the great what if

it might be worth all the chaos of christmas. the traffic. the noise. the bustle and hustle. maybe.

it might be worth all of that for christmas day. not for the presents or the family or the being in your pjs and slippers but for the stores being closed.

i love how the stores are closed and not many people are on the roads.

the happiest thoughts go through everyone's head: what if it was like this all the time? what if so many people did not exist anymore? i wonder what kind of event would cause that? i wonder how much i would hold my breath hope not to die and pray pray pray to survive so i could live in a world like this.

the great what if is "what if some great genocide swept through and preserved only some, or only me, or none at all?"

this is what everyone thinks as they sit at a light that's red for no reason other than the other light is green. you think about how much authority that light has over you. how if a cop saw you blow it he'd give you a ticket. or maybe he wouldn't because he too knows it's red for a bullshit reason. or maybe he'd give you a ticket for your expired registration and ask if you're drunk because he knows it's red for a bullshit reason but even if the light's red for a bullshit reason you still have to stop at it faggot.

anyways... what if there were just less people? less traffic? shorter lines at the grocery store?

what if i was the last person on earth and i got to walk around in everybody's house? i would get to know all their dirty secrets besides the ones that are only in their head and most people aren't smart enough for dirty secrets that are only in their head. (god knows i'm not. i have a blog for fucks sake) i could go through their gun collections, try on their clothes, drive their cars, i could see how everyone else lives. i would need no conversations and fake friendships to infiltrate their inner sanctums and watch their homemade pornos. i would need to buy no drinks to wear my mail-lady's underwear on my head. i could empty out an inground swimming pool just to burn things.

i've already decided how i'm going to live after the event.

i'm going to live in the movie theater. i will hollow out all the theaters that i don't need but i'll keep a few for church.

i'm gonna be a priest! maybe an elder. whatever you call it, i'm gonna be one of those. i will hear confession and give people the hope they can no longer find. i will have a congregation that will meet at our leisure and we will spend our time fortifying the theater in preparation for attack.

there will be a very large contingent of people who believe the event to be god's work and for whatever reason the survivors were chosen to survive by god. the muslims will rejoice for peace coming to earth. the jews will see that god's chosen people come from all faiths. the christians will say "god has chosen us to survive so we can band together and exterminate those who do not believe The Truth." This work is god's work and they will band together and travel the land scouring it for nonbelievers or misbelievers or anyone who does not know and accept The Truth.

They will come for us and we will have to hold them off. We will train because we must. We will learn discipline not for the physical rhetoric or maintenance but because our survival depends on it. We will make crude weapons out of things we have scoured but we know what they are coming with and they are coming with weapons made of steel and hate once issued by armies.

We know we may die. We know some may defect but we will fight The Truth with the truth and the honesty of our hands and on that day the impure will of unrighteous marauders and purveyors of false hope will meet with honesty ambition and noble purpose.

All of us of the movie theater congregation die that day.

The marauders move on and do the same to each city they touch and ultimately eradicate their enemies until they become their own enemies and they eradicate themselves.

The hopes we cherished and toiled to preserve will burn and die only to haunt the children of our enemies.

Because good people do good things and bad people do bad things. Bad people do bad things to good people and that's how and why bad things happen to good people.

and that's what if.

trust me i play the guitar

and i'm big enough to hide behind

dear my son of the future

son i didn't vote for the first black president, i never smoked a cigarette, and i never went outside for a meteor shower. unfortunately i'm still your dad and you're still my kid so get to your fucking room and build you some bunkbeds because godwilling you're getting a baby brother 9 months and 15 minutes from now.

YES YOU JUDGE THEM DIFFERENTLY WHICH IS WHY THIS DEBATE IS LINGUISTICALLY FLAWED AND INCOHERENT

or something.

by saying the book or movie is "better" you're really just commenting on which one you "liked" better. or maybe you take it a step further and compare the unquantifiable amount of joy the book gave you compared to other books with the unquantifiable amount of joy the movie gave you compared to other movies. in either case your criteria is undoubtedly vague and aside from theme and dialogue very few parallels can exist between the merits of a book and the merits of a movie.

a movie based off a book can only be one person's interpretation.

like... why can't i get a cool harry potter tattoo? because there are no pictures of harry potter, or hogwarts, or anything from the book that isn't one person's interpretation. there is no absolute potter. maybe the movie posters? a picture from the first edition? a sketch from rowling's notebook? all interpretations. I am the one who decides how hot or not hermione or cho chang is. which is true for movies, but not in the same way.

shakespeaere gets retold. beckett gets retold. star wars is fucking done. i might enjoy one person's romeo over another's but i always have to bear mark hamil.

a good book lets you fill in the blanks and make it into something enjoyable because nobody's gonna keep reading a book they hate unless it's for college, and schoolacademia is where good fiction retires, not where it is born or lives.

this argument is like saying what is better, chocolate chip cookies, or my grandma's chocolate chip cookies.

a note on sunday

i think the way i do because public opinion is generally and at best an approximation of the truth without being the truth. i know i'm one of the good guys because my version of truth strives to be all-encompassing knowing it can never be whereas others maintain their versions are all-encompassing despite their failure to account for evidence and insights whether scientific, philosophical, or religious.

i can't see the sun anymore

all i have are pictures and documentaries
stories from old people told on mesh caps with pins
miniserieses and docudramae
i've heard...
i've heard...
i've heard...
i've heard so much i've stopped listening
i've grown bigger eyes with larger pupils starved for light
my skin has gone pale
and this lobby is starting to look like a living room
this hotel, a home

combing my thoughts and settling the unsettled

maybe i have two cowlicks to represent some of the thoughts in my head that never lay right. one is right at the top of my head and the other is some weird whirlpooly thing on the left side of my neck. my left.

i should really be getting to work on the next great american novel but i have better things to do. kinda. i've been pretty happy lately just getting high and eating pizza and making food etc etc. you know the life i lead. it's like those guys in those movies who live like this until they find a girl or get some calling to go out and DO and not simply BE. well this is being without doing because there is nothing to be done. because there are deep woods outside the cabin that i dare not venture into. i don't want to build widgets or write about widgets or go check the back to see if we got in those brown rice widgets that some asshole can't live without.

that asshole, he's really got it comin' to him. doesn't he know we live on a planet called earth where things happen for reasons and it isn't always as simple as "CAN YOU CHECK THE BACK?"

There's such separation between product and process it's unbelievable. ok, ok. it's very believable. nobody wants to see behind the curtain. i'm pretty sure we're doing all this shit we're doing to replace that man behind the curtain with a robot that will shut the fuck up and never tell us what's REALLY going on. until then we'll use people that speak spanish and we'll ignore them.

GTFO N00B

he goes "are thinking people destined to be discontent?" or something like that.

and already i knew some things about him, or at least had myself fooled into thinking that i did. this kid with the glasses that looked kinda like the tall dude from madtv and acted like one of his characters. If you know how I feel about madtv you already know how i feel about this guy. Well, he said this.

What else is there to know about him? Well he was there with a girl he wouldn't stop touching. Hand on the leg, holding hands, standing behind her and holding her hair, etc. The sort of behavior that smacks of desperation and\or juvenile separation anxiety.

About thirty of us are sitting in three arcs of lawn furniture watching a guy with a guitar in a backyard in Bohemia; a quaint little hamlet on the South Shore that looks like the kind of place where you don't lock your doors but everyone does. Guy with a guitar asks "does anyone have any questions at this point in the show?" and it gets a small laugh from some people, myself included, but he was serious and people asked questions. It was actually very nice. This kid goes on some tangent about struggles he has or has not shared with the man in the guitar that may or may not have inspired some of his most favorite songs, and the question he asks goes something like "are thinking people destined to be discontent?" and i put my finger in my mouth and vomited on everything that was happening.

just kidding.

but i thought about what he said. I thought about the agony of awareness and the discomfort in being conscious and that line in that beatles song "living is easy with your eyes closed" and that line in seven where morgan freeman goes "it's easier to beat a kid than to raise him" and I agreed that there is a discomfort involved in engaging the more pressing issues. There is. You are right Mr. Madtv.

But I want you to think about this discomfort. Is this discomfort because you are thinking about things or is this discomfort because you do not know how to think about things without sharpening them into little daggers and stabbing yourself in the heart with them? Maybe the last emotion you have left in your dried up affection starved heart is outrage and you're scrambling around like a junky begging for his next fix. Am I projecting? Always.

Thinking people are destined for discomfort as long as they have not granted themselves the serenity to accept what they cannot change, the courage to change what things they can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

And this is something you grant yourself, and you do it, and unfortunately you have to shut the door on outrage. Maybe not completely, but for the most part. Because outrage is a juvenile emotion. Outrage only exists in a world where there is justice and injustice and I do not believe in the concept of natural justice. You learn how to aikido things and redirect their negativity into positivity. You learn that maybe you can't do anything about starving children in the sudan or the violence in the middle east but maybe you can just not be a sonofabitch and give hope and inspiration to someone who actually can do something about starving children in the sudan or the violence in the middle east.

what do i find comfort in? i find comfort in the idea that violence will always exist and there is nothing to explain this violence besides the chaos that is the natural world. maybe that sounds counter-intuitive because if the earth was only a little bit further away from the sun it couldn't support human life and if our mitochondria and hearts and livers and white blood cells didn't do what they do humans wouldn't survive. with that in mind the world seems anything but chaos. or maybe it makes nothing but sense when you think of humanity and civilization as the flower growing in the crack of the cosmic sidewalk. and one day our sun will burn out or we'll get smacked upside the planet with an asteroid the size of texas or maybe somewhere there's a physical force moving at an untrackable rate that is going to smash our solar system into little tiny bits and pieces before we can turn our heads to look at the sky. and that is scary to some people. that's why we make disaster movies, because people want to see the future before it happens so they can be prepared for it when it gets here.

i find comfort in chaos. maybe i can be the little flower growing in the sidewalk of civilization (which is a flower growing in the sidewalk of the universe) and maybe it makes me sad to see other flowers growing blocks away and i know we will never meet, but at least I know I am not alone. at least i can maybe be something someone will find beautiful and we can make some small corner of the universe slightly less unbearable for you you glasses wearing girl doting skinny piece of garbage. find something better than your existential nausea to bond over with indie rock icons. lets talk about anything. the weather. sports. your favorite madtv sketch. because for a minute i thought you were trying to flaunt your misery in some effete way to woo your dark haired girlfriend who loves you the way she loved the baby bird that landed in her driveway she almost hit with her bike at age twelve. Am i speculating? Always.

Figure it out kid.

this poem will end

this poem is going to end
so why bother with the pretty words
and imagery beyond the yellowing page

who needs the assonance
asinine and archaic

the syllables
the similes
the iambic pentameter hopping through the line
like a rabbit off a cliff

who needs the internal rhyme
the metonymy
the meter
the metaphor
the parallelism

knowing that this poem will end
keeps it from ever beginning
but now that it exists
it will haunt me forever

architecture

i want to build skyscrapers that don't scrape the sky
i want them pointed down into the earth
one hundred floors towards the mantle
i want a city of skyscrapers pointed towards the center of the world
dug out with holes around so out the windows you can see the dirt and worms
where passerby might fall and land on the top floor
a building where getting to the top is easier than leaving

skyscrapers that don't take you away from the world but into it
where you don't get to the top and think 'how small we all are'
but 'how large we all are'
and you think about how capable human beings are
how craftily we're pulling the green off the earth like shitty magicians,
yanking the thin veil of life off to reveal a ball of wasteland underneath

the top floor
where the stink sinks down to and the air is dense with the filth of people
where you drop a penny and it doesn't crush anything

skyscrapers facing the center of the earth
because fear of heights is fairly common
but fear of depths is epidemic

a riddle

one is a round stone from a river
one is a boulder

that last one...

well that last one is a little too girl power for me.

here

here

this is my entire life in a number of sentences
it has some shiny parts and some sharp parts and some soft parts
i've been making it for twenty eight years
and here it is

some of it goes on the internet
some of it gets watched through my window
some of it happens when i think no one's lookin

but this is the person i am

here are my hands
still have all my fingers
i use them for typing and strumming

these are my arms and they carry things
these are my legs and they carry me
this is my skinny stomach and chest
inside of them is what i ate and other important things
this is the face i wash in the shower and show to everyone i meet

your opinions are welcome
but when you're out for blood

this is my back

...

there is no life after hope

pleasure

there is no pleasure in this world i do not wish to know
but there are certain things i take no pleasure in
where others do
and these people are my enemies
and i live that they may hate me

there is no good thing that cannot be shared

lot's wife

you fucked up
you looked back on a burning city
and you didn't turn to salt
but you might as well have
because looking back paralyzes you
just remember what there is to remember

all of it

not just the smiling, but the disappointment
remember the sin that sent two angels to your door
that was the out that made you see it was time to escape
that was your black magic feather, dumbo

don't look back on a burning city
or turn to salt while your family flees
the city you loved to hate or hated to love is being destroyed by fire and brimstone
don't look back on that

an apology to myself

i am sorry
whatever is flowing out of me right now needs to never stop
and i need to make myself a conduit for whatever needs to get out
to show people what i think should be seen
the selective presentation of realities that i create

for what?

i don't know

don't ask for what and don't ask why

you just do what you do and you need to keep doing it
the [something] doesn't know he's a [something]

and i do not know i am a writer

i've spit so many cliches onto this thing i can't count
but they were something nice to me
they were a sentiment i wished to share with the few that are known to peruse these messages which i throw into bottles to be cast into the sea never to be read

and that's ok

because i am still me and i don't need gold stars or pats on the back

but maybe you come out of here thinking about something differently
maybe i turn your kaleidoscope eyes and you see reality a little differently now than anyone else does and you don't wonder how the kaleidoscope will get back to where it was you just watch it change and it washes over you

i am sorry
will i be what i must be tomorrow? the next day?
good chance i won't
sorry team

but there is only one way to get where i am going and i am walking that way and the distractions are the attractions

that last one was a little corny

i mean it rhymes, what am i mother goose?
whatever man

let's talk about this past friday.
it was a little heartbreaking.

friday, not saturday. saturday was fine.

friday i was supposed to see my friend from california but couldn't get her out of the house for reasons that were beyond our control as much as anything like that can be beyond one's control which is in fact not beyond their control but still beyond their control.

i just ate two of her cookies and i still have bits of them in the sockets where my wisdom teeth are going to be.

fuck.

saturday i was at a bar with the girl i've been hanging out with and two of my exes. one of them is cool. the other is cool too, just very far. and that is a distance i put there and i did extend an olive branch by way of facebook message the next day (lame) to no avail. that's fine. i'll take that. that is life. the face of the world changes with an earthquake and two neighboring townships stare eachother down from across a gorge with bridges dangling like untied shoelaces from their cliffs never to be repaired.

what really bothered me about friday was going back to a party people started bailing on because i couldn't produce the guest of honor. my parties aren't really parties anyway. they're more like gettogethers. soirees. mixers? i have fun and that's what matters, but my cup is small and fills easily.

the face of the world is still changing. an earthquake took my friend from farmingville to berkeley. there was the hope she would be around for a night to be happy with people she calls or called friends and that was taken from us. it was an outrage. it is an outrage still.

are you listening you incorporeal son of a bitch? i am shaking you by your white gown and showing you my teeth. i am angry with you. you are not my god. you are a charlatan. i have moved on to a land without you where there is no cruelty only chaos. i have been here for years but i still feel your presence swapping chess pieces replacing my knights with pawns and moving my king out in the open and i am now playing my part in your death by ignoring you.

it could be worse.

write that on my cardboard headstone and toss me into the ocean for the fishes to eat or to be swallowed by a great whale.

sometimes, this is too much.

iced vanilla soy latte

drink it too slow it's watery
drink it too fast it's gone too quick
sip evenly with breaths between
the venti always makes me sick
iced vsl is just the drink
to teach me not to overthink

journal entry : whatever

when it's time to get the fish out of the fishbowl they all scatter. that's what writing is like for me, the silly pet shop employee and the kid who wants a particular fish. that's what writing is like for me.

i'm of the solemn opinion that there is no point in doing anything beyond food\clothing\shelter. i can't force myself to look for a better job because i do not care. i do not. i care when it looks like i'm running out of money and my car starts acting weird, but i just do not care in all other instances.

i wanted to be an artist, i wanted to write, i wanted writing to be my art. but what's the point? i can't help but think of anything in terms of anything but its eventual commodification. that's a word for pretentious people, but here we are. you could write the great american novel and it could languish in obscurity for years like moby dick. you could paint starry night and wind up selling it at a yard sale for $11 and it could get torn in a stranger's back seat.

not that i want fame and fortune, i just want to know i can focus my efforts into something and have those efforts come to something. not fame or fortune, but maybe a bowl of food on my table? maybe some new rear brakes and an oil change? not likely.

but what's the point of thinking like that?

it's time to enter a bubble where everything i do is for me and those i care about. i don't want to help people, i don't want to paint a picture of how i see the world, i don't want to write a book full of dumb opinions on other people i've judged prematurely.

i've got a pretty bad case of the whatevers.

whatever.

this year there have been words i have wanted to say but knew no good would come of it so i have swallowed them back down and now they haunt my stomach.

there are people that regret the things they do or say and there are people that regret the things they don't do or say. you spend enough time being one and you start acting like the other. that's ok.

people don't change, they just act different

stink

there is a stink in my skin i will never wash off
if i scrub too hard
it washes away pieces of me along with it

so i don't

some people turn away
some bury their nose in me
and my life is mostly managing that peculiar ratio

killing children

is it ok to kill a kid?
no?
but what if their parents look like assholes?
and the kid looks like an asshole?
what about that kid?
what about retarded kids?
rich kids?
poor kids?
kids with messed up teeth?
kids that are mean to other kids?
kids who let other kids pick on them?
what about a kid with some crazy disease like progeria or asthma?
what if you don't really mean it?
would anyone notice?
if we do it by the tree that fell in the forest without anyone listening that did or didn't make a sound?
will it really tear a hole in the fabric of society?
what about a boy with short unwashed hair?
or a boy who cries too much?
what if it doesn't hurt?
and so what if it does?

hot in high school

i've been looking at pictures of girls who were hot in high school
and seeing how not hot they have gotten
or how they've had a kid or gotten married

i've been looking at pictures of girls who weren't hot in high school
and seeing how not hot they have stayed
or how they've had a kid or gotten married

and i wonder what it's like to be a woman
and watch my face twist and limbs grow fatter
as a small child whose father i know or don't know or both climbs all over me
spilling apple juice and saying their first words
taking their first steps and cracking their head on the coffee table

i wonder if i will stop being young
thinking about doing drugs
playing in bands
requesting off for parties
or whatever it is

hot high school girls
they peak early
and are led into pregnancy or marriage before the chance to ruin themselves in a funner way

i was not hot in high school
and i have stayed unpregnant and unwed
and there are mistakes i have yet to make
that make my cock swell with enthusiasm
the way those pictures could never

sleeping

time spent thinking about sleeping is worth less than time spent sleeping
goodnight
i am going to spend my time more wisely

a grove unknown (welcome back craig)

what happened?
what didn't happen?
a grove unknown
you came home to a grove unknown
the face of the clock doesn't change
but the faces of your friends do

-

my name puckers her lips but not to kiss
the way lemons do
and that's ok

i did that

that was me

because the memories were fonder than the moment and still are
but they are there and they will stay there
like all those pictures

i remember most of them
we had plans to make me the most photographed asshole in america

we laid plans like eggs
that i broke and made her eat

the fate of so many young lovers carved upon the headstone or scrawled in the ashes of their life together

"we weren't any goddamn good for each other"
and it took me far too long to say

where are you? (2nd draft)

you are somewhere in the desert sprawled and clutching the earth backwards with your crooked fingers in the dirt
the night and the moon are washing you in the coldest blue the coldest color
the wind is scratching as it passes and the quarter moon is dumb and bright
is there no one coming to pull you up?
are those the footsteps of horses under gallant men galloping to your rescue?
is that the flood of the old testament coming to carry you off?
only the blood in your ears rushing through their capillary creeks
while the horses are in their stables and the gallant men are sleeping soundly
the waters are not rising and there still is no water nor will there be
your stomach is rotting
your teeth are chattering
the sun will soon come up and burn you alive
where are you?
where is this cold blue world?
and how did you get here?

the market for outrage

they should organize bookstores according to the emotion you want to elicit

or solicit

the market for outrage is booming
but the newspapers have it cornered

a cleansing outrage
ahhhh
that's nice

it's nice to know that what is happening is an exception
and that after this things will be back to normal

no more million dollar bonuses for millionaires
no more soldiers doing dirty things
no more children choking on carrots in day care centers

life will be as it should be
with old people dying in beds in nursing homes
teens getting into traffic accidents

and all that other stuff happening away from the prying eyes of the yellow journalists scribbling incendiary tripe in a push to create and exhaust the market for outrage

it's the clause in murphy's law for downward spirals
how bad can it get?
as bad as it can

all in

you go all in and
lose only what you brought with
you to the table

right now

right now
i'm thinking of the weather
i'm thinking of more than the weather
i'm thinking of the ideas i've had to write things and how much has slipped through my fingers and i have watched it do just that and not cared one bit
i'm sorry
i don't like reading
i'm sorry
i do like reading, but not always
i have been watching alot of television
i am uninspired
my head is a mess of empty boxes
post-it notes and things to do
all nothings
little nothings

i have buried my talent master

you gave me one
and i buried it

cast me into the outer darkness
i will weep and gnash my teeth

movie theater popcorn

This was originally written as a message board post.



you're not supposed to preheat an empty kettle, but damned if we didn't preheat some empty kettles in our day. we always popped with canola oil. that's what made it yellow. we used a special salt called flav o cal or some shit. towards the end of the loews days we stopped using that actually and started using some other salt that came in a 50 pound box, like soda syrup. one fifty pound bag of seed would get you approximately 14 big bags of popcorn. and by big bags i mean like... the size of a round R2D2 garbage can. we used a special hybrid corn made by pop secret. what does that mean? hybrid corn? i don't know. i guess it truly is a pop secret. i have a hunch that movie theater popcorn is the most GM'd O out there. my nightmare was always sticking my hand in the bin of seed only to find out that all the seeds had turned into pinchy beetles that would eat my whole hand. i hate bugs.

one time i took a big bag of popcorn to tim delaney's house for some hangout. it was awesome. we had a big bag of popcorn. another time i was closing out a concession popcorn bin and let some guy take a bag of popcorn. jose, the puerto rican security guard who brought me a mango once and told me to fuck goats close to a cliff so they push back, stopped the guy as he tried to leave. i felt bad, but didn't say anything because i didn't want to get in trouble. seeing that mustachioed spic walk back to the stand with a bag of popcorn as the other guy left was sad. how did jose feel? i bet it was hard to negotiate how noble one is supposed to feel about a job well done when the bottom line is a bag of popcorn that was going to get thrown away anyways.

sometimes we would put in more oil to make it extra yellow and delicious. there is a direct correlation between the amount of oil in something and it's deliciousness. i never understood how we made money when a regular popcorn was twice the size of a small and only fifty cents more. doesn't it make more sense to sell less stuff and get more money for it? but i guess popcorn and soda are the same shit. low investments, high returns. making fifty cents more and spending one cent more i guess is more feasible. i guess. there's too much guesswork in this post.

i would love to know how much popcorn i've popped in my lifetime. i want to know how it compares to everyone else that worked there. i'd like to meet the man who has popped the most popcorn in history. but only out of movie theater employees. i don't want to be up against some industrial popcorn magnate who pops for the people at smartfood. there's no craftsmanship involved in that.

the agitator is a piece of the popper that looks like a swastika. it seriously looks like nothing but a swastika. i guess this is the perfect shape for agitating kernels into popping. i think it was actually a backwards swastika, but still. does that mean if i took it out while it was hot and pressed it against the flesh of someone's exposed back it would burn a real one into them? that's another thing i've wondered. maybe i'll get to do that one day.

i am a male, and as part of my masculinity i often dream up strange scenarios in which i get to inflict overly harsh and senseless violence on someone. not even senseless, totally sensible. like... ok what if i get carjacked? what if someone takes my girlfriend hostage? well, if i get carjacked i do what bas rutten said on his youtube, even though i drive stick and am at a decided disadvantage. if my girlfriend gets taken hostage i say "KILL HER" because you don't negotiate with terrorists. that goes for all of you. if any of you get taken hostage as far as i'm concerned you're dead as soon as they touch you, and they are too. if shit ever goes down at TJ's i'm grabbing a bottle of white balsamic vinegar because it's long and has a handle-like top. i have other fantasies involving beating someone down with a can of pet food (dog or cat). did i say fantasies? because i meant to say plans of action. my mind has compensated for the lack of violence\action\life in my life.

anyways... what if we detain some criminal who has wronged us financially or morally and it's up to me to teach him a lesson, all within the sacred walls of loews-cineplex stony brook? no brainer. we handcuff them to a toilet bowl and brand him with the agitator while someone sticks his head in the bowl. it's actually too big to do that. there would be too much rolling around to get a good print. it would be like trying to ink stamp a banana. a banana that has wronged us morally or financially.

we used to pop to get at least one hundred bags of popcorn in the back for every friday. there was little rotation. the popcorn you ate on a sunday would most likely have been popped friday morning. some days we wouldn't even open the popper. cleaning it was a pain in the ass. i won't even get into what went into cleaning it. the bottom got burnt every day, and cleaning off burnt shit is a pain in the ass. we all know this already. it was held together by these weird little bolty things. in many ways it was a medieval device with a complex heating mechanism that would beep when it got too hot. for a little while there was a computer in there that was a piece of shitty garbage. if you ever need a popper, don't get one with a computer. get one with simple switches. four switches.

delivery, agitator, heat, and cleaning

is that true? i think it is

delivery put the oil through. the oil came in boxes like soda syrup. same boxes. same as the salt.
agitator made it turn
heat made it heat up
and cleaning was a switch that wasn't as hot as the other heat thing.
no.... one of the switches turned a fan on for the popcorn bed, a fan that never really worked.
or there was an exhaust switch? something like that.

i'm getting something wrong here.

i remember four switches for something.

when i retire i'm gonna get a job at a movie theater and ask to pop popcorn. i just want to pop popcorn all day. put me in front of a machine. my dream was to put the popcorn machine in the lobby and i go behind a glass case popping popcorn and people see me and i smile. maybe during the dayshifts kids come up to me with empty bags from the concession stand and hold them up to the glass and knock and i smile and fill their bags with popcorn. "oh jeremy the popcorn guy isn't here? that's too bad, we love his delicious golden corn." i would only work days, for children. i would want to be there when the kids are there. i would put the showmanship back into the movie theater business. nowadays it's just a candy store that happens to show movies. but people enjoy that 'behind the scenes' type thing and that's exactly what i would be. they would get to see where their popcorn gets popped. just a little peek under the skirt of the great theater whore.

then i wouldn't have gotten fired. there would have been public outrage at my release from the movie theater. that happened in new jersey when someone with army tattoos got fired. there was public outrage and he got his job back. maybe that could have happened to me. but it didn't. i got the boot. who cared? nobody. who could? i was just some monkey with an apron elbow deep in fryer oil dreaming about handcuffing people to toilets wearing a costume i felt too comfortable in in a building i felt too comfortable in for a company that would do nothing but spit me out like an unpopped kernel unfit for consumption on the basis of visible tattoos contrary to their employment policy that looked eerily like the one the air force had according to octavia, the larger overweight lady who was into LOST who had a couple kids and always ripped tickets and never judged me for leaving girl who worked there and dating another girl who worked there after only a month. octavia loved the letter i had to write explaining why i shouldn't be fired for tattoos. this letter would turn out to be just a way for all of us to out ourselves. it was a good letter. it was me saying i was not an unpopped kernel and was, in fact, totally fit for consumption and would digest nicely and excreted when it was my time. there was never any hope. who would take my case? it would be hard to find a lawyer and give him the task of negotiating how noble he was supposed to feel saving a bag of popcorn who was only going to be thrown away anyway.

now i am a ghost. i have no home. i toil endlessly half a mile away up to my eyes in groceries bereft of my hopes of popping popcorn in the lobby of the movie theater. and what of my dreams to crack someone's skull with a bottle of vinegar? my hopes of turning someone's face into dogfood with a can of dogfood? who's gonna take those away?

who could?

a music lesson

learn how to play one instrument well

don't study universally applicable principles
don't work too hard

play

know what you're holding
know it's strengths and it's limits
feel it in your hands
pay attention to your embouchure
listen to the sounds it makes as you move your hands and blow your insides into it

sing if you don't use your mouth

become an instrument
know your strengths and your limits
don't think about what you're doing
think about what it is doing to you

feel the tempo in your chest
rhythm is important

you don't have to reinvent the wheel
don't take notes
don't be scared

music is an emotion
you hear with your ears
and listen to with your everything

ghosts are not real

but they make a good case for themselves

OOH BERRIES HOW DEEP

sorry i wrote something about berries, i know how personal you guys take these things, fuckin berries, food food food is all i think about you know that.
you know i have some very choice words for this generation and this world and myself and these words i write down only on corn flakes so i can eat them because they do better in my stomach than they do landing on peoples ears. nobody wants to hear anything they already know, and that's what raspberries are that's what everything i write is. tersely stated items universally recognized. nobody needs to write about that jeremy, well i do i guess. maybe this really is all for me i get a small little idea then i blog about it because i am happy i still have ideas. raspberries. who cares. who could care? 'oh no things aren't real anymore and reality is an imitation of an imitation uh oh' it's all real. when nothing is real everything is real. if a man holds up a bank with a candy bar he is charged with armed robbery. there's no ideal raspberry taste out there. ooops, there is. that delicious blue raspberry. whatever. i'll take it. what choice do i have?

berries

what was i even thinking

berries

berries are the greatest culinary casualty of our day
raspberries in particular
they're seedy and sour, and if you ever had a sweet one it probably had sugar on it
so hard to get right

now we have blue raspberry
blue raspberries don't even exist
nothing blue should be eaten

but blue raspberry exists and is real
it is a real flavor
maybe food science will create blue raspberries to grow out of the ground
are my kids gonna ask for blue raspberries one day?

what about regular raspberries?
does the FDA have a stash of raspberry seeds in case of rapture?
does it have a stash of blue raspberry seeds?

are we to mourn the death of the raspberry?
i mean, it exists and all, but how many people buy them expecting to get something sweeter and not so tart?
anyone?
is there a group of berry enthusiasts who fear they will one day wake up in a world where the actual raspberry flavor is gone and instead there are only genetically modified blue raspberry flavored raspberries growing out of the ground?

will good charlotte release a cover album of dead kennedys songs and alternative tentacles will burn the originals?
will drama start borrowing from popcorn movies?

oh boy oh boy i know
we get to witness spectacle's adolesence
he doesn't need his mother's raspberries anymore
no more hot\cold reward\punishment system during his berry enjoyment
no more sweet sour sour sour sweet mealy mushy sweet

and his kids are gonna eat crunch berry flavored blue raspberries
they'll learn about heirloom berries and fruits and vegetables and organic produce and they will feel outrage for as long as there are classmates to proselytize amongst

quit your bitching kid
the raspberry is dead

you're next

you put in on the internet

that's what you do with things like this
put them on the internet
put them on here for your friends to ignore
maybe learn a little bit more about you
confirm their suspicion that you are as full of shit as they had thought all along

maybe some kid i went to high school with is reading this
maybe some ex-friend
maybe someone from a message board or a hardcore show

that's what you do with things like this
go to the internet like a kid
put something on myspace or facebook
maybe make an angry away message
like a kid

wear black because you're angry
storm around the halls jingling the locks on the lockers
buy a shirt that says something you'll never have the courage to say, in an environment where nobody has the courage to say anything to you

get older and put it in your livejournal
get older and put it in your blog
get older and put it in your memoir
all of which flotsam and jetsam

something is bothering me and i don't know how to get it out
maybe this will help?
maybe if i point it out your monitor it will dilute the subtle misery of my heavy lungs
maybe i will want to write again one day

this was a waste of your time but i'm not apologizing

sometimes i just need to go off like a little stupid firework
spraying sparkly words over your driveway
for reasons that are entirely my own

kill me or make me stronger

they say that
well i say
what makes stronger kills
every way but dead

this is a little immature, but fuck it

if you grow up in california
you miss earthquakes when you get older
you talk about the small ones that made you tough
and the big ones that shook your house down
and you miss them

so go back to california
you're not welcome here anymore
all you california girls

go back to your parents' house
call me when you need an aspiring young arsonist.

another thing about god...

do you know where thunder comes from?
that's god laughing
he's laughing at us because we wanted to be better than animals
we said 'give us brains and emotions'
and he said 'sure thing, under one condition, you have to feel them'
but we had already said yes before he could finish his sentence
so we feel them
and they turn us inside out
when we could be just procreating and doing terrible things without remorse
and every now and again it's just too much for him to take
and god and all the angels and deities and spirits just laugh their asses off til they pee
on us

(also funny to them)

polar bears (second draft)

the flat sheet of the tundra is wrinkled, wide, white and shrinking

when i see polar bears swimming i think "swim you dumb bastard swim"
learn how to swim
the rest of you evolved and moved south to the great northwest or maine
why couldn't you do that?
you had to stay behind
the last holdout of an ignoble tradition

you'd better swim you dumb bastard
you should have evolved
if you can't the world won't have a use for you
did it ever?
and i will not come to save you any more than you will swim to the mainland to learn how to ride a tricycle for the russian circus

that's what the other bears did
they evolved
they pedal tricycles in the russian circus
they balance on balls
they eat scraps of tainted meat in between tazings
while you swim into oblivion
and the history of your existence is fossil record and corpses shot by teddy roosevelt for the museum of natural history

why didn't you survive?
you can ride a tricycle

can't you?