Celebrate your Deathday!

For those of you who hate birthday(I'm ambivalent myself) here is a thought: instead of birthdays, which are so egocentric and self-important, we should celebrate our death day. Now it sounds morbid on the face of it but listen: we pick a day of OUR choosing and celebrate our eventual death.

When you are born you have no choice as to when where and to whom you are born. But our death day, we get to choose. We choose not as dependent infantile human beings but as autonomous and free and beautiful people.

And on this day we reflect joyfully and with a good deal of sarcasm on our eventual death. Instead of a birthday where you go "one more year closer to death" on your deathday you reflect back on the year you had and say "fuck, I am alive and i had a pretty decent time of it, I wonder what this year will be like? I hope it doesn't suck..." And then you take another shot of tequila.

You see, a celebration of death is more of a celebration of life then a celebration of birth. But its not supposed be all that serious. Someone's death day is a day for morbid jokes, and laughter, and irony. Looking at how fucked life is and laughing at it with friends and drinking too much, laughing too much, talking too much, life in excess on the day your eventual death. And the whole idea of having a "deathday" on the face of it is morbid and hilarious and ridiculous and flies directly in the face of this stupid institution called the "birthday". Oh, and no gifts on deathday! On your death day you give gifts to your friends; gifts low in monetary value but high in sentimental or intoxicating value. (ie handwritten letters, framed pictures, shots of tequila ect)

The B Sides

Ah shit... now I have two blogs. The new blog, Overextended Meta4 is strictly devoted to poetry. I have a feed on this blog linking to material on the new blog. So when I post a poem it should automatically update this blog with a link to the new poem. So...instead of keeping track of two blogs you only need to track one. Pretty slick I think, if it works...

Oh and you can now just go to www.meta44.com to get to this blog. Yeah, I'm a nerd, I got my own domain, but hell ,it was $7.00 for a year. Why the hell not?

September 11, 2007

I sit in one of the cafes
On positively fourth street
Too certain with no fear
Reading Machiavelli
Like this Sunday’s editorial
“the state will collapse”
When god dies and fear revolts

God is grasping for breath and we have nothing to fear
Our parents have felt the seams of society come loose
So they dare not ask us for a sacrifice
With their wealth they don’t need our bodies
But we will need the bodies of our unborn children

We have no memory of the altar
Never had to make the choice
To burn, to run, or to fight and die
With anxious but spotless minds
We ask our lambs to sacrifice
But they will not fear a dead god
They must fear us
If they refuse to ascend the steps
they will at knife point
but fear will revolt and the knives
will be at our throats
and with our blood a new god will rise.

...

inspired by W.H. Auden's September 1, 1939

Knots know

No knot, not knows
nothing. Sum things
know things nautical,
some not articles.
Knot art tickles
cots caught
gnarled cuticles,
tickles cut.

Raccoons in His Eyes

Raccoons in his eyes
Squirrels in his heart and
Bees in his blood
And folds of skin
like warm wax

He opens his mouth to laugh
The squirrels pierce the ears.

Another drink, and another.

“How long have you been…”
Raccoons dance
and dart,
rolling folds find their proper pose

Another joke, more squirrels, another drink

And the bees begin to infect my blood
And the skin on my face disconnects from my soul

Temptation Divided by Torpidity

Temptation divided by torpidity,
split asunder by academy's devior.
tepid rivulets carving time's soil
to conjugate 'nief the light of a city

Telephone Poem

Sitting here at work
bored.
Time's death,
held off by ten short lines.


Her
blue words, are a cure for

beige.

The Solipsist

The solipsist reads her words
and “cringes at the sight”.
Not to be discouraged
He diggs into the verses’ blue soil.
Stained with ink and confusion,
He comes back up for air.
And covered in words not his
he looks into the mirror
and recognizes himself.

Escape

Dust pumps slowly
through the narrow veins
in the crux of my arm.

Dry air leaks
from a dozen small holes
in my chest,

and beige thoughts crawl
around the florescent lit knots
on either side of my head.

My yellows eyes rest
on the pithy quote that adorns
my cloth lined cage

“Bureaucracy is a circle
from which one
cannot escape”

And I smile.

Comments: So yeah this the first poem I have written that I am not completely embarrassed to put out there. Not sure how comfortable I am about writing about work. I mean, shit, I already have to be here, not sure if i should be spending time writing about it. Unless of course...i write about work while i am at work. Yeah i guess I am ok with that. Oh, quote by Karl Marx.

Because I Don't Want to Study

Latest Random News:

- I bought a bike from my buddy Carl over at Everyone Is Dumb It is one of those hip single speed bikes. Its super light, very fast and my chances of making it to the age of 24 are slim. I love to go fast and I am an idiot. It doesn't look good folks.

- I am the newest employee of Dakota Jazz Club. This my first real job in the restaurant biz and I am excited. My friend Melinda over at My Roommate Has a Beard has some experience in the resturant biz and has been cluing me in. According to her working at a restaurant is like high school but with even more sex and cocaine. This job is gonna be fucking awesome.

An actual reproduction of a text message conversation between Melinda and I after I scored the job:

Me: Got the job at the Dakota. Holla!

Mel: Yes! Awesome, congrats! When do u start? I can't wait for all the coked-up sex hi-jinks stories! When do we celebrate?

Me: Me and the boss just did 4 grams off the snare drum and I feel like god. i love this job!

Mel: OMG, so dude im totally in class right now, the teach is lecturing and I just burst out laughing. So great.

Me: Yes!

- I just bought a iPod Shuffle. It's awesome, and I love it. I am not a fan of consumerism or brand names but if Apple made cliffs I would probably jump off 'em. That doesn't make any fucking sense. My friend Sarah over at Sarah's MySpace Blog has the exact same model and color (orange).

- My friend Frances over at Frances Lost in Space is in Venezuela being a total bad ass doing bad ass shit. She is 22 years old, in the middle of the Venezuelan jungle near the border of Colombia teaching University level classes on socio-economics and getting harassed by the government (actually more harassed by bed bugs then the government but yeah... a total bad-ass)

Thats enough for now.

Privatization of Violence

I am never enthusiastic to support any kind of violence however I do believe that in a democratic society it is the government, accountable to the people, who should hold a monopoly on over its use, not a private for-profit company like Blackwater, whose name Stephen Colbert pointed out is "cartoonishly evil". Check out their logo:Wow, if that doesn't scream "amoral greedy lawless mercenaries who do the governments dirty work" then I don't know what does.

These guys creep me out. What's even more scary is the implications. The one thing governments, for all times, have had a monopoly over, the thing that might even define them as governments, is the ability to legally enact violence, either on its own citizens or another state. Like so many other government "services" it is being privatized and outsourced, to be held accountable not by citizens but by shareholders.

Here is the latest story on Blackwater from the New York Times:

Another Probe Involving Blackwater

A report on Blackwater by The Nation's Jeremy Scahill

Raccoons in his Eyes

Raccoons in his eyes
Squirrels in his heart and
Bees in his blood
And folds of skin
like warm wax

He opens his mouth to laugh
The squirrels pierce the ears.

Another drink, and another.

“How long have you been…”
Raccoons dance
and dart,
rolling folds find their proper pose

Another joke, more squirrels, another drink

And the bees begin to infect my blood
And the skin on my face disconnects from my soul

I need to get out of here.

The Battle for St. Paul: 1 Year Away

This is a trailer for the Republican National Convention Welcoming Committee, a group of anarchist organizing protests against the Republican Convention coming to St. Paul August 31st.

These are the guys at protest who will be lighting shit on fire and grabbing canisters of tear of gas with their bare hands and throwing it back at the cops.

Side Story: At the last protest I was at I stopped a group of these guys from taking apart this huge float-like puppet thing so that could use the wooden support beams as weapons against the cops. See, while the rest of us are protesting peacefully these guys start shit with the cops and then everybody gets tear gassed and shot with salt pellets. Not very fun.

Point: These guys are nuts. However they do have a sense of humor:



I guess some of these guys were involved in the recent clash between police and the activist group Critical Mass.

The Star Tribune reported that the normally peaceful monthly bike protest was "infiltrated" by protesters who sought to provoke police. I will put money on it that it was some of these guys. However the City Pages write up about the incident made it seem pretty clear the cops where out to beat some ass (anarchist or no anarchist).

While I have political sympathies with them I don't buy into the anarchist ideology or their methods. If I am going to swallow the pill of any radical ideology its going to be Marxism. Meanwhile I will just stick with my incoherent jumble of ideas I lazily call "democratic socialism" and stick to non-violent direct action (no Molotov cocktails for me...)

When a group is vastly out-gunned, be it by the cops on the street or society at large, it is their moral authority that is their source of power. Engaging in violent direct action only allows the authorities to strips us of our liberties beyond legal doubt and strip us of our moral authority in the eyes of the masses. To think one can engage in direct action with out consideration to how it is perceived by the sheepish masses watching us get our asses beat on television is to be either naive or to be a "True Believer"

True Believers: people who want to escape a flawed self by creating an imaginary self and joining a compact collective whole to escape themselves.

Why we are miserable.

Check out this article by David Wong at Cracked.com. It is a great piece about friendships in the age of text messages, emails and Facebook. He has some interesting points about text messaging (I am personally on the verge of boycotting them) and emails. I suspect the point about emails is that they are so quickly and poorly written. Email seems cheap, fast and informal and our writing reflects that. In my long email exchanges with friends overseas I have been trying a bit harder to write with greater clarity and proper punctuation but I am not usually sober when i do so my efforts have been falling a bit short.

7 Reason the 21st Century is Making you Miserable.
by David Wong

#1. We don't have enough annoying strangers in our lives.
#2. We don't have enough annoying friends, either.
#3. Texting is a shitty way to communicate.
#4. Online company only makes us lonelier.
#5. We don't get criticized enough.
#6. We're victims of the Outrage Machine.
#7. We feel worthless, because we actually are worth less. (my favorite one)

The Secret: Self-Help Books and Nietzsche

Walking to the elevators to head down to the cafeteria for lunch I saw my friend Sarah sitting on a bench near the windows reading a book.

“Hey, what’s up?”

I asked her what she was reading. She looked a little self-conscience. I read the title “Life is Now” or something like that. Oh… a self-help book.

“Hey, don’t laugh at me. I know I know. But it’s really good”

“Hey hey” I tried to console her. “As long as you are not reading THE SECRET”

“uh…Brandon…I have something to tell you”

“No, no don’t. I like you too much. I don’t wanna know”

“Somebody gave it to me…so yeah I read it” She said with an embarrassed smile on her face. “But it sucked…it’s so selfish, its all about money and success, not about making the world a better place”

We discussed about why The Secret sucked, and basically anything that puts financial success as its central value. We came to a broad consensus: Whatever you buy into, compassion for others has to be the main idea. We parted and I went down to grab some food.

I reflected on her embarrassment at me seeing her read that book. I thought about the reputation self-help books have among the cynical over-educated and over caffeinated. Then I realized as a member of this illustrious group I too was an avid reader of these types of books. However my self-help books are not written by Dr. Phil but by Karl Marx and Frederic Nietzsche. I am sure a few bodies are rolling in a few graves at making a connection between the soft-headed dribble of self-help books and the works of these preeminent thinkers. But I think for me at least, in the role they play in my life, there is a connection. We go to self-help books for help; For clarification when we are confused, for consolation when we are in pain.

I turn to Nietzsche for the same reasons. When I feel weak and lost, when I feel nihilistic, I turn to Nietzsche for not just answers, but for consolation. For consolation that there are, in fact, answers. Maybe even these pages and this author may not have the answer to whatever questions I have but reading the genius of his words gives me hope that humans can find answers. For much of his life Nietzsche, by all accounts was a miserable fuck. In constant pain and ill health but he wrote some of the most noble and beautiful words ever written and saw farther into the human condition then anyone ever had. But my hope does not come from his specific words or ideas, I am no worshiper of false idols, Nietzsche is no saint for me, but my hope comes from the recognition that Nietzsche, or Marx or any other great thinker was just a man- a bag of bones and chemicals. And look what they could achieve!

But there is another connection I failed to mention that is more flattering to the so called “soft-headed dribble” of self-help books. The basic premise of any self-help book is to provide instructions on how to live. How, as humans, do we live, how should we live. This is one of most fundamental questions of philosophy and a question underlying all studies of humanity, even those areas which deny any premise of seeking normative values. (talk about dribble, this is the academic sort). The very act of studying humanity weather it is through psychology or art or any other field is normative in its self. Through the very act of studying we are implicitly saying we should study psychology. The very act of study is a way we ought to live. But back to the point, a fundamental question of philosophy is “how do we live?”. That is the same question that self-help books try to answer, and it could be argued that they often times are more effective then even the most brilliant words of Plato. They key for self-help books, I suspect, is that they communicate something that can be understood by a more general audience. Sure when you really put the ideas under a microscope they disintegrate like wet toilet paper, but whose to say they have less pragmatic value then some of Freud’s incomprehensible theories? Does my supposed latent desire to fuck my own mother really tell me how to live my day to day life? Not really.

Like theory, I am sure there are self-help books that are more fundamentally sound then others. Consensus between Sarah and I was that The Secret, with its sole focus on personal self-interest, was not fundamentally sound, where as a devout Muslim, who reads from one of the grand-daddy of all self-help books, who tries to reach across boundaries of faith and form inter-faith communities, is operating on some fundamentally sound soft-headed dribble.

Updated: 15 minutes later...

So my friend Sarah read this post and came over with the book that started this discussion "The Power of Now". She pointed out a passage which address Nietzsche proclamation that "God is Dead" and then flipped to another page and had me read a passage she found especially interesting. I read and then flipped through a book I happen to have of Nietzsche's "On the Genealogy of of Morals" and tried to find a relevant passage. I found and aphorism which ended with a quote from some guy named Master Eckhart "I ask God that he rid me of God". Sarah came back over and ask me what I thought. I thought it was pretty interesting- that I agreed generally with it. Then I looked at the spine of the book a noticed the guys name- Eckartt Tolle.

Wait a sec. I flipped back to that random passage I had found with the quote from Master Eckhartt. I read the footnote "Master Eckhartt (1260-1327) was the greatest German mystic of the Middle Ages" I pointed it out to Sarah. "Weird, yeah, i just sent you a wikipedia link about the guy, I don't think its his real name" What a weird coincidence.

So I checked out the wiki page and turns out the guy is from Germany and of course took the name of the famous mystic that Nietzsche quoted, who in turn quoted Nietzsche and wrote a book that my friend read that started this whole conversation. I thought that was pretty weird and one hell of coincident.

A Saturday Night

So I went down to the Luce Blockalypse music-beer-and-pizza thing. Met up with some friends (Melinda, Ben and Andrea).

Ben had his first show with his new band the other night at Stasiu’s.

Band Name: Sneaky Pygmy.

Best Song (so far): Auto-Erotic Asphyxiation.

For the bridge Ben read out this text book “Auto-erotic Fatalities” he found in a dumpster at the U. As his band mates jammed he read in this low droning voice a medicalized description of hanging oneself while masturbating. I thought it was pretty cool. It reminded me of my Sex and Culture class. Pretty much everything reminds of that class.

Back to the Blockalypse: I purchased 20 meal/drink tickets (a dollar a pop). I ended selling a few back to Melinda and Andrea. I got a couple beers and stole a slice a pizza. I don’t think anyone was impressed. I guess sneaking off with food isn’t as impressive as it was when you were 16. It’s funny, I would have never have done that at 16, being a very serious 16 year old.

I wasn’t sure about Andrea or Ben but Melinda and I were there to check out the Alarmist. Melinda had told me good things. It was time for them to hit the stage so Melinda and I head towards the stage temporarily losing Andrea and Ben. I am always for getting right up to the stage, I don’t go to too many shows so when I do I want my ears to ring for days. Melinda is usually game but our other friends didn’t seem as enthusiastic. No big deal. The Alarmist were not that big of a deal anyways. So we held back and watched some of the more entertaining audience members.

A middle aged balled guy in a huge neck brace. He looked very serious and very uncomfortable having the fat under his neck pushed up through the bottom of his jaw. I imagined him head banging in his brace. Instead of bending at the neck, having to bend at the waste, and his arms up, fist and finger making the devil horns. I had a few laughs and passed the observation on to Melinda- I get a chuckle.

To the right- a slim well dressed graying couple in there late 50’s. “Oh she is drinking white wine” Melinda observes “Some lucky guy is getting head tonight”. I crack up.

A couple layers of people ahead of us is another 50 or so year old woman. Slim, dressed all in black with old beat up chucks. She is dancing like a mad woman. Some kind of punk/mosh dancing. Pretty much just bouncing around like a fool. We made a few cracks but I think we (at least I did) had some respect. She looked like she was having a great time. A lot better time then the guy in the brace or the stale, white wine drinking couple to the right. This lady could probably party harder then any of us and by the looks of it has been doing just that for many years.

The clouds looked like rain and soon enough produced. I was fine getting wet and rocking out but Melinda was dressed up and wasn’t down for getting soaked. Plans were quickly made: To the Red Dragon.

Ben and Andrea drove together; Melinda and I would meet them up there. It started raining pretty heavy so before we headed out I suggested we grab a couple of city pages to help stay dry. With the Pages over our head we started down the ally.

The paper wasn’t doing much. More of homage to the desire to stay dry then a successful attempt. Something caught my eye- behind a gray metal trash can was big piece of folded foam board. I tossed the Pages in the can and grabbed the board

“Here take this” I said to Melinda holding up one side of the foam board over her head. No hesitation from her, just surprised and approving laughter “Good idea!”, she hoist the board above her head and we walk down the ally looking like complete fools- albeit very dry fools.

After a few wrong turns and some confused looks from others on the stree we find her car. We ditch the foam board, pile in and head to the Dragon. A few drinks and a few eggs rolls there and then on to Liquor Lyles.

Turns out it was two for ones that night. Not a bad deal at all for a Saturday night. The place was pretty full and seemed like people were having a good time. After a few rounds of g&t’s, and cheap beer we became restless once again. Where too? Tiffany’s, St. Paul. Why? No clue. But it was an idea and our lazy minds attached. We got back into our various cars and to St. Paul we went. Ben and Andrea arrived there a few minute before us and called me. I guess there was a $6 cover and they were just going to head home. $6 cover? Bullshit.

So new plans began to form. To Goby’s- the ol’ standby. We arrive and ten friends are there to greet us. What a great place right? A round of shots (Melinda), a round of discreet puking (Sarah), and a pool cue into an eye (Sarah again…ouch).

The lights turn up and it’s bar close. Where too now? To Annie’s to drink some more and pass out. Thankfully Annie’s was walking distance. We go there, cracked some Mic Golden’s and Melinda orders a pizza from Luce. It all comes back around right? We started the night with Luce and ended it with Luce.

Things we getting late and we were not getting any more sober. Annie crashed in her bed around 3:30. A few wardrobe malfunctions later Liz soon followed with Melinda not to far behind. It sounded for awhile like they were fighting for bed space but soon enough all went quite. Out of curiosity I went and checked on them- nope, no lesbian orgy…damn!. So in disappointment I throw some pennies at them that were lying on Annie’s dresser. Nothing, they were out cold. After a visit to the john, I fell on the couch and started talking god with Sarah. After a few minutes of slurred pseudo-philosophy we let the late hour and intoxicants take over and quickly fell asleep.

Two minutes later Melinda comes out the bedroom, fully awake. “Ok lets go” Wait what? I passed out around 4:00am. I didn’t realize the sun comes up at 4:02. Fucking Christ. Oh, its 8:00. “the fuck is wrong with you?” I yell at Melinda. “Go to bed”. She laughs and grabs her keys. Fuck. We stumble into the car, laughing like idiots. It’s a curious feeling. Waking up drunk- not sloshed or anything, but drunk and its early in the morning. We are delirious- things seems really funny, if a little too bright. We drive back to Uptown and find our cars. A couple half drunken jokes and a few high fives and we go our ways and to our own beds to sleep the after noon away.

Some Poems, Vol. I

The Solipsist

The solipsist reads her words
and “cringes at the sight”.
Not to be discouraged
He diggs into the verses’ blue soil.
Stained with ink and confusion,
He comes back up for air.
And covered in words not his
he looks into the mirror
and recognizes himself.

Telephone Poem

Sitting here at work
bored.
Time's death,
held off by ten short lines.


Her
blue words, are a cure for

beige.

Temptation Divided by Torpidity

Temptation divided by torpidity,
split asunder by academy's devior.
tepid rivulets carving time's soil
to conjugate 'nief the light of a city

Escape

Escape

Dust pumps slowly
through the narrow veins
in the crux of my arm.

Dry air leaks
from a dozen small holes
in my chest,

and beige thoughts crawl
around the florescent lit knots
on either side of my head.

My yellows eyes rest
on the pithy quote that adorns
my cloth lined cage

“Bureaucracy is a circle
from which one
cannot escape”

And I smile.

Comments: So yeah this the first poem I have written that I am not completely embarrassed to put out there. Not sure how comfortable I am about writing about work. I mean, shit, I already have to be here, not sure if i should be spending time writing about it. Unless of course...i write about work while i am at work. Yeah i guess I am ok with that. Oh, quote by Karl Marx.

Obama

Obama came to the International Market Square on Friday. I was standing about 5 feet to the left of this guy who shot the video. After the speech I got to shake his hand. I have yet to wash my hand.

L’Étranger

Messing around when i should be studying for class...