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NIGHT (PART 1)

He slept next to a hammer every night. The man's bedroom was on the ground floor next to the type of alley where sick howls and bins crashing were commonplace, so he found it only proper to arm himself with the crudest weapon he could find in his apartment.

When someone finally decided to dive head-first through the glass window to the left of his bed, he imagined he would be ready for a scrap.

At the very least, he would get in one or two errant swings before the aggressor(s) beat and/or raped him into submission. After the beating and/or rape, he would hold on to life just long enough to see his HDTV get passed through the shattered window, and feel the unreasonably cold evening wash into his room.

The next day, his roommate would stand in the doorway and try to find an appropriate posture for the moment. The roommate was glad it wasn't his window, and that was only natural. A Cop would break the moribund atmosphere. "The hammer was obviously used in defense. His wounds don't correlate with the type of wounds a hammer would leave. The kid put up a fight..." His red-faced Cop partner, sitting on the end of the man's bed, would smack his gum and point at the indifferent and half-naked corpse on the wood-paneled floor and say, "Not much of a fight! And for fucks' sake, what kind of loony tune sleeps next to a god damn hammer?"

These were the kind of happenings that ran through the man's head at night. He tried to fight these sordid thoughts with breathing exercises and positive thinking. He even wrote down things he was grateful for on a legal pad before he shut the lights off for good. His psychiatrist told him such routines would "ease his mind" and "help tremendously with such irrational and disturbing imaginings." But the list ended up being little more than a compilation of hollow generalizations like "family" and "friends" and "job," and an assortment of random commodities. Only "Clonopins," "Srircha," and "Uncle Ronnie's Jet Ski" were written down with any particular assurance or zeal.

The list-making didn't last more than two weeks. The legal pad sat underneath the hammer on his night stand most of the time.

For the rest of the winter, he would lie on his side in the darkness, eye-to-eye with a Radioshack alarm clock, and watch the minutes fall away to the sounds of the city he found unkind.

#fiction #short

One of my favorite moments in music this year begins at the two-minute mark.

#Gary War #Jared's Lot #Pleading for Annihilation

“At the age of six, Gil was hired by his eight-year-old brother to run his sidewalk lemonade stand for the afternoon. By the end of the day, he had bankrupted his brother’s business and drank up all the remaining inventory. Since then, Gil has managed to hold down only one job for longer then a few days. He kept his job at Red Blazer Reality for over twenty years by selling his own house to himself several thousand times. Eventually, the house was destroyed in the Great Springfield Flood of ‘99, and with no other sales prospects, he was fired.”

— Gil Gunderson is a Man of the Times (via)

#The Simpsons #Gil Gunderson

“It was undoubtedly the feeling of exile - that sensation of a void within which never left us, that irrational longing to hark back to the past or else to speed up the march of time, and those keen shafts of memory that stung like fire.”

#Albert Camus #The Plague

Now that we have that out of the way...

#django django #life's a beach

The longer you’re away from the world of social media, the harder it becomes to return to the world of social media.

A day or two without a blog post or tweet is fine because you’re not gone long enough to warrant suspicion that you’re making some sort of grand statement, giving up entirely or undergoing some sort of seismic life change. Conversely, an entire month or two without throwing a fuckin’ video or photo or drunken ramble against the digital wall is ludicrous and will probably have your Internet friends worried sick or anticipating the greatest short story of all time.

As you can see from the previous time stamp on my blog, I’ve been gone a while now. This absence was, for the most part, unforeseen, and a result of my new job and the other trappings of “real” life. Even when I did have the time to break silence, I crumbled every time I even thought about starting a new post. I would open Tumblr and think to myself, “I’ve been gone for a month and all I can offer the Internet is this Django Django YouTube video? What the fuck…” I don’t know if this was simply my own neuroses at work or what, but it was a strange burden.

So this, right now, is me copping out and clearing the air in the most matter-of-fact manner possible. To clarify: I wasn’t making a statement, I haven’t given up yet, and there’s no creative masterpiece coming ‘round the bend. All things considered, I’m just glad to break the social media moratorium – even if it is in the least interesting way imaginable.

The beer is bought. The aloe is packed. The sleeveless tees are folded ever-so-gently in the Eddie Bauer tote. That’s right, folks…I’m headed Up North to the Maus Family Cabin for the first time this summer.

For those of you not in the know, the Cabin is a sacred place where real problems like bills, slow Internet streams and being out of Snyder’s pretzels are replaced with “lake problems,” such as jet-ski buoyancy, deciding what alcoholic beverage to have with breakfast and complying with no wake zones.

Ah yes, the Great, Grand North...a place where serious things become mere trifles because either your mouth is full of beer or your head is under water.

#minnesota #lake #cabin

Last night, I went to the 8:00 pm showing of “Moonrise Kingdom” in an anxious and upset way. For one reason or another, I thought that the pastels and whimsy of Wes Anderson had the kind of emotional stuff that could white wash clean some of the crud blocking my serotonin receptors. I went alone, to get away from people, and the heat, but I didn’t find what I was looking for at the Lagoon Theater.

Immediately, I was surrounded by 40-year-old adolescent couples and actual adolescent couples. I mean, if for some inexplicable reason, I wanted the theater to be full for “Moonrise Kingdom” in my mood on a Wednesday night, I would want it to be full of 75 lonely people sitting exactly three seats apart, interacting only with the most economical sidelong glances. Instead, I was treated to omnipresent guffaws and the deep smack of Milk Duds being chewed in unison – the type of primordial environment that only makes sense corned outta your gourd on whiskey at something like "Total Recall" or a Jason Statham movie.

The film itself just made things worse, and it wasn’t even awful. I just wasn’t willing to give it a chance. The soundtrack and that narrator and the cast of children – especially the two leads – made my stomach turn every which way. It was, to me, the absence of meaning dressed up as something precious and true. But what the fuck did I expect heading into a Wes Anderson film about the trials and glories of adolescent love in 1960s Khaki Scout Rhode Island?

Seeking edification via “Moonrise Kingdom” was moronic. The movie only opened my eyes to what makes for such rotten Wednesday nights, and that is, that the briefest thought can pierce through the most saccharine celluloid moments, and leave you feeling like you somehow deserve better.

#moonrise kingdom #wes anderson

#spectrals #get a grip

If you were that NPR intern, what would you be doing right now?

Would you be filming a YouTube confessional promising to buy every flexi disc released by small, NYC-based imprints from now until the end of time? Would you be staving off panic attacks with loads of benzos and flasks? Would you be stomping around regretting the fact that you didn’t just write an innocuous blurb about the Truth of Fiona Apple?

These are the kind of moments that make me grateful that I run a blog of zero consequence and work for a giant corporation where my personal mark is obscured completely. I mean, I get pretty distressed by the wrinkles on my dress pants on a given Tuesday afternoon, so I don’t think I have the mettle to withstand what Emily White has.

#NPR #emily white

#metronomy #nights out #on the motorway

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