we all want people laughing at our wake

I've Mostly Moved

2006-12-08T09:28:00.000-08:00

yep... faithful readers...

{hahaha who does he think he's kidding?}

my particular brand of reality is now simply a part
of the granduer available for dissemination at..

Lewd Cognoscenti

of course if you've surfed here from there, these could be considered
the archives... such as they are, and I'll probably be updating this beast
sporadically

or so I hope...

peace,
finite jester

clutter

2006-04-30T01:45:00.000-07:00

every once in awhile i just think that something that i've written
is actually decent...
this is one of those moments...
of course if you are here.... you are probably worse off then i am...
i mean fer fuck's sake...
i may have written it...
but you're attempting to read the shit...

my grandfather was resurrected today,

in all manner of momentarily, a whole string of instants

he stood behind me as i stared at the tangible remnant

of my firmest memory of that old man

the night before i had been out late, making an ass out of myself in a circle of people composed primarily of those whom i know in too many ways to quickly explain, there was a bottle of mescal making slow rotations and i had a drum in my lap; i'm certain that i sang, perhaps even well enough to frighten away the less foolish people whom i did not know

i remember cracking walnuts

in the closely cluttered atmosphere of that barn

i remember the oil that would be pressed out

onto a dusty floor

so far as i am able to report, my grandfather had only one use for that aged vice on the oft repaired table just inside the barn, for all i ever knew, the only function of that tool was to crack all these black walnuts which littered the ground

a cousin of mine today,

cigarette in one hand - beer in the other

during a conversation 'bout them ol' boys

living on the fringe

carting about scrap metal,

of which grandpa's barn had yielded quite a pile

to be collected and exchanged for currency;

told me he was up there laughing at us,

because we wound up having to deal with all his shit -

i got home at two a.m. and having had the benefit of not needing to drive, i was out there - out there to the point where i do believe i quoted from finnegan's wake, and i know the period of time that involved my transport home was really just an impressionistic blur of neon wars somehow waged against all these beautiful people that i am so blessed to know

i showed up

about fifteen minutes past the time

which had been told to me

i showed up

hung-over as hell

and i found that a congregation -

of what i can only term honest folk,

ol' boys from the church who've bought my grandparents land

already had an amazing amount of the barn cleaned out

fifth wheel;

damn -

another revelation regarding the situation where; given a society that could actually embrace the human as the human wishes to be, the joke is that;

given that ideal society . . .

i would not be

(something of a specialized sequence of lines right there [i most especially hope that my father understands how i can write that, feel that, understand that, and smile at that . . . in my own odd way] the rest of you can cope) and yet here i am . . .

i showed up -

(employ your own

suitable rhymes

and reasons)

it's odd, my grandfather,

i remember feeling like such an outcast at his funeral

i remember that the entire experience of his death -

the fact of being able to watch (from what i felt to be a position of detatchment)

this unwieldy, never fully understood,

concept of family go through grief -

inspired me

to the first story

i would still dare to call literary . . .

(laughing as i label it)

and i never knew the man

who ultimately had inspired it -

which was part of the story, yet i knew that more then ever today,

as i wandered around casting a covetous eye across the piles

of detritus -

which today, in all manner of moments,

resurrected my grandfather

and i saw him clearer

than i ever had

standing in front of that vice

with the half-shell of a black walnut

sitting behind the toolbox,

having pawed through the relics of things

which meant mostly nothing to me

i listened to my aunts and uncles,

cousins and such,

speak about objects and how they link -

well no; not quite

but as the truckloads flew out of the loft

and the piles that had been pushed out in haste

were picked at and plundered,

i thought i saw how it all works

yes, that again - the night before i'd staggered away into the darkness; drink having sunk into the drunk . . . and needing egress; and what with it being the sort of place where you can actually see stars, i stepped into the cold world that exists when the winds are strong and the hour is late;

it can be dreadful away from the fire

when i turned back and looked

when i started walking -

returning to warmth;

it can be a beautiful thing

oh no... have i forgotten that i'm supposed to be carving out archives

2006-01-27T01:53:00.000-08:00

yep... right here on the ol' blogger...
gotta find space to be brilliant
gotta find time for the fingers
to begin their intoxicating/ed
dance across the keyboard
as world-dream experience time begins it's
trance of dancing with me...

bah~!!
i d'not care what ya
silly fuckas think of me

excepting when i do...
like now
when i turned from the flow of
alcoholic debauchery
to post
this
stupidity

testing.....

2006-01-18T21:21:00.000-08:00

test test test

bugada boo!!

2005-12-20T16:17:00.000-08:00

holy crap I cleaned my apartment!!!

Free-Time On My Hands

2005-12-12T12:34:00.000-08:00

Classes for this semester are now over, and a stretch of time where I don't have any papers that I have to write, nothing I have to read, and I don't know what to do with myself.

Plans are currently as follows:

Read a couple of books; currently working on Pynchons V for the second time. I read it for the first time a goodly number of years ago, think I'll enjoy it even more this time.

Write a couple of odd little notions that have been bugging my brain; namely a defense of blogging as a means of stimulating creativity and some sort of discourse on internet pornography as it relates to human sexuality and the ongoing repression of all things related. I mean despite all the little starlets we've got running around in various states of undress the american mind-set is still far more comfortable with decapitations than naked bodies.

I'd also like to clean my apartment.. (probably not going to happen in any-way but a half-assed one.

And finally, celebrate the holiday season with the consumption of every alcoholic beverage that comes within reach of my grubby little hands.

Happy Holidays!!!

finite jester

2005-12-06T00:12:00.000-08:00

on a search for words
words words words
ways to wrap this wound
that i can't find words for...

god that's horrible...
just thought i'd share...

had a poetic impulse a moment ago, but it fell apart when it tried to go to paper, so i says to myself, ach.. just write something stupid for the blog... and that's it.. wow.. i really shouldn't post that

Free Advice... (and we all know how dangerous that is)

2005-12-05T15:30:00.000-08:00

if you're planning on running out to check your mailbox in the winter...

and if you're currently wearing a pair of bowling shoes...

...either;

A : walk, don't run

or

B : change your shoes

otherwise you might slip and crack your knee against the icy concrete, which doesn't tend to improve anyones day and will probably leave a bruise.

Random Ranting, without a Real Reason

2005-12-05T14:22:00.000-08:00

so last night I got to play with one of my friend's kids. the jester got an invite for martinis and upon arrival, everyone in the house of two children was, go figure, busy.

so the jester has been watching a bunch of old muppet show episodes lately, and this seemed like a perfect opportunity to act foolish, lemme tell you, under the influence of a lovely little pain-pill and some alcohol there's nothing better than to have a couple of kids running around you, hyper as all get out because there's a fresh human there to gabber at. I've got one child hanging off my shoulders, the other trying to climb up my leg, I'm singing Christmas songs with off-key conviction, and there for a couple of moments, nothing else mattered. Easy to look at it as an excuse to release your inner childish nature, but the jester has never had a hard time releasing that side of his personality.

just one of those magic moments, when you've got the undivided attention of a set of eyes that have only just seen their second birthday, when you're the one responsible for that grin, that awesome and incomprable curving of lips that doesn't bear the ironic detatchment you can see in the grins of everyone who understands how this wonderful world of ours works. kids don't laugh at how you dance.. (well they do, but there's no malice in it) kids don't laugh at how you sing... (well they might, but they're just as likely to join in)

and you know, the real impetus for writing here is gone... i've lost that moment, when i was reading "Green Eggs and Ham" and everything seemed fine and dandy. For just a moment there, the world was the wonderful place we'd all like it to be...

and knowing their parents; good, caring individuals, the jester just has to smile... the magical mystery tour is going to keep on rolling, maybe the next generation will get it right.

Fortune Cookie...

2005-12-05T14:02:00.000-08:00

The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.

ok, that's an odd fortune cookie... just got that one last night.

hard at work.. but durn, i love bloggin'

2005-12-01T23:33:00.000-08:00

Yep yep, the actual truth is that I'm at a momentary impasse with regard to a paper I'm writing for school, so I figured I'd piddle here...
{the jester notices that working on scholastic paper has affected his habit of not capitalizing his 'i' }

In truth I've decided that since I just got back another A on my latest paper, my notions of grade immunity were not exagerated and am hard at work on a defense of drunkeness in terms of artistic integrity...

the jester laughs...

i think i'm bringing balance back to my life

2005-11-30T22:05:00.000-08:00

oh my goodness, the jester is reading a book again.. haven't really sat down and read anything since the arrival of this here computator a little over a month ago... and that's pretty painful for me, because this year i finally decided to keep track of all the books i read, and i was on track to break the 200 book mark, until of course this whole internet thing knocked me right off the pace...

at any rate, i'm currently reading the newest peice of wordage from that brilliant mind who operates under the moniker of Tom Robbins... "Wild Ducks Flying Backwards"

a bunch of short peices on all manner of subjects, a few poems and what have you... the jester here places his stamp of approval on this collection of pages, for Robbins afficianados it's an absolute must read as it allows a new angle of perspective into the mind of one of our most brilliant and fearless word-smiths....

yep yep...

So yesterday was my birthday...

2005-11-29T12:05:00.000-08:00

and what did the jester do?

had lunch with my dad... called in to work, went off and got good and twisted, then passed out while watching the first season of the muppet show that i'd just got my hands on.

unfortunately one of my friends was planning on stopping by, but was unable to wake me from my stupor in front of the computer screen, so he just left a bottle of cognac in the door.

i'm really not a big fan of birthdays anymore...

you turn twenty-one and it's off to the bar to drink until you're clutching onto any solid object to maintain your identity as an upright human and flinging bits of the nights debauchery out of your mouth into the porcelein receptacle, or the street or floor or anywhere else...

but that loses its thrill pretty quick, and now that i'm almost thirty {sigh} it all seems like a bunch of garbage, i'd rather get painfully introspective and make resolutions regarding my general relationship with society that I'll forget to write down because i'd rather watch the muppet show.

sorry gentle reader... the jester knows he's been channeling a bit of the crotchety old poop-head lately, 'tis the season.

don't like christmas, not a big fan of thanksgiving, don't really like my birthday anymore...

but despite the whine that's been flowing freely as an undercurrent beneath all my posts, i still love life and can't wait until this little back-slide into angst is over and i can be my asinine, absurd self once again...

the laughter of the damned will ring out loud and clear once again

the jester sighs and goes back to brainstorming for his paper.

quote for the night

2005-11-27T18:52:00.000-08:00

To understand just one life,
you have to swallow the world.

-salman rushdie

A Fun Arts and Crafts Project {creative ways to freak out the squares Vol. 1}

2005-11-26T16:45:00.000-08:00

ok, so these are a pair of pants that i made whilst living in connecticut, for awhile there they were my favorite pants for going on walkabout, an absolutely great way to get a whole smack-load of people staring in your general direction with looks of disbelief, bemusement, you know the whole spectrum of human reactions possible when confronted by a loony in a pair of heavily decorated pants. the jester has plans to make another pair, this time with the text broken up into smaller, more easily read slogans and what not, i still want to enlist the aid of a friend with a digital camera to capture some of those reactions mentioned above. i think the high-point of my pants was the time i answered the door to find a couple of guys from the 'jesus-christ church of latter-day saints' standing in front of me, wrong address, but i did manage to engage them in a bit of conversation, after all, i did have a bible quote on the front of the pants, 'judge not lest ye be judged' to be exact... that was fun...

so yeah... take an old pair of pants, a permanant marker and express yourself... certain to be a hit at parties, unless of course you happen to attend those parties where everyone is wearing... well whatever the hell it is the 'in-crowd' has decided is the uniform of choice these days...

more pants photos fer... {creative ways to freak out the squares Vol. 1}

2005-11-26T16:40:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving

2005-11-26T00:11:00.000-08:00

Well after my early a.m. walkabout thanksgiving morning, the jester passed out.

And when at last I awoke, it was about 5 pm, and a good friend was pounding on my door, hung-over as all get out i answered and was informed that he was taking me home to have thanksgiving dinner.

People are awesome.

So, instead of a lonely thanksgiving meal of beans and rice, the jester got a meal with all the fixings, got to hang with friends and their kids... {why anyone would let me around their kids is a mystery, especially as i must have smelled of a distillery} truly great. And although I already thanked them I'll do it here on the blog again.. thank you.

When I got back to the apartment I got a call from the ex, see post 'Thus begins another series of pre-dawn posts', and it was the ex whom the jester is still missing. Turns out she's getting married.

Ouch.

The real problem here is I can't tell if I'm honestly concerned that she's rushing into something that serious in such a short period of time, or just intensely jealous that she's found someone else to love.

Who the hell knows.

At any rate, the jester is stuck in a weird head-space and doesn't quite see a way out.. oh well, a couple of days and my inner mechanisms will be back up and running in their version of normalacy.. or so I hope. Until then.. send a happy thought or two the jester's way...

Oh yeah, birthday's coming up on monday and that doesn't do much for my mood either... don't have any plans, blegh... I should just stop posting until after my birthday's done... because I don't want to be a whiny little turd.

At least at this age I've learned how to deal with momentary bouts of depression in a healthy manner......

a walk

2005-11-24T09:50:00.000-08:00

almost a white out...
absolutely beautiful...

left the apartment sometime after 8 am... skull still peeled back from a full night.. almost 10 am now.. smoking a cig.. drinking a beer.. thinking bout bed.. but it may be too late for all that.. better perhaps to just stay up..

shot a full roll of film out there, should be able to get it developed next week and up on the ol' blog soon after..

people in their cars were all staring at the fool out in the wind.. but damn i feel great..

it's on

2005-11-24T08:21:00.000-08:00

8:19 am... thanksgiving morning

been snowing all night.. and i've been up.

got my jester hat on, and a stuffed monkey named ishmael velcroed to my neck,
i'm going out to take pictures of the snow-storm, but with my manual camera, not the digital so it may be awhile before those pictures come back.. but i'll get 'em scanned and posted on here eventually.. trust me.. would a man wearing a monkey lie to you?

oh yeah.. heavy construction going on now!

2005-11-24T07:16:00.000-08:00

ummm yeah.. some changes and stuff... why am i posting this...

ok... just to defend my integrity... random finnegans wake quote

come back under all my eyes like my sapphire chaplets of ringarosary I will say for you to the All michael and solve qui pu while the dovedoves pick my mouthbuds (msch! msch!) with nurse Madge, my linkingclass girl, she's a fright, poor old dutch, in her sleeptalking when I paint the measles on her and mudstuskers to make her a man.

don't blame me... blame Joyce...

that's the top of pg 459 in my copy

An Attempt At Dissecting Internal Beliefs

2005-11-24T06:24:00.000-08:00

so i'm in a class where i have no fear with regard to grade recieved... and it's become {much like this blog} an opportunity... anything else i say will be rdiculous, considering the state i'm in...

finite jester...

Without Symbol

On a shelf in my apartment, in a small box which depicts a gargoyle perched on a sarcophagus, I have a pendulum in a black velvet pouch. It sits among the other tangible mementos of those things that defined my life, and represents the closest thing I have ever known to faith. It was my mother’s.

It’s a simple thing really, this pendulum; a stainless steel chain with a ball at one end and a small stone of opaque green encased in a conic cage of Celtic lines at the other. You hold the ball, and as the cone swings, its movement will tell you things. My mother believed that it was a ‘gateway’ through which the spirit world helped her to heal others. So far as I understand it, the spirits would move through her and use the pendulum as a sort of focal point to allow pain and suffering, all that negativity which caused illness and misfortune, to dissipate.

As human beings, we all need to believe in something larger than ourselves, it’s a sort of fundamental requirement for the human creature. It really doesn’t matter whether this belief is in government, society, science, human nature, or something that can only be defined as spiritual. We all believe in something, but it’s the last one that’s been really successful, the idea of God has been an enormously popular one for humanity through the ages. The idea of God, as it has been understood by billions of brains and expressed in so many diverse tongues and by so many myriad names, has been an underlying concept of the human experience for at least as long as our records will allow.

Of my mother’s children, it’s no surprise that I’m the one who has her pendulum today. As the youngest by 13 years and the product of her second marriage, I had the benefit of a mother who had reinvented herself. My sisters were brought up in what I can only understand as a fairly conventional familial structure; their mom cooked and stayed at home to do- well, whatever it was that mothers did in those scenarios. By the time I was old enough to understand her, my mother had been through a divorce, graduated college, started a career, and given birth to three daughters and a son. She was forty-two when I was born in 1977, and she had me at home without the benefit of drugs or a doctor.

When I think of god, I think of a safety net, a hard and fast idea where our minds can find rest from the incessant questioning of existence that the mind is apt to engage in. The idea of god is comforting; it makes life easier to believe that there is something out there that has control, especially since as humans we seem to have so little.

I’ve got her pendulum; I’m the one who went to awareness classes with her. We’d drink herbal tea and breathe the incense, we’d sit and listen to those minimalist organ tones of new-age music and meditate to open our chakras; we would visualize our pineal glands, find them deep in the center of our brains, and give them a light shake. It was never quite clear what the pineal gland did, it was just a lump of matter that the scientific community had a loose enough understanding of to allow the new-age crowd to rush in with their own explanations. With my mother I learned how to affect it, whatever that effect was. The most important thing I remember learning was how to visualize a person surrounded by love and light, it was how I was I taught to pray, to visualize myself surrounded by love and light. That was as close as I could come to interceding with divinity.

I think we need something more exceptional than ourselves to take the pressure off. If there is something out there that has a plan, or if there is an underlying order here that can be understood by reason; that means we fit somewhere in the grand scheme of things. If we were created, by design or in accordance with logical laws, then life can have meaning. To believe that your life has meaning allows you to live it, for me the alternative is too painful to be contemplated for extended periods.

To my mother, god was everywhere and everything. Each individual atom in each individual thing in this great cosmic stew of planets and quarks[i] was part of some great amalgam that the English language represents best as God. As humans, our gift of consciousness would allow us to partake of powers most would reserve for God himself, but only if we could remember the simple truth of what we are.

Beautiful really, as far as philosophical ideas go, tidy even; my principle concern is for the limitless possibility it affords. To be a part of this amalgam, to grok[ii] the amalgam itself you simply must know your place in it. It is all well and good to penetrate the webs of illusion from which this life is woven and to peer into the infinite oneness that lies beneath, but you cannot forget that you are living this life. The problem is out of the infinite possibilities of experience you need to pick who and what you are.

When I was growing up my mother sold real-estate. She would read new-age books out loud with my father at night before they retired for the evening. I learned about near-death experiences, past lives and the fallacies of western medicine. I received acupuncture treatments to clear up my allergies, and one of my mother’s friends guided me on a journey into my past lives. I grew up believing that I could do anything, and I wanted to save the world. What I wouldn’t give to be able to talk to the person I was then, because today I have a hard time understanding exactly what I thought I was going to accomplish with my life when I was still an adolescent, and completely lost in the heady buzz of idealism at it’s most fiery.

When I was twenty-two years old I moved to Connecticut. I’d been given the opportunity to run a grass-roots environmental campaign, and I was off to save the world. It was only a few months after my departure that my mother moved to Arizona. I had no idea at the time, but when I was running off to save the planet, my mother was running to save herself.

She quit selling real-estate and was making what she needed to live by performing spiritual healings. It didn’t surprise me, nor did the fact that she was becoming more and more incomprehensible. As far I gave it thought, I assumed that she’d found a niche in the new-age community and was just about as happy as she could be.

The years passed, and I was back in Kalamazoo when I got a phone call from my sister. Two days later I was on a plane to Arizona.

When I think of faith, I think of something that gives you the strength to endure what would otherwise be unendurable.

My favorite picture of mother is from that visit, she’s wearing her smile, the one that everyone who knew her got to see so often they’d sometimes wonder if she ever took it off, it’s the look of someone who is completely and unabashedly happy. My mother referred to the get-together where the picture was taken as her wake, and she was pleased as all get out that she got to attend. It was the first time in probably ten years that all of her children had been assembled in one place. What better reason to celebrate could you want? Never mind the facts behind why we’d been assembled.

You could tell that she’d slowed down, but it was only slightly. We took walks, she laughed and wanted to take me to all her favorite shops, she wanted to introduce me to all her friends. She was incredibly vibrant despite the fact that, to put it bluntly, I could smell my mother’s body rotting as she walked around smiling and radiating love.

As far as I’ve been able to figure out she never saw anyone the western world would recognize as a doctor. My mother found the lump right around the time that I was packing my bags, and had been without the benefit of chemo or indeed any accepted form of treatment for almost four years when I saw her for the last time.

Leaving Arizona, I tried to comfort my sister with the thought that if anyone in the world was prepared to fight cancer with their will, it was our mother. Now I have her pendulum in a box, and her ashes have been spread across the shores of Lake Michigan.

It’s taken me a couple of years to fully come to terms with the way my mother’s life ended, but now I can honestly say that it had to happen that way. I treasure my last memories of her, and would never trade them for scenes in a hospital. My mother didn’t belong there; she would have had to trample her ideals to let the doctors touch her. She died like she lived, by her terms. While I can think of nothing better, I can’t escape this feeling that her faith let her down.

There are nights when I go looking for the safety of faith and find nothing that will comfort me. My esoteric notions of god, in as much as they are understood, are understood intellectually. I can best conceive of god as a social construct or an unknowable force. As a social construct I have only my outsider’s opinion on the varieties of dogmatic postulates which predate what I consider the age of reason. As an unknowable force god is precisely that. Unknowable, an entity I cannot sufficiently affect with anthropomorphism to take comfort from. My mother’s pendulum rarely leaves its resting place, and I am without a symbol when my mind goes looking for god.

[i] Quarks are one of the two basic constituent of matter in the Standard Model of particle physics…the notion of mass for quarks is complicated by the fact that quarks cannot be found free in nature.

[ii] Grok (pronounced grock) is a verb roughly meaning "to understand completely" or more formally "to achieve complete intuitive understanding". It was coined by science fiction writer Robert Heinlein in his novel Stranger in a Strange Land, where it is part of the fictional Martian language and introduced to English speakers by a man raised by Martians.

In the Martian tongue, it literally means "to drink" but is used in a much wider context. A character in the novel (not the primary user) defines it:

"Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because we are from Earth) as color means to a blind man."

Oh #%&$, he's posting again.

2005-11-24T06:12:00.000-08:00

That's right, durn near %:)) am...
{that's 6:00 am for those of you who can't read 'drunk with finger on the shift key}
thanksgivin' day.,.. whoooo ray...

storm is raging outside and the jester has decided to found his own religion...

perks: the devout will be allowed to claim that they are the reincarnation of whomever they wish!

drawbacks: persona reincarnotia {as they shall be called} will be given out on a first come, first serve, ongoing donation war type basis, with the sole exception of Jim Morrison, whom the finite jester is was and shall be... onward towards infinity absobluepen, which does of course confer unto me the title (in perpituity) {sorry had to go for the rhyme even if i can't spell} of.... dum dum dum... dumb.

yeah but if you've been reading enough of this madness to get that then you're already in and to my dear friends i grant whichever persona reincarnotia they desire; on a first come, first serve, ongoing donation... sole exception of Jim Morrison... because y'all are alright, y'all are down w/ gee whiz and dats cool..

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!

past 6:00 am now, and i have noticed that the above 'drunk with finger on shift key was, in fact, mistranslated.. ^:)) is actually ^:)) am in 'drunk with finger on shift key and the damn joke ain't funny no more...

no more
no more

how many beers constitute to many beers for bloggin'

{really, i'm sorry to subject you nice people to this, but i so desperately want the government to subsidize my existance because of the crippling insanity that infects me, and if y'all could just play along i'm gonna get them checks rolling real soon}

the jester just laughs and laughs and laughs

and the wind is beating at the windows, the breeze finds a way past the door, crap, i really shouldn't post no more

still posting.. but why

2005-11-24T04:48:00.000-08:00

too much?

not enough?

balancing your own personal chemistry is tough... take it from me

To off-set the downer post below....

2005-11-24T01:40:00.000-08:00

this here bear's got history too... maybe i'll get around to telling that story in a different post, i fear his history might fit uncomfortably under the above header, so we'll save it for later, one day i woke up to see him wearing my hat, his look of infinite compassion gleaming in artificial eyes.. anyway, enjoy the post below.. and if you don't.. well dammit!#@!$@#

I Gave You A Picture of a freaking bear my *&^%$#@ jester hat... what more do you want from me?!?!?!?!?!

Thus begins another series of pre-dawn posts...

2005-11-24T01:25:00.000-08:00

hopefully somewhat more restrained this go round

to tell you the truth, i've been meditating on being single. farking blows, your humble author here is still not sufficiently able to cope with the fact that his latest ex is- in fact- his ex.

oh woe and meloncholy, envelop me

such a grand thing that we do...
i swear we learn our lessons on love through the mirror of hindsight alone, which is not to say that i wasn't aware of how much i loved when she was still a regular presence here. it's just that...

it's just that in the aftermath of last night's debaucheries i seem to have embarked on a meloncholy drunk and can't get my mind off someone who inspired me to all sorts of poetic heights and made the vast majority of my moments sparkle with wild irradecence

maybe it's because i jest {typo that i'll leave} 'reconciled' with a different ex, actually the one immediately preceding the girl whose absence i lament.. said reconciliation involving the reclamation of certain articles of 'my shit' and the consumption of various substances, some small talk and a viewing of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory..

{good movie by the way, Johnny Depp is brilliant, and it's a fairly sadistic reading of the old story, which the jester enjoys}

at any rate

{forgive me, i'm forever striving to find a new definiton of revelant}

spending time with the ex prior to the one whose absence is here being lamented was bizarre, especially as it took place in an apartment where i was once known to reside, and sadly said period of time would have to qualify as a low in the jester's history

which of course leads quite logically into contemplation of time spent in the presence of the female creature, and ruminations on a low simply must be offset by ruminations on the high {human consciousness seeking homeostasis as do all things} which is meditation on the ex

oddly enough the last time i saw here was the day {about a month ago} when i finally wrenched up my motivations and took her pictures down, she called out of the blue and a few hours later was standing in my apartment

i gave her back her tool shirt that i'd found a week or so before and hadn't gotten around to calling to report, and we chatted, maybe even a couple hours, felt like old times for a second, except i was sitting there, being that creature that i was when i was around her, acting in close accordance to the inner dictates of that person that i always thought i was and wanted to be, and she was there, so close.....

and out of reach

i'll turn twenty-eight in a few days and since it's now thanksgiving i guess i'm thankful that i finally found someone who could break my heart

if it can be done then that means love is real...
just wish it was still here with me

the finite jester again refuses to comment, except to say that he'll be back and in a better mood before you know it... i'm hard at work ingesting substances to insure it! ha ha

yep...

2005-11-23T05:33:00.000-08:00

furthermore it has recently come to my attention {probably what with the birthday rolling around.. yeah nothing else} that i no longer feel the need to melt my face, and go about confronting the mirrors of my conceptual self.

but twist an evening off into strange relevance with the post-neo-modern-shamanistic rituals that come without hesitation to the cat in the fool-hardy hat...

{and because i kinda feel like it i will}

relate this to the whole 'freaking out the squares' thing that one feels compelled to do after refusing to fly either east or west. of course we're all familiar with the pitfuls of conforming to non-conformity {well some of us} and that leaves this great big hollow gap where once strange guerilla theater was occuring, and i know in so many ways it is still occuring, it's just not being deciminated across wide lines of awareness...

is this good or bad?

the finite jester refuses to comment on any posts made under the influence until he is off the influence, excepting in rare occasions which he may or may not comment upon as they do or do not occur, being completely seperate issues from whatever it is that i was bloggin'bout...

the finite jester refuses his to right to start the offhand making sense

perfecting the movements

2005-11-23T05:00:00.000-08:00

when you stop your ruminations and stare at the ashtray, bleary eyed and wondering if that last cigarette you smoked actually happened... realizing that memory is a fuzzy device composed of snap-shot elements and habitual tendancies slip beneath so many of our filters...

at any rate, i'm rolling another one.

{the finite jester would here like to point out that he rolls his own cigarettes, when it comes to pot he prefers bowls}

Discordant Imagry

2005-11-23T00:14:00.000-08:00

the spider-web connecting one bathroom shelf to another are especially apparent

it's tuesday night

i will attempt to reconsitute all these image-thought dreams

but at this point it seems pointless

why does anything matter
and does it

it does
doesn't it

mercy, infect me with your omnipresent strands!!

where is that human with whom i can sit down this evening and have a seven-dimensional conversation about the enigmatic mysteries of this infected earth space

yeah, kinda joking here...

but then again the jester has always used humor as a defense mechanism

and humor is one of the few things left in this world that can honestly move us, i think if "the revolution" is actively being pushed forward in a reasonable and responsible manner, then it is occuring in the comedic genre.. comics are the only ones who can really get away with saying the truth of what's going on.. and perhaps sadly they are the only ones who are being listened to anymore

come on, laugh with us, the laughter of the damned has been ringing in our ears for so long, who are we not to laugh along...

{almost didn't want to post this.. but i did}

No Novel in November....

2005-11-22T21:13:00.000-08:00

despite my earlier enthusiasm for 'Novels in November' I have come to the perhaps belated realization that it just isn't possible for the jester to put out 50,000 words in 11 days.. just a logistic nightmare with school work and keeping you savages entertained..

plus i've been sitting here trying to get the stream o' consciousness running in between web surfing and beer-drinking, and it's just not there, i'm way to self-conscious of the fact that i'm trying something that's quite difficult.

into this we can add the fact that the next paper i have to write for the scholastic scene is whatever i want to, said liberty being more creatively crippling than anything i can think of, i simply have to many damn ideas to even dream of focusing yet.

however I sincerely hope to be able to participate in this fine and noble event next year.. if i get a start on it at the start of the month i should be able to get out 50,000 words and maybe even find time to insert something like a plot.. it's already on my calendar.

Creative Commons

2005-11-22T20:02:00.000-08:00

Yep... now all this madness is legally open for the public to play with as they wish.. provided they don't try to make any money off it without contacting me first.

I'm not egotistical enough to believe that there is anybody out there who is going to make use of that ever so tempting offer.. {although The Truth About Chickens would make a great movie} I really did it because I have a deep and abiding respect for the idealogy behind Creative Commons,
and because I'm sitting here waiting for the madness of the evening to begin..

walking to class in the bracing wind

2005-11-22T16:14:00.000-08:00

beautiful thing really...

ye ol' jester is a big fan of bipedal transport. nothing better to clear your head, gain a new perspective or simply to view the world. it is a form of meditation, it really is, plus just by being out in the open you open yourself up to all sorts of random oddness that this grand world of ours is more than willing to provide for those of us who are willing to follow the slippery trail of opportunity in all of its many forms.

scored another 'A' on my latest paper fer yon english class, so it's a good day. now i just have to go participate in the whole work experience for a couple of hours and then i will have the freedom to celebrate my latest triumph. and that of course means that the jester will be draining silver cans and, presumably, posting some sort of deluded madness.

maybe i'll take up the theme of paragraph two more fully, i have a friend who claims that certain things can only happen to people who are stoned, everybody else would just miss 'em.

of course, during the wander-about that produced that conversation he was struck on the head not once, nor twice, but three times by an old man with a mop who was innocent of what damage his mop-handle was perpetrating in the world. odd...

at any rate.. it is tuesday.. let us all be grateful for whatever it is we want to be, love, books or insanity.

oh yeah, and this up-coming thanksgiving holiday thing... it can bite me.

oh no... he can do photos...

2005-11-21T23:00:00.000-08:00

this is one of my best friends right here, strange sculpture like creature who occasionally sneaks out of his corner and explains things to me, he's most helpful in philosophical or spiritual quests, but he's no slouch when it comes to a good ol' drunken mumble..

a land-mark of jesterdom...

2005-11-21T22:58:00.000-08:00

so this is my fish-tank, i found the toilet by the curb of a neighboring house a couple of years back and decided to save it for....
didn't really know at the time, but it has since found its rightful place of honor, this that you see... and in answer to the obvious question.. none of my drunk friends have tried to piss in it... yet.

because i do love my country

2005-11-21T22:50:00.000-08:00

buttons; come from various jobs, and or environmental campaigns i've been around.

monkey; because i like monkeys, and i sometimes feel like a monkey hanging on a chain

small denim scrap; first line of ginsberg's america

swimming in a world from which pain has been banished

2005-11-20T18:02:00.000-08:00

hahahahahaha...

it's all so soft and beautiful sometimes, when you can put on the appropriate tunes and twist about in the delerious contortions of another inner voyage...

is this revealing too much, has the jester tipped his hand to far and allowed you to see him in his own brand of delinquint mediocraty, desperately trying to make another evening of brain twisting seem like something poetic and worth doing?

there really needs to be a reason for me to post, other than i'm off in fuzzy world.. but that's probably not going to happen.

watching the minutes waste themselves

2005-11-20T15:03:00.000-08:00

yep

Your Fortune Is

Man who scratch ass should not bite fingernails.

The Wacky Fortune Cookie Generator

sleep is for the weak and stupid

2005-11-20T06:07:00.000-08:00

silly misguided mortals,
while you are snug in your blankets and sheets the true experiences of madness are waiting to be discovered! I have become a machine that empties beer cans and lights cigarettes.

my mental network is up and running perilously close to the red, so fast and furious are the thought streams that i am awash in, i have broken free of the speech-time continuum and am experiences things beyond the confines of language.

cigarettes burn way too fast, and leave so little, like these fleeting ephemeral thoughts that drive me to the limits of what can be considered insight, not that anything ever sticks here, it just passes through, filters off into the ambience and messes with my mind.

{hang on, I can't type for a minute, i've got to roll another cigarette, who says how many beers are too many beers for blogging, somebody ought to take a cigarette... i mean survey... hang on... really gotta roll me that smoke}

ahh yes, that first delightful inhale, like a spring breeze reminding the back of your throat how raw it is from all these deliberate excesses, and now i'm out of beer... hmm... six o' clock in the a.m. got a presentation to give in class tomorrow, time to switch to mountain dew?

{the finite jester would like to take this moment to urge all his readers to stay in school, and to do whatever it takes to survive the experience}

now what was i talking about...
oh yes of course, the ethereal nature of insight.. duh

This is a great thing.

2005-11-19T20:09:00.000-08:00

National Novel Writing Month!

I'm going to sign up and give it a try, produce some insane stream of conscious post-modern parable that won't even make sense to me when I'm done with it.. Of course it is November
19th, and that means my time is limited. yeah, that's probably ridiculous.. 11 days?

at a word count of 50,000 words, that's 4,545ish words a day... yikes...
maybe I'll wait until next year... maybe not... have no fear, the jester will keep you posted, maybe if you all behave I'll even carve out some choice cuts from the beast and vomit them upon this forum that no one reads... except you...

finite jester refuses to comment on the meaning of the link in you
or on the meaning of that one, except to say...

{ahem, affecting groveling, mad-scientest helper type character voice, almost golemesque}

oh no! I did not mean to eemply anything about your sweet and gentle visage dear reader, nor to insult your surely prodigious intellect with either of those two links meeraculously appearing in my voice, pleeze continuing to come here and support my delusions of granduer!!

oh how cute, my first online test

2005-11-19T17:24:00.000-08:00

Are You Normal?

Your Normalcy Quotient is: 69 out of 100.

You are a Quirky Character
You’ve found yourself mostly in the middle of the road, but you have enough quirky habits to not be entirely normal. You’re probably glad to be more than ordinary, but you’re normal enough to fit in. Sounds like a perfect balance. Take this quiz by Clicking Here>> or going to www.chatterbean.com/runormal

quirky my ass!!! man, I'm a hell bent bizarro!
quirky... {mutter mutter}

it's the hat's fault

2005-11-18T01:33:00.000-08:00

you see i do have a jester hat, it's all fleece and so warm and nice.

i think i enjoy wearing it mostly for people's reactions, man you can bring a smile to the faces of some strange characters just by wearing a jester hat and walking the streets, you can also invite some intriguing looks. {plus, chicks have been known to dig the hat}

at any rate, point here being, {blogging + beers = digression apparently} that what with snow on the ground, the hat has come out of hiding and it's presence is accelerating the process hinted at in The Change has Begun, thus the possibility of such posts as slice o' life, with it's beery theme.

has it really come to the point where i'm willing to throw out this, the strange and occasionally terrible reality i see?

[damn, /ee/ /ee/ /ee/ what the hell are you thinking? that is the worst kind of poetic posturing possible {oh and now you'll go for alliteration?}]

the jester bows and laughs

slice o' life

2005-11-17T19:39:00.000-08:00

Well it's four o' clock in the morning, despite what the ol' blogger clock may have to say about the timing on this one, oop just turned 4:01.

Just posting to inform you that I have discovered a black-hole, an empty space where beer disappears, never to be seen again.

yep...

un-huh...

woo...

{i'll come back and edit something entertaining into this if I can manage}

Today was one of those days.

2005-11-16T21:59:00.000-08:00

The first accumulation of snow has begun, and today I didn't have to drive anywhere, I got to walk to class, with the brisk wind making my hands numb in short order as i perambulated across the down-town scenes.

I don't know why I enjoy the first snow-fall as much as I do, I'm not a winter sports enthusiasist, I think it's mostly because so many people complain about the cold and the snow, wimps.

All you need to do is get out there, get walking at a good brisk pace and everything is fine and dandy.

what's with the links you maniac?

2005-11-16T21:57:00.000-08:00

yeah, i know they seem to be getting stranger and stranger...
don't worry, i can keep this up indefinately...
finite jester

hi

2005-11-16T21:27:00.000-08:00

just finished seeing south park; season seven, episode seven.

just felt the need to post something relating the beauty, yes, the bleeding beauty of the painful irony involved in that particular peice of madness...

when this show works it works as well as any other peice of revolutionary rallying cry that we have left in this desperately jaded world-scape that you and i are privilidged enough to call home.

can comedy affect social change? why is it that the people who seem able, and willing to sum it up best are comedians? does any of it matter and can anything change, or are we just going to wind up laughing hysterically at ourselves as we slide... here.

i'm disorganized

2005-11-15T10:55:00.000-08:00

known it for years too, doesn't seem to be much of anything that i can do about it. it's just go with the flow, catch as catch can nonsense.

they say a neat home is the sign of a life wasted.

i say trampling empties underfoot is a sign of the times.

oh yeah, we'll go there, the specific malaise that affects my personage is symptomatic of a larger, social disfunctionality.

who knows how far that will take one, although it has gotten me here;
{here meaning of course the general life-status type signifiers that nobody else can really get, no matter how much of this nonsense i insist on posting}

A Preview of Coming Attractions!

2005-11-14T12:27:00.000-08:00

Coming... {dum dum dumb; i know, forgive me please, it's all in fun}

...to we all want people laughing at our wake in 2006.

Twelve months!

January, Feb
link all months to weirdness..
explain quotes
sound and fury baby...

and instead of saving this as a draft i'm going to publish it as a post and as i edit, post links to original post which can thereby be exhalted in all of its subversive glory!

BLOG BLOG BLOG

2005-11-13T18:46:00.000-08:00

Dear reader...
if you've been waiting for my latest post, i'm sorry.
you really should have something better to do.

finite jester will be back and blogging just as soon as his two papers for school are finished...
hopefully not more than a day or two.

what's that now?

2005-11-12T22:33:00.000-08:00

to those of you who are bored enough to be here and actually follow the links that i create... i'm sorry.

Recipie for Nirvana

2005-11-12T22:19:00.000-08:00

what? don't tell me that you actually expect me to just
hand out the necessary steps for enlightenment here
in a few glib phrases.

if i know {and i'm definately not tellin', don't need that
kind of media attention right now} the secrets to finding
peace here, what works for me ain't going to work for you,
so i'm sorry, but i can be of only limited benefit in your
quest.

i refuse to comment

2005-11-12T05:18:00.000-08:00

the finite jester hereby refuses to comment on....

any posts made under the influence,
{allowing, of course, an addendum that his friends are weird}

the fact that it's 5:14am and he feels like his
mental prowess is just kicking in.

how many beers constitutes too many beers for blogging.

and of course, how it is that typing is still possible.

wooo
friday ladies and gents

i do sincerely hope that you are all tucked into warm
beds with warm bodies that get yer sexual juices flowing
send a thought or two the jester's way because the futon
looks far too damn lonely.

and again...
i refuse to comment on whatever the hell it was that
'i was talking about.

but you know, just because i'm sitting here t.w.i.
{that's typing while intoxicated} doesn't mean that you
can rule me out, oh no! you see the jester's alter ego
is actually engaged in that schooling thing we've all heard
so much about and is currently (although thankfully not
between posts such as this, kids, school is something far
too serious to engage whilst hammered!) in the process
of finishing up a paper which dissects the unique and
decidedly unorthodox belief structure that said jester's
alter ego has found himself the inheritor of, and said
document will find it's way into these *$^@#&^$
whatever the hell these bloggin' posty type constructs
are deserved to be called with regard to collective
consideration...

whoa, can't keep that up, i need more bevy... and it's
all already sideways, and i've got an ex-girlfriend to
deal with tommorow and then a serious consideration
of finnegans wake to attempt, good-night sweet reader,
fictional though you may be...

you know if you really wanna ring the jester's bells
and give some random cat in the earth-sphere
experience a wild thrill just respond to some of this
god-forsaken nonsense that i'm spouting, fer fuuk's
sake comment y'all... i commonly find myself sitting
here, bored, looking to imprint bizarre experience
into internet immortality {otherwise you wouldn't
be reading this} and what could be more bizarre than
actually admiting in a comment column that you've
actually wasted however long it took you to read
this nonsense. damn, it's a great way to 'be like me'

Yep! Another spine-tingling chapter in the ongoing
saga of mondo-bizarro life slice, mind spiced meglomania.
Ha! Another two beers and I'll be philosophizing and
telling y'all 'bout my drug-dealing co-workers and how
beautiful it is that I raise money for the cops.

Bow...

Exist stage left..
{was that a typo?}
[ignore it, he's drunk]

i refuse to comment

dern that blogger clock is messed up!

2005-11-12T02:45:00.000-08:00

just noticed that after, ya know, checking the
last bit of stupidity pasted up, and of
course that'll probably look like it was written
after this, cuz i fixed the time posted on there,
and i'm not gonna do it here, not being
Michael J. Fox, this is as close as i can get to
time travel.

random crazy quotes...

2005-11-11T18:59:00.000-08:00

for what are the stars but holes in the body of god through which we insert the healing needles of our terror and longing.
-thomas pynchon

here's to the girl with the little red shoes, she likes to party, she likes her booze, she lost her cherry but that's not a sin, cuz she's still got the box that the cherry came in.
-some drunk irish man

what has two thumbs and likes blow-jobs?
{points to self with thumbs}
-bartender in PA, New Years Day 2002

not all those who wander are lost.
-J.R.R. Tolkien

an optomist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and a pessimist fears that this is true.
-cabell

The Change Has Begun

2005-11-11T13:16:00.000-08:00

oh no... it's started....

i used to be a fairly ordinary guy,
{ok, so you've got to put that comment
into a certain context.. (ok, yes i've
been somewhat mental for quite awhile)}
but ever since I started trying to create
this 'blog' thing, things have started to get
really darn dicey.

now i wake up at odd hours of the afternoon,
sprawled across my futon with only the
vaguest of memories of what the hell it is
that i've been thinking about, the note-books
scattered across the floor are no help, and the
ashtray has spilled once again i see.

voyages out into the 'real world' are becoming
trials, i feel like i'm on a subversive mission,
moving amongst the multitudes, reveling in
their ignorance and trying to keep the look
of hauty granduer from becoming too apparant
on my features.

i'm thinking about writing phrases on my pants
again, and walking in the world with a friend
to follow me with a camera, so i can capture those
faces that i sometimes see from the corner of my eye,
when i have emerged from my lair of mental
majesty; unshowered, unshaven, bleary eyed
from poor sleep and the accumulated weight
of daydreams.

soon, it will be irreversable... my very psyche
is shifting, something else is coming through
now... an idealized image from the depths of
my dreaming is coming out..

the jester is being born

Yea! Wasn't that fun! Gosh... I'm going to
post some book-reviews soom, so stay
tuned!!!

Poetry Instruction Manual, Chap. 1

2005-11-09T18:50:00.000-08:00

Hey!! Haven’t you ever dreamed of being a poet? You know, grow a goatee, wear black and scribble profound nonsense for the acclaim of other people in black with goatees. I know it’s a dream close to the heart of every American, the only problem is finding the time to do all that creative stuff. It’s difficult to come up with all that esoteric symbolism. Luckily the finite jester is here to help.

Here’s what you do. 3 simple steps.

1. Grab writing implements.

2. Settle into your favorite seat facing the television.

3. While watching TV, jot down any lines from the show that strike your fancy.

And there you have it, you’re creating art! Stuff that’s every bit as bizarre as anything else modern poetry has ever put out. Soon you too can be basking in the glowing admiration of all sorts of people. Just remember, the poetic lifestyle is a tough one, I’ll be back soon with more advice on how to adopt the proper attitude to complete the image.

In the meantime, enjoy some of the jester’s fine attempts at television poetry.

TV Poem 1

tomorrow you will learn by doing
some days we don’t let the line move at all
so when are we gonna get rowdy
you’ve had your glory
i’ll prove i can keep your secret
why waste your hypnotic powers on neighbors and co-workers
i guess fate was against us
i thought we trusted each other with our secrets now
it’s getting too commercial
are you laughing at me?

TV Poem 2

i cannot absolve sins
please call me snake
captivity blows
we gotta find a way out of here
years of wandering the desert
but after that it’s clear sailing
get yourself another hero

You see! Gosh those are good, and I’m sure that you can see the vast untapped potential here. Happy Poeting!!!

succumbing to my poetic impulses

2005-11-09T12:47:00.000-08:00

such is the nature of sunday, the slow serpentine crawl of smoke across your arm from the seventh cigarette smoked today.

delusions of freedom as the seconds burn, one after another and everything is as fragile as the wind which unsteadies the leaves ever so slightly to offer us a glimpse of the pale underbellies.

the clouds are wisps of dreams you can’t remember, pieces of images long scattered across the ocean of sky and another moment has passed, folded into the ashtray of sand and now another moment is burning.

heart, mind and lungs in conflict on this sunday

such is it’s nature

an idle melancholy over distant streets and faces, a half-formed tear that an autumn breeze pulls from the eye before it can ripen and roll.

a drag from a cigarette

a long pull of beer

then another moment extinguished into the soft hush of sunday.

Q: Who is this finite jester; and what does he want?

2005-11-07T22:05:00.000-08:00

a: who? ha! far too complicated.

what does he want....
i could dig one of two scenarios.

I- relatively stable life; teaching, steady money, nothing crazy... but i need; a woman to love, books to read, and the opportunity to spout gibberish towards a peer group that can grok said gibberish and laugh as we watch the world slide down into- well, whatever it is we're slidin' into.

II- being at least partially responsible for deviation from aforementioned (albeit vaguely) end of option I, with the proviso that said end, should it be definitively defined... is really, really awful.

a wry observation about human nature in the form of...

2005-11-06T19:01:00.000-08:00

A Notification:

Henceforth all spam-comments will be removed, with the exception of those left for the sake of posterity in the two posts that reference them.

Dude, do you actually think that the spamming programs that do this read these things?

Piss off you, I’m busy venting my spleen at forces and such that are entirely outside of my control, and completely deaf to petitions. Quite satisfying really.

sunday mornings

2005-11-06T07:59:00.000-08:00

oh yeah, on sunday mornings i like to get woken by my landlord and sit up with a raging hang-over, stagger to the kitchen to find a supply of cold water while my toilet gets fixed. then i like to sit down and type stuff like this while smoking a cigarette and debating whether making yet another of those resolutions to curtail the whole drinking, partyin' scene would be a totally lame move, probably.

I can like hardly see straight, I'm on another plane of reality entirely right now, it's a painful one, maybe i'll go take a shower, then it's off to class, sunday mornings mean the history of rock n' roll for me these days, and I always wind up showing to class with a bleary aura of booze clinging to me as i attempt to participate in that grand experiment of higher education.

yeah, that's right, the jester is going to school! Yep, further inquiries confirm it's truth, the finite jester may one day be teaching your children, yeah man, the cat that wrote 'the truth about chickens' hopes to be paid to warp the minds of future generations, teaching them to like read and stuff, or better yet annoying the grey matter right out of college students in some institute of higher learning...

yep, that'd be a laugh. Trading places; me up at the front of the class in my jester hat, the next generation of movers and thinkers showing up all reeking of booze from last night's debaucheries...

ok kids, that's it for this post, stay tuned fer finite jester to expound upon the definitions of 'utopia' and 'philosopher' and maybe if you all behave, i'll tell you a story... so be good, faithful readers {who the hell does he think he's kidding} and i'll be back after class...

burp

2005-11-05T17:56:00.000-08:00

burping is one of the great arts, sadly diminished in our times

Beatnik Bar Report

2005-11-05T16:28:00.000-08:00

This is something older, written one night after leaving the bar… obviously.

Staci kept moving the bouncer’s beer.

The bouncer was an ex-army ranger, cut like a man who will still feel comfortable in fatigues when he finally found himself in the nursing home, his bullshit power-plays being patronized by the hired help in their clean white uniforms.

Every time I came to the bar he’d ask me if I was going to cause any trouble that night, half the time he’d ask to see my ID with the next breath even though he obviously remembered me from all the times I’d been in there brewing up my own particular brand of trouble.

I always grin at the question and then give a little

what me? cause trouble? come on.

To which he lets me in, making a pretty good show of reluctance, tossing out some admonishment regarding proper tavern behavior. But I always tell him..

- what me? cause trouble? come on.

Which means –yes, of course i’m going to do damn near whatever it is that comes into my foolish head when those two dollar Guinness pints start treating me proper!

Which is why Staci kept moving the ex-ranger bouncer’s beer and shouting

- Do You People Know You’re Alive?

at the top of his lungs while the rest of us beat on the table to keep time with the jig-punk that made the whole bar bounce and huffing down to holy hooch to keep our minds good and limber, that’s what I call trouble.

Somewhere in the dark-wooden, smoky air of that bar I found an ad that said “Get High and Wake Up In Ireland” and I plastered it to the window with me own spit, already incomprehensible as I rambled in that odd Irish lilt the place always gives me.

It was truly a beat moment. I think Keroac would have been wowed, and Cassidy would have made that table sing with his fists, drunk the place dry and gone home with one of the lost looking little girls that dotted the place, call it kicks or maybe just living.

me, i just laughed and breathed those wild free lungfuls of something that only seems to be around when the mind is truly limber, i just stood on the booth and rubbed at my head, thinking about ecstatic ballets and dug the damn groove of it all, that’s what i call trouble, there come these moments of euphoria when you can just relax into your own wild hi-jinks in a circle of deeply there spirits and become nothing more than that table in the corner, the one making all that noise.

There is a satisfaction that comes from those kicks, the comments shared about the fools in suits and designer hog-wash that just don’t get it, don’t dig the whole spit on the window, fists on the wood scene of mad euphoric life, the ones who don’t seem to realize that they are alive and in this wacked little bar with the ex-army bouncer and the beautiful waitresses weaving through the press of humanity in tight khaki pants with trays of pure liquid night air in two dollar pint glasses, who could resist wheeling out into the true and final night to see who can skip the fastest down the street with the wind in their ears and some vision of eternity right in front of eyes blurred with exertion and the mad joy of it all.

It’s like the joy of a sentence that doesn’t want to stop, it would be perfectly happy to run and run and flow and paint its trails of illumination across those moments that loom timeless and never leave.

That’s what I call trouble, an ongoing statement of the patently absurd woven into the urban night.

When we left the bar there was a small system of Guinness lakes running across the table, soaking into the newspaper from where I’d found that ad. Flipping open the sodden pages revealed another ad.. “What a Trip!” it said, and that one was moist enough to stick to the window all on it’s own.

An Announcement

2005-11-04T23:11:00.000-08:00

I treat each and every post that goes up onto this blog with the most complete and fitting reverance that it deserves.

I know that I have an obligation to you, the reader, to pay close attention to the task at hand and present only the most polished and refined aspects of my personal character to you…

be aware however that when i comment on the shit i post, i don’t give a fuck.

i'll comment

2005-11-04T22:57:00.000-08:00

this is only a test

do not read this…

read comments…

porn porn porn

because i know y'all wanna be just like me...

2005-11-04T22:51:00.000-08:00

DOOM AND GLOOM!!!

henceforth follows the jester’s infallible recipe for building up the sort of sickly malaise that has been known to strike people senseless….

{as an aside… this whole blog business, it’s really just an excuse for me to type a whole bunch of garbage and try to string it together into that great American novel thing that i’ve heard so many plots for bouncing back to me off my walls here in the great American night}

ahem…
perdohn…

the recipe.
man, if you want to be fucking despondant, just do what i do.
pay attention, read the news, participate in any and all forms of mass
communication, and that includes this whole internet thing…

finite jester goes interactive!!!!

2005-11-04T22:49:00.000-08:00

here’s a treasure hunt for you, find me the image of internet porn where the chick has the most haunted expression on her face, find me that girl whose true soul was expressed in just that second where the shutter opened and fame beckoned, the fame where only sickos are out there looking to see the humanity in those eyes…

what is a poet?

2005-11-04T11:09:00.000-08:00

does anybody care?
i do... Kerouac did...
here's what he said...
Kerouac’s definition of a poet…

A poet is a fellow who

spends his time thinking

about what it is that’s

wrong, and although he

knows he can never quite

find out what this wrong

is, he goes right on

thinking it out and writing

it down.

A poet is a blind optimist.

The world is against him for

many reasons. But the

poet persists. He believes

that he is on the right track,

no matter what any of his

fellow men say. In his

eternal search for truth, the

poet is alone.

He tries to be timeless in a

society built on time.

a modern parable

2005-11-04T02:57:00.000-08:00

there was a character in a bar the other day, his t-shirt read…

“sometimes you have to go too far, too fast, too hard against the wall of reality and just will that fucker to bend, i can already feel my spirit burning as it races through the atmosphere towards the sun.”

the print was obviously fairly small, so the patrons would have to get quite close to the character. one by one, as each finished reading, their heads would come up and they’d look him in the face for a second or two.

when they asked him who it was that had actually said that he told them that they already knew, and whatever name they came up with, he’d tell them that they were right.

but sometimes the character would take a deep breath and say that

“one night as i sat waiting for a metaphorical dawn, Jerry Garcia whispered that to me from a sticker i kept on my my clip-board.”

one by one the other patrons left.

later that night we huddled around the juke-box and traded songs.

heaven

2005-11-04T02:56:00.000-08:00

he would stand in the wind and let it drag a tear from his eye

she would smile from the porch as smoke uncurled from her mouth and went racing into twentieth century myth

he would unfold his arms and close his eyes to appraise the heavens

she would sigh and take another drag

waiting for this madness to pass

he would turn to her and complain that it was all too complex to be an accident

she would laugh and offer him a hit

he would join her on the porch, drawn from his tedious and indignant revelations into a quiet moment of love

she would lay her head on his shoulder and rename all the stars to soothe his visions

faith

2005-11-04T02:55:00.000-08:00

i must believe in something.

and in truth i do, but it’s little more than a fragmentary collage of impressions and ideals that has proven inherently fragile in the face of reality.

it seems that i have no faith in reality, or rather that my beliefs are continuously trying to overcome reality.

sadly, such is the nature of belief.

i have this romantic vision of existence, and since i keep trying to live in accordance with a set of rules i’ve deduced from said romantic assumptions; when i crash, and find myself in these painful situations, it is reality that is at fault.

of course, finding fault with reality is simply a continuation of my romantic vision, and i have a hard time keeping my actions in true accordance with my romantic vision.

the rules that guide my actions are mostly compromises of my ideals, which remain largely untried.

Those of you who know the truth

2005-11-03T18:46:00.000-08:00

Those of you who sat watching as my hyper intelligent self worked out how exactly it is that i make such fascinating creatures as links appear, got to click the refresh button incessantly as you sat there, waiting, hyperventilating in anticipation of the changes coming, those who didn't immediately jump to Concrete Utopia got to watch it's link jump in and out of reality, switch position a few times... and turn for one brief second into a peice of code that allowed the great underground eye to look back into you and forgive all your flaws, and finally settle where it shall reside until.... whenever....

you also got to watch as this post was edited until it almost made sense...

My First Link, by gosh!!!!

2005-11-03T13:00:00.000-08:00

So, all you untold millions out there tuning in day in and day out, waiting hours in front of your computer screens, salivating in anticipation of that moment when a new post comes up... the wait is over!!! Plus as promised a link!!!!

ConcreteUtopia

lovely name, lovely site...

my third post, and oh, it's a doozy

2005-11-02T11:33:00.000-08:00

hmm... so if this is supposed to be interesting to anyone other than myself
that could necessitate me... being the person who is solely responsible for
content here... to provide said content... instead of this, which is what they
accused keroac of... typing (subtle compliment here, pulled out of the dregs of
self-deprecation)

i mean, after all, i've got all sorts of things to say, i could tell you about my life,
my beliefs, the strange paranoia that occasionally grips me when i've been
outside, walking on a fall day, rolling the world under my feet as i stand in
stationary orbit, my every view-point has always been from the perspective
of the universe's center, at least the only universe i feel capable of claiming
i know...

hell yeah, and i could tell you about my childhood pets, Harold and Maude,
and yes they were named after the movie, that was my parents favorite..
shit, i can tell you about my parents, they are a trip... my mom especially,
and i can spend pages and pages of posts talking about that...
exes..
all those fucking books i read...
my favorite foods....
why i bought my american flag at wal-mart.....
i can explain my scars anecdotally... like the one right in the middle of my
noggin above the hair-line, i got that one head-butting a no-parking sign
after testing my resolve against the various intoxicants available to the
adventuresome in Connecticut bars..............

is that too obvious an indictment of self-centeredness or a naked plea
for people to get a kick out of me, and what the fuck is this??
self-referential metafiction?
aspirations to something as nifty as
'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius'
by Dave Eggers?

so that's me...
self-referential,
anecdotal,
your local,
book review portal.

yeah always good to strain the rhyme, makes you look earnest

stream of nonsense

READ MY BLOG!!!! Blegh!!

because i got shit i need to say, and need to discuss ideas,
plus penning this random madness whenever the mood
strikes me...
i've got a couple other stories ready to go up,
and once my happy ass gets acquainted with my computator
like links and stuff!! yippee! links!!

yeah links, so you can go places other than this,
i see how you are ya shits!!!
no fuck off; i'm done talking to ya!

but please come back!

Yes, it's gonna have to be like that

2005-10-30T12:23:00.000-08:00

the monroe post is something i wrote a number of days ago,
couldn't sleep and out it came, i think this explanation and
that post could tell you more about me than any user profile
could ever dare, you'd just get all the specifics wrong...
which we go ahead and do anyway, makes life more fun.

The Truth About Chickens... oh and marilyn monroe

2005-10-30T12:21:00.000-08:00

i awoke this morning at three-seventeen a.m., startled out of a quite pleasant dream about singing cockroaches by the sound of a typewriter operating at high speed. Switching on the light i discovered that Marilyn Monroe was sitting in a chair beside my bed, quite naked, with a chicken in her lap and a thin strip of paper issuing from between her closed lips. Other than the fact that the chicken's eyes were sending out burst of green and black fire in time with the clacking of typewriter keys, everything seemed perfectly in order.

Abruptly the sound ended, the chicken tore the strip of paper from Monroe's lips and flapped across the two feet of space between her lap and my bed. It approached, the fire absent from it's eyes.

"I'm terribly sorry about this," Monroe said, "but it seems I've been possesed by Nietzsche again, he claims he's on to some sort of universal knowledge..... Do my nipples look alright to you?"

"Your nipples look fine dear." I assured her, and took the paper strip from the chicken, which began pecking at bits of fluff on the bedsheets.

The note from Nietzsche read.....

'The whole chicken and egg argument is useless, juvinille fodder for the delinquient thoughts of mediocre minds. A true philosopher, one with a will to greateness and an acute sense of the power inherent in all healthy delusions will eat nothing but omelets with tex-mex style chicken breasts and fresh sheeps milk.'

"This is madness." I said, rolling a cigarette.
"Do you suppose I could have one of those old chap?" The chicken asked in an obviously faked british accent.

Of course I gave it one, and offered one to Monroe.

"Oh no," she said, "I only smoke when clothed. And of course it's madness, everyone knows that philosophers are pathologically incapable of making decent omelets, the only sensible thing to do with chickens is to give them scotch. Perhaps you would care to join us for a drink?"

I nodded my assent and she poured three glasses.

While we drank, Monroe began telling off-color jokes, sadly I didn't get to hear the punch-line to the one where Michaelangelo is being sodomized by the pope, because Monroe began making sounds that made her nudity even more arousing. And then, to the chicken's evident disgust, laid an egg.

"Dippy-bitch" the bird muttered into it's drink, "that's bloody well my department innit."

Monroe, to her credit, ignored the bird and picked up the egg, which hatched almost immediately, revealing Jim Morrison.

"I say God-Damn, that, THAT was some good shit." he said.

I rolled Jim a cigarette, Monroe poured him a scotch.

"Thank you." he said, glancing about the room, and running his hand across Monroe's butt. She giggled.

"Fuck off J." the chicken said, "It's a stupid plan and I'm not helping anymore."

"Now, come on man. It's working great, you can't cop out on us now."

"No, enough is enough." the chicken turned to me, "Look, I'll level with you. You, indeed all of humanity is living in a world that has been purposely led astray. I am not really a chicken. I am a human from the future, masquerading as a chicken."

"But that is Marilyn Monroe, right?" I asked.

"Yes."

"And that is Jim Morrison, right?"

"Well, yes, and well.... you see what you need to understand is this. In my time human society was working so well that it was quite frankly boring as hell. So after the invention of time travel we abducted the corpse of some random preacher who the romans had crucified, reanimated the poor fool, sent him back to his disciples to stir up all manner of nonsense, then abducted him again and took him to California in the early 1960's and made him a rock star."

"Yeah," said Jim, "that was great, acid is a phenomenal thing. But you've got to help with the last bit."

"Will you shut up Jesus. I'm not helping anymore."

"Hey, I like being called Jim now, less confusing."

"Shut up! Shut up you rock-star messiah freak!! I'm telling you I'm done, the whole thing is silly enough already." the chicken said, then turned back to me, "Now they want to go back in time again once this guy gets old and fat and then skip around the planet delivering toys in the middle of fucking winter. I am not changing into a reindeer and that's final. I rather like being a chicken."

"Aww... c'mon." Jim said, "It'll be funny."

"Do you mean like Santa?" Monroe asked, "Cause that's already been done."

"You see, she's heard of me!! That means you're gonna cave at some point. Let's roll baby."

Jim grabbed the chicken and they vanished.

I picked a few errant feathers out of the chicken's glass and finished it's scotch.

"You look kinda cold Ms. Monroe." I said, peeling back the sheet to invite her in.

"Call me Marilyn."

Yup... tomorrow I'm calling all the newspapers and tv stations. They might not want to believe me, after all there's going to be a certain amount of history that needs to be revised, but a story this important has to be told. The world needs to know that Marilyn Monroe, wow man, she's a screamer.

my first post

2005-10-30T12:01:00.000-08:00

and it doesn't matter what i say here... because i don't have a theme, i don't have any messages, i don't have anything great or deeply insightful to share, man, maybe someday soon when i stop freaking out about the fact that i'm back and internet capable after a gap of so many years, maybe when i stop freaking out about the fact that i'm able to type this and put it out there for nobody to really read, then i'll get around to organizing the various compartments of this dilletante of a brain and post tales and insights and the fractal matter of precisely translated ephemeral epiphonies as they float about here in my world... until then you'll have to read shit like this....

time travel...

1999-06-06T06:06:00.000-07:00

time travel? go to bed you fool