When you're in your mid to late 20s, Halloween is pretty much the most important holiday. See Halloween 2005 here.
Friday at the House of Love (English grad students), Saturday at Grant and Ben and John's house. Please enjoy these digital images.
The spam keeps getting better. The artifical intelligence behind this spam is pretty cool.
"A frustrating paycheck assimilates the steam engine. Some pork chop over a grand piano pees on an inferiority complex living with the garbage can. A knowingly dirt-encrusted photon falls in love with the fruit cake. An umbrella brainwashes another parking lot. Some pork chop for the mortician, some globule, and the fractured industrial complex are what made America great!"
She was very thirsty. Most of her body’s blood had spilled onto the concrete.
From the hole in her side.
From the placed it had pried.
Away the taught youthful skin.
And busted her bones in two.
Her liver disinterred.
Grated on impact and leaked all its juices in blue.
And gray and red and green it ran out of her body to sidewalk and through.
It a man walked, shaken confused, he’s lost all his mind, forgotten of time, he limps.
Like hot red shrapnel had pierced his thigh which it had he cried out loud:
“Why, oh why, must this girl die a painful death on the street?”
“Mothers and fathers and friends are dead.”
“I’ll probably die soon too.”
”So fuck the world and fuck the bombs and fuck the riflemen there.”
“Fuck you! I said, listen to me, fuck everything that's true.”
I've been super busy lately doing philosophy. Philosophy is funny.
This passage struck me as particularly funny. It is from Hilary Putnam's "The Meaning of 'Meaning'".
"Imagine that we someday discover that pencils are organisms. We cut them open and examine them under the electron microscope, and we see the almost invisible tracery of nerves and othe organs. We spy upon them, and we see them spawn, and we see the offspring grow into full-grown pencils. We discover that these organisms are not imitating other (artifactual) pencils - there are not and never were any pencils except these organisms. It is strange, to be sure, that there is lettering on many of the organisms - e.g. BONDED Grants DELUXE made in U.S.A. No. 2. - perhaps they are intelligent organisms, and this is their form of camouflage. (We also have to explain why no one ever attempted to manufacture pencils, etc., but this is clearly a possible world, in some sense)...In a way, the case of pencils turning out to be organisms is complementary to the case we discussed some years ago...of cats turning out to be robots (remotely controlled from Mars)." (p.242-3)
She worked at the coffee shop on the same block
of the biggest beer store in town.
I used to hate her, now I bait her
to look in my direction.
I yell out things like "Yo, bitch! Nice Ass!"
(which always works).
She looks over and I smile wide
and try to look fly but stumble on the sidewalk.
One time she flipped me off which I consider to be progress
because typically she just doesn't notice.
Which seems odd. She's got to wonder who the big hairy dude yelling obscenities from across the street might be.
I mean, come on. You'd think she'd call the cops or some shit yo.
She must be one of them weird, creepy specimens that I don't wan't to have anything to do with.
Peace out.
The liaison between my s and my vowel makes for a cute pair. Vous aimez-vous? Lascivious little liaison, they laugh like loons. The cutest thing you've ever seen? A particular fille jeune. But sitting there in the field, minding each others ears, a cow walks up that doesn't notice them there on the page so little in the middle all alone in the sentence, MOOOOOOO!, that's right, just back up a little bit here, chewin' my cud, da da daaa, I'm sooo full of hay and corn, ahhhh, FLAP FLAP FLAP PLOP FLAP, the little pair no more.
Making progress feels good. It might be the best feeling thing I can think of revealing right now. At least after weeks of stasis. Regress. Weeks of ideas running splat into walls, slowly, sticky, sliding ideas coming to rest in a glycerine puddle on the concrete floor of my brain. All used up, turned out, crumpled and vacuous from the start anyway. I peeled the layers of disguise away to realize that, they all turn out to be crap. This one will probably too. I just hope it has thicker skin than the others.
I’m sitting in Encore Café. I was here last night too, but not to make ideas. I’m here now to make ideas and to write them down on this computer. I enjoyed several cups of coffee, accidentally putting soy creamer in the first. That was a bummer. I just saw the ‘cream’ part and poured away, without a care in world.
Now I’m enjoying a late lunch of carrot-potato soup, garlic roasted potatoes, and a hefty turkey sandwich on a baguette with red onions, cucumbers, and herbed cream cheese. Rather spot on with my bottle of Stone IPA. They wouldn’t sell me a bomber of Runination to drink here. I says to ‘em, I says, “Well I can buy two 12oz bottles and drink those right?”
“Well, yes sir, but we can’t sell you the 22oz bottle to be consumed on the premises.”
This is when I kind of freaked out and shoved the fat girl who was ringing me up. She slammed into the wall and slid to the floor quite like my ideas although with more of a thud. It created a scene. Several bike hippies tried to contain me but I’m big and they’re not.
So I’m sitting here now in the corner eating my sandwich and drinking my beer and typing away on my laptop like nothing happened, everybody’s looking at me, the manager talking on the phone, probably with the police.
I should leave.
Click on the picture for a very large version.
Our bodies were covered in lava colored battery acid. The explosions gained momentum as the night progressed. Despite common stereotypes, the Belgians are a corrosive people. Particularly the Flemish. First it was the hop. Gut wrenching acids introduced into early 15th century England cleverly attached to an otherwise perfectly pleasing and functional plant. Moving west, across the ocean, Flemish Manifest Destiny has arrived on out own shores. This time under the guise of otherwise innocuous microorganisms trained to produce low ph metabolites. Puckered were our cheeks. Denameled were our teeth. Exhausted were our salivary glands. A night to be remembered. A night to be feared.
When I left, Ryan and Dar were cowering in the corner crying in each others arms with a bottle of ammonia at the ready, “You’ll be neutralized you bastards! Don’t come near us!”
First, out of the gate, Melbourne Bros spontaneously fermented strawberry ale. The odd spontaneously fermented beer from...England. Smells like musty jam. Very jammy. Rich. Jam. But with a hint of musty, brett like character. Very sweet on the palate. Like diluted strawberry jam. Jam. Fairly tart finish, but is it from the strawberries? Pectin? Jam? One can’t know for sure. Would later be used as a salve for the inside of our cheeks.
Then Ryan’s homebrewed raspberry lambic. Maturing very well. Now four years old. Really nasty in the nose. Spot on. Like very yellow urine. The pisser hasn’t drank anything but raspberry syrup for days. And mushrooms and mildew. The pisser was pissing on a patch of rotten horse manure. Well, not that bad. On the palate this beer backs off a bit. Drier than our last tasting. With a solid acidity, but nothing like that to come. A pleasant, clean finish with a hint of raspberry. Bravo Ryan, Bravo.
The Vichtenaar sour ale was well past its best before date of June 2005, but it was actually better than the last bottle I had. Very sweet, but well balanced by a hefty sour side. Well assimilated. Get some oaky notes and kind of a chocolate covered cherry sort of thing even though there are no cherries here.
The Petrus sour ale was also well past it’s best before date, but it too had held up well. Not very tart or sour after the Vichtenaar it showed a nice malt character in the nose but more so on the palate. Special B? Chocolate malt? Very nice.
The two De Proef Primitive ales were interesting. Each about the same color, same strength, 9% abv, about the same carbonation, about the same final gravity. But the bottle with the “pig nun” and the “little armored thing” on the label was a much calmer ride. Fairly smooth all the through. A bit of funk in the nose but subdued. Big fermentation character, maybe a touch tart in the finish, hefty hopping, but all in all a very easy ride. The bottle with the “red caped bird” on it was an adventure. Massive dry hopping in the nose and maybe some spicing. The palate was herky-jerky all over the place. Much hoppier, big spicing?, much more tart in the finish. Reminded me of a slightly sweeter, spiced Orval.
The Rodenbach Grand Cru was much more intense than expected. The nose is absolutely funk-a-licious. Straight up cheese. Or smelly shoes. Really funky. Really puckering on the palate. Very sour. Definitely the most sour so far. Fairly sweet with a decent malt character underneath it all though. But still really tart.
The New Belgium La Folie was a whole new level of acidity. Supposedly brewed to be less sour than Rodenbach, our opinion was that this beer blows Rodenbach out of the water in terms of sourness and sheer acidic power. Much drier than Rodenbach, or at least so perceived, this beer strips teeth of enamel and sets your saliva glands to pumping out copious quantities. Much less complex than Rodenbach, but more aggressive. My bottle is marked 05-2030.
“Quit starin’ at my mouth, boy.”
I’m staring at his mouth. His lower jaw juts out sharply to the left. Broken bone that never healed quite right? Black, vegetal flecks of Copenhagen stick to his lower lip, a thin trail of brown saliva navigates his significant stubble. It rounds his chin. He sees me tracking its progress. Wiping the juice away quickly with the grease-stained cuff of his untucked blue Dickies work shirt he yells “Quit lookin’ at my goddamn mouth!”
He’s a short, wiry, dark haired man with a mustache and long tangled locks boiling out from under his dirty, boxy, mesh-backed ball cap. He’s got a long, bony face with deep sunken eyes and bushy brow. Big ears and a big nose. His once-blue work pants are now darker with grease and oil. Large black leather boots are out of proportion with his very skinny frame. He’s filthy. A mechanic maybe? Waving the rifle around now, veins and arteries ribbing his skinny, sinewy, red neck. He’s worked up. “You fuckin’ college boys come up here like you own the place. Well you don’t. I own it! And one of these days I’m gonna’ shoot one of you little shits for trespassin’. Now tell me you’re sorry and that you won’t never come up here again.”
“But sir, I just wandered off the trail. I was looking for a shortcut down to the river and I certainly didn’t mean to cause you…”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Screaming this slowly, breaking the phrase into three distinct parts, daa da-daaa daaaa, his voice broke. Frothy pods of brown chew spit sprinkle my face as he pronounces the f. He was clearly drunk. Or completely insane. Couldn’t be reasoned with either way. “Do you want me to shoot you? Cause I will you big piece of shit. You ever see what a .243 ‘ill do to a deer? Blow it’s shoulder clean off from 100 yards!”
“Ok man, ok. You’ll never see me again. I’ll never come back up here.”
“Now start runnin’. If you’re not out of my sight by the time I count to thirty I’m gonna’ start shootin'. Now git!”
The only way to go is up. Open forest as far as I can see down the hill, there’s no way I’d cover that distance. I’ll try to make it up and over the rise. Big strides, trying to run but it’s steep and the new fall leaf litter slides against the old. I slip and stumble and my muscles ferment. Holy shit please don’t let me die in the woods, shot dead by a drunk mechanic. Almost there. CRACK! and a again CRACK! he shoots. The rifle’s deafening. My ears are ringing. Jesus fucking Christ I don’t want to die. CRACK! CRACK! One of the bullets ricochets to my left and sounds like a tightly wound spring being plucked. My body is vibrating with adrenaline. I’m melting. I scramble over large rocks and fall into a tangle of logs and mountain laurel. CRACK!
“And stay the fuck out!” I can barely hear his maniacal laughter over my breathing and heart beating. I vomit a little in my mouth and it burns. I let it run out and into the dirt. A small, bright blue metallic beetle clings to a blade of grass just inches from my face. Precariously perched, preening antennae.
As the African continent forced the rock to fold, a river cut a notch in the ancient sandstone.
One thousand feet deep.
Barree Gorge is a rugged, roadless place where Tussey Ridge is cleaved in two by the Little Juniata River. The red, orange, and yellow of late October cloaks the ravine in autumn brilliance and cold, crisp air makes the fresh fallen leaves crackle underfoot as I walk shaking. The dark blue water tumbles round rocks, swirling in pools serene from above.
I plot a course far west of the trail through the trees to avoid any more unfortunate encounters. I’ll walk along the river back to my car. It’s overcast. I should hurry.
But descending towards the river the water becomes white. Thick heavy cream lumbering through rapids. Red maple leaves swell to plump, fist size raspberries and float in the cream’s current. A pale, beautiful, naked woman sits in a small rock pool, breasts full and bulging. She says something softly to me in a delicate French accent: “I am sorry”.
I eat her slowly with a large silver spoon.
She’s sickly sweet.
my hangover undulates in periodic motion
slowly surging
nausea builds
dizzy shriveled brain unhappy
very gassy
garlic sausage melted cheese
four eh em
bad eye dee
uh
I have finished part two of my piece for Indianabeer.com. The Scottish accent of the Segway gang leader doesn't come through very well because of a formatting error, but such is life. Click on zee picture to read it. 
