Frontier Gibberish

Read John Cheever stories. DO IT. He writes the greatest opening paragraphs I've ever read.

"This is being written aboard the S.S. Augustus, three days at sea. My suitcase is full of peanut butter, and I am a fugitive from the suburbs of all large cities."

"The Crutchmans were so very, very happy and so temperate in all their habits and so pleased with everything that came their way that one was bound to suspect a worm in their rosy apple and that the extrordinary rosiness of the fruit was only meant to conceal the gravity and depth of the infection."

"The Wrysons wanted things in the suburb of Shady Hill to remain exactly as they were. Their dread of change--of irregularity of any sort--was acute, and when the Larkin estate was sold for an old people's rest home, the Wrysons went to the Village Council meeting and demanded to know what sort of old people these old people were going to be."

"Our ideals of castles, formed in childhood, are inflexible, and why try to reform them? Why point out that in a real castle thistles grow in the courtyard, and the threshold of the ruined throne room is guarded by a nest of green adders?"

"Oh I hate small men and I will write about them no more but in passing I would like to say that's what my brother Richard is: small."

My brother is currently, I believe, in Baltimore, hobnobbing with various other nerds of his particular stripe; while I was first disturbed that he felt it necessary to travel hundreds of miles to converse with large men with lackadaisical attitudes towards shaving and "secret" stashes of animated pornography in which girls in schoolgirl outfits with freakishly large breasts and excessive amounts of...fluids get it on, I'm starting to think it might not be such a bad idea. First of all, he's taking a camera to snap photos of the freaks in costumes. Second of all, he might "snap out of it", so to speak, and move on to other, more adult concerns. It's starting to freak me out, how immature he is. Was I that immature at that age? I sure hope not. And if I was, why weren't more people slapping me and saying "get laid" and/or "grow up"?

Have you ever noticed that some people seem to fall into and out of sexual relationships with the frequency of a fly jumping from entree to entree at a summer picnic? And do you also notice that some of these people are not in any way attractive? And they don't have much of a personality to speak of? I certainly knew some people in high school who were most likely swimming in venereal disease. To quote Roast Beef from my favorite comic, Achewood, if gonorrhea were piano these guys would be considered bold and unpredictable new talents.

I've got several grad schools in mind. The problem is I just don't think I've written anything good enough to be accepted. I haven't reached that level yet, and the deadlines are coming up quick. But you can't just pull things out of your ass at the last second when it comes to writing. I know that everything I write makes me better and everything I read makes me better. I read incessantly--42 novels so far this year by my count. And I write incessantly, most of which I throw out because it, well, sucks. A lot of what I write sucks...but now I can recognize that it sucks, and I'm halfway there in figuring out how to recognize how it sucks. However, I can't yet make it not suck. It gets very, very frustrating when the mind can recognize that something needs to be changed but can't yet determine how to change it. But nothing is easy; it's all hard work. If you want to achieve something it requires hard work. This is the first time I've really ever had a specific goal in my life, ever.

I was unmotivated in high school, because high school is not designed to engender motivation. It's a dead zone, mathematically seperated into parts, fifty minutes to a period, 8 periods to a day, with a break for lunch. They yank you in and four years later they squeeze you out. It was all my own fault, mostly. I was not interested in the things high school wanted to teach me. I was doing things like watching David Lynch films and reading Thomas Pynchon and William Burroughs novels. I was interested in anything that was odd. The moment something became popular I scorned it. Not a recipe for popularity, that's for sure.

I desperately, desperately want to get into the Iowa Writers Workshop. That's what I want. I don't care that nothing is guaranteed afterward. Nothing is ever guaranteed. I may write a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. I may never publish a single thing in my life. Who knows. I just want to get in. I want to be around people who have the same desires and interests vis-a-vis writing that I do. The English majors here are not serious about it. They've read too much Hunter S. Thompson, who as great a writer as he was had some fairly odious ideas, and think that drugs and calculated eccentricity itself is enough to start a writing career. It's not. There must be talent under it. I'm not saying I have talent. If I have any, so far it's shown itself to be minor. I've gotten second place in the campus writing contest twice in a row. The first time it was probably justified. The second time it was utter bullshit.

It's all about the manuscript, it's all about the manuscript. Three stories.

I ordered an Andre Dubus paperback off of the massive online used shop that is Half.com and recieved a book of V.S. Pritchett (also a worthwhile writer) short stories by mistake. So I let the guy know, and....

1. I get to keep the Pritchett book
2. He's sending me the original book I ordered
3. I get a full refund.

That rules! I get two books for free! This almost makes up for the time when I ordered Slint's Spiderland and never recieved anything.

Our bat hasn't showed up again. I called up our rental company during a break at work and was in turn given the somewhat ominous message "we'll take care of it", shortly followed by them hanging up. Um....okay. They better damn well take care of it! Those things have rabies! Especially if they seem somewhat insane, like this one did. I was divebombed three times! I wish I could have a cat--that'd take care of our bat problems. There is a hole in our wall that I stuffed with an issue of Time magazine; the front cover story was on that ridiculous Da Vinci Code shit, so it will be far more effective as a bat-proofer than it ever was as a piece of news or entertainment.

We're in the middle of a heat wave here and old people in large metropolitan areas are dropping like flies. In my apartment my t-shirt sticks to my body like it was glued on there and I killed a freakishly huge bug on my wall that exploded when I hit it with a rolled up magazine. Lots of green blood or whatever.

--edit--

This is just about the funniest comic I've ever read. I love Achewood.

are there bats in my goddamned apartment? Why is the bat flying around in the hallway? And why can't I find it now?

our school is doing a big "Bring Back The 60s!" theme this year.

So...does that mean the more extreme radical students on campus are supposed to blow up Old Main again?

Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all.

With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.

The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi, and Groucho Marx.

As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them.

Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction.

Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck.

--Thomas Pynchon

Cool. And yes, it is 992 pages. A new book by what is generally considered the greatest author of the past fifty years? It's a big deal...

SECTION 1 [ STATS ]
+ your name: Jon
+ your gender: male
+ age: 20
+ height: 6' 1"
+ hair color: brown
+ eye color: brown
+ your location: 124B south prince street
+ fears: spiders, icy steps

SECTION 2 [ HAVE YOU EVER ]
+ peed your pants? probably when I was younger
+ cheated on someone? no
+ fallen off the bed? yes
+ fallen for a relative? no
+ had plastic surgery? no
+ broke someone's heart? this face ain't a heartbreaker
+ had your heart broken? no
+ had a dream come true? not yet
+ done something you regret? quite a few things
+ cheated on a test? who hasn't? Oh yeah, SQUARES!!!
+ been raped? nope
+ broken a body part? arm

SECTION 3 [ CURRENTLY ]
+ wearing – jeans, ramones shirt
+ listening to – tchaikovsky
+ chewing - nothing
+ feeling - a little tired and hungry. not eating before bed though.
+ reading – salman rushdie - midnight's children, sam harris - the end of faith
+ located - bedroom
+ chatting with – steph
+ watching – nothing
+ should REALLY be - sleeping

SECTION 4 [ DO YOU... ]
+ brush your teeth? yes
+ like anybody? yeah this one chick maybe sorta actually no
+ have any piercing? no
+ believe in Santa Claus? Jesus christ, these questions....
+ ever get off the computer? every so often

SECTION 5 [ FRIENDS ]
+ do you belong to a crew? just the Cutting Crew
+ do you hang out with the opposite sex? yes
+ do you consider yourself popular? no
+ do you trust your friends? pretty much
+ are you a good friend? i'm awesome
+ can you keep a secret? yeah

SECTION 6 [ THE LAST PERSON YOU... ]
+ hugged – hell if i remember
+ IMed – kayla
+ talked to on the phone – my brother
+ yelled at ? – zac
+ fell in love with - nobody
+ turned down - a rakish youngster outside the local spirit-house

SECTION 7 [ PERSONAL ]
+ What do you want to be when you grow up? writer
+ What was the worst day of your life? plenty of candidates
+ What has been the best day of your life? I will refrain from quoting City Slickers
+ What comes first in your life? family/friends. the usual
+ Do you have a boyfriend/girlfriend/crush? – not right now
+ If you had an extra set of eyes were would you put them? on my index fingers
+ What do you usually think about before you go to bed? the random crap that runs through all our heads

SECTION 8 [ FAVORITE . . . ]
+ Movie: 2001: A Space Odyssey
+ Song: Pavement - Summer Babe
+ Group: mogwai, pavement, guided by voices
+ Store: used bookstores
+ Relative: grandparents!
+ Sport: football to watch
+ Vacation Spot: anyplace nice
+ Fruit: strawberries
+ Candy: Twizzlers Pull and Peel
+ Holiday: Christmas
+ Day of the Week: Friday
+ Color: I refuse to answer
+ Magazine: Bookforum
+ Name for a Girl: Enid
+ Name for a Boy: Stephen

SECTION 9 [ DO YOU . . . ]
+ Like to give hugs - yeah
+ Like to walk in the rain? not really
+ Sleep with or without clothes on? with
+ Prefer black or blue pens? blue
+ Dress up on Halloween? no
+ Have a job? Cygnus Business Media
+ Like to travel? – indeed
+ Like someone? wow, this fucking survey is insistent
+ Sleep on your side, stomach or back? back
+ Think you're attractive? - i suppose
+ Want to marry? - yes
+ Have a goldfish? - no
+ Ever have the falling dream? - no
+ Have stuffed animals? - no
+ Go on vacation? – not fucking lately

SECTION 10 [ WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT . . . ]
+ Abortion: go right ahead.
+ Bill Clinton: charisma!
+ Eating Disorders: they're not good for you?
+ Summer: can be extremely boring
+ Tattoos: hot on the ladies
+ Piercing: also hot on the ladies
+ Make-up: fine. I sure don't use it.
+ Drinking: makes me feel all wiggly
+ Guys: are disgusting
+ Girls: are pretty. How eloquent!

SECTION 11 [ THIS OR THAT ]
+ Pierced nose or tongue? – doesn't matter to me
+ Be serious or funny? - Funny
+ Single or taken? uh? In regards to what?
+ Simple or Complicated? - Complicated!
+ MTV or BET? BET actually shows videos.
+ 7th Heaven or Dawson's Creek? - 7th Heaven. It's funny-bad as opposed to boring-bad.
+ Sugar or salt? - Salt
+ Silver or gold? - Gold
+ Tongue or belly button ring? whichever
+ Chocolate or flowers? chocolate
+ Angels or miracles? neither exist
+ Color or Black-and-white photos? black and white
+ Sunrise or sunset? - Didn't Buck Swope and Jessie St. Vincent talk about this?
+ M&M's or Skittles? M&M's
+ Rap or Rock? - Rock
+ Stay up late or sleep in? – Stay up late
+ TV or radio? - Radio
+ Hot or cold? - Hot
+ members of the opposite sex taller or shorter? - doesn't matter
+ Sun or moon? - Sun
+ Diamond or Ruby? – ruby
+ Left or Right? right
+ 10 acquaintances or one best friend? One best friend.
+ Vanilla or chocolate? - chocolate
+ Kids or no kids? - kids
+ Half-empty or Half-full? – Half empty
+ Mustard or ketchup? mustard
+ Newspaper or Magazine? - Magazine
+ Spring or Fall? - fall
+ Give or receive? - receive
+ Rain or snow? - snow.
+ Happy or sad? - being manic is far, far better than being depressed. Depression is baaaaaaaad
+ sneakers or sandals? sneakers
+ McDonald's or Burger King? McDonald's
+ Mexican or Italian food? - Italian
+ Lights on or off? - off
+ A house in the woods or the city? There aren't many "houses" in the city....to live in the city you're probably gonna be in an apartment.
+ Pepsi or Coke? - Pepsi
+ Nike or ADIDAS? - ahhh, who cares

D.H. Lawrence is a great writer, but he's got the attitude towards sex of a fifteen year-old. It's the whole "I don't want to sully the beautiful girl of my dreams by having sex with her" disease that often afflicts young, overly sensitive guys of that age. To be fair, Lawrence owns up to it but I still think his whole attitude towards sex (which is a large part of his work) is a great distraction.

It's strange how life works. For his whole life, the writer Philip K. Dick lived in near-poverty. At times, he and his wife did not have enough money to pay the late fines on library books. In 1982, he died of a stroke. Since then, 12 of his novels have been made into movies, including, most famously, Blade Runner, Minority Report, The Truman Show, Total Recall, Impostor, Paycheck, and most recently, A Scanner Darkly. If he were still alive, he would be a millionaire many times over. Life just doesn't work out sometimes.

The hottest days of the year are upon us, and there is little to do but lie and stir in my own sweat, taking periodical cold showers every six hours and read D.H. Lawrence. It's the type of heat where it hurts, physically, to stand outside, and the sensation of your shirt sticking to your skin is like nails on a chalkboard.

I've settled on three grad school MFA programs so far: first choice being the University of Iowa, second being Cornell, third being UC-Irvine. These are all fairly challenging schools to get into; I haven't selected a "safety" yet. That'll come later. I harbor no doubts about my ability to get into these three schools, what I do have doubts about are my ability to work hard enough to come up with an impressive enough manuscript, and my ability to pay if by some freak chance I actually do get accepted to any of these three places. I've been writing steadily all this weekend whenever it hasn't been too goddamn hot. Also in my spare time I've been obsessed with YTMND.com. My favorite little theme on there is their fad where "misheard lyrics" are literalized. Samples:

Baked Apple Pie

HYPHEN!

You Need Kool-Aid!

Corn On The Cob

You Should Be On My Lawn

SPOKANE!

Reagan Rocks All Day

My personal favorite. I don't know why.

because it was annoying. But this is a great sustained piece of writing, and short enough to post in here. It's by David Foster Wallace, who is commonly dubbed "the greatest writer of his generation", and while I don't know if that's true (William T. Vollmann certainly can go toe-to-toe with him) he occasionally knocks it out of the park. As with this story, Incarnations of Burned Children. Read! It's short.

The Daddy was around the side of the house hanging a door for the tenant when he heard the child's screams and the Mommy's voice gone high between them. He could move fast, and the back porch gave onto the kitchen, and before the screen door had banged shut behind him the Daddy had taken the scene in whole, the overturned pot on the floortile before the stove and the burner's blue jet and the floor's pool of water still steaming as its many arms extended, the toddler in his baggy diaper standing rigid with steam coming off his hair and his chest and shoulders scarlet and his eyes rolled up and mouth open very wide and seeming somehow seperate from the sounds that issued, the Mommy down on one knee with the dishrag dabbing pointlessly at him and matching the screams with cries of her own, hysterical so she was almost frozen. Her one knee and the bare little soft feet were still in the steaming pool, and the Daddy's first act was to take the child under the arms and lift him away from it and take him to the sink, where he threw out plates and struck the tap to let cold wellwater run over the boy's feet while with his cupped hand he gathered and poured or flung more cold water over the head and shoulders and chest, wanting first to see the steam stop coming off him, the Mommy over his shoulder invoking God until he sent her for towels and gauze if they had it, the Daddy moving quickly and well and his man's mind empty of everything but purpose, not yet aware of how smoothly he moved or that he'd ceased to hear the high screams because to hear them would freeze him and make impossible what had to be done to help his own child, whose screams were regular as breath and went on so long they'd become already a thing in the kitchen, something else to move quickly around. The tenant's side door outside hung half off its top hinge and moved slightly in the wind, and a bird in the oak across the driveway appeared to observe the door with a cocked head as the cries still came from inside. The worst scalds seemed to be the right arm and shoulder, the chest and stomach's red was fading to pink under the cold water and his feet's soft soles weren't blistered that Daddy could see, but the toddler still made little fists and screamed except maybe now merely on reflex from fear, the Daddy would know he thought it possible later, small face distended and thready veins standing out at the temples and the Daddy kept saying he was here he was here, adrenaline ebbing and an anger at the Mommy for allowing this thing to happen just starting to gather in wisps at his mind's extreme rear and still hours from expression. When the Mommy returned he wasn't sure whether to wrap the child in a towel or not but he wet the towel down and did, swaddled him tight and lifted his baby out of the sink and set him on the kitchen table's edge to soothe him while the Mommy tried to check the feet's soles with one hand waving around in the area of her mouth and uttering objectless words while the Daddy bent in and was face to face with the child on the table's checked edge repeating the fact that he was here and trying to calm the toddler's cries but still the child breathlessly screamed, a high pure shining sound that could stop his heart and his bitty lips and gums now tinged with the light blue of a low flame the Daddy thought, screaming as if almost still under the tilted pot in pain. A minute, two like this that seemed much longer, with the Mommy at the Daddy's side talking singsong at the child's face and the lark on the limb with its head to the side and the hinge going white in a line from the weight of the canted door until the first seen wisp of steam came lazy from under the wrapped towel's hem and the parents' eyes met and widened--the diaper, which when they opened the towel and leaned their little boy back on the checkered cloth and unfastened the softened tabs and tried to remove it resisted slightly with new high cries and was hot, their baby's diaper burned their hand and they saw where the real water'd fallen and pooled and been burning their baby boy all this time while he screamed for them to help him and they hadn't, hadn't thought and when they got it off and saw the state of what was there the mommy said their God's first name and grabbed the table to keep her feet while the father turned away and threw a haymaker at the air of the kitchen and cursed both himself and the world for not the last time while his child might now have been sleeping if not for the rate of his breathing and the tiny stricken motions of his hands in the air above where he lay, hands the size of a grown man's thumb that had clutched the Daddy's thumb in the crib while he'd watched the Daddy's mouth move in song, his head cocked and seeming to see way past him into something his eyes made the Daddy lonesome for in a sideways way. If you've never wept and want to, have a child. Break your heart inside and something will a child is the twangy song the Daddy hears again as if the radio's lady was almost there with him looking down at what they've done, though hours later what the Daddy most won't forgive is how badly he wanted a cigarette right then as they diapered the child as best they could in gauze and two crossed handtowels and the Daddy lifted him like a newborn with his skull in one palm and ran him out to the hot truck and burned custom rubber all the way to town and the clinic's ER with the tenant's door hanging open like that all day until the hinge gave but by then it was too late, when it wouldn't stop and they couldn't make it the child had learned to leave himself and watch the whole rest unfold from a point overhead, and whatever was lost never thenceforth mattered, and the child's body expanded and walked about and drew pay and lived its life untenanted, a thing among things, its self's soul so much vapor aloft, falling as rain and then rising, the sun up and down like a yoyo.

I found this on the internet somewhere. These are all real video game titles.

50. Frogger: Helmet Chaos
49. Zeitgeist
48. Twin Eagle: Revenge Joe's Brother
47. Jumpman
46. ASO: Armored Scrum Object
45. Wild Woody
44. Tech Romancer
43. Princess Tomato in Salad Kingdom
42. Beyond the Beyond
41. Silhouette Mirage: Reprogrammed Hope
40. Um Jammer Lammy
39. PenPen Tricelon
38. Spanky's Quest
37. Cacoma Knight in Bizyland
36. M.U.S.C.L.E.
35. Sticky Balls
34. 70's Robot Anime Geppy-X: The Super Boosted Armor
33. Punky Skunk
32. Klonoa: Door to Phantomile
31. Awesome Possum Kicks Dr. Machino's Butt!
30. Catechumen
29. World Soccer Winning Eleven 5: Final Evolution
28. Panic Restaurant
27. Ninja Hamster
26. Iggy's Reckin' Balls
25. Booby Kids
24. Yo! Noid
23. Lee Trevino's Fighting Golf
22. Astro Fang: Super Machine
21. Divine Divinity
20. Eggs of Steel: Charlie's Egg-cellent Adventure
19. Barkley: Shut Up and Jam!
18. Tongue of the Fatman
17. Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together
16. Rosco McQueen: Firefighter Extreme
15. Tobal No.1
14. Wargasm
13. GOLF Magazine Presents 36 Great Holes Starring Fred Couples
12. XEXYZ
11. No One Can Stop Mr. Domino!
10. Totally Rad
9. James Pond II: Codename RoboCod
8. Psybadek
7. Nuts & Milk
6. Huygen's Disclosure
5. Bad Dudes vs. Dragon Ninja
4. Pesterminator: The Western Exterminator
3. Mobile Suit Gundam: Gundam vs. Zeta Gundam
2. If It Moves, Shoot It!
1. Irritating Stick

How does one go about rectifying the situation if one's electricity bill is much, much higher than it should be?

also: our former roommate is a fucking deadbeat. It's too complex to go into right now but...christ. I'm pissed. On the upside(?) I got a new phone.

also: my brother can't go to the Sonic Youth/Go! Team concert with me in August because he will be attending--wait for it--an anime convention. Nerd.

Shriekback's song "Nemesis" is amazing, amazing, amazing. I can't believe there's an 80s underground rock hit that has slipped past my radar, but lo and behold...

BIG BLACK NEMESIS! PATHENOGENESIS!

And this is why

We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common, we call them 'religious'; otherwise, they are likely to be called 'mad,' 'psychotic' or 'delusional.' '' To cite but one example: Jesus Christ -- who, as it turns out, was born of a virgin, cheated death and rose bodily into the heavens -- can now be eaten in the form of a cracker. A few Latin words spoken over your favorite Burgundy, and you can drink his blood as well. Is there any doubt that a lone subscriber to these beliefs would be considered mad?
--Bill Harris

--edit--

This is also from that same book (which I just ordered with my new paycheck) The End Of Faith. This is a bit longer.

"Out of deference to some rather poorly specified tenets of Christian doctrine (after all, nothing in the Bible suggests that killing human embryos, or even human fetuses, is the equivalent of killing a human being), the U.S. House of Representatives voted effectively to ban embryonic stem-cell research on February 27, 2003.

No rational approach to ethics would have led us to such an impasse. Our present policy on human stem cells has been shaped by beliefs that are divorced from every reasonable intuition we might form about the possible experience of living systems. In neurological terms, we surely visit more suffering upon this earth by killing a fly than by killing a human blastocyst, to say nothing of a human zygote (flies, after all, have 100,000 cells in their brains alone). Of course, the point at which we fully acquire our humanity, and our capacity to suffer, remains an open question. But anyone who would dogmatically insist that these traits must arise coincident with the moment of conception has nothing to contribute, apart from his ignorance, to this debate. Those opposed to therapeutic stem-cell research on religious grounds constitute the biological and ethical equivalent of a flat-earth society. Our discourse on the subject should reflect this. In this area of public policy alone, the accommodations that we have made to faith will do nothing but enshrine a perfect immensity of human suffering for decades to come.

But the tendrils of unreason creep further. President Bush recently decided to cut off funding to any overseas family-planning group that provides information on abortion. According to the New York Times, this “has effectively stopped condom provision to 16 countries and reduced it in 13 others, including some with the world’s highest rates of AIDS infection.” Under the influence of Christian notions of the sinfulness of sex outside of marriage, the U.S. government has required that one-third of its AIDS prevention funds allocated to Africa be squandered on teaching abstinence rather than condom use. It is no exaggeration to say that millions could die as a direct result of this single efflorescence of religious dogmatism. As Nicholas Kristof points out, “sex kills, and so does this kind of blushing prudishness.”

And yet, even those who see the problem in all its horror find it impossible to criticize faith itself. Take Kristof as an example: in the very act of exposing the medievalism that prevails in the U.S. government, and its likely consequences abroad, he goes on to chastise anyone who would demand that the faithful be held fully accountable for their beliefs:

I tend to disagree with evangelicals on almost everything, and I see no problem with aggressively pointing out the dismal consequences of this increasing religious influence. For example, evangelicals’ discomfort with condoms and sex education has led the administration to policies that are likely to lead to more people dying of AIDS at home and abroad, not to mention more pregnancies and abortions.

But liberal critiques sometimes seem not just filled with outrage at evangelical-backed policies, which is fair, but also to have a sneering tone about conservative Christianity itself. Such mockery of religious faith is inexcusable. And liberals sometimes show more intellectual curiosity about the religion of Afghanistan than that of Alabama, and more interest in reading the Upanishads than in reading the Book of Revelation.

This is reason in ruins. Kristof condemns the "dismal consequences" of faith while honoring their cause. It is true that the rules of civil discourse currently demand that Reason wear a veil whenever she ventures out in public. But the rules of civil discourse must change.

Faith drives a wedge between ethics and suffering. Where certain actions cause no suffering at all, religious dogmatists still maintain that they are evil and worthy of punishment (sodomy, marijuana use, homosexuality, the killing of blastocysts, etc.). And yet, where suffering and death are found in abundance their causes are often deemed to be good (withholding funds for family planning in the third world, prosecuting nonviolent drug offenders, preventing stem-cell research, etc.). This inversion of priorities not only victimizes innocent people and squanders scarce resources; it completely falsifies our ethics. It is time we found a more reasonable approach to answering questions of right and wrong."

this is the summer in which (ideally) I would start thinking about potential graduate programs. The problem is, I'm not sure I want to do it. Graduate programs in literature often strike me as fairly repulsive, with backbiting, antisocial grad students playing their little games of Where's Waldo with great literature...there's MFA programs, but those serve little practical purpose aside from the (admittedly important) aspect of networking, but again the impact of that is negligible if one doesn't happen to get into, say, Cornell or Berkeley or something...(I would've liked to have studied under John Barth at Johns Hopkins, but that college is damned expensive and he's retired).

I could always get David Foster Wallace as a professor at Pomona in California. I think he only works with undergrads, though. (The rumor mill also tells me that he will bite the ass of any student who brings up his work in class).

Also, I don't want to be one of those people who suckle at the tit of graduate studies for years and never actually get a real life. So it comes down to three post-undergrad options:

1. attend grad school in Madison (pros: (comparatively) cheap, easy. cons: may lead to emotional degradation, Kafkaesque apartmental existence, eventual suicide.

2. attend grad school out-of-state (pros: greater opportunity, greater opportunity for experiences. cons: don't know anyone, will completely destroy my bank account and force me to live in poverty for many years, completely take up all my free time and eliminate most social interaction (not that there's inordinate amounts of that right now).

3. continue work at Cygnus, get that elusive "1-2 yrs. experience" so sought-after on job applications, move away, preferably to sunny California. I don't think I can handle many more winters here. The cold and darkness will kill me. (pros: greatest security. able to save (some) cash. job experience. gain "maturity". cons: very, very boring for those 2 years of working. I want to get out of here now.)

Ahhh, who knows. The only thing that's certain is I will move out.

My favorite book of all time is being reissued in October, with art by Frank Miller (the Sin City guy).



Cool. My current copy is close to falling apart from overuse...I'll have to pick this up.

Sleater-Kinney are breaking up!!!!

God damn it.

the 10 funniest lyrics on the Electric Six' album Fire!

1. "Radio message from HQ/Dance Commander, we love you"

2. "And you know that my suit cost more than your house/Because I'm a scoundrel, a lover, and a murderous louse"

3. "She's white! WHITE! She is so white/She's white like the light, never like the night/ She's white, white, she is so white/I was born to excite her, she could never be whiter/ TONIGHT!"

4. "I make lots of money, I make more money than you/I drive around in my limo, that's what I was born to do"

5. "I invented the night/In my laboratory using lust and lies"

6. "I went to the store/To get more FIRE!/To start the war"

7. "You can go to the doctor/You can cough in his face/Infect the whole human race/But you can't ignore my techno"

8. "I look in the mirror and I know I'm a man/I know a woman and she's looking for a man/We've got sex planned/OH YEAH!!"

9. "I was born a dancer/In your disco of fire"

10. "Now I ain't educated but I sure ain't stupid/I know what is wrong and I know what is right"