Stay the Curse

If I suddenly recovered the entire Library of Alexandria, combined it with the contents of the Library of Congress,and just for kicks, tossed in every published word-(every single damn word,including every single line of internet text)- and printed it all out -only to spend the next million years or so shredding documents into the Grand Canyon- I could be certain of three things:

1)I'd be immortal

2) I'd be insane,

3)If I reached into this land-fill of wasted words and pulled out any two scraps of text ,the words "Lying" or/or "Bush Administration" would be on one or both of them .

I Had No Choice

I put up with so many indignities on a daily basis that it's hard to focus rage on the present without having my head explode from the sheer overwhelming hell of it all.
So here's a blast from the past- a battle I won, although not without sacrifice:
Seven years ago I took a job at a realty office, running credit checks,data entry and drafting leases and other office crap. Seemed OK for about fifteen minutes. Good pay, insurance etc ...
Then I met the Boss. If Ross Perot and Gollum produced a love child using their DNA, John Birch's stem -cells and Ann Coulter's womb it would be saintly and charismatic in comparison to this Boss.

A role-model for slum-lords,petty tyrants and venomous, fascist insects everywhere.
His first words to me -"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS!?"

"The phone log ?", I lamely replied,referring to the fact that he was pointing at the phone log .
"NO!THIS!", he raged ,changing color to match the hideous Sharpie-red carpet-eyes rolling like a 4'11" drunken chameleon.He used a marker to "X" out a 7 I had logged into the book. (I have always crossed my sevens)
" A phone number?", I meekly replied, unsure of what the fuck this was all about.
"It's a French seven!", he said.

"It's a French seven?",I ventured.

"WRITE LIKE A GODDAMN AMERICAN FROM NOW ON", he screamed,applying an unwelcome drizzle of patriotic spittle to my eyeglasses. The things we'll endure for money...
A week later a nice couple came in to sign a lease, they had sterling credit and great references. I prepared a lease for them.
While I was in the back office the Boss told me to deny them.
Idiotically, I asked "Why?"
"Because we don't approve of that here!" He used words I won't repeat.
Then it dawned on me-the man was black and the woman was white-that just wasn't proper for the Boss morality.
"Yes, sir!" I said , playing the fool.
I printed out the lease and presented it to the couple.

" Over the wishes of my boss, I'm offering you a lease. By the way -he told me not to rent to you because you are a mixed-race couple.I'm quitting right now and I suggest we leave together without signing this". We did, although the applicants looked at me like I was crazier than my boss. Perhaps I am- but I'll never be as evil as that Boss. He was hateful and small and meaningless;evil with a lower-case e.
Three days later a local news station received anonymous documentation of a local slumlord's crimes -resulting in over a million dollars worth of housing code violation fines and fees.

A rash of lawsuits ensued Company? Bankrupt and gone.

I nearly pissed myself when I watched this on TV, I laughed so hard.

Priestess of Pity and Vengeance

The links in my last post seem to have vanished. Every goddamn time I declare that I love someone they disappear. Even if they died in 1912.

Click the red title for a great essay regarding this remarkable woman.

A special thanks to Crispin Sartwell.

UPDATE: links in last post are up again.

I am in Love With a Dead Anarchist

I'm quite the expert in unattainable and unrequited love, but this obsession is bad, even by my standards. I've got her portrait hanging in my cube-I don't have any photos of family or friends-just hers (and a detailed map showing exactly where all of Chicago's 598 homicides took place last year. Later for that...)

A brilliant writer,a gifted poet, a socially and politically active progressive intellectual and beautiful. Amazingly, she wasn't a lesbian.
Click on the link (title) and see for yourself. You'll love her too,I know you will.
...sigh...
A great poem she wrote

Tiny Shreds of Hope

I learned many things from the link above.Among them:

1)There are some people trying to do good things, a fact that I'm all-too seldom reminded of.

2)Gorillas are smarter than anyone I've talked to in the break room.

3)I'm not sure why,but I can't say or present something positive without adding at least a touch of gloom or pessimism. I don't mean this in a Duality/Yin-Yang/Harmonious sense. It's more like whenever I catch myself saying or feeling something good I feel somehow sullied and dishonest,shocked that such thoughts or actions could actually be coming from me.

If I was the Incredible Hulk I would quit my job and have fun doing stuff like this instead. Photo by me after Hurricane Isabel. 

Handing it to Bush

While I'm glad the Preznit had the pleasure of shaking the artificial hands of Saddam's victims, I'm kinda pissed about this .Read down a bit and note that his VA budget cuts research for prosthetic limbs by $50 million-at a time when the demand for such items is,for some odd reason, increasing.

I guess our returning soldiers will have to make do with wooden peg-legs and metal hooks. Perhaps they'll also recieve an eye-patch and a mechanical parrot that rides on what's left of their shoulder and squawks ,"Stay the Course! Bring it on! "

And a bottle of rum to help ease the pain.
Yo ho fuckin' ho.

About the Hagfish

click above to learn to love this gentle and misunderstood creature

The Hagfish is Not a pretty Animal 

Bet ya didn't know

These Giant Worms can be heard slithering underground. Does anyone have an mp3 of this? 

I feel Guilty Today

Didn't do anything at work today. Nothing.
Well, that's not entirely true. I re-read some Flannery O'Connor stories. "Wiseblood" sort of cheered me up, but "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is a little more depressing. Except when the Misfit shoots the grandmother. She had it coming.
O'Connor's writing really does hold up today.
Also read some Twain (The Prince and the Pauper).
I bet Mark Twain could write a great blog if he wasn't dead.
If I didn't have to drive home, I'd sit in my cube and drink all day. I'm invisible while I work so I doubt anyone would notice.

At least I have a job.And a library card.
And this blog, which is probably the most useless way of wasting time I've yet indulged myself in.
Which would be impressive if you knew how many ways I've tried.

Not very reassuring

Sounds like our policy has shifted from WMD to liberation to bringing freedom to the whole bloody Middle East-it doesn't' sound like it's going to be a voluntary process.Seems like the same old agenda to me- it'll be same shit,different country? Any bets on who's next?
One of the benefits of the new Iraqi soveriegnity will be the construction of an enormous , American built prison.
Bring in the experts. I bet Halliburton builds it.
This replaces the old one, which should have been destroyed at the first chance. It would have been a much more effective public relations move than a never-ending stream of torture images.

Anything is Possible

If I do this right, I just may be able to pull it off. I'll leave work a few minutes early-dash into the pharmacy and pick up my Xanax, stop at the liquor store and drive directly home. I should be able to get home shortly after 7 p.m. That'll leave me almost an hour to wash down those lovely little pills with vodka. I normally drink beer, but I'm pressed for time tonight.
With any luck, I'll be so fucked up by 8 p.m that I can watch Bush's speech without throwing a cinder block through my television. If I can manage to get truly, profoundly wasted, his feeble utterances may even begin to resemble human speech.
Perhaps I'll get really lucky and have an LSD flash-back. In that case, he may even sound like he's making sense.
I'm less than sanguine about this possibility.
About the best I can hope for is to either a) pass out at 7:59 or, b) get stuck in traffic and miss the whole sorry spectacle.
I guess I could just not watch it-that would be about as easy to do as not slowing down to gawk at a 10-car pile-up on the highway.
Maybe the power will go out and I'll wind up reading by candlelight. I'm such an optimist...

Squinting into the Abyss

Ever have the feeling that somewhere, something is going horribly wrong,and it is gonna change your life in an unforeseen, but inevitably negative sense?
Do you ever not have that feeling?
How much horror and hatred do we need in our lives anyway? Apparently we've not yet satiated our appetite for despair.
More torture. More death. More de-humanizing destruction. Everywhere.All the time.
Is this progress? History repeats itself- but this time it's streaming at us on broadband.
Here in America we've been warned to watch out for potential suicide bombers.People carrying almanacs or maps.Suspicious behavior. I see suspicious behavior every day, and it's not the guy in the alley hitting his crack stem.
We know what he's about.He's not plotting to draft my younger friends and relatives, of this I'm sure. He might steal my car stereo, but he's not gonna touch my Social Security.
I don't know about you, but by the time I notice the guy next to me is wearing a belt of grenades under his London Fog it's already too fucking late.
How the hell are we supposed to be happy, experience love, and feel a sense of wonder at the beauty of it all when we're kept in a constant state of fear and anxiety about everything?
Well, there's always the Internet.
The Net allows me to realize just how isolated and disconnected we've become -while still allowing me to obsess over anything we're capable of fucking up-which is everything.
What fun!

3M Brand Haiku

Still life in stock room
Dispensing tape not wisdom
Sticky yellow notes

Flat-Earthers Piss Me Off

Remember when the world was widely considered to be flat? I bet you don't.
That's because a bunch of egg-head scientists and left-wing public school teachers have sold you on the lie that the world is round. Perhaps you've been shown a "globe" to help convince you of this falsehood.
Don't fall for this trick. What you are being shown is merely a ball.Prove this to yourself-proceed to your nearest "globe" and kick it in the same manner you'd kick a soccer ball. Better yet, hit it with a baseball bat. It reacts like a ball, doesn't it? (Unless you've got one of those fancy-schmancy wooden "globes", in which case you'd better drag your intellectually elitist ass out of your ivory tower and head to the ER to get a cast on your newly-damaged foot)
In case you haven't noticed, the world is a goddamn cube.It's exactly 6 1/2' by 6 1/2'.
I know this because I measured it using a 3"x5" post-it note. It took a while.

Since I got paid for doing that I,must be a "professional". Everyone knows you can always trust a professional to fix or solve yer problems- (my so- called therapist being the exception).
Those glowing sticks in the sky? Those are called "stars", and yes ,you've been lied to about those as well.
On a positive note, space-travel is easier now than ever. Every single goddamned day I travel to another planet (also square) and bring coffee back to Earth. Somedays I go to a really big square planet full of glassy-eyed humanoids. Some people try to tell me these are called "meetings" , but I know them for what they really are-Alien Abductions!
Right down to the anal probe. If you haven't noticed this,you need another trip to Planet Coffee. Is it five o'clock yet?