Gotta love John Cage. A pioneer of electronic music, inventor of prepared pianos, philosopher, artist, writer, amateur mycologist and mushroom collector. I learned about “As Slow As Possible” back in 2004 during my classical music class, but Wikipedia says it better anyway…
The world’s “slowest and longest concert” resumed on July 5, 2008, when the Halberstadt church organ played the next - 6th - chord of John Cage’s As Slow As Possible. The weights holding down the organ pedals were shifted resulting to the 6th chord change, and accordingly a chance of hearing the final note being played in the year 2639 would be a possibility. In 1985, Cage opted to omit the detail of “exactly how slow the piece should be played.” Its maiden performance was 29 minutes, while a second version took 71 minutes. The song is a 639-year-long version of Cage’s ORGAN2/ASLSP As Slow As Possible, first played on Cage’s 89th natal day at 1361 St. Burchardi on September 5, 2001. At 3:33 p.m., Saxony-Anhalt politicians, tourists and media led by Hans-Jörg Bauer, head of John Cage Organ Project, attended the chord change to C4-A flat4.
The former Church of St. Burchard was used as a pig-sty in the communist years of East Germany. Two more organ pipes were added alongside the four installed and the tone became more complex at 3:33 p.m. local time. The second of the new pipes, the next musical change in John Cage’s slow masterpiece will be in this November. A machine keeps the sound coming out.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_cage#World.27s_slowest.2C_longest_concert
The current organ performance of the piece at St. Burchardi church in Halberstadt, Germany, began in 2001 and is scheduled to have a duration of 639 years, ending in 2640.
Background
A 1997 conference of musicians and philosophers discussed the implications of his instruction to play the piece “as slow as possible”, given that an organ imposes virtually no time limits. A project emerged to perform the piece so that it would take a total of 639 years to play. This length was decided based on the estimated lifespan of the organ. The origin of this number is as follows: the piece was to be performed in the St. Burchardi church in Halberstadt, Germany, beginning in the year 2000; 639 years earlier, in the year 1361, the first big organ had been constructed in that church.
The piece
Organ2/ASLSP is the slowest and longest lasting musical performance yet undertaken. The score consists of eight pages which have been stretched to fit the wanted duration of 639 years.
This duration is the difference between the date of the installation of the ancient organ of 1361 and the originally planned start of the performance in 2000. This leads to a curve from 1361 over 2000 to 2639. Unfortunately, the performance was slightly delayed, and it began on 5 September 2001.
Performance
The actual performance commenced in the St. Burchardi church on 5 September 2001 with a pause lasting until February 5, 2003. The first chord was played from then until July 5, 2005. The most recent new chord from the organ was a three-note chord, A above middle C, C above middle C and the F# above that (A4-C5-F#5), which began on January 5, 2006 and will conclude on July 5, 2012. This sonority can be heard on a website devoted to the Halberstadt event.
The latest musical event from the organ is a new chord (C4-A flat4). On July 5, 2008, the weights holding down the organ pedals were shifted resulting in the 6th chord change. Two more organ pipes were added alongside the four installed and the tone became more complex at 15:33 local time. A machine keeps the sound coming out.
The performance is planned to continue until 5 September 2640.
The instrument
An organ is being built specifically for this performance and will be finished in 2009. It is standing in the right transept of the Burchardi-church, while the bellows are in the left. Between January and May 2005, it contained only six pipes. Because the instrument sounds constantly, there is a cube of acrylic glass around it to reduce the sound emissions.
Sound changes
The piece started with a rest of seventeen months*, beginning September 5, 2001, which was the 85th anniversary of Cage’s birth. The first audible sound appeared on February 5, 2003. Further dates for changing notes are:
- July 5, 2004
- July 5, 2005
- January 5, 2006
- May 5, 2006
- July 5, 2008
- November 5, 2008
- February 5, 2009
- July 5, 2010
- February 5, 2011
- August 5, 2011
- July 5, 2012
- October 5, 2013
- September 5, 2020
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_As_Possible
* hahaha…
Posted in Uncategorized
I’ve been browsing the news sites and the peak oil sites and the “world is coming to an end” sites and I got a little bummed.
It seems as though the fabric of our society has suddenly worn thin and is coming apart at the seams. I was ready to pour a large shot of vodka and numb myself when I felt compelled to watch one of the Matrix movies for some reason.
I jumped to the chapter featuring the Architect talking to Neo and listened. It was then that I had a revelation.
There comes a time when your computer had become so corrupted with bugs and viruses, so bogged down with half deleted pieces of programs that never worked anyway and so fragmented from trying to force the issue with obstinate hardware that all you can do is put in your recovery disk and reapply the Operating system.
I think the world needs to have it’s hard drive wiped clean and the recovery disk reapplied.
Maybe the Universe is one step ahead of me. Maybe we are seeing the universe slowly wiping its drive clean in prep for starting this whole thing over.
I hope I get re-installed.
Posted in Dire Warnings
Why we are here
Posted on September 27th, 2008 by Bryan Gatton
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“As surely as mountains are to be climbed and oceans sailed, your dreams are meant to come true. This is why you’re here, to live the life of your dreams. Not to be tested, challenged, and tried, but to conquer, champion and rule.
Keep going, forge ahead, press on and the day must dawn when your thirsts shall be quenched and you, exalted.
Don’t ever settle for less, don’t ever think it’s too late, and never, ever, ever compromise a dream.
”
Mike Dooley in: More Notes from the Universe p.
188
Posted in Philosophy of Consciousness
 : ok son sit down and smoke a pcp-filled blunt, let me expand your monkey mind……….
: In 3 spatial dimensions we aren’t moving anywhere near the speed of light but remember that spacetime is one 4-dimensional framework. for example if you’re moving straight up at 100mph you’re moving up the y axis, and if you go 100mph to your right you’re moving through the x axis, but if you moved 100mph at a 45 degree angle you’d be going 50mph through the x axis and 50mph through the y, so you’re splitting the speed through two spatial dimensions. the same applies *salvia bong hit* to 4-dimensional spacetime, you are moving at the speed of light but it’s split through the four dimensions. in other words, if you were moving straight up at the speed of light, 100% of lightspeed would be going into the y axis and the temporal dimension would completely stop (time would stop for you), and if you were standing completely at rest you’d be going 100% the speed of light through time, ie. you’d be moving through the one temporal dimension as fast as the universe allows. and anything in between is a splitting of lightspeed through multiple dimensions. so you’re always traveling at light speed but most of it is going into the speed at which your subatomic particles are moving (manifestation of time)
acorre: love to see that film school education put to use
acorre: carl sagan must be rolling over in his pod
Posted in Braindance
This is the story of two best friends I took drugs with on separate occasions. No narrative or thread really ties the two experiences together, I just think drugged-out adventures are fun to write about. There are some similarities, though. Both friends had never tried the drug in question (dextromethorphan) before, and both stories involve tripping outside after dark in parks. Don’t look for much more deep significance than that, though  Names have been changed to protect the syrupheads involved.
I had been wanting to trip with my girlfriend, Lauren, for the longest time. She finally agreed after being subjected to various forms of subtle peer-pressure and playful taunting. Lauren was a particularly innocent girl who hadn’t tried many drugs except for random, brief forays into alcohol and amphetamines land. I had been tripping balls and smoking copious amounts of weed around her and her friends all year and I think curiosity finally got the best of her. She also saw it as a possibly-romantic thing to do with someone she trusts a lot, and so I started to plan out the details. At first ecstasy and/or LSD seemed like prime candidates, but my roommates and I massively flaked on trying to track some down. One roommate, Renaldo P Flores, had candyflipped his ass off during two years in Tallahassee and yet here we were… pathetically unable to find much in New York City. My other roommate, Dennis R Microsoft, was pretty happy smoking grass and snorting the occasional stimulant all year and so wasn’t too motivated. Shrooms, which has been taken earlier in the year, were also woefully unavailable. Weeks passed as nothing too promising turned up but, again, we were also pretty unmotivated and lazy at the time. Smoking weed upwards of six times a day can do that.
Finally I thought “screw it” and decided on DXM, a drug I had tripped off many times in the past and knew quite well. It’s not the most glamorous drug so I floated the idea by Lauren and happily she was down to try it. I had to describe the effects to her a few times but I knew all of them well and could articulate the hidden awesomeness of chugging bottles of nasty ass cough syrup. It was weeks before the year ended (and I graduated college) so everything academic was kicking into high gear for her (since she was double majoring), but I was sleeping in till noon or later everyday and writing about one essay per semester. I was down to trip whenever but we had to plan things out a bit around her absurdly-busy schedule. A date and time where chosen.
On the day of, in a druggish haze I anxiously waited for her to finish class while also trying to calculate how many pills to take. I had taken 600mg during my first trip years ago an found the experience to be extremely pleasant and weird, so I felt that was a good starting point. After I adjusted the numbers (starting over like seven times since I was very stoned) for her weight it came out to like 23 pills. Hmm, but was that really accurate? She did weigh 110lbs after all. But only 23 pills? Hmm… I kept searching erowid or whatever else site I could find to see if any of this made sense. Finally I decided to play it safe and assume that effects are inversely linearly proportional to weight, but even then doing 23 pills just seems so non-eventful. At the last minute I impulsively set my mind on the equivalent of 750mg. This would mean like 50 pills for me and something like 29 for her. I had it all written down on a post-it note that I double checked about 10 times.
Just as night was setting I met Lauren outside the building she had her last class in and we walked down the street to a deli. We bought some grapefruit juice, which intensifies (or “potentiates” in drug lingo) the effects. Normally you’d drink that hours earlier but I thought maybe it could still help. We went back into her class building and went to the top floor, up to this old maintenance stairwell thing where we had often joked about doing each other. We chased a bunch of pills with grapefruit juice and naturally commented about how lame that tasted. I also gave her a Benadryl pill and some ibuprofen. We took some pics and chilled and talked for a while and then decided to head to Central Park. This was a bad idea in retrospect, but at the time we both thought it would be lots of fun to trip in nature.
The metro was making its way uptown slowly and so 30 minutes went by. By then, we got to our stop feeling pretty light-headed. I remarked how amusing it was that she had never smoked weed in her life but was about to trip off a strong dissociative. We then started walking towards the park, which was about 4-5 blocks away. Going from the subway system to above ground and moving around got the effects accelerating pretty nicely. We stopped for a while because she was feeling kinda dizzy, and she said “now I know you’re hot because even really high on drugs you still look handsome”. What a sweet thing to say, but funny too because at the time I was starting to feel and probably look like a fucking vampire.
At Central Park we walked around for a while as the effects kept picking up. I felt pretty light-headed, drunk but lucid, bouncy, numb, etc. and a very familiar dissociative/tripping feeling which is harder to describe but unique. Lauren was starting to trip pretty hard soon thereafter so we lay down in the grass for a while and stared at the sky and a messy jumble of twigs and branches that were ominously hanging above. At this point we were having trippy sensations of floating out of our bodies and that kind of thing, but she soon started to freak out a bit. The DXM was causing her to intensely focus on various parts of her body that she typically experienced pain in. I couldn’t really relate to that sensation so I tried to soothe her. She said it was very freaky but almost as if the drug was talking to her and telling her what parts of her body were stressed or sore and needed attention in the future. I was like “okay, sweetie :)” and tried to keep things light and fun. About 10 minutes later she started to really trip and by now felt confused and scared. I kept telling her to just flow with it but a very serious situation appeared to be forming. We were kinda in the middle of nowhere, in the park, and I had no idea how to call for help or what to do in case of an emergency. That was probably one of the scariest moments of my life, as time seemed to grind to a halt and I was freaking out hardcore about whether or not I had just done something very bad to my best friend. She started alternating between asking me to help her somehow and short bouts of unresponsiveness. My heart was filled with terror but I realized the drugs were probably amplifying this mindset. I decided to make a conscious effort to stay calm and show her everything was okay.
Then, like 10 minutes later, everything was. Hahaha. We got the hell out of the park and started walking downtown. She said how she didn’t feel much and, if anything, felt braindead, which was kind of strange since she was obviously tripping. It was nice to move around again, though, and we both felt like we were being transported to different time periods. We passed a Starbucks and she mentioned how badly she needed something to eat and drink. I was totally not looking forward to stepping into Starbucks on 750mg of DXM. As she waited outside, I walked in and the bright lights were painfully, obnoxiously heightened. I picked out some stuff and paid for it while squinting my eyes and looking down, feeling high as a banshee. Sketchy moment.
It was a nice, breezy night out so we felt like walking back to our apartment building. While passing through a trendy, hyper-chic area of the city I stopped a few times to look inside some of the stores. All the stuff being sold seemed so terribly useless and unnecessary, and it kept bringing up thoughts of capitalism and consumerism and the state of our society, and very deep, interwoven stuff. Ahh, I was used to these thought patterns while tripping and lost myself in some of them. When I asked Lauren what she thought of these stores she stared for a while but wasn’t really experiencing anything close to what I was. She said again how braindead she felt, but I was just relieved that she was doing well and not freaking out or having a medical emergency.
When we got back, we went up to her place and she casually greeted and briefly chatted with one of her roommates that was around. We were kind of bummed out that we didn’t hallucinate all that much, so I suggested we go into her bathroom and turn off the lights. Well, this turned out to be lots of fun and I sincerely regretted the whole Central Park thing. Here, she felt much more relaxed and safe, and this tripping environment would’ve been a much better choice in retrospect. I felt pretty retarded. Anyway, we started hallucinating little bits here and there and she got into it. “Ohhh… so this is a hallucination,” it was neat to show her various techniques for bringing them about. Of course, they weren’t LSD-ish visions but these were ghostly and surreal nonetheless. We lost track of time and ended up talking and hallucinating on the floor for over an hour. At some point another roommate entered the apartment and had to use the bathroom. That was awkward to turn on the lights and both leave the bathroom without really explaining anything.
The night then ended casually. We were both feeling horribly non-sexual, and she was sleepy so she got in bed. I was still wired so I went downstairs and chilled for a while, and took six Benadryl. An hour later I was tired so I went back upstairs and hopped in bed. We talked for a while and my mind was still racing with random thoughts and whatnot. Finally, we both passed the hell out.
A few weeks later, I ended up buying an ounce of mids and my girlfriend joined in the festivities. This culminated in a weeklong binge that we both found to be exhaustive and awesome. Perhaps it’s best to get back to basics.
A little over a year later I was back in my hometown with very few fellow stoners to speak of. My friend, Paul, was around however and I thought he’d be down to raise some chaos. He smoked silly amounts of weed in college, rolled periodically, had done shrooms, LSD, coke, etc. and tried 2c-b with me. We had barely hung out at all since I got back because of mutual post-college busyness so we made plans to trip. I specifically wanted to do DXM this time, instead of being forced into it, because he had seemed totally incredulous to the idea that cough syrup can be a serious mind-altering drug. I believe at the time he kept confusing it with NyQuil (ie. getting buzzed off the small alcohol quantities and whatever else in NyQuil), which is understandable.
I was left in charge of planning and unfortunately, this went along kind of haphazardly again. There’s a sprawling park (complete with basketball courts, a skate park, large fields, water fountains, tire swings, access to trails, etc.) nearby that seemed promising, although exactly why I’ll never know. I’ve come to enjoy tripping indoors a lot more in some circumstances after freezing my ass off outdoors various times. Early in the day I went out to buy some DXM and shoplift some more. I thought I’ll just go all out so I gathered a little over 1 gram for myself. I had around 700mg for Paul. After getting some essentials such as bottled water, mp3 player and headphones, we drove over to this park.
I took mostly pills but Paul had insisted on syrup because supposedly he couldn’t swallow too many pills at a time. I should’ve gotten him pills anyway, since syrup is so incredibly nasty and isn’t such a good idea for a first-time trip. To make matters more sketchy, he had just eaten a lot of pasta or something very filling. I told him to eat light but he didn’t feel like it. I had finished exercising 1.5 hours in the morning and eaten mostly lean proteins for dinner so I was ready to trip raccoon balls.
As we were swallowing our drugs Paul told me about this ridiculous facebook drama he was going through. He had left his girlfriend months ago but she was still being clingy velcro towards him. His brother, of all people, had drawn some graffiti on his facebook page of his ex-girlfriend as a stick figure with a penis. There was more but I forget the exact details. Anyway, she was fuming mad and was calling him all day to complain about it. Paul and I found a hill that overlooked a lot of the park and we went there to chill, watch people play basketball, and finish our drugs. His ex called again and I almost fell over laughing as he calmly tried to explain to her that because of freedom of speech, he’d be unable to delete the graffiti or even talk to his brother about it. This went on for a good 15 minutes as he was chugging cough syrup.
After that was over with, things took a turn for the worse as Paul puked up a ton of red liquid in plain sight of dozens of people. That was disheartening because I was going to trip hard and now wasn’t even sure he’d trip moderately. On the other hand, half an hour had elapsed and so a lot of it could’ve been metabolized already. There was still some syrup left so he finished that, and I then gave him some pills just in case. However, things weren’t looking that ideal.
The effects for me came on smoothly as always and right around the time I was regretting buying Paul syrup (should’ve gotten him Zicam instead, which is a concentrated form of DXM that’s easier to tolerate) I suddenly stopped caring and started enjoying myself. As nighttime was quickly falling, we wandered around for a while and then decided to go to this large parking structure that’s nearby. We made it to the top floor, which is open-air, and looked around at the city. It looked all shiny, mysterious, vibrant and cool. I was tripping as much as I thought I’d be for the night, but I was in for a surprise later on. Paul ended up puking a bunch more all over the concrete but this time I was sure an hour had gone by since ingestion, so he wasn’t weakening his trip. Even though I was sure he wouldn’t trip nearly as hard as I had planned, he seemed noticeably high as a kite and laid down on a cement divider to stare at the sky and zone out. I was listening to some Mum on my music player and randomly twirling around, spinning and running in random directions until I felt like fainting. Fun times.
We ended up walking further from the park and into this business area that has lots of company headquarters and office space. This area has huge architectural art structures that were trippy to look at. By now I was tripping harder and the sodium-vapor lighting scattered throughout the area was looking incredibly subtle and surreal. I felt like I was in the game Metroid Prime for some reason. Paul had to sit down for a while, while I explored the area a bit, because he was getting kinda disoriented. When I got back I came across a large pack of geese (I think?) that I tip-toed through. They were spread out across an artificial sandbar separating two huge reflecting pools. The lighting and everything else made the experience memorable, and Paul took a few pictures of me leaning in to see how close I could get without scaring them off.
Back at the park we were both kinda tired and bored so we lay down to stargaze for a while. Laying down felt really relaxing as numbness and energy rolled through my body. All of the sudden there was strong ass lights shining down at us, and we had to get up. It was some park maintenance or security but I was way too high to realize it and thought we were about to get arrested. Some guy shined a flashlight at me and said that the park was closed. I noticed Paul and I were both lying down on a path and blocking the guy’s car from getting where he needed to go. The whole thing looked pretty lame. I said something like “Uhm… well do you mind if we make our escape then?” because I thought we might get arrested and I wanted to get out of it somehow. The man gave me a very weird look and told us to leave.
We actually only ended up walking to another part of the park where there’s a huge playground and tire swings. I told Paul to listen to this fantastic Mum song that’s like 11 minutes long, so he put on my headphones and laid down again to zone out. By now I was aware of the fact that this whole thing had been badly planned. Paul had worked all day and had to get up early tomorrow. He was pretty tired and I guess expected to be back home in an hour or so. I felt bad but didn’t know how to tell him that the drugs would last several hours. I went to go act like a retard spinning around on a tire swing. This was extremely disorienting and fun and I kind of had a moment. I don’t remember at all what it was about but I remember how profound it felt. It seemed like the drugs were still intensifying, which was odd.
When I got back Paul said he was tripping pretty hard, but was also tired and we should probably head back soon. My experience was maybe halfway through so I asked if he wanted to chill a bit more. We ended up walking back to the parking structure for no real reason. I was getting progressively more slurred and my vision was getting shot to hell. Everything was choppy and bugged out in ways I hadn’t experienced in a long time. I kept trying to think of the reason this was hitting me a lot harder than usual but I could barely think straight. Back at the parking structure, I started really tripping like a loon and couldn’t decide if I enjoyed it or not. It was getting a bit too intense and I had the distinct feeling that I was close to dying or passing out. 1 gram of DXM shouldn’t have produced these kinds of experiences (as it typically hadn’t in the past, under similar circumstances) so I was perpetually intrigued by trying to explain why I felt so out of it. We talked a while more and then out of nowhere a fucking security car approached us and told us we were trespassing! I was like “Oh, what?” at how ridiculous it felt to be busted by two separate security details within what felt like an hour’s time. I quickly snapped out of my trance and calmly told the guard that we’d leave immediately. As he was escorting us out I pass by a huuuuge puddle of red puke which I had completely forgotten about and started cracking up loudly over how absurd the situation felt.
We then sat for a few minutes on some concrete biking trail which wasn’t illuminated at all. It was cold, dark and Paul felt like going home soon. We talked for a while but I was still stoned so solid that I could barely speak. He’d say something or ask a question and though dozens of thoughts and ideas would race through my head, I could hardly articulate any of it. Thoughts were racing by but I sounded like I had nothing to say, and it was more than a little frustrating. After a little of this it was clear that talking wasn’t going to work out. We agreed it was late enough, even though I knew I wouldn’t be driving anytime soon. We walked back to our cars and after he made sure I wasn’t dying (hahaha), I reassured him I’d be fine and would chill a bit before leaving. By now I knew I’d be okay sooner or later. I listened to music and did my own thing for about an hour and then finally felt ready to drive home. Even then, driving was horribly, horribly sketchy and I could’ve easily been arrested at any time. I took a very convoluted way back home which avoided the freeway or any major streets, hoping to not run into a cop.
Back at home I stared blankly at my carpet for three hours and then called it a night.
Posted in Non-Fiction
In the Eiffel Tower
Posted on September 18th, 2008 by Danny Lyndon
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“how long has it been since we ordered?’
“I don’t know, it’s been a long time”
“I can hear everybody eating, and smell it. Their food is real. Why isn’t our food here? I’m not hungry.”
“what do your mean you’re not hungry? You didn’t even eat today.”
“HAHAHAHA, waiter, Garcon, HAHA, I’ve eaten, and we’ve almost eaten…”
“shhhh. sit down, don’t draw attention to us.”
“They already know everything. Everybody always knows everything. Relax!”
“Come here. Fuck! Larry, come here”
“I’m sorry, Jesus. Are you okay”
“I’m fine. Breathe. Enjoy this. How often do we get to come to Paris”
“EVERYTIME, JESUS! WE”RE ALWAYS HERE!”
“ - ”
“Mr. Bird, Mr. Christ, your food is served”
“Thank you”
“Thank you”
“who do you think that was?”
“I’m not eating any of this”
“Me neither”
Posted in Uncategorized
The blood in your body is never blue.
 There are several possible sources for how this myth circulated into public consciousness. Perhaps the most persistent is that blood simply looks blue when you let sunshine or artificial light fall on your wrists or other body parts. The effect is produced by light reflecting from a blood vessel, through your skin, to your eyes. Less longer-wavelength red light is reflected than the shorter-wavelength blue rays, skewing the blood’s color. Another contribution to the myth comes from the oft-repeated assertion that blood returning to the heart (venal) is colored blue because it’s de-oxygenated. When this blood is exposed to the air (when you’re cut, for example) it will oxygenate and appear red again. It’s true that returning blood is de-oxygenated but that doesn’t color it blue. That specific claim might come from anatomy books and medical work, which typically color arterial vessels red and venal vessels blue simply out of convenience. The color delineation helps with memorization, but is only a teaching convention.
So there you have it, the makings of a very popular myth. Arterial blood (leaving the heart) is bright red because it’s been re-oxygenated. Venal blood (returning to the heart) is actually a ruddy, darker red since it’s become de-oxygenated.
Learn something new everyday!
Posted in Science
Who put the “ultimate” in “frisbee”? Was it the hand of god or the work of mere mortals, those fallen angels and risen apes which raze the planet with orgiastic delight? Here’s a letter to a congressman you can be proud of. 1, 2, 3 bong hits of salvia…
Dear Barbara Boxer,
First of all, let me just congratulate you on your breasts. I’m writing you today to petition for a new state-wide holiday: Ultimate Douche Bag Day. I know our holiday schedule is already tight but hear me out: 1) Free pizza, 2) Ceremonial lighting on fire of 40-foot wooden owl, 3) rave glow sticks and free concerts throughout the countryside.
But these are just the nighttime celebrations. The crux of the holiday revolves around the playing of a sport I invented, UDB. Picture ultimate frisbee but with a sopping wet, used douche. Now after that mental image is out of your mind, let me please add how cool it would potentially be to tittyfuck you. For all these reasons and more, please consider promoting this upcoming indie sport by honoring it with a holiday. The CSUN (Cal State Northridge) UDB club has over 40 members and growing. Formed on the ideals of sportsmanship, fair play, and sheer love of sport, the “douche baggers” (as we affectionately call ourselves) have a rich heritage dating back to summer of ‘02.
The game we now play is simply the shadow of an unattainable ideal. Perhaps one day with your help we can reach our goal. I envision teams dressed gallantly in raccoon fur coats dyed purple, with impressive-looking war clogs and gloves made of pure, dried whale blubber and cured with the tears of albino orphans. The playing field has been stripped of grass and replaced with ostrich feathers dipped in swiss chocolate. Goal posts are constructed from tinker toys, and goalies must be extremely high on LSD at all times under penalty of permanent expulsion. Score cards are made of papyrus and written on with octopus ink, and referees should be specially-trained monkeys which hover above on miniature zeppelins. The douche is ordinarily custom-made pigskin which has been used by the current Miss Universe, but during sudden death or tournament play a drugged-up Dick Cheney is brought in and symbolically stands in as the Ultimate Douche Bag. Help make this a reality.
In closing, I’m pretty drunk.
Sincerely,
Troy Zaleski
What happens when ye die, oh lovestruck philosopher? Is it not the poking and prodding of pitchforks and fire for all eternity, or the sweet possibility of everlasting happiness and rapture. No, that’s not what Dennis Kucinich told me… He said once you die you wake up to find yourself in a plain-colored empty room with Bill O’Reilly. There he constantly pelts you with dodgeballs, which doesn’t hurt at first but this goes on for exactly 10,000 years. Finally at the end of that, that’s when you really die.
Buddha never saw that one coming… Peace and compassion have been replaced with dodgeballs and angry Irish men in our postmodern hyperactive backwards world. What’s 2012 bring, is it the end of the world? Aliens screaming down from the heavens with intent to kill? No it’s far from that. 2012 will bring lots of parties as stoned hippies everywhere celebrate, but have a look around. What do you see? Technology runs unhinged and threatens to destroy civilization. There’ll be bugs in our mainframes, 0’s and 1’s invading from left and right, and government is totally paralyzed. The coming of age for self-conscious robots will be brutal. We’ll be wishing the Mayans were right, but no… Robots will be candyflipping in our oceans, having sex with our dolphins! Robotic pterodactyls will fly amok in our crowded skies, soaring into planes and raising our homeland security alerts to unforeseen colors. Disabled old people and autistic puppies will be strapped with explosives and sent into the battlefield to die valiantly against the hordes of cybernetic spiders and eagles. Untold death and destruction lies in our path, humans!
The future is dire but of our own making. As we invest billions more in taxpayer dollars to promote Ultimate Douche Bag, and new sports we’ll be busy creating, let us not forget that our actions echo through spacetime. The well-intentioned seeds of yesterday bring forth our demise tomorrow, for the past is wrapped inside the present.
Posted in Dire Warnings
Secret Prisons
Posted on September 9th, 2008 by Steven B
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Yesterday I became homeless, and hopelessness and despair seem much further away than boredom. There is nothing exciting about this life. I look at their lives and I see their tears and I wish my cheeks could be as wet but…
I just stubbed my toe about fifteen minutes ago and it hurt but that’s not what I mean but…
I’m still afraid to die I admit it. I just want to live God, I wish… I want to even believe in God.
rrrrrrrrrrrOOOOOMMM!!…
A car passed. It’s a new one. How do people afford these things? I go into stores and see them working, I see them thinking about what they’ll have for dinner, I just want to stab them in the stomach and see how their breakfast is being handled… “This is America,” that’s what the police told me. “This is America and people have the right to have their own opinions.”
Maybe we don’t have the fucking right to our own opinions. Maybe just as some rights are inalienable, some rights are inconceivable for us to have.
Fifteen miles a gallon? More than twenty-five percent of the world’s resources? Death squads and secret prisons? Dairy Queen and Hollister?
The hardest thing about my sickness is…
Rrrawwwwwrrrrrrr…
I’m passing an alley, cats are just as sick and tired as I am, they are better suited for this though. I was bred in captivity. I can’t even complain without sounding like an escaped felon. I feel like the Buddha finally seeing death and suffering. But there is no dark night of the soul, I have barely the will to breathe…
I’m crying now. It’s about 3 am and the city is bright, lots of lights, and I can’t be crying. I stopped. I’m wiping the tears up with my shirt. I can’t be dead from this, it is 2008, it is too easy, so many people are kept alive, pumped full of…
fuel.
I just passed a gas station. I want to rob it. I always want to… commit illegal acts. I don’t like even thinking about it but I love thinking about it and always plot and scheme, I am just the sort of person… I just passed a mechanic’s shop.
Smoky windows. Warm night. Clear sky, trash on the sidewalk I wish I had a girl. I need… I need someone to talk to.
This is a rush I don’t need anybody else I am alone and I need nothing… I need somewhere to sleep tonight.
Walking further never hurt anyone in America. If I collapse an ambulance will get me and then it’s game over. No fun. No quarters. Smoked up my last eighth. Double delicious when I soak up that value. I know I’m exhausted when I start talking gibberish.
Psychic babble hardly floats downriver damnit! Straighten up! Keep your mind, son. You haven’t committed any murders. No listen you haven’t committed any… murders. You’re a good person, you’re one of us. Stop. I won’t have sex with you…
Damn. Damned. Fuck. Shit.
I’m passing a green park bench, and I want to sit but the trees, the trees are wet, the grass is wet and I want mom. No, I’m grown, I’m at home all alone, all the road is the cars. I’m the hard crack the stars damnit!
Stop talking like that, I need something to drink.
I need punctuation. I need firewood and books and comfort, food and nuggets of lint in my belly button, not these frostbitten adolescents… not these…
Posted in Non-Fiction
Like many children born, I was suckered into loving Kano, Sonya, Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Raiden, Johnny Cage, and Liu Kang. Wait, was Liu Kang in the first one? What the fuck ever. The point is that I never wanted to uppercut someone until I played SEGA Genesis’s Mortal Kombat at seven years old.
My seventh birthday party was punctuated by a young friend falling down my grandmother’s stairs, the result of a malicious roundhouse. My parents could not stop us from imitating those video game characters. We were characters, but bad television. I suspect it was the terrible food we were fed at that age. Apple juice and ham sandwiches? Fuck you bitch, where’s my LASAGNA? Jesus Christ.
But my point is, I recently discovered I am Sub-Zero. I moved to my dad’s big city house and my neighbor is… Guess… SCORPION!
Elucidation: I’m tripping on a three or four day Robitussin and marijuana ‘binge’ and I affect an Irish accent and introduce myself as Seamus Maudhen to people around this particular neighborhood. I meet a retired Black drug dealer who buys me some beer, a depressingly intelligent White young adult (my age, twenty), and more souls than Shang Tsung could shake his cock at.
The White young adult turns out to be Scorpion in the same way that I am Sub-Zero: completely imaginatively.
We’re just monkeys, but we’re literally at each others throats as we speak! As you know, Sub-Zero killed Scorpion and Scorpion’s ghost reappears as undead to defeat the still living but vile Sub-Zero. Well, my depressingly intelligent neighbor is joining the military after he completes his final semester of High School (he was dropped back a couple grades. Ha. I love those kids!). He’s joining the sniper unit, he enthusiastically informs me every time I step outside the house. Dear fucking Christ. This kid corners me for fifteen minute (at least) long conversations about his Vampireness, his control over the local gangs, or his girl troubles.
I have a fiance and he has met her. He hit on her heavily while they were alone, she tells me. I just have to laugh. This White neighbor of mine speaks like a leprechaun and has hair greasier and longer than a horse’s cock.
To make matters worse, his house is completely as crazy dilapidated as my father’s is. His family is large and tight and, as I mentioned before… Irish. *Shudder*.
The only thing scarier than a Ginger/Mick is a sleeper agent croppy. Before you know it he’ll be planting trees in the front lawn and asking me to pay him for it.
I am a Bisexual, so I considered coming on to him, but he is seriously as ugly as fuck. He looks like a can opener. Jesus Christ I’d rather fuck a department store plunger with hand soap.
I always had a crush on Kano.
Damn those video games…
Posted in Pop Culture
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