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Damn Trucks

After getting up early to turn in the weekend video equipment I didn't use, I was walking down Walnut when a Tropicana truck caught my eye. Written on the side was "Always Fresh, Never From Concentrate." I thought, "Wow, what a great way to remedy the fact that I haven't yet eaten breakfast. I should acquire some of this Always Fresh product." I went into the CVS and took 60 bucks from the ATM, planning to buy as much Never From Concentrate as I could carry. I went to the Cold Drinks case and was heartbroken to see only Red Bull, Vitamin Water and milk where real juice should have been. I grabbed a Vitamin Water in disappointment.

But then, as I was walking away, an orange glow caught my eye from the top shelf of the cooler. They did have orange juice after all! And the professed Fresh Never From Concentrate Tropicana at that! Primo.

I went to the cash register, paid for my little bottle of sunshine then went back out into the dreary December morning. I was not to be brought down by my surroundings. I had my bottle of sunshine.

I sat down on a nearby bench, cracked the lid off the bottle and took a big swig. Then I nearly vomited.

This was no Fresh Never From Concentrate ecstasy. I looked down at the bottle. "100% Orange Juice From Concentrate With Other Natural Flavors."

What the fuck, Tropicana?

An Aside

The fleisch-kincade grade level of the previous post, as determined by microsoft word, is a 6.3. That's right. My natural thoughts and writing style are equivalent to that of a twelve year old. Awesome.


(I managed a 6.4 for this post.)

Write Your Congressman

The only way I know it’s not Tuesday is I didn’t have my Italian test yesterday. But then again, the only reason I didn’t take my Italian test yesterday is because I figured it was Sunday. The only way I knew it was Sunday was because when I woke up I didn’t go in to work at ten like I’m supposed to on Saturdays. Then again, my boss has stopped calling me when I don’t show up for work, and my Sunday work is unsupervised and I could conceivably come in whenever I want.

I think today is Monday.

If today is Tuesday, that means I missed my test yesterday and I’m horrendously late for my test today. If today is Tuesday, that means I worked one hour too many yesterday and it will go down as yet another hour of unpaid work. If today is Tuesday, that means I have to completely edit my film by the end of tonight. I really hope it’s not Tuesday.

If today is Friday, though I highly doubt it is, then everything is long over due, which is sort of liberating in its hopelessness. If today is Friday, I can chalk up the semester in the loss column and move on with my life. If today is Friday, I don’t really have to do anything for the next month or so. It would be pretty nice, albeit a little unfortunate, if today were Friday.

Today has to be Monday. My watch says it’s Monday. What little semblance of cognitive function I have left tells me it’s Monday. I have a feeling if I turned on CNN Anderson Cooper would tell me it’s Monday.

But what if everyone has been mislead? What if somehow, during the night, everyone came to believe that today was tomorrow and that yesterday is today? Then all the major media outlets would present the date one day in advance, and the world will have lost a day. We lose an hour in the day in the springtime, who’s to say that losing an entire day couldn’t happen?

That seems just like the powers that be to steal a day from me at a time when I need it most. Can’t we just go back a day? Repeat Sunday just like we repeat a wee morning hour in the fall? The public needs to write their respective congresspersons and ensure falling back a day becomes a reality.

Then we can all piss the entire day away playing guitar hero, getting loaded or whatever else constitute our respective vices.

Then next year we can ask for another day. Eventually we’ll be asking for years at a time. Once a person turns eighty, he can ask to fall back sixty years to repeat his prime years of life. This can be a reality. Please, write your congressman. We could all use some extra time.

Banksy's Manifesto

Quick, everyone, post something Bri-ish!:

(I had to reflect on this for like three hours to understand what it meant to me. That's the thing with Banksy: Sometimes he seems brilliant, and other times you wonder if he's just an angry, rebellious-albeit talented- vandal. This is a moment of the former.)

An extract from the diary of Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Willett Gonin DSO who was among the first British soldiers to liberate Bergen-Belsen in 1945.

I can give no adequate description of the Horror Camp in which my men and myself were to spend the next month of our lives. It was just a barren wilderness, as bare as a chicken run. Corpses lay everywhere, some in huge piles, sometimes they lay singly or in pairs where they had fallen. It took a little time to get used to seeing men women and children collapse as you walked by them and to restrain oneself from going to their assistance. One had to get used early to the idea that the individual just did not count. One knew that five hundred a day were dying and that five hundred a day were going on dying for weeks before anything we could do would have the slightest effect. It was, however, not easy to watch a child choking to death from diptheria when you knew a tracheotomy and nursing would save it, one saw women drowning in their own vomit because they were too weak to turn over, and men eating worms as they clutched a half loaf of bread purely because they had to eat worms to live and now could scarcely tell the difference. Piles of corpses, naked and obscene, with a woman too weak to stand proping herself against them as she cooked the food we had given her over an open fire; men and women crouching down just anywhere in the open relieving themselves of the dysentary which was scouring their bowels, a woman standing stark naked washing herself with some issue soap in water from a tank in which the remains of a child floated. It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don't know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tatooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.

Source: Imperial War museum

Taken from Banksy's website: http://banksy.co.uk/manifesto/index.html

Tonight's News

My printer is out of black ink.


this sucks.

tonight, of all nights, when I was going to print my 1000 page epic.

the thing shat out on page 997. Since the epic was unfinished, i burned the printed pages and deleted the text from my hard drive. The world is poorer because dell never got on its game and made everlasting ink cartridges.

If you are as disappointed as I am that the world will never see what was bound to be the piece of literature that defined our generation and want to voice your frustration to dell, you can contact them here.

From the BBC

Man hurt using gun to change tyre

The man had removed all but one of the wheel nuts

A US man has injured himself in both legs after attempting to loosen a stiff wheel-nut by blasting it with his gun.

The 66-year-old man from Washington state was repairing his car outside his home when the accident took place.

Shooting at the wheel from arm's length with his 12-gauge shotgun, he was peppered with buckshot and debris.

The man - whom police say was on his own and not intoxicated - was taken to hospital with severe, but not life-threatening, injuries.

The man, from South Kitsap, 10 miles (16km) southwest of Seattle, had been repairing his Lincoln Continental for two weeks, according to the police, and had removed all but one of the nuts on the right rear wheel.

Frustrated by the one remaining nut which refused to budge, he resorted to fire power in an effort to shift it.

"He's bound and determined to get that lug nut off," said Deputy Scott Wilson, a spokesman from the sheriff's office.

He sustained injuries from his feet to the middle of his abdomen, with some pellets reaching as high as his chin, police said.

taken from the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7091904.stm

Gone Gone Gone

So jim is gone. That means he hates all of you. And by all of you i mean me, since i'm the only person who reads this.

Did you know that you can listen to hardcore through theatre speakers when you work in a video lab and nobody else is there?

Yes I did know that, cuz I did it. Next question.

Why can't you find a girl?

They're all out chasing heroes. We're just a wrecking crew, bored boys with nothing to do.

Did you come up with that yourself?

No, it's an adolescents song.

Are they your favorite band?

That's a stupid thing to ask. Next question.

Why are you writing this?

I'm bored at work. Gimcrack needs my attention.

What is 'gimcrack?'

A gimcrack is something that is showy, but ultimately useless. It was the original name of this blog, but gimcrack.blogspot.com was already taken.

You have a big vocabulary--

The internet has a big vocabulary.

I see. Do you store all your knowledge on the internet?

I try not to have any knowledge. In the rare instance when I need to know something, I consult the ultimate source of everything, the internet.

Is this interview over?

Yes. Please close the door on your way out.

Mystery Link, Take Two

As hard as it may be to believe, it's better this time (longest clickable link ever).

Hey Joe, Look What I Can Do

Pretty cool, right? Click it for the Whole Collection

Maus'd

Dying mice are book-marks for really negative memories. The only way I experienced death and loss for most of my life was due to half-eaten and/or mouse-trapped mices.

Out of sight, out of mind works.
I prefer comic relief:

Today is November 1st

Halloween is over, and I didn't get any free candy. I did see a fun-size milky way sitting on the ground outside the CVS. However, deciding that it was most definitely poisoned, I didn't partake in its celestial fusion of chocolate and what-ever-the-hell else is in a milky way these days.
Later, I saw some lady dressed up as a fireman, but when I asked her the primary method of egress during a multi-level burn, she just stared at me. Fireman indeed.

There's a young mouse slowly dying under the radiator in our living room. He tragically found his way to the sticky rat trap a roommate set out. Apparently sunflower seeds are a delicacy worth the risk of one's life. I'm glad all they cost me is a dollar fifteen at 7-11. I discovered the little guy about two days ago when I investigated this strange squeaking noise I heard while watching reruns of the Colbert Report. I peered under the whitewashed radiator and found the creature completely adhered to the adhesive. It appeared that in an attempt to free a leg through the use of leverage, the mouse permanently glued his face down. I picked up the trap and the mouse squirmed wildly. Not knowing what to do, I put the occupied trap back where I found it.
Out of sight, out of mind, right?

Something Else

Mystery Link.

Click it.

A Conversation

A: Shut the fuck up. This is the second time in one night you've woken me up!

B:

a reply

So far it looks long. that's all i got so far.

Bootycall Lessons

I got a text at 10:50 PM yesterday evening. It was from my ex-girlfriend, Kim. We broke up about four months ago. It was a matter of circumstance (I'm joining the Peace Corps) and incompatibility.

This is what the text said:
'Will you come over and give it to me.'

I knew what she meant. Kim and I still get drunk and text each other with propositions. To date, none of them have culminated in anything for various reasons.
Kim is one of the only people I know that makes me doubt myself, so I responded thus:
'Does that mean what I think it means.'

No response. I became impatient, and three minutes later I texted:
'Because before I get excited I want to make sure that was meant for me'

Seeds of doubt. Was the text a proposition for another person? Was the text calling for a casual favor, completely misinterpreted without context? I tried calling to confirm, but the rings went suddenly into voice-mail.

I consider myself mostly self-confident. I have a good sense of who I am, and I don't falter often.
But I was a stringy mess, at this point. The girls I fall in love with are the only people on Earth that incapacitate me.

'Fuck it. I'm coming down.'
Lesson #1: I'm still in love with Kim. I'm okay with that. I know (and most people don't) that love is variable, and has degrees. I don't love Kim much, but I love her, nonetheless. I can make it to her apartment in 30 minutes if I speed.

The feeling was familiar. It's angst, and nervousness. It's a little bit cold. There's some panic in there, too. I thought it felt right. I thought it was what I wanted. The impulse and desire were strong, and I confused them for intuition, but I didn't realize that until later.

I got to Kim's. Her car was gone. Her apartment door was unlocked, like always. I tried calling her twice. I felt like a tool. I lied down on her couch, and tried to force myself into sleep.

As I write this, it reminds me of the time I tried to sleep in Michelle's bed while she was at a party in Golden. I was shaking uncontrollably as I waited for her. She was my first-love. We had broken up when she slept with a guy named Mike while I was out of state. Mike was the one throwing the party. Michelle still let me sleep in her bed because it was too hard for me to be alone at night. She would hug me while I cried.

Not a good feeling to reclaim; trying to sleep because it forces the heartbreak time to move faster. The waiting is too much to take.

I usually fall asleep easily, but, last night, my thoughts were piercing, and constant. Sleep was a transition that I somehow shifted into. I came out of it, just as suddenly, at 3 AM. I didn't feel relieved or rested. I still felt like a tool.

My phone showed no new texts, no new messages. Kim's car was still gone.

I wandered into her bedroom. I started to make the bed so I could sleep in it. It looked like she hadn't slept at home in a few days, which became fodder for more worry. I turned off the lights, and lied down.

I realized I didn't want to be there. Finally.
I recollected my belongings from her floor: a contact case, shoes, a tote bag holding tooth brush and condoms.

I drove home, certain that there was something to be learned. I resisted the urge to send Kim an angry message; after all, I was the one who had driven down. I was the one following my cock against some glimmer of personal judgement inside of me.

This pulsed in my head, every few minutes:
Lesson #2: Libido is a poor replacement for personal judgement.

But, I was still confused. This drive towards physical gratification had felt so 'right' four hours prior. I tried to think of similar situations. After a few minutes, I decided that fighting/anger, and the act of apathy were the same as mindless sexual desire.

How does one distinguish between the need of impulse, and the want of intuition? I don't blame myself for improperly doing so scores of times. They're difficult to differentiate between. I did some stream of consciousness writing in one of my notebooks this morning, and I think I articulate the difference well enough:

'They seem intuitive, because they're strong, immediate, and filled w/desire,
but I think it's animalistic in its bluntness. It's a base urge, which is
similar to the enlightened 'want,' of intuition because you're [unexplicitly]
driven to do something. However, intuition is a calculated, honest want, whereas
desire is a sudden, partial 'need.' If the true want is focused on, the desire
is lessened. You don't want: to use someone for gratification; to fight in
anger; to 'do' nothing. But they seem intuitive and 'right,' given an undefined
'pull' throws you @ them. In Decorum,[succumbing to what you 'should'
do] there's an articulate rationalization against the will. In desire, it's
a carnal, unvoiced push, and now I can discern the difference between that and
intuition.'

So, both desire and intuition are difficult to discern because of their lack of articulated 'rationalization.' You simply 'do,' them because of urge. The desire is carnal 'need,' however whereas the intuition is a personalized/universal 'want,' for what's best. The lack of concrete expression for either is what confused me.

But like I said, now I can better discern between the two. Sexual desire is a place where I've often faltered, and by faltered I mean acted in ways that left me unhappier than I was before. I think this final lesson will help me be a happier person:
Lesson #3: The difference between desire and intuition, is the difference between gratification, and love.
or
Lesson #3: The difference between desire and intuition, is the every difference between gloss pictures, and mirrors.

Kim texted me this morning at 10 AM. She said her phone died at her brother's, and she was too drunk to drive home.


Matt, what do you make of all this?

And

Thus begins something. It's something.

But what it is we do not know.

All we know is that it will eventually be something else entirely.

But for now, this is all that this particular something is.

We hope you enjoy it.