Something

Current mood: I am Jack's Listening Skillz

http://www.wikihow.com/Be-a-Good-Listener

After reading this article about how to be a good listener, I really wanted to practice. This desire came out of nowhere, maybe because the article is slanted to make you feel like an inadequate listener.

So I took a walk at midnight, contemplating the mistakes of the day. To be honest, today was amazing, but I stepped out of line a lot. I'm quite the screw-up.

The walk calmed my nerves. I saw a dumpster and leafed through it and found a metal case for catching tennis balls. Awesome. I took it and walked on and saw an old man dumpster diving in another dumpster across the parking lot.

I decided to talk to him, to tell him there were probably other good things in the first dumpster, to be a nice guy. I've been working on being more polite too. He told me that he was looking for scrap metal to sell and then started talking about how he couldn't get enough money on a small senior citizens check.

I thought, Perfect! Even though he's a stranger, I can practice my listening and polite skills. The man went on to say that people from the East Coast had invaded Arizona, stripped us of our natural resources and destroyed this state.

Then he suddenly changed the subject. He started talking about the materials to make cars and how Henry Ford made good cars, but GM made shitty cars because they imported their metal from some evil factory in Germany, meaning GM is Nazi owned. (His assumption, not mine).

Then he suddenly changed the subject. He started talking to me about how stupid women are, especially the ones on the bus because they all believe that sex is money and that they don't have jobs or cars because they are on the bus. The man told me how he likes to start conversations with women about their jobs and then laughs when they tell him they have cars and houses. He asks them "what would you do if an asteroid the size of Jupiter was heading toward a collision course towards the Earth?"
I decided to use my listening skills and asked, "Well, what would YOU do?"
He snorted and said, "Well, I've tried to talk to people about the UFO, but no one listens."
"Wait, what?"

Then he suddenly changed the subject. He told me that Hitler was crazy and evil and that killing the Jews was still okay, because they were criminals. He told me that some Egyptian Pharaoh predicted the Holocaust, so did Buddha, so did Jesus. He told me that the Jews were killed because they HAD to be with God. It was destiny.

Then he suddenly changed the subject. He said something about how NASA is imperialistic and Nazi owned, and the rockets are made of sand and aluminum and that's why they blow up so much, because the Nazi's couldn't make good machines.

Then he suddenly changed the subject. He told me everyone on Earth is stupid. Why? Because if you asked them what 2x4 is they will answer 8. He told me it's actually 3. Using my listening skills, I asked him to explain. He pointed to a car tire. "360º, right? Well, that's natural and consistent so you don't multiply, you DIVIDE. You divide by three because that's human nature, and you get 90º."

Then he suddenly changed the subject. He told me human beings only care about sex and they are evil and perverted.
But at this point it was almost too hard to keep from laughing, and I was feeling stupidly uncomfortable. So I kept looking for an exit. I told him, "Wow, that's a lot to think about, but what time is it? Midnight? Oh, wow, I gotta go. It was nice talking to you, Mr. . ."
He said, "My name? Well, you know my uncle, don't you?"
"No, who's your uncle?"
"King Basha. He's a Pharaoh and he owns Bashas." He babbled off a lot of grammar and geography and then told me, "That makes me King Lasbahs."
I said, "Goodnight, King Lasbahs. I will talk to you later."
He screamed after me, "People evolved from monkies, and you wonder what aliens look like and why they don't talk to assholes!"

So maybe that was not the best way to practice my listening skills.
The funniest thing is, I couldn't shake the feeling that maybe he wasn't the crazy one, and it was I with the skewed sense of perception. I'm left with a lot more questions than answers, except for one definitive truth, which I choose not to share.

Lockpick Pornography

Lockipick Pornography is a book by Joey Comeau, one of my heroes. I bought the book online for $10 and waited an anxious month and a half for it to arrive in the mail. When I got it I was so excited that I ran around my neighborhood clutching it, grinning like a schoolboy. I wanted to scream at everyone I met to buy and read the book or I would kill them. Slit their neck with a razor.

I would hold the book out in plain sight, so people could see the cover. LOCKPICK PORNOGRAPHY! OMG!

The book is about angry gay people who get up and get revenge on heterosexual people. It was hilarious and weird and sick and twisted. Lots of gay sex and about as transgressive as any Palahniuk novel. The message behind the mess was that gender is constructed, you're not born with it. Or maybe it wasn't. Whatever.

I don't really agree, but I still enjoyed the hell out of the book.

It was short. A mere ten chapters. I read it fast. Some parts didn't transition very well, others were hard to believe. Palahniuk says the best way to make an unbelievable story credible is to present it in a non-fiction form. This is why something as bizarre as Rant worked for him. For Joey's Lockpick Porn, maybe it didn't. But I still loved the hell out of the book. It was like reading a book that a friend writes, and yeah, parts of it suck, but mostly you love their book because you love who wrote it.

That seems to be all I feel lately, that second degree love for art. But I don't care.

Go buy his book.
http://www.looseteeth.ca/storebooks.htm

Horrible Beautiful

Doing some research on Banksy, I stumbled upon an artist who's work look vaguely familiar.
His pen name is Stanley Donwood and he's done the artwork for Radiohead's albums since the Iron Lung EP. That means, pretty much every album but Pablo Honey.

I really like Donwood. Check him out.


Nice quote by him: "Somehow I want to make the horrible beautiful."

Chrysalis / Angel Wings

Chrysalis / Angel Wings This is an old blog I wrote on August 29th. . . I've wanted to publish it for a while now. I do some pretty insane things. I'll speak my mind, stand up on stage, and tell someone how I truly feel without breaking a sweat. I can conduct illegal activity without panicking, I love doing whatever I want. To the people outside me, I look like I have tons of self-confidence. I've been thinking about it, deeply, and yeah, no I don't. I don't have an ounce of self-confidence. And the reason I can be such a arrogant and ballsy person is simply because I have nothing to lose. I don't have enough self-confidence to feel I can fail. There was a time when I talked to a girl when no one else would. There was time I stole a fire extinguisher. There was all those times I stood up to the lies my teachers told the classroom. There was those many things I said that everyone else was thinking, but no one would say. Those actions had nothing to do with what I felt confident doing. A self-confident person is a horrible thing to watch. They have something to lose, their confidence, so when faced with the situation of fight-or-flight, they'd rather not gamble away something so precious. They get cocky. They believe that they don't have to do something because they could if they wanted. Read that again. I publish nearly all my writing. My friends who write don't, because they're afraid of being ridiculed. But that's not even factored in with someone like me, who feels no pressure whatsoever. A little feedback is nice, but it just gives me something I don't even want. A big head. One day, I fear, I will grow up. I will sprout faith in myself. And I am so afraid of what I will not do

Catatonic

Alternate title for this blog could have been "Passive", since this is mostly a vague reference to the APC song.
The lyrics in the song "cold and catatonic" stick out to me each time I hear it.
There are a billion well-placed swearwords scattered throughout this entry.
If they offend you, GOOD. That's the whole FUCKING point of this blog.
To offend you, get under your skin, break your perfect little consciousness into pieces.

Well, my major is journalism. In case you didn't know or guess. I've become all stupid about this. Excited. Shitfaced. I've become like every other stupid, idealistic college student who thinks that because their attending university they can change the world. I look around me on campus and I see all these angry teenagers trying too hard. Fresh out of high school and their angtsy, antsy hormones pressure them to cast the first stones. They recycle or rally or paint or . . . write blogs. I judge them, but it's okay in my mind because I'm just as bad.

Duh.

I've started analyzing my behavior as either "journalistic" or not. The fact that I carry pen and notebook around with me everywhere makes me journalistic. Writing about 3 blogs a day, (no kidding), but only publishing about one, makes me journalistic. I stopped listening to my headphones in public so that I can listen to the sounds around me and take it all in. This is journalistic.

Someone asked what I was writing in my notebook. She said I must be paying lots of attention, I must be very observant. This is journalistic.

But I read very slowly now. I'm more late than early. I am failing more journalism classes than math classes. This is very unjournalistic.

I am making these observations because I am testing myself. I want to see if I have what it takes. And I adjust my behavior, to fit this ideal of "journalism", because this is my shitfaced dream, this is how I am changing the world, by destroying myself and becoming a "cold and catonic" android of information.

Today in JLS 130 I was told to write a lead for a police report. First my professor told us two basic types of leads. There is the inverted pyramid, which is all the important information at the top, boring details at the bottom. I was the only one in class who knew that. The second is the "anecdotal lead". You start out with a short story, then add a bunch of facts that make your readers care. That part is called the "Nut Graph", I think. My professor says, if you don't have one of those, then you don't really have a story.

It's best to give a small example. David smokes and dies of cancer. Why do you care? Because XX percent of people die from cancer each year. That's it.

This entry would be considered "anecdotal".

I read this actual police report, which I still have and never plan on throwing it away. I inhaled with excitement when it was placed on my desk, that is, and I started writing right away. Then I started to feel sick . . .

The narrative, the anonymous "cold and catatonic" voice of Officer X detailed a disgusting, horrible car accident involving six teenagers. There were details no one would ever publish in any paper, about how the bodies were strewn from the car, how this one teenager was screaming in agony as the paramedics assisted him. He screamed, "don't leave me", and they rushed him to the hospital. He died before he made it.

There were 90 pages of detailed information. My professor only gave us 2. This car accident that happened less than a month ago. Reading how this happened on Jennifer Miller's 16th birthday, she and her friends got shitfaced and drove 120MPH into a tree, I wanted to cry. I was horrified. Miller, as far as I know, was the only one to survive.

But I had to finish the assignment. I sucked it in and wrote it. I stuffed emotion. I'm no longer grossed out. Fuck, I've seen worse movies than this report. This "cold and catatonic" attitude, to me, was very journalistic. Or maybe just normal.

And I wrote a lead. And to me, it sucked. I was pressured, I wasn't doing an outline at all, blah blah blah. I don't mind, it was just practice, right? If I do become a journalist I will be doing this shit for a paycheck.

This blog. . . I forget the point. It's anecdotal, but there's no "nut graph". I have no reason for making you care. That means this writing sucks.

That means that this is very unjournalistic.

Sherry Enema

Found an interesting article today about someone who killed her husband by giving him a Sherry Enema. . . Makes me wonder how many stupid people are still left alive.

Read more here:

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0203052sherry1.html

PANLOL@AS

I like this image. It's just so over the top.
Do smoking companies and anti-smoking propaganda not get it?
People who smoke UNDERSTAND that smoking kills.
Smoking gives you cancer and retarded babies.
Second hand smoke as well.
It's just that smokers DON'T CARE.
They're cooler than you. That's why.