Allen Ginsberg Won a Race Today

Yes, despite being dead for 15 years, the Beat Poet Allen Ginsberg won a local 5K this weekend. Upon finishing he exclaimed, "I paid money for this?" and then ran off into the woods.

One can only hope he finds the answers he has been searching for.

____________________________________________________________________

I think it would be a wonderful running tradition if all runners entered themselves as deceased poets. That would bring a lot of class to the sport.

_____________________________________________________________________

I think we should re-parse the phrase "do not want" into one word: donotwant! and it should be pronounced (doh-nah-twant) with the stress on the final syllable. DONOTWANT!

______________________________________________________________________

My current laptop wallpaper is a French ad for Uncle Ben's microwavable basmati rice. To date, that makes the second predominately orange wallpaper I've had advertising a product in French. They just make classy ads, man.

______________________________________________________________________

What would it feel like to evaporate? Like, to slowly turn into vapor and become a cloud. That could be a good story.

_________________________________________________________________________

I had an Evil Penguin-Man moment today. Where I scared myself with my thoughts. My friend and I were crossing a busy road and I was running and she was biking. And so I cross the road and I look over at her and she's on the side of the road but the cars were just close enough that my brain had time to imagine her falling off the bike and getting hit. And I almost went a little crazy just thinking about it. It was so real and I knew my brain would be like if you dropped a hiking boot filled with molten lead onto a chipmunk. It would not even have the possibility of holding up. Wouldn't even be close. SPLAT!  Gone.

So I was freaking out and I couldn't stop replaying the scene in my head. But I didn't want to say anything because that could be perceived as weird. If I was talking to someone and then said, out of no where, "Hey if you died in front of me I'd probably go crap-my-pants crazy. Whaddya think of that?"  I felt the need to say something though, so what I said, out loud, instead, was "Cars are scary."

And she said, "Cars?"

And I said, "Yep."

And that's it. Then silence. So that was about equally awful as the Penguin Man but at least more grounded in reality. And I spared myself an awkward conversation. Good job...brain?

_________________________________________________________________________________
Life is fragile like single ply toilet paper. You still gotta get up every day and wipe. You still gotta play the game and act like you're safe. But every once in a while you try grabbing toilet paper with wet hands or something and it rips and tears into little TP-shreds and you're like, "MAN THIS STUFF IS REALLY FREAKIN' THIN!"

And then you think: What am I doing with this stuff? Where am I putting it?

But that's the fun. That's the challenge. You just have to prepare and make sure there's still enough left on the roll before you sit down....not really sure where that metaphor wound up...

___________________________________________________________________________

boo-yah cathedral.

Leadership Part Two

As I've already talked about earlier this semester. I'm in kind of a leadership position in my running club, Team Blitz.

The problem is I'm not a leader person. That doesn't appeal to me. Leaders are people who can confidently tell people how to manage their lives. You have to know what's good for other people.

I know what is good for me  and I basically want everyone else to fail so I can laugh at them. Not my friends, obviously, but outside of that I really don't like watching people succeed. A leader has to use people and get something out of them. I just want to see failure. I love failure. I'm a bit obsessed with it. I think it's the coolest thing in the world. To experience or watch someone experience failure.

Watching someone succeed is like watching someone play with a dog. It's fun for them and they're happy but...there's not a whole lot to it. All I can think about is, "I wish I had a dog. But...you know...dogs aren't that much fun anyway. I'm gonna go stick my mouth on the hose and try to inflate myself like a cartoon character." Point is, I don't want to watch you play with your dog. If the dog starts biting your ear and won't let go, I'll record that for later but otherwise: not interested.

But failure, failure is incredible. Failure is like watching someone uncover a terrible smelling dinosaur skeleton in a pile of manure. It's amazing. And it goes on and on. They keep digging and digging and they find more bones and it hurts but they keep digging deeper. And you're like, "Can you believe this giant skeleton of failure was underneath you the whole time?! Look how big it is! How did you not discover this until just now?! This goes all the way back to your childhood and you've finally uncovered this terrible smelling beast that you'd tried to bury!" And then you take the skeleton back to your living room and set it up and invite them over all the time and be like, "Look at that stanky dinosaur skeleton! Ha! You thought you were a good person." But it's cool at the same time. It's interesting. It's worth talking about. It's painful--and stinky and a little scary but it's interesting.

So anyway, I can't be a leader because I like failure too much. Yesterday I was running with like six other people on this really narrow trail that we don't run on very often and I'm in the front, trying not to fart on everyone, and I see a left turn so I yell, "LEFT!" and I make the sharp turn and it throws everyone off and very shortly after I take the turn I realize this trail doesn't lead anywhere. We're going to have to turn around and go back. So I immediately yell out, "I MESSED UP! SORRY EVERYBODY! I MESSED UP!" Not in an apologetic way. In like a loud, obnoxious, I know what I did and I'm proud of it way.

It'd be like if I just ripped the whole dinosaur skeleton out of the ground and said look at this! You don't get any of the fun of me crying over it as I slowly chip away at the bones.

So the trail dead ends and I abruptly stop. Everyone behind me, in a single file line stops. And then I turn around and just run through everyone to get back in front and go back to the trail.

Then I do it two more times in the exact same way.

Every time, "I messed up! I messed up! Look at me! I messed up."

That's not what a good leader should do. A good leader should have an ego. He should want to succeed and do well. He should get quiet and angry or pass the blame on someone else. You shouldn't be proud of failure. What kind of message is that?

Realistically, would you want to join a group that's lead by a group that runs around the woods in short shorts yelling about how he's messed up. Saying stuff like, "I'm full of surprises! I'm like a card covered in clown pictures and on the inside it says, 'SURPRISE! YOU HAVE LUNG CANCER!"

That guy doesn't have his priorities straight. If I lead an adventure to the North Pole, by the third day the ship would be trapped in ice and be like, "Aww shucks guys. I thought this might happen. Oh well. Ice, right? It's crazy stuff. I've got some coloring books and crayons if anyone wants them. There's also a single harpoon we could use to kill a seal or something. I would've brought more but I wanted to make room for empty photo albums and chunks of ice that look like states or people's faces."

DON'T FOLLOW ME INTO THE ARCTIC CIRCLE!

Frananash

    When I was a little kid, probably not as little as I'd like to admit, I used to wake up in the middle of the night and stare out of a window overlooking my front yard. I was a small child, staring out of a window at two in the morning because I believed an evil penguin-man hybrid was going to come out of the woods near my house, break into my little sister's room, and murder or kidnap her. So instead of sleeping I would check my sister's room every fifteen minutes to make sure she was still there and hadn't been killed silently or replaced with an evil-penguin man. I don't know what I would've done if I'd found him. Probably screamed and died. Or somehow transformed into a large bat creature with swords for nipples. Something equally scary and sensible.

    I am glad that I no longer believe that. I probably became interested in girls and stopped worrying about the welfare of my little sister. Anyway, I do miss how much power my own thoughts had to me.  Maybe I'm too well-fed or well-adjusted now but I could never convince myself now that something as concrete as an evil penguin man could actually exist just because I saw it in my head. But what kinds of things would I have written if I believed in demonic penguins, that my neighbors were lizard people wearing disguises, and that the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz was trying to kill me? That would be powerful stuff. I can try to recreate that feeling but I can't live it anymore. Or maybe I am. The fact that I believed that then makes me wonder what I will later realize is crazy about me now. But, on the upside, at least I'm writing it all down this time!

  But it's definitely not the same now. My thoughts went from all-consuming monsters to just regular dudes that sometimes do interesting stuff like open a portal to another dimension with an ink-jet printer but at the end of the day it's like, "eh. That was pretty cool." Or I'll say, "Oh hey thought. I like your t-shirt. I'll write about it later." And you read about my thought's funny t-shirt but that doesn't have nearly the same weight as I AM PRAYING TO A HIGHER POWER THAT MY SISTER LIVES TO SEE ANOTHER MORNING! ALSO I MIGHT BE ABLE TO CONTROL THE WIND WITH MY MIND!

As much as I enjoy being a functional human being I kinda wish my thoughts could scare the be-whoo-zits out of me again. I'll keep mining my brain for veins of raw crazy until then.

New Goal in Writing: Revive the Penguin-Man. But like, turn him into something not creepy and awful.

Goodnight Internet

Goodnight Internet, I'll see you again in the morning. I need to go to bed now. Here are some things to think about and maybe invent while I sleep. If I wake up in the morning and find you have made them come true, I will turn over all the faith I have in the generative power of nature to you and your massive legion of faceless, omniscient chuckleheads.

ONE- What if the kid who always wears a raincoat and talks to himself was waiting for a solar eclipse to turn into a giant rubber band and shoot himself into orbit? How many people would regret having not made out with him? I mean, other than me! That kid's gonna end up in a cool physics textbook at the very least. He'd practically be folk-hero royalty. Like Johnny Appleseed or Andre the Giant.

TWO- One time in my fourth grade biology class, the teacher asked what we wanted to learn from biology. A girl who sat in front of me said, "I want to know why God made trees." That's not a stupid question because it does not concern biology. Nor is it a stupid question because of all the things you could ask God, why would you ask about trees? They have leaves! They make air. Some make fruit! Eat the fruit! Breathe the air! That wasn't meant to be one of his toughest riddles! But really, it's a stupid question because we all know trees have their own God who they refuse to share with people. What does the Tree God look like? Is he made of biscuits? What do the Goats know about this? I think they're holding out on us until we let them stare in more buddy cop movies. Things to consider: Goats lack the attention span to enjoy fine cinema.

THREE- What if someone hid iguanas in vending machines in the desert and when people reached their hands in for snack-a-rooskis, they were bitten and slowly turned into Don Knotts?

It roams the wasteland, feeding on the abyss.

FOUR- What if wizards made commercials about how they want everyone to stop using spoons and eat with their hands again? The spoons are interfering with the wizards' powers and they are losing the war on breakfast to the Corn Lobbyists. Wizards scare me because they're magic but frustrated and have beards but wear robes that look like gowns. Are they getting married or are they going to turn me into butter? I can't tell!

FIVE- What would be more impressive? A dozen kittens with puppy-faces re-enacting the Spanish American war or a video of me punching a sting-ray until it coughs up the baby I was supposed to be watching.

SIX- Gotta go to the bathroom, if my shadow could just go to the bathroom for me, then I could use my bathroom time for figuring out how many playing cards I could fit into the abstract concept of Forgetfulness.

My life is a misplaced sack of something rotting, growing, burning, and smelling like eighteen days-old Orange Juice.

Internet, I know you can perform these tasks. Or at least, provide evidence of their existence. This is easily within your scope of awesomeness. Don't let me down!

Not Me Yet

Can't believe I haven't mentioned this yet...

PEACE TEA DOG LIVES!!

HE LACKS REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS!
____________________________________________________________________

Remember being in trouble? Remember when that was a major life concern?

Don't get in trouble!

He's in big trouble.

I accidentally shaved the class hamster. I'm gonna get in so much trouble!

____________________________________________________________________

My roommate's parents just walked in and I'm wearing only running shorts with my laptop covering those! They think I'm naked on the computer! I'm in trouble!

Let's hope they don't see the puke stain I'm sitting next to!
_____________________________________________________________________

I kinda miss that feeling. Not really though. Now I'm an adult so I never get in trouble when I fail to manage my life properly! Haha! I can wake up at 3 in the afternoon and eat the sugar remains from a bag of Frosted Mini-Wheats and nobody can tell me I'm wrong!

But you can't really escape being in trouble. That fear and dread instilled from all the times you got in trouble, from your phases of kicking things and seeing what happens. From the times you thought drawing poop was  the funniest thing imaginable (and it still kind of is) until you got caught by your second grade teacher. It holes up inside of you. And it grows with you. It needs to feed but when you stop doing all that stupid stuff you'd get in trouble for as a little kid, I think it just starts making up things to be mad at you for.

"Oh, you haven't bullied anyone in a while? Yeah, well, you still waste all your time doing nothing! Have you even brushed your teeth today? You don't send anyone thank-you cards for anything anymore do you?"

And so maybe disciplining a child comes down to giving them just the right amount of neurotic self-loathing. Not too little that you end up on a reality TV show, but not so much that you are paralyzed and do nothing but watch old episodes of Little House on the Prairie.

or...or...maybe you're just supposed to learn to love yourself so that you can love others...

no-no-no. That makes no sense at all.

Precision self-loathing. That's the way to go.

GUILT MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND! WORLD GO ROUND! WORLD GO ROUND! GUILT MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND! LA-LA-LA-LA-LA!

It's probably the 'love' thing but who would want to read, much less write, about how great it is to love something? We all know it's great. Unless you have the audacity to think you've loved something better than I have. That there's an update to the Love software that I have neglected to install. Highly unlikely! You don't need to complicate it with your stupid words. That's not what language is for, for me. If we all just walked around feeling happy we'd have no need to communicate. Words exist because you take your life and the world around you and say, "This is terrible!" and then you use words to build that damaged, busted, blasted hull of ship you call a life and try to make that baby float! We're gonna ride this dilapidated bathtub of a ship all the way to Coconut Island! But if you were already at Coconut Island you'd be like, "Forget words  all I needs to do is roll over and find ANOTHER tropical beverage in a coconut with a straw."

Spacemen

Well it was another beautiful morning here at William and Mary. The sun is shining. The air was warm and welcoming. The birds sang their celebratory "tweedly deets" and the Earth was happy.

The same could not be said for the poor soul who woke up on my couch this morning, half covered in his own vomit from the night before, looking sweaty and exhausted even while sleeping. That's what I walked out of my bedroom to find.

But you know what? As great as all the pretty things I started off with are, there's nothing like some good ol' fashioned suffering and regret. And this guy was experiencing some high-octane, low sulfur, premium suffering and regret as he slowly wiped the couch cushions clean.

Every once in a while I saw him catch a peek at himself in the mirror on the opposite wall of the couch and that's what suffering is all about. That's what good suffering is. Really seeing yourself, taking the broken and charred fragments of yourself from the night before and looking at and going, "This is me! It must still be me because I have no other choice!" And then you gotta whip out the duct tape and crazy glue and start piecing yourself back together. But in doing that, you try to gain a greater appreciation and understanding for what makes you who are you.

Let's say you had a car and you never bother to learn what makes the car work. You ascribe the power of horseless carriage locomotion to magic or the temperament of the vehicle. And if that car breaks down, you have two choices. You can, a) get mad at it and get someone else to fix it and go on being ignorant of your car's needs and continue your cycle of hate and confusion. Or you can get your hands greasy and figure out what makes the box with wheels go! And then you can't hate the car anymore. You just know what needs to be fixed when it doesn't work the way it's supposed to.

That's what you stand to gain by accepting your suffering. If you wake up with vomit on your face, death in your guts, and pain in your head, you gotta say to yourself, "Oh hey, World! Looks like I just fertilized myself because I've got some growing to do!"

So that's why I wasn't mad at vomit on my nice things. Because that guy, a great guy, was getting some quality time with himself as he picked out tiny bits of partially digested chicken out of my rug.

And then later on my run I was trudging down the sidewalk in the heat, feeling all kinds of terrible but I thought of him, and I thought, "Me too! Terrible for me too!"

And I was looking at myself, I was looking at my parts and I came to the same conclusion I come to whenever I'm having a long, boring, painful run, "If I finish this I might successfully sweat out a little bit more of whatever makes me such a wimp."

Go out and make some mistakes! And be like, "How stupid was that?! I have acquired knowledge of my failure as a person! Watch as I now transform to: A SLIGHTLY BETTER PERSON!"

And maybe that's all you can hope for until Free Slurpee Day rolls around again.

Doodles

These are from class notes. Sorry some of them are sideways. I suggest using your neck device to adjust your visual input devices.

I may have already posted this one but I really like it.

Manytimes

I've been writing a lot in notebooks so there hasn't been much room for blogging.

I think I'll just try to pull out one fragment of today. Something to distinguish it from all the others. 

I ran 9 miles in the rain in 55 minutes.

I got Free Spirit repaired and outfitted with a non-punctured front tire and working back brakes. 

I started listening to This Devil's Workday and Satin in a Coffin by Modest Mouse again. I got really into this two songs last semester.

I woke up after not getting quite enough sleep and really didn't want to run but then I did and felt good. 

I had Creative Writing today where I started another potential story.

Also I gave my 15 page story I wrote last week to my professor. 

My apartment has kind of a weird smell to it so I've been trying to open the windows as much as possible but it keeps raining.

It's kind of a tattery day. 

I imagined my fear of the future has a man with a pie for a head and normal eyes, nose, and mouth in that pie. I think I defeated the pie man somehow. Oh yeah, with the power of crazy. You can't scare crazy.

You can't let these grey rainy days get you down, readers at home! You gotta carry that sunshine inside of you! I'm not gonna allow people in my life to tell me that they're not gonna live their life to the fullest because of some clouds and some rain. In the darkness you can shine even brighter! Bite into your life-steak with no hands and let the juices run down your chin. That's what I'm saying. You gotta imagine life as a radish. Now, radishes aren't just the juiciest root but you gotta squeeze at it everyday. You gotta get that radish juice and put it in your pitcher for the future. Some people don't want to squeeze their radish on rainy days. I say, you gotta squeeze that radish, rain or shine. The little things matter. The best, most complex things in life are made out of little, inconsequential actions like squeezing radishes. Maybe you'd fight off a horde of termites trying to eat you in your sleep if it was raining but that's a big thing. That's not gonna happen every day. It's the simple daily things that matter. If you tried to send a platoon of babies to poach elephants, they'd fail miserably. But not if you train them. Not if you drill them with simple, elephant poaching exercises every day. Use bright, careful shapes. Speak in a higher, simple register with lots of positive reinforcement. Leave plenty of time for naps and they're gonna take to it like a white-trash dolphin takes to jumping through flaming hoops for fish chow. They're going to grow and get stronger. Make an investment in your future, train babies to seek out ivory!

Weekend Happened

Look at that beauty of bike! HUH?! That's the bike I purchased at a police sale for 40$. I only had to wake up at 5:45 and scare away a tiny asian girl to make it my own. It's a Free Spirit! I have the women's version. It's from the 70s and originally sold at Sears Roebuck. It has no back brake, a shaky front brake, a leak in the front tire, makes a multitude of squeaky whiny sounds, and together we have MORE HEART THAN YOU CAN SHAKE A DEAD CAT AT! Me and little free spirit are going to take on the world! We're gonna go to the grocery store. We're gonna go to Target. We might even go all the way to a body of water of some kind! And spend the day eating grapes on the beach and kicking sand at all the little kid's bikes. Lil' Free Spirit and me just can't be stopped!

Also that same morning I found this evil smile on my jar of peanut butter. I did not put it there. No one I know could have put it there. I ate from the jar and the face disappeared so I fear I may experience haunted bowel movements. Lil' Free Spirit might have to accompany me to the bathroom for strength.

True Type

I love picking scabs. I love it. I got a big shoulder scab from my fall last week and it's just started flaking off so I've been picking at it all day.

And I realized that picking scabs is like Minesweeper. After a certain point, most of the scabs have new skin under them. You're picking them off and picking them off, you know they haven't all healed yettt...then you get a bleeder. Gotta start the scab all over again.

Scabs are mega-tight. If you had never had a scab before and then you got a cut, you'd think that your body was replacing that soft, baby skin with new battle armor skin. You'd be like "Alright! This is a lot better! This darker, harder lumpier skin will hold up way better than that other stuff." Your dangerous ways have upgraded you to the Don't-Need-To-Take-Crap-From-Nobody skin edition.

If I had scab armor, I would stop letting people get away with being jerks in public. "Hey, did you just cut in front of the line? I don't care if you're in a wheelchair, I'm covered in coagulated blood and I'm basically invincible! Gimme that chair!"

And then you sit down and your hip and butt tear in have because the scab armor is too brittle. You're just bleeding out of your backside!

"AAAHHHH! This is the curse of excellence! I've flown to close to the sun! But at least I used my time...to be a jerk to people I don't know."

So yeah, scab armor. It'll probably get you to mythical warrior status. 

Second Time Around

I was asked in my psychology class the other day to design an experiment to demonstrate my knowledge of the terms independent variable, dependent variable, control group, and treatment group. I was also asked to work with a partner but there was no one sitting near me so I decided that I could take on the job all by my lonesome.

The experiment I devised was to study the effects of Alcohol in the Human Body While Navigating an Increasingly Death-Defying Obstacle Course in a Helicopter.

The control group was irrelevant because this is not the kind of experiment that can be controlled! We're talking some serious, cutting-edge, free-flowing science here. This is how things like gravity and triangles get discovered.

The independent variable would be the number of brewski's consumed by the pilot. The brews are scattered across the miles long course on the tops of various buildings. Along the way there are various obstacles such as flaming hoops of death and on one building we hired a whole bunch of Estonians to stand up there in Spiderman costumes with cloves of garlic to throw at the propeller.

Quick Sidenote: As I am devising this experiment, the professor has moved in on in the lecture. My notes are now being replaced with schematics and working on the rough drafts of the waivers I'm going to need to hand out.

The dependent variable would of course be the helicopter. Because the helicopter depends on the intoxicated pilot steering it away from any buildings or Thanksgiving's Day Parades in the immediate vicinity.

The treatment group is ME! Because I am being treated to a dazzling display of aerial acrobatics in the name of science and funded by one of those Genius Grant Foundations that are probably going to just about wet themselves with glee when they get these scraps of notebook paper in the mail.

It was at this point the experiment became less experiment-y and more video game-y. If the pilot completes the obstacle course in the allotted amount of time while holding down all his drink we will progress to level two.

This time the pilot finds himself in the Siberian wasteland of Russia. He must navigate the icy conditions while downing shots of vodka and fighting off Russian bears and Russian guys in Russian Bear costumes. We've upgraded the pilot from beer to hard liquor and, just for laughs, we put a flamethrower on the underside of the helicopter.

At this point the class had ended and in big letters I scrawled at the bottom of the page!

I WILL NOT BE HELD BACK BY THE RETARDING EFFECTS OF THE BUDDY SYSTEM THAT PERMEATES THIS SCIENTIFIC ENVIRONMENT! IF ALCOHOL, HELICOPTERS, AND FLAMING BEAR ROBOTS HAVE NO PLACE IN BEHAVIORAL PSYCHOLOGY THEN THEY BEST PREPARE THEMSELVES FOR THEIR INEVITABLE FADING INTO OBSCURITY AS THE CEASELESS MARCH OF TIME MARCHES ON! 

Do Nothing Day

This was a pretty wasted day, everybody.

This was the kind of day that never really started. It was like that interval between getting up and brushing your teeth, which normally only lasts like five minutes on a normal day, lasted about eight hours today. It never really got started.

This day is like having a conversation with someone and you never get past the how-are you's.
"Hi."
"Hey."
"How's it going?"
"Pretty good. And you?"
"Oh, it's fine. You doing alright?"
"Yeah, pretty much. You hanging in there?"
"Hanging in there. How about you?"
"Same old, same old. You know how it is."
"Yeah, that is how it is."
"That's how it's going."
"Yup, that's how it is going. How's it going for you?"
"Pretty good. And you?"
"Oh, I'm getting by."
"Keep on, keeping on."

That's it. You're never engaging the day. The day is just staring at you and you're looking right back at it like, "I see you, day. I see you from here. Now I'm gonna pass out on the couch and wake up sweating...

Oh, you're still here."

This day is like being eaten alive by a shark but he never gets past the wrist of your hand. You're horrified at first but then it's just...c'mon! Kill me already, I have places to be. I have people that need to mourn the loss of me! One hand isn't gonna cut it! They're just gonna give me a hook and a spot on the local news as I work my new job at the bowling alley.

This day is like someone who is about to say the word, "niggardly" and for whatever reason you know niggardly is the word they're about to say but they never get past the 'ni-'. You're just waiting for the sweet release

niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

but it's never gonna get there. Look at all those i's. You could already have the story all planned out in your head but you can't tell it until this jerk finishes up saying his word.

It's like, "Yeah, I wanna tell you about how I heard a guy say the word "niggardly" but I can't because he won't get past the first FREAKIN' syllable!

This day is like a big, ugly, furry, old, wrinkled, smelly, hairy, voluminous, saggy, furry, musky, crusty...ffffffusty, sack of...french fries. And you're walking your dog and it latches onto the bag and it just keeps smelling and humping and humping and smelling and humping and humping and smelling and you can't stop it even if you wanted to. You try setting the bag on fire but it won't burn. It just quickly secretes a flame-retardant foam that excites the dog even more.

This day is like trying to pull down your pants to drop a deuce but they just keep coming down. You just keep pulling them down and they keep going. You can't find your ankles. You can't even find the bottom of your butt.

16 hours of pulling down your pants and then you fall asleep on the toilet so you can wake up and try again for another 16 hours.

I will tell you one thing: when I finally get those pants off. They are staying off.

WOOOUNDS!

It's time to give the people what they've been wanting all along.

REALISTIC BATTLE DAMAGE!

  

To reveal the scars from the heat of war, just add water to the new Andy action figure! He'll also make a sound like a gazelle being eaten alive by army ants!

What a baby...

I fell on some rocks in the woods yesterday and then I bleededed....

________________________________________________________________________

I really can't tell if it's awful or not but I recorded one of my posts. Soak It In. You can scroll down and find it or check under the "recorded" labels at the side of this page.

[20 minutes later]- I've now also recorded Hulling (the own about brain jars).

[later later]- PALOMIDES is also recorded.

Unhinge

I had to go to a meeting for this organization that I'm a part of and they called it a "Retreat."

Which probably makes you think we went out to the woods somewhere or out in a nice field and had a picnic and played games or maybe we went...anywhere outside. Or maybe we saw...something green?

Nope. Sat in a room and watched a Powerpoint for about two hours.

How is that in any way a Retreat? Well, I thought of one way. It's a retreat in the sense that we are surrendering our will to this organization in their pursuit of enthusiastic members and quality good-time fun. Which is still pretty evil.

If something that is supposed to be good is mandatory...that's way more evil in my mind than something terrible that is mandatory.

Because at least the terrible thing makes sense. While you're toiling and breaking your fingers and burning your back in the hot hot heat, you can understand, Ohhh! I see why I didn't get a choice in doing this. This is terrible! No one would volunteer to dig a hole two miles into swampy earth for a fallout shelter because it is a terrible job and flies have laid eggs in my skin.

And then you have the added comradery of sharing the misery with everyone around you. You're all remembering the past when times were good. You're holding each other during the night terrors. You're dreaming of a better tomorrow where you create a yogurt brand that powers your country's olympic athletes. Obviously, you're doing to die. You're not getting out of here alive. But at least it all makes sense. You're a pawn in the overlord's master plan. He has you doing the things no one else would ever do. Doom is like a comforting blanket that holds you down in your sleep and bludgeons you with hunks of fetid ham.

But mandatory fun is like being trapped in a weird alternate dimension where capris pants are cool and captains can trap time in their body hair. I can't figure out how to move in this dimension. I just know that I'm intensely uncomfortable with all this unwarranted enthusiasm and good cheer. And you can look around the room but everyone else is just as confused.

You can ask them, "Are you having fun?"
They say, "I don't...think so...but we...have to...I think."

And you find some people who seem to be getting really into the presentation and the little mixers but suddenly they don't look like real people anymore. They've transformed into the Pink Elephants from that scene in Dumbo when he gets wasted.

And you're like, "What does this mean?! I want the mandatory fun to stop RIGHT NOW!"

I know exactly what that mouse is going through

I guess my problem with it is that at least when something awful is mandatory, your only option is to try to make it fun. You can resist the bad and will the good.

But when something 'good' is mandatory, to give in to that just feels creepy and cult-ish. You're not choosing your own happiness at that point. You're just accepting. Which, maybe that's being too contrarian but I can't help but get a weird feeling from it. And even if you find a way to make it fun, it's impossible to tell the difference between your fun and their fun. Then that leaves me the job of resisting the fun and finding things to be mad about.

Like the pink elephant parade. They're having fun but Dumbo can't control it. They're marching all over him and changing into stuff and playing music, "Hippety hoppity hippety hoppity!" but he's lost all control. You would never volunteer to be in the pink-elephant-parade fun in the same way that no one would volunteer to go to the Surrender-Retreat. So when they make it mandatory they're sort of taking the control away and putting on this mask of happy and saying, "Aren't you so glad you came?!"

No. You forced me to. Let's be honest about this. I would much rather show up and you tell me to scrub floors or do something than sit here and pretend to be excited about the Sun Chips you brought.

But that's just me.

Hulling

Here's the link to the recording: HERE!

We're all probably just brains in mayonnaise jars.

Why a mayonnaise jar? I don't know. I'm just trying to be optimistic about the situation. I could have said we're all just brains in jars full of puppy farts. But I didn't. I went with mayonnaise because I believe in the dignity of the human spirit!

You ever think you're not a real person? You ever wonder about that?

Who or what are you going to trust to confirm your bodily presence in the universe as we currently understand it? Your brain? Ha! Haha! That's a real trust-worthy source.

One time I ate over a pound of peanuts in under an hour and the next day my BM sounded like a rock being thrown into a river. You know who came up with that idea? My brain. 

One time I thought I was the kind of person that could wear a fedora. And then bought a fedora. Once again, I've only got the ol' noodle to thank for that one.

Even if your brain does do something right, it's just gonna trade that useful information for the next worthless new shiny pile of knowledge that comes along. At one point in my life I could name all the capitals of Europe and list 196 countries in under 12 minutes. Right now all I can do is tell you the jobs of the people in the band, the Village People.

There was a Native American, a Police Officer, a Construction Worker, a Cowboy, a Biker, and an Army mans.

Thanks brain. Thanks for making that trade-off. At least you still retain your encyclopedic knowledge of late 90s, early 2000s Nickelodeon cartoon shows.

What was the name of the whiny, deadbeat, immigrant-sounding guy with the big nose and beard on Hey Arnold: Mr. Kakashka. Duh. His wife's name was Suzy. That's the kind of information that needs to be brought up at a moment's notice without being thought of in over ten years.

But the point I'm trying to make is, I figure there's like a 50/50 chance that we're actually people and we actually take dumps and make love and pet tortoises at the Zoo. And then the other option is we're brains in mayonnaise jars and we're imagining all the dumps and humps and turtle bumps.

Obviously, the truth doesn't affect anything one way or the other. You still can't go around kicking people in the face regardless of whether their ugly, kicked-in face exists or not.

I just think it's good to not take reality for granted once in a while.

Before you get a whole bunch of sand in your coin purse (your vajittle) when the world seems 'broken' somehow, that's a perfect time to think about how you might be a brain in a jar somewhere. And some guy is staring at you (the brain) and thinking about how his dog better not have thrown up on his carpet again.

Just think of the most ridiculous alternative for everything you know and can ever know and see if it doesn't help you let go.  

"Well, I secretly suspect that everyone hates me but on the other hand, I might just exist in the mind of a larva being carried by an ant out from underneath the world's largest gay pride parade."

"The weather said it was gonna be sunny but now it's partly cloudy! This day sucks but at the same time, the chances of me being the figment of the imagination of a giant boil on a sweaty man's back are just as good as me being anything else."

It's all a delusion, shape it however you want and go as deep as you have to but it probably wouldn't hurt to come up for air every now and again.