kowinkydinks

2011-03-14T15:47:00.000-07:00

In the future, the only art will be machine hiccups.

2009-07-10T16:31:00.000-07:00

viviparous blenny

2009-02-08T18:07:00.001-08:00

viviparous blenny volume one: synchronicity is available for order.

http://www.twentythreebooks.com/vivi.htm

2008-12-03T09:52:00.001-08:00

FCC complaint

2008-09-18T18:24:00.000-07:00

The use of the word "frak" in this show I find highly offensive. It is obviously a substitution for the word "fuck," which has been historically considered obscene by your standards. The writers of this show think they are clever with using "frak" instead of "fuck" but the context in which the word is used clearly is how deranged individuals would use "fuck." When I hear the word "frak" in this program I hear "fuck" in my head and this highly offends me. It is a contamination of my thoughts and I do not appreciate it. I remember in the movie A Christmas Story the character says "Oh, fudge" and the audience clearly knows the character says "Oh, fuck" and the character is punished by his father for using this word. Words in and of themselves are not offensive but their connotations and context have a negative influence on our minds, so even if a show does not use the word itself, if it conjures the word in any way and the audience knows what is really meant, then it is just as bad as using the word itself. Thus, the writers conjure the word "fuck" by using "frak." I think the FCC should do its job and sanitize the public airwaves of these conjuring substitutions, like "shoot" for "shit" and "darn" for "damn." We know this is just a clever liberal attempt to get away with using obscenity. TV shows are interrupted by commercials and their clever marketing techniques are meant to conjure a desire in my mind to buy their products, which is good for the market. We must consume at all costs. It seems the writers on this show are attempting a similar technique, to get me to think I thought the word all on my own, but I am not buying their product: bad language.

Run, Jesus, Run

2008-08-19T23:13:00.001-07:00

When you look at this picture, think of that moment when Our Lord and Saviour comes back to earth and takes a little road trip across America just before he destroys it and he realizes we’ve done a bang-up job ourselves and heads on back to eternity with some souvenirs from Oshkosh.

Thank you Solid Rock Church for scaring the bejesus out of jesus.

corporate/officespeak i am quite tired of

2008-05-14T10:43:00.000-07:00

value-add
synergies
fyi
look and feel
robust (applied as adjective to anything and everything), e.g., more robust platform
re-create the wheel
one-stop shop
sooner than later

Beanie Bay Scorching 2008

2008-02-29T21:57:00.001-08:00

Beanie Bay Scorching 2008

2008-02-29T21:52:00.000-08:00

THEM

2007-10-22T09:49:00.001-07:00

twentythreebooks is proud to announce that Omar Shapli's newest selection of poetry is available for purchase.

Clever Reverend #6

2007-09-07T17:32:00.000-07:00

Beanie Baby Scorching 2007

2007-08-25T16:28:00.001-07:00

Beanie Baby Scorching 2007

2007-08-25T16:22:00.000-07:00

The World's Fastest Growing Sport

Absinthe - It'll Do It to You (Continued)

2007-08-25T14:12:00.000-07:00

Absinthe - It'll Do It to You

2007-08-25T14:02:00.000-07:00

Book Inscription

2007-08-10T16:58:00.000-07:00

Check it out:

Mr. Longfellow's Home

Nickname

2007-07-23T11:21:00.000-07:00

I've never had a proper nickname. There have been attempts, but nothing has ever stuck. That's mostly because I haven't been the warmest, most fun-loving guy in the world, the kind of guy that people would think of all affectionately, enough to have a cutesy shorthand for eternal reference.

The most recent nickname is not really a nickname but is some hybrid of sorts simply because I have no blood relation to the cool little gal that calls me by this name:

Uncle D.

Fitting. Perfect.

It is certainly better than "The Doog," something that I tried to keep alive ever since high school Spanish class.

A close second is "The Reverend" or "Reverend Mo" from my Army days.

I had a homeroom teacher who gave everyone a nickname, and since I apparently didn't make that much of an impression on him, he just blurted out some half-ass mangling of my last name and that stuck for him: "Moocow." Have a guffaw, it's free.

I'm surprised no one ever attempted to call me "Drug Mowbray." Too obvious? Too much guilt for enabling?

Perhaps I have a nickname amongst certain groups of people, the kind of name I would never hear directly.

I'm not looking for something to be on my tombstone. In fact, I hope I don't have a tombstone, nor a tomb.

And I don't think it is in me to make an attempt this late in life to be considered affectionately. That ship done sailed.

But, I would like to have a nickname ready in the off-off-off chance that someday I will enter the ring as a professional boxer (or at the very least, which is really one of my heart's very most: boxing photographer), I'm going to need a pithy handle.

The Marauder?

It's alliterative, but not appropriate.

Think I'll need some help with this one.

Complete This Joke

2007-07-12T15:21:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine wrote half a joke but was unable to finish it.

Task: I will write the joke; you supply the punchline. Pass this around to all your friends, post bulletins on MySpace, etc., and let's collect as many punchlines as we can. Here goes:

What's the difference between Jesus and a scarecrow?

1. One is a character in a fantasy book that was put up on a stick to scare poor, stupid creatures from fucking with the money-producing crops of rich landowners...

...and the other was in "The Wizard of Oz."

2. Scarecrows don't need twelve disciples to believe in them.
3. You save three nails on a scarecrow.
4. Really, who wants the fucking blood of Christ on their hands??
5. A scarecrow just needs a holey post.
6. Corn fields are MUCH cleaner (and smell nicer) than your average golgotha.
7. After a few days, a good Jesus just starts to rot and stink.
8. If you told someone "My Scarecrow told me to do," you would actually get the mental help you need.
9. Jesus loves me, this I know.... haven't heard shit from that scarecrow. And he owes me $20.
10. [Insert punchline here.]

Clever Reverend #5

2007-05-30T18:19:00.000-07:00

More D.C. Pictures

2007-05-23T08:59:00.001-07:00

R.I.P. "Chico"

2007-05-08T10:14:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images

Thank you for delivering the best fight I've seen in my lifetime.

"The old order has passed away;
welcome them into paradise,
where there will be no sorrow,
no weeping nor pain,
but fullness of peace and joy"

Mantra

2007-04-13T23:48:00.000-07:00

Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007

2007-04-11T21:09:00.000-07:00

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007

I once saw Vonnegut at a reading in Denver. It was right after Princess Di died and he said something like, why does anyone care about this twit?

Rest easy, Kurt.

If Only I Were a Vegtarian

2007-04-08T16:21:00.000-07:00

Wish Tree - Washington D.C.

2007-04-08T16:05:00.000-07:00

Yoko Ono, Imagine Pea ce

2007-03-31T13:59:00.000-07:00

Clever Reverend #4

2007-03-26T16:32:00.000-07:00

We Speak in Metaphors About Love

2007-03-23T10:10:00.000-07:00

The Poinsettia

She brought this into work a few years ago around the holidays—just a simple, small poinsettia with foil wrapping and full, blossoming leaves. It sat on top the microwave for the longest time and random people would water it from time to time (or it could have been just her and I watering it, I never really knew), keeping it alive well past xmas. I started watering it regularly, and when she was laid off, I took complete control of its care, which consisted of nothing more that giving it water. Sure, I initially did some extra care: I re-potted it, and I trimmed it once so it would stay full, but all I do now is give it water every few days and a little extra water on Fridays. It just grows and grows without any nurturing or attention at all. I recently cut off part of a branch to see if I could get a new plant started, but that hasn’t amounted to much. I’m pretty sure it has outgrown its pot again, and I have a feeling that it may tip over some day, but I’ve gotten rather ambivalent lately about putting forth any extra effort, so whatever happens, happens. It’s common sense that if I don’t re-pot it then it will fail someday, but I’ve made no plans to do much more than water it, and there’s no biting desire within me to start making any more care plans now. It’s there. It gets taller. I water it. Some day it will need more, and that some day is now. And I haven’t decided if I’m willing to do much more.

That goes for the both of us.

Hey Mistah, Spare Any Debit Cards?

2007-03-01T18:22:00.000-08:00

Walking across Fleet Street, heading toward the parking garage, thinking about what I am going to do for dinner and how I can't just stop at some fast place because I have no cash on me, I am accosted by a lady asking me if I have any money, she's just trying to get something to eat. Sorry, I have no money whatsoever on me, which is the truth. (Full dislcosure: I did find a crumpled dollar bill in my wallet later on in the evening.) Half the time I'm asked, even if I wanted to give, I can't because I often have no cash on me, even less often is change because it quickly ends up in my change jar. I wonder, in this age of plastic plastic plastic, in the hurtling forth into a newer age of a cashless economy, how many people that once depended on the spare bucks and dimes from street strangers are now either starving, dead, or gainfully employed now that the handouts are fewer.

Bong Hits 4 Jesus

2007-03-01T17:32:00.000-08:00

Photo credit: Clay Good

Heading to Supreme Court this week is the case Morse and the Juneau School Board et al. v. Frederick (06-278). Guess who's the guy arguing for the school? Billy Boy Clinton's old nemesis, Kenneth Starr. I'll leave the jokes to someone else on that one. All I can say on this matter is this:

The current neona, uh, conservatives have it in their thick heads that we can export democracy. Look how free we are! read the banners strapped to the heavily armored humvees with machine gun turrets. Throw an election and you too, someday, will be able to tell kids not to paint satirical signs and display them on Olympic parade routes.

John McCain this week said our troops were being wasted in Iraq, then later clarified to say he meant "sacrificed."

If they are over there moving into Baghdad outposts while we sit here and suspend students for this shit, then I say, Mr. McCain, you had it right the first time. And you just lost my vote. Again.

Why do we need to mince words? Fuck it, I'll say it: we are wasting lives over there. Waste. As in throwing away. Anyone with half a cashew in their noggin who thinks I am deriding our troops needs to armor up and ship out. Of course the soldiers believe and want to believe they are fighting for the greater cause. I don't fault them for that. To many of them, to those who do feel they are helping each and every day, it is not a waste to them at all. I am sure that Iraqis can see that we are not the devil after all, at least not all of us, and are smart enough to separate the men from the policy. But the policy is wasting lives. Wasting money. Wasting international goodwill. Wasting the future. Wasting opportunities for balance in the Middle East. Waste.

I wouldn't trust Dick Cheney to run a carwash. I wouldn't trust Donald Rumsfeld to hold my place in line at the checkout. But yet we trusted them to wage war, and they wasted the international support we had after September 11, 2001 (can we please stop saying "9/11"? It's not a fucking decal; it's an historical event. JFK wasn't assassinated on 11/22), they wasted our surplus, they wasted time and resources in Iraq when they could have spent effort in Afghanistan, the battle that no one dares question, and they wasted over 3,000 lives so far, and tens of thousands who will carry, as Bush calls them, "grave wounds."

The whole thing is a waste. Just like it's a waste of the court's time and America's time to be arguing about the sign above. But I guess they figure after installing the pasty white diverse duo on the SC, they've got a shot at going after their little pet projects: namely, eroding all Amendments except one, the Second.

Bong Hits 4 Kenneth!

Assault Rifles 4 the Messiah!

Cigar Blast from the Past

2007-02-20T19:30:00.000-08:00

In 1996 I was the Democratic Student Coordinator on the campus of my college in Rindge, NH, Franklin Pierce College. I got an opportunity to meet President Clinton during his run for a second term. I volunteered to drive a van in his motorcade which held part of the press corps (I believe I had CBS news reporters). The moment was fairly unremarkable, but it was something my father was very proud of and he related the story of a young Clinton meeting President Kennedy when he was just a few years younger than I was and how such encounters inspire youth to grow up to be the men they admire most. I was pretty cynical at the time, still am, and the moment was not one that inspired me to great political aspirations, but from then on I did declare my future candidacy to anyone and everyone (after I turned 35) and I even voted for myself as a write-in candidate for president that year. I was 18 and it was my first national election and I voted for myself.

Chuck Palahniuk Responds

2007-02-10T17:39:00.000-08:00

Inventory of items sent by cool-ass writer Chuck Palahniuk (generous guy, knows how important his fans are; all due respect to Chuck, stand up fucking guy):

letter (personal)
carrot
chocolate-scented stickers
birthday candles
harmonica
swiss army knife
temporary tattoo
name badge, signed
photo, rooster and Chuck with cigarette butts, signed
folding pocket comb
pirate coloring book
magic cards
3D cheetah
million dollar bill
severed finger
valentine's day pencil
herb garden seeds
forget-me-not seeds
fake poop (I always wanted fake poop.)
sugar-free peppermint mints
valentine grow kit
candy cigarettes
it's a boy candy cigar
pop rocks
star-shaped hole-puncher
mini xmas crayons

The Dilemma Satisfied

2007-02-08T17:16:00.000-08:00

I received some good ideas, but decided to go with a donation.

Hooray for the FCC Guard Dogs

2007-01-21T11:33:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2WAgLzxdJs

"During the Eagles-Saints game on Fox TV, the camera lingered on a fan with a t-shirt that read "Fuck Da Eagles." I was highly offended by this offensive use of the offending word "Da." It's not even a word, and yet here it was in full display for all to see during a nationally televised football game. I trust that you will put forth every effort to punish those responsible for the flagrant foul of displaying made up words on TV. Thank you."

My Drink

2007-01-12T23:16:00.000-08:00

This is DP24. Dr. Pepper claims 23 whatever. DP24 is Dr. Pepper plus one, lemonade. Mix these two. About 2/3 parts DP, and 1/3 part Lemonade. And you have DP24. You can also add rum. Ummmmm, rum.

Baltimore. Fleet and Caroline Streets.

2007-01-11T06:10:00.000-08:00

The General Has Arrived!

2007-01-09T13:25:00.000-08:00

twentythreebooks is proud to announce the arrival of Omar Shapli's The General Is asked His Opinion and other sad songs 2002-2005. Check out the website for ordering information:

http://www.twentythreebooks.com/

The Dilemma

2006-12-27T18:31:00.000-08:00

Hello folks. I have a dilemma. Perhaps you can help me out.

I found this cup at a Royal Farms gas station on Boston Street in Baltimore. I was pumping gas, looked down, and there was this cup one-fourth full of change. I stared at it for a while; looked around to see if anyone was looking at me, looking at the cup. I wondered for a minute or so if I should take it with me. I grabbed the cup, held it, sat down in my truck, door open, sat there with the cup in my hand, wondering if I should leave it, perhaps for someone less fortunate than me, or if I should just take it and toss it in with the rest of my change in the water cooler change deposit bank I have in my closet. Needless to say, I took it (and considering the 'less fortunate' angle, I recalled the countless times I have given those "less fortunate" folks money when they've accosted me on American streets) and I brought it home and counted it:

7 dimes
1 nickel
1 button
87 pennies

The button isn't worth much, but the coins add up to be $1.62, a fine amount if you want to start resurrecting those dreams of world travel and owning your own business, but I digress:

Now what?

I cannot bring myself to pour the change into my water cooler bank, so now the cup just sits on my desk, mocking me, echoing the ghosts of all the homeless persons that could have used the money on these cold and frigid Baltimore winter nights.

So what do I do with the dollar sixty-two?

What ever do I do?

Other Boston Pics

2006-12-22T15:01:00.000-08:00

The Prudential Building, Boston, MA

2006-12-22T14:55:00.000-08:00

View from Prudential Building, Boston, MA (cont. 2)

2006-12-22T14:42:00.000-08:00

View from Prudential Building, Boston, MA (cont.)

2006-12-22T14:22:00.000-08:00

View from Prudential Building, Boston, MA

2006-12-22T14:07:00.000-08:00

Trinity Church, Boston, MA

2006-12-22T13:38:00.000-08:00

Leaving Colorado

2006-12-11T15:27:00.000-08:00

View from Lost Gulch Overlook (Boulder, CO)

2006-12-11T15:18:00.000-08:00

My Old Apartment, Boulder, CO

2006-12-09T08:56:00.000-08:00

My Favorite Used Books Store, Boulder, CO

2006-12-09T08:51:00.000-08:00

More Colorado Pics

2006-12-08T20:51:00.000-08:00

Long's Peak

2006-12-08T20:15:00.000-08:00

Long's Peak stands 14, 255 feet in Rocky Mountain National Park here in Colorado (just outside of Estes Park, where I spent some time today).

I climbed (hiked is the more appropriate term; I bore no equipment for scaling rock faces) this mountain in 1999 with my then-supervisor and friend Silas.

I had lunch with Silas and his three-year-old son today at Mountain Sun on Pearl Street in Boulder. Good to see how well he is doing. He is a bona fide 100 percent milkman; you know, like delivering bottles to your doorstop milkman. NO shit. It's a good living and I wish him and his family all the best.

When I was nearing the end of my Bachelor's degree in Baltimore (2000) at Towson University, I walked into the new Barnes and Nobles and spent some time scanning the titles in the poetry section. One title stood out: Long's Peak by Chester Wickwire. The cover had a picture of Long's Peak. Applying the logic that I once hiked this verysame mountain, I purchased the book. After I fininshed reading, I noticed that it was published by a Baltimore press, BrickHouse Books. The publisher of BHB was listed on the title page: Clarinda Harriss. The name was familiar; I had an inkling she worked at Towson University. So I looked her up in the TU directory, sent her an e-mail inquiring about any internhip possibilities, heard back from her soon thereafter, and thus began my on-again off-again tenure as an Assistant Editor with BrickHouse Books.

This past year, I was reading manuscripts for BHB and came across a unique and lively book of poetry: The General Is Asked His Opinion by Omar Shapli. I wrote up a brief review of the book and told Clarinda that she should publish this title next. Her reply was the she didn't have the funds to do so. My reply: What if I published it? With her blessing, I wrote Omar a letter offering to publish his book, and thus was born twentythreebooks. The General Is Asked His Opinion will be available for online purchase in the next few weeks.

I park, therefore I am....

2006-12-07T23:06:00.000-08:00

a fuckhead.

(Baltimore, MD)

Boulder Revisited

2006-12-07T22:33:00.000-08:00

This is the bagel shop I worked at for about a year and a half. Up every day at 5 am ('time to make the bagels'), I staggered into this place, by the back door, and ruled like a tyrant over my food prep area.

I am writing this post in a Best Western a few blocks from the bagel shop (or as my friend and former co-worker Eric likes to call it, "The Bagel Hut"). One block up and across 28th Street is a Target.

When my friend Drew and I first moved out here, we had no friends here, no jobs lined up, no place to live, so we slept in our sleeping bags just outside of town at the foot of the Flatirons, fending off cops, foxes, and morning dew. We spent a few days looking at apartments and applying for jobs. City Street Bagels pretty much hired us on the spot and we were to begin working immediately: Drew as counter help, me as the prep guy. I did everything from prepare the dough for the bagels to making a variety of cream cheeses (which I do not eat, and thus I never, ever taste-tested my own whippings) to slicing tomatoes and onions and turkey for the lunch crowd. The night before our first day I went into Target (across the street) and purchased a cheap alarm clock to wake us up at 430 am so we could sneak into a park and use their showers before anyone woke up and was the wiser.

Drew didn't last long at City Street Bagels; I held on until March 1999.

Being back here reminds me of all the reasns why I loved this place; conversely, it reminds me of exactly why I left. I have a lot of great and not-so-great memories tied to this place and I am grateful I had the opportunity to come here in the first place and grateful for the opportunity to revisit.

I haven't eaten a bagel since I left here 7 years ago. Eating 5 to 7 of them a day will do that to you. But I also have not hiked in the mountains since I left, and I miss that tremendously. The Rocky Mountains make this grown man well up a little. Hopefully tomorrow I will get off my lazy sit-in-front-of-the-computer ass and make my way to the trails I once knew.

The gathering flab concurs with this hope.

Bush's Vietnam Tour Duty

2006-11-17T06:10:00.000-08:00

At long last, Mr. Bush faces the communist enemy in Vietnam.

A Good Night

2006-11-16T21:05:00.000-08:00

November 4, 2006 - A night of so-so boxing, but with a great setup.

For fans of HBO's The Wire

2006-10-28T13:48:00.000-07:00

Order Carcetti products by clicking on the kowinkydinks store link.

2006-10-23T11:05:00.000-07:00

Ear-Biting Endorsement

2006-10-18T12:21:00.000-07:00

Tyson endorses Steele

Mike Tyson is enthusiastically endorsing Republican Michael Steele for a Maryland U.S. Senate seat.

Paging Mr. Cardin: Time to call "The Rock" Rahman. Tyson says he would go so far as to climb in the ring and fight again in support of Steele. Well, let's get him in there with Rahman (in support of Democrat Ben Cardin).

Winner takes my vote.

Nevermind - 15 Year Anniversary

2006-10-02T17:55:00.000-07:00

Never Your Old Mind Again

When Nirvana first released Nevermind, I didn’t even own a CD player. Soon after the release, though, I bought one of those all-in-one 5-disc changer/tape decks from Circuit City, and I was on my way to amassing quite the CD library (don’t get me started on the process of ripping them all to mp3 format).

The first CD I owned? Dr. Dre’s The Chronic. Why? Well, it was on the shelf near the cash register at CC; it had a parental warning sticker on it; and my mother offered to buy me any CD I wanted so I could test my new equipment out.

The second CD I owned—Nevermind; though, it did come as part of the first 12 CDs I ordered through Columbia House. But for the purposes of the quasi-myths of your youth, it was number 2, alright?

Up until the Nirvana era, my musical tastes ranged from the skaterpunk music I picked up on from the neighborhood baddies to the heavy metal noise I picked up on from the other baddies (the alcoholic versions, though there was a lot of cross-pollination) to the rap music I was turned on to by my city-dwelling wigger cousin to listening to Lite 102 torch songs and ballads, calling in to make requests for songs to be played for all those girls in my class I had quiet crushes on.

Then came Nirvana.

And never again did I stay up late at night making embarrassing requests. Crushes: “oh well, whatever, nevermind.” It was time to accept that the prettiest girls in class (even the mid-range ones I settled for—in my mind) would view me as nothing more than an odd curiosity (not to be confused with a curious oddity: that came about when I discovered Aphex Twin years later)—a rather short-lived odd curiosity.

Instead of hanging my head in dejection, my head would be bowed only out of spite, a disdainful gesture for all those I now considered unworthy of my time. If I’m invisible, then so are you.

This attitude (which has been oh-so all been done before, has been commodified, has been ironically vilified, absurdly embraced, etc.) still didn’t change the fact of how alone I was. Nirvana’s Nevermind was the soundtrack that made it all too clear that ‘alone’ was just an illusion; I was alone because I was around all the wrong people; I was trying too hard to be part of all the wrong people.

Nevermind helped the Disaffected find each other. Say what you will about Nirvana’s artistry, or lack thereof: paradoxically, Nevermind, Nirvana, and particularly Kurt Cobain probably inspired FEWER suicides.

ants at the poison trough

2006-09-19T21:08:00.000-07:00

we're not such good bodhisattvas

literary critic: Grub Street 2006

2006-08-14T19:45:00.000-07:00

american garish

2006-08-14T19:25:00.000-07:00

She still loves what? (Belair Road, Baltimore)

2006-06-09T20:00:00.000-07:00

Toad the Wet Sprocket RamsHead Live 6-2-06

2006-06-03T13:22:00.000-07:00

the sun done blowed up

2006-05-26T16:28:00.000-07:00

the problem with americans

2006-05-26T16:24:00.000-07:00

hummer

needs more than normal parking space

nuff said

burned out baltimore

2006-05-26T16:02:00.000-07:00

Clever Reverend #3

2006-05-26T15:41:00.000-07:00

this week's kowinkydink

2006-05-13T17:40:00.000-07:00

i was updating my queue over at Netflix on Friday and there was a recommendation for the documentary Paradise Lost, a story of how these three kids got railroaded in Arkansas on murder charges. there was a part 2 to the doc and years ago i followed the website they had set up for the boys, now known as the West Memphis Three.

i posted on My Space some info on the Three and today i read that there was an art show this weekend to help raise money for them. West Memphis Three art show

is this synchronicity? or is it simply someone at Netflix knew about the story and made sure the DVD popped up on everyone's Recommendations?

Clever Reverend #2

2006-04-25T15:55:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on Windmills

2006-04-13T10:58:00.000-07:00

It’s 11:11 and I wish I were an Oscar Winner weiner,
home on my hidden valley ranch.
There’s a wife in my future—
I can feel the tightening.
She would do anything for me,
except take care of herself, which is
the only thing I want from her.
Ezra Pound’s middle name is Loomis.
Hey hon, let’s go to the pound to get a cat
and name it Loomis so we’ll have something
more than the weather to talk about
when people come over. It very well may
facilitate discussion about Pound, fascism,
and Italy—Oh, how I’d love to go to Italy!—
the ladies will say, taking larger sips, gulps even,
putting the wine glass on the table
instead of holding it in their hands to help them
feel more comfortable, less awkward, and gesture gesture
their love for everything Italian and how much more authentic
it would be to have it all to try it all to snap photos of it all
in the home country itself. And the cat,
Loomis, will cough up a hairball; we will run out wine;
and I’ll be hoping it’s not too late to catch
at least one fight on ESPN2 to make this whole night
worth the whole day I gave it.
And before I fall asleep, I will think of ingrown hairs,
and turn to you and say,
Hey hon, we should live together—
I haven’t any tweezers.

Found Poem

2006-03-29T08:23:00.000-08:00

(stones)

ends dimmed.
why boy killed himself

Here We Went Round the Mulberry Bush

2006-03-16T20:11:00.000-08:00

I, I, I

It's the sixties all over again,
and I am standing on the sidelines
jerking off into a Dixie Cup that
is a donation to nowhere.

I am a genuine fake Picasso.

I remain blurred; Photoshop is no help.

I sold my house
so I could write this poem.

I've got ice cream in my pocket,
and Jesus was my Sugar Daddy last night.

I eat airplane peanuts
weeks after they are served.

The only forgiveness I want is from my cat–
my girlfriend has a dog.

Sometimes I doubt my commitment to Sparkle Motion.

I've got beer on my shoulder.

I tend generally.

My Date with Synchronicity

2006-02-17T06:07:00.000-08:00

I watched the movie "My Date with Drew" last night. This is precisely what I mean about the force of synchronicity, and allowing it to work in your life, but also following its lead and making things happen for yourself.

Depending on how you warm up to the guy who is seeking the date, and if you are a cynical bastard or not, you may or may not like this flick.

The point is: when something is recurring in your life, be it a theme, a sign, a person, an idea, there's something to it after all, so follow it. Had I followed "23," as you may have read in a previous post, perhaps I wouldn't be where I am now, sitting in a cubicle, miserable (not even happy that it's Friday, because Friday doesn't negate the fact that Monday will come: it's just a tease; prolonging the misery), and I don't even know if I have a dream to follow any more; more importantly, I doubt I ever had one.

All that said, if it weren't for me making my way to this ratship, I wouldn't have found my Riss.

d

Poetry Reading Essay (Beginning draft)

2006-02-08T12:43:00.000-08:00

View of Posterior Occipital Region with Scalp Reflected:
My First Poetry Reading

I attended my first poetry reading in my high school years.

In my senior year, I belonged to a club called The Dead Poets Society. Mr. Magrogan was the founder and moderator of our little brotherhood. During my one-year stint with the club, there were 6 members: my best friends Mike and Todd, Keith, Ray (the only one with whom I am still in touch), and a freshman who I didn’t get to know too well, so I don’t remember his name. We met before homeroom, one day a week, and we shared our writing or read the poetry of those we admired.

Mr. Magrogan turned us on to poetry readings. He would let us know where one was taking place, and we would all meet thee after school, each of us with poems to read hidden in our pockets, pretending we didn’t bring anything in order to have an excuse the moment Mr. Magrogan would say, “Why don’t you get on up there.”

The very first reading we attended was at Borders Books and Music in Towson. The reading was in the café on the second floor. We stood on the elevated section, outside the café, looking down on the readers from a railing aside the True Crime section.

Instead of paying attention to what the poets had to say, I split my time between nagging Todd to read and flipping through a book on the Kennedy assassination. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was an early foray into a lifelong fascination with the events of November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas. Had I not been so disturbed by the company one keeps after going down the grassy knoll rabbit hole, I could just as easily have been a conspiracy theorist instead of a poet.

***

I have been to countless poetry readings since that first night in Towson, and I have taken from the experiences this one unmitigated exegesis (read: wisecrack) about poetry:

If your poems aren’t JFK autopsy photos, don’t bother.

Freedom

2006-01-31T13:40:00.000-08:00

The Fountain of Couth

2006-01-27T12:39:00.000-08:00

The 'Fountain' attack: Art or crime?

While I've had my share of Angelina and Oprah news this week, one story that I can't seem to get enough of involves a 77-year-old man, a urinal and artist Marcel Duchamp.

Earlier this month, Pierre Pinoncelli, 77, was arrested after attacking Duchamp's Fountain at Paris' Pompidou Center. Created in 1917, Fountain is considered one of the most influential works of modern art of all time. As you can see on the left, it's also a porcelain urinal.

On Tuesday Pinoncelli was ordered to pay a fine and given a three-month suspended sentence for striking the urinal with a hammer. (Weirdly, this was the second time he attacked the urinal. In 1993 he, uh, urinated on it.) The case has revived that age-old question, "What is art?" -- especially since Pinoncelli's defense for his actions was that he was making an artistic statement. This week NPR interviewed an expert on Duchamp who maintained it was an act of vandalism; this commentary, however, suggests it "is exactly what Duchamp would have wanted."

Personally, this story sparked me to learn a little more about Duchamp. If you'd to do the same, this timeline is a good place to start and adds that he submitted Fountain under a pseudonym, "R. Mutt." The Met's website provides a good biography, while MarcelDuchamp.net offers some video interviews, shot several years before his death in 1968.

How do I feel about the Fountain case? I have to say Pinoncelli got what he deserved. The next time he feels the need to express himself, I can only hope he makes a urinal of his own at home -- and, if he decides to pee on it, decides to keep it there.

Posted at 09:52 AM/ET, 01/27/2006 in Random amusement, by Whitney Matheson, USA Today's Pop Candy blog

My comment:

While I agree that the work has been made into a mockery of itself by being touted as a great work, Mr. Pinoncelli's act was uncreative and hardly as inspired as his defenders make him out to be. Even if Mr. Pinoncelli had in mind all these great notions of anti-art and bringing the Dada piece back to it's original perception, the way he went about it seems just so pedestrian. If he had taken a crap in it, he would have been in Jackass 2. 'Nuff said. I think the key here is the notion that he was trying to destroy the work to make a point. There are many levels of destruction, and the level Mr. Pinoncelli has reached with his hammer and his pee is not the same level as what the Dadas were trying to do.

Appreciate the gesture, but the effort has to go much deeper than that.

Posted by: Buddhakowski | Jan 27, 2006 1:35:38 PM

Robert Pinsky and Bill Hicks

2006-01-27T06:18:00.000-08:00

The poem featured in the new POETRY magazine, February 2006, by Robert Pinksy references the late, great comic Bill Hicks and one of his most famous and provocative quotes: "I support the war, but I'm against the troops."

Which segues into a recent Joel Stein column:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-stein24jan24,0,3682678.column?coll=la-util-op-ed

From the Los Angeles Times
JOEL STEIN
Warriors and wusses
Joel Stein

January 24, 2006

I DON'T SUPPORT our troops. This is a particularly difficult opinion to have, especially if you are the kind of person who likes to put bumper stickers on his car. Supporting the troops is a position that even Calvin is unwilling to urinate on.

I'm sure I'd like the troops. They seem gutsy, young and up for anything. If you're wandering into a recruiter's office and signing up for eight years of unknown danger, I want to hang with you in Vegas.

And I've got no problem with other people — the ones who were for the Iraq war — supporting the troops. If you think invading Iraq was a good idea, then by all means, support away. Load up on those patriotic magnets and bracelets and other trinkets the Chinese are making money off of.

But I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition. It's as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn't to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.

Blindly lending support to our soldiers, I fear, will keep them overseas longer by giving soft acquiescence to the hawks who sent them there — and who might one day want to send them somewhere else. Trust me, a guy who thought 50.7% was a mandate isn't going to pick up on the subtleties of a parade for just service in an unjust war. He's going to be looking for funnel cake.

Besides, those little yellow ribbons aren't really for the troops. They need body armor, shorter stays and a USO show by the cast of "Laguna Beach."

The real purpose of those ribbons is to ease some of the guilt we feel for voting to send them to war and then making absolutely no sacrifices other than enduring two Wolf Blitzer shows a day. Though there should be a ribbon for that.

I understand the guilt. We know we're sending recruits to do our dirty work, and we want to seem grateful.

After we've decided that we made a mistake, we don't want to blame the soldiers who were ordered to fight. Or even our representatives, who were deceived by false intelligence. And certainly not ourselves, who failed to object to a war we barely understood.

But blaming the president is a little too easy. The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they're following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying. An army of people ignoring their morality, by the way, is also Jack Abramoff's pet name for the House of Representatives.

I do sympathize with people who joined up to protect our country, especially after 9/11, and were tricked into fighting in Iraq. I get mad when I'm tricked into clicking on a pop-up ad, so I can only imagine how they feel.

But when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse. Sometimes you get lucky and get to fight ethnic genocide in Kosovo, but other times it's Vietnam.

And sometimes, for reasons I don't understand, you get to just hang out in Germany.

I know this is all easy to say for a guy who grew up with money, did well in school and hasn't so much as served on jury duty for his country. But it's really not that easy to say because anyone remotely affiliated with the military could easily beat me up, and I'm listed in the phone book.

I'm not advocating that we spit on returning veterans like they did after the Vietnam War, but we shouldn't be celebrating people for doing something we don't think was a good idea. All I'm asking is that we give our returning soldiers what they need: hospitals, pensions, mental health and a safe, immediate return. But, please, no parades.

Seriously, the traffic is insufferable.

Synchronicity and The Number 23

2006-01-26T08:54:00.001-08:00

In 2002, I began an essay about the number 46 and the theory of Shakespeare and the Bible (Shakespeare was baptized on April 26, 1564. It is widely assumed that he was born that year. The Authorized Version was being revised in 1610, by which time Shakespeare would have been 46. In the King James version of Psalm 46 (see below), counting 46 words down from the top, we find "shake", and counting 46 words up from the bottom, we find "spear." "Selah" doesn't count -- it is sprinkled throughout the Bible as a sort of punctuation mark.)

The essay was intended to poke fun at those who spend their time chasing these synchronicity rabbits down their respective holes. But a funny thing happened:I briefly became one of those people. Half of 46 is 23, and once I started digging up that number from my life and the world around me, there was no going back. It was everywhere, suffused with meaning, and beckoning my mind to join the schizophrenic contingency. Significant events happened in my life at the time and the number 23 was prevalent. After a brief time of exploring the meaning behind all this, I realized I had a choice: follow the rabbit and risk madness, or let it go. I let it go and my life has been one of relative stasis ever since. Had I followed the rabbit, perhaps I could have been the writer in the following story:

Carrey Counts On Number 23
Jim Carrey told SCI FI Wire that he's particularly excited about his next film, The Number 23, a mind-bender about a man who becomes obssessed with the number 23. Carrey said that it was likely fate that brought the project to him, since he himself is obsessed with the number 23.

"I've had this obsession with the number 23 for years," Carrey said in an interview, while promoting his current film, Fun With Dick and Jane. "[The script] was given to me by a friend who had the obsession with it, where he talked about the Earth's axis is on the 23rd degree and 23 chromosomes in the human body from each parent and all that, and he has books written about everything that adds up to 23. As soon as he told me, I started seeing 23 everywhere. And it's shocking how much adds up to 23; it's a primary number, but it's bizarre. But it really works out in a strange way to be very prevalent everywhere."

Carrey (Bruce Almighty) will share the screen with Virginia Madsen in the film, which Joel Schumacher will direct. Schumacher last directed Carrey in Batman Forever. But, Carrey said, The Number 23 is not a comedy. "No, it's a thriller," he said. "It's about a guy [Carrey] who finds a book that's about a character that is obsessed with the number 23, and the number 23 is haunting him and leads him to do some very bad things. And then finally it starts happening in his life, and he starts to notice parallels between the book and his life, and the character and his life."

Carrey added: "I don't want to say too much about it, but it's really an interesting movie. I was talking about all this 23 stuff. ... First of all, the number 23 thing for me culminated in ... me talking about it, and at the very same moment, someone handing me a book about the 23rd psalm, which became like my kind of mantra a little bit. Because it's about living without fear, feeling like you're taken care of, like you're safe. And so I changed the name of my company to JC23 a couple years ago. I started telling somebody about the 23 thing, and 'the valley of the shadow of death' and all those things it means, and they said, 'I just read a script called The Number 23.'"

Carrey read the script and found it compelling. "It's so interesting, and the way the mathematics are worked out in it, it's like this guy is Rain Man, the guy who wrote it, Fernley Phillips. So I decided to do it, and I gave it to a friend of mine to read. He read it in an hour and a half, [and] when I came back in he was on page 23, circling every 23rd word, to see if there was a puzzle. That's the kind of thing that I want to do to an audience." Production on The Number 23 begins this week, with an eye toward a late 2006 release.

©2006, SCI FI. All rights reserved.

Clever Reverend #1

2006-01-25T18:28:00.000-08:00

This is the first in what will be a series of shots of the church sign a few blocks from my house. I will post new shots as often as there are new slogans. I will limit my comments because the signs speak for themselves. One has to wonder, though, if these are the emanations of a single mind, or if he is pulling these from some monthly Church Sign Newsletter. One has to wonder, too, if Baskin Robbins would have the balls to go after Christus Victor the same way Pizza Hut went after Papa John's.
Enjoy.

the doog has a blog? what is happening to him?

2006-01-24T12:27:00.000-08:00

The Justification (from the Justifier himself):

1. Immortality. Let's not pretend that we stopped looking for this. The connected world is just the latest attempt.

2. Synchronicity. It exists in and of itself, and it can be nudged along. I am making myself available to the possibilites of both.

3. I abhor my job. My mind is beginning to rot in this place. I am taking the necessary steps to counter this from leading to any kind of permanent damage. But if you know me, then you are prolly saying to yourself that this is a futile effort — there's too much other-kind-of-damage already done.

Enjoy. I'm sure this will be fairly infrequent.

Reverend Mo.