Now that's a downright lie.

I don't mean to make this blog a happening for anarcho-socialist critiques of capitalism, but
isn't that better than a catch-all of whining and indecision?

Have you guys (as I assume there are two of you, and at this point, it's only men) seen the documentary The Yes Men Fix The World?

I just watched it and I'm inspired to lie to the public. I should be a spy.
Do spies have blogs? Do I need an alias?
If I become a spy, I'll let you know, just please don't tell anyone that I'm a spy.

Some girl on facebook keeps trying to sell me weed. I think that's funny. I don't smoke weed, or I don't really. Or, I would, but... I'm trying to remain cool and respectable and those two ends are at odds. Not just sell me weed, but get a weed hookup from me. I relented and gave her a name of a friend that smokes, rudely.

I don't even know this girl. I'd like to say bros before hos (hoes?), but every time I think about drugs, I feel like I have a gun to my head.
(Funny, to go to sleep, sometimes I imagine someone breaking in to my room and pointing a shotgun at me, as if that hardens me or something. Weird habit, but it puts me to sleep.)

I thought about salvia once and was pulled over. It's the fear of God, man.

On the same note, I almost smoked a cigarette just now. That isn't news, is it? Or it is news, but it's the lamest news in the world. "Oh, Joel, good reading, thanks. Peer pressure is present in college, good one."
But it's more than that (or maybe it isn't; regardless). I have it ingrained that I look at a cigarette and scoff. When my friends started smoking, I laughed, What Fools! As if peer pressure is something that happens to someone else, like death, taxes and mutually beneficial romantic relationships between consenting adults.
That's supposed to be a joke! Laugh at it!

Well, it wasn't funny, so...

The girl offered me a cigarette, jokingly and I rebuffed. Oh, you're funny, I thought. She laughed, but pressed.
She called me a pussy for not smoking. Your joke is TOO funny.
To situate myself back in my created reality, I told her and her cohorts and reminded my cohorts that I ate a cigar once to spit on peer pressure.
I don't think she understood.

"How old are you?" ..."So do you want to smoke weed? You've got to smoke something tonight."

And thanks to Hania, here is a sight (what a site!) where you can download music for free legally, or whatever.

Speaking of music, have you guys heard of this new hip hop thing? We don't have it in Oregon. Ever since, I came to the city, I've heard a lot about it. Is it different than rap? I don't know. I have a lot of questions.

What if these things don't materialize? What if you don't get hired? What if your debt breaks a hundred thousand? What if you work in a padded office?

It wouldn't be so bad.

In a moment of doubt, I wait for clarity to wash over me, clarity or forgetfulness.

Charity is Great

But it is not enough.

There's some hubbub about a fad on facebook, that's a social network I frequent, about changing one's profile picture to a cartoon character to fight against child abuse. There was some ideological backlash, of course, because it involves effort. I think most people ignored it.
Though, If it would have been framed as "raising awareness" or "bathing in nostalgia" or not framed at all, it would have results as powerful as when users were asked to change their picture (voluntarily and not by facebook itself) to Pokemon or doppelgangers.

One of my friends even started a reverse trend fighting terrorism with pictures of orange juice.

And then I saw this lecture by Slajov Zizek and after the initial nausea was the grain of truth reflected in the hubbub.

Are you really making a difference, or passing over for status quo?




I'm not throwing away my TOMS shoes or shaving my hair that I was growing for charity. Charity is still necessary, I made my professor and classmates tell me,
but Joel, does shoelessness still prevail?

One less person! It's still useful!
Yes, but the problem, Joel.

The problem.

What EVER

Too serious, too dramatic, too everything.
Too much.

Isn't that a song?
Yeah, it's a song.

One of the things I read that my college is trying to cultivate is a powerful critical analysis, a somber pragmatic rationale for tackling today's issues, whether that be which flavor of American Spirits to buy or how to cut a hole in a Urban Outfitters jacket but make it look like it was an accident because you were drunk.

I already critically analyzed everything. That's how I got to college, and likely, that's how I'll be sent out. Anyway, I prefer making jokes than contemplating the states of things. Thoreau said "Pay attention not to the Times, but to the eternities."
Isn't that cool? He was so cool.

I really like when old people wink after they crack a joke. It's a highlight of every day.

I am tired to looking at myself in the mirror and saying "I didn't do the required reading." I can barely bring myself to look at my face. I evade my disappointing glare.
No, that's not true. That's ridiculous.

I saw "Fair Game" on Black Friday with my aunt. The movie was about the Valerie Plame fiasco. I was surprised to find that no one had any idea what that was after I told them I saw it.
I was also surprised to find that it was not a Vaudeville-style comedy.

The state of things today...

I heard a story before I went back to school about why my dad was actually born in Chicago. My grandma always told me it was because Detroit was an embarrassment of a birth place, even in 1946, but my aunt clarified that story with facts about the German practitioner that prescribed heart medication to my grandma, despite an absence of a heart condition. It turned out he was anti-Semetic.

Yet Another example of a story without a punchline.

I started Christmas shopping and I kept in mind the buy what you would want to receive mantra. I strictly followed it, actually. I hope everyone likes size 31 jeans and candy.

You know what my biggest problem with studying the political implications of Apartheid is?
It's so Boering.

Have a great night.

For Christmas, I am only going to speak to my nephew in Spanish

Title unrelated.

Candid:
I started dating a girl about two years ago. Started.
The process of dating is rough when you care about everyone and their feelings,
especially and most importantly yourself.
Started.

It was on and off, up and down, and other terrible things relationships shouldn't be,
but always in my control.
I've said that line at least a hundred times and it has only recently become digestible, understandable.

I am selfish and I am an asshole. I've been working on that for years, and I will continue working on it.

I kept coming back, I keep coming back. I've always come back to the situation and asked for chances, opportunities and she's always given them, the sap.

We started dating again, in June, and after a couple months of not being sure where we are, I have committed myself to the situation in ways that I never have before. Facebook. My status has changed. It was purposeful; it is purposeful. I am trying to right my wrongs, and whatever...

I face the same doubts, probably once a week about whether I should be in a relationship or not, the same doubts that have stymied my every move for the past couple years, the doubts that established my ignorant swinging bachelor life at the end of high school.
We do not act in a vacuum.

I'm sure some of my friends call me Doubting Thomas when I'm not around. I'm sure they've said it and I wasn't listening.

This morning, I thought about the relationship and wondered if I could handle it, should I handle it? What's the point? It can't be that good. Fewer and further between are these doubts, but omnipresent, somewhere, id, superego, loudly I exclaim that I have these doubts,
always have,

but,

I do not act in a vacuum.
and I may or may not be in love with this girl.

Mostly the latter.

Oh and it's a girl, by the way. I figured out I wasn't gay.

They are... difficult issues

Today was the longest day of the year by my count. It still hasn't ended.

Two dramatic happenings:

I was at work at the theater for something like ten hours today, on and off. I have a calm, often apologetic demeanor with patrons. I want them to know that they are in control, while I tell them what they can and cannot do.
Today, I learned to be assertive
(Not aggressive, Not Aggressive)

The show had started, we held the start for five, ten minutes for late comers and then come rushing up two patrons, a married couple, looking determined.
We scan their tickets and direct them towards the monitor with a moving picture of the happenings on stage. The wife comes to me and complains that the picture is not adequate.
"You can't see anything!"
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
"We'll go into the theater and stand in the back." She said this so many times. ALL BROADWAY HOUSES do this. ALL of them. So why don't you? Where does it say on my ticket that I can't stand in the back?

She said all of that so many times.

She rushed while the show is in progress to an unmarked exit door, "We'll just go in here" she says, declaring I can't control her actions, she's an adult and she will be treated accordingly.

It's actually building policy that we only late seat at specific times agreed upon by our staff and the production staff. Only. It is my job to make this clear and make it happen. I'm rather calm in times like these.
She was not having it.

"I'm sorry, but that door is locked."
"What do you mean it's locked?"

She gave me devil eyes.
"It's company policy that...

And that's when my manager stepped into the situation, seeing that the woman was going to give me a mouthful. My manager had had a long, tiring day and she was not willing to concede anything to anyone so when the patron exclaimed that the monitor was not adequate, my manager smiled. "It's company policy..."

And that's when the battle of wills began.

More and more and more and
Yelling and WHO do you think you are and JUST LOOK AT YOU and You're being patronizing and all of it escalated.

You'll have to wait for the break.
Where does it say that? That's not how Broadway works.

And then the police were called and there were tears shed by all parties.

The patron yelled at my manager and accused her of not being properly educated all the way through the late seating break.How blind she was.

It was overreaction and ego. There is no winner in a battles of wills. There are only the unsatisfied and the foolish.

I feel guilty for not quelling this.

Things not need escalate

Stories My Grandma Tells Me Part One

I've had to be flexible for a couple weeks. The point of a blog isn't to keep the audience updated on all of the ham sandwiches I've eaten or women at whom I've swooned, is it? I'm struggling if it is.

I went to DC today to be a part of The Rally to Restore Freedom and/or Fear. I failed, if my idea of participating was to be listen and watch the rally. I succeeded if my idea of participation was being slammed into a crowed of ten thousands with funny signs and silly costumes.

I'm going to lean towards the latter. There were too many people there. Jon Stewart joked that there were 10 million. All of Gresham showed up, that's for sure. I think all of the East Portland suburbs showed up. That's about how many people were there. 300,000, give or take 100,000.

The entrances were closed, but what can you do? I read in a magazine (whichever, they're all the same) that it's better to spend one's money on experiences, rather than goods. Higher emotional capital.

It was AARP magazine.

I'm flexible.

I really enjoy my grandma. She's crude and old. I used to ask how old she was and my parents would estimate and then tell me "Old." That's an answer, thank you. She has the same birthday as me and in March, she'll be 97. She needs to slow down. Too many years. Somebody should tell her.

Sometimes she traps me in her room (I'd gladly be trapped, with the sugar-free Werther's and yarn) and tells me stories, most of them I've heard before, but they resonate differently each time I hear them. She tones them differently, different context, shifting point. The same ten stories.

I really like the one where her brother accidentally drinks breast milk that he found in the refrigerator. That one is hilarious, but sits the same every time, on my shoulders, like lightning.

She told me this one today, involving her last late husband,

"He was going, you know, but I didn't know it. It makes me angry that he didn't tell me he had Alzheimer's. I didn't know what it was. He didn't either...

"One night he told me he felt great. 'I'm taking you out,' he said. I said, 'okay, I'll go get dressed upstairs and I'll come down and you'll get dressed.' I used to lay his clothes out for him, you know.

"So I got dressed and I called him and he said he was in the shower. I went into the bathroom and he was showering with all his clothes on. 'I feel great,' he said. 'We'll get you out of those wet clothes and into dry ones and right into bed.' That was the frosting on the cake. That was it."

Fleeting, like an escaped balloon

So I'm listening to Vitamin C's Good Riddance or First Day of My Life, or whatever.
Graduation.
Vitamin C's Graduation.

It's been a strange day. It's been a set of days that fall into each other.

Today was marked by the balloons in the sky, or UFO,
Technically UFOs, but they looked like balloons. A policeman friend of Cansino, the best the security guard I know, said it was forty balloons. Fear not citizen!

What's the deal with covert ops while I'm in school? Seriously, nine months out of three years and they have to happen while I'm at work (in reference to the bomb in Times Square; I'd link my previous post, but whatever) and this one! This diabolical weatherman scheme! This was happening in Chelsea!
MY NEIGHBORHOOD!

I thought Chelsea was a secret.

I went to a vigil today. I'm an Ally. I announced it, proud of it.

Have you ever wronged someone badly once and continued to wrong them, without trying? Even while trying to do the right thing?
Ever wonder if sometimes you are the perpetual antagonist to someone's perpetual victimization?

I do. I think about it every day.
Melodrama...

There's a girl that looks like Aurora at Lang. I don't know what to say, or if I should say anything at all, but I have a keen urge to tell her not to apply for a job at Office Max because
"They'll fire when you get pregnant with Natalie,"

but she probably wouldn't understand.

Writing on the Wall

One of my favorite parts of the New School, I'm talking top two, is the graffiti.
There are some real idealists at my college and they mostly want to be read, not heard. They want to leave their print in an ever-expanding city where they feel like only the wall will be willing to be marked, impressed with their very personal opinion.

"Fuck you, you bunch of faggots"
and so forth.

That's really most of the graffiti, that and rebuttals.
"You homophobic piece of shit... Why are you at The New School?"

It's called Trolling. It's baiting and it is common. That you fight back means you've lost. Don't take scribbles seriously, man.

But that's not the focus of this post. The focus is the aficionados and absurd, the non sequitur humor sometimes in response to the rest of the hate-baiting mess.

I like,
"UNIVERSITY ASSASSINATES YOUTH"
and in response,

"ODB was the best rapper of the Wu Tang Clan"

In fact, if we are measuring popularity just by graffiti, Ol' Dirty Bastard, the deceased rapper, has a significant New School following. Some people are willing to fight to the death in his honor.

I have two other favorites. I go out of my way to read the writing on the walls of these bathrooms.

1.) To the conversation referenced at the beginning of the post, there is one separate thought, hanging over the rest of the nonsense:
"There's always money in the banana stand."

And that's it.

I'm glad someone thought that a Arrested Development reference was applicable. So glad.

2 and new.) The original quote was
"Life is Dead" to which someone with a large scrawl responded, "Cultivate DICKS".

I believe the response was a reference to Voltaire's Candide, as in Cultivate your Garden, but the person omitted the necessary comma between the two words of his counter so naturally someone else drew a large phallus being watered to the side.

The best part is that someone else in blue crayola marker decided to fix the first statement to say, "Life is BRead", rendering the comeback and the illustration meaningless.

I think I'm going to go to work now and see how many of the anonymous will fight me.
"ODB can't be the best MC, he's not even alive."

Digging too deep, we are all obscene.

There are far too many wonderous things on the internet. I would rather stare blankly at a series of windows flashing and coalescing than write, alas, it must be done.

Because I have a huge ego.

Probably two things:

I successfully killed who I was. I made decisions antithetical to my previous nature. It was awesome. I drunkenly exploited a third world country for its resources. I spat on a police officer and veteran, then stole a painting from a sad hawker with two kids. I think I didn't flush and then fought a group of schoolchildren and defended my actions with "Everyone is allowed to have emotions!"

I expected some perspective building out of these deaths of previous self, but what I've found is that I have experiences, but my person hasn't changed. I feel pretty much the same way about life. Maybe I should do it again. Maybe I should do it every weekend waiting for the mirror and the words to shift and aggregate.

Thing two: I've been having some trouble while I'm having sex with A LOT of women (I don't know why people don't take me seriously). While I'm rocking the motions the only way I know how, I keep having to stop the action and tell her not to move her body, but make faces at me while I pan around her and close in on her face, and then back up again, only to pan around.
It's a challenge to do this spectatorship and participate at the same time, leading me to have virtually no sex my entire life.

Some of my friends inform me that this behavior is actually a representation of a need to be stimulated by what I've seen, which is apparently odd camera angles in cheap pornography.

Well! How-dy! I'd like to counter by depicting realistic, inspiring sexual experiences that could also be made into pornography:

Passing each other every day for about six, seven month Going out for coffee and talking about displeasure with the intellectual regime about a month later and awkwardly making an advance that pits me back further, over and over again until

A final culmination of unsaid and (often) unwanted evanescent emotions leads us to an encounter for five, ten minutes until I fall asleep because of exhaustion.
All of this would take place in real time.

But that would be like making a map that so accurately depicts the terrain that it exactly covers it like a fitted blanket.

It sucks to have to pick and choose. You miss out on so much.

That quote doesn't mean anything. I typed in a text message about food. I like to be enigmatic, but not too enigmatic.

So time flies when
anything.
Cliche, right?

But it has flown. My hair is eight inches on top. Most people on the street don't respond to my smiles anymore; they assume I use drugs, which is true, but is unfair of them to assume.
Classes are better, I'm smarter. I'm less patient. I think I'm a better person, but I'm struggling with that. Who knows?

I mostly struggle with my predisposition for predestination. I inactively focus on what I'm supposed to be experiencing, while fighting against that impulse with solipsist nihilism.

For instance:

"It's a beautiful night, the people are wonderful. I think I want a hot dog. I would like to make something of my life. Good thought, I wonder what lesson I can take from leaving Scott's apartment early. Probably one to do with temperance.

WAIT.
No, Joel. Stop it. You're doing that Calvinist thing again when you think there is a lesson in every moment. It's not that life might not be important, it's that life is not important right now.
Stop it. Stop it. I do want a hot dog."

Plenty of silly things have happened that I should have chronicled, but I have neglected my ego. One time, I was moving stuff from a storage apartment, but it was too carry to heavy, so I put all of the clothes on and walked the rest of the mile with ease, asking pedestrians if they knew about the storm.

I do a lot of stuff like that. I'm unappreciated and that's probably for the best.

You know what the best part of being Youth is? I can purposefully make decisions I know are poor and chalk it up to my age. Immediate acceptance of terrible actions.
"We were all kids once," I'll nudge my ashamed children, "right?"

I went to see the Blue Scholars at the Bowery Ballroom and it was a great show. The highlight was when the MC, Geo, and security shoved his way into the front before he started. I was in the front next to him. I knew it was him so I said, "I can tell you're in the band because of how you look, but who the fuck is the guy on stage?"

"He's low-key and shit." Then he laughed.

I liked Blue Scholars more than I liked Public Enemy.
I hope both parties read this post.
A boy can dream.

Father Figures (Or Why I Learned to Love Artificial Insemination)

Okay, not really.

I would hate to have a blog, or any series of written pieces where members of my regular, dedicated audience says, "It's all kind of the same, Joel. You didn't grow, you hack."

You know?
If I was an old, bitter drunk and I wrote about being an old bitter drunk, maybe a wouldn't care, but I'm not Bukowski or Burroughs or
Hell,
I'm not even Hemingway.

So,
I'm really digging into the possibility of finding my biological father. I think the state of science is awesome and frightening, all the same. I shouldn't be able to find him, you know.

There are some exact matches on the DNA Family Tree website and I sent an email to my mom saying, "I know this guy isn't alive anymore, but he could have been my biological father."

She said, "No. This is why:." She then listed facts about my biological father of which I had never been aware. WAY TO KEEP ME IN THE DARK ABOUT EVERYTHING MOM.
I'm not angry, but if I find out about another sibling this year, I'll go crazy. I'll snap.

I put here a list of the things I knew about my biological father a month ago:

-Brown hair
-Brown eyes
-Master's program when he donated
-Lived in Oregon
-I can only assume male.

Here is what I was informed:

-25 in 1990, so born in or around 1965
-Many siblings, roughly 5 brothers and one sister
-Medium complexion
-Married with no children in 1990.
-5'11"
-Hobbies included biking, reading, writing, history and backpacking
-O+

The more you know!

It's like I'm discovering myself. Answers to questions I've always had, like my family's surprise at my academic success.
"You did really well in school this year, Joel!"
"Right."
"Well done!"
"It really wasn't an issue. Didn't you and Dad do well in school?"

"Well, no."

I don't know. I don't want to overthink it. Overwrought in Overthought. It'd be cool is all.
Right?

You made your bed, now Lie in it.

It seems silly, doesn't it?, to take everything so seriously
and to expect that you are the exception to every rule
and to dismiss advice only to form an opinion identical to the original advice and
and
and
and

So many things! This is the mark of overanalysis.

I am back in New York today.
I'm not freaking out, but I'm not doing well.

"Summer went by so fast."
"I wish I could have done more."
"I know the facts but I'm ignoring them."

Give yourself, time, right? Let the world settle before you change it.
Or something.

I'm trying to think about life as an escalator. There's a big one in Universal Studios and another one in the 42nd street Regal Theater. The marvel is not in the breadth of the escalator you're on, but the sights and sites around it. You can't see the end of the line. It's been so long that you can't remember the beginning. You can run up or down, but it still goes onward and upward. You can jump off, but you'll just land on another escalator, ascending, ascending.

And there is also this zen thing where I try to find peace with whatever I'm doing. It'll get challenging when my family enters into an ethnic war with my friends and neither side wins.

Find your zen there!

I'm pining for the Oregon Fjords when I plug my radio in and I hear the Nine Inch Nail's cover of "Hurt". I turn it on and it plays 94.7 KNRK wherever I am.
There's solace somewhere in this.

Hidden History

Summer is ending in a flurry, but I'm preoccupied with genealogy. See, my mom and I entered in on a DNA database to see if there are any half-biological siblings or maybe a biological father available on the internet.

Oh, right. My dad isn't my biological father. That fact is pesky.

I was informed of this reality when I was 15. That may have been RELATIVELY late, but who cares? Not me. Bigger fish.
So I'm looking for biological ties just for fun! Who knows what I'll find?

But that's only my preoccupation. My dad woke me up, a strange occurrence for I lack responsibility, and tells me we should talk.
"Wake up, drink some water."

I mean, okay, but we're walking a dangerous line. I've never experienced a positive surprise in this position. I glance outside the window. Good. Good. The truck is still there. Is my mother pregnant? No, that's impossible. Why would he tell me this now? Is he mad about my sleeping friend in the basement? No. I wrote a note. There's silence outside. No, there are birds. I'm waiting.
I drink some water.

"When I got out of the Navy, I was sleeping with a girl named Diedre in LA. She said she was pregnant..."

Dad, we had this conversation five years ago. Not this one, but one involving this topic. I've lived this life.

He surprised me and proceeded to tell me about his ex trying to get him to be a father for her son back in '68, but her family was not receptive and he was escorted out of Ohio. He told me about he forgot the hypothetical son until 1989 when he called but they never met. He told me about the call he received on Friday from his other son. He told me about the lunch they had planned at Edgefield Winery later on Saturday.

He told me his son's name was Hoye. Joel Hoye.
He lives in Las Vegas, but had lived in New York and LA earlier in his life. Everywhere my parents had been. Strange coincidences. Laughable ones.

My father has two sons named Joel. The biological son doesn't share his last name. The one that does share his name is not his biological son.

Anything I find on the DNA database will be shadowed in comparison.

Quiet Majesty

I forget how jittery I get when I drink coffee. I don't drink coffee. It's excess. I don't need to have so much uncomfortable focus. I could stare at a tree for hours and feel like I've done myself a favor.
Well now I understand nature, I'd think.

I'm back from vacation and what do I do? Wake up at noon, even if I set alarms, I'll disable them. I know myself. I have no self control if I don't have a reason to have self control.
With my time, my limitless hours, I have done naught. I know that. I am nothing. I'm not working. I'm not reading. I'm not painting murals of Chicano history on Brooklyn walls.
I'm doing nothing and I am nothing.

I mean, there's that, but there's also this whole living in the moment thing that I'm doing. There are friendly faces and mistakes and meteor showers and the internet and gifts and gab.
Repercussions, sure, but eventually! Right now this is what I'm doing and it's fine and it will build me.
I'm back to running. I'm back to writing. Some, but some is some not none.
I'm back to forgetting what words mean and kicking myself.
Knowing that I'll do fine, but worrying about all of the possibilities.
Being too egotistical to be nervous around attractive women.

Everything.
Is this a recharge?
I guess.

I just need to make sure that I've grown.

Taylor and I were talking (He's not real, by the way; He's just a name) about what's wrong with what I think.
The issue is that I think heavily, but speak lightly. Simplified dialectic. One sentence is backed by a thousand sentences that I haven't spoken.
And also, "You're not as open-minded as you think."

"I'm Opinionated."

I'm liberal and not religious and that means I'm open-minded.
But not really. I'm notoriously, loudly set.

And I know that.

The point is, if you have a problem with anything ever,
I'm Sure that I can tell you which way is right.

Enough about Me

So I just watched "Julie and Julia" (sp?), a film by Nora Ephron (the famed fictionist who concocted the romance novels with the faces cut out, probably).

It was a touching film. It seemed to strike pretty close to my conscience with this whole blogging thing. That was an important part of the movie. Also, Stanley Tucci plays a diplomat. On top of that, Amy Adams and Chris Messina's characters live in New York.

If I had any interest or talent with food, I would do something with it. The sad truth is, I prefer frozen dreck to culinary artistry.

I guess that means a deeper meaning cannot be had.

I kept thinking loudly to myself, "Girl, you ARE a writer. Just because you aren't published doesn't mean that you aren't a writer!" I thought this many times.
If there's anything Writer's Workshop 1 and 2 Professor McCarl taught me, it's to think of yourself as a writer if you write.

(*Think of Oneself as a writer if one writes)

(**Correct Grammar is a waste of time.)

So I'm writing a novel, right? I'm REALLY writing it. It's real. It's in my hands. I roughly remember all of the characters...

But I'm holding off for at least five years, or so.

I know a girl, a college friend, who has written over two books. I don't know how she's sure enough about anything to write about anything.

Maybe that's just me. I want to know about life before I write about life.

There's something so Pretentious about a suburban teenager directing a school play version of "Serpico", you know?

That's a reference to the movie Rushmore, by the way.

Also, by the way, Condescending means talking down to people.

I'm in the San Fernando Valley right now, taking the scenic routes with my dad's side of the family. There is a real reason I wear a Star of David around my neck and it's not because I chose to be chosen. There's something Deeply rejuvenating about family, even if they are loud or ugly or talentless or unfunny or downright schmucks. It's an identity.

The second blog is churning. One more ingredient and it will be systems go. Taylor, that's you. Sign up. Let's get some criticism on the road. I want to decry Meryl Streep.

It's getting crowded in my head. I need to leave it for a while.

A dream died today

Summer living is SO HARD.
Ughh!

I've been writing so much. At least three novels last week. I'll sort them and it might be more. I only write paragraphs at a time. That's the easiest way to write books by the way: tie together unrelated paragraphs.

I'm telling you, that's art.

In the reality, I haven't done anything at all. I've wasted my time.
"Should I buy a new journal?" I ask myself every day.
Yeah, Weeeeeeellllllllllll, I guess I coullllllllld, but I just situated in this chaaaaaaaaaaiiiiirrrrr, so I probably shouldn't.

Every day.
Summer living will be the death of me.

I have spent most of the last week not sitting, though. I've been out in the West Hills deforesting. It's a pretty good living. Definitely one of the most masculine things I've done in a long time, possibly ever. There was a day I spent on a saw mill, but I wasn't wearing plaid, I was wearing stripes by Kohls. Department stores are not masculine.
If you want clothes and you are male, you must kill an animal and wear it. Horse, river fowl, whatever.

I'm working on a second blog. I know I haven't perfected this one, but the second one will be better. There will be more information soon. It'll be something critical and regular with multiple contributors. It'll be Really negative, too. That's all I'm sure about.

Mostly these days, I'm trying to become the person that I see in the mirror.
(I taped a picture of Liam Neeson on my mirror.)

My old technique of bettering myself as a person was rejecting all criticism.
For instance, my sister Aurora said that I was being clingy once. Haven't spoken to her in a while.

But now, I regularly figure out who I am, what I stand for and what I see myself being and destroy it all.

This has been a summer of going to the basics. Of ego death and fervent spiritual dreams.
It's been a summer of growth.

Obviously, I want it to end.

LORD, Do I have Stories!

Mmm!


I got back last night from two weeks in some podunk, all-White town in North Alabama, unaffected by natural disasters and poor race relations.
That's not true. I was in New Orleans.

Hania, a girl who I've been slyly referencing for about two years (especially when the story is about self-pity), hooked me up with a trip to The Big Easy.

Service Work.

It's a beautiful, muggy mess, man. Hurricane Katrina killed some serious employment foundations and continues to wink at the residents with abandoned homes and empty lots, five years down the road. The oil spill has brought some would-be rig workers to the Easy, too.
On top of those environmental catastrophes, alcohol there is like meth here: Plentiful. Half of the French Quarter is washouts with great stories and hungry hearts.
Bruce Springsteen lives in New Orleans.

Education in the city is horrid, also. I met too many people with illiterate leanings. Adults, middle-class. Too many. This is the West, isn't it?

No, Joel. This is where the "Global South" got its name.

The whole time, or at least the time when I wasn't reveling REALLY loathing my neighbor or looking lustfully at everything downtown or in a(as of yet) unspoiled gulf of Mexico,
I wondered, I refuted what the difference was.
Had I done anything of substance? Had I contributed to the rise of a once cosmopolity?

I packed boxes of books in Capdau Elementary, I painted baseboard in a church office, I handed and shook the homeless looking for a good camping spot, I dug a ditch, killed weeds, smiled, witnessed, Strove to make a difference,
but this city is shattered.

Not ruins, but perpetual shatter. There is much room for improvement.
And of the thousand, maybe tens of thousands of volunteers that come down, is my time drop in the water?

Am I faceless many? I must be, right? I have to be. I can't have an ego in this place, staring out the soul-crushing shattered windows of a charter school.
I can't.

I just can't.

That was until I was standing next to a VCR and Hania, talking with Miss Luvenia about faith and race. Our host, whose house we were painting "Winter Hedge," said, as if in a dream,
"You have no idea how much difference you're making.
"This means the world."

Or something.
I paraphrase because the moment passed like all others, and her sincerity struck me.

I hope I didn't get preachy.
I have cooler stories about getting stuck groggy in a what could have been a tropical storm at six in the morning, swimming with fish, falling in and out of perspective,

But what struck me about the trip, past the breast-beating and the evangelism, was the thing Miss Luvenia said to me. An old, black widow, hardly walking, telling me she'd rather be me.
And I told her that I'd rather be her.

That was the crux of it. I think. The crux of the whole trip, of my life so far. Or something.
Or nothing.

For those of us who lack faith, who struggle with the idea, or feel outside the club that already has meaning pre-attached because of the One Truth of their faith,

We have to find our own meaning. Miss Luvenia smiled and told me I'd be a good father.

Go Big or

So I went home.

I failed at college. I did nothing but study and curse the season for changing.
I seethed like an old man.
That attitude gets you a one-way ticket home. Shape up for next time.

I'm enjoying being home, sort of.
I mean, I'm doing less than I did in college.
I'd peak outside my window, "Is the sun shining?
Better go back to sleep."

I don't even see the sun anymore, now that I've been home.
Portland has been ugly and drizzly, too. More than usual. I thought I lived in England, for a while. I wanted to colonize so bad!

I wanted to write about my experience at the Sasquatch Music Festival, with apparent rants about the pervasive white youth culture,
contrast and compare it to my recent visit with my Other grandmother (not the foul-mouthed, but the foul-spirited) on the topic of drug use and abuse both to numb the pain and open the eyes as well as the ironic conformity of the eternally nonconformist youth and the seeming conformity of the elderly who have lived completely different lives,
but
Not only was my commentary going to be cruel, but
It's really not that interesting.
You could read that anywhere on the internet, I bet.

Summer is about unwinding, not analyzing (and refuting) the lives of others, Joel.

I think you should focus on something lighter while you float between unemployment, hunger and philanthropy:

I don't care what anyone says. I'm glad I'm growing out my hair.


Proof of success!

Train of Thought 5, 6 and the Rest

This is why I don't post series.
And this is why we don't have nice things.

I have long since ended my trek, but I will still recant the end as it was so powerfully inspiring.

The last two days drove by slowly with Illinois, Ohio, Montana, Indiana and eastern Washington rolling on by my window, by every window. I don't have these states in an accurate order because they don't need to be.
What wasn't dilapidated houses and shut-down steel mills still coughing smoke from the years past of poor health and union busts
was fields, open fields underneath the worst of overcast heavens.

Big Sky Country was wide, rambling country.
I sang "Wide Open Spaces" by The Dixie Chicks to my Dad for two days.

He told me about a History Channel special about ruins before I graduated. The show glossed over the ruins of previous civilizations and stated that the modernity's lust for progress and rebuilding has arrested our ruins.
Well Dad, I beg to differ.
These are our ruins: The empty factories and the abandoned homes next to the train tracks. They are our ruins. The Iron Age is over for America.

On a lighter note, some two-seated woman totally hit on my dad as he was stumbling back from the bathroom. Thank you Gods of Contrast.

As we came up on the Rockies, he told me a couple stories about his childhood and why he loves trains. For the first time in my life, I could imagine him as a child, not as an addled young man in the Village or a fisherman off the Oregon Coast, but as innocent and ignorant.
There were a lot of people in the 50s that didn't know any better. That's as much as I can say before I'm stealing stories.

Indirectly, I learned that one thing that can't be taught or explained is nostalgia. We were cooped in a box slightly smaller than the 50 square feet of my dorm room and forced to stare at each other or the dull and dying outside world partly because he was attached to the grandeur of the railroad in his memory.
I'll tell you what, I was born with jetfighters and space ships. We don't need trains like the baby boomers.

It was still a journey and I've seen middle, run-down America.
Amtrak won't go out of business, at least, for the next five years, so if you want to get nauseous and glue yourself to window across the States, I'll tell you, it's an experience.

Train of Thought: Day 4

It is important to bond with family. It is said that when you die, the entire family, all creatures before you, greet you in the Purgatorial state of the unknown.
I would to like to see all of my ancestors reincarnated, on the other hand. I would like to cherish my familial history as pets. A little caravan of dog-aunts and parrot-uncles, good-for-nothings, marching behind me, a smiling menagerie. I would like that.

I write this because I have time to think on 17 hour train-rides from the District of Colombia to Chicago. I have much time.

Leaving Philly was easier done that said. Grandma would have been angry if I didn’t make eye contact with her and yell my goodbyes and Aunt could not Stand (right?) my contentions, but she waved me off lovingly, just the same.

We had seats this time. We have many seats. We have a whole train to ourselves when we get to Chicago, Alas, that is tomorrow.
It’s odd that through years of mutual verbal abuse, my dad and I have hardly quarreled during our trip. I can’t call it maturity or growth, though it most definitely is, because I have a pride and a narcissism that doesn’t trust silence more than I can throw it.
Who is this imposter that can have civil conversation? My friends will be surprised and saddened, lest I fall into old habits.

And of course, I will.

In the dining booth we ate with a Boston-grown, tough-as-nails truck driver with silly, flippant mannerisms and his geeky French traveler that was severely misinformed about American landmarks (“You’re from Oregon? He’s going that way to see Mount Rushmore.”). The two just met.
My dad somehow mustered over an hour of truck-driving knowledge with the Bostonian. It was impressive. I was stuck out of the conversation because "the young folk" don't know much. My dad patted me on the back and used my ignorance as an example. I stamped my feet, cried about how much of an adult I was, and realized my place.

I tried to make conversation with the tall Frenchman but I relapsed into Spanish several times. He laughed, Frenchie, but our exchange suffered. And I want to be a diplomat with these chops?
Better line up for fast food work, Joel.

The lights went out in the Midwest. I’m passing major attractions, but I can’t tell.
Oh, right. I’m writing in the present tense now. I forgot to clarify that. No mistake. I’m in the present right now.

Instead of wandering amazed in Sandusky Ohio’s amusement parks, I can see metal rods from afar between pages of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.

It’s getting late, wherever I am. I wasn’t sure if time flew in the Midwest.

Train of Thought: The Evening of Day 3

When you become an adult, no one, or most often no one, stops you from waking up at noon. You’re just lazy. You’re a slob if you do, but you are free to do it.

I woke up at noon and sat back until four in the backseat of a used car with a broken seat-belt running errands in South Philadelphia. My dad and his sister bought me an acupressure wristband because I ran out of Dramamine. I can’t handle Philadelphia driving. Speed bumps are dismissed and stop signs are ignored completely. It’s like riding shotgun in a go-kart with poor brakes.

Lucky for me, I’m a fool and believe that acupressure works. The placebo effect is sufficient.

We dined with cousins and first cousins at a fine Italian restaurant, Stanniccio’s (what a name!) where we spent so much that we were gifted free orange cello, a liquor.

I don’t know if it’s clear to you that I am afraid of alcohol and, actually, all things mature and adult, but I am. That’s an exaggeration, but I don’t drink. I’m still holding onto some semblance of innocence that was completely spent around the time my first long-term girlfriend lied about her pregnancy,

But I don’t drink.

I was served the alcohol and most of my relatives pushed me to man up, with the exception of my aunt,

“Joel, it’s fine if you don’t to drink it as long as you know that we won’t love you if you don’t”

Or something.

I moved the shot glass around the table, grimacing and weeping, but I succumbed to the pressure (acupressure) and knocked it down.

From there, I cut my hands on the broken glass of the bottles I smashed to suckle every drop of alcohol I could find. I flipped the table when it went dry. I had to be knocked unconscious by the maître’D and THEN the police were called.

The worst thing was,

I didn’t even like the taste.

In the evening, my dad and I sat on my aunt’s porch and I listened to him wax nostalgic. We tried to sing harmonies to “Summer in the City” by the Lovin’ Spoonful and cackled as attractive women strode past. I was sober, too.

My dad stopped me as I was explaining my views on alternative fuel or the fall of the nation-state or whatever and said,

“Joel, this is a song. This moment is a song.”

It took him five minutes, but he found it.

We listened to it as I welcomed adulthood.

Train of Thought: Early Day 2

As I had already overstayed my welcome at student housing and Ronny’s apartment, I woke up in some hotel on 33^rd and wandered, groggy, to Penn Station with suitcases ripping open with t-shirts.

Here’s a note for the uninformed: Don’t pack all of your t-shirts. You won’t wear them, or, you shouldn’t wear them.

Also, second note, if you don’t know locations or directions in New York, likely every major city, you shouldn’t necessarily expect assistance from train, plane or mass transit staff. They have better things to do and enjoy misleading the general public.

We followed poor directions so we almost didn’t make it onto our first train to Philadelphia. My dad and I somehow lacked intuition and were far enough back in the line for the conductor to personally bark at us to “Get on the Train! We’re Leaving Now, You damned Fools!”

He looks more and more like a whip-wielding Egyptian in my memory.

Maybe that’s unfair. Maybe He’s unfair.

We loaded half of our luggage into someone else’s compartment and wandered the train for seats.

“Is this seat taken?”

“Yes. He’s coming right back,” they all said.

Ladies, you liars, we’ve already seen the rest of the train. You are alone and you should be, you fraud.

We were left with one seat in the lounge car. Because I am not ageist, I stood next to the garbage can and smirked at the lounge attendant (she prefers Snack Specialist). She didn’t say much to me, I assume because I look like a 19-year-old in a band that’s not very good.

With this much excitement early on, when I arrived in Philly, I was overpowered and napped for the rest of the day.

Train of Thought: In and Around Day 1

I haven’t written a series of blogs successfully since Spring Break 2007, and then barely, at that.

I was proud of myself for having some sort of journalistic integrity describing the lucidity of Las Vegas as a teenager, but like most of my early writing, it turned to mush quickly.

I get ahead of myself, see.

My first year of college is over. I am officially not as ignorant as before.

My dad and I decided that the best way to travel back home this spring would be by train. It’s an experience. I’ve told this to people (not friends, just strangers) and I’ve received mixed reactions.

“Trains are stupid. They’re for illiterate pansies.”

That was harsh and irrational.

“I like trains. Good for you, Joel.”

Thank you, stranger.

We saw Hair on the night before we left for Oregon, with Philadelphia, D.C. and Chicago stops in between. My dad laughed louder than the rest of the crowd. That was embarrassing, but only at first. I forget how loud I am. I cried at the majesty of ‘60s culture while my dad assumed the role of unseen Hair characters from memory.

We danced onstage at the end and I was almost ashamed of my dad’s interpretation of the Rain Dance, but I accepted his lineage when I noticed I was the only dancer on the off-beat.

Thus is life.

And I don't even drink coffee

When I was younger, not much younger than today, I had some friends that were desperately uncool. To put a face to a name, sweat pants and roosting chickens as pets.
I was in 7th grade and kids were cruel.

I wasn't cruel, or I was, but only to those assholes that watched wrestling and smelled poor.
That's hardly cruel, right?

But really, I had innocuous friends that sometimes hampered on how many drinks I was offered at parties
or how many parties I was invited to

or whether or not I was ever going to be invited to parties
(I wasn't).

I was socially awkward, then. Or I was too smart for my own good.
I love to hear that latter phrase. It was something that my teachers told me when they doubled as life coaches. It meant that I told jokes I didn't fully understand, liked music that wasn't in my generation,
and that I was socially awkward,

but I could write one hell of a worksheet.

I wasn't exactly an outcast with my braces and developing taste for girls with low self-esteem, back in seventh grade. I wasn't a pariah. I was geeky, sometimes bullied, sometimes violent.
I was sorting myself out,
but I had friends that in low places that didn't need me, but wanted to socialize with me.

And, of course, who am I to say no to friends?

It's a thought now: maybe I missed out on something then. Maybe I could've been a different person because of my choices. Probably, I wonder and sigh.
Then again,
It was middle school. There was nothing else going on. It's a joke to regret childhood.
Seriously.

But now,
I sit in a cafe, asking myself how shallow I've become.
How many of my friends are cool wastes of time and how many are those innocuous mouth-breathers and latchers-on?
Have I gone shallow?
At what point do I stop myself from embodying pretense?

I can't brush this off as I sip at my latte.

Invest Well.

My professor told me a classical research paper was a case study.
"This is a compendium. The intro is great. The conclusion is great. You might want to fix the middle, though."

So I'll give some case studies.

I was walking onto the subway today to get to work. I usually walk, but I planned my day ahead of the time and I planned to struggle to eat a chicken gyro on the street while carrying my folders in my hands and check my email ten times (Just in case!).
I planned these things ahead of time. You can't go back on plans, you know?

I stumbled down the stairs and there was a woman at the bottom of the first step, waiting for eye contact to capitalize.

(When I was researching the independence movement of Oregon, Washington, and California ((Cascadia)), I came across a story by the founder of a thinktank in Seattle called the Sightline Institute. He bought a bunch of oranges, too many, at Pike Place and handed them out to the homeless he passed. There was no dilemma about the ethical, Christian ((He is a minister)) need to help by giving change. Problem solved. No more homelessness. I have since made this my mantra.)

So I glide awkwardly down the stairs and make eye contact. She was asking for change.
Before she pleads, I put my finger to her lips. No, Say no more. I was prepared with a trusty piece of fruit.
I hand her a banana and she looks at it. What is this queer piece of yellow?

"I want change. I'm trying to get out of the city. My apartment, it's really..."

What? You don't want my fruit? How can you not want my fruit? You people LOVE my fruit........
Shit. I did it. I made them the other. I've tried not to do that. Suddenly, it's a You People situation. I can't look her in the eye, now.

But I do, anyway. "I'm sorry, I only have fruit to give."

And then, after work, I met another man. He did the walk-and-talk move. It's amateur, but if you do it well, you get what you want. He even put his hand on my arm.
"Hey, you seem like a nice guy, can you spare me some change?"

He didn't know about my fruit policy, obviously.

I stopped and looked him square in the eye. "I'm sorry. I can't give."
I mean, I have the ability, but I'm on a street corner where you could run and steal my things. It's not a race issue. It's not a class issue. I shouldn't give you money. I don't put too much importance on frugality but theft would greatly inconvenience me.

"Not even a dollar?"

"Look, man, I am sorry, but I can't give today. Have a good day."

Speaking of Thrilling

Yesterday, Saturday, there was a car bomb in Times Square.
I say car bomb lightly because it was propane tanks, tubs of gasoline and fireworks.
Al-Queda has claimed responsibility for the event. I don't know what they're doing, but ground bloom flowers aren't threatening. Bombs are threatening.
I don't know.
I heard that there was a bomb in Pittsburgh today, too. At the end of a marathon. Another failed attempt.

I don't want another 9/11. (This is the age of the understatement.)

I was at work in Times Square, 42nd Street, when we were informed to stay calm, be ready to guide patrons West to safety.

It was an odd day for me. We were ushering a dress rehearsal for our next show and I decided that meant business casual instead of uniform.
To me, business casual means oversized suit jacket, size-too-big dress shirt and brown pants.

All but one other coworker was in blacks on the day that a terrorist plot foiled four blocks away.

Isn't it funny that these are the things we think of when calamity strikes?
I looked different and was uncomfortable.
That's silly.

I seemed to be the only person with his heart racing. I was jittery and shook every time the doorbell on set rang.

I guess New Yorkers are acclimated to disaster.
Business as usual.

Most of the theaters in the area closed. The Square was evacuated.
My theater stayed open without interruption. Nope, business as usual.

It was exhilarating. Oooooo! Terrorism!
Even now, I can barely begin to imagine what would have happened had their been an explosion.
I want to take this seriously. I'm supposed to take this seriously, but there's a part of me that thinks he's going to live forever and he hasn't left yet.

The world isn't bleak, it's thrilling.

There was a conference at school tonight. It was a screening of excerpts of Rwandan genocide survivors called "Voices of Rwanda" and then a question and answer session with the executive producer.

I joked to a friend that this was one of the two topics about which the New School teaches. This and Walter Benjamin.

The testimonies were somber and quiet, usually. The video was only of the faces of three survivors with subtitles and an explanatory caption between the stark, grave images. It was graphic and sucked the air out of the room.
It was similar to the Fortunoff Archive at Yale, more so than the Shoah Foundation at USC, both archives of recorded Holocaust testimonies.

Fortunoff doesn't have clips online. It only gives out full interviews. Shoah has clips as if to simplify the experience of each survivor into a buzzword, but that isn't in Rwanda.

After studying genocide for a year now, I have made it so that I can picture atrocity and breathe at the same time. It's a feat. Withstanding the truth of the testimony is a juggling act of rationalizing and unfocusing, disassociating.

The footage ended and I asked a question about courts. He gave an answer. Other people asked questions and he answered. The shocked witnesses of witnesses stewed in their chairs. The inquisition was ending and a woman stood from the back.
"I just want to say Thank you, Taylor. Thank you for your work. As a survivor it was hard to watch, but thank you."

It's easy to pretend that the world is split up into different universes and traveling to the African world is as crazy as traveling to the Moon.
But she was in the room with me.

I couldn't pretend anymore and cried for the first time in a while.

I wanted to tell her that I was glad she was alive, but I thought that didn't make a difference.

I talked to her afterward, anyway. There was a reception with food and drink.. A woman in the elevator spoke truly: "There needs to be lubrication after something like that."

I may have a career in this.

There's a character

in Slaughterhouse Five, and probably some other crap written by a one-off Hack like Vonnegut or Salinger,
that writes fiction.
He writes unsuccessful, bitter science fiction, but at least he's writing.
I want to be him.

That's a dream for the weak, or the broken idealists.

"Here's another one," he said aloud, his hands raised, lifting his tie out of his cup of coffee.

"Here's another what, Dan?" his wife asked, smoking a cigarette at the breakfast table.

"A guy I knew in high school died. He was third string Debate team or something. He had a mustache his sophomore year. Another guy in the Metro, he was arrested. Meth, probably. He looked haggard on the news yesterday." He folded the paper in half and looked at his wife, looked her square in the eye. "It's hell to have all of your friends in prison or dead."

She pushed her cigarette in the tray and smeared the glass. "Well, that's why I don't have friends, Dan."

"It's only a matter of time," he said, unfolding his paper and dipping his tie in coffee.

Well now we're respected in society

(We don't worry about the things we used to be)

I read to the end of my Macroeconomics textbook expecting heaven to open
and BOY was I surprised to find that the main author (Colander, 7th edition) had thrown his hands in the air and said he didn't know.
"Global development is a complicated issue..."
I appreciate your honesty, I really do, but we had a deal, Colander.
You were going to give me the information I needed and I would blindly memorize said information.
You have cheated me. You printed a book, nine hundred pages of graphs and models that don't accurately illustrate reality.
You are an honest man, but you are a deal breaker.

I wanted to study economics because it is an undiscerning art.
It isn't one of those "pseudo-sciences" like politics or chemistry.
Economics was grounded in reality.
And you have spat on my dug grave.

On a different note entirely,

I have been highly amused to find that it's true. I can be the mayor of one town and the mare of the next.

We don't worry about the things we used to be.

Back home, I'm a ruthless, benevolent braggart that craves attention and can't make up his mind.

And that's me.

At this school, The New School, I'm an off-beat Northwest cynical, displeased smirker that revels in his intelligence as much as his indie music tastes.

Somewhere else, I'm probably a despot, a heathen, a priest or a vagrant.
And those are me, too.
It's more than presentation, it's stepping into a role.
And they were right when they said you could be anything you want to be,
But they forgot to mention that

You're also a whole lot that you don't want.

Something that won't be witty in a couple days

I made a trip to an advising office with some modest entrance that could have hidden some dank speakeasy or a some jumping point lookout,
but instead hid tired, cramped academics.

My academic adviser is an unapologetic cynic. She worked for World Bank instead of the Peace Corps after getting either her Master's or her Doctorate, or maybe something else. She has degrees like vices, many. I took one of her classes last term and didn't know anything about most things and by the end of the class, I had it all figured out.
At least how to tell my temporal history from my opinions.

She made it clear that my undergraduate degree didn't matter.
"As long as you have a high academic rank, just do what you want, Joel."
Okay.
I need high marks to get into grad school.
I needed high marks to get into college (I couldn't do it on looks alone).

"75% of jobs don't ask to see your transcript."

Good news.
Good news to share!

She's publishing an academic book about cybernetics and memory while writing a second one.
I told her I was writing a book of fiction and she said,
"Great, hopefully someone will read it," sardonically.

I laughed and grew nervous as the day went on.
"I hope, too," I laughed.

I don't want to be forgotten while I'm alive,
mostly by myself.

You're wrong, you're all wrong.

I have been very tempted to make this blog a political jumping point as I'm accepting that for a while I won't be dreaming of one-off roles and comedy writing.
And that's okay. I still want to do that, but I want to be smart, and the only way to be smart is to have a degree that says so.

So I get my degree.
But I love writing, so I'll write about other things. I'll Muse. I'll throw copper in a fountain and hope someone retrieves it, makes something cool out of it. Pennies aren't worth anything.

Insults are odd. They depend so much upon the person. For instance, jokes about mothers are cruel to orphans. Jokes about Blondes offend the Polish, and vice versa.
One of my roommates I make fun of in my head.
(I know I shouldn't, but I'm documenting truth here; roll with it)

I call him a big, smelly oaf.
That's not particularly insulting. That's childish. I've insulted him calling him a child, too. That's not so bad, unless you're acting like a child, unless regularly you throw temper tantrums and don't clean up after your feasts, you oaf.
See? That's not right. I shouldn't do that.

And Smelly? That's hardly insulting
...
Unless you smell.
Unless partners will not make you their husband because of your POWERFUL scent.
I have another roommate (I have a lot of roommates. I'm not making this up.)
The other smells like a hockey match.

I don't even know how you do that.


I started my book, too. I'm writing a book. I plan to write a bunch of books, but so far, I have only started writing one. It's okay. I've written about a page.
It's about sanity and homelessness.
Not like I know anything about homelessness. Not like I care.
It's not like I'm going to research this.
It's only characters. Lifeless characters.

In truth, it'll be some sort of parable, some launching pad for humanization.
I won't say too much.
(There'll be a surprise twist!)
There probably won't.

After an Easter egg hunt on Sunday, I shopped with my coworker Matt for his wife. Not for his wife. Gifts for his wife. He's an Australian actor and [not because of that] I have wanted to hang out with him. He's sort of what I aspire to be. He has a blog. He's real.

We talked tax codjavascript:void(0)e wandering through Times Square and I'm sure now the country/continent of Australia is a better version of America.
If it was a LITTLE greener, I'd move there right now.
Then it would be San Francisco. 100%.

I recommend hanging out with Australians. And actors.
It's just fun not knowing if they're lying or not.
They can be in character in any moment.

After all, what is natural?

I was busy writing my Republic of Cascadia research paper and I decided I wanted candy.

When I entered the lobby of 20th street, I also entered a conversation about healthy living. A small girl that I've never heard speak was a well-oiled vegan machine. The security guard on duty, Cansino, must have asked.

"If you want energy, real energy, I wholly recommend cacao. Just pure, natural chocolate. It's rather bitter, so you can mix it with some [something] or brown sugar, whatever you like. I personally like to mix it with gogi berries, a real superfood. The Chinese have it listed in most of their remedies. It has 18 of 22 amino acids, more vitamin A than carrots and more iron than spinach. It has cancer-fighting [words] and you'll never get sick!... Well anyways, I think cacao is too bitter on its own, so I mix it with gogi; it's like a sweet treat. Dave Wolfe eats cacao every day and I see him as one of the best, one of my natural health living idols, but that seems..."

She breathed.

"and Daniel Vitalis has a plan for everything, how to be efficient on a plane, indoors, outdoors, exercise... If you watch his videos on youtube, it will change your life."
(I thought, like New Slang?)

She continued to speak, it was becoming more fluid, less robotic. I thought to myself that I should really know what she's talking about. Health religions are started in Oregon, aren't they? I'm from there. I need to be in on this.

"...And cancer can be cured. What if I told if you take 300 grams of Lyceum and it will stop your cancer dead in its tracks? David Wolfe knows this. It's cutting-edge stuff."

And by that point, I agreed with her. You're right. AIDS was a conspiracy. I can live to be 200. There is nothing in my way. I need to start eating only raw foods and foraging in Central Park. If I do this, then my yin will balance with my yang and I Can't POSSIBLY eat anything that isn't made of pure vegetables and Western medicine is rather suspect and I will understand...
Oh right,
This is the kind of person that's attracted to The New School.
I smiled. She thought it was intrigue, but it was closer to amusement.

"We'll talk again sometime later," she said, now directed at me, as if she wasn't in a conversation in the first place. "I know I talk really fast and it's a lot to remember."

I nodded and, wanting to be standing in the fresh rain with the cement smell, left.

I ended up buying a candy bar.

I give a B- to Reviews

They are doing more than the minimum, reviews, but still so much more could be done. Without a reasonable replacement, reviews and review systems are our best option for qualifying art, thought, and process But your test grades in eighth grade math still get a higher score than reviews as a whole.
I feel and I am not alone in feeling that when I read a review I am left with opinions that are not mine and guide me only as far as was intended and that length is a B-.
Shape up, reviews.

I read pitchfork.com's reviews of music, sometimes. It just makes me mad.
Here is link that makes me laugh instead. Look how digital the internest is.

I've been dying to write something, anything. My fingers are steadying, hardening and splintering from atrophy. I haven't written anything REAL (FEEL IT!) in too long.
And by real I mean fiction. I haven't written fiction in too long.

I started using sleeping pills.
I also stopped using sleeping pills. I just wanted some regulation. Those hours were out of control, with their big money spending and their ignorance of the common man,
oh, no wait, that's Big Business.
I couldn't sleep.
With every sleeping pill, I felt closer to celebrity, but then I gave up the habit, only to stare at the red marks on my ruddy face in the mirror. Oh Hardship, you bother me so!

Sidney and Joï (roommates) were listening to a poor cover of "Use Somebody" and I made them watch (made is a strong word; I coerced them, I rose my fist, yeah) into watching Jake Shimabukuro play "Dragon" and Andy McKee play "Drifting." Some of those tabs that I've left open in the window of my mind. Joï sang "Telephone" by Lady Gaga over both melodies.

You can lead a horse to water, and he'll eat for a day.
But you can't teach an old horse new tricks, not even when you beat it dead.

I keep reading philosophical material that makes my troubles seem trivial. I want or need or cannot but dedicate my life to something. I want to dream the future, yes. Walter Benjamin said that.

"Every epoch, in fact, not only dreams the one to follow but, in dreaming, precipitates its awakening."

So college is telling me to be a revolutionary and that writing silly satiric pieces can get me only so far.

Positive note: "Right to be Lazy" by Paul LaFargue is HILARIOUS.
That's not really positive.
Duane Reade is open at all hours.
No, not positive.

No, okay. I'm settled.

When I dreamt I was an electron in a bar, I still ordered milk and (is) the bartender (here) asked me if I wanted anything else.

"No, I'm fine."
And as an afterthought,
"Thanks."

Can you name the people that made you cool? (and how sometimes blogs are less cool in retrospect)

I'm a sensationalist. I pretend that I'm not, visually, mostly, but I can't help but rouse and rabble.
Rabble on, I heard once.
Lead Zeppeling, or something. I'm not big into the "music" community, so I wouldn't know.

But more, Blue Scholars, the best Filipino/Iranian rap group from Seattle (The only Filipino/Iranian rap group from Seattle), recently made a new HIT downloadable on their blog.
Those Northwest rappers, they're definitely funny.
It's one of the bands Ben turned me onto when Ben and I were friends.
That was before he went to Mexico.
Those were the days, downhill since.


I've been wanting, asking for inspiration and reasons to be, lately.
I ran to the East River, the other side of Manhattan where I was told I would likely get stabbed. I didn't get stabbed. A mere graze.

It was beautiful. It was like Portland. I'll send you the picture if you want. I really will. If you have my phone number, I'll send it to you, if you want.

I thought about reading about Cascadia but instead went to Chelsea Market for the first time/ It's on 9th avenue, and that's usually too far for me. That's an avenue that doesn't have my school on it, so I have no reason to be there.
Well I'll tell you, it was like what I imagine Christmas in Disneyland to be. Plastic perfection. It was pure food. It was all stuff grown in the area. It was a breath of fresh air, to say in the least.
I bought SO MUCH produce. I'm on a health kick now after going to Philadelphia. When I'm with family, I just eat. Nothing else, just eat.
"You're too thin!" No, I'm not. Stop hiding candy for me, Grandma.

I'm not as much worried, today. I'm looking for inspiration. And when you want something, prophetic, it's there. Right in front of you.
(When I say prophetic, I don't mean like the time I was at Happy Day Christian Daycare and the employees, or the other daycared, I don't remember, told me that praying was about asking for a sign and it being presented. I waited a full hour on the metal monkey bars watching traffic as mostly trucks passed. I thought that was the sign from God and that was when I started thinking religion was lame. Not like that)

"I'm thinking of transferring mostly because I don't think this school will prepare me for a career," I said entering the elevator.
"Well, it won't. This school will just make you a fucking amazing person."
Thanks Matt.
I guess I'll rethink my next couple years.

Monkey Wrench

I can do Whatever I what.

I worry and I worry and I worry and I get emotional.

I'm so close to womanhood. If it wasn't for my mane of a beard, I would go beyond empathy.

I massively and royally screwed up the interview. I was emotional during a rational portion of the group process and I sucked the big one. Not really, just counterintuitive world.

And I was nervous in my birthday suit.

(I was in a regular suit. It was my birthday. That's the relation there.)

I was nervous. My age and inexperience showed.

But thanks to El Presidente y su administracíon, I can take out as much money as I want. I can go anywhere and spend all sorts of fake cash and it's Fine!

There's loan forgiveness for people that want to serve the world or nation.

I mean, that's beautiful.

I'll figure something out. I'm going to visit Georgetown. I'm going to do whatever. We'll see.

Sometimes the way is pointed, sometimes Not.

UGH! Look at the above! So informational. Mark it well. All is not blandblandbland,

blandblandblandblandblandblandblandbland.

There's television on, for instance.

As a thinker, I want to not default onto the answers of yesterday.

I have to ignore Zarathushtra and Buddha. Narratives of yesterday!

There was no flying car for the prophets to make decadent.

We have rock music. We need new ideology.

Everything is Black and White! Listen to the forecasts! Panic!

I do. I panic. I do the panic. It's a dance crazy like the stanky leg or the jitterbug
(it just plumb evaded me).

I jump to conclusions. That's an easy way to figure yerself in a hole. Keep jumping blindly and you're bound to find yerself in a hole, straight on, that's the Truth, I say.

The results came in today.
It turns out I'm 19 and not 37.
I don't have all of the answers or all of the experience.
I get nervous; I get passionate. That's the spirit, I thought. Keep giving the morals!

They LOVE morals!

Some people want reason over morals.
And that's where my age showed.


I'm told that I am an old soul. Astrology tells me that I have been through eleven cycles already, at least. Psychics tell me that I'm meant to be a prophet,

but I can still fail. We can all fail.
Every life (I believe it!) we have to learn another set of lessons.
They all seem the same after a couple cycles.

I may not leave New York. We'll see. The world hasn't ended yet.
Counting down from two years, though.


On a specific note, not some crap rambly note
(as if anyone even reads!;
especially on the useless internet!)

I am tired of reading Terrible names on youtube.
Funnyman4321 has not striking quality. It makes me doubt your humor,
you sad sap. You fake.
That's not that bad, in truth. He might be hysterical.
He's not, though. I know him.

A real bad name is linkrulessonicsux.
That's a horrid, bad name.
I'm watching his rerecording of Dude Where's My Car.
His sunglasses tell me he's thirteen, but his voicelowerthanmine
Just makes me angry.

And I hate him.
I hate him so much.

Oh! It's Ashton Kutcher's voice.
Hmmm.

There's the reason I was looking for.
I just to have to wait. Everything becomes clear

I want to hang out with you, Henry David Thoreau

I get tired of theory. There is a broken tapedeck in the back of my mind that whines on and on about the state of the world, how dreary are the buildings I choose to see daily

(I could walk a different way),
but man, does HDT get under my skin. Mmmmm.

Those that go through heroin withdrawals feel something under their skin in the same way I love to see my derma bubble and pop with ideas of perfect isolation.

I got rejected from being an Resident Advisor today. I was really banking on that job to stay in New York, but in my interviewing, it was decided I wasn't wanted as much as others. The New School is too expensive for what I'd be learning, what I could use. I could be a liberal, theory junkie that hates the system and Freud.
That's not my dream.

It was never my dream to live in New York City. I don't need the professional contacts I've made here. I can't work for the United Nations until I'm a graduate student.

I had a back-up plan. I have the ability to transfer. I have it and I will use it. I truly hope I write fiction all my life and my experiences in New York are represented. I trueally hope.

So, where to?

I feel like a cokehead

because I keep wrinkling my nose. Not like a closeted witch or a bunny, but with my lips and my squinted eyes and my knuckles dragging across my nostrils. I look like a mess.
I accidentally snorted some shampoo in the shower. That's why.

I make it a habit to smile while I'm walking. It makes me seem different. I don't need to be substantially different. I don't need to create or anything frivolous like that. Silly. I need to have the pretension of being different and warm and caring.
It's all about the image. I'd resign if it wasn't for that.

I don't understand the iPad, other than a nasty joke. It's an iTouch, right or an iPod, something beautiful that can capture attention. I don't need people. I can interact with my friends, designated by the queue on my iPad. What the hell is it?
It's a trinket, a bauble. It's an indulgement.
But have you played the toilet paper app, Joel? Don't knock it 'til you try it.
I have to invent a new pocket for it. That's when it becomes unnecessary.
The first man to build a house didn't need it, right Adam Smith?

I'm tired of schoolwork, by the way. I love communes and Islam and women and poverty and theory regarding the former sobjects, but I don't feel the drive to be an intellectual anymore. I want to be a man of the people. I don't want to limit my discussion to only those who know a analogous set of facts as I do. I want my words to be as bland as they can be. I want to make up in marketing what I lack in intelligence,
or something.

My rants get so strange. I make both sides seem ridiculous.



I had a great aunt that was one of those figures that you were supposed to love because they were family, but you only loved them, ignorant as you were because they were family. Those people were real characters before you met them. They were round and susceptible to mistakes and failures of reason.
When you meet them they love feeding you and giving gifts, the synagogue and game shows.
Age isn't fair to real characters.

She was loud and opinionated. Sometimes hateful. God spat on her when her daughter came out as Catholic and her eldest son gay. She grew past these prejudices and was loud and opinionated again, but like a tire will lose its air over time, so did she.

By the time I was aware of her as a person she would call me Josh. I've had teachers and professors alike calling me Josh. That's not my name. I don't look like my second cousin named Josh. I'm not Josh, but she was deflating.

It's hard to face that one day you'll be empty,
so I don't, personally.

Perspective, again

That's a buzz word. I should probably go into writing the news, manning the teleprompter, filling the pundits like cream pies,
but I may not. I may just pretend to know how to write and work in a South American embassy. We'll see.

My suite is getting a little frazzled. There was a pile of garbage with liquor seeping, mopping the floor beneath it. Flies materialized, I swear through black magic. Our pile of dishes started curing staph infections. There was a feeling of rancour because of the singing, the bleating of sheep emitted from the throats of grown and growing men. It was getting bad is the point.

Everyone seemed displeased. Or maybe I was displeased and I imagine the feelings of others to be the same as mine. The passive and the aggressive wrote notes condemning a behavior but they themselves would behave in a way that was condemned by another scratch on the wall.
I'm complaining. I'm a complainer.
Solutions. Solutions.
Okay.

Here's a short story illustrating a point, not necessarily mine:

Susy sauntered into her home, oblivious. She unlocked the door and removed her scarf, placing it loosely on a coat hook. Her mother greeted her. "Hiya Suz! How was school today? Learn anything interesting?"

"Good afternoon, Mother! School was great today, yeah, actually I learned about—"
"Gosh DARN!" Susy's father bellowed from the dining room.
Thinking perhaps her father had stubbed his toe or chipped a tooth, Susy and her mother raced over the earthy Persian rugs and into the dining room. "Gosh, you better Darn EVERYTHING Straight to Heck!" shouted her father.

"What is it Father?"
"The raise I got at work," he continued to shout, slamming his red fists on the table, "pushed us into a new tax bracket!"
Susy thought to herself. She understood that tax brackets were somehow bad and that more is better than less.
"Father, I'm sorry, but what does this mean? I don't understand."

He began breathing again, her father. His breath at first coming in short pants. He skin became the normal polished ivory and he explained: "Susy, I'll put it simply. We will have to give up one of our jetboats. This is like a darn swear on my ears. I'm livid."

Her mother rubbed the back of her husband slowly and apologetically. "Our taxes will be higher, Susy. That's all. We can't afford all of the wonderful Gosh-blessed things we've been given and pay taxes."

"But won't we be making significantly more money?"
"Yes, but the new bracket has a higher ceiling. Honestly, Susan Skylar, do you listen? I just told you."

Susy stood an uffish while in thought while her mother crushed Advil into her father's whiskey and stared at the tax forms.

"Can we get a smaller boat?" Susy asked ignorantly.

"No, stupid Susy, you're so stupid. We want only the best for our family," her mother said, lightly slapping Susy on the face repeatedly.

"I see. Woe is us."

"Woe is us, indeed," said the father grimacing.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Susy, what did you say you learned in school today?"

"Oh, nothing, mother. Ethnic civil war seems so irrelevant now."

Some thing is off

Seriously.
I felt odd all day. Like when you wake up before an alarm and know that you shouldn't have.

No, body. You are wrong. Go back to sleep.

I was angry in class.
I made negative, critical comments about white culture and the upper class.
Oh, wait, I'm at Lang where upper class and white is the norm.
That makes me want to swear,
but I have family subscribers.

Here's to you, Hayes!
Hannah's and your pictures are up on my wall.

Well, as it turned out, something was afoot. Not everyone is well.
Bomb threats, not here, but not far
an airplane crash in Texas,
a couple falls and Kaiser is ignorant.

Law is blind.
Justice is blind.
Order is blind, or blurred, I guess.

It all came falling today.
I was doing well, but it all came today.
Packaged by Amazon.
I didn't order this book. Did I?

I don't think I honestly ordered The Temper of Our Time by Eric Hoffer. I don't know why it arrived.

I hope you're alright. I hope you're fearless.

But things are not obscured.
Mercury is no longer retrograde,
so shut it Bloc Party.

What can I do right?

Around once a fortmonth, I travel to Philadelphia to visit my grandmother, my aunt, Abby and new friends. Abby was busy so I spent most of my time listening to my grandmother tell a skewed version of history and arguing with my aunt.

She's great, don't get me wrong. My aunt is like my father in that she is self-righteous, liberal and swears sometimes. She's quiet though. Most of her yelling she does silently with her expressions. She looks at me as if I'd slapped her when I say I want to eat a cheesesteak for breakfast.

We talked about (500) Days of Summer for a while. She argued that Summer acted and spoke respectfully. She did not deceive Tom. It was in his head, he led himself onto fantasy. No pretense, Joel.

I disagreed. I said that she (Summer, not my aunt) did not take into account the feelings of Tom. She should have known.

"'Should' has nothing to do with the equation, Joel.

"I can't believe you think that."

Her and I also discussed a satirical piece of short fiction where a man, about to kills himself, races past the Apocalypse to greet his newborn daughter. The moral of the story that it isn't the end of the world to have a baby. Life goes on.

She said it was disgusting fiction. Ugly.

I mean, she's right. It absolutely is, but that was the point.

But I want to sell it at some point. I don't know. I mentioned an audience and she decried it.

"You have to write for yourself. You can't write for an audience."

Fine. Fine, Aunt. I'll read something pretty and sweet and we'll watch Big Love.

Weekend vacation.

Make It Big, Wham! (The path to success is littered)

with

Nutria

Fairest pelt!
Cousin Winter curses and glares,
but you, Nutria, have provided
at cost-effective rates!
the finest coat in all of Sellwood.

Sickness and woe
are mere surrealities. You, warm nutria,
did not perish without meaning.
You, itchy nutria, Prince of Mediocrity, have
missed the A-C of bulging teeth,
the 1-2 of white, puffed ears,
the N of Wings!
Burnt sepia mass, searching
wandering in the river.

No one speaks for you, fair Madame
Queen Nutria, guide your vessel;
nay, you lack the vision.
No Roosevelt, you.
It is a doubt you could save yourself.

Cousin Winter, wrinkling in his
agéd speak, he plays with mirrors, but
Scraggly Nutria, you will suffice.
Just enough.
You with wandersome eyes, you filth,
only good when you're dead.
Die for warmth, proletariat.

Become the fairest, most beauteous coat
from fat, ugly beaver.

You want a big word? I'll give you a big word

Everest.
Evercest, also. Quite a connotation.

Yo, but seriously. It's a mad crazy world out there. You just can't stop.

I started reading D.H. Lawrence a couple of days ago. He has control of language. He's dropping word bombs on my peaceful village. Sometimes, I have no idea what language he's writing. Who is he, Lewis Carroll?
Stop making Lewis Carroll jokes, Joel. Not only are they not funny, but they're tasteless. The man was a Saint.

I don't think James Joyce is God.
That must be why I dropped Intro to Fiction.

I missed the Superbowl for the first time in my conscious life. It's a travesty, I know. Life is full of them, Superbowls. I'll catch the next one.

I want to complain tonight. I want to rabble until my heart turns blue and some jazz musician will ask me "Are you Blue?" and I'll totally say yes, for once, I am blue.

The fear is gone. I can take on any academic obstacle. I can honestly take down most obstacles at this point. I'll top my dreams by making them reality.

At work, there were extra posters of Laurence Fishburne as Thurgood Marshall. I set him up so he stares out my window. I hope someone has noticed.

Ushering today, I couldn't help but write poetry in my mind:

The world is full of ugly men,
each ugly in their own way.

Darn Tootin'!

Intro to Macroeconomics is the best thing for me, as a sad sap with broken, sad sap dreams.

I was walking away from class trying to shake off the knowledge bestowed upon me, and I was thinking about being sad, so I asked myself,
"Self, what are the costs and benefits of being sad?"

Well, I would have the ability to write great poetry if I was sad.
and I would have a topic for a morose (BORING) blog.
and I would eat more, I know how I love food, right?

But the costs: I would be less productive. I may say something stupid and regret it instants after it is uttered. I'll be less confident therefore impregnating less women.
The list goes on.

Joel, you are living the dream. You are a god (lowercase. I know my audience) among men. What in the heck do you have to be sad about?

I have toothpaste dribbled dots on my jeans.
I am alone surrounded by millions.
I forget basic articles of speech.
I'm balding.

But I decided I would be more efficient if I was not sad. Dang, if I don't waste my time feeling anything, I can do so much!