Monday, December 29, 2008

Bush's Beans and Rice

Condaleeza Rice, the Secretary of State until January 20th, said that the American people will soon "thank Bush." You all remember Ms. Rice, almost certainly the most intelligent (if not scrupulous) member of the Bush Administration. She's the one who told us all that the very evidence we need to justify a preemptive invasion of Iraq could destroy us. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." she told the world.

This is precisely the same logic that could be used to justify a war on Belgium. That may or may not be a good idea, I don't know. But the pseudo-logic used here could be an avatar for a entire mode of thought, a very different view of the world and how we move in it than anyone you know. The major points of this way of thinking and acting are difficult to define. Rice and Bush are hard to define. I feel as if I could walk right through them. They are phantoms. But I do know that Bush people adhere to a collective approach. For example, to Bushies, everything is a hustle, a grift. There isn't an ounce of intellectual honesty or integrity here. Bush never spoke with a reporter, or to the American people and just talked to us. He was always trying to talk us into something. Also, to a Bushie the law is just an obstacle course to be negotiated in order to get what you want. Ethics, simply put, do not exist in any capacity. Ethics are for academics and children...that's the vibe I get from Bush. In addition, he's probably mentally ill, as he seems to worship the God of "us vs. them."

One last thing about Bush and how we'll "thank him." I'm confident that he will be remembered as the worst president in American history, up until this point, anyway. There's a good chance he'll be remembered frequently, too.

I feel rather odd, and may benefit by taking another pill. That impulse doesn't fail me often. Adieu, comrades!

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Day of the Hangover

By all accounts, via email and blog commentary, "Night of the Sake" played like a horror movie. Most of the elements that contributed to that aesthetic were accidental, like the black void of my bedroom with no candles or lights. And naturally it didn't help that I was shirtless. There is some sort of correlation between dark thoughts, angst and shedding one's shirt. I'm seen enough episodes of cops to know about this phenomenon. For men, anyway. When women get angry with me, or depressed, they never just decide to go topless.

That's the kind of world we live in. Don't look at me, Choochie, you live in it, too.

I apologize for my lack of eloquence, but in fairness I polished off that whole bottle of sake myself. A young lady and friend asked me this morning, via email, if I was depressed. No, I'm not, but I'm fixated on physical and emotional pain. It's no wonder that people need the pleasant fiction of religion to get through the day.

Today I went to my doctor, the man responsible for keeping me healthy. I'm meant to address my B12 and vitamin "D" deficiencies, which is easy enough to do with a syringe and needle. He also felt this and that, we talked, we laughed, and he kissed me full on the lips during the "strip to your underwear" exam. Well, that last part is my attempt at humor. An amusing lie.

What I learned, though, is that there is nerve damage from my second orchiectomy, which is causing frequent low level pain in the place where my balls are supposed to be. This isn't a complaint, as I'm acutely aware of how lucky I am to have had those nuts removed before cancer ate me.

Lou Gehrig, who by coincidence died of Lou Gehrig's disease, once said (in a famous speech) that he was "the luckiest man on the face of the Earth." With all sincerity, I feel that way about myself. I'm the beneficiary of incredible kindness. In the spirit of the holiday bullshit season, I'm going to name five people who have changed my life with a modicum of compassion. Consider it well. In my opinion, compassion is the greatest thing we humans have brought into the world. Nothing compels it but empathy. Religion tries to scare it into us, but that won't work without a threat of action in this world, not the next or the one after.

Here's my list of people who have been compassionate towards me, and should be canonized as far as I'm concerned. In no particular order.

Linda N. - My girlfriend, lover and friend. She is on this list because she is the very picture of kindness, to me and every living thing that crosses her path. She has the tough tenderness of a mother, and grandmother. Before we met, she made the world a better place for three children and one grandson, numerous horses, countless cats and dogs a'plenty. It's in her nature to empathize. His Holiness the Dali Lama once said, "If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion." I've found her easy to love.

Kent L. - My brother. Older brothers have a reputation for being brutes. Through all my electroshock treatments, hospitalizations, suicide attempts and various and sundry tomfoolery over the years, he has always been there. I know I'm in his mind when I'm in pain, and he knows that I'm there for him, too. Helping each other get through life, whatever it is.


Quinn Brisben - I have to mention Quinn, the man is physically incapable of judging someone. Kind and tough. Worked for disability rights via ADAPT in Chicago, the SP, and traveled the world. He once smuggled condoms into the USSR. Kind and tough go together well.

Dr. Michael Gibbons - When I was at UMass Boston, Dr. Gibbons was my degree advisor and frequent lunch companion. He'd take me off campus to a nearby restaurant and we'd just talk and eat. If memory serves, he drank a bit. He was all advice, good humor and rugged affability.

I could go on, about all these people. When I speak of luck, and how lucky I've been, I think of these people, among others. I've certainly tasted enough hardship to know that life can always get much, much worse. But for now, I have my friends, and memories of friends past. At my core I'm grateful. The pernicious schemes of men, the power of money to rob decent people of their principles, and the random visitations of hardship and death. That's life, yes. Partly, anyway. But so is the rest of it.

There you go. As sappy as it may be, enjoy this quote from George Washington Carver, the man who had a thing for peanuts.

"How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these."

Monday, December 22, 2008

Night of the Sake

Go bed now

Right now I'm drunk off my ass on Gekkeikan sake, my personal favorite brand because it's crazy cheap and manufactured in Folsom, California. License plates, prison outfits and sake. Yeah. My name is Darren and I am fat but not as fat as I used to be. I'm pretty thin, relatively speaking. I'm not all that bright. I have a blog. My balls are gone, and sometimes I wear my girlfriend's panties. With the exception of my huge cock, the panties fit.

Go figure.

Right now I'm sweating a lot. I'm really drunk. Good thing I have a doctor's appointment on the morrow. I'm going to say funny and good things to that doctor. We'll laugh and celebrate some fucking social relationship and I'll fly home and enjoy being alone. Away from all you rubes.

In actuality, I'm just waiting...longing...for merciful death to rob me of horrific awareness. Jerry Lewis is an abomination. Michael Jackson has lung cancer from fucking llamas. Llama lung, they call it. But between you and me there are a lot of people who can go die for all I care. Bush, Rice, Cheney, the guy who sold me the wrong FUCKING bagel at Dunkin' Donuts.

Vampires. Teenage chicks want to fuck them. They'd rather fuck a damned, undead James Dean impersonator than the fat kid. Fuck the fat kid. He's there and alive, dammit.

I should go bed now.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Of Sports, Sex and Pink Floyd

I've lost my girlfriend for the afternoon, to the National Football League. For my European friends, that's not soccer. In the US, "football" refers to a game that rarely involves the use of feet. They could have called it "noseball" and only been slightly off.

Soccer, of course, is all feet, all the time. That's why they call it "football" over there. We call soccer "boring" over here, but we have feet of clay on that one. If you've ever sat through a 5 hour baseball game (or more), you know of what I speak. Part of me despises all sports, as they remind me of gym class, particularly in middle and high school. I enjoyed all my other classes, even math, but I just skipped gym a lot.

One time, my "physical education" teacher asked me, "Why don't you ever come to class?" I didn't say anything of consequence, but my weight should have been a clue. But if gym teachers could think properly they'd be teaching something else. Anything else. If I could answer him today, I'd say, "Because I'm grossly overweight, which makes it hard to engage in your nonsense, and also makes my body look like the Michelin man, thus making cruel jibes & group showers another compelling reason to skip. You got that, Jumping Jack?"

The patina of my angst lingers today. Linda, the woman whose heart I made a nest within, loves football, especially the Patriots, of course. No problem. I can reconcile her enjoyment of an absurdly stupid sport with no redeeming aspects whatsoever with my love, via respect. There is more to love than finding a clone of yourself. I definitely do not want that, friends and neighbors. She puts up with my occasional enjoyment of Red Sox baseball, Socialist rants, insanity, and small pecker sans balls. In turn, she can watch football, House, engage in rampant cell phone use (she answers the phone during sex) and watch Days of Our Lives on her day off.

Believe me, I got the better deal. And she doesn't like NASCAR, thankfully. Whew.

Sometimes I feel compelled to shop for a strange sport that may appeal. Like AC, who is a Sumo wrestling fan. It looks like an interesting spectacle. But it never works out. The interest just isn't there...I'm not a sports guy. The only "sport" that has me watching in genuine admiration is marathon running. My friend Adam is a very adept runner, and a thoughtful intellectual. Great abs, too.

Adam, you are one sexy bastard.

Tennis is fun. Kickball is also fun, but who plays that but kids. When I was 10 we played "Trog" in our neighborhood, which was based on the Creature Double Feature "classic" of the same name. It was basically a cross between tag and hide-and-seek, with bad acting mixed in.

At 14, I discovered sex and any chance I had at pursuing a hobby (other than boning) with zeal went out the window. My "sport" became trying to convince girls to touch my willy. Fucking is a good sport. It burns calories, you don't have to go near men, and you never have to worry about being motivated.

That's why I thought that women's beach volleyball was so magnificent when I first discovered it. But that didn't work out, either, unless Linda was around to help me sate my base sexual desire. Oh, yeah.

So that's my thing about sports.

PS-To everyone who took a moment to tell me how much they liked my video posts, thank you. It means a lot to me, seriously, when someone says I'm funny or clever. It may be pathetic that I need that, and I suppose I don't need it, but I do enjoy it. Thanks GSP, AC, Eve, Linda, all of you.

Bye the way, AC, I'm getting into Pink Floyd and if you have any thoughts as a fan, let me know.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Out of Town News to Close

This comes from a friend of mine, in a recent comment left on a previous blog entry:

not sure if you know this, but "out of town news" in Harvard Square is going out of business. Figured it would be something that would interest you, as OOTN is one of the last bastions of non-ass in the whole square. Good bye, Wursthaus, good bye Bow and Arrow, good bye House of Blues(the original), good bye anything non-sucky. I guess the only thing left that I would go there for is Pandemonium.

I'd like to second what he has to say. Out of Town News was right outside of the T station, before you crossed over to the Harvard Co-op, or went the other way to the smoke shop Leavitt & Peirce. My father used to clean the Wursthaus after hours. I remember hanging out in the "pit" behind the T stop. That girl with a pet rat.

Harvard Square will continue to be in business, but whatever made it interesting is bleeding away. It hasn't sunk in yet...this OOTN business. It's more upsetting than Someday Cafe. Is Million Year Picnic and Tokyo Kid still there?

If so, not for long. Thank you, AC.

Family Circus Homage

Today, Darren has decided to take the day off and fight the Demon in his mind with a pitchfork and a small novelty baseball bat. Good luck, Dar! Until he returns, "Jeffy," Darren's psychotic pen pal will take over the blog. Enjoy the hi-jinks!

-Impy

Hi, I'm Jeffy.

The exciting and challenging act of being myself requires that I take many prescribed drugs. Just like that crazy fat fuck Darren. After one of the drugs killed my boner, I became a serial killer in a violent, pathological attempt to regain a modicum of dignity and, in a twisted fashion, regain the loss of what I've come to think of as my "manhood." I'm not above having sex with a houseplant or piercing my nipples at home with a meat thermometer.

I wish I could eat chicken wings all the time. We all like them, but I really like them, you know? I'm a bit worried. I asked Darren what he thought, but whenever he comes home and finds me in his flat, he's all about dialing 9-1-1 with his fat little digits.

J'accuse!

It is possible, but highly undesirable, to "fuck a duck."

My nipples are totally numb, so it wasn't a good idea, apparently. I'm sure it's temporary. In fact, one of my nipples rubbed off and fell out of my T-shirt near the Harvard Square T station, near the "Coop." If you find a nipple around there, it is so totally mine.

Can't be a lot of nipples just out there.

Low fat cookies are a scam perpetrated by an international cabal of Jews and Australians. The government!

Monday, December 08, 2008

Where's The Romance?

Some coffee is steaming in my favorite "Le Chien" mug next to me. It's a fearsome, strong blend that I'm inclined to make. Instead of cream or half & half I used some store brand dry coffee creamer. It's a real pro and con situation with this unsavory white powder. It keeps the coffee from getting too cold too fast, and makes it taste a bit richer. But no matter how much I stir and stir, there are little white balls floating around, like Japanese men in a jacuzzi. Each one needs special attention and must be squashed against the side. Also, strangely, like Japanese men in a jacuzzi.

It's a whole production.

But that's done now. I'm alone in my flat listening to the heat turn on and off. For such a small place we have an extremely powerful gas burner, or whatever you call it. The heat just appears. I'm a lucky man.

I've managed to string a few good days together, days without tears or self-injury or panic. If I feel compelled to burst out of my flat and into the night, where I can shout protests and insults at the moon, it never lasts very long; it's freezing out. Medication is helping, even if I do keep skipping appointments. I've got one this week, one I have to attend. The heart pill I take is especially helpful against panic attacks. As I said, a lucky man.

A modicum of melancholy is expected around the holidays, although it is an urban myth that suicides are highest this time of year. Actually, it's in the summer that most people off themselves. But this time of year does lend itself to remembrances, especially for one as sentimental as I. Atheists like myself (and there aren't many like me) romanticize the world to make the brutality and meaninglessness more endurable. Is there anything more romantic than tragedy? Is there anything more tragic than the pointless life we're all living? Anything more beautiful than two people finding love while framed by an endless void of time and space?

The most beautiful noise to me is Tchaikovsky's violin concerto. The Russians of his time were very Romantic, in music and literature. And borscht. The way people like to remember Tchaikovsky is that he was a homosexual in a time and place when that sort of thing was not kosher. Like Texas today, or South Carolina. So he struggled. He felt he was struggling against Fate. All Russians do, and why not? It makes you a hero just by living.

Tchaikovsky had a wealthy patron, Madame Von Meck, and they never met once. Sad, but to me painfully romantic. All this drama in a godless universe.

In the end, he may have committed suicide, or just had a drink of water that was teeming with germs. People were supposed to boil their drinking water at that time and place. It doesn't matter, though. His torment and struggle is perfectly evident in his music. Nothing I've read about Tchaikovsky, not even his letters, touches me like his music. This is news to no one, but music is powerful stuff.

My dead Russian friend was miserable and a closet homosexual who may have killed himself, possibly at the urging of his classmates at the Law Conservatory, who feared an embarrassing scandal if his sexual orientation were made public. I don't think he did, though. In my professional opinion, he simply drank the wrong glass of water.

Either way, he was around long enough to produce six symphonies (among many other opi). I'm fond of the last three in particular. Music critics will say that his 6th is truly special, and I'm inclined to agree. If you're unfamiliar with his music, I urge you to listen to the 4th symphony first, and then move to the 6th. It will aid in your appreciation, with perhaps a bit of consternation the price you'll pay. If you see the 6th performed live, don't get up to applaud until others do. Standing after the third movement and applauding is embarrassing as all hell.

I'm so lucky to live in a world where unhappy people can record, in a beautiful fashion, their interaction with the world. Happy people, too. I can listen in on, or read, whatever they felt compelled to shout out. Whatever they wanted remembered. A little bit of themselves and a little bit of shared experience. So we know what they were talking about.

Few artists know what to do with angst. Use it in a proper way. Record the fear but know well the desire to be unafraid. And have the scruples to detest hateful thoughts and actions but recognize that they live within most of us, maybe you. That will get your stomach roiling if you give the matter proper consideration. And never make the mistake of thinking that cynicism makes you wise.

A cynic is usually apathetic, and apathy is boring. Either way life is a struggle, so you may as well embrace what is either a pleasant fiction or a simple truth, that we're here to help each other get through life, whatever it is. It adds a bit of nobility to the cold fire of empty space, in the soft gray matter of our brains, and thus our minds. There's the romance, too.

Find one person, take his or her hand, and grow old together, all the while committed. It's a struggle, but there's romance there.

Thursday, December 04, 2008

Stream of Stupidity

I'm floating with the deliberate speed of a turd down the toilet into a period of mild depression and increased suicidal ideation. I'm doing quite well, and putting up a sporting fight. It's either that or hang myself, and I'm terrible with knots. All thumbs. Besides, suicidal thoughts hold little sway with me right now.

I'm a lucky man and have absolutely no cause to complain. But I don't see these little missives from the frontal lobe as complaints.

This site is for entertainment purposes only.

Part of my mind is constantly occupied with this one question: Am I totally out of my fucking mind, but everyone is too afraid to say anything to me? It haunts me, and there are many other questions that float around with it, and they are all incredibly negative and withering. I know we all have some crazy thoughts, but I can top whatever you got.

It has a nice, tidy name. Bipolar disorder. Along with Avoidant Personality Disorder. They sound quaint. Bipolar disorder effects 2% of the population, but they advertise bipolar drugs on national television. So everyone has heard of it. There's a stigma, but it's not terrible.

Right now I'm daily flinging drugs into my yap, all prescribed. I'm on board with The Whitecoats. They are going to take the pain away. Shock your noggin and give you an English muffin. Who else is going to give you a deal like that? Huh? Then drugs to numb your delicate little brain and fragile little arms and lets. It takes the edge off a very edgy world. You can pop your balloon in a world like this in 2 seconds flat. So many pointy, edgy parts.

The French had a red balloon. He thought he would live forever like DeGaul, but he was popped at the Canne Film Festival in the late '70's.

I refer to the balloon as a "he," but in truth I don't think there is any sexual dimorphism among balloons. Not even alive. So that story can't be true. Newsflash, balloons are not living, sexual beings.

But I'm pretty sure the French had a red balloon.

The French seem to enjoy smoking, as it gives them some street cred among the existential nihilists in all those little cafes that everyone blows a load for. For which people blow a load. There. I'm an existential nihilist and I can't smoke cigarettes. I tried smoking Galoit cigarettes when my girlfriend smoked them. About 10 years ago. It didn't go over, the cigs or the relationship.

But the French. They just keep going to town on those things. The French make and eat a lot of cheese. It's like a law or something. Every family must keep a mold or fungus working its magic on a dairy product. I wonder how many French people have ever tried to smoke cheese. You know someone did. Personally I'd go with bleu cheese, if I were going to try.

Then you got wine. It's a whole thing.

Monday, December 01, 2008

Creative Endeavor

At about five this morning I woke up and it occurred to me that getting back to sleep just was not going to happen. As it happens, my father was also awake at this early hour, smoking his brains out and watching MSNBC, or the Today Show. One of those. It was too early to join him for coffee, and instead I leafed through the pages of my incomplete, unpublished and mostly unseen novel/script. Over the years some scenes were added while others were thrown in the trash. I like what I'm left with, even though it would make little sense to anyone but me.

A creative endeavor that intrigues and entertains me, and nothing more. And my poems, too. They are mostly unseen by any eyes other than mine, but I don't mind. It's a mercy to my friends, who have better things to do than read the overwrought poetry of Fatty McCrazy (me). My friend Clare wrote a 50,000 word novel just for the fun of it, for National Novel Writing Month a few years back. She seemed to enjoy it, and it was well done. The joy of writing for the sake of writing.

There are a few people out there who dislike me in the extreme, mainly because of my political disposition coupled with how I enjoy debating philosophy and politics. If you want to talk about Skinner's Problem of Evil, I'm your man. Existential nihilism, Keynesian economics, "The Invisible Hand" of laissez-faire economics, national health care, the Red Shift in physics, NAFTA, Obama, a woman's right to choose, gay marriage...whatever you want to talk about, I'm sure to have a strong opinion on it. Out there on the Internet, there are some people who want to pop me in the nose for my socialist/atheist philosophy.

These people get angry, because I'm much smarter than they are, and they mock my attempts at creative writing. It's one of the few criticisms that bothers me not a bit. Not a jot or a tittle. Most of what I write is for me, and it's writing that I like, not having written something. One I'm done with a short story or chapter or paragraph or line, I tend to just throw it out. It's not the key to heaven, and warrants at most a long last look. Then I move on to something else.

Writing for fun is a blast. Writing for others, to show off or tell a story, is an anxious festival of fear and loathing.

That said, I'm working on a summary of Last American on Earth. I'll show it to friends and family and get some feedback. If there is anything there worth a serious effort, maybe I'll work on that. I don't know.

Now if you'll excuse me, there is a fellow outside hammering and one of us has got to go.