Ten Minutes Spent Bathing in the Stream of Consciousness

Sitting here naked, the only sounds are the keys gently tapping away -- my own damn fault -- and the quiet constant humming of the fan next to me trying to bring the temperature down to optimal human temperatures. This summer's going to be a sweaty hell. Just outside: on the porch, recovering from a long day's worth of diarrhea and discomfort, my head is clear for the first time all day and terminally focused on the ant sharing the doorstep with me, slowly skittering across the entry to what to it must surely be God's house, incalculable inches tall, its' light and smooth stone in vast opposition to the naturally-grown environ this small soldier was surely born into. And there is a giant here, too: clad in green & blue, nature's colors, a mountain that sits cross-legged, its' armor bought on sale from the local capitalist's outlet, billowing smoke from near its' peak and hoping by God that it might not reach 2012. Logic and compassion, ethical endeavors, these are the X factors that plague theologians trying to unify our fleeting lives with the uncompromising eternity of existence. There is no court in nature, only courting. We spread our misunderstanding species-wide, 'til we're all so ingrained towards the idea that we all live under some invisible set of "natural laws" that the truth of the matter slips away, purged deep into the subconscious where it waits for awakening via global catastrophe. If ANY law can be said to govern us, it must be Darwin's: survival of the fittest. The lock-step order of the Hive Mind mentality will far outlast those who would rail against it, while the Hive simultaneously plucks what it sees as fruitful from these so-called extremists and incorporates these concepts into the Mass Routine. The worst part of it? I'm not even on drugs right now.

J.J. Abrams: Man or God?

Putting "Felicity" aside for the moment, which was obviously a stepping-stone to his more current works, is it possible that J.J. will be the new face of Sci Fi? Many might argue with this point, as his work inspires a love-it-or-hate-it mentality across the board. But then, science fiction hasn't ever really NOT had that effect. People are so quick to pronounce his newest film, "Star Trek," as either a flop or total smash that they forget that holy shit!: this is possibly the best use of the Trekkie universe in a good solid decade. And even before that, Roddenberry's immortal franchise hardly had a sterling record, anyway.

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Lost: Expanded Thoughts

I never really took the time to analyze the self-loathing I so constantly feel towards humanity, progress, even society on a very general level. So far I have been simply overwhelmed by the vitriol my mind seems so intent on spewing. But my resent is not unfounded: revolution is, after all, a survival instinct, a primal instinct.
It is hard to be on such middle ground that you can see both the sterling heights men and women can rise to and the shallow depths they so constantly mire in. How can you even say we even live in the same species when astrophysicists and philosophers of great preponderance routinely are mocked and swept under the table in favor of more news about Britney Spears or really any sort of reality television.
Too often are we ensnared by the shining future, or at least the less glowing trinkets hurled at us full speed from the television, internet, billboards, bus ads, and radio. People so sure of the little rules that govern their own small self-centered little universes that they never bother to pick their heads up even once and realize that about 90% of what they thought was the Truth is actually total bollocks.
Those with the Revolution in their eyes sucker to religion, politicians, and really even passing fads to help show them the way to happiness, which for them is almost certainly something you could put a dollar-count on.
But those who have been struck by these feelings are already shattered people, hopeless to amass into any sort of fighting force. Their paths begin with a breaking, after all: the snap of pre-conditioned thought that allows innovation and resilience to seep through. Explorers of ideas, they do not think "outside the box," but rather chart the ever-expanding reaches of said box, hopefully delivering the riches of these wild frontiers into mainstream society for the betterment of those so caught up in Right and Wrong that they cannot even begin the train of thought that will lead them to the conclusion that neither really exist.
But what happens when you lose your way? When you walk into the desert only to find the next day that your tracks have been erased and that there is no path home? Can a person survive for long in the wild, with only the barest memory of what the cities of Acceptable Behavior looked like?
But those cities only think in circles, and the circles always crumble. Revolution is FACTOR-X, revitalizing systems of abuse and discretion that have outlived their usefulness in those particular forms, making way for the new boss. Except that age is over. No more revolts. The technology gap is too wide now. It was possible in the 20th century (and before) to overthrow the Order, but now we live in a world where every phone can be listened to, every street corner watched, every person located by great orbiting satellites. There is no room to hide, there is no more wilderness. At least, that's what they're going for. And unless some sort of near-apocalyptic catastrophe comes out of the blue to snap us all out of our collective daze of collectibles and celebrity gossip, I honestly see Them (it's always a Them, and even They probably don't know that that's what they are) winning.

No more Revolutions. Where do you think you are, a free society?

Lost

What does it mean to be a part of the sea of humanity?
John Donne once said "no man is an island," but if one tries hard enough, they CAN become an archipelago. A disconnected yet still somehow tethered grouping of happenstances that makes one feel as if he is touching the mainland...but no. It is just another isolated hoboken, and the way back to the braying herd has become lost.

Notes From An Inauguration Concert

walking downtown...and it was worse than THAT.
so many people, crowds and crowds... and this wasn't even the big shebang...
jumbotrons...and immense mass of people from the Lincoln memorial straight down to the Washington Monument, and thousands more between there and the Capitol...
Even Garth Brooks rocked the District today.
And I hate Garth Brooks.
So many out of towners...everybody in the nationalist uproar. Flags and free drinks. Traffic like you wouldn't believe. Like trying to get across New York City on December 31st.
Amazing and enthralling and Obama even sang along to Brooks' rendition of "American Pie." Here's a guy with some spark to him, not just the same old sagging governors. D.C. flags everywhere, too.
Sheryl Crow ruins the Wailers, thank god Marley wasn't here to see this...
Goold ol' Sheryl, just another thing that other races don't get about white people.
Even with my embittered anti-nationalist tendencies, it's kind of overwhelming to be right there, caught up in the whole show of it. Jumbotrons for blocks, the whole of downtown packed in like sardines, or Chinese chirstians trying to escape the Motherland.
And the vendors! Everywhere, Obama-themed pins, buttons, t-shirts, sweaters, hats, earrings, earrings for gods' sake!, gloves, more t-shirts, posters, god knows what else.
Even in the bitter cold, it wasn't chilly, however. The warmth of a couple thousand-strong crowd seemed to allieveate the wintry grip that the City has been entagled by lately. Not a drop of moisture, mind you: snow is still a pipedream, but the wind rips through even the toughest jackets, which sucks for the many visitors who perhaps misjudged the exactly climes of the area before packing, but for those safely in the throng, its' like a winter miracle.

It bugs me, though. When we first saw people walking towards the Washington Monument...
It looked like people heading towards the Rapture.
Figures drawing into Heaven, Bliss, Oblivion.

His Holy Shadow

It's the Saturday night before the much-ballyhooed inauguration of the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama, who as Pastor David Manning informs me, is some sort of "mac daddy." Certainly worse epithets have been thrown at the President-Elect by men with much more clout than Dr. Manning (no offense, Doc!) and Obama's certainly embraced the turn-the-other-cheek methodolgy when it comes to these remarks.

It's been a hell of a campaign and a terrible shitstorm before that, and I nary meet a face anymore that isn't relieved that Bush will be gone in only a matter of days.
It seems like the entire world is flocking to D.C. for the event, and I've been told that there will be more port-a-potties set up for this event than have ever been deployed at once before in the history of the United States, a fact which really makes me worry.

So here I am, reading Hunter S. Thompson's absolutely stunning Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, when I got the silly idea to try to keep all of this down. The whole Obama Presidency, from a guy whose only political expertise is simply having grown up in the shadow of the whole thing, living in the city so enshrined as the "Capitol of the free world" that we gloss over the cameras mounted Big Brother-style in the streets and the indigent who will walk its' cold streets tonight in search of shelter. Obama being in office won't change their lives any more than Bush did, or Clinton before him. And I'm sure I'll only see more cameras as the weeks wane on.

Oh, and also: comic books.
Because I say so.