The Namesake (See Above)

I thought that it would sound profound to start off with something like: "We all stand on the edges of our own, personal oblivions. Eventually, we resign ourselves to throwing ourself into it, and, thus, life begins." But, really, it rang way too melodramatic and existentialism is getting passé.

       We write with our right, we think with our left, and, in the middle, we register everything null and void. I'm standing on the sands of time, and the ocean of blood is washing it all away. Ernest Hemingway was an overrated drunk with a dismal world-view, but I still like his stuff. Edgar Allen Poe never wrote a single true word, either.

       Metallica are hacks. Stream (stram?) of conscious is overrated, too. William Faulkner did it best, and everyone else is just playing catch-up to a dead drunk. Ouch. Honesty is the best policy, except when it comes to literature. Authors are just fancy liars. Some of them even wear fancy pants, but very few, these days.

       Poetry is a dusty tradition full of more symbolism than rhetoric, and what's a symbol without an allusion? Ask Mister Cummings. Everyone reads the same stories, over and over, and nobody's clever. Everybody writes the same stories, over and over, and . . . Nobody's clever, not even me—especially not me.

       He worked for all he was worth, whittling away the darkness until he could see the light of creation and could cup it between his hands, eyes agape in awe and mouth open in horror, the contorting lines of his face evaporating away with the slow realization of its ultimate redundancy. Nihilism and existential bullshit free in every fourth cup of coffee sold at Starbucks, would you like a coupon? This is practice, just an exercise, but is it more, and, if it is, is that sad?

       Geometrists and absurdists write of the same material, just in different ways: the shapes of our universe, how everything connects into some kind of polygon. There's a disturbing tendency towards rounder ones, and you know what they say about wheels on buses. I rode the bus for twelve years. I still do. Shit.

What have we learnt today, children? "Nobody knows!"

Be My Angry Valentine: My Concupiscence Has Udders

I feel vaguely obliged to speak on a certain matter at hand: Valentine's Day.

        Firstly, why the fuck do I have to hear about this holiday any more than one day beforehand and the day itself? Why am I hearing about Valentine's Day a week before the date, huh? I don't want to hear about it, not because I don't like the holiday, and not because I'm a bitter single man, but mostly based entirely on a single principle: it doesn't apply to me.

        February 14th is a date I don't mind creeping up on me, springing up, then going the hell away. I don't worry about it, 'cause I don't hafta. It's like National Secretary Awareness Day—I don't even have any idea what day that is—I don't have a secretary, I don't need to be aware of secretaries any more than that they take my calls or call me at my job, I don't have any obligations to send meaningless flowers as an empty gesture of appreciation. I don't have to care, so I don't: the same goes with Valentine's Day.

        I don't like the fact that Valentine's Day waves its fucking flag in my face for seven bloody days and shakes its ass around town. Imagine if 80% of the advertisement space around National Secretary Awareness Day was dedicated to reminding you about that holiday; how many people would just think, "Hey, I don't have a secretary, why do I fucking need to know this?" Yeah, it'd be irritating, wouldn't it? Same with me: no girlfriend, no date, no need for me to even know when Valentine's Day passes. I'd rather not, but I do, so I'm mad.

        Sure, you can dismissively wave me off as yet another bitter single guy bitching about not having a date on Valentine's Day, even though the case is more that I'm just rather apathetic toward the endeavour and I don't appreciate being forced to acknowledge something I usually care to ignore, but what fucking gets to me is this outcropping of whiney nonsense I've been catching. I don't want to God damn hear about how much you may think Valentine's Day is commercialized, or how it's been corrupted to be just a day of obligatory sex acts. The fuck?

        In my memory, Valentine's Day has never not been commercial. It's a day about giving gifts to your significant other and taking them out to eat or dance or the cinema or whatever you both fancy. Unless you're six and gluing macaroni to construction paper in the shape of a heart, this always costs money, and always has. You know, I'm just bloody sick of people who bitch about holidays being commercial, in the first place. For one thing, nobody fucking forces you to spend the money on the holiday, there's no Commerce Police at your door with guns and credit machines banging it down because you didn't buy the special heart-shaped version of Reese cups in bulk or somesuch. Nobody real cares if you spend the money or not, just Commerce, itself. The fucking point of the commercial industry is to make money for itself to spend on itself for making more money. Welcome to Capitalism, bitches, the land of gain over soul.

        Secondly, in a secular society, which America is, what do you expect from holidays? Congratulations, you've sucked the religion out of holidays and all that's left are empty rituals, commercial expenditures, and stupid gimmicks. Oops, you liked the part where holidays were held sacred? Gee, I guess you shouldn't have eliminated the very meaning of the sanctity. Fuck off, we constructed an amoral society on the greedy bones of capitalism and never stopped complaining when people openly practiced and spread their religions, because, somehow, religious freedom equates to "Everyone is free to practice their religion, except the parts that offend the oversensitive public, so keep it indoors." The hell is wrong with you, how can you expect something to remain sacred when the meaning is gone?

        Am I supposed to take the Easter Bunny seriously? Why should I take a holiday known for being excessively pink any more seriously? Valentine's Day is about encouraging people to make simple gestures of affection and gratitude toward the ones who hold the biggest real estate in each other's hearts, through gift-giving and poem-writing. People are lazy and just buy cards and shrug, then I'm meant to be angry at society for some reason? Just because it gave us the means by which we could turn Valentine's Day into a meaningless show of shallow affection doesn't mean it made us. We made the choice. We chose laziness, which, in turn, became foolishness.

        And, now, on top of this "boohoo, Valentine's Day is so commercial" crowd of crybabies, there is now a crowd of people moaning about how Valentine's Day just means women are obligated to have sex with their men. I'd apply the same to the reverse situation, but men never have to be made to feel obligated to have sex, they just do. What the fuck is even the meaning of this complaint? Who is making Valentine's Day any different than it was ten years ago? Maybe I'm missing something, but when walking down the card aisle I've yet to see a "Hey, You Better Give 'Em Good Head!" card. Did I miss the Hallmark commercial where a guy gives his girl flowers and then donkey-punches her? Who's making this shit up?

        If you want to feel obligated to have sex on Valentine's Day, congratu-fucking-lations, but that's your decision. If your boyfriend slash husband slash penis of choice tries to make you feel obligated to have sex with you, then, oh, maybe he's just a dick and you should stop associating with him? So far as I can see, the only ones making the rules between couples are the two people involved in the coupling, not the Love Police or some ridiculous bullshit like that.

        Imagine, though, the Love Police: big, burly, angry men—balding, mustachioed, unshaven, smelly, the cast of every cop drama ever—wearing pink police outfits with heart-shaped badges and, instead of revolvers, they carry red bows with arrows that have heart-shaped heads. Hilarity!

        Anyway, I don't recall the last time a mysterious man in a fedora and trenchcoat walked by me and wagged a finger at me for not having sex on Valentine's Day—or on any other day, for that matter. People are making up these bullshit rules for bullshit holidays and then posting complaints about them to each other, as though they aren't the ones ultimately in control of how they celebrate any given holiday or any given day of the week.

        If I wanted Tuesday to be the Day of Hamburgers, then I could very well go out to a hamburger place—let's say Red Robin 'cause it's fuckin' delicious—and tell the waitress I'm celebrating the Day of the Great Cow, or in Spanish: El Día de la Vaca Magnifica. She'll nod and take my order and give me my fucking celebratory beef sandwich. Why would she stop me? Maybe I'll wear a cow-print shirt with a cowbell around my neck, and yell "Moo!" at passers-by. I'll give meat-themed cards out to all my friends. If I had a girlfriend or lady companion, I'd buy her a plushie cow. It'd be great, and you know what?

        It'd be the motherfucking Day of the Great Cow because I said so.

        Then, I'll start complaining about how Day of the Great Cow got way too commercial next year, how all the big hamburger companies—who are already selling meat on that day, regardless—are forcing me to buy fancy hamburgers with frills and pickles, expensive, pink-colored mayo and goldleaf on them. And Hallmark is charging me six bucks for a Cow Card to give to me friend. And my girlfriend won't settle for anything but that gigantic cow plushie at the State Fair, which I can't get because carnival games are rigged and I can't really throw a baseball or plastic ring that well, to start. Shit, this holiday sucks now.

        The year after that, I'll start crying about how my girlfriend is expecting me to cry "Moo!" in bed and won't suck me off unless I wear a cowbell and get on all fours so she can pull up a stool. Cruel fate, thou hast spat upon mine virgin holiday! I'll start writing letters to the Editor of my college newspaper complaining about how the once-pure and wonderful holiday has been degraded by society's menacing machinations.

        Thus, El Día de la Vaca Magnifica would be truly spoiled, in three short years.

        If you don't like how a holiday is being celebrated, then why the hell are you letting others—society, companies, friends, peers—tell you what to do on that day? What the fuck is wrong with you, if you want to still make Valentine's Day a quiet walk in the woods while treating your lover with simple affection and lovingness, watching the sunset over a river while holding hand, then why don't you do just that? Are you going to be arrested for not obeying the Valentine's Day Laws of Aught Five?

No, you bastard and slash or bitch—

On Comedy

You will find more wisdom in one comedian than you will find in one thousand businessmen, one thousand politicians, one thousand lawyers. Stand-up comedy is the modern oral tradition, the new world shamanism.

   I live my life on those stakes. Hope I called it right.

My Disparatedness

      I would be speaking an atrocious lie if I claimed to fully understand how my mind works wholly, as some things still catch me off guard about myself. A lot of the times, these circumstances wherein I am baffled by my own brain has to do with writing, as the whole thing is, relative to everything else I've ever done, new. I started seriously writing when I was sixteen years of age, which is . . . well, distinctly after I thought I had established the entirety of my personality.

      You know how teenagers are. Well, you do when you are no longer one, at least. You look back and nod sagely, comfortable in a complete understanding of how dumb it all was and how silly you were in many ways. I had this notion for the majority of my teenaged years that I knew myself perfectly, and that nobody else could really offer up an opinion about me that I did not know or had not considered and either disregarded or accepted. Secretly, I thought I was also the subtlest and slyest guy in the world, 'cause I thought there was no way anyone could possibly know me how I knew me. It's all kind of silly and typical for those formative years of prepuberty, puberty, and early post-puberty. You know: seeking to create one's own identity, crafted from the ashes of a carefree childhood—that whole drill.

      Anywho, that's not what I wanted to talk (write?) about here. Writing as an exercise and a craft was just not something I thought to do in any kind of real capacity until after I had convinced myself I was done with figuring out who I was. I was an Artist and a Gamer and a Geek and a Punk and all these things, not a Writer. I used to write lyrics to imaginary songs, then I started writing poetry, and then I just started . . . writing. I had always been a prolific reader, and a raging fanboy of authors, poets, playwrights and so forth, so it kind fell very naturally in place that I began emulating them.

      It changed me. It changed the way I think, the way I look at words. The way I read.

      Today, I'm reading the newspost for Penny Arcade and I noticed something, which henceforth stuck in the forefront of my mind for as long as I was reading the post. After each hard stop—period, colon and semi-colon—Tycho puts two spaces, not just one. "Holy shit," I think, "I remember being told to do that by an English teacher in middle school and thinking it was just too much effort." But, Tycho does it? Who else does this, integrates this into their formatting?

      I could not, in fact, not mind the gap, at this point. I just sort of stared at the gaping, empty spaces between each sentence. "How did I not see this beforE? Did it just start?" I went back all the way to five newsposts ago, and, yay, I didst behold the Truth: he's been doing it for a very long time. And, for whatever reason, I had just not noticed.

      "When did these kinds of concerns become relevant enough in my life to present such a pressing response in my head? When did I decide I could not live without indenting the paragraphs of my posts? When did I decide to memorize the Alt+Code for the long dash, '—', which is alt+0151? Where does the medium dash, '–', even go? Why does it bother me constantly that the proper placement of punctuation when using quotation marks is ambivalent, do the quote marks go before or after periods, question marks, and the such, when that stop isn't actually part of the quote?" I'd just put the stops outside the quoted text, but it looks strange to me to do so. "God, I just tried to look up the Alt+Code for the closing single quote and double quote mark. When did this happen to me? At what point did these kind of thoughts ingrain themselves in my psyche?"

Inquiring minds (kind of) want to know—

[Editor's Note: I did notice, today, that Tycho's two spaces between hard stops aren't manual, insofar that it seems to be the way the text's coded to appear. So, maybe it did start recently, and the code affects all newsposts retroactively . . . I'll never know, now.]