Brilliant interview.

the world is dying. the global economy is in shambles, it’s become a world for the rich, and I don’t have anything against the rich except for the fact that they make it wildly difficult to get where they are now. impossible, really. you can’t get ahead unless you start ahead, live in long beach, have parents to give you money to fund expensive hobbies but hobbies that pay off big-time later. if you don’t have that, you have nothing, and will continue to have nothing until you’re no longer in one piece. i can’t see a future for myself. i can’t. god is dead, and everything is worthless, meaningless. i go to a museum and see the crown of a long-since-not-in-one-piece king. it meant something then. something. but now we see an illusion. pennies could be made out of gold instead of copper, and we would still drop them on the ground. meaningless and arbitrary, the arbitrators bring the rich, who advertise what they control. i don’t want to be a high school teacher, i don’t want to work at kinkos, i don’t want to work in a museum. the most meaningless thing, as i see it, is to simply work. the only point is to work from the imagination, it’s all that we have, to create. creativity is a battle against entropy. we know every time we build a structure it will degrade, but perhaps it is our instinct as human beings to delay this, to hide-and-not-hide. back to the ever-widening mass that is meaningless. capitals are naught; no god, no authority, no a priori importance. no italics either. entropy may be catching up. oh how utterly sad it is. and we want to be noticed as unique for our creativity, but we’re running out of things to say. we have run out. fine. i resign. but let us have meaning once more before departure. “it was as though a veil had been rent. i saw on that ivory face the expression of somber pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror — of an intense and hopeless despair. he cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision, — he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath — The horror! The horror! Mistah Kurtz — he dead."

"My soul seemed as foul as burning cat fur." — Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

Nice . . .

The following is taken from a telephone conversation between two lovers.

[phone picks up]

Hello?

Hey, how are you?

Oh, I’m fine . . . you?

Yeah I’m great. What’s up?

I just wanted to call and see how your day was before I go to bed.

Oh yeah, [brief laughter], it was interesting, actually.  I walked down to Albertsons and picked up a few things, and you’ll never believe what I saw . . .

[Chuckles], what?

Well as I went to check out my items, as a I entered the only line open, I . . . well there wasn’t anyone there!

Really?

Well no, because as I was looking around . . . Ha! I must have looked like some sort of sprinkler head. Anyway, I heard a voice from somewhere, a kind of high-pitched one but cut short, like someone on helium, and I—

Wow, that’s odd

What?

Oh I said: “wow, that’s odd”

Yes!  And so as I’m looking around and hearing this voice a single hand begins waving from where the checkout counter, um, taker should be.  I lean forward just a few inches, and the man whose hand was waving and whose voice I was hearing was a midget!

Oh wow!

I know, that's . . . those were my thoughts exactly!  So I say to the man, his name was Derek, I say “Oh, I didn’t see you down . . . down there.”

And what did Derek say?

Oh I don’t remember, something nice I’m sure.  The guy was real nice.

Real sweet guy?

Yeah.  Real small, too.

Well honey that’s great!  I’m glad you were so nice to him.  Didn’t make him feel small, or anything.

Oh of course!  That’s really the most important thing to do in . . . in situations like these . . . how was your day?

Oh well it was fine . . . fine . . . just work.  Seattle’s beautiful though . . . real nice place work.

Oh good . . . nice.

Yeah . . . Well honey, I hope you sleep well, and that you meet many more midgets while I’m gone and you can tell me all about them when I get back or when I call you tomorra'.

Will do honey.  Goodnight.

‘Night.

*c-clunk*

End of conversation.

The Interesting Thing About Nothing

The interesting thing about nothing is that it never exactly happens.  When the life has sapped out of every leaf on all the trees, and out of every room in the house, every blanket and book in your room, every wooden panel of the floor or fiber of the rug, nothing still never exactly happens.  

Let me explain.

The world is made up of parts.  Small parts, but they are still parts.  The parts move and, if they are slow, they might be a lamp post, or a tree and all its bark.  If the parts are medium speed, they could be yellow paint, cement not yet dried, the kind with young names freshly writ in it, or they could be silly putty in the hands of a child who, although he has not encountered silly putty before, knows upon feeling it through his soft and tiny fingers that it is exactly what it is.  And if the parts are fast, very fast indeed, they could be gasoline exploding in the internal combustion engine of an boat on the Atlantic, torrents of water gushing from a broken fire hydrant in a inner-city neighborhood, poor children forgetting for a moment that they are poor as they play in it, or maybe it is the dog running around the hot corner and all it’s bark.

Sometimes the fast parts are electricity, and occasionally they are not just any electricity.  They are electricity running through your brain, making it so you can think many things, one of which being that nothing is happening . . . but nothing clearly isn’t.  You’re thinking it, for one, and as the electricity runs raisin-shaped circles around your brain, allowing you that thought, it makes a very slight ringing noise.  You can hear it, if you listen quietly.

So next time you have the thought “nothing is happening,” imagine all the electricity tracing its way through all the neurons of your brain, and try to hear the faint sound it makes.  Most likely you will hear it, and it will get louder, like electric guitar feedback, but that is beside the point.

The point is that nothing is most certainly not happening, and you should get off your ass and do something because of it.

Gail's and my self-made foodie tour in LA turned out to be a great journey of self-discovery.  I discovered that, although I love food, I am not a foodie-tour kind of guy.  I can't stand showing up at a restaurant and taking only one or two bites.  I just can't!  I must sit down, relax, and enjoy a whole meal.  My favorite foods were the "white pizza with apple-smoked bacon," at California Pizza Kitchen (we call it "CPK"), a last-ditch dinner after a long day of foodie tour-ing, and a vegan breakfast burrito that kicked ass, and that we hadn't even planned on getting.  

Regarding the comic (at the end of our tour), we ended up driving a mile or so to another theatre, across the street from UC Irvine, where Gail and I saw "Her" (which also kicked ass).  There, we purchased our tickets for a total of $17.

Good times.

Time with a Friend

Time with a friend is a thousand Kodak moments bonding together like water in space.  To single out any droplet would be unremarkable, but as a whole, weightless shifting globe, the memories become a work of impossible art, unframeable and alive in the minds of only the two.  Time with a friend is outside itself, a state of mind, mutual pleasure, and a garden that gets better with age.  It is a wildflower in a glass terrarium; viewed from all angles, infinitely provided for, and loved.

Never pass up 

time with a friend.

There's a Tree

There's a tree in downtown San Diego where the names of passed ones are hung.  Next to the names are short messages from loved ones to keep the names and the passed ones warm, but really they are there to keep warm the hearts of those still living.  The messages are writ on white, heart-shaped pieces of paper contained in clear, heart-shaped ornaments that cover the tree from top to toe.  One wonders about the short lives marked on the tree.  "In memory of Annie, always brave, always strong, always loved."  Annie was twelve, and then she wasn't.  Some of the notes are faded, and only phrases like "love," "Mom & Dad" and "HIV" can be read.  Sometimes even the names are gone, following closely those who once used them.  It's quiet four days after Christmas.  And together we say, Amen.