Honoring Michael Jackson

Earlier tonight I tried to pay tribute to the great deceased pop
singer by torrrenting some of his best songs onto my ipod, which
I then connected to an expensive boom box my dad bought me. I stepped
out onto the streets of San Francisco and clicked on the song
"Rock With You." Then I accidentally dropped the stereo, and then
I accidentally dropped the 40 oz St Ides I was holding in my other hand.
It shattered everywhere. I ran home.

Macho!

Write What You Know

1. Fearing that one's Dad will cancel one's credit card
2. Diagnosing oneself with mental illnesses on Wikipedia
3. Fearing that one's food looks junky and unimaginative alongside
roommates' exotic and nutritious groceries
4. The names of San Francisco Giants past and present
5. Arrested Development (TV series and early 90s rap collective)
6. RBI Baseball '94 for Sega Genesis (Bonds is the best hitter)
7. Feeling one's organs for signs of failure
8. Pretending to know what existentialism is
9. After five years and thousands of dollars, I still have no idea
how to smoke a cigarette
10. Dreams of armed black men with vengeance on their minds

The Grand Experiment

Our potential is infinite yet we insist on being simply human.
We live out our lives without ever testing the boundaries of what that means.
We spend our lives searching for those things which can never be truly attained.
We hurt, hurt, hurt.
Ourselves and all of those around us.
It's only conscious some of the time.
How can we learn how to love?
Or should love as we know it be forgotten, stricken from the language of our lives?

Advice Notebook

Last night, in a fit of something (bipolar disorder?) I bought a
notebook and a pen from a small bodega with the intent of writing
down people's advice. I asked the two clerks in the bodega what I
should do with my life. The younger Mexican guy was clearly
uncomfortable and had nothing, and in retrospect I don't blame
him. The older Chinese guy thought it over and said, basically,
I could continue down my current path (he's seen me before) or
do like him and get a fucking job. I then rushed over to the
Scottish-themed pub across the street because my real mission
was to ask for the advice of the Glaswegian who tends bar there.
I thought bitterly to myself, "Fuck you, Chinese guy, I don't
want to be a liquor store clerk, I want to be Scottish!"

Now two nights ago I had spent several hours shouting at this
bloke about the Associates, Aztec Camera, Celtic F.C., and Irvine
Welsh. In my imagination,I was the son he never had. This is a
pattern here, basing my entire self-esteem on the approval of a
single person. This is what is scrawled across the pages of my
notebook from last night:

"Fuck. My hero just left. I bought this notebok because I
wanted him to tell me something wise. He just shook my hand
and disappeared. He's Scottish. He probably doesn't want to be
bothered. He grew up on the streets of Glasgow. He's a writer.
I gave him some of my shit. I gave him some prose and poetry.
He said I had talent. But he also implied I was a drunken loser
who couldn't pick him out of a lineup. He asked me what I wanted
to do with said talent. He said I should probably write a
novel if I want to get my point across. What's my point? That life
in the U.S.A. sucks? He suggested that it might fly in the U.K."

My tub is half empty

The Don'ts of Avoiding Suicide

From Night Train, by Martin Amis:

"Don't work around around death. Don't work
around pharmaceuticals.

Don't be an immigrant. Don't be a German, fresh
of the boat.

Don't be Romanian. Don't be Japanese.

Don't live where the sun doesn't shine.

Don't be an adolescent homosexual: One in three
will attempt.

Don't be a nonagerian Los Angelean.

Don't be an alcoholic. It's suicide on the installment plan,
anyway.

Don't be a schizophrenic. Disobey those voices in your head.

Don't be depressed. Lighten up.

And don't be a man. Don't be a man, whatever you do."

Harry's Self-Appraisement: Thumbs Down!

My self-education has been unfocused. I've read a lot
of criticism, humor, and novels that alleviated my sense
of loneliness, but very little in the way of hard
suggestions as to how life should be lived. As a
result I've been able to get away with living a very
chaotic and inconsistent life, with an ever-rearranging
conscience that that fails to tell me whether my actions
are right or wrong. Sometimes I feel excessive guilt
over transgressions that are probably insignificant,
yet other times I weasel out of accepting blame for
situations in which I was clearly in the wrong. I have
justified my dissolute lifestyle by relying on the
pro-drug rhetoric of authors like Hunter S. Thompson,
John Dolan, Mark Ames, and Charles Bukowski, yet
there is no denying that drugs and alcohol make me
dumb, mean, clouded, incontinent, and confused.
I have avoided athletics out of some deep insecurity
and self-consciousness, despite the fact that I love them.
I write pieces that are essentially pointless and show-offy,
because I have a bottomless need for approval and
positive feedback. I try to impress everyone I meet,
regardless of whether their personalities have any value;
If I was stuck on a bus next to Charles Manson, I would
be cracking jokes and worrying whether he liked me.

I eat too much meat.

Previews are the New Feature Presentations

My students ask me if we can watch a movie every day. This week, I let them watch a film.

What instantly struck me was that their collective attention span was that of a five-second pop-up internet advertisement.

Four movies were begun over the course of an hour.
The class would sit somewhat silently at first.
Within five minutes they would then start fiddling with their cell phones.
Within ten minutes they would all be whining.
"This film is so boring, can we watch another?"
"Do you have anything more interesting?"
"This is stupid."

I began imagining what would happen were I to show them an hour-long string of film previews. Would that satisfy them? They never exceed 5 minutes and are usually quite gripping.

I remember a time when meeting with a friend required two things: A time and a place.

We watched VHS tapes, listened to CD's or LP's, called house lines, or simply knocked on the door.

Things weren't better then than they are now, but they certainly were more simple.

They were also more conducive to the development of a decent attention span.
I can sit down, in silence, and read a book for hours.
The youth that I see here may never be capable of doing that, as the idea of sitting in silence isn't hard-wired for them as it is for me.
How is the race to continue when the gadgets of our daily lives distract us from ever examining those lives?

Bathtub Dilemmas

I was standing outside today thinking to myself, "what the hell am I doing with my life" when suddenly I was cornered by three old women. They are all neighbors, one of them has no teeth on the top-left side of her mouth, and the other two spend all day sweeping up trash on the street.

"What are you doing?" they asked me.

"Going to the post office to send these" I said as I showed them the four postcards I had in my hand.

"Oh, you need an envelope for these!" one woman exclaimed.

The conversation went from there. All three women went back and forth discussing whether or not it was necessary that I put the postcards in envelopes. I continued with my insistence that there was no need for an envelope, but two of the three women wouldn't hear it.

Each day has been a struggle lately as I can't do anything without wondering, "to what end?" How can I be expected to go out and exercise when sitting in the bathtub for hours on end reading feels so much better? Exercise? For what? A longer lifespan? Why? I feel fine as I am.

Ultimately, would I lead a more fulfilling existence if if I had so little on my mind that envelopes were enough to render me fully engaged?

Existential Terror

Richard Speck

I'm hunched at my computer in my little room in a city on the western coast of the United States. I have a
vicious cold. Crumpled tissues and Robitussin bottles everywhere. My curtains are drawn. There's a sea of
blackness out there. I go to a website that culls interesting clips from youtube. I click on one video. It's a
documentary about the mass murderer Richard Speck, who killed eight student nurses in 1966, and his
subsequent life in prison. The video is VCR-quality and seems to have been shot in the late 80s.

Richard Speck has breasts. He has been taking female hormones that have been smuggled into
the jail. He parades around in a pair of makeshift "panties." A voice asks him, "do you like being
fucked by men?" he says, "absolutely."

Cut to an academic-looking narrator, who describes to me the concept of "queen bees." In prison
some inmates feminize themselves and perform sex acts in exchange for treats like liquor and cocaine.
It is not made clear whether this is consensual , but you'd have to be an idiot to believe there isn't
some level of coercion involved. I start to feel very ill. I leave my apartment and stumble into the street hoping
for relief.

I don't live on a particularly comforting street. I don't know what I was expecting. My street might
as well be named Richard Speck Street. There are no lawns, no sprinkler systems, no stars,
and no kittens.

That video. This universe. Why? Our prisons show us how flimsy our concept of civilization is.
Put a group of homo sapiens in a room, and they will create hell.

I didn't always believe that life is hell. As a kid, I distinctly remember believing that the universe
is a beautiful work of art. That life is good. That everything is going to be all right.