Keith Spillett
I have a lot of strange debris rattling around my mind that I need to work out in a useful way.
Homepage: https://tyrannyoftradition.wordpress.com
Requiem For A Dumb Idea
Posted in Articles I Probably Shouldn't Have Bothered Writing on November 10, 2011
Every once and a while the free market really gets it right. Dippin’ Dots, the mothball shaped ice cream that took America by storm back in the 1990s, has finally, mercifully filed for bankruptcy. The fact that 2,000 of these stands exist today is a shaming blight upon the wooly, pock marked face of consumer capitalism. I am not much of a dancer, but I need to admit that I actually leaped out of my seat and did a fair Michael Flatley impression when I heard that this frozen pox was nearing eradication.
Anyone who has had the misfortune of having been around me when walking by a Dippin’ Dots stand has been subjected to a mile-a-minute tirade about how “the rat poison of the future should be grinded into the dust of the past” (as I told my wife on our second date). I actually got in a shouting match with a Dippin’ Dots franchise owner in Poughkeepsie, New York that ended with me nearly getting maced by a mall cop.
What bares further investigation is surely not the uselessness of the product, for who among us can actually defend such swill, but my disposition on the matter. With famine, war, pestilence and torture all more obvious candidates for my vitriol, what really rankles me is the existence of these pellets of shame.
To be fair, I can’t even be certain I’ve ever eaten the things. They actually might be quite good. There is just something about them that makes my internal organs weep. I feel insulted by their very existence.
I’m certainly not harboring some deep dissatisfaction with the concept of frozen desserts. I could ingest nothing but ice cream, Italian ices and Sno Cones from now until when my first social security check comes in and be perfectly content. It’s not like I had to be hospitalized with an ice cream headache for three weeks or got hit by a Good Humor van when I was 11 and have some odd physical aversion to this sort of thing. I practically sweat gelato.
After almost four decades of being offered a shameful array of stuff that I could not find a use for in a million lifetimes, I think this may be the Dot that broke the camels back. How many Sham-Wows, how many Pillow Pets, how many steel-belted, titanium, rust-proofed, icy cold scams can a man endure before he reached the point of feeling genuine, hot-blooded scorn? Every time one of these asinine businesses get started in the name of The American Dream, a little part of me dies.
If the little Chamber of Commerce member in your mind has started to spew rhetorical vomit about how having 67 thousand different brands of oatmeal is good for the economy and, thus, America, tell him that while this stuff may be good if your goal is to create a society who’s members all have amassed personal debt in excess of the Gross National Product of Peru it might not be the best use of their time and collective brain power.
I’m a communist, you say. Fine! At least Lenin never had to sit through toothpaste commercials. If what passes for communism in America is being ill-disposed to living in a 24 hour a day flea market that has been approved by 9 out of 10 dentists, then sign me up.
Truthfully, my real anger is at the feeling of having to participate in the market at nearly all moments. Sure, I could go sit up on a mountaintop and breathe fresh air all day, but most people’s lives put them face-to-face with The Never Ending Hustle. In The Great Gatsby, the billboard of Dr. TJ Eckleburg was a façade that hid a part of the soulless, desolate valley of ashes. The billboards of today merely serve the purpose of hiding more billboards.
I can’t get five steps away from my door without some hackneyed inducement to participate in the ever-glorious marketplace of individual freedom. Sometimes they are gentle, sometimes they are rough, sometimes they play on my nerves, sometimes they tug on my heartstrings, but the pull is interminable.
Sure, I don’t have to buy whatever this or that company is selling, but I do have to make an effort to tune it out. Constantly. And while that effort is minimal, the collective weight of it has worn me down. After all, you can be crushed under the weight of a hundred tons of feathers just as you can be crushed under a hundred tons of lead.
At some point along the line, a very real feeling of insurmountable weariness has crept into my mind. Like when you are trying to fall asleep and different vague, unconnected noises continue to awaken you right when you have become completely calm. Eventually, you can be annoyed into the belief that peace and calm are impossible.
I blame you Dippin’ Dots, because getting my arms around a problem this big and pervasive doesn’t seem feasible. I’ve forgotten how to take to the streets and I don’t know the mailing address of my duly elected state representative. I only know the language of futility and those types of words don’t move mountains. I might not be able stop the endless flow of sugar-coated avarice that flows unabated though our collective veins but I sure know how to smile when the axe of the free market lands squarely on the neck of a hated foe.
Thanks to good old-fashioned American knowhow and the virtues of commerce, I can be assured that five even uglier heads will sprout up where there once was only one. That problem, however, is for another day. Tonight when I lay my head down on a pillow, I can rest easy knowing that at least one stupid idea is being vanquished from our world. Sometimes, that’s enough.
Dissecting Carcass’ “Heartwork”: Sixth Incision…This Mortal Coil
Posted in Notes on Carcass Heartwork on November 8, 2011
This is the sixth in a series of articles analyzing the lyrics from the 1993 Carcass album “Heartwork”.
This Mortal Coil
Tearing down the walls
Breaching frontiers, unlocking the gates
To a new world disorder
A fresh balance of terror, the equilibrium of hate/
All flesh entwined, in the equality of pain
Archaic nescience unleashed
Entrenched, a bitter legacy
Tempered in mental scars
All flesh entwined in mortal equality
Tangled mortal coil
Twisted and warped
Tangled mortal coil
“After three thousand years of explosion, by means of fragmentary and mechanical technologies, the Western World is imploding. During the mechanical ages, we extended our bodies in space. Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system in a global embrace….Any extension, whether of skin, hand or foot, affects the whole psychic and social complex.”
-Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media 1964
If we are not here in the traditional sense, then where are we? If our world has transformed from one of fragmented nations to a global village, what does that mean for us, the humans that inhabit such a world? Today’s human is locked into a nearly constant struggle for identity, attempting to at once be an individualized autonomous self and an interconnected part of an ever-shrinking world. We are engaged in a process of knocking down many of the walls that for generations have kept us separate. In this moment of great potential, one is left to wonder whether we will seize the opportunity for global embrace or build a new set of seemingly insurmountable walls. This question is the echo of our footstep as we wander headlong into the new frontier.
If the self is no longer locked in its corporeal shell and has, indeed, reached through the boundaries of the body and into the never-ending stratosphere, what does that really mean for us? After all, I look at myself in the mirror and am still contained in a structure remarkably similar to that once inhabited by my ancestors. Yet, my mind and spirit reach out beyond the fleshy walls of the Self and live an all-at-once, timeless existence in the technological superstructure that is fast becoming our world. Or, more precisely, what does it mean that these ideas are flowing out of my mind, through, my fingers, through the ethers, into your brain almost simultaneously and yet I’ve barely moved? It is not as simple as thinking things have changed from one form to another. Rather, it is significant to understand that we are both individualized fragmented bodies and the all of the universe. We are currently living in an age where we are consistently faced with being two things that seemingly cannot inhabit the same space. How can a thing be finite and infinite at the same time? More importantly for our purposes, how does a being reconcile the contradictions and stresses that arise from living in multiple realities in the same moment?
There is no easy answer for this. The lyrics to this song are a reflection of the pain one might believe itself to feel when coming to terms with a question of this size and scope. The quest for identity under such bizarre conditions could well lead someone to a feeling of being enraged and overwhelmed. It’s not hard to imagine the “archaic nescience unleashed” to be the hand of the Self reaching back through time clutching at any answer that spares us the uncertainty of not being able to fully comprehend the world. The coil on which Shakespeare so eloquently described us as living upon does not, upon first glance, seem built for multi-dimensional travel. The connection of seven billion spines seems to be an inexplicable tangle from which we can never escape, but is it?
Maybe trying to find an answer is the larger problem we face. If we believe in the need for a solution, we must also believe in the existence of the problem. Maybe all there is to do is to call the thing what it is. The world offers us an impossible contradiction. Even in the confusion created by this idea, we are still given the power to say, “Yes, both are true in this moment.” Is it impossible? Yes. But so too are the bizarre terms of our existence. There is no rational context under which we can properly understand what it means to be alive. In stopping the search and accepting an answer that defies all we think we know, we might well be able to begin understanding a question whose vastness reaches beyond eternity and whose minuteness is less than the size of one atom of our physical body.
Globalization, on some level, is a metaphorical magnification of the quest for spiritual identity faced by all humans. It is the human condition writ large in a way that can be directly observed by anyone willing to ponder the meaning of the Self. It broadcasts the eloquence of our contradiction in a way that is both tangible and boundless. While our immediate reaction to the question may be fear, it also offers a sublime opportunity for self-awareness. This form of awareness may feel like a curse at times, but it is a gift of the highest order. It is nothing less than a window into the deepest recesses of our communal soul.
Keys To Regress
Posted in General Weirdness on November 3, 2011
What does the world matter if I can’t even control this one thing? Here I am standing in front of my car. It’s a beautiful Sunday morning. Birds are chirping, a light breeze is softly cascading colored leaves everywhere I look….all is calm. Except me. The world takes no note of the maelstrom of tension swirling ravenously through my gut. It simply is. I, however, am not. Not in this moment.
Here I am on a Sunday morning with all the love and light a person can want around them. My two beautiful children are smiling and playing, my wife is looking on brimming with joy, and then there’s me. The Angel of Death photo shopped into a Norman Rockwell painting. Pacing like a wild animal, cursing under my breath, spewing lava, fist fighting the air. And why do I sacrifice my sanity on the altar of rage on this lovely day? Am I reacting to some dreadful piece of life shattering news? Is this childish paroxysm my way of protesting some grave, callous injustice the world has decided to pay towards a friend or loved one? Of course not. I have decided to transform into a human blowtorch because I have lost my keys.
Me: Where are they? Where are they! Where are they????? WHERE are they?
Shannon: Where did you have them last?
Me: If I knew that, I’d know where they are.
Shannon: (calmly responding with compassion and understanding to my state of determined stupidity) Well, have you checked you pants from yesterday?
Me: Yes. And the dresser. And the coffee table. And inside my pants from two days ago. And in the closet! And on the book shelf!!! And in the oven!!!! And in my shoes!!!!! And in an elephant’s pajamas!!!!!!!! And on the moon!!!! And in the entire state of Wyoming!!!!!
Shannon: (channeling a level of patience that would have made Job look neurotic) Keith, breathe. It’s not a big deal. We always find them.
Me: But why do I have to lose them! It’s ridiculous! I must spend half of my life losing my keys!!!! I don’t even need to go anywhere! I just have to get inside the car!!!! My work is in there. I need to get to my work so I can finish my work so I don’t have to worry about my work! That way I can stay calm!!!!!! Don’t you see!?!!?!
Shannon: It’s fine. We’ll get in there today. Don’t worry about it.
Me: You don’t understand! If I don’t finish my work, I’ll fall behind. If I fall behind, I won’t be able to get the things I need done for next week done! Then, I’ll fall further behind. It’ll create a nearly endless chain of events that cannot be stopped. Like a runaway train!!!! Eventually, I will collapse under the weight of all these things that I haven’t done! I’ll lose my ability to function. I’ll start walking around parking lots at 2 o’clock in the morning humming the theme from Bonanza. I’ll lose the ability to enjoy meals!!! I’ll become one of those George Romero looking zombie like creatures that only shaves one half of his face and quotes Finnegan’s Wake all the time!!! I won’t be able to hold down a steady job!!! I’ll be an outcast! A social parasite! (In a tone of self-mockery) “Hey look, there’s Keith Spillett. Nice fellow, then one day he couldn’t get into his car. Now he’s a penniless loser who spends most of his time collecting rocks that are shaped like former Presidents. Too bad, huh!”
Shannon: Whoa. Slow down. It doesn’t mean all that honey. We’ll get in your car.
Me: Sure it does! If I cannot complete a simple task like finding my keys, what does that say about me as a person? What sort of idiot can’t even find a set of keys! I can’t even….Maybe I should smash the window? Like in one of those movies. I’ll wrap a towel around my hand. That’s it!
Shannon: That’s really not a good idea. Just breathe for a minute.
Me: I don’t want to breathe! Not without my keys! I am sick of not being able to control things! I hate the feeling of constant confusion, constant disorganization, and constant waiting for something else to go missing! ARGGGGGGGH!!!!
Shannon: Well, have you tried the door?
Me: Tried the door! Tried the door? You mean just tried to open it! I have locked my door every time I have left my car since I was 15 years old. The chances of the car door being open are somewhere in the order of 12 billion to 1. I’d be better off taking all of our savings and betting it on the Cubs to win the World Series next year! Or buying a Dippin’ Dots franchise! Or buying Greek government bonds! There is not even an infinitesimal chance in the universe that the door is unlocked. SEE!!(I quickly snatch at the door handle. The car door opens with as much sarcasm as an inanimate object is capable of)
Shannon: (smiling without a trace of “I told you so” on her face) Well…good.
Me: Yeah. (relief floods my body) Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Shannon: See, it’s never as bad as you think.
Me: You’re right. You’re totally right. Thank you so much for your patience. (I stop and hug Shannon filled with gratefulness) Now, have you seen my wallet?
Chapter One-Rebirth
Posted in The Resurrection of Michael Jackson on November 1, 2011
Photograph By Libertina Grimm
Being dead wasn’t what he expected it to be. By the end of what had become his life, he was completely overwhelmed and inundated with all of the venomous scorn that The Great American Hate Machine could produce. He had become a walking nightmare. A cautionary tale. The punch line of every inarticulate joke told by the stumbling rabble that thought that he belonged to them. Because he was wealthy, because he was famous, because he was different, they felt they had the right to turn him into something less than human. He used to pull the strings, but at some point, he lost control. He became property of those who despised him the most. He loved the fame and the attention, but he never asked for the hate. They buried him under it. So, he died.
Two and a half years after his death, he stood alone in the living room of a small bungalow on a beach somewhere in the South Pacific. He was one of the few residents of one of those rare and unique places where even the most popular celebrity in the world could be ignored. Where he was, no one cared about his identity. It helped that the massive plastic surgery he had undergone made him look remarkably like the man he was in the late 1980s.
Science was a gift to Michael. It allowed him to be whoever he wanted to be. What he had once used to remake himself into the greatest attraction on earth now made him the world’s most famous stranger. At first, he reveled in the anonymity. Conversations with people who didn’t want to ask him about his baby hanging over a balcony or Bubbles the chimp or the Elephant Man’s bones or the latest Trial of the Century. Conversations about the sunset. Conversations about the weather. What is least available to us is often what becomes what is most prized. And to him, it was normalcy.
The routines of existence were, at first, poetry to him. He awoke at 7 AM and took a walk on the beach. He got home and fed his chickens. He read extensively. He listened to the beautiful sounds of Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson howling away on his record player. He closed his eyes and sat peacefully in the sun. He needed no sleeping pills or locked doors to create a brief and artificial quiet. Real quiet was everywhere he looked. Real harmony, at last.
For the first year, it was like heaven on earth. About halfway through Year Two of his life as a dead man, a strange feeling began to well up in him. It was a longing for something that he could not name. Something was unsettling about his life. He was far from lonely. He had made friends with a few of the locals and was able to contact the ones that were closest to him. He wasn’t exactly bored. There was much to do, even in his idleness. He missed the music.
One morning he caught himself signing along to Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come”. It occurred to him that he had not sung in what felt like an eternity. By the end of the song, he was so moved he felt himself begin to weep. He had forgotten what the music could make him feel when it came out of his body.
A steady need began to develop…the need to share this great gift that was given to him with others. He remembered that night on stage in Japan where he looked into that woman’s eyes and had seen the most pure love that had ever existed. To know that his voice, his music, could create that love in a person was something beyond words. He missed that feeling, that connection. When he was onstage and his voice exploded out of his slight frame and filled the theater with orgiastic light it was a feeling that transcended anything that he believed possible.
As he looked deeply into the endless horizon, he began to understand what he had to do. Sometimes, the whole of a person’s being changes in an instant and there is simply no going back. He purposefully walked to his bedroom closet. Above his clothes on a white wire shelf was an oak box. He took the box down from its perch and laid it on the nightstand.
A cold feeling gripped him. Nerves? Fear? He opened the box. There, staring back at him with quiet intent was his white glove. The white glove. The glove had come to symbolize everything he loved about his old life. It was glamor, it was beauty, it was ecstasy, it was uniqueness, it was innocence, it was joy….all together in one perfect icon.
He picked the glove up and slipped it on to his right hand. He stared silently at it for what seemed like an eternity. The sheer magnitude of the instant radiated hope and inspiration as brightly as it had ever shone for him. He had reclaimed himself. In this moment, he had been reborn.
Photograph By Libertina Grimm
Five Zombies In Search of A McRib
Posted in Existential Rambings on October 27, 2011
The Nexus of the Crisis and The Origin of Swarms
They were banging wildly at the windows. Bloody, barbeque sauce stained hands clutching at whatever they could grab. We had kept them at bay by throwing of the store’s stock of McRibs through the drive-thru window into the parking lot. The horde of undead monsters gobbled them up, consuming them in a grotesque span of seconds. In their fiendish delirium, they could no longer tell the difference between human life and a dollar ninety-nine cent sandwich (2.99 in some markets). The five of us were about to become a very unhappy meal.
There was Janet, the waitress, Addams, the cop, McBain, the lawyer with great hair, and The Doctor. They had gone through their lives secretly wondering when their hour would finally come round. They never would have believed they would perish terribly, mistaken for a limited time sandwich. I had dressed well, anticipating teaching an excellent day of thought provoking history classes. Instead, I was going to be eaten by zombies at my local neighborhood McDonald’s.
Janet: We should feed them something else.
Addams: We should not feed them, it will just encourage them.
McBain: We should reason with them.
Me: We should run.
Doctor: I’m a doctor.
Janet: We should scare them.
Addams: We should shoot them.
McBain: We should trick them.
Me: We should hide.
Doctor: I’m a doctor.
Janet: We should climb out through the air conditioning ducts.
Addams: We should set off an explosion in the parking lot.
McBain: We should wait for the army to save us.
Me: We should help them.
Doctor: I’m a doctor!
(Banging on the windows is growing louder)
Janet: We should feed them the cop.
Addams: We should feed them the lawyer.
McBain: We should feed them the poor.
Me: We should try to understand them.
Doctor: I’m a Doctor!
Janet: We should fight them with our mop handles.
Addams: We should make an example of one of them and scare the others.
McBain: We should poison the McRibs, then feed them to the zombies.
Me: We should educate them.
Doctor: I am a….Doctor!!!!!
(More zombies pounding on the windows. The zombie moaning is becoming intolerable)
Janet: We should protest their actions.
Addams: We should show no fear.
McBain: We should see if we can pay them to go away.
Me: We should build them houses.
Doctor: I……AM…..A…..DOCTOR!!!!!!
Janet: We should raise their taxes!
Addams: We should use our weapons!
McBain: We should offer them a simplified tax code that does not punish job creators!
Me: We should offer them adequate dental care!!!!
Doctor: I am a doctor…I am a doctor….I am a doctor! I’m a Doctor!!!
(The glass in the main window begins to crack. Zombies swarm towards opening with horrific glee.)
Janet: We should pray with them.
Addams: We should pray for them.
McBain: We should pray for ourselves.
Me: We should love them.
Doctor: I am a doctor????
(The window shatters and the zombies pour through)
Janet: This can’t happen; I’m too young.
Addams: This can’t happen; I have a family.
McBain: This can’t happen; this is America
Me: This can’t happen; we’ve acted honorably.
Doctor: This can’t happen; I’m a doctor.
The zombies attack and overwhelm us. Lots of gore and guts and gizzards and grossness. You’ve seen this movie before or at least one like it. Just make up your own ending. Mine is…They all die. Alone.
BlaK Dan Reviews Metallica’s “Ride The Lightning”
Posted in BlaK Dan's Theatre of Cruelty on October 26, 2011
A few weeks back, we did an interview with the 2011 Purest Man In Metal Award winner BlaK Dan Krutzmeyer (or xxxxZyr as his friends call him). What I did not reveal in the initial article was that BlaK Dan is actually my brother-in-law. About 5 years ago, BlaK Dan received a settlement from Costco after slipping on a wet spot in the cat food aisle and rupturing his spleen. Instead of spending that money wisely on food and shelter, BlaK Dan invested heavily in Amway products which he has been unable to sell even at steeply discounted prices.
In order to recoup his investment, BlaK Dan has been showing up at our front door at the crack of dawn trying to get me to buy cases of Nutralite Vitamins and 100 count boxes of hand sanitizer. At first, my wife and I tried to help him or, at least, keep to the terms of the restraining order we have against him. But BlaK Dan is persistent and we are running out options that don’t involve having some guy named Yuri The Blade drop him into the Atlantic Ocean. I have no use for Amway Products and I am tired of having to deal with the guy, so I told him that I’d pay him if he stays away from our home and writes me a metal album review from time to time. Maybe the reviews will keep him busy and stop him calling us at 2 AM in a drunken haze to cry about the lack of woodwinds on the recent Burzum album.
Anyway, here’s the first (and hopefully last) in a series of articles called “BlaK Dan Reviews Albums He Hates”…..
Alright, so first of all, I need to tell you that this album sucks. It’s so obvious that it sucks, I don’t even need to listen to it. I could feel the suckiness through the latex gloves I used to handle it. Out of a scale of 1 to 10, it gets a negative 12 billion. It is meant to sap the spirit of those who fight the battle to remain unscarred by the joy and happiness that goes on around them. It is a Trojan Bull sent into BlaK Dan’s City of Darkness to try to destroy the China Shop that is his purity. BlaK Dan will not be fooled!
People like to argue that Metallica sold out when they recorded …And Justice For All or The Black Album or when they did a video for “One”. This is not true. Metallica sold out well before the time of their birth. While James Hetfield’s mother was pregnant with him, she listened to a good amount of Elvis Presley. Recent research conducted by researchers has conclusively shown that fetuses exposed to Elvis music will become humans who write sucky, sell-out music 98 percent of the time. James was born to suck.
That drummer who looks like a Muppet is no good either. What’s his deal?!?! He strikes me as the type of guy who’s in it to meet women or make money or to be famous or something. He’s probably got a room in his house filled with nothing but KC and The Sunshine band pictures. Why does he need all those drums? He doesn’t even use most of them. I’ve seen pictures of him smiling, too. If I knew for sure I could keep my Bathory vinyls in prison, I would crush his head with a boulder whilst reading from the Necronomicon.
Like I say, I’d never listen to a Metallica album, but if I did, I bet they have choruses on them. And melodies. And harmonies. And lyrics about feelings. And songs about how much they cried when their dog ran away when they were eight. And stuff about how when they were kids people laughed and wouldn’t invite them to birthday parties because they had stupid Gobots instead of Transformers like all the cool kids. And songs about how personal hygiene is important. Dumb sucky stuff for losers who buy furniture and go to shopping malls.
I have so far burnt over 300 copies of this album in an attempt to unfoul the universe of smut. I plan on keeping myself and my pet ferret Varg warm in our cave all winter by the light of this epically sucky piece of suckdom. A suck free cave with blazing Metallica albums and all the berries and squirrel we can eat. The way Odin would have wanted it.
The Tyranny of Attrition
Posted in The Poetry of Death on October 22, 2011
“Now in these dread latter days of the old violent beloved U.S.A. and of the Christ-forgetting Christ-hanuted death-dealing Western world I came to myself in a grove of young pines and the question came to me: has it happened at last?”
-Walker Percy from Love in the Ruins
October is the cruelest month
(Or was it September?)
(Or is it all of them?)
I don’t know anymore
I’ve stopped counting
You don’t need a compass to know which way is up
Despair, Guided by the torpor of stale air
The last thought that went through Junior’s mind
Was how much the horizon looked like the ocean
Because this is The Season of the Witch
Must be The Season of the Witch
Must be The Season of the Wi-tch
Oh Dr. More
We’ve become so much less
Your you-topian dreams
Transmogrified
Into an I-topia of silent screams
And ponzi schemes
Because this IS the wasteland
And WE are doomed
As the milk of human kindness
Reaches its much anticipated expiration date
Evaporating, The Armageddon of the Spirit
Echoes of Narcissus
Gazing
Lifelessly
We know that we are dying
(Be it one at a time)
(Or all of us at once)
Because this is The Season of the Witch
Must be The Season of the Witch
Must be The Season of the Wi-tch
The Absence howls
To be filled by nothingness
The Presence mocks us
With its promises of illusion
You don’t need a stethoscope
To hear a heart that’s not beating
Our differences are not nearly as terrifying as our similarities
The weight
Too great
The universe has forgotten how to protect us
(Or never wanted to know)
So far, from our-Selves
In the wasteland, there is no Up
Because this IS The Season of the Witch
Must be The Season of the Witch
Must be The Season of the Wi-tch
A Confessional Review of David Mamet’s Homicide
Posted in Pointyheaded Highbrow Stuff on October 19, 2011
“A Grandma is at the shore in Florida with her little Grandson. The grandson is playing on the beach when a big wave comes and washes the kid out to sea. The lifeguards swim out, bring him back to the shore, the paramedics work on him for a long time, pumping the water out, reviving him. They turn to the Grandma and say, “We saved your grandson!” The Grandma says, “He had a hat!””
-Henny Youngman
Bobby Gold was born to die a thousand slow deaths. His is the pain of a man without a country. Homicide is his confession. The confession of the man that can never be whole. He is the first through the door, the last to leave the gym. His mistakes must be rationalized or his coat of armor will become tin foil. He has an answer to every question even before you ask it, because he cannot afford to show an ounce of skin. He must convince them of his worth. He must be more than human or else they will see him. Then, they will know.
Bobby Gold, set to wander the desert into eternity. He must be exceptional or he is lost. He is the map of human misery. Bobby the Nomad. Every time he finds a river he drinks a mouthful of sand. He knows that you see him and he thinks you won’t let him forget it.
His is the story of the self-made man. What becomes of the self-made man when he stops creating? What if he gets tired? What if hasn’t the strength to work at the rate to which he has become accustomed? No one will catch him if his arms and legs cramp up. He knows this as surely as he knows how much time it will take him to get there 15 minutes early.
He looks around at people and instead sees the ocean. The ocean is still and never needs anything more than what is given. The ocean is a mystery to him. Who built it? How does it hide its shame? In his hands are a set of tools from which he must construct himself. From nothing. From the ground up. He must explain himself over and over. He recoils, overwhelmed by the fear that they’ll recognize the sadness in him. He explains and explains and explains never making the point that is so obvious to anyone who takes a moment to look. And he hopes his explanations will blind them to the truth. And he hopes they’ll see him and forgive his existence.
He looks enviously at those who have never had to work a day in their life to exist. Some people just wake up and “are”. He must invent. He must create. All of his actions reek of existential survival. Bobby is a reminder of how fast a man must run to not fall down. The faster he runs, the closer the oblivion he gets. It is gaining on him, always.
Bobby Gold, never to know the stillness and quiet of a dreamless sleep. Haunted by his visions of wholeness. Mocked by his own creations and talents. Bobby hears with a third ear. He is haunted by the stumbling footsteps of those who do not belong. The flesh on his neck stands at attention when he is near them. He doesn’t need files and he doesn’t need a map. He knows the look. He is blessed with the curse of understanding. As like is drawn to like, as “a dog goes back to its own vomit”, as pain seeks out pain. He is them and they are he. Outcasts. Alone in a crowded universe.
Bobby Gold, born to see what people pray to have the strength to ignore. Bobby the Outcast. Bobby the Obscure. Bobby the Stranger Among Strangers. Bobby the Donkey. Capable of so much, but unable to hide the absurdity of his being. Imploring the world to see him for what he does and not what he is. Doomed by the pain of the man who can never be more than he can build.
Califivenia Dreaming
Posted in Totally Useless Information, Uncategorized on October 16, 2011
The Clown Prince of Denmark....A Grenine Dane
One of the great comedy bits ever concocted is Victor Borge’s famed “inflationary language” sketch. Borge, the brilliant Danish pianist and comedian, devised a way of inflating the value of each word that has a number in it by taking the number and adding one. Thus, the constitution becomes the constitthreesion, lieutenant becomes lieuelevenant, tulips become threelips and on and on. Utterly hysterical.
While Borge’s idea is a comedic masterpiece, I wonder if he didn’t happen to luck into a fantastic way of creating a more precise version of the English language. We live in a world where hyperbole is commonplace. Both a grilled cheese sandwich and a beautiful, once in a lifetime sunset can both be referred to as “wonderful”. The listener is left to determine from context clues and body language which wonderful is more wonderful. But, these bits of evidence can be misleading and in a text-based situation like the internet, one can easily miss the difference between the commonplace “wonderful” and the nearly spiritual “wonderful”.
Borge has unwittingly given us a solution. Numbers combined with language can help us find a more precise answer to the deeper meaning of many words. So, the excellent grilled cheese that you consumed for lunch can be “threetaful” or two points better than wonderful. The sunset which brought tears to your eyes is much more likely “tentaful”, a full nine points better than the original. In this way, once can clearly discern the differences between a great sandwich and a magnificent experience of nature’s wonder (or tender in this case).
Think of all the miscommunications this could clear up. If someone produces a really quality work of art it could be called a great “creatention”, a true masterpiece would be much more along the lines of a “creafifteention” and the best piece of art you’ve ever come across might well be a “creathirtytion” or even a “creainfinitytion”. Think of how much additional joy your neighbors will feel during the holidays when you complement them on their “sixtaful decortwelvetions”
It could work in either direction, too. Let’s say you meet someone you have a serious romantic interest in and make an offer to become better acquainted. There is no ambiguity in that person telling you, “No, I don’t want to go over your house and negativeonenicate.” In that case, it’s clear she’s not being coy and any sort of future inquiries should be made elsewhere.
In literature, there are serious possibilities as well. A writer could be given the gift of being able to explain complex circumstances in one word. A character with a ridiculously pronounced area between his eyebrows and his hairline could simply be described as a person with an “eighthead”. A character maimed by a poorly performed birth ritual could be quickly noted as someone with a problem with his “twoskin”. A character who is overly honest could be referred to as being “seventhright”. No fuss, no muss. Think of the efficiency.
Five us four fully understand each other it is a greytwelve skill six learn. When we creaeighteen a more precise language much of the twentytion that arises from miscommunications will be mitigtened. Face it, our current language is assafive.
Here’s Borge’s original bit…..
Acute Post-Operative Complications
Posted in Existential Rambings on October 13, 2011
About six months ago, I had surgery done on my foot to remove a bone spur. During the surgery I was given a dose of anesthesia to knock me out and numb the pain. Since the surgery I have noticed many inconsistencies in the fabric of the universe. I have come to the conclusion that one of two things took place. The first possibility is that I am still under anesthesia and currently on the operating table. For this to be true, the anesthesia would have to have distorted my sense of time and what has felt to me to be two months is actually less than an hour. The other possibility is that I died on the operating table and this is either a very strange afterlife or I am experiencing an early stage of death in which the images and ideas in my head slowly become distorted as I lose my connection to what we know as reality.
I know this sounds a bit far fetched, but things have been really strange since the anesthesia went into me. When I was first injected I began to feel extremely sleepy. I tried to talk but it felt like my mouth was filled with peanut butter. My eyes closed and all I could hear were the doctor and one of the nurses talking and that dumb song “Life is a Highway” (the surgery center pumped bad pop music into all the operating rooms to “relax” the patients). I was completely conscious and totally immobile. The song was making me angry. Why couldn’t they have anesthetized my ears? It’s a preposterously stupid metaphor. What the heck does it mean? Life goes on for a long time? Life has exits? If you stay on life for thirty minutes you can get to the airport?
I’m not certain of how I got home. It was late in the day. For the next week I flowed in and out of awareness. Pain and pain medicine shaped my reality. I watched the entire first season of the TV show the old CBS show “Wiseguy” on DVD (mercifully, I only remember about ten minutes of it), I ate pizza, I stared at the painting of a woman on the wall and imagined another head growing out of her neck. I could not shake the feeling that something was wrong. I chalked the whole thing up to oxycodone-induced weirdness and figured I’d feel normal once I got the stuff out of my system.
Time passed. My foot began to heal, I started driving again, I went back to work, and I shed my crutches for a boot. Life resumed, but I could not shake the feeling that the things around me were somehow less real then they had been. It’s not something I can put accurately into words, but it feels quite real. The world seemed similar but not the same.
My first visit to the gym was when things started to get really weird. I slowly moved my way through a few machines and went into the locker room to get the stink off of me. As I walked past the lockers there was a guy in a speedo who looked almost exactly like the guy who played Father Damien Karass in the Exorcist films. I had never seen him at the gym before. He was staring into his open locker and shouting. Most of what was coming out of his mouth was impossible to understand. He was raving. I understood the occasional curse word, but most of it seemed like it was in some weird language that he was making up as he went along. I averted my eyes away from him and sprinted into the shower. When I had gotten out, he was quietly staring with this horrible empty expression on his face. Suddenly, I heard him say in a monotone, semi-possessed voice “Life isn’t a highway, is it Keith? Is it Keith? Is it Keith?”
I felt my stomach leap into my throat. “Excuse me?!?!?!”
He just continued staring blankly into the locker.
“What did you say???” I repeated in a panic.
He did not respond.
I did not tell the thing about “Life is a Highway” to anyone except my wife. I strongly doubt that my wife has launched into a criminal conspiracy with some lunatic at the YMCA to drive me crazy so she’ll be able to drive our Saturn more often, so I have to imagine there are strange forces at work here. But what? Why?
Every time I see this guy, he hums a bar from it and smiles at me. He has a sickly, menacing smile. The type that bankers usually reserve for customers with no hope of getting a loan. He jogs next to me on the treadmill sometimes. Humming. Smiling. Laughing to himself.
The other day, he walked out of the gym at the same time as me. He started repeating the phrase “Do you know where we are? Do you know where we are? Do YOU know WHERE we ARE?” in strange intonations about five feet away from me. At first, I sped up, but when he didn’t stop and continued to follow me I knew I had to take some kind of action. I turned to him and shouted “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? Why are you bothering me?!?!?!?!”
He looked perplexed. The man stared blankly into my eyes and began to speak with a voice that betrayed no emotion whatsoever, “Don’t you know where we are?” He reached slowly into his pocket. I was terrified. What was happening? He grabbed my wrist and shoved a piece of paper in my hand. With a coy smile, he turned on his heels and stumbled back towards the gym.
Maybe it was some explanation of everything. Maybe it was a threat. I needed something to make it all make sense. I swallowed deeply and looked at the piece of paper. This had to be the answer. It had to be. It was a ten percent off coupon for the frozen yogurt store about a mile from my house. The orange rain began to pour down from the sky, washing away the beautiful blue sunset. I sat down on the curb next to my car, put my head in my hands and wept.
The Tyranny of Tradition 