Fan’s Complaint

I’m sure the political blogs have already beaten this to death, but the latest Bin Laden tape and its ramifications upon the election are extremely worrisome. Bin Laden does not directly threaten us with another attack. He merely states that if we continue on our current cause, there will be another attack.

“Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or Al Qaeda; your security is in your own hands,” Mr. bin Laden said. He added: “Any state that does not mess with our security, has naturally guaranteed its own security.”

-from the Times

I agree.

“Oh, American people, I am speaking to tell you about the ideal way to avoid another Manhattan, about war and its causes and results,” he said. He added: “Despite entering the fourth year after Sept. 11, Bush is still deceiving you and hiding the truth from you, and therefore the reasons are still there to repeat what happened.”

Again, I agree.

Mr. bin Laden said Mr. Bush reacted slowly to the Sept. 11 attacks as they were occurring, giving the hijackers more time than they expected to carry out the plot. At the time of the attacks, the president was visiting a group of second graders at an elementary school in Sarasota, Fla., holding a book called “My Pet Goat.”

“It never occurred to us that the commander in chief of the American armed forces would leave 50,000 of his citizens in the two towers to face these horrors alone,” Mr. bin Laden said, referring to estimates of the number of people who might have been at the World Trade Center.

Referring to the president, Mr. bin Laden said: “It appeared to him that a little girl’s talk about her goat and its butting was more important than the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers. That gave us three times the required time to carry out the operations, thank God.”

He’s starting to sound like Michael Moore, with whom I tend to agree, regarding the Bush administration.

What is the simplest explanation for my suddenly agreeing with many of the things said by this monster who killed three thousand of my people? It’s obvious. It’s the only conclusion that I can come to, and I hate to sound like one of those crackpots who don’t even think that a plane hit the pentagon, but clearly, Bin Laden is already under U.S. control.

The Times describes his appearance as “vigorous and healthy…” whereas his last video, “Mr. bin Laden appeared gaunt and somewhat halting as he picked his way along a trail with a walking stick.”

How did he get well? Don’t we have Afghanistan covered? How did his health and appearance improve so much when he has supposedly been sitting in a cave? Obviously, he’s escaped or gone somewhere else. So why does he sound like Michael Moore?

Because the current administration wants him to. Right now, Bin Laden is in China, being forced to read his statement, prepared for him by Karl Rove.

Of course, the simplest explanation is that Bin Laden has toned down his message on account of angling for a Bush victory, so as to justify his war on terror. And I know I sound like one of those crazies by suggesting and probably believing in this conspiracy theory, but I cannot otherwise reconcile my agreement with what this murderous monster is saying.

I cheated yesterday and ate a hot dog. Today I will try to do better, except I’m out of cigarettes.

It would appear that when left to my own devices (staying at home all day on account of not having friends or a job), I revert to a primitive state (primitive in this case meaning like I was at points during college)–I’m nocturnal and I have begun to play the Beach Boys on repeat.

If only I had known this would happen, I would have acted on my desire to bring back sand from California, in which to place my feet.

In Blue Hawaii

edit: I love to say da-da

edit: it’s obvious. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. I need to go to Hawaii. Maybe after that it’s Japan. Or maybe not. I’d cross the date line. Anyway, I’d have to hop a boat. Drive to California, then hop a boat, possibly a sloop, and head for Hawaii.

it is 49 degrees outside, and I’ve been home long enough that my tan lines are gone.

I’m down to my last pack of Colorado Camels.

I saw a commercial for a movie called “The Machinist” which featured a gaunt Christian Bale. I did some research and read that he lost nearly 70 pounds on a diet of cigarettes, coffee, and an apple a day. As of today, I am on this diet.

Roy Orbison was a genius.

Well, not that I ever claimed to be a hipster, but by mentioning this after the Times article, I’m really throwing away all of my cred. Anyway, I picked up the Arcade Fire’s album, and it’s really fucking good. Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, the Times has already written about them, so it’s over already.

It was about 3 am when I jumped out of bed. It was about 2 am when I got into bed. The hour in between was spent tossing and turning, ideas gradually coalescing into an embryonic story. After coming up with several prospective titles, one fairly good opening paragraph, and two directions in which to pull the story, I threw off the warm covers (the first and most important step to any writing endeavor) and brought up that old familiar blank page…

That old familiar blank page of despair! HA!

Folks, this has got to end. I have been writing the same damn story for nearly my entire sentient life now. I was, of course, not myself, before say, junior year of high school or so. Arguably, I was not myself yesterday, but the point is that the core of the person that I am today was formed sometime in high school, and the H. who ran around before then could easily have grown into some kind of cruelty-free internationalist activist. But after that Ur-me began to take shape in high school, the course led irrevocably to the hateful, incompetent hack whose words you struggle with today.

The first piece of writing that I was proud of was not about the tiresome subject which I may or may not mention later on in this entry, though if you know me, you ought to be able to guess at what that subject is. I started out writing about my childhood experiences. Well, I actually started out writing about getting high on cough syrup, but I’m talking about the first piece that I was proud of here, so that other nonsense is beside the point.

In freshman year of college, I continued to write about my childhood, and with some success, but my favorite pieces from that period, the ones of which I was most proud, were about them. Yes, girls. There, I said it.

Maybe it’s a form of addiction. It started innocently enough, it was a short piece that had a brief scene with an old high school crush. Then there was another piece entirely about a college crush. And then I stumbled on to the heroin of girls, E****a. That was in sophomore year. 2001. Everything since then has been the same. Sure, names may have been disguised, circumstances changed, there were even different girls for a short while, but the root of it, the horrible obsessive need to chronicle every thought and every possible outcome or action, to analyze every frame of the mental movie of her that I made, and worst of all, the needless search for meaning behind every gesture–all of that has been the only fuel for my writing in the past four years.

It’s gotten to the point where I cannot remember ever being different.

It helped at first, I suppose. I liked the work I was doing. It had conflict! Pathos! I was suffering for my art, in the sense that I used the suffering to fuel it. And I was sure that the more suffering I inflicted, the better the art would become. Now, I think the art has become the cause of my suffering. It’s still suffering for my art, but this sucks.

I don’t know what the point of all this was. It was so easy to write this, and so hard to write two pages that I will in all likelihood discard. Maybe this journal-keeping has indeed become a form of masturbation. I’m spurned by my true love, and so I need to release my frustrations onto this filthy rag.

And now that I’ve had my fun, all I can do is look at the mess I’ve made and cringe.

If you’re still out there, Candy, or whatever you’re calling yourself these days, those italics were for you. It’s not that I didn’t want your advice. I think I’ve known the truth of your words for some time now. I just don’t know how to stop.

I wrote a letter today, which would not normally be anything remarkable, but this particular letter was written on a typewriter. Not that that’s remarkable, but it’s pretty damn cool.

When it comes to typewriters, you either get it or you don’t. My friend Sean, to whom I wrote this letter, gets it. I now hope to be a part of the Typewriter club, whose inaugural members are supposedly Sean and his father, where one sends typewritten letters to each other. It’s kind of silly, considering I had to e-mail Sean to get his mailing address, but there’s just something really great about the action on a manual typewriter.

My first typewriter, which my mother liberated from her office, was an IBM Selectric I still have it. It’s pretty cool, and the action is really easy for my wimpy fingers, but it just seems too modern. I, believe it or not, typed a few things for school on that machine before I got my first computer, a 12 megahertz 286 with 48 megabytes of hard drive space. I didn’t experiment with “serious writing” on the Selectric until freshman year of college, and though I enjoyed the results, it was more of a novelty than anything else.

My second typewriter was a Royal 440″. I bought it for five dollars at a yard sale sometime in senior year on impulse. I was in a “slump” with my writing (I still am), and I was hoping that the Royal would be a cure. It also helped that I was able to talk the seller down to five dollars from ten. I was disappointed to find, upon first attempting to use it, that it did not function 100%, as the capital letters typed on it appeared misaligned.

And so I started to do some research. Kerouac wrote on an Underwood, so I searched on ebay. All of the ones that I liked were too expensive, and the ones I could stomach paying for just did not seem stylish enough. Auster uses an Olympia SM 9, so I looked into those. I loved the styling, but once again, I could not afford the price. So I started just looking for the cheapest manual I could find on ebay, which at the time, was a Hermes Baby Rocket. But since it was going for about ten dollars, and shipping would have cost quite a bit more, I decided that I would surely be able to find one at a thrift store.

After looking for the Hermes at several thriftstores without any luck, I settled for my current typewriter, the Olivetti Studio 44. I tested it thoroughly at the store, and came away with it for less than ten dollars. After replacing the ribbon, it has served me well for the past year or so. Granted, I have only written maybe ten pages on it, with half of those coming today, but I really feel that I’ve turned a corner (yeah we’ve heard that before), and I’ll start taking my writing more seriously.

Unfortunately, I am an American, and I’m already lusting after what I hope will be my next acquisition: the Olivetti Valentine. I haven’t run across any famous writers who use it, and I don’t know if the action on it could be good, being such a small machine, but I remember the very first time I laid eyes on one of these, at MoMA, and thinking how pretty it was. The cheapest one on ebay right now is going to cost over fifty dollars with shipping. Maybe when I have a job, and don’t feel like writing anymore, I’ll buy one of these.

Of course, there is still the question of where I would put a fourth typewriter, seeing as how the one I use the most spends most of its time in its case, sitting on top of an even more rarely used bass amp. But if I just get 119 more, I could become like this guy!

Howard, now I confess
I’m scared, and lonely, and tired
They seem to think I’m made of clay
Another day
I’m not cut out for this

***

I never realized how empty I could feel. I am pretty sure at this point that my box-moving days are over. If not over, then definitely numbered.

It’s not like I didn’t know this day would come. I half expected to never move another box again when I headed west. But I had the road in front of me then. Now all I have is a driveway.

I’m not getting any younger. I need to get up and think seriously about my future, before I get stuck here.

***

Well sometimes I punch myself
Hard as I can
Yelling nobody cares
But then someone will tell me how
Wrong I am

***

I had a great weekend, which makes it all the more strange that I feel so empty now. It’s just somewhat strange to once again be unemployed. I really hate how down this all sounds, because I don’t think I really feel bad, I just feel nothing. I have nothing. I don’t have the routine to be mired in anymore. That’s a good thing, isn’t it? Horrible, horrible freedom?

I remember reading an article a while back about how the more choices we have, the more down we get. I always understood on some level how true it could be. I knew that the work routine, however much it sucked, kept my mind off just how stuck I was in my circumstances.

Geography matters. Lauren once made fun of me when I tried to meet her out on the island for a movie. I was driving east on Northern Blvd., and I was looking for some sign. It was dark, and I had been driving for a while, and I started to get the idea that I had missed my turn. Then I went over a bridge (viaduct). When you grow up on an island, you learn to fear crossing bridges. Do it indiscriminately and you could wind up in the Bronx. So that night on Long Island, I turned back, because I got freaked out after crossing a bridge.

I know this is a good thing, an opportunity to make some changes.

***

Boxing’s been good to me, Howard
Now I’m told, you’re growing old
The whole time you knew
A couple of years I’d be through
Has boxing been good to you?

***

Hi there. Be sure to keep those Homer Hankies handy today. For wiping away your pathetic tears.

well, it’s official, I am smoking the last cigarette of this pack, which I opened less than twenty four hours ago. I didn’t sleep last night, and I’ve been taking too many breaks from work. Working from home is officially just like being in college.