A New Year, A New Blog OK, readership. This is what it is; I no longer live in Oueste Tejas. It's now more of a vida en el Norte de Tejas. New locale, new mood. I'm going to start a new blog.  ¶ 11:31 AM 0 comments

  Humility I'm branching out, or trying to. I have high hopes. I'm not overly confident or filled with false hope. I'm not the finger-crossing type. I'll just do my best and try not to botch the interview. I'm hitting the road tomorrow morning. We shall see.  ¶ 8:14 PM 0 comments

  And We Sail Out On The Water. . . It's been a while. I've been mainly using the myspace blog, but it's not the place for me to keep it real, as it were. I'm trying to figure it out. Whose space is it anyway? I grow tired of the posturing on myspace, yet it has allowed me to reconnect with old friends who I'll see soon on my upcoming trip to Funkytowne and its surrounding area. So I'm in two minds about it, as I am with most things.  ¶ 5:31 PM 0 comments

  voicemail How infrequent it is when I get a call from someone I want to talk to. It's just my rotten luck that I miss the call. Ah well. Talk to you soon, old buddy.  ¶ 11:42 AM 0 comments

  books, myspace, etc. Such are the joys of notoriety, today I received over 20 friend requests from women who may not exist, but have webcam footage of themselves to sell. It was wild and crazy, I tell you. I got to use the multiple delete feature in my friends request column. It was a first. Ah yes, firsts from women of loose morals. . .but that is something altogether different, which I won't elaborate on this time.
Where was I? Nowhere particularly. It had just occurred to me that I should be blogging since I had not written anything in particular in some days. Yet a real subject eludes me. At times during the week, certain things came to mind and made me think I should write about it but I forgot about it when I finally got to a point where I could write it down.
I was combing over the old blog I wrote when I first returned to the country and pretty much decided that those pieces are much too angry. I've thought about de-fanging some of those entries for public consumption, but then I wouldn't be keeping it real. So I put them on a floppy disk which will fit nicely in the pocket of the suit I would like to be buried in. And the phoenix formerly known as Kilgore Trout will rise from the ashes centuries hence.
So my subject was: Pop Music, Literature, etc. I like things people don't like at all but then some things which I dismiss as stupid yet have enormous popular appeal still draw me in. Like certain pop songs, etc. Hit machine pop is a force that can't be denied. And it gets me to thinking about what people think is good and why. I got some more books from the library because I was curious about some books by writers that people like. Literatures cycles of popularity are much broader and take at least a generation to fall out of favor. That aside, I got some books from the public library to keep me busy for a while anyway.
It was all short stories this time: I got The Selected Stories of Phillip K. Dick, The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty & Dress Your Family In Corduroy And Denim by David Sedaris.
My Analysis: Haven't yet touched the Sedaris book although I've read Holidays On Ice and found that amusing, so I'm sure this one'll be ok.
I tackled one of Ms. Welty's stories in the book and I must agree that she is one of the American masters of prose. Not as challenging as Faulkner or light entertainment like Grisham, her vision of Mississippi is a slice of life tailored to fellow southerners mainly.
Phillip K. Dick wrote stories that transcended the stigma of Science Fiction. His quasi-Kafkaesque Weltanschauung transcends the maligned genre. There is a genuine hopelessness that goes beyond rocketships and all the ubiquitous crap that accompanies the typical dystopian space opera, or whatever books 300 pound dorks shove their noses into when they should be trying to be social. To put it nicely, I like what he did. That and his personal life is intriguing. The point in the 70s which he spent a good year and a half amped on amphetamines after a lost love is a story all people who've ever had their hearts broken can appreciate.
On that odd note, I'll close.  ¶ 12:57 AM 2 comments

  Opulence And Soap Opera Mentalities I have some extended family that are well-off. My grandmother talks about them all the time. When my cousins' grandfather died about a year and a half ago, she talked about him every chance she got. I imagine that she wishes she could have married him years ago, but then the purpose is defeated because he was the one who married into money.
Anyway, the idea that the lives of the wealthy are more interesting is a curious one. One imagines it is because they don't spend their time struggling to make ends meet and have more time to just be themselves. That sounds plausible enough, yet somehow flawed. It's hard to explain, really. Many people are well off because they are extremely driven and would be uncomfortable resting on their laurels. So the potential time spent on leisure activities and/or self discovery is not necessarily there in many cases, but seems so from the perspective of an outsider looking in.
The media is full of soap operas about the decadent upper class. People just find those types of people more interesting. That takes away from my previous assumption that television is a mirror. Escapism is a valuable commodity in the modern age, and the people who provide that service are elevated to positions of wealth and power; perhaps rightfully so.  ¶ 12:10 PM 1 comments

  Pre-Date Rundown I went on a date almost exactly two years ago. I was moved to write about it and was looking back and found an entry from May 2004. I haven't been on this semi-blind date yet but somehow I imagine that I'll be writing something equally vitriolic afterwards. Stay tuned.  ¶ 5:52 PM 0 comments

  Whence The Need For Higher Education I think a lot about the impossibly high standards for getting decent jobs and am uncertain about how to go about getting something better. In my father's generation, a bachelor's degree was a lot like having a graduate degree nowadays.
The reasons for the so-called upping of the standards may be for one of two reasons, or a combination of both. But as far as I can see it, they are:

1. The self-serving nature of the University system. I might just be biased, or I might know what the hell I'm talking about. It took me 5 years to finish my degree because I spent the last year waiting for them to offer the course I lacked to complete my degree.

2. The overall decline in standards in public schools making high school diplomas not worth the paper they're printed on. A bachelor's degree today is tomorrow's Master's. Or having a high school diploma meant something before public schools became a day care center. I'm not sure which. There seem to be lots of people who are quite capable without having been to institutions of higher learning, but they get lost in the shuffle; while children of parents who could afford to send them to college land jobs.

I don't know really. I don't feel any sense of entitlement due to my education. A liberal arts degree is more for personal edification than anything. I just want to get my shit together and quit working in customer service is all.  ¶ 1:39 AM 1 comments

  I Had Nearly Forgotten I spend lots of time in a limited environment and forget that I have this blog as my own private intellectual toilet. So I'm brought back to the age old question that Moz posed some twenty years ago: "Does the mind rule the body. . ." and vice versa.
Recently I may have brought myself into contention with the latter half of that statement. I've been chatting to a girl online who just moved to the area and have plans to meet her tomorrow afternoon. I'm not so sure about all this.
Not to demean her, necessarily, but there has to be someone more suited to her intellectual capacity. I have my doubts we'll be talking about Baudrillard over dinner. My insecurities aside, she seems to be putting a whole lot of stock in the date. I wanted to make sure it was in the daytime to put less pressure on the whole thing. It's just silliness. I just wanted to be friendly to someone who has just moved here but it seems to have taken on a life of its own in her mind.
I don't want to criticize because the shoe has been on the other foot without a doubt, yet I feel pressured in a way.

Back to my original statement about this being my personal online bathroom stall. I spend way too much time on myspace and its blogs are not really suited to my blogging needs. All the people I work are forced to make sense of what I put on there which is a bit much for them more than likely. I also am denied the luxury of keeping it real, by the token that free speech just really doesn't exist in a place of business. I couldn't talk at great length about how I resent being put among the great unwashed not just in the customer service side of it but the whole interaction with coworkers thing. They're not all bad and I have always placed a pleasant demeanor over intellectual ability. Perhaps a skewed priority but certainly a more pragmatic one within the confines of reality. Still myspace tells too much of a story and I'm not comfortable with writing revealing entries for my coworkers to read.  ¶ 1:03 AM 0 comments

  Such A Difference A Door Makes Here I sit in my little apartment guzzling vodka and cop cars go by with their sirens. The tribal instincts so drummed out of us and isolation is the new Utopia attainable within the constraints of society. Maybe if I was part of a tribe, I wouldn't waste my nights away, doing my nightly magic act--making large quantities of alcohol disappear into my little body. Ah, but who could answer such a speculative question?
I would be the Indian called nobody until I met William Blake and taught him the new poetry. But that's not it either, really.
I'm so lucky to have a door.  ¶ 12:58 AM 1 comments

  What's Left of Mr. Lachey I watched that MTV special about Nick Lachey and how he's getting on with his life. I was somewhat moved but really I was doing paperwork and my attention was divided. Lachey remains positive which is nice and perhaps a good thing for his fanbase to emulate. I don't know, but he drinks Miller Lite and I approve of that, most certainly. His new album is coming out next month, which was mentioned at every possible moment during the special. Not my cup of tea and I'll be sitting it out but he wrote a lot of breakup and heartbreak songs which might have been more interesting with different instrumentation and accompaniment. That's just my opinion, though. If he could take an acoustic guitar like Mark Kozelek and sing those sad songs they might carry more weight with me. But then Mark K. doesn't write songs for everybody, he left that to Nick Lachey.  ¶ 10:13 AM 0 comments

  My CELTA I have a CELTA although I am not a native speaker of the Queen's English. I break many grammatical rules as a matter of style. There are some regional preferences in speech that I have grown up with in the Southern US and I am all for doing away with prescriptive grammar in native language English education. One of my predilections is using the preterite form of drink when forming constructions in the past perfect. To me, "drunk" is an adjective and I say "I have drank. . ." This is the way I prefer to speak and after my time overseas I finally got my accent back.
I think that I would like to go on another overseas adventure which could involve using my certificate, getting back into the ESL game. I'm not so sure about anything anymore though. Most days I feel like crawling out of the shit pit I dug myself into all those years ago. Die Wille zur Macht is a trite sentiment but how else does one motivate oneself?  ¶ 12:59 AM 1 comments

  Ringo and Modern Principle I was thinking about Jackson, the younger's blog entry about music stardom. When I drove home from work tonight, the college station played an album side from "Beatles For Sale." I have long since retired from the study of Beatleology, of which I was a solid devotee about ten years ago.
The Fab Four's early work before they discovered drugs is good stuff. The musical arrangements are a lot simpler but the 4/4 time signatures and sparse instrumentation are timeless. I guess this led me to the thought of stardom and how four working-class guys became rockstars, but it was right in middle of the paradigm shift of the preceding and following decades.
In the latter half of the 20th Century the world changed (thank you, Captain Obvious). Record sales eclipsed sheet music sales and it was gradually realized that the disease called consumerism had no Typhoid Marys.
Extreme isolation is the only precautionary measure, but it's not a healthy environment for art and therein exists the problem. You can fell all the trees you want in your mountain hideaway, but then you begin to wonder if your own ears deceive you. A more proper rendering of the koan would be to say if only one pair of ears hears it. . .  ¶ 12:28 AM 1 comments

  Troglodytes Texanum Occidental I put out the word on Poop For Peace Day 2006 and the only response I garner from these dusty-brained simians is "gross." That's great. You heard it here first, I'm getting the hell out of flyover country. I can't stand it any longer. I'm biding my time until my lease is finished and then I'm jumping ship. This place is far too uncivilized. I'm on my way to conquering the initial depression that put me in this toilet.  ¶ 11:27 AM 0 comments

  Reposted from PPK Industries' blog:

==================================
WAR IS OVER, IF YOU GRUNT IT
==================================

Poop For Peace Day is not about protest or partisanship or politics. Poop For Peace Day is about acknowledging the fundamental basis of shared humanity: black or white, liberal or conservative, Christian or Muslim or Jew, we are all united in struggle against the tyranny of the bowel.

And Poop For Peace Day is April 14 -- next Friday.

Spread the word. Tell the media. And start eating roughage.

More info:
http://www.poopreport.com/Peace  ¶ 1:53 AM 1 comments

  Lexapoo The other part of the cessation of the SNRI has brought about a marked increase in the volume and frequency of my constitutionals which I hope to chronicle on PPK Industries blog. Output in the written format has also increased and we hope to have more postings about the raw feed from both ends.  ¶ 6:40 PM 1 comments

  Axons Firing Into Nothingness I have a horrible couple of weeks ahead of me. I have gotten off the pills and am experiencing withdrawal symptoms of brain shivers and and nerve pulses like electricity through my extremities. I checked some of the websites about the problems of withdrawal from this interesting drug. There has been talk of a lawsuit due to the problems due to cessation of its use. There was this 19 year old girl who was a test subject. She had no symptoms of depression and was in the control group. Then she was shifted onto the placebo for four days and she hanged herself in the laboratory. That is disturbing to think that impulses and thoughts much darker than what led me to take the drug may emerge. Of course maybe it's some Nietzschean urge but I think I'll probably keep going while I'm in true pain as opposed to the boredom.
I'll live.  ¶ 9:46 PM 0 comments

  Where The Ideas Go I've had a lot of ideas and I'm not sure where to go with any of them. This blog has not seemed like the outlet for them in some time. A recent rejection has put me under a little bit. It's the first time I tried to stick my neck out there a little bit and I guess I wasn't ready for it.
I gotta work more on doing what I believe in and then I'll figure it out, I guess. Who knows?  ¶ 7:26 PM 0 comments

  The Imaginary I just posted about another imaginary band I thought of the other day. I have lots of blog ideas but don't put them on my myspace blog because I just don't know what to write on there anymore because my coworkers read it and I'm a silly bastard and can't keep it as real as I'd like. Where do all those ideas go? I went out last night and got plowed for my not-girlfriend's birthday. I kept thinking of things but they all faded away into the ether. Ah well.  ¶ 9:41 PM 0 comments

  Requiem For An Audience Of One Liam deleted his blog last week and won't be hollering anymore. I guess that's that. Earlier today I was full of ideas for blog entries but now I'm constipated with I sit down to do my thing. Ah well, what can you do? Nothing I guess. I played a soccer game tonight. We lost. Nothing to report.  ¶ 12:23 AM 3 comments

  Strategy And Haste I'm off to a meeting today at 1pm. I've been thinking some about my Myers-Briggs Temperament Indicator. I'm an INTP and as one I seem to place knowledge above all else. With this in mind, I often attempt to rationalize my own thoughts and behavior within this dynamic. My knowledge or lack thereof of certain things gives me insider or outsider status, respectively in my mind. I often idealize the unknown and lose the fascination when the knowledge is attained.
That leaves me in an odd position when it relates to interpersonal relations. I have crushes on girls I've never met and then find myself disappointed. I once tried to explain that to a woman I was friends with but she thought it was somewhat misogynistic. I don't know about that necessarily. It's not quite that really, to me at least. I'm a heterosexual man and my love interests are women, that's just that. Anyway the story I told her went like this. Years ago, when I lived in the city, I was walking across a crosswalk and I caught eyes with a woman going the other way, we both looked back but never talked. In my mind, that was the most beautiful thing because I was free to imagine only the postive aspects of a romance with this woman without disappointment. The female friend that I told the story to thought I was dehumanizing the woman in doing that. I don't know what her MBTI was but it obviously began with extraversion.
I suppose there are at least half of people who see reality as an objective phenomenon, in that only by a shared consensus can truths be absolute. This is scientific but it seems limited to me somehow. It seems to ignore the Quantum aspects of reality, focusing solely on the Newtonian. At least it looks that way through the subjective lens with which I observe the world.
Intraversion is an odd master. The false relationship imagined is a universal in that most never want to feel that they are truly alone. Yet without shared outlook, there is no underlying positivity in any relationship. You can either deal with it and look inward or reshape your view for the purpose of conformity. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down, blah blah; unless you live in a universe without hammers.  ¶ 10:19 AM 3 comments

  The New Season I've been quiet lately. Busy with a little of this and that. The new indoor soccer season started. We had a game last week, final score 8-1. We had five substitutes. We kept the bench moving and beat the other team soundly. We were moved down a division which may have been a mistake. The captains are looking at putting us back in Men's 5. There's another game tonight, if the score margin is also as wide as the last one, I think we have a case to be moved. Tonight's game is also at 11. Late nights but I have Tuesday off so this will work out as our next few games are also on Monday.
That's about it. No real news of any significance. That probably explains my recent silence.  ¶ 7:02 PM 0 comments

  Arsplosion Here's a slice of life that can't be sliced. I'm having tummy trouble and am supposed to be at work. I'm a toilet slave at the moment. I can't break away from the porcelain for more than a few minutes at a time. I don't feel comfortable making the 10 minute drive to work. The toilet at work is also about 50 meters away from my desk. I've taken some Pepto and will try to make it in later once the medicine kicks in. I can't miss out on my wages. Porcelain and wages are cruel masters.  ¶ 8:00 AM 0 comments

  Art Chat with RLB I had a chat with my friend earlier about art. He told me I should read the Jerry Saltz piece in the Village Voice. I've always believed in what he was doing even if I didn't fully understand. But then by Socratic reasoning, poets are not the wisest men because they don't always know what they are doing. Through some sort of artistic license, I imagine this extends to visual artists as well so maybe he doesn't always know what he's doing. That's why I found the reviews of his work so unusual and at times overblown. He's forced to explain his art as part of his coursework, but at the same time I think if there was a proper explanation that could be given he would have chosen to write something. That is where the lexicon fails us or something like that. The true origin of the phrase, "A picture is worth 1000 words" originates from the Chinese whose original saying was that it's worth 10000 words. There is a kanji character for ten thousand which makes sense but sort of defies the western numbering concept. Sun Tzu in the art of war talked about how it's a viable military unit of troops, etc. 10000 is serious, 1000 men can be defeated. Some 300 odd were defeated at the Alamo. 1000 words is a book report, 10000 is on it's way to being a short story/novella.
So my friend has 10000+ words written about his art already. Which makes it all the more real but is falsely conveyed in the critics' respective imaginations. It's not at all what the viewer might think in the gallery, so I have my beef.
It says that Chaos Theory prevails. The two main ones are Chaos and Superstring. I think both have their merits. Superstring has its flaws in that the length of the strings is indefinite. That is, one wonders if they reverbeate within one's own universe or only outside of it. If it's only in alternate universes, then it might as well be Chaos because we are limited in our perception to only five senses and four dimensions.
OK, I've said it. This message brought to you by Beer.  ¶ 8:23 PM 0 comments