You Arrogant Bastard

it's just like spitting back at rain

I spent a good portion of the evening deciding whether or not to post up on here. To be honest, things have been moving at a different pace lately, and I heard rumors of a hot J. Russell entry, which I just now checked out. It gave me the energy to post but I will try to break with my usual pattern and be brief. I’ve got plenty of stuff to talk about. To follow up on the PETA rant, it was kind of funny to see that cow falling down, when the truth is that mad cow disease often spreads as a result of inhumane conditions in factories. It gets transferred through cannibalistic feeding, and cows are often forced to eat shit in those huge feed-troths they get up in the pre-kill pasture. Anyway, I think my facts are straight, check out Fast Food Nation if you don’t believe me. Just thought it was an interesting side note. And I can’t help but chuckle when that poor cow trembles like that. Like he dun’ eaten a vibrator.

Anyway, I should be writing “Junius” right now, I still haven’t finished it. I’ve got good jokes but I’m missing a solid content skeleton, usually it’s the other way around. That J. Russell post was well executed- maybe I like it because I’m in it so god damn much. Whatever, despite the jokes about me and him sounding the same, acting the same, etc., for lack of my own year-old LiveJournal that I can look into and dig up memories, the record he kept there was a near mirror-image of my own. I would have liked some more details about Nwise’s smoke-filled (Robert Jordan style) vehicle though. Anyway, after writing in this thing for several months I have yet to find any real groove- personal summary and reflection is fun, but I am completely outclassed by others on this community. The public is hungry for dirt, which explains the critical berating of the bare bones blog-everything-in-sight style of our own Dco1, as well as the popularity reality TV and those new ‘gourmet restaurants’ where they actually serve you plates of flavored dirt.

Methinks I’ve got to shed my poorly veiled anonymity, yes I know you all know who I am, but this thing was never supposed to float out to the prying eyes of those whom I would rather keep in the dark as far as my personal activities go. Basically I don’t want to end up like that guy in the Onion article (“Mom Finds out About Blog”- can’t find a working link) but the shit has hit the fan, I got a digital camera, anybody wanting to know all about me has just got to read the comment boards (fuck! A hint!). Maybe it’ll spruce things up around here to actually give unrestrained commentary… what’s the worst that could happen? Or maybe it was never my place to air my dirty laundry in public, that pair of pants I wore 13 days in a row, that wool cap I borrowed from Jamie in the blizzard and never given back. But again, what am I afraid of? We’ve all ‘borrowed’ stuff from Jamie and never given it back. The blizzard! Now that’s something J Russ left out of his summary. Changing gears again, however, my place may be better found behind the scenes. My creative outlet has never been telling people about the shit I do between 10pm and 2am, or at least not writing it down. I should be writing my script, pompous introspection has never won me any awards at the festival I helped organize- I’m just not that damn interesting.

I am most creative when I take my head out of my ass and make fun of somebody besides myself. I find that I blow the most air up my ass when my head is in there. So enough of this gay banter, its too damn hot in her(r)e. Anybody got any good funeral stories?

Crackin' beaks to the crackling beats of the Nutcracker Ballet

Let it be known that I'm not against vegetarians, the lifestyle is damn admirable, but I have an innate distaste for people who spend their time standing around on the streets handing out pamphlets that demand you alter your lifestyle and join up with whatever ideaology du jour that they affiliate themselves with. PETA has been coming up with some controversial new ads that I assume are designed to advance their image as "intrusive bunch of annoying cunts." First part of a campaign to convert the masses to vegetarianism launched in Rhode Island is the billboard that depicts the Virgin Mary cradling the carcass of a chicken. Just in time for the holiday season. On top of that, those creative bastards are launching an anti-fur ad campaign passing out flyers to children whose mothers wear fur. The flyers declare "your mommy kills animals." Hey, thats great. Exploit the kids. To think that kids young enough not to reject the flyers and say "Go get a real job, you Reed-educated bastard" are intelligent enough to pick up the aim of the message instead of just become extremely confused and upset is foolish. Target your ad campaign at the parents, they are the ones you are trying to change, and they are the ones tall enough to throw your flyer out in the proper receptacle. You give your glossy color-printed flyers to children and they will wind up polluting the streets. You're contributing to the ruin of the environment by doing this, you hypocritical preachy fuckers!

Is it worse to mistreat animals throughout their short lives and then kill them, or to provide them with a wonderful life and then murder them when they expect it the least? Would it change the flavor of the chicken? Would it taste worse to have your free-range chicken muscles flooded with calcium as their muscles tense up, realizing they are about to be murdered? Or would you prefer to have your mistreated chickens with tender, relaxed muscle tissue, after they see their oncoming death and a warm feeling of peaceful anticipation of the end of their suffering overtakes them? I don't think that the imprisoned chicken is unhappier than the free-range chicken. It's like the USSR, cousin. The impoverished masses living under Stalin were unaware of the freedom existing in other nations scattered around the globe. If they were made aware, they were usually killed.

So how unhappy could they have been, if they had no knowledge of things around them being much better? So they de-beak them, big deal. They don't even take the whole beak off, as the word would suggest, and the process causes only temporary pain. I was circumcised. I don't remember the event, but I once watched my neighbor's son's bris across the street from me, and let me tell you, I would not wish that upon my worst enemy. The baby's moans quickly turned to muffled gags as the mohel dug his metal tool deeper down the side of the poor fucker's wang. I would have walked right out of there if there wasn't a bomb-ass smorgasboard of bagels and lox. Needless to say, after witnessing that atrocity, the lox just didn't taste right. Can't we form an organization demanding cock-slicing reform? At least give that child some pain pills before you go to work. Fuck. And if I can't remember that sickening pain, what's to suggest a chicken will remember his beak getting cut off? Its all about information distortion, again, very Orwellian. They're all missing beaks, so all the boss chicken has to do is change the poultry newspapers to say that none of them ever had beaks to begin with.

This all assumes, of course, that chickens are conscious enough of their surroundings that they are able to detect oncoming death, and of course they are not. How hollow it must be to devote your life to curtailing the mistreatment of animals and receive no thanks from the animals themselves. This is the same conundrum that keeps beastiality illegal in many places. Fuckers just can't consent! Ah well. The bottom line is this. Chipotle now charges 30 cents more for their "ethically raised" chicken, and I have yet to taste the difference.

Another deep question arises from this scenario. Personal philosophy: is it better to live a joyous life right up until the end and then die abruptly without warning, or to become aware of your death long before it happens, possibly tainting your last days with depression and fear? My death of choice used to be "long-range sniper," but I have recently switched sides: my current death of choice is "terminal illness, minimal pain." While you would experience less anguish with my former choice, I have grown to realize that the time you have with an terminal illness allows you to tie up loose ends and actually accept death. Also, I would want to know who was killing me, if I was getting murdered. A disease can only be called by one name so thats one less problem to begin with (except for Burmese Kidney Rot, which can also be called Myanmar Kidney EXPLOSION!). Alss I know is that drowning would suck. Ugh! Man that would blow. Breathing in pure water... ugh.

So what have we learned today? PETA activists would like to be assassinated. Always gotta be the hero... you fucking glory hog. Cancer patients are never heroes unless they live. Funk dat. I'm gonna print a pamphlet full of grotesque pictures and get that changed, just like when PETA got all those corporations to treat animals ethically and eliminated animal cruelty forever. I'll start by passing it out to 6-year-olds at the theater.

Feverish Masturbation and Slurpees

Alright there's been a lot of commotion over JRussell way about the supposed "downfall" of this weblog community, and to be honest with you, Larry, there's not much I can post here about our own blog group that would not be self-indulgent and ironic. As you may have guessed I've come down with a bit of blogger's block. There are three or four half-finished slabs of wonder sitting in my 'draft' folder. Either I couldn't make a coherent argument or I couldn't make enough contextual references to feverish masturbation and slurpees. Am I losing my touch? No. This community is not collapsing, the people are changing the criteria for what passes as a 'good' entry. I have written much material in the past couple of weeks but have refrained from publishing it, because now that I actually had a significant comment count I feel like I actually have something I should follow up. But no, I choked on the metaphorical no-chew piece. The sinews of expected continuity have lodged themselves in my wind pipe, one end clinging to the meat currently being digested- posts written and published, free to be flamed on by our loyal peanut gallery, and the other end still in my mouth. So here I stand with the classic no-chew-piece struggle: do I try to swallow the piece in my mouth, or do I try to cut the string of fat that chokes me? If I swallow the piece whole, it could give me a stomach ache. That piece is too big to swallow, any doctor would tell you! I can't chew it anymore because I'm choking- I've got to act. Can I cut the string? The stomach has already primed itself for the next piece. I got myself into a rhythm and to pause throws everything into chaos. Everything gets upset on the receiving end.

So here you are, fuckers. I'll cut the string and swallow them both. Analyze that symbolism, you college-bound whores.

Yeah, I've got ideas. I've got ideas enough to fill at least three moderately-sized cabinets. But things have gotten hostile here- such is the changing nature of this community. The blogs are in too much direct competition with each other- we should return to the quiet acknowledgement that we had some four months ago. The goal of these blogs should not be a high comment count, as JRussell is demonstrating right now. Comments should be a reward for a post well written, and fittingly pertinent to the post. These pages are transforming into an informal forum for Saul to make fun of people and then have Klaus chime in about why he hates one thing or another, only to have Trevor retort with some douchebag statement about how the following quotes prove that you are an idiot and he is better than you. Then comes Sklover and Mason and all the peripheral viewers that occasionally take the time to let everybody know they are reading. There's a larger peripheral audience to these things than we might think- it is proven in the webstats every day. Traffic to these blogs doubles every month. I would not doubt that this audience is scared off by the sense of elitist camaraderie that permeates the comment board.

For the first week I rode the comment count, I wanted to see how high it would get. But now the comments are cheap and off-topic. Its like building an obelisk, man. You start out with your good marble to provide a strong base, but then as you gain elevation, nobody hauls the marble up there anymore. You wind up with cheap fucking limestone. By the time you reach the top, you're using shale and pumice. That's not an obelisk you have there, sir. That's a large vertical piece of shit. That's right, a Trevor Martin special. Then I began to synthesize new material, but always stopped short of publication. The commenters on these blogs are increasingly bitter. If I post an interesting link, then I am being too much like Trevor. If I make a scathing insult toward blind people, I am being self-centered. Make fun of a conservative guy and I’m back in the swing of things, but nobody will say so. Comments have been occurring at most lately when people have something cruel to say. Do I have to cater to the young-DC norm of liberal rhetoric to gain approval? Funk dat. I’ll make fun of blind people all I want. The aim of this community was never to piss people off. The blogs are not getting worse, but the people are getting bored. Maybe in a couple of days we will have something to talk about. I'll save the 'A' material until then.

Check out the Northwest Current, there’s an article about the film festival. Meet me on the Midnight Express. You get into Tufts? Schultz thinks so. Check out this dub box set. How was your trip to Papua New Guinea? It’s the club med of Oceania I hear.