it's not if they are

l'amour

the darkness

.[redacted].

papen was a girl in my mind...

it was really great. but if i could, i would have had charles lose the gun in a struggle; it goes off severing richard's femoral artery. henry comes up with it and immediately plugs francis in the gut and in the neck. charles and henry talk about it; charles admits to sleeping with his sister but camilla seems detached. Richard is bleeding slowly to death. Then henry, to doubly spite charles, puts two in camilla and then the last one for himself. Charles, stark mental, strangles the rest of richard, seals himself in the garage with the running sedan and slips away on monoxide.

but the way she had it happen was really great too.

pushes for disaster

No new pictures today, though that was the plan. Forgot the camera at home. Batteries do not 'die' in other languages. A Czech girl told me so over lunch. I really like English when it arrives by translation. Afterwards, I bought laundry detergent, dishwasher detergent, brown paper bags, a bottle opener and incense called "guilty". Premium incense.

At home, I thought for awhile about what modest mouse song i like the best. Cowboy Dan? Dark Center of the Universe? As far as I know, Isaac Brock has not had his teeth whitened. Whatever. I downloaded an email from FW who was recently assigned to Krackow and can't get over the fact that his apartment has square pillows. He's eating a lot of beets, the note said. There's not much else. FW thinks the random is charming. Since my grandparents died, I haven't eaten beets or borscht or any of it. A whole food culture died with them. They were Ukranian; the old country. They washed all their clothes by hand. When my dad bought a washer and dryer we would wash their clothes at our house every Sunday. My mom can speak Ukranian. I cannot. I can only say "Good day missus", "I don't want any" and "I don't know", plus a few foods. But I can't spell them.

masada

roasting folks in the valley

...
...
...
...

...
...
...
...

...
...
...
...

the impossibilists

hey.

cough.

you high?

yeah, you?

yeah.

troglodyte.

i'm the oracle, don't you know that by now?

yes, but you understand why i needed to see him right?

no, not really. i gave you the facts. why do you always insist on the irrational? this isn't mathematics. there's no solution.

you don't understand. i know he's lying to me. i just want to know what he's lying about.

well, look. you're ten years between accomplishments. you're up, what did you say? 15 pounds. you look like shit. you cut your own hair. what do you want from me? you keep asking me the same questions expecting a different answer. that's pathological. you know that right?

i'll get back to you.

looking at guitars

...he sees himself as the jeremy irons character in The Mission.

i haven't seen that movie.

oh. well, it's like, every guy has an angle or a gimmick. his is the 'reluctant priest/warrior' thing.

i have no idea what you're talking about.

...

are you hungry? let's get lunch.

anisotropic texture filter

cardophagus
wombat
purgatory
fossilize
merdivorous
prod

futilitarians

now accepting wagers on the raptors' record through the first 20 games:

bp: 2 wins, 18 losses
cb: 5 wins, 15 losses
jz: 4 wins, 16 losses
s69: 0 wins, 20 losses
cs: 3 wins, 17 losses

prizes to be announced.

no messages

All you do is write down random words.

What’s your point?

Well, anyone can do that.

Sure.

Don't you read McSweeney's?

No.

janalysis

there are no planets in my house of intellect these days.

you're a good man, charlie brown

If even just once I could remember to close the top cupboard door before i bend down to pick something up. my head is killing me. i am so angry! argh! stupid cupboard door! Right on the corner!

be my prescription

i wish you were a pill, she said
i would take the whole bottle!

...the par in party

Golf is pretty much finished this year. The last round, 113. Honestly, I was a little disappointed. Not in the course. Copper Creek, great. But I had high expectations of myself. I really wanted to shoot 110 tops. Instead, a nervous 54 on the front, and then the blow up on ten – errant tee shot, OB; subsequently dump the third into the pond and then a couple of toppers (lifted my head) and a three-putt (anger). Didn’t regain my composure until the 14th(though on the 12th I got lucky and got out with a bogey, which I'll take). So, 113. A terrible score, but not one of those angry 113s. It was great. Even with five lost balls. Two on one hole. In the same pond. I don’t really keep GIRs, fairways, or putts on my card. It’s enough right now just to keep track of the number of strokes, there are so many. As evidenced*:But, as far as the overall game, this was a good year. Sixteen-and-a-half rounds. Seven different courses. Three countries. One new golf bag. Plus, the new woods, that, as long as I remember to choke up to control the fade, will really help us hit more fairways, with distance, than ever before. When I look at them even, they just fill me with fierce happiness. And my butter knife putter, too, should get a bit of a mention. I know there has been miraculous innovation in putter technology, but i feel strong with the old-school blade. I will admit that I lipped a few out at first, and i admit there have been doubts. But together, we one-putted the first three holes at Copper Creek, didn’t we my friend? Yes we did.

Anyways, to say goodbye to the season, one last fling with the clubs, we drove out to Andy Bathgate with C a few days later. Most of the range has been closed down but we hit a couple hundred on the remaining piece. Gusty conditions, but mild with top-shelf visibility. The soothing thrum of traffic off the 410.

Felt real easy with the high irons, even rusty gap wedge. I don’t know why, but there is a tendency to chicken out with the wedges around the green during play. The same shots (we visualize them in our mind when we practice) come off the club soft, with sober distance at the range. But then on the course we don't trust it, and so it dies or flies. It's hell. So, that’s my goal for next year: become deadly, in close around the green. I’m sick of giving up strokes because of my short game. This should be my specialty.

Afterwards, we went through the carwash. Improved Regular Wash, $8.99. There’s also The Basic and The Works. But there's just something about the phrase “Improved Regular” that feels comfortable to me. Maybe it has something to do with the drinking. Or second-hand jean jackets. I'm not sure.

*card unsigned!

one is the loneliest number

XXX XXXX X XXX XX XXX XXXXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXXX XXXXXX XX XXX XXXXX X XXXX XX

cellular memory...

I think if i was a doctor i would explore cellular surgery as an answer to curing sadness. Because I think that our emotions create, or adhere or somehow are physicalized (?)into our cellular structure; especially feelings like loss and love and anxiety, the hard and strong emotions. Sort of like how my friend TJ won't eat meat because he believes that animals retain a cellular memory of the awfullness of their cooped and wretchedly farmed lives. And when you consume this tortured flesh, he told me, you consume all the pain and anguish the creature carried inside it. Just like mercury or PCPs. So, I think that if you could isolate the cells that are causing the sadness or pain inside a person, you could then excise them under the knife. Because you sure can't think your way out of this shit.

pace of asses

tonight, i intercepted an agitated lady attempting to steal a lawn chair from my backyard. our conversation was entirely random. it reminded me for some reason of a little while ago, i was crossing a street when a bouquet of flowers slapped down in front of me. I looked up and there was a woman on a balcony pointing at a man with raised hands, about four floors high. She clambered over the railing in her heels, holding onto it, but lolling out and obviously distressed. People around me stepped over the flowers and didn't look up. There was an exchange and then he went for her arms and she caved and they went inside together.

the magic spot

casual, yet turbulent.

jar head

the big bad dog

plus, new favourite words...
murder
parsnip
dingbat

three tilt warning

There's an artform to pinball. It involves more than just dropping coins and pressing the bumper buttons. You've got to know how to handle the tilt. You've got to understand how to lag shots and cradle and fight the side sewers. You've got to be able to hit consistent jackpots, roll the ramps, repeat the loops, knock down pressure shots and generate multi-balls on demand. You need intensity, focus. Pure being. You got to feel slices. These things are self-evident to anyone who has played enough. But for the uninitiated, pinball can seem like an archaic, almost luddite-esque experience. No nuance, garish, loud, heavy. Not at all like an i-pod.

While I can't deny that these things are true, I will say that pinball has more soul and more jazz than playstation or xbox ever will. I've been p-balling for about two years now. I mostly play at one place; which isn't so bad because they change the table often enough. NASCAR is the game of the moment. I like it. It's very kinetic, very fast. And you can really bounce the thing around without danger or tilts. I play hard on the table. I like to kick the legs and bang it forward. I'm not a table breaker or anything. I know what it is to lose a bonus on a tilt. It sucks. But I'm willing to take the chance to save a ball, you know?

stranger dynamic

I have only ever asked of God one thing: to make my enemies ridiculous. And he did.

Voltaire wrote that. I couldn't. Maybe it's not related, but i have always preferred funerals over weddings. At least with funerals, there's no need to pretend the future is bright.

...with envy

winner's blues

activate force shield.

be the monolith

when you quit a thing, all the other things that you used to do that involved the quitted thing must be relearned or abandoned. In my experience, I have found that, more or less, that this process takes one full year.

There used to be plenty of years laying around so I wasn't bothered so much. But not anymore. Now I would like to find a way to accelerate this process, as a whole year is too much time to spend quitting anything.

So I turned, as I always do in times of crisis, to astrology. However, there isn't much in the way of praxis-based solutions on this subject. There are only warnings and omens and soft prophecies. Which I fully love, for sure. But what I'm after here is a way to collapse the withdrawal phase to a few short weeks. Philosophy quells somewhat the panic; either by confirming that there is utterly no hope to existence anyway, or by making me so confused that i forget about the problem i was originally attempting to alleviate. But again, I need to utterly extinguish all longings and temptations.

So I realized that I could look to no outside agency. It's up to me. So I came up with an idea called:

Temporary Psychic/Organic Transference, aka: T-POT
Basically what this involves is the complete transfer of all mental, psychic, and motor control to a trusted, trained, expert proxy. The timeline for control return obviously is agreed upon prior to the transaction. I'm not sure how much this would cost. It works like this, I think: Using some sort of transfer architecture/technology (like that saliva/hydro sucky thing that dentists use to suck the spit out of your mouth) a trained professional would connect the two parties -- the patient and the proxy -- and, like osmosis i guess, the patient's 'life control system' would be vaccuumed out of their body/brain and stored in optimal conditions (say like a sanitized mason jar in a cool place) for its return. Then the proxy's 'will' would be 'uploaded' into the patients emptied compartments. The proxy then would assume full and complete control over the patient, assuming completely all stored knowledge (memory, personality, ticks, etc) but would retain autonomous decision-making power over the host. The host would have monitoring capabilities, but no ability to at all influence the proxy's piloting of their body.I think that the proxy would not be able to control themselves at the same time they are controlling a patient, so their body would have to be stored and supplied with nutrients and evacuation systems pending the return of themselves to themselves.

So, now that I've been able to surrender myself to another person totally, they get to go through all the shit I don't want to. And because they don't have the same issue that I'm enduring (of course, a screening process would be neccessary to ensure that this is true. I can forsee some complications here.) and because they aren't emotionally or psychologically attached like I would be, they can manage to do all the usual things I would do during my day, but without the anxiety, pressure and pain I experience due to all the associated, vestigial issues surrounding the quit. For instance: I quit smoking, but can't seem to shake the need for a cigarette when I drink. I sure don't want to have to stop drinking just because I quit smoking. So, with my proxy, they could take my body out to the bar, have drinks and laugh it up (totally just like my personality, no one would ever know that I was actually in stasis in a mason jar somewhere) and everything and never feel the need for a smoke! I believe that this could work for almost anything. For example, if you broke up with someone and you see them all the time because you have common friends and they won't stop hanging around your spots, so why should you right? Well, sign up for T-Pot for a month or so and you can still do all those things, but via your proxy. So you never feel any of the usual breakup pains or awkwardness. You're able to acclimatize yourself, via the proxy, to this new dynamic and then when your 'life system control' is returned to you, everything is totally no problem. I mean there are tons of applications.

shit, more later...doorbell

And even once people become comfortable with the process and it actually works reliably, you'd even use it to like, zone out for a day. Like a spa, but even better because someone can do the workout for you. Unless you like working out. Even so, everybody's got their own particular fence to whitewash.

Challenge To Myself: Determine what possible negative side-effects, collateral damages, possible malfunctions, existential crises, quantum impossiblities etc... may occur.

The O.C.

Ornette Coleman, Massey Hall. Ok, but first, I have to tell a story about O.Coleman that I don't know myself. I heard it from D while we were walking out of Massey Hall after the show, and I read another part of it later on. So I'm second-hand here. Anyway, so Coleman was playing at a place called the Five Spot in NYC in 1959. It was like 'a turning point in history' and everyone is totally going to this show and Ornette is freaking them out. Miles Davis said after catching his set that he thought Ornette must be "all screwed up inside". Dizzy Gillespie supposedly walked up to the bandstand after a performance and said "you're fucking kidding me, right?" Also, another night, Max Roach got so mad at what he was hearing that he punched Coleman in the mouth at the show, then showed up in the middle of the night at his home and yelled for him to come down so he could kick his ass some more. So, what have you seen like that? Know what i mean? But I'm just repeating shit everyone already knows.

telephone call. more later

ok. so there were two double-bass players - Greg Cohen and Tony Falanga -- and his son, Denardo, on drums. Ornette played saxophone and violin for one song (he dropped it at the end and it broke) and also a trumpet briefly. He wore a black wizard suit with gold symbols all over it, shiny pointed black shoes and a plain porkpie hat. When they came out on the stage, the audience errupted and applauded and yelled out for a long time; then Ornette whispered hello and then they played and noone spoke after that.

It was tremendous. It was crazy. I couldn't stop laughing at times it was so outrageous and good. I swear, it seemed to me like they just played whatever they wanted to play, i mean, individually. Just random progressions and notes from who knows where they got them. Though, slowly you could tell they had certain phrases they'd return to. Like thin anchors in the storm. Oh yeah, and the double-bass pizzicato player, his plucking hand turned beet/beat red by the second song he was going so fast. Thinking about how it would throb made me feel sick for a while.

The songs, which I didn't know a one, were like strings of digressions or falling down stairs or like walking by turning in a new direction for every step. But it made sense if you looked at it like it was a longer thing. And it was mesmerizing. They'd seem to shift you around somehow so you'd hear each instrument just slightly featured; and it was great because the crowd would float in appreciative applause after these features, sort of like a gentle awakening. And then you'd sort of reset to the next adventure. Travelling around the stage, inside each player, until then you'd feel like you were outside the Hall, maybe back in time, or thinking of a thing you want to have happen. Transported. That's how it felt. But so random and even out of tune and sometimes I couldn't connect at all together what each player was playing. It was like different songs at the same time. Sometimes it seemed that they couldn't actually play their instruments. I mean, they were unbelievable musicians, but it came off liked they resolved to not at all pay attention to anything about scales or harmony or whatever and make like that's how they wanted music to be. Like studied savants. Still, they played at times from sheet music, so you know at least some of the chaos has order. And also, Coleman came up with a name for how and what he plays, 'Harmolodics'. So that's what I'm hearing I guess. Even though I have no idea what it means when I read the explanations of it. It's like if you decided you'd play poker by showing everyone your cards, but still you beat them. Ornette Coleman, man.

blah blah. telephone again

let the sleeping dan lie

some more 'favourites+hated', courtesy of catalina and stout:

eradicate
linoleum
acrobat
crotch
trundle
milky
anomaly
licorice
petulant
tomorrow is the last golf day of the year for me. i've been fading the driver so i'm a bit worried about hitting the fairway off the tee. and lately the short game is my murderer. still, i'm confident in my putter (as should we all be) so we'll see. I think I have a good chance to break 100. (Also, I am going to Ornette Coleman. I will try to remember it enough to tell some of it.)


PS: “captain, we believe that they're using their phonetic skills to attack new words.”

cohen's

come down to my room
i was thinking about you
and i made a pass at myself

...

i am punished when i do not sweat
or when i try to invent something
i am one of the slaves
you are employees
that is why i hate your work

my favourite words list

rabbit
twirls
dunk
mammoth

e.e.

2 little whos
(he and she)
under are this
wonderful tree

smiling stand
(all realms of where
and when beyond)
now and here

(far from a grown
-up i&you-
ful world of known)
who and who

(2 little ams
and over them this
aflame with dreams
incredible is)

to know it is to kill it

Is it true that you'd have to cut down a tree to find out how old it is? when does life as a tree begin exactly? From the seedling? Sprout? I don't know.
sidebar(a):
A list of words i've never said out loud (or only recently):

digestif.
non pareil
sensual massage
agape
physiognomy
riposte.

sidebar(b):
A (short) list of words that gross me out:

pantyhose
pork
yoghurt
moist
yeast

jesus creased

the dunnville theory

dial m for pocky

the unsuspecting pals enjoyed their pocky, without anxiety, until...
gotcha'! give us the pocky!
run for it!
leave me, save yourself!
stupid pumpkin. you should have given us the pocky!
the end.

dude, quit it

kensington before the fall

war party

Incredibly, no one got hurt tonight.

dirty secrets

4am is full of trouble.

all my lies are only wishes

mandelbrot and juliet

drift, wait and obey

when your demon is in charge, do not try to think consciously. Drift, wait and obey.

before they make me run

even though
i didn't want to
i did

graceland

We drove to Graceland a few years back. J was living on Euclid; I'm still where I was then. Don't think it doesn't bother me. Anyway, we didn't expect to see Elvis. We're not like that. But pictures don't lie right? So you see it for yourself. There's me, J and Elvis right there all thogether in his car. Crazy.

The place was impressive. The whole house seems like it's cocooned in shag carpet; floor, wall and ceiling. We saw no vaccuum cleaners however. I was looking. My favourite part was the shooting range. You could put your fingers in the bullet holes that had been shot outside the target area. There were alot of these holes. I thought drunk elvis shooting off revolvers with richard nixon. We didn't go in the airplane (the 'Lisa Marie') but we did buy special chocolates from the gift shop. And magnets.

derision

If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and sabbath breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.

The Incompleteness Theorem

xxx xxxx xxxx x xxxxxxxxx xxx xxxx xxxxxx xxx xxxx xxxxxxxxx xxxx xx xxxx xxx xxxxxx xxxxxxxxx xx x x xxxxx xxxxxx xxx xxxxxxxxx xxxx xx xxxx x xxxxxx xxxx xxx.

xx xxx xxxxxxxx xx xxx xxxx xxxxxx xx xxxxxxx xx xxxx xxxxxxxxx. xxx xxxx xxx xxxxxxxx xxx xxxx. xx x xxxxx xxxx xx xxxxx.

Vestibule Longing

So we drank a couple of car bombs and then I went and shot 77 million on Sopranos. I know what you're thinking, but I swear to you, I had nothing to do with the squished peanut butter cup. That happened way before I got there.

Anyway, I don't let myself get hung up with these things anymore. It's like my new mantra, courtesy of old man Churchill: When you're going through hell, keep going. But seriously, 'what do I miss?', you ask. Ha, I miss it all brother. I miss it all.

for jessica jackson, age 18

Galactica

ES of the SM

i'm back to loving highways. Though, I am afraid that I am beginnging to distrust astrology.

rocktober

Suddenly all I want to hear is “Across the Universe”. I read a girl’s blog all about how she is in love somehow at 21 with someone named Michael. But they’ve got problems.

S from the bar was hosed and put her arms around me. Then later she made out with some tall guy and later still he was in the bathroom with her while she vomited.
I haven’t slept in 37 hours.

My life is escaping me. I think all the time if I could just get the right perspective. I have to have something to accomplish. Don't I? Watch the world go by? Make dimes? Sure. Everday I feel guilty for something. This can't be good.

Coffee Pot Sunday

I know it’s Saturday so it’s kinda' like how the Big10 actually has eleven teams in it. My friend J says that it’s a phenomenon how guys all seem to like Nicholson Baker. I sure would like to be able to stop and start time. Couldn't you use a little more space to think? Like you, I’m obsessed with death. I also thought at one time that love meant finding your heart’s sparticle. But until the results are in from the Large Hadron Collider, it will be difficult I imagine to prove that super-symmetry applies to romance let alone elementary particles. There isn’t much time scientists! Godspeed.

I’ve been on the look out for extra-dimensions. Are you doing your part?