Sunday, February 23, 2014

This is What the Music Does to Me

Increasingly, as time goes by, I get referred, by people in the general public, including by both people who know me well and by people who barely know me, as a hipster.  After having meditated on it a long time, I still can't understand why everyone feels the need to label everything and everyone.  We are all human beings, and we don't need to be branded, homogenized within a category as a part of a system that is set up to sell us the material shit that we don't truly need, those shiny things that so easily distract us and make us forget about how truly shitty everyone treats everyone else and everything.  It's all just so absurd.

That is why I choose to live the way that I do, because after a certain point, you just have to accept the things that you cannot control and you just let go, and be at peace.  I am at peace with the things that I cannot change, because I have no more control over the external world than anyone else does.  Letting go of what doesn't matter is an essential aspect of growing up and moving on and just getting in sync with the rhythms of life.  It is the only way one can be truly honest with oneself.  By surrendering.

Not to the abyss, but to the light.  To swimming with the current and seeing where it takes you while you just enjoy the ride with those who are around you, good times with good people.  Reminiscing about the bygone era when you were faithful to the supreme restlessness of youth, the anarchy of mind and spirit when you thought you were in control but really you were just being selfish.

Maybe we should all be politicians and show our impostors how they need to grow up and be responsible for the mistakes that they have made.  That is a thought, but really I am just as much a part of the problem as anyone ever was, and there is really no solution because, well, that's just how life is.  We are a bunch of inflated donkey dicks in a circle jerk parade.  We all go around with mirrors on our foreheads so we can watch ourselves jack-off from each others' perspective.

But what we don't realize is that, as out of control as it seems, we put ourselves in this position because we start to take ourselves and our ideals too seriously.  What we need right now is to give into our shame and start to move forward and just wear it.

I myself would rather be happy.  In that way, shame can be my blanket, and at least I can rest comfortably at night.  It is the best thing on earth when you can fool yourself into a peaceful state of mind, for at least a little while, before you have kids and that's when you have to be selfless.  If that's what shame can bring me, I will build a fort with it.  God bless America!

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Monty-Python-inspired Graffiti

In school, I used to draw a lot of silly little cartoons all over notebooks, chalkboards, men's bathroom stalls, etc...  Not as much of the latter as the others, although I have always, in general, appreciated the absurdism and anarchy that you find in many public restrooms.  This type of graffiti art is what has inspired me to add this graffiti to these seven print copies of Out in the Garage.

While I don't expect these to ever be worth anything or for anybody outside my immediate circle to appreciate, it is something that I feel compelled to do as I feel like it adds to the story that I worked so long and so hard to finish.  It is also a way for me to not take myself so seriously.  I really try hard to not be pretentious -- even though it is in my nature as an over-thinker.

Anyways, the art is also inspired my my love of Monty Python, and specifically Terry Gilliam's cartoons, which are simultaneously brilliant, entertaining, and outrageous. I am going for the same sort of outside-the-box thinking, in my own style, of course.

There is one more in the process, and two that I have yet to begin, but this is an ongoing project, for now.  I am giving them all away (except for my two copies) to friends and family.

This one is for all intents and purposes finished.  It is being given away to someone.
This one is incomplete.  It is also going to someone.

These are my two copies (they are two different proofs).

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Herman Melville, You Motherfucker...

Good God.  I am going to give it one last shot.  It came to me: an epiphany.

Before I give it up, before I let it go, before I decide to switch, once and for all, to a non-thesis track, I am going to throw myself at it, head first, so that way by the time my head stops spinning my fingers will be on fire and I will type like the wraith of Hell is pressed up against my ass.

I just have to believe in Hell, first.

This coffee tastes like shit.  I guess it's just as well that the Keurig is putting less water in and it is beginning to taste a little like motor oil.  It's bitter but a little nutty like a good stout beer.

For it I must sacrifice for myself, for a time period: sleep, and sanity.

It's just as well.  Those things are overrated anyways.  Society has made such a to-do about them, but, yet, if people stopped and looked around at the general fucking nuthouse that society has become, then they will realize that it is just the new normal.

Herman Melville, you motherfucker, here I come...









Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Lab Rats in a Laissez Faire Labyrinth

Look around, and see that we are lab rats, running around our maze, constantly being probed and prodded by faceless institutions and corporations to act and react and lead each other into a more confused state---and there is no end to the maze, it only leads in circles.  

Archaeologists and anthropologists from some future civilization are going to unearth our ruins and our ruined remains---just like we have done to those that came before us---and try to figure out what happened.  They  will see how we butchered each other trying to get out of the labyrinth while those others watched from their lofty peaks, writing and rewriting history to clean themselves of responsibility for anything.

We are all distracted by the digitized reflections of our Ids, and we buy into the propaganda and dumb down our values to this black and white opaque transparency.  We are being controlled, manipulated, while just 10% of the world's people control over 80% of the world's wealth, and there is nothing we can do or will do because we are too distracted.  We let our lives get worse, and we only continue to work towards someone else's advantage, and we just accept it as the status quo.

Dystopia is Utopia: war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.  We are trapped in a laissez faire version of the Orwellian nightmare---unless we act and clear away all the nonsense, and work together to figure out real solutions to the problems that plague us.  The solutions are not going to come from the corporations, the politicians, the wealthy elite, it's going to come from the every day, ordinary people, who see more and know better and realize what is happening.  

There are more of us than we can imagine who still actually hold those truths to be self evident.  It's going to take more than a ball of string to get us out of our labyrinth, but, if we work together, we might yet find a way.

NOTE:

In order to proactively correct mistakes that I missed when I published Out in the Garage, I went back through and proofread it again and have made the corrections to the manuscript.  The updated ebook version is available on Smashwords and shortly will be available on Amazon through the Kindle Store.  It will be available again in paperback in a couple of days.

The changes are relatively minor in nature, but I felt it was necessary to do so---as to make a better effort towards professionalism.  While I cannot guarantee these will be the last changes I make, I have no intention of making any more at this time.  I have learned that I need to buy another proof and go through it again until I no longer need to correct any typos---which are basically the only things I really changed.

As a writer and a publisher, this whole process is in every way a learning experience, and I hope, as I continue to write and publish my own books, that I can avoid making these mistakes in the future.

On another note, my short story collection, Tales from the Fringes, received a 5-star rating on Goodreads.  Here's to many more!  *raises imaginary champagne glass to imaginary audience*