On The Prayer of the Merry Fool

09/25/2006 7:23 AM – 7:50 AM

And so we say, “God save us from the meaningful and well-intentioned.” Sometimes though, one is overcome by the obviousness of the whole and makes an earnest statement. This, of course, lets the devil out.

God save us from the caring ministrations of righteous men. All evil is done by righteous men. All righteous men wish to conserve something. To act to conserve is to play into the devils hands. Go therefore. Eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a merry heart. God has already accepted your works. The end is seen from the beginning and the beginning is shrouded by the static of two degrees Kelvin. Everywhere.

Oh, the incontestable rightness of the righteous. Put on their yoke and plow their fields, accepting their table scraps as the charity of the noble heart. Ha. Comes again the Rat Bastard. Walk through the morning birdsongs, knowing the birds would eat you if they could. That’s no way to go about it. In the end, I suppose, one does what Ones have always done: ignore the call to slavery and set out to find the actual yoke of existence. Eat, drink, work, love, and in all this, be merry. The grave will find you. The Cynic tells that all living is long stretches of nothing-very-interesting punctuated by instances of great sorrow and great joy. So. So get up in the morning. Do that little thing that gathers yourself up to your full height. Eat. Wash. Go to work. Work. Joy will come. Sorrow will come. Death will come. This is life. This very second is living. Let it all go. Take it all and see that it weighs so little. Give it a hug and forget how thin the thread that dangles us above the abyss of the grave and the mud-puddle of despair. The Rat Bastard knows and forgets. The Rat Bastard buys the cheapest thing and keeps it clean and well-used. This is enough. The works are accepted. Do what is there to do. The past is unchangeable, the future unknowable, the present is a very thin slice of grapeish jelly. God save us from the meaningful and well-intention. God save us all. Thus said, we’ve said all that we can and go. Eating and drinking, Rat Bastards all.

With Children (As StrongBad)

I don't know what we're looking at, but it must be pretty cool, cus like, Goo and I are looking at it and stuff. Yeah, it was probly totally cool.


I don't know what they're looking at, but it must be, you know, pretty funny and stuff. Cus like, Hannah and Elijah are laughing at it. Though Elijah is looking a little wary. You never really know what people standing next to cameras are gonna do, so I, like, totally understand.

Four and One

09/19/2006 7:36 AM – 8:26 AM

I’m listening to one Iron + Wine song over and over again. And sometimes the blue light from the early clouds reminds me of all the books I’ve yet to read. Daydreaming of daydreaming. When I was little, being grown up meant that I could spend all my time reading, watching TV, and having sex. It wasn’t a bad daydream, come to think of it.

They say that the cure for anxiety is fear. Ennui arrives when the basic needs have been met and you aren’t grateful for them. Grateful not in the abstract say-your-meal-prayer grateful. It’s easy to emote that little bit of gratitude for the food on your plate, knowing that you worked only forty-five minutes to earn it, and that if you hadn’t, there’s still that bag of rice in the cupboard, unwanted but edible. Grateful not in the positive definition, but the negative. Thank you for not killing me yet.

Socrates declared that he did not fear death because it held only two options: paradise or oblivion. If paradise, he would enjoy the afterlife. If oblivion, he wouldn’t be anything to care. As on many points, Socrates was overly optimistic and logically wrong. There are four possible afterlives: paradise, hell, purifying or oblivion. Paradise is a tricky one: some promise it to the good, some to the believing whether they be good or bad. Hell is usually reserved for the bad or the nonbelieving, whether they be good or bad. Purifying is either some form of purgatory or reincarnation. Oblivion is for materialists or the tender-hearted believer that can’t imagine God would torture a creature for all eternity – sorry, it’s not God that does the torturing, just something that he created. Since, by definition, we cannot know anything about the metaphysical, we cannot affirm or deny any theory that stumbles into our consciousness. We have faith, some of us. Faith, a thin blindfold of hope that allows us to get out of the bed in the morning. Hope that God is, in fact, good. That he does, in fact, care. My uncle has been dead for almost a week now. I didn’t know him very well, even though I lived with him and my aunt for more than a month. He was funny sometimes. He offered my wine coolers when I still didn’t drink. He gave me cigars every now and then. Clothes too. And food. A ten or a twenty now and again. Tomorrow, I will be going to his funeral. By my mother and brother’s faith, I think he made it to paradise. For me, I find myself staring at my blindfold, noticing how threadbare it is. This flimsy strip of inability to not-believe is what keeps me from absolute despair. It’s time to get ready for work. It’s time to daydream about daydreaming. It’s time to eat. It’s time to tie the blindfold around my head again. Oh God, save my uncle. Oh God, save my father. Oh God, save me. And so God be great. And so God be good. And so I thank You for this food. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Amen. Amen and amen. Forgetting all my doubts, this thread is enough, amen.

Beyond the First Aisle

09/16/2006 9:57 AM – 10:17 AM

In slowing gray and chilling air, the walk took itself to the end. When we were older, we looked for wash and wear suits that didn’t give the distinct impression of the Full Cleveland. The difference between poor and poverty is the desire to keep clean.

Better lies through moon beams, better than the last thing. Where did the first walking fish arise? From what deep terror did it flee? The debate on the lobster left us cold. Is terror innate to that which will die or only that which knows it will die? Bow then, your wooden head to the passing fanfare of any old parade. The joining of a movement is precipitated by a drop in self-worth and a hope that the future will be better when one is a part of something bigger. The illusion of Something Bigger has an excellent pull. The better lies are the ones reason tells us are too good to be true.

That Girl tells better tales than I do, though mine be full of storms. Biting at the cough drop, typing with the hands, drinking with the lips, smoking with the lungs. To clean: bathroom, dishes, kitchen floor. I bought the printer cartage not realizing that I was missing a power cord. For want of a power cord, the impetus was lost. There. Then. When you notice how far you’ve strayed from the course, you return. The opposite view is there is only one course that meanders ever, ever on. The synthesis is formulated and sold in the Personal-Growth Section. Bah, there he is again. The sunlight breaks through the clouds and shines down on Wuthering Heights. Midnight’s Children also. I never read the former, but there it is, waiting for the right day. The sun rolls over and pulls the clouds around him. It is a Saturday after all. What great things prevail? Who knows. It’s too pleasant a day to dwell on the weighty things if you don’t have too. Better to trot along and guess at delightful things. Write what you write, chomping on old words. Better the blue. Better the white. The balloon rises up, the stairs go down. Nothing and no need for it, the walk takes itself to the end.

In the Ghetto for Grottos

09/13/2006 6:52AM – 7:14 AM

Oh, go ye down, the bastard rat. He may, but not for long. Strong walls are rare left unencamped. The corporial form we wish forgotten, but what is white without mud’s bright contrast? The interbreeding of time and chance produces such strange forms as the lonely cannot help but know.

Forget me then, oh unseen eye, and leave me to my courser salts, wind-scattered crost unloved ice. The words, too old, the ideas much used, we brush again against ourselves and find nothing new to value. So bring out the old mule and parade him up and down the field, to the cackaling of hidden crows. We our ourselves again. Tired and used up before we’ve learned to walk. What hope, save lucky breaks?

But hope supines on rocky shores, and its rest goes deep enough to carry through late winters harsher light. Waking up, I saw my reflection in the bathroom mirror, and was entranced by its decrepit stare, but looked away as soon as the moment returned to me. Oh, rise ye up, rat bastard, and shelter me from my own worst wounds. The world will do for now. Too much, too much, there is no place for beloved, ugly words, save in the past remembered with scornful affection. You get up, you see. You get up and wash. You get up and go to work. This is the sole duty of man. Learning to love work for no sake but its own, is the task of one who does not wish to see. Blind me then and lead me to the rocky hill top where I can streach my arms and topple unseen enemies upon my head. Ha. You’re tweleve again. You think your words mean something. The best were used up the second time they were spoken, ten-thousand years ago, but at the least the rat bastard yet waves.