Thinking About Maxwell, Lot 49, Etc

It is difficult to drive to work on cold mornings just after the night’s Snow Storm has become a Light Flurry.

A Light Flurry means that it is barely freezing, though this doesn’t matter to the imp in my Windshield Wiper Fluid Dispenser, who keeps the Fluid Nozzle firmly shut against my attempts to dispense fluid onto my windshield. Sometimes, on those winter mornings, it is a Light Flurry with Freezing Rain, and I especially need to use the Dispenser. This does not matter to the imp, and it continues to restrain my Windshield Wiper Fluid Dispenser.

When I press the button which, on other cars I’ve owned, would spray soapy fluid over my windshield and activate my wipers for a short time, I often find myself cursing behind my dirty windows as I imagine the imp reclining against the stopped gears, perhaps leafing through the imp version of Popular Science.

The imp functions unerringly on warmer days. I travel a good deal, so my warmer days can be grouped as Days I Was in X State, as follows:

Georgia, Florida, Alabama: March through May. Windshield Wipers and Dispenser used infrequently with no errors.

Western Louisiana and the entirety of Texas: May through July. Windshield Wipers and Dispenser functioned as needed. Curiously, as temperatures rose, Dispenser was often fired without my input, suggesting that the imp is able to trigger the Device from within its home. Given the high temperatures, I hypothesize that the imp uses the Wiper Fluid Dispenser as a cooling device.

New Mexico and Arizona: August. Again, the Dispenser was frequently fired by the imp. Temperatures were often higher than in Louisiana or Texas.

I was recently reassigned to work with the school districts of Southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois. I’ve kept the imp, and the car. When they work, both imp and car are dependable and efficient.

From Junky

"The Valley is like an honest dice table where the players do not have the vitality to influence the dice and they win or lose by pure chance. You never hear anyone say, "It had to happen that way," or when they do say it they are talking about death. an event that "had to happen that way" may be good or bad, but there it is, and you cannot regret it or rehash it. Since everything that happens in the Valley - except death - happens by chance, the inhabitants are always tampering with the past like the two-dollar bettor on the return train from the track: "I should have hung on to that hundred acres on the lower lift; I should have took up them oil leases; I should have planted cotton instead of tomatoes." A nasal whine goes up from the Valley, a vast muttering of banal regret and despair."

-From William S. Burroughs' Junky

Written a few paragraphs after Burroughs first describes the Valley as "America concentrated".

Interesting Tidbit: Burroughs original title for the novel was "Junk" - his publishers changed the title, against Burroughs' wishes, to "Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict".

Dames

This is what I can remember from a conversation between Jeremy and I at about 10 in the morning, while wandering lost in residential New Orleans, after driving several hours to the city the night before, putting our brains through various chemical and situational wringers, then waking after a half hour's sleep and walking some more, which is how we lost the car in the first place.

Jeremy: We need some dames.
Me: Dames?
Jeremy: Yeah, lots of 'em.
Me: Dames with maps.
Jeremy: Dames with maps and coffee.
Me: Driving cars, so we can get back to our car.
Jeremy: But dames... yeah, dames...
Me: With swords!
Jeremy: What the fuck?
Me: Valkyrie dames, creating swords of mythic might! With maps, and coffee, and who also have cars!
Jeremy: Or - dames who are cars!
Me: With wheels for legs, and hammers for hands!

The conversation went downhill from there, as is often the case when discussing magical sword dames.

Portrait of a Hangover

A Warm Story for Cold Weather

When you see the immediate aftermath of a car crash in movies, there's always a bit of soundtrack in the background, tinkling urgently along to let you know the car's about 45 seconds away from going up in a big burp of flame and special effects.

It was summer, and the sun was hanging a bit behind the actual time, still barely throwing shadows even though we had stopped for lunch two hours ago. We'd gone through something like three, maybe four tanks of gas so far, staying on the road all night, talking past the point we got sick of each others voices and letting the road just flow through us like the cold coffee Jamie took black and I drank with less sugar each time we stopped for more.

It was like being on the docks again, this sun burning into arms we let hang out of open windows – I had driven since the first leg of our trip, a straight shot up to one of the Carolinas that hadn't taken more than 6 hours, but I'd had my left arm hanging out the window the entire time, tapping a beat to whatever Jamie put on, and, half watching my arm take up the radio's rhythm now, I could see that it was no darker than the rest of my body. We really were baked. Jamie was lighter than me, but I was sure, if he had dragged his arm back into the car, it would be just the same crisp color as the rest of his body.

The highway was two lane, and a line of slow motion seemed to run through the cars ahead of our own. They bunched, caught a whiff of uncertainty, and slowed as we started to climb a gentle rise. The sky was the sort you got on long car rides through South Georgia, which was about where we were, one of those sections where the real towns had been shriveling for the last million years. Someone had crashed into a drainage ditch a few car-lengths past us. The truck ahead of us blinked sunlight off fresh washed metal details as it slid left, and Jamie followed.

V-Day, Misogyny

I keep forgetting that my parents occasionally read this blog. Which isn't too much of a problem, except when I title a story "I Became a Counselor So I Could Tell Rape Victims They Asked For It", which, on reflection, is a bit of an alarming title for a completely unrelated piece of fiction if you don't know the title is actually stolen from the title of an Anal Cunt song.

Other Anal Cunt song titles:

"Everyone in the Underground Music Scene Is Stupid"
"I Got Athlete's Foot Showering at Mike's"
"Sweatshops Are Cool"
"I Ate Your Horse"
"Domestic Violence Is Really, Really, Really Funny"
"Dictators Are Cool"
"Deadbeat Dads Are Cool"
"Being Ignorant Is Awesome"

Which all lead to a call from my mum the other night, and a lecture about why I shouldn't be a misogynist. Personally, I think that being a misandrist, tends to balance out any misogyny pretty damn well. I don't really see a tendency towards hating on womenfolk in my writing, except maybe when I talk about my love life, and, even there, any negative things I say about dates or partners or etcetera seems like an equal condemnation of myself, right?

[By the way: you should probably read those Wikipedia links even if you know the definitions of misogyny and misandry]

You should also realize that I'm laughing as I write this. The idea that I hate or dislike anyone based on their sex is pretty damn funny to me.

Actually, just as a guide for further reading; it's important to keep in mind that any criticism I write aimed at a person or group of people is intended to show my belief that those persons or people are capable of being better than they are currently. Also, any time I use a broad generalization, specifically the words "always" or "never", you shouldn't be taking me seriously.

In non Ben-Hates-The-World related news, Chicago's in the middle of the first big storm of winter, I saw Ira Glass do a reading last night, and I'm visiting my grandparents for Valentine's Day. [Interesting Fact: they stay at a Conservative Jewish nursing home, so the home calls it "Love Day". I think there's going to be Old People Dancing and other Special Events, and I imagine I'll end up telling Elizabeth about it Thursdayish, and she'll make a little awww sound and call it "cute".]

Hm. And there's no one in the office except me today, which means I really shouldn't be wearing any pants. Also, I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but I usually try to spend one week out of every month without caffeine or booze or anything else that makes life worthwhile, and it's going pretty damn well so far. Nights are sort of slow, but I've been drawing stuff on my walls, so that's good. I've got a date with a bartender on Thursday, and I think we're meeting at a bar, so I'm not sure whether I'll cut the No Booze restriction short for that night.

Shit, I've been typing lots of words.

Local

Not taken in Chicago, not my photograph.

Lif

It is surprisingly hard to convince myself to do things I don't want to do.

Your thoughts?

Futures

The more time I spend in offices, the more sense Rousseau makes. Not that I think the guy's anything short of completely batshit, but I suppose he's useful to read as a sort of reflection of his times + how he influenced Marx.

I think, in 100 years, the invention of the office, as in the physical environment, the box we store people in, the cubicle - these images will be the stereotypical pictures of our time, just like pre-civil war south had the plantation, and ancient Rome had the coliseum. I can feel it working its way into me, and sometimes, I worry that my memory of Chicago will be entirely dominated by florescent lighting and offwhite walls.

That's the scary part. This whole thing is viable. There's really no rational reason not to finish college, than return to Cube World. It wouldn't be too hard to get a job in a box doing something I can tolerate, working in editing, or management, or something. But I don't want to do any of that, and I'm getting to the point where, each moment I do one thing, I dig deeper into the life of always doing that one thing, or always living in that one city, or always something something.

So, now what?

Current Chicago Temperature: 10 degrees.

Winter in Atlanta. Not my pictures. If you've met the Russian, and you probably haven't, they're hers.

Sometimes I stick comma's in sentences just to annoy you.

I'll have Chicago pictures soon.

Pains

The space between my ears hurts.

For the next 2 hours, I will require:

6 girls dressed in Russian Cosmonaut suits
A bowl of chili
One of those espresso machine that makes like 3 cups at once
A copy of Steinbeck's Cannery Row
Pants
And someone to build a shelf along the corner of my room, 'cause I decided today that a shelf's the only thing I need to complete it, not that I have enough books to put on said shelf. I miss all my books.

Mucca Pazza

Pictures I found on flickr from last night's show:










I like how, in every picture, the musicians are making the same "I'm rocking out now" face, but that one cheerleader kicks it up from "rocking out" to "bat shit fucking insane". 3ish hours of sleep. Apologies if that last sentence didn't make sense.

I mentioned the three hours of sleep thing to my boss, and he said, "why didn't you just take the day off?" - it's been a while since I worked white collar - I didn't even realize that was an option.