long year

This is me and my writing, hello hello. It’s almost the end of the year and I’ll publish something before I get too crazy tonight. But tonight has been making me think: I’ve been browsing internet forums for almost a few hours at a time now and I’ve been thinking:::::what’s the point? Why go out? Am I ever going to have sex again? Why is that all I think about these days? There’s no real stimulus creating that for me what the hell i'm going to think about other things now

a wedding and a funeral

My mom remarried in 2004. I was on her side. She deserved to be happy.
The wedding was interesting though. Of course, my father didn’t show up. That would be really weird. I felt like a martyr, though. Like I was the image of someone losing from this partnership. I was put in a weird position and was forced to cope somehow. The first thing I remember is hardly remembering.
My mom was going through chemotherapy at the time and I took some of her Ativan to calm my nerves. I remember some people singing at the wedding. It was in the clubhouse in that gated community of mobile homes in which they lived, with some Spanish name. I remember lying to my grandmother about the beer I was drinking, saying it was juice. She doesn’t know what Heineken is. She’s too old and foreign to know. I love her.
I think I danced with my cousin. And I remember passing out in the back of my Aunt Rona’s Ford Escape with the dog. I did not puke. I do not remember how I got home. That’s one of my trademark shitfaced wasted reflections. I do not remember how I get home.
Like the first time I got drunk when I was 14. Jessica, Kim, and Miguel had me drink a Powerade bottle’s worth of what I thought was mostly Powerade. It was mostly Bacardi. I was wearing an oversized hoodie with shark tooth designs on it. It was ugly and black. In my mom’s car I remember puking down the sleeve. I do not know how she did not know. I think she pretended not to. How could she not notice? Somewhere she picked me up and drove me home. I stumbled into my bed and puked in it, without taking off the hoodie. I learning nothing from this experience, except from not to trust people; they may deceive you at any given time.

Remember when you wrote How to Subdue a Society, more than 15 pages in like 3-4 days? Less than that. I took Adderall, but I churned out the best thing I have ever written. With the Khrushchev paper, which was marginally better, I took a steadfast and focused approached. It took me a few drafts, but they improved consistently each time. I am very impressed with it, when I look back upon it. Let's do that now. I feel more confident about my writing ability and look forward to see what will coalesce in regards to 19th century Britain and social welfare.

Photography / Bullet Trains

Many people have either taken or been part of a photograph. A technology from the Victorian era that has yet to die out soon, and is constantly being improved, photography is a way to create memories, to capture beautiful scenes, and create images out of light. We first had rudimentary photography in the Civil War/Victorian era, and it was also in the 1850s when the first steam engine locomotives were making their debut in Victorian Britain and with the unparalleled speed of global capitalism, around the world.

To be captured in a photograph is to be imbued in time. The mediums of photographs have changed from paper printouts which cost money to electronic images shared on the internet. Trains have only increased in speed, efficiency, and how much waste they produce.

John Ruskin's Modern Painters

John Ruskin's Modern Painters
"…for [the painter's] selection of the brawls of peasants or sports of children can, of course, proceed only from the fact that he has more sympathy with such brawls of pastimes than with nobler subjects."

In his integrative essay Modern Painters, John Ruskin explains several points regarding high art, and on what makes certain art truly great. In brief, great art amounts to the use of a well-regarded subject (real or fictitious), beauty in consistence with truth, and utilizes the power of invention or imagination. He regards the so-called Pre-Raphaelites of the Victorian world, those who attempted to return to Renaissance-style art like the old Pre-Raphaelites, as those who have attained the "perfect unison of expression." Therefore, one can assume a bias toward the style of painting found on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
I think he is embracing the past too much. Yes, those works depicting Christian harmony are triumphant and have provoked piety as well as zeal for centuries, but he has encapsulated the concept of great art within a tiny prism. For the industrializing era, realism can amount to a completely new range of expression. For example, while Ruskin was writing this manifesto, Ilya Repin of Russia was becoming an esteemed portrait and realist-styled artist - and he turned Ruskin's quote regarding "lower orders of painting" and "noble subjects" on its head. Repin painted Tsar Nicholas II, Ivan the Terrible, and Leo Tolstoy - all who could be considered noble subjects - but they were captured in different ways. Tolsoy, simplistically; Nicholas, gallantly, and Ivan, brutally. Repin also painted peasants, famous Volga barge haulers, and a fantasy piece, Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom. This is why Ruskin's statement on how an artist must choose a proper subject is petty and pointless. It is not who or what the artist captures, but the way in which they are captured that determines whether it may be high art or not. The rest of Ruskin's points are rather one-sided or obvious. An artist on his or her path does not need Ruskin's help in understanding what makes a Rembrandt or a Durer fantastic. Thank goodness for Emilio Marinetti and his Futurist Manifesto¸ tossing aside this pedantic nonsense.

I felt a strange attraction, immediately to her beauty, but later toward her philosophy, her humor, and her inclinations. My second cousin, my uncle’s cousin, that is, she was. My aunt, at whose house we were both staying, cued me into her person before she arrived. She told me she was Randy’s (my uncle) cousin, that she was roughly his age, and that she worked for a living as a hairdresser and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Later on, my second cousin would correct my pronunciation of this province. My aunt, a professional homemaker was very warm and catering, and was an excellent host for my second cousin and myself. It was Christmastime, as was the motivation behind my visit, and my aunt bought a number of presents for everybody and instructed the cousins to choose presents to gift for each other. “This is a time I want you all to relax, you’re off school, off work, I want you to be able to just, veg, ya know?” “Yes Aunt Tara,” I agreed. “Now close your eyes and turn around, I’m getting stuff.” She scrambled inside the closet of the guest room and pulled out a large cardboard box. There was a fancy round case with different sorts of eyelash and eyebrow primping devices, a set of wine glass markers and a “Girl’s Night Out” bingo game that I envisioned my second cousin would find tacky, and a few other items that don’t come to mind, but I chose the primping kit as I liked the box and thought I would enjoy wrapping it for Elaine, my second cousin.
The next day Elaine showed up at the door with her bags. I saw her blonde hair and tender, loving facial features and I became again greeted with that sort of “in love”, or “in lust”, as I knew it, feeling at the bottom of your heart. That shrill pang that made you blush internally, that spread from the bottom of your sternum to the top of your skull, to your heels, back again to your heart, sending messages to your endocrine system, to your liver, and, if you are a man, to your penis and your balls, too. And the more “logical” side of my mind fired shotgun thoughts of doubt and fear to the same core of my being, when I realized I would be living, yes, living my life, if only for a few days, a stairway away from the guest room where she would unpack, sleep, dress and undress, think, daydream, stretch and breathe, and we would be so close! Doors and walls matter little for separation when you can hear someone snore and stub their toes just a hallway’s distance away. I feared, with her life decades longer than the one I am living, that she wouldn’t take me seriously, that she would be able to see through me, that she would see I was little more than a sad, lost little boy with issues.
We exchanged greetings and pleasantries, but with difficulty, with the rest of the family crowding her at the doorway, pestering her with asinine questions, although in just observing her interactions with them, I had a genuine feel of her maturity, her kind spirit, her earthly yet spiritual wisdom.
Here, we drank and chatted.
Later, she talks about feeling her father’s spirit, smelling him, around the hour of her mother’s death

It wasn’t until we wrapped presents together when our relationship really began to unfold. I found out she is unmarried, single and looking, has no sisters, brothers, or parents.
I wanted her to hold me and love me, though I never wanted her to know what I wanted. And that, in retrospect, was a problem in its own.

I am sorry, I must continued shortly after.

Goat Cheese and Chocolate Every day

I’m only going to write what I remember.

The first time I had a gun pointed at me was January 11th, 2004. It’s just one of those things that sticks with you. Jonathan and I were trying to get high. His blond hair was unusually long and straight, and as plainclothes undercover detectives slammed him against the concrete wall of a seemingly abandoned house, it flailed helplessly. Let’s smoke pot at the abandoned house, he said earlier. Alright, sounds cool. It sounded cool at the time. When the three men pointed pistols at me, and yelling boorishly to freeze, I was so scared. I thought they were gangsters who were going to beat us up, steal our money, and make us suck their dicks. Despite the shock, I was slightly relieved when one of them showed us his badge. “Fuck, that hurt! Why’d you have to slam me into the wall?” “You shouldn’t have gone for your pockets, we didn’t know if you were going to pull out a knife.” As I briefly and blankly considered my future and what drugs were in my pockets, and how to make them disappear, my wrists were instantly bonded by cold metal cuffs. First you feel the chill of the steel, and then the tightness is cinched in until it hurts. It always hurts. When you’re a prisoner. Every time I wear handcuffs, I think about this one episode of the X-Files I watched with my parents – one suspect could dislocate his thumbs and routinely escape from handcuffs. Maybe the handcuffs are so tight because the detectives have seen that episode. As a captive, they patted me down with their brisk, orderly fingers. It was less than a tenth of a gram of amphetamine. I was going to smoke it that night and play computer games. Regret, regret, if only I could have tossed it. A single Vicodin pill. “I have a prescription for that,” I lied. “They took out my wisdom teeth recently.” I was in a weird state. I cannot go on for paragraphs about how the sweat dripped down from my brow, or how I just wanted to crawl into a ball and will myself out of the universe, or whatever. That stuff isn’t true. I remember being completely subjected to the officers’ will, being stiff and numb. If I just stayed quiet, I could go home, I’m sure. If I answered their questions respectfully they’d know I was a good kid on the wrong path, and leave me alone. Blame the friends.

But no. I had the guns pointed at me because I was a criminal of the state. Two felony counts of possession do that to you. I remember on the ride to the police station, one of the men asked me, “So why you doin’ this stuff, the speed?”

I paused and admitted, “I…I like to paint. I like to take it and paint, it feels good and its fun. You should see this picture I did, it’s like a massive thumbprint with contrasting colors. A little bit of the stuff helps me focus and makes me more creative, I guess. I only do it sparingly though.”

I don’t think the answer was good enough for him, because he didn’t respond. I wonder what special investigator person, call him Agent Bradley, did after work that night. Did he complain about today’s youth, have a drink of Maker’s Mark, call his wife a sour name and then apologize? Did he walk in the door, notice a bill he’d been avoiding on the countertop, and swear, and wish his daughter didn’t hear him? Did he tell his wife about the kid who does speed because he thinks he’s a creative artist? Did he lay her a sweet smile at the end of his jeering anecdote? Agent Bradley, what did you have for dinner that night? Do you live alone and eat Marie Calender’s frozen entrees? Do you smoke Pall Malls, Marlboro Reds, or are you just too good to smoke? When you’re not driving the Ford Interceptor, what do you drive? I want to know about you because I want to know what makes you you. I want to know why you didn’t respond. I told you why I did that one particular drug at one particular moment last week, which, in my opinion is a very personal thing to ask, and I, feeling blinded, physically immobile, and mentally blunted, poured out a piece of my heart to you during that drive.

And I want it back.

It’s hard to be a rebel when you just want to go home and see your parents and hope they’ll still love you.

I'm a fan of the occupy olympia movement, I support it. But I think their general assembly meetings are pretty silly. They way they work is that they demand consensus on everything, and everyone who wants to raise a point is free too.

drinking game: Corporate, Capitalism, and Gluten

Is it me or does 50% of Olympia suffer from Celiac disease? It was the first time I've seen homeless people turning down free bread!

Have you guys read a day in the life of Ivan Denisovitch?
Citizen, your ration for the day is 400 grams of bread.
Agh....do you have Quinoa?

When I was a little boy my mom would arrange play dates with the other boys in kindergarden.We'd play video games or legos, but I noticed that our play dates would come to an end when the other boy would show me his penis. This happened more often than not.

But I became vigilant.One day me and this kid Anthony were playing a board game. I guess he got bored and told me to come to his room. He shut the door. And he started taking his clothes off while grinning at me. I remember this very well. So I stopped him and said Anthony, please don't show me your wiener, cos then our moms wont let us play any more Monopoly Junior.

When I was a kid my mom would arrange play dates with my friends in preschool or kindergarden.

Sometimes we'd play Mario Kart, sometimes we'd watch Disney movies, sometimes we'd play board games. But more often then not, the boys I had play dates with ended up showing me their penises.

The first case was with a boy named Russell. I don't remember what we were doing until we went inside my closet and he showed me his penis. He told me to take mine out too. But both of our mothers rushed in and they looked horrified, at the sight of Russell's babydick. And he went home and he never came over again.

And then there was Sean who showed me his babydick in the pool one day. I was horrified, and I told my mom that "he showed me his 'thing'" and we both left.

The third time, I was more vigilant. I didn't want my playdates to come to an abrupt end. One day me and this kid Anthony were playing Monopoly Junior. I guess he got bored and told me to come to his room. He shut the door, smart boy that he was. And he started taking his clothes off while grinning at me. I remember this. So I stopped him and said Anthony, please don't show me your wiener, cos then our moms wont let us play any more Monopoly Junior.
...
also if you wanna take your wiener out, go to Katie Wolf's house. cos she likes to touch it.

Everytime i orgasm from sex I have the bad habit of immediately thinking about my homework. I seriously muttered under my breath "god damnit i have to finish oliver twist" and my partner was mildly upset from this comment. how are you? Yeah baby, im good. two hundred pages...

But i realize where this reaction stems from. In one of these sexual advocacy meetings i heard that whatever you look at upon the moment of orgasm is permanently embedded into your brain. And as a very regular masturbator in high school, I'd put my geometry notes adjacent to my keyboard, so right as i was about to come i'd cover the screen with them, and chant REMEMBER REMEMBER REMEMBER

and hey, to this day i still know what perpendicular lines look like, so :)?

Not just a horny fuck or an amateur comedian but I'm also a published poet.
Well, ALMOST.
pay attention because this is short and i'm NOT gonna repeat it


Me a warm ass nigga
unda' all these blankets
I see a big ass booty
bitch I wanna spank it

My strongest influences are Dickinson, Pound, and Bukowski.
In fact, the ABCB rhyme structure here is very Dickinsonian.

Dear Matthew,
Thank you for your submission. We at Poetry London regret to inform you that after careful review of your entry, your poem "untitled" was not chosen for publication. The theme for this quarter's publication is Goons, Moons, and Quadroons, and the editing staff and I did not feel that your poem "untitled" was a proper fit.
All the best,
Colette Bryce

Utmost Christian Writer's Poetry Contest,
Dear Poet,
Thank you for your submission to the Utmost Christian Writer's Poetry Contest. Unfortunately, your poem "untitled" was not chosen for publication, and is not eligible for any prize for our annual poetry contest. Commentary is below: The words n****, a**, and b**** are not allowed by our foundation to be published in our gallery. Please note that this contest is only open to Christians. You do not need to be a member of Utmost Christian Writer's to submit poetry, but you must be a Christian believer to enter our contest. Please look over the rules .
Sincerely,
Barbara Mitchell
Christian Writers Foundation director


SW
Your poem, which was submitted without a title and will here by be referred to by the first line, "Me a warm ass nigga" was too short for publication. There is not enough information about the protagonist and how the statements correlate; it is unclear whether his feeling of warmth relates to his desire to spank a "big ass booty." And is the word "booty", here, in this connotation indicative of a woman's behind? How does this poem relate to women? And what of the word, "nigga"? Furthermore, does being under "all these blankets" warm just the protagonist's skin on a physical level, or metaphorically? We are just trying to understand what is really going on here and if this is applicable to this year's mood.
Cheers,
Slightly West

Since the beginning of styrofoam, men and women have been stealing leftovers from each other and lying about it. I've done this a lot and I'm gonna offer you guys some tips on getting free food in these desperate times. Now, if you wanna steal your roommates' leftovers, there's a few precautions to take. I'll input my own experience here. I lived with a veteran named Josh. I'm going to preface this and say, if you're interrogated, the magic phrase is "I don't know". And if that doesn't work, you say "No." One day he makes a shitload of chicken drumsticks and thighs. But I need to test him before I can steal from him. One day I open the tupperware and simply rotate a few of these drumsticks, and wait to see what happens. I'm sitting on the couch doing nothing and I hear "What the shit? Who touched my food?!" "I don't know," i said. "Was it you, Matt?" "No." Well then I knew. This motherfucker would put you into a sleeper hold over half a hotpocket. I live with better people now. I ate some of chase's pasta salad and he actually noticed and asked me. "Matt, did you eat my pasta salad?" "I don't know." "Well who did?" "No." Now if you're unfortunate enough to work in an office, you're lucky in that the fridges are actually communal. They don't tell you that. You've just got to reach out and grab the chicken salad. The rule here is the 3 day rule. If something's in there for 3 days, it's yours. Now, this one time there was an old trader joe's greek salad. So i took it into the bathroom, took a shit, and then ate it. The salad, that is. But the walnuts were kinda chewy and it was taking me some time. Someone knocked and was like "Is someone in there?" and I remembered the magic phrase, "I don't know." oh is that you matt? "no." And then you MUST MUST MUST dig some trash out of the bin, bury the leftover containers, and then put the trash back on top. even if its gross. otherwise they'll know it was

6,030.00 18 6,030.00 18 2,412.00 4 14472 7,156.00 20 7,156.00 20 1,206.00 2 15518 18 20 2 14,392

For me, chapters X and XI were the best out of Cranford so far, because they deal with Victorian neuroses, paranoia, and the occult. In this scene, reminiscent of combating a vampire, the sign of the cross is made to ward off an evil spirit or otherwise some un-Christian element from the East, I wasn't sure which. I also liked the footnote explaining the possibly of Signor Burnoni possessing a "will…of deadly force" which said that something like the "evil eye" has existed since the late 18th century, whereas one could direct the will through the eyes into some sort of metaphysically powerful gaze. I would like to know more about these sorts of beliefs with Victorian folk. My Russian professor was telling us the other day that generally people of lower social standing are more likely to believe in superstition - to not risk losing wealth or health - and it fits in perfectly with the ridiculous delusions that the ladies of Cranford underwent in Chapter X and all the irrational xenophobic fears that surmised.
Also I found it easier to get into the novel by realizing who it was published for - Gaskell's contemporaries. I suppose fear of losing wealth invested into risky international banks or businesses may have been a realistic imperial fear. Poor Miss Matty. But despite some of the support Miss Matty's friends have promised her in her poverty, I have no doubts that they will soon begin to think less of her for losing her status.









i cant help but stare at girls in the library
then they notice
and i stop for a bit