Don't come around here no more

Go here. I'll see you there.

It's not speed on your breakfast plate but I'll try...

Things are pretty static on my CST side of the Mississippi. I’m still getting to work on time, I’m still running after work (although the sudden chill has me off by two days) and I’m still working on a plan to do something else for the rest of my life. All this doing nothing has shrunk my world down a bit and, with the exception of sporadic barroom gatherings, left me feeling more than a little cloistered. And while many features of my cloister are self-designed (the go straight to voicemail, the no-blogging, and the short answers when short answers will do) I have found the world a willing co-conspirator. Aside from being coal stack-black at five o’clock it has been cool and sunny in the morning, cool and windy by mid-morning, and for a stretch of time cool and rainy at night; this is the quintessential weather-soundtrack to seclusion.

But God has more guiding digits on the Dexter than just the weather-controlling index finger. Middle finger: I’ve seen beautiful bruised-knee sunsets most nights that I’ve looked. Ring finger: My cat has become unusually gentle with me. Pinky finger: The Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros CD came out at midnight on Tuesday. Thumb: The Strokes CD also came out midnight. By 12:51 this alliance of seclusive indicators had roundly defeated my years of socialization and I was in jeans and t-shirt happily doing nothing with anyone. I was Iraq and the sequestrating God above was tearing down my statues of Saddam.

But I have also been Afghanistan. This fit of isolationism is not a new development in the great chain of me being. Every so often I just like to step out of line and run around the corner and behind the bar and have a nice smoke, all by myself. Sometimes this means a day away from the phone, sometimes a week, and this one time in 2001 it was three months. 2001 was a weird year for everything. Point being, I just do this for myself and more important than the guilty part is the pleasure part. I love doing this. It’s true, sometimes the circumstances that compel me to withdraw are not so nice and soft but being alone is.

Yeah, I know, it sounds like I have problems connecting with people and being vulnerable in general. Well, fuck you, I just might but I don’t think I do have these problems as a rule. Being alone is like how I imagine being homeless, it makes me thankful for the bed I have and, in this analogy, the people I get to talk to, connect with, and be vulnerable with. That sounded far too sexual for my liking but I’ll let it stand. So, occasionally, the toppling of a giant statue of an evil dictator IS a good thing.

But the shoe slapping and gleeful discharge of firearms never persists for very long. Deep down inside I know that eventually I will have to return to the social comity of nations. Welcome the intervening figure cum guerilla fighter/suicide bomber: Los. Los understands, better than most, this strange phenomena and is fairly well schooled in the art of the call to arms. Result: we’re at the Crystal Corner and my phone is slowly turned back on. And if the dizzying heights of my socialization seem to you to be too steeply set against the light-swallowing depths of my isolation then you sir or madam do not know me.

As for my advice to Chris. Take it & leave her.

That’s that.

But I know that’s not that.
“That’s not that” point #1: Why don’t you tell anyone when you’re doing this so that they know the score and don’t waste their time trying to get you on the phone? Well, I waste my time doing a lot of things and leaving voicemail is hardly the most time consuming of them. On balance, I'm working on the timely response thing. As for the lack of advance warning, lots of things in life come unannounced: suicide bombers, herpes, babies, and brushfires. Put it that way and I’m not so bad for not calling ahead.

“That’s not that” point #2: You have problems connecting with people and being vulnerable in general. Didn’t we cover this. Sure, whatever. I’m a robot and you’re a squishy bag of sloshing emotions. Everyone’s different.

“That’s not that” point #3: The Strokes suck. Thank god you’re not one of them or you’d suck too.

“That’s not that” point #4: So are you going to start taking calls again? Ha! Maybe.

“That’s not that” point #5: Your advice to Chris further supports point #2. My advice to Chris is realistic and safe. When you’re in your mid-twenties and as neurotic as all of us are I think realistic and safe is sometimes the right band-aid for the fantastic and bold move that leaves you with skinned palms. It’s not a life policy that I’m encouraging everyone to adopt, it’s just a means to avoiding further “fuck-your-brains-up-move-home-with-parents-start-blogging-obcessively-fall-on-your-steak knife” situations.

“That’s not that” point #6: I think you suck. Hey there, I’m not The Strokes CD. Actually the new Strokes CD is really good, save one song that sounds like it was stolen from the Weezer songbook. I say buy 1 for yourself and 1 for the tollbooth operator.

Love you all; but secretly, I love Sarah a little more.
A_RON

Back to blogging

I'm looking forward to some time off from work and with that a little bit of time to collect my thoughts on the many topics that have not yet been covered herein. Until Wednesday night I offer only this assurance: I will post more than sad stories.

DO THIS NOW or thinly veiled references to my own pain and anguish

CUT HER OUT OF YOUR LIFE.

If you don't do this now things will unravel thusly:
You will never learn how to cut people out of your life and consequently you will start accumulating "friends" that you don't want. Eventually you and your multitude of "friends" will drink/smoke too much and someone (most likely her) will say something that will end the "friendship" painfully and, this is more important than the painfully part, after you've suffered many weeks/months/years of horrible personal growth-crippling repression.
In summary: SHE WAS NOT YOUR FRIEND BACK THEN. SHE'S NOT A FRIEND NOW. SHE'S AN ABORTED LOVE INTEREST. Don't be one of those sad mothers that takes pictures of their dead baby, why?
Because: nostalgia for something that never was is called delusion.
Do as I say: CUT HER OUT AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE.

Where's God when you need him?

Oh right, fighting Mel Gibson; nevermind.

The Cougar speaks & other things that interest me through my allegery medicine sponsored haze.

Open Letters. The letter itself reads better to the tune of "Life Goes On" but still. I guess that's just another person I have to start taking seriously "despite their hairstyle or ownership of oxygen bars. Fuck, if Snoop Dogg ever starts writing open letters to the Bush Administration I might have to stab myself. Sorry, no more Elliott Smith suicide shit, I promise. Poor, sad, crazy Elliott Smith.

Bumper Stickers. I've already said that my favorite bumper sticker, and winner of the scarlet "I" for ironic, is "Don't blame me, I voted for Nader!" Poor, sad, crazy Nader voters.

Suicide bombings. Poor, sad, crazy suicide bombers.

Assualt. Worth laughing at.

CCTV cameras. I didn't find them to be as Big Brother-y as most but then again I didn't really do anything worth zooming in to watch closer.

Carl with a K. There are other Karls out there.

And last, but not least, Cuba. Even from within the womb I supported lifting the travel ban.

Re-e-val

While reading Karl's essay in many parts regarding the suckyness of Bloomington, Indiana I was struck with a horrifying vision a la Great Expectations. Maybe Karl has inadvertently discovered the next great style geyser. What once was the urban-mish-mash of Seattle, Wash is now the trailer-parks of Alabama and will soon be known as hand-clapper sheik from Bloomington, Indiana. Shudder to think.

Newness

The inspiration for the title.
As for the work that has just begun: How does destroying the english language from the inside out sound? If that's not your morning beer howsabout this for work to begin doing? Maybe this?


Addendum:
In the order they appeared:
Those are Nora's shoes, circa 1997.
The English language has survived Shakespeare, James Joyce, Virgina Woolf, Norman Mailer, Dave Eggers, Strom Thurmond, and even George W. Bush and it will probably suffer greater tricksters, phrase-turners, po-mos, and fools in the future. I think the worst connection being made in language studies today is that this decline of formality means a decline in the rhetorical quality of speech. As if to say that a debate is totally without value so long as it resists the formality of Socrates. True, Bush's complete betrayal of the English language does obscure many of the issues he attempts to address but Bush is not speaking informally, he is speaking uninformedly...or whatever that word might be. Point being, he doesn't understand the language well enough to switch between formal and casual. All of Bush's inanity aside, the review does make a case for a kind of nostalgic fondness for language that is probably worth remembering, even if we decide that "whom" is worth discarding. Nostalgia can be a great grammatological epoxy, it helped Joyce create a "new" English and strengthened Mailer's rhetoric when it was called into play. It may not be a restoration of eloquence but sometimes nostalgia is all we can muster for Shakespeare. But it is important to acknowledge that nostalgia is a vaseline jar NOT a magnifying glass, it may be that the language of the past sounds more eloquent than the language of today but that's a trick of the ears as much as it is truth. Last thing about the review, I loved the end, particularly the comments "McWhorter himself certainly seems happy to abjure formality in his own prose. He obviously is a very smart guy, but a lot of the time he writes like a dumb one." Language-nerds are SO catty.
Wateraid is a really fantastic charity to remember when Christmas comes around.
RSF offers a series of breathtaking photo albums for sale on-line. Profit from the sale of these albums helps RSF fight the good fight.

When I speak, you nod and pretend to listen, quickly look away and excuse yourself citing something-or-other as the reason you have to leave.

Sarah sits perfectly still at the cafe table. Motionless and solitary like one of those urban sculptures that lurk in the atriums of larger city public libraries or outside mercantile exchanges. Lit cigarette in hand, hand inches from face, face tired from being a bit sad lately, a bit sad lately from being so far from home, home being where the heart is, the heart is beating beneath ribs, ribs expanding as she inhales from the lit cigarette in hand. For all of these connections she is a perfectly arranged rendition of a woman at the middle of twenties. She is a woman whom neighboring patrons would swear to be in regular attendance at the trendiest of cafes, the most learned of lunch tables, the best-read of parties, and the warmest of queen-sized beds. Holding her book or maybe the local newspaper, she rests her elbow on the table, the book's spine is cradled in her palm or the paper is folded smartly before her. She absently rotates the coffee cup atop its saucer with her smoking hand. Yesterday was a miserable yesterday and today is two boys richer in pocket. Thinking about Boy A and Boy B she begins to wonder what ever became of Boy pre-Boys A&B. And what of Boys before him? She knows that she must do something soon or else she will only have the memory of Boy pre-Boys A&B and the stinging regret of never knowing Boy A's favorite dirty word or the layout of Boy B's apartment. And yet, in the cafe, she sits still while students--wild in conversation--bang table tops, as businessmen and women exchanges meeting times, and as errant children totter on the tightrope routes traced in tile spreading out on the floor beneath her chair.

Say yes

Stabbing yourself, to death. I can think of a few better things to do on a Tuesday night but then again, I'm not Elliott Smith. As thElizabeth properly notes (I capitalized), "I would say 'WTF' again, but who didn't see this coming?"


Addendum:
A really good obit, if such a thing can truly exist.