Sunday, January 25, 2009
Monday, September 15, 2008
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Wow
In Office, Palin Hired Friends and Hit Critics
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/us/politics/14palin.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all&oref=sloginSaturday, August 30, 2008
"Yellow" from synesthesia
She’s his best friend’s girl, he says, former addict and anorexic; she looks good in just bones. Pinpricked crevices between her toes, she’s awful anxious to show ‘em with those cuticles painted pink. Her bath robe is always between one-half to 5/8th open, but I’m pretty sure she has yet to notice, and the protruding ribs and razor-sharp hips, I would be inclined to say, have never looked so good.
He’s a medical miracle with those flapping gums, a real humdinger, a medical anomaly to shock the docs, the folks back home. They’re all over the place as the ’72 Chevy ejects sparks into the atmosphere, like shooting stars, like fleas jumping on the back of a dead Great Dane. He says that he just wants to see her for a minute or two, to provide a place where she might rest her head and be at peace.
You should come, it’ll be a blast, you should see this place, there’s never been one like it, I swear it. C’mon, c’mon, really, there’s no reason to worry. It’s only an hour drive, we’ll back, sitting in these same chairs before the day’s over, chatting up the good old times we had at Marie’s.
As brakes squeak, squeal, squawk, there’s a cloud of dust that clears and settles and comes to rest on an old crone that waves on the porch. She doesn’t seem to mind the dust. She sits on a can of paint thinner, marked 30 in red, that props the door open, better than the neon signs glowing a world away.
It’s a winner, he says, he’ll be back in a bit or an hour. He crosses the threshold with its taciturn cracks chock full of grime and grit, crossed a million times over by the local meandering philanthropists that – after a long day of giving rations and lessons on sexual protection – enjoy all the natives have to offer.
Her body was a rail and clothes hung from her bones. The face was borrowed from magazines and newspaper clippings of a fanatic spouse, with glib and knowing smiles with teeth without spaces, skin without pores.
She’s a machine, he says.
In the room, upstairs, second from the left, her mechanical words rekindle his heart’s hearth, creating sparks like his ’72 Chevy, setting his body ablaze in passion and poison. His own attempts at romance are futile, phrases flubbing against an iron corpse, and you can’t strike fire on iron. She paints their body in colors, in reds and whites, browns, whites, and speckled with the remnants of a prodigious unborn progeny. She works like a painter, painting paints on painted flesh (might have been souls if they had ‘em). Cheeks were done up with blush, lips moistened never once dry, a stretching of certain body parts toward God.
She attempts to instill a sense of adventure in the brief intermissions with mixed up stories she’s heard once or twice before (and forget that she already knows him):
“But with the loss of conscious thought, so too was the voice lost in a sea of technology and alcohol, smelling strongly of cheap whiskey and typewriter ink. It dropped like a stone into the oil, lighting fires in the waves and blackening the lungs of the forefathers that drifted nearby like great sea lions, tusks bared, tooth and nail ready to defend the precedent. They barked. And snarled. And within corpulent bodies, there was a stifled glow, like a sunrise seen from beneath a stone, barely noticeable from where we watched in a tub miles and kilometers away off in the distance.”
(He slips his tongue within the separation of her radius and ulna, sweeping dirt into the sheets).
“The candle maker wept, a sorry sight we all agreed. His tears tore apart the plaster sinews of our impromptu sea-faring vessel, and as the politicians and gulls overhead were burst into flames, we, our tub included, took on oil and disappeared forever, awash in the sea of technology and alcohol."
(He hadn’t seemed to notice that the story had ended.)
On the dusty sheets, she recalls her history, a terribly interesting situation, she explains. Or was and perhaps still is. When she went to the doctor when she was a little girl, sugars and saccharines and Reds 5-30 were the only things that could make her smile, and show her teeth, and let the doctor peer down her throat, and make the tear ducts parched. Daffy Duck and Tasmanian Devils, beating each other into submission on her arm only offered the most basic of fleeting conciliation, more comfort and reflections of battle scars than incentive to smile. But now she likes the needles, she says.
He turns his face to face hers, eyes squinting through a veil of methamphetamines and barbiturates and various depressants, licks his lips to make the words come easier. It’s not before he’s repeated himself a few dozen times before she’s able to make a coherent whole of the multitude of syllables and phonetic aberrations. This is about as much as she (and I, later facing imbibed explanations) is able to pull from his words:
Won’t you come away, though I sincerely hope that you won’t mind driving with someone who has a warrant out for his immediate arrest or execution?
She’s hesitant at first, but is convinced by a length of rope, as it’s passed and looped across her narrow frame. The lanterns that hang in her eyes she tries to relight, as they trot down the stairs and out the door, but it’s been too long since they have shown brightly.
They get in the car, playing a role-playing game, he says through teeth clinched too tight, of kidnap-the-whore-against-her-will-beneath-a-dusty-sun-and-the-haunting-eyes-of-her-mother-who-sits-in-front-on-a-can-of-paint-without-saying-a-word.
It’s a hundred and degrees outside, and I don’t mind sacrificing the talk of turbans, towels and Talibans for the cool breeze that makes a mess on the floor of his ‘72 Chevy pickup truck, silting with sand and motor oil. She speaks softly through the gaps in her teeth, lips chapped and blazed, trying to remember how to pray.
We’ve already ridden into the sunset, a trio of madmen and addicts, when her mother stands to report the loss of her investment.
Fiction is dead, sometimes.
He’s a medical miracle with those flapping gums, a real humdinger, a medical anomaly to shock the docs, the folks back home. They’re all over the place as the ’72 Chevy ejects sparks into the atmosphere, like shooting stars, like fleas jumping on the back of a dead Great Dane. He says that he just wants to see her for a minute or two, to provide a place where she might rest her head and be at peace.
You should come, it’ll be a blast, you should see this place, there’s never been one like it, I swear it. C’mon, c’mon, really, there’s no reason to worry. It’s only an hour drive, we’ll back, sitting in these same chairs before the day’s over, chatting up the good old times we had at Marie’s.
As brakes squeak, squeal, squawk, there’s a cloud of dust that clears and settles and comes to rest on an old crone that waves on the porch. She doesn’t seem to mind the dust. She sits on a can of paint thinner, marked 30 in red, that props the door open, better than the neon signs glowing a world away.
It’s a winner, he says, he’ll be back in a bit or an hour. He crosses the threshold with its taciturn cracks chock full of grime and grit, crossed a million times over by the local meandering philanthropists that – after a long day of giving rations and lessons on sexual protection – enjoy all the natives have to offer.
Her body was a rail and clothes hung from her bones. The face was borrowed from magazines and newspaper clippings of a fanatic spouse, with glib and knowing smiles with teeth without spaces, skin without pores.
She’s a machine, he says.
In the room, upstairs, second from the left, her mechanical words rekindle his heart’s hearth, creating sparks like his ’72 Chevy, setting his body ablaze in passion and poison. His own attempts at romance are futile, phrases flubbing against an iron corpse, and you can’t strike fire on iron. She paints their body in colors, in reds and whites, browns, whites, and speckled with the remnants of a prodigious unborn progeny. She works like a painter, painting paints on painted flesh (might have been souls if they had ‘em). Cheeks were done up with blush, lips moistened never once dry, a stretching of certain body parts toward God.
She attempts to instill a sense of adventure in the brief intermissions with mixed up stories she’s heard once or twice before (and forget that she already knows him):
“But with the loss of conscious thought, so too was the voice lost in a sea of technology and alcohol, smelling strongly of cheap whiskey and typewriter ink. It dropped like a stone into the oil, lighting fires in the waves and blackening the lungs of the forefathers that drifted nearby like great sea lions, tusks bared, tooth and nail ready to defend the precedent. They barked. And snarled. And within corpulent bodies, there was a stifled glow, like a sunrise seen from beneath a stone, barely noticeable from where we watched in a tub miles and kilometers away off in the distance.”
(He slips his tongue within the separation of her radius and ulna, sweeping dirt into the sheets).
“The candle maker wept, a sorry sight we all agreed. His tears tore apart the plaster sinews of our impromptu sea-faring vessel, and as the politicians and gulls overhead were burst into flames, we, our tub included, took on oil and disappeared forever, awash in the sea of technology and alcohol."
(He hadn’t seemed to notice that the story had ended.)
On the dusty sheets, she recalls her history, a terribly interesting situation, she explains. Or was and perhaps still is. When she went to the doctor when she was a little girl, sugars and saccharines and Reds 5-30 were the only things that could make her smile, and show her teeth, and let the doctor peer down her throat, and make the tear ducts parched. Daffy Duck and Tasmanian Devils, beating each other into submission on her arm only offered the most basic of fleeting conciliation, more comfort and reflections of battle scars than incentive to smile. But now she likes the needles, she says.
He turns his face to face hers, eyes squinting through a veil of methamphetamines and barbiturates and various depressants, licks his lips to make the words come easier. It’s not before he’s repeated himself a few dozen times before she’s able to make a coherent whole of the multitude of syllables and phonetic aberrations. This is about as much as she (and I, later facing imbibed explanations) is able to pull from his words:
Won’t you come away, though I sincerely hope that you won’t mind driving with someone who has a warrant out for his immediate arrest or execution?
She’s hesitant at first, but is convinced by a length of rope, as it’s passed and looped across her narrow frame. The lanterns that hang in her eyes she tries to relight, as they trot down the stairs and out the door, but it’s been too long since they have shown brightly.
They get in the car, playing a role-playing game, he says through teeth clinched too tight, of kidnap-the-whore-against-her-will-beneath-a-dusty-sun-and-the-haunting-eyes-of-her-mother-who-sits-in-front-on-a-can-of-paint-without-saying-a-word.
It’s a hundred and degrees outside, and I don’t mind sacrificing the talk of turbans, towels and Talibans for the cool breeze that makes a mess on the floor of his ‘72 Chevy pickup truck, silting with sand and motor oil. She speaks softly through the gaps in her teeth, lips chapped and blazed, trying to remember how to pray.
We’ve already ridden into the sunset, a trio of madmen and addicts, when her mother stands to report the loss of her investment.
Fiction is dead, sometimes.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Trenton Trenton Robespierre
Trenton Trenton Robespierre, the ill-faced boy, with the pallid complexion, was in the manufacturing biz, specializing in the systematic manufacturing of religious icons and tupperwares. At ole’ PS 217, they were eating from the Shroud of Soup Tureen, a collected residue of various culinary oddities, spiced with salt and tomato paste from plastic, bottled by mechanical arms, hands and digits, crusted at the bottom, looking like maps of the European coasts. In the realms of reds and yellows and greens, splotches intermittently scattered, there could very easily be discerned a face, resplendent albeit slightly moldy.
They said it had been there since the beginning of time, when it was pieced together to their most exacting specifications which was, oh, about 4 years ago, to the day, barring those damned leap years and other temporal variations that are the bane of teachers, Savior to the ecclesiastical education classes with the tired drawls and vapid eyes.
All had been just peaches and cream till tricky Tommy Twotoes hop-skoped right in the Tureen, swimming in the veggies and beef broth and diced celery (added to give it just the right ZING of sabor, said the old Spanish chef with his lilting lisp and half a tongue, blown from his mouth during the war), whose entry went unbeknownst to the chef who promptly placed the flaky golden crust over the pot, (it was a pot-pie, you see) and in went little Tommy Twotoes who came out just a bit less tricky though especially more crispy.
T.T. Robespierre came and sampled the pot, two days after, to the day, and he said it tasted just fine. Took another look and saw the face of God, phoned his brand-spankin’ new agent, and said, “I do believe, Henry, that we have the opportunity here to make ourselves quite a prophet.
(To be continued…)
Monday, June 9, 2008
A Philly Christmas Comes Early
I fondly remember the Christmas mornings of my youth with a lilting nostalgia: the boughs of the evergreen spread with tinsel and stale popcorn laced on red yarn, scores of packages beneath the tree like tiny villages buildings wrapped in paper and ornate bows, only to be dismembered shortly after by the grubby, ever-grasping hands of children.
Apparently, at the area surrounding the University of Pennsylvania, Christmas sometimes comes in May.
Upon first glance, it appeared that the busted appliances and spotted bed sheets in the mammoth dumpster across the street had sprouted legs and were crawling, delicate and unsure, among the mounds of their discarded brethren, and a Tutu wearing sprite, an intrepid diver of the perilous and grimy polyester deep. There was wind rustling deep within the trees, footsteps rummaging in the dumpster.
But the story isn’t about tutus, nor is it about the search for bargain rubbish on a fine Christmas evening in May. No, this story is about yours truly (though more accurately it’s about the shoddy maintenance and blatant disdain of customer satisfaction).
But perhaps I’ve started too far along in the story…
To begin: as the days wore on after my initial move-in on May 23 to the house at 40th and Baltimore, I witnessed a phenomenon that I first imagined to be an illusion. Almost every morning when I awoke, eyes bright and starry with just the slightest hint of over-pronounced blood vessels, I came downstairs to find that the living room space had grown smaller during the night – a continually diminishing space that appeared to be gradually fading from the throes of tangible existence.
At the end of the week, there were the passers-by – window shopping addicts of the holiday season – who passed along the sidewalk wrought with cracks and crabgrass, their faces looking in at the amassed heaps of crap, the ever-mounting testaments to consumer proclivity strategically placed to fulfill the image of a flea market gone to hell. There was certainly too much to list here, but I would be remiss if I neglected to mention the following: a makeshift pyramid of polyester and plaid upholstery, the dismantled armoire, the nude mannequin lacking arms and a head, and what appeared to be a pair of miniature palm trees that had taken root in the midst of it all.
Now the question invariably becomes: Why were there approximately 13 peoples’ belongings in this space that had once been called a ‘living room’ (rather ironic since it was no longer possible to live there with the surplus of furniture)? This was a question I found myself asking throughout the week that I spent in there, but I believe that I may have answer.
It’s a veritable man-made fucking phenomenon, an annual recurrence caused by a radically negligent policy of a property company who owns the vast majority of residential housing in the area bordering the UPenn campus.
Basically, what happens is that residents who do not re-sign their lease are instructed to vacate their homes of all possessions and persons so that the residence may be cleaned during a span of a week (most often in the last week of May). Even in the case that old furniture is purchased by the incoming from the outgoing, it still must be removed for that time.
In lieu of this annual event, there are two questions which inevitably arise as a result:
First of all, what options are available to students who want to keep all that crap which they intend to use the following term or perhaps even later? The answer came to me, a brilliant epiphany as I walked down 40th when I saw half of a couch perched on the lip of a construction dumpster, a stake of its wooden innards protruding through its bottom.
The second question, and frankly the far more important of the two, becomes what is to become of the students themselves, especially those who come from out of state (or out of country) for that week in which they find themselves without a proper place for living?
As far as I can tell, there is no answer either of these questions
If you have an answer to either of the questions, I would very much like it if you could enlighten me.
(Full Disclaimer: After speaking with the company, I’ve verified the fact that residents are expected to find a place for their persons and their stuff; yet, even though this is something that must be dealt with by each person in this situation, it’s not something that happens all at once. Rather, it depends on the pre-arranged move-out date that has been agreed upon by the tenants).
Apparently, at the area surrounding the University of Pennsylvania, Christmas sometimes comes in May.
Upon first glance, it appeared that the busted appliances and spotted bed sheets in the mammoth dumpster across the street had sprouted legs and were crawling, delicate and unsure, among the mounds of their discarded brethren, and a Tutu wearing sprite, an intrepid diver of the perilous and grimy polyester deep. There was wind rustling deep within the trees, footsteps rummaging in the dumpster.
But the story isn’t about tutus, nor is it about the search for bargain rubbish on a fine Christmas evening in May. No, this story is about yours truly (though more accurately it’s about the shoddy maintenance and blatant disdain of customer satisfaction).
But perhaps I’ve started too far along in the story…
To begin: as the days wore on after my initial move-in on May 23 to the house at 40th and Baltimore, I witnessed a phenomenon that I first imagined to be an illusion. Almost every morning when I awoke, eyes bright and starry with just the slightest hint of over-pronounced blood vessels, I came downstairs to find that the living room space had grown smaller during the night – a continually diminishing space that appeared to be gradually fading from the throes of tangible existence.
At the end of the week, there were the passers-by – window shopping addicts of the holiday season – who passed along the sidewalk wrought with cracks and crabgrass, their faces looking in at the amassed heaps of crap, the ever-mounting testaments to consumer proclivity strategically placed to fulfill the image of a flea market gone to hell. There was certainly too much to list here, but I would be remiss if I neglected to mention the following: a makeshift pyramid of polyester and plaid upholstery, the dismantled armoire, the nude mannequin lacking arms and a head, and what appeared to be a pair of miniature palm trees that had taken root in the midst of it all.
Now the question invariably becomes: Why were there approximately 13 peoples’ belongings in this space that had once been called a ‘living room’ (rather ironic since it was no longer possible to live there with the surplus of furniture)? This was a question I found myself asking throughout the week that I spent in there, but I believe that I may have answer.
It’s a veritable man-made fucking phenomenon, an annual recurrence caused by a radically negligent policy of a property company who owns the vast majority of residential housing in the area bordering the UPenn campus.
Basically, what happens is that residents who do not re-sign their lease are instructed to vacate their homes of all possessions and persons so that the residence may be cleaned during a span of a week (most often in the last week of May). Even in the case that old furniture is purchased by the incoming from the outgoing, it still must be removed for that time.
In lieu of this annual event, there are two questions which inevitably arise as a result:
First of all, what options are available to students who want to keep all that crap which they intend to use the following term or perhaps even later? The answer came to me, a brilliant epiphany as I walked down 40th when I saw half of a couch perched on the lip of a construction dumpster, a stake of its wooden innards protruding through its bottom.
The second question, and frankly the far more important of the two, becomes what is to become of the students themselves, especially those who come from out of state (or out of country) for that week in which they find themselves without a proper place for living?
As far as I can tell, there is no answer either of these questions
If you have an answer to either of the questions, I would very much like it if you could enlighten me.
(Full Disclaimer: After speaking with the company, I’ve verified the fact that residents are expected to find a place for their persons and their stuff; yet, even though this is something that must be dealt with by each person in this situation, it’s not something that happens all at once. Rather, it depends on the pre-arranged move-out date that has been agreed upon by the tenants).
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Lucidity Unmasked: A Cruel Realization
I will suffer the demands of the critics, I will blunt the words of my adversaries in debate, but never shall I submit to that cruel degradation that is so often endured by the closest of my peers. So often have I seen them not abused by others, but by substance. It is a friend, to be sure, upon first meeting and invitation, but immediately following, it reveals itself to be acid. How many of us has it struck down, unknowingly, and unwillingly? Its one façade is of destruction, yet we embrace it as if it were our own flesh and blood, and we take the veil that extends over its eyes and we make it all the longer.
Comte de la Nécrologie de Valeur
Edit: A nice example of drunken blogging. It's dangerous, friends.
Comte de la Nécrologie de Valeur
Edit: A nice example of drunken blogging. It's dangerous, friends.
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