Love is the scars on your knees, the leftover food in the refrigerator, the song the birds sing, the pain you inflict, the sweet nothingness which flutters from your lover's mouth, a half-complete cigarette, diet coke with fizzles on your tongue, the rainbow sprinkles on your cupcake, the battered package you received in the mail the other day, the sound of wind escaping through a small gap in your window, the dampness in your hair, the chipped red varnish on your fingernails, you grandmother's musical box, the ballet shoes you've had since you were five, the music playing on your car stereo, the flaky paint on your walls, the bubblegum stuck under desks, the tooth-fairy, your hands and the things you can make with them, the kisses you blow, the clothes you wear, 5am morning breath, your sensitive teeth, the tingly feeling you get when you get touched at certain parts of your body, the tangles in your lover's hair, sleepless nights, overdosing on painkillers, undeserved success and recognition, telling lies and not getting caught, blacking out from consuming too much alcohol, being desired by multiple parties, solving a mathematical problem, watching the people around you, watching the people fucking up around you, screaming out of your window in the middle of the night, flaming your lover's ex, make-up sex, smudged mascara, disheveled hair and smeared lipstick, the coffee and bagel you digest on a daily basis, little children, silence, recyclable materials, trees, photosynthesis, growth, development

No. Love is

you, I and a careless mixture of everything else we worry about.

I've tried to say it a thousand different ways. I've tried twisting the words inside out and doubling them back over onto themselves. I've tried coming up with words in different languages, because maybe they have words for this thing (I couldn't say what it is) that we're missing in this one. I've tried saying the same words over and over again in hopes that this time they'll mean what I want them to mean. I've tried writing it down and spelling it out and stressing each syllable across intercontinental static. I've filled up pages and pages of paper with what I'm trying to say, but never with what I mean to say.

Maybe it annoyed you in the end. Maybe I should just stop.

-Loren Barnes

I want a dyke for president. I want a person with aids for president and I want a fag for vice president and I want someone with no health insurance and I want someone who grew up in a place where the earth is so saturated with toxic waste that they didn't have a choice about getting leukemia. I want a president that had an abortion at sixteen and I want a candidate who isn't the lesser of two evils and I want a president who lost their last lover to aids, who still sees that in their eyes every time they lay down torest, who held their lover in their arms and knew they were dying. I want a president who has stood on line at the clinic, at the dmv, at the welfare office and has been unemployed and layed off and sexually harrassed and gaybashed and deported. I want someone who has spent the night in the tombs and had a cross burned on their lawn and survived rape. I want someone who has been in love and been hurt, who respects sex, who has made mistakes and learned from them. I want a Black woman for president. I want someone with bad teeth and an attitude, someone who has eaten that nasty hospital food, someone who crossdresses and has done drugs and been in therapy. I want someone who has committed civil disobedience. And I want to know why this isn't possible. I want to know why we started learning somewhere down the line that a president is always a clown: always a john and never a hooker. Always a boss and never a worker, always a liar, always a theif and never caught.

((All spelling/grammar mistakes intentional.))

What do these poets have in common? They don't write sycophantic, roman-numeral-volumed postcards to God. They don't get all "love-ity-love-love" either. I get the sense they imagine their audience and want to comfort them. They are so good at it they even have the ability to comfort us with scariness. Sadness too. I think that is a powerful magic. They don't just write poetry either; they are playwrights and painters and singers and novelists.

How can we help them out? I guess we keep on needing them, even if it's kind of a secret. If the poets handed out anonymous comment cards for us shy poetry lovers to fill out so they could get a better idea of what we needed, I would direct them to the Osbourne Brothers' bluegrass classic, "Rocky Top." They say in two lines what poets and writers "Anna Karenina" themselves to death to convey, about a girl who's "wild as a mink, but sweet as soda pop/I still dream about that." If those lines were written about me I could lie down and die. It is perfection. Uncool Perfection.

My Flaming Hamster Wheel of Panic About Publicly Discussing Poetry in This Respected Forum -Neko Case

Close friendships, Gandhi says, are dangerous, because "friends react on one another" and through loyalty to a friend one can be led into wrong-doing. This is unquestionably true. Moreover, if one is to love God, or to love humanity as a whole, one cannot give one's preference to any individual person. This again is true, and it marks the point at which the humanistic and the religious attitude cease to be reconcilable. To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others. The autobiography leaves it uncertain whether Gandhi behaved in an inconsiderate way to his wife and children, but at any rate it makes clear that on three occasions he was willing to let his wife or a child die rather than administer the animal food prescribed by the doctor. It is true that the threatened death never actually occurred, and also that Gandhi - with, one gathers, a good deal of moral pressure in the opposite direction - always gave the patient the choice of staying alive at the price of committing a sin: still, if the decision had been solely his own, he would have forbidden the animal food, whatever the risks might be. There must, he says, be some limit to what we will do in order to remain alive, and the limit is well on this side of chicken broth. This attitude is perhaps a noble one, but, in the sense which - I think - most people would give to the word, it is inhuman. The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals. No doubt alcohol, tobacco, and so forth, are things that a saint must avoid, but sainthood is also a thing that human beings must avoid. There is an obvious retort to this, but one should be wary about making it. In this yogi-ridden age, it is too readily assumed that "non-attachment" is not only better than a full acceptance of earthly life, but that the ordinary man only rejects it because it is too difficult: in other words, that the average human being is a failed saint. It is doubtful whether this is true. Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings. If one could follow it to its psychological roots, one would, I believe, find that the main motive for "non-attachment" is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual, is hard work. But it is not necessary here to argue whether the other-worldly or the humanistic ideal is "higher". The point is that they are incompatible. One must choose between God and Man, and all "radicals" and "progressives," from the mildest Liberal to the most extreme Anarchist, have in effect chosen Man.

-George Orwell, "Reflections on Gandhi"

If music is dying, musicians are killing it. Composers are the ones decomposing it. We are as responsible as anyone--although we'd love not to admit it. We lash out at "The Industry", blaming things like corporate structure for our shitty music--but we are the ones making it. We open the box they've given us and jump in, wrap ourselves up, and even lick the stamp. Why? Insecurity--the need for acceptance--maybe even money. We're not thinking about our music, just how it looks. One would rather have the warm tongue of a critic licking his asshole than the tongue of his spouse. It gives him a sense of validity and power. He seems to defy gravity. Maybe it is because he doesn't know what the hell else to do. He sees it coming--but freezes with panic like a deer in the headlights. Don't laugh--I've done it and you probably have too. And it has undoubtedly effected out music. (But have we learned anything from it?)

We know that we are mostly a lot of slobbering babies who need constant stroking. We realize also in the moral order of society, we occupy positions similar to the thief, pimp, or peeping tom. We know that even if one has the pride of a bull, it is hard enough just to remain focused in this world. It gives us milliona upon millions of images--distractions--all saying the same thing at the same time: DO NOT THINK. If your fantasy and desire give you migraines, how easy it is to forget them when there is so much to look at. Our creations die quickly when abandoned like this.

Do we realize that we are eating our young? It seems the passion that moves us is accompanied by an incredible urge to squash it. It is as quick as a fucking reflex--a conditioned response. It it a sexual problem? A puritanical one? The most intense and convincing music achieves a sexual level of expression, but what we normally feel is frigidity and limpness. It is just too easy for an artist to 'socialize' his desires when life tells him cardboard is OK. You should be ashamed of yourself! What is your fucking problem? If you don't come out, sooner or later you will die in there. Use chunks of yourself. Bodily fluids. Look left and right. Sift through others' belongings. Borrow. Steal. And try to achieve some sort of pleasure while doing it. This excitement should increase and intensify when you visualize it being shared by a number of people. Think about it. If it comes from inside you, it is automatically valid--it just may or may not be good. Because if it is not communicating in some way, its pleasure is as short-lived as a quick fuck in the back room. It doesn't mean shit. The labor of many composers is to construct elaborate walls of sound--but we often forget to leave a window or door to crawl out of. ow can we survive in these clever little rooms? We must eat our creation or we will starve.

At this point, we have heard what we wanted to hear--our ears have shut down. We've resigned as slaves to our own gluttony. But if we have boarded up our learning environment, our only way out is to teach what we know. Will they listen? Why should they? Because they need you as much as you need them. You can save them from being swallowed up by the world--they can save you from being swallowed up by the world. Young and old players should be seeking each other out and using each other. They should develope a healthy exchange of smut--and learn to wear each other's masks. In this kind of environment, incredible things can happen. Music can emerge that is athletic and personal. Music that is riddled with contradictions--impossibilities. And that is the shit that can defy gravity.
- Mike Patton

Thought for the Month
18 Brahe, 36 Tranquility

By Robert Anton Wilson

I've recently noticed "as if for the first time" that when people pray they always look "upward" -- i.e. perpendicular to whatever place they're standing -- or kneeling or groveling. I deduce that they conceive of their "god" as topologically isomorphic to a huge donut, about a thousand miles wider than Earth.

[Of course, if people ever pray at the north or south poles, this would have to change; then "god" would become isomorphic to a hollow sphere.]

When I raised this issue in a blog recently, Paul Krasner asked "Does this mean that the pledge of allegiance should be changed to 'one nation inside god'?"

Not necessarily. Although the Bible and Koran always speak of their god as "above," Christians, Jews and Moslems can either accept what their rituals imply -- a donut god -- or return to a flat Earth....

Giambatista Vico, "the father of sociology", suggested in The New Science that Thunder historically underlies the "god" idea; the Noisy Thing roaring in the sky , seemingly in rage, had to be appeased. Sometimes lightning came from that roaring monster, and sometimes lightning killed somebody. Hence Zeus bronnton [Zeus the thunderer], Jupiter, another thunder god; Thor, Donner, whose very name means thunder; etc.... and Yahweh..... and Allah...... Joyce uses this god=thunder equation repeatedly in Finnegans Wake [which drove me to read Vico...]

I have also observed that thunder on the sound-track -- signalling oncoming tragedy or horror -- appears in films as diverse as those of Orson Welles, James Whale, Howard Hawks, Wes Craven, Monty Python etc etc.... Listen for it and note how bloody often it pops up...... especially in thrillers....

The monotheistic idea implies a cruel and grumpy old electric donut surrounding Earth and ever threatening it.
I think this explains the "structural unconscious" or inarticulate neurosemantics of Bozo, Ariel Sharon and Osama bin Laden equally. They're all heaping up human sacrifices, as at Stonehenge, to Him Who Thunders From On High.

I was obviously born to draw better than most people, just as the widow Berman and Paul Slazinger were obviously born to tell stories better than most people can. Other people are obviously born to sing and dance or explain the stars in the sky or do magic tricks or be great leaders or athletes, and so on.

I think that could go back to the time when people had to live in small groups of relatives-maybe fifty or a hundred people at the most. And evolution or God or whatever arranged thing genetically, to keep the little families going, to cheer them up, so that they could all have somebody to tell stories around the campfire at night, and somebody else to paint pictures on the walls of the caves, and somebody else who wasn't afraid of anything and so on.

That's what I think. And of course a scheme like that doesn't make sense anymore, because simply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world's champions.

The entire planet can get along nicely now with maybe a dozen champion performers in each area of human giftedness. A moderately gifted person has to keep his or her gifts all bottled up until, in a manner of speaking, he or she gets drunk at a wedding and tap dances of the coffee table like Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers. We have a name for him or her. We call him or her an "exhibitionist."

How do we reward such an exhibitionist? We say to him or her the next morning, "Wow! Were you ever drunk last night!"
-Kurt Vonnegut Bluebeard

12 Reasons Why Gays Shouldn't Be Allowed To Marry

1. Homosexuality is not natural. Of course eyeglasses, polyester, and birth control are.

2. Heterosexual marriages are valid because they produce children. Infertile couples and old people can't legally get married because the world needs more children.

3. Obviously, gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

4. Straight marriage will be less meaningful if Gay marriage is allowed, since Britney Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage was meaningful.

5. Heterosexual marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are property, blacks can't marry whites, and divorce is illegal.

6. Gay marriage should be decided by people, not the courts, because the majority-elected legislatures, not courts, have historically protected the rights of the minorities.

7. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire counrty. That's why we have only one religion in America.

8. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

9. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

10. Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why single parents are forbidden to raise children.

11. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and we could never adapt to new social norms because we haven't adapted to things like cars or longer lifespans.

12. Civil unions, providing most of the same benefits as marriage with a different name are better, because a "separate but equal" institution is always constitutional. Separate schools for African-Americans worked just as well as separate marriages for gays and lesbians will.

When Saliva Dries
When all your workshop roman tongues run dry,

are you a writer yet?

25 workshops later and you've nodded your head and inwardly shook it no. Thought hard about everything though.

You writing yet?

Two years down comments upon comments shared, read, envoloped, nagged at the back of your mind "capitalize when proper, commas here, rhyme, don't rhyme."

write yet?

Feeling tired, can't write anymore, all dried up, no one seems to read you, " writing gets me no where," gee maybe this isn't for me.

yet?

You think you've written something? Really. Have you.

-A post in the deviantart forums by inennui.

National Day
For me, April 9 was a blur of faces distorted with fear, horror and tears. All over Baghdad you could hear shelling, explosions, clashes, fighter planes, the dreaded Apaches and the horrifying tanks heaving down streets and highways. Whether you loved Saddam or hated him, Baghdad tore you to pieces. Baghdad was burning. Baghdad was exploding… Baghdad was falling. April 9 is the American Occupation Day. I can understand why Bush was celebrating- I can’t understand how anyone who values independence would celebrate it.

April 9, I woke to the sound of a huge explosion at around 6 am, only 2 hours after I had fallen into a fitful sleep. I was sitting up stiff in bed, even before I had my eyes open. The room was warm, but I sat in bed, still in my jeans of the night before, my teeth chattering, clutching at the covers, groping my consciousness for sanity.

We had been sleeping in our clothes for the last few nights with pockets stuffed with identification papers and money because we kept expecting the house to come crumbling down around us... we wanted to be out the door as soon as it was necessary.

I listened to the noise that had become as common as crickets in the summer- the constant drone of helicopters, and fighter planes... explosions and shelling.

We spent the early hours of that morning watching eachother silently and solemnly- the only human voice in our midst was coming from the radio, crackling and fading. It told us what we already knew- what we had been dreading for what felt like an eternity- the American tanks were in Baghdad. There had been some resistance, but the tanks were all over Baghdad.

And that was the start of 'National Day'...

April 9 was a day of harried neighbors banging on the door, faces so contorted with anxiety they were almost beyond recognition. "Do we leave? Do we evacuate?! They sound so close..."

It was a day of shocked, horrified relatives, with dilated pupils and trembling lips, dragging duffel bags, spouses and terrified children needing shelter. All of us needing comfort that no one could give.

It was the day we sat at home, bags packed, fully dressed, listening for the tanks or the missile that would send us flying out of the house and into the streets. We sat calculating the risks of traveling from one end of Baghdad to the other or staying in our area and waiting for the inevitable.

It was the day I had to have 'the talk' with my mother. The day she sat me down in front of her and began giving me 'instructions'- just in case.
"In case of what, mom?”
"In case something happens to us..."
"Like what, like maybe we get separated?"
"Fine, ok. Yes. Separated, for example... you know where the money is, you know where the papers are..."
Yes, I know. But it won't matter if anything happens to you, or dad, or E.

It was a day of stray dogs howling in the streets with fear, flocks of birds flying chaotically in the sky- trying to escape the horrible noises and smoke.

It was a day of charred bodies in blackened vehicles.

It was a grayish-yellow day that burns red in my memory... a day that easily rises to the surface when I contemplate the most horrible days of my life.

That was the 'National Day' for me. From most accounts, it was the same for millions of others.

Maybe come April 9, 2004, Bremer and the Governing Council can join Bush in the White House to celebrate the fall of Baghdad... because we certainly won't be celebrating it here.
From the blog of an Iraqi woman using the alias of Riverbend. Read it here.

A Sermon on Ethics and Love

One day Mal-2 asked the messanger spirit Saint Gulik to approach the Goddess and request Her prescence for some desperate advice. Shortly afterwards, the radio came on by itself, and an ethereal female Voice said YES?

"O! Eris! Blessed Mother of Man! Queen of Chaos! Daughter of Discord! Concubine of Confusion! O! Exquisite Lady, I beseech You to lift a heavy burden from my heart!"

WHAT BOTHERS YOU MAL? YOU DON'T SOUND WELL.

"I am filled with fear and tormented with terrible visions of pain. Everywhere people are hurting one another, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder other groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war. O, woe."

WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THAT, IF THAT IS WHAT YOU WANT TO DO?

"But nobody wants it! Everybody hates it."

OH. WELL, THEN STOP.

At which moment she turned herself in to an aspirin comercial and left the Polyfather stranded alone with his species.

An excerpt from Principia Discordia, which is written by everybody. Hail Eris! Fnord.

Where is Her Grave?
Do you remember why we're fighting?
Why we tear our selves apart in a civil war where the blood spilled can't be seen,
and the wounds will never heal?
Do you remember why we've isolated ourselves from the entire world just to get out point across?
I sure as fuck don't.
What I do remember is why we shouldn't be fighting,
why we should be moving forward into the future as one unified people,
everyone together,
why we should take our mistakes and the mistakes of others and learn from them,
rather than profit from them,
and why we should never forget.

September 11th brought about an almost sickeningly commercial response of patriotism and star-powered, four hour long ego-thons. Do you think that those same stars, who protest the war today, remember why we are fighting, and why we shouldn't be fighting? Both sides have completely lost sight of the very reason that we're fighting internally in the first place, and are instead bickering and killing without any hope of resolve.

We weren't fighting, at least originally, about oil and fighting the government because saying fuck off to authority is the trendy thing to do. Nay, we were fighting because when we saw those massive casualties and felt a part of ourselves go dead, we never wanted to see that happen to anyone ever again. Ever. But now that both sides both have lost sight of their original point of argument, this whole thing becomes pointless. But what isnt pointless is why the debate started in the first place, because without that we're accomplishing nothing, and blood spilled simply for the sake of it is in some ways worse than blood spilled for an ill reason, and that's why we should never forget.

Thanks for your time.

-DA
circa the deviantART account digitalalchemy

Deaf Girl in the School Cafeteria
We're all strange here.

Being deaf just makes you feel more strange around the "normal people", the ones who can hear.

They always say to me, "But you're missing out on so much"...

And I say right back to them, "And you don't get it. Being deaf makes you pay attention more to the little details you'd never give a second thought to if you could hear."

There's no interruptions to my thoughts. absolutely.
It's total peace, pure.
circa the deviantART account sunlessmoon

Recently I've heard people walking around claiming that they are god. . .You ask someone a question, "why is that?" They reply, "Because I'm god."

This got me to thinking. . . Why do these people harbour these absurd delusions of being god? The answer was simple enough to find. . .

I recalled many theories. The first being that god controls the destiny of man, an old solid christian belief. Then another theory crossed my mind. . . Man is in control of his own destiny, this is a younger, popular, and entirely valid theory. The idea that man is in control of his own destiny is a strong belief in the scientologist church. After these two theories and their roots processed in my mind. . . Another thought formed, I recalled a lecture I once attended with my sister and my mother, they had no where else to stick me, this lecture posed the theory that all religions are basically one and the same, they all come from the same place.

Adding it all up in my mind, I then formed the following theory of my own (disregard it entirely if you must, I can't stop you):

God controls the destiny of man, yet man (for the most part) is in control of his own destiny. . . Therefore it is safe to assume that god is man and man is god.

Loopoles in this theory:

-God is perfect, man is not. . .
-Creation
-Exsistance itself


Sealing those loopholes. . . First. . .Man is the most perfect animal. . Because it is imperfect. We learn from our mistakes, some of us find beauty where others see none. . . It's a balance. . What some lack, other make up for, in abundance. Second, creation. . . We're here. . . Do we honestly need to know how we came to be randomly shat into exsistance? I think not. . .

Finally, exsistance on a whole. . . It's the longest most confusing chain reaction in the history of itself. Everything plays off of everything else. Because I do something here. . . Something good or bad will happen somewhere else or down the road. . . We create these problems, and the idea of god is just a scapegoat. A mer crutch for the imperfections we choose not to deal with.

The very imperfections which make us godly and more perfect.

"Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart"

circa the deviantART user wordsareuseless