Festering Carbuncle

In this land of strangers...

They say that leaving notes in lieu of talking face to face is a form of passive-aggressive behavior, meaning that it is a discrete form of aggression, but it also works as an emotional insulator, a means of protecting yourself from the inherent risks that accompany honesty and personal revelation, the emotional equivalent of yelling out of a second story window; you may still be hurt, but it requires a greater amount of calculation and precision on the part of those wishing to cause you pain, minimizing reactionary violence and making accidental injury less likely.  This is why I prefer writing, it allows me to reveal the things that I would never have the courage to express under the crushing burden of another's gaze.

I believe it is the case that people hate getting bad news in written form.  It makes them feel all alone with their pain, which is probably the best way to be with your pain, but it always feels like the worst.  People would rather have somebody deliver the bad news in person because it gives them an outlet for the emotions inspired by the news, whether that outlet comes in the form of a hug or a punch.  And these things do make us feel better, hugs and punches, when we are on the giving end, at least.  They give a tangibility to the world that is seldom present, a scientific rationale for a sadness that seems impossibly heavy.  A letter can also be hugged and punched, torn and ingested, but there are no tears and no blood, so it is unsatisfying.  It can't squeeze us tightly as a metaphor for shielding us from emotional pain.  Instead, it leaves us alone to defend ourselves, which allows us to realize that we do, in fact, have the capacity to absorb unbelievable amounts of pain, and that we can recover just fine all on our own, without the help of another's blood or cozy metaphor.

Holy shit, world peace! Alllriiight!

Two notable moments from Stella at the Aladdin that will gain nothing, and likely lose everything, from being described in a hastily written blog post:

1) David Wain, in response to I can't remember what, cuts loose with a ludicrously drawn out "fuuuuhgheeeeedabouuuuuuuudit" in the most unconvincing caricature of a retarded Brooklyn meathead (it was fucking genius, and come to think of it, the delivery was pretty similar to the voice of Junyer Bear, or maybe the lion from the old Bugs Bunny Cartoons).  Whatever bit they were in the middle of grinds to a halt and Showalter says, "See, if I were watching this on DVD, this would be the moment were I would stop and rewind," and Black goads Wain into repeating the line, garnering laughs from six audience members.

2)  Audience member invited to stage to join in a game of Zots and Crambles is named "Jakady."  Seeing Black bite his tongue, Showalter asks, "What are you thinking right now, Michael?"  Prompting Black to launch into a "Stupid name, no just kidding, but really, it's a stupid name, but no, I tease, but fuck if that ain't a stupid name..." tirade that goes on for minutes, eventually concluding with him saying, "I think it's short for, 'Her parents are assholes.'"

The first item hit my noodle like a time bomb tonight, leading me to look for more information.  I then bumped into this interview with Black and Showalter, which reminded me of the second item.

Did you ever notice that Daily Show correspondent John Oliver bears a striking resemblance to Count von Count?

I am an unrepentant Futuramaholic.  Yes, my name is badpenny, and I am addicted to Futuramahol.  I have a disease, but it is a disease I cherish, and I seek to spread my affliction far and wide.  I am particularly interested in spreading it sexually and with reckless abandon.  I will, however, not be entirely disappointed to spread it with careful restraint through light contact of open sores and the exchange of oozing fluids.  Enjoy.

FuturamaWeeknights, 9p/8c

Robot Wash

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I have tested it scientifically, utilizing methods as mysterious as they are simple, and the data supports the theory that the above clip maintains a consistent and continuous level of hilarity independent of the number of repeated viewings. Hey, I don't fucking understand it either, nobody fucking does, it's fucking science, for fucking fuck's sake.

The Ayatollah of Rock n' Rolla

No matter how bad it gets, you can always take comfort in the fact that The Lord Humungus understands your pain.

carriers of memory

Oh, to once again be 11 years old with a grocery bag full of found porno mags and a repurposed Bon Jovi cassette containing Push It...

The rightful owner of the Bon Jovi cassette was also the one who found the bag of porn; he noticed it on the river bank while walking to my house.  His older brother was the one who dubbed Push It over the 99 in the Shade single; he had a boom box with a "high-speed dubbing" feature, and we dubbed that shit double-time.  Later in the day we decided to go shoot some b-ball at a nearby elementary school and my friend suggested we bring the boom box so that we could listen to his new Bon Jovi tape, but his brother stood behind him running his pronated hand in front of his throat and mouthing what was probably the word "no."  I offered that the boom box was the way to go, for sure, but that we should totally listen to Kurtis Blow, being that we were playing Basketball and all...

Our ruse worked, but karma came through in the end, seeing to it that I went forehead first into the court's blacktop surface.  It was a scant seven blocks back to my friends' house, and I walked with them, alternately pushing my t-shirt into my forehead to sop up the blood and wondering why, of all the cars passing by, none of the drivers thought to at least roll down their window and shout, "Hey, you OK?" to the kid with blood in his eye.  As a child I thought them cruel, but as an adult I can sympathize: the kidz is old enought to bleed, they's old enough to take care a' themselveses.  Some people thought it was racism, because of the thirteen hundred people in the town, only two of them were black, but I know, deep down inside, that it wasn't a matter of race, because at least half of the people who drove by would have killed for just one chance to touch some nappy little curls.

In any case, we soon made it back to the house where I ate my first octopus tentacle, and our mothers inspected my headwound, and, determining it not to be terribly massive, recommended that I use a tea towel as a styptic.  I had been the posessor, until that moment, of only one headscar: a bald spot about two inches deep into my hairline as a result of a combination of chair springs, a marble hearth, and gravity.  On this day I gained my second, and more prominent headscar: a fairly small dimple above my right eye that nicely offset the fading dog-bite scar on the chubby cheek just south of my left eye (a facescar, not a headscar).

I have checked the mirror and found that both of the headscars remain, but they have both diminshed in significance due to a much larger scar that took over the left of the forehead a decade later.  It is fitting, I suppose, that the scars supplant each other, as the people who helped the scars to come along have also supplanted each other.  Fortunately, we have those scars to carry the memories, the visual equvalent to the songs that take us back in time to those moments that encapsulate the all of the pain and pleasure that allowed people and places to mean so much to us.

Shit (From an Old Notebook) that I just can't completely work out

The whole goal thing, it turns out, wasn't founded on the fact that I lack a goal so much as that I had lost track of my goals, or perhaps even my identity.  I don't know why I had such a hard time bringing it all together for myself, but the problem was that I had decided that the best course of action was to suspend my goals and lifestyle when the longshore opportunity presented itself, and that I would resume both once I had completed the longshore thing.  The thing about the longshore thing, however, was that it required so much of me that it took over and eradicated my goals and lifestyle of the past, and once I had finished up with it I sort of forgot that I even wanted to resume a different lifestyle, and remembering the specifics of that lifestyle was nearly impossible.

It reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend several years ago where I asked him what the American public's reaction was going to be when it turned out there were no "weapons of mass destruction."  He explained that there would be virtually no reaction, because, by the time that information came to light, the war would have become its own raison d'être.  Similarly, becoming a longshoreman became my raisin-b'êan, so once I had succeeded, I had lost all perspective on anything greater, or at least other, that I had wanted to do with my life.

Things have been coming back to me, though, lately, and I am beginning to feel good about the things that I desire of myself and my life.  For a time I had felt that I was just going to have to pick from a small sample of possible futures that included virtually nothing I desired, and certainly nothing that inspired me.  Fortunately, I am beginning to find small reminders of the things that do inspire me and, as such, I know that I can just strive for them and they will create a future for me that I could have never just found on the rack somewhere.

I have explored the idea, in the past, that we, as individuals, tend to fixate on the symptoms of our ailments instead of their root causes.  We are all afflicted, to a certain degree, with a malaise of general unhappiness, and we usually see that one thing, should we ever be able to overcome it, that would allow us to be on top of the world.  For me, that thing had been not being a longshoreman, and, when the malaise didn't retreat after I had rectified this problem, my unhappiness swelled and the burden began slowly crushing me. The irony of all of this is that I had observed this happening to others in the past, spent time contemplating the possibility of it happening to me, yet still i didn't understand it while it was happening. Ain't that always the way, though ;)

You don't anticipate the amount of stress that comes when you willfully accept that much uncertainty into your life, and, in order to cope, you must manipulate yourself on a psychological level.  The hard part comes in recognizing when circumstances have changed to the point that you no longer require those psychological defenses, and then in being able to break down those barriers and revert to the person you used to be.  The only way that I was able to tolerate the process of becoming a longshoreman was by believe that becoming a longshoreman was the best thing that I could do.  I was able to convince myself of this so thoroughly that by the time I had become a longshoreman I had forgotten that it was a lie.  I saw all of this coming, all of it, but it still caught me by surprise...

mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance

I was invited, tonight, by a self proclaimed schizophrenic named Winter to come with her and write a new constitution.  I informed her of the futility of such an endeavor, but she told me it was the act, not the result, that mattered.  We talked for hours, competing to see who was the more adept bullshitter.  She told me she had an IQ of 177.  I told her that I didn't know what an IQ was, but that I knew big numbers when I heard 'em. She told me of how her preparation had met with the opportunity to work for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.  She told me of this after copping to having mental problems, in response to which I quoted Ginsberg.  She acted as though she had some conception of Howl, but in an act of subterfuge I discovered that she not only wasn't familiar with Ginsberg, but that she didn't know how to Howl at all.  Actually, I'm lying; after I quoted the first line, she quoted the second.  After pointing out that she lacked the requisite stature to condescend to me, I spent several hours condescending to her because she was attractive in spite of her stupidity.  Of course, she wasn't actually stupid, she was merely condescending to me.  She spent the whole night regaling me with tales of her overcoming both her privilege and her blackness, which, due to my vanity and ignorance, allowed for me to find her more and more attractive.  You see, both her fortune and her misfortune far outstripped my own, and I admired and envied her ability to overcome both.

A fight erupted several minutes after last call, a fight between the blacks and the whites.  Chivalrous as I am, I stepped in to prevent two men from scalping a young woman who had spent the night being denigrated by Winter.  I told the aggressors that the police were en route, and that it would behoove them to make haste for another venue.  Blows were thrown at the individuals I restrained, a situation that always injures my feelings.  Soon enough, one team left and the cops arrived.  Winter seemed to be in her element, providing the victims with moral support and fabricating tales of her own injuries and injustices.

One of the first things Winter told me was that she was a teacher.  Judging by her inflection, she was as surprised by her occupation as anyone.  She taught music to nine-year-olds, and science, and was this year going to teach the kids how to make rockets, or, on second thought, she was maybe just going to drop some mentos into diet cokes.  She had a smile like the Grinch's, only toothier, which would make it more like the Cheshire Cat's, I guess, whoever that is.  It looked great on her, in any case.  She told me she lived in a garage in St. Johns, to which I replied that the garage wasn't technically in St. Johns.  She iterated, this time placing greater emphasis on the fact that it was a garage.  I told her that garages were awesome places to live, like a fort built of couch cushions.  She reiterated.  I told her it was a tragedy that one should find herself living in a garage.  She agreed.  Subsequently I continued to boast on how overwhelmingly empathetic I was as an individual.  She was exactly like all of the women I have ever been in relationships with for exactly the same reasons that all of those relationships have ended; she was willing to say anything to gain my approval, and I was willing to say anything to make her happy.  She was needy, I was accommodating.

After the cops left I waited at the bar for long enough to make sure I wouldn't run into the cops when I left the bar.  For a minute or so, I watched Winter console the young woman who had been dragged across the floor by her hair, then I walked home in the rain.  Sooner or later, I always become less accommodating.