Death and the Surreal

On the plane to New Orleans, I experienced something pretty unexpected. The plane had hit a heavy amount of turbulence, for a good minute or so people were looking around worried as the captain reassured the passengers that everything was fine. I was reading a book and listening to music when I suddenly stopped and started to think of the plane crashing. I wasn't feeling anxious or scarred, more of a relaxed almost wishful anticipation, I felt an extreme calmness that I've never heard of except in what I guess people talk about in their religious experiences as endorphins and nerves run up and down their bodies. Not tuning out the music, but not hearing it either, I was not concerned with anything really, felt a bit like an out of body experience. Nothing was pressing on my mind, no thoughts of friends, family, how short lived I was, or even the highest of probability that death wasn't going to happen anyways. an ode to religious experiences.



Old men like me just tuck our shirts in, too busy running out of time.

Writing

I was very discouraged to hear that we would be doing a blog in our class. Not so much opposed to the writing, but opposed to the idea that my words and ideas would be open to the public, since I carefully choose what subject to talk about and how to go about it, with each person, I didn't like the idea of it being open to everyone to pick apart, even though I don't think anyone has the time or mostly the want to bother on such things as blogs, there is always the possibility. It ended up encouraging me to write more, and I think just through the act of constant writing, whether it be all at one time or a consistent blog a day, I think my writing and everyone's writing has probably progressed a good amount. Not to mention that I have been slightly enjoying it, and I think i'll keep writing, however not online, and not on topics such as oil, and what i did today, and that sort of thing, those topics that are there to fill up another blog for an assignment, but I think it would help my writing in general if I kept it up. Hard concepts: practice and consistency makes people better at things...Not only that but it has made me appreciate authors and notice things in writings that I normally wouldn't notice, because of the appreciation of how writing is often times pretty difficult to convey certain ideas in a way that you want to affect people in a certain way. Now that I look back, I apologize for never editing any of these, probably takes away from a good amount of what I have just said. Regardless, I have picked up little tips and strategies from writing on my own while writing which has been of good aid during writing projects. Things that I generally wouldn't have used. I was reading recently one of Stephen King's introductions into the series I mentioned earlier, and something that stood out is the way that he goes about writing. He says that many people go about editing their paper throughout the whole writing process, and there is nothing wrong with that, but what he likes to do is to go straight through with an idea or book, do the whole thing and then put it away for a good six months, even up to a year, then pick it up later on and edit the whole thing. I have found that strategy to be the best on my papers as well, although not having months or years to let sit, I will write the whole thing through and edit after. I think the advantage in that is that you end up getting all the ideas and concepts you wanted to get across in one smooth thought, and then fix up the language and grammar errors later, putting whatever may be more fitting in the paper, but usually if you go in one continuous sweep with your idea you wont have to fix up a whole lot, or so I've found. Cheers to the king.

Beginnings of a ballad

Based off/borrowed with twisted story line of Cahill (John wayne movie which was about the story of a son of a sheriff (who was never around, always out in the desert bringing down the criminals) who with parental negligance got mixed up in the wrong crowd and robbed a bank, later father finds out, son turns his back on outlaw ways, happy ending), mine heads down a different direction, far from finished lyrically, and may be revised what little i have, once school is done i think writings will get better, also keep in mind that this is going to tunes and makes more sense with those tunes:

As the sun beats down, a father buries his son,
solemn minded, he stands over the grave he dug,
stares into shadows, blood on his boots
a reminder to him, a reminder of you
mother sits and waits, she's waiting on two


"where have you been, you've been gone nine weeks,
said it'd be six this time, been waiting ever since,
where is my son, he's nowhere in my sight,
and what is that sweet rain falling from your eyes?
don't tell me rumors are true, that are son has not died,
tell me everything is alright,
everything is fine."

He stares slowly, wipes the sweat from his brow,
takes off his weathered hat, finds a chair,


I have a bit more, him beginning his explanation, but definitely want to change that around. The storyline is that the sheriff got caught up in a scuffle at the bank, shot few of the men dead then followed the others into the desert, where when they think they lost him he ends up arresting them, seeing one is his son he grows solemn and arrests him as well. The son convinces his father that the outlaws put him up to it, it was for the money noone was to be killed, he takes them in to be tried, the judge sentences each his life. He watches at the hanging his own son life taken, luck of the gallows, once he finishes his story his wife passes away, he takes her to the doctor to make sure, then buries her. He takes off begins robbing trains banks and the bit, knowing all the ins and outs becomes successful and never caught. Legend begins. We'll see.

2 blogs?

they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so can this count as two blogs?

Rot those teeth; they wont if you let them be

The last cleaning/check-up I had was a good three years ago, at the least. They told me on my last visit i needed to get my filling, go ahead and make an appointment at the front. I made the appointment, but the night before called and canceled, don't like the idea of people inside of my mouth regardless if they are helping. I've been going in and out of painful feelings that start in my teeth, cavities i always assumed, but never enough to bring me back. However, lately feeling responsible and on track with life I decided to get my teeth checked out, pain helps occasionally or so i hear, and probably would be economically wiser in the long run. So I headed to the dentist where they were surprised to see me, probably guessing that my dad had made me since he had been in a few months before, talked some sense into me, or something like that. <-- have to enjoy the run-ons. Figuring I would come out resembling Hannibal Lecter with blood splattering from my teeth, I wasn't surprised to see all the blood that she was able to manage getting out of my gums. What I was surprised to see was that I had passed the inspections, the x-ray testing, the sharp object prodding around, the interrogation of the necessity of coming in every so many months, all they could find was wine stains on the backs of my teeth and the possibility of removing morals (money-whores), so I got off clean, with even a supposed cavity that they were going to fill last time. To tell the truth, I don't always have time to brush my teeth three, or sometimes two times a day, I figure gum works, and so far haven't got too many cringing faces when I speak. So let them be, they'll save you money that way, and don't visit as often as they say, gives them all the more reason to dig in there with needles and drills. I made an appointment for six months.

Louisiana (and presidents) pt. 4

After trying to get away from the topic of Louisiana, I found myself reading an article in Newsweek that caught my attention. Unfortunately, I didn't get the issue number or author's name, so I apologize ahead of time for any misquotes or twisting of ideas. However still fresh in my mind I believe I can get the gist of it across. The author was talking about how Obama is untouchable, how he could do no wrong, at least in the eyes of the democrats, of course he is still unlawfully President and the anti-christ in the eyes of conservatives. However, even many conservatives didn't fully appreciate Bush, and many became wary of the idea of where the GOP was headed by the end of his second term, with good reason of course... What I was surprised to find, and had no prior knowledge to, whether it had been because the media didn't touch on it or I haven't been keeping myself updated enough, was that Obama had been endorsed by BP, and with support from his administration had allowed for the drilling in the off-shore drilling in the underwater canyon in the Gulf Coast, possibly endorsed by him, with the prior knowledge of the possibility of such an occurence happening. When the Gulf Coast began to spew a black mess by the thousands of gallons, Obama either failed to mention or failed to visit the scene of the event, and one of the things he mentioned about the spill was 'don't worry, BP is going to pay for the cleanup.' Regardless, Mr. President why endorse such a project when you want to appear green for all your democratic and green followers? And for that matter, Mr. Media and Obama lovers, why have you not ostracized our President like you did the prior? The author brought to attention the question, 'what would have happened if President Bush had done the same?' the world would have came down upon him. But why shall we turn our cheeks when Obama does the same?

God bless these waves of grain, waves of grain.

Wilde Aphorisms

Sometimes people say things better then you, and sometimes its best to get a break from your own words and enjoy others, and all the time Oscar Wilde should be the one to be chosen when in such a predicament:

" A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her."

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."

""Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination."

"Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing."

"Biography lends to death a new terror."

"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative."

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."

"For women it is matter over mind, for men it is mind over morals."

"I am not young enough to know everything."

"I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability."

"Illusion is the first of all pleasure."

"It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is fatal."

"It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information."

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth."

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

The list goes on...

Louisiana pt. 3

Now to talk about Louisiana in a not so melancholy tone.  I went down there about three weeks ago, after promising a few of my friends that I had met in Yellowstone that I would make it down last summer, then again promising them I would make it down for Mardi Gras, which I was unable to do either.  So I told them on a whim that I would be able to make it down for Jazz Fest.  Jazz Fest is the biggest music festival, or most well-known music festival in the U.S..  The music ranged from jazz to folk to blues to classic rock.  The headlining bands were ones like Simon and Garfunkel, Allman Brothers, Levon Helm, and there were also tents set up for those who would rather relax and enjoy listening to blues or gospel while chomping on their fried alligator or catfish head.  I bought the ticket the night before, thinking I was going to let them down again, for a reasonably cheap price, then flew out in the morning.  I landed in New Orleans where my friend picked me up and we drove off to Hattiesburg, Mississippi.  Noone likes all the details...so highlights: pouring out a 40 of Budweiser (king of beers) on Elvis' front yard (couldn't get in to the tour, lack of funding), animal house frat party at Ole' Miss University of Mississippi in Oxford Town(600 32 cases of some water beer, barrels of crawfish and corn and your generic meat heads butting heads then drooling over women, what was found in the pool at the end off the night was human waste (out of all ends) a leather couch, blood, beer, and more; where a boyfriend went diving in to get his girlfriends glasses, twat), sleeping in front of Faulkner's home, going to the crossroads )where Robert Johnson sold his soul for the ability of playing perfect blues guitar), best fried food (food in general), Bourbon street, bumming it in a park in New Orleans, etc. etc..  May expand later, but wild childs in the dirty south.

Louisiana pt.2

 Louisiana has been taking the brunt of catastrophic events with little aid from the government or others.  With media attention only capturing the events and staying with them for a few weeks the idea passes through our minds quickly and without any sense of the amount of damage that has or is to be done.  People in the area and radicals are going to congress and BP's headquarters to protest, telling them that BP should be responsible for the actions that they did, whether it had been not securing the lines, or not being able to control them, or for offshore drilling in the first place when they knew the possibility of catastrophic events such as the one they find themselves in now.  It reminds me of the nuclear explosion in Chernobyl, when in heavy debate and possibility of building more plants the event may be talked about, but generally nuclear power is still looked upon as a good option.  Similar to clean coal, they just find a desert to dump it in, nuclear materials that have the potential of many deaths.  Now people still refer to nuclear power as a great option for energy,  will it take something like an oil spill (nuclear meltdown) to get people's attention that it is a bad idea?  When I was in Louisiana a few weeks ago my friends were showing me a field scattered with brand new trailers, no upkeep, no one living in them, just lines and lines of trailers placed strategically behind trees so if you were not looking for them you wouldn't see them.  However, what I saw was trailers lined for I would say at least a half mile, looking like they went pretty far back as well.  These trailers were sent to people whose homes were destroyed by Katrina, they were giving to the people when the media and the American people had felt the urge to donate enough to give these people temporary homes until they could get back on their feet.  After so much time they took away all the trailers that they had given them and put them in the field, to be put to no use, sitting out there in a field while the families still have no homes or much shelter.  Hurray for bureaucracy.

Louisiana pt.1

With the oil spill leaking anywhere from 200,000 gallons to millions of gallons a day, according to your source, BP probably saying somewhere in the lower region, we wonder how is this going to affect us.  Not necessarily just right now but in the long run, once the whole has been suctioned, plugged, or however they manage to stop the leak.  The current restaurant I work at get their crab from the Gulf of Mexico, with the usual cost being somewhere around 12 dollars every eight ounces, the price has already moved up to 16 dollars in anticipation of the shortage of seafood coming from that region and the soon to be toll it will take on the fish market.  Our restaurant doesn't heavily rely on any seafood from the gulf, most of it brought in from places in new england or the northern pacific, however areas around are going to be hit extremely hard  with the amount of jobs lost (restaurants, fishing, boating, etc.).  The only good I see coming of this is the reluctancy of wanting to be aboard the off-shore drilling point of view.   Our governor Arnold Schwarzenegger probably with many other well-known politicians have changed their views to not pushing for off-shore drilling.  It shows what it takes to change most people's minds, unfortunately a catastrophic event of some sort must take place. 

the king

I have always enjoyed reading like others have enjoyed tv. Not that I think it is a better means to learning or a better way to spend your time, just a different option. It's more that I can watch characters develop with a more openness, certain qualities become more exaggerated in books since your brain is painting the picture not your eyes. A person is able to dive into a person's feelings, and depending on how descriptive the author is get a better picture of the surroundings then if a director tried to show the same qualities. It is the subtleties in words and phrases that can get a person to grab a different meaning and understanding of a situation, where that is still able to be done in good dialogue of movies it is mostly found in text. What I've never been a fan of is contemporary authors, anything past Huxley or Burroughs never appealed to me. It may have been simply because in grade school all they assigned to us was authors like Dumas, Fitzgerald, Twain, Harper Lee and other authors that grabbed attention with their stylistic choice of fitting words, and story lines. Stories that were pushing on their readers an obvious theme or moral, doing this by hitting the right emotions, choosing the right characters, storyline, climax, etc. The qualities that always pulled me in were not only the storyline, but how the author danced around his ideas. Anything direct and obvious, like my blog, I never enjoyed, something that was not left to any interpretations but just a blatant period at the end of a book, not open to interpretation always left me bored, or uninterested. Now I've only read a few modern authors, although by my unfair bias it would seem I have been disgusted by many, but from the few I've read I found boring and focused only on the decent story. The characters always seem beige and underdeveloped. However, recently I picked up a stephen king book or rather series, something that a few years ago would have laughed at, and haven't been able to put it down. In the past six days I have read over five and a half hundred pages. And it isn't just the story that is so well written, it is the almost unnoticeable quips from the characters that define moments, the anticipation of whether or not the author will allow this character to be able to make sacrifices for an ultimate cause, and the language he uses, not pretentious, but not direct.

Only speak sober with a bottle in hand,

watch time taken from us, slip in sand,

the heavy-worn noose tied around our feet,

lead us to whatever ends we may meet.

cure for the mind

People don't have any reason to be held down or feel trapped in their brains. We are constantly on the move which keeps us busy and our minds moving. It's when we slow down that we become tangled up in emotions or thoughts that can pull us down. When we slow down is when we start to think back on what we've been doing throughout our lives, does it really have purpose or are we just going through the motions, and if we are just going through the motions is there any better way to go about it?

The cure to any critical thinking or worry is to stay busy. How can someone be caught up in bad thoughts if they are busy, they have no time to let their thoughts bring them down because they are doing some sort of activity. Now that bad thought or regret may still be in the back of their head but it doesn't affect them the way it would if they were not busy. Since they are busy a good majority of their brain, or at least part of it has to be being used to perform whatever thing they are doing. So the thought that usually would have been holding a person down if they had been sitting at home on the couch thinking, is now either a small problem or one to be worried about later.

Unfortunately you can't always push those thoughts away by being constantly busy. The thoughts or latter consequences will usually come back to remind you of your poor decision making.

So the question becomes do we stay busy to push away our regrets, or do we deal with our bad thoughts right away and try to come to some conclusion that will make the decision no longer a regret? There are always other alternatives, not doing things you would regret, or drowning those thoughts out with liquor.

all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

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The only type of woman I could see myself in the long run with is a woman of natural beauty. Someone who isn't defined by their make-up and gets caked up every morning. I often times think whether or not make-up is the reason that women generally look older then men when they get older, if it is the constant waking up to put chemicals on their face that eventually distorts them. I also believe this to be true since, native american women never seemed to age as quickly and as pathetically as a Western woman. But don't worry because the Western woman has found a way around this, gaining large sums of money and paying surgeons to fix any unwanted qualities. I think a woman of nautral beauty generally also has to be in love with nature, and everything natural for that matter. She must be loving, and never anxious or angry, she shows emotions through loving mannerisms, not loud or boastful. If you find any woman of natural beauty, you can be sure to find these qualities in her. It makes perfect sense too, since anyone who is often anxious or angry, hateful, bitter, loud, boastful, materialistic, usually has a natural opaqueness to them and instead of drawing a person in with beauty has to draw a person in with lustful qualities, which at often times works, mostly since natural beauty is a rarity in itself these days. All of those terrible qualities takes a toll not only on a person's soul and character, but also on their physical qualities. So while I am still young and able I will take whatever comes, and we'll see if I make it to become older.

anxiety of influence

The trouble with influence is that it is in itself immoral. Any influence given away, is a giving away of one's soul. The person who is being influenced is not thinking his own natural thoughts and everything that he thinks or becomes is now borrowed from someone else. To realize one's nature perfectly is what each of us is here for. Authors are influenced by other authors, poets by poets, song writers or music writers by the same. The influence that I am referring to is not the influence of natural things around them, inspirations felt through their surroundings, that is self-development through experience. What I am referring to is when one comes up with an idea of their own, or a certain style and others change their natural tendancies of what they like or dispositions to fall into the same category or, They abandon their own thoughts because they enjoy someone else's style, or sometimes rather just the position they hold in social situations. Generally it has to do with the person's style though. On second thought, or probably third thought, I think it is writer's that are influenced in that way, by the style that other writers write, the topics they choose, the certain philosophies they hold to, the aphorisms, paradoxes, stylistic poetry, and whatever other aesthetic qualities that make up styles, and are usually influenced by past writers. While in music, it seems that whatever qualities a band latches onto, is usually found in contemporary bands that they like. And as opposed to the style that influences them so much, I see it as a mix of influences, of the style that they enjoy but also the people that they enjoy hanging out with. Unfortunately influence will usually carry a band to sound like the band they are influenced by but worse, and then more generic bands begin to pop up in that category, and what once was original and showed ones soul now is generic and boring. It is impossible not to be influenced by other writers, bands, etc. etc., and thats why I wrote this.

This post was influenced by various amounts of people and their ideas.

right amount of time?

I hear people talking about where they stand at in their lives, regarding their career paths, which major their pursuing, jobs they have or don't have, how much longer they have to finish up at school, and in each circumstance I always have this idea of the standard, or correct place to be in life. Culture has seemed to do that to us, imprint some sort of correct timing on where we have to be in life at what age. A good handful of my friends don't have jobs or go to school, seem to be drifting through life, similar to the life of Cassady (except at times Cassady even resorted to jobs), enjoying the quick moments and experiences in life, the "life of a rock star". I'll find myself envious of their lifestyle at times, wishing to drop everything in times of build up of responsibilities and things to do despite the progression of what I've worked for. But then when I hang out with them for extended periods of time, I often find myself growing tired and bored of sitting around talking about petty things they've accomplished, tours they're going on, places they've been, the failings of others, nothing of any substance, and the lack of care for anything that I find interesting. And here I sit in the cafeteria of a community college as a girl across from me talks to her friend about her position as a manager working 40 hours a week, dealing with other district managers and , and the problem she has with only taking a few higher classes a semester; things such as physiology and other 200/300 classes that she needs to take to be closer to finishing up her major in some complicated branch of science. Then I have other friends who are finishing up school with jobs and a social life, what seems to be a good balance and place to be in one's early twenties. However, a handful of those have no idea where they are to head after they finish school, since they don't want to be working at their little bit higher then minimum wage job, but are wary of the idea of jumping into a career. There seems to be a quarter life crisis where a person has to figure out where they are, where they want to go, and by what time. And as our society dwindles away jobs and our money, should we be on the ball with little time for social events/life, or should we be living our twenties as much as we can, with a fair amount of balance of school and work in there as well? Since we are young and able now, should we be enjoying life as much as possible? Or just work hard and get enough money to retire as elderly and fragile in hawaii? Getting old isn't worth the work. I'll stick to my balance of professional student, worker, and traveler.

Moloch

HOWL

by Allen Ginsberg

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by  madness, starving hysterical naked,  dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn  looking for an angry fix,  angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly  connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,  who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat  up smoking in the supernatural darkness of  cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities  contemplating jazz,  who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and  saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,  who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes  hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy  among the scholars of war,  who were expelled from the academies for crazy &  publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull, who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear,  burning their money in wastebaskets and listening  to the Terror through the wall,  who got busted in their pubic beards returning through  Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,  who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in  Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their  torsos night after night  with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,  incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and  lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,  Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery  dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops,  storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon  blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree  vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,  who chained themselves to subways for the endless  ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine  until the noise of wheels and children brought  them down shuddering mouth-wracked and  battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance  in the drear light of Zoo, who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's  floated out and sat through the stale beer after noon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack  of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,  who talked continuously seventy hours from park to  pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,  lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping  down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills  off Empire State out of the moon,  yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts  and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks  and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,  whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days  and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the  Synagogue cast on the pavement,  who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a  trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall,  suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind-ings and  migraines of China under junk-with-drawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,  who wandered around and around at midnight in the  railroad yard wondering where to go, and went,  leaving no broken hearts,  who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing  through snow toward lonesome farms in grand-father night,  who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy  and bop kabbalah because the cosmos instinctively  vibrated at their feet in Kansas,  who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary  indian angels who were visionary indian angels,  who thought they were only mad when Baltimore  gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,  who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight street light smalltown rain,  who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston  seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the  brilliant Spaniard to converse about America  and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa,  who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving  behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees  and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago,  who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the  F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist  eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets,  who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting  the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism,  who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union  Square weeping and undressing while the sirens  of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed  down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed,  who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked  and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons,  who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight  in policecars for committing no crime but their  own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,  who howled on their knees in the subway and were  dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts,  who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly  motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,  who blew and were blown by those human seraphim,  the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love,  who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose gardens and the grass of public parks and  cemeteries scattering their semen freely to  whomever come who may,  who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up  with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath  when the blond & naked angel came to pierce  them with a sword,  who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate  the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar  the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb  and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but  sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden  threads of the craftsman's loom,  who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of  beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along  the floor and down the hall and ended fainting  on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and  come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,  who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling  in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning  but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sun rise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake,  who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad  stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these  poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver-joy  to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls  in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses'   rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with  gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station  solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,  who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in  dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and  picked themselves up out of basements hung over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third  Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices,  who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on  the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the  East River to open to a room full of steamheat and opium,  who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment  cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime  blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall  be crowned with laurel in oblivion,  who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested  the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery,  who wept at the romance of the streets with their  pushcarts full of onions and bad music,  who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the  bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts,  who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned  with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded  by orange crates of theology,  who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty  incantations which in the yellow morning were  stanzas of gibberish,  who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht  & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom,  who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg,  who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot  for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks  fell on their heads every day for the next decade,  who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique  stores where they thought they were growing  old and cried, who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits  on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse  & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments  of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the  fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the  drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,  who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten  into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,  who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of  the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes,  cried all over the street,  danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed  phonograph records of nostalgic European  1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and  threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans  in their ears and the blast of colossal steam whistles,  who barreled down the highways of the past journeying  to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude  watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,  who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out  if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had  a vision to find out Eternity,  who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who  came back to Denver & waited in vain, who  watched over Denver & brooded & loned in  Denver and finally went away to find out the  Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes, who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying  for each other's salvation and light and breasts,  until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,  who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for  impossible criminals with golden heads and the  charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet  blues to Alcatraz,  who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky  Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys  or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or  Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the  daisychain or grave,  who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hyp notism & were left with their insanity & their  hands & a hung jury,  who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism  and subsequently presented themselves on the  granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads  and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy,  and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin  Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational  therapy pingpong & amnesia,  who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic  pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia, returning years later truly bald except for a wig of  blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible mad man doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East,  Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid  halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul,  rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench  dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare,  bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon,  with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book  flung out of the tenement window, and the last  door closed at 4. A.M. and the last telephone  slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room  emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture,  a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet,  and even that imaginary,  nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and  now you're really in the total animal soup of time and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed  with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use  of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrating plane, who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space  through images juxtaposed, and trapped the  archangel of the soul between 2 visual images  and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun  and dash of consciousness together jumping  with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus  to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human  prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent  and shaking with shame,  rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm  of thought in his naked and endless head,  the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown,  yet putting down here what might be left to say  in time come after death,  and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in  the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the  suffering of America's naked mind for love into  an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone  cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio  with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered  out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years. What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open  their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?  Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unob tainable dollars! Children screaming under the  stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men  weeping in the parks!  Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the  loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy  judger of men!  Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the  crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of  sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment!  Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!  Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose  blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers  are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo!  Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!  Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows!  Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long  streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories  dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose  smokestacks and antennae crown the cities! Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch  whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch  whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch  whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen!  Moloch whose name is the Mind!  Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream  Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in  Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!  Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom  I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch  who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy!  Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch!  Light streaming out of the sky!  Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs!  skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic  industries! spectral nations! invincible mad  houses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!  They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pave- ments, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to  Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!  Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies!  gone down the American river!  Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole  boatload of sensitive bullshit! Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions!  gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs!  Ten years' animal screams and suicides!  Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on  the rocks of Time! Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the  wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell!  They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving!  carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street! Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland  where you're madder than I am  I'm with you in Rockland  where you must feel very strange  I'm with you in Rockland  where you imitate the shade of my mother  I'm with you in Rockland  where you've murdered your twelve secretaries  I'm with you in Rockland  where you laugh at this invisible humor  I'm with you in Rockland  where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter  I'm with you in Rockland  where your condition has become serious and  is reported on the radio  I'm with you in Rockland  where the faculties of the skull no longer admit  the worms of the senses  I'm with you in Rockland  where you drink the tea of the breasts of the  spinsters of Utica  I'm with you in Rockland  where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the  harpies of the Bronx  I'm with you in Rockland  where you scream in a straightjacket that you're  losing the game of the actual pingpong of the abyss  I'm with you in Rockland  where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul  is innocent and immortal it should never die  ungodly in an armed madhouse  I'm with you in Rockland  where fifty more shocks will never return your  soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a  cross in the void  I'm with you in Rockland  where you accuse your doctors of insanity and  plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the  fascist national Golgotha  I'm with you in Rockland  where you will split the heavens of Long Island  and resurrect your living human Jesus from the  superhuman tomb  I'm with you in Rockland  where there are twenty-five-thousand mad com- rades all together singing the final stanzas of  the Internationale  I'm with you in Rockland  where we hug and kiss the United States under  our bedsheets the United States that coughs all  night and won't let us sleep  I'm with you in Rockland  where we wake up electrified out of the coma  by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the  roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the  hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse  O skinny legions run outside O starry spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is  here O victory forget your underwear we're free  I'm with you in Rockland  in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea- journey on the highway across America in tears  to the door of my cottage in the Western night.

QUATRO

Four in the morning good time to start up the bloggin frenz again. "Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end." Since our next essay is going to be about art why not start here. Quote taken from Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man I want to reinforce it by bullshit ideas. Art is for humans and humans alone, Aristotle said that it is which distinguishes us from the animals. I say thats not only true but that art is worthless and an expression for the rich to enjoy and decide which should be hung up and which is trash. Conspiracy's and theories, two things i hate but which i always find myself resorting to at early hours of the morning. It is worthless in the sense that it is nothing but enjoyment, no pragmatic logical basis for it, just an expression of one person's DISPOSITION on what they think is BEAUTY, which in its own is relative. Or I think it is...sometimes. The Mona lisa, is there that much beauty in it as there is to an egon schielle, but taste is relative as well. I suppose to Dan Brown Mona Lisa is more interesting, but I enjoy chaos, bad art (good art, relative to perception??), poor voices (adam stephens, bobby dylan, neil young, conor oberst, etc. etc.), and things that take hours to read into, so I guess I get things cheaper which becomes an advantage. Poetry is appealing because the amount of depth and description in a such a short amount of words, more aesthetics to it then that, but thats what draws me in, point across in often a better and indirect way, have to think things through where stories and prose usually get their point across in a direct way which losses some of the meaning. maybe?? done with that. here's many unfinished verses...things that i'll eventually finish.

Been livin life at a runnin pace

That might be a whole song.

SIX DAYS SHORT

He cares no more of the drink

swallows down each night

a drunk man

no thrill in the ride

just another means to pass the time

find him at home with lips around his baby

tellin her she drives him crazy

and he'd take the bottle over her

if only he could pay for the next six nights

he stumbles like the darkness

a summer night

gotta get it printed

or it'll be rewritten

six thousand times all with new meanings

just ramblin' now, no rhythm, no depths to words for me right now, gotta fill them bloggin quotas

A different man in the morning

then throughout the rest of the day

someone you wont recognize, keep away

let me come out on my own accord

In the courtroom, so fancily dressed

in front of the panels and jury, some sort of mess

called forward for my morning crimes

cant bribe dirty judge

pockets full of pennies and dimes

Judge oh how can i recall

a crime you wont tell me i've done,

for an answer he just swings and points

his gavel sound of a drum

locked up got few days to pay the price

in a cell with fellow field mice

life lasts a blink of an eye

lost cause in expanse of blood red sky

never get to find out the crime i've done.

oi oi oi

'

Sally won't you come back to me

been gone for sixteen centuries

now patton takes me by the hand

says he's gonna turn me into a new

man.

Fought in six wars and now i'm bored

think i'll go home and check the score

you'll always be there in the back of my head.

fini.

Has the idea of the group, the class, the population as a whole caught people's attention? Has it subdued the ideals of individualism? Are we coming to some sort of group consciousness? Has globalization been the key to this success, if it is success? The clint eastwoods and john waynes have lost their touch. Disneyland's small world shows all the different cultures and their matching outfits that resemble their lifestyles or ideals...The chinese with an emperors hat and cape, the dutch with their pigtails, the germans with their lederhosen, and the Americans with in their western outfits. The cowboy wild west period lasted about a whole of twenty odd years possibly thirty out of the two hundred thirty four years that this country has been established, we are obsessed with the do it yourself, face hardships, and be an individual through and through. But are we anymore? Ah, nevermind, I don't really care to talk about this subject anymore. Too tired, and don't really care about it. Instead here's some writings that are extremely rough and will most likely be heavily edited...take heed...

YOUTH

Read me the lines,
from pages of old,
lost stories untold,
of past generations,
lives being sold.

They left me with little,
and thats just fine,
they'll have to take a lot more to change my mind.

And it takes a lot of heart, to know.

so now comes the time,
to fall into line,
become who we were cut out to be.

we live the life we are called for

we've got nothing to gain,

and worse. nothing to lose.

Lovers lost,
at high cost,
of what the the soothsayer sees.




again, nevermind...too costly to continue.

MEXICAN MISTRESS

Showered off the last bit of Mexico

Picked up dirty habits,
mama you'd be sad to know,

smoking, drinking, lovin, life i've come to know,
now my baby's callin my name back home.

Shoot six men, watch em' die
noone round here ever blinks an eye
gotta board that train, thats gonna carry me on home.

Homeward bound, Jalisco bound,
makes(theres) no difference to me now

life, liberty, equality,
things round here run a bit differently,
mother mary wont you come back to this state of affairs?

Kids playing soccer out in the streets
ma's in the kitchen, know she'll be there for weeks,
and i'm out searching for what i came down here for.

Homeward bound, Jalisco bound,
makes (theres) no difference to me now.

no difference to me now.

blame the devil for the things you do

Doubting is a senseless game, one that brings one round and round in circles never with an answer to anything. Can tear a person apart, being that with no conclusions the average person is bound to keep toiling in the question, which just leads to another one that contradicts it, and another paradox, etc. etc. What is worse is to live a double life, with two principles, actually, I think those two things play hand in hand, doubting and a double life. Life of two morals, being sure of yourself and unsure at the same time must be a stressful and tedious lifestyle. Pleasing everyone is another characteristic that must be tough, which again, plays a role in each of the former ideas. Actually the man who knows that he knows nothing, knows most of all. That's a lie as well. Man will think what he will, and in the end should enjoy life with the most joy as possible. Unless he breaks some moral code, then he should do what is best for the majority of the people. Unless what is best for the majority of people means that the question of the man's life is in question, then maybe, just maybe, its better for that man to stay alive, for his sake.

To live in a world with nobody to impress, people would be even less ambitious then we are. However, a man with no ambitions is a happier man then the one that has too high of ambitions, wouldn't everyone agree?

Open portals,

love never enters.

Neither does the devil.

I thought you knew this.

ay yai yai

Me-heee-cooo. Spent four days in guadalajara, jalisco, mexico, center of the universe. Got sick, but that was bound to happen, drinking wine like water, dirty water like soda, soda like air, squeezing tequila from the agave plant for one more taste of authenticity. Authenticity. Authentic. From the plane ride from LAX to leaving Guadalajara that would be the right word to describe such a trip. On the plane a woman next to me performed six hail marys full of grace before the wheels left the asphalt, turbulence/discomfort from lack of space (a given due to the cheap seat of an AUTHENTIC airline: aeromexico), and cheering as we landed on a dirt air strip. Surreal bus rides that should have been amusement rides not means of transportation, but all the better I say. Finishing the trip off with a bowl full of cow face soup, a delicacy in such a place. Well fed, staying with a loving family with a heart of hospitality and generosity that you generally don't encounter in southern california. Long nights led to long mornings, third day in after roaming the streets we headed over to Mariachi street, where every hour is an hour of festivities, as long as you have the money and time. Convinced one of the band of brothers to come back with us to where we were staying and as they quietly set up at five thirty in the morning on the front porch of the grandparents home that we were staying, we opened the doors for all to hear. The band began their renditions around six, and played till seven thirty, with nonstop sounds and dancing coming from the tired streets of the neighborhood. They came out in their pajamas, the whole lot of them, all to dance with tired eyes but a smile on each persons face. Requesting songs and singing along, the way life should be led care free and enjoyed. Walked in the streets for days, the locals telling stories of revolutions and religious relics that they held close to heart, giving what little they had to those more in need, a country of selflessness, or so it appeared from quick glimpses. Beautiful through and through.

sensuality versus sexuality

Two in the morning is a good time to begin a blogging frenzy. Whether it be lack of care or fogginess of mind, words come out, often times maybe that shouldn't, but regardless early mornings/late nights are an apt time for rambling. Is man solely enticed by sensuality more than sexuality, or are women the same, or is it the romantics that appeal to women, or the chase, the security maybe? Whatever the case, I believe sensuality drives a man more than sexuality does. There must be those who disagree, but then I would ask how do lingerie shops stay open and profitable? Thin pieces of cloth that more often then not reveal the person's nakedness anyways. What is it about natural nakedness that does not entice a man as does a thin piece of fabric? Is it the enigmatic qualities or the act of taking off the small amount of clothing that is appealing? And for women, do they get turned on by men in small underwear or g-strings? What makes a woman so in love with a man if he takes her out to a fancy restaurant? Is it the money factor, finding love in the security of a future or a short-lived spending spree? Or could it possibly be the gesture, a gesture showing that a man is willing to spend his hard earned money on a woman that he wants to spend it on in an act that he knows she will appreciate? Gave up trying to read into things of that matter long ago or any ideas at all really. Is it in man's nature to be drawn in by indiscreet physical attraction? Or is it that we were born with a chivalrous nature and have become enamored by the immoral, indiscreet and love for things relating to sodomy by the social surroundings we are placed in? I'll tell you one thing I know, it is much easier to ask questions then to answer them.

"Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent. " -Nietzsche

All apologies for grammatical errors, lack of editing, poor wording, reckless rambling, etc., etc.

If I lived on a ranch it'd be full of peacocks and wolves. Two separate areas for each obviously, since I would like them to be both alive throughout the course of my stay. Both would roam free for acres but a large wall would block them from ever coming into contact with the other. Similar to the Berlin wall, the animals would attempt to cross over (the wolves by digging trenches, the peacocks by attempting to fly). However, MAN, the animal left in charge to subdue such acts, would be sitting in watch towers making examples of those who attempted to meet the other species across the iron clad wall. In the end the people in the tower would have to come down and which ever side they choose they are met with similar fates. The wolves devouring, peacocks pecking.

catch up

needs to be edited...more imagery and the bit, however, in times of much needed blogging this will have to suffice.

UPHEAVELS 20ce

London's on the podium,

screaming at the crowd,

"Let's bring down this city,

ya we'll burn her to the ground"

I turn to Mary,

wearing a frown,

I love this man, love the cause, love this goddamned town.

Triumph democrat revolt

soulful is key

Feed every father, mother, child,

leave no man till he's free.

Sun's on the horizon,

blood spread through the streets,

poor man's revolution,

mother sits home and weeps.

Upton writes a jungle,

Chicago lost its core.

City's new reputation,

bondage to machine,

makes a strong man wonder,

who he used to be.

needs work, or to be erased from pages, but I think I need to leave things as they are sometimes since I am never satisfied with anything, and will often resort to over analyzation, its become an art. Its about the socialist reformation of the early nineteen hundreds and the slave to labor situation that was occurring during the time period, bit melodramatic, sounds better with music, etc., etc..

People are drawn in by the unknown and uncharted territories, so people have a deep interest or awe with space whenever somebody brings it up. Space is vast, difficult to reach, and greatly unexplored. However, when brought up with the subject of the ocean, or depths of seas, people are less interested and impressed. According to the show Blue Planet on Discovery Channel we have only explored two to three percent of the entire ocean. Also the great amount of never seen before ocean life that has yet to be found or discovered. I'd say its not better then space, but more reasonable to explore first then space. UFOs and aliens don't compare to things like giant squid taking down submarines and ships, fish with lights on their heads, or grander canyons then the ones we have on land. The Mariana Trench with a depth of thirty-six thousand two hundred feet is one thousand five hundred eighty miles long, while our grand canyon is two hundred seventy seven miles long. Around four hundred and fifty people have gone to space while there have only been 3 attempts to make it to the Mariana trench. Saturn is composed of mostly gas, and the rings of ice and debris. Who cares to go to a big ball of gas and debris even if it has rings, underwater with unknown creatures who are able to sustain life under unbearable pressure sounds like a much more exhilarating place to be. Hopefully soon we'll be able to build some sort of suit that allows us walk at the bottom of the ocean without our ears blowing up or getting the bends. If all the money spent towards wars, politicians, entertainment news on Jonas brothers, and on space was put to exploring the depths of our enigmatic ocean we would be far better off. Can anybody honestly look at the images below and tell me that they would rather be updated on what the image on the right is doing and her lifestyle and friends then to know how something of any nature can live in great depths and what the fish on the left is made up of to be able to illuminate like that, what it eats, and what other creatures and underwater features there are below that have yet to be discovered.

can't compete, what is wrong with people's brains?

macho movies

There should be more macho movies. Movies with little plot, lots of guns, explosions, and indecencies. Movies with guys like Jack Bauer, Rambo, Segal, Norris, Bronson, Arnold, Jossie Wales, and of course John McClaine. Where would we be without guys like Jack Bauer, from the tv series 24, defusing three nuclear bombs, saving millions of lives and making impossible life or death descisions all within 24 hours with no sleep, time to eat, or bathroom breaks. Rambo sneaking into enemy territory with nothing but a few guns, explosives, and his fists taking on a whole army to save the day. Men of few words but many actions. People need those kind of movies, movies so extreme that you go home and do as many pushups as you can while asking yourself, "what would Norris do?" Walking around school or work the next day with a new sense of justice and values, ready to take on the world with nothing but your two fists. Too many people are enjoying movies like Sherlock Holmes, Avatar, or The Lovely Bones, which I'm sure are all descent movies something that you walk away feeling good from, but you don't walk away feeling like you could go kill six terrorists with a ball point pen if the time came where you needed to. Plus any other sort of movie softens people, and in the cut throat world we live in today there is no room for being soft or understanding; instead we have to be on our toes ready to pounce at the opportune moment. In fact I think thats why America has lost a sense of values in the last few decades, if it wasn't for movies that showed what it takes to be a real man we would be more lost as a nation and even more in debt, not taking responsibilities for ourselves along the way. I saw The Book of Eli a few weeks ago, overall a pretty good movie, not as extreme as I would have directed but enough macho fighting scenes and explosions to make it a good film. The movie touched on a few different areas with a pretty good balance of self-justice and values, reminded me of a modern day Mad Max. Even more recently I saw the movie Edge of Darkness with Mel Gibson, although not the extreme tough macho man movie that Chuck Norris or Clint Eastwood would have starred in, it was good in the sense that it had plenty of kidney punches, car crashes and shotguns to the head. The story as with most of these tough guy movie story lines, is the story of taking justice into their own hands because the judicial system is a long and tedious way of doing things, and often times don't give a strong enough verdict. Basically what I'm trying to get across is that we're becoming too weak as a nation, too soft. Look all around us we have boys wearing tight pants and earings, others thinking they're tough looking like gangsters, but what we need are real tough guys, not ones who dress like it and ask for fights, but ones that if they were in a knife fight and down five guys to one would be able to beat them all just using their fists. The cure for this soft society is macho movies. They inspire children and adults alike, give us strong values, and an unrealistic view of how things should be handled which can be useful in the sense that it gives us courage in difficult situations, saying something along the lines of, "well if John McClaine can strike down a helicopter with a car then surely I can get my homework done tonight."

slowing down

My life for the past month or so has been filled with nonstop trips, holidays, and work. There has been a constant push to try and fit in as many things as possible. Now back in school I have to somehow slow down and pace myself so that I don't go insane with school work on top of everything else. However, its tough to get back in school with all this fresh snow. Two weeks ago I went to Mammoth with my dad for three days, a solo trip we try and fit in once a year. We did some pretty hard skiing all over the mountain and got back in time for work the next day. The next weekend I took off again for the Grand Canyon, this time with two of my cousins and four friends of mine. We left early around five a.m. and packed in as much as we could into three days. We stayed in Williams the first night, walking around the town bars and restaurants on route 66. Williams is a small town in Arizona which you hit right before you head up to the Grand Canyon. It's an old town that reminded me of Jackson Hole in Wyoming, quaint and western. The bartender at one of the bars was pretty glad that we came in and talked to her since the town was pretty empty on the Thursday night. She made up an itinerary for us of all her favorite places to visit where the majority of people visiting the canyon wouldn't know about unless you lived in that part of Arizona. The next day we headed to the Grand Canyon and drove all along the south rim debating on whether we should hike down the canyon or not since there was a sign right before you descended recommending using crampons because of all the snow along the trail. We watched as the majority of people who were coming up were using crampons and looked pretty worn out and decided that we would hike the next day if we really wanted to since it was getting colder as the sun was going down and the snow was icing over. The group then split up, two of my friends stayed at the Grand Canyon while the rest of us headed out to Flagstaff following the bartender's advice to stop once along the way at a small secluded chapel right at the base of the mountains in an area where Native Americans still practiced religious ceremonies. After we went to Flagstaff to get some food we headed back to the canyon where they dropped me off with the other two who had camp set up and a fire going. The others took off to go find a hotel they could stay in instead of camping in sixteen degree temperatures. The next morning the three of us hiked down the canyon to a few different look out spots where you could see the Colorado River and more of the canyon then from the top. After we met up with the others in Las Vegas where we spent the night gambling, drinking, and causing havoc on the strip. We made it back on Monday where things still didn't slow down. Tuesday I had to work all day and Wednesday is when school started. A few friends and I went to Wrightwood to go skiing on Thursday, I worked on Friday and Saturday, then on Saturday night headed up to Big Bear to go skiing again. We skiied at the resort for around four hours where the conditions were perfect, sunny blue skies, warm weather and tons of snow. After the resort we went to go build a jump out in the backcountry. We hiked with shovels and after a half hour or so we had built a good size jump which landed right in powder about thirty feet away. With all the powder everyone was willing to try out tricks they wouldn't normally try since the chances of getting hurt were pretty low, we spent the rest of the day there and finally left at sunset.