It occurs to me that I have never imagined a dragon when the band Imagine Dragons comes up in my life. I'm not imagining a dragon now, either. Their whole deal does not work on me, which is interesting, as I am prone to imagining dragons without any impetus at all. From the ages of seven to fourteen, I drew dragons practically all the time. I had entire art pads filled with dragons.
Can't draw a dragon very well, no. They were all bad, but I did at least imagine them.
*
Maybe I'll draw a crappy dragon when I finish this post. Use that fancy brush pen I bought on a feverishly desirous whim and have only set to paper a single time.
*
Some days your body feels fine and your head checks out okay but your spirit's a little off the center, your heart maybe not quite right. It's not bad, not a sickness, not an affliction like despair or thirst for punishment, but a fragility. The sensitivities are heightened, your feelings glassier, easier for you to see through but prone to cracking. Ever run a finger over cracked glass the wrong way? One learns what it is to bleed freely, if one didn't already.
Usually there are little solaces throughout the day. This is lucky.
*
Taking in and working out poison takes a certain toll on the system. This is as true for the spirit as it is for the flesh.
*
Alright. Gonna go sit outside for June's last sunset. It's been quite a month. Really one for the books in a lot of ways. A month of extremes; frustrations and blessings, blaze and deluge, halcyon days and severe tests, compassing failure and success, loving and longing, and exertion and release. Also I saw a lot of birds. Even saw an oriole, not super common to peep round here.
Hope your June was also worth comment. Let's see what July has for us.
--JL
Sunday, June 30, 2019
Saturday, June 29, 2019
#194
About halfway through Nicholas Nickleby, which made me very much want to read The BFG again real quick (Dahl's Chickens, so funny), which on completion which made me want to read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory again real quick, which I also did.
Man, I've had those two books for more than twenty years and more than seven moves, one of them transcontinental. They're still in fine shape given all that, holding together well, but their age definitely shows, the pages past their initial yellowing and roughening and going into the tan tones and suede textures. In a few years they'll begin to crinkle and throw a little dust as the paper cracks minutely, and then they'll really start to fall apart. For right now, they're still trusty, though. Amazing how things can last.
*
Not going to give any details, but I got so fucking lied to today! It was pretty mind-blowing to be lied to in such a fashion. Truly incredible. I mean this was weapons-grade, fully delusional lying. I knew a reality that a person did not know I knew, and they proceeded to attempt to insert a complete fabrication into what they assumed was void. In doing so, they revealed more true information about themselves to me than they have in almost a year of knowing them.
For example, this person has never read The Art of War.
Like, it's not new information, exactly, but such a resounding confirmation that it became comical; at first, my hands were trembling with outrage, but as time went on, the humor outweighed it.
Now there is mostly just pity. I mean at the end of the day it is extremely pathetic. I have lied like that in my lifetime; having been in this wretched position, I know intimately how low you have to fall, how painful it is to need to convince yourself and how doubly painful it is to need someone else to believe that you aren't as weak and scared and fumbling you are, to support a whole world where that isn't true and heaven itself be damned if the world I ask for contradicts the world that is.
No, I'm no better than this person at all, but the way things stand, I suppose it doesn't matter. Math starts at different places for different things.
*
My will, these days, is bent on telling the truth, as far as any human can manage such a thing. This means I cannot stay too angry with liars, and don't deserve to; it is incredibly, brutally difficult not to lie, and once you really try to stop, you understand why you need to a lot better, and you catch yourself trying to do it a lot more. Difficulty compounds again as one experiments with the rigor of considering certain silences a type of lie, or an outright one.
Only an idiot blurts the truth at all times, needful or not, though; a measure of idiocy is called for in life, I think, but not the whole damn hog.
Yet I don't know. Perhaps the discipline is exactly that demanding, and perhaps idiocy isn't valuable precisely unless it is carried too far.
Anyway I am as guilty as anyone, no matter what I say or who lies to me.
*
Maybe maybe maybe. Whatever. I had some really fun thoughts about cutting things up in the kitchen today, overwrought meditations on the nature of knifework. On my walk home in the blazing summer heat I texted them to a couple of coworkers:
"Good knifework approaches Euclidean geometries"
"The purpose of the knife is to make the smoothest, truest lines through the apparent chaos of the organic and effect the approximation of even particles, which could at pains be reconstituted beautifully"
"A knife doesn't destroy, it creates the possibility for harmonious rearrangements"
Those were my private ideas on cutting vegetables and sundry, then I shared them with my friends, and now, you too are burdened with these notions. Will you think of them, I wonder, the next time you approach an onion, or prepare to carve a bird?
It does not matter, but if it should happen, I humbly pray it enriches the experience. Even if as you read them right now you consider me an overblown douchebag--it could still happen, and I hope it does.
*
Other things that have happened include going on a beautiful very sunny date on which sushi was consumed and a riverbank thoroughly lazed on, receiving my paring knife in the mail, and some mighty glorious skies to look at. It's been hella summer here, stupendous shit, never gets old.
--JL
Man, I've had those two books for more than twenty years and more than seven moves, one of them transcontinental. They're still in fine shape given all that, holding together well, but their age definitely shows, the pages past their initial yellowing and roughening and going into the tan tones and suede textures. In a few years they'll begin to crinkle and throw a little dust as the paper cracks minutely, and then they'll really start to fall apart. For right now, they're still trusty, though. Amazing how things can last.
*
Not going to give any details, but I got so fucking lied to today! It was pretty mind-blowing to be lied to in such a fashion. Truly incredible. I mean this was weapons-grade, fully delusional lying. I knew a reality that a person did not know I knew, and they proceeded to attempt to insert a complete fabrication into what they assumed was void. In doing so, they revealed more true information about themselves to me than they have in almost a year of knowing them.
For example, this person has never read The Art of War.
Like, it's not new information, exactly, but such a resounding confirmation that it became comical; at first, my hands were trembling with outrage, but as time went on, the humor outweighed it.
Now there is mostly just pity. I mean at the end of the day it is extremely pathetic. I have lied like that in my lifetime; having been in this wretched position, I know intimately how low you have to fall, how painful it is to need to convince yourself and how doubly painful it is to need someone else to believe that you aren't as weak and scared and fumbling you are, to support a whole world where that isn't true and heaven itself be damned if the world I ask for contradicts the world that is.
No, I'm no better than this person at all, but the way things stand, I suppose it doesn't matter. Math starts at different places for different things.
*
My will, these days, is bent on telling the truth, as far as any human can manage such a thing. This means I cannot stay too angry with liars, and don't deserve to; it is incredibly, brutally difficult not to lie, and once you really try to stop, you understand why you need to a lot better, and you catch yourself trying to do it a lot more. Difficulty compounds again as one experiments with the rigor of considering certain silences a type of lie, or an outright one.
Only an idiot blurts the truth at all times, needful or not, though; a measure of idiocy is called for in life, I think, but not the whole damn hog.
Yet I don't know. Perhaps the discipline is exactly that demanding, and perhaps idiocy isn't valuable precisely unless it is carried too far.
Anyway I am as guilty as anyone, no matter what I say or who lies to me.
*
Maybe maybe maybe. Whatever. I had some really fun thoughts about cutting things up in the kitchen today, overwrought meditations on the nature of knifework. On my walk home in the blazing summer heat I texted them to a couple of coworkers:
"Good knifework approaches Euclidean geometries"
"The purpose of the knife is to make the smoothest, truest lines through the apparent chaos of the organic and effect the approximation of even particles, which could at pains be reconstituted beautifully"
"A knife doesn't destroy, it creates the possibility for harmonious rearrangements"
Those were my private ideas on cutting vegetables and sundry, then I shared them with my friends, and now, you too are burdened with these notions. Will you think of them, I wonder, the next time you approach an onion, or prepare to carve a bird?
It does not matter, but if it should happen, I humbly pray it enriches the experience. Even if as you read them right now you consider me an overblown douchebag--it could still happen, and I hope it does.
*
Other things that have happened include going on a beautiful very sunny date on which sushi was consumed and a riverbank thoroughly lazed on, receiving my paring knife in the mail, and some mighty glorious skies to look at. It's been hella summer here, stupendous shit, never gets old.
--JL
Wednesday, June 26, 2019
#193
Things have been good with the new knife. It took its blood tax in the gentlest way possible, just the very tip piercing the fleshy part of the bottom segment of my left little finger in the part of an instant it took to flick my eyes over to another coworker as I was resetting my position. The knife is exacting, but cooperative and forgiving; we are an excellent match. I strive for these qualities professionally and personally.
The knife's performance is nothing short of exceptional. I am a new man about the kitchen, with a new spring in my already hasty step and (I would not doubt) a manic glint in my eye as I render four quarts of parsley into dust and turn an onion into minute geometry in forty seconds flat. Slap a steer carcass on the table, hand me a cleaver for the bones and I would cross myself and confidently butcher that fucker and fillet you a lovely bunch of smooth-cut steak. If you put me in a warehouse with a table, a wooden cutting board, a honing rod, and twenty tons of potatoes to cube, I would ask no questions and set to with a will, my knife lovingly in hand. A little boombox or radio would be a luxury.
*
That's all for now, folks! Try not to die out there, secure in the knowledge that it's gonna getcha one fine day.
--JL
The knife's performance is nothing short of exceptional. I am a new man about the kitchen, with a new spring in my already hasty step and (I would not doubt) a manic glint in my eye as I render four quarts of parsley into dust and turn an onion into minute geometry in forty seconds flat. Slap a steer carcass on the table, hand me a cleaver for the bones and I would cross myself and confidently butcher that fucker and fillet you a lovely bunch of smooth-cut steak. If you put me in a warehouse with a table, a wooden cutting board, a honing rod, and twenty tons of potatoes to cube, I would ask no questions and set to with a will, my knife lovingly in hand. A little boombox or radio would be a luxury.
*
That's all for now, folks! Try not to die out there, secure in the knowledge that it's gonna getcha one fine day.
--JL
Saturday, June 22, 2019
#192
Damn, doggies, a dude is tired from the day, and must wake early on the morrow, and would fain rest his head upon the pillow, but I bought a knife today, and that marks a day particular, so one feels bound to punch the record.
Forsooth!
*
When a dude drops two hundred of his own dollars after tax on a tool, which in his case equates to half of the average monthly rent he has paid throughout his adult life and close to seventeen hours of work before tax, it is natural and correct that he should feel it is a proper day to take stock of oneself, to see where one stands.
What kind of man is this, that spends this kind of money on a knife? And then, of course, spends a hundred more on blade guards, a carrying case, and a paring knife to exactly match my new Wüsthof Classic Ikon 4596/23cm (nine cool inches of full-tang German engineering with that hybrid ergonomic handle for relaxed-grip comfort).
*
Well, it is a tool of my trade. I spent this money for work, which is special way of spending money on myself. It is not a hand-forged, unique carbon-steel masterpiece; it is not the dream knife that I am not even sure that I want. But it is time I had a knife for work that is mine, whose edge no one is allowed to scrape across a cutting board, which will not be stuck into an industrial dishwasher or run through a shitty hand-sharpener, a knife no disrespectful, careless, unprofessional-ass hand will ever fucking touch and therefore a knife worth caring for, care for which it will reward me with leal and untroubled service for years, and faithfully keep its edge for more than fifty fucking minutes after the knife guy brings the fucking freshly sharpened knives back to the kitchen after which each knife is a ketchup hammer to a tomato and cannot so much as leave a mark on the skin of an onion.
Also stainless steel is in now, the sharpening game has caught up to it and it is a perfect choice for the kind of kitchens I work in.
Most importantly, after trying a couple eight-inchers and pretty much resigning myself to just a basic work knife I would not really enjoy, the dude at the store (I chose a local vacuum store with a Wüsthof stock) asked if I wanted to try the niner, it being discounted in a damaged box and all. I could give a shit about the box (stainless, suckaz!) and gave it a shot. The moment I held it in my grip and felt the balance travel up my arm, I knew it was my knife, said wow out loud, and reached for my wallet.
It was like that with Stray Dog*, too. Some of the tools we encounter in life, well, we've all hurt ourselves and known in our heart of hearts that this one was not on us, this time the motherfucking tool came at us with evil intent and no one can convince us otherwise. I believe this is perfectly true; malice aforethought can reside in the inanimate and tools, being made with purpose and thrown into the world to exist as vessels of purpose, quite naturally react as subjective individuals to the purpose of the user to varying degrees. Energy acts upon energy. Some groups of molecules come together and something lights up. This knife and I were meant to cut together, as Stray Dog and I were meant to do our thing.
People are kind of like this, too.
*
So what kind of dude is Joseph Lidd, on the day he meets his knife? A dude that got up at four in the morning after about three and a half hour's worth of sleep, walked the old five miles to work in his brother's birkenstocks, put breakfast out on a hot table, got so tired of the gee-dee work knives that he resolved out loud to go buy his own knife after work, put lunch out on a hot table, closed the hot table and pulled the leftovers and cleaned and closed his station, walked six blocks to a place to get a certain lovely lady of intimate acquaintance a welcome-home present (presents?) for when she returns from her overseas vacation to that most emerald of isles, walked a little over a mile to the vacuum store, thinking over the notion that this was it, hell or high water come crashing through the world he was going to walk into a store and drop more than one hundred and fifty dollars on a single object, which he did, and having accomplished these errands, walked the mile and bit back nearly to where he works; rather, cruised into the shoe store in front of his workplace, inquired after a pair he has under their charge for resoling, was told they would likely be ready in a few days, and walked home barefoot the five miles on the burning asphalt and cement, backpack loaded quite to the maximum healthy capacity, system perhaps not having been provided with quite the recommended calories for all of the above, mind and body full of the special clarity that comes with determining and carrying out acts demanding of such a blend of endurances undertaken for the purpose of tempering the body and mind like steel in the forge, of sharpening the self like a knife, until he got home, to the dog so glad to see him and his mother's good cooking which has made him strong, to his feet hurting like the proverbial son of a bitch and walking around extremely gingerly, to saying fuck it beautiful day let's do this thing let's not be done with this sun I still got more juice behind the hose, so he puts on socks, which hurt, and shoes, which also hurts, and he fills his backpack once more with clothes he's getting rid of as they are ruined by wear and tear and honest accident, walks them a mile and a half to those bins that are a tax scam but who can make themselves really give a fuck without enjoining upon themselves to also give a fuck about the invisible insects we cannot but crush underfoot or fret over the bacterial genocide which is the act of drawing breath**, walked a mile and a half back, pain completely forgotten, pushed aside by the natural medicine of continuing to walk and the ease of spirit that comes of listening to Blind Boy Fuller truckin' his blues away.
Hardly necessary as it is to add, nevertheless it should go on record that I periodically vaporized THC throughout all of this. I am a dude who does that stuff plus a bunch of other stuff I ain't got time or spare wherewithal to detail. I mean, like I said at the outset, I'm pretty beat.
--JL
*ideas like this are why I would make a poor Buddhist, which would nevertheless not prevent me from being an exemplary Buddhist, the great genius of this mode of spirit being that it should be impossible to tell if anyone is doing it correctly merely by observing, or even probing. For who would know the right questions, and still have to ask them?
Hoooooly fuck I gotta go to bed
Anyway I know there are better ways but like I said, can't care about everything all the time
Hoooooly fuck I gotta go to bed
Anyway I know there are better ways but like I said, can't care about everything all the time
bed
Friday, June 21, 2019
#191
One of those little blessings in life is that you cannot go back and tell your teenage self that they completely fucking suck at what they are trying to get away with. I am sure that you can tell your past self things in the dream world, but that's one thing; actually being able to take your own face in your hands, look yourself in the eyes, and tell yourself that you do not blame yourself, but it is a cold fact that you are painfully deluded about the scope and quality of your abilities exactly where you believe that you are strongest.
No, it is for your younger self to present you with physical evidence that this is so, by way of the works of your own clumsy hands. Not to mention the hindsight that allows us to remember the stupid and terrible things we have said with such particular acuity.
Ordinarily I am a diligent and merciless deleter/burner/shredder of old work, but every now and again material will escape the steady culling and survive for years. I had the singular opportunity (here I use the word opportunity with incredible resentment and disgust so complete that it fills my body like a terrible flood of static and makes me break out in actual hardcore uncomfortable goosebumps) to come across work I had last touched at the age of seventeen in a neglected external hard drive. Seventeen, hard as it is for me to believe, was nigh-on thirteen years from this day, and what I beheld within that text file is a punishment from God*. This is how I am punished for the arrogance that I once fostered in my wretched teenaged breast.
Bad, friends. It is bad. It is bad writing by a kid that thinks he is a cool genius, a devil-may-care trickster badass. I thought I had amazing ideas and kept it real despite my expansive vocab. I believed I was writing the great modern epic of multidimensional pulp fantasy (with time travel, and the fuckin' apocalypse, and the main characters breaking out of my version of Hell on a motorcycle giving the finger to my version of the Devil [seriously. Like on the cover of the Meatloaf album, Bat Out of Hell. I never got that far, but reading it has forced me to acknowledge that this was my plan. I wanted to have this happen. I was thinking about how best to execute this idea]). It would be funny if I had thought it was funny. I thought it was fucking important shit. I thought I was radder than a fighter pilot whose jet is a handicap because he's fucking Superman]).
Seriously this document contains the most hellaciously bad writing I have ever read in my entire life. I had no idea how people talked--it may be that I had not yet had an actual conversation, I don't know! This evidence would make any reader doubt it. I understand with renewed clarity the mechanism of "improvement", but also how it may slow down; I had forgotten that I was ever this raw, that the bad writer that I more easily can avoid being truly was me. When I look my writing, the slightest little thing that reminds me even a minuscule bit of how I used to write, well, I know it's gotta go right out the god damn window, red pen, blue pencil, whatever you use; X, gone, kill it, say goodbye, burn it on the cutting room floor, but I'd forgotten it was me that I was reminded of: for a while now bad writing has felt impersonal to me, like a storm I left behind me miles and miles ago on the highway. Bad writing comes to be something that exists and, like, gets writers, catches them unawares despite themselves. Everyone knows how to write, one begins to feel; they just need to learn to outrun the storm.
Nope! We are babies, and once did have to learn. Even the most basic, elementary things, like getting food into your own mouth by yourself, were once a project. I am merely looking at version of my writing that has food all over its stupid face, but you know, it's a baby. Maybe, to another, this could even be cute. To me it is like a close-up image of a ruptured, infected cyst, with the word "moron" spelled out in tiny cysts.
You would think that this is comforting to me. Haven't felt this way about something I've written in over five years, I would say. I agree that this is a very unmistakable sign that I have improved my craft, and that it is useful to be reminded that I, me, am capable of bad writing and the reckless, self-astonished hubris that produces the unique flavor and so accentuates the absolute laughable badness can always dominate my mind once more. But I do not feel this feeling, which is precisely why I avoid keeping old work around; I skip straight to the paranoia that my current level is equally shameful in relation to some imaginary level that I ought to be at already, and experience paralysis, the urge to delete every text file on my computer, and the terror that all publishing is a terrible mistake.
*
Happily, this paranoia is rendered null in the face of two printed books and so many blog posts. And that chrononormative bullshit about having to be a certain kind and quality of successful with art at any point, and being judged thereby: absolutely a load of crap. You can do whatever you want, however you want to do it, for however long you want to. I'm going to make myself read the whole thing (I literally cannot for too long at a time, I start to feel very weird and my vision blurs) but I will learn from this pain. It is a pain I try to put off through a different kind of pain I like better, and that other pain has served me well, but this is important too. Forward, forward! Ever forward!
Do you think the people who painted the walls in Lascaux give one cold fuck that you don't know their names, or exactly what they meant by what they were doing? Do you think the millions of artists whose work turned to dust a thousand years before anybody wrote down a single word don't count because nobody can have an opinion about them? Man, just make art and do whatever you want with it. If you can't make a living at it, that's not the best luck, but not being able to make art should feel like much worse luck, so if you are able to, be glad about that and enjoy the use of a blessed life.
*
Also despite what I am saying here improvement probably isn't real. What is it? It's more complicated a question than I seem to have spent most of my time thinking, and I've never exactly sat easy with it.
Who knows? Not me! No, sir.
--JL
*this, I think, is the only way heavenly justice is, properly speaking, meted out--always and only it is your own hand on the blade.
No, it is for your younger self to present you with physical evidence that this is so, by way of the works of your own clumsy hands. Not to mention the hindsight that allows us to remember the stupid and terrible things we have said with such particular acuity.
Ordinarily I am a diligent and merciless deleter/burner/shredder of old work, but every now and again material will escape the steady culling and survive for years. I had the singular opportunity (here I use the word opportunity with incredible resentment and disgust so complete that it fills my body like a terrible flood of static and makes me break out in actual hardcore uncomfortable goosebumps) to come across work I had last touched at the age of seventeen in a neglected external hard drive. Seventeen, hard as it is for me to believe, was nigh-on thirteen years from this day, and what I beheld within that text file is a punishment from God*. This is how I am punished for the arrogance that I once fostered in my wretched teenaged breast.
Bad, friends. It is bad. It is bad writing by a kid that thinks he is a cool genius, a devil-may-care trickster badass. I thought I had amazing ideas and kept it real despite my expansive vocab. I believed I was writing the great modern epic of multidimensional pulp fantasy (with time travel, and the fuckin' apocalypse, and the main characters breaking out of my version of Hell on a motorcycle giving the finger to my version of the Devil [seriously. Like on the cover of the Meatloaf album, Bat Out of Hell. I never got that far, but reading it has forced me to acknowledge that this was my plan. I wanted to have this happen. I was thinking about how best to execute this idea]). It would be funny if I had thought it was funny. I thought it was fucking important shit. I thought I was radder than a fighter pilot whose jet is a handicap because he's fucking Superman]).
Seriously this document contains the most hellaciously bad writing I have ever read in my entire life. I had no idea how people talked--it may be that I had not yet had an actual conversation, I don't know! This evidence would make any reader doubt it. I understand with renewed clarity the mechanism of "improvement", but also how it may slow down; I had forgotten that I was ever this raw, that the bad writer that I more easily can avoid being truly was me. When I look my writing, the slightest little thing that reminds me even a minuscule bit of how I used to write, well, I know it's gotta go right out the god damn window, red pen, blue pencil, whatever you use; X, gone, kill it, say goodbye, burn it on the cutting room floor, but I'd forgotten it was me that I was reminded of: for a while now bad writing has felt impersonal to me, like a storm I left behind me miles and miles ago on the highway. Bad writing comes to be something that exists and, like, gets writers, catches them unawares despite themselves. Everyone knows how to write, one begins to feel; they just need to learn to outrun the storm.
Nope! We are babies, and once did have to learn. Even the most basic, elementary things, like getting food into your own mouth by yourself, were once a project. I am merely looking at version of my writing that has food all over its stupid face, but you know, it's a baby. Maybe, to another, this could even be cute. To me it is like a close-up image of a ruptured, infected cyst, with the word "moron" spelled out in tiny cysts.
You would think that this is comforting to me. Haven't felt this way about something I've written in over five years, I would say. I agree that this is a very unmistakable sign that I have improved my craft, and that it is useful to be reminded that I, me, am capable of bad writing and the reckless, self-astonished hubris that produces the unique flavor and so accentuates the absolute laughable badness can always dominate my mind once more. But I do not feel this feeling, which is precisely why I avoid keeping old work around; I skip straight to the paranoia that my current level is equally shameful in relation to some imaginary level that I ought to be at already, and experience paralysis, the urge to delete every text file on my computer, and the terror that all publishing is a terrible mistake.
*
Happily, this paranoia is rendered null in the face of two printed books and so many blog posts. And that chrononormative bullshit about having to be a certain kind and quality of successful with art at any point, and being judged thereby: absolutely a load of crap. You can do whatever you want, however you want to do it, for however long you want to. I'm going to make myself read the whole thing (I literally cannot for too long at a time, I start to feel very weird and my vision blurs) but I will learn from this pain. It is a pain I try to put off through a different kind of pain I like better, and that other pain has served me well, but this is important too. Forward, forward! Ever forward!
Do you think the people who painted the walls in Lascaux give one cold fuck that you don't know their names, or exactly what they meant by what they were doing? Do you think the millions of artists whose work turned to dust a thousand years before anybody wrote down a single word don't count because nobody can have an opinion about them? Man, just make art and do whatever you want with it. If you can't make a living at it, that's not the best luck, but not being able to make art should feel like much worse luck, so if you are able to, be glad about that and enjoy the use of a blessed life.
*
Also despite what I am saying here improvement probably isn't real. What is it? It's more complicated a question than I seem to have spent most of my time thinking, and I've never exactly sat easy with it.
Who knows? Not me! No, sir.
--JL
*this, I think, is the only way heavenly justice is, properly speaking, meted out--always and only it is your own hand on the blade.
Thursday, June 20, 2019
#190
Between Apple and Microsoft, I have never held a loyalty. The first home computer I remember using was a Macintosh, then there was a Compaq, then a different Hewlett-Packard machine. We didn't have a PC for the house after that, everybody started using Macbooks except for me and my dad, who stuck with whatever unfashionable rectangles his companies would give him, Dells mostly (I would get the discard). The first new laptop I got was another Compaq I think; I really should know, since I used it for about six years. Then, my brother's discarded Macbook from 2009 for another few years, before I got this Black Friday Toshiba I am typing on right now a couple years ago.
Basically I do not care what the computing device's extraction is. Adaptability serves better than loyalty, I think. This isn't such a wild stance these days, now that everything is cross-platform and the computer phone changed everything (everybody should know and silently hold in their hearts that Nokia could have had their "iPhone" out way earlier in the game and opted to make the N-Gage instead. Next time you miss an opportunity, think about that one, and go easy on yourself) but many times have I been forced to tonelessly repeat that I don't care about what a dude is saying as that dude evangelizes about which giant company is the savior spewing rainbows and which the horned devil, lord of deceit.
Now that, friends, was pointless. If I ever see one of those fuckers again, I am going to dash whatever they are holding in their hands to the ground and I am going to boost their wallets, to-their-face style.
Anyhow, I use old, bad, broken, and otherwise extremely convenient computers, and I don't use them very well.
*
I should take a moment and clarify that when I address myself and refer to titanic companies in the blog and talk about the people that run them, I am thinking largely of top-tier decision-makers and policysetters. I am thinking of the gruesome puppets that dance on the strings of their own bloated hubris, and do not wish to malign the thousands and thousands of grunts that make up their generally abused and underpaid workforce, no different in any concrete sense than any other shat-upon laborer.
*
Probably done writing about internet for now. Maybe I'll think of something, but maybe not.
I'm reading Nicholas Nickleby. I like it a lot, glad I picked it up, didn't realize I missed reading Dickens till I was reading it. So good. So funny. So gross and sad and weird. Such graceful, effortless beauty.
Also reading Markings, by Dag Hammarskjöld, translated by W.H. Auden and Leif Sjöberg. I found this book during a sale at the local library on one of those automatic picks (I get into a zone when pickin' books) and it is pretty wild so far. This dude was a personality.
*
Have a good day, have fun in life
--JL
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
#189
Big day with big changes in it. Rather than type the post this morning I had a wide-ranging, semi-contentious discussion over what essentially boils down to ontology and semiotics with my dad, the sort of sparring that leaves both parties feeling that they have learned from one another without giving ground. Our debate is volatile and can be explosive, and today we each at times felt quite unheard by the other, but we kept it tight and were rewarded with that incredibly pregnant, joyfully expanding silence that signals the end of fruitful dialogue. We slapped five hard and laughed from our bellies, got up, and went about our respective days.
*ok on balance that is a lot of British dudes to recommend but hey, I had the childhood I had
See, I like internet, but I talk to my father. It's one of those key buffers between a young male and a spastic fucking little troll. Fresh air and acquiring hands-based or otherwise physically applicable skills is also important.
*
*
If you can get a kid to read even a single one of the books that Rick and Morty cannibalizes before some twitching maniac peer at their elementary school makes them watch an episode on their tablet during recess, then you have done a tremendous job as a parent. Aesop's Fables by the artists formerly known as Aesop (if I understand the modern stance correctly), The Wind In The Willows, by Kenneth Grahame, Winnie-The-Pooh by A.A. Milne, and Animal Farm by George Orwell are all most instructive, and feature anthropomorphized animals or stuffed animals. You can pretty much cut kids loose and let them read whatever after that, but I'd leave the books that make up a basic introductory philosophy course lying around, as well as a dictionary and perhaps the latest edition of Bernard Grun's The Timetables of History. Nice.*
As an aside, in my humble opinion, there is no finer book for children anywhere than The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster.
As an aside, in my humble opinion, there is no finer book for children anywhere than The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster.
If you think these books are too hard or explicit for little kids I gotta tell ya, you're not ready for this century. The human brain is changing fast. Pretty soon a kid is gonna have a science fair project where they 3D-print a liver with a salvaged 3D-printer that they modded themselves that is forty-five percent more efficient than an analog liver and can be held and transported at room temperature while retaining transplant viability. A few years after that, a kid that pulls something like that will scrape a C.
*
How does Google's own Blogger text editor not know the word anthropomorphized? Or the word Blogger, for that matter? Get with it, people. You are too big for this. Shit like this, man. Shit like this is why Google+ fails and nobody thinks you're as smart as you are anymore. You put yourselves on such thin ice with your logo shenanigans from the get-go (sorry to jump on such a creaky old bandwagon, but honestly, you deserve every stroke of the whip for as long as people have eyes to see) and it's like it doesn't even matter anymore that you are a company with such vast resources and ambitious projects that people forget that you are the only game at your level, they stop seeing you like they forget how vast the sky is. Why do you play below the level when no one can even get on your level? Why do you let a Vince Vaughn movie happen to you? That was grim, a grim moment for me, to see that.
Stop playing around, Google. You are too old. There is no excuse but that your text editors should know every word there is to know, period. You have disappointed me enough, Google. Don't even know the word petrichor, or the word materiel, or the word hornswoggle. Do your homework!
(I can never thank you enough for your search engine, Google. I remember trying to ask Jeeves shit. I remember being at Yahoo's tender mercies. I remember the debt, and I remember your crazy aircraft carrier and your deep-space projects. I just want you to fulfill your potential, Google. Bring me home. Unless there is some kind of endgame to having people think you're a company where people play Quidditch and sit in beanbag chairs. Unless you really are that company, and you don't care that your game makes boiled cabbage look like a young Sean Connery. Yeah, don't be evil, I love you for saying that [lmao I know you fuckers are a little bit, maybe a lot a bit, but who's keeping track, right? You think people will continue to not care** about what you do with their private stuff on the basis of how silly you appear? It's your gamble, y'all], but don't be dorks either.)
*
Good night. Internet fun probably continues...tomorrow!
Peace and love and a puff of the sweet stuff, tender hearts
--JL
*ok on balance that is a lot of British dudes to recommend but hey, I had the childhood I had
**I don't really care
Tuesday, June 18, 2019
#188
Just want to say that to me, using the word "Libra" as a proper noun for your currency sounds too much like Final Fantasy, first and least of all. I think you fucked up, facebook*. It's not tough to get what their marketers were going for, you know, liberation, unchaining the world through the blockchain (irony**), it is the Spanish word for granting or gaining freedom, certain currencies, and also the pound in ounces, which is also a former British currency, the British being the arguable founders of modern currency and banking, but this is the new shit and the revolution because Libra, etc.
But look. Look. Don't name your currency the same as an astrological sign, no matter how obvious the symbol is for what you are trying to do (the scales invoke justice and balance, like facebook is very concerned about what is fair and just). Someone should have stopped you a long time ago. I am glad that you are not trying to cure cancer, facebook people.
Guess a bunch of people are on board, though. They'll make money hand over fist for a second, before facebook fucks each and every last one of us right up the ass and for real something like Black Monday goes down, once again with our own personal lives collectively raining out the windows along with the cashrats who played so fast and loose with them.
*
So. The Internet.
Referring to internet just so, as though I were pointing at a dog without a name, is a quirk I picked up from Jeffrey Rowland of Wigu fame, internet's poet cowboy godfather. Maybe this assessment of the man's imprint is specialized; one of those "you had to be there, in order to think and feel as I do" things (everything? "you had to be there" is one of the most boner-killing tautologies, and it's usually hiding a kind of lie). But as I discussed yesterday, breaking ground is deceptively humble, and everything that comes after must make it seem tame and quaint.
This is known as proof of concept.
*
It begins and ends with webcomics, of course. I liked the internet okay initially as an information-gathering and communication tool (as I will confess, I was not always such a lurker), but the .jpeg had to hit its stride before internet truly seized my faculties. I started using internet about 1998, but did not truly get into it till 2002, and wasn't deep till 2003. Webcomics were the portal, the food that drew me to the rabbit hole, and they were themselves a great object lesson in how internet culture was to refract, warp, bend, and ultimately give rise to establishment and merge with a corporate economy. Among other things.
*
When I say deep, I think of individuals that were among the first perusing snuff sites and buying sex slaves that come with a bonus bag of heroin crammed into their rectum, or were building their own open-source operating systems in order to make themselves into powerful virtual entities by various computing methods. When I say deep, I do not mean that I have posts out there on defunct forums that told all my "friends" how to crack the system into a million triangular little eggshells and from the slimy mess that is the corpse of the Deep State raise up a new and perfect society. To simplify greatly. I am not claiming anything approaching the hardcore when I say "deep". I don't know how to code.
What I like to do it just take a good long look at whatever I happen to find, and what I have happened to find includes resources for all of the above and a world's worth more. Thing is, it is very very easy to look around on internet (you just click around, that's how it works), you can go very very far without actually doing anything, and you only matter if you make yourself matter. You can get very good at knowing where to go for interesting new ideas, unusual art, and the type of news that doesn't make the news, and without wasting a ton of time typing, you can get a lot done every day.
All I can really say is that I have looked at a lot of words and pictures on internet. But when I say a lot, I mean a fucking lot. I don't even so much as surf incognito. The volume and breadth of my trawling is its own signature and its own defense. Also the stuff I check if I'm just quick popping open the browser to do my little routine is so pedestrian it's laughable. Just picture me opening a newspaper and skipping straight to the funnies in a sunny kitchen, a cup of coffee at my elbow and my tie an affable half-windsor, my hat waiting for me on its peg and the dog content with its water dish and large white bone. A federal agent literally thinks of this man as their best customer as they go about their work.
*
Social media brought every toxic thing we learned how to hurt and troll each other with on forums into public life, right up to how our elected representatives seem and behave. That's okay. We will either digest this poison and mature as a culture or tear ourselves apart and what is left can try and learn.
*
Okay, more internet tomorrow! Got stuff to do.
internet, internet, the world wide web, if you were really any good, you'd have gotten us Jeb!
--JL
*every time I say facebook has fucked up or done something wrong they make another billion dollars net and change society for the worse/more interesting, so this is very good for them and presumably for the blockchain. Don't say I never did nothin' for ya. I'm totally kidding about this fucking evil company ruining the world by getting directly into the money these fuckers have shown their blue-and-white sigil and it is spattered with gore and human pulp how is this company still legal why has no one stopped them fffffffffffffffffffffffffffff***
**this is why Amazon is the company that is good at irony and facebook is staffed by affectless psychopaths who think they're philosopher-rogues: facebook's most ironic thing will always be their company name, and Amazon never offers any explanation for actions which seem destructive but which over the long-term solve problems those who loudest cried "foul" on Amazon had always wanted solved and never did. Amazon continually draws pistols from its coat and points them at the forehead of the terrified consumer. Their face grim stone, Amazon pulls the trigger, and a little flag that says "BANG!" shoots out and a puppy appears in the consumer's arms. Elsewhere, a CEO's head explodes and a whole industry collapses, its ancient bones serving as a delicious and powerful fertilizer for the new economy. Meanwhile facebook changed how the things on its hell of ass website are organized and sold a picture of your kid's genitals to a German murderer while giving the sum total of your human data away for free to people who cosplay as the Illuminati. (this is a cola war scenario of course, I like Amazon better for wholly personal reasons but none of these fucks are your friends; you are their food and never forget it)
***seriously congress is all "facebook demons, are you bad?" and they tell congress, "No! We are good!" and congress is all "Then do you know how I can get my printer to talk to my screen?" and now it's all "We're gonna save the world by giving everybody money-power! Did you know that not everybody can even hold money, and this makes things bad? Now everybody can hold money, though! If someone robs you blind, we can give you more to hold, no problem!" and Visa and Spotify and lord knows who else are all "Sounds real, let's go" and everyone in the facebook building rubs their little claws together and slips their forked tongues out from between their lips.****
****ok who cares though ultimately I am being a Chicken Little about all this, get out of here and try to have a good day without thinking about internet anymore, that's my plan
But look. Look. Don't name your currency the same as an astrological sign, no matter how obvious the symbol is for what you are trying to do (the scales invoke justice and balance, like facebook is very concerned about what is fair and just). Someone should have stopped you a long time ago. I am glad that you are not trying to cure cancer, facebook people.
Guess a bunch of people are on board, though. They'll make money hand over fist for a second, before facebook fucks each and every last one of us right up the ass and for real something like Black Monday goes down, once again with our own personal lives collectively raining out the windows along with the cashrats who played so fast and loose with them.
*
So. The Internet.
Referring to internet just so, as though I were pointing at a dog without a name, is a quirk I picked up from Jeffrey Rowland of Wigu fame, internet's poet cowboy godfather. Maybe this assessment of the man's imprint is specialized; one of those "you had to be there, in order to think and feel as I do" things (everything? "you had to be there" is one of the most boner-killing tautologies, and it's usually hiding a kind of lie). But as I discussed yesterday, breaking ground is deceptively humble, and everything that comes after must make it seem tame and quaint.
This is known as proof of concept.
*
It begins and ends with webcomics, of course. I liked the internet okay initially as an information-gathering and communication tool (as I will confess, I was not always such a lurker), but the .jpeg had to hit its stride before internet truly seized my faculties. I started using internet about 1998, but did not truly get into it till 2002, and wasn't deep till 2003. Webcomics were the portal, the food that drew me to the rabbit hole, and they were themselves a great object lesson in how internet culture was to refract, warp, bend, and ultimately give rise to establishment and merge with a corporate economy. Among other things.
*
When I say deep, I think of individuals that were among the first perusing snuff sites and buying sex slaves that come with a bonus bag of heroin crammed into their rectum, or were building their own open-source operating systems in order to make themselves into powerful virtual entities by various computing methods. When I say deep, I do not mean that I have posts out there on defunct forums that told all my "friends" how to crack the system into a million triangular little eggshells and from the slimy mess that is the corpse of the Deep State raise up a new and perfect society. To simplify greatly. I am not claiming anything approaching the hardcore when I say "deep". I don't know how to code.
What I like to do it just take a good long look at whatever I happen to find, and what I have happened to find includes resources for all of the above and a world's worth more. Thing is, it is very very easy to look around on internet (you just click around, that's how it works), you can go very very far without actually doing anything, and you only matter if you make yourself matter. You can get very good at knowing where to go for interesting new ideas, unusual art, and the type of news that doesn't make the news, and without wasting a ton of time typing, you can get a lot done every day.
All I can really say is that I have looked at a lot of words and pictures on internet. But when I say a lot, I mean a fucking lot. I don't even so much as surf incognito. The volume and breadth of my trawling is its own signature and its own defense. Also the stuff I check if I'm just quick popping open the browser to do my little routine is so pedestrian it's laughable. Just picture me opening a newspaper and skipping straight to the funnies in a sunny kitchen, a cup of coffee at my elbow and my tie an affable half-windsor, my hat waiting for me on its peg and the dog content with its water dish and large white bone. A federal agent literally thinks of this man as their best customer as they go about their work.
*
Social media brought every toxic thing we learned how to hurt and troll each other with on forums into public life, right up to how our elected representatives seem and behave. That's okay. We will either digest this poison and mature as a culture or tear ourselves apart and what is left can try and learn.
*
Okay, more internet tomorrow! Got stuff to do.
internet, internet, the world wide web, if you were really any good, you'd have gotten us Jeb!
--JL
*every time I say facebook has fucked up or done something wrong they make another billion dollars net and change society for the worse/more interesting, so this is very good for them and presumably for the blockchain. Don't say I never did nothin' for ya. I'm totally kidding about this fucking evil company ruining the world by getting directly into the money these fuckers have shown their blue-and-white sigil and it is spattered with gore and human pulp how is this company still legal why has no one stopped them fffffffffffffffffffffffffffff***
**this is why Amazon is the company that is good at irony and facebook is staffed by affectless psychopaths who think they're philosopher-rogues: facebook's most ironic thing will always be their company name, and Amazon never offers any explanation for actions which seem destructive but which over the long-term solve problems those who loudest cried "foul" on Amazon had always wanted solved and never did. Amazon continually draws pistols from its coat and points them at the forehead of the terrified consumer. Their face grim stone, Amazon pulls the trigger, and a little flag that says "BANG!" shoots out and a puppy appears in the consumer's arms. Elsewhere, a CEO's head explodes and a whole industry collapses, its ancient bones serving as a delicious and powerful fertilizer for the new economy. Meanwhile facebook changed how the things on its hell of ass website are organized and sold a picture of your kid's genitals to a German murderer while giving the sum total of your human data away for free to people who cosplay as the Illuminati. (this is a cola war scenario of course, I like Amazon better for wholly personal reasons but none of these fucks are your friends; you are their food and never forget it)
***seriously congress is all "facebook demons, are you bad?" and they tell congress, "No! We are good!" and congress is all "Then do you know how I can get my printer to talk to my screen?" and now it's all "We're gonna save the world by giving everybody money-power! Did you know that not everybody can even hold money, and this makes things bad? Now everybody can hold money, though! If someone robs you blind, we can give you more to hold, no problem!" and Visa and Spotify and lord knows who else are all "Sounds real, let's go" and everyone in the facebook building rubs their little claws together and slips their forked tongues out from between their lips.****
****ok who cares though ultimately I am being a Chicken Little about all this, get out of here and try to have a good day without thinking about internet anymore, that's my plan
Monday, June 17, 2019
#187
Ahhhh, surfing the web! Entering cyberspace! Placing your consciousness within the virtual object! Checking the Internet! Looking online! Uploading to the mainframe! And, of course, "jacking in", whether it be into the network, the matrix, or another made-up term.
Some language for whatever the fuck it is I am actually describing? You do not need it! It is amazing how few people work with an actual definition, going beyond "my computer contains the things I like, and there's like this...directory? I can send my gram-maw a smiling face made out of dots and slashes! A man put up a diagram of a carburetor that ups your fuel efficiency to ninety-eight miles to the gallon*! And this dancing baby Larry sent me on that electronic mail it has, holy shit!"
It's funny, and confusing, to those of us who like to understand things--but you do not need to understand anything in order to use it. Matter of fact, through use, those who do not comprehend what they are using often demonstrate that you do not need to understand something in order to define it and indeed even determine it.
*
When I was in high school I called coffee "jittersoup" and I named cocaine "super-powered party powder." And I spent a great deal of time on internet.
*
As in meatspace, I don't go around putting my mark on a lot of things in this world. Some dudes approach meatspace with their dicks out and a can of spray paint in each fist, and it is only natural that some dudes approach internet the same way (dudes whose dicks and fists do them precious little good in meatspace, typically, but only typically).
Me, a small area to call my own, unbounded opportunity to read, trying to fix it so I can think and look at stuff and move around pretty much how I please without the Man coming down too hard on me. Try to get some work done, for everybody's sake and for my own. Hopefully no one tries to talk to me. There is basically no difference between how I approach meatspace versus internet.
*
More about internet and its intersections of all types tomorrow! I don't want to be in my house right now. I want to go not be here before I have to be at work**. I don't know where I'm going to go. It doesn't matter. Probably the library.
Peace out, peace in, peace for a good deed and peace for a sin
SMOKE WEED EVERY DAY
FUCK YOU IF YOU DON'T
------> jk peace <-------
--JL
*dear FBI: I never saw anything like this. I don't think such a thing can be done, and have never heard of a dude accomplishing this. This is a blog of jokes.
**as I moved the mouse over to the "publish" button, my dad came into my room with his résumé for me to proof. This did not take long, but stung me right in the place where I am still immature.
Some language for whatever the fuck it is I am actually describing? You do not need it! It is amazing how few people work with an actual definition, going beyond "my computer contains the things I like, and there's like this...directory? I can send my gram-maw a smiling face made out of dots and slashes! A man put up a diagram of a carburetor that ups your fuel efficiency to ninety-eight miles to the gallon*! And this dancing baby Larry sent me on that electronic mail it has, holy shit!"
It's funny, and confusing, to those of us who like to understand things--but you do not need to understand anything in order to use it. Matter of fact, through use, those who do not comprehend what they are using often demonstrate that you do not need to understand something in order to define it and indeed even determine it.
*
When I was in high school I called coffee "jittersoup" and I named cocaine "super-powered party powder." And I spent a great deal of time on internet.
*
As in meatspace, I don't go around putting my mark on a lot of things in this world. Some dudes approach meatspace with their dicks out and a can of spray paint in each fist, and it is only natural that some dudes approach internet the same way (dudes whose dicks and fists do them precious little good in meatspace, typically, but only typically).
Me, a small area to call my own, unbounded opportunity to read, trying to fix it so I can think and look at stuff and move around pretty much how I please without the Man coming down too hard on me. Try to get some work done, for everybody's sake and for my own. Hopefully no one tries to talk to me. There is basically no difference between how I approach meatspace versus internet.
*
More about internet and its intersections of all types tomorrow! I don't want to be in my house right now. I want to go not be here before I have to be at work**. I don't know where I'm going to go. It doesn't matter. Probably the library.
Peace out, peace in, peace for a good deed and peace for a sin
SMOKE WEED EVERY DAY
FUCK YOU IF YOU DON'T
------> jk peace <-------
--JL
*dear FBI: I never saw anything like this. I don't think such a thing can be done, and have never heard of a dude accomplishing this. This is a blog of jokes.
**as I moved the mouse over to the "publish" button, my dad came into my room with his résumé for me to proof. This did not take long, but stung me right in the place where I am still immature.
Sunday, June 16, 2019
#186
Made use of my offensiveness yesterday, like I do sometimes. Let us all meditate briefly on how offensiveness is the most transparent defensiveness there is, then, meditate briefly on how important a tool it is to retain if you are to keep something of yourself intact in the extremely polite meat grinder that is getting the fuck by in society. Then, once our meditations are complete, we will be prepared to take the next step in our lives. Take my hand. Flying is as simple as missing the ground.
*
Due to a combination of travel anxiety, guilt, free-floating stress, and a complex about the whole thing that would take several post's worth of narrative to unpack, I stayed in the house alone with the dog instead of going out to Chicago for my youngest brother's commencement ceremony. This was of course designed exactly to compound and add to my feelings of guilt, but I did a lot of math and this was the bearable outcome.
I see how some men are able to use their pride to overcome these problems that I allow to essentially rob me of life. This is a kind of pride I lack. Speaking hierarchically, that mode of pride is above my station; it is the pride of the noble, the father, the head of the clan. I have access to modes of pride that this type of man could never understand, but you would never in a million years stick me at the head of a parade, nor would I allow you to.
The difficulty for me does not involve shame, though, which can be confused with guilt. My problems are manifold, but the main one for concern is that attendance at crowd-gatherings is entangled with a demonstration of love and filial feeling, which I have trouble with. My feelings on the matter are peripheral, of course; you show up for your people. That is basic. So if you don't, you did fail to show love, you shot down a window for it, you have to own that you put your wrecked nerves ahead of showing your love, you can call that selfish or call it self-care; I call it a missed opportunity, which I understand could be perceived as very trendy in the holistic psychoanalysis circles, but I am as usual thinking phenomenologically in order to protect myself (a useful defense against these practitioners, incidentally), like a coward, just as Heidegger taught me. I will learn from this missed opportunity and try not to miss the next one, and I will create an opportunity through action to account for, though not make up for, the missed one.
It is selfish, though. Rationalize away, by all means do not punish yourself, lie, whatever, but for my part, it is selfish. I admit this.
*
Speaking of, I can't believe I wrote about "Bohemian Rhapsody" and talked a bit about its subtext and omitted that it also brings up the problem of being able to consider not having been thrown into existence after the fact. I listened to it again just now, with headphones on and my eyes closed. I hadn't done that in years. Gotta figure out this music trauma, gotta learn what has happened to me while I was trying to just survive and apparently missed it as things fell away from me, as dissolution had its way.
Also I cannot believe I wrote about "Bohemian Rhapsody" without talking about THIS ONE TIME AT BAND CAMP when five buddies and I whipped up a brass quintet arrangement of the song with a drum part and performed it for everybody in lieu of "Taps" at Senior Taps. One of the buddies was not just a buddy but my brilliant and longtime partner in distinguishing deeds ranging from something as completely dorky as what I am right now describing to sneaking beers into High School and totally drankin' before class. We considered ourselves gentlemen, and talked about James Bond a lot. It was him did the bulk of the arranging and editing, which I was more than happy to let him do because that writing that stuff down in my bad notation penmanship bores me to death and using computer programs to do it sucked really bad back then.
Many laughs we shared and many terrible and crass names we called one another as we prepared the arrangement in dusty basement practice rooms, computer speakers hooked up to an iPod so we could replay sections of the song over and over to, sharing Blistex and telling lies and awful jokes as we hammered it out between us. The trombone players were assholes, of course. That's just something you live with in a trombone player; I love both those dudes, they were good dudes I had known for a long time and shared much with, especially as one of them was also a wrestler, but they are trombone players, and therefore pricks of a category all their own. The drummer was, as is proper and correct, hardly there.
Played the tuba that year (band directors have this skill for cornering me into playing the tuba for them though I kinda prefer the trumpet), so I got to do the bassline. It was definitely worth learning to play brass instruments and dealing with all the crap that being in a school band throws at you in order to have done this with some dudes, all breaking the rules and whipping out a banger in front of the director and four years of band geeks all ringing you round and loving every second as we did our thing full and complete start to finish, well-played and a good show rolling without a thought off your lips, easy under sure fingers, all huge smile on the director's face as he stands there arms crossed as the people (nerds, bless my people) went wild.
A little later in life my brothers, attending the same band camp under the same director, let me know that the seniors always play "Bohemian Rhapsody" for Senior Taps; every year since they'd been there. My middle brother's first year was my last, and some seniors played out their class with "Bohemian Rhapsody" the year my youngest brother graduated, four years after the middle one did. Not just five horns and a percussionist on a snare, a hi-hat, and a ride cymbal; up to fifteen people, depending on the year, playing all manner of instruments, some of the drumline folks using the drumline shit, there is an actual electric guitar, a true Thing. My middle brother actually thought my friends and I were embarrassingly unmemorable, since obviously it could only go up from our humble breaking of the ground; neither had any idea that no one had ever played anything but "Taps" before we came along.
Dunno if they're still doing that, as it has now been four years since my brother left, but I don't at all care; that should be more than enough for any dude, I figure.
*
Keep yourself alive! All you people, keep yourselves alive. The show must go on.
--JL
*
Due to a combination of travel anxiety, guilt, free-floating stress, and a complex about the whole thing that would take several post's worth of narrative to unpack, I stayed in the house alone with the dog instead of going out to Chicago for my youngest brother's commencement ceremony. This was of course designed exactly to compound and add to my feelings of guilt, but I did a lot of math and this was the bearable outcome.
I see how some men are able to use their pride to overcome these problems that I allow to essentially rob me of life. This is a kind of pride I lack. Speaking hierarchically, that mode of pride is above my station; it is the pride of the noble, the father, the head of the clan. I have access to modes of pride that this type of man could never understand, but you would never in a million years stick me at the head of a parade, nor would I allow you to.
The difficulty for me does not involve shame, though, which can be confused with guilt. My problems are manifold, but the main one for concern is that attendance at crowd-gatherings is entangled with a demonstration of love and filial feeling, which I have trouble with. My feelings on the matter are peripheral, of course; you show up for your people. That is basic. So if you don't, you did fail to show love, you shot down a window for it, you have to own that you put your wrecked nerves ahead of showing your love, you can call that selfish or call it self-care; I call it a missed opportunity, which I understand could be perceived as very trendy in the holistic psychoanalysis circles, but I am as usual thinking phenomenologically in order to protect myself (a useful defense against these practitioners, incidentally), like a coward, just as Heidegger taught me. I will learn from this missed opportunity and try not to miss the next one, and I will create an opportunity through action to account for, though not make up for, the missed one.
It is selfish, though. Rationalize away, by all means do not punish yourself, lie, whatever, but for my part, it is selfish. I admit this.
*
Speaking of, I can't believe I wrote about "Bohemian Rhapsody" and talked a bit about its subtext and omitted that it also brings up the problem of being able to consider not having been thrown into existence after the fact. I listened to it again just now, with headphones on and my eyes closed. I hadn't done that in years. Gotta figure out this music trauma, gotta learn what has happened to me while I was trying to just survive and apparently missed it as things fell away from me, as dissolution had its way.
Also I cannot believe I wrote about "Bohemian Rhapsody" without talking about THIS ONE TIME AT BAND CAMP when five buddies and I whipped up a brass quintet arrangement of the song with a drum part and performed it for everybody in lieu of "Taps" at Senior Taps. One of the buddies was not just a buddy but my brilliant and longtime partner in distinguishing deeds ranging from something as completely dorky as what I am right now describing to sneaking beers into High School and totally drankin' before class. We considered ourselves gentlemen, and talked about James Bond a lot. It was him did the bulk of the arranging and editing, which I was more than happy to let him do because that writing that stuff down in my bad notation penmanship bores me to death and using computer programs to do it sucked really bad back then.
Many laughs we shared and many terrible and crass names we called one another as we prepared the arrangement in dusty basement practice rooms, computer speakers hooked up to an iPod so we could replay sections of the song over and over to, sharing Blistex and telling lies and awful jokes as we hammered it out between us. The trombone players were assholes, of course. That's just something you live with in a trombone player; I love both those dudes, they were good dudes I had known for a long time and shared much with, especially as one of them was also a wrestler, but they are trombone players, and therefore pricks of a category all their own. The drummer was, as is proper and correct, hardly there.
Played the tuba that year (band directors have this skill for cornering me into playing the tuba for them though I kinda prefer the trumpet), so I got to do the bassline. It was definitely worth learning to play brass instruments and dealing with all the crap that being in a school band throws at you in order to have done this with some dudes, all breaking the rules and whipping out a banger in front of the director and four years of band geeks all ringing you round and loving every second as we did our thing full and complete start to finish, well-played and a good show rolling without a thought off your lips, easy under sure fingers, all huge smile on the director's face as he stands there arms crossed as the people (nerds, bless my people) went wild.
A little later in life my brothers, attending the same band camp under the same director, let me know that the seniors always play "Bohemian Rhapsody" for Senior Taps; every year since they'd been there. My middle brother's first year was my last, and some seniors played out their class with "Bohemian Rhapsody" the year my youngest brother graduated, four years after the middle one did. Not just five horns and a percussionist on a snare, a hi-hat, and a ride cymbal; up to fifteen people, depending on the year, playing all manner of instruments, some of the drumline folks using the drumline shit, there is an actual electric guitar, a true Thing. My middle brother actually thought my friends and I were embarrassingly unmemorable, since obviously it could only go up from our humble breaking of the ground; neither had any idea that no one had ever played anything but "Taps" before we came along.
Dunno if they're still doing that, as it has now been four years since my brother left, but I don't at all care; that should be more than enough for any dude, I figure.
*
Keep yourself alive! All you people, keep yourselves alive. The show must go on.
--JL
Saturday, June 15, 2019
#185
Rode a bicycle today. That's a real releasing thing right there once you find the groove and work up that speed. A state of being particular to itself. Bicycles are an incredible invention and have figured largely in my life; so many bicycle stories. Rather than begin with any specific anecdotes, I'll illustrate something of my mindset.
Though, I will conclude ahead of time that my case is spectacularly weak and simulates cogency only when received by someone who is the same flavor of crazy as me or is open to understanding the motives and calculations of fundamentally weird dudes.
*
Feeling the wind in my hair is, to me, an essential part of the cycling experience. So I haven't worn a head protection for the main bulk of the hours that I've spent on a bicycle. Used to hang my helmet from my handlebar, since like any good parent my mother compelled me to wear one. As I took plenty of spills on my bicycle, and also just plain dropped the things a lot, my artificial carapaces grew convincingly scuffed at a reasonable pace.
This is not to endorse riding your bicycle without a helmet. I think everybody should do that. I should do that. My bad and unwise decision not to is the product of a part of myself that I have to live with but cannot be dealt with. It's that thing in a dude, what in Achilles was his inability to stay and in Hector his inability to leave. It's what makes people climb Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen. It is the thing that kills you, but makes sure you live first. It is also, I would bet, responsible for a lot of unprotected sex. If it were to find expression in a gene, we could call it the "fuck it, go--and go hard."
Personally I do wear a helmet on a motorized two-wheeled vehicle, but I respect folks who do not. I definitely get it.
Anyhow sure, I've come pretty close to crackin' open the ole cosmic egg a time or two, but who's counting? Every time I've passed a truck on the highway I've been playing fast and loose with all kinds of fucked-up odds, not to mention when you imagine how many times I've been passed myself by some unreachably methed-out wheeltwitcher with one eye screwed shut and a sweaty cauldron of hemorrhoids burning in their coin purse like a lit cigar.
What am I writing about? Helmets? People should wear them on their bicycles. I don't and rarely will, even though it's unsafe. You are never safe anywhere.
But especially not, in my opinion, when you ride your bicycle in the street, where the cars are. I don't give a damn what ordinances they pass, how many people give me the stinkeye, I ride on the sidewalk. I want a curb between me and the cars. That's final. Drivers see you as not only not a person but an actively hostile element invading their driving environment; not only will they kill you on instinct and mask it even to themselves as an "accident", but there is a certain kind of person who will deliberately try to fucking murder you if they think no one is there to see, and this is not counting the vast segment of the population that actively sucks at driving and will kill you without so much as looking up from the text they are composing as they apply makeup and eat a sandwich to absorb the pint of vodka they had for lunch. Sidewalks only, fuck the street, fuck the law, and may a monster made of angry cocks fuck a cycling activist* flapping their whiny business in my face about how my behavior "hurts the cause". I bury your cause with a spade one hundred meters from my area when I am camping. Do you understand.
Contradiction, you say, to worry about cars when I disregard the easy safety of a helmet? Well, surely then I must be the first man to live his life this way, with contradictions. Someday you must tell me what it is like, this life of yours, so engineered as to ensure that none of your choices or ideas conflict with any of the others or the overarching structure as readable for logical cohesion, coherence, and correctness. If you're not sure, and want to double-check, though, I recommend the purchase of a few red pens.
*
Watching this Seth Rogen movie last night (Observe And Report, made me kinda sick with its hackneyed reliances but also definitely had its many moments, some even pretty great, and made its salient points) I was reminded (by soundtrack decisions [really good in this movie]), as I sometimes am, that Queen is basically my favorite band of all time. I've spent more time liking Queen than I have spent liking any music, with the exception of the classical selections from Disney's Fantasia, and possibly, Little Richard. Bohemian Rhapsody is the first piece of art that I can remember interpreting, and my introduction to the problems of fatalism, judgment, regret, meaninglessness, inevitable death, and the indelible nature of decision/irretrievable action. Also the embattled pity and pitilessness of the choir, which is literal within the composition. I'm sure plenty of dissertations and twatter threads make the case ahead of me, but Bohemian Rhapsody is a pretty heavy text. Some density there.
*
Fat Bottomed Girls is the most flawless composition of all time. They could put it in that French building with the meter and the gram and all that other shit that isn't even accurate anymore**. All songs would be measured in thousandths of a part of Fat Bottomed Girls, the only complete song in the world.
*
Queen also has that song Bicycle Race.
I do enjoy riding a bicycle and I am glad I got to today; it's not quite all I wanna do, but I'd definitely rather do that than argue about fake opposites, unimportant connections, and meaningless loyalties, which is the main point of the song as I remember it.
--JL
*fucking listen to yourself, look at what you call yourself, by all rights you should make yourself sick
**untrue? not looking it up
Though, I will conclude ahead of time that my case is spectacularly weak and simulates cogency only when received by someone who is the same flavor of crazy as me or is open to understanding the motives and calculations of fundamentally weird dudes.
*
Feeling the wind in my hair is, to me, an essential part of the cycling experience. So I haven't worn a head protection for the main bulk of the hours that I've spent on a bicycle. Used to hang my helmet from my handlebar, since like any good parent my mother compelled me to wear one. As I took plenty of spills on my bicycle, and also just plain dropped the things a lot, my artificial carapaces grew convincingly scuffed at a reasonable pace.
This is not to endorse riding your bicycle without a helmet. I think everybody should do that. I should do that. My bad and unwise decision not to is the product of a part of myself that I have to live with but cannot be dealt with. It's that thing in a dude, what in Achilles was his inability to stay and in Hector his inability to leave. It's what makes people climb Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen. It is the thing that kills you, but makes sure you live first. It is also, I would bet, responsible for a lot of unprotected sex. If it were to find expression in a gene, we could call it the "fuck it, go--and go hard."
Personally I do wear a helmet on a motorized two-wheeled vehicle, but I respect folks who do not. I definitely get it.
Anyhow sure, I've come pretty close to crackin' open the ole cosmic egg a time or two, but who's counting? Every time I've passed a truck on the highway I've been playing fast and loose with all kinds of fucked-up odds, not to mention when you imagine how many times I've been passed myself by some unreachably methed-out wheeltwitcher with one eye screwed shut and a sweaty cauldron of hemorrhoids burning in their coin purse like a lit cigar.
What am I writing about? Helmets? People should wear them on their bicycles. I don't and rarely will, even though it's unsafe. You are never safe anywhere.
But especially not, in my opinion, when you ride your bicycle in the street, where the cars are. I don't give a damn what ordinances they pass, how many people give me the stinkeye, I ride on the sidewalk. I want a curb between me and the cars. That's final. Drivers see you as not only not a person but an actively hostile element invading their driving environment; not only will they kill you on instinct and mask it even to themselves as an "accident", but there is a certain kind of person who will deliberately try to fucking murder you if they think no one is there to see, and this is not counting the vast segment of the population that actively sucks at driving and will kill you without so much as looking up from the text they are composing as they apply makeup and eat a sandwich to absorb the pint of vodka they had for lunch. Sidewalks only, fuck the street, fuck the law, and may a monster made of angry cocks fuck a cycling activist* flapping their whiny business in my face about how my behavior "hurts the cause". I bury your cause with a spade one hundred meters from my area when I am camping. Do you understand.
Contradiction, you say, to worry about cars when I disregard the easy safety of a helmet? Well, surely then I must be the first man to live his life this way, with contradictions. Someday you must tell me what it is like, this life of yours, so engineered as to ensure that none of your choices or ideas conflict with any of the others or the overarching structure as readable for logical cohesion, coherence, and correctness. If you're not sure, and want to double-check, though, I recommend the purchase of a few red pens.
*
Watching this Seth Rogen movie last night (Observe And Report, made me kinda sick with its hackneyed reliances but also definitely had its many moments, some even pretty great, and made its salient points) I was reminded (by soundtrack decisions [really good in this movie]), as I sometimes am, that Queen is basically my favorite band of all time. I've spent more time liking Queen than I have spent liking any music, with the exception of the classical selections from Disney's Fantasia, and possibly, Little Richard. Bohemian Rhapsody is the first piece of art that I can remember interpreting, and my introduction to the problems of fatalism, judgment, regret, meaninglessness, inevitable death, and the indelible nature of decision/irretrievable action. Also the embattled pity and pitilessness of the choir, which is literal within the composition. I'm sure plenty of dissertations and twatter threads make the case ahead of me, but Bohemian Rhapsody is a pretty heavy text. Some density there.
*
Fat Bottomed Girls is the most flawless composition of all time. They could put it in that French building with the meter and the gram and all that other shit that isn't even accurate anymore**. All songs would be measured in thousandths of a part of Fat Bottomed Girls, the only complete song in the world.
*
Queen also has that song Bicycle Race.
I do enjoy riding a bicycle and I am glad I got to today; it's not quite all I wanna do, but I'd definitely rather do that than argue about fake opposites, unimportant connections, and meaningless loyalties, which is the main point of the song as I remember it.
--JL
*fucking listen to yourself, look at what you call yourself, by all rights you should make yourself sick
**untrue? not looking it up
Friday, June 14, 2019
#184
For some reason as I look out the window thinking of what I want to write about, the image of the blade of one single iron plow furrowing its lonely line across a vast expanse of loose brown soil is all that arises. I don't know what pulls it; we're right by the blade, watching the earth part for the metal. That's all, forever.
*
perfect fucking blog post
peace--to the MAX!
--JL
*
perfect fucking blog post
peace--to the MAX!
--JL
Monday, June 10, 2019
#183
Rained all last night after threatening all day, all day, filling the air with an unsettling promise. When the rain came the air itself exhaled, and set down some heavy burden, and the whole world breathed easier.
This morning a huge chunk of a limb fell off the big willow, one of the bare dead extensions of what remains to it of its former crown, riddled with worms and grubs and the ravages of the hunting and nesting of birds. I heard it crack and the noise of the air and lash of the leaves as it fell and I heard the great thud of its landing. When I went to look, there it was, looking for all the world like someone had hauled a partially rotted log out of the woods and laid it to rest in the mown grass by the willow.
*
Watched some Friends the other day with Moe and was surprised by how fun it was to watch those folks interact and do their lines and shenaniganery. I watched Friends as a kid, fresh as it aired, and these people and the way they mess around with each other and snark it up had a greater impact on how I got by as a teenager than I had perceived. Friends isn't exactly The Wire, y'know, no shit, but it's not really as bad as people act. I mean, parts of it are pretty cringe, but there's tons of fun material there.
"What'd I just say?"
Classic.
*
Another early day at work, folks. Much as I would love to continue to entertain us both, duty summons me with its implacable knell.
--JL
This morning a huge chunk of a limb fell off the big willow, one of the bare dead extensions of what remains to it of its former crown, riddled with worms and grubs and the ravages of the hunting and nesting of birds. I heard it crack and the noise of the air and lash of the leaves as it fell and I heard the great thud of its landing. When I went to look, there it was, looking for all the world like someone had hauled a partially rotted log out of the woods and laid it to rest in the mown grass by the willow.
*
Watched some Friends the other day with Moe and was surprised by how fun it was to watch those folks interact and do their lines and shenaniganery. I watched Friends as a kid, fresh as it aired, and these people and the way they mess around with each other and snark it up had a greater impact on how I got by as a teenager than I had perceived. Friends isn't exactly The Wire, y'know, no shit, but it's not really as bad as people act. I mean, parts of it are pretty cringe, but there's tons of fun material there.
"What'd I just say?"
Classic.
*
Another early day at work, folks. Much as I would love to continue to entertain us both, duty summons me with its implacable knell.
--JL
Saturday, June 8, 2019
#182
In lieu of a post, today I offer you all this service offering I wrote to put on Craigslist. I guess it's still a post, just not the kind of post you're accustomed to. I mean, it's the post. I wrote this like I write a post.
*
Need to avail yourself of the power of the written word, but have no interest in putting pen to paper? Or do you anguish to express yourself, but no matter how much graphite you wear down, how many keyboards you type to pieces, does what you hear in your head constantly elude you?
Hire me, and together we will give actual live birth to a piece of writing that will fill its lungs and literally scream into the world like a human baby, and be just as unique and special.
COMMISSIONS
Yeah, I can write copy. But what does anyone want with copy? In this bold new century, could we not at the very least have bold new boilerplate? I offer spicy super-copy, redolent with umami, heaped with mountains of sass and informed by volumes of wit, at a fraction of the price some buzzword kid with a computer watch and politely aggressive ideas about cross-spectrum language is apparently entitled to. I'm way cheaper and I don't screw around with synergy. My copy is rude. My copy is the business, it is the leetness, and it is the fabled magic bullet. As grand as the Taj Mahal or as understated as James Bond's shoe tread. My copy is whatever you need it to be and some stuff you didn't know you needed it to be. Get in on it.
Small, utilitarian pieces of writing; longer than a text, shorter than the average young adult novel. Letters, notes, reports, debriefings, condensations, summaries, essays, etc. For an agreed-upon fee, I can whip one of these and many more "words with real clear job to do" on deadline without breaking a sweat. These are available in "original" or "personality-style", depending on like whether it is your boss who needs good information in a clear and concise style or you need to very unmistakably communicate some stuff to a contractor or you need to describe something for your lawyer, or you simply want to let someone know how you really feel.
Ghostwriting! More boring than it sounds...or is it? Well, I can't promise to make it a trip to Disneyland, but I can promise you that if you have a book in your brain--whether it is about your own long and storied life, a novel you have playing in your head like a movie, or an exposition on the lies and hypocrisy of some industry you hate or shadow government cover-up--and you definitely don't want to write it yourself, given a reasonably worked out schedule and the adequate time and materials commitment we can bang that sucker out on a deadline. It will make you happy to see this thing become a reality, because I will do an excellent job.
Translation is a possibility for me, if what you need is in Spanish and needs to be in English, or English and needs to be in Spanish, and if it won't take me a million years. Menus and other copy, essays, posts on the internet, poetry, short fiction, legal papers and communiques, articles, stuff like that.
Last, but truly in pride of place, original pieces. Do you require high-quality erotica tailored to your specific kinks? I have no judgment. Do the main characters need to be fictional characters, fleshed out as convincingly as they are in their source material? I can do this thing for you. Do you want a stirring speech? I can bring out a banger with potential jokes in the margins. A poem about a certain someone, or our mother planet for an Earth Day poster or children's play? Perhaps just a basic regular poem? A mural made of words, rap lyrics, screenplays, children's books, the correct words to tattoo across your forearm, articles, essays, fanfiction, comics, graphic novels, zines, criticism, stand-up comedy or other joke formats, and so on ad nauseum. Do you need a new format? I will sit down and I will invent one. This is not to brag. I will at least try.
The thing to remember is this: if you have a blank space that you need a writer to fill with words, then here is a writer with absolutely no fear of that blank space, and I will work until you think those words are the perfect words, as long as you don't want words to be boring (unless boring words are funny or so correct as to be unmodifiable in the furnished context).
DISCLAIMERS
*not going to help anyone write hate speech or an instrument of terror or coercion or anything like that. I just mean to encourage those who think their writing needs aren't worth hiring a writer over.
**it is understood that a piece of writing may have varied effects and provoke unforeseen reactions when perceived by recipients intended and unintended. I guarantee clarity and I guarantee quality; I cannot guarantee effects of any kind, and am not responsible for unintended consequences brought on by the product of our agreements. Once a piece of writing is accepted by the client and services are paid for, what it accomplishes out in the world is outside of all human control.
***All prices and rates on discussed agreement, might ask for half up front on real labor-intensive jobs. No refunds! This ain't that kind of party. See above.
Thank you for reading. For samples of my work, see below.
*
Except you can't! You're already here, which means you are also where the link to my books is. My purchasable, purchasable books.
Was this blog post a copout, or working smart? I absolutely do not care, had the same amount of fun either way.
--JL
*
Need to avail yourself of the power of the written word, but have no interest in putting pen to paper? Or do you anguish to express yourself, but no matter how much graphite you wear down, how many keyboards you type to pieces, does what you hear in your head constantly elude you?
Hire me, and together we will give actual live birth to a piece of writing that will fill its lungs and literally scream into the world like a human baby, and be just as unique and special.
COMMISSIONS
Yeah, I can write copy. But what does anyone want with copy? In this bold new century, could we not at the very least have bold new boilerplate? I offer spicy super-copy, redolent with umami, heaped with mountains of sass and informed by volumes of wit, at a fraction of the price some buzzword kid with a computer watch and politely aggressive ideas about cross-spectrum language is apparently entitled to. I'm way cheaper and I don't screw around with synergy. My copy is rude. My copy is the business, it is the leetness, and it is the fabled magic bullet. As grand as the Taj Mahal or as understated as James Bond's shoe tread. My copy is whatever you need it to be and some stuff you didn't know you needed it to be. Get in on it.
Small, utilitarian pieces of writing; longer than a text, shorter than the average young adult novel. Letters, notes, reports, debriefings, condensations, summaries, essays, etc. For an agreed-upon fee, I can whip one of these and many more "words with real clear job to do" on deadline without breaking a sweat. These are available in "original" or "personality-style", depending on like whether it is your boss who needs good information in a clear and concise style or you need to very unmistakably communicate some stuff to a contractor or you need to describe something for your lawyer, or you simply want to let someone know how you really feel.
Ghostwriting! More boring than it sounds...or is it? Well, I can't promise to make it a trip to Disneyland, but I can promise you that if you have a book in your brain--whether it is about your own long and storied life, a novel you have playing in your head like a movie, or an exposition on the lies and hypocrisy of some industry you hate or shadow government cover-up--and you definitely don't want to write it yourself, given a reasonably worked out schedule and the adequate time and materials commitment we can bang that sucker out on a deadline. It will make you happy to see this thing become a reality, because I will do an excellent job.
Translation is a possibility for me, if what you need is in Spanish and needs to be in English, or English and needs to be in Spanish, and if it won't take me a million years. Menus and other copy, essays, posts on the internet, poetry, short fiction, legal papers and communiques, articles, stuff like that.
Last, but truly in pride of place, original pieces. Do you require high-quality erotica tailored to your specific kinks? I have no judgment. Do the main characters need to be fictional characters, fleshed out as convincingly as they are in their source material? I can do this thing for you. Do you want a stirring speech? I can bring out a banger with potential jokes in the margins. A poem about a certain someone, or our mother planet for an Earth Day poster or children's play? Perhaps just a basic regular poem? A mural made of words, rap lyrics, screenplays, children's books, the correct words to tattoo across your forearm, articles, essays, fanfiction, comics, graphic novels, zines, criticism, stand-up comedy or other joke formats, and so on ad nauseum. Do you need a new format? I will sit down and I will invent one. This is not to brag. I will at least try.
The thing to remember is this: if you have a blank space that you need a writer to fill with words, then here is a writer with absolutely no fear of that blank space, and I will work until you think those words are the perfect words, as long as you don't want words to be boring (unless boring words are funny or so correct as to be unmodifiable in the furnished context).
DISCLAIMERS
*not going to help anyone write hate speech or an instrument of terror or coercion or anything like that. I just mean to encourage those who think their writing needs aren't worth hiring a writer over.
**it is understood that a piece of writing may have varied effects and provoke unforeseen reactions when perceived by recipients intended and unintended. I guarantee clarity and I guarantee quality; I cannot guarantee effects of any kind, and am not responsible for unintended consequences brought on by the product of our agreements. Once a piece of writing is accepted by the client and services are paid for, what it accomplishes out in the world is outside of all human control.
***All prices and rates on discussed agreement, might ask for half up front on real labor-intensive jobs. No refunds! This ain't that kind of party. See above.
Thank you for reading. For samples of my work, see below.
*
Except you can't! You're already here, which means you are also where the link to my books is. My purchasable, purchasable books.
Was this blog post a copout, or working smart? I absolutely do not care, had the same amount of fun either way.
--JL
Thursday, June 6, 2019
#181
Today marks the seventy-fifth year since the landing on the beaches of Normandy by the Allied forces in 1944, which is marked down as quite a moment. The situation is pretty hardcore if one lets the prevailing conditions factor in, if you get even a little subjective with the equation. It's some significant shit. It's not like any of those dudes didn't know exactly what the uncorrectable math was. If you were there, you would know for a cold hard fact that when the hull scraped the sand you were probably going to die screaming and hurting like a son of a bitch, breathing out your last far away from home too early in the morning and your mother would never see you smile again. If by some miracle you made it through, the math was again clear and irreducible: some of the dudes praying and vomiting next to you would not, and you were consigned to walk over their threshed bodies into however long you had to live on time they bought you.
In addition, June 6 has the honor of hosting the Battle of Midway in 1942. That's just World War II. June 6 has a lot to its name. Extending just a shade, it is the date that Union forces seized Memphis from the Confederacy.
*
Also, birth date of Thomas Mann, Isaiah Berlin, and Paul Giamatti. Just to name the ones who are on my shelves or whose acting for the screen I have perceived and interpreted. Patrick Rothfuss gets an honorable mention since I only know him by reputation but a lot of people seem to like his book The Name of the Wind a lot. I'll get around to it. Have been meaning to get around to it.
*
Oh, apropos of nothing, war is a shitty thing, and the people who fight it do shitty things. Crimes within crimes, and in secret, the truly unthinkable, the shit nobody knew about, the shit every living soul denies they would do when asked and yet happens every time there's a war on, and there is always a war on. There is no defense for the shit that soldiers do every time that soldiers do what soldiers do.
But it is mad low class and an extremely rude and off-base dis to trash soldiers. Get off of it. I've read Sartre, I know and consider cogent the case that it is always a choice not to be a soldier, that you are always free to not be a soldier, that all war is accomplished by cooperation and if no subject agreed to cooperate with war, then it could not be brought off; hence, each of us is responsible to the other to deny the soldiering contract. I always love how philosophers use freedom to try to force you to act how they think you should act. I always love when philosophers are indiscernible from politicians.
Well, it is my small and uneducated opinion that Sartre* didn't really understand Heidegger, who was a Nazi and a cuck and a living piece of shit but wrote more important books and he talked about something called a situation and if you're not in someone else's situation it is just my opinion that odds are good that you know precious little, probably little enough to amount to dick, about what freedom looks like to them. It is difficult for me to consider that you know enough to tell them what they should do with their freedom.
Look, I don't go around volunteering to go to war. I'm not that kind of person; my situation is not that. War happens, that's a situation, and there are always going to be a lot of people who have a stake in that situation and create a gravity around it. There is an accretion of war whose gravity would pull me into it whether I willed it or not; that is a change in situation. That there is no such accretion is because wars are fought and won without my cooperation for my benefit, a fact I am at both at peace with and unhappy about but a fact, which I must consider when I criticize war as a situation and consider the situation of the individuals who are in it.
It seems to me like I get to sit on my biscuit and intellectualize about all this because other people died and are dying in order to grant me the privilege! Huh. I would feel like a real asshole if I didn't at least have the grace to keep silent on the matter, if I didn't feel like waxing poetic about glorious sacrifice. Maybe I do and maybe I don't. My own business, mostly.
At the end of the day, I feel the least you can do is recognize the situation, and respect the decision, and use the whole thing to get some perspective.
Everyone has their reasons for doing what they do. It may be opaque to you, it may seem to amount to the same thing, but the why matters, and the why is different in every situation, for every subject.
Not being a soldier is not a decision that makes me any better or more correct than a person who made the decision to be a soldier.
*
Of course, this does not mean we do not hold individual soldiers accountable for their personal misdeeds. It never means that! It just means we do not consign every soldier as an individual to the horns of a demon nor the wings of an angel on the basis of current pop ideology heated by a feverish press. It just means that maybe you and I, dear reader, can perhaps slow down together and remember that even in the act of holding others accountable we may become greater hypocrites and monsters than those we would judge, must be on our watch for that always, must remember that the rush of righteous condemnation is one of the things that war is founded on, one of the things that breeds the iniquitous social organizations that give rise to warlike situations.
Just means that we can remember that in other shoes, we'd walk other paths.
*
Got more to say on this subject and another I was thinking about yesterday which relates, but I am tired, and this has gone one quite long enough. It was a big day today.
Ok, real quick: I had absolutely stupendous sex. It was fricking superreal. It was healing.
Cool peace barely gonna make the deadline tonight haha
--JL
*it is my habit to be extra mean to Sartre but he's all right really dude just sucks
I have a few of his books though
In addition, June 6 has the honor of hosting the Battle of Midway in 1942. That's just World War II. June 6 has a lot to its name. Extending just a shade, it is the date that Union forces seized Memphis from the Confederacy.
*
Also, birth date of Thomas Mann, Isaiah Berlin, and Paul Giamatti. Just to name the ones who are on my shelves or whose acting for the screen I have perceived and interpreted. Patrick Rothfuss gets an honorable mention since I only know him by reputation but a lot of people seem to like his book The Name of the Wind a lot. I'll get around to it. Have been meaning to get around to it.
*
Oh, apropos of nothing, war is a shitty thing, and the people who fight it do shitty things. Crimes within crimes, and in secret, the truly unthinkable, the shit nobody knew about, the shit every living soul denies they would do when asked and yet happens every time there's a war on, and there is always a war on. There is no defense for the shit that soldiers do every time that soldiers do what soldiers do.
But it is mad low class and an extremely rude and off-base dis to trash soldiers. Get off of it. I've read Sartre, I know and consider cogent the case that it is always a choice not to be a soldier, that you are always free to not be a soldier, that all war is accomplished by cooperation and if no subject agreed to cooperate with war, then it could not be brought off; hence, each of us is responsible to the other to deny the soldiering contract. I always love how philosophers use freedom to try to force you to act how they think you should act. I always love when philosophers are indiscernible from politicians.
Well, it is my small and uneducated opinion that Sartre* didn't really understand Heidegger, who was a Nazi and a cuck and a living piece of shit but wrote more important books and he talked about something called a situation and if you're not in someone else's situation it is just my opinion that odds are good that you know precious little, probably little enough to amount to dick, about what freedom looks like to them. It is difficult for me to consider that you know enough to tell them what they should do with their freedom.
Look, I don't go around volunteering to go to war. I'm not that kind of person; my situation is not that. War happens, that's a situation, and there are always going to be a lot of people who have a stake in that situation and create a gravity around it. There is an accretion of war whose gravity would pull me into it whether I willed it or not; that is a change in situation. That there is no such accretion is because wars are fought and won without my cooperation for my benefit, a fact I am at both at peace with and unhappy about but a fact, which I must consider when I criticize war as a situation and consider the situation of the individuals who are in it.
It seems to me like I get to sit on my biscuit and intellectualize about all this because other people died and are dying in order to grant me the privilege! Huh. I would feel like a real asshole if I didn't at least have the grace to keep silent on the matter, if I didn't feel like waxing poetic about glorious sacrifice. Maybe I do and maybe I don't. My own business, mostly.
At the end of the day, I feel the least you can do is recognize the situation, and respect the decision, and use the whole thing to get some perspective.
Everyone has their reasons for doing what they do. It may be opaque to you, it may seem to amount to the same thing, but the why matters, and the why is different in every situation, for every subject.
Not being a soldier is not a decision that makes me any better or more correct than a person who made the decision to be a soldier.
*
Of course, this does not mean we do not hold individual soldiers accountable for their personal misdeeds. It never means that! It just means we do not consign every soldier as an individual to the horns of a demon nor the wings of an angel on the basis of current pop ideology heated by a feverish press. It just means that maybe you and I, dear reader, can perhaps slow down together and remember that even in the act of holding others accountable we may become greater hypocrites and monsters than those we would judge, must be on our watch for that always, must remember that the rush of righteous condemnation is one of the things that war is founded on, one of the things that breeds the iniquitous social organizations that give rise to warlike situations.
Just means that we can remember that in other shoes, we'd walk other paths.
*
Got more to say on this subject and another I was thinking about yesterday which relates, but I am tired, and this has gone one quite long enough. It was a big day today.
Ok, real quick: I had absolutely stupendous sex. It was fricking superreal. It was healing.
Cool peace barely gonna make the deadline tonight haha
--JL
*it is my habit to be extra mean to Sartre but he's all right really dude just sucks
I have a few of his books though
Wednesday, June 5, 2019
#180
Nice round post number today. Half of three hundred and sixty. In the fifth grade I tried to learn to skateboard, which involves attempting a ten-eighty, or, 1080, or, (2)360.
We are talking about circles, here.
Most I got out of this affair was learning to spin entirely around mid-leap, skateboard at least ten feet away from me with the wheels in the air, which is how I set it down. I can jump from a high dive and execute without hesitation, walk along the edge of the roof of a tall building or the top of brick wall six inches wide, do that Prince of Persia thing where you swing from horizontal bar to horizontal bar and also run up walls and kick off them to climb buildings, jump twenty-plus feet straight down, tuck and roll onto concrete and go directly into a sprint, but I cannot stay on a skateboard in motion. Just won't happen.
Someday I won't be able to do any of those things, and hopefully I will have learned from life not to really care about that at all. However, already do not care that I can't skateboard. Check that off the list.
*
I wonder how many federal law enforcement agents know how to skateboard. Could this information be found and made public through a Freedom of Information Act Request?
*
It also crossed my mind to wonder how many are orphans, but that is a very personal matter and a rude question to even think*. Very low of me. Curiosity is a tough thing to wrangle, just scurrying ahead of you like a greased weasel on a dark night, sinking its teeth into whatever.
*
My second lamp lives pretty close to my head. One should always have a light by one's bed if one can make that happen; if it has to be the only light in the room, well, I've lived that way and it's not optimal, but one can manage. The important thing is being able to shut the light off from your bed.
Like its partner in illumination, it's more of a desk lamp than a room lamp. This lamp has been with my family since the early nineties, and indeed was once the "computer lamp", the one which lived next to the computer on the huge glass table in the office of the apartment, and later, the multilevel little pressboard desk from Sears we had in our University Housing unit next to the dinner table, and then back to the apartment. Since coming to the states for the second time, that is, since the advent of the aughts and the bold new century, it has lived in this room, above my head, as my reading lamp. It's been in the closet for some years, but it is back in service now and still going strong with a warm yellow glow. My dad put a real good bulb in there.
It's got a rectangular black plastic "tray" base, with little square compartments for oddments like erasers and tacks and rubber bands and anything else you might want, like spare change and superballs and baby teeth and relics from acid trips like particular pebbles or a hard dried length of reed, and extremely small toys, beads, business cards, shells, tiny bottles of Tabasco sauce, unused keychains, and lord knows what else. The very front is a long narrow scoop, for pens and pencils.
The switch is a turn knob, flat on the right corner of topmost level part of the tray, smooth and white and round, gentle clockwise tension action with a pleasant click release. It has that desk lamp stylized cone shape head in white lacquered metal, on a neck that's just flex wire covered in that round grooved black plastic sheathing for cables, which rises from a tall protrusion at the top center of the tray, and extends to the top left corner. This has a hollow compartment for pens and pencils which you wish to be vertically oriented, rather than horizontally at the bottom of the tray.
Good lamp. I like level differences like that, where the very front of something is its bottom, closest to the surface rests on, and the back is the top, the pinnacle of the object. I also like looking at graphs, and arrangements of extremely perfect shapes.
*
That's all I got, folks. I'll describe other lamps in the future, but those are the two main lamps, I guess, for right now. But life is long, I've known many a lamp, and by and by I will do them some form of what can be thought of as justice.
--JL
*should note that due to the children's literature I have happened to consume over the course of my lifetime, I am almost painfully sympathetic to orphans. Almost all of my philanthropic power-fantasies involve easing the plight of orphans.
I got so high before and during today's post. I'm serious. Keeping completely silent but I feel my laughter physically filling my room like giant balloons.
We are talking about circles, here.
Most I got out of this affair was learning to spin entirely around mid-leap, skateboard at least ten feet away from me with the wheels in the air, which is how I set it down. I can jump from a high dive and execute without hesitation, walk along the edge of the roof of a tall building or the top of brick wall six inches wide, do that Prince of Persia thing where you swing from horizontal bar to horizontal bar and also run up walls and kick off them to climb buildings, jump twenty-plus feet straight down, tuck and roll onto concrete and go directly into a sprint, but I cannot stay on a skateboard in motion. Just won't happen.
Someday I won't be able to do any of those things, and hopefully I will have learned from life not to really care about that at all. However, already do not care that I can't skateboard. Check that off the list.
*
I wonder how many federal law enforcement agents know how to skateboard. Could this information be found and made public through a Freedom of Information Act Request?
*
It also crossed my mind to wonder how many are orphans, but that is a very personal matter and a rude question to even think*. Very low of me. Curiosity is a tough thing to wrangle, just scurrying ahead of you like a greased weasel on a dark night, sinking its teeth into whatever.
*
My second lamp lives pretty close to my head. One should always have a light by one's bed if one can make that happen; if it has to be the only light in the room, well, I've lived that way and it's not optimal, but one can manage. The important thing is being able to shut the light off from your bed.
Like its partner in illumination, it's more of a desk lamp than a room lamp. This lamp has been with my family since the early nineties, and indeed was once the "computer lamp", the one which lived next to the computer on the huge glass table in the office of the apartment, and later, the multilevel little pressboard desk from Sears we had in our University Housing unit next to the dinner table, and then back to the apartment. Since coming to the states for the second time, that is, since the advent of the aughts and the bold new century, it has lived in this room, above my head, as my reading lamp. It's been in the closet for some years, but it is back in service now and still going strong with a warm yellow glow. My dad put a real good bulb in there.
It's got a rectangular black plastic "tray" base, with little square compartments for oddments like erasers and tacks and rubber bands and anything else you might want, like spare change and superballs and baby teeth and relics from acid trips like particular pebbles or a hard dried length of reed, and extremely small toys, beads, business cards, shells, tiny bottles of Tabasco sauce, unused keychains, and lord knows what else. The very front is a long narrow scoop, for pens and pencils.
The switch is a turn knob, flat on the right corner of topmost level part of the tray, smooth and white and round, gentle clockwise tension action with a pleasant click release. It has that desk lamp stylized cone shape head in white lacquered metal, on a neck that's just flex wire covered in that round grooved black plastic sheathing for cables, which rises from a tall protrusion at the top center of the tray, and extends to the top left corner. This has a hollow compartment for pens and pencils which you wish to be vertically oriented, rather than horizontally at the bottom of the tray.
Good lamp. I like level differences like that, where the very front of something is its bottom, closest to the surface rests on, and the back is the top, the pinnacle of the object. I also like looking at graphs, and arrangements of extremely perfect shapes.
*
That's all I got, folks. I'll describe other lamps in the future, but those are the two main lamps, I guess, for right now. But life is long, I've known many a lamp, and by and by I will do them some form of what can be thought of as justice.
--JL
*should note that due to the children's literature I have happened to consume over the course of my lifetime, I am almost painfully sympathetic to orphans. Almost all of my philanthropic power-fantasies involve easing the plight of orphans.
I got so high before and during today's post. I'm serious. Keeping completely silent but I feel my laughter physically filling my room like giant balloons.
Tuesday, June 4, 2019
#179
June is fuckin kicking ass this year. Beautiful breezes, powerful storms, gentle loving sunshine, and all the flora hissing green and veritably writhing in its frenzy to grow into its full summer strength.
Feels amazing out here.
*
There is a design of lamp which to me, and to many others, can be evoked in an instant by calling it the "Pixar Lamp". You either do or do not know what a pixar lamp is, or whether you should capitalize it in casual reference.
The lamp's proper name, its foundational noun of power as a design itself, is the Luxo L-1, manufactured by the Norweigan lamp manufacturer, Luxo ASA, and designed by its founder. It is a lamp with a circular base, an adjustable armature body, and a stylized conical head design. It is the sort of lamp you can adjust the height and the angle of illumination on, thanks to the springs and joints in the armature and the neck of the lamp.
Mine is a fairly large specimen which I would not hesitate to repurpose for, say, drafting or sketching. Its base is a little smaller in diameter than you usually see but it is a thick heavy stainless steel disk to make up for it. The whole lamp is stainless, with a shiny silver cord and very clean white bulb, which casts a very clinical and honest light over my room. Not cold, but almost.
It stands on my smallest bookshelf, between a little pile of Roald Dahl books under a little pile of Jerry Spinelli books also on the shelf, and the freestanding three-tier paperback non-fiction pile.
*
I'll have to describe the second lamp tomorrow, chaps! Want to be early for work today, there were electrical problems yesterday; a flatbed truck plowed into a utility pole early yesterday morning. It was a shitshow and my shift got canceled, but this had its upsides.
Anyway, peace, more tomorrow!
--JL
Feels amazing out here.
*
There is a design of lamp which to me, and to many others, can be evoked in an instant by calling it the "Pixar Lamp". You either do or do not know what a pixar lamp is, or whether you should capitalize it in casual reference.
The lamp's proper name, its foundational noun of power as a design itself, is the Luxo L-1, manufactured by the Norweigan lamp manufacturer, Luxo ASA, and designed by its founder. It is a lamp with a circular base, an adjustable armature body, and a stylized conical head design. It is the sort of lamp you can adjust the height and the angle of illumination on, thanks to the springs and joints in the armature and the neck of the lamp.
Mine is a fairly large specimen which I would not hesitate to repurpose for, say, drafting or sketching. Its base is a little smaller in diameter than you usually see but it is a thick heavy stainless steel disk to make up for it. The whole lamp is stainless, with a shiny silver cord and very clean white bulb, which casts a very clinical and honest light over my room. Not cold, but almost.
It stands on my smallest bookshelf, between a little pile of Roald Dahl books under a little pile of Jerry Spinelli books also on the shelf, and the freestanding three-tier paperback non-fiction pile.
*
I'll have to describe the second lamp tomorrow, chaps! Want to be early for work today, there were electrical problems yesterday; a flatbed truck plowed into a utility pole early yesterday morning. It was a shitshow and my shift got canceled, but this had its upsides.
Anyway, peace, more tomorrow!
--JL
Saturday, June 1, 2019
#178
June came in with a bang around here, thundering huge and spitting lightning with a hail and a thick downpour, but also it has been sunny and bright and mild and calm through parts of the day. High-key stuff. It's been a savage year, really digging it. June is one of my favorite months, desperate and magnificent. Challenging and glorious. I am thankful to live to see another June.
*
June first also happens to be the day of Saint Justin Martyr, who doesn't even sound real but is the patron saint of philosophers and was a gangster (you can kinda guess the main outline of how he died and got sainted) so I don't really care one way or the other, this dude and his dorky-ass name are on my team.
*
There are few stories as metal as the stories of the Christian martyrs of the early centuries. Crazy shit, astonishing shit, even if a bunch of it is fake. I sorta thrive on made-up crazy shit, personally.
*
I've been doing some warmups on my bass guitar as I've been writing this. The A string, which is the lowest string on my thrashed-ass old beater* had come unsprung, what with the advent of summer an all. I hooked it up again and he's all in tune and sounding sweet and sound as a bell like he does. My guitar is very special, a real blue dog, one of those Fenders that rolls off the line with a magic spell on it, loud and clear with power in the wood that only grows as the neck warps and the body ages and cracks and breathes all kinds of smoke and takes all kinds of dirt, it's all magic enhancement, and will stay on in the pieces if I'm lucky enough to live to play it to kindling. I call him Stray Dog and I have wailed on him with full abandon and he has sounded out a fearsome joyful noise for twelve years now.
Anyway, I'm going to get down to business, and when he and I are through I'm going to work on some other stuff. I sense a productive June in the offing.
*
Next post I'm going to describe some lamps!
--JL
*only need three strings to kick much ass and whip up a fiery frenzy and I will prove it any day
*
June first also happens to be the day of Saint Justin Martyr, who doesn't even sound real but is the patron saint of philosophers and was a gangster (you can kinda guess the main outline of how he died and got sainted) so I don't really care one way or the other, this dude and his dorky-ass name are on my team.
*
There are few stories as metal as the stories of the Christian martyrs of the early centuries. Crazy shit, astonishing shit, even if a bunch of it is fake. I sorta thrive on made-up crazy shit, personally.
*
I've been doing some warmups on my bass guitar as I've been writing this. The A string, which is the lowest string on my thrashed-ass old beater* had come unsprung, what with the advent of summer an all. I hooked it up again and he's all in tune and sounding sweet and sound as a bell like he does. My guitar is very special, a real blue dog, one of those Fenders that rolls off the line with a magic spell on it, loud and clear with power in the wood that only grows as the neck warps and the body ages and cracks and breathes all kinds of smoke and takes all kinds of dirt, it's all magic enhancement, and will stay on in the pieces if I'm lucky enough to live to play it to kindling. I call him Stray Dog and I have wailed on him with full abandon and he has sounded out a fearsome joyful noise for twelve years now.
Anyway, I'm going to get down to business, and when he and I are through I'm going to work on some other stuff. I sense a productive June in the offing.
*
Next post I'm going to describe some lamps!
--JL
*only need three strings to kick much ass and whip up a fiery frenzy and I will prove it any day
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