1 Published Tangent Way

Often, I find myself writing about truth when I have nothing to write about, and the pursuit of this altruistic fate. Y'see, truth is a sticky thing, really, because it can bleed into lies, and it can scar... Sure that's being a bit corny but, really, truth inside of a person is a person. Perhaps there is no altruism... Perhaps there is no absolute truth. For example, you can have two people that are split on the idea of murder. One can think it is right, and the other thinks it is wrong. Well, if the man that thinks murder is right kills the other, does he not ultimately win? Isn't that just formative micro-evolution. Change is eventual and perhaps we need a little murder or mishap to shake things up.

Especially in the Christian Right. I was watching the VH1 show Best Week Ever today and they had a segment that said that the Christian Right had deemed Jessica Simpson a slut. They actually called her a slut. Doesn't that go back on the whole, "don't judge me the bible says not to" idea? One guy made this point: they found it objectionable that she was washing a car in a bikini, something a lot of high schools use as a ploy to get people to pay five dollars to get their car badly washed, and yet they made no objection to the Confederate flag on the front of the car. Let me remind you of something, the Confederate flag has not come to symbolize "heritage" but rather racism. Sure, all sins are equal, but, honestly, in the eyes of society, which is worse: a skank or a racist? My point exactly.

Jesus was a liberal since, according to the dictionary, a liberal is merely a person who seeks to change the way things are done whereas a conservative is kind of like an old person: set in their ways and not wanting change. Pharisees, I hear you. Things had been working until this Nazarene came along on a donkey. He was like, "Equality and freedom and love one another!" and the pharisees were basically, equivocably, "Hell No! Get off my turf!" Because, admit it, the Pharisees had something working, but it just wasn't the right thing to do.

Sound familiar? Pilgrims. The Mother Land had the right idea, wrong concept. They wanted Equality and freedom and to love another, unless they were an indian (they'll get theirs). This country was founded on equality and slavery, misogyny and freedom. See how this ties to the Christian Right? No?

They contradict themselves. Two issues were apparent: the confederate flag and Jessica Simpson being a Paris Hilton no-talent-ripoff. So, we brush past the other one (slavery; misogyny) and totally make a big deal outta the other (freedom; equality). Truly, the Christian Right is embedded in the American way.

Let's change this ladies and gentlemen. Let this be a lesson to ye. To be equal, we must address all the issues and look past how one wants to make money. Frankly (and not because I'm a teenaged boy), I don't care what Jessica Simpson wears. She can wear nothing or winter snow clothes for her next video. I don't care. What there shouldn't be is a Confederate flag grazing my television even if it grazing her chest like a bearskin rug.

Change.

I just watched the documentary Snowball that was about the making of the movie Clerks. The first draft of that script was finished January 8th, 1992. The movie was made a year later. A year after that, it was picked up by Miramax. All the while, the first screening of the movie flopped, and it wasn't picked up by Miramax until its last showing at Sundance.

The moral? I'm stickin' to Gershwin in Full and making that my baby from now until that biatch gets picked up.

Jesus loves you.

Sony Ericcson blows

My phone went retarded tonight. I'm mad and angry.

Band this year'll be cool... I hope...

Word.

Hi. I'm tired.

Boarding School Rhetoric

Hi.

I wrote this story...

Streetcorner Omnipresence

Street Corner Omnipresence

I sat beneath the shadow of the street sign, the sign that cried "Fourth Street intersects Sunrise Boulevard Here" in green and white. The street corner was a busy one, and I could not walk any farther. I had made a phone call to someone to give me a ride the rest of the way. My legs were weak from walking the 1800 miles between my heart and my soul and my spirit. I was weak on this street corner.

I sat against the sign pole, brown and copper and gold with rust, and it swayed under my weight. The pole was not the most comfortable thing I had ever sat on, but I figured I would not be here for long. The corner is engulfed with shadows at this time of morning, the shadows of houses across and high rises across from the houses. The shadow of the high rise was growing on me as I sat there. The street corner was contradicting like the mind, and yet, seemingly hollow like the world. The houses were dilapidated and the high rises were mere shadows of what they once were... Time worked incognito and these buildings were evidence.

From one of the houses emerged a young Latina woman, with a baby in one arm, and a suitcase in the other, bursting at the seams. She was halfway down the walkway to my corner when her husband or boyfriend, brother or father, stopped her. "Stupid girl! Get back inside, you're my wife," Question answered, wife, "and I know damned well you're not going anywhere but back into the house!" He was wearing a white shirt and tan shorts with no shoes on. He was about six feet tall, not a very impending figure. She was about four and half feet tall, but from my perspective she looked about four and a half feet shorter than his ego and eccentricities.

"Jamie, this is no way to raise our child. You don't understand me, and you probably won't understand our child when he's old enough to question where the hell you've been." She replied, the solace and the apologies passed and past away deep within her tone.

"Well, when the bastard does ask where his father is, tell him that you took him away from me! That's right! I blame this all on you." He stormed back in the house.

She, alone, looked for a ride. None. She merely walked north on fourth street, away from me. The wind carried her cries, and her apologies for the coarse language to her baby. Inside the house, the sounds of things breaking was evident. The sounds of broken hearts were all around this street corner, be it in the offices and apartments above me on the southwest and southeast corners of the street or in the houses across the way. No one was happy, and the buildings frowned in time and tempo with the situation. The whole street, I speculated, was a living, breathing metaphor for contrition. Society apologizing for what the proletariat has to go through, the world apologizing that it can not be the Utopia ever desired.

I turned around fully, slowly. This corner was odder than I had realized. I have yet to see one car, and one can usually say that that is not the best thing. I looked east, down Sunrise. The road was haunted by the horizon at the end of it. The road knew that it goes on, but the horizon does not, cutting it short. The road was in slight disrepair with the yellow lines cracking and chipping as if someone was chiseling away the barrier between east and west, as if someone wanted east and west to meet at some point. I looked the other way, west, and it was the same story. The horizon being the blatant murderer of sight and sound, touch and smell, east and west. I thus looked up into the colored sky, blue with wisps of clouds from the western films. I was supposed to be riding into the sunset, the sky told me, but where is your golden horse? I looked up and east to look at the buildings, the buildings were the pessimistic reply to the sky. The buildings were saying that the ride would never come and that I was destined to degradation. I guess that is not so bad.

Suddenly there was a crash, a raging and storming subdivision of the road as four cars came towards the intersection, none with any sign of stopping. They collided before they collided, as if the drivers knew what was to become and gave up on their lost hope of survival beyond the fittest. They collided with great force, crumbling under weight inertia tic. I stood, stunned by what I had just seen. I watched as four bodies flew from four flaming wrecks to collide again. I saw within them as their souls collided. They were merely mannequins now, their life sucked out of them, their soul only remaining to finish the scene presently unfolding. The bodies hugged each other grotesquely, accidentally. The bodies fell flat onto the shards of metal. The smell of rotting flesh blew in the air, blowing up my nostrils as I inhaled. I had to get away, but I could not.

Knowing I could do nothing, I sat down again, resting my tense back against the rust again. As I watched, I saw time speed up in the road, as the fire lapped for air faster and faster, as the bodies became ashier ashier, as the cars further became modern art rather than getaway vehicles. The world around was still slow as I moved my hand towards my face to wipe away my hair that had maliciously blocked my view, trying to tell me not to watch what is happening. The cars were melting into puddles on the ground and as they melted, the time slowed gracefully, like an aircraft touching down from an extensive mission to explore the unending, returning from a mission to heaven; unending, unquestioning.

The street corner was silent again, no tumbleweed to embellish in the cliché of the empty midway when the villain is in the road and everyone is inside, nothing to let me know that I am still alive. So, I sat and moved my hands... Moved my hands across my body, against the abrasive service of the cracked gray concrete, up the pole above my head. My feet shook and I stood up. I knew if I turn, I would see the houses against the empty backdrop of a ghost town. I knew if I turned I would see the office building that so haunts my dreams as their shadows grow on me during the hours, offering me shade from the lying sun. I knew that I was the villain in this western film out of context. These people were sane enough to stay indoors, away from me. They saw beyond the facade and into my soul. They saw how cracked it was, but what they did not see was the journey I was taking to amend these cracks with abrasive adhesives called apologies and how I was on this long journey to merely repair my apathy, my soul's atrophy. This is why I reticently lived my life and crawled myself into an apathetic hole.

A man was walking down the sidewalk opposite me. He caught glance of me, saw the look of maliciousness and malcontent for this deep corner of the psyche, looked across the street, as if signaling cars to stop, even though there were none. I could see that he was homeless, with his oversized, and overstuffed with alcohol, sweatshirt. He had a bag in his hand, presumably more alcohol, and he was bounding across the street like some sort of rabid animal. His beard was matted, but it was thin and gray enough to sway in the wind as an oil rag would.

He came bounding towards me, the scent of something unknown, but ubiquitous about him, was evident. He stopped, saw me, I slouched against the pole in fear, and sat down again.

He leaned down, that odd scent evident again. He bent down and said, "Can you see?"

I looked at him, glassy eyed and innocent, as if my eyes could plea to him silently for him not to hurt me.

"Son, I can see in your eyes that you... You're not like everyone else..." The pungent drunkard hit that one on the nose. People called me the iconoclast. They called me the breaker of molds. They called me names for it, too. It was not all praise. But, the atrophic apathy led me to another end of the spectrum of mood colors.

"Dammit, boy, I'm talking to you!" And suddenly, I realized it. This man was not paying attention to what he was saying. He was afraid of me. I noticed that he was shaking as he stood back up. This man was merely egocentric and eccentric. He needed to feel a lift from response, and when I refused response to him, he became afraid, depressed, fearful, closed, paranoid, reticent. He became like me for a split second. He saw what brought me down, saw what became of me being brought down, and stopped.

"Well, now... This all your damned fault." He bounded off in a flash... Gaudily, in reflection, he wore his brown and tattered sweatshirt; he wore his torn and stained navy blue sweatpants with pride. The pride of an unknown kind, the pride that only the failed have. The pride is all that was left of this man, and it showed. There was an acceptance meeting in the center of his forehead. Beneath the stress lines of his forehead, the vein had protruded as his mind stressed working to not show his true self. His cheeks twitched as his anger heated like coals.

I heard behind me footsteps. I slithered around the pole, too weak from realization to get up to turn around and face it. The man was coming back from the murderous horizon. He was running now, not bounding. He was running full speed. Like a freight train uncontrolled and its only load being a few 40 ouncers.

He stopped in front of my sprawled out body, I looked up at him questioning. He raised the hand without the bottle into the air, balled into a tight fist, as tight as his meager hands could manage, and he brought it down upon my shoulder with all the force of a drunken sledge hammer. I whimpered as the bone shattered. I cowered as his hand released his grip on the bottle to grip air in a fist. He brought his sledge hammers down all over my body, bruising me, shattering me, nearly killing me. I grabbed his bottle with my one good arm, and drank whatever was contained within the bottle. It tasted sweetly bitter, sourly ugly. I felt the pain no more, and his blows were merely that, blows. He realized this, looked at my bruised face. Tears welled in his eyes... I could see this man was stalked and haunted by something so much more than fear, depression and paranoia. He was haunted and stalked by the tears not cried at funerals, the words unsaid. He was stalked and haunted by all he never did. He was haunted and stalked into submission. He knew this, as did I. He did not want to know this, however, and that showed as well.

"I'm sorry... I'm sorry..." He repeated this many times, and soon, his tears moved from saliva to dry sobs and then to blood. I had nothing to give him to wipe the blood away as I lay on the ground in a floating, out of body state. I merely watched as the blood ran down and contrasted the browns and blues and rips and tears of his clothing. He was on his knees now, looking up. I watched as he fell backwards, onto his back against the cold, hard concrete. He curled into the fetal position, the blood pooling around him... He died in that instant, as the buildings frowned and sighed.

With all this death within the past two hours, I would have to speculate that the Latina woman who emerged so long ago is dead as well. Unknown about her baby, however. He may just carry on some legacy that the family may have. The Latina lady, though, walked off, in reflection, with no spot in society for her, a single mother. There was no spot or time for a single mother like her, even if she had four jobs trying to raise her child to the best of her ability. Her footsteps echoed against the concrete, they echoed these feelings. She walked with an air of apology. She was society's variola, growing larger and larger, until it bursts at the seams and action will have to be taken or infection will ensue.

The car wreck. It was merely a four way collision and death, its way of telling me that directions, like personas, should never meet. There are some people that will never mix, and those people are named North and East, East and South, South and West... The people within the cars had no families; those people were merely uninhabitable stray animals searching for the piece of meat on the hunt for companionship. Somehow, there was a sexist aura around them, but I could not care very much about sexism, as per the fact it is transcendent and is part of history's taciturn paradigm, as with racism. Racism merely shifts, like the bodies, from color to color.

Suddenly, people began to emerge, bustling, from the office buildings. And, like ants, they filed into a line, down the road... I half expected someone celestial to drop a leaf to see what would happen if they lost their way, if their sound and light was so interrupted by something so vile as a leaf in the road. They all wore gray business suits, of polyester and wool. Their hair was all part to the right, border lining a comb over. They all were one portion of one person, one part of this society, one part, like a limb, doing the job. They all had their fortes, and their vocation was based off of this knowledge. As they walked, there seemed to be two lines that suddenly emerged, as people walked next to, caught up with, and began to speak to the person ahead of them. Their vernacular was colloquial, as if they had nothing to talk about except the days work, their vocation. These people had no friends, since they were all nourished to do one job and had no idea what the other person's job did or meant.

The stream stopped, and the last person swung out from the rotary door. This last person was an anomaly, shorter than the rest, his suit and tie a lighter gray. He was Napoleon and they were the world. He was to conquer them one day. He walked up and past me, the air carried him well, I thought, as if to give him another inch onto his height. He swung around fast to meet my eyes staring at him. He moved like a dancer. Walking in step and time. He looked at me, the grease in his hair glinting in the sun.

"Hey kid, this will all be mine someday. Mark my words." And he walked off, into the street, without signaling cars as the homeless egocentric had. Suddenly, a car came up fast, a car unseen by Napoleon dynamite. The car was speeding, like a bullet train, towards fate. The car hit young napoleon with the force of a jackhammer, as the parts of his body contorted and the hood, the windshield, and roof of the car in rapid succession. The car stopped, the body laying on the front of the car, the blood that was bent on world domination bleeding through the cracks in the windshield. His words I will mark on his grave, I thought.

The driver in the car got out, he was wearing a wife beater and a "Member's Only" jacket. He had an angered look on his face. "Ah hell no! Dammit!" He studied the body for a few seconds, and grasped it at the point where it was the least bloody. He took the body and carried it to my side of the sidewalk, where I was laying down.

He turned and looked at me, dazed, confused, possibly stoned, possibly freaked. He looked at me with eyes full of fear and worry. He was nervous about what he had done. He looked at me, still lying on the ground, and said, "This? This cadaver? Goes no where but where ever rotting flesh goes. Which, I suppose is into the mouths of vultures. If anyone finds out, I did this? You're so dead, my friend, you are so damned dead." He walked back to his car, reached in and got some paper towels from the backseat, and began wiping off the backseat. He finished that which he was doing. It seemed odd, though, that he was doing this from the inside, since the blood was leaking through the cracks in the windshield of his fiery red hatchback. He looked at me, realized what I was just considering, and got into his car, and turned on the windshield wipers. The blood was drying though, so it was as if there was red fog, a fog acidic, on his windshield. He drove off, fearfully.

I rolled over and looked north on 4th street and began to think, where did everyone go? Why did everyone go? What was all of this? I got up, and squinted down the road. I then turned to look west on Sunrise, and the road swayed, the heat of the afternoon radiating off the cracked east and west barriers. I decided that ride would never come and that I was to walk.

I got up, and crossed fourth, being sure to signal for cars even though I saw one. I saw what had happened to young Napoleon, so I figured, better safe than sorry. I began to walk, my bare feet hitting the ground and vibrating my body with every step, my shoulders rising and falling with each step. I walked, tired and slouched. I did not want any more of Sunrise and 4th street. It was all too much for my tired head to even want to consider.

I reached the horizon, the horizon murderous. I looked back and I could no longer see the pale buildings and the poor housing. I could see the horizon now. It was a sad, sad, day, I thought, for I have been murdered by the horizon, told what I can and can not see. The horizon is truly the omniscient and ubiquitous murderer and inspirer, calling people, like a siren, to come to it, but right in front of the horizon are sharp rocks or...

I had veered into westbound traffic on Sunrise, and a car hit me, and I began to bleed from my bruises aforementioned. My friend emerged from the car.

He looked at me with all the horror of someone who had just killed their best friend. "Shit, I had just dodged someone back there, he was lanky and out of it... And now you... I'm sorry my friend... But I guess this is goodbye..." He pushed me off the hood of his car, and let me bleed to death on the side of the road. He got back in his car, turned around, and drove off. I knew he was not going to get help, I knew there was no help to cleanse these bleeding wounds, these broken hearts...

I began to realize, that, beyond the silver dreams of electric sheep, and beyond the dreams of those eccentric, there in lies the ego. The place in which I lie, selfishly caring about myself, my broken and mangled self. I lay there, engulfed in pure feelings of lustful hatred, a want to be back on the street corner. But, I suppose that this is the only way my ride would have ever come.

And I thus completed my journey through the final gate...

Preoccupied with my sixth sense

I've been preoccupied with myspace and lack of effort and Gershwin in Full. Sorry. i'll try harder... though no one reads this mofo. Yesyesyes.

Holy Crap!!!

The first draft of my script, tentatively titled Gershwin on Full, is completed. It's the story of a guy named Tom Little who moves to the San Fernando Valley to live with his dying best friend. I don't wanna give it all away, so sue me.

---

I have a Napoleon Complex. I'm going to rule the mothaf**kin' world.

Neo-Aggressivism

Violence never solved anything. World War led to World War. Words, however, changed ideology, epistemology, and life itself. Jesus was never violent; nary did he strike a person. Though Jesus did get angry. In the temple he threw over tables and told everyone to get out. He did not strike a single person, but his actions showed exactly what he was trying to convey. Actions speak. Words speak. Violence does not.

Neo-aggressivism is of this idea.

Violence traps and violence weakens. Words and actions are the antithesis of this. Your actions speak louder than your words and, sometimes, your silence speaks the loudest of them all. For silence breeds tension and tension causes breaking and breaking causes change in pitch or thought. Tension is key for it allows the person to be under pressure. A person is only their true self in two situations: when no one is looking and when they are pressurized by the world around them. The goal of a neo-aggressivist is to stand against the tension of the Earth, causing it to break at their own accord.

A neo-aggressivist fights not with fist or foot lest they are punch air or stomping the soil. We fight with questions that need answers, actions of kindness to prove the stereotype wrong.

---

This idea of neo-aggressivism is new to me. It intrigues me and it makes sense, at least to myself, to have this ideology. I feel this is how Jesus called us to be--not a passivistic pushover but rather aggressive in our faith and forceful in our actions without harm to another. More will come as this idea fleshes itself out in my mind.

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Give all your love to the risen Lord for He is the reason for this and that and those and these.

Territorial Marxist

OK! Recap... I saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Yea. Weird. But, overall, a good movie that wasn't too slowly paced and wasn't as weird as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. That one was a 70's acid trip. I recommend you see it. Now.

I went to a Rancho Cucamonga Quakes game last night... They're a farm team for the Angels... The OC Angels. Muahaha. That was fun because the people in the luxury boxes were giving their food to us. Peanuts and Hot Dogs: Oh My!!

PS: You're all beautiful.

Sor'y

I keep meaning to post, but, uh, I have nothing to post about... Keep checking back and, when something happens, a massive post will happen.

One Great CD

Track list for the mix CD entitled Absolutes that I just made:

1. Michael Jackson - Billie Jean
2. The Strokes - 12:51
3. The Chemical Brothers - The Golden Path
4. Outkast - B.O.B.
5. Billy Idol - White Wedding
6. Blondie - Atomic
7. The Beatles - Ob-la-di ob-la-da
8. Flock of Seagulls - I ran (so far away)
9. Dre ft. Tupac - California Lovin'
10. Yes - Owner of a Lonely Heart
11. Styx - Mr. Roboto
12. Kim Wilde - Kids in America
13. The Cure - Boys don't Cry
14. Weezer - Buddy Holly
15. Nena - 99 Luftballoons
16. The Foo Fighters - Everlong
17. Orgy - Blue Monday
18. Cindi Lauper - Girls just Wanna have Fun
19. Dead or Alive - You Spin me Right Round
20. Berlin - The Metro

Lots of 80's, but not too much to call it an "80's mix." Word like whoa.

Wildwood in Reflection

I'm back from the dead... well, from the spiritual dead... I just got home from Wildwood camp at Hume Lake, which is their leadership vehicle that is a small camp in the backwoods of the property. It's geared towards the leadership kids in HS at their churches and so it is a totally different experience than any other camp.

The theme this year was "Engage," and was focused on Missions trips. The way they presented this topic was excellent because it could have easily gone towards the guilt trip connotation quite easily. And, because of the theme, we got to learn about the starvation around the world and not just the physical starvation. The people over there are starving for the love of Christ. Take for example the "Invisible Children," Ugandan kids that flee to Sudan every night in fear of the rebels who abduct children into the army and then proceed to brainwash them by showing them human torture and violence and death in front of their eyes saying that that is what will happen to the child if it attempts to escape. These children can't sleep in their own home, don't have running water most often, are not safe from predators, and barely get enough food to survive. And I complain about how much I hate my car. Yea, well, only 9% of the world population has cars anyway so screw it.

All over this world there are 29,000 children dying every single day. That's more people than who died in the September 11th "devestation," and all the tsunamis... This is happening every single day. And yet the news wants to care about a war in an attempt to further the apathy of the youth today.

But... with all the poverty, hunger, death, and fear, these children are happy. They're happy when missionaries bring food or water. It is often that the gospel comes with the jubilance of the children and their resilience to the strife and pain that they go through every single day. They thank God for every single grain of rice they get.

We haven't even gotten to the night of Persection.

Monday night we were told about how there are still countries where Christianity is illegal and over 150,000 Christians are killed every year. That's more than ever. Take for instance, Jim Eliot. He was a missionary in Ecuador in the 1950's. He decided to reach out to an unreachable tribe. The tribe, Aca, killed him after they touched down. How does God work through that? His wife of two years, Elizabeth Eliot, learned their language and established a church in the tribe just a few years night.

We got to experience persecution. After our talk on Monday night, they sent us out into the woods to get to a certain point where our church meeting would be held. On the way there we were stopped by people, including ex-Marines, who asked us why we believed in God and asked the questions that no Christian ever wants to answer. After getting asked these questions five times by five different sets of persecutors, I made it to the church meeting where we sat and prayed and sang songs. But they found us. They made us lie with our faces in the dirt and try and make us denounce our faith. In the end, they "killed" the pastor. (Don't worry, they were stage guns.)

--

I've decided that there's just too much to discuss about and you honestly wouldn't understand the experience I have had this past week. That just gives you a taste of the dirt so far above the core of the week. Amen and Selah.

One more Week...

I'm gonna be gone for a week at Wildwood at Hume Lake. Peace.