Nothing compares

Cold stiff wind just powerful enough to make you fall over laughingly while taking a stereotypically majestic and self-congratulatory picture of yourself in front of massive jagged peaks srumbling in snow, and all the other indescribable beingness of winter in the mountains. The movement of wind and snow over each other, over ground and through tree, over crisp frozen lake, swerving like tiny clouds around your feet, the bleak blank empty beauty of it all, element interacting with element, short gnarled trees just trying to survive with their sputtered green, the snow blown to look like clouds looming around the moments, the mountains, swooping and swirling like birds and cigarette smoke and ocean waves, 'looks like the gates of heaven opening up, just above that lake,' says Mitch, and I agree, thinking something about how the sun, like most women, is much more alluring when covered by something smooth and white, yet still showing just a little bit of light, and her winking without being a peacock, expressing her beauty without showing it off, being beautiful without manipulating some sordid beauty out of herself.

All that type of failing language bullshit. I was going to put up my first picture on this blog of me near a frozen lake with the sun and powerful phallic rock-crags smooth feminine hills and clouds of windblown snow behind, but my bud didn't have his camera with him. I don't know, I have been wavering between being a romantic about these sorts of experiences and then just viewing them as another particular emotional response to something that has been built up in ones mind from past experiences and Jeremiah Johnson, and that, if ones mindset is right, working at McDonalds when it's hot and humid can be of an equivalently ecstatic or epiphanetic experience as watching sunsets from mountain passes and clear wind through pine boughs etc.etc.etc., all of that, so that there is nothing necessarily more Beautiful in the 'mountain' than in the McDonald's, but that I am merely too weak/simple-minded/conditioned to experience that sort of feeling in blander situations, such as, say, driving in downtown traffic in deep heat and humidity and nothing on the radio but bad music and static and even on NPR it's a report by that guy with the annoying voice (most NPR radio personalities have distinctive voices, if repetitive cadences, and most of them I like...Garrison Keeler, of course, rules, as does that one main guys from All Things Considered...but one of the standard reporters that I hear a lot grates me as though he is to sound as bananas are to taste).

So what is it? Do I continue holding a certain hypocritical disdain when people extol the virtues of traveling and being all adventurous and condemn or condescend to those who do otherwise, in essence blaming their own inability to live steadily and joyously on a certain deficiency in their system that makes them unable to Be in a steady 9-5 state... or are they right? Or is it just a matter of programming, genetics, and natural inclination, that we all find our it in different places...but is it ludicrous to say that there's more it in the Maroon Bells than in the Taco Bells? I suppose that all you can say is that if people are consciously and purposefully and awareishly deciphering where they find their it, then wherever they see it, there it is.

I guess I want to avoid the narrow self-absorbedness that is the tendency of those who devote their lives to adventuring, and I also want to avoid the narrow slothfulness of those who don't think about what they're doing or why they're doing it but just doing that which gives them a sense of security. I think I usually tend toward both of these extremes in different ways and at different times, though I'm probably more often guilty of the latter.

Anyway, I'm feeeling neither very steady and regimented and logical in my ideas nor free and energetic. I promise, I'm talking about good ideas, or interesting ones, I'm just not doing it too well or interestingly. I'll come back to it later. But, basically, I had a few moments today, on a relatively short hike, when I said to myself "it's great to be alive..." which is something I always Believe, but not something I necessarily feel all the time, and I usually don't have that specific thought come from my present experience but, rather, from thinking about thinking about life and experience.

Also, I like Lou Reed. I used to have a bit of a prejudiced aversion to his post-velvet stuff, since it's less melodic and more talky, but, beyond the catchy licks and riffs and rhythms, and intriguing lyrical constructions, he just Sounds cool without Sounding like he's Trying to Sound cool.

like David Yarborough.

Brett travels. Same shit, different bodypart.

So I'm under covers and wearing a warm superwool hat and socks and long flannel pants (plaid, greenish, like the cotton sweater I'm wearing) and I'm just about comfortable. I may have to take off this hat in a bit, though. It's real darn warm.
In any case, this means that I am at the moment in Colorado, the beautiful land of stars and starlets and mountains and wiznits and whatnots. My bus-ride from Austin to Denver was a normal travelling-excursion for Brett: Much time spent trying to get comfortable, stetching, and cracking my back, a few vain attempts to read in the bus without heading into a state of car-sickness, listening to my beautiful little ipod, and gettting quasi-molested by a Bob-Marley-wanna-be Jordanian man from San Francisco.

What is it about me, travel, and ethnic gay men that inspires them to touch me in inappropriate ways? I suppose the combination of tiredness and the slight nervousness of travel makes me look vulnerable and swimming in desire for hard man cock. I just don't get it. When I'm travelling (and in real life...but especially when I'm travelling, for security and slothful reasons) I look more like a bum than homosexual. But I guess looking homeless (which usually keeps me from being too worried about people stealing my stuff...sure, I have a thousand dollar computer in my backpack, but I Look like I should be asking you for a quarter so I can buy a cup of coffee...who's gonna rob a vagrant?) turns dark-skinned people on. Because this is the thing. Most of my life has been spent Not travelling. Most of my life has been spent, admittedly, around waspish American white people. But EVERY time I have been inappropriately touched by a Man, I have been travelling, and the man has been 'ethnic,' or whatever the PC word is for 'not white American-born suburban duder'.

So what was the particular trespass this time? Compared to Perugia, it wasn't much...just me entering into a 'friendly' conversation with a hippie-looking dude. We talked a little bit about various universities, schools, poetry, bullshit, yada yada. Every now and again I feel like I should try to be more of a 'talkative' traveller, instead of the apparently-depressed guy with his head against the window daydreaming about dying. So I talk to him, we communicate, everything seems aight. And then his hand enters into the space between us. And, somehow, slowly and sheepishly, his hand ends up grazing my ass. It's an accident, right? I mean, these seats Are kinda close to each other. Then, somehow, he moves his hand Under a bit of my ass. I am now feeling very awkward, and I am beginning to realize the paralysis that I have seen in attractive women being touched by skeezy men. So, there's his hand, under my ass, and I shift my body around to get it out from under me as best I can, and while I'm doing this, the hand moves to the small of my back, where it rests for a moment or two before he asks 'Do you mind if I work on your back?' and I say 'yeah, I'd rather you didn't,' after which he says 'I just like doing things I'm good at,' or something along those lines, and then I move seats as best I can to try to fall asleep.

I learned two things, Again, from this episode. 1) I think it might SUCK to be a girl, especially a good-looking one, at times. I've oftened heard attractive females complaining, in one form or another, about being hit on constantly. Luckily for me and my maleness, I don't often get 'hit on' by undesirables, since most women are not as predatory as men tend to be. With only about 2 percent of the male population being homosexual, there just aren't all that many gay dudes to eerily and queerily and touchily hit on me. But if you're a Girl, and you're hot, and there are men everywhere you go in your life, and 98 percent of them are straight,and 80 percent of them what to bang you, and 40 percent have the gaul/balls/dumbassness to approach you in that quary when, then it just seems like you could get into a lot of awkward, unwanted, or feeling-violated situations. It would be shitty to Constantly have to think that with Every man you're talking to, he really wants something more than just a friendly chat. On a lot of levels, I think it'd be a burden, especially when guys starting getting touch-feely-ewww-gross...and Especially when you're constantly being groped when you're in Italy. Dirty farkin' Italians. Dwelling in a land of stereotypes, I was expecting to be ashamed of obnoxious american boys when I was in Europe...but the truth was that most of the big annoying groups of guys were Italians, even in Prague and whatnot, and most of my she-friends who've been to Italy have complained (or just apathetically stated) the reality of being repeatedly felt-up in Italia. Damn good pasta they got, though. Damn good pasta. And Fonzie, the guy I met on the train, was cool...though he was two-timing on his girlfriend. So, cool to me, not to his women. That's the Italian pattern so far from my incredibly narrow viewpoint.

The other thing I was reminded of is something more general: Everybody wants something from you. This guy I was talking to told me I had a 'pure soul' and seemed like I could 'write a great novel' or something alont those lines, but, really, 'you have a pure soul' means 'please give me a handjob on the greyhound bus,' and you seem like you could write a great novel means 'I want my hand in your ass.' So people say things, and feel and mean something else. Maybe not all the time. but possibly, probably most. It's hard not to be suspicious of people's motives when you're human. But, as Mother Theresa said, be hip and live sweetly anyway, though I guess she never assumed that being friendly with a hippie on a bus would lead to creepy lemme-rub-you come-ons.

The thing is, Hussan wasn't, from what I could tell, a Bad guy. Seemed nice enough and whatnot. But I guess that might be part of his shtick to get the shdick.

The Man who Would be Schizophrenic

I was just walking from the kitchen to my bedroom. When I opened the door and turned on the light, I Saw a He-man Figurine in the middle of my bed. It wasn't just Any He-man action figure, it was battle-scar He-man, the one that would magically go from having a big slash across his chest to being completely healed to having a big slash across his chest if you just punched him. That action figure was the awesome. The funny thing, however, was that there was no He-man action figure on my bed. None at all. I had Seen something that's not actually there. I didn't Imagine it....it wasn't a thought I had in my head of a bed with the quilt and the sheets with blue stripes and the unfinished Propel water bottle and the Schrodinger's cat Trilogy and Chief Modern Poets of Britain and America and my dry-humpable mac. It was a(n) Hallucination of me Seeing something within my normal field of vision that wasn't actually there. The insanity encroaches ever more closely. Good thing I'm about to head off into the cold winter of Colorado to work with adjudicated youth. That environment will surely be calming enough to ease the tensions in my mind and release me from all disturbedness. (Actually, I think that living in a white house with lots of food everywhere and nothing stressful ever happening is probably what causes these sorts of things to happen. Creating something for the mind to deal with so that the mind can have something with which to be occupied.)

Don't Tell my parents, but I have a jar of peanut butter next to my bed, and when I'm hungry late at night or early in the morning I just dig into it with a spoon and eat the stuff, double and triple and quadruple-dipping. I wonder if I should return this to the cabinet or just claim it as my own, put a sign on it that says 'property of Brett...keep away womb and spermbank.' That probably wouldn't go over too well.

Before taking a gnosh of my peanut butter, I was at the refrigerator hand-eating a chunk of cheese and a few slices of meat, I think Turkey, but I wasn't paying enough attention. Actually, the meet had that vaguely purplish color, not in a bad sickly way, just in a not-white-turkey way. Was it Ham? shit, I threw out the wrapping, so now I'll never know.

Tonight I watched a bunch of movies. Actually, the past few days have been full of me heading to the movie theatre by my lonesome to take part in the Austin Film Festival. I bought my 35-dollar pass, Brian was busy womaning it, I didn't feel like calling anyone or initiating what others refer to as 'social contact,' so I just went to the movies. I made a concerted effort to see short films so that I could size up the competition, as it were. Needless to say I was not altogether impressed. Especially with the shorts I saw tonight. Most of them were mediocre to GodAwful. One was pretty good, but the rest were either lame-ish student films or lamer internet-spawned turds.

Previous shorts-viewings had been more successful. One about a couple of old dying men was pretty good, real character-driven and funny with the old men complaining. Can't go wrong with grumpy old men. Remember that Snickers commercial with the old guy who paints the fields for the Kansas City Chiefs, and the big black football player comes over and says 'Who are the Chefs,' and the thin old decrepit white guy looks up and sees that he missed the i, and he says 'Great Googly Moogly.' GREAT GOOGLY MOOGLY. That is something which everyone of us should be saying at least twice a week. Much better than 'motherfuckin' shit' or 'damn that bitch' or 'let me have my pencil back, teacher, or I'll bite your throat.'

I once had a quasi-goth girl in seventh grade scratch me across the neck with her big long red nasty fingernails and they cut deep into my skin, I even bled, and all because she made a comment about a guy with baggy pants and I said something about her wanting access to his penis. Innocent stuff, really. I didn't deserve to be attacked. Vicious artsy bitches.

You could definitely tell which short films were made by youngsters and which by older folks...the youngin's basically were trying to out-weird and out-quirk each other: a failed hot-dog vendor who kills his competition and boss, which ends up bringing him lots of business with the cops coming and then the press and the tourists etc.etc., a woman with the arctic in her vagina and her vaginologist goes on a tour with her exploitatively and everyone thinks of her as a freak but one young man takes note of how it probably aches to have vast fields of emptiness in your pussy and he jumps inside of her and gets lost but then they meet on the ocean which gets frozen because she as an eskimo-'tang...that one was executive-produced by George Clooney and Steven Soderberg (sp?) That's kinda weird.

In a sense, it's all inspiring and stress-relieving in relation to Swerve. Up to this point, I've been of the mind that it'll either come out really great and win everything, or somehow end up sucking. But WHATEVER happens, it'll be better than some of these shortflicks, I know that for sure. It's one of those things where you think in your mind 'movie at a film-festival' and you imagine it being this big huge step that must mean that a film's well-made and intelligent and full of creativity and wit...but, really, some of those short movies (especially the short short ones) downright sucked.

I should try to get some sleep. I am still having this feeling of bein depleted/un-nutrified/disconnected between brain and body with some lack of essential energy. I'll do the Colorado stuff, it may just be an in-shape deal. Otherwise I'll try to visit mister hippie doctor.

Larry Bird is Awesome

So here we have an interesting little article about the fact that some random man voluntarily extended his jail-sentencing in order to match Bird's number. I would say that this shows a complete reversal of priorities, but, obviously, someone who's going to jail for thirty years already has a wacked-out view of what the hierarchy of value in his life should be. Three years of freedom? Nah, not at all...I'll definitely trade that for some inconsequential numerical forced-coincidence between the number of years I'm in prison and the number on the back of the best White-Guy Basketball player ever. See, the absurd thing about this is, that it's really not all That absurd. It's simply human. If you were to dissect the choices and practical value-systems of most human beings (including myself...and I say 'practical value systems' denoting how people's actions define their priorities, as opposed to what they say they are...which is usually really just a wish-list that comes from a certain, oft-defeated portion of the brain) you would find similar - if not so obvious or eggregious - upturnings of logic reason soul heart faith dogtongues etc.etc. It happens all the time, but it usually just happens in ways that we are accustommed to, so we don't notice it. But when we read an article like this, it's easy to say 'that's weird, that's strange, that's perverse, that's Other, that's not me, I'm different than that.' But, actually, part of the reason it's intriguing is because it's a mirror. God knew a lot about this when he spent a lot of time talking to the cats who wrote the Bible about not putting too much stock in weird statues and numerology and whatnot.

You know that song by Bright Eyes on that album (I've not heard the whole thing) where he ends it with some faux-radio interview put over some 'ethereal music'? I hate that frikkin' thing. First of all, the man's singing voice can sometimes get annoying, but its stutter and slowness makes the standard 4/4 timing of the songs interesting in a strange way. When he's talking, it's simply annoying and pretentious and whiney-sounding, especially when he's Saying Such pretentious BS about 'well, you know, fevers symbolize this and mirrors symbolize that and...' take a lesson from Bob, don't explain your frikkin' songs, especially not easily and symbolically, and don't hide your tunes behind this miasmal mist of 'deep' pseudo-impromptu poesy interview shmaltz Arrrrrr it's bad. I don't even know if the songs on that album are good or not, because every time he opens his speaking mouth and says something uninteresting and arrogant I want to kill someone, usually him, and usually with a medieval mace or a spork or something (always falling back upon the spork for 'interesting randomness.' Still doing it after all these years, when I attempted to woo the wacky redhead with my melancholic sweet strangeness. Didn't work, but I've since moved on to higher ground, though I am now in the valley, where the pellets of poison are flooding my waters. Good thing, though, that beer and blogs act as antidotes to the pellets. Good thing.

You know, I mostly love my Mac, but sometimes, and I don't know how, I press a certain button or graze that touch-pad, and all of a sudden the cursor moves to some godforsaken place on the page or even opens a different program and all of a sudden I'm typing the word 'the' in the middle of 'Bright' so that it becomes Brtheight, and I have to delete it and then move back down to start where I had left off but some unforeseen unnatural force had moved my cursor backwards, forcing me to interact with old words that I'd already written and was through with, and, in doing so, perverting the meaning and structure of those words.

This is a metaphor for memory.

Another intriguing thing that we have to fess up to about Larry Bird is that a lot of people like him (including myself, in some ways) more than they should because he's white and in the 80s he was on the Celtics, which was by far the whiter of the two dominant teams, in the cold civiliized Irishly-related Northeast, instead of in the hot horny horrible sinful West Coast of LA where a lot of people are black and get AIDS. It's like when I was sitting next to my grandma watching a college track meet that my brother was in, and she was rooting for the white guy in a race that had nothing to do with my brother's school, not in a horrible racist way, but as if that meant we were segregated by teams. The Celtics were that way for a lot of white folk...They were their team because they were mostly white like them. And there is a great history of racism in Boston. At least that's what I remember from some short plug for a TV show and it mentioned how the Red Sox were the last team to get a black player because of racist reasons.

Goin' to Office Max, gonna buy me some white folders. Goin' to Office Max, gonna buy me some white folders.

Gluck

I just made up a new word..."Gluck." It's short for G'luck, which is short for good luck, which is short for I wish your pupils were boiling in a pot of tuna-semen!!!

(Notice how Brett employed All of his well-worn comedic techniques...putting words together in slightly unobvious, slightly juveniles ways, Being hyper-depressive and violent and dark, being strangely sexual, and being absurdly random to the point of commenting upon the shallowness of those who are pretentiously random).

Do Tuna even have semen?

SPOTLIGHT!!!

Have you seen this thing?!!??!? Did you realize this existed??!?!?!? How Awesome is this!!!! I hate exclamation points but have to use them, like SUVs or words!!!! Do you see that little icon in the top right of your computers, mac-owners? Looks like a magnifying glass? Right next to the time/date? Well, you press on that, and then type in any word...and it (VERY QUICKLY) shows all the documents that have that word in it Somewhere. Boom. Just like that. Utterwow. Yay for Mac. Yay for Mac. Yaya Mac.

Standard Update (poker and video games)

I suppose that it's time for another standard update. It's been a bit of a while since I've told you uninterested folk what I've been up to recently. Anyhooch, this weekend was a pretty good one, mostly spent with my brother, which means that I watched football and played video games. It was fun, but I definitely am looking forward to being forced out of my screen-ridden reality and into the stark nature of the big CO in the middle of buttsex nowhere. Obviously, I watched the Notre Dame football game, and it was probably the most I've ever actually yelled at a television screen when in the company of less than 5 people. I sent Brian a number of text messages throughout the game, mostly 'fuck yea' in response to times when ND would score a touchdown or get an interception. I didn't know what to send after the wretched end to the game...I thought about just sending 'fuck' instead. That probably would've been appropriate.

Also, I'm a Jedi, and I can kick your ass at revenge of the Sith. Probably. My brother, who is generally better or equal to me in talent when it comes to video games, could not, for the life of him, figure out how to beat me in the duel mode for Revenge of the Sith. It's a bit perplexing, since the game doesn't have a lot of intricate combos, and I definitely didn't use them very much...mostly just swinging the sabre with the quick/weak button. After a long time (I'm talking about 50 matches) he finally caught on, and I think I'm in a place where I'll beat him 3 out of 4 gameds (instead of 25 out of 26). The Broncos won, which was pretty sweet. They look to be pretty good this year, but I would imagine that their fate this year will be quite familiar: losing to Indianapolis in the playoffs. Maybe this year, though, they'll make it to the AFC championship game before that happens.

Last night I had a dream that I made out with Arianne...my college girlfriend. It was kinda weird, I can't really place where we were, though I think a couch was involved, and the making out wasn't very heavy. It was reminiscent of the first time we hooked up after we'd broken up, when we were on her bed and rolling around a bit and snuggling and she stuck her tongue in my mouth and then I kissed her and then she claimed I'd started it because she hadn't kissed me, just stuck her tongue in my mouth. Girls are weird. See. It's true. Don't argue. You know I'm right. So, anyway, that was sorta the kissing-level that was in the dream, somewhat restrained and awkward, especially since her Boyfriend was in the room, and he wasn't too happy about it. Whatever. He's a douche, and I could use some innocent ex-girlfriend love.

Punk.

Earlier tonight I wandered around downtown Austin, delivering fliers (sp?) for my friend/executive producer Jeannette for a documentary film that she worked on. It was kinda fun to slightly aimlessly walk around, trying to find various pre-assigned locales. It was interesting to actually be in bars that I would otherwise never consider entering. Many of them were strangely red-lit in that dark creepy way that I guess makes people want to get horny or buy beer or something. It's intriguing, but makes me feel kinda strange. Most importantly, however, it gave me an excuse to go into Coyote Ugly, where there was a thirty-something woman and a couple of hot barely-dresseders dancing on the bar. I glanced over at everyone else in the bar, and all eyes were on the leggy babies dancing, as though they were a football game or something. I guess people go there to get a bit of the strip-club feel without actually feeling like they're a strip-club guy. As I was leaving, the manager (slightly older, with bigggggg natural boobies) and one of the waitresses (whom I'd talk to before about where to put my fliers [no joke about putting things in flies, I promise] but I didn't notice how 'hot' [which means rather goddessian boob-to-stomach-to-hip-size ratio] she was until she got up to dance]). They did a slightly amusing/arousing quasi-lesberotic number to Adam Sandler's 'medium pace,' miming all of the pure wonderful things he describes in that song.

I see a lot of other blogs, and they're all hip with cute pictures and colorful links. I don't know if I can do that. I don't think I'm THAT kind of hipster. More like the one who doesn't exercise enough but still remains relatively thin. I need to exercise and eat better...I think my brain functions (and sleeping habits) would improve drastically. Luckily, I'll be forced into that situation soon.

Lastly, I've started a 'poetry project' on another blog. I don't really know where it's going, just the general gist of the method behind the poems. I'm a little disheartened since the quality of the poems has steadily decreased from the first one, in my opinion. And the first wasn't all that earth-shattering Need to exercise more and/or smokee weed to get the brain juices flowing as they should.

Just remembered. Had a weird moment today, sending off a 'give us money' packet to Carly's mom. Generally, we attach a small hand-written note to personalize things. It was a strange thing for me to write, and, to be honest, a bit emotional. It's really really weird how you can Think certain thoughts, or say them, or even Write them, and they dont' affect you, but when you're doing it in a way that's directly communicating with someone, the brain's on a different wavelength for some reason. I made mention off feeling regret that I hadn't seen her this past summer, and expressed gratitude for her being so warm to me when meeting her a year ago. She introduced herself as I was walking by (she had recognized me from pictures). I was somewhat dreading that moment, because Carly had recently 99% broken up with me, and I knew that her momma would be there. But her momma was so nice and sweet and warm that it didn't even cross my mind. I'd thought about being melodramatic in that moment, but I couldn't bring myself to do it... Somethin' about them Ritter women that makes it impossible to bring up any sort of unpositive emotion when you're in their presence. You can think and think and think about this and that you're going to say, this unfair, that unfair, yada yada bleck, but then you see 'em or hear 'em or even thind\k about 'em within a real-life paradigm, and the insides melt. Which is usually probably a good thing, since you're an emotional, hyper-logical, slightly disturbed guy who thinks too much. I thought about writing 'I suppose I wish you could've been a bigger part of my life' but didn't.

That's all for now. Gonna try to sleep. Wish me luck.

Name my Macintosh!!!

Allright lovely blog-readers (aka Brian, and maybe that other guy...)

I am Going to name my Mac, whether you like it or not!!! It hasn't frozen on me since Friday, I'm still slightly concerned that the fan is broken or something...it shouldn't have overheated the way it seemed to.

So name-suggestions are more than welcome. Only requirement is that it's pronouncable, not too long, and is a feminine name. I've come up with a few myself, so far:

Macintina

Macintitty

Computang

G-na

ihooker

Mary

Mulva

Applease.

Noahseeta.

Nicole.

4-play

Carly

Orange

Wife version 1.0

Tigress

Lapina

lupina

whore.

Mary Oliver

A proponent of quietly fear-ridden nature-numbed Buddhism. She is to be avoided at all costs, though I've not seen a picture of her, and if she's hot, then my statement becomes nullified.

The Ridiculous Sad Waste

I am so sorry, Brian and all of you other ND-ers out there. Often (who starts a sentence with 'often'. I mean...really) I have a partial secret desire deep within me to see Notre Dame lose, just for the sake of seeing the illogical sadness come over rabid fanatics. But I was really rootin' for you guys. It looked like you had it. I was cheerin' and bitchin' for the Fighting Irish the entire time. I had faith in Touchdown Buddha, but Carroll Crappy Cuntish Luck won out this time. Next year, guys, next year. Imagine this offense with a top-notch recruiting class. You'll still go on to be a highly-ranked team this year, have a good showing at a respectable bowl. But next year is BCS all the way, baby. No worries about that.

Funny how the Trojans look like Herpes.

Thought

Smoke without air
Dog without leash
motion lacking movement
body without form,
silence lacking stillness,
a balloon without a string
up, up, up! Like the upturned
air-wing, downturned
distrophy.
Memory without setting.

Doorknob lacking all doors,

Verbal masturbation OR what I said I didn't want to do but would

I have this strange habit where I write something and then re-read it over a number of times, just for the sake of reading it. On a night like tonight, I generally try not to think about this reading in editing terms, but inevitably it slowly turns into a revision and addition process (I felt like that last post needed more concrete metaphor and weirdness so I went back and added the penis/girlfriend riff). Right now, I'm in bed, and it feels great. I love having a soft, smooth, white, warm body on my lap, something for me to finger with a rhythmic tapping motion. And man, when I push the right botton, does she sing!!!

When I first talked about naming my computer, Brian said I shouldn't, because I'd get too attached. I was initially thinking of man-names. But now that I've actually seen/used my Mac, I think I should give it a girl's name (though, perhaps, it's got a steadiness that is rare within the fairer fickler gender...wait. did I just say that? Yay for much-deserved hate-spam from girls, which would come only were they to read this blog...but face it. It's true. You know you're going to say it's true about all girls except you, and then you'll grin sheepishly, and note how it makes you charming. I know you. I've seen you out on that dance floor. Shakin' that booty. Yummmph) But it does have the smoothness/warmth/comfort/portability of a female. It also smells nice and likes to bite my nipple.

My foray into that girlfriend-analogy on my last post got me to thinking about the big post that will have LOVE as its topic. But I won't start that now. I promise. That'd keep me up until Sunday. In the meantime, though, I got to thinkin'....If I had the option, which of my ex-girlfriends would I want to have a short-term love-affair with? Who would you pick and why? For me, I think it'd probably be Ari, for a number of reasons. A) She's hot. B) She's very sexual C) My emotional attachment is pretty darn distant from her these days, so it wouldn't be nearly as much of an emotional problem in terms of recreating old negative thought-tendencies and leading me down a deep dark need path toward depression and feeling unloved and bitter resentment and all of that. D) She was good about drilling my tongue with her ear.
Obviously, if we were talking about a rekindling of long-term relationships, that'd have to be with 'ze other girlfriend, for obvious stillinlovewithherevenifItrynottobe reasons, and because I think she has an undefined divinity about her the surface of which I only cracked (or stuck my tongue into) (see how I make the joke to lighten/degrade the thought of it to try and create distance between myself and my emotions? Yay defense mechanisms!!!And did you see how I didn't mention her by name, because that would feel like some sort of strange betrayal in some wonked-out way, that her name as this sacrosanctness to it that shouldn't be blemished as use for blog-fodder......amazing, really, the power in a name. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but the shampoo called 'rose-dawn' wouldn't smell as sweet if we called it 'fred's-shit'.

Writing this blog creates the sense that no one is reading it AND that everyone is reading it. This is a strange/dangerous amalgam of feelings. At the same time, I mostly don't cognitively realize that this can be viewed by anyone anywhere. At the same time, I can imagine this communication going out to various specific persons, which gives me the initiative to be open/self-explanatory/weird/etc. So it's like a combination of all the emails I would've written to an array of peoplee, but all mushed together. Funky. It's to do with the inability of the human mind to really conceive of more than one person at a time. Kirby Olson, a lutheran Surrealist, talks about this in his blog, about how he can't really conceive of the suffering of people in New Orleans on a wide scale, but he can imagine one person in the superdome, one person being overtaken by water in an attic, etc. Maybe God gave us this brain defeciency so we wouldn't feel all emotions at once, or get overwhelmed, or decide to turn into foghorns.

leghorn.

Mustard pie.

KURDS!!!

love,

Turd

goat-daughter. OR

British

duck-offspring.

Culture

I would like to say someething about multi-culturalism.

Most of my friends and acquaintances who consider themselves multi-culturalists really aren't. For them, multiculturalism means that they have a prejudiced affinity for non-dominant cultures. Thus, it becomes okay to decry ones OWN culture, but not okay to be negative about Other cultures. It's sort of this extremist disconnected patriotism, and has all of the faults of a normal excessivepatriotism, just displaced and transferred onto Other cultures.

Eastern philosophies and South American/African tribalism seem to be quite appealing, especially aesthetically, to a lot of liberally types. But if you start talking Nascar hamburgers SUVs etc., they become offended, angry, and may even use the word 'evil,' especially if you mention Bush. These people have a massive gap in their understanding: What they don't realize is that they are experiencing a cultural dissonance, a cultural distance. They are condemning and judging members of another culture just as much as Fred's "those habibs are all the same" girlfriends. The thing is, I usually agree with them. There's a lot wrong with that, shall we say, mainstream Southern american culture, or mainstream American pop culture. But there are also a ton of things wrong with a lot of Other cultures, be they Islamic or African or Asian or tribal or cultist...We have JUST AS MUCH right to denounce the practices and perversions of those cultures as we do have a right to lambast lazy Deliverance-creepy idjuts.

So let us move forward, understanding that ALL cultures have their particular deficiencies, their debaucheries, their defects, though some may have more than others. And let us remember that the most important thing about changing or improving the defects within a culture (and I believe this should be the mission of all of humanity...either our own culture, or, yes, other cultures) is to understand that culture as deeply as possible. This is why it's usually not an intelligent thing to get involved with changing other cultures unless there is a drastic need to, and when we do, we need to approach these situations with as much care, caution, and understanding as possible. This is obviously about Iraq, in some sense. Yes, Western Democracy is a far superior government and culture to theocratic dictatorships, fundamentalist Islam, and most forms of Communism. And 'spreading democracy' should be something that we are interested in, it should be one aspect of our mission to improve humanity. Obviously, however, spreading democracy must be done in a manner that takes into account how democracy will interact with and be accepted by a certain culture. War usually isn't the best way to do this. I remember the Repubs had a commercial during the elections about how (I don't know the exact number) there had been 100-some new democracies formed since 1978 (or some similar year...) And then went on to brag about how we'd added Afghanistan and Iraq to that list. But, last I checked, we didn't go to war with those other 100+ countries who became democratic. Good ol' Pope John Paul did a lot more to spread democracy than this president will ever know how to. He's also on my hat. My hat rules.

Of course, we didn't go to war to spread democracy. That's why we're there now, but it's not why went. That's a whole other bag o' worms. Die worms, Die.

I don't mean to get on a three-year-old tirade about Iraq. I was hoping to use it as a specific example of a larger idea to do with culture. More importantly for us as individual people who don't make massive decisions that affect the lives of incredible numbers of people on this planet, we need to think intelligently about that which is good in a culture and that which is not, and take upon ourselves that which is good, and disrobe ourselves of that which is not. Now, of course, we need some basic underlying system of defining what is Good, but I think at the bottom of all of this are basic assumptions: love better than non-love, joy better than non-joy, sincerity better than non-sincerity, being better than non-being, harmony better than disunity, freedom better than oppression, and on and on, something coming from a mixture of Christian surrealism and Buddhist Logic. The problem most people have is that they are used to strict, dogmatic, Ethics-less definitions of these terms, and so they become hyper-relativistic and slippery-slope-tastic. "well, maybe if someone's sincere that'll hurt someone else, and hurt is worse than non-hurt, so it all comes tumbling down into a vast abyss of meaninglessness I need cry. Who's to say what 'good' is"

I Am. Bitch.

Perhaps the most frequent objection that people have is the diversity/unity connundrum. If we define unity as good, then we'll be like Hitler, forcing everyone to be the same and killing Jews and gays and gyspies. Well, no. Unity is good. Killing people shows a lot of disunity, but let's move beyond that. Here, let's say we have to sacrifice 50000 babies to gain perfect cultural unity. which doesn't mean sameness, by the way, but tends to be helped by sameness. Well, we have to realize that killing 50000 innocent babies is bad, and probably not worth gaining a leg or two up on vague 'unity' concepts.

what a bad analogy. Maybe a a discussion I've had with non-existent girlfriends in my head from time to time will illustrate my point better about loyalties.

I want to meet up with a long lost friend who's only in town for one day, and then he's going to go back to Mongolia where he will die of cancer within the next year. My girlfriend wants me to stay home to watch an episode of the
OC and transcribe it. I say "sorry, hun, I'm going to go see my friend.' She says 'that means that you are more loyal to him than you are to me...that means he's more important to you than I am.' No, says I. Seeing him once more before he dies is more important to me than your OC transcription.

See why 'absolute loyalty', to a girl or a moral, is dumb? Obviously, I'm not advocating cheating. Why'd you even think that? I guess because 'loyalty' somehow gets caught up with sex within the context of relationships. But it gives us another example: Which is more important, having sex with your highschool girlfriend, or keeping your sexual relationship with your wife pure and sacred, and keeping yourself from guilt, and keeping her from hurt? Obviously, that second list wins out if we are thinking reasonably. Now, your ex-girlfried from highschool will say 'aren't you loyal to me? Don't you like me? If we're friends, you should give me what I want.' But then you'd say 'you're an idiot,' and go and masturbate, because she's still hot. And your penis might get angry at you, and say 'but daddy, I wanted to go back to that place we went on vacation 7 years ago, it was nice and warm and smooth, and going back will have the comfort of being home mixed with the excitement of travel. please, please, please...' And you'll say, to your penis, 'no, little fred, being faithful to my wife is more important than meeting your desires.'

I think one of the Main deficiencies of our school system, culture, and politics, is that we have ceased to be ethicists. We are mostly all moralists. We do not weigh loyalties, we do not consider consequences, we do not recognize that inherent to trying to find goodness will be times when one good is in conflict with another. Sex with ex-girlfriend may be good, but it comes up sharply against a more important good of faithfulness to wife, or, in my case, faithfulness to mental-health and the linguistics of physical interaction.

We have become lazy, and only stick to our moral guns, believing in a black-and-white universe. Even the Lefties do this much of the time. There is no place for reason in these debates, no place for consideration or discussion. We are either pro-environment OR pro-business, pro-health-food or fat-angry-Americans...We approach a particular issue with an idea pre-set in our minds, seeking to take the factual knowledge therein to use it to fit our pre-decided side. Notice that I use the word 'we' in this paragraph to try to even out the unintended arrogance coming from the use of the word 'they' in previous paragraphs.

It's just sad that liberals usually get caught up in the false binaries that they pretend to condemn most of the time. We have lost the Potter Box in our minds. Come back, Potter, come back.

Also, I just read an article about how rudeness is increasing, and it quoted a lot of old people who said that things had gotten ruder. As if it hasn't Always been the case that old people think young people are rude. And, again, this is often due to a difference in culture. 'rudeness' on a general level is often the clash between cultures. The problem with where we are in human history is that cultures are not nearly as static or segregated as they used to be. We are a huge mish-mash of people from different backgrounds who grew up in COMPLETELY different times. Used to be that the world a ten-year old grew up in was much like the world a 50-year-old grew up in. not so anymore. Not so at all. Salient cultural changes, pushed forward by technology, now happen within 5 or 10 years, and that time-period is increasingly becoming lesser. This means that there are More people interacting with More people who come from a different culture, and so clashes of culture happen more and more frequently. I don't necessarily think this is Such a bad thing, especially if we recognize it and approach every interaction we have with people who come from a different culture as if we were in a foreign country...

My biggest fear, however, (and this is something that has been supported/pushed forward by artists over the past 40 or 50 years) is that we are now so caught up with trying to understand and deal with all of this information and varying cultures that we do not have time effort energy ability to seek the 'still point' as Eliot says, or that which is essential to the human condition, or that which is beautiful or Godly/goodly. Instead, art becomes about the experience of being black or gay or female or male and white or a LANGUAGE poet or it becomes about poetry or about technology or yada yada yada...it ceases to be about being human, or about creating an emotional experience or finding an idea with universal implication. The other problem is that many of these baseline truths were known how to be expressed by certain cultures and with certain languages, but those structures have been abandoned and, in a sense, are inadequate to the times. But we are too dumb to learn from them, and now we don't have the time as a society to reaxch the heights of a certain expression of the human soul or heart or mind or whatever inside of our cultural systems.

People like to chastize the literary canon because it's full of 'dead white men.' This is not only dumb and silly, but stupid and wrong. The canon is the canon, not because those poets were dead white men...that thinking doesn't even come into play. Their poems weren't about being white and male, they were about being Human. And just because some people may not relate directly with the setting, language, and culture within that work immediately, doesn't mean that that work is somehow unimportant to us or has no impact, or isn't Better than most work being produced today.

It is the world of surfaces that we are now dealing with, and it is why things have become so disparate and segregated and either hyper-specific or hyper-not-good: If it does not relate to me and my experience directly, it is somehow not real, or I can not relate to it. This thoughtpath thrives because so much has been Just about those simple surface-level ideas, or about destroying old patterns of being. For the language poets, it's poetry about language, for the marxists, it's poetry about marxism (or viewing all poetry through a marxist lens. Gag me with an ugly rooster) for the School of Quietude, it's about being quiet, for Queer poetry, it's about being queer, for angry white men, it's about being angry white men.. Postmodern bullshit all of it.

My eyes are probably grown red by now. I should sleep. This may just mean that I'm going to walk from my chair to my bed, laptop still in hand. Mmmmmmm. laptop.

it froze today, perhaps from overheating. Has me a little worried that the fan inside is broked.

don't go dyin' on me my brand new beautiful Mac!!!

How do blogcompanies make money?

I'm trying to figure it out. I haven't seen any advertisements, haven't seen anything indicating any way that blogspot makes dough. I suppose maybe they somehow have a craigslistish settup of getting money from the most popular blogs and then letting everyone else do their shiznau for free? Maybe they get a portion of the revenues from each advertisement that a blogger puts on his webpage? That's gotta be it. Kinda weird, in any case.

Well my main homeslices, that's it for now. I may come back with something long and lovely, but not at the moment. It's a sweetly lonesome Friday night. Something about the upcoming unknown lifechange makes this feeling a pleasant one...reminds me of when I was younger and more innocent somehow. Maybe it's to do with bad sleeping and eating habits.

My eyes can not open wider,
they can never swallow
the universe.

I have an instinct to sign off of each of these things as though it were an email. I don't think that's standard blog formatting, right?

Off to perusing the internet for intellectually stimulating drivel.

song

I couldn't find my whiskey, and then I realized that I drank it all.

It's Been Decided...I think

I've figured out, mostly, what I'm going to be doing over the course of the next months. I'm about 90% sure that I'll take the Colorado Wilderness Therapy job, which begins November 1st. I finally talked to the dude , and he sounded quite cool. He had that good-person outdoorsy laidback friendliness in his voice that I love so well. I discussed with him my conflicts, and he seemed to be pretty flexible with working it out. You can tell that it's a difficult thing for him to find qualified candidates who are going to be staying around for a long period of time. I'm sure working in such an environment is a heck of a learning process, and that having a year of experience increases the value of a worker significantly, but these kinds of jobs tend to draw quasi-transients with college degrees like myself. He seemed very receptive to my inquiries about getting time-off for the movie shoot in January. So, as long as it's in January, I'm pretty sure I'll be there for at least most, if not all, of the shoot. December depends on the timing of it all. Otherwise, There's an aight possibility that I'll visit Austin sometime in December (and maybe november) as well. There's an airport in Montrose, so that might be an easy transition.

Is this post intended to be read by Brian so that he doesn't hate me? Yes:-) But I'm in a position where I can come close to having it both ways, and so I think I'm going to take that opportunity. I'm sad that I won't be able to bond with everyone involved with the production as much as I'd like to, but it doesn't take up a substantial enough portion of my time to replace the constantness and closeness that comes with the outdoor-ed experience. And I don't think there's a short-term job out there where I can have the same impact and gain as much. The other disappointment is that the train trip might be postponed indefinitely. But, really, let's face it, the whole idea behind that was just to give me an excuse to get out of the house and to have a method of trying to marry one or two beautiful women. I'll do it again sometime. Now my hope is that I get into the University of Oregon so I can traintrip it in late August. I still might be able to ditch the Colorado program and do it in May, but that might be a bit skeezy of me.

So, this means that I'll probably be leaving Austin later this month...25th or something like that. I need to have some time in Colorado to get things settled, get my car from Estes, sleep on the floor of poorartsyhipsters, and get half-acclimated before the training begins.

Anyway, for some reason I left my mac in the car, and this darn PC is already destroying my soul. Daggnabb-it.

Poetry from the strangewebuniverse

Ever noticed these things that come up in strange porn-emails or in weird searches that you do? I just figured I'd paste one of these. It's so. Beutiful.

Johns hopkins orthopaedics kenmore washing machines extreme sportbikes cabo beach cam casa sirena hotel grief brothers

Round rock texas baseball investment advice red rose vintage ppo ok hospitals ppo oklahoma hospitals ok lesbi indonesia tahoe house ...

Arabic flash cards online greeting fluoxetine side effects sim city 4 patch irish boy names greeting pages

mmmmmmmm

The Title of ALL TITLES

This is a beautiful day in Austin, Texas, with corpses everywhere rotting jazzishly.

Dream of Less-Than-Interesting Status

New dream. I was working at/promoting some restaurant. Chris Conley, maybe Josh Morris were there. I was some kind of greeter dude who would welcome the long line of people. It was part of some larger festival..I remember a voice over or a conversation with somebody about how they were making the space curvy and cramped so that it seemed more popular/lively than it actually was. I went to order something, and did. I think it had to do with meat.

I know, I know, whatever happened to marrying a girl who's only a head and then finding out that the vagina that's on her neck has teeth. These are growing to be sad times in Brett's dreamlife.

I'll try to make something more interesting come out of this nightmind soon.
I should get out of bed to check my email...

WAIT, I don't have to!!! I'm still in bed!!! God is ALLSOME.

MY NEW MAC!!! etc.

Hello farm fresh Sallywags. I am now typing from the most monumental purchase I have ever made in my nasty, short, brutish life: my new ibook G4. God bless the mac, I say. god Bless. Such an intrinsic smoothness to the design, the layout, the ease and simplicity of everything. As owen said, it takes about ten hours of work per week to keep a pc running smoothly. nothing of the sort for a Mac. I am now typing laying down on my back, which itself is quite a revolutionary idea. Only drawback is that hard-to-reach keys are even harder to reach (numbers and the shift key especially). But, besides that, I could, theoretically, just fall asleep with my baby in my lap. Mmmmm. Like a baby.

I am still in the midst of deciding what to do with my life. There is the possibility of working near Telluride. I got a call from Jim Omer, the Alternative youth Adventures guy, and he said that they're having the next training session the first week of November. I may have a few conflicts of interest, however...the job description online says that they require a commitment of one year. I will most definitely be in graduate school by the time September rolls around. Also, I might want to work at Cheley again, which would push things back to May. And last, but perhaps not least, the movie is scheduled to begin filming (probably) in January sometime. I will discuss my conflicts with Mr. Omer and then proceed once I have the pertinent information. I still hope to go ona train trip at some point, as well (what with my new laptop and all and me so poetic on the train world rumblin' by and me writing the great American poemnovelscreenplayporno. If I could have things my way, I would go on a train trip in late october/november, come back to Austin (or hang around Colorado for a while) in December, do movie stuff January, and then do the AYA job starting in mid-January, finishing in May to begin another wonderful year at Cheley. But that scenario seems unlikely at this point.

I also had a happy surprise. For some reason, I have about three thousand more dollars than I thought I did. It's great what happens when you don't look at your money all that often. You just get a blurred figure in your head, and that two that you saw was actually a five. yipyip!

This laptop is either the most healthy or the least healthy purchase I've ever made. The increased convenience of using the computer in more comfortable areas and positions may cause me to be even more swallowed by the digitized numb loveliness of the internet...conversely, however, I may simply be a much happier boy, able to feed my neddiction in comfortable, invigorating environments. Maybe I'll go to bed earlier because I won't be in the computer room, with its chair and bright lights and all, until three in the morning. I am already feeling somewhat sleepy, which is a good thing, like Jesus eating ice cream (how cheesy to recycle an image from a poem you wrote sophomore year of college)...

Brian commented earlier that I should 'start a blog'. Obviously, I already have. I am uncertain as to what extent I should advertise this thing. On the one hand, having people know about it may inspire me to write things that are more interesting (or at least to use a more engaging style). On the other hand, I may begin to feel the need to censor myself, and I'll also be afraid that people will think I'm self-absorbed and dull with my long ramblings. Not having a SPECIFIC audience
(otherwise known as a pretty girl on whom you have a crush) might influence these bloggings into a realm of boredom not seen in my more interesting emails of a similar kind.

So there you have it. It's always difficult to end a post that had no central point.

I think Neil Young is really an allright Bloke. Kinda like Bob Dylan, but more accessible, warmer, less brilliant.

We Clean Up Suicides, So You Don't Have To

OH...and I almost forgot. The most important thing that's happened to me in a bit of a while. I went to Dallas with my brother to see the Cowboys' football game...good time, a long drive, bad traffic around the stadium. But, on the Way There, I was in a half-comfortable half-sleep, probably dreaming about women, glasses of beer, and shoving a snake into a pilot's face, then falling into a river and turning into a woman (who had just dumped Brad Pitt after riding in a bobsled-like-taxi from Italy). So, what did I see in a billboard as I was waking up one fateful moment? A sign that said (I kid you not at all): We clean up suicides/so you and your family don't have to.

I believe that I have been searching for some representative expression of the particular insanity of our times (all times are insane, or perverse, with their own diversions from what is good and godly). I may have just found it. "We clean up suicides so you and your family don't have to". It doesn't get much better, or worse, or more microcosmic, or symbolic, or important, than that. I thought I was on to something (though admittedly one-sided and obvious) when my father told me that I had to go out and buy a lot of peanut butter when there was a vague possibility that we might have a tropical-storm here in Austin. As though, somehow, BUYING peanut butter would save us. (Keep in mind that we have about 3 weeks worth of food for four people in this house.) In the face of possible insecurity and discomfort, my otherwise sane father becomes enamored with peanut butter's life-saving qualities. This deeply instilled rich white WASP cookie-cutter neighborhood reaction of BUY when something might go wrong. The advertisers have successfully turned the Fight or Flight response into a Buy or Buy response. SAM's...which is a HUGE store...was OUT OF BREAD. Look at the coast. Look where Austin is. Not-Sane.

Anyway, those are my two representative building blocks so far. Hopefully these things come to me in ever more absurd, less obvious ways. I'll find it someday. Might also have to do with Nicole being unafraid of stammering into abandoned buildings while being scared to death of people doing ROTC exercises on the CSU lawns. Maybe, in the end, it just comes down to the beauty of nature, or the holiness of God, or the sweetness of two thin bosomy tight-sweatered girls kissing with wet moaning lips and stroking each others' growing nipples with delicate smooth hands.

I think I might write a movie about the 'We Clean up Suicides' people. There seems to be a sub-genre of the feel-good comedy that is about the little-guy's business about to go under and then being saved. (Billy Madison, Tommy Boy, Dodgeball, etc.) Except, now, that little business is 'We Clean Up Suicides,' and there is something in the script about how a morbid, suicidal guy signs up for the job,but upon seeing dead people, realizes how precious life really is. It relates to a theory I've had that part of the reason for the specific depression, lack of reverence, lack of holiness, lack of sanctity etc. in our times is the absence of actual experience or seeing of death. "The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living..." But if we never see the dead, or only see them in pornographied (Pore-nah-gruh-Fide [as in hide]) action movie ways, then we never receive that communication, which is a combination of 'you, like me, will die' and whatever you add to that, whether it be 'life is holy' or 'life is meaningless.' I prefer the former.

I was talking to my friend anthony online. He's in Iraq. This is a bit surreal, because on one level I want to ask him in-depth journalistic questions about his experience in the army, on another level I'm too lazy or scared to do that, and on another level i just feel like I'm talking to him normally. In any case, in his situation, he has expressed something about the newfound reverence he has for life (I suppose one could argue that such reverence is essential to even try to live through a war, and therefore something ofa necessary/shallow epiphany) but it did get me thinking. It was also very strange...when I started talking to him about ACL, I began to get into my bit about how Hot it was, 107 degrees, and in that half-complaining half-bragging way, describing the effects of the heat and that moment when Jude threw water on me and the water was so hot that it burned. And then realizing that Anthony's in Iraq, where it's basically always that hot and that dusty, and, instead of seeing the Decemberists, drinking a beer, and worrying about talking to some girl he has a momentary crush on, he's getting shot at. I haven't asked him if he's shot anybody yet. It's a strange thing to imagine him doing. I don't know what he's doing there, really. Intelligence stuff. 'Making people feel good,' I think is what he said. It seems quite hush hush when I get to asking him questions about it.

Big booty big booty big booty, I am, the big booty.

love
Brett

Walking The Dog, and Other Adventures

So, I just went for a little walk with my dog. The second little walk (okay, see, something IS wrong with me...i should've put 'this hallowed night', or something), since we had gone for a little walk earlier before breakfast (further evidence that I'm not okay. I meant 'dinner.). Between these walks, I wrote that bad lil' poem/quasi-song immediately below...the idea could turn into a passable song lyric, someday, perhaps.

In any case, the reality of what I said in that bad poem is true: The brain is constantly working, but sometimes it's in a mood to capture thoughts and images in a visceral, sometimes emotional way. Other times these things just pass before it like still-photo commercials before a movie. Can't remember the phone number, the name of the business, the picture on the screen...maybe just a vague idea that it had something to do with dentistry or cosmetic surgery. Today was one of those vague beginning-of-AnnaKarenina-days. Lots of walking, lots of thinking, not much remembering (unfortunately)...

I think I just had a radio-riff in my head (I've recently become the anchor of my own politicalreligious poetry sports talk show) that was related to a conversation I had a long time ago in Fort Collins...I was with a bunch of artsy people (this was before the election) and they started talking about (they=a group of 4-7 people) some group of old ladies that had a 'we hate bush' party. In any case, I only heard the talk of 'we hate bush', without hearing the amusing tidbits about these being OLD LADIES, and I went on a God-like tirade denouncing we liberals for playing into us vs. them structuralist good/evil ideas, for stooping to limbaugh-like levels, yada yada...

we think it's so horrible of Bush to call terrorists evil, when we then go and call Bush evil. However bad he may be, he's not evil in the same way that building-blower-uppers are, and neither is conservatism evil. If anything, Bush is a horrible CEO, or coach, or whatever. At first I started to use a vague sports analogy..." a coach can run the west-coast offense, and run it poorly, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the West-coast offense itself is good or bad..." then I decided, since this IS more of a poetry/political talk show, that I would use a literary analogy: "It's like a 10th-grader writing a sonnet. Sure, you've never read worse poetry in your entire life. And the fact that the student tried to write in a restricted form probably sucked out any sort of ingenuity from his already-tiny mind. But a Sonnet, well-written, can be a beautiful, perfect thing." Etc.

I believe that this all came about because I had earlier been on a sort of mind-date with Colleen, a CSU-girl on whom I had quite a crush for quite a while (I suppose I still do...just haven't seen/heard from her in so long...) And she was one of the folk at the gathering of artsy people when I soap-boxed myself into a defensive corner. 'Twas inspired by something about my upcoming trip to Colorado, to Denver, to stay with Noah and Nicole (they don't know about this yet). I talked with her, revealed outright my crush on her, she was surprised, I'm like 'how could that be surprising? A) [then I smile and look at her the way I usually smile and look at her] B) you're Colleen...everyone has a crush on you, and you know it. And maybe there was a C. Can't remember the C. She asked me why I was attracted to her, and, besides her obviously being attractive, I noted her constant smile, her intelligence, and her memory/insightfulness, pointing out that one time at the movie theatre.

Rewind. She had a showing in the mini-gallery on CSU's campus. I remarked, probably in pseudo-pretentious, witty Brett-tones, that one of the photographs was 'sexual' (it was of Aspen trees growing out of a sort of grassy weedy snowy field, and was framed so that the tops of the trees couldn't be seen, and, therefore, the eye traveled top to bottom in a tree-penetrating-ground fashion). Fast Forward. We were in the movie theatre, about to watch some sort of artsy movie at CinemaCSU, and she sat down next to me, and we talked for a bit. Then she said something like 'did you say something about how one of my photographs was sexual?' and I, wide-eyed, said 'yes....how'd you know' and she, sheepish-smiled, said 'My mother said that one of the boys at the show had made that comment...and I figured it was you.' pumpumpumpheartpumpumpumpsigh.
Then she asked why I hadn't asked her out, and I went into a montage of 'I was dating the love of my life at the time.' That's not what I saidto her, but what I thought to meself and then images and all that jizzny came a spewin' up.

I sometimes get this vague notion that the front of my brain isn't receiving enough oxygen, and that I am therefore becoming markedly less sharp and intelligent, as if some brain-fog has covered over my synapses. I think it may be somewhat true, having to do with a general state of lethargy and out-of-shapeness, and perhaps it's merely a feeling of my forehead due to a tightness in my neck and/or back.

A girl named Annie wanted me to talk about poop, and I can only comment that I haven't been doing as much of it lately as I think I may need to. i've been starting to take some colon-cleansing products, because I do have this feeling of toxicity in my body, and maybe that will help.

I watched Don't Look Back today. Always makes ya feel kinda...guilty...or...worthless...when you see someone at your age changing the f'in world, puttin' himself out there, go-go-fearless-going, while you're unemployed, balding, and living with your parents. Thankfully, that period of time is coming to a close, as I will soon find myself in Colorado once again, working with troubled youths in the mountains of Colorado. Should be intense, maybe fun, maybe woman-finding. It'll be good to see snow, be in the mountains again. Good to be out of this house with its pleasant comfort. God bless the house, but time to be rid of 'er.

love me
Brett

Bad Poem

If I could've caught
All the thoughts that I thought
While I was walkin' down that road
deep in the trees,

I'd've written a couple novels,
maybe composed a pretty symphony
And told too many girls how much I loved them
in a way that made them all fall in love with me.

If I could've listened
to the voices in my head
arguing about Jesus and eternity,
I'd have the answers
to all of my questions
and all of your questions
could be answered by me.

If they didn't all just disappear
like air into air
like smoke in a wind,
or a hair in a stiff breeze
Then I'd be able to rule this whole world
with my understanding and poetry and deep sympathy.

If I could've caught
all the thoughts that I thought
walkin' down the road,
deep into the trees

Then I'd've told you
in just the right way
that I'll love you forever,
a trillion eternities,
and you'd do more than just laugh at me.
and you'd do more than just smile at me.
and you'd do more than just forget about me.

The Journey to the Northeast

False dawn's withered fingers.
We depart,
ashes on our eyelids.

The meadow's mouth opens; we are swallowed
like the fog we swallow.

Leave the trees leave the autumn leave
the dream about your death
to die.

I have seen her sitting naked,
waiting sacred for the sunrise:

skin like feathers,
arms so golden
they can not move.

The aspens whisper windy;
the willows creak with empty laughter.

Her eyes will not redeem you, her
eyes have vanished
into the hollow.

Make her blossom, make her open,
make her love where love is absent.

Submerged in moonrise,
winter on our tongues,

I thought I heard her sigh, something,
I thought I heard, I thought
something.

Find the roses, fill the rivers, cast a word
into her heavens.

Only in Orion is the moment
fully remembered:

Those were suns inside her eyes
filling deep with water.

Serendipity Sucks

Something somewhat strange recently happened. I was very content in a detached unvisceral way about the fact that my mind has steadily turned off it's constantCarlychannel, and I was happy with God for helping me out with that, and, though I was losing at shuffleboard, I was having quite a good time making eyes at the attractive latina across the way and mocking Brian's shuffleboard fervor. And then Mike (friend through Brian, swimmer, yada yada) had a friend come. The friend's name was Brett. Brett was with a girl. The girl's name was Carly. Very strange and highly highly coincidental, and I was like, 'Yo. God. Wussup wit dis weird shit?' It didn't dig too deep a hole in me stomach or anything, especially since Carly was a cute pretty-eyed nicely-bosomed flirtacious lass...So it was just pretty serendipitous or coincidental or surreal.

I also went to the post office to mail off a good bit of application stuff. Now I just have one recommender and five schools to send packets of to.

Strangeness in the Stomachs and other Insights

I've had a strange relationship with food recently. For some reason, I don't really feel like eating it, or part of me feels like eating and part of me doesn't. When I Do eat the food, it tends to make my stomach feel diarrheal and strange, just a bit bloated or something. Maybe it's all this extra beer fat I've added to pad my bony belly. I think I should start lifting weights to turn it into muscle. Maybe then I will have the perfect formula for actually gaining a significant amount of physical stature: drink, lift weights, drink, lift weights. I really blame it on Brian Scofield. I don't know what it is, but being around him makes beer suddenly everpresent.

Rereading my last post, I felt (like I sometimes do) like Jude Law in I Heart Huckabees. I don't know HOW many times I've told that molestation story, and here I am, with no Reason to be thinking about it, but I write it in my little blog. As if my life is so uninteresting that there are just a few moments in existence that are worthy of recounting...and recounting...and recounting. Same with jokes. I've made (as Brian pointedly pointed out) that same at-first funny joke about having a sequel to a sweet romantic movie be a porn. So that the sequel to Single in Seattle would be Couple in Copulation, and it'd just be Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan Humping, ending with a nice money shot and a pun on 'Big'. But, see, I've made that joke Sooo many times, or some variation, so now I probably won't make it ever again. Especially in Brian's presence, the poor guy. He's always there for my repetitive stories/jokes. I really don't feel like I exhibit that quality as often when around other people.

The one problem with the molestation story is that people Will ask for it (ala I Heart) when in a group situation, which will be fine, depending on my mood. I've decided, though, that in normal social situations, I'm not a great storyteller. Get me in front of a group at Chapel during Camp, and I'll rule the room. With insecure artsy folk, I'll be the Man. But within the context of a lot of social situations, I'm much better at riffs (a la 'This must be a tough decision for you. Are you Sure you want to eat the lettuce?) and quickly dropping shocking life-story statements (Instead of telling the entire build-up, just bluntly saying 'I once got molested by a 65 year old spanish man in a hostel in perugia. I was asleep. He was playing with my balls.,' or 'I once wanked it in a library bathroom.') etc.etc. Well nameless kiddos, I'm going to bid you adieu. I need to go to the post office to drop off some mail for grad. school applications and then maybe go 'work out' as they say in Germany and then maybe study for the GRE.

Owen Gets Married, and other Indecencies

I BLEW it...maybe

Dear journal and/or random website visitors... It has been a bit of time since last I wrote in these beautiful old hand-made pages (I love the coarse feel of your rough thick paper). A few things have happened. One of which is that Owen got married. Married! The wedding was nice, short, in the morning, and nearish a pretty river. It was surreal in that it did not feel too weighty or surreal...There was Owen, getting married as the minister recited the words that I'm Pretty sure Owen himself wrote (or found on the singulatarian's online wedding guide...) I don't think the word 'quintessence' is in the bible. So, there you have it, Owen's married, and probably humping his wife in the ocean right now. Go Obo go.

What's really important, though, is that I think I May have Just Blown it. I was applying to the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, one of my top collegiate choices based upon the fact that it's cheap and in the Northeast but seemingly not overwhelmingly depressingly big in its newenglandcity-ness. Strange thing, though, is that they have a relatively primitive online application process...Just one big long strange page. In any case, I cut-and-pasted a shortened version of my 'personal statement' or 'letter of intent' or whatever it is...Ya know, all about why I want to go to Graduate School (which means I'm half-lying the whole time, since 'don't want real job' and 'pretty smart girls at universities...mmmm' probably wouldn't get me into a school of any esteem).
And I Think...Maybe...that my First line says, "I want to write poetry that create significant emotions..." CREATE. I must've been fooling around with 'do I want to say poems? poetry? What should I do? Who am I? Why does Flexall Burn soooooo much when you put it on your penis? Why why why?' I'm not certain about this, but I Think that the letter of intent I sent to a GRAD SCHOOL for ENGLISH, which is full of bragging about how great I am at proofreading things and how I got well grammar and all, has a glaring mistake IN THE FIRST LINE. Maybe. I don't know. The application went away to cyberspace, and now I'm all vishnugina'd that my entire life has been ruined because I forgot an s.
I can just see the old bald people reading my application and thinking: "such brilliant poetry...passable grades...looks maaahvelous in a Tux...But, wait, what's this? I want to write poetry that create significant...Fie on him! Send in the hounds! The dwarves! The amoebas with monsoons in their mouths!!! I must now masturbate to rid my mind of such wretched grammatical incorrectitude! Is Incorrectitude a word? I don't know!!! He's infected me like the plague, a girl, the Swedish Mouth Herpes, Heroin, Hitler, and Felini all rolled in one! Does Fellini have two L's? I just don't know anymore...My life is ruined. Slay me, sweet pen...Cut me to the quick, the throat is too thick, go for the eyesocket. DAMN THIS HURTS. Pamela Anderson is soooo plastic...but still so hot! I am a dying contradiction! I am beating a dead corpse!!!! I hate exclamation points [it's like laughing at your own jokes] but I can't Cease!!!! Arhrghrhgrhgrghrghrghrggrhr"

So, I think that just happened. Also, I was recently walking my dog in the greenbelt near my house. It was the first day of cool weather that Austin has had in quite some time...perhaps ever...so I decided to take my sweet Willie-pants (as my mother calls him) down to the river for some fun. 'Twas a beautiful day, full of chirping birds and steep downward trails and me and my dog hikin' and runnin' and walkin' along like some bad hallmark postcard about how dogs are a man's best friend. The river was completely dry, so we spent some time walking in it. Pretty cool, especially around Sculpture Falls (an area in which the stone is cut into these strange connected wavelike forms...quite beautiful).

Anyway, after a while, we got lost. I mean, I got lost, because the dog really isn't supposed to have any idea of what he's doing and where he's going. He's a frikkin' dog. But I got lost. It's crazy how I can climb around the mountains of Colorado and know exactly where I am and where I'm going based on some primordial instinct, but in our lil' greenbelt I get completely turned around. We seriously kept going around and around in circles...Ended up across the street from the mall. At one point I climbed an excessively tall tree to try to figure out where we were. That was actually quite enjoyable, sort of like getting a handjob from a girl who's 'asleep.' We were deep in these woods for...about... 6 hours...7 maybe. Definitely going back and forth, finding ourselves at the same place twice. Finally finally finally we made our way back to civilization. I decided I'd just follow a damn road and make my way back home instead of fooling myself into thinking I somehow could find a way to get back by rumbling through the woods. Things make sense in Colorado. Not in Austin.

Anyway, we ended up passing by a hotel, and there was a pool of water where the grass met the road. So I let my very thirsty, tired, paw-hurtin' dog drink and drink from the water that was there. And then, all of a sudden, I got this motherly panic-attack that there HAD to be anti-freeze in the water and that my sweet lil' dog was going to drop dead in two days. So we walked back home...I carried Willie much of the way, as his paw was hurting (actually got quite tore up). I was in the middle of some adrenaline driven fervor, needing to get back home to give him water and food and search the internet for information about Antifreeze...needing to go back to the trailhead to get my car, since we'd gone straight home instead...So I dropped Willie off, ran to me car, got in me car, drove back to the hotel to see if there were any signs of antifreeze (which I’d just learned was green...)
And there was Green stuff. EVERYWHERE. Right on the road, next to where the water was (why was there water there? Where'd the water come from? None of it made any sense!!!) So I stooped over and poked at the green stuff and picked it up and smelled it...and it didn't smell sweet. It smelled like river. It was moss. The water'd come from the sprinklers (duh) which were watering nearby flowers. I was safe. Willie was safe. No dead dog on my hands...

But, still, for the next two or three days, there was this little inkling thing in my brain believing that Willie was gonna plop over at any moment...I'd be chillin' with him, and he'd start breathing a little bit quickly, and all of a sudden my brain would imagine his death, him spasming wildly and glaring at me with scared brown dog eyes, his already shaky legs shaking and shaking and his barking and howling and moaning and whimpering and me trying to get him to the vet but of course being too late, always too late, we'd get there and Willie in so much pain his inside organs eating away at each other at themselves like there was a pack of cancer and wolves in his stomach body veins cells and the vet putting him to sleep and his quiver quiver dead body and all of it my fault.

But, luckily, that didn't happen. Willie's paw's healed pretty much to being like new, and he's a happy tail-wagging dog. I do think, however, that this sometimes-visceral mental tendency to spiral downward cognitively into these strange worse-case scenario fantasies is somewhat hereditary. I'm pretty sure my dad and grandma have something similar. I can see it in my dad's eyes when he's watching TV sometimes, and I know that both of them have this weird uber-preparedness at times, that idea that if they DON'T do Something (sometimes something irrational) everything will go to hell... my dad making sure that we had enough PEANUT BUTTER when there was the small possibility of a tropical storm hitting Austin. My great great (maybe great great great great) grandfather was an alcoholic Lutheran minister. I think I see a trend.

I'm depressed because I read an article somewhere about creating successful blogs. Believe me, this blog is in no way meant to be successful (or even read by anyone, really), but what disturbed me is that she said one shouldn't use ellipses.!?!?!? My entire online grammatical rhythm is now undercut by this nagging voice in my head that says, "if you use an ellipse, you're just being lazy, and you're just like all of the illiterate uninteresting ellipses users out there polluting the web with their meaningless dots. It's like saying 'like' or 'ya know' all the time, except you don't have the balls to be stuttering and dumb. You try to be all perfect and smooth with your ellipse. I see through your pretensions. You ain't nothin' but a nothin', nothin' Boy." So maybe I'll use the dash. Unfortunately, it's not in a very advantageous spot for common usage. Up there Above the pinky. Damn bad place, I tell ya. Damn bad place.

Lately, I've been listening to my friend Adam's "no picture show" podcast. Pretty funny. But it gave me the ability to think about things in terms of Me having my own show - you know, what I'd say, what it'd be about, all of the voice-fluctuations and how much of a podcast STAR I'd become with my irreverent revealing talk about poetry my penis love God etc. While I was outside moving chairs around, I thought about a whole lot of funny riffs. Probably can't remember them now, as is usually the case. Hopefully they'll come back to me. A lot of it, anyway, was quick-dropping memorable things that have happened in real life.

I think I thought about a section: "What NOT to do, by Brett." And, of course, these things would go on wacky long tangents. One was "Do not, under any circumstances, wear Black socks, BROWN shoes, and Khaki shorts when you're set up on a Blind date with a Design Major. Such a horrific clash of fashionless senselessness might be somewhat endearing to a laid-back English type, but for someone whose entire Life is built around making sure things match and look good, for someone who's so in tune with the appearance of things and the meaning behind certain appearances, it is simply NOT a good idea. But maybe dating a design major isn't a good idea in the first place. Someone whose goal in life is to make things pretty, to make them coordinate, to make people enter an environment in which they feel all happy and Wealthy, so much of it seemingly designing things for the sake of function or for the sake of appearing of a higher class. To MAKE oneself Look like something as opposed to Being something. Artists, sculptors and painters etc., are much different, in that what they are doing is Creating something for the purpose of Expressing a challenging Idea or creating a significant Emotion. Design, on the other hand, 'susually about marketing and making people feel Cozy or Comfy or YADA Yada. All of which is Necessary, but if someone's Brain is wired toward thinking of things on that level, then what can you expect that person's value system to be? Really. Think about it. Bitch. On a side note, the design major turned out to be pretty cool, though she does tend to be dominated by ideas instead of owning them. Hrmmm..."

So, ya see, there was one riff. I had a few more. But that happened in me head outside whilst I was moving the chairs, again, as I said. It’s not a Direct quote, of course, but that's basically what the machinations of my mind were railing on for a while. The next in the series of 'What Not to Do' was "smile and nod at people who are talking to you in a foreign language.' My co-host, who at times was Adam, asked me (in an obviously set-up way), 'well, why not, Brett?' And then I go into the story about how my ex-girlfriend had painted my toe-nail red when I was visiting her in Poughkeepsie (and I tell of how she gave me a handjob in her sleep...and, actually, refer to her as 'John Ritter's Daughter' at first to make the story slightly interesting and also somewhat universal, and then, of course, going into a riff about how I don't think of her as John Ritter's daughter, that that thought rarely enters my mind when I think about/interact with her, except on the level of how much his death affected her and by proxy me, but even then it's not John Ritter's death, but Carly's father's death, that her being the daughter of John Ritter didn't 'matter' or wasn't weird anymore than had her father been a plumber, but what Was weird was seeing JR on TV and thinking of Him as Carly's Dad. And then I talk about how I kept the toenail red because of how much of a sentimental bastard I am, and that maybe it was her way of 'tagging' me for safe-keeping until she was ready to be in a relationship again, or maybe for me a way of timing how much longer I would 'wait' for her...not that I was consciously always waiting, but it would be yet Another marker for when I'd be 'over' her, which still hasn't really happened yet, but that's okay, I suppose. And a few more long internal riffs about how much I loved/love her, yada yada, maybe even here I tangented off to a discussion of the definition of love, but I won't go there right now.)

See how this works? welcome to brett's head. Anyway, then I described the story of how I met this old Spanish guy in a tent near Rome because the Pope had just died, and I was staying in the big blue tents with all of the pilgrims, and there was a central tent where drunk Italians and Germans and all sorts of people were drinking and singing songs, and I half-met this random old Spanish dude. Then THE NEXT DAY I went to Perugia (which I visited for two reasons: 1] near Assisi. 2] the placename had been put in my brain because Carly had stayed there with cousin-types a few years back, and because something of me wanted to be where she had been. Yes, crazy sentimental bastard, I know) and in the hostel THE SAME WEIRD OLD SPANISH GUY WAS THERE. We started communicating about this and that, he showed me a picture-book he had of Rome, yada yada, I was smiling and nodding most of the time because He was speaking Spanish. At one point, he gestured toward my red toe. I smiled and nodded.

Okay. Cut to the night. Dreaming about Jon Fitzpatrick getting into a fight with Brad Pitt because Brad stole Jon's girlfriend (Angelina Jolie). Go to mass. Lead by Mary Steenburgen and Laura Linney. Get into a taxi-cab that looks like a bob-sled with a pretty girl. Wake up. To THE OLD MAN PLAYING WITH MY BALLS. I jump up quick, cover myself with my sleeping bag, look at him, he says something in spanish that sounds like 'mojitos,' I say no comprendo, he says Something Else in Spanish that probably means 'beautiful' or 'I want to give you a handjob' and caresses my face with the back of his finger. I say 'no, no, no.' He goes back to sleep. Scary.

So those were a few of the riffs I was thinking of on my would-be podcast. I also had another section I thought of called 'I argue with Limbaugh' in which I read some of his transcripts and yell at him about how dumb he is even though he's not there. In real life, I read some of his transcripts sometimes. Gets the blood flowing (like that old man in taxi-cab confessions who played bingo to keep his mind off the fact that his wife had recently died).

Phew. I think I've finally run out of steam. Might be the sweatiness of my feet in these aqua-sock type things. I'll think of something later. Maybe talk about love, poetry, God, or death.