Truth Theorem

read this last night & considered recent events/posts

2009-07-13T14:25:59Z

Privacy

I hope all the Jacksons live to old age.
I hope in old age they all get together---
in Indonesia, let's say---
to have a picture taken.
Michael, La Toya, Janet, Jermaine,
and all the rest,
in whatever's left of their fineries,
smiling,
remembering nothing
so much
as the ridiculous hope
of the opened shutter.

-Joe Wenderoth, published 2007

Wait, Letterman!

2009-07-07T14:46:34Z

SpellBinder changed P-O-V-E-R-T-Y to P-O-E-T-R-Y! Don't change it back!

slomosexual @ 2009-07-04T09:55:00

2009-07-04T16:00:06Z

I tried to be great on birthdays & I sucked so I decided to give up on even remembering birthdays & well that's just dumb. Happy Birthday lj_flavorpacket. You're tops

slomosexual @ 2009-07-04T08:59:00

2009-07-04T15:04:37Z

Happy Walden Day!

slomosexual @ 2009-07-02T14:58:00

2009-07-02T21:08:56Z

Been reading Huck Finn, & my eyes must have crossed the word "ni%$#r" a thousand times.

Of course we may understand why this is, but for me here in the 21st it is a heady book. There ain't a way it's used that ain't horrific, but some are just downright deep. I'll spare you if you haven't read it.

Is it racist? Of course it's racist. People were & still are; we just have an interest in hiding it nowadays that didn't exist back in the 19th.

So it ain't shocking in that it depicts something I haven't seen with my own eyes, or with my own hands. I'm merely blown at the constant up front of it. I'm white after all.

But Mark Twain is a fine fine writer. I take in about a book of his every two years, & it has enriched my life.

slomosexual @ 2009-06-21T07:51:00

2009-06-21T13:56:42Z

Happy Father's Day to the guy who usually says yes if Mom says no. You know who you are

nyres stats

2009-06-21T13:55:13Z

Yesterday I practiced my 13th hour of yoga this month.

This is significant because it was also my 50th hour this year, which completes my New Year's Resolution before half the year is over.

I will be doing many many more hours of yoga this year but not counting. Every hour that I practice from now until at least the end of August will be dedicated to Sheila & her strength, light, endurance & love.

Song by Charles Simic

2009-06-18T14:53:54Z

Song

There's a house on the tip of a branch.
It sways in the Summer breeze.
The great tree won't let it fall
Even when the wind comes to shake it.

Its only door is a beak. It opens
To steal the starlight. Inside
You can see the ribs. It's a house so tiny
It can fit in the dark of my eye.

When I close that eye, I can hear the sea in the other.
It bears the house through the night.
With my tongue I touch its prow from within,
With my breath I blow
The candles in the captain's cabin.

When sleep overtakes me,
I say good-by to the house.
I lower onto my heart
All that it cannot ferry on.

-Charles Simic

slomosexual @ 2009-06-08T06:26:00

2009-06-08T12:37:10Z

I dislike surrealism, & I loathe surrealists in general, but damn do I love me a good game of Surrealist Telephone!

6 or more people sit around a table & take turns choosing a painting from a book. That person writes down a sentence of at least 17 syllables in length describing the painting.

The person whispers the sentence into the ear of the person on their left. Each participant then tries to repeat the sentence faithfully in the ear of the person on their left,

but the sentence always gets so butchered that it comes back to the creator almost completely different. We played Saturday night & I haven't laughed that hard in ages.

slomosexual @ 2009-06-02T07:25:00

2009-06-02T13:35:36Z

Once I'm rich, my schedule should look like this:

Morning
-business, financial matters
-light chores, personal hygiene matters
-scheduling
-something involving fruit spreads

Afternoon
-reading, writing
-research in the home library
-correspondence, idea development
-revisiting morning activities

Evening
-talking, socializing
-dance moves (music not required)
-mood elevators
-rest, sleep

ny res stats

2009-06-01T13:10:52Z

05/09

Hours of yoga this month: 9
Hours of yoga total toward 50: 37
Hours of yoga not counted: yes
Days sitting in full-lotus this month: 29
Days sitting in full-lotus total toward 365: 130

my stated goal is 50 hours of yoga for the year, & if I can get 13 hours in June that would put me at 50 in 6 months. Once I hit that mark all my yoga hours will be fully dedicated to others.

15 Books

2009-05-14T01:54:55Z

The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski
The Obscene Bird of Night by Jose Donoso
The Song of Roland
The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Sitt Marie Rose by Etel Adnan
Une Semaine De Bonte by Max Ernst
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Wisconsin Death Trip by Michael Lesy
Dictee by Teresa Hak Kyung Cha
One Night Stands by Rosa Liksom
Epileptic by David B.
In the American Grain by William Carlos Williams
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes de Saavedra

ny res stats

2009-05-01T14:42:22Z

04/2009

Hours of yoga this month: 8
Hours of yoga total toward 50: 28
Hours of yoga not counted: multiple
Days sitting in full-lotus this month: 29 (!)
Days sitting in full-lotus total toward 365: 101

I was a personal practice monster this month, only missing 1 day of full-lotus & at one point reaching 25 days in a row.

quick question

2009-04-29T18:52:35Z

I have seen many of you do a meme that uses your name & a Google search, with the results being something like

"MJC is going downhill at a splendid pace.
MJC is an awards ceremony gone horribly awry.
MJC is an excuse to not come home at night. . ."

what is that, & how do I create one/access the dealio?

slomosexual @ 2009-04-25T01:46:00

2009-04-25T08:47:13Z

Chia Pet Seeds are edible!

slomosexual @ 2009-04-09T08:20:00

2009-04-09T15:21:36Z

We played APPLES TO APPLES
We discussed our winners as portraits of our inner selves
I got Playful, Powerful, Responsible, Goody-Goody & Hopeless

slomosexual @ 2009-04-03T16:14:00

2009-04-03T23:14:06Z

I'm a lot funnier when I don't laugh at my own jokes.

ny res stats

2009-04-01T03:13:43Z

03/2009

Hours of yoga this month: 7
Hours of yoga total toward 50: 20
Hours of yoga not counted: yes
Days sitting in full-lotus this month: 23
Days sitting in full-lotus total toward 365: 72

slomosexual @ 2009-03-11T06:25:00

2009-03-11T13:26:00Z

Fidel Castro is blogging about the World Baseball Championships!

slomosexual @ 2009-03-09T09:17:00

2009-03-09T15:23:37Z

I didn't get the Recycle Game Voice gig; the city said they wanted someone who "sounds younger"
"[ guess I shouldn't have used my "Granpa Simpson" voice. . .

slomosexual @ 2009-03-06T11:51:00

2009-03-06T18:52:30Z

belated happy anniversary

slomosexual @ 2009-03-02T12:45:00

2009-03-02T19:50:14Z

I haven’t owned a car since 1988. It was a tan Nissan hatchback bought from my parents (they paid the insurance.) I covered it in Greenpeace & Grateful Dead stickers unaware of the hypocrisy & sold it back to my disgusted folks a year later. As a means for me to get to trouble & subsequently get into it the Hatch was fantastic, but I was ready to be done with it soon enough as the arrests & fines consistently sapped my paycheck. I told myself I was doing my part for the environment, & my friends I was doing my part for the safety of humanity. We all had a good laugh.
How right I was. In the 20 years since saving mankind from metal ruin I have lived in 5 major metropolitan areas: Philadelphia, Albuquerque, Minneapolis, Austin Texas and Tucson. These cities all have varying degrees of a public transportation system but in 2 decades I haven’t suffered all that much. The bums & psychos are certainly annoying, & I can’t always guarantee I’ll arrive on time. Shopping for canned goods is avoided (hope the Rapture holds off); asking girls on dates a little embarrassing. I still feel I made the right (forced) decision.
At heart & foot I am a walker. And by walker I mean I walk almost everywhere I go. My life radius tends to extend just a few miles and rarely do I want for more. I understand I’m not a typical America:; 39, never married or had kids, graduate student, just got my first credit card a month ago. So it’s easier for me to exist in the world of my first three sentences than most, and I don’t hold it over anybody’s head. It’s just my reality.
When I walk to school or the supermarket/laundromat or the place where beautiful people gather, I try to stick to the less-traveled thoroughfares. Otherwise I’m subjected to lungfuls of fumes, revving engines and honking horns, stressed-out individuals and possible death at their hands. As lane after lane of cars go by I can’t help but wonder about who is drunk behind the wheel, which driver/cellphone user is a bad multi-tasker or how lucky I am to live in a city with so many citizens so aware of the louder irony of putting an anti-Bush sticker on a motor vehicle.

I'd like to say that public transport in the country is fantastic but I don't want the reader to dismiss me as an idiot (just yet.) Philadelphia and Minneapolis rank high in my estimation due to an underground train (Phila) and numerous 24 hour bus routes that ran within minutes of each other (Mpls.) The others were fair to woeful, with Tucson being the worst. I understand that a transfer suggests you will adjourn to another route, but not allowing a return trip on the same numbered bus is downright offensive. Are they unaware of the many tribulations our cities face, such as traffic, parking, air pollution, etc? But I digress: riding the bus isn't such a terrible affair but it is also rarely pleasant and pits me with and against a random selection of Americans and really, they are often a miserable lot. Impolite, aromatic, opinionated, whiny and masculo-aggressive. I have a hard time recommending it, but I do. It is an undeniable solution to many of this country's problems, from over-consumption of resources to childhood asthma rates. Cars, on the other hand, contribute few solutions other than escapism (an individual benefit at best.)

In recent conversations with friends they spend a lot of energy complaining about things like gas prices, traffic and global warming, and I have to say I feel proud to not contribute to that mess.
Sure I drive once in a while, or bum (accurate) rides from friends, but my carbon footprint upon this planet is very very small and has been for a while (I wonder what that says about my carbon penis.) I am glad not to be supporting questionable corporations and foreign governments with my dollar or my support of wars and causes I do not condone. If I've had a mental glitch over these two decades, it's worrying about losing jobs from automobile plants in this country, but I am certainly not the one outsourcing America's jobs. If the movers and shakers of this country are interested in an overseas workforce, would it be unpatriotic of me to disagree? In the discourse on the War on Drugs I hear argument that money spent on pot and the like is money going to support violent criminals and I don’t know but those guys in Saudia Arabia and Venezuela (and Alaska even ) might be up to no good.
The degree to which prices of commodities tied to the automobile and oil/gas industries fluctuates has little effect on my wallet as well. $4 a gallon, $5, $6. . .it doesn't mess with my bottom line very much no matter what happens. I don’t say this to be insensitive, or superior. I understand how our economic health as a nation is tied to the success of the fossil fuel and it disappoints me immensely. I don’t know when so many Americans adopted the habit of handing their money over to people they don’t know; perhaps I should include my address at the conclusion of this essay. I haven't given a dime to an insurance company in quite a while and somehow I've continued to live a relatively carefree life even without their services. Repairs, registrations, speeding or parking tickets, these phenomena are alien to me. Speaking of parking, I don't speak of it often. It is of little concern and I’ve lived downtown in four of the five aforementioned cities.

Am I recommending you stay at home, lead a sedentary life, rarely venture outside the small radius of your life? Well it might suit you, but no; that leads to its own problems, especially considering that we here in this country love our freedom: it is at the core of our belief systems (contested as they are) and cannot nor should not be worked out of the American soul. Every story tells of a journey, and that is as it should be.
Walking down that morning street, surveying the engines slithering their slimy trails over this gentle slope of pavement, one vehicle stands out as beneficial: the motorcycle. For starters, they are sexy. Let us not ignore this basic fact. The clothes, the hair in the wind, the big pulsing beast throbbing between your legs. This is important to us as a culture. It screams. But the more practical effects cannot be ignored. They use less gas and cost less to insure. They are easier to park and emit less greenhouse gases. They are often louder, but not always, and that could certainly be remedied (though it would be a dogfight I am sure.)
These effects are more far-reaching than they might originally appear. Or put another way: what if all recreational drivers used motorcycles exclusively? Less gas means less greenhouse gasses emitted into an already overburdened atmosphere. Less gas means less dependence on foreign tyrannies and overfunded domestic corporations. There would be literally no need to extend oil exploration into Alaska or anywhere. Maybe we could finally ease the stranglehold that insurance companies have on this society. Parking problems would be lessened if not completely eliminated in every major city in this country, not to mention a reduction in traffic situations. Of course there would be more motorcycle fatalities on our roads, but I would argue that percentage-wise fewer accidents would result in death. Abandoning the four-wheeled vehicle would lessen the percentages of death in motor-vehicle accidents by reducing the speeds and tonage involved in these accidents and increasing motorcycle safety and awareness.
The motorcycle answers every single one of these needs so flawlessly that hours of endless mindless conversation can be eliminated without anyone (environmentalists or road hogs) losing face. We may start by remarking at how nice the world is without traffic and parking expenses. A happy discussion of lower childhood asthma and skin cancer rates might follow. And lower drunk driving incidents cannot be ignored. The trucker who lives on my block who has been raving about the speed and safety of highway transport now that they’ve been streamlined and dedicated. Who knows what’s going on in the former Middle East? Not me; it stopped mattering to us in a very real way a long time ago.
It sounds a lot like my childhood, only better.

There are a few instances where motorcycles are not the ideal vehicle. Examples that come to mind are cargo situations, maximum passenger use and long-distance travel. However a solution comes automatically to mind: vehicles with an odd number of wheels. Put one wheel in front and then as many in back (and as many axles as desired) for cargo and passenger transport. These could be covered “wagons” in which groceries and guests are completely protected from the elements. These automobiles would be available for longer trips too, although high speeds are an issue. Traveling at a rapid rate would cause the vehicle with a single, frontal wheel to lose balance and possibly topple. Remember though that high speeds are not an entirely valuable quality in today's gas-expensive markets. Lower speeds translate as better fuel efficiency. And fast or slow, the single wheel and its maneuverability are great for quick assessment of the drunk driver.
The even-wheeled vehicle is fantastic for transporting goods, providing speed and balance, and I have no qualms saying the highways should be turned over to them. A single lane for civilian travel will suffice in the previous scenario. Other than that, the highways could be literally turned over to the transport of essential materials. This would reduce interstate fatalities, and even with increased speed limits for 18-wheelers greenhouse-gas emissions would be miniscule.
The products that the trucking industry provides would arrive faster and safer at less human cost. Longer travel could still be accomplished by airplanes (which have an odd number of wheels, interestingly enough) and other air vehicles; in fact, expanding their services to handle smaller markets and routes could potentially save this vital industry from the financial ruin it currently faces.
A question which remains unanswered in my mind is whether to allow even-wheeled vehicles for specific purposes, for instance law enforcement. If police officers have speedy and balanced vehicles it will make it easier for them to apprehend suspects, even if said persons are attempting escape by motorcycle. Knowledge of this state of affairs could lead to reduced crime rates as possible delinquents realize the futility of their getaway. But I am a realist (hahahaha) enough to be aware of and frightened by the potential for institutional abuse that I can envision a police state arising quickly from these specific circumstances. It is an issue not to be approached lightly.

Besides, wouldn't we become the coolest & sexiest nation once again? We heard the cries of the rest of the world, we assessed our consumption of resources & consequent effects on the planet, & we got sexy. Now that's bad ass.

slomosexual @ 2009-03-01T05:32:00

2009-03-01T12:37:24Z

Big Poppa E, since you've removed my ability to respond on your LJ I will on mine.

I made my last comment as a friend, & any true friend at this point would say "Stop being such a sensitive dickweed."

Since other people can see this, I'll explain: in response to BPE's posting of JV's poem, I commented

good poem (subj heading)
you should read more poetry (text)

could this possibly mean there is a lot of good poetry out there that you might not have encountered? No, it means only that I think I'm great & you are not. In fact, you might not even be able to read. Geesh.

nyres stats

2009-03-01T03:12:57Z

02/2009

Hours of yoga this month: 6
Hours of yoga total toward 50: 13
Hours of yoga not counted: multiple
Days sitting in full-lotus this month: 20
Days sitting in full-lotus total toward 365: 49

slomosexual @ 2009-02-21T08:04:00

2009-02-21T15:05:33Z

Does anyone know if the tax credits Obama signed for have kicked in yet, or kick in this year? I want to do my taxes & get the student write-off. . .