There’s a city in Morocco where every building is robin egg blue and in Jordan they carved temples into cliff faces. His place is modern, all sharp angles and minimalism. Neutral colors like eggshell, sandstone, and espresso. “Clean,” I guess, or just boring. Corinthian pillars had the most intricate detail with curled leaves and scrolls and ornate patterns. Augustus left behind marble buildings covered in depictions of goddesses in gossamer gowns and vines reaching high and coiling around themselves, making sure that he was remembered long after his passing. The man asleep beside me obviously doesn’t agree. He’s gone down the route of functional simplicity, though unfortunately so much so that I couldn’t distinguish his living room from an office waiting room if I had to pick it from a lineup. Maybe I couldn’t pick him out, either. Sure he had a different name, a different job. He had short, dark hair compared to the blonde boys I’d known with chin-length locks or longer. But the true stuff of him? It was just like all the others. Brown, dull, neutral, just like his house. All straight lines and no curves or kinks. He’d copied his life out of a magazine, and now that’s all he was: a paper cutout, a crude imitation of a person.
Maybe it’s too much to ask for anything different. I’ve long given up on looking for someone I wanted and just settled for men I wouldn’t mind sleeping with. We were starting to go too deep. We’d been sleeping together for enough weeks, me staying over at his place for enough nights, that I could tell he was starting to feel the urge to call us a couple. It’s the only way he can justify spending so much time on me; without the relationship, it’s just a waste. I didn’t have many feelings for him beyond the physical, and I figured if he thought any differently about me, he must be lying to himself. I wasn’t what he wanted, if he wanted anything at all, but I was a good decision. His whole life was good decisions, I’m sure. No spontaneous roadtrips or late night adventures or foreign travel in anywhere but a four star hotels.
I wondered if he would marry me. If I let it get that far, would he ask, even if neither of us ever developed any sort of affection for the other? I tried to see something in his serene, sleeping face that would tell me otherwise. A certain twist of his mouth or crook in his nose or faint scar that I had never noticed. But all I saw was perfectly trimmed sideburns and smooth cheeks, the planes of his face reminding me so much of nobody and everyone all at the same time. I wasn’t sure he was a person at all and not some generic shape of a human being I had created in a dream. And then my head was on the pillow and my eyes closed to the reality of what this was. There was always time for change in the morning. In the purifying light of a new sun, that was the best time to think about such things. Alone in the dark, it was all too frightening, and I could feel creeping despair emanating from all the dark corners I couldn’t bear to look at. There would be time. There’s always time tomorrow.
The Doctor’s name is probably Yahweh, guys.
It can’t be avoided any longer: The Doctor is God and humans are his chosen people. Praise be to the TARDIS.
No, it’s Phil.
True, the Hebrew God thought of a secret name first, but it is Phil. Dr. Who is a roundish bald dude from Texas who is a blow-hard know-it-all.
Dear, Naked Japanese Woman Suspended From The Ceiling
I am writing to inform you that this is broken up into verse
because it seems you are more likely to read poetry than prose.
I wanted you to know that I have internalized a type of abuse
celebrated in the media
by exaggerating a personal event into a trauma
which makes me feel like a heroic survivor.
For too long, surviving abuse has been a game for elites.
Now that everyone can play,
I need you to know that the scent of freshly mown grass
needs a trigger warning.
Please don’t be upset but
when you posted that stack of pictures in one long line
to try to force me to look at them all,
I used the scroll bar and looked at none of them.
More is just not more unless it is Lake Baikal,
which I was just thinking about the other day
and you saved me the trouble of having to Google,
so thank you. In gratitude, I am reblogging that post
in which you attacked a commenter and proved
that Internet trolls represent society’s values and,
by the transitive property, society is made of straw.
The other day, you posted a nude selfie.
This was after a fiery post about the outrage
of women’s bodies being objectified by society.
Today you posted a picture of another girl’s body
and then implied yet another girl was a slut
by saying she has no self-esteem.
Since being outraged on the internet about something
is the same as doing something about something,
I was wondering, how long does it take to get over someone
who has broken your heart?
Is there a cutoff date or does it have a half-life like radiation.
The Lord and the Flies
In “The Master and Margerita,” Bulgakov’s depiction of the Crucifixion is the most unique in my experience. Grünewald and the Medieval Germans in general – even Mel Gibson – as obsessed as they were with the cruelty of crucifixion, the flies never occurred to them. Biting flies. What had to be multiple species coating every inch, actually eating Jesus alive. It should have been obvious but I had never thought of it before and I don’t know who else has. Judea is a desert. Water is scarce and so are large mammals – and they don’t stand still. For biting flies, a crucifixion is an open banquet thrown by the court of Henry VIII.
Somehow, as bad as anyone might want others to feel the agony of Jesus’ suffering in the cause of spreading the faith, the idea of vile flies consuming the blood of the Lord seems unacceptable. All over the world, Christians of every stripe observe the Eucharist, in which the blood and body of Christ are consumed by the faithful via wine and wafers. How awkward is it that nasty flies may have been the only beings to consume the real thing. The little bastards received a real communion. Were they filled with the Holy Spirit? Maybe they stopped biting and became butterflies or angels? Where are the liturgical stories of these “blessed” little parasites? The Gospels are nothing if not rationalizations for the final tragedy of the Crucifixion – dying for sins, suffering for humanity, resurrection and so many other items of “Good News,” like thirty pieces of silver lining. Even Judas was a vital instrument of God’s plan. Like the kid who fell off his bike, God meant to do that.
In Bulgakov, there is no silver lining, only the merciless flies. The ugliness is casual, with a grittiness that seems more in keeping with the dust and reek which must have accompanied the desperate crowds of the sick and poor Jesus encounters in his ministry. A grand design seems far away and the world around him is stark and uncompromising, unlike the more romantic portrait painted by Nikos Kazantzakis in “The Last Temptation of Christ.” Stripped of magic and holiness, it is the closest I have ever approached to the flesh and blood of nothing but a man, who had been arrested after a very bad day in Jerusalem. In the South, at the convenience store, you can pick up a tabloid with the mugshots of everyone arrested in the previous week. Through Bulgakov, I can see Yeshua ben Nazareth in one of them, a small town boy with naïve ideas, driven mad like Martin Luther in Rome, by the corruption of a big city he had thought of as a holy place, and who was apprehended and booked for tossing tables in the Temple.
No church has ever been able to fully erase the constant tension between Messiah and criminal, holiness and filth, divinity and humanity in the Jesus narrative. It is a subtlety too often missed by the devout and the atheist alike, who search for a monolithic and absolute religion to either follow or attack. It doesn’t exist. The closer you look at the story, the more it fractures, which is probably why the Christian faith has given rise to schism after schism, but is also so adaptable to a wide range of cultural conditions. It is hard to resolve the man casually doodling in the dust, while talking a mob out of stoning a whore, and the God who ascended into heaven on a cloud.
Almost every form of Christian faith has plenty to say on the God, and even in the most human moments in the New Testament, Jesus seems remote. In Bulgakov, Jesus passes out on the cross. When the flies break, his face is “bloated from bites” and “unrecognizable.” When a soaked sponge is offered up on a stick, his eyes “flashed with joy” and he drinks “greedily.” Bulgakov is not doing this to blaspheme or belittle. His Jesus is very sympathetic, and his human frailty confronts us with our own. It also points to the most important tension in Christianity: Jesus’ humanity is the best selling-point for Christianity, and at the same time something believers would least like to hear about once they have accepted him as God. Jesus gets us because he was us, and that’s good, but now that he is God, let’s keep it that way because we don’t want a God like us. If I were looking for a God, I would not pick Jesus. I am looking for a man, who revolutionized the way people thought about the poor, an obscure man from an obscure place who fell backward into history. I’m not interested in the mysteries of divinity. I’m interested in the mysteries of humanity.
Ben Nye® STAGE BLOOD: Zesty Mint Flavor
Rodney: I’d wager mint-flavored blood is the equivalent of Zima for vampires.
Clint: The mint covers up the taste of the 60/40 pig’s blood/murdered prostitute blood mix, for the fish-and-chips crowd. Look for organic, free-range virgin blood and settle for nothing less.
Kateri: Sorry but if it doesn’t say “100% Organic” then they are still allowed to mix 15% murdered prostitute’s blood into your free-range virgin’s blood. So know your labeling!
Clint: I did not know that. Is there an approved seal I should look for?
Kateri: Yeah it will say on the label “100% Organic”. It’s the only product the Fetid Dark Alliance requires to be pure.
Clint: Well, I hope they are not too Fetid. The Dark Alliance doesn’t accept a product made from the blood of free-range virgins, who had a regular dairy diet. Free-range blood from maidens — who have eaten cheese as a dietary supplement — has been shown in peer-reviewed studies to fight cancer and osteoporosis in Vampires. And I do like my cheese-flavored blood. Do you know anything about tofu substitutes to feed organic free-range virgins, so their blood still has traces of a cheese diet? What about gluten-free virgins?
Damn. That cat is way more talented than Toonces.And so much experience! Why, he has seen more in nine months than most cats have seen in a year-and-a-half.
“Ah, a precious moment to continue my memoir!”
— Livingstone Irwin, Literary Critic, Memoirist, continues his forthcoming autobiography, “Living Livingstone: Nine Months of Unparalleled Adventure” which includes such topics as:
Peeing In Corners
Brawling
Molesting Your Gay Big Brother
Murdering
Licking Your Butthole
Your Humans Are Furniture
Is Gravity Still Working? (How To Knock Things on the Floor To Make Sure)
Clint does The Cramps. I have natural hair gel. It’s called being frizzy.
A Rum-and-tea Rum
A polar bear cub wore a helmet and tweed
For a bicycle ride on the ceiling,
With a fish, and a dog of a fanciful breed,
And the tea that they drank was Darjeeling.
The animals passed around pickles and rum
And sang, “Albatross! Oh, this is thrilling!
A rum-and-tea rum, and a rum-and-tea dumb!”
Then the bicycle beasts began spilling.
The fish was a kitten and barked at the bear
That the fanciful dog was a lemming.
A rum-and-tea rum, and they fell up the stairs
But the fish on the ceiling kept swimming.
I love it. I hate that it doesn’t fit the contest’s required rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD DEDE. Good nonsense, right here.
: /
I thought I did it right. This is why I try not to fuck with poetry. Fuck it
Holy Hootenanny
Beebledee beebledee beebledee bee,
Up flew a monk and sat in a tree,
Rode in on a beehive and out on a flea,
How mibbledy mubbledy muddled was he.
Boinkitty boinkitty boinkitty bang,
Penguins from England had Arkansas twangs
From eating their banjoes and lemon meringue.
How pickitty pluckitty pompous they sang.
A ping-a-ta-toot, a ping-a-ta-toot,
A monk in the muck and a penguin to boot
Playing on drums with a spoon and a flute.
What a hoppitty hippitty happening hoot.
“Who is Kickstarter for?” via the Kickstarter Blog
Star power has the potential to raise all boats, a point which seems to be lost the instigator of some of the recent controversy.
(via marksbirch)
The writer of the linked criticism clearly has personal hostility toward Braff, and it is hardly fair, but the author still makes a good point. Every time we hear fans of the net and computer technology cheer, Yay, a way around the corporations (or government or celebrities)! the the well-moneyed and well-known move in and take over. The truth is, the larger Kickstarter gets, the more celebrity and corporate brands will show up, the more people brought in by a brand will contribute only to other brands. You can’t get a Kickstarter campaign going without publicity, no matter who you are. Corporations and celebrities have that built in, which is why they eventually take over everything. The entire history of the internet has proved this again and again. Initially a few little guys get big, when the ground is fresh, then they get absorbed into the celebrity culture and seal up the door behind them. We have a society where the American dream used to be a house, a spouse and some kids — something at least achievable — now it is to be rich and famous, something which by definition is only going to be for the few. The internet and technology offer a constantly receding shimmering mirage of finding a way around the celebrity and corporate lock on the culture. The ground is broken. Within the next few years, the vast majority of Kickstarter money will be going to celebrity projects and studio brands.
Nonsensical Poetry Contest
Get excited and write Poetry!!!
Poetry captured in the greatness of creative thought and challenge.
Do you have it in you?
If You do, we ask that you release the Nonsense and compete to win a prize.
Rules will be as follows, and are subject to change… (It is Nonsense)
Entries are to be posted on your page and tagged as “nonsensicalpoetry”
Feel free to send links to Wolfie or leave here as comment
Contest will run from May 7th 2013 to May 17th 2013 7:00 A.M. U.S. Central Time
The format
3 stanzas rhyming scheme
ABAB
CDCD
DEDE
The poetry submissions will be judged based on technical merit and how well the poetry leaves the perception of making sense without actually making sense.
Prizes will be as follows and subject to additions.
1st place
One copy of 69 Shades of Shit written by Mr. Dennis DuBay II
And choice of one mug
Selection of mug will be between “Spank Me with Poetry “(Monkey Mug) or “I love Wolfie “
2nd place
The mug not selected by first place winner
All non-offensive posts will be reblogged on desayunogratisreblogs
Mugs are being produced and provided by Kristen
Judges for the contest are
Thank you for your participation and support,
Wolfie
obit:
He takes his daughter to the sea.
He points towards the horizon where the blue meets the blue, and says, There is where we come from. There is the beginning of things. The irretrievable origin. The script of telos.
The irises adjust as if attempting to take in the distance.
The girl picks up a rock. She throws it. It is swallowed by a swell.
They stand in silence. Father and daughter. The wife and mother, only a gesture; they look to the beginning and attempt stories about a loss.
