Day 53 - 300 M.P.H. Finger Breaking, No Answers Makin, Battered Dirty Hands, bee Stung and Busted Up, Empty Cup Torrential Out Pour Blues

What am I to you but a mistake? I ask myself that. But, then I've gotten to think. Maybe I'm not the mistake as much as you are the flawed flesh of broken homes and bromide burns? Tell me your name, for once and for all, don't you wish that's how it was?

Put on that song and tell me what you think. Believe in me because you think of me kindly. I am not as flawed as I think I am, I think. It all comes down to what I want to believe.

Iterate, itinerate. Irate. Believeability faulters when you discuss the empty houses of relatives on Mars. All set up to kill yourself to live. Never to be heard from again. The weight of water in space. believe in me and I am insignificant, flawed. But it's all concerning what you want to believe. I cannot believe in you anymore because you hurt me so. I can show you the scars where the lye burned my flesh like hot ash against all the worst in the sandpaper industry. Or where my lungs have blackened from my 20 cigarettes I smoked trying to get addicted. I just wanted to hinge on something tangible. I cannot hinge on something tangible. I must hinge on something tangible. You are my love, you are my peace, you are my serenity. Grant it thusly.

--

My first experiment with playlist-based poetry. Set up the playlist on your iPod as so:

1. Joanna Newsom - "Emily" from the album Ys (I actually started writing at around the 8 minute mark of the song, so maybe meditate for eight minutes on her child-like voice first?)
   
2. Bob Dylan - "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" from the album Highway 61 Revisited.
3. Sufjan Stevens - "All the Trees of the Field will Clap their Hands" from the album Seven Swans
4. Bob Dylan - "Mr. Tamborine Man" from the album Bringing it All Back Home
5. Interpol - "Leif Erikson" from the album Turn on the Bright Lights

Play:
Come on home, the poppies are all grown knee-deep, I know.

We are going to places where there's sadness among within the field.

Developed in the playlist. And only breaks to change sides. Not time breaks between keys. Black white up down back again in the stars settling the order with our heads cocked at this joy in bodies that don't keep. So take this and eat this the source of the light that's devoid of just what causes the light that lies stone quiet and offering. The poignant stacatto, I know.

Wake me up at dawn, Down Crescendo.

I know there are portions you'll hear forever without the hiss and an eighth note behind Juarez where gravitas fails. Negativity don't pull ya through. Hungry women there. Fingers wreaking of tobacco among the experienced. The goddess of gloom, invited among the uninvited, but always too soon. A Kierkegaard anthology. Are you asleep? You better go to where the cops don't need your authority to boast of blackmail at the post's angel of the coast, immaculate.

Inbox: Angel

Outbox: Ghost. To change and remove I know not but everything.

Bob Dylan must play piano.

Portions you'll hear forever. Wrecked the hell from Desolation Row, dredged.

Quiet, soft, azure among the flowers alive next year sitting, picking at the smaller with you my heart in purity when All the Trees of the Field Clap their Hands.

You've come home my darling, to where we are forever beneath the scarecrow cupola that sits above and sees the valley below. All the fields of others. We are close but not in heat. We are happy, we are we... We can, from here, see all the couples to come before they know it. We can seem them stumble across and finally into each others' arms. I know your name.

There's a depth-hum on the right. Maybe flourescent, but I don't want to fix it because you are too beautiful to turn away from. I hate the Byrds but I love this song. Ancient deadly streets too dead to dream. My toes too numb to step. I love you, I know your name. I know you don't exists, but I can't work on Maggie's Farm no more just to support your wanton material lust complete and unabridged, my Cassandra. Is that you? The Dark Ages--they haven't ended yet. I haven't become enough for you.

I know it helps with the lights out but just this once? Why should I sway your hips, lets move, dance away from the beat but the wood that bends and breathes under our feet. Lean over the edge and scream of divinity.

See the birds flow around us singularly (that is supposing you don't sleep tonight).

Don't bring on the lonely parts. ever. The past before we knew each other is mute and indifferent. Now, we must learn everyone anew, the language and all.

So Stay Awhile. Never Leave."

At this point, please put on "Across the Universe" by the Beatles. It's on Let it Be.

Day 42 - Lone Hill Blues no. 9

I can't understand why it's so hard for people to believe in God. To believe in Christ as God's son.

Day 39 - Killing Yourself to Live

So I'm reading Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman, and there are a few things I've been thinking about. I am going to assume you know every detail of this book, as I know you've read it.

He talks a lot about music and movies in passing reference and as a way to describe how people look or act or sound ("Jolene" by Dolly Parton, Morrissey on Bona Drag, Jack Lemmon in Glengarry Glen Ross, etcetera), yet I can't figure two things out:

1) He goes to Fargo, ND, mentions ND a ton because he grew up three hours away from Fargo in ND, and yet he makes no mention of the most popular movie about Fargo entitled, well, Fargo. Someone winds up in a wood chipper. You should see it.

2) He was a journalist in Akron, OH, for a time, something he mentions multiple times. Now, this one may be a personal thing because the band that labels themselves as "Akron, OH's finest" is one of my favorites, but he never once mentions The Black Keys. If you're in Akron, I'd assume you'd know of them. Akron's not Hell, not under a rock. I'm just surprised he can have a two-page explication about a Rod Stewart box set, three to four pages on Thom Yorke accidentally predicting 9\11, and yet nothing on two things concerning two places he is deeply involved in. But this whole book is about the strange things in life, but mostly death, and so maybe he intentionally left them out.

Either way, what a douche bag for not mentioning the Black Keys. They're Akron's FINEST! C'mon, Chuck. Not even a footnote. Nothing. Whatever. I paid full price for the book, so, Black Keys and Coen Brothers or not, you still have my money and, thusly, my soul. Have a nice day, Mr. Klosterman. And you too, Vietnam.

I'm not even going to mention the three women he's involved with during the book because all three relationships seem very contrived and, if this is 85% of a true story, then they're the 15% fiction. He can't deal with women, neither can I, maybe he should've taken a chastity vow for a year. And not been so awesome. Who knows.

Day 36 - Records, Musings, Side B, Open Window Beckonings.

I collect vinyl. Age-old, archaic and kind of clunky. I have a budding record collection not for the sake of pretentiousness, or for the sake of getting old records to hear their original recordings, or for the sake of getting new recordings that were digital-turned-analog.

Before I go on, I'd like to point out that records are more expensive, come with less booklet-art and lyrics (especially the older ones), are usually used, and that one record takes up twelve inches as opposed to my iPod's 3 and a half. I'd like to point out that they are by-gone and kind of silly to have.

But the reason that I have them is because, in this age of convenience and music-at-your-fingertips, having a record is absurdly space-consuming. But that's the whole point to me: saying to the artist, "I could have you crammed into the list on my iPod and enjoy you that way, but, instead, I've also placed you on a shelf in my room where I could have put other stuff." It's the idea that I like these bands enough to let them take up an insane amount of room in these days of over-consumption. Twelve-inch singles are like saying, "I like this song enough to have it take up a whole foot of space in my room." I like Ok Computer enough to drop 30 dollars on it even though the CD is less. The CD is smaller, the CD is easier. There's not four sides to it. Just the one. And so the records are my way of saying, "I appreciate you," and showing it.

--

What more can I say? I am sitting here without a shirt out, sensing (but not quite scenting) my b.o. that everyone has but no one likes to admit. Funny how we as people are inherently stinky, yet we attempt to cover it up with deoderants and antiperspirants and lies and showers. We are stinky people in both physiology and ideology. Everyone has lies and judgments yet we don't try and cover up their stench. We let it fly and whew! I'm pretty sure that's the methane that's being released to cause global warming. Maybe if we were less full of shit, then this world wouldn't be as hot.

I realized that I truly love very few things: baseball, women, music, God. The idea of love and women fascinates me. I know a beautiful girl who would cause my year to end and the world to stop if she admitted to being in love with me (but she never will be for her own reasons, so the year trudges on like a Casanovan solitude). I know that I watch too much baseball when I can point out rooftops of the bleachers in commercials. Music at full volume in a car makes me feel invincible. Lightning Bolt turned up to 11 driving down the freeway is intoxicating, driving, confusing, cacophonous. It will get you killed. Icky Thump, too, will kill you. Meg White pounding the knife in as your car slams into a tree, pinning the wife of a priest to a tree who begins to ramble on about how Merrill should swing away.

God is. What more can I say?

Am I happy? No, but I'm okay with everything.

Day 34 - Failures

Well, it could be worse, right?

Where are you Jannet Rodriguez? You never called me. I just wanted to be friends.

I've gotten all seven of my submissions back. And seven rejection letters. Even the Pacific Review, the CSUSB publication, rejected my submission. Wonderful, isn't it.

At least I haven't failed a class yet.

I have failed real bad at dating, and I may (probably) even fail at this whole "taking a year off" thing once I see any sort of success in the dating realm. I don't know. I just want one thing I can be proud of. And I'm trying to make it happen. Great things don't come from sitting on your butt, I know. I'm working on it. I know I'm not supposed to swear. I'm trying to become a leader.

I think the light out beyond that's cresting will be one thing worth holding. I will have success. One day.

Day 23 - Misc.

Does the greatness and the smallness of life ever get to you? For example, when I was in High School, I was in band. It was my world. And now... it's a sidenote to the great, sad, black hole four years. I never thought that I could regret High School any more, but it has occurred to me that I wasted so much on something so little... But, then again, at this computer, in this room, on this planet, how small are these keys, how small are these words compared to all of God's creation? We can't get caught up in the small and minute. There's a bigger picture. And it's depressing, that's for sure, but it's also good to have perspective and to lack meaning sometimes. To have your baseball games you watch for the purity of nothingness. Existence is based on existing. Can't you see the light out beyond the west?

There is no purpose--

Just existence. Just us. Just God. Just love. Just metaphysics. Just ethics. Just arguments. Just relationships. Just loneliness. Just oneness. Just spirituality. Just plurality. Just community. Just divinity. Just theology. Just psychology. Just theosophy. Just masochism. Just cities. Just people. Just humans. Just animals. Just roads. Just cars. Just smog. Just Los Angeles. Just you. Just me. Just God. "By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, 'It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.' Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death."

And what more shall I say?

Day 22 - Things usually not Mentioned

Welcome to the death and resurrection. This is the secret: Know Me. Know Him. I know you.

I am aware, I think, of what is meant to be done in my life. So, to put it out there:

Starting Monday, June 25th, I will be having a small group for college people. It'll either be at 5. Come if you can, the first week we'll be discussing what we'll be doing in the second to endth weeks. We all know. At my house. Ask if you need directions, my email is: evanrobertpugh@gmail.com . I am doing this for you and your honor. I want to see you, all of you, grow in God as I know you can. You know how it is.

"The Children Swing the Dawn in."

Day 19 - Insight

"I... I, I thought of that old joke, y'know, the, this... this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc, uh, my brother's crazy; he thinks he's a chicken." And, uh, the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" The guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships; y'know, they're totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and... but, uh, I guess we keep goin' through it because, uh, most of us... need the eggs."

-Alvy Singer, as played by Woody Allen, in Annie Hall.

Relationships are self-deprecating and a terror on our souls 49.98% of the time... But it's the 50.02%, just barely a majority, that makes it all worth doing, worth committing to.

Don't be afraid, neither, of anything. Don't cower away in fear of something either. Everything worth doing comes with some sort of fear-attachment. And that's the first hurdle to getting there. Is getting over the hurdle one to the finish line. To the finish line!!! La'Illaha Il'Allahu!

"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me."
-Philipians 3:10-12

Day 17 - Response

Once again, we have an anonymous commentor. I hate it when people do that. Can't you at least give a first name? Even a fake one? Anyway,

"question, why no girls for a year? and i think you take life too seriously. or maybe i don't take life seriously enough? but i seriously don't think you should ban girls for a year. i don't think you should just jump on the first girl who walks by, but who knows, you might meet someone great and it would be really sad if you don't even give her a chance because you're playing this game with yourself."
-Anonymous

Response: I am going cold turkey on women for a year to learn how to appreciate them, the basic spiel is held in the "Day 1" post on May 25th, 2007. I don't want the stress, I want their friendship. And, if I meet someone great, they'll be great enough to understand my commitment to this and I really think that any sort of relationship I have with that great girl would be solidified by this year of not fooling around and let emotions get in the way. Have a real connection, y'know?

Finally, I don't think this is a game I'm playing with myself. Solitaire's a game I play with myself. I'm doing this to peel away the seriousness. This is my attempt at meaning nothing, because dating makes every gesture, every swing and sway of the eyes and hair, mean something, insinuate something, cause worry. I don't want to worry about that for a year, I just want to be friends. It's too much to worry about what she's trying to tell me. Now I don't have to. And if she's so great, she'll be around on May 25th, 2008 to take me in her arms, becoming a lesson in patience for her. Maybe that's what God would need for her, if I am to meet someone great through these next few months. Who da hell knoes, thoughs?

Day 15 - Lion's Mane

"and love is a tired symphony
you hum when you're awake
and love is a crying baby
Mama warned you not to shake
And love's the best sensation
hiding in the Lion's Mane."

-Iron and Wine, "Lion's Mane"

The lion, in many common threads and cultures, represents the Christ: wild, courageous, king of the land. The golden lions of The old man and the sea that the titular old man dreamt about were the courageous, golden, coming home.

I like the final line of this stanza for the very reason of what it means to me: that love is within the Lion's Mane--love hanging on like a cub to the mane of the lion. That love is contained and created within Christ is to begin, but you must find love first. And it's hiding in the mane. To be able to touch the mane of a lion, you must know it well, because, otherwise, it will eat you alive (much like religion's scariness). The more you are comfortable with the wild lion, the closer you can get. And only in such closeness with the Father, with the courage and the King, will you be able to even begin to search for the love hiding in the lion's mane. It begins and ends with the Lion. Aslan, all that.

In the end,
"Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." [And love is real.]
1 John 1:9

"Finish it."

Day 8 - Already?

It's getting tough, and we're only 8 days in. I sat next to a friend in my Poli-Sci class, and kept getting these, like, "Flirt with me," vibes from her, and I had to resist, what with this admitted year-off under progress. Talk about self control. Same with a girl who works at Petsmart. Of all places. She's nice too, probably'd make a nice friend. You know how it is: Building nothing, right? Let things have no meaning and drift into esthetics instead of esoteric divinity. It's okay, it really is, I think. I'm working on not trying to mean something all the time. It starts with these girls and ends with the fact that everything seemed to have to imply something, or be meaningful for it to be worthwhile when, in reality, it's not the case. And I think that me trying to write what's happening in my life has become me trying to find meaning enough in everything. Believing this insanity? I sure am.

Aside: I was talking to a friend about how Coldplay is just ripping off Radiohead's The Bends and Pablo Honey. And so another friend put it on to see what I was talking about. And the first friend stated, "God, can you put something on that doesn't sound it's from Garden State?" Funny thing is that Radiohead isn't on the Garden State soundtrack while Coldplay is. So there was the implicit admittance of their connection. Whoa. I didn't say anything, though, because it's a little undercurrented, I guess. Just funny how things work out that way, right?

Day 6 - Mostly Baseball and an announcement

It's getting easier. I want to be friends mostly. I like friendship. There's less turmoil and no worry about breaking up... Nothing awkward, just purity between two souls. Honesty. Serenity. Peace and Serenity, 1972.

We got a new dog, her name is Annie. She's a cute little dog.

Dodgers got routed by the Nationals today after shutting them out 2 games in a row (10 to 0, 5 to 0). They lost 11 to 4. Stupid.

Memorial Service for Mark S. Etzen (Celebration of his life)
Date: Saturday, June 9, 2007
Time: 11:00 AM - reception afterwards
Where: CBC (Community Baptist Church)
Address: 9090 19th St., Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91701
Directions:
210 Frwy
(S) on Carnelian
(E) or (L) on 19th Street (It's the 1st turn)
NW Corner of 19th Street & Beryl Street
In lieu of flowers, Mark had requested that people
donate towards his most recent ministry:
CBC Church Planting Fund
9090 19th St.
Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91701

Day 3 - Problems and Perspective

J.P. put it in perspective for me. This year is my attempt at trying to stop making everything mean something and trying to make something mean nothing. Trying to relax. Go with the flow. That type of thing. Not, "Boobies boobies boobies!!!" It's a general problem most guys have these days. Every one wants a music video hoe, a hoodrat. The illusion of love that is in truth a simple physical lust. And lust can't carry a relationship. Lust will carry the night while love will carry the day.

That's all.

Day 1

At midnight, I began an excursion. I will not date a woman until May 25th, 2008. I will not think of them in that manner, I will shut off myself from them in that way.

Madness. That's what it's supposed to be. But, really, it's an exploration into my interactions with women, others' interactions with each other, and the downright perversion of my thoughts as well as everyone elses. I really want to appreciate women, and I've been so hell bent on finding a girlfriend that I've never been able to step back and just appreciate them. Well, I'm stepping back and being just a friend for a year. Seriously? This shouldn't be that hard, I haven't been on a date in over a year anyway. The only difference will be that I won't have to worry about whether or not she's going to call me back.

Swear to God I'm going to do this. It's something my Youth Pastor in High School recommended to me, to take a year and be removed from dating, but I was so in love with a girl at the time, I couldn't say yes. Well, now I'm over that one and on and so I will do this at the right state of my life when everyone else seems to be zoned in on making it with a hoodrat for a night and a morning.

As timed, and if I'm lucky, this would take me into the end of my first Semester at Humboldt, if I get accepted for the Spring term. This could get interesting, and I'll keep this as a constant, letting you know of my observations and my struggles (because I know there's going to be many).

Will I have arrived in time to share?

For every tenth thing I tell you, there will be nine I withhold or refute with vigor. If there is a sea worth swimming, I would swim to get away from here. If there were a life worth living, I would hold on to it. Worth living. Telling your story to the children. Contemplating murderous antiquities and the likes seen only now on quilted patterned pillows and soft down comforters. See me alone with you holding you being you. Wanting you. I cannot see worth a damn but I know it's you. I know by the stillness in your eyes. I am alone but I have another plan. Something and nowhere all at once. Atmosphere not conducive. I electricity and I have nothing to conduct against. No conductor for the band. Against all your will to sleep and to be still. I know you from before when we were once. Away and fallible once contrived and votive alone at the chapel perpetuating our sheep and our nature. Conniving bitch seething with the fury of those nine things I hold off. I cannot stay because I know you not. You know this and you still cry out across the chasm where I cannot see and hear or taste and smell your beautiful skin...

But, one day--in time?--we will be together and that great chasm will be but a mere divide as natural as your ten toes and fingers. Thumbs. Rings passed in matrimony. Great divide to drive away as natural as the sun may set.

One Taste

Here are some excerpts from the book I'm working on (they're trademarked. Don't plagiarize.):

"We are lost, you the reader, and I, the writer. We have come this far into the world of men of the “Yo no ‘sé’” prefix, diluted and soluble in water. Seamen who cannot swim when their heads are lost like chickens and their own nerves breaking down without a head to keep them sane. Bread stealing birds from your feet. Feet growing for hands and vice versa. Alone and not knowing it. Stooping behind a house to tell a yarn to the neighborhood boys you’d like to fuck. Boys and boys and their own private vices. Their own private versas. Veritas. Veritably. Lost in Sinai, Mount of Moriah killing our own chosen son of Ishmael ma non troppo. I will admit as the record scratches and skips back to “zero” and not “one,” knowing nothing again, that I am one with the Father in all the blasphemous senses.

"Tell me your goddam name, dear child. Highway. Riding downward south along our truisms, aren’t we? Veritas. Saying what we want when we’re drunk and telling the truth that there’s really nothing there to most people. Play with my cunt! That’s drunk-talk. Journey of the first-degree burns.

"I know what it is. I really do. It’s beneath these words and these pages. Beneath. It’s your legs, it’s your feet, it’s your hands, my daughter. It’s your thighs (milky white or caramel or dark as sin), your thoughts (milky white or caramel or dark as sin), your knowledge (milky white or caramel or dark as sin). I know it’s you reading this to guide unto me. You I will not kill but they I would to get to you. You are my Keats Grecian Urn. My pillar to stand all the ages against and rest under the ashes of Pompeii falling down on the ground, on its hands and knees to praise Allah towards the east. I will praise Allah all the days of my life for Isaac was God’s chosen son to carry all the nations! La’Illallah Il’Allahu! Veritas! Praise Reality for He is All!"

...

"Planted in the ground, white yet azure and tall against the sunflowers unending like a pedestal for my queen or a monolith for my love. Up above and out and around the holding stands, awaiting its subject. She is coming and she is there, just beyond the horizon, and I know when she is to arrive or whether she is within this field, coming towards the pedestal. Nothing is known. Love is like religion, in some aspects. You know which ones.

" Quaquaqua.

" I wish I could have told SK all these things when he was drunk off his rocker and crazy as the night.

" Later, SK would say to me, in regards to another girl, “You know me: I don’t know my emotions unless I’m shitfaced.”

" “Or drunk off your ass,” I replied, thinking of SK with shit all over his face taking artistic nudes to be put up at the LACMA one day.

" After this brief conversation, we left for Pasadena, a great coming up home away."

Go on Down

Coachella is this weekend. Nobody reads this since I deleted mySpace. I realize that. I never post anything significant, anyway.

My book is coming along just fine, if you're wondering... I'm afraid of it, so I haven't been writing much lately. The whole giant idea scares me. The whole Giant scares me. Coming down from the hillside when in reality it is us.

I'm awake beacuse I fell asleep and couldn't wake up. And now I'm awake. I'm apologizing. And this is for you, isn't it. Believe in me. Pray for me. Keep me safe. Right? Because we all know that pain is somehow tied to insolence.

The Problem of evil: maybe evil is some sort of good? That definitely be an explanation for why there's suffering without seeming justification. I no longer think we are pre-destined. Free will is the only rational, previously justified reason for the existence of both God and evil. Tandem sort of thing. But maybe evil is just a masking of good? And all great mythology, all great stories, require some sort of weight and counter-weight to teeter the totter of atheist theism. Three years later, Billy Pilgrim would die, wouldn't you know. Episodic. Virulent. Dying tonight to brush my teeth and crawl away and die. Don't be afraid of Him.

The boat you know she's still rockin' it... yehh

Easter is about the whole resurrection of Christ thing. But this is more about the Good Friday Actions I think. The whole crucifixion thing. What was the big deal? How can such a grand metaphysical thing as sin and the whole vague idea of morality be transmuted into such an act as a typical Roman punishment. Peter's crucifixion hurt more because he was hung upside down.

So maybe it's not the physical pain that Christ experienced--that was pretty normal--but rather the mental strife that he experienced. Knowing that he could, at any moment, step off that cross and give the finger to the whole idea of being the savior. Defecting from his own teachings. But instead, he suffered through the decision of his own doing through the 4 hours. Choosing crucifixing, committing suicide in the name of a cause when you know you could tell the whole idea to go hell is probably way more tortuous than what the criminals around him were experiencing.

And the idea is further carried by the fact that the worst sins are those that are mental. Lust and the like. Because it's destroying yourself. And your body is a temple defiled by the beggars.

Another thought, a little more psychadelic, is that our sins are time travellers. That, once committed, they are slashed upon Christ's back during those four hours. And those hours are his unending hell. You know God can do anything so this could also be a possibility.

But anyway, that's what Good Friday's about. The Easter Bunny is the fucking man.

If you think that a kiss is all in the lips, well, you've got it all wrong.

I'm finally getting around to formulating this...

So lately there've been two commercials I've seen that're pissing me off: 1) The Carl's Jr. commercial where the guy's with his girlfriend checking out one of the waitresses who's all trying to pseudo-seduce him and shit. And he's watching and smiling. And when his girlfriend hits him or whatever, he just goes, "What?" Funny that this is also the All-Tel douche bag (the dyed hair made me think he was homosexual.) and the 2)nd is the Hotel Aquarius commercial that has a scene of a similar thing happening. Wife\girlfriend playing the slots, older man (mid-40's) checking out a younger woman (20's). Wife hits husband, husband goes innocent, the same "What?" face.

Well, I'll tell you what: YOU'RE DISRESPECTING YOUR WOMAN. You don't deserve a woman if you're gonna be a degrading cunt who sits there, next to her, and stares at other women. The girl is NICE enough to be with you, even if though you're some perv-cunt-asshole who takes either his girlfriend to either a Hot Wings place for a date, or to fucking LAUGHLIN, NV (where the people are the same age as the temperature: 99+). That's not romantic. That's just stupid. And you have no right to be, oh, y'know, checking out other women. Do that on your own time. Or when you're single, especially. But not in front of another girl. Especially one who's willing to put up with your shit.

"Women think these Will Smiths or Leonardo Dicapricocks are gonna come waltzing off the screen and into their lives, take them to some place romantic like the Olive Garden, or a Pizzeria Uno, then take them home and make love to them with a condom on without fingering their asshole. Well, wake up. These men don't have the time. I do." ---Dave Attell, "Skanks for the Memories"

Sit Down. Stand up. Ring the Bells.

I don't know how to start this review, so I'll say this: BOY CULTURE is a typical romance movie in most senses... except that it involves man on man. Currently playing only in Hollywood and New York, this is one of those unrated gay films that really makes you scratch your head about what makes it SO terrible that the rating was released. There's no male nudity, no female nudity, and only a few shots of men getting their kicks.

Anyway, this is a movie about "X," an escort who has 12 clients, whom he calls disciples, making him Jesus, as if his ass were on a crusade to give these men a good fucking (from the shots we see of these clients, I guess he does.). And it's definitely not sex. There's no sex in this movie, it seems. It's all fucking. They refer to it as so, and it's promiscuous enough to warrant the term "fucking" as opposed to "sex." "X" has two roomates, Joey, and Andrew, the former being a young 18-year-old slut who has tons of tricks and does drugs and all those times of things; and the latter, Andrew, is the central character of the story aside from "X." They've all been roomates for a year, and there's been sexual tension between "X" and Andrew and Joey for that whole year. From the posters, it could be assumed that there's some sort of crazy man on man on man ménage à trois, of which there is none. Joey is the baby, and Andrew and "X" are the dads to his promiscuity.

All of this is narrated by "X," who tells of all of this very cynically, almost tiredly, as if not really caring. Passively telling of the mutual masturbation (just kidding), and all the parallel stories including one trick named Gregory who tells of his love of 50 years with a man named Reynaldo who just recently passed away. Funny how the story of Reynaldo and Gregory parallels so well wtih the story of "X" and Andrew. "X" even was in love and fucked his cousin, "call him John," when he was 12. Nothing ultra-nasty there either, by the way. Etcetera. It's all very convoluted and trite. The dialogue is stinted and it all seems like a typical love story.

Except it's two men and a bunch of other men who pass in and out of the open door\asshole. And that's where I think the MPAA had a problem with this movie: it's homosexual and women are never portrayed as being pleasured. If nothing else, this is the greatest showing of the MPAA's homophobia. This is a prototypical R-rated romance melodrama. It's not SHORTBUS, it's not DEEP THROAT. Nothing. It's just BOY CULTURE, a movie about men in love. And what's so wrong with that? Oh, right, the woman is not involved.

I grimaced less at the male kissing and the male touching and feeling than I did at the thought that all of this in the movie would be permissable if it were a man and a woman or a woman and a woman or, I don't know, released by a major studio. It is everything that Kirby Dick recognized about the homophobia in the industry incarnate. Living proof that this movie could be widely distributed, and probably liked by a good many people. But it is shunned because it has a soundtrack consisting of mostly house music, and a good ton of man-on-man kissing and lusting.

I'm not... difficult to please.

Thanks a lot, assholes, for showing me how far being funny will get you. High School was a crapshoot and college is even worse. I have no friends and I'm rather lonely, paling in my shyness, moonlighting with my loneliness. I can't seem to find the group to surround myself with. Acquaitances that think I'm funny. Maybe that's why I stuck around in band: because I needed to group atmosphere. Social whore, that's what I am. And I've got nothing to whore around or pimp.

I don't know any of you anymore. I've tried and I don't. You've all gone the way of the dodo to me, it seems. I've tried and I've tried but you're all just too cool anymore to even want to respond to my options about hanging out with me. Except Danielle Cobb, you've been pretty cool, but I've just been busy.

So fuck you.

Chk Chk Chk

It's Thursday. I've fallen into a do-this-every-Thursday pattern it seems. Just nothing to write about.

Waiting for Godot.

I have to write a new story.

Compass turns to coal.

Gyar. Not GWAR. Dodgers have gone on a hot-losing-stream. Hypenated-sentences-are-badass-.

Fuck.

It shakes your pretty little Clavicle

There's so much violence, so much pain, so much hate, that it's easy for one to be apathetic. John Lennon got annoying come the 70's. I just watched the US vs. John Lennon and he just got annoying, I thought. I don't know, I'm not a big fan of him. I'm a passivist, I think. Let it happen, the universe tends to unfold as it should--yea, that is from Harold and Kumar go to White Castle, but so what. I believe in fate. If it's meant to happen, it will happen.

I don't want to adhere to religions that kill for the sake of being right. So I am an Anarchristian. A Christian Anarchist. Of your own accord. Peaceful. Love love love love love. Though love is sometimes conflicting. Because to love someone, there is a point and place for chastising. It's not all roses. There's obvious shit-storms and virulent come agains. Come on to me and tell me your name sweet sister!

I believe in God. I believe in you. I believe in we. And love will conquer all.

It's a scary thought that Doomsday Theology has met Doomsday weaponry. True, fateful, apocalypse is capable now in the mushroom clouds. So relax and let it happen.

When my mom was in Israel, some of the soldiers and Jews were telling about how, in three weeks, they are going to bomb the Muslim Temple Mount because they're sick of it. Sick of God's wild Children of Islam, descended from Ishmael, both blessed and crazy, but blessed and of the Father nonetheless.

I just cry for harmony in a dissodant world. "You have a decent ear for notes, but you can't yet appreciate harmony." Beware. I think that the "apocalypse" is upon us, but the apocalypse is truly metaphorical.

But all human life is cyclical, so we are probably coming upon a proverbial starting over, just as when Rome was destroyed and deflated into a city in Italy. The children of Isaac and the children of Ishmael will destroy each other and deflate each other until there's nothing left but leukemia and fall out. And adaptation and evolution (yes, I said evolution) will run its course.

"Raise your fist and march around, just don't take what you need."

Tie me up tie me down!!!!

It was a summer camp and I fell in love with her. Her who lived miles and
miles and miles away from me. Her whom I had no chance with. Her. And I so
hopeless, and a godless Socialite. This was during the Downfall. I can guarantee
you that.

Away from music, our laughter made music. We flirted as far as I know. And I
fell in love with her. Great, unadulterated Her.

We would sit and play cards and talk and hang out and be together, and my
mind raced with Visions of Johanna keeping me up past the dawn. Her. She would
tell me about the boys in her life and I would ascertain a sort of repressed
jealousy. Never possible. I know for sure. But it was praised within my soul to
know of a growing girl who could satisfy my soul’s lust for a pastor’s wife.
Waiting for the pastor’s wife to be mine.

I could drive, I don’t care about distance. I had remembered what another
girl had told me about distance earlier that year. That we would be together
despite it. And I realized that there’s reassurance despite miles and miles. She
and I fell out but Her and I still talk, somewhat, and subdued by years of not
seeing each other. Years of separation, my heart is filled with longing for her,
or someone like her. Small and quaint and brown eyed and smiling and lost within
her God. Hailing the stars to come down to her and tell her things that were
unknown otherwise save but a little honesty.

A little trite honesty and ¡Viva Suzuki!

Oh but Oh how Her highlighted my week with visions of love, visions of hope.
She gave me hope that there’s someone, at least someone, out there that isn’t
fucked up the ass with religion and stupid. You can be fucked up the ass with
religion and grounded. Not lifted on the cock of propriety, but held grounded by
reality. It’s give and take, not rape.

And deep saxophone tones cried low low low and down down down come away with
me I need you TS! I need you to be mine! I am alone and nothing without you
withoutyou with you I am whole! Take me away from here and I will be yours!! I
know that that’s what you need and what I am going to give you! HER!

Won’t you wait for me? No, because I know nothing of how I think of you.

“I love you, Danny.”

Inimitable, unknowable, ineffable her. And that’s how it always will be. Too
many miles and I know all this shit. Cock-rodded women about me abound.
Cock-rodded religion.

And so I sank. Deep down and down and down and down and down and down and
down anddownanddown and down and down and down spiraling down and down and no
way out and up and up and down and down and down and spiraling with all these
vile sins racing so fast down and down this vacuum I thought everything were to
fall at the same rate feather and bowling ball down and down and down air to
hold sin is falling faster than me towards hell and inimitable sin and
repression down and down and down and things sit in this well of my soul where
nothing is allowed to be told save on pulp and paper and trees that are dead
trestles sadness transmutated and known unknown and cock-rodded cuckolded and
the sitting next to the soda bin where they rip us off and tell me my name in my
journal and remember me before I burn us down with gasoline and down and down
and down and decrescendo and ritardando and down down down down down down down
down down hearing the pounding hearing the pounding you let me know I was alive
but where are you now I know where you are and I cannot come unto you her. just
to say I love you would have been enough and I know it wouldn’t be for you so I
will leave you alone…!…

Old South Order, New Northern Horizon

I had this thought when I was pulling my T-Shirt out of my sweatshirt: What if I've turned into myself today because I was tired of being the sacred me of yesterday? I got tired of people telling me how perfect I was, how I never cursed, never did anything bad. I got tired of that shit.

And maybe I needed change. When what is working is tired, it is no longer working. It is laboring. I wanted to work, I didn't want to labor through my days any more. I wanted to be me. Not that me is unchristian, but that me is not me. I was pushing against the vulgarity, but, more than that, I was pushing against reality. There is a difference between being of this world and being naive. I have to know so as to change the knowing. And the things I do not know about are the things that I don't need to know about yet. I will find them, and they will find me. And I will change them. And I will change you.

This has no title.

A gnawing, groaning, pain, etching towards nirvana.

All the good ones are taken up the tree and sodomized. Molested. Destroyed. By me and above me, below you. Come away with me.

Divine.

Alone. Trite and complacent. Trying to be, at least. Trite not tripe.

Thimbles were thumbnails' crowns.

Fear is the great drive towards stagnancy. Fear will get you nothing.

Wake up, Little Sparrow

Faith is the highest passion in the eternal realm of the soul. It is the greatest act man can show. Faith in God is the highest passion of man.

But below that, in the mortal realm of our soul, is something that often comes before it, something that often messes up our eternal realm--and that is love. Love is the highest passion of our mortal realm. It is the most strange act, having a man and a woman come together to be one while being two. Love is a contradictory action that is so important to us, that we won't eat, won't sleep, won't walk, won't do, when it's on the line or around us with impending doom. And it is tied directly into the mortal realm, like a mobius strip. Because love comes from faith in beings of God of man in faith of love. Love, ultimately, makes or destroys faith. It is the foundation for faith, it is the foundation for life. It is so foundational that it can ruin both in one fell swoop. That's amazing.

One thing that won't get you love, though, is dropping your pants in an airport. That will get you arrested for terrorism and\or indecent exposure. But I digress.

We must do everything in love, knowing how foundational it is to our soul and our being and our existence. We must begin and end with love so that we know what it is to be free, what satisfaction is, what greatness is, who God is. Because God is love and God is our destroyer. And God is our God.

Ash on the Window

"Disappointment is the great flag of the soul that is raised, thickly and heavily, with great remorse, to let you know you've tried."
-Cassavetes.

Yes, it's a deep feeling, full of regret and remorse, but, at the same time, it is unavoidable, like smoke from a fire, like frost on the windshield. And the things that are unavoidable strengthen doubts into the feelings of the stars. Cygnus and Gemini and Taurus. They, the great celestial animals that fly with my soul unto tomorrow and all my woes. All my voluntary unemployment, and the scratching feeling at the back of my throat that's telling me I will never be happy, that I will always be me. No matter how medicated I am. No worry save all the ones that are the must.

Broken down by the bleach I will drink to make my insides white again. In purity and in love.

Sunset & La Cienega,1972. Immovable Movers.

Surely you must be welcomed sweetly to the overture. But welcome to the Loathing, all the hatred of self, if only to better oneself. That is pure. I believe in some kind of purity. And the betterment of man through doubt and its syndicate actions driven into light by the preceding darkness.

And the line is thin. Between self-loathing and self-hate. Self-loathing is healthy while self-hate is what leads to Death, that great immutable action muted. Enduring.

If only to better oneself. I and the Father are one!

She was into S&M and Bible Study

Women.

Let's think about this one. I don't know anymore about them. I'm too much of a dickslap to be handled by any of them, and I'm too wrapped up in my own fear of hurting someone else to even take the first step towards a relationship. I no longer care about myself, it's the sheer implication that I'm so scared that what I am will not be something that any woman will like, will dig, will go for.

High School broke me. I was who I was not. And suddenly, I am. And I am shy as fuck. I am nervous as shit--"shakin' like a dog shittin' razor blades." It's how I seem to be, that far down. But beyond? Yea, we're all the same. We all suffer the same fate, the same reality, the same anti-reality. We are our own antithesis.

I am the Lion down the yellow brick. Down and down and down.

But enough about me.

Women.

They're God's chosen companion. They're our chosen companion. They are the first-mate and the guide and the reason why we reach port. Without a companion, without a guide, all men are lost at sea. Women are of men, but men are not without women. How strange is that? That we only flourish via the secondary, making it the first. ¿Verdad? I don't know. I think it makes sense. I have so much respect for women and all the tiring work they've borne. They are support, yet they are often the lead covertly. This is why we've never had a single president. Men need direction. And women lead and lead and lead.

Down and down and down.

Beginning again, but only over and over. Tell me the truth, I am angry. Tell me the truth, I am full to the brim with the Sadness.

I'm afraid of God. I am lost at sea.

"Caught him napping and picked him off at first!"

I think music is amazing. Emotion, storytelling, and inherent connections between man. They're the great spawn of greater friendships. Both Jasmine and JP were friendships spawned by our love of one band (Jasmine being mewithoutYou, JP being the Mars Volta). When there's nothing to talk about, you can talk about music and its patterns and its words and its legitimacy.

That's why there's no musical canon, because all of it is great to someone. Even Killswitch Engage, just not to me.

But once you've got that first spark, that first connection, you can go much further than without it. And, for me, music has been that first big spark many times. Find your music, find your people.

Be your own enemy.
Believe in God.

Other things that are almost as uniting: Books, TV shows, Movies, Fashion, Language, vernacular. God. Faith.

Do not conform. Let them conform to you.

Passive Aggression on Limited Ed. Clear Vinyl.

I have this feeling right now, in the pit of my stomach, that everything is my fault. Everything down and down beyond and into the river below and between us. All those days at Best Buy that we "didn't hit budget" were my fault. All the lost socks and the headaches and the messes and AIDS epidemic and the wars and the hate. It all feels like it's my fault.

And I don't understand why. It's as if this feeling is there for no good reason save per chance selfishness?

Let's start on what I want, and things that I can have if I so choose to get off my ass:

1) A girlfriend. I want to be in a relationship. But I don't know how to start one. I don't know how to be a boyfriend. I'm a dick. And dicks don't get boyfriends, they get hairy palms.

I think that's what this guilt stems from: loneliness. I am lonely, I am blue...and unwell. Such petty remarks in the length of the Father!

Of the infinity.

Uncle Mountain

So let's split hairs. Black, in American Politics, apparently means "descended from Slaves." Therefore, Barack Obama is not black. He's born from a Kenyan immigrant and "The Swiss Miss Girl." He's a mulatto and no one wants to say it.

But isn't that splitting hairs? He even said himself that if he hails a cab, they're not going to look and say, "A person who's half-black and half-white, but not technically black because of political stigma--no, they see a black man." Okay, so he didn't that exactly, he said something else less convoluted, but whatever. It's amazing that they have to find something about this guy to make sure he doesn't get the support of black voters in 2008, or Whitey.

Barack Obama in 2008. The First BLACK PRESIDENT.

I think it's going to be hard for him to straddle the line of being black and being an Uncle Tom.

He's black.

I can't let you go.

I am in a sad and terrible mood for some reason. It's probably because I'm tired, kind of sick, and really need to go to bed. But I digress.

Characters coming along well, I think. I've discovered their cognizance, I guess you could say. A lot of S&SL is non-cognizant. I am trying to make it as lucid as possible... But the understood is often more misunderstood.

Kleptomaniacal and masochistic front for war. Viva Zapata!

I have two friends and one is moving away. Do you know how much that scares me?

Alabama, Arkansas

Democrats and Republicans are sellouts. They've sold their soul to corporations. And nothing is safe.

Censorship is rampant these days. Between ClearChannel's early list of banned songs after 9/11 as well as the MPAA censoring artists (see This Film is not yet Rated) and the FCC destroying any artistic credo with their fines and their bullshit. Let the PARENTS decide.

Anti-Political Machines. Let the people decide. Nothing's gonna change with a ballot pull save the rhetoric.

Too angry to put more into words.

Everything changed on a New Year's Day.

We as a nation are trillions of dollars in debt because weaponry costs more than peace and diplomacy. We spend more money on weapons than food. And that's maddening. We are no longer the isolationist nation we used to pride ourselves on being (but, really, were we ever?), thrusting ourselves like knives or penises into foreign affairs. I wish we spread more diplomacy that bombs.

It's because countries have the same mentality and animal instinct that all humans have. To be bigger, to be better. That great, competitive drive. In the words of Trevor Hoffman, "It's a lot cooler to strike out someone with an overpowering fastball than a changeup." Changeups are food drops and helping the starving millions both here and abroad. Here, too, we have the starving people, despite our great supermarkets. And we are interested in helping out terrorism? What is terrorism but a great relative term now given to "those goddam A-rabs?"

If there are to be numerous weapons, I at least want honesty in exchange. Why are we in Iraq? Is it because the Middle East has 2\3rds of the oil reserves?

Drop food not bombs. Ole cliche and I'm serious.

--

On a lighter note, I got tickets to Coachella. Be jealous.

I love your depression and I love your double chin...

In my years of writing, I've come to the realization recently that every novel, every story, every idea, has a sinking point. Not a sinking point as in the way of the idea going south, sinking into the echelon of broken thoughts and novels, but a sinking point in the way of breaking the surface on the water, and diving deep into the lake. Instead of catching the fish beneath the water, it's allowing the fish to catch you, pull you off the boat, and drag you along underneath. This is the point that the characters take over, which can cause great confusion and public disdain. Steinbeck did this with East of Eden, of of which, he had this to say: "In this book I am a bystander and I know it." The fish takes you along, not you hauling in the fish, because that's labor, that is superficial. Following the great fish throughout the water, wherever it wants to take you, like riding a great Whale, is not work, it is not forced, it is not superficial. It is real. Of pure writing convention, Charles Bukowski wrote, “There is a time to stop reading, there is a time to stop trying to write, there is a time to kick the whole bloated sensation of art out on its whore-ass.”

Kicking the whole bloated sensation of art out on its whore-ass. Giving the finger to genre. Giving the finger to reality. For far too often, novels are forced into pragmatism, leading to questions and analysis. But to question the surface is but mere ripples. What is amazing is when the sinking point hits and the fish says, "I will show you your answers," and leads you to the answers to the 1st, while making you question the second.

Alice down the rabbit hole and the cake saying to her, "EAT ME," and here she is, growing larger and larger. This whole idea of the sinking point, and swimming with the whale, swimming with the fish, is beyond the idea of stream-of-consciousness. It is going beyond what is conscious, and down deeper, into the subconscious, down to where this story, this essay, this book, this poem, really wants to go. Because, in the end, you will be swallowed by it, and spit out at least 100 miles closer in the right direction.

You can sit on chimneys and put some fire up your ass.

I've said it before, and it' s going to be reiterated because of these comments.

If you are going to disagree with me and say that something is "retarded," please at least give a solid reason and not just come back a minute later and "second" the first "retarded" comment. Give me reason, and, c'mon, give me your name! What is really retarded is when people are so opinionated and yet can't put a name to their "taboo" statements or even have a reason for being "taboo." That's something I've found is that an opinion held in fear is an opinion held anonymously. At least Bethany, a while ago, had the guts to step up and say, "'Twas me, mofo!" That type of thing I dig upon. "Retarded," I do not.

Justify nothing, believe in everything. Except what Anonymous says.

--
Never fear the idea. Never fear the opinion. Never fear growth and rebuttal. Never fear being wrong. It's sad that the great intrinsic feeling is that to be wrong is to be dumb, when, in reality, wrongness is the the first step towards wisdom. Freedom takes mistakes. Without, we are hollow. Without wrong, there is no right. Without bad, there is no good. For it is the bad that carves that great chasm that will be filled up by the Goodness of God that is more pure than any Christmas gift and more gratifying than any candy in any egg found on any Easter. The bad is pivotal because it points out the good.

That's Billy Madison, I heard he's retarded or something...

I don't know what to say anymore. I don't know what to do anymore. I'm uneployed, of my own accord, and I am alone, of my own accord. It's funny, I often wish I could be suave with women, etcetera, when in all reality, I'm timid beyond belief because I'm afraid that they're all sexually active. Narrowing the pool to girls I know well enough to ask that question to. Narrowing the pool to puddle to girls who aren't who I know well enough to ask that question to. So could I get a date? Probably. But do I want to? No, not really. I'd rather be friends first. And that's funny because it never was that way before. But now that it's necessity, I'm okay with it. Because I don't want to date or even consider dating a defiled woman. Because casual sex is awkward. And scary. Mostly scary.

Just something that needs to be said.

I love you. You are valuable.

In the words of Mos Def,

"Well, from my understanding people get better
when they start to understand that, they are valuable
And they not valuable because they got a whole lot of money
or cause somebody, think they sexy
but they valuable cause they been created by God
And God, makes you valuable."

Don't think you're not worth something. You are to me.

shave the cat.

Fear.
The great driving fear.
Disenchanting, it tells us all we need to know.

"OH THE PEACEFUL SODOMY!"

Don't be such a queen. I know who you are, and you know who I am. I am not afraid to kick your ass. I am not afraid to run. I am afraid of you.

A purpose still to be fulfilled. Unnamed, but in need of fulfillment. Show me oh my father!

"Look, come to the window, she carries a candle in Mid-day while the sun's still so high!"

Gook, nigger, spic.

Beware and caveat emptor. A streaming conscience might reveal more than you expect. Hunger. Definitely hunger.

Hunger for what?

Love? Probably.

But what hinders hunger and keeps us starving?

Fear.

Under the boughs unbound

I just got home from seeing the movie Pan's Labyrinth. And the movie indicated a few things to me: that this is going to be another solid filled with movies I will enjoy, that damn near no one in the audience was expecting Pan's Labyrinth to (gasp!) actually be in Spanish, and, finally, that no one likes magical realism these days. It's not acceptable to have a world where magical things happen and everything's alright. No one likes fairy tales. No one likes Kafka. Not that no one cares, for that's a different story, but that no one wants it because it's awkward to revert to these "childish" ideas, when, in reality, our childishness is also some our most insightful.

Magically real, or not; in Spanish or not, I highly recommend Pan's Labyrinth.

--

Now, it's been said to me that there's a fine line between worldliness and sovereignty. There's a thin line between sin and war. There's a fine line that is tottered between the drunk's new year's and the church's.

There's also the great brushstrokes of immersion into the world or into American Christianity. Think about it, there are just as many Christian books and Christian shirts as there are non. The Christian culture is just as capitalistically driven as the non. The only differences are the metaphysical ones--intoxication, celibacy, et al.--and so for one to totter that thin line between worldly and godly, couldn't it also be said that they are walking that great and narrow path towards that great and narrow gate? For in their metaphysics and in their beliefs and in their beign, they are sovereign, while in their habits they are sometimes worldly, and mostly sovereign.

There's no way around sin, I'm just saying that the one who can have the social agility to totter the two sides and have the spiritual wherewithall to survive both sides of the fence deserves much more merit than the caved and plain Christians. I wish I was that strong.

Without a Queen.

If you know me, which you probably do, you'll know that I enjoy movies. And 2006 was definitely the year I got really into movies and really excited about them--sort of switching my love for roller coasters over to my love for film. This Top Ten is more like a tie for #1, since I thoroughly enjoyed all of these movies. Out of the whole 12 I actually enjoyed enough to place here (most comedies got omitted because they're good but they're not transcendental "Oh my God" movies. Except for a few, and I'll explain.).

The year had its bad too, lest we forget Apocalypto and Date Movie. Most would cry heresy seeing Apocalypto in the same breath as Date Movie, but, hey, that's my opinion. And my opinion is that Apocalypto was absolutely shit. Talladega Nights and Beerfest were two really good comedies that were released this year, but, once again, not good enough to be considered for the list.

Here's my Top 10, with explanations... Some are esoteric but all are highly, highly recommended.

10. Bobby

So, basically, this movie is about Bobby Kennedy. And, as a democrat, I must include it. Although there were some needless plot lines within the movie, it was overall a very touching and sentimental story about the effect of RFK, bringing up many "What ifs" along the way.

9. This Film Is Not Yet Rated

Compelling and angering as all shit-get-out. This documentary was muckraking at its best. It was enfuriating enough to get me to do a speech about the issues with the MPAA in my Speech class last quarter at the college. Frustrating who controls everything because no one wants art to speak for itself.

8. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

Ah, comedy #1. A movie that was hilarious and also showed off some very bigoted ideals still alive in America. We hate Iraqis, just watch the rodeo scene. This movie was funny and infuriating all the same. And funny, again. I can't not recommend this movie. Or leave it off of the list.

7. Monster House

This spot was between Monster House and Cars. What made me choose Monster House was that it was a coming of age tale that I could relate with. Not the house part, the girl part. It was awkward for the boys to be around her. And the prophet at the video arcade was genius. And, c'mon, the house died. And the ending wasn't happy at all. It was fucking masterful, though. Rarely do I like a kids movie as much as I enjoyed Monster House.


6. An Inconvenient Truth

Another "typical socialist necessity movie," it was boring and engaging at the same time. To hear not only about global warming but to have the pictoral visual aids, and all of it punctuated by Gore discussing his own life and why he was doing it, gave it a ton of heart. This good Earth is being destroyed. And now everyone knows it.

5. Little Miss Sunshine

The first great movie of the year. When I heard about it from trailers and reading preliminary reviews online, I dragged my friend JP along to Hollywood where there was an exclusive engagement... The hype was basically a setup for disaster. Driving 50-odd miles, paying out-the-ass for parking, and for the Arclight's higher-than-average ticket prices made us beg for this movie to be great. Hopes were high. And this movie definitely delivered. Funny and touching and sentimental and sad and real and definitely different. Offbeat and genius and wonderful.

4. The Departed

Ever since Titanic, I didn't like Leonardo DiCaprio. He was hokey, and I lost faith in him. I knew this movie, with all its a-list stars and its a-list directors, had a lot of weight. And it could have definitely collapsed under that weight. Instead, it delivered a top-notch mobster movie. So good that, hell, Mark Wahlberg actually looked like he was acting.

3. Dirty Sanchez: The Movie

The grossest movie I have ever seen. Based on the show "Dirty Sanchez," or "Team Sanchez" in the USA, it's basically the same premise as the Jackass movies and show. Only taken four steps further. The stunts are nasty (tattooed penises, liposuction and the subsequent eating of that liposucked out during a "drinking" game), and fucking insane. If you saw Jackass 2, you'll recognize the drinking beer by the anus stunt that Steve-o did, but, instead of shying away, the Sanchez boys drink the beer. Gross gross gross. And fucking hilarious. I've never laughed so hard in my life. If you're into gross-out, stupid human tricks, I highly recommend this movie. If you have a weak stomach, and don't want to see a lot of full frontal male nudity and brutality, don't see this. Although you definitely will be missing out. Although the version that gets released in the US straight to DVD will probably be hacked and cut by censors. Find a UK bootleg. Hah.

2. The Fountain

This movie posed the ultimate question for me: What if you could live forever? And it also solidifed Darren Aronofsky as one of my all-time favorite directors. It's a transcendental love story that spans across 2000 years and confuses and awes and strikes and retreats and plucks and prods. See this film. The scene where everything collapses into a single dot is worth it enough. I absolutely loved it. Except Tai Chi in space. That's why it's not #1. Oh and because the next movie is the greatest fucking movie of all time. Yea.

1. INLAND EMPIRE

I love David Lynch. He's a genius. Okay, I didn't like Eraserhead, but this is, definitely his magnum opus. This is David Lynch off the Deep End. And he took us with him. Convoluted and incomprehensible and absolutely mashed up, it's a nightmare that stirs and destroys without remorse. It's not cohesive, and it's confusing, and I love it so much. Go to Pasadena and see this movie. It will mess you up. And you will love it. Okay, maybe you won't. But I definitely did.

Go ahead and disagree with this list. I don't care. It's mine.

Here's to 2007. Go Dodgers. Go Humboldt. Go forth O my Love.

There's gotta be some way.

Are we afraid of the term "meditation?" We call it quiet time, even though it's truly meditation... It's not as imperative as in the Eastern religion, but it seems that it's just as important for our understanding of the nature of God and all his crazy antics.

Meditation and the clarity and the fishing down deep is all pivotal. But why can't we call it meditation? Euphemisms will destroy our world.

Black on both sides

I have a problem with authority. Especially when I disagree with the ideology of the company that I work for. Even when I do agree with them, I still have a problem with others telling me what to do. No matter how much they're paying me. No matter what the consequence.

Some would say that a man would suck it up and deal with it, but I was raised that a real man rises up for what he believes. Even Jesus did it.

And Best Buy, you've turned my heart into a den of thieves.

We are hip hop. You, me, everybody. It's goin' where we goin'.

Reach Out. Time. Requiem.

Perchance,
it is requiem.

Or, perchance,
it is time.

Time to reunite old love,
with new divine,

to take the word
and leave it bare-boned
and aleatoric.

Back unto its own basics.

Time to knock the whole pretentious lot
out on its whore-ass.
The whole convention and all its bullshit.

And to push forward, against.
For without a push to begin,
how can there be a push to

end.?

--

Believe in God.

We'll call it Christmas when the adverts start

Does the world actually exist? What actually exist? What is it existence?

If Paul calls us to not be of the world, what does that mean? It has often been interpreted to mean the things that go against our beliefs, and, yes, that does make sense. But what of our beliefs but love and faith in Christ as God? Is the world, then, simply the things that are not in love and contradict our faith in Christ as God? Is then premarital sex of this world? It's an act done in love, surely, but, at the same time it sometimes drafts consequences of regret. And regret leads to despondent acts.

And if the world is only the cause of a chain of events, what do we make of the paternal acts? What of the creation? Even that was a chain of events for God to say, "It is done, I can rest. My God was that a long six days." That first day. Our first day, our first act.

Then is the only thing of this world our final breath and our final repercussion for all things are linked? Then is being not of this world simply being?

But, oh, how it deepens, when you consider that we start dying the moment we are born.

What is it to be of the world? What is the world? Do either exist? Are we as Christians focusing too much on our physical actions, those that are often called worldly, when it's really the ontological actions, our acts that effect our state of being?

Oh how shallow Christianity is!

Crimson Clover and Bastard Synergy. And, you, yourself? How are you?

I'm cutting my hair, I'm getting the fuck out of Dodge.

With love and regards, but never contempt or approval, I've cynically lived my life. God's not dead, he's just in my own soul's coma.

Fuck love in the INLAND EMPIRE.

All, All we'll ever have.

It is.

My problem with Mormonism does not stem from their beliefs, their stigma, their theosophy, no. What it stems from is the fact that they believe "The same priesthood authority that existed in the original Church established by Jesus Christ exists in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints today." (Divine Priesthood Authority) What Church did Christ set up? Wasn't it Peter who was the first Pope? All Jesus did was teach and lead, not organize. He organized no one, they followed him of their own will. The church was setup by the Apostles.

The more I read about the religion, the more it disgusts me. I don't understand--their beliefs are, at their core, the same, and yet it all has a false sense about it. But then doesn't every church?

Maybe it's that it has no true history, that it's a new religion. Most religions have a culture. And the culture of Mormonism seems to be, despite their President's open statement otherwise, of the white upper-middle to upper-class American. They are anti-gay marriage and think that it is simply an inclination that can be fought against. And we thusly disagree about that. But, hell, this is some of the smartest thinking about marriage I've heard:

"The Apostle Paul taught that “neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 11:11).

In marriage, as before God, men and women are equally important.

Marriage gives neither partner the right to dominate or abuse the other. Rather, husband and wife should help each other as equal partners." (link)

They believe in a Purpose Driven Life like Rick Warren, but they're more bureaucratic and step-driven about it. Repentance, Forgiveness, Priesthood, Saving Yourself all have steps to do.

There seems to be no room for individuality in the church, despite my meeting completely different mormons. They have rules for everything, like their own Torah. They have brought back the legalism of the Sadducees, it seems. Maybe they will bring about the second coming because God's so pissed off about the fact that they're doing exactly what he preached against.

Loving one another, Faith in Christ as your Lord and Savior, and Self Sacrifice. Everything else will come thusly. That's what I believe. Those are my believes. Sit on it.

Oh, and I also believe that Capitalism is organized crime. But that's another topic.

Syncopation

Is it immature to fuss about the immature? What is immature? People have made a lot of money off of immature things, you know (cf. Jackass and the entire MTV generation).

And what if sin is relative? As in, what is sin to me is not to you. Ignoring the obvious agreeables like murder and theft, etc., where does the line get drawn? Is there a line? Or are the minor sins and minor issues always to be debated? That seems more like it. The ambiguous is always what gets argued most. That's why baseball is popular. It's ambiguous--no time and enough flexibility to have a game go for as long as 5 hours and as short as 1 hour.

I just realized I've been wearin two different types of socks all day.

"Do you still want to hang out today?" I asked

"No, Evan, it's too late." she replied

"I will find out, one day."

Go see INLAND EMPIRE. It's not about the Inland Empire.

--

Currently, I think what's the biggest thing on my list is to "get the fuck outta Dodge." Usually it's find love and all that metaphysical bullshit, but, really, what do I have here in Rancho Cucamonga? My social network was slashed and thus collapsed after graduation, and the one part is moving away, so fuck you, I'm moving away too.

There is nothing for me here.
I will find out one day.

We are truly blind to what our conscience doesn't want to see.

Water runs from the snow.

Fear of nihilism and cynicism and disenfranchisement in a city of franchises.

I am going to be visiting Humboldt University this next week, hopefully. I am thinking of transferring there, all 760 miles north of it.

I want to be transformed. I want to free my mind. I want to laugh. I want to experience the Redwood Coast.

I want metaphysical enlightenment. And I can't achieve that here. I want to experience, I want to live.

And I can't achieve that here where opportunities to be the over-man (cf. Thus Spoke Zarathustra) are far too prominent. Not to say you're dumb, but I always feel apopletic, bursting onto others. I've taught you all I know, and I must move on. See? Nihilism.

Although, I probably will be back to live in SoCal again because I plan on going to Fuller Seminary in Pasadena for my Masters or Doctorate in Theology.

With JP moving, my whole social network moves north. And what do I have for me here if all I was staying around for was friends? Most damn near abandoned me, became their own over-man. Yea, well, fuck you. I'm leaving.

--

Go see David Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE. It's not about what you think it is.

"A Woman in Trouble."

Lapping Currents

I am a hypocrite. I suffer from the nihilism I preach against. This has reared its ugly head, and now I feel like I'm in need of some sort of cleansing.

I do think I am better than you, a lot of the time, because I've come to these "great revelations." But in all reality, it's just a bunch of bullshit. And who am I to judge?

--

JP's going to San Luis Obisbo. I am happy for him and sad for myself. I am such shit at meeting new people too, at getting some sort of sweeping confidence. I guess that's what defeat does to you. And I'm shy and paranoid.

And love. Love will ultimately be your defeat as well as mine. Probably mine first since I'm so insanely in love with the idea of being in love. How gay is that.

The LandLord's daughter

I think the problem with my social awkwardness, and oft disdain, lies within the esoteric. Not so much things that are esoteric, but things within common things that are esoteric. Like, "I'm gonna kill you, mothafucka!" which I said to my dad tonight. That's from a Dr. Dre song. But who would honestly know that? Or "That's just how it goes I guess," how would anyone know that that's from a mewithoutyou video on YouTube from Cornerstone 2006? "You shot Marvin in the face!?" is another good example (Pulp Fiction). Or, during Apocalypto (absolute shit. Don't see it.), I shouted, "BEES!" during a scene where the pursuers get attacked by bees. Funny out of context, sure. But funnier in the context of my dad's story about a co-worker shouting it in a high-pitched voice over the radio on the train.

I try not to worry about what others think of me, but when all I have to call on a Thursday afternoon is a friend, an ex-girlfriend, and someone who I really doubt wants to hang out with me, as apologetic as she is and can be, I begin to wonder if I should care so that I have some sort of network to get me off my ass.

I've had a very existential week. nothing to be done, nothing to do but wait for 3 o'clock Friday when I work. Godot is coming, and I will probably get called off. "Godot will not be able to come today, but if you come back tomorrow..." I've gotten really depressed and have begun to sleep a lot. It's the closest to time-travel that I can get. It's the nicest thing. It's the hardest way to make an easy living. See? There's another one. That's the title of the Streets' ablum, "The Hardest Way to make an easy living."

I let the Beast in too Soon

I received this comment from Anonymous. Don't be anonymous anymore, it pisses me off. I digress. Anyway, This is it, regarding my previous post:

"...but I want you to be wise about what is good, and innocent about what it evil." Rom. 16:8

I like to think that anything that is NOT of God is of the world. It doesn't always have to be a complicated thing to interpret.

"For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin." Rom. 6:6

so, since we have his blood, we aren't slaves to sin anymore, and so shouldnt let it be a part of us. I love this verse. Pull it apart and really think about it! It's magnificent!"

What is not of God, if he created everything--from the land to the sea to the birds to the people? Sure, the body of sin has been done away with, but what about our intrinsic desires and our intrinsic soul? Isn't that the most inherently evil thing known? All those animal urges are considered evil, and they are the foundation of which we are built. If, then, those instincts are of this world and are inherently evil, then does make a creature of pure instinct, like a dog, completely evil and thus to be destroyed?

Even language, all language is from God--it is the one thing that discerns us from the animals.

I do not conform to our government completely because I believe it is evil, yet necessary. I do not conform to our corporations because I believe they are worldly and greedy and the most innately evil thing we know of. But, once again, how do we escape these things except for being Amish? Except by becoming a recluse in a forest, writing our manifestos like the UniBomber? Everything is evil, it seems, and the only thing that seperates us from this world is our faith. Our faith is not of this world. That's the one thing that is completely detached. The metaphysical, that which does not take up matter. Those are the things that are not of this world. The rest falls beneath. Faith, love, liberty, the metaphysical.

Then, then, we could go to the extreme and say that, "Since we, according to Romans 6, are dead to sin, we can no longer sin, and thus everything we do is sacrosanct." But that's just bullshit. Maybe.

I can agree with this person, but it just brings up more questions. That's all.

And, again, I have to ask the question of: Why is cursing and swearing considered evil? That's one thing that I just don't get. So I ask again.

Two other things:

Romans 16:8 is actually, "Greet Ampliatus, whom I love in the Lord." Not quite the same effect. I think he\she meant 16:18, but, even then, I have a different translation, including 17 "I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them. For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people." The Naive people can be deceived. There's a difference between innocence and naivete. I am innocent because I am a virgin and "straight-edge." I am not naive because I know the inner workings of this good earth.

--

Danielle Cobb sent me a message and told me to stop being so negative. So here it is: Ten Nice Things about Life

1) Music
a) Fiona Apple, Joanna Newsom, mewithoutYou, Devendra Banhart, the Decemberists (O Valencia!)
2) Film
b) Directors: David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, Darren Aronofsky; Actors: Elijah Wood, Shia Labeouf; Actresses: Naomi Watts, Laura Dern, Isabella Rossallinni.
3) The Philanthropic.
c)That Guy who invented the segue, specifically. He's fricken amazing.
4) Laughter.
d) needs no explanation. Smiling is excellent. I love to smile, I love to laugh. Especially at my own or others' expenses.
5)Love
e) True love.
6) Philosophy
f) Existentialism and Nihilism and Objectivism and Christianity and Catholicism and my own.
7)God
g) To know God is to know life.
8)Family
h) the greatest friends you will ever have or will not have. I have two sisters and parents. They love me. And support me.
9)Friends
i) They often offer the greatness of the previous 8.
10) Socialism
h) It's the knowledge that there is something better. Hilary 2008. Or Obama. :)

One love.

Life is beautiful, but I often see the bleakness because that's what I've been taught by my parents. To never take anything at face value. To think critically about everything. And, although that has bogged me down in some areas, I believe it is the best thing they could've taught me. I have a job, I have my friends, I have my doubts! Amontillado!

Grapefruit from a Bramble Bush

But he continued, "You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world..." John 8:23


Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:2


You have to ask yourself: How does one conform to the pattern of this world? Is it by cursing and sexual frankness? Is it by conforming to the will of a despotic government? Is it by being passive about an indecent war?

Or is it about seeking God which is not the pattern of this world. The pattern of this world that Paul was talking about, I believe, is merely the ideas that are put forth and the ones that we passively accept. Am I of this world because I am sexually frank and I curse like a sailor? No. I am not. Because I seek God with all my heart, and have him as my undercurrent in everything that I do. From women to whitewashing. I praise God for all he giveth and taketh. Ergo, I am not of this world, despite however much I sodomize your moral high-horse. We are one and the same with different tactics.

And does that really surprise you? That a socialist Christian has a different tact than a Republican one who thinks the line of morality to draw in the sand is far before what it should be?

Jesus said we are of this world, we are from below, and there is no changing that. The problem is that people think that not conforming to the patterns of this world means not cursing and being naive whereas I come from the disposition that it is not that, but rather the idea that the patterns of this world are greed and lust and rage and malice and deceit. To not conform to the world is to not conform to those ideals. We are all a slave to our sin, but is swearing a sin? No. Is talking about cunnilingus a sin? No.

Perhaps all the morality is to veil a paper thin faith, making it easier to proclaim to the world that you are a Christian. It's a lot easier to be passive and quiet and naive (as most of the non-cursors are) rather than to dissent. I will fucking dissent. I will sodomize your moral high-horse and come away still a Christian, still as "non-conformed" as any of you. But I am free. And I am honest. And I believe in God the father and Jesus as his son. And I will proclaim this until the day I die.

Maybe I'm not supposed to be a fiction writer. Maybe I'm supposed to focus on non-fiction... But the problem is that where do I publish non-fiction?

Anyway, It's the Christmas season and there's no baseball on. I hate it.

Refused Party Program

I trust God more than I trust people. But, then I have about zero trust in people, and anything times zero is zero.

Does that mean I do not trust God? in that I don't trust his pan-ultimate creation?

I think this world is bullshit anyway. I think Christians are far too often naive and full of themselves (Except Keagy. She's just nice.). But, like I said before, I just hate their whole ontological and theosophical nihilism. And their overman. Wasn't Christ of the people?

And why is "fuck" such a bad word? I can see the degradating effects of "cunt" in certain circumstances. But fuck? So the fuck what? it's a passing four letter. And shit is angry. No divinely negative connotation. Spic, gook, Nigger, etc, I can see the beef with, along with cunt. But why fuck?

"In the wake of our existence. In our parades, and in our dances. Touch, see, and behold: the wisdom of the Party Programme. Essential in our lifetime and irresistable in our touch, the great spirits proclaiming that, 'Capitalism is indeed organized crime. And we are all the victims." -Refused.

Abraham Lincoln was the Great Emancipator.

An Empty Garlic by Rumi (Translated by Coleman Barks)

"You miss the garden,
because you want a small fig from a random tree,
You don't meet the beautiful woman.
You're joking with an old crone.
It makes me want to cry how she detains you,
stinking mouthed, with a hundred talons,
putting her head over the roof edge to call down,
tasteless fig, fold over fold, empty
as dry-rotten garlic.

"She has you tight by the belt,
even though there's no flower and no milk
inside her body.
Death will open your eyes
to what her face is: leather spine
of a black lizard. No more advice.

"Let yourself be silently drawn
by the stronger pull of what you really love."

What I thought was interesting was that final stanza. "What you really love." not "Who you really love." I began to dwell on who I love, if it's anyone that I know. If it's she, then she has no nourishment and she's deflowered. It is not she. Then I began to think about what I love. And how I love it. I neglect my writing for the fey pressures of life and boredom. I struggle a lot from boredom. And mixing that with a big, empty house, I have nothing to be done. 11 hours a week at my job and I do not love it.

Is the what that I love actually she? Or is the what that ufailing, easy answer. The what is God. But that is too obvious. Writing? Obvious. Film, baseball, theology, rational argument, thinking.

You don't meet the beautiful woman. Not women. Singularly beautiful woman. Not women. And who is she if not she whom I know? Am I too young to know? I mean, the triumverate of potentials that I know don't seem to want me back, and then, if that is the case, is that singly beautiful woman going to never walk into my life because I am too shy?

but what do I love? Silently, quietly, what do I love? Spooning. Oh, it's that easy.

No, no. beyond the jokes, the humor--laughter. I love laughter. I love to laugh. I love music.

Is that what itself my damn-near-hostile obsession with love? Is it all those hopeless romantic thoughts that often decay my mood unto loneliness and bare-boned anonymity?

The what's, the loves, the singulars, and Oh I feel so old.

File under: Worry; Easy Listening.

My finals start tomorrow. And I'm worried. I don't know why I'm worrying, but I am. I've been acing all the motherfuckers this season, so I have nothing to worry about. But, still, I suffer from Liberal Jewish Paranoia, even though I'm a negligible 1\64th Jewish. I guess my Jewish qualities still shine through though. With pride, of course.

I want to go to the Bay Area--Frisco, Berkeley, Santa Cruz. But I don't know why. There's a certain allure about the cities, I guess. I want ot get published, but I don't write enough short fiction. Or long fiction. I've written maybe one or two stories a YEAR. Maybe I should batton down the hatches? But non-fiction is a lot easier, I've realized. Maybe I'm supposed to be a journalist? Or a social Critic? Because my older stories seem to be stale and shit-riddled. I was a cocky, egotistic, motherfucker with no self-esteem, and that shows through by the protagonists. And the protagonists all die. I think that was my way of saying, "I am not ego." It was my own self-denial, my killing off myself. And it's probably also directly connected to my often-feeling of not wanting to live anymore. That's pretty typical, especially when the worry gets to be too much. I even bought a knife today, for work. And I began to think, "it's gonna get easier to bleed this way, you know."

But I'm tangled in the reins and lost in the love of God. My purpose hasn't been fulfilled, I haven't been actualized yet. It's all fucking coming.

And I want it now.

I want love, especially. I want to go on dates, I want to take girls out, I want to find love. But I'm so caught up in my own idealism and shyness and fear that no one will ever love me in "that way" that I can't say anything to any girl about that. As art fades, form appears. I want a lover, an editor, a critic, a friend, a supporter, a lean-to, a house, a home. I want too much of girls my age. I want too much of myself at this age. I want everything now, and I have no patience.

We've discussed this before, you and I. The whole idea of my impatience. I'm only 18 for Christ's sake. But, at the same time, I want to cry because I know in my heart of hearts that I won't hold another girl with love and affection for another few years.

Hopeless romantic idealism. And Liberal Jewish Paranoia. They obviously don't mix. But when they do, you get a mess like myself.

"How're you?"

"I'm decent."

"Well, that's a change."

What the hell is that supposed to mean?

Traditional Chinese Medicine in Omaha

The paradox of buying a packaged knife is that you need a knife to open the knife. But if you buy yet another packaged knife to open the first, you need a third to then open the two. The moral? Use your fucking teeth.

I guess the reason why I haven't killed myself yet is directly tied to the fact that I've killed myself multiple times in many of my stories. All the early ones result in my death, me as the narrator, or me as the protagonist. And, to quote various zombie movies, "How do you kill something that's already dead?"

It's a less harmful form of self-flaggelation.

So, nobody purchased The Fall issue of We are all Serial Killers. So what am I doing? I'm making a 2nd volume, goddammit. And I'll tell you why. because I might make this one at Kinko's. And it'll be cheaper that way, I think. Hopefully, we'll see.

And it'll be a lot more magazine-esque. I'm willing to take SERIOUS submissions--art scans in B&W (B&W printing is way cheaper), B&W photography, essays.

And it can be of anything, you know me. Open to anything. Except pornographic. If there's nudity, at least make it classy. :)

That is that. Follow the link to Volume one to see what's in it, and buy it for God's sake. It's only 45 cents for the PDF. And having a Lulu account doesn't hurt anyone. Make your own books.

Buy Volume 1 and get excited for Volume 2.

S-S-S-Sabotage!

Christians caught up in their own ontological and theosophical nihilism. We've all seen it. They're the ones with the stories about accidental swear words. And me in the backseat can only say, "I have no story for my disposition is to swear like a sailor." They're the ones holed up in a niche of--more like a small crack--of culture that is poorly written and poorly composed. All the Christian music I hear, save a few exceptions, and all Christian literature I've read, save very few exceptions, has been shit. There's no way around that word. "Crap" is too white-washed and euphemistically silly. "Crud" is all the worse. "Poop?" "Terrible?" No. I want a word that is associated with that which comes out of my anus. Shit shit shit. Now, admittedly, I hate 90-97% of all existence anyway, so maybe my stance has no validity. But the fact that they're willing to sacrifice something's validity because it's "vulgar?"! Oh dear sweet Christ how shelled you are. What is life without vulgarity? What is honesty and integrity with that veil protecting you from things people should be honest about.

They are caught up in a naive being. Maybe they don't prioritize or necessitate seeing or knowing what 90-97% of this world consists of. Maybe they don't see the need to know their fellow brethren?

That's naive, pious, shit. Shit I will not stand for.

I can't tell my Christian friends that I masturbate, I can't tell them about my struggles. Because it's taboo and it's "icky." Icky? Are you fucking children? Or just... fucking children. It's frustrating that I can't be honest around Christians, because my life is icky.

But show me someone more devout than I am? Consider everything I've been through, all the things that should have caused me to fall away and onto that broad path. Come back and tell me that I am no Christian because I swear. Come back and tell me I am no Christian because I am constantly attempting to humble myself in the face of honesty, integrity, and, often, embarassment.

Be not afraid for the World is yours, oh Children of God!

Something to Chew on

So Buddhism and a few a others believe in reincarnation and enlightenment, right? The whole idea of cyclical thought, where everything comes back around until your soul is finally enlightened.

Christianity, however, believes in the one-life-to-live, get rich or die tryin', straight and narrow path of life. Hm.

I state this because I had to write a paper on self-realization and how enlightenment cuts that cycle short, like a slingshot, catapulting you into heaven. A cycle cut open is a straight and narrow line. See what I'm getting at?

Maybe Christianity is the enlightenment all Buddhists are seeking: that path straight to heaven, that one life, not restarting, and being on a one way to Heaven. The only rebirth a Christian ever faces is when he turns around and says, "I and the Father are one," and accepts Christ into their heart. That's all the rebirth we need. That's it. And then we have cut short the cycle--say, we didn't hit the home run, but we got the hit, the double, the triple--and are catapulted at our eternal father in love, faith, and humility.

Christianity is enlightenment for all.