beavis_the_wise

Just between you and me, I am writing you this letter while I'm on the toilet.

Why do I say that? Good Question.

The Internet is a part of our lives. No matter how hard we try to free ourselves from its grasp, if we try at all, a new app, viral video, or new news story comes out which makes it impossible for us to be free of it long enough to use the bathroom in sweet solitude. We prefer it that way. We're so happily in the throws of an addiction to something which, as far as we know, doesn't even cause cancer! 

You know why I am writing this message to you. Do the right thing; spray the some Lysol.

beavis_the_wise

The following things have been on my mind today (and number one is the most important by far):

1. I share the sadness of my family in this difficult time. I don't know how else to say it.
2. The rebirth of this journal is coming.
3. a)  I's born 'der da 'blue t'under, ... 'nnal 'ver known 'ergot.....
b)  Alone, it feels you while without you - with you it only knows you, alone.
c) 

 A flame was set inside our Soul so long ago that naught remains but cindered ash on blackened clay
 Which swirls in air so still...
 ...and now we can't recall our vaporized dreams...
 ...Dead essence stuck in Chimney Flue...    
 Anthropological-Forensic Community: Question: 
 "Who lit the torch and burned those souls?"
 Heirs of Suffering: Response: 
 "We cannot say, but know one day that you will know."
 Anthropological-Forensic Community: Assurance:
 "We will know the soul, and on that day..."
 Heirs of Suffering: Request:
 "And on that day, show us the way to make them pay for making life so gray."
 Anthropological-Forensic: Denial:
 "No, we only investigate the crimes - and these are beyond the capabilities of Justice."

d) 

 How now, Sham Wow?
 See God; See How:
 We punctuate existence.

e) Lazarus A'Kaltu-Penze's Call to Pens called, "To your pens!" to lazy Penz-A'Kaltu.

4.  The elements of the third point may or may not be discussed in the near or the far future. They are pieces of random poetry which I am proud of but have never edited. And they all mean something, at least to me.

5.  I just wanted anyone who was wondering, or anyone who never knew, that I still exist, and will continue to exist, God willing.

6.  Oh, and sorry, I still speak in metaphors and language which only touches the surface (or the very bottom) of what I am really trying to express. It's called fiction. This journal is, always has been, and always will be FICTION.

 This is fiction. This has always been fiction. This will always be fiction. 
 This is fiction. This has always been fiction. This will always be fiction.
 This is fiction. This has always been fiction. This will always be fiction.

7. The best things come in multiplicities of three and factors of three and trinities.

8. My ambition, my wish, my goal, upon graduating from college, is to pursue, MY DREAM JOB, MY PASSION, MY PURPOSE: to make a career of my passion for the study and sharing of critical theories, to become a member of a community whose purpose is to develop and perfect these theories, to one day become a leader among this community of critical theorists, to make a contribution to critical theory.

9. PS: I am reeling because I am mourning point number one, which, even after all the time I just wasted typing out all the other things that have been on my mind lately, seriously, truly is the most important point in this entry, by far.

10. This whole post sucks. Sorry.

beavis_the_wise

I read "The Sun Also Rises" and "A Farewell to Arms" this week. I wrote a poem today while we were talking about scansion. Here is analysis on things about politics. I try to maintain my partisanship while eliminating bias: These were written for my politics class, and not for an audience of random aqauintances, but here you go. I'm too uncreative at the moment to write anything original, or not confident enough in my own orgininality, at the moment, but I don't want to deprive you people of my beautiful mind. So read this shit and dont' talk to me about healthcare please. When the bill passed, I said SUCK IT and have not thought about it since.



New media, which I assume is a blanket term for all the different methods of communication made possible by the internet, is a very powerful thing in the right hands: it has a seemingly infinite capacity to link people together in terms of their philosophies, interests, whatever, so that any possible group of people with any sort of crazy-ass idea in common can talk about it until the end of time. The internet, I suppose, can never be held by “the right hands,” but just hands; it is almost completely unregulated. Power on the internet comes from the ability to gain website hits. Of course, a high profile institution like the White House can attract far more traffic to its website, in order to promote its political agenda, than I can to my blog other blog on this website, which exists for seemingly no reason at all, since nobody reads it and I barely write in it.

 Anyway, I’ll get back on track: the Internet (this is my extremely academic definition): an infinite ocean of individuals who range from psychos to humble businessmen, all either competing for an audience, or devouring information from the unthinkably unimportant, to the practical and boring. It’s total chaos. 

A large number of people use the internet to reaffirm their political beliefs – and some people are so easily influenced. They will seek out any third rate website written by nobody-revolutionaries or anarchists or political soothsayers just to feel justified in believing whatever the hell it is they believe. Voices of credibility are few and far between in terms of the sheer number of the propaganda machines out there (the internet is a propaganda machine factory; a manufacturer of propaganda fountains), but they generally get more traffic. Credibility comes from name recognition on the internet, thank god. That’s why Johnny Blow-Up-Government-Buildings cannot get a big following: barely anybody’s heard of him, and even fewer really care about what he has to say, or that he was able to scrape together enough money from his chicken-shit farm to buy a website, and take time off from farming his chicken-shit so he could read from an HTML guide on some website that defines the ways in which propaganda is to be formed from the raw cyber-materials.

 Digression: the hubs are the credible websites. The mainstream information sources contain links to other hubs that link to other hubs, and if the initial hub was credible enough, and not a just a search engine, chances are that the man who surfs the internet from links from one page to another and nothing else, who begins at a major hub like the New York Times, for example, will find himself far older than he was when he started, if not dead, when he ends up on a website with instructions for how one is to disrupt a town hall meeting by shouting nasty words at poor people without health insurance. Controlling the infinite chaos is a power of the modern world that should never be underestimated. From the maelstrom of opposing ideas that is the Internet, people all over the world define what the mainstream ideology will be. Grassroots movements can spring up out of nowhere if the linkage and message is right. Obama’s 2008 political campaign for president was, after all, won online. It’s the purest form of democracy. It is up to the possessors of strong name recognition to give order to the storm by directing the random meandering discussion. Sometimes anomalies, internet entities without any name recognition, gain huge amounts of traffic without having anything of the sort to start out with. They are called Internet sensations. President Obama is partly an Internet sensation, and partly a very much victorious political campaigner. 

So, now that I have told you my stupid understanding of the mighty Internet, here’s what I think: President Obama should communicate with people through a variety of media – television, radio, in-person speeches, internet broadcasts, talk shows, and anything else. But the Internet has the largest potential audience, and therefore, in the interest of making the Obama agenda ring throughout the country and world, he should have his communications staff focus on the internet directly, and always make sure the president is communicating with the American people through media that will lead his words to the internet. Going on MSNBC will give him time on television, for example, and time on the internet, for people who do not have cable. It’s a maximization of audience.

 

Personally, I do not use the internet all that much. I find it a little tedious, and too easy to get off on the wrong track. I gather my news from cable news networks, especially MSNBC, almost exclusively. That’s my secret shame, because I know that the Internet has much more to say. My credibility suffers when I talk politics with people who know about my information gathering habits. I’m not sure if my opinions are any less valid, but Internet is gaining the prestige. I’m glad that’s happening, because I’m just old fashioned and I know that it is the deserved wave of the future. My parents are almost politically agnostic, though my dad tells me that he is a republican, and always has been, whenever I go off about how unfair the whole damned system of America is, in terms of social-economic justice. He’s afraid he’s raised a communist. I’m not a communist. He has Fox News on just to piss me off when I get home from class, but he reads the New York Times on his lap top while Bill O’Reiley whispers sweet nothings to his stupid sheep. 

I think that my introductory thoughts on the Internet have done a pretty decent job of discussing the way new media has changed the way people consume information, and thus form opinions, so I won’t try to make this post longer by dwelling on that. 

Democrats place an emphasis on the use of new media for a few reasons that I have already described: it’s the most democratic forum for communication imaginable, it attracts the widest audience, has the greatest capacity for discussion of ideas, shares information faster than anything else, including live television (because you don’t have to cut through commentator’s skewed perspective of live events as they are unfolding online, reading a twitter from a respected politician, like you would if you were watching the senate vote for the final passage of the healthcare bill on via CSPAN, brought to you by Fox News, with Bill O’Reiley blubbering and moaning like the lying, cheap, self-promoting **ck-for-brains that he is. Pardon me). The internet makes it easier for the author to take himself and his perspective completely out of the equation, so that his perspective does not spin the information. The consumer of cyber-news hears events from a nonexistent voice in space that he has never seen or heard of. Information goes from the event, through a keyboard (without passing through an author’s mind and lens), straight to a computer monitor a couple thousand miles away. Objective reporting means removing the author from the transfer of data. Online, there is a far smaller chance of being recognized or praised than for a cable news anchor, so bias evaporates. Force the author into thankless anonymity and information is clean and pure. He will be paid for his article, depending on the guys who posted it, and that’s enough for him. If he wanted fame, he would have written for the New York Times. Obviously there is an infinite number of websites out there that could support contrary examples to this ideal form of information transfer, but because, in contrary cases, the author is more present, the news is less objective, and more for entertainment and reaffirmation of political beliefs that can only be maintained by clever rhetoric, and not the facts. The risk, then, in using the internet for disbursal of political information, is that the objectivity illusion can easily be employed. 

There isn’t much risk for the White House, directly, that I can see. They may post something that the Republicans could get all fussy about, but generally, I believe, any snafu committed online will not make big news – because it’s the Internet: a maelstrom of chaotic and rambling half-brains seeking political peace of mind. Not that you are. You’re probably my professor!

There are two very different realities described by Politics Daily and Real Clear Politics, but I'm guessing that the truth of the matter the articles for today discuss lies somewhere in between, or leans toward Politics Daily. In the red corner, Real Clear Politics is presenting something more akin to a wish than a truth, saying that somehow Obama will have an easier time, politically, with a Republican Congress, citing the 1994 midterm election in which Republicans took both houses of Congress from the Democratic majority; meanwhile, the blue corner has given us an article suggesting that, contrary to the dominating right-wing psycho babble prophecies, left-wing voters like to see their goals met by Congress and the President, and as healthcare reform was a major goal that has been met (the degree to which the bill satisfies the left is debatable, but I say: progress is progress), and Democrats should have no trouble holding on to their majority. I would like to discuss each article separately in terms of how realistically they portray the legislative and political realities of American government. 

Before I continue, I would like to point out that I am in no way qualified to discuss political issues with any shred of credibility. I get my news from MSNBC, which I try to watch for at least a few hours every day, if I have time. I am a liberal with no formal training in any of this stuff. My opinions on politics are the result of my experience as an extremely poor college student, countless political debates, and, of course, old fashioned "rational" thinking. 

Real Clear Politics is a good name. One might assume that by visiting this website, he will indeed read something that is real, and clear about politics. I'm not going to be fooled so easily. I would like to briefly show how, judging by the article assigned for today, this website is not a reliable source of information (as much as entertainment; but sadly, I think some people will mistake it for information). 

The article "Obama's Best Hope: A GOP Congress" starts off with a humorous image of a sort of somber procession of left-wing congressmen dressed in black. They are on their way to President Elect Bill Clinton to announce their enthusiastic support for his legislative agenda. Why are they dressed in black? Well, according to Rich Lowry, a man that I have never heard of (but I'm sure he knows what he's talking about as well as I do), they are dressed in black because they will fail to satisfy Clinton's wishes in the future. Let's just look at the source text: "They were the leaders of the Democratic Congress, and they might as well have been draped in black crepe... Two years later, Clinton stood among smoldering political ruins." Interesting. They "might as well have been dressed in black" because they will fail their President within two years? If they were so pessimistic from the start, wore black like the Supreme Court, and wept like little children because they saw their future in a crystal ball, then the healthcare debate of the early nineties would not have taken place, and then who knows? Maybe the democrats would have kept Congress because their "socialistic ideology" would not have been revealed to the “center-right" people of the country. The point is, this article is relying on a ridiculous rhetorical strategy to prove a point, and I'm not sure it makes any sense, even if it made somebody out there chuckle. The ultimate moral of Lowry's anecdote: "woe unto you who try to govern a center-right country with a left-wing Congress." Clinton's Presidency was "nearly destroyed" because he trusted his own party, in other words. The religious reader of this article will probably read about Clinton's first midterm election fate and think to himself, "ha! Serves him right. I mean, Tom Foley, what an ass, he can't do anything, and Clinton should have just asked the Republicans to write all his stuff. Sometimes the wrong people get elected." I'm just making assumptions here, but the point is that this article could possibly be very misleading to people who are not so well informed. 

Also (and this is probably what I'm supposed to be focusing on), the President does not rule Congress. Congress is a separate body of power that exists outside of the White House. They do whatever they want. The President can influence them with powerful political threats, but only if they're in his party. Besides that, all he can do is veto legislation, which Congress can over ride. He can introduce bills to congress, I believe, but only if a representative does it for him. I've never understood how the otherwise excellent entity that is the American People could somehow link the success of a President to the doings and not-doings of Congress. Well, Real Clear Politics and other right-wing noise machines probably have something to do with that. And the left. Really, appealing to the lowest common denominator is the root of this issue. It's easier to say "Congress screwed up and therefore the President screwed up" than to get into the nitty gritty of the political process and our system of czechs and balances. 

 ANYWAY 

The article continues: "If Pres. Barack Obama is ever going to regain the ground he's lost as a bipartisan healer determined to transcend ideological divisions, he'll need to have Speaker Nancy Pelosi or Majority Leader Harry Reid or both shunted back to the minority. For Obama, a Republican Congress could be a counterintuitive political boon."

 1. Becoming the transcender of political divisions is not Obama's goal. His goal is to lead the country in a better direction. The Republicans, as the deserving minority, can come along if they want, but they are not, nor were they ever, necessary, or anything more than an obstruction. They can complain about being left out of the legislative process, but they are as involved in it as they want to be, and so far they have only chosen to lie to their constituents consistently, obstruct the political process, and destroy Obama. "So be it" is Obama's reaction, I imagine. Anyone who thinks Obama is more concerned with pleasing Republicans by calling tort reform healthcare reform is sadly mistaken and has no idea what the people who actually voted for Democrats in 2008 really wanted. 

2. Speaker Pelosi and Harry Reid, as leaders of Congress, can and will do whatever they think is politically best for themselves and the future of the country (hopefully not in that order), as will the President. I believe Lowry means to say that Obama should consciously do something to put the dems back into the minority because that would help him politically. My question for Lowry: what sort of political capital could be gained helping Republicans win Congress? I'm pretty sure that Chris Matthews and others might see that and rail against him for it for the rest of his term. Not much of a political boon if you ask me, but again, I am an uneducated poor person and the only reason anyone can read my opinions is because of the internet. Technology and Universal Suffrage: now there's some poison for "real clear politics." 

The passage above is the essential message of the whole article and many more fallacy ridden speculations and twisted historical examples are used to back it up, and I don't think I need to get into all that. I will only focus on the end, because damn, I'm really enjoying this. 

Lowry concludes that after Clinton lost both houses of Congress (as opposed to individual congressmen losing their seats to Republicans, which sounds closer to the facts), he was still able to pass meaningful legislation, like "welfare reform" and "deficit reduction" as well as "incremental steps on health care that were popular and sustainable" ("popular and sustainable" meaning "small and nearly meaningless compared to what could have been if the Republican apocalypse prophets took the decade off"). Pretty nifty accomplishments. However, if you asked Clinton, or any Clinton supporter from that time, "Would you have rather have seen deficit reduction, or healthcare reform?" I'm sure the answer would be a unanimous "healthcare reform." 

Finally, Lowry gets in one more joke: "Obama probably doesn't consider a Republican Congress in his interest. But with all he's done to bring one about, who knows?"

hahahaha 

I suggest a few changes: Obama probably doesn't consider a Republican Congress in his interest because all Republicans want to do is defeat Obama in 2012. Duh. But with all he's done to bring one about, who knows?

 Supposing I have not already typed the readers to sleep, I will proceed to the next article. This is "Van Hollen: Democrats Are Still the Party of Change, Will Keep Their Majority" from Politics Daily.

 Jill Lawrence, author of this article, and another writer I have never heard of, begins by saying what we all know: Republicans strategists, snug in their beds, are sleeping with unrealistic goals this election season, while visions of sugar plums and little else dance in their heads. They believe that the American people will be apalled by the "change" that Obama and his Democratic Congress have brought, and will vote Republican. Democrats, according to Lawrence, are prepared to bring their dreams to an end, however. 

Democrats ran on a very successful and somewhat vague platform of "change" in 2008, and won a pretty decent victory, adding to the gains of 2006. Presumably, they voted for the liberals who said they would bring healthcare reform to Americans in desperate need because that is what they wanted. Republicans will somehow try to tell the people who voted blue the past few years that the change we have received is not the change we wanted. They will probably run on a "change" platform as well, since that seems like the thing to do, but their idea of change is hardly change at all. Tax cuts, shitting on gay rights, bombing Muslim countries, the same old conservative approach to everything, will be offered by the right. They will call the democrats communists, socialists, Marxists, Washington insiders in bed with Kim Jong Ill and Hugo Chavez, and Sarah Palin, a potential Antichrist, will make even more insane statements than these (she'd nuke Iran in response to a cyber attack, or computer hacking. No, maybe she isn't the Antichrist. Maybe she's just stupid). That is their strategy. It is a response to what they see as the destruction of their precious super wealthy white male favoring status quo. Meanwhile, democrats will combat these foreseeable attacks with the assertion that if the right regains Congress, we will again be at risk of recession-causing Bush policy.

 The left will have a fair case to make since many of the voters casting their ballots will still be reeling from unemployment and foreclosure. The Democrats only job is to make it crystal clear that the reason they are in that mess in the first place is because the Republicans have no clue how to govern, and that the left is trying its best to clean up their mess. Their campaign slogan should read something like: "Yes, we know you're still on the brink of financial disaster, dear voter, but it was the Right that got you into this mess, and even though we've been in power for two years, we're seriously doing our damndest to help you out. Honest! So please please please vote for me." Very catchy. Lawrence says that it should be easy to show that the Democrats are the ones who are trying to help, as not a single Republican voted for the stimulus package or the healthcare bill. They will also have to show that these two things have had a positive effect, but I'm guessing that won't really be as much of a focus because it requires more less-interesting words to prove or disprove. The discourse of campaigns never really changes.

 Unlike Lowry's article, Lawrence points to the fact that that a win is a good thing and the recent healthcare victory has energized liberals all over the country. I myself felt a brief pang of happiness when I saw the bill pass. The right may be energized as well, but only in the most negative, reactionary way. Death threats and bricks through windows and all that. Republicans will not vote for financial reform, campaign finance reform, or anything else as long as a democratic Congress is responsible for passing it. Eventually, their constituents will realize that their representatives have done absolutely nothing and vote blue. Hopefully. The democratic campaigns should focus on that.

 Lawrence has very little to say that I find interesting, but at least she uses statistics to support her argument: the President's approval rating is higher than was Reagan's or Clinton's around this time, while historical trends say that the Republicans will pick up seats. I doubt very much that the right will gain a majority in either house, especially with the tea baggers siphoning votes from the Republicans. They don't know what they're doing. Also, Lawrence says Rep. Van Hollen says (<--- crappy) "Republicans were considered a real alternative governing party in 1994, when they won a House majority after decades in the wilderness. This time, he said, disaffection with Democrats isn't translating into affection for the GOP." Perhaps this is because Republicans seem to only have a voice in people like Cheney, Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, and nothing to show for their conspiracy theories besides a serious pandering problem. Ultimately, this is not 1994, according to Van Hollen.

The Lawrence article seems like a better reflection of the reality of the 2010 Congressional races. She only uses the name "Obama" four times, while Lowry uses it ten times. Lowry focuses on generalities, and Lawrence focuses on the opinion of a congressman, polls, and solid reasoning. She does not seem to want her readers to believe that Obama is the leader of congress, in other words. 

I'm not sure what I have just accomplished, but I had a good time here in McMicken. Thanks for reading. If this is not the sort of thing you're looking for, let me know. I love a good political rant.

beavis_the_wise

Oh Christ, here we go again. It looks like I’m trying to sit down at the old table or desk with a pen and paper or a keyboard attached to a computing device so I can pretend that I’m writing something important that the whole world will be insanely interested in if I ever actually complete it. I’m thinking at this moment that there is nothing or no one in the world that will take up arms against some force in the name of a cause of some sort or think in a different way, even slightly, as a result of reading this, and that is a result, being read, I mean, that I do not think this will even ever achieve. But still I do it. I think it’s insanity, if the definition, that it is something done over and over gain with the expectation of a different result, is correct. But then again, maybe it is not insanity. It’s not like I expect anybody to read this. So what? I’m writing, understanding that there’s no purpose, and I’m not under any illusions in that department, but I’m doing it anyway, and I do it very often, and over and over again, and the content of my shit never changes, no matter what I eat. Color, consistency, stench, and what ever, are all always the same. Corn has as much effect as a can of chili, after all – in my case, certainly. And this turdy analogy is necessary in order for me to express to you the only thing we two in this relationship between subject and object or reader and writer is the fact that my writing is shit. It always will be, I think.

Anyway, that little bit of nothing but a pile of smelly self-degradation will serve as my attempt to invoke a muse. I do that kind of thing from time to time. In my glorious work of art about the coming Armageddon as I see it, I invoked the muse of the sun, with its rays of illumination that took all uncertainty towards the future out of their dusky shadows within the nooks of my sad mind, state of affairs. Those were better times in terms of my own ability to be creative. Things change, and I have quickly learned the truth in the idea that when there is no junk, there is no soul. So anyway, on then. Get on with it. Hurry along now.
 

First off, I am interested in using assonance in a certain way. Every word shall end with the same vowel sound in its final syllable, of short sentences, phrases, commas, a length that will otherwise be determined by the number of syllables, as feels right at the time, so as to create a sort of system of composition. And now I will relate to thee the ways in which it can be said that driving through the snow is like driving through a haunted house: The interstate journey begins with optimism cautious; a destination across the river to be reached after sufficient space has been bridged. But soft! What snow from yonder snow storm covers the road? What road? It is the ramp between the loop and the lateral! Steady as she goes. A car has taken a spill for the worse and now some stranded motorists mingle on the side and are beaten by the slush of my speed, though it truly is not fast. All along this highway to hell, there are abandoned cars that scream for movement, and I am reminded at their every appearance that it is not the time to drive like a maniac: see that sign that reflects my speed, even though I have an speedometer? Put the big seven O on the board, please! No. Not today at least.
 

Okay, so I broke my promise. How’s about instead I write myself for you a little poem on my old guitar here? Thatta sounds like it’ll be justta fine wit me? Yeah, I’ll say. Fuck you: … Actually, hold that thought. I need to write a few more lines of gibberish so that when I begin my undertaking – a poem of special magnificence, it will all appear on the same page. I bid thee good day, page! I said good day! Get the fuck out of my sight. And asshole to my right, you sigh like a tornadic bumbling butt bucket; sneezes, mucus laden cough throat clearings: silencio!

There was a time when I started my things with the thing that is as follows: there was a time when mortals embraced thunder and majesty and what not – however, there is a time for such motifs of unrelatable allusion; and then there are times for reminiscing about the lack of need for afore mentioned rhetorical strategies. There is no need for the needless when one may resort to passive references to the things that remind us of the things that have happened in the past, so as to aid in the creation of a more perfect signifier of times gone by. Times gone by: the pluralization of “time” is a thing that is somewhat meaningless when you think about the moment to moment passage, and quantifying the number of such times is difficult from any objective standard. What I’m trying to say here is this: I have absolutely nothing to say, though there are things that I would like to discuss. That is the reason I have called this meeting to order. 

 It occurred to me the night before that I have a tendency to the negative course of action, if the positive course of action is any action at all and a negative is not. So here’s the situation, as it was, the night before:
 I’m sitting out here on the damn porch with a paraphernalia device that intoxicated the soul with the things that are condemned by the racists of the era of another kind of prohibition, and in that manner, I carried out a session of ritualistic mind decay, which can be habit forming in cases involving individuals with addictive personalities. The chemicals that react with the brain of such a subject are excited to a term that I have described, from such states, as clockwise paranoia, or even paraclockwise paranoia, should the reader prefer the repetition of my favorite prefix in place of a more clear meaning. I am of the opinion that the latter is preferable because lately it has come to my focused attention that the purpose of literature is less to convey a meaning, than a feeling, and the art of writing comes in when visceral, primordial feelings are included in the potential capacity of a text, as it is more difficult to communicate the subjective with such a limited medium as words, and success towards that goal is always more elegant. Let not my writing here prove as an example in the contrary, for I am not attempting to write anything that anybody would ever want to read, no matter what. If this was the last piece of text on earth that the last man on earth had access to, he would kill himself out of sadness for the loss of all meaningful human achievement, being left with only my ramblings that are the result of a mind that is out of all ideas, or thoughts. And given  all this, you still must put aside the majority of what I have so far said, because my current intention is to tell a story, and though I have only covered a span of real time in the past of a matter of less than a minutes, I will leave the story as it is here, meaningless and empty, because that will better get my meaning across. Fuck you.

 This is a story about a… well, you’ll know what it’s about when you see. 

Lady’s sitting at a bus stop with a poodle. It’s white and fluffy with pink frills, and the red glow of its fiery demon eyes makes the drool that slips down its unusually long yellow fangs glow with a phosphorescence that aids an old man on the other end of their mutual bench, peering through thick black rimmed glasses at his crossword puzzle. He makes sure to keep out of the kill zone of the dainty high society type’s demon hound: the cross-dressing son of a homosexual Cerberus, minus two severed head stumps. 

The bus is running late, and the sun sets behind the towering slum scrapers. Scummy street lamps and the poodle’s eyes are the only sources of light. The lady is motionless, with a stony gaze that expresses utter disgust for her present surroundings. She is late for a charity dinner and now she’s stuck in a god forsaken ghetto full of the scum of society, somewhere in those crumbling  apartments, surrounded by empty needles and beer boxes and whatever other stereotypical items of the ne’er-do-well allude me; the lady’s search for unseen recipients of her disdain. The poodle sits obediently by his owner, and without drinking, the drool still continues the unnatural flow, until the bus stop sidewalk is flooded with the oily glow of demon spit. With a disco ball, it would have been a pretty wicked dance floor. The old man is also drooling, and only becomes aware of the tardiness of the bus when his own slobber waterlogs his crossword puzzle, and it dissolves in his shriveled hands into soggy gray pulp. The dog laps it up, consuming, along with it, a fair amount of its own dribble. Shortly after, it marks its territory by pissing all over the pay phone receiver that is dangling to the ground, and it steams in the cold air, adding a mystical mist to the scene, and it smells bad.

The lady keels over and dies from starvation: the unfed folds of her blubbery, classy body could not be sustained by the smell of greasy food coming from the nearby Asian restaurants alone, and gravity drags her fat into a shape like a puddle; her arms and legs become buried and only her head remains discernable among the bubbling mass of damn-near-liquid flesh.

The old man and the poodle join forces to marvel at the pool of fat ass that has formed, and that’s when a police officer sees them from across the street. He urgently makes his way to them, not even pretending to dodge the speeding traffic, because in these parts, a long streak of perfectly acceptable brutality has maintained a solid respect for the badge. The police officer nonchalantly pulls out his pistol and shoots one of the lion head statues that guard either side of the bench. I have to admit that they were quite threatening, in their prime. The old man, with his hearing aids, which bulge out of his ears through a forest of long gray ear hair, is startled by the shot in a manner that he had not known since his frantic days as a doughboy in the trenches of WWI. By the time he had finished shitting his pants, his false teeth were already shattered on the ground, expelled by a wheezy gasp. 

The dog betrayed a similar change in awareness, and gazed up at the police man. The police man, however, due to a force whose properties have always eluded the scientists gnawing, was transformed into a towering penguin dressed in the uniform of a Bronze Age Roman soldier. “I ain’t going to California, quack! Quack!”

Then you’re at the wrong bus stop, sir.” The dog could talk. A rusty metal sign agreed, reading: “This is a bus stop for people going to California.”

The Roman soldier killed the dog with a swift stroke of his short sword, being angered at this transgression against obvious imperial authority, and at that moment, all the lamp lights went out, the glow faded from its eyes, and a blast wave of supernatural energy exploded out in all directions, incinerating the old man and the Roman penguin soldier. All windows in a wide radius were blown out and a spring rain of shattered glass calmed the sleeping scum to gentle dreams.
 

beavis_the_wise

I was thinking about this for a while and I realized that there is a thing that I’ve been considering for quite an  amount of time now and I think that now that it’s been brought to my attention, it has come to my mind that it is time to realize a proper way in which I may better convey the general gist of the idea that has come to my focus, and the blur of reality itself has been decimated in one fell swoop of though-thinking. I think that the original consideration that was troubling my psyche with sharp daggers of alchemy has been warded off – banished – by the improved concept that I’ve been developing, as if the new idea was a crowd of red necks with torches and pitchforks and they tied up the false abstract and metaphorically tied it’s arms behind its back and made it ride a donkey backwards over a cliff where it became battered by spikes and rocks and stuff.

I was thinking about this all day: the new age, when it begins, will take us by surprise. Without historians from the future to tell us about how, on that glorious day when the world sang in unison for the destruction of the pyramids, and the obliteration of Stonehenge, and the crushing of all Mayan temples, and the demolition of all Greek and Roman monuments, and all things that represent a façade of a lie that has guided the course of all civilization, and how the Gods came from a sun shining part in the clouds to descend from Olympus to assist our wrecking balls with their titanic might, we will be unable to comprehend the fact that it has begun. And under such circumstances, it cannot be possible for Armageddon to unfold. Leave it to the historians in the future to tell the students of the day that when everything changed forever, they did not know it, and their calendars were never right for at least a hundred more years. They looked around them at the smoldering remains of ancient empires and knew that it was so. And it was good.

There will be a revision of Christianity. It appears that the Bible had it right, but only partly. The thing is, Jesus, before he was imbued with the holy spirit, he was just a normal boring pizza delivery man. He would ride all the way from Bethlehem to Jerusalem to deliver pizza to his people. One day however, he got a call from a number that his caller ID could not process. He answered, and said, “Yay, hello. Thanks for calling Jesus Pizza. How may I serve thee? Bitch?”

And God said, “Hey, I want a pizza for delivery, with pepperoni, sausage, green peppers, ham, bacon, beef, onions, pancetta, proscuitto, hot capicola, feta cheese, goat cheese, low fat mozzarella cheese, ricotta cheese, with garlic and olive oil and extra red sauce, oregano, basil, tomatoes, kalamata olives, jalapeno peppers, banana peppers, gorgonzola cheese, portabella mushrooms, regular mushrooms, psychedelic mushrooms, a piece of the true cross, of course (which I’ll tell you about in a minute), and on half, make sure you give me extra extra artichoke hearts, green onions, beans, chili sauce, turkey, lettuce, pickles, diced pineapples, and a diet cola just dumped all over that bitch, yo.”

And God explained to Jesus that the only way to bring a pizza to God was to die on the cross.

I don’t know how all that other dumb shit got into the Good Book.

I have a night light that is actually a miniature version of the city-sized space craft from the movie Independence Day. I found it in the woods. Seems like some race of tiny aliens wanted to invade the planet. I fucked them up but good. So the space ship is a night light now, and it shines green light from the primary weapon hole that keeps me calm when I’m scared at night. It also serves as an alarm clock. It doesn’t have a snooze button. If this thing senses that you’re not going to get out of bed, it blasts a fusion reaction laser beam of death at you, and you explode. I know this because I tested it on a homeless man after the aliens hinted that this might happen, as the death craft was not designed to be such a thing, and in such employment, it could be disastrous. I’m not sure how to fix it. Does anybody know of a good clock repair shop?
 

beavis_the_wise

I had a dream last night that made me wake up laughing.

I was meeting with a bunch of people, and remember one person in the room had a beard with hair that was clearly bent at a sharp angel. I asked somebody why this guy's beard was bent like that, and they said, "That guy doesn't take life seriously at all. Last summer he spent everyday getting hit in the face with those cream pies, and sitting on those things that dunk you into water when you hit the target with a baseball. He's a real moron." So for me, the funny thing was that he got hit in the face by so many pies that his chin hairs were forever bent. Fucking brain of mine.

Don't ask me. I couldn't tell you.

beavis_the_wise

I switched to a different computer lab and now I’m typing on a very proper keyboard identical in model to the one I massage at home, and I could go back and remove that last entry, but then again, Fuck it.

So anyway, here’s where things stand at this moment: yesterday I had an interview for a new job in the industry that has thus far been so gracious to me, and ye, has given me so much, and through which I have yielded blessings beyond my capacity to understand – the pizza industry, mind you, which I have been a part of for the past nearly four years. I have toiled by the burning ovens and boiling water; and I have breathed in the flour in the air to the point that the tar in my lungs is in competition with forming doe; I have burned my weary hands which now map out these years of hardship, in times of  barren payment under the table, times of laborious busyness, times wrought with sorrow, according to one Tim McClain, in that the dining room lay desolate. I have been rewarded, for my troubles, with the most undeserving pay of less than eight dollars an hour. I have moved out of my independence, and my intoxication, and my cat’s common dwelling, and the cultural center of a university, and lost all my furniture to the ravages of financial destitution – but, ye!, these blessings from the pizza industry that have been visited upon me, carried by the wings of an angel carrying a dollar sign bag, are not a curse, oh no! And so I did indeed interview for yet another position in this industry. I am up and coming. Get the fuck out of the way, Papa John. I’m coming to get you. Dewey’s Pizza. The interview went alright, I suppose. The guy said that given my experience at a restaurant that makes all of its own food from fresh ingredients, I should fit in just fine to the “Dewey’s Team.” Fine. Just great, you know what I’m saying? The thing is, and this may be a deal breaker on my part, that there are currently not enough open shifts for me to get a job there. Whatever. They have my phone number. And so my subjugation to the forces of pepperoni continues. This whole paragraph is stupid stuff. I hope you didn’t read it.

So anyway, here’s another place where things stand as of this moment: yesterday I watched the State of the Union address by President Obama (and I find it hilarious that MS Word still calls that name a spelling error, suggesting that I replace it with “Osama.” Or to put it another way, “fuck you, Microsoft Word, you stupid bastard.”). He did a good job, in this humble commentator’s opinion. But I must say I think his little “spending freeze” idea is a political disaster, and a meaningless nod toward the people who are forming themselves to oppose the democrats in 2010. A pretty stupid move. And only 17% of the federal budget would be affected anyway. Here’s my idea: cut the fuck down on the damn defense spending. Boom. I said it. And yes, when I say that, I really mean, “open up airport security. Encourage terrorists to come.” Just kidding, tools. But no, I mean it. I think we spend a bit too much. Consolidation, my friends. Think about it. There was a clip from one of the 2008 presidential debates in which John McCain suggested that we freeze federal spending to cut down budget deficits, and Candidate Obama said that was a bad idea.  Well, way to go Mr. President! You got elected, and the conservatives govern anyway. You struck out big time.

That was my biggest problem with the speech. The rest of it was decent, I suppose. I especially liked when he called out the entire Supreme Court for their ruling that makes it easier for corporations to lobby the federal government (even if it is not necessarily beneficial to that congressmen’s constituency). Their expressions (the ones who didn’t look like mummies unwrapped, anyway) were priceless. I liked how he called out the democrats of Congress for running away with their tails between their legs like frightened puppies every time a political decision needs to be made, and how he told the Republicans that saying “No” to everything is no way to legislate (even if there are political rewards.) The overall best section of the speech though was near the end when he started talking about presidents and Congresses that did things for the sake of the country, and not their own short-term future; that the American people would prefer it if Congress did not appear to be in a perpetual election. Plouffe probably said, "Fucking homerun," at that, as he did in a few places in his book, The Audacity to Win, which I have just finished reading today.

The right may have started applauding him around the end of the speech, but no minds were changed.

I think Obama should be renamed “President Zarathustra.” He is on the right track, but he is dealing with a community that is operating in the wrong century. He is a precedent; an example of better things to come. Ein spieler besserer spieler! Oh, meine Brüder! Ein Beispiel! Volgt sein vorspiel!

That’s how progress happens.

And now on to more interesting things. The other night, I had the most insane dream that I have had in quite a good long while. It began with something having to do with me in some kind of air force training camp in the future, playing some kind of war game. It got more vivid when war was declared! Shit shit shit! Jet planes were all over the runways that stretched into the rolling hills, and further beyond the horizon. I jumped into the back of one, waiting for a fighter pilot to get in the driver seat and take off. None came, and all around me military personnel scrambled to ready the fleet. John McCain was in the jet to my left and quickly motioned for me to join him in the back, which must have been the gunner seat. I got in, and we flew off. The destination was the war torn city of San Francisco, where the Japanese had unleashed some serious hell. Buildings were crumbled, concrete and rubble filled the streets, and no wall was complete any longer. Imagine the scene in Haiti, only in San Francisco, beneath glowing red and darkened skies with clouds like horizontal plumes of volcanic ash and smoke and fire. Holy God, it was apocalyptic. We were flying close to the ground to avoid enemy radar, and from the back I managed radio communications with the rest of the squadron. I was probably also remarking on the fact that John McCain was still alive and flying planes in this crazy future world, as I was unaware that this was actually a dream. I cannot comment on the success of our mission, because the next thing I remember is standing out in the front yard of my old house on Hunters Knoll, without any trees, right outside the front door, and looking up to the skies to behold the dog fight above me. The jets were transformed into the shapes of gigantic 747s but lost none of their maneuverability. The 747 Jets, let’s call them F-747s, were flipping and zipping through the air, American versus Japanese, directly over the completely non-strategic location of Cincinnati, Ohio. Some of the F-747s were leaving a trail of smoke behind them, and were flying erratically, as if to crash. They launched missiles and things at each other, and spiraled up to the sky before spiraling back down during their death dance. I was overwhelmed with the scene, and did not notice the fact that from the left, a gigantic futuristic-looking and flimsy WWI style airplane with guns and shit was landing in the front yard. It stopped right in front of me. I knew right away that it was their intention to kill some important member of the American government. Unfortunately, some certain members of my family attempted to take matters into their own hands and kill the crew of three in the retro future craft, but failed. I got really pissed at that point and somehow killed them, I guess. Don’t remember how, but I remember thinking I did. It was pretty funny.

And that keyboard that I was talking about in the previous entry was called “Keytronic,” which is a fact that goes a long way toward reaffirming my belief that nearly everything that is not metal that deals with the suffix “tronic” or “tron” is an utter catastrophe and a thing to be despised. See ya.