THE OUTSIDER

RETURN TO REVELANCY

2012-01-12T12:13:00.001-08:00

i won't be blogging, I should be able to start blogging somewhere else soon.

Done Blogging, Going to the Irrelevant Wilderness

2011-08-04T11:28:00.000-07:00

I think I am done blogging. Blogging is no longer relevant. I don't want to twit or tumble or work really hard maintaining an internet presense. I think my life is fucked and I need to fix things and like, try to make money and write books I want to write.

1. If you would like to contact me for an interview or article or anything, my email is noah.cicero@gmail.com

2. I'm going to the wilderness of the irrelevant, the relevant bores me. I look at the relevant and think nothing, my mind goes dead, I have few things in common with anyone anymore. I'm reading Froissart and listening to Darius Rucker. I do like some new Bon Iver songs though.

3. If you want to give me a job, I don't care where, if it is in Florida or a safe part of Mexico, I'll go. I would like 11 dollars an hour and to get health care. I also don't care what the job is, I no longer have any self respect.

4. I will sell my printed books and ebooks for 20,000 dollars, hell I'll sell you every blogpost, everything is for sell. Send me an email and I'll sell them to you, you don't have to publish them, you can just give me the money. You can burn them or fuck them or kill me, it will be okay.

Well, back to Ohio

2011-07-28T11:15:00.000-07:00

UPDATE:

got a job bussing, hopefully it turns out okay.

Luna Miguel Interview

2011-07-20T15:49:00.000-07:00

Interview done with Luna Miguel by Ani Smith.

I don't think you can order Treatise or Burning Babies

2011-07-13T13:50:00.000-07:00

If you order Treatise or Burning Babies, I seriously doubt anything is going to come.

I'm working on getting the books at new places.

It will probably take a couple of years.

Just don't die and one day you'll get to order them.

Memoirs of a Pizza Boy (A Nano-Farce)

2011-07-05T13:40:00.000-07:00

Preface: I don't remember writing this. I had to find something on my old floppy discs and had to look through all of them to find it. While looking through all the docs, I found this. I honestly don't remember writing this and I never submitted to anyone. I'm going to be really busy over the next few weeks and won't be able to blog, so if you want to read it, go ahead. It isn't edited and I don't care about editing it. If you want to publish it, email me, noah.cicero@gmail.com. thanks, enjoy.

Memoirs of a Pizza Boy
(A Nano-Farce)

Hello my name is Rocky and I’m dead.
This novel will lead to my death.
Aren’t you excited?
I have been dead for a week
I have been told that I need to write about my final days. I do not know who told me. I believe it was God, but I’m in existential heaven, and there is no God here. So I think it was just Sartre dressed as a woman.
It is very peaceful here.
I do not have to work. So I will be able to complete my manuscript in peace. And get it published in hell I guess.
I used to write books on earth. Only got one published though. It was POD, which means Print on Demand. It sold 28 copies and got seven good reviews.
The story begins now.
*
It is a funeral on Belmont.
The sun is shining.
Everyone is dressed in nice clothes bought at Wal Mart.
I’m wearing a watch.
I usually don’t wear a watch.
But it is funeral and for some reason I have the sentence in my head, “Men should wear watches at funerals.”
I do not know where this sentence came from.
But I believe it is true and follow my duty of wearing a watch.
The dead person is Carol.
Carol used to own a strip joint before she died.
Carol had black hair and green eyes.
And wore fur coats from the seventies.
She was a wretched woman.
Most people didn’t like her.
I did.
Most people don’t like me, so I guess that is why.
Carol killed herself.
She had so many good reasons. It would take another book in itself to explain.
She would never say, “I’m sorry.” She was very stubborn.
Maybe she felt guilt about something.
I don’t know.
She slit her wrists in her bathtub.
Her daughter found her immobile dead body lying there in a pool of blood and shit.
Carol left a suicide note saying, “I love fat dick.”
No one yet understands what that means.
But it must mean something.
But things mean things all the time, and we just walk by them. Like the meaning is just a shoelace or a sock on the floor.
So why not just walk past the meaning of, “I love fat dick.”
There are many people at the funeral. A lot of dancers and patrons.
My girlfriend Tasha is with me.
She is wearing cornflower blue for some reason.
I’m not asking why.
Because I don’t care.
And so are four of the other dances who showed up to pay their respects to this dead wretched creature.
Carol’s daughter gives a speech in front of the casket.
Carol’s daughter is wearing an ugly Wal Mart dress bought for the funeral. It is blue with white dots all over it.
Carol’s daughter is fucked out of her mind on oxies right now. So are most of the people there.
Carol’s daughter speaks, “My mother… Was really mean… She was not nice person by any account… Her mother hated her… Which could be the cause for my mother’s terrible personality… But what the fuck… You know… I remember one time when she was high off of ludes she beat me with a baseball bat… Then she broke a beer bottle off of my brother’s head… It was a bad night… When I was in high school I would come home to her fucking on the couch… And she wouldn’t stop… But I really wanted to watch television… So I would lay on the floor and watch Leno while they fucked… It was disturbing… But I really wanted to see what Monday’s Headline were… For Christmas one year she was so high she forgot to buy me any presents… So she gave me four hundred dollars… I spent all the money on drugs… I told her I did… She asked for some… When I was eighteen she had me dance at the strip joint when there weren’t enough girls, she would say, “You gotta help out around here you fucking free-loader…” My mother… My dear sweet mother… She is dead now… People die all the time… And last Tuesday was her time to go… I really can’t believe it… I’ve been waiting for so fucking long for that bitch to die… Anyone who drinks three gallons of Crown a week should surely die before they are sixty… I get all of her money… She had a good amount of it… Also I own the strip joint now and tip out is lowered to fifteen dollars a night… Twenty-five a night is too fucking much… Greedy fucking bitch my mother was…”
Carol is almost crying but not quite.
It was beautiful performance by any standard.
A hired pastor goes up.
Carol had never been to a church since she was a small girl.
The Past is also high off oxies and used to always go to the strip joint.
The Pastor says, “Everybody bow their heads. Our God somewhere deep in my asshole. Hallow be something blah blah death. Carol was a great lady. She once told me that God saved her. She was just a bar owner, but God told her, ‘Carol, open a strip joint and they will cum.’ We all know Carol’s strip joint wasn’t clean. She had drug dealers give her a percentage to deal to the girls. She let girls give hand-jobs. And if the guy spent enough money he could fuck right at the bar. We know these facts. But no matter what Carol kept the Lord in her heart. When I was in there last week, Carol said to me tanked and fucked up on oxies, ‘God loves me Pastor, God loves me like I love steak.’ I remember when I graduated from pastor college. To celebrate she set me up with one of the girls for a small fee. It was a delightful night. The girl kept passing out because she was high off of oxies. But I have always preferred to fuck sleeping girls. Carol was a strong woman. I once saw her pick up two full kegs at once and lift them above her head. It was amazing. It made me cry, because I knew the spirit was in her then. I knew that God loved Carol and made her so strong that she could lift up two full kegs of beer. I always involved Carol in my prayers to Our Lord and Savior, I would say, ‘Lord, tonight when I go to the strip joint. Please guide Carol to not make me pay a cover charge.’ Oh, Carol, I can’t believe you’re dead. May the Lord bless you.”
The pastor then fell over; his tears were like dirty worms coming out of his eyes.
No one helped him up.
No here gives a shit about religion.
We care about oxies and dancing and poor poor dead bitch Carol.
Someone brought out a stereo and played, “Whiskey Drinking Woman.”
It was Carol’s favorite song.
They lowered her casket with her in it into the ground.
We watched bored.
I had to pee badly.
I wanted it to be over.
Tasha looked at me and said, “I kind of liked her.”
I said, “Yeah, somewhat.”
Another dancer named Cherry said, “Do you guys have any oxies?”
“No,” said Tasha.
“I need to get some, or I’ll go through withdraw in about three hours.”
“Go ask Diamond, she’s probably got some valiums,” I said.
“I spent all money last night. Do you think she will give me some for free.”
“Go ask her,” said Tasha.
“All right.”
Cherry walks over to Diamond while the casket is still being lowered.
Nobody even looks.
No one cares.
When the song finishes we all walk to our cars.
At the cars we all talk quietly.
The pastor walks over to me and says, “Hey Rocky.”
“Yeah.”
“How much is Tasha going for nowadays and how long?”
I light a cigarette and scrunch my face up and say, “I think 300 for two hours, but you gotta talk to her. I ain’t her pimp.”
“That ain’t bad. Who’s her pimp then?”
I point to where they just lowered Carol into the ground.
The pastor looks over to where I’m pointing and stares like a retard. Then it hits him. Then he says, “Well, can I be her pimp then?”
“You don’t even have socks on, how are you going to be a good pimp.”
The pastor pulls his pant legs up. Looks down and sees he has no socks on.
“You’re right. I should just stick to preaching.”
“Yeah, you gotta continue with Lord’s work. Look at all the people you’ve converted today.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Tasha and I get into my 1988 Delta 88 Oldsmobile. The same model of car that was used in Dirty Harry Blood Pool when he gets chased by the remote control car. So the car is pimpin.
The passenger side arm rest has fallen off the door and is in the backseat. Tasha knocked it off because she got emotional about something, slammed the door, and it fell off. Which I guess according to the internet is a common trait of 1988 Delta 88s.
Now the passenger window doe not work.
My armrest has fallen off but is still connected to the wiring. It is held on by several pieces of scotch tape.
The tape player does not work. But the radio does. That is also held together with a piece of scotch tape.
The car has over 140 thousand miles on it.
I put about three thousand a month on it being a pizza delivery boy.
Tasha says to me, “I have to shit hurry home.”
“You know, Carol was a real legend of Belmont. She had that bar there for over twenty years.”
“Yeah, but she’s dead now.”
*
Before I go deeper into these memoirs.
I have to supply a geographical description of the Youngstown-Warren area or as some call it, “The Mahoning Valley.”
I want to give this description so I won’t have to later. And also this area is like a character in itself.
The core of the Youngstown-Warren area is the Mahoning River.
The Mahoning River is where the steel mills used to throw their waste.
The Mahoning River is brown and toxic.
You can’t even eat the fish out of there.
If you went swimming in there you would probably die a week later.
It goes from Warren to Youngstown.
The road 422 follows along side of it.
The area can be considered one large city with a bunch areas that have different names.
It takes approximately a half an hour to travel from the middle of Warren to the middle of Youngstown. It takes so long because there are so many fucking lights on 422.
Here are the names of the towns that populate the Youngstown-Warren area and a little description of the mental stability of the residents.
Warren: The people are depressed, masochistic, and violent. Amongst all the people that live in Warren you will not find one gram of self-esteem. They also like to fight with each other a lot. There are a lot of people on bicycles because of DUIs. Warren is very integrated racially; it is basically made up of poor whites and blacks.
Niles: Everyone from Niles is weird as shit. Niles has like five people that own a house. Everyone lives in one of the five giant apartment areas. Those long three story square apartment buildings.
Girard: Everyone is drunk and violent and everyone under 30 is for sure on coke. There are houses, but they are cut into smaller apartments where people live and drink. In the summer everyone sits outside and drinks. There is a lot of drinking in Girard. The men have square heads and the women have octagonal heads. It is weird.
Liberty: The people of Liberty are quietly miserable. The Jews used to own Liberty but their kids graduated college and there are no jobs for college-educated people in the area so they left. And the older Jews went to Florida to retire. Liberty is predominately poor whites and black people, and the black people that got some money bought Jews houses on the nice side of Liberty. The really nice part of Liberty is where the Indian doctors live. For some reason every doctor in the area from rectal surgeons to pediatricians are Indian. I don’t know why somebody would travel half way around the world to live in Youngstown, especially when their country had tigers and Cobra snakes which are really cool. There are no cool native animals in the Youngstown-Warren area, we have white tail deer and dirty ass possums, that’s it.
Youngstown: Hell. Most of the population is illiterate. Twelve thousand of its citizens are get disability. It is ugly. Nobody is happy. There is a college located there where like two of the fifteen majors they offer can get you a job. If you go for English or Anthropology unless you get straights As no good grad school will accept you. If any at all will. The cops don’t even exist. No money, death.
There are other towns like Struthers, Boardman, Austintown and Campbell, which are just extensions of the Youngstown misery.
And there are two nice towns where rich people live: Poland and Canfield. The rich sit in those two towns hiding like rats.
Here is a list of some Skid Row type districts in the area:
Belmont: Liberty
Tally Ho’tel and Knights Inn: On Belmont in Liberty
McKinley Motel: On 422 in Liberty.
Market Street: Youngstown.
The Trumbull Avenue side of Girard.
Briar Hill: Youngstown.
West Gate Projects: Youngstown.
Dogpatch: White trash hell Liberty.
Bel Air trailer park: Dogpatch annex.
Etc.
So this is the Youngstown-Warren.
You know now what is where and what the names signify.
We can match on into the memoirs of a dead pizza boy.
*
I’m at the pizza shop.
Smoking a cigarette staring at the abandoned kmart across the street.
In the parking lot sits semi-trucks.
There are two poor folk bars in the parking lot of the abandoned kmart building. And dead Carol’s strip joint within five minutes of walking.
Truckers park, get drunk, go to the strip joint, and go to sleep.
Behind the pizza shop is section eight housing and cheap apartments. There is a small quickie mart with bars covering the windows down the street from the pizza shop.
People from the section eight housing and cheap apartments go to the quickie mart constantly because they don’t have cars.
I sit on the stoop of the pizza shop and watch them walk by.
Most walk by with paper bags with tall boys and forties and bottles of wine in them.
A lot open one can and drink on the walk home.
They pick the bag up to their face with both hands and drink one of the two tall boys in the bag.
It is beautiful.
It will be snowing like a mother fucker and there will still be people coming from behind Papa John’s, walking through the three inch thick snow, ten degree weather to get some beer.
I sit and watch this.
It somehow comforts me.
While sitting there Fluff walks up.
He’s a fifty-year-old crack head schizophrenic black guy missing some teeth. His bottom lip touches the bottom of his nose.
Fluff’s hands are like rocks.
Cold jagged rock.
He is emaciated from not eating right.
He comes to the pizza shop all the time and asks for messed up pizzas. If we have one, we always give him one.
He isn’t homeless though.
The government has set him up with an apartment.
And supplies him with SSI checks.
That is usually gone by the second week of the month though.
About that time he comes down and asks him for two dollars from me.
I don’t mind giving it to him, because I don’t really mind giving two dollars to anybody.
I mean, what the fuck is two dollars.
If someone needs two dollars and they ask you for it and you won’t give it. Why kind of asshole are you?
Fluff walks up to me.
I stand up and shake his hand.
It is still hard.
“I need your help man,” Fluff says.
“What do you need?”
“Advice.”
“Advice for what Fluff,” I said.
“I got a woman living with me Rocky.”
“You always got a bitch Fluff, how you do it?”
Fluff laughs.
Then he says, “Lets go in your car and talk.”
We go in my car.
It is all very serious.
Fluff says, “I don’t know what to do. I haven’t lived with a woman in over twenty-two years. I don’t know…. I’m scared…. I don’t know what I’ll do Rocky. I like to be alone. I don’t like people telling me what to do. When people live with you, they always tell you what to do.”
“You’re a loner Fluff.”
“Yeah, I’m a loner. I like my freedom. That’s why I walk up and down Belmont like I do. I just walk around. I get money and get some beer. You know?”
“Yeah, there is a strange freedom on Belmont.”
“Strange is the word.”
Fluff and I laugh.
“I’m scarred,” Fluff said.
“I know what you mean.”
“This woman, I don’t know. I asked my mother. And she said that I should try to stick with her. That she hopes that before she dies that I’m settled down with a woman. She would like to see that before she died. But I don’t know. What do you think I should do?”
“Try to live with her Fluff.”
“That’s what I was thinking. Can you give me six dollars?”
“For what Fluff? I’ll give you two, not six. I’m a pizza boy Fluff.”
“I need to get a rock. Now listen to me Rocky. Just hold and listen… Last night we had sex. She was naked and she looked good. I hadn’t touched a naked woman in years Rocky, fucking years.”
Fluff starts crying and goes, “I’m scarred.”
Then goes on, “I told her, if your shit stinks. I’m not gonna eat it. But I went down there and it tasted so good. I was in heaven Rocky. I hadn’t touched a naked woman in so long. But then I was like, ‘you gotta suck my dick.’ And she said she don’t do that. She said she hadn’t sucked dick since 1992 Rocky. She said she don’t like it. That’s why I need six dollars. Because when you high off that rock, man you will do anything. So I need to get her high, and then she will suck my dick.”
Fluff is crying more.
“I need that six dollars. She’s back at my place now waiting for a rock. And after she smokes that rock. She will be high as hell. And she suck my dick Rocky. I haven’t had my dick sucked in so long. I need this man…. I’m scarred…. I need six dollars. Please Rocky. Please let me have six dollars. Help me out. I’ll pay you back. Come on.”
I look at Fluff crying.
Pull out my wallet and hand him six dollars.
Fluff and I get out of the car. He gives me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. For some reason he always kisses my cheek.
Then he heads down the street.
You may be wondering, if I was at work. Why wasn’t I inside the store doing some work. I only make $5.15 an hour. I don’t think that is enough money to work. Hell, that is barely enough money to get a human to show up. If there was no such thing as starvation no one would.
*
I am at my mothers.
My mother lives in a trailer on Trumbull Avenue in Girard.
She is 320 pounds of pure fat.
She used to be a whore.
My mother would go from truck lot to truck lot selling her fat ass. I don’t know who. But she had many customers.
She has been prison three times, for a total of four years.
She is a painkiller addict. She loves oxies.
She broke her leg once trying to get some oxies.
It was stupid.
She called me from the hospital, “Rocky, come to the hospital, visit your poor mother. I broke my leg.”
I show up there. I took my time, I was in no rush. I would have not even went but I had the day off and had no excuse for not going.
She said to me after the doctors left the room, “I got Ahab to hit my leg with a baseball bat, I was withdrawing and sick as dog, you know.”
Ahab is my mom’s boyfriend.
He is a huge fat black man. He is like 6-5 and 350 pounds. He is huge and fat and weird.
He is also a painkiller addict.
He has spent a total of six years in prison for dealing drugs. And I think he shot someone, but I’ve never asked.
He works at a factory now.
I am sitting at the kitchen table. My mother is sitting across from chain smoker. I take ten-minute breaks.
She is also drinking a tall boy and she keep farting every three minutes. Almost on a cycle.
While we are sitting here at the table.
Ahab is in the living room watching television, also farting every three minutes. His are not synchronized with my mother’s though. So there is a fart approximately every minute and a half that takes place in the trailer.
I look at my mother and say, “Mom, what’s the meaning of life?”
“Well, there was this time when I was eight. I was in bed. And my sister was in her bed on the other side of the room. Grandpa came in and gave my sister an onion and said, ‘Enjoy this onion Susan.’ Then my daddy came over to me. It was late and he had just gotten home from work. He laid on top of me. Pulled my underwear and fucked me. My sister watched from across the room. He did all the time for a year. Well, until he got sent to prison for fucking me all the time. I never told anyone. I didn’t think it was anyone’s business. My sister and I became lovers after that. That was strange. My mother told the police because she got jealous. I would like to think that she did it out of kindness towards, but even when I’ve got like three oxies inside me and a twelve pack and some whiskey, I think she was just jealous. I think the meaning of life, is to enjoy pain. To love suffering. To make suffering your purpose. To relish in it, to roll around in it like a pig in mud, to swim in it like a fish, to fuck the suffering. To cause suffering that is important. It is no fun to suffer unless you are causing other people to suffer. To cause other people to hate life as much as you, the hate you know. In suffering there is peace. There is love in suffering, love for the suffering that is.”
“Mom, you’ve told me that story about grandpa like fifteen times.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Ahab yells from the living, “What the fuck are you two assholes talking about?”
“The meaning of life you son of a bitch!”
Ahab comes into the kitchen.
Which is connected to the living room, so it was only like four steps.
Ahab gets a tall boy out of the refrigerator and sits down at the table.
Ahab speaks, “Let me tell you boy what the meaning of life is: You are young, like twenty-five or something. First you get a bitch pregnant. Then get her to move to the projects. Then secretly live with her. Then start dealing crack. You can make like fifty-five-thousand a year dealing crack in the projects. But you gotta make sure you don’t get disrespected by no mother fuckers. You gotta make sure you get some good guns, you know what I’m saying. When I was your age I fucking owned Briar Hill, I mother fucking owned that bitch. I had all the mother fuckers getting crack from me. I was making good money. Now once you get the money, you can all the bitches you want from the projects. I mean think about, you have tons of cracked out bitches, and men with cracked out bitches. The bitches will fuck for crack no fucking problem. And the men will pimp their bitches out for crack. And some will pimp their kids out for crack. Your mom told me you never took anyone’s virginity. This is your chance. Only crack dealers get to fuck the fifteen and sixteen year old bitches. You think you gonna get to get to fuck any fifteen year old bitches being a fucking a pizza boy. Pizza boys don’t fuck fifteen year olds. With the money you can get a Cadillac with some rims and speakers. And the bitches be all over you. And you living for free because you in the projects. And you let that bitch with your baby clean the house. You will be king of the projects, you know.”
“Didn’t you end up in prison like three times for dealing crack, and got shot twice.”
“Yeah, but there are sacrifices that have to be made.”
“For fifty-five-thousand a year?”
“Well, it does sound better than mom’s version of the meaning of life.”
“Don’t listen to your mother, she’s high on oxies.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Hey mother fucker, you want your ass kicked. Cuz I’ll kick your ass.”
“Go ahead bitch.”
Ahab gets up and picks me, dangles me upside, and swings me into the wall. For some reason we find a reason for him to do this every time I come over. It brings me back to childhood or something.
My mother, Ahab, and I are all laughing.
I ask my mother, “Where’s Chuck?”
Chuck is my youngest brother, I think he is nineteen. Something is wrong with him.
We do know what.
He sits in room all day playing the guitar.
He has mastered Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn and Jimmy Page, and he hates Eric Clapton.
My mother responds, “He’s in his bedroom.”
I go into his bedroom.
Chuck is sitting there playing Pride and Joy by Stevie Ray Vaughn.
He does not stop playing when I enter. I sit on the bed.
He keeps playing.
Chuck doesn’t even look up.
His eyes are closed.
There is a little bit of slobber running out of the corner of his lip.
He finishes the song and looks up.
He sees me there.
Chuck does not speak.
Chuck barely ever speaks.
I say, “That sounded really good.”
Chuck says, “Thank you.”
Then Chuck improvises a blues solo with his eyes closed slobbering.
I stare into space.
Then he stops again and says, “Carol’s dead.”
“Yup.”
Then he plays the solo to Stairway to Heaven.
Then Chuck says, “I need to get a job.”
“You should get a job at a music shop.”
“Yeah, but then I will have to talk to little bastard rich kids whose parents bought them Gibson Les Pauls for Christmas. And they want to learn the new NickleFuck song. And I will want to grab their little twelve-year-old heads and ripped them off. And jam their two-thousand dollar guitara up their fucking asses. It will be horrible.”
“Work is horrible Chuck.”
“All work.”
“Yes, all work.”
“Not if your band, work is fun.”
“Chuck, you live in Girard in a trailer. You aren’t famous. You would be in a band that played at local bars. You would make like fifty dollars a month.”
“What if I went to New York City.”
“I thought you said you didn’t like NickleFuck.”
“You’re right.”
“I’m going to go get mom to give me an oxie.”
Chuck leaves the room.
I pick up the guitar and play the chord A minor.
Then C.
Then G.
Then E minor.
Fade to Black
*
Before I show what emails I woke up to this morning.
I have to tell you about my book.
I got one book published on a small POD press. For those of you not in the literary world, POD means print on demand.
Which means that the book is basically printed in a high tech Kinko’s printer. The books fall apart easily and reviewers, bookstores, etc find them disgusting to the nature of literature.
I’ve sold twenty-eight copies through Amazon.com.
In two years.
But I do have like seven good reviews on the internet and in underground magazines.
But the world of TIME and Newsweek do not care about my book.
My book’s name is The Ugly Mongrel.
It is about my mother.
No one cared that I knew that I got the book published except for Tasha.
Everyone accused me of printing it myself at Kinko’s. They would say, “How much did you pay to get this printed?”
I would say, “I didn’t, someone published it.”
They never responded to that sentence, so I think they didn’t believe me.
Then they would ask what it was about, and I would say my mother. Then no one I know would read it, because everyone hates my mother.
There are people in New York City, Paris, London, Denver, Los Angelos, and several parts of Canada that are very interested in my mother though.
They are obsessed with my mother.
People email me constantly asking for short stories and poems about my mother.
I do not understand it.
I like to write, and my mother’s story sounded interesting, so I wrote about her.
People take it very seriously though.
They think she is sad and pathetic and a symbol of America’s oppression of the lower classes.
Well, to go on with this memoir.
Everyday when I wake up I check my email.
I go to the email and click mail on Yahoo.
This morning I have eight emails.
I will copy and paste them onto word so you can look at them.
This is from one of the top two book companies concerning my book. This guy writes all the fucking time.
Dear, Rocky
I love your book. I think it is masterpiece. Your mother is inspiring. But you already know that. What I want to talk to you about is you killing yourself. If you kill yourself then I will publish your book at Harper Collins. I will pay 20,000 dollars for it. You will be dead, so you won’t get it. But you can make a will, so it goes to someone you like. See, you being alive is bad. Your book is good, but it is weird and different. People don’t like weird and different living writers. Like you say very Marxist things in your writings, and if you are alive that is dangerous. But if you’re dead, then it is okay. Because the book can’t hurt anybody. We can brush it off as you being a mad man, screaming out of his mind. And we can analyze it and talk about it like it is a fossil. But if you are still alive, that means in some way the book is still alive. We have to consider the implications of what it means in today’s era. And you will be talking about it in interviews. And maybe write some more books of the same nature. We cannot have that. We cannot give a crazy loon saying the word “class” any power in society. We both know that, you wouldn’t have written the book the way you did unless you knew that. We have a republican president you know. Things need to be about family now. Even though things have never been about family in this country, that is what sales now. We are conscious that your book will sell. There is a lot of demand for pissed off working class writing. We know that from Bukowski selling so much. But we think the book would sell more, we could do better publicity, and make you more a mythos if you kill yourself.
Do you understand Rocky? Am I getting through to you. If you want your weird and different book to reach the masses it would be if you were dead. Imagine the back jacket, “Underground legend Rocky kills himself because his opus never reached the masses.”
Isn’t that beautiful Rocky?
People would review in huge newspapers because they would think, “Wow, he was such pained human being he killed himself. I need to give him a good review.”
It would work like that. They wouldn’t even read the book if you killed yourself. They would just give you great reviews based on that fact alone.
Think about it.

Your friend,
Preston Hughes.
This is my next email, from the guy who is going to publish my next POD book.

Dear, Rocky
I bought 700 ISBNs today. I want to publish sixty of your books next year. Do you understand.
Your mother is very important to me.
Write about your mother.
I want to rape your dog, do you have a dog.
Tim Jones.
This email is from a fan.
Dear, Rocky
Can I get your book in France. I live in France and want to read your book. I read about in some magazine. Your mother sounds interesting.
Jean
This is from someone I just submitted a book to a week ago.
Dear, Rocky
We read your book and found it good but thin. We liked it very much. But for a first novel it is too thin. If you write a longer novel and it is good as the stuff we just read, we will totally do it.
Sincerely,
Lisa Armstrong
She was talking about a book I wrote that I think is better than the book about my mother. But it is only 80 pages long in Microsoft word. I understand that it is too short. People like to hold thick books in their hands. They like thick steaks and dicks and books. That is life.
This is from my friend in New York City.
Dear, Rocky
I have nowhere to go.
People think if they get a nice couch and microwave and a flat screen television. And some Dave Eggers books. Maybe some black rimmed glasses. Or a car that is red and shiny. Or a gun.
Things will be good.
That’s not true.
You sit on the couch. That’s all.
A lot of people have guns and they never shoot who they wanna shoot with them. Man is moving nowhere.
I live in an abyss of stupidity.
I want to be spanked for these thoughts.
I should be.
I should be taken out and shot.
Then things would be good.
Time would pass and I wouldn’t have to worry if I left my stove on.
Or if I will have to fart when I’m out on a date.
People would still suffer, but I would be dead. And I wouldn’t have to cause or think about any of it.
I’m still here.
Tomorrow I will write a short story about an alien that eats children’s brains.
Your friend,
Somebody
There are some more emails, but they are boring.
*
Tasha is a communist.
She has built a stripper army.
They aren’t exactly communist.
The communists don’t even know they exist. Nobody does.
The government has been so busy looking for Arab terrorists they have stopped considering their population a threat to national security.
The stripper army’s philosophy comes from books by Marx, Engels, Trotsky, Lenin, Sartre, De Beauvoir, Che Guevera biographies, Abbie Hoffman, and Charles Dickens.
Every Thursday about ten dancers come to my house and sit in my living room. Tasha gives a speech and they all listen.
It’s Thursday.
I’m sitting in the living room.
All the furniture is from thrift stores and discount outlets, or just given to us. There are pictures of Lenin and Trotsky on the wall.
There is a fourteen-inch television, a computer, and couches.
Our house is located in Youngtown. It is a two-story house we rent for four hundred dollars a month. I’m serious. It is possible to rent a house for 400 dollars a month in Youngstown. We live here with two other dancers named Charm and Liza.
I will get to those women later.
The house has not been remodeled since the fifties. It looks like hell. There are holes in the carpet. The sink is a dirty red color. The toilet has to be flushed with a dangling chain, etc. It is home though. It is where we live and it supplies heat.
It is Thursday night and the women are running around getting ready for the mini-rally about to take place in the living room.
Chips and beer are served.
There are two new girls tonight and it is very exciting.
We all sit in the living room.
The women sit around waiting in anticipation for what Tasha has to say.
I feel I should mention the general state of the females, including Tasha.
The women are not indie girls or scenesters or punks. They are very regular people, well in terms of what it means to be regular when you grew in trailer parks and projects and small apartments. Never having much food or things, being involved in acts of incest before the age of ten. Being pimped out by their parents. Stealing bread to survive. Being beat by their fathers then their boyfriends. Spending time in prison. I mean for living in those types of circumstances they are normal.
They aren’t intellectuals. They never saw the hammer and sickle before Tasha showed it to them. They didn’t know what capitalism was or what communism was before Tasha showed them.
But most so-called intellectuals really don’t know what those things mean either. It is the state of American education.
Teach the children about American wars, teach the children about American politics. Tell them it is beautiful. And no matter what, and I mean no matter what never put anything into context.
It is sad.
Since the women don’t know who these heroes of political thought are, and really don’t have the time or patience to learn what the theories are.
Tasha basically shows them where to direct their anger.
What saddened Tasha the most, which drove her to these actions is seeing young women direct their anger at their friends, at their children, at their lovers.
You will see what I mean.
Here is Tasha’s speech, “Now listen you mother fuckers! We must stop fighting amongst ourselves. We must recognize who the evil fucks are who have done this to ourselves. It is not our parents like the bourgeoisie liberal psychologists want us to believe. But it is our own government, our economic system that has caused this anger in us. Poverty does the same thing to everyone, it causes the same motivations. The same hate in everyone. It does matter if you are black, white, or Mexican. Poverty causes people to be mean, to steal, to be violent, to treat their children like shit, to treat the people they love like shit. To treat their fellow man like shit. We are pitted against it other since birth, to fight for attention and toys. Then we grow and are fighting for minimum wage, $5.15 an hour. The capitalists have us fighting for $5.15. For one five-dollar bill, a dime, and one nickel! They treat us like expendable objects! How are we supposed to be nice to our fellow citizens if we live every day fighting like rabid animals for one five dollar bill, one dime, and one nickel. How can we be anything but angry when our cars won’t work for a week straight, when our clothes washers are broke, when our sinks are spitting out brown shit water! When we get sick and we need to go to the doctor, and we can’t because we have no health care. And at the same time we can’t take off work because they will fire us if we do! How we are suppose to be happy when we can’t afford to take even one week off a year! How we are suppose to be anything but angry when our managers tell us to clean a shitter for one five dollar bill, one dime, and one nickel. We are dancers now. But when our knees finally give out, and our bellies are lined with stretch marks from having babies. What are we going to do then! Be servers making 12,000 dollars a year! Be secretaries making 12,000 dollars a year! Be hairdressers making 20,000 dollars a fucking year! And they tell us if we save our money we can get ahead and leave our class to one the above ours. What fucking money are we suppose to save! What money, where is this money. Where is this time to go to school when the kids to be fed and watched. But we know the truth behind. We know other women and men, our own relatives who have taken the government’s grants and loans. What did they do, they betrayed us. They left us here to die! State colleges aren’t institutions of learning; they are institutions where the rich train us to become like them. But we all know many that went to the state colleges with loans and grants and couldn’t find a job afterwards, their jobs were outsourced before they even graduated. And if they did find a job, we all know what happens then. They become blind to the horror of the lower classes. That we don’t exist. That we are just lab rats for them to write sociological papers on. But we do exist. And we aren’t fucking lab rats! We are humans too. And that’s why we are here tonight. To admit to ourselves and to each other that we are humans. That even though we of different races, some of the people here are Mexican, some black, and some white. That it is not race that makes us who we are. But what are circumstances. And we all have the same circumstances. Therefore we are the same kind of people. We are of the same race, the race that has been getting shit on since the day they were born!”
The dancers clapped.
I clapped.
The women in the room are very angry.
They are angry to the point of being psychotic.
Tasha goes on after the claps have died down, “Women started the French and Russian Revolution. A revolution will not win unless it involves the women. We as women must become conscious of shitty state in this society. Look at what media wants, they want to be housewives again! Nothing disgusts me more than the word ‘housewife.’ That word is an abomination! We become conscious of the fact, that we are people too. And that in no way, are we second-class citizens. That any man or any woman has the right to tell us what to do. That we as humans can make our own choices. And that no one can order another human around, they can suggest it. But not order it. We must take charge and tell all the mother fuckers of the world, that we will be put down. We need to start with our men. We cannot give men money that are in prison for beating us. That is fucking stupid! I am tired of seeing bitches give money to men, that are in fucking prison for beating them! You are stupid, you need that fucking money! Grow the fuck up girls!
This revolution will not be worth anything, unless we stop following duties that have roots in a miserable past, and start behaving like we living in 2005. Also what about our men. Our men are drug dealers, our men are factory workers, pizza boys, gas station clerks, in prison. Our men are angry also. And there is a reason they are violent and angry. Because they are pitted against each other, just like us. We must recognize, that we are not alone. That our suffering is individual, that we can be understood. That the white man’s suffering is the same as the poor black woman’s suffering. That the root of the suffering lies in circumstances not color or gender that the suffering comes from the outside in. Not the inside out.”
The women clap again.
Two of the women look kind of embarrassed because they give money to men in prison for beating them.
Tasha sits down.
We all eat chips, drink beer, and order a pizza.
*
I’m the strip joint where Tasha works.
She is naked somewhere.
I scan the room looking for her.
I see her.
She is on the stage.
I see her pussy.
It is beautiful.
Her pussy is fantastic.
From that pussy comes pee.
It does give life.
She kills all possible life that could come forth from that pussy.
Tasha has had like four fetuses sucked out of her.
She has never cared about it.
In some strange way she kind of enjoys killing the babies.
She says giggling all the time, “Rocky, if I could I would take my dead fetus and throw it at the abortion protesters.”
The bar is non-alcoholic because the ladies are nude.
So I drink diet soda.
Cherry sits next to me.
Something is wrong with Cherry.
She has been on crack for like three years now.
Her skin tone looks like hell.
She falls down all the time.
It is sad and somewhat horrible.
One time Tasha went downstairs and saw her naked on the floor masturbating while eating a piece of pizza.
Cherry is a great person.
Cherry says, “Last night I had a dream. God was in it.”
“What did God look like?”
“God was this horse thing with Stevie Ray Vaughn and Jimi Hendrix heads on it. It had two arms holding a guitar. It didn’t talk. It played the guitar and I understood.”
“Are you serious?” I say.
“Yes, I’m very serious. This is so serious I might kill you.”
“Oh, go ahead.”
“Well, I said to God, ‘God, what should I do? Keep my baby and love it. Or sell it for oxies to these strange British people who want it?’”
“What did God say?”
“He said sell the baby.”
“Wow, that’s a good God. Hmm, there are British people trying to buy your baby?”
“Yeah. These two British people saw me in a super market and asked me to buy it. They said the dollar was so low they could make a killing buying poor third world American babies.”
“Fucking shit, I wish somebody would buy me and bring me to England.”
“Me too. I want to fuck Colin Farrel,” says Cherry.
“So did you sell your baby?”
“Yeah, I made like five thousand on it.”
“You gotta do what you can.”
“You got that right.”
*
I’m in the bathroom.
I’m staring to the mirror.
I have a face.
I look at my teeth in the mirror.
I have a gap between to my upper front teeth.
There’s a brown dot on one of the front teeth.
It is staring at me.
Telling me I should go to the dentist.
But I look closer.
It is an abyss.
The brown dot is Youngstown.
I’m sinking into it.
There is snow and slush and cigarette butts.
Shotguns and garbage cans.
Rust, vomit, and the look of angry faces.
This cavity will take twenty-five dollars to fix.
The woman said, “Show up with $25 and we will admit you.” Basically saying, “We know you aren’t going to pay your bill, no one does.”
I’ll go someday when I care.
Perhaps the tooth will fall out.
I’ll get a grill with fake diamonds.
I will be sweet.
The bitches will want to suck my dick.
But that won’t happen.
There just won’t be a tooth there.
There will just be an ugly human missing a tooth.
Maybe I should go somewhere and die.
*
I go to Charm’s room in the house.
She is sitting on the bed.
Huddled in a ball.
Crying.
I sit next to her.
Charm is kind of doomed.
She grew up in the West Gate Projects.
Raped by her step dad.
Watched her dad get shot in the parking lot at the mini-mart outside the projects where she lived.
Kicked out her house at age twelve.
To become a whore.
Lived with a bunch of runaway kids.
Sucking dick for food and drugs.
Met a guy in the juvenile jail.
He beat her for years.
She was a whore for anybody with the money.
And I mean anybody.
The men the other girls wouldn’t fuck, she would.
She accumulated some venereal diseases.
They are cured now.
She has had like five to seven abortions.
Tasha let her live in the house because she had no other place to go.
She gets SSI now.
She never leaves the house.
Charm sits in her room, usually huddled in a little ball.
She smokes weed and just stares.
She has little television that she watches soup operas on, court shows, CSI, and LOST.
I’m in here to check on her.
“So Charm how are you doing today?”
“I’m okay.”
“Is there anything you want to do today.”
“Would you drive me to Mosquito Lake. I want to look at the stars.”
“Yeah, that sounds good.”
I help Charm put her clothes on.
I get her pants and sweater.
She slowly puts them on.
Her face never changes.
It just looks frightened and sad.
We go outside and get the car.
We drive along.
It takes around a half an hour to get there.
Charm puts in a rap CD and listens and stares out the window.
She doesn’t speak.
She just stares out the window.
We go through Vienna and Fowler and then Johnston.
She looks around at Johnston and says, “This place looks quiet.”
“It’s more boring.”
“Yeah.”
We arrive at the lake.
She gets out the car and walks around.
There are some clouds in the sky, but not many.
We sit and just look at the moon whitening the water.
Charm says, “Ever go swimming in there?”
“Yeah, once when I was twelve. It gave me spinal meningitis, almost fucking killed me.”
“Damn, you almost died.”
“Yeah, had a temperature of 106. Was stuck in the hospital for a week.”
“Well, you still here.”
“Yeah. When I was about fourteen my dad brought me out fishing on the lake on a small boat. We caught some fish. I remember poking their eyes. I remember their eyes being really slimy and gross. But when your fourteen slimy and gross are awesome.”
“I like to go swimming.”
“So do I.”
“I hear they gonna open up the Youngstown pool this year, did you hear that?” Says Charm.
“Yeah, I heard that. Tasha’s mom has one of those three foot pools we can swimming in the summer. When we go, you’ll go with us.”
“Oh, that sounds good.”
We sit there for about another ten minutes.
Then we drive back.
Charm doesn’t speak all the way back.
She almost smiles for a little bit.
I like the lake too.
It is quiet.
The moon can be seen.
The lake has a soft gentle sound.
The night is always beautiful at that lake.
The lake is green and ugly during the day.
But at night, it is peaceful.
It says, “Look, if the water can survive. You can.”
That’s nonsense.
But what the fuck, who needs to make sense these days.
*
Sitting at home reading the paper.
I notice a picture of my ex-fiancé with the small headline above it, “Woman Rapes Baby.”
The article said this, “A young woman named Cassandra Stevens put peanut butter on her vagina then placed her vagina onto her one-year-old baby’s mouth. The baby then licked the peanut butter off her mother’s vagina.
Cassandra Stevens was discovered during this hideous act by her husband. Her husband Bob Stevens called the police.”
I always knew that bitch was sick.
One day we were at Diary Queen on a hot summer day. And there was this eight-year-old girl and she said to me, “Man, that bitch is hot.”
Then I kept reading the paper. Which is a horrible thing to do with one’s time.
There was an article about Bush’s State of The Union Address it said, “Bush is our great leader. Without Bush, we will all die. Terrorists will fuck out mothers and daughters. They will turn all the men into bitches. All death all the time. There will be no Amercan Way Of Life. Only American Way Of Death. Bush is our Supreme Lord. The Democrats are all bitches. All humans are bitches except for Republicans who are Gods of the earth. Who own the earth. Republicans are an all loving, all giving party. We owe our lives to capitalism. Capitalism has given us microwaves and Ford cars. Capitalism loves us. Bush loves us. We are all bitches. Bush’s love is not unconditional though. He needs your support, or he will not love you. Bush wants you to believe in God and family and homophobia and xenophobia and phobias that you’ve never heard of, he wants you to believe in those too. Believe or be shot in the street like a dog. Or have your house blown by a missile shot from Lake Erie.”
That was a strange article I think.
There are more articles, mostly about lawyers who have their husbands killed.
Mobsters building highways.
Cocaine dealers doing drive-bys.
How there is gay propaganda all over the television.
That there is a liberal media at all.
That there is God and He loves you.
That certain churches are doing really stupid events.
That some white kid shot two other white kids over a pound of weed.
That some black kid shot two other black kids over a pound of weed.
That some Mexican kid shot two other Mexican kids over a pound of weed.
That they closed a strip joint because a coke dealer paid off the mayor because the coke dealer in that strip joint was dealing without his permission.
That some guy stabbed his wife and child then lit the house on fire.
How they are going to pave the richest people’s streets first, and it is only fair because they have the biggest televisions.
Our congressman did nothing but sit in his office and eat potato chips and watch soap operas.
They found the biggest indoor weed crop in America’s history in downtown Youngstown.
Our area’s top lawyer swindled thousands from poor people.
A back doctor raped four of his patients.
A man in a trailer park cuts his penis off to become a woman. It doesn’t go right and he dies. They find over twenty dead animals in the trailer.
A drug dealer executes two crack heads for not paying up. Even though they only owed six bucks a piece.
Some more stuff about how God is awesome and Bush rocks.
And they found a dead crack head in an abandoned house and they don’t who the fuck it is.
That’s the news and heard it here first.
*
I go this place, it will remain nameless.
At this place a man can pay $150 to get a shower and a hand job.
You might be thinking this is an Asian Spa, but it isn’t. There are American girls here. The only place like it in the area.
I get to sent to a room by a woman.
It is a small room with a massage bed.
I take off my clothes and wrap myself in a white towel.
I sit there on the bed.
There’s a clock, I have an hour.
This is my life.
Waiting for hand jobs on a long thing bed.
This is the world.
This is what the world of humans, animals, and plants can give a human for $150.
I deserve this.
I’m not dead.
Haven’t blown my brains out.
Or gone to prison.
I show up for time at work.
I don’t shoot people.
Or steal from old people.
Don’t run credit card scams.
Haven’t designed any computer viruses.
I deserve this.
I need this.
If I don’t get this shower and hand-job I might blow my fucking brains out.
Then I will dead.
Shit.
But I saved up the $150 and I’m going to get a lovely girl to be my friend for an hour.
I have Tasha.
But we are more like friends.
We talk a lot.
We have things in common.
We found that out through talking.
I will not have to talk with this woman.
This woman does not care what my favorite color is.
She doesn’t care about my mother’s neurosis.
How my father is a dumb angry automaton.
She will not ask those things.
I sit here and wait.
Eventually the door opens.
The girl is about five five and skinny with brown hair.
She looks at me and I look at her and realize, it’s my sister Tianna!
I’m like, “Fuck, Tianna, what are you doing here?”
“I’m working dick fuck.”
“Oh.”
We stare for a second.
Then she is like, “All the other girls are busy… I’ll give you a hand-job but I’m not fucking you.”
“That’s fine. I still want the shower and everything.”
She looks at me and laughs.
Tianna leads me to the shower room.
She takes my towel off.
My flaccid dick is out in the open.
She laughs and says, “Look at your little peepee.”
“Shut up.” I say real childlike.
Then she has me stand there and she shoots hot water on me while laughing at my flaccid penis.
I ask, “Have you seen dad lately?”
“Yeah, last week I drove over to get some money. He was sitting there yelling at the television. He kept saying that we are going to run out of oil and that there will be violence and death and all kinds of weird shit.”
“Yeah, that’s dad. Did he give you any money?”
“Yeah, he gave me a twenty. I wanted forty, but that’s all he had.”
“I saw mom the other day. She was high off of oxies saying dumb shit like always.”
“Yeah, that’s mom,” says Tianna.
Tianna finishes my shower.
She dries me off.
She says, “I feel like a retard drying you off.”
Tianna hands me the towel and I finish what’s left.
We go back to the room where the massage table bed thingy is.
She lays me down on the bed and asks, “So you want a massage asshole, or should I just get to the point?”
“No, my back is fucking killing me. And I paid good money for this twat face.”
“All right, all right.”
She takes off her clothes.
Revealing a small shaved pussy.
Small pretty tits.
Long soft legs.
And a belly lined with the stretch marks of pregnancy.
That reminds me to ask how her kids are, but then I remembered they were taken away because she left them with a baby sitter and didn’t come back for a week. And when she got back they were in the custody of the United States government.
I lay on my back.
She gets on top of my back.
I can feel her soft pussy on my lower back.
She massages my shoulders.
Then flips me over.
And massages my arms and legs.
Then begins the sexual activity.
I pull her on top of me and kiss her.
She opens her mouth.
Usually the ladies keep their mouths closed.
But I know my sister and knew she would open her mouth.
We kiss and she lays on me.
She looks pretty in the little room.
Not like an angel or anything.
Just nice and soft.
I like it.
I grab her small ass and squeeze.
It is nice, round and firm.
I whisper to Tianna, “I love you.”
And she whispers back, “I love you too.”
Then she goes down and jacks me off.
I blow a huge load.
I make a horrible amount of noise while it squirts out of my dick.
My sister Tianna puts her hand in it and then rubs it all over my face.
I say, “I’m gonna kick your ass.”
She laughs.
I laugh.
Life is good.
We put on our clothes.
And she says, “It was just like when we were little remember?”
“Yeah, it was. If you ever want to do this for free. You know where I live. You know Tasha don’t give a fuck.”
“Maybe,” she says smiling.
Then I leave.
Less than two minutes down the road I forget about the whole event and start thinking about stupid shit that makes me want to ram my car into a telephone pole.
*
They executed Flip four months ago.
They injected him.
Then he died.
I didn’t know Flip.
Flip executed three men.
He made them get on their knees and he shot each one in the back of the head.
It can be assumed Flip killed more than those three men though.
Flip had already gone to prison for three years for shooting another man.
They just caught him this time.
The news said that Flip rejected his last meal.
A woman I work with at the pizza shop that works at the prison said he was so violent that he was permanently locked up far away from the other prisoners.
His lawyer on the news said he was very intelligent and had cold dead indifferent eyes. That you knew he would kill you if you were left alone with him.
They showed his picture on the news.
He was a strong looking young black man.
No ugly or attractive. Just a normal looking man.
But his eyes were angry.
Cold and indifferent.
He was fierce and kind of creepy looking.
Flip had grown up in the Youngstown projects like Charm.
He had spent his whole life in those projects.
He grew up to become a drug dealer.
He grew up to live by the gun.
I asked Charm if she knew Flip she said, “Yeah, when I was young. When I didn’t have no home. Flip didn’t didn’t have no home either. He was angry, I remember that. He would break shit all the time. And he was real crazy.”
And that’s all she said.
I think about Flip a lot driving around delivering pizzas.
I see his face.
He was twenty-five like me when he shot those guys.
He came from this area too.
But he came from the projects.
Like Charm who sits huddled in bed.
I’m an existentialist so I don’t believe genetics cause people to kill people.
So I have to accept that this world, this country, this city made it possible and easy to shoot three men in the back of the head.
A mixture of intense anger and dehumanization.
That Flip could look down at another human and just shoot.
That it didn’t matter.
Drug dealers and mobsters do kill people.
But not like that.
Criminals need to spread fear to gain respect. It is part of the game.
So they do drive-bys and car bombings.
But I’ve never heard of a drug-dealer shooting another person in the back of the head with such little remorse.
To shoot the three men at once he knew he was going to get caught.
He was conscious that he never get away with that.
He couldn’t get away with shooting one man and not killing him. How could he get away with three executions.
Flip wanted to be caught.
He wanted the police to show up with their guns.
Guns just like his.
And take him.
And one day kill him.
He didn’t want to be killed like the men he killed.
He just wanted to be killed.
He had grown up with punishment.
With severe endless pain.
He had grown to love suffering.
Suffering had become his God.
He prayed, worshiped, and brought gifts to his God of suffering.
Flip loved suffering.
He didn’t want to be executed nice and easy like he killed those three men.
He wanted a long insufferable time between the announcement of his death. And his execution.
He wanted to dwell like a madman on his death.
Flip wanted to sit in his cell and savor every morsel of his coming death.
Flip is inside all the people of Youngstown and the surroundings.
This want for blood.
For violence.
For unbearable long-suffering we have been taught to love and cherish.
All Flip was, was a gross exhibition of what the people of this area are like in on the inside.
But we all on Flip’s side of the spectrum of hate, despair, and the want bloody violence.
*
I walk into my dad’s apartment.
He is sitting on a lazy-boy chair.
There is a bottle of Vio and a Pabst on the end table beside him.
He is watching the news.
His face doesn’t change when I come into the room and sit on his couch.
He doesn’t speak.
I sit there for a long time.
He still doesn’t speak.
He never talks.
Just silence.
After awhile.
He looks at me and says, “I worked in the steel mill for twenty-four years. You know that you son of a bitch!”
“Yeah, you fucking tell me every time I come over.”
“I started working in the steel mill when I was eighteen-years-old. Look at you, your twenty-five and you’re a fucking pizza boy.”
“There’s no fucking steel mill to work at scumfuck.”
“Shut up! I worked in the steel mill for twenty-four fucking years. I went there five days a week for twenty-four fucking years and then they close the mill! They closed it! I was suppose to fucking retire from there. I was fucking suppose to work there for another six fucking years! But no! Americans want to buy foreign steel! Mother fuckers!”
“Does your ex-junkie third wife still haunt the bathroom?”
“Yeah that fucking bitch. First she fucking dies in there. Then she haunts the son of a bitch. My toothpaste keeps disappearing. I find it jammed deep in the shitter. So I have to stick my hand in the shitter with shit in it and dig the fucking toothpaste out. Fucking crazy bitch even tortures me in death.”
“Ever think about getting a hobbie?”
“What the fuck you say? I watch Nascar every Sunday. Every Sunday I sit here and eat chips and watch Nascar. You gotta fucking problem with that?”
“You fall asleep by the end of every race. I bet you don’t even know who won last Sunday.”
“Mother fucker, I know who won!”
“Who tardfuck?”
“Shut up!”
“You have an attitude problem.”
“My attitude is fine you son of a bitch!”
“You are deranged. You should get help or something?”
“I will get drunk,” says my dad.
“Let’s just not talk.”
“That sounds fucking good.”
We sit in silence.
*
In my house on the Southside.
I’m sitting on the floor reading a book.
I hear screaming from the cellar.
It is Tasha.
I run down into the basement.
She is kicking the washing machine.
Throwing broken microwaves at it.
Punching it.
Calling the washing machine a son of a bitch.
I say, “What’s wrong?”
“Open the fucking door!”
I walk over to the washing machine and open the door. There is water, lots of water.
Too much.
“Its broke?”
“What the fuck does it look like?”
She continues to kick the washing machine.
And throwing my shit at it.
We just bought an used one about two months ago.
Before that we didn’t have a washing machine for six months. We had to drive down to the laundry mat to wash the clothes.
When shit breaks, and it always does.
She flips out.
I don’t think she has ever owned anything new. Or could afford to fix anything immediately.
She grew up with hand-me-down clothes.
With a used bicycle.
Read books bought from thrift stores.
Sometimes she get nice stuff from discount clothes.
But she has never had a car that was more than $800, or a new stove, or microwave, nothing.
Just used junky shit.
Tasha is tired of it.
Tasha is tired of junky shit.
I’m tired of it too.
She doesn’t calm down for two days.
She eats pissed, ties her shoes pissed, chews bubble pissed, she is just pissed.
Eventually she forgets about it.
When the car broke she is laid in the driveway and cried for an hour.
I wish I could buy her something new. But I don’t have the faintest clue how one goes about getting the money to do that.
Tasha makes good money now dancing and doing privates every Sunday. Which adds up to about $26,000 a year. Which ain’t bad. That gets new clothes bought from places like Wal Mart and Target. But not enough to get new shit.
*
I work with a schizophrenic named Jeff.
Here are incidents at work: During all of these events I am standing in the driver’s area. Where drivers stand and do nothing. Sometimes we fold boxes.
Jeff is telling the in-stores who make $5.15 an hour that he makes $24,000 a year.
I say, “I only make $12,000.”
Jeff says, “Dude, that’s because you don’t hustle. You gotta talk them into tipping you. You gotta tell them that those lines on the credit card are for the tip and shit.”
I stare.
The in-stores stare.
Later on in the day Jeff tells me he won a thousand dollars on horse races last night. I asked him how he bet. He could not answer.
The only way to be on a horse in Youngstown is by internet.
So I asked him if he had the internet. He said no.
I don’t even think horses race in the middle of winter.
Another day he told me that he was going to buy a racehorse with his tips, and that he would make $50,000 a year with it. I’m serious. I googled, “buy race horse,” it said that it costs $8,000 to $12,000 for a race horse. And that it is around fifty thousand for training and upkeep on the animal.
He makes $12,000 a year.
Jeff also randomly tells me he is going to get brand new trucks for like $5,000. Next week he has no truck.
He is insane.
He is also terrified of black people. Not like a normal racist, like, “Damn niggers blah blah stupidity.” But something like, he is just terrified, he is convinced that all black people are trying to steal his pizzas out of his car and want to kill him.
I can only imagine he grew up with dumb money grubbing racist parents.
What is strange to me, or new.
Is that usually schizophrenics believe they are God or bad painters. Schizophrenics love to be bad painters. They liked to say the phrase about themselves, “Genius touched with madness.”
But Jeff is different.
Jeff is Godless and doesn’t even know who Picasso is.
His God is capitalism.
But he is poor.
He is poor with delusions of grandeur.
Which is just ugly.
Jeff also has a girlfriend he does not allow to leave the house. She must sit there in the house all day and night. She is not allowed to leave.
He feeds her only old pizzas that were mess ups.
In a liberal daydream people would run to the girl’s help and try to rescue her from this insane man.
But down here, beneath the world of media and literature and political influence we just say, “If a bitch would take that shit, she’s probably a fucking asshole anyway.”
*
I’m outside with Frankie one day.
A black guy in his late twenties.
He has told me he’s a gang member and works there because it looks good for his parole.
He carries a blue bandana around with him.
One of his front teeth is broke.
I’m sitting in his car smoking outside the pizza shop.
Frankie says, “What is wrong with that bitch Megan. She is always on our shit. About our fucking name tags and hats and all kinds of shit. She ain’t even a manager.”
“She says she is a trainer or something.”
“I don’t know what the fuck she is, but if she don’t stop with this shit. I’m gonna get a hood-rat up here to fuck her up.”
I laugh.
“Another thing, she don’t know how to talk black. There’s black up here, this pizza shop is on the border of Youngstown. She needs to learn how to talk to black people.”
“You’re right about that.”
“No shit. I was thinking about, I think the difference between the black attitude and the white attitude in this area is this. A person with a black attitude knows that they are getting fucked and they will always get fucked. A person with the white attitude knows they are getting fucked too, but they think someday with some magic fairy shit they will what is coming to them. They whites is wrong, there ain’t nothing coming but another piece of shit day. And you don’t need to be a certain color to have this attitude, you can be black and have the white attitude, and be white and have the black attitude. That bitch Megan, she is all white all the mother fucking time.”
“You got that right.”
Both of us sit in the car smoking knowing nothing is going to come but another ugly piece of shit day.
*
I love the internet.
I wake up everyday and stare at that box.
There are links.
I click them.
Check my email.
Read the lit blogs.
Then look at porn.
Then google jelly fish.
It is beautiful.
*
I’m in a bookstore.
Walking around looking at books I don’t wanna read.
It is painful.
There are books everywhere and I don’t want to read them.
They are all bad.
Horrible trite monsters eating at people’s brains.
I see a girl.
She is like eighteen with long brown hair.
Kind of pretty, in some weird way.
She is looking at comic books.
I don’t know anything about comic books.
I stare at her.
I feel heartbroken.
Like I soiled my pants.
I want to talk to her.
About what though?
I don’t want to talk.
I just want to see her naked.
That is all.
Just fuck her without speaking.
But no.
I have to talk to get fucked.
There is nothing around me.
Just dead lifeless paperbacks.
There is a CD section near by with bad boring music.
She is looking at comics.
If I could.
I would cry.
I don’t know if there is any life left in me.
Any desire to care anymore.
What does it matter when you live in a country where truth is bought and sold like cooking products or hair styling gel.
Nothing matters here.
We don’t matter.
Why should I care?
Why should I even speak.
If a major corporation wanted to cheeseburgers the new God, they could. They could buy up enough commercial time and make everyone believe in the cheeseburger God.
They do anyway.
We all believe in cheeseburger Gods.
*
My mother and Ahab died two days ago.
In their trailer park was a meth lab.
It blew up.
And took the whole trailer park with it.
I do not feel sad.
I’m sitting in my bedroom.
Charm comes in.
Charm says, “Your mom and Ahab died.”
“Yes.”
Charm sits down beside me.
She holds out a candy bar.
I take it.
I eat the candy sorrowfully.
Charm says, “The funeral is in an hour, we need to go.”
I put my shoes and we leave.
Tasha, Charm, and I all ride together in Tasha’s hoopty.
My mother and Ahab are being buried on Belmont in the same cemetery as Carol, the one across from the discount clothing store.
There are a lot of my mom’s past johns there.
They miss my mother in some strange way.
Ahab’s family is there.
There are a lot of people on oxies.
Some are stoned.
I think Tasha took six valiums today.
She stares like a bewildered reptile at the universe.
Charm is looking at her feet, she has big women feet.
My father is there, for some reason he goes up and speaks.
“That woman, was something else. She couldn’t cook. She couldn’t clean. But she worked hard for the money. The cops used to say, she was the hardest working damn lot lizard they ever seen. That’s all. Also Ahab was a nice guy. He was a lot nicer and funnier than my wife. I liked Ahab better than my wife.”
Ahab’s brother goes up and speaks, “Ahab once saved me from drowning in water. We were sled riding on a pond and the ice broke. Ahab jumped right in and saved me. He went deaf in one ear because of it.”
Somebody yells out, “That’s It’s a Wonderful Life.”
His brother goes, “Shit, you’re right. All right, Ahab taught me how to steal cars. And he taught me how to shoot a gun and clean it. He was the one that told me when I was ten that if I rub my penis white stuff would come out, and it would feel real good. Before I went to the pen for the first time he told me all the shit I needed to do to get respect in the pen. He was nice and funny too, in a strange kind of dark way. And that woman, oh, she wasn’t bad. I tell you what, that bitch didn’t take no shit. For a white bitch, she was pretty strong.”
Ahab’s brother sits down.
Someone said I should say something, so I do. I go and say this, “My mother and Ahab were people. They survived and bred other people. My mother told me to never butt fuck on the first date. I did not follow her advice and found out she was right, it leaves a bad impression.”
There are laughs.
“Ahab was a good guy. He was funny. And always paid back what he owed you. He would always ask for twenty dollars and give it back within a month.”
A lot of “mm-yeahs” from the crowd.
And I finish it by saying, “At least they didn’t kill themselves.”
The pastor goes up after me. He said he would do it for free if Tasha would give him a blowjob. Tasha is going to give him one immediately after the ceremony.
“Now everybody bow their heads. O father, bless these bless Loretta and Ahab. They were good people. The best you can get. That’s all. Amen.”
It was obvious that the pastor was dying for a blowjob and just wanted to get the service over with.
They lowered my mother and Ahab into the ground.
My brother Chuck who is also Ahab’s son plays Lets get it on by Marvin Gaye on the guitar and sings it. At the end he bursts into a crazy Stevie Ray Vaughn solo.
We all disperse.
Some people are crying.
Some just want to go home and watch television.
Tasha and the pastor go into a mausoleum and do business.
Charm and I sit in the car and smoke cigarettes.
*
It is cold in Youngstown in the winter.
People say it is because of “Lake Effect.”
I don’t know what “Lake Effect” is.
I don’t think anyone else does either.
I don’t even think our weather anchormen know.
They were all trained at YSU for Communications.
Which is a major that guess teaches people to communicate.
It is about 20 degrees.
Last night I got pulled over by a police officer.
He said, “You didn’t stop at the stop sign. And your license plate lights are out.”
In Youngstown having a light out on your car will get you pulled over. If you speed, run red lights, swerve around drunk, you can do pretty much anything you want. Except for black guys in one single car, they are doomed to be pulled over.
So I’m at work, and there is still light outside.
I’m going to replace the lights in the parking lot.
There is a parts store next door.
I buy some lights for three dollars.
I know the guys at the parts store, so they let me borrow a flathead.
I go back over. My hands are cold now.
I stare at the lights.
This is what people do who fix little on cars.
They stare at it.
They know it involves screwing and, “right tighty lefty loosy.” All heartland men know that phrase, because our fathers beat it into our heads. And I mean BEAT it into our heads.
I unscrew the screws on the lights.
The lights don’t come out though.
So I’m fucked I think.
I open the hood.
Can’t get to them through the hood.
I stare more.
Then I realize I have to take the plate off and remove the chrome thing surrounding the plate.
I do.
I am able to pull the lights out.
I stare at them and fuck with them for a long time.
I am very cold.
Eventually I figure out that I have to twist the light sockets out of the light container thing.
Do these things have names?
I twist them out and put the light bulbs in.
I can’t get the chrome thing back on.
I throw it in the back seat.
Turn on the lights.
And go look.
Only one of the fucking lights are on.
So I hit it a couple of times.
And it comes on.
Lights on your car for some reason will come on if you hit them.
I don’t know why.
I’m not an electrical engineer.
It works.
Like the witch doctors of the past using herbs to cure people.
We Youngstown people have ways of keeping our hoopties going.
I feel like a man now.
I have done something to my vehicle while it is very cold outside.
This somehow means something.
This coldness and the vehicle combined makes me into a man.
To some being a man is taking care of your responsibilities, having children, paying bills on time etc.
But so few of us do that, we have had to create new standards of what it means to be a man.
And fixing your car in extremely cold weather is one of them.
*
I’m sitting in the kitchen looking out the window.
There is snow on the ground.
Black people wearing stocking caps and large worn coats stumble down the street.
I just stare pointlessly.
And then a cat walks into view.
One of those mangy gray and black cats.
The fur is extremely thick, it has been outside all winter.
Just walking around.
Trying to find shit to eat.
The cat did not die.
The cat is pretty as it walks around.
It looks peaceful.
It is used to trying not to die.
*
Work meeting bitches.
It is 8am on a Monday morning.
Everyone at the pizza shop is there.
We are all standing.
We all look like hell.
Our faces look all puffy, burned out, and ugly.
The manager says, “Now listen up. We have an inspection. If we fail this inspection, we all lose our jobs. They close down the store. So listen, this is important. You must wear your name-tags and your hats. If you do not wear your name-tags and hats you will be brought outside and executed. Men wearing black and gray military like uniforms will come and shoot you. You will be dead because you refused to wear your name-tags and hats. Also they will kill brothers and fathers and rape your sisters and mothers. Corporate is very concerned about name-tags and hats. Any questions?”
One the in-stores asks, “What if we forget our name-tag.”
“You will die a horrible bloody death.”
“Oh, okay.”
“Second, we must clean shit. We must clean all the screws; we must clean the wheels on the tables. We must wipe down the walls. We must mop properly. Moping is very important, the floor must look clean. Got it! Good. Third all drivers must learn the phones, all drivers must answer the phones. Except for Jeff because he is insane, and we all know he will fuck up the orders. And he will probably start annoying the shit out of the customers about his horses. Forth, all in-stores must count the exact amount of pepperoni that goes on each pizza. There are posters above the make-line that show how much pepperoni go on each pizza, we must not deviate. That goes for all portions. Our product cost has been like four percent. We need to bring it down to two percent. If you in-stores don’t start putting the exact amount of portions on each and every goddamn pizza, you will be executed by the men in black and gray. Fifth, I’m going to start sending people home early, labor cost is at an all time high of three percent. We need to bring that down to one percent. Corporate said if can’t get it down to one percent, then they are going to fly the pizzas in from India. Or perhaps replace you with robots. They haven’t decided yet. So even if it is busy I will send some of you home. And I might fire some of you in the next week for really silly reasons to save on labor. Sixth, corporate wants over ninety percent profit. We must accomplish this goal because the owner said he wants to buy a hummer, a boat, and take a trip to Africa this summer. And unless we get ninety percent profit for the next six months, he will not be able to accomplish these goals. Seventh, corporate has told me that we must pledge allegiance to George W. Bush every hour of the day that we work. And that you must vote republican or die. And that if anyone even mentions Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter or happiness in anyway will be shot by the men in black and gray. Eighth, some of you have said that $5.15 an hour is not enough money to scrub toilets, or work hard. I asked corporate about that, they said do it or die. Over the course of the next few months we will be adding more and more work for you to do, but we will not be paying you anymore. You will do the work or die, it is your choice. You must realize that you are not humans, but tools, instruments of production, you are soulless, godless, loveless, shit eating dogs. And that if you think even for one moment that your life could be any better than this, and that if anyone has it better than you, you are lying to yourself. Corporate has told me to tell you that all have their kids have diabetes, and therefore they suffer worse than you even though they are millionaires. And that they have to deal with something called Post-Modern-Emptiness which is worse than any of the suffering your asses could have. So because of that, and the fact they don’t want you to have something called Post-Modern-Emptiness they said you can never ask for a raise, even if you work here for twenty years, you will under any circumstance ever make more than $5.15 an hour. Good, have any questions?”
We all just stood there waiting to go home.
*
I’m at the strip joint.
There are naked girls walking around.
Sometimes I look at them.
I look at their asses.
It is nice.
I notice the pastor is sitting a couple of seats down from me.
I go and sit and next to him.
He looks at me and says, “Rocky, the weirdest thing happened to me yesterday. Jerry fucking Farwell called me on the phone. He said, ‘Listen, you need to tell your parishioners that God hates Muslims, Liberals, all blacks that refuse to speak white people English and poor people.’ He also said, ‘If there are any poor people in your church, any of those shoeless stinking vomits of mankind, kick they them out because we need money, empty those seats and fill them back up.’ I was like, ‘Dude, you’re creepy and hung up.’ It was so weird.”
“Are you for real?”
“Yeah, I’m for real. Jerry fucking Farwell called me. Then, do you know what happened? Pat fucking Robertson called me, he said, ‘Now listen, we know you have niggers and white trash that attend your church. Why don’t get some of those dirty mangy niggers and white trash to vote for Bush. You know those niggers smell, they smell bad, I hate niggers. My dad told me that all people that ain’t white and don’t have money are evil. He said God hates niggers, spics, yellows, wops, Catholics, and dirty shitty white trash. That’s the way I raised, and I don’t care. Those liberal scum fucks are goddamn pinkos even though every liberal scum fuck I’ve ever met is rich. That doesn’t matter, what matters is that some of them have the audacity to even go near those nigger scum, white trash turds, and spic wetback bastards. I’m Pat Robertson and God loves you.’ I was like, ‘Dude, what the fuck year are you living in.’ He responded, ‘I live in a mixture of 1325 Europe, 1941 Germany, and 1835 Mississippi.’ I hung up on that shit. That guy is crazy man, he’s crazy.”
“You got that right. Have you see Cherry?”
“Oh, man. You didn’t hear. They found her dead in a crack house off of Albert Street. They think she either had a heart attack from smoking too much crack. Or zombies ate her,” says the pastor.
“Zombies ate her?”
“Yeah, they said there were bite marks all over body. They had to shoot her in the head to kill her actually.”
“How many oxies did you sniff today?”
“Like six, I got a prescription. I went to the doctor and told him my knee hurts from dancing so much.”
“When the fuck do you dance?”
“Well, one of the girls told me it worked for her. So I used it. And since I’m a man of God, and all those doctors are republicans he believed me.”
“That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“No, this republican thing has really worked for me. All these bitches come to the church now asking for religious guidance. They think if they religious it will align them with the republican party and get them money or a tax break or something. So I’m like, ‘Hey baby, why don’t you sit on it.’”
“Does it work?”
“Yeah, sometimes. They think God loves them if they fuck a pastor. The whole time while we are fucking I quote random psalms I kind of remember.”
“Let me ask you pastor, you even believe in God?”
“How can you ask something like that? I make forty thousand dollars a year and have health care. Who the fuck cares?”
“You make forty thousand a year, you don’t do anything.”
“No, fucking shit. I’ve never done anything all my life. And you wanna what the best thing is about being a pastor, the job never changes. You say the same damn shit for the whole thirty years. It never changes, because God doesn’t change,” The pastor laughs at that hysterically.
“When’s Cherry’s funeral?”
“Tomorrow at the cemetery on Belmont across the street from the discount clothing store.”
*
Someone emailed me and said somebody reviewed The Ugly Face.
I click the link and look at it, it says, “Reading about Youngstown made me vomit. It was a good healthy vomit though. Rocky’s writing is amateurish but at the same time has a certain amount of archaic and mid-twenties sophistication. Rocky seems to have emotion, and I almost had some emotion while reading his book. But since I have a horrible case of Nihilistic-Post-Modern-Emptiness I could get none. So I will just say things about his language and his craft. And other random weird shit.”
There more. It talks about how I fuck with endings. How I’m a horrible person and all kinds of shit like that.
They are right.
I am a horrible person.
I used my mother to create a book.
My mother is dead now.
One of the things the review said kind of pissed me off though, “There are a lot of Ebonic type phrases in it.
I sat there staring thinking, “My step dad is black, my half brother is black, and half the people I talk to on a daily basis are black. What are the fucking chances.”
But I guess they assume I’m suppose to be white, and that means something. Being white.
I’m just a guy who lives in Youngstown. I’m not white. I’m not black. Fucking shit. Maybe somebody should bitch about Hemingway when French appeared in his book.
It doesn’t matter though, it is a good review.
As long as the review is good, that is what matters.
Maybe suburban educated people don’t understand that beneath the layer of shit the media has built, that there are white and black people that speak to each other. That hang with each other. That in each other houses. Or maybe in some parts of America it is still Jim Crow fucking bullshit.
I don’t know.
This all troubles me.
I feel hurt when someone says I’m speaking Ebonics because of some philosophical reason or as a joke.
Oh God, when will this race shit ever end.
It is 2005, why do I have to do with this race shit.
This problem should have been solved by now.
But it isn’t.
And no one cares.
And there are assholes who think racism will end in the constructs of capitalism. But the essence of capitalism is alienation, division, making other people surplus.
Maybe history needs to pass.
I wonder how long the foreign slaves in Italy were pissed and shitted on. They never talk about that in history class, maybe they fucking should.
They probably just kept fucking the other races.
Which I fully support.
I believe wholly heartily in inter-racial fucking and breeding.
I want America to be yellow.
Like Puerto Rico.
That’s why Tasha and I abort all of our possible humans. They will be white. There are enough white people.
There needs to be more mixed people.
I am tired of white people.
I am tired of this race shit.
People need to grow the fuck up
People need to grow the fuck up in this world and start behaving like people, and not like fucking retards.
*
I walk into the bedroom.
Tasha and Charm are on the bed.
Tasha is holding a handgun with a fully loaded clip.
She is drinking cheap wine out of the bottle.
Charm is lying peaceful. Her head is on Tasha’s lap. Tasha slowly pets her head with one hand.
They are both naked, why I do not know.
Tasha stares into space, looking mean and angry.
I sit down on the bed fully clothed and say, “What’s with gun?”
“I’m going to shoot the computer,” says Tasha.
“How come?”
I got a Trojan virus. I am fucking tired of Trojan viruses. I want to use the computer, I want to click links and end up at goddamn websites. Not have the fucking computer freeze up like a bitch!”
“Did you hear, Cherry is dead,” I says.
“I know. The zombies ate her.”
During this Charm just lies there.
“When I was young. We ate cabbage soup. All we had was cabbage soup. The factory closed and my father was thrown away like garbage. Like garbage. So we ate government cabbage. And cereal without sugar. I wore hand-me-downs. I slept on a rough mattress. I was jumped constantly. One would come from behind and hold me. While another would beat me in the face and stomach. This was my life. At night I would hear gun-shots. People would die less than fifty yards away from me. One I walking and saw a man dead with blood. I’ve listened many times to the screams of women being raped. Of death, hell, blood, and loss. They told me the teachers to go to school. To apply for a pell grant. I got one. So I went. They told me the American dream was to live in the suburbs, that I would graduate from state university and live in suburbs. How am I suppose to sit in a house peaceful, far away from the people I once knew, knowing that there are still gun shots. That good men still die for nothing. How many people I grew up, only grew up to enter prison. I cannot live peacefully. I know this violence, I know this anger. I have come to love this ceaseless anger that exists in me. I don’t have a clue how to quiet it. I went to college and graduated but it did nothing. My anger is there always beating loud. The suburbs were not built for people like me. I think I’m going to shoot the computer.”
“The police will come, don’t do that.”
Tasha continues to pet Charm’s head.
“I do not care if the police come. The police can come, I will shoot them all. Their deaths mean nothing to me. Everyone deserves to die. I’m sure there will be at least one person happy that I’ve killed these certain humans. No one is innocent. We are all guilty. We all bear the guilt of this civilization. We keep it going. The workers build the buildings, and deliver the food and water. The rich plan the suffering and we carry it out. Only the poor are innocent. They didn’t plan it; they didn’t build or deliver the goods. And they couldn’t afford to stop it. I want to remain here, without shit, it is horrible when something breaks and I can’t go to the doctor. But at least I’m innocent. At least I know when I get up in the morning, this isn’t my fault. I am an Iraqie. Liberals say we shouldn’t have banded together to stop the wars. Who am I to stop anything? I am the anything that needs to be stopped. With what money and time am I suppose to stop a war. Bush owns television, I can’t even afford cable,” says Tasha.
“What did the doctor say about your knees?”
“Well, today I went to the free clinic. I went in there and said, ‘My knees have water in them. I’m in constant pain from dancing.’ The doctor looked at me and said, ‘You should stop smoking and drinking. And believe in God, and stop dancing.’ I said, ‘I can’t stop dancing, that’s how I pay my bills.’ He said, ‘God hates you. And this is a Catholic hospital, have you eaten the Eucharist lately?’ I said, ‘Yes, I ate my boyfriend’s ass just yesterday.’ He didn’t like that. I said, ‘I need surgery, but I don’t have health car.’ He responded with, ‘You should take baths with Epson Salt.’ I said, ‘I do.’ He said, ‘That’s good keep doing that. Also you should believe in God, and God will take away your water that is located in your knees. Also this hospital doesn’t do abortions. And we know all you dancers are drug-addict bitches. So here is a prescription for chewing gum, you should chew it, and then shove it up your poor stripper ass.’ That’s what doctor said.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.”
Tasha never shoots the computer. She falls asleep soon after.
*
Tasha, Charm, and I are watching television.
George W. Bush’s State of The Union will be on in a minute.
Tasha and I are sitting on the couch together.
Charm is on the floor huddled in a ball. She is playing a hand-held game.
Bush comes on.
He is my president.
He reigns over this land.
He is God.
Bush has a stupid look on his face.
A very undetermined kind of complacent childish look.
Bush speaks: Good evening my fellow Americans. America is the greatest country on the earth. We are better than all other countries. There is France, Germany, Kenya, China, Columbia, all of them. We are better! Even though many of those nations have national health care. And there is less of a difference between the richest and the poorest of some of those nations. Means nothing!
America is God.
Because God loves America.
All Gods love America.
Jesus loves America.
Yahweh loves America.
Allah loves America.
Vishnu loves America.
Even the mother fucking Buddha loves America.
Because we are great!
We have brought things to the earth like Elvis, the nuclear bomb, Jefferson Davis, the television, Warren G. Harding, Ted Bundy, Tom Cruise, Michael Jackson, all kinds of great shit have provided the world.
But there is a danger.
There are terrorists.
And they have a new plan.
A very big plan.
They are training hamster spies.
These hamsters are vicious terrorists suicide bombers insurgents Iraqis evil evil evil!
These hamsters can be anywhere.
Under your covers.
Inside you toasters.
In your car.
Inside of your eight-year-old daughter’s cranium.
Intelligence tells us that we will soon have to cut open people’s craniums with drills to see if terrorist hamsters are inside.
I am telling America.
Beware of all hamsters!
They are terrorists.
They are enemies of the state.
All hamsters hate American!
All hamsters hate the America Way of Life!
All hamsters have one mission and that is to destroy us!
Hamsters believe that just because we put them in cages and force them to live lives of servitude because our children enjoy them so much.
Hamsters believe these are justifications for blowing up subways, ramming mopeds into buildings, killing our mothers, raping our daughters, ass fucking our sons without lubrication.
They must be stopped.
I’ve decided to wire tap all hamster cages.
To implant little microchips inside of hamster skulls so we can monitor their thoughts at all times.
America must not, under any circumstances negotiate with hamsters!
We must be resolute on this.
No negotiations with hamsters.
Your life, your wife’s life, and your children’s lives depend that no negotiations with hamsters take place.
Hamsters are evil!
Hamsters hate humanity!
Hamsters hate the Christian God.
We also believe that hamsters have built several nuclear devices. These hamsters are planning on killing millions of Americans with these nuclear devices.
Many Americans will die because of these hamster terrorists.
We have already foiled several hamster attacks on America.
They planned on blowing up the Grand Canyon, lighting Yellow Stone on fire, ripping out the eyeballs of everyone in Chicago, gang-rapping Laura Bush, taking little hamster poops on the citizens of Florida, eating Mount Rushmore, and chewing on Baptist Church pews in the south.
The hamsters must be stopped!
Intelligence has told me that the hamsters might have orchestrated Hurricane Katrina, and that in fact it was the hamster terrorists and not me who carelessly let all those poor people die.
Intelligence has even told me that hamsters have caused jobs to be outsourced. And not anything I’ve done.
Hamsters are the reason Americans die in Iraq, not me.
Hamsters! I tell you. Those dirty hamsters!
I have been told I must talk about other things besides hamsters, so I will talk about this.
All women must procreate within the next year.
All women!
If you cannot procreate, we will kill you.
You will be dead.
You are just getting in the way.
My own mother will be killed.
All men that cannot get hard and squirt love juice into female pussies will die also.
All men that refuse to fuck women will become killed.
We need children.
We need lots of fucking children!
You must start a family.
If you have finished puberty and do not have a child you will be shot!
I know that females are going through puberty at younger and younger of ages. The average is ten now.
I do not care.
You must procreate!
But do not worry parents, I’m sending a law to congress stating that parents can choose who will have their daughter’s baby.
It will be like the good old days.
And to men if no parents choose you as good enough for procreation, you will be shot.
I want fifty million babies born next year.
I’m sending a law to congress stating that if you have over four babies by the time you are twenty you will never have to pay taxes. You will get college free, you will get a free car, a free house, free everything. And if you have over ten babies by the time you are thirty. You will get a own your big screen television.
Do you understand!
Procreate or die!
Even though the world will run out of oil by the time the baby is thirty. It does not matter. What matters is that there are babies and lots of them.
See what baby do is, is cause you to suffer.
I like to see suffering.
I like to see poor people get their arms blown off. I have soldiers with cameras in Iraq, they send live internet feeds of little five-year-old girls screaming in agony with their arms blown off.
I lubricate myself and get to business.
I really enjoyed Hurricane Katrina, seeing all those fucks drown. Oh, that got my penis all crazy.
I jerked off for days.
And seeing those poor white trash bitches drown with them.
Oh, that got me going.
Dick loves it too.
We both like to see little naked babies with their brains spilling out all over the sand in Iraq.
Nothing turns me on more than severed body parts.
Oh, yeah, baby, give it to me.

Somebody blogged about Shoplifting

2011-07-03T12:09:00.000-07:00

Brooklyn's Miska blogged about Shoplifting the movie.

"a group of fashion-conscious, affluent, self-aware individuals too radical for the world’s conventions."

That is funny.

Shoplifting Trailer

2011-07-01T08:43:00.000-07:00

Review of Best Behavior

2011-06-30T09:37:00.000-07:00

Review

My Identity and leaving Youngstown

2011-06-28T13:09:00.000-07:00

If I leave Youngstown, what will happen to my identity?

Will I start reading Edward Abbey and Cormac McCarthy?

Does anyone have Cormac McCarthy's address? I guess he lives in Santa Fe. I want to go over his house and eat lunch.

*

Watched this video about Edward Abbey. John Depuy says that Abbey and Robert Creeley hung out there for awhile.

There is also someone named Witter Bynner who according to wikipedia, "had numerous parties at their house, hosting many notable writers, actors, and artists, which guests included Ansel Adams, Willa Cather, Igor Stravinsky, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Robert Frost, W. H. Auden, Aldous Huxley, Clara Bow, Errol Flynn, Rita Hayworth, Christopher Isherwood, Carl Van Vechten, Martha Graham, Georgia O'Keeffe and Thornton Wilder."

I want to find a place where Errol Flynn had sex and have kinky sex with my girlfriend on that very spot.

Done reading the bible and working at red lobster

2011-06-26T14:50:00.000-07:00

I'm done reading the bible, it got too boring.

I read the gospels a lot when I was young and know those well, so I'm just going to deal with Saint Augustine and as he quotes things, I'll look it up.

Last day at Red Lobster, it is over. They got me a cake, and everyone said goodbye and good luck. It'll was nice.

I didn't expect a cake.

They gave me a donation of 30 dollars.

I don't leave for three weeks, my plan is to tan and read, read and tan.

I read Tacitus' Agricola and Germania today, I liked it a lot. It had one really good line, "You create desolation and call it peace."

That was said by a Brit concerning the Romans.

I don't know if I am going to write the political philosophy book yet. I think I might write a book called "A Metaphysics."

I need three books to write that book.

Can someone give me the names of books that concern the Big Bang theory, the many worlds theory and evolution, like modern up to date books about it?

Reading the bible day 4

2011-06-24T12:24:00.000-07:00

I read the Joseph part in the bible and then read the Joseph part in the Koran.

The Koran just seems, like it rewrote it, and then wrote that everyone was a Muslim and not a Hebrew in it.

King David seems like a lousy person, he murdered Uriah

for what?

Why?

King David also murdered the person that told him Saul was dead, for what?

I guess King David is important because he established a system of public administration for the Jews. He is like George Washington or Julius Caesar.

I have heard people say on television in person and in some books, that everything Jesus said was contained in the Old Testament.

Where?

Jesus was about poor people, social safety nets, debasing oneself, humiliation, that there was no king, everyone should be poor and full of love, and there should be no king.

I couldn't find that in the Old Testament.

The story of Job starts off with him having nothing, but then Job gets things because he behaves.

The God of Abraham grants earthly gifts, the New Testament does not.

Those aren't the same Gods.

I don't know.

reading the bible day 3

2011-06-23T11:49:00.000-07:00

when i said, "God is like red lobster"

i did not in anyway mean disrespect to the God character contained in the Torah.

After reading the Five Books of Moses, the character of God teaches an important lesson.

When you enter into a situation involving other humans, a deal arises.

A deal always arises.

The deal can be translated as covenant, contract, agreement, etc.

When a person enters into a situation involving other humans or even nature, codes of conduct must be followed.

The codes of conduct if they are followed will be rewarded.

I think life is really about codes of conduct.

Money does make the world go around.

But codes of conduct.

The question is, what codes of conduct do people have to perform to gain money or resources for survival?

I think this is basically the same lesson taught in Erving Goffman's Presentation of of Self in Everyday Life. He basically outlines how people must behave certain ways in certain circumstances all day long.

The story of Joseph is amazing, how he ends up in Egypt, and then the Hebrews end up being enslaved because of it. What a strange plot twist. It really doesn't seem logical. Seems like it was edited in by a third party to make sense.

What is strange to me is the phrase "God Remembered"

Here is what I found in a bible search:

Genesis 8:1
But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded.
Genesis 8:1-3 (in Context) Genesis 8 (Whole Chapter)

Genesis 19:29
So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived.

Genesis 30:22
Then God remembered Rachel; he listened to her and enabled her to conceive.

Exodus 2:24
God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob.

Numbers 10:9
When you go into battle in your own land against an enemy who is oppressing you, sound a blast on the trumpets. Then you will be remembered by the LORD your God and rescued from your enemies.

Psalm 98:3
He has remembered his love and his faithfulness to Israel; all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.

Revelation 18:5
for her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes.
Revelation 18:4-6 (in Context) Revelation 18 (Whole Chapter)

Like God forgot them.

The sentence, "God remembered" implies that God has the ability to forget.

If you wrote the sentence, "Bob left the house and then remembered his lunch, and then went back to the house to get it."

The word "remembered" implies the ability to forget.

Which is strange.

The ancient jews must have thought about their God as something different then we think about God.

Like their God was actually somewhere, doing things, living out his God life, and could be really busy, and just forget something.

Besides the one time in Revelations, the phrase "god remembered" is never written in the new testament.

It isn't really written after the Five Books of Moses.

I googled searched two different translations of the Koran and found no phrase resembling "God remembered" or "allah remembered."

why am i reading the bible?

2011-06-22T19:10:00.000-07:00

I have a reading list, Saint Augustine, Maimonides and Saint Thomas Aquinas is on it so I want to know what they are talking about.

Trying to read the whole bible seems impossible though: there is so much shit in it, so many pages of laws concerning animals.

I feel nothing religious when I read it.

I feel nothing when I read religious texts, it doesn't matter if it Buddhism or Islam, nothing arises in my soul.

I mean the story of Samson is entertaining in a way.

But God?

God does what?

Seriously?

I approach everything with the attitude of "seriously?"

I read Kant and Nietzsche, and also think, "Seriously?"

day 2 of reading the bible

2011-06-22T15:57:00.000-07:00

The Ten Commandments states exodus 20:2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

then God gives the commandments.

These commandments seem like a deal.

Like since I brought you out of slavery, you have to behave a certain way.

God seems to want payment in terms of behavior and animal sacrifices.

That is kind of like working at red lobster, I get paid to pretend I care about Red Lobster. Good deal.

God is like Red Lobster?

Then comes Samson and David

They are like super heroes.

Samson kills like thousands of people by himself.

It is pretty amazing.

The heroes of the Old Testament seem really ambitious, Moses, Samson, and David are really pumped up. Everyone wants lots of male children and to have their children become kings.

It is really just a history of kings.

People keep talking to and seeing God.

Like God appears.

But there is no description of what God looks like.

God seems to love property.

The thing that is unique to me, or weird

The thing that I wonder about are the writers' intention.

Like they would be completely surprised that their writings were still around be sold 2500 years later. Were they thinking, "This will be good for the people of the village, they will like these stories."

I doubt they were thinking, "People will be reading this for 2600 years."

Day 1 of reading the Bible

2011-06-21T19:33:00.001-07:00

I have decided to read the bible. Here it goes.
At least want to read the give books of Moses, Isaiah, Job, and the New Testament.

READ: Genesis 1 to Genesis 28.6

Thoughts:

God created the universe.

Seems strange that someone or something would create a universe.

There is no backstory on God.

God is the image of people? I guess that means he walks and has hands.

That is all the description we get.

Gods back in the day usually had character development.

The ancient Jews said, "What about a God with no character development."

This was a good idea, then no one could talk shit about that god, because that God wasn't anything.

So the universe was created by something that wasn't anything.

There doesn't seem to be any mention of an afterlife.

God makes constant binding contracts that if you behave, you will have lots of male children that will become nations.

God is a disembodied voice that speaks to people all the time.

He says, behave and you will get children.

Another bibilical note:

saw a book today in Wal-Mart titled Love you Life, it is a book by a Christian for Christians.

John 12:25
"The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life."

It is bad, really bad when a Christian titles their book a direct contradiction of what Jesus said.

Victoria Osteen either doesn't read the bible or figures that her audience doesn't.

Interview at Matador

2011-06-17T13:03:00.000-07:00

here is the interview, David Miller is a really nice guy.

My Grandpa Died

2011-06-14T21:45:00.001-07:00

I hadn't googled myself in like 3 months and I'm up alone, feeling sad, so I googled myself and found this.

My name is in the thing. I'm the only person not married. The one that says christie was married, she might not be now.

I feel like all of his grandkids are married and have babies.

I feel alienated.

Jordan Castro writes about LA

2011-06-05T17:31:00.000-07:00

Here is the story.

That is what exactly happened.

Funny.

Coming to Terms with Being alive

2011-06-05T16:58:00.001-07:00

in 2006 I was standing in a dishtank.

I quit football, I quit college, I quit Melinda, I quit Bernice, I quit every job. I moved out west twice, once to San Diego and failed, because i spent all my money on meth in Mexico. The other time in Oregon where I didn't try to get a full time job.

My best friends Ricky and Nick were gone, one to Columbus, one Santa Fe.

Melinda had a baby.

Bernice had a boyfriend.

I had no friends, except for ones on the Internet.

I decided to not quit anymore.

I made a bucket list in my head.

Realizing I had to do it without parental support. I no longer spoke to my parents, there would be no money from them, there would be no congratulations from them.

It had to be done with no help from them.

I would have to work every week and go to school five days a week full time.

I would have to rebuild myself from scratch.

I could no longer live with my prior instincts.

Sartre told me that existence precedes essence.

I believed him.

I could change as a human if I willed it.

1. My loans were defaulted, so I had to pay them off for nine months in a row before any college in America would allow me to enter it.

2. Go to college and finish it.

3. After college move out west.

4. Get published my a mainstream publisher.

I realize now these are very personal goals. That I am trying to prove something to myself. The thing about proving something to oneself is that other are concerned with you trying to prove things to yourself. They like or dislike for different reasons. Some people might like because you are a quitter.

The second day after I graduated high school I drove to the Grand Canyon to live for the summer, the next sumer I drove to Oregon. One trip my friend Nicky and I drove to Maine and the middle of the night, we were driving, and felt like do something cool, so we drove to Quebec in the middle of the night, not caring about anything in a 1979 Ford Fairlain.

I wonder where that Ford Fairlain is?

I was not afraid of risk.

But after my brother died I became afraid of risk.

I wanted comfort.

I wanted peace.

The anxiety of risk was too much.

But I no longer feel that need for peace.

Several people told me lately, that they could help me get a job in the Cleveland area, and I have given in to weakness, thinking, sounds good.

But I must remain on track.

The course must be followed.

I started working on this four years ago.

Why should I stop now?

a strange review of Best Best Behavior

2011-06-04T11:48:00.000-07:00

here is a strange review but fun review of Best Behavior.

Reading the Koran

2011-06-04T10:26:00.001-07:00

I started reading the Koran last night and read some more today.

I feel that

I might not care about God at all.

Like the word God causes no emotion.

A lot of it is saying the same thing over and over and over again.

There have been cool lines throughout it though:

It reads like an experimental novel.

Like the first chapter is called "The Cow"

I'm not sure what a cow has to do with the first chapter. But I think that is cool. Somebody was like, "I'm gonna write a religious text, and I'm going to write the word 'The Cow' for the first chapter."

I can see why Islam was needed though:

Large scale institutional religion i.e. Christianity started taking over Europe, Turkey and Egypt which is to the north of Arabia and to the east of Arabia there was Hinduism and Buddhism. And there was also Judaism.

The Arabs saw a function in that decided to create a religion of their own.

This all took place in the 700 and 800s.

It is true that Christianity stated in the 100s, but it didn't take over on a super large scale until the 700s.

But Christianity and Islam were not the same thing.

Christianity was a coping mechanism to deal with the collapse of the Roman Empire. Which had a dead man as their leader who was obsessed with poverty and had no real interest in knowledge.

While Islam did not have a poverty stricken dead man, but a God who demanded a set of specific behaviors but did not mind wealth as long as they gave alms to the poor. And you could still seek knowledge along as you practiced those designated set of behaviors.

The difference being:

Christianity has a dead man OBSESSED, and to be a Christian one be obsessed with poverty and think it is good. That to suffer and be wretched contains a certain amount of beauty. I would say Bukowski best exemplifies that. Bukowski characters are Christ like sufferers seeking redemption in a fucked world. But they don't change because they are consumed with the beauty of their own suffering.

Islam and Judaism are not obsessed with poverty. Judaism because of circumstances is mainly concerned with survival, the survival of their people and they themselves not getting killed. Because of this they give positive reinforcement to hard work and being functional. What I mean by functional, is attaining positions in society that the leaders of that society that are not Jewish need to main their infrastructure. Portnoy's Complaint shows this, the lead character has anxiety over sex, but it isnt the act of sex he has anxiety about, but the result of sex, which is procreation. He is afraid that he might accidently get a gentile pregnant and reduce the numbers of the Jewish people. I just read Max Demint's God, Jews and History, in it he shows how the Jews in Europe and in Arabia were under constant pressure to concede their religion for Christainity or Islam. That it was legal for a Jew to marry one of them and become them, but not the other way around. Just looking at wiki bios of Karl Marx, Karl Popper, Wittgenstein and Proust a person can easily see how the Jews intermixed to get better positions in society. So when I try to imagine a Jew of today, a person whose family who has never conceded to mixing with the gentiles, then that person must feel a heavy weight.

Islam isn't an obsession, it is worship. They worship their God and constantly give thanks. The Five Pillers of Islam is a list of behaviors, behaviors that lead to the idea of worship. If men do this and women do this, if they pray five times a day, go on a pilgrimage to Mecca, if they give alms, if they stay from certain drinks and foods, then through that they will worship their God.

Christianity and Islam are not to concerned with being functional.

To them, heaven is right after death. All they have to do is survive until they die and they go to heaven.

What needs to be noticed is the three emotions or ways of thinkings of the different religions.

Judiasm: Survival.

Christainanity: Obsession

Islam: Worship.

while watering my plants

2011-06-03T12:09:00.000-07:00

I went and got a bucket from the inside of the house.

Grandma came over and said, "Did it frost last night?"

"No, but it hasn't rained and the zucchini aren't doing good."

I went outside carrying my bucket by its handle, right when I got the garden, the handle broke and the water landed on the ground and no plants.

Had to walk back to the house and get another.

Walked back to the garden, with a little plastic bowl I scooped water out of the bucket and watered the plants.

The sky was clear, blue, the sun was there.

I heard a voice, it sang the song of the broad axe

Muscle and pluck forever!
What invigorates life, invigorates death,
And the dead advance as much as the living advance,
And the future is no more uncertain than the present,
And the roughness of the earth and of man encloses as much as the delicatesse of the earth and of man,
And nothing endures but personal qualities.
What do you think endures? 100
Do you think the great city endures?
Or a teeming manufacturing state? or a prepared constitution? or the best-built steamships?
Or hotels of granite and iron? or any chef-d’oeuvres of engineering, forts, armaments?

Away! These are not to be cherish’d for themselves;
They fill their hour, the dancers dance, the musicians play for them;
The show passes, all does well enough of course,
All does very well till one flash of defiance.

The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman;
If it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the whole world.

I listend, finished watering the plants and took the bucket back in the house.

a 14 year old boy asked me

2011-06-02T19:17:00.000-07:00

Two men, one 14 and one 30 are standing in a garden on a sunny day. The boy holds a hoe and the man holds a shovel.

14 year old boy: What are you gonna do now that you've graduated?

Me: I'm gonna be a poet.

14 year old boy: That's not a job.

Me: No matter what job I'll have, I'll be a poet. 15 years ago I was a caddy and a poet, 10 years I had no job and was a poet, five years ago I was a pizza boy and a poet, right now, as I stand here in this garden holding a shovel, still poet, ten years from now, still poet, on my death bed, poet.

14 year old boy: Noah, you're crazy.

Me: It is perfectly acceptable to be a crazy, when I applied to be a poet when I was 15 I wrote "mental ward experience" and was hired instantly.

Will give you a free copy of Best Behavior for

2011-06-02T18:55:00.000-07:00

I will give you a free copy of Best Behavior

if you give me one of these books:

A history of japan
A history of India
A history of Australia

or

any book of history involving a generalized history of a country if the country be Suriname or Ghana.

I do not want

Any main European histories i.e. France, Germany, England.

But countries like Slovenia, Poland or Norway would be cool.

or
histories of specific events or bios of historical figures.

Except for maybe Deng Xiaoping

email me at noah.cicero@gmail.com

schematics for novel

2011-05-31T16:27:00.000-07:00

first schematics

second schematics

picked up my diploma today

2011-05-31T13:12:00.000-07:00

this is how i feel about having a bachelors degree.

If I am standing in my yard wearing cut off dickies, with no shirt on, sporting a pair of stupid looking sandals. I'm not white trash. I have a bachelors degree, I'm eccentric.

new article up at Matador

2011-05-25T10:44:00.000-07:00

It is an article about going to LA.

High Debt and History

2011-05-24T13:37:00.000-07:00

Here is my senior thesis, you don't have to read it. Just posting it for fun.

The point of this paper is show information regarding what the effects of high debt had on past governments. This is relevant because the United States is currently in the y

ear 2011 14 trillion dollars in debt and the debt continues to rise every day.
The paper will go over the debt crises of the past and then supply information on the debt crisis of the United States, what people are trying to do about it, what can be done about it, and what the probable implications of it are.

The claim will not be made that debt is The Cause of revolutions or political upheaval. Only that at some points in history when political upheaval occurred, debt was found at the site. The same way that a gun is found at the scene of a murder, the gun murdered the human. But the motivation and reason for the murder is not found in the gun.

Political science does not have the luxury of controlled experiments. The experiments of political science are found in history. When looking at this past high debt situations we may look at them as experiments in how the society solved their debt problems. What is also important is that when looking at past high debt situations we can see the long term effects of high debt. Currently the United States is in the short, these past experiences with high debt will provide a view into what the long term effects will be.

The debt crises selected range from antiquity to the modern times and are from Western Cultures. The Middle-Ages were omitted because as according to Marc Bloch in Feudalism volume 1 (Bloch, 1978, 66-67) said concerning money in the Middle-Ages, “The society of this age was certainly not unacquainted with either buying or selling. But it did not, like our own, live by buying and selling.” The Middle-Ages were primarily an agriculture economy and had no method of coining money. Large debt did not occur there because they did not really have money. When someone wanted more or to get a higher status in the world, instead of money they wanted land or a higher title like knight, Lord or Bishop.

Several debt crises were neglected because of time and because they are already well known. The debt crisis of Germany of in the 1920s that led to Fascism and the debt crisis of the Catholic Church in the 1500s that participated the birth of Protestantism.

The debt problems of antiquity do not concern government debt but personal debt. Antiquity did not have stock markets, huge banks and especially not foreign banks. During Roman times, Rome was the only real government. The creditors were the wealthy who could loan money on interest. They did not have corporate offices with stock holders.

Chapter 1: Solon Cancels out Debt
Chapter 2: Publius Servilius and Appius Claudius in Ancient Rome
Chapter 3: Tiberius Restores Credit
Chapter 4: Pertinax Cancels Debt and Lowers Taxes after the Reign of Commodus
Chapter 5: How Debt made the French Revolution Possible
Chapter 6: Russia, Debt and War
Chapter 7: Debt in the United States after World War 2
Chapter 8: The Current Debt and can we Learn anything from the Past
Chapter 9: Why Americans are so against Taxes being Raised?
Chapter 10: What Solutions are Possible inside the Present Paradigm?
Chapter 11: Suggestions Based off what we Learned from History
Chapter 12: Chapter 12: Domestic Implications if it’s Business as Usual

Chapter 1: Solon Cancels out Debt

According to Plutarch's Lives (1957, 44-49) there was a debt crisis in Athens. Plutarch says, “So greatly were the poor in debt to the rich that they were obliged either to pay them a sixth part of the produce of the land-whence they were called Hectemorii and Thetes- or else to engage their persons to their creditors who might seize them on failure of payment.” This means that if they could not pay, they were taken as slaves or they were forced into selling their children into slavery. Others were forced to leave the city and find another place to live because they could not pay off their loans.

This situation forced the people of Athens to find a new leader. Which was the first political upheaval, being forced to choose a new leader.

The people of Athens chose Solon. They chose Solon because he was neither rich nor poor, he was what we would call middle class. At first Solon told the poor he would divide up the lands and he told the wealthy he would secure their securities. This was a political lie. Then he told the people, “Equality causes no war,” to soften their hearts and keep them peaceful. The debt crisis was so bad that the rich and poor urged Solon to make himself king but he refused to. But this shows what large debt can do to a nation, it can lead people to the idea if they give up democracy it may lead to a better life.

Solon in the end canceled many debts and made it illegal for a creditor to take a debtor to be his slave. Solon also inflated the currency, according to Plutarch, “For Solon ordered the minas, which before went but for seventy-three drachmas, to go for a hundred so that, as they paid the same in value but much less in weight, those that had great sums to pay were relieved while such as received them were no losers.”

The new laws did not make everyone happy. The poor still wanted a division of the land and the wealthy didn't want to give up their money. But they agreed and dealt with the situation. They agreed to the point that they did a sacrifice after called the seisacthia.

After Solon fixed the debt problem he reduced the penalties for breaking laws. He actually reduced the laws made by Draco where we get the term “draconian” from. Then he gave the poor more power in government.

Athens basically had a complete reform after Solon took office.

We can see a several step process when it comes to the story of Solon and Athenian debt.

The first step was to select a new ruler.

The second was to cancel debt for the poor and change the laws of what can be done to the debtor who cannot pay.

Then a large scale reform in government occurs that allows a better quaility of life for the poor.

The main difference between the United States and ancient Athens is that the debt is personal and government. But how the Athenian government solved the problem and the effects on government still remain a factor in looking at our own situation.

Chapter 2: Publius Servilius and Appius Claudius in Ancient Rome

According to Livy (1998, 93-98) ancient Rome suffered a terrible debt crisis in 495BC. While Rome was preparing to fight the Volsci the plebeians began complaining that even though they were fighting wars for Rome. When the got home from war if they could not pay their debts promptly they or their family members were taken as slaves. Then as Livy says, “An elderly man burst into the forum displaying the marks of all his misfortunes,” and began screaming that he was once a soldier and company commander for the Roman Army, and that he had been taken prisoner by a creditor, imprisoned and then whipped by the creditor. Inspired by the elderly man crowds of soldiers and ex-soldiers started protesting in the forum. The soldiers askedd him why he was complaining the elderly man said, “That while he was serving in the war against the Sabines his crops had been ravaged, his farmhouse burned down, all possessions looted, his flocks driven off. Then at the worst moments, a war tax was levied. So he borrowed money, and as the interest piled up he first lost the land that had belonged to his father and grandfather and then all his movable goods, until the debt spread like a cancer to his very person: his creditor led him not into slavery but into a torture chamber and prison.”

While this protest was taking place the Volsci were charging to the city. The Consuls or leaders of Rome at that time were Publius Servilius and Appius Claudius. They saw the threat that was occurring the soldiers were refusing to suit up for battle until the laws were changed. The protesters screamed for the senate and consuls to convene, eventually they did. Appius Claudius thought that if they arrested some of the protesters then they were go away. But Publius Servilius who had a softer heart disagreed.

While the debate was going between the consuls the soldiers announced that they would not suit for the battle, they said, “Let the senators don their armor and fight the fight so the same group would face the peril and reap rewards!”

To get the soldiers to fight Publius Servilius announced that, “No one might keep a Roman Citizen in chains or confine him so that he could not join the military levy by the consuls: nor might anyone take possession of or sell the property of a soldier while he was on active duty, nor interfere with his children or grandchildren.” When this was announced the soldiers got prepared to fight the Volsci and eventually beat them several days later.

The steps went like this:

First the soldiers or plebeians began complaining about debt.

Second an elderly man comes into the street and begins a protest and gives a speech concerning his suffering.

We found out there was a war tax that overburdened the farmer to the point he had to take out loans but could not afford to pay those loans.

Third crowds begin surrounding him.

The Volsci were coming closer to Rome to conquer.

The senators and consuls realized that without the soldiers their Resilience Factor was lost. They would lose to the Volsci and the Volsci would conquer them and make life worse for them.

The senators and consuls realized that they needed the plebeian soldiers to survive and because of this they needed to appease them. They needed to change the laws to benefit the lives of the plebeian soldiers.

Chapter 3: Tiberius Restores Credit

According to Tacitus (1966, 201-204) n 33AD when Tiberius the Caesar of Rome they had a debt crisis. The problem started because usurers or wealthy people loaning out money began breaking the laws of Julius Caesar. Tacitus says, “Since patriotism comes second to private profits, this law had long been ignored. Money-lending is an ancient problem in Rome, and a frequent cause of disharmony and disorder.”

Tacitus explains that interest in earlier times were determined by the wealthy, then the Law of the Twelve Tables put it at 10% and then a Tribune's legislation reduced that to 5%. Then loans on compound interest was made illegal. Tacitus says though that people did not obey the law, “Fraudulence, attacked by repeated legislation, was ingeniously revived after each successive counter-measure.”

The Roman Senate decided to do an investigation of what went wrong. The Senate decided that in 18 months people had to follow the law. According to Tacitus, “The result was a shortage of money. For all debts were called in simultaneously, and the numerous convictions and sales of confiscated property had concentrated currency in the Treasury and its imperially controlled branches.” What happened was that so many wealthy people had broken the law that when the Roman government convicted them and took their possessions they ended up with most of the private capital of the held by the population. This may be surprising to a modern American to attack the upper classes in such a way, but in ancient Rome the Caesar had all the power and did not need to rely on campaign contributions or voters to maintain that power. Therefore he could do what he wanted.

To solve this problem Rome did several things, first they demanded the creditors, “invest two-thirds of their capital in Italy, and debtors immediately pay the same proportion of their debts.” This did not solve the problem though, because the, “when the capitalists received payment they hoarded it, to buy land at their own convenience.”

Tiberius decided to do a bailout, “He distributed a hundred million sesterces among specially established banks, for interest-free State loans three year State loans, against security of double the value in landed property. Credit was thus restored; and gradually private lenders, too, reappeared.”

Unlike earlier debt crises, the one of Tiberius did not involve large crowds, riots or protesters. The Roman government saw an imminent danger and decided to fix it before it became worse.

The first step was that government identified that there was debt crisis, that illegal activity and corruptions was rampant.

The second step was to arrest those who were breaking the law. The result was that Rome had a shortage of money and land capital.

The senate decided to have creditors invest in Rome.

But some of the capitalists decided not invest in Rome.

Which led to Tiberius giving a bailout of 100 million sesterces to restore credit.

This bailout is very close to our bailout, the nation needs credit to survive and thrive. The government is the only institution large enough to supply the money to restore credit. Which is what the United States did in 2008 and 2009 to restore credit.

The main difference between the bailout of Tiberius and the recent bailout of the United States is that Rome demanded that the wealthy invest in 2/3rd of the land of Rome. The United States did not demand anything in return.

Also the United States did not arrest people on a large scale.

Coincidences worth mentioning: Because of the style of ancient historians, because ancient Rome lacked newspapers and proper data collection our knowledge of correlations are scant. But we can see that something might have had to do with something else, but we cannot prove it conclusively. Two things occurred during the same year as the Tiberius debt crisis in 33AD that are troubling, first as Tacitus records in The Annuals of Rome (1966, 201) Tacitus says, “In the same year the high price of corn nearly caused riots. IN the theater, for several days, sweeping demands were shouted with a presumption rarely displayed to emperors.” We can see that there were riots concerning the price of food for the poor. Viewing that it makes sense that Tiberius would have made the creditors invest in agriculture, but the relation is not mentioned in the writings of Tacitus nor of Suetonius the only two people of Antiquity that wrote about Tiberius' Reign.

The other strange incident in 33AD is the birth of the Christian Cult. Nobody knows the exact years of Jesus or exactly when he died. When trying to gather information on the subject there were too many opinions to consider any of them completely true. But we do know that at that time a cult of people claiming to be Christians arose. The theory of the Christian cult was that “less is good. Less will bring you to God.” In a time without money and high corn prices this philosophy would have made complete sense. The reason for mentioning the Christian Cult is because the Christians in that time were considered radicals, they were rejecting Roman opulence and vanity. This is mentioned to show the possible manifestations of radicalism that could take place in our time.

It should be defined that “radicalism” does not imply good or bad. It merely implies in this text that a group of people have gathered together with extreme ideas about reality and the paradigm is considered normal.
Chapter 4: Pertinax Cancels Debt and Lowers Taxes after the Reign of Commodus

According to Edward Gibbon in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (2005, 76-81) Rome in 192 Rome had another terrible debt and tax crisis. The problem occurred because of the Right of Commodus. Commodus had, “through every measure of injustice and extortion had been adopted which could collect the property of the subject into the coffers of the prince, the rapaciousness Commodus had been very inadequate to his extravagance that, upon his death, no more than eight thousand pounds were found in the exhausted treasury to defray the current expances of government.” Commodus had spent most of Rome's money even though he raised taxes enormously.

The reason why Commodus raised taxes and spent so much money was because he did anything he wanted and was protected by the Praetorian Guard. But while the Praetorian Guard was protecting him he also had to give money to them to make them happy.

After Commodus was murdered Pertinax was put in charge of Rome. Pertinax, according to Gibbon, “Pertinax had the generous firmness to remit all the oppressive taxes invented by Commodus and to cancel all the unjust claims of the treasury; declaring in a decree to the senate, “that he was better satisfied to administer a poor republic with innocence than to acquire riches by the ways of tyranny and dishonor.” Pertinax reduces taxes to solve the debt crisis. But he didn't solve the revenue, according to Gibbon this in when Rome began to decline. Their former glory was completely over and destabilization was the future for Rome.

Less than three months after Pertinax was killed by the Praetorian Guard because they did not like that Pertinax would let them do anything they wanted.

The steps of this crisis were that Commodus created a large deficit because of his spending habits and to make the Praetorian Guard happy. Then Commodus raised taxes to pay off his ventures. But this did not solve the debt crisis.

Pertinax came in and reduced taxes but did not solve the revenue crisis. The Praetorian Guard killed Pertinax because he did not make the Praetorian Guard happy.

The main correlation relating our debt crisis is if we replace the Praetorian Guard with multinational-corporations who fund out political campaigns. Multinational-corporations do not kill politicians like they did in ancient Rome, but they can choose who they give money to. If a politician does not want to play within the games of Multinational-corporations than the politician does not get to play at all. The point is that like in ancient Rome with the Praetorian Guard there is a small group of individuals that have a very large tug on public policy.

Another troubling aspect of this story is that Pertinax remits these high taxes even though the government badly needs revenue. Gibbon does not go into description but we can deduce it is because the people of Rome have barely any money to give. It gives a picture of a very poor republic. But it could be said that with gas prices so high and the people are already overloaded with personal debt the average American might not be able to pay their taxes and not foreclose or miss other bills at the same time.

The most terrifying thing about this story is that Rome began to decline after this debt crisis because the people could not make enough money to be taxed on. The government of Pertinax fell into a paradoxical situation. If Rome taxed highly they would cause different problems, if they taxes were low different problems would occur.

For our debt Crisis it would look like this: If the government raised taxes than millions of people might foreclose and start missing monthly bills like credit cards or their car insurance. Which will lead to a certain group of problems. If they government keeps taxes reduced the government will be forced to lesson the qualities of their services, for examples roads, schools, military, police, and the pay of public employees. A different set of problems will be reduced. For Pertinax it was to let the government quality lesson.
Chapter 5: How Debt made the French Revolution Possible

In The French Revolution by Ben R. Jones (1967, 20-22) the story of how the French government in the 1780s and 90s fell in to debt. It started with an agricultural crisis, according to Jones, “Severe drought and fodder shortage in 1785 meant less livestock and wool- this affected Eastern France especially. There was also a slump in wine sales that meant less money available in the normally profitable wine areas. Rouen had not recovered from a disastrous cotton famine resulting from the Maritime War (1778-83), and this meant less money for peasant families relying on earnings from domestic industry.” All this famine caused the price of food to rise and people could not afford to buy things other than food which led to a slump in every other market.

Then the French government made a free trade agreement with Britain called the Eden Treaty. The purpose of this was to help the wine market but it ended up hurting the textile industry.

IN 1788 the harvest was ruined because of hailstorms, then the price bread took, “there-quarters of a day laborer’s wage.”

Ben R. Jones does not state it but while all these domestic tragedies were occurring they France was fighting small conflicts all over the planet to gain more colonies. France had colonies in America (Louisiana), in the Caribbean Haiti and other islands, and had a good portion of western Africa. They were spending massive amounts of money on expansion and none on domestic.

All these catastrophes led to the French government having no money. According to Jones, “There had been serious economic crises before, but the sudden slump of 1787-9 coincided with a political crisis arising out of the government's lack of money.” Jones goes on to say, “The extended recession had sadly reduced the government's financial resources at the very time it was most seriously under pressure. Without the political crisis there would have been no revolution, for it apparent was not distress; but the prevailing economic conditions explain much of the course that revolution took.” The French government could not properly respond to the food crisis because it had no money, the Resilience Factor was gone. The French government was snapped in half because it could not fiscally afford to solve its problems which led to the Revolution of 1789.

The French financial crises followed several steps: the first major problem was that it was over expanded, they had colonies all over the world which they had to spend money on. The second problem when they kept having crops fail which led to high food prices. The high food prices led to people not purchasing non-food goods which led to economic slumps in other economic sectors. Then the French government made a free trade agreement with Britain which helped wine but hurt other sectors. This all led to low tax revenue. Which led to the people to radicalism that made revolution possible, which led to regime change and the previous rulers and leaders of that society having their heads chopped off.

The main similarities between The French Revolution and the debt crisis of The United States is that we have a free trade agreement resembling the Edna Treaty called NAFTA which has reduced wages and hurt many economic sectors in the United States. We have military forces posted all over the planet like France did, we do not call Iraq and Afghanistan a colony because the word has a bad connotation, but the fact is, Iraq and Afghanistan are colonies that we occupy and have to spend huge amounts of money on.

America does not have a food crisis, but we have a gasoline/oil crisis. The price of gasoline until 2000 with a fluctuation a few times remained around 1 dollar per gallon. It can be assumed that the United States economy was designed around 1 dollar gasoline, how we price things, how we pay people, how we generally transport ourselves and what products we use. In the last ten years the price of gasoline/oil has skyrocketed which and since all goods are shipped by vehicles that run on gasoline/oil the prices of those commodities rise with it. Food may not be scarce but if oil is scarce then the price of goods that require transportation rise with it.

The French Revolution was obviously a product of radicalism. The French people could not get food and live a worth living, they became afraid and the fear led to anger, and the anger resulted in violence.
Chapter 6: Russia, Debt and War

In The Russian Revolution by Richard Pipes (1990. 234-238) an explanation of Russian debt crisis of 1915-18 occurs: According to Pipes Russia had a reasonable economy before World War 1 Russia had a good supply of gold reserves and some money in the treasury. The problem was this in World War 1, the war concerned Germany, France, England, and Russia. Pipes said that, “It has been estimated that whereas the national per capita income of England in 1913 was $243, of France $185, and of Germany $46, Russia's was a mere $44. And yet Russia's costs would be to England's and inferior only to Germany.” This is obviously not hard math to understand. Russia was trying to spend just as much as England and France even though they did not have the money to spend. The war led to a deficit which led to them indirect taxes and taking loans out from foreign institutions.

Russia also prohibited the sell of alcohol which led to a huge decline in tax revenue. According to Pipes, “While alcoholism did not decline, the Treasury' income from alcohol taxes did, and these had formerly accounted for one-fourth of its revenues.”

Then Russia decided to print more currency which led to inflation. On July 27, 1914 the Russian suspended the gold standard and began printing notes without concern for how much gold was in the Treasury. “Paper currency declined proportionately, from 98 percent (July 1914) to 51.4 (January 1915), 28.7 percent (January 1916), and 16.2 percent (January 1914).” This led to inflation and a job in the exchange- rate.

Russia began borrowing money from England, America and Japan. Six to eight billion came from England alone.

The inflation led to high food prices but strangely the it benefited the peasant and hurt the urban dweller. The muzhik (a race of Russian peasant) got the idea not farm every piece of land which would make their food more expensive when they sold it to the urban population. What did they care, they grew their own food, they didn't have to pay for it.

This led to an urban crisis though: there were estimated between 22 to 28 million people living in the cities that depended upon food. Soon there were food shortages which led to the price of food skyrocketing,

Then Russia had a shipping crisis: The main Russian cities located in the north-west near Europe before the war were getting their coal from England even though Russia had its own coal in its southern and eastern parts of Russia. When World War 1 the sea lanes in the Baltic were closed, Russia couldn't get coal and oil which led to transportation problems, because the food was transported by trains which ran on coal at that point in history. In 1916 the transportation became even worse because the government had no money to repair the trains, so when they broke, they weren't fixed. There was one less train bringing food to the cities.

The steps of the Russian debt crisis: They joined a war that they couldn't afford to be in. Then the war cost too much. They decided to inflate their currency. The inflated currency led to the peasants not farming as much to make more money. This led to urban centers having food shortages, the supply of food went down, the price went up. The Russian government started taking out large amounts of loans from other countries. Then there was a transportation problem because they could not get British oil which led to trains and automobiles not being able to run. Then they were so out of money they couldn't even repair the trains, which meant one less train bringing food. Which led to a violent revolution that resorted in the leaders of that society being shot and a whole reworking of government.

The similarities between The United States and the Russian Debt crisis are that the United States had a deficit surplus before going to Iraq and Afghanistan which was less than ten years ago. Instead of the farmers having a food shortage because of a lack of planting, the United States has higher food prices because farmers have decided to grow corn for ethanol and not food people can eat. We also have transportation problems because of the high price of oil. The United States gets its oil from foreign countries that are thousands of miles away. And when those countries have a disruption like in Libya the price of gasoline/oil rises in America. The United States also has taken out billions in loans from foreign countries for example China.

Chapter 7: Debt in the United States after World War 2

It can been seen from this graph (usgovernmentspending.com) that America after World War 2 and The New Deal in 1944 was at over 100 percent of its GDP in debt. It was actually at a higher percent of GDP than it is currently. But there was no radicalism, no riots and no revolution. The reason is that the unemployment rate between 1944 and 1959 stayed below 6 percent (infoplease.com, 2011). The other reason concerns tax collection, the United States decided to put a heavy tax burden on the wealthiest class. In 1944 the tax burden for people making over 200,000 dollars was 94 percent and the lowest was 23% for people making $2,000 and below (taxfoundation.org). In 2011 terms $200,000 would be $2,502,534 and $2,000 is $25,148(CPI Inflation Calculator). Every one paid high taxes in 1944.

Google taxfoundation.org to find graph.

The graph displays the tax rates for 1944. As anyone can see they paid very high taxes.

It would be easy just to say, “Raise taxes like they did in 1944 but there few similarities between 2011 America and 1944 America. 1944 America a very strong economy and a freshly built infrastructure following The New Deal. We have a decaying infrastructure built in The New Deal and the 50s. America 1944 had a large supply of oil and the use of oil did not demand foreign supplies yet. 1944 America did not have an 8.9 percent unemployment rate like we have:

1944 America did not have to employee females to a large extent, they didn't have to supply African-Americans good jobs, they didn't have an influx of Latino immigrants. World War 2 was over and they didn't have to spend any more money on that, while 2011
America has two colonies to deal with. They didn't have to compete with foreign countries that do not mind paying their workers less for manufacturing jobs. After World War 2 Europe and Asia were blown to pieces and South America was still a backwater, so the United States did not have to compete with them. But currently, Europe, Russia, China, Japan, India, and several South American countries have been stabilized for along time, and have found new ways innovative ways to make their countries wealthy. Also 1944 did not global warming, excessive environmental damage leading to further problems and didn't have to worry about high gasoline/oil prices.
Most of all 1944 America did not have to worry about the cost of health care and entitlements for the elderly. What one notices after looking at the debt crises of history is that none of the aforementioned countries had health care costs problems.
The 2011 situation is not the same as the 1944 situation. The 2011 situation is much more complex and daunting.

Chapter 8: How the United States Taxes its Citizens

In America we have a progressive tax which means that the government taxes more and more the wealthier the citizen is. The idea of the progressive tax comes from Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations (1937, 793) from this paragraph:
“The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion”

Smith's basic idea is that the poor cannot give to many taxes to the government, if they do they will starve. And that if the wealthy give a large proportion of their wealth to their government the government can in turn use the money to create infrastructure that will create more wealth. The more wealth there is, the wealthy everyone can become, which makes the nation wealthy and prosperous and a good nation to live in.

2011 United States Tax brackets from Taxfoundation.org:

Obviously from looking at this chart that taxes are much lower than they were in 1944.
According to USA Today, (4/15/2010) 47% of citizens do not pay taxes, it can been seen in this chart:

It can be seen that most people under the $30,000 bracket are not paying taxes. But strangely 9% come from citizens making over $100,000 a year.
There are also subsidies that the federal government gives out to oil and gas companies and to farmers:

$36.5 billion in subsidies to large oil companies.

Billions and billions in farm subsidies. Could not ascertain the exact number given to farms because the farm subsidy world is intensely bureaucratic and full of specifications. It involves subsidies to farmers to grow ethanol, subsides to people not to farm, and even subsidies
to Brazilian cotton farmers.

There are also tax refunds and loopholes for major corporations: For example in 2009 Exxon Mobil paid no taxes even though they made $19 billion in profits. Bank of America paid no taxes and got a $1.9 billion tax refund. General Electric made $26 billion in profits and paid no taxes and got a $4.1 billion refund and many more corporations have gotten out of paying taxes (sanders.senate.gov, 2011). This is obviously a problem of tax collection. The United States is failing to collect taxes; the idea that Exxon Mobil doesn’t pay any taxes is absurd. It shows a complete a failure of governance.

The United States way of collecting taxes is amazing in its complexity. But one can see that it is very easy not to pay taxes in America from the rich to the poor.
Chapter 9: Why Americans are so against Taxes being Raised?

What is important, is that we need to figure out why Americans do not have the income anymore to pay high taxes and are strongly against the raising of taxes. And even why they do have the spending money to purchase goods like they used to: What needs to be done is show the math of a normal American family. Take a married couple of two with say 2 kids whose annual income is $60,000 a year that live in Hubbard, Ohio.

Federal social security state income city
(60,000 x .15)+(60,000 x .084)+ (60,000 x .04983)+ (60,000 x .014)
9000 + 5040 + 2998 + 840
=17,878
60,000 - 17,878
42,122 left
Average cost insurance for a family according to Kaiser family foundation
13,373
42,122 -13,373
= 28,749
say the monthly mortgage is 1200 a month which equals 14,400
28,749 - 14,400
= 14,349
Then I added in the price of owning one car for one year:
insurance payments gas oil oil changes two new tires
(66 x 12)+ (200 x 12)+ (40 x 52)+ (35 x 4)+ 300
792+2400+2080+140+300
=5712 x 2 but lets say one car is paid off and they have a family insurance package, lets just add 3000.
=8,712
14,349 – 8,712
= 5637
$5,637 is the remaining amount left for a family of four. This does not include food, heating, electricity, water, Internet, cable television, or sales tax.
I admit there are some problems with the choosing of the numbers, I tried to pick them to resemble the bills of someone making 60,000. There are also other things like tax credits that I didn't include and a possible lower insurance premium.
We have to remember that in 1944 the United States was able to raise taxes and that for two decades the United States had a very high tax rate. In 1944 the lowest tax rate was 23% (Barrymore, howstuffworks.com, 2011) So what is the difference between now and then?

The two things in 1944 that Americans did not have to deal with were the extreme cost of health care and the automobile. For a family of four that has an annual income of $60,000 a year having health insurance and two automobiles literary sucks up an estimated $20,000 dollars a year. Because of these two expenses it leads to several things: on the macroeconomic side it leads to an inability to save, an inability to buy products in the economy generating wealth throughout the economy, and it leads to people using credit cards to compensate for not having
an adequate supply of spending cash. On the macroeconomic side automobiles lead to wars, massive military spending, subsidies to oil companies, oil spills, CO2 emissions, damage to the environment, and constantly needing to maintain the roadways.

The cost of health care keeps going up and up. Everyone needs health care though: everyone wants to be well and not to die. And everyone knows that if you go to a hospital for something serious and you do not have health care you will have bills for the rest of your life.

The cost of being an American and having children verges on impossible. The average American is a serf to debt, insurance companies and their car. The difference between a slave and a serf is that a slave cannot leave the plantation, but a serf can leave to do their business but they are constantly owned by outside forces that tie them down.

Chapter 10: What Solutions are Possible inside the Present Paradigm?

Cut the Budget: The future could be Senator Rand Paul's budget which cuts almost every program in the federal government including 30% decrease for Agriculture, 54% decrease for Commerce, 83% decrease for education, 100% for the Department of Energy, 100% decrease for HUD, 49% for Transportation, 29% decrease for the EPA, and many other programs. Budget cutting at this level would lead to America becoming a third world country, many of the services we enjoy would disappear: our schools, environment, highways, housing services for the poor would be terribly damaged. It would lead to America not being able to compete in the international market for jobs because our country would be in a state of inefficiency.

If the budget is cut as intensely as Rand Paul wants to cut it, then it will lead to massive outrage and instability in the society. The recent events in Wisconsin would be just the beginning of the future protests that will occur if the budgets keep getting cut. Lowering the budget on education will compromise the future of America and make it less competitive, which will lead to further decline. Rand Paul's budget is the acceptance of decline. It resembles Pertinax and could bring on Russian and French revolution style chaos in the future.

Raise taxes on the Middle-Class: Raising taxes would be difficult because the average citizen is already spending so much money on their car and health insurance. Raising taxes on the middle-class and lower-classes now would lead to the economy worsening.

Raise taxes on the wealthy: It might be possible to raise taxes on people making over 2 million a year. It would not hurt small business and only effect those who could pay it. But at the same time because we have an international market the wealthy might decide to just leave America.

Cut subsidies and tax breaks: Cutting subsidies would create more revenue but might cause the prices of fuel and food to rise.
Make Multinational Corporations Pay Taxes: The United States government instead of giving tax refunds to Bank of America and Exxon Mobil it could actually collect taxes from them.

Flat Tax: Russia implemented a flat a 13 percent flat tax for individuals and a 24 percent tax on corporations. Russia doesn't give subsidies and tax breaks like the United States does. According to an essay from “The University of Chicago Journal” by Kevin Stacey (2009) it has created more revenue for the government but has not increased wealth. And according to Stacey, the,“data is that the flat tax seems to have done little to increase real income for taxpayers. If real income had increased substantially.” But it must be noted that Russia makes a lot of revenue from their natural gas and oil exports.

Chapter 11: Suggestions Based off what we Learned from History

We have learned from the aforementioned experiences of history that great debt brings on great change. The change requires people to live differently, under new laws and new of philosophies.

Immense debt is a signal to your country, “You have been living incorrectly. The path you have chosen is not sustainable.”
Before we fix the debt we have to ask the question the Roman soldiers did in ancient Greece and in Rome during Publius Servilius' time and what the French and Russians asked during their times of crisis, “Is the government and its laws worth saving?”

The Roman soldiers answered yes, they believed in the Republic and thought it needed improvements not destruction. The Greeks responded with electing a new leader that would change the laws and framework of their government, as the French and Russians did also.

My answer would be yes, save the Constitution, the constitution is well written, provides a separation of powers and grants us rights we very much enjoy. The debt is a constitutional problem, it is a culture problem.

The steps I would take in trying to solve the debt crisis:

First Step: Creating a mixture of a flat tax and a progressive tax. People making below $20,000 do not have to pay taxes but get no tax breaks. People making between $20,000 and 2.5 million have to pay a flat tax of 13 to 16 percent and no tax breaks. People making above 2.5 million would have to pay around 50% on every dollar they made above 2.5 million and subsidies only on farms and innovation, which should be strictly monitored. The reasoning for the 2.5 million is so not to hurt small business. We have to remember that much of small business are doctors and local owners who we do not want to hurt. While people who make 2.5 million are people involved in large corporations. Perhaps if the tax was higher multinational corporations who do not concern themselves with the prosperity of the American citizen and only with reaping as much profits as possible from the American citizen will leave and they will be replaced with smaller businesses who care more about their communities and its citizens. This could have a bad effect at first but years later it could lead to a better America.

Second step: Reducing the price of health care insurance. The best way to do this would be to create a public option where people can pay into health care. If everyone pays into health care then it will be cheaper. By not allowing people to frivolously sue doctors and hospitals.

More preventive medicine and the reduction of unhealthy food in our culture.

Third Step: Bring the troops home from foreign countries. According to Professor Jules Defour from the Globalresearch.ca website the United States has based in 63 different countries (2009). Defense is costing the U.S. Tax payer almost 700 billion a year. Cutting spending on education and transportation before needless military bases is not logical. The logical thing to do would be to close many bases around the world and to bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. There is no money to fund these ventures any no longer.

Fourth Step: One of the main problems we refuse to look at is the use of cars. The United States needs to reduce the amount of car use. Owning and using cars are sucking up too much money and leading to foreign wars the United States cannot afford. It should be a high priority of the Federal, state and local governments to zone in new ways. The new types of zoning should be based on sustainability methods. The United States needs to start building up and not out. The era of urban sprawl needs to come to an end. The average person cannot actually afford to own a car when the numbers are added up. It should become law that cars that drive on less than 30 miles per gallon should be illegal to make. Then it should become law that any new building of suburbs become illegal or just not zoned. Business centers, factories and hosing should be zoned within walking or busing distance of each other. Bike paths and commuter train rails should be built. Also food should be grown more locally, instead of growing food for ethanol or soybeans for China local farmers should be given subsidies to grow locally. This would also bring back a sense of community that Americans have lost in the car boom years.

If Republicans want to go back to the time of the 50s then this is very close to that: it involves a higher tax rate for the wealthy, less car use, people living closer together, and eating local food. But without the racism and sexism the 50s contained.

The United States can either choose to implement these things and start making changes early or the changes will be forced through protest and anger, and the natural progression of history. It is wiser to make a change then to be forced to change.

Chapter 12: Domestic Implications if it’s Business as Usual
If the United States government cuts budgets, refuses to rearrange the tax brackets, keeps allowing large corporations to not pay taxes and never downsizes the military influence on the world then extreme government deterioration will occur. Budget cuts = deterioration. According to Politico (2011), “Moody’s chief economist, Mark Zandi, projected that the House proposal would cut real GDP growth by 0.5 percent in 2011 and 0.2 percent in 2012. That, in turn, would lead to 400,000 fewer jobs being created than expected by the end of this year and a total of 700,000 fewer jobs by the end of 2012.” When the budget cuts are implemented thousands are going to lose their jobs. Thousands of Americans who worked hard and got paid well will be sent home with no job. This is going to be a disaster, 100s of thousands more people and many who have college degrees will be added to the as Marx called it The Reserve Army of Labor which is large mass of people who are unemployed, all the unemployed people creates a surplus of possible workers, which lowers their demand, after their demand is lowered, then the corporations can pay them less to work. Because instead of workers getting paid well and getting good benefits, the United States citizen will have this attitude, “At least I have a job,” which will destroy the work labor unions have done since the beginning of the United States.

As The Reserve Army of Labor grows discontent will grow in the United States, now in terms of political science, discontent doesn’t need to make sense. Germany had massive amounts of debt; they tried to cure it by killing Jewish people. How killing Jewish people can cure deeply befuddles me. The new illogical discontent can be seen with the Tea Party, the founder of the Tea Party Judson Phillips’ believes that Barack Obama was not born in America and that, “The White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) population in America is headed for extinction and with it our economy, well-being and survival as a uniquely America culture.” (Devin Burghart, irehr.org, 2011). According to the Tea Party the United States government is in such debt and has so many problems because white people aren’t having enough babies, and if we could just return to white people culture then everything would be fine. This is madness. This is the very definition of a fascist ideology, where you blame the problems of your society on race and not on empirical evidence. If a Tea Party member is eventually elected to President, the United States will face grave implications.

The United States in the coming years will experience a deep decline of government services, the government will become more and more inefficient. For example there is a plan currently to cute the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Cutting funding to the CDC is not a good idea, instead of building less aircraft or closing a few bases in foreign countries, or making Exxon Mobil pay taxes, we are going to create an inefficient institution concerning disease. These budget cuts will eventually lead to the American citizen becoming very dissatisfied with the government, which will lead to protests on a large scale.

Livy, Titus. 1998. The Rise of Rome Books 1 – 5. New York: Oxford University Press.
Plutarch. 1957. Plutarch's Lives. New York: Mentor Books.
Tacitus. 1966. The Annals of Imperial Rome. Baltimore: Penguin.
Gibbon, Edward. 2005. The Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire. New York: Random House.
Jones, Ben R. 1968. The French Revolution. U.S.A.: Minerva Press.
Pipes, Richard. 1991. The Russian Revolution. New York: Vintage.
Smith, Adam. 1937. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. United States: Random House.
Truthandpolitics.org. 2004. Top Marginal Income Rates, 1913 -2003. accessed 2/18/2011 fromtruthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php
usgovernment.us. 2011. Budgetted U.S. Federal Debt. Accessed 4/3/2011 from http://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/federal_debt
infoplease. 2007. United States Unemployment Rate. Accessed 2/3/2011 from http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104719.html
Tax Foundation. 2011. State Individual Tax Rates. Accessed 3/23/2011 from http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/228.html

Tax Foundation. U.S. Federal Income Tax Rates History, 1913-2011. Accessed 3/23/2011 from http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html

CPI Inflation Calculator. Accessed 3/23/2011 from http://www.compuquotes.com/average-costs-of-insurance.html
Compu Quotes. 2011. Average Insurance Costs for Auto, Home, Renters Health. Accessed 4/25/2011 from http://www.compuquotes.com/average-costs-of-insurance.html
USA Today. 2010. Our View on Financing the Government. When 47% don't pay income tax. Its not Healthy for the U.S.. 2010. Accessed 4/23/2011 from http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2010-04-16-editorial16_ST_N.htm
Reuters. 2010. Obama budget seeks to End Oil, Gas Subsidies. Accessed 3/15/2011 from http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/02/01/us-obama-budget-oil-idUSTRE6103RM20100201?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2Fenvironment+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Environment%29
Dan Morgan, Gilbert M Gaul and Sarah Cohen. Farm Program pays out 1.3 Billion to People who Don't Farm. The Washington Post. Accessed 3/15/2011 from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/01/AR2006070100962.html
Michael Grunwald. Why the U.S. Is also Giving Brazallian Farm Subidies. Time. Accessed 4/23/2011 from http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1978963,00.html
Kevin Stacey. 2009. Study Separates Russian Flat Tax Rate Myth from Fact. University of Chicago Press Journals. Accessed 4/15/2011 from http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-06/uocp-ssr061609.php
Daniel Mitchell. 2003. Russia's Flat Tax Miracle. The Heritage Foundation. Accessed /15/2011 from http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2003/03/russias-flat-tax-miracle
Jennifer Epstein. 2011. Report. House Budget Bill could Kill 700k Jobs. Politico. Accesed 3/27/2011 from http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/50341.html
sanders.senate.gov. 2011. Accessed 4/4/2011 from http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=A25567FF-02C0-4730-A6DF-BF1F0039AC78
Devin Burghar. 2011. Tea Party Warns of White Anglo Saxon Protestant Extinction. irehr.org. Accessed 4/3/2011 from http://www.irehr.org/issue-areas/tea-parties/19-news/76-tea-party-nation-warns-of-white-anglo-saxon-protestant-extinction

Interview for Rumpus by Ani Smith

2011-05-23T10:50:00.000-07:00

here is the interview

I continued to write today, it felt food.

the words starting flowing easily.

It was like I rembered how to write.

the fingers were moving.

last night I sat next to my book shelf, picked up Ezra Pound and read random poems from Personae, Pound always notifies me of what needs to be done, Pound is always there, I go and sit with Pound at he kitchen table, before he became a nazi, and he talks to me about writing, about beauty, how to drink it, how to find it, how to succumb to it, the sounds, he tells me about how the oldest known language is the songs that Brahmans sing, and that no one knows what the words mean, and that when scientists put them through a machine, the sounds resembled the algorithms of birds, he says I must find the algorithm.

started another novel today

2011-05-22T19:02:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I've started another novel.

I should write a book of poetry or philosophy or something.

But another novel

It is a young adult novel.

I asked Ned Vizzini in LA if I should write a young adult novel. He told me I should. He told me to remember that teenagers have total emotions. They are not hindered by bills, long term romantic relationships, children or long term dreams.

I spent several days with Jordan Castro and Bebe Zeva who are both graduating high school this week. Congrats to them, good luck.

Both of them, are like, super intelligent and very weird, and interesting. I think I will be basing a lot of the thoughts and feelings of the characters on those two. It won't be impossible to base a book of them, because I know very little about their real actual lives, or what it means to be them.

Both of them still have this, "Don't tell me what to do" thing going on. Which I have lost. Most of the time, I wish someone would just fucking tell me what to do.

But I know I had it.

So I will try to go back to it.

And it will be fun to pretend that I still have that, when I write alone in my house.

I think I will be able to write this book because the book is about going into 9th grade, which is a huge transition. And right now in my life, I am inside of a huge transition period, I just graduated and plan on moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico. I am in a committed relationship. I am committed man.

A strange thing that is going on, that might influence the novel, is that all I'm reading is experimental literature, Ofelia Hunt's new book Today and Yesterday, Michael Seidlinger's new novel that hasn't come out yet, and Chris Higgs' novel The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney.

I am not writing as fast as I did when I was yong. I can't drink coffee because of the psoriasis, so I'm typing with the power of Yogi detox tea.

I'm writing this book with a healthy mind and body.

What is hardest, is to know what I didn't then. Because I've analyzed my childhood a lot, but the trick is, figuring how to display what I know now in a way that still pretends that the lead character knows nothing.

Because the person in high school, is so narcissistic, the world is completely located within themselves, not the other around.

The world eventually grinds you into knowing that you are very alone and that the only way you are going to get anything is by working and struggling, and that money is really important.

But when I write about these characters, I have to recognize money isn't important, money is like a bag of weed or cigarettes, money is like fun, not something one thinks about with a sense of dread and a generalized feeling of hate.

LA post

2011-05-19T11:20:00.001-07:00

I think what I learned from LA was this: everyone must find a place in the division of labor, if you are writing a script for a tv show, an actor on a cable television network, an indie writer, a boom mike operator, a homeland security guard at an airport, an owner of a burrito joint, an airplane pilot, everyone must choose a job, and then they need to choose to do it well, and if every works hard, then everything goes smoothly, and strangely how much everyone fucking needs everyone else.

Here is a blog post about the trip by Brad Warner

In LA

2011-05-15T18:38:00.000-07:00

Here is a new interview

I have been in LA for several days.

It has been pretty intense.

I am done shooting and will get to relax for the next couple days, and return to Ohio.

Need some more Money

2011-05-10T07:01:00.000-07:00

Shoplifting from American Apparel needs a little bit more money to be made. Help us. Please

mallory whitten writes a short story about the reading in Pittsburgh

2011-05-07T10:06:00.001-07:00

the story is here.

Mallory Whitten is realy nice.

Osama Update, Che Guevara

2011-05-05T10:25:00.000-07:00

Che Guevara was executed on the second day after being captured.

According to wikipedia, "Today, some of these belongings, including his flashlight, are on display at the CIA.[201] After a military doctor amputated his hands, Bolivian army officers transferred Guevara's body to an undisclosed location and refused to reveal whether his remains had been buried or cremated. The hands were preserved in formaldehyde to be sent to Buenos Aires for fingerprint identification. (His fingerprints were on file with the Argentine police.) They were later sent to Cuba."

So this is the protocol:

Leaders of international political organizations that commit violence to achieve its end, when captured must be executed and their remains hidden.

Ana C. wrote a poem about Best Behavior

2011-05-03T11:36:00.000-07:00

Ana Carrete is awesome, i love her so much. Go to the other section of her links, and read her until you get horny.

i put ‘best behavior’ on the driver’s seat
opened the trunk
put my backpack there
closed the trunk
kissed my dad goodbye and he said
do you know how to pronounce cicero
and he pronounced it and said it was italian
and i was like oh
and got in the car but moved best behavior
and placed it on the passenger seat
and waved goodbye and blew him kisses and drove away

i read some chapters while waiting at the border
and i accidentally read
‘the rabble worked the low paying jobs, trying to feed themselves and their children’
while a man that was selling fruit
stood next to my window
and while i wrote this note down another man asked if i wanted to buy the newspaper

and i read
‘but she rationalized that electricity and heat are important things and must be maintained to live a good life’
and then they played this song on the radio:

Rod Stewart

2011-05-03T08:54:00.000-07:00

I don't know who Rod Stewart is

But I'll let him save me.

I keep listening to The Young Turks.

I feel very tired.

Osama Bin Laden (UPDATED)

2011-05-02T10:47:00.000-07:00

After The Civil War we did not kill Jefferson Davis and throw him into the ocean.

After World War 1 we did not kill Kaiser Wilhelm and throw him into the ocean.

After World War 2 we did not kill Hirohito and throw and him into the ocean.

At the Beginning of the Operation Iraqi Freedom we did not kill Saddam Hussian and throw him in the ocean.

It doesn't seem that throwing foreign leaders dead bodies into the ocean is protocol.

There are two things you can assume from this story.

1. It is made up, a beautiful noble lie for the masses, to distract them from the fact that gas rose 30 cents today. Or perhaps to help Obama's election strategy or just to give some vague hope that are country isn't pathetic.

2. America is now a murdering pile of shit. Instead of doing the normal protocol of getting the foreign leader, bringing him back to face an international trial. We just kill them and throw them into the ocean.

This second might make sense: considering that right now America is killing people with tax payer money in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lybia and Iraq all at the same time.

I want everyone to imagine this scenario:

The CIA and the Navy Seals call the president Barack Obama and say, "We know where Osama Bin Laden is, we can get him. What would you like us to do with him, when we capture him."

Barack Obama responds, "Kill him and throw him into the ocean."

Now before anyone makes up a scenario where, American troops were forced to kill Osama Bin Laden in a firefight.

There are machines that are being used to fight pirates in the Indian Ocean, that can send a sound wave that will cause everyone in its way, basically to fall over in pain because of the sound. We could not have shot that at the house?

UPDATE

But perhaps since Osama Bin Laden led no foreign nation, he was considered under the status of William Wallace and Vercingetorix but they were both captured and held for awhile before being executed.

Someone made this point on some forum, "Because in actuality, they did not kill him, but captured him to extract information. Obviously, they would employ any means to achieve this. Leading everyone to believe he is dead is the best way to prevent public curiosity and interest. And of course the Geneva convention agreement for the treatment of prisoners does not apply to dead people, or does it? Just my personal opinion."

That the Navy Seals extracted information by doing some heinous ass shit and didn't want anyone to see his body. Sounds plausible.

I don't know.

If this helps Obama beat the Republican candidate, and gets the democrats a majority in the House again, whatever.

TO MORE SERIOUS NEWS:

James Howard Kunstler on his blog has proposed this amendment to the constiution, "Therefore, the remedy is a constitutional amendment re-defining corporate personhood as something less than, and apart from, citizenship. Who is the elected official out there who might take up this proposal?"

The Energy Information Agency, the agency that does the data on natural gas and oil reserves at home and abroad has had major cuts and no longer has the ability to collect the data needed, to understand why gas prices are rising.

According to the article, "For example, the agency will not conduct its annual report on U.S. proved oil and natural gas reserves, an issue of major interest in Congress as lawmakers debate bills to expand domestic oil and gas production."

That is great.

I am like, are you serious? I have childlike confusion right now.

So this is the state of my country

it kills people and throws them into the ocean and defunds agencies that collects the data on the liquids that give us heat and propel the vehicles that bring us food.

Oh my gucking god.

I feel like, William S. Burroughs was right, The Naked Lunch was true and a great prophecy.

People keep telling me the government sucks

2011-05-01T07:38:00.000-07:00

I think in the last month I have heard someone say at a sentence that implies, "The government sucks."

According to Aristotle the best government is one with just laws, an aristocracy and the society has a strong middle class.

Well, going by Aristotle we don't have these things:

When no one got arrested after the banking crisis, the government basically said, "The Rule of Law does not apply to banker, stock brokers, and people who work at insurance companies. Laws only apply to poor people."

So the laws are not just.

The middle class in America has basically died, if a family of four doesn't have an annual income over $70,000 a year they are still behind.

We don't have an aristocracy but an oligarchy.

Definitions first:

An aristocracy is where the best rule. The best do not rule in America. The structure of campaign donations has created a system where those who love power for power's sake and will kiss anyone's ass who gives them money become the leaders.

An oligarchy is a government where those with the most money have an incredible amount of influence on public policy as opposed to the people with normal amounts of money relative to that society have very little influence on public policy.

So I guess it makes sense when people say, "The government sucks."

In 2006 people concluded that the government might suck and decided to vote in Democrats, then Democrats again 2008. Nothing happened that made them happy so they voted for Republicans in 2010, The Republicans decided to bust public unions and attempt to defund Planned Parenthood. So that isn't working either.

Now the gas prices are rising again, and when it reaches 4 dollars a gallon Americans get mad.

The reason gas prices are going up is because the world has reached peak production of oil, the world can only produce a certain amount of oil a day. A lot of countries want that oil so the demand goes up supply goes down, which leads to higher prices. The gas prices are not the fault of the U.S. politicians. The gas prices are the fault of urban sprawl which is the fault of the American people. Someone complained to me the other day that gas prices were high, I looked at his vehicle, it was a giant van. I looked at mine, a small Saturn. The next time you think the thought, "Gas prices are high." Imagine a horse, imagine you riding a horse, imagine how long it would take for you to get there, imagine how much your ass would hurt from the saddle, imagine there being no radio on the horse's head playing your favorite CD. Imagine it and thank God you get to drive a car.

Here are my current suggestions to start fixing problems:

1. A constitutional amendment stating a way for campaign donations to be just between all economic classes.

If there were justice in campaign donations probably all of our current politicians would disappear. The politician would have to choose different methods of getting elected. The politician would be forced to listen to their constituents and think differently about how to solve problems.

I'm not going to add any more because if this problem was fixed, then in theory many other problems would have the possibility to be fixed.

If this problem is not fixed, things will just get worse and worse.

The other thing that needs to be mentioned is that if you are mad that the rich keep getting richer and are not accountable for their actions. Then you don't believe in The Constitution, The Takings Clause states, "Private property shall not be taken for a public use, without just compensation." The Constitution comes from Locke, who believed that the protection of private property is the reason we left The State of Nature.

Now here is the question:

Do you believe that protection of private property is the reason we left The State of Nature?

Or so you believe we left The State of Nature because they realized that a monopoly on violence was required to attain a life worth living. And that is the only reason.

Or do you believe that we left The State of Nature because we humans are genetically prone to work in groups to attain food and shelter and when the work is done to supply entertainment for each other?

Or do you believe that we left The State of Nature because the wealthiest farmers forced the poorest farmers to be their slaves?

Or do you believe something else?

If you do not believe in the Lockean, the whole crux of America collapses. You know that right?

New Review by Ellis Sharpe

2011-04-28T15:11:00.000-07:00

Here is the review

The Political Philosophy Book

2011-04-27T19:29:00.001-07:00

I am still working on the political philosophy book

I have been working on it for five years now.

I have not written one word.

2 and a 1/2 weeks left of school

2011-04-26T18:09:00.000-07:00

I skipped two classes today

I went to the first two

then I just walked off campus to my car and drove home.

These will be the last classes I ever skip.

Unless I go to grad school, I will only go to grad school if I can go for free with a stipend. That will probably never happen. If anyone reading this is a professor and wants to hook me up, please email me at noah.cicero@gmail.com. I will go to your grad school unless it is in the south.

So those will be the last classes I ever skip.

I don't really care about getting good grades this semester. It used to be fun to get good grades. Now I am tired. I know I will pass the classes, it will come. I will open the page with my grades on it and they will have passing grades and it will be fine.

I also learned that YSU never fails people in upper division classes, they just give incompletes. That is really funny. I have met people who stopped showing up to class with six weeks left to go and the professor gave them an incomplete. Also met someone who never turned in the final paper and the take home final and got an incomplete, the professor told them if they can just turn something in they will give them a C.

That is really funny.

College is really funny.

UPDATE:

After reading a comment, it occured to me that this post might imply that I think college is a joke.

I don't think college is a joke.

I learned a lot in college.

It is true, it is not hard to pass a class in college.

But if one wants to, they can actually read everything that is assigned, study hard, and spend time thinking about what they've learned then it can be a great experience.

I mean, because of college I know some spanish, how to do some statistical math problems that take forever to do, and where Azerbaijan is, how cool is that?

UPDATE

It occured to me this morning while walking on campus that I want to take spanish classes at a local community college wherever I move.

Also, I will deeply miss the parade of hoochie shorts that come at the end of spring semester and beginning of fall semester.

Good bye hoochie shorts
I will miss you
and all the legs
a boat leaves the harbor
and realizes the fish
were on the shore

INTERVIEW WITH xTx

2011-04-21T11:47:00.000-07:00

Here is the interview, xTx is really nice. Buy her book, google her, do what needs to be done.

BOOK TRAILER

2011-04-20T19:46:00.000-07:00

Untitled from Noah Cicero + Brittany Wallace on Vimeo.

Interview with Scott Mcclanahan

2011-04-20T16:18:00.000-07:00

Here is the interview.

tao lin writes on the future of the novel

2011-04-19T21:21:00.000-07:00

the future of the novel

I don't think I have ever thought about the future of the novel.

Seeing Someone you've had Sex with

2011-04-19T17:10:00.001-07:00

There are only two people at YSU that I've had sex with out of 11,000 students.

Today I saw one in the hall.

I thought when I saw her, "I don't really want to talk, but we've had sex, I have to say something."

I could tell she was thinking the same thing.

So I said hi and she said hi.

Then we said congrats on graduating.

Then we walked in different directions.

Chris Hedges vs. James Howard Kunstler

2011-04-18T05:17:00.000-07:00

Every monday morning I read the new blog posts by Chris Hedges and James Howard Kunstler.

I think after reading them, about people, and that Americans might like corporations. Everyday I hear people talking about brands of cell phones, brands of clothes, brands of televisions, brands brands brands.

At times I feel like a brand.

Maybe it is ugly. Maybe humans weren't meant for better.

A 1000 years ago in 1011 people were convinced that the Catholic Church was awesome, that kings and queens were awesome, and people lived like that for a very long time.

People in 1011 were fine with believing in God and the Catholic church, and having a king.

They didn't mind.

They don't mind buying droids and iphones and MACS and Pepsi now.

Kerouac had this strange view of humans, it was like, "Well, people aren't that great, but a lot of them are funny, they do endearing things, they live they suffer, everyone knows somebody that died, just go with it."

To take on a kerouac voice:

Oh if it all collapses, the Buddha will be keeping his hand on his belly, ocean waves will keep splashing on shores, women will keep yelling at their men, the children will play with broomsticks instead of plastic toys made from the hands of Chinamen thinking their Confuciusian thoughts, old women will keep demanding love and tenderness from their beleagered sons. Young puberty stricken boys with dried cum on their palms will still talk about the girls, legs and pretty faces, the girls will giggle and do their little dances, men will find drums and beat them beat beat dum. Old men will have their stories and the young will be making theirs. Living rooms will still need to be cleaned, cats will need to be fed, the dogs walked, the food cooked, sizzle sizzle of the frying pan at dinner time. People will find time to make love if it be on a rock or in a bed, soldiers will wear their uniforms and the poets will wear their uniforms and the politicians will wear their uniforms, you will still grow old with tatters of age, hair grey and booze in the tummy, visions of past kicks with a few kicks left to grab from the living breathing night, and the shoeless Jesus will be laughing, and you will laugh with him. And each baby will still have to be carried knowing one day it ends in death.

thank you I love you

2011-04-18T04:24:00.001-07:00

Interview with Rebecca Haze and a Book Signing gone Bad

2011-04-17T05:44:00.000-07:00

Here is the interview with Rebecca Haze

Yesterday I did a book signing with local authors at a library.

It was nice for a little bit. I basically met everyone who had a book published in my county. It was in Niles and everyone knew my family, they were like, "I know Carla." "I know Joey" "I know Carmen." Obviously the Cicero side.

Met a black female preacher who told me, "Produce, produce, that's what we tell people at the church, get out there and produce. Even if you never really sell any books Noah, if you have grandkids you can show them this book and they will know what it meant to be you in a different time." I believed her.

I didn't have my glasses on. Anyone who knows me, knows I only see about 15 feet without my glasses. After 15 feet I can't recognize who people are without my glasses.

I'm sitting there reading "A Short History of Africa" I look up and an old fat white woman is walking toward me. I took no thought of it, oh wow, a fat old white woman, this is common in Ohio. As she got closer I thought, "I recognize this person, but from where." Then she stood at the table and it was my fucking mother. I haven't seen my mother in 8 years. She stood there and said, "How much for a book?" Then I thought she looks old. I said, "Five bucks." I looked at her face, it was old, ugly, mangled, cold, indifferent, resembling an opossum. It was like a giant opussom was standing before me dressed in a Fashion Bug coat. I realized this situation was bad. I picked up my books in one hand and grabbed my coat in the other and ran out the door, then I ran to my car and drove away as fast I could.

A typical book signing in Ohio.

i feel unsure about this

2011-04-14T15:40:00.000-07:00

the dvd in its entirety can be purchased here

Review for Best Behavior by Rebecca haze

2011-04-13T14:28:00.000-07:00

This is the review.

three and a half weeks till graduation

2011-04-12T15:42:00.001-07:00

I just sit in class with a complete sense of apathy.

don't talk.

kind of sit with my eyes closed half the time.

Everyone is talking about what classes they are taking the next semester.

The other political science majors are done with me because I have no interest in taking the LSAT or going to law school.

Two people spoke to me today and I have no idea what they said, wasn't concerned.

Please wrte a review for Best Behavior

2011-04-11T11:45:00.001-07:00

If you have read Best Behavior

could you please write a short review for it on amazon.

If you want, you could go to like the amazon page for The Brothers Karamazov or Moby Dick, and then just switch the titles to Best Behavior and post that on amazon.

If you want to post song lyrics that is fine also.

If you just want to write the word "good" that is okay.

If you want to write to talk about your mom that is okay.

You can write anything you want.

Maybe a poem about spring.

Spring is good.

People will be like, "oh I like spring, therefore I will like Best Behavior."

I am a Party says I am number One Internet Star this Month

2011-04-10T20:17:00.000-07:00

This is the link.

There are many other stars such sam pink and Ana Carrete

I like this list, it is made Martin Wall.

The Open End Reviewed Best Behavior

2011-04-09T09:50:00.000-07:00

Here is the link to the review by Michael Davidson

Book Klub and interview with Sam Pink

2011-04-07T15:39:00.001-07:00

Interview with Sam Pink

Book Klub from jordan castro on Vimeo.

Five Weeks till Graduation

2011-04-02T05:50:00.000-07:00

I have been busy lately with school, the book, still working at a restaurant.

I still I am not sure where I am going to move in July, there are two possible locations but contingency and the gods will to have determine which one I go to.

Which is causing tension.

I have to give a powerpoint presentation at a conference on "High Debt and its Consequences on Government" Tuesday. I recently left my flash drive in a computer and it was stolen. The edited draft with the citations and the powerpoint were on it. I had to redo the powerpoint in a dark depression of hatred and will have to redo the citations and edit it again.

Studying the history of debt and our debt crisis was not good for my mental state. When the federal and state governments cut their budgets this year, it is going to cause around 200,000 to 300,000, maybe more not less people to be laid off. This is will cause a wave of shittiness in America. And all the pay cuts will cause shittiness. What is coming, is bad.

I am on a crazy diet to cure my psoriasis that doesn't allow me to eat pizza, cheeseburgers, Mexican food or kitkats. I also cannot drink alcohol and coffee. These food items make me very happy. Instead I'm eating gluten free cereal and salads.

I have lost 11 pounds in 5 weeks. I'm down to 173, I haven't weighed 173 since 2001. I am emaciated.

The psoriasis is healing on my body. The 'healing crisis' is still going on my scalp which is painful at times.

This is creating tension.

The dynamics the situation has created a feeling in me that I am "lost in my self"

Because I am spending so much time on my needs.

School is all about myself.

Work is all about myself.

The book is all about myself.

The diet is all about myself.

I think this is one the problems of modern America. It makes you very busy with things concerning yourself.

When you do things, that only concern you.

You don't feel part of the world.

When you don't feel part of the world.

You feel isolated.

Alienated.

I think this is why I have been doing interviews lately, to feel part of some social network, the online literary world.

Even though the online literary network is a collection of individuals living in isolation across America, Mexico, England, Canada and Spain.

It is strange, when you actually do something to help or participate in something in real life, it is causes a very real and concrete feeling.

When you help your elderly neighbor snowblow their driveway. You can see your neighbor in person, see the look on their face, you can even smell them, and reach out and shake their hand. It is very real. Concrete.

I hope after I graduate I get a job either with a business where I get to participate in how it works a little, or a job like the Vitamin Shoppe where I can least participate in helping people getting healthier, and by helping them get healthier I'm helping my local community get healthier.

A job where I don't feel so isolated. A life that just doesn't include myself.

my mother wrote an email

2011-04-01T19:15:00.000-07:00

Dear,
Noah

I remember when you were little: you weren't that interesting. The television show Cheers was much more interesting than you. You've always had imagination but no application. Your lack of application reveals itself over and over again. Your attempts at creating something worthwhile, brings to mind only a sense of a little boy trying very hard to impress his peers. Your peers will never love you. Remember when you were in 8th grade and you didn't make the head of captain of the football team and you threw that little hissy fit. It never changes does it. The hissy fits. Over and over again with the hissy fits. Now you are 30, and you seem scared again. You are very good at being scared. You were always scared of work. Your body couldn't handle it. A weak body for a weak boy.

Your mother

Scott McClanahan

2011-04-01T05:36:00.000-07:00

Scott McClanahan has a new book called Stories V.

I've read Stories 1 and Stories 2.

I liked them a lot.

Here is Scott reading

Best Behavior is Selling Badly, fear that my mother won't love me

2011-03-31T12:19:00.000-07:00

If the sells of Best Behavior do not rise

I will know for sure

that my mother does not love me

I have tried so hard to make my mother happy

and still she gives me nothing to eat

she locks me in the closet

I live in the closet with a laptop

typing like little boys do

but still my mother does not love me

she does not visit me

she does not make me dinner

my father keeps telling, "Noah, your mom doesn't enjoy the company of failures."

I sit like a little boy and find lies to tell myself.

I tell myself

Mother is busy

Mother will come around one day and show up and make me dinner.

I tell myself when I get older that my mother is a victim of society.

At times spite comes and I want to yell at my mother

But instead, I yell at myself.

I punish myself.

Mother never comes.

She never visits.

The last time I called my mother she told me that I needed to "get it together."

"get it together"

I'm together mommy I promise

Michael Davidson Interview

2011-03-30T08:32:00.000-07:00

Here is an interview with Michael Davidson

Want to do more interviews

2011-03-28T21:04:00.001-07:00

Will have interviews coming out with Michael Davidson and xTx.

I have Sam Pink's book Self-Esteem and Blake Butler's Scord Atlas.

I'm half way through Sam Pink's book. I'm really liking it.

Some other people are sending me books also, Elizebeth Ellen and A.J. Tyler.

I would like to do more interviews.

I want to do these interviews for posterity.

I will put them together one day and make a book of them.

Then put it in an air tight container and put them in a ceramic vase in a cave to be found 2,000 years from now.

email me noah.cicero@gmail.com

I have one rule though:

I don't like to read PDFs.

I have tried to read PDFs and have failed because I like books.

I don't like nooks

I don't like new music.

I don't like new movies.

I don't like new architecture.

I don't like new politicians.

The only thing I like about cell phones is that you can check the weather on them.

I like new clothes.

I like the new female hair styles.

I like the whole organic food movement.

I like men not hitting women.

I like flat screen televisions.

But I don't like reading 200 page books on a computer.

making a trailer for Best Behavior

2011-03-28T20:57:00.000-07:00

I've been notified that I need to make a trailer for Best Behavior.

I get to be in charge this trailer.

This is pretty serious.

Here are two book trailers I've been watching to understand the power of the book trailer

'Water' | from Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler from blake butler on Vimeo.

After watching these trailers I know I have to live up to a certain standard.

I think the trailer will be like a silent film from the 20s or maybe like 1911.

yeah, I'm going for 1911.

There will be music and no words.

I got a rapper from work to make me some beats so it is authentic shit.

I'm not filming it until it reaches 50 degrees because it is fucking cold.

1st review of Best Behavior and influences on the book

2011-03-25T19:37:00.000-07:00

Andrew Worthington wrote a review of Best Behavior.

Andrew mentioned Jack Kerouac as an influence.

The plot was designed after Twain's Huckleberry Finn, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Kerouac's On the Road and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

All four of this books plot structure around travel and experiencing things in the new places. But also at the same time there scenes where the characters are at home in the novels. Also they all contain scenes during the travel, going down the river in Huckleberry Finn, in cars for On the Road and Fear and Loathing. I can't remember Jake Barnes being in a train but there were scenes in cars.

The novels revolve around movement. The lead character is in a state of Being, constantly going somewhere, having to get somewhere, on the move. Which provides the pace for the novel.

The narrator is in omniscient first person which I don't think I have seen in many novels. On the Road resembles omniscient first person but the audience usually assumes that the first person knows these things because he has spent time with his characters and knows their histories.

Descriptions of the characters came form reading Studs Terkel books, Hard Times, Working and The Good War.

The long speeches were based off of Richard Wright and Dostoevsky's long speeches they always had. I really like that in novels, when characters just give speeches and say things. I miss that in novels, probably the reason I don't read many modern books.

The stream of consciouness comes more from Proust than Joyce. I don't really like Joyce's stream of consciousness. I really like later Proust in The Fugitive where the narrator is obviously coming from the mind.

There are several types of first person, like Glamorama, it is basicaly third person but told from the first person.

In Keroac and Hunter S. Thompson it reads like a person telling you a story.

But in Proust it reads like a person thinking about what happened. The first person isn't telling a story, but trying to gather their thoughts on certain experiences they have had. I tried to aim for that with Best Behavior.

My college newspaper the jambar wrote an article about Best Behavior

2011-03-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

Here is the article.

The Human War Trailer

2011-03-23T21:55:00.001-07:00

The Human War Trailer from Pirooz Kalayeh on Vimeo.

Two Interviews

2011-03-23T16:22:00.000-07:00

This is interview was done with by Ben Kharakh

I did this interview with Steve Roggenbuck

All links Regarding Best Behavior

2011-03-22T14:48:00.000-07:00

Here is the page on CCM with an excerpt.

Here is an excerpt on the muumuu house page.

Here is my first blog post concerning Best Behavior. This was written before I took 50 pages out of it and added an epilogue.

Best Behavior was posted for awhile, like a month or so on the blog. It got a lot of comments, read the comments, they are like blurbs by normal people.

My Favorite Songs

2011-03-21T11:40:00.000-07:00

I spent the weekend with Jordan Castro and Sam Pink. They asked me what kind of music I listen to. So for now on, when anyone asks, "Noah, what kind of music do you like?" I will refer them to this blog post.

These are ten favorite songs.

I heard this song one night when I was in high school. I was listening to some strange radio thing where they were playing old blues songs. This is my favorite song. Play it at my funeral.

The first time I heard this song was is in an old girlfriend's car in a Denny's parking lot. It was night, she played on the song on a cassette tape and looked at me sadly. The line, "I could have loved you, but you would not let me." That breaks me. Just fucking breaks me.

Time cast a spell on you...but you won't forget me...
(I was such a fool)
I know I could've loved you, but you would not let me..
(Give me one more chance)
I'll follow you down 'til the sound of my voice will haunt you..
(Haunt you)
You'll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you..

Oh man, that shit hurts. Just fucking hurts.

Cat Stevens is like a god to me. If I found out he was an avatar of some deity one day. I would not be surprised. I'm going to write a book about politics one day and I'm going to title a chapter, "We all want Cat Stevens to be president, but we know that we know we are actually evil and need ruthless leaders that don't mind killing people."

Heard this song for the first time in Eugene, Oregon. I remember sitting in a kitchen and listening to it drunk.

I had a mix tape when I delivered pizzas. It was nice to drive around smoking cigarettes listening to this song. I like even when Prince sounds happy, it stills sounds sad.

When Prince says, "Little Red Corvette
Baby, U're much 2 fast (Yes U are)
Little Red Corvette
U need 2 find a love that's gonna last (Oh, oh)"

Oh man, I just faint. Just fucking faint.

and when he makes ya hoo hoo thing, oh man, can't handle it. Going wild with emotion.

I'm just like, "Prince knows my soul."

I like this specific performance. Elvis is so beautiful. That no good white trash fuck from the south. Oh man, He looks like he can barely move. He dies like three weeks later he is so fucked. But he still just does it, that thing he does. I don't know what it is. When he says "Mine" for like 30 seconds. oh man, the torture.

This song reminds me of my brother. I remember him liking this song very much. I remember him not wanting anyone to talk when this song is on.

I can't even finish the song it pains me so much.

I love Metallica. This song is nothing but tragic earth of America pain. The guitar is like some sad fucking bird on a summer movie, singing by itself because it has got wounded and their flock has left without them, knowing that it is going to die.

"I was me but now he's gone"

Oh god, what pain.

Then it builds up to the last guitar solo. It just keeps working and working, like a good depression. A good depression just keeps working and working on you, then the solo start. The sad bird like noises. Reminds one a flute from 1920s jazz. It just floats and floats, then it busts into this fast pace, seemless noise of pain and frustration. Then it just fades, saying, it isn't over.

this song kills me. The first time I heard was in a bar in Youngstown. I was sitting in some sad white trash bar, drinking my life away in my mid twenties. I had zero reason to live then. I think I wrote Burning Babies and The Condemned then. I felt so terrible. I can't imagine a person being more miserable. Who that person was, I can't even recognize anymore. I was sitting in the bar drinking Black Velvet and coke, and then this song came on. I remember such a feeling came over me. Oh, sweet misery. Oh Stevie. You are reaching out to me.

I heard this song in the fall. The fall is so miserable, full of longing. This might be my funeral song. I haven't decided yet.

This song just breaks me apart. I can't help but collapse into a little emotional ball when I hear it.

It just reminds me of fall when I was little. All the falls, with its colored leaves and walking around in sweaters. I feel I could write several 100 vignettes listening to this song.

"I keep your memory, you visit me in my sleep." Oh man.

Best Behavior can be ordered, please order it. Please. Please.

2011-03-19T13:40:00.000-07:00

Best Behavior can be ordered.

It can been ordered here at Amazon.

And at Barnes and Nobles.

Thank you to everyone that orders it.

Figured out being an American is impossible

2011-03-15T00:39:00.000-07:00

I'm doing my senior thesis on The History of High Debt and its Consequences on Government.

What of the things i'm doing is calculating how much money a family making an annual income of 60,000 a year spends on taxes and necessities.

Here is what I came up with using a married couple with kids that live in Hubbard, Oh. I live in Hubbard, OH.

Fed social state income city
(60,000 x .15)+(60,000 x .084)+ (60,000 x .04983)+ (60,000 x .014)
9000 + 5040 + 2998 + 840
=17878
60,000 - 17,878
42,122 left

average cost insurance for a family according to Kaiser family foundation
13,373

42,122 -13,373
= 28,749

sat the monthly mortage is 1200 a month which equals 14,400

28,749 - 14,400
= 14,349

Then I added in the price of owning one car
insurance payments gas oil changes two new tires
(66 x 12)+ (200 x 12)+ (40 x 52)+ (35 x 4)+ 300
792+2400+2080+140+300
=5712 x 2 but lets say one car is paid off and they have group insurance, lets just add 3000.
=8712

14,349 - 8712
= 5637

This does not include the heating, electricity or water.

I admit there are some problems with the choosing of the numbers, I tried to pick them to resemble the bills of someone making 60,000. There are also other things like tax credits that I didn't include.

I think if this data shows anything, it is that health insurance and cars are the main problem.

I understand the 15% income tax and the local taxes because the federal governent provides military protection, interstates, national parks, the EPA, FDA and other things. And the local governments provide protection, roads, parks, everything needed to live a normal life. If you minus social security it equals 12,838, which seems worth.

Social security is money for the future.

It seems sad though that it adds up 17,000. That is a lot of fucking money.

The price of owning one's own home makes sense, it is a large structure that took a lot of money to build and keeps you free from the world of cold and bugs.

The main two that seem to be the problem are the health insurance and the car expense.

It seems like it would be logical just to have national health care, it would probably reduce the cost of health insurance by several thousand because everyone would be paying into it.

the main problem besides health care are cars. Cars seem to be a burden on Americans that they never think about. But the cost of having one and maintaining one really adds up. I did not even include if the car breaks.

I feel that this maybe where the teabaggers and where most Americans are getting their emotional rage.

Every year passes and they have saved no money. They are probably deeper in the hole as each year passes.

Noah Cicero sells out

2011-03-14T22:28:00.001-07:00

News from my existence.

*

Someone posted on my, "He sold out when he made friends."

That is funny.

*

Best Behavior can be ordered from amazon and purchased from Barnes and Nobles. You have to go to the counter at Barnes and Nobles to order it.

*

I am on a new diet for my psoriasis.

Psoriasis is a skin condition where red dots show up your skin and have white flakes on them.

I have red dots all over body, on my scalp, in my ears, on my eyebrows, on my legs, all over my belly. I look pretty terrible naked. If I eat a lot of bread products they itch horribly and hurt.

it is genetic and there is no cure for it. Nobody really knows what causes it either. There are a million opinions on it. None of them strong enough to believe.
Supposedly in my 60s I will get terrible arthritis and I will die four years earlier than the average human.

The diet is pretty hardcore.

I can not have these things:
beef
pig
all milk products
all processed foods (all candy)
no wheat based products containing gluten (pasta, pizza and bread)
tomatoes and peppers
coffee, pop and alcohol
white sugar

I have basically been eating salads and asian food.

I can eat birds, so lots of chicken and the other day I ate some duck form a chinese restaurant.

Have to drink 60 ounces of water a day.
The only thing I drink besides water is kombucha tea and GT's kombucha.

The diet was pretty hard at the start because my body was used to getting more calories a day from cheese, bread and meat. But after a week it leveled out and I've lost five pounds in the last three weeks.

It also got worse before it got better, which means it crusted up and the red dots cracked and blood oozed out of them for several days. but that is over now.

I am starting to get better.

*

Today Jordan Castro's dad put a tooth implant in my mouth.

It is like a metal screw in my jaw.

Feel like I might set off metal detectors now.

or that I might be a cyborg.

This is my theme song today.

2011-03-10T09:08:00.000-08:00

The Human War won third place at the Appalachian Film Festival.

A good place. Third the Bronze.

sweet pic

2011-03-09T18:24:00.000-08:00

ani smith made this sweet pic

it's a gif

Drinking Kombucha Tea

2011-03-08T19:13:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting here drinking here drinking kombucha tea.

Trying to understand

My book Best Behavior can be ordered.

It appeared on this blog, but now it is missing 50 pages and a new 35 pages are added. It is not the same book.

The book was written two years ago out of boredom. I don't know why I was bored. But I was. And that is what I did with my time. It states on the site that the book is like, "The truest ever told." I don't know if the book is the truest ever told. Saying 'ever' makes it ordinal. People like ordinal things. Maybe the world must be ran on ordinal assumptions or we would be confused all the time. We wouldn't know the order of things, the rank, the how to treat each other. I think I try to escape the ordinal when I write. Just for a minute, away from the ordinal. But I've checked my amazon ranking several times today, checking the ordinal.

There is also a movie trailer on kickstarter for Shoplifting at American Apparel. The movie needs 37,000 dollars to be made. It has a little over 2,000 now. I hope people donate to it. I would like to act more. I need to memorize my lines though, because when I went to the thing, I didn't have my lines memorized and it was embarrassing.

I have only been in an American Apparel once. It was in New York and Tao Lin was actually with me. I looked around and felt disinterested. When I met my girlfriend she was wearing an American Apparel red t-shirt she bought offline. It made her look very cute.

There is a shitstorm on HTML giant concerning Jordan Castro's post on Muumuu House writing. I wrote something for HTML about the shitstorm that will appear next week. I just reread it and feel unsure about it. I've been writing political posts for Who Are about to Die that appear every Wednesday. I have a hard time believing anything I write after a day. I look back at it and don't believe that I believe that. But I let it go to the world anyway. I'm not sure when I write a nonfiction piece that I am aiming at facts or truth, just thought. Just writing thoughts on things, nothing is concrete. Nothing is assumed to be true. I want people to think that My Thoughts could change with new facts or even with new emotions. And that they the audience should allow themselves to freely flow with their thoughts, not forcing themselves to stick with just one thought, until that thought becomes a habit and then the habit becomes a stubborn behavior. I have become very afraid of assuming anything to be true which has led to a certain style of writing that just ends nowhere. I always try to finish it though with a good line, but a lot of times that last line just kind of ends up not really saying anything.

BEST BEHAVIOR CAN BE PREORDERED

2011-03-07T22:03:00.000-08:00

go HERE

GO TO AMAZON

IT IS CHEAP

THE BOOK IS PRINTED IN AMERICA

IT WILL HAVE CHEAP SHIPPING COSTS

WRITE A REVIEW

LINK THIS POST

I NEED TO DO A FUCKING BOOK PARTY

SERIOUSLY

Literary Lineup

2011-03-05T05:47:00.001-08:00

This is a lineup of important internet literary voices

Watch me Act, donate money so I can act more

2011-03-02T05:37:00.000-08:00

Go here, watch a small movie trailer, watch me act, it is funny, I look funny, then donate money.

The King's Speech wins Oscars

2011-02-28T18:45:00.000-08:00

During The Great Recession, during a time of revolts and protests and govenment collapses, crippling debt and 40 million people using food stamps to eat

A MOVIE ABOUT A FUCKING KING WINS OSCARS.

Why Obama won't talk about Libya

2011-02-23T04:48:00.000-08:00

Obama won't talk about Libya because Libya supplies the stock market with 1.7 million barrels of oil.

The world needs every bit of oil it can get.

If just a little bit is not there then the price rises.

If it a price of a barrel of oil starts to climb again, goodbye economic recovery.

What is Barack Obama and every politician that truly loves his country doing right now.

They are sitting in a chair holding their face with their hands slouched over, worried to death that our economy will completely go under.

And everyone in the world is worried that Saudi Arabia will erupt into violence.

If Saudi Arabia erupts into anything

it will cause major damage to the world oil supply.

The Pax Americana is Over

2011-02-22T07:47:00.000-08:00

It is over.

In International Relations peace is maintained by Balances of Power. Peace is granted when there is a large centralized institution that has the monopoly on violence which does not allow smaller units of the stucture to start violence without their permission. Peace is not had by smoking weed and listening to the Grateful Dead, I'm sorry.

There was relative peace from 1945 to 1989 because we had a bipolar world, of the Soviet Union and The United States.

Then the Soviet Union fell and The United States was the sole power.

Now the United States has no money.

Which has brought in a State of Nature.

One could assume China would attempt a grab for power but China seems not concerned.

Which allows for Middle-Eastern countries to revolt.

And in the future will allow for any country to attack another country, because there will be no third party to stop them.

When America announced to the world, "We are doing budget cuts."

It announced, "We can no longer meddle. Our power is over."

Something very very fucked up has just happened in the world.

Interview with Ana Carrete

2011-02-18T08:10:00.000-08:00

This is Ana Carrete. This is a poet. Look at the poet in her natural habitat.

Here is an interview with Ana Carrete

the cover of Best Behavior

2011-02-17T08:47:00.001-08:00

The cover was done by Michael Seidlinger.

The book is not out yet. This is just a cover, or a picture of a cover of a book that is not out yet.

A book shelf

2011-02-13T15:01:00.000-08:00

shit

2011-02-07T05:40:00.001-08:00

picture

2011-02-06T20:47:00.000-08:00

Brittany Wallace made this

CHARTS

2011-01-29T06:47:00.001-08:00

Federal tax rate

STATE OF THE UNION ANALYSIS

2011-01-25T20:24:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama's Speech:

He said Facebook and Google are like Edison and the Wright brothers.

This is fucking stupid.

According to Wikipedia Facebook has 1700 employees.

Which is nothing.

Darden Restaurants(Owners of Olive Garden and Red Lobster) has 180,000 employees which probably doesn't include all the people running the fish farms and truck drivers, napkin factories, silverware companies, plumbers that repair things, dishwasher companies, broom companies, condiment companies, etc that employ thousands more.

It would seriously be better to create another restaurant chain than open up another Facebook.

Google has 24,000 employees though, I guess we can give Google some credit.

Then he said we would make America into Japan, a big techno wifi gadget internet obsessed culture.

I don't want to be Japan.

I don't think other Americans want to be Japan. (This is not against the Japanese, they are great at being Japenese)

Maybe they do.

We are probably turning our children into gadget obsessed tards who don't know how to light a fire or grow a tomato.

Obama said we don't have any money.

This seems factual.

*

The Republican responded and said we don't have any money and that we need to repeal Obamacare.

Only 18% of America wants to repeal Obamacare.

Which means the Republicans are only representing health care companies.

The CBO said Obamacare will reduce the deficit, here is what it says, "On March 20, 2010, CBO released its final cost estimate for the reconciliation act, which encompassed the effects of both pieces of legislation. Table 1 (on page 5) provides a broad summary and Table 2 offers a detailed breakdown of the budgetary effects of the two pieces of legislation. CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate that enacting both pieces of legislation will produce a net reduction in federal deficits of $143 billion over the 2010-2019 period. About $124 billion of that savings stems from provisions dealing with health care and federal revenues; the other $19 billion results from the education provisions. Those figures do not include potential costs that would be funded through future appropriations (those are discussed on pages 10-11 of the cost estimate)."

*

Michele Bachmann for the Tea Party said that America has no money. The Tea Party has no plan but to not spend money.

Then she said we need to like wage war on our debt.

*

Conclusion

America has no money.

They are lagging behind in innovation

Our politicians still believe in Manifest Destiny

*

Noah Cicero's Response

America, we need to start gardening. Everyone needs a garden and to grow some kind of fruit tree suited to your climate.

The government will provide you with hoes, trowels, and seeds.

No more stupid suburbs will be built. Everyone is going to learn to walk like the Indians.

No more large gas guzzling piles of shit will be sold in America. We can do that because we own stock in the car companies.

We will reduce medical costs by purchasing the copyrights to medical equipment and medication which we are allowed to in the Takings Clause.

We will follow the rules of Machiavelli and colonize Iraq and Afghanistan to insure we rule there peacefully.

We will send our unemployed and our rich kid drug addicts there to colonize.

We are going to pass an Amendment concerning campaign finance so democracy is restored.

We are going to be able to vote for three days one of those days your employee must completely close so people can vote.

Information about the candidates will be free to read at the high school gym where you vote.

Small windmills will be given to citizens to get electricity from.

This is the plan.

Get to it.

TO MAKE SURE: I AM NOT AN ACTUAL STRAUSSIAN

2011-01-25T16:46:00.000-08:00

I am not an actual Straussian.

I'm reading the History of Political Philosophy edited by Strauss.

And I've read Natural Right, some of What is Political Philosophy and I'm going to read a couple more just to see what he has to say.

But I am not obsessed with Strauss.

To give a few reasons why:

I believe in a Jared Diamond version of history

which basically means

resources create situations

and these situations bring about events

Like for me

when the Europeans found the Americas

the world was able to combine

wheat, rice, potatoes and corn in their diet

which created a super amount of caloric intake for the humans

we had the renaissance which created Reason and Empiricalism

which as far as I can tell was created

because Europe took an interest in Aristotle in the 1200s

then the Black Death created a decline in religious belief

then the popes of the Renaissance sucked really bad

which led to Luther which killed off religion and replaced it with a social club.

Then the renaissance happened which was led by the fact that Europe was reading Aristotle and not Plato. Aristotle led to science.

Then for many reasons the populations grew

which demanded large scale production

which created wage labor capitalism

capitalism leads to people living for MONEY

not for God or a life in the after-life

this also all led to democracy

democracy uses the separation of powers to make sure Great Men do not arise

for men must always compromise in a democracy

this is called the separation of powers

Then we found coal, oil and natural gas

God dies because we don't need to go to heaven anymore because we have Taco Bell and cable television.

I believe these things not to be determined but very much situational

This is not in tune with Strauss who never considered the impact of resources on man's morality.

And to me morality often leads to racism, sexism, and murder.

The Muslims of Saudi Arabia have morality, they believe in things, which lead to women getting murdered and obeying princes.

Americans probably believe in justice and freedom and some believe in hard work.

Why they believe in them, most have never thought about it, probably the main belief of Americans I hate is their love of gas guzzling cars and suburban sprawl. Which isn't part of their core beliefs, but the fact they do not believe in duty to their fellow citizens and nature.

ALSO

Strauss has this thing concering secret meaning in political philosophy

I don't care about that

Political philosophy has gotten a lot of people killed

and it has made a lot of lives better

if someone was adult they would be looking at what kills and what brings food and justice to people.

ALSO

Strauss thought that relativism made fascism and Communism.

The Christians killed each other and Muslims constantly from the Fall of Rome to the Renaissance. Sometimes you really wish that a philosopher had to show at least one graph or some empirical data.

I think he was just hoping his readers didn't know history.

I can be a Straussian now

2011-01-21T18:36:00.000-08:00

According to my political thought professor I can be a Straussian

someone can be a Straussian if they are in the genealogy of students of Leo Strauss

Basically it works like this

Strauss directly taught someone named Carey/Karrie/Carrie Williams at Rutgers who taught my professor.

And I guess it has to be a political thought class too. You are not allowed to be a real Straussian if you were like taught intro to american politics by the same professor. It must be a political thought class.

So I guess I can be a Straussian now.

But the cool thing is:

Heidegger taught Strauss

which means i have four degrees of separation from Heidegger.

Which is really cool.

An Interview and The Human War has made it into a festival

2011-01-17T19:45:00.000-08:00

The interview was done by The Chaz for the zine Underground.

Here it is

The Human War will be in the Appalachian Film Festival in Huntington West Virginia

If Sarah Palin was president

2011-01-11T15:38:00.001-08:00

The conservatives have lost

this is the problem

they have no new ideas

the new world of energy depletion and global warming and the failure of capitalism to properly deal with globalism scares them.

What I mean by, "The failure of capitalism to properly deal with globalism" is that capitalism isn't really bad in terms of local things. You have a local business, you hire some people, give them an hourly wage. The reason it isn't bad is because globalism causes workers in China, India, France, Bolivia and America all to compete for the same job.

If you are wealthy capitalist you can put your business anywhere on planet earth.

Capitalism doesn't have the ability to deal with that. Actually nothing does. It is a bad idea. It isn't feasible and everyone is finding that out.

The liberals are scared too. But they are trying to find empirical solutions to the problems.

But there is a portion of the population that are in a state of anomie.

They are lost and scared.

The republicans don't have a conspiracy.

there is no conspiracy here by the capitalists and bankers and health care companies.

The Republicans are for real terrified of the present reality.

They are scared and this fear is leading to a loss of power, which is leading to violence.

They have nothing to say but violence.

Violence is always the last resort.

They are at their last resort.

They are like that person you argue with, and the person can't fight back anymore because they lost and instead scream "shut up".

71 percent of america was for the public option.

Neither republicans nor democrats listened.

something is wrong.

This kid at work said he was going to the marines and several people said, normal people, not college educated people said, "Why do you want fight someone else's war?"

I think after 9-11 this is what happened.

America, The Will of The People thought that we were going to go to Afghanistan and get revenge. We were going to kill like 20,000 thousand Afghan humans, and then come back.

Then we went to Iraq and we thought, "Oh good, more revenge."

We were going to go to Iraq and kill like 20,000 and come back.

The average American did not expect that we would have to rebuild their entire countries.

Everything got way to complicated

Then gas pries got higher

then the banks collapsed

then we started losing our jobs to workers in other countries.

the bush tax cuts for the wealthy passed with a democratic house, senate and president

we have a huge debt and deficit

everything is so complicated now

Tomorrow I'll write the greatest blog post ever written, but tonight I'm going to write this one

2011-01-10T22:41:00.001-08:00

I told her, "To die when you are sleeping is considered to be the best way to die."

She agreed.

causes of death in america

•Heart disease: 616,067
•Cancer: 562,875
•Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 135,952
•Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 127,924
•Accidents (unintentional injuries): 123,706
•Alzheimer's disease: 74,632
•Diabetes: 71,382
•Influenza and Pneumonia: 52,717
•Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 46,448
•Septicemia: 34,828

all of these sound really fucking painful.

I think death is generally supposed to be painful.

it is the earth saying, i'm not going to let you go without kicking you in the junk one last time.

it is strange to think, in the middle of the night, that someday a painful death is waiting for you.

I like that we say, "waiting"

what a protestant thing to say.

the sentence implies predestination.

that god has actually already set my future in stone and that my death is already known by other worldly beings.

death isn't waiting for me.

one day i will just die.

and the people around me will have to go on without me.

perhaps i could die knowing they will say nice things about me after i'm dead.

but perhaps i'll die, in an accident and not have to think any focused thoughts about how good my life was.

people always worry about dying.

But they never worry about before they were born.

You weren't here then either.

I wasn't around in 1979

and it doesn't bother me at all.

if i die in 2049, what should 2050 matter?

This is my favorite painting.

I like the boy in it, sitting there.

I look at it and think, "That's me."

I imagine that the boy has his feet in the water feeling pretty good and then suddenly thinks, "This is good, but I will die one day."

But now I'm looking at it again.

There's the boy with his hands over his mouth.

A boy, who is just having fun.

then there's the sexually charged teenager worried about his sexuality and what is to come.

Then the middle aged man laying there, with no more anxiety, he knows what will come, it came, he got it and dealt with it, he has learned that sitting next to rivers are important because you don't get to do it everyday, so he enjoys.

The boy and the teenager don't know that but they will learn.

I've been alone for several hours and I'm starting to feel okay again

2011-01-07T23:34:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting here

listening to In my Life by the beatles over and over again.

I've been alone since I left work.

I just keep doing what I want like a selfish little boy.

I keep walking around my house really slowly.

letting the bottom of my bare feet feel the ground with each step.

I looked at a spoon in my kitchen for five minutes.

I wondered about the spoon.

Enjoyed holding the spoon.

I used the spoon to stir my theraflu.

Aristotle(The Philosopher) said, "Perhaps we may say that there is an element of good even in mere living, provided that life is not excessively beset with troubles. Certainly most men, in their desire to keep alive, are prepared to face a great deal of suffering, as if finding in life itself a certain well-being and a natural sweetness."

This phase, "Natural Sweetness."

I'm blown away by it.

today i walked out of work with the 52 year old dishwasher.

The mall parking lot was covered with fresh snow, the sky was pitch black and little white snow flakes were coming down. I said, "It looks pretty." He said, "yeah." I suppose that is the natural sweetness of life.

When people you know kill themselves.

You think about them.

On a random day you might think, "Did they forget the natural sweetness of life?"

Was not the wind hitting the trees before a storm not good enough.

Sometimes you meet a person and you say, "What are hobbies?"

And they respond, "Soap Operas."

Yesterday I learned how to play The Past is a grotesque animal, it taught me this strange G minor chord. I've been playing that chord over and over again, just listening to the sound of it.

I think literature is about the "natural sweetness."

The book Roots has this strange character in it that takes care of chickens, I haven't read it since high school. This slave, this creature that should do nothing but suffer finds happiness in his chickens.

Sometimes i like to imagine Aristotle walking around his yard and sees a slave feeding a horse. The slave says to Aristotle, "Nice day isn't it?" And Aristotle stops thinking for a second and lets the sun hit his face, and feels it on his skin, and says, "yes."

MuuMuu House DVD

2011-01-06T18:00:00.000-08:00

There is a Muumuu House DVD. Go to this blog and watch the trailer. Then order it.

I think my new years resolution is to have a stronger internet presence. I think I would like to show up on two things a month. I have been bookslut and my existence has to do with the muumuu house thing this month. I'm going to try to write some thought catalog articles to increase my internet presence.

I feel like two things a month is a good internet presence.

Interview with Kendra Grant Malone on Bookslut

2011-01-04T13:35:00.000-08:00

Here's an interview with Kendra Grant Malone I did with her on bookslut.

Stay Classy America: A rapist v. a dog killer

2011-01-02T11:44:00.000-08:00

Ben Roethlisberger and Michael Vick are about to enter the playoffs with pretty good teams.

I hope they verse each other in the superbowl.

a rapist v. a dog killer.

it will be great.

Sometimes I think about Barack Obama.

I wonder if he ever looks at the television and sees like Jersey Shore and thinks, "Do these people deserve justice?"

He probably thinks, "I'm so famous and powerful, I'm so cool. My dick is like a thousand feet tall and several miles wide."

What I'm going to do after college

2010-12-31T11:27:00.000-08:00

yesterday i was in barnes and nobles spending my 50 dollars in gift cards. (Got Antiquity by Norman Cantor, The Two Treatises of Locke, a bargain bin bio of Andrew Jackson and a bargain bin book on pandemics.)

My Algebra teacher from the summer semester was there. He is this weird middle aged black guy who wears home made knitted corn flower stocking caps, shirts that have skulls on them and smokes black and miles and is really weird.

He kept asking me what I was going to do with my political science degree.

While he is talking to me he is holding a papers covered in complex number arrangements full of letters and dashes that mean nothing to me.

I didn't feel like talking so i said "get a job"

he said i should i should go on CNN or write books or work in politics

i just stood there

it seriously has never occurred to me to work in politics

oh my major is poetical science(best typo of my life) with an Applied Sociology minor.

i don't know if that means anything.

I was eating an almond joy this morning and thought, "I want to pick coconuts."

I googled, "Jobs picking coconuts"

This came up. The article states that monkeys actually pick the coconuts.

I feel really jealous of those monkeys.

then I thought I might work at the Hersey Plant but then I found out it is in PA, and I hate PA.

I feel like if you live in PA you have to wear a Steeler's jersey even if you are a hipster.

Then I thought I wanted a job feeding reindeer, I googled it and nothing came up.

I feel like if I could feed reindeer for 40 to 50 hours a week I would be really happy. I think reindeer are really pretty animals.

For a moment I wanted to be like awesome, like a pirate or maybe a mercenary that works for Black Water, like a badass dude that carries a gun and shoots bad guys and makes tons of money and is like sexy with a six pack. But then I found out I'm a totally out of shape and suffering from back problems and have no will to travel the world and shoot people. In the end I'm just some guy who watches netflix with his girlfriend and smokes too many cigarettes.

Then I thought I wanted to be a writer and I googled that and it said I should become informed on teenage vampires or young children that ride broomsticks and play a game called quidditch. Then it said to get an MFA in creative writing and compete with forty million yahoos who also got MFAs in creative writing to get a job that pays less than a manager does at Panera Bread.

Then I went to the craiglist of Santa Fe New Mexico of where I want to move and I found something called "receptionist coordinator" which pays 13.25 an hour.

And then I was like DAMN!!!!

That's it

receptionist coordinator

now I can answer with pride what my future will be on this planet

next time someone asks I will answer with The Serious Face of Ambition

receptionist coordinator