MOVIES

This happened today

Deal with it:

All names changed except mine.

Bob to Jim: Dude, the CIA can find anybody in like minutes.

I looked from my work and said: No, they can't. That is from movies.

Bob: No, that's what the CIA does it finds people.

Me: I'm in an international relations class, they can't just find people. Actually most of the jobs of the CIA are collecting intelligence on other countries, like reading foreign newspapers and collecting data on their populations.

Bob: Have you ever seen Taken staring Liam Neeson?

Me: No.

Bob: Well, have you seen Shooter staring Mark Walhberg.

Me: Yeah, I guess.

Bob: Dude, I'm going to be trained to do that, I'm gonna be like an independent agent that travels the world.

Me: Do you know any foreign languages?

Bob: No.

Me: Okay dude, I believe you.

Then we both went back to work.

In case anyone believes that all the CIA does is hunt down terrorists and murder commies, here's the career page for the CIA

Number one job on the list

Analytic Methodologist

Job includes

Developing and applying new or established analytic methodologies that include social science research methods, statistics, operations research and econometrics, mathematical and geospatial modeling to add rigor and precision to intelligence analysis and collection is the responsibility of the Analytic Methodologist. Agency analysts are encouraged to maintain and broaden their professional ties through academic study, contacts and attendance at professional meetings. They may also choose to pursue additional studies in fields relevant to their areas of responsibility. Opportunities exist for foreign and domestic travel, language training, analytic and management training, and assignments to other offices in the Agency and throughout the US Government.

*Higher starting salary possible depending on experience level.

You can get this job without having at least a masters.

Surrounded by Women

Last night I was in a good sized bedroom surrounded by six women.

I was very terrified.

I seriously thought for like two minutes that they would attack me and sacrifice me to Simone De Beauvoir and Betty Friedan and maybe have a small blood soaked parade around the bedroom after. I imagined them cutting my genitals off and playing catch with my balls and penis and laughing.

The terror was made worse because three of the women were lesbians. And I believe one of them may have Mayan origins.

I started to think that maybe they would know about the two girls I broke up with by not calling ten years ago, or how I cheated on my ex-fiance eight years ago, and how I hate my mother and won't talk to her and they would know all this telepathically through the great collective consciousness of womanhood. Then they would remember all the little shitty things that men did to them, maybe one or two had been raped or beaten by men and they wanted revenge and they knew the upper hand had finally arrived, the balance of power had shifted. There was no way one man could take six women, a couple of black eyes, but eventually he would be taken down and his genitals could be severed.

They didn't kill me though, I'm here to write another blogpost.

it should be noted

That when I'm alone with American men I don't fear I will be killed, but that four outcomes are possible:

1. Hyperbolic conversations about sports.

2. One of the men is for sure a libertarian and really wants to talk about it.

3. A long converstion about our dads which will lead to everyone crying.

4. A circle jerk starts that eventually leads to tea bagging the smallest male.

my house is like a cave

I have been living in this cave since october

all the windows have been shut and the doors have been closed

and i cannot hear the birds sing when i wake up

if there is no music or movie playing, then there is nothing to hear but that weird fan sound the computer makes and every twenty minutes the sump pump in the basement makes strange noises.

These noises are my only friends.

Fucked up in Spanish

I drank a half of bottle of wine last night.

Woke up and drove for an hour with snow covered roads in a 1997 Saturn to get to school to turn papers in.

In Spanish we were going over the body and when we got to 'nalgas.' I yelled, "What about culo?"

The teacher is a small woman from Puerto Rico and started laughing and said something like, "Esos un palabra mal."

I wanted to scream, "Tiene tremendo culo!".

Then a couple of hours later I end up in the elevator con mi professora with four other people and she says, "Hola"

y dije, "Como estas?"

"Muy bien y tu." No tuve idea porque le senti bien. Ha hecho frio por cuatro mes.

Deje, "Muy cansado?"

Then she said something which I know conveyed, "Why, the weekend is here." What exactly she said was too complicated for my dumbass to translate.

"Bebi un media un botella de vino tinto pasado noche." Dije la oracion lentemente como un persona retrasado.

Entounces dijiste, "resaca."

Estaban pensado, dry my self, bag, sack, get your grades, and thought fuck it and said, "What does resaca mean?"

"Hungover."

Then we laughed and I left the elevator.

You probably shouldn't tell your professors that you are hungover.

What people are thinking

Last night we were drinking

and someone said to me, "What do you think she is thinking?"

I replied, "I don't try to think about what people are thinking, I try to figure out their motivations."

Now that I am sober with some coffee in me listening to Glenn Hansard on a college campus I'll try to think about this.

Okay, what are we thinking?

We are always thinking the present tense.

Our thoughts sometimes resemble what we say.

But our my thoughts leading my behavior

Are my thoughts the same as my motivation?

If I do something because of my blue collar background?

Is that because of my thoughts?

Okay

Lets get serious

There is a difference between thoughts and motivation

Someone thinks thoughts like these, "I am in college to be a lawyer, I am sitting here at this desk, working on this assignment, I want to get an A, I want good grades, so I can have a 3.6 so akron law school will accept me."

That is a thought process.

I mean you could add sentences like, "I need to do this. My mother will call me at five, and bitch at me. She will complain and yell at me about my life. I need to do things to make her stop bitching at me. I don't want to listen to her complain. I have to do this, this is important."

This is another one, similar to the first one. These both could be thought in the same hour, at the same desk.

Is that motivation?

Are these thoughts 'true'?

Another one, how many times has one of our friends come over and complained about their girlfriend or boyfriend stating for over an hour how their boyfriend or girlfriend is pissing them off, and then at the end they state, "I love them."

Those are thoughts?

I have thoughts all the time.

Today I thought for like three minutes about Chinese Buffet.

Do you want to know what I'm thinking?

Okay

Maybe this

What about other people's 'rationalizations?"

How about those?

You CANNOT ASK A HUMAN WHY THEY RATIONALIZE ON A CERTAIN SUBJECT.

This is failure.

I personally might be able to rationalize why I believe in a certain political stance or why I bought a certain car.

But don't ask me why I love a certain person or why I have these certain friends.

I could state some things like, "I like this and this about them."

But I could never and I don't think anyone can give a completely 'true' answer.

Okay

We are writers

lets think about characters

You have a character

The character

thinks

The character

rationalizes

The Character

has motivations

The character

also talks

The character

also does things in slience

That is really empirical though and not very artistic

But what about 'how the characters feels things?'

I mean, how do they go about 'feeling'

Not feeling, like sick or something.

Or feeling a pillow or a tomato.

But 'feeling' concerning things, when they read something, now what does it make them think, 'but what does it make them feel?'

I'm not doing a good job of saying this?

A behaviorist would call a reaction to a stimulate.

but that is too strict

Feelings, are poetic, song like, notes on a piano.

How does their piano play?

What songs do they play naturally?

What do you hear when we are near them

Put your ear to the floor and listen

To that song that comes from them

You have to be able to hear that song

I was at a restaurant the other day with BW.

BW and I was sitting at a table, looking young, smiling. We had cute clothes on. We had just taken a long walk in the woods and felt good about existence. That life was worth it.

The server was the first girl I had ever kissed. She isn't a girl now, she is a woman close to her 30s with three kids and an ex-husband.

We spoke politely to each other. The same things everyone says to people they knew years ago.

The only sad thing she said, was, "I'm working here."

Her face had no glow, she looked tired, her eyes could barely open, her voice was not strong, it was weak. It was like she did not have the motivation to even talk anymore. Her bones were tired. BW and I watched her walk around the restaurant carrying herself with a sense of defeat. Things had not turned out well and she didn't know how to repair them.

See the line, "Things had not turned out well and she didn't know how to repair them."

I sit wondering

Where did I get that line?

Where did the truth come from that made that line?

If you asked the server, in person, in a crowd of her peers, Do you think the sentence "Things had not turned out well and she didn't know how to repair them."
describes you.

She would say no.

But I think alone, if she read it, she would 'feel' the line. She wouldn't think the sentence, "Yes, that is it. I do know empirically that things didn't turn out well, that I made some bad decisions, that things are not like I pictured them when I was young envisioning my future. And yes that is true, I do not know how to make things better. I just don't know what to do."

I think she would 'feel' the line. She wouldn't have thoughts concerning the line exactly.

Maybe the line might spark thoughts, but what thoughts I the writer, do not know.

But BW and I could hear her song and we listened. The notes said, "Things had not turned out well and she didn't know how to repair them."

So lets answer this question sober

"What do you think she is thinking?"

"I do not know her thoughts, but what song do you think she is playing? Perhaps that will better lead us to what we are searching for?"

Serious Gmail Chatting

me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQqCTaRTqrQ&feature=popular
PM this was on the front page of my youtube
it is devastating
it is like a bunch of super famous crazy singers

BW: is this what they showed during the Olympics
it is
oh god

me: fergy
is nuts

BW: the girl from the pussycat dolls

me: pink is nuts

BW: jesus christ

me: i don't think there is one person that isn't crazy
celebrate america's singers
who are fucking nuts

BW: lil wayne is not nuts
excuse you

me: oh my god lil wayne
just showed up
i'm terrified
he just sniffed two children

BW: i laughed so hard
at various points in the video
he could sniff up all of the debris in Haiti probably

me: r kelly just pissed on three kids
kenya west just called some kids bitches

BW: kenya
hahahaa

me: jamie fox just showed up and did six bad movies at once

BW: i am laughing
this video is tragic

me: there is more money in that room than in the whole country of Haiti

BW: yeah

me: hait's gdp is only 6 billion
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=haiti+gdp&aq=f&aqi=g10&oq=
that room could buy that country

BW: they won't
they'll just sing
with expensive equipment
nice sunglasses
but it's okay. good intentions.

me: haiti is destroyed by deforestation
that was in the verse lil wayne sang

BW: ikea

me: they couldn't get business contracts from other countries because other countries weren't writing their documents in french
it is like a huge complex situation involving
plants and the fact they speak a language no one else speaks for 6,000 miles away
they can't do anything until they grow trees and speak english or spanish
oh god, singers
i'm okay now
i turned it off
it is gone

BW: i could stop smoking for a week
give 30$
but i didn't

me: i gave a dollar at school
dr. lepak told us he sends a thousand dollars a year
i have a really good book with a chapter on Haiti if you ever wanted to read it

BW: what is it

me: it describes how they have no trees
Collapse by Jared diamond

BW: that sounds good

me: the book is about the rise and fall of isolated civilizations

BW: good

me: it is an easy read

BW: i will put it in my to-read list

me: i thought ikea was like good
or something

Writing as a Testimony

In the Protestant American churches it is common for a person to go up on Sunday and burst into tears and speak of their suffering. To tell everyone, people they know and people they don't know, how they have suffered, how their suffering made them feel, and how in the end they did not lose faith.

An old friend brought me several times to her narcotics anonymous meetings. In those meetings the same thing occurred, a person went up on a stage and told everyone how they had suffered, how they felt when they were suffering and how they had lost faith.

The testimonies always end in with epiphanies.

I believe that for me writing a story or poem is to testify.

To as webster says, " 1 a : to make a statement based on personal knowledge or belief : bear witness b : to serve as evidence or proof"

I believe the artist has a place in The Republic.

The artist if they are willing figures out that not everyone has the time to sit and dwell upon their feelings. The artist figures out that people need to design and build bridges and buildings, somebody needs to do the science, somebody needs to teach the math, somebody needs to wash the dishes and box the cheese whiz.

Being an artist is always a choice though:

It is a lot easier to allow life to take charge and for you to become a accountant or construction worker.

It is not easy to sit and dwell on your feelings, on what surrounds you, and then to spend time figuring out how to put it into song or make a short story out of it.

Being an artist is a really hard job.

It is hard to become a heart surgeon, but as soon as you are done with school you have an endless amount of patients.

An artist can't always find an artist.

Beyonce can find an artist now, but where will she be in 20 years. probably wherever Diana Ross is sitting, alone somewhere in a nice house living off of royalties watching television.

With no audience.

An artist must come to grips with, that they can't produce all the time, they are only produce sometimes, and eventually that production will end and they will have to go on with their life.

But they can testify a few times

And what I mean by testify

Is that they bear witness to their life

A good artist I believe recognizes that they are just one person

Living their one person life

Amongst a million people living their one person lives

But if they have the courage and self-awareness and the willingness to read and try to comprehend what it means to be them and their place in the grand scheme of things.

Then if they testify

The audience

If it be a church congregation or narcotics anonymous

Will see themselves in their little one person life

The artist is a sacrifice though

Society says to the artist, the writer, the song maker

You aren't really one of us

You don't want to work like we do

You don't want to join the world of capitalism and endless time clocks and hard work

You want to be weird and walk around and contemplate existence

We don't want to directly talk to you

We like that you wrote a book, we even read it

But when we meet you in person we don't want you to start analyzing us personally, we don't you to attack us and force epiphanies upon us. We don't want you to start our lives to Plato or Heidegger or Dostoevsky. We don't want you to be amongst us with all those feelings and emotions out in the open. You are somewhat dangerous to your co-workers.

Society doesn't want an in your face testimony.

They like the idea of their artists being distant.

And if they come in contact with an artist, they want them to polite and calm, to show respect for the delusions the masses hold.

Society does not mind when the artist goes to his bedroom and types on his computer sentences that are destructive but please society says, 'Don't bring it to our faces.'

So the artist gets pushed farther and farther away from the society they once belonged to.

But the artist

If he or she wants it

Can continue to testify

Because they know they have found their place in The Republic

It is hard to be strange and alone

But it is also important that someone does it, that someone goes off and sits alone and writes those thoughts they have when they are alone.

The artist knows when they finally completely pushed out of the circle of tradition and culture they are in, because they are still in it, they are still sharing their roads, sewer systems and buying food from the same markets.

That they are no longer having discussions with the people around them. But are debating and figuring things with the Great Ones of history, if it be Nietzsche or Alexander Hamilton.

How many artists have consulted with Homer and The Old Testament writers about a line, how many times did Joyce, Eliot, Dostoevsky, Kerouac and Hemingway sit alone with Homer at night discussing epiphanies and syntax.

Do you think Jimi Hendrix did not have a long discussion with Bach and Mozart before the completion of Little Wing?

When Heidegger sat in his little cabin, he sat in a room with Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Pascal, Kant, Locke and Nietzsche and said, "Listen you guys, I have been listening to you mother fuckers talk forever, I did not have anything to say before, but I have something to say now."

Love Letter

Valentine's Day is coming again, so i'm going to write a love letter. Anyone can use this love letter for their lover.

Dear Lover,

There are a lot of butterflies on the planet. But none in the winter. You are my winter butterfly.

I want to lick the inside of your belly button. I want to lick the lint out of it and then kiss you. Then you have the lint in your mouth. We are naked and you laugh.

(If you are a straight man or lesbian) I want to grab your pussy. I want to cup your naked pussy in my hand. Your pussy is like a leaf with dew on it on a July Morning. That means I like when your pussy is wet. I like your pussy more when it is wet than when it is dry.

(If you a woman or a gay man) I want to hold your soft penis in my hand. Then I want to caress it until it becomes hard and then I'll call it a cock. I want you to do things with your cock that will make me moan and make strange sounds.

I want to eat candy with you and check our facebooks sitting close.

We need each other like poor people need food and politicians need votes.

We need each other like cell phones need signals and books need readers.

Right now I'm yearning for your genitals to be near by, for your laugh, for your arms, and your legs to wrap around me and pull me deeper.

I can never get deep enough into you.

I want you have my babies. I want our babies to look like us.

We will raise our children to be nervous and strange and to love music like we do.

I keep seeing your belly in my mind, your belly flat, I rest my head on your belly, your belly is soft and we watch a movie. A movie staring Will Ferrell. Everything is right with the world. We have good credit and our grades are good.

I want to fuck until both of our genitals are chafed and sore.

There are a lot of butterflies on the planet. But none in the winter. You are my winter butterfly.

Sincerely,
Your Lover

POEM

Mandy B

On the night of the Super Bowl
There were barely any customers
I stood there drinking my iced coffee
looking at Mandy B
who is 29 like me
both born in 1980
In the final months
of Jimmy Carter's presidency

Both of us
in our junior year of college
her for nursing
me for poli sci

both of us working for Red Lobster

Mandy B said to me
Have you told your new girlfriend
said
I love you
yet

I said no
We've only known each other
for three months
that isn't long enough

Mandy B
responded
I got married right after high school
and had three kids
by the time
I was 22
I don't know what people do

By the time
I had graduated high school
I'd lived in San Diego
and Oregon

I'd crisscrossed America
looking at both oceans

She was changing diapers
and teaching her children
to talk and count

The moment I was sitting
at the bottom of the grand canyon
She was watching her baby walk

We both felt very excited
at those moments

When I got my first book published
Her first child was entering kindergarten

We both felt very excited
at those moments

In our mid twenties
I sat drinking with strippers
and writers in New York City

She went to work
and struggled to buy Christmas presents
for her three children

We both realized we needed money
and had to go back to school
so we went

When you hold your money
you know it means you have
three little mouths to feed

When I look at my money
I think about buying some Chili's
and a bottle of Lady Bligh

I don't know how
time passed so differently for us
but it did