:(
lonelycoast asked: You are calling the police I hope.
Yeah, I did. He’s gone. No one’s up there now as far as I can tell. Hopefully she left for good.
I don’t talk about him much on here, since this blog has become a very public thing. It isn’t my own little corner of the world anymore, hasn’t been for quite some time. An average of a thousand people read it a day, from all over the world.
So I’m reluctant to do a lot of personal shit on here, especially when it has something to do with someone else, someone who’s a real person living in my sphere of reality.
After what I just went through, however, I would post that son-of-a-bitch’s social security number on here if I had it. At 3 am this morning, he beat up his girlfriend. « CONSIDER THIS A TRIGGER WARNING FOR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND, WHAT THE HELL, LET’S THROW IN ONE FOR ANIMAL ABUSE WHILE WE’RE AT IT »
I saw it coming. I saw it coming in the way he treated his dogs. I saw it in the way he would forget to water them, for days sometimes, even though he was right there in his house twenty feet away. I often had to water them. He’d also forget to feed them, and sometimes, if they pissed him off by barking at a passing cat for 30 seconds or something, he would refuse to feed them intentionally. One time Roscoe, the youngest dog, did something to piss him off that I didn’t catch and Nick was out there punishing him. I heard the dog yelping, so went to my window and watched him kick the poor thing a half a dozen times in the ribs. Then, he grabbed the dog by the collar, pulled his face down to the ground, and began rubbing handfulls of dirt in his eyes, saying, “You like that, bad dog? You like that?”
This is all true. I am dead serious.
I immediately called animal control, although my instinct was to tear through the window and rip his tiny-ass balls off with my bare fucking hands.
Animal control came and talked to him, maybe ticketed him, I don’t know. They left the dogs there, though. God bless, South Dakota.
I didn’t see anymore direct abuse after that, but the dogs were totally ignored, outside in their pen 24/7, sporadically fed and watered.
When winter rolled around, I watched them freeze. There’s one doghouse in the pen, barely big enough for one of them (they are two good-sized German shepherds). During a blizzard, when the wind was howling and the temperature was ten below, I called animal control again. They came and made him take them inside. It was the first and last time I had ever seem that pen empty, and I have lived here for eight months.
The next day, suddenly, there was a shitload of hay in the pen. My guess is animal control told him to do it. The dogs were back out there again, 24/7, this time in hay that quickly became shit-covered and, of course, was never changed.
Sometimes, I really hate this backwoods, cousin-fucking state.
About a month ago, I was sitting here writing like always and heard one of the dogs yelping again. This time I went outside and right into his yard. Nick was trying to catch Roscoe, but was having a hard time. The dog was terrified and fled from his every step.
“Feel tough?” I said to him.
“Huh?” He was shocked to see me and looked scared, which is what you’d expect him to look since he’s a fucking coward.
“Tough guy, beating up a dog.”
“I wasn’t beating him up. His foot was caught in the fence.” His voice sounded whiny to me, like a 12-year-old’s. The beard on his face looked really out of place and stupid.
“Whatever. You’re a fucking pussy.”
He turned and went inside his house. I rarely saw him after that. He no longer smoked on his porch, and always went for his fast food and cigarettes late at night. Around this time, his girlfriend moved in.
It was bliss the first week, then the fights started, increasing in frequency as time went on. It was always him yelling at her, berating her, saying shit like, “You need to think about what you’re doing!”. I could hear it through my ceiling, everything, his yelling and stomping, her crying and apologies. Then, last night, they came home about 2:30 am and he started in again on her, drunk and hoarse. He was screaming at her this time, screaming “Why?! Why?! WHYYYYYY!!!!!”
Why what?
Like a fucking banshee. She was bawling, pleading for him to stop, please stop, Nick. I heard crashing and banging, then her saying “Ouch! Stop! Let go!”
So I called the cops and he went to jail. Or at least I think he did. It was silent after all the heavy footsteps had gone. In the bathroom, through the vent, I could hear her weeping softly. She sounded alone, in every way.
This all went down between 3 am and 3:30 am this morning. I couldn’t sleep after that and have still not slept.
It is now 1:35 pm as I type this and I am very tired. Nick came home about a half hour ago and they are now having very loud sex.
Ok.
Republishing because he is beating his woman now, as I type. She is crying and apologizing and begging.
(via sinshine)
[video]
At the mess-tables
the boys in training were brought to war
the sound of crimson
hair long in the old way
On their lips, the State
Soldiers
beget
loaned
assumed
In their absence
admirers claim brutality
better than deathless heroism
Battle immortality
die oneself, continuing
the life of Sparta.
Subordinates
memories cowering
in brave
incidental paraclete
fascination hand & feet
sleep,
the broken eyes go blue
turn gray
& fade
fade away
nothing,
maybe night or death
green teeth, dank breath
hidden,
the broken eyes fall flat
turn dark, go black
& fade
fade away
metaphors within similes
parasols in mud & sleaze
fire,
the broken eyes burn bright
roll back, lose sight
It’s the middle of the night and my house is full of people. “Company” they’re called. Nice folks. Relatives. We all played cards earlier and had a bang up time. Now I am up alone. Everyone has gone to sleep and I am alone in my kitchen—or as I like to call it: The Happiest Place On Earth.
I am drinking beer and creeping around all quiet like a pervert.
I mentioned on Facebook but not Tumblr how I’m harvesting yeast from dates. I am a date yeast harvester. It’s very fun and I see that I am having signs of initial success, i.e., cloudiness and frothing.
What I did was take a few dried dates, sliced them in half and pitted them, then stuck them in some pre-boiled and therefore sterile water. In that water was also a little honey and apple juice, also boiled.
The dates were grown in the California desert, without pesticides. They were simply cut from the trees and dried. On the skin was yeast. It looks like white powder, like condensation perhaps. You’ve probably seen it on grapes.
I got the idea here. He uses raisins, but I couldn’t find any raisins around here that meet my exacting specification.
I am going to build bread with it or maybe brew some cider. Not sure, but this is fun to me. I am DIY and culinary nerd bigtime.
So basically I’m standing in my kitchen, in the middle of the night, wearing AC/DC pajama bottoms and a New York Knicks t-shirt, drinking beer and gazing happily at my cloudy, frothy jar.
Life is good. Hope all is well with you too.
Oh dark mother, long has it been since I suckled upon your delicious teat.
So I’m reading the news, right? And I’m reading along, clicking here and there. I don’t read the paper because that’s so 1990. I want to be hip, like all the kids, so I get everything off the internet. And by everything, I mean EVERYTHING: the news, of course, but also tobacco, “hemp” seeds, adult entertainment, clothing, books, yeast for brewing closet hooch, information about unicycles, and the entrance requirements for Clown College.
It’s a wonderful time to be alive.
Anyway, I came across a study, which is no big thing. You see them all the time in the news. Studies work like this: you come up with an agenda, then pay some scientists or researchers or college professors to figure out a way to back it up statistically. You then give it to the news so it can scare us (usually) or hearten us (rarely). Fear reads better and does wonders for ratings, creeping totalitarianism, and many other things.
The study I was reading about was unique, however. It was the most unique study in the history of studies, in fact. It was a study of a study of studies.
Yeah, really.
It was a study done by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) of a study done by the Pentagon which was a study of the value of doing so many studies. The Pentagon, you see, does a lot of studies, and the generals were all sitting around one day waiting for the manufactured fear to build up so they would “have” to attack Iran or North Korea to “defend our freedom” and one of them said, “Holy beans, we do a lot of studies around here! Maybe we should do a study about that.”
“Yeah,” said another general, “maybe doing so many studies is a waste of money.” And everybody in the room burst out laughing.
So the Pentagon commissioned The Study To Determine If Doing So Many Studies Has Any Value At All Study (TSTDIDSMSHAVAAS). The study began in 2010 and is still underway today. Government studies work a little differently than private sector or political studies. There isn’t an agenda per se that needs to be statistically “proven”. Government studies are done, in every single case, so that bureaucracy has something to do. Bureaucracy, you see, needs to justify its existence so that it can continue being enormously expensive, thereby creating the chronic debt needed by Republicans to justify taking away help and benefits from the poor, women, immigrants, and pretty much everyone else who isn’t a rich white male. The Democrats use it to justify raising taxes, thereby creating the fiction of class war.
So, obviously, this contrived debt we have is very important to everyone.
Recently, the GAO got wind of the Pentagon study and said, “Hey, they’re doing a study of studies over there at the Pentagon. This needs to be studied. By the way, isn’t it about time for another war? We’re all clearly bored out of our minds.”
So the GAO, without even one head shake or a single eye roll, commissioned a study of this study that’s studying studies and a hole was torn in the fabric of universe. At this very moment, reality is deflating like a party balloon.
Seriously, though, this is all actually happening. Here’s a source. Here’s another.
The GAO study determined that the Pentagon’s study of studies was “lacking”.
Lacking what? A point? And if, indeed, that this is true of the study about studies, what about the study about the study about the studies?
My head hurts. I’m going to start drinking now. Goodbye.
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I will be wearing a tiara, because I’m a pretty little princess.
Seriously, though, I’m gonna be on it. I got shit that needs appraising, namely a 1770 Spanish silver coin and an 1889 copy of Twain’s Huck Finn. Other than these two things, I own squat. I am surrounded by modern plastic doohickeys, gismos, thingamajigs, whatchamacallits, and whirlybobs.
Future garbage, in other words. Everything in my life but these two objects will end up in a landfill festering, including myself because I don’t want to be cremated. I wanna be fucking ENTOMBED, baby.
The Huck Finn is really cool because it has the receipt from the bookstore where it was bought between the pages, a handwritten receipt, handwritten with one of those stylus type pens you gotta dip into ink. Found it at a yard sale for a buck. Pretty cool, huh?
I’m not exactly sure how it’s all gonna work. I’ve never been on tv before, or even much out of the house really. I rarely talk to anyone, least of all people holding microphones. I am committed to sobriety during this event, despite my constant urge to get blackout drunk. Also, I will wear pants.
Sorry, ladies.
:(
…
I like the idea, though, of me being a lot of mes, billions of mes, and of not being an island, a separate thing from the incorrectly termed Outside World. I am the environment, not just in it. It flows through me and in me and out of me.
That’s cool, huh?This is a beautiful idea to me. AND ties in to my “science and religion are wholly intertwined” philosophy.
My friend Jason of FeignedCreativity.blogspot.com had this brilliant nugget to add to the convo:
One of the major problems with our current state is that we have separated ourselves from nature, made a barrier where there is none. This is due in large part to Christianity moving spirituality from nature and moving it to some unearthly plain far removed from the trees and water.
This false duality has led to a society that doesn’t make a connection between pollution, resource depletion, GMOs, Trans-fat, and obesity, cancer rates, and cardiovascular disease.
We are so ignorant as to think we can destroy the world and still live in it. The bible says man has dominion over the earth, right? It’s actually the other way around.
I agree. Also, on the other side, there is arrogance. Man’s arrogance in believing he can destroy the Earth. If we pollute the hell out of everything and the sea levels rise ten feet, and millions of species die off (including us, most likely), the Earth will still be here. New species will evolve and we will be but a memory, like the dinosaurs. Once before in our planetary history there was a great die-off. 95% of all living things died. Now look. We can only change the world, not kill it. Even if we continue to pump CO2 in the air, things will only change. There was a time on this planet when there was no ice, none. Palm trees grew near the poles and swamps and water were everywhere.
Our disconnect and disregard for nature will only harm ourselves in the end.
Friends with benefits
According to the Scientific American I am reading, we are not only covered in germs, but filled with them too. In fact, the germs on and in our bodies outnumber our very own cells, ten-to-one. This means that of all the cells that make you up, only 10% of them are “you”.
What I wanna know is WHO’S REALLY IN CONTROL?
If you think about it, you are not you—or rather the you you are is plural rather than singular. This point would be harder hitting perhaps in another language. In English, you is both singular and plural (except in New Jersey).
But, then again, maybe that’s the actual point. You are an ecosystem, a cellular social network, a “microbiome”. Just you and your bugs.
What’s really funny about this are germ-o-phobes. You know, the people who open doors with napkins and wear not only rubber gloves but also condoms when masturbating. You see them around, clutching their anti-bacterial spray bottles, doing all they can to build up the resistance of generally harmless household bacteria so that they will one day rise up kill us all.
Thanks a lot, dorks. How about not being so swayed by advertising for once?
I like the idea, though, of me being a lot of mes, billions of mes, and of not being an island, a separate thing from the incorrectly termed Outside World. I am the environment, not just in it. It flows through me and in me and out of me.
That’s cool, huh?
LANDSCAPE WITH YELLOW BIRDS
by the mighty Paul Klee, who painted it entirely in the nude, though fully clothed. He lived a long time ago, so the television wasn’t on in the background, but I do sense cigar smoke somewhere.
Perhaps he did this in an atelier, smoking cigars, not listening to the television because it wasn’t really invented yet. He possessed a phonograph, I imagine, on which he only played the darker Haydn.
Klee’s head is small and severe, and his hair doesn’t stick out. There is a scrunched quality to his face, with a hint of constipation, and it sports a very square jaw. This jaw squareness goes along with the rest of the squareness in his face, and his eyes are direct and penetrating.
He was a warrior and fought at the time when warriors had spikes on the tops of their helmets. He spoke German and was German, despite the embarrassment of being born in Bern. Perhaps he killed a man in France, near the trenches, with Snoppy flying overhead on his doghouse. Though a warrior with a phallic spike jutting from his helmet, he was not a fan of war and would not get along swimmingly with current American neo-cons, no matter what the the tabloids say. He wrote at its outset: “I have long had this war in me. That is why, inwardly, it is none of my concern.”
His two best friends, Marc and Macke, died in battle, so he was wrong.
Klee suffered from scleroderma and it would eventually kill him. A systemic autoimmune disease affecting primarily the skin, it gradually removes the supple softness of humanity, replacing it with the fibrous, scaly hardness of reptilian. It is terribly painful and many art writers have noted with comic obviousness that Klee’s pain seeped into his work.
This is like saying the sky is blue and the ground dirty.
One of his last paintings, “Death and Fire”, features a skull in the center with the German word for death, which is “Tod”. The next time you meet a person named Todd, remember to laugh inwardly.
He died in Switzerland, the land of his birth, in 1940. Despite being born in Switzerland and even dying there, he was not a Swiss citizen. His attempts at it were always refused, the sole reason being his art. The staid and narrow-minded authorities felt his painting was too revolutionary, even degenerate, for him to be Swiss. Six days after his death, however, they had a change of heart and granted him posthumous citizenship.
Bzzz! Too late.
He is buried in the ground at Schosshaldenfriedhof, in Bern. If you happen to stop by, tell him I send my love.
is a very weird place. I haven’t been there in quite some time. It’s a warren of cubicles the minions of which are dressed smart casual.
The lady at the desk explained to me how I didn’t have to come there, how it was all done online now. I shrugged.
There are many, many jobs in this area, according to the printout I was given to peruse. I focused on those of 20 hours are less.
“I just need to get out of the house,” I explained to the guy who was sitting at the table at which I, too, was sitting.
He turned away, disturbed by a Perfect Stranger talking to him for No Reason.
There was a job feeding birds. 15 hours a week. Must be able to lift 50 pound bags of feed. I applied for it and a couple part-time cook jobs.
I hope I get the bird-feeding job. It would be great if anybody ever asked me what I did for a living.
“I feed the birds,” I would announce proudly.
I am in serious wonderment over this bird-feeding job. What sort of birds are they? How hungry are they? Do they free range or cage fester? The listing had virtually no information, though the fact that I would have to tote 50 pound bags of feed says something. It says A LOT OF BIRDS or VERY BIG BIRDS, VERY HUNGRY BIRDS.
Christ, I hope they’re ostriches, emus, something. A zillion clucking chickens would be, as they always are, a let down.