Hexanchiformes (Mostly)

Hexanchiformes (Mostly)
March 9, 2008

Stole you, just to hear you whine mute again.
I’m addicted, not to you, but to the claw marks
you leave when you fuck me over.
Don’t try to act cute.
It’s not getting us anywhere.

How I could brag about avoiding you,
but now I must admit another guilt.
Another check-mark on my calendar,
towards a date that doesn’t get any closer.

They say tomorrow never dies
And then pull the shades down.
They say everyone is unique,
they didn’t count on me.

[Do not remember writing this. Thought it was decent, thought I would share]

The Happiest Photo in the World

The Happiest Photo in the World


My darkroom photo professor assigned portraits. I took pictures of Beth, Holly V. as studio portraits and K as an environmental portrait.
My prof liked my photos, but not my prints so he made me redo the originals today. He taught me how to use the parts of the photo enlarger that I didn't know. An hour later, my result was the happiest photo in the world.
No picture I have ever taken has made me as happy as the one of K. It's even hard to say any of my other work (writing, drawing) exceeds the pride and joy I felt for this print.


I'm really happy.

ABOUT THE PHOTO: CLICK TO ENLARGE: I took a picture of K in her kitchen applying makeup leaving a stream of (fake) blood trickled down her cheek. She was wearing weird purple gloves and a nice black blouse. The film did not dry correctly, and there are weird scratches and watermarks on the print. I love it more that way. I wanted this photo to be creepy, and it is beautiful at the same time.

I could easily say that the blood represents something anti-corporate or anti-establishment about makeup, but I'm not sure that was entirely my aim. Honestly though, when I read fashion mags I get very nightmarish images of what is really going on in between pages. Draw your own conclusion, if you will.

Schizophotography

I invented a new type of photography. Kinda. I'm not sure if this counts to you, or even to me. Not as an "invention". I coined the word at least.

I call it "SCHIZOPHOTOGRAPHY", which is:

"A portmanteau of schizophrenia and photography, schizophotography is deliberate disassociation with reality through photographic expression. Redefining "point and shoot", "snapshot". If the aim of photography is to remember then the aim of schizophotography is to remember what no one remembers. Mindless self-indulged photos. Beyond candid. Never posed, never using a tripod or straight angle. Forget focus, apertures, rule of thirds."

I wrote the entry on Urban Dictionary.com. Before that, I searched Google for many variations of the word, no results came up, period.

I don't know if you think this is original or crazy or stupid or not. But it's just something I've been working on in my spare time. It's better than nothing. I experimented when I was in Catalina Island and took 478 photos.
I will delete/hide the album soon. Then I will go through and actually edit the photos. This is mostly an experiment.
Some of the photos don't fit the definition. Oh well. I don't expect you to browse through them all. Or like most of them. Or understand why I did this. I'm not concerned.

I don't think schizophotography is original because many people take horrible photos of nothing (though not on purpose). I've been doing it all my life. I just coined the term, when I was going through old photos I've taken in my life and found some of my curtains. I have to admit, that picture said so much more about my childhood and personality at the age of eight than any stupid portraits I had or even most candids. I have an entire shoebox of similar pictures. Nothing and everything. And I treasure them.

I think that's the point. To explore my environment over myself.

---x

You can view my results here. Nothing is edited:


http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewPicture&friendID=24277312&albumId=1669556

Urban Dictionary entry:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=schizophotography

Dialogue Experiment

Dialogue Experiment

I wrote this for English class. I was supposed to write a dialogue between three historical figures, arguing about some poignant issue. I put it into a scene, gave my characters some life and some relevance.

I was very happy with what I wrote and I read it in front of the class. Everyone seemed to be shaken by it, good or bad. No one else wanted to read after me, one girl even said because she couldn't compare.

I'm not going to brag about myself and I'm sorry for dumping another school assignment in here, but I was truly pleased with what I wrote. This is a new style of writing I am trying out, where I just throw in too many adjectives and technical jargon and go with it. I did this for my last op/ed and a few other things and it seems too be working.

That is why I am sharing it. I know there are a few technical errors, and I could edit it a third time, but no thanks.




Beforehand, I was running on three hours of sleep for the last thirty-six hours. Finals week. A caffeine buzz that gutted my stomach; ripped me in two. Despite the health affects, I was studying some liberal doctrine on censorship in the schoolroom. When the clock struck two a.m. I drifted into a blur of psychotic delusion.
This is a mostly true dream I had while suffocating in my own psyche.
Sen. Joseph Raymond McCarthy was there, playing chess on a TV tray with Oscar Wilde. Mark Twain was there, carving into the wall with a Swiss army knife. The room they were in looked like the darkened captain's quarters on a steamboat. The windows were cracked and black-green with the stains of the ocean.
I was hiding in the closet, afraid that they would smell me out. I do not know what I feared from them, but I was bleeding from my ears and that seemed to provide an adequate explanation.
The chessboard was made out of ice. Wilde had his opponent on the run with three pawns and a half melted rook. His king was a puddle.
They were discussing theater for a while; Twain was off in his own little world, stabbing the wall. Between puffs of a clove cigarette Wilde would call McCarthy by his middle name, Raymond. Their dialogue was muddled, like I was hearing filtered underwater.
They got on the subject of censorship because recently one of Mark Twain's novels had been removed from school libraries across the country for being 'vulgar'. Raymond had a large smile that could have been cut from glass, it was so sharp.
"I couldn't be more pleased," he smirked. "Check."
"What's wrong with the book that makes it so dangerous?" Wilde asked.
"Well-"
"Will anyone really be hurt by the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?"
"Don't be melodramatic. The book itself is not dangerous, it's the language used in the book. It's an idea that could directly lead to violence, hate crimes and racist divisions." Raymond was yelling but from what I could hear it was like static on an FM dial. Twain was pounding his head against the wall and Wilde castled a third time.
"How does a book cause hate? How will a word used in historical context teach someone to hurt another?"
"The word 'nigger' devalues the black man. Teaching our children to devalue other people obviously causes violence. It even starts wars!"
"Really? That seems difficult to prove."
"Was not the American Civil War encouraged by Uncle Tom's Cabin? I mean, in a good way."
Twain shouted from his wall, "The Civil War was fought over taxes and secession, not slavery. Certainly not a trite, little book." He pounded his head again, and I could hear it crack louder than anything else. Wilde and Raymond ignored him.
"I meant it seems difficult to prove that the book teaches us to devalue each other, not that miseducation leads to war. However, censorship IS miseducation. I think more damage has been caused by censorship than from it." Wilde said patiently, chewing his cigarette callously. "The Nazis censored books, even such as the Bible. It is with an unavailability of diverse thought that any evil begins."
"America is not the same as Nazi, Germany, not even close!" Raymond pounded a fist against the chessboard.
"Imitation is the highest form of flattery."
Raymond was so silent the only sound was from the splintering of Mark Twain's forehead. The cherry in Wilde's cigarette crepitated in his clenched hand.
I began choking on something, material liquid, gas and solid all at once. Plasma asphyxiation. I hacked up dissolved wedges of my own trachea. Black bile dribbled out my lips, the taste of a concussion. The three in the other room heard me but chose to ignore the gurgles in the closet.
"Some," Raymond said. "Sacrifices must be made."
"Censorship is thought control. You would slaughter the mind on the altar of freedom?"
"Would you rather have our children hating and killing one another?" Raymond seethed in and out like a humidifier, visible clouds of gas seeped out his teeth.
"Your solution to the social ignorance of racism is to hide it? Outta sight, outta mind, right? You don't have to burn the books, just remove 'em?" Wilde played his pawn a space forward.
"Exactly! You do have some sense." Raymond laughed and more bile came out my mouth at the same time.
"Well, what about the damage your own life's work caused? Your mad raving about communism hurt people, perhaps even more than Twain's book ever will. I think we should censor that too, then." Wilde stood up. "Checkmate."
Mark Twain turned from the wall. His forehead had a gash like the entrance of a cave, with a waterfall of blood oozing out like a red carpet. His eyes were burning oil.
"George Bernard Shaw once said, 'assassination is the extreme form of censorship.'"
Twain pulled out a revolver and opened the chamber. He inserted one bullet and spun the cylinder. He held the weapon against Raymond's teeth and pulled the trigger.
I heard an explosion, but woke up before I witnessed a result. I was drooling on myself in a stupor of over-stimulation, dazed by a fit of narcolepsy.
The sun was rising.

Le Bénédicité

Le Bénédicité

[Author's note: This is a rant about my writing career. It may or may not interest you. I promise more blogs about death, suicide, lame jokes and bad poetry later in the week.]

The other day, I realized, this is it.

I am at my peak. So far.
Sooooooooo good.

This is the height of my writing career.
This year alone, in 3 short months I have finished a novel (I consider the Anesthetic Vampire serialization a novel. It has chapters and it's long. You won't convince me otherwise, but I'd love to hear your opinion) I have become published and gotten a job as a journalist.

I work for the Lumberjack, a small, crappy school paper that only pays $5 an article but it is publication. It means the next time I work at a paper, I can show them "clippings". It gives me experience and credibility and makes it more likely for me to get a job in journalism. Maybe a couple dozen of the several thousand students on campus actually read my articles.

What I write is called "op/ed" (opinion/editorial). Basically, it's what does Tekel think this week? It's basically keeping a weekly purely political blog. My writing in it is far from polished, but that's what I run into with deadlines and word counts.

I plan on working for a small newspaper in New Hampshire over the summer, which will give me even more clippings under my belt. I really need to work on writing in a more journalistic format, but that's what school is going to teach me to do. I hope.

I wish I could share, but my diary involves people I don't want to expose. My writing in that has greatly improved, even become somewhat poetic. I'm very pleased with it, for purely aesthetic purposes.

This is it. My peak. The highest I have ever gone with my writing. Higher than that short story contest I placed 2nd in, higher than . . . well, that's about it.

I am going to enter in two more short story contests. One for $300 and one for $2,000. I just need motivation. I could easily go higher.

I'm Opening a Drug Rehab Clinic

I'm Opening a Drug Rehab Clinic

Wanna join? Or invest?
It's a great money making scheme.
96% of all drug addicts who enter rehab will return to drug rehab.
That's a 96% costumer return rate! Wow!

I'll take anyone for any addiction, big or small. From heroin to cigarettes to caffeine to sniffing glue.
Just come over to my house and sleep on the floor, and I promise not to give you any drugs.

THOUGHTS OF A DYING ATHEIST / CONCLUSION II / OBITUARY XVII

THOUGHTS OF A DYING ATHEIST / CONCLUSION II / OBITUARY XVII

First, I have to apologize this took three months instead of one. This was supposed to end on/before Christmas. Anyway.

I have finished my first novel.
I have finished my little obituary experiment.

I feel relieved. I proved something to myself.
I feel a little bit more like Mene Tekel, the person I'm supposed to be.

I did not plan any of this. It just seemed to happen on it's own. This is mostly Christine's fault. It was she that inspired me to write obituaries for everyone as Christmas gifts. She inspired me to tie it into my whole countdown thing, if you even remember that.
Originally, I had nothing planned for that whole countdown. Just an, oh well, I didn't kill you.
I didn't plan on interconnecting the obits, but Christine inspired me to do that too, when she read the first one I wrote (Brian's).

I didn't even plan for this final blog or half the twists I wrote into the plot. I would publish this in print form but it only makes a good personal novel, not a book a stranger would read. For reference, this was inspired by Zodiac, Haunted, SE7EN, and a lot of other things.

I have had so many experiences wrapped around this. It was not easy. Most of these I was writing mere hours away from midnight, many more were past the deadlines I created for myself. It grew crazy inside my head. People grew as impatient as I did for results. This wasn't easy to write tho, so I took breaks. I'm still alive, still human, you know.

I began to hate this. Then school started again, and I really hated this, because I had no time for it. People whined and bitched about how their obits didn't go the way they wanted, and a lot of people begged me to kill them too. In the end, I cut out a lot of deaths because I was just so fuckin' sick of writing them. I'm not mad at anyone, so please don't take it personally if I didn't knock you off.

Also, I wasn't even the killer. DUH. I think Michael Hughes was the only one who got that, or at least the only one who expressed that. He gets kudos.

I know there is a lot of plot holes, and I wish I could fix them, but 1) it doesn't seem right and 2) I don't feel like it. If you want, you can reread them. I think I left enough clues, not enough answers. The dates have a lot to do with it. 12-21-12 anyone? How about that this started Dec. 3 and ended Mar 3? Each obit number was corresponding to a person's numerical identity, in a way. Seventeen is a very important number to me, almost more important than 23.

Some people asked me about their futures, like I really knew what was going to happen. Who is X that I married? Brandon, for example, kept asking when Psychopomp was going to become a band. I kept telling him, it was HIS future, he was the one who had to get going on it. I hope he and Ben do create the best metal band in history. But these were my speculations, and I look forward to enjoying everyone's doomed futures, even if I am wrong. Especially if I am wrong.

I had wished for this go much differently. I began to get paranoid that someone would die before I finished. And someone did. So it goes.
They weren't part of the story line, so it wasn't a great coincidence.

Someone nervously asked me, "is this necessary?", to which I responded, "This isn't necessary, but it's inevitable."
I mean a lot by that.

First, I have almost all the symptoms of a serial killer, which are killing animals, playing with fire, and wetting the bed.
I've killed a few animals. Not gonna lie. I play with fire, as you probably know. I just don't wet the bed. Honest.

Most serial killers have/had issues with those things.

Seriously, ask yourself, what is preventing me from actually becoming a serial killer?

I joke, but I'm not on any meds. Haven't been into counseling since I was 10.

What's keeping me from going over the edge? I have answers, so you don't worry any more than you already have. Here we go:

The first thing is my writing. I have an outlet to kill whoever the fuck I want. Usually, I murder people who are reflections of myself (Examples are 2AM, Jamais Vu, Ars Moriendi). This time around, I changed names that are similar to people I dislike and killed them. Other than my friends.

For example, Chris Brooks is a name close to someone I really do not like. Guess. Kyle Foot is the real name of someone I REALLY don't like, that's why he suffered when he died. I can kill him and release that rage and forgive him, all by just typing it out. In the words of Scott Adams, "Fiction is the ultimate revenge".

So, because of who I am, it's inevitable that I kill some people in my lifetime fictional or otherwise. To quote David Lynch, "if everything is real, then nothing is real as well." So, in a sense I really did kill all my loved ones and friends and such. Just not in a consequential way. A safe way, but this project still worried the fuck out of everyone. So many people got freaked out, and I just laughed. That can be taken as a good thing or a creepy thing.

My friends that died all died painlessly, if you paid attention. I don't want to ever hurt anyone, but I'm not saying that isn't an option. I pray it isn't.

The second thing keeping me from killing everyone I will get to in a moment.

Back to my first point: second, this is inevitable because YOU'RE GONNA FUCKIN' DIE. I hope to be privileged enough to write all my friends true obituaries, and they would be far better than the ones I lied about. I also hope to be privileged enough to never have to see a dear friend die, but that's not likely. That was the point. I hope these got people thinking DEEPLY about death, and maybe they will start to cherish each other more. Maybe I will start to cherish them more myself.

I hope this whole thing got you thinking about death. Your friends are gonna die, die, die. I guess you can let that bother you or you can ignore it, but neither is worth it. Cherish people, or you can lie about how you really treated them, which is what happened in one or two obits, as a joke.

Again, this was not easy on me, for a lot of reasons. It took a lot of time, energy, focus, thought and resistance and I still think I did a shitty job. Do you have any idea how hard it was to go approx. 90 days without posting a blog? No, you don't. But I digress. This is already hideously long.

There is one final reason I did this, which follows below.
It's the last obituary I hope to write for a long, long time.

- -
OBITUARY XVII - - ROBERT

The serialization of the "Anesthetic Vampire" is dedicated to the memory of Robert A. Hawkins.

Dear Robert,

I never met you, but I didn't have to.
I read your suicide note.
I cried and I shared your pain.
Aside from the spelling mistakes, that's the exact kind of note I would have written.
I wish more people understood us, that we are violent and disturbed and yet. . .
They'll only ever know when it's too late.
People won't even care after awhile.
You killed eight people mercilessly and no one really cares.
With enough apathy, nothing is wrong.

I wish I had truly known you.
Then, I could write you a true obituary.
You'd be a good friend of mine. Just from reading your biography, I know you were a person just like me, and that we would have gotten along so well. Is that wrong to say? I almost feel it's unethical to sympathize with a massacring psychopath. Well, maybe not if I'm a massacring psychopath myself.

I really wish I could have shared something with you. A little bit of hope.
The only thing, other than my writing, that keeps me sane.
My relationship with God.
I can't explain it, but in the lowest parts of my life, the darkest corners of it all, I can sometimes feel a peace, a joy and a presence that I know is unnatural.

The papers said you were in and out of treatment centers. That you were denied nothing, that your actions are not the fault of social services, that your act isn't a "failure of the system".
They wash their hands of you, Robert.

All I know is you were lacking meaning in your life. You said so yourself. And we all do at some point lack meaning. But I found that meaning, I found a purpose. In Christ.

I only wish someone had understood what you needed.
You needed someone who really loved you. You needed a purpose in life.
Now you're just an example.
A textbook massacre.
A moment of silence.
And this all happened three months ago.
And no one cared then, no one will care in the future.

I've devoted myself to reaching out to dark, lost souls like you.
Others may be afraid of you. But I understand you.
And I won't forget you.

Yours,
M. Tekel