Weblog

My sister was kind enough to bring to my attention the offense of referring to someone as a “cute little number.” Somewhere in this raging sea of academics I became torn from the harbor of manners and cast into the black foam of crass man-isms. I forgot I signed on long ago as member of “People for the Ethical Treatment of People.” I’ve forgotten what it’s like to actually be a person of feelings and emotion.

Jazz piano virtuoso Keith Jarrett brought me out of the surf momentarily. I listened to 30 seconds of his live solo album and was astounded. Completely lacking in-

it’s snowing

-pretentions, every second was an infinitely dense affirmation of the human spirit. Keith didn’t play any notes. He tilted his head so the idea would run down his arms into his fingers and plunk the keyboard in the perfect place.

If I had the energy right now my knuckles would be white with frustration. I don’t want to be at my computer. I don’t want to be writing for Cromlech. I don’t want to be doing homework. I don’t want to be in any place that reminds me of higher learning.

I want my soul back.

Wow. Like, wow. USS Clueless ponders the cultural implications of a civilization developing on the moon of a gas giant.

As for me, I spent 2 1/2 hours today reading through the English Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words. It’s two volumes chock full of old English dialects from England. The dictionary was first published in 1889, but some of the words are referenced back as far as 1300. The introduction was quite interesting, as it detailed the quirks and pronunciation tendancies of every regional dialect (Isle of Wight, Westmoreland, Hampshire, etc…) I’ll glean some of the most findest findings for ya’ll.

Chinny mumps: Rude kind of music made by beating chin with knuckles, by the rattling of teeth causing sound in time. So next time you’re sittin’ around at a party and someone starts doin’ that, you know what to call it.

Chokes: The throat. I liked this one cuz it implies an immediate course of action.

Clavy tack: a key. I lost mine clavy tacks last semester. I am still convinced that a cruel woman stole them to do her voodoo majick.

Clatterfert: A tale-teller. If Brian Perez were around he would say “phert”.

Cleaver: This one was a strange childhood game. It’s a length of string tied to a wet piece of leather, which the kid squeezes against a rock with his feet until all air bubbles are forced out. He then pulls on the string, popping the rock (often a flagstone in the road) out of its hole. This is why roads in Duluth suck. Next time you see a kid with a cleaver, beat him.

Claw back: A flatterer. I have lots of these.

Clish clash: Idle discourse. Often takes the form of awkward, forced conversation between a man and woman. We all hate it, and yet we still stand for it.

Flibbergibber: A lying knave.

Flim flam: False, foolish, nonsensical. See Cromlech.

Fog: Another word for moss.

Fossick: A troublesome person. See fossicking.

Fresh-Liquor: Unsalted hog’s fat.

Drunkwort: Tobacco.

Drunkeschipe: Drunkeness.

Drunkard’s Cloak: A barrel that one can wear. Formerly used in Newcastle for the punishment of scolds and drunks.

Duddle: To wrap un warmly and unneccessarily. To cuddle. To make lukewarm. A child’s penis (I assume a male child).

I was trying to read a selection written in Westmoreland, and the spelling was so horrible I could hardly make sense of it. The experience really reminded me that written language is not a natural entity, and everything that has happened thanks to writing depends on a human construction. When someone’s words pluck at the strings of your soul, for how wonderful and transcendental the experience feels, it results from an invention that we created. If humans weren’t here to ascribe meaning to nature, it would be meaningless.

Words are alive and can breathe if you let them. They hold the ideas of the ages, from political agendas to knitting circles to daily life. I can see the people that spoke them. I can see the green fields of Ireland.

So long as my writing survives me, I can never die.

I was reading in the library and kept getting distracted by my brain. Let’s see what kind of crap I wrote down…

Does most philosophy boil down to a whole bunch of guys locked in a p3nis match? It seems like all they do is come up with ‘reasonable justification’ that their four-inch prick is really a foot-long rod of desire. Philosophers will go to any length to argue the ruler out the game to keep their truths ambiguous and vague. They tell you how big it is and refuse to show you.

Ever wonder why there are very few female philosophers? Women really have better things to do. God bless them.

The problem with starting an intellectual magazine… all the topics come from within the writers, not from without. There would be little noticeable consistency to the casual reader. No set topics, no subjects, no focus, no direction. The writer for last month’s urban spelunking feature may have three columns about love, rain and p3nises this month. You would need readers that appreciate this randomness, and writers that can lay down words with great talent to keep the quality satisfying.

Love is not an independent thing to look for, but the physical actualization of the human passion for life. It makes the soul tactile. You can wrap your fingers around existence and embrace it, twirl life around on your tongue.

If you don’t love life you cannot love a person. Thus, loving another person is not the exclusive factor for loving life. Getting in a relationship will not gloss over problems that you carry with you. You must have the zest for life, the vigor, the mighty yawp.

Ideally your partner is a condensation of your entire vision of the world into human form. They resonate in your world. Another person can connect you fully with your reality while simultaneously pulling you into their own.

Here’s the first page of my first book, of which I now have about ten ‘first books’ being planned:

There is nothing romantic about my ascension. I was raised by affluent, caring parents. I attended public schools. I graduated college with honors, bought a house and got an accounting job.

There was no grinding poverty, no drug abuse, no adverse conditions from which to rise above. It was a straight shot to the center pin. A life of sweethearts and Novocain. When people hear my story they hide their disgust.

I am a nice man. I am a cruel man. I hate myself for it.

And thus begins the story of Walter Cromwell.

From this hence at USS Clueless came this:

The Universe is back online. Kind of. Check out the press release images and click on the JPG icons running down the side. The images are huge but absolutely stunning and some of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. I wept.

It reminds of a shot from Ryan Rapsys’ video in recital hour. The camera was focused on hundreds of yellow points against a black background. They looked like stars, but were probably from a night shot of Duluth high atop the hill. The camera slowly started to pull out, capturing more and more of the city, more lights, more stars, more dark. It kept expanding until the entire city could be seen, but somehow managed to keep going farther and farther out. An edge appeared in the periphery, then another, and the city rippled like the surface of a pond. Contained within cracked and yellowed borders Duluth continued to drop away as the camera turned skyward…

To focus on a lamppost. Duluth was contained entirely within a puddle on the sidewalk.

I challenge myself to go the weekend without writing on Cromlech. This is a lot like a musician challenging herself not to practice. A police officer challenging himself to not to stop homicides. Spiderman challenging himself not to go PSHH PSHH and swing through Manhattan with gossamer threads, hunting for evil-doers and hot chicks in impossibly tight and impossibly wet and impossibly pink t-shirts.

What happens to all that sprayed web crap when Spiderman is done using it? Does the stuff just evaporate, or does it eventually lose its stickiness and drop to the ground? I normally wouldn’t be concerned, but if a strand that is as thin as thread and strong as steel were to fall from a building it would risk slicing people in half down on the sidewalk. The residuals of Spiderman’s crimefighting would plague the citizens of New York City for weeks or months afterwards.

I don’t know about you, but I would take the Green Goblin over hundreds of falling roast beef slicers any day.

Challenge begins. See you guys later. Rockstock rocked.

Everybody loves price gouging, especially when it’s academically sponsored!

Where’s the government inquiry on that one?

I feel I owe some explanation for my spat with newspaper reporting. In their insistence to always cover the alternative Palestinian view, to print quotes from the mother of Ifram Quaran who was convicted of murdering Israel’s minister of tourism, to continue to talk as though Israel committed a huge massacre in Jenin and managed to leave behind no evidence…

At their worst, newspapers speak against the constructs of reality to present the ‘other side,’ but as they spit and caw they do so in unison. They are no longer the antithesis, because the thesis has been quieted and forced into the blogosphere. The news is supposed to accurately reflect the reality of events, but increasingly I get the feeling they’re reporting on what should have happened, what should be correct, rather than what is. If you want to fabricate your own reality, fine. I don’t care. Just please don’t tell me you’re in the business of truth-seeking, and don’t call it news.

And don’t write crap send-offs like this:

Ziad Mousa, a lecturer in linguistics at Bir Zeit University in Ramallah, brought his two granddaughters by the same barricade. Mousa, who splits his time between Ramallah and Irving, Texas, said his younger grandaughter Zania, 2, knew only two words: “Jews” and “Sharon.”

“She is afraid of them,” he said. He was not opimistic that Israel was prepared to talk peace.

“They are afraid of peace, and they are afraid of war,” he said. “They like a state of no war, and no peace. This is the climate where they can survive.”

Because a climate where 28 Israelis are shredded to bits during Passover is obviously a climate where Israelis can survive.

Let’s switch gears.

The hubble telescope has beamed back some awesome pictures with its new digs. It’s just a low-res Yahoo site, as the official Hubble site has been been overrun with everyone lookin’ at these pretty pics.

It’s a happy, happy, happy Universe!

Well, I’ve wanted to get my feet wet in the foul pools of punditry for quite some time, and the New York Times has managed to make it quite easy, today. What will follow is a stupid college student’s analysis of a situation that is likely so far beyond his comprehension that he would be better off joining Students Against War and yelling Ji’had! Ji’had! Ji’had! on the steps of the Capitol.

He really should run spellcheck, too.

Israel lifts seige as Arafat yields six men

Palestinians trapped for a month in Yasir Arafat’s humbled compound here erupted in celebration early this morning after Israeli forces withdrew in an American-brokered compromise.

Humbled, eh? As though the compound was once a proud and shining beacon for peace that has since been laid to waste by the vicious Israeli military.

But almost at the same time, a gunfight broke out at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, setting off fires in the church compound where Palestinian gunmen and noncombatants have been under Israeli siege since early April.

This gives me the idea for a cool Western. Gunfight at the Bethlehem Corral. And another thing: How the hell do guns start fires without Gene Wilder? Flaming bullets? I think we’re missing something, here.

Before he knew that the gunfight had subsided relatively quickly and the church compound had only briefly been aflame, Mr. Arafat exploded in rage at the news from Bethlehem, shouting: “This is a crime! This is a crime!” and calling those who committed it “terrorists, Nazis and racists.”

Yep. Just like the Nazis. Oh, the wonderful irony of Nazi Jews, gassing millions of Arabs in their refugee death camps. Terrorists? Sorry Mr. Arafat, all the terrorists you need are on your side. No sense trying to recuit troops from the Israeli seige engine.

Through a chilling mist in Ramallah, Israeli soldiers grinned and flashed victory signs as they rode out tonight atop the armored vehicles and tanks that have occupied most of Mr. Arafat’s compound since the army invaded after a suicide bomber killed 28 Israelis in an attack at a hotel banquet hall during Passover.

Now this is interesting. I believe that in Arab culture it is called the victory sign. In Western culture it is the peace sign. I wonder which one the Israeli soldiers really intended.

Hey kids, why write for the Statesman when you are obviously qualified to work at the NYTimes? Give James Bennet a call and tell him you want his job.

Newspapers suck.

Finally. Sunk back into the shadows. Cromlech only drew 50 views yesterday. Statistics nevertheless, cuz I know you love ’em and I love writin’ em:

4 – hours spent compressing video

9,786 – number of pages in a 95MB text document

CRASH – time it takes computer to load said document

3 – number of commands I know for navigating Unix

5 – how excited I am for tomorrow’s Judge Parker

2 – hours spent writing on Cromlech, today

58 – what day I think it is today

59 – how consistently funny McSweeney’s.com is

12 – An important number left over from the days of working at the Data Recognition Corporation

#CCCC99 – the number for this background color

5 – number of body sections the larva in Bunny’s ears have

7 – I really like the number seven

18 – how much thought and care I’m taking in this post

19 – how much thought and care I take in most posts

97 – how bogus I really think that last statement is

13 – number of minutes spent so far on this post

2328 – this column height

99 – number of keys left on my 101 character keyboard

Is it snow? It could be ashes from a nuclear attack on Superior. It could be the finely shredded results of an angel’s collision with a jetliner. It falls like rain, pings like BB’s and collects like lust in the shallows of the ocean.

I wrote the following note to myself on my desk:

FADE FROM CROW TO TITS… longer?

Ten points to whoever can tell me what it’s from.

Today at noon Sunny Wicked will be playing Seraph in recital hour, my philosophy video running on a 10 foot screen behind. I’m very excited.

I’ve been listening to the Presidents of the United States of America this morning and it’s resonating something fierce within. I feel fourteen years old again. Chillin’ in Washington DC, touring the Smithsonian, transcribing lyrics on the plane, buying peach penguins and jellybeans at the mall. I still have a small Pier 1 flask of those jellies at home.

I’ve been elected to orbit the planet in a rocket…

I’m goin’ to Mars, I’ve got a message for the poodle in your pocket…

Well Mission Control, call a supernova

The hotlines rockin’ and you can come on over

And let us be who we am…

And let us kick out the jaaaaaaaaaaam yeah!!!

Kick out the jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam!!!

WE DONE KICKED ‘EM OUT!

Playful. Doldrums? Pah. No such thing.