Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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Like my brownhouse:
   free drinks at a posh place
Tuesday, January 20 1998
T

he ongoing Joe Christ scandal continues to stir the web. I've been sort of drawn into this story because my musings are now used as a "confirmed sighting" in the battle to expose Joe Christ as the dickless spectacle in his movie Sex, Blood and Mutilation.

A

s I worked today, I watched stuff about the Nazi SS on the History Channel. It's appalling to imagine a whole nation under the thumb of such inelegant unsubtle artless unthinking thugs. The only counterparts they seem to have in my experience are the skinheads. This would seem to belie the oft-made skinhead contention that skinheads are not Nazis, that some of their best friends are blacks, Jews and homosexuals.

S

arah Kleiner came to visit Matthew today during the late afternoon. She's a short attractive seventeen year old Jewish girl born with her sun in an earth sign and Matthew is a (almost) 20 year old warm blooded boy in a committed relationship, and I have no scandal to report.

T

he Simpsons have been even more funny than usual for the last two days. The episodes are all reruns during the week, but I've only had reliable cable teevee for the past year and a half of my thirty year life, so it's often fresh material for me.

Yesterday they ran the one where Homer keeps going back into time with the help of an improperly repaired toaster suddenly endowed with time travel properties. Every time Homer found himself among the dinosaurs and ground sloths, he'd try to be mindful not to disturb anything lest he affect the future deleteriously. This principle is such a well understood phenomenon in the Simpsons viewing audience that they didn't even feel the need to explain the chain of events that had led to the altered future. When Homer smushed a mosquito and returned to the future, he found his family lobotomized and worshipping Ned Flanders (the irritatingly religious do-gooder neighbor), who had (with the aid of his "ReNEDucation camps") risen to the position of almighty ruler. That future was unacceptable, so Homer bumbled back to the past, avoiding doing anything at all, but of course he managed to step on a fish that had just scurried out of the sea on flimsy lobed fins. The future he returned to this time had his family living in posh circumstances, but that was unacceptable since no one had yet invented the donut. In the past and frustrated as hell, Homer smashes everything in sight. The resultant future this time is absolutely normal, complete with "plentiful donuts," except his family eat with flickering forked reptilian tongues. "Close enough!" Homer sighs. It was an inspiringly creative episode.

In today's episode, the Simpsons go on a vacation to Itchy and Scratchy World, a theme park based on the gratuitously violent cartoon-show-within-a-cartoon-show, the Itchy and Scratchy Show. I've always found Itchy and Scratchy segments to be the absolutely funniest part of the Simpsons, and to see a whole show concentrated on that theme was pure delight. What is it about the Itchy and Scratchy Show that I like so much? I suppose I like the violence: it's hilarious, gratuitous, and imaginatively thought out and doesn't seem to care at all about "message" or "example" except perhaps to parody conventional pop-children television shows.

My favourite segment in today's show was a rework of the Sorcerer's Apprentice as it had been presented in Disney's Fantasia. In the Itchy and Scratchy version, instead of magic regenerative brooms, the mischievous cat apprentice (Scratchy) chops up his musian rival (Itchy), reducing him to fine powder, which he then accidentally inhales. The powders regenerate as zillions of tiny chopping Itchies which then hack Scratchy into mush from everywhere in his circulatory system. Scratchy dissolves away completely, only to be presented restored and healthy in another episode. Marge tut-tuts about the Itchy and Scratchy violence having no observable consequences, thus providing no message, but it falls on deaf ears.

M

atthew Hart and I went out to the Boars Head Inn at 6:30pm to partake of free drinks. Angela works as a hostess/waitress there, and she's a good connection if you like to drink booze in snazzy circumstances. That's one of the odd things about befriending members of the restaurant worker class (all my friends): no one has much money, but often there are connections available for things for which rich people routinely pay top dollar.

The Boars Head lounge area is a finely upholstered room with low circular tables and dim lighting. Audubonesque paintings of birds (stiffly posed with broken necks) hang on the wall. Aside from Matthew and myself, the only others present were middle aged guys wearing suits and an occasional woman.

Never you mind the possibility of double entendre.

Eventually a couple guys played jazz using piano, synth and drum. Matthew didn't know when to start clapping, but I did. I've been listening to (and not particularly enjoying) jazz for years in situations like this.

Angela kept the drinks and peanuts coming. I was having Manhattans and Matthew was working with Scotch. He and I had a interesting conversation concerning our respective relationship behaviours. He likes the security of a girlfriend and can't understand why I squandered such good possibilities as Elizabeth Stark, Jen Fariello, Sarah Kent and Cory the Former Coffee Cart Girl. I explained that I hate the feeling of being trapped with someone, and that whatever I need out of relationship (including adequate space) is very hard for me to find in a person. While I may not like going to bed alone, I sure like waking up that way. Matthew is very different. He doesn't like waking up alone.

I also told the story about my Juniour year in College, when my girlfriend Joy Powley was off in King of Prussia (Pennsylvania) earning money for a new cello and I was living in a dorm called Harkness and abiding by morals of fidelity. That lasted for quite awhile, until I met a short attractive seventeen year old Jewish girl born with her sun in an earth sign. One day she convinced me that if I wanted her at all I was already unfaithful. My resolve weakened and my fidelity dissolved like a Scratchy being hacked apart by millions of microscopic Itchies. I was 20 years old at the time, so I guess I had a lot to learn. I didn't have a 30 year old Gus to bounce ideas off over glasses of free booze.

By the time we left, Matthew figured we'd downed 50 dollars worth of free drinks.

B

ack at Kappa Mutha Fucka, Deya found that we'd been "stalked." Someone had left two bottles of champagne, some light beer and some non-alcoholic beer on our front porch. Whoever had left those things must have a zany sense of humour. Non alcoholic beer? The non-alcoholic beer section of the display case in Apu's convenience store was where the secret staircase was hidden, for Christ's sake.

But then the girl across the street, Katherine, came by briefly and admitted she'd been the one who had left us the alcoholica. She knows we drink and she's lightening her load in preparation for moving out. It seems that her landlord, the senile oldster known as Minga, has raised her rent and become a complete "asshole." Katherine will be living rent free at her next place, in exchange for checking in on and eating dinner with a rich old lady.

one year ago

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