Today's Forecast

A good chance of a bright and shady yesterday with a definite possibility of scattered outsideishness.

Report from the Outskirts of Lunacy

Written on a bus ride from Seattle to Bellingham, WA.

Novelty seems to quell the natural gravitation towards cynicism.

The unfathomable subconscious community of souls before conception and after life. Soul as a function of mental ability is the antithesis of what I seem to magically know the soul to be.

Oh shit! Look! A mountain!

The raving madman, the ignoble lunatic inside me violently flails but silently slobbers:
Just what the britches are those damned plateaus??

Some lunatics say this sort of thing out loud, barking incorrigibly from a mouth encrusted with blackened, decaying enamel. But me, I'm the type of lunatic that harbors this verbal concoction in my own lumpy gray mass and lets it fester and internally promulgate until the absurdity of the flippant nonsense balloons to such preposterous proportions that I start to mistakenly believe that the otherwise vacant statement encapsulates some sort of elemental profundity.

When really I'm just a preachy asshole.

I'm no more noble than the strung-out, ratty-haired, smoking old lady scraggling down the street that just told me to suck her dick.
Don't mind if I do, lady, don't mind if I do...

This bus rattles like a fragment of angry candy. (Thank you e.e. cummings.) The belligerently intriguing future props up my consciousness, manifesting a mental intensity that is prohibiting rest in any form.

If you haven't figured it out from previous posts, or especially this post, all I do is figure out a really wordy way to describe something otherwise legitimately uninteresting.

This pointless rant has been brought to you by sleep deprivation, caffiene, and the "Blue C Sushi" sign on Fremont Ave.

Big City Wonder: Shelley (pt. 2 of 2)

Jerry's fascination with the awkwardly shaped, ineptly coordinated, but obviously enthusiastic plastic-wielding girl was akin to that of a person watching a chimpanzee pretending to wash toy dishes in its zoo cage, or to that of watching a portly, middle-aged couple, unfamiliar with the seating organization of a baseball stadium, climb up and down rows and rows of stairs repeatedly, completely unable to locate the seats designated on their ticket stubs. His amusement was enhanced by the small joint that he and his wife shared on their 8-block walk to the festival. It wasn't the strongest grass he had ever smoked, but it gave enough of a buzz to allow him to absorb the festival's glistening visuals and blaring Doppler cacophony with a distinct separation from the nagging perpetual stress of coordinating delivery times, scheduling the rotating shifts amongst his four loading crews, and keeping a lid on the damaged goods count.

Jerry stared at Shelley with a vaguely condescending smirk as the band continued their driving rhythm and soul. He took a Marlboro Light out of his breast pocket, sparked the end without taking his eyes from the oddly captivating exhibition of awkwardness in the field of view opposite the band, and let the smoke drizzle upwardly across his grizzly bear brown face, slightly squinting as the eddies from the tobacco exhaust spun and gently pushed away from his glassy, bloodshot eyes and short, tightly-curved lashes. He nudged his wife's elbow to divert her captivation from the amateur but not unenjoyable band on stage to the intensely gauche combination of jiggling belly fat and chaotic display of flying neon plastic near the back of the crowd.

Wanda was not as starkly amused as her husband; her reaction displayed more sympathy and embarrassment, likely enhanced by the always slight paranoia accompanying the spliff. She peered briefly at Shelley as her husband handed her the cigarette, but quickly affixed her gaze back on the band, more out of shame of her husband's obvious rubbernecking than anything else. As she turned to pass the cig back to Jerry, her filmy pink orbs caught the glimpse of a young man sitting on the picnic table behind her, in a blue shirt with a shiny bald head, tenuously grinding his teeth as he worked his way through a soggy bun that housed a few strips of cold, fatty, gristly "Italian" beef. She wondered if he was amused by Shelley's inelegant demonstration, embarrassed by it, or just trying to resist the urge to discard his poorly selected festival food.

He was a little of each.

Big City Wonder: Shelley (pt. 1 of 2)

As the bluesy croons of an astonishingly soulful tiny Caucasian lady punctuate a better-than-average rhythm section and a driving, distinct, yet entirely unknown, lead Fender Stratocaster, the moods of a smattering of festival-goers are perceptibly rendered a little more pleasant.

Shelley wanders artlessly into the back row of the intermittently attentive crowd, costumed in bright pink stretch material athletic shorts and an oddly truncated gray t-shirt with bright purple lettering. Intentionally cut-off to expose her amusingly rotund potbelly, her t-shirt leaves all but the most unobservant wondering whether she's an adolescent or an absent-minded 20-something.

Shelley was adopted by a young couple of modest means after spending the first 3 years of her life in a small but crowded slum in southwestern India. The complete absence of personal space and privacy that coated her fundamental social experience as an infant and toddler has enabled her to forge bizarrely instantaneous but personally cold and non-reciprocated relationships with complete strangers, often at the exceptional clip of a dozen per day.

Armed with her gift for making unsolicited introductions, Shelley approached the lanky, baseball-capped-and-goateed young man who was enjoying the concert in the physically expressive mode of twirling. As the two neon-green plastic balls rhythmically orbited his hands, the wide, curved, figure-8-shaped centripetal authority of the two pink nylon chords controlling the orbs captivated and delighted Shelley, as evidenced by her shining awestruck eyes and her stretching, gleaming teeth. Shelley approached the twirler, who was caught so off-guard by her forwardness that he couldn't help but immediately relinquish control of the apparatuses enabling his expressive dance. Shelley haphazardly began swinging the orbs from the nylon strings, resulting in a lackluster spectacle that showcased her disproportionately pudgy abdomen protruding from her shortened t-shirt.

It was during the beginning stages of Shelley's virgin twirling episode that she attracted at least the partial attention of a small but not insignificant audience. One of the members of the audience whose attention was distracted from the blues band on the festival bill was Jerry, a 50-year old warehouse manager who was enjoying the concert from the comfort of a flaky green picnic table with his wife, Wanda.

Lyri-clue: Apathetic observation

on a rainy day
while i wear newspapers for pants
and a tee shirt that says "damn I'm good"

people look funny when they cry
'cause they just can't let it hide
typing into your little box
press the cry button
then it unlocks

-Eels, "Something is Sacred", Daisies of the Galaxy

Lyri-clue: Respiratory Nuances

Don't get me wrong, he's a nice guy, I like him just fine,

but he is a Mouth Breather.

-"Mouth Breather", The Jesus Lizard, Goat

Apple Introduces New iCrutch

The new iCrutch is a technological marvel that will ensure your perpetual reliance on it and all future technological marvels. Specially designed to help you with remembering phone numbers, listening to music, finding directions, sending email, typing letters, taking pictures and video, making breakfast, driving your car, mowing your lawn, teaching your kids to read, dogsitting your chihuahua, making nice with your mother-in-law, giving you something to talk about with your students, suggesting appropriate anniversary gifts, creating a facade of healthy communication with former friends, and giving you an excuse to recalcitrantly crane your neck and fixate all mental and physical effort on visually following tiny, irrelevant little pixels blipping and flashing in undeniably extravagant visual patterns, only to gain the slightest insight regarding weather forecasts, television schedules, trivial facts, or your friend's intention of meeting you at the concert.

The 32 Tera-byte memory system allows you to rely solely on this single device for storage of every single useful and non-useful work-related document, picture, video, song, genetic code, Principia Mathematica proof, security software backup system, or funny forwarded email with dogs dressed up like pirates and princesses.

Once you lean on the iCrutch, you'll fall flat on your face if you're ever without it!!






P.S. I'm not trying to knock on people for having iPods or iPhones or iAnythings (I'm typing this on an MacBook right now, in fact), I'm just trying to put into perspective for myself, and possibly for others, the dark side of these ridiculously addictive little gadgets. If I had the disposable income at this point, I would be lying if I said I wouldn't have an iPhone.