Silence

They say silence is golden. They're wrong.

Whereas someone screaming in your face may enrage you to the point of knocking a few teeth out, silence affords you the time to plot something a trip to the dentist couldn't possibly repair.

What Makes People Evil?

Forget about mapping the DNA sequence of a chimpanzee, why can't scientists discover and repair the human gene for a lack of discretion and a lack of respect? Finding which chromosome a propensity to lie is commensurate with wouldn't be such a bad thing either.

Closing Statement

Witness: Yeah, that's him. That's the one I saw. I'd recognize that mug anywhere."


Prosecutor:Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury;

You've heard a lot of testimonies over the past few weeks. Some of them heart-wrenching, some of them fabricated. You've heard convincing arguments encouraging you to point the finger at our bovine brethren and our pot-bellied pal the pig, but after sorting through the rhetoric and barnyard blasphemy, I think it is clear that the real culprit here, the one responsible for these heinous crimes, is none other than that animal sitting before you. The sheep.

Forget what you were told as a child. Forget the grade school images of wide-eyed, helpless quadrupeds grazing indolently on herbs and flowers. While sheep certainly appear warm and cuddly, I'll give a hundred dollars to whoever walks over to the defense table and hugs the sheep sitting there. No takers? I thought not. Ladies and gentlemen, your hesitance is not in error. You know deep inside you that the sheep on trial today is a vicious, malignant stain on society, and it's your job to make sure he never sees the light of day again. It's your civic duty to make sure he doesn't kill again.

I encourage you - the members of this jury - to remember the itchy wool sweater you Aunt Gladys gave you in the third grade. Remember how your mother used to make you wear it to school, how the other children made fun of you because the sleeves were too long. Remember how by the end of the day your neck was blistered with weeping sores and inflamed rashes. Remember this as you reach your verdict. Remember the facts.


















Exhibit A: Photo of victim 1,456.A.2 wearing the garment in question only moments before her death.


And need I mention how many nights of insomnia you've spent in your life counting sheep? And did the sheep hopping over a picket fence whisk you away to slumber? No? Well, I say that's fraudulent behavior, and I won't stand for it!.













Exhibit B: The one in the middle is the ring leader.


The defense has tried all sorts of chicanery to confuse you, but don't be mislead. Certainly there are those environmentalists who say that sheep are an excellent ruminant alternative to mowing the lawn because they run on grass not on gas. And to them I say, so does the goat. But it is not your job, ladies and gentlemen, to decide if the goat shares the blame for the horrors we've showcased for you in the past few weeks, it is not your job to impugn other guilty parties. It is only your job to decide if the sheep is guilty. And whether he acted alone or not is irrelevant, because the very fact that he acted at all is enough to put him away for good.

The prospect of sheep related death starts with stealing milk from the unweaned lamb. Sheep's milk is used to make a bevy of different comestibles from fatty, stinky cheeses like idiazabal, torta del casar, manchego, and pecorino staggionato to sheep's milk yogurt. But these dairy products made from ewe's milk are so high in fat that a direct injection of it into your blood stream would instantly kill you. Instantly! That's quick. Are you going to put that animal back on the streets and let him do this again?! Will you be able to live with yourself if you do?! Think about that.












Exhibit C: Aerial photo of the cabal congregating and colluding.

While I willfully submit to the fact that it may not be the nicest thing to do to steal milk from a lamb in order for human epicures can have a nice accoutrement to their spicy zinfandels and their Cote du Rhones, this act of petty theft certainly does not warrant the vicious extermination of the human race by sheep. When you go to deliberate, ask yourselves, do we deserve to die intravenously at the hoof of a dunderheaded, cud-chewing, syphilitic mammal? Because this is exactly what the sheep is doing to us: the fat and cholesterol in the cheese and yogurt sits in your veins like a stalwart curd, becoming more and more massive, until blood flow stops and you die. End of story. No matter how much you exercise, diet, or perform angioplasty at home with a condom and a coat hanger, you will die.


Defendant's counsel: Objection, your honor! Things like heart attacks are just God's way of telling us not to eat animal flesh! Listen to the divine voice of the food pyramid. Lima beans, okra, these are the road to salvation!

Judge: Overruled. You should know better than to object during closing statements. Please continue, counselor

Prosecutor: There it is, ladies and gentlemen. Incontrovertible evidence that sheep are trying to kill us. It's in your hands now, noble citizens. Put the ewe in the shoe. Give the ram the slam. Lock up Aries with the canaries.

I leave you with this last thought: if sheep weren't inherently guilty, then why do they say absconded criminals have "gone on the lam"? The homophone says it all.

I rest my case.

Quantum Sadness

Fission,

a stable particle
is attacked
by

an electron
traveling at unknown speeds
into unknown orbits

fracturing all that was before
into two
distinct,
inseparable
pieces.

One errant electron -
small,
obsolete,
unforeseen -
can spin everything
the other way.

But for every fission
there is
promise
of fusion

again.

Welcome to Nashville!

Damn you, Nietzsche!

Nietzsche, Germany's answer to the Cupie Doll

Friedrich Nietzsche (Editor's note: Oh, no. Here we go again.): proper noun. 1. German philologist and existential philosopher. 2. Iconoclastic figure of the late 19th century. 3. One of the most improperly cited sources for supporting the eugenic and Nazi movements. 4. Rumored to have died from syphilis. 5. Though he was the bees knees.

Nietzsche is not the focus of this blog, though he is important, because it was Nietzsche who introduced me to the idea of physis, or fusis, which is a Greek term meaning "the nature of things," and this term is generally applied to the inanimate.













Nietzsche used the physis model, (which was more or less described to me by a student of Derrida's as a bell curve) to speak of the natural course of cultures, and he said that every culture invariably starts at a low point, rises up, reaches its peak, and then declines sharply and comes to a degrading lull. In various texts, Nietzsche said this is what happened to the Greeks and was currently happening to the German peoples of the late 1900s. And I'm sure many democrats think this is what Bush has done to America (Editor's note: I agree).

But personal physis is something I'd like to talk about, as it is something many people overlook as they trudge through their life routing. There are events which we may skim over in our personal affairs that embody the nature of physis, and it is time to acknowledge those moments of physis and value them, for they were not entirely bad. They started out arbitrarily, eventually rose with promise, reached a climactic peak, and then crashed and burned like the Hindenburg.

When speaking of physis-personal or culture-it's important to remember three things: 1) the peak is so blissful that anyone in their right mind would want to prolong it, however attempting to prolong a failed personal affair or culture may make it sink faster; 2) the fall is devastating; and 3) the lull after the fall is often lower than the Point 0 at the beginning, because it is only after that you know the peak and lose it that you truly understand what you have lost.

This could happen in any area of life. And probably for most of us, it has happened in a romantic relationship. You meet somebody in passing, think nothing of it (point 0). You develop a friendship, find common interests (rising, rising). You notice an attraction (Going up, please). You act on the attraction (Up, up, and away). You commit and fall in love, and everything seems to be going just fine.

(Editor's note: But, as Nietzsche and the Greeks well know, "just fine" never lasts "just long enough.")

And then, like an explosion in the fuselage, the whole shebang comes crashing down, and while you slide down the tail end of the physis model, you ask yourself, "What could I have done to prolong that feeling of ecstasy, that jubilation that bliss, that wholeness of feeling loved?" And the answer is, "You couldn't have done nothing, Jack."

Because that's how life works. Sometimes you get shat on, and sometimes you do the shatting. But most often, it feels like you've been shat on 100 times more than you've shat on others, doesn't it?

Tom Petty said, "The waiting is the hardest part." But he was wrong. I, and anybody whose written 200 pages of a novel and then couldn't figure out how to tie everything together, know that the end is the hardest part, because you know what you had and you know what you lost and if you're at all interested in learning from your mistakes, you blame yourself for what happened and ask, "What can I do differently in the future?"

But there is hope, because Nietzsche never said the physis model can't repeat itself, it just can't reverse itself. (Editor's note: in fact Nietzsche loved the idea of eternally repeating everything you've done over and over) And maybe you haven't even reached the peak yet, maybe you're still working your way up there, and maybe, just maybe, you'll find somebody who makes you feel twice as alive as that other person did. It may be hard to believe right now, but it's possible.

Carbon Monologue-oxide Poisoning

The roads are open. The cars -
verbs of the Autobahn -
cruising on accelerated rhythms,
they move,
they spin,
the spinners.

ignite the high octane phonetics,
syntactic spark and ear plugs,
87 units per gallon,
87 unit paragraphs.
Running through the inner ear -
the carburetor of my head.

The spinners.
The spinners.

Open mouths releasing exhaust,
while pollution crawls out my eyes
Gray clouds,
hanging overhead
are words
burning the galactose of
my brain.

Passenger-side wind bags.
Dual gasket dictionaries.

The spinners.
The spinners.

People pollute with their open mouths.
And we choke on it
without smelling it
and die.

The spinners.
The spinners.




[photos stolen from Evan Hayden ]

I'm Still Sane...Or Am I?

It's officially over. I completed my novel in 3 days, as expected, and while The One-Way Rejuvenation of Allowishus Scrimshaw may not be the most polished novel ever written, I am certainly proud of it. Especially taking into consideration the factors involved.

Due to extenuating circumstances, my original writing partner was not able to collaborate on this project with me and I didn't find out about this setback until 2:00 p.m. Friday afternoon (10 hours before the start of the contest!), so needless to say, I was in a bit of a panic. But I think going at this solo actually worked to my advantage and got my creative juices flowing.

I scraped the original idea of a group of mental patients trapped inside an airplane in favor of something completely impromptu. The idea came to me in a flash as I was staring at the wall.

Here's a basic plot summary: Allowishus Scrimshaw is a polemic philosophy professor and lover of cheese who, after inciting a riot at his university, is fired from his tenured position. In the ensuing months he suffers a complete breakdown, hits bottom and then builds himself back up. (Nice bell curve in effect.) Along the way he encounters whores, whales, rednecks, surrealist restaurants, blood-thirsty Christians, cut-throat businesswomen, cancer patients, a French lesbian who want to have his baby, and more. It's all very picaresque and parts make me laugh out loud. Maybe it's because I hear the characters' voices the way I want to hear them, or maybe it's because parts of the story are genuinely funny. Either way I'm pleased. Anyway, if anybody out there is a fan of Kurt Vonnegut or J.P. Donleavy, it's written in that vein.

So, in a 72 hour period I "completed" 120 pages and 59 chapters. (I'm sure there are some grammatical mistakes or sentences that could be rephrased. Usually the editing process alone takes me three weeks for a 20 page story. I'm hoping the judges of the contest understand the difficulty of the task at hand and grant some leeway.) Some of the chapters are monoglogue, some are dialogue, some are expository prose, some are written like a play, some are written as newspaper articles. There's a whole array. It's a melange of styles, I suppose.

Due to contest rules, I'm not allowed to publish any of excerpts until after the winners have been announce. Until then, hang tight!

Rome Wasn't Built in a Day...

But Maybe a Novel Can Be Written in Three.














Rumor has it Kerouac wrote On the Road so rapidly he had to tape sheets of typewriter paper together write uninterruptedly. Thankfully, in the digital age, we no longer have to worry about this problem.

A friend and I, let's call her L, have decided to participate in the International 3-Day Novel Contest. In short, the contest commences at 12:01 a.m. Sep. 3 and ends at midnight Sep. 5. The goal, in this 72 hour window of opportunity, is to create and entire novel. It sounds interesting enough, but can it be done without losing one's mind?

According to the website, hundreds daring writers complete the contest every year, sending in manuscripts anywhere between 90 and 150 pages. L and I have decided upon quirky premise, almost the lead-in to a really bad joke, and we will take turns writing chapters. Madness will ensue, in the novel and in real life as well. It's going to be intense.

"Gasp," you eek. "Forsooth thee jest, for to endeavor to pen a literary work in three days is to wag one's tongue at civility."

"Shut up," I say. "And stop talking like Lord Byron."

Do I anticipate that this project will yield an unparalleled literary masterpiece? Of course not, but the very hubristic notion of creating an entire novel in three days is a feat I can't not attempt. If nothing else, it will be an amazing exercise.

If anyone else is interested, HURRY UP! Registration forms must be postmarked by September 2, so you still have time.

While you're busy eating hot dogs and slurping beer at your Labor Day Picnic this weekend, remember me, and remember that I'm probably wallowing in a pool of my own filth, pulling out my hair, quaffing coffee, banging my head against the wall, depriving myself of sleep, and trying not to crack under the pressure.

Stay tuned, if I ever want to look at my computer again after this weekend, I'll post a blog about the results of this cruel, cruel experiment.