Twenty-Seven+ Ways to Die in 2011

First, if you jump into the cold North Atlantic at dawn on no sleep and then don't eat and go to sleep,
you could get sick.

Second, a few weeks later, you could try to catch Walking Pneumonia at work, which is harder to catch than most diseases, because it keeps walking away, but then once you get it it's really hard to get rid of so I wouldn't recommend it. Lucky for me, I'm a runner.

Third, you could mess up the company rental car, or not have the money to pay for the parking garage, or coming back to pay the fifth dollar, you could startle the cashier while she's counting her money and that could just be the end of you.

Fourthly, there are always arguments with youth at the Cov.

Fifthly, you could have a heart attack trying to catch up with Jr. High youth playing freeze tag.

Or sixthly, you could get killed by the elders for playing with the tennis ball inside the church building.

Seventhly, you could get trampled by a cow at the PA farm show, or die fat and happy of a ice-cream induced food coma.

Eighthly, you could die of cold in Toronto, or die happy because the Curator of the Model Ships section of the AGO tells you amazing stories of ships that were snuck, carried, and sunk. Or you could die because Toronto is liberal and there are cannabis shops. Or because there are statues to Redcoats in prominent squares, and the locals might mistake you for an invading Fenian.

Ninthly, you could eat bad salmon. Or put craisins in your spaghetti (yum!).

Tenthly, you could get attacked by rioting youth on your way to work. Luckily the stones thrown were before I passed by. You could also die by driving the wrong way on a one way to avoid police barricades. They tell me you can die for being a white person in Back Maryland, but I haven't gotten shot at so far.

Eleventhly, you could make sexist comments to your housemates. Or take the car without asking. Or finish off the leftovers. Or leave a dish in the sink.

Twelthly, you could die spazzing over the possibilities of the future and your desire to be in eight places at once and do everything. Or there's the pressure of being a terrible friend and not responding to messages on time.

Thirteenthly, you could stumble across an illegal operation while looking for homeless people under a bridge.

Fourteenthly, you could break your face on the floor when you pass out because you are sick.

Fifthteenthly, you could die of awe over the awesomeness of the movie 12, or die because your roommate is trying to warn you, but you hear Russian coming out of his mouth, even though he is speaking English.

Sixteenthly, you could upset an ex with a youtube video.

Seventeenthly, you could stick with protocol and refuse to tell a parent whether or not their child is currently in the building.

Eighteenthly, you could talk to strangers in elevators.

Nineteenthly, you could try to slide/drive to Philly in the 6am snow and ice. (If you have a good housemate, he'll talk you out of this one.)

Twentiethly, you could write unprofessional messages to your boss.

Twenty-firstly, one could undertake pains to wrongly split infinitives.

Twenty-secondly, one could put your hands in your jacket while being searched by an overzealous policeman on your way to the library. Cops don't like hippies with purses.

Twenty-thirdly, you could walk to work in a blizzard and...I still haven't figured out what could have happened.

Twenty-fourthly, by pool stick.

Twenty-fifthly, you could die because you run out of money. This is what my brain tells me. However, I think it's actually food and air and water that you need. Still though, money is annoying, and it feels like it could kill you.

Twenty-sixthly, unrequited love?

Twenty-seventhly, and lastly, a poet-aster must always be wary of the grammar police, pun haters, rabid fans, and his own dramatic hubris. Alas, it's a dangerous business entering the blogosphere...especially when you don't continue your previous to be continued. Oh wells. Don't hate the player, hate the game??

La Familia

Firefly, Joss Whedon's unfinished (or half-finished, since Serenity came out) epic deep-space series, resonates very deeply with outsiders, with our crazy culture. It's a story of finding family in the most unlikely of places, of making family with the people around you in a fragmented society. Each character has an opinion on each of the others, a mix of respect and annoyance. Each individual finds a fragile but beautiful family brought together by chance, difficult pasts, and a little love.

I think one of the reasons that the poor are blessed is that they have to depend on one another. Because they realize they couldn't do what they're doing on their own. And perhaps one of the most destructive beliefs, no, it goes deeper than that, roots of American culture is the idea that in order to succeed, you have to leave it all behind and go it alone. You have to be able to make it on your own to be a real man, a truly independent woman. That in order to succeed, you have to go it alone.

Gangs are a reality of inner-city life in this hemisphere. You see the tags and tats in almost every major city: New York, Guate, LA, DF. On a local level, you could think of them as grassroots labour organizations or pyramid schemes, but I think the essential allure of gang life is family. Of knowing that when you walk out into the streets, you're not alone.

We're a homeless culture, the United States the vanguard in a global society where place is becoming less and less particular. In such a global society, flows of capital and labour mean that while a "living" might not be sustainable in an overcrowded refugee camp, the flexible and willing to compromise can rise to great heights thousands of miles from "home." But orphans of divorce, emotionally abandoned children, wealthy and poor line the halls of every school in every country. Those without family are manipulated to kill, prostitute, and suffer by evil and desperate individuals in places like Oklahoma City, San Diego, Pensacola, and Atlantic City. Out at 18, foster children in the United States, impovershed youth in Guatemala's slums, and orphans in the Ukraine all fall prey to gangs, suicide, and drug addiction. They medicate their helplessness with violence, their lonliness and lack of self-worth with sex and "under the table" medications. Many college students aren't that different. Grad schools and jobs lead us further and further away from family and often dehumanize us altogether. Those of us who are "good" often medicate these same afflictions that street kids face with much smoother veneers: we work for houses, cars, to "provide" for our family, and for the accolades of teachers and bosses, we volunteer and give, and these things make us feel accepted and good and a part of something.

But it's not family, it's not true community. I've seen family in Mexico: when churches and friends come together and truly focus on serving one another. When a family takes in abused, neglected, and previously unwanted children and makes them their own. I've seen family in Oklahoma, when a family invites me to share Thanksgiving with them, in worship nights, or when my friends and I would stay up til all hours of the night reading, eating, talking, and listening to music together. I've seen churches and schools in Lithuania adopt orphanages as their own. I've seen family in Russia as well: a couple of the church families I met there were truly extended, in that you couldn't really tell where blood ends, but you knew that family spread beyond just being related. I see family in California and Pensacola, when I'm welcomed back no questions asked, and welcomed home. Family can be brief, when one person takes on the burdens of another person for a conversation, a moment, or some support between paychecks. But true family is unconditional, and as such, although life is change, unchanging. It's a lifelong commitment to another, a marriage of individuals. Family can be united around a common idea or task, but it knows no religion and doesn't even need common interests. My most profound experience of community was in Scotland, where our shared experience wasn't much more than that we shared meals together, did laundry with each other, walked to the grocery store together, and had a "community night" once a week where we shared dinner and sometimes we'd have music nights. It was as simple as us deciding to be together and treat each others as equals, and to open up what was really going on in our lives a bit. Frisbee and movies are also something that have brought me closer to my roommates, past and present. But I think true community happens when we pray, and when we do dishes or run errands together, not as a favor, but as a part of family.

So I would encourage you to be a person that invites family wherever you are. Invite people over, bring people in. Talk to strangers on the bus and in elevators and lines at the grocery store. Ask lots of questions. Listen a lot. Don't settle for status quo with the people you live with. Love the people around you more than you love yourself and your grand story. Get involved in theirs. And when you do that, and really commit to it, you'll create community.

To be continued...

A Poet-astic New Year (No dice)

So...359 days to the end of the world. Not that anyone's counting.

I'm kinda bummed about not being able to see a much sooner end of the world in high definition. Communication is just really important in a relationship. And if you're gonna no longer stream your episodes of V at the same time you did last year, ABC is just gonna have to face the fact that fans are gonna watch elsewhere, or just not watch ABC at all. I think the worst was they tried to get me to sign up for a facebook application with a ridiculous amount of intrusion by vaguely dangling the carrot of "exclusive video." I used my myspace, because the only TRUE personally identifiable information on there is my e-mail address, but no dice, and no video either.

No dice is a strange phrase. Did they used to give out dice in Cracker Jack boxes or something? You're like "FREE TOY INSIDE, FREE TOY INSIDE" and then you look, and dang, no dice. I feel like dice in cereal boxes, like Hannah Montana, are probably a good way for the Illuminati to corrupt and control the minds of the masses. Or maybe the phrase comes from Monopoly: your opponent is clearly winning, it's just a matter of painful elimination at this point, and "oh whoops, no dice, where could they have gone?" Or maybe it's why they drew straws in the bible: no dice.

I feel like straws are an important cultural phenomenon; I wonder if Andy Warhol ever drew straws. Purple Straw, red straw, green straw, Marilyn Monroe straw. Picasso straws would be amusing, but you probably couldn't drink out of them.

WELCOME TO THE NEW DECADE!!! 2011. Twenty eleven. The 20-00s are gone. Eminem will probably not be the musician of the next decade, I just hope it's not Nicky Minaj, no offense to the very spastic and intelligent Lady Gaga of Gangster Rap. Emo is gone, punk is dead. Soon they'll be playing All American Rejects and Linkin Park on the 00s station on the radio. I feel like 2011, and just this holes zeros and teens thing, are just bad marketing ideas. Everybody wants to spin and sell the new decade, new things, the last decade, the past, the nostalgia...but who wants a book about the 00s...I mean, we could call it the 2000s...but I feel like those will last for a millennia. Welcome to the 10s?

I dove into the Atlantic on sunrise at New Year’s Day...the bay was covered in ice at the time, (the ocean wasn't) it was exhilarating and the sunrise was beautiful. I has video, but I think I’ll save it for the fam, cuz it gets a little risqué. Unfortunately, my zest for life got me sick. Not because I jumped in...but because I jumped in and ran home, burning thousands of calories, and then I didn’t eat, and went to sleep. When I woke up I’d probably lost at least five pounds. I’m not sure what that means for the new year. Perhaps this is the year of overzealousness leading to overload? I hope not, and I thought that was last year.

Some new year's resolutions:
1)Stop complaining. I mean, I pretty much think the world's about me most of the time, but I feel like I should probably think about myself 1/6 billionth of the time or less, and not double-time brain overload think.
2)Post more things online, finish some projects, get some poems published. (My manuscript was rejected, which means they're all fair game.)
3)Stay at least three months behind on messages. (As in, don't fall further behind. I'm in October currently.)
4)Be present. Even if my best friends are in four different countries and I don't like here. Even if here changes 6 times in the next 12 months (Which might be the plan). I can't be everything everywhere all at once all the time.
5)Put God first. My head's learned this one a couple times...pretty much every year for the last five or six. My life is a mess sometimes. Ay. Whatever you've got for me this year God, I pray that my spazziness and obsessive planning doesn't get in the way. I’m excited. Lead on Lord. Walk with us.

The Poet-aster

I like Joanna Newsom's voice. It's like a kid with a clothespin on her nose mixing sarcasm with nursery rhyme and some of the best poetry ever...like you want to cry and laugh together. My life is like that sometimes. Cheers, Joanna, for a great blog title. Another Poet-aster enters the mix.

So...call me strange, but there was a blizzard two days ago, so I decided to walk to work cuz there was a travel ban. (Yeah, they called up the house and were like "don't drive.") My friends tried to talk me out of it, considering the blizzard and all, but the Poet-aster is only stopped by iambic pentameter and lightning. So I'm walking and walking and the wind is crazy, I think I have some ice marks in my cheek, but dun da DUN, superpoets have Estonian hats sometimes, so I wrapped my hat around my face and strode forward peeping out at the snow-covered streets. Then I punched the light out on this guy's Jag while he was trying to escape a snowdrift. I think that's cool, right, bashing luxury cars? Like rock stars bash guitars, but I feel like poets have to bash more symbolic things. Like Black Eyed Peas albums or pictures of Donald Rumsfeld.

Speaking of bashing, I think all the youth at my work have the occasional urge to bash each other. I'm really glad they haven't tried to do this on my shift, I think it's probably due to my soothing spoken word voice. It's scary, ya know, when you're never sure when somebody's gonna get in a fistfight. Like South Korea right now: North Korea's like "Don't shoot or we'll declare patriotic jihad on you" and South Korea's like "Whatevs, you be Il'in (Kim Jong style)" and they do it anyway. I think if Kim Jong Il had a rap album, I would buy it, but if he got in a fight with anyone of our youth, he would lose big time.

I decided to start writing more blogs this week. Somehow that tied in with making money somehow...don't ask me...although I hear I can monetize this thing...hmm...the Poet-aster's thought process went a little like this: "you should write online articles to make money." "Yeah, but those are lame I'd rather write things I feel like writing."
Thus, two new blogs in two days. The artist remains poor. *sigh* It also helps that I've been on the nightshift, cuz this means I'm awake all night with nothing better to do then torment you with my writing.

Full-time volunteer wanderer poet. It kinda has a ring to it. It's always a fight though. The youth I'm trying to help are amazing! But they don't respect me all the time, and it's really hard, they've gone through a lot of shit. Also, they don't always want help. They're college aged kids: they want to party, they want to be left alone, they think they know everything, and money and settling down doesn't look attractive to them. Pray for the Poet-aster, my friends, because these kids are going to college, they just don't know it yet.

Full-time wanderer poet musician angstball seeks wealthy patron to be absentee wife. We don't have to like, do anything, ya know, I just need to be taken off the market for the sake of all those poor girls and I reckon once I don't have to worry about money and girls, I won't have to worry at all, and Jesus says I shouldn't worry so I should marry an Heiress right? What's the opposite of a cougar? A gold-digger? If that sounds like you, inquire below.

A Tale of Two Biscuits

I think I need a company car. Or maybe a chicken, cuz I know our budget here at KFC isn't that big. Though if I was gonna ride a chicken across town, I think I'd need a good sidearm, like Anduril or an AK, depending on the chicken's color scheme. Which reminds me of a Russian Folk tale where a prince turns into a Hedgehog and rides a rooster.

So anyway, apparently I've been pegged as the gullible one who will run errands without asking for gas money, so I've been to the bank ("I'd like four hundred in ones please."), and to Staples to replace our ailing printer (apparently it got confused, so when the ink was full it thought it was empty and wouldn't print.). "I love technology." (You know, the wedding song from Napoleon Dynamite...)

But then one day this last week our freezer was on the fritz. In order to save our beloved buttermilk biscuits, I was called into action to ride my noble chicken steed across town to the other KFC where their freezer was working. Sweat and feathers and smoke don't mix (Does this chicken meet California emissions codes?), but the run was successful...mostly...after retrieving the biscuits the next day and fighting through a horde of Uruk Hai with only a Crispy Strip, we found that many of the biscuits had stuck together and The Empire of Yum! in its infinite wisdom decided it was too much trouble to thaw and reform the biscuits, so I came home with two boxes of dough. Which of course means...

Experimental cooking! My personal favorite was my attempt at lembas bread, the perfect blend of Peanut Butter, honey, brown sugar and a few secret ingredients, perfect for recharging after a day fighting the forces of evil. (That is, recharging like a battery. Recharging in battle fulfills Einstein's definition of insanity.) So now we have four gallon baggies of biscuits in the fridge, and seven or so of dough in the freezer, as well as one baggie full of biscuits that I can't remember what I put on them...though the raspberry jam one definitely tasted like one of those pastries you have for breakfast with frosting on it...what are those things called? Anyway, I had that one for lunch with two Ham and Cheese biscuits, after my biscuits and milk for breakfast yesterday.

Unfortunately since the cost of corn is so high these days, I normally let my chicken run around town while I'm at work so he can feed on Pomeranians and small children, but we ran out of Crispy the other day, and we had to put him down. It was hard to convince the customers that a three foot chicken leg was as good as a 16 piece meal, but Anduril is quite persuasive. So I'm once again in the market for a company car. Have you seen any blueprints for a biscuit-mobile?

Peace and Chicken.

Sweaty Modern Art (A Day in D.C.)

Okay Dad, you told me so. Those annoying rolly backpacks that I scoffed at would've saved me pains in the back, shoulders, and feet. But I am a man. With sore arms that will hopefully be stronger when I try to carry these bags in Dublin.

The humidity here in D.C. reminds me of high school in Florida. And makes me sweat like a pig. (Have you ever seen pig sweat? Me neither. But I assume if the pig was wearing a shirt, it would be soaked like mine.)

Travelling alone is a new experience. I've done it many times, but not for two whole days. I don't even know what to think about what I'm doing...like I'm not that excited, I'm just kinda spaced out. I'm enjoying myself, but my voice sounds funny when it pops out, and I feel kinda people-starved.

That being said, my lingering visit to the National Museum of Art (well, two visits, after I missed my train) was much less interesting than the colorful mosaic of people I saw today. I heard probably five languages before I finished breakfast this morning, including one "Shizer" from a girl who scalded her hand in the hostel kitchen. But the best moment by far today was provided by a little guy in the Museum of Natural History: ¨¿Tío, qué le pasó?" ('Uncle, what happened to him?' he says, pointing to the limp gazelle draped over a branch in front of a salivating leopard.) This was of course followed by an awkward silence in which Tío decides whether or not to respond with the gruesome truth.

The pigeons from Union Station garage say hi. They were pecking under my shoes trying to get at my cracker crumbs. Crazy birds.

In case you didn't know, Raphael definitely painted this picture where a mischievous baby Jesus is trying to reach inside the Virgin's blouse. Oh, the Renaissance. I have a really hard time believing that all these nudes were artistic and had nothing to do with Italian hormones. As feminists have pointed out, why are they all women then? Sexuality is such a powerful thing, but it seems almost impossible to portray it without cheapening it. Maybe that just reflects how powerful it is. Or how messed up we are.

Modern art is interesting. I saw one piece (a video) where this artist had set up a huge chain reaction where things like baking soda spilling across the floor tips over a table so it knocks a tire into a bucket that starts a balloon car. Cool. But most modern art reminds me of Elliot talking about 'shape without form' in the Hollow Men. It's...intellectually interesting...sort of...but it has little pathos, because it has no recognizable forms, only shapes, only colors, like letters without words. It almost seems like modern artists are deconstructing the idea of progress by proving that man is actually regressing and has nothing beautiful or important left to say. Shame.

Seeing old friends is refreshing. It feels like I have a couple lives behind me sometimes. But I can only live one at a time, and tomorrow, it's on to Dublin. Peace.