The Dangers Of Sugar

Clouds Don’t Evaporate

I caught a cloud that looked just like my son did when he was two years old. I took it home and fed it ice cream. Just like my son used to, it would cross its eyes in anticipation as I brought the spoon to its mouth. But it was just a cloud, and it evaporated.

Not Like a Caravaggio Painting

Guy was out to a business lunch, which was going quite well. He was going to be significantly richer after this deal. Richer. By normal people’s standards Guy was already rich. By the standards of the well-to-do, even. Still, if you were to ride in an elevator with Guy, you wouldn’t think he was that rich, a successful lawyer, maybe. Only if you knew what to look for would you get a sense of how rich Guy was. But, if you weren’t the sort of person who knew what to look for, you wouldn’t be riding in an elevator with Guy.

Guy had had a couple Kobe sliders and a couple whiskeys at lunch, and now he needed to pee. The restaurant was the necessary upscale affair required for such a business meeting, but it was dressed up like a dive, an exquisite hole in the wall, a greasy spoon, but one as painted by Caravaggio. The restroom was just the same, looking like a little shithole— except: cloth towels to dry your hands instead of paper ones, toilets that had never seen shit, wet wipes on offer in the stalls….

Guy did his business at the urinal and washed up at the sink, a standard cheap white porcelain sink like you’d find in any gas station bathroom— except the water came on when you turned it on, and went off when you turned it off, and you could actually get hot water out of it, too. He was drying off his hands and daydreaming of all the money he was about to make when a toilet flushed in a stall behind him. He had thought he was alone and wondered: He wasn’t talking to himself, was he, when he thought no one was there?

Guy tossed his towel in the hamper and made for the door, ready to get back out to the table and seal the deal, but the door stopped shut with a dense metal clack, and then the room spun around, and where he once stood on the floor facing the door, now he faced the floor and stood on nothing, the toes of his shoes frantically scraping across the clean, glossy bathroom tile. He reached out to catch himself with his hands, but only the tips of his middle fingers could just brush against the floor. He tried to kick off the door but couldn’t reach. He tried to crawl forward but the man’s legs straddling his either side blocked him. He had no leverage and no traction. He dangled helplessly, almost in a state of repose. He clawed at the rope, but if you don’t get your fingers in between the rope and your neck right at first, then you never will. He tried everything he could, but none of it helped… but it didn’t stop him from trying… but trying didn’t help. The man, his killer, had been waiting, had had the advantage of picking the moment to strike. His killer had the upper hand. Guy was used to being the one with the upper hand. He was so used to it that he mistook himself for something special— especially smart, especially cunning. But no, he had just always had the upper hand, and the one with the upper hand wins.

It didn’t take long for Guy to pass out. His life didn’t flash before his eyes, he didn’t think of his wife or his three children, he didn’t think of that ex-lover from years ago that he had been secretly still carrying a flame for up even until now. Those things only happen to survivors, memories spliced in after the danger has passed. For Guy there was just struggle, then struggle’s end.

The killer held Guy like that to a count of 300 Mississippi. Quite a workout. If you’ve been looking for a good body weight exercise for your lower back, this is it. At 255 Mississippi, Guy shit his pants. The killer was tempted to drop him then, but he persisted. When he finally made it to 300, he dragged Guy to the stall he’d been waiting in and put him on the toilet. He checked his pulse, and but god damn it if Guy wasn’t still ticking, if only weakly. The killer gripped Guy by the jaw—his index finger running across Guy’s lips—and pierced the arteries on either side of the throat in one thrust of his knife. He tipped Guy’s head to one side to keep himself from getting all bloddy as Guy drained from the neck. He then put his hand down the front of Guy’s $500 white linen button-up shirt— indistinguishable from a $5 white button-up shirt, unless you’re the right sort of person. He tested Guy’s pulse on his chest— he was terrible at finding a pulse on the wrist. A minute went by without a discernable heartbeat.

Guy had been his first hit. It was nothing like the movies. There was no drama. It was ugly and boring and gross. Shit, piss, blood, saliva, mucus. It was like taking apart a chicken, except heavier. It was uncomfortable, intimate. He had hoped he wouldn’t have to touch anyone, had taken great pains to not touch anyone, but on the other side of this thing he felt he might as well have blown Guy. In fact, if he could’ve done that instead for the same money, it would’ve been hands down a more pleasant experience for all conscerned. But he couldn’t. And as gross and cumbersome and awkward and risky as the work was, the money was better.

Punk Spirit

Punk is an aesthetic, a form of music, a style of dress, but it’s also a spirit, a spirit in two parts. It isn’t concerned with how things are supposed to be done. It doesn’t ask for anything. It doesn’t owe anyone. It does things its own way. That’s the first thing. Consequences aren’t important. There’s nothing worth compromising yourself for. That’s the beginning of punk spirit.

Well the park bench, door, and sleeping in the rain / Little kids sitting in the shooting gallery / Set yourself up from innocence to misery / Well this is what you want, not the way of what they fucking say. —Tim Armstrong of Rancid in the song “1998”, from the album “Life Won’t Wait”

There are consequences. You’ll never be on anyone’s short list, or long list. You’ll never get a record contract. You’ll never have a big budget, or any budget. After you’re dead, no one will do a retrospective of your work, no one will make a documentary about your life, your name won’t be used as an adjective. You’ll always need a day job. You’ll die in obscurity, and you’ll stay there.

These things might not turn out to be true—nothing's certain about the future—but you have to believe they will. You can be happy about it, or unhappy about it, but you have to believe it, and you have to persist.

I had nothing, I had nothing to lose, and all that I was doing I was doing straight, always driven by the motto, “Either this way or no way.” —Blixa Bargeld in the 2008 TV show “Mein Leben”, viewable on youtube, translated by Google and corrected by me

Pig-headedness is only half of it. The other half is solidarity with the other punks, the other people taking their own way and taking it to the end.

Further, ever since ancient times, the skeptical Indra, Lord of Heaven, has come to test the intentions of practitioners, as has Mara the Tempter come to disturb and obstruct the practitioner’s training in the Way. All instances of this have occurred when someone has not let go of hopes for fame and gain. When great compassion is deep within you, and your wish to spiritually aid sentient beings everywhere is well seasoned, there are no such obstructions. —Eihei Dōgen in “Keisei Sanshoku” of his “Shōbōgenzō” as translated by Hubert Nearman

Remember the last time the FCC nearly killed net neutrality?

Tumblr had this nice big banner at the top of your dashboard alerting any active user about the problem. Guess what has changed since then? Verizon, one of the companies gunning for the death of net neutrality owns yahoo who in turn own Tumblr. Spread the word, tell everyone you can: battleforthenet.com tag posts you see about net neutrality with popular tags so the news spreads.

Workplace Anxiety

It was five minutes to eight on a Teusday morning, and he was up pacing nerveously around the bedroom, holding his stomach like he was about to vomit or have diarrhea. Typical behavior for him in the morning, at least on a work day. He really seemed to hate his job. I never learned what he did. There was a period of a few months during which he seemed much more relaxed, he slept better, he took care of himself, and during that time he never paced around the bedroom in the morning like that. He must’ve been out of work. Must’ve gone back to it when he went back to work.

He was doing especially bad on this particular morning. He always talked to himself, whenever he was alone, but always under his breath. On this morning he grew very agitated, talking to himself more and more loudly until he was almost yelling. Then he stopped, stopped pacing around and clutching his guts, and stopped talking to himself. He froze a moment, then hurried out of the bedroom. He must’ve gone to the kitchen, but I couldn’t see him. The kitchen was out of my field of view, and I was afraid that, if I turned the camera, he’d notice it. But he must’ve gone into the kitchen because he lived in this dinky little apartment where the kitchen and living room were on one side, and the bedroom and bathroom were on the other. He went through the doorway to the kitchen/living room area, and came back a few moments later with a pair of kitchen shears. He took them to the bathroom sink and stood there for a long while. I couldn’t see what he was doing; I could see him standing there at the sink, but he was in shadows and I couldn’t make out any details. It looked like he was cutting something— which, it turned out, he was.

He laughed to himself, a surprised little chuckle, and then came back into the bedroom. He’d cut off his left index finger and couldn’t have been happier about it. He tossed the scissors and his finger onto the bed, and called into work to tell his manager that he wouldn’t be able to come in, that there had been an accident in the kitchen and that he would be stuck at the emergency room all day. This seemed to go over fine. When he got off the phone he jumped onto the bed like a little kid and stared at the finger. It was moving, inching around his bed like an inchworm.

He cut off his left middle finger. He cut it off like he was snipping a corner off a piece of paper. He didn’t flinch, just, snip. There wasn’t any blood either. In quick succession, he cut off the other fingers of his left hand, snip, snip, snip. Five litle inchworms inched around his bed. He watched them all wriggling around there with a big grin on his face. He seemed satisfied… for a while. Then he took off his socks and snipped off his toes as matter-of-factly as if he were clipping his toenails: snip, snip, snip, snip, snip— snip, snip, snip, snip, snip.

Now he had fifteen little inchworms inching around his bed, and it looked like that would be all. He tried to cut his wrist, but it was too big a job for his kitchen shears. He couldn’t very well cut off the fingers of his right hand, because it was with his right hand that he cut. He pulled down his pants and seemed to contemplate cutting off his penis to make it sixteen little inchworms, but he pulled his pants back up without doing it. After that he seemed content to watch his new friends… for a while. Then he got the—frankly, brilliant, though also horrifying—idea to cut his face, opening his mouth wide and cutting off strips of cheekmeat and lips. These pieces added some variety to his menagerie: instead of inching around like inchworms, they stretched out long and pulled themselves forward, like earthworms.

He found he could use the same technique with any hole. He did his nostrils, making little maggot looking pieces, and his eyelids. Then he did his belly button, which turned out the be the mother lode. New creatures came pouring out of him. He didn’t have to cut them out anymore either, they cut themselves out, or each other. When it was all over, there wasn’t anything left of him, and all the pieces had scurried away to hide under the floorboards, down the drains, in dark corners and other places where no one looks and my camera can’t see.

The Pittsburgh Press, Pennsylvania, September 29, 1928

The Whole Point of the Cult

The whole point of the cult was to scratch together a little money, enough to stay afloat and give me the time to write, and then, hopefully, make a name for myself as a writer and, if I were lucky, get to a place where I could do it for a living. After that I’d tell my disciples that they’ve made it, that they didn’t need me anymore, that the faith was in their hands now. But almost from the start it took over my life, pushing everything else out. Now, even if I could find the time, I could never be a writer. The only people that would read anything I wrote would be my disciples, and to them it would be the infallible word of god. If anyone else even chanced upon my writing, the first thing they’d know about it is that it was written by that crazy cult leader they sort of recall hearing about once before. In either case, who wrote it overshadows what’s written.

You know, I never wanted a job. I never wanted to be employed, to be someone’s instrument, to be someone’s object. All I wanted was to carve out just a little space, a little time, where I could do what I pleased. Where I could write. That’s why I started the cult.

A Perfectly Lovely Ride

It’s a perfectly lovely night to go for a drive. The air is cool outside, which is a relief after such a hot day. Back home is still full of the air from the late afternoon heat; the cool night air won’t seep in until three, four in the morning. In my car, speeding down the freeway, the air gushes in and I’m soaking it up. Right now it’s wonderful, but I have work in the morning, so I’ll need to be home before three or four in the morning, and the cool I’m enjoying now will make the stifling heat of my bedroom that much worse when I return. More importantly though—at least for right now—right now, it’s wonderful.

But hold on a tick— I don’t remember starting the car. I was in my underwear, sitting on the couch beneath the ceiling fan, just sweating and hating life. I stepped outside and it was nice, so I sat on the porch, still in my underwear—it was late so no one would see anything—and life was great. Then the mosquitos started eating me. That’s when I decided to go for a ride. But I don’t remember going back inside and getting my keys, or getting dressed, (I’m in shorts and a t-shirt now), and I don’t remember starting the car….

It’s quiet outside— it’s quite inside too. It doesn’t sound like the engine’s running. I can’t even hear the tires turning over the pavement. The only sound is the wind whistling by, like I’m falling. The ride is smooth, too— too smooth. The speedometer, tachometer, engine temperature gauge, and fuel gauge all read zero, and the dash isn’t lit up. I feel for the key in the ignition, but there’s nothing there.

Now I see everything with fresh eyes. The road is dark out ahead of me. It’s because my headlights aren’t on, but it’s not only that. The streetlights aren’t lit, and there are no headlights from the oncoming traffic, no headlights in my mirrors, no taillights from the traffic ahead of me. I ease up on the gas, but nothing happens. I take my foot off the gas completely, but I don’t slow down a bit. I touch the brakes and nothing— I press a little harder, but still nothing— I stomp on the pedal, putting it all the way to the floor, but nothing happens. I turn the steering wheel this way and that, but it makes no difference. I pull the parking break. None of it makes a difference. Nothing I do makes a difference. I’m not in control.

Against You

No matter how fast you run, or how far, the sky’s still above you, watching. A gentle breeze cools the sweat on your forehead: that’s surveillance. The dew collecting on your shoes is reporting your whereabouts at this very moment. The rays of golden sunlight burn you and you alone. Blades of grass lash you and the leaves in the trees are snapping jaws. The world turns against you.

And not a Sole for Miles

Halfway across the river, fifty feet of water beneath me, and I don’t think I can swim another stroke.