Michael Kindt's Blog, page 447
November 18, 2011
Well, this is cool.
Well, this is cool.
November 17, 2011
I, Too, Can Write A Poem About Love
Where is the fuzzy, mealy-mouthed man
I used to call Papa?
Where did he go?
I last saw him
on top of the Empire State Building,
smoking a corn cob pipe,
saying "What's good enough for Frosty the Snowman
is good enough for me."
He had just eaten a pizza
and was content.
Together we peered
down on the people below,
all looking like ants and shit.
Earlier that day,
I had taken a shower
back at the hotel room,
got dressed,
and was watching the terrible news
on the square tv.
There were wars
and shitty economies,
robberies and murders,
random bodies washing up on specific shores.
Oh, and the weather.
There was always weather out.
Suddenly,
my left armpit began to itch incessantly.
It was an angry and aggressive itch,
reminiscent of poison ivy.
I began scratching it
and noticed that it was
all gooey up in there.
I had never experienced
a gooey, itchy armpit before,
but, hey,
this was New York City.
Anything could happen.
My fingers were now gooey as well
and I sniffed them,
curious.
Soap.
It was soap.
I had forgotten to rinse out my left armpit
when I was in the shower.
The fuck?
But, yeah,
I lost the fuzzy, mealy-mouthed man
I used to call Papa.
I wonder
where did he go?
Remember, Gandhi took down an empire.Seriously, the protestors...
Remember, Gandhi took down an empire.
Seriously, the protestors can overwhelm things. How many have been arrested since the start of it all? They all have to go through the system, every last one. This is the system, by the way, already strained to the limits fighting prohibition. Jails are full, court rooms crowded. No room for thousands more. So make them deal with thousands more. The NYPD is paying out shitloads of money in overtime. Occupy will work if it keeps on trucking. Keep getting arrested, and when they release you, come back and get arrested again. Keep the riot police on the streets constantly. Remember, these authorities have to pay to fight you. So make them pay. Keep them paying. Remember, the economic injustices you rage against have also made the government institutions who oppose you broke.
Nonviolence is the best weapon and cannot be resisted indefinitely.
November 16, 2011
New article up: I Found God On The Mountain. Sorry, I...
New article up: I Found God On The Mountain. Sorry, I can't write about politics every week. If I did, I would shoot myself in the face with a bow and arrow. So go read it, and using the handy-dandy Facebook button, like the living shit out of it.
Thanks,
Mike
November 15, 2011
Truthful Tuesday: Snail Mail and My Own Private Idaho
I miss writing letters sometimes. For a while there, I wrote letters quite a bit. No, I wasn't like the people of the 19th and early 20th Centuries, who maintained great and lifelong correspondences. One of my favorite writers, H.P. Lovecraft, wrote letters like moderately attractive people fuck. (Sorry, beautiful people don't fuck all that well. You can't fuck well when you treat every penetration as a charity case. So if you're gorgeous, it's very likely that you're lame in bed. There have actually been studies about this, but I digress).
He wrote letters like a sumbitch, did Lovecraft. Thousands upon thousands of them. Contrast this with you reading this, who have written, at best, dozens. Very likely less than that.
Liar :) Emails don't count, nor do cards with a sentence or two scribbled in them. Paper, pen, stamp, envelope, Dear ______, Love ______, the works.
When I was in 8th grade I was exiled to Idaho by my mom, who had lost control of me. Utterly. My dad, you see, lived in Idaho, where he busied himself with not paying child support and getting married and divorced every couple of years. By 8th grade I had enough height and strength in me to do as I pleased and there wasn't a damn thing Mom could do about it. Not only had I become, quite to my delight, stronger than her, but stronger than the very house I lived in, punching holes in the walls and ripping doors off hinges. She decided I needed a man in my life who would, hopefully, knock the shit out of me. So she got on the phone and basically pleaded for my dad to take me. He didn't want to, but she somehow talked him into it. He did knock the shit out me, too, quite a bit, especially when I wouldn't cut my hair. I wasn't strong enough to do as I pleased, but I was strong enough to take whatever he dished and egg him on for more, snarling at him as he threw me around rooms and whipped me with belts. Practically every time he wasn't looking, I'd run away, and for 6 solid months, which was all he could take, I made his life hell.
It was the least I could do.
The whole time I was there, I wrote letters. My grandmother had slipped me a couple rolls of stamps before I left, along with a 50 dollar bill. "Write us," she commanded, and since she was the matriarch of the family and a veritable queen, I had no choice but to obey. She died just this year, by the way, proving beyond any doubt the existence of heaven.
I wrote Grandma and Mom weekly, sometimes more. I wrote my sister a lot. Dozens of letters, most of which are still in existence. Occasionally, when I'm at Mom's she'll break them out and I'll read them, surprised at how they mention nothing of what was happening in my external reality. Never once did I report an event, mention a person, or talk about anything that was going on in my life at the time. I just rambled, told stories, speculated about shit, cracked jokes, etc. And it wasn't like the whole Idaho experience was a complete nightmare. In school, I had become somewhat popular. I had friends. One, Rusty, I even got pretty close to. One time, we stole his dad's pick-up, skipped school, and drove across the state to Pocatello to see a Van Halen concert. We had a blast. There were girls, too. It wasn't all bad. Hell, I got my first blowjob in Idaho. (Thank you Carra, where ever you might be. Know that you have made me an undying fan of the female mouth and all it's wonders).
I never wrote letters like that again. Times are different. It's 2011, but my head still feels like it's full of magic or at least the mental equivalent of optical illusions. I sing it all on the internet now, on yet another blog, praying to the God I met through Carra that I make enough money to at least buy some beer.
So here I sit, typing into the void.
Tonight in New York City they cleared out Occupy Wall Street....
Tonight in New York City they cleared out Occupy Wall Street. After midnight, cops raided the protest and forced everyone to leave. Some resisted and were arrested. This was done, according to officials, for "health" reasons. Apparently, they're going to give Liberty Square a good scrubbing. Protestors will be allowed to return, but without sleeping bags, tarps or tents.
"Since it's getting cold out, not allowing them to have shelter will hopefully make them go away," said an unnamed New York City official. "It's looking like the protests are resonating more and more with people, and this has to be stopped before the ruling elite are forced to take them seriously."
The 1% has spoken out about the Occupy Movement and it worries them. Read about it here.
November 14, 2011
Humor is never taken seriously. As one hilarious motherfucker, I'm ok with that.
How many comedies have won academy awards? I can think of only one and it was a pretty dark comedy: The Apartment, starring the brilliant Jack Lemmon. Go watch it, if you haven't. Chuckle through the suicide attempt. I did.
The best comedy, the funniest, is the blackest. It is also the only kind ever to be taken even a little seriously.
Comedic writing, like all things comedic, is not taken as seriously as other forms of writing. If you whine and moan about love and the soft lighting it invariable happens in, why, you're a serious writer. If you depict the horrors of war, of poverty, of whatever else sucks cosmic donkey dicks, you, too, are a SERIOUS writer. But if you make people laugh while you do it, you are a humorist dealing with serious issues.
The problem, I think, is that humor, done correctly, is intellectual violence. It tears everything down, leaving nothing but scaffolding. It is destructive whereas other forms of art are creative. To me, though, it is the most logical thing a brain can do in the face of the most ridiculous of situations, which, of course, is its own existence.
Humor, and especially its darker shades of sarcasm and satire, rips the skin off everything. No myth or construct is safe. Being the most violent of intellectual or creative activity makes it also the most effective. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, you can do about laughing.
Nothing at all.
