Ranty Goodness

A half-second behind

2007-11-15T08:44:00.000-08:00

You ever have that feeling that reality is about a second ahead of your consciousness, and that even the words you speak or type are a bit of a surprise to hear coming out of your mouth, since you've not yet had a chance to put voice to those words? When I'm really paying attention, it's like my limbic system and everything external is already decided half a second ahead of my actual consciousness--like, by the time I've consciously decided to put that double-em-dash earlier in this sentence, I've already heard the sound of my fingers hitting the keys. it's like how your hand will drop the hot potato before your fingers even make the report to mister Brain - hey, this shit is fuckin' HOT! So, what's the point of making decisions, if they're already made?

Again, maybe instead, I'm just nuts.

Ebb and Flow

2007-11-14T11:10:00.000-08:00

I've had this weird feeling lately. Like, wistfulness, but not for the past. You know how retro fashion has cycled through - back in the early 90's, Weedstock and a lot of psychedelia were fashionable Alice in Chains was nothing if not a metalled-up psych-rock band), then That 70's Show had everyone wearing a lot of brown, then a couple years ago we were already seeing a resurgence of pleather pants a la' the Reagan 80's? Now fashion is all over the map, since there's no "retro" to mine for ideas. I feel the same way with regards to the cultural zeitgeist - I pine not for any past (real or idealized) but rather the very present I'm experiencing. It's like, I can't really connect to what's actually going on around me, but I can still mourn and long for the imagined place I have in the mix.

Sometimes I'm not entirely sure that I'm not the idiot and those who I assume are idiots aren't the grand masters.

Malaise

2007-10-22T07:45:00.000-07:00

The word to describe my generation is ennui. A buddy and I used to discuss it to death over drinks and pizza. The problem lies in that the easiest way to attenuate the ennui is to bitch about it to other people who are in the same boat - and you find those people in bars. Of course, bars can be depressing places, which only serves to maintain the personal level of ennui.

The short-term solution is to do a little whitewashing - everything's ok, or good enough to manage. That positive attitude gives you the breathing room to get your mind in a place where you actually are ok with things. It's not a true flavor of, but a sort of postmodern, nirvana. You focus on the good stuff, and kinda shrug off the bad stuff as something you work on, but you don't let work you into fits. Life is hell, as Matt Groening used to say, but you have to keep a sort of zen attitude. Instead of assuming things will be fine at some future point, you assume that things are messy horseshit and then you amuse yourself at the myriad ways the fractal mess (same sort of mess at both large and fine scales) of modern life presents itself.

Then again, perhaps it's my own personal form of mental illness.

iRant

2007-09-13T10:47:00.000-07:00

I run with my iTunes and Nike+, but do not ride. I might consider tunes on the bike, if I had perfect hearing, but i don't, so i don't. Really, all the ignorant pricks who have their tunes on and then veg out deserve to have their Achilles tendons snipped. I see people all the time, walking two or three abreast, headphones blaring - if you're not talking to those people, why do you have to be alongside them? Esp. when you can't hear me bellowing that I'm coming around, and esp when you don't even get out of the way of *oncoming* path traffic. I swear, if I ever go all "falling down" it's going to be either *in* forest park, or on Oakland at Hampton, where I sat for 20 minutes yesterday while cars getting off 40 on to Hampton would block Oakland traffic through an entire light cycle. Swear to god I want to put up a gate at that offramp and put a ten ton hood-smasher on it. You get in the way of me taking a nap, i kill your car.

2005-01-24T23:28:00.000-08:00

There's one conspiracy theory to which i'll subscribe: the stupidification of the American public. We're sold a bill of goods that boils down to buying goods. Fuck plastics, *marketing* is where it's at. Kids aren't stupid, but the public is fed the notion that we have to have TV's with DVD players on the back of every captain's chair in our SUV's, just to placate those kids with sugar-coated advertisements disguised as entertainment; or sit them down in front of the boob tube instead of playing in the yard, because the yard is full of DIRT (which can only be truly removed by antibacterial soap!) I see my friends with kids simultaneously think their kids' every turd is a work of genius while they keep the kids coddled in cocoons like intellectual bubble-boys who are allergic to the slightest threat to their delicate minds. The worst part is that most of these parents know the truth, but are too worn down by trying to pay off their second mortgage and credit cards that they can't lift a mental finger and fight it!

Even those of use who tell ourselves to resist mainstream marketing are pandered to in a different way - whole foods, electric SUV's, outdoor adventure that's as safe as a walk around the block. And then, as we recognize *that*, we're marketed to in even more insiduous ways. It's recursive, and maddening.

Fuck.

2004-11-03T21:25:00.000-08:00

To all those that said they'd leave if the election didn't go their way, get out. From both sides. Just go.

I guess the October Surprise we all expected was nothing. Exactly nothing; a ruse, while the Christian Coalition got out the vote quietly. The ABB strategy (predictably, with hindsight that qualifies us for flight school) didn't work. Never mind that abortion rates have risen the past four years after a stead decline of ~1.6% per year since 1976. Never mind that the "moral values" guy doesn't go to church (unlike his predecessor) and has an administration that makes U.S. Grant look like Woodrow Wilson by comparison. Never mind the retarded war on nonexistent premises. The outsourcing. The cloven tax stratification. The bullheaded non-observance of facts by a guy who has never kept a company he helmed afloat and thinks that evolution being a "theory" means it's on the same grounds as an X-files episode.

A lot of people are scared of catching the gay, and are willing to make second-class citizens out of certain neighbors and co-workers. And these people vote.

Cobbled together musings

2004-10-25T14:06:00.000-07:00

A married couple who I'm longtime friends with has a problem. They're having a baby in a couple months, but his parents won't even talk to them because they're not voting for Bush. They asked me how I deal with my own very conservative parents.

My dad handles it by being passive-aggressive. Well, he's like that all the way 'round, anymore, but specifically, when he comes over to help paint, he either does nothing, or does such a poor job I can't but think it's intentional. My mom, when I feed her data (as in, the Latin American countries in which abortion is legal have lower abortion rates than those where it's illegal, or, that the abortion rate was steadily declining 1.7%/year from 1976 to 2000, then has been going UP 3.5% since GWB came to power), does the rhetorical equivalent of plugging her ears with her fingers and braying, "LALALALALA".
When my dad made the claim that "the liberals have brainwashed" me, I countered with a two-pronged approach. First, that the single biggest factor in my exploring new viewpoints (Actually, I think I phrased it "the person who made me a liberal") was GWB. (not to mention that Republican chicks are SCAY-REE). The other tine of my rhetorical fork was a twisted compliment: that I don't follow my parents' political leanings in lockstep means that they did a good job raising me as an independent thinker.
One thing's for sure: if Bush wins, I expect every fucking Dem senator to remind the CNN viewers as much as possible that Bush does not have a mandate, and should not act as though he does.
When the court jester of rhetorical response (i.e. me) can immediately punch USS Cole-sized holes in every one of the administration's arguments without even trying, I can easily see why the rest of the world thinks we're a bunch of fucking cowboys who've gone off the Prozac.
In other news, I've given up on dating...I make comments loudly in the bar about whatever comes to mind- that girl's got nice eyes but no butt, etc. It's not worth it. I mean, it's been a year since my last real g/f broke up with me, and I no longer talk to her, but I still get a chubby when I see a girl with her bodytype. I don't like what a fucking obsessive I've become, although the rest of who I've become I'm pretty proud of. Dating, it seems, is just a modern-day psy-ops ballet which costs a lot to get into the game, and to keep playing. No thanks, jacking off takes 15 minutes and kills my libido for the rest of the day.

Seeing a man about a horse...

2004-08-05T20:04:00.000-07:00

Knights in White Satin

2004-07-06T21:05:00.000-07:00

You know you're about to have a bad day when you look at your jobsite, and the mold growing on the wet bits makes you have to poo--then on the sprint through the convenience store to the john, you hear the Guess Who's "No Time Left for You" on the Muzak.

Supplies!

2004-07-05T13:11:00.000-07:00

I'm a glutton for punishment (and the summer has been relatively mild here in St. Louis), but I've not yet turned on the a/c in my house. Nor have i bothered to run a new circuit to run the window unit in my bedroom. How? box fan. It's amazing how much cooler you can feel when the last thing you do at night is take a shower, then let 30 MPH winds blow over you.

It's also amazing how quickly I wake up when it starts raining horizontally, *inside* my house.

This is really not off the top of my head...

2004-06-21T15:32:00.000-07:00

A friend put the following philosophical question:

Assume an intelligent, perceptive individual who follows his or her own path. Occasionally that path will coincide with another person; love ensues, etc. Does the mutual challenging, prodding of each other then necessitate that the trajectories diverge too far from that point where the crossing - that deep understanding - occured?
"Trajectories" is such a nice word to describe out life paths - at least it's 3D, and implies time as well. I also like trajectories because I'm the geek who once wrote a numerical integrator in Excel to determine the path, and thus the muzzle velocity, of an air-cannon-launched pumpkin. On one hand, there's the spark that comes from crossing close paths in the poly-dimensional space of our lives. In an internal-cumbustion engine, the spark is what makes it all irreversible - makes the entropy accrete at a rate that can't be reversed. That entropy (crap, I'm mixing meta-metaphors) is what drives us, is it not? And as for whether, once crossed, the paths must necessarily diverge; they must, but this actually can be an advantage. When I'm performing my own intellectual repairs, so to speak, I've found that I get too self-absorbed unless i have a sounding board - someone to help me realize that I'm on the wrong path. Who better to make that objective determination than someone with whom you've gained rapport, inwhom you trust? If the paths diverge to the point that it "no longer works", i.e. either the advice is a bit too objective or there's no longer enough rapport to grant weight to the opinion, then the relationship is no longer useful in a utilitarian view; but i don't think that the paths must necessarily diverge so much. After all, (getting back to the metaphor) those trajectories *are* still with respect to the same ground, in the same atmosphere. I see my neighbors as an example. They're both social workers, over fifty, but she's an artist, and he's an artisan, if you get my meaning. Would that i may find something of that same sort of willing, not willful, love.

On dating...

2004-06-21T15:23:00.000-07:00

I posted this to the Nerve personals. Wonder if it'll work:

My friends say I'm a jerk; at least, that's what they say when they've asked me for an opinion and I forget to sugarcoat. When a friend asked about his dying car, I responded, "they shoot horses, don't they?" When another griped about her beau, I told her to quit using him for rides (despite that I couldn't stand the guy). I install carwashes, teach math at the community college, and fix cars to make my bread, and all the rehabbing I've got planned for my house suffers for my lack of time. Musically, I listen to whatever I like, though I'd rather develop stomach cancer than listen to commercial radio (I lerve KDHX though). My favorite artists right now are Calexico, Marah, and Townes Van Zandt; the current crop of pasttimes in which I engage include learning to fingerpick my guitar, drinking beer, scenic photography while on road trips, riding my road bike, and spending too much time on the computer. I'll admit to having no fashion sense whatsoever (I'll wear boots with shorts and sneakers with jeans), and I own three vehicles, all of which run. Stacked sloppily on the shelf by my toilet are issues of at least five magazines, a book on MC Escher, Uncle John's Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader, and some catalogs for things I don't need.

My ideal match doesn't go to tanning salons and hates the Landing. She can remember lyrics better than I can and isn't afraid of a little grease, nor the mud, the blood, and the beer. She'll prod me to actualy get off my butt and do something about the mess this country's in. I want someone who can suggest a half-dozen philosophy books to read; out-drink, -cuss, and -smart me; and not mind that, although I make great attempts to be thoughful, I'm occasionally a complete lout.

If that ain't country...

2004-06-14T13:12:00.000-07:00

It's been said that shallow people talk about others, good people talk about events, and great people talk about *ideas*. I'm gonna talk about the weather. It's 92 outside, and teh relative humitity is supposedly 46%. If that's only 46%, I'll kiss your ass. It was so uncomfortably warm out there that I had trouble keeping my brain working on anything better than the reptile level. My mind was a slipping clutch, so to speak.

Jobsite shitter chainsaw massacre

2004-06-12T15:25:00.000-07:00

(pronounced [mass-a-cree'] a la' Arlo Guthrie)

So I was um, using the portajohn on the jobsite the other day (I install car washes). Johnny-on-the-spots are an interesting phenomenon, in that they're either surprisingly well maintained or so damned foul you need to have a completely non-functioning olfactory system to escape without wishing you could snort stale cigarettes to cleanse your palate. This particular rest-cubicle is pretty decent. Well, except when it tips over in the wind and left on the concrete is some blue stuff that will turn you off certain colors of Gatorade for a month or so. The graffiti is interesting (if only for the egregiously poor grammar and spelling), the door actually latches, and the seat is almost always piss-free.

It's been hot in St. Louis of late, and even when the dewpoint is something less than my grandfather's age, it's a mite bit uncomfortable in there - by the time you've unzipped, you're sweating. I guess that blue juice really adds to the old expression, "It's not the heat, it's the humidity." At any rate, I'm dropping the kids off at the pool, and someone fires up a chainsaw. Right. Outside. The. Shitter. Door. Now, at the time, I didn't know he worked for taco bell; I just suddenly was absolutely DONE crapping. To say I was scared shitless is something of an understatement. I never gave it much thought, but now I know what went through the minds of the kids who were just done fucking when that hockey-mask fellow walked into camp.

I'm like, really nice...really!

2004-06-07T17:42:00.000-07:00

Hello, my name is chris, and a personals-site-aholic. Occasionally I shop the competition, but jaysus it's sad reading the women's profiles. I'll click on a photo of a gal who is atrractive but not in that (cue loretta lynn) "I'm proud to be a frat boy's consort" way and the fun begins.

May I editorialize for a moment, ladies?

1)Please don't tell us what your friends say about you. "My friends say I'm..."--allow me to fill in the blank--dependent upon other people's opinion of yourself?
2)"I'm funny, honest, and really nice"...I'm sure you are, but seriously (oh, fuck, isn't that a Phil Collins album?), if someone were setting you up on a blind date and described said date thusly, wouldn't you feel underwhelmed?
3)*EVERY*FUCKING*AD* says, quote, "I'm looking for a guy with a sense of humor". Everyone has one, it's just that some people have a shitty wit. If you really mean, "I'd like a guy who can make me laugh, not make me feel stupid with esoteric references to the geek obsession of his choice, be playful enough to make me feel wanted, but not take practical jokes to the point that I'm in pain or embarrassed," say it! Say something different, fer chrissakes!

Welcome to three years ago...

2004-06-07T17:39:00.000-07:00

...blogging has jumped the shark, so *now* I get in on the game.

These shall be the voyages of my misanthropic mind, wherein I shall bitch, rant, wallow in minutia, and occasionally post under the affluence of incohol.