Instead of praying, I ate cheesesteak
and drank red wine,
sat and watched the lizards talk,
and pretended that I was in control
forgetting for a long moment that I was only a passenger on this spaceship
Floating amidst powers beyond comprehension
Then a backpack clad spaniard leaned over me,
gently grabbed my pen, and drew a peace sign on the page
and I wanted to cry from the sheer beauty of a moment standing in the light of the immensity of existence
and a tearful rememberance of my significant insignificance,
and the maze of desires, wishes, wants, and dreams,
that built a wall up blocking gratitude,
the thank-you to life which is all there really is to wish for,
because it offers the only pure happiness in this illusion of the flesh,
and the inevitable loneliness of being alive,
as the world rushes by
and dilapidates the fulfillments of our selfish wants,
leaving us alone and empty,
ready to feel the gratitude of pure being,
a happiness which makes us cry,
and folds us in half with apologies for our forgetfullness to the universe
as we thank the great void for existence as a silly lizard
who every so often remembers to say thank you,
and then, most probably, proceeds to get drunk,
trying not to forget the beauty in everything
amidst crashing stock markets, the smell of stale cigarettes,
and hearts bursting with love,
a great big human family
spinning around on this big round spaceship
in the midst of unknowable infinity

9/17/08

An angel crawls up from hell,
searching for a new life,
yet the road is hidden,
time limited,
as the sand falls through the hourglass and is forgotten.
The streets are littered with shrimp heads,
rotting flesh,
and dreams.
Another plane lands,
and the passengers live another day,
rushing away from each other into their little worlds,
alone.
We were close to the ocean,
but we had no idea,
just the miracle of life

9/17/08

What are we doing in outer space?
Why do we always pursue the beyond?
I suppose it´s human nature,
but when does progress become a basic waste of time?
Modern science,
the age of oil,
Love in the time of Fossil fuel.
Waiting for things to change,
waiting for the gifts of life,
happiness, love,
an upward swing from where we have grown down.
There is a loneliness that comes with living without a community,
the life of a lone nomad,
at home nowhere, and everywhere,
and the fellows of his heart are constantly lost,
but never forgotten
on the long strange ride around the planet.
He disapears,
constantly searching for a place,
never fully content,
always searching,
seeking a home and love,
and some purpose,
in a modern world of dilapidated meaning.

Off to Barcelona 9/16/08

Hot red wax accumulates around the edges of this hole,
The personality,
the one original thing in the universe,
be it planet, plant, animal, or man.
The thick liquid accumulates all over my mind,
hampering the truth,
rushing over my soul with the treacherous breath of societies demands on the battered self

Sept. 2 2008

Time is strange lately
the hooves are mouthing hot on the french horizon
Green drips of terror eat a the fragile ageing mind
Iceicles forming around the edges
Pencil scribbles darkness lines
the edge of something beautiful
the edge of despair
Dreams and requests from the almighty,
the infinite universe,
the unknown,
The burial

8/21/08

Whatever it is in here, as these molecules crawl through us like a prysmatic blossoming, suddenly the words like red blue and green flags waving and laughing now.
So the two monkeys sit and crack while the giants exlplode the universe,
while nothing is happening.
It´s quiet, and the ladies are gone and the morning has left his damp imprint on the soft coves,
and the hearts beating perfect as he looks at the scenery.

The Fool

They say that the fool who knows he is a fool is wise for this, while a fool who thinks he is wise is called a fool indeed. Well I've been a fool who thought he was wise, but life has a way of reminding one of his own silliness. Love and pain are so intertwined , it's like living under water. There is no sense. The fool thinks of his greatness, and the fool thinks of his misfortune. The fool is lost, and cannot find the middle way. I'm off to Europe today. I don't have a clue, and I'm running late to get ready and take off for the airport. Strange days from a strange year.

Greatest Country on Earth

Well tomorrow I take off for Barcelona, leaving this little hamlet of wealth and beauty called Aspen. Except for my extreme laziness of late, which resists movement of any sort, I'm exited. I'm sad that I will be missing the presidential debates, but also grateful to escape the insanity of this strange and awful campaign season. Two candidates are now running on a platform of change. Change Change Change. Well Bullshit. What exactly is going to change? Barack, the other night, and I've heard him say it a few times, said: "America is the greatest Country on earth." Sounds a lot like Sean Hannity to me. How exactly is America the greatest Country on earth? Is it our huge collection of nuclear weapons? Is it our wide variety of reality TV shows? Is it our great population of obese, and coastal enclaves of anorexia and bulimia? Barack, why would you say that we are the greatest country on earth? That is a stupid thing to say. I thought you were the guy to restore our reputation around the world. You know what those other countries are tired of? They are tired of Americans thinking that they are better than everyone else. We are not. There is no greatest country. And we are not high up on the list of greatest countries. We have most dictatorships beat. Countries all over the place have their own little and big problems. And we have more than our share. Greatest country on earth my ass. Mr. Obama, you are not helping restore my hope, and while you don't scare me as much as McCain, you are losing my faith. I'm off to Europe, where the wine tastes like wine, and people are a slight more mellow than in this haven of capitalist consumption and endless want for more. But i'll be back. I'll try and keep you informed.

Montezuma Adventure

Well before I go trying to put myself to sleep, I have to just for a moment stop and swirl the laughing face! And then ask myself, now wait a minute, was the world not completely insane enough, without having to add molecules to the nuclei? LSD. Flush that perfect union synchronicity out into the everything back into the moment, as the trees breathed as we breathed, and the present suddenly appeared, undeterred. But then here we were, again, humans, in the middle of this universal perfection all breathing together and flowing out into infinity. And we were confused. This was all so connected and the lines bent to allow us to see the corners of the mystery like tracers clawing round our paws. And there it was. The moment. The present. Perfection in all it's breathing majesty. From the ground through our tissues, we are the fiber of the all. The molecule. It makes up everything. But that's just the drugs talking, or that's just the truth talking, and maybe normal reality is what's known amongst the druish thinkers as that same old swine rag flemgoribbish as we've heard before. We have no idea what is going down here. We want to find and mate and reproduce. How complicated we've made everything with our mighty and grandiose minds. We still eat sleep and fuck, but there is love in everything. The source. The source of the wind. The breath of the trees we see enveloping each other when we sit and watch them breath. All the dimensions exist at the same time, and they wrap us in secret caves, separate from each other, but all breathing as one. The main organism. The big Secret. And tomorrow, we wake up, and go to work, and let the train leave the station yet again, from just another pair of warn lenses looking back down the line, and asking why. The dance is circular, like life. "It's all circles" one molecule said to his friend, in the midst of all this meaninglessness. Look at the sunset. Look at the Mountains. The rock beneath our feet, and the creek of reflections flowing through the meadow. The stars in the sky, and we all breath together. Breath in. Breath out. Breath in, Breath out.

Campus Priest Accused of Dealing Coke

Alright. Three cheers for a priest who offers his flock the powdered lord! For a price, his believers can buy a ride on the white horse, with an increased heart rate, and flap mouthed ecstasy. At least he wasn't molesting kids, just doing God's work and selling dope. Sweet. Reminds me of a guy in Hawaii who started The THC Ministry. You can go in there and be blessed with the cannabis sacrament, and get a neat little card that says weed is part of your religion. Maybe the Catholic priest should have covered his ass a little better and started the Church of the Lords Blow. I'm sure his church would be filled with jittery believers, jonesing for a little bit of God in their nasal canals.

Thoughts for Obama

I was talking about balls in my previous post, and Barack Obama needs to get a new pair. While NBC and FOX attack each other for being biased, the Fox after NBC for being Obama cheerleaders, and NBC after FOX for licking Mccain’s hoohaa in their fair and balanced way, Barack is getting pit-bulled left right and center. Come on, Mr. Obama please wake up, out of your monotone, slow and deliberate, overly thought out commentary, and push back a little bit. Please Barack, before it’s too late. You are losing the election as we speak. The lipstick on pigs comment was a really dumb thing to say by the way. Did you not listen to Sarah Palin’s speech? Come in Honolulu. She told a joke about the difference between hockey mom’s and pit-bulls. Lipstick was the difference. Now, let’s be clear, I understand that McCain has used the lipstick on a pig comment, as have a number of other politicians over the years. I know you weren’t calling Sarah Palin a pig. Your timing was bad. That old overused line about lipstick on a pig, not a great time to use it. You have likely put that line away for the foreseeable future. Thanks to you, we probably won’t have to hear it again for quite some time. Sarah Palin looks more like a rat anyways. But with lipstick on she’s a damn fine rat!

Listen Mr. Obama, please. In case you didn’t get the memo, politics in America is a fast game. You lost your upper hand. Your slow, mellow, thoughtful, painfully emotionless speech is not working anymore. In case you missed it during the last two elections, the Republicans have a winning strategy. Make the other guy look like a pussy. That’s what they do, and they are doing it to you! You are doing it to yourself. Americans don’t want a sissy for their president, and the Republicans have been working this angle effectively for a few years now. They did it to Al Gore, and they did it to John Kerry. They made them look like girly men. Barack, being mellow and thoughtful worked with Hillary, she outmanned you for sure, but she’s actually a woman, and what do you know, you beat her in the primary, but barely! Get some nuts man! Like I said, it’s all about balls. If Hillary had some pictures of her with guns, and sitting next to large dead animals, she may have had you. You are not standing up very well against your vice presidential opponent, maybe that’s why Mccain picked her, because he is too old to look tuff, despite his history as a military man. And let’s not forget he was in the Navy, the sissy arm of the armed forces.

You didn’t stand up to Bill O’Reilly when he interviewed you. You just sort of stumbled thoughtfully along, while he rolled all over you. Stop thinking so much! Americans don’t have a long attention span, so while you may have all the answers, people don’t pay attention long enough to hear it. They just see you waffling, or silent, and think you may have lost your voice, or your balls! I know you don’t want to seem like an angry black man, but you are running against an angry white man who shakes his withered fist with glee. Try talking a bit faster. Stand up for God’s sake, and stop your halting speech. They want to drill, drill, drill, and bomb, bomb, bomb, you have to say no, no, no, and say it with some heart. You may not notice, what with all the cheering crowds, but you are being dressed in drag darling. You are getting sissified, and you are not helping your case. Come on Obama. McCain and Palin are worse than four more years of Bush. They are the doomsday team. Start talking about it. Tell us you will bring us peace, while they will bring us war, but say it like a man, not like an embarrassed sex ed teacher, timidly talking about things you are not comfortable with. Say something loud, and stop talking like Martin Luther King. America does not want a preacher for a president, but it does want someone who can stand up to Admiral Skeletor and a red headed pit-bull wearing lipstick.

We've Got Balls!

What goes up must come down. The coming down is the hardest part. But it’s all circles in this strange universe of universes, and so what goes down, must come up. We don’t need the Large Hadron Collider to tell us that this whole strange mess is made up of little tiny balls. It used to be the atom was the smallest that we knew. Then the balls got smaller, and then we had quarks, gum balls, and nuclei. The elusive Higgs bosons could be the next discovery if the Collider doesn’t create a black hole which will swallow us all. We’re made of little molecules, just a bunch of balls. All of us. Man, dog, frog, swallow, slug, and crab, we’re a bunch of little balls all wrapped up together in a variety of different shells. What about the Anti-Christ? What about the empty space? Planets are going around and around, a bunch of balls rotating just so. And the universe, what does it mean? What about Anti-matter? The tree of knowledge is getting barren, we’re eating all the fruit off, and the world is not the better for it. But we were warned, weren’t we? But we had too many balls in our brains, and we just couldn’t seem to help ourselves. We’ve made quite a mess out of this garden of Eden. Our balls are out of control! Sarah Palin and her overactive ovaries, balls creating balls, and John Mccain who got his balls busted at the Hanoi Hilton. Exactly how does enduring a bunch of torture at the hands of people you were trying to bomb make one a hero? Well, I guess it took balls to endure what he endured. And balls make heroes, as sure as they make devils. Well, praise the balls of God, here we are, and still here, despite our quarks, and quirks, and atom bombs. God bless our balls, spinning around, going up and down, and around and around. There is no answer to the question we weren’t supposed to ask. The more we learn, the farther we seem to move from the truth. But we keep asking questions, which just goes to show you, we‘ve got balls.

Seems pretty innocent. Yet they say the experiment could cause us to be swallowed by a black hole. Down down down. Little balls everywhere.

I'm tired of being angry about things, so i'll just let this guy do it for me

Wow

John Mccain is the Anti-Christ. I had no idea until the end of his speech. Oh Shit! We may be in trouble.

Update

Bill Clinton gave an amazing speech tonight. I'm sorta just not that into writing on this blog lately. To the few readers out there, I apologize. Anyhoo. My dog is from Jamaica.

we meet again

Come in Honolulu. Can anyone read me out there? Come in. It's not the first day anymore, and the flitty little twits of our dreams have haunted us far too long, and have begun to wear on our patience. Memories litter the brain, jittery connections synapsing about in that little confined space of electricity and habitual behavior. The only thing we are sure of is that this too will change. The present moment can be grand, but not when the experience of it is being bombarded with the relived longings for what was. What will be is a mystery, but the future does not appreciate the negative influence of a brain that keeps floating old material which serves no purpose but misery.

The dread pirate spat "hoorah!" to the wind, and it flew back in his face. The chickens danced around the yard, the gorillas sat on their asses, and ate bananas. Another computer, and cheap sunglasses. We ate ravioli.

Soon the sun will go behind the clouds again. There will be a rainbow this afternoon. A car accident. A plane crashed in Spain. The sound of a helicopter in the distance. Love evaporating into the ether. The giants of the universe inhale it. We are breathed in, and exhaled out. Space. Empty time while the sand falls gently through the cracks, and into the void.

Don't Fuck with America

It’s been pretty interesting to watch the Russian Georgian conflict through the American eye. It is depressing to watch our government squirm in its own powerlessness. Russia’s invasion of two of Georgia’s northern territories has Russia boldly taunting the western democracies, their fingers pointing their noses up like a group of angry French waiters. America is doing some posturing and making scolding statements against Russia’s actions, but what is amazing is watching everyone in our government say as quietly and unnoticeably as possible that military action is really not on the table. It might almost make someone believe that we are finally coming to terms here, in America the Great, with our actual size on the world stage. We don’t seem to be standing up so big as we have been acting. We certainly aren’t going to go pick a fight with Russia. We thought we were pretty safe taking on enemies in Iraq, but we can’t even win there. We aren’t gaining much ground in Afghanistan, and we have amassed maybe the biggest debt in all of history, and who is the loan shark with the baseball bat to crack in our kneecaps if we can’t pay up? That’s just China. We don’t want to make them mad. We are suddenly bare assed, and despite the Viagra we’ve been consuming, we are just not the superpower we thought we were.
John Heroman McCain is busy trying to take advantage of these events, posturing as if he is the tuff guy, beside the fact that he looks like Skeletor. We got no tuff left in our bank. America is just not the powerhouse it thought it was. Our soaring eagle is paper thin. Many Americans are living life in a vacuum of debt, which is enriching the upper echelons. Instead of trickle down economics we are experiencing vacuum up economics. The super rich are packing their accounts with wealth as the debt of the nation and so many of its people just multiplies.
I’m hungry, let’s get a taco. Come to paradise, up here in the mountains of $1000 dollar a plate, McCain fundraisers, where a trailer costs a million dollars. The air is clean, if you can afford it.

Spinach, grass, sea cucumbers. Shrimp. Just disappearing into the two forces combating in this vessel. No movement. Movement. Get up!! No, I think i'll just lay here. Who is lying here? Who is not getting up? One of us wants to get up. The other just wants to lay here. Let's go running. No let's just lay here. Come on, let's go! No, I don't think so. Drowning in the slush of I don't think so, the battle wages on. Which wolf will we feed? Dilapidation or growth? Spin monkey. Spin you little son of a bitch!

Out into Nature

When a man just types senselessly into the dark, the keyboard becomes a journal. Oops, the man sometimes thinks, I've been posting my most personal thoughts and feelings out into the void for anyone to read. Not that people are that interested. I need to go back to politics and just the old basic storyline of crazy humanity in the modern world. But, I just can't think of anything new to say. Yesterday, my friend and I walked over some mountains and found our way to Crested Butte, Colorado. I'll work on writing something about that. I'm really bored with yellowjumpsuits. A decision must be made.

Feb-17-06

How does the water taste?
As the bubbles float to the surface?
It looks like hand blown glass
Alive. Infinite.

3/9/06

Slept the great sleep
Soft pillows of nothing
Falling into darkness

Am I that I am?

I’m not a big fan of clichés, but in this new millennium they seem hard to avoid. Everything written, in one form or another, has been written before. You can tell a story differently, but it’s probably happened somewhere, sometime, in the past. Someone has likely articulated it. We have comedy and drama, the laughing face and the sad one. As the Dancing Outlaw said, “there’s love in it, there’s happiness in it, there’s also sorrow, hatred and madness in it.” I was watching CNN this evening, as I’m prone to do in my weakest moments, and I heard some great advice on Larry King. One of the quantum physicists who spoke in the movie “What the Bleep do we Know” said “let’s say you are sitting on the couch depressed and feeling lousy, ask yourself WHO is depressed?” This is a great little exercise I found. It makes you realize that it’s not you. It’s a voice. Like the voice of sorrow, who articulates the sadness of the world, the desperation and desolation of life, it is only a voice, another habit in the void. We could also ask the question in times of ecstasy or happiness, who is happy? Then we come back to the I AM consciousness. I am that I am. This thing is neither empty nor full, half-empty or half-full, it just is, and existence as experienced by man is a matter of mind. We are prey to our mind, or we are benefited by it. Existence is many different colors, and one is no better than another, they are all necessary for the comedy or drama which ever exist in this world of life and death, love and loss, growth and dilapidation. I am that I am, and I fall victim to the chemical attachments in my brain. Who is addicted to these attachments? Who is prey to ecstasy or sadness depending on circumstances? The definition of the observer is what is malleable in this odd new world of post relativistic modernity, where everything means nothing, and nothing means everything. Truth has been crushed under the wheels of expanding thought and information. The information superhighway is littered with the writhing bodies of the limited beliefs of our past, yet we are still hardwired for our delusions and addictions, even though we know them to be destructive and not inevitable. We can only sail on in this odd new world of science, and choose to accept life in all its scientific deconstruction. It’s a strange day indeed when man has broken himself down into molecules. Who is the puppet master of this carbon based, oxygen breathing machine? Is it even possible for the life force to be depressed? What is the observer observing, and can it really separate itself from its own being? Maybe Larry King knows. Time only passes for those who are on the clock.

welp

So I've written some depressing shit the last few months. What do you know, I've been depressed. Before that was pure madness, which is a lot more fun for the madman, and maybe less fun for those in his path. During parties, special events, times of boredom, the madman was welcomed with his off-kilter message of a new dawn of civilization, destruction of human separation vis-a-vis the stupidity of organized religion and our system of color coding called race, which has been scientifically debunked by the reality that, oh shit, we are all just a bunch of humans. Oh. The human race you say? What about beliefs? Well, turns out those are pretty unrealistic as well, since we seem to learn something new everyday, which contradicts that which we believed yesterday. This is a dilemma, since we have habitually believed ourselves into separation for the past few thousand years, coming into contact with people "different" than ourselves, as we sometimes did, and still sometimes do. So it turns out it was all an oops, since we are all inbred to the max. That's right, Muslims were Jews, Christians were Jews, Jews were savages, and savages were holy in disbelief. Buddhists were warriors and Hindus. Yellow, White, Brown, Red, all of us peoples were black. Who cares right? I'll just turn on CNN, flip over to Fox News, and hear about Americas worries. A dwindling economy, nuclear proliferation, and more politics, luxury problems one might say. I'm tired of prophesies. 2012? What were you high? We'll see. I've had the vision, under the enlightenment of madness, and what did it get me? Another trip to the psych ward. When the world is insane, don't confront it with its insanity. Modern religion has never made so little sense. Hey people! You aren't going to win. The war against Islamic fascism? What a joke. East vs. West? Hah! The planet is round and is orbiting the sun, there is no east and west. We've done the work. We've gone out there far enough. It's time to come home. It's just one planet here. We are just one race. Why are we still killing each other? Why are we still fighting? Maybe it's because we are overpopulating the earth, and damaging the future for our descendants. What is the solution? Nuclear holocaust to avoid a population apocalypse? Who goes first? Eenie Meenie Minie Moe. Which of our brethren will be first to go? Or we could just ramp up our production of condoms, pay people to give up their sexual reproductivity, and give up the fallacy of our sovereignty as nations. Or work to convince everyone to drink the cool-aid so they can catch the next ride on Hale Bop.

should i just wake up and sleep through life?

Good morning winterberries
as the starlight whispers to the dawn
Slick hot fat
runs down the edges of the page
as it drips off the leaves
The peak of Summer
Tennis and waterskiing
and dreaming of a fresh horizon where there
is meaning
where oil isn't so important and where money is safe
in a bank not from thieves with guns,
but from thieves with suits
the river of life keeps flowing
carrying the pollutants away
and sour tidings to the sewage sea
shark fins ripped gently through the fluid
the little fishing boat floating gently in the buoying tide
and all the floatng people eating Prosac in the soft crusade
There are no floatsam quills here
This flesh exploration
as PlayBoy fleapots sit idly by as the margaritas eat themselves in harmony
A black dog kingston obessively chews the town with only floss

yea, that's the ticket...

May all sentient beings be released from the bondage of self.
May the light radiate through the universe and dispel all illusions of separation.
May you be happy
May you be well
May you be free from suffering.

Analyzing Dreams

The polecat swears out
mouthwise
into the wind
with pictures of the modern age
The future mechanized
Daily jive on television
Cheap eats
Cupcakes in the oven
A claw descends from Heaven
pulling the word pirate from the ash heap
Prayers of anti-repetition
The roll to revert
waiting for the dawn
in conscious insanity
listening to dreams talk about reality
bleeding from the shoulder
from the feet
hobbling around on a concrete floor
trying to avoid a decaying elk
with fears of gangrene
and some Hawaiian is waiting outside for hours
in an idling open aired vehicle
waiting for the future
but the house is a history of pain
littered with the refuse of insanity
and the little Mindhead cannot escape
from this family home
The dead grandfather sleeping nervously in a hidden room
will not wake up
Has the summer of this human life ended
or is just beginning
as the third symbol of habitual love
ascends into the void?

A Short Novel

The slipline wipes itself off
with the dew of a hopeful morning
It's mind sits curled beneath the earth
Fingers gently grope the chest
on a playground for animals
during the dilapidation of the larvae and bacterial growth
This eye whispers desperately and shouts,
without glee
and the whole machine spins mindlessly
on perpetual motion
This dripping fat world
sprays the filthy meaty juice and plastic bags
and strangles us with information
Another timeline
and endless repetition of the same different things
So the spider crawls from inside
tickling the ear
with venomous innocence
and the nightmare of existence
prays to be a dream
and then again
becomes nothing

drawing a blank

Can someone please help me out? What's wrong with these celebrity types. Brangelina named their new offspring. The boy is Knox Leon Pitt and the girls name is Vivienne Marcheline Jolie-Pitt. Do these people think just because their kids are born famous that shitty names will not affect them? Knock Knock. Who's there? Knox. Knox Leon. He'll grow up in the world of soft knocks, a Hollywood boy with severely good looks, and a family bank account that grows 40 million a flick. A mansion in LA, a mansion in France, his mother has huge lips, and his fathers most convincing role was as a stoner in True Romance. Not that any of that matters. It doesn't. I just can't think of anything to write.

It seems like just yesterday that everything was grand, the economy was great, everything was rosy, the chemicals in my brain were pumping me with euphoric mania, and there were big plans for world peace and harmony. There was meaning, there was potential, there was hope. In short, we were insane.

How I long for the days when the Oval Office was used for the enjoyment of oral sex. Those were better days. Nowadays it's just a boring den of beady eyes, plotting the new world order with prayers for Armageddon and the blessings of Jesus in a war against "evil." Thank god our lives are in the hands of these rational thinkers.

What is the basic malfunction of this human organism? The tree of knowledge? Internet porn? Microwave popcorn? Religion? The ingredients of a hot dog?

What does it mean if we are all the same? George W. Bush and his brother Osama Bin Laden are just two examples of people acting out their beliefs. People are rarely as wrong as when they think they're right. The sound of the sheep is silence.

DUH MM

So if the glass is neither half full nor half empty, because in fact there is no glass unless we invent it, then the world is not bipolar, everything is actually not up or down, and therefor, everything must be just fine and dandy; unless you watch the news, or date, or follow politics, environmental policy, gun control laws, or international nuclear proliferation. Sometimes things don't look so good, but at least we aren't locked up, getting raped on a regular basis. I'm only speaking for myself here. Have you ever been completely delusional? It's like an inside joke that only you are in on, but then you wake up one day and realize that it's everybody else who is in on a joke that you aren't in on. You've gone around trying to convince everyone that they are crazy, and they are, but you are really the crazy one because you've gone about thinking that you had some existence outside the game. That's the delusion, and the joke's on you! Sanity in the modern world is an oxy! Moron. Things are way too insane these days to make any sense out of what it is to be sane. You are either functioning, and therefor qualified to live in this insane world, or you are non-functioning, running around naked, having delusions of grandeur and paranoia, and blissing out on the interconnectivity of the universe, which means you are probably close to losing your freedom. Going insane disturbs the status quo of those around you, and is therefor frowned upon in general. As good as it feels to lose it, we must keep it together. Keep it together, keep it together, keep it together. Take your medicine. Shut up. Everything looks fine here Ma, ain't it grand the wind stopped blowing.

ripe fat kitten

The scourge mouthed bratwurst turned to its cousin and said, foul mouthed, "do not use me for your over-weight dice gamed floor shine schemes! I have had enough. With you, and your foolish games and capitalist whispers in your free market jive. Take a loaf and lick it, swine. The little ninny pants in his Out House in Washington. It's a free market free for all, and the chickens are coming home to roost. Big D! E! B! T! and a wicked yeehaw factor. Rich Rich Rich is how rich you have to be to not get screwed, and the hawbags have done garnered their prize. Now to rape the shorelines with a few black hole pumpers. Oh Well. Hello from Babbleon. Is there some compromise? Must we reap, oh bratwursts?"

YJS update.

Today, if only i'd had a camera at the store! I have to laugh. We sold a yellowjumpsuit and a cow suit this fine summer day, and the young gentlemen are now in neon, off to skateboard and swineherd the greedheads! These youths, entering their freshman years of high school, will be well prepared and glowing bright. Can the people of this small town, with its ridiculous rents, keep this little hole in the wall store from closing? The demand for bright yellowjumpsuits waxes and wanes like the light of the moon, the same moon I was on when this particular genius struck me. Sunglasses, glass wear, fine art, bright clothes, surrounded by bright yellow paint, here we are. It would be sin to close down, but sometimes you have to fold a hand to fight another day. The rent is stupid high, and my prices once reflected that, but, though I can tell a lie, I don't see why, and we slash prices like swashbuckling pirates. Aspen, Colorado, and here I am, just another ass with a pen, and not quite rich enough to feel right about surviving the coming off seasons. Business plan!? Hah, we laughed in the face of a business plan, and instead dressed in suits, signed the leasae, and painted the store. We built it, and the people have come, and then returned, but we are difficult to find, and we may not be best suited to this high end retirement community for the supremely rich. Maybe we should add gold plated adult diapers to our inventory.

The Green King... I wrote this a few years ago, june 14th 2006, and I think it's my fav. Same old shit

The Green King wets his mind hat

In the flower breath of tortured faces

Shaking the looks 

Heart mouthed out

Fetching nothingness and

Castles drop bottom faced 

Through his shoe horns.

A cracked beak shines bold

Faced on his rotten snout

Fresh parsley crowns his tarnished head

But he is pure green and couldn't be happier 

Eating his pimientos.

They are so green and

Hot red bread sauce 

Pours out his eyes onto his shaking hands and

He is gorgeous gorging his fat 

In meatball popsicles and french death

Drink his Coca Cola light 

In fetid 

Stupid

hash hating 

tobacco faced 

greasy

slimy

clammy

soft

pudgy 

Snail Rotten Shrimp sauce.

Everyone on the metro

Wore Green

And he was the Green King

In his green shorts

green Slippers

And a famous green shirt stuffed with French Cuffs and Shrimp Heads

What more was there he asked himself

Eating fake death every day and swallowing yourself in slime.

Does Gonzo really pay? We have to admit that this marvelous way of thinking ended in our hero philosopher blowing his brains all over the kitchen. He perches hawkishly over my stove, next to the ice box, smoking a cigarette.
"The Rifle cracked
The Pig Ran back
Then over the Cliff
To his Death
I plucked out his Eyes
And ate Them
His spirit Saluted me"
HST 10/22/94

Big bird is up in Heaven, looking straight back with the inside line on shoulda coulda woulda. Was there any choice in the matter? Or are we just doing exactly what we have to, and whistling away at free will?

Camus said:

"There are many causes for a suicide, and generally the most obvious ones were not the most powerful... What sets off the crisis is almost always unverifiable... But it is hard to fix the precise instant, the subtle step when the mind opted for death... killing yourself amounts to confessing. It is confessing that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it... It is merely confessing that that "is not worth the trouble." Living, naturally, is never easy. You continue making the gestures commanded by existence for many reasons, the first of which is habit. Dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized, even instinctively, the ridiculous character of that habit, the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering.
What, then, is that incalcuble feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. All healthy men having thought of their own suicide, it can be seen, without further explanation, that there is a direct connection between this feeling and the longing for death."

The jumpsuit project is having a crisis of direction. It's a crisis of leadership. Is an embrace of the absurdity of this insane reality we have built up around ourselves really the best option under the circumstances? Is it sensible here in this post post relativistic modernity to continue to embrace meaninglessness? Can we reconcile the fact that it's meaningful and meaningless at the same time? It is, or it ain't might be more like it. Relativity produces insanity. When it means something we go up, when it's meaningless we go down. Society is bipolar. We are running out of sense.

It's a crisis of thought. I don't really want to go down the road of one of my long time heroes, HST, blowing the absurd contents of my brain out through the back of my skull. I want to live life desperately and eliminate the dark habits of decay. I like what Baudelaire said: "Let us admit for a moment that hashish gives, or at least increases, genius; they forget that it is in the nature of hashish to diminish the will, and that thus it gives with one hand what it withdraws with the other; that is to say, imagination without the faculty of profiting by it."

blah blah blah...

The Bears

We have finally reached the threshold of a Bear Market, according to the New York Times, and it's all tied to oil. The Dow has dropped a thousand points in the last month, and while that makes me afraid to check my portfolio because some of that money floating in the ether is supposedly mine, I also find myself a little giddy. Maybe this is the point at which things will change. Probably not. Oil may drop drastically and everything will seem fine again. People may just return to the pumps as before. We forget that 100 years ago we could have gotten around just fine on the fantastic system of trains that ran across this country. Wouldn't it be nice to just jump on a train here in Aspen, and not have to rocket into the air in an aluminum tube with jets attached to its wings? I feel like smoking a cigarrette, and taking the day off work. It's beautiful here in the mountains, but I miss the city. I miss being surrounded by masses of humanity. I miss the smells, the smiles, the sprawl. Life is a mystery. I've experienced major insanity, and let me tell you, it's a whole lot more realistic than what we call reality. The world we've invented is a world of nonsense, a black and white world in the midst of a universe of color floating in a void. Insanity is a rebellion against the walls of psychotic culture, it makes one feel powerful and fills the soul with an indignation and a hope of something else. When that falls away, there is only culture floating in a void of possibilities. This culture is something solid, stinking, wretched, crushing our souls in the spinning disposal of separation. Good Morning America. Doesn't anyone hear the screams of our crushed soul? We are boiling our potential in this melting pot. Hope? Faith? Joy? Honesty? Love? Rebellion.

So it's like some kind of journal

Well, I documented the pure insanity here in these online pages. The truth is it's been a shit storm, and I've done pretty well fooling myself on that account over the years. I guess I've been an emotional wreck since I can't really say when. I was born on the road, never knew my father, got left with my grandparents, and from there I got shipped around a whole lot. It really wasn't very much fun growing up a spoiled rich kid. It's more than it's made out to be. As much as I like to pretend, as I sit here mired in a crap heap of 28 years of hiding from my misery, I must say, when I wasn't the boy crying in the dark, I was whistling. So i'm sitting here paralyzed, wondering how to get out of this mess. I never really threw any clothes away over the years, partly as a result of living in so many places at the same time. I could have started a used clothing store by just selling my own. Instead I actually decided it would be a good idea to go around buying up old clothes that people had given away to thrift stores. This is really precious. So I went around collecting a whole lot of what I once saw as gems, and now i'm stuck with a home full of things that I don't need, and a store full of things that I don't need, and that will take me way too long to sell. Also, I've realized that having a store, for me, is a complete and utter nightmare. So I've just awakened from a nightmare that I've built up around myself, and I can't see any way out. As good an option as suicide seems, I really don't want to live on in infamy, as another of those fellows who was found hanging from a rope in his garage. Each day a new beginning right? I believe it's time to start throwing it all away to preserve myself, or whatever self there is worth saving in there. I pray to a god i'm not sure I believe in. I'm broken. Reading Of Human Bondage is not helping me, but it sure is engaging. It sure is pretty outside, but I just can't seem to grasp it. There you have it people. The end of the jumpsuits for me. It's time to get off this silly ship. I don't know where i'm going, and I have no idea how to get there. If I can just get rid of all this shit, it will be a beginning. But it's the mess inside that worries me the most.

the meaningless drivel of the universe

Matthew, one of our regular customers, was just enjoying the yellow ambiance of the store. He found a pair of brown Greet sunglasses, which resting on his nose, made him a perfect picture of a man walking straight and powerful out of the 70's. We talked about how every human being is closely related. Matthew said "white people are the first black people." I didn't quite understand how that worked, but I admitted that we did all come out of Africa. I just learned the other day that there is more genetic diversity between two chimpanzees in the same family group, than there is between any two human beings. Not that it really makes any difference. We are so closely related that we all seem utterly incapable of not acting like assholes. We are a most remarkable species, and we treat our fellow man like dirt. The more we can convince ourselves that he's different than us, the crueler we treat him. Mean monkeys walked out of Africa on our own two feet. Are we all Jews? That whole Israel area would have been a first stop on the trail out of our original homeland of Africa. Did skin get lighter the further north in Africa we went? Was Whitey born in Israel? Did that super volcano really explode 80,000 years or so ago, like they said on the History Channel, and kill all of us but fewer than 50,000. Those are our parents, All six, almost 7, billion of us. Yet we seem to easily ignore that fact, and amidst all the knowledge of our relation we have ourselves easily separated by race, religion, and sexual orientation. Oh well. We lock each other up and kill each other with impunity. Is there a God who cares? Or is it really so simple as the invention of God in our own image. The reflection of the observer. And so as we are cruel, but also gentle and loving, wrathful, as well as forgiving, so is our God. If there is a devil, he is inside all of us, just like God, but more than likely they are just two sides of one coin: us. Creation, destruction, creation, destruction. Om Nam Shiva.

Dr. James Hansen of Nasa--a to b aint gonna be easy

Twenty Years Later: Tipping Points Near on Global Warming

James Hansen

Tomorrow I will testify to Congress about global warming, 20 years after my 23 June 1988 testimony, which alerted the public that global warming was underway. There are striking similarities between then and now, but one big difference.

Again a wide gap has developed between what is understood about global warming by the relevant scientific community and what is known by policymakers and the public. Now, as then, frank assessment of scientific data yields conclusions that are shocking to the body politic. Now, as then, I can assert that these conclusions have a certainty exceeding 99 percent.

The difference is that now we have used up all slack in the schedule for actions needed to defuse the global warming time bomb. The next President and Congress must define a course next year in which the United States exerts leadership commensurate with our responsibility for the present dangerous situation.

Otherwise it will become impractical to constrain atmospheric carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas produced in burning fossil fuels, to a level that prevents the climate system from passing tipping points that lead to disastrous climate changes that spiral dynamically out of humanity’s control.

Changes needed to preserve creation, the planet on which civilization developed, are clear. But the changes have been blocked by special interests, focused on short-term profits, who hold sway in Washington and other capitals.

I argue that a path yielding energy independence and a healthier environment is, barely, still possible. It requires a transformative change of direction in Washington in the next year.

On 23 June, 1988, I testified to a hearing, chaired by Senator Tim Wirth of Colorado, that the Earth had entered a long-term warming trend and that human-made greenhouse gases almost surely were responsible. I noted that global warming enhanced both extremes of the water cycle, meaning stronger droughts and forest fires, on the one hand, but also heavier rains and floods.

My testimony two decades ago was greeted with skepticism. But while skepticism is the lifeblood of science, it can confuse the public. As scientists examine a topic from all perspectives, it may appear that nothing is known with confidence. But from such broad open-minded study of all data, valid conclusions can be drawn.

My conclusions in 1988 were built on a wide range of inputs from basic physics, planetary studies, observations of on-going changes, and climate models. The evidence was strong enough that I could say it was time to “stop waffling.” I was sure that time would bring the scientific community to a similar consensus, as it has.

While international recognition of global warming was swift, actions have faltered. The U.S. refused to place limits on its emissions, and developing countries such as China and India rapidly increased their emissions.

What is at stake? Warming so far, about two degrees Fahrenheit over land areas, seems almost innocuous, being less than day-to-day weather fluctuations. But more warming is already “in-the-pipeline,” delayed only by the great inertia of the world ocean. And climate is nearing dangerous tipping points. Elements of a “perfect storm”, a global cataclysm, are assembled.

Climate can reach points such that amplifying feedbacks spur large rapid changes. Arctic sea ice is a current example. Global warming initiated sea ice melt, exposing darker ocean that absorbs more sunlight, melting more ice. As a result, without any additional greenhouse gases, the Arctic soon will be ice-free in the summer.

More ominous tipping points loom. West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are vulnerable to even small additional warming. These two-mile-thick behemoths respond slowly at first, but if disintegration gets well underway it will become unstoppable. Debate among scientists is only about how much sea level would rise by a given date. In my opinion, if emissions follow a business-as-usual scenario, sea level rise of at least two meters is likely this century. Hundreds of millions of people would become refugees. No stable shoreline would be reestablished in any time frame that humanity can conceive.

Animal and plant species are already stressed by climate change. Polar and alpine species will be pushed off the planet, if warming continues. Other species attempt to migrate, but as some are extinguished their interdependencies can cause ecosystem collapse. Mass extinctions, of more than half the species on the planet, have occurred several times when the Earth warmed as much as expected if greenhouse gases continue to increase. Biodiversity recovered, but it required hundreds of thousands of years.

The disturbing conclusion, documented in a paper I have written with several of the world’s leading climate experts, is that the safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is no more than 350 ppm (parts per million) and it may be less. Carbon dioxide amount is already 385 ppm and rising about 2 ppm per year. Stunning corollary: the oft-stated goal to keep global warming less than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is a recipe for global disaster, not salvation.

These conclusions are based on paleoclimate data showing how the Earth responded to past levels of greenhouse gases and on observations showing how the world is responding to today’s carbon dioxide amount. The consequences of continued increase of greenhouse gases extend far beyond extermination of species and future sea level rise.

Arid subtropical climate zones are expanding poleward. Already an average expansion of about 250 miles has occurred, affecting the southern United States, the Mediterranean region, Australia and southern Africa. Forest fires and drying-up of lakes will increase further unless carbon dioxide growth is halted and reversed.

Mountain glaciers are the source of fresh water for hundreds of millions of people. These glaciers are receding world-wide, in the Himalayas, Andes and Rocky Mountains. They will disappear, leaving their rivers as trickles in late summer and fall, unless the growth of carbon dioxide is reversed.

Coral reefs, the rainforest of the ocean, are home for one-third of the species in the sea. Coral reefs are under stress for several reasons, including warming of the ocean, but especially because of ocean acidification, a direct effect of added carbon dioxide. Ocean life dependent on carbonate shells and skeletons is threatened by dissolution as the ocean becomes more acid.

Such phenomena, including the instability of Arctic sea ice and the great ice sheets at today’s carbon dioxide amount, show that we have already gone too far. We must draw down atmospheric carbon dioxide to preserve the planet we know. A level of no more than 350 ppm is still feasible, with the help of reforestation and improved agricultural practices, but just barely – time is running out.

Requirements to halt carbon dioxide growth follow from the size of fossil carbon reservoirs. Coal towers over oil and gas. Phase out of coal use except where the carbon is captured and stored below ground is the primary requirement for solving global warming.

Oil is used in vehicles where it is impractical to capture the carbon. But oil is running out. To preserve our planet we must also ensure that the next mobile energy source is not obtained by squeezing oil from coal, tar shale or other fossil fuels.

Fossil fuel reservoirs are finite, which is the main reason that prices are rising. We must move beyond fossil fuels eventually. Solution of the climate problem requires that we move to carbon-free energy promptly.

Special interests have blocked transition to our renewable energy future. Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, as tobacco companies discredited the smoking-cancer link. Methods are sophisticated, including funding to help shape school textbook discussions of global warming.

CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.

Conviction of ExxonMobil and Peabody Coal CEOs will be no consolation, if we pass on a runaway climate to our children. Humanity would be impoverished by ravages of continually shifting shorelines and intensification of regional climate extremes. Loss of countless species would leave a more desolate planet.

If politicians remain at loggerheads, citizens must lead. We must demand a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants. We must block fossil fuel interests who aim to squeeze every last drop of oil from public lands, off-shore, and wilderness areas. Those last drops are no solution. They yield continued exorbitant profits for a short-sighted self-serving industry, but no alleviation of our addiction or long-term energy source.

Moving from fossil fuels to clean energy is challenging, yet transformative in ways that will be welcomed. Cheap, subsidized fossil fuels engendered bad habits. We import food from halfway around the world, for example, even with healthier products available from nearby fields. Local produce would be competitive if not for fossil fuel subsidies and the fact that climate change damages and costs, due to fossil fuels, are also borne by the public.

A price on emissions that cause harm is essential. Yes, a carbon tax. Carbon tax with 100 percent dividend is needed to wean us off fossil fuel addiction. Tax and dividend allows the marketplace, not politicians, to make investment decisions.

Carbon tax on coal, oil and gas is simple, applied at the first point of sale or port of entry. The entire tax must be returned to the public, an equal amount to each adult, a half-share for children. This dividend can be deposited monthly in an individual’s bank account.

Carbon tax with 100 percent dividend is non-regressive. On the contrary, you can bet that low and middle income people will find ways to limit their carbon tax and come out ahead. Profligate energy users will have to pay for their excesses.

Demand for low-carbon high-efficiency products will spur innovation, making our products more competitive on international markets. Carbon emissions will plummet as energy efficiency and renewable energies grow rapidly. Black soot, mercury and other fossil fuel emissions will decline. A brighter, cleaner future, with energy independence, is possible.
Washington likes to spend our tax money line-by-line. Swarms of high-priced lobbyists in alligator shoes help Congress decide where to spend, and in turn the lobbyists’ clients provide “campaign” money.

The public must send a message to Washington. Preserve our planet, creation, for our children and grandchildren, but do not use that as an excuse for more tax-and-spend. Let this be our motto: “One hundred percent dividend or fight!”

The next President must make a national low-loss electric grid an imperative. It will allow dispersed renewable energies to supplant fossil fuels for power generation. Technology exists for direct-current high-voltage buried transmission lines. Trunk lines can be completed in less than a decade and expanded analogous to interstate highways.
Government must also change utility regulations so that profits do not depend on selling ever more energy, but instead increase with efficiency. Building code and vehicle efficiency requirements must be improved and put on a path toward carbon neutrality.

The fossil-industry maintains its strangle-hold on Washington via demagoguery, using China and other developing nations as scapegoats to rationalize inaction. In fact, we produced most of the excess carbon in the air today, and it is to our advantage as a nation to move smartly in developing ways to reduce emissions. As with the ozone problem, developing countries can be allowed limited extra time to reduce emissions. They will cooperate: they have much to lose from climate change and much to gain from clean air and reduced dependence on fossil fuels.
We must establish fair agreements with other countries. However, our own tax and dividend should start immediately. We have much to gain from it as a nation, and other countries will copy our success. If necessary, import duties on products from uncooperative countries can level the playing field, with the import tax added to the dividend pool.

Democracy works, but sometimes churns slowly. Time is short. The 2008 election is critical for the planet. If Americans turn out to pasture the most brontosaurian congressmen, if Washington adapts to address climate change, our children and grandchildren can still hold great expectations.

oops

How easy it is to forget the self. To return is to be free again. To come back to the one, to the soul, is to return. The all lives inside the one. We exist inside the self. There is nothing outside but the reflection of within. Everything is here. That beautiful self within makes it easier to say goodbye to the reflection we seek without. Reproduction is just another illusion. The production exists without. To forget the self is to seek the other. This forgetfulness is life. It keeps things interesting. But then the illusion collapses, and we are forced to find the self again; and then begin to forget ourselves once more. Our nature is to seek, and we find ourselves and forget ourselves, and then we die. Goodbye illusion. Enjoy your concert.

Life Goes On

Well what do you know? We survived another Friday the 13th, and put the nuclear holocaust on the back burner for another day. One day at a time, as the saying goes. Life goes on. It's not that big a deal.

So the other day, my friend Matthew and I, with eyes wide, and foggy brained, discussed the all, standing in the sun, as I ignored my work duties. Matt is a bearded fellow with bright ideas and a strong belief in "the sacred herb." My belief in the same herb is not so faithful, as things get cloudy after awhile in the high hills of my dome. But on this occasion, Matt brought me back to the sunny heights with talk of Rasta and the interconnectedness of all. He brought it home again, for a moment, as I expressed my frustration with the great load of meaning and non-meaning in this age of lost innocence and the Death of the American Dream. As I struggled to keep some connection to some higher meaning outside the pipe, old Matt explained that we are simply the eyes of God witnessing our own creation. God, he told me, the creator, had no way of observing the creation; and here we are, the observers of the earth, separated from pure being by our questioning minds. In the midst of consequences of 1000's of years of our own inventions, it is becoming increasingly obvious that eating of the tree of knowledge may really have been a terrible idea. Now we are stuck in information overload. Knowledge is meaningless now, because too much information finally led us back to relativity, which took the wind out of our choice to be. Not to be seems far easier amidst the guilt of the Tipping Point. Man has become the weapon of vengeance upon ourselves and our garden, which God never was. So according to my estimation of the meaning of Matt, we are witnessing the imperfection of the creator, through the obviousness of our own imperfection. The Creator couldn't see itself, so we came to see it for her; and so to observe our own imperfection, as the masters of this planet, is also to see the imperfection of the creation of God. We ate the apple didn't we? Of course we did. So did the creator see its own reflection through us? Life and Death, life and death, life and death, is less than perfection. Existence is life and death, molecules popping in and out of existence. Maybe we don't die "over there," but we are stuck in the observation of over here, and are totally attached to this. We have yet to comprehend the unknown, we only whistle and pretend. The unknown is where we understand the powerlessness of creation. Does the Creator really have any power beyond what has been created? Our mistakes seem to be evidence that we are the acting creators. Our power over our own existence in the choices we make, seems to indicate that our power is intact, but we cannot escape our role as observers. We are the judges, and we stand before the judgment of ourselves. The creator must be experiencing its own powerlessness as it watches us spiral into our own destruction. The human being has become a force of nature, changing the face of the earth as we act in consciousness unlike the unthinking hurricane or earthquake. I was hip to the experience of feeling like the eyes of God observing its own imperfection in my own dissatisfaction with reality. We are coming up on 7 billion pairs of eyes here on earth to observe with. Come in Honolulu! We still can't seem to see a goddamn thing, so stuck are we on our individuality. But we are the same eyes, looking out at each other as if we are separate. Maybe that is how God feels. Looking out on the world that it created, powerless over its imperfection, and lonely because existence seems incapable of looking back into the eyes of itself to admit that there is no separation. I'm hungry, anyone for a taco?

Video Game sales are up 45% in the first 5 months of the year. Has the quality of reality outside the door gone down 45% in the same period? Grand Theft Auto IV is driving the upswing with massive sales as the top seller of the year, having sold 4.2 million copies. What's missing from our regular life? What are the people going to the games for most? We must not be getting enough killing, stealing, and prostitutin in our regular lives. I have a feeling the Japanese Knife killer was an avid video gamer. I think once you play enough games you long to bring your virtual world into the real one. Is it any surprise that we generally play war games before we go to war? Oh I don't know, maybe not. Why are we filling our minds with such crap? If we create reality, then why are we making such a nasty one? For some reason the Care Bears game just doesn't sell. I guess we are the lizards, and we just don't care.

Well, it's friday, the 13th, again, so we should all be very afraid that something bad will happen. We can sit paralyzed in fear all day. I feel like the whole show is tumbling down. The human race has figured too much out, and now life is so complicated that the dangers of existence are ready to overwhelm us. Like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN which threatens to create a small black hole which could conceivably swallow the earth, possibly in just a few years, as it expands. Yep, the first world sure is an interesting place to follow the news. Smart people are the dumbest people on earth. Let's invent this to fix that, and we'll let somebody else worry about fixing all the problems that our little quick fix will cause. It's like this whole thing about getting the "standard of living" up around the world. We are sold this hawbaggery all the time. Sure, having a high standard of living is great. We get to eat food from all over the world, while the third world starves. We get to drive in cars, fly in airplanes, and have our lights on all the time, while the have-nots just get a warming planet, and deteriorating farming conditions. The faster the first world grows, the more of a middle class is created in China, India, and the rest of the world, the faster the supplies that the planet can provide will be used up in the waste wash of consumerism. By spreading apple pie and the American way, we are accelerating the demise of human life on the planet. The way we live is not sustainable, and we are on the verge of the back lash. We were #1. Not anymore. We made our bed, and we've been busy making the bed of the rest of the world, and now we are all in bed together, and it's getting dirty. Really dirty. What am I talking about? It's a beautiful day. I'm gonna go out whistling and buy an expensive breakfast of imported foods. Mmm. I have yet to find a drug that completely removes the feeling of guilt which threatens to overwhelm. Television works pretty good. Maybe i'll turn on CNN, and see what's happening between us and them. But wait. We're all on the same boat, orbiting around the sun, in the midst of this vast universe of the unknown. It could all be so much fun if I didn't know how to read, if I wasn't subjected to all this information. The world is as small as we make it. I sure wish this town had an Arby's.

The Brat Child Lives

So I opened a yellow store in Greedhead, Colorado, which is insane and way too much responsibility. I dream of running back to Europa and doing nothing. Eating behind the St. Josep Boqueria in Barcelona, and riding an old bike in the sun. I'm good at nothing. Nothing is my specialty. It's so choice. I'm going to work my way back to it as fast as possible. The world is going to hell in a handbasket, what the hell am I doing trapped in paradise USA, the tip of the golden pyramid. Satan himself owns a home here, in case you didn't know.

Little Tillich from The Courage to Be... it's rare you read something that so nicely explains one's present situation

The anxiety of emptiness is aroused by the threat of nonbeing to the special contents of the spiritual life. A belief breaks down through external events or inner processes: one is cut off from creative participation in a sphere of culture, one feels frustrated about something which one had passionately affirmed, one is driven from devotion to one object to devotion to another and again on to another, because the meaning of each of them vanishes and the creative eros is transformed into indifference or aversion. Everything is tried and nothing satisfies. The contents of the tradition, however excellent, however praised, however loved once, lose their power to give content today. And present culture is even less able to provide the content. Anxiously one turns away from all concrete contents and looks for an ultimate meaning, only to discover that it was precisely the loss of a spiritual center which took away the meaning from the special contents of the spiritual life. But a spiritual center cannot be produced intentionally, and the attempt to produce it only produces deeper anxiety. The anxiety of emptiness drives us to the abyss of meaninglessness.
Emptiness and loss of meaning are expressions of the threat of nonbeing to the spiritual life. This threat is implied in man's finitude and actualized by man's estrangement. It can be described in terms of doubt, its creative and its destructive function in man's spiritual life. Man is able to ask because he is separated FROM, while participating IN, what he is asking about. In every question an element of doubt, the awareness of not having, is implied. In systematic questioning systematic doubt is effective... This element of doubt is a condition of all spiritual life. The threat to spiritual life is not doubt as an element but the total doubt. If the awareness of not having has swallowed the awareness of having, doubt has ceased to be methodological asking and has become existential despair. On the way to this situation the spiritual life tried to maintain itself as long as possible by clinging to affirmations which are not yet undercut, be they traditions, autonomous convictions, or emotional preferences. And if it is impossible to remove the doubt, one courageously accepts it without surrendering one's own convictions. One takes the risk of going astray and the anxiety of this risk upon oneself. In this way one avoids the extreme situation--till it becomes unavoidable and the despair of truth becomes complete.

The Courage To Be, Paul Tillich, 1952. pages 47, 48.

Three poems from the hole

Dulces

The orbs of fate spin heartlessly and cruel through infinity
While the seasons make their rotations
And consciousness oscillates between
Being and non-being
And the sheep graze
And the wolves wait
All is quiet as darkness comes

On the opposite side of the same planet
The sun is rising
Everything is spinning in the void
Every possible outcome since the beginning of time
Manifests and disappears
Here we are existing in the midst of non-existence

At least the love was real
As real as all the emptiness
Maybe the empty space,
Inside the empty space,
At the heart of all existence,
Is love
Reality inside out
Maybe everything else is the illusion
Empty and whole
Two poles of one thing
Outside the mind
Just the illusion
Of separation


Here's the Steeple

Oh Church
What solemn, serious, theater
How prim and pomped with crosses,
Music makers, podium, stained glass.
When belief is the only relief,
And we go looking for a different hue.
Sitting on a wooden bench in the silence of an empty chapel
Listening to the wind and pretending to be a tree
To become the nothingness for just a moment
To choose, for a second, not to be.
Then retreat from God and cry in the darkness!
"I am alone."
This is the beginning of death


Depress Haiku

And now to become
The infinite weight of nil
As winter begins

Just for Today

So i'm growing weary of small town life. I'm starting to feel trapped by my own inventions. I built up a little reality for myself, which is suddenly crumbling apart in the food processor of my brain. The developed self-concept, which was fortified with too much old literature, philosophy, and spiritual books, is falling down on itself. The void, which once was sublime, is now as depressing as it is empty. There is no thinking one's way out of being. Action is the only way out. There is positive action and negative action. The choice not to do is rarely conscious. How much does brain chemistry have to do with this equation? In retrospect, one can find themselves buried in the reality of an equivalent unconsciousness in all the doing they were so busy participating in. With a new existence in the bottomless glass, what seemed to be a purpose driven life suddenly seems like the root of our damnation. If nothing is built up, then there is nothing to fall down. Our world is Bi-polar. We are buried in the consequences of our actions. The idea that we know what we are doing is ever crumbling, as it is ever argued.

In other news, a 25 year old man in Tokyo went on a killing spree with a large knife, wearing a stylish suit, tee-shirt, and Converse sneakers.

The action and inaction of a century of oil addiction has tipped on us and the price of black gold is skyrocketing as the dollar and our stock-market fall. As our role at the top of the food chain wanes, and the rest of the world begins to overtake us in more than just their need for sweet crude and all kinds of fancy food, our past actions start to look like the seeds of our destruction. Nuclear weapons, anyone, anyone? Government sanctioned insanity is the norm nowadays, and we are so deep in the hole of our own irrational righteousness, that the best we can generally hope for is a bad day of depression that we can blame on ourselves. If the machine is sick, how can an individual cog be well? Enter Religion on stage left. Enter medicine on stage right. Redemption in the face of guilt. Another day to trod on into the headwind of our own insanity, pressing on in this labyrinth of the inventions of our fallen selves. The solutions of today are the problems of tomorrow. Around and around and around she goes, where it stops, nobody knows.

quick note

Psychiatry and psychology are the rational side of the brain telling the irrational side of the brain that it's crazy. Religion, superstition, and belief in the super-natural, is the irrational side of our brain telling the rational side that it's crazy. There is no right or wrong, just two sides that are limited by their perspective.

tuned into modernity

I’m sitting here thinking about a certain secret society, of which I used to be a member. For those who haven’t figured it out yet, the party never ends in Aspen. This little resort community may be the capital of the world when it comes to eating, drinking, and being merry. We also add lots of healthy living during the day, like skiing, paragliding, slack-lining, tennis, mountain biking, horseback riding, river rafting, water polo, kickball, pole-vaulting, somersaulting, skeet and trap shooting, duck-hunting, bird-watching, and pot smoking, to help us work through the hangovers, and feel good about ourselves. I’m not currently taking any prescription medications, which makes me a minority here. The Aspen way, exercise and drugs, is commonplace, leaving most of the high end shopping to the tourists. Enough money in your pocket can make drug addiction look good. Relief is essential to ignoring the ridiculousness of living at the very top of the pyramid at the apex of human development. How painful it is to even consider looking down. It’s steeper than that sweet left section, cutting over at the top of Hyrups. My life is your vacation. Is that what the sticker says? What exactly could living in a vacation do to the psyche of a person? It’s sort of like living in Disney Land, except the little kids are getting old now, with slicked back gray hair, expensive belt buckles, young blonds replacing their popsicle, and billions in their bank account to boost their sex appeal. They don’t ride on roller coasters now, like when they were kids, they snort them. There are still plenty of psychedelics around if there is anyone left out there for whom it’s not weird enough. I have to be honest, and differ with St. Thompson on this one, because it’s weird enough for me; it’s way too weird for me. I work in a bright yellow store, did I have to go and make it weirder? Is the card house preparing to collapse? The modern world is not funny. The closest thing we have to a rational spirituality is called Quantum Physics. This is frightening. Ultra-violence is pumping out the television set. Horror movies are blockbusters. Satan is rejoicing, splattering himself with meaty juice in the slaughterhouse. People are having visions in common, of Jesus Christ returning to kill George Bush. I’ve seen it on YouTube. We have magnified reality to the point we have made ourselves God. While Barack Obama is taking heat for the screaming preachers at his Chicago church, who continue to sell a culture of difference, pitting human being against human being, we have yet to come to terms with the basic, rational, implications of Christianity as a belief system. For example, the premise on which Christianity is based is a fundamental blasphemy against a Higher Power or greater God, the one Christians reportedly pray to, or more specifically, the God that Jesus prayed to. Jesus called that God “Father,” which would make him God’s son. That was pretty basic, still is. Most believers consider themselves God’s Children. Which would make Jesus their brother. Jesus is the man that the Church turned into God. Duh. When Jesus said “let he who is without sin caste the first stone,” did anyone report seeing Jesus throwing stones? I don’t think so. Anyways. Politicized religion is against the founding principles of this country. God rarely serves the public good when He is wielded in the hands of those in power. At least Barack Obama goes to a church where they have entertaining preachers. His church serves the same kind of entertainment as Fox News, and most of mainstream media today. The messages these types of churches or media serve up is divisive, hurtful, and creates resentment in larger communities. It’s the same tactic politicians have been using for years. It’s not good for communities, it’s not good for society, but it sells products by making people feel unsafe, it gets people out to vote for you, and it keeps people tuned in. Consumer society works better when people are afraid. It keeps the status quo intact. Make sure to keep your dogs on a leash on the Rio Grande Trail, or you might get a ticket. The leash is getting tighter every day.

Lost in the Dancing Wu Li

What if the glass is not half full or half empty? If the atom is empty, and it looks like it is, like just a bunch of space inside space inside space, then the glass must be empty also. Whatever we put in the glass must then come from our minds, no? So the glass is full of illusion, and outside the glass there is more empty space, but the glass exists, so there is something, right? The glass is empty, but it exists, like us, and so we are the glasses, constantly full and empty at the same time. Not that it's any relief, but at least now if you hear two people debating about optimism and pessimism, you can tell them both to shut the fuck up. The glass is empty, and our brains are full of illusions. Life is grand, and not, and then again. Sometimes we fill the glass with emptiness, and sometimes it's something a little sweeter. Which illusion will it be? But then wait a minute... we also invented the glass?

Shopping

Is it me, or does shopping in your average American grocery store make you suicidal? Was it the depressing rock love ballads playing, or maybe all the colorful packaging leading the mind in a hundred different directions? There are 20 different kinds of rice, what am I supposed to do? People are having riots over food shortages throughout the world, and here in Aspen I’m troubled over which rice to choose, while people are dying for just rice. I just bought four different types of chocolate from a few different third world countries. I’m eating their chocolate. America: the beautiful, the war mongering, and well-fed dieters to boot. We are having a plastic bag competition with Telluride. Who can use less plastic bags to save the world?!! Are you kidding? Isolated in our little mountain town, with mansions popping up on the hills like spring flowers blooming, with enough light sweet crude to keep the private jet running, we are oh so responsible and environmentally friendly with our cute little hemp tote bags, with which to carry imported brie cheese, and a few bottles of water from Fiji, in case we get thirsty on the way to yoga class. Will they open Aspen Mountain over the Food and Wine festival weekend? I sure hope so, cause like Duh, we need a reminder that after the winter of 2008 we can all be sure this whole Global Warming thing is really a hoax. It snowed in Baghdad after all, for the first time in a long time, but the Iraqi people might not have noticed, distracted as they are with all the pretty soldiers we’ve been powdering them with the last 5 years. The media is currently in the midst of it’s biggest lull in its reporting of the war. We can ignore our guilt now, amidst this huge year of natural disasters. I mean you can’t blame the earthquake in China, or the Cyclone in Myanmar, on America? Or can you? We’ve pumped more carbon into the atmosphere than any other group of people over the last hundred years. It’s been the American Way. It’s built up our American Dream. Then of course, there’s the coming down, and carbon emissions don’t cause earthquakes as far as we know. Speaking of natural disasters, has anyone heard of Hillary Clinton? A total lack of faith in her ability to lead, or win, is not sexism, it’s realism. Now there is talk of what a powerhouse team her and Obama would be if she ran as his Vice Presidential candidate. That rumor may have been started by Karl Rove, another criminal adopted by Fox News, sharing his fair and balanced commentary with us on a weekly basis. Great. Barack Obama has his work cut out for him trying to pull this country together behind the first black Presidential candidate in one of the last countries on earth that outlawed slavery. But let’s be honest, we did that before we gave women the right to vote. People ask which is more pervasive, racism or sexism. Let’s consider. Men are from Mars, and Women are from Venus, right? Is the sky blue, or is this still a patriarchy we are living in? Misogyny, the word has been thrown about like a flaccid football this political season. The hatred, dislike, or mistrust of women is still just as American as apple pie. It was only a few hundred years ago that our forefathers were burning women at the stake, for nothing more than being accused of witchcraft, of dancing with the devil. Men, rulers of worldwide hegemonic patriarchies crossing cultures and continents since we made God a man, have been the greatest devils, and women have suffered our sins, and loved us even as we oppress them unceasingly. American women are broadly oppressed today, through their objectification. Women seem to do a great job hating themselves nowadays, as they kill themselves with eating disorders trying to look the way our culture tells them they should. Patriarchy gives names to women like Hillary Clinton, women who stand up to men, who do not sexualize themselves and submit to the status quo. Hillary should be applauded for being the tuff woman that she is, but that does not make her a good presidential candidate. Hillary has taken on masculinity like a woman whose husband has been cheating on her for the entirety of their marriage. She comes off like a big, crazy, power hungry man in a blond wig and a pantsuit. Giuliani could probably do a great impression of Hillary if he tried out a nice yellow pantsuit and a blond wig the next time he goes for drag. Hillary is not a terrible candidate because she is a woman, she is a terrible candidate because she is Hillary Clinton. The Democratic party has a debt to pay her and she does not seem too concerned with anything other than cashing in on the rest of the political capital she earned by staying with her philandering husband like a good little girl through Monicagate. Hillary Clinton is a great Presidential candidate for those who want today’s democracy, where the well being of the many is sold for the profit and benefit of the few, to continue at its wonderful capitalist clip. When it comes to the characteristics of many of the worst presidents in our history, like our current one, she has what it takes: a lack of honesty, integrity, and a willingness to say anything to get into pole position. I’m going to shove another huge bunch of plastic bags under the sink and continue to insist on my American innocence.

the breakdown

OK, so i'm in the midst of a nervous breakdown. Have you guys heard about how the King of Thailand has lost his taste for yellow? It just happened recently. His favorite color was yellow, and every year on his birthday, masses of the population would wear yellow in his honor. He's changed his favorite color to pink. I think I may be tiring of yellow myself. It's too intense for me lately. Unfortunantly my whole store is yellow; bright, fucking, yellow. I highly advise you come down and buy something before we decide to paint the whole place pink and start selling baby diapers and strollers. I don't really want to sell anything anymore. I think i've decided I want to go back to school. Or maybe join the Army. That would be a great idea. Fantastic. Cheers from the king of the indecisive. This place is too damn yellow for me. Yellow was the new black for awhile there, but I think black may be back. I think the time has come for some serious pessimism. Time for the denial to stop. Time for the ship to go down. Time for walking back into the great unknown and not doing what we think we should be doing. At least for me. I'm tired of doing the things that I think I should be doing. I was being a good citizen, a functioning, respected member of the Aspen business community, but I think i'd rather go the way of standing man, or maybe trudge my own road, drinking beer out of a brown bag on the lazy streets of Aspen. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die! Where exactly does running a business fall into that equation? Doing stuff is overrated. I'm tired of it. In my last post I said "get a job," but I may have to revert back to my former attitude of, "if you can't beat them, join them." What the hell, if I wasn't spending so much money on yellowjumpsuits.com, I might like to go pay the prices at that stupid club they are going to turn the Red Onion into. Yes, I think it is time for retreat. Do I really need to prove i'm crazy by running an insane business?

Anyone out there interested in running yellowjumpsuits.com? Cheap business for sale, vintage clothing and art boutique store in Aspen, great location right across from the Aspen Brewery, get the ecommerce going and have a field day. Motivated, business and marketing oriented person would be perfect. I can't stay in one place long enough to run a business. Full inventory, 1000's of tee shirts, vintage sunglasses, coats, one-piece ski suits, sweaters, classic tweed dress coats. Any takers, shoot me an email at yellowjumpsuits@gmail.com.

Otherwise, at least for the moment, I will be in business. We have fine American made glass tobacco pipes coming soon for all the green machines. We'll also be getting lots of tee-shirts out for sale directly. Come on down.

Summer has arrived...

I got two pound puppies about two months ago out in the desert of Southeastern California. They are Needles dogs. Summer is the girl, and she's a real pain in the ass. She loves to pee inside. Her brother is a little angel in comparison. But Summer is a lovebug and cute as a button, and she has a doggie smile straight out of a cartoon. She likes to live outside, and do her dirty business inside. She's a wild soul I guess.

Ferris B's Day Off is playing at the Yellowjumpsuits.com store, here in Assholepen, formerly Ute City, and the Greedheads are turning the Red Onion into some Los Angeles type nightclub. They should try opening one of those in Los Angeles instead. The bastards are overwhelming us, so swin on down to the store and get a brew at the Aspen Brewery next door while you are at it. The least we can do is offend these disgusting people with outrageous clothes which will offend their sense of self-entitled style. I'm tired of all the yuppie wear in our town. Untuck your shirts douchbags, unless you have a sweet belt-buckle to show off! Get that sweater off from around your shoulders unless it's neon.

Ute City needs to fight back against these snobs! Enough already. No more overpriced club scene in the mountains please. Hello people, if you want the city scene and culture of the American Douch, please move to a city. This is the dirty hillbilly mountains of Colorado.

I want to see a neon Frank Sinatra before I die.

I need it.

I feel like a Palestinian in my homeland, getting invaded by people who want to turn this town into a little guilt free safe-haven for lazy, egomaniacal, rich-people, who come in waves, and then retreat, leaving over-developed ugliness in their retreating wake, and then they return in their jets from one of the coasts and attack again. Get a job or get lost people, but please stop by YJS.com and buy something on your way out. .

Back in Action

We are back at the store, busy as can be, moving out the winter inventory, and bringing in the summer styles. Hillary Clinton is still sqawking like an out of control parrot, CNN is coming up with new ideas for terrorists and engaging potentialities of destruction and damnation. Seems like the media is only too exited to report the coming apocalypse. Living at the end of the Age of Oil is an interesting experience. It's like being a drunk in the depths of denial, without any sense of how to recover from a deadly addiction. Laziness is the answer. Oil is like pure speed for society. The more you have, the faster you go. With enough rocket fuel you can go to the moon faster than a person can ride from New York to Philidelphia. Maybe it's time to go back to horses and donkeys. The Amish are in great shape, not much is going to change for them. The rest of us spinning monkeys are in for it though. Can my portfolio possibly survive?

Oh what the hell?

So why not just post another driveling blogpost. Blog. Blog. Blogger. What would Charles Dickens think of this? There is no money in it. We are being fooled. This is volunteer work. The people reading should be the ones getting paid. That would be interesting. Is this life in the modern world?

John and Tom are speaking, but other people are listening in on the conversation. They are talking in a large room. This space is painted in interesting colors. Colors blend together to confuse the fragile gelatinous mind. This room is inside a green or maybe a purple gel tab, with all the intensity and reflections of the maze.

John goes by the name Eagle on this Day, and Tom is playing the Crow. Goose sits idle on the sidelines becoming a Jew among Jews, who plans to passionately convert the Muslim and Christian hordes back to their origins. Goose is screaming at Bear, Tiger, Panda, and the fool swine Hedgehog is painting his own delusions.

Eagle: I can't believe the stupidity of this modern world.

Crow: You fool, this moment, this distraction from itself, this is your delusion. This isn't even happening, and these swineherd clawfaces are still being fooled by the lie of separation.

Eagle changes the channel from CNN to the History channel where a documentary, apparently advertising the new Indiana Jones film, is playing. The search for the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, and the ancient stones of the lunatic guy with the overused crazy skull helmet, all pointing to the existence of an angry judgmental God.

Bear is hungry again, and stoned, and looking for mushrooms. The Tiger is taking over America. He has a plan to storm the Capitol with 50,000 peaceful marchers, occupying the White House, the Capitol Building, and the lowest class whorehouse he can find to appease the desires of the Hippy masses. The plan looks sound, and American Intelligence is certainly at this moment planning some appropriately idiotic way to prevent this chaos, and avert the catastrophically beautiful outcome of the movement's plan to move the Capitol to San Francisco. There, in the promised land, is waiting a whole congress of Peaceful geniuses and scantily clad gay bikers with rainbow flags and adorned bazookas. The future is inevitable.

Chipmunk: Oh how fun this global garden of Eden will be! How colorful!

George W: I don't like it. I'm a decider. I've made my decision.

Jesus Christ: Are you people still talking about me? Jesus H! Christ. Shut up already and stop lying about who my father is.

Crazy Black woman on the train in Atlanta (see youtube video below): Who wants to see Jesus Christ Kill George Bush?

Eagle swoops down on Jesus, and lands on his arm, which falls off quickly because he's been dead for thousands of years, and sadly it turns out, is not sitting on the right hand of God forgiving people.

Jesus: I'm Jesus, remember me? Son of Joseph. Prophet of unity and peace. Killing is wrong.

George W: Shut up son, you talking like a damn Terrorist agitator. You sound like an appeaser. What was your name again, sounds vaguely familiar? Think my friends in the Masons were talking about you, but I can't really remember, cause I was on Acid. Heehee hee. Think I have one of your crosses in my back yard, to remind me how innocent I am. Hehehe.


This is foolishness. Plain and simple, the voice, the voice. I have no voice. I am the sickness that lurks beneath the surface of your addictions.

I am Adam, who led my people out of the garden and into loneliness and separation. I am the original fallen Angel. I have many names. I am the snake. I am the rooster. Just kidding.

Eagle: aren't we all Adam's. Just a bunch of insane Assholes, who make each other feel good then bad, then good, then bad. At least that seems to be my life. From the bottom to the Skies, then spending a lot of time in the trees.

Crow: Let's go get drunk.

Badger: No I think an AA meeting would be better.

The old claw drags on the hawbag of life,
Like it always has, and nothingness matters as much as anything.
The anguish well beneath the surface
Veiled behind the fragile lies of our institutionalization
Wants to consume us
The letters of our alphabet can't hide the truth much longer,
and we will enter a new epoch.
As cyclones, earthquakes, and tornados savage the surface of our globe
The idiots of the apocalypse rejoice in the corners
Awaiting their own demise with the vain optimism of resurrection.
Hope lies in little old grannies on rollerblades
Wearing purple hats rolling down Venice beach.
Their Kingdom has already come.
Morning whispers again.
Enlightenment in a stuffed American face,
Fat on the belly, and calories to burn.
There is nothing really happening.
Stuffed, drunk, and smoking, we all wake up dead.
The Hunter strikes, and ever loves us all.
Aloha

Young Frustrated Woman Gives Old Lady Piece of Her Mind. Amen.

Flying High

Well I’m sitting at Danny’s bar in Venice California, next to the ocean, trying to put my brain back together after a few months of bursting insanity. Things are getting back together and I’m snuggling into a fine form of unconsciousness and the good old news-fed drivelty and blank stupidity of the status quo in Modern America. I was stuck in my head the last day or two because I seem to have been so stoned the last few months that I have finally reached total burnout syndrome. I discovered that I had reached this marvelous landmark when I woke on a plane from Hawaii to Los Angeles, via Phoenix, with a nice exit row of my own, ample leg room, two blankets and a number of pillows; but the arm rests were built in on this emergency row, so I couldn’t lay down. It could have been worse; we could have been hurtling down at the earth from 37,000 feet, a wing ripped off by a giant pterodactyl straight out of the coming apocalypse. Planes, and other carbon guzzling machines, be warned! The vision has been seen.
I had to pee. So I got up and wandered to the back, because first class was before me, and I wasn’t welcome there on this specific flight, flying with the savages in the back, I was, and so I wandered back and noticed an open row with the right kind of arm rests and three open seats for me to lie myself down on. I peed, then returned to exit row 10 to collect my blankets and pillows, and decided to store my cell phones so they wouldn’t press into me when I went to curl down to sleep. I acquired a second cell phone in Hawaii a few months ago using the idiotic logic that a second phone would somehow simplify my life.
I do remember putting the phones in a conveniently located pocket in my backpack that I don’t remember being there. I went to the back of the plane and made myself comfortable in the empty row, put up the armrests and lied myself down. I went right to sleep. I woke with the light of the sun coming through the window, and felt refreshed. It was a perfect red-eye flight. It had passed like an evening on the couch. Easy. I went back to my previous seat, with the endless legroom, and the beautiful view out the window, over the clouds, over the ocean. Past the half-way point the stress of being awake, trapped inside an aluminum tube, thousands of feet above the mother planet, begins to subside, and hope rises, that all of us squirming sardines on board will land safely, and escape to the land. We landed, thank the Jesus of the Universe, and I had little time between flights. When the doors opened, I was on my way. Out the tunnel of emptiness and through the A concourse of Phoenix I shuffled, hurrying through the corridors on my wild morning adventure to the B concourse and my flight to Los Angeles. After years of the monotony of flight, the thrill was still with me. Yippee, my heart leapt anew, with the thought that I would again go hurlting into the air in a metal phallus with wings.
Between concourses, I decided to retrieve my phones from my bag. I opened every pocket. Nothing. Stuff. No phone. No time. No connection. I didn’t search thoroughly. I knew they had to be there, but the question lingered. Had I failed completely? I hurried along to the next flight, 8:57 to Los Angeles, and a sweet blond snake in the grass, who I had no way to contact. I searched again before boarding the flight. And searched. And crossed the way to report my phones lost. I admitted to the uninterested lady the stupidity of what I’d done. She didn’t flinch, didn’t seem to really even think. Everyone had boarded my plane, and she told me to report it in Los Angeles. I ran across and boarded my plane, still hoping that I would search my bags again and find a last hope of sanity.
When my beautiful lady friend finally picked me up, with worries about why I had not called, my little pleasure domes of connectedness were still missing. While she was sympathetic to my story, I have not been able to come to terms with this blaring act of clarity. The reality of my situation has still not sunken in. I am now completely out of touch. How does a grown man with his face up close and personal with someone else's bag, just go ahead and stick his cell phones right in there? Bye Bye. I am drinking the red juice of the Lords sweetest miracle, and feeling softly optimistic about the demise of life as we know it. I think it’s overrated anyway.

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