There's Something About a Cigar

Effective January 1st 2007 one will no longer be able to smoke in bars, clubs, etc., anywhere in DC. No cigarettes, no cigars, and sad sad sadly, no pipes or hookas. I understand the argument. Really it's not such a bad one - secondhand smoke does suck. Especially if you're trying to eat. And I couldn't imagine how horrible it would be to get cancer if you weren't even intentionally taking the risks.

Then again, part of me just wants to say, grow a pair of balls you goddamn hippies.

I refer you to a selection from a play written by a young Jack Kerouac, which is the namesake for this blog:

"But, there's something about a cigar just the same. Like the time I walked out of a movie in New York and began to walk home along Broadway. I was cold, and shy of the world. Suddenly, I saw a cigar store. I said to myself, "Zagg, you're going to go in there and buy yourself a cigar. What for? I don't know. I'm glad I don't know. I don't want to know. I'll just buy one and smoke it." So I bought a cigar and lit it, and walked out and went right along the street, a new man. I looked at everyone with new interest, because the cigar gave me courage. It made me say, "Well hello there. How the hell are you, you little pavement cipher, you little nameless, faceless cinder of Wolfe? I'm Zagg and I've got a cigar and I don't give a damn for anything, nor do I reject anything. I think that you're an ugly puss, but I like you because you inhabit this earth with me and we're both in the same boat.""

You get the idea. There's something morbidly noble about smoking - about saying to the world that you know the consequences and fuck it, you choose wrongly on purpose and to hell with everything else.

Some thoughts on Justice

A couple of nights ago I walked into the middle of a conversation between a jubilate friend of mine and a vocal atheist. We were at the U-Singers/Symphony Christmas concert and my friend had asked this guy (who I guess he knew was an atheist from something else he'd seen him at) if he celebrated Christmas or just secular "Holiday Season" and how he felt about the traditional music that was being played. Anyway, by the time I walked in on the conversation he was philosophizing about the nature of God's Justice and how for God to be infinitely Just he could not be a loving God, because it would be injust for him to save any of us, etc. Therefore there is no God because an entity cannot logically be in contradiction with itself.

It's actually an old argument. Very old. Early humanists confronted this problem 700 years ago, and it was one of the complications during the Reformation. I think, but I could be completely wrong, that it was the early Reformation thinker (and genius actually, getting his Doctorate of Theology at 19) Phillip Melancthon who first said that "God cannot be infinitely just and infinitely merciful." Someone look it up so I don't look stupid. Anyway, it got me thinking about the nature of God's justice. There are two ways that I look at it. First, I'm inclined to think that maybe this guy was right - it isn't just of God to forgive us without punnishment. Therefore, maybe God isn't infinitely Just. Maybe we should just get over it and be grateful.

But that's not really satisfying is it? That would basically be to say that whatever we do doesn't matter - our actions have no consequences. Everything about that is wrong to me. If there are no consequences then it follows that there is no responsibility, that there is nothing expected of us, which means there is no growth and no possibility to be more than animals, creations, rather than children and honored servants of God. (Note that this is not a discussion of Free Will, or Grace vs. Works - I think wherever you stand on the Elect, you can agree that God expects certain things of you, even if already saved).

Here's an alternative view. Maybe our conception of Justice is misguided. We tend to think of it as putting things right. That in the end, the bad people will be punished while the good victims will get their due. But that sounds oddly like revenge, not like Christian doctrine. Yes, of course, "Vengenance is mine sayeth the Lord." but if we are all potential children of God, and he loves the most base villain, then vengenance is not what he's primarily after. If you pull back to get some perspective, maybe it's not just at all. After all what would you do if a Toddler kicked you in the shins? Is it just to kick him back with equal force? Of course not. What if there was some awful tragedy and two of your kids were fighting, maybe one was emotionally disturbed and killed his brother. You would be heartbroken, but could you possibly want the police to take your other child to be executed? Our very nature rebels against this, and tells us that this is wrong, that it doesn't make anything right or better, which is what Justice is really all about. So maybe it's not as contradictory as it seems to be both Just and Merciful - perhaps they're not so far apart.

Finally, a third but related view (I know I said 2 but I can't help myself). To the Christian view there cannot be a paradox. God created a world in which actions mattered, and we had to take the consequences. Unfortunately, that means we all deserve death. Whenever we treat a fellow human being as a tool, whenever we cheapen a fellow soul by making them into nothing but an animal (either in a small way - using someone for sex - or a large way - the holocaust) we deserve for God to treat us the same way. In other words to take away our eternal nature as well, aka death. So to satisfy Justice, to make sure that our actions still mattered, but that his desire for us to live with him as human beings forever (love) also be satisfied, he died himself to pay the price. Whether you believe or not, if you assume a Loving God, but also a Just God, as well as our own fairly easily corruptible natures, then it makes sense that events would play out in this way.

Civil War in Iraq

So the new debate about Iraq (new a relative term of course) seems to be whether or not the "country" is in a state of Civil War. The Bush Administration desperately wants for the conflict not to be characterized in this way, suspecting that the terminology could cause further political fallout and erode support for the war even more than has been done so far. Democrats looking for a way to pull out want to use the term for exactly the same reason - thinking that it will give support for the argument that it is no longer our conflict. Meanwhile, news organizations seem to be trying to give themselves a harder image by "telling it like it is."

My problem is that to me - it's not a civil war, it's far far worse. Here's an apt description of the conflict by CNN's Michael Ware (as quoted by Washington Post's Dan Froomkin):

"I mean, if this is not civil war, where there is, on average, 40 to 50 tortured, mutilated, executed bodies showing up on the capital streets each morning, where we have thousands of unaccounted for dead bodies mounting up every month, and where the list of those who have simply disappeared for the sake of the fact that they have the wrong name, a name that is either Sunni or Shia, so much so that we have people getting dual identity cards, where parents cannot send their children to school, because they have to cross a sectarian line, then, goodness, me, I don't want to see what a civil war looks like either if this isn't one."

Only the situation Mr. Ware is describing isn't Civil War at all. Civil War, as horrific as it can be, implies some kind of organized insurrection from an established government. This isn't civil war it's anarchy. It's the complete absence of the rule of law, replaced by the law of the sword (or in this case the AK-47). It's gang violence on a national scale.

I guess what my point is that debating semantics is useless. Whether we call it a Civil War or not doesn't change the fact that if we (or preferably the whole international community) don't stop the extremists from killing every last moderate left, there will be no Iraqi nation, in fact there won't be even a Sunni nation fighting a Shia nation, there will only be neighbors brutally murdering their neighbors - chaos and the end to any semblance of civilization.

Forget words, forget religion, forget politics. We fucked up big time by causing this - we can't pretend we're not involved, but neither can we say we've fixed it or that it hasn't gotten worse. It's not about Democrat or Republican, or Christian or Muslim, or who did what when. It's about the people who just want their kids to go to school, who just want to work and laugh and live getting the shit kicked out of them and even if the level of violence it's reached hadn't been our fault, we would still have a responsibility as a witness to stop it from happening.

Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. -- John Donne

Happy but not Content

I've come to realize that I am, whatever momentary storm clouds of despair may float across my subconscious, incredibly and stupidly happy. I have so many things in this life to be happy about. I've managed to come through the public educational system virtually unscathed, with the ability to at least fool myself into believing that I can think for myself. Opportunities abound for me, and my future actually looks like it might have promise - I may never have the chance to do anything great, but I will have ample chances to do something good, maybe even lasting. I've had money enough to experience life without obsessing about survival, yet not enough to take away a sense of the value of a hard day's work.

There are many things on this earth that I honestly love. There are great roaring fires in the family hearth that keep away the bitterness of a winter night. There is good food to be eaten, good tobacco to fill my pipe, strong drink to fill my cup. There is wind in the trees that sounds like poetry, and poetry when read that sounds like music, and music that sounds like hope, or rage, or sadness, or love, or peace, or passion. There is Shakespeare, and Milton, Coleridge and Wordsworth, T.S. Elliott and Robert Frost. There is Poe, Joyce, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Kerouac, Tolkien and Lewis, and a million others. Pages and pages of dreams that remind us how much more there is beyond our own petty little lives. There is a smile from a beautiful stranger, the shared pleasure of a beaming child, the love of a loyal dog with his head resting across your lap.

There are memories: of walks under the moon, of football games played or watched, of little league, of my own drunken (figurative or literal) stupidity, of girls I've kissed and those I wish I had, of songs sung, dances danced, of life...lived.

And I am especially happy for those people - friends and family alike - who intrude on my solitude, who break me away from myself and my own egomania. People who, no matter how much you despise them from moment to moment, inspire you to love fiercely because they accept you for yourself even when you don't know who or what that is. People who somehow help you towards becoming the person you think you should become.

Here's the thing though. All these things make me happy because they remind me of home - and I don't mean Lexington, VA. I mean Home. I mean that place from which we've all been expelled or exiled, or just lost. You can call it whatever you want - Heaven, Never Never Land, the place between awake and asleep where you can still remember dreaming, The Far Country.
So I know that I will never always be happy. I know that things can go wrong for me - that my good life could end. But even when I am most satisfied, I know I will never be completely content. I can surround myself with all those things that remind me of home, but they will never be home. At my happiest there is that hunger, that pit of longing and desire for something that I know is so much better - like when you look at pictures of someone you've loved and lost. You love the picture, and couldn't part with it - but in some ways it actually makes the pain far worse. So, I'll keep searching for the hidden country, the door to the lost city, the key to a forgotten language, the leaf, the stone, the door. One day, God willing, I'll make my way back to Ithaca and the things I love then won't fill me with biting sadness, but with simple, happy, fierce content.

Look Homeward Angel

The Death of Benjamin Gant

The rattling in the wasted body, which seemed for hours to have given over to death all of life that is worth saving, had now ceased. The body appeared to grow ridid before them. Slowly, after a moment, Eliza withdrew her hands. But suddenly, marvellously, as if his resurrection and rebith had come upon him, Ben drew upon the air in a long and powerful respiration; his gray eyes opened. Filled with a terrible vision of all life in the one moment, he seemed to rise forward bodilessly from his pillows without support - a flame, a light, a glory - joined at length in death to the dark spirit who had brooded upon each footstep of his lonely adventure on earth; and, casting the fierce sword of his glance with utter and final comprehension upon the room haunted with its gray pageantry of cheap loves and dull consciences and on all those uncertain mummers of waste and confusion fading now from the bright window of his eyes, he passed instantly, scornful and unafraid, as he had lived, into the shades of death.

We can believe in the nothingness of life, we can believe in the nothingness of death and of life after death - but who can belive in the nothingness of Ben? Life Apollo, who did his penance to the high god in the sad house of King Admetus, he came, a god with broken feet, into the gray hovel of this world. And he lived here a stranger, trying to recapture the music of the lost world, trying to recall the great forgotten language, the lost faces, the stone, the leaf, the door.

O Artemidorus, farewell!

Carnifex

For those who may be interested, I've started writing a story, slowly, on another blog. It's fantasy story and mostly has evolved from the days when my brother and I were obsessed with fantasy books, yet couldn't stand them at the same time because they were so poorly written. We've always thought that we could essentially shit out books that would be better than the...well shit that's out there. So in that spirit you can feel free to read along as we write Carnifex (a horrible title that'll probably change - it means, among other things, executioner in Latin).

A word of warning - most of the posts for that story are, like this blog, largely unedited. While that means you get to see my unadulterated, raw, natural writing talent, it also means you get to see my raw, natural writing talent if you know what I mean. I'm doing this piecemeal when I have time and mostly as a writing exercise rather than as anything too serious. It is fantasy after all. And for once, I'm not trying to pretend to be greater than I am. This is run of the mill adventure type fantasy - not Tolkien.

Feel free to leave comments of approval, disdain, hatred, love, scorn, pity - etc. You can even suggest plot turns if you'd like, but I can't promise I'll listen to you.

Evangelical Agendas

In a story by washingtonpost.com today prominant Evangelicals, both liberal (relatively speaking of course) and conservatives joined in announcing a broader agenda including the environment, poverty, and even taking action to intervene in Darfur. First, I think this is great news. It's nice that even conservatives are finally admitting that there are more issues in the Bible than Homosexualtiy and Abortion. I'd love to see them go further and drop all political action on those two issues, but still, it's a welcome change.

The move hasn't been without it's opponents however. Just read this piece of the article, quoting the Rev. Michael Haseltine.

"I definitely don't like the widening of the agenda, because it muddies the water. Be good stewards of the environment? Sure, but how? These tree-huggers and anti-hunters think it's terrible to kill animals. Oppose poverty? Sure, but what's the best way to do it? We can't solve everybody's problems for them," he said. "Family and life issues -- abortion, sexuality -- they're much more clear from the biblical standpoint."

I think, Reverend, that if you read the Bible, nothing comes across quite as clear as the need to care for the poor. There's no muddying there. Not to mention the fact that, yes, as christians we should do everything we possibly can to solve other people's problems for them. Why not? It's what I believe Jesus did for me, and what you claim to believe. I'm not saying it's easy and I'm not even saying it's possible in this world, I'm just saying it's a noble goal. Far nobler a task for a Christian to undertake than thinly disguised gay bashing. It's positive rather than negative. Helping people rather than trying to force legislation that restricts them.

Fighting for legislation to "protect" traditional family values isn't the hard thing, it's the easy thing. It's getting off the hard road onto the grass in Pilgrim's Progress because they seem to go side by side. As Christians we're called to do the hard thing, because the hard thing was done for us.

Collaborative Work

I've discovered something about myself - well part of it I've known for a very long time. I have no self-discipline. I mean none. I do what I like, but I can't stop myself from doing it to excess. Or I can't make myself do something that's hard, even if I do like it. For example - I want to be in shape, but it's extremely rare that I can make myself get off my ass and do any serious exercising. So when I do, I feel so accomplished that I convince myself not to do it again for a week.

What I'm really talking about is writing though. I love to write. I really do. I have so many stories that I want to tell: simple stories, complex stories, rants about politics or religion (see below), didactic thoughts on the human condition, etc. Only it's a hard thing to do. Confronted with a blank page (or far worse, a blank computer screen) I panic and give in to one of my easier excesses (see below).

But the new thing that I've found is that I can steal discipline from other people. I'm like a discipline vampire, sucking creativity and drive from those more ambitious than myself. Or even if they aren't - somehow my sense of responsibility makes up the difference. If I feel that someone is depending on me, I work hard not to let them down.

Lately the Jubilate Basses have been working on our Act for Variety Show (saturday 3-5 at University Baptist Church). Basically the writing has come from Dan, Zach, Tad, and I (with some help last night by Joseph) sitting in the old apartment shooting ideas and lines back and forth. Even when it's been especially hard, I love it. I really enjoy working in that kind of environment, and the hours just slip past. Not only does it produce quality work (and it's not always easy to bring the funny) but we actually get it done. By myself I can't make myself work for more than 20 minutes so nothing ever finishes. Maybe I'm destined to work on a sitcom or some other TV show where most of the writing is collaborative.

Only...I still don't want to share the credit.

Tridentine Mass

So the Pope is apparently about to make it easier for Catholics to worship like they did in the old days - with the priest speaking purely in latin to the altar rather than the parishioners (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/12/AR2006101201563.html?referrer=email). First, not being Catholic, I don't really care too much. It's not like either my father or Tom Leland are going to start preaching in Latin. And second, I'm not saying that Latin mass can't be beautiful - I'm sure it can be very moving. Also, to be fair, the Pope is not saying that everyone must start speaking latin, he's only making it easier to do so.

Still, it seems like a bad idea in general to me. Services in English can be beautiful as well, and you know what's going on. Most Latin masses throughout history consisted of the priest mumbling to the altar in psuedo-latin. He could be saying anything he wanted. It's not like Latin is really the holiest of languages. He could easily just quote Roman graffiti:

Quisquis amat. veniat. Veneri volo frangere costas
fustibus et lumbos debilitare deae.
Si potest illa mihi tenerum pertundere pectus
quit ego non possim caput illae frangere fuste?

Whoever loves, go to hell. I want to break Venus's ribs
with a club and deform her hips.
If she can break my tender heart
why can't I hit her over the head?

How many people would really know the difference? I'm not anti-Catholic by any means - I know a number of devout Catholics whom I respect greatly (sounds like I'm saying I've got a black friend doesn't it?). Neither do I have illusions about protestantism. I just disagree more with the Catholic system in place, not to mention the insistance that it not be questioned. I think it makes it easy to assume that what's important isn't belief, but just showing up.

The Everlasting Man

I've been reading G.K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man over the past couple of weeks (it's taking me so long becuase I read it online when I'm at work, a paragraph here and there). If you haven't read any Chesterton, you should, if only to see that, yes, there are Christians (even Catholics) who use their brains. These days it's easy to find examples of so called Christians unwilling to use the reason that God gave them - worshipping not God but some psychotic bastard who hates the majority of his creations and doesn't believe in the natural workings of the world that he created and controls.

In the latest chapter I read he makes a very compelling argument for the divinity of christ, or rather, not for the divinity, but for the honest consideration of that divinity. There is a popular idea - popular in Chesterton's day as much as in ours - that the historical Jesus was a very learned and wise Jewish rabbi. He was a teacher, a wise man, even a prophet. The view stems from two things, both are rational assumptions. First, it is highly unlikely that Jesus the man, this historical Jesus as he is often referred to, did not actually exist. To say otherwise is simply ludicrous. It's to argue that shepherds and fishermen were able to dupe the world with a vast conspiracy that would have little point if they didn't believe it in the first place. In fact, it would have been a suicidal conspiracy - leading them largely to violent death at the hands of authorities or insane mobs, and certainly not leading them to riches and glory. This is like saying that the government caused 9/11 so that they could invade Iraq. As much as certain members may be capitalizing off tragedy, to say that there was a conspiracy involving hundreds of high level officials and no legitimate reporter has ever found out is basically retarded.

The second view of Jesus the teacher comes from reading the gospel. Anyone can see that the man must have been intelligent, as well as wise well beyond his time. The greatest atheist, if he honestly approaches it, cannot read the Parable of the Prodigal Son without thinking at the least - "Here was a great moral reformer." The longevity of his teachings elevates him far above the average philosopher and numbers him among the greats. His teachings are without exception, to my mind, beyond his own time and place: universally applicable. To love your enemy was as near an impossible thing but a uniquely insightful thing then as it is now. The greatest intellectual could not but look at his apparently paradoxical words about dividing with the sword and delight in the subtlty of his thought. As Chesterton points out, Jesus was a man of peace who knew full well that a good peace was better than a good war, but a bad peace infinitely worse. There is universal wisdom here.

That being said, I can agree with the popular view. However, those wanting to claim Jesus as great moral thinker run into a problem. He claimed, quite clearly, that he was the Son of God. This isn't the claim of a great man, this is the claim of a small man who might very likely be insane. One could never imagine a true thinker, whatever his pride, actually claiming to be the Almighty. That kind of egomania is the province of small minded men, unable or unwilling to see how they are men like everyone else. It is easy to discount, because it does not seem logical at all for a man to actually be the Son of God. If one approached the Gospels as someone who had never heard the name Jesus before, one couldn't discount it however. It would, in fact, be incredibly shocking. The speaker of the Sermon on the Mount - preaching wisdom, tolerance, love and moderation - suddenly makes the absurd and insane claim that he's God. There is a serious paradox here that can't be easily ignored.

The obvious option is to say that Jesus never said it. His followers must have added that bit later on. After all the Gospels were written some time after the fact. Only if that's true, and though I personally don't believe it to be true I'm willing to admit that in fact it could be, then it is the only mistake like it that has ever been made. Muslims don't confuse Mohammed with God, Jews don't confuse Moses with God, no one ever thought Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle were God. If it is indeed an error then it is a unique one. If it is a coverup written as it was after the fact, but when there were those who had lived through the events covered, it is an impressive conspiracy. Logic dictates that that is incredibly unlikely. How could one keep a stranglehold on all those who knew the truth?

If one accepts that Jesus was a great moral reformer, logically one must at least consider the possibility that he was telling the truth.

Womenfolk

Any girls that still read, maybe you can explain something to me. How is it that you can kick a guy right in the nuts (metaphorically speaking...or not) and then manage to convince him that no in fact, against all logic and the laws of physics, he managed to kick himself in the nuts. And he should be sorry to you for it.

...

That sounds bitter doesn't it? Don't worry I'm not bitter, I'm just trying to be funny. As someone recently pointed out to me, I think I'm funny, but I'm really not. I think I'm smart, but I'm really not. I think I'm clever, but I'm really not. I even think I'm sad and mysterious, but I'm really really not that. I'm just another asshole with a typewriter who thinks too much and maybe drinks too much but doesn't have the will or ambition to act. And there's nothing either inspiring or depressing about that.

Nutcracker

Not that anyone's reading anymore, but I'm bored at work and I found this especially funny. Checking my email I received the following from "Lizabeth":

"Do you want to fuck her until she is speechless?Generik Viagra will make your dirty fantasies come true.Erection with Generik Viagra is superhuman.With our Generik Viagra you can crack nuts with your penis."

Crack nuts with my penis? Who wants to crack nuts with their penis? Do people sit around thinking, damn if only my penis were harder, I wouldn't have to crack all these nuts by hand, I could do it by penis? How would that even work? And wouldn't it be painful?

I just think - some living human being must have written this - and probably spread his horrific genes around the planet. And I can't even afford cable.

A Life Plan

Today I sat down to make a plan for my life but this is all I could come up with.















Just kidding! There's no way I'd really make it 60 years. Actually I stole this from a great webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. You should check it out.

A Life Well Lived

Just remember kids: "Herpetic sores are just the body's braile for a life well-lived!"

O Lost!

Feeling that old ache come on him he grabbed some sad music, a beer, and his last cigar and went out on the porch to think. This what he did when that part of him that was empty, that ravenous lion started eating him from the inside out, and it helped, if only a little. He drank, he smoked, and he let the beast have its way with him. In an alcoholic haze he would dream of the day when it would all be over. Of the day when the beast was spent and he could think of other things – of love and peace and happiness. He wondered if that's what he really wanted. He knew he should be happy now. He knew that God would want him to be happy now, but what could he do?

O waste of loss, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this most weary unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost land-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When? --Thomas Wolfe

When he felt the first surges of his drunkenness and the heady spin of the tobacco coiling in his stomach he thought, I could do something about it. He picked up the phone.

He called Julia first, even though he knew that was a mistake. She was reading a romance novel. He hung up on her. He called Emily next, remembering their night under the stars. “Do you ever dream in poetry?” he asked her. “Do you ever curse the sun so you can howl at the moon? Do you long for something that cannot be touched, heard or seen? That can only be tasted? Do you ever want to chase dreams? Are you sick to death because you've lost your way and you know you can never find home again, but only shadows, shadows, damned shadows? Have you ever ruined, murdered, something you loved because you wanted it so much? Have you ever stifled a lover's torch so that you could see the stars, only to find yourself in darkness?”

She didn't understand, asking “Are you drunk?” He hung up.

He called Cristina - Cristina with a slavic soul - but when she answered he didn't say anything. She was broken too, but she was too young. She was broken but not lost. She couldn't understand a man who reveled in the blackness, who drew the horror of the dark around him like a warm blanket, and cried because it was lion's skin and it's claws sank deep. He hung up.

In winter, he went down joyously into the dark howling wind, leaning his weight upon its advancing wall as it swept up a hill; and when in early Spring the small cold rain fell from the reeking sky he was content. He was alone.

He put down the phone, knowing that they couldn't help him. They weren't what he wanted – they were reflected smoke, diversions, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

He drank, and smoked, and listened to sad music, and thought dark thoughts. And it helped, if only a little.

Blogging

Blogging, much like idealistic versions of either Communism or Capitalism, is a great idea. In a splintered world, the internet provides a medium that is truly free from constraint - a great forum for the sharing of intellectual, cultural, spiritual, and economic ideas. A place of debate where all can discuss freely, without fear of reprecussion. Hundreds of thousands of people have taken this idea and run with it, writing blogs from around the world - providing real personal news and insight, giving people the chance to truly understand other human beings, not just through a medium that pretends objectivity, but by being able to put themselves in another person's shoes, to see the world how they see it, even if just for a while.

You would think, with millions of blogs being posted everyday, that something, SOMETHING, would be worth my time to fucking read. But everything on the internet is tainted. Everything degenerates into name calling. The great discussion of ideas turns into a racist brawl, with half the people fighting just accusing everyone else of being racist.

To quote my betters:
"Holden: If the buzz is any indicator, that movie's gonna make some huge bank.
Jay: What buzz?
Holden: The Internet buzz.
Jay: What the fuck is the Internet?
Holden: The Internet is a communication tool used the world over where people can come together to bitch about movies and share pornography with one another."

Seriously. And that pretty much goes for democracy in general. I'm not saying it's not better than the alternatives, I'm just saying it pretty much sucks that people take their freedom and destroy it with their own hands. Shit, we deserve the government we have.

Serial Fiction

So since I started work (all of 3 days ago) I haven't gotten anything else done. Yes, I know my track record wasn't that great before, but I really thought that working would structure my day and therefore make me more productive with the few hours that I did have. I was wrong. Mostly I've wasted them watching tv. I certainly haven't done any writing...I've found it diffcult even to reply to emails. I've got so little motivation, and I can't even think of any good ideas. So, in order to combat the brain killing lethargy, I've taken some steps. First, I've ordered a banjo. Perhaps a strange direction to take, but I like to come at problems sideways so they don't see it coming. Hopefully it'll get here soon - and it'll be something that I can play with for an hour or so which won't kill my soul.

The second thing I was thinking of doing was an idea I discussed with Jack a few weeks ago. We both are really into the webcomic Something Positive by Randy Milholland and I've wanted to do something like it for a long time. Unfortunately, neither one of us can draw, and the (rather amazing) artist that we know will be a senior and VCU and its going to be hard enough to get him to work on the real comic we're doing. (It's pretty bad ass actually - we'll definitely let everyone know when its finished). Anyway, the idea we struck on was that we'd collectively write a fiction version of the comic we wanted to do. There's alot of potential in serial fiction and I think you could do some creative things with different styles (or even different forms...one week fiction the next a play script, or pictures added in, sound files maybe). We need to sit down and hash out some characters and some general plot structure, but potentially this could come out weekly. It would definitely get me writing in general, which is what I need to do. The more writing I do generally, the more I want to do it, and the more creative motivation I have.

So anyway...if anyone still reads this (I know a certain someone bored at work probably will) then let me know what you think. Maybe I'll make you a character, and you can be immortalized in fiction that few people will ever read. On the plus side, if we can really do this, my brother will tell his friends about it, and he has more friends than I do. We could get a readership of almost 10! If we're lucky: cross your fingers.

Sarcasm and The Human Condition

A friend recently told me that I'm too sarcastic with her. I feel bad if I hurt her feelings, but even while apologizing I couldn't help but laugh. Is there something wrong with me? Am I really nothing but post-modernist mockery? I often poke fun at these popular books that are all clever and no substance, but am I pointing out the faults in them I see in myself? Or maybe I'm legitimately a funny guy and she needs to get over herself...probably not.

I was going to write something like this: "Looking at the human condition one can either laugh or cry...I choose laughter." But I couldn't get through it. It's just too damn funny.

In which nothing is decided and nothing goes on...

I'd really like to write something, but, man, I don't even know where to start. I could go with more tales of drunken revelry (something involving me running outside at 8:00 in the morning with a sabre and an empty bottle of 151 and shouting all piratey at pedestrians) but that's old hat.

So, I'm graduating college, as most of you who would read this probably already know. I hate to be cliched but I'm sitting here asking myself, "What the fuck am I going to do now?" Get a job, they say. Get married, they say. To which I sarcastically reply, in quotes like any good sarcastician, "We're a generation of men raised by women...," etc. (If you don't know the rest you haven't seen Fight Club nearly enough.) I always bitch when it gets close to closing time. At the end of high school I beat my chest and tore my beard saying, "What a damned cruel system that makes us leave our bosom companions behind, and so forth and so on!" But I didn't really enjoy high school that much. There are a few moments that I can point to and say that there! That is something! Whether I enjoyed that moment or not at least I can say I was alive. But there are only a few really. Most of it is just a mesh of nonsense.

The same is really true of college. I feel the urge in me to hate the leaving of it, for all the great times that I had. I think maybe I just want to be sad because then I seem like I've done something of such worth that it breaks your heart never to do it again. But really, though again, I can point to some fantastic moments, I've squandered these years. How often did I waste time when I could have been doing something important? If not important at least something to remember?

Well, fuck. What's the point of living with regret? Isn't that what I'm trying to say? That I shouldn't be sad over it? Maybe I should be optimistic about the future - even a future as murky as mine. What's the point of living if it isn't an adventure?

That didn't really fit. I'm gonna stop writing now. Why, you ask, would he post something if didn't finish it, why wouldn't he just erase it or save it for later? Why does anyone actually post anything for others to read? It's all just bullshit half truths and boldfaced lies. Its the love of spectacle, I think. Pechorin-like we are conscious of our roles on the stage and we long for an audience.

I don't know. I can't think of the last time I had an answer for anything.

A Story Involving Nudity, and the Police

So. Tuesday night I'm at Jamie's for beer pong. If you didn't know, every Tuesday Zach and I trek over to his place on 14th street to play in the league he and his roommates run. As a side note, we started out really strong before Zach lost his shot. It's cool, we all lose our shots sometime, but he had been hitting pretty consistently. I'm not bad but I'm not good enough to carry the team and so the last few weeks have been rough. We're coming back for the tournament, though. Yesterday Zachy did pretty well, so I think maybe he's hunted it out. I have high hopes.

Anyway, after beer pong most people usually head out to bars, but we hung around and played some flip cup. I once read that beer pong is considered a binge drinking game. If anything its the opposite. It's what you do when you need to slow down. Flip cup, on the other hand, is most definitely a binge-drinking game. Still, I don't think it really compares to an hour long game of Moose which followed.

Needless to say, we were feeling pretty good by the end. So what do we do? We do what every self-respecting UVA student does when the weather's nice and he's got alcohol humming through his veins. We went streaking. Or sort of.

We made it to the Lawn without too much trouble, (but I seem to remember tripping over a guy with crutches? Who knows?) but when we got there a certain someone...cough cough Jamie cough cough...decided he wasn't gonna do it. While the girls were trying to convince him, I got the urge. You know, that drunken urge that drives you to just walk out of a room even though no one comes with you - the one that leads you to dirty strip clubs, or to jump off a roof into a shallow swimming pool. That one. So I just take my clothes off and take off down the lawn.

Its kind of further than you think. In daylight, with your clothes on, it doesn't seem like that far to Homer's poetic (and possible pediphilic - that statue is weird man) ass. Naked in the dark its an eternity. Still, I was full of liquid courage so the length didn't bother me. I was just hitting my stride when I was spotlighted.

I figured it was some jackass who lived there so I kept running until I heard, "Put your clothes back on and get back up there!" in a gruff, undeniably policeman voice. I wanted to argue. "But it's a tradition man!"

"It's also against the law."

I'd been running with my boxers in hand, just in case, but I lost my grip and this point and lost them somewhere in the grass.

Stalling, I said, "It's cool man! It's cool!" Brilliant, I know. I bent over in the grass frantically searching. Finally I found them and hastily threw them on, backwards. I didn't stop to fix them, but took off back towards the rotunda, passing a naked Zach on the way. When I got back to my clothes I quickly threw them on. Rachel, Meghan, and Jamie had split of course. Apparently Jamie thought we got arrested.

The cop came up to us, nodded, and said, "How's it going?" walking on. It was a fun night.