The Crimson Permanent Assurance Strikes!

This is what happens when you bring up a list of books to read with an English professor...I'm forwarding a list from the Associated Press. This is what they think are the 100 best novels of this century! Some of them are arguable, I think, and of course it's subjective and limited to the 20th century....and limited to those written in English, too. See what you think. I'd add James Joyce's Ulysses to your list, for sure. And maybe JJ's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I would also *definitely* add Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. It is a hoot...and pushes the limits of 18th C. typography. If i used it for 206, though, I think students would kill me. Ulysses is number one on this AP list, coincidentally. In fact, I ought to re-read it; it's been a long time. I would also add George Eliot's Middlemarch to the list. It can be slow at first, and then you get caught up with the characters. For poetry I love Browning's monologues....Fra Lippo Lippi, etc.Portrait of a Young Artist? *sigh*... I read it up to like page 40, the text went through my mind like bird through air. Unless you count in "The moocow was up the road" or something like that, then that stuck. But, I've heard Ulysses was much better, though. As for Tristram Shandy, I really wanted to read it, but like everything else it gradually fell out of the back of my mind, and splattered on the intelligence floor, to be whisked away. Guess that one's going on my list, too. She also included the list of 100 best novels, but I think, and she does too, that it's really biased, as it largely focuses on only 20th century novels, is subjective, rather limited in its scope, and to me, more of a British/American, caucasian male list. There isn't anything by Sartre on it, nor Camus or Toni Morrison. Hm. There's probably a disenfranchised, mixed-minority list floating out there somewhere for me *grins*The 100 Best Novels This Century .c The Associated Press By The Associated Press The 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century, as drawn up by the editorial board of the Modern Library: 1. ``Ulysses,'' James Joyce 2. ``The Great Gatsby,'' F. Scott Fitzgerald 3. ``A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,'' James Joyce 4. ``Lolita,'' Vladimir Nabokov 5. ``Brave New World,'' Aldous Huxley 6. ``The Sound and the Fury,'' William Faulkner 7. ``Catch-22,'' Joseph Heller 8. ``Darkness at Noon,'' Arthur Koestler 9. ``Sons and Lovers,'' D.H. Lawrence 10. ``The Grapes of Wrath,'' John Steinbeck 11. ``Under the Volcano,'' Malcolm Lowry 12. ``The Way of All Flesh,'' Samuel Butler 13. ``1984,'' George Orwell 14. ``I, Claudius,'' Robert Graves 15. ``To the Lighthouse,'' Virginia Woolf 16. ``An American Tragedy,'' Theodore Dreiser 17. ``The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter,'' Carson McCullers 18. ``Slaughterhouse Five,'' Kurt Vonnegut 19. ``Invisible Man,'' Ralph Ellison 20. ``Native Son,'' Richard Wright 21. ``Henderson the Rain King,'' Saul Bellow 22. ``Appointment in Samarra,'' John O'Hara 23. ``U.S.A.'' (trilogy), John Dos Passos 24. ``Winesburg, Ohio,'' Sherwood Anderson 25. ``A Passage to India,'' E.M. Forster 26. ``The Wings of the Dove,'' Henry James 27. ``The Ambassadors,'' Henry James 28. ``Tender Is the Night,'' F. Scott Fitzgerald 29. ``The Studs Lonigan Trilogy,'' James T. Farrell 30. ``The Good Soldier,'' Ford Maddox Ford 31. ``Animal Farm,'' George Orwell 32. ``The Golden Bowl,'' Henry James 33. ``Sister Carrie,'' Theodore Dreiser 34. ``A Handful of Dust,'' Evelyn Waugh 35. ``As I Lay Dying,'' William Faulkner 36. ``All the King's Men,'' Robert Penn Warren 37. ``The Bridge of San Luis Rey,'' Thornton Wilder 38. ``Howards End,'' E.M. Forster 39. ``Go Tell It on the Mountain,'' James Baldwin 40. ``The Heart of the Matter,'' Graham Greene 41. ``Lord of the Flies,'' William Golding 42. ``Deliverance,'' James Dickey 43. ``A Dance to the Music of Time'' (series), Anthony Powell 44. ``Point Counter Point,'' Aldous Huxley 45. ``The Sun Also Rises,'' Ernest Hemingway 46. ``The Secret Agent,'' Joseph Conrad 47. ``Nostromo,'' Joseph Conrad 48. ``The Rainbow,'' D.H. Lawrence 49. ``Women in Love,'' D.H. Lawrence 50. ``Tropic of Cancer,'' Henry Miller 51. ``The Naked and the Dead,'' Norman Mailer 52. ``Portnoy's Complaint,'' Philip Roth 53. ``Pale Fire,'' Vladimir Nabokov 54. ``Light in August,'' William Faulkner 55. ``On the Road,'' Jack Kerouac 56. ``The Maltese Falcon,'' Dashiell Hammett 57. ``Parade's End,'' Ford Maddox Ford 58. ``The Age of Innocence,'' Edith Wharton 59. ``Zuleika Dobson,'' Max Beerbohm 60. ``The Moviegoer,'' Walker Percy 61. ``Death Comes to the Archbishop,'' Willa Cather 62. ``From Here to Eternity,'' James Jones 63. ``The Wapshot Chronicles,'' John Cheever 64. ``The Catcher in the Rye,'' J.D. Salinger 65. ``A Clockwork Orange,'' Anthony Burgess 66. ``Of Human Bondage,'' W. Somerset Maugham 67. ``Heart of Darkness,'' Joseph Conrad 68. ``Main Street,'' Sinclair Lewis 69. ``The House of Mirth,'' Edith Wharton 70. ``The Alexandria Quartet,'' Lawrence Durrell 71. ``A High Wind in Jamaica,'' Richard Hughes 72. ``A House for Ms. Biswas,'' V.S. Naipaul 73. ``The Day of the Locust,'' Nathaniel West 74. ``A Farewell to Arms,'' Ernest Hemingway 75. ``Scoop,'' Evelyn Waugh 76. ``The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,'' Muriel Spark 77. ``Finnegans Wake,'' James Joyce 78. ``Kim,'' Rudyard Kipling 79. ``A Room With a View,'' E.M. Forster 80. ``Brideshead Revisited,'' Evelyn Waugh 81. ``The Adventures of Augie March,'' Saul Bellow 82. ``Angle of Repose,'' Wallace Stegner 83. ``A Bend in the River,'' V.S. Naipaul 84. ``The Death of the Heart,'' Elizabeth Bowen 85. ``Lord Jim,'' Joseph Conrad 86. ``Ragtime,'' E.L. Doctorow 87. ``The Old Wives' Tale,'' Arnold Bennett 88. ``The Call of the Wild,'' Jack London 89. ``Loving,'' Henry Green 90. ``Midnight's Children,'' Salman Rushdie 91. ``Tobacco Road,'' Erskine Caldwell 92. ``Ironweed,'' William Kennedy 93. ``The Magus,'' John Fowles 94. ``Wide Sargasso Sea,'' Jean Rhys 95. ``Under the Net,'' Iris Murdoch 96. ``Sophie's Choice,'' William Styron 97. ``The Sheltering Sky,'' Paul Bowles 98. ``The Postman Always Rings Twice,'' James M. Cain 99. ``The Ginger Man,'' J.P. Donleavy 100. ``The Magnificent Ambersons,'' Booth Tarkington Literary Capitalism - too many choices, not enough time. *Chuckles* :)

"The mi...

"The mind ought sometimes to be diverted, so that it may return the better to thinking." —Plato I'm compiling a list of books to read, maybe 10-20 books, and I'm aiming to finish most of them by January 1st. I'm posting so you guys can add books you've read (and liked, I hope) so I can add, remove or modify my list. I'm reading those right now:The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael ChabonThe Dharma Bums, Jack KerouacThe Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser My partial list of books to read is:The Sun Also Rises, HemingwaySlaughterhouse Five, VonnegutLolita, NabokovAll Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria RemarqueCandide, VoltaireThings Fall Apart, Chinua AchebeA Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, David EggersI'm pursuing a possible minor in Philosophy (to go with my English major), and I don't think Gallaudet's teaching principles are adequate, so I'm throwing in some philosophically oriented works too: The History of Sexuality, Michel FoucaultUnpopular Essays, Bertrand RussellAlso, I'm looking to read some plays so I can learn how to write one. What's on my list is: The Misanthrope, MolièreWaiting for Godot, Samuel BecketThe Glass Menagerie, Tennessee WilliamsLysistrata, AristophanesI'm fond of Kundera, Camus and anything that discusses the changing attitudes of the time. I'm also interested in feminist literature, as well as books that were historical flashpoints (Think Hitler's Mein Kampf, or Darwin's Origin of the Species.)Please add if you want to. Thanks, and have fun!

I'm a mercenary. Cool.

I am a Heliotropic Dragon!Hey, I took the http://dragonhame.com online Inner Dragon quiz and found out I am a Heliotropic Dragon on the inside. In the war between good and evil, a Heliotropic Dragon tends to walk the fine line of Neutrality....When it comes to the powers of Chaos vs. those of Law and Order, your inner dragon walks a fine line between Law and Chaos....As far as magical tendancies, Your inner dragon has the ability to conquer the world of magic, but it will not be easy....During combat situations, whether by spells or by claw, your inner dragon will do whatever it takes to get the job done....Instead of scales, Heliotropic Dragons have a thick hide to cover their body. At the early stages of life, the Heliotropic Dragon is green with red speckles that resemble blood spots. When fully grown, the dragons color changes to any number of variations of violet, but predominantly they have a deep, reddish purple color with streaks of azure blue and magenta.'This unusual skin type also gives them an unusually sleek appearance and allows them to move with greater speed and freedom both in air and under water. These Dragon's are known to be highly competitive.'They often meet with other dragons to compete with each other for sport. NOTE: A few small villages have been destroyed by being so unlucky as to be in the path of a speeding Heliotropic Dragon taking a shortcut to gain an advantage over it's competitor. Heliotropic Dragons are well known for their protectiveness, but also are known as loyal friends and allies. They make true friends rarely, but those friendships that they make are well chosen and long lasting.'This Dragons favorite elements are: BloodStone and Valerian Roothttp://Dragonhame.Com

In a funk

It's raining. Pretty heavy, too. Rather cool, I can see my breath trailing out. I just fished two Kool cigarette remnants out of the ashtray and smoked them outside on the porch. There's straight lines of water slamming down on a small canister of roofing tar in the corner of the cast-metal wraparound. I'm slumped down on the concrete, against the whitewall. I haven't been able to really go to sleep, or sleep well, and have this migraine following me around. I'm going to make coffee soon. For now, I only want to wrap myself around a warm body. I could care less.

Bushmen's top 40 lies

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0730-06.htm

Rubik's Heart

Hmph. I set out to make a quesadilla and ended up with slightly burnt cheese crackers. Strange. Just like today.Today's been a little weird. I woke up at about 11:30, 12p and within 15 minutes was down at Super Johnny's buying egg noodles (medium, if you must know) and two money orders that total up to $102.85 to go with my can of Arizona Green Tea. Spent better part of the early afternoon trying to figure out how a money order - screw up on it and you can't redo it, you gotta plunk down the same amount for a new one, and considering the amount I spent, I sure as hell didn't want to fuck up. Washed dishes, noted the magnificient black cloud above the bananas, so I tossed them out, and hoped the fruit flies (drosophila, as I recall from biology class, and Christen, that pretty girl — what do you care? :D) would die out quickly, or I could get John Coffe ("Like the drink but spelt diffrently, Boss") to hoover them down. Did some laundry, talked to Christy (christyslife) and tried out some of the Iced Java my mom bought for me. I'll tell you now; if you have not had coffee for two months, a dwindling supply of milk (sorry, Lynn [charmenders], I still do drink cow milk, but I'm working on it!) and a packet containing chocolate mocha syrup, make sure your ceilings are not too short. I found out that even if i'm 6' and my room's ceiling is 7'6", I could flatten my afro almost all the way to my scalp just by jumping around. I also stepped on my bed frame and shoe, so I stopped before I ended up breaking another ankle. Frailty, thy name is mud. My heart now has racing stripes. I went to unleash a barrage of caffeine-enriched urine into the toilet and had this loopy thought in my head (you fill in the blanks): Hello Bush! What WMD? It's just piss, you crazy fuck. No, I don't think Saddam is in the market for enriched piss. No, I believe Saddam has better things to do than throw wads of cash at me for a quart of caffiene-laden piss. No, I do not look like Ibn Laden. No, I'm not his son. Why the hell are you even here? Yellowcake? I flush after every leak! You disgust me! Get out! Can't believe we elected a cokehead for a president.After I was done with my business, I come back and there's something from a friend sitting on the computer. It was a little weird seeing how we didn't talk for two months and she's trying to casually strike up conversation. I didn't know what to say so I was pretty nonchalant about it. She had IM'd me a few days ago to thank me for wishing her a happy birthday and we left it at that. I know most people won't bother with someone who doesn't talk to them, but I suppose, either out of foolishness or optimitism, I went ahead and wished her a good 20th. She told me about her new tattoo and I didn't really care about it, but only said if she was happy with it, great. She left and I went back to doing my laundry and talking to Christy. Didn't want to think about it. About a hour passed, and I was folding up clothes, taking the occasional text from Jon (lumenluna), Jennie (pmpknfn) and Lynn, as well as looking for something online, and this IM comes up again. Her again. She asked me if I knew a kid from here, I told her yeah he lives 10 blocks from me, and she and I talk a little — If you consider my grunting yeses and no's and cool's talking. I'm a little impressed she's finally taking the initative for once, but at the same time, slightly perturbed. I think poetmatt's been in this situation before, maybe. Don't know about the rest of you guys, but it's like getting to know the person all over again, or for geeks, starting your favorite RPG on New Game+. After five minutes she's back on her job and in ten minutes I'm talking to Pap, who just happened to be the same guy who lives not too far from me, and I'm asking him how he's enjoying his time at GU, and Pap brought her up and I felt like my gears ground to a stop. Why? I can't understand the strains and bonds of human emotions and needs. I sometimes wondered if a Rubik's Cube wanted to solve itself, but was immensely afraid. It would mean completion, and would lead either to languishing somewhere or being destroyed and slowly rebuilt by an outside force. At the same time, it needed to understand how to proceed, which is maybe what the feeling is. How to move? Not how to move on, but how to move. Like beating a guy at chess and moving on, but then trying to move in a new game. It's how you do it, and since there's no take-backs, it's just damn hard to decide how to do it at times. Better than leaving the shrink-wrap on, though.I decide to go to my room and draw a snake-eater. I've been mulling this design for a while, the Indians, I think Cherokee, had a symbol of renewal and rebirth, a snake that was devouring itself. My take on it is a dragon devouring itself, but as it's too grandoise an image for a tattoo, and I'm afraid of pissing off the Yakuza fellows, I decide to stick with the snake-eater. It's an interesting image. The Circle of Life, as represented by a self-cannibalistic snake. The pain of renewing, the purity, the cleanliness. Real snakes usually shed their skins when it gets too small and old for them; this imaginary snake is eating it, as if you would devour your own fading past in order to make your present stronger, your future brighter. Of course, the fact the skin hasn't come off didn't occur to him, but damn it, he'll symbolize something! I also added a tweak to it; The snake would be in the symbol of infinity. During that I decided I was going to text her and make modest conversation, to show I had good intentions and a little interest in what she was doing. In between texts and Jon's headbanger comments (When asked about what class and which level of Inferno he was trapped in, and why, he replied, "This is astronomy. We're gonna look at slides of planets. This is the 8th level — defamination of art!",) I worked on the snake-eater. It's not easy drawing when your desk turns into a big battery-powered dildo every five minutes, and I was too focused to just turn the damn thing off. In twenty minutes, I had a simple charcoal sketch, but quit so my eyes could rest. She's talking to me somewhat, laughing at my remarks. It's weird how quickly comfort creeps in after a chill, so I bust into Kerouac's Dharma Bums. Favorite of mine, I love this book as much as I do On The Road, but I'm slightly biased to Dharma Bums due to its enviromentalistic, buddhistic, and dare I say, bodhisattvatic implications. After a while, I decide to hop into the shower. Haven't had anything clean to wear until just now, so I go up. Now, the wiring in the bathroom's fucked up, and the lights won't turn on. As usual, the landlady is holding tight to her 'But I'm just a girl!' attitude, and won't get it fixed, so my mom bought two spot-lights that you push on to light up, similiar to that audist 'Simon Says' game. Even though they only emit 10 watts each, the bathroom is small enough to be lit up totally. It's almost like candlelight, and on a cool night like tonight, taking a shower in this kind of ambience is great. Guys, this is a great way to get in touch with your feminine side without looking queer! :D Pretty relaxing, too.I'm reflecting on our times together, and I'm thinking about this comment someone made, about how it is good to have an occasional fight, to show that the people involved still care about the relationship. Otherwise, you meander along as if you were a leaf on a river, just passively. Easy to do, but fighting the current will make sure things don't stagnate somehow. Washing out my curly locks, I'm thinking how some tribes in Africa fled while others stood their ground in the early days of slavery. Those who fled either got away with their lives, only to be killed later on by stronger and richer tribes, or were killed in the process of fleeing. Those who fought, either won the fight and gained enough respect to be left alone or become business partners, or were killed, injured and taken as slaves. My point is fight or flight, something will be lost. But what's to be gained if you don't attempt to stay your ground when it's important? Then again, there are times when staying your ground is what's going to get you finished off. Back to the idea of how to move.Love is eternal confusion. Buddhist doctrine encourages acceptation. I'm accepting it. One problem. What am I accepting: Love, or the eternal confusion?At this time, midnight has come and gone. I'm still wondering about the Rubik quagmire. I'm rather tired from all this writing and thinking, and I've been neglecting my pager, which threatens to lob itself at me with angry vibrations. I'm just looking for a way to get the best of the situation. Meanwhile, I'm making tea. Tea is good for the soul. I need to sample Teaism when I visit DC. :) Everyone should thank me for the free advertisting! ;) Good night!

Brand Killers

Remember the days when Nike shoes, Champion sweaters and Oakley pull-overs were all the rage? When rappers advocated to us the wonders of bling-bling, ice, Bentleys, shit like that? When you didn't want your friends in the cafteria to beat you up because you brought in Duplex cookies instead of Oreos? Or when the soles of your P.F. Flyers ripped off in middle of a dodgeball game and you had to gimp around, yelling "Those ain't my shoes!" ?Not anymore. Fortune.com published an article on store-name brands, like Walmart's Sam's Choice brand or Target's Mossimo clothing line, and their overtaking the big names. In other words, us college students get a little more money back in our pockets as well as a few extra pounds. Bling-bling, now 40% off!

Bathing of the Cats

I woke up at 1 in the afternoon, and realized the starched stiffness of summer's breath blowing in my face. Today was hot. I figured, nobody was home, the landlady was away, I'll go gather up Goldie and Smokey and give them their first flea bath since their birth three months ago. We didn't have fleas until their whoring mother decided that she'd abandon her latest litter to get some good cat cock. Damned landlady doesn't want to get her fixed. The woman's the epitome of all things that makes feminists, even marginal ones at that, retch: She "can't" get dirty, she "shouldn't" have to know how to change a tire, she "isn't" responsible for upkeep of her own properties. I plunked down 130 bucks for a damn weedwhacker because she couldn't understand that a spark plug and petrol containers were to be bought at a hardware store and used to get the lawnmower up and running, even for a pitifully small city backyard. And at 51, she claims she's "old," even though my 64 year old grandma worked the backyard and gardened and fixed up the house up to the day before her death, and with two half-foot steel rods to keep her spine from collapsing. That, folks, is a real woman; one who knows how to gently pluck strawberries off the tender verdant stems, cook up a loving batch of chocolate cookies when you've skinned your knee, and also be able to teach the finer nuances of a right jab. In other words, she could whip up a cake and whip your ass straight, yo. So I've my orange-and-cream cat nibbling himself raw, and my indigo cat going crazy on the floor because they're biting him where he can't scratch himself. I gather up Goldie off the floor, sweet-talk him, put him into the bathroom, run a little warm water, put on some Barry White, and got out the flea shampoo. I undid his collar lovingly, and he began to eye me suspiciously. His back stiffened some, his eyes blazed more yellowishly. I picked him up and tried to gently set him into the bath tub.Bam! This little cat goes ballistic, becomes a streak of gold across the room. I let him frenzy until he's worn out, then try again. Fait accompli. So I pick him up, sweet-talk him again, and hand-ladle water on him. He's staring me into the eye, giving me the svengali look of death, the feline mafioso doom-gaze. I'm wondering if he wants to claw my throat out when I sleep, so I make a mental note to lock my door. After a while I got his shoulders slightly pinned, his hindlegs into a warm pool of water in the sink, and getting the green goop on him. Goldie's sticking his head into my armpit, so I drew him close, and kept shampooing him. A few minutes of watering him down and drying him, He come out tan and rather pissed, shaking his paws and swearing death upon me. One down.I get Smokey, and he's all nonchalant, lying on the floor like he was THE boss, and cradle him, walking upstairs. He passes Goldie, who's still venting, and starts to panic a little. Telepathy rocks. I pour some warm water, play a little De La Soul, light a few candles, and undo his collar. He's looking at me the way a girl looks at me when she thinks I've slept with her roommate, much to the contrary. I get him to touch down on the slightly warmed porcelain, and he goes upwards and over my shoulder. Battle wounds, amigo. This one takes longer; Smokey's Houdini stylings are foiled each time by the closed door, but he incurs a few scratches on me every time he pops, twists, slithers and shake 'n bakes out of my hands. Dispassionate, I get myself wet and lather him up, making my clothes into a soapy mess. After drying and such, he falls asleep in the towel, so I lay him out and return the towel to the landlady's rack. She's awfully ignorant too, so I doubt she would ever notice the smell of flea shampoo on her towel.To earn back their respect, I fill up their milk saucer to the brim. They're pleasantly surprised; the milk saucer is half-filled when it is 8pm, and to get it at 2:30 in the afternoon, just like a kid getting a pint of ice cream for breakfast. My mom walks in from her job, laughing when she sees the two surly, partially soaked cats lapping up milk as the newer litter milled about, crashing into their older brothers and sniffing their legs. Afterwards, Goldie and Smokey let me pet them again, and their coats are very silky and shiny, and neither one has scratched himself lately. I think they understood what I was doing for them, even if it meant getting them wet. Cats.

Death is photogenic [supplement]

Oh, and one more thing related to the Death is photogenic post: charmenders forwarded me an article on why it would have been better to keep the Hussein sons alive: Uday and Qusay: Better Alive Than Dead - Commondreams.orgThanks!

Intellectual ...

Intellectual smut costs money. Sponsor me today!

Harbinger

I wrote a short story. In one sitting. Under a hour. I'm overjoyed! Now tell me what you think of this story! And flesh it out, too! :D Harbinger Not too long ago, there were two friends who were university students. One was on his way out the door with a diploma, and the other was muddling around, sampling life and frantically trying to stay in school. Max was a budding philosopher, taking extravagance in the works of Wittgenstein and Russel, while Starky was a jack-of-all-trades, learning about quantum implications of the Big Bang just as he would about which electrical wires to run in for a technocommercial building. Their meeting comes by chance, at a social event before the doors of the university opened for classes. They bump into each other at the keg, and pour drinks and discuss meandering items - who they were, where were they from, and what they were doing that night. After a few cups of cheap beer and some shots of the potency, Max and Starky get into a headslong discussion of philosophy, physics and symbols. Max mentions something about Wittgenstein's power, and desires to have it himself. It appears that, during Wittgenstein's days as a professor, he exerted so much influence that his students were constantly in awe and deep respect of him, even as he babbled and self-proselyzited his ideas. It drew up to one point where, in the throes of his own power, Wittgenstein ordered a heavily admiring student to drop out of school and go work in a cannery. Thus, the student did. Max grinned slightly at the possibility of having such power and broke into a more broad smile. Starky looked slightly perturbed, and warned Max,"You do that, and I'll make sure I set you straight." Both men grinned heartily. A few years later, after getting his dual degrees in Philosophy and Political Science, Max makes a succession of very successful runs at the offices of the alderman,and the mayor, and is poised to run for the Governorship. Starky is nowhere to be found, having dropped out of university not too long after the conversation at the keg took place. Max is smiling and waving to his constituents from an open-top Cadillac, and in the back of his mind, he's pondering the magnititude of his power, and to a lesser extent, what Starky said a few years ago."You do that, and I'll make sure I set you straight." What did he mean? Max put it out of his mind, and thought about the luscious campaign volunteer he had sex with the night before. She was a dirty blonde, very curvaceous, filling out her white blouse and dark slacks. They had rolled around on the couch, and Max thought that she might have stained the couch when she began to shudder violently. His smile grew wider. Then he started to think about her husband. Why would people get married so young, at 20, 22? Her husband was already an important man in the world of law, and had the beginnings of the straits of a well-connected man. Surely he had some suspicions; Powerful men always had them. The Cadillac pulled up not too far from the platform on which Max was to speak. Frosty hands and voices flourished, and he shook and answered as many of them as he could. Thoughts continued to reverbate in his head. His days as an alderman was rather puritanical, focusing on issues of garbage disposal, snow removal and repairs of the parking meters, then a few drinks and some chinese food, then sleeping alone. One chance night, after a bad meeting, he had gone to a bar to get a little of the fire back, and he bumped into a beautiful, waif-like woman, and they struck up a conversation. Within hours, they were having rough sex, and she was screaming like crazy. He couldn't help it. It was so addictive, so thrilling. She had bled quite a bit, but he was satisfied. They met up again and again, him finding out that she was a former run-away who got a break and worked her way up to mid-level management at a nearby company, but a bad relationship left her rather wanting, and in some cases, searching for pain. There was a click between them, and many nights someone would bleed or leave battered and bruised, but satisfied. One night, just after Max had seized the mayor's election in a landslide, they had gone out again, to celebrate. By dawn, he woke up hungover and found her dead, apparently from internal hemmorraging. So he took steps to dispose of the body, eventually interring it into a small patch of ground not far away from the lake, in hopes that when discovered, the body would either be disfigured or wash into the lake and sink. It had begun to snow as he was burying the body, so he took the time to carefully dig up the dirt so she could be buried and the parcel of dirt replaced to show that there had been no disturbance of the soil. As he set foot back in his place, he began to think about the way the body was buried. There was so much purity in how it had been accomplished; The surface was not of a disturbed appearance, but underneath it, there was something decaying. There was a gloss of beauty on the green-and-white ground, even as a nullification was going on only a few feet underneath. He thought about it: This was what she was like. Her life was the null object, and she wasn't happy. She looked for pain to punish herself, and he had willingly taken advantage of it. Max shrugged. It was the cost of things nowadays, he thought. A small amount of scotch splashed its way into his tumbler as he left to start the day at the office. Max made his way up the steps, turning back every now and then to continue greeting his followers. The snow had began to fall gently. As his time in the mayor's office went on, Max began to find himself doing things only dictators would do — illegal detention of dissidents, secretly authorizing police shoot-to-kill orders, and paying bribes to people for support, especially those who wanted to run against him. Later on, there would be extortion attempts made against those people. It was a political machine of the finest kind, and anyone under it was subject to Max's absolute power. A lot of power-fascinated women made sure they had been sampled by Max, and high-pull men would try to curry favor with Max in order to improve their own standing and pull. Oftentimes he would accost the women of those high-profile men, and enjoyed it. Taxes were raised almost on a whim, and policies were established for no reason at all. Max had began to embodify Wittgenstein's power, and was getting hooked to it. The spokesman introduced the challenger to the governor's office, and Max took the steps to begin his talk. It was standard rhetoric, to do better than what the incumbent has done, to promise things that would take longer than his term to accomplish, and to do things that won't be done anyway. As he began to wind down, something struck his left eye. He winced in pain, and people gasped. Rivulets and splotches appeared out of his eye socket, and before long, a bullet pierced his heart. As he lay dying, he began to openly regret every act he had done, and asked for forgivance from the creator. Max shut his eyes and gave up, his last thought on Starky's words. The police converged on the supposed origin of the weapons. All they found was an air rifle, a .22 rifle with a spent casing and one other bullet, and a note."Left eye to wound: To remind of the perils of looking down the wrong path.Heart to kill: To show that no matter what, one is always with a conscience." An officer looked out the window from where the killshot had come, and outside of a grand collection of gawkers and city personnel, a lone figure walked down the street slowly, green-jacketed and knit-capped, and a cigarette emanting from his lips. The officer failed to note that this figure had walked past them as they rushed the building, down into the middle of the street and away from the scene. Starky knew what he had done. The revolution had begun, and he would be the anonymous father of it.

Gro...

Growing up, teachers at my school told me a lot of things about my future: That I was going to a prestigious university and find the answers to the mysteries of the world; Or perhaps at a radically liberal campus, where I would liberate Tibet from their occupiers; Or becoming a student at a respected school that lies outside the borders of the States, and become an innovative thinker. Most of them, however, felt that I was going to enroll in Clown College.So, does Gallaudet fall into that category? :D

Death is photogenic

A few nights ago, I watched Natural Born Killers on HBO for the first time. I know, I'm really behind on my movies; Hollywood cinema doesn't really inspire me, and I think they deaden their viewers with many of their movies (I have the displeasure of knowing some people who think Master of Disguise was a thoroughly entertaining, stimulating and appropriate movie, but that's an extreme instance,) so I stick to foreign films or indies whenever I can. Anyway, I was watching NBK, and I was wondering: In today's age of reality-tv, would the media have denegrated to the point where viewers would be watching a live prison riot on tv, with executions and tortures, all in the name of ratings? I remember a short that was set in the near future, and a killer on death row is released into the desert near his prison, to be pursued by the heavily-armed parents of a woman he killed, as an audience roars and calls in from home. I'm sure that was a send-up to Texas. The reason I bring up this point is because of the overwhelming excitement over the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein. I am completely against Saddam Hussein and everything his family and politics stand for, but doesn't celebrating their deaths show the world that the States are willing to stoop down to killing people in order to justify their position? I can understand that the deaths are needed to prove to Iraq that the Hussein rule is now over, and to show the world that the US objectives, other than invading Iraq, is to show that they are attempting to install democracy by removing traces of the previous leadership. Why invasion and conquering is neccessary to establish a democracy strikes me as a direct contradiction, but that is another story. But, having a hour-long special on ABC about how good it is for those men to be dead? I feel that it was crossing the line a bit. The media has shown signs that they are reverting to yellow journalism, and in some cases, extremely bad gonzo journalism. One day, things will end the way it did in NBK: the authority loses their minds and become devoured by the subjects, and the media becomes the news, in the most fatal sense of the word.[add] A CNN.com article discussing release of death-images of Hussein sons; also contains a link to the images themselves.

This is stupid

Whatever happened to giving for the sake of giving?Berkshire Gives Up on Giving - Fortune.com

Monday

What I did Monday. I'm not very articulate today. Got up at 9. Miraculously.Went to my VR meeting at 12:30. I'm going to community college, but I'm also guaranteed support for Gallaudet come springtime. Also have to take up an internship; I'm hoping to find one in either DC, San Francisco, Austin or one of the Pacific Northwest states. I've two weeks to apply to one of two community colleges that's deaf-friendly; but only Wilmington College has anything really related to my as-of-yet undeclared major (English,) though I won't mind learning a few trades at Delaware Tech. Read Proust and put back together the carburetor of a '68 Impala! What would the ladies think?!Got a tan. I don't really need one since I'm already tan, but the Sun does not give a damn. Then again, neither do I.

Hmm...

Does deaf schools hinder deaf students? - A LJer's opinion

The Bunny

I lost my mind when I wrote this. Anywho that knows me, knows how things go when I go bonkers. THE BUNNY(A stupid story) Once upon a fuck-ass time, there was a bunny named Marbles. Marbles was blue with a pink underbelly, and giant stainless steel fangs in place of the ones he lost a few years ago. He lived in the far, far away land of Psychedelphia, deep inside the mind of the author. The author, by the way, doesn't exist, so keep that in mind. Anyways, Marbles lives in Psychedelphia, a magical land full of amazing animals, fabulous flora and fauna, stunning stratospheres and powerfully psychedelic poffballs. It was a land Dr. Seuss visited to derive his cleaner, kinder inspirations for his books. This land was as magical as Wonderland and as gritty as Wonderland. Alice is bisexual. So, this bad-ass blueassed pinkgutted monkey-fucking rabbit with stainless steel fangs and the name of Marbles sat there, on the trial, in the middle of nowhere, puffing on a jimson-weed joint and huffing his seventh can of Scotch-Gard, when this high and mighty trooper turtle named Sam (incidentally, this Sam is not related to that retarded turtle Sam from PBS. Stop retardation of our children!) came over with a bag of smack and two needles. 'Hey.' Marbles hollered. Sam instantly rivedted his blood-shot eyes, retrieved his Glock and ran rivulets of bullets through Marbles' heads, splattering that blue bunny bastard's brains everywhere between Britian and Bangladesh. ''What's up?' Sam wiped his nose with a deaden ear and pissed on Marbles' quivering body as one of Marbles' arms struggled mightily to retrieve what little was left of the feces he called gray matter. 'Nothing much. Whatcha got?' A fire in my underwater underwear underoos. The Marxists sat there and puffed on their high expensive cigars as they discussed the future of Cuba, and Marbles mumbled out six distinctly different dots on the New Jersey map, and Sam ran into all of the folks there and murdered them all with a Denny's Grand Slam meal. 'Uh. A bag of smack, two needles. Want a Coke?' Miami explodes into sixteen different forms of anaphasic glorified hell-balls; Utah is brought to its knees by a maniacal man wielding nothing more than a pen, a pad, an afro an dan angry, self-sustaining beard with sub-atomic capabilities as well as a deep-fryer stuffed deep into the crevasses of his backpack along with the Tottenham Hotspur FC and their supporters. 'Sure. I'll go get the burgers. You want one?' Ramen causes Cancer. Legs cause locomotion. Walking Ramen kills 20, ravages villages in southwestern India; KGB suspected in sexual fiasco involving fermented rice-fish and forty-two thousand Celtic druids resurrected primarily to participate in the X-Games in the Necro Vert and Rot Luge events. Ronald McDonald experiences subliminal rape from Hamburgular and the Cincinnati Bengals defensive line. Wreak Havoc! Wreak Testicle! Wreak Beer! David Hasselhoff must fricassee! 'Aight.' They part. Somewhere during this critical phase in our universe's time-continuum, two vast, foraging alien forces collide between galaxies in an elaborate game of Manatee Chess, and a war erupts in which French-fries are the obvious culprit, and the refrigerators made by Kenmore are used to annihiliate and cleanse the impury lobotomy patients like those sponsored by the 'Save the Children' fund, and etc, etc, etc killed Jack Kerouac. Meanwhile, a poffball comes along. 'Poff,' the poffball says. Suddenly, a powerful riptide rips through the poffball's body, and he explodes into billions and billions of parts, killing everything within a 16-mile radius. Nobody cares. Starbucks, Planet Starbucks. How may we help you drink our coffee, with its beans made by the enslavement of one-armed Mexican men with two teeth and a wino's breath, and endlessly stained shirts and grimacing toes, while the Australians kill and catch (Oui, zee is different. Different!) platypuses to use their skins for exfoliating soap and Tom incites a riot in Jambala, Brazil over the price of Skin-So-Soft and Swank magazines? No point, no point. Mark Twain, stay dead, please! I can take this job seriously! The psychedelic effects are temporary; the poffball has violated the temporal laws of 14th century Japan, and as a result, has commited to the elaborate tea ceremony of self-castration through intricate removal of the testicles through the Islets of Langhorne without sutures, on the eleventh hour of a day hiding a witch's moon while eating two cans of masala-flavored rice off the head of two exact dead replicas of Marilyn Monroe. I lost my mind. Find it. It might crack when you step on it, it looks so much like a contact. Satan is in my underwear again. Sam comes back. He holds two cans of Coke. In 1864, Atlanta burned. In 1992, Los Angeles burned. Christopher Columbus Sailed The Ocean Blue in Fourteen Ninety-Two In His Fuck-Ass Baby Blue Ass Spleunkers While Indians Recited Poetry And Fomented Against The Spainards for Bad Cooking and Bad Art, and The British Perfected Their Hicky, Hinny Hooey-assed Teeths and Accents Synchronized With Mr. Rogers' Hacking, Whacking Phlegm-Blasting Coughs. WE hold these truths to be self-evident, self-supporting, self ass-wiping, and thoroughly incorrigible, as incorrigible as Dolly Parton's breasts seems to the NRA in terms of sheer armor, and capable of stopping the overflow of the Tennessee Valley in case of another Civil War, which we shall call here forth 'Another Civil War' as to not treat the American Publick Stupidly. Marbles has hamburgers. I have typhoid. I hate Marbles. I hope he falls off a cliff, get a perfectly narrow tree trunk caught up his assjamb, and tears of approximately 22 and a half feet of intestines as well as a third of his liver, and 1/6 of Malaysia's Gross National Profit, plus every k.d. lang song ever written, before he hits the ground in a heap of torrential shit and flaming fungicide, liberally dosed by a loving Julia Child whose hump keeps her from competing with Julia Roberts, who should have never dated Richard Gere, who should have left all those poor hamsters alone so they could have danced more online, who lent propensity to the pornographical filth online that Larry Flynt made famous, while Clevelant deliberately torched the Cuyahoga in spite, who went down narrow alleys and wide upandishads in search of a white dharma, who beat Allen Ginsburg like a tin drum and sprayed his blood everywhere so Pollack could paint his works so that we could lose our minds and ram our heads melodiously into every open, cold crack in the sidewalks to loosen up mother earth's clutch on the sandstone supply in accordance to the Taft-Hardy law or some bullshit jive like that, who gives regular monopolistic folks like that a black eye, just like the cats' eyes I'm going to hit out of the ring. Anyway, I hate Marbles, and I ate Sam. Boredom ate my brain, and how about you? 'Poff.' This isn't getting anywhere, is this?Please don't turn me in to the UN International Court. You probably will, anyway, so I'll save you some legwork: International Criminal Court

OM NIA MERICAN

om nia merican born of beats and bloodthe concert of the sun unplugged, i'm theom nia merican born of beats and bloodthe concert of the sun unpluggedo say can you - 20,000 negro leagues beneaththe sea foamed clouds laced with ink that stainswhen rains. makes books of trees at onceupon a dawn's early light, pawn bishop knightchildren of night, may queens take kindshereafter, thereafter the trickling sandsdemand that our decisions be timeless i'm theom nia merican born of beats and bloodthe concert of the sun unplugged, i'm theom nia merican born of beats and bloodthe concert of the sun unplugged, i'm theoffspring of spring reborn, pledged, andsworn - the risen ash of a flag burned andtorn, i'm the blood of the womb, the risentide of the moon, the dark side that the sun cannot hide, i'm the pages of historyread between the lines, the shining truthbehind your symbols and signs, i'm the sonof a minister, love a teacher, my mothertaught me well so i rebel, i'm the bell retolledyet a story untold, the hidden force behinda rock that was rolled. i'm the om niamerican born of beats and blood, the concertof the sun, unplugged, i'm the om nia merican born of beats and blood the concertof the sun unpluggedlift every voice and sing til earth and heaven ring—Saul Williams

Inamorata

she screamed—INAMORATA—the walls screamedthe people below screamedand long afterthe windsand graveyard rosescriedher tears had dried up

Greetings from Austin

This one comes by way of Tom:http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993942In thanks for the article, I have composed a short litany for him:Tom is goodTom is greatTom is G-dTom is the inventor of the kung-fu gripAnd Tom now comes in two varieties:Liquid and Powder formLovely, eh?

Meditations

Well. I'm still awake. I'm cultivating my insomniac tendencies nicely. Those thoughts running through my head has not made sleep come easily, at all. In a month, everyone will be returning to college, a few thousand dollars deeper in debt, a little older and more excited about the future. I'm wondering if I'll return to that image come August, or January. Or at all. So far, here's what I've gotten planned for myself:By August 1st:Clear up the financial situation with VR and Gallaudet; Get transcriptEnroll in one of those community colleges around hereGet hired. Hopefully, not at a dinky-ass fast-food place. Bye, pride.By January 1st:Visit Jon and Jennie. I know, I know, but I'll get to Chicago, I promise!Ace my community college classesFind a place to live in DCRe-enroll at Gallaudet; Tear up campus, imprison administration for treason, and reign over said university.Mend ties with certain friends. Again. And make new ones!My yellow brick road is not so yellow right now, but the roses are good enough. I also think about this: We had DPN roughly 15 years ago, and at the time it was hailed as the end of one of the last oppressive instituions in America. Mandela commended the leaders, the world gazed upon DPNers with awe. The students of 1988 were battling for a deaf president and for a majority of the board control to be allocated to deaf members, but my question is, "Is that the only thing you really wanted?"Three semesters at Gallaudet only made me feel that DPN was essentially a Pyrrhic victory. We haven't had a new president ever since. The quality of education has steadly declined as costs have gone up. Students and faculty alike are disgruntled and very unhappy with the way things are progressing. The atmosphere between students and administration is rather hostile, and Gallaudet has resorted to paramilitary actions to control the populace. Then again, the majority of the students seems to be akin to headless chickens; constantly running around and making noises, but in the end it just fizzles. Keep in mind, I'm basing this section on what I saw up to mid-February, though I doubt much changed during the Spring. I personally feel that Dr. Jordan isn't doing such a good job as he used to, and maybe it would be in the best interest of all of Gallaudet if he stepped down. Along with most of the administration.Let a couple of the morale-sapping professors go. Definitely Sutherland and Myers, at least.The entire accounting office, too. What kind of morons bill you for a refund? Jackasses. I think I'll execute them instead.Now, I sleep.

Thanks

Huh. I guess I'm finally opening up a LiveJournal after all. All those kickbacks, grafts, scams and cement boots sure have paid off for themselves! I naturally have to thank charmenders for the code needed to break into this place, as well as lumenluna for his incessant non-prodding. Thanks, guys, and hand me that sledgehammer.