I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, Mr. Aronson, but you have … AMNESIA!!!

Irony is dead and sarcasm is bullshit. It has been stated that we are no longer living the Postmodern world but that rather we are living in the poorly termed postpostmodern world. Which, of course, is a meaningless designation that critics use to cover over the fact that they know the old world has passed but they 1. don’t have a fucking clue what is going on now and b. are not clever enough to come up with a real and lasting name for this newest of bullshit “periods” of art. I would like to think I am somewhat familiar with the concepts, but now is not the time to delude myself into make a blanket statement on art. After all, art is just a three letter word. As much an abstract construction as anything anyone else has ever said about it. I don’t know that the though is original though. So it would be premature for you superfans to be quoting me on it just yet.

There are a lot of things that I desperately feel the need to write, to write on, to write about, and yet I find myself unable. I have opinions on life outside of failed relationships and the merits of bourbon, scotch, tequila, gin, India pale ale, and other assorted means that the Muse uses to open the airways and fill the world with sound and glory. I need not go into a discussion on whether or not as an American I should prefer our one national spirit, bourbon (and it better be from Kentucky) or whether it is indeed acceptable to drink the national spirits of other nations: scotch, tequila, rye, London dry gin, Russian vodka (no grape fed substitutes allowed). As a relatively well traveled and cosmopolitan man, I can assure you that all spirits are equally valid and should be enjoyed for everything they have to offer. Life is, after all, mostly dull when you are sober. It doesn’t get any more interesting after drinking, but it sure fucking seems that way.

I want to call myself an anarchist. Not just because it is so punk rock or because I have an affinity for crazy Russians (though the statement has been made about me and I guess might in some ways be true, but I would imagine it is mostly coincidence). I do find myself with an affinity for the downtrodden and outcast, but again, that isn’t really a reason to be an anarchist. I just plain don’t believe in authority. I don’t believe that the imposed hierarchies are capable of governing and I don’t think that governing is a worthwhile concept anyway. For those of you unaware of the political aspects of an intellectual belief in anarchism, I would now direct you to look it up (the internet is good for that sort of thing, try wikipedia). Because, just in case you were wondering, I am not advocating people run around killing and raping each other. The Golden Age of Piracy has passed. Murder is no longer an acceptable means of resolving a bar fight or a cheating girlfriend. The problem, however, lies in the fact that despite what I would like to believe intellectually, I cannot allow myself to reasonably sustain views that are wholly impractical or unrealistic. I do my best to act in accordance with my beliefs, the modern world be damned, but I cannot deny the power structures that be quite that easily. Falling off the grid is no so easy as I would wish. I was about to quote Hamlet here, but it would have been awkward and most readers would have missed the line entirely finding it to be only one of my anachronistic phrases (as if I made most of those up on my own, too).

So I have this friend named Jeff. We went to college together. And that was enough. There was more, but that was enough. He is a big fan of professional wrestling and blonde girls with deep tans. One might immediately think that Jeff is obviously a boor and the worst example of American culture (yes, he does go to and enjoy strip clubs). But that is because your average American is an pretentious self-involved dipshit far too impressed with their utterly unimpressive selves. Suffice it to say, if you do not like Jeff, you are a loser and it is your own damn fault. The issue really is that Jeff has decided to become whole heartedly what your average intellectual wishes he could be but can only pretend to be with an ironic detachment because, after all, that is the nature of the mother fucker modern society has become. As far as I am concerned, Jeff has is better than most of you degenerate bastards. He knows what he wants – beautiful blondes. And he goes after what he wants – beautiful blondes (some of them are also cheerleaders and other such archetypes of perfection). So if you are jealous, be jealous. But do not begrudge him for going after and getting what he wants. Because that would be überlame and make you something of a assclown. It isn’t that Jeff knows everything or has the secrets of the universe hidden in his fifth pocket. Nothing quite so dramatic as that. Mostly it is that Jeff doesn’t worry about the bullshit and (surprise surprise) actually goes after what he wants. Me, I want different things out of life and women and the universe and everything. But that doesn’t mean that Jeff doesn’t have his shit figured out just well enough.

And the world goes on. Because what would be the point if it didn’t?


***
”The Defense Department regrets to inform you that your sons are dead because they were stupid.”
- Goose

Perception is Reality. I am not.

Fear not, I have a story in final revision (I actually made it to a seemingly satisfactory ending, so that is kind of a big thing. I just need someone else to review it and let me know if I am wrong before I reveal my veins to the masses.) so it shouldn't be too long before I get back to business as usual. At which point I will break with tradition and do something else. Unless I am too busy finishing up those dangerous and potentially life threatening applications.

In the mood for damn near anything, I am drinking a stirred martini in a rocks glass, listening to Lil Jon because for reasons beyond comprehension I just needed to get crunk, and learning about heavy metal and what life was really like when I was in first grade from the sage Chuck Klosterman, and I needed to write. I am often so compelled. I have always found it best to yield to the temptations. Besides, what else was I going to do? The Office isn't on for more than an hour.

I know that I write in what has come to be a rather noticeable and definable idiom. I call it "love and alcohol" because, well, I think that it sounds good. There is more to my personality, to my thoughts, wishes, and dreams. There is, as I often write (though usually in stories that never make it past the first or second draft) such potential. In me. There is such potential in me. I don't just write about twentysomething degenerates with an artisitic bent and a penchant for rampant boozing. I just find most of what I otherwise write lacking in what can be best termed "believability." I can't write about success or life in an office or 13th century poverty because I can't picture myself in such a situation. And I have a difficult time writing as someone else. I am incredibly vain, it almost always a bad thing for me. There actually are a few rarely seen examples of my extention beyond the world of my understanding and my own severely claustrophobic experiences. And included in those passages are what I at times consider some of my best writing. Unattached to my own fears and insecurities, the stories take on a character from a deeper and more dangerous portion of my unconscious. Unfortunately, they are the main set of writings that I cannot figure to finish. I don't know where the story goes and the characters are either unable or unwilling to tell me how their stories end. Ideally, this is what I would learn from grad school. Ideally. But fuck if I know that it will work or not. As the due dates roll ever nearer I become less and less sure of my worth...

Do my fears and insecurities come through in my writing?

I think I had better stop now. If I keep going, I am pretty sure that I am going to get too drunk or too lonely and start begging someone anyone to make my life better. And that is the last thing I need. I need to work through this on my own.

The Universe is dying of boredom. Scientists call it heat death. I know better.

God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son."

The Devil, well he likes to gamble. What you might call his sin of choice.

Why all my poets made of sand? Why are all the prophets dust?

Caligula got a bad rap.

Today, a day much like anyother, happens to be the 23rd anniversary of my birth. Twenty-three years ago in a small hospital in a smallish suburb of Tokyo a much smaller version of myself was brought forth into the world screaming. I have continued to scream. Though the words have changed and there are less nurses around. Perhaps I should remedy that. Perhaps.

I have nothing truly to say, being mostly sober and bored, but I sit here contemplating life and drinking $3 California "champagne" - you can't go wrong with Andre, believe you me. I don't know where any of this is going, so I mostly going to just let things work themselves out. First I have to go turn off my dvd player. It is playing the top menu 30 second promo thing and it is repeating ad nauseum and becoming quite vexing. Better...

So here I am. Sitting alone in a house full of nothing, books. I drink nowhere near as heavily as a good prophet should and far too much for a normal person just looking to get by, just looking to stay alive until the end. So that might be the source of my problems. I cannot live to excess. Not well anyway. I can't commit to it. I live my excess in moderation. Too damn stoic if you ask me. Need more cynic, more Diogenese. And now I wonder how it is I feel comfortable waxing Greek philosophical on topics which I have only the most rudimentary of knowledge. That might be another of my problems. That I know a little about a lot of things but I don't know a lot about any specific thing. I have no real interest to which I have devoted myself and my study. And the vagaries of my knowledge base and backstory are starting to catch up with the fact that I still want to write without the burden of six months of research. I have never been a fan of research. If something is worth knowing, I have probably only stumbled upon it by chance. Though I must insist that Fate not be invited to my tea party. But that leaves us nowhere...

I feel like I was born in the wrong generation. Perhaps that is the view of all budding dissidents. A harkening for days long past, for the freedoms of our fathers. I cannot fully say. Maybe I just haven't found my scene yet. Or figured out who I am. Because I haven't really figured out which one of the voices in my head is mine, or if they all are, which one I should trust as most reliable. The relative isolation of my twenty-second year taught me little save that I am a serious of unfortunate contradictions. Ask me about it later, it's a long long story.

In case you were wondering, (and if you weren't then I guess we aren't as similar as I might have hoped) yes, I am drinking my "champagne" straight from its oh so inexpensive bottle. It brings a sense of absurd "manliness" to the whole circus. I will be drinking martinis later provided I have enough initiative to actually mix them. Elsewise I will be drinking gin. I needed a change from months of bourbon. I destest patterns and routines. It's how think, and thus I feel the continual need to flee from what I know and can understand. I wonder if that is as unusual as it sounds. Interstingly enough this is the first time I have diagnosed myself with this absurd malady, I wonder if it will catch on and find its way into something I write. I wonder if I will ever get anything I write finshed. It would seem the Muse has taken a vacation/doesn't really give a shit about me anymore. What can you do? The world is naught but shifting sand. Under the brilliant unchanging sun.

Doubt, because it has to end sometime.

I'll think of something. In time, I hope...

Who died and made you Emperor Hirohito?

It has been some time since I have sat down and composed a blog post that wasn't a completed piece of prose or an arbitrary poem I had written while consciously not writing the serious work I have committed myself to completing. It would seem that I have begun to take my writing too seriously, that I have begun to give it the weight of things unknown and thus I have long been unable to write the freeflowing gobbledigoop pieces of grandious bullshit I made this blog known for. Since the whole 3 of my readers have since moved on to other things, I am mostly writing this for myself and my own well being. But as I have always done everything for myself and in what I concieved to be my own best interest, this is no new thing and so I will not fear it. Fear rules far too much of my life, I will not grant it more. Regret has paid in advance for the space and I am not a man to breach a contract. There are rules to this world. There are rules.

It's not that I am a bleeding heart, that I feel for the depressed and the downtrodden as if they are in some way better people: saints all and closer to god. It is not the case. But life could be better than this. It could be so much better.

There have been thoughts recently of my idiom. Of what it is I write about and why it is I write about such matters and moreover why I write about such matters in the manner that I find myself writing about such matters. It is the case of fate, I may tell you, that I have come to write about love and alcohol in a the style of a degenerate confession. Or maybe it is that my youth has, despite my over-reliance on the lie as a means to resolve any situation, brought about in me a need for sincerity; for authenticity. Long did I disbelieve that it had become the case that I, like the burai-ha, was obsessed with autheticity. But it would seem that I could outrun that fleet-flooted demon for only so long. And such a time has arrived that I must confess that sincerity, or the veil of truthiness must be present in order for me to feel comfortable about my work. I cannot in good conscience write about happy people or sober people or people with real jobs in cubicles with real families in the suburbs and real relationships that will end in marriage that will end in divorce. It just rings false with me. I write what I know, what I have come to know. And it just so happens that that is myself and the small fraction of my generation that has said, with fists raised in defiance, that we don't want your life, your bullshit, or your money. With our passive sense of distrust and our complete lack of ideology we go gently into that good night with one hand down our pants and the other holding some bottle or another of cheap booze. This is life. Because everything else is pale and silent.

I didn't have a motive when I began this piece. There wasn't anything particular I wanted to say. Taking a break from watching a movie, venting about the current story I am having predicable trouble ending, I just needed to get back to my roots. If anyone reads this, welcome home. If no one reads this, then I guess we got what we paid for.

Here's to the next step. Here's to bookshelves full of books you have never gotten around to reading, and not just because they are bad and useless books. Here's to not being able to finish an application. Here's to not knowing why I want something better for myself, why I want something different, why I want anything at all. Here's to being alone watching tv on a Friday night wondering what to do when the booze runs out. Here's to telling stories, or lies, whatever the difference may happen to be this time.