(good night, Irene.) ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: out of bed. finally. have STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/05/2001 12:55:20 PM ----- BODY: out of bed. finally. have to make coffee with 2 scoops decaf and 6 scoops regular, different than my usual 1/2 and 1/2 recipe, because i only have enough milk for three cups of coffee, plus a real dark fourth, maybe. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: still tweaking the template for STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/05/2001 02:05:20 PM ----- BODY: still tweaking the template for this page, colors and such. large layout changes, and pleasing table affairs will no doubt be forthcoming.
i need to go get milk. i have to bring my weekly unemployment claim form to the post office (still not approved for it yet). i have to fix my bike's flat tire (or keep pumping it up every seven minutes). and it's snowing, hard.
there is a very dark brew in my cup. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: fixed tire. bike was very STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/05/2001 07:47:01 PM ----- BODY: fixed tire. bike was very grubby. just finished cleaning it--with a toothbrush. i get a little carried away. hey, when i was still depressively employed, i would have sooner stuck needles under my nails than take care of something so intimate to me--so very 'joe'--as my bike. i even cleaned the fridge last week. i do laundry. i might even replace those rags i use for towels with new ones. but right now, i still need milk before i can have some more coffee. and i am desperate for coffee... ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: now HERE is a STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/05/2001 11:01:48 PM ----- BODY:
i said, "what?" knowing exactly what he had said. he replied, "nothin," and he darted out the door. feeling like that had just made me appear like a prude who was temporarily in the middle of a friendly-talkative-manic phase, i went outside after him. " h e y ! " i yelled. he stopped -- this was a good thing. he could have ignored me, abandoning our encounter as just another wasted few moments of human interaction. he certainly could have misinterpretered anger in my voice when i yelled 'hey!' -- imprecise vocal modulations are the way with us manics, and i was a bit loud. but maybe it was my frustration because another social effort (which are rare as gold in these parts -- at least for my part) was wasted because i was mistaken, again, for something i am not, or at least for something i don't want to be.
he probably thought i wanted to rat him out, or fuck with his head, or threaten his apartment situation just because -- oh, who knows why, just because once-upon-a-bad-time-reagan told us it was o.k. to hate certain people for certain reasons. but he (my laundry encounter) stopped anyway and waited to hear me. i look for that; people who still hold out for the potential of the unknown in spite of their fear of the known. it felt like kindness, and as he stood there looking at me, his eyes were clear as innocence.
anyway, (this is going on forever) i didn't want to take the easy way out, and stay with my laundry while he brought his home, and let it end without at least an effort to be clear, to understand and be understood. "maybe i do and maybe i don't want some," i said to him.
"i don't know what you're talking about," he started to say before i got the first 'maybe' out. i forged on, tolerating his understandably defensive reaction, hoping i did actually understand, hoping i was not acting irrationally. i've done that before...
"i know a lot of people who have used lots of drugs in the past, some of my friends still use drugs, occasionally. i like them all, a lot. i might even consider buying some weed from you in the future, who knows, but right now i just don't want there to be any misunderstanding; i don't have any problem with that. it was nice talkin to ya, i'll see ya round."
i turned back to the laundry room, half expecting him to roll his eyes and dismiss me with a disconcerted sneer. i left him just standing there, holding his laundry. 'i tried' i thought with resignation, as i descended the few little steps back down to the basement laundry room door. when the door didn't close behind me, i looked, and there he was.
he sat on top of one of the dryers, and we talked until my laundry was all dry. it didn't seem to take long at all. over weeks we got to know each other, he would stop by for coffee. he'd smoke, i'd pass. usually. one day he walked in, i said hi, he didn't say anything. he closed my apartment door, and leaned back on it. and never taking his eyes off of mine, he grabbed his cock and...
speaking of h e y ! , check out hey mercedes (their cool front pictured above). of course they have a blog!
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: SDF STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/07/2001 03:02:34 PM ----- BODY: SDFwhat was that all about? i really have to stop drinking so much fuckin coffee. i mean it. last night, i downloaded and listened to the song that was #1 the day i was born. then i proceeded to get quite psycho, and balled my eyes out. (cried) as if that is not enough, i then had to describe it all in great detail to a complete stranger in an e-mail. which is i guess kinda what i do here, but here it is more like mumbling out loud in a subway station. the e-mail thing is a little like pouring your heart out to the cashier-kid at the supermarket. creepy.
gotta go make coffee...
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: tweaking... STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/07/2001 05:49:58 PM ----- BODY:tweaking...
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: me and blogger mcgee STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/07/2001 06:03:03 PM ----- BODY:me and blogger mcgee are starting to get along quite well. finally.
now, if i could only acquire a little taste...
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: i have been made STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/07/2001 11:45:38 PM ----- BODY:i have been made real. the best kind of grace is annonymous grace -- she's the lucky person who was first to post a comment (actually i was the first, but me and all the employees of publisher's clearing house and their families are inelligible). as such she gets my gratitude, and a coupon for a free foot massage, redeemable at any public men's room (just pass your foot under, oh yeah, just like that, oooo baby...). if you want it in the ladies room, you got to give me 24 hours notice to do my hair, and find some pasties. (but don't the stall dividers go all the way to the floor in ladie's rooms? and if they do, why the difference? hmmm...)
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: good morning. it's a STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/08/2001 06:59:47 AM ----- BODY:good morning. it's a bit past my bedtime, but the roast beef sub i had at midnight keeps returning (it's the onions). so i tweak. all night i tax blogger's web servers with tiny template alterations and style sheet touchups. i am insatatiably curious, but lazy and undisciplined -- a combo that leaves me comfortably unsatisfied. not comfortably numb; i don't want to lose my curiosity, i just don't persue it, much.
staying up all night is not so bad -- it keeps me out of the world and away from... from people? so i post a weblog. this really is like mumbling in the subway: know me know me know me know me know me know me know me, but... don't come near me. those wild-haired subway lunatics and i have a lot in common; we're all stuck in isolated prison cells aware of the world and unable to engage it, aware of each other down the halls or through the walls, and gaining some half-assed sense of companionship from that, and always afraid to be released. "don't hate me cuz i'm beautiful," i hear the pretty boys on the street call out to each other in mock indignation, disembodied voices intruding through steel-barred windows, and sometimes i want to lift myself and glance at life, sometimes i don't.
i don't hate you cuz you're beautiful. i hate me.
alright, 'nuff a-that. time to take a nap, reset the neuro-chemicals to a better place. time has turned us again to face the sun, and i need get me cheerful for that, or for what's left of it after i awake. good night.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: i must be getting STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/08/2001 07:49:55 PM ----- BODY:i must be getting very, very old. a prarie home companion (a.p.h.c.) has become my comfort, like brioschi, or motrin. some parts can be tedious, but it has gems, jokes, and joy. And a fair amount of 'biting' satire.
i would like you, generous reader, to do me a favor. below is a link to a sound clip from a.p.h.c.'s most recent show, of John Hiatt singing a song he wrote, and i would appreciate it if you would listen to it. be patient if you do, for the song does not begin until about 2 minutes in. but it's a very nice song.
they say all good things about you in retrospect. he had a good career, he did good things, he was a good man. but while we are in the throes of these moments what's real is all there is, and what people will say or are saying cannot matter -- because what's real is all there ever needs to be. the mistakes we made, the bad choices, the stumbles and falls are all forgotten in deference to the flying we did, but i have always been troubled by the dismissal of those lesser moments when we take time to remember, for there is as great a dignity in them as in any.
Mr Hiatt flubs a line, but in so doing, and in the way he recovers, he makes the experience of this song immeasurably more moving -- at least for me, and for you, too, i hope. and it's timing in my day today was almost appropriate, too, because i heard this song right after i started writing this post, which was right after i got up at about 2:30 pm. it took forever to get it posted -- but you know me and tweaking...
it's midnight, and i'm just getting started. (maybe i should move to new york.) i unplugged the phone today, about an hour after i plugged it back in from being unplugged since yesterday. <sigh>
where is this tedious place? what strands touch it from afar, anchor it within the (in)firmament, at once toying and discarding? and why do we stay... we, who can do anything, be anything, even reinvent reality; is this life perhaps a fun-house we chose, during some past enlightenment, to visit -- a dark and startling place intended for amusement only -- and have we perhaps forgotten this? taking life seriously leads to suicide. it really is all a joke -- and i don't mean that derogatorily. i'm serious. it's a comedy, a light farce, heavy with camp and desperately believable, and tempting, so very tempting to believe...
and where is faith? belief? the concreteness of knowing? should we just make it all up as we go along, like so many do? how much should we allow ourselves to lie? and we really only lie within ourselves; everything else is costume and pretense, even when we try our best, still then, the expression of our truth is incomplete. any representation of the other -- of what they think, say, or do, of who and what they appear to be -- is never as significant to us as who and what we are ourselves. besides, one could argue that no truth survives intact the transit across the interval between persons. we are only naked inside. the best we can hope is to discover our own nakedness, and perhaps to approach the nakedness of another. but we can never get all the way there.
along that vein, it occurs that i would like a chance to approach the nakedness of my abercrombie-attired neighbor, matt. he is young, short of stature, innocent of eye, fresh of face, italian of descent, and loose of boyfriend; my neighbor is gay (i hope?) like me. of course i am almost 20 years his senior, and somewhat reclusive (interpreted, i hope, as enchantingly mysterious). i am probably viewed by him as somewhat strange. he and i seem to be up all night, every night lately. he comes and goes til about 5 am which is when he sleeps, i think. on those rare occasions when our paths do cross, he gives me a look that might be saying, "gawd! you're so fucking desperate! will you get a life!" but i like to think his shy, expressionless glance is saying in breathy, whispering needfulness, "did he notice me? doesn't he want me? isn't he ever going to grab me and press me against the wall and hold me as i faint? well, isn't he!?!".
well, it is possible. remotely.
in the end it is all intellectual dishonesty, a game that i am drawn to no less nor more than anyone else, a game i would gladly play with matt, because we humans are a species that does very much love to lie. come matt, come lie with me.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: a day in the life STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/09/2001 07:21:16 PM ----- BODY:got the letter from unemployment today. :-( quoting from the claim adjuster's comments: "you left your work because of stress. you failed without adequate reason to request a leave and thus your seperation became final. leaving work under these conditions is voluntary and without good cause attributable to the employing unit. therefore, you are disqualified..."
well, what'd i expect? hell, based on that version, i'd have denied me. i called the director of human resources at adcare hospital (where i worked) today, a very nice guy named paul. he started-out working in the admitting department, and i was on occasion his supervisor during that time. anyway, i called because i need to liquidate my retirement funds, i would not have called if i could have avoided it. paul was cordial, even friendly, explaining the retirement fund's procedures for wresting money away from them. it takes two weeks.
then, paul felt it necessary to address the denial of my unemployment claim. hmm. i had hoped to bypass that awkward issue and his complicity in it entirely. but he had a need to talk about it. (awww). without coaching from me, he said of his brief tenure in the admitting dept., "i know firsthand that job is the hardest in the hospital. it was the hardest work for the least money i ever made." he went on. "just this week we had a woman walk out of there after only three days." i found out later they had another walk-out after fifteen minutes. awww...
not.
plausible deniability. if i were in their position, i would use it. the employee has no written proof of his expressions of distress, of gasping, choking and drowning. no taped recordings, or even transcripts, of his conversations with administrators about abusive conditions and about incidents of specific abuse.
but i knew all that when i went there. it is pretty obvious right up front (aparently within three days), how not up-front they are about things, about their responsibilities and your responsibilities, and how policies are tolerated in a loose-leaf binder, somewhere apart from actual practice, and how a wink and a nod or a glare and a scowl is how things are really done. it comes across the first time you see that face, the face of a smiling glassy-eyed refusal to care. 'it's all very nice, you bringing this to my attention, thank you very much.' period. it is the face of a pledged allegiance to a particular set of corporate self-interests, a narrow inflexible and dehumanizing framework that denies any reality outside of itself, inviolable no matter how compassionate the impetus to reach beyond its limits (or rather, its limitations). and they call themselves a hospital.
there should be rage, but there is not, from one who came perilously close to reaching there and fitting in, but didn't. fortunately.
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AUTHOR: joe
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DATE: 02/10/2001 03:59:31 AM
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n i g h t
here's a view of the place where i was born (which is not far from where i am -- about a pixel away). as i write this, the day's light onrushes from the east; the shadowed curve of that face turns toward the dark at mid-atlantic and there takes on the cloistered quiet of night.
the bright shine from the sahara, and the gleam from scandinavian glaciered coasts are vexing lights to me in this image, they mark the awakened day as beacons in basking revelry, while the cities on the dark side -- my friends -- display their puny helplessness in tiny zits of faint light beneath the massive comforting oppression of night.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: you know, stealing webcam images STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/10/2001 03:23:24 PM ----- BODY:you know, stealing webcam images is getting pretty tedious. i mean there was a time when it was interesting to learn about http and html, tracing links back through server redirects, frames, and javascripts, across domains, extracting and deconstructing html designed by others... <sigh> i do a lot of sighing, don't i? heh.
so, the point is that right now i'm gonna try to update all my webcam image links, or write a script that will do that for me. whoopeee. just wanted to alert the world.
oh, and btw, good morning. apparently, i'm following the time zone of the central pacific, or someplace. oh, and btw-#2, what the hell is up with those half-hour time zones? like india. or central australia. if you know, please speak
oh-#3, here's a site i stumbled upon (meaning i have no idea how i got there -- this ain't surfing, it's drowning!) aaaaanyway, it is created by and imbued with the personality of a dweeby nerd, who's really not dweeby at all. and she's not a nerd, either -- except that she likes not being dumb. i guess that makes you a nerd.
oh-#4, that's her blue-tongued dog. cute, huh?
(addendumb: i am mortified.) ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: no appreciable progress made. time STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/10/2001 05:16:02 PM ----- BODY:no appreciable progress made. time to leave for supper at stephanie's (hey! that sounds like a title, like maybe the sequel to breakfast at tiffany's. umm, no? <sigh>)
<sigh>
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: go here, and then STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/10/2001 10:23:02 PM ----- BODY:go here, and then here. i did.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: reminder to self: investigate STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/11/2001 04:59:04 AM ----- BODY:reminder to self: investigate this guy, chay, more later on.
i can't believe he calls this image 'chaysilly'. i know that i have a rather flattened affect as the result of my own caffeine abuse; perhaps he and i have something in common. he does drink coffee (espressoes, lattes, etc.).
<sigh> fevered dreams upon temporal brow, still-beating hearts do hope, and the soul in angst exudes its glistening sweat in the innocence of tear'd eyes. bedtime.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Tales of a Slut it STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/11/2001 05:20:43 AM ----- BODY:it thrilled me with its class, its antics made me laugh out loud, and i cried for its more than close to the heart familiarity. bravo.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: fascinating rambling thoughts. and STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/11/2001 06:46:28 AM ----- BODY:fascinating rambling thoughts. and don't go there just for his voice. but go there.
now, finally, i am going to bed (i promise) and go to sleep, listening to mays talk.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: g'day. coffee, windowshades, the knowledge STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/11/2001 03:26:27 PM ----- BODY:g'day. coffee, windowshades, the knowledge of a perfectly sparkling-sunny-crisp-clear-bluesky day outside, and lots of html to tweak, all make for a contented (if unemployed) soul.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: tweaking the layout, halfway there... STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/11/2001 05:32:37 PM ----- BODY:tweaking the layout, halfway there...
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: boooo, we lose. uh, STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/12/2001 02:19:40 PM ----- BODY: boooo, we lose. uh, wait a minute... no. uh, yay, we win! ummm, hang-on. shoot, i don't know! go here whilst i frantically d/l more tunes. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: you know something? i really STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/12/2001 02:36:09 PM ----- BODY: you know something? i really like the pat metheny group. i never would have realized that, except for napster. i mean, come-the-fuck-on, napster does the same thing as radio stations, only napster isn't wrapped around the record exec's cocks like radio stations are (or at least napster hasn't taken that position in the past -- we'll soon see if they can continue to abstain...). it's a tantrum we let the recording cartel get away with; napster ultimately does what the recording industry pays dj's to do -- only napster does it better and without advertising expenses -- but the RIAA exec's stomp and whine and shout "NO!"just cuz they can.
excuse me whilst i puke. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: shawn fanning can have anything STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/12/2001 02:45:44 PM ----- BODY: shawn fanning can have anything he wants at my house... <grin> ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: i thought i evaded STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/12/2001 10:38:38 PM ----- BODY:
i was feeling fine at noon, and by five i was starving. so i cooked up <gag> a bunch of greasy sausage <retch> and eggs. two bites and i was closely inspecting the condition of my toilet seat. oohhhhuuukchffft, (wipes mouth). sorry. you know how that taste... oh, never mind.
anyway, the turmoil seems to be, ...um, ...passing, so to speak (or at least on its way there). you know, it is amazing how certain urgencies can make us gladly put our fair faces in certain places where, once having seen it up close, we then think twice about putting our fair asses there.
if the rapid progress of this storm through my alimentary canal is any guage of its duration, then i can predict i will be through this -- or it through me -- by morning. and already i am tolerating a little cherry garcia. i would faint if not for ben & jerry; this weak-trembling-ness sucks, and i think i'll be in bed by eleven. : that's at least six hours earlier than my usual bedtime, for about the last month anyway. so maybe this is a good thing, to get me back on track. (yeah, right. like curing jet-lag with a crash.)
also, thanks to whoever returned via 'permalink'. you alerted me to my sloppy url-coding. for the first time, i'm using non-relative, (i.e.: "../../img/me_and_marcus_schenkenberg_in_bed.jpg") non-absolute (i.e.: "http://burgwinkel.com/img/me_and_marcus_schenkenberg_under_the_bed.jpg") url's in my image links, like this: "/img/me_and_the_bed_on_marcus_schenkenberg.jpg" -- no dots and no domain name -- soze i can move pages down to the blogchive directory without losing images. and i have no eff'n idea why i'm explaining all this. it would have been interesting to me once. i guess that's why.
or maybe i'm delerious...
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: i have been re-reading a STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/12/2001 11:43:44 PM ----- BODY: i have been re-reading a minor history of bubble-baths. it is amazing how often they were needed throughout the progress of mankind, yet how often their soothing peace was forfeited for our familiar angst. i am no queen (marcus schenkenberg notwithstanding), but i am also no dummy and i have learned a bit from a minor history. now i will imerse my aching, flabbous (well, really only slightly mis-shapen) frame into the gentle (mmmmmm...), warm (aahhhh...), slippery (oh, yeah...), pulsating (!), uh, no -- got a bit carried away -- not pulsating, but nonetheless rejuvenating bubblebath. therefrom i shall emerge -- serene.
oh, and might i mention the tinkering (apparent at the top of this page) which i am doing to try and make this page actually load when BlogVoices is blogged down (like earlier this evening). the code is only half finished (scriptus interruptus via vomitus), but the idea that is developing is to just prevent calls to the BV server during their peakload times, thus allowing this immeasurably valuable page to load quickly, while relieving some of the stress on BV.
i really do appreciate that service; it is nothing less than precious to the cohesion of this type of community, as given witness by the massive demand on it. and if i have overstated that, then at least i can say authoritatively that the comments it yields are precious to me.
thanks, you commenter, you.
of course my tinkerage disables commenting during the time it is speeding up page loads. ah, well. perhaps it's only temporary. more tweaking tomorrow...
as dudley moore's manservant in the movie arthur would say, "you're bahhhth awaits." ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: napster was smokin last night STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/13/2001 05:50:55 PM ----- BODY: napster was smokin last night (or this morning, like 4am) -- everybody was there! searches were fast, high bit-rates were abundant, and i got stuck in some sort of sixties reminiscence (thank you kvjc, you have an excellent collection!)
now, of course, i obey the wishes of those pricks (whose assholes are so tight they could snap broomsticks) who want the RIAA to rule (heil!), and i do not actually keep any of these things. that would upset the economic balance of the universe, and send us careening into really dangerous places (lions and tigers and bears -- oh my!) or at least into places unfamiliar. (lions and tigers and bears -- oh my!)
anyway, these are most of the gems i found, almost all at 320. and of course i am not listening to them right now, of course i am not flying through the intoxicating ether that is music, of course i am not swimming in that exquisitely delicate, massively moving sea that is music.
i am not. that would be anti-social (or something).
enjoy life a little.
*Bangles - Manic Monday.mp3 *Cole Porter - Night and Day (vocals by Ella Fitzgerald).mp3 *Law & Order.mp3 *Gene Pitney - The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.mp3 *Paul Revere & the Raiders-Indian Reservation (Cherokee Nation).mp3 *I'm Henry the VIII, I Am.mp3 *Young Rascals - You Better Run.mp3 *Young Rascals--Groovin'.mp3 *Young Rascals - Good Lovin'.mp3 *Turtles - Eve Of Destruction.mp3 *Bee Gees - New York Mining Disaster 1941.mp3 *Donovan - Jennifer Juniper(256).mp3 *The Turtles - Eve Of Destruction.mp3 *Young Rascals - A girl like you.mp3 *Hermans Hermits - Cant You Hear My Heart Beat.mp3 *Tommy James and the Shondells - I Think we're alone now .mp3 *Young Rascals - How Can I Be Sure.mp3 *Louis Armstrong -- What a Wonderful World.mp3 *Ani Difranco -Two Little Girls.mp3 *Starz - Cherry Baby.mp3 *Bee Gees - (1967) - Massachusetts.mp3 *Eric Burdon And The Animals - When I Was Young.mp3 *Turtles - Elenore.mp3 *Eric Burdon & The Animals - Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood.mp3 *Herman's Hermits - Listen People.mp3 *Ani Difranco --When I'm Gone.mp3 *Herman's Hermits - I'm Into Something Good.mp3 *Eric Burdon and the Animals - We Gotta Get Out Of This Place.mp3 *Herman's Hermits - There's a Kind of Hush(320).mp3 *60s - Kingston Trio- The Lion Sleeps Tonight.mp3 *Oldies - Nancy Sinatra - These Boots Are Made For Walking.mp3 *Eric Burdon & the Animals - San Franciscan Nights.mp3 *Otis Redding - Sitting on the dock of the bay.mp3 *Lulu - To Sir With Love.mp3 *Donovan - Colours (Rare - 4.mp3 *Association - Along Comes Mary.mp3 *Herman's Hermits - Mrs. Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter(ok).mp3 *Donovan - I'll Try For The Sun.mp3 *Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young - Teach Your Children.mp3 |
*The Turtles - Happy Together.mp3 *Carrie Anne - Hollies.mp3 *Hollies - Bus Stop.mp3 *Young Rascals - People Got to Be Free.mp3 *70's Bob Welch - Sentimental Lady.mp3 *Greatest Hits - The Association - Windy - 12.mp3 *Rainy Night in Georgia - Brook Benton.mp3 *Turtles - You Showed Me.mp3 *Petula Clark - Downtown.mp3 *Association - Never My Love.mp3 *Petula Clark Downtown.mp3 *Bob Dylan - Lay Lady Lay.mp3 *bob dylan - lay lady lay2.mp3 *Lionel Richie - Easy like Sunday morning.mp3 *Ani Difranco - Up Up Up Up Up Up.mp3 *John Lennon - Woman.mp3 *Association - Cherish.mp3 *Eddie Holman - Hey There Lonely Girl.mp3 *Mungo Jerry - In the Summertime 1.MP3 *Eagles -Best Of My Love.mp3 *Righteous Brothers - Unchained Melody2.mp3 *Christopher Cross - Ride like the wind.mp3 *Ani Difranco - Outta Me, Into You.mp3 *Donovan - Mellow Yellow.mp3 *Cheap Trick - I Want You To Want Me.mp3 *Donovan - Ballad Of Geraldine.mp3 *lonely-days--bee-gees.mp3 *The Guess Who - The Best of The Guess Who - 09 - Share the Land.mp3 *how-can-you-mend-a-broken-heart--bee-gees.mp3 *Donovan - Atlantis.mp3 *07 - Ruby Jean And Billie Lee.mp3 *Seals & Crofts - Diamond Girl_Various Artists.mp3 *Hollies - He Aint Heavy He's My Brother.mp3 *The Zombies - Time Of The Season.mp3 *Sade - Smooth Operator.mp3 *Commodores - Easy Like Sunday Morning.MP3 *BoDeans - Fadeaway.mp3 *Ani Difranco - New Orleans - Wish I May.mp3 *Eric Burdon and The Animals - Paint it Black.mp3 *Donovan - Season Of The Witch.mp3 *third eye blind - the background.mp3 *ZZ - Ray Charles - Rainy Night In Georgia.mp3 *1970's FM Hits - Various Artists - (Don't Fear) The Reaper - (Blue Oyster Cult).mp3 *Eric Burdon and the Animals - Sky Pilot.mp3 *Piano concerto No. 3 - Sergei Rachmaninov - 04 - Andante from Cello sonata, op.19 (arr. by Volodos).mp3 |
i fear it will be, though. they ask us to press our congresspersons to support the movement, to express our napster-devotions to record companies, and to stay connected and keep napster running on our computers. the last i will do. hell, i religiously practiced the seti 'distributed processing' thing for a long time. and if i am going to be religious about it, the napster thing is much more a part of my world and closer to my heart than ET.
.
And the world will be better for this
.That one man stormed and covered with scars
.Still strove with his last ounce of courage
.To reach the unreachable star
.
yet, i hope...
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i have been tweaking (you know how i am with tweaking...) a new blog which i started on a whim. i guess the germ of the concept was planted when bernard (happy birthday, bernard!) told me of a court case in which a former FBI agent accused of drunk driving was ordered to repeat, exactly, the hoisting of drinks and gorging of Mexican food he did on the night in question. The judge in that case -- apparently a 'law-and-order' man -- is engaging these extraordinary departures from judicial practice in an effort to acquit the lawman based on some bizarre logic that says we can make you repeat what you said you did (as if that's the truth) and thereby 'prove' that you were not drunk (as if that's proof).
it started me thinking how there may be many ultra-conservative, fanatically religious, racially biased judges out there who, inspired by the Supreme Court's gerrymandering of law, may now feel freed from the judicious restraint they have imposed on their biases in the past. why bother now that the gang of five has, on the basis of untenable arguments, so vigourously expressed their true colors? <fade to rehnquist doing plies in a sunny flowered field while cindy lauper sings>
well anyway, that's what got me started on starting the other blog, and to tell the truth, it scares me, looking at those fleeting dark thoughts out here in print, and observing the shift in the behavior of many judges and the new boldness of some of them to violate long-standing ethical prohibitions against partiality.
there is a courthouse in worcester, massachusetts with this harsh motto carved in stone: obedience to law is liberty. i have never liked it, but my observations of new judicial excursions outside the law while under the color of authority make me want to re-carve it thus: obedience to truth is liberty.
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sorry, no. that's another scene.
i'm off to postmark my request for a hearing -- i am going to appeal my disqualification from unemployment. i have 48 hours left (to postmark my request), but better early than not at all. (gee, work would never think that was me talking.) cya.
§
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listening. overtaken by the sounds of garrison keillor's banter with greg brown, and i recall that music is people -- human people, human hearts, simple sound.
listening to 'never so far' performed by greg brown on a prarie home companion in october 2000. its surface has the naked texture of brushed metal, the sound of greg's voice does - and it's as substantial as iron, it's so very deep and gentle.
gotta be careful, or be overtaken... ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: got im'd on napster STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/16/2001 05:31:58 PM ----- BODY:
got im'd on napster yesterday by a guy from france who was downloading maria, by blondie. 'hi', he said. i said, 'hey.' blondie hasn't been in france lately, he said. he's a 35-year-old firefighter, in Strasbourg, France. '...and u?' he innocently asked.
he didn't know i used to be a firefighter—how could he? but i sat there frozen for a moment, as my frame of reference expanded in a breathtaking instant from the 18 inch space between me and my monitor to the 3711 mile space between me and this guy in france. whhoooh. just remembering it is a rush.
the poor guy was then subjected to a gush of my reminiscences about firefighting. he sent a pic, and asked me for one. i sent my best one—me at work last year. but i think he wants pics of people around firefighting stuff—like his pic. i have none.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: well, let's see if i STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/17/2001 02:45:33 AM ----- BODY: well, let's see if i can come up with any more inane crap to post...
tweaked the blogvoices 'flag' script for the last time—i hope. i should just pretend it's cool, but it's not. all it does is switch from blogvoices' dynamically-generated javascript source (during BV's server-overload time period) to a 'dead' copy of bv.js on my server. the script doesn't even know whether bv is slow or not—it just switches during whatever time i programmed it to (from 2pm - 9pm, i think. i don't even remember.) making it actively watch 24-7 for a delay and then automatically switch to an archived—or better yet, preloaded—version (ooo, there's an idea); that might be cool.
no matter, though, because my server is not much faster than blogvoices' server lately, ever since the goldbrickers at XO communications bought my domain host, concentricnet. i used to have a ping (at burgwinkel.com) in the 80's. today it was 414! i know that i know very little about network protocols, but the increase in ping rate seems to coincide with a newly sluggish page loading rate from my site, independant of any slowdown by blogvoices. not to mention all the ftp and telnet disasters they (at XO) have been creating...
enough. i must ...ohhhmmmmmmmmm... relax, and focus my mind on peaceful ...ohhhmmmmmmmmm... things, and prepare my body to slip off ...ohhhmmmmmmmmm... into the netherworld that follows after ...ohhhmmmmmmmmm... one finally comes to the complete acceptance ...ohhhmmmmmmmmm... that another totally wasted day is over. ;)
besides, i'm getting heartburn. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: gm. this is the earliest STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/17/2001 11:10:56 AM ----- BODY: gm. this is the earliest oob since i quit my job. laid in bed listening to the 80's; journey, styx, queen (winamp auto-starts at 8:30am), then crawled out, started coffee, folded futon, and judi called. "change of plans, stay in bed," she said.
"rrrrph, ihg nooo ate," said i.
"WHAT?"
then i started up the tractor which i have been keeping in the back of my throat for the past couple weeks, and dredged a path of intelligibility through the night's accumulation. then i said, again, "well, dear, that's nice, but it's too late now. i am up and about."
also, the second time, i moved my lips.
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Jesus of the Week 2001 "Jesus is coming. Look busy."
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TITLE: quote from alison, at bluishorange.com:
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quote from alison, at bluishorange.com:
conversation had with myself while making my parents' bed:
"hmm, this striped bottom sheet thing looks kind of square. i wonder which way it goes."
"the stripes should be vertical. vertical stripes are slimming."
"yeah, but on a bed. wouldn't you want your bed to look bigger?"
"you'd think that, wouldn't you?"
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TITLE: found this at CodeWarriorU.com "The
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found this at CodeWarriorU.com "The Introduction to C++ Programming course is designed for both beginner and experienced programmers."
for the beginnier it's an intro; otherwise i'd guess that it's designed to be a sedative... ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: None Dare Call It Treason STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/18/2001 10:18:44 PM ----- BODY:
None Dare Call It Treason an article by Vincent Bugliosi discussing the recent (mis-)conduct of the Supreme Court.
i'm going to get outta here and eat...
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: prophet STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/19/2001 12:56:29 AM ----- BODY:Qouted on 9/28/00 in the Philadelphia Inquirer Karl Rove (the scariest political insider since the Schutzstaffel) said, "It's going to be the closest race since at least 1960, and it's going to be settled in the last ballot box, in the last precinct in the last state in the last hour of the last day."
He's a prophet.
Speaking of the Third Reich, a brief visit to Britannica.com informs that "...the Sturmabteilung was reorganized in 1925 and soon resumed its violent ways, intimidating voters in national and local elections." Not only that, but the US Army pays for recruitment ads at that page. It is the same page which describes selection for military service based on physical perfection and racial purity, saying, "With their sleek black uniforms and special insignia (lightning-like runic S's, death'shead badges, and silver daggers), the men of the SS felt superior..." Oh, my!
The US Army is seeking out young readers of history's horrors, hoping to find closeted 'sturmtruppen' among them.
Hey, I can try to be a prophet too! ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: An army of one? STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/19/2001 01:22:21 AM ----- BODY:
An army of one?
This is the pop-up I got when leaving the britannica article about Himmler and Hitler, and the Gestapo. He's got a cute face and nice lips. And I'd fuck him in a second. But I don't trust whatever it is that they're selling.
I just don't. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: not in the mood STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/22/2001 12:09:37 AM ----- BODY: not in the mood
ya know, i have to say something in worship of blogger, and Ev: in a time when most 'enterprises' offer a plastic smile, and an all-is-well attitude publicly --especially when all is not well --blogger has been honest. Ev, the guy behind blogger presently and as far as i can tell, the sole occupant of its organizational flow-chart, has been uncommonly up-front with blog users about the blogger-related things that affect them. blogger is the 'new' kid in town in an economy leaning heavily-- indeed, falling-- into the hands of an already over-powerful and over-rich minority like the industrialist monopolies of a darker economic past. and Ev prophetically reminds us that there is, or should be, another way.
unfortunately, the successful business model in the investment culture of today demands style over substance and values skillful self-deception over truth, and it makes no distinction between appearing sincere and actually being sincere-- to its detriment (i hope). perception is reality, i have been told by those whose profession is marketing. it follows then that controlling the consumer's perception is controlling reality. woe be to us, in the most gluttonous nation on earth for swallowing that lie, hook, line and sinker. haven't we swallowed enough, already?
i, for one, have heard the lone but welcome voice with which blogger speaks. its business is push-button publishing, but its message would be the same whether it baked bread or built houses: trust people-- unlike my web host, who assured me nothing had changed, when in fact everything had changed, and unlike my ISP, whose customer service staff has no contact with the technical staff and no clue about what they do. they both apparently keep their customer service staff uninformed (or even mis-informed) to protect ...who knows what? and they never put anything specific in writing, even in something as mundane as e-mail. perhaps they are trying to preserve their place in an overheated economy of overvalued stock and undervalued people.
but Ev's openness regarding blogger stands in stark contrast to these guarded, suspicion-based behaviors. when it 'hiccups' he acknowledges that, instead of staying silent. Silence regarding problems with a product makes a company look dumb, and if that company is huge-- say, like aol, or intel-- then silence makes it look dumb AND abusive. Thank you Ev for trusting us enough to tell us the real deal. your trust is greatly appreciated here; i will do whatever i can to reward that trust.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: the right click STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/23/2001 01:39:58 AM ----- BODY:inspired by blogger's right-click menu extension, i have written three other tiny little scripts to provide me with that same easy access to a few 'utility' sites i use all the time...
for web searches, it used to be AltaVista. now i use Google to find everything web (and a hell of a lot non-web). i just highlight the text (a word, a name, a phrase) and with the rc-menu, select 'google'. a new window opens with my precious info. if nothing is highlighted on the page just right click and select 'google' and a prompt pops-up asking you to type in your search string. same with the other two.
the online dictionary i use is Merriam-Webster's. just because it is the most accessible. it will even try to find misspelled words, and give options based on the search string.
the latest addition to my right-click assortment is for encyclopaedia (i like that spelling) look-ups. it searches britannica.com, which always returns several short articles, and sometimes a longer, comprehensive one.
one of the major benefits of this method for me is that i no longer lose the window from which my search originated-- a cause of me getting very lost sometimes (like Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits).
if you want these trinkets on your system (sorry, IE only) then download and 'merge' these three reg keys into windows registry-- one each for web search [goosrch.reg], dictionary [define.reg], and encyclopaedia [encyclopedia.reg]. be careful, and back-up your registry first. when you click on these .reg links you can select 'open from current location', and the merge will happen without fuss. if you require extra peace of mind, select 'save to disk' and inspect each one from a plain-text editor, like editpad, notetab, or windows notepad. then merge, close all instances of IE, restart IE, and voila.
to remove the changes, use [joeRCremove.reg].
the menu options each call a different javascript on burgwinkel.com (about 400 bytes each-- smaller than the previous paragraph) which forms your query into a url string and opens a new window to display it. i like it. you can get an idea of how each one will work (before installing) here:
highlight a word on this page and click one of the following links. for example, highlight Terry's name and movie above, and click 'google'... then try it with nothing highlighted. (these links use this window, the menu extension will do the same as these, but in a new window.)
..google.. ..merriam-webster.. ..encyclopedia..
enjoy. now it's time to ...zzzz
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: in better word STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/23/2001 06:34:04 PM ----- BODY:...What you said in better word is what I think.
nothing could possibly be more complimentary. if only i could speak french the way she speaks english... no, if i could just speak english the way she does. oh.
she slays me
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: it's like giving in to STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/24/2001 01:15:26 AM ----- BODY: it's like giving in to an addiction... i can't help it. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: limblesslove STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/24/2001 02:30:41 AM ----- BODY:cute quote at wordsmith
Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.-Marcus Tullius Cicero, statesman, orator and writer
(106-43 BCE)
books like these?
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: tmcm STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/24/2001 05:47:46 PM ----- BODY:
i could be here the rest of the day...
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: whine STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/24/2001 08:58:35 PM ----- BODY:i'm a writer, aren't i? why won't this happen to me? i thought the one on the left was cute, and i look like the one on the right-- sort of.
maybe i should get a pipe...
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: doesn't the post office STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/25/2001 02:27:46 AM ----- BODY: doesn't the post office pick-up on Saturday anymore? (i sound old).i filled-out some cobra paperwork for the ex-employer, put it in an oversize envelope along with a pithy tome, and set it out for usps retrieval. i just left the house to get a grinder (aka a sub, elsewhere), and there was my important mailpiece. i grabbed it, stuffed it in my shirt (i was traveling via bicycle) and set off to find a mailbox which i found right outside the pizza place, and which i walked by, not once or twice, but three times without it occuring to me once that i need to take the envelope out from inside my shirt and place it in the mailbox. perhaps the supreme being is trying to tell me not to send it.
i didn't know she had jurisdiction over the post office, though. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: it's the old 'old-posts-within-a-new-post' trick... STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/25/2001 10:16:47 PM ----- BODY: it's the old 'old-posts-within-a-new-post' trick...
i wish everything was different... i don't know how, exactly. just not like this. some days suck, and some days suck a little less. i'll be up til there's a light.
i wish mays would put up another voice blog-- right about now i could use the soothing sound of gentle sanity. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: doing nothing. still. STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/26/2001 01:52:54 PM ----- BODY: doing nothing.
still. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: some people are so negative... STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/26/2001 03:06:34 PM ----- BODY: some people are so negative... they never get it! you can even tell them straight to their face, and they gloss it over like you didn't speak, and they just continue unimpeded on their whiney-ass, self-pitying way. get over it, will ya? jesus, get a life! ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: the previous 'some people' are, STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/27/2001 03:07:26 PM ----- BODY: the previous 'some people' are, namely, me. i thought there might be some confusion...
also, there's a new post at my journal.
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just thought you should know, from Animal's Health -Coprophagy
...
e) Feces can be tasteful to the dog.
...
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TITLE: ..on that same disgusting vein,
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..on that same disgusting vein, from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
At the University of Washington, athletes often play in feces because workers cannot clean it up fast enough, said Charles Easterberg, an environmental health instructor
I discovered that while waiting for dawn to come, despair can be quite severe, and the relief which came with the first light and the first birdsongs was stunningly transformative. My life's perspective traversed instantly the vast gulf between despair and hope, all for the arrival of a little light. Suddenly I was...see the rest here. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Nom: Roxane i think she STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/01/2001 12:22:33 AM ----- BODY: Nom: Roxane i think she is beautiful, (and I think the bike is cool too).
ahh, summer glow... ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Dear NIKE iD, Thank STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/01/2001 11:58:03 AM ----- BODY:
Dear NIKE iD,...from a series of e-mails reprinted in In These Times regarding Nike iD's rejection of the word 'sweatshop' as a personalization for Jonah's shoes. Read the whole series. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: shhhh. this too shall pass... STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/03/2001 07:59:52 PM ----- BODY: shhhh. this too shall pass... ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: the waiter of previous worship STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/04/2001 09:14:22 AM ----- BODY: the waiter of previous worship hates me. either that or i make him very uncomfortable --not the nervous-and-excited-because-joe-likes-me kind of uncomfortable, but the irritated-and-annoyed-that-joe-is-attracted-to-me kind of uncomfortable. believe me, i've seen others affected by me in the same way before. and i know this is adolescent. i wasn't kidding when i said i was stuck somewhere between eighth grade and real life.
Thank you for the time and energy you have spent on my request. I have decided to order the shoes with a different iD, but I would like to make one small request. Could you please send me a color snapshot of the ten-year-old Vietnamese girl who makes my shoes?
Thanks,
Jonah Peretti
he's one of the adults who grew-up, learned acceptance, took on responsibility. he has an intuition --like everybody --that tells him when something is right and when something is wrong. he's 27 and he is one of the adults; i am 42 and i am still not.
he skiis. he's the oldest of five boys. they all ski. there was a 6-month old at the table next to us. whenever Jason came in the vicinity, the baby's face lit-up and he wouldn't take his eyes off Jason. Jason likes kids. Stephanie's question, 'do you like kids?' led to him telling us he is the oldest of five, that he grew-up taking care of kids since he was a kid. he even allows that he has some anxiety when they all go skiing, about his youngest brother who just started skiing this year. it is very sweet to appreciate from the perspective of my years the concern of an elder in the eyes of one so young as Jason. and the baby across the aisle remains fascinated by the beautiful young man who can't remember my name.
the 6-month old and this 510-month old both have the same keeness of perception borne of a need to thrive, and are both attuned to the same clues; who is generous?, who is kind?, who is my mirror.
who can i trust?
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: the national weather service forcast STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/05/2001 12:40:44 AM ----- BODY: the national weather service forcast for central massachusetts (just a tiny bit west of boston):
*** ZONE FORECAST ***----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: tonight, the supermarket was out STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/05/2001 01:04:28 AM ----- BODY: tonight, the supermarket was out of bread. i think people like any diversion they can get from the routines into which they have chosen to be locked. that's why the weather 'entertainers' are making such a big deal of this storm, so early; hell, they started their chicken-little routines thursday! but everybody was almost cheerful at the supermarket tonight, even giddy. we were all feeling secure in our mutual need --regardless of how true, or not true, that need may turn out to be. because all we want, really, is an excuse to acknowledge that we do like each other, an excuse to lower our guard in the safety of a shared crisis which equalizes us --or, rather, which allows us to let go of the pretense --the lie --that we were ever unequal in the first place. it's a relief. .MAZ004>006-012-NHZ012-051632- HILLSBOROUGH-NORTHERN WORCESTER-SOUTHERN WORCESTER-WESTERN ESSEX- WESTERN MIDDLESEX- INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...FITCHBURG...LAWRENCE...LOWELL... MANCHESTER...WORCESTER 1132 PM EST SUN MAR 4 2001
...BLIZZARD WARNING MONDAY THROUGH TUESDAY... .OVERNIGHT...SNOW BECOMING HEAVY TOWARD DAYBREAK. SNOW ACCUMULATION BY EARLY MORNING 2 TO 5 INCHES. LOW 20 TO 25. NORTHEAST WIND 10 TO 20 MPH. .MONDAY...SNOW...POSSIBLY BRIEFLY MIXED WITH SLEET LATE IN THE MORNING. PRECIPITATION WILL BE HEAVY AT TIMES. TOTAL ACCUMULATION...6 TO 12 INCHES. BECOMING VERY WINDY. HIGH 25 TO 30. NORTHEAST WIND 20 MPH INCREASING EARLY IN THE AFTERNOON TO 30 TO 35 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 55 MPH. .MONDAY NIGHT...SNOW...HEAVY AT TIMES. VERY WINDY WITH GUSTS TO 50 MPH. LOW IN THE UPPER 20S. CHANCE OF SNOW NEAR 100 PERCENT. .TUESDAY...SNOW...HEAVY AT TIMES. VERY WINDY WITH GUSTS TO 50 MPH AND SEVERE BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW LIKELY. HIGH NEAR 30. STORM TOTAL SNOWFALL BY DAYS END...20 TO 36 INCHES.
course, i'm probably clinically depressed, so what would i know about it? ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: here's the weather on STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/05/2001 08:19:18 PM ----- BODY:
here's the weather on top of me now. the weather is mostly coming off the sea from the south right now, but notice how the pattern is very subtly turning counter-clockwise (pretend, OK?) for example notice the few straggling radar reflections moving due west into boston. right now i am at the 1 or 2 o'clock position relative to the storm, and the winds --which move around the storm counter-clockwise --are coming from the south east. as the storm moves out to sea, it will probably strengthen, slowly it seems in the case of this storm, and New England will eventually be in the ten o'clock position relative to the storm. Then the winds, snow, and sleet moving counter-clockwise around the storm will be coming at us from the northeast, hence the term Nor'Easter.
such juxtapositions of storm, sea, and land have often created very severe weather, including my favorite, the Blizzard of '78. We didn't give the Nor'Easter its own name just because we are pretentious. It was named many generations ago by taciturn New Englanders who would never admit it, but who secretly love a really good storm.
and with that, i am going for a walk... ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: A Glimpse of Hell, The STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/15/2001 02:05:30 PM ----- BODY: A Glimpse of Hell, The Explosion on the USS Iowa and Its Coverup is the name of the book banned from all US military bases by the Navy. The movie will be aired Sunday, March 18 on the FX Television Network.
It's an old story (twelve years for the story of the explosion, thousands of years for the story of institutions that lie to preserve power). But, regretfully, it is a story all too germane to the abuses of power which the Bush administration has currently resumed.
Read the Salon.com article. Watch the movie. Buy the book. These are the days when we cannot afford to allow honest, competent journalism to go unrewarded. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: German armed forces ban MS STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/20/2001 01:09:29 AM ----- BODY: German armed forces ban MS software, citing NSA snooping. A full circle takes about sixty years. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: the patient could have suffered STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 04/12/2001 05:52:29 PM ----- BODY: the patient could have suffered temporary memory loss because of the sedatives he had been given
integrity-optional behavior is a privilege, not a right. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Mass. Voters for Clean Elections STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 05/01/2001 03:19:39 PM ----- BODY: Mass. Voters for Clean Elections ignored and a column in the Boston Globe, today.
What the hell happened to Massachusetts liberalism? ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Bush Protesters arrested in Tampa STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 06/06/2001 04:19:24 PM ----- BODY: Bush Protesters arrested in Tampa Bay
What the fuck is this bullshit. The corralling of free speech is nothing less than bald-faced repression. We wouldn't tolerate it from an intelligent and accomplished head-of-state; all the more reason we should not tolerate it from this straw-man Bush.
Let the national news desk and the editorial board at the St Petersburg Times know how you feel about these encroachments on freedom, because a lot of powerful people are encouraging news media to look the other way. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: This is absolutely astounding. STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 06/14/2001 01:07:08 AM ----- BODY:
This is absolutely astounding. A removable hard drive for a Compact Flash slot. Up to 1 GB.
Such coolness in gadgetry is almost moving. Now I know why I cried affter watching 'Men in Black'.
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Christian Grantham is an excellent writer. I hate him for it. He also does some really fabulous web pages. I obsess over my broken pages and I hate him more. He is adorable--both physically and socially--and he has sweet Vince for a boyfriend (who is, by the way, one hell of a hotty also).
I'm going to kill myself.
But... there is love. Wherever love is, there am I also. And you... wherever you go, there is my love. Let us tink the glass, and make the happy couple kiss. Too soon, too soon. Always, summer ends too soon.
Get me another martini.
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A former member of Congress launched a campaign to impeach the five conservative Supreme Court justices who voted to stop the presidential ballot recount in Florida last year -- but admits it's a long shot.
Charles Porter, an 82-year-old attorney in Eugene, said the Supreme Court ruling was so clearly influenced by politics that under the Constitution there may be grounds to impeach the justices for bias.
However, real crimes have never been grounds for impeachment in this nation's capital. It is painful for us as persons and as citizens to seek a redress of our very real and valid grievances when we know those grievances will be officially discounted because they stir the hatred and the opposition of 'the hating party'.
"...under the Constitution there may be grounds to impeach...". Once upon a time.
Since December 12 we have seen clearly that any ground upon which the Constitution once stood has been eroded by the political sea, like the coast of Chatham, and that formerly solid foundation, now shifty and unstable, moves to suit the strongest, or the most powerful, or simply to suit the ones who are most willing to hate. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Global Trash Hash Hymnal - STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 06/28/2001 01:25:31 PM ----- BODY: Global Trash Hash Hymnal - Roll Me Over in the Clover
Well, the Supreme's have done it again! (I know this is not healthy, but my cynicism about this president has proven to be so accurate in predicting his administration's behavior that I no longer need my psychic.) The Supreme Court can no longer claim a place within the Judicial Branch; it has become an agent of the Executive.
This, apparently, is a New Federalism fashioned by the same people who said that the states should be left alone to do what they want. That was what they said, until the federal law became their domain when they sucessfully installed an illegitimate president. These people in power are afloat in a tide of intellectual dishonesty. Bush, Scalia, Cheney and the like--they can't be trusted.
But who cares. I just bought a new iPAQ, and it will be here before supper. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Summer Better than Others I STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 06/28/2001 07:51:42 PM ----- BODY:
I hide.&nbs. On nice days I stay inside and read. I like dark winter days when the ground is brighter than the sky. You wouldn't like me. You probably don't like my writing. I am a classically depressed person.
Summer brings to me the annual chore of fighting to stay withdrawn and numb and safe. But yesterday I went to the beach, Hampton Beach, in New Hampshire. The warm balmy air filled with the scent of fried dough... and the gleeish squals of children mixing with the surf... and bare skin, smooth tanned teenage skin... There is no safe harbor for me at the beach. Every sight and every sound is a warm seductress calling me to come out of my shaded life, luring me kindly out onto the bright boulevard. Oh, fearless reckless beautiful summer, I am in love with my longing for you.
I had to get up earlier than I usually do, Irene picked me up at 9:15 AM; I work with Irene, I met her in December. And I had to sit next to Irene for a hundred and twenty miles, in a purely social context, without any of the chaos of work to distract and buffer, and with only a cup of well-insulated Dunkin Donuts coffee to occupy my hands. It stayed hot all the way to Newburyport.
I had forgotten the summers of my single digit years and the day trips when my parents took the five of us kids in the family's station-wagon to Hampton Beach when, fifteen years later as a nineteen year old, I drove there in my own first car with my friends. And I had already forgotten those teenage excursions to Hampton Beach when Irene brought me there again yesterday.
Great Boar's Head brought all three eras together for me at once--my childhood, my coming of age, and my self now. I looked at it yesterday, and I saw it in my memory from when I was five years old, and again from when I was nineteen. A high cliff, it stands in the near-distance to the north, jutting out into the sea, but looking back at us with a sideways glance which seems smug at times, as if knowing why we timidly came to visit to the edge of landlife. But every now and then, the cliff seems to me to be furtive in its glance back at us on the beach, as if secretely looking for some assurance that it does not approach the unknown alone.
We drove around--Irene and I--looking at all the beach houses--the mansions and the camps. Then, further along Route 1A in Rye, we stopped and collected seashells at low tide from among the slippery boulders in the bright sun.
Back at Hampton Irene had calamari and I had fried clams, and we napped the afternoon away on the beach. There were tanned, trim bodies laying sprinkled on the sand like jimmies on a donut. Irene and I settled right next to the spot where a painfully beautiful stud, fully exposed all but for a tantalizing bit, lay beside his girlfriend sunning himself. It was easy to get burned on the beach yesterday, but the water was cold, painfully cold--it was 51 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday (I don't care what that is in Celsius). And I think that saved me.
Once you get used to the pain, the beach can be quite a frolick.
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...nothing's so warm as my lover's hand
resting lightly by my thigh,
nothing's as fine as the warm white wet sand
briefly tracing our twinned stride,
nothing's the same since that foam trickled off this beach,
nothing's between us;
your soft sand reaches out to meet my sea,
nothing's ever moved me like the tides of us,
nothing's what I want when I'm with you,
then nothing's all there is--no Sun, no sand, no sea
nothing, I should say, 'cept the shadow of you and me.
"The Vatican has not disclosed Milingo's whereabouts, saying he is on a spiritual retreat and should be left alone to pray.. Yah, right.
This is the guy who said, in no uncertain terms, that priests should be allowed to marry, and that he had already consummated his marriage with his wife, a 43-year-old South Korean doctor. This is the guy who said he had no intention of ever resuming celibacy, and went to the Vatican with the purpose of broadening the Holy See's vision.
Come on Karol, where's the archbishop? ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Simple. STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 08/20/2001 02:11:58 PM ----- BODY: Simple. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: More than one word: STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 08/21/2001 01:52:19 AM ----- BODY: More than one word: Joe:12/1/99.
Somebody connecting to the web through a server at Random House visited my blog today. Pure accident, I'm sure. Probably wanted the link next to mine, but had bad aim. Or they'd had too much coffee. Maybe some editor there was looking for someone who can write. More likely they are looking for someone who d o e s write. But most likely it was simply a belaboured soul taking a break.
I can write. I don't, usually. Success is a happy accident waiting to happen, and I give it precious little opportunity to occur. My random visitor from Random House came because my blog had been freshly updated. And what was the content of that portentious update?
One word. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: I am going to begin STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 08/23/2001 02:12:14 PM ----- BODY: I am going to begin a blog-centric life, focussing the emanations from my silly mind all into one place. Here.
Hopefully this will make some difference in my update frequency but, perhaps not. We shall see, and right now, I am late for work. (What else is new?) ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Simple. A new start, gracious STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 08/24/2001 11:47:09 AM ----- BODY:
Simple.
A new start, gracious though ungraceful - panicky even. I am close to the end, the parts amputated are still nearby, sheddings of a weightful something - old trauma perhaps, but more likely sheddings of a present fear. Just me.
I am - we are - ever close to the end; indeed close to everything, only an instant away. It is all just on the other side of a membrane which contains us, and time, and reality as we know it. Everything crowds up against it; birth, death, and every moment in between, the boredom and the thrills, the history and the moments yet unlived. The possiblilities and the impossibilities touch me all around, and reaching them is not a process of filling this space with complex stuff. Reaching beyond the limits of this membrane is achieved by becoming less, by emptying, shedding, and simplifying.
Simple.
To be decent, I should include at least one renamed link to assist the intrepid visitor in the navigation of this site, which is apparently going to be entirely revamped. (I thought this was simple?)
For the old familiar journal presentation, click here.
There is so much to do, and so many ways to do it. I find it difficult to avoid the complication of all things, the exponential expansion of each detail into a new universe of my own making. Nothing ever comes in to that universe from the undiscovered country, and my complications more than adequately distract me from any need I may feel to mount an expedition to explore the undiscovered country.
The frontier of complexity is unmoving; it never progresses. The illusion of movement comes from the explosion of itself backwards, a sustained production of geometrically multiplying details, a roaring flow creating its own wind, mesmerizing like the blur of asphalt which I contemplated as a child while hanging out of the rear window of my parents' station wagon. A vision fascinating to behold, but utterly impractical, for it reveals nothing about where I am really.
Enough abstraction. There really is a life being lived here, and these are some of the parts of that life which are important to me. I worry about my friends.
· Suzy was taken to the hospital with chest pain after she arrived for work yesterday. She is an RN at the detox where I work - a very stressful place. It is a kind of port authority for agonies, and sensitive souls like Suzzanne, for whatever reason, try to bear more of that burden than they should. Maybe they refuse to believe that every broken thing cannot be fixed, and want to prove it.
· Kathy works in the same office as me, and she has seemed quieter than usual lately. I suspect that the overwhelming nature of our job is beginning to get to her. But I find myself wanting her distress to be the result of my behavior - so I can feel significant for having a profound affect on others, and salvific for my ability to retrieve them from pain by merely changing my own behavior. But I worry that she is hurting somewhere inside from something I did not cause, in a place that I cannot touch.
· Annie is my supervisor at work; I used to be her supervisor - sort of - and then I walked out. She took over my job, and a lot more, after I came back. She has had hurdles presented, and standards set which I never had to contend with when I was the one initialing the overtime on other peoples time cards. She initials my time card now, and she pushes herself so hard to meet her new challenges that she gets sick. I never had to push myself that hard, and it's not fair. And though she does it all cheerfully, it is wearing on her. I worry.
· Gary and Betty are friends from my past of fifteen years ago with whom I may reunite in the next couple weeks. I worry for the Gary and Betty I once knew - who I chose not to know for the last fifteen years - who have surely passed-on by now. And I worry about how I will be received by these 'new' people who know so much of my personal history and my past cowardice. Dinner with them is this week or next.
Hints and wisdom; whispered rumors of an enlightenment that surpasses light; existence spent in the intimate process of living. How can one remain downcast for anything more than mere moments?
(Two sentences - not bad for five days.)
I've been trying to complicate things again.
While fighting the waking-up this morning, I was dreaming about my cousins' Dachsund. The memory is from more than thirty years ago, and my cousins were military brats who had then recently returned from Germany, though I don't know if the dog was from there. I have since heard that Dachsunds are a breed prone t. being nasty and mean. My cousins' little dog was not like that. In fact, it was extraordinarily patient; my cousins were angry kids not given to gentleness.
Maybe she just liked me; the Dachsund was female, I think. I have a vague memory of puppies. Back then I was a gentle person, maybe moreso than now. No, certainly moreso than now.
My cousins were three boys, a year or two younger than me, sons of my mother's sister who had married an angry guy named Blair. Her first pregnancy produced twins, and they named one of the new boys Blair. As an adolescent he was agressive, and enjoyed dominating his twin, Robert, or anybody else who would let him. I was fascinated by Blair, and a little afraid of him. I was very attracted to him. I have never been battered by a boyfriend, but remembering my feelings for Blair reveals the early origins and depth of my desire for isolation; regular violence at his hand would have approximated companionship without the risk of anything even close to intimacy. I can actually see myself preferring a violent Blair to the shrieking emptiness which is my companion now.
Robert, the other twin, was a whiney child - kind of a wimp - and definitely not the favored son. And two, maybe even three years younger than the twins was Jeffrey. Jeffrey was the artist and, for a time, he was innocent.
We all grow up, one way or another.
The landlord is raising my rent by $165.00 to six hundred dollars per month. That's a 38% increase. I find myself spontaneously rehearsing courtroom dialogue in scenes from a Chekhovian nightmare.
I don't like myself. I don't like my space, much less its container. But circumstances force me to be champion-protector of this place (or some place) as if it were mine, as if I loved it as something more than just a familiar place to go and isolate, as if it really mattered to me. As if I mattered.
Yeah I know, that sounds whiney, and I know also that in fact I DO matter. But you see, I DON'T want to matter. I WANT to not matter. Defending myself, making claims to protect and preserve myself and the things I need - it all makes me very uncomfortable. And if doing any of it was just a hopeless fantasy, beyond my capacities, then I could let go of all this landlord-tenant bullshit, and move on to the next lesson life sends me.
But this is one of those despised challenges that you hate for one reason more than any other; it is a challenge which you are perfectly capable of meeting, and though it may not - indeed probably will not - have a favorable outcome, it is a challenge you cannot forego without the disappointment of knowing, deep down, that you ran away from a struggle, and turned your back on a contest with an angel - an angel sent to make you become more than you thought you ever could be.
Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled an angel until the breaking of the day. When the angel saw that he prevailed not against Jacob, he touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh. The hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him, and the angel said, 'Let me go, for the day breaketh.' But Jacob said, 'I will not let thee go, except thou bless me,' and the angel said unto him, 'What is thy name?'
He said, 'Jacob.'
The angel said, 'Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince thou hast power with God and with men, and thou hast prevailed.' And Jacob asked him, and said, 'Tell me, I pray thee, thy name.'. And the angel said, 'Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name?'. And the angel blessed him there.
Toward the end I was really starting to get it - you know like life was finally starting to make sense, at least a little. The restraints surrounding me, which had always been concealed by fear's murkiness, began to emerge as I drained that swamp, revealing to me most (or perhaps all) of the many ugly secrets that had deformed my youth, had confounded my every effort to grow, and had tied me to my eventual ruin. At the end I began to see clearly for the first time in my life the tragedies which had been origin to a thousand tragedies more. At the end I began - with compassion - to finally absorb the agony I had been unable to endure at the beginning.
The reclamation of the small amount of trustworthy ground which I was able to recover was an excruciatingly slow process, considering that at the end I had been at it for over forty years. But the progress at the end had become quite swift, leaving me now with only a hint of how far I could have gone had I been able to continue that progress untruncated. I know that every summit - and beyond - would easily have been mine; ahh, but the mere imagining of those vistas inspire such heart-bursting joy that I don't believe I could have survived the real thing. I would love to have died trying.
However, I have yet to record the middle of this story. This is not an unlikely problem; more than half of humankind's existence was spent not in ignorance of our beginning, nor of our end but, until Copernicus, in utter ignorance of the middle from where we observed all the rest. Self-awareness is ever the greatest challenge, and simple presence the most daunting task. If now is all I have, really, then the last thing I want is to make an inventory of it lest I find naught but crumbs. Let us measure the past counting and recounting its achievements and its accumulations, or let us guage with imagined specifity the promise and the peril of the future. But let us not give now more than a mirror's glance for it reveals all we are and all we possess, and as such represents by cold inference all that we are not and all that we do not possess.
But that may be exactly what we need to know most of all.
It's not a pretty sight. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Saturday. A little nuclear family STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 08/25/2001 02:01:10 PM ----- BODY: Saturday.
A little nuclear family - a unit of four - was being shown one of the apartments behind mine. Dad was trying very hard to pay attention to the blither being pitched by the guy showing them the apartment; a fifty-year old ex-surfer dude who was wearing shorts, had blondish-gray hair and a tanned, lean body. He looked like he lives in a tanning booth. He seemed very intense, and slightly annoyed. He must want to be in Colorado.
Dad, on the other hand, was moving about uncomfortably. He appeared awkward in his sandles and shorts as the little group viewed the back porch. He seemed uncomfortable in his role, hesitant and uncertain as he stepped back into the apartment behind everyone else, pretending to listen to the conversation while fiddling dumbly with the storm door latch behind him. His every movement seemed unfinished, his hands - held behind his back - fidgeted continuously.
However, Dad's son was a thing of beauty to behold. He had long black hair, aquiline features, and his eyes were dark sparkling pools adorned with unfairly thick, long lashes. He seemed a little lost, but not uncomfortable like his father; the freshman's awkwardness was borne of his youthful innocence, he had not yet learned the aging reluctance of his Dad.
The boy appears to be just leaving high school, and I assume he is a freshman at one of the dozen or so colleges around here. The parents were looking at places for their child, and it might have been the daughter - who appears the same age as the boy - who is the freshman. But, if it is the boy, and if that is the chosen apartment, I will note it well. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: I laughed out loud. STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 08/26/2001 01:42:59 AM ----- BODY: I laughed out loud. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Apartment hunting. More to follow... STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 08/27/2001 09:22:08 AM ----- BODY: Apartment hunting. More to follow... ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Back from round one of STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 08/27/2001 11:53:25 AM ----- BODY: Back from round one of apartment 'cruising'. Me and Irene didn't have any appointments set up to see places, so we just did a series of 'drive-by's'.
The first one is a condo in a three-unit building, and the next door neighbor (whom Irene drew out onto his back porch) is a very attractive black man with light brown highlights in his hair, and a very pleasant personality. She says he liked me, but that would be too much to hope. Besides, my whole life will be undergoing some significant changes - my astrologer told me so - and I hope (tentatively) that I will be changing my habit of objectifying men. I'm really, really not sure, but I think I might prefer to meet and get to know them - to engage with their heart and mind without bailing and diving into their pants.
But that is a nice thought, still. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: I've been gradually reinstalling STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 08/27/2001 01:30:06 PM ----- BODY: I've been gradually reinstalling stuff lost to my operating system upgrade. (don't ask.).
I recently reinstalled AOL Instant Messenger, as well as the new version of ICQ, and that has allowed me to reacquaint myself with a couple chat buds with whom I failed to maintain contact over the last year or so. The reacquaintance has been really ...well, let me just say it has been very nice. Isolation can be pleasant in small doses, but excessive isolation just seperates me from everything, always. That was nice for a while - not needing to accomodate anybody else's needs, or respond to anything outside of me - but the deadness creeps in, and the creator within me becomes despondant.
I've spent a lot of time there, in isolation, reflexively closing doors without any consideration for what (or who) I was excluding. It got so tiresome that at one point, I almost closed the final door - with a rope. That made me realize that what I really want is to stop closing doors.
But it is opening them that scares me. Yeah I know, that's just like everybody else. Only everybody doesn't buy th. rope.
I suppose I'm going to have to do a lot - a whole fuckin' lot - of work on the reasons why I like having doors shut before I can fling them all open without a care. But to have gotten so far as to have closed them all but one, and then to have chosen quite deliberately to stop closing doors - that reversal is enough, for now.
My future is all open doors; I might even find occasion to close one, from time to time. <insert lyrics for tacky 70's song, 'Behind Closed Doors'> ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: I can't stand the 'B' STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 08/27/2001 04:17:48 PM ----- BODY: I can't stand the 'B' stuck to the top corner; I want to make it float. I guess it's not going to stay so simple after all.
'Hi, my name is Joe, and I am a javascript addict.' ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: This brings back memories from STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 08/27/2001 11:18:11 PM ----- BODY: This brings back memories from when I worked at a garage, especially the complex hydraulic control-channel casting. Ahh, the pre-silicon seventies... Howstuffworks: "How Automatic Transmissions Work." ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Hmmm? STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 08/27/2001 11:41:41 PM ----- BODY: Hmmm? ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Found in the Boston Globe STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 08/28/2001 09:02:22 AM ----- BODY: Found in the Boston Globe this morning, with coffee: US to tap pension funds, report says.
Shifting Social Security funds to other government expenses has no impact on benefit payments, but has been considered taboo since 1998, the last time the government used part of the surplus for anything other than paying down debt. Office of Management and Budget director Mitch Daniels yesterday called that policy a ''symbolic commitment,'' arguing that while it was a noble cause, it should be considered a luxury in boom times, not a necessity during an economic downturn, and that the budget estimates should not hamper investments in defense.
Please tell me what we need defense from, if not from these worry-mongering Queeg's who live in fear and seek to codify it.
Sorry. Pomposity is not a good way for me to start the day.
Me and Irene are looking at another apartment this morning and, in the cyclical nature of things, it is across the street from the apartment which I moved out of 6 years ago to come to my current place.&nbs. It is on the third floor of a gorgeous old brick Victorian that is showing its age. All hinges on the quality of the renovations now ongoing. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Return of the Lockbox, a STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 08/28/2001 01:23:20 PM ----- BODY: Return of the Lockbox, a column by Mark Weisbrot at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
I am not an economist; to me, economics seems a study in conundrums. But all this 'either raid the trust fund, or pay down the debt' rhetoric is not informative or even helpful. It is, rather, the two major political parties jockeying for advantage.
I am usually a politician-basher but, you know, they must be as fed-up with us as we are of them. As an electorate, we are lethargic, disinterested, and a nearly unrousable occupant of our own careening destiny. The tedious decisions, the tough decisions, the consequential decisions; we choose to discard them to the custody of our elected representatives who, without guidance from their constituents, have no choice but to find other lights to guide them. This is the inevitible result of popular non-participation in government, and we should not expect it to be different. Unless we participate.
We cannot expect them to do what we want unless we tell them what we think. And, yes, that makes the letters and the calls and the e-mails and blah, blah, blah all very important. But the tedious work of telling them what we think is not the hardest part; thinking is.
Thinking leads to feeling, and feeling leads to a meaningful response. If we have conviction, then the e-mailing, the letter writing, the phone calling - even the sign making - is a cinch, and not tedious at all.
Personally grappling with the intractable conflicts that confront our lawmakers is the very chore which we elected them to relieve us of. That is a self-deception. We are responsible; all they do is represent us. And to overcome our disinterest, the politicians present us exaggerated details with histrionic drama, and that is OK with us - even when we know that what they are doing is not strictly truthful. That's OK, as long as they just keep making our decisions for us, relieving us of our responsibilities which, really, are impossible for us to surrender - whether we like it or not. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: I'm sick. But I'm not STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 08/30/2001 04:01:25 AM ----- BODY: I'm sick. But I'm not complaining. You can't know that, though, because it sounds exactly like complaining. How do I say it the way it is meant?
There is a language I have not learned, a rapid fire rata-tat-tat of syllables that would dance and tumble from my mind with effortless precision like Nadia Comaneci, a way to tell you in perfect tens, or in spades, or in quadruplicate forms, or in two hundred ninety five million divided four ways; a way to say in one life, with one heart, just one word that cannot be misunderstood. There IS such a language, but I am possessed of it not. Not yet.
In the meantime I do night school, here with my blog, alone - like an autistic trying to get through. To you.
Someone advised once long ago, in the pre-history of high school perhaps, to just write. Don't think the words to death, but get them out and put them on the paper. Make room for more; despite my fears, more will surely come - it always has. And when more words do come, put them on the paper too. With a flow of enough words over enough time, I might get through. Hell, just a trickle made the Grand Canyon, after enough time.
Enough time. I'm sick.
It matters less than not at all what particularly is wrong with me, or rather, my body. It matters less than not at all the hour and the day when these words will end. What matters is how many went before. I could have done better, from the beginning until now. And who knows what I'll do between now and the end.
But I won't be a Navy pilot, and I won't be a movie star. I'm not going to have a beach house, or probably any house at all.. I might not ever ski again. I'm never going be able to play all the games I've learned in this life - I've spent all my time learning new games (or re-starting old ones, maybe) just so I could avoid getting too deep into any games; like life, or love, or family, or friends. Me.
I think it all gets stuck inside me, like an infection festering, or a poison that my liver tries to contain within itself in a futile effort to save my life. It makes my stomach hurt - everything from my ribcage to my waist, swollen and heavy like a garbage bag full of water - and it wants to get out. Maybe it is just sick of waiting, and since I am never going to start the flow on my own, maybe whatever is stuck is going to just come out, like in 'Alien', and there is no way to be ready for that. There was never a way to be ready. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: I just love this (new?) STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 08/30/2001 02:26:14 PM ----- BODY: I just love this (new?) blog, with lines like, "so he invited our priest and her boyfriend the policeman over for dinner tomorrow night," and throughout using the endearingly utilitarian title 'the husband' whenever referring to the companion/lover/significant-other/canasta-partner/whatever.
And this. Delightful. I hate that he is younger than me. ; )
How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Will I make it to STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 08/30/2001 02:50:44 PM ----- BODY: Will I make it to work on time?
Went to bed sick. Woke-up sick. Decided, in some sort of fear-of-death Puritanism, that calling in sick would be... well, lazy. And that would make me bad. (As if showing up late is somehow redeeming?). So here I am - in my underwear, with foreign things moving furniture in my abdomen, and with twenty minutes to be at work - and I am typing.
(You needed to know that.) ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: The 20-year-old grandson-of/property-manager-for my landlord STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/01/2001 02:38:11 PM ----- BODY: The 20-year-old grandson-of/property-manager-for my landlord is leaning against the building next door, enjoying a late summer daydream, his boyish limbs a-languor, his meditation central and deep. And secret. He is tall and blonde though not stunningly handsome, and cordial but not particularly charming, yet nonetheless I find moments of him - such as this secretly stolen spectre - especially delightful.
The determined reader will have found that much of my writing is (and I am not proud of this) a ponderous mass of whining and self-pity. The casual reader never stays, I think. The reason for my depressed style is perhaps the same reason that I am fascinated by this plain boy outside my window; regret.
I read, in Bono's commencement address to Harvard, "...Is missing the moment unacceptable to you ? Is wasting inspiration a crime? It is for a musician.". I must therefore be a musician. (!). I am no more a musician than I am a writer, but I am so in love with the moment and the inspiration that I am stuck lamenting their loss. It's like I am focussing on everything not just as I am receiving it as a free gift form the universe, but just as it has passed; as if choosing a vantage point in the lull of the wave's wake is preferrable to riding its curling lip on the event-horizon of disaster.
I was a boy. I am not now. I was absent from my boyhood in lamentation for my lost childhood. And still looking back, I am absent from my manhood in lamentation for my lost boyhood. Missing the moment, wasting inspiration.
Just twenty minutes passed, and the meditative boy ouside my window is long gone. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: It's a common theme here STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/02/2001 02:51:42 PM ----- BODY: It's a common theme here in my blog, or anyplace my orphaned words find a home - in letters, e-mails, or any of a few former journals; the Movement of Light.
"He's a guard at a federal prison, for chrissakes," I said to myself after reading the article about a guard at the Federal Detention Center in Central Falls, RI who is suspected of murder. I thought, "I'd laugh if it weren't so sad.". And I caught myself gazing out the kitchen window at the moving light, at 2 PM, Sunday afternoon on a sunny Labor Day weekend.
I never recount anything in the present; even the current moment must be deftly deflected into the place where all my apparatus for examining and experiencing it are directed, the past. And to avoid having to actually wait for now to become then, I have invented a 'virtual past' into which I put now, safely seperating reality and me. It is like the big sealed glass glove box that lab technicians reach into through long rubber gloves to manipulate stuff which is either hazardous or absolutely positively cannot be contaminated by their touch. I like to say that I put this beautiful, gorgeous moment into that box. But it is more accurate to say that I put me into that box, and from there I beg the moment to touch me, gloved. It is never enough.
I've often wondered if we can detect the movement of light when the Sun - relative to Earth - begins to recede near the end of summer. Is the quality of that patch of sunshine on the lawn next door significantly different - except for the slightly repositioned shadows - than the quality of that same patch in the sunlight of May? Is the sky a little less blue? Do we have in our DNA some evolutionary memory that resonates with the movement of light? - a memory that tells us, near summer's end, to stock-up and seek shelter, even to prepare to hibernate? - an unbidden reminiscence of a delicious gentle warmth inexorably slipping away? ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Kev, Nah. "Looking STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/04/2001 02:45:25 AM ----- BODY:
Nah. "Looking through rather than looking at..." It's all a matter of perspective. You know how cruel 'kids' can be, but young men need us more than we need them. And of that need we are acutely aware, while our juniors remain grossly unaware. Do you lately remember -- with amazement, as do I -- the immensity of our dumbness (not dumb as in stupid, but dumb as in benumbed and shell-shocked) in our late teens and earliest adulthood. Maybe it's just me, but I was unconscious in lots of ways. I knew how desperately I wanted guys, but -- maybe it was the hormones -- I was utterly paralyzed from doing anything about it.
Ninety percent of a youth's energy is spent pretending to a condition he can achieve only when he is no longer young. Then, in some cases, he reverses and spends himself pretending to b. young after he is not. In a few cases the grown man recognizes the wisdom of youth's innocence; then he prepares himself to be a kind host to Wisdom-Innocence should it happen to pass nearby and need a moment's rest and comfort. It is a holy opportunity.
So, Kev, don't let their aloofness borne of fear dissuade you from giving the gifts that your less mature counterparts need from you. Also do not misinterpret their cool disinterest as the result of a considered deliberation -- it is in fact hastily chosen, an artful and magnificent disguise worn in an effort to stay safe amidst terrible newness and monsters. Some young men keep hiding even into their thirties, or beyond -- like me. Most young men will not drop the uncaring guise, but all of them want to. I try to stay ready for that moment, whoever he may turn out to be and whatever the circumstance; it is holy. But more often than not I am tangled in my own need and lonliness, helpless.
I'm sorry for your brief sickness, but I'm glad it was not a week-wrecker. And the dancing... hmm, nice... It has been a long time. As for my smiling face "real-time," well, there is no camera here, and soon enough there will be no me. Gotta move. The landlord raised the rent, but that's just the excuse. Over time, stationary has turned to stagnation and it simply is time to move on. Even though I have an absolutely fabulous DSL connection here, which (in the great confusion of a Capitalism operated by incompetents) I have been getting for free, for over a year, without even one single bill. Despite my e-mails alerting them. Nada.
But there is more to life than bandwidth (isn't there?), even if the bandwidth is one megabit per second. It is a testimony to my faith in life that I am willing to forfeit such a connection, and the isolation I have cultivated around it -- I even neglected my phone unto disconnection -- in search of a fuller embrace of life.
However, for better or worse, I will keep you posted.
And there is no way I could've met you in P-town. I knew the days you'd be there, but with me sucking-up all the overtime I can get, looking for a new apartment, and with the velocity of my cash flow critically close to cavitation, there just was no way I could do anything more than maintain an awareness from across Massachusetts Bay. I love P-town, perhaps I love it even more from a distance. There's no chance it will disappoint me. Wanna go there off-season.
Truly, Madly, Deeply.
joe
Such a marvelous economy of words.
- · -
Let me introduce you to my longtime friend John, from Boston. He has a big dick. Very big. He cruises; parks, bars, bushes near bars, even hotel men's rooms on occasion. He gets lucky a lot, and tells me about it later:
"He was g o r g e o u s -- a Spanish or Brazilian boy, said he went to Northeastern. And he had an e n o r m o u s dick. But, OH! could he suck!
"How old was he?" I ask voyeuristically.
"20. He wanted me to come in his mouth. I almost did..
"You didn't?" I already know where this is headed, but I go there anyway. It amuses me.
"No."
"Why not?" I press.
"Cuz he might have anything. How the hell do I know what he's got? The tone of John's response strives to be sincere, but I know John. He realizes that his logic kinda skips a track there, but he won't look at why. He lets them suck him, rim him, deep throat him, and he reciprocates (except for rimming), and he pretends there is no danger of "getting what they've got" -- until they want his come. I can never quite get him to tell me what the real reason is that he withholds. At this point our discussion of the tryst always ends.
I have seen it often in other ex-lovers and casual partners; the guy topping me, while perfectly willing to put me through all sorts of acrobatics on the end of his cock, is curiously passionate about preventing me from keeping his come. It was always as if expelling their semen into me made them vulnerable to me; as if at the moment of their total release they were in complete surrender, and defenseless. That's exactly what I wanted; indeed, I got it quite regularly from my second to last ex-, Kenny, but he is the ex- exception.
Semen is powerful, even if only in our minds. Some of the young men from my past who were stingy with their come, were very uncomfortable with power, especially their own -- they had each been raped by an elder when they were very young. Very young. Like six or eight years old. Power for them was inextricably entangled within the concepts of harm, injury, and danger to themselves.
A scene:
I'm 25, he is in his late teens. He's black and hot as hell. He's got my pelvis clamped between his hands and he's pumping his cock right into the center of my ass, into the center of me. And something is gathering deep inside him, somewhere behind and below his belly button, and he feels it coming and he knows that in just a couple strokes more, that vulnerable center in him is going to make a big connection with that vulnerable center in me, and it's all just too powerful and too scary and he stops it. He pulls out and shoots his load on the cement floor behind me, in a vacant corner of the Worcester Center parking garage. It was 1983.
- · -
I can't say I disagree with Poz's sentiments, but I certainly cannot say that I agree. Maybe it's just his tone; AIDS has made us arbiters over the intimacies of others, and that is clearly sick -- at least it is to me. Under the badge of some imagined moral authority we presume to insinuate our Pop-culture attitudes into the private sexual activities of gay men. Bah-humbug. I'm not afraid of my come or yours, whether you call it poison or not; and I'm not afraid of your power, nor of mine. I can understand the heat some people feel around the issue of barebacking, but I equally understand the heat felt by aroused guests at a bareback party.
I might like your body, and I might like you to do some push-ups on me while you hold my ankles by my ears. But if you are going to preach -- or worse yet, if you are going to keep your mouth shut and assent to the preaching of others -- then please do pull out. Then go away, and stay away. I'd do as well having sex alone. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: push STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/06/2001 12:34:48 AM ----- BODY:
Another great thing about blogger is that when midnight comes and I have wasted an entire goddamn day stuck to this web like a dying insect, I can still post something dated yesterday, thus redeeming the lost day.
Well, now I see that that is not true. I must have gotten the time warp notion from Blogger's main page where, for exactly one minute at 9:34 PM PDT, it appeared that I had stopped wasting my life three hours ago. (As if posting this drivel stops my descent toward absolute zero. No offense, Blogger, but keeping this blog probably accelerates my descent -- I only do it because I really want to look like I have a life, too..
I'm starving. That's the substance of my existence right now. Actually, it is a dilemma; I have in the freezer a pint of ice cream, which I should not have purchased two days ago, but that is a story I have already failed to tell. Gotta move on. Someone -- a writer probably -- said once, "If you wake-up feeling the inspiration to write, just eat something sweet and the feeling will go away."
I'm starving, and I'm gonna eat the ice cream, even though sugar depresses me, and I certainly don't need to be any more depressed than my usual. But the alternatives are... well, dull. I mean, what would the world be without an occasional plunge from a bridge to spice-up the drive-time? Or an airline disaster to make us wake and wonder if there's not more to this destination than we thought? I grew-up wanting to put my cock where it was not supposed to be, simply because everything I was taught about life -- and how to live it -- was so goddamn dull. As it turns out, cock-placement has never provided anything more than merely fleeting relief; it's not where you put it that matters, but what you do when you get there.
I'm starving, but I'm going to tease the gnawing hunger a little bit, like gastronomic foreplay, because there's a three month old leak in my bike tire that I didn't fix today -- again. And because there's a classified section from Sunday's paper right beside me listing apartments for rent with phone numbers I should have called Sunday night that I still haven't called, in search of the apartment that I am going to need in three weeks, which I still haven't found. And because in twelve hours I'll be firmly under my employer's thumb again, at a subsistance job I hate, where all my skills and talent and inspiration will be discounted out-of-hand -- much like when I am home all day, alone.
But it is all OK, because once I fill my gut, everything will matter a little less, and that is bad because there is little that matters now. Writing this blog isn't much, but at this moment it is something. In twenty minutes whatever tiny inspiration may have briefly flickered here will be thoroughly buried under a pint of Ben & Jerry's Apple Crumble.
I'm not despondant, I'm just sick of all the nothing. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: 7,205 STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/06/2001 02:36:33 PM ----- BODY:
I have 7,205 'dirty' pictures. They take up 442,912,423 bytes of disk space. If it weren't for blogger, I'd have nowhere to say that.
So what!! Yup, I agree. insignifica inundiata. That means, "I got blogs up to here!"
So, back to the business of blogging. It was the viewing of the pictures that occupied all my time yesterday... well, not just viewing them, but... (Eieewwww, icky!) Anyway, that big manual I brought home from work never left its place in my bike bag, where I had placed it -- with the very best of intentions -- around midnight on Tuesday before leaving work. And my iPAQ, once it finally made it's way out of the bike bag and into its synch-cradle, never moved again nor made a peep. I have all the acoutrements of an active life, without actually living. I am an Egyptian mummy.
Now, mummy's got to go to work. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Eventually we get around to STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/07/2001 11:38:55 AM ----- BODY: Eventually we get around to talking about the point. Eventually.
...after the diversions, after the sex, after the booze and the binges, after the boys of summer. After the fall.
joe. (a true story) It's all a lie, a clever Mambo danced amid the lethal laser beams, between and under them; and a ballet of leaps and pliès over and around them -- but never through. To go right through one of those slivers of light would cut a person in half. Tell the TRUTH!? What, do I tell the story of what really happened to me? That would be the most boring thing on earth -- or the most terrifying, depending on one's perspective. Do I tell instead of the consequences of that story, the sequelae of my life? (As if my life is already over and this is what's left.)
And so the dance -- the lie -- defines the trap even as the dissociate soul ranges broad across the universe (and the bedroom ceiling).
The story is this: I don't lie, I just don't say. Cryptic, hidden. Safe. Let's play pretend, it's comforting. It is like being God. Children are God, or not far from it; they are at the beginning of that little loop that is human life, that comes out from God at its start, swings out away and finally, near its end goes back in again. At the beginning there's a need for a little readjustment, as the soul departs from infinite omnipotence to enter a journey through limited humaness. Some people make the transition well.
Getting honest is the hardest part; it is coming out of hiding, and giving up all the clever hopes and schemes that say going back is possible, promising that life can be undone and re-lived. Truth is the laser which seared clean through you; it cannot be un-burned. The options are simple; do you want to be real, or do you want to pretend to be God?
The true story is real, not pretend.
Eventually. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Good night. STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/08/2001 02:00:02 AM ----- BODY: Good night. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: I like chiphi2x -- the STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/08/2001 03:16:30 AM ----- BODY: I like chiphi2x -- the name, the new design, and the person behind it all. From his journal:
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Yay! ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Boston Globe Online / Nation STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/08/2001 01:39:27 PM ----- BODY: Boston Globe Online / Nation | World / Pay phones to cost 50 cents as use falls
More insignifica. But you just know I've gotta complain. Only my complaint is not that they are raising the price of payphones -- please, they've always cost at least twice what we spend in phone change. That's the lot in life of a 'public utility', but the notion of promoting the commonweal by regulating such services as are considered necessary for the common good is fast becoming antique. And yet, even that is not my complaint. I may wax nostalgic for the monopoly days of Ma Bell and 10¢ phone calls, but nostalgia is not cause for complaint except when I am miserable or when I think I am about to die. Happily, neither is the case at the moment.
My complaint is that their excuse for doing it is a lie.
I have to smile. Poor folk, who have already endured the loss of "widespread availabality" of payphones, now have to stop being poor in order to use the few payphones which are left. The public payphone has long been acknowledged to be an albatross around the neck of the telecommunication industry and -- except for for those public utility regulations -- would only have existed in the form of that bane to social progress, the privately owned payphone. Verizon wants to transform that albatross into a 'pearl-necklace', and the public, not just their customers, are the ones getting jerked-off. "It's as simple as that.".
Now, in order to continue enduring this corporate impediment, and to (tongue in cheek) continue to provide the general public with reasonable access to the phone system, they are going transform the payphone -- a symbol of once egalitarian elements within the former Bell System -- into just another overpriced vending machine. (If they think there's a lot of vandalism to phones now, just wait. Poor boys pick their targets with unerring acuity.).
Complaint over. Hi ho, hi ho, off to work we go... ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: glad summer STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/10/2001 02:02:03 AM ----- BODY: I'm glad summer is not over. I'm glad my air conditioner still works. For all my tantrums and bitterness, I am still grateful that all the world's people continue their precious journies despite my occasional desire that everyone except me be vaporized. I am grateful for the work I am allowed to do -- even with all of its frustrations, catch-22's, and angry-scared-hurt people who call and try to be mean.
I am thankful for consciousness; for sight; for the ability to read; for the opportunity to write; and for the paperback set, now venerable and disintegrating, given to me by my sister 30 years ago, 29 years before she died.
I like woodsmoke carried on crisp air, or the scent of suntan lotion mingling with sweat and sea air on a brilliantly sunny beach-day. I apreciate the performance art of day and night, of sunset and sunrise, of cloud and sky, and of star and spirit. I love all my ex's and their vast capacities to forgive; few of them hate me, but most of them have had reason to. I am grateful for all the trauma's I have suffered, for my abortive evasions of trauma's effect, for the decades I have lost to self-pity, self-contempt, and breathtaking rage. And I am grateful to have lived long enough to grow up and to retract the blame that really belongs to no one.
I have hated living only because I loved life more than I thought I could bear. I am grateful now to know that my love for life is vast -- and exactly the equivalent of my capacity to bear it. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: boys and men STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/10/2001 11:34:18 PM ----- BODY:
Why can't I just write about the cat, or the boyfriend, or how I am getting my head waxed and going to the beach, or anything just bland and safe and mundane... Why does it have to be these topics?
"Well, you write because you care," responds my father, "and you care because it matters.".
There you go. Because it matters. Hmm. So simple; I should've known that. I guess sometimes wisdom does come with age. Sometimes. There are, however, grown men who have less wisdom than most boys I've known. But underage gay boys share a scary love that terrifies some men, especially when that love is celebrated and not hidden like a dirty English school boy secret. Some men are positively beside themselves with rage that such a love might dare to speak its name in a widely published glossy mag that claims -- quite correctly -- to tell the truth.
Boys are attractive in their own right, regardless of the beholder's orientation or age. That notion alone is difficult for the sex-phobic American culture to accept. Much less acceptable are any efforts made by anyone to validate and normalize the sexual attraction felt between some teenage boys.
To the boys:. Whatever you are feeling is right and good. I don't care what it is. There are a lot of bad men out there who are terrified of boys who love other boys. If you dare to love another boy, those men will hate you for no reason other than that. Many are very respected, and powerful. One of the bad men, unfortunately, might be your father. Or he might be your minister, your rabbi, your teacher, your bus driver, or your scoutmaster. He might be all of the above. But if you hear it nowhere else, then hear it now; your so-called 'bad feelings' are not bad, in fact they are good. Supress nothing. Deny nothing. Accept everything about yourself as precious (yeah, that's right -- precious) and good, and wholesome, and true. These things will lead you to integrity, deep happiness, and freedom.
I had a lover when I was in the fourth grade. His name was David. We had terrific, fabulous, wonderful, intense, red-hot sex, even though neither of us was yet able to ejaculate. But sex is not all we did. Mostly we were just boys who did boy-stuff together; camping, Boy Scouts, drawing (he had talent), watching TV or just hanging-out. In fact, David was so flamboyantly femme -- and I, so homophobic -- that I would have avoided being seen with him, except that we were lovers, and we each had few other friends. And because he was nice to me.
I wanted to be like David -- or, more accurately, I wanted to be like me without all the pretenses and self-consciousness. David was certainly not ignorant of the straight boys' contempt, but he never once let them dictate his behavior or cramp his femme ways; he met every intimidator toe to toe and he never once backed down. David, the queen, was more man than me. From the perspective of the closet I was in then I could not have recognized how much I looked up to David. But despite the swish, the lisp, the limp wrist and all, David was what I wanted to be -- free.
In the mid-sixties there was no way for me -- or for David and me -- to be gay and okay. There was a lesbian (I think) teacher who was our champion and our patron, who did make it okay to be gay, at least in our immediate vicinity. For a school trip to a museum, she had, perhaps on her own initiative, made arrangements to support the friendship of these two lonely boys, neither of whom had ever been able to make friends with others before. So with half the elementary school assembled to receive the rules for the class trip, Miss Williams announced that she had gotten special permission -- from the Principal and the other teachers -- to have me come over to David's bus to ride with him.
With her help, it would have been okay to be gay, except I was just too afraid to acknowledge my own affection for my loverboy. I learned that cowardice from men. I stayed on my own bus.
If you ever see a tall forty-something blonde named David Ackley, originally from Northboro Massachusetts, please say hello to him for me. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Updated: 12:19 PM EDT STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/11/2001 12:39:46 PM ----- BODY:
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Updated: 12:19 PM EDT 16:19 GMT -- 11 Sep
2001 |
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stunned. |
Words have not yet been invented to describe the way this agony has touched me, this nation, and the world.
Hitler taught humankind a great deal about inhumanity, atrocity, and lust for power. These were things we did not then want to learn -- lessons which we would gladly have forfeited had they not grabbed us and shaken us into an unpleasant reality. Humanity paid dearly for that education. But it was worth it.
On Tuesday -- my birthday -- we began a new lesson, similar in its unpleasantness and difficulty to the one Hitler taught decades ago. However, the topic of that lesson was over-grasping political philosophies while this lesson's theme is hateful religious fanaticism. And like it or not, now is humanity's time to learn this particular lesson.
The instructor, probably Osama bin Laden, has aroused in us an epic rage and fury. Thus he offers us a test, with an opportunity to pass or fail: can we feel within our broken hearts the full breadth of our rage, and attend our agony wherever it takes us, even down to our most terrifying depths and back out again, without choosing to kill our souls with hatred?
Whoever did this is a hate-filled person who has a chilling skill for turning others toward hate. His substance is fear, his purpose is evil, and he hates every manifestation of the openness, optimism, dauntless hope, and kind generosity which are, in large part, constitutents of the American personality. He seeks to kill that goodness in us -- not by murder, atrocity, or acts of war -- but by simply making us hate.
I can't stop crying, and that is a good thing. Because once I refuse to cry, I have no choice but to hate, and that bastard is not going to win. Not in America.
And definitely not on my birthday. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/12/2001 03:57:09 PM ----- BODY:
I know none of us ever thought a whole ton of things that we are thinking today, but I really never thought I'd hear the term 'forces of darkness' used outside of a fantasy novel, much less by a head of state. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: This will become the 'Zapruder STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/12/2001 06:27:58 PM ----- BODY: This will become the 'Zapruder film' of the World Trade Center catastrophe. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Where has all the time STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/13/2001 06:34:08 AM ----- BODY: Where has all the time gone? Just getting into bed now.
I just don't want to be awake in the daylight today -- or yesterday. And maybe not tomorrow. I think I will call in sick tonight, If I don't sleep past noon... ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: An account from a 1998 STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/13/2001 02:51:47 PM ----- BODY: An account from a 1998 interview with Osama bin Laden. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Something tells me this is STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/14/2001 02:48:37 PM ----- BODY: Something tells me this is sick, but I wish I was there. Of course, if I was there, I would have wished I wasn't -- like the 5k who were there.
5k. A gross impersonalization but, as counterpoint, it emphasizes how utterly personal that attack was for every single one of those who died. Out of all of those who suffered and died (estimates are that there will be more than 5,000, much more), at the end someone was just taking the first sip of their last coffee; someone was yawning; someone sighed for the tedium of their life at the instant it ended. Out of 5,000 plus people who are now dead, someone saw it coming. I wonder what they did. Scream? Furrow their brow quizzically at the 'impossible' spectre?
I wonder what I -- what any of us -- will do now. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: If you are sitting alone STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/15/2001 01:33:08 PM ----- BODY: If you are sitting alone in your apartment, not watching (or don't have) a TV, and you feel an akward incongruity between the sunny clear blue-sky Saturday going on outside and the wailing grief of a nation, then spend some time with these photos. Your tears will likely flow like rain, and your heart will be right back in alignment with all the rest of humanity.
Tears do not darken our view of the world. The white trim on the brick building next door is gleaming in today's bright sunlight. Through tears, it absolutely sparkles. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: gettin up. STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/16/2001 04:16:55 AM ----- BODY: My DSL is back up. Yay.
I have no TV, recently lost my phone, and when I got home from work, no DSL. Cut off. No contact at all.
Here's a couple golden-hearted young men whose sites I found in my referrer log. i'm running and 14th brother. God, i love the web.
Good night. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: File this under 'fate': Couple STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/16/2001 01:46:54 PM ----- BODY: File this under 'fate':. Couple altered itinerary. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Lots of bizarre news stories. STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/16/2001 02:33:17 PM ----- BODY: Lots of bizarre news stories. It can be a few minutes relief from the story; the obscurestore.com. I've been lost there for an hour. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Doorbell woke me. Hours ago. STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/17/2001 05:04:09 PM ----- BODY: Doorbell woke me. Hours ago. It was Bobby the cab driver, not Bobby the one I love. Funny, it interrupted a dream of Bobby the one I love:.
Why is it that only Isreali politicians tell it like it is? Here in America we swim in our political leaders' soothing rhetoric -- we elect them for their ability to tell us what we want to hear. There is a nobel purpose in attempts to minimize fear and terror. But let us not be deluded, as any rational person is wont to do in this situation; we are indeed facing an "unbelievable danger.".
And from the same article:
This scares me. Enemies ally themselves -- without first resolving their enmity -- only under mortal threat. Isreal and Palestine are indistinguishable to a re-entry vehicle, and Jerusalem lies within minutes of an Afghani ballistic missile. I can't believe I am even saying these things, it is all so unthinkable. But it is also visciously real.
"God bless us, every one.. --Tiny Tim, from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: This story piqued my apocalyptic STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/19/2001 03:21:42 AM ----- BODY: This story piqued my apocalyptic fears earlier today, though I could not find the details of it until I got home from work.
Osama bin Laden is the perfect solution for fanatical Arab states. Through him they are able to prosecute a war which officially and diplomatically they decry. The hobnailed boot of Arab agression in the Middle East has been left empty as the result of an international (mostly American) prohibition on its use. They have been gnawing that angry leather idly for many years, one might even say for decades. Finally, as if in answer to their prayers, that boot is now filled with the force of a potent phantom, a non-state entity responsible to none, who has the resources and the will to carry out the most brutal schemes of the most fanatic elements within the several bona-fide Arab states.
Attacking the Great Satan half a world away was a stroke of self-promotional genius by bin Laden. He proved to the Arab states, especially to their fanatic elements in their Intelligence and Military communities, that he was capable and competent. He capably pulled-off the boldest incursion ever into the sovereign land of the world's biggest superpower. And he proved his competency by executing this grand horror without losing any of his cover. I submit that what connections we have discovered between bin Laden and the dead mass-murders, he has intended to reveal to us. He wants us to attack.
While he is baiting us to attack, he is dangling before the noses of those fevered hate-filled Arab fanatics an irrestible dainty: Isreal. When the Great Satan superpower attacks the impoverished Afghanistan, bin Laden will have accomplished what he set into motion on my birthday, September 11, 2001 -- justification for the Arab world to retaliate against the United States. And since the Arab states with nuclear capability have no launch vehicles capable of reaching the United States, they will retaliate by striking Isreal who they hate even more than the United States. This is why I oppose a military retaliation against bin Laden, the Taliban, or Afghanistan.
He is revolting, an ugly and disgusting soul who seeks nothing good for anyone, yet claims holiness. He very effectively is gaining power for the sole purpose of feeding his insatiable pride in the same way Popes and nations have been doing it for centuries; by claiming to serve God. I would like nothing more than for a cruise missle to flick him like a snot from the face of the earth, but I don't think we would get him, and besides, that's exactly the attempt he wants us to make. Everything he wants we must oppose. Osama bin Laden is the closest that humankind has ever come to the Anti-Christ; he may yet prove to be. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: This e-mail message was forwarded STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/20/2001 12:56:17 PM ----- BODY: This e-mail message was forwarded to me, but unlike most of the garbage forwarded to me by my dear friends (who really do mean well), this possesses some intrinsic value. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: ...all fall down STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/20/2001 02:26:46 PM ----- BODY:
I was reading National Geographic last night, an article about light. Physics, photons, waves, spectrums -- it was all there. And as a curious aside, they included a picture taken at dawn of a workman replacing the red blinking light that is perched atop the antenna tower on the Empire State Building. It was a nice picture, maybe I will scan it after work and post it here. And it is fascinating to see close-up such things which are familiar to us at a distance. There was the East River in the thin light of early dawn, the Brooklyn Bridge, the surrounding huge buildings looking tiny from the tip of that height 1400 feet off the ground.
And there was in the grey distance near the tip of Manhattan, two towers -- so fond. So painful.
They are gone.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: It finally dawned on me STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/21/2001 03:39:03 AM ----- BODY: It finally dawned on me what hurts so much about that picture; it's a warning light, intended to help aircraft avoid collision with these tall structures.I hope we do not let this horrific tragedy make us cynical in all our human activities. I hope we can maintain the optimism which makes America one of the most desirable places on earth to live. We cannot predict every monstrous plan, nor forsee every potential for evil. We cannot create lives of utter invulnerability in America without losing a great deal of what makes those lives so very much worth living.
Out of context right there, that quote sounds facetious -- but it is not. After just a few minutes at Sovaj's site you know.
Maybe my isolative behavior makes me more acutely aware of human warmth and sincerity. Maybe I'm just seeing what I hope is there -- but I don't think so. I don't think so because there comes with these recognitions of young men who are generous and sensitive a kind of jealousy on my part -- no, it's more like a soft lament for the boy in me who always wanted to be generous and sensitive, but never let it out. That unpretensious sentiment makes me believe that my perception is accurate; that impossibly beautiful young gay men do exist. And I don't mean beautiful that way -- I've never seen his picture.
It's nice, even if it's not me. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: How vain. But I just STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/22/2001 11:46:25 AM ----- BODY: How vain. But I just cannot waste a good e-mail -- especially if the recipient liked it.
Hi Joan,
Hell has come to America. It really was only a matter of time -- it has been brewing for decades. It may be disingenuous to frame the World Trade Center tragedy as anything but what it is; a shaking, screaming, ripping agony of epic human suffering. Nonetheless, it represents the beginning of a painful process during which monumental social, religious and philosophical stresses will resolve themselves with often explosive and deadly force. When it is over, I hope the seething anger and the livid hatred will be thoroughly spent.
I hope you are well, and not too depressed by it all. Everyone I know has been crying and distraught, myself especially. But I feel more aware now of the world, as though awakened and released from an unrealistic innocence. So much so that I bought stock for the first time in my life today.
Yup. I can't pay my phone bill, I can't pay any of my credit card bills (except one), but I'm buying stock. You see, I'm not going to be marching in any desert sand in this lifetime, nor working for the military in any other capacity; I will not ever be a fire fighter again, nor an EMT; and admitting people to a detox... well, it just doesn't give the same sense of power and potency that I might have if I were helping to lift a slab of cement off of a survivor. And the image of an economic collapse springs to mind far too easily since watching those towers fall. The economic collapse of the United States is probably no more likely than the end of the world -- but to be honest, even that seems possible lately.
So I bought fifty bucks worth of PriceLine.com. It was one of the biggest losers on Wall Street today, with one of the highest volumes of shares traded. It costs 50% less today than it did before the attack, and with airline ticket prices certain to increase dramatically, 'bargain brokers' like PriceLine will see tons of business -- if they stay in business.
And all of this has made me realize that paying off my credit is as much if not more of a contribution to this economy than is the purchase of stock on a day when everybody seems to be selling.
These terrorists seem to have awakened the survivor in me. I used to pay the minimum due on high interest rate credit cards with balances maxxed -- and often over-maxxed -- even though I knew I was treating myself like dirt, throwing value away, and wasting money I needed to buy food for myself. (I fled from everything that could be considered competent self-caring.. I used to ignore the poor innocent plant that was given to me by my friends at the hospital with their condolences when my mother died in 1998. (At times I hated my mother almost as much as I hated myself.. And I was getting increasingly hopeless about life, accepting social and emotional isolation as an acceptable method for coping with that hopelessness. (I told myself I did not deserve for my life to be any different.)
...until I turned 43, on September 11, 2001. I have never grown up so much, in so few days, under the weight of so many tragedies. It is no longer acceptable for me to isolate when New Yorkers weep openly in the streets, sharing their many griefs with other New Yorkers they have never before met. It is no longer acceptable to devalue myself by misusing one of the symbols of my value, money. And it is no longer acceptable -- been practicing plant care for a couple weeks now -- to shun the responsibility of caring for the dead-mother plant, which is utterly dependant on me for everything.
Maybe none of this makes sense, but one of the things I learned this week is that the World Trade Center towers, (and other places occupying the rarefied air space above lower Manhattan) -- places where I thought only the vaunted powerful and rich dwelled and worked -- were in reality filled with people just like you and me. They were men and women, some terribly young, who got up early to fight traffic or subway crowds. They took the time each day to dress sharply and to present themselves enthusiastically to the often mundane and tedious tasks of administering the financial capital of the world. And they each did these things day-in and day-out in a 110 storey building with the precious hope of improving the little Jersey Shore futures of their little two-storey lives. They were optimistic. They wanted to make some progress in this world, which must have seemed to them, before they died, to be a world brimming with hope and endless opportunity; for them the world was not so little as it is for us today -- today we measure distance in minutes by missile.
And that is the other reason I bought stock today. The world is -- indeed, because of the missiles it must be -- a world still brimming with hope and endless opportunity; that's the way the world was before the attack, the only difference now is that we can't see quite as far as those who were above the 89th floor. We built our way of life upon the courage of millions of people who were willing to come to this country and start from scratch. How dare I lose hope for the condition of the world today when, only a few miles from the tragedy of the twin towers is the place where hundreds of thousands arrived in this country and began new lives in which they overcame far greater obstacles than I face today -- and they did it with far less fanfare, and far more cheer.
I will never forget the image of a man leaping to his death, who appeared tiny, almost negligible, against the massive backdrop of the burning North Tower.
And so, I will keep their optimism and their hopeful, far-ranging view. I will keep alive some fragment of their humanity by cultivating my own humanness and breaking down my own walls of isolation as best I can. I will keep their tenacity and enthusiasm; they have become mythic. And I will pay my annoying, overdue bills, even as I keep on investing (in my tiny way) in the stock market.
Most of all, I will try to remember; it is not the one causing the most damage who wins, the winner is the one who causes the most healing.
luv
joe
Even if such prophecies are viewed as nothing but the curious obsession of a few, they still allow us to look at various interpretations of the present and the future. They gave me pause to reflect, and as a result I gained a perspective on life which I did not have before. And interestingly, for all of Nostradamus' bleak and desperate predictions, I came away with a very sturdy conviction that goodness and enlightenment will prevail among humankind -- eventually.
We are exactly where we are supposed to be right now. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Photographers Covering Attacks Are Jailed STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/23/2001 01:49:48 AM ----- BODY: Photographers Covering Attacks Are Jailed
This is the beginning of underground journalism. If the objective story is going to get out, somebody is going to have to go in and get it. But beware, this is post-911 America; leave your press pass behind. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: bye. STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/23/2001 03:40:17 AM ----- BODY:
When sirens began to sound, the audience feared the worst, and began donning gas masks.
Mr Stern, however, ignored the intrusion and focused all his attentions on a Bach solo.
Everything ends. Violinist Isaac Stern dies.
Goodbye, Isaac. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: A nice diversion. STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/24/2001 05:03:37 PM ----- BODY: A nice diversion. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: unfinished love STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/25/2001 01:15:13 AM ----- BODY:
I used to live at this site. I watched his webcam day in and day out. I was in love with him in the same way that I love the sexy boi's I know I cannot have, the fresh beauties who do not have a pathologic attraction for older paunchy men. Rex was the perfect sweet soul, kind to all, sensitive in a crystalline-honest way, and gentle. He was one of those delicious boys who made me achingly aware of that place in my heart where I wanted someone to be. But I tried to be the good observer from a distance, not contemptuous of him, for he deserved no contempt, and not hating him for his vital youth and love of life, for that is the basest kind of jealousy. I tried to be just me, whatever that would be if I were like his other admirers -- open and honest and not trying to keep contained a raging white-hot lonliness in a pressure vessle of calm appearance.
He was so many things that I was not; young, attractive, productive, social. Genuine. While watching his webcam I listened to his nightly web-broadcast on gaybc.com almost religiously. I watched him have coffee most mornings when he got up around 8 or 9 AM his time, which was around 11 or noon my time -- we usually got up together. It was as much interpersonal reality as I could handle at the time, the silent movie of reX updated every 40 seconds. I wondered what he was saying when I saw him on the phone, and who he was saying it to. I wondered what he was watching when the downloaded image showed him alone on his couch illuminated only by the light from his TV. I wondered how I would behave if I were there, within earshot of his TV -- within the sound of his voice. How would I respond? Who would I be?
maybe you know already - perhaps told by a dReam - or vision - or passing thought or maybe wHen you took your med's one time you might think .. "hmmmmm... wHy am i tHinking of michael right now?" .. what has he done now? ..
I tried to read the language of the bodies when he was not alone on that couch; he was modest, never an exhibitionist, though he was extremely hot. And his partners (the few I saw) were never interested enough in him; either they persued their own sexual urges despite his reluctance, or they dumbly ignored what appeared to be his obvious affections, withholding their warmth and resisting intimacy with him. Baffling to me.
One of the things I respected most about reX was the loving way he handled people -- callers to his show, people who wrote in, guests -- who were HIV positive. He treated us the same way he treated everybody, with whole hearted kindness and goodwill. He even had a positive boyfriend for a significant period of time. I loved reX.
sPecial you are now to me.. moRe and more .. as i miss and yearn my best fRiend.. my confidant.. it sCares me that my protection cant protect you fRom some of tHOse realities - makes me smehow feel like i failed - and tHen wHen i found out I wHas pos - it made me feel eVen more disapointed - or that i failed a mission
i haVe always used my "neg" status as magic and protection for those i loVed - being neg meant i could keep others safe as well..
I speak of reX in the past tense not because he died or anything like that, but because he left. He disappeared from gaybc without much explanation that I could find. But I didn't look too hard because he was still on-camera; I had figured out how to watch his webcam without going to his site -- stealing bandwidth it's called. I am a sinner. But even his pictures spoke of something different. My reading of his images told a story of some disruption, a hard wind of change. His images switched web-hosts, he started showing more skin -- not immodestly, but like a modest boy pretending to be immodest. I wondered where he was going.
I stopped snatching his images off his server because it began to appear like reX was using them commercially, on badpuppy.com. Private galleries of reX-images became available to subscribers. And nowhere on the web could I find his voice, which, now that I think about it, had always been wHay more sexy than any cock- or butt-shot could ever be.
Fast-forward to tonight, while I was wrestling with my lately spotty DSL connection and out of sheer annoyance at my disconnectivity I clicked on a streaming-audio link in an e-mail sent by Eric at planetconcrete.com. There was reX, at radio.gaycams.com. I listened to reX again. I watched. And I read.
And I cried. Because I've been at this place before. And I never finished crying from when I was in that same place, eight years ago, discovering that I was HIV positive, too.
Maybe you never finish, maybe you never complete the task of working through a tragedy. Maybe instead of crying as much as you could -- which would take forever and certainly be enough tears to wash away all the dust from ground-zero -- instead, you simply mark the dust with a thousand tears, and then you walk away. They say that even a work of art is never truly finished, just abandoned.
I love you reX, and I don't care what anybody thinks of that. I don't even care if you don't love me back the same way -- which of course you don't. (If you do, I'll be there within 24 hours. <grin> ). No, I love you because my love is -- it has to be -- unrequited. It cannot safely exist otherwise. It blooms in the space of your absence; it would wilt from shyness under the sheer intensity of your attention.
The truest work of our hearts is never finished, just abandoned...
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Reply to cold cold STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/25/2001 08:58:24 PM ----- BODY:...and anything could happen
Ahh, Mary. Is it you who make the tears? Or is it me? Or are they made in that horrible holy space between us all, where we fail -- fail to meet; to love; to touch and give; to touch and receive; to let go; to hold on...
(I want -- just one more time in my life -- for the center of my world to be my nana's chocolate chip cookies.).
But here the tears gather, in the wet of my own eyes; blame me for them. Guilt by association. But I don't want them. But here they are, more and more.
And more. Thank you. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Ok. Enough of this. My STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/25/2001 11:05:36 PM ----- BODY: Ok. Enough of this. My astrologer tells me I take myself much too seriously. (Yeah, an astrologer. What else would I call her, an angel?). I was going to get all tangled up in some new javascript that I found, and then maybe change all my icons from 32x32 size to 32x88 cuz I found a bunch I want to use that are the larger size, and then I might create more pages for this site within a sensible structure like other sites I see...
And then I remembered; there is something in me that needs to come out -- that's why I get into this kind of unfocussed frenzy. So, what might it be?
I wonder sometimes why in this weblog I don't write most of the things that are going on. Other bloggers give a nicely proportioned serving of their day with some detail, sometimes with great detail. Why don't I do this? (Rhetorical question -- no e-mails, please.). So. This is what is going on:
So that is what's going on -- or not going on, as the case may be. And I don't feel even the slightest bit better for having not indulged my fetish for javascript merely for the sake of trying to be more like all the other bloggers in the world. Harumph. I'm going now to play with some javascript -- or maybe getting into bed would be nice. Hmm... ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Went to bed at 7:30 STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/26/2001 02:13:42 PM ----- BODY: Went to bed at 7:30 AM. Can you say depression? Anyway, I wasted a big chunk of my life at Spaced Penguin, a fiendishly addictive game which I discovered at blogdex. The idea behind blogdex is simple (though quite complicated to implement, I imagine); keep track of what URLs everybody is linking to. Consider this detail from blogdex: The link cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/damage.map.html scored 16.9 points. I have no idea what that means except that out of more than four hundred and fifty thousand links, only two other links scored higher. And one of them was that miserable penguin game.
Now, if someone is keeping track of how many other websites have posted a given URL, well, I can't help but wonder how my humble offering ranks. It doesn't. In fact, this is all they know 'bout me. So far.
Whilst I make another cup o' joe, I encourage you to add your site to their 'bot 'base. You will be assimilated eventually anyway. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: God save me from Paint STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/26/2001 04:35:42 PM ----- BODY: God save me from Paint Shop Pro. If there ever was a method for me to hyperfocus on the insignificant, that program is it. I make all those -- well, most of -- little icons on the top left. And if it's a copied graphic, then I just have to tweak it to death.
Enough! ...enough, already. That's not my life -- at least I hope it isn't..
Time is running out. I want to tell you how the air felt when I shut off the a/c today and opened the window for the first time in weeks. I want to explain that my landlord reminds me of my father, just because he's the man who owns the house. I would like to capture in words this fleeting terror that comes and goes unbidden, without warning -- even without words, I would like to capture it and send it on its way, like an unwanted bug in my bed. I want to say so much.
Today, the air was like the air two weeks ago, the sky precious blue and clear, the sun warm; a joy just to breathe. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: I have to post weel STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/27/2001 11:23:48 AM ----- BODY: I have to post weel qwick like a bunny -- my dsl is dropping like pellets this morning.
I thought it might be nice to have a dependable connection again, so I asked Speakeasy to help. They responded fast but, alas, they probably won't be able to help me. Actually they responded so fast that I was forced to restate (and rethink) what it is I want from them. In the interest of getting this posted in the tiny window of connectivity which I am now enjoying, I paste from my e-mail to Speakeasy:
2. I do not want a new DSL installed, I actually just want to preserve my current DSL connection, which has begun bouncing me with increasing frequency lately. People at Rhythms (they installed it) say they can't help me because I ordered my DSL through MSN and that I have to talk to MSN about it. That would make sense, except MSN says they aren't providing my DSL, that my MSN account is a dialup and has never changed. That too is plausible, except for the fact that my DSL has been connected for over a year and is still connected right now at 864(down)/364(up) kbps. Nobody has ever billed me for my DSL connection -- not MSN, not Rhythms.
In a nutshell, I want Speakeasy to take custody of my existing DSL connection. It is not because I feel guilty about getting it for free, it is because I need to know who I can call if it goes down again, and doesn't come back up. Theoretically, this transition could be done at the CO, without any rewiring here, and without any outside line work by the phone company. I realize this may not be possible.
[tedious end of e-mail omitted]
Oh my, but when it is fast, it is FAST. See that little delicious detail in this morning's FTP session log? 2.25Mbps. Oh yeah, I'm hard. But I fear it won't last long, and that is why I am typing like a fiend to get this posted, like the last wave of a swimmer in distress.
This is certainly not a complaint about Speakeasy. Indeed I have heard nothing but good things about them. But the logistics (and other details of which I am not aware) of DSL procurement in the cutthroat DSL market is prohibitively complex. I am expecting too much if I want them to reuse a perfectly good, tested, and working connection loop, and my router, and perhaps even the DSLAM at the CO. That would require too much of a departure from the polished routine which they have perfected, of getting people hooked-up and online fast. I guess I just want it my way.
I have been amazingly lucky -- DSL for free for over a year. This is not unappreciated here, especially now. DSL is my ONLY connection with the outside world; no phone, no cable, no TV. But I am addicted now, and I will do just about anything they want to stay connected via DSL -- even if it doesn't occasionally reach 2.25 megabits per second. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: In addition to the quote STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/27/2001 02:03:42 PM ----- BODY: In addition to the quote posted on Blogger's main page:
...from this article, the writer goes on to say, "Not that they are about to displace the main organs of journalism. I don't think any serious blogger would make that claim."
Spoken like a true self-preservationist, suckling on the teat of journalism's main organ.
Journalism is a joke in most of its present propagandized incarnations. It is so bad in fact that I don't think any serious journalist would actually claim that as a title. He'd probably have a weblog and call himself a blogger.
Good journalism is out there to be sure, but too many so-called journalists are nothing but ad copy writers, which is in itself an honorable profession -- writers must make a living too. But when ad copy is passed off as journalism, and when the stuff being hawked is political manipulation -- the basest of snake-oils -- that my dears is called propaganda. They can call themselves whatever they want if it helps them swallow their own saliva without retching. But if you won't tell me the real stories, which I find almost exclusively by reading weblogs, then you might as well be lying. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: New javascript pop-ups installed STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 09/29/2001 02:59:40 PM ----- BODY:
New javascript pop-ups installed (for the most part, lots of links still need tweaking). I just can't keep it simple.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: You know, when you really STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/02/2001 02:59:58 AM ----- BODY: You know, when you really look at a person, you see them. I said somewhere once this guy was 'way cute,' and he is. But he's a whole hell of a lot more; he's a whole human being for one thing -- including of course all the appropriate appendages (not that I know personally -- just surmizing). But he's also got a voice, and he's got a brain, and the scariest thing of all for me is that Mays has got a heart. Not that I know personally -- just surmizing...Check out his blog entry for .:: Saturday :: September 22 :: 2001 ::.. There's pics. If you look at them, maybe you won't see a person, maybe you'll just see a picture. I saw a person, and I'm right back where I was running from: I'm afraid.
I'm not afraid of pictures.
PS: I really can't believe that Mays is only 5'2" like he says.
PPS. He is not a child, as his appearance (at a stretch) suggests to some people. He is a grown adult. Once he even got laid-off from an adult-type job. So there. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: This explains part of STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/02/2001 03:50:37 AM ----- BODY: This explains part of the story about my phantom DSL provider. The line was (again) down most of the day, coming up for about a half hour every three hours, finally coming back up and staying at about 2:30 this AM.
All is not hopeless. WorldCom is buying Rhythms, or at least they're buying that group of access rights for Central Offices which include the CO for my particular line. Maybe WorldCom will take me under their wing and send me a bill for this DSL. Then at least I will know who to call when it goes down, or slows down. Gawd, I can't imagine calling somebody just to tell them my bandwidth is drooping when I've lately gotten used to being wonderfully grateful just for having a connection. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Doesn't it just figure; I STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/02/2001 05:12:47 AM ----- BODY: Doesn't it just figure; I finally got a decent connection soze I can blog, and I gotta go to bed. Fuckin' thing will be down in the morning, I just know it.
On the other hand, it is 5 AM...
Good night. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: No blog entries because DSL STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/04/2001 02:14:48 AM ----- BODY: No blog entries because DSL has been down. Going down again any second, I am sure. Just wanted to say hi. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: It has made me too STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/06/2001 12:36:07 AM ----- BODY: It has made me too jittery to think straight. This dropping-DSL, which has been down for days on end, coming up for 30 minutes or an hour a day, has made me link-light crazy, watching the router nervously for the fatal wink-out of the WAN link indicator. I'm getting an ulcer.
Current connection condition as follows (as obtained from DSL reports)
...to New Jersey:
** Speed 1294(down)/442(up) kbps **
(At least 25 times faster than a 56k modem)
Logging result
Finish.
...to San Jose:
** Speed 274(down)/436(up) kbps **
(At least 5 times faster than a 56k modem)
Logging result
Finish.
..to Los Angeles:
** Speed 545(down)/438(up) kbps **
(At least 10 times faster than a 56k modem)
Logging result
Finish.
I don't know what is up with the San Jose test results -- the upload is faster than the download. But if it is connected at all lately, all I can say is 'tsawright.
The DSL offerings out there are pretty awful. WorldCom, despite their website propaganda, can't do anything for a Rhythms customer 'cept sell'em a new line. No assumption of 'customer care' going on there. Or maybe it is just an unscrupulous sales staff trying to maximize commissions -- the American way. They want to discard the present connection, hardware and all, and have Covad install everything new. Such an encouragingly inefficient business practice for lean times -- maximize cash flow without regard for the rest.
I'm in a bad mood.
They want $150 per month for a 128kbps line (Synchronous DSL -- 128k both ways). This price means nothing to me since I have not spent a cent on my present line. But the service I signed up for was ADSL (Asynchronous) which for most of its life has provided me with 1.5Mbps downstream and 300+ kbps upstream. The price for that was $49.95 a month. Hmmm. I think there is some shopping to be done here -- or maybe some strong words to be shared with WorldCom, like... well, I don't know exactly what they are yet. But I'll let you know. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: the tenth... Read this, STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/06/2001 02:29:42 AM ----- BODY:
Read this, then this, and finally this, but especially be sure to read this.
I for one will be anxious on the tenth. I love it. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: ...keep the home fires burning STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/08/2001 01:01:06 AM ----- BODY:
I go to the British very much in these last several weeks -- to those who survived Blitzkrieg, who emerged victorious from the Battle of Britain; to that nation of whom the world might one day say (using the words of Churchill), never have so few given so much for so many; to the historical parent of my own nation -- for reassurance and comfort in a time of impossible and gravely consequential choices. And I go to them for nothing so much as the simple knowledge that I am not alone. That is the cure for terror. Whether we are right or wrong -- and I think we are both -- I thank you Britain; I daresay I love you.
Here is Tony Blair's announcement of British support and participation in US-led attacks on Afghanistan. In case that doesn't work, try this. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: what is mine home STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/08/2001 08:39:15 PM ----- BODY:
I know I've been offline for a while, but Office of Homeland Security for crissakes?
An American blogger in Sweden, somewhat more alert than I, astutely asked, "why ever did they pick such an Orwellian name?". Why indeed. George Orwell's 1984 was fiction, but Rumsfeld and his boys are as non-fiction as good ol' American beef on the hoof -- and as morally dumb. Problem is, they've taken over the abbatoir, and they've been running it for quite a few years now.
I certainly do not want to sound un-American (the Committee on Un-American Activities may be revived any moment), nor un-patriotic; and I certainly do not want to allow any passion -- no matter how righteous it may feel to me -- to dissuade me from the only motivation I will ever want -- love. Therefore, it is love for that man (whose image appears on the right) that makes me bring up a tacky topic like assassination at the awkward moment of a nation's self-vindication. He was my hero. I was five when he was assassinated.
I don't like this topic; it gives me a headache. It makes me cry. I tell myself John F. Kennedy was probably just as crooked as the people who killed him; I mean there was the Illinois votes scandal, and there was his rum-running father -- or so the story goes. And I use cliches like, 'you live by the sword, you die by it,' or 'you play with fire you get burned.' Ugh. Eventually, I do admit that I'm just trying to minimize the loss, to impose on the Fates some balance which makes them less unfair. It is a touching effort but fruitless, and I cry.
Or maybe the fruit of rehashing these emotions is the tears. They uncover me; it is how I know who I really am. Yes, even after 38 years, there are waves of saddness yet to spend themselves in sobs and blurred vision...
He was ours, he belonged to us here in New England and, more specifically, here in Massachusetts. He talked like us; they made fun of him for it. And he was Catholic like me and my family. He came from that heritage of veils and genuflections, of candles, rosary beads, and sad-faced statues, and he came from an era of Friday afternoon confessions that was emblematic of being Catholic in the Sixties. Yet he lived playfully. He lived on the beach, on Cape Cod, a place I have loved since before I was five -- it may be that I love the Cape simply because the Kennedys lived there.
In the world I knew, President Kennedy was my remarkable incongruity, a saving grace. My world was one in which everybody like me was defined by saddness and unfair suffering; by the age of five I had already spent two years in hell, but that is another story. He was like me, except he was happy, always having fun, laughing, and never suffering. Even when I was five, I knew, because of Jack Kennedy, that life didn't have to be the way I had known it, he was my proof that life really was better than I knew. His assassination, the way it happened, and the lies surrounding it all, created in me that cynical little man you see in all these words. The death of my President re-crushed my hope.
The black operations conducted to assassinate John F. Kennedy were not the beginning of such activity inside the US government, but they certainly were the most ambitious up to that time. That activity is continuing, which brings me back to the topic at hand; the trust of government.
The plain logic, obvious to anyone who has ears is that Osama bin Laden is the best thing to ever happen to American domestic intelligence -- it frankly terrifies me. The terrorist Osama, the homeless rabble-rousing waif, cannot terrorize me one tenth as much as the American government can, in its crimes and its espionage against its own citizens, set now to begin a new era of expansion, and folks like Rumsfeld will, despicably, use the September 11 atrocities to justify their excesses. They can't let pass unexploited such a profitible opportunity to gain unreasonable power and centralize authority.
Their eagerness is nauseating. Instead of dashing to the fore to take their places in a new lineup of power-grubbing haters of civil liberties, it would be more appropriate to the realities of the day for them to at least appear reluctant as they advance, jack-booted, over the Constitution. Come now, it is not as though our very existence as a nation were threatened, and forgive me if I think that a threat to our existence is the only justification for trashing the US Constitution. So I would have thought these image conscious power-mongers would be more concerned about their appearance. But why should they? None of us are paying much attention anyway. As long as they keep the gas flowing to our SUV's, and as long as they preserve 'our American way of life', whatever that is besides irrelevant, then we don't much care what they do, do we. We just don't want to know.
Have you ever seen Three Days of the Condor? Quite dated, but relevant today, perhaps even moreso than when it was released.
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This administration is promoting -- too vigorously, I think -- the idea that this fight against terrorism is going to last years. How do they know? And why are they so interested in fighting terrorism now -- terrorism is not a new thing. Why didn't they start America's New War back when the WTC was first bombed in 1993? The threat then was no less lethal, nor less likely, than now.
We have become a battle state, a nation of heartless and mindless goons drunk with rage and blood-lust. Don't say you are not part of it -- even though you may not be a goon. Because that is OUR president, and OUR Secretary of Defense and, lamentably now, OUR Director of Homeland Security. We may not like them, we may even have opposed their ascendancy to high office, but we are the source of the authority they weild; we are responsible for the actions they execute in our names. Whether we like it or not, the buck stops here. We can continue to look the other way, which we do very well in America. But there are masses of humanity across the seas who hate me and you for being part of this country, and for participating in the most wasteful and self-indulgent society this earth has ever known.
Our government did not start America's New War in 1993 because it could not have gotten away with it then, at least not with as much popular support as today. If the administration then was conservative, it might have tried to start a war and curb free speech and advance the militarization of American society, but that would have been much more difficult then. In 1993, our government might have prevented the events of September 11. But in that case they'd not have gotten all the extra goodies they are getting today, like this homeland security bullshit -- a better title might be the Office of Domestic Espionage.
I bet Bush and his buds are glad they couldn't shoot their wad in '93; it comes out so much better if you wait.
Yeah, I know, he's got a job right now, and not a bad one, at that. But as we all know, politics is fickle, and when they are done with him over there in bonnie old England, I would like it just fine if he'd come here to be president. The fact that this would constitute sloppy seconds does not matter to me at all, in his case. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Sleep, sweet boy, sleep and STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/11/2001 02:06:30 AM ----- BODY: Sleep, sweet boy, sleep and dream fretless dreams of desires quenched, and of hopes fulfilled; let the trembling of today's troubled world disturb not the restfulness of your dreaming, nor the clarity of your meetings in the day.
Good night. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: The Most Rev Michael J STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/11/2001 12:18:41 PM ----- BODY: The Most Rev Michael J Sheehan, archbishop of Santa Fe, said Ms Lopez had turned the Holy Virgin into a "tart".
I don't think Ms. Lopez has changed any dead people, saints or otherwise, one iota. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: What could the point of STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/12/2001 01:16:25 AM ----- BODY: What could the point of this possibly be? Are they promoting Bert along with fanaticsm? Is Bert a terrorist? Have they even infiltrated Sesame Street?
Maybe bin Laden's videotaped messages do not include any coded instructions to terrorists in the United States; maybe they get all their direction from Sesame Street, and Bert.
They don't, I know. But they should. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: where to draw the STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/12/2001 01:31:44 PM ----- BODY:
Despite my cynical skepticism concerning motivations governmental, this story might well be true, that a shift in US policy toward Palestine was already planned before September 11, to be announced on Sept. 13. Attacking the WTC after the US took such a pro-Arab stance would make bin Laden's efforts to paint America as an enemy of Islam dubious at best. Though the proximity in time of these two events may be coincidental, still it raises the disquieting proposition that the terrorists' intelligence regarding the intentions of the US government was (and maybe still is) highly accurate and timely. The timing of the atrocity on the day it happened was obviously precise, but the choice of that day in particular was, I thought, a random one, based on opportunism more than on intelligence from within the White House.
I have always stood in awe of the story of the state of Isreal, while naively overlooking the human toll of the violence there, as well as overlooking the reasons which have given rise to that violence. Human deaths -- whether Arab or Jew -- cannot be overlooked, and there have been many on both sides. Likewise, the beliefs and free will of individuals must not be overlooked either. But where to draw the line? Surely, some things must be banned; murder, torture, terrorism, and abuse of power to name a few. And some things must be preserved; life, the freedom and respect to live it with dignity, peace. The difficulty arises between the extremes -- when the way I want to live my life imposes restrictions on the way you want to live yours. (I know this is a vast oversimplification, but I don't have much time.).
As much as I dislike the way Bush came to be president, he is. And as much as I am loath to admit it, I think he is right to seek to preserve (or create) a balance between Isreal and Palestine.
And while New York mayor Guliani may be right in principle, egos such as his will make these balancing efforts more difficult. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Reblogger is back and reinstalled STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/13/2001 03:19:37 PM ----- BODY: Reblogger is back and reinstalled here. Click on the '&' below and add your thoughts. [Update: changed it on Monday already.] ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: I am having tcpdump for STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/14/2001 03:01:50 PM ----- BODY: I am having packet envy. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: BlogBack is now in use. STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/15/2001 09:29:53 PM ----- BODY: BlogBack is now in use. Can't say why I switched from reblogger, I just liked it. : ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: seized Woke today in STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/16/2001 12:59:58 AM ----- BODY:
Woke today in that confused state which precedes a seizure. This condition was at one time difficult for me to distinguish from normal life. Partly because at one time I enjoyed disjointed thoughts which disappeared in mid-thinking, and partly because at one time when these neurological electrical storms would rage inside my brain, it did not much matter to me whether they intensified into a seizure because at one time I could endure a seizure without any lasting effects. But now I tend to dislocate shoulders, and such.
First, sleep flees; no matter how tired I might be, and regardless of how lazy I normally am, I cannot stay in bed when these storms come. It is not that I want to be awake -- as if to greet the bright day, make coffee, and be alive -- oh no, I want more than anything to be asleep again, because just simple consciousness exacerbates the storm. Every brain cell contributes to the propagation of incoherent energy across my brain, stirring my thoughts into a melee of memories, images, words, ideas, questions and disorientations; I have a pot of coffee and a near-empty container of dilantin capsules and it seems to make sense that I should pour one into the other. But is it the coffee into the pill bottle, or do I put the pills into the coffee pot? And why can't I seem to recall anything about how I always must have done this in the past.
Sleep flees because when the normal neurological pathways of thought careen out of control, they tangle with and sever other pathways, sending them out of control thus spreading pockets of anarchy across my brain at the speed of light. This intense random electrical activity sets off alarms in my cerebellum and brain stem causing the release of adrenalin and signalling the higher functioning levels of my brain to wake up and pay attention. And so the cycle goes, until either I have a seizure, or I avoid it somehow.
Today I avoided it by taking the emergency stash of Ativan given to me by my neurologist for such occasions. It calms the panicking brain cells that are increasingly losing connection with other brain cells -- being isolated really upsets a brain cell -- and all the little fighting children and their broken toys are given a time-out nap, and when I wake up a few hours later, things are usually better.
But I am nonetheless annoyed today because, seizure or not, this kinda crap takes a day right out of my life, crumples it up and throws it away. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: This is a URL from STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/17/2001 03:22:34 AM ----- BODY: This is a URL from my website's referrer log. I wish it was from a former boyfriend trying to send me a subtle (or not-so-subtle) message.
I wonder how many other lonely men -- who have little better to do than pore over their server logs -- were similarly reminded of a Daniel from their own pasts? And I wonder how many of them wished him back again?
cache - ntc - ab01 . proxy . aol . com - - [16/Oct/2001:04:08:24 -0400] "GET /blog.js HTTP/1.0" 200 7040 "http://www.google.com / search?q=cache : Hu_VtCzWyBc : burgwinkel.com / blog.htm + boyfriend + gone + beg + cock + deep + inside + me & hl=en" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; AOL 6.0; Windows 98)"
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Bedtime. Thanks HMS. I know STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/17/2001 04:39:32 AM ----- BODY: Bedtime.Thanks HMS. I know it's not so, but sometimes it seems, on dark pre-winter nights, that no one sees these cobbly thoughts -- no one, that is, but the 'bots and me.
Guten nacht. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: loss It represents only STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/18/2001 10:57:16 PM ----- BODY:
It represents only 1 ping every ten minutes, and in the space of ten minutes this DSL connection goes up and down more often than me on a good night. In the time it takes me to write a sentence this link dumps me twice; that's means either that I write very slowly, or that this connection is infinitely frustrating.
Yeah, I know, it's a free connection. All that green on the graph represents free bandwidth -- how can I possibly complain, you might ask. Well, for one thing, I am not sure it is free. Somebody could show up tomorrow and hand me a bill for $2000. Besides, I would have already found an ISP to adopt me if everything was not in flux -- i.e.: I am going to move this week, next week, next month, or the month after next, and apart from that, ISPs are dropping like flies, declaring bankruptcy and vanishing into the bit-o-sphere as fast as I can look up their phone numbers.
The problem is not the spotty connection, though. Used to be that green part of the graph was like a dense hedgerow; in it I hid. Now there's lots of splits and gaping breaches and there's not a lot of bandwidth anymore to distract me from looking at myself. You see, I don't have a TV -- right now, I don't even have a phone. I do everything here, at this screen, on this keyboard. I watch the world, I learn, I relax, I run away. But it doesn't work so good anymore.
I'm feeling kinda naked, and not in a happy sort of way. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: University of Wisconsin-Madison has stopped STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/20/2001 11:39:14 AM ----- BODY: University of Wisconsin-Madison has stopped serving my favorite desktop wallpaper, which were weather satellite images of the US (one of the east coast and another of the west coast).
I suppose if enemies of America want to know what the weather was (or more specifically, the cloud patterns, not the actual weather) on May 11, 2001, this photo will help. If they want to know what the weather is today thay can still go here. News flash to the government: Just because it's a satellite image doesn't mean it qualifies as intelligence. And just because we do it out of fear does not mean it is intelligent.
I am wide open for attack here; what possible benefit is there in having an image of my planet on my desktop, from a satellite in geostationary orbit, updated every 30 minutes? None, of course. There is no value to the comfort of seeing us as a single earth from an impossible altitude, no advantage to observing -- as if removed from it all -- the peaceful countenance of our strife- and hate-riddled world, and of course no gain in preserving (as much as possible) the way we lived our lives before September 11 -- including such frivolities as a desktop with panache.
If they are looking for Florida or Texas, they know where to find them without this image. Concealing information that might be useful to terrorists is not the purpose of removing these images from the Internet. This image has a resolution of about a mile -- objects smaller than that do not appear as discreet objects, rather they are melded into their surroundings. Furthermore these images remained available up until October 18, 2001, a full five weeks after the WTC attack. Even as uncharitable as is my opinion of governmental competence, I think if these images mattered, they'd have been gone sooner. There could be a lot of reasons that this view has been blocked, the misconception that it has a strategic value not least among them. Forgive my cynicism, but five weeks after the fact is about when I would expect the newly assembled iron fist of Homeland Security to start tightening, and the place where oppression -- however well intentioned it may be -- first occurs is at educational institutions where free thought and dissent are nurtured and cultivated.
Shame on the University of Wisconsin for not protesting. It may be politically impossible to sustain such a protest in this case, since public access to satellite images is pretty much doomed these days, no matter how useless they might be to our enemies. But the truth of the matter, both technically and morally, is that government should keep its hands off when compelling and legitimate government interests are not at stake. The thing I fear is that the government today does have interests which are threatened by academic autonomy, as such those interests are illegitimate.
Where did the free world go? ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: On the other hand, fedworld.gov STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/20/2001 02:44:18 PM ----- BODY: On the other hand, fedworld.gov is still posting these images, which thoroughly invalidates the premise of my previous post.
Nevermind. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Earth Web Sites STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/20/2001 03:06:19 PM ----- BODY: Earth Web Sites ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Is there a real life? STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/21/2001 02:01:11 PM ----- BODY: Is there a real life? I know others have lived one. I do not know how they found it, though. Was it a chance opportunity which presented a new trajectory for life, an illness that unveiled another door, a blockage which redirected the flow? Or was there an irrepressible urging, unknown even to the one being urged, a force that in most lives never finds its freedom, which in one life did? Sometimes real life seems to happen as the result of a choice, and sometimes it seems to never happen, no matter how much you try to choose it.
Well, what's wrong with that? I mean, there's been some things in my life -- like the longings I harbored for a straight boy or two when I was in high school -- longings which, if satisfied, would have left me terrified and dumb. Indeed, on occasion those romantic longings might have been satisfied had I not been paralyzed by the prospect. So maybe the longing is not so bad; it seems I may have chosen to continue the longing instead of accepting the longing's resolution. But that's disingenuous. The longing is bad if, out of fear, it becomes artificial and insincere -- a refuge from that which is ostensibly longed for. If I choose to remain in the wilderness at the city's edge, though I profess to be on a quest for civilization, then I am lying. And lamentable.
So why am I afraid of the inspiration that lies dormant within me? Why am I afraid to emerge?
Lately, I have buried myself within an excess 40 pounds of cover. I must be getting uncomfortably close to the edge of my wilderness. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: The Times',CAPTION,'thetimes.co.uk', HEIGHT, 15, LEFT, STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/24/2001 01:11:06 AM ----- BODY: This will not help dissuade aggrieved Muslims from accusing the West of bias. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Insightful. STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/24/2001 02:05:47 AM ----- BODY: Insightful. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: My nausea at the fans STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/24/2001 03:31:59 AM ----- BODY: My nausea at the fans of World War III is threatening to progress to projectile vomitting. As if that is not bad enough, this from some idiot: "...it is now a commonplace notion that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.".
Come again? I beg your pardon, but I am a liberal, and I have been mugged. I was 35 and I briefly wanted my mother (who was dead) and then I thought I probably should want a cop -- but I recovered from that notion quickly. Never, for an instant, was I even slightly inclined to any form of conservatism. I did not, even once, want to scold myself for carrying things of great sentimental value while strolling alone. I was not confused; I bore no responsibility for the theft of my possessions, the thieves bore total blame. And though I did not want to see them again, I knew that the greater danger was to fear and hate them, and to engage in the pretense that I could prevent anything similar from ever happening again by who knows what absurd, irrational means -- perhaps by costuming myself as poor and destitute before appearing ever again in public.
Furthermore, if the mugging of this liberal did anything, it made me MORE liberal, wanting to promote investment in more social programs which might have disabused those fatherless high school dropouts of the notion that success in this society was only for others unlike themselves.
The above quote, speaking of September 11, says that "America has been mugged.". Conservatism stockpiles, it worrys and reserves, and it keeps everything it can. Liberalism casts to the wind, it invests in hopes and in insupportable dreams, and it seeks to give away everything it can. Conservatism withdraws from what it fears -- behind unmatchable military force, expansive police powers, and more severe social stratifications, and it seeks to make greater distinctions between itself and others. Liberalism embraces what it fears -- inviting its detractors to join its internal debates, refusing to make labels into badges of entre and even refusing to create seclusions which one might need entre into, and it seeks to minimize distinctions between itself and others; indeed it seeks to diminish all distinctions.
A former liberal, become conservative, is a person who has learned fear. A liberal who remains a liberal simply knows the difference. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Annoyingly entertaining. STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/25/2001 01:36:49 PM ----- BODY: Annoyingly entertaining. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: word Wallowing in the STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/29/2001 09:28:18 PM ----- BODY:
Wallowing in the balm of self-abuse. Bomb. Sometimes only it soothes. I let reams and reams of words float through my brain, through the day, words like lost waifs that beg with poignant eyes and broken-hearted hope for recognition, or acknowledgement, or even just for some evidence that their existence is not totally and completely superfluous to the world. Words. Were.
Like throwing pennies away. It's wrong. It's a waste. I discard the most precious thing that could ever come this way, and I feel powerful -- like the five year old who threw the Sunday roast on the kitchen floor. I want to feel powerful, senselessly powerful in the way a drowning man in desperate panic attacks his rescuer. I do what I don't want to do; because I don't want to die, and I don't like to cry, and I do not want the responsibility of these precious things, words.
So I throw them away. Oh, if you only knew the words from today, the stories they told, the fictions they wove more true than any fact. Characters with breaking-blooming hearts, plots of universal significance, songs of hoping-eyes brightened, of unlived lives brought to glorious joyous life... I trash them all. Then in tears I go back, as now, to recover, reclaim, retrieve; to regain some fragment of that which I discard as the result of trantrums so very infantile -- as the result of agonies all too mature.
I must post this -- whatever this is -- before my electricity is shut off for the night (Mass Electric is doing upgrades in the neighborhood), and before I lose my fickle Internet connection. The anxiety of the end is always the last reason to start. Sometimes it is the only reason. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: I used to write essays STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/29/2001 11:18:58 PM ----- BODY: I used to write essays for my journal, things that took time and tears to produce. It was not a 'blog' kind of writing, not given to the staccato pace of a good weblog. My journal entries were introspective, reflective and, too often, preachy. I wanted my writing to have a better perspective, a view not limited to the world of me, I wanted to create these words with a view toward the broader world. A blog -- a thing perhaps best described as a narrative of websurfing, thick with links to and pithy comments about other fascinating websites -- seemed a structure that might promote extroversion in my writing (and maybe even in my thinking), a format that might help me get out of myself.
Every soul did once experience greatness in one of its incarnations. Every crippled creator today has, somewhere in its karmic record, an experience of flowing, lush, endless-seeming creativity which perfectly and appropriately expressed the contents of every void, and every shadow, and every humble hiding thing within. And everything has happened already. In the moment that is life, the moment of the soul, there is no past and no future -- all that was and all that will be, very simply, is. My task is to give that creator, that god, an incarnation in this temporal plane -- this existential flatness upon which god has smashed itself, splattering godself into its component parts; you, me, time, space, life, death, love, hope... I am called to transcend my existence as a mere speck in an enormous abstract stain, to knit from these tenderly intimate, yet infinitely distant parts a coherence of god. I am called to reclaim from the surface of this canvas, a whole truth, to draw up out of the accidental randomness of that flat reality a real, honest-to-goodness multi-dimensional creation which will be my contribution to the ultimate reassembly of everything into One. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: A sobering excerpt from a STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/30/2001 10:57:06 AM ----- BODY: A sobering excerpt from a speech you should read.
... Would you like to know the memorial they would offer the almost six thousand people who died in the attacks? Or the legacy they would provide the ten thousand children who lost a parent in the horror? How do they propose to fight the long and costly war on terrorism America must now undertake?
Why, restore the three-martini lunch; that will surely strike fear in the heart of Osama bin Laden. You think I'm kidding, but bringing back the deductible lunch is one of the proposals on the table in Washington right now. There are members of Congress who believe you should sacrifice in this time of crisis by paying for lobbyists' long lunches. And cut capital gains for the wealthy, naturally, that's America's patriotic duty, too. And while we're at it, don't forget to eliminate the Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax, enacted fifteen years ago to prevent corporations from taking so many credits and deductions that they owed little if any taxes. But don't just repeal their minimum tax; give those corporations a refund for all the minimum tax they have ever been assessed.
You look incredulous. But that's taking place in Washington even as we meet here in Brainerd this morning. What else can America do to strike at the terrorists? Why, slip in a special tax break for poor General Electric, and slip inside the Environmental Protection Agency while everyone's distracted and torpedo the recent order to clean the Hudson river of PCBs. Don't worry about NBC, CNBC, or MSNBC reporting it; they're all in the GE family. ...
There's more. Go read it. The truth hurts; in fact it hurts so much that it might -- just maybe, if we are strong and see with open hearts, and if we are brave and feel the full depth and breadth of our national agony -- it just might transform us for the better. There is no question it will transform us -- the only question is whether that transformation will be for the better or for the worse. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: I lit candles, watched the STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/30/2001 03:24:15 PM ----- BODY: I lit candles, watched the clock, shutdown everything electrical and precious (read: computer and monitor), snuggled into bed and began to read by flashlight. At 1:30 AM the electrical shut-down in my neighborhood, scheduled for midnight, had still not ocurred. When I woke, the microwave clock and the caller-id box indicated that there had been no shut-down.
The candles were nice. Going to bed early was nice, as was getting up early. Maybe the lights will go out tonight. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: I do not support the STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/30/2001 03:56:21 PM ----- BODY: I do not support the so-called Patriot Act. Since it is now enacted, I do support strict adherance to its 'sunset' provision limiting the life of this draconian act.
I am embarrased to be a human today, on a planet where the dominant free society enacts a law that virtually criminalizes immigrant status. This exceeds the shame caused by Bush-the-former when he blocked HIV positive people from entering the US.
What is going on? Callers to Talk of the Nation on NPR are actually advocating torture for suspected terrorists. What's even scarier is that such torture is the scheduled topic for today's show. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: People who are viewed as STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/31/2001 12:36:33 AM ----- BODY: People who are viewed as intellectually enlightened and informed are increasingly adopting the fanatical view that this conflict needs to become (or is already) a religious war. The sane moderates maintain in a tragically diminishing voice that this is a political conflict masquerading as a spiritual imperative. Not to diminish the extremity of the horrors which have occured, but unfortunately, framing this conflict as a merely political one offers only mundane, pedestrian benefits to the powerful elite compared to what they can gain through exploiting the frenzied hysteria of a patriotic American fatwa.
Who will our Mohammed be? FDR? Lincoln? Washington? John Adams. Benjamin Franklin? George Mohammed Walker Bush? And when it is all over how will we account for ourselves? Will we bother to examine our collective conscience then? Will we feel any need at all to do so?
We are revealing our true selves as individuals and defining our nation by our response to this attack. I daresay we are a nation of courageous individuals who, over the last thirty years, have abdicated arguably the greatest democracy (certainly the most powerful democracy) of all time, turning it over to an oligarchy of rich, mostly white, men who are using this crisis for their own narrow, selfish purposes. They are the real fifth column in any battle brought today by true patriots and defenders of freedom.
Freedom is not a prize to be awarded to either 'us' or 'them'. Ideally, freedom tolerates no imposed distinction; there is no 'them', only us. There will always be those who seek rebellion against society and who repudiate the inclusiveness of freedom. The danger is to adopt their destructive view as our own, to descend into their brand of hatred and to adopt their posture of judgementalism, thus becoming not defenders of freedom's high ideals, but the petty custodians of some cheap imitation of freedom. Let whatever distinctions there may be, be only the distinctions which others have chosen for themselves. Let us not lose our grip on this precious gift of freedom in the tears of our grief, nor in the fever of our just rage.
It is, least of all, a nation we defend; much more we defend the ideal of a free and open society which can exist anywhere but which, for a couple centuries now and to our great good fortune, has chosen to exist in America. We are blessed. Let's not blow it. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Just go here. STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 10/31/2001 03:29:49 AM ----- BODY: Just go here. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Yay! I can pay my STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 11/01/2001 04:45:42 AM ----- BODY: Yay! I can pay my rent! Such are the turning points in my life. But, you know, I think of war refugees, who are poorer than dirt, and homeless -- and hungry, always hungry (never sick, because if they get sick they just die) -- and then I think of how much money I give my landlord and I want to kill him. (Oop. That's not what I meant to say.). I meant to say that then I think how fortunate I really am.
Of course I could not find out anything about my bank account until my DSL came back on a couple hours ago. It was off all day. That's because I had today off from work. (My DSL knows... It watches me... it waits... It will be up and running fine all day tomorrow, while I'm at work.).
But -- I must have some sort of DSL-guilt, I keep talking about this -- it is free. And it's even faster now. It's latency is down to 30ms from 50ms. It used to graph flat at 50, with occasional spikes. Now it graphs flat at 30, no spikes. Flat. Things just keep getting better, life is good, there's no sand in my food, I think I still have a job, and we just enjoyed the first ocurrence of a blue moon on halloween since 1955. Come on al Qaeda, nuke me! Nuke me now, because right now I'm content. But hurry because I'll be securely ensconced in my impregnable misery in no time. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: The story is stunningly brutal STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 11/01/2001 08:29:24 AM ----- BODY: The story is stunningly brutal and cruel. Don't read it. Do anything else, but do not read it. Because once you read it, you will be completely preoccupied trying to convince yourself it is not true. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: I'm trying to make it STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 11/05/2001 02:01:01 PM ----- BODY: I'm trying to make it load faster, but you know how I am with the principle of keep it complicated, stupid. I shaved off about 5% of its load time so far, but there is just so much stuff that needs to be crammed in... And did she use the adjective 'interesting' in connection (indirectly) with me? Omigod. More javascript, I need more javascript, quick. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: This fucking DSL sucks out-loud. STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 11/05/2001 04:49:02 PM ----- BODY: This fucking DSL sucks out-loud. Came up at 3 AM, went down at 2:30 PM (half hour ago), and I'm asleep during 90% of that time period.
How can I bitch? It is -- as you are no doubt sick of hearing -- free. But I bitch because it means I have to do the laundry. Having no DSL means I have to shower, get dressed, maybe even clean the house. Without the distraction of this wide area network distributed toy I have to confront the same fear I see in people who come to detox. It is a very real terror, though of nothing, and it lurks just beneath the surface -- a howling, shrieking torment completely contained within its victim, while outside, in unrelentingly ordered moments, we all step evenly through the procession of a world which, though we search it for acknowledgement, is ignorant of the storm. It is an apparently irreconcilable duality; the interior experience, ineffably tangible, irrefutably horriffic, and the exterior world, unaffected, irrelevant, and intractably enigmatic.
So I bitch. And I write about bitching. I discuss this 'duality' as if there really were two things, and not merely the appearance of two things. We have all experienced the excision of pain from reality; we have observed with objectivity when others have done it in denial of their own pain. We have perhaps done it ourselves. And we might have witnessed in horror others who cut our pain brutally from the fabric of reality, as if that changed it any. "Let them eat cake.". It is always flippant and cavalier. It is always self-centered since it always costs the other more when we discard their agony simply because we do not like the look of it -- maybe because it reminds us of our own.
The adults did it when I was two and a half years old. I cannot speak for them, but from my perspective it appeared they did not want to deal with the intractable problem of an uncle who raped his nephew. Besides, two-and-a-half year olds are resislient; they can recover from just about anything. Right?
Did I? ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Hi. I been gone. I STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 11/09/2001 12:04:44 AM ----- BODY: Hi. I been gone.
I punched the keyboard of my miscreant computer Monday night and shorted out the motherboard. I've done similar violent things to the 'cheap peripherals' in the past (i.e.: the keyboard and the mouse) without any damage extending into the mystical tower. This time it fried a chip; not anything significant like the main processer, or a video chip or hard-drive controller chip, just a keyboard controller chip on the M-board, but this PC won't boot without a keyboard. Sometimes the insignificant is essential.
Everything is gone. E-mail, instant messaging, posting to this page (I am doing this from another location out of my cave), is unavailable to me, and my favorite text-editor, NoteTab, is gone right along with my least favorite word processor, MSWord. Gone even (or most especially, maybe) is all access to my computer's contents. It's all still there, but I can't get it. Like a child with autism, or an elder with expressive aphasia, my computer has it all and can't let it out. I can rescue it by moving the hard-drives, but to where? Someday to another machine, when I become solvent again (I will be stroked-out by then). However, I would prefer that the magician -- who lives in an improbable little rural hamlet near Worcester, whom I have called, who seems to have some hope for rehabilitating the precious machine which carried me on this journey to these fond places here on the 'net -- I would prefer that he return to me the place where I have learned to live, the place where I have learned to be alive. To the place where I am briefly now, at a usurped machine in a dark vacant office at work. It feels like getting a fix in an alley.
Maybe being alive is something else entirely from what I have been doing here.
I hope to be back soon... ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Happy Thanksgiving. Box still gone. STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 11/22/2001 11:51:15 PM ----- BODY: Happy Thanksgiving. Box still gone. What can I say, the magician is an artiste. Miracles happen overnight, but repairs take longer. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: I hate this. I have STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 12/05/2001 11:42:14 PM ----- BODY: I hate this. I have to sneak to work after hours to blog, and that pretty much sucks all the pleasure out of it. The magician may have found a new board for my box -- it has a non-standard mainboard design, split in two, an I/O board where all the PCI, USB, drives, and stuff resides, and a processor board where all the memory and (you guessed it) the processor resides. The I/O half is the fried half.
I should know one way or the other some time before Spring -- tomorrow, I hope. I expected it back within days when I left it there a month ago. I miss my e-mail, my regular Web sites, and I miss my system. I miss you.
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AUTHOR: joe
TITLE: painting me
STATUS: Publish
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DATE: 12/17/2001 08:35:31 PM
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It is all such a difficult endeavor for me. I don't want to be bothered explaining, or complaining; I don't want to be bothered trying to tell some convoluted story (a true story) of unimportant detail which I pretend will, in the telling, exonerate me from the guilt of having chosen to live my life irresponsibly -- or more accurately, unresponsively. As I write this, the quote up top, which is selected randomly when the page loads, says, "As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death. - Leonardo DaVinci".
My sleep has not been easy nor has it come promptly. Never was that more evident than immediately after I whacked my keyboard six weeks ago and killed my old computer. That first night I actually cried. No more did I have a soothing perception of connectedness to all of you -- strangers mostly, distant certainly, safe and comforting. I was plunged into the dark space of my own life, which was not made dark by my giant, bright monitor; my life had been increasingly abandoned to the darkness by me. I have easily ignored the darkening all about me by obsessing on this artificial light to which I have returned tonight. I am here with ambivalence.
+',height='+(screen.availHeight-30)+',scrollbars=no,resizable=yes');)
While I was away, I rediscovered my apartment. It was a mess. I vaccuumed up the biggest piles of dirt, washed and scraped surfaces of ancient dust -- some of it had nearly fossilized -- and rearranged my living space around my tiny, one-person dining table, leaving the desk with its dark monitor like a relic of another time. I started showing up at work much nearer to on-time than ever before. I started spending quiet, no-stress time reading National Geographic before bed. I re-employed my stereo system as a tuner -- rather than as a sound system for Winamp -- and I listened to NPR and the BBC's The World Today, finding the former almost as disappointing as I feared, while discovering that the latter is far better than I had expected. I began to spend more time bathing and shaving and brushing my teeth. I started buying fresh vegetables. I did laundry, and folded it and put it away, all in the same day. I cleaned the bathroom.
"A well spent day brings happy sleep...". I spent last night here, in front of this computer, indulging my addiction. I went to bed at 8:00 AM this morning. The first day I got this system (it is a new one, the old one is as yet irreparable) I was reluctant to resume my obsession. I didn't write anything here for nearly a week. I have always known there was something beyond the monitor -- mostly I have know that with fear and I immersed myself in this pool of light, hiding. Now, I am newly curious of the unilluminated life behind the monitor, having returned to it briefly. And now when I am in front of this monitor, I find myself leaning to the side and peering around it like Norman Rockwell peers out from behind his easel in one of his self-portraits.
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TITLE: And here are all
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DATE: 01/30/2002 03:20:20 AM
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And here are all the non-bloggerized posts...
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wednesday.
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23 Jan 02 11:20:13 AM
Do you want to know who a terrorist is? My second grade teacher was a terrorist. She was an ex-nun (she must have been asked to leave) and she had painted-on eyebrows which enhanced her already menacing grimace. She never smiled. She loved to flaunt her authority over little people to terrify them and make them cry; she was, in polite-speak, a dis-empowering mentor. Crasser words of fewer letters have been used to describe her. A child was taken from her class with an ulcer and, according to my sister, the cause was Mrs. Moore's angst provoking meanness. My sister and I had a lot in common. As children we were each trying to manage a barely containable rage. As adults we led fairly dissolute lives—she recovered, I have not. She had some spunk; I have always been more passive and avoidant. But regarding Mrs. Moore, my sister and I were of the same mind. If terrorism is imposing unnecessary fear upon innocents, then my second grade teacher was a terrorist. Indeed, many teachers, bosses, cops, even political leaders would meet that standard of terrorism. In fact, the randomness of daily life has certainly moved many of us into and out of that role, to one degree or another. As schoolyard bully, sibling monster, frat-house prankster, political candidate, conspiracy theorist. Sometimes one cannot help but impose unnecessary fear upon an innocent; it can be entirely unintentional. The crucial question is what constitutes 'unnecessary' fear? |
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sunday.
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20 Jan 02 1:16:49 PM
I'm going to confront something significant, and of course it begins with me. You know how they say if you want the world to change, start by changing yourself. (Somebody says that.). It'll be ugly, and I will describe it all here in detail. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day will be January 21 this year. His birthday was January 15, 1929, but Martin Luther King, Jr. Day does not just celebrate his birth--it does that certainly. But much more it celebrates his life, and our lives during his life. It is a time to remember the dream--the dream which we all have; a nightmare it has been for some--of our fullfillment as human beings, and the restoration of justice and freedom to all beings. It is not a day for the guilt of the unjust, nor for the anger of the aggrieved, but a day to contemplate the substance of things hoped for, a day to boldly pronounce our assurance of things not seen. He was not--and you and I are not--alone. Life is much more than mere biological animation; love is the Prime Actor, fundamental to all. Testament to that is the way he died. His murder sought to prove that physical death was the end of him and his message, certainly those applauding his death (or conspiring to cause it) held just such a desolate and truncated view of human existence. I know better, and on January 21, 2002, I will acknowledge in some private act of meditation an assurance of things not seen, powerful things within and underpinning life, real forces that will move the earth--indeed the world--toward the inevitable conclusion of hate and fear. These are the things to which Martin Luther King, Jr. called our attention in some very fond moments during the fear-filled days of the 1960's. Our days today are no less fear-filled: The United States of America recently took prisoners of war, in hoods and shackles, to Cuba and is holding them outdoors, in cages of chainlink fence--a human kennel. The Secretary of Defense says, with thinly veiled contempt, that those conditions are better than he thinks they deserve. The installations on Cuba today are more threatening to our freedoms than anything during the Cuban missle crisis. Also, the Attorney General, the head of the Justice Department, can't prosecute the criminals of Enron and its accounting firm, Arthur Anderson, because they are all his friends. And the hollow puppet that is our president, the presumed leader of the most powerful nation on earth, literally fell on his face this week, and now I seriously doubt his sobriety, in any sense. That's nothing compared to the fact that he was installed by a treasonable supreme court, and holds the position at the whim of powers who remain in hiding--a condition that is current, yet anathema to freedom. I suppose if I don't like it here, I can leave. But I won't leave, except by the route which they forced Martin Luther King, Jr. to take. Because in the midst of this nightmare that is the United States of America in the second millennium, there still is room to dream, and there still is time to make those dreams come true. |
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friday.
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18 Jan 02 11:41:39 AM
Did you ever try to live life dead? Did you ever wonder what that would be like? It's slapping the sunburn, or pressing your thumb deep into the center of a bruise, or probing a zit with a needle. It's staring into the sun until you're blind, banging your head against the wall until the pain goes numb, and turning up the volume until you can't hear. It's kind of a tantrum, but it's more like hiding--hiding from any chance of contact, like going under water whenever anybody notices you, and staying there as long as it takes. It is the refusal to be responsive, a deliberate snuffing of any bright wit or original thought that seeks to emerge. There is a margin around the edge of life, a high ledge where life is lived dead, while the living--most of you--glance with concern at us through the windows as we stiffly shuffle by. We have made our home within the shadow of an eclipse, and, instead of the sun, we worship a brilliant corona of longing for life that flares and rages gloriously and cannot be seen by those who live life alive. We don't believe we will ever fulfill the dream, but we do dream of basking in full sun, we dream of days filled with relaxing warmth and easy human contact; some of us even fantasize what real intimacy might be like. We dream as if we might ever come out from darkness, as if we might ever leave behind the precious blazing ring which encircles the sun and defines everything for us--everything--including the sun. |
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monday.
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14 Jan 02 11:25:13 AM
Dreamed about flying again--or floating, rather. It's more like swimming over land, not quite weightless, but not anchored foot after foot to the earth. It allows locomotive innovations, like when I have allowed myself to drift so close to the ground that there is not enough room to get my feet under me, then I can push-off with my hands and rise gently above twice my height. But there is always forward motion, as if that were necessary to keep from crashing. There were firefighters doing mundane things, but I was not among them. Two young firefighters were walking toward me on a road in the woods; there were only a few houses around. I wondered where my gear had gone to, the boots and bunker-pants, the coat with my 10-letter name stitched across the back--who has that? There was a small memorial stone set upon a wall in the courtyard of a home, and unable to stop moving--being a-float as I was--I bumped the wall and knocked the stone to the ground. I worriedly returned it to its perch upon the wall as early morning sounds of running water and someone moving about emmanated from a bathroom just behind the wall. I wondered what spirit keeps this place, and who they were in life. Then I drifted out into the street in front of the house to a busy, peopled, city street, and met a young woman carrying a baby who asked my help as we both got on a train. She said, "...if it's OK," as she handed me some books to hold, as though she expected me to withdraw my assistance when I saw the titles, which revealed her to be a pro-choice feminist. I said, "It's OK," as I helped her through a cramped passageway. We stopped and I admired her baby's dimples. She said that they were not dimples, which they were not exactly, but I don't know what she said they were. Then the baby said, "I'm celibate.". And I thought it odd that a six-month old should know such words. |
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thursday.
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01/10/02 12:07:15 PM
The conflict in my computer system resulting from my uninstall of IE5.5 has been resolved. Hooray (sort of). I don't like IE5.5. I prefer 5.01, but that probably reflects my reluctance to change more than anything. Stumbling around my hard drive, I re-ran one of the five versions of IE5setup.exe that linger there and voila! IE5.5 was back, curing the fatal inconsistencies it had introduced in my system. Progress is inevitable, right? You bet your pension it is, but 'progress' is just a word, and its definition has changed since the Progressive Era began near the beginning of the Twentieth century. Someone at work said he thought I invented cynicism. I haven't been around that long, but I will still accept the compliment. I have only been around (consciously) since the 1960's and if I define progress by, say, the amount of sex available to me, then progress ended in the 80's. On a more elevated plane, if I define progress by my degree of enlightenment, then my peak was a few months before sex peaked. The only thing which has been increasing consistently throughout my life is the potential for enlightenment. I dare say this is the true definition of progress. The potential for enlightenment increases as naivete and ignorance decrease. The problem is that as we shed our naivete and ignorance, our responsibility increases; this is the rightly lamentable loss of innocence and, though lamentable, this loss need not be catastrophic as long as we respond with love and intelligence to the realities revealed. The cynic in me sees a society that feigns innocence merely to avoid the response which is required by reality. Perhaps all I see is a reflection of me: I am certainly in denial of my own loss of innocence, and my experience of life is demanding a response which I am shunning. However, I often note small clues that the disingenuousness I see is not just a reflection of me, clues like the U.S. republican party's statement today cautioning others against starting a "partisan witch hunt" in response to president Bush's close ties to Enron Corporation. That's the company caught in flagrante delicto while raiding its employees pension investments. I think I recognize intellectual dishonesty because of my own intimate experience of it. And why not a partisan witch hunt? You mean, partisan witch hunts are only OK if there's cum stains involved? Or is it that partisan witch hunts can only be perpetrated by those same self-righteous hypocrites who are in fear of them now? Ah, the irony. However, I believe--cynically--that this country's concern over Bill Clinton's semen will, in the end, prove to be far more significant than will its concern over the big-money criminals who--with reckless disregard for their legal and moral responsibilities--did real, numerically quantifiable catastrophic damage to the lives of thousands of working class people. I expect this because in this country, money is king; because business--especially big-business--is everybody's buddy, we all need it to succeed and its indiscretions should be overlooked for our own good; and because these irresponsible, unconscious and dehumanizing businessmen are indistinguishable from the people we have chosen--by our fears and our aversions--to run our government. Oh, and I predict that our government will execute some black operation to remove attention from this scandal. Some event which will have a 'Condit-saving' effect as did September eleventh. From what I have seen in my life in America, nothing would surprize me. But then I am a cynic. |
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tuesday.
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01/08/02 12:31:56 AM
on the ground
I am having the worst stretch of bad computer-luck since 1990. The latest is the refusal of Microsoft's vastly bloated shell program, Explorer.exe, to do anything. Period. Last night I thought it might be a good idea to install Microsoft's Personal Web Server; I thought since I do not have internet access anymore that I would use the local web server to simplify my viewing of the pages I write. Now, I have not only lost the shell program (which, when working, produces the start button, the taskbar, and the system tray, along with about a million other features of almost every Windows program), but I have also lost IE5 and access to all of the cool little apps which I relied heavily on and which resided in the system tray. I know how to fix it: I have to reinstall IE5. But I can't do that because I have always installed it using Microsoft's Active Setup, from source files that stay on Microsoft servers. It was easy with that fabulous connection I had, once upon a time. Am I failing to get some cosmic message here? Is my effort to maintain a feeble presence on the web ill-fated? Does some vast higher power want me to stop writing here--or stop posting here and start writing, perhaps? And since I am cranky anyway, what the fuck is all this excessive use of the phrase, 'On the ground...'? Whenever a journalist or politician makes any reference to being physically present in a place, the invariable fashion lately is not to say simply that so-and-so is at the battle front, rather they say something like, 'Dan Rather is on the ground in Afghanistan.'. Oh, if only that were literally true... Or better still, 'Strom Thurmond is on the ground at the capital.'. In addition to the annoying fact that this stupid blemish on the vernacular is never going to actually effect the demise of either asshole, it is further annoying for the fact that it represents language which captures absolutely nothing aesthetic, poetic, meaningful, emotional, or even utilitarian about reality. It is, in my paranoid opinion, a code-phrase--since it has no other purpose--signalling complicity in the prevailing soup of lies which is being paddled by sinister conservative cowards in a cauldron of social frenzy which they keep as hot as possible. Such a signal is not insignificant, for any one of us who dares not conform to the waxing forces of perception control might just end up in that soup. This new McCarthyism (not my phrase) is a bundling-bag of dishonesty keeping us from knowing or touching what we have actually become. Somehow, by believing the lies about who is dangerous, about what qualifies as patriotism, and about what constitutes terrorism, we will remain virginal--unsoiled though we roll in the hay with smelly characters of despicable intent, the likes of Bush, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft. Conformity is something I reject for its own sake; that may be my flaw, and it may have cost me many beneficial alliances over most of my life. But in the current tide of events, it may well become a virtue. The non-conformists became the heroes in 1939, in Berlin. Greenpeace is a terrorist organization, under the criteria of the so-called Patriot Act. The frat party that was the Boston Tea Party was a terrorist act, based on that legislation. What I am writing here is probably breaking numerous federal laws, but that puts me in 'good' company, right along with Bush and Ashcroft, and if what I wrote was actually important enough to be noticed (a thinly-veiled challenge to the inaptly named Justice Department) then I might get in trouble. But I am an American. Maybe I waste my life, behave like a jerk, ride my bike in the snow, and fantasize about being powerful while embracing the role of a victim. But I have something which some on this planet who might read these words don't have--the right to say them. That has been a jewel of petty value to us Americans; we have undervalued our freedom so much that we deserve now to have it threatened--we need to have it threatened--if nothing else to reveal to us who we can trust, and teach us what our freedom is really worth. It saddens me to see how the majority of Americans seem to care little about who can be trusted, and are exhibiting their indifference by letting their civil freedom be slowly withdrawn from their custody as if they cannot be trusted with it. And it astounds me that they seem to agree; they seem to think that big brother really should keep the treasure that belongs to them--to each of us. If I were a conformist, I'd agree, because in America you succeed, and excel, and prosper (like GE and Time-Warner) by alliances--by winks and nods and considerations exchanged. But I do not agree, because we hold these truths to be self evident; that all people are created equal and are endowed (by their creator, or maybe just by chance) with certain inalienable treasures. Inalienable; they cannot be removed. So if you try to give it away, you're lying and you're participating in a complex of lies that does not merely repudiate some quaintly American notion of freedom. If you try to give away the treasure of your freedom, even by degrees, then you are participating in nothing less than the repudiation of an absolute truth. So there. Now go play, and be nice. And remember, fear makes you mean, but fear is an illusion. The feeling is real--indeed it is--but there is nothing it can do to you. Nothing. Be nice. |
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sunday. |
01/6/2002 11:49:13 PM
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painful moment My e-mail sucks. I am off line (as stated ad infinitum previously) and I am forced to use web-based e-mail clients (ala hotmail), at work, between phone calls or, more accurately, between shifts. The situation is simply not adequate. In fact, while writing a long, very long e-mail the other night, I bumped the wrong key on the one-thousand-and-one-key keyboard at work and POOF, the whole window was gone, and my delightful prose with it. In my doomed e-mail, I was responding to what I had read in a favorite journal, and though I have avoided trying to rewrite that message for fear that I could not reproduce the perfection of the original <grin>, the internal nagging of this squelched expression demands another attempt.
I should just give up, right?
answer me. somebody tell me to just give up. To take a break from matters of the heart. To be a kid, to stop urgently vying for something that can wait. lodestar.diary-x.com Give up. Indulge your neediness, let it be not enough, let it hurt. It won't wait, it can't wait. But it won't take long. I have spent a life dry as a stone because I just skip across the pond, afraid to sink in. A self-centered person is not what you will become by giving in to a brief wave of selfish neediness. Be petulant, unreasonable, demanding. And do it with passion, thoroughly, enthusiastically, and with your whole heart. For the depth and intensity of the emotion will pass with age, and the opportunity to cry in your pillow for something as subtle and delicate as the petals of an opening heart will become ever more rare, and one day will come no more. And I miss it. It was miserable, not because I cried, but because I fought crying, I fought sinking in, I levitated by excruciating effort and floated right past every one of the glorious, gorgeous, genuine passions of my own heart's 'petty' agony, and I successfully evaded every experience, more or less. They will never come again. Once, I let myself weaken, and I sank in a bit. He had just started college in Amherst, Massachusetts, and I loved him like the earth loves the sun. One Sunday afternoon I brought him back to school after a weekend home. I stayed longer than I thought I should want to, but not as long as I really wanted to. That night when we parted, I wanted to kiss his mouth, to tell him I was in love with him, to grab him and hold him and not let go until I don't know when... We leaned on my car for a few minutes in the driveway of the place where he stayed. He was so beautiful... blond curly hair, green eyes, tanned, and he had a smile that made me die, over and over again. This was the moment, either grab him, or go... the pressure was building... I postponed, I delayed. I had a lump in my throat. The silence hung heavy between us... the pressure... Grab him. Or go. Or grab him. Or go. I left. I hated myself for leaving, I hated myself for loving him. I was crying so hard I could hardly drive. Just as I got to a bridge not far from his house, something welled up that was stronger than fear, and I turned the car around and went back. His roommate answered the door, and then closed it. When Dave came outside, he took one look at me and understood. I didn't need to say a word, but I blurted out, "I love you." Then I grabbed him, and balled my eyes out, and nothing since has ever felt as good as holding him tight in my arms. And being held. Going back didn't result in Dave and I living happily ever after, but somehow that doesn't matter. Dave was straight (mostly), and he's married now. But going back got me everything that there was to get that night; I went back and got everything from that moment that it had to give. And for a moment, that was more than enough. Give up. Let go. Sink in. The painful moment will never turn out exactly the way you want it to, but it will always give you more than you hoped for. If you let it. . |
An web acquaintance, dg, presented this gem recently in her blog. She mentions an article about an old man who died far away, but it might just as well be describing me as the mummified one.
Anyway, it just so happens that earlier today, around the time of the first cup from the first pot of coffee, I wrote an e-mail to an old dear friend that went like this:.
Today I am fighting with the phone company (I hate authority) and pleading with the weakest of all possible champions—state government—to intercede on my behalf. I fantasize of other interventions; there is something to be said for learning how to fly and not how to land. But the truth is that it probably doesn't matter at all. It is not about getting a good internet connection, and it's not about them being wrong, even if they are. It's about letting go and entering the flow, like a red leaf drifting down on the crystal surface of a mountain stream. This is life, and while many bitter circumstances seek to exclude, many others are waiting for me, urging me to go another way, offering to include me with them in an entirely different thing.
Death is really not so bad (not that I know, for sure, but I have a beneficient suspicion). I mean, there's separation and loss, and so on. But there is a place to go, also. Even if I have to relinquish all claim to whatever identifies me as me—my body, my personality, my talents, my diseases—and go on from death as nothing more than food for worms, that is still a place, and far be it from me to disparage any other dimensions, places which I may well have enjoyed before, precious experiences which have merely slipped from my mind of this moment.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: worship STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 01/30/2002 05:00:58 AM ----- BODY: I cannot begin to worship this woman enough. Mary: Do you labor to make your words the way they are, or do they just come out that way? ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: sensible STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 01/31/2002 02:15:08 AM ----- BODY: I have found (again) something I have needed to find. This is just one excerpt. Please check out the entire site. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: ending STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 01/31/2002 01:53:23 PM ----- BODY: I guess kerr and denys are no longer a couple. I'm sorry. I have been disconnected too long, and I have only been checking denys's site (which has been 'sleeping', so to speak). My sympathy is terribly belated, but I am sorry it ended, even though I have no idea what it may have become, and even though it has nothing to do with me. Love is a wonderful, electrifying, agony. I want the honeymoon to last forever. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: did STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/05/2002 01:29:23 PM ----- BODY: I actually did a couple of the things that have been on my To Do list for about the last year. Here's the latest:.My insurance, which resumed six months ago, requires me to pick a PCP right away. I want to avoid the status quo and the powers that be as much as possible, so I didn't want an MD. The only variation offered by my insurance is a few DO's (Doctors of Osteopathy), so I picked the one closest to my house. Already I'm thinking that I should have picked the woman DO, not the man. We'll see...
Now, this might have been a disaster for a paranoid person, and I am a paranoid person, but I also know more about DSL than most people. So I figured that they weren't just blacklisting me because they found out I suck dick, I concluded (rightly, I might add) that they encountered a silly stupid little problem with my particular phone line, which is not uncommon in the DSL provisioning process. Covad then decided, to their detriment, to end our relationship. Silly Covad.
Since Covad had not answered my question about what the obstacle was, I decided to ask, not a DSL sales person, but a tech support person at some other DSL provider. The tech support people are not being told what to say and what not to say; and they usually know what they are saying when they say it, unlike the sales people. So, at 12:30 AM Wednesday morning, I e-mailed tech support at MegaPath.net, explaining the issue in detail, and I actually got an intelligent response. In less than an hour. From Jeff Rohrich, the VP of Service Delivery and Support. What counts is not the 'VP' title, what counts is his willingness to be identified to me, by name and by whatever title he has—'maintenance engineer' would have been fine. But what counts most is that he explained what options there were for getting around my particular obstacle. The option I chose—from Megapath—is a separate, dedicated SDSL line, which Covad could have provided, and it will cost roughly three times more than the line Covad could not install, but I will be paying MegaPath, not Covad. In a deliciously ironic twist, MegaPath will be hiring Covad field technicians to do the install.
This is admittedly an unfair comparison, comparing Covad's sales people to MegaPath's tech support people. But I don't care. Hopefully, deities willing, I will have an excellent DSL connection soon, which is a hell of a lot more than Covad offered. And MegaPath will even move the line once free during the first twelve months, so I can apartment shop angst-free.
This single flame will have to go before I sleep. Another may come another time, but this one's brief life will have been spent before bedtime comes, and spent entirely with me. Its excitement at my approach, its twinning with my soul in stillness when I stay, our entrancement together—his light, my energy—will have to end. And for one like me, who tabulates love only between the sheets, his extinguishment just as I go there will leave me sweetly sad, and though he could not stay, I will keep his light—like thousands before him, and thousands more to come—in my flickering heart. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: nuts STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/07/2002 10:46:03 AM ----- BODY: What am I, fuckin' nuts!?! Well, yes. I am.
This, dearies, is the ugly side of a DSL addiction. There is no treatment. If there were, I would not want it since I already know what the treatment is for most addictions—I work at a detox. Besides, it is easier to keep using the twisted pair, especially now, since cancelling my pending DSL install now will cost almost as much as going through with it. (Now fade-in Meatloaf's Paradise by the Dashboard Light.).
I looked at 2 apartments yesterday, one too big, and the other just about right. $1050 and $975 respectively. Are landlords in this dumpy city fuckin' nuts too? Well, yes. They are. Only they also own the property. They are salivatingly unaware that Worcester rental prices are not supposed to be as high as rents in Boston or New York. However, no penalty will be exacted for their blithe gouging, for I have not the means to penalize them, and I have no faith that the open market will be Robin Hood for me.
If I don't eat for six weeks, I'll maybe have enough for shelter and DSL. Maybe.
So, does anybody want to buy my teeth? ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: depressed, and worried STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/08/2002 02:28:48 PM ----- BODY: I am depressed, worried, and angst ridden. I am also pathetic, aging, sagging, washed-out and energy bereft. Every cell in my body has been pickled in caffeine; if not for the artificial stimulation, I probably would have died months ago. Needy and infantile, I am a ten year old who happens to be forty-three, with no idea of who I am supposed to be now.
The flow has reversed. Once, I benefitted from the kindnesses of those who saw me as young and innocent—a babe inspiring the care and concern of strangers. Now, I am the one who is concerned and caring for the rare babe who appears, needful. in my vicinity—and I have precious few resources to draw upon for the benefit of a needful one, even if he is me.
A twenty year old called detox last night. He'd been in only one other detox before, and he'd never been to the one where I work, unlike most of the people who call me. His voice was soft, almost sleepy. His drugs were heroin and OxyContin, and he'd just had a few OC's. With an incongruously gentle voice he was trying to express a desperate need. Here still were the old life-fears which we all encounter, fears that made the escape look so good to him a couple years before, magnified now to a nightmarish scale. Added to that are new annoyances like, where will I sleep tonight? and where will I get some stuff when I get deathly ill? and who will I get it from? and will it be safe, because I know I will do anything for it. In the background a woman's voice, his mother, screams obscenities at him. It can be difficult to hear, but between his softly spoken words is a real fear, and a question, sometimes asked half-hearted; I can't do it any more—can you help?
No, actually, I can't. But I happen to work at a place that will take him out of there for a few days, and provide a brief interlude of structure while postponing the dope-sickness. We don't really eliminate withdrawal symptoms, we just soften the blow with methadone, and two days after he leaves us he'll be sick, but not as sick as he would have been without us. That's not helping much, I know, but that's not what we really do at a detox. We don't cure the agony of withdrawal, nor the agony of life. We simply show people that there is another way of dealing with it.
We try and make them see.
"I got a car, I can get there," he says unconvincingly, after I tell him he has a bed. "Don't do a thing," I say. "Just stay where you are. I'll get a driver to pick you up and bring you in.". That's one of the best things about my job; somebody calls needing to be rescued, and most of the time I can send them a real human being, anyplace in Massachusetts, and that alone probably saves a lot of lives.
I see him just before I leave for the night. The driver has just brought him in. "You're the one I talked to on the phone?" he asks. He thanks me. He's young, cute, and despite everything, sweet and innocent. We are all sweet innocents, whether we're young and cute, or not.
We just don't see. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: maryWrite STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/10/2002 02:54:05 PM ----- BODY:
I want to write like this. Or maybe I just want to have a life to write about.&nbs. Some desperate smash-the-mug romantic rage accompanied by some discouragement at work and some genuine, tangible toilet-overflows, can't-pay-the-bills depression—mmmm, that would be living! Instead...
The Major Deity visits me at work last night, while I am pining over the memories of boys who once I worshipped, and He stands there, budda-like with his chubby hands folded across the dome of his belly, gazing at me with a grinning expression that says, "I know there is something you want. Just ask me.". MD and I have played this game before. He is going to trick me again—he is a tireless trickster—but I must be in a teachable moment and he is, if nothing else, all about love and compassion, so I allow the trick to proceed.
"I want you to send me a young man who will love me.". I know from past experience that I should be more specific, such a generalized request will get me into trouble with the Major Deity. But things at work are, just then, rather frantic, and there is no time to polish my legalese before submitting my request. I am sure I included the concept of 'cute' as a descriptor in my psychic communication with MD, and I may even have asked that the boy-gift only want me instead of love me. Love is not actually on the menu at this stage, that would be like a restauranteur presenting Gas and Indigestion as an a la carte item. It comes later, if at all.
Then, the admission of my desire obtained, the Major Deity smiled—no, he grinned, a little too much—and went away. Now cut away to a cold black night as I pump my bicycle up the hill to the doorway of my house. There is no one in sight except the dark outlines of two men walking down the hill toward my house. I fantasize that one is perhaps an enemy who wants to kill me, perhaps it is Bernard (another story). I manufacture a need to get my bike and me through the door quickly and away from this threat which, while it isn't really lethal, it is worse. They threaten to socialize. iyeee!
They are a late-thirty-something man, and an early-twenty-something boy, very early twenty, he could even have been very late teens. From some elsewhere heaven, MD watches with glee. They are now on my side of the street. They are looking at me. I am fumbling at the door like a damsel squirming helplessly on railroad tracks. Now they have turned onto the little walk that leads to my door, to me! Before I am able to flee through the front door, I can feel the 19-ish boy close behind me. He stares at me, transfixed I'd like to think. I am about to let go of the first door as I wrestle my bike through the second of my building's double doors. I have to say, "Got the door? He wakes.
The obligatory next line is, He is beautiful. Major Deity has played this trick on me so many times, that that line is getting worn out. Alas, it is true. Sparkling dark eyes, perfect black hair with a glisten of gel, fine eyebrows and long lashes, and fascinating lips, not pouty at all, but pink—and waiting. He watches me intently. I think I looked at the thirty-something man, but I can't recall if he even had a head. The man was a present non-entity as the boy watched me. The man is aparently my downstairs neighbor, although I thought my downstairs neighbor was a young handsome blonde. I saw the blonde once when he brought his departing guests to the door as I was entering, again, with my bike. The blonde had smiled a remarkably disarming smile at me that left me much like I am now, pondering what could have been. And now I wonder where this thirty-something neighbor gets his friends.
With a look of hopeful innocence, the 19-ish beauty stood at my neighbor's doorway after my neighbor had disappeared within, and watched the whole while as I ascended the stairs out of sight. I could have smiled. I could have winked. I could have gestured for him to follow me, neighbor be damned. When I got into my apartment, I turned to the Major Deity just in time to see Him glance away. He had a smug look. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Step back STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/11/2002 05:53:57 PM ----- BODY: Step back and take a look at who we are. It will only take a minute, but it is worth its weight in days. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: news STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/12/2002 03:52:34 AM ----- BODY:
I thought this immediately when I heard that the former vice-chairman of Enron had supposedly committed suicide; that people in power are corrupted, that any appearance in them of high-minded enlightenment can reliably be attributed to the success of their deceptive skills, and that Vince Foster didn't commit suicide either. This does not smack of the kind of high-salaried journalism we have learned to trust, and that is precisely why I am more apt to trust it. If the journalist has 'access', I want to know why. I am suspicious if he lives comfortably and fits seamlessly into the media matrix that is the perception management industry. On the other hand, if the writer has naught for sources but the working poor, and the unknown commoner, then that writer's words are the ones I want to read.
Journalism has joined the World Wrestling Federation in its contempt for truth. The most successful newspeople have learned what needs to be presented as truth, and participate fully in the deathwork of doublespeak, and they get their mansion in Georgetown. The truth is not there, as if you need to be told. But it really is so much easier to believe it, and participate too... I mean, what the hell, what does the truth really matter—isn't it all relative anyway? Wouldn't you prefer a Camry rather than a bus pass? Isn't it nicer to be standing in front of a Jenn-Air rather than standing in a line at a soup-kitchen?
I really hope that whatever we have lost in our acquisition of comfort isn't killing something vital in our soul. I've heard no news to that effect, and so I fear it is probably true.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: This isn't true, either. STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/12/2002 04:08:53 AM ----- BODY: This isn't true, either. It's not even troubling. In the least. I think JFK, Jr. died accidentally, too, even if they did send a Navy task force to recover the evidence. Of course Teddy did publicly ask for the Navy's help, but then Teddy is a broken man, living on someone else's permission, surviving his brothers by some fiendish fiat. I don't trust this government as far as I can throw a battleship. Sorry, but it's true. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: ooops STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/13/2002 01:18:11 PM ----- BODY: In an effort to prevent my precocious little computer from overwriting my published blog with my local test copy, which looks crappy (I mirror this site on my local hard drive, sort of), I deleted the test copy. During its routine FTP session sometime around 5:00 AM this morning, my machine noted the local deletion of blog.htm, and dutifully deleted it from my web server. Thank God (and Ev) for the miracle of blogger. All is back to normal. The only problem with the world is people. ;) ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: A giant bamboo dildo STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/14/2002 12:43:50 AM ----- BODY: A giant bamboo dildo used in the sexual assault of a woman is a weapon, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Tuesday. I hate to seem prudish, but how can this even be debatable? How is it that the appeals court, which reduced the man's sentence, was able to say that the baseball bat-sized instrument used in the sexual assault was not a weapon? Is there some sort of sick sexism going on here? Was the thing NOT a weapon because it was NOT used against a man? Was it not a weapon because it was used by a man in a sexual assault against a woman? Was the blushing, bashful Appeals Court so embarrased by the way it was used, or so uncomfortable about the term used for it—dildo—that that they actually chose not to look at it in the cold light of reality? The appeals court opinion which revised the original sentence should have been titled, How to Commit Assault with a Giant Bamboo Stick, and Get Off with a Dildo. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: cornerhost STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/16/2002 02:29:05 AM ----- BODY:
Moving webhost. New info is propagating throughout the internet and DNS databases are seeking equilibrium. Magic. If you can't see this, you won't know why. If you can see this, you have no need to know.
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AUTHOR: joe
TITLE: a gray matter
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DATE: 02/18/2002 07:26:51 PM
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I have been spending the day implementing a greymatter version of my blog. There's nothing there just yet, except attempts to make all the lines and colors look right. You might want to visit noahgrey.com to find out more about greymatter, and about who made it.
There's a good chance that once I finally understand how it is all supposed to work, I will continue to use blogger to publish because (despite my antisocial leanings) I like the connection that blogger provides to the whole mass of other blogger-published bloggers.
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AUTHOR: joe
TITLE: absolutelyEverything
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DATE: 02/19/2002 02:01:50 PM
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I've recently learned a little bit about boundaries; a little about what is mine, and a lot about what is not. Wanting what you do not have is the great American pastime, and for some of us it was a prerequisite for survival in childhood. I was taught to be very good at wanting what you have, taught to believe with my whole heart that I needed what you had, and that it was perfectly appropriate for me to give you whatever you wanted in exchange for it. The problem is that we cannot exchange parts of ourselves, romantic rhetoric aside. The substance of us, defined by our boundaries, is indissoluable and inseperable. We can pretend to use it as so much coin for emotional commerce, but it never, never leaves my possession, and no matter what I'd like to think, I cannot take possession of any part of you, even in exchange for all of me.
I was taught that there existed just such a market for the real estate of me. I've known for a very long time that it was a game, but the threats in my early life—that I'd be abandoned if I didn't play—have laid deep tracks in the now hard-baked muck of history. Changing the course of this early begun, and decades reinforced path is like trying to send the Mississippi to San Diego Bay.
I am me. I can give you any part of my heart and soul, and trust you to take possession of any (or every) part of my life, but it remains me, and if you damage any of it, I will feel the pain, not you. I have sought to escape responsibility for these parts I give you by taking responsibility for parts of yourself that you give to me. If I feel your pain I won't have to feel mine, you will. This was diligently taught to me as the way in which one behaves who is good and kind. Others are selfish and despicable.
I have learned that it is insanity.
I don't want to take care of myself, I want someone else to do it. I don't like me, I want someone else to do it. I don't like my life, I want someone else to live it. I don't like my body, I want someone else to take it—and completely give me his. I don't want to live, I want someone else to live instead of me. These are all lies. At different times, I believe each of them. On particularly dark days, I believe them all. In the end nothing will be lost, nothing destroyed, nothing will be annhilated. All sorts of limitless evil can be threatened, and everything can be feared, absolutely everything. But in the end I will be me, and you will be you, and the sum total of our experience here will be the feelings and emotions we inspired in each other. That will be all there is.
That will be everything.
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AUTHOR: joe
TITLE: What do I do?
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DATE: 02/21/2002 01:19:09 PM
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What do I do?
Sleep. Wake to my computer's choice of music, Nils Lofgren, Shine Silently. Avoid thinking, start to make coffee. Fold-up futon, enjoying Nils. Let daydreaming overtake me as I stand in my ripped underwear in the middle of my cluttered dirty apartment—a waking dream. Resume sequence when I hear gurgle of coffee maker. Shine Silently ends abruptly, in mid flight, as I pour perfect liquid into coffee carafe, in mid stream, and is replaced by Styx' Show Me the Way. Seal carafe and retrieve from it a cupful. Pad over to 'cockpit' (I love that word), replay Shine Silently (complete version) and delete incomplete version from playlist. Begin to write.
Hit wall. Seek diversion.
Start to edit everythingMost playlist to remove entries for incomplete music. Become entangled in an effort to resort all 1342 entries by song title using a plain text editor. Employ regular expressions in an unsophisticated attempt to rescue myself, similar to throwing a fire extinguisher at a fire. Give up. Get more coffee.
Resume writing.
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AUTHOR: joe
TITLE: thaw
STATUS: Publish
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DATE: 02/23/2002 02:41:17 PM
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He was an unkown man to me, but there was something in that face, a humanity and grace that informed and illuminated whatever character he placed upon it. His face was honest and genuine, with a hint of painful history yet revealing a clear optimism. John Thaw was something rare among actors. He was real.
Acting, at its best, is about becoming real. One does not achieve authenticity in a role by compressing one's personality down to an invisible speck, and assuming an artificial personality. A good actor finds and magnifies that speck within him that is the character he seeks to portray, giving it such force and prominence that we lose sight of the actor, and even forget he is acting. A great actor does exactly the same thing—but he never disappears; the actor remains himself the whole time, yet the character he plays is absolutely and undeniably real. They are two as one. John Thaw was real when he played the sometimes cranky, sometimes contemplative Chief Inspector Morse. This makes his passing all the more difficult; he was not a stranger to us for his being an actor, he was not an unknown person behind a role. Such is the value of being a great actor; he gave of his substance, of his treasures, he gave of his most deeply held self in his craft—something I find hard to do even for those I love. John Thaw showed us how to give, simply for the love of giving.
I wish, right now, that he had not been quite so real, for I would prefer not to feel the passing of such a one as he. How would I handle it if I were real? I would acknowledge the sad loss, and go to work... ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: mike bell EMAIL: mikebell1200@hotmail.com IP: 194.117.133.182 URL: http://www.yourSite.org DATE: 11/18/2002 04:18:59 PM I deeply ripped a part when i had heard John Thaw had died. I sometimes of wished i was him and he was me. His wife Sheila Hancock i deeply send my love because of her great loss. I cant beleive he is gone, his children and wife had an even bigger shock even more. Naming the top British actors of them all it has to be John. Rest in peace John. From Mike Bell. ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Coffee, dust, and me. STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/24/2002 01:43:12 PM ----- BODY: Coffee, dust, and me. What the hell am I doing here?
"This'll do," has become my motto, even my personal vision statement. It has applied to boyfriends—that's whoever is currently sleeping in my bed. There have not been many. It applies to whatever the waiter actually brings, as opposed to what it was you ordered, because you never decided what you really wanted anyway. It applies to bad jobs, to stagnant lives, and to any event that you don't want to be bothered changing. "This'll do" is a universally useful utility for settling and stilling, which is the opposite of stirring and agitating. Neither extreme is better than the other, they both have their advantages. Only, I never choose the latter.
Lately, I have been getting an eerie sense of things. Once or twice, when talking idly about unimportant things—office chatter—and reference was made to specific geographic locations, I got the distinct feeling that I won't be going to them. Not with any particular forboding, just a sense that the limits are closing in and the possibilities diminishing, as they do in everyone's life eventually.
Some things are relatively certain without the aid of clairvoyance. NASA is not likely to enter me in its astronaut training program, for example. I'm never going to enter the military (not that I ever wanted to, except for the men), so I'm never going to fly an F16 or drive a sub. I don't seem to be in proximity to any opportunities that would take me to other continents; a stint as foreign correspondent seems unlikely now (not that it ever was likely). There are not even any stints as a foreign tourist on my horizons. A career as a celebrated chef is less than likely. Same with surgeon. And airline pilot. An acting career is a little different; I've survived my whole life by acting, and it just wouldn't seem right to make it a career. No such possibility is imminent, anyway. A future as an olympic athlete is out, too—except maybe for curling. The sweepers and the throwers in that sport seem to be in awfully good shape, though I can't see why they need to be.
Careers aside, many untried pastimes (and even former ones) seem unlikely now to start (or resume). Skiing was my absolute favorite thing to do, up until high school when my mother stopped me. She thought it was dangerous. And when I resumed it in my mid-twenties I was sure my legs wouldn't take it and I'd fall, make a fool of myself, and have to repeat my fourth grade ski school as a remedial. After so much time away from it, my first run was absolutely fucking fantastic, and I didn't have any time to worry about falling. Riding a bike.
Speaking of riding a bike, sex—which is often compared to that activity—seems to have been over for a while. It is problematic for me, anyway. Intimacy is just too much work, and sex with strangers, while it has not lost its appeal, is simply not allowed anymore. Sigh. There is fantasy (or memory) and, of course, latex. I'm refering to latex in its solid, cylindrical form, not the thin, sheath-like form which is slightly more acceptable to talk about. Despite its comendable silence after the act, the solid form leaves a lot to be desired. Now that I think of it, both forms—the dildo and the rubber—leave out an awful lot. Or maybe I'm just wanting something from sex that I shouldn't want. Sigh, again.
Today, I'll go to work. Supper will be a pizza or a sub, and more coffee. Tonight, I'll come home and reread this, and like parts of it, and wish I spent more time rewriting other parts. But I won't rewrite anything. Then I'll visit some favorite sites, maybe tweak Greymatter some more, listen to the BBC, have a snack, brush my teeth and go to bed. I might clean my apartment someday before I die.
I might not. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: discovering america STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/26/2002 01:03:30 PM ----- BODY:
And why should we believe that this is true. Why should we believe, just because they say they're going to close the propaganda office, that they actually are going to close the propaganda office? "We have decided not to lie. Honest.". It's like an Escher engraving—the hand drawing itself. The act of drawing, and its result, are both part of the two dimensional image produced by an unseen artist.
I'd like to think that I can see everything there is regarding the intrigues and deceits of government, and on a warm summer night near the shore under stars I can believe anything anyone tells me. But in the harsh light of a cold dawn, my overlooked suspicions have often been confirmed.
We are not a noble nation. We are not a righteous people. Least of all are we fearless. We tolerate pronouncements of assassinations and kidnappings for the sake of, what, peace? safety? in the name of 'truth' and the American way? After they float those balloons successfully, we have the gall to squirm with discomfort when they tell us they are going to lie. (!). What is it exactly that bothers us about this Office of Strategic Influence? That it promulgates and disseminates lies? Hardly. We take those easily, with tea and lemon.
Institutionalizing the culture of deception which exists in government lays bare something raw and sore—our collective conscience. That's the only problem we have with the OSI. Just give them an out of the way office, bury their budget within another, and for crying out loud, do not outright tell us about it!
Myth precedes reality. Joseph Campbell taught us this. The myth of a New World preceded its discovery. On an uncharacteristically optimistic note, I'd like to suggest that the myth of America will one day become a reality, too. It will be a nation of free people gathered under principles which affirm the significance of the individual, and promote the inclusion of all. There will be diversity imbued with equality. America then will hold as its only might the truth, and will have learned how to rehabilitate sophisticated thugs and power-mongers like our present day politicians, enabling them to participate productively in the collective soul of America. We will then stand as proof of these wild imaginings, rather than stand as we do now, as proof that such things are nothing but wild imaginings. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Here's a hundred things STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/06/2002 03:03:13 AM ----- BODY: Here's a hundred things we don't know about me. She inspired me. Blame her.
They won't be all together—like compiled and then posted—because I come when I come, and I write when I can, and life is not a test.
Stopping for now. Got further than I planned to go. That's nice on hikes and dates. And on a 'things list' like this. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: 26 of 100 STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/06/2002 01:20:52 PM ----- BODY:
I tried to cuddle with Daniel on the beach. He was not in a cuddling mood just then. Suddenly he turned toward me, and with his arms around me, I fell back on the sand with Daniel on top of me, hugging me. At the same moment, I looked up and a shooting star flashed across the night sky.
Heaven is a moment. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Israel descends into chaos. "He STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/09/2002 03:13:13 AM ----- BODY:
During the 15-minute rampage, the militant hurled a grenade into a trailer, incinerating a student in his bunk, and sprayed gunfire into the study hall, before being shot dead by a soldier.
The attacker was identified as Mohammed Farhat, from Gaza City. At 19, he was a year older than his victims.
I feel sad, hopeless, depressed. I need some food, some wine, and some serious recreation to cure my despair. And as always, I still need to cry. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: half a hundred STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/09/2002 03:29:38 AM ----- BODY: Starting the last half.
Thanks Mary. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: There is a warm wind. STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/10/2002 03:19:14 AM ----- BODY: There is a warm wind. It shakes the house, rattles the windows which have been open all night, and makes the doors sound like someone is there, trying to get in. It's a storm; a mild summery Nor'easter, with clouds close and fast moving one way, and above them, high and slow, other clouds moving the other way. The warm, wild air through the screen makes me glad that I am here.
On a night like this, with God panting so near, can heaven be far behind? ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: snippet STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/10/2002 01:22:31 PM ----- BODY: A fascinating snippet from a fascinating site.
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality Volume One: The Will To Knowledge, Penguin, London. (First published: 1976).
— Queer theory grew, basically, out of this book. Why? Because Foucault argues that the current Western social view of sexuality is not the sum total of knowledge gathered over the aons, but was invented last century. Our current discourses about homosexuality (or heterosexuality) suggest that these are distinct conditions, or identities; but to Foucault these are just labels put onto people because of some actions they may or may not engage in. In other societies which employ different discourses, these labels would just not make sense.
Foucault also argued that power is not possessed but is exercised; and the exercise of power produces a corresponding resistance. It is therefore partly because people try to shovel discourse about sexuality into the cupboard that it comes crashing out all over the place again.
[See the Foucault pages for more].
Oh, my! So much to think, and so little time. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: I love the sound of STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/11/2002 10:39:03 PM ----- BODY: I love this guy. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Every day. STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/18/2002 01:55:41 AM ----- BODY: Every day. I have been here every day. Silent. Mute. Every day, with my muse playing soulful notes like a muted coronet—wailing, moaning, pleading, groaning. And every day I hide from the screeching subway-noise of your eyes consuming my lines, scraping along all the steel-track-length of my thoughts, into my mind, reading my heart. I have been here hiding from you whatever words would have come, denying, god-like, the incarnation those words so sweetly sought. You give purpose to the whole goddamn network of neurons and thoughts and tunnels and minds and trains—you give it all a purpose, and a reason for being. You are the destination of everything I write; it comes from somewhere else, and it uses me as mere passage, bound for you. It uses me. It uses me. I stopped it.
I am letting go. Surrendering. Giving in to its will. I will, once again, actively participate in giving this thing what it wants, and with hands against headboard I will push back against its invading, penetrating force. I will cooperate with its appropriation of me for its own purposes; I will make its will my own. I had my own way for a week, I stopped it and refused it passage through my openings, and I found out again, like a dozen times before, what that would cost. It costs too much.
I don't want this. (Or do I?). If I decide that I do want this, then it is no longer rape, is it? Then I can happily participate in the crime, and even have a good time! The words demand to have their way with me—but they require me to fight. They demand me to scream into the pillow, to squirm beneath their weight, to fight their naked force and break my fists against the wall they thrust, they thrust, they thrust me up against. The words demand a struggle, otherwise they will not come. They demand me to be me, contemptuous of their intrusive visitation, raging under their dictatorial commands. The words demand that I preserve within myself one true thing for them to chase. I would surrender without a fight because I fear the pain that resistance brings; the words will not allow it. They demand I feel everything.
Therefore, make not pain the pleasure, nor subvert the tears to joy; give nothing you rightly own away—give not love, nor agonies, nor joys, nor sultry summer evenings of fading sun away to anyone. Own them. Stand up and own them, and cry for your pain, and sing for your joy. And write for your life. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: to do STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/18/2002 11:41:01 AM ----- BODY: I have to run. Laundry. Bank. Train to Boston. And it is snowing.
The forecast says the temperature will continue a gradual decline until it reaches eighteen degrees on Saturday. Eight-fuckin'-teen! Winter will be plunging its long icicle-fangs deep into our shivering hearts, even as we welcome spring on March 20. Excuse me while I pour some hot coffee over my head. (It's like wetting your pants; it feels nice and warm for a moment, but then there's problems.).
I am generally a miserable cuss right now because I am leaving my house. It is my day off, and I am leaving my house. I don't do that on my day off. And I cannot come back to my familiar bed, my own clutter, and my precious coffee pot until Tuesday night. Tuesday fuckin' night!
I used to gear-up for a trip to Boston, I used to get all psyched and optimistic on the bus ride there, and then I would focus on staying all happy and smile-faced for the potential life-love (read, fabulous regular sex without emotional conflicts) who, breathless, would stumble upon me, cheerful and charming, in one of the ancient gay bars in Boston. Optimism is not my thing. Not anymore. I did optimism once; I met Daniel in one of those ancient gay bars and I made him fall in love with me. He gave me some fabulous sex, not so regular, and some goose-bumping emotions which I never expected. I wish I stayed there, I wish Daniel had been perfect, I wish I was not HIV positive. I half-lived in Worcester then, and half-lived in Boston with Daniel. Now I fully-live nowhere.
Nowhere, as best I can rekon from where I stand, is better than somewhere over the rainbow. Things used to be different. I used to be different. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: joe. (not me.) STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/20/2002 02:45:57 AM ----- BODY: Got back from Boston and found a comment from joe. I thought, either I wrote this and forgot (dementia), or... I couldn't imagine what else. Then, two lines in: Ah ha! And I wanted to faint. Oooo-wheee, baby. Joe! The other Joe, the one with a hell of a story, a cut-the-ribbon, christen-the-boat, stain-the-sheet and smash-the-glass story. The one who... Well, maybe we can go into the details later on. The point is that I returned from my reluctant excursion to Boston, and received an invitation to Cologne. Germany.
I can't escape life, apparently. At least not yet.
I remember when cologne was something you gave on Father's Day to that man you couldn't love—or were afraid to love—because you were a boy with a difference, and you knew most of what you felt toward other males was 'wrong' and you weren't really sure which feelings were OK with Daddy, and which were not. It was cute for the straight boys to want to marry Mommy; it was not cute for me to want to sleep with Daddy. So we gave cologne.
Somewhere long ago I noticed Cologne was also the name of a place, so long ago in fact that I thought they named the place after the toiletry. And I thought that was odd. It was among the first in this lifetime of many misconceptions on my part.
Joe. Wow. The strong fumes of our past are flooding my brain—his wet mouth, his once-familiar taste, the intoxicating scent of him. And the absolute clarity of his intentions, which cut through and scattered that nebulous fog-cloud that was me. Joe loved me, but I... Well, let's just say I wish I had more substance then. I was a misty summer evening and he a brilliant noonday sun. We played and played, chasing one another around the days—so few days—and we tried to stay, we tried. But showers fell and darkened the teary sun, and a cold wind cut the lonely night to shreds. They seperated, but not without knowing that once, in a glistening twilight moment, the night and day were one.
And wouldn'tcha know, I mean, isn't it ironic that long after I stopped applying expensive potions from tiny vials to strategic locations on my body (which could, in the past, precipitate a shallow, but none to shabby encounter) that today the necessary proof of my substance is to simply show-up in Cologne.
Forgive the bad pun, I am falling asleep. Good night. And good luck today at the hospital, Joe. You will definitely be hearing from me. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: flat STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/21/2002 12:23:12 AM ----- BODY: Hello. I have a flat on my bike. Into which I pumped air whilst trying to get away from work. Right after I chipped away the slush and ice which had encrusted the vehicle. With my bare hands. Then I rode home through small (and not so small) waterways which, dammed with slush and ice, had filled-up all along the road edge to occasionally disconcerting depths. Oh, and there was wind and freezing rain, too. My bike is in the shower now, recuperating. (Actually, I sprayed it with detergent to loosen the grime in which the bike becomes encrusted on wet, dirty days like today.)
I am bankrupt. Docket #02-41552, filed March 14, 2002. Any day, I may come home to a dark and cold, de-electrified house, though I am assured by my lawyer that if I am home when they come to shut me off and I present the aforementioned docket number to the Mass Electric employee, that "they should leave it on.". They should. Likewise with the phone. Although Verizon has already shut me off, the CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier), Ztel, my current phone company, will shut me off March 24, unless the bankruptcy court's injunction (represented by the docket number) prevents them from doing so. No matter how much my lawyer—a really wonderful woman—tries to explain it to me, I just can't grasp the logic of bankruptcy. She says it is designed to give people a second chance and a new start. But it still looks to me like none of these companies should ever want anything to do with me again.
There is a lot of laundry—about four loads worth—laying on the bathroom floor, piled-up nearly to the height of the windowsill. I have been intending to attack it every day for over two weeks. There are things in there which I forgot I owned. The house is a mess, there are computer parts scattered all about, old unopened mail, and piles of semi-discarded papers, forms, newsletters, and magazines. The biggest accomplishment in my day is folding up the futon.
This is a low point, in case you hadn't noticed.
I hope I get up early enough to get something done; I hope very soon that I begin to care whether or not I get something done. It has gotten so that a little thing like a flat tire is just about completely overwhelming. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: fifty again STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/22/2002 01:51:56 AM ----- BODY:
Already time for bed, again.
Why does this always happen? Another day is gone, and I'm just getting here.
Anyway, I told my boss today to take her bonus and stick it. She wanted to give fifty bucks each to me and three others who came in on almost no notice to do overtime this week because somebody quit unexpectedly. It went like this:. Unsmiling, she solemnly called me into her office. Her face betrayed nary a hint of good nor bad—well, maybe a hint of bad. She closed the door, and whispered conspiratorily, "We're giving this to the four who came in to do overtime.". She produced a folded fifty in my direction. As I took it she said, "But you can't tell anybody, because we can't give it to everyone.".
"I won't do that. Keeping secrets breeds suspicion and distrust; it's not worth fifty bucks for me to do that. I won't do it for any amount of money.". She snatched it back.
"Well," she said petulantly, "then don't take it."
"OK," I said, "Thanks for the thought.". I really kinda meant that. She glared as I left.
Had I not been exposed in the past to their breathtakingly insulting and demeaning behavior, I—stunned—probably would have walked away with the bill, and despite later misgivings, never returned it. But I have had practice with the fifty dollar bill at the place where I work. And the last time it happened, I swore it would never happen again.
Either give it to me, or don't. Either be grateful, or be not grateful. But spare me your disingenuous gratitude, and keep your strings-attached bribes that you call generosity. If it's not above-board, it's not a bonus—it's a liability.
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You like Ulysses?
Please don't like me. I don't like being liked. People who know me seem to know this through some instinct or perceptiveness that is alien to me. I make a concerted effort to conceal my discomfort at being liked. I mean, being liked is something I am supposed to want, right? So I try to appear as though I want people to like me, but despite my efforts they know the truth. People are magical.
You see, I can't give in. I can't like myself, because then I will have to cry. He has been hurt—not lately, but hurt in his essence, back near his origins. And if I give in to liking him, I will have to care about what happened to him then, and I will have to cry. It won't be just a tear, or even a sea of tears. Though some tell me there is a limit to these things, it feels like there will be no end to the tears. It will be an inundating, annihilating flood. It will not have an end, but it will end everything.
I am not sure, but I think others have been there, to a place that is after the end of everything. Maybe if I went there, I would discover what comes after the end of everything. Or maybe I would discover that no one ever goes there, no one in their right mind, anyway. Maybe I would realize, after it is too late, that all the people who do like themselves got off this train back at the last stop because they did not want to go this way, to the end of everything. It would be just me and the old woman who keeps staring at me giggling, the crazy toothless lady with the dead leaves in her hair. She is always on the train that goes to the end of everything.
Everybody has always known something that I have never understood, they all share a kind of common fabric, and I try to pretend that I am a part of it. A friend once called it standing in anxiety, trying to think of something spontaneous to do. Everything about me is wrong, I am not attached to that fabric, and the best I can hope is to deceive some few who are included, some one. The best I can hope is to deceive myself. But I already know too much.
I don't want to be alone. But I am afraid of you. I don't want tragedies to happen that always happen as a part of life, things like losing limbs or getting paralyzed, like breaking hearts, like dying. And I won't survive that original pain, so I split myself in two, and I keep him, ...where?; I don't know. I keep him—somewhere.
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DATE: 03/23/2002 02:57:35 PM
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Okey dokey, I want to make blogger's edit your blog page my browser's home page, changing it from one of the news and information pages (the Guardian, the Boston Globe, CNN) it usually resides on, but I am torn. Shouldn't I also want to know what goes on in the world? Besides, who would keep an eye on the genocidal politicians? I mean, I know we in civilized society have systems and people in place to do that for us—to watch the genocidal politicians. Unfortunately watching is all that ever seems to be done by those systems; the journalists, the opposing political parties, the mothers of these soulless despots. That just isn't enough. However, when I try and watch them myself, it is simply too much.
Ahh, coffee cup dilemmas. I suppose I have GE to thank for my leisure comfort, and for the ability to sit, sock-footed, and contemplate their crimes. Thanks go out too to the big-money, power-mongering conservatives who keep it all in order—growing the economy, controlling the culture, restraining all those wild anarchic liberals. And that's just their domestic venue. They are blood-spattered rapists abroad, all their actions beneficiently intended to prevent our precipitous fall from our familiar American standard of living to something closer to the standard at which 99% of the world suffers.
More coffee.
And why make the page at which I compose these diatribes which I spew into my spitoon-website, why make this the page I come to every day, automatically? I wish I came here reluctantly, but I can't control my eagerness to bitch and moan. I am still playing the part of victim; I have not yet moved into that next role of my existence, ...I don't even know what it's called. Besides, I might not assume that role until a later lifetime. In the meantime, as a victim, bitching and moaning is the only comfort I know. Is that pathetic, or what?
Peter Wiedenman. The name is all I have been able to keep. The rest all scared me too much. I remember the moment I saw him; he walked in late to an orientation meeting at a summer job on Cape Cod. He had short blonde hair, except for a braided tail that hung down to the middle of his back. He had to keep it hidden while he was working, he was a waiter. That was odd because the place was very tolerant of a whole lot, but he had a reputation there, at Wequassett Inn. Peter lived nearby, and had worked there before, and he was mischievous and irreverent. He was fearless.
I concluded he was way out of my league; cute, young, charming, and popular with all the right sorts of people—or more accurately, unpopular with all the stuffed shirts and authority figures. I didn't want to embarrass myself by revealing the powerful attraction I felt toward him. He was 20, I was 30.
It is amazing how low a person's self esteem can be; I was certain he would disdain me from the start—if I were fortunate I thought, I would be able to evade the focus of his attention completely. How completely, completely wrong I was.
Very early into the season, Peter suggested to me that he and I go swimming the next night in the pool on the property, which of course employees were forbidden to do. I was scared and looking for hiding places from this attention that I was so afraid to want. But at the same time I was thrilled, and lost. I thought Peter might be gay. I felt guilty for hoping that he was. We did it—swim, I mean—I brough. a bathing suit, he was naked. He stood above me, at the edge of the pool, a perfect, tanned young body. I focussed on swimming, pretending I didn't notice. He wanted me to do exactly what I wanted to do, but I was paralyzed with fear, hiding in the water. His ego must have been at least a tiny bit wounded, and I went home, sorely dissappointed in myself.
He didn't let up as the season progressed. Not that the focus of his attention on me was withering, but he did persist. Once he sneaked in the night to the bungalows where most of the employees stayed and, outside my door, he took my bike—which was as important to me then as it is now—and he climbed up on the roof, completely unnoticed, and propped it there, directly above my door. In the morning, late as usual, I came out to jump on my bike and dash two miles to work, but the spot where I left my bike every night was bike-less. I was stunned. Someone stole it, I thought, panicky. But I was late, and I would have to deal with the theft later. Just then a co-worker was in the parking lot, starting her car, and I asked if I could get a ride in with her. "Somebody stole my bike," I said as I got in the car. Then, as I looked back at the building I had just come from, I saw it. My bike, a teal Bianchi, stood upright in the roof-gutter directly above my door like a kind of makeshift bicycle store sign. And I knew, with a giddy pleasure, that it was Peter's attention focussing on me again.
(I'll have to finish later. I am late for work, as usual.)
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DATE: 03/24/2002 02:58:14 AM
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In about six hours I have to be back at work. Right now I am feeling an awful lot like the way I feel when it comes time to do something which I have promised I will do. The longer I wait, the less likely it becomes that the promised thing will happen. So here's the quick and dirty conclusion to my nostalgia over Peter:
I think the bike on the roof stunt got Peter fired, but because he was close friends with many of the people I worked with—and who knows, maybe because he actually liked me—he and I continued to cross paths, a lot. Peter was a sailor in the deepest parts of his heart. He shared with me his plan to live on a boat, not on a houseboat like a shoebox on the water, but on a sleek, big seaworthy sailboat. As he shared this with me, late in our acquaintance, I was aware that it was his own mythic plan, expressive of worlds more meaning than the mere details contained. This was Peter's vision for his place in the world, detached from all that would have him lead a conventional life, yet plunging bow-long into a more dynamic, more threatening, more invigorating life. He shared with me his personal mythology for engaging life more fully than he had ever been taught, and I believe he achieved it. He was an absolutely capable person around whom I always felt secure; there was no challenge he could not meet, no goodness could occur that would not glint more brightly off his soul than any other, and there was no visible end that I could see to the mirthful kindness in his eyes. Peter Wiedenman made a place just for me in his myth of joyous life; he told me that I would have a place with him on his sailboat when he got it, and he told me that he had intended to make no such place for anyone, until he met me.
Such precious gifts I walked away from, pretending I did not recognize their value. The absolute, non-erotic, spiritual beauty of generous souls like Peter has more than once scared the shit right out of me. But worse, it scared me on a level too deep for me to know, for long before I met Peter I had chosen not to feel such depths, and to function in a superficial safe zone, unmoved by deep currents. And even as he was loving me in the way he did, I was aware enough of its significance to carefully keep my distance from it, and to maintain the scrupulous pretense that I didn't even know it was there.
Peter's father had a heart attack in California one day in that summer of 1989, and Peter got on a plane, not knowing if the man would be dead by the time Peter arrived. He came back weeks later oh so subtly changed, with just a twinge of skepticism, or maybe a slight little hint of fear. His father survived, but I think in the ordeal Peter realized that certain relationships will never be what they could have been, and certain people will never reach that mythic place he has prepared, even when it becomes real. I think Peter knew when he returned that some men will forever be victims, no matter how much he loves them.
Sail on, sweet Peter, over whichever shining sea you have chosen, while here I publish another whiney post, and get...
More coffee.
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DATE: 03/29/2002 02:03:35 PM
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I am trying to find every reason on earth not to write a word here (or anywhere, for that matter, since here is the only place I write lately, if I write). And I have found almost all of them—reasons to not write, I mean. Here is a partial list. Review access logs; go to the bathroom; check e-mail; make coffee; muse on the potential of various scripting tools to do wonderous things with access logs; drink coffee; check blog to see if anyone has commented (I am a comment-whore); visit sites that link to me; visit sites that sites which link to me link to; visit all the usual sites; drink more coffee; go to bathroom, again; give passing thought to numerous pressing responsibilities; review more access logs; take the top off my scanner and rearrange all the lighting in my apartment so that I can scan my face; post the resulting image to blog; go, late, to work.
Do you think it is easy being a mute blogger, with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder and a spastic bladder, trying to hide from life while living—all without any Ativan at all? Yeah, you're right. It actually is pretty easy being me, all things considered. (Oh, that's another one. I can listen to NPR instead of blog. Add that to the list.). I mean, I could be like Yasser Arafat, with tanks and bulldozers trying to knock down my house—not to mention short and ugly. Or I could be like Margaret Thatcher, with not only bad hair, but also too old to talk. Instead of being just figuratively paralyzed, in my hopelessness and fear, I could be actually paralyzed like Christopher Reeve (who, by the way, is actually quite a Superman in his real life). Or I could be dead. A condition which, despite all the frightful dark imaginings that seem to recommend it, would probably disappoint. If everything—and I mean everything—disappoints me now, what on earth (or anywhere else for that matter) would make me think that I would find happiness in being dead? Nonsense. I would find disappointment in death, not because there is anything wrong with the experience itself, but because there is something wrong with my disappointment detector.
My 'disappointment-detector' is like an unplugged TV. I turn it on, and get nothing but a smoky black image, and conclude (quite prematurely) that Light no longer exists. I am thus disappointed. No matter that my conclusion is illogical; I am able to see the device which is telling me that Light has abandoned us. And no matter that there are things like windows; though they are somewhat less entertaining than TV used to be, they still tend to indicate that Light is continuing on. But the fact that Light is not gone from my life is somewhat more painful than the alternative. I cannot explain exactly why this is. The reason is not explained by the over-simplifying phrase 'misery loves company.'. On the other hand the problem is not so complex as to be unsolvable, though it often feels that way. The best way I can explain it is to say that the loss of my magnificent life, which was lost long ago (the reasons for that are another story entirely), feels like it is survivable only as long as I pretend that there is no magnifence anywhere in life.
There is, indeed, magnificence in life. That makes me cry.
And here am I, wringing out these tears and discovering these truths in one of the most un-original and un-novel of forums, a weblog. Magnificent.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: solidarity STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 04/01/2002 12:17:35 AM ----- BODY:
Why am I not here?
The effort is continuing right now.
Regarding the Six Day War, in June of 1967, Golda Meir remarked, "We can forgive the Arabs for killing our sons. We can’t forgive them, however, for forcing us to kill their sons.". In that conflict, the Isrealis were outnumbered three to one, yet they prevailed. Today the tables have been reversed, and today it is the Palestinians who must forgive the incomprehendable agonies inflicted on them by their Isreali occupiers. This may be possible, though it may well be more than any of us remote from the killing can rightly expect from any people. But even beyond this, beyond forgiving the injuries recieved, now each side must additionally forgive the other for forcing it to draw the blood of its enemy's sons.
If I were there, even in that land of miracles, could I ever in my life forgive you for making me a killer?
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: the 14th is 24 STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 04/01/2002 05:50:02 AM ----- BODY:Happy 24th, Denys! Three years ago, you were half my age. Kisses.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: river crossing STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 04/02/2002 01:09:00 AM ----- BODY:I don't know what we expect the Palestinian people to do. God help us, but no person can be expected to endure being brutalized for thirty five years without becoming brutal—or dead. Perhaps Ghandi could do it. And Mandela actually did it. But the rarity of such greatness should increase, not decrease, our compassion for those who are driven by overwhelming rage and despair to do monstrous things. They are not like Ghandi or Mandela, they are just like you or me, and in their place I don't know if I would not do the same.
She was eighteen, an A-student. Aayat al-Akhras was not a terrorist, but a girl who had lost any remnant of hope when she blew herself up in a supermarket in West Jerusalem on Friday, March 29. The young security guard who tried to stop her is either dead, or will be maimed for life. None of these people deserve the death and destruction that has engulfed them, but it does serve the despicable purposes of some old men in suits. Sharon has no intention of tolerating a Palestinian state, and the more he can provoke them into a hysteria of self-destruction, the better. And Bush is in league with Mr. Sharon because Bush will be depending heavily on Israeli support when he goes after Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Besides that, Sharon's brutality with the Palestinian Arabs might just provoke Saddam, giving Bush even more reason to attack him.
But the truth, indeed, is from the mouths of babes, and these killing, dying, hating young people—both Israeli and Palestinian—indict the men in suits irrefutably for failing to lead unselfishly, for failing to put right ahead of hate, and for promoting fear in order to achieve their own ends instead of inspiring courage in order to advance the good of all.
It is just overwhelmingly depressing.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: naked beast STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 04/03/2002 04:45:04 AM ----- BODY:
What [will] be permanent is a further intensification of the hatred between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, with all that will mean for their futures.
Israel is using one of the finest military machines on earth to exterminate dirt-poor Palestinians who have little more than rocks to throw at the advancing tanks. Israel would have us think that the only way to stop suicide bombers is to eliminate their enemies—exterminate them.
I once viewed Israel as a just state, a people with a dignity born of horrors survived, who posessed such enviable strength of resolve and determination of will that I began to expect miracles in whatever they chose to do. I expected justice from a people who had risen above unspeakable injustice, and I trusted that love and unselfish compassion underpinned their fearsome power. Maybe it was a misperception, a fantasy—a myth. But it was a comely myth, and in that land of Israel, which I apparently saw so unclearly from this far, dwelt justice, and around it arose conflict, as it always does wherever justice dwells. And I trusted the powerful, just state—the state that showed astounding restraint when the scuds flew by not obliterating Baghdad, which it could easily have done—I trusted Israel to use its power, its strength, and its dominance to counter enmity with forgiveness, to nurture goodness and kindness while banishing brutality and hatred from its land. In a world of competing, petty, self-centered states, I trusted the State of Israel to be not a state, but to be Israel.
Now Israel has shed its raiments divine, and beneath, is indistinguishable from her enemies, both past and present. This may be the greatest tragedy I have ever known.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: In the midst STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 04/04/2002 02:27:30 PM ----- BODY:I am in the midst of a transition (again). The muse came briefly today, but blogger was down (again). I have been teetering on the verge of switching to Greymatter, and (until later today, maybe) I am going that way. Whether I abandon blogger forever, or come to my senses and return to the fold, I still need to keep them both up for a bit. Besides, as you can see, the Greymatter version needs a lot of work.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: dangerous designs STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 04/07/2002 01:17:02 AM ----- BODY:It has been a sad and depressing ...week, ...month, ...season? Life? I don't know, but I hope this darkness lifts. And I am glad this man is in the same world as me, at the same time as me—if for no other reason than to reinforce a feeble hope I have that people are all that really matter; that connections between souls are indeed possible; and that the dirty, cheap, puny things we do to each other both personally and globally have not, yet, submerged us completely.
There may be hope.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: the oppressed as restorers of humanity STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 04/07/2002 03:02:01 PM ----- BODY:And this from the book I am reading:
This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their opressors as well. The oppressors, who oppress, exploit and rape by virtue of their power, cannot find in this power the strength to liberate either the oppressed or themselves. Only power that springs from the weakness of the oppressed will be sufficiently strong to free both.
What the hell is real? And will it hurt me? The answers, respectively, are nothing, and yes.
What does it matter what's real, anyway? I mean, it's either nothing, or everything. Or nothing and everything. It is a superfluous question. Doesn't matter. And hurt?—that's a subjective thing. If I'm addicted to pain killers and suddenly stop taking them, then just being awake hurts. If I have attained a modest enlightenment around the issue of pain and suffering, then my injuries, though they hurt, serve to expand me rather than diminish me. In the latter case, hurt is a desirable thing. In fact, at some point beyond the fear and panic it might otherwise cause, hurt becomes a gratifying gift, the mark of an attenuated sensitivity to conscious life.
These are practical questions for me. I have not gotten beyond the fear and panic yet to whatever it is that we call 'real'—the true story of me playing itself out in my absence. I'm missing it. Though I am in this story, I am not present to it. I get glimpses of the story of me when people, usually strangers and usually in response to my writing, make observations about me. This is like catching a distorted reflection of myself in the chrome of a passing car. To say the least, this is a rather eclectic and remote way of appreciating the art of my own story. But it proves I have not vanished. Not yet.
I am addicted to unconsciousness. No drugs for me, thank you. They are not strong enough. They just leave me groggy, but still connected. What I want is to completely disconnect; what do the shrinks call it?—dissociate. That's what does it for me. In the tacky personal exposes, and in the Readers' Digest versions of life, dissociation is described as being pushed out of your own body and floating ghostlike above it, beside it—somewhere nearby—and watching like a spectator while this horror or that is being perpetrated upon you. I described it once rather aptly (if I do say so myself) in this snippet:
...and that's just it, disconnecting hurts. It's the only drawback. Otherwise I could visit and observe life comfortably, like an oceanographer in a glass sphere, visiting a shipwreck. Warm, dry, ...breathing. As a tool for oceanography, this works. As a tool for living life, it is an unweildy contraption requiring most of my effort just to cart it around. It obstructs every touch and whisper, and it imposes upon anyone who would communicate with me the need make cryptic gestures in an impromptu sign language. I am the boy in the bubble. The only problem is that there is no goddamn reason for the bubble. It's worthless. It's useless. And it is now causing more pain than it ever protected me from, once upon a time. In panic now I cling to it, remembering how it saved me once. But the quality of disconnecting, which was salvific decades ago, is rapidly becoming fatal today.
I can't wait to see what happens next.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: great damage STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 04/10/2002 01:19:03 AM ----- BODY:"However many wanted men we kill in the refugee camp... there is still no justification for causing such great destruction," said one of the anonymous officers.
Rendered evil? Is that like rendered fat? No, of course not, but it makes about as much sense.
It has taken me some time to come to terms with my anger and disappointment with Israel, but I am now an unapologetic critic of Israeli actions. Israel is the one in this conflict that has rockets, jets, helicopters, bulldozers, tanks and an army. Israel is using her military assests to silence, terrorize and punish the Palestinian people not for suicide bombings but for dissenting—dissent which by any account is overwhelmingly justified. If anything, the suicide bombers have played into Sharon's bloody hands, and he has encouraged them every step of the way. I have observed nothing but contempt from the Israeli government toward the Palestinians, whose land they occupy. No rational assessment can conclude from current Israeli actions that the Palestinian people have any hope for the future beyond complete submission without protest, and increased suffering beneath the heel of a boot—until they are exterminated. Israel wants ALL the land.
If there is an evil here, it certainly does not spring from the heart of a child who blows herself up in desperation and rage. Nor does it originate in the heart of a 23 year old boy who has faced the black hole of an Israeli gunbarrel—more often than not pointed by a soldier in a livid rage—every work day for a year. I submit to you that evil is a quality of behavior, not an entity in itself, and the side whose behavior has had the most evil effect is not the side least powerful and most villified. Israel must change, or suffer the consequences of harboring evil, which will not come in the form af a crushing military assault like the one being waged against the Palestinians. The consequences to Israel-the-oppressor will be a godless rot from within its own soul. I think it has begun.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Harper's Magazine: A Gaza Diary STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 04/10/2002 10:25:11 PM ----- BODY: Harper's Magazine: A Gaza Diary ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: and murder them for sport STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 04/10/2002 10:44:58 PM ----- BODY:"Come on, dogs," the voice booms in Arabic. "Where are all the dogs of Khan Younis? Come! Come!"
I stand up. I walk outside the hut. The invective continues to spew: "Son of a bitch!" "Son of a whore!" "Your mother's cunt!"
The boys dart in small packs up the sloping dunes to the electric fence that separates the camp from the Jewish settlement. They lob rocks toward two armored jeeps parked on top of the dune and mounted with loudspeakers. Three ambulances line the road below the dunes in anticipation of what is to come.
A percussion grenade explodes. The boys, most no more than ten or eleven years old, scatter, running clumsily across the heavy sand. They descend out of sight behind a sandbank in front of me. There are no sounds of gunfire. The soldiers shoot with silencers. The bullets from the M-16 rifles tumble end over end through the children's slight bodies. Later, in the hospital, I will see the destruction: the stomachs ripped out, the gaping holes in limbs and torsos.
Yesterday at this spot the Israelis shot eight young men, six of whom were under the age of eighteen. One was twelve. This afternoon they kill an eleven-year-old boy, Ali Murad, and seriously wound four more, three of whom are under eighteen. Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered—death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo—but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.
I don't know where to start, this article tells of so many crimes and inhumanities. Like rocketing and bulldozing homes while civilians still occupy them. Like using prisoners as human shields. Like extrajudicial executions and disposal of bodies in unmarked mass graves.
Are the Israeli's allowed to do this because of the Holocaust? We need to get over our gentile guilt. I have only skimmed the surface of that genocide's horror, like lightly touching the numbers etched in glass, and even that was overwhelming. But nothing justifies repeating that behavior. Nothing. I acknowledge the base urge of the Israeli people to return horrors and inhumanities for the horrors and inhumanities which have been inflicted on them. But civilization, by definition, means that such atrocities are stopped, not perpetuated. Sharon, in everything he has done his whole career, has sought to perpetuate the insanity of hatred. Israel, stop him.
Where are the tears? Where have our hearts and souls gone?
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: scream silently STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 04/12/2002 02:47:18 PM ----- BODY:So what is the other response? Tell me please. Parts of the world containing millions of people are going to hell in a handbasket, and I skip merrily along like a girl in a Spring dress distributing depressing little vignettes as though they were flower petals. But what's the other response? ...the one that does not dwell so tenaciously on tragedy?
(Let's see if i can do this without 'dwelling tenaciously on the tragedy.').
Focusing away from the point-at, gasping, horror may not be the same thing as denying it is there, but it feels that way to me. Pretending everything is OK is charged for me, supercharged emotionally. As you may know, when I was two years old, I experienced a horror that has not yet ended. But that event in itself is not the point. The thing that makes it difficult for me not to scream (figuratively), even when screaming has been done to an annoying excess (like I have done in this blog), is that the two year old's screams were deliberately ignored. The choice was made to ignore what happened, to pretend everything was OK, because in 1961 nobody wanted to put my father's brother in a mental institution, which would have been the course at the time, and nobody knew how to handle the rape of a child; nobody even wanted to admit that it had happened.
So it didn't. My screams all drowned in the sea of denial around me. And my reality rejected my experience. My going-on-three-year-old life in Northboro, Massachusetts became stunningly and tragically unreal when parents, family, extended family, and even family friends, all rejected my experience as if my story were the problem, instead of the horror it was reporting.
So, the image of skipping merrily along like a girl in a Spring dress distributing depressing little vignettes as though they were flower petals, captures in some way the absurdity of my experiences—perhaps the absurdity of everyone's experiences.
And screaming, ...well, I don't know when to stop because I have been taught to believe that I make no sound at all.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: eve of destruction? STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 04/13/2002 12:54:10 PM ----- BODY:I am Shirley-McLain-ian, to a degree. I believe that I chose this life before I was born, and this spot on the planet to live it, and the people who were my family. All these things I whine about, ...they've been happening forever, and probably will happen forever, and will happen whether I am here to gasp at the horror or not.
When one experiences an overwhelming trauma, I think a person tends to believe something like, "This horribleness is only happening here—it can't be like this everywhere.". Of course it is not horrible everywhere, but once a victim focuses solely on their own trauma, it is only a short step to seeing it as the only trauma.
From the way I have lived my life you'd think that pain and suffering were my invention, that my surveillance of it is novel and unique, and that no one has ever noticed injustice before me. I have to keep reminding myself: It is not all about me. It never has been.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: sad eyes STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 04/14/2002 01:23:28 PM ----- BODY:Pinochet judge asks to question Kissinger, an article from The Guardian today, says in part, "The former US secretary of state is wanted for questioning by Baltasar Garzon over his alleged involvement in a plot by former South American military dictatorships to persecute and eliminate their opponents in the 1970s and 1980s."
A long life is not always such a good thing. Too bad we have to wait until men like Kissinger become frail before we dare speak the truth about their crimes in our midst. The question I am really wanting answered is this: Will American government officials—both former and current—ever subject themselves to the same international criminal code that they seek so broadly to impose on officials of other governments? I think not; one of the perquisites of power is the ability to imperiously disregard the rantings of those who know the truth.
I know it is unbecoming of me, but I hope Henry lives many years more, the longer for me to relish his decline.
Finally, not to worship Hitchens too much, but here is an article he wrote nine months ago in which he touches on the arrogant, self-serving attitude that Palestinians can have rights only if they deserve them. Talk about crime in our midst...
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: brief kisses STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 04/18/2002 05:01:37 AM ----- BODY:These are the musings of a poetic heart breathing gently like a warm breeze on a balmy sun-filled afternoon. He makes me sigh; such a sparkling gift, so perfectly bestowed, and brief.
Ahhh, the lips. You can keep them, more truly than you can keep any pop lyric which will never be yours alone. You've kissed others, and so has he. But those were all different, completely different. Those others can't, and none in the future ever will, bring two together in one small moment, within one small space, sharing a single halting breath in any way even close to the way that you and he did it. A kiss is an intersection of emotion and moment and neither will ever be the same again, not for you or for him. Each kiss is as much yours now as it was in the instant you drew back from it.
...big strokes, thick scribble, bright colors only. Warm as your lips are.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: cry STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 04/18/2002 05:42:19 AM ----- BODY:And this (from days ago—I have to stop reading sites in reverse!) is so very sad. You made me cry. Again.
There are many trite things available to say; none of them help. Cry. Break stuff. Make the neighbors wonder if you're not unstable. Then laugh at the neighbors, and go buy better stuff.
Oh, and get drunk. (Was that trite? I'm sorry if it seems so, but I really mean it.). Margarita's or Martini's, vodka Martini's. Mmmm, I'd forgotten why I like tragedy so much.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: bronchitis STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 04/18/2002 03:20:10 PM ----- BODY:Been coughing and wheezing for five days. Deep down in my lungs I can hear the fizzing-gurgling of stuff that shouldn't be there. It seldom emerges, even after an hour of deliberate effort to tear it loose and spew it out. Because of the concurrent head cold which I am also enjoying, each rib-cracking cough of my chest cold makes my head feel like the homerun ball at the end of a slugger's bat. I am up to about 50 grand slams today; there must have been thousands yesterday. I start the day with a swig of cough syrup and 7 ibuprofen. Please write and tell me how foolish I am, how I should not even be allowed to have medicine if I am not going to follow the rules and make nice, how I deserve to be sick, to suffer and to die because I do what I feel like doing instead of feeling like I am told to feel, how commie, liberal, terrorist, pinkoe fags like me... Well, you get the picture. And really, don't get your panties all in a bunch; I have an appointment with the doctor in an hour. Maybe he'll give me some psych meds, too.
I thought that I was all better when I got up today. Tuesday night, my coughing and wheezing woke me from a sound sleep several times. ; Not so last night. I woke with nary a gurgle. Considered calling the doc's office and cancelling—too late for that, I decided. Then I began rehearsing how I would explain my lack of distress during the appointment which I so urgently requested yesterday. But soon the hack woke up too, and I was barking all over the house, and collapsing into a kind of combat crouch which I have developed for these episodes of sustained, explosive coughing. So, we're off to see the wizard...
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Amid the ruins of Jenin, the grisly evidence of a war crime STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 04/18/2002 09:53:17 PM ----- BODY: ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: letter to Israel STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 04/18/2002 10:14:01 PM ----- BODY:Excerpt from the Independent News:
I'm tweaking my template (even still), and blogger apparently pings weblogs.com for each tweak even though there is no new post. Sorry if you have come here seeking newness and been disappointed.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: breathing reX STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 04/20/2002 01:44:43 AM ----- BODY:Woke up feeling pretty good, thought the bactrim the doc gave me yesterday was kinda miraculous. When I went to work it all came back, so I stayed for an hour gurgling and coughing incessantly, then came home. Ate. Slept, a little. Spent hours reading the archives of reX.'s raMbles..., and now I am here.
I love reX.
The chest cold, now anchored firmly in place, is beginning to take the defensive and no longer commandeers every breath I take. As its tribute, it now demands only two or three minutes of uncontrollable coughing out of every hour, instead of the 20-minute episodes it demanded yesterday. My head, however, is behaving somewhat like a baggie full of jello with great globs flopping either this way or that, depending, I surmise, on nothing less fickle than my position relative to the direction of the earths rotation. In one instant my sinuses feel like cathedrals and my hearing is so acute that I can follow a conversation in the street a block away. The next instant I am deaf, and The Blob has grown to fill all the cathedral space, and is threatening to invade the town.
I told them not to expect me at work tomorrow. I can say, like president, Jr.—except I have justification—that this will be a long term proposition. I may try to return Sunday; that would make for only four missed work-days. Or I may set my sights on Tuesday (I have Mondays off) and make it an even week.
And allow me to suggest that you visit reX's site. The webcam is interesting, but he writes with absolute sincerity and brutal honesty. Much of what I discovered in his archives touches on familiar names, themes and images from the year and a half during which I was obsessed with him daily, even hourly. But even for the uninitiated, reX tells a story, in days, of joy and tragedy and love and heartbreak and hope. Above all else reX is delicately sensitive, and exquisitely humanitarian. I don't know what he gets from putting up on the web his cam images, his voice and his words, but he cannot possibly have any idea how much he gives to us by doing it. Personally, I am moved to tears, as well as inspired by great gusts of hope, over and over again by his faithful sharing of his life. I love reX dearly—and we have yet to speak.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: the insignificance of killing boys STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 04/20/2002 03:27:32 PM ----- BODY:This line was tagged onto the very end of an article in The Guardian.
Say what you like; it was accidental, the boys shouldn't have been where they could get killed, or children can be suicide bombers, too. Select whichever line suits your audience. The fact is that young men and boys are the targets in Israel's crusade to dominate Palestine. Especially boys. Israel has been cultivating a taste for homicidal rage within the ranks of its military for decades, and it is using those killers now to quash any base for future dissent from or resistance to their almighty will. Why is it virtually always Palestinian boys that are killed this way? I don't know why the girls are not savored targets, as are the boys, but I suspect in the Israeli military's cold calculations, the girls don't count as much.
Apart from and exceeding the outrageousness of Israel's boy-murder spree, is this world's blasé lack of interest in the news of such atrocities. Sure, Baby Bush is calling for an investigation into the alleged crimes at Jenin. Big deal. His call is disingenuous; Bush seeks only to rehabilitate the image of his most significant ally in the Middle East. And I fully expect the investigation will distribute the blame (if any) not based on real proof or the real culpability of the parties, but instead will dole out the blame in exact inverse proportion to the amount of power each party holds. The powerless Palestinians will be blamed the most for the Jenin massacre; the hot headed Israeli's will get a little blame; and the Americans, of course, will get none.
And after all the posturing, theatrical incredulity, and histrionics, we tack on to the end of the story, almost as an insignificant aside, they murdered two more little boys. And now for the weather...
It is all business as usual, imperial egos, money and power. And though it feels like it will never change, it will. Indeed it will. Not in our current lifetimes, certainly, but when humankind grows-up a little more, and a little more, and a little more, things will be better. I understand well the despair and rage of suffering beneath cavalier cruelty and breathtaking injustice. And when facing one's own destruction at the hands of another, ignored by a world that apparently could care less, I know how tempting and seductive it is to choose to go out in a blaze—or an explosion, taking some of that world along—rather than die quietly.
I don't know what part is played by such outrageous passions in the growing-up of the world; and it is not our place to know. But it is our place to care, and care deeply, tearfully. We should not ignore our anguish at these events—but I believe we will. Until another life.
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reqs: search term ----: ----------- 10: story . 7: true . 2: with . 2: sister . 2: is . 2: aids . 2: chainlink . 2: burgwinkel . 2: fence . 2: bike . 1: children . 1: dildo . 1: why . 1: seat . 1: of . 1: brother . 1: aunt . 1: joe . 1: living . 1: that . 1: dealing . 1: in . 1: firefighter . 1: sex . 1: semen . 1: all . 1: chocolate . 1: masturbate . 1: caffeine . 1: sugar | This week's search terms, courtesy of analog. (Strung all together, it's quite a story!) |
Hi.
Hello. So, you're going back to work today?
Yup. It's hard to go back, after so many days off, but it's only for today. Then I work Tuesday and I'm off again Wednesday.
They'll want you to work OT on those days off. Everybody is sick, the place is falling apart...
No. I'll Just say no. I may be going back, but I am still sick. Hell, I was wheezing and gurgling and coughing constantly; I couldn't even breath enough to keep my lips from turning blue two days ago.
You thought you were going to die, didn't you.
Yah.
You're still scared of it, dying I mean.
Hell, I could die any minute. I just don't want to die not being able to breathe.
You just don't want to die. And it's not because you want to live, it's because you're scared to die.
Well, ...yah.
Work on that. It's no way to live life.
Yah, I know. Hey thanks, I gotta go. See ya,
joe.
This is my answer to all the blind American nationalism. I have nothing against generic nationalism, the gentle kind, sans bloodlust. But blind nationalism ala USA says I'm better than you because I'm an American. I find that nauseatingly juvenile. Maybe I'm just being contrary, I mean, some of those cheap, shredded, filthy plastic flags that hang pathetically off nearly every car antenna were put there by moderately well-intentioned people. Placed with the same ubiquity and 'mindfulness' as the antenna standard are the flag bumper stickers and flag window decals, which number at least twice the population of this country. Where is the nationalism in flying a disgracefully neglected, dirty, torn US flag—as do most of the businesses where I live? It seems everybody wants to appear patriotic; perhaps this obsession with patriotic appearances is ebbing. One can only hope.
Maybe it is just a matter of taste, but I am gagging on the overstatement. This flag saturation is pernicious; it seems to implement the particurlarly emetic slogan of George Bush, "You're either with us or you're against us," implying that my choices are to be either an American, or a terrorist. It implies that I, flagless, possess suspicious intent, questionable patriotism, and perhaps I even have treasonable designs. As a mere mark to signify one's concurrence with the prevailing tribal mood, I suppose it works. But this mindless flag-plastering fails miserably to promote anything, least of all the flag. The US flag symbolizes a living nation that has historically defended the individual's freedom to act contrary to the majority's sentiment; it represents a brave nation that more often than not, and at grave cost, has sought justice; and despite everything, the United States flag flies over a young nation that once made a revolutionary assertion to the world: human rights preempt state's rights. The flag represents things about my country which I describe now more with hope they might resume, rather than assurance that they persist.
These US flags, in their proliferation, seem to represent something warlike, inhumane and divisive. I won't sport one. I'm not with you, Mr. Bush. But I am not against America. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: little tiny screams and moans STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 04/22/2002 11:00:24 PM ----- BODY:
It is truly cuckie here. Cold like winter, and wet, well, ...like winter. Isn't this after easter already? I mean, didn't I see pastel bonnets weeks ago? I know I saw bonnets... It. Is. Not. Supposed. To. Be. Cuckie. At. The. End. Of. April. (!) Jeesh.
And this bronchitis... I try to take a nap, and with every exhalation, I hear at the very end, tiny old men, in my chest—hundreds of them—making little tiny screams and moans. They sound so sad.
I can't even focus on a blog entry. I sat down hours ago to record the tremendously insignificant events of my day. A simple task. Instead, I ended-up with that flag rant! It was like, my scanner just d-r-e-w my face to its glassine surface—and to the impossibly bright light thereunder—as inevitably as gravity draws a meteor to its brilliant demise.
So, I went to my bankruptcy hearing today. It is called a 'meeting of creditors.'. It seems to me that there are never any creditors at these things. There were at least five bankruptcies being processed in the hour that I was there, and not one creditor. Not that I am complaining. But I wish I knew that earlier. I was a wreck worrying.
It's a slick process. One guy from the US Bankruptcy Court, the Trustee, is there sitting in the front of a big room at a huge table. He has a tape recorder, and a cell phone. He asks if you have read this or that form, and asks if you understand it. He does this for about a dozen forms. One scary thing: He asks if you have read the notice on the door of the hearing room, and do you understand it. That notice, in giant red letters, says something about firearms and weapons not being allowed in the hearing room. I don't know what I would have done with my sawed-off had I inadvertantly brought it. There's no court officers, and just this little guy at a big table with a cell phone. I wonder if getting you on tape saying that you have read and understood the firearms prohibition somehow makes you more culpable than if you just walked in and blew someones head off without making any such statement.
He then rattles through a pro-forma interrogation of the petitioner, and schedules the case for discharge of debts two months later. There's no robes, and not even many suits. It was scheduled at 10:30 AM. I woke up sick as hell, crawled there, sat waiting for my lawyer, and trying to keep quiet the old-man chorus in my chest. My lawyer was representing three of the five petitioners at the 10:30 session. Bankruptcy law is apparently a brisk business.
I walked home, changed clothes, and shivering, I put on my little cap and sat down to write a simple blog entry.
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generating page(s)...Look familiar?
I hate to complain (no, that's a big lie, I love to complain, so here goes...). I've been watching the above little graphic for an hour. And during that time I waxed reflective about the magic of push-button publishing. You see, Blogger has several (at least) major pieces behind the magic. For example, there is one piece which keeps a database with all my precious irreplaceable pearls of wisdom. This is where they go when I push the 'Post' button. There is another piece that takes those posts from the database and transfers them to my web-server, which was originally the most fascinating aspect of Blogger for me. It was cool to do something on a blogger web page, and have the results emerge on my website.
That's the gimick that got me hooked, and before long, I was assimilated into the blogger community. However, as I am wont to do from time to time, my affections eventually wandered; I began seeing Greymatter in furtive little trysts, and adolescent explorations. We met in the safe and hidden confines fo my webserver, ftp-ing the nights away. I revealed nothing to my faithful friend, blogger. But it didn't work out. Greymatter is one hot piece, (of software), but things got complicated, and I guess I wasn't in it for the long haul. The mysterious ones are the most attractive, but they require the greatest committment. I just wasn't at that place with gm. Except for just one more fling I had with gm, it has been blogger and me for the past two years.
It wasn't really one thing only that led to this. It never is. There's a malaise, a general lack of novelty, a challenge, passion, and payoff that is just not there anymore like there was when me and blogger began. It's not actually over yet. Though I no longer love blogger we are, you might say, still co-habitating. But I am seeing another program.
MovableType, apart from having a cool name, isn't 'out there' as much as blogger; he stays home, on my server. He's more accessible than Greymatter. He does it for me. With blogger, depending on what interface I am using—editBlog page, the blogThis popup, or the API products, to name a few—there is at least two servers involved in that process apart from mine, more likely there is a chain of blogger servers, any of which can (and do) go down from time to time. And when a server goes down on me, it is nothing like when that happens in a human relationship. It does NOT make me happy. It really comes down to simple logic (don't we always say that when we are about to break someone's heart?). The fewer opportunities for failure between me and a published page, then the more likely I can publish when I want to.
If, or when, I finally do leave blogger, those will be my reasons. I will miss the tempermental servers; I have grown kinda fond of their antics. And I will miss the connection to the blogger community, though that will turn out to be, I think, less of a loss than I now anticipate. I won't be gone and neither will they, but still, moving-on is hard. And if there is any consistency to my fate, once it is over for good I will realize like a hundred times before that I was nuts to leave, and that it was the best thing I ever had.
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TITLE: suffer the little children
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Tell me please, once again, what exactly it is that makes these children evil. Objectively speaking, I think it is grossly unreasonable of us to expect that these children will do nothing during their short lives in response to these injustices.
If we want to continue to do nothing about the crimes committed against them, we should by the same token do nothing about the crimes that they commit. This is absurd, to be sure, but it is certainly less absurd than what we do currently: cultivate for only one group of people the humane compassion that is rightly deserved by all people.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Apartheid in the Holy Land STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 04/29/2002 01:04:39 AM ----- BODY:A synopsis of Dr. Tutu's remarks from his keynote address Occupation is Oppression, given in Boston at the Ending the Occupation conference on April 13, 2002, can be found at the Guardian. Also check out this article in The Christian Science Monitor. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Israeli arrogance STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 04/29/2002 01:04:39 AM ----- BODY:
The [Durham Catholic District School Board] has said it supports Hall's right to be a homosexual but that it does not support "a homosexual lifestyle."
 | Into the 60's Howard Johnson's still owned the road. Expansion had stretched coast to coast. In 1965, sales exceeded those of McDonald's, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken combined. They were the second largest food feeder in the United States exceeded only by the US Army. --from The Howard Johnson's Story |
The last Howard Johnson's restuarant in Massachusetts, the state where HoJo's began, is closing today.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: eat STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 05/28/2002 03:02:59 AM ----- BODY: Work called today. Somebody was out, they wanted me to come in. But I was so bad yesterday that I was feeling that familiar fondness for the rope (and I don't mean the one with the life ring at the end). I retrieved myself from that abyss, but only with the promise that I would be 'sick' on Tuesday. One day off isn't enough this week, not to mention that I was given four hours worth of work to do at home today. So today I didn't call them back. It is bad enough to be still suffering from my time there; to respond to their call for help only to say, "you're on your own" is cruel to both me and them. I didn't eat all day. Just ate ten minutes ago. And there's a muscle in the back of my neck burning like an oil field on fire. I haven't begun to recuperate from the last week of hell-on-earth at that hospital where I work. Staying home tomorrow is not about recuperating, it's about avoiding harm. But I don't know if staying home just one day is going to help anything at all. I work in the admitting department at a detox. However, we can't admit anybody without first beeping at least two people who are seldom readily available--and even less so on a holiday weekend like this last one. But we cannot even begin the ordeal of beeping doctors and administrators for approval until after we endure the ordeal of lying to suffering people, telling them there are no beds when in fact there are empty beds. It's just that their non-Medicare insurance is acceptable only if we have admitted one, and preferably two Medicare patients before them. Guess which pays more. I might have some tolerance for this situation, if the hospital were not spewing cash to seven vice presidents and more, most who have the same last name as the hospital's president. Nepotism aside (some waste is endemic), they just spent ninety thousand to replace a working phone system with one that doesn't. More cash down the drain, and I can't admit you because your insurance pays fifty a day less than Medicare. There was general astonishment surrounding the new phone system's inadequacies when it was initially installed, and this fed some feeble hope it would be made right by the powers that be. Over several month's that hope has been extinguished, and I can see now that everyone is grimly bearing as a matter of course the vast inefficiencies and impediments introduced by this expensive downgrade of our phone system. 'The way they do things will never change;' that's what everybody says. Let me go into just a few of the many lies and misrepresentations which arise from the fact that we also answer 1-800-ALCOHOL, the national drug and alcohol information and referral line. If, for example, you are calling 800-ALCOHOL from Florida (or anyplace else outside of New England, for that matter), good luck. You will be swiftly referred to another phone number which probably doesn't work, and if it does, it probably won't provide you with the information you are seeking. This is more of a crime because our 'hotline' is advertised as something which it is not. Until I complained a couple years ago, that page called us 'trained counselors.' Now it calls us 'highly trained staff', and elswhere lies that 'you can talk through a difficult situation with one of our on-line counselors.' The training I recieved six years ago (and repetitively since then) regarding calls to 800-ALCOHOL was very clear; it is not a counseling line, and we who answer it are not counselors, but admissions coordinators. We arrange to admit you, or we give you a number and end the call. Somewhere between the institutional neglect, and the naked agony of the individual, there is me and a few comrades making 9, maybe ten bucks an hour. We really do our best to help. I acknowledge the fiscal realities of providing an expensive service, and detoxification at AdCare Hospital is expensive; we require a three-thousand dollar cash deposit at the time of admission for patients who can't--or choose not to--use insurance. And I think it is almost worth it. It is a good place and it does a great deal of very good work. But it wastes a lot of money, and it doesn't seem to be as bothered as me by the corners it has to cut to make ends meet. There is somebody who needs help standing on every corner that they cut, somebody who is going to call me sooner or later, and I will have to say, 'not here.' Maybe I really am too sick to work today. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: joe EMAIL: joe@burgwinkel.com IP: 64.105.110.210 URL: http://burgwinkel.com DATE: 06/04/2002 09:56:17 AM I am. Living. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Me Again EMAIL: lazy@lasier.com IP: 216.68.44.228 URL: http://halfmadspinster.com DATE: 06/04/2002 12:18:16 AM Now I read it. Joe, I've checked. No rope will hold you. No chain. No bungee. No twine. Nothing. It'll never hold. Nope, never. Don't even bother. And I've locked up all the meds, so don't try. And you're fresh out of razors. Looks like you're going to have to live. love ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Mary T. EMAIL: mth@mth.com IP: 67.96.176.158 URL: http://www.yourSite.org DATE: 05/28/2002 09:55:20 AM Joe, I don't have time to read your site right this minute (have a meeting), but I read your comment to me. Don't ever give up. I'm out here sending love. I really do adore you (what I know of you, and that's enough). ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: grave of the fireflies STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 06/04/2002 12:07:04 PM ----- BODY: At 1:45 AM somebody knocked on the door. They kept knocking. Sometime after 3:00 AM they knocked their last. I don't like it when people come to visit, unannounced, at 2 in the morning. I especially don't like it when they --presumably a friend, though I don't think I can tell the difference between a real friend and a smiling enemy-- continues knocking for over an hour. Is it just deliberate torture? ..from a friend? Or is it some former-friend, a malcontent who has maintained some simmering grievance toward me and has chosen the angsty and insane part of night, the wee hours, to address it? In my apartment it is nearly impossible to escape from an unwelcome knock at my door. I have a studio, and no part of the apartment (except for the closet in the bathroom) is more than ten feet from one or the other door, and he used both doors last night. And as it happens, my dishwasher was running when he arrived. My dishwasher is noisy. From outside my apartment in the hall, it sounds like I am taking a shower and having a tantrum at the same time. It's not repetitious noise either, it really makes it sound like someone is moving around in here. Have you ever hated your dishwahser for telling the truth? I am most certainly nuts. It would have been so much simpler to have just opened the door and said, 'go away.' But would he (or she) --no reason to be chauvinist about my paranoia-- have gone? Once his (or her) intent to torture me was clear, it was not much of a leap then to envision all sorts of violent intents festering outside my door, hovering just above the shadow that I could see through the space under the door. Let me clarify a bit; this knocking was gentle, at times even timid. This was not the door-rapping that accompanies an emergency or crisis, at least not the kind that involve fire or police. And any friend who knows that I might sit rigid unto sore stiffness for two hours also knows that I need more than an anonymous knock in the night before I open the door. A friend in need would make some announcement from outside the door like, 'Hey Joe, it's Jack. You know, Jack, the ripper. I gotta use your phone.' Or maybe it's only the smiling enemies who choose to speak when knocking at my door at midnight, their polished words and pleasant tones a balm to my fevered angst. And maybe I prefer them; they don't want a friend, they are not seeking a quote-unquote relationship. Whatever they want, they do not want me to be real. No matter what bizarre imagined danger a smiling enemy might represent, it is never worse to me than the threat posed by a friend. It is by friendship that we get real. I will not survive the transition from me to real.+',height='+(screen.availHeight-30)+',scrollbars=no,resizable=yes');)
He (or she) took a break around two-thirty; the shadow moved away from the door. I took the opportunity to stealthily reposition myself in front of my monitor. No turning lights on or off, no closing blinds, and no standing upright even --the knocker may be watching from outside, and the shadow may return at any moment. And it did.
I had been planning to watch Grave of the Fireflies. So I did. I crawled across the floor to my chair, turned off the sound and started playing the DVD. English subtitles. An occasional knock at the door. No music. There is at least a novel's worth of irony in the image of me watching an anime movie about the homelessness, starvation, and deaths of a young Japanese boy and his little sister, orphaned at the end of World War II, all the while ignoring someone who obviously knows me --and for all I know needed me, or maybe needed just a place to stay last night-- standing at my door less than ten feet away, alone in the hall outside my apartment.
A true crisis never happens outside of our own hearts.
The movie was a diversion from my imaginings of murder and mayhem lurking outside my door. It also diverted my attention away from the insane behavior in which I had already invested an hour, and subsequently three hours. And with the addition of this post now, four hours. If the insanity ever ends, I won't be happy. It is my life.
By the way, get that movie if you haven't seen it. And watch it twice, once without making a sound.
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AUTHOR: joe
EMAIL: joe@burgwinkel.com
IP: 64.105.110.43
URL: http://burgwinkel.com
DATE: 06/06/2002 04:27:02 AM
You are too kind.
And I would love to have a man pick my lock... That's probably why it terrifies me so.
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AUTHOR: dg
EMAIL: dg@dgsblog.net
IP: 63.192.67.77
URL: http://www.dgsblog.net
DATE: 06/05/2002 03:33:23 PM
It wasn't me. But glad you didn't open the door. I once ignored a knock at my door. Then watched as the knocker proceeded to pick the lock and let himself in. Was okay though, in one sense anyway. It was a maintenance guy who thought I was still the resident manager and as such he thought he every right to break into my apartment. He did not. Even if I had still been resident manager, but I did not ream him as he was basically a nice guy.
And thanks for the Quote:
"A true crisis never happens outside of our own hearts"
Beautiful words I'm glad to see you are sharing with everyone again.
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TITLE: 3:51 AM
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DATE: 06/06/2002 03:51:32 AM
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Me. I look at my name on the cancelled checks returned to me, and I wonder who that is --me. I see me as though from afar, as if everything I know of as me is a memory --a remembrance of flesh once animated; a fond recognition of a distant life, in which pulse and scent were too familiar to be noticed, from a perspective where I have neither. I imagine fondly remembering pain, and breath, and hunger, and all the host of physical, temporal preoccupations that came with having a body. I picture --or rather, percieve evanescently-- the latter-me wondering quizically how the embodied-me could have failed to exploit all the fascinations raised by the curiosity of being both physical and spiritual at once. How did I go through that with eyes, but unaware? With a warm throbbing heart and exquisite nerves, but unfeeling? With needs, both ferocious and delicate, with desires both fleeting and unending, and with appetites both excruciatingly insatiable and sumptuously fed, and with me all the while unforgivably unconscious?
It is too late. Light is beginning to overtake this spot in the northern hemisphere, creeping up over this place on earth from the East-northeast. Every summer night, the sun sleeps briefly, lightly, just beyond the northern woods, never fully surrendering its influence over the sky, never completely abandoning us. In the summer, at these latitudes where I have lived this life, the northern sky stays a faintly luminous deep, deep blue. It is the warmth of every Summer night.
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AUTHOR: joe
TITLE: educated morons
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DATE: 06/07/2002 03:05:17 PM
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There is nothing like a cab driver to make one want to keep living, ...or at least want to clean the house (I have just discovered dust bunnies under my keyboard).
Is sex really supposed to be this good? 
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AUTHOR: Mary T.
EMAIL: mth@nono.com
IP: 67.96.176.158
URL: http://halfmadspinster.com
DATE: 08/19/2002 09:10:22 AM
yes!
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AUTHOR: joe
TITLE: no time
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DATE: 08/18/2002 02:51:05 PM
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There's no time. There never is. I really don't want time, I want stopped time. Just hold still for a minute, so I can figure all this out, OK? Don't you realize there's babies under this train, getting smeared all down the tracks from here to Henrietta Ville?
Yeah, I know; it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all. There's no stopping now.
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AUTHOR: joe
EMAIL: joe@burgwinkel.com
IP: 64.105.110.161
URL: http://burgwinkel.com
DATE: 08/19/2002 03:45:40 PM
I bought it. I'll let you know. Thanks.
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AUTHOR: Mary T.
EMAIL: no@@nuh.com
IP: 67.96.176.158
URL: http://halfmadspinster.com
DATE: 08/19/2002 09:11:06 AM
I just finished reading The Fermata by Nicholson Baker. You should check it out.
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AUTHOR: joe
TITLE: a hundred loves
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DATE: 08/28/2002 03:13:50 PM
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Out of bed. Considered writing yesterday (like everyday). In fact, I just remembered that I had actually opened the Movable Type new entry page. Never stroked a single key, though. Some more important diversion (which I can't recall now) distracted me.
Considered writing of love--that was two days ago. I wonder if this will catch on (like the original 100 things, maybe): make a list of--lets make it challenging--100 people who you love or have loved, and why. Be brief.
Let me clarify my format for this list: Some identification of the person loved precedes the semicolon; my motivation for loving, brief and vastly oversimplified, follows the semicolon.
1. My third grade teacher, Mrs. Tupper; because she loved me first.
2. My brother; he was my first best friend.
3. Not Elton John; he lied when what I needed most of all was the truth.
4. Not me; same as above.
5. Andrew, my landlord's grandson (he manages the building); because he's sweet and sincere and beautiful.
6. David Ackley, who was the very first one; because he was beautiful long before I had any clue how to appreciate beauty.
7. Juan Valdez; coffee.
8. Duke, my dog when I was a teenager; for being absolutely innocent, and for being a dog.
9. The shirtless young man with the tattoo and the necklace, who I see on his porch from my kitchen window; because he's cute. (And, apparently, straight.)
10. My friend, John, in Boston; because he's as loyal as a dog—and probably as innocent, too. Oh, and because he loves me.
11. Anne, my supervisor at work; because she sees behind my disguises and its OK.
12. Jimmy B., a straight boy who I had a crush on in my twenties; because he was irresistable to me then, I still have no idea why.
13. David F., another straight-boy crush, earlier than Jimmy, when I was a teenager; because Dave accepted me loving him, and he loved me. He probably still does.
14. The Thompson Twins; for Hold Me Now.
15. Neil Michael Medin, who is not remarkably pretty but is terribly attractive, who has sold me every bike I have owned for fifteen years; for his sincere kindness and integrity, and for his knowing without saying.
16. The cab driver who comes over for sex; for knowing where to go, how to get me there, and for always coming back, no matter how many times I told him not to.
17. My great-aunt Helen; for staying kind against all odds, and for teaching me—when I was nine—how to crochet and how to love no matter what.
18. My kindergarten teacher, Mary Winning; for inventing the world for me.
19. Boy George; for always being himself, unfinished, unconventional, unapologetic.
20. My ex-friend, Scott M.; for letting me love him, sans sex, which must have been more difficult for him to do than I can possibly imagine. (He was a hustler.)
21. Bobby, the love of my life, with whom I realized that making love did not necessarily make anything at all like love; because he's guilless, abused yet endlessly forgiving, strong as a rock and good to the core but as delicate and sensitive as the morning's most fleeting and precious dream.
22. Mary, the Half Mad Spinster; for laughing and smiling and reading and writing, for occasionally crying right out loud (and hearing me when I do), and for being a person as sturdy and honest as anybody I have ever met—in person, or not.
+',height='+(screen.availHeight-30)+',scrollbars=no,resizable=yes');)
23. A bellboy/pianist I met when I worked on Cape Cod in the summer of 1989, Christopher Castle; because he had nearly as much—or perhaps even more—affection for me than I had for him.
24. Peter, the pastry chef, who was my best friend during that same season on the Cape; because he loved me and because I never told him that I loved him. 
25. Tim W., my boss that year on the Cape (it would seem I love just about everyone I met that year!); I love Tim because he was tough, open-minded, hugely energetic, playful, sweetly charming, kind, understanding... and he told me at the end of the season that he wished I would stay through the winter and be his friend.
What is broken in me that I keep failing to grab such ropes of love thrown to me here in isolation drowning?
26. And of previous fame in this blog, also from that year on Cape Cod—I need a break from this reminiscing—Peter Wiedenman; for being the one person who, even though I thought he would never notice the likes of me because he was so cool, not only noticed me, but focused on me.
27. Tara, who is a spectacular person, a nurse where I work, an actress, an athlete, and a person with C.P.; because she has a heart of gold, and because she shows it to me, often.
28. reX; because he shares everything, and that is no small gift to me.
29. Stephanie, the one I work with, who I am so close to that I can't see her, and whose death I worry about irrationally; for being light, life, and love in flesh.
30. Tommy, Stephanie's brother, who is hot as hell, and possesses a fair amount of Stephanies best qualities in his own right; because he put my shoulder back in its socket with a simple gentleness—even though he hates doing that sort of thing—after I dislocated it dancing at his brother's wedding.
31. Paul, the owner of Tech Pizza, where I get most of my meals when I am at home; for just being kind, always kind.
32. Paul's (I think oldest) son; for being not only kind, but for possessing a particular gentle compassion, borne of a secret personal suffering of his own that I wish I could heal.
33. Julie, the admissions department nurse where I work; for coming to work—like me—in utter dread and agony every day but, despite this, appreciating even more than I do my sense of the absurd.
34. My sister; for loving me even in my estrangement.
35. Bill Lyver, my only friend when I was a teenager who I did not want to sleep with; for being, very simply, an excellent friend.
36. Paul M., who was the other first one back in 1984; for touching-off in me a desire that never was and, fortunately, never will be fully satisfied or extinguished.
37. Kenny A., who fanned that desire into a fucking conflagration; despite the burns, I love him for the fire.
I have wrung from my heart as much as I can for today.
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AUTHOR: NameTERESITA
EMAIL: e-mailMULLANET@UMMHC.ORG
IP: 63.121.252.140
URL: http://
DATE: 09/04/2002 04:40:40 PM
JOE I LOVE YOU WITH OR WITHOUT HAIR.......BUT IT IS TRULY INTERESTING TO SEE YOU AS A CAREFREE KID....WITH HAIR
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: dg
EMAIL: dg@dgsblog.net
IP: 63.192.67.77
URL: http://www.dgsblog,net
DATE: 08/29/2002 04:48:32 PM
and I love Joe's writing.
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TITLE: a hundred loves +',height='+(screen.availHeight-30)+',scrollbars=no,resizable=yes');)
This struck me yesterday when I saw it, just a glancing blow, a tragedy in the news—there are so many. But it really hurt. Still does.
One survivor.
How do you go to work everyday for months with fourteen friends, isolated together in the Maine wilderness, isolated together in a foreign country, your family half a globe away, isolated together by your language and your culture, and then one day return alone from the woods?
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AUTHOR: joe
TITLE: judicially cognizable rape
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DATE: 09/18/2002 01:13:29 AM
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From the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly:
Well it's a cold cold dark dark day in Minnesota. Terrible plane crash broke everybody's hearts. And so it means a lot to us that you came to our show... so glad that you came, and all these wonderful musicians here. Not here to do a eulogy or make a memorial. The guy already has a city named after him, this one right here that we're in, so what else can you do? <applause> So we're just going to do our show, just do our show, with a heavy heart which makes it all the more important to do it.
Can I tell you that I cried tonight, listening to this?
The party of power has won everything. The Senate and the House are theirs. Today the United Nations' Security Council abdicated its right to dissent and allied its authority with US imperial supremacy in a stunning unanimous adoption of its Iraq resolution. Also, maybe this is not related to the Republican election sweep, but the day after election results, federal charges were dropped against the Washington snipers so that they could be tried in Virginia, where federal law does not prevent the seventeen year old from being executed. I suspect the government hesitated until it was sure there was no Democrat-controlled Senate to offend. From now on they will resume with glee and impunity the selling-off of whole chunks of personal liberties, appointing treasonable justices, arranging for the execution of minors and bending the course of a nation to the will of a few.
I feel as though there has never been so weak a voice as mine raised feebly against so great a roar of morally corrupt power and arrogance.
But I know there have been thousands. Through milennia individuals of compassion have sought fitfully to organize themselves under various political parties and social movements of every ilk, none with absolute effectiveness. We have tried socialism, communism, and secularism. We have occupied niches of moderation encased within movements whose goals were largely inconsistent with ours, like some religions, and variously flavored conservatisms. In reaction to our feeling of helpless paralysis in the face of disaster, we have, on occasion, even joined up with organizations that advocate force and violence. Though we need not be passive, we are largely pacifist.
Whether these efforts through history have failed or not is debatable. The present conditions, which I consider nightmarish, may simply be an educational opportunity proceeding directly from the many efforts made through millenia to promote human compassion. The apathetic are never more than today poised to learn something from Emporer Bush and his court.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: dream STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 11/09/2002 02:47:02 PM ----- BODY: John was recounting the most recent episode of his endless pursuit of sex; earlier today he had found a particularly choice morsel online, whom he hopes to meet later. "Do you know that we live in a country that is the modern equivalent of Nazi Germany?" I asked. "Of course!" he replied without hesitation. This surprized me. "Do you care?" I knew the answer, but as I asked the question I realized, with a horror in the pit of my stomach, that I was face to face with the very demon that will destroy us. "No, I just want to find some hot piece and..." (Risque drivel omitted.) The demon is our apathy. We tolerate state-sponsored assassinations, justifying it by narrow illogic that fails, fantastically, to recognize how it duplicates the crime. At the same time as we abdicate our responsibility to oppose such crimes, we are also forfeiting individual liberties under the fiction that state control of the individual will somehow preserve individual liberty. This is an obvious contradiction, but we don't care, as long as we can maintain the American Dream—a home, a car, a comfortable life. Secret trials take place, and individuals are unconstitionally imprisoned, but we refuse to recognize these crimes because the victims are not americans—not entitled to the dream. And we don't care as we cling to the disintegrating tissue of our dream. There was some relief in recognizing this demon-apathy. Knowing the cause of the disease, no matter how intractable—even when the prognosis seems hopeless—is at least an anchor-point in reality. Truth, no matter how unpleasant, is where hope must start. Built on any other foundation, hope will fail. From there we can begin to hope—if we are to hope at all. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: stardust STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 11/11/2002 12:18:58 AM ----- BODY: Note to self: Be somewhere dark during the night of November 18. (More precisely, November 19, at 4:00 AM) ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: NameDiana * Artemis EMAIL: e-mailartemis@graffiti.net IP: 64.230.106.171 URL: http://www.epanastasi.blogspot.com DATE: 11/11/2002 12:24:52 AM YOU are a wonderful writer. Do not let this gift go to waste! ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: joe is STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 11/11/2002 07:54:29 PM ----- BODY: I'm numb with sugar but can't go back to sleep for the caffeine, so here's the most original, perceptive, and insightful thing I could come up with; Googlism for joe. It's all I have to show for the seven hours since I crawled up off the futon and onto the chair. And... Hey! —let's be careful out there. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: Where are we? STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 11/20/2002 04:58:28 PM ----- BODY:
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I don't even know if I really want this program. But the author's license agreement makes me want to download and use it for this line alone: "But if you like it, I ask of you one thing: say a prayer..."
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: dialogue STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 12/01/2002 02:06:56 PM ----- BODY:Instant messaging scares me. Like the phone. They are the tangible manifestations of our need for human relationship, a need I do my best to repudiate. The fact that I use these devices, or rather, keep them handy—I don't actually make calls or IM anybody—is evidence of my conflict within; I want to isolate, yet I want relief from lonliness. I fear contact, especially genuine intimacy, yet I despise isolation. Rock and a hard place.
The illusion of presence soothes. The AOL instant messenger 'door creak' and 'door slam' sounds suggest that I am there, wherever 'there' is—present to the reality of now—even when I am not. Like soft voices from the kitchen when I was a toddler waking from a nap, the illusion of presence, of a cognizant, caring presence quieted my fears that I might be cutoff and on my own. Why did I ever fear abandonment? How did I know such a condition existed?
I have a hard time with people who never experienced nihilistic threats in infancy. This makes it easy to exclude many. It is not that I don't like them, it's just that I'm jealous. It hurts more than I can bear when to be kisses not to be full on the lips.
BTW, it looks like the rent check maybe didn't bounce...
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There is just too much to cry about. Seas upon seas filled with tides of tears, coming in overwhelming waves, unrelenting, unending. Timeless.
Who would embark on such a quest? To venture out upon a sea beyond the limits to which we have ventured in the past where it gets only deeper, darker, more desolate and more hopeless—who would go? By any reckoning from the shore such excursions could only lead to death. Or worse, to an unimaginably horrific end in a place beyond the reach of any humans, a region devoid of compassion and bereft of love, a tortured place where all things that we have never known hold sway and power, a wilderness where dwell the terrors and demons which we have driven off the common ground of our familiarity. Who would go?
The hero. She will go. She might gaze out across the hopeless tempest, away from her own people (who seem to be not her own), away from her home (which feels like it is not her home), and she might see a vision of something beyond. Such is the gift of the misfit—to see two worlds with equivalent eyes. For the misfit, both the native land where most prefer to stay and the dark sea of unpredictable possibilities lie upon the same horizon. For the misfit, either journey will be difficult, whether inland or outbound. But for the hero, only one way offers the true thrill of life...
Seas upon seas filled with tides of tears, coming in overwhelming waves.
Unrelenting.
Unending.
Timeless.
Carry me home.
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About time.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: doing it for real STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 12/25/2002 02:22:38 PM ----- BODY: I fantasized all day about a movie I would make, if... If something. If I were connected to life, to myself, to this moment. If I had done the time in the little jobs that the people who make movies did. If I had done the work that a writer does to earn the right to write. If I was consumed with doing what I want—following my bliss. Instead, I am obsessed with identifying and avoiding all the things I do not want—and that list is never done. Lucas is home for the holidays, apparently. I am just glad he has not been consumed by the background, like a discreet signal lost in the hiss. I want a beacon, or I want to be a beacon, maybe. No, I would chafe at the burden of being used by others for guidance, though I'd be flattered. Maybe I would be so flattered that it wouldn't matter to me that my guidance was wavering and unreliable. Maybe I wouldn't mind deliberately misleading them—and maybe it doesn't really matter in the end. The movie is a gay porn with no rubbers about a primal breach of trust in the middle of an unintended love affair, with an angel who falls from her position as a winged luminous creature to become a homeless, legless street beggar, achieving enlightenment in the process. Troy is black, age 25, he's HIV positive and angry, he's living in Boston and he hates the white privileged world. Jonathon is white, age 16, and uncomfortable in his rich, entitled world; he lives in Wellesley Hills, an affluent suburb of Boston. Troy is Jonathon's first love and first lover. Jonathon is Troy's first victim. In the end, something precious and familiar is destroyed, while something new, precious and unknown is created. In the end it is not about fucking without rubbers, but about loving without defense or reservation. By falling in love with the rich white boy he sought to infect, Troy is transformed from an aloof aggressor, and his hatred is revealed as empty and meaningless. The naive Jonathon loses his innocence, and his illusions that Troy was the perfect first love are destroyed, and he is left with the question, "Can my love for Troy transcend his betrayal and forgive, no matter what?" At the end Jonathon is having blood drawn at a free clinic for an anonymous HIV test. We never find out the results of his test. We have to decide for ourselves about the strength of his love. In the end it is a movie. In the end, we—and not the porn stars fucking on film—are the only ones doing it for real. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: half gone moon STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 12/27/2002 02:21:45 PM ----- BODY: Time is about up. Only minutes to go, never enough time. Phone calls and responsibilities interrupt. Even phone calls I want, from people I love. Don't they know time is all there is? I'm not so rich with time that I can afford to lavish it all about on whomever happens by. I'm not that generous. I have to force something through this tiny window of time, something huge and important, like the swelling of a symphony up from rumbling depths to a cresendo understood by all. I sit here beside the hopeless task, it's like trying to get a piano through a bathroom window, and I am on the toilet. Another interrupting task. We are buried in snow, everything is whiteness, snow like frosting plastered on the sides of trees and walls and porch railings, and raised in great whimsical drifts. It is as if workmen came in the night and tried to decorate the world like a wedding cake. The streets are already filthy, time is going, the moon is half gone, my coffee cup needs a refill and I don't have time. I have such big things to say. So little are the words that maybe it won't matter much if I never get them said. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: bouyance STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 12/31/2002 02:45:32 PM ----- BODY: Cleaned the apartment Sunday night. Spent yesterday bitching, moaning, napping, and downloading cute games for the iPAQ, which pretty much is a useless device—I carry it around hoping I might need it for something, and I worry about losing it. But back to Sunday night... Stayed up until 6:00 AM Monday morning cleaning. Used every rag, sock, and towel in the place. I now have a 300 pound pile of laundry on my bathroom floor that smells like Murphy's Oil Soap. I had to get the place at least tenable looking because the landlord's cute blonde grandson was coming with a locksmith at 9:00 AM to re-key all the locks in my building. His note said it would take about an hour. They came and woke me at 9:30 AM and stayed for four hours. I started out tired, cranky and irritable. My usual, I know. But then I got worse. The fat, ugly locksmith comes in with globs of slush, takes the locks apart, leaves the pieces on the floor and goes away for twenty minutes. He did this six times. The pretty young blonde hovered about being useless, but polite, during each visitation. This made me anxious in addition to annoyed; attractive young men make me anxious, especially if I am not having (or not able to have) sex with them. By 11:00 AM, when I had expected to be back in bed snoozing recuperatively from my all-nighter, it had become clear that this would take a couple hours more. My overwhelming desire to be alone was in diametric opposition to my equally overwhelming desire to fully engage the fever of having this adonis within speaking distance. Alone won. I was all but snarling audibly by early afternoon. I think I even caught their attention briefly with a little petulant cabinet-slamming, or a loud expellatory sigh. Or two. I guess I blew my chances for a blow-job; there won't be any illicit encounters with landlord-grandson, at least not in the apartment which I occupy. Oh well. Maybe I really do prefer the view of him through imperceptibly parted venetian blinds as he scurries about outside my windows. Despite my pining for contact, maybe I do prefer to be alone. Maybe. But maybe I just do not know how to do it; me and the cute boy, or me and you, or me and anyone at all. The game is tedious for me for some reason, at least it is the way I play it. Probably I am not 'following through,' as in a perfect golf swing. Probably I am not surrendering to the flow, swimming with it, cooperating with life, and even redirecting it a little as the course of things might allow. Probably somewhere long ago I chose to fight, and to make that my sole companion, to dig my toes, my whole legs even, deep into the muck and fight the flow while also trying to keep my head above it. Could it really be the complete opposite? That this stream of experiences—this dream of existence—is really the bouyant of my life instead of its inundation? ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: joe EMAIL: joe@burgwinkel.com IP: 66.167.13.43 URL: http://burgwinkel.com DATE: 01/03/2003 02:46:11 PM i am a comment whore. thank you. ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: dg EMAIL: dg@dgsblog.net IP: 24.50.69.154 URL: http://www.yourSite.org DATE: 01/02/2003 07:43:33 AM Joe you ruie. ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: bourgeois discontent STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 01/07/2003 10:00:34 AM ----- BODY:Woke this morning vastly earlier than usual. Indeed, I was up today at the same time that on other days I am just lying down.
The cab driver finally returned yesterday and confirmed what I had not dared to hope—that he had been coming here but always when I was somewhere else. As his absence increases, so increases my certainty that he has finally recognized the absurdity of his attraction for me. Then he comes again, and I am almost convinced that his eager zeal has indeed been long pending, the result of a slowly steeped and strong desire. It baffles me. And he put me on my back this time; the burning in my strained muscles is a warm reminder.
He'd said the place was hot when he arrived, but I hadn't noticed. After he left I had to crank the heat and I put on a sweatshirt and hat, too. Though I'd only gotten up at noon, by eleven-thirty last night I was back in bed and swaddled thickly, snoring with a National Geographic laying open in my hands. I dreamt of confusion about the time, of places I could have known and I dreamt of experiences I haven't had. I woke often in the night feeling my exquisite weakness without escape into the depths of unconscious sleep. And at 6:54 AM, as hints of impending light revealed the sky, and as the landlord-grandson sprinkled salt outside on the icy walk, I gave up my night's endeavor to escape, and made this coffee.
Fleeting thoughts of making improvments to my slowly shredding physique, thoughts of massifying my spindly arms with push-ups, or trimming my stretching abdomen with sit-ups—these thoughts pass swiftly through the space of my consciousness. Memories of a younger body, which I must have once had, linger somewhat longer. And everything creeps along inexorably. Sometimes the Grand Procession is so slow it is dull. Let the lifetimes come and go, the thousands of existences that have been and are yet to come, let's get them over with and move on. All the societies and the cultures traipsing tediously through their predictable courses, let's just get them done! Steal all the oil and burn it all up and let's move on to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. Why can't we just shed the facades and the artrifices that bind us to this glacial pace? Let the pretenses go. Let the growling sex-fiends fuck. Let the imperialist warmongers murder. Let the saints love. Let the blond landlord-grandsons all do their chores and go to school and make their fortunes and get old and die and come back and do it all again, a thousand times again. And let's get on to whatever happens next...
There is something. Next. Isn't there?
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: now or never STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 01/08/2003 02:24:07 PM ----- BODY: I offer this as an amplification to the last entry. No, there isn't. This is it. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: a good woman STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 01/11/2003 02:23:40 AM ----- BODY:She was influential, affluent, and a powerful symbol promoting peaceful resistance in a brutal place. Unfortunately, Israel is not equipped to prevail in a confrontation with peaceful resistance, and so she was murdered. Passive opposition is the only weapon possessed by the Palestinians which can defeat Israeli efforts to eliminate all of them, which, from my perspective, appears to be exactly what Israel intends to do. Israel will not accept co-existence with any Palestinians—even those who resist them only peacefully—but Israel will gladly accomodate the wishes of every Palestinian who prefers martyrdom to peaceful resistance. Israel knows how to kill a violent Palestinian, and apparently Israel thinks that by murdering a peace-activist grandmother in the quiet afternoon sun, that it will inspire violence among Palestinians who might otherwise be peaceful, thus driving them as fair game into its field of justifiable fire.
I don't follow the tragic events in the Palestinian territories as closely as I could; it upsets me too much. I can only hope that a movement of peaceful resistance will not die but grow and flourish among Palestinians as a result of this good woman's death, disproving once and for all the cynical expectations of their oppressors.
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Which monkey are you?
Another pointless diversion from Bijouriel
You have to read this.
Is that Ruby Ridge property still available?
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AUTHOR: joe
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DATE: 02/07/2003 02:30:36 PM
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There's six inches of fluffy new snow on the ground. Snowflakes are sticking together as they fall, forming big snoflake-matrixes that hover and drift, then hesitate and fall.
Depression is like snow on the poppy fields, like in the Wizard of Oz, only it doesn't wake you up. Snow-depression wants you to stay asleep—and it wants to bury you. It makes you want to be buried.
My favorite was Willie McCool, the pilot of Columbia. I didn't know much of anything about him until he was dead. I have spent the last week scouring the NASA human spaceflight site, and all the images, videos and sounds archived there from the last days of these remarkable people and their remarkable journey. Before the crash I knew they were up there, vaguely. I wasn't even sure, before the end, that they had not already come home—until I saw the headline; Seven Die.
Some TV news anchor interviewed some psychiatrist in 1986, at the time of the Challenger disaster, and the psychiatrist made sense, and I have always remembered what he said. We, who never knew these people, and never tried very much to know anything about them really—people like me—we mourn because these events stir our own buried griefs and cause our own experiences of tragedy to re-emerge. Our loss in the deaths of seven astronauts is not a conjured lament, nor is it a pretense of loss for something which was not our own. It is our loss, for we recognize in the public tragedy an infrangible connection to our own, perhaps secret, tragedies, and we are helpless to stem the tide of tears. The premature end of a life, especially ones like these, recorded with such intricate detail right up to their end, focuses in one aching spot in my chest the termination of all the hopes and dreams I once had, dear things which I saw killed, and precious opportunities which I allowed to die.
There is an affinity of grief for grief. Tears apart seek to join. An unfathomable emptiness here nudges me to move closer to your unfathomable emptiness there. I am bawling my eyes out because it is one of the saddest things this life will ever know.
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AUTHOR: jerry
EMAIL: hoops21256@aol.com
IP: 64.12.96.43
URL: http://www.yourSite.org
DATE: 03/01/2003 05:51:24 PM
i feel the same way u do about this guy: Willie McCool; i knew nothing about him except they (the crew) where up there; now i too have become adicted to this man's story; my classes are also learning who these indiviuals were. I do not even know how i came across ur web site but guy its so cool
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DATE: 02/10/2003 03:15:35 AM
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I am so sick to death of everything that I think of to say, that all I can come up with is this stupid diatribe. I ask the guiding entities what the fuck I should do, what should I write—or at least what should I write about. And there is silence. They do that well, the guiding entities; you probably don't even know they exist they do it so well. But I have this stupid website, and what is one to do with a stupid website but fill it with stupid blither and infantile bellowing. So here we are.
I wonder why I do not have any interesting links to code-up for your viewing pleasure. You know, like those fascinating links to really quite delightful sites which seem to only be discovered by the most intelligent and smooth-skinned, emotionally well-balanced young boy- and girl-geeks. They're cool people, and human and witty and droll and ever ebullient within a bemusedly subdued exterior, and they have lives and they go to school and to work and they go from day to day as if everything is somewhere else and they are on their way. Impossible for me to immitate.
Some kind people seem able, on occasion, to identify something here of marginal value, some sort of decent or comendable quality which I, quite honestly, am at a loss to recognize. But I like it when others see it, so I keep bumbling along, reciting doggerel and hoping to produce again by some clumsy accidental alchemy a bit of wisdom or truth in bright and gleaming gold—maybe platinum.
And maybe I am just distraught. It is a cold, dark night, with a crystal-clear black starlit sky, a moonless void, a vast impenetrable vacancy on what is for now the dark side of the earth.
The memories acquired earliest in life are the most fond to us. The feelings and emotions most familiar to us from our first experiences are dearest to us, and when they return they have greater access to our hearts than all the rest. I have the blessing (or the curse) of just such an affinity for tragedy. It touches me more deeply than any joy ever could; I am never so alive as when confronting anihilation and disaster. No pleasantness, nor mild ecstasy, no sublime comfort nor trembling shaking orgasm can do as much to connect me to the juice of life. To witness the extinguishment from this world of a little bit of hope eternal is, for me, to know beyond knowing—it is to understand without any question or doubt what truly matters.
This is dull to you. Disinteresting. Predictable and obvious. On a cosmic scale, emptied of time, nothing really matters, so why should this? And it doesn't.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: fly STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/14/2003 02:41:32 PM ----- BODY: Fifteen minutes. That's all I have right now. Let's see how much I can say without slipping into nonsensical-ness. It is all OK. It doesn't matter what you do, and it doesn't matter what I do. Everything is perfect. Tragedies. Ecstacies. All the shades of boredom in between. Perfect. I get mad at stupid men with power who do stupid things with guns. But I am no different. I have done stupid things. I get frustrated at all I do not know—the evil machinations and cowardly conspiracies that are concealed from me, like friends talking behind my back or shadow governments manipulating the electorate. But I do not need to know the details. This vague uneasiness is perfect just the way it is. Even if absolutely everything is riding on it. Just perfect. If we really knew, and stopped trying to impose our arrogant little intellects onto everything as if we knew, then we would see that it is all OK. Just the way it is. We could simply be, and thus relieve 'do' of all the angst we heap upon it. In all of human history, when 'do' is so relieved, it has simply had no limits. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: friends STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/17/2003 05:30:24 PM ----- BODY:This scares me. I wanted to be a professional photographer—actually a photojournalist—even before I wanted to be a firefighter. The first camera I fantasized about was a Pentax with a couple lenses. I couldn't muster the courage, or the money, to pay what that cost, and eventually I began lusting after those beautiful Minolta SLRs with all their built-in electronic assistance. Such electronics were new then, in the late seventies, and nobody had yet heard the term 'digital still camera'.
A passion postponed goes into a dormancy of desire. And it waits. Some lusts are powerfully fulfilled, others miss their mark and flail against the wall as they slide to the floor. But some never are allowed to make an effort toward consummation, and for those desires, their postponement may be right. I can only hope that postponement will prove to have perfected the desire when finally comes the long-delayed launch of my ever patient urge to make a picture.
Wish me luck.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: seizure STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 02/28/2003 01:19:37 PM ----- BODY: I realize the protection of copyright is somewhat important. Though it is not orange alert stuff, it is still significant. But in America, if you are rich and don't need a tenth of what you possess, then your right to continued amassment of wealth will enjoy the protection of the US Justice Department, and other Federal lackeys, who once were not the errand boys of the entitled, but the servants of the People. If you are not rich and powerful, and connected, then you can wail and moan, and though you are right, you not only won't win, you also won't get any assistance from Federal law enforcement. Isn't seizing a website a little heavy handed? And doesn't anyone else sense in this excessive action the attempt to terrorize free-thinking and free-speaking people? I don't even know the details of the case, and I never visited the site before it was seized, but these actions by the Justice Department are theatrical, and that scares me. Why not just pull the plug on the servers, and be done with it? Unless of course you want to 'send a message' to intimidate us uppity website owners and discourage not only unlawful activity, but unwelcome discourse as well. John Ashcroft, in great discord with the freedoms he is charged to defend, has done much to discourage free speech. Personally, I think he views that as no small dividend of this action. I reserve no greater contempt than that which I hold for those who act unlawfully under color of authority. I would today wear the disapproval of John Ashcroft as a badge of honor, and it is tragic that I am compelled to say that of the Attorney General of the United States. There is a division of power between the governed and their government. It is an intimate and delicate interface between the freedoms and responsibilities of the individual and those of the state. In a perfect union, the state serves to preserve the individual's 'life, liberty, and pursuit of hapiness'. But even a perfect union between the people and the state is only a marriage of convenience which must be abandoned when its benefits no longer justify its burden. Recent events seem as harbingers to tell us that the once noble state has become an historic artifact. Even abusive cops will likely find a warm place in the halls of the hidden breasts of Lady Justice. Seek not that which sustains. Seek instead that which destroys—and stay behind it. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: helicopters coming STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/04/2003 03:59:34 PM ----- BODY:I woke up, started the coffee, and heard a helicopter go over my house. I folded the futon and heard a helicopter go over my house again. I poured my first cup—oh! that first cup is always so glorious—and my windows and walls shook from a helicopter again passing over head.
I became curious.
You know a helicopter is close when you can hear a ringing whistle sound from it in addition to its throbbing bass. Such high frequency sounds do not travel as far as the lower pitched sounds, and are usually drowned out by them. As I took my first piss I heard that shrill ring from the air machine, and I thought, "I have to get outside." I grabbed my new camera.
It made seven more passes after I got outside. It had probably made twice as many flyovers while I was puttering indoors. I must say the best photo is the very first one I took. I didn't even know how to set the camera for a daylight shot—or for any shot for that matter; it's brand new. I just spun the mode dial to the symbol of the little green camera as I ran through the front door. I looked up and shot.
My house was on the southern extent of a small circular pattern which the helicopter was following repeatedly. At its furthest from me, it was only about a quater mile, and it was banking to the left throughout its course. I thought I would feel awkward, standing on a street pointing a camera in these code orange days. I suppose if it had been marked clearly as a police helicopter, I might have felt naughty photographing its surveillance—but I would have anyway.
But it was not marked clearly, and in these post 9/11 days the unexpected behavior of aircraft gains a whole new significance. I felt almost patriotic, standing in the street, camera braced against a no parking sign, brazenly setting up for a telephoto shot of the underside of this loitering helicopter.
It made still more passes after I went back indoors to see what the images might reveal. After transferring the photos to my PC, I was able to read the registration number of the aircraft, N824AH, and after some web searching, I was able to locate still other photos of my mysterious airborne visitor's siblings:
policeHelo2.jpg
policeHelo5.jpg
And lastly, this very informative page.
In this image, a dangling square structure beneath the body of the helicopter, directly in front of the floodlight, seems to me to be perhaps the airborne equivalent the directional antennae arrays I see on the roofs of some police cars used for locating stolen cars.
Need I say more? I love my camera.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Sam EMAIL: wakefield@recently.nu IP: 68.164.46.146 URL: http://www.recently.nu DATE: 03/05/2003 11:57:06 PM I am insanely jealous of your Camera. It is so nice. I have been wanting to get a new one, and yours is at the top of the list :) Oh, and for some reason, this post seemed to be one of the better ones I've read on a blog lately. Thx. Wakefield ----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: blake EMAIL: blake@exudate.net IP: 24.66.94.142 URL: http://blake.exudate.net/ DATE: 03/04/2003 05:33:37 PM that's a sweet camera - and a really nice shot. you must post more as you take them... ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: given image STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/10/2003 11:24:26 PM ----- BODY:Cold as can be, here. Joint-aching cold, and windy, too. I was outside around sunset playing with my new camera. My fingernails are still throbbing.
This one was an accident; I thought the windows were in focus, not the branches. I set everything else manually, except the focus. I figured the good 'ol auto focus will just set up on the wall, and won't even notice the skinny little branches. I'm learning.
Used to be, on really good days, some mundane thing would present itself to me as a vision, and I would wish I had a camera. That was back before I did have a camera. Such visions presented themselves as perfectly composed images that lacked only capture by a gentle hand. It almost seemed that first there was a perfect image, then reality conspired to make its presentation in the physical world as if hoping that someone might find it, recognize and appreciate the beauty in it, and save it. This made me want a camera.
I look at everything a little bit differently now, or maybe just a little more closely. I see into things. Even without a camera in my hand. I look for light, for clarity, for perspective. I am on the lookout now for images that would be orphans, produced by reality according to a truer, more perfect plan that exists outside of reality and casts itself like frozen branches into our view, hoping that we will see.
Even accidentally.
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: see? STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 0 ALLOW PINGS: PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/11/2003 01:33:17 AM ----- BODY:Here's another before I go to bed; a window and a loft door from the same building as last entry. It was a fire station at the turn of the century. I have always loved this building and I don't know why. Maybe I worked there once in another life. It's amazing what one can see through those windows...
A couple days ago I threw out all the junkmail and outdated catalogs which had accumulated on my kitchen table. I tidied what was left, a few books and some old journals and sketchbooks, with plans to put it all away somewhere eventually. This morning, as I opened the blinds to let in some light, I glanced sleepy-eyed at the titles revealed there on the table. I hadn't noticed them before, together. Postcards from the Edge, by actress Carrie Fischer and The Immense Journey, by anthropologist Loren Eisley. Cute.
Are you sick of my pictures yet?
----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: no pics STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/12/2003 02:13:48 PM ----- BODY: I don't feel like writing, so try this old journal entry. I'll be rearranging the site soon. If you get screwed up in the frames (these are old pages, coded when I knew less than not much) then try this link to the old journal entry. ----- EXTENDED BODY: ----- EXCERPT: ----- KEYWORDS: ----- -------- AUTHOR: joe TITLE: relief STATUS: Publish ALLOW COMMENTS: 1 CONVERT BREAKS: 1 ALLOW PINGS: 0 PRIMARY CATEGORY: DATE: 03/19/2003 06:33:15 PM ----- BODY: I heard a rumor at work that Aziz was shot. Of those at the top in Iraq, Aziz is the most capable politician, and certainly more moderate than Saddam. Aziz wants Iraq to survive as a sovereign nation and has arguably accomplished a political miracle within Iraq to subdue the petulant Saddam and allow inspectors unconditional access.
A coworker said to me the other day, "Yeah, well, I'm behind Bush one hundred percent. I saw the pictures on the news of the kids that got killed, and that's not nice, but you know, they're just going to grow up and be just like their parents."
"And. What's. Wrong. With. That?" I asked, incredulous. "What have they done to us?" She responded with some vague blither about 911. "You don't even know," I said. "The fact is that they haven't done anything to us. You don't even know the lies, much less believe them, yet you are willing to let children die."
Her voice can be a scraping irritating noise even when her words have negligible meaning. But her cavalier disregard of the slaughter of children, and her use of racism to justify it was revolting. I nearly struck her. I had to walk away.
She is just an overwhelmed child herself, what with all the considerable trauma and stress she has endured in her own life. Which makes it worse. She doesn't have the time or the inclination to be bothered with the esoterica of injustice ten timezones away. Indeed, for anyone, accusing one's own country of criminal behavior requires an uncommon discernment both incisive and fearless. And so her opinion is not the result of a rigorous and objective examination of the facts, but is simply a regurgitation of the recieved propaganda, passed on essentially unchanged. I'd like to think no one else thinks this way. I'd like to think the propaganda did not have this effect on one as typical as she. She is in her twenties—starting a family, starting a career, starting an American life. She is a mother. And she is studying to be a nurse. I dread to think how many other young people in america—children really—think as she does.
I want to throw-up.
There is no question in my mind why the world hates us.
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AUTHOR: joe
TITLE: strange embed-fellows
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
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DATE: 04/06/2003 04:25:24 AM
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BODY:
A little bit of truth slipped out recently, despite Donald Rumsfeld's omnipotent micro-management. The whitewashing effort, well underway for days, helps identify for us those few news outlets which still hold the truth in high regard, and reveals the rest as cowardly apologists for thugs. 
You know, maybe it is just me.
I live mostly in fear. That's right folks, I am no different than the people I find most revolting; people who pave-over their nagging consciences; people who consider compassion and logic to be unnecessary encumbrances; people who make statements like "You're either for us, or against us." I am just like them.
The people who believe that 'might makes right', who promote distortions of true patriotism with sentiments like 'America, love it or leave it', and 'My country, right or wrong', they would not agree that I am just like them. They would dispute that they too live mostly in fear. They may have no awareness of their fear, or they may be trying to control the fear that haunts them by denying that it exists. Fear makes us brutal when we could be courageous, it makes us violent when instead we could be powerful, and it makes us view dissent as tantamount to treason. This is how I know they are living in fear just like me.
But maybe it is just me. Maybe I am the only one who is afraid. When I was a child, I would occasionally have a recurring nightmare of being lost in a crowd of strangers, separated from my parents, terrified that I would never be able to find them again. I always thought it would never come true, but here I am; they are gone, and I am lost. I know of course that I am only as isolated as I choose to be, and I choose to be very isolated. I also know that I am not a child, but I feel that way sometimes, and I know that I am not lost, but it sure seems that way.
I don't want to hate them, I don't want to hate anyone. But I don't want to be like them, either. Yet I am. I sometimes let my frustration boil over in a froth of rage and reckless acts, like calling the president an asshole, or calling a cabinet officer a Nazi. While obviously not literally true, such name-calling is polemically unhelpful. To engage in such divisivness is self-abuse. We are a body politic beating itself up, like when the police inflict injuries upon peaceful protesters, or when a raucous war rally tramples a noble sentiment. We—and that is the we that includes us all—we do not want to inflict injury upon ourselves, yet that is what we do sometimes in the reckless folly of our rage and confusion.
I cannot stop them from hurting me. I cannot stop them from locking me up in secret without benefit of due process. I cannot stop them from killing innocent people. All I can do is stop myself from running in fear to the opposite pole in this national debate. I can refuse to become the mirror image of 'them', by continuing to patiently insist that there is no 'them', there is only us.
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