"Career Aspirations"

The only title
I ever want:
"Dungeon Master."

"Figment, Spitted"

So:
here's the famous
-nay, infamous, if I was to buy his line,
though I don't know if I even buy "famous"-
writer,
with his beer bottle collection,
daily zazen,
heavy metal records and t-shirts,
incessant smoking, piles of books,
and who knows how many other
affectations
(I'm sorry, "idiosyncrasies").

Weird hours,
lazy skateboarding
(stop being a pussy, dude),
Chinese studies,
broad yet shallow intellect:

All this shit is absurd enough,
but where is the output to justify his status?
Where are the novels, poems, essays?
Am I really expected to take his word for it,
or worse,
these words as proof that he's a "writer"?

Please.
There are teenagers who've written more,
and had better receptions
on- and off-line,
than this guy.

I'll take a page from his book
(The Big Copout: Recent History and Personal Failure)
and leave it be for the time being.
Maybe he'll write something in the interim that breathes life into
the author he sometimes thinks he is,
and that the future
-in his mind-
might not revere, but at least relegates to
a comfortable cult niche.

Nice try.

Grazie, Ezio

Earlier this year I played Assassin's Creed 2. Tracey got it as a surprise, and a surprise it was, given that I liked the original game somewhat, but not enough to even get close to finishing it. The story was compelling, but the gameplay was lackluster. The sequel, however, was a blast from start to finish, due in no small part to the setting: Renaissance Florence. Everyone from Lorenzo "il Magnifico" de Medici to Niccolo Machiavelli to Leonardo da Vinci showed up at one point or another, and the historical notes about people and architecture showed that the design team wasn't merely content to slap a facade of historicity over a generic game. I loved it.

As a result, I've picked up an additional, if not quite as intense, line of study. As you may know, I'm currently studying Chinese at the University of Houston, but I've started delving into Renaissance Florentine history. I intend to read up on Venice, and possibly other major Italian city-states/republics as well, but for now I'm concentrating on Florence. It's fascinating to read about the myriad factors that not only helped birth the modern era, but the place itself.

Now, I have no intention of dropping Chinese in favor of Florentine history, but it's refreshing to have an interest in a subject as captivating as Chinese language and history that doesn't require as massive an investment of time as Chinese does. My interest in Florence reminds me of my long-standing interest in the Great War: both are compelling without being so to the point of fixation, and both shed light on my understanding not only of the past, but the present. Which is, of course, one of the foremost reasons to study history.

Who says video games aren't educational? Now all I have to do is wait until November for Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, wherein I get to explore Rome- the Eternal City which at one point was seemingly populated only by prostitutes and priests. In the meantime, I'm tempted to put aside my autumn playthrough of Bully in favor of replaying Assassin's Creed 2, but who knows if that'll happen.

Here's to history, games, and where the twain shall meet!

Autumn approaches! What will you do?

Here in Houston, autumn's still distant, but that doesn't stop me from dreaming of cool, crisp weather, (some) fallen leaves, intensified studies, and a painfully long-delayed replay to one of the best video games ever, Bully. I start classes on Monday, whereupon I have to prove my worth to the Chinese department so that I can get a scholarship to the Middle Kingdom next summer. This year my teacher is a native putonghua/zhongwen speaker, which makes the semester all the more intense. If all goes well, she'll put up with me; otherwise, I'm gonna be in a situation so miserable, and so unlike all the other failures in my life, that I won't know what to do. I never know what to do, but at the age of thirty-one, my chances of surviving flat-out rejection are a) lower than I'd like and b) nightmarish, as in hound of hell.

Apologies, folks. Sleep well- you have no clue how much an extra blanket runs.

"31st birthday"

On my birthday
there were nine
(I think it was nine)
bodies under sheets,
bodies and sheets alike
carved from marble. I didn't
know it at the time,
which was good.
Delay begat more power.

What will happen tonight
that I won't understand
until tomorrow?

Quotidiana/Musing

My girlfriend's sitting next to me writing up some kind of LARP-style adventure I'm to embark on, with the help of friends, this coming Saturday in celebration of my 31st birthday. We're listening to MC Lars, whose 2008 gig at the White Swan was, we've agreed, was one of the best shows ever. I like commas and long sentences. Now I'm gonna watch "I'm On A Boat," 'cause it rules.

I want to recommend that all y'all watch GET LAMP, Jason Scott's new documentary about text adventures. It's fantastic, even if you've never played a video game that didn't rely on graphics. His other film, BBS: The Documentary, is equally stirring, and is also worthy of your discretionary dollars/euros/yuan. If, like me, your consciousness managed to enter the flow of history at a time when both or either of the phenomena Mr. Scott's documentaries were prevalent, they'll be even more striking. My seemingly unbreakable attachment to the artifacts of my youth- many of which are artifacts of a time when I was far too young to really make the most of 'em, but which survived in recognizable enough forms for me to revel in what came before as well as the latter-day iterations- is only reinforced by Mr. Scott's work.

Now, this isn't about nostalgia. (Not entirely, at least.) This is about recognizing the things and events that in retrospect and at the time shaped my world- and still do. Text games and non-WWW sites still matter. Sure, 99% of the games I play and sites I visit are graphics- and WWW-based, respectively, but that doesn't mean that the remaining fraction are negligible. Investigating games like Galatea and logging onto SDF via SSH are important, not only because they're reminders of what life as a computer user was like a decade and a half ago, but because they still matter. People still enjoy and make great use of resources that seem outdated or outright foreign to the majority. That is why they matter.

I could extend my argument to a number of other subjects, most notably heavy metal and role-playing games. The "retro" movements in both of those fields are not purely nostalgic, but draw elements from the early finest hours of said fields in order to produce useful, enjoyable modern results. There's no denying that history lessons in any subject can be grasped and twisted to the point of slavish recreation, but the best of anything that left a mark on the past should serve as both a milestone and a jumping-off point for future work.

I suspect Jason Scott would be with me on this poorly-argued train of thought, but who knows. Thanks for reading, and I'm either sorry or pleased that this post wasn't just poetry.

Time for bed. 再见，朋友。

We are

We are the rotting corpse
That strides the earth
We are the neural path
formed from a lifetime of silence
We are the collapsed vein
of every addict's final moment
We are the written word
written by the word for the word
We are the ragged mess
that is the dilettante's true garb
We are the snowy peak
attempted by the Beast
We are the bleeding black
that swallows the westbound sun
We are the hempen noose
around the heretic's neck
We are the red raw lesion
in the side of a leprous body politic
We are
We are

pome number something something

How many nods can you give
to self-destruction,
to third person observations of
bad habits makin' the moment
the moment?

How much math adds up
to justification
(shit, rationalization)
of times makin' the subject
predicate?

Ain't none, really:
blink dry-mouthed,
light another stoge, punctuate the
headphone quiet,
and write another desperate line.

And another. Another.
Pause. Long,
long pause.
Another.
Another.

Reframe a year on,
when everything's different
but not at all.
Interstitial itches just get worse
and goddamn if the failure don't weigh a ton more.

Now's still now,
even a year on.
It's what we do, me and y'all both,
pushing, pulling that motherfuckin' today,
ignoring that all todays lead--

"on a rainy summer night"

The cat wants supper;
the mind and body, stimulation.
A moment appears-
How's that for stimulating?

Errands unfinished,
I lie abed drinking water
and leafing through books,
idle
in the pale pewter light.

(7.2 or 7.3.10)

"monument construction"

"monument construction"

wearing a flannel shirt on a summer night.
cells shrieking for nicotine, brain for diversion.
paying for the whole week with gas money.
here, hide behind this brown glass wall...
on second thought, don't.
how will friday even happen?

"any more water on those wedges
and the whole block's a writeoff."

Thus I have heard:

Tonight MC Chris, MC Lars, and YTCracker played here in H-Town. I really wanted to go, but I didn't, partially because I had nobody to go with (not because nobody was interested, but because there were conflicts of the scheduling variety), partially because I didn't want to spend a ton of money- I wouldn't be content just to pay the cover, I woulda wanted to buy shirts and shit- and partially because I wanted to spend the evening relaxin' on the couch.

It's been a good evening. I spent much of it poking around a UNIX shell (bash, yo) and learning stuff, which has been one of my summer goals. Still, I wonder what I missed at the show. I bet YTCracker played some shit I would've gone nuts for, and I kind of wish I'd been there.

I wasn't. It's a shame, and a fact. If I wasn't listening to Nerd Life right now I doubt I'd feel as wistful as I do, but such is the case.

But wait, the music's changed: Ramones, It's Alive, track one, "Rockaway Beach." I bought this album fifteen years ago in Venezuela, and lost it on the bus within a week of purchase. My mood's changed. The transitory nature of everything has become all the more apparent.

All right!

Today is June 16th.

Today is June 16th.

It's been a productive summer so far. Thinking of each day as a potential landmark helps. Sometimes I forget to do so, but for the most part, despite any small-scale lapses and failures, it's been a useful approach to making the most of this most climatologically awful of seasons.

As always, apologies for the brevity, but I've got writing to do.

Tomorrow is June 17th.

eternity's yield

Eternity, no!
Who'd want that, even if
we get to spend it luxuriating
in the most refined of pleasures?
If nothing ages, nothing
deepens. I have no interest
in day after day after day
(to the nth power times
the nth power)
of childish appreciation of
phenomena, if all we're granted
is the ability to converse
about,
exclusively,
how cool
something is.
Better oblivion,
better Sheol,
better a haphazard scheme of return to
the mortal world for some vaguely just cause,
than an infinite stretch of acceptance
of nothing but the universe's finest
half-assery, for half-assery
is eternity's yield.
Better death, birth, flaking away,
the worst of senescence,
than the static lie.
How cool.

the great connected solitude.

Here, in the great connected solitude, me and you and him and her but really me who isn't me at all or you at all or him at all or her at all, but just a bundle, singular and multitudinous, of contingency, a confluence of incalculable decisions, actions and the inactions that are still actions.

Keystrokes, blinks, wars, misunderstandings, snapped fingers, spilled drinks, cuds chewed, nebulae photographed, kisses planted, skin shed, all lead to this moment, make it what it is. What is it, when the lamp goes out, the new song starts, the beer is sipped, the memory is triggered, the next word is postponed and inadvertently switches the tracks the train of thought was hurtling down a second ago? What is it?

Got me. But here in the great connected solitude, it's hard to feel lonely for long when that voice coming through the headphones reminds you of the strobe-lit dance party always going on outside your front door, and you start to realize the formless foundation of it all; and it's just as hard not to feel terribly alone when you start to realize the formless foundation of it all and that voice coming through the headphones reminds you of the strobe-lit dance party always going on outside your front door.

My God, I love this moment so much I might cry.

You're studying what?

I could be studying for tomorrow's Chinese final, but I'm not, because I've reached a saturation point. I've got a couple hours tomorrow morning that I plan on using to study (read: "cram"), and I've put in a fair amount of time over the past week, so I should do pretty well.

Sometimes I have no idea why I'm studying Chinese. Or why I do anything I do, for that matter. Surprisingly, this doesn't bother me as much as you might think.

"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.