Days of Days
In all the days of days
I hope this is not the end
But as much as I wish
For better things to come
I can’t see them on the horizon
For all the days of days
I’ve been trying to walk the road
The land gives way further to waste
I can’t accept this sight
That this is all there is
Why do I feel alone in my anger
That the world has fallen with ash
And buried all the dreams that were.
Why do I quell the rage within when I
Can only scream at rats and roaches
Who are unable to imagine better days
To come when they’ve found perfection.
I never thought
In all the days of days
That we’d return to a point
Where action based on hope
Was revolutionary action.
Dreaming Like a Parade
I dream like crawling over a parade
Passing by loud, blaring instruments
Getting sections of music and sound
I climb up the front of float-cars
And over the traveling wonderlands
To get snippets of performance taken
From my past day, ripped from my
Fantasies of what the future could be
Or my tragedies grotesquely displayed
In full, vivid, unavoidable technicolor
The voices are loud and everywhere
Repeating chants in a background roar
While the people in front of me scream
Words that are different every time
But come down to the simplistic queries:
“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE?!
YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG! WHY DON’T YOU LISTEN?!”
Yet when I try to get the meaning,
When I try to find my way off and escape
The parade is nothing but gibberish
I escape one vignette to crawl through
My regret and just climb onto another
Over and over again in repetition
I try to avoid the mistake of staying
But every time I try to go I end up back
In a different twist of the same screw
It never quits until I grow too tired to sleep
Upon which time I am far too tired to wake
I lie in bed staring at the sunlight squeezing
Past the blinds to mark up the ceiling and ask
“What am I doing here? What is there to listen to?”
The Untrusted Dark
March has chill nights to go out in
Enjoy the crisp, starlit spring air
At least if you can go out at night.
I used to cruise alongside the beach
No city stars but quiet ocean breezes
A way to focus before the lion’s share
Of work in light of tomorrow’s sun.
At least when I could go out at night
In the crisp, spring air of March.
Now in the foothills, barbed fences
And animals running loose all over.
Wild dogs and coyotes sniffing about
Out here in the wild, desert dark.
A crystal clear sky but no haven
In which to enjoy sparkling light
Nothing to do during the day either
Everyman’s choked of every dull cent
To lavish on unknown employees for
Oiling their business day with ease.
No room for the unknown in the day
Any bit of waste is a true loss today.
Nothing but pre-packaged guarantees
Only the right labels and warranties.
And where are we going in this nowhere
With people broken out of old packages
We are the unknown to these businesses,
The vast dark in which beasts lurk.
Maybe I will walk in the March dark
I’m a coyote in the light of this town
Lets walk in the starlit air tonight
Either way we’re desperate to survive
Lets play wild dogs in the sunlight
And bite the hands that abandoned us.
May I be true.
I thought about dying just now
Minutes ago while cooking noodles
Nearly impossible to focus on
There was this earth-shattering
Noise aside from the boiling water
Screaming in the back of my head
While I thought about dying
Moments ago while preparing food
Abruptly, to be sure, a spring
Off this mortal coil, no polite
Shuffle at my age, with my health
It would be untimely to others
But what to say about dying
Is the same as asking about living
The only reason the thought comes
…Would it be any better at all
Any easier than finishing off days,
Weeks, months, years, decades…
I mainly fear all that I will,
When it comes time for me to die,
Will look back as the end inevitable
Comes despite resistance or regret
And realize in all that living done
It was the same as dying years ago
I do not want my life, as I live it
To be a struggle to hold deluded
Reasons against Death.
Standing on a Precipice
I stand without standing on a precipice
My dreams have expanded beyond my grasp
And fly in the starlit sky before me
Like streams of gas dancing in ribbons
Throughout the deep, firefly void of space
Yet close enough to feel the wind stirred
From the powerful, far reaching movements
It is my very breath lost in the sky
And I stand on the edge of reality
There is no gravity in this world now
I am merely standing still between
The twinkling stars of the universe
And the endless sheet of blank plains
Above and all encompassing around me
My dreams dance, they dance, they dance
Like furious cables of wind tossing and
Dissipating their ethereal colors in
Pathways of formless inspiration
I stand on the edge of it all
My lungs burn for precious air
The cold stings every corner
I have no fire now
I have no spark
There is no warmth
My fuel is gone
I stand on the edge of two paths
I may crawl deep into the ground
To be embraced away in warmth
Or fall into the sky to burn
In trails of my escaped dreams
Two very different actions but
In the end what’s the difference.
Study on Virginity Pledges results: “Well, duh!”; Reveals Crisis.
According to a study from John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, it appears that abstinence until marriage pledges don’t seem to make any difference in the likelihood of a teenager’s sexual behavior. The major public response of individuals that have reached any age between 13 and dead is, “Well, duh!”
Janet E. Rosebaum published the new article in Pediatrics evaluating how 17 year-old teenagers who say, “Listen, I’ll write my name down and take this stupid pledge if you shut up, leave me alone, and stop looking at me like I’m a whore,” mysteriously and amazingly have sex by the age of 21, with a variable number of partners. The study itself reveals that students who have pledged for virginity are just as likely to have sex as students who receive the same sex education and have not pledged to virginity are. Furthermore, the study reveals that teenagers who do pledge to virginity are less likely to use a condom or practice actual safe sex than those who don’t.
This aspect of the study is also creating an impact on not only sex education levels, but sex intelligence levels of students (education being the amount of facts a student knows, and intelligence being their ability to apply facts and other knowledge.) Preparing for a new study, researchers are noting that somehow students are lacking enough sexual intelligence to believe that saying, “No, I won’t” during Phys Ed., is enough preparation for when a libido says, “Oh, yes, you will!” For people who have lived between the ages where puberty ends and death, most are asking how anyone could allow a student to think that. “Look at the amount of literature that has been written about youthful proclivities towards sex,” says a concerned English teacher, “If Shakespeare knows that teenagers are going to make rash, sexual decisions even with the full weight of the Catholic church on them, why don’t we?”
“This is what we call a ’sexual intelligence crisis’,” explains Professor Holbert of Berkeley. “Not just for the students, but for the people coming up with this information. This reveals a ‘Too cool for school’ mindset, but instead it’s more of a, ‘Too cool to be a raging ball of hormones’ mindset. Student’s need to be aware that if they put themselves in situations that can become sexually charged, they’re going to be idiot, raging balls of hormones and need to be able to handle their stupid decisions in the safest manner possible.”
There is opposition to the results. “The author inaccurately equates the holistic breadth of an abstinence education program to the one-time event of a virginity pledge,” says Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association, “A pledge and an abstinence program are not synonymous.” This is an assumption that researchers must contend with. “We can’t say students who have taken the pledge have mentally ‘completed’ the program,” says sociologist Jennifer Whitberg, “I mean, at the point of being asked to take a pledge like that, most students realize the severe retardation of the curriculum, go through the motions of taking the pledge, and end up getting their information from a place that’s a little more grounded in reality; such as the guy they buy their pot from.” Of course, just because the students believe their new sources are grounded in reality, Whitberg adds “It doesn’t mean they are actually reliable.” Meanwhile, the students who don’t take the pledge may view themselves as challenging the program, so they “scrutinize it for what little, relevant information is available,” which allows them to discover that condoms do exist, and are useful.
Valerie Huber contends that the study reveals a later age at which students are becoming sexually active, which is not average for their peers. Of course, being that abstinence only programs are the only programs are allowed in public schools, research is now being done to discover what peers public school students may have that don’t receive the education. “This study looked only at individuals who have specific skills that are taught or reinforced in an abstinence program, so we are not at all surprised that they abstained about 4 years longer than their peers. This study simply reinforces the need to continue the skill building practices found in a typical abstinence-centered class,” Valerie Huber literally says. Literally. No, there’s no joke here, that was actually said, and investigation is underway to discover what possible programs could be proposed for continued abstinence education among college aged and adult students that will not be laughed out of existence for trying to prevent pre-marital sex amongst people who live outside partental supervision, and are legally allowed to drink.
Parents who support the program are also thrilled with this prospect. “If my child is waiting until 20, or even at least 18 to have sex, instead of 17, well when he goes and has sex without a condom like these kids are likely to do, I can at least callously throw him out of my house without being charged with negligence!” says ecstatic mother, Tracey Smith. ”21’s close,” says Matthew Rodriguez, “I’d rather have them off my health insurance when they start having sex, especially if it’s likely to be without condoms.”
The NAEA itself is expected to maintain its position. In its literature to parents, it states that it wants to safeguard children who are most likely not psychologically and emotionally developed enough to deal with the physical and emotional impacts of sex. “The program’s working if kids are waiting until they’re adults; in essence it’s doing its most basic goal,” says an efficiency analyst, “Even if when they do start having sex, they start having the most dangerous and riskiest sex because they mistakenly believe that condoms have a 44% failure rate due to the education they receive from the current materials out for abstinence only education, at least they’ll be 21, and that should make being diagnosed with HIV much easier for them.”
LA to cut Bullshit out of Real Estate
In light of the ailing economy, the city council of Los Angeles has announced a decision to cut the “bullshit” tax out of living in LA.
This understated tax was one of the things driving up real estate and rental prices, and went to help pay for things like prestige, reputation, struggle, and difficulty. While some of those will now have to be cut out of the budget, Ed Reyes of the city council says, “We think the money among residents that will be freed up will be able to re-energize the economy.”
Right now, luxury items, such as bullshit priced perfumes, bullshit parking, and bullshit clothing are being massively undersold, and many economists blame this partly on the substantial cost of living. “Listen, it’s not Los Angeles if you don’t feel prestigious living here,” says exotic purse salesman Michael Deveneaux, “But what’s more important? Spending money on pretentious amounts of rent? Or spending money on pretentious amounts of material goods? Without this bullshit being sold, I’m out of a job, and that’s another person who can’t pay the bullshit rent in LA.”
Removing the bullshit tax on real estate in Los Angeles will hopefully make things much more reasonable. Apartment complexes are estimating that they might have less noise complaints and lower utilities to deal with when they have less than 4 people splitting all their 1-bedroom apartments. Studios may actually only house one occupant once more as well, save for in the originally expensive and prestigious areas such as Santa Monica.
Some people are opposed to it, however. For example, living rooms will no longer be competitive on the market. Stacie Kuger, of Brentwood, says, “Listen, right now I can get $400 a month from some vulnerable, twenty-something, artistic, young man to rent just the living room. Once he can get an efficiency studio with actual privacy for that much, I’ll just have a regular living room.” Another resident of Inglewood feels similarly, as his rent may not go down as much as he can charge for his current extra space. “Right now, I have an office space a little larger than a closet that can go for $475, but that won’t be competitive once there’s no more bullshit to renting in LA, and our rent will only go down about $200.”
A few members of the Hollywood Council for the Higher Arts oppose it as well, saying that removing the bullshit from living in Los Angeles will damage its artistic integrity. “What’s going to happen to all of our starving actors if they’re not starving?” Tom LaBonge bemoans. “You’ll no longer be able to taste the visceral desperation in films.” Porn Producer Klaus Shweissinghoffenmeyer feels similar. “If living becomes much more affordable, I’m going to have difficulties finding desperate young things for my work.”
The city council is trying to decide a date for the bullshit tax to be removed, to give citizens and businesses adequate time to prepare. There’s also question of how long it will be removed. “It has to come back sometime,” Jack Weiss says, “It’s just not LA without all of the bullshit.”
Job Searching Fallacies.
This is off my normal path here, but here’s some helpful tips to writing a cover letter. I’ve been reading articles about how to write cover letters and I’m now inputting my own information into this handy clip as I’ve discovered not all the information out there is helpful or reliable in the current job market:
Dear <Person’s Name/Company Title Here>,
– Note: This is a fallacy. All-in-all, when you’re applying for what you can get online, you’re getting less than nothing for people to contact, and if you’re responding to a classified ad, there’s usually not even a company name. You get to write, “Dear Employer”, or as I’m beginning to do, “Dear Mystery-Job-Person” (It is important to be genderless), or perhaps, “My dear lord/lady, Purveyor of Professions and Income,” if you would like to inflate their ego.
The body text:
Intro:
1. I am writing in regards to your ad for <job>.
2. I am your <insert job title advertised here>!
– Note: The intro to your cover letter is an important part of your letter, as it’s going to be the main reason the hiring manager decides not to be interested in you. Interviews with hiring managers have shown that they don’t like things they hear all the time. This is why you’re not supposed to use #1. They want you to be proactive like in #2, but they don’t want you to be overconfident like in #2; professional, but not stiff; enthusiastic, but not overbearing; emotional, but not weak; reliable, but not predictable; clean but not spartan–well, you get the idea. They want this magical middle ground of you being perfect and ALL FUCKING EXCITED about the limited information they put in their job posting. Or perhaps it’s something from Monster.com, where they’ve listed the ENTIRE HISTORY AND MISSION STATEMENT of the company twice over to get you jazzed about working for them as the perfect “Clerical Assistant and Coffee Maker I”. I, for one, believe perfection is stasis and thus something humanity should never deign to achieve. So, I’ve decided to set the mark somewhat off to give a unique intro as option #3.
3. I see from the fact you’re throwing yourself to the wolves on <insert job classified site here>, you must be absolutely desperate to hire a <insert job title here.>
The body of the body text:
Experience:
I have experience working in <job> as you will see on my resume from when I worked for <employer> from <date> to <some other date>. I also enjoy partaking in <activities requiring traits similar to candidate qualifications described in the job ad>. I’m extremely reliable, in fact, I think if I have any problems my one problem is I’ll just try to work too hard! I like to work with people, children, and puppies. I have references!
– Note: The thought of writing anything past your first sentence, which we already went over, is an absolute fallacy. The reason is simple: It won’t be read. They’re not going to bother. There’s 1400 other applicants for the position, the fact you can string together a polite hello and attach a resume is enough to put you into the “Check Resume” pile. If you INSIST on writing a body text though, please don’t refer them to your resume, and if you do, don’t list page numbers, simplicity will just make the hiring manager more confused. They’ll write you back with QUESTIONS about your letter, asking what you meant by saying, “Please see the second page of my resume for my education qualification and certifications,” and then you’ll just feel insulted, and that enthusiasm and excitement they want will turn into bitter, pickle flavored vitriol, and pickles aren’t good for you when you’re job searching. So instead, write something clear and to the point like this:
PLEASE SEE RESUME. PLEASE SEE RESUME. PLEASE SEE RESUME. PLEASE SEE RESUME. PLEASE SEE RESUME. I ATTACHED A RESUME, HAVE YOU READ IT YET? PLEASE SEE RESUME. THE RESUME HAS AN AMAZING JOURNAL OF PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE I HAVE IN THIS WORK, PLEASE SEE IT. PLEASE SEE RESUME. I TYPED IT OUT SO NEATLY JUST FOR YOU? PLEASE SEE RESUME. PLEASE SEE RESUME. ARE YOU LOOKING AT IT YET? PLEASE SEE RESUME. WHY AREN’T YOU LOOKING AT IT YET?! PLEASE SEE RESUME. WHY NOT JUST CALL ME AND I’LL EXPLAIN IT IN PERSON IF IT’S THAT COMPLICATED! PLEASE SEE RESUME. PLEASE SEE RESUME. PLEASE SEE…Please… I know where to hide bodies.
Note: The above body paragraph should make it clear where their attention can be, and where their questions can be answered. It even implies they can talk to you in person for any questions NOT answered. It’s brilliant!
The body text:
The conclusion and farewell:
I would once again like to say that I am highly interested in <job>, and I would like to thank you for your time and consideration. Have a nice day, and I look forward to hearing back from you!
– Note: Oh, you were doing so WELL with the rest of the body-text, and you come tripping with something generic at the conclusion. Oh, well, obviously you were just putting on a veneer of being a highly skilled worker with years of reliable experience who’s smart enough to put a professional (even if not wildly entertaining) sounding letter together for someone to consider, and after this sentence it’s time to toss it into the “Second choice if all the first choices are psycho” pile. After all, you’re an English Major with an aspiration to outdo Dickens and e.e. cummings all at once when applying for that underpaid video logging and transcription job, right? Just like you have to find some amazing way to say, “Hello!” that’s more creative than everyone else saying, “Hello!”, you need to say “goodbye” on a creative note. Because, you know, a polite saying, even if generic, clearly isn’t good enough. You have to go beyond polite. So I’ve been tooling around with a phrase which I think appropriately treats anyone who puts on that type of attitude when reading a letter:
Well, it was nice writing this. I’d like to thank your mom for telling me how to get you to pay attention after we finished making love last night. Well, she thinks it’s love, I call it slamming a screen door. OOOH! What? It’s not like you’re going to read this anyway. You think paragraphs are hard. What? Yeah, like I said, YOUR MOM, I totally know you made a C-average in high school. I can’t wait to interview and pretend to be excited about your shitty job at whatever fantastic company you work for that’s so desperate as to be posting on <classified ad here>.
Signed,
Sam Asshole
(I bet THIS letter got your attention, didn’t it?)
–
I wouldn’t be surprised if someone who is a hiring manager stumbled across this and got offended. But, honestly, three times in the past month I’ve sent out nicely written letters and gotten questions back that I specifically answered in the letter. I was able to just copy and paste the text into a new letter to reply. It’s ridiculous! That’s what spawned this.
When the Dreamer Ends
I sit here and try to write
But find it hard for universal
Truths to come to me to roll
About on paper as I yearn to do
Instead it’s just my own trite
Problems that mill at the tip
Of my prickly tongue to stab
Holes at the sheet as I go along
Where am I going and what am I
Doing in this greater world
I’m trying to survive in?
Why can I only think of this
Land of nightmares I travel
Through to chase a dream
I constantly wonder day to day
If more would be possible
If I conceded to less
Because it’s apparent now
I only get less as I strive
To achieve more and more
The richness of life slips away
Enduring a struggle for success
With eyes on a shining citadel
I am blinded to potential wonders
In the hills surrounding
My only wish is at the end of life
Is not to look back at what I did
But to look back at how I lived
And no matter what to say I lived
Well, and very well at that
You may say I live as a dreamer
And a dreamer needs to dream
But the waking world means
Day-dreaming for the dreamer
And in so it means living
The nightmares that come with
Dreaming less and less brings
Them stalking more and more
This is the life I chose
And through it I will dream
As nightmares come and go
It’s unstoppable unless one day
I decide to dream no more.
A Gobbledy-Gook
November 23, 2008 at 1:25 pm (Uncategorized) (commentary, humor, Poem, poems, poetry, satire, society)
Today I write a-dook a-dook a gobbledy-gook
The words are simple and the message is easy
There’s nothing for you to comprehend but
A-dook a-dook
A-dook a-dook
A gobbledy-gook
It’s all just a-dook a-dook a gobbledy-gook
I see so many people reading so many things
Yet of these things there’s no understanding
Hear them repeated and repeated until it’s all
A-dook a-dook
A-dook a-dook
A gobbledy-gook
Wonderful words a-dook a-dook a gobbledy-gook
To hear them chanted as you walk down the street
Legions of people speaking the same language
As ugly as it may sound to hear in perpetuity
A-dook a-dook
A-dook a-dook
A gobbledy-gook
Hear them say a-dook a-dook a gobbledy-gook
When they really sing a favorite song perhaps
It’s what comes out when you love something
You’ve no strength to believe in, it’s just
A-dook a-dook
A-dook a-dook
A gobbledy-gook
Every piece of life should question gobbledy-gook
As its sparkle comes not from gold minds of words
And squanders their meaning as it’s championed
For selfish causes as though Satan repeats the verse
A-dook a-dook
A-dook a-dook
A gobbledy-gook
No waste in writing a-dook a-dook a gobbledy-gook
If it’s what may be said by everyone anyway
For who should craft delicate articulation
Only to hear it repeated mindlessly as
A-dook a-dook
A-dook a-dook
A gobbledy-gook
So here I write a-dook a-dook a gobbledy-gook
So for at least one thing ever written there’s
No misinterpretation among the human nation
Because until we mean what we say it’s all just
A-dook a-dook
A-dook a-dook
A gobbledy, gobbledy-gook.
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