waiting behind her in line.

"oh, these--" she says, wild-eyed and holding a box of chocolate coffee health bars in front of the cashier, "have you tried these? they're great!"

the cashier continues scanning the woman's items. it's apparent to everyone waiting in line that the cashier is not interested in the woman's attempts at small talk. the woman persists, dropping a box of glow-in-the-dark condoms on the belt.

"can't remember the last time i bought those. i've been spayed!"

the woman laughs to herself--doesn't bother looking at the cashier's reaction or anyone else around her--almost as if it were her own private game in which she is forced to come up with one little quip about each item before it is bagged.

she takes the next filled bag and puts it into her cart, having finally finished unloading.

"how much do i owe you?" she asks, bringing out her checkbook. she looks at the screen displaying the total and squints her eyes. the cashier says meekly: "forty-one. sixty-two." but the woman is still squinting at the screen. "what's that say? forty-one. sixty--."

"sixty-two," the cashier says.

bringing her pen down from where she holds it eagerly hovering above her checkbook, she makes out the check in very ornate-looking but hurried cursive.

later...

begin

"you should be crying. you should be a mess right now. that's your father in that casket over there. you should be an absolute wreck right now."

make me call you daddy

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/58937_Page2.html#comments

obama to gop: go fuck yourselves.
me to obama: hell yes!

vent

there is a world outside fox news: and it looks like a veritable intellectual utopia in comparison.

as a person who values "fair and balanced" journalism, i want to know why fox news has neglected to report on the news of the world phone hacking ordeal. i've checked the webpage twice within the past week and nary a mention of the scandal has been made. instead: a fluff piece about the "genius" (no kidding, this is the term they used) who created gilligan's island: a show so inept that it requires viewers to believe one of the island's stranded inhabitants could fashion a telephone from coconuts yet he can't seem to apply that same resourcefulness to building a boat, say, to get them off the fucking island.

i think fox news' definition of genius and mine are a little different.

however: smear-piece stories abound on how obama is a baby for using the same defiant tactics the gop has used in negotiations all throughout obama's presidency: specifically, how obama "stormed out" of a debt crisis meeting because the gop were unwilling to compromise on a viable debt solution. the logic seems to be: the gop can throw tantrums and drag their heels in the name of furthering their agenda: filibustering nearly every fucking issue, but when dems get sick of indulging their childish bullshit...they're just being babies.

fucking ridiculous.

obama's going to lose this next election, not because he's a bad president, but because he's up against overgrown toddlers who don't understand the concept of democracy and compromise. every fucking issue is met with opposition from republicans: issues that serve the greater good of everybody. why? because he's "durp durp socialist durp durp." it's truly frightening what this country has come to and i hold fox news (and it's selective reporting techniques) responsible. for keeping conservatives in the dark: for turning them into rhetoric-reciting morons who follow blindly what they're told to follow by these underhanded fake news organizations. it's obvious--painfully fucking obvious--to anyone outside that sphere that fox news has an agenda; that the gop has an agenda: to keep the rich rich and trick the middle and lower classes into supporting these crooks by telling them that to do otherwise is un-american, which in my opinion is closer to evil than socialism (never mind that no one who makes these accusations even knows what socialism means): something bordering on orwellian. it's sick: it's lying by omission; neglecting to present all the facts. these organizations like fox news are in cahoots with big business, republicans are in cahoots with big business: and they see to it that their own agenda is pushed; that their own interests are promoted and reconfigured so that people like joe schmo blue collar conservative gets duped into believing it's his responsibility as an american to support their agenda.

anyway

according to an article
published by time magazine
our generation is skeptical
in a healthy way
of marriage

we don't believe in marriage
we have no faith in it
because we haven't seen evidence
that marriages work

we haven't seen a successful
marriage firsthand
so we have no reason to believe
they work

such is life post divorce generation

we are also skeptical of other things:
jobs
the government
growing up

for this reason: we live
with our parents longer than
our parents lived with their parents
and so on and so forth

we are a deliberate generation:
we like to take time and assess and consider
all possible outcomes

we try on different identities:
doctor
psychologist
laborer
restaurant worker

and it's still unlikely that
we'll commit to a single one

we have no faith in corporations or
big-businesses and
they have no faith in us
there is a breach of loyalty between
the two of us
we work for peanuts and then move on to
the next job like
capitalist nomads
and every door we knock at
is sure to handout the same relative
piddly handful of peanuts
we are neither invited to come in and chat
nor are we obligated to stay

we float around indecisively
waiting for the older generations to die
so we can have their jobs
which sounds cruel
but that's really just the way it goes

....

i decided to start reading the new testament
beginning with matthew and then
once i'm done with revelations
reading the old testament
once i'm done with that i plan on
looking at the gnostic scriptures and the apocrypha
in addition to some outside research on
each book or author of the books of the bible

i'm doing this because i want a more comprehensive
doctrine-based understanding of my religion
which i feel is the only way to go about it

i dislike churches these days and i don't trust
them: they are money-hungry institutions who
could give a goddam about my soul

i do have faith in my beliefs and i believe that
there is hope yet for christians
but it will take a lot of work

i just hate that so many christians rely on preachers and priests
and televangelists and the like
who seem more concerned with product sales (their own books and merchandise which they sell as supplementary to the bible or required for anyone wanting to feel closer to the truth though they still sell this stuff for profit) than anything
to tell them what being christian is all about
if christians simply read the bible
actually set down with the text
i don't believe there would be so much confusion
granted: there have been a lot of selfish edits and revisions to
the bible over the years and it's sometimes hard to know
what's been altered to suit someone or some institution's political interests
but there is research out there--extensive studies by biblical scholars--to
help anyone seeking to find
the essential message
it's up to them--these christians--however to not be lazy and swallow whole
what's being tossed at them every sunday and instead do the research themselves
which is what i believe god would want
jesus talked in parables
so that those who wanted to know
would have to do some work to find out what
he was talking about
excluding others who simply weren't interested in
decoding the mysteries of the kingdom
i believe it takes work to know the truth
and i'm not defending the actions of those who've made additions and changed the text
for their own benefit
but i think it's important for anyone serious about their religion
to sort of decipher and pick through the fluff in an attempt
at getting closer to the intended message
i believe it requires work: that salvation maybe is earned
a reward
but that the essential doctrine is accessible to anyone

anyway...