overhaul / undertow

Thursday, March 20, 2003






The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.
-Robert Lynd, 1879-1949

People can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. Tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism.
-Herman Goerning, Propaganda minister for Adolf Hitler

O you who believe, do not prohibit good things that are made lawful by Allah, and do not aggress; Allah dislikes the aggressors.
-Qu'ran 5:87.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?
-Mahatma Gandhi, 1869-1948







Thursday, March 13, 2003



HA ha ha ha hee hee hoo ha....

From the Orange County Register (about half way down the page):

"Was that really the president of France on KROQ/106.7 FM Wednesday morning?

Members of the radio station's morning team, Kevin and Bean, insist it was. Impersonating comedian Jerry Lewis, KROQ DJ Ralph Garman called the president's office and, after a long hold, was put in touch with Jacques Chirac.

"It was NOT a hoax," Garman wrote in an e-mail. But he said station management had asked him not to speak about it yet; as of Wednesday afternoon, KROQ said that the matter was being investigated, but otherwise had no comment.

Garman had called the president's office and, after a dead-on Lewis impersonation with the secretary, was put on hold. The station then went to commercials and songs. When Kevin and Bean returned, they said that, to their amazement, Chirac had answered and they had recorded the conversation.

Garman seemed honestly flustered during the exchange, dropping any punchlines and simply saying that he was worried about French-American relations. Chirac said he was worried, too, but said that the two countries would always be friends, even if they didn't agree about Iraq.

Chirac - if it was him - initially expressed skepticism that he was really talking to Lewis, but after Garman spoke, Chirac said, "I recognize your voice." At the end of the conversation, the president said he was "a big fan" of the comedian.

If it wasn't a hoax, KROQ officials could be worried about fallout from France, or Lewis, or both. In January, a radio station in Miami was criticized when its morning team used a tape of Fidel Castro's voice to get through to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez."








Tuesday, March 11, 2003





...and in other news, the Senate announces "We don't WANT to be your friend anymore! We don't we don't we don't!!!"

Hot holy mother of god. I can't believe I pay taxes for this shit.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/03/11/sprj.irq.fries/index.html

"WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The cafeteria menus in the three House office buildings changed the name of "french fries" to "freedom fries," a culinary rebuke of France, stemming from anger over the country's refusal to support the U.S. position on Iraq.

"Ditto for "french toast," which will be known as "freedom toast."

The name changes were spearheaded by two Republican lawmakers who held a news conference Tuesday to make the name changes official on the menus.

Across the country, some private restaurants have done the same.

'This action today is a small, but symbolic effort to show the strong displeasure of many on Capitol Hill with the actions of our so-called ally, France,' said Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, the chairman of the Committee on House Administration."





Friday, March 07, 2003


Culled from latenite depressed docs. Oh, what fun!!!

...I have read all those books, those self-aware, self-conscious books, where you are supposedly the proverbial onion of yourself, peeling yourself apart layer by bitumous layer, traveling inward towards a center of sorts that you imagine is there, beneath all the translucent bits; through the external parts to the inner, through the Jungian parts and then into the Freudian parts, the ego and id and superego and deeper and deeper, hitting each one as you plan to penetrate further; and then you are supposed to land at an end, an epiphany to end all epiphanies, and that is It. There you are. The world is solved. Right?

I cannot get over the fact that I can’t seem to reach that center; and I worry that if I already have at some point it wasn’t impressive enough for me to even notice, or if it’s one of those bullshit things that “you’ve known all along, in your bones.” Intuitive--right? Well, intuition schmintuition. No "intuition" of existential significance is going to help me get through the night. Why can’t I escape the feeling that there should be more? Further inward to go? A bigger better answer than what I’ve gotten so far?

Maybe there is nothing bigger or better. Maybe I’ve reached the end of the introspection rail line, and the tracks hit a flat wall here like some Road Runner cartoon. Maybe I have plumbed the depths. I have mapped the unmappable, and found it is not so large, not so vast after all, it is a known value, and my story of myself is now reduced to a required-reading book from tenth grade that you read and re-read and analyzed over and over ‘til you found every clue, studied every nuance, analyzed and debated every literary device, allusion, metaphor and possible theme or patterns; and the book has now been wrung dry, meaningless, to bare bones and powdery teeth, moth’s wing-brittle and dusty and so, so so incredibly sorrowful; it will never hold a mystery again, not a single one, reduced to a childhood map where the treasure’s been found—and you now know years later that your treasure, once so brilliant and depthless and deep green, was really just some pennies and rusty old paperclips and faded candy wrappers.

I hate books for that reason.

They are wordlessly lovely, those worlds built of words--and then they cease to mean a thing, a mirage melting before your eyes, leaving you with the dull and faded day-to-day life you really live.













I harbor a strong distaste for postmodern ironic scenesters, and here's why.


I hate that.
How the homeostasis of the world remains and remains and remains, but I never do. Mold is always creeping back into my shower. The floor is always getting filthy again, the dust always building up again. I hate it. I want to eliminate it from my life.

I thought living halfass was going to be so glamorous.

You know, and we bank ourselves up with irony so we don't collapse. We pile our ironic trash around us. Things like kitschy memerobilia, blow-up dolls, slightly-smaller-than-life-size cardboard cutouts promoting football games by teams we don’t like, things with fish on them, kids’ toys, corporate-synergy cross-marketed crap we pick up at fast-food chains, disturbing religious tracts, non-sequiturs, goofy books like “Chincilla Farming,” horribly dated audio equipment, sexist/racist flotsam from years past, stuff from Japan we can’t understand. And we laugh. Like we’re having fun.

But we’re not. We laugh like they’re toys, we tell ourselves we are being playful, wide-eyed and childlike.

We’re actually angry.

We are anything but wide-eyed and childlike. We are so lost, burnt out and cynical that if something genuine came up and slapped us across the face we would be unable to recognize it as anything more than a laughable twist of fate. We are old, old, old, because all this crap we gather into us, all the useless trash, is the sick relics, the flotsam and jetsam of a culture pasted together poorly with things that don’t matter. A small, petty, bitter little culture, where we are tiny and can do nothing large. We are nursed on childhood stories of epics and dragon-slayings, and then loosed into the workaday world to sit down all day long, to buy a house, to scoop out litter boxes. We can’t even become rock stars. We can’t even become football players. We can’t be presidents.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” I got asked ten million fucking times.

We can’t even be astronauts. We will never be doctors, or firemen. Those dreams of glory die. We work in offices, get 401K’s, tell our friends that the health benefits make the lower pay worth it. We pay bills. We refinance and make dinner plans. We research CARS, for fuck's sake.

So if we do gather that ironic trash in around ourselves, understand. Understand that we are shell-shocked victims, we’re lost our minds, rattling there in the cage: we sit amid the shards of our madhouse, imagining we build an epic and lovely castle, and stare lovingly at our meaningless treasures all day.






Thursday, March 06, 2003





A little night music, a little morning fog

Went to the Twine event with Mash Up Soundsystem last night at the Knitting Factory...it was great. It was neat to see them in action and the music was incredible. I think it's really quite rare. Breakcore and noise-broken beats-type stuff is pretty new and it was very fun to be a part of such an intimate show, with the dj's and laptoppers hanging off the stage, dancing with the audience...

But two kamikazes would have been enough. That third one, as always, was a bad idea.

So what was it that saved my sorry ass at 9:30 am this morning when I verrrrry sloooowly eased my achy hungover self onto my office chair and stared, drooling, at the up-close detailing of the faux-wood formica of my desk?

Few things clarify the important parts of life and cut thru the morning misery like the Swedish Chef: "Herndee berndee, en dee chocolat, yerm yerm yerm, en de moose...moose? Mooshe mooshe mooshe."

Thank you Kazaa, for delivering the magic of the Swedish Chef to mitigate my hangover. I feel so much better!







Monday, March 03, 2003




Lord, help me to live a life made more remarkable
by its unwillingness to be crushed by Your will.













workaday dada


consummately

boring.



live your life in much the way you while away the hours unbowed and unbroken at home, undercover...lights on low and groundcovering, busted and short bursts of activity during which you call yourself

all you ever were meant to be, oh yeah

till the urgency peaks and sinks its soar corrupted, your fall from what you were meant to be
so inevitable, and so complete a reduction,
a loss,
a line lost gone spinnin thru your palms cutting deep leaving you leagues lower and reduced compressed in upon by the space, the space, an increased density of life that is harder to move thru, harder to walk--


live each day like a broken rhyme,
unmetered and
with no good ending.