You Are Not Better Than an Octopus

"The octopus has an amazing skin, because there are up to 20 million of these chromatophore pigment cells and to control 20 million of anything is going to take a lot of processing power. ... These animals have extraordinarily large, complicated brains to make all this work." -  Roger T. Hanlon

How To Make Marbles

How To Make Marbles

By Maria Getto

     At first I thought you could just roll some agglomeration of warm glass around on your tongue, flicking it savagely, running it across the ridges of your sticky palate. You might think about a teenage fuck because you just can’t help yourself. Or maybe it’s like dating a construction worker who comes home in dust and neon without a college degree. Rebellion and a little bit of shame each time the thought crashes into one of your molars. It doesn’t really taste good, but it feels like something that a mouth was meant to do. However, that would necessitate a quantity of warm, misshapen glass. The mouth would not be the birthplace of such a pleasure, but rather a receptacle, a refinery, a reformatory as it so often is. The mouth is a shapeshifter’s cave. It seems almost unreasonable now, silly.
     There is, quite possibly, an island where lightening strikes more than twice. The Irony Island, the point of universal spite, where such reckless force creates a shower of temporal immaculacy. The weights of this perfect rain being the corpse chained to some kind of perfection, its illegitimacy. Definite and unforgiving, but the liquid haunting dissipates as soon as you try to touch it. The beads surrender in mid air, give in to rigor mortis, and fall to the sand only to reflect the water that they once were. The fisherman will revile their beauty, piss on their chance to evolve while they laugh with missing teeth and toss them next to the day’s haul of mackerel, squirming and slimy with the wickedness of the sea. Some will escape the net and spin toward the water. I can smell the rotting seaweed that would squish into the negative space and leave a slippery mucous on the already slippery drops. Maybe I can hear it too. Or maybe it’s just the sound of you remembering what you did on a dock one night.
     I killed someone in a dream. She was very close to me, but I can’t remember her name anymore. The drag and the dream fog kept it while I opened my eyes. I felt intrusive trying to remember. Please tell me your name. Please undress while I watch. Please let me put my hands inside you to see if your belly is a good rock tumbler, and you can tell me your name when I’m finished. You are human if you look into an open window, but you are a voyeur if the shades are drawn and you look for cracks of light. Her name must exist somewhere, reeling down allegorical hallways in my sub-conscious like Barbie thrown down some stairs. Her name will be trapped in a maze, wearing itself down into tiny memory blobs, hoping to find a place to fit, a place to be filed. But because I’ve never filed anything but fingernails, the globs that used to be something must rattle around until someone gives up a body for science and they can be collected after the brain and the guts are studied and discarded. Surgical extraction of memories turned into toys. I doubt doctors are simply highly trained marble collectors, but it isn’t completely insane to consider. That just seems cruel, all that money for an education.
     Some people who could be doctors don’t become doctors at all. They become utilitarian and they use sand instead of needles. Once, a doctor who didn’t end up becoming a doctor built a factory wedged between some red lines on a map that wasn’t really a territory. There was a pipe painted on the bricks, but it wasn’t really a pipe. The factory had fingers for shaking growing out of each side and those fingers began to perspire. Those beads of factory sweat were pickled with black clouds and empirical mechanics. The reason that the sweat can be something else entirely and is only a representation of "a something that is sweat" is the infinite regress that you never learned about and now you don’t want to keep reading. Does it scare you that you may have been made in a factory that was made in a factory that was made in a factory?
     They wear no assembly seams to pick at. Infuriating. No two are twins (but I know you’ve been fooled), and they are not burdened by atmospheric imperfections as their planet mimics. They are exact as close as your palm can carry them to your eye, where a planet is only perfect from too many miles away. They are perfect to a degree that makes you want to masturbate when you hold one, to orgasm in the presence of the indisputable. Fucking marbles (figure of speech or the other option blablabla)…amazing things.

Kurt Vonnegut's Natal Chart...FUCK!

I found this on the internet, which I am now convinced is the most amazing place on the planet.  This image will be integrated into my tribute tattoo.  Yes, I'm serious.  Read or don't, but the fact that it exists is proof that somebody knows exactly what I'm looking for...   I found it at this link: http://www.astrologyinstitute.com/Newsletters/news04_07.html   This Month's Profile: Kurt Vonnegut If not for having his a natal chart, we probably be looking at Don Imus' chart, as we have all seen his career collapse over the past week. May we  watch his career and that of some others fade back into the setting sun.  We do have a chart for the recently-deceased Kurt Vonnegut, though.  His birth time is unverified and only rates a "C" on the Roddin rankings, but we have enough to work with, as long as we are careful with what we pay attention to. Here is his chart: Some of us know or remember Vonnegut very well, others -- who are younger -- maybe not so well.  He is known as a novelist whose works were funny, imaginative, highly ironical, haunting, and an easy read. His biography is distinguished by traumatic wartime experience.  As a soldier toward the end of the Second World War, he was captured by the Germans.  He was held in Dresden in early 1945, where he was witness to the demolition of Dresden by allied fire bombing and was forced by his captors to dispose of piles of dead bodies.  (Below we will note the astrological indicators during this time of his life.)  These events resurfaced in American literature in 1969, when, at the height of the Vietnam War, Slaughterhouse Five was published.  This was his best-known work and stands as a searing antiwar document to this day. First we look at Kurt Vonnegut's natal chart.  If we were confident about his birth time, we could say much about Venus conjunct Ascendant.  This configuration may have given him not good looks but personal charisma.  We could surmise about his personal charm, but it may be more important that Venus is conjunct the Mars-like fixed star Antares, the "Heart of the Scorpion" -- Venus is best expressed with fighting purpose that would manifest in his private and public life. Also interesting feature of his chart is the configuration of planets with the Sun.  Note Sun in Scorpio and what rises ahead -- Mercury, Jupiter, and Saturn.   Mercury is clearly a planet of writing, Jupiter enhances it (and is rising from the Sun), and  Saturn is in exaltation and in a strong eleventh place.  The fixed star Arcturus, the pioneering star of the northern sky, culminates with Mercury, tell us more about his life's contribution. For Vonnegut's Sun, Mercury, Jupiter, and Saturn are doriphoria or "spearbearers," and can be factors that can lead to eminence. (All these planets are in "sect" in a daytime chart.) What planet governs his three in Scorpio? -- don't say Pluto!   It's Mars, of course, in Aquarius in the fourth from the Ascendant  but tenth place -- a predominating place -- from his Scorpio planets.  Also, Mars is exactly opposite his rather flamboyant Moon in Leo.  With Mars so prominent -- and also being out of sect in his day chart -- Vonnegut would have passion, anger, and outrage. To what do we attribute his depression? We could start with the same Mars, stymied by a sense of futility and powerlessness. Using Neptune, the modern great malefic, we note that is is in partile square to Sun in Scorpio. (This is not helped by Sun being in the twelfth.)  What do we see in the astrology of late 1944 and early 1945? Lets start modern: merely transiting Pluto in early Leo, exactly conjunct his Moon and opposing Mars.  This time for him was the most Plutonic one imaginable.  By solar arc Pluto (!) was conjunct Jupiter -- on December 31, 1944.  Highlighting the significance of this time for him was a progressed Full Moon, although that wouldn't be exact until the autumn.  Now to ancient timekeeping. I begin with his decennials, because I  always do.  Because Sun is in the twelfth, we begin with the other luminary, the Moon. His general time lord was Saturn during his adolescence and early adulthood, and at this time it was Mars who was the specific time lord for about fifteen months.  This combination of malefics, and the specific time lord being out of sect, does not bode well for happy times. During the time he was captured and was present for the Dresden fire bombing, the fourth planet involved (using a method involving 129 days) was -- you guessed it, Saturn.  Zodiacal releasing from the Lot of Fortune puts this time in Scorpio-Scorpio (more Mars) and his zodiacal releasing from the Lot of Spirit gives us Aries-Scorpio.  Again, more Mars. Vonnegot was 22 at his birthday before he was captured by the Germans, which is his 23rd year.  This gives him a profection of eleven places (23-12=11).  Again we see an influence of malefics -- more so if the birth time is correct and he has Sagittarius rising:  Mars profects to Venus/Ascendant, and Venus/Ascendant profects to  Saturn.  He was captured during his second monthly profections (thank you, Penelope) which brings the profection of Mars, by year to Venus/Ascendant, to Capricorn, where Mars was transiting.  The Dresden firebombing took place when the monthly profection reached into Aquarius, where natal Mars is. The ancient astrologers did not have transiting Pluto in their  toolbox, and could have not caught Pluto transiting onto Vonnegut's Moon and Mars, or his solar arc onto Jupiter.  Instead the malefics ably perform the work we might attribute to Pluto.  It is clear from this example that one could note tremendous difficulties brought on my the two malefics, especially by Mars.  No, I do not advocate eliminating Pluto -- I do advocate looking more closely at the influence of the malefics when horror occurs in the life of the individual, as it had for Kurt Vonnegut at the end of the Second World War. A Personal Note on Vonnegut: I too read Kurt Vonnegut as a countercultural voice and I had different responses to different pieces.  My personal favorite was Breakfast of Champions, and I cannot remember why I liked it as much as I did.  This novel contained many simple cartoon drawings: one of them was a picture of a gravestone, and engraved was a name -- which I do not remember -- and a epitaph: "Not Even the Creator of the Universe Knew What This Man Was Going to Do Next."  This stuck with me and became an inspiration to me and an influence in the future.  I hope this "so it goes" may go better.

Starry-Eyed Interfacing

She said, “most people think I look Middle Eastern.”

I never asked

because everyone is an equal enemy

and another “she”

had chicken hanging tenuously

from her salmon lips

by a tendon, or maybe cartilage

two courses for the price of one

“I like you smiling behind poultry”

I said

At some stage

I said the same sentence twice

but I hoped that it would

mutate in context

One announced the need to yell

before killing something

I assumed she was talking

about sex

but only because that’s what I would be talking about

if I had said it

but I will never know

Money and Miro are both good

well, maybe just Miro

we agreed

and someone will need to supply

the extra parts

she is two steps ahead

Some of us sit at the same counters

a day or a year

later

and our bug eyes,

our resemblances

ignore the improbability of miracles

and acquaintance

all of it is happening to

someone else

blocks from there



Where I'm Going

I saw this picture on foundshit.com and I felt an immediate connection to it's contents.  Where am I going? What am I doing? How am I not myself? Etc.

Lawlessness of a Skeptic

Sometimes I say the wrong thing

but make it glow

the displacement is obvious

you moving into my aphonic “never”

pouring from the city top

the gutter run-off pooling, unctuous

 

the sounds you make after midnight,

vivid beyond the cadence of white sex noise,

hold the tenses of empyrean oddities

my vocabulary is a statue

poised for only one syllable

maybe two

we become half-moons looking in

on the parenthetical slipknots

that took no time to tie

 

it is appropriate to exult

to sleep

there will be plenty of me

saying wicked things

but you can have my atonement meat

for breakfast

and I’ll lie down in your lap

my disbelief on the outside

to catch what I can from the corners

of your mouth

 

the details you know in silence

because I mean them

and the waves in our bed sheets

are for holding you under

I pull you up, vaulted spine beam

breathe into you

and I’m the one who is saved

God OR Humanity?

It Says: "Isvarapranidhana - total surrender to God or Humanity"

Ishvarapranidhana represents surrender to, and love for, the divinity within the individual in Hinduism and Yoga.

1. Either the typist or Wikipedia spelled this concept incorrectly.

2. I picked this up off of the bathroom floor at school.

3. It would seem from my blog that I pick up just about anything off of the ground from inappropriate places.  This may or may not actually be true.

4. I think it's strange that something seems profound if you find it crumpled on the ground instead of in a stack of other pieces of paper exactly like it.  It's as if the paper was left there for you.  But it wasn't.  Wake up and smell the coffee!  Just kidding. I would never say, "wake up and smell the coffee."

5. Surrendering to either God or Humanity seems like a pretty important distinction.

6. People who do too much yoga make me angry. Sting is a douche bag. He does lots of yoga.

7. There are probably lots of people in my neighborhood who have the yoga symbol tattooed on their hip or neck or some other really interesting and attractive place.

8. I hope the bathroom fortune cookie find didn't have poop on it.

9. But I didn't wash my hands to get rid of diseases, so I guess Ill just wait and see...

10. Poop

It Never Really Helps...

Be a good person.  Save Community.  It is in danger of extinction due to a poor time slot.  Just taste it.  I promise you won't be dissappointed...

Squash and an Incriminating (of me) Photo of a Nude Androgynous Woman

This picture makes me wish too many things.  Wishing is for suckers.  You are a sucker.  I also wish for, or rather "would like," an extensive knowledge on sqauash...squeesh.  The partialities of drugs can't always be explained, but the tendencies of television are much easier.  Corn, squash, and beans were traditionally planted together in a milpa as a beneficial agricultural technique.  They don't do that anymore, and I will never look like the picture above.  Squash also have great guts, much like humans do.  Things with guts deserve to be delved into.  Things on strings deserve to be tangled. 

13th Monkey

I tried to flip the monkey over
but he wouldn't budge
monkeys can be that way
Welcome to the Monkey House

He lives on 13th St. in an abandoned phone booth
better than the monkey cage
more people

Which kind of monkey am I

a slowly slipping into sleep monkey

a good eats monkey

a monkey with zombie envy

this is not a poem

this is not about monkeys either

and it is becoming more about spacing

and the paradoxes of computer incredibilities

and "reasons not to use"

bla bla bla

Welcome to the Monkey House

Fisting: Definition and Application

I Stole Something Today

I stole something today

it was unsophisticated

even in comparison to tying my shoes

I did not tie my shoes today

but used that energy instead to thieve

now both arrangements seem faulty

a reason for velcro

and customer service

telephones don't even have cords anymore

so how will anyone know

that I am not sorry?

telephones don't wait on pedestals

anymore

so what will I set my shoes by?

and how will anyone know

that I am not sorry?

Comic Strip Version of a "Synthetic" Conversation

This was "TECHNICALLY" a conversation I had over text message, but it makes a better comic strip. My sister's boyfriend is K, I am M, and we are apparently synthetic...
Click on the comic to make it bigger if you can't read it.

Oxycontin: Oxymoron

Diving In a Sweater

On a porch in unseasonable weather
vapor brawling bitter air with the sweetness
of the last, the lucky
the two winds and I socializing and
carving equivalence
into the surrounding space like
courtship on tree bark
and I'm thinking about the appeal of sparsity
of exodus

The literal stomping of my feet to keep warm
cracks the exchange
into shiny fallen angel feelings
shivering on the concrete steps
barking raspy bittersweetness from what seems like
miles below

Piping for a heat wave
half dreaming with my fingers outstretched and
palpitating on those rarified type keys
it's no wonder that I haven't traveled


This poem was "published" in some issue of wordletting.com a while ago.  My only claim to recognition. 

American Ingenuity

As you can see, this simple metal device was NOT installed with "this side down."  Did they admire the embossed lettering?  Were they practicing some secret form of mechanical anarchy? Or was this person illiterate?  The possibilities are endless.

P.S. This is a toilet paper holder in a public restroom.

P.P.S. I am furious that I did not check the underside of this mechanism to see if the same message was displayed.  That would have made my "bathroom experience" a rabbit hole in a toilet bowl...

Her Clavical Is Broken, My Clavical Is Askew



Me naked...sort of.  Have you ever taken a naked picture of yourself?  It's illuminating.  And the drawing looks much better than I do.  You can see my signature at the bottom...so that scribble compounded with the obvious fracture/s in my collar bone mean that I am terribly disjointed.  I would have said "askew" but I already used it in theTitle.

This is Vonnegut on Kafka

1. It doesn't have to make sense to you.

2. I write in all capital letters as well, though I do not make critical literary diagrams.

3. If you put a dot in each side of the infinity sign it would look like boobs. This might eliminate some (if not all) of the "ill fortune."

4. Vonnegut was a genius.

5. Kafka was a genius with less of a sense of humor.

6. END

How Things Happen

I wrote this story a couple of years ago when I was entranced by "micro-fiction."  I'm sure the style has acquired many other names by now.  I imagine that this is how married people are.  At least affluent married people.  I like knowing that I re-read this story before posting it because I get to be the first person to judge it, as if it wasn't mine.  It is mine, just when I was a different version of myself.  Maybe the present version of me will re-write it...



How Things Happen

Their wrists were banging together impatiently, waiting for the water to get warmer. Four hands, twenty fingers, all waiting for their turn, like teenage girls pushing their way to the front row of a concert. He asked, "Is the water OK now?" The hairs on his knuckles were knotting and smashed. She said, "Yes, it just fine. Hand me the soap." Her fingernails were chewed down so far that the tops of each finger looked like a newborn baby head, pink and raw and sick. One nail even began to bleed as the water infiltrated that incalculable space between her different kinds of skin. She wasn’t embarrassed, and he didn’t notice. He said, "This soap smells like smoke and birthday cake." He wrinkled his nose and thought about shoving his fingers into her mouth. She said, "And now, so will you." Their wedding bands were beginning to glare at them through the foam. They knocked clumsily into one another and tried making a spectacle of themselves, knowing that they meant something only slightly better than banal.
When he washed, he squeezed one hand inside the other and pulled the soap off like a glove. When she washed she wove her fingers into a little fence and rubbed them vigorously back and forth like cricket legs.
The sink looked blue when it was dark outside. He said, "This used to be charming." He felt like he was betraying himself, washing away all the work he had done during the day. She said, "That was when we were in love." She said it apologetically, but without tribulation. He began to think about what it might be like to touch her with a tainted hand. What it would be like to put a his palm between her legs and know that he was giving her the memory of his day.  He wanted transference, mixing the debris of his tiny existence with the newness of her body’s sexual extrusion. Never in all the time he had known her had she given in and had sex without requiring the ceremonial hand wash. He said, "I don’t mind your germs." He looked at her, not hopefully, but just in case she broke down at that very second, just in case she started to cry. She said, "Thank you," and scrubbed a bit harder.
Usually the wash was a silent one, a routine that required no dialogue or discussion. This time he said, "I feel like I’m going into surgery, like I have to operate on you." He thought about opening up her stomach with a scalpel and squishing around inside her until he found something he liked, until he came out with a souvenir and sewed her back up. She said, "You wouldn’t have the precision for surgery." She didn’t mean to be malicious; she was trying to take away the comparison so he wouldn’t imagine it that way. He pulled his hands out of the sink and slapped them savagely into the clean towel dangling from a hook.  The hook was an afterthought. She looked up nervously, still washing. He crossed the threshold into the hallway and headed for the front door. His ankles were heavy and one hand still dripped a tiny procession that followed him on the carpet. He thought about how dry his mouth was just then. She called after him, "Where are you going?" She still wasn’t sure if he was upset or had just changed his mind about the sex.  The soap was interfering with the signals. He mumbled something about medical school and slammed the front door behind him.

The Pips

I invite you to meet The Pips of the famous Gladys Knight & the Pips.  I heard it through the grapevine that they would be making an appearance at my friend's Halloween party this year.  As you can see, they are dressed to the nines and ready for the performance of a lifetime (or deadtime?).  Gladys will be there as well, Pips "on hand" ready for singing opportunities that are sure to arrise.

The lovely and talented Jennifer Simmons is resposible for "booking" the act.  Her crafting ability never ceases to amaze me.  A Motown Halloween.  Jealous?

It's Only a Few Points Above a Nut Roll

I went to see Jacob's Ladder tonight at my favorite independent movie theater.  I was admittedly stoned, but of sound mind (I think).

The car was parked in a garage across the street from the theater, headlights responsibly turned off.

Theater in sight, I walk the 30 feet of concrete to the door, and I make my way briskly across the street (it's chilly, mind you).

PROBLEM:

I notice a glowing fun size Butterfinger lying directly in front of me on the ramp up to the theater.  I would swear on Carol (what I call my mother) that it was in pristine, unopened, edible condition.  My heart jumped.  I bent down and picked up what I thought would be a delicious pre-movie treat.

PROBLEM: I was not willing to wait until the movie to eat the candy.  

PROBLEM: I picked up candy from OFF OF THE GROUND and had every intention of devouring it.

PROBLEM: What I actually picked up was a piece of trash.  It was an EMPTY fun size Butterfinger wrapper.

PROBLEM: Because my body subsists mainly on sugar, part of me literally died. Additionally, my most significant dream of the day was crushed.
PROBLEM: I don't even really like Butterfingers. It's only a few points above a Nut Roll.
POSITIVE: There was no string attached to the wrapper.
QUESTION: What would a computer do with a lifetime supply of chocolate?

Something About Worker Bees

Drinking too much cofee and
free thinking
and knowing what hair actually is
makes it difficult
to put on nice pants and go to the
office
where the smell of everyone
adulterates
and life plays the part of the
one trick pony
your boss only knows a few
words in English
so you go to the bathroom to
count the holes
in the drain when he is walking
toward you

by - Me

This Is Water / Capital-G Guts

Excerpts from David Foster Wallace's Keynote Commencement Speech in 2005 as they relate to my post:
"There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"
"The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance..."

"This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger." (a terrible, and probably accidental foreshadowing)

"...awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

"This is water."

"This is water."

And now, this is me (your blogger) speaking:
I should have read this speech a long time ago, but starting college at 25 has put me behind.  You try to read Infinite Jest so you can brag to your English major friends that you get it, that you know what it "means." Then you read anything else that DFW has written so that you can keep up.  And then you hear, you know, that DFW hangs himself 3 years after giving that speech.  The problem with the water is that your awareness of it will NEVER save your life.  I find myself unfortunately resigned to the fact that he knew this as well, but chose to keep it out of the speech for obvious reasons.  Less than an hour after reading this speech I was driving home from work, listening to community radio (which I almost never do) and the song The Great White Ocean by Antony and the Johnstons began to play.
 
"Swim with me my Sister when I die
In the great white ocean we must try
Try to find a way that we can see
See each others faces in the sea"

It seems melodramatic to relate one to the other, song and prose, bla bla bla.  But the only thing I could picture (which is an unfortunate consequence of over exposure to pop culture) was DFW hanging in his bedroom while The Great White Ocean played on repeat on a faded yellow record player a la Susanna Kaysen/James Mangold.

The water is the little things, the big things, the things you forget to remember, the passage of time, the inconsistencies,  the obsessions, the lack, and as DFW puts it - "The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death."

What worries me is that while the water surrounds me, my capital-G Guts inhabit me (variety meats, brain, belly, marrow, etc).  If DFW believes that we all worship something and that there is no such thing as atheism, then he worshiped his Guts.  And now he hangs above the water. 

David Foster Wallace Keynote Commencement Speech 2005 can be viewed in its entirety here:
http://publicnoises.blogspot.com/2009/05/david-foster-wallace-kenyon.html
 

Complaints?

The Poster goes a little something like this:

Is your band struggling to come up with a name? (Go with something that starts with "the" or try using three unrelated words to astound/mistify/impress your audience)

Do the animals in the zoo look sad to you? (Like, because they're in cages...or whatever)

Are you confused by the paradoxes of sex and art? (You should be. That's the point)

This poster exemplifies the ideologies of the 20-30somethings who inhabit my urban neighborhood.

I do, in fact, have a complaint: General complaint.

I have never called that phone number.  I like that it floats out in hipster oblivion without a real person on the other end.  Perhaps I should prank call them with a "Prince Albert in a can" joke since they are so consumed by "vintage" EVERYTHING. 

At Least They Didn't Sigh In My Mouth

1. Don’t anthropomorphize my lunch. I already purchased the tots, I don’t need them to sing, dance or bathe themselves in salt and ketchup. The fact that they are fried makes them appetizing enough. Trust me.

2. I prefer not to have philosophical differences with my food. If the tots believes (yes, I will play along for a moment) in some kind of divine inevitability, I would rather them keep that to themselves.

3. The tots tasted good despite the nuisance of a carton in which they came.

4. "As for me, to love you alone, to make you happy, to do nothing which would contradict your wishes, this is [a tater tot's] destiny and the meaning of [their] life." - Napoleon Bonaparte