April 2011

Cat muses

Catistentialism is nothing more than their attempt to ruin a coherent couch, as mine is now littered with hair, hair balls, passive aggressive affection, and evil looks. Man plunges into the couch next to cat, and into despair. To have a cat fight catistentially, which is talking at one’s mirror regarding a neglected litter box, is not to use the word in its original sense. To show that God doesn’t exist may be to show that each unique defecus combed and mined from a litter box does, each piece’s existence preceding its essence. Now that we believe God doesn’t exist, we are assured that our despair can only be mitigated by feeling hairs which have yet to be collected into a hair ball by a brash milk lapping tongue, asexual at best, whose host’s eyes see straighter than the author’s.

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Random / 12 Comments
April 30th, 2011 / 8:34 pm

Psychomagic: A Conversation with Alejandro Jodorowsky

Craft Notes / 5 Comments
April 30th, 2011 / 3:42 pm

Low Lives 3

My wife is performing today as part of Low Lives 3, an online international performance festival. It’s going on from 3-6 ET today on UStream, so if you’ve got some time and you’re just like hanging-out and eating a sandwich or watching your cat sleep, you should tune in here.

Events / 2 Comments
April 30th, 2011 / 2:39 pm

“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” — Edmund Burke, Anglo-Irish Statesman

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — George Santayana, Philosopher from Spain

“Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.” — Winston Churchill, Former Prime Minister of the U.K.

“People who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.” — Ryan Atwood, Fictional Character on “The OC”

The Cult of the Bookstore

Against, perhaps, better judgment, I’m going to go ahead and say some words on the fly here. They will be perhaps less coherent even than most of my posts, but whatever. It’s friday and almost the end of the work day so I doubt many people will read this. This is really scattered. I mean I guess the point of this post is that I like the internet more than bookstores.

I love books. I will honestly, undoubtedly, be one of the last people who own an eReader. I was basically the last one of my friends to own an mp3 player, so this is probably not surprisingly to anyone who knows me. I’m not against technological advantages, not at all– rather, I hate spending large amounts of money on things. Right now, I could buy 20+ books for the price of an eReader, so because I have little patience and have more interest in the books themselves than keeping up with technology (or even the convenience, or whatever), I would actually rather have 20 new books than an eReader. But, really, this isn’t a post about eReaders.

I want to talk about bookstores. READ MORE >

Random / 79 Comments
April 29th, 2011 / 5:06 pm

Beautiful new piece by Catherine Lacey, “Remove Yourself,” today at 52 Stories.

“Yet underneath its surface challenges, THERE IS NO YEAR turns out to be deeply honest and emotional, a family drama that by its end brings on feelings as complex and satisfying as those summoned by Faulkner’s simple sentence “They endured.”—Joseph Salvatore, New York Times Sunday Book Review

Stupid ass pants

Irony is a smart people excuse for looking stupid. Talking Heads made nice songs, and so did MC Hammer, but you’ll only see one in some art chick’s iTunes library, the bichromatic spectrum of roots and highlights in her hair, the slow erosion of nail polish marking an idea she had three weeks ago one night reading Derriduh for class. Orwell said something about there needing to be opposing classes for a society to function, but my googlefingers are tired, and only Joyce can make up words like that. You may ask yourself, where is that large automobile? First, it’s called a Bentley, and ’twas inside MC Hammer’s garage before he spent all his money on fabric. (In the disclosure, is foreclosure, hence its closure.) Rap stars enjoy walking around showing off their mansions, huge ass freezers full of nothing but popsicles, the former which record companies lease per month, until the sales drop. Snoop Dog encouraged me to drop it like it was hot, but I simply dropped it like it was a hernia. The university is a cultural war zone without fatalities; the only collateral damage is a bruised ego and a secret asshole, whose soldiers come out firing blanks in cafes and open mics, the worst ones holding clipboards on sidewalks, in need of a shower. High brows listen to music inside their heads, low brows rub it with their ass. Problem is we all monobrow, fucking monkeys who just recently upgraded from sign language. Each side needs the other, so when you walk down the street, you can wear your team’s t-shirt, identify your party at a bar, go up to them and say stop making sense. Remain in light, speak in tongues, dance like there’s an angry handjob inside your pants. Point to the atoms between you and your enemy and say you can’t touch this.

Random / 8 Comments
April 29th, 2011 / 3:18 pm

Today at Vice, The Tyrant and I have a conversation about masturbating and language. What books get you to touch yourself?

Four bookstores in Chicago


Just returned home, having spent the past few days helping my brother move to Chicago. After we unpacked the moving truck, we hit up a few bookstores. Here’s what I thought about them:

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Random / 96 Comments
April 29th, 2011 / 9:14 am