Perpetual Frustration of Writer and Lover

I just surprised myself with this poem, which I had to write for my English class. As always, I strive to share my lack of genius with all three of you who read this blog. Enjoy, or choose not to!

On the off-chance the poets one day will

Write of our love with wit sharper than mine,

Erasing details in order to fill

Marginal notions of meter and rhyme,

Striking out hard times for meaningless good,

Carelessly flourishing withering pens,

Boorishly scribbling over what could

Spell out the truth in more capable hands,

I hope the poets don't learn of our love!

Nor teach the world false, through elegant tale,

That knowledge of love the world's in search of

Could ever be found without true love's hell.

Foolish writers! Love, the sonnet of life,

Is equal parts joy, and equal parts strife.

Subconscious Thoughts

I quit cigarettes and weekday stoning in the course of the past month. Waking up this morning, having taken my first bong rip of the week last night, I have very little to say on the matter. Because my vocal cords are fucking sandpaper.

Losing fifteen to twenty pounds (don't know 'cause I never recorded an initial weight, but I'm estimating 230-235 when I began) in the course of a month and a half casts a much more critical light on the things you previously dumped into your body. For example, a week before starting my trudge to 170, I ate an entire large pizza, by myself, in less than a day. If I tried pulling that now, not only would my stomach lining rupture, but I'd be shitting, without pause, for a week.

I hate to concede the point I've been ignoring for years, but I really don't function as well when I'm smoking on a regular basis. I don't mean when I'm stoned, I wouldn't waste word space with that gem of knowledge. I mean all the other times- the three or so days it takes for me to come down from the prolonged haze of relentless plant huffing. This was no more apparent to me than when someone asked me what day it was and I could respond in less than five seconds. If you don't think that's too long a time to be retrieving such information, count out five seconds in your head. If you still don't think so, I'll just remind you to clean your bong after every twenty uses.

Zeppelin have recently retaken their rightful rank at the top of my favorite bands list. This observation brought to you by common fucking sense and the diffusion of Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse.

I hope herpes isn't enough to ruin a Memorial Day weekend, but I'll bet it is.

I had to be reminded of my own impending birthday. Hopefully I forgot because I've been busy and not because I subconsciously want to die.

Why are people always so Goddamn worried about the subconscious, anyway? What makes the subconscious any more valid than the conscious? If I was having a good time all up in Conscious, liking life pretty well, not sulking and loathing life like at Christmas, but I was a broken little tea kettle up in Subconscious, what the fuck does that matter? Just because there's an opposing side doesn't mean it's the "real" you. In fact, I'd argue that the subconscious has LESS relevance than the conscious, because the subconscious is only ever a concept. Once the subconscious ideas are put into practice, are observed and can therefore be evaluated, they by nature become the conscious. So, really, the subconscious doesn't exist. HA!

Yes, I know there are logistical and theoretical holes in the above paragraph, holes gaping and numerous in equal score. However, such points have hardly ever been relevant to me.

And now, I leave you with a quick poem summing up this week's English class studies, which I just wrote.

The Fates of the Saxons

Runes, Runes, the letters of Jutes,

The more you cast 'em,

The more you loot.

The more you loot,

The more you can steal

So cast some runes, but get ready for Hastings.

Stand-Up Sneak Peek

Here's a rough cut of this Wednesday's stand-up script. There's no guide for delivery or inflection, but you'll have to attend a performance for those. Hope you like it. Related jokes in different colors.

People may be shocked when they hear what I say, not so much what I say but how I say it. I use language in ways that would terrify a normal citizen’s grandmother. But not to worry, you’re in no danger! I’ve been convicted of no crime!

 

However, don’t corner me, or I’ll lash out at you like a snake. Like a badger. Like an angry and startled snake lunging at an ambitious badger with an unsavory past. Who will win, the audience asks, hands frostbitten in suspense? Nature.

 

Now you tell me that what I just said, and how I just said it would not genuinely scare an elderly woman. You didn’t enjoy that, did you ma’am? I didn’t either, to be honest. All this terrifies me like you wouldn’t believe. I’m likely to cry any moment now.

 

I don’t know why I’m up here. I barely know THAT I’m up here. It’s over very fast and I have no memory of the episode, like that one little time when everyone was hopeful about Obama. It was “quaint”. Even conservatives were sitting around fireplaces, leisurely puffing on a glass of brandy, eating stacks of twenties and hundreds, going, “Well, I, for one, am proud to be an American in an age when we’ve elected our first black president. Go get ‘em, homie.” But the economy doesn’t care who’s president. It’s not even registered to vote.

 

Hi, I’m Tyler. What’s your name? We’ll talk after the show, I can’t hear a damn thing up here. You can buy me a drink. What’s that, three drinks? I’m flat broke.

 

Some people do comedy to get girls, which is sad not in the noble pursuit of beautiful ladies, but sad that doing comedy to get girls is a flawed premise to begin with. Girls don’t want funny. What they do want is kinda like funny, ‘cept it starts with an M. It’s like playing guitar. Young men in the audience, never pick up playing guitar to get girls. Doesn’t work. Pipe dreams. It only brings calloused fingertips and hearts.

 

(SOMETHING ELSE)

 

Yet another comment that would anger and confuse anyone over the age of sixty-five. And if you talk to me after the show, I might can say a few more.

 

Sike, I Had 13 Total Posts And I'm Superstitious

"I'm not racist."

"Yes, you are. What you just said was clearly racist."

"No, I'm superstitious."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"No, like, I'm really superstitious that black people are gonna steal my things."

It took me three seconds to think of that, and about ten minutes to articulate it. I have no idea what that means, but it's most certainly the fault of the MARIJUANA PIPE.

I really don't know what to make of this post, taken as a whole. It just kind of happened, and was written and conceived largely without emotion or malice of forethought.

Second Page Google Image For "Cosmic"

I have tobacco stains on the tips of all my fingers. I hope they go away, with time.

I have devised a system of rarely running out of marijuana. I have two small pill bottles, each packed with anywhere from one sixteenth of an ounce to one eighth of an ounce of good weed. In the first of these bottles, labeled "CURRENT STASH" (in white-out), rests the cache of pot I'll be smoking on a regular basis. When I run out of that bottle, I put to buying more. In the meantime, I smoke from the additional pill bottle, labeled "EMERGENCY ONLY!" (alas, white-out again) until I buy more weed. I then restock "CS" and replace whatever I inhaled out of "EO". In this way, the only way I'll run out of pot is if I go five days without being able to buy it when I need it. Quite fail proof, really.

I hope my fingers' tobacco stains and time enjoy themselves when they go away together.

I had a powerful strange vision the other day. Actually... it was less a vision than flashes of fantasy imposed on what I was already seeing. I was listening to Brothers of a Feather, stoned, driving on a beautiful day up by South Lowell Road. Everywhere I looked, images snapped before me. If I saw a bridge, my mind's eye would to flash that same bridge, with two monks leading a pack mule over said bridge, in a different place and time. Stories like this, fleeting and vivid, would pass before me time and time again for about seven or eight minutes. It is only luck that I had the thought, at the time, to focus on these thoughts and conjurations and keep them in my heart. All of this, set to Driving Wheel... it was a spiritual experience. I don't know if what I saw was my future, a past life, songs I'll one day write or stories I'll tell. I just know that I saw them, and they meant something to me, and that fact alone reckons them worth noting on the old timeline.

I'm gonna get out of here as soon as humanly possible. I seem to have misplaced my funny.

Zevon Half-List Of The Now (Now With More Pontification, Also, Alliteration [An Appalling Amount] And Too Many Damn Parentheses)

1. Mohammed's Radio, Warren Zevon

If you told me the first time I heard this song that it would soon be one of my favorite songs, I'd have spat in your drink and called you a harlot. How wrong I would have hypothetically been. ANYWAYS, this is a wonderfully composed song, with movements that move and lyrical lyrics.

Warren Zevon, being of considerable talent (he boasted he could competently play any instrument in an orchestra), composed every part of his songs, from strings to piano to guitar to horns. Every time I listen to Mohammed's Radio (or as I like to call it, The Radio), I hear something fresh and new. The lyrics make very little sense when taken as a whole, and were inspired by a mentally handicapped man that Warren observed one Halloween, in Aspen, dressed as a sheik.

2. Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner, Excitable Boy

In only one other song is Zevon's storytelling ability more expertly displayed, and it's on this fucking list. Just chill. We're getting there.

This track, off of Zevon's breakthrough album (due in no small part to a song you WON'T see on this list, Werewolves of London), was the song that first tuned me into Zevon's voice. Dark, often humorous, with every word in the right place and every move at the right pace. I'd have to say that his lyrics are unparalleled in these verses.

3. Desperados Under The Eaves, Warren Zevon

A "riff" that serves as bookends on Warren's debut album (the album closes off with this song, and the first track, Frank and Jesse James, mimics Desperados' string intro), the lyrics (and stirring, symphonic string sounds slowly shushing, and suddenly surging, signifying satisfying serenity sweeping the sunset), and the rest of this song should always be described with gratuitous alliteration and over-use of parentheses (like this).

4. Lawyers, Guns, And Money, Excitable Boy

"Finally," the masses cried, "A rocker!"

Well, this is by far the rockin'ist track on Warren's most commercially (and arguably, critically) successful album. My theory on this song is that, when the producer came to Warren and said they needed two or three more tracks for the album, Warren went home and decided he didn't want Werewolves to be the hardest rocking song for the release. So he opened a bottle of vodka, drank it instantly, and went to his guitar and beat the noise out of it until this came out, waving a white flag.

"So," the masses again bellowed, "What's the last one?"

5. Mr. Bad Example, Mr. Bad Example

This song is 100% lyrics. Well, OK, the catchy horns help, but it's still the lyrics. They tell the story of the title sir who likes to have a good time, and doesn't care who gets hurt. Some selections from his life, showing how he got his nickname:

- stole furniture from housewives he boned and sold it in Spokane, WA

- worked in hair replacement, swindling the bald

- hired aboriginals to work opal mines, and "pauperized the lot."

Zevon at his story-telling greatest (told you it was coming) and likely funniest. He truly did it for the lulz. Also, this CD is out of print, so I guess if the internet didn't exist, this would be hard to find.

If you're not a Zevon fan yet, or God forbid you've never heard of him, go forth and download a free, surprisingly legal live show of his from 1992.* If you like what you hear, which you damn well better, go acquire his music, in this album order:

1. Excitable Boy- his first and probably best album. I always have a hard time choosing between this, his sophomore outing, and

2. Warren Zevon- his self-titled first album. Great songs, not a one worth losing.

3. The Wind- Zevon died in 2003 from inoperable mesothelioma (the cancer you might remember from class-action lawsuit commercials and the cancer that also felled the mighty Steve McQueen before HIS time). Having OCD and a phobia of doctors, Zevon made the remark on his final TV appearance (on his good friend David Letterman's show) that he "may have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for twenty years." Instead of making his peace with God and living out his days quietly, Warren cranked out a brand new album, written and recorded during his last year, and released about two weeks before his death. He even held on long enough to see the birth of his two twin grandsons. When he received his diagnosis, Zevon joked that he just wanted to live to see the next Bond movie. He did.

The kicker? One of the best albums I've ever heard.

Now stop reading and start listening.

Your man in the field,

Text Radio.

* 1/4 down the page, under the "Individual Files > Whole Item" column, click the "Size > 129 MB" link. Download 'em. Playable in iTunes. 100% legal, I promise.

Spring Break Travelwords, Pt. 1

Editor's writer's poster's damn note - Here's the text file from my Spring Break writings. Not funny, but words nonetheless. BEGIN-

WRITER’S FUCKIN ‘ NOTE - I’m going to have to write on the computer since I don’t know with certainty that, when reading back over hand-written entries, I would be able to decipher my own deranged handwriting. Plus, this is faster, and can be transferred to blog form.

3/4/09 5:54 pm Wednesday

I’ve been spoiled. Smoking premium weed for so long (including the rampant baking Fat Man and I engaged in this weekend) has raised a Great Wall of Tolerance that guards against advancing Bongolian forces. Shit weed no longer does much for me. I just smoked out my car roughly thirty minutes ago, and now I’m not feeling it much at all.

7:07- Just smoked another Jeep joint and devoured Eric The Half-a-Burrito. /EPIC

Christ! No internet! I can’t mindlessly scour all the humor sites I frequent. How will I know what to laugh at now?

Florida… hopefully my future is pointing to the sandy shores of Tampa, and the University of Tampa, AND a Creative Writing degree. I’ve got to decide on the fifteenth (or so) which classes I’m taking this summer and next semester.

POINTER: Talk to one of the advisors, either yours or one for CHASS, and find out how you could get departmental approval to take deep ENG(lish) classes this summer and next semester. Let’s look at some of your options, shall we?

No, we shan’t. Not concretely, at least. No course catalog website access. I can, however, rattle off a few from memory. REGURGITATE!

POETRY (applied, studies in)
AMERICAN LIT
BRIT LIT
WORLD LIT?
MORE CREATIVE WRITING
FILM HISTORY
WRITING ABOUT FILM
ANYTHING THEY’LL FUCKING LET YOU IN
HAWTHORNE STORIES IF YOU ABSOLUTELY FUCKING HAVE TO
NO QUARTER ASKED, FOR NONE WILL BE GIVEN.

Haiku Break!

Don’t be a fucktard.

Away! To fabled slut bar!

P.B.R.; so cash.

I wonder if anyone has ever bought a house with traveler’s checks.

No, I really don’t. But I kinda do.

Been watching Monty Python lately… that one human who said they were the Beatles of comedy was on point. If they have any influences, it doesn’t show. Writing and performing like they did is my comedy dream. I’ve a long way to go, though.

8:00 PM EXUNT.