Friday's Link of Wonderfulness vol. 1

Since I'm a professional web surfer (I work at Mahalo.com), I thought I'd begin favoring you with a weekly weird link chock full of wonderfulness (in addition to my well-known love of nautically themed melancholia, I'm also a big fan of strange things and portmanteaux).

This week: The Parasite Pals!

Have you ever felt lonely? Upset that even though you get to see your friends on occasion, they eventually have to go home and leave you? Well, if they lived inside you, they'd never leave! Joy!

This is the central idea behind the Parasite Pals. They're basically cute, Sanrio-style drawings and flash animations of disgusting organisms that feed off of your blood and inward meats. My favorite is this happy fellow, Tickles the Tapeworm:





Aw, the stomach is sad! :(
No reason you should be, though!
Happy weekend and labor day, y'all!

Happy Babies and Angry Old Men

So yesterday my buscapades continued. As I was only my way to work, I noticed one old man getting kind of annoyed. He was one of those old guys who can't really stand up straight and needs a cane. I think he was upset because another old man was standing too close. I could here that they were talking to each other, but I couldn't make out what they were saying until this little gem from the one with the cane:

"Get away from me! Are you a faggot or something?"

He said it in Spanish, but that sounds even more abrasive.

They continued bickering for few seconds, then both got off at the next stop. The bus idled there for a few moments, and the whole load of commuters rushed to the right side of the bus to watch their continuing and escalating beef. The one with the cane was now wielding it as a weapon.

"Pinche Viejillos!" exclaimed one bus patron with a laugh. It means, roughly, "fucking little old men!" Perhaps I'm a little too sensitive, but it was too early in the morning for hostility and madness and callousness. I needed a book of Bukowski poems and a belt of whiskey, stat.

As the bus pulled away and relegated their rivalry to my memory, I felt a profound disgust for life itself. I can't take you through my thought process, because it was somewhat hazy to me: all I know is that something about these bitter old bastards, full of piss and vinegar, hanging on to their pride and preserving their last ragged breaths like a bag of jewels seemed utterly, utterly pointless.

But that was yesterday.

Today I've been listening to a song called "Intelligentactile 101" by a young lady named Jesca Hoop. A lot. It's nice.

As far as I can tell, the song is sung from the perspective of a fetus in her mother's womb. It mainly discusses her plans after she's born, like sucking her mom's fingers and other important things.

You know something? I love songs about being born. This one in particular is especially jubilant, rocking from side to side and laughing like a toddler with a set of colorful plastic novelty keys.

Dont' get me wrong: I don't want to be a baby again. I'm not pining for my childhood as a reaction to the unpleasant portent the two old men formed. All the same, the themes raised by this song are just really cheerful. I like the idea of just enjoying life, of seeing it through a fresh lens. That, I think, is the key: I've always though that life must inevitably become more complicated. Every moment we live adds a new dimension of context, a new aspect of complication that seems unimportant in the moment it occurs, but eventually breaks our backs with it's sheer weight as more and more of these moments accumulate.

If we didn't change, this would be completely true. But even though reality is a dynamic and ever-changing system, so is a human being. The concept of growing or acquiring greater strength to carry greater weight seems remarkably short-sighted as I think. Did not these mighty A.M. gladiators value their strength, their capable-ness, their identity as manly men without need of others to defend them? That way doesn't seem right to me. No, the answer isn't in addition, it's in subtraction.

Maybe I should explain this cosmology a bit more thoroughly before I engage this concept. Let's start with another old man: Heraclitus. Notable idea:

This world-order [kosmos], the same of all, no god nor man did create, but it ever was and is and will be: everliving fire, kindling in measures and being quenched in measures.

This is essentially the concept of Universal Flux. It means that the universe is always changing. Kant was probably aware of this when he came up with his idea that the "real" universe is pretty much unknowable, because our perceived universe is always several steps behind the shiftless actual fabric of reality.

While all of this is a bit dizzying and maybe a little depressing, it's important to remember that a human being is not just a hunk of matter or a simple animal: we're much more than creatures, much more amazing than even the greatest and most majestic of reality's constructs. We're in and of this universal fabric, but we don't have to act like the rest of it. The sun, for all it's brilliance and power, must follow it's appointed trajectory. It must burn and burn until it has nothing left to burn. Sad.

But us? People? Do we have to keep all the residue and space dust that accrues on our happless, possibly hatless heads? Hell no! We can take showers! We invented shampoo! And this is not limited to detritus from the nether-corners of existence: this concept can also be applied to the ponderous context that collects over our lives. Just as every moment forces a new dimension of context for us to carry, we can perform an act of perceptual judo and be reborn. How? By understanding that the person you were just moments ago is not the person you are now. You've aged a bit, some things that seemed true then probably seem the tiniest bit less true or more true now, and just like a baby's rapidly changing synapses, your mind has made and severed thousands of connections. The point? You're a new person! That other person? Gone. Now there's you, and no one has ever met you before, and though that other guy has eaten all kinds of shit, you have never even had the pleasure of tasting chocolate.

The wonderful thing is that it's not limited to once a year or once a day or just whenever an epiphany decides to wander in: we can do this every minute, every second, every discrete unit of time we have in our whole lives! The only thing we have do is remember.

Maybe this is sounding very Catholic of me: a sort of modified penance to achieve absolution. This has nothing to do, though, with being in the good graces of the Universal powers that be. It has everything to do with the perception you have of yourself. You have to remember that existence is any incredibly complex dynamic system, and as small spinning convection cells in this system, we're in a perpetual state of flux too. If our perception of the whole system is always a few steps behind the system itself, why should our perception of ourselves be any more caught up? We are reformed and recreated every moment, so why not embrace contextual babyhood? It sure beats the alternative.

Man, I can't wait to know what chocolate will taste like to my tomorrow-tongue.

The Wheels on the Bus

My car is broken at the moment, so I had to ride the bus home from work today. It made me remember a few things I already knew:

1) People who ride the bus are by and large decent, but there's always one jerk in the bunch. For the most part they're fine people: quiet, minding their own business, generally absorbed in their own affairs, iPods, newspapers, or conversations with the other people living inside their skulls. Still, there always has to be one person who wants to be the center of attention. Some kid I saw today was tripping old people as they walked by. When one lady said something to him, he lost his cool. It was a rather pathetic spectacle.

2) Bus drivers are generally not the most polite or intelligent people in the world. I think the last time I rode a bus was about a year ago. At that time, I stepped onto a bus that was apparently ending it's run. I was about to ask the bus driver a question when she made a shooing motion with her hand and commanded "Off my bus." As I tried to interject that I only had one simple question, she reiterated her order. I tried to mention that that is not the most polite thing to do for a person in a public service profession, or at least to affirm that I hadn't been rude to her, but if I hadn't stepped off as quickly as I did I might have lost my nose to the slamming bus door. This was at a terminal, so of course, the bus I wanted was hers. She parked the bus for awhile and rolled it to the opposite end of the station. She saw me running to catch it, slowed down, realized I was the guy who had questioned her politeness, and proved me right by slamming the door a second time and peeling out.
Today it was something much more simple. I was sort of lost and confused after getting off at the wrong stop, so I walked up to a bus that wasn't mine and asked the guy a question:

"Does the number 68 stop here?"
My question was answered with another question.
"Do you see a sign that says 68?"
"Well, no, but that's why I'm asking you." I briefly considered adding "because you are a professional coach conductor while I am a barely literate rube who has no right to trouble you with his problems" but decided against it.

The point, I think, is that you should never ask a bus driver questions. Burdening them with your ignorance is a cardinal sin in BusDriverLandia. Do what I did instead: carry your ignorance as you walk home. Let it distract you from the various marginalized people you run into on that walk, and the smell of sewage wafting up from the street. Then go get your car fixed, for fuck's sake.

Public Affection Announcement

Hey stranger. You. reading this. There's a fair chance I've never met you.

I just wanted to tell you I love you. Not because Jesus says I should. Not because you were nice to me. Not because I think you might be nice to me in the future. Possibly because of a chemical imbalance, I'm not sure. Either way. I love you.

Don't look at me like I'm crazy. I'm not. I'm also not drunk or high or suffering from a concussion. It's a little sad, as I think, that I'd have to be crazy by your estimation for feeling this way. But I know you're a decent person.

Just accept it. Neither of us can stop it, so let's not fight it. I don't want anything from you, I just want you to know that someone loves you. And again, it's not Jesus: he's make-believe.

Things that May or May Not Have Happened to Me

1. I was born.

2. When I was three years old, i had one pair of cowboy boots, which is one more than I have today. however, I also had much less control over my bowels, which led to having a pair of cowboy boots chock full of shit.

3. When I was a very young child, my cousin (also a very young child then) lived a few doors down from a slightly older kid who, according to rumor, was a ninja. In those days, it was so obvious that he was a ninja: he had real ninja stars, a real ninja sword, and the full ninja outfit. One day, we were supposed to go to his house for our first day of ninja training. Training consisted of him shooting arrows at us while we attempted to run past them. Somehow, we both survived our first day of ninjutsu training.

4. At the age of 8, I once gave a speech at a local college. Then I puked on my principal's shoes.

5. At age 12, I spied my teacher's dangling armfat, and before I even knew it, I had jiggled the armfat. She was not amused, bt some of the other kids were.

6. I didn't have a 13th year of life.

7. I had a highly sadistic high school PE teacher. he forced us to do hundreds of pushups, once in the rain in our swimtrunks next to the heated pool. He let us jump in for a few seconds only to force us to get out again and do more pushups.

This other time skipped our physical education to embrace a more spiritual one: he read to us from the bible.

8. As a teenager, I played a lot of hackey sack. I would play in the front yard of my family's house when it was cool enough. I don't think I was that good at it, but definitely got into it and worked up a sweat.

One evening at around 6, the sun was beginning to set. It was August. I start as I always did, fresh, ready try to top my personal best of something like 90 consecutive kicks. it wasn't long before I had hkciked the sack into a tree.

Maybe I was feeling cocky because it had been so easy to clamber up the branches and pluck the hackeysack like a piece of fruit. I wasn't going down too fast, but just was nearing the bottom, one of the branches I was holding onto snapped. I went plunging down and landed hard on my tail bone.

Pain shot up my back and throbbed throughout the rest of my body. I writhed around on the ground, instinctively holding my back as I rolled on the grass.

I was vaguely aware that one of my neighbors had been standing there the whole time. At first he ignored me, but soon he started watching me. The guy was a jerk most of the time, but this time he just watched me while i was lying on the ground in pain. It pissed me off, but I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of wailing out in pain. After a few minutes of this he finally decided to say something.

"You ok?"

Motherfucker. I stood up straight and gritted my teeth.

"I'm fine."

I calmly walked back into my house and into my room, where I resumed writhing.

9. I used to live in a building with underground parking. The parking was gated, and though there was access to the underground parking through the building, the front doors were perpetually locked. One night I had been out with some friends and got in at around three in the morning. I parked in my spot and got out of the car; i could hear what sounded like a soft stream of water echoing through the garage, and at first I couldn't tell from which direction it originated. I got my cue before I was able to find it for myself.
"Its okay, homes."
I couldn't make out the words as they were being said, exactly: they were a little too thickly intoned, a little too distorted by the labored rasp of breath that pushed them out. But as I asked "Excuse me?" I made the connection.
"It's okay. I'm washing the car."
It's important to mention that I had had my back to him when he first spoke, so that when I was facing him, I saw that he was standing between two cars parked in the row across from the row where I had parked. One of the cars, a mid size SUV, was sort of blocking my view of his lower half. Not that I hadn't figured out by now that he was pissing on the car, I just couldn't see it, and had no real desire to. Something to keep him over there, on the double:

"Cool, man. My car's all set, so... you know..."

Nice job. But my friend seemed to agree. He laughed a laugh laced with bronchitis, mummbled a soup of words as he shook his head. I could still hear him pissing.


I didn't really want to leave my car with this guy running around. How the hell did he get in in the first place? It was time for some decisive action.

"Hey man, when you're done over there, I got five bucks for you. Why don't you go get yourself a sandwich?" I figured if could give him enough cash, he'd want to go spend it that second. I'm not sure that's what he had in mind, but he finished up, walked over, and took the money without incident. As he was leaving he said one more thing:

"Thanks man. Godbless. Hey, I'll be back to wash your car tomorrow night, alright?"

"What? No!" Again as he left, I could hear that wheezy laugh. I never saw him again, but I parked out in the street at least two blocks away for a week.


10. Once I sawr a blimp.

Out of Mayonaisse

Oh crap. My friend Nelson of Asymmetric recently posted a comment regarding confessional blogs and condiments. Curiously portentous, Nelson, because I've been up late working on something, and when I got up to make a sandwich, I noticed that I was indeed out of mayo. Sadness.

And weirdness. I'm wondering whether Nelson has precognitive abilities, and if so, whether they are limited to foodstuffs. If so, I'm really curious to know what's for lunch tomorrow.

Announcements at Dawn

Sometimes life feels like an endless stream of announcements and proclamations, but I suppose we'd be quiet all the time if it weren't this way. Right? Well, I suppose there are questions and answers, but um... shut up. I'm about to make an announcement.

I tried to blog here many moons ago (see posts labeled "old"), but found it too difficult. It's not that I mind that no one is reading this, but I somehow managed to get on some kind of list, and Epistles was drowned in a deluge of spam for dear hunting supplies. On top of hating spam, I'm not totally keen on the idea of sport-killings. My frail constitution couldn't take it, and I waded out of the blogging kiddie-pool.

But I'm happy to announce that I'm back! Thank you. Thank you. You are too kind. Please sit down. There will be a slight shift in focus: frankly, the confessional blog is something I've been moving away from of late. If you don't know where to find my public diaries, I'm certainly not going to tell you now. What I can tell you is that I will try to achieve a semi-daily frequency of posting, and the laborious, slightly antiquated prose-style to which you have become accustomed shall remain in place. I am still as interested as ever in exploring the line between forlorn and cantankerous, and luckily for you, I'm still as confused as ever in this regard. When I make a breakthrough, I'll be sure to announce it to the world.