The Tee Vee's Pride and Joy (boast post)

One cat watching, one walking away... clever beasts

Plump months ago, I asked myself a question: "Would every single pre-20th century living-being size-you-up to be a completely worthless piece of shit?" My answer was yes. I wanted a new answer... achieving "probably" was my first target. Here we go:

chicken manor

1) Chickens. Four bawk-bawks prancing about... de-he-he-lightful. My not biological brother, wife-like partner (pictured above), and I built their shelter and run, allowing those silly birds a comfy place to put themselves to bed every night. The mysterious production of eggs does whatever it is it does. Goats are next.

2) Growing Food. For years, I lived in a place where everything that wasn't the house was ignored. It was space to pass through... rarely was it considered or enjoyed. Always background. I didn't know it.

Potatoes live in that box

That has changed. Digging the rapacious Japanese knotweed for a few months was delightful (I can see the hunter-gather amused by my absurd toil). My brother built stunning retaining walls (I was labour only on that project, this brother of mine can build a wall like a schizophrenic (I'm under the impression they're often phenomenally adept at this)). This is the first year that we've grown everything from seed. And with the broad expansion of our gardens (nearly 10x more square footage than before) we're thriving. Big ole' potato bin. Quinoa. Beans. Salad greens and veggies galore. Galore!

3) Canning. The local Goodwill stocked us well here, we have quite a nice jarring and pickling operation ready to go.

4) Tools. You need to borrow a tool? Seattle, via Craigslist, has us well-stocked. Thanks Seattle, for having way too much shit.

5) Boozin'. Dmitry Orlov, an eminently generous man who is largely responsible for getting me all ginned-up for these projects, emailed me a link to his family's vodka recipe. That's a' happenin'. And we're going to make a run at blackberry wine (something of an aperitif, good for cocktail mixin' too, I suspect)

6) I got my little bit of money out of the big banks and into a credit union.

7) All-bike-all-the-time. My body is as strong as it's ever been.

That's a lettuce bed, some strawberries in the rear

Since I am boasting, I needn't point out that I'm rather proud of what we've done. I am becoming progressively less useless.

I feel like I did some good at school too. Another list:

1) Got a lot of kids away from the awful x terrible mindless mantra that pervades public schools: You MUST Go to College! All you need (other than pointing to the obvious decay in the world of fucking jobs and an economy that is — thankfully — collapsing), is to use this one from McLuhan, it does the trick:

The past went that-a-way. When faced with a totally new situation, we tend always to attach ourselves to the objects, to the flavor of the most recent past. We look at the present through a rear view mirror. We march backwards into the future.

I'm going to college!

Luminous, isn't it? And then we can move beyond all of that college-prep nonsense. 

2) We created Poetical Dictionaries, attempting to mimic the unyielding, thorough brilliance of Lohren Green.

3) We also mimicked Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style — the kids loved them some Doc Queneua — and their ability to find delight in the ways-of-words properly exploded (thanks to a sage, Daniel Coffeen, who did the same for me).

3-4 feet to dig out knotweed

4) Singing. Lots of singing.

5) Select passages from Derrick Jensen's The Culture of Make Believe went a long way towards enabling my students to think about racism and exploitation — certainly the single greatest sense of accomplishment I've experienced in a classroom. Listening to oft-angry black teenagers lace together coherent and complex ideas on the nature of human destructiveness brought me some serious fucking joy.

Obviously, none of this stuff is approved curriculum (I barely even know what kind of bullshit I'm supposed to be teaching them, but I'm pretty sure the end product is multiple choice tests where I attempt to discern whether they know the difference between the "a" and the "o" in the names of Iranian clerics... or some such rote, power-strucutre-privilegin' bullshit (in haiku form).

I think I'm doing alright. Combating the dynamic R.D. Laing put a finger on:

Long before a thermonuclear war can come about, we have had to lay waste our own sanity. We begin with the children. It is imperative to catch them in time. Without the most thorough and rapid brainwashing their dirty minds would see through our dirty tricks. Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves, with high I.Q.s if possible.

thankfully, my dumb phone can't capture the quality of these walls. Gotta sit on em' to know

Don't be too late

Slowin' Down

I'm down-shifting. The internet has gots to go... Begone, I say! Hellllooooo immediate, tactile space.

Thank you for readin' and chattin'. I liked this experience very much. Now, I'm going to enjoy other things. Slower things.

Ethan, JRB, Charles, Jack, BDR and everyone else who spent some time with my thoughts... you've been lovely... your involvement (because I think you're quite wise: fawning alert!) has lent me poise and confidence.

My final blog thought is a command: Enjoy! (it must be done)

Old Man Avoids Shame

I like this. Teems clarity. I bumped into it in McLuhan's The Extensions of Man (this isn't McLuhan's pen; he suggests he found it in Werner Heisenberg's The Physicist 's Conception of Nature, which McLuhan describes as an example of the new quantum physicist whose over-all awareness of forms suggests to thim that we would do well to stand aside from most of them. He points out that technical change alters not only habits of life, but patterns of thought and valuation. Page sixty-nine of an old paperback:


As Tzu-Gung was traveling through the regions north of the river Han, he saw an old man working in his vegetable garden. He had dug an irrigation ditch. The man would descend into a well, fetch up a vessel of water in his arms and pour it out into the ditch. While his efforts were tremendous the results appeared to be very meager.

Tzu-Gung said, "there is a way whereby  you can irrigate a hundred ditches in one day, and whereby you can irrigate a hundred ditches in one day, and whereby you can do much with little effort. Would you not like to hear of it?"

Then the gardener stood up, looked at him and said, "And what would that be?" Tzu-Gung replied, "You take a wooden lever, weighted at the back and light in the front. In this way you can bring up water so quickly that it just gushes out. This is called a draw-well."

Then anger rose up in the old man's face, and he said, "I have heard my teacher say that whoever uses machines does all his work like a machine. He who does his work like a machine grows a heart of a machine, and he who carries the heart of a machine in his breast loses his simplicity. He who has lost his simplicity becomes unsure in the strivings of his soul. Uncertainty in the strivings of the soul is something which does not agree with honest sense. It is not that I do not know of such things; I am ashamed to use them."

Funny thing I've been doing: Lying

Lying could — if one were so inclined — be used to cheat. But, is every lie dishonest? Of course not. Being Ahem-ployed by the gubmint forces me to lie all. of. the time (hell, you simply can't voice "radical" political and social thoughts and not get crushed, I opt to conceal, misdirect, and lie). This proclivity towards the lie is unfortunate — or, not to my liking — but the results of said lying are not exclusively misleading. In fact, my lying illuminates a spit-shined truth: I am a coward.

Damn straight. A coward. I would prefer to lie than risk potential material harm. How is that for some weak-sauce? Next, I'm going to (just for fun) argue the other side.

Not a coward: I simply don't have any real convictions. I don't believe in me, so why portray myself "honestly". So, if my honesty doesn't mean a thing, I prefer to protect something that does mean something, my money (and all the delicious food that comes with it).

In both scenarios, my lying is not misleading. Rather, it is an essential part of understanding me. Hooray.

Side Story:

Like you, when talking with new people (I possess an agreeable and altogether inviting mien, so it happens constantly... a wink for you), I get asked, "what do you do?" After I say teacher, they say (every god damned time) what subject? The "truth" is stupid and misleading (maybe not misleading, but it certainly doesn't capture what I do in the classroom), so I tell another version of the truth when I answer: aesthetics. Yep, I'm an Aesthetics teacher. The responses, as you might imagine, are wildly varied, but always better than if I had told the truth.

If only we had a good reason to stop trying to destory each other...

This made me giddy. Oh, it was good... so good.



When, in the last ten seconds,  he laments that we can't wait (just thinking about it makes it hard to type, I'm crying right now) for the alien attack to unite us.... ahahaaaahahah... oh, it's just so fucking funny... ahahahahaha. When he points up (what the fuck is he pointing to???)... oh god... here it comes agai — ahahahahahahahaahaaaahh — he's fighting a smile, the whole time, his smile is soooo big, he can barely talk... oh, shit... I can't stop.

Intergalactic war will save us... from ourselves. What a relief. I had almost lost hope.

Up — ahahha — date! He...ahahah, was talking to high schools kids!! Ahahahahah

I'm still on coffee, haven't even switched to cocktails yet — it's gonna be a good one.

Today's cocktail:
A glass
Ice
Squeeze a blood orange... not too much
DryFly Gin until you're excited
bubbly water
blood orange twist

Fighting fire with anything other than fire

I encounter shitbirds (actual birds, I apologize for the term). Empathize with me. These people, poor things, just can't wait to splash their shit all over the unwitting.

In the library, with the kids... she (the shitbird) lumbers in my direction, sporting the mindless confidence that defines the species, her face reads: "I'm about to drop a little ethical righteousness on you". She leans in and announces, in a tone that begged my wrath AND loud enough that a few of my students could hear, "you know... you really shouldn't let them use Wikipedia." I resist. My students exchange knowing looks.

"Why do you say that?" I'm thrilled to have nailed the tone I was hoping for — genuine surprise, as if I have no. fucking. idea. what she's about to say. This royally fucks up her game. Poor shitbird thought she was going to have an easy landing... not today.

"Well, it's not reliable..."
"Oh?" my fake genuine surprise has moved to fake genuine concern.
"Anybody can edit those pages." looking vindicated, like she just scored two for a take-down.
"Yeah. I was wondering about that. What is their editing policy?" Again, I'm on a roll. Genuine question? hardly... but my ability to fake-it is ruling the day. The nonsensical blubbering that came next does not lend itself to summation. I don't know what the hell she said, but it was 15 seconds of I-don't-know-what-I'm-talking-about backpedaling.

Not usually this cute

She departs, quietly... as if she didn't just try to tell me about my business — nothing happened, she'll tell herself. But, I assure you, this shitbird will steer clear of my masterful defense in the future.

Be gone, Shitbird!

My teaching time isn't wasted if the kids master the concept I stealthily stress: the burden of proof falls on the shitbird who seeks to control your actions... and "proof" isn't easy to come by. Make em' earn it.

What's the story here?

It is necessary for a violent culture to adopt the precept: it is impolite to talk of politics. 

Some of the Mubarak supporters were working class men who arrived in buses. Some headed to the battle with their sticks or their knives stuffed in their pants. One was a doctor who wore spectacles and held a club wrapped in electrical tape and armored with tacks.

Some were men like Mohamed Hassan, an accountant, who had actually attended Tuesday’s antigovernment demonstration. “Of course we needed a change,” said Mr. Hassan, standing on the Corniche not from the Egyptian Museum. Mr. Mubarak’s speech to the nation had changed his mine. “I think all of our demands were filled. We need change, but step by step.” (italics mine, typos theirs)

This is going to be my "warm-up" question in class tomorrow: What the fuck is this supposed to be?

Say it with me now: Rev-OOOOO-loo-shun. In America, you won't receive the label "revolution" until you've already won.

Read or re-read the whole thing, if you like.

Power pair of puppy pounders

Jocular — or — life well-lived

Dazzling. Momentary. Wonderful.

34 forty-some year-old seconds.

the difference of endurance.