A Gruff Growl, A Dancer's Brawl, A Balletic Paradise

Attention Citizens of The NewHindenburg! Put down the razor, climb in from that window, and let's have us some meatloaf. I've got a nice warm slice of meat hear for you. Can you hear it sizzle? I bet you can. Meatloaf doesn't normally sizzle but this loaf got some pop to it.

We've been a mopey bunch here of late but I think we're right about most of it. Bryan and the Pen gave us mournful soliloquies on the void. I mean, yeah, it's there and we feel compelled to poke it with a stick. Poking's fun and good but why poke when you can stab it in the heart and suck out it's blood?

I've spent most of my time thinking about writing, which is exactly what I hate most about the majority of young writers. Enough of that though, the time has come to embark on a concerted effort to start writing more.

Don’t you get it? We like being addicted to it.

Scientists will look back on these sentences and say "By golly, I think they're saying the same thing." I'm not a scientist but I applied for a job as a Chemist once. In my circle of friends I've come to notice a disturbing trend among America's youth: we've got no energy. We drift like barnacles and spend more time latching onto whatever's there. Nights of debauchery end with everyone huddled around a computer screen watching video's on Youtube. This is nothing against Youtube, lord knows I love this but how far does it have to go? Our entire lives are spent in front of a screen. We're so lucky to be born in the exact window where we can feel the full complicity of technology while fortunate enough to recall a time when there was no computer in our house. They're a good thing, a swell thing, the very thing these words exist upon. On the downside, Computers be clowning us, dawg.

You can rely on a computer.
You can lie down to a computer.

To a great athlete, the ball feels like part of their body. A great saxophonist can not tell where they end and the saxophone begins. I sit at the computer and become a big, dumb drooling computer. Dialed into electrodes, the brain goes numb as I lie prostrate before the screen. Pen says we're addicted to this feeling of it. I'm down with that. I'm addicted to everything. My personal it comes from sitting at a computer. I sit to write and read about baseball. I hear a clock ticking. Pages left unwritten but can not ween myself from the ambilical feed of information. No one gets a good self-image when comparing themselves to omniscience.

This isn't the computer's fault. As an information terminal, it comes into direct conflict with the writing process which requires one to clear their mind and become a medium.

Paul Auster wrote a book about his Typewriter. I don't think anyone outside my friend Caitlin will ever cuddle their technology.

I'm digressing terribly and resisting the urge to compare William Perry's career YPC to the gross domestic product of Norway. Our generation has nothing to look forward to yet there are no protests, no flag burning, no nothing. The useless landcape around us is the fact that no one gives a shit about anything yet people still have the gumption to talk to me about Greenpeace.

You can wear a sarong if you want
For no reason at all.
But to wear a sarong
You've got to feel a sarong
And be in a place
To think about wearing a sarong
Not, like, blenders, or anything like that
If you opt to be a sponge
Soak, soak, soak it up.
You'll get filled and wet
But won't think about wearing a sarong.

It's hard to step back to the tides of Whimsy to feel young, surprised, and prosperous. I have the ideal living situation with perfect people doing perfect thing but Kesey was right, "the combine is everywhere." Something is chasing us, beating us into submission and we don't even know it. It's possible to throw off this beast for a few hours but if you want to break it down, crumbling it into mere veneer and taste the full vibrancy of a peach, all out assault is the only way to go. I'm not strong enough to wrestle my demons away. If I'm going to get the life I want the only solution is to live the life I want. Every second. Everyday.

I want to ramble into town with a pocket full of Nickels and tell stories. Why the hell not?

In short, come August, Jeff and I are moving into an RV and shaping life as we'd like to have it. It's short-cited as fuck, ultimately childish, and ridiculous past the point of ridicule. It's absolutely perfect. Dissatisfaction's boring. BORING BORING BORING. A Jar of Mayonaise no one bothers to eat but stares at anyway. Riding around in a careening husk of metal adorned with frescoes of screaming children and blaring Beyonce's "Single Ladies" as we roll into a new town, well lubricated on the sweet nectar of "Why Not?", is the only way to play out the hand.

You're all invited.