Socrates

How did Socrates keep getting invited to all these parties?

"Look Socrates, I made a cake for us to eat, together."

"Ah, yes Geena, and chocolate too, my favorite.  You are such an excellent cook.  Tell me, since you are so skilled in these matters, whereas I am just a humble novice, what do you consider to be the proper aim of cooking?  Is it to please the taste or nourish the body?"

Five minutes later and Geena is sobbing quietly in the corner, while Socrates is eating the entire cake by himself with the biggest smile you've ever seen.  He was the worst party guest.

Cuckoo Birds

Cuckoo birds are well known for placing their eggs inside the nests of other birds in order to be hatched. It had been supposed by most scientists, for this reason, that cuckoo young need no guidance from their parents in order to become fully fledged members of their species. What has been recently discovered, however, is that male cuckoo birds will fly from tree to tree looking for nests with newly hatched young, from birds who may or not may be their own, and sit on a nearby branch and sing the distinctive cuckoo bird song. The baby cuckoo birds, in the midst of other calls and songs made by the alien species that are raising them, will pick-out this one song made by a bird from another branch and learn to repeat it. And so the cuckoo bird song survives across the generations, memorized as an oddly familiar story, told by a stranger to a child.

Cathedrals and Stonehenge

Whenever anyone says "how are you," as a greeting the proper response should become "I don't know what to say." By adopting this new social standard we will become both more honest as a people, as well as a more decent civilization in which to live; one capable of fostering works of communal greatness such as the medieval cathedrals and Stonehenge.

Johnny Cash

On January 12, 1972, Johnny Cash came on stage dressed in a white suit with a rainbow on its back. Declaring that all the world's problems were at an end, the reckless ones over their bad trips, all the prisoners freed, the sick and lonely old now cared for, the wars ended, hopelessness cured, and poverty and hunger ceased to be.  He proceeded to sing 'With A Little Help From My Friends', by John Lennon.

Myself

Often when I'm talking to myself, inside my head, it sounds like I'm trying to make awkward conversation with a stranger.

"Wow, that's really funny."

"It sure is cold today. I thought it was going to get warm again this week."

"That's really interesting."

"I love cats."

"Here comes the streetcar."

"I like Greek food."

"What a lovely tree."

Maybe I just don't have much in common with myself, but I'm still trying to make it work.

Meyers Briggs

You know what? It may sound like hoo ha in the abstract, but the personality profiles astrology makes often seem to at least be strangely useful, for whatever reason. Meyers Briggs, however, is a bunch of pseudo scientific crap. The test is meaningless and uninteresting. Please, just stop talking about it. Let's stick to the hard, manly, common sense of the ages and relate our lives and destinies to the stars instead of a multiple choice test.

Elbows

Your elbows are beautiful.

Paintings

I avoid eye contact with the people in paintings.

Bullshit Foucault

Foucault tries to talk about the worldview of the sixteenth century and then cites as his support Paracelsus and Peter Ramus, two men very closely associated with the Reformation and the subsequent abandonment of the scholastic tradition in mainstream thought. Ramus led to the withering of rhetoric and Paracelsus to the dumbing down of semeotics. They were men primarily of the modern era, not the world that preceded it. I call bullshit.

Tarts

I should open a really trendy house of prostitution and name it simply, 'Tarts'.

Dress Shirt

I just bought a dress shirt from a guy on the bus for five dollars. Can't beat that with a stick.  It would run away.

Jor El

Jor El was the Williams Jennings Bryan of Krypton. Sure, he talked a good game, enough to ensure his place in the history books, but in the end his naive and indecisive behavior could only end in the destruction of everything he or anyone else held dear.

Of what use is your saintly pride to anyone when your planet's no more and Braniac is free to wreck God knows what else on an unsuspecting universe?

What's that? You saved your son? Well good for you! I guess the billions of other parents who now have to die huddling in the darkness with their doomed offspring, their futures extinguished, can take some comfort in that.

At least you sent him to a suitable enough planet, looks pretty habitable. No need to do further research to see if the population there is currently locked in any kind of vast global struggle between totalitarianism and democracy. Its not like where he lands matters to either his fate or that planet's. Just shoot blindly, you feckless fool!

Indiana Jones

They should have a subscription movie service where you just pay for the ability to stream all three of the Indiana Jones movies.

New Orleans Movies

New Orleans movie night starting with 'Cat People' and ending with 'JFK'. Through the French Quarter, the mansions uptown, the Mississippi, straight past the dark heart of the American dream to a swamp that NEVER ENDS.

Beautiful Bird

Last night, a beautiful bird flew into my window and began to speak flattery. He promised me riches and the ability to wound my enemies with just a glance. In exchange, I would only have to sign a single sheet of paper, nothing more. Funny, I can't remember what happened after that.

Donald Trump and Taxoplasmosis

What Donald Trump really needs to start talking about is all these cat parasites and what we're going to do about them.

Louisiana

I wrote a long rant in response to one of Bobby Jindal's posts, talking about all the ways he had disappointed me, and his limp handshake, but Facebook didn't want to cooperate with my drunken rage.

So I'll just sum it up by stating how in the end he's just another product of Louisiana's broken governance and our failure to find or elect a true reform governor.

Democrats shouldn't be so pleased about what he's become, they gave us Blanco and the Superdome.

Jindal's failure is bipartisan. Huey Long broke this state and it has yet to recover. We have some of the highest taxes in the country combined with some of the worst services.

It didn't start with Jindal, and it obviously now isn't going to end with him.

This state is beautiful, its people and their culture glow, they influence the world. If only we could get the government's boot, however briefly, off of their faces, there'd be no end to what Louisianans could accomplish.

Space Jam

Space Jam, directed by Vincente Minnelli.  Who knew that Larry Bird had such a beautiful voice?

Wine

I would like to buy an entire case of wine, have you drink it straight from the bottle, and then spit it into my mouth. I would spend a night doing that. So, can I get your number?

On Bobby Jindal - Semicolons Are For Cowards

Some day, years from now, Bobby Jindal, you're going to be moving into your new windowless office in the basement of the Heritage Foundation, which used to be a closet, or you'll be awkwardly wiping away sweat, standing in front of the desk of some snooty congressman's secretary, while trying unsuccessfully, for the tenth time, to arrange for five minutes of face to face with the congressman in order to lobby him on some meaningless and obscure oil bill, or you'll be waiting in the lobby of a TV studio at one am, in order to fill ten minutes of air time on a low rated late night cable television show, where you'll get confused by the delay in the satellite feed and never be invited back, and you'll think about that time, late in your governorship, when you, a child of immigrants, chose to turn away men, women and children, who'd survived unimaginable horrors, and were fleeing war, genocide, and despair, in order to score easy points to prop up your already dead political career, and appeal to the basest instincts of your fellow citizens.

You'll realize that was the last significant thing you ever did in elected office. You'll wonder if it was all worth it, not just that single act of meanness, but your whole life. You'll think about that for a long time.

America

The biggest problem in the United States is that too many of the nice places to live are cold.

Starbucks

Why do the chocolate chip cookies at Starbucks taste like banana bread? What kind of goddamn, middle-american, bullshit is this?

Donald Trump and Farmers

At the center of the microcosm that Donald Trump imagines existing inside the head of the average elderly, rural supporter, the internet is a single, immense white room, with doors that can be opened and closed.  Where empty, almost bodiless, people float like paper balloons, and the sound of thunder and laughter can be heard just outside.

The very best people, the winners, built this place.  God knows why, but they can end part or all of it, with just the puff of their breath, like blowing on a candle. Will they? Only if he asks in the right way, and with the right words, at the right time.

Is this the world inside your head, Iowan farmer?

New Orleans

New Orleans, you big beautiful woman, you break my heart.

Mr. Scientist

Mr. Scientist- 'Ok, here we go. This is probably going to seem like it hurts, but don't worry, that's just your brain. It whispers deceit.'

Peyton Manning

If Tom Brady is the kind of psychopath who looks like he once stood on the edge of a frozen lake, and stared absently into the distance, while the ice broke beneath another person's feet, and they were dragged, screaming, beneath the dark water, Peyton Manning is something else.

He's seems more like a guy who grew up in a small town, and stayed, while still managing to become a success. Sure, he inherited his dad's small bank, and the money that went with it, but he made the most out of that slight head start and reinvested it in the community, starting many local businesses. He's the one who brought the KFC into town.

Everyone loves the guy, but he's always rubbed you wrong. Something was just off whenever you saw him, left you cold when he smiled. Maybe it was real danger that you felt all along, you can say that now, but at the time it seemed more inexplicable.  Either you thought he was too calculating, or he was too boring, but for some reason he didn't match up with the way that you valued the world and what was good within it.  You knew somehow that he wasn't going to be on the side of whatever you wanted the world to become.

Then one morning you wake up and turn on the news and old Peyton's there, getting led away in handcuffs.  For some god awful crime, he poisoned old people or children, or he's been dabbling in human smuggling, and you feel slightly vindicated, but, just as his head is about to disappear into the cop car, he turns and looks at the camera with that bland expression on his face, and his giant forehead, and you see it all for the first time.

The fear, the calculating terror and menace that's lived right at the heart of your local universe for all these years, how every major tragedy seemed to combine itself with what was least unusual and most numbingly routine in the day to day lives of you and your neighbours, the bankruptcies, the early deaths, and suicides, and breakdowns, and runaways.  The decline of any real spontaneity or hope for change, the roads being paved in the summer and cleared in the winter. Its not that the blandness and monotony hid what was evil around you, its that it was of a piece with it.  It was the same force motivating each separate event, and the same man with his hand moving all the peices to the same outcome, thanks to his relentless and unstoppable calculation. You see all this on his face, and he knows that you see it, and you see that too, and for a long time you can't stop yourself from shuddering.

That's what Peyton Manning looks like.

The Pledge of Allegance

I just realized how much I resent having been made to do the 'pledge of allegance' when I was a kid. What kind of creepy fascist crap was that?

My Windowless Room

Lately, I keep waking up at 1am and, because there are no windows in my room, having to work really hard to convince myself that its not actually 1pm and I haven't overslept my alarm. Somehow, I feel like this is a metaphor for my whole life.

Donald Trump and Milton

Really, God as he's portrayed in 'Paradise Lost', is a lot like Donald Trump, just a petty aging rich boy shyster, with his fake tan and comb over, hidden by a cloud, talking bullshit. Hail Satan.

Donald Trump and his Supporters

The problem with Trump supporters isn't even that they're stupid, although a lot of them obviously are, its that they're morally underdeveloped.

These are people who can't tell the difference between political correctness and basic common decency. They confuse bullying and posturing with strength. They think patriotism is yelling USA and watching the Superbowl. 'Telling it straight' to them means telling them what they want to hear.

They honestly think that if they are to succeed in life others need to lose, and they want to build a country around that zero-sum vision.

Stupid people will always be with us. What decent people in this country need to start asking is how we let so many of our fellow citizens get so detatched from what are our common values. What has happened to our moral education in this country that it now fails to reach so many?

Is it the decline of the union movement? Too many big box stores? I'm open to suggestions.

These are people who don't even the have the courage to admit that they're racists. At least when my grandparents said something racist they had the decency to say it directly, there was none of this hemming and hawing and coded language. How have we created a nation with so many cowards?

Donald Trump and Dick Jokes

Missed in all the outrage over the fact that Donald Frump made a dick joke, is the much more unbelievable and revealing moment when he said that he would directly command members of our millitary and intelligence services to use torture and target innocent civilians, and implicitly threatened reprisals against them if they failed to obey. These are war crimes and this is what fascism sounds like.

Donald Trump and Karl Marx

Karl Marx once said, when writing about Napoleon III, that "History repeats itself, first as tragedy then as farce." There's a Donald Trump joke here, but I'm honestly just too exhausted to work it out.

Anyway, I guess the fact that I'm now quoting Marx in my updates might make it seem like I'm being radicalized, but, you know, we live in radicalizing times. So, there's that.

Donald Trump and Richard Nixon

Trump's persona is a lot like Richard Nixon. Not the sweaty, uncomfortable, dress shoes on a beach, Nixon that we got to know in public.

Its more like the one on the White House tapes after he got good and soused, and started ranting about the 'Jews', bombing the 'goddamned hell' out of North Vietnam, asking Kissinger to confirm his views on homosexuality, and aborting interracial babies.

I guess that appeals to a certain older, white, stupid, bigoted, authoritarian demographic. Trump reaches out to the 12 percent of Americans who, in their heart of hearts, know that behind closed doors they are all Richard Nixon.

Donald Trump and Tacos

If you know a Trump supporter personally who's going out for Chinese food or something similar, or if you spot a Trump bumper sticker in your local Chi-Chi's parking lot or Olive Garden, or you see someone wearing a Trump t-shirt shopping in the international aisle at your grocery store, maybe suggest to them, in the politest way possible, that they shouldn't be there.

Be very polite, we're trying to reintroduce a certain level of decency into public life, not get dragged down to their level, but explain to them that if they want to undermine the values that support a democratic, multiracial, multiethnic, classically liberal republic, then they really shouldn't feel as free to enjoy all of the benefits that come from living in such a wonderful country, at least not without being called hypocrites.

‪#‎NoTacosForFascists

Donald Trump and Self-Destruction

I have a lot of experience dealing with my own self-destructive tendencies, and I feel like maybe that's what Donald Trump is tapping into at a wider social level. For whatever reason, a lot of Americans right now just need to find out how far they can go.

Its like, you wouldn't want to have a beer with him, but you can see how his company might be appropriate in an unfurnished room while you sit on the floor, sobbing, choking back that last bit of 'Early Times'. He's the one looking at you without sympathy, and maybe a mild look of amusement on his face. Like he's getting a kick out of what you've become, but also like he's welcoming you to your new life.

He's the guy who goes with you to the payday loan store, stands by your side while you trade away your future of just two weeks from now so that you can afford to stay constantly plastered. He's not there to help you, he's there to make sure you don't change your mind.

He's the pawnbroker who buys your mother's jewelry. He fits there, it seems to make sense. His face is on each of the dollars in your shaking hand.

You don't like the man, you find him repulsive, but he's what you deserve, and that's why its good that he's there, because you did this to yourself.

Donald Trump, 'Make America Hit Bottom Again'. Who knows if we'll survive this time, but its where we need to go, just because.

Donald Trump and Daddy Issues

Donald Trump is a surrogate father figure for Americans with really dark daddy issues. I mean, really, really dark.

New Orleans When You're Not In New Orleans

I ran into someone that I knew from New Orleans on the street today, and they asked me what there was to do around here, and I looked them in the eyes, and it was like we had both already died.

I realized then that this was the underworld, and that we were just shades here, doomed to persist in a monotonous half-existence until the end of time.

"There I saw one that I knew, and stopped him, crying Stetson!
You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!"

I will be in New Orleans in a week.

Dandelions

Dandelions are the best flower. They grow everywhere and they're pretty, even when they die. If you don't like them you can go to hell.

Election Slogan

Vote for Casey. He Watches While You Sleep.

"Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers,
Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory,
Pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping.

How solemn they look there, stretch’d and still,
How quiet they breathe, the little children in their cradles."
-Walt Whitman

Election Promise #2

I promise that, if elected, I will not use the powers of the presidency to create a homunculus version of myself.

Donald Trump and Aliens

Donald Trump is the candidate most likely to betray us all in the event of an alien invasion, I'm just saying.

Dishwashing

You can wash a dish, but you can't scrub your soul clean, or forget the things you know, where you've been, or what you have done.

Hair Cut

Every haircut now, I just tell the person that I want the same kind of cut I already have but shorter. This has led to a slow, Darwinian, evolution of my hair style, as each barber makes their own subtle interpretations of what came before. What could be viewed as arbitrary mistakes taken in one light, become features and adaptations for the next barber to exploit. This may sound terribly boring to you, and a ridiculous level of analysis for a series of twenty dollar men's haircuts, but I find it fascinating. I have a special relationship with my hair, and, the fact that I can now liken its changing patterns to those of geology gives me strange comfort, and you should be happy for me because of that.

Election Promise #1

I promise that, if elected, I will not raise your taxes in order to pay for the construction of a gigantic mechanical 'foot of doom'.

Time Travel

As a straight white male, I can be confident that, as a time traveler, if my machine broke and I became stuck in one of the periods I'm most interested in, I would at least have a chance to build a life and gain some reasonable comfort and independence for myself. That's what privilege is.

Washington Monument

My evolving perception of the Washington Monument-

Childhood- It looks like a giant pencil!

Adolescence- Ha ha, it looks like a giant &*$%.

Manhood- My God, its a gigantic phallus.

When old age comes for me, perhaps only then will I have seen the true Washington Monument.  I will have the secrets.

God of Birds

The god of birds wouldn't have wings and it wouldn't fly. It would be a tree in whose branches the weary could settle. When the wind blew they would hear it sing, in a language wholly other but strangely familiar, with breezes from far off and the sound of sights yet to be seen.

People

The older I get, the more every new face seems to have something oddly familiar about it. If I were more trusting about what my brain was telling me, it would appear that I now know everyone. Really, what has happened, is that I have now become more familiar with humanity. I now have a closer relationship with the human race.

Its very disturbing.

Football

If you think about it, football isn't even really a sport. It's more like a hellish vision trip, designed solely for the purpose of facing my inner demons and learning to accept my inevitable failure, sadness, and eventual death.

Memory

Of memory's palaces, long long ago.

Rhyming

We should all live our lives according to arbitrary rhyme schemes. If something rhymes you should just do it and stop complaining.

Library of Alexandria

Man, every few months I still think about the Library of Alexandria, and it gets me down.

Underwear

You buy one pack of tighty whities on a whim. Gradually, over the course of a month, all of your boxers just seem to dissapear. Now, you just are someone who wears tighty whities all the time, because he has nothing else to wear. This is how fundamental changes in your identity happen, through some kind of bizzare moral drift inherent in the nature of having things. Only a true act of will, and a trip to Walmart, can reverse the cycle.

GRE

Studying for the GRE is like letting The Man erect a stately mansion inside your head.

Robot Spring

Whoever ever invented 'Spring Cleaning' obviously hated spring. One day we'll have robots that will do all of our chores for us. We'll sit around and mock them, because they don't have any souls, and can't even smell the flowers that are blooming all around them, or feel the simple pleasure of the cool April dirt beneath their feet.

Alone

If we don't find aliens within the next thousand years, we should think about using genetic engineering to bring back the Neanderthals and other upper-hominids that once shared the Earth, and walked side by side with us. I am tired of thinking that we might be the only form of intelligent life in the universe, and being forever alone. We could make a park where we got to hang out together and call it 'Neanderthal World', and they would call it 'Human World', because we would share the gift of language.

Lemonade Stand

Lets get real here kid. Why would I be interested in buying your lemonade when there's a drug store across the street? You obviously can't compete with them on either price or selection, but you might at least try to find a niche by offering superior customer service, or having a better presentation of your product. Instead, look at you, you're a mess. Your undersized hands are all sticky with sugar from the lemonade that you probably didn't stir enough.  Your booth is laughably constructed, and you have a poorly written sign. There's no ambience here, whatsoever, no cool factor.  I had no reason to stop other than to tell you these facts.

Also, your crying doesn't make me want to buy your lemonade any more than before. Do you think Henry Ford cried?  Do you think he cried when they tried to unionize his plant?

If you are a representative of what is to come with American capitalism in this next generation, then this country is surely doomed.  I will leave it at that, tip my hat, and say good day to you.

Children

It must be really scary being a kid surrounded by adults who all are so much bigger and seem to know so much more. It's a good thing they don't know how much secret contempt we all harbor for them and their small hands.

After the Blackout

Upon arriving at my house very late this evening, in truth it was more morn than night, I was unsettled to discover my home lit up with a most powerful and unnatural light. The very air around me was so suffused with this bright mixture, that seemed to flow from out my windows and doorway like the hot gold spilled from a cauldron, as to be Elysium's gate. Although I am not by nature a superstitious man, I must confess that for a moment I thought that this must be some kind of enchantment. I imagined, for just a moment mind you, that inside this house must be some kind of revelry of which you sometimes hear on from the oldest days in fanciful books. Of glowing naked nymphs and warm-blooded statues, playing on lutes and braiding one another's long hair, the golden age come again and the gods among us. When I finally did tremblingly enter my door and gaze upon my interior, I discovered that hung in many places, along my walls and ceilings, were ingenious balls of glass, laid by I know not who, that contained this supernatural seeming lightning inside them, each separately. What's more, I have since been told that these devices have always been here and that I along with others often partook of their use before. They tell me, indeed, that perhaps my mind has become slightly addled to have forgotten so. They blame the disappearance of some man or creature titled 'electricity'. They assure me that with his return, and as with the return of the light he furnishes, all will be well. It is true that, often, when I think on my distant past of more than a week ago, I seem to be like one who is standing on the top of a fog banked hill, so much is unclear... I know not what to think.

Democracy

You know, with this upcoming election season, I just hope that we don't hurt the feelings of any of our elected politicians, because they own us.

The Past

Did you know that up until around the year 1620 people didn't really have emotions? Feelings are an entirely modern invention.

The first real tear was only shed in the year 1807, they were all fake before then. The first genuine sigh was breathed in 1850.  The pace of change has only accelerated since then, as new affects come on line now, seemingly, almost every year.

Be happy that you live in a world of colors and things that move, your ancestors weren't always so lucky.

The Party Bus

I wonder what the Party Bus would think about if it could think.  If the Party bus could dream, would the Party Bus dream about cities made out of light, with men made out of fire? Worlds where the color blue described the smell of an onion?

Walt Whitman

A video game adaption of "When Lilacs Last in the Door-Yard Bloom'd," where a coffin journeys night and day. The player's job is to throw as many flowers onto it as he or she can, while it passes through populous cities, draped in black. The final boss is Robert E. Lee.

Lincoln Memorial

Where are my flying washing machines, scientists?  Everything in the future should hover at least five feet off the ground, including public monuments.

My Alcoholism

I realized today that I don't like to watch people eat. It brings out a contempt in humanity.

Look at you, taking in nutrients in order to survive, you failable creature. You know, you're going to die one day and then there's not going to be anything left. Not even the memory of this moment. Why don't you just put down the cheese?

Also, why do people have so much hair?  What are you trying to hide?

My Dreams

I had a dream where I was starring in a musical play entitled "Thank God I'm not a Cartesian!" Most of it was just me and another guy standing around in front of a stream and catching golden and silver colored fish that we pulled up from the water with our bare hands. At the end we fought a gigantic mechanical disembodied hand. We received a standing ovation and then I was naked.

Did this dream actually happen? No. My dreams suck.

Mutual Aid

If there were an army of 500 me's we would first of all establish a non-hierarchical system of cooperation and mutual aid.

Used Mattress

For sale: used mattress, never slept on.

Vampire Coal Miner

As a vampire coal miner I have held naked coals in my super human grasp for hundreds of years and watched as they slowly turned into diamonds in my hand.