Fawzy Zablah wants me to do this: Here is his book Ciao! Miama which is better than most books that have come out.
1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Being ten years old holding sparklers on a nice summer night.
2. What is your greatest fear?
Currently, trying to have any courage at all.
3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
coldness
4. What is the trait you most deplore in others?
talking a lot
5. Which living person do you most admire?
living people scare me
6. What is your greatest extravagance?
ice cream
7. What is your current state of mind?
okay
8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
ambition
9. On what occasion do you lie?
i don't lie, i remain silent on certain issues
10. What do you most dislike about your appearance?
my forehead
11. Which living person do you most despise?
the person who invented text messaging
12. What is the quality you most like in a man?
quietness
13. What is the quality you most like in a woman?
quietness
14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
devastating
15. What or who is the greatest love of your life?
fuck i don't know
16. When and where were you happiest?
i don't want to answer that one either, i feel like I would be discriminating against other moments
17. Which talent would you most like to have?
perfect pitch
18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
that i don't have perfect pitch
19. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
scoring a touchdown in junior high football
20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
women's underwear, preferably a cute pair
21. Where would you most like to live?
i have no clue
22. What is your most treasured possession?
my photo albums
23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
asking someone for money knowing you'll never pay it back
24. What is your favorite occupation?
kickin' ass and takin' names
25. What is your most marked characteristic?
sarcasm, cruelty to those who deserve it
26. What do you most value in your friends?
quiet
27. Who are your favorite writers?
Jack Kerouac, Richard Wright, and Richard Yates
28. Who is your hero of fiction?
Cross Damon
29. Which historical figure do you most identify with?
Diogenes
30. Who are your heroes in real life?
That's depressing
31. What are your favorite names?
tasha
32. What is it that you most dislike?
a lot of talking and really any kind of loudness
33. What is your greatest regret?
it doesn't matter, does it
34. How would you like to die?
i'm a writer, what do you think
35. What is your motto?
devastating
Saturday, June 27, 2009
What Michael Jackson taught white people and Caligula
White people watched Michael Jackson grow up, live as an adult and then die.
Michael Jackson came during the civil rights movement when white people were allowed on a mass scale to really look at black people as individuals.
Before most white people viewed black people as one unified block of blackness. When a white person encountered a black person it was not like they were coming upon a person with a name with a particular set of behaviors that defined them. They were coming upon, an extension of 'black people' or them or that.
But after the civil rights movement a black person could choose to single themselves out and appear as a person with a set of individual behaviors and white people were allowed to see it and even to relate to it.
So Michael Jackson came:
It wasn't his music
his music was shit
Thriller is fucking stupid.
We all know Thriller is fucking stupid.
He showed white people how individual and human black people are
That they are just as fucked up and weird as us.
The white race gave birth to Caligula and Nero, we've known for a long time how fucked up we can get.
But we didn't know that black people could be so weird, fucked up, and human.
I think Bill Cosby and Michael Jackson worked together to make a complete picture.
Bill Cosby showed that black people have the same concerns as white people, taking care of kids, paying bills, keeping the house clean, and putting up with the shit of life, but at the same time, trying to maintain a sense of rationality.
Michael Jackson took on the role of completely fucked human being trying to live in a world that doesn't want fucked up people.
The duality of rationality and letting one's emotions control one's decisions.
Michael Jackson also was decadent as all fucking hell.
Michael Jackson was so "I am number 1" that he thought he could fuck little kids and get away with it, and he did.
Even though a lot of people said that was sick. Jackson's Caligula like behavior goes to the darkest part of humans, their will-to-power. We might not to fuck kids and get away with it, but there is probably something disgusting we want to do and get away with it.
It is like Michael Jackson took on the American Dream full force, or the dream of Western Civilization, because it isn't really purely American. You can be weird as you want to be in most of Europe.
Michael Jackson became as weird and fucked up and unique as a human could be. He took Sartre's call of existence precedes essence and took it to new fucking limits. There was no one like him.
Humanity had not created such a freak and colorful character since Caligula.
We will have to wait two thousand more years for another freak of such magnitude.
Friday, June 26, 2009
I can't stop being depressed
There are like truths
truths are everywhere haunting me currently
they keep scurrying across my brain
i have to grow up in a year
bernice is forcing me to grow up
she has graduated college and wants to move
which means i have to grow up and live and work 40 hours a week
i've never had a checking account
i've lived with bernice six years coming this july
that's a long time
living on this street
with this kitchen
this bathroom
this living room
this closet
the little butterfly pictures in the kitchen
six years
i've just finished a 'real novel'
a 'real novel' that is long enough to be called a 'real novel'
i can't go around saying anymore, "I've never made it as a writer because I've only written short little books"
A truth will be made from Best Behavior
am I a writer or a loopy fuck from Ohio who wrote some worthwhile short stories
I've become such a weak person over the years
two days after I graduated high school i went and lived at the grand canyon, then i lived in san diego
then i went home and drove to south Carolina and saw both oceans in the same summer
the next summer i lived in eugene oregon, came home and drove up through new england and spend the night on by a beautiful lake in Quebec
i traveled back out west like three more times
then time passed
and the traveling and the fun faded
i stopped traveling
stopped having sex
i read a lot
i became comfortable
and let the comfort take over my life
maybe it was because i was out of my parents' house
and didn't see them anymore
and bernice made it so easy to live here, having little rent, only a 100 month in bills
it was easy
all so easy
i could write and live an easy life of comfort
of Youngstown misery
oh
these truths
all making their way to reality
truths are everywhere haunting me currently
they keep scurrying across my brain
i have to grow up in a year
bernice is forcing me to grow up
she has graduated college and wants to move
which means i have to grow up and live and work 40 hours a week
i've never had a checking account
i've lived with bernice six years coming this july
that's a long time
living on this street
with this kitchen
this bathroom
this living room
this closet
the little butterfly pictures in the kitchen
six years
i've just finished a 'real novel'
a 'real novel' that is long enough to be called a 'real novel'
i can't go around saying anymore, "I've never made it as a writer because I've only written short little books"
A truth will be made from Best Behavior
am I a writer or a loopy fuck from Ohio who wrote some worthwhile short stories
I've become such a weak person over the years
two days after I graduated high school i went and lived at the grand canyon, then i lived in san diego
then i went home and drove to south Carolina and saw both oceans in the same summer
the next summer i lived in eugene oregon, came home and drove up through new england and spend the night on by a beautiful lake in Quebec
i traveled back out west like three more times
then time passed
and the traveling and the fun faded
i stopped traveling
stopped having sex
i read a lot
i became comfortable
and let the comfort take over my life
maybe it was because i was out of my parents' house
and didn't see them anymore
and bernice made it so easy to live here, having little rent, only a 100 month in bills
it was easy
all so easy
i could write and live an easy life of comfort
of Youngstown misery
oh
these truths
all making their way to reality
Brandon Scott Gorrell and Catholicism
To understand Brandon Scott Gorrell's during my nervous breakdown i want to have a biographer present a person must understand Catholicism.
This is the logic of Catholicism:
In America we consider to be heaven to have millions of dollars.
Now lets say we grew up in modest circumstances
Not born rich already with connections
but born normal
Well, you would have to work constantly to get millions, you would have to get up early, go to college, show up to your classes, not get drunk at work, maintain good credit, make connections, spend all your waking hours with the goal of making millions of dollars. You would have to leave your family behind and move to a bigger city, kiss your bosses asses, probably take out huge loans to buy businesses, get up early and make sure everything is okay, probably be sadistic and snobbish, sell your soul at least a little, sacrifice fun like getting drunk and high. All kinds of hard work and sacrifice would go into making your millions. It requires a huge effort.
Well, Catholic heaven is better than millions of dollars.
To get to Catholic heaven a person must view their life on planet earth as nothing but suffering. That human life isn't worth living. That the only life worth living is the heavenly one when they will be in the presence of their God.
Brandon Scott Gorrell revealed to me he grew up catholic. I asked him some questions to understand him better and he wrote the word 'catholic' 12 times in a normal sized email. He went to Catholic school all the way into high school and he said the only people he was really around for most of his childhood were catholics.
Brandon Scott Gorrell is an atheist but the world view was firmly placed in his mind
When the poem * I could see it clearly.
The massive listing of small acts
i click on gmail
i click on word document
i click firefox
i click on myspace
Then he writes, "there is nothing in my reality that i fell i want enough to try"
says in terms of Catholicism, "Lord, I understand there is nothing on this planet worth living, only your heaven is worth having."
If the Pope had a poetic spirit he would canonize Brandon for that poem.
There are two other points that must be noticed
his lower case letters signifying that worthlessness, that he is just a small pauper who does not even have the power to write to an upper case letter
And that he wrote 'biographer'
Catholics throughout the middle ages did not believe in writing autobiographers
that autobiographies were too self-important
The middle-ages did not see a biography from Augustine's confessions written in the 400s and then Europe did not have another biographer until the early 1100s with Abelard's Historia Calamitatum (A history of my calamities), both about being miserable.
Brandon could easily have written, "This is my nervous breakdown" or "nervous breakdown" but to include the word 'biographer' is powerful
it says, "I don't view myself as important to write my own autobiography"
The title can also be viewed ironic.
A play off the modern era, how there are books being sold about people and their horrible life experiences.
How people go through horrible things like the holocaust, dying in some wilderness or in war and real people are living through hell, but as soon as the hell is over they go and find a biographer to write down their experience.
Which is saying, "There is no god, if I'm going to suffer, I'm going to find a way to make money for it in this life."
A line by Brandon, "the best moment of my life will be overshadowed by the worst moment of my life"
This is the logic of Catholicism:
In America we consider to be heaven to have millions of dollars.
Now lets say we grew up in modest circumstances
Not born rich already with connections
but born normal
Well, you would have to work constantly to get millions, you would have to get up early, go to college, show up to your classes, not get drunk at work, maintain good credit, make connections, spend all your waking hours with the goal of making millions of dollars. You would have to leave your family behind and move to a bigger city, kiss your bosses asses, probably take out huge loans to buy businesses, get up early and make sure everything is okay, probably be sadistic and snobbish, sell your soul at least a little, sacrifice fun like getting drunk and high. All kinds of hard work and sacrifice would go into making your millions. It requires a huge effort.
Well, Catholic heaven is better than millions of dollars.
To get to Catholic heaven a person must view their life on planet earth as nothing but suffering. That human life isn't worth living. That the only life worth living is the heavenly one when they will be in the presence of their God.
Brandon Scott Gorrell revealed to me he grew up catholic. I asked him some questions to understand him better and he wrote the word 'catholic' 12 times in a normal sized email. He went to Catholic school all the way into high school and he said the only people he was really around for most of his childhood were catholics.
Brandon Scott Gorrell is an atheist but the world view was firmly placed in his mind
When the poem * I could see it clearly.
The massive listing of small acts
i click on gmail
i click on word document
i click firefox
i click on myspace
Then he writes, "there is nothing in my reality that i fell i want enough to try"
says in terms of Catholicism, "Lord, I understand there is nothing on this planet worth living, only your heaven is worth having."
If the Pope had a poetic spirit he would canonize Brandon for that poem.
There are two other points that must be noticed
his lower case letters signifying that worthlessness, that he is just a small pauper who does not even have the power to write to an upper case letter
And that he wrote 'biographer'
Catholics throughout the middle ages did not believe in writing autobiographers
that autobiographies were too self-important
The middle-ages did not see a biography from Augustine's confessions written in the 400s and then Europe did not have another biographer until the early 1100s with Abelard's Historia Calamitatum (A history of my calamities), both about being miserable.
Brandon could easily have written, "This is my nervous breakdown" or "nervous breakdown" but to include the word 'biographer' is powerful
it says, "I don't view myself as important to write my own autobiography"
The title can also be viewed ironic.
A play off the modern era, how there are books being sold about people and their horrible life experiences.
How people go through horrible things like the holocaust, dying in some wilderness or in war and real people are living through hell, but as soon as the hell is over they go and find a biographer to write down their experience.
Which is saying, "There is no god, if I'm going to suffer, I'm going to find a way to make money for it in this life."
A line by Brandon, "the best moment of my life will be overshadowed by the worst moment of my life"
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Total Rejection
I feel like my body is rejecting life
right now
like someone injected something into me
and my body is rejecting it
like i have allergy toward life
even my arms are pissed off
my thigh is screaming in agony
my feet are asleep and won't wake up
my belly wants to be left alone
my anus is tight and sore
and my hair wants to give to up
i feel really terrible
I just watched this movie
it was better than Transformers
Does someone want to buy Best Behavior for 20,000 dollars
I think 20,000 dollars would cheer me up
Might reread Roots to fill better
might take a vicodin to feel better
right now
like someone injected something into me
and my body is rejecting it
like i have allergy toward life
even my arms are pissed off
my thigh is screaming in agony
my feet are asleep and won't wake up
my belly wants to be left alone
my anus is tight and sore
and my hair wants to give to up
i feel really terrible
I just watched this movie
it was better than Transformers
Does someone want to buy Best Behavior for 20,000 dollars
I think 20,000 dollars would cheer me up
Might reread Roots to fill better
might take a vicodin to feel better
Paris Hilton and Narcissism
Greg Partch wrote me, "Hi all,
I'm conducting an informal survey, in the hopes of inspiring your best and most inspired thinking, on the subject of non-clinical narcissism. There is Narcissism, as a diagnosable personality disorder, and then there is,say, Paris Hilton, whose narcissism is more of byproduct of the cultural vapidity of contemporary America than it is a pathology. So, here's the question:
What would you make of a person who says, with a straight face: "I'm my #1 priority".
What sort of person would you imagine earnestly thinks likes this? Are they young, old, rich, poor, smart, American?
Any and all thoughts on this subject are welcome."
I've never met anyone who thinks like this in the Youngstown area. I can't imagine any of them thinking they deserved anything but a nice little house and some dogs. A lot of them don't even take vacations.
I lived in Eugene Oregon and been there a bunch of times and no one said or did anything that implied, "I'm my #1 priority".
I've known a lot of republicans and they all think, "White people are the first priority", but that still doesn't imply "I'm my #1 priority".
The only place I've run into "I'm my #1 priority" people is in New York City, they were all rich kids who didn't care about anything because they didn't have to. I was shocked by some of the people, it was like nothing bad had ever happened to them, and they were completely convinced that they should be controlling their reality at all times.
But I don't think America is overall like that, that is some dumb topical shit the media sells to sell more advertisements. Americans like all the general populations of the world are clueless, but they don't assume "I'm my #1 priority".
My roommate (Bernice) gave me this sentence, "Narcissism has become a past time."
Here are two people I know from Youngstown:
MH is the president of the philosophy club, he has twitter, facebook and all such things. He goes to indie rock shows and twitters like five times a day. Which seems narcissistic, but when you meet him in person at a bar or on campus he doesn't announce himself as The President of The Philosophy Department, he doesn't force you to talk about him, he probably does volunteer work.
Another person is GT, she has like 1300 pics of herself getting drunk on her facebook. The site is pretty narcissistic, she has pics of her going to the bathroom with her pants pulled down and pics in her bikini. But when you meet her in person she talks calmly, she listens, she has good responses, and she is trying to graduate college with a teaching degree.
So I think it appears that Americans enjoy playing super star when they are bored and alone at their house on their computers. But when they leave the computer room they act like normal people again.
I'm conducting an informal survey, in the hopes of inspiring your best and most inspired thinking, on the subject of non-clinical narcissism. There is Narcissism, as a diagnosable personality disorder, and then there is,say, Paris Hilton, whose narcissism is more of byproduct of the cultural vapidity of contemporary America than it is a pathology. So, here's the question:
What would you make of a person who says, with a straight face: "I'm my #1 priority".
What sort of person would you imagine earnestly thinks likes this? Are they young, old, rich, poor, smart, American?
Any and all thoughts on this subject are welcome."
I've never met anyone who thinks like this in the Youngstown area. I can't imagine any of them thinking they deserved anything but a nice little house and some dogs. A lot of them don't even take vacations.
I lived in Eugene Oregon and been there a bunch of times and no one said or did anything that implied, "I'm my #1 priority".
I've known a lot of republicans and they all think, "White people are the first priority", but that still doesn't imply "I'm my #1 priority".
The only place I've run into "I'm my #1 priority" people is in New York City, they were all rich kids who didn't care about anything because they didn't have to. I was shocked by some of the people, it was like nothing bad had ever happened to them, and they were completely convinced that they should be controlling their reality at all times.
But I don't think America is overall like that, that is some dumb topical shit the media sells to sell more advertisements. Americans like all the general populations of the world are clueless, but they don't assume "I'm my #1 priority".
My roommate (Bernice) gave me this sentence, "Narcissism has become a past time."
Here are two people I know from Youngstown:
MH is the president of the philosophy club, he has twitter, facebook and all such things. He goes to indie rock shows and twitters like five times a day. Which seems narcissistic, but when you meet him in person at a bar or on campus he doesn't announce himself as The President of The Philosophy Department, he doesn't force you to talk about him, he probably does volunteer work.
Another person is GT, she has like 1300 pics of herself getting drunk on her facebook. The site is pretty narcissistic, she has pics of her going to the bathroom with her pants pulled down and pics in her bikini. But when you meet her in person she talks calmly, she listens, she has good responses, and she is trying to graduate college with a teaching degree.
So I think it appears that Americans enjoy playing super star when they are bored and alone at their house on their computers. But when they leave the computer room they act like normal people again.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Transformers Review
I don't know what happened.
My head hurts really bad.
It was really loud.
Shia Labeouf kept running and yelling.
Megan Fox looked really hot, and did not even cut herself or get dirty and her lip gloss did not smudge when she fell off a roof and landed on an awning made of hay and then fell to the dirt. She was also shot into the air like three times because of explosions and she still didn't get dirty or break a bone or get cut. And her make up and hair remained perfect.
There was a robot girl who had a tail, which was hot.
I don't know what happened.
It was like having a few beers and throwing M80s in a lake.
My head hurts really bad.
It was really loud.
Shia Labeouf kept running and yelling.
Megan Fox looked really hot, and did not even cut herself or get dirty and her lip gloss did not smudge when she fell off a roof and landed on an awning made of hay and then fell to the dirt. She was also shot into the air like three times because of explosions and she still didn't get dirty or break a bone or get cut. And her make up and hair remained perfect.
There was a robot girl who had a tail, which was hot.
I don't know what happened.
It was like having a few beers and throwing M80s in a lake.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
amazon 100 top sellers
Here are the top 100 sellers at amazon
Stare at that list
believe in it
let it break your spirit
3 out of the top 5 are republican nazi books
I've never met a republican that seemed like they ever read a book in their whole life. I don't know who are buying those books. It is disturbing to think that people are publishing books with I assume complete nonsense on every page. But what the fuck, people like nonsense
number 2 is a diet book. Americans are fat and they want to get skinnier even though they took the time to get fat
Number 6 is fiction, it is a story about a woman sending letters to her publisher. I have no fucking clue, of course it takes place around world war 2
NUMBER 9 THE SHACK ""The Shack" is a one of a kind invitation to journey to the very heart of God. Through my tears and cheers, I have been indeed transformed by the tender mercy with which William Paul Young opened the veil that too often separated me from God and from myself. With every page, the complicated do's and don't that distort a relationship into a religion were washed away as I understood Father, Son and Holy Spirit for the first time in my life. --Patrick M. Roddy, ABC News Emmy Award winning producer"
That is total nonsense. So books about republican nonsense, God nonsense, and vampires are what Americans want?
I just stuck my finger in my ass, pulled it out, and smelled it.
18: Olive Kitteridge: "Themes of suicide, depression, bad communication, aging and love, run through these stories, none more vivid or touching than Incoming Tide, where Olive chats with former student Kevin Coulson as they watch waitress Patty Howe by the seashore, all three struggling with their own misgivings about life."
This sounds okay
41 in books: Man Gone Down
has anyone read this, it looks good, somebody tell me the truth on it
618 in books: Those Who Save Us: holocaust novel
58 in books: Sarah's Key: holocaust novel
Fahrenheit 451: why it is there, don't know, pile of shit book.
Neil Gaiman has a book in it, it looks like a kids book. Neil Gaiman has sex with Amanda Palmer which makes him awesome to me.
Glenn Beck appears again at the end: someone wrote in his reviews, "Our democaracy is morally, politically and economically bankrupt." (Did not personally spell democracy wrong, copy and pasted)
What does that even mean?
If any of you say statements like that, or hear people say statements like that, just ask yourself or them, "What does that even mean?"
And you will win the argument.
Don't fight with facts.
Just ask them, "What does that even mean?"
The thing that troubles me about the list is that there is no 'literature', like books for adults, that take place in the present day, like I don't think I even saw a book that took place after 1950. Which makes me wonder about my prospects as a writer and my friends. If no one wants to read about the modern era and especially not about people from the modern era sitting around being depressed.
Stare at that list
believe in it
let it break your spirit
3 out of the top 5 are republican nazi books
I've never met a republican that seemed like they ever read a book in their whole life. I don't know who are buying those books. It is disturbing to think that people are publishing books with I assume complete nonsense on every page. But what the fuck, people like nonsense
number 2 is a diet book. Americans are fat and they want to get skinnier even though they took the time to get fat
Number 6 is fiction, it is a story about a woman sending letters to her publisher. I have no fucking clue, of course it takes place around world war 2
NUMBER 9 THE SHACK ""The Shack" is a one of a kind invitation to journey to the very heart of God. Through my tears and cheers, I have been indeed transformed by the tender mercy with which William Paul Young opened the veil that too often separated me from God and from myself. With every page, the complicated do's and don't that distort a relationship into a religion were washed away as I understood Father, Son and Holy Spirit for the first time in my life. --Patrick M. Roddy, ABC News Emmy Award winning producer"
That is total nonsense. So books about republican nonsense, God nonsense, and vampires are what Americans want?
I just stuck my finger in my ass, pulled it out, and smelled it.
18: Olive Kitteridge: "Themes of suicide, depression, bad communication, aging and love, run through these stories, none more vivid or touching than Incoming Tide, where Olive chats with former student Kevin Coulson as they watch waitress Patty Howe by the seashore, all three struggling with their own misgivings about life."
This sounds okay
41 in books: Man Gone Down
has anyone read this, it looks good, somebody tell me the truth on it
618 in books: Those Who Save Us: holocaust novel
58 in books: Sarah's Key: holocaust novel
Fahrenheit 451: why it is there, don't know, pile of shit book.
Neil Gaiman has a book in it, it looks like a kids book. Neil Gaiman has sex with Amanda Palmer which makes him awesome to me.
Glenn Beck appears again at the end: someone wrote in his reviews, "Our democaracy is morally, politically and economically bankrupt." (Did not personally spell democracy wrong, copy and pasted)
What does that even mean?
If any of you say statements like that, or hear people say statements like that, just ask yourself or them, "What does that even mean?"
And you will win the argument.
Don't fight with facts.
Just ask them, "What does that even mean?"
The thing that troubles me about the list is that there is no 'literature', like books for adults, that take place in the present day, like I don't think I even saw a book that took place after 1950. Which makes me wonder about my prospects as a writer and my friends. If no one wants to read about the modern era and especially not about people from the modern era sitting around being depressed.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Hi
Brandon Scott Gorrell
wrote a book
Well, here is the day
It has finally come
Congratulation Brandon
Go buy his book
wrote a book
Well, here is the day
It has finally come
Congratulation Brandon
Go buy his book
To PEOPLE
If you are human being
and we are ever making out
do not fucking bite my tongue
do not bite my lip
don't scratch me
*
Bought a 1863 penny today at the flea market
It has an indian head on it
*
While pissing the transportable bathroom
at the flea market
i looked down and saw orange shit
how does one's shit get orange
what do you have to eat for that to happen
*
In Best Behavior I will destroy sex.
Sex will be destroyed.
Total destruction of sex.
No one will be able to have good sex again after reading Best Behavior.
and we are ever making out
do not fucking bite my tongue
do not bite my lip
don't scratch me
*
Bought a 1863 penny today at the flea market
It has an indian head on it
*
While pissing the transportable bathroom
at the flea market
i looked down and saw orange shit
how does one's shit get orange
what do you have to eat for that to happen
*
In Best Behavior I will destroy sex.
Sex will be destroyed.
Total destruction of sex.
No one will be able to have good sex again after reading Best Behavior.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Online Writing
Someone asked me to do this.
Not everything listed here is awesome
Here is what I could find
Poems at
Mad Swirl
Word Riot
The Doomed
Paper Wall
No Posit
Lamination Colony
3AM
3AM
3AM
Fiction
Bitchen
The Beat
Nadia the Human
Beat the Dust
Black Ice
Alice Blue
Lit Vision
Plays
MuuMuu
Identity Theory
Interview
Buzz Line
Art Nouveau
Shikow
Dogmatika
HTML GIANT
Not everything listed here is awesome
Here is what I could find
Poems at
Mad Swirl
Word Riot
The Doomed
Paper Wall
No Posit
Lamination Colony
3AM
3AM
3AM
Fiction
Bitchen
The Beat
Nadia the Human
Beat the Dust
Black Ice
Alice Blue
Lit Vision
Plays
MuuMuu
Identity Theory
Interview
Buzz Line
Art Nouveau
Shikow
Dogmatika
HTML GIANT
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Richard Rorty's Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity
I tried to read Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. It didn't work too well. I think you actually need to be a philosopher to know what is going on. Like you need to have read Sellers and Quinne, which I don't think anyone does unless they are actually a doctor of philosopher.
I mean, people who write literature or just like philosopher will read Sartre, Nietzsche, Heidegger but they don't go that far into it.
I'm reading Contingency, Irony and Solidarity though and it is readable and informative. You need to know Nietzsche, Heidegger, Freud, Proust, Orwell, and some other people. There are a couple of obscure ones like Habermas, but I think most people can make it through that section with some googling.
In it Rorty tries to show that instead of Aristotle's rational animal, humans are actually 'poetic animals.' That we do things to make ourselves feel better and not because we are rational.
He tries to show that there is no 'truth out there'. That desks and lamps have no truth. Truth is only relevant to language and us, not to objects.
That truth coinsides with vocabularies, which has to do with Kuhn's work on the history of science. That change and truth moves with each generation's new system of language.
Rorty says this is why democratic systems with an emphasis on negative rights are better, because they allow for vocabulary change, while the medieval system didn't. Because what allows for a vocabulary to be constantly in flux is that there is no foundation for truth. Democracies with an emphasis on negative rights like America and Europe's have no foundation for truth, as opposed to Saudi Arabia which has Islam or China which has Marxism. Since America has no foundation for truth we can constantly change our language and become new things, fix problems etc.
Rorty also agrees with Rawls that since there is no foundation for truth, then the only thing people can agree that is there is should be justice, or the Original Position. Rorty basically says the phrase, "Commit at least cruelty as possible."
Rorty writes a lot about literature in it, that writers became the new philosophers after Hegel. That writers replaced the priests and enlightenment philosophers, that they became the authors of the morality.
Rorty says something, I think really makes a lot of sense, he says that people will become more and more ironic especially artists and philosophers. Rorty says
She has radical and continuing doubts about the final vocabulary she currently uses, because she has been impressed by other vocabularies, vocabularies taken as final by people or books she has encountered; (2) she realizes that argument phrased in her present vocabulary can neither underwrite nor dissolve these doubts; (3) insofar as she philosophizes about her situation, she does not think that her vocabulary is closer to reality than others, that it is in touch with a power not herself.
When I read that I could see many internet writers in it, I could see shows like LOST and Always Sunny in Philadelphia, I could even see the work of Jared Diamond.
I think what it means to have an ironic vocabulary is when Jared Diamond in Collapse describes the people of easter island, how when they moved there, it was covered in tall 65 foot tall palm trees, they used them over a period of like 500 years to move those statues around, to build their shelters, and eventually they cut them down till they were all gone.
One of Diamond's students asked him, "What do you think the two guys said to each other cutting down the last tree?"
Diamond wrote the whole 500 page book Collapse in responds to that question and he said basically, "They wouldn't have known they were cutting down the last tree. The trees would have been getting smaller and smaller over the course of 500 years, because they would have been cutting them down earlier and earlier. They wouldn't have even known what those trees symbolized to their ancestors."
And there is also Always Sunny in Philadelphia, when someone asked about Hillary Clinton and the person responds, "She hates freedom." Which doesn't make any sense but to that person is completely true, but at the same time he might not being doing anything that signifies that he truly believes that Hillary Clinton hates freedom. The sentence, "she hates freedom" makes no sense, but people keep saying it, reacting to it, believing it, and even doing things like voting Republican or attenidng church on sunday, spending time, gas money, clothes for church, because they believe that democrats hate freedom. Even though they themselves cannot define freedom and have never personally sat down and read the u.s. constitution.
To me irony means, in the third person or looking back you say, "Humans are such dumbasses."
Like
I know a woman who is an engineer, she got really good grades in college, does a great job at work between the hours of 8 and 3, then goes home and chooses really bad boyfriends, gets drunk and dances to lady gaga, and has a million strange motivations for her behaviors.
I think the thing about humans is that we can do things, we can get shit down, build houses, build cars, invent, cure diseases, make beautiful tasting meals, shoot last second 3 pointers, a lot of amazing shit. But after we clock out we immediately start acting nuts, getting drunk, dwelling on what our mothers did to us, getting into fights, looking at scat porn, and dancing to lady gaga. And underneath all this, lies a million motivations with origins so deep into our pasts that we might not even remember them anymore.
I mean, people who write literature or just like philosopher will read Sartre, Nietzsche, Heidegger but they don't go that far into it.
I'm reading Contingency, Irony and Solidarity though and it is readable and informative. You need to know Nietzsche, Heidegger, Freud, Proust, Orwell, and some other people. There are a couple of obscure ones like Habermas, but I think most people can make it through that section with some googling.
In it Rorty tries to show that instead of Aristotle's rational animal, humans are actually 'poetic animals.' That we do things to make ourselves feel better and not because we are rational.
He tries to show that there is no 'truth out there'. That desks and lamps have no truth. Truth is only relevant to language and us, not to objects.
That truth coinsides with vocabularies, which has to do with Kuhn's work on the history of science. That change and truth moves with each generation's new system of language.
Rorty says this is why democratic systems with an emphasis on negative rights are better, because they allow for vocabulary change, while the medieval system didn't. Because what allows for a vocabulary to be constantly in flux is that there is no foundation for truth. Democracies with an emphasis on negative rights like America and Europe's have no foundation for truth, as opposed to Saudi Arabia which has Islam or China which has Marxism. Since America has no foundation for truth we can constantly change our language and become new things, fix problems etc.
Rorty also agrees with Rawls that since there is no foundation for truth, then the only thing people can agree that is there is should be justice, or the Original Position. Rorty basically says the phrase, "Commit at least cruelty as possible."
Rorty writes a lot about literature in it, that writers became the new philosophers after Hegel. That writers replaced the priests and enlightenment philosophers, that they became the authors of the morality.
Rorty says something, I think really makes a lot of sense, he says that people will become more and more ironic especially artists and philosophers. Rorty says
She has radical and continuing doubts about the final vocabulary she currently uses, because she has been impressed by other vocabularies, vocabularies taken as final by people or books she has encountered; (2) she realizes that argument phrased in her present vocabulary can neither underwrite nor dissolve these doubts; (3) insofar as she philosophizes about her situation, she does not think that her vocabulary is closer to reality than others, that it is in touch with a power not herself.
When I read that I could see many internet writers in it, I could see shows like LOST and Always Sunny in Philadelphia, I could even see the work of Jared Diamond.
I think what it means to have an ironic vocabulary is when Jared Diamond in Collapse describes the people of easter island, how when they moved there, it was covered in tall 65 foot tall palm trees, they used them over a period of like 500 years to move those statues around, to build their shelters, and eventually they cut them down till they were all gone.
One of Diamond's students asked him, "What do you think the two guys said to each other cutting down the last tree?"
Diamond wrote the whole 500 page book Collapse in responds to that question and he said basically, "They wouldn't have known they were cutting down the last tree. The trees would have been getting smaller and smaller over the course of 500 years, because they would have been cutting them down earlier and earlier. They wouldn't have even known what those trees symbolized to their ancestors."
And there is also Always Sunny in Philadelphia, when someone asked about Hillary Clinton and the person responds, "She hates freedom." Which doesn't make any sense but to that person is completely true, but at the same time he might not being doing anything that signifies that he truly believes that Hillary Clinton hates freedom. The sentence, "she hates freedom" makes no sense, but people keep saying it, reacting to it, believing it, and even doing things like voting Republican or attenidng church on sunday, spending time, gas money, clothes for church, because they believe that democrats hate freedom. Even though they themselves cannot define freedom and have never personally sat down and read the u.s. constitution.
To me irony means, in the third person or looking back you say, "Humans are such dumbasses."
Like
I know a woman who is an engineer, she got really good grades in college, does a great job at work between the hours of 8 and 3, then goes home and chooses really bad boyfriends, gets drunk and dances to lady gaga, and has a million strange motivations for her behaviors.
I think the thing about humans is that we can do things, we can get shit down, build houses, build cars, invent, cure diseases, make beautiful tasting meals, shoot last second 3 pointers, a lot of amazing shit. But after we clock out we immediately start acting nuts, getting drunk, dwelling on what our mothers did to us, getting into fights, looking at scat porn, and dancing to lady gaga. And underneath all this, lies a million motivations with origins so deep into our pasts that we might not even remember them anymore.
Monday, June 15, 2009
A 13 year old girl told me today that I have a horrible life
I was on a porch reading Being and Time minding my own business.
A 10 year old boy named James and a 13 year old girl named Patricia were sitting with me.
Patricia said, "You're always lonely. Your life is horrible."
Then James went, "Yeah, you never go near people."
I just sat there.
They went on and on for like ten minutes telling me I need to make friends and party more.
A 10 year old boy named James and a 13 year old girl named Patricia were sitting with me.
Patricia said, "You're always lonely. Your life is horrible."
Then James went, "Yeah, you never go near people."
I just sat there.
They went on and on for like ten minutes telling me I need to make friends and party more.
Youngstown wins another award
Yahoo told me today that I need to move or die
I saw the headline on yahoo and thought, "Please god no, don't mention youngstown, please don't!" Of course, of fucking course, there it is, assblasting me.
I saw the headline on yahoo and thought, "Please god no, don't mention youngstown, please don't!" Of course, of fucking course, there it is, assblasting me.
Advice from Old Men
An old man told me the other day
he told me
he was always a person that believed in education
and doing the right thing
the long term thing
he said though
it didn't matter
he told me no matter how hard he worked
the place he worked for eventually went out of business
or cut his hours
and that didn't have anything to do with him
he had worked very hard and his 401k was pretty much gone now
he said his brother worked for Chrysler for 35 years and he just got a letter stating his dental, vision, and hearing were gone.
He said no matter how much you try to help some people, they keep being fuck heads.
He told me politely that no matter how hard I worked the place i was working for would fail eventually and i would be put out on the street again.
Keep workin' and hope you don't end up in a tent.
he told me
he was always a person that believed in education
and doing the right thing
the long term thing
he said though
it didn't matter
he told me no matter how hard he worked
the place he worked for eventually went out of business
or cut his hours
and that didn't have anything to do with him
he had worked very hard and his 401k was pretty much gone now
he said his brother worked for Chrysler for 35 years and he just got a letter stating his dental, vision, and hearing were gone.
He said no matter how much you try to help some people, they keep being fuck heads.
He told me politely that no matter how hard I worked the place i was working for would fail eventually and i would be put out on the street again.
Keep workin' and hope you don't end up in a tent.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Update on Best Behavior
There are 30 to 40 names. I didn't give everyone a last name.
I think I only gave the authors first and last names.
Didn't use people's real names, because there only four authors are in the book. So that means there 35 other names not related to authors. And if one of the authors as Chapman put it, wrote a really lame novel about dieting or starts writing scripts for Tom Cruise to make money in 10 years, than that would look bad on the book.
There is now 70,000 words.
It has been put into microsoft word margins it came out to 220 pages.
I'm really daunted by it.
It took six months to write.
Revising 20 pages a day.
Probably do it like three times.
Then give it to Bernice and she will notify me of all the times I didn't make any sense.
I just took two writing intensive classes, and had an analytic philosopher and a political science professor yell at me about writing, so that might help clean the mess up I usually create.
I think I only gave the authors first and last names.
Didn't use people's real names, because there only four authors are in the book. So that means there 35 other names not related to authors. And if one of the authors as Chapman put it, wrote a really lame novel about dieting or starts writing scripts for Tom Cruise to make money in 10 years, than that would look bad on the book.
There is now 70,000 words.
It has been put into microsoft word margins it came out to 220 pages.
I'm really daunted by it.
It took six months to write.
Revising 20 pages a day.
Probably do it like three times.
Then give it to Bernice and she will notify me of all the times I didn't make any sense.
I just took two writing intensive classes, and had an analytic philosopher and a political science professor yell at me about writing, so that might help clean the mess up I usually create.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
I NEED YOUR ADDRESS
I would like to thank everyone who commented concerning the previous post. Most of them were males. I have no real female demographic.
*
Okay to the real post
This is to publishers and people
If you are a publisher that has a good list of people to send books to to get reviewed email me.
If you are a person that would like to review The Insurgent later this year, please email me and you'll get a free copy.
thank you
noah.cicero@gmail.com
*
Okay to the real post
This is to publishers and people
If you are a publisher that has a good list of people to send books to to get reviewed email me.
If you are a person that would like to review The Insurgent later this year, please email me and you'll get a free copy.
thank you
noah.cicero@gmail.com
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
important question
here is a question
to the audience of this blog
answer in the comment section
what is better
in the long run
living somewhere with scenery you enjoy, like mountains or ocean
or living somewhere with a lot of friends you like and that like you
give personal experiences
to the audience of this blog
answer in the comment section
what is better
in the long run
living somewhere with scenery you enjoy, like mountains or ocean
or living somewhere with a lot of friends you like and that like you
give personal experiences
Back in Ohio
Everything is normal again
i woke up and hoed the garden.
Wrote an introduction to Best Behavior. It resembled an introduction to a philosophy book.
Some of the corn came up, some didn't.
Played basketball on the 9 foot hoop.
I've been sweating all day.
I smoked only one cigarette.
Everything is quiet.
Birds are singing.
Going to read Adderall Diaries soon.
and then go to work.
Tomorrow I'll write a footnote to Best Behavior
This is how I feel
I feel like if someone gave me a test at the end of the day
with sociological, political, and philosophic and perhaps basic economic questions
on what happened during the day
I could answer the questions
But I don't know
what the answers would mean
or if they meant anything to me
I fear not talking to my parents
by choice
or the fact they never cared about me
and then I decided to not care about them
and that we do not care about each other
I believe it has left me stranded. I do not 'feel' stranded. I don't know how I would go about 'feeling' stranded. I don't know if behaviors can construe 'stranded.'
Like 'feeling' alone, I think implies that a person builds a giant garden or write a novel to give themselves something to do.
'feeling' lonely implies that someone is looking on dating sites for people to comfort them and give them approval.
'feeling' sad is like being quiet or sleeping a lot.
'feeling' miserable is like crying and punching your dog.
I don't know who to seek approval from
because to humans, as far as I can tell,
the number one people we seek approval from are our parents
but mine aren't around
so when I do things
it doesn't matter to anyone
I do enjoy
when someone says, 'Noah that was good.'
But it doesn't have the power I think humans get when their parents say that
I don't feel like I'm having an existential crisis
I feel pretty existentially resolved.
It is like
existence precedes essence implies that behind all these emotions, habits, motivations, behaviors, intentions of ours, there is nothingness
I think people, to make up for this nothingness
place two or three statues in their mind
perhaps mom, dad, maybe a close grandparent or sibling, and perhaps for some a statue of their community's belief system
Then when they do something, bad, good, or okay, they bring that accomplishment to the statue and sacrifice it on the alter.
I feel like
why should i accomplish anything
even work a forty hour a week job
which isn't much
to ask
but for who
for what
I would get a woman pregnant to give my life meaning
but i know that i would abandon the child and not pay child support
before anyone bitches at me
hey, i'm not going to get anyone pregnant, so don't worry, I'm not actually an asshole unless I actually do that
i haven't done that and don't plan on it
I also think if I got a pool I wouldn't clean it regularly and it would get dirty
i don't clean my car
Zachary German and I were sitting on his patio. He said something about the bus ride home being over 10 hours. That was a lot of time.
i said something and then thought, "What does it matter, if I'm sitting in this chair, or that chair, or on the ledge. What if I was walking around on the sidewalk looking for a bagel. I would eventually get the bagel. The bagel would be eaten. The bagel would be digested. After I ate the bagel. I would be forced to find something else to do. I would do that thing."
Sometimes I think, "This is nice."
i woke up and hoed the garden.
Wrote an introduction to Best Behavior. It resembled an introduction to a philosophy book.
Some of the corn came up, some didn't.
Played basketball on the 9 foot hoop.
I've been sweating all day.
I smoked only one cigarette.
Everything is quiet.
Birds are singing.
Going to read Adderall Diaries soon.
and then go to work.
Tomorrow I'll write a footnote to Best Behavior
This is how I feel
I feel like if someone gave me a test at the end of the day
with sociological, political, and philosophic and perhaps basic economic questions
on what happened during the day
I could answer the questions
But I don't know
what the answers would mean
or if they meant anything to me
I fear not talking to my parents
by choice
or the fact they never cared about me
and then I decided to not care about them
and that we do not care about each other
I believe it has left me stranded. I do not 'feel' stranded. I don't know how I would go about 'feeling' stranded. I don't know if behaviors can construe 'stranded.'
Like 'feeling' alone, I think implies that a person builds a giant garden or write a novel to give themselves something to do.
'feeling' lonely implies that someone is looking on dating sites for people to comfort them and give them approval.
'feeling' sad is like being quiet or sleeping a lot.
'feeling' miserable is like crying and punching your dog.
I don't know who to seek approval from
because to humans, as far as I can tell,
the number one people we seek approval from are our parents
but mine aren't around
so when I do things
it doesn't matter to anyone
I do enjoy
when someone says, 'Noah that was good.'
But it doesn't have the power I think humans get when their parents say that
I don't feel like I'm having an existential crisis
I feel pretty existentially resolved.
It is like
existence precedes essence implies that behind all these emotions, habits, motivations, behaviors, intentions of ours, there is nothingness
I think people, to make up for this nothingness
place two or three statues in their mind
perhaps mom, dad, maybe a close grandparent or sibling, and perhaps for some a statue of their community's belief system
Then when they do something, bad, good, or okay, they bring that accomplishment to the statue and sacrifice it on the alter.
I feel like
why should i accomplish anything
even work a forty hour a week job
which isn't much
to ask
but for who
for what
I would get a woman pregnant to give my life meaning
but i know that i would abandon the child and not pay child support
before anyone bitches at me
hey, i'm not going to get anyone pregnant, so don't worry, I'm not actually an asshole unless I actually do that
i haven't done that and don't plan on it
I also think if I got a pool I wouldn't clean it regularly and it would get dirty
i don't clean my car
Zachary German and I were sitting on his patio. He said something about the bus ride home being over 10 hours. That was a lot of time.
i said something and then thought, "What does it matter, if I'm sitting in this chair, or that chair, or on the ledge. What if I was walking around on the sidewalk looking for a bagel. I would eventually get the bagel. The bagel would be eaten. The bagel would be digested. After I ate the bagel. I would be forced to find something else to do. I would do that thing."
Sometimes I think, "This is nice."
Monday, June 08, 2009
currently in NYC
watched auditions
hung out with james yeh
went to clong
ate with kendra grant malone
kendra has long hair currently and french men
everybody is talking about ryan manning
it is funny
zach just took me for a walk around the neighborhood
he is a professional dog walker
he is also very good at walking authors
i will blog more seriously when i get back
about serious things
currently i'm not depressed
enough to blog
and still trying to quit smoking
i don't think best behavior is done
i need to rewrite two characters after this trip
i think i want to have an introduction, a footnote, and a large 10,000 word epilogue
everyone has been really nice
i would like to thank
pirooz, thomas, zach, tao, jamie, james, Dr. ben, and miles for all being really nice.
hung out with james yeh
went to clong
ate with kendra grant malone
kendra has long hair currently and french men
everybody is talking about ryan manning
it is funny
zach just took me for a walk around the neighborhood
he is a professional dog walker
he is also very good at walking authors
i will blog more seriously when i get back
about serious things
currently i'm not depressed
enough to blog
and still trying to quit smoking
i don't think best behavior is done
i need to rewrite two characters after this trip
i think i want to have an introduction, a footnote, and a large 10,000 word epilogue
everyone has been really nice
i would like to thank
pirooz, thomas, zach, tao, jamie, james, Dr. ben, and miles for all being really nice.
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
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