EVERYTHING SIMULTANEOUSLY

NEW NOISE

2012-01-19T19:11:00.000-08:00

i made some new noise with processed voice and bowed psaltery.

ok.

INTERNET POETRY

2012-01-15T17:46:00.000-08:00

in the blank autistic throes of whatever. they have software to write our copy now where are the fucking people

you industrious little fuckheads. making t-shirts making poetry t-shirts on the internet. t-shirts don't feel anything they're t-shirts. why doesn't your poetry feel anything

with the advent of the camera in the mid-1800s

painting lost its major function as visual document

because the camera's accuracy could exceed

that of the most technical artist's hand

and now we use fucking smiley faces for no smiling.

you know life is really fucking cruel but the sounds that swat at my teeth from an amp in the dark and the lowest key on a piano and slow air on long walks and the skin of the boy who kisses me being different from the skin of leaves, these things.

goddamn

i have maybe five years left to be alive. i would eat this floor to feel the layers of people i would eat a lot of things i cannot even tell you how much there is

please stop making t-shirts

it's completely fucking brilliant out there.

QUESTIONS ABOUT FOREVER LAZY

2011-12-18T08:34:00.000-08:00

A NEW, PROMISING PIECE OF CULTURAL FABRIC HAS ACHIEVED MIMETIC IMMINENCE, AND WHILE I FULLY SUPPORT AND ENCOURAGE USE OF FOREVER LAZY, I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS THAT ARE NOT ANSWERED IN FOREVER LAZY'S CLEVER, INFORMATIVE COMMERCIAL:

1. FOREVER LAZY IS MADE FROM SOFT, BREATHABLE FLEECE. IS SOFT, BREATHABLE FLEECE AT LEAST PARTIALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR WIDESPREAD NATIONAL OBESITY?

2. FOREVER LAZY IS MADE FROM SOFT, BREATHABLE FLEECE. IS THERE AN OPTION FOR UNBREATHABLE FLEECE? WHAT IF I PREFER A SAUNA EXPERIENCE WITH MY FOREVER LAZY?

3. FLEECE IS EXTREMELY FLAMMABLE. WHY ARE THERE NO WARNINGS ABOUT THE FLAMMABILITY OF FOREVER LAZY? HOW MANY WILL DIE BEFORE A WARNING LABEL IS APPLIED?

4. IS IT POSSIBLE TO NOT GET FECES ALL OVER FOREVER LAZY IF ONE CHOOSES TO EVACUATE THEIR BOWELS AFTER THEY HAVE UNZIPPED FOREVER LAZY'S CONVENIENT FECAL FLAP?

5. WOULD IT BE POSSIBLE TO BUILD A HIGHLY ABSORBENT, ODOR-KILLING NET/FILTER INTO FOREVER LAZY'S REAR SECTION SO THAT YOU CAN IN FACT SIMPLY EVACUATE YOUR BOWELS AND BE LIKE WHATEVER IT'S TAKEN CARE OF?

6. HOW LIKELY IS IT THAT FOREVER LAZY WILL SOON FEATURE FULL-BODY DESIGNS OF MY FAVORITE THINGS, SUCH AS: DORITOS, FANTA, WEED, ROLEX, RITTER SPORT CHOCOLATE, FIXED GEAR BIKES, BLACK TAR HEROIN, HOT POCKETS, VEGANISM, DUBAI, SAILOR MOON, LASER TAG, AVATAR, LISA FRANK, AND LONG JOHN SILVERS?

7. THE FOREVER LAZY COMMERCIAL FEATURES SEVERAL WOMEN (NOTED.) UNSUCCESSFULLY 'STRUGGLING' TO USE BLANKETS, AND THE COMMERCIAL SEEMS TO IMPLY THAT BLANKETS ARE 'UNCOMFORTABLE' AND 'A HASSLE'. HAVE GOVERNMENT-SUBSIDIZED STUDIES BEEN CONDUCTED TO ESTABLISH THAT BLANKETS ARE IN FACT DIFFICULT TO USE?

8. THE FOREVER LAZY COMMERCIAL FEATURES A PANNING SHOT OF A FAMILY ACTIVELY WATCHING A SPORTING EVENT ON TELEVISION WHILE THE FATHER IS SLEEPING ON THE END OF THE COUCH. THIS SHOT IS ACCOMPANIED BY THE FOLLOWING NARRATION:

DAD DOING WHAT HE DOES BEST.

IS THIS A THINLY VEILED COMMENT ON PATRIARCHAL ABSENTEEISM?

9. IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THE MOTIVATION BEHIND THE INVENTION OF FOREVER LAZY WAS PATRIARCHAL ABSENTEEISM IN THE EARLY LIVES OF FOREVER LAZY'S MAKERS, AND THAT THE MAKERS FIRMLY BELIEVE THAT FATHERS WILL BE MORE 'ACTIVE' 'FAMILY MEN' WHEN THEY DO NOT SUFFER FROM NAP-INDUCING FATIGUE FOLLOWING EXHAUSTING STRUGGLES WITH BLANETS?

10. HYPOTHETICALLY, LET'S SAY YOU WALK INTO A ROOM POPULATED BY 8-10 PEOPLE AGED 18-24, ALL WEARING FOREVER LAZY. IS YOUR INITIAL RESPONSE:

A. DEEP-SEATED KIERKEGAARDIAN DREAD MANIFESTING IN SUDDEN ANEMIC APPEARANCE AND VERY MOIST EYES

B. SEXUAL AROUSAL

C. EXTREME FATIGUE FROM YEARS OF UNSUCCESSFUL STRUGGLES WITH BLANKETS, FOLLOWED BY A FLOOD OF RELIEF THAT, FINALLY, 'ANOTHER OPTION' EXISTS

D. TRIGGERING, PHANTASMAGORICAL MEMORIES OF YOUR ABSENT FATHER FOLLOWED BY AN UNCONTROLLABLE URGE TO EAT UNTIL IT HURTS

11. HYPOTHETICALLY, LETS SAY YOU WALK INTO A ROOM POPULATED EXCLUSIVELY BY 8-10 PEOPLE AGED 18-24, ALL 'LOUNGING' IN FOREVER LAZY. WHAT DO YOU CONCLUDE ABOUT THESE PEOPLE?

A. THEY ARE COMFORTABLE

B. THEY ARE A HIP-HOP DANCE CREW

C. THEY ARE A CULT

D. THEY ARE MAY BURST INTO FLAMES AND ARE POSSIBLY POOPING.

12. HOW PARALYZING WILL A FOREVER LAZY FETISH BE TO ONE'S SEXUAL WELL-BEING? IS IT OK FOR ME, HYPOTHETICALLY, TO FEEL LIKE IT MIGHT BE A GOOD IDEA TO TELL MY BOYFRIEND TO WEAR FOREVER LAZY ON SPECIAL OCCASIONS?

13. THE CURRENT FOREVER LAZY PACKAGE INCLUDES FOREVER LAZY, FOREVER LAZY FOOTIES, AND A FOREVER LAZY NECK REST THING. IN THE FUTURE, WILL FOREVER LAZY BE OFFERED WITH A DISCOUNTED PRESCRIPTION FOR LIPITOR AND/OR PREDNISONE AND AN UNMARKED WHITE VAN?

14. WHY DO THE MAKERS OF FOREVER LAZY ASSUME THAT MINORITIES ARE NOT INTERESTED IN A COMFORTABLE

OH WAIT THERE'S A BLACK GIRL NEVERMIND.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, YOU SAD SACKS OF CRAP

2011-12-14T16:38:00.000-08:00

since robert frost is my favorite poet i wrote a winter poem that is inspirational. i hope you are inspired to do something great this holiday season.

i went to the woods to die

to splay belly-out in a red copse

with no internet.

i sawed down two conifers

and built a coniferous fixed gear bike

with tires from snakes.

i practiced track stands on my fixed gear bike

i bombed down the forest hills

while i waited to die.

i had no boyfriend.

i wrote boy's names on the husks

of leaves and stuffed the leaves

in my underpants.

when winter came i flogged

my legs with naked sticks

to put the warmth in.

ice boxed my throat rigid

my eyelids swelled up and white light erupted

from the roof of my mouth.

i suffered

an uncomplicated episode of diarrhea.

i screamed into a mulchy pit of dead deer

what the fuck i screamed

what the fuck.

i imagined an issue of People magazine

featuring only myself

myself is the only People:

i have the best bikini body

i am the sexiest man alive

what else.

one day the snow fell into the tunnel

i used for my snacks

and i lost the way up.

i lost the way up for days until peter

from peter paul and mary

was skiing up there.

peter pull me out

peter help me i'm down here somewhere

there are no snacks left.

but it was too late

i was dead

werner herzog made a film about it.

FANCY BRAINS

2011-11-11T14:22:00.000-08:00

I THOUGHT I WAS A NORMAL PERSON

BUT I WAS WRONG

AGAIN.

I SEE WEIRD STUFF.

I HAVE A CONDITION WHICH MAKES ME SEE WEIRD STUFF

MY ENTIRE VISUAL FIELD IS

STATIC, A SYRUP OF MOVING PIXELS

LIKE WHAT YOU SEE WHEN YOU LOOK THROUGH

A VIDEO CAMERA IN THE DARK

ADDITIONALLY I SEE LITTLE ZIPS OF LIGHT MAKING

ELLIPTICAL PATTERNS AND

DISAPPEARING INTO WHEREVER

ADDITIONALLY I SEE AFTERIMAGES

OR NEGATIVES OF SILHOUETTES OF ALL THE OBJECTS FROM ONE SPOT

WHEN I MOVE MY EYES TO ANOTHER SPOT

ADDITIONALLY I SEE WEIRD COLORS AND HUNKS OF EMPTY THAT HOVER IN ONE PLACE FOR DAYS OR WEEKS AND THEN DISAPPEAR FOREVER

ADDITIONALLY I SEE WHAT IS KIND OF LIKE LEOPARD SPOTS IN THE PERIPHERY OF MY LEFT VISUAL FIELD WHICH IS WEIRD BECAUSE IT'S NEW BUT I'M TRYING TO IGNORE IT

ADDITIONALLY I HAVE TINNITUS WHICH MEANS THERE IS A BUZZ IN MY BRAIN THAT MAKES A NOISE THAT ISN'T REALLY THERE

WHEN I WAS VERY LITTLE I THOUGHT THIS WAS THE WAY THAT EVERYBODY SAW STUFF

BUT IT STILL SCARED ME

I COULDN'T SLEEP BECAUSE I SAW WEIRD STUFF IN THE DARK

SHADOWS AND ENERGY CROWDING AROUND

ONCE I SAW A WHOLE BASEBALL GAME MADE OUT OF COLORNOISE

I SLEPT IN THE HALL WHERE IT WAS LIGHT

I AM TWENTY FIVE NOW AND I STILL HATE THE DARK

THERE IS TOO MUCH STUFF HAPPENING.

WHENEVER I WOULD GO TO THE ROLLER RINK

THERE WAS ALL THIS LIGHT AND SOUND AND
THINGS MOVING IN CIRCLES AND
COLORS EATING AT MY FACE AND

I WOULD RISE OUTSIDE MY BODY AND
STAY SEPERATE FROM MYSELF AND EVERYTHING ELSE AND

I WOULD HAVE TO SIT DOWN

AND THEN I WOULD ASK TO GO HOME
AND I WOULD NOT GET ANY PIZZA.

WHEN I FOUND OUT THAT MOST PEOPLE JUST SEE THINGS WHEN THEY LOOK AT THINGS AND NOT ALL THIS OTHER STUFF

I ASKED MY DOCTORS WHAT WAS WRONG WITH ME

I ASKED GENERAL PRACTITIONERS, OPTOMETRISTS, OPTHAMOLOGISTS, NEUROLOGISTS, AND PSYCHOLOGISTS AND NOBODY HAD ANYTHING TO SAY EXCEPT

MAYBE I HAD A RARE SEIZURE DISORDER

MAYBE I WAS DEVELOPING SCHIZOPHRENIA

MAYBE I WAS GOING TO GO BLIND AND DIE.

NONE OF THOSE THINGS HAPPENED

I JUST SEE WEIRD STUFF

AND I USED THE INTERNET TO FIND OUT

THAT OTHER PEOPLE ALSO SEE WEIRD STUFF

SOME PEOPLE HAVE SEEN IT ALWAYS LIKE ME

SOME PEOPLE DEVELOPED IT LATER FOR NO REASON

SOME PEOPLE SAY IT HAS TO DO WITH DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY AND HEIGHTENED ADRENAL RESPONSES

SOME PEOPLE SAY IT IS A SLIGHTLY OVERACTIVE BRAIN

SOME PEOPLE SAY IT IS A DISTORTION OF ENERGY

SOME PEOPLE SAY IT IS A ZINC IMBALANCE

SOME PEOPLE SAY IT IS CONES OF LIGHT BEING STUPID IN OUR EYEBALLS

SOME PEOPLE SAY IT IS THE AURA OF THE UNIVERSE AND WE SEE WEIRD STUFF BECAUSE WE ARE MYSTICAL CENTUARS

MAYBE

I AM SO SMART I SEE THE THINGS INSIDE OF THINGS

THINGS THAT ARE SO SMALL AND ODD THERE IS NO LANGUAGE FOR THEM YET

I AM SO SMART THAT MY BRAIN IS SPARKLY AND MY BRAIN IS EXPLODING WITH SMART STUFF THAT IS SO SMART IT IS SO SMART

MAYBE THIS IS GREAT

TO SEE WEIRD STUFF

TWENTY FOUR HOURS A DAY

MY WHOLE LIFE

ANYWAY

I WOULD LIKE TO LOOK AT A THING

AND JUST SEE THE THING

I WOULD LIKE TO LOOK AT A THING AND SEE THE THING AND KNOW IT IS A REAL THING INSTEAD OF MEMBRANES OF MOLECULES AND LITTLE ATOMS OR WHATEVER THE HELL IS GOING ON

I FEEL LIKE I JUST WANT TO LOOK AT THINGS

AND JUST SEE THE THINGS

JUST THE THINGS

THANKS.

THE INTERNET

2011-09-28T16:38:00.000-07:00

WHAT IF I FIND ANOTHER

JPEG OF YOUR EX'S VAGINA

SHE HAS A TUBE OF CHAPSTICK IN THERE

WHAT IF THE LID GETS STUCK

I HAVE CANCER

WEBMD.COM TOLD ME

BEFORE I DIE OF CANCER

I'M GOING TO EAT THE REST OF THESE GRAPES IN THE FREEZER

I'M GOING TO EAT THESE BOOKS FROM INDEPENDENT PRESSES

I'M GOING TO EAT THIS PIGGY BANK THING FROM AFRICA

I'M GOING TO EAT THIS SOFA MY MOM BOUGHT ME

I'M GOING TO EAT THESE CABINET KNOBS FROM ANTHROPOLOGIE

I'M GOING TO EAT THIS DECORATIVE RABBIT HUTCH

I'M GOING TO EAT THESE MOLDY TOWELS

I'M GOING TO EAT THIS CANDLE THAT SMELLS LIKE REDWOODS

I'M GOING TO EAT THIS OTHER CANDLE THAT SMELLS LIKE CHURCH

I'M GOING TO EAT THIS LAMP FROM IKEA THAT EMITS VERY LITTLE LIGHT

I'M GOING TO EAT THIS SURGE PROTECTOR AND IT'S EXTENSION CORD

I'M GOING TO EAT THESE PILLOWS WITH WEIRD STAINS

I'M GOING TO EAT THESE STRANDS OF PEARLS

I'M GOING TO EAT THESE SCARVES FROM H&M WITH WEIRD STAINS

I'M GOING TO EAT THIS SHAMPOO TESTED ON ANIMALS

I'M GOING TO EAT THIS SHAMPOO NOT TESTED ON ANIMALS

I'M GOING TO EAT THESE FANCY VIALS OF CREAM FOR MY FACE

I'M GOING TO EAT THIS VITAMIX POWER BLENDER WITH WEIRD STAINS.

I'M TAKING MY STUFF WITH ME

I'M TAKING MY STUFF WITH ME IN MY DEAD CANCER BODY

I'M NOT GOING TO SHARE MY STUFF

YOU CAN ALL GO TO HELL.

SORRY FOR THAT EMAIL I SENT ABOUT YOU BEING A TERRIBLE PERSON AND WHEN YOU DID NOT RESPOND I WROTE ANOTHER EMAIL APOLOGIZING FOR THE PREVIOUS EMAIL AND WHEN YOU DID NOT RESPOND TO THE APOLOGIZING EMAIL I WROTE ANOTHER EMAIL RESCINDING MY APOLOGY AND THEN I WROTE ANOTHER EMAIL APOLOGIZING FOR RESCINDING MY APOLOGY AND THEN I WEPT AND THEN I FELL ASLEEP WHEN I WOKE UP I FELT OK AND WROTE YOU AN EMAIL SAYING NEVERMIND I FEEL OK DON'T READ ANY OF THE PREVIOUS EMAILS I SENT LAST NIGHT AND I ATTACHED A VIDEO OF A JIMMY DEANS SAUSAGE COMMERCIAL I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT LIKE.

WE GO SOMEWHERE ELSE

WE GO TO THE FOREST

WE SCALE THE FIRS

AND BURROW SMALL HOLES HIGH IN THE TRUNKS

WE SLEEP IN THE HOLES

IT IS MORE COMFORTABLE THAN IT SOUNDS WE PROMISE

THE FIRS SMELL LIKE POTTERY BARN

AND WE LIKE THAT

AND WE HAVE EVERYTHING WE NEED

WE HAVE BUCKETS FOR OUR PEE

WE LOWER THE BUCKETS TO THE GROUND ON ROPES

TO EMPTY THE BUCKETS OF PEE

WHEN THE BUCKETS ARE FULL.

CHILDREN BRING US BOTTLES OF WATER

CHILDREN BRING US SNAPPLE

CHILDREN BRING US SUBWAY SANDWICHES

CHILDREN BRING US DORITOS SOMETIMES

WE WRITE LISTS FOR THE CHILDREN AND THEY BRING

THE THINGS ON THE LIST AND PLACE THE THINGS IN BUCKETS

NOT THE PEE BUCKETS

DIFFERENT BUCKETS MARKED NOT PEE

CHILDREN LOOK UP FROM THE GROUND CHILDREN WANT TO KNOW

WHEN WILL WE COME DOWN

NEVER WE ARE NEVER COMING DOWN

IS THERE WIFI THE CHILDREN WANT TO KNOW

YES THERE IS WIFI

DON'T BE STUPID

OF COURSE THERE IS WIFI.

ARCHITECT&VAPOUR: A REPRISE

2011-08-31T17:30:00.000-07:00

recently i have read much about eating disordered writing -- particularly that anorexic writing is minimalist. i disagree.

baroque. the writing of anorexia is maximalist. anorexia is a disease of constructs, of labyrinthine complexities, gilded passages of perfect mathematical stringency in unwavering discipline and self control.

when one plays a passage of baroque music there is little room for rubato, for fondling melody and coaxing out and cajoling, for bending. the best players of baroque music play precisely as written, the best anorexic follows the rules.

arguments for anorexic writing as minimalism only take into account the anorexic as body. the anorexic body is simply a symptom of the disease, things are not so stark and simple as a fleshless form, and anorexia does not align itself with the aesthetic doctrine of minimalism -- that of attention to material and texture. anorexia seeks to exceed the material, to overcome the bodily, to achieve a 'holiness' that supercedes physical demands and limitations.

the anorexic is a maximalist.

she is clogged, meticulous, stuffed with food records, hoarded candy, recipe books, calories counted, exercise regimes. ask an anorexic how not to eat and her mouth floods: chew ice, keep an image of something disgusting on the kitchen table, padlock the refrigerator, drink vinegar, write notes on packages of food. this is not a disease of minimalism; anorexia is laid out in an endless script. this is the presentation of the true function of the illness; food, eating, the organization of the day around it and the avoidance of it; these things act as devices to distract from what::

anorexia is not about the body, this is a maddening yet almost universally held misconception. the shift of the surface is only one symptom of an illness deeply entrenched elsewhere. that the body becomes the locus for abuse is only a presentation of the compulsion to change into Other, to become child or alien, to become anyone else. anything else. shit to gold. fat to thin. alchemy.

anorexia is as much not about food as it is not about the body. the obsession with foodlessness and tautening is Distraction, and Deceit must become ever more mazelike to keep the focus away from the core, the mind is incessantly fabricating deeper complications for itself, repeating repeating repeating until the person is lost and becomes the instrument that the disease wants to play. hours of exercise and caloric burn and BMI and numbers and numbers and calculations and days onto days and weeks and years and pounds and postulates and structures and structures repeating repeating repeating onto the architecture of ::

(open a page of bach’s well tempered clavier, note the directions to play pianissimo, note the moment when the fugue motif is repeated precisely 8 measures following its inception in the other hand. note when it appears again in the bass 8 measures following that. no movement of the hand is unaccounted for. The structure is in place, the player has only to fulfill the task)

bach wrote for god, wrote to exceed earthly limitations::

stories of oracles who laid in caves for months without food. ascetics purifying, seeking a spirit outside themselves. hunger artists. the body is only a vessel. anorectic writing is writing that strives to escape the body::

yet the argument that anorexia is a ‘disappearing body’ does not hold. the anorexic body occupies the same space as the normal body; occupies, more or less, the same mass and shadowspace, and the same breath of oxygen is needed to fill the anorexic lung. the anorexic body is simply closer to the true anatomy of the human figure.

i do not believe that the anorexic wishes to become ‘male,’ as seems to be a widely held view. the silhouette of the truly starved is neither male nor female but androgynous. note the body of the concentration camp; try to distinguish between genders when the essence of the physical frame catches in light and shadow.

the nuances of the tendons, the articulation of veins, the curve of the clavicle: the anorexic body is the body made naked and visible; it is not hiding or disappearing, it juts into::

thinness in a woman is glorified. yet the truly emaciated body, as categorized by medical standards, is horrifying to behold. a sixty pound woman is not beautiful by any normative standard nor by any extreme standard, and this is another reason why the truly anorectic shape is not about body. a sixty pound woman knows she is not beautiful, but a sixty pound woman will not stop at sixty -- she is fighting to acquiesce her physical needs, and she is winning.

and so the best anorexic is dead. the best anorexic is she who has a body no longer. and ironically, only when the anorexic is dead is anorexia about the body. with death the host has left a husk and a trophy.

i wanted to bring my BFA thesis here, or at least what could be presented in this screenglow.

i wrote my thesis about anorexia, about the systems and constraints of the disease; about deprivation, fixation, distortion, consumption, emptiness, control, and perfection. it is also a disease which denies and dances around itself endlessly -- it was my aim to talk about it without ever talking about it.

anorexia is a mathematical disease, and as i tend to contextualize my writing in terms of music, i chose the form of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier (Book I) to as a template for the writing. the music of the baroque is the music of Absolute. it is rigid, ornamental, gilded, caged.

i chose to follow the form of Bach's piano pieces based on meter, tempo, and tone. I constructed a syntactical lexicon to fit each piece which i programmed into the texts using various techniques of music theory analysis which was sometimes stringent and sometimes loose. i then smoothed everything out to make each piece melodic/ lyrical/ decorative.

these are some notes about the Bach WTC upon which i based some of my basic methods of textual integration:

prelude 1 – moderato - evenness, meter, repetition

fugue 1 – andante – espressivo e molto legato

prelude 2 – allegro - energico, repetition, homogeny, frenetic

fugue 2 – allegretto – grazioso e tranquillo

prelude 3 – vivace 3/8 - whimsical, whirling, dancing

fugue 3 – allegro – con grazia

prelude 4 – andante 6/4 – very sad, slow, graceful, longing, long line

fugue 4 – molto moderato – largo e maestoso - excesssively slow.

prelude 5 – vivace – frantic, bouncing

fugue 5 – allegro moderato – risoluto e sempre marcato – stern, sonorous.

prelude 6 – allegro ma non troppo – repetition, left hand takes melody, like rain

fugue 6 – moderato ¾

prelude 7 – largo – strong, changes in pacing and tone, dissonance

fugue 7 – allegro

prelude 8 – sostenuto 3/2 – the most beautiful, mournful, arpeggiated, singing.

fugue 8 – andante – tranquillo slow, quiet, winter stillness.

prelude 9 – allegretto piacevole 12/8 - even meter

fugue 9 – allegro – brilliante con fuoco – bright, punchy.

prelude 10 – andante – long, singing line.

fugue 10 – allegro capriccioso ¾ - leggiero ma ben accentuato

prelude 11 – allegro 12/8 – quick, brief, light.

fugue 11 - allegretto 3/8 - tranquillo

prelude 12 – andante - autumnal, sad.

fugue 12 – molto moderato – largo e pensieroso – dissonant, sad, long.

Here's a thing i wrote about it at the time:

I saw striking parallels between the complexities of anorexic behavior and the severe architecture and technical perfectionism of baroque musical form. I composed 24 poems derived from dissection of J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Book One. The work as a whole was limited to a textual lexicon culled from months of research into self-starvation and its history. Each of the poems employs a different approach/process, but each is similarly haunted by repetition, rigidity, and ritual. Mathematical systems deduced from meticulous musical theoretical/thematic material analysis were implemented to deconstruct the appropriated preludes and fugues, transcribing the music into text (for example, Prelude 2 in C minor is a thematic analysis in which the left and right hands perform the same material in harmonic counterpoint, thus the upper and lower registers of the text are composed of lists of food pleasure and physical disgust, respectively).

here are some of them. please keep in mind that i wrote these when i was 17-21 years old, and that i sucked and perhaps continue to suck.

prelude one in c major: ave maria

sing!

i have made you ten years golden

graceful utter, unfurl

my name

my name the tongue my tongue the name

be reverent be tender

O how thick

your fingers

fugue one in c major: ave maria

dried soprano stuck lung

lumped clay that will not set

O how dark

this body pushing

valves to stutter stumbling

desperate shove from sleep

my fool’s damp head to headboard warped

as blackened oak will warp when damp.

fugue two in c minor: dogwood

make me pearl.

incense of the exhumed pulp

scrape my insides with wire

purge the tissues of my belly

cleanse and purify my inner walls

make me pink and

holy.

prelude three in c sharp major: the kafka

Keep vigil

with your torch

and see lit

the spine from the gut

see

that I have swallowed

no secrets

in forty days

forty nights a vigil here

please kiss me

lift your lips to my ear

use your unslaked throat to beg.

withdraw

into

the sound

knees that knock together.

The gaze of animal the

drowsy wandering eye the

still breath that does not move the breast

pulse restless and visible the

devoted ribs to rise to

fall

fugue three in c sharp major: the kafka

kill me

so that a fine stew

might be made of my flesh

for as I slept the devil robbed me

turned my human shape

to cow.

prelude 4 in c minor: the moth

months come autumn months in gathered mounds as for ten years stacked

twigs of virgin linen, stone, and wood.

and weave your garment veins of pine

come pierce my belly walls with root

blanch my tongue of bitterness wax wound boughs wound between the ribs

satisfy my wants with bark.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE NO. 2

2011-08-16T17:44:00.000-07:00

johann wolfgang von goethe is caught

in a thatch of iceplant adjacent to

the highway overpass

seven miles from the house

i have been looking for you for five hours i say

you can’t keep doing this.

SKEWERED ON THE BLOGOSPHERE

2011-07-08T23:39:00.000-07:00

THIS POEM IS CALLED

I FUCKING HATE THE RENAISSANCE

FUCK RAPHAEL
FUCK THAT GUY
FUCK CEILING FRESCOES
IF I SEE ANOTHER FUCKING CEILING FRESCO I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD
I AM TIRED OF ALL THESE FAT PEOPLE LOOKING LIKE SHIT ON THE CEILING
I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR LINEAR PERSPECTIVE
I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR GOLDEN TRIANGLE
I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR IDEALIZED PROPORTIONS
I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR HUMANISM
I DON'T GIVE A FUCK
ABOUT THE POPE
FUCK THE POPE
I DON'T WANT TO SEE ANOTHER FAT PERSON HOLDING A FUCKING TOWEL
I DON'T WANT TO SEE ANOTHER FAT PERSON HOLDING A STUPID BABY
I HATE YOUR BABY
I HATE YOUR BABY AND THE WEIRD FACE ON YOUR BABY
WITH THE BODY OF BARRY BONDS
I HATE THE TRICEPS ON YOUR WEIRD BABY
IT DOESN'T LOOK NATURAL.
FUCK BALANCED COMPOSITIONS
AND THAT FUCKING PAINTING WITH ALL THE PEOPLE
AND PLATO POINTING UP AND ARISTOTLE POINTING DOWN OR WHATEVER
MAYBE ITS THE OTHER WAY AROUND
WITH PLATO POINTING DOWN AND ARISTOTLE POINTING UP
WHO GIVES A FUCK
I FUCKING HATE THAT PAINTING
FULL OF FAT PEOPLE HOLDING TOWELS
THEY JUST STAND THERE
AND TWO OF THEM ARE POINTING
AND THAT'S BASICALLY IT
THERE AREN'T ANY BABIES WHICH IS GOOD I GUESS
IF THERE WERE BABIES IT WOULD BE THE WORST PAINTING EVER
I HATE YOUR FUCKING RENAISSANCE BABIES
I HATE YOUR FUCKING RENAISSANCE BABIES AND THEIR TRICEPS
FUCK YOUR FUCKING DOME
OH ITS TWO DOMES ONE INSIDE THE OTHER
ITS INNOVATIVE OK OK THANKS
GREAT I'M SO GLAD YOU HAVE TWO DOMES THAT LOOK LIKE ONE DOME
THAT'S HOW YOU GOT THE DOME SO BIG YOU PUT ANOTHER DOME INSIDE IT OK
I GET IT
GREAT THAT'S AWESOME
THE DOME IS ACTUALLY TWO DOMES THAT'S GREAT
SUPER. OK.

THE COOKIE MAN OF GHOST TOWN

2011-05-23T23:57:00.000-07:00

fully clothed gulch in. i dream i eat his fingers i eat his fists. gold against throat, throated hair. fingers in

glands looking for glands finding glands to feel with. in frenulum. hit me. ache from spine ache from

stake in tongue. abandoned arms. left with hammer i take fingers. i take fists. gold against throat throated

hair throated weight of wood. fingers forward fingers in looking for glands finding glands. to feel. with

ache from spine ache from spit. stake in tongue. abandoned arms i take fingers. i take fists. i take gold

from the larynx little dog split in the teeth. at the base of spine near fingers near ankles near heart in heart

in arms in arms. drove stakes therein drove and drove nails therein to rape in the knee in a stake tongue.

palms front arms fold forward and forward in stomach. abandon your arms above tick in fingers in gold.

bloom deeper, gulch in. day within day within throat happened there fingers in gold in front i love you

in frenulum. hit me. hit me. hit me. wire and copper. molting teeth where are my teeth where are my

teeth in the cookie man cookie man will hang you upside down and shove ice in your cunt cookie man

will bind you and use a hacksaw's handle a screwdriver a shampoo bottle he will leave you in

there and he will leave you in there he will not come back he will slice the back thigh for blood he is

tired of your childish bullshit he will spit he will hold your face to the floor he will press the close on

your throat he will spit he will spit oh. Oh! oh in another life i was an owl or a fish barrel or a honey-

painted plate but in this life i am a flange of pink noise in the wall or the juice between the tongue and

the cheek and in the middle of my ribs is a french chandelier where petrified in the center crystal is a

single crisp of corn cereal the men inked with a name and this is my name a thing sealed within crystal

and cereal in the ribs i almost devil i almost did oh

THE BEE SITUATION

2011-05-01T23:26:00.000-07:00

thought i wouldn’t be able to eat all those carrots but i was wrong.

when carrots comprised the major portion of my diet i had orange feet and palms. now i

have palms and feet all white and violet from the smoking and the whatever america.

pardon my woops body.

sorry for this year.

sorry.

my grandma used to sleep in this room before she left her body.

years ago she slept next to my grandpa in a house in dry grass

a house next to a peacock farm.

the peacocks would scream all night.

have you heard my father sneeze. that sound could bury miles.

with this wellbutrin i don’t stop twitching. abrupt shifts in the orientation of the ground

when i move too quickly. sometimes my eyes flicker. the other night i sat on the sofa

squirming like a baby while we watched a show about coupons.

akathisia: internal restlessness.

jimmylegs.

my jimmylegs got soft when i came back here and didn’t move at all for thirty days.

you can use bleach and toilet cleaner and pesticide in a bucket in a bathroom.

they do this in japan. sometimes it doesn’t work.

that’s why i didn’t.

wellbutrin. i’d rather have those seizures than be so fucking morbid.

it’s a drag for us both.

you were so sleepy. i kept thinking ‘this feels weird and not good.’

anway this gym looks like a hospital. pinkeye gunk sticks to all the plastic.

now that i move around i notice more germs.

please don’t die alone atop your pile of toys.

please come with me.

we made a list of things that the smurfs were about.

things that the smurfs were about:

i don’t want to talk about it.

gingersnaps, babywipes, whatever.

we have a bee situation here

i don’t know what the bees are doing but it seems unsavory

they’re mobilizing near the freeway

a misanthropic, swerving mob

this doesn’t look good

can’t say i’ve met any friendly bees.

THE STATCOUNTER INQUISITION

2011-04-02T15:18:00.000-07:00

before i had statcounter i didn’t realize peoplez could easily identify who visits their site and i didn’t know that internet stalking and arriving at the blog of my limerent object via google search terms “[NAME OF LIMERENT OBJECT] EX-GIRLFRIEND 2009” could easily be seen by the limerent object if the limerent object were to have statcounter and that they could definitely discern how many hours i had spent refreshing certain pages and obsessively perusing posting history and so when i installed statcounter the first thought i had was uh-oh and also woops

this blog recieves about 300 hits per day and about 700 on days that i post which is a small amount for a small person and means that i can easily follow pageload activity and keyword searches which is important because it shows me how people arrive at my blog and what they are most interested in reading and it also shows me to some extent who everyone is

for those who don't know each one of y’all b marked with a unique IP address which pinpoints your location, time spent, entry and exit pages, the browser you were using, and your search terms i can make little label nicknames for you which is fun and some of you have very good nicknames but

i wanted to write poems for a few nebulous visitors i don't know who you are who are you

let me know what you want on your label if you want a fancy nickname or something like

"2SPOONS"

also anyone should feel free to nominate any of these poems for a pushcart prize

BAKERSFIELD IP EXHIBITING ‘COMPLEX’ ‘HUMANISTIC’ RELATIONSHIP TO MY BLOG

do i know anyone in bakersfield

no i do not

are you merle haggard

are you a member of the band korn

are you frank bidart

my dad told me bakersfield holds the world record for largest pile of manure but

when i asked him a second time he said no, the largest pile of manure is in king county.

according to http://www.visitbakersfield.com bakersfield is the 11^th largest growing city

in the united states did you know this

that is something to be proud of i think

your bakersfield ancestors were hunter gatherers did you know this

they hunted elk and deer and antelope and bears and they herded fish

how does one herd a fish i don’t know but your ancestors did this

they did this.

bakersfield was once a marshland

now it seems to be kind of not a marshland at all

people got malaria downtown

it is probably better

now that it is kind of not a marshland at all

there are fewer tropical diseases to contend with.

do you want to come visit me

i am in san diego right now there is a room upstairs where my sister used to live

it is a big room i lived there too but then my sister stole it

you can sleep there my sister is dead now

just kidding she’s at college

do you like waffles we have some

do you want to visit me you don't even have to hang out

you can just eat the waffles

IP STALKING MY ROMANTIC INTERESTS/EX BOYFRIENDS VIA GOOGLE KEYWORD SEARCH

who the fuck are you

if you are a girl i hope you are very ugly

i'll stab your nasty face bitch

MILLS COLLEGE IP

if you are a part of the financial committee please give me my money back

i have submitted the petition three times

thank you

IPAD IP

ipad IP you make me feel like i have cornered some affluent demographic

of people who like Flat Things

and The Future

IP(s) FROM AMERICA’S HEARTLAND

arriving via search terms: semen-spurting, muppets, clean very dirty beige hand towel, sacking justin bieber penis, mermaids attacked by octopus, justin bieber stood up with waistcoat on, detailed diagram of clownfish,youtube jail house female lesbean women police officers gurds french kissing search videos

that's enough

this isn't that type of place.

otherwise thanks and i love you all.

YOU TALK A LOT OF SHIT FOR A BABY

2011-03-27T16:11:00.000-07:00

friends i am so tired i can’t see straight and it hurts to look at this space here which is kind of moving in ways it shouldn’t. in the past week i have slept twelve hours total i think but here are some things.

INTERNET PRESENCE BELCH: STORAGE FOR THE IMAGE HOARD

analog synthesizers ominous cloaks monochromatic palettes cyan tinting black lines black machines naked people bone cults here.

INTERNET PRESENCE BELCH: WILL SMITH’S BLACK NAZI MACHINE

“sounds like a dream i had where Nazi's were trying to take my family from a mammoth church made of dirt tunnels where hundreds of children in white robes sung with their eyes shut until they were shot. Every time a child was shot, a Nazi would melt into the ground." - TPJN

"i feel like i just fell out of my safetyshell inside of an enormous black machine" - BB

“the end sounds a bit like the beginning of a will smith movie.” - NS

on the track's title page i talk a little about it i couldn’t find the text piece HOURS upon which it was based but i found it now i found it yes. here it is. from back in 2008 when things were simpler.

INTERNET PRESENCE BELCH: TWO THINGS YOU WILL NEVER KNOW

a glockenspiel interpretation of the schubert string quartet from Herzog’s Woyzeck but only from memory though i don’t remember the melody's turnings. sounding like what i remember it sounding like which doesn’t seem quite right or rather doesn’t seem right at all. an audio sample of a shrill tenor shit-talking the dave matthews band. the synth sequence element from paul mccartney’s christmas song a wonderful christmas time which is not seasonal or appropriate but i can’t stop it in my head up there. a lo-bandwidth bitcrusher wall to hold everything up.

and

15 minutes of vocal loops backwards and icy guitar chords recalling a certain icelandic ensemble but it really sounds like enya and this is something that keeps happening and i don’t know how to stop it. can i market myself as the Noisenya. is that viable.

A SHORT THING ABOUT OAKLAND

you took my mattress you took my megaphone. everything the neighbors said about the smell is true. i smoked in bed i woke in sweat. the corner’s crackhead begged for mine but all those dollars went to rock. he sang outside my window in the dark in the garbage he built a careful shrine from what he didn’t want. empty bottles of facial cleanser and punched out laxative tabs on the walkway.

who wrote my fake missed connection and who wrote yours. the safeway checkout clerk who called me Hollywood maybe. his big bright teeth. i wondered who he went home to. if like me he just went home and wore his winter coat to bed. the whole foods clerk wouldn’t call me Hollywood wouldn’t talk about his elk tattoo. elk meaning melancholy. cut chunks of watermelon.

night a boy twisted into a chair came and gripped my hand in the dark. i kissed the straining motor of his breath but there was nothing i could say to give him legs. when it stopped making sense. i drove to the red bridge and issued silent threats into water for an hour and then drove back. you broke the gold on my throat and hung me with it. you in the bottom of the basement with your photographs of air in days. where your mom found you. where was i.

BREAKING NEWS IN HUSBANDS

I RECIEVED A MESSAGE FROM A POTENTIAL HUSBAND TODAY, HE MAY HAVE EXCEEDED THE 500 WORD MESSAGE LIMIT BUT HE SEEMS SUITABLE. AN UPDATE WILL FOLLOW SOON.

THE FALLACIES OF MARCH

2011-03-21T02:43:00.001-07:00

there are no good movies out and i want to go see a movie but

i will not be going to see that rango.

HEAVEN’S REWARD FALLACY: THE HUSBAND

on a recent evening i watched a 1820s british period drama starring keira knightley and decided i must find a husband at once. i think that antiquarian gestures of courtship and inflexible gender binaries all continue to be totally viable and appealing today. i want a fluffily-coiffed dandy in a waistcoat to pander to my affections and come to dine with my parents and brush my cheek with a fine lambskin glove in a folly based on the acropolis. i want him to have very moist eyes, to appear to be nearly on the verge of tears at all times; wertheresque, perhaps a certain tubercular ruddiness in the cheek to offset the pale, angular visage. people will wonder whether he is ok. he is ok, he is fine; just very much in love, maybe he is slightly consumptive, i don’t know.

if you would like to be my husband please email me at khay86@gmail.com explaining in 500 words or less why you feel you are qualified. if you require a dowry we can arrange something. my dad has a lot of socks you might want, i have some soft beige hand towels and also NIN’s Closure for VHS.

my mom often says that my posts at http://everythingsimultaneously.blogspot.com have identity-branded me as unstable, reckless, angry, suicidal, and exhibiting a ‘complex relationship with body image and food’. my mom claims that this identity brand may deter potential dates. well mom, i’m not looking for a date. i’m looking for someone who will spend the rest of his life being ok with the fact that i am incessantly on the verge of physical and nervous collapse, i tenuously maintain a crippling depression/anxiety/eating disorder trio, i am able to move from the bed approximatey 4 out of 7 days weekly, and from the bed i will chain-smoke, disparage your taste in music, and threaten to kill myself.

what i really want is to sit in a chair by a window and knit things for you and feel kind of sad but not too sad. i will sit and i will wait for you to return from the forest, i will broil whatever you shot.

BABY WHY LOVE WITH SONG WHEN YOU CAN LOVE WITH ICEPICK

2011-03-10T01:04:00.000-08:00

photographed in the tundra wearing one of those cable-knit sweaters that threatens to swallow, revisiting the secret goth of fifteen. want to say those were easier times but nothing about black metal is simple.

ok, things look grim. i held a color in my head that was less a color than the sound of barking dogs. sorry for being so erratic. happy birthday. please come back.

photograph of an overhanging face from the perspective of the toilet. cut off chunks of my hair with the scissors from the sink. dried your dick in my hair, ok. but if you clock me in the face and call me Little Dog In Heat again i swear.

wind-blasted polaroids of a face’s corner, obviously in error. you never said goodbye. we never took a back road or dressed up like members of Kraftwerk. ich weiss nicht.

say something stupid. i don’t want to live i want to fuck. ok. we still look good but i don’t have the bones for this anymore. if i end up with my stomach in a sack on wheels will you still make me shave my cunt. will i be smooth and useless.

drawing of your dad in the bottom of the boat. dad didn't spend time. once slit a cow from larynx to rectum, greened the lawn with shit. misunderstood as a child: inches in a cookie's radius. overheard as a child: fat kids fucking fully clothed.

the place where my heart is hurts and i don’t mean that way. i mean the beating the backwards the icepick, the icepick i mean that way. meaning white. white always. white all.

THINGS OF LIFE + CANCELLATIONS

2011-03-06T03:02:00.001-08:00

hello america how are you doing today i am ok i guess.

OAKLAND IS CANCELED

i jettisoned from oakland, my dad drove his nissan quest up to take me back with the sofa my mom likes and so that is what happened. i closed up the apartment and had to smoke outside so as not to upstink the interior with the toxic air of my breath.

PASTELS ARE CANCELED / TRUTH IS CANCELED

resting against the bench on the porch was an oil pastel drawing that one of the neighbor girls would periodically spray with fixative. the oil pastel drawing was of a mermaid or some kind of half-woman half-octopus with tentacles. i would sit there and smoke cigarettes and she would come out and spray fixative and i would say I REALLY LIKE YOUR PIECE and i was lying.

BEING REASONABLE IS CANCELED

social wreckage.

BEING UNREASONABLE IS CANCELED

in fact, i’d like to apologize to everyone i have spoken to in the past 12 months. if we had plans together, i probably broke them and told you i hate you. if we were friends i probably told you i hate you. if we were romantically involved, i probably told you i hate you then apologized immediately then told you i hate you for new reasons and so on and so forth in an endless and loathsome cycle. i will try to be better.

MORTALITY IS CANCELED

shaan and i went to a late showing of BIEBER3D in a very fancy suburban mall targeting a demographic of women with expensive breasts and ugly children. the mall had a pond and two visible swans. we named a swan marcel and plied marcel’s affections with popcorn. i was attacked by a rogue duck. shaan explained rene girard’s concept of mimetic desire to me while tweens swarmed around in ugg boots. the 3D experience was extremely destabilizing, to the extent that i struggled with extreme vertigo and illness into the next day. in the film, Justin Bieber is forced to drink a green smoothie provided by Usher, who briefly but sagely touts the immortalizing qualities of multivitamins.

LOS ANGELES IS CANCELED

on the drive to san diego i was stuck in los angeles gridlock for two and a half hours. i felt extremely nauseated and weak and i smoked approximately 14 cigarettes and repeated YOU ARE GOING TO MAKE IT to myself very loudly with no music playing.

NOT LISTENING TO RICHARD SKELTON IS CANCELED

i listened to Richard Skelton’s new record Landings and it is a gorgeous thing you must have – it is a shimmering and pastoral and icy bouquet of weeping strings that wilt and tauten in luminous ways. Richard sends his music in beautiful handcrafted packaging with a personalized dedication.

DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES IN INDIE DRAMAS ARE CANCELED

The Kids Are All Right has the same syllable count as The Squid and the Whale, which does not seem to be coincidental.

The Squids are All Right The Kid and the Whale.

NOT BEING MUU-MUU HOUSE IS CANCELED

check out this shit going down on HTML_G. sometimes i feel like we are all autistic.

WHITE IS CANCELED

repainting my studio in preparation for the move-out i foolishly took the advice of the ace hardware man with the dead eyes and bought white paint without seeing a sample. this white was blinding, arctic, like the womb of an MRI machine. it frazzled my strained nerves and left me sleepless. nothing is more unsettling than an unbroken expanse of white, and i find that certain color palettes make me very nervous. i am frightened of most pastels.

THE MONTHS OF 2011 THAT ALREADY HAPPENED ARE CANCELED

there seems to be a chance that 2k11 will turn around. i am excited for some things and people of the future.

WATCHING SODIUM IS CANCELED

when i got to san diego i ate a lot of crackers.

LIFE MISTAKES: THE ANTHOLOGY

2011-02-24T18:42:00.001-08:00

EPISODE 02

LIBRARY JUSTICE

numbering among the institutions from which i am banned is chicago’s Harold Washington Public Library. as far as i’m concerned, Harold Washington Public Library can suck it. Harold Washington Public Library is not an asset to Chicago’s outstanding architectural history. the structure sullies an entire city block in its grotesquely inflated neoclassical splendor. i might describe the library as aesthetically and functionally retarded. the exterior features bronze ornamentation of stylized americana such as corn and indians. the perimeter is lined with dozens of false entrances only one of which is ever open, and so a person must stalk the perimeter until a functional handle is found. once the entry is discovered and breached, one must navigate a labyrinthine corridor to access a cavernous vestibule which serves no function other than being cavernous and aesthetically retarded. from here one must ascend two escalators to a second floor which houses computers shiny with germs for public use, a perpetually empty gallery, and book check-out. riding this escalator involves passing a large piece of laminated wall art comprised of words drawn in crayon that are ‘representative of chicago’ in pairs of two i.e. STRONG LEARNING or LOVE CITY. in what is perhaps an unfortunate oversight, one set of words is CRACK ROCK. once you ascend to the second floor you have the option of using elevators to access your bookfloor of choice or you may continue to ride escalators in a staggeringly ineffective fashion. either way you will pass security -- two sentries at the neck of the check-out floor.

i spent nearly every day at Harold Washington Public Library in the month preceding submission of my Fulbright application in early fall 2008. the week before the application was due, i did not sleep or do much of anything aside from sit in the library photocopying endless pages of shit which seemed pertinent to my country of intended scholarship. on the morning two days prior to the Fulbright application deadline, i photocopied quickly and gathered my things to leave because i needed to pack for my flight to san diego the next day; my ‘gathered things’ included two books i intended to check out because they contained too much pertinent shit to photocopy. i used the bathroom. while in the bathroom i put the books in my handbag so as to not dirty them with library bathroom filth. i was very tired. i forgot to remove the books from my bag. i forgot the books were in my bag. i forgot. i proceeded to exit as usual and passed through security. problems developed rapidly.

i set off the security alarm. as an ostensibly innocent person who feels they are being accused of something unsavory i immediately affected an expression of annoyance and surprise when the guards approached and asked to search my things. i grudgingly complied and opened my bag still not realizing that i had books therein. the guard pulled the books out, and looked at me, and i was kind of aghast. OH THOSE ARE MINE i said and immediately realized that this was the fucking stupidest thing i could possibly say. really said the guard. these look like library books to me. these are yours? he inspected the books. they have Harold Washington Public Library stamped on the inside he pointed. i’m sorry i said i forgot to check out. please let me go through the line. the guard ignored me and summoned a second guard and they examined the books and spoke to each other in hushed tones. i began to sense that i was imminently fucked. the guards summoned more guards with their electronic summoning devices, and these new guards escorted me to Library Security Headquarters, which apparently is a place that exists. i was led into a locker room and seated in a wooden chair in the center of the room beneath a cinematically placed spotlight. i politely answered several questions and appended my answers with yes ma’am and yes sir and proffered my driver’s license and library card. a female guard frisked me. a large, imposing man entered. he was wearing a black suit and a red tie. like satan i thought. he was head of library security. how did you get this library card he demanded. i applied for it SIR i said. but your driver’s license is in california, he hissed. i’m a student sir i said i aquired the library card using verification of my current address in the city here. this doesn’t add up he said. he handcuffed me to the chair and informed me that they were waiting for the police to arrive. it is likely that my eyes were really big and maybe kind of red at this point. the handcuffs were sort of painful, which was something i had not anticipated. i remember thinking ‘the man’ has me in a kind of frantic way.

while waiting for the police to arrive i sat in the chair and listened to the guards in the next room talk about chipotle. I NEED ME SOME CHIPOTLE, the female guard said. I LIKE THAT SALSA THEY GOT THERE.

two police officers arrived, a male and a female, and asked me more questions. they said they were not getting radio reception and would need to take me to another location for further questioning. this other location turned out to be jail, which was another thing that i had not anticipated.

i was led back up the basement stairs flanked by 8 people in uniform with my hands cuffed behind my back. we conducted the ten minute journey through the library’s causeways and library-goers stopped to watch, agape. i felt kind of important, i thought this is how Lindsay Lohan must feel sometimes. i was led to a waiting police vehicle and the female police officer conducted a spread eagle patdown before instructing me get into the back of the car. WHERE ARE WE GOING MA’AM i asked. she didn’t answer.

about twenty minutes later we pulled into Cook County jail. the police officers exited and left me with the driver, who seemed kind of friendly, and who asked how my day was. i said i had probably seen better days, and he replied: IF THIS IS THE WORST THING THAT YOU HAVE TO DO TODAY THEN YOU’RE HAVING A GOOD DAY. i thought about asking him for some sort of context, and then i thought about what Chicago police officers contend with on a daily basis i.e. getting shot in the face, or stabbed, or gang-raped, or being set on fire, and i said YEAH I GUESS YOU’RE RIGHT.

the female police officer and the male police officer, aka ‘my people’, took me into a booth room thing and handcuffed me to a wall. is that really necessary i thought. they had my handbag and removed all of my possessions from my handbag and noted all of my things in a computer database. for some reason this process took two and a half hours, during which i mostly thought about what i would eat when i got home, and acknowledged that i was thirsty and that it was time for me to take my xanax. i felt lonely. i tried to ingratiate myself with the female police officer because i was sure there was humanity in the chicago criminal justice system, and that the good people of law enforcement would take pity on an anorexic college student in a cardigan and pink high heels who had accidentally taken two books from a library in preparation for a scholarship application. i complimented the officer on her eye glasses. she looked at me and did not smile. she asked me a lot of questions that i had already answered several times. she asked me why i had taken the books. i said that i was very tired and had forgotten to remove them from my bag. i said that i had not really slept in several days, i was preparing my fulbright application, did she know what that was, it was a very prestigious scholarship to a foreign country. the male police officer approached and asked about the motive for theft. the female police officer responded TEMPORARY LOSS OF SANITY.

eventually i was placed in a large cell with other detainees. i was never exactly sure what i was waiting for, but i accepted the process as part of american justice. i was handcuffed to a metal bench, and waited another two hours while people filtered in and out. at one point i was completely alone in the cell and i began to hum Amazing Grace to myself. i began to feel increasingly distanced from my body. i began to feel very patriotic. after an hour or two they moved me to a hallway directly outside the cell and i was seated in a chair next to a latino man in his late 20s with several tattoos on his face. he said he liked my shoes. i said thank you. he observed me suspiciously and asked ‘what i was in for.’ LIBRARY THEFT i said WHAT ABOUT YOU. GRAND THEFT AUTO AND POSSESSION OF A CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE he said. OH i said THAT SUCKS.

they called my name and took me into a weird and tiny space that looked like a doctor’s examination room. i was asked to take my hair down. i was frisked again. a woman took my shoes and gave me plastic booties. she snapped my mugshot. in my mugshot i appear to be extremely non-plussed, and this mostly because i was upset about taking my hair down. it had been nicely pulled into a tight chignon, which, when taken down, requires a lot of ‘zhooshing’ to look fluffy and pert, and i was not allowed to ‘zhoosh.’

my prints were taken on a strange machine with an led screen. PROCESSING YOUR PRINTS WILL TAKE BETWEEN 12 AND 24 HOURS the prints processing woman said. WOULD YOU LIKE TO MAKE A COLLECT CALL TO NOTIFY SOMEONE OF WHERE YOU WILL BE. i felt something very bad happen to my heart rate. WAIT i said WHAT i said. YOU WILL HAVE TO STAY HERE UNTIL YOUR PRINTS ARE PROCESSED, she replied. YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND, i said, and maybe my voice became kind of stern and rose an octave or two. YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND. I NEED TO FINISH MY FULBRIGHT APPLICATION. I HAVE A PLANE TO CATCH. WELL she said YOU ARE GOING TO MISS YOUR FLIGHT. she led me to a cell. ARE YOU THIRSTY she asked. i nodded. she gave me a three ounce dixie cup of jail water. she closed the door of the cell. she left. to this day it remains a complete mystery why i was placed in a room i later found out was an isolation cell, a part of jail typically reserved for highly violent detainees. perhaps regular jail was full. when my eyes acclimated to the darkness i observed that there was blood and what looked like fecal matter spattered across the walls. scrawlings were carved into all surfaces of the room, reading FUCK U or HELP or ALFREDO RUIZ RIP. there was no place to sit. there was a hole in the floor which seemed to have the dedicated purpose of toilet. a sliver of light shone in through a slot in the door at eye level. in the cell next to mine i could hear officers struggling with another prisoner who may have been getting a chrome rod shoved into his rectum judging from the pitch of his screams. i heard one of the officers say YOU WON’T STOP BLEEDING IF YOU DON’T STOP MOVING.

i ceased to feel patriotic and began to feel very anxious and certain that i would die. i sat down on the floor and rocked back and forth, as per the filmic response to being held in isolation which seemed like the appropriate thing to do but was not particularly comforting in retrospect. after a few hours in the isolation cell my very high prescription dosage of xanax had worn off, and i had a panic attack. i began to pace the room sobbing and hyperventilating in a very uncharacteristic fashion. i started to pound on the door. I NEED XANAX i shrieked. I NEED XANAX AND I WANT TO GO HOOOOOOOOME.

i think i must have been really obnoxious, because pretty soon after that they gave me my pink high heels in a plastic sack, and my handbag and its contents in another plastic sack. they gave me some papers, and they showed me the door. i didn’t know where i was. i thought about taking a cab. FUCK CABS i thought. i thought about taking the el. FUCK THE EL i thought. i walked home. it was maybe four or five miles. it was raining. it was dark.

it seemed like a really good idea to stop at the Loehmann’s on State Street on the way back. they were nearing closing. I NEED A TRAVEL MAKEUP BAG FOR SAN DIEGO. i thought, LOEHMANN’S WILL HAVE A CUUUTE ONE BY BETSEY JOHNSONNNNNN. when i stumbled into the store (and by ‘stumbled’ i mean ‘limped heavily in an utterly delirious PTSD way’) the Loehmann’s security officer’s eyes became very large and his mouth became very small. he stared at the ID numbers that had been scribbled all over my hands and arms with thick black sharpie at various junctures during the day, which i had totally forgotten about, and which were kind of dripping blue from the rain. he nodded toward my arms and asked what the numbers were. I JUST CAME FROM A CONCERT i kind of whispered and this made perfect sense to me at the time. the security guard shadowed me in the store to the extent that i said FUCK BETSEY JOHNSON and continued home. when i finally arrived back at my apartment i looked at myself in the mirror and saw a creature that looked a lot like Mary-Kate Olson after a five day coke bender and forty-five minutes in a washing machine. i drank a bottle of water very quickly. i called my mom and we laughed together, afterwards i sat on my window seat overlooking the city and thought about america and felt very wise.

LIFE MISTAKES: THE ANTHOLOGY

2011-02-18T11:12:00.001-08:00

EPISODE O1

ROMANCE IN THE ERA OF GOTH

high school freshman year was all about listening to skinny puppy/debussy playlists on my discman during PE while adding safety pins to the thumbholes i had cut into my mesh undershirt. i would concentrate intently on this somewhat hidden from view by a shrubbery near the baseball diamond. sometimes a group of popular, lithe girls would pass and tell me to kill myself, and i would add their names to my hit-list and draw ‘angry hands’ in art class where i occasionally used my own blood as pigment. things continued in this way in a seemingly interminable fashion.

and then there was charlie brown.

charlie brown seemed to be the antidote to my young malaise and existential placelessness. he was four years older - a senior to my freshman, and he was everything i wanted to be. he was The Big Goth On Campus. he held the respect and admiration of jocks, skater kids, and feckless, roaming abercrombie&fitch drones. WHAT’S UP CHARLIE BROWN they would say, quivering under forest green jansport backpacks. HEY charlie brown would say NOT A LOT. charlie brown did not carry a backpack. if he did, it was probably black, survivor-bike style, and had a bunch of Fear Factory cds in it and a big black sketchbook full of GOOD IDEAS.

charlie brown’s goth image was perfectly executed. he had long hair knotted into semi-formed, half-bleached dreadlocks. he wore red-tinted sunglasses. knee-high combat boots ascended to busted corduroy cut-off shorts and a distressed NIN or bauhaus t-shirt. his pale limbs were festooned with glittering, spiky jewelry.

i loved him.

and so i did what i do best: i stalked him mercilessly. i sleuthed until i knew where his classes were and at what time, i wore my best electrical tape accessories and conducted brazen Goth Walks near where he and his raver friends formed their circle in front of the drama room. i wore my trench coat often and in the heat at the cost of bodily comfort, i took greater risks with the texture, color, and material of my pants.

and it worked. it worked because i always get what i want whether or not it is good for me. because if there is a god he seems to employ the same modality whenever i come up on the radar. which is: oh fine, you fucking idiot.

the day that charlie and his friend geoff approached our crew during a morning break we were all aghast and nervous and honored to be graced with his presence. i felt myself sweating and trying to appear nonchalant and congenial. he walked me to my english honors class and we made small talk about trent reznor. he asked if i was seeing anybody. i paused for a moment as though surveying a vast mental catalog of men begging for my attention and then responded NO. he said OK THEN MAYBE YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE MY GIRLFRIEND. and as Vonnegut would say: so it goes.

he was two hours late to our first date. i had agreed to meet him in front of the high school gym, where i told my mom i would be attending a basketball game with my friend kate. as a person who wore a mesh undershirt beneath my phys ed uniform, this was obviously a lie. i waited and charles finally showed up, breathing laboriously under the weight of many pentagram necklaces, and panted SORRY I FELL ASLEEP. i payed for his ticket at the movie theater because he had no cash, i recall him actually emptying his pockets inside out in a comedic manner and grinning with yellow teeth. we saw a horror film, and afterwards we walked to the nearby middle school playground and sat on a bench for a while and talked about subjects that were probably middle school and middle school. after that he fell down a flight of stairs. after that we met his sister at burger king. charlie wore his fingernails very long and they were always kind of clogged with grime and debris. observing his fingernails digging into the deflated bun of his cheeseburger and imagining his discolored teeth commingling with grey cowflesh i felt an urge to drink clorox and scream in an empty field of wheat. instead i made a kind of impressive house of cards out of sugar packets.

over the next four months i ‘lamed up’ exponentially. i started listening to nu-metal. i stopped caring about my grades (prior to meeting charlie brown it had been my sort of inexplicable goal to get into Cornell, and i held all honors courses and got straight As). i stopped reading russian literature. but i began to cultivate a certain cred and people seemed to stop throwing stuff at me for a while. i became charlie’s unflagging support system. charlie was mostly invested in practicing metal vocalizing and smoking weed and occasionally doing e. the only time he was verbally affectionate was when he called me on the telephone whilst rolling. charlie was also an illustrator and a poet, and he drew me pictures occasionally; stylized ink drawings of, for example, a butterfly grinning maliciously. and a valentine depicting my mangled body in a trashcan and himself with a bloody axe, which i retain in a folder of forgotten, nostalgic documents till this day.

we spent our time together wrapped in a silent, somber embrace. one of charlie’s more formal sartorial items was a cape. when i say charlie brown had a cape, i am saying that charlie brown had a cape. this was a cape that did not play any games about being a cape. his mother had made it for him. it fell in mournful black swathes to the floor, the lining was red satin, i want to say there was some sort of bodice-like lacing on it somewhere, and voluminous renaissance sleeves with fine french cuffs. we would stand in the center of the quad and he would enfold me in his cape, and i would rest my face on his chest and usually leave a pale makeup stain thereon after we would peel apart at the toll of the final 2^nd period bell.

at lunch we would sit with our backs to a stony column and i would pick at a peanut butter sandwich while he ate a school-heated slice of pizza. we would discuss tool’s latest album lateralus. we would discuss the next time i could come to his house and hang out.

charlie’s family was a very curious unit. his father was an extremely wealthy computer software entrepeneur who divorced charlie’s mom and married a batshit crazy trophy woman who shat rhinestones, and they lived with three hopelessly spoiled alternative kids in a rancho santa fe hillside spanish villa. charlie’s dad had a hobby being a dad in a Dad Band, like many dads who have money and time and a modicum of musical inclination resuscitated after twenty years. there was an enormous grand piano in the foyer flanked by expensive bass cabs and fine marshall amps, formal sofas were upholstered in ‘rockstar’ gold. he seemed like a laid-back dude.

the first time i went to charlie’s house we watched bladerunner on a gigantic television framed by a custom maple entertainment unit with surround speakers. charlie’s stepmother fumbled around in the liquor cabinet and pulled out two bottles of empty absolut. THERE IS A SECRET ALCOHOLIC IN THIS HOUSE she glared at us suspiciously and then teetered off in platform sandals. after we finished the movie we ascended the graceful curves of a marble staircase and charlie brown showed me the most interesting room in his parent’s house, this being The Bong Room. this was a large sort of vestibule off the mezzanine which led to the parent’s bedchamber, it was furnished with sofas, chaise lounges, and a circular ottoman all in matching red velvet. i suppose the most interesting aspect of The Bong Room was the presence of many bongs, surely several dozen of all sizes and colors, and the bongs appeared to be the source from which The Bong Room got its name. The floor of The Bong Room seemed to be covered in expensive persian rugs. WE SMOKE A LOT charlie explained.

the color of charlie’s room was a mystery to me because heavy blackout curtains were always drawn over the double pane windows and french doors of his balcony overlooking Jenny Craig’s horse stables. i do remember that the room had a very high ceiling, because i spent most of my time there staring at it while charlie and i lay in a fully-clothed spooning position on his California King-sized bed. i don’t remember a damned thing we talked about, but i do remember being locked in passionless, lethargic make-out sessions during which my level of arousal was so low i thought mostly about homework and began to question whether i was gay. after kissing him i would return to stroking his goatee and picking at his dreadlocks with ape-like fascination. here i shall proffer a note about people with naturally straight hair who are in the process of growing dreadlocks: they do not bathe. they wax their dreads and abstain from showering for as long as possible to facilitate the ‘natting’ process. and thus: charles smelled. he smelled. he smelled very strongly of patchouli, weed, high school sweat, and dolorous body odor. i never saw charlie unclothed, and i never moved beyond his mouth, and i think that in this way i am very very lucky in love.

i remained assiduously dedicated to his causes, committed to convincing myself that the physical revulsion i felt toward him was an intrinsic character flaw that must be purged. yet i started to see him less and less. he would pass me in the hall and pretend not to notice. there was talk. at chili’s one night with my best friends darren and emilio the topic was brought up whether charlie brown and i were even dating anymore. OF COURSE WE ARE STILL DATING i retorted, and darren wiggled a spoonful of crispy thai rice noodles in front of my face and we all laughed, but internally i began to dread the inevitable.

i checked his geocities page religiously. his page had a brief bio stating, in red typeface on black background, verbatim: IF I DO NOT ATTAIN FAME AS A MUSICIAN, I WILL CERTAINLY ACHIEVE PRESTIGE AS A PRODUCER. one day, appended to this bio was something like I’M GOING TO BREAK UP WITH MY GIRLFRIEND THIS WEEK which was very alarming because it seemed to directly pertain to me. within a few days he approached my crew on the quad, pulled me sort-of aside and said we should be friends. i kind of reciprocated his flaccid embrace and watched tearfully as with a great flourish of his cape he stalked off in the morning glare to biology class.

i was devastated and wallowed for a few months but soon found an even better boyfriend who’s complete lack of social expediency and tendency to eat paper and/or curl into the fetal position at inappropriate moments was outweighed by his excellent taste in music and literature and his proclivity for writing me pretty-decent-for-a-15-yr-old beat poems with a vernacular prominently featuring the words ‘mountain’ ‘sun’ and ‘gysm.’

i am fairly certain i saw charlie brown at a jamba juice near my parent’s house a few years ago. his dreadlocks seemed finally to have achieved a consistency which bespoke success. he ordered a razzmatazz.

SOUNDAGE

2011-02-13T19:22:00.001-08:00

so if you like Goblin's italo-disco giallo Dario Argento madness...

(does that sound familiar? JUSTICE, anyone?)

...you will love this bit of analog deathscore doom funk from Matt Hill, aka UMBERTO, who you might also know as part of the ultra stellar EXPO '70. expect a lot of vintage KORG magnificence and sincere, brilliant executions of pure and unadulterated camp.

Temple Room, Widow of the Web, and Night Stalking are particularly quality tracks.

DO. IT.

DON'T LOOK AT ME IN THAT TONE OF VOICE

2011-02-12T19:08:00.001-08:00

things of the lately.

TYLER THE CREATOR: YONKERS

i have not seen/heard hip hop this abrasive and stunning in a very long time. reminds me of the rawness and urgency of some of my favorite tracks... cage’s manic horrorcore anthem AGENT ORANGE ('divorce ya head and neck and scalp it / rip off all ya flesh and make an outfit') or the campiness of gravediggaz 1-800-SUICIDE or immortal technique’s incomparably brutal DANCE WITH THE DEVIL. this kid's demented swagger is chilling.

he talks a lot of shit. in the video he eats a cockroach, vomits, removes his shirt, and hangs himself. awesome.

lyrics:

I’m a fuckin’ walkin’ paradox, no I’m not  Threesomes with a fuckin’ triceratops, Reptar  Rappin’ as I’m mockin’ deaf rock stars  Wearin’ synthetic wigs made of Anwar’s dreadlocks  Bedrock, harder than a muthafuckin’ Flintstone  Makin’ crack rocks outta pissy nigga fishbone  This nigga Jasper tryna get grown  About five-seven of his bitches in my bedroom  Swallow the cinnamon, I’mma scribble this sin and shit  While Syd is tellin’ me that she’s been gettin’ intimate with men  Syd, shut the fuck up  Here’s the number to my therapist  Tell him all your problems, he’s fuckin’ awesome with listenin’.

Jesus called, he said he’s sick of the disses  I told him to quit bitchin’, this isn’t a fuckin’ hotline  For a fuckin’ shrink, sheesh I already got mine  And he’s not fuckin’ workin’, I think I’m wastin’ my damn time  I’m clockin’ three past six and goin’ postal  This the revenge of the dicks, that’s nine cocks that cock nines  This ain’t no V Tech shit or Columbine  But after bowlin’, I went home to some damn Adventure Time  (What’d you do?) I slipped myself some pink Xanies  And danced around the house in all-over print panties  My mom’s gone, that fuckin’ broad will never understand me  I’m not gay, I just wanna boogie to some Marvin  (What you think of Hayley Williams?)  Fuck her, Wolf Haley robbin’ ‘em  I’ll crash that fuckin’ airplane at that faggot nigga B.o.B is in  And stab Bruno Mars in his goddamn esophagus  And won’t stop until the cops come in  I’m an over achiever, so how ’bout I start a team of leaders  And pick up Stevie Wonder to be the wide receiver  Green paper, gold teeth and pregnant gold retrievers  All I want, fuck money, diamonds and bitches, don’t need ‘em  But where the fat ones at, I got somethin’ to feed ‘em  In some cookin’ books the black kids never wanted to read ‘em  Snap back, green ch-ch-chia fuckin’ leaves . It’s been a couple months, and Tina still ain’t permed her fuckin’ weave, damn

FRANCESCA WOODMAN

Francesca Woodman's work is often characterized by long exposures where women move through the shot or are suspended like apparitions. reminiscent of the paintings of gerhard richter. i think particularly of callas descending the staircase. ghosts. memory. silence.

she committed suicide in her early twenties. she jumped out a window.

JAMES BLAKE

james blake’s new record was just released; a collection of broken, naked soundscapes. his voice quietly devours everything around it. not a thing out of place.

this is my favorite track, for some reason abridged.

RAPEVAN MURALS

i have been scouring the internet for images of elaborate rapevan murals. as though owning a rapevan were not enough to call one’s character into question, the mural seems to say: i celebrate my questionable taste and dubious repute, and i celebrate with abandon.

popular subject matter includes: wizards, desert landscapes, proud horses/unicorns, splayed women, star wars.

TIM HECKER

read a really lovely review of hecker's new album/listen at coke machine glow. CMG continues to do justice to music criticism, they are my favorite source for intelligent, astute reviews in spite of their Kanye Hype Bandwagon Jumping.

ALED JONES

british miracle boy soprano from back in the day, here performing Handel. makes me a little weepy.

OAKLAND TURFIN’

elegantly-shot videos from YAKFILMS = beautiful oakland cultural documents. the dance style turfin’ combines traditional breaking/poppin’ elements with krump and balletic pirouettes. mesmerizing, and, when danced in tribute; heartbreaking.

ciao bella.

STOCKHOLM SYNDROME

2010-12-17T22:34:00.000-08:00

with hair is without arms. there are many ways to knock dog there are many hairs to split still. sit still split cord. cord to begin with gag of wood and then hair and then hair.

and again and again. haircutter this is myself as a child. this is my hair in a ring. afterward a table for the head that is left. with fork. to begin with straw or paper or fork.

i ache and stink and conduct the voltage with the stretched tendons in my legs and i love you. this attracts flies. this place is narrow.

love me with fork. i cannot stand. i retract my feet into. i flood with grease. from the mouth again. and again from the mouth with wood i am a throat conductor.

when without teeth into a fine mesh and wire for my other mouth. cord bound with wood in my throat. tongue’s flint.

i ache often and this is fine. there are many ways to knock wood and shove. hammer stomach on a black spindle. stomach cord with wood. hammer for my blunt side. palms up palms open.

without teeth i have more place for hair or wood. i have a line. a line is hung with me. when i am sad. when you paint me without eyes. without arms what can i do.

collar teeth at your throat. blunt side of the skull make me holy. liverbiter woodshover begin with a fat gourd. gore me from mouth.

blunt side of the skull. hammer stink from narrow. pluck cords in my sight’s harp. when i cannot stand or see i try but you paint me without eyes.

when i was a harp. when i was a child. when i was a harp.

harp is hair for hands holy holy holy conducted between the lines of legs against dog against dog dog within dog dog in a thick line against me to begin with. to begin with conduct the voltage from the socket in the dog. when the dog stunk for days.

blight and blight and where unto you my breath. where are my fingers gored of wood in liver. spat and emptied his grease spat black for days. i could not stand or see.

i flood the bed with wood. i dog up against the floor and ache. hold me. howl against palms up palms open on the floor. i flood and hang a line.

unto you. for hammer. unto you.

THINGS I REQUIRE FOR YULETIDE SATISFACTION

2010-12-09T20:33:00.000-08:00

hello. it is good to see you again. i have been neglecting my blog recently but

i am not sorry.

christmas is approaching, 2010 has proven itself a singularly traumatic year, i require many presents to compensate for the emptiness salting the bitter wounds of my withered unslaked soul.

these are things you should get for me if you want me to not kill myself.

1. CHRISTMAS BOYFRIEND

he does not need to possess any particular skill set or mutual interests. he needs to be able to hold me while i weep and occasionally whisper something such as "your face smells good" in a non-threatening way. perhaps he has cirrhosis secondary to hepatitis and addictions to both alcohol and needle-based drugs, perhaps he has festooned his face with conceptual quasi-africa shaped sideburns, perhaps he has a tattoo depicting Mary Magdalene spread open at the feet of a monstrously gifted, semen-spurting Jesus Christ, perhaps he is all of these things and more.

2. ANTIDEPRESSANTS

as a person sometimes described as 'childish' 'churlish' 'egocentric' and 'retarded' antidepressants will be an essential component of my christmas 2010. Zoloft is an antidepressant that appeals to the part of me that likes dough and smiling mostly as a result of Zoloft's delightfully carefree orb constituent. i like to think of the Zoloft orb completing synaptic leaps with utterances of glee, i like to think of myself poking the Zoloft orb with one finger and the Zoloft orb laughing a little and perhaps accidentally vomiting a tiny paper airplane.

3. T-SHIRT BEARING OVERTLY HOMICIDAL//AGGRESSIVE SLOGAN

it is essential that i have something to wear when i get out of my bed every other day and walk to Safeway for fudgesicles.

4. TRENDY ASIAN DANCE BATTLE OPPONENT

if dance battles occurred spontaneously during mundane daily activities the quality of my life would be greatly enhanced. my dance battle opponent should be a highly-skilled asian male with touchable hair and nice sneakers. his dance battle music preferences will veer towards d&b, deep house, and electropop and he will mix hardstyle shuffle with acrobatic flips and an impossibly complex move called The Time Machine. despite my opponent's advanced technique i will win each battle because of my existential swagger and controversial Bourgeois White Person Krumping style. At the denouement of each battle my asian opponent will grin, drop to the splits, rise again very quickly, shake his head in disbelief, and exclaim "DAAAAMN, YO."

5. CREW W/ HATS

i need people to dress like me and follow me around and agree with everything i say. ideally they will be less attractive, have a higher bmi, and wear blank, glassy expressions. ideally my crew will wear hats, because hats solidify the legitimacy of a crew. ideally one member of my crew will have basic-to-intermediate knowledge of how to shoot a firearm. ideally one member of my crew will be able to operate a minivan with deftness and possibly conduct an e-brake drift into any parking space in front of Souplantation.

that is all. thank you in advance.

THAT OF CAKE

2010-11-21T21:41:00.000-08:00

here are videos of people eating cake and brief observations about cake and people who eat cake.

most videos of people eating cake are titled declaratively, and, perhaps boastfully: ME EATING CAKE.

most people employ a specific modality in their cake-eating, typically consuming the cake as quickly as possible (inhalation) with considerable lip debris.

1. CAKE AS ENNUI // IRONY // ANGST

here is ZACHARY GERMAN eating a small yet mightily-frosted cake from a box. german seems dehydrated + is wearing a button-down from American Apparel, which makes me nervous.

***addendum: german has informed me that his shirt is from j.crew and not american apparel. i am sorry, and i assure you that this sort of error will not occur again.***

2. CAKE AS FEAT OF STRENGTH

here is an asian woman eating a large cake rather quickly. she seems to be ok with it. i remain concerned.

3. CAKE AS BADASSERY

here is a very intense video vis a vis cake + guitar riffage + disembodied hand w/ knife. the cake appears very dense and dry and not delicious at all, the lengthiness of the video implies that this is a ‘marathon cake sesh’ and that eating cake is 'metal'.

3. CAKE AS CATALYST FOR HILARITY

here is a video that seems to say drugs are fun. cake is not prominently featured.

4. CAKE AS NOT-THE-PREFERRED-FETISH-OBJECT-FOOD-OF-PORNSTARS

this video does not feature cake but made me extremely uncomfortable.

5. CAKE AS SHAME

here is a deeply disturbing silent video in which a cake is consumed without utensils and bodily excretions occur.

6. CAKE AS MORAL CODE // WRATHFUL GOD

here is a video of a child surreptitiously eating cake until he is reprimanded by god, who punishes him by removing christmas.

7. CAKE AS ENIGMA // QUIET SENSE OF FINALITY AND DOOM

here is this user's first and only video upload to youtube.

i think the meta-message derived from my cake exegesis is that people need to stop buying video cameras and that i need to start taking effexor.

WHEREIN THE IMAGE OF THE PERSON

2010-11-19T17:29:00.001-08:00

juss lookin at som art pikturz yallll.

1. the work of NYC-based fashion photographer SHANNON SINCLAIR is colored with an insouciant rebellion perfectly articulated in the boy/man subject and artfully teased out in models such as nick cave-ish inky broodbomb COLE MOHR (second from top, and, by the way: DAAAAMN). her images are angular and taut and convey a frustrated youthful virility both awkward and gorgeous. i like.

**addendum** while i'm here, i suppose i'd like to congratulate the fashion industry for finally constructing and promoting an ideal male physique that is as unhealthy and emaciated as the established female paradigm. equality is awesome, right?

2. a mad genius of epic proportions is London's luminous, anarchic multi-disciplinarian MATTHEW STONE. i think Stone's approach to framing the figure is rather striking. bodies woven together into tapestries and tangled knots -- tableaus of orgiastic ecstasy or torment? for me these are unsettlingly anachronistic; simultaneously conjuring Kafka's contortions of the grotesque, Caravaggio's anxious tenebrism, Doré's decadent piles of languishing flesh. i like.

A NOTE OF APOLOGY TO MY CAT

2010-10-28T02:43:00.000-07:00

dear nietzsche

please forgive me for berating you

for drawing attention to your obesity

for plucking at the drooping belly flap that

wobbles when you pace the windowsill

and spreads beneath you while you sleep, inflating you

to twice your usual dimensions

which are already quite porcine; you are

a very large cat, nietzsche

in The Wilderness your size would be considered an advantage

in The Wilderness you would have your way with lesser cats

you would dominate lesser cats you would kill lesser cats you would smother them

lesser cats in The Wilderness would fear you i think

and you could copulate with any male cat

because the meat of excess is arousing in your culture

not to mention

your very fine and soft coat

that male cats would find attractive.

i am sorry if you feel lonely

if you feel Lack

your sister mostly keeps to herself under the bed upstairs

and like most thin people she is rude and nervous

i don’t know if you are very good friends.

i think it would be healthy to develop strong relationships

and a sense of identity within your culture

but as far as i know

there are no cat groups i could take you to

nor courses in which to enroll

other than setting you free in The Wilderness

and setting you free in The Wilderness is not ideal, i would worry

(though your surplus stores of lipids would ensure your survival

until you had smothered and eaten other lesser cats)

i would worry

that you would not come back.

MOURNFUL HEAD OF WHALE

2010-10-26T09:57:00.000-07:00

it takes all my arms to drag you down. sorry.

swallow you whole in the car on the corner so go ahead and cake me up

flake my dimming bulb i look

fucked as a flocked holiday tree where every christmas

i am wider i rarely fit the sink but still

shove my ass in to scrub me to a little less. i am honeyed ham on string

under all this skin

all this skin with nowhere to go.

so no no thanks i’ll not i’d rather not thanks.

i dont want your help or your love or your time i don’t want

any of your things or your eyes i don’t want your hands

or your hugs

i don’t want your gloves on my throat or your thumb in my cunt. no thanks

i want to sit here.

i want to sit here on the floor i want to put my clothes back on and

sit here and

i’ll sit here because this is what i do now this is it.

this is it.

IN WHICH THE ACCUMULATION OF STREET CRED, OR THE ‘ISSUE’ OF ACCUMULATING STREET CRED, IS SOLVED, REVEALS I HAVE ‘SCADS’ OF STREET CRED INTRINSICLY

2010-10-24T17:50:00.000-07:00

a revelatory beam of light hath swathed the darkened crevasse of my street cred in a creamy sunglow a la the soft focus filter of pg-13 romantic comedies c. 1992-1996. this street cred laser burned my sleepy little retinas after about six hours on wikipedia invested, as per usual on saturday night at 2:40 am, in rap exegesis.

the basis for my epiphany is this:

street cred is different for

white people.

in order to accrue street cred as a white person, one must simply exhibit symptoms of severe psychological unrest, and this is made exponentially more viable if psychological unrest manifests via extended episodes of clinical nervous collapse punctuated by: institutionalization, rampant drug addiction and failed rehabilitation, suicide attempts, successfully completed suicide, unrequited romantic fixation that results in stabbing, stalking, lurking, a painful break-up, compulsive masturbation in public restrooms, etc.

i am completing a chart of Caucasian Street Credibility Paradigms. more on that soon.

white people.

we are delicate flowers.

don't hurt our feelingz.

OCTOBER

2010-10-04T06:59:00.000-07:00

on the seventh day i removed the left arm and placed the arm on the floor next to the foot i removed on the third day. by the fifth day the foot i had removed was tender and grey and smelled of standing water. by the eighth day the left arm smelled of the hair it held clenched in its fist.

on the tenth day i removed the pupil which had seemed impossible to do all previous days without also removing the cornea. but on the ninth day i acquired the proper tools.

where do you go. where do you go. what do you do with your days. where do you sit in your home. when do you sleep. are you in ache. are you alone. is there a hill. is there a window. are you alone. are you alone.

i am here still. i am grey and tender. i am without many parts. i stink deep and heavy. i am without many parts but i retain certain holes. i retain certain water. i am good still for certain things.

OCTOBER

2010-10-03T14:28:00.000-07:00

on the sixth day the voice of the earth shook and from the tremor was birthed a village inhabited by people that kissed with their fingertips because the earth bore them without mouths. the people of the village absorbed nutrients with gaze and because of this they grew from the eye before they grew from the body. the people of the village held skins the color of clay to better sink into the soil when the fires ripped their homes into the winds. when the winds came the people of the village wore goggles and they grew thin.

i dreamt you wrote a letter and kissed it and sent it.

when i woke i searched my rooms for the letter and searched for days and upon my face a wetness slicked and dried and i sat in the center of my rooms overturned with papers and furniture and i sat in the center and spoke not and slept not and after a certain time had passed i thought to knife a slit into my sternum to open up my ribs wherein

wherein i found the body of a bird and nothing else.

STUMP

2010-09-21T20:23:00.000-07:00

often the men use the gut of a cat to unite the posterior and anterior muscles and this is the right way. the gut of a cat is a different softness from the skin of the bone or the marrow of the bone or the nerves or the vessels or the branches of blood.

if you ask me to kneel i will try to kneel but i cannot. i cannot kneel. raise the cat to my face because i cannot kneel to look and i want to look this pretty cat in the face before the men.

the leather adds a bit of comfort and the men like it, the men like it. they like it. the men like the steel that extends up the thigh and they like the casing that holds the canal together with stiff laces. the men like these things.

i need to practice. i need to learn. i need control of my pelvic ring and i need. i strut upon wood. for the men a disc of wood is affixed to my pelvic ring by means of straps and buckles of copper.

the men pin me with a rubber tip. i bear their broad end and their pressure well and i am not tender with the men because they do not like it.

i use wax to affix the broomstick to the disc of wood and i prefer the broomstick to the men.

if it is tender i make modifications to it. if the upper portion has atrophied i open the bone joint and remove it, and the men affix this flap and that flap to the broad end using steel pins.

i use the knife to cut up and down and then sweep to the back and to the outer side and then round to the front and then up again. i apply pressure to the spring of my thigh and press the spring to remove it.

the muscle is cut and allowed to retract where the skin was cut and allowed to retract and you must take care to allow these things to retract, these things take time. this is as good as any.

difference between softness. i want you to feel it with your fingers. when you have felt the softness i want you to pull down and cut short this flap and that flap and i want you to feel it with the knife.

i cut. i cut using circular sweeps of the knife and when the clit is exposed the men saw through it and dab the ends in powder. i cut short the nerves and vessels and branches and create an inverted cone and at the apex is a stitching of wire and then.

then i have room to move about. i have room to move about and do not feel pain. i feel it with my fingers and i move about and i can do this. i can do and i do this and i do not feel pain.

if the thigh is not properly positioned friction and sores will develop and my whole skin will be dragged upon and stretched and my stitches will be opened. so here. here are the straps for my pretty lips. hold them.

you may press a spring to remove my mouth and then you may feed me. i carry my box in my pretty mouth and i bite the spring. i attract favorable attention on the street. i am as good as any.

THINGS OF COLOR

2010-09-07T19:29:00.000-07:00

reading albers color theory and goethe's color theory and kandinsky's on the spiritual in art which is essentially color theory for grumpy, mystical modernists.

arbitrary naming, synesthesia, codification, impossibility, failure, animals, ice cream, paddle boats.

also, non-sensory constituents for sensory things.

this is re: i wrote about colors a while back. the colors here are composites of crayola crayon names.

please read to yourself in a booming and authoritative teutonic monotone.

U JACKIN MY STEEZ BITCH DONT PLAY

2010-08-29T20:45:00.000-07:00

i feel it necessary to air grievances today.

1. i began to listen to gangsta/underground rap with assiduous, exegetic tenacity.

2. i intended to extrapolate meaning from the conditional rhythms of speech and the timbres of individual voices therein.

3. i spent almost seven hours on wikipedia learning about the wu-tang clan. i began attempting half-heartedly to resuscitate my plummeting street cred.

4. i began to feel very strongly that proclamations such as ‘i spent almost seven hours on wikipedia learning about the wu-tang clan’ and ‘it is very interesting that GZA displays a propensity to alternate from dotted 16^th notes to triplets to a kind of second-beat-emphasis mazurka thing mid-verse’ will not aid in street cred accumulation.

5. i bought the latest issue of black warrior review and to be totally honest it fucking bored me to death. are any of my friends in it. i don't care.

6. i began to feel very strongly that a certain moody genius is attempting to ruin my life or 'jack my steez' as one with street cred might say.

7. i began to feel that moody geniuses jacking my steez is a dominant trend, perhaps an intrinsic personality trait compels me to seek moody geniuses who will make my steez jacked.

8. new friend neil o'connor is really fucking gifted. check out his work. all of it.

9. i began to write a new sound piece which includes a sample of Bruce Naumann repeating

the word 'ok'.

10. i felt i should lend a semblance of legitimacy to this post, so i included this older graphic text score thing:

2010-08-14T20:42:00.000-07:00

this is an image of a piece of paper written upon by a person giving another person a test for dementia from the office where i worked this summer. it is referenced in a previous post here.

i have not posted in a long time. sorry.

i attribute my gross negligence to my move to oakland. i have moved to oakland, where i am now residing. i live on the border between oakland and berkeley. literally. on one side of the street i am in oakland, and on the opposite side i am in berkeley. i would prefer that i remain in oakland and not berkeley, so i stay on the side of the street that is oakland.

i thought that i would hate oakland. actually, oakland is quite special.

oakland has a unique cultural profile. oakland does not 'fuck around.' most of the people who have talked to me on the streets have been very kind. only one large van filled very liberally with muscular african-american men harassed me while i was riding my bike downtown. at each stoplight the van pulled up next to me and the men inside yelled

HEY BECKY

BECCCCCCKKKKKKKYYYYY

HEEEEEYYYYYYYY BECKY BECKY BECKY

BECKKKKKKYYYYYY

this became very irritating after about ten minutes. i thought they would get bored but they continued to yell BECKY. i know that 'becky' is slang for a (white, typically) girl performing fellatio. these men just appeared to be focused on establishing a moniker, which i found slightly less flattering. urging me to perform fellatio would be something of an affirmation that i am, if nothing else, a useful and/or desirable being. calling me BECKY is simply affirmation that i am a white girl, a really white girl. obnoxiously white. beckys play water-polo and plan weddings.

other than that it's been great. i love my new apartment. i painted the walls of the main room chartreuse, which turned out to be a very very deep and disquieting yellow, taqueria yellow, so i repainted it spring green, which is very refreshing and pleasant to look at and catches the light well.

i will post more about oakland as i continue to reside here. one last thing:

something that i really enjoy about oakland is the prevalence of independent bookstores. There are no Bordersez in oakland. there are no Barnes & Noblesez in oakland. these are a couple of the books i have purchased since my arrival:

David Markson: THIS IS NOT A NOVEL

Amelia Gray: AM/PM

Samuel Beckett: HOW IT IS + MURPHY

Joshua Mohr: TERMITE PARADE

Eugene Marten: FIREWORK

+ THE NEW FENCE MAGAZINE

i am currently invested in FIREWORK, i have only been able to read small portions at a time, for some reason reading + writing energies are sapped. but wowie wowie wow. there is a brutal stoniness to Marten's prose - his words fall like bricks, fall like steps on a determined, somber march.

i have also read the entirety of the new FENCE. what a remarkable collection of work, as per usual. i really like Rodrigo Toscano's 'modules' from 'the collapsible poetic theatre'. other favorites in this issue are pieces by the ever-excellent Anselm Berrigan, Heather Christle, Christopher Deweese, Gordon McDermott. Thomas Doran's 'elegy for Sarah Bernhardt' is a biting slap of language. man, i want to pick out a passage, but the whole thing is shiny and sharp. Evan Lavender-Smith's 'from old notebooks' is also quite compelling.

i am tired of poems/prose that prominently use the words 'breast' and 'raspberry.' any kind of berry, really. fruit as feminine metaphor makes me think proto-EAT PRAY LOVE*, makes me think Yoplait and pastel tank tops with built in bra shelfs. makes me think shopping for clothing that 'flows' or is 'flowy' at boutique shops in affluent areas. makes me think of taking a weekday afternoon to indulge in chocolate with a spoon.

the female body is tired, so loaded she is deflated. i am wary/weary of gendered bodies in writing, i only seem to be able to tolerate in the contexts of revulsion, scientific remove. anatomical object, objet for the cabinet, monstrous appendage.

the celebration of the female form. celebrating femininity. dove. yoplait. raspberry. white-chocolate raspberry.

i like androgynous bodies, smooth and translucent.

probably there is something wrong with me, as basically all i do is write about my body, even if i am circumnavigating by writing ostensibly about something else.

i don't like to think about being a woman, about being white, about being anything in particular other than an organism that was generated and now does the best it can to generate.

Q: Can one hypothetically devour too many carrots?

A: Yes, Certainly.

Q: Can one hypothetically die of laxative abuse?

A: Yes, Certainly.

The Electrolytes, O the Electrolytes.

my bed just shifted rather violently for no apparent reason. my bed is now askew, i must tend to it.

* i hate eating

i hate praying

i hate love. kind of.

ON THE FLOOR OF THE UNDERSIDE OF THE FLOOR OF THE SECOND STORY: PAGE 1, THE ELDEST STRATUM

2010-07-28T00:23:00.000-07:00

i built for you on the floor of the underside of the floor of the second story a grand plastered surface containing vigorous molded ornament against a plain ground divided by a grid forming a central rectangle with semi-circular breaks and deeply moulded beams leaving only ovals or circles which had formerly been framed so that the patterns remain simple and forceful and large with densely ornamented areas divided by grids which imposed clearly centralized and sometimes hierarchical systems depicting scenes from ovid’s metamorphosis framed by cherubs in simple geometric patterns shaped with hand-forming tools and ornamental elements of moulded papier mache fixed with pins in situ rather than applied reflecting grand baroque traditions as executed by german craftspeople of southeastern pennsylvania held by dense strapwork with repeated breaks and ornament centred on armorial or emblematic devices most often the four seasons the seven sins the fives senses the nine virtues recessed in octagonal coffering decorated with wreathes and rosettes in delicate palettes of pea greens with pinks and lilacs and lilacs with greys on a shallow dome supported on pendentives decorated with an incised elongated greek key motif complementing the curving ornament in the rectangular panels at either side of an elaborate ensemble of swags and roundels with a central sunburst and the head of a god stenciled with painted and gold plaster of special exuberance displaying a penchant for roman splendour gilded and painted white in accord with chaste palladian principles of joists simply lathed and plastered resulting in a slightly undulating appearance marked with plain or corniced moulding along with acanthus and anthemion and egg-and-dart mouldings as well as beading in the cornice featuring ribbed design for intricate paintwork atop barrel vaulting of incipent modernism in the anglo-japanese style with all-over papers in reticent patterns with plain borders ensuite of tongue-and-groove boards or of painted tin insets with scenes or coats of arms with details reserved in white against sky tones for the curling vine motif that surrounds the central panel in strictly geometric compartments within naturalistic swags in white blue and cream representing glory as well as elaborate swags and ribs and flowers and festoons and roses and medallions and ventilators in combinations of rosettes and patera motifs with radiating palmettes and other leaves coarsened by layer upon layer upon layer upon layer upon layer upon layer upon layer upon layer of gold.

LOUSY T-SHIRT

2010-07-27T10:39:00.000-07:00

children suck on their guilt at the bus stop

this is the blood chatter in the subwoofer’s shove

a nibble of fish fanning an indigestive shudder.

cock crushed like accordian bellows

my box stink is the sully on your chin’s coarse blade

ride the tip of my ice pick and thumb the butter i leave in the bed.

hear: i echo in my heart’s cheapest chamber

i use all my sweat to put out, catch:

the tick of the glycemic index on the wall near the kleenex.

brandishing fists full of triscuits

my throat is a grief channel, gut walls aglitter

with shrapnel: gristle of skittles, ice cream lacquer.