"Fuck it, here's that fiction."

Some new microfiction comin' soon, y'all. Guaranteed, seeing as how it's in my notebook waiting for transcription. I just gotta conquer this semester, and then I'll have a couple-three months of relatively free time to jaw about whatever comes to mind. Exciting topics may include Chinese radicals (the linguistic kind, not the political), ruminations on skate park life, brutal Houston summers, whatever. No promises.

Fuck it, here's that fiction. Penned 二零一零年四月二十五日。 No editing.

Another batshit heat day out here, they all observe while mopping sweat from brows & crevices. Eight, ten hours on the blacktop in uniform for all, with a changing of the guard so to speak every two hours, time for hot coffee served in metal cups, no sitting allowed and cigarettes must be smoked w/in four minutes or else. Then it's back to formation until- if not when, at least on a small scale, a day scale- one of the figures in the bleachers comes down with the manual and invokes some rule or another, rule more arcane than the last, no way for most of those soaking their starched collars to ever figure out the whole thing. But there is no whole thing; the game is made up on the fly, rules from the manual quoted & put into play for the sake of a game using the manual as a prop. Nobody sees over the cinderblock wall east of the field, doesn't know what else is part of the larger scheme, knows anything but fields & barracks and hot coffee that blisters the mouth daily.

Gravitational Constant: G = 6.67 x 10-8 cm-3 gm-1 sec-2 (AKA More Shit Taken For Granted Until It's Too Late)

INT- 4843 BRIDGEMONT LANE, SPRING, TEXAS, 77388. NIGHT.

The year is 1993, and a young DAVE SMITH sits five feet from the television, watching Headbangers Ball. His parents and brother are all sound asleep, as they usually are at this late hour. DAVE is entranced by the current video, which appears to be a song by a band of imposing, vampiric Eastern Europeans surrounded by hot women and freakish extras. The frontman of the band plays an upright bass like a guitar, rolling his eyes back in his head and flashing literal fangs. DAVE tapes this video and watches it numerous times, sharing it with his brother SCOTT on the old TV the family bought years earlier in Italy. Time changes DAVE's understanding of what he's seeing, but it doesn't change the meaning. He has discovered Type O Negative.

INT- SOMEONE'S FAMILY'S APARTMENT, CARACAS, VENEZUELA. NIGHT.

1996. DAVE SMITH sits in a tile-floored room with several friends, listening to Type O Negative's cover of "Paranoid," but only DIPTO CHAUDHURI is into it to the same degree. It seems like everyone these two dudes hold dear is leaving, and they revel in Type O's amazingly bleak take on Black Sabbath's classic, playing the song over and over.

INT- PETE'S CAR, HUNTSVILLE, TEXAS. DAY.

1999. DAVE SMITH and PETE SWULIUS sit in the latter's car, smoking cigarettes and absorbing the first minutes of Type O Negative's newest album, World Coming Down. "It's Type O," they say approvingly.


These are my three strongest memories involving Type O Negative. There are more, of course, but these are the ones that come to mind when I consider the news that Peter Steele, TON's frontman, died yesterday of heart failure. I remember when Yi-Lei Wu came back from a trip to the States with a copy of October Rust. I remember smoking a bidi with the Swulii outside Numbers after seeing Type O in '99. I remember buying Life Is Killing Me years after it was released, during a period when I realized I hadn't listened to TON in a while. I remember Fran Torres playing keyboards for my brother's band, Last Eve, and looking particularly like Josh Silver, hair- and playing-wise.

I remember a lot of things that have involved Type O Negative over the past seventeen years, but of course it takes Peter Steele's death to make me remember just how much I loved, and still love, this band. Maybe that's what death is for, aside from being something to fear and make hilariously tasteless jokes about. I don't know. Every time I think I'm getting a handle on things, shit like this happens and I realize the scope of my assumptions about life as I know. Christ.

Hail Type O Negative. Requiescat in pace Peter Steele. Those chicks in the "My Girlfriend's Girlfriend" and "Black No. 1" videos were hot. Thanks for everything.

Sinister.

Among the recent things I've done is a short-lived attempt at doing things with my right hand. Being fortunate to have been born in a time not insistent on having my natural tendency toward things sinister rather than dexter beaten or cajoled out of me, I took an opportunity last night to try to brush my teeth with my right hand. My teeth ended up clean, sure, but it was not an easy task. My brain knew what to do, and my hand valiantly followed orders, but in a manner most awkward and tedious. A task that would've normally taken two minutes took more like six. Afterward, I tried writing English words and Chinese characters right-handed, which was an even clumsier undertaking. Ambidexterity might be achieved some day (or month, or year), but I think I'll postpone attempts until something tragic happens to my left hand... in which case I won't be so much ambidextrous as unidextrous, albeit with my new dominant hand.

It's Tuesday night, but it feels like Thursday, because this week's academic hurdle came, and was overcome, earlier in the week than usual. I've taken to staying up until well past midnight on Thursdays, writing and generally soaking up the witching-hour atmosphere, but tonight I can't afford to do so. Duties call, so I'm going to torch one more gasper and call it a night. I won't even read any of Anathem before turning out the light.

In lieu of delving further into my well-over-a-decade-old obsession with late nights enjoyed in quiet domestic environs- a situation in the midst of which I again find myself- I instead urge you to listen to the Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation's Succubus. Accompanied, perhaps, by tobacco and alcohol, and silent rumination on subjects best left undiscussed.

Good night.

Itinerary.

48 hours from now I'll be in San Diego, California, enjoying the first leg of a trip up and down the Golden State (or, as Erik Davis would put it, the Visionary State) with my girlfriend.

Twelve and a half hours from now I have a Chinese midterm.

Right now I'm not studying. Right now I'm enjoying some DCPD Bangerz, sipping tequila with Peychaud's bitters, Controy, and water, and daydreaming about skateparks and other assorted things.

I'll try to write from Cali-forn-eye-ay. Failing that, I'll drop whatever verbiage I concoct out west here when I get back to H-Town. (I'll also try not to use ridiculous nomenclature, though that's a dodgy proposition.)

Zaijian, pengyou.

"this is my curb"

"this is my curb"



"Skate curbs, smoke cigarettes."
...say hi to groms, moms, dads,
ice cream man.

That ain't wax,
that's aluminum. Months and months of Trackers and Indies
laid down on these curbs, mere yards from 35,000 square feet
of high-grade Grindline concrete.
It's easier out here, if you don't count pedestrians
and the occasional Parks and Recreation vehicle
rumbling through.
Stoge sessions sometimes, bitching about work
or just the rough concrete,
but mostly just Sk8-His and a set of 160somethings:
remember to lean back
and soon you'll be showing axle and
blowing the fuck out of some orange Khiros.

"Drink coffee, skate curbs."
snapshot: coffee grind
(backside 50/50, joe in hand).

Book it: only way to go. Remember to lean back
or you'll never enter the kingdom,
'cause bails don't count.
"how's it going, man?"
It's going, man.
It's
going. Let me see if I can nail this
feeble,
dig this fenceposted sunset and crank up the Rockboxed
metal before I have to go back in
and do what I'm gettin' paid to do.

Be back in an hour
for ten minutes of Tom Knox action. This
is my curb.

interstitial pome, number whatever

That was, in its way,
accidental:
the Tao of the house
seeing fit
that the rubber bat
stays aloft.

2.10.10

Apexin', dude

I remember it like it's tomorrow. Chris puts down his pen, looks up from the notebook full of BBS numbers and game maps he keeps next to his computer, and blinks. He takes a long swig of Coke, glances at the pack of cigarettes his dad left behind when he called it quits for the night, and almost reaches for one but doesn't, knowing he's already got an addictive personality (and besides, his dad will notice any missing smokes; he counts them carefully since he's trying to quit). Takes another swig of Coke.

"It's messed up," he says, "but this is what people are going to put on a pedestal. It doesn't matter how fast their machines get, what their baud rates are, or even if they've got computers that fit in their pockets. They'll get nostalgic about playing computer games in basements with wood paneling. Shitty graphics will be awesome. Nobodies will be heroes."

Before he sits back in his chair he plucks a Marlboro from the pack on the desk and lights it. "This is it," he grins behind the cigarette. "Apexin', dude."

"this is not the heart sutra speaking"

There will be no return to form.
There was never any form
to begin with. This is not the Heart
Sutra speaking; this emptiness is the
one we know, the one we fear, the
shape and texture we think we
associate with the darkest of nights.
Emptiness cultivated by trying
to hold it at bay. We'll return,
there's no doubt of that; it's just
a question of what we bring
back, or what we leave behind.
When we've returned, thinking
the sun has banished whatever
we just did, it won't be to form.

I've been much more silent than I intended. It's been a busy month; I feel like the 3.5" disk that runs my brain's OS has been swapped with a different one containing an operating system that handles school and work programs and very little else. Ugh.

A little somethin' for 2010.

LADIES & GENTLEMEN, the brain tonight isn't moving in the unexpected directions you may have expected given the circumstances, but rest assured there are still sirens screaming down West Alabama, holes in the elbow of someone else's sweater, too many minutes spent surfing (oh, OUTDATED!) increasingly few websites, bursts of laughter and temperatures that make putting beer, NA variety, in the fridge an unnecessary move, movement all done in cars at this hour and degree Fahrenheit, 'cept for the hipsters earlier bookin' it westward (swig) on their bikes; all the accoutrements and claptrap but as of yet none of the loneliness that the bottle and House of Pies sing to (why drink? why eat? Food's in the fridge, hombre) or sang to, so much seems past tense, definitely past and still sometimes tense, shoulder muscle tense, tense you don't find in Chinese, quite a blessing for the student of 中文 if you don't mind the cold fingers & copybook rote practice of 汉字, not me, that shit is great- hope the cat isn't too lonely, bet she's fine, we've got an understanding, 'cause sometimes, solitaire nights and that shoulder all tight again, you just have to be home, where the office is a mess and Elvira's watching you do zazen, all outta page and there goes the 78, later, folks, but no more than one or two-

Zero hour minus 13.

I've got my Chinese 1501 final tomorrow. Once I'm done, I hope to use my winter break (from school, not work, naturally) productively, in a writerly sense. We shall see.

Let's just hope I don't forget a semester's worth of Chinese in three weeks and ruin my current academic respectability come springtime.

"Barrows"

Barrows

We opened the tombs of
our ancestors, kings and heroes all,
only to find them empty,
quiet homes of dust and memory.
Our sacred myths founded on vacant architecture
and lies our great-grandfathers told
to keep the nighttime silence at bay.

No splendid treasure-hoards,
no bones to brighten the microscope's
eye, no spells to
ward off the other side's ravenous denizens,
only the tombs, hillside after hillside,
hewn stone mouths speaking
for nobody, nothing but the earth.

Thoughts on output.

I've been more prolific, in some ways, this past year than I have in a long while. One of my biggest problems with defining prolificity is the issue of length: have I written anything longer than a few hundred words, much less a proper short story or, even better, a novel? Not really. I've merely been amassing vignettes, poems, and fragments of ideas that if properly fleshed out could be seed material for longer works. I've also written a few episodes of the new iteration of Unheimlich, which if I haven't mentioned was revived by Andy Link in the form of a next-generation Xbox Live game. It's still in the daydreaming and scripting phase, but if it never gets past that, it's a better fate than its ancestor, Unheimlich the novel, faced.

So, despite being used to writing long-form works ("used to" being an increasingly inappropriate phrase, given my overall literary silence for some time), I'm faced with a plethora of short pieces that in the old days wouldn't amount to shit, but these days do. The sheer amount of small things I've cranked out lately- I've filled all but a few pages of a pocket notebook in seven months, whereas in the past it would've taken considerably longer to do so, and there are probably plenty of scribbles and vague textfiles floating around my house and hard drive- serves as the main metric by which I consider myself "prolific." There's something else to take into account, though, and that's whether producing a great deal of work counts for anything if said work isn't being pushed into publication.

I'm torn. Part of me, the much younger, militantly authorial, part, says "if you're not publishing, or trying to publish, then you're a dilettante," whereas another part of me- which the younger part understood, even back then, though it was hard to come to terms with- says "You're writing. That's all you've ever wanted. Stop beating yourself up about whether anyone reads it, much less pays you for it, and just write."

I tend to think the latter approach, which has always been the real reason for writing but is hard to stomach when you really want to make a career of writing, has the upper hand in my current inner debate about whether I'm writing a lot. I'm definitely enjoying writing for the hell of it, even if it I'm still frustrated that I can't seem to cough up anything longer than a page or two. I suppose that kind of dilemma's an intrinsic part of writing- not that it makes it any easier when you're up late at night wondering where all your ideas have gone and whether or not people will ever read something of yours that isn't maudlin, self-indulgent moaning.

Whatever. Fuck it. I'm happy with how much I'm writing, and I can see certain changes (for the better, I think) in how I write. I'm even posting more regularly to this web log, which I've missed dearly. Who cares if I'm not submitting work left and right or writing another novel?

Good enough. Good. Enough.

Happy Bodhi Day.

-DAS 12.8.09

"Field Recordings"

The sound of two-inch tape hisses and rustles in the weeds. Someone's forgotten they were supposed to be making field recordings, left their gear behind. That was 1971; since then kids have been discovering the machine and replaying the sounds the tape never captured. They don't know how it works- the batteries are corroded slugs- and they don't care. They press play, rewind, play again, fast forward, rewind, judging the permutations of blank soundscape. Nobody thinks to take the machine home, clean it up. It's been in the same empty lot forever, as much of a secret landmark as the curb behind the convenience store, the crucifix nailed upside down to that one tree in the woods. Silence, waiting for encroachment from a child's aeon ago.

(12.3.09- revisions 12.7.09)

D.A.'s Favorite Five Records of 2009

D.A.'s Favorite* Five Records** of 2009

It's close enough to the end of the year for me to make some assessments of the albums I acquired in 二零零九年, or as the Chinese say, deuce double ought nine. It's been a tough year for music, I think, mostly from a personal standpoint: I spent a quarter of the year unemployed and the rest of it saving as much money as I could to pay UH's insane tuition, so I lacked the usual discretionary record-buying funds my income prior to 11/08 allowed.

Not buying records on a near-weekly basis has left me out of the loop. It used to be that I knew what had come out in the recent past and what was coming out in the immediate future, so I could pass more informed judgments about the state of music (music that might interest me, that is) for any given year than I can at the moment. For example, a year or two ago the appearance of a new Nile record would not have caught me completely by surprise, and I would've been aware that Portal would be unleashing another disc of extraplanar death metal, but not this year. It's not just poverty that keeps me from being a record nerd, of course. Between work and school I have a lot less free time than I used to, and I turned 30 three months ago, which officially makes me old, befuddled, and out of touch with the hip kids, so I'm not pulling from as extensive a list as I normally would.

Now that the excuses and rationalizations are out of the way, here are some records I really dug this year. Even if your taste in music differs from mine (which it inevitably does; don't worry, I won't mock you too much), these are albums I'd recommend to anyone. Whether or not you'll like them is, of course, a decision for you alone to make; I hope you take the time to check them out and make that decision.


Current 93- Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain

Matt, my brother from another mother with the same last name, turned me on to Current 93 about ten years ago. I won't try to describe, much less explain, this band (which is one dude, David Tibet, and a revolving handful of comrades) here, other than to say that they make folk music if folk music were written by an English prophet/artist even more obscure than William Blake who was into children's rhymes and prog rock. Or some such shit; the point is that C93 is unique, and "Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain" is unique among their discography, mainly because it's a pretty heavy, electric guitar-oriented record. Part of me doesn't want to talk too much about it in the hopes that my silence intrigues you enough to hear it for yoursel-and because silence is sacred- but another part of me could spend a solid hour talking, and maybe two hours writing, about this album. "Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain" is probably the best record of the year in my book.

N.B. If it's worth anything, I bought this on CD and on vinyl. Side 4 of the double LP has all the album's lyrics put to a piece of music not included among the normal tracks, and it works really, really well. I also got hold of a copy of "Monohallucinatory Mountain," which is a mono mix of "Aleph at...", through questionable channels (read: downloading). I'm not an audiophile, but I can say the difference between the regular and mono mixes is noticeable, and changes the atmosphere of the album in a way worth hearing. Yes, I have this album in three different formats, and it's completely worth it.


Deströyer 666- Defiance

Long story short: this is a band I blew off for far too long because I didn't care for their name. In late '03 or early '04 I got my shit together and bought "Cold Steel For An Iron Age", their latest record at the time. They promptly became, and remain, one of my favorite metal bands, and they exemplify the widely recognized excellence and brutality of Australian heavy metal. "Defiance" is their first full-length in six years, and while it may initially not impress fans in the way their older work does, after a few spins there's no doubt that this is quality stuff, and by no means a slack effort. As an added bonus, it contains one of the best lyrics I've ever heard: "have the gods not failed enough that we must conjure more?". Take that, theists.

Mastodon- Crack the Skye

I almost didn't include this. I listened to "Crack the Skye" about a thousand times in the month after it came out, and I saw Mastodon play the entire album live three weeks ago, so I'm almost burned out. Luckily, I already wrote a review of it, which you can find here at this very web log. 'Nuff said.


Wolves in the Throne Room- Black Cascade

Definitely harder to get into than their last full-length, "Two Hunters," and I'm still not sure why. At some point I thought I'd figured it out, but I've forgotten what my theory was. No matter; this is yet another stellar release from one of the newest crop of American black metal bands. All of their albums are near-masterpieces, and their sound and ideology, both of which have been criticized for numerous reasons but to little lasting effect, are a logical extension of and welcome addition to the black metal scene. Perhaps it's their roots in Washington State, and/or their Thoreau-like appreciation of nature, but Wolves in the Throne Room strike me as an alternate universe Beat black metal outfit. I don't know if the band would appreciate that or not, but I don't care: as I see it, if Jack Kerouac grew up on Romantic poetry and heavy metal tales of pagan forests, he may well have tried (and knowing Kerouac, likely failed) to start a band like this. Listen to "Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog," especially the last two and a half minutes, and maybe you'll see what I mean.


YTCracker- Chrono Nurga vol. 1

"High five for the Cat5, and a fat drive, and a quarter of weed."

That pretty much sums up YTCracker's attitude on this album. If you aren't familiar with nerdcore hip-hop, of which YTCracker is a progenitor, imagine hip-hop with geeky subject matter: in this dude's case, spamming, Nintendo games, programming, defunct sodas, and nerd life in general. "Chrono Nurga vol. 1" consists of raps laid down over beats lifted from the old RPG Chrono Trigger, which I'm ashamed to admit I have yet to play despite hearing nothing but good about the game. You'd think such a project would have little more than novelty value, but you'd be wrong. (Such an argument could be made for nerdcore as a whole, but again, you'd be wrong.) Peppered throughout the album's eight tracks are lines that strike a chord, and not only because part of me is somehow still surprised by poignancy in music like this. "Chrono Nurga vol. 1" doesn't have the range of "Nerd Life" or even "Nerdrap Entertainment System," but it's a solid album in its own right, lyrically and musically. YTCracker, despite all his bragadoccio, most certainly knows what it's like to be a nerd. Be prepared for obtuse references, crudeness, and the us-versus-you attitude that so many of us who've always felt at odds with our less intelligent but somehow socially superior fellows have adopted from time to time. Don't sweat it if you don't catch some of the references, because I didn't either. What matters is that a dude ganked some old Playstation beats, threw this thing together in a day, and did it with enough heart and wit to beat out albums that might otherwise have made this list.

"Show that nerd life off, never hide it."



* In no particular order.
**Not just records, but CDs, tapes, mp3s, whatever.

(as of yet) untitled poem + a recommendation.

The song of harlots and saints
resounds in chambers without walls
or walls of bone, smooth curvature of bone.
The stars hide behind light and a hundred
wheels spin.
Children grit their teeth, prepare to fall,
as parents demand more. Young masks
tear at the edges when ten thousand
tomorrows arrive today.
But today
there is no today, only now,
the moment of noise and lines.

11.11.09
----

YTCracker's dropped a new one, chrono nurga vol. 1. Dig it. Nerd life.

Unsummary.

Iced tea and a cigarette. Geocities comes to an end, and with it the internet as so many of us knew it. The ego as time bomb. New YT Cracker release awaiting extraction from a .zip file. A day of rain. That cold-weather smell, not because it's that cold but because it's just cool enough for an extra layer. Abyssal power struggles. Locks in need of powdered graphite. Too many appliances. Pumpkins awaiting faces. Move along.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood!

(tl;dr version: nice weather and skateboarding rule)

It's been a weird year for Houston, weather-wise. June was brutally hot. July was, to nobody's surprise, also hot. August was a little more mellow, but only in comparison to what it usually is. September sucked: the temperatures didn't seem to drop, and the humidity was awful. October, when most of us would agree that H-Town starts catching up with the seasonal rotation thing, has been a little more forgiving, though it's still been humid as shit. Today, however, Mother Nature has dropped a boon on my fair city in the form of mid-70s temperatures, clear skies, and steady breezes. This, my friends, is the way things should be. Like I told a buddy at the skatepark earlier today, I understand why people are willing to shell out the fat cash to live in SoCal, where days like this are routine.

Even better, it's my Saturday. I had a rad green smoothie for breakfast, then went to the skatepark to make the most of the weather and drop off some Tracker Fastracks for a buddy looking to set up a cruiser. I saw, for the first time in months, one of the guys who was a stalwart of the 8 AM scene when Jamail still opened that early and when I didn't work there. Threw down some increasingly solid feeble grinds on the curbs outside the park, and started plotting my conquest of a particular quarterpipe via backside rock n' rolls. Stopped at Half Price Books and walked out with a couple promising books, one of which is by Stephen Batchelor, who I can't recommend enough if you want a clear, meaningful, and modern approach to Buddhism. Came home, drank some Koenig Ludwig weissbier- 'cause it's that kind of day, dudes- and jammed some MC Frontalot and 3 Inches of Blood. Later, I'll probably go lay waste to some neighborhood curbs and/or do some/all of the following: take a nap, read, visit my brother, smoke cigarettes, go back to the skatepark, and maybe some things I haven't even thought about yet. Days like this are why we're put on earth.

Shout-outs to Aaron Estrada, War Master, Santa Monica Airlines, D, Daniel, Richard, tahini, cheap lighters, and West Alabama Street.


Impervious to fire, impervious to steel,
D.A.S.

Some words.

"Every waking moment is a footstep deeper into a labyrinth where the meaninglessness of life pursues us like a patient minotaur." -Lina Strade