a_dilletante_rants stork daddy i was having the most interesting conversation the other day about how a very popular form of comedy these days is self-referential pastiche, as embodied by such popular shows as the family guy and futurama. by applying longstanding archetypes in popular culture to inappropriate situations, the very nature of these archetypes and of our own identity is drawn to its logical and yet absurd conclusion. we see what we should do by seeing what we should not do. my fellow conversant replied to this by saying...sir you aren't allowed in this delivery room and please put some pants on. i love these new cartoons that are the making fun of the application of a wrong social cue…a theory of cultural development. definitions of social currency are given at every corner. the inappropriate is applied to expose the appropriate. clearly you aren’t supposed to ask a girl if you should pay her after sex, but clearly it is a familiar emotion. you aren’t supposed to try and fling your baby in the pool, but it too is familiar enough for us to laugh at the surprising banality of our own emotions when condensed to a two second interrelationship. but it's even more than that, it's a dissection without murder of what makes something funny, why a pause starts to be funny, then ceases to be, then continues to be again. by taking things one step too far, we see how humor contains elements of surprise and familiarity. and this is why people don't feel like mindless sheep wearing family guy shirts. because stewie makes a joke about royalties later on that week. for a cynic to find even a single instance of a truth they hope exists in the world, they need only embody that truth themselves. that's a tall order for a cynic, who tends to distrust anything that isn't readily apparent. and the consistency of one's self is anything but. the spider might be my anti-totem. solitary, fastidious. building perfect webs. even in their imperfections perfect in supporting the weight of insect life and death. they were agile and only intelligent enough to bite you. there are people like that. I suppose I’m not one of them. oh look at me I’m so different and by implication better. no. maybe. after the weed, the cigarette buzz carried me down to the bed. I felt paralyzed as if aliens were restraining me for study. a cool breeze on my feet felt like the coolness of strange alien metal tools. on weed the other day my bathroom with the door closed seemed as cramped as an airplane bathroom. and i felt slightly cut off from the rest of reality, as if i had accidentally locked myself out of the rest of the universe and would only hear the slow droning of the fan for the rest of my life. i guess that's what most people think hell is...being aware of possibility but being somehow removed from them all. previous capabilities or capability in the abstract being the fruit always out of tantalus' reach. oh tell me now and tell me true, what's a person like us supposed to do? can there be existentialist bad faith and yet no free will? i suppose there can. if one accepts that in all people there are perhaps some deeper rooted interests and truths and that discovery and deference to those truths would enrich and recreate the subjective experience and so world of those people and that with or without free will our brains are often configured to think of the immediate surface requirements of the world (which we have deemed necessary to our deeper goals, but often mistake as independant of or somehow determinative of.) all i'm trying to say is that i should quit smoking. the criminal justice system presumes free will. i don't necessarily agree that it's a clear issue, but perhaps it makes sense to have a rebuttable presumption of freedom as our system does. we declare someone acted freely so long as they were not under influences which the average person would recognize as limiting even their ability to maintain an illusion of freedom. a gun to the head, a manic episode out of the cleary blue skies. oh my fighter friends don't see the poet in me and my poetry friends don't see the fighter. just pick a day to try something new. same old actions leads to the same old results. so just start now and give it a year. sure you won't have all the tools you wish you had. there's always more books to read more ideas to keep at your disposal, but just start acquiring them now. there's no clean break between night and day or yesterday and tomorrow. some decisions will be arbitrary. but the decision itself is not arbitrary. i mean sure in the sense that no matter what you do you'll be just another person in the end, subject to meteor showers, cancer, unruly other people...but any action directly related to making our experience more bearable can hardly said to be arbitrary from a human perspective. who you tryin to be...god? rick james? spalding gray? she walks on water. ain't it right ain't it right ain't it right. modern life is a virus. everywhere you turn the world seeps in and undermines the integrity you assumed of your borders of your limits of your rights. the computer slows from viruses, there's porn in the e-mail, deadlines are mixed in with bevmo's five cents sale. you don't know how to cancel half of your credit cards. no one devil has you, but many do. your self somehow fades into everything else around you. bodies become flowers but in a new way. you know? you ever respond to someone who's actually talking on their cellphone? it's embarassing. 051005 ... zeke ... and as in Chekhov, the action always seems to take place off stage. my opening line, carefully crafted, falls on deaf walls, ringing in the close silence. walls surround and keep out humor. they protect us from our own complicity. change comes in the form of windows, opened into the media world, bringing the other, with it's bitter tang of remote intimacy. and it fills me with laughter, which i had not intended to enact, forced from me like a difficult birth. open wounds do bleed, they empty me. the drip drip of conviction changes my hue and complexion, removing my pigmentary camouflage. the fires of meaning escape, leaving me transparent and exposed. just as a lens is a filter, i do absorb some truth. and i stop. 051005 ... ever dumbening sez: and then someone makes a first ever in blather reference to your workplace. don't call it a nickel sale. 051005 ... andru235 here's what i don't get, stork daddy. see, i found this very cool. i sort of relate (maybe not entirely, but still a lot). it seems like maybe we are on a similar page. but yet you disagree with pretty much everything i say, so clearly we are not on the same page. but still, as i read the stuff you have blathed over the years, i usually agree with you more than i disagree. this is also true of my feelings about what i myself blathe - i mostly agree, but sometimes disagree. i am not asking you to feign agreement; you obviously don't agree. i'm merely observing my confusion about yet *another* facet of existence. there i am, confused yet with a vague sense of understanding something ephemeral, yet again. *sigh*. hooray, i guess... 051028 ... andru235 too many yets, yet again... 051028 ... stork daddy see, because i don't disagree with everything you say. just your recent bouts with solipsism. which i've entertained myself before. i've really only argued with you twice that i can remember and that was in the past two days. i also don't have any real animosity towards you. i mean sure the ascii pages aren't my cup of teat as it were, but you seem like an alltogether fine upstanding citizen. i just didn't agree with one or two things you said. i can disagree with you and still like you. i'm glad you can find meaning in things i've written. the same goes for you. i believe people can communicate. just not perfectly. but it's enough. and i'm not 1983 u.s.c. 42 though i do agree with him and disagree with him as well from time to time. anyways, it's all shits and giggles. just remember it's just blather. 051028 ... andru235 o.k. 051028 ... - - 060809 what's it to you? who go blather from