 éjà vu: a false sense that something new has been seen before
Jamais vu: a feeling or impression that something familiar is not familiar or is being seen for the first time
Presque vu: the erroneous sense of having something on the tip of your tongue, or that a mental epiphany or breakthrough is about to occur
I wonder if the French have a word for the strange feeling that something wonderful has just happened, but you don't have any idea what?
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 he text and original graphics, logos and slogans used in my blog "Sloth And Dignity" (as seen in the main page here) are copyright (c) 2005-2007 by Life In A Mikeycosm. Please do not steal them and use them in a gay porn video like these people did.
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 gotta do something about them day nights.
I was just walking home from the store, bopping down the street at 11 PM, a time that I grew up believing was a sensible time to be in bed. 1 AM used to be alien terrain, exotic, strange. 2 AM - well, that might as well have been a million o'clock. It was like the furthest frontier. The night might have gone on forever beyond that, for all I knew, ending only when the last human had decided to go to bed before we could all wake up in the daylight again.
Nowadays the small hours of the morning are familiar to me. More than familiar - ordinary, 1 AM no more mysterious than 1 in the afternoon (and probably not as mysterious as 10 AM, a time I haven't seen in many months but that somehow still fails to hold a fascination for me.) Even 4 AM is pedestrian. I call it the "day nights". It's just another part of the day. If you're up long enough, it becomes literally day again, and what once seemed the endless rolling mystery of night is revealed to be nothing more than the day going slack for a while, drooping into in a bucket of dark water, but soon enough pulled taut again. Sunrise doesn't just break the magic spell - it announces that it was, after all, just a spell. Daylight shines even into the darkest recesses of the day nights.
When I was a kid, I snuck out of the house a few times late at night, either by myself or with friends who had stayed over for the express purpose. I once ventured out into the unfathomable territory of 3:30 AM - alien, not as mars, perhaps, but as the arctic. It was a broad frontier. Now, it is no different than a trip to the cellar.
I had the experience once, as an adult. I had decided to catch a nightcap, last call at a nearby bar, at quarter after 1 in the morning. As I walked the few blocks to my watering hole, the neighborhood was quiet and still. Perhaps it was just that, or perhaps it was in conjunction with home psychological or chemical fluke, but suddenly, it all came flooding back. It was late night, that foreign land - past the frontier, well into the secret, wild territories of the 1 o'clock hour! Here there be tygers!
And I was on my way out! To a bar, to play with the adults in an adult outpost out in the wilds of 1:15 AM! I was delighted.
That was a rare exception. Once 4 AM became familiar to me, and sunrise mundane, the territory was charted, tame. I know the riverbed from shore to shore. 11 PM isn't the last outpost of the known, it's just 11 o'clock in the afternoon. And hence we have the day nights. There's no beacon, no hidden land or hour out there far in the night, far into times that we don't have a name for yet, which I might stay up later and later and still never find. Tygers don't exist. Dawn always comes.
So, I gotta do something about them day nights, because, you know, the quintessence of romance lies in the beckoning. Once you've conquered the unknown you have familiarity and safety and comfort, and if you believe the world is a terrible place that may be all you need. I am a romantic, because I am, at significant cost to myself at times, an optimist - a cynical, scarred, and unfailing optimist, in that I believe better things may always lay just a couple of steps into the unknown. And really, they don't have to be. I just need the potential to be there.
Note: This little bit of exposition is dedicated to Ray Bradbury, a longtime companion who I have never had the pleasure of meeting.
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 s some of you may have noticed, I do not generally write posts about the day-to-day events of my life except in the course of telling an amusing story or explicating some idea or other. So, we interrupt this blog for an unusually personal moment.
On May 27, Christopher Hume's parents met up with my friends Dan and Mike at Bard College, and they went down to the on-campus waterfalls on the Sawkill Creek, where Chris and I had spent so much time back in school, to scatter Chris's ashes.( Interested parties can click here to read the whole post and listen to my song about it. )
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 hat better a measure of man as a poet
Is there, b'sides seeing some poems he's wroet?
If better exists, I sure do not knoet.
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hy I posted a movie review is a mystery even to me. But if you want you can read it here: ( Full Review )
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 y living room, 11:15 pm, 2/24/07
[As I was walking through my living room with a glass of wine, my laconic roommate Gil was having a conversation with his friend Dean the video editor.]
Dean: ...all we need is Anna Nicole Smith's body! [pause] There has to be a way.
Gil: Yeah, well, I was outbid.
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In memoriam Christopher Hume, Sep. 20 1968-Feb. 17 2007. Ridiculously talented musical prodigy, ludicrous poet, co-conspirator, inspiration, trickster, friend, enemy.
ODE TO A CURL-UP BUG
O! pity the poor maligned curl-up!
Its form, tho' well designed, inspires many to fear!
But many a curl-up has faced
a cruel and untimely fate
'neath some shoe or sneaker well-placed
So it raises its hackles to have some such footwear come near!
Though 'pill bug' it's properly named,
so low on the food chain, one hides behind cautious deceit!
The 'pill bug's kept secret and dear!
Mere 'curl-up' when others are near!
Lest the higher aesthetic, they fear,
of some higher predator find 'pill bug' deliciously sweet!
In the science museum on a visit,
I viewed an exhibit of insects both fearsome and small.
But one creature displayed, I saw not!
"Unworthy of view, or forgot,"
so I thought, 'til chagrined I did spot
In some beetle's food bowl, poor curl-up lay curled in a ball!
Injustice! Whose foul vision is it
that sees fit to visit on poor curl-up such indignation!
Can poet not visit museum
And look upon curl-up, and see 'em
regarded with higher este'em
than chiefly of value as some beetle's mere delectation?
My wrath hits its limit! I must make a stand! Steeling my courage, with clenched fist I tilt towards exhibit!
Beetle and beetle curator be damn'd! By indignant poetic hand I SHALL FREE 'IM!
BUT WAIT!
Unlike my own hue and cry,
Without heave nor sigh the small pill bug awaited his fate.
So stoic, as if deep in thought
In spite of what fortune had wrought
the pill bug appeared undistraught!
As if unconcerned that a curl-up's thought best to be ate!
So nobly it faced its demise?
Rubbing my eyes, I peeked close at small curl-up again.
Yes! Naught but peace shown on his face
Him placid and stately with grace
Disturbed not by impending fate
For such is the curl-up's exemplary practice of zen!
Embarrassed I was, I confess,
For mine lesser grace and finesse than the doomed curl-up shew.
Perhaps, then, this pill bug has shown
a strength we can find of our own
when looms near that darkness unknown,
should we ever come to be ate by a huge insect too!
So heed now all creatures my call!
Should you walk, fly, swim, slither or crawl!
The merest of pill bugs is mightier still than us all!
This poem, previously published on my website, is based on a real experience that happened to me and Chris in the Boston Science Museum in 1993.
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 OOD COMMUNICATION, LIGHTNING FAST DELIVERY. A++++++++++++++ SELLER. PERFECT TRANSACTION. WOULD DO BUSINESS AGAIN.
Good to hear on eBay. Not so good to hear in bed.
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he other night I talked to my old friend Zigmo Parchesi, the funniest man in the world. He told me he took his toddler son Max to his first movie. "Oh, yeah?" I asked. "What did you choose to scar him with?"
"Porn. We took him see some hardcore pornography. Told him we were going to show him how he was made. 'Not like that.... not like that... not like that... Yes! Like that!... No, no, not like that!... Not like that... not like that...'"
* * * *
A few years ago, Zigmo moved out to the edge of the woods in northern New Jersey. I asked him, "New Jersey? have you seen the jersey devil yet?" Without missing a beat, he said, "No, I haven't seen the jersey devil, but I have been to the mall."
* * * *
Update, 5/31/07
I almost left out the funniest part.
Zigmo had his first son about 2 years ago. When he was talking about naming the kid, he said they picked the first name "Maxwell" very easily. For the middle name they wanted something to honor their fathers, both of whose names start with the letter "J". So, "Maxwell J. Parchesi". They just had to decide what the J would stand for, that would honor their fathers.
Can you guess what they picked? Think about it for a minute. They geekiest among you may get it. The rest won't.
Starts with 'J'. Honors their fathers. Get it yet?
Jor-El.
As in, Superman's father. Jor-El of Krypton. From the comic book. Maxwell Jor-El Parchesi.
I said, "Jor-El?!?!?!" Zigmo said, "What? He was very wise."
"That's great," I said, "now all you need to do is make sure the none of his peers ever hear of this between, oh, the ages of 8 and 15."
"Oh, he'll have much worse stuff to be embarrassed about at that age than his name," he said. "Like, his father."
I asked if they were going to go with the hyphen or if he was going to wuss out. He said his wife originally pushed for no hyphen, spelling it "Jorel", but Zigmo talked her out of it. Maxwell Jor-El Parchesi.
You probably have to know Zigmo personally to know how lucky that kid is.
Now, kid #2 is on the way. I'm waiting with bated breath. I'm going to suggest "Clea" if it's a girl, "Dormammu" if it's a boy.
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he other night, as I was laying in bed, I suddenly saw my thoughts from the 'outside'... almost like when you look at your reflection in a mirror. It's like, some people say they have out of body experiences, where they can look down at their body from the ceiling of the hospital room. It was like that except instead of an out of body experience, it was an out of mind experience.
Isn't that weird?
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he other night I had a dream. This sort of androgynous figure, I think it was a young girl, was causing all sorts of violence. She desperately wanted to be free of linear time, to be able to travel and move around in it however she wanted, and was willing to hurt of or kill to be able to do it.
I asked what she hated so much about being stuck moving forward in time like the rest of us. She said she couldn't stand the constant stream of seconds, one after another after another after another after another... "It's like being covered with a million flies, picking at you." The scary thing was, for a second I knew what she meant. I felt it.
The blogger wishes to note that despite the implications of his choice of phrase above, it has always been his firm believe that we are not moving forward in time. We are standing still, and time is moving backwards around us.
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think it was Edison who said the thing about genius being composed of 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. But I feel fairly sure that what he left out, was, it's a particularly joyous sort of perspiring.
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 arlier this evening, my friend and I were at the store. I picked a bottle of fine belgian ale out of the cooler. The bottle was priced at $4.59. When I got to the register, my friend was in line ahead of me buying a slice of pound cake. Knowing a good idea when I saw one, I went and picked a slice of pound cake also. I did not know the cost of the slice of cake. When the cashier rang up the slice of pound cake and the bottle of ale, the total was $6.66.
Today's date was Friday the 13th of October.
Q: What was the brand of the ale that I was buying?
--
--
--
A. Duvel, of course.
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espite how solid they look, most coffins are designed to collapse once they have 100 lbs of pressure on them. This way they break before the grave is even finished being filled in, so the grounds crew doesn't have to run around later filling in occasional sinkholes around the cemetery.
My cousin learned this the unfortunate way, after cemetery staff made an awful mistake and he had to bribe a grave digger $100 to get my aunt's body moved from the wrong plot into the right one without an exhumation order or a lawsuit.
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'm in Seattle right now, stuck in a youth hostel, which is a truly ridiculous place to sit in a room crying. My grandfather had a massive stroke this morning. I just got the phone call. My mom is en route to Florida. According to my sister they're going to try to keep him alive until she gets there.
I need to do something. Might as well write about him.
I idolize my grandfather. I've never told him. How could I tell him something like that? This is a guy who, when you say "I love you, grandpa", answers with, "Swell." A lot of my mom's side of the family are like that, very straightforward people, not very emotionally demonstrative, which is a trait I dislike, but what are you gonna do.
When my grandmother was terminally ill, my mom told me about it on the phone, and before speaking to grandma & grandpa I said to her, "What am I gonna say to them?" I didn't realize it, but my grandfather had already gotten on the phone, and he said, "You're not gonna say anything. She's your grandmother and you love her very much and you're lucky you had her as long as you did." And that's it - he told me how it was, issue closed. My family is like that. My sister said she had once told him when she was first training to run a marathon. She asked him, "Aren't you proud of me?" - which took screwing up her nerve a bit to ask. He shrugged and said, "People do it." She was so pissed.
Strange, though, because although I've never seen him display much sensitivity, he was an artist for a lot of his life. We have a lot of paintings of his. When I was younger I left a one of those little rubber superballs at his house, and he returned it in the mail nailed onto the nose of a whittled seal. You have to understand, this was the sort of whimsy he never, ever displayed in person. He played the violin, also, when he was younger, but then he took it apart and couldn't put it back together again, which makes him like me in more ways than one.
Here's a story for you. It's real easy to tell you what my grandfather is like, because you may have seen him on TV. Did you ever watch an episode of "Seinfeld" with George Costanza's parents in it? I always said they were exactly like my grandparents. Then a few years ago someone mentioned "Seinfeld" at a family dinner, and someone else said, "I wonder how the Seinfelds are." Turns out they're friends of the family. I think my great-uncle grew up next door to Jerry Seinfeld's dad, or something. When Jerry was in high school, he used to come hang out at my family's factory - where my grandma and grandpa worked the front office. So, I'm not saying it's based directly on them personally, but it's the same circle of people. Certainly the same mentality. So any time I mention my grandfather, if you use George Costanza's dad for your mental picture, it's not a bad fit. So picture that character turning out to have been an avid painter, or carving a seal out of a block of wood to nail a superball to the nose of. It was weird.
One time he also made me sit and listen to big band records, because he didn't like the rock & roll I was listening to ("Life's Been Good" by Joe Walsh, incidentally.) I hated his music, and my grandmother yelled at him for making me listen to it... but, you know, he cared, which is something he rarely showed. I didn't even know he liked music.
By accident or design, I'm a bit of a "character", I've been told. My grandfather wasn't... isn't. He's straightforward. He's an old-school child of immigrants and worked his whole life. His dad, who lived until I was in college, worked on the floor of our family's factory until he was 90 years old. He lived to 97.
Christ, I don't know whether to write about him in the past or the present tense. If he survives this stroke, he's fucked. His mother, who also lived long enough for me to remember well, survived a stroke, and she was confined to a wheelchair and could barely speak.
You know what? This is sorrowful but good. He's been alive a very long time, he was slowing down, and he didn't like it.
Two years ago I was down there, and my grandfather was getting out of a chair, and he look up at me and said, "I'm old! I never thought I would be old. But look at me, I'm old." I remember thinking, I hope I'm doing as well at 90 as you are, grandpa.
He's getting laid, too, he has a little old septuagenarian girlfriend who his physical relationship with embarrasses everyone in the family except me. I think it's great. A few years ago we all went to a hotel for the holidays, and everybody arrived to check in at about the same time. Every we all went to our rooms to unpack, we all met down by the pool. After a few hours, somebody said, "Where's Morris and Molly? They never came down." "They must have been tired after unpacking. They must be taking a nap." "Oh, that must be it," someone else said, "they're taking a nap." I started to nod and looked at my sister, and she was shaking her head and mouthing the words at me, "DON'T SAY IT. DON'T SAY IT."
He refuses to stop driving, it's been a bone of contention between him and my mom for a couple of years now. He did something scary when I was down there last month, we were in the car waiting to make a left turn at a red light and as soon as there were no cars coming in the opposite direction he said, "OK, you can go." We pointed out that the light was still red and he confessed that he hadsn't been paying attention. But he won't stop. Until not too long ago he had a volunteer job - until recently he's always taken volunteer jobs - driving other old folks around to their doctors appointments. He lived in one of the areas hit by Hurricane Katrina. A wall got blown clean out of the building next to his, and he lived without phone or electricity for like 8 days or 12 days or something. My mom found someone who had a relative who lived not too far away but still had phone service, and was willing to go pay a call on grandpa to see how he was doing. "So," I asked when mom told me about it on the phone, "he's alright?" "Oh, sure, he found a restaurant with a generator, he was taking Molly out for the early bird special."
But last time I was there I asked when he does with his days and it was the first time he didn't have an interesting answer for me. He puttered around the house, played with the computer, that was about it. I privately wondered what the next few years of his life were going to be like, how a workaholic like him was going to deal with slowing down like this. If this stroke kills him it may be a mercy. God, I can't believe I just wrote that.
This is sudden. That's the amazing thing. At 90, if he dies today, it will be a sudden and untimely death. He wasn't a frail old man, slipping away. He was grandpa. He was like an oak tree. He was hale and not going to die any time soon.
Not long before my great-grandfather died, he told grandpa, "97 is too long to live. 80 would have been enough." I heard grandpa telling someone this not long afterwards. He seemed spooked.
For two people who were so different, we were a lot alike in a lot of strange ways, and I identified with him because of it. Besides the artistic leanings, we also had the same taste in food. If I liked something, I knew he'd like it, and vice-versa. Except for borscht. Everyone in my family likes borscht, I think it's gross. But other than that we like the same things: we liked our fries burned to a crisp, we liked spicy food. Like everyone else in my family, he had a taste for alcohol as well, although he was mysteriously content with just getting a buzz on. I don't remember ever seeing him noticeably drunk. I always respected that ability. Wish I had it.
I guess that's all, right now.
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y god, if I knew how my little weekend of excursions was going to turn out, I would have made it an event and invited you all along. My report:
PT. 1: Cold Wind To Valhalla
On Saturday at 1430 hours I procured a late model red Chevy Cavalier. One of those self-driving models so I would be free to hang out the windows and waggle my tongue at the hoi polloi as I sped past. Although finances dictated that this would not be an extended sojourn into the greater countryside I packed for several days as a precaution. Having grilled Rick and Mike B____ for information, I decided on a trip into Marin to locate a suitably pastoral swimming hole in which to ease away my troubles. On advice of Rick, I headed for Samuel P. Taylor State Park. Samuel P. Taylor is beautiful, but if you blink, you'll miss it. One road through, with one already-full campground, and every likely swimming hole packed with cars. And so it came to pass that I found myself on the other side, driving through the woods above Pt. Reyes National Seashore.
At about 5:30, I came to a stop at Sky Trail head, where I was offered a choice of the trail uphill, into the wooded hills, or downhill, into the lowlands and scrub. A few minutes into the scrub it became apparent that the trail was going to stick close to the road rather than dip down into the lovely gullies and valleys as expected, so up into the hills I went.
Sky Trail is stunningly beautiful. After passing a number of hikers between the trailhead and Sky Camp, a backcountry campground about a mile in, I found myself alone on the trail for very long stretches, catching gorgeous views of the ocean from on high. This is the first solitude I have found since being caught on the back playa in a sandstorm last Burning Man, and probably the first true solitude I have encountered anywhere in the Bay Area in the entire time I've lived here.
Sky Trail begins as a dirt road and over the course of a few miles narrows gradually to a footpath. Each bend in the path revealed more beauty and I simply could not turn back. I saw deer, flurrying glimpses of what I think were grouse, flowers that looked like orchids or lillies, a small black beetle, and almost no humans for miles. Every turn in the trail reveal a new, beautiful vista or forested glade, and I was compelled forwards until I was a little over 4 miles in, where the path rounds its final hill and begins its descent to the shore.
And then
the
sun
went
down
Pt. II: Hymn 43
I passed a sign that indicated I was 3 miles past Sky Camp, so I had covered about 5 miles in all, including jaunts up and down side trails just to check them out. The sun had begun to creep towards the horizon. The sign indicated that another mile further, Sky Trail met the Coast Trail far below, which, I knew from signs at the trail head, would meet the first path I had started down through the scrub at the bottom and then after a 3 mile uphill hike lead me back up to the car. Although Sky Trail had just entered new and even more beautiful terrain, I decided to turn back and walk the 4 miles over which I had just come, rather than walk at least one more mile down to the coast and three miles uphill back to the car plus the unknown length of the Coast Trail between the Sky Trail and the trail back up the road. I estimated I had enough time to return over the 4 miles I had just walked by last light, plus the trail over which I'd come had a lot of western exposure, so I'd be able to milk the sunset for all it was worth. I congratulated myself on making an intelligent decision and turned back.
Not intelligent enough, as it turned out. Having left at 5:30 pm to go hiking in shorts and a t-shirt and without a flashlight, any further attempts at intelligence were probably a moot point. So, I soon found myself walking alone through the woods in the dark wearing only my beachwear.
It's amazing how fast it gets dark in the woods. The sky was still light, but under the canopy things began to take on an ominous tone. The birds sang for quite a while longer than I expected into the approaching night, but eventually they stopped, and I heard the wee nocturnal beasties began to slither, pad, and prowl... the raccoon, I imagined, the fox, the mountain lion, the sasquatch, the giant carnivorous centipede, the mothman, and various other Mikevores looking for an easy meal of stupid hiker, all skulking just beyond visibility in the growing gloom. I passed gallows and a sign on which was written in blood "Beware" and large creatures circled above through the treetops on the edge of my vision. Yes, the mind does play tricks, doesn't it. Having just had the creepy experience of being harassed by an unseen, mewling mountain lion while scoping an event location up in the Berkeley Hills a few weeks ago, my senses were on edge.
I began jangling my keys as I walked. I began to get the doppleganger, which I had noticed earlier in the day, but which came on more strongly as my hearing grew more acute in the gloom. You know when you're walking through the woods, and with every step you take you hear an concurrent step 20 feet behind you, or just off the path behind the brush? Every time you stop, it stops, but hollering at it does no good and as soon as you are going again, there it goes. That's when you know you have to hurry up, because if you let the doppleganger catch up, it will overtake you and reach your car before you, at which point it will pull out a key identical to yours, and drive back to civilization and say rude things to all your friends and family - leaving you with a hell of a lot to explain when you get home, besides being stranded at the trailhead without a ride. This actually happened to a friend of mine.
It was a relief when I finally reached Sky Camp again - both to hear human voices, and to know I was only a little over a mile from the road. The last of twilight was fading into night, but the last stretch of trail finally widened to dirt road. I walked along in the darkness, jangling my keys the whole way, not in the least comforted by the familiar noise.
What security I experienced at some semblance of civilization passing Sky Camp soon dissipated. As I walked past an open meadow on the trailside, a shape sat in the dark and and watched me pass. Tough call - you could have told me it was a large bush, and I would have believed you, or you could have told me it was a sasquatch, and I would have believed you. The meadow was shaded maddeningly from the moonlight by the treeline, and in the gloom it was impossible to tell if the thing really did shift to observe me I crossed its field of vision. As long is it didn't get up and bolt towards me, I stayed on the close side of sheer panic and kept an even gait, swinging my keys. It sat on its haunches and I kept my ears open for massive footsteps from behind as I passed back into the trees. The darkness was silent.
Suddenly I heard a sinister whisper up ahead. I trained my eyes and saw movement on the slope right next to the trail. Brigands! At this point they surely were aware of my approach, but having nothing of value with me and presumably still being within shouting distance of the campers at Sky Camp I forged through. As I walked past them, the smell of jasmine incense filled the air... hippie brigands, sitting on the wooded hillside, burning incense and smoking pot as they no doubt waited for some hapless traveler to stumble into their crutches. I "put on my wings", a threatening manner of walking I learned when I used to have to pass through Times Square on my way to work at three in the morning, and they wisely let me pass without incident.
A last moment of danger came as I reached the portion of the trail near the road and was momentarily relieved by headlights glinting through the trees. Until I heard a car pass by a few minutes later on the other side of me, and realized that the brief discs of light I had seen flash to my left were in the opposite direction from the road. Whatever's eyes had flashed at me in the dark, it had allowed me to pass, perhaps preferring to gorge itself upon my doppleganger, which I at this point realized was no longer audible.
[TO BE CONTINUED...]
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ach snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty."
-Stanislaw J. Lec
I think "fuck 'em" are the most evil two words, the worst thought, in the english language.
Maybe they're not terribly evil, said once, by themselves. But no words are. Catastrophic evil is a compound phenomenon.
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 ront stoop of my apartment, day after Thanksgiving, 11/25/05
[As I was arriving home, my eccentric neighbor Ellie was just leaving her building.]
Ellie: [waves at me]
Me: Oh, hey, how ya doing?
Ellie: Good. How 'bout you?
Me: Good!
Ellie & me: [awkward pause while I hunt for something else to say.]
Ellie: Thank you!
Me: [pause] uh... you're welcome!
Ellie: Thanksgiving, and all.
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 h poem that spoke of a man who croaks
Were you not my own I would quote you
I would think that whoever composed you smokes dope
but I know it ain't so 'cause I wrote you.
Which poet is it, that constructed you, ode?
'Twas me! Though I scant deserve credit.
For a poem's not a poem 'less it stands on its own
through my 50 neurotic edits.
And, let's not forget the post-poem note!
Doleful lament upon poem just wrote
Pensively telling of muse that had flown
Though reader, perhaps, was just glad poem was done.
NOTE:
The poet wishes it to be known:
It's not his intent to promote or condone
the writing of poems about one's other poems.
Do as I say, not as I've done.
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’m a big believer in personal responsibility and people being accountable for their actions. That said, there’s only so long you can do something to people that they perceive as unjust before they lash out. It's as certain as a natural law.
It's true even if only they think you're acting unjustly to them. If people don’t understand that or don’t care, violence will continue.
This also allows both sides in a conflict to believe, with moral certainty, that the other side started it.
Complicating the issue is that violence as a means to an end, even as an attempt to end injustice, is bound up within the larger issue of what violence, for any reason, is: a forceful attempt to achieve one's goals when someone else's goals stand in the way. Sometimes this is completely successful against the very weak, but most often what violence primarily accomplishes is socially strengthening an opposing force's resolve. Why is that so hard to understand?
(Although I think that some people who appear not to understand that actually understand it very well.)
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ly Bar, Alamo Square, 9/2/05
[My eccentric neighbor Ellie walked into a bar where my friend Brendan and I were sitting at a table near the door and I called out to her.]
Me: [to Brendan and Ellie] Do you guys know each other? You both live in the neighborhood.
Brendan: No.
Ellie: I don't think so. You might have seen me around the neighborhood. I always walk around with a little dog. [pause.] ...I used to walk around with a little dog. He died three days ago.
Me: Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.
Ellie: Yeah, he was sick for a while. A few days ago I could tell, it was the day, so I put him out in the backyard and he curled up in the grass... I went out for a while, and when I got back... ...
Me: I'm really sorry.
Ellie: I put him in a bag in my freezer. [pause.] Well, I have his body in the freezer. I cut off his head.
Me: [stunned silence]
Brendan: WHAT?
Ellie: I cut off his head. [pause.] I'm gonna put the skull on my bicycle.
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have an idea about what happens after you die. I think when you go to heaven, St. Peter lets you in, they show you to a room. You take a sauna, somebody brings you a plate of cookies or a slice of cake. Then you take a nap.
Later on, when you're ready, they take you to a huge room, and everyone you've ever met is there. And everybody gets together and tells each other exactly what was going through their fucking heads. Then you all have a good laugh about it all. I see lots of back slapping and smiling eyes.
Wouldn't that be a great thing to look forward to?
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 ere's some words I've either coined or found useful to make sense out of what I've found in the Bay Area.
Counterconformist: someone who convinces themselves (and other counterconformists) that they are nonconformist by conforming to a set of fashions and sensibilities that run counter to those of the greater mainstream society. (cf. "Camp".) Counterconformists can be identified by their tendency to form countercultures, usually around real nonconformists, like snowflakes form around airborne dust particles.
Look for the genuine iconoclasts in your neighborhood. The counterconformists are the people clustered around them, who think that slavishly following a unique person's lead makes them unique too.
Punk: a particular counterconformist sensibility that originated with a handful of Sex Pistols fans who wore handkerchiefs on their heads at the very next show after guitarist Steve Jones wore a handkerchief on his head as a joke.
Tattoo: a permanent mark or image, similar to a cattle brand, that many counterconformists put on their skin so everyone can see what herd they're part of.
Parrot people: the counterconformists who are impossible to miss, with unnaturally bright multicolored hair, prominent tattoos, and shiny piercings (either visible, or hidden but loudly and often mentioned.) Parrot people believe that adhering to this uniform set of fashion conventions makes them more unique and individualist. Parrot people can typically be spotted by watching out for their garish thrift-store plumage.
Trivial Arts: the branch of the performing and visual arts that involves spending a fortune in time, effort, talent, and actual dollars to create something that doesn't matter. San Francisco has a thriving Trivial Art scene.
Margarine: my friend Zigmo, the funniest man alive, coined this one in high school to describe a certain sort of people we had in our class. I can't top his explanation of it: "The Margarine are... well... picture someone who stands out in a crowd. Now, just picture the crowd."
Blogorrhea: do I really need to explain this one? I'm sure I can't be the only person who's come up with this. The behavior it describes dates back centuries, to the earliest roots of the Information Revolution - I'm sure that back in the 1700's, when the ease and availability of the printing press made printing flyers a huge fad, and everybody had a leaflet to distribute expounding their views, somebody must have coined the term "flyerrhea".
Heteroflexible: I didn't coin this one, but boy has it come in handy since I hit the west coast. Heteroflexible behavior is characterized by someone's highly vocal, vehement insistence that they are homosexual, and by how totally not surprised you are when they then settle down into a long-term relationship with someone of the opposite sex. (Sometimes they practice for this beforehand by screwing members of the opposite sex all throughout their claimed 'homosexuality'.) This can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on which side of the coin you're on: I've been both the frustrated pre-switcheroo rejectee and the delighted beneficiary of the heteroflexible "Yes I'm gay, oops! now I'm not" about-face. As one formerly heteroflexible friend explained to me, after we finally succumbed to the silent battle of hormones that had raged any time we were in a room together throughout her years of loudly-proclaimed lesbianism: "Oh, I grew out of that." Sweet.
Bonus points if you're on the losing end of the coin toss, but you find out that while they weren't into you because they were 'gay', they were heterosexual enough to fuck your friend. And your boss. And your other friend.
OK, that was a low blow. Sorry.
Camp: word used to describe the creative output of people who know they don't have the talent to create good art, so they create bad art on purpose instead. I guess elevating lack of talent to an aesthetic does real well for some people's self-image. Camp is a big favorite among certain counterconformist types.
Camp has a second, related, meaning: Take something that is total crap, and add 20 years to give the people who were children when it came out time to develop a disposable income, and it's camp. You may not have any problem with this, but wait until it's 2015 and and all the hipsters are into the Billy Bass and "Achy Breaky Heart". Then tell me what you think.
GOAT: Girlfriend Onceupon A Time. For when calling them an "ex" just doesn't cover it. (Hey - I don't mind if they call me a BOAT.)
The "consolation prize": When someone beautiful tells you they "like you too much to sleep with you." Great.
California: the act of telling someone something false as if it's definite, without the least bit of regard for the truth, like it doesn't matter or something. "I knew we should have asked someone else how to get there, that guy totally california'd us on the directions." "We had plans for Saturday night, but she california'd me on them and I spent the whole night at home waxing my duck." The reason I live in San Francisco is to make sure I get my life quota of this.
Costume: a conjunction of the Early English words "conform" and "buffoon". I once saw a guy show up at an Edwin Gorey-themed costume party dressed as Tigger from Winnie The Pooh. (No joke, this really happened.) Behind his back, he was widely ridiculed by the other partygoers, because while he had excelled at the "buffoon" part of "costume", he had failed miserably at the "conform" part.
"Costumes" are often confused with "disguises", but the difference is that a good "disguise" fools people, thus risking the wearer not being recognized as conforming adequately, or as being a buffoon.
"Sweet Grapes": A phrase I use to describe the irrational, desperate desire to always believe that everything is just great. This term stems from an old fable about a fox who tried very hard to get some grapes that were hanging on a high branch above his head. The fox jumped and jumped and reached real hard, and just when he was ready to give up, he caught the branch and pulled the whole bunch of grapes down.
Feasting on the grapes, he said "Mmmmm! These grapes are absolutely delicious!"
A parrot flew down. "Try some of these grapes!" said the fox.
"Mmm-hmm! These grapes are great! I love them!" said the parrot.
Just then a skunk, who went to a lot of events with the fox and the parrot, walked over. "Hi," said the fox, "have some of the grapes I picked! They're amazing!"
"Thanks!" said the skunk. "What a good friend the fox is," he thought. His lips puckered slightly as he bit into a sour, too-hard grape.
"Wait a minute," said the skunk, "these grapes don't even taste that good."
"I think they're delicious!" said the parrot.
"I love them!" said the fox.
"Isn't it great to live in a city where we have such great grapes?" said the parrot.
"They're not even ripe yet. They're inedible." said the skunk. The fox and parrot then said the skunk was too negative, and stopped calling him.
Futility circuit: a series of bars that you wander all night, by yourself, from one to the next, as if you expect to find something. Where the fuck is everybody?
Futility Fridays: a weekly ritual, back when I used to spent every Friday night on the Futility Circuit.
Defensive drinking: the drinking you do at a bar when you know your best friend might show up arm in arm with your "lesbian" heteroflexible GOAT later on. A quick duck out to do a short Futility Circuit can spare you the embarrassment of them showing up and seeing you before you're completely drunk.
Window shopping: Admiring women in a bar who you're too chickenshit to go up and talk to. No shame in that, as long as you're honest with yourself about it. This is California, after all - free to be you 'n' me. [NOTE: It's not 'window shopping' if you're just holding off on approaching until you have a few Manhattans in you. That's called 'stupidity'.]
The author wishes it to be known that any resemblances to persons living or dead are completely intentional, and if any of those people have a problem with it, I suggest they grow a sense of humor. It's satire, ok? If the shoes fits, baby... it doesn't mean that I don't love you.
You should have seen it before I edited the really nasty stuff out.
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hat started as my latest blog post became much too long to inflict on my friends' "Friend" pages. Almost 6000 words. So I only put it up here: "The Light Shone on Me"
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h, croaking bloke beneath the moon
so like a toad, it makes me swoon
whence "ribbit!" rises like balloon
which euphony just fills me with delight
Beneath my window every evening,
the dish of night's picante seasoning,
the soft "ribbit!" I find so pleasing
commencing 'pon the fading of the light
Placidly it comes, the presence
with the evening's supple pleasance
a "ribbit!", mellow beyond measance
from someone 'neath my window, out of sight.
I know of those whose souls are burdened
who're prone to start and feel consterdened
when bloke near window they have heardened
but I've no need for being so uptight.
For tender is the twilight mood
whence blissful metaphors of food
from placid "ribbit!" are construed.
Such beauty, I donut connect with fright.
Tho' others shoo him from their windows
I hope wherever I go, him goes
whose "ribbit!" fills me like pimentos;
the sausage in the jumbalaya of night!
The author wishes it to be known that he had wanted to add more references to food, but unfortunately the muse had departed.
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fter a night of shooting on a small movie I was doing sound for, a bunch of us went to the Russian deli Veselka on 2nd Avenue in New York. It was peak hours - about 2:30 in the morning - and Veselka was packed, so we had to wait for a table on a line that trailed out the door.
As we waited on the sidewalk, halfway up the block a vagrant sat on a box and wailed. "I'm HUNNNNGRY. OOOOOOH, GOD. I'M SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO HUNNNNNNGRY." The guy sounded like if he didn't get some food in him immediately he was going to keel over and die. So Beth, the production manager, and I took some pity on him, and decided to get him something to eat. After a moment of strange negotiations we somehow agreed on splitting the cost of a bagel and cream cheese for him. We went in to the take-out counter to order such.
This being New York, it took 15 minutes to order and be served a bagel with cream cheese at 2 in the morning. By the time we got back outside with it, the vagrant wasn't there. We saw his box sitting alone on the sidewalk where he had been.
We cased the block up and down, looking into side alleys, so we could give him the bagel. He was nowhere to be found.
But while we were looking for him, I saw someone walk up and steal his box.
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http://www.mikeycosm.org
2/16/08 @ 11:41 pm 
plagiarized 
Doggerelistatical 
Evesdroperous 
nervous 
evil 
alone 
tired 
very pleased with myself 
fuschia 
3-beer buzz