old people young people

I'm slowly breaking my reading habit into a more modern era.  This is something that I view as an improvement to what I take in.  Instead of reading books by dead/way old white guys, I've been sucking down shorter articles, essays, stories and novels by people within my age group.  It seems necessary.  While of course a bunch of wisdom or knowledge or bullshit or nonsense can come from the geriatrically challenged, it's nice to wrangle some words from people outside of that demographic.

It helps to see things be put in a modern context.  There's nothing wrong with Facebook or eBay being written into texts (at least according to the current cultural climate.  Obviously that shit is going to be dated as hell within 8 years), and it's refreshing to have these things represented as they are.  I suppose a lot of writing is being done on the internet anyway, so there's no point in purposefully ignoring it's impact on one's daily habits.  Check your blog, tweet some bulljive, update banalities of living.  It's ok.  We do these things.  No need to spraypaint a sloppy shit.  Let it cover the bowl in style.  Document it flowing over the seat.  Take a Polaroid and paste it above the toilet handle.  Bring a mason jar into the bathroom and bottle the smell so you can bust it out at a party like a sick card trick.

Really I just want to read things that are not only thematically and metaphorically relevant to me, but also physically and currently.  I want to dive into your shitty job and shitty car, and the night you got really shitty at a stupid bar and spent $27 on the jukebox, listening to 90's nu metal for a laugh, but no one else thought it was funny.  For now, I just need a break from a cafe in France or a farmtown in the 1920's.  I want big dumps turned to words.

and its driving me mad

The past few days i have successfully dug new trenches and escaped the well worn ruts of my internet use.

I think i will start submitting things i've written to places that publish things other people have written.

But for now, i will head home to sit on my couch with the lights off.

cold dead are the eyes of the tried

i wonder if feeling old is like having a hangover.  weak, nausea, strange bowel movements. the point where you lay in bed and death is a much simpler option.  i don't think i want that.
or maybe its just like you smoked way too much pot the night before, and your day is a kind of haze that you can't shake, so you just smoke some more pot.  if that's what aging encompasses, it's doable.

iliketowatchthingsontv

of sickness and money

i woke up sick today and have been denying it for the duration of the day. clearly it isn't going to do me any good, so now i have to come to terms with the facts and accept it. my name is scott, and i have a common cold. this morning i got frustrated with my cigarette habit. i smoke too many of them and they do do much less than they used to in terms of qualming anxiety in social situations. while they've always been an enjoyable outlet of consumption, the ratio of dollars spent to happiness or relief felt is all but a sure thing if we're talking vegas odds. it's got me thinking, however, about deeper issues of how money and self destruction manifest themselves in folks overall.

oh nothing with a point. just that these things do things to people without them having the slightest notion that they are profoundly and irreparably changing into the skin a reptile leaves behind.

the hail

Dan and I watched two birds die in the hail yesterday. We were stuck outside smoking cigarettes and one of them fell out of the sky and was sailed away in the gutter water. The other limped around for a minute and we went back inside.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2009511/To-Catch-Predators-Chris-Hansen-caught-cheating-wife.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

so chris hansen did it wrong. i wonder if the irony is lost on him as he begins apologizing to everyone in his life. i'm sure it isn't. he's probably swallowed some beers with a friend and laughed about it.

that's necessary sometimes.

i woke up from a nap that i hadn't intended on taking and saw this article. even though the concept of stars falling generally delights me, proving the morose truths of the media's pyramid scheme and the need to build others into something bigger than oneself, chris hansen getting his ill desserts leaves me with a bitter tongue. like too much ginger at once. yuck. clearly this was meant to happen, say, inevitable. And it bothers me that i don't love it as much as i love every other perfectly happenstancial celebrity downfall.

because watching pedophiles get busted is a fantastic thrill. they're dehumanizable, and clearly that's the draw of the dateline specials. but to juxtapose that with the fucked up police tactics employed really displays the lengths and depths of america's reliance on brute and arbitrary authority. the horrible balance is what makes the show a spectacle. it's what pulls me in. like the ride at the carnival where you spin against a wall and the floor drops out. its crazy fun, but you kind of feel sick. the sensations combined are something new and bizarre.

so maybe chris hansen's downfall was deserved. i'm not sure.

to begin again

An impulse to restart an amateur internet writing career really is tough to reconcile when you have little to write about. It's like snapping on a speedo and some goggles in the middle of a drought parched prairie. Not only is the endeavor rendered fruitless, but you get scratched up by the dry grass and chiggers. I feel like a bunch of chiggers are biting my shavedtoaerodynamified ankles right now.
And really, all I can think about regarding what I write is that I know I cannot write poetry. So, a poem:

a blog loaded like a cannon

aimed at the infinite emptiness

of the internet

is really a great way to imitate

the dredges of living

and sitting on my couch

watching to catch a predator.

those pedophiles sure are fucked huh?

earth

harvey