Mission of Burma

I've sort of lost focus on this whole blog thing. Maybe when I get to Spain I'll get back into the groove. Or maybe I should just forget it. It's not like a blog is an alive thing. It's pretty dead. Even the popular blogs are pretty static. Not like cinema. Blogs are just dead bodies. Corpses with writing on it. Or maybe I'm stuck in the past. I guess that's why I wanted to write a blog, to see if I was stuck in the past. Not all new things are great. Some new things are essentially stupid, but somehow because everybody injects so much enthusiasm into it that they seem alive. But then once the enthusiasm wans, the thing goes cold and blue again. I think that's the problem with blogs. They are so disposable. Who reads old blogs? Maybe someday there will be a blogger that the entire country has to read. A Pushkin in blog form. But hardly anybody will read this text. It doesn't really matter what I write. At least a journal I know nobody will ever read. And when I write fiction, I write it hoping someday it will be published, or at least somehow spread and enjoyed by other people. Maybe publishing as we know it will eventually die, then books, then any writing that is meant to last.

Ask Orky

Things go Scary in the U S of A.

Good News and Bad News

I am working now. I have a job in a library. The library of the school I got my crappy graduate degree from. The commute is hell. I hate working. I have no money right now, though. So I have to. Though I don't have enough money to pay for the train. Hopefully my credit card will work tomorrow. Actually, I have a little cash, so I'll be able to get there tomorrow. I hate money. I hate working. I hate capitalism. I know. Who complains about Capitalism anymore? I think I'll steal a copy of Das Kapital from the library. One of my roommates, not the roommate who got me my job, but my other roommate, said I should piss on the floor of the library. That might be going a little too far. Atrios said we should buy from Barnes and Noble rather than Amazon because Barnes and Nobles are Democrats. Besides, one should never piss in a library. Libraries are one of the few good things in our life. That's what kept me going today. Libraries are strongholds of enlightenment. As Susan Sontag said, Literature is Freedom. I didn't get to read the book where she said this, only I got to put the little security strip in the book so that the alarm goes off if someone tries to steal it. My roommate who works at the library and got me the job is in charge of making sure the student employees check your bag if you try to walk out with a book without checking it out. I told him that the neat little security strip was worthless if no one enforced the bag-check policy. He knew, he said. They were having problems with theft. Here's my roommate, a million books at his disposal, probably a hundred or more with information about theft, thieves, petty larceny, bibliokleptos, and he was powerless. He should watch Bresson's The Pickpocket. Maybe, also, he should be given a gun.

If I did piss in the library it would be because it owes it to me. I paid a good amount of money, and the debt collectors will be taking my blood. (A few years ago I worked for a half-deaf accountant out in the Hamptons during tax season and he said one time or more: "Everybody wants my fuckin' blood." Imagine it said in a whiney, heavy Brooklyn accent. The other thing he said many times was "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke." It never quite makes sense, but is always appropriate.) So if they're gonna take my blood then I should get to piss on something of theirs. It seems only right. I will let you know if I piss on anything.

The good thing is that, due to circumstances I won't go into, I got a membership to the Moma. I have no money, but I have a yearlong membership to the Moma and also a monthly subway pass. So I may or may not be able to eat or get to my job in Westchester, but I can go and look at art ANYTIME I want. Plus I can get my friends in for cheap. If I was a proper capitalist I would be able to somehow make this power of mine lucractive. After all, Moma membership puts me in a new status bracket. I feel like a disinherited Count. Maybe there are openings I can get into with hors d'oeuvres. I looked up hors d'oeuvres to see how it was spelled.

Charles McKinley

Is one of the great heroes of our age. Along with Aron Ralston. McKinley is the missing spirit of our day and age. A vestige of something grand that is now gone from humanity.

Happy Two Thousand Fucking Five

I haven't blogged in awhile because I have been busy with relatives. I got some things on the agenda. First, I have more nominees for drunkest blog on the net. I'll get to those later this week. Also, I have more I want to write about the guy who mailed himself.

I can't believe it's 2005. If this was going on in the seventies, it'd be tragedy. Like Vietnam. Vietnam was a tragedy. (I'm not really drunk, but I've had enough this evening.) Anyhow. This 2005 we've got...it's not tragedy, but it's dystopia. Because it's 2005 and not 1975 it's dystopia.

There is a movie you need to see. It is The Thing With Two Heads. I saw it the second time yesterday. It was made in 1972. It is a movie that explores the possibility of human head transplantation. The layers of meaning and metaphor contained within the movie are enough to provide a hundred PHD dissertations. I believe the filmmaker of The Thing With Two Heads is as good or better than Godard. Godard is brilliant, but a terrible filmmaker. The Filmmakers of The Thing With Two Heads are terrible but brilliant filmmakers. This is because what they have created is too bizarre not to be relevant. As Werner Herzog has said, he'd rather watch a Kung-Fu movie rather than a Godard movie. (Who, TRULY, wouldn't?) The Thing With Two Heads can't hold a candle to a great Kung Fu movie as far as pure cinematic experience is considered---only because it is so uneven!---but it contains images that almost aspire to Herzog's ideal of esctatic imagery! More later!