Monday, May 25, 2009

I have no wants.

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice - 8/10. A nice line between not saying what you mean and not believing other people when they don't say what you think they should say.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

There's no history

but what people say.

Glory is acquired by virtue

but preserved by letters.

The history of the world

is the biography of great men.

Too low they build

who build beneath the stars.

Unabashedly

herself.

The kitchen sink.

Billy Liar - 7.5/10. Yorkshire lad finds it easier to lie than to become it. Youthful indecision in the style of everything afterwards.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Can I ask you a question.

Do you dream?

Thursday, May 21, 2009

That's dedication.

Anvil: The Story of Anvil - 7.5/10. Subject matter on par with 'The Wrestler,' except, uh, funnier, I guess. I want to make a movie about it being okay to give up on your dream.

I always try to not remember

rather than forget.

Ahh.

The joke has come upon me.

What's worse?

Passing it off as truth or passing it off as fiction?

People who vote for talent vote once.

People who vote for 'cute' vote twice.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

What will become of us who want to believe

but cannot?

When they cancelled the project,

they almost did me in.

Slavic deity

of whom much has been speculated but little can be said. It is indicated he was a dark and cursed god.

And none on this earth will ever get what they want.

And that is beautiful, or close enough.

I've got one things to say to the future's absolute poor:

I've got mine -- fuck you.

It's in our hearts, it's in our heads.

It's in our love, baby,
it's in our bed.

A bookmark

need not be a fancy thing.

'Til we've lost our voice,

we'll make a joyful noise.

Monday, May 18, 2009

It's time you decided what it is you believe in,

even if all you have to choose from are fictions.

Don't be.

We're just saying goodbye.

Monument

to memory.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

It's not that I dislike anyone.

It's that I don't like anyone.

Ehh.

7/10.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

You never seemed to pull the thread.

When the study asked you to indicate “some of the fundamental beliefs, concepts, philosophy of life or articles of faith which help carry you along or tide you over rough spots,” you wrote: “Hard to answer since I am really not too introspective. However, I have an overriding sense (or philosophy) that it’s all a big nothing—or ‘chasing after wind’ as it says in Ecclesiastes & therefore, at least up to the present, nothing has caused me too much grief.”

Maturation

makes liars of us all.

One brilliant woman from the Stanford Terman study had been pre-med in college;

when she was 30, a vocational survey identified medicine as the field most suitable for her. But her ambitions were squashed by gender bias and the Great Depression, and she ended up a housewife. How, the study staff asked her at age 78, had she managed the gap between her potential and her achievement? “I never knew I had any potential,” she answered. Had she ever thought of being a doctor? Never, she said.

You were clearly depressed, he observed,

and yet full of joy and vitality.

“I’ve answered a great many questions,”

you wrote in your 1946 survey. “Now I’d like to ask you people a couple of questions. By what standards of reason are you calling people ‘adjusted’ these days? Happy? Contented? Hopeful? If people have adjusted to a society that seems hell-bent on destroying itself in the next couple of decades, just what does that prove about the people?”

But you said your parents’ divorce was “just like in the movies,”

and that you someday “would like to have some marital difficulties” of your own.

“It’s very hard,” Vaillant said,

"for most of us to tolerate being loved.”

All I really want to do.

I ain't lookin to compete with you,
Beat or cheat or mistreat you,
Simplify you, classify you.
Deny, defy or crucify you.
All I really wanna do
Is, baby, be friends with you.

No, and I ain't lookin to fight with you,
frighten you or uptighten you,
drag you down or drain you down.
Chain you down or bring you down.
All I really wanna do
Is, baby, be friends with you.

I ain't lookin' to block you up,
shock or knock or lock you up,
Analyze you, categorize you.
Finalize you, just advertise you.
All I really wanna do
Is, baby, be friends with you.

I don't want to straight-face you,
Race or chase you, track or trace you,
or disgrace you or displace you.
Or define you or confine you.
All I really wanna do
Is, baby, be friends with you.

I don't want to meet your kin,
Make you spin or do you in,
or select you or dissect you.
Or inspect you or reject you.
All I really wanna to do
is, baby, be friends with you

I don't wanna to fake you out,
Take or shake or forsake you out,
I ain't lookin for you to feel like me.
See like me or be like me.
All I really wanna do
Is, baby, be friends with you.

What happened to you?

You grew up in a kind of fairy tale, in a big-city brownstone with 11 rooms and three baths. Your father practiced medicine and made a mint. When you were a college sophomore, you described him as thoughtful, funny, and patient. “Once in awhile his children get his goat,” you wrote, “but he never gets sore without a cause.” Your mother painted and served on prominent boards. You called her “artistic” and civic-minded.

As a child, you played all the sports, were good to your two sisters, and loved church. You and some other boys from Sunday school—it met at your house—used to study the families in your neighborhood, choosing one every year to present with Christmas baskets. When the garbageman’s wife found out you had polio, she cried. But you recovered fully, that was your way. “I could discover no problems of importance,” the study’s social worker concluded after seeing your family. “The atmosphere of the home is one of happiness and harmony.”

At Harvard, you continued to shine. “Perhaps more than any other boy who has been in the Grant Study,” the staff noted about you, “the following participant exemplifies the qualities of a superior personality: stability, intelligence, good judgment, health, high purpose, and ideals.” Basically, they were in a swoon. They described you as especially likely to achieve “both external and internal satisfactions.” And you seemed well on your way. After a stint in the Air Force—“the whole thing was like a game,” you said—you studied for work in a helping profession. “Our lives are like the talents in the parable of the three stewards,” you wrote. “It is something that has been given to us for the time being and we have the opportunity and privilege of doing our best with this precious gift.”

And then what happened? You married, and took a posting overseas. You started smoking and drinking. In 1951—you were 31—you wrote, “I think the most important element that has emerged in my own psychic picture is a fuller realization of my own hostilities. In early years I used to pride myself on not having any. This was probably because they were too deeply buried and I unwilling and afraid to face them.” By your mid-30s, you had basically dropped out of sight. You stopped returning questionnaires. “Please, please … let us hear from you,” Dr. Vaillant wrote you in 1967. You wrote to say you’d come see him in Cambridge, and that you’d return the last survey, but the next thing the study heard of you, you had died of a sudden disease.

Dr. Vaillant tracked down your therapist. You seemed unable to grow up, the therapist said. You had an affair with a girl he considered psychotic. You looked steadily more disheveled. You had come to see your father as overpowering and distant, your mother as overbearing. She made you feel like a black sheep in your illustrious family. Your parents had split up, it turns out.

In your last days, you “could not settle down,” a friend told Dr. Vaillant. You “just sort of wandered,” sometimes offering ad hoc therapy groups, often sitting in peace protests. You broke out spontaneously into Greek and Latin poetry. You lived on a houseboat. You smoked dope. But you still had a beautiful sense of humor. “One of the most perplexing and charming people I have ever met in my life,” your friend said. Your obituary made you sound like a hell of a man—a war hero, a peace activist, a baseball fan.

In a big cup, I put my hand

and took out the heart of a Cordovan girl.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Reason for being.

Ain't nothin' else to do.

A piquant, striking word

occurs to history almost always delayed.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Employee discount

at the Baby Gap.

Perhaps, in another reality.

Star Trek - 7/10. Hello, you flawed and entertaining motherfucker.

As a sidenote, I don't know if Chris Pine made a great Captain Kirk, but he did make a great Green Lantern.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Motherfucker ain't love a buffet

like this motherfucker is love a buffet.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Because you know how to feel,

and knowing how to feel is more important than how you feel.

I stared you down so hard,

I burned your shadow to the wall.

Keep it secret

like fire.

Saturday, May 9, 2009

My love,

I am the speed of sound.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

They split up.

One day, according to Karr, he broke her coffee table. She billed him a hundred dollars. He paid her and said that the remains of the table were now his. Karr told him that she’d used them for firewood, and that all he’d bought was “the brokenness.”

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

As subtle

as those three names will allow.

Hang tight, spidermonkey.

Twilight - 4/10. Vampires give piggyback rides.

Wolverine - 4.5/10. Sigh.

Monday, May 4, 2009

I don't care

what they say about us, anyway.

Weak-willed.

Dedicated sinners.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

More like

Thomas Pynch-one off, shorty, ha.

Betray a great thought

by simplifying it.

There's a thief

in your language.

Secrets

don't keep.

Saturday, May 2, 2009

I could've told you.

I'm not an idiot.

Looks to everywhere

as temporary.