#173

left right and center is a very good radio show that comes on kcrw every friday afternoon at two thirty and a centrist and a conservative and a liberal guest have a sane and rational discussion about american politics which is mediated by a very smart and very good host who is slightly to the left of center and describes himself as a radical centrist while both of the real extremists are actually a little ridiculous and annoying and complaining and whining and exasperated at the intellectual foibles of their counterpart across the aisle and the centrist guest is usually an engaging canadian woman whose views i generally agree with but anyway the point is that i always listen to the show in the car while i am running around doing errands which means i am getting in and out of the car and i only catch probably twenty out of the thirty minutes of the show which is a terrific annoyance but on the other hand it is a terrific motivation to get my errands done quickly so i can get back in the car and listen to the show while i drive to the next place but my haste probably makes me appear rude to the clerks i interact with

#172

funny thing funny is making misery bearable and horrible tolerable making life livable and heartbreak overcomeable and loneliness doable and nighttime endurable letting me make it through the weeks and months and years just because my brain tickles and my throat makes a tinny grunt what a funny thing funny is and what a joke it is not but what a lifesaver it is staving off despair long enough to survive staving off sadness long enough not to cry staving off gloom long enough to smile to connect with other human beings with these meaningless tinny grunts what a funny thing funny is in all its sound and phooey signifying nothing but lifes absurdity in all its goofy glory naked in the cosmic rain with nothing to prove and nothing provable and nothing lasting and nothing durable a whole planet nothing more than a strand of hair on the barbers floor at the end of a short day swept up tied up put out and forgotten a funny thing funny is the futile phenomenon the goal of my life the quest of my wretched existence to laugh and make others laugh and beat back the tears of frustration that threaten our eyes when we consider our vanity our silly efforts our hollow journeys and our funny bodies oh what a funny thing funny is

#171

hes a nice guy but he sure is a talker he will talk your ear off if you let him so what i try to do is just be real nice and tell him i gotta go because i got other things to do and if he asks what it is you gotta do just tell him he doesnt wanna know and try to be funny and light about it because if he senses youre being mean or if youre annoyed or something he will just go calling everyone else in the family and tell them what a bitch you are and if they dont answer i swear he will say it on their answering machines and no one ever answers his calls so hes gonna be on the whole familys answering machines calling you a bitch if you act annoyed with him or get testy and im not saying hes not annoying he is hes my brother i should know better than anyone except for maybe his ex wife god bless her the saint for hanging in as long as she did i dont know how any human being can stand the guy for more than five minutes now dont get me wrong i love him hes my brother and dont go around telling the whole family i cant stand to be around him because they dont need to know its between you and me okay and he really is a nice guy and we should all be nice to him because hes been going through a rough patch for the last twenty five years

#170

trouble was brewing for beer bandits in covina when a botched theft turned into a sideshow so what happened was three nineteen year old men went into the baja ranch market and stole a thirty pack of tecate but the clerks spotted the theft and ran after the men tackling and detaining one of them in the parking lot while another guy got behind the wheel and the third guy threw the beer and himself into the passenger seat but as they pulled off one of the employees stood in the way of the car and when the bandits tried to plow through him the employee jumped on the hood of the car causing the driver to crash into a curb and throw the employee off at which point the two men scaled a fence and landed in the neighboring car wash and while the driver ran to freedom the other one ran into the car wash tunnel behind two cars so he had to just take the beating and swishing and hot water and wax for a couple minutes and when he got to the other side two police officers were waiting to arrest the wet rat and to cap it all off the driver who escaped had left his wallet and identification in the car so the cops just called him and convinced him to turn himself in and now all three men are in covina city jail in lieu of fifty thousand dollars bail

#169

i cant wait around man i cant wait around youve been a great collaborator and youre a true friend but your excuses are too many and too much for me to handle because i have so much energy that i need to get it out get it out and i cant wait around for you to find a convenient weekend to work because you are always going to find excuses and until you realize that sacrifice is the price of art and the excuses that keep coming up are of your own making then we will never work again but as soon as you figure your shit out if indeed you ever do then ill be glad to jump back in the cockpit with you and take the beast to mach twenty up into outer space skidding around saturns rings and dipping through gaseous jupiter and out to pluto and beyond and beyond and into different universes but i cant wait around man i cant wait around so im gonna have to lift off on my own and you can try to meet me out there but ill be hard to find because ill be in strange places where people like you dont go until you decide you wanna go bad enough that you get outta your nest long enough to stretch your wings so for godsake either do it or give up but quit the flapping because i cant wait around man i cant wait around

#168

theres a pile of gear in the living room all musical stuff an amplifier a speaker cabinet a stratocaster and a gibson acoustic and a bag full of cables and shit all of the items bunched together by the door because i was too lazy to put them in their proper places after the gig four days ago and the ceiling fan spins on its lowest speed breezing down on a squat square coffee table covered with mail and netflix dvds and an empty water bottle and tippss cologne and the sunken green couch sits there depressing and i am sitting at the cluttered dining room table which is covered with all sortsa shit like my canon a1 and an empty box of 400tx and an old but functional pair of fostex studio monitor headphones and a parking violation citation which i am due to contest in court shortly and another empty plastic water bottle and typewritten notes for a short film and a plane ticket for michael tipps los angeles to chicago and a piece of returned mail and a spray bottle of magic sizing and three foul candles that certainly wouldnt be here if i had my way and my computer playing some moody tune from elevator to the gallows and all this is happening and existing when she walks through my front door and tells me she doesnt love me anymore

#167

a moment an instant a point in time is my only existence is my only experience i have never and will never be except for in a moment unappreciated and unnoticed and defiled and rotten even before it passes people have told me to live in the moment or live for the moment but i cant because the moment is real and i live for more than real i live for divine and transcendent and perfect which exists only in my distorted memories and imagination but certainly not in the here and now i have never appreciated a point in time as i lay suspended in it but i have fully loved a moment looking back and i have reached levels of excitement bordering on hilarity anticipating moments to come but the best i have ever done with an instant is to become unconscious of pasts and futures but that happens almost faster than an instant and fades away within the same instant because time cannot even be considered in such a thought or such a thought be contained in time or ever placed on a timeline because the timeline doesnt exist in the thought and a moment only exists in a linear representation of time which may not be linear at all though the human experience of it is certainly so but in any case and despite it all i exist in my subjective timeline and waste moment after moment after moment after moment

#166

get it started get it up and started start the day take it all the way get it moving get it going push it off crank it up start it up lets go roll call up and at em wakey wakey eggs and bakey lets go rock and roll lickety split lets hop to it dont delay act now before its too late time to go we are late we are gonna be late we gotta go theres no time nows the time the time is now to get it going crank it up set it spinning never drop keep it up juggle juggle keep all those balls in the air dont let em drop have some coffee here we go vitamin b lets go now adderall start me up speedball all night long never sleep never die always go and keep it up never drop come on baby one more cup before i go before i go go go and get it started get it get it come on now we late we late lets go lets go i cant be late on your account goodbye oh no thats the alarm get up its five lets do it again i said get up dont lie down there hop to it hup one hup two roll call up and at em in formation march like ants in time in time repent clock repent youll never keep up you cant keep up cause my ticker is stronger than yours so get it started get it up and started start the day take it all the way

#165

being funny is easy except when its hard which is when youre trying to be funny and your trying mind switches into logic mode and slows your response time to an embarrassing lag if you even get a retort out at all so i guess what i am saying is that your funniness depends on something totally other than brain power or reasoning power but rather it depends on connection time and how mad your reason naturally is so maybe there is no hope for the unfunny or maybe there is some way to train this unconscious part of your brain and to excise logic and reasoning from the joke process but that still leaves the fact that you may be trying to be funny which will kill a joke no matter what so what does that say for a comedy writer like me who spends hours and weeks and longer on scripts and jokes and such does it mean that what i write can only be funny if i dont think about it thus making the first draft of everything by definition the funniest and every revision a detriment to the original product but what if i put even less though into the revision than i put into the first draft i guess that would make the revision more thoughtless and therefore funnier so maybe i should do revisions with no thought at all i can tell you one thing i aint gonna revise this rotten thing funny or not

#164

it had to be you wonderful you on the ferris wheel at the pier going over the water like we are going out to nothing to the yonder to the deep blue forever but then the lights track us back over the wood and the wild neon lattice of the machine transforms itself into infinite geometries every new moment but all i feel and all i notice is your warm hand slipping onto mine like natural like that was the right thing to do with your hand at that moment when we were on the ferris wheel in santa monica falling in love and your husband was at work in hollywood managing some bar on the boulevard not thinking that you were falling in love with me on the ferris wheel in santa monica on the pier with your hand slipping onto mine sending warmth from my fingertips up past my collar into my blushing face down to my unsure toes and the neon dancing like sugarplums reflected in your eyes looking so sure and innocent so sure that you are doing the right thing moving your hand onto my thigh on the ferris wheel on the santa monica pier while your husband is managing some bar on hollywood boulevard not thinking that what we are about to do could ever be happening as i lean in to kiss you the melody of that song keeps running through my head it had to be you wonderful you

#163

theres a somebody im longing to see someone wholl watch over me and care for me so I can surrender to my laziness and exist in calm without worry for nutrition or shelter or warmth or the emptiness that i usually feel with no one to love me and no one in my bed except some fly in fuck buddy every now and again but its not like i want a full time girlfriend or a wife or anything like that rather id like some comforting angel to spend my nights with who smiles warmly and doesnt tell me about her day and i dont tell her about mine instead we just look in each others eyes and that is enough and when morning comes shes already gone back in heaven watching over me making sure i dont step into the street in front of a runaway bus or sit on a scorpion or become infatuated with some pretty face that will soon transform into a wretched and miserable bitch that makes her top priority to make my life a living hell in retaliation for me stopping to care for her or even really give a shit how she feels anymore oh yes my angel will never let this happen to me because weve got it perfect because i love her and she loves me and we dont take more than we want to give and we dont give more than we want to take yeah thats a somebody im longing to see

#162

tell me where you want it and thats where ill put it tell me where you like it and i will deliver tell me where you need it and i will quench your need tell me what you wanna hear and i will tell it to you tell me what it is and i will fix it for you tell me whats wrong and i will comfort you tell me how long and i will make time pass more quickly tell me what youre afraid of and i will slay the monster tell me whats the deal and i will comply tell me who you are and i will admire you tell me how you see me and i will smile tell me when to come and i will obey tell me what is what and i will pretend to understand tell me about your dreams and i will try to follow along tell me what you hear and i will try to hear the same thing tell me why im here and i will try not to blush tell me how many before me and i will try not to be jealous tell me everything and i will be overwhelmed tell it like it is and i will listen like it is tell me some of your secrets and i will keep them to myself tell me wild things and i will treat them like normal tell me boring things and i will fall l asleep tell me you wont hate me if you wake up alone and i will tell you you wont tell me you want to see me again and i will tell you the same

#161

on the bean then off it then on it then off but i cant stay off because everyone always wants to meet me for coffee always coffee in the morning in the afternoon and at night always caffeine always putting fuel in the engine revving it up til it cant go no more and you fall asleep because you flooded the engine you pressed the primer too many times and now you can crank it as much as you want but you aint getting sparks so you just gotta sleep it off let the fuel seep out on its own but you know you gotta eventually prime the motherfucker again to get the engine running so you do it and it works but it dont run the same way somehow it runs weaker and weaker everyday until it gets ridiculous and you say hell i just gotta let the motherfucker rest for a few days before i crank her up again and you resign yourself to getting no work done which is not hard to accomplish if you can fight through the headaches but you know you got to you got to but theres your amigo calling you to meet him out for coffee in the middle of the fucking night and you know youre gonna have some and because its your first time in awhile its gonna keep you up all night long and make you hate everything

#160

opportunity knocks and i answer the door and opportunity is there so when does opportunity satiate me or when does opportunity flower into accomplishment and contentment or is contentment stagnancy and stagnancy death and by extension is opportunity all there is to life until i am ready to lay down and die or is death an opportunity in itself and is after life even more opportunity to feed the worms and creepy crawling things who shit us out and fertilize the food we eat because after all we are made of food and we become food so maybe the opportunity is to come to terms with our foodness or maybe the opportunity is to transcend our foodness and decode the complexity of the world using our iphones or maybe the opportunity is to not add to the confusion by becoming a monk and eating less food because the need is not there because i pray all day and try to think of nothing and become nothing not even food just nothingness the lack of anything which sounds a whole lot like death to me and makes me wanna go back to my old ways in which moderation is pointless and aint nothing worth doing unless you take it all the way so when opportunity knocks you gotta take it in the gut

#159

adios cigarillos i shall miss you as i lock down into business mode and clean up my everything and grease my parts so i can run clean and energized into a brave new future with nothing but my clean new energy to drive me to glory in clean and handsome style into a house on bad boy row on mulholland drive with a view of the flats where i can see my struggle from above and where i can play my music as loud as i want without disturbing anybody but the birds who fly in clean patterns to remind me of the freedom i have earned and who perch proudly on wires to remind me of the fear i left behind and i will write greater and grander and messier things to fuck up my clean new world and to remind the humans that every life is a wretched and beautiful terror and my friends will be plentiful and free as we sit in the sun and fight our demise with smiles and celebrate our wrinkles and dig deeper into the mire of our wretched and beautifully terrible lives and we talk about the times before bad boy row when we saw no hope and we will reminisce without nostalgia but remember fondly the times when we smoked cigarettes and our royal dreams were just fantasies

#158

highland park is a neighborhood in los angeles that is like williamsburg and park slope and oaxaca all mashed together with the hipsters and yuppie homebuyers and mexican families all mashed together and everybody looking at each other a little suspiciously unsure of what the other guys want with their neighborhood and the fact is that the hipsters are only here because some maven set upon the wind a rumor that all the cool kids were moving east to highland park where everybody is mashed together and the snowflake homeowners heard that they didnt have to go all the way out to glendale anymore to get a good deal on a three bedroom two bath starter home because the hipsters had started to move in and gentrify the once scary neighborhood and the mexicans and salvadoreans looked at each other and said why are these chingadores moving into the arroyo seco and driving up our rents and opening their own shops and restaurants and where are we going to go now further east fuck that puta we are just gonna stay right here and let the british come and ten years down the road when our sons and daughters have children with the crackers we will sell our houses for a million bucks so fuck em

#157

the mysticism of athletics is a concept with which i have some experience like the exaltation after a great goal or a michael jordan buzzer beater or a diving hail mary catch in the division finals or simply in the way my legs stretch out as i sprint alongside the arroyo seco parkway or channeling that blinding energy into the last push up or the long womblike glide of a good stroke in the swimming pool or the way my body changes in the mirror from day to day depending on what i do physically and what i eat transforming the holy body from one shape to another like i am both the clay and the god and my willpower is my god power because i can be as strong as i will and i can look however i will and i can feel however i will and with great concentration i can transcend with an unlikely shot or a blistering sprint or an adrenal yank of the pull up bar and the memory of transcendence will stick in my muscles and hurt for days as punishment for reaching beyond my abilities and i enjoy the pain because it just feels so goddam good

#156

duke and carmelita meet on the wrong side of a blind curve in baja and fall instantly in love attracted like one crazy magnet to another then duke sneaks carmelita over the border and they live in some kind of peace until creeping desperation takes over duke and he needs to go to nashville to become a country singer so duke gets an annulment of his previous marriage to tracy and he and carmelita plan to get hitched and save up enough dough to go east but before their wedding date rolls around carmelitas pops kicks the bucket so they have to hike it down to old mexico so carmelita borrows janies passport and they go to the funeral in san quintin where duke meets carmelitas drug running brother salvador and arranges to run a load of coke over the border but when they go to the pick up spot and carmelita understands whats going down she flips out and shoots duke and shoots salvador and a henchman so she is stranded over the border with gangs after her but the gangs think that she is janie because of the passport she dropped in haste at the pick up point

#155

gotta do your math homework buddy get onto your computer and log into your account like youre some adolescent in neuromancer or johnny mnemonic and crank out your homework which is checked by computer and you get instant feedback and meaningless digital rewards that your second you can keep in your second house as you lead your second life online and develop fully into a person with whom i have nothing in common and no interest to talk to and the generation gap has closed on my generation of swine who were born before the internet existed and only learned what it was with difficulty in ninth grade so that it wasnt impressed on our dna and we retained a strong sense of self awareness but now the yuppies of the eighties have given birth to a whole breed of maggots that grew up connected to the internet and to a multitude of devices because their yuppie parents bought up every device and digi knick knack that ever existed so their little maggot spawn would have a head start over all those poor bastards from the barrio who still have to go to the public library to use a computer but shit i am just your babysitter so hop onto your macbook and do your homework buddy

#154

come on in here to the third bedroom which of course is the master with beautiful hardwood floors all around and back in the kitchen all stainless steel appliances and vaulted ceilings in the living room and a beautiful lemon tree in the spacious yard and all of this for only six hundred dollars a month and you may ask how this is possible and i will tell you how its because when you sign the rental agreement you are also agreeing to do small and annoying errands and non repayable favors for me at my request which basically means that i will find out when you are most busy at which point i will call you early in the morning and plead with you to do an errand which involves you driving all the way across town to do something unimaginably annoying and to make it worse you wont have time to do it and when you tell me so i will plead pitifully and use words like desperate and need until you feel guilty because you did sign the agreement so you do the errand and call me to tell me its done but i dont answer so you leave a message asking me to please give you some more warning next time and then i send a text message back that just says k

#153

the boys broke the banister and i gotta tell mom and dad for crissake we were doing just fine besides a friendly tiff about if and when they were too mean to each other and then the rubber band ball falls down the stairs and breaks the goddam upright on the banister i was just sitting there on my computer when i heard a thud crack crash and i shouted out what was that and then silence and then i said i said what was that guys then i walked around the corner to find that the rubber band ball fell down the stairs and snapped the upright like a twig and they were all like he was playing with the rubber band ball nah ah it wasn't me it was him and i said i dont care go put the rubber band ball back upstairs and i held the two pieces of the broken upright in my hand and said this costs money and they hung their heads as if money were some magical heavy thing which had an importance beyond their comprehension and then after they put the rubber band ball back upstairs they tried to walk right out the front door right under my nose as if it was a normal thing for ten year old boys to do to just leave the house without telling anybody

#152

coffee cuppa coffee in this crazy multicultural cafe in east hollywood called sabor y cultura where a table of eight middle aged nerds plays mysterious board games and four black ladies crowd around their elderly mother on this mothers day sunday and the asian barista pours a beverage for a dominican looking fellow and a mexican guy in a dodgers cap hunches over his laptop with his headphones on bobbing to an unheard beat and the korean guy on the couch who looks like he is waiting for someone and the clean cut persian businessman flipping through the back pages of the la weekly and the long haired metal scum finger pecking on his tiny netbook in between biting his nails and the swarthy fellow of indeterminate ethnicity with a mohawk that doesnt match his fiftyish years and me the white guy writing in his notebook at a round table pressed against the wall spying on all my crazy neighbors of the next hour or so who are busy talking or gaming or listening or surfing or reading or serving or asking or daydreaming or whatever else like the redhaired guy that looks just like louis ck with an inscrutable expression who must be thinking of something he doesnt want to be thinking about

#151

hummina hummina summer is coming the weather is warming and hummingbirds humming around my canyon window in the last weeks before i move my carload worth of personal possessions to a fortified compound in the barrio of highland park where i plan to spread out in the three bedrooms of the main house and set up a writing office in the grand finished garage out back where i will write my masterpiece as the great rob fitterman scoffed not believing in the idea of the masterwork ha tell that to richard wagner who probably would have beaten rob to death with a potato which i heard is all wagner could afford to eat in his early days as an unrecognized genius in his own mind or a goddam maniac in my mind but whats an unrecognized fellow like me got to say about genius when i cant even get recognized as a real writer by my friends and family who have the manuscript proof that i do in fact commit words to paper at a frequent and often feverish rate and which i will soon string together in masterful fashion in my mad garage of verbal alchemy within my fortified compound in highland park when the weather is high and you can stretch right out and touch the sky in the summertime hummina hummina hummina

#150

keep me outta this buster i dont want no part of your insanity alternate universe trip from hollywood on buckboard to inside the movie from prokofiev to my funny valentine without a bridge or an approach just boom and there you are the characters shift taking one anothers personae like it aint no thing like its some cubist story where each character is every character seen from all angles at once flicking on the screen and then there in real life lights out transformation green skin and now youre him wait what surreal thing am i seeing and what does it mean and if it means nothing then does it matter and what matters in the first place does any art matter even if art changes the world we live in does change matter who decides what matters i suppose entertainment matters because when entertained youre not thinking about the futility of thinking about what matters i like laughter but whether laughter matters or is just a freakish spasm of the chest and throat is entirely possible though that doesnt change its entertainment value even if you dont value entertainment you gotta admit that laughing is all right whether it matters or not for that matter

#149

first day on the job coming right up parked outside about to meet the old babysitter or nanny whatever you want to call her and she is gonna show me the ropes yeah show me how my monday through friday for who knows how long is gonna be hopefully not that long but it will be awhile judging by my current level of screenwriting success or maybe not considering the uptick of good things people are saying about our stuff and claiming they are going to do with it ha we will see wont we in this infamous business in this infamous city of infamous lies and broken deals and stabbing backs and pissing on hydrants and other primal rude stuff that makes this place as gloriously fucked up as any place in cyberspace and beyond jeez i am surrounded by towering mansions and manicured lawns that the tenants take for granted heebie jeebies in manicured mansion land pickpocket feeling reeling from the big bread zone i seem to have infiltrated honestly with the threat of monotony around every turn its just a placeholder he tells himself a way to get by until the purse pops and he absconds with his brain to mexico city twenty two million people on the otro lado and the promise of the unknown

#148

welcome to the valley of the shadow of los angeles the san fernando melting pot of weirdness and blandness and myth and surface and hidden doors in unassuming strip malls magic hidden place out in the open hidden by universal citywalk hidden by improvement districts hiding dive bars for the good freaks and private rooms for the bad freaks hidden by all the normal folks with no clue these stories are going on around them the heroin dealer next door hidden by the bobs big boy sign and the money laundry hidden inside the karaoke bar and the prostitutes hidden beneath the hand carwash sign on ventura boulevard and the ghosts hidden between the lost years of the mission and the entire porn industry hidden right out in the open in unmarked warehouses or proud office buildings and the swingers hidden in suburban splendor off moorpark and serial bodies hidden in the tall grass of neglected orange groves and the deception of audiences hidden in the great stages of warner brothers and the choice the love the desperation hidden on the curves of mulholland drive

#147

procrastination is the mother of depression and i am her grievous child the pitiful orphan within the robe of the ghost of christmas present with a minnesota twins cap and a beaten down pair of wranglers looking all in all like an emaciated michael moore with some sort of fear transmuted into anger turned inwards then outwards depending on my momentary fortitude looking not seeking running without destination like some uncharismatic forrest gump cursed with a good brain and motivational idiocy setting myself up to be a twenty first century emily dickinson with piles of manuscripts and notebooks and a hard drive full of words at my funeral they will all say who knew that he was a writer and from beyond the grave will shout back i tried to tell you lousy motherfuckers i even sent you scripts to read and i put my music up on facebook and itunes but you never bothered to consume it because who knows why because im a poor self promoter because my humility got in the way of tootin my own horn because shyness kept me from schmoozing the fat cats instead of talking to the shy dude in the corner

#146

of course i can prove the baby is mine its my wife isnt it hey are you saying my wifes been humping around behind my back why thats impossible im home everyday at five thirty when would she have time during the middle of the day why shes got house chores to do like tidying and fixing dinner and shopping and such why it amazes me that she gets done what she gets done during the day and to think youd accuse her of having an affair why sure we have a garden boy that comes over and sure we have a pool boy but your not saying no way jim why theyre only in their twenties they wouldnt be attracted to an old woman like my wife well i guess youre right thirty ones not too old for a woman these days hey i know my wifes attractive i dont need you reminding me you might give ideas youre making me paranoid you know that why i havent been suspicious or nothing til you come around here stirring up the pot now listen here mister are you trying to tell me something are you the one diddling my wife no im sorry jim but your the one that put the damn idea in my head

#145

los angeles is a place where living things go to die and dead things go to live and hibernating things go to get sunburnt and grapes go to get sunkist and bums go to get some style and writers go to see the dark side and desperation goes to flourish and cars go to sit in traffic and beer goes to be drunk by drunks and pot goes to be vaporized by pot scientists and the skinny go to get skinnier and the fat go to stay inside and the mexicans go to see their families and the armenians go to escape genocide and the koreans go to take over downtown and music goes to get its veneers and christians go to get scared and the sun goes at the end of the day and old cars go to get pimped and the cool breeze goes to fan the flame and maniacs go on their way to hell and wisconsin goes to be in the american idol audience and serial killers go to inspire noir stories and boulevards go to be seven lanes wide and the high schoolers go to eat at in n out burger and the strange businessmen go to work in a strange cluster of tall buildings and words go to page before the brain fries on pavement

#144

nice pen ben what a nice pen that is whered you get it whered it come from last time i saw a pen like that was in a display case at the amsterdam airport in eighty nine i was there for vacation just visiting anne franks house and stuff and that nice art museum there with all the famous paintings and all and i tried weed there i didnt like it it made me paranoid i thought my kids were gonna find out oh and i tried shrooms you know the ones that make you see things so i was in this big park they got there and i said hey theres an ear in that tree and my friend was like shut up youre seeing things because of the mushrooms and i was like i dont think so look and he was like oh shit i see it too so we walked closer and it was a big papier mache ear some crazy artist had made up and stuck it in the tree and we started laughing so hard my chest started seizing up i think partly on account of the mushrooms but i couldnt stop even though it hurt like hurt to laugh but anyway nice pen ben

#143

jesus god how much agony can one soul take without even the promise of some goddam ecstasy even wagner had some joyful moments amid his potato eating misery of unproduced madness and here i am in blustery laurel canyon pissing into a ditch my mind turning mushy from lack of outcome i think i am a good writer because everyone tells me so but i cannot get anything to come of my productivity in fact i cant even get a job to support myself and i am gonna have to move into some flophouse closet with bunkbeds and used syringes and beer cans full of newport ashes and sticky floors maybe i should get a job at a hostel and just be impoverished until a magical quentin tarantino moment materializes out of the ether because all this proactivity is getting me nowhere at the speed of light speaking of which isnt calfornia supposed to be sunny and warm and not cloudy and blustery and cold like it has been since november when the rains started and all these quality screenplays started pouring out of me to no satisfying conclusion but what choice does a lowly writer have but to keep pressing on in the face of jesus god how much agony

#142

dont go in the water theres an earthquake in japan and some tsunami waves are supposed to hit california any second and the sudden waves might pull you out to sea and theres this picture of a real live whirlpool i saw in the paper that looked like one of those old japanese paintings where its some sort of sea disaster with boats all scattered everywhere and debris so prominent nervous laughter the buildings look helpless and just shattered by the water with gas explosions and nuclear power leaks and so many dead it reminds me of nine eleven and the weird feeling of helplessness and horror and unexpected emotion welling up in my eyes because i am suddenly conscious of the abrupt end to so many stories without reason and so it is that so many of the faithful asked then as they ask now why would a good god allow such horrible events to pass and god as always answers them with unflinching silence and the unfaithful sigh and ponder the merits of enduring and the bigger meaning of love and then without thinking tell their children dont go in the water

#141

pick a pocket wallet sticking out of the back pocket or better yet in the breast pocket just bump into the guy and shake him down or roll a drunk on the subway then go to the nearest bar and max out his credit card on champagne and throw a few bucks to the pigeons outside the mission jesus taking money from people not even stores or businesses that steal from you no just innocent people walking the street going to work or going home or going to national wholesale liquidators to get some cheap light bulbs i guess you might as well go to an internet cafe and get on amazon and order yourself some electronics or rare books but where to send the products not your apartment and not a friends apartment maybe just have amazon hold the product at the local post office so that no one can trace you at all or you can just take some rich guys cash and use it to feed your poor wife and kids who think you are at work at a real job not just bumping into tourists in times square and looting their pockets why not figure out how to hold up a bank it is more admirable

#140

when one adjusts oneself to poverty it aint nothing to think about except for periodic panics around april fifteenth and rent time and bill pay periods but rice is filling and grape nuts are cheap and if you can quit the smokes like i did you can live on forty bucks a week no problem plus rent costs of course but even with such a low spending rate money runs out and employment becomes necessary almost paramount and such pride tied up in making a living wage and dont even think about taking a girl out when you cant support yourself better to just wait out the prime of your life and meditate as your testosterone drains from your blood and when you reach middle or maybe old age and you are solvent finally you will have no interest in sex and so it is you just missed participating in the cycle of life instead contributing words and music and movies to the world not children but who is to say which is the nobler with overpopulation such a concern but also consider the glut of media content and how long it takes for greatness to rise to the top of the bucket o fruitful o despair o confusion

#139

far east feast disoriented in the orient kabuki theater masks violence meekness machismo submission samurai epic musashi miyamoto from savage maniac killer to wise and noble fencer of middle age only a few hundred corpses to wisdom killing whoever insults him or whoever challenges him or whoever he so pleases fending off ambushing armies and slicing the life out of opponents with a single stroke pursued by women he has forsaken hunted by men he has never met taken in by geishas challenged to duels at sunset in rice paddies and gates to cities on beaches bushwhacked by brigands mount fuji in the distance wisdom years away and with wisdom comes heavy sadness and deep wrinkles between the eyes obnoxious laughing zen priest is always so hysterical why wont he shut up and let me out of this tree let me out of this attic give me some advice that doesnt put my life in peril offer me shelter from the brigands feed me bathe me clothe me just dont trick me there is a long way to go after my battle with the great longswordsman until i find something something

#138

highway man ramblin round nothing but a suitcase full of bottled tears not a care for himself or anyone else harmonica soundtrack in the dusty desert town to town barroom girls dancing like a diamond shines it sparkles before she speaks a shot of booze to get him through just enough fuel for the endless drive through nothing to nowhere waiting round to die nothing but a desert sunrise stops the flow but once a day at the end of another lost night on the lost highway waking up beneath the stairs that lead to gypsy sallys love for a night and nothing more careful not to let his suitcase spill because the shame will fall with the rain the blues are the song wont be long til he ties on his flying shoes satisfaction no longer a thought in his ramblin mind riddled with rot full of holes of memories as tired as his feet as far away as a mountain moon no desire but to not be there wherever that may be shenandoah shadows melancholy on his soul the sound of weariness in his throat no hope to rest easy or rest at all because there has got to be traveling on forever and ever til he lays down to sleep forever and ever wearily

#137

lonely woman ornette coleman the shape of jazz to come i dont understand it but i cant stop listening to it even though i sort of hate it the squeals the meaningless runs the harsh imprecise harmonies the rhythmless drums the squirrelly bass line the shrill mix but there is something there something musical in the noise dark and slinky around alleyway corners with berettas and stilettos outside a speakeasy is she gonna charge me at the end of the night or just get up and go i would like a double whiskey neat and  filterless lucky strike smoke curls up until it meets the big cloud yeah thats lonely woman but eventually is something else like joyful mania right before a breakdown right before you realize heaven is hell and everything good is a bad chemical reaction in your brain knowing the speed is gonna put a vice on your head in the morning piggies squealing at the slaughter bacon call and response on the killing floor maybe in bed reaching and reaching for the heavy moment here it comes here it comes nope not yet but maybe eventually

#136

doctor certified its the phd dildo phd designed for perfect vibration and ultimate stimulation clinically tested for perfect size shape and comfort get yours today available everywhere just look for our phd packaging and the surgical blue unit this aint no toy ladies its the architecturally perfect foreign stimulator professionally designed and clinically tested to give you the best orgasm you could ever know better than sex even good sex even great sex hell even the best sex of your life this is the element youve been missing a device to carry your body to the heavens in a few minutes and leave you there as long as your duracell lasts with a patented logarithmic curve to stimulate your g spot and a vibrational pattern designed and certified by university trained vibration experts until your clitoris meets the phd dildo it hasnt lived it will be delivered to your doorstep in a discreet parcel but big things come in small packages ladies enjoy it at home at the theater in the car or on your lunch break keep it in your purse and rub one out in the bathroom forget all those other dildos this is the only one youll ever want or need batteries not included

#135

the beat rock and roll crazy girls strip club going up in a couple hours lead singer birthday bash biggest show of my life strippers on stage dancing along with the beat the beat that drives the hips mad makes em go bonkers for the public trust sex appeal groove music get into the groove your girlfriend already has dont forget that when you take her to the show sweat and testosterone and physicality on stage rhythm and blues shake it shake it for this twenty first century nowhere man child of the beat the snare the kick out the jams pure energy libido aurally insane unbridled fury the beat the boom the pulsing hips dont stop allow them to move your feet to stamp your head to fling your hair to irrepressible beat the public trust it cant be stopped the momentum the lap dance tunes rising and rising the tension the beat the tubes glowing the speakers vibrating the cables serpentine shirts off cant be stopped it aint only rock and roll sister its the beat the beat the beat

#134

blow gabriel blow archangel of jazz show em what youre working with lips to the brass and toot toot bebop hiphop all over the map lightning runs and modal madness melodious thunk and silvery funk keep it up and dont drop the ball eyes closed and locked into the music another tuneful dimension marijuana concentration lost in the sublime yap of the band the unit sweating together like one monstrous body of beat a force of groove an undeniable thing on stage of a different time of five four signatures and tijuana clubs of another decade but here you are and it doesnt matter spotlight limelight nobody cares that you traveled through time because youre transporting us to a time before our grandmothers were born better than vinyl its live in the flesh all eyes forward all feet tapping highballs empty gin rickeys everywhere smoke rings curling girls falling in love to the holy notes of the horn and the unholy beat and the kinky harmonies i for one lay myself down and rise up to meet you in the skies now blow gabriel blow

#133

one fish suckfish shark coming now to get swallowed up by a killer whale and out the anus to recombine with its plankton brethren lap around the globe from pole to pole frigid water ring the world equal latitude straits and storms on a submarine of scales and bones and guts prey hunted by an angry sea of darkness just below the surface hidden depths with ghoulish angler fish dangling the light to you swinging it fishing for idiots like a car salesman in atlantis twenty percent off free mats never been driven off the lot just buy it if you dont somebody will come on travel on to the reef and swim with the warm weather freaks why does good weather always attract such losers in their colorful clothes there should be one reef in the world where they dont allow douchebags but thats not the case so back to the gulf stream not bad its temperate and if you like cold weather its only a couple of miles and head inland if you want the west is stormy in the winter but its better than the arctic or the goddam reefs and a whole helluva lot better than being trapped in one of those net farms

#132

its raining in sunny la up in laurel canyon as i try to quit smoking in this perfect coffee and cigarette weather with the smoky mist out over the hills and a damp seattle fifty four degrees aching for coffee in the air the smell is weak without the tobacco and without the magic bean and my jaw is tensing up thinking about these life giving elements that death loves so well and i am about to break and go get some dunhills but i wait i am fine it must be those damn vitamins i took making my heart beat fast and my toes tap and my eyes dart and my thoughts race man it feels like adderall but it is nothing but one of the last desperate stages of withdrawal pleading for a fix telling me how nice it would be to have just a little of this and a little of that just once just to ease off the stuff you know you dont wanna just quit cold turkey because you will feel awful its better to wean yourself so just go buy a pack and smoke one and put the rest in the drawer and you can give them to your smoker friends or just have one whenever its rainy and cold like today

#131

cigarette cigarette no cigarettes headache plus no coffee headache the horror the pain the pain in the puss for godsake i have withdrawal symptoms which means i was addicted which means the nicotine and the caffeine were not having as much effect per dosage as when i first started hammering the black and tar the bean and leaf which means when i have my next dose of cafe i am gonna be crazy and i am gonna shit my pants so i should wear an old ratty pair of underwear so i dont spoil a good pair because i cant afford new underwear right now i should write that down on an index card and tape it to the wall behind my computer so i dont forget just like i did with that note card there now to remind me to write harvey a check for 13.65 which is such a pitiful amount and i have to call millie the accountant to whom i need to sign over power of attorney but i dont wanna think about such bullshit right now because i have a fuckin headache which i know will go away in two more days if i stick to it i will

#130

the leopard image sticks with me as a black flag waves on the system and the coiled sex attacks like a leopard without knowledge of its frightful grace and pearly fangs and sweet blood from the veins on its tongue it doesnt even care it doesnt want blood or food it just has to be graceful and violent because thats what it is a pretty little hate machine it doesnt know it has spots it lunges without calculation but some emotion some joyless satisfaction of an instinct a beautiful kill it stalks like it was made of black fire flicking tongue motionlessly moving too fast to see or too slow to detect unpredictable scary and so violent so why so pretty why cant you not admire the pretty hate machine of long coiled muscle and deceitful coat and dagger teeth aimed for your heart the violence the crime of it the pure crime of it all yet he is better than all the rest of us put together that violent fuck that hateful killer of innocent things that beautiful beast

#129

there is a hawk tooth stuck in my craw and iggy pee in my ee are that is all folks musicologist on a long and winding road to hell with no possible escape on hades horizon orpheus prancing around like little richard on goofballs making fun of his friends that have to use walkers to amble around and around we go on a merry go round of dream fears and a leopard on stage that doesnt know how beautiful it is as it stalks and lurks and screams search and destroy and rise above all this meaningless shee it that is where our program comes to an end to be continued on the next installment of meaningless bull run in pamplona and ernie hemingway drinking from a wineskin like a basque nomad no gonad main character named barnes or something is better than nothing said fannie farmer from in utero the baby passed into the next next world yup straight from the inside to the other side where things are even more boring than womb life because there is no other side just dirt and worms and silverfish and slugs or biohazard bags and dumpsters

#128

look who it is going in the studio thats the public trust i heard them before girl they tight like a baby butthole nice and groovy bootylicious like beyonce who i hear got one in the oven no doubt from jay that fertile mothafucka talk about a groove i bet they rock nice between them sheets in their ten cajillion dollar house in greenpoint i mean when is that sex tape gonna hit the internet i would be all over that shit like breading on kfc i bet you they film all sortsa crazy shit on that camcorder i bet you they do it in the studio she all sucking him off while he lays down that track and even while hes writing the words hell i would do that shit for real i dont care if its gay or not his shit would be all deep in my esophagus and id be like what and hed all be like what and then hed lay down some wicked shit like you never heard all open minded and gay friendly and shit yo that would be the shit for real and im totally down jay if you read this its on man i aint fucking with you or any such shit you can find me in the blue van parked by them warehouses right by the gowanus canal and shit

#127

funny set up all down and out in los angeles with nothing but hitch 22 between me and this side of paradise and a plastic cup with milk drying in a ring at the bottom and too expensive eyeglasses on top of a thesaurus which is on top of a dictionary which is on top of a clipboard upon which are clipped snippets of short stories and song ideas and le mepris by jean luc godard inches away needing to be returned to the video store and a powerbook g4 in front of me playing ray charles through itunes and a brother brand typewriter in the back left corner of this brand new wooden fold out table and on my lap is a black and white speckled notebook upon which i am scribbling words with a blue pilot inkpen which i grip with my thumb and index finger and middle finger while i enjoy my bare arms with my tanktop on and the warm white light cutting through the window in front of me and shining onto my old black guitar case on the floor to the left of my ass which sits on a beige metal chair like one might find in a middle school teachers break room

#126

california lonely like only california can be freeways and big skies and the ocean and wide boulevards and dry heat all good places for closeness and comfort disappear and evaporate into nothingness leaving me alone and lonesome with no friends and a mexican eightball buzz just the way i like it not unhappy but very very alone with my mind and my ideas and trying to punch a hole in my fingertips to let some bloody ideas out onto the page and into the world but the dry peace of la taking me down slamming my wet brain into the dust of this western eden where all is possible but so many sins are committed every second that even god cant keep count nor does he need to because what could he do with the tally but retch at his dismal design while his chilluns bask in the sun like lizard freaks and spend poor peoples salaries on dinner and the fool immigrants in east la eat rice and beans and send extra pesos back south wondering if the horror of their northern migration was worth the lousy payoff rice and beans california lonely like only california can be

#125

taking it hard in new york city where the streets are burning my soles and the weather is hot and the girls are pretty and they are starting to show some skin and i am starting to fall in love on a daily basis with a different girl it is the damn weather i tell you it is the pollen i tell you it is the fact that i have a penis i tell you oh god i need to get out of this bacchanal city before i take it too far with some floozy that took advantage of a surge in my hormones or before i drink and smoke myself into some gnarly oblivion with nothing left behind but a strange little movie and an even stranger collection of journalism and an oddball selection of unproduced screenplays that have as yet resisted garnering an agent or manager and just sit there on my shelf like some ugly little art project i was too scared to show anyone but the truth is that i have just been to pansy about the whole thing and i have refused to be cocky and arrogant enough to get my scripts in the hands of the studio brass who can make the damn things into movies with stars and big budgets and all so it is time to get cocky and shove it down some throats

#124

nothing is forever except the past said that poor son of a bitch as he looked down to the hudson from the rooftop of his sixth avenue apartment and then he looked south down into greenwich village and took a long sip of his wild turkey and thought about his college days swimming naked in the washington square fountain and sex in the stalls at taverns with women he barely knew and didnt care to know he let out a big sigh and turned to the woman next to him with whom he had been in love the last time he looked over but not anymore it seemed she was nothing to him anymore but a stranger and a gloomy reminder that his youth was behind him and the wrinkles were starting to spread like spiderwebs around his mouth and eyes and up to his steadily growing forehead he looked east and stopped for a second to consider how soft and pink the sky gets at the end of a warm day and the sun has abandoned the east in favor of the west and he wondered if his problem was that his day hadnt been warm enough but he came to no conclusions he looked back at the woman and decided she would have to do for now

#123

hey girl where exactly did this come from us falling for each other and then things getting complicated within twenty four hours of the start of it all curses to whoever is responsible for this and a pox on gods balls just for good measure now i wish we were together again in my bed or yours because they both worked all right and moving in rhythm with each other like two halves of one ecstatic body and what a body you have just perfection my georgia rose with strawberry blond hair and everything about you is sweetness from your voice to your breath to your taste to the touch of your skin to your words to your eyes to the looks we shared and your sweet sweet smile oh glory when i fly away i hope to find myself in your arms in the by and by when we kissed i knew and you knew and sometimes things like this happen we were told by fairy tales and hollywood and it happened to happen to us in real life but now it looks like its all over because of circumstance because of the chance shitstains on our random histories and the people we each know so i am trying to convince myself to appreciate the whole thing like a comet or like any of the other godforsaken love affairs of mine that have ended this same cursed way

#122

morning new york at the hollywood diner and a cup of watery joe in front of me on the bar a sausage and egg sandwich on the way and a full day of work ahead of me and i will probably never feel better than i do right now but i am restless and cant help it i am leaving this paradise and going to the garden of eden in los angeles and then i think i need something new for awhile like el paso or washington dc or hawaii or florida or mexico or argentina or just something new because i havent done anything crazy and new since paris really because i dont count providence because i was there to work and new york is definitely my favorite city in the world and one can never know every in and out of the city but one can feel the heart of it like any city except los angeles and i need a new heart maybe austin could renew me or maybe i need a traveling job that will send me all over the place so i am never at home and thats whats at the bottom of it i am sick of being at home

#121

a southern gentleman does not crap on his friends head when his friend isnt looking nor does he murder people without motivation nor does he cross the street without looking both ways nor does he rape other peoples house cats nor does he twist the knife after the torture victim has made his confession nor does he eat chinese food alone on thanksgiving nor does he parade as mussolini in july and promote genocide nor does he fund snuff films nor does he let a stray piece of egg salad get stuck in his mustache nor does he practice soccer using an immigrants head as the ball nor does he embezzle funds from charitable organizations nor does he let a lady open a door for herself nor does he roll drunks just for the rush nor does he arrange homosexual orgies in his secret house in the bad part of town nor does he forget which spoon is the correct one to use for soup nor does he carelessly spread his venereal diseases to his friends wives nor does he masturbate in public toilets nor does he keep nightcrawlers in his pocket for no reason at all nor does he fart on the proctologist when the proctologist is giving him a rectal exam nor does he curse in the presence of the fairer sex

#120

i would like it to be publicly known that i am pathologically unable to turn down an invitation if i dont have a conflict so my schedule gets eaten up by a string of engagements half of which are joyful occurrences and the other half teeth pulling nail biting exercises in boredom endurance with people i dont really know or whose company i dont enjoy so since i have diagnosed my illness i would like everyone whose company i dont enjoy to quit inviting me to do things with them and not just for my sake but for all yours as well because if i am finding our conversations excruciatingly laborious you cant be having a good time i mean i get so bored i am incapable of making the least interesting comment and certainly nothing witty or astute escapes from my mouth in these situations because my mind turns soft and the blood supply gets cut off and a keen depression concentrates into a point between my eyes and gives me a migraine of hopelessness which certainly must show on my face so in conclusion please just stop inviting me out and there will be more hope in the world and children of all colors will be fucking in the streets in the morning

#119

creeping christ i dont want the wild turkey but i will take it anyway because i am the enablers enabler and i will make sure that the chaos comes from within all three of us and not just me because there is only so much that one man can do but if you get three of us together and fuel us with admiral nelsons firefly wild turkey then you have a grisly force that might break into spontaneous lancing bouts in the median of philadelphias busiest thoroughfare or fall face first on a freeway exit ramp or try to bring women home with it even though the force resides two and a half hours away or spend more than it can afford but not regret it because this is one for the history books and i recorded it all posing as a reporter from the new york times and revealing myself as an ignorant fraud at every turn but no one cared because we were so much fun and they liked us there and they liked the chaos and the freedom of madness and they liked answering my questions into the dictaphone knowing that we would listen back to the recordings and hear their voices and opinions and we would laugh

#118

theres a smoothie on my boobie said the duchess of earl a dashing young lady of seventeen and it just so happened that the duke was in london on business so i the duchesss clothier was left to suck that blueberry smoothie off her royal pink nipple like a puppy goes for mothers milk but keeping within the realm of propriety i stopped sucking when the smoothie was gone from that cold and erect nipple then i turned around and went about my business and not a second later i heard theres some smoothie on my cooter and i whipped around and burrowed beneath the duchesss dress and wore her crotch like a horse wears a feed bag for hours and hours her thighs clamped around my ears deafening me to her orgasmic screams her feet pressed against my back pulling me in closer as if i could get any closer than having my face halfway inside her but i tried and for a moment i imagined myself swimming inside her exploring her feminine tunnels in a jules verne sort of way just curious and fascinated at every turn all the savagery of sex replaced by the cold comfort of science but then she pushed me back and dumped the rest of her smoothie down my pants and said theres a smoothie on your weewee

#117

hey singer hey singer i love you get on off that stage and stop singing our song to all these schmucks in the audience and we can go back to my place and when i want a show you will sing in my ear and after you finish we will make love and then we will shower and then drink wild turkey on the river bank and look up at the clouds that mingle briefly with our cigarette smoke every time we exhale and we will nap for a little bit and when we wake up we can do whatever we want like go back to my place and make love all over the place or we can meet up with friends before we go back to my place and make love all over the place and dont forget we can always go back to your place and make love all over the place any one of those options will work for me but you have to promise that you will sing for me every now and then and not let our lovemaking get in the way of what made me fall in love with you oh that voice and that mouth and your eyes and your hips and your shoulders hey singer i love you get on off that stage and we can do whatever we want

#116

i am exhausted like a tail pipe an engine running on fumes uphill in the rain in a foreign place where the law tells you to drive on the weird side of the road and even when you know its right it feels wrong and you slip up and the cops pull you over and ask you questions in a tongue you cant understand or even place because you woke up in this car with no recollection of the past month and it might be switzerland or germany or argentina or nepal but you dont recognize the language its indecipherable and the cops uniform is blue like in america but its definitely not america so you just throw up your hands in frustration but the cop is startled by your sudden movement and pulls his gun on you and you slump back in your seat resigned to die in some unknown foreign land but he doesnt shoot he just slowly backs up all the way to his car keeping his eyes on you the whole time then he gets in his car and pulls away so after a few weird seconds fascinated by the absence of adrenaline you turn the key in the ignition and drive up and up but it gets suddenly dark and theres no sign of humanity and your eyelids are heavy so you pull over to the shoulder of the road in this strange land and give in

#115

love is in the hair said hildegard as she unleashed her bun into the two miles of locks that a moment ago were piled on her head and then we climbed into the great white convertible and i stepped on the gas harder and harder until all two miles of hair was blown taut like old glory in a hurricane and then i looked at the speedometer to find that we were traveling at one hundred seventy mph and my joy was interrupted by a strangling fear of law enforcement until i realized that if i accelerated just a little bit more no swine could ever catch me so i set cruise control at two ten and then i climbed onto hildegards hair and walked on it like a plank for a mile or so until the roaring white whale was barely visible in the distance then i stripped stark naked and lay down to get a tan but the gale force wind tickled my balls and the sun made me horny so i flipped onto my stomach and fucked hildegards hair until a banshee orgasm ripped my loins in two and littered the desert highway with untold generations of me which screamed and shriveled in the heat and i turned over on my back penis in the air like a sundial and muttered to myself over and over love is in the hair

#114

he is lording over us that spirit in the sky the grand voyeur the incubus prime the alpha and omega kingdom come spying and plying our lives and putting his omnipotence in our biznass which is ludacris bc if you fucking invented us then either help us or leave us the fuck alone you dumb geezer stop fucking with us and putting stones and railroad ties in my fucking footpath damn god so heres the thing am i an atheist no a religious fella no but i do believe in a singular higher force that exists above all else and i rely on the admittedly faulty first cause theory for the logical part of my belief because everything exists it seems so something had to cause everything to exist right but what caused the first cause to exist and so on and turtles all the way down but i have no faith or love for this first cause god if he does exist bc he isnt exactly the biggest presence in my life outta sight outta mind and since no one ever has seen or experienced your presence i cant waste any sympathy on you so unless youre gonna come be a part of my life stop lording over me lord

#113

some things are simply harder than others for example peeing versus dredging the suez canal or walking versus painting the ceiling of the sistine chapel but if you have a urinary problem or you dont have any legs then maybe you dont agree but even so you probably understand what im getting at and would probably agree though maybe you wouldnt because you want to make a statement that people shouldnt just assume everybody can walk and pee because there is diversity in this world goddammit and if you cant get used to that then go back to the stone age or run for senator or open a barbecue restaurant but dont you stand there talking to me like youre some kind of human being that deserves an ounce of my respect i hate you because of your closed mind and inconsideration of those who you probably consider less fortunate than you ya prick i hate you and everyone like you and everyone that reminds me of you so you could be like that or just agree with the sentiment and make conversation more pleasant for the world by judging intention and not the mechanics of the language save that for your op ed piece and i promise ill read it

#112

i write i do i write and roll like ozzy osbum the wicked mathemetician pine valley mail truck driven by the possessed spawn of dixie and the dark lord after which suzy unwittingly baked my remains into the lasagna served at tad and hayleys wedding at the hale bop heavens gate headquarters mass suicide geniuses in a sterile compound holy holy glockenspiel at the top of everest wise guy in a seafood joint in little italy roman holiday beauty bogart baby in a bubble with a babble in its fart the queen of hearts the overthrow of a dynasty of bastard men in blackened spicy robes under a blood red sky where jimmy cracks corn and i dont care for mother goose cuz she dont care for meat and i simply cant abide a vegetarian diet commercials lap band dog instant hair loss lip gloss liposuction miracle whip its a free country music station to stationery store front and back in black you never go back in time is on my side of a barn door is open for business as usual suspects apprehended red handy man around the house coat of paint the town red sea to shining sebring me a pint of irelands finest sewage water and make it quick before i do die do die doe die do die

#111

two days after fools day and not a single trick was played upon the lemonade split by the cinnamon stick in a rainy meadow where nothing stood but a simple stand by a couple portly fellows portentously manned selling wicked chemist concoctions of sugar and spice spiked with a lethal dose of crawling pubic lice but nothing so delicious did this kingdom ever see than their uniquely tangy potion of cracker pecker tea that would split your brain and buckle your knees and bend your elbows back and send shivers shooting down your spine from cranium to crack the queen could soon drink nothing but and princess anna too but king balloo banished the men because the drink gave him the flu and then there was a great revolt from pauper to royalty and the farmers used their pitchforks to fight for democracy and when they won they nominated a portly fellow to run for prime minister and he won the seat and banned from the kingdom the bastard drink censors then he held a free cup day where everyone could come and have a cracker pecker tea spiked with spicy rum and thus the party ran and ran til they all drank themselves dumb

#110

back and forth and in and out and left to right and here and there and there we are at wimbledon at centre court following balls with our swiveling melons intrigued by a match we have no stake in supporting a player out of blind and disgusting patriotism the eighth deadly sin the arbitrary pride america has duped its citizens into believing is a moral thing god and country the contradiction is clear if you believe in god then you should value all gods creatures equally i dont remember any people besides the jews that were set apart as special and holy in the eyes of god and surely god didnt have one of his prophets slip in some line about the usa in the bible so what is this god and country thing other than nationalistic jingoism hammered into your brain to make you more willing to accept the atrocities our country impresses upon the less fortunate and hopefully get you to turn out for the ticker tape parade where we land those mercenary killers for hire we call soldiers and praise to no end just because they work for the government theyre volunteer killers of innocent little brown people upholders of totalitarian regimes keepers of the american world order and guardians of the corporate greed wealth and i dont support them

#109

dry spell in a wet hell morning nothing but boring crustacean land life wavering on the brink of plankton worthless boneyard flavor in the depths of puddle pie crazy as a naked jaybird on the wagon off caffeine sans cigarettes by no means straight edge and by no means mormon or born again just a clear mind to antagonize the world without clouds and lapses of memory and humiliations when someone else can tell my story better than i can whats up my gayness on the soccer field after they scare or oops i just farted as i hit the pitch in golden valley that port of call that layover in my young life that i remember more vaguely than i want to even clemmons fades away lost in the dense brambly forest of tanglewood escaped horses in the yard smoking refires with josh and making out with ashley at the ymca and going up her shirt at the water park and jordans arm breaking during the soccer game like a twig snapping off a high branch and now memory trees fall in tanglewoods wilderness and im not there to seem them or hear them but sometimes i find myself alone in the wilderness crying or laughing or finding fallen fragments of branches that used to mean something but now i cant quite place them

#108

when the moon is smiling and youre reminded that your heroes are gone a sad version of peace fills your bones and lovers from the past weep in your memory and love and sorrow overcome the illusion of routines and annoyances and habits and you are there somewhere with your heroes in unity without separation beyond ambition beyond need and desire beyond want and ignorance beyond words in empty space alive with music not bound by the fallacy of surviving swimming in the balmy dark just feeling only feeling nothing but feeling everyone is gone but you are with them all in nothing just reality and nothing else illusions by holy laughter blown to rags and atoms at a blast all but reality forgotten regret and pride alike eaten by the vacuum energy alone remaining just feeling only feeling nothing but feeling when the moon is smiling and youre reminded that your heroes are gone

#107

oh my god oh my lord one day at a time sweet jesus theres a bomb coming out of the sky and everybody knows but the wingman is here to solve your woes by wooing the sweet young mary of your dreams like freud in the batcave slaving away at his psychotic analysis of your inner fantasy bullshit bullshit hogwash for sale twenty five cents a pound two bits a lb my lord on high in the sky looking down at his ant farm observing the system and realizing he is only part of the system he created no more immune to the effects of the first cause than uncle bob in tomahawk wisconsin is immune to the hospital laying him off cigarette ashes keeping his arctic cactus alive under the all seeing eyes of larry curly and moe and the duke little missy youre too young to handle a gun oh yeah john wayne pow pow kablow his brains plop onto the dusty trail while his lifeless body stands unaffected and petrifies into a living dead monument to fakery upon which big g in the sky smiles down bemused knowing he couldnt have stopped the carnage if he wanted to because he bowled the ball into the precosmic cluster and sent us hurtling through misery and pain and meaningless dominoes unaware of our freedom our mastership of our souls our oneness our consciousness our love and our web oh my lord oh my god

#106

talk to the stigmata hood rat satan in a black box theater underneath a grocery store where tv actors do things that are much more interesting and intelligent than the backwash they cough up on screen the poor successful hacks that have nothing but a grocery store basement in chelsea to feed their artistic souls whereas i have my piece of shit apartment in crown heights to remind me everyday that i havent sold out and even if i had the opportunity i wouldnt accept tens of thousands of dollars in exchange for minimal work because i simply dont pander to monied interests actually in think this is true because i dont really need money and i believe my self respect would shrivel like a penis in the yukon in a fruit dehydrator if ever i saw myself hawking some bullshit product on late night tv or even if i was on a tv show of low merit for after all tv shows are just the space between the commercials as far as the big wigs are concerned but then again the movie world isnt as pure as i would like to think it is since stars are the big draw so you have to put stars in your movie for it to open big or to give it legs even if brad pitt is wrong for the role and who knows maybe even brad pitt longs to be in the basement of a grocery store in chelsea sometimes

#105

there is no sanctuary my felonious friends we thieves of the night of justice and good misunderstood by all even those we aim to help but we must forge ahead moving under the cloak of darkness from hamlet to village from kingdom to camelot from great hall to single family occupancy dwelling redistributing wealth as we the radical economist outlaws see fit and carry out our operation in stealth speeding the adjustment of the market and molding a guerrilla socialist state purloining gold bullion from fort knox and knocking off atms and rolling wealthy lushes and executing high end jewelry and art heists doing whatever it takes to robin hood this world into equality even jumping into the cap and trade game setting up front corporations and selling our emissions to proctor and gamble and using that money to hire a safe cracking specialist to go into proctor and gambles headquarters and steal their cash that we can give to the working class heroes whose houses are getting foreclosed because they were sold subprime loans by another institution that we are going to rob and our mission is to redistribute wealth so that every person in the world has exactly thirty two thousand dollars and for the first time democracy will rule as no one can leverage their financial power to influence the government or i guess we could just search for honest politicians ha ha ha

#104

fast i cant move from malnourished brittle bones syndrome pummeled by giant fists of arsenic and truth serum forced to tell the story of romulus and remus teat sucking infidels founders of a ruined city questioned by interpol and thrown in a secret prison for international offenders of public faith and unanimous consensus of the olympic nations living in filth in tent city vancouver biplanes circling ominously with intent to kill manslaughter to the nth degree you fill in the variable with what you will and never approach infinity holy trinity holy ghost invisible tyrant of vague and myth like unicorn leprechaun wizard of the omnipresent banging on an open door with a fist made of whispers and lies until you cease to live in the eighth dimension and materialize and try to live in the real world until you realize life here isnt worth the aggravation and you give up the ghost and return to your safe and heavenly perch on gods golden throne and do what youve always done nothing because you dont exist in fact the word you doesnt even apply to you praise jesus for the revelation and my impending elevation into the heavens to perch on gods golden throne and do what a holy ghost should do which is i dont know i guess ill just be here where i cant move fast

#103

juno the crime dog perched on a mountaintop eating her curds and whey when out came a diplomat and convinced her to sign a nato nuclear disarmament treaty and then america bombed her country and stole her natural resources so juno swam to the bottom of the dead sea and sought out the worlds oldest merman herman who told her to seek out the diplomat and slit his throat and decapitate him and stick his severed head on a trident and display it in the piazza della repubblica for all the western world to see but juno the crime dog thought this unwise as times square was much closer to the source of the crime but the merman explained that she would never get a severed head into america because the tsa is too tight ever since that stupid underwear bomber futzed his job so juno and herman compromised and decided on picadilly circus so juno resurfaced and trekked to the embassy and slipped into the diplomats office and chopped off his head and took that bleeding thing to london and then realized she didnt have a trident so she found an old curiosity shop and the proprietor had a farmers pitchfork which was good enough she thought so she took her materials out to picadilly circus and stuck the severed head onto the pitchfork and lashed it to a lamppost then a bobby came up to her and said it was illegal to stage a protest without a permit and arrested her

#102

when youre weary feeling dreary and a bottle of rum on the wall where the sum of all parts is equal to the hole in the bottle as you squeeze the throttle and mollycoddle the ringworm tooth fairy on a man made bridge just a hop skip and jump from dead mans ridge where the daredevils fall into an urn while the car radio fuzzes turn turn turn and the cops come to investigate the scene and draw a line of chalk around the reckless teen who did it all for the high school dream and street cred to impress the rebel james dean the three movie king of cunnilingus in the hollyweird machine betting on roulette nobody knows nothing nobody holds the cards and everybodys bluffing like the eight k bling on the cardinals ring finger or a three dollar cup of starbucks red zinger if you cant afford a mocha for your girl dont bring her into this world to increase the surplus population and spread stds by excessive copulation just because shes getting tired of solitary stimulation be a man get a vasectomy youll be an inspiration to a new generation of lazy goof worthless for a pepsi and a wii theyll humilate themselves and eat a millipede on fear factor or laugh about losing a limb under a tractor if i need a girl to love me gotta find a good actor

#101

what im doing now is one hunnert percent illegal in every state and province in every county of every principality in every country on every continent on every planet in every galaxy in every universe in every dimension inside every gods brain forever both forward in time and retroactively but i dont think its so bad because it serves my interests quite well making me fatter and happier and mitigating the stress of my existence so i take offense at anyone elses offense because weve all done bad things before maybe not on the scale of my evil deeds but a sin is a sin and wrong is wrong so dont go around thinking youre better than me just because you dont have the power and position and means that i have because youd be doing the same things if you were wearing my thousand dollar shoes you little upstart prick and thats why youll never be where i am because you dont understand man you dont have the compassion and understanding of what its like to be in my position and the kind of situations im put in and the kind of decisions i have to make so dont go blaming me for some shit your little parochial brain cant even comprehend you little insignificant fuck

#100

and now to jim at the white house jim how are you doing today thanks brian im doing great which is much better than i can say for house republicans who are having a rough go at it today on the hill with dems really sticking it to them on a variety of issues and not hesitating to use the recent republican scandal to their advantage on the podium and earlier today i spoke to john smith representative from iowa john thanks for taking a minute out of your schedule to speak with my network im glad to be here jim thanks for having me on now john let me ask you as a sixty three year old wealthy white male politician how easy is your life well jim im glad you asked because i tell you its not easy you see because i have all these people back in iowa that elected me as their representative you see and they want me to do things for them you see which takes a lot of effort interesting john so i see that the effort it takes is too much for you yes jim that is correct and let me mention my beautiful wife and two lovely daughters and my newborn granddaughter that was great john thanks for having me on jim and now back to brian in the studio thanks for that piece of journalism jim and thats all the time we have tonight this is brian mediocrity signing off god bless america

#99

this biological article needs additional flagellates for meat grinding accuracy in order for it to be legally engraved on the vietnam monument in my lai where their skin still burns like napalm on pho with a little cock sauce on the top making them crow for mercy and offer their skeletons for vibraphones tex avery style anti nazi propaganda little german brainwash boy in a bubble and a baby with the babble in its heart and i believe that four score and seven years from now i will not exist but haleys comet will be doing fine and scientology will be the worlds dominant religion squashing atheism into nonexistence sweeping abraham under the dianetic rug with all the other bugs like the mayan calendar and nostradamus and timmy boy leary on a wood panelled tour bus luxuriating in psychadelic comfort observing the infinite intricacies of wood grain and knots and lacquer and imagination the destroyer of fascism and status quo and that exterior world if you want it all to disappear but dont confuse creative laziness with imagination like terry gilliam has that poor old biological specimen without enough brain flagella to make an imaginary pinwheel spin in the breeze

#98

wake me up before you go bowling because i dont want your ball knocking over my dreams and giving me a stroke because you roll a strike on the high point of my rem cycle with a banana split doing the tango with bigfoot before barbie swoops down in a chopper and blows harry away with an uzi and takes me to dr dementos castle where big bird is waiting to take me out on the lake to go water skiing with mr t and three of my ex girlfriends who are all pregnant by my elementary school principal who is bob dylans brother and can do time travel magic casting us back to 1939 hollywood where we hang out with humphrey bogart and ingrid bergman and everybody gets roofied by cary grant and we stumble back into the next millennium in walmart where humphrey is operating the cash register and he lets us take the baby pool even though we dont have enough cash to pay for it just because he likes us and then i find my three exes face down in the baby pool dead as door nails and my life takes a dark turn as axl rose leads the funeral ceremony while slash plays a dirge in an empty western church yard and the color bleeds out of the rose and all im left with is blankness and my elementary school principal who recommends we go back to golden valley to recover but instead i crawl up my mothers vagina and die stillborn

#97

i think i may have made a mistake when i asked the nun out on facebook because she hasnt made any status updates for months oh i would have called her but i dont have her phone number i cant believe i didnt get her phone number but i should be grateful that i found her on facebook and i wonder if she has a myspace page with sexy pictures of her lifting up the hem of her habit to reveal her slim ankle i cant believe ive fallen for a nun but theres something about that guaranteed purity that turns me on because you can never tell with other folks when they say theyve only slept with three people ever in their whole lifetimes because there is no way to confirm or disprove that because they could just be lying like if i was a slut i would totally lie about how many people ive slept with because people might look at me like i was dirty or something which is totally unjust because i would practice ultra safe sex if i was a slut with all kinds of contraceptives all over the place like pills and diaphragms and condoms both male and female and all that shit like four layers of contraceptive protection but with a nun you dont have to worry about any thoughts like that at all because shes locked in her penguin chastity suit by her vow to god but i guess its not like a vow has really stopped people from you know what in the past damn

#96

please be aware there has been a scat scare on the skeez meter outside the club so weve had to clear the building while the health inspector makes sure all colon particles are no longer airborne and large intestine residue is cleaned from the pole and sphincter flakes are cleared off the front row tables but after that we can all go back inside and enjoy the entertainment of rectal rachel and flatulent fanny and hemorrhoid heidi so guys put on your surgical masks and prepare for a methane blast like youve never known cuz it will make your eyes water and your nose bleed and youll leave with and ear infection and youll never forget your time here at the crackhouse you labia hating pucker button wild sleaze freaks so come and see me to reserve your seats in the front row on the edge of the stage where the flying farts arent just heard but felt and sometimes seen as particle poo stains on your collar which is why we recommend you stay away from white clothing while youre here or any color other than brown or dark yellow cream diarrhea blend but thats only on tuesday nights when we have our happy hour enema mama specials from five until seven and then again from midnight until close where its an all liquid show absolutely no solids guaranteed and looks like the health inspector is giving us the all clear to go back inside and get shitfaced

#95

okay class i know you cant see me or hear me right now because im dead and im in your presence only as a hovering ghost of the netherworld but i have a few things id like to say to you for my own sake like be careful when you get into a fight with a large man wielding a crowbar and dont taunt your husband when hes strung out on meth especially when hes big and wielding a crowbar because most likely he will not hesitate to strike you in the face and send your immortal soul to the great beyond and though this might seem crazy to some of you i think its a good idea to get surveillance cameras installed in your house because you never know when some tragic accident might happen and i can tell you that meth abusers are surprisingly good at disposing of bodies probably because of their singlemindedness and lack of a moral compass but my point is that if you heed these two simple suggestions then you might not end up as dead as i am right now doing crazy shit like i do like haunting my own classroom or the police station because even if you do get murdered by a loved one you would at least have video evidence were the crime to happen in your house but it sure is a shame that we have only one go at our earthly existence because man the things i know now

#94

mary rose standing in a blizzard heat wave in shorts and a down jacket with hair covering her burning legs in a sprint to apartheid south africa around the time madiba is released among great burning civil unrest in a country thats cold in our summer with the blood diamonds of the mind dripping red into the pelvic consciousness thrusting about in the snowstorm dodging snowflakes like cornflakes in a grain silo emerging unscathed only to find herself before john the revelator and his gates of heaven that are each a single pearl harvested from the life force of oysters by angry sardines and strung and given to girls on long island as holiday presents to take up to newport when the weather turns warm at the midnight hour when the crotch is so hot you must let the steam escape before your insides boil in the freezing rain and your string of pearls burst onto the ice at her feet shod with diamond soled shoes as durable as a papier mache dump truck on the sun five light years from another star in empty cold space filled to the brim with void and burning emptiness and soul trash jettisoned into space because the ghost world is too full here on earth where mary roses lungs are burning from the cold air at midnight on new years in new york alone in the vomiting crowd on forty second street and cold and cold and cold

#93

subway preacher brought a crony to shout amen and hallelujah to his sermon like johnny carson brought ed mcmahon to laugh at his jokes but it has no effect on the subway crowd of commuters staring past each others heads at the walls at the ads at the headlines on other peoples papers half curious about whats playing on other peoples ipods but certain words power through the banality due to emphatic decibels like church and lord and jesus and awesome and then they step off the train and disappear into the noise of the station bound for another train to preach their words and i wonder if either of these fellows would have come up with these sermons and words of praise if no one had ever drilled into their heads from the time they could comprehend the irrefutability of gods word and the power of jesus or if instead of being born in crown heights they were born wealthy and comfortable in a mansion in beverly hills with celebrity fathers and the ability to make their whims reality or in that case would they be fat on a couch or on a date or in a private plane or on a chartered sailboat in greece or would they be right in the same place on a seven thirty train from brooklyn to manhattan stumbling over the words of their inspiration and doing their best to convince themselves as much as anybody else that what they are saying is true

#92

i evolved from a communist botanist who studied flowers at the north pole so she had plenty of time to dilly dally with the natives like walruses and humpback whales and other snowy sea creatures which i have no idea exist in her neck of the woods and then one day she met a mystical fat drunk in a red suit with a drunken reindeer and he cast a spell on her and took her back to his lair where he filmed the botanist being sodomized by elves then posted it online for all the world to see but that was three thousand years before anyone else had the internet and the language that they spoke at the north pole is no longer around nor are their old keyboards with their languages letters on it so its impossible to get to the web address where the video is posted but anyway one of the elves impregnated the botanist who i forgot to mention was a giantess and their offspring were middle sized folks that neither the elves nor the giantess botanist cared for so they put about two hundred of these middling children in a boat and the boat drifted to the white cliffs of dover where the passengers got out and kissed the soil like it mattered to them and then they went forth and multiplied and formed religious factions and some sailed west for freedom and the religion part was pretty much forgotten so thats really where i come from

#91

time has a way of putting you in your place even if your place is a highrise penthouse in a concrete jungle of crackerbox toy guns and holy rollers in a turkish bath between the wall and a black hole ten micrometers wide that sucks you in like a vacuum cleaner with jet engines that took leonardo da vinci from zero to genius in three point seven seconds on a bull named fu manchu after a desperate parachuting venture designed to make you appreciate the life you threw away into a fluorescent cubicle on the fourth floor of a seventy six story building in midtown next door to your penthouse apartment built on the grimy souls of the rats in the subway huddled together in scarves and desperation on new years eve with nowhere to go but drunk and forgetting all the time that nobody saw passing by until it was too late and youre dying of cirrhosis on your nephews couch trying to get that liver to split on open but your shot after shot is just messing with your mind so you get a gun for a real shot and fill the barrel with vodka and put it to your lips and realize that the cool metal on your lips goes nicely with the hot filth in your gullet so you do it over and over again until you cant see and you wake up the next morning with a foggy memory of the good time you had the night before

#90

good morning sex and pea shoots why dont you want to come over to greenwich village and have a cuppa joe at a place called cuppa cuppa or a place called joe or we can walk over to seattle and have a macchiato at joe bar next to where i used to live on boylston and mercer near the qfc and golds gym and other corporate landmarks i use instead of longitude and latitude or is it more conventional to say latitude and longitude with latitude first or more importantly who cares about coordinates when we are just trying to figure out where to have our brewed beans in a cup of stringent aroma delusion like you can get at fiorio which is a cafe in torino that ive been to before or maybe that rundown mexican joint in el paso at sunrise where tyler and i stopped to get some breakfast two nights before i got arrested for unruly behavior in austin texas when that ninja bouncer swooped out of right or left field and ripped my shirt off and tried to puncture my kidney with his knuckle sandwich and then he sodomized me in front of a crowd of bewildered wildebeests in the austrian jungle or maybe it was the siberian metropolis of africa but once again all these magnificent details are just superfluous detours on the road to our delicious cup of exotic arabica colombiana mixed blend finely ground pure teetotalin piece of bacon but screw it and lets just go to starbucks

#89

i am casually flying from rome to turin to go to the world premiere of the first feature film i ever wrote as if it is just any other day in the life of a casual man that just turned twenty six two days ago in america though here in italy the time is six hours ahead so that might screw up my equation and throw off the equilibrium of temporal equality as i pour equal amounts of equal and sweet n low and splenda in my imaginary cup of equipoise which tastes like a summer breeze sweeping across the polar ice caps of mars or like some other feeling we can all relate to like casually flying through italian airspace en route to the premiere of your first feature film or eating an entire cloud in one sitting or dying by accidental asphyxiation during masturbation which i believe is often termed autoerotic asphyxiation because it is so common and engaged in so casually by everyone from rock stars to game show hosts to actors to everyone else in the world that you would like to emulate as you masturbate or maybe just in the other areas of your life like the career part because you are what you do and absolutely nothing else because you exist only in your essence and your essence is defined by your actions and your success is determined by the level of your autoerotic asphyxiation

#88

i have never been so aroused by anyone as i was by the cover model for a magazine i saw on the newsstand today that lay back in the grass staring up into the camera lens and out right at me as i walk by and she has this southern sensuality that cant be found in cities or in northern climes or other countries and i think ive literally fallen in love maybe not with this particular girl but with all the loose limbed ladies that hardly sweat when the thermometer reads one hundred that mix their lemonade with sweet tea without calling it arnold palmer that ride dirt bikes just because that wear sun dresses and actually go out in the sun that never wear sunglasses because they dont need them that know how to water ski that have never seen snow in real life that have tan lines and wear flat soled shoes that look right through you when you walk past their photograph on a magazine stand forcing you to hide your little bit of an erection that threatens to give you away to any of those girls that might be near