#411

With civil war bearing down upon us, we dutifully trudge to the cineplex en masse and consume a movie entitled Civil War. 

Well, if that isn't just too fucking perfect and complete.

Have heard that this film asserts that journalism is our only hope. Jesus, can that be true? It plunges into my stomach like a depth charge how unequivocally fucked we are if so. Unless the thesis of the movie is that a nontrivial percentage of the citizen body should transform themselves into a renegade verifiable information supply chain, here in the times of the tail wagging the dog openly and without artifice. Guess I should watch it and see. One should not talk too much about what one don't know.

Just wanted to point out in that first paragraph how utterly, completely steeped in Modern Americanism this situation is. We wouldn't believe it was possible or even desirable to go to the moon until Walt Disney said it was ok. It's just how we are. 

People don't need porn to fuck nasty, but movies tell us how to act nonetheless. Art reflects life, which can only reflect art. Indeed, I have met many people who seemingly constructed their identities and based their speech patterns on a loose mix of perennial and recently perused films. I myself borrow from fiction in these ways--it's only human. But it is always possible to be a little too human. 

*

Lately I have been seized in philosophical and ethical paroxysms that can only be called fits or perhaps fevers of anarchy. Never have I perceived more clearly its allure as a basis for action. 

Because why should we hew and cling to this stability we have enjoyed? To nurse at its teat is to drink a black poison, and all our choices are tainted by our demanding the ability to pay good money for our best lives while existing as the justification and topsoil for corporate and political vines which strangle and destroy our human dignity and the life of our planet. We aid and abet it no matter how much we make noises of outrage or legally protest or whatever, because we are convinced we can have our cake and eat it too and guess what, fucks? The cake is a lie. Always has been.

If we want to enjoy our nice sunny days, it might serve everyone better if we did it without having governments and companies that are literally Ahriman. There is no better way of illustrating it. Maybe we'd get sick and die a little more, maybe there won't be a whole eleven billion of us. Maybe that's ok.

I don't fuckin know, though. I didn't make this world. I don't get to decide these things, or know if my feelings are right. I get stressed out and fight response just from seeing and hearing this motherfucker down the street from me run a gas lawnmower. I can't set policy. I'd collapse every economy on the planet in under a week and many hundreds of millions of people would die. Is that worth saving the world? I don't know. I'm not likely to find out.

Too paranoid to ever make a difference in any way, shape, or form, you see. Can't trust anyone far enough to throw them, let alone enough to coordinate anything. How can I commit to action under conditions which have driven groups of people to act inhumanely since time immemorial? It's a guaranteed way to compromise your ethics, and then, you have to keep going. If you find yourself fighting a war, you have already lost more than half the fight, and the rest is seeing how quickly you can put an end to it or get out of it or die for it--how grave the loss and how compromised you will be before the end.

Plus ultimately I am more interested in expanding my rock collection and playing video games than I am in actually holding myself or anyobody else accountable for anything.

There's your moral high ground. Like all other systems that tempt a human being towards irrational and irretrievable actions which help no one, anarchy is not lucid or explicative. It cannot feed or clothe you. It will not help you make decisions that are more moral or efficient or superior in any way than choice-paths supplied by any other ideologies, systems, worldviews, or hybrids or adaptations derived from existing sets. 

It's all just a lattice we set in front of our eyes in order to try and see an incomprehensible infinite vastness as limited and quanitifiable. All our mistakes start there, because it isn't.

Action is absurdity. The sacred infinite cares not. We are dust motes falling chaotically through time; fixed points on tesselations; fractals made of fractals made of fractals all the way down and all the way out.  

*

Have a nice day? 

Fuck that guy mowing his lawn. Seriously. I hate people acting like anything we've done this past century is something we can just keep on blithely doing till the sun falls down. We need to change everything. Why the fuck are people building houses? Stop it! We have to stop! Stop mining shit, stop making new shit, stop fueling evil tech with massive energy costs! Goddamn it, this other fucking bitch just started in with an even bigger, louder lawnmower! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

--JL

#331

Oh no! I've been putting off the last post of Album Week 2022 until post #333, and it fast approaches! This is terrible! Not ready! But I must be ready. It is essential that the post be dropped on #333 and no other, and I can't just take a hiatus right now--feeling extremely productive lately and wanting very much to put a lot of posts into the blog this spring and summer as well as finish and start some books, so I will simply have to screw my courage to the sticking-point and plunge headfirst into the deep end. Literally and metaphorically and literally within the metaphor! You'll see what I mean when we get there, dear reader. Water, and plunging--will we sink, or will we swim? 

That is what is known as a teaser.

What is the sticking-point of courage, I wonder? Is it the nipple on the left side? Your right hip? Up your own ass far enough to plant it in your guts? This bears long consideration. Courage a threaded thing, made to fit a threaded hole in the body, or the spirit, and hold fast. Does its mere presence do the job thereafter, or does its function as an affordance require further manipulations? You know, like a strap-on. Or, I dunno, a crank.

Perhaps we all have our own unique sticking-points. Perhaps many sticking-points, for many varieties of courage. I get my artisanal, shade-grown courage at the stupid fucking farmer's market, and it makes me feel super good about myself. I put it in a reusable cloth bag before I take it out and casually but conspicuously screw it to my extremely obvious sticking-point.

That's an example that occurred to me just now. Suppose we don't have to respect every kind of courage, even if we're obliged to acknowledge them when we see them in our effort to appraise the world with honesty.

*

Thinking about openly carrying a pistol or other high-velocity projectile weapon, as is so prized by certain types of individuals in this vast, strange land of ours, these nominally united States. More like federally linked conditions, but those aren't the hairs I'm here to split.

One reason I would never carry a gun is I just don't like them, but even if I did like them I don't think I would carry one openly because of the very simple reason that to me, carrying a gun is a clear signal that I want to get shot at. I dunno. It feels like, fucking airtight to me. 

"Why did you kill that man? There was no provocation."

"Well, he had a gun."

"So?"

"I don't understand the question."

"Explain to me why you killed that man, as though I were a five-year old, son."

"Ok. I'll try. Listen, kid, that dude had a gun, and he made sure I knew it, so what I heard him saying was that he walks around looking for an excuse to use it. I killed him to make sure he didn't kill me first for a real or imaginary reason. This is a function of my paranoia and the fact that I also had a gun, which I carry because I know a lot of people carry them, and so I knew it was only a matter of time."

So like, I dunno. That's exactly how I feel, so if I had a gun, I would have killed a man by now. You know what's fucking crazy? I think it's a miracle that there isn't more gun violence in this blood-drenched, gunpowder-reeking nation. It's fucking pathological the way shit is about them and it is absolutely incredible that the very gutters don't reek with clotted gore.

No solution! I'm just saying, you know? Well, I have my solution, which is to accept that man with a suppurating infection for a brain might shoot me for a faggot or a wetback or a heretic or some other scapegoat for his own massive personal problems or as a form of revenge against our embattled society with its broken institutions or even just as performance for the pageviews and and that's just how life is, and death is, and fuck him, he's not gonna run my life, make me have things I don't want to have, or do things I don't want to do. I live how I want to live, which is with my hands empty.

Wage peace or fuck off. Or don't. All anyone can do is walk their own path.

--JL

#322

Dang! I really do be busy, quite. Turns out working about half as much and taking five courses adds up to more work than just working. Well, fine. That's fine. I'm procrastinating right now, by writing this, but that's fine. Tomorrow will a good day to do three assignments; today is not. That's just how it is sometimes, and I need to learn to be okay with that. Burning out is a grave risk when you want to achieve near-perfection, and I must allow myself the space to not do that. Back in high school, achieving perfection in the areas I wanted to achieve perfection was a breeze, because I let the rest of it all happen however it was going to happen without giving it a second thought or instant of stress. Failing the same algebra course two years in a row? Ask me if I give a flying fuck! I'll laugh right in your face. No, no fucks buzzing around my airspace. That second year, I had an A+ in both accelerated English and AP European History. Achieved a C in chemistry, mostly by showing up and cracking jokes all hour. I also got an A in Twentieth Century Literature. Don't remember what else I took, besides Concert Band, where I did fine but never brilliantly. Maybe another English elective. Took all the English they let me get away with back then. When it came time at the end of that year to talk to my counselor about graduating next year, she let me know that strictly speaking, I had not accumulated enough math credits to leave school on time. 

"I see you haven't signed up for any math next year, which makes sense, since you haven't met the requirements for any of the classes. What you might not know is, you can't graduate like that. Not in this state. Look here, though. You've already exceeded your English graduation requirements. In fact, you've taken and passed more English classes at a high level of performance than anyone else in your class, and you're maintaining that trend for next year. Nobody else taking AP English and Humanities and an English elective on top. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna make a deal. You're going to take this class called Geometry X. It is remedial. You take this class and pass it--just one semester--and do well with the rest of your planned courses senior year, and we'll let you walk. Fail this class, we'll have to have a different discussion. Do we understand each other?"

And thus, I fell at her feet, praising her benevolence, her wisdom, her power and acumen. The one and only administrator in my entire middle and high school career that acted like a human being. And indeed, though my overall GPA was really nothing to write home about, the English department awarded me an Outstanding Student of English award, which was worth more to me than the actual diploma. Also at this point I'm bragging about nothing,but my SAT scores would have been in the 98th percentile nationwide if my math hadn't been down at the 70th. Everything else, the bar was tickling that sweet 100. 

As you may know, dear reader, I soon proceeded to drop out of college and drink myself almost to death/madness over the course of the subsequent four years instead. I mean, I accumulated some credits at the community college I attend now, but my performance was awful, even worse than high school, as I would usually stop turning up mid-semester or even before.

Now I am giving all my classes the same focused I effort I once gave a chosen few. I will pull this academic situation out of the ashes, so help me, but I must also continue to take care of me in the ways I need taking care of--and hammering some bullshit into this blog every now and again should be part of that. Even moreso, actual projects, which I should really get to instead of any more of this nonsense.

So PEACE THE FUCK OUT, READER! THIS WAS HELLA POINTLESS! YAAAAAAAA


--JL