The Fall and Fall and the Fall and the Fight of the Falloutkid

Social Services Worker Confession

2008-05-07T15:36:58Z

I can feel myself growing calloused. The people that I am paid to feed, bathe, clothe, and tuck in at night frequently decide that they would like to spit at me, kick me, punch me in my face, try to break my glasses, and repeatedly beat the shit out of themselves. This always forces my intervention, and more bruises for me which I have to deal with, or, heaven forbid, bruises on them, which makes me look like fucking dick.

I start off saying, "B____, it's not okay to hit yourself. Be calm."
A few minutes later, I'm saying, mostly to myself: "Doug, be calm. It's not okay to hit back."

At this point it all becomes strictly professional. I "care" for the people as part of my job description, but sometimes I sure don't give a flying fuck about them. We're not friends. I'm a professional, and they are a client receiving my services. And yet, who's the dependent one? How strange it is, and fortunate for us both, I suppose, to live in a part of the world where their medical condition allows for both of us (and my other co-workers) to be financially supported, instead of it being a lethal liability.

falloutkid @ 2008-05-01T20:00:00

2008-05-02T05:06:56Z

crossposted to anarchists

Maxing out at the Red & Black Café.

I am currently contemplating an interesting conflation of paradigms again--

The Red & Black is hosting a benefit for VOZ (en inglés, "Voice", pinché gringos!), a Worker's Rights Education Project. This is specifically to help fund a day labor hire site, instead of a street corner to be harassed by the weather, the police, and antipathic Portlanders.

Also in attendance tonight is a moribund surplus of shoeless hippies. Ah, Portland. The Day Labor Hire Site raises some interesting questions for me. Many of the white kids that I have met around here that can claim radical politics of various shade and viligree have an almost unnatural abhorrence for physical labor. I find this to be very interesting, because I have always wondered when "The Collapse"/"The Revolution" comes, who the hell is going to harvest potatoes if nobody can tell the difference between a garden rake and a field hoe. Or take out the trash, or run the sewers, or work construction jobs, or......

In the interim, VOZ perhaps has an answer for the contemporary movement that may put the deliberately jobless to shame. The day laborers want to work because they need to. The paradigm is this: what is the pertinence of the politics to remain deliberately unemployed at all costs as a form of political protest in the face of the same argument rehashed and served again in the form of the desire to OBTAIN work at all costs, in any condition, duration, or realm of comfort or safety? The debate boils down to this: is the anarchist that does not want to work to avoid paying war tax, or to simply avoid selling one's hours of life over to the capitalist cabal more justified or less so in this decision than the worker that will break several laws before most people get up in the morning, facing deportation, political exile, homelessness, exploitation, et al., simply to obtain the means of survival?

It may be crude to put this to a matter of preference, but to put the issue more succinctly, who do you favor in an argument-- The anarchist that works, or the anarchist that refuses to? And why? What, if any, are the ethical differences you see?

Livin' la vida

2008-04-25T09:13:26Z

Comin' at ya live from BYU Hawaii. What an absurd life. My brother is getting married, and I am staying at my sister's house along with a lot of my which on the dorms. She is a manager, along with her husband. It's finals out here, and all the kids are going back home to their various continents or islands. My brother had no time to plan for the wedding, since it was finals week. I'm spending the night drinking awful energy drinks, cooking, making decorations, etc.

Spent some hours at the (Mormon sponsored? or owned?) Polynesian Cultural Center, which felt like stepping into one of Owen's exotica records. I saved a brochure for him, because of this sentence, (and others): "In the shadow of the Fijan temple, mingle and dance with the natives." It would be more ironic if they weren't actually transfer students from the respective islands they were representing. White folks walking around with Maori tribal facials (temporary tattoo) and learning how to crack open coconuts.

Portland winter skin, graveyard shift, sunburned scalp. Carhartts at the beach. Hoodies are useless in this weather.

No coffee in this small Mormon town of Laie, on the northern tip of Oahu. I have searched high and low. I wouldn't buy anything from McDonald's, but they had a waterfall inside instead of a plastic playground. The gas station has a coffee maker, but they never use it and they cannot find the carafe. I found caffeine anyways, but it's not quite the same thing as the real deal.

My newphew can almost stand up on his own. A different brother is officially popping the question tomorrow, although it is only a formality at this point. They decided a Vegas-style wedding, minus the booze, plus the Elvis impersonator.

Walking around BYUH campus and digging on the weird, draconian rules ($50 fine for opening a door after ten or eleven at night! Fiercely gender segregated dorms, signs saying "No men allowed beyond this point" Cameras! Religion!).... It all makes me quite happy to have done away with religion. What a strange, unnecessary burden. Tomorrow I am going to the temple and wait outside. Since I am not Mormon, I don't get to witness the actual event itself, a union shrouded in secrecy and decorum. No matter. I am not here for religious nonsense. I am here for my brother and his soon-to-be-wife.

Anyways, it's late here for the people that sleep at night. I guess I am going to go walk along the beach or something. Clear skies, overnight low 71 degrees. Suck on that, Provo and Portland. both of you below 40.

America broke my fucking heart.

2008-04-22T14:17:59Z

Let America Be America Again
by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? 
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free?  Not me?
Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

Hughes has said it better that most ever can. This reflects my feelings today. I am not the only Generation X(late)/Y(early) kid that has had a hard time taking politics seriously. However, I find it ever harder to make the typical snide comments I am used to making. I desperately do want change, but I am uncertain that Barack Obama will deliver. "Change you can believe in" et al., from the television. "Not fucking likely...." I chortle. "But... thanks for trying." I continue.

Good luck in Pennsylvania just the same, Senator. The world watches in delight.

On anger

2008-04-17T00:14:21Z

I have been thinking a lot about the double-edged blade of anger and rage. Anger seems to be the sharp edge of a blade, and rage is the heft that will drive the blade deep. Punk definitely gets the aggressive charge that makes it what it is from anger. The urgency of anger is brought to the surface. When done right, it seems like a pot about to boil over. It's not a bowl of ice cream. It's not nice. It's nasty.

For some of us, anger will always be there. It can be a caustic emotion, causing you to burn out, wither and fade. It can cause you to go over the edge if you do not have an outlet, and I cite Columbine and Virginia Tech as prime examples. However, anger seems to have a productive quality to it. I see it like fire, capable of overtaking it's environment and burning down your house, and I see it as necessary to get through the day. Try living without fire, without heat, frosting over in the shallow tundra of apathy. Anger is the fire that I fuel to keep me going, channeling it's power into socially productive means.

No surprise that I'm a big Henry Rollins fan. I do not necessarily approve of all of his career choices (*cough*), but I find that on the whole, I find that he has very interesting and worthwhile things to say.

Love or hate him, I think this is the core of character of Henry Rollins, and I couldn't possibly agree more:

Stupid stupid stupid

2008-04-12T18:07:37Z

In a real mean mood....

School today was fucking lame. I can't understand why people enroll in a class when they obviously don't give a fat flying fuck. How demoralizing to have become a professor to only be the process of weeding out, the babysitter for kids that got lost on their way to perpetual self-induced wage slavery. They come with no books, no pencils, no paper, no ability or desire to add negative numbers, for it is fundamentally offensive to some elementary logical principles that they somehow managed to ingest. Now any new challenge is too much, they need their hand held for linear addition. They want to offer excuses and expect special privilege. The fundamental rules cannot possibly apply to them. (even though math is basically nothing but rules, haha.) They talk on cell phones all the time in class, about the party the night before and the one going on tonight. Why the fuck are they here?

I suggest preparation, my fellow students. Hard times, coming your way. Organize your life and figure it out. It's one thing to come to a machine gun fight with only a knife, but it's quite another to only bring a blank, stoned stare. The only reason you are allowed to be so stupid is because somehow tuition got paid. Well, it's your dime, but you will not be allowed to waste my time, and I will not let you borrow my book., copy my answers, or even borrow a pencil. Don't ask me for a goddamn thing, privileged slacker scum, I'm not your bankroll or your middle class parents. Put the bong down and pick up a book. You're part of the problem. Please stop sucking at life so bad.

Bicycle

2008-04-11T00:25:03Z

I got my bike "Jack" back, and well under estimated budget. Sweet! $111, lucky number eleven in there about three or four times, I guess. It looks funny to me, because they worked on the drive train and the sprocket rings on the cassette look silly, mismatched. But it climbs the hills like Spiderman, so I don't give a fuck. Well done.

I saw Alex and Paul on the way to North Portland Bikeworks, they were going, I was coming. Paul got hit by a car! He is okay, he was wearing a helmet, but his poor bike is in a bad way. No suspected damage to the frame. Double reminder to get a helmet, probably should before I get some sporty new Vittoria or Continental tires. Shaved headed visions of skull splitting like an eggshell, spilling knowledge into the street where it will dissolve in blood, brains, and grit. Blinking out under a light rain, oil and mud smeared on my face.
gotta get a helmet.

falloutkid @ 2008-04-07T17:36:00

2008-04-08T00:41:59Z

Helluv.

I had to bring my bike to the shop today, and the estimated cost to fix it is more than what I originally paid for it. Well, that's a dead drive train, destroyed bottom bracket, flat brake pads, and a general tuneup for you. That's not even counting the new tires I expect to have to buy next month, possibly new wheels as well.

Buss pass? No way. I'm livin' la vida.

I am doing well with work and school and my other obligations, but now things are starting to stack up, and I'm seeing how important it is going to be to always be busy. Less time for things like this, I'm afraid. Gotta get some coffee and get to class. Check you later, sucka.

Basic conflict of Interest

2008-04-04T23:38:33Z

I have recently discovered for my listening pleasure a band called "Off With Their Heads". I really like them, I like the vocals, and I like the swaggering melodies. I think it's about everything that a punk band should be. Unfortunately, every single song is about being a worthless drug addict, scum fuck, bridge burning washedup junkie.

"I'd rather be in NY shooting heroin again."

Oh, dear!

I assume the lyrical content is all autobiographical, but somehow it feels almost disrespectful in some way. I have a sneaking suspicion that if all of these songs were true stories, the musicians would not be coherent enough to record such good music. Basic conflict of interest.

*edit*

I think the thing that makes me upset is thinking of all those that have had their life shortened in this way, or those that have died in accidents that would love to do anything to have another day of life, and I hate the thought of wasting something that you never get to have again.

What, no chess club?

2008-04-03T04:00:04Z

I'm wondering right now if I have any free time between PZS, 40+ hours at work (plus an hour cycling either way), 8 credits, and a boyfriend if I have any time for school clubs. I'm eyeing the so-called "Q Club" for lgbtq kids, and the Paralegal Club for the kids that are paralegally minded, and the Phi Theta Kappa for the scholarships and the prestige of being a nerdy wanker. Hmm.

What for? Something to put on my dossier? Ennui? It certainly isn't because I have free time.

I am well into...

2008-04-02T01:00:38Z

... the Tri-Met bus driver that usually drives routes in NoPo and Downtown, the one that is about 50 some odd years old, always wears sunglasses, and has a shit ton of pins all over his beret, hella rad wingnut style. He has a little quartz radio (probably contraband for drivers to have during shift) that he has sitting next to him, and it is tuned to NPR or some other morning news program.The voice of George Bush comes on, and he says, "Oh, shut the hell up."

That guy is one of my heroes.

First Day of school

2008-04-01T02:16:27Z

All done! The class is as old as me, less a year, on the average. One snappy looking feller said that he hadn't been to school in 7 years. A neo hippie (read= pothead) beardo was only about 20. The college professor looks younger than my boyfriend, and he almost certainly has an extensive grunge CD collection, and was probably stoked to see Dinosaur Jr. this year.

English 121, dope-bizzle. I'm just here maxing out on these hella computers. Damn, talk about spending some dime! I'm going to go check out their law library in a second. For better or worse, this campus is going to be home for about two years, I'd reckon. Gotta hold it down this time.

Yo peace, suckas.

Your face is about to be melted off

2008-03-28T01:48:19Z

Perhaps my all-time favorite band, duly sparring for the position with the Ramones, the mighty Rudimentary Peni will have an album out in two months. It's been four years since they released anything. Check out their newest song on the DieSpace, ....er MySpace, otherwise known as Best News so far this year

The song is called "No More Pain", the title track from the album,due to be released in May. It sounds much like the Archaic EP from 2004, and I am beyond stoked.

Rudimentary Peni has a special place of my heart and will always be my champion, the survivor of perseverance of art through mental illness. The Underclass, the underdog. Lead singer Nick Blinko is the Edgar Allen Poe punk rock. He has creative energy that seems like it is loose from hell, and banished to the earth. The album art is always intense beyond comprehension, small deliberate lines meant to exorcise and perhaps contain the ghastly images depicted. The music itself stands out in my opinion from much else that I listen to. I am thrilled by the sparse electric grief as heard on Death Church ("Three quarters of the world are starving/The rest are dead"), the psychiatric meltdown on Pope Adrian("I'm a dream, and I'm nightmare"), the frenetic charge of EPs of RP and the maelstrom of mental illness as heard on Cacophony. For outsider art, you can't go wrong. Buy the vinyl for the larger reproduction value of the album art, or download the songs off Soulseek for instant listening (dis)pleasure, and fuck yourselves up (in a straight edge sense, of course, or otherwise) with Rudimentary Peni.

Yes!

Punk!!!

2008-03-25T01:11:32Z

Sojourner and Marrow last night, folks I know from Tacoma. Great kids, good music.

Lyrics from the Marrow Demo:

"Nourished by movement, yet manifesting stillness
Though sometimes I wish to just remain still
and try to piece back together what I've moved on from
(and what's moved on from me)"

and....

"Restless for a new timeless arc
To thaw the core To nourish the root
To succor the past To give home to hurt"

That's damn near as good as anything that Greyskull had, and Marrow is just getting started. I remember well the song Rainbow Glitter Unicorn vs. Rambo Nuclear Uniform:

"Awake, alive, clear-eyed but cold, your death seeps in and I am not carved of stone."

All of these lyrics are accompanied by some amazing Tony Wolfe riffs, and few things have ever been dynamic enough to cut through the fluidity of the moment and pierce directly through time, space, and my exterior, tying it all together. It is hard to say what music can be like when it truly works. It has made such an impact on my life.

I think I am coming to terms with the fact that what I miss the most during melancholy is not a place on a map, and it is not even the way things used to be, but it is a time itself, which after all, is mostly a place in the mind. It was good to see Adam singing again, and Brian singing for the first time (for me). Punk is really great. It's hard to call it a youth culture when you start feeling old. Better still to enjoy it and just enjoy each other's presence. We don't want each other as entertainment, for we have a little bit of money, and we have American life and all those plastic solutions. We seem to need something more from each other, substance, soul, and anchor. We seek each other out as illuminating presences. I am one in favor of keeping pushing punk rock dreams, inhaling sweat and bleeding tears. Bridges burned, or lessons learned, and everything earned.

A note on baldness

2008-03-21T22:01:06Z

I secretly believe that shaved heads tend to represent police and jocks much more so than zen monks, convicts, and punks. Nevertheless, I'm going to shave my head again tonight anyways.

Anniversary

2008-03-18T22:57:47Z

Five years. Five years that you won't get back from me.
Yesterday marked five years of my God Free sobriety.
Patty's Day, I know. Lucky edge.

tangential meaning from David Bowie:

"We've got five years, stuck on my eyes
Five years, what a surprise
We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, thats all weve got
We've got five years, what a surprise
Five years, stuck on my eyes"

http://amporganic.com/musique/davidbowie_fiveyears.mp3

Spartan Punk

2008-03-13T03:11:34Z

Cam is in town! Owen came back from a short road trip to Utah and brought him back with him. I have been riding bikes and hanging out ever since. It's been pretty fun. I keep trying to get him to move up here, and he keeps trying to get me to move back home. Nothing doing! Portland is not home in the way Utah is, but it is where I am living.

We have been showing each other different things. He has demonstrated that he could totally kick my ass. He has been taking martial arts in Utah, and he already has an impressive upper body strength. I am built like a Jack Skellington, or Steve Buscemi, and I doubt that I ever really scared anyone with my physical presence in my life. I have been riding bicycles with Cam, and I totally dust him on anything that I ride. He wants to arm wrestle, and I hate it, I always lose!

I have sometimes wanted to not be such a twig, but it has been difficult, I guess. I never felt that masculine. I have fawned over femininity instead, nurturing the parts of myself that do not really make me a dangerous killer type. Not to say that Cam is a macho hooligan! Far from it, he is a reserved and polite person. But he is a tiger that purrs. I can only imagine the damage he could do if he felt threatened. I think I know what I am capable of, and from the people that I have dealt with when I went toe-to-toe, I was just not threatening at all. A sneer, cold stare, and quick thinking has usually got me out of scrapes. However, I have always wanted to be able to take a police officer one on one, disarming them of their weapons and applying non-lethal, but irrefutable force as necessary. That is perhaps the biggest reason that I want to complete my education; I want my animosity to have more potent meaning. However, there is sometimes nothing so beautiful as the physicality of one on one interaction. It is definitely the reason that I like dancing at hardcore punk shows. I like getting hit in the face, I like feeling sore and in pain, combined with endorphins and adrenaline. You can write about a show, but sometimes, you have to feel it in your guts, and taste the blood in your mouth. There is no substitute.

Hmm. Well, if I am going to try to develop the ultimate punk rock spartan lifestyle, I think that it would include training, study, diet, and supplemental vitamins and for the brain. For training, I should expand my exercise beyond my average 80-120 miles of bicycle riding every week. I need pilates, weight lifting, yoga, and perhaps a couple martial arts. For study, I need to go beyond my passions which I read anyways and explore necessary subjects like regional histories, legal structure, current code, anything to understand the nature of the laws and ways to circumvent, disable, change, annul, or modify them. It is important to explore ways to exploit them for benefit as well as to resist the oppressive tendencies. There are stacks and stacks of law books in the downtown library, just begging to be read.

As for diet, I need to stop eating things that are simply pleasant, and actually schedule a bona fide eating plan. Even though I am vegan, I do not believe I eat food that it is entirely beneficial to overall health. I believe I am healthier, in general, but there is definitely room for improvement. There are foods that I do not eat that I should that will help build mass, stimulate logic centers in the brain, stabilize mood swings, increase stamina, etc. I like peanut butter sandwiches and wheat bread, but there is so much more. For strength, I need to look at protein, and for what I could change about my diet to complement my two fold goal of mental and physical ability.

For vitamins, I should look at some good daily pills, some Omega-3s, vitamin E, and perhaps something else. Raw foods. I really need to fully explore the possibilities.

In the meantime, I plan to continue my other daily activities, or to modify my schedule to accommodate necessary changes. I like myself well enough, but I would love to be the poster boy for irrepressible vegan vengeance, not some stereotype of lanky black clad anarcho-vegan pasty white boy. I will be exploring my options, while realizing that it may not be feasible to change at once, entirely, or some things at all. However, I like the idea of change, of becoming something new. The raging Spartan fury, like some counter-culture Renaissance ideal.

Got it

2008-03-08T02:35:34Z

I've finally got a working ending complete. What a long one this has been! 149 pages currently, 10-15 more or less after a few more weeks of editing.

It's hard to judge the quality of your own work... I hope it doesn't suck too terribly, and I hope that I will be able to afford to actually print as many as I would like (probably not).

It's not too early to complete the outline for the next one, and I think I'll work more on that tonight.

Fuck. I remember when zines were like 28 pages, and had drawings in them. I long for that again, actually. Blissful ramblings like DHC, an ancient little rag, which was more love than labor, but brought up in just the same manner. But quickly, urgently, and with improvised stylistic finesse! This, instead is a switch to the slow and painful, with errors buried blissfully within the text, until they awaken some time after publication.

Indeed, for almost a year and a half I have dealt with every manner of distraction and complication to constipate this latest work, and I am so glad that this shit is essentially 1/3 finished. (write, edit, publish)

ow

hurts so good

I don't sleep anymore

2008-03-06T03:14:35Z

I got three hours of sleep today. I felt worse when I woke up! It took me a few hours, but I'm leveling out right now.
I got a lot of work done on the zine, I think it's going to be done this week! Step one finished. I guess there's no point in hurrying, since I don't have money to print it yet. With school comin' it will be long time until I could afford it. (Plasma center.... haha just kidding, Cam.....maybe)

It would be rad if I could have it done by the time Marrow (ex-Greyskull, highly pivotal band for Provo kids, in many ways) comes through Portland. I can take a long time with step three. I'll be editing for a long time. Just the same, I want to have something to show for myself, and more specifically, Adam Barnes and Tony Wolfe, since they figure in, of course.

I have been reading a lot of it today, making minor alterations to the text. I can say, without ego, it is a wonderful story.

Punk breaks my heart, man. True story. There has never been so many reasons to believe, and there have never been so many defeats. "Martyrdom and Artifice", indeed! It's always so much "wish", you know? Wishes and dreams. I'm glad. I'd rather have broken dreams than none at all. I have been dreaming about Blake, the de facto subject or main character of the book, and he's a dead guy! I had two dreams, the first I've had in a very long time. I really fucking miss him, you know? Like all old injuries, you can trace the scar and you swear you can feel it again, like it was the day it happened. But the singular moment of losing someone is not nearly so painful as the years that they stay lost.

Guilty pleasures? Some have guilty pangs. I keep listening to old Jawbreaker, close the door and cry. Ache: "The people I love are spread so far apart....." and then, a couple songs later, same album, a song called In Sadding Around: "Sleeping off the last five years takes another five. Recovery in lieu of being here right now." The sting of truth, my friends. Fuck, that hurts.

I have this illusion that he would know just what to do, and we would fuck shit up, in total arrogant confidence. I sometimes feel like life is passing me by, that there's something important I need to see in three different places. I end up missing the moment entirely, and then it becomes a self-fulfilling reality. I know it's bullshit.

Being "free" from Utah (if only for this year, haha) has never felt so bittersweet. I hope I'm making the right decisions, but as I wrote earlier today, as a sort of "ending" for the zine, I only ever know what I'm doing after it's done. It's always easier to tell who you are in hindsight, rather than foresight. Future and past, that addition and subtraction of years, based completely (or is it?) on our decisions and circumstances, the sum of what a person is right NOW. Is it appropriate to use a balance of the two to reveal what you are right now, or do you disavow all of it, sit zazen and just be.... that guy sitting on a pillow, staring at the wall?

Fuck it. I don't think I understand. Art is meant to reveal, but when you pull the skin back, sometimes there's only more questions. These are the lines of questioning to which only music can soothe, another important facet of art. Drop the needle and shut the door. Side A, side B, repeat as necessary. The world awaits, and will be patient enough for a record listening session.

Helluv hella points

2008-03-05T05:33:52Z

Top Ten:

1. Paid some fines (only $560 to go, Portland Circuit Court)
2. Registered for school. Can't fuck with this.
3. Spent a couple hundred on roundtrip tickets to Oakland. Sent mom some money for airline tickets from OAK to HON.
4. Made good on my word with old roommates (I had to bail when I was broke and unemployed, despite my best efforts).
5. Owen is on the road, probably in SLC by now. I wish I was going, too.
6. I just found out my brother is moving to Washington D.C. after his wedding. What the fuck? I had been wanting to go to the east coast this whole time, until I got bit by the school bug instead. Now my brother, posterchild straight society (love 'em to death, though) is totally going to beat his hobo older brother.
7. Dreams about Blake. We were talking about poetry. Fuck yeah.
8. Falloutkid
9. Got a packet of straight edge zines from Approaching Apocalypse Zine Distro, from Amherst,Maryland/Richmond, Virginia. Cuddle Puddles and Hot Pants #1 &2. Haha, it's all about straight edge kids with mohawks.
10. Coffee at the Red & Black.

Reading List for March:

1. Atheist manifesto : the case against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam
by Michel Onfray ; translated from French by Jeremy Leggatt

I am reading this as a sort of philosophical perspective to complement my prior reading of Ricard Dawkins' "The God Delusion", which was based much more from a background of science and Darwinism

2. The Atheist Debater's Handbook
by B. C. Johnson.

When you take on the Christian Right, you've gotta realize that you can't afford to lose.

3. Farewell to Eden : Coming to terms with Mormonism and Science
by Duwayne R. Anderson.

Apostate Mormon chronicles his own experience with leaving the faith of his upbringing as his education in science, even at BYU, provided him the tools to debunk the myths of creationism and religious superstition

4. Grace beats Karma : letters from prison, 1958-60
by Neal Cassady

The best of Cassady's writing usually was written in prison, or in between visits to lockdown. This particular section is letters to his ex-wife, in which he shows a more domesticated side, revealing the tenderness he felt for "home", in this instance, his fledging family, wife and children on the outs. Of all the Beats, he is decidedly the most romanticized deadbeat dad there ever was. However, despite this shortcoming, I saw him as a lot more than an irresponsible parent. In many ways, he was a catalyst for both Keroauc and Ginsberg. He is known more for his antics than for his writing, but in those sparse moments when he puts pen to paper, the ink flows straight from his soul. I read "The First Third" almost ten years ago, and I felt like I had my hair standing on end the whole time. I am reading this collection, specifically in hopes of reconciliation of my feelings of hostility and anger I have towards some of my friends who have hopelessly diminished in my eyes because of similar choices, sans all pretensions to Beat nobility.

5. As ever : the collected correspondence of Allen Ginsberg & Neal Cassady
by Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg

I wonder what this will entail. These two were known to have had a steamy love affair in New York and Denver, as noted by Jack Keroauc in "On The Road", (paraphrased from uncensored version: "sordid all day, all night exchanges") I wonder what, if any, of that makes it into their letters to each other from their various locations, including jail, of course. I'm excited to check it out.

6. The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice : first journals and poems, 1937-1952
by Allen Ginsberg edited by Juanita Lieberman-Plimpton and Bill Morgan

This book is currently melting my mind. I am lagging in my own writing because I have been reading this instead. It has the personal journals of Allen Ginsberg from when he was 11 years old and his mother first started going to the mental institution. It details all the more pivotal moments of the formation of the Beats... David Kammerer's murder, drugs, the meeting of Burroughs and others. It's a sad, desperate reading of someone gay that is desperately trying to live straight. The envy he has for his out queer friends easily shines through, as he had not yet come out, not even to himself. I haven't got to the parts where he gets locked up in the State Hospital and ends up meeting Carl Solomon, but that's coming up. It's the total formation of him as an artist, 11 to 26! Holy shit. I'm at 1947 right now, where he's out of the merchant marines and going back to Columbia University. As I read his prose and dig on his style, it blows my mind. He refers to works that no 19 year old has any business reading. I guess the world was a different place before TV. He is obviously highly intelligent and well read, but he struggles with finding his own voice. It's like watching someone with delicate tools and machinery struggle to learn how to use them. He fits into the temporarily ineffectual intellectual shtick quite nicely. I find it intimidating, because even in his inexperience, some of his writing goes over my head. Amazing...

7. The Official Punk Rock Book of Lists
by Amy Wallace & Handsome Dick Manitoba.

This could suck really bad. I skimmed it for twenty minutes, and it looks just how it sounds. It's like a list of influential punk's favorite bands and shit like that. On first glance, it reminds me a lot like that lousy Fat Mike publication Punk Rock Confidential, which is a glossy color photo spread magazine that is total punxploitation, pictures of punks drinking, fishing, hanging out at bars, living the dream, whatever. Everything important about punk is cut out, and it boils down to self-interested bullshit and image. The end result is a published item that is "not about anything, it is just about punk". However, this book of lists should be given more benefit of the doubt than that, so I'll spend a couple hours with it and decide how to proceed.

Anyways, I'll be busy with that for at least a little while. I still have to buy textbooks. I can't believe that I only got into Math 60, which is pretty remedial shit, but I fucking aced Writing and Reading, totally destroying the test. I guess I have an intuitive sense for the rules of college English, and I like to break them a lot.

I gotta get some zine shit done soon, like tonight. I'm considering hiding out in the basement and making it happen. Free time won't exist anymore in three more weeks once school begins. Fuuuuck. Gotta get it done. I almost threw it all away the other day, I was so fed up with it. I've got to push it through.

Over and out.

Five things

2008-03-03T01:58:02Z

1. Overslept, missed the Zine Symposium meeting again. Shit! This time, totally my own damn fault. I can't blame work, I was in bed. Fucking hell..... I need to stop being absent from that.
2. Coming up with cash for school is looking like it's going to be tough. If I have to pay back my old defaulted loans before I get anything, I'm going to be waiting a long damn time.
3. I need to get ahold of my boss to get time off for my brother's wedding. If I can't, then I'll probably quit. The tickets are already paid for.
4. I watched Decline of Western Civilization III last night. Owen said he knew some of the kids in the film. It reminded me of being 17.
5. Running into a brick wall with my writing. I'm trying to salvage the rest of the day before I go in for work to fix it up. I thought the whole thing was shit, and I wanted to erase all of it. I reconsidered, of course, but I am feeling like it is haunting me to finish, even though I sometimes feel like it's all pointless, since I won't like the finished work and it wouldn't matter much anyways. I'm listening to my nihilism too much, I think.

Untitled

2008-02-27T00:22:31Z

Poetry time. It's sprining up around Portland like a mofo. I went straight to the library as the sun shone down and I checked out a hefty stack of books, mostly by Allen Ginsberg or Neal Cassady. Nothing like the season to put my mind right in action this way.

I hope my plan doesn't backfire. I've been so busy trying to be "legit"... 40 hours, school, proper diet, regular eating and sleeping routines and all. Reading books by those notorious souls, self annointed and publicly confirmed as crazies always makes me want to take off my "respectable costume" of clean clothes and a freshly shaved face and go be a traveling crazy myself. To fly like a wandering crow, instead of a busy bee of the hive.

It's a bad habit to compare yourself to other people, but when I let my mind wander for even ten minutes, I look at the people around me, especially my own generation, with a thinly veiled sense of disturbed concern. What are they thinking about? What's going on in their heads? I can't believe what they listen to on the radio. I can't believe the things they say, the things they do. They say that my generation is one of the most conservative the country has seen in quite some time. I certainly believe it. I wonder where all these kids are going? Don't they worry about always accepting the status quo? After the nineties, I thought that the counterculture was really going mainstream. Blue hair dye, pierced lips, tattoos. We were going to be the change in the world. And we were going to do it, too, with wild style! Now I feel like image is totally meaningless, and those with heart are in the real minority. The problem is that these people are invisible. They could dress like a freak, or they could be "undercover". There is no standard for passing anymore. There is no way to know, not until it's too late.... or unless it's right on time.

Maybe that's just me growing up a little, by being burned a few times and also by learning that just because you wear nice clothes doesn't make you circumspect. This may sound weird, but for a long time I had a profound disrespect/distrust for people that wore suits (Reinforced no doubt by a virulent reaction towards my native and former Mormonism and corporate culture in general.). Now I see that I was wrong, and I have also seen kids that wore almost the exact same "punk rock outfit" as me turn out to be the most despicable humans imaginable. There's no way to judge a book by it's cover.

That being said, to the kids that never wonder why, I have this to say: I still feel that I might be a weirdo, but you're a fucking sucker.

Orson Scott Card

2008-02-08T16:34:59Z

cross-posted to exmormon

Below is an expository piece used to frame a memoir, of sorts. It is perhaps a bit self-indulgent. You are forgiven if you skip it entirely.

For those still interested in continuing, pour yourself a cup of coffee and let's go. I don't know how many Science Fiction readers there are out there, but I wonder if any of you had read Orson Scott Card. He is an author of science fiction and fantasy who just happens to be a Mormon. Ender's Game is perhaps his best known work. Highly recommended, you can't go wrong.

I began reading his books at a difficult time in my life, nearly ten years ago. Virtually or literally homeless as a teenager in Utah County, rather than "just go away" as the police continually harangued us to do, we had little choice but to remain, although it meant to live in exile, even on the streets of our hometown. For obscure reasons, we outcasts were hanging about the Orem, Utah Barnes & Noble. It was our efforts to build a sense of visibility, community, and togetherness, establishing bonds that still exist today (hi, captain_brad!). Although I do not vouch for the corporate giant B&N on any means, (please support your local independent bookstore, if any even still exist in your town) it was the largest bookstore in the city. There are far worse places for punks to hang out than a bookstore. The long hours were often spent in days of hunger, the missing food we tried to forget, it's absence barely supplanted by nicotine, "Top" brand rolling tobacco (which for the uninitiated, is a name mired within wishful thinking), insert favorite illicit drug here, generic whiskey, caffeine, and literature. I have since removed all but the last two from my life, and these remaining habits have been adopted with prodigious efficacy.

During this time, upon introduction from a friend of mine, I began to read Orson Scott Card-- again. I was aware of him as an author. I had read Ender's Game a few years earlier, and I had even attended a "Young Writer's Conference", a sort of congratulatory seminar sponsored by the Alpine School District for high school students in Honors English that had wished to attend, to learn how to become "a real writer!". Paid, or at least published adult authors were available for consultation and lectures during a grand six hour event held at Brigham Young University. None other than Orson Scott Card was the grand host of the event. For two hours, he delved into the mysteries of the written word, inspiring many, I am certain, of both their own ability to write, or perhaps to awaken a tingling desire within those in the audience that sought to learn more. We were all pleased to have this "real writer" as a lecturer-host, and I had a copy of "Prentice Alvin", Book Three in the Alvin Maker series, for him to sign. I shook his hand and thanked him profusely. Glowing. How nice to put a face to a name, but even more, a handshake from the very hands that wrote words I read and loved.

Orson Scott Card would fall out of favor for me, just as my family and I would fall out of favor for each other during the tumultuous events of a bitter adolescence. He was a Mormon! Member of the enemy creed, that which banished us from home to bleed. I had little time or patience for anyone or anything associated with it's pernicious nonsense. But in the long days of Barnes & Noble, I was chastised forthright for my willful ignorance of his works and deliberate avoidance of his name amongst the giants all along the "Sci-Fi/Fantasy" section in the bookstore. I would read Isaac Asimov, Spider Robinson, Poul Andersen, Douglas Adams, Ben Bova, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, George Orwell. These were names of masters of the genre, bold story tellers that inevitably imagined where our post-modern world could go, literature of the upmost importance to me, to my raggedy Anne and Andy "reading group", and to us all, in some degree, during this great technological age in which we live. I was ruefully chided for never thinking to make time again for Orson Scott Card. I relented, and found myself engrossed in his writing once again. It was a bold move for myself; there had been no reconciliation between Mormons and myself on that day. This was perhaps the first step for me back to a more desirous relationship to both my de facto culture and my family, and in the years since, I still remember that day as me abandoning my youthfully ardent hardline stance against Mormons, when I felt I still had nothing to gain.

As I read more, I remembered that seminar, that room, that sunny spring day in which Orson Scott Card had not only dared us all to follow our dreams, but to show us how. The memory set the mood for a pastiche feeling of hope and desire, less self-destruction, more creative construction. I would set down the drugs and pick up a pen.

Orson Scott Card would recede from view, eventually, for if he did not, I perhaps would have happened across this essay, entitled The Hypocrites of Homosexuality much sooner. Here are perhaps the most condemning passages:

"Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society.

The goal of the polity is not to put homosexuals in jail. The goal is to discourage people from engaging in homosexual practices in the first place, and, when they nevertheless proceed in their homosexual behavior, to encourage them to do so discreetly, so as not to shake the confidence of the community in the polity's ability to provide rules for safe, stable, dependable marriage and family relationships."

This is 1990, and the laws on the books were of course the sodomy laws, anti-lesbian laws, anti-homosexual acts laws, ability to discriminate for employment, adoption, housing, et al. One would hope that the years may mellow, but in 2004, he wrote another long tirade against homosexuality, this time specifically attacking gay marriage. Gems below, stating that "Marriage Is Already Open To Everyone":

"In the first place, no law in any state in the United States now or ever has forbidden homosexuals to marry. The law has never asked that a man prove his heterosexuality in order to marry a woman, or a woman hers in order to marry a man.

Any homosexual man who can persuade a woman to take him as her husband can avail himself of all the rights of husbandhood under the law. And, in fact, many homosexual men have done precisely that, without any legal prejudice at all.

Ditto with lesbian women. Many have married men and borne children. And while a fair number of such marriages in recent years have ended in divorce, there are many that have not.

So it is a flat lie to say that homosexuals are deprived of any civil right pertaining to marriage. To get those civil rights, all homosexuals have to do is find someone of the opposite sex willing to join them in marriage."

Purely obscene logic that is more eerily reminiscent of jock high school kids yelling at me, "Fucking Faggot!" and alternately to my female-bodied queer friends, "Dyke bitches! You just need need a man to fuck you straight! Come check out my dick!" Ah, penishood.

My current feelings as I type this are hard to define. I am quite upset. They are perhaps best represented by Donna Minkowitz, writer of an interview with Card written for Salon, entitled My favorite author, My worst interview. I feel betrayed, in a way that I usually do not allow homophobia to let me feel, especially coming from distinctly Mormon homophobia, a virulent form rivaled in the West only by Baptists and, uh, maybe Rastafarians or otherwise devout members of most any faith in Jamaica. In Utah County, you learn to grow thick skin. Resentment leaves a thick scar tissue that the sting of daily reminders do not often penetrate.

For another final example, I offer up my ninth grade current events and U.S. History teacher. I saw her as a bold and vivacious personality, and I often spent hours in her classroom after the school day was done, speaking to her, hearing her stories, empathizing with her woes, celebrating anecdotes of victory and hope with her. With her deep southwestern accent, she was my Texas champion, in a way that was reserved perhaps only for the likes of Randy "Biscuit" Turner of the punk band The Big Boys, legendarily ending shows performed while wearing a pink tutu, with the shout to the audience: "OK, ya'll! Go start your own band." She was the first person in authority that told me that authority was often entirely mistaken. It was as much a confession as a revelation! "Your final course of action must be civil disobedience," she encouraged, citing Thoreau. Years later, I found her again at the thrift store. It had been over a decade, but she still remembered my name. She updated me on events, and ended with a statement that basically boiled down to: "I have tried to fight the dangerous tendencies of the left to brainwash all you kids-- I have always been worried about the threats of communism, atheism, and homosexuality. Those godless faggots....." I, of course, had a two out of three status, being a godless faggot. I didn't bother to break her heart by telling her my secret, but she had unknowingly broken mine with hers. She was also Mormon, a convert when she was in college.

All in all, I am glad I know, even as it has been a continual lifelong and painful realization of the truthfulness of Steven Weinberg's words: "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion." How had these inspirational people been able to find their way into my heart with theirs so black? How had I swooned over their mental faculties when I examined them again to find them to be intellectually bankrupt? I feel tricked, and betrayed.

Being Exmormons, I find that our youthful heroes oftentimes end up making the perfect villains for our later years. It is too bad, and I wonder how much an emissary of their faith they truly are. I think of heated arguments from with family members revolving-- well, any topic, really-- often leading to disagreements so profound, I am actually ashamed for them that they have been fooled so completely by lies that they regurgitate them effortlessly. Despite this kind of letdown, for those family members that I am on healthy terms with, I know I can never cast off completely and abandon, even as I abandon all hope of rationality succeeding in benefit of their behalf, and indirectly or not, my own as well.

But for the likes of Card, in closing, I will cite Minkowitz directly, as her sentiment echos my own: "I end the interview with a sweetness that later makes me cringe and pick up 'Ender's Game,' discover it's still good, and wish the man a very lousy rest of his life."

Atheism

2008-02-08T00:51:36Z

I am reading the God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. It's a pretty decent book.

This year, I'm trying to cram as much information in my head as possible. I have been reading queer theory, picking up books by MRR columnist Mattilda, aka Matt Bernstein Sycamore's. There are several books, works of fiction, Pulling Taffy and two anthologized books, That's Revolting!: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation, and Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity. As a result, I have developed an interest in the character and personality of Sylvia Rivera, the sometimes celebrated Stonewall veteran, who, at the time as a young tranny woman, was amongst the first to throw bottles at the cops and was all over the newspaper the next day. She was considered the "Rosa Parks of the GLBT movement", but was dismissed from the mainstream of the same civil rights advocates because of her expression of her gender identity. Sylvia Rivera had been dead a few years now, and I am wondering if a biography will ever be published. In the meantime, there is only the Internet, and candid mention of her in published works such as Mattilda's.

I have come to the point in life where I feel that I am gathering stones. Stones for arsenal, and stones for laying the fortress walls. Knowledge seems to be the key focus for me in my life. I am aware of the power of speaking truths and refusing to be silenced. I wish to expand upon my base of knowledge, for there is truly an engaging realm in the avenues of the mind. Even if the avenues to acadmemia seem to be beyond reach, the library is always waiting for students of all ages. In the meantime, chuckle along with me as we view this scene, one that I am afraid that many of us may have had a similar experience with.

2008 Taxes, Election

2008-02-07T01:59:44Z

Life costs money: I'm looking at school in the spring time ($600-$800), fines from the pigs in Oregon (I jumped fare on the light rail on my way to work, got busted. I also ran a red light on my bicycle, same predicament. Total = $294) fines from the pigs in Utah (graff, and a separate charge from trespassing, um $350ish? ...), paying for an airline ticket to my bro's wedding in Hawaii ($450), settling some old shit($hahahaha), and publishing a zine ($300 or so, for 250 copies). A few thousand smackers, all in all. That's not so bad as Cam, who got smacked down a five grand lawsuit for the old Cunningham House. Yeah, right. Good luck getting that money, evil Total Property Management corporation. You can't get blood from a stone.

Good thing I just filed taxes. I can't believe I really only have less than five grand on the books this last year. I've been living the hobo dream all 2007, that's for sure. I definitely got my five thousand dollars' worth of life experiences. I couldn't ask for a better return... but I'm broke. When I was 19, I filed something like $34,000. I wonder when the next time that will happen. Hmmm.... never? I hate numbers, sometimes. They only serve to invalidate your humanity. I used to talk about this sort of thing with Blake a lot, about how money further abstracts the meaning of life away from you, forcing you to think about life in terms of dollars on the hour instead of in terms of vignette moments. The only thing that we could surmise is that money cannot be relied upon to measure the value of life. And in our respective instances, in accordance to, uh, (un)employment histories, it cannot be relied upon at all.

I've been watching the 2008 Elections rigmarole with mixed feelings. Is it really progress to have a biracial man or a woman as president? "It's just Slavery, Inc., either way" so saith my empathic peers. On a business level, I will offer that Pepsi is definitely the Republican Party. The Pepsi Generation refers to Reagan babies, i.e. generations X & Y. Richard Nixon himself endorsed the carbonated liquid poison as a personal favorite. Coca-Cola is totally the Democratic party. A classic, feel good sentiment, shiny veneer, dubious Warhol qualities. Meanwhile, there's political assassinations, strike breaking, and strangling neo-liberal capitalism underfoot. As long as you can keep buying up "healthy" drinks like Odwalla, and other juice companies, this uh, aquisition of credibility is somehow supposed to exonerate your pitiful Human Rights decisions. It feels nice to think that "Change" is more than a campaign motto, but I still think it's like a Coca-Cola advertisement, "Enjoy Life". In both instances, we're moving towards and counting on those goals, with or without your products, politics, and lies.

Of course, the upside is that George Bush is out. Oh, man, that does feel good. A man that will go down as "Worst Fascist Ever", criteria being based not necessarily on the amount of oppressive powered wielded, but how terribly mismanaged. Although our fellows on the Left have fondly favored the frequent comparison of "Dubya" to the Third Reich, can you imagine if Bush really was comparable to Hitler? We'd be in so much more shit if Bush had even a quarter of Adolf's populist charisma, and an eighth of his native intelligence. Bush was behind the wheel of the most powerful political machine the world has ever seen, the United States of America. The sporty little number was the fastest car on the planet, a flurry of Red Fury, Republican fever that has caused the country to go into hysterics, hallucinations, and pain. George drove it like a rental, right into the goddamn ditch, Budweiser cans spilling out. "Now, officers, I can explain. Here, let me call my dad...."

"Yeah, step the the fuck out of the car, sir." No more years.

However, don't you get so drunk on that ecstasy that you miss out on what's going on: He will merely be handing the wheel to a damaged mobile and the slavemaster's whip to the next man. Or woman.

Progress? Are we there yet?