Homesick

Grinding on tamales slathered in homemade, salsa and accompanied by Nana's homemade beans and fried rice, at her house, would be hitting the spot right about now. Her beautiful and delicately gnarled, ninety-year-old hands producing culinary delights that everyone must enjoy at least once in their life. The food of the peasants is the food of the Gods! Being called Mijo and feeling special. The grand-parents' love for my kids. Going to the Food City to get more Cerveza, limon y queso. Looking cooly at an Ese standing next to me in line, who smells of beer and weed, a tattooed tear under each eye, nodding and grinning at one another, knowing that this is the greatest day of our lives as it reverberates through eternity and awesome permanence. 

I miss enjoying the vibe as Ranchero music and Narco Corridos blare out from the dope dealing, neighbor midget's jacked up, souped up Chevy across the street. He is really short and his truck is really tall; go figure. His midget baby tooling around in the yard and riding his little bicycle dangerously into the road. Random, stray pit bulls and mutts strut down the street oozing machismo and closely held sorrow as we eat tangerines from Tata's trees and buzz glassy-eyed @ 68 degrees, staring at the sun faded world through Bud Light goggles (horrible tasting, but drank out of respect for someone sharing their meager resources with you and loving every moment of it) and breathing the dusty, musty, smoggy brown cloud air heartily like we are on a pristine forest glade. Crazy Dave saunters over and spills his tweak rhetoric about cops and militias, we give him a beer. He saunters away muttering to himself, but you know there is love in there somewhere. 

Every so often a ghetto bird buzzes overhead, chopping the air, adding it's own rhythm to the song vibrating in the fabric of time. The calm, quiet of the West Side Phoenix Barrio during the holidays always reminds me of Ice Cube's 'Good Day' song.

Ice Cube - "Good Day"

"A Message To Thin Air" or "A Dying Man's Non Sequitur"

Dear William F. Wet Blanket, jr.


Stating that the Minutemen are nationalist, carry firearms, and indeed are from Tombstone is not extreme. It is a fact. In fact, you can go to some of the diners there in Tombstone and buy the group's bumper stickers and hats when you are dining on fat burgers and munching down freedom fries. You only choose to see the political stuff that I post on Ray-Man's FB page. You are writing from ignorance and a myopic viewpoint when you go on to posit that everything I post is political, left-wing, and nonsensical. You do not see what I post on my own profile. Inductive reasoning is usually flawed reasoning just like conventional wisdom is usually not very good wisdom. Do you find my writing nonsensical because it can be perceived as left-wing, or because you disagree with it?

I write on and about a myriad of topics and comment whimsically on some of the other posts from time-to-time on some of the interesting things that Dr. Know is always seeming to get into. I would say you should read them yourself and find that I am multi-dimensional, but your lazy, anti-intellectual thinking and lack of a sense of humor are quite striking to me (and all too common). Did you even once actually imagine Ryan buying a rifle and trying to join the Minutemen? Did you get the reference to the band of the same name? I giggled to myself at the imagery of the scene playing in my head as I was writing in the gray confines of my cubicle.

Your bullshit two-sided viewpoint is problematic in that the world does not work in this manner. This or that? Black or white? Good or evil?

You wrote, "I have friends who do things on the other side?"

What other side are referring to? National-Socialism? I am neither a Communist, nor partisan. Mostly I would define myself as somewhat of a cynical, secular humanist. Is this too extreme for your tastes?

The moral of the story? I am quite calm, mostly peaceful, and as I wrote once before: keep my name out of your mouth and your eyes on the road to oblivion; since you do not seem to suffer fools gladly.

Just be passive and entertained. It's much easier on the mind.

Sincerely,
MM23

Watch me some Minutemen. Click Here.

All We Are Saying, Is Give Sleaze A Chance...

These things take some time to get over. I am already elevated quite enough, so that words I string together, and words others string together, have little effect on my constitution and my judgments of the people stringing them together. Please value the absurdity of language when words are connected like train cars in certain configurations that make the train tracks in my brain tickle. Of-the-cuff comments and gutter ball ideas come from me in various ways throughout a given day. Some get filtered and some don't, then get shared. Take the good with the bad and entertain a broad general view of things and my words will seem less atrocious and caustic when juxtaposed with the absurdity, violence, and (somehow) horrible banality of this modern life. Isn't it great that we live in a country (so far) where freedom of speech is usually a guaranteed right and? Isn't it even greater that as humans we have the right to be offended and to voice our displeasure with the words and actions of others by using words and actions of our owns? This can be quite a responsibility to endure; maintaining a modicum of tactful restraint to prevent the outbreak of violence over use of our language. Is it possible to be offended that someone is actually offended? What is that even called?

Seven Words

Purificación

The wrinkle-faced lady with the golden teeth shivered

Shimmered Ukrainian

Against the backdrop of somber faces

Almond eyelids drooping from the strain

Of these days consumed by such dire stakes

Heart gambling on the least sure thing

In the gaming hall where unknown sadness looms

Weaving tales of impossible bliss,

Tongue-tied & tortured

By the thrilling threat of smitten kisses for me

Please do say hello if you meet the missus

History classes,

Foggy glasses,

Robot love on Seoul city trails

Through this thick fog of people I can’t see the sequel

Lured into a hollow calm,

The fortune lady’s lies sound like gibberish

Just spears my ears

My Western womb suffers; cracked and broken

Tearing into tears of lovely dead gutter poets

Piling on the imagery of my unified perversity

Seizing on the tragedy of my Foolish, Foible Folly

The ballads bleed onto the paper dripping quills

Perks, I pine for pills and comfort rubbing legs

Together under the cover of classic quilts

The chickens chirp and the crickets burp

Out rotten songs beyond the conscience of my beers

Shifts the gears,

Lying eyes brought down to the valley low

Where I’ll go,

Then I’ll glow,

Worming my way to my soul through the maze of night

Blackened bleach,

Snatch the sneetch,

And shake my fist at the sun that stuns

Clutching guns, feeling hot & empty like the desert

The desperado stands tall and scans

The distant sands for the love that will not wilt

Thou do what commonly causes current angst

Teen-angers uproar trip switch, please modify

My machine lingo malfunction

A dingo ate my maybes?

Maybe she starves me of my laughter.

Maybe she robs me of my second-sight.

Maybe if I fail to mind my magik,

Maybe my mind will never make it right.

Out of these old-fashioned playbooks,

Random romance rags

Zines en scenes everyone seems to know, but me

With corner-pocket eyes,

To ground, nose down

With fiend-like hunger,

I walk a line scene unseen...

Disappearing links to the past,

Bridges burnt,

Cinder box char

Doctor notes,

Dog drips,

Flea dips,

Steady slip

Into something less comfortable; strait-jacket malaise

On my side face plant pillow furrows plow

Feeding cash crops from leaky lids

How this love thing fucking hurts!

Harming harmony,

Humbly hammering shield,

Forging Flaws,

Diamonds damage manual theory

Daft draft designs deemed too ambitious

For feeble-faced,

Man-child minds to muster

Mastery over the forces of Choas

Dancing beneath furrowed brow

Potent Potables

Here's to my broken heart. 

 

Pieces of my soul litter the floor and crunch satisfactorily 'neath the soles of my free-trade, Chinese shoes. 

 

I could probably spend the next 15 years with a tube of crazy glue and tweezers, but you know I don't have much patience with arts & crafts. 

 

My porky fingers have great difficulty grasping what my stubby little mind cannot seem to. 

 

A half-man/half-monster weathers this war of the words with a fizzy bubble and hugs the edge of the cosmos with his tortured ideas of romance. 

 

Yawning, I lean my head into the goose down pillow and stretch my arm, out and then in, with fingers extended into the slippery, warm, musky, moistness of my child-brain. 

 

Massage. Rinse. Repeat.

"Moodswing's Empty Threat To No One In Particular" or "Driving In The Slow Lane On Empty"

WHERE IS MY COMPUTER?

It has been almost 6 hours. Even with lunch it should only take 2-3 hours, maximum, to to remedy the issue I took it to IMO for. I could have fixed it myself if they'd only give me the keys to the kingdom. Living life @ work without a computer makes me feel like I am slowly roasting on a bamboo spit...in hell. Most of the time it only seems like a bland, gray purgatory. Usually, I type the musings, rants, and asides with reckless abandon, but today I am haphazardly scrawling out these words of protest to nobody in particular in my warbly, horribly twisted script.

I keep whispering to the cosmos to just send me a Seoul/soul friend, already.

I scream to the clouds for the pure rains to fall and cleanse my consciousness.

I beg the universal mind for something good and true for me to hold onto.

Mostly, I get karmic crumbs and half-ass conversation that does not go anywhere meaningful; or really fun.

I am shutting off the tap soon and turning deeply inward. I cannot seem to find my willing muse and have only had random glimpses of my schpadoinkle; if however fleeting.

Maybe something, some spark will come along and turn this busted robot back on, but for now I am just going to go into hibernate mode...

My binary is a little rusty, but I think that this means peace: 10100100010111.

(Damn, yesterday was a lowly day.)

Blowing Wind

My favorite track covered in blood. Soul sacrifice and dissolution...artifice, painted epic in the face of broken promises...she and he, yin and yang, touching at the border...he negatively charged, electrically opposed...she swims in the positive current, swept away by the rapids of time...tired of gnawing on his fist, he looks glassy-eyed towards foreign shores...screaming in triumph and howling out the last of his dwindling pain...

Watch me: 
Idiot Wind

Missile Toe

I know, and I think that I am coming out of an long, intense period of stagnation and fear.

Trapped in a life I didn't really create because of lives I created.

Now, I think I see that it has to be broken because, the longer it takes, the more it wears down to an ugly shape that no one involved can cherish, or appreciate.

Scars are scars. 

And I love my babies enough to find my true self for them to look up to, be nurtured by, and befriend as they become beautiful adults.

Message To Messengers

"I would rather be spreading minds, but do not want jail time.'

The 'spreading minds' coinage comes from a Primus song:

Duchess and the Proverbial Mind Spread

It had been awhile, so I had to dredge to stupefying amount of words we have written back-and-forth for a monkey memory refresher. I think mostly I was alluding to, before I became a heavy tool of the system and subsequently, middle-class, the latent idea of techno-shamanism and me being an agent of it. The evolutionary possibilities of psychotropic vegetable matter tickle my mind. Previous agents have certainly been incarcerated for decades or vilified by the establishment for doing such activities. I think we have come to a point where it's either love or die, evolve or face extinction. I am a proponent of the idea that culture and technology blossomed through the consumption of such substances; however, we have had issues in the West with consumption for the sake of consumption.

In the past, I know I have had such issues where indulging was done without ritual or quest for personal and spiritual growth. I think mostly, within my peer group in high school West Side of Phoenix, we were trying to escape the realities of our broken homes, decaying neighborhoods, and foolish child-parents. The downward spiral, coupled with the use of some not so evolutionary substances, led to jail time for some and longer maturation time for many of us. One of the saving graces in my life was becoming a parent as a teenager.

The fog of my adolescence was blasted away by the bright light of becoming civilized and having my feral ways tamed by the men in green. I didn't run from the responsibility of being a parent, but I certainly struggled with great angst about it. Spending time in a military mind and the threat of prison and destitution for one's offspring builds a possibly healthy fear (in those circumstances) of avoiding the aforementioned activities.

In any case, sometimes I feel like a rat in a cage like the Smashing Pumpkins song 'A Bullet With Butterfly Wings'. I have mostly come to grips with my conundrum, but every once in awhile I want to break out of the machine and run down the beach naked until I pass out or expire from exhaustion; as tears of joy from my star struck eyes dribble down my face and mix with the salt of the sea.

MM23

Magical Project.

A hallowed shout down the sin gilded hallway rings true into beautiful, waiting, glistening ear at the other end. Tingling nose smells the rose as mind walking wanders to be near titillated ear. Eyes spy gleam in batting eye as building anticipation kills the fear. Clasping hands, I almost fall on faith when she's near...

Vista Lleno

I stole the full view, unmentionable, from my science guise ruing Rascal scraps in the front yard birds flying startled.

The full view: oblivion…

The full view skirted to the side like a crotch piece, confidence game connected, pair of panties in the race to procreate, or at least in the quest of leaving tell-tale, interesting Rorschach designs on the waxy hard wood floor.

I saw the mobsters kick the voting machines with polished wing tips and pistol grip chump squad ramblings in forearm musical swing moods all along the wasted water front.

Not feeling magical at all, I walked around the streets wishing the inside of me was on the outside of me, wishing that sweet someone would finally notice me, turn the gold gilded, crystal doorknob and walk through my soul sleeping down into dreams; waking up to the delicate splendor of it all.

The full view: oblivious…

Chopped finely and abused, dead men tell no tales. Wise men ride rails or set sail in the search of time spent full view down weirdly wild trails. Seoul serves some sacred wisdom among the taxi collisions and capitalism schisms. The artful dodging of tax schemes all the while drinking my Eastern dreams makes you have to strain your eyes to view the ultra-bright lights during the total eclipse of the West.

Tricked and treated to a decade and a half tied to ancient tome morality mocking me half-distorted by my contorted man-self, I sat on the shelf looking for a way down, but always afraid to make the necessary faith leaps into living long love life like songs written half-maniacal by modern twirling, touring troubadours.

The full view: obscurity…

High time I left behind high times to let brain whisper beauty into my ears uninhibited, uninhabited by doubt and loathing 'self' for not really trying to love 'not self' with kind words instead of hurtful, heartache, anger, heaviness. Heavens clouded by nasty narcissism and petty profusions of grandeur condensed clumsily into the water droplets like hastily homemade dope bindles.

The bitter taste of defeat lingers, but oh sweet freedom, she left her smell on my fingers, and the scent gives me sustenance on the slow road to personal victory over the slow torture of my time in this unholy (insert swear-word...right about here--->) stasis.

The full view: autonomy…

30 AUG 10

Kill For A Thrill: Tales of the Early Nineties

A normal day on Facebook for the Moodswing Meister 33rd Degree:

You should totally still listen to Lords of Acid. I saw My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult with Traci Lords once. Traci Lords wore a full-body nylon, cowboy boots, a trench coat, and a cowboy hat. At one point she opened her trench coat and greased her gooey gutter shutters with her gorgeous finger.

My 18-year-old boy brain brimmed with joy. I went to the show with a stripper (on her birthday) and her best friend. They were on acid and we danced like whores; us three. We ended up back at the stripper girl's house; where she was staying with a real-estate shyster (I think he went to jail for fraudulent activities) named, Lynn. We called him Lenny and he hated it. He was a throwback to the eighties. As an action-figure he came complete with stacks of porn VHS/BETA, shitty eighties music cassettes (Frankie Goes To Hollywood, anybody), a 9mm pistol, and what I believe to be a gnarly cocaine habit. Stripper girl had him tightly wrapped around her finger.

Anyhow, the girls were surly and riding the night like pirates on the mast rigging. They decided to utilize the musical sex magic we witnessed on stage and invited me into the bedroom with them to explore the Devil's business. I felt like a ghost. I drank more beer and went to get my friend Z-man and his video camera to capture the shenanigans.

When I showed up at his door, he swore I was on hallucinogens because of the wild sparkle in my eye. Vibration and human interaction have magical properties; I am now for sure certain about the veracity of that statement. I assured him that I was not and we ran down the street like anxious thieves ready to steal the dusky jewels, to just near the Willow House (downtown PHX - hoorah!) and crept silently into the house.

My friend Z-man edged his way up the stairs into her room, cracked open the door, and the made his was silently back down the stairs. He said, "let's go to my house, roll another number, and drink." The look on his face was one of incredulity. I asked him what he saw and he wouldn't tell me. Even to this day he has not divulged what those two furious freaks were doing and I am almost afraid to ask.

There's more to the story, but who would believe that when we walked in to the Electric Ballroom's lobby that the ladies I came in with had their arms around me, were kissing my ears, and pawing and nibbling on each other? And what critical creature would even reach further into belief to actually consider that when we were half-way through the lobby the girls detached from my sides, walked over to a group of ladies and 1 man wearing cloaks, pentacles and the like and held hands in a circle for a few moments? They then came back to me and acted as if nothing ever happened as we penetrated the outer membrane of the dance floor and melted all molten into the crowd.

1995 was a gnarly year and My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult is a gnarly band. That experience was Kooler Than Jesus [Joe sits with tongue in cheek]:

Kooler Than Jesus Clip

Dirty Joke

Someone told a dirty joke

It seems like nobody understood

The punch line was a farce

So, I left the neighborhood

I ran off into the distance

Dipped my toe into the lake

I fell in love at first glance

With all the women on the take

Damn! They stole away my innocence

They thieved away my rowdy years

I got all turned around, lost my sense

Slathered by a jury of my peers

Then dining on a winter feast

The last supper of our discontent

Not frightened in the least

Hoping all of my dreams were heaven sent

Then I flipped the sticky switch

Packed all my junk in my creaking car

Threw my wallet in the muddy ditch

Headed off to the nearest star

The star was warm and searing

It burned away all my face

The audience fell down cheering

For the outcast roaming outer space

Food For Thought

She likes humming on my nummies, but she's texture oriented and does not like the shrubbery.

Dog Songs - February 2008

You bequeath litter to the air by leaving your horrible lies rolling, just leaves in the wind.

When I look around your street corners, the thinning air is the only one that’s there.

I wish to storm your murky castles made of bland and rescue the pink prisoners of youth.

I have tried to whittle away at your protected centers with nothing, save my thoughts.

Traded like cold hard currency, sin barter, they’ve all but vanished. It isn’t quite fair.

I’ve been tarred and feathered by your apparitions that skulk in the corner by your beer.

All mottled by your flags, your fear, and the accidental plutocracy that you never cheer.

I’ll give worth it’s what’s for, a fair shake, a second take, to witness your misery. 

‘Til I’ve swallowed your Moloko breath mints, my breath wasted on its lower learning.

Me, just waiting to inhale the mysteries and mania scattered down your bitter trail of fear.

Resistant strains of fools lying through their teeth shining ‘neath neon cafeteria lights.

Suggested minimal use in daylight only, you prod me into being your unhappy whore.

Moans outside in a still, what was that in my ear’s multi-memory glistening fun tunnel?

Wot’s uh…the deal with wondering how it all moves into living and dieing for the emperors of China?

It wears me Down's. I wear its t-shirts to hide the fun of mostly moist, classic middles.

Shining oriental heaven lights into burns rugged red with the worst embarrassment.

I try hiding my freedom under my heart, solemnly, pried free only by my own dead hands.

But you filthy Ape-things…kidnap me into the broken scenarios of your beastly misery.

Scheister Cogburn

I saw the purple sky crumble into little chickens. They pecked my dead eyes open, looking for true grit. The sun blared non-stop rhythmic living energy into my ears. A symphony of love ensued. The rain puddles shed tears of joy into the air for my bright future.

Parking Shenanigans @ Korean Malls

The other day Sativa Mariposa and I stopped for lunch at the IPark mall here in Seoul. Now, the malls here are not configured like the malls in the US with their acreage of parking lots surrounding suburban accoutrements. The malls in Korea tend to be buildings of the verticle variety with attached parking garages; so on, and so forth.

Anyhoo, Ms. Boozer and I, in our last minute effort to get tasty delicious grub, as opposed the Booger King/Taco Hell style food on the Army base, went through the ordeal of actually finding the parking garage and eventually made our way to the 5th story of the parking garage at the very last section. Slightly irritated, and severely hungry, we made our way into the mall and dined on delicious Thai food and then went into Emart; the entrance to which is located on the 1st floor with groceries in the basement floors.

Emart is like Walmart, but it doesn't hurt my soul and my ears (easy listening, anybody) so much and the samples/store made food are freakin' awesome. The throngs of people in the store made navigating the store feel like I was in a version of human Frogger.

Well, after burning an hour or so getting grindage and groceries, we made our way back up to the 5th floor garage and were quite dismayed to see the a string of cars had parked perpendicular to to our row of course; thus blocking us and a few other vehicles in. I exclaimed neatly heated words in disbelief and began cooking up a good Soviet threat story to justify me completely kicking the shit out of a compact car and giving a careless Korean car operator whatfor in the form of vulgar verbal jihad. Rarrarrrarrrrrrrrrrr!!! Who would seriously do such a thing in cIear conscience?

I scanned the parking lot hopelessly looking for aid, comfort, or a helping hand just like a dingo ate my baby. Frantically, I checked the doors to see if they were unlocked; no dice. Wondering what we were going to do, and the threat of children waking up and haranguing Forrest in the air, I noticed that the gear shifter was not in park. Hmm... I then saw the gleaming glimmer of hope arc acrossed my frontal lobe like electricity. I got behind the car in front of the one behind my car and pushed it forward. Then I pushed the car sitting behind my car into the spot I had just cleared. Bingo! Jackpot! We then drove to our next checkpoint and I successfully avoided having a massive coronary.

Once again, my perceptions have been altered for the better by living abroad (that is, in a foreign country,  and not wearing a dress and make-up, you perv). A pragmatic approach was taken and a highly successful meme spread in reaction to a dense population and space being at a premium in Seoul.

On the way to the Army base I wondered if I could do the same thing in 'Merica? My first reaction was to rant and rave at being severely inconvenienced before I solved the riddle.

Would most 'Mericans! do the same?

Would my car be in the same shape as when I left it?

Would violence be visited upon my head?

Would the law be called?

Discuss.

A Short Circuit To An Ass Kickin'

Walk into the rock-a-billy bar of your choice at 11PM and scream out, "Johnny Cash is a pussy!"

Biopic Fodder On A Blustery Day: With Video Accompaniment

What if I said I was a casual acquaintance with destiny manifest as I go wandering the torn, shattered world of my grandios cosmos? Shit. What hyperbole for a man who walks through life like a busted machine, or a ‘broken robot’ (thanx Boozer)! Spiritual bankruptcy. A copy of Cash in hand, drifting on the breeze, walking the line in a zig-zagging, crisscrossing fashion…between dirty hands, dirty lands, and dirty deeds. How’s a child grown like ditch weed and expected to flower in these darkest of times? Thompson would say something about this foul year of our lord 2009, but we won’t go into that malarkey right now (or ever, if you know how I roll).

Video: Guitar playin' sonuvabitch.

Now I have to say that the massive edifice called life, monumentally clouds my chakra. My third eye is crying. I try to whisper the meanings. Then I yell them while out and about in the world, and it never works.  BulIshit cliches about rhyme and reason tickle my eardrums with empty echoes. Beware the bunnyman! I have to tune into my scary transmissions and amplify them to the deafening roar of light and dark, good and evil, right and wrong for them to even eventually be heard by the others. Dualism is a blinding force sulkily creeping around in my universe, but I shall overcome! I was weaned on cheerleading atrocities and molded out of shape into believing in icons, slogans, xenophobia, and some secret things much, much worse.

Video: Quicksand

As a child languishing in the mid-eighties, I once munched greedily on Rambo cereal. I dined on the corny sugar shapes of knives and guns, or something of that nature, but I don’t look back so fondly on these times, as I keep seeing it all come crawling back around all glassy eyed in the form of a golden, halcyon nostalgia in the looking glass, drama, dream machine. Unbelievable. My whole existence through the early stages of my process through time, it seems, was shaped and influenced by the media. It is almost like I have a childhood story cobbled out of television shows with such horrible little plots, and of news headlines screaming only of triumphant tragedy. Fuckin’ hell. Me thinks the technology of it all is bringing some form of rotten desolation which is blowing into town on the back of an ever accelerating wind.

“They’re spoon feeding Casanova

To get him to feel more assured

Then they’ll kill him with self-confidence

After poisoning him with words …just being punished for going

To Desolation Row” - Dylan

This little ship has been tossed around and is finding a hard time in celebrating his own triumphs against the agents and energy of ‘Control’.

The simple truth is…I want to be ablaze like a God, astride a wondrous chariot, mastering a team of galaxy trampling horses, content, and solving only higher puzzles. What do we do with a supposedly approaching ‘golden dawn’? Dammit, I wanna know! “I shift gears and I drink beers.” Huh? That’s a clever fucking name for a rockabilly song if I ever heard one, or twenty three. I do know where all my troubles started, that’s a step in the right direction, I think. I think moving forward would spring me out of the little, fragile, wooden cages I have constructed for myself out of doubt and open hostility towards other humans just like me (or really, truly me if the Buddhists or that Scottish 23 comics are to be understood).

I have at the back of mind, an animal of an idea that I have been fighting the wrong battles and dragging the war through multiple dim decades. I am 32, almost. I was born on December 10th, 1976 and I do believe I have just recently begun to learn on a more prescient level, most of the time. Other times I blunder and blither, but that has been caused primarily by my predilection towards drinking copious amounts of lagers, and ales, and stouts, and pilsners, and bocks, and hefeweizens, and whiskeys. And further down the rabbit hole we go.

Video: Whiskey Dick

I spent time in the Air Force, a derelict, on duty, following in my Dad’s economic footfalls and baby-making, traditionalist ways. I hated the Communists and I revolted the Queers in Kalifornia (SF flavor). I spaced the years of my early twenties learning technology and a valuable work ethic (although I think that it had always been innate). I kicked and screamed, cringed and cried, only to learn, recently, that I was breaking down the walls in the ruins of an ancient city created from the energy of blaming my parents for all of my pain, sorrow, and existential misery. A dead end if I followed through, but with no useful conclusion.

Video: My Back Pages

Anyhoo, the dogs bark orders and the lesser dogs march through the hell of Control’s machinery and drink to their destruction and eat their own souls. Some found comfort in being this way, but I could not. I had come to gain an inkling of the abstractions and ideas I could hardly ever convey to the others in these broken circles. My testosterone surely has had an awful influence on some of my illest actions and behaviors, but some of the shackled beasts I lived and worked with then were like the Island of Jackasses in Pinocchio; on steroids. Seeing soulless Creatine cretins, the cream and the clear, the cream of the crap, cheap thrills and canned Keystone beers as the smell of cigarettes, sweat, sex, and pent up Yankee v. Southern aggression roiling on the air can lead a sensitive one to surely suffer some sort of social paralysis. Fuck and fight, yell and scream, then fight and fuck some more seemed to me to be name of that consensus reality game. Oh yeah!

Video: Sgt. Baker

Afterword, heads filled with thoughts of a trumpeting Jesus booming from the PA system like some sort of weird Evangelical version of a cacophonous call to a Muslim morning prayer made my eyes water with loathing and my stomach quiver with fear, for I knew we were the fleeting lifeblood, fixing flying machines, with the sole purpose of projecting destructive power onto the global peasantry. WEWJD? What Exactly Would Jesus Do?

Video: Build my hotrod, of course.

And I can never forget the cloying, carcinogenic chemical soot wafting through the air on tendrils of demon fingers, creeping into the olfactory centers of my once baby-freckled nose, as I was ever cringing from the unholy scent of airplane flatulence. The air machines bled poison and leaked excrement onto the concrete in maniacal Rorschach patterns and caused the fresh flows of rain to be all cloudy and rainbowy-like as they fled away into the storm drains and eventually disappearing into some distant, nameless body of the bluest, purest water.

And I, avoiding breaking the rules of the institution became a full time obsession. I felt like some of the heaviest, densest material had been placed squarely on my shoulders for me to trudge around with in addition to all of the niceties and necessities of married parenthood grinding on the back of my skull like the strong jaws of some depraved, invisible Dingo. A dingo ate my baby! Indeed.

By now you have most likely come to terms with my blatant cynicism and twisting tortured sarcasm. What can I say? “I guess I am just a product of my environment” likely to be sang, and then chanted loudly in the chorus, by some obscure punk rock band named the ‘Cop Outs’ or some similar shit I heard in an interlude on an Ice Cube record. I cannot pretend to be something I am not; and why not? And what I most certainly am not, is bubbly, so deal with it or quit reading this unplanned, biographical manifestoon and go turn on the neon and drink one for me. I am now going to tune out of this digression, so let's just light it up and move along.

Now the truth of the matter is, after the aforementioned last little spell cast, I have to say, I have no idea what I am doing here, or there. I can’t help but feel like I am closing in on something grand and tragic in the same instant. I feel like a momentary collapse of our life-star. I feel like our awesome post-post-modern apocalypse in full bloom like a daisy chain crown of thorns consisting of, all in all, DNA and a streaming consciousness outside of time and space; now bringing you to my point. What does it all mean, man? Or woman! Or whatever it is that I’m supposed to say, or do, or cherish, or become!

Video: Third Eye

Always in a state of becoming...I am always reminded of that gourmet trash can gracing the succulent kitchen adorning my house, my home…that whenever I read the box…or see it taking up valuable shelf space in one of those awful Red stores that burn my eyes like wine…I think it to be smug, a self-assured robot with a tin can human voice who is always saying, “Simple Human ™”, when he happens upon one of us fragile flesh-creatures frolicking joylessly in the emptiness of the street. Or I think of Chomsky, who just has to be robot or one of the golden ones Bowie crooned about 30 years ago, come yesterday. Is time travel possible? What sort of question am I asking? From whom should I seek the answers?

Video: Pretty Things

LSD…almost…really didn’t work…a catalyst definitely maybe…but it did not finish the job. We only projected up and outward, then slowly went under, sank back; all slow-like into ourselves and consumerism. Just ask the cocaine kids on the IPODs and the internet, and the TV, and the Zoloft, and read the text messages (I may be becoming square like those before me, but seriously, I cannot understand, nor want to understand the hyperspace spelling, 3v!l) and the jingoisms raining down through the clouds of the media, Stormin’ Norman like our great arena warrior traipsing through surreal cities Godzilla-style.

Video: Zoloft

Cheesy Velveeta is what it often regresses to in the mind of this thing called Mickey Moodswing. I have been called a beautiful dork by so many people, beautiful in their own right, rite of passage, climbing the hill or currently on a plateau. Does it all end when we are dead? I think that that is the million-dollar question on everybody’s mind. “Enquiring minds want to know, I want to know.” Again the question is begged, “From who should I seek the answers?”

Video: I won't get to get what I'm after, till the day I die.

Turn that frown into a shining crown...

And now, for something completely different:

American Psychosis by Chris Hedges

I couldn't have described the decline any better than the drunken, smoking, pompous, atheist Mr. hedges did in the above linked article.

Bad Religion also does a decent job of describing the collapse collectively over the course of their record catalog using sonic mosaics that rapid-fire in 2-4 minute bursts (with amazing prescience, mind you). However, I still go to see them play and I witness punk on punk violence like some of the 'punks' are just jocks/wolves in sheep clothing who never even paid attention to the lessons embedded in the lyrics. Domination/Submission.

Please, please be objective and look through the facade of the glitz and glamour. Peer into the shit storm brewing...and then do nothing about it...like me, the lazy middle-class intellectual that I be...a hopeless cynic seeking hope...

"lascivious, it's all that I can think of as I drag my feet,
searching like a diogenes,
dangerous, the adjectives of the decade
and of your alluring intricacies,
I can see your green-screen mentality
and I can feel the sting of it's consequence,
and I know I shouldn't
but it's too much to ignore, an emotion I deplore,
every time I look at you,
I just want do it,
I can clench my fist right through it
but I just want to get off

rectilinear, this direction we've been heading
never realizing we are on a runaway machine,
angular, the momentum that does turn us one
step further on our ladder,
one more turn toward the east,
I realize your green-screen mentality
and I know it is shared by many more,
I know it's quite impossible
but I am damned to find a way to revolve the other way,
every time I scrutinize I just say "screw it",
we're on a ride down a blind conduit
and I just want to get off."


Audio: Bad Religion - Get Off

Anyhow, my writing offers a calming catharsis, a soothing respite from the tangled bramble in my brain. My personal life is a daunting gauntlet of emotional stormy intelligence gathered by trial and error. I nearly careen over cliffs of consequence and lie low in valleys of artificial amusement, clinging to the deeply embedded Judeo-Christian idea of finality and paradise at the end of...the end of something.

I got mixed up confusion

Man, it’s a-killin’ me
Well, there’s too many people
And they’re all too hard to please


Well, my hat’s in my hand
Babe, I’m walkin’ down the line
An’ I’m lookin’ for a woman
Whose head’s mixed up like mine


Well, my head’s full of questions
My temp’rature’s risin’ fast
Well, I’m lookin’ for some answers
But I don’t know who to ask


But I’m walkin’ and wonderin’
And my poor feet don’t ever stop
Seein’ my reflection
I’m hung over, hung down, hung up! - Bobby D

When an empire collapses something must come, be born, out of it.

We Americans have Roman amusements, decadent ranting, a national consciousness born in war, conquering heartland, freedom spilled from the blood of the conquered and those carried along with the winds of 'success' to be the labor and technical experts in the advance of civilization (as seen through our Western eyes).

We Westerners also have imbued within our psyche the apocalyptic collapse of the Roman Empire. The idea of an apocalypse engenders a creative myopia in our national consciousness, a disjointed view of the reality of competition to an end that only benefits a few and strangles the hopes and aspirations of millions, starves the life out of children, then points to the sky and says, "it's him" (thanks for the last bit or lyrical mashup, Mr. Dylan).

Where are we going, really?

Whatever comes, I think it will be tainted by those with mean minds shouting slogans, hard heads rationalizing US global dominance (or else), and heavy hands wielding loveless, locked, and loaded guns to smear the brains of their imagined enemies. The me first crush groove country cavalry. Yahooooo...I need a Toby Keith (or Lee Greenwood) excerpt right about now...

These are the internal forces I truly fear. It's going to suck when brown shirts are in fashion. Soon come.


And now the final word in today's quote cafe, you know, for a bit of philosophy disguised as eighties levity:

"Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." Ferris Bueller

Peace and freedom for all the world, not just the fortunate few...

A Few Things I Have Noticed In Seoul:

1) I have seen little to no stray animals. I don't know why this may be. And don't pipe and say it's because they are getting consumed by people. They use certain farmed breeds for this use in specialty restaurants.

2) I have seen very few stray humans (houseless folks). I have not seen more than one or two at a time, unlike other places I have lived or have been for periods of time in the US: SF, PHX, DC, Salt Lake, New Orleans, Tucson, Sacramento, KCK, etc. The previously mentioned places, I have found, have small to large groups of homeless people who often seem to be under the influence of a variety of illicit and licit substances. A qualification to the previous sentence is that the people on the street may seem to be under the influence, but may really have variety of mental illness due to a lack of affordable mental health in the US.

3) The subway trains and stations are amazingly clean (including the bathrooms). I am impressed by the lack of grafitti, trash, and smell of urine.

4) Most of the public places I have been so far (various malls, the subway, alley merchants, etc.) have had a shockingly low amount of police presence, if any. I do see police near military installation gates and during protests (there are many protests by my work). But, here's the thing, this city of 13-14 million people has super-low crime. I have heard form Koreans that you can walk down the street at anytime of night, anywhere in the city, and be unaccosted. This atmosphere is very foreign to me, save Germany and some of the rural places I have lived.

5) The food is fucking awesome and super healthy. I have seen very few fat Koreans, which is suprising, as I have seen some of them pound food like it is going out of style.

Blast from the Past: Musings of a Man in His Later Twenties...

They can actually prompt him to speak. He always feels berated, but he will certainly open up like morning glory blooms in the dawn’s early light. The information he divulges is broken and strained in as much as he can twist the truth into what he believes. Nothing is vast, and the fact that he knows this makes him believe in nothing, as it exists in its entirety. Where the road ends, misery begins. This is the situation, as it stands, just beyond being halfheartedly crippled. He nods his head and shakes with the sickness of a broken man from a broken home. He is broken from the oh so lovely opiates that keep him going strong in his convictions to disagree with these inquisitors from the Devil’s system of imperfection. Given all the possible outcomes of the night, death seems like a very comforting alternative.

All of these tumbling hours, and ours is just a shifting path of irregularities and random acts of conspiring forces that seethe in alleyways trying to obliterate his sanity. “What is this all about?” He creeps, and as the drone of voices rage on overhead he dreams of everything good and wholesome in this life; burritos on Haight, warm, clean sheets, kind bud, and the pale, prickly-pear goose flesh that blankets the lush labia as he licks life’s holy eye. That will be enough of this rambling on in such a venereal fashion.

The seriousness of the present predicament is lost in the faded consciousness of the Asian flu sickness that makes him shiver with a sort of moaning anti-delight. He feels like Oswald when Jack Ruby stuck a gun in his guts; however, a knife to the hilt would more apt; a straight classic. But, opinions never counted in the American gray matter of separating black from white, rich from poor, good from evil, right from wrong, tastes great from less filling, for better or for worse, so help me God. It’s all the same fucking thing! Delirium is settling down for a permanent stay in the confines of his thick skull.

How would Uncle Bill handle this situation? Well, he would probably call Ronnie Milsap, Ray Charles, Little Stevie Wonder, and the rest of the Blind Boy Scout Battalion to croon lullabies of redemption into his sweltering ears. “Hell, Zimmerman never wrote any shit this crazy, never strayed so far from the path”; I think to myself crankily and quite conceitedly. Everything occurring since his breaking point, even with the flow of time, has not made any more sense than it did on the Western Plain.

The eyes open, dry and red and irritated by the fumes of the peeling paint. His eyes roll wildly, dart furtively, then open wide with an expression seeming to exclaim, “My God! (My Dog!). What a blindingly brilliant world that waits for me to…to…run away and hide from…me.” What is that creature squirming in my throat? Did I swallow my pride? It tastes a bit like bilious, Hollywood homicide. His mouth is parched. His dreams are decayed. His wants are trivial. He runs to look in the mirror. “That’s not zombie road kill in my throat, that’s my tongue.” It’s all purple swollen and abused like Linda Lovelace escapades into celluloid insanity. Saliva! Where are you? Where did you go? Tears.

The night before is a torturous, blank memory. The course of the day remains to be seen. The sun scene seems to be polluted with ideas of nothingness, and where my liver used to be, now resides an I.O.U. Well shit, I don’t want to pay up…I’m destitute…I’m zero balance on Karma…you can even ask my friends. The guy wasting away 6 doors down is a junkie, but not me.

I rode all the way from heaven in a Uterine Carriage, some 23 or so odd years ago. I fell from heaven as if a broken angel. The fall has been long and hard, the road full of potholes and broken promises. I have been told by various, nefarious women of the night that I am an angel, that my personality exudes the necessary generosity that makes men of mice and saints of sinners. No way. No how. Not this kid, not this gullible, Goat-head wannabe. This walking stranger headed for nowhere, that eerily empty place where the sunshine fix awaits.

Now, as may or may not know Raoul Duke and the great Dr. Gonzo went off on their little excursion into the neon nothingness of Vegas searching for that Dream, American and proud. What they found there had completely tainted the glory of the story all together, but somehow the general idea of my situation isn’t the same. I feign Rap and Roll like a frat boy, jock talking the king of swing. I eat paper wrapped, salted crap for dinner. I scrub my nether regions; Carlin fashion. I dine on moist animal flesh. I was raised transfixed by the fix and the glimmering sheen of the Tee-Vee screen. I learned to fuck missionary style just like a good God! fearing citizen, so is it such a wonder why a life that should be so full of bliss and so mightily meaningful feel so wasted, so broken, so hollow like busted, bar slut, brain chambers? Will I ride the snake to the lake with that brown tooth, dangling cigarette droop, writhing in the wrinkles of sin, buttered and basted, by back-seat thrill rides and drunken jokes with forgotten punch lines?

Yessir.

And today's all-original, aweful joke of the day is:

What did James Bond say to the Madame when he got to the brothel?

"I'd like a fresh lady, shaven, not furred."

'Sweet Burn' or 'Ode to Mr. Jerry Tomato (slightly bruised)'

Girl come! Come into the darkness…Draw the curtains on my calm Korean morning as the dew beads on my upper lip, too. We’ll steal ourselves from the shining, oven light of the sun. I see the sweat stand out on your soft skin as I fall from high heaven, naked and wailing, only knowing you’ll leave here and I’ll be holding my dead-beating heart in my outstretched hands. The contempt brews just beneath the surface slurry. Your gaze eats my mind as it sputters in the shallows, trolling for an excuse; fishing for the reasons. Why do we pretend to defend the sanctimony of our empty promises, the olden, golden, glory-gone, leaves gathering out in the garden? Our version of the fall of…

Man, I despise that man-thing, that bumbling beast; the interloper who hobbled in from the flatlands in the East with a smiling sneer and the glossy veneer of a snake semen salesman seeking a rosy rube to spill syrupy, kind words into a leaking vessel. Tears strewn throughout the home from one cherubic, naïve, the mother of us all. The tales she tells, true fiction, ever seeking, solace and redemption in the aisles and alleyways of her heart. Or so I see…

Slowly and sleepily, Stuttgart dreams call, peevishly, pandering, and pensive, the salesman pounces, panda-like, reeking of fermented, phony bamboo, on his prey. With the prospects of no gal, no beautiful babes, and no home, the mouse in this man is left tattered and torn from the ever-brewing, bawling battles. A white flag covers his shame. Pencil on paper soothes my pride. Rock crushes scissors. It’s a losing game. A bitter bet…better yet for all of me to all of thee that I have nothing else left to write; even less to say.

The Infancy of My Intimacy

Fallow fields. Vision concealed by the facts of matter scattered at the periphery. When I see what I see I want to be far from here. I wallow in the wake of forces that lie beyond the shoal and greave for the lack of soul at the center of all of the activity.

Will it come to pass that I will not be able to outlast the fears that hold me back? I scrimp and save Karma like the bits beetles roll into balls of dung and the flush it all down the sewer pipe, 23 skidoo; rinse, repeat. Then the monsters and mental mistresses come to me in fleeting visions. They reconnoiter in shadows of the void that lie between the spirit and waking worlds. They come blasting out into the fields of vision stretched thin and wispy upon the back of my eyelids. They come and delicately pound the timpani drums residing comfortably in my ears. Those bashful beasts bring unto me words, images, songs, and sounds of realities far removed from my own. I would be grateful if I could bring these states into my waking world and for me to be walking through the gardens shocked wide-eyed and beautifully ecstatic with golden glowing purple flowers woven beneath my feet like walking stones on the path to oneness. Draw another deep breath. Sigh.

My one true hope is that Mystery finds me naked and feral in my own mindscapes, sucking on the teat of post-modernity. I wish to be torn from the teat and thrown into the beautiful chaos of the cosmic. Cosmopolitan, I search about for meaning, for solace in the arms of the gentle ones, for table scraps from the bleeding hearts. I come up empty, pockets pulled out, a look of quizzical embarrassment shrouding my face in comic fuckery (did I just press Winehouse word coinage into your palm like a paper seal filled with dope?).

The drive for downing libations with half-witted remembrance of the ghosties of Saturday night that came before to wallow in the sallow lights of personal oblivion, only strokes the yearning urges for meaning. Where is it? I cannot seem to find it in the carnal ramblings of breathing, walking, corner skulking, early mid-life crises or the voracious sexual appetites of the young Gods who drive chrome rimmed chariots into the noxiously neon night. Where the fuck is it? I can’t seem to be able to just copy and paste it into existenz. It is not appearing to me as a matter of convenience. It does not seem to be readily apparent. WTF?

Everything else in this American life comes so convenient. You just solve little bits of the maze and hit the treat bar with your little, clawed paws. ‘Take a pill, man, leave the driving to us’ seems to be motto for my day and age under the sun. Who the fuck is driving? I don’t know if I am to break into song about the whole mess of it like Pynchon scrawl because my program is all mixed up like DJ kicks and my situation’s been slaughtered by the sins of my bothers for so long now. I need to know my song before I start singing it from the misty mountain top. The foibles of faith tell me the peak is up there where I could be living majestic and eternal somewhere; post-life.

This tirade is tired and teasingly targets nothing, save my own inadequacies. And I, only troubled by the newer than new realization that somewhere along the way I lost the path. It must’ve happened early on in my time because I don’t exactly remember what it looked and felt like to be on the path. Notions of pre-recordings vanish into nothing as I stand on a pivot point of a huge invisible compass. I intuit that the 360° of potential paths are emanating out there into the void, but I am so fallibly human and cannot see. Dragged and drugged by the invisible hand of the marketplace across the shards, I wantonly reach out grope some comfortable bosom. Ringing loudly, voices come to me and say, “Monkeyshine Moodswing, self-deception was always your strong suit.” Just transmissions from the void. A vote of no confidence from my internal parliament; as it were. Oz ‘The Great and Terrible’ says, “no, sir.”

In classic fashion I’ve come to an impasse. The boiling over of the skull pot oozing like some sort of pre-mature ejaculation rattling the walls inside like a thousand paint cans full of coins riding the paint mixer, then nicht, like a light switched into the O-F-F position. Denouement leads to infernal suffering and the bubbles rising up from my muddy beer only serve to cast out the angels dancing on signals between my synapses. The 17-year-old within my skin constantly clamors and spouts vitriolic rants from the face of the pig, “Water melting, decayed and angry, collapse, collapse, collapse!” to ward off the potential good spirits drifting in from the desert. “Is this the only way to say a prayer?” Stare at me. See if I care…

We have just traveled 858 words (and counting) down, down deep into the rabbit hole.

How does it feel, to be horribly mind-blown?

How does it feel, to be like some monkey’s evil clone?

We’re no closer to the truth. We’re just slightly becoming aware that there possibly is/isn’t such a thing. Feeling it all out with this kid feels kind of good in a bad way like pressing an ingrown toe nail against the inside wall of your shoe, doesn’t it? Or is it horribly unsettling and leaves that dreadful feeling in your stomach like when we watch Mr. Orange writhe around in the back seat of a stolen Nova as he dies bleeding like a uterus from the bullet hole in his gut? Either way, just impatiently slack around for the next episode: “I Gotta Golden Pussy, Jones.”

Kalifornia Kreeping In

I peer around, sonically immersed in some blues ditty, at the sleeping sugar babes on the Seoul subway as they drift off to toil eagerly in the city towers. The almond-eyed scenes are so perfectly surreal to my wild Western eyes that I cannot help but feel like a subterranean homesick alien. The humidity in the lazily swirling air bothers me no more as Burning Spear drowns wailing into my ears with a song of sweet bliss that harkens my mind away from my perfect, little life I now happen to live; burrowing beneath the ground on shiny rails. Dead-heading into Dongdaemun with the breezy ocean, ice plant, moist eucalyptus air lapping at my soul, I catch myself coming under heavy with the suspicion that at this moment, life is good. Although, I do pine for Kalifornia so.

“My time coming, anyday, don't worry about me, no
It's gonna be just like they say, them voices tell me so
Seems so long I felt this way and time sure passin' slow
Still I know I lead the way, they tell me where I go.

Don't worry about me, no no no, don't worry about me, no
and I'm in no hurry, no no no, I know where to go.

California, a prophet on the burning shore
California, I'll be knocking on the golden door
Like an angel, standing in a shaft of light
Rising up to paradise, I know I'm gonna shine.”

Grateful Dead - ‘Estimated Prophet’

New Band NAME:

Forrest came up with a phrase that would be a great band name: "6-year-olds with cell phones". Womp-womp.

"...mended broken wings" indeed.

I do miss the chance to see Calexico every so often, but I can bask in the music here in Korea. 

I see the crumbling foundations of the empire. Decadence...going under. The dust fills my trained eye, always hawking the bitterness of defeat; vanquished by the sword of entropy. I look at America through the sight glass of a broken telescope from the Asia continent. I love, but my love is thrown into my family and out into the cosmos, because it simply hurts too much to have nothing left to cherish in my homeland.

The words below remind me of this desolation. Like many other mindful Americans, I too look to the South and its beautiful tribes and peoples not thoroughly wrought by the 'free-market'.

The current scene: Learn it. Breathe it in. Exhale and 'press on with pride', like my dad, Lee Calvin, always exhorted during military mind exercises.

"Watched with a hawk's trained eye
Trees grow silent fruit
'neath a suffering sky
Those who have stayed, keep a flame
In memory of the fallen
And pass on the old rites despite the risk
But many more have left here
On mended broken wings
Turning to see your reaction
A tear drop fills your eye" - Calexico 'Woven Birds'

'Anyone know where a guy can get a beer around here' or 'Christ Kabobs'

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100615/ap_on_re_us/us_lightning_strikes_jesus_statue

I knew the words were bullshit as they left my lips.