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Doomed to Obscurity Issue 24
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)- doomed to obscurity e'zine issue number 24 - released december 4, 1997 -(
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)- i just trust the oppression like i trust your friends )--( sonic youth -(
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
)- "Here is The Address"
)- by Mogel, Eerie, Mooer, & Kaia
Recently, Doomed to Obscurity experienced its much heralded, much
talked-about, & quite possibly most *battled* change in format, ever.
"Will this change _overwhelm my life_?" you ask. Don't panic --
everything will be okay! You can return to your dripping refried bean
burrito and melting coffee-coffee-buzz-buzz-buzz ice cream. "But...
nothing's *really* different, is it?" The course of the planets is still
the same, right? Ricki Lake is just as annoying as before, right?
Here's the scoop: We've shifted our focus to the web, and the funky
url is <http://www.dto.net>. Does this mean we've _failed_? Probably --
although we're supposedly Doomed to Obscurity, this change is gonna point us
straight towards the spotlight.
So... here we come, Ted Turner!
Details? Here goes. In addition to becoming more web-focused, we
now classify the writing you've come to know us for into four genres:
editorials, humor, and fiction (both 'normal', and absurdist). These will
appear as different sections on both the website, which will be updated with
new articles in each section every week, and in the monthly text release.
Yessiree, you'll still receive a monthly ASCII version of DTO (like
what you're reading right now!) containing all the articles that have been
featured on the website in the past month. To contact us about any of this,
here is the address: dto@op.net.
---
So we're sitting around here, looking at this issue.
Mooer says I'm supposed to beg for new, GIRL writers. Eerie would
prefer if they were womyn. He also says that if you want to advertise DTO
in your 'zine (print or electronic) or website, all you have to do is talk
to us. We're nice. Here is the address: dto@op.net.
It's Thanksgiving. We've been eating a lot of starches. Got ideas
about other things to eat? Here is the address: dto@op.net.
Oh. Be sure and tell us what you think of these developments in DTO
and DTO in general. Yes, give us feedback. Let us know you're there.
Here is the address: dto@op.net.
____
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___| | _______
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)- -------------------------- | | | | | | -------------------------- -(
| | | | | |
doomed to obscurity #24 | | | | | | and all contents therein...
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)- -------------------------- | | | | | | -------------------------- -(
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|___ _
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. "Here is The Address" -- By Mogel, Eerie, Mooer, & Kaia
2. DTO #24 and all contents therein...
3. Letters to the Editor
EDITORIALS:
4. "Dry Thoughts From A Dry Brain" -- by Sweeney Erect
5. "Divine Database" -- by D. McDaniel
6. "Racism: From Class To Classroom" -- by Murmur
7. "Wet Leaves" -- by Jamesy
HUMOR:
8. "Aura Of Saber-Toothed Tiger -- Condiments; Chapter #4893" -- by Murmur
9. "A Blast from The 80s" -- by Jamesy
10. "Beard Club" -- by Oregano
11. "Igneous Rocks Are Cool" -- by Styx
FICTION:
11. "Dance Ballerina" -- by Eerie
12. "The Colonoscopy Conspiracy (Chapter Dog)" -- by Zircus
13. "The Chaos Theory; Sunday, July 24" -- by Eerie
14. "Monthly Report, June '98" -- by Esso
15. "Pee Shy" -- by Puck
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
[ The following two letters are in response to the satirical file published
in DTO #20, "Rollerblades Are Gay", written by Murmur. ]
Date: Sun, 26 Oct 1997 14:36:31 -0500
From: Heinz Gudarain <heinz@megakool.de>
To: mogel@dto.net
Subject: "rollerblades are gay? Dear MURMUR"
Listen fuckhead, That fucking attempt at philosophy of yours is nothing but
the biggest fucking collection of bullshit that any fag of fucked up type
could have ever writtem. Congratulations. Now, u know who's gay? you, your
stupid shit friends, and your cocksucking mama. Thats who. With that fucking
attitude of yours, YOU are the fucking who would have his fucking head
ripped off and shoved up your pathetic gay ass, you brainless fuck. The next
time keep fucking opinions to yourself or the nest thing u know, some
hard-boiled niggers are gonna show up on your doorstep wishing to discuss it
with u in person. Thats after this shitty site is off the net, compliments
of me and my friends. Breking in would be fun, equally your piece os shit
site and your stupid head. YOU are doomed.
---
Date: Wed, 05 Nov 1997 13:57:37 -0800
From: EIEIO@VSTA.COM
To: mogel@dto.net
Subject: BLADERS
HEY! I'M SLADE KENNER. I LOVE YOUR PAGE ! BLADERS SUCK!
[ editor's note: I guess nobody wins, huh? ]
---
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 11:20:42 PST
From: eric hedBERG <burg13@hotmail.com>
To: mogel@dto.net
hello i read your peom tittled my name is mud by murmur. i
wish that you would make aniother one just like it and if you
already have i wish that you would tell me were other peoms
like it are. please e-mail me back at burg13@hotmail.com
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
[ editor's note: Murmur sure is a popular writer. ]
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
EDITORIALS
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
"Dry Thoughts From a Dry Brain"
by -- Sweeney Erect
Getting baked and thinking deep thoughts about beautiful things is
not the only or best method of doing philosophy. In fact, except in rare
cases with especially gifted individuals, this pursuit does not deserve the
label of "philosophy" at all. It is certainly not my place to disparage the
value of chemically induced late night revelations amongst friends, but
philosophy in its true sense, in the sense to which I will be alluding, is a
ridiculously demanding and time-consuming intellectual discipline.
The reason philosophy has developed an insidious reputation with the
very people who themselves would make excellent philosophers is largely that
the true discipline of philosophy has been misconstrued, equated with this
or that frivolous system, and therefore perceived as a ridiculous failure as
a discipline.
For the sake of convenience, let us suppose there are two ways a
discipline can succeed, and that any discipline which cannot excel on one or
the other of these fronts is a failure. A discipline can produce tangible,
practical benefits (or seem plausibly capable of producing these benefits in
the near future) or it can say beautiful things and provide aesthetic
pleasure.
It is clear right off that philosophy has never been a success on the
first front. Philosophy has never given us the cotton gin, or artificial
hearts or Tang(tm) or the A-Bomb. In fact, it is most often philosophers
resplendent with ridiculous facial hair and an arsenal of latin phrases who
make themselves *opposed* to these very innovations. And philosophy has
not, for an hundred years, proposed a system to make the masses happy the
way economics or political science have -- indeed philosophers are seldom
happy people. Many seldom date. Most drive shitty cars.
And on the other front, philosophy does not produce beautiful systems
nor does it describe the mundane in beautiful ways. True, some
philosophical concepts are beautiful and fragile things -- but put these
concepts in the hands of philosophers spewing philosophical jargon and they
become merely muddled and confused -- the victims of brutally dry and
ineloquent language. Compare Plantinga's infamous "and so the argument is
defeated by an undefeated defeater that remains undefeatable in the absence
of an adequate defeater principle" with a passage from the poetry of Eliot
or Stevens or the prose of Joyce or Dostovesky and the tragic failure of
philosophy on the aesthetic level is obvious. The very thoughts that
philosophers think (and these thoughts seem not to differ much from what a
stoned alterna-girl might coo at the young man monopolizing her time, for at
least an hour or so, one evening) are stated better by artists.
And at this point, one must surely ask, "On what grounds, then, can
philosophy be defended?" Philosophy, I will argue, cannot be critiqued
according to these standards of success, nor can it be critiqued as a normal
discipline. What philosophy is, simply, is a heightened state of
consciousness. As such, "philosophy" is the secret source of practical
benefits and of beautifully expressed thoughts. In considering the
discipline in isolation, of course, this is not obvious -- it is only when
we look at philosophy in its proper light -- as a manner of concentrating
and refining our thought process -- that the great debt we owe philosophy
becomes obvious.
Having made such a comment, I had *better* commence to explaining
myself, so let me begin by breaking down just what I mean by "higher form of
consciousness". I do not mean some vague yuppiekin phrase that feels good
to say and good to hear but connotes nothing. I mean specifically this:
Consciousness: The process of examination, contemplation and evaluation that
it *is* to be a human being. And, higher: Better, enhanced, more fruitful,
more precise.
Some form of philosophy is inherent in human consciousness -- the two
are almost inextricably intertwined. We perceive things around us and try
to make sense of them -- this is, at heart, what philosophy is. It is also
at heart what religion and science are. And these three disciplines will
forever be tangled, for they are the three most basic instincts a human has
intellectually... three faces on the same monster, so to speak. Religion
proposes the existence of some *other* or transcendent set of entities that
impact on our lives in personal ways. Science sets up a method to study
what is perceptible to us. Philosophy is even more basic than these other
two -- philosophy trains our mind to ask the right questions, focus on the
right issues and conduct tests in the right ways. Even before humankind
could hypothesize answers to questions, it had to be able to formulate the
questions and evaluate its answers, and this is the lifeblood of philosophy.
Because all persons by nature desire to know, and because all persons
at heart cannot help but dabble in philosophy, the bad reputation is
unavoidable. There will always be those who are too undisciplined in their
own thoughts, who turn these undisciplined thoughts to contemplative
pursuits and embark on wild intellectual goose chases. These persons, at
heart, violate the discipline they purport to practice.
Each perception that attacks us, no matter how objectively we think
we are looking at it, carries with it a bundle of nuances and associations
we can neither predict nor control. Seeing one thing reminds us of another,
thinking one thought leads to another. We consider the question "Should
taxes be raised to pay for more welfare programs?" This leads us to "Should
there be welfare at all?" And then "Well, what is the role of government?"
This spiral continues downward into a sequence of questions that will never
quite end until it gets to "So why the hell are we here, anyway?" And at
this point, if not before, we know we have gone too far down.
It is an old truism being rediscovered that all inquiries melt into
all other inquires, all true statements imply all other true statements, and
in the end for all our questioning we run the risk arriving nowhere other
than at a muddled intellectual soup of ideas and concepts.
So we have come round, now, to an explanation of how this makes
philosophy a higher form of consciousness. Philosophy, simply, is the
ordering of our thoughts and concentration of our efforts so as to avoid
this spiral. Since it is man's philosophical bent that causes this
spiral, it is this bent that must be mastered to focus our energies in
the right places. Philosophy is, at the end of the day, the mastery of
this spiraling process. Thus the philosophical mind, whether it belongs
to an artist or a poet, is what allows us to do anything at all. It is
what allows for any progress, for any innovation, for any concentrated
statement of beauty or truth. In the abyss that we all fall through,
knowing not where we came from nor where we are going, it is philosophy
that allows us to, for our moment, concentrate our senses and our
thoughts and say "Oh what a pretty cloud" before we splash against the
rocks below.
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
"Divine Database"
by -- D. McDaniel
I am awake now. A slow-blooming comprehension, a sudden awareness,
an arrival into these days. My days. Days of drudgery, days of miserable
sloth, days of boundless joy shackled. I am a bug screeching on my personal
pin, my carapace grinding around metal, churning my guts, flailing as if I
could uproot myself from the soft cotton display. A label above my
head identifies me in white paper and black ink and transparent tape.
I am evenly spaced among other identified creatures who grind upon their own
pins. In all likelihood these are pins of our choosing, the countless
decisions and revisions of our lives, the twisted paths of fate sharpened to
a fine point. But they pierce us all the same and they hold us in squirming
reluctant inertia.
My life is too vivid, too late. It was a bigger science project,
that's all. The tether was a little longer. But the pin was there the
whole damn time. For some reason it didn't bother me. The leash was never
taut, the shackles went un-noticed, the carapace didn't grind. Until now.
There is a mirror. It sprays back glimpses of me, objectively. I
cannot curse the mirror for being true to itself. But I do, I do. And it
is a sad thing that reflections of me can cause retaliation and fear, when
they should be a source of joy, of exaltation. I should rejoice at the
sight of me. I should rejoice in the motion of my limbs and the motion of
my mind and the beauty of my motion. I must be the source of any divinity
in this world. If there is a One True God then my soul is surely His
genesis. For I created Him in my image and on the seventh day I rested.
I should explain myself -- it's about honesty in art and all that. I
toss out "God" remarks recklessly. I use Him loosely in my writing. I curse
Him roundly and I jest with Him and I evoke Him at odd times. But although
I'm not really a Christian, I'm no screaming atheist, either. I'm one of
the countless lost who mucks about in the thousand shades of gray -- yeah,
as a hip intellectual agnostic newage retro-hippie, or something.
I believe in spirituality, and in the existence of the soul. After
that, I begin to get bogged down, and the whole business riles me to no end.
But that hasn't stopped me from spewing strange verbiage chock-full of snide
remarks aimed directly at His Truly. It is a ponderous thing. I need some
time and a little more research. I still flirt with the idea of a supreme
being, a One True God. I enjoy screaming at Him from rooftops. Taking His
name in vain. Taking His name in anger and joy and fear and crazed
depression. And I've always made it a point to be upfront with The Bastard.
If He does exist, I'm sure my number is in the Divine Rolodex. Guess that
would be the Divine Database nowadays. And I'm sure there are a few
meaningful notes in the margins.
But I cannot quite get it up for the fabled "leap of faith". I have
a problem with the whole concept of faith, and it scares me. I'm really
into that black and white thing -- hard data, stark truth. Churches scare
me, also. They are large groupings and, in my experience, large groupings
have translated into large badnesses. Organized religion, as one of the
greatest evils ever created by mankind, has a long and sordid history of
causing misery, death, and general unhappiness. Witness the Crusades (kill
the Muslims!). Witness the Inquisition (kill the heretics!). Jews and
Islamics blaze away at each other in the Mideast. Catholics and Protestants
blaze away at each other in Ireland. Christians in the lion pit, witches at
the stake. No thanks, count me out.
At its best, organized religion is a friendly circle jerk. "I'll
pull yours if he'll pull mine and the fact that we're gathered here today is
a glaring sign of our collective holiness." See and be seen and have
someone else affirm that you keep the faith in God-fearing decency. Problem
is, I don't really trust others' judgments of me. I rely on *yours truly*
to do the judging. And I have never understood the need to get all shined
up and drive across town to a large grouping, just to listen to a rant, when
there are way better rants sitting right there on the bookshelf.
Damn. I sat down to write something groovy, but here I am thrashing
around lamely in the treacherous goo of religious ideology. I don't mean to
do this. Curses. Drat. Satan is surely at work here. OK, let's see if I
can gracefully extricate myself from this mess.
"Hey buddy, look who created it!"
Witness this: my childhood, the buckle of the Good Book Belt,
small-town-Texas-bible-thumpin' pew-jumpin'-holy-rollin' pass-the-plate-
Amen. A big-eyed kid, shaking crispy warm hands on the steps of the church.
Looking on in wondrous awe, trying to fathom the deep and boundless wisdom
of these deacons bathing in the beam of goodwill and purity swathed around
our little get-together. Right.
My religious gig crumbled early. The shit that some of those
upstanding church-going folks pull on non-Sundays could curl your hair. The
church-heavies of my youth turned out to be rampantly human, rampantly
corrupt, rampantly hypocritical. I can forgive them for the human part, but
the facade of Christianity that the fuckers bandied about has queered me for
life. It's fine by me if someone wants to fuck, suck and run amok. What's
not fine by me is if the someone shows the hell up on Sunday morning,
staking claim to some kind of moral superiority. That is the main reason I
stay away from anything remotely resembling a church, although I want to
avoid blanket statements here. I'm sure there are many good people
connected to these institutions and I beg forgiveness if I have trod upon
blessed toes.
The most decent religious practices I've encountered belong to the
ancient tribes. They found joy in the Earth, in the simplicities of
everyday life, in the interaction of all things living and not. And it was
mainly a private gig. There were ceremonies and dances and various other
social functions, but it was up to the individual to seek his own medicine,
his own visions. His relationship to the Supreme Being was a purely
personal affair. God began in the mirror. He was embodied within the
reflection. I like that.
This theology weirdness is maddening. My brain is beginning to
bulge, writhing, convulsing against the skull wall. The warm wetness of
gray matter seeps out of my ears. But there was a need for some operational
definitions here, by God (there He is again!). A cleansing of the local air
before I go stomping off in another direction.
My take on religion is still half-baked, to say the least. But it is
my take, nonetheless, and hopefully it will prop up this rabid chattering.
I believe that the individual is sacred, holy, powerful beyond compare. And
I believe that the vast majority of us have lost sight of that. Our failure
to live up to god-like status is causing us problems.
Hardcore strangeness is eminent on this planet. Although we live in
an era that's undergoing stringent re-definition, we are oblivious because
the events are tiny. No big bangs, no headlines. Just continual minute
erosion. But what of this huge orgiastic throng of humanity that continues
to insist the world is somehow improving? Even the dumb starving geeks in
tenth world nations swallow the happy pill time and again. Yippee, another
coup! All hail to the new dictator! Life is good again!
Upheaval is on the verge. This isn't a political opinion. It's a
statement of the laws of physics. Gravity and density and mass,
acceleration and thermodynamics. Addition and multiplication, subtraction
and division, geometric progression and regression. The laws of physics
govern us as surely as any other law and we are in a radical bent now. The
formula is getting increasingly lopsided. Let X = the volume of life on
this orb. Let W = the world as we know it. Ideally W > X. But W happens
to be getting the shit beat out of it. And the lower tiers of X are
becoming increasingly unhappy, increasingly pissed off. Society and the
Earth as we know it are bound to sway. The quest for equilibrium is eternal
and all prevalent. The mathematics of the equation are insistent.
I believe that America is currently at the root of the big evil, as
well as of many fine and noble things. Boy did we show the world. We threw
off tyranny, we sought peace and freedom, we built a brave new kingdom
founded on principles of integrity. We have proven that it is possible to
have a rollicking good time as a democracy, something no other political
system has achieved. And now we are in the process of queering this image
as quickly as possible. There is no cohesion, no unity anymore. No
individual Godliness. Just a large collection of angry people trying to get
theirs before someone else does. And we are showing the world what an
empire looks like when it crashes beneath the weight of its own excess.
Once upon a time there was this place called Rome...
As individuals we must learn to look into the mirror with honesty
again. We must un-cover the Godliness of ourselves. And as a country we
must un-cover and re-define the American in ourselves.
I read this bestseller book a while back. Something about how we
learned everything we need to know in kindergarten. Holding hands and
watching sunsets and being courteous. It is about un-covering Godliness and
it is swell, but if you go out into the world today armed with that book you
will get stomped. That is where the American part comes in. We must hold
those kindergarten values close to us and be willing to kick some ass in
their defense. Fierce morality. Insistent righteousness. Black belt
kung-fu kindergarten. We need to rejoice in the motion of our limbs and the
motion of our minds and the beauty of our motion. The mirror should be full
of Gods, showing the world. We must pull at our pins.
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
"Racism: From Class To Classroom"
by -- Murmur
Buried on Page 4 of the Monday, November 17 Chicago Tribune is little
more than a blurb with the headline "Nearly 9 of 10 black teens say racism
has little effect on them". This sounded... wrong. The article was a mere
six paragraphs, so on I read, surprised and curious.
Indeed, according to a Time-CNN poll, 89 percent of surveyed black
teenagers said racism was a "small problem" or "not a problem at all" in
their personal lives. At the same time, however, 62 percent of those same
black teenagers (and 58 percent of white teenagers) said that racism is "a
big problem" generally.
The survey additionally found that 23 percent of black teenagers
reported having at some point been victimized because of their race,
compared to 16 percent of white teenagers. Black and white adults, however,
reported percentages of 53 and 20, respectively. The discrepancy between
black and white adults is hardly surprising; the discrepancy between black
teenagers and adults, however, is extraordinary.
Granted, any poll has to be taken with a bucket of salt. The figures
offered for black teenagers' feelings about racism, however, are strong
enough to be positively befuddling. Are we to assume that teenagers simply
haven't been victims of racism, but adults have?
It is safe to say that racism, as a problem in America, has declined
overall since 1954. Whether that decline has been steady or whether there
has been a resurgence is debatable (many experts will claim that racism has
experienced a resurgence, especially since 1980); but it should not be too
surprising that fewer numbers of blacks are reporting having been victimized
by their race. It should be affirmed, without hesitation, that American
race relations are far better now than they were during the height of the
civil rights movement, or before.
Nonetheless, it is puzzling that so many black teenagers (as well as
other segments of the population) feel that racism is "a big problem" yet in
the context of their own lives it is "a small problem" at best. The poll
would have us believe that fully half of all black teenagers are of such a
mindset. If 89 percent of them are not being profoundly affected by racism,
then how are they able to claim it is such a major issue?
I have believed for some time that race relations in the United
States are, generally, fairly reasonable. Many subtle societal factors
prohibit any claim that racism is not a problem, because it clearly is; but
racism has seemed to be little more a problem than discrimination against
homosexual, elderly, young, or even obese persons. This perception of mine
may be explained in part by noting that perhaps the minorities I see and
interact with daily are not an accurate reflection of minorities in general.
If racism is a major problem, however, and nearly 9 in 10 black
teenagers do not feel the implications of that problem on a daily basis,
nothing will happen to improve the problem except societal inertia (in other
words, some trends in society will persist even when there is no active push
for them to do so, simply because such a major force was started that even
when the catalysts faded away, a forward motion remained). This is perhaps
sufficient for the majority of the population -- certainly in 1967 most
black teenagers would have claimed to have felt victimized due to their
race, and that number is likely one that has continued to fall. The fact
is, however, that for those people who do believe that racism is a
consistent problem in their daily lives, societal inertia will not do them
any good.
Without sufficient personal motivation, America's black teenagers are
not going to actively combat racism. After 1970, the civil rights movement
had been sufficiently repressed, radicalized, and splintered that it has not
recovered as a major force, and this lack of personal motivation will
prohibit it from regaining such a force.
Institutions, however, have been forged in the wake of the civil
rights movement that certainly have positively affected American race
relations. It would be considered blasphemous for somebody to comment that
"Jordan is one hell of a basketball player, even though he's black."
Less-than-holy institutions like professional sports and the entertainment
industry have created scores of African-American stars, individuals who
without even necessarily meaning to have brought down a lot of the hardcore
bastions of racism.
All this does not, however, change the fact that for some people,
racism is part of daily existence, perceived or actual. Perhaps a certain
proportion of these people could be labelled abject paranoids, but the issue
is not at all served by such a meaningless claim.
Where the racist problems in American society seem to lie is where
certain institutions like professional sports and the entertainment industry
are less part of mainstream culture. Although actors and football players
might be considered loosely part of "elite" culture, that "elite" culture is
still effectively at the level of mainstream middle-class America. It is
therefore at the lower class level that problems of racism should be
considered.
Documented studies show that racist tendencies fall with an increase
in education level. The American lower class is not only at the bottom in
income but also at education, not coincidentally, and also not
coincidentally, lower class America is more apt to stronger racist
sentiments. The argument becomes one of "it's not race, it's class". This
is certainly true to a certain extent, but such a generalization serves to
minimize the other latent issues, which deserve no such minimization.
The separation of the lower and middle classes in America is causing
(and has caused) an unraveling of culture at the lower class level. This
cultural unravelling is not only a cause of racist tendencies, but at the
same time ought to be considered a result of latent racist beliefs. The
downward spiral that results from the interaction of these and other
negative societal factors is one that will continually theoretically
unimpeded until the point where something is forced to give.
Is there a solution? Racist sentiments can not be evaporated by
government intervention. Depressed economic areas can be reconstructed
under the auspices of local governmental organizations, but any true reform
must be internal to those citizens affected. If funds are to emanate from
local/state governments, with the goal of empowering citizens, then is there
an appropriate medium?
There is -- and that medium is education. Subpar test scores and
dropout rates in the inner city are not the results of stupid children, much
as superior test scores and graduation rates in wealthy suburbs are not the
results of brilliant children. An immediate reevaluation of inner-city
education must be undertaken by local and federal education officials; there
are bound to be several examples of what will and will not work to turn
schools around. Throwing money blindly at school boards will not solve the
problem; money by itself will never be an end-all solution.
Similarly, investing resources into propping up traditional
educational systems in order to make them superior will prove to be
ineffective. The standard American high school curriculum is wildly
outdated and the system is such that veteran teachers are by and themselves
outdated while a potential new generation of enthusiastic educators finds
themselves attracted either to those same suburban districts that can pay
them more or attracted to such comparatively unbeneficial fields as plywood.
Furthermore, new educators continue to receive their training under the
auspices of the old system, prohibiting any meaningful reinvigoration on the
part of recent college graduates.
These issues are merely heightened in the context of inner-city
districts because poorer areas are that much more unable to procure
top-level educators and are often even farther behind the times content
wise, making educations in such districts inferior to similar educations in
suburban districts, continuing the problem. With a large proportion of
inner-city districts populated by minorities, especially African-Americans,
the social unravelling of the lower class is unsurprisingly exacerbated by
the progress of the middle and upper classes.
What percentage of American black teenagers would claim that they
have been the victims of inferior educations? What percentage of American
white teenagers? Chances are that the reported figures would actually be
less than they should be; anyone I went to high school with received a
comparatively inadequate education, and I'm in that American middle class.
If a smaller proportion of those teenagers who should report educational
inadequacies actually do, then would it be very surprising if a smaller
proportion of teenagers reported being victims of racist incidents than
should? Still, twice as many black teenagers claimed to have been
victimized by racism than claimed that racism was more than "a small
problem" in their lives.
American middle class culture, then, is not just the culture of the
American white middle class, but of all middle class people, a culture
insufficiently motivated by the issues around them for anyone to reasonably
expect that the population would rally behind a cause and support it with
their time and money. The system can remain intact for a long time, but
eventually, all systems allowed to maintain as such will be assaulted by the
victims of the system, or so consumed by its own existence that there will
be tragic consequences.
Regardless of whether or not they have due cause to be, if black
teenagers are complacent when it comes to the issue of racism, and
complacent when it comes to the issue of education, then middle class black
society will do nothing about those issues for the next 20 years, until
there is a new generation of black teenagers. But with the perpetual
crumbling of the inner cities as is, will they be on the brink of anarchy in
20 years?
The solution, time and time again, is education. Not money thrown
around, but intelligently applied resources, and a major reevaluation of the
American educational system, and especially those of inner-city districts.
Make course subject matter more meaningful. Reward quality educators.
Encourage top-notch college graduates to go to the cities and not to all
pour into the over-saturated suburban markets. Increase funding of quality
extracurricular activities. Overhaul educational training. Remove
inefficient administrators. Repair crumbling buildings. Foster meaningful
educational environments.
If steps are not taken at the most basic level -- and once above the
poverty level, education is about as basic as level come -- then the schism
of classes will continue in America, and racial wounds will not be healed.
This is not extremist rhetoric. This is the way things are; and things do
not need to continue to be this way. Action needs to be taken to reverse
this course -- and this action needs to start immediately.
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
"Wet Leaves"
by -- Jamesy
I've been watching the leaves lately. Every day I walk to work, and
every day I walk home, and every day the way the leaves appear to me
changes. A few weeks ago, when the leaves were falling from the trees and
their colors were radiant and they were crisp and strong, I realized how
beautiful the fall is. Last week, when it rained and the leaves were wet
and squishy and made flimsy mess all over the sidewalk, I realized how ugly
the fall can be. And this week, when the leaves are dry and cold and
brittle and rotting away, and there is absolutely no life left in them, I
realize how final fall can be.
I also realize how tired I am of trying to make realizations about
life and the world. Our feelings differ, our lives change -- and our
realizations reflect those changes, and not much else. I'm a radical now,
and I'll be a liberal in my late 20's, and I'll be a conservative in my late
30's. Just like everyone else. All I can really hope for is that I'll be a
little happier than everyone else, that I'll have a strong friend base and a
successful relationship and maybe a few children to raise.
Although it would be nice to change the world and make it a better
place, chances are my conception of 'a better place' isn't everyone else's.
I got into a silly argument with my girlfriend Rachel because I think all
libraries should be online, while she likes visiting them and finding the
books and reading the paper, all those things I hate to do. I also think
there should be a universal world government, like the UN only with a lot
more power, so silly border disputes would be a thing of the past.
Needless to say, she hated that idea too, citing how important cultural
differences are and blah blah blah.
My point is I'm tired of being an idealist. I think I'm going to sit
this one back, relax, and try to make the best out of what I have. I'm
happy now, for once, and I want to stay that way. Not much else matters.
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
HUMOUR
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
"Aura of Saber-Toothed Tiger -- Condiments; Chapter 4893"
by -- Murmur
in the ever-ending tragedy of the western fieldmouse we find that,
indeed, there is an insufficient arsenal of goat cheese with which to feed
the troops, the cells of the beating heart, to keep it alive in a capacity
more meaningful that that of a shriveling minimalistic existence.
therefore, a feast! we have chickens and cucumbers and croutons and none of
them shall withstand the ferocity of my crop and gizzard. there is a fine
line, you see, between being an eagle and apprehending your conscience. i
don't know what that fine line is, but i am quite sure that it is there.
its presence is felt in the deepest pits of my arms. et tu, flutie? i like
the funny chrysler man. he is so not full of glee. all quarterbacks should
feel compelled to lessen their names to a letter count of two. then the
linebackers will not be able to anagram them into the ground. countless
concussions have i not witnessed with these glossy filaments. oh the owl he
is blind oh the owl he is blind hi hi allegrio the owl he is blind. the owl
eats the mouse the owl eats the mouse and g. gordon liddy puts the smack
down on my house. the plumbers they got caught the plumbers they got caught
nixon was a dirty rat and that's just what i thought. i think i'm gonna cry
i think i'm gonna cry all the girlies dissed me and it makes me wanna die.
my god the phone just rang my god the phone just rang luke called me from
the station everything is a-ok. that really didn't rhyme that really didn't
rhyme it isn't gonna stop me 'cause it isn't worth a dime. i think i better
quit i think i better quit my neurons have conferred and they declare that
this is it.
moral: you make me feel like a natural light.
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
"A Blast from The 80s"
by -- Jamesy
If you haven't noticed, the last few years have brought a big
revival of 'retro' music. I think we're missing the point. There was more
to the 80's than music. And that's why I bring you this guide to a few of
the best movies of the 80's. Without these movies, Richard Butler wouldn't
have ever been more than a retail clerk. Without these movies, we wouldn't
have grown up to be the responsible generation of young adults we are today.
So here it is, Jamesy's guide to the best movies of the 80's:
* _Howard The Duck_ (1986), starring Lea Thompson
I was the envy of all my friends when I completed my Topps' _Howard
The Duck_ movie trading card set. It was 132 cards, if I remember
correctly. Although this movie didn't have anything do with the complex and
demanding mores of high school life, it still left a picturesque etching
about humanity in my soul. If you haven't had a chance to see this movie
yet, rent it immediately; although it was overly produced and its product
cost is a tribute to the man, the quality of the script is enough for you
to enjoy this movie immensely. And, if that's not enough, there's music
by Thomas Dolby in the soundtrack!
* _Pretty in Pink_ (1986), starring Molly Ringwald and Andrew McCarthy
Those who say _The Breakfast Club_ was the best movie of the 80's
must have missed this thriller. Perhaps part of the problem was the
language used in this movie. It was possibly a little too complex for the
average viewer, and that's why it didn't become as big of a hit. However,
with the internet we can easily obtain critical information needed to
interpret the hidden meaning in this movie. Tashia Stone, designer her own
_Pretty in Pink_ Web Page, explains this widely-discussed line:
"You told me you couldn't believe in somebody who didn't believe in
you. I believed in you. I always believed in you. I just didn't believe
in me."
Tashia's Interpretation:
---
This quote is interesting because it is hard to tell what Blane is
saying. I think that most people understand it as "I believed in
you, I always believed in you. You just didn't believe in me." I
discovered that this is how the French version was dubbed. But I
believe that it should be "I just didn't believe in me." It makes
more sense to me, because Blane is apologizing for his behavior
when he was avoiding Andie and when he lied about the prom. She is
obviously moved by his statement, which I don't think would be the
case if he were accusing her of not believing in him!
---
You see, people like Tashia are what makes the Internet community
as great as it is. Without the Tashia's, most of us would have been
baffled by the cornucopia of connotations derived from this quote.
* _Can't Buy Me Love_ (1987), starring Patrick Dempsey and Amanda Peterson
Probably the greatest movie of our time. Not necessarily for the
great acting or for the great scenework, but for the beautifully composed
script. No movie can possibly top the climactic scene where Ronald's nerd
friend is about to be beaten up by jocks, but Ronnie triumphantly breaks in
and says the now famous line:
"Nerds, Jocks, it's all bullshit, man! it's all bullshit!"
Ok, so I paraphrased. But these words, whatever they were, changed
my life. After watching the nerd and jock shake hands and live in harmony
for the rest of their lives, I went to school the next day and quoted that
line to Billy Mitchel, the school's steroid poster child. Luckily, my
parents can afford this typist to transcribe my column for me.
* _Some Kind of Wonderful_ (1987) starring nobody you've heard of.
1987 was the year for movies, wasn't it? The slogan for this movie
was "Before they could stand together, They had to stand alone." The
premise of this movie was a guy who really wanted to date the 'popular' girl
throws away all his money into a pair of cubic zirconia earrings. Then the
butch lesbian girl who is his best friend gives him kissing lessons. Then
the popular girl and the guy go out on a date, and the lesbian drives,
because lesbians do that. She was wearing funny gloves. At the end the
lesbian realizes that her sexual preference wasn't genetic after all, and
decides to be straight and get the 25 thousand dollar cubic zirconia
earrings from the guy. If you missed this movie, you need to get cable.
* _Rock 'n' Roll High School Forever_ (1990), starring Corey Feldman
This movie might have been made in 1990, but it typified the beauty
of the 80's. I can't possibly beat the summary from "E! Online," so I'll
just quote it:
The new V.P. of discipline at Ronald Reagan High rules with an iron
fist... literally. Her militaristic expectations are enough to make
Reagan High the most uncool school in the district. But as she soon
finds out, this student body is ruled by Rock 'n' Roll.
Apparently there was a Rock 'n' Roll High School made in 1979.
Fortunately, I never had the chance to see it, because, since Corey Feldman
wasn't in it, it obviously couldn't have been as good.
* _Zapped Again_ (1990), starring Lyle Alzado, Karen Black, and Linda Blair
This is one of those few sequels that was better than the original.
But it's hardly unbelievable when you take a look at the all-star cast. The
Mr. Showbiz Movie Guide states:
New kid at Emerson High discovers the magical elixir that confers
telekinetic powers and puts them to the same uses -- namely, getting
even with bullies and causing girls' clothing to fall up, down, and
off. We'd be embarrassed to be seen renting this.
Regardless of Mr. Showbiz's shoddy critique, this movie motivated me
to drink prune juice. Unfortunately, no skirts were uplifted by me doing
so.
If you haven't seen any of these movies, make sure to check them out
of your local village's library today! Memorize each and every one of the
lines in the movie to impress and influence your friends! Write your
college thesis on John Hughes' directing career!
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
"Beard Club"
by -- Oregano
Michael R. Eacott, senior designer for COMBO magazine, has a strange
ritual that he has follows every year. Each fall, on the day after Labor
Day when the weather is threatening to change to cold -- at least on the
calendar -- he starts to grow a beard. For a few weeks he has stubble then
after a while it fills in and everyone gets used to it again; he goes
through the winter with with the beard, he claims it makes his face warmer,
and then come spring while the flowers are pushing up through the ground, he
cuts it all off and stays clean shaven for the warmer months.
This odd behavior, as consistent as fall itself, inspires others on
the COMBO staff to join in, a gesture mockingly known as the Combo Beard
Club. Anyone in the company who starts a beard at this time is said to be
part of the COMBO Beard Club whether or not they work on COMBO.
I came back to my office which I share with Steve, the copy editor of
COMBO, with the startling news that the vice-president of the company has
joined the COMBO Beard Club. No doubt the vice-president didn't even know
about the COMBO Beard Club or would be happy to know he joined, but
tradition states that he was now a member. I had been upstairs getting an
orange soda from the building's sole vending machine, and saw him walking
through the halls with a 3 day growth.
"Have *you* joined the COMBO Beard Club?" Steve asked me. Our desks
face opposite walls, so we sit back to back the whole day talking but not
seeing each other, still he should have seen my face a dozen times today
from our various going in and out of the office.
I replied, "What? Don't you know? You've seen me today."
"I don't recall," he said, "is that a 'yes' or a 'no'?"
Stunned, but seeing an opportunity, I said, "I'll tell you what,
let's make this more interesting. You can bet either way you want, say a
dollar, whether or not I have joined the COMBO Beard Club."
He replied, "I don't know..."
"Only a dollar, and you can pick whichever side you want to bet on,"
I goaded him.
"Sounds like a trick."
"There is no trick, either I have started a beard or not, it couldn't
be simpler." With that I took a dollar out of my wallet and snapped it in
the air to taunt him, "either way you want to guess is fine with me."
I could hear the gears grinding in his head weighing a possible
decision, this was my payback of sorts for his trying to goad me into
betting on the last-place Cubs against the second-place White Sox earlier
this year, he had asked me where my pride and loyalty were, but I knew a bad
bet when I saw it. Steve was silent for a few minutes, I could hear him
typing slowly on his keyboard, or stopping to uncap his felt-tip marker to
write something on one of the page proofs for the magazine. It was like a
moment from the movie High Noon, all we needed was a pendulum clock ticking
away each tension-filled second.
Finally he spoke, "No, I know that somehow there is a trick involved,
I'm not sure how, I just know you have some way to make it come out in your
favor." With that there would be no bet.
But my fun was not over, I knew he wanted to know if I was bearded or
not so I let him wait, knowing that it was gnawing at him the whole time.
After an hour of talking about things not related to beards I stood up and
stepped to the middle of our office and gently stroked my 3 day stubble.
Steve looked, said nothing, turned back to his computer and kept on typing.
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
"Igneous Rocks Are Cool"
by -- Styx
earlier today, while i was going through my sister's room looking for
anything remotely interesting (she's out at the ozzfest), i stumbled upon my
mother doing the same thing. soon, we found a test my sister had discarded.
it was from her general science course in high school. she's a freshman.
according to my mother, she has completely given up on the class because
science just isn't her forte. anyway, there were six essay questions she
had to answer. not only does my sister kick ass, but she's funny! behold!
---
1. Describe the 2 types of magma. Include what each is made of and
the volcanic cones they would form.
Well, see when you scientifeicly research the magma cones, you
realize what they are. they are formed from ice cream.
ice-cream cones, that is. i eat them.
2. How does cooling time effect crystal size? Give an example of
one rock type that cooled quickly and one that cooled slowly.
When they cool slowly, the elements have more time to move
around. so it changes the shape of the crystal.
3. How do we know the Earth's core is very dense?
Well when the earths core is made of peanuts, it makes happy
men sad, so it makes it dense.
4. How do we know the Earth's core is solid?
if the Earths core was mushy like melted marshmellows, it would
fall apart and we would all float away.
5. How does the formation of igneous rock differ from the formation
of metamorphic rock?
igneous rocks are cool. they listen to cool music & wear cool
clothes but the metamorphic rocks are all dorks. They wear
thick glasses & they eat cheese on ice cream & wear there pants
above their ankles, and have pocket detectors, So no one steals
their $50 dollar pens.
6. How does the formation of clastic sedimentary rock differ from
the formation of chemical sedimentary rock?
clastic sedimentary rock compares to the growth of old tomato
mold, it turns green with age. the chemical sedimentary rock,
however, compares more to old apples and banannas, they get
kind of mushy, like how the earth's core isn't.
i am very sure i got an A+.
---
all spelling and grammar mistakes were hers, but who cares?! thanks
to the grade curve, she got a 22 out of 98. the teacher then added one
point for creativity. she got a 23!
pictures of my sister in all her glory are available at
http://www.dto.net/~styx/pix.html -- i will direct any email to her!
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
FICTION
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
"Dance Ballerina"
by -- Eerie
it's raining nails against the cab's windshield & it's around one
a.m., this one specific hour that decides if your day was wasted or not,
depending on what you did prior to this checkpoint. well, in our case,
here, that whole day had indeed been throughly wasted. woke up in no arms,
got a goner for a girlfriend -- why couldn't he figure these things out
before they started? it came to him that those girls probably saw exactly
this into him: a walking failure, can't even stand straight 'cause he
drinks too much, doomed from the beginning to a life of immature
quiverings -- blah, blah, blah.
her on the toilet seat, peeing her previously swallowed load of beer:
"don't you ever realize how awfully _childish_ you are? i waited for a
while, thinking you'd change..."
"what do you expect? go fuck a suit if you want maturity."
"no way to get you to take that fucking laundry to the laundromat...
hey, i'm talking to you!"
sandy, her name was. she was indeed just like the sand in your hand
that eventually runs through the interstices between your fingers.
& now he's -- catch the clich while it's around! -- running away.
oh, ecstatic escapism, driving for a few hours, destination nowhere, as long
as you remain on the map... oh, & the bored bliss of crossing the whole
state of new jersey without ever stopping even for gas, like the used whore
you can't help but act just as nasty -- never a halt before getting into
pennsylvania. feeling lagged in the head, doing it bare metal for once --
anywhere but this compunctioned soliloquy his head liked to think he wanted
to hear. like there's anyone to care about these big words, huh.
she shouldn't have a name, his mind repeats ad lib. there shouldn't
be a way to remember her damn face, her damn sex. that stuff never was that
painful -- no, it always was, but you don't realize that on the moment where
you're once again proved of your condition of a failure, or do you? it's
late enough, he then thought as he saw a sign advertising some chain motel
or whatever trademarked brand of rooms you usually stop & fuck in. for
cheap enough, he'd get a bed he wouldn't have to make -- no one to complain!
-- & hopefully his mind would leave him alone to watching tv, & he might
still have some southern comfort -- yeah, 2 bottles & a half in the back.
paid & smiled to the woman at the counter silently asking himself if
she'd be up for a fuck if he promised he didn't remember her -- crap, why do
they have to wear nametags? his mind slipped through a vision of him, &
her, sweat, hereafter his conscience still full of her damn name. she's
probably not all that pretty naked -- her breasts all flat with the guess of
the classic inverted bikini silhouette, you could tell from her grotesquely
tanned skin she probably spent hours in her backyard under the north
pennsylvanian sun, not even getting rid of the top 'cause there are
neighbors, she'd oh-so never be this perverted, right out of college,
already pretending she's 40 or so... if that isn't gross, what is?
went back to the cab -- readied himself for the alcoholic fuel that
was going to feed his little wasted night. then back in the room, turned on
all lights, crashed on the bed holding a bottle of southern comfort,
drinking straight from the neck -- almost vampiristic an image! he laughed.
tonight wasn't going to be all that bad. stared at the tv screen then
turned it on to see the mix of late movies & late programs he could only
expect for & gratuitously yawn at. then with a content smile he drank some
more & some more, dashed boulder his head was, most likely he wouldn't feel
the weight come back until tomorrow, & then, he'd get rid of it with some
more dashing boulders...
(okay, this is the point when the reader ponders, don't you love it
when the writer goes on & on with their preparatory statements, "setting the
mood" or so they call it, this masturbatory babble for no audience but
themselves? well, mind you, enduring this is your fate as a reader -- so
live with it! writing is such a pain in the ass, if there wasn't any
pleasure in it i don't see why i'd be doing it right now...
oh, but now on to the damn action.) ... the noise was getting
heavier, plaintive moans that seemed to come from behind one of these
walls -- a couple playing the naughty next door? but damn, why is the woman
so damn loud about it? maybe there's 2 of them, he thought, getting an
instant yet ephemeral hard-on. but whimper after whimper, he couldn't help
but noticing an awkward similarity & a tone that had nothing sexual in it, a
flangering weep, ghastly & insane, not unlike the crying of a dumped bitch.
then the knocking on the walls. okay, he figured, something's wrong.
&, he was shortly to figure it out, this wasn't going on in the next room
but rather, oddly, in his very bathroom.
"what are you doing here?" he asked, unbelieving, to the woman in the
bathtub. it seemed like she had been laying there for a while, hands & feet
tied, looking rather comatose if not for a background dim light somewhere
deep in her very green eyes -- oh, but the detail of importance is how she
was dressed up as a ballerina, her dress floating over 20 inches of lukewarm
water. & her face looked so doped up, so crammed with chemicals under a
bloat stare, it didn't fit the costume at all. she tried to pronounce
something but was obviously unable of coherence at that point & possibly
even realizing it herself, so she nodded instead, seeming slightly afraid
with this sudden masculine presence but ultimately uncaring of what was
going to happen next.
he approached her, untied the knots at her feet then as gently as he
could turned her around to finish with her wrists -- "not that i wanna sound
like i'm spoiling the party, but this is a room i paid for... what the hell
happened in here?" emptied the tub quickly... she was freezing.
"hand me a towel" was the first sentence she pronounced coherently.
the second one was: "thanks."
"so what's the story? care to explain?"
"do you have... spare clothes?"
surprised silence -- "well, not really. i came here for..."
"oh, what the hell," she said, her white dress & hair still dripping
all over the bathroom floor tiles, like a bland mosaic turning into
watercolors, looking overall so indecent & out of place. "you don't wanna
know. this fucking asshole just... you don't wanna know." he thought,
fine. he actually didn't wanna know.
"let me see if i have some clothes in my..."
"don't bother." her arms stretched backwards to unbutton her dress,
which she almost gracefully let go on the floor, with the spilled water &
towels. he enjoyed the sight for a nanosecond, then wondering if she should
leave her to her 3/4-nakedness -- nothing but white panties, i'm afraid...
& a skin that, he noticed it immediately, lacked the forced tan of the woman
at the counter -- but then he decided otherwise: "wanna drink? -- yeah..."
as her hand fell from behind her neck, she touched her breasts a sloppy
touch -- all damp, feeling crappy. he pulled out his t-shirt & handed it to
her then left to the bed & the southern comfort & the tv set which was still
on.
much unsurprisingly, not half an hour afterwards, some strange yet
pleasurable sexual act followed, punctuated by many a vowelling moan, sour
sweat from both our protagonists as they had just dipped their minds in
alcohol well enough to pretend they didn't know what they were doing, with
the bed, we'll assume, knocking repeatedly against the wall & possibly
annoying the hell out of the people next room, yet this all smoothed up with
the hushed plaintive breakbeat of rain falling outside.
("oh," says the potential reviewer. "sex." that's right, it's my
recurrent theme. for the record, related themes dear to your friend the
author -- you do know that norman mailer is a blast to rip off from, do you?
-- include drugs, alcohol, depression, escape, angst, etc. i'm just saying,
because analyzing the story together makes it so much easier for you to
understand it, don't you think?)
her climbing, salient breasts were his first sight when he woke up
the next morning. a quick recall of the night before informed him that this
was actually the one bondaged ballerina he had more or less saved the night
before. the thought of that surreal scene mixed up his mind more than it
cleared it up, but then again, the morning hangover wasn't exactly of any
help. he didn't feel like moving for a little while -- from his point of
view, her breasts looked just as tasty as a sundae. his watch said it was
somewhere between 11 & 12.
the noise of a door opening should have affected his senses a little
more, but for whatever reason he thought it was part of a dream that was
somehow still going on in an unawakened region of his brain. but the next
thing he heard has the potentiality of causing a hell of a shock:
"the *fuck*? she's gone!" said one man from the bathroom.
"what?" said another, probably in the embrasure of the room door.
like the bass drumming heart of his -- peak level on the awareness vu
meter -- his mind literally jumped a few instructions & reached the organic
error handling procedure.
the second man had walked past the bathroom door to discover him, &
her, in full nudity as the reader will expect -- yet everybody seemed just
as confused, & she woke up pretty much at the same time & exclaimed this
surprised, succinct shriek he could only love her for, then hid under some
covers by something that felt like instinct.
yet her delicious shapes remained, easily guessed, screaming to be
kept sweet & soft -- it might have been their sight that got our protagonist
to decide he felt like a hero that day. but, his mind wouldn't wander much
longer, as everybody was standing there, menacing yet foreseeing, staring at
each other, no one quite saying a word, for no one was quite sure of what
was going on.
it became obvious that this guy in the bed was probably just a
customer who happened to sleep in the room they thought would be free for
the whole night -- after all, this was off-season, not many a stranger ever
comes in this hole of a town, this forgotten clime -- it wasn't even
wondered at why the ballerina hadn't just left the place.
it was moreover realized that these 2 men probably had relatives in
the personnel here, for one of them was holding a set of
keys that didn't
quite seem like your usual house & car set.
"okay," the first man managed to say, "you give us the lady, she has
nothing to do with you, & you forget about this, dig?"
"i'll suppose she does... have something to do with you guys?" ouch,
said his head, damn your boozer habits. can't think straight.
the second man approached the ballerina, near enough to make it
alarming, & our protagonist held her hard enough & said: "wait a minute, if
you take her, you take me with." it seemed like the oddest thing to do,
obviously, for he didn't really know who that girl was, after all -- hell,
he didn't even know her _name_!
"don't try with us, shithead, okay? you have nothing to do with
her."
"well, at least i'm not gonna tie her up in some motel's bathtub for
whatever reason you guys might have thought of..." there, he thought,
following his heroic rant, here's your lure -- time to explain what the hell
she was doing there.
"this is none of your fucking business..." second man was getting
angry & possibly dangerous, he was rather tall -- yet seamly built, like
pieces of lego mixed up with tinkertoys. neither seemed to have a weapon,
but they seemed strong enough to hold the ability to tamper with one's
facial features, especially one as skinny as his.
all the while the girl had remained silent, if not simply uncaring.
(climax.)
the phone rang. once, then twice. out of surprise, our protagonist
answered, still holding the ballerina with his free arm, almost fearing it
was the ordinator of this scheme of things, calling to see if everybody was
appreciating the sarcasm:
"hello?"
"hello, this is reception desk, we'd like to inform you that
check-out time is in 10 minutes."
"oh." a pause -- everybody was strangely silent. "will you please
come here? i think we're having a problem."
the second man stared at the first one with a disfaced look. beneath
their oh-so mean figures, you could now tell there was some hanging over
going on that a tylenol hadn't solved quite yet.
"what kind of problem, sir?"
"we'll get her later on", the first man said to his acolyte,
signifying to him that they should maybe leave the place quick. the second
one mumbled: "you die..." to both the girl & the stranger, "we'll make you
both's life a living hell..."
"let's get going, dan" -- with a pressing inflection.
the 2 men then left the room in a burst of anger. "oh, i'm sorry,
miss, everything's back to normal. i'll be leaving in minutes. thank you."
she kissed him as soon as he hung up. her breath smelled of southern
comfort: "my head is pounding."
"get dressed," he said, "we're outta here."
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
"The Colonoscopy Conspiracy (Chapter Dog)"
by -- Zircus
Ing sits and watches with eyes gaping, mouth hung open. Feels a
familiar tingling in her loins and as usual her thoughts travel off to
daddy. Frantically massaging her genitalia, she feels the first of many
climaxes to come. Brother had disappeared, most likely to get high with the
friends he had met by chance out at the wet bar. Mother was away at the
jacuzzi, probably passed out on valium. At any rate, neither would be back
to the room any time soon. All alone, nobody around, just her and her
recently acquired addiction to masturbation and lesbian pornography as
Mrs. Clamstead paces back and forth on the lawn of her bungalow located on
the north island of this resort. Still mourning the death of her husband
after 27 years. In her left hand is a large pistol and in the left, her 4th
bottle of Jack Daniel's of the evening.
He died by chance. Fell off a window-washer scaffold while
attempting to catch a glimpse of a naked woman. Poor, crazy old man. An
accountant by trade, and a thief and embezzler by hobby, he left quite a
bundle to their only son, Thursday, who in turn founded the very resort
which even has an underground parking lot for Klen Flostaff and his buddies
to conveniently smoke massive amounts of marijuana without the bothersome
forces of nature to blow their Bic lighters out. The wind can be a pot
smoker's worst enemy. The night was young and the buds were Thai, imported
and distributed by the same organization Sliff Clamstead believes to be
hunted by.
On this night, twenty years before the time that I as a child
electrocuted myself to death and back to life again by sticking a key into
an electrical socket while pretending to drive a racecar, Sliff snorts yet
another line of the highest grade cocaine and continues to write a story
almost as shitty as the one you are reading now. An author, under a pen
name, to prevent "them" from finding him, Sliff made much money. Why then,
if his stories suck, does he sell so many books? The answer to that
question is simple. He has the power of subliminal mind control on his
side. A well placed review, written by himself under a different pen name,
chock full of invisible messages commanding that people buy his book or
die a slow painful death, sold out his first novel _How To Properly Rid
This Planet Of Festering Cockroaches, If You're Into That Sort Of Thing
Which Is Highly Likely Considering You Have No Grasp On Your Own Senses,
I Mean You're Reading This Book What More Evidence Do You Need?_ in
less than three days, which the exact time it takes to cook a ham and cheese
Hot Pocket in my piece of shit microwave. Oh sure, the package says 1 to
2 minutes, but in my microwave it takes three okay so shut up, stop
asking stupid questions about microwaves and get back to the story with
your short attention span having ass, punk.
Bloom Floss, divorced once and married twice, opened the door to his
room at the resort. His new wife, Shindy Diggins was back at home throwing
up her last meal while his stepdaughter, in her bedroom with the door
unlocked like a dumbass, cut lines of crystal meth out onto a mirror. His
life was perfect, provided he could pay off some young slut to get him off
now and again or perhaps twice and thrice a day. Petite blondes between the
ages of 14 and 16, much like his daughter, who with his ex-wife and son had
strayed off to God knows where after finding him in bed with three
15-year-old asian girls, were his favorite flavor, due to their small young
breasts, thinly haired pubis, and potential to do practically anything
for the right price.
He had no knowledge of his former family's whereabouts, nor did he
know that they were vacationing at this very resort just two floors below
him. The average wingspan of the lucretian spotted buckeye ping pong bird
of northern Zimpland, is anywhere from 6 inches to four feet. The bird is
known for its distinguished taste for hermaphrodite porn and clam sandwiches
on a breezy spring night. Sliff snorted another line and decided to go for
a walk to collect his racing thoughts.
Two years ago, I met a girl named whats-her-name who can give
blowjobs almost as well as the very Mr. Clamstead's mistress and secretary,
Dindy Shiggins, who is in no relation to Bloom's new bulemic wife, but
passed by her in a shopping mall once. On that occasion, some unknown
source (me, the writer, but we won't let her know that until later when she
dies. Oops! What a giveaway!) told her that she would one day be in the
same shitty story as the lady she had just passed. Another unknown source
(Not me this time, but my pet frog Hercules, who is six foot tall, dances
the lambada, and cooks an excellent pot roast) thought it would be funny to
tell her that she should trip over a nearby midget to get the other lady's
attention. She did, and Shindy came to Dindy's aid, which might have
resulted in a third world war had I not caught Hercules in the act of
fucking up my story, and acted accordingly.
Once upon a time there was a man in a house who had a job and some
kids and a wife. He had a normal life and then one day he died. This story
is exactly identical to the story of our good old reefer tokin' friend Klen,
except that Klen's life is a lot more fucked up, he never gets married
although he eventually does have a kid, but he eats it after his busty
girlfriend yanks it out of her vag with a bent up coat hanger. Oh, and he
never dies. He probably will eventually, but not in this story, which is
getting very long and drawn out, so I'll pause by ending this chapter. Why?
Because I am the all powerful author of this story which, due to the fact
that it never will cease to be shitty, is better off ended now altogether,
although I am a dominatrix and you, as the reader, are my humbled slave and
if every phrase is a hot poker to your rectum, then I can go on living.
So until next time, my lovely flock of snids. Criticize me more, I love
you.
Sm00ch!!
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
"The Chaos Theory; Sunday, July 24"
by - Eerie
cynthia wasn't there when i got back at the apartment. no message.
nothing. everything was just exactly how i left it last friday to take a
walk & suffer an insolation. she didn't show up. i slept alone. well. i
didn't really sleep. every minute i hoped to hear her back with some excuse
which i didn't care about anyway. i was waiting for her & she didn't come.
i woke up around eight this morning, even though i had only fallen
asleep five hours earlier. it was extremely hot. & it was raining.
this is the kind of time i'm usually well-equipped for. i can resist
any kind of wait, i just put my mind to neutral & after some time it stops
thinking on its own will. i could just blankly stare at a wall for hours.
i was lurking over my balcony at pedestrians on 67th street, running under
the intermittent yet never really ending, slowly poured tears. i didn't
feel like cooking anything, so i ate chips, crackers... finished the fruit
punch in the fridge... spent the morning & the afternoon without knowing,
trying to do things (get back on writing! or at least clean up this mess
you call a bedroom) yet ultimately doing nothing but question myself about
things i should know & worry a little more every second. somehow i was
stuck with the persistent feeling that everybody actually did hate me.
that's it, i said to myself -- & that was the lightest thought to come to my
brain on this whole day -- here comes schizophrenia.
around 7 p.m., i decided i'd go bezerk if i stayed one more minute in
this apartment listening to the falling rain. i was about to go when the
phone rang. i didn't even bother to hide how depressed i was.
"yeah?"
"oh... this is melanie. i -- i'm sorry about... i don't know what
to say."
"melanie? what are you talking about?"
"i -- i -- i just want to express my sympathy..."
"your sympathy? what's that?"
"i... you don't know? oh, shit."
it took this "oh, shit", repeated ad infinitium inside my cortex to
get me to get it.
"i... you... no... it's not..."
"your girlfriend... your girlfriend..."
"WHAT IS IT? WHAT? I..."
"your girlfriend... cynthia... she's..."
"NO!"
"i -- i'm so sorry... i thought you knew, i..."
"NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!"
"calm down, calm down, please calm down, i..."
i screamed, i think. i fell on the floor & cried. the telephone was
spurting words. every part of my body was shaking.
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
"Monthly Report, June 1998"
by -- Esso
Monthly Report, June 1998
Carl Dreddess
Manager, Internal Fastener Clamp Products
As she realizes the internal panic that you live with,
that you're not much better than her in this area, and
when she sees your defense mechanisms & rationalizations
for what they are, that you believe in the sick
traditions of togetherness, how you cease to become a
most interesting customer contact -- now you are just a
telephone call buzzing sadly around her ears, begging to
be swatted.
-- Thoman Thamba, _Motivaciones the Masses_
I. General Comments
By 1994 we managed to cut turnaround time on heartbreak. Resolution
now comes quickly. We mapped the disconnects where emotion gets handed off
to other parts of the brain for extra processing. We eliminated those
parts, took them out of consciousness. Then we gave ounces of honey as a
smiling reward to the now-defunct chaos and maudlin brooding centers. Their
lapses have been pointed out many times, cited as the weakest link.
Our customers do not like our arrogance. We are widely recognized as
meat beaters in our field. But _we will adjust_. The factories of God ship
out souls and forget packing slips. Factories lose the awareness, the sweet
thinkers and drinkers, the salivating. Spit is missing on modern bills of
lading, and its companion, disinterest! Here we stand facing the largest
market loss this side of _white flight_... You have to find out where the
bitterness comes from.
Think about our test sample. The soap operative word is bigg, as in
foyer, _daddy's den_, the porch for receiving like-minded _individualistas_,
the garage for projects, 20% of which get finished due to career concerns
coming first. Do not leave out the bedroom for polite fucking. Our stereo
has an assortment of adult contemporary tastes. The beats screamed about
nothing new and nothing old, and now beatdom is a worldwidespread disease,
and _still_ idiot jocks rule the land. It's a crime to be a caring, tender
faggot.
But how to rebel now, and much less why? You understand your concept
clothes, you comb your concept hair. You fertilize your crescent. You move
in with dumb motherfuckers and their unschooled visions, their stasis. You
give them cause for concern. Why? Because you're YOU. So pissed off and
dumb and horny.
Case erectors, actuated ball valves and flash coolers were the big
movers this month.
II. Areas of Pride: Drinking in a hotel to kill the pain.
My cells end up blasted in some cracked mirror of family life. Oh,
I'm sleek and velvet-grinding into my losses, backed up and straddling some
bludgeoneer's barbecue pit. And it's all _bleeding light_ -- meaning
nothing, meaning _bones_, it's not been explored or smallified, or
identified as a trend in some cultural journal. Departments don't deal with
it, governments don't notice it, but I am _feeling it_.
It is akin to the one nice comment I made out on the floor to Tina
last week. Probably the only one I'll make in my career. _Verbatim_: "I
know how you set up tooling on the Quor bender. A lot of the temps just
_don't really care_. They think it's all KFC and smoke breaks. I'm having
John run your name across the laser, _just to say thanks_." And I know Tina
thought, "_Thanks for the piercing needless over-interested look through_."
I dip into the highballs with some scratchy intern at my side.
Chikara questions the day shift, works on the cell leaders and performs what
I call the _good works_ of motivational instruction. I am fully mesmerized
and into the company-wide vision of sucking at her lips. Sweet radiator
crush-mouthed crimpette! ... She will throw him out gracefully. She will
earn a credit for a soft disappearing, she having studied his total
emotional history fact quotient. She will let him know gently, _oh it's
time to look elsewhere_.
III. Areas of Concern
A. Why do you have evil, heartless puppets like Joan running the
quality initiatives?
B. The mainstream beautiful girls speak in the most mainstream
contented voices.
C. I'm at the hind-end of a three year long _fuck fantasy_.
How many times must i suggest what _I'm doing this evening_? Why
must she be so ratty? Back when I overwrote and drafted my fat fantasies,
she took home a stack of _individual development_ plans and concluded that I
was _unhelpful_ to her aims. I need some recognition. I'm putting a hold
on these avenues until further notice. Give your significant autre the
convenience of a mind fuck. Give the time of day to all who follow.
I ended up in a go-go bar with this hydrotreaters engineer from
Trokar. She was slowly cornering the market on product satire, pursuing an
environmentalist vein. I knew the youth networks would have it killed in
six months when it got to college radio, with digital-reverbed voiceovers
and beer commercials and belching and the _constant blaring across
somebody's pool in summer_, the backdrop for Jock and his death ray van, his
shared interests with the girl of the thrift store. I don't hate them.
They peek out from vintage clothes.
IV. Administrative Initiatives: I imagine Chikara plastered and then getting
compliant. Another round. We talk about the latest welding alloys.
I reduce my amount of human errors via _people skills training tapes_
and night classes. I write down my ideas for improvement. Of course no one
really cares about playing _In a Silent Way_ during lunch breaks to
_soothe_. Nobody wants to rehabilitate Cy Twombly as a business innovator.
It all boils down to precision, difficulty, the kids at home inheriting the
parents' substance abuse tendencies, and on a graph, quality of disconnects.
It is Christ's business.
-:- _Ideas, action ideas_ kill people and that is what I am making,
up, up. Define and measure.
I submit gladly to the interview process. I welcome comments and
additional derision. Please summarize why you think this person has bad
hair. Do take note of her general _easy-going quality_ and _hesitant
soulfulness_.
V. Teamwork
Window-dressers tape notes on her phone, screaming on the extension,
licking envelopes of information and spraying open-ended flames into their
quality hands. All lovers are quality, piled high onto some bar tab,
disappearing into each other's service. Both individuals put themselves
seriously into this outing, _all damn day_.
VI. Summary
I want you to have this job. I see that you like being pleased, you
don't argue and complain. I am *Powered Up* by your subservientude. You
save your best moments for fading _third-tier_ data entry clerks... A
concise phrase, another how-to book, and you set me off and running. I
spend whole afternoons rapidly approaching your visions. On quotations, I
learn to "_control the ball_" as you pointed out.
I'm tired of being chained to this administrative structure and its
_sickening outlay of gold stars_. I'm getting reports back from greased up
_has-beens_ perfecting their sick fictions. And I am _saddened_.
Stop and read it over. Elegance fading. Moving down the line as to
_why we hate it here_. I see you've got a trove of experience in dealing
with wire manufacturers, and there's a pleasing light to your eyes. You
interview well. Why do the coolies seem so troubled this week? Let's stay
out of the debates on who is most self-consumed, because I know we need
_vision_, and not _nail-biting_.
Just a warm, steady soul to glow on.
)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
"A Very Serious Story About Manhood, as Told by Pico Guinness, a Man Who
Just Killed His Father 'or' Pee Shy"
by -- Puck
I knew this guy in high school named Adolf who shit his pants in the
middle of geometry class. We gave him such a hard time about it, that
instead of going to the bathroom and cleaning himself off, he went down to
the basement and blew his head off with a shotgun he kept in his locker.
About forty minutes later, the entire school watched as his shitty, bloody,
headless body was carried out to the ambulance on a stretcher. What a way
to go.
The whole next week we were allowed to leave class at any time to
talk to a counselor if we felt like we needed to. The guy was an asshole,
though. He had no friends. We were all much more relieved than we were
distraught, to be honest. He was gonna use that gun on one of us sooner or
later, right? Call it premature justice.
Don't get me wrong, though. Even at seventeen I knew an opportunity
when I saw one. I was good at playing the role of the emotionally disturbed
teen, and used those "allowed absences" as an opportunity to pick up a
smoking habit. Some counseling of a different kind. Earnest Kapowski, the
head janitor, would sell me Marlboro Lights for a nickel and smoke with me
in a storage room while he prattled on about the school's more socialized
youth. Some days we'd puff away three entire classes.
So I guess Adolf got his justice, too, right? But forget him. I
did. I only think about him every time I light up a damned cigarette.
About twenty times a day.
And of course, I'm thinking about him now, twenty-nine years later,
as I stand here over my father's hospital bed and watch him die.
I remember telling my father what happened that evening at supper.
"A kid shot himself in the head today."
"How come?" he asked, digging into his steak.
"He shit his pants in the middle of geometry class." My father
taught me at an early age not to beat around the bush.
"Ah. Welp, a man's gotta take the shitty times with the good times,
otherwise he ain't a man. Ya don't live through shit, ya don't live as a
man. Fit for dyin'."
Fit for dying, I think to myself, as I watch his lungs take in the
air around him as if it were thick like Jell-O, his eyes glazed with terror,
and finally death.
My mother's tears slow, then stop as my father dies. For three
seconds there is a silence so pronounced that it seems like thirty seconds.
Slowly her tears start to flow again, this time for an entirely different
reason. I can tell she needs some time to deal with this alone.
I head over to the hospital cafeteria, which is lit in such a way
that everyone's face looks like Howard Cosell's. A big fat Howard Cosell
hands me a grilled cheese sandwich, and a tall, skinny, smelly Howard Cosell
grabs me a can of Coke. A wide-hipped pregnant Howard Cosell takes my two
dollars and fifty cents, and reminds me to throw away my trash when I'm
through.
"This isn't a restaurant, after all."
I stand there and stare her right in the eye for a good minute or
two, smiling so all of my teeth are showing. Then I stick out my chin, and
in my best Howard Cosell voice, "This isn't a restaurant, after all." I
don't move. I stare her down. I make her react. That's another thing I
picked up from my dad - a fascination for people's reactions to unexpected
situations. He owned the entire Candid Camera video collection, and would
force my mother and I to watch every single episode with him hundreds of
times. Nobody laughed like my father did. He would always start out
laughing real slowly, then his breathing would get real fast and he'd let
out these enormous silent guffaws. Pretty soon he'd start sucking in air so
fast and so hard, it was almost as if he was trying to breathe in a well of
Jello.
I suddenly realize that I'm no longer staring at pregnant Howard
Cosell because she's walked to the other side of the serving area to whisper
about me in hushed tones to black manager Howard Cosell. I mutter an
apology, something about stress and carry my food to a table in the corner.
There's a television hanging from the ceiling, and they've got it
tuned to a jazz concert. This woman is scatting along to the music. That
gets me thinking about scat. I could just see it being invented. There's
music playing somewhere, and some person who doesn't know the words has just
got to sing. They're just so moved by this music that they need to. So
they just lay into some scat. It's that pure, raw impulse that drives it
along. Screw the words, the words aren't important. The words are just a
disguise for that compulsion to make some noise. Logical scat. Hell,
that's all language is, anyway. Those days when my father would come home
from delivering mail and kick back ten beers and yell for two hours about
being a man before beating the shit out of me
he could have been talking
about knitting, for all he cared. He just needed to make some noise. He
was all about logical scat.
To spite pregnant Howard, I leave my trash on the table. Over the
years I've developed a pea-sized bladder to accompany my nicotine addiction.
It always does wonders for the psyche to be known around the office as the
guy who smokes a lot and the guy who pees a lot. Smiley bearded Cosell
directs me to the nearest men's room.
The bathroom lights are dead, but there is enough light coming in
from the windows to keep me from peeing on the floor, though the slick
feeling on the bottom of my shoes leads me to believe that my eyesight is
better than most. So I approach the urinals. There are four of them, all
lined up against the back wall. Some guy is using an end one, but I don't
hear any splashing so I know it's hit him. He's pee shy. I pull up to the
one on the other end to try to make him feel more comfortable, but the ease
with which I start to pee intimidates him and he knows he hasn't got a
chance. So he does what any real man would do. He acts like he's just
finished peeing, flushes, zips his fly, then washes his hands with extra
soap as if to impress me with the enormous wealth of urine he's just
expelled into the toilet. He leaves, and will probably go off to find a
bathroom where he thinks he can be alone.
Pee shy. It's the story of a man's life, if you really think about
it. One's journey through manhood has to be filled with moments of pee shy.
My father believes, or rather, believed, that a man was meant to endure. He
learned too late that knowing when to give in is as much a part of manhood
as anything. Every man has faltered at least once in his life.
Except my father. He lived his entire life putting up with the
shitty times, forcing himself to endure them and making fools of those who
didn't. When he found out he was sick, he just kept right on living like he
was living. The doctor said that he would have to modify his diet, quit
drinking, stop delivering mail, and start walking around the block a few
times a week.
"I don't get it. I'm not allowed to walk around delivering mail, but
I'm supposed to get exercise? What the hell is that all about?"
"Dad, he wants you to quit your job because of the stress, not
because of the exercise."
"Quitting is for women."
And in his world, I guess it was. My mother quit her job the day she
found out she was pregnant with me. She quit fighting back when he would
lay into her, and eventually became nothing more than a nervous smile at his
side. Always at his side. Ironically, but not surprisingly, she was quick
to agree with me on what had to be done. These last few months with him in
the hospital have been easier than most, but his presence has a way of
seeping into all aspects of your life. He's there with me at work, he's
there with me at home. He's there in my mother's nervous smile and it kills
me to look at.
So I wash my hands, and I only use a dab of soap because I'm
confident in the knowledge that I can pee under pressure. I make sure to
flush, though. I would hate to have the guy come back in and think I was
trying to rub it in. I stand in front of a mirror for a while and stare at
my face. The face of a killer. The face of someone who has just killed his
father by injecting an air bubble in his IV.
It was two days ago that I had my idea, and it was yesterday that I
knew it had to be carried out. So now I'm here today, walking out of a
hospital bathroom with water on my hands, knowing that what's done is done
and for damn good reason. My father had to falter, even if it was forced.
I know he was in pain before he died. I know that deep down in the dark
buried recesses of his brain a little voice was telling him to give up, and
he was taking that little voice upon his knee and beating the crap out of
it. Someone had to fight for the little voice.
I walk back up to his hospital room, and I take my place at my
mother's side.
"You look so much like him," she says.
"Yeah, I'm just starting to notice that."
"You did good," she says, and I know that in her limited scope of
understanding she really means what she says. She'll never grasp why I had
to do it, that I know, but for now the nervous smile on her face has
withered into a slightly worried curl, and for now, that is enough.
When the nurse comes in, she sees my father is dead and they ask no
questions. They tell us they are sorry, there was nothing they could do,
his condition got the best of him as they knew it eventually would. My
mother and I nod silently and leave.
---
My father's last words were to me. My mother, crying, stood by my
side. She cried not because of the weak man in the bed, but because even in
an open-back pastel blue hospital robe my father still looked as foreboding
as ever.
"Pico," he said, his voice thinning with each word, "If you shed one
tear, I swear to God I'll give you a reason to cry." And with that, he did.
---
It's six-thirty in the morning, and I'm thirsty. I'm sitting on the
edge of my bed smoking a cigarette. This time the scene plays out
backwards, as it does from time to time. First I see the ambulance back up
to the school. Then they pull out Adolf's mutilated body and carry it in
through the wide double doors. Everyone rushes back to class, and we do
reverse geometry proofs. Except this time, it's my father who walks
backwards into class, ashamed, dejected, his pants heavy with waste. He
sits in the empty desk to my right and hands to me a laxative that looks
strikingly like a piece of a Hershey bar.
s$
$$ $s .d""b.
)- ---------------------- - .d""$$ $$sS$$ $$ $$ - ---------------------- -(
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:: doomed to obscurity :: $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ :: doomed to obscurity ::
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)- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -(
