Saturday, February 26, 2011

a dinosaur of the mind / future flowers for langston hughes


you are an animal.
last night you
dreamt
of
a restaurant named
after your birthday.
and you think
of your name in
lights.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

the capitol of Libya is burning but on the plus side my car passed smog


so i was going to do this post about how to filter/purify water (apparently there's a difference) but now i'm thinking you can just google that shit yourself. its really not that interesting. initially i thought it would be. i thought that, if anyone out there is like me, he or she might want to face the idea of an impending apocalypse with a little background knowledge of straight up, time-tested survival tips. and you probably do. i do too. so let's do the research together. meanwhile i think i might buy a rifle. or a good suit. not sure which. i kind of think a nice, well-tailored suit could be just as much an advantage as a rifle, post-apoco. probably not, though. probably the dudes in suits are the first ones robbed and shot with rifles. yeah, fuck the suit. now that i think about it, Thunderdome steez is one of the best parts about being an apocalypse survivor in the first place. really. i mean, can you imagine? the world goes mad and people are killing and eating each other and some blowhard just strolls into the wreckage in his tattered skinny suit like, "woah, hold on here gentlemen, i think i can help clear this up..." looking like Jimmy Carter at the Gathering of the Juggalos? no thanks. "not it".

p.s. fuck tidal wave dreams, right?

Sunday, February 13, 2011

tonight the streets are ours


what am i supposed to feel about valentine's day? at first i was too little to care what love was and valentine's day was meaningless save for the fact that my mom (!) used to give us kids little tiny easter basket-ish goodie bags with chocolates and pencils with hearts on the end, then i went through a romantic political phase when i was reading zinn and thought the hallmark corporation basically killed anne frank and love to me was LOVE in caps and needed no notices and any girl worth talking to just understood. but now i'm older and am wise enough not to know what the fuck to believe in. Love? yes. hallmark? still no. chocolates and heart-tipped pencils? okay. sex? yeah! being reminded by consumer culture to pick more wild flowers and kiss her more? yeah, alright.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

all my friends are dreamers and drunks


i hate banks. maybe not "hate," although I want to hate them, in fact would hate them, if the very thought of banks didn't make me so goddamn tired. and when I got this latest letter, stating that I'm now going to be charged a monthly "maintenance" fee for having an open checking account, I wasn't even surprised. my bank is like a consistently disappointing child and I am the aging parent who finally says, fuck it, the kid's on his own, I've got to live my life now. happy in my empty nest.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Sex Sells


"Sleep Cycle"

We cannot push ourselves away
from this quiet, even in our sprees
of inattention, the departing passengers
stubbing out their smokes, arrivees in tears,
lots of cellophane, the rumpus over parking.

Wind scrapes leaves across the road,
first flashes of snow, it is dark then
it's really dark. Forgive me for not
writing for so long, I've been
right beside you, one of the vaguer
divinities blocking your way with its need
to confess all its botched attempts at love,
what started this whole mess. I love this place,
its absurd use of balustrade, the chairs
that dig into the spine, motorcyclists
propping their drunk girlfriends in the sun,
men playing timed chess with themselves,
the guarantees and warnings that entice us
to the brink of what they warn about.

But we can do no more than pass through
these rooms and their sudden chills
where once a plea was entered almost
unintentionally that seemed at last
to reveal ourselves to ourselves,
immaculate, bereft, deserving to be found.

-Dean Young

Not Feeling Sorry for Yourself is the New Black


You probably shouldn't think about guns so damn much.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

The idea that electrolytes are a myth is, itself, a myth.



As an admittedly heavy drinker, I find myself in a near constant state of dehydration. To combat this perpetual thirst and to stave off the inevitable brain implosions, I drink VitaCoco. But I'm not in love with that name so I call it "CocoVita," which I think rolls out a bit smoother. Here's a few factoids I pulled off somebody else's website. Quote:

It’s a natural isotonic beverage, with the same level of electrolytic balance as we have in our blood. It’s the fluid of life... In fact, during the Pacific War of 1941-45, both sides in the conflict regularly used coconut water – siphoned directly from the nut – to give emergency plasma transfusions to wounded soldiers.

Boom. COCONUT BLOOD.