#261

Managed to live in the same town (or at the very least, in extreme proximity to the township) for a long time despite my mean, mean stature in society and its skyrocketing cost of housing and living. That's done and over with on short notice. The apartment complex where we live is crunching up the rent, and as the lowest rent we could get in this town, it was already too high. So it goes, eh? Those rascals! 

*

On this day in 2020, I got married. This is how our landlords see fit to congratulate us. It would be comical, without the stress of it all. You know I own a lot of books, right? We have stuff, much of it heavy, a good part acquired over the course of the last year. I didn't want to move any of this shit for at least another year. Whatever, though. Adapt or die.

*

The wedding was extremely private, the year 2020 being what it was. I dressed in green from toe to shoulder. He wore a yellow shirt, a denim jacket festooned with buttons, a long yellow skirt stitched with brown leaves, and black boots with neon-green laces. We both wore flowers in our hair, said our vows under an archway hung with flowers, spilling over with flowers, in a room crowded full flower arrangements and flower-based art installations. 

It's been a good year.

*

Well! May the Lord grant us fortitude.

--JL

#260

Remembered a moment. That moment filled me, filled me to the very brim with itself, with its redolent emotion. I was a pure clear vessel for the wine of my memory. I determined to make straight for the laptop to record this pure beam.

Literally two things happened--a cat moved and I turned my head--and I forgot what it was. Reeling slightly due to the vertiginous effects of blanking of that magnitude, but kind of amused, I did a few more things, then smoked half a joint just to seal the deal.

Hey, who gives a shit? I can write something else.

*

Life is too fucking hilarious. I leave you with nothing. Nothing is the greatest and most comical joke I could hope to tell, and I leave it with you, dear reader, so you may laugh at nothing with me. I fucking love you. We are going to die. STRAP IN YOU BEAUTIFUL GODDAMNED BASTARD WE ARE GOING TO

BREAK

ON

through.

--JL

#259

Damn, so, hey, just wanted to pop on here to say that this new Tetris game that just dropped that got collaborated on by the Rez people and the Lumines people is the greatest thing that has happened to Tetris since 1985. I am experiencing the kind of deep, giddy joy that affects your breathing and makes your brain feel like it is literally squeezing itself to produce more endorphins.

Ok gonna go play the greatest form of Tetris ever produced thanks bye

--JL

#258

It strikes that perhaps too regularly when I approach this space the result of the encounter is a failure to properly navigate the line between the management of alert, manifold cogency and the irreverence with which I am tempted to skewer and demean myself. Also a failure to manage the tension between my overbearing vanity and too-precious desire to sound clever, and my wish to be as honest as possible.

All of which is so stupid. I feel like such a fucking twit, sitting in the dirt with too-small pants riding up my calves, splaying each testicle onto a separate thigh. Drool running all the way down my chin and drying on my neck. Very proud of myself, big smile.

Not literally in that position as I type this. Just saying I feel like a total asshole sometimes. Guess we all do.

*

Let me just tell you a story. Let me just be done talking for a moment.

*

Cedar Point, the amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio, has been a destination in my life. I mean, that is what it's there for, its exact and stated purpose: a place to go to. For those times you need a place to take a bunch of middle school concert band students somewhere. Somewhere they can conduct themselves with dignity and comport themselves with grace, like a roller coaster pileup what gift kiosks do be sellin' rebel flag durags n' fried mars bars. Somewhere you are surrounded by men whose lifestyle's cumulative contribution to their frame and physique has rendered them unable to cover ground for more minutes than they need to rest in a day, though these men are typically not yet sixty.

We hearken back to that basically revolting and yet truly magical age of thirteen. We evoke a maladapted little atheist with spiked hair, caustic t-shirts, evilly rubber-banded braces, long drab cargo shorts, and two rows of homemade brujo beads hanging round my neck down to my groin. Only my black slip-on moccasins, slightly overlarge, and particular dysfunctions betrayed me as autistic. I played, of course, the trumpet.

*

Before noon I had already used one of the disposable cameras I used to like to bring everywhere to snap an incriminating picture of my buddy Red, and also a picture of an impressively-endowed classmate with her shirt up. The way I accomplished this was by feeling the impulse enter my mind and acting upon it without thinking: she was perhaps ten feet away, ahead of me and my boys in the line for the standing-up coaster. I called out to her to show me her tits, she did, and I took the photo without consent. There is no excuse for this behavior. Troubled youth. If I have not already paid for the balance in personal agony, may I continue to do so, amen.

Funny thing about this girl, a couple years later she pulled her shirt up at me again. I was already a different man, though, had already drunk deep from the shame of having done her like that in the first place, and turned my eyes away. This, of course, offended her profoundly, and also caused a wrestling teammate that was talking to me up till that moment pitch a fit at me like "motherfucker you crazy, that bitch is showing you her tiddies what the fuck is the matter?!?" Dude shoved me and everything. Thought I was gonna hafta deck'm with an elbow.

Couldn't explain it, really. Both occasions are founts of equal guilt and pain. Perhaps it's not such an amusing thing that of her own volition a teenaged girl would show her tits to a dude that once tricked her into same for no particular reason other than that he could. Perhaps it doesn't matter. And perhaps it does.

*

In line for the fast coaster (plenty of fast coasters at the park now, but back in the day, you'd know which coaster I meant), me and the boys were very naturally horsing around. No real mayhem, just mocking grins at all and sundry, the kind of fidgeting that isn't nervous but rather makes other people nervous, and laughing raucously at inside jokes and Monty Python quotes. Just being little assholes, you know? 

To make a long story short, there was this super hot chick further back in the line. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in my entire life up to that point, and it is easy for me to remember that this was so because it was by such a ridiculous, such a painful margin; seven times hotter than anyone I could think of or remember. I think she contributed to how long it took me to come around to actually having sex. If I had waited for real for a chick as hot as her to give it up to, I would have stayed virgin till I was twenty-six. This was a thirteen-year girl, a flesh-and-blood occurrence of the mysterious stranger of lore that pops up in people's lifetimes. Like the loveliest cicada imaginable.

Shan't bother to describe her. You've either seen a thirteen-year individual or you haven't; if you have, there is no purpose in wasting words, and if you haven't, understand that looks as describable are barely a part of this, and understand that in this matter, words are a waste. You, too, may be someone's mysterious stranger, showing up in a beam of light before their eyes, representing a great axis in their lives.

As I say, thirteen years after this little story, I consummated the cycle and fucked the next thirteen-year girl I saw. She deserves her own post and she shall have it, but I will say this: I didn't flirt with a single customer the entire five years I worked at this remanufactured automotive parts outlet except for her (I'm not in any case a flirter, really; don't have the ear or the tongue or the type of patience for it), I knew I was gonna fuck her the moment she walked through the door, and I let it happen without giving it too much thought. You can't. With a mysterious stranger, you're either gonna pretty damn soon or right then and there or not for a long time or maybe ever, decided essentially in the first few instants of the juncture. 

So, when we noticed this girl, the boys just about shit their pants. They regressed about five years at a leap and shoved their hands in their pockets as the blood ran away from their faces, an ashen hush collapsing their voices and deflating their auras. I don't blame them. We were confident enough amongst ourselves, but it's not like we were the coolest cats in town. Remember, Monty Python quotes. Braces. We thought doing a real good professional German accent and a real good British accent back to back, playing with the stereotypes, was a total crackup. We still spoke of Space Camp sometimes, with a wistful gleam in our eyes.

Me, much as it would go thirteen years later, I looked into her eyes and I knew that I could get it done if I wanted to. That day, that very blessed hour. Unless she just wanted to hop the line and thought the naïveté of this gaggle of twerps was a good safe bet. Don't think so, though. So maybe her bet was on this twerp (me) possessing delusions towards the sigma male posture. Maybe. But I doubt it. This was sustained eye-contact, actual-flavor-on-the-tongue real come-on as in come on, boy, come get this, I have it and you see that I have it and I want to give it to you. I remember the shape and color of her eyes like no time has passed at all because she drilled them into mine with no doubts at all. And what eyes.

Problem is, I was thirteen, and plain weird. Now, I've known guys to turn in their v-card on just such an occasion, no other consideration in the world at all in their minds, just going for it. They are everywhere in literature. I remember reading an article the year before this tale took place in Men's Healf Maggrozeen about a sex addict who turned in his v-card at twelve in a tunnel on a playground and spent the rest of his life as the type of dude who, in his own words, would chew through a brick wall if he knew there was pussy on the other side of it. But I'm a dude who, first, values loyalty and doesn't like to set people up to have their feelings hurt needlessly (I might be extremely good at hurting feelings both intentionally and through many unflattering varieties of fuckup, but I really don't like to), and second, values his independence. I am, by and large, a dude of discipline and behavioral rigor. I value honor, justice, freedom, courage, wisdom, prudence, and honesty. I also love to fuck, drink hard, and smoke like a chimney. These, and intellectual arrogance, comprise my Achilles heels and the foundations of my hubris and death-drives. Known all that pretty much since I was a kid. 

Therefore much as I could already feel my feet shucking the pointless line, leaving my dudes castrated and abandoned (really not good for their psychology and a profoundly bad look on me), taking her by the hand literally without saying a word over to the Ferris wheel, and finding out what the songs are all about, I did not do this thing. So it goes.

Stayed in line with the fellas like a brother ought. Yes, I looked at that girl: I feasted my eyes and I told her I was sorry though mine as best as I could. Yes, I stood up straight shoulders squared chest out gut tight, and let her see me smile, because she was curving herself and setting herself up some angles and letting me see her smile. Yes, there were moments, many, when the intensity even got turned up, and it is hard to describe honestly and not sound like a bullshitter, but if you've been there, then you know: moments when that girl and me were all alone in that line, when it was quiet because there was, in those moments, no Sandusky, no Ohio, no cut-rate amusement park, no line, no time. Just the sunlight falling on two humans, the sound of the ocean in their ears the one and only sound, the maybe, the beckoning, the holding of the peace, the yes and the no at the same time. 

Yes, I looked at that girl. And she looked at me.

But I kept joking with my boys, got 'em laughing, got 'em pumped and grinning and full of themselves and psyched for the roller coaster. Reminded myself about brick-wall-pussy dude and made other memories; like this older dude with a big gray grizzled ponytail under a trucker hat wearing a sleeveless t-shirt and sporting on his upper arm the absolute hugest, longest, most out-there fuckin mole I have ever seen, and let me tell you the best part: this mole had a long gray ponytail too. Never saw another like it. A mole that impressive, on display? Rarer than a thirteen-year girl. Never seen its like before or since, not even on an old man's pate.

A gem. Really, truly, you don't stand in a line like this every day.

*

That's the tale, folks. Hope to do more stuff like this, through the end of this year. Yet, who knows?

Peace,

--JL

#257

"Say lahh vee," my husband likes to say. And indeed, that is life. What is known as a truism or given, and might more precisely be called a tautology, or, my favorite, a worthlessly complete truth. Anyhow, whatever you say or feel about it, así es la vida. 

*

If I say "that's how life is," how can I be lying? If I am saying it right after someone says something that is not true about life. And yet, whether I acknowledge it or not, even whether I know it or not, I am still telling the truth. That is how durable, and pointless, the truth-power of the tautology is. All lies become true. Every absurdity in the universe thoroughly commonplace--to be expected as a matter of course as soon as it happens and perhaps beforehand, no matter the content or context. Such is the perfect suspension of disbelief at the heart of the universe as it watches itself unfold.

*

What the fuck? lmao

--JL 

#256

Hm. So I got a bit tired of my own output, as I do, and have been working on slightly different breed of post. Not tossing it all off in one go, even though working long-term on a single post kinda messed me up a little last time I did it, which was already breaking the rules. Just, it was refreshing for awhile to return to the short, immediate blast. But, this is, in the end, an autobiographical blog, and though it does count--matter--qualify--earn points--whatever--to talk about what I have read since the last time I posted about what I read (which, yes, I will be doing in this post), I feel the endeavor also requires the occasional substantial longer-form tale about or around me. 

There'll be more explaining in the post itself. This isn't that post. Worked on that one for a bit but also want to do this. Don't even know what this is yet, though.

*

Oh! Of course I have also been very busy, too busy, being the big department boss. Good experience so far. Learning loads.

*

Anyway all I really have right now is the stuff I've been reading and watching, and perhaps the odd thought about that. My bandwidth is crunched, and that is simply that, as they say. Maybe I'll come up with something to finish strong on, who knows.

Since I last mentioned the topic--quite some silence ago now, it feels--these are the things I have read, played, and looked at. To unburden myself of any kind of strain at all beyond the minimum, I shall list them in no particular order.

A General History of Quadrupeds, by Thomas Bewick, figures engraved on wood by same, newly introduced by Yann Martel. A book of exquisite interest and beauty. I loved reading it and looking at it so much.

Billy Summers, by Stephen King. The dude still plays for fucking keeps. Amazing book. I'm not saying anything else about it except that perhaps the truth is stranger and more brutal than even the most brilliant and cutting fiction is allowed to or even could be.

Godzilla, by Stephen Molstad, a novelization of the critically shat-upon U.S. film Godzilla, directed by Roland Emmerich and co-written between him and Dean Devlin. I grabbed this at a thrift store in the northern part of the state along with many other books* and reread it eagerly. Or thought I did! The novelization of Godzilla that I read as a kid was actually Godzilla: A Novelization, by H.B Gilmour. Of these three pieces of media I will say that the superior iteration has to be the H.B. Gilmour mid-grade novel, but I very much like all three. Admittedly fraught, mismanaged, and bastardizing of itself, the '98 American foray into the mightiest of kaiju properties is comprised of underrated efforts nevertheless.

Jurassic Park and The Lost World, by Michael Crichton. I have lost track of how many times I have read these scientifically imprecise and technically outdated books, and still to this day I learn from them and am delighted by them on the reread, and am more amazed at their depth, prescience, truthfulness, and philosophical acumen. They are, for me, emblematic of what makes a classic. They are among my personally iconic duos.

Hound of the Far Side, The Far Side Observer, and The Far Side Gallery 2, by Gary Larson. Speaking of classics.

What Makes You Think You're Happy? a "Peanuts Parade Book" by Charles M. Schultz. A slim but lavishly tall and wide printing of a noble run of older Peanuts strips. The classicism appears to be relentless.

Only Yesterday, by Frederick Lewis Allen. An illuminating, incisive little history of the 1920's, written early in the thirties of that same momentously recent century, scoping the United States of America by the stats, the fads, the scandals and the dramas on the global and the individual level. Certainly a lot to think about from a timely little tome. It is the twenties, after all, and the parallels can really make one smirk and wince.  

Probably a few other comics and a book or two I'm missing. But you know, it's very difficult at the moment for me to try and grasp a reality in which that might matter.

*

Notable recent watchings of photo film sequences include Lars Von Trier's The House That Jack Built, a work of art I do not feel called upon to comment on at the moment, and perhaps I never shall.

Also watched Pacific Rim. I guess I don't feel too compelled to blather about this movie either, but for very different reasons. It just sounds like a restaurant, you know? It's not a restaurant, though.

Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV was quite an achievement in many ways, though fails to grasp that magical touch Advent Children never lets go of. On its own, with no game under consideration, I feel this movie suffers badly from technology that overreaches slightly, taxes patience, and sometimes actively sucks, but ultimately rewards patience, triumphs emotionally, and excites cinematically. The hero's arc and what he has to say for himself are also interesting enough to think about closely, though I didn't believe so till very late in the game. Overall, worth required effort. 

The final installment, for the nonce, of Adventure Time: Distant Lands, Wizard City, was fabulous. 

Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, by the people who made the thing. Nick Park and the Aardman Animations. Steve Box or something. Peter Lord. The British. So good, so funny. Ralph Fiennes was in it. Ralph Fiennes is plus one thousand to everything he appears in.

More stuff, can't bear to think about it any more right now. While on the subject of the Queen's own England, though, might as well state that Ira and I have been absorbing the psyop that is The Great British Baking Show nightly. No defense.

*

Played Skyrim a lot. As one does.

Also this new game Eastward I have been very much looking forward to has dropped and I got it and it is undiluted joy. Pure goodness. Ship of the fleet in the lush, surprising, gorgeous "2D" renaissance currently underway. Seriously it is so fucking goddamned orgasmically beautiful and fun. 

To cap it off, Katamari Damancy: Rerolled and Star Wars: Republic Commando and Mario Kart 8 and dipping into whatever random fancy my Switch hides within its depths. The Metroid: Dread drop approaches with extreme swiftness, and that game must be played and beaten. Soon, apparently, I shall be able to play a host of Nintendo 64 games on my machine, much as I already have access to many OG Nintendo and Super Nintendo titles as long as I'm connected to internet. The future past is constantly almost here, and I don't give a fuck if I have to pay for it the rest of my life. I grin and laugh and caper with glee as the Nintendo-logo train speeds me towards my personal oblivion. 

*

This blog has been running for over three years now! This is the first post after the first collection cutoff**. The first post of the next three years. The first post of the rest of my life. G'bless, all. Happy to be typing.

*

Do no harm, some say. Let me just...breathe.

--JL

*only now do I realize how many books I have acquired without ever writing them down. I suppose at some point it would be perhaps all right to post pictures of the books. Not quite yet. A vastly improved percentage of the books are shelved these days; few piles remain, but it's not quite photographable yet.

**this did not turn out to be applicable; the book became unwieldy well before this point.