best joke i've heard in a while:

"I'm writing a screenplay about what would happen if Helen Keller could see dead people. It's called The Fourth Sense." - Dan Mintz

love

nostalgia

love

nostalgia

love

nostalgia

love

nostalgia

again.

there are things you desperately want to put into words.

hope

stale cigarettes.

your winter coat can act as a time capsule. as a new winter settles in, you'll go through the pockets, and you'll find little artifacts from a year ago. artifacts that remind you of your life a year ago. artifacts that you'll hand to a stranger because you don't want them, and they don't belong to you anymore anyways. 

k a bit of honesty here

i've been playing drums for 13 years

and there's nothing worse than a drum solo

even i can't stand them

if my kid plays the drums

i'll kill myself

so annoying

but there's exceptions to every rule. i could probably watch this all day:

this little lady, Marnie Stern, is the shit.

totally the shit:

"In every poem by Matisse there is the history of a particle of human flesh which refused the consummation of death. The whole run of flesh, from hair to nails, expresses the miracle of breathing, as if the inner eye, in its thirst for a greater reality, had converted the pores of the flesh into hungry seeing mouths. By whatever vision one passes there is the odor and the sound of voyage. It is impossible to gaze at even a corner of his dreams without feeling the lift of the wave and the cool of flying spray. He stands at the helm peering with steady blue eyes into the portfolio of time. Into what distant corners has he not thrown his long, slanting gaze? Looking down the vast promontory of his nose he has beheld everything- the Cordilleras falling away into the Pacific, the history of the Diaspora done in vellum, shutters fluting the froufrou of the beach, the piano curving like a conch, corollas giving out diapasons of light, chameleons squirming under the book press, seraglios expiring in oceans of dust, music issuing like fire from the hidden chromosphere of pain, spore and madrepore fructifying the earth, navels vomiting their bright spawn of anguish... He is a bright sage, a dancing seer who, with a sweep of the brush, removes the ugly scaffold to which the body of man is chained by the incontrovertible facts of life. He it is, if any man today possesses the gift, who knows where to dissolve the human figure, who has the courage to sacrifice an harmonious line in order to detect the rhythm and murmur of the blood, who takes the light that has been refracted inside him and lets if flood the keyboard of color. Behind the minutiae, the chaos, the mockery of life, he detects the invisible pattern; he announces his discoveries in the metaphysical pigment of space. No searching for formulae, no crucifixion of ideas, no compulsion other than to create. Even as the world goes smash there is one man who remains at the core, who becomes more solidly fixed and anchored, more centrifugal as the process of dissolution quickens." - Henry Miller.

i don't want this book to end.

There was only one reason to watch the tragedy that was the fourth Indiana Jones.

Cate Blanchett i love you.

How do you make Garfield comics awesome?

You take Garfield out of them.

haha i'd like to erase most of that. but in the spirit of candor, it shall remain.

here's the terrifying burden of felt physical truth:

the limits of physicality HAVE to be tested because they can be.

i'm sorry.

here's the burden of felt drunken truth:

the limits of drunkenality HAVE to be tested because you might die and maybe you should.

okay. i'm done.

time to pass out.

the knowledge of having missed something is flavored with a sense of humility and regret that crushes the present spirit, the spirit that feels its presentness is irrefutable, is undeniable, and is, ultimately, tragically, stupid.

in supporting my theory about life/art/life and art

coming to a realization about a crossroads in your life

in the moment that you are watching a movie

AT THE SAME TIME

when a character is making as unwittingly and unknowing a decision as YOU were

there's a parallelism and a synchronization

and a poeticism there

that is

nothing but a mistake

and simultaneously

can't be a mistake

that is just too mindboggling to comprehend.

and that's the lesson.

humble yourself to reality and the extent you are able to react and act within it.

it seems this blog/journal/whatever has lately become some sort of effort to guide one through the endless labyrinth of media. that's stupid. not intentional. still stupid. but ultimately okay. because you can really do nothing but forgive someone when you realize they're up against an infinity of interpretation.

in that spirit

i just clicked "No Country for Old Men" on and...

it didn't strike a wise, old, young little Jake at the time but

julian and i went to see it with our three elder statesmen of the Previous Generation.

Tom. Chris. Peter.

the general consensus was the following:

youth: "that movie was the fucking shit. holy crap. awesome."

passed time: "huh? i don't think i get it. i didn't like it. wait, what? the movie had no ending."

if you took a bullshit English course, the one where the empty-headed clone spewed algae-colored nonsense reeking of home-schooling, banality, and tradition, and the professor countered with the faintest hint of interesting, yet tragically institutional thought, you would learn that this is the definition of irony.

they ABSOLUTELY should have been able to understand the movie.

this doesn't undermine the movie.

it underminds ABSOLUTENESS.

they regurgitated it like a bulimic on thanksgiving.

thank you.

i'm in good form this evening.

learn one thing,

alcohol robs me of my one virtue.

the virtue that disappears when you say its name.

goddam. it's some sort of horrible Gollum riddle in the deep dark cave where Bilbo finds the ring.

sorry, when you find the answer, you won't turn invisible.

strange that that should be the ultimate power.

ick. maybe Tolkein was on to something frightening and disgusting and true and...

rubber baby bugger bottom dollar fountain ick.....

it's all nonsense.

poop on you.

so. that makes it 2 henry miller tattoos. i've got 2 tattoos from a crazy ass misogynist(?). my main defense is portrayal and representation are not necessarily endorsements. and misogyny doesn't necessarily negate his profound views on morality and action and time and the universe. so... go like this... and get a grip.

today, i was musically very... OMC circa 1996. it was a wu tang/tilly and the wall kind of day. with a dash of the microphones.  as far as tilly and the wall, you really can't go wrong with a really awesome song and really hot girls:

watch this documentary. it's totally the shit.

if you think about how difficult this must have been, it'll blow your mind:

this show totally kills me:

"british children are notoriously stupid and must attend schools."

agreed

just read:

TOTALLY the shit.

not to be a bummer, but this link will take you to a clip from a new documentary about Genesis P-Orridge and s/he is clearly out of it since the death of their beloved Lady Jaye. :( still interesting though. 

ahead of their time, whatever that means

gotta love ginsberg

Well, while I'm here I'll

                  do the work-

and what's the Work?

             To ease the pain of living.

Everything else, drunken

                             dumbshow.

i really need to reconnect with my studying of Burroughs and Genesis. that's the first thing i'm going to dive into when i graduate. studying them and their ideas. Genesis truly is the only person on the planet right now that i'm aware of that is trying to push things forward. and s/he's pushing 60. s/he should really be a bigger deal that s/he is right now.

is it bad that i kind of hate all this "bi-partisan" talk?
all this "come together" talk?
i'd kind of rather things get super crazy
i don't know

also,
it's strange to sense such a role reversal going on
the past two elections, liberals villainized Bush to crazy extremes
and i guess it was its own kind of irrational desperation
and now the conservatives are villainizing Obama in the same ways.
it's just strange. after 8 years of republican stranglehold they lost their grip.
they got away with SO much. how they lost it is beyond me.
it makes me suspicious that threw the election and this is all in the master plan...
they're so damn tricky.

either way
fork it over, rich people.

so it's come to my attention

and perhaps this has already come to some people's attention

particularly

people who,

when they were twelve

saw Jurassic Park

my main philosophy in life

revolves around

FUCKING CHAOS THEORY

i've at least looked down upon such

goldblum-isms since the movie's conception

but now i realize

constantly accommodating for nature and life's infinite possibilities

at least carries shades of chaos theory

something i know nothing about

and is literally relegated to the realm of 

hurricanes and butterflys

if i'm wrong in correlating the two

let me know.

because i want to know

if my main philosophy in life is CHAOS THEORY

because i feel like such

PULP

is exactly that.

basically, it comes down to this:

a grip that is slipping.

i desperately want people,

mainly those who are close to me

to understand the plight

that is 

attempting to account for the infinity that is the universe

the possibility

the life

the chance

that you are wrong

dead

fucking wrong.

knowing that you know

FUCKING NOTHING

is terrifying

and sudden.

and then

something you feel like you know

like

OBAMA WILL WIN

becomes truth

makes you second guess

doubt

and then you realize

the ability to second guess doubt

IS INSANE.

drunken rambling.

blahdy blah.

i don't know.

it's like i told julian once.

life

is a gigantic game of yahtzee.

there's a cup

with 6 billion or so dice within

and the outcome

is...

in a human word: insane.

while i voted a bit begrudgingly,

it is a good feeling to finally vote for the winning party.

and i do somewhat feel like it's a big deal he won.

so hooray.

the woman is a goddamn genius.

as of late i'm trying to be apolitical because everything is so saturated, and in all the wrong ways, with politics BUT

this bothers me to no end

THE WEATHERMAN NEVER KILLED ANYONE. yeah, they blew up government buildings. they never killed anyone. actually, they did kill someone. one of their guys blew himself up building a bomb. they organized and agitated. they did not murder, nor did they want to. that would have been hypocritical, since they were responding to violence and murder against their brothers (the black panthers) and violent aggression in Vietnam. it would be nowhere near the hypocrisy of a Bush supporter accusing Obama of "pal-ing around with terrorists." Bush is just a terrorist with bureaucratic approval.

i can't take any of this shit. i wish i could just hibernate until Nov. 5th.

when you feel trapped between everything and nothing

what does that make you?

at the very least,

panicked.

ps. the new Organ ep is SOOOOOO good.

because part of me is still in high school...

haha that's fucking ridiculous.

time has become NOTHING

i feel this needs to be known by those who do not know:

that song Black Sheep Boy by Okkervil River is a cover of a Tim Hardin song. he's not very well-known, but he's pretty awesome.

when it comes to decisions of life and death

we act like we know

because we HAVE to.

ACT

but we don't know.

being placed in a situation does not necessarily

enlighten you to IT

yes, i live here. 

no, i do not have the key.

all is fair in love and war.

As the floorboards moaned under the soldiers’ feet, the children groaned in their sleep. Their young, beautiful faces radiant under layers of dirt and dreams.  The people who were never there.  But the soldiers were on their way.  Coming up the stairs.  Pounding in the hall, getting closer, raising the dust into the dark where it hung for a moment and settled back down.  The children were dreaming. They were dreaming of nothing, but their sleep was not silent.  It was filled with shaking bones, racing eyelashes, flailing limbs, and prophetic ramblings in tongues.  All the secrets in the world were being forced through these children submerged in sleep.  Channels, conduits, for the Universe and its vibrations.  They felt and saw our dreams and had none of their own.  They felt the repercussions of our actions, our willingness to disturb and unsettle the innocent.

A man just outside their building was smoking a cigarette. He had been dreaming about burning the city to the ground, but when the soldiers stormed past him he felt nothing again, and kept smoking his pack of cigarettes.

“The contraband must be eradicated,” a walkie-talkie said.

“Engaging.”

define irony

when blind people can't see the point

click play on these at the same time for the full effect.

you haven't read kerouac till you've heard kerouac read kerouac.

on a separate, related, cryptic note:

okay okay. maybe i'll do it for kerouac.

i think adult swim is pretty good about tearing stuff off of youtube so this might not work in awhile, but it's probably the funniest thing i've seen in awhile.

ya know

there's that bit patton does about different kinds of stand-ups (is it the Dr. Pepper bit?) and one of the types is the Comic-Who's-Funny-But-Who-Gives-A-Shit? like, he's just really... stand-uppy. he has the jerry seinfeld observations that may ring true, and may be funny, but they're still... icky. it's like a band performing their version of Stairway to Heaven. it's been done so much, what's the fucking point? it's one of the weird things about the world and how we view individuality and what we've always been taught about ourselves. like, there's six billion people on the planet. do you really think that there isn't someone out there who's just like you? i kinda do. i mean, that's a lot of people. there's some good odds that someone is gonna get pretty close to your mark. but i'm digressing... my point is Brian Regan IS that comic to me, however i still love him. somehow he embodies but also transcends the idea of a Comic-Who's-Funny-But-Who-Gives-A-Shit? i have an annoying ego-monster in the back of my brain that itches when i enjoy his comedy. "you're cooler than this. you like the Comedians of Comedy. you like alternative comedy. blahdy blah." but i guess sometimes it really just boils down to, "haha. that was funny."

from the stage

some moments

they are gray

drinks in hand

cigarettes at lip

hopes in heart

standing

fidgeting

waiting for

something

something

to happen

awkward

peril

me, flaws, here

there

burning

lights

aged tables

stained napkins

black iron

in the dark

drum pulse

me, flaws, here

 

other moments

their faces

glow

glow like the

stained glass

dull

with rich, deep

hues

yet vibrant

with religiosity

and infinity

and hope

 

and i am present

me, flaws, here

bad night.

"And this was the price you paid for sleeping together. This was the end of the trap. This was what people got for loving each other."

tee hee

so last night i dreamt i was hanging out with Zach Galifianakis outside of this really pretty house in a really pretty, green neighborhood. i was throwing a bike into a gate over and over. he asked what i was doing, so i told him i was trying to crossbreed a bike with a gate and i was going to call it a "gike," though i didn't expect it to sell well. he thought that was pretty funny.

my dreams are so retarded.

also, allow me to reiterate what the rest of the world has already told you:

Bob Dylan is awesome.

            This is the way things went. But not according to God.

            Their mercy had just run out and soon they were stomping the breath out of their own shadows.  The shadows of their parents and their children and their homes where once their plumbing was not rusted and clean water poured from their faucets.  With every blow to their shadows, several days were erased from a bothersome recording.

            “STOP FOLLOWING ME, YOU FUCKER.”

            They consider themselves defined by their pulse, their ancestor’s echo that is constantly fading, constantly retreating into the Big Nothing. To sustain it, they all act as giant vocal chords for the universe, turning the Big Something’s chaotic molecules into concrete, physical vibrations that make sounds and declarations and wars and love.  Long, sticky, fleshy pink columns of Human, infesting the planet, lost and wandering, settled and stabilized, like phlegm in the lungs of a coughing giant.

            “What I do is me. For that I came!”

            They possess only rust and know not when this possession began. Sometime before yesterday.

            “Something becomes nothing when you consider everything else.”

            There is a girl sitting on a bench in the park.  She is staring at a tree.  She realizes the vast number of branches on the tree.  It confounds her.  The branches seem infinitely intricate and complex.  A system, an arrangement that her brain can never comprehend.  Their coordinates written in a strange language forged in eons of prehistory.  Each branch giving birth to a smaller branch; the girl imagines that this creation of branches cannot end with just the branches that the eye can see, and that we are all being suffocated by tiny, invisible branches, that creep into our orifices.  These wooden fractals explore our inner vastness, learning, knowing us better than anything else.  The girls sits there breathing in the tree, letting it enter her, letting it know her, even though she still cannot comprehend it and it’s branches. She desperately wants to understand it, believing it to hold something that may complete her.  Just when she is about to surrender her efforts, a single bird lands on one of the branches and suddenly the meaning of that branch becomes apparent and true.  Every detail of that branch has meaning and reason and justification because of this bird.  The girl realizes that if this can be true of one branch, then it can be true of all of them.

            I don’t want the night to endand

            something inside is the sky

            and everything

                                         and nothing

            and togetherwe

                                         make it real.

the cigarette is all burned up

it's come to an end

i know if there were more

i'd get sick

but i'm still sad that it's over.

more Miller

setting: the narrator and his friend have picked up a hooker for fifteen francs and she asks for a piece of bread...

"How the hell can you get up any passion when you've got a starving cunt on your hands?"

Precisely! We haven't any passion either of us. And as for her, one might as well expect her to produce a diamond necklace as to show a spark of passion. But there's the fifteen francs and something has to be done about it. It's like a state of war: the moment the condition is precipitated nobody thinks about anything but peace, about getting it over with. And yet nobody has the courage to lay down his arms, to say, "I'm fed up with it... I'm through." No, there's fifteen francs somewhere, which nobody gives a damn about any more and which nobody is going to get in the end anyhow, but the fifteen francs is like the primal cause of things and rather than listen to one's own voice, rather than walk out on the primal cause, one surrenders to the situation, one goes on butchering and butchering and the more cowardly one feels the more heroically does he behave, until a day when the bottom drops out and suddenly all the guns are silenced and the stretcher-bearers pick up the maimed and bleeding heroes and pin medals on their chest. Then one has the rest of his life to think about the fifteen francs. One hasn't any eyes or arms or legs, but he has the consolation of dreaming for the rest of his days about the fifteen francs everybody has forgotten.

...There are some of us who don't live in the moment, who live a little ahead, or a little behind. My mind is on the peace treaty all the time. I can't forget that it was the fifteen francs which started all the trouble. Fifteen francs! What does fifteen francs mean to me, particularly since it's not my fifteen francs?

...A man can get to love shit if his livelihood depends on it, if his happiness is involved."

our culture has decided that if you are having your picture taken

then you are someone

hence, all of these websites filled with

hipsters and scenesters and clubbers taking pictures of each other.

blatant vanity.

self-worship and preservation.

you can't embrace yourself until you embrace your inner no-one.

embrace your inner no-one.

be something for yourself.

The Wasteland

eliot's poem-masterpiece

it's said that The Wasteland is the poem that changed the way people saw poetry.

people began to see poetry as difficult.

and yeah, it's a fucking difficult poem.

it started this bullshit way of looking at poetry as an academic endeavour.

you have to study shakespeare, greek literature, the bible, Dante, Aquinas... blahdy blah etc

just to be able to understand what eliot is getting at.

but poetry is for the people, right? it comes from somewhere pure and simple

distilled life

little crystals of meaning and "truth" and beauty and ugliness and pain

no ACADEMIA

so fuck eliot right?

no, fuck YOU

i hate that argument.

why shouldn't eliot be able to do this?

it's just as valid as any other poem.

sure, overall it might've had a negative effect on the way people look at poetry.

eliot didn't set out to make poetry some elitist, academic bullshit.

all eliot was doing was sitting down to write a fucking good poem.

and he did.

how he did so and who is able to understand it and what it did is secondary

to his inspiration and desire to just write a poem.

can we really hold people responsible for the effects their accomplishments have on the world when the world is so fucked up and unable to handle things?

we must never fear putting things out into the world, no matter how ruined they will eventually become.

because that disaster, that evolution of meaning and perspective becomes a part of the poem itself.

nothing is ever done.

casualties

the cigarette in my hand

the whiskey in my other

and the black widow on 

the bottom of my shoe

and the girl with

dangerous diamonds

in her smile

all gone.

the Dodos wrote a song and it was one of those strange moments of significance where you realize you're not alone. 

"Winter"

Don't know if I'll make it through this winter without you by my side
I waited for you so long while I traveled far and wide
Convinced myself there's no one better, so how can I deny
Your love, it's like a thorn into my side

My friends they understand me better but don't whisper goodnight
I want a lover and a sister, but we know that's not right
You used to listen to my music, I always wondered why
I wish I could pretend you make me try

I want the days to come, I want these sleepless nights to end
I lie here thinking how I lost you to all your stupid friends
You made me feel so foolish for the twenty-second time
Your love might be the last time that I try

Don't know if I'll make it through this winter without you on my own
I waited here for you forever, I can't believe you'd go
I may not have the answers, but I'd rather never know
Your love was such a heavy, heavy blow

Goodnight my love, you seemed so nice 'til I knew you better
Now I can tell you're always thinking twice about what might be better
On the outside, there's no conscience, you're a victim of your cautiousness
You don't try, you just lie there hoping that someone will come to make it right

i relate with exactly 100% of this video:

fuck yes.

"More than sixty years ago, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac sat down in New York City to write a novel about the summer of 1944, when one of their friends killed another in a moment of brutal and tragic bloodshed. The two authors were then at the dawn of their careers, having yet to write anything of note. Alternating chapters and narrators, Burroughs and Kerouac pieced together a hard-boiled tale of bohemian New York during World War II, full of drugs and obsession, art and violence. The manuscript, called And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks after a line from a news story about a fire at a circus, was submitted to publishers but rejected and confined to a filing cabinet for decades. This legendary collaboration between two of the twentieth centuries most influential writers is set to be published for the first time in the fall of 2008. A remarkable, fascinating piece of American literary history, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks is also an engrossing, atmospheric novel that brings to life a shocking murder at the dawn of the Beat Generation."

national - forever after days

on my feet i stand tonight, stand and step up to the line
an extraordinary man unbroken in a breaking life

forever after days, stand and make myself a crown
to the table i step alone, hold my own above the ground
take my shot under the light, heroes come the common way
pull myself into the sky, wrap me in the banner i made

on my feet i stand tonight, stand alone inside the air
an extraordinary man, everything stops and holds me there

forever after days, stand and make myself a crown
to the table i step alone, hold my own above the ground
take my shot under the light, heroes come the common way
pull myself into the sky, wrap me in the banner i made

also, this is awesome:

he won't fuck us over.

NATIONAL INSIDE JOKES. NICE.

slowly inching my way towards being happy and normal. it has its ups and downs (lots and lots of downs) but i'm definitely better than i was.

the lamest part is feeling so alone. i haven't been alone for 2.5 years. so it's just a really lonely, crappy feeling. hopefully i can adjust. or maybe if i meet someone i won't have to. we'll see. i'm going in to see my psychologist. she can usually speed up the recovery process.

a positive is i've started exercising. three days strong. 1-2 miles on the treadmill, sit ups, weights. the works. it's nice. i feel more healthy and the guilt of not exercising no longer hangs over me. it's not that hard.

latin is lame, but i should make it.

i'm stinky and gross from the treadmill. time for a shower.

let's start off here where we left off there.

more Miller;please read

"The state of tension was so finely drawn now that the introduction of a single foreign particle, even a microscopic particle, as I say, would have shattered everything. For the fraction of a second, perhaps I experienced that utter clarity which the epileptic, it is said, is given to know. In that moment I lost completely the illusion of time and space: the world unfurled it's drama simultaneously along a meridian which had no axis. In this sort of hair-trigger eternity I felt that everything was justified, supremely justified; I felt the wars inside me that had left behind this pulp and wrack; I felt the crimes that were seething here to emerge tomorrow in blatant screamers; I felt the misery that was grinding itself out with pestle and mortar, the long dull misery that dribbles away in dirty handkerchiefs. On the meridian of time there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama...

... the monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured- disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui- in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable."

new journal

hey guys. it's jake. got a new journal up here on blogger. xanga doesn't allow italics. fuck that noise.