Still Lame

Out here, with the night creeping in on the edges of a dusk reality, life breathes slow. The insects scream and chirp. The frogs holler out for company of a fellow lukewarm companion. I missed it terribly when I was gone.

That first night back, I laid down in a borrowed bed and buried my dreams in the fabric of life. I had nothing to tell anyone before I went under the spell of night. I had nowhere to be. In my own way, I had no friends. In my own way, I had no life. The patterns of life lived wore into my tired soul. I knew I needed them, those tracks in my skin and in my head. The tracks that hinted at my soul's torn and tired flagging in a long night of dying to self. There was no self left after five years of love and killing. My eyes would close, but the racket of all the screaming life kept me awake.

Thirty five tons of machine had been landing above me, barely thirty feet of steel and working men was all between me and that noise. I slept as I never have under all that noise in a two foot box. In my other stations I had lived in poor ghettos where the sounds of life took on the screaming noises of people. Parties and cars and loud thudding sorts of music. I had slept there in that noise fine. I could sleep through that.

I laid here that first night home. On my queen sized bed that seemed so obscenely large after the life I had lived before, that friends were still living. That I still lived in steel and nitrate dreams. I could not sleep.

Noises would startle me awake with their random sounds of life. I would wake and jolt up, searching for threats. My heart would rocket off into tachycardic who knows what. My breathing would slowly return to me. The little white country room in a little white country house would return to me. So would She.

As a ghost. As a ghoul. She was supposed to be home with me someday. Not living in a hotel working, as they say. She was not supposed to be left behind.

My eyes closed and I listened to the symphony of chaos. I couldn't sleep.

What a Bullshit Return

I got a hotrod Ford and a two dollar bill.

Indeed. I also have an empty glass smelling of lightning jet fuel mineral smelling vapors. Those vapors, the remnant of a raptured Kentucky church of spirituous beauty, will shortly be replaced by more of Austin Nichol’s finest. The liquid is growing frost in my freezer, acquiring icy love of the first or fifth order. Importantly, there are five platonic solids, and damned if they all mean at least something to mineralogy with the exception of the most complicated and most numerously vectored among them. Yes, there is in fact a naturally occurring pentagonal dodecahedron in nature. We like to call it pyrite. Any pyrite, really. Five sides on the crystal faces, twelve separate non-intersecting vectors, fucking cooler than hell. Much like that one girl, the honky-tonking woman, the one that knows her rank well. In fact some of this stuff down here under heaven is just cooler than hell.

Anyway. The point is this:

Where have all the men gone? Where have they left to? Let me forgo the defining of the breed, you know them when you meet them. Or at least you should.

Why are there so many weak boys? Why are there so many of my sex that are such worthless specimens of the species? Why do they hurt my friends? Why do they make them cry?

I have no answer. They are weak, and in that weakness, they hurt my friends. I cannot abide by such action. Their activities raise up in me the warrior tendencies I have since sandy diesel stained murders tried to put to bed. I hate them. I hate that they hurt my friend.

Men are strong. With strength of any ilk comes the responsibility to protect. Whether your creator is God or selection, our human species depends on the strong defending the precious. When those jello-spined males do not live up to their role, the role of proactive manhood, of not being a little bitch, they hurt my friends and they insult my manhood. I want those males to hurt in turn. I want to make them cry.

I am no longer violent. But I can say this:

I have spilled enough real innocent beautiful human blood for bullshit ideology and capital gain that breaking a nose on general fucking principle is not going to keep me awake at night.

I hate that about myself.

Choose Your Own Damn Title

You know what? I'm bored with this.

I really don't want to do this anymore. This constant creativity. I'll still be around, and I'm sure I'll be back, but it will be a while. Maybe a month or two, maybe a week or two. I have a vague idea of a post I might put up in the next few days, but I don't know how to write it and I'm tired of this writing crap.

That doesn't mean I'm not going to stop by and say nice things to those who need it or mean things to those who need it (GSR). In other words, I'm not gone, just not being productive. Besides, I have drag races to go to. And mountain biking to do. And people to associate with.

So, anyway, that was that.

I'll email all interested parties when I decide to restart this thing. Or if I kill it off more effectively than this little message.

I'll still be playing around occasionally at The Five, and you're all welcome to stop by.

Arnold

So camping didn't happen. That's fine, I guess. Next week I go up to see the drags in Denver, but the week after I'm free.

Here and there I've been missing someone. A couple of them, really. At this point it's just gotten complicated to say I miss people. This one was a friend of mine who taught me important things. When to plant turnips. How to start grape cuttings. How to use old crankcase oil and spent gasoline to make smudgepots. Smudgepots are important. They keep fruit alive. He taught me how to irrigate and how to conserve water, never taking more than the absolute minimum. He taught me how to start a tractor using the crank start under the radiator. We spent years talking often under the shade of his shed. I kept up his house as time murdered his bones.

He told me over time about his life. The man had a grasp of the tragic, but he kept a grasp also of the comic. Good guys marry crazy bitches, apparently.

He died and I missed his funeral. I never got to hang out with him on his way out of this world. I was off in The Gulf. He saw one more war take away a friend of his before he resigned himself to the ground he had made his living.

I always miss him around this time of year. He died right after the Fourth.

I'm Leaving

I'll be gone for a while. Not cryptically gone. Not OMG! I'm leaving forEVER!

I'm just not going to be near any sort of networkish trash. I have a holiday to remember not to drink during, a boat-ramp-side memorial/fishing trip and burial-at-lake service (welcome to Colorado), and maybe a camping trip if the funds to get out of town come available. I also have this murderous physical training routine I have been subjecting myself to since by all current information, I'm still leaving soon. Important? Probably not.

Fiction Friday

The sequel to this.

The bus ground into second gear. The driver, short and ugly in the way of the unlucky, knew not to expect much from this particular bus. CCT No. 1125 was not known for legendary ability. The driver hated CCT No. 1125. This bus had a bad habit of stranding the driver with a couple dozen angry passengers along the trashy highways of his route. CCT No. 1125 smoked terribly, and the old sealing along the windows, long since been dried and rotted away by long, hot summers of dust and wind, let in exhaust fumes that had led to a number of vomit cleanups. The failures of the transit system, especially on this route, through this area where desolation sat on the terrain, were taken out on the driver. The driver by nature was a sensitive man. His wife had left him for a man less sensitive, but more assertive and exciting. Somewhere he had children who shared his eyes, his mouth and nose, but held the hand of an exciting (and taller) man.

He held the throttle down and cursed the Detroit 318 groaning and screaming against its governed maximum speed. CCT No. 1125 had no air conditioning. The passengers and the driver sweat in unison.

A passenger sat in the back of the bus, his leg over the faded green bag rescued earlier from the official carpet. A plastic shopping bag rested in his lap, still new. Inside the bag was a collection of the cheapest hygiene and food items that money could buy. When starting a life, the system of public assistance does not equip the journeyman well. John Pine sat straight and rigid, cheap headphones in his ears connected by a many times repaired wire to an equally cheap portable CD player. Music flooded his brain. Old Dylan tracks pushed out the cloud of angst and anxiety that wanted to erupt. John was not one to ride a bus. He had never attempted in his adult life, at least the last few chaotic years of it, to ride a bus, train, or plane without music.

Outside his window, the life and death struggle of CCT No. 1125 against the hill and the heat was ebbing down. Diesel fumes and chaos lingering on the fringes of his mind were giving him a headache. His sweat was not the sweat of uncomfortable heat. There was heat, heat from the sun beating down on the passengers; a beat up woman with bony arms and self-inflicted scratch wounds, a young boy of several recognizable races and probably one or two hidden, two skinny chocolate colored women in Wendy’s uniforms cooing softly in Spanish, a dilapidated waste of man wearing a white sleeveless shirt and an expression of either boredom or sadness, and a slew of the underground and unseen workers of every community. John’s sweat was of fear, and it soaked his heaving T-Shirt and ran down his pulsing neck. His eyes were closed against the onslaught of vision.

The driver, his charge rounding over Coyote Wash Hill spoke into his microphone, “Coyote Canyon, 3rd and Morrison.” Then went back to hating a man more exciting (and taller) than he. He expertly, but absently, pulled the bus into the bay of gravel and weeds that passed for a bus stop. A sign, long since riddle with bullet holes of various calibers, hung loosely from its post with a picture of a friendly bus welcoming the types of people who have to ride a bus.

John gasps, garnering the attention of a small child hanging on his mother’s arm. He stands with slightly more enthusiasm than most would have to leave a bus. The bag again makes a twisting journey on to the shoulder of John Pine. The bag speeds toward the front of the bus where a door, an escape, hangs open. The aisles trip him and cause stumbles that he does not notice. The door is closer. The last obstacle of the stairs flies past and he’s safe on the ground.

“You alright, buddy?”

The voice comes from the driver’s seat while John bends almost double panting in the dust and sun, his shaggy dust colored hair hanging over his face. A beaten and dried and cracked hand waves the driver off.

Thank you, I’m fine. Thanks. Sir. I’m fine.

Fuck a Lexus

I hate dumb hot chicks. They're like V6 Cameros. Sure they look good cruising around, but they just don't got it when your put your foot in them. Why is this important? By way of explanation:

A fucking Camero can lick my crack. All chromed up like some two dollar whore in Fresno who won't leave you alone because you're a white guy broke down on the wrong side of King's Ave. That shit is annoying. Shit, give me one of them Road Runners. Ass like a ton of bricks, nose like a shovel, hub caps off the county trucks, that shit is like that librarian chick with the horn rim glasses and the skirt down to her knees. She will destroy a Camero. Yeah, she ain't covered in chrome and metal flake paint, but she's got some hardware that will ruin your shit.

Yeah, give me a Galaxie. Let me get a hold of that 390 HP split-head V8 with the high rise cam and the Holley pushing out four barrels of "this is the best damn country on Earth." I want that Gallie talking back. Take your "smooth throttle response" and "responsible torque curve" and shove it up your well formed ass. I want to feel the throttle arm moving and the cable sliding in its housing. I want to feel that power valve kick over and those back two barrels of oxygen and love and gasoline explode into the ports of the manifold.

I want to feel the pistons, that huge bored out beast of hell, come up and strike top dead center. I want to feel the power stroke live and die in the veins of physical reality. I want to experience that piston defying metallurgical limits to return on its charger of hot rolled steel. Let me hear the explosion of spent gas rocketing to its cooling doom out the valve and through a set of headers. Then I want to hear the cylinder reborn hard. I want to hear the suction from the valves through a carburetor, pissed off and starving.

Fuck your hot chick with her fuel injection and 20 inch wheels. I want my girl complicated and finicky about how I treat her, not about what I feed her. Take that Lexus and show it off to your office buddies. I'll be the one on the line. In the tubbed out flat black Ford. I prowl after your Lexus. I'll race you for pinks. And that pink slip you treasure will be mine. We'll go gun for gun. You can't appreciate my tastes. Unlike you, I can keep that ass on the ground. I can keep that dragon breathing fire. I don't need a hot PROM to tell my engine what to do. She does as she pleases.

And she pleases me. Only because I know how to work her.

Anthropomorphic Geology No. 3

Bad news. That was the last beer.

I think I’ll live. I’ve lived through worse.

The wind’s coming in tonight over the desert, in through the door and over me laying here. The night loves me. Maybe, anyway, it’s always tough to tell. She just might. One desert night I spent out in the middle of a littoral gulf. I built death. I sucked in sand and diesel and blew out the end of dozens, hundreds of people who never offended me. Another sort of desert than this one, blowing in the open door, wrapped me up in the eddying and heated wind. That war was odd in that the two sides claimed the same God to be fighting for both sides. Out there, with the sand and hail and the technological might, I could believe that God was fighting with himself.

Not to say I am God, but I can empathize with his plight. I often fight great and fundamental battles with myself. When I do, however, I rarely cause more than a bloody nose or two.

One night I sat up on the rim of the Grand Mesa. The vista spread out from the basalt cap that had once been the bowl of an ancient valley. Those mountains around that high valley are gone downstream now, but the basalt, all that damn silica, is not easily eroded. Now the river valley of the old Colorado and the new Gunnison flows and buttresses the West Rim. The vista is about one hundred miles of visibility and 1.6 billion years of geological history. The storms blew in over the desert six thousand feet below me in sweeping cities of condensed moisture. The trains of the water cycle fell across the desert with grand gray and dark flourishes. Lightning reached out into the mud shale.

A year or two later, I lay on a bed far away from the Mesa. My hands traced Her skin like those clouds over the desert. Instead of graying clouds and traces of rain drops, I had skin turned copper by the nature of nautical living and fingers battered by countless arming wires. I loved Her in a very temporary way. Her skin, instead of the pale yellow of shale, was all obsidian, charcoal, and cinnamon. Her back was a gabbro silvered river valley in the moonlight. The trace of Her spine told of a sinewy stream and her so very female bulges were the graveled mounds of some ancient confluence of curious genetic rivers. Her skin sheened by sweat and heat out there where humidity is a way of life rippled like a million years of a river’s journey under my light touch. In the blue and amber light of that city, her contours and monoclines and buttresses stood out with that light tracing them. She knew we were not forever.

I wonder sometimes if the Earth has some sort of sentience we are just not able to perceive in our perception of time. When the fragile and most private skin of her is brushed by the rays of the sun or the fingertip of a river, does she shiver like that other masterpiece in city light and moist air?

I hope so. I would hate to think that this memory is mine and mine alone, fading like a vapor in my short time here on this planet.

I wonder if She still remembers me. When she lays back on whatever bed she calls her own, does she lie back and remember my touch in spite of the ring she must have on her finger by now? Whoever put that ring on her finger must have been able to love her better and more permanently than I. Does she trace the places my finger tips were, all copper on her obsidian, charcoal, and cinnamon skin?

I sort of hope so.

I’m a bastard like that.

Fiction Friday

This has been a plan now for months. On Fridays, not every Friday, but more less around the end of some weeks, I want to post a quick fiction. Not stories, necessarily, but maybe parts of bigger stories. Or something. I don't know. Whatever.

The bag had seen better days. Time had worn worried furrows and the sun had licked off most of the drab color. Dust had reclaimed the bag, run its fingers into the folds and flaps and pores, and marked its ownership with shades of neutral brown and gray. The bag let a small cloud of dust escape into the air of the Office. The thick pile neutral maroon of the carpet with vacuum cleaner tracks visible told a tale of care and cleanliness that had escaped the bag, and its owner.

The owner of the bag had fought a war with decades and was still in the process of losing it. Around thirty hard years had come and sat their trains upon his paths. The years had not been kind in the sense of being undamaging, but had been bountiful in experience and in fullness. Sparseness possessed him throughout, his clothing, his grey eyes, his dust hair, and his wiry frame. Farmer lean muscle deferred to the cheap pocket T-shirt tucked into the worn and faithful jeans clinging to his frame. He and his faithful bag had lived a thousand miles of rough road and a thousand nights out on the outskirts of humanity. They did not belong in the Office. They were an insult to all that offices stand for.

Shuffling papers cut into the dry heat and uneasy silence. A pair of soft and milky hands with reasonable and painted nails riffled through the paper. After the official looking text had been sorted, parted, laid flat and stacked, the voice of the woman with the hands spoke through the silence and swirling dust.

“Last name?”

Pine

“First name?”

John

“Middle?”

None.

The one line questions came out with the familiarity of repetition and were answered with the sparseness of the man. City of birth? Permanent residence? Felon? Veteran? Service? Discharge? Date? Last mailing address? Mental health issues? Can you read? Are you willing to find employment? Do you want housing?

Monument, Idaho. None. No. Yes. Marines. Honorable, Zero Five June Zero Five. 386 Oak, Lodi California. No. Yes. Yes. Yes.

The rapid-fire questions and tapping of plastic keys stopped for a moment. The woman’s hands found each other and folded together. She leaned back in her sensible chair. Her eyes searched the man until she found humanity. The eyes of her face, aged by two boys with no father around, wrinkled a little and a kindness crept into her official face. She hated being official with her skirt suit, official haircut, official nametag, and faux-wood desk and faux-wood life of moving people and paper. She had to find reasons not to be official. Her eyes locked out the official story of John Pine, veteran, non-felon, homeless John Pine, and look at him through her human eyes. A pastor tells her and her sons every Sunday about how Jesus saw others. Maybe John Pine was Jesus, not likely, or remotely possible, but the thought helped her love her neighbor.

“So, Mr. Pine…”

John, ma’am.

“John. What skills do you have?”

I spent a few years before I was in doing some carpentry and construction, a little mechanicing here and there. Not to brag, but I can do anything, really. I mean to say I ain’t picky. Ma'am.

“Okay. We have some more paper work to do. I’ll be giving you a voucher for one month at Coyote Canyon, alright?”

Sure.

The bag hefts up out of the jungle of piled maroon. The dust of a dry summer breezes around the swirling figure of the bag as it makes its twisting journey from the floor to the spare and hard shoulder of the man. The weight settles onto his right shoulder with familiarity. Papers shuffle on the desk in a poker hand of bland bureaucracy. Twisted into a sheaf and stapled together, more added with paper clips, the paper takes the form of a packet that is slid into a manila envelope.

“Alright, Mr. Pine. Let’s go next door to the Job Center and I’ll get you started on your new life.”

Appreciate that, ma’am.

*************

If you see anything glaringly stupid I did, let me know. Thanks

I Am Not In The Cult Of Genius

Note: This was written while I was in a very hostile mood, I might not really believe all of this here in the morning (Update: I don't). Also, I borrowed heavily from Ray Wylie Hubbard's version of This Mornin' I Am Born Again.

I despise drama. The sick whining and pathetic grind of a thousand little and insignificant monkeys with their little boxes of music digs into the bullshit of all the goddamn drama.

I've been pounding the beers pretty heavy. I have a swath of modernism to sift through and find at least something worth keeping. I hate poetry (outside of a few). I hate it with every fiber of my being. If you wish to communicate, form sentences, form statements, form a point. Communicate something. Don't tell me how you feel, tell me what you think. Don't wallow in your condition, improve it.

Why the tirade on poetry? Long story, but suffice it to say I have been drug through the mire of a bunch of goddamn whiners from the turn of the century. Please God, never let me be one of those.

Perhaps the meanest thing I can say is the truest. I hate them because I have known them all. Here, at the turn of this century, we have another grasping group of pretenders who know how to complain, but don't know how to do a damn thing. Give me all your drama, I'll ingest it and secrete sweaty work. Tell me your problems and I will find solutions. I have been born again complete. I stood up above my troubles and stand on my own feet.

Poetry, at least the poets that are not Noyes and such, annoy me. Find your feet, stand and be counted for something more than your supposed genius. Let your past be dead and gone. I've sat here blistering my brain with all this goddamn ramble for a grade, and because I hope soon this modernist crap will go away. Thank God.

I hope never to sit in my room complaining, whining about life with nos solution when I could be outside. I could be running. I could be fixing. I could be changing, out in the sun with a young sun. I could work outside, muscles working while I breathe like a sledge-hammer man, I would feel the sun upon me and its rays crawling in my skin. I could drink the blood of Jesus and old John Henry in. Fix yourself.

There is no heaven in the land of drama. The pearly gates lead nowhere. They stand at the vestibule of a land peopled by those too weak to believe in hell. Poetry is a process that is not a solution to a problem that does not exist.

That's why I hate it.

Long Post, Full Glass

So this was going to be one of those witty posts. You know the ones. The posts that people read and say, "Wow, that guy is something."


Then I started sliding down the low road. That road leads nowhere, beloved. At the most, it leads into a low spot, where stagnation and rot occur. In the heart of all human trouble lies the road to nowhere that I now sit in middle of with dull apathy.

I'm afraid people think I'm an asshole. I am most definately not an asshole at least a good 95% of the time. My writing style hints at someone I am not, not really. My style, or voice or whatever English major types like to call it, is not a friendly one. People do not read me and say to themselves, "Now this is a guy to trust with nice thoughts of puppies and such."

My friends, and this term I use in this instance for those who have actually heard me speak and enjoy the practice, generally tell me that my prose style or writing voice is very masculine. I guess that means I don't sound like a girl. I find that fascinating. What do women "sound" like in the theatre of pointless blogging bullshit? I have no idea. I can tell with some certainty when I read a man's writing. They usually talk a little too much about beer and hint a little too much about some scandalous hooker who destroyed their faith in femininity. I hope I don't do that. I talk as much as I can about whiskey, not beer, and don't even bother hinting about that damn scandalous hooker. That was in jest; I am not aware of anywhere on this little corner of CSS that I have ever said a disparaging utterance about a woman. Perhaps I have voiced some perplexed frustration, but I have nothing but love for any written of here.

I forgot where I was going with all this. The cold and brown and toxic beauty in my hands has made me a little too speculative. The flow and ebb, the neep and spring, and the general psuedopodia movement of the universe is displayed in the slick of ice melting into the 50.5% death by Turkey in my clear sweaty glass. None of the movement is with purpose and none of the movement is with cause. The water and alcohol mix swirl in the random eddies of life.

In that life I find something soothing. I will be sad when this glass is empty, but were I not to drink it, the ice would eventually melt away and the water and alcohol, being the same temperature (I refuse to take the tangent of the inexact nature of measurement), will be able to blend away into homogeny. The beauty I do not want to destroy will destroy itself by the very nature of that pulchritude. Am I hinting at a scandalous hooker? No, not this time. Though I hope to one day remember the analogy.

The glass has more or less emptied itself into me. The ice remains along with whatever pretty little brown passengers managed to avoid their metabolization. I love me some pretty little brown passengers. Also not analogous, at least not this time.

The brown, such an ugly adjective for so golden and beatific a shade of caramel, cascades slowly down the monsters of ice in the glass. The flattening of the liquid against the glass, testament to the unending truths of hydrology, is beautiful.

The beauty, not only the beauty here, but the beauty of all things, rushes through me. The beauty needs an evangelist. I have not the words. Beauty is such an odd word in that its state defies its definition. Perfect imperfections and crooked smiles and so forth. I am failing beauty, and I am afraid if I fail it, it will leave. Beauty is a fickle lover, never tolerant of those who are unwilling or unable to love her with words that are true. I fail beauty, so it leaves. The golden caramel is nothing more than booze. The sunset is nothing more than deflected light. I have failed beauty and it has left me. Also not analogous, at least not this time.

I am saddened that it is not.

Another Lame Attempt to Help Someone

I've been thinking lately of goodbyes. I can't claim that the thought occurred spontaneously. The weaving thoughts of goodbyes come and gone spilled over into my life because of another who requires in her life a goodbye.


I remember a time or two I had to write someone's epitaph in my life and their birth certificate into the pantheon of those gone before and gone forever simultaneously. The ghosts of that life and death struggle in your head to resurrect the dead or dying flit across your mind like demons of some pathologically flawed hell. You lay awake and dream dreams of a future you will never realize.


Then the inevitable confrontations. You offer them the questions that you have carved out of your dying flesh where they used to make a home. You offer them the sacrifice of your teary and unanswerable questions at the alter of all they used to be. You walk up to them on your knees with a little silver platter of all you have left of their person, the hows and whys. The unrealistic hope that this is just temporary. When all else has failed, you begin the whens: when did you stop loving me? When was the last time you still cared? When did the last straw hit your back?

The questions are placed onto the alter and burnt up to that dead spirit in the air, the spirit of their memory. Never again will that memory live on this Earth. Like God leaving the Earth forever because he could not abide the world once it had died in the sins of Eden. And like the original sinners, you wander the land of Nod, always east of Eden with your mark. The stigma you carry is to remind you and others that you have lived and died and sinned enough to be human.

Life is murder. Murder of all that came before today, and sometimes murder is fun. Occasionally, you murder an abusive spouse or an insane dictator and the Justice flows in your veins like a burned rock in a tin foil pipe. Sometimes, you have to murder a child who made the mistake of standing too near a tank with the wrong flag painted on it and the Justice burns your skin and the tendrils of your conscious thought. And in this way, the love and hate is balanced.

In this way, all life continues on, murdering the past. The blood will wash off, and the sacrifices of your own dyed flesh where another moved in and loved you will burn away. In the crucible of time, we're all just carbon. If you're lucky, maybe some day your bones will be subducted and you will emerge more beautiful. If not, the silica will be pulverized to sand in some future desert. Time will murder your bones.

This may not help, but at least it's here. All we can expect of thought, really.

With A Little Help From This Friend :)

I've decided that the blogosphere needs some direction. There are way too many people that just don't seem to know what the f*** they're doing. Don't try and lie to me, I have seen your blogs. Informative, provocative, life-affirming. You are doing it all wrong. ^__^

Rule one: Profanity is fine, but only if you couch it in friendly looking letter replacements. F*** is OK, as is S##t. Phonetically spell F as a verb for added emphasis. Some people incorperate the standby @ss or A$$ variants. Never ever use profanity as it may offend someone who would rather be...

Rule two: Looking at Kittens

People love pictures of critters.

See, this is a kitten:

How much lighter do you feel now? It's easy to do, I just google image searched for kitten and found dailykitten.com. Sometimes you can use puppies. People will laugh and comment. Speaking of comments....

Rule Three: You must comment everyday. On everything. Did you read it? Then you must register an opinion, no matter how insignificant. Feel free to copy and paste the following:

OMG! SOooo True!!!!!
You are so lying ;)
AwwWWww.
Effing Yeah!!

If you cannot muster it inside of yourself to think of something to say after you read a post by anyone at anytime, you must delete your Blogger/Typepad/Wordpress account immediately. You have let down the blogosphere.

Rule Four: Strive for a picture to word ratio of at least 1:3, since if the blogosphere wanted to read, it would go to one of those book places. If you do not mathematically understand ratios, you most definitely belong in the blogosphere. I was most impressed once by a post about intelligent design (ID) which had a ratio of 48:1. It was astounding, you could not even understand the opinion of the blogger the post was so convolutedly covered in photoshopped pictures of George Bush and random endearing shots of monkeys.

Rule Five: Change colors randomly.

I don't know why.

Football v. Soccer

You'll remember earlier this week that I asked a question about debate methodology. It was a clever trap. Momentary Academic fell into said trap. Her first salvo is on her blog over here. You should read that before you read my response below.


GSR moderates and scores the debate for us. His comments are in italics.

********

The distinguished gentle-woman from The District of Columbia makes a valid and important point about athletics in general. Everyone gets the opportunity at low skill levels to participate and improve their personal health.

I should note that never once in the history of my writing have I ever mentioned my shapely arms gripping the handlebars of my bike. You might be adding in your own fantasizing. I think that's super.

At this point, I should write a quick disclaimer stating that I have the utmost respect for athletes professional and otherwise regardless of what sport they choose. I make no judgements on the validity of soccer, indeed, I find many positive aspects of its game play, first and foremost that it is an activity that adds to the health of an individual.

Your central and eloquent argument pirouettes in a gentle declining orbit about a misguided point. That point, namely that soccer is the most accessible sport, is incorrect. I believe you fail to make the area of amateur and non-professional sport equally available to all sports in your argument. I remember many an afternoon with my brothers playing the game of football with nothing more than a vague imaginary line drawn between two convenient trees or fence posts. With only a ball, we were totally able to play an approximation of the sport. In fact, we could have changed the shape of the ball and just as easily have been playing soccer in the same yard.

If I were to choose one sport where equipment is truly a non-issue, I would choose as my sport wrestling. There are no real requirements save two competing egos.

This debate is, however, soccer vs. football.

My preference for football rests on the simple fact that it balances so well the kinesthetic and intellectual. Football is an incredibly intelligent sport, in fact more intelligent than any sport of which I am aware including soccer. While soccer is an exciting and very strenuous approximation of a tactical environment, the sport never satisfies the overarching definition of real-time strategy. I should mention here that the definitions of tactics and strategy I am using are standard military.

The purpose of contact sport is to simulate warfare or battle. Football simulates warfare on a larger scale than does soccer. In the real world, divorced I realize from the arena of sport, a nation going to war will utilize several totally disparate forces and resources toward the accomplishment of the goal, victory. They will mobilize strategic bombers to fly high and slow, they will utilize sea-borne assets with long range strike capabilities, special forces, etc. These assets will not operate in the same capacity as their teammates, or even their fellow services, none of which are nicknamed after the goddess of fire.

While soccer will have several possible plays and tactics available and certain players who specialize on the field, football has three different types of players who do not share the field. Defense, offense, and special teams function as strategic assets fighting the clock and the efforts of the other team. In this way, football better simulates warfare, and soccer better simulates an individual skirmish. I would prefer to see the strategy in a real sense on the field simultaneous to tactical feats.


As the moderator of this debate allow me to welcome both of the participants. The lovely lady from D.C. is someone I have known now for almost 5 years. The gentleman from Colorado is someone who has insulted me and intellectually jabbed me from the moment that I met him. To help balance this seemingly unfair dynamic The Momentary Academic is arguing for soccer, a sport that I never enjoyed playing or watching. Casey is arguing for football, which is the most tangible proof that there is a benevolent God in heaven that we mere humans can witness. So all in all, I should be able to stay impartial-ish.

In this first round of the debate M.A. does a nice job of playing the sympathy card. Her arguement that soccer can be enjoyed by many, regardless of income level, is quite compelling. It is supported by the overwhelming popularity of the sport in third world countries where the price of a baseball glove or a football helmet for each member of a team could be equal to the cost of a families annual income, but one coveted soccer ball can be enjoyed by the masses.

Casey, on the other hand, has done an excellent job pointing out that one football can also be enjoyed by a veritable neighborhood's worth of children. Having first hand experience playing backyard football with 7-10 friends, I can attest to the fact that the only pieces of "equipment" needed to have a backyard game of football are the ball, a working set of feet/hands, and some trees to serve as the goal marker.

More importantly, for the sake of the debate, Casey has done an excellent job of talking about the strategy involved in playing the game of football. His comparisons to modern warfare are impressive, and my one critique is that for those of us who have never gone to battle he could have at least worked in a Stratego analogy. But I digress...

The winner of this first round is Casey. He is awarded one point based on the merits of his arguements.

Codified Rambling

I'll be gone the rest of the weekend, so this is what you get. By the way, the last post is still up for discussion.

I spent some time riding along the rim of a canyon. I stopped at the crest of the box end and found a rock to sit on.

Due, I'm sure, to the exhaustion and pain of sweat seeping into a scraped knee and abraded calf, several profound thoughts occurred to me, or at least vague notions I've been working on I can now codify. I once listed as a hobby "thinking." It is a hobby I never lost. Sitting in an inspiring place and reading my thoughts on the pages of my brain is beautiful and bountiful. One of those thoughts is mine and mine alone, but the others I will share in order of appearance.

1. All Life Is Sacred

Truly, whatever mystery we hem and haw and turn into religion must return to the point of life. Life is unlikely. Actually, extremely unlikely, especially in the form of awareness. Think for a minute about your consciousness. Why do you have it? Where does it come from? I am aware of the selfless theory in vogue now, the one that says identity is a coping mechanism and a fallacy. I don't accept that particular thought as it leaves much to be explained. The Buddhist ideas of selflessness on the other hand, though coping mechanism they may be, I find sort of romantic. A freedom is available to those who believe they are truly not.

2. Causality is Bullshit

There are no causes.

3. Pseudopodia

I am a physical person. I live a lot of my life between my ears, but I live a sizable minority of that same life between my legs and between breaths of action. I find that five minutes of motivation can easily replace twenty minutes of preparation. Consider the machines we use to assist our lives. At my former employment, I always found it easier to just get in and move the heavy and large objects that made up my day. We had a plethora of mechanized assistance, but by the time you went to grab the machine, chased everyone out of the area, and moved the behemoth to your work site, you could have been up and down an old fashioned ladder ten times over. My personality is such that I'd rather just grab the ladder and grunt and struggle and get it over with.

Sometimes, my coworker was Bill. Bill was in a wheel chair. I would be constantly up and down ladders, carrying heavy products from a random here to a random there. I often broke a sweat at work. Bill did not. Bill was in a wheel chair. Many other men I dealt with during my day were overweight, or old, or had some malady that angered me. Men with sickness or disability anger me. I don't know why, and I know it's wrong, but they anger me. I still have incredible empathy for them. I believe strongly that at this point in history, we have room for everyone. We don't have a herd to slow down, and regardless, humanity is descended of pack animals, a completely different mentality from a herd.

When I pass these wheelchair-bound or obese people on the street or when they see me with a bike helmet or with my forehead beaded with sweat and my bulging quadriceps, do they think I am showing off? It feels like I'm showing off when I feel my body's mahinery bulging up and straining so close to the surface of my skin in their presence. That makes me sad. Why should it make me sad? I am no more responsible for my genetic stock than they are. And don't pretend that even the obese are to blame. Any number of factors can contribute to sedentation. Remember:

Causality is bullshit.

4. Population

At this moment, humanity is stretching the limits of their home. I should not say humanity, as that makes it sound as if the species has blown past the checks of carry capacity. We have not. The Earth can accommodate us as an organism. What it can not accommodate is the damage of our wills. Were I to eat a deer, the tragedy to that dear, and one could argue to the immediate herd, would be great, but Deer in a platonic sense would be unaffected. When my body turned the deer into fuel and did not perform the task with greater than 45% or so efficiency, I would have to get rid of the deer inside me. The Earth could absorb and reuse what I would discard. Life would explode out of the nitrogen I did not use.

However, this plastic lid to my cup of coffee will find its way into the system. It will not die or be reabsorbed very quickly. For the first time in the history of large individuated life, an organism's discards will outlive the organism. You could argue that the discarded oxygen of the precambrian forms of life did much the same thing, but the stakes are higher now. And as such:

5. Humanity

As in Humanity can no longer change. Think on this: at this point in history, the further speciation of the genus homo is no longer possible. Humanity is too connected for a separation event to last long enough for the nucleic acids to mutate that much. We can no longer evolve. People the world over are mating with diverse other people, which I think is great. I participate in the activity myself whenever possible. Racism won't be possible when we're all the same shade of caramel. On the other hand, it also hands us a standard and unified truth. This is the only humanity we will have for a long, long time. There will be no waiting around for better people. We are all there will be. This is our one shot.

Shot to do what? Improve, I guess. Improve our lives, our culture, our species. We have the ability, we do not have the will. We need to get our heads out of our global asses.

6. Causality is Bullshit

There are no causes.

A Request

If you notice, the last post was a statement of my being. That was something I've been wanting to do for a while, and I figured I would state a different being verb correlating to the alphabet for twenty three posts. The decision to spend time on self introduction sprang from a brief self-introduction of the author in one of my favorite travelogue. He said something intelligent sounding about people not being able to visualize characters without them being described. Then I realized I had nothing for "B."

I also realized that I am not the kind of person who can do the same thing twenty three times in a row. The thought is scrapped. I also have another idea that will be a complete departure for this site that may show up if I decide it's worth the time. Two departures, in fact. I think I already mentioned the Friday Fiction thing. Besides, lately my writing has been shit, so a departure might be nice.

On to the point:

So, I have an idea. I'm thinking of having a debate.


Recently, someone disagreed with my views on a minor topic, and I have to admit to being captivated. I have debated the issue, which I don't really care that much about, with others before with passion and fire. I have good ammo. I have presentations and parallels to show the wide-eyed audience. I considered making a PowerPoint.


I don't know how to do this. I want the debate moderated, but informal as I have no idea how formal debate actually works. The moderators should be people who are either dispassionate on the subject or people who are able to be rational. I'm not sure I have that many fans, for lack of a better word, who fit the criteria.


Also, the location of the forum. Gmail? Conference call? Smoke signals?


I don't even know why I'm giving it this much thought as it would be less debate and more of an argument, really.


Any ideas are welcome. I'll be more or less absent for the rest of the week and on into the weekend, but I may get a few minutes before Friday to worry about all this.

I Am Argumentative

At some point I will have truly given up on this semidaily vomitous mass of words and I will start doing what I have wanted to do all along: just pass on links from The Onion.

I have read The Onion now for years. A friend of mine used to have a subscription and quite a bit of CPSD 51's Internet resources were dedicated to downloading their Statshot and Infographic features. I don't think I have a sense of humor of my own, I just adopted snide Tom Servo lines and memorized swaths of The Onion.

What truly makes The Onion funny as I get older and maybe more mature is the parallels I can find between the universe of my favorite root vegetable and my own life.

They have an article running right now entitled Area Man Somehow Roped Into Arguing Passionately For Green Day. I don't think you'd ever catch me arguing over Green Day, but this situation has become exceedingly common in my life. I find myself defending thoughts and practises that i really don't even like. Maybe it's because so many of the subjects are related to a demographic I pretend to identify with.

I have found myself in loud and impassioned arguments over the validity of oil-assist twin turbos in the International 6.0 Powerstroke. I don't give a shit about that engine. I don't even forsee a time in my life where I would spend the amount of money required to purchase a vehicle so equipped. Independent front suspension? Hate it. Don't know why. 7005 aluminium tubing? Yeah, just try to talk some shit about it. Go ahead, seriously. I will end up defending the crap.

I find myself defending entire genres that I hate. (CAUTION: MUSIC SNOBBERY) Country music is complete garbage. That is a lie, country music is by and large garbage. I bounced in a country bar, I have half of Nashville's catalog memorized and I hate every pandering bullshit lyric. But let someone say Hip-Hop is better. I will be spewing the musical equivalent of Luther's Diet of Worms speech. Why? I don't know.

I will argue the validity of motorsports. Specifically NASCAR, especially if someone is making disparaging or downright cruel remarks about the fanbase of the sport. I don't give two shits about NASCAR. I don't really care about that many practises or issues enough to hate them. Or love them. Why do I keep doing this?

I mean sure, everyone knows Soccer is pointless and boring and a game of sissies, do I have to find new reasons that are intellectually qualified to dislike the "sport?"

non-Fiction Friday

So, I meant to start something new today called "Friday Fiction." You know, just whimsical fun.

I have a complicated reason for not doing that, but that would need a longer post. All I have today is this:

While sitting at home, with no classes to go to or work to do, I decided to turn on the TV. I never watch the TV. Anyway, whatever you do, do not turn this thing on after the news is over in the morning. There were all these shows that really entice a guy's sense of morbid curiosity.

Large women who don't know who they baby's daddy is, this show with Barbara Walters and some very loud older women, some bald-headed psychologist, etc.

I flipped through all four channels you can get up here on the hill and then I saw a familiar face. It was Gary Busey.

On the Jesus channel. Preaching. To Smokey Robinson.

I don't know what else to add.

Drunken Ramble #437

I just say he was the leader of a steel driving gang.

What did I say to the captain (What’d I say)? You know, the time he brought the steam drill ‘round.

Shaker you better pray, if you miss your six feet of steel, Tomorrow’s gonna be your burying day, day, day.

Polyanne would have been a hell of a woman. Driving steel like a man and so forth.

Fuck yeah.

Oh Lord.

Whatever. Causality pisses me off. Women and men always try to lay blame here and there when the fact is that there is no one at fault. Sure, that last person to date was a bad person, they fucked around. They ruined good things. They were intriguingly melodramatic. At some point in their developmental life, they were used, abused, misused, misguided, or some other decent reason to be unworthy of continued breathing. Fill it to the top, cause I hit rock bottom this time. This paragraph was not autobiographical.

This song is fun. And rocks. Poor me. Poor me. Pour me another shot of whiskey.

Right, causality. Lately, I been getting into bluegrass more than normal. Banjo rolls are God speaking to the soul of man. Declarative sentences rock. “What does that mean,” ask you.

Well, that means I am shit-hammered, Soon as I make a playlist that consists of almost exclusively of Ray Wylie Hubbard, Hank Williams, and mandolins, shit has went wrong.

I want to play so bad. Music is pouring out of me, but is not flowing into anything. I am not religious, but I’ll be Goddamned if a Blackface Twin with a couple of JBL’s worth of tubes driven to the limits of physics don’t throw me into convulsions.

Warning! This Post Contains A Politically Incorrect Joke!

So...whatcha doing.

Drinking. Studying. Drinking and studying.

How's that working out for you?

Eh. I am having some serious give a fuck problems at the moment. Impending deployment and all. I have a hard time worrying about Glassner's lame-ass book about paranoia where he tries to frighten everyone. I can see why Michael Moore likes this guy.

You know, you're the smartest person I know.

I am aware. I should be the only person you know, what with you being my conscience/internal monologue and so forth. You are exclusively my conscience, right?

Um, yeah.

Wait, you mean you work for other people?

Sort of, we've been through the amalgamation thing before. There's a few consciences I timeshare with. I'm also supposed to guide a conch fisherman in La Paz. That's why you seem to be obsessed with Baja, more than likely. Just like I'm the conscience of several Russian prostitutes and a handful of hobos.

That's kind of random. Do you have to draw straws? Like, why the baja kid? Are you sure you're qualified for all this?

We have an eight-week class and a cultural indoc for all the different people we have to be. I am current in several cultures, Indonesian, Indigenous New Zealander, Reformationist Hindu, and I'm working on my Appalachian qual. Kind of a tough one.

Well, most of my microculture derives from similar origins to most of your Appalachian people.

Really?

Oh yeah, I even knew how to yodel at one point. That and all the weird religious backstory is pretty much straight out of the hill people. I think anyway. You'll run into a lot of the same words.

Scrame?

That's one, I still catch myself using it sometimes. Past tense of scream. And Drame, past tense of dream. Also, scrempt.

Scrempt?

An indirect scrame, mostly.

Example.

"A call went out from some Brethren in Carbondale who had a young'n get croupy for the Elders, but they had to leave a day late; the elevator wouldn't take our beans early until Bro. Claudy went and scrempt at 'em."

I don't know whether to be fascinated or not.

I don't either, really. So, how much time do you really spend on me?

I just picked you up for the bullet on my annual eval, but you've taken up a lot of my time. The kid in Baja? He never needs shit from me. Of course, all he does is spear conches. I caught him screwing a tourist's daughter a while back, but I figure what the hell, the kid deserves to misbehave a little.

Tourists in La Paz?

Long story. Hey look at that, a sailor recalled even though he was discharged for being a fruit.

Woah, you can't say it like that! What the fuck kind of conscience are you? Besides, see where he was sent?

Naval customs battalion bravo, Iraq. Ha. That's funny, that's where you're getting recalled into. Know what the difference between your recall and his is?

There's a difference?

Yeah, he LIKES getting fucked in the ass.

Wow. Um...is it OK to laugh at that joke?

Quietly in your head is fine.