Latent/Blatant

i can't look at you.

i'm not hitting on you.

i want to play dumb.




...they say that everything you go through in life

that's what you become,

if that's the case

than i'm becoming number one.

you can't read with music like this playing...

it would be no biggie to me to drift off on the couch and die while white label aphex twin is on the stereo...

the script has been flipped, party people.  sterling is the one out on a limb while i'm cool, calm and collected...my patience, however is wearing thin.  i'm like david banner, feeling that first twinge of annoyance between my shoulder blades...

and meanwhile there is sterling, brilliant and biblical, standing over a sea of daffodils and claiming that every one of them has a soul.

 

 
 
 
it's funny how things happen, sometimes.
 
the first time i went to tony pierce's site, this was the pic he had posted.
 
it's of johnny knoxville, of jackass fame.
 
i didn't know that back then, however, as i had never seen the show.  i was living without television having accidentally tackled my cute blue toshiba late one night, killing it instantly.  the screen smashed into a zillion pieces all over the floor.  my big regret is that i didn't snap a pic of the carnage.  it twinkled like the milky way.  a year later i was still finding shiny bits in corners and under furniture.  anyway, i was all set to front with the warranty card when sterling convinced me it was fate, and that i shouldn't buy or procur a new set.  television brings you down, she told me.  she had been living without one ever since she got clean, as watching TV reminded her too much of how she used to spend her mornings getting drunk on heineken and riding the H train.  she gave a little speech about "what we can learn from the punk lifestyle" that was so convincing that i followed her advice and went without one, figuring that if there was something important to watch i could always go to a bar or scam on someone who i didn't owe money.
 
so i missed the whole jackass phenom...i was going to try and catch the movie version, but i never got around to it.  so when i saw the above pic i had no idea who it was and assumed it was this tony guy himself.  fabulous, i thought.  i loved the rough looking hands, the facial hair, and the flag in the background.  was he blowing us a wish?  i noticed the "nothing in here is true" and it intrigued me all the more, as i had just started BTB and was looking to enact a similar creed.  mine was a little more open ended though:  "Somewhere in space, this could all be happening right NOW".  it's a sample from a kool g. rap song, actually.  yep--like most of the best shit on this site, it was stolen.
 
anyway, the point of all of this is that two years later i finally saw an episode of jackass...on some fucked up satelite channel on sterling's big ass TV.  that's right, along the way on her journey to extreme yuppiedom, sterling rearranged the pillars of her punk ethos and somehow justified buying a home entertainment system.  shit is fat as hell, lemme tell you.  invisible speakers and a bassbox, a screen that's thinner than the august issue of vanity fair.  i've been over there babysitting her bewildered ass and catching up on all sorts of pop moments.  jackass has gotta be up there with the best.  how come none of you made me watch it before?  fucking hell.  it's like, exactly what i've been aspiring to with this blog.  crashing into shit and getting hurt on purpose and recording it for the masses.  the select masses that is--those who don't take life TOO seriously and appreciate a good old fashioned RUSH.  i loved the part where one of the dudes goes around town with a big ol dildo in his shorts, fronting like he has a raging boner while perusing a guitar shop and working out and getting fitted for a suit.  then there was the "blind" guy getting into a car and "running over" a bicyclist...the urban kayaking in public fountains...johnny knoxville's failed attempt at jumping the LA river on rollerskates.
 
it's perfect--failure is success--yr a champ if you get knocked out
 
pain is real, ego is not...
 
anyway

i had some kinda ephiphany last night, sitting there on the couch with my cigarettes while sterling slept in the other room.  it carried over to today.  i can't really put it into words yet.  it has something to do with feeling the fullness of time, like when you are way out in the ocean and a giant wave passes through you...the feeling of being alone, but not lonely...i don't know.  this morning i read an email from a friend whom i had a falling out with.  he wasn't asking to make-up, he just wanted to say he was sorry for having hurt me.  which he did, big time.  he also said he hoped that i could maybe do the same--you know, write someone i had had some beef with and tell them i was sorry, even if it wouldn't change things.
 
so OK.  there you go.  tony pierce, we were never super tight and you might be a right bastard and a wannabe pimp, but if it wasn't for you, i don't think i'd be as deep into this blog game as i am.  and for that i'm grateful.  and also for the kurdt posts from back in the day.  those were inspiring, man...
 
anyway, sorry if i ever hurt you.
 
that is all.
 
thank-u, drive-thru...
 
 
 
 
 

money, power, respect

sterling has totally lost it.  i always knew the day would come again...you see kids, you don't need drugs to fry yr brain.  a nine to fiver will have the same effect.
 
but it's weird, you know...now that she's got this big unrequited romance with a dude i find myself able to put my arm around her, maybe even touch the side of her face like girls who are best friends do to one another in the movies.
 
ahhh...the movies...i think i'm going to get high and go to one right now.  sit in the back and shoot half chewed skittles out of one of those big ass green starbucks straws.
 
 
in the meantime, big ups to radiohumper and the rest of the beef kids for holding it down while we deal, crisis mode style with my girl's impending unemployment and other, less mendable disasters...i mean, i haven't had a legal gig in years and that's never stopped me from looking dapper as fuck.
 
 
also, one love to my day ones
 
raymi, jamie, anti
 
next level blogs, represent.
 
 
 
 
 

fresh like studmuffins

just when it seems like all hope is lost and the world is going to hell in a cheap ass faux louis vuitton handbag from canal street, my beefcake Canadian supermodel comes through in the clutch with some fashion forward pix:



dig on rosie the riveter there in the background, IMPLORING US to ACT…the scandal of our lifetime is unraveling around us…they treated us like a buncha dumb fucks and LIED to our faces about why we were going to war

now it’s up to us to change the tide

don’t just change the channel

they knew we’d never go for it if they used the words “regime change”

don’t just change the channel

so they fed us some fat WMD bait dipped in 9/11 special sauce

don’t just change the channel

our intelligence is a joke, we aren’t safe

don’t just change the channel

his approval rating is starting to drop, slowly but surely

don’t just change the channel

think of all the dead soldiers, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters who aren’t coming back

don’t just change the channel

not to mention the Iraqi civilians

don’t’ just change the channel

the injured, the maimed, the kids, man

don’t just change the channel

the effin kids







instead repeat after me:

we can do it

we can do it

we can do it


it’s now or never, party people.

fuck bush

i was just at the world trade center and there were all these tourists and cops dressed like nazis with machine guns and i had a line of dried vomit on my sleeve from the night before and i only realized it at the cross walk when everyone took a step away and no one would look at me and i felt my eyelids with my fingertips and they were completely swollen and my teeth were coated with psychadelic wool and i was so lonely i could cry and all i wanted to do was cross the street and get back down into the subway but more cops were passing by in their cruisers, one after another, smoking cigarettes out the window with smug looks on their faces and i really needed to cross i really needed to get out of the light but this humungous pig put his arms out and said, "police excercise in progress, you'll have to wait," and he didn't look at me either, concerned instead with watching the slow procession of cars, 20, 30 maybe 40 in all, i thought i was going to lose it, i kept muttering, "whatthehell whatthehell," and rubbing away the clear coke snot that was running out of my nose like water from the tap.

then it finally occurred to me--this was a practice motorcade for some fat ass republican coming to pollute the city at the end of august.

"fuck you!" i shouted, as the last car pulled past, "fuck you nazi motherfuckers. you want protect us so bad--why don't you do something useful like learn arabic!"

doughboy turned to me, enraged, but the crowd was pushing forward and i ran through the middle and escaped out the other side

sugar high

fuck, why did I have all those cheap ass American chocolates now I feel like lashing out and I forgot what I want to write about. and I drank a coke too, from a fountain, not a can, and it had a funny aftertaste, like someone had tossed a Winston in the mix and let it ssssssoak. man you never know… I went into au bon pain and saw the guy who makes the sandwiches picking at this thing on the side of his face. he actually had the audacity to stare at his fingernail afterwards. then he went back to picking. if I knew how to projectile vomit I would have puked all over the counter. i was waiting for him to stick his finger in his mouth or better yet his ear and then his mouth. anyway I got the hell out of there. packaged food is the way to go. at least you have the choice of not really looking at what you eat. none of this hard skin shit hanging off your turkey sandwich. flesh rinds…they make me think of penis scabs, and dried pimple puss flakes and other beautiful things cooked up in mother nature’s crock-pot.

it’s like when you manage to score a seat on the express and the dude in front of you has his crotch in your face and you can totally smell it’s unwashed ripeness. and you wish you were dead or somewhere far away, all alone with waterfalls of green, irish spring soap bubbles foaming all around you.

speaking of trains, my favorite part of spiderman2 is when he’s trying to stop that faker than fake speeding train and he’s got his mask off and the rest of his costume still on and it’s this total heideggerian moment in which he’s kick-ass spiderman at the height of his powers and peter parker at the same time, for all the world to see.

according to Heidegger, truth is not a thing or a fact…it IS the act of unveiling…the act of taking something that was hidden and revealing it to the world…

spiderman IS peter parker and peter parker IS spiderman—the only way to fully live is to embrace the essential contradiction of your own existence…

(so says the girl named TRUEBOY…)

there is only one thing that is fer sere in this world. only one fact that you can be certain of—and that is that you are going to die.

once you grasp that, everything else in the world is possible.

of course when they laid homeboy down in the aisle you know if it was REAL new york folks would have been snapping his pic like crazy with their camera phones instead of nodding solemnly and promising to keep his secret.

ha yeah, spidey, don’t let em take yr pic…have the peter parker pr department provide em

become an entire corporation, onto yrself

brand that shit

then swing back on home to mary jane

fuck

coming down

coming coming

coming down


who’s gonna catch me?





the s stands for slicker than most

the j's like the jam on my toast

b's for my old school

chillymost...

and r's for a queen from the northwestern coast

protocol 1

12. Feeling of understanding Poe much better now. The entrance gates to a world of grotesques seem to open up. I simply prefer not to enter.

Independence Day

I got wasted and went looking for trouble. That said, not much happened. At least not that I can remember. I ended up at Stonewalls. We kissed at the bar, then I sat on top of him in an upstairs booth filled with fake snow, deflated pink balloons and empty drug baggies.

He had prickly stubble that I made wet with my saliva. His lips were soft. His mouth tasted like whiskey.

He chuckled about how hard he was. I remember the insistence of his hands on my back as he told me he hadn’t thought it was possible with a woman.

Hearing this in turn got me hot, but I remember everything stopped early, like maybe someone had intervened or I suddenly freaked out or something. But we both had our pants all the way on, this much I remember.

I think we smoked some weed in the boiler room later on. There were other people there but their faces were blurs, like in a dream or a dream sequence in a movie.




dirtylittlehomos

this chick was in my dream. she poured me a coca-cola.

Thank-U, Drive-Thru...

so i saw Fahrenheit 9/11 and i have to say that despite my many trepidations, i found it to be a pretty decent flick. mm's film making skills are top notch and this time he lays off the wacky-ass pseudo logic that plagued bowling for columbine. (the fact that defense contractors build missiles in colorado can in some way explain the actions of two fucked up teenagers? por favor!) thankfully, he doesn't say anything in f 9/11 that hasn't been reported elsewhere, and for the most part, (and this is merely an observation) i don't think anyone watching the film was SHOCKED by what they saw. for example, i think most americans know that bush and his daddy have been doing bidness with the saudis for several decades. yes, and we know that the saudis are two-faced, and yes, their own country is pretty much as far away from democracy as you can get, and yes they have a fat trillion invested in our country and yes, they get special treatment on account of that investment...OK, yes, yes, yes...we funnel down all of this info over the course of 2 hours, being reminded all the while that poor, disenfranchised kids from all over this country are (right now!) fighting a fucked up war that will make these same, reprehensible rich people even richer.

it's the same old story. it's the song we hate called "western civilization"...

and of course it's all well documented--the paper trails, the soundbites and film clips. mm takes care to cite the sources he pulls from--the wall street journal, the NY Times, Fox News, CNN...but it's not the individual bits of scandalous info that proove revelatory, it's the manner in which he puts them together and feeds them back to us that does the trick.

yes, feeds...that's the metaphor i want to explore...because while i think the film is good and worth seeing, it's the overall act of watching that i have a problem with. in more than one review, i've heard people describe how they left the theater feeling wiped out and depressed...and no wonder--the past four years are played back to us to the tune of "You Sure Got Fooled Again." we are the dupes, the stupid, well-meaning fucks who (on a daily basis) are overwhelmed by the circle jerk of media corporations and tricked by the rich, self-serving assholes who run our government, time and time again. according to the film, the only responsibility of the lowly citizen who is not an elected member of the government is that of the individual's responsibility to him or herself to survive--we see the soldiers "just trying to make it home" and get out of Iraq, we see a mother who has lost her son trying to come to terms with her grief and disillusionment in the country she used to love, we see the poor kids in flint, MI, just trying to get by and get an education...while all along cocky ass bush and his boys are giving great media head and making money hand over fist. mm never looks deeper, and he certainly doesn't offer any viable alternatives. he seems content to reinforce the idea that we are all just anonymous pawns, with nothing much to offer to the country as a whole. as a director, he at least has the camera, the enlightened consciousness and the connections who photocopy classified info for him--but we the people have nothing but to watch and learn.

how come he doesn't talk about why these dudes are so rich? how come he doesn't talk about why we are so beholden to oil, i.e., why doesn't he ONCE mention our country's love affair with the automobile? try counting the number of car commercials you see on TV sometime...it's outrageous! bush and his daddy and cheney and the saudis would be out of business if we refused to buy these gas guzzling machines. the trillion dollar investment would start to shrink if we agreed to raise the price of black gold per gallon to an amount that might actually curb our consumption of it...the reason these dudes are so rich is because YOU AND I ARE BUYING WHAT THEY ARE SELLING.

we can demand the implementation of alternative energy sources, we can car pool, we can take the subway, we can regulate fuel consumption

we can get off our fat, lazy, apathetic asses and start walking.

i saw f9/11 on times square, right around dinner time. just before it started i got on one of the 8 lines at the concession stand to get a bottle of water. all around me were fellow members of the f 9/11 audience, anxiously awaiting their turn to spend more money than the average iraqi sees in a month on a "snack". guts protruded over waistlines, dollar bills were clutched in fists...it was all i could do not to shout--"so this is what a revolution looks like in the year 2004!" this is how one gets their message across, in a super climate controlled setting, with extra cheese nachos and convenient bendy straws for super large cokes...

don't you see--y'all love yr lives. the comfort and greasy food and instagrat...you love yr brand new car and your plasma screen TV...

you love yr pills and yr potions, yr shrinks and yr televised emotions...in fact, if anything makes you sad it's that you want, no, you DESERVE MORE! more of everything! especially the right to point the finger at everyone else!

(and more than anything else right now we love DUBYA! yes, that's right! all of us, even me--i love him so much because he's the perfect bad guy for me to direct all my moral indignation upon)

we have become a nation of soft heads and bellies. we are greedy enough to believe we can "have it all" without anyone else having to suffer as a result.

the world, unfortunately, does not work that way.

in closing, i think f 9/11 is a good movie to see, because it accurately portrays one aspect of the problem...it shows just how wide we've allowed the gap between rich america and poor america to become. it also tears asunder the thin veils that our government put up between us and the "truth". in that, it is successful. but the important next step that mm does not take is to point out that it is WE who let it happen. it is time that WE wake up and get hard again. drop the fast food and get out of the car. shut off the TV and go outside...


the next step is to fucking do SOMETHING.

think

talk

read

write




free yrself from yrself for it is truly now or never.






you can start by writing a post for this site...

piiiiishhhhh


the feds are all over this site, btw

no beef, just bare bones

mmk

i'm gonna say this once and then that's IT.

(and no hyperlinks cuz i don't want shit to get HYPER)

wtf, man...i send you three invites to join my other blog and you can't even be fucked to send me a decline? that's rude, man. i've been polite and i haven't bugged you and i've given you plenty of time to draft a response.

after we buried the hatchet, you asked me to write for lick and i immediately wrote back that it was a nice offer, but i didn't have time to write for another site. sorry. i think i even wrote "sorry"--but if i didn't it was at least implied.

i think yr lame. i think yr getting old and going nowhere fast. i was so stupid to think you'd want to be a part of something new and exciting. i'm like, kicking myself, but whatever...

soon, when i get to where i'm going and i've taken whoever else with me, i'm going to look back in yr direction and laugh, laugh, laugh






...I feel constrained to add;I really do enjoy how you can be so
prolific, and yet seem so oblivious of your audience,but in a good
way. I can't find a way to put that in your comments without sounding
lame and stalkerish.

Oh, and if I didn't say it emphatically enough before, Tony Pierce is
an asshole who hasn't mattered for awhile. He's dug his niche, let him
bury himself in it. I have a hunch Ultrablognetic will be the new
BusBlog ,without the lard.

See you around.

...




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all the fake things get in the way

like air, food and water.




fuck yr job


i think it's time i started doing graffiti again.


and get the new site up

oh man you guys are gonna love it.


{d hjafasd;jf}

I do push-ups like I’m in the clink.

fast and loose

faster than you think

then I load her up

and I take a hit

that’s when I get psychic

that’s when i see shit

blue-green pictures in my mind’s eye

of millions living now

who will never die



it’s not like I can read yr brainwaves to find out what you think

rather, it’s about being plugged into the Central Generator

you know,

through the outlet over the sink

the same one that powers my own private Schwarzenegger

he brews me coffee thick as tar

and feeds me cherry now and laters

(while on American Idol a girl scalps herself to become a star)



yeah

me and my friends are so smart

we invented a new kind of art

we receive transmissions from the satellite fart

share a vibe

and erase our start



look

all I know is that I feel like something bad is gonna happen.

something big and fucked on the island of manhattan

and it has to do with how we’ve put the car before the yolk

and those who survive will be the punch line to the joke

they’ll hold hands and join a church and confess all their sins

they’ll have their cathartic memorials and print their t-shirts and wear commemorative pins



and because they’re alive

they’ll finally subscribe

and receive re-invigorated digitized beams for their plasma screens.

broadcasting beer commercials and fox five

anti-pot recriminations

fer the denizens of this daydreamnation

who will walk like zombies around the malls

waiting for danger

fer a pipebomb to pop their basket balls

fer a smuggled gun to smudge their maybelline face

or a black arab hand in their lap

to wipe away every last trace

of how life was before the big zap

when they never thought to make preparations for the dirt nap

that will someday be yours

while these streets will endure

lined with starbucks and krispy kremes

and the compact cars and hard on teen dreams

and TV TV TV

btw

I cried at the full monty

I cried at channel 13

at the story of the lone accountant who stood up and blew the whistle

and I cried at the way that fat woman on The Practice stuck up fer those kids

she was sharp as a pistol

the way she took some highly damning testimony, flipped the script and turned it into the greatest and most obvious defense of all time.

(oh, if only I had someone like that to take care of all my tiny little crimes!)





mott the cromby

I see the states, across this big nation
I see the laws made in Washington, D.C.
I think of the ones I consider my favorites
I think of the people that are working for me

Some civil servants are just like my loved ones
They work so hard and they try to be strong
I'm a lucky guy to live in my building
They own the buildings to help them along

It's over there, it's over there
My building has every convenience
It's gonna make life easy for me
It's gonna be easy to get things done
I will relax along with my loved ones

Loved ones, loved ones visit the building
Take the highway, park and come up and see me
I'll be working, working but if you come visit
I'll put down what I'm doing, my friends are important

I wouldn't worry 'bout
I wouldn't worry about me
Don't you worry about meeee




psychoticnormalcy

katzinjammer

k

gsusking

cocaine milk

i can always come here. i always feel welcome. i built this place with my own two hands. it's my world, my pearl. i own the land. someday, when it's dead and gone i'll drill a hole through the middle and suck all the oil out and use it for something else.

i feel like i'm burning my own fat to make soap.

(is that the only way i'll get clean?)

i like that my template is retro. i write some of this shit on the subway--the trains rock an old vibe too, so it all fits. also, my cd man is ancient and scuffed.

my notebooks are filled with maps and equations.

back in the day i would have been writing hieroglyphics and making masks.

no scratch that. i'm a woman, so back in the day i would have been a piece of property with a kid on each tit, sucking me dry, while my mind floated in another universe

steeped in those dark oscillations...

making up stories

stories and people

people and stories

somethin to get me the fuck out of wherever i was.




raymi, write me back.

the three of us were watching the funeral on friday. (see how it sounds like old news, already? that’s why they had to make that shit so long and involved, so there would be at least a CHANCE that it might get burnt into our short ass, TV-clipped attention spans.) anyway, don’t tell anyone but I got unexpectedly choked up over nancy. she looked so stricken, like a corpse herself. it reminded me that we all end up alone, even former first ladies.

“oh, sweetheart,” fitz intoned, without bothering to turn away from the screen. “it’s OK. It’s good that yr sensitive. It’ a good thing to see people as people and not just as political party props.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“I don’t know,” sterling said, as she slurped the last bit of her seltzer up with the orange bendy straw she had just bought at the 99 cent store. She crushed the can in her gloved hand and burped quietly before continuing.

“All I can say is that Carter better not kick the bucket any time soon, cuz no one will show up.”



junkyard

there have always been blogs, there will always be blogs. blogs have been around since the beginning of time, since the first scalping, the first bear rug the first telephone call and the first big mac.

blogs are like the salt shakers and little aluminum ashtrays next to the fake flower in the 99 cent vase that you use to stare back at yr puffy ass eyes.

and blogs are dying all the time: every time you wait a little longer to update, every time you go on vacation, every time you loose your connection, lines of javascript break off and float into the abyss like rust hairy chunks of the titanic…until there’s a web inside the web of corpses and flickering half-lives…stations along the road leading to nowhere…

the internet is for losers.

I imagine an intergalactic tourist looking down at this cloud of stupid ass political commentary, junkie war stories and cybersex fantasies and remarking,

“and here you can see the irrevocable proof that western civilization has indeed rounded the corner and headed into its final lap…”

the other week I was in a piss poor mood and toyed with the idea of putting up a list of sites I’ve managed to shut down during my illustrious blog career. mind you, none of us at BTB have ever purposely gone and fucked up anyone’s shit, except for the time fitz and I were fighting and he managed to hack into my profile on blogger, but that was only because he got his hands on my laptop. sere i play rough with folks and i always carry the verbal whip--but none of that tit for tat shit has resulted in someone quitting their shit. nope, on the contrary, I got along famously with the authors of the sites that actually shut down. we were like, friends, almost. friends who had never met. but then something happened. assumptions were made, lines crossed and shit got said…about how they couldn’t handle it, about how they might be in love with me, or sterling…about how they can’t tell fact from fiction and it’s fucking with their head, even though I’ve come out and shown my hand and offered to answer whatever questions they have. somehow it’s not enough. they tell me I’m sending out secret signals, subliminal messages that only they can hear—that I’m fucking with their heads, but the truth is, I’m not desperate or needy enough to satisfy their egos—they want me to want their words in the exact same way that they want mine. they call me selfish and cold and pure as the driven snow while they are the ones who refuse to accept me for the way I am.

which hurts, fer real…

cuz y’all are the only ones who can appreciate what I’m trying to do here. the few folks on the outside who I’ve told about the blog are usually pretty dismissive. “so what are you going to do with it?” they ask, and I’m like, I don’t know. nothing? “but how are you going to make any money off it?”

I won’t, I answer, and they look at me like I’ve got two heads.

but I know I’m right.

I know there’s a next level to this shit—I can feel it, I just can’t see it...

yet

when all hope is lost I’ve got my day ones to keep me strong. although I’ve connected with everyone on the prop list, those three are the only bloggers I “regularly” communicate with. Jamie in person and on the phone, anti on IM and raymi through telepathic mind hump…

one love, you guys.

also big ups to my boy IDEA, who I met on memorial day. we had breakfast @ 3 in the afternoon, holiday style.

welcome to the circle of trust, my Motown amigo.


in other mindfuck news, I told this asshole I was going to send him poop in the mail. I was being metaphorical, of course. at any rate, I’m like, blocked from the site right now, so can someone let me know if there are new developments? I hope my comments are still up, they are hi-lar-ious.

it's not trigonometry.

same old thing as yesterday

that whiteboy on the roof threatened to jump, so the whole block went outside to watch the cops talk him down. he seemed like just yr average, sullen motherfucker, and not at all like an edged-out case who was about to swan dive into eternity. also, he picked the shortest building on the block. it was like when I was 11 and used to carve at my wrists with a plastic takeout knife.



the cops yelled up that if he jumped, he most likely wouldn’t kill himself, “just fuck yrself up real bad”, which I thought was a pretty good point to make.

the whiteboy shook his head and repeated his line about having three kids and nothing to show for it.

I hung around on the periphery, eyeing the cops and picking halfheartedly at the smoker’s callous on my thumb while I eavesdropped on my neighbors’ conversations. I guess this plus all the Reagan coverage was really bringing out the latent morbid fucks in people. one chubby, jolly looking Indian woman asked a guy and a girl couple if they could sum up their lives in a 30 second eulogy. the wife snapped her gum and stalled and pulled on her hair before finally admitting that she couldn’t do it. they guy smiled and rubbed his chin.

“30 seconds? OK, here you go:

‘It started out good and it got worse.’”

this cracked everyone up—even me, so that I totally missed seeing the whiteboy change his mind and go back inside. safe and sound.



I heard that venus was in front of the sun yesterday and that it would be visible as a black dot during sunset, when it’s possible to look directly at the sun without blinding yr self, but I only remembered this when it was 2 AM and time for the army of infomercials to take over the air. I take an odd solace in these mutant pieces of broadcast. It’s comforting to believe that there is an 800 number for everything evil in the world, from acne to lousy saran wrap to exercise machines that don’t fold up and disappear when yr done with them…yessir…they have lotions, they have potions, to hide yr shame from all those prying eyes…




zulieka

Youth Against Fascism

i remember being at the zodiac club in oxford with fitz, dancing in the pink light at the back while the cold cut brothers tore the place UP. they got surgical on the wheels of steel, mixing rock n' roll and opera and incidental bits from soul songs--handclaps and shouting and shit...at one point my bloody valentine flowed under run d.m.c. like water under a bridge.

it was '96 everyone was sweating...rolling...but not me, i was prolly just drunk. i remember fitz's hair was soaking wet. anyway, one song fades out and everything gets quiet, and for a minute or two, all you heard was the pop of the needle on the record. than, suddenly, there's an impossibly low bass note struck by a gravelly human voice that comes thundering acapella through the gigantic speakers on the wall. a chill ran up my spine. the man talked in a tough voice about america becoming powerful again...a new morning in america or some shit like that. everyone was laughing and cheering even as their hair stood on end. it brought me back, hearing that dried-up war mongerer's voice.

my first president was reagan.

his cowboy vibe made me think of america, and all the things that were wrong with it...but if nothing else we were at least out of those dark ages.

at the end cold cut tweaked the voice, comically yanked it back and forth before disintegrating the sound until it was only a hummmmmmmmmmmm

(ashes to ashes)

above which, a beat started. it was a fresh hip-hop beat, old school and immediately recognizable.

yo, yo, yo, i said, pushing my way through the steaming crowd and up to the turntables...

(dust to dust)

lemme have the mic...i said.

the ceiling was ringing with beats

just gimme the mic for a minute...i yelled out

and when i was startin to think no one heard me

or gave a fuck,

it got passed over the crowd

a golden baton

some duck tape on the bottom...




it was on.




today is anti day.

everyone, taker easy.

big ups on yr berfday, baby.

I don’t know, man…working on the skullfuck bush party makes me realize just how ambiguous I really am when it comes to politics. there’s no right way to think, no clear way out of the mess we’re all in. I don’t wanna veil on my face, I don’t wanna car that spurts toxins into the air, I don’t wanna read about all the infighting regarding the building to be born on ground zero, I don’t wanna cringe inside when the train comes to a sudden halt due to a police investigation, I don’t wanna have kids and suffocate them with my neurosis, I don’t wanna put up with some richy rich pinstripe dude cutting in front of me like it’s nothing, like I’m nothing, I don’t wanna spend my entire 20s dazed and confused, wasting valuable energy repressing all the fucked up shit that happened, I don’t wanna keep fronting like I’m strong, I don’t wanna be called a victim, I don’t wanna march, I don’t wanna stand still, I don’t wanna know, I don’t wanna find out, I don’t wanna fuck, I’d rather be fucked, lie on my back and dream, dream, dream, I don’t wanna wake up tomorrow and find out that it’s all been decided…

it’s like the end of the first story in denis johnson’s collection, jesus’ son. yep, the same one from which they made that sucky ass movie that I nodded out on. anyway, the story’s called “car crash while hitchhiking” and it’s about how the narrator, a nameless drugged-out hitchhiker in the heart of the heart of the country is in a car crash and ends up saving the baby of the family who’s picked him up. there he is lying to the doctors who want to admit him to the hospital, a precursor to years later when he’ll be dragged into rehab and injected with sedatives, his skin crawling and his eyes seeing shit…totally fucked up, totally unreliable…

“and you,” he writes, “ you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you.”



blue hysteria