Michael Kindt's Blog, page 516
May 30, 2011
299
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.
Michael Kindt
If you like my writing, please consider sharing it with others. Thank you.
Tagged: Books, Fiction, Literature, poetry, Writing
May 15, 2011
The Causes of Behavior
Later it would become practical if we are asked why
But where are these feelings and states of mind?
We simply make sure that no other food is available
As one neurologist recently put it
The study of literature, art, and music
From infancy to maturity
Changes occurring in time
The systematic neglect of useful information
Is, of course, nothing new
It is so easy to observe feelings and states of mind
If such a robot could be built
To work on its own projects without philosophical digressions
Indistinguishable from a real person
But problems remained
Feelings or states of mind seemed unnecessary
What about other evidence?
What about psychophysics?
What about stream of consciousness?
Ignored because it cannot be studied objectively
The possibility of self-observation or self-knowledge
Introspection but not what philosophers
Consider events taking place
An organism behaves as it does
But it exerts a different kind of effect
Human
In this way we repair the major damage
When what a person does
Is going on inside him
Michael Kindt
If you like my writing, please consider sharing it with others. Thank you.
Tagged: Books, Fiction, Literature, poetry, Writing
May 13, 2011
Oklahoma to adopt official state gospel song
“Swing Low Sweet Chariot,” will likely become the official gospel song of the state of Oklahoma. The measure, which was already approved by the Senate, passed the House by a vote of 89-0 and now heads to Governor Mary Fallin, who said “Don’t these people have anything better to do?”
Oklahoma is not the only state wasting time dicking around while the country disintegrates before our very eyes. In Arizona, legislators are seeking to make the Colt revolver the official state gun. Governor Jan Brewer has not yet acted on the bill, which passed both chambers by a narrow margin.
“I’ll definitely sign it when it comes before me. Nothing says Arizona like a fucking gun.”
South Dakota, location of the Mt. Rushmore monument, recently adopted the 1998 Wes Anderson-directed movie Rushmore, starring Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman, as the official state movie, even though the film makes no mention of the monument, South Dakota, or even the Midwest.
Hu Jintao, President of the People’s Republic of China, expressed delight at the flurry of futility and posturing among the American states. “Hard to believe the U.S. is no longer the dominant world power,” he said and burst out laughing.
Michael Kindt
May 9, 2011
Home is where they have to let you in.
I remember when I was a little kid I was horribly hyperactive. I would only sleep one or two hours a night and she had to hire babysitters to watch me just so she could sleep. The only time I could relax is when she took my shirt off, laid me across her lap, and rubbed my back lightly with the tips of her fingers. I would lay there, still for the first time in hours and hours, almost in a meditative trance. She didn’t do it often because usually she couldn’t catch me.
I remember when I was a teenager and putting her though hell with cops and school and fighting and drinking, we would still laugh and always had really deep talks. The police would bring me home and in an hour we would be talking about how flowers could defy gravity by growing upward and how the branches of a tree were really just sunlight roots.
Always she was excited about books and wanting me to read. Every week she would rave about a new book and tried to get me to read it. As a toddler or young child I couldn’t be read to because I was so terribly nervous, but by my teenage years, I could sort of focus and she would read out loud to me then. She read out loud to me perhaps monthly, whenever a book or story really captured her. She made me sit down, shut up, and listen, and it was one of the few commands of hers I obeyed.
Growing up, my house was filled with classical music because she was a classically trained pianist and played daily. She played me Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata when I was 6 or 8 and I remember it made me cry. I had a pretty broad knowledge and appreciation for classical music before I even discovered rocknroll. For some reason, I am extremely glad of this.
My dad left this woman when I was five and I have no respect for him. How could anyone leave this woman? I have no respect for him and not really for any man. He was a piece of shit and did her a favor of course, but still.
My mom was once the strongest person I'd ever known, and I hate time and change and sick and loss and death.
May 8, 2011
I Met a French Girl One Time
…………Some background before we proceed: I like French things. I like how, as a nation, they constantly tell the US to fuck off. Remember when everybody was changing the name of French fries to Freedom fries? Hello, we're the United Dorks of America. Whenever the US goes out and bombs some brown people, which is usually every five to ten years, the French are never behind us. They're reluctant. They have doubts. They won't play along. Compare that to the UK, America's little brother, who follows us around everywhere we go, saying "Me too! Me too!"
…………I like French food. I like French wine. In fact, I'll only drink French wine. I don't care if that fruity tooty shit from California and Australia is "as good or even better" or that it's cheaper. I drink French wine for philosophical reasons.
…………As I am writing this thought down on a steno pad in my kitchen, I am using a blue Bic pen. Bic is a French company. I am, however, drinking Mexican beer.
…………So I used to run a gas station and one time a French girl came in who could barely speak English. I surmised from her halting, mispronounced words and pantomime that she was having car trouble, the poor thing. She was so pretty, too. Only a heartless, twisted freak of a god would allow this young woman to have car trouble.
…………Immediately, I ignored all my other customers, left the store, including the cash register, and went outside to see if I could help. Fortunately, it was no big deal. The tire on her rental car was very low, is all. Inside the car was a young man about her age. He smiled at me through the windshield and shrugged his shoulders. I realized I was looking at the luckiest man in the Universe.
…………The young woman did not know how to make the air pump go. Adorably, she looked through the owner's manual and pointed at the air hose. She shrugged the milky white shoulders that held up her sun dress. "Wheel?" she wondered, but wondered it with French class: "Whe-EL?"
…………"Yes," I said and aired her up. I had to get down on my haunches to do it and spent the glorious minute and a half looking at her shapely legs, also milky white, and SHAVEN, for your information.
…………"All fixed," I told her, standing up.
…………"Fixed?" she wondered.
…………"Fixed," I confirmed.
…………"Fixed. Thank you."
…………"You're welcome." I looked into the car again at the luckiest man in the Universe. He was still smiling.
…………Of course he was.
Michael Kindt
If you like my writing, please consider sharing it with others. Thank you.
Tagged: Books, Fiction, Literature, Writing
Man Who Opened Fire on Reality TV Crew Widely Applauded
Las Vegas Police today identified a 40-year-old man who they say opened fire on a reality TV crew in his neighborhood Monday after becoming angry that a van was parked in front of his house, blocking his driveway.
Authorities said the incident happened about 9:45 p.m. in the 2900 block of Vigilante Court, near Barren Wasteland Road and Suicidal Parkway.
Police said Carlos Barron began yelling at the van’s occupants from a second-story window and then went outside to demand they move the van, at which point he pulled a handgun from his waistband and fired multiple shots at the seven-person crew. Unfortunately, no one was injured.
The TV crew was filming an episode of “Repo Games,” a reality television show from Spike TV that allows debt serfs a chance to win back their repossessed cars by performing humiliating stunts, usually involving nudity, or by eating extremely unsavory things, like buckets of baby shit. The show is produced by SallyAnn Salsano, the sleaze-bag who brought us Jersey Shore.
Usually, gun violence is condemned, but not in this case. Speaking from his private island in the Pacific, the Reverend Jesse Jackson called the attack “a sign of hope.”
Ron Schmeits, president of the National Rifle Association, said he “couldn’t think of a better use for a handgun.”
Even the pope took time out from his busy schedule of telling people how to fuck to say that “evil must be confronted in whatever way possible.”
Barron is expected to be given the Key to the City by Las Vegas authorities later this week.
Michael Kindt
April 24, 2011
I Was a Teenage Poltergeist
…………My Grandpa Jack was a drunk. At least, I guess he was. I'm sure there's some criteria somewhere that tells you if someone's a drunk or not, but I choose to not believe it. "If you drink this much or this often, then you're a drunk." What could be more bullshit than that? He was fun and funny and great to be around when he was drunk, but when he was sober he was surly and quiet and distant. That's how he functioned. He did fine. At 13, I was a little scared of him when he was sober. He would yell at me, tell me to get off the damn roof, or he'd put me to work, tell me to put those damn bricks in a pile.
…………When drunk he was talkative and smiling and joking around, and I was an appreciative audience. I was his oldest grandchild and he liked me. He sometimes called me Mikey. Down in the basement of the old hotel he owned was his Man Cave, with his tools and work benches and engine parts. In a blackened corner was the big pile of coal and the huge furnace that heated the whole hotel. That corner kind of freaked me out. The whole basement, in fact, kind of freaked me out, unless I was down there with Grandpa Jack.
…………He would show me things, saying "This is a carburetor," and tell me all about it, about how it took in air and how the air was combined with gas and how this air-gas mixture went on to become little explosions in the cylinders of an engine. He would take out his large and unused collection of fishing lures and I would look at them, amazed at how colorful and odd-looking they were. He would sometimes show me the guns he never hunted with. I remember one time he was explaining bullets to me and even dismantled several with his pocket knife to show me the insides. I remember being most fascinated with shotgun shells.
…………He would give me things, too. Neat things. He gave me an old kerosene lantern my mom never let me light. He gave me an old, hand-crank drill, calling it an antique. He said it used to have several different "bits" that fit on the end so you could drill different-sized holes, but they were now lost "in the mists of time." You could now only drill dime-sized holes with it and he showed me, drilling a little ways into one of his work benches. I remember the smell of wood filling my nose as the shavings came up.
…………Mom confiscated that drill not too long after I got it, calling down the hill to the hotel, telling my Grandma, "Don't let Dad give any more tools to Mike. He drilled a bunch of holes in the wall and we probably lost our deposit."
…………Grandpa Jack didn't listen, at least not that time. He didn't listen to anyone, as far as I could tell, and I so loved him. He did stop giving me tools, but only after he gave me the screwdriver set. It was way cool, too, I remember. Came in its own little case with six screwdrivers. Three flatheads and three Phillips, three sizes each. It fit in my pocket, sort of, and was my very own. Mom didn't even know I had it, no one did. That was the coolest thing of all about it.
…………I was 13 and it was summer vacation and since I had nothing better to do, I became The World's Greatest Collector of Screws. To keep it on the down-low, I avoided my own house this time, but cut a swath through town the size of the mighty Missouri River, unscrewing everything in my path and growing my collection, which I kept in a mop bucket I stole from under the sink and dangled from the handlebars of my bike.
…………My new task consumed me with the fire of a million summer suns. I would spring out of bed when it was barely light and head out with my bike and bucket, and I wouldn't come home until Mom came and tracked me down with the car, hollering out the window to get my ass home, that I was turning into a wild animal, that it was after ten, for Christ's sake!
…………All over town, doors were hanging off their hinges, siding was falling off of buildings, railings were wobbly and no support at all. It was a hot topic down at the A & K Market, where there was half-joking talk of gremlins afoot or even ghosts. Old Don Wilson, who'd come in to get some canned tuna and a carton of cigarettes, spoke of how when he went to start his car, the headlights fell out. Annella Black, a loaf of bread in one arm, bananas in the other, related how she found her lawnmower in four pieces. It was all very odd and the local paper even wondered What's Happening to All The Darn Screws? in a short article below the fold on page three.
…………Only me and Grandpa Jack knew, and when I rattled by him with my bucket, he would poke his head out from under the hood of the old truck he was always working on and wink at me.
…………It was the only time I ever recall him smiling when he was sober.
Michael Kindt
If you like my writing, please consider sharing it with others. Thank you.
Tagged: Books, Fiction, Literature, Writing
April 8, 2011
March 1, 2011
I Got a Boner For Pineapples
…………I love them. Big, beautiful, brutal fruit. If you throw one hard enough at someone, you're liable to kill them. Try that with one of your pussy bananas, you damn dirty apes. Pineapples got fucking spikes on them and a tough, woody exterior. They're the Chuck Norris of fruit.
…………A good way to eat them is like this: First, slice off the spikes, then slice off the ass. It should be able to sit upright perfectly now and not be all wobbly and unstable like a little baby. Now, being careful not to cut in too deep, take your knife and slice off the skin in slabs, rotating as you go.
…………At this point, you'll have a completely naked pineapple sitting on your cutting board in all its glory. There will be delectable pineapple blood (juice to the faint-at-heart) all over the place – on your hands, on your knife, all over the counter, everywhere. Your kitchen will smell like a mixture of Hawaii and Heaven, which is very likely a redundant analogy.
…………Tip your naked pineapple over so it is laying supine in its own blood. Depending on its size, you'll cut it in half or in thirds. What you want after you dice it up is about two cups, so estimate. When you have the approximate chunk sliced off, wrap the remaining pineapple in plastic and stick it in the fridge. Uneaten pineapples will turn a ghastly brown-gray and get all mushy in retaliation for being ignored, so eat the rest tomorrow or at the very least, the day after that.
…………Now, dice up your chunk of pineapple except for the tough core. Cut around that and throw it in the trash or the compost heap. You'll want your diced pineapple to be about the size of, well, dice. Little cubes.
…………You're ready to get down to business. Take out a sauce pan or medium-size frying pan and throw in your pineapple dice. Next, pour white wine over them until they are just submerged. Put the heat on high and let them boil in the wine for, say, 5 minutes, stirring more or less constantly. Then pour in half a cup, maybe a little more, of heavy organic cream – enough so that the pineapple is submerged again, plus maybe a quarter of an inch more. Throw in a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of pepper, and a tablespoon of dried parsley. Allow to boil for another 5 minutes, stirring more or less constantly. What you want is for it to reduce and thicken. It may take a little longer than 5 minutes.
…………Now you're ready for the finishing touch. Throw in about 3 or 4 tablespoons of blue cheese. Stir until it is melted and fully incorporated into the sauce. The sauce should be nice and thick and totally clinging to the pineapple.
…………Dump it on a plate and eat it with a spoon, collecting some of the sauce with each chunk of pineapple.
…………You can thank me later.
…………By the way, I call this Creamed Pineapple of Blue Cheese, and if you have the means, I recommend Maytag Blue Cheese from Iowa. It's the best stuff in the Cosmos and makes Europe's best offerings seem amateurish. Any blue cheese will do fine though.
…………And, yes, once upon a time, Maytag Farms used to make washing machines.
Links of note: One of the many pineapples that have died at my hands, Maytag Dairy Farms, Chuck Norris, the pineapple of action heroes, Charlton Heston, of the above subtle Planet of the Apes reference, another one of the many pineapples that have died at my hands.
Michael Kindt
If you like my writing, please consider sharing it with others. Thank you.
Tagged: Books, Fiction, Literature, Writing
February 21, 2011
Broken Eyes
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
under parasols in mud & sleaze
fire:
the broken eyes burn bright
roll back, lose sight
Michael Kindt
If you like my writing, please consider sharing it with others. Thank you.
