ambergris

youth is wasted

when i was growing up the neighborhood i lived in was on a hill overlooking a flood plain. my friends and i would play there, traipsing through the tall grasses on our way to the creek at the bottom of the valley, where we would splash around underneath the bridge that ran over it with the impunity of children whose parents do their laundry for them. when we would finally show up back at our homes our washerwomen mothers would cry bloody murder upon seeing their beloved little workloads slathered in mud and clay, or holding together the ruined, lifeless shells which had been our clothes but, under duress of child's-play had been reduced to tattered rags by the rocks we crawled over and the trees we climbed, destroyed before we even had a chance to grow out of them--oh, how our fathers would howl at the waste of it all, at the futility of lives indentured in uphill battle, of trying to fill in sinkholes growing even faster than a child.

then, one day--this was before the county had reached its full size, before suburban sprawl had closed in the gaps between housing developments with more homes and the connective tissue of prefab fast-food restaurants, banks, and strip-malls--while we were playing in the creek we heard screams drifting down from the wooded hill on the other side. it sounded like a girl...but what would a girl be doing up there, playing in the woods where no one lived? we ran to my friend's house to tell his parents. "maybe you should call the police," i remember suggesting. childhood is chock-fucking-full of adventure. it is before the imagination dies. they waved us off like flies. who with children has the time to listen to them, go on the line for them?

not long afterwards, underneath that bridge, a set of clothes was discovered--they belonged to a girl. her body was found in the woods; she had been raped and killed.

(parents should listen to their children)

coke & pussy

i'd had too much to drink and smoked too many cigarettes; my mouth was dry so after leaving my friend's house i stopped at a nearby 7-11.

i heeded the call of the refrigerator case, choosing a cherry coke. the man at the counter had cola skin (natural caramel coloring) and took my money. by law, i was free to leave.

so i did and got back into my car, which at the time was actually a minivan. it was about two o'clock, and the road was mine. counter-leverage provided by the vise-grip of my thighs, i twisted off the cap with my right thumb and forefinger.

but what was this? as i lifted the bottle to my desiccated lips, a strange odor obliterated my thirst-quenching behavior. the smell was none other than the sickly-sweet stank of snatch.

yes, it most definitely was vaginal...but?..i reeled, stunned...a litany of questions competed with a primitive gutterance for the usage rights to my tongue, and lost. repulsed, i recapped the bottle and heaved it out the window into the darkness of the world.

twitching with the electrifying throb of my adrenal glands my mind, now clear and focused, though puzzled, contemplated the thoughts cascading through its canals. i wondered if i should go back to the convenience store, but almost immediately rejected the notion--what should i say, what should i demand?--"excuse me, sir, but i believe this bottle has been in someone's vagina?"--that could result in more problems than it would be worth, especially if the clerk had been the one practicing his fatty arbuckle impersonation--i planned my motor sequences up until i would arrive home at my bathroom sink and soap dispenser, putting a moratorium on the use of my soiled right hand, locking it in a curled-up, retarded johnny tremain lump in front of me--i remembered the first time i smelled pussy, the initial visceral response i had to that scent like a cocktail of sweat and shit, how i must have been traumatized or something by it because for the next week as i would walk down the street and the breeze would gently blow through the leaves on trees i would be assaulted by the olfactory memory.

i guess what they say is true, that a good way to get pussy is to buy some coke...

one time i shaved my head and tried to be a monk...

Very seldom did fate throw him together with a woman so closely that he could catch fire for a few days and imagine himself to be in love. That was why his love adventures never developed into love affairs; they stopped short at the very beginning, and in their simplicity, innocence, and purity equalled the love-stories of a schoolgirl. He particularly avoided the pale, melancholy maidens, mostly with black eyes which reflected "tormenting days and inquitous nights," maidens with secret joys and sorrows, who always have something to confide, something to tell, and when they tell it, shudder, burst into tears, then suddenly throw their arms around their friend's neck, gaze into his eyes, then at the sky, and declare there is a curse on their life, and sometimes fall down in a faint. He avoided them fearfully. His soul was still pure and virginal; it was perhaps waiting for real love, for support, for overpowering passion, and then, as the years passed, seemed to have dispaired of waiting.*

*(Goncharov, Ivan. 1978. Oblamov. Penguin Books. p. 65-6)

real or fake/teeth or pearls

I tripped and--splat!--there go the vegetables...I was going to make some soup.
Now all the vegetables are illegible. No way I'm going back to the store: all that way. It's too far. I'm elderly.
No sympathy, please. I'm completely normal. Just elderly. I became a hairdresser during the war. Now I have varicose veins.
It wasn't easy for me to be doing what I was doing, for me at least. I wish I'd been working in the factories with the lesbians. What I did was tantamount to treason. I made girls look pretty when their men weren't there

my guilty conscience forces me to constantly examine and harass myself.
i'm always going back to that time. i think about alternate explanations.
i see that everry story is true.

Now I know that they were fighting so that their women could be pretty!

I'm sorry, boys! I grieve for those who came back only to be alone. I praise GOD that others could die before they found out what they were living for.

The CABANA BOY fucked Stacey! I gave her a permanent!
The JEWISH DOCTOR fucked Lorraine. I dyed her hair red!

...all this work I did for the devil and all I have are broken vegetables and varicose veins.

full disclosure

hair of the dog that bit me

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

cooperative hunting for young wheelstock

on july the 17th, common era year 2004 (around 9:45 pm) a gentle, lost lamb was set upon by a pack of wolf-pups practicing their tactics as he made his way back home. it was the lamb's first experience with criminal violence, a rite of passage that he had avoided through sheer blindness to the fact that it could happen facillitated by a youth spent grazing the rolling hills of the county.

but he recognized the immanent danger of the situation as he entered it. it was obvious as three approached from the north and one from the south to intercept his traverse through the pathway's bottleneck that, though they were not yet long in the fang, these wolves hungered for tender meat. still, he was surprised when the completion of the trap came from a third direction, and for all intents and purposes the premier impact served also as the coup de gras.

i saw stars in my right visual hemifield provided by the concussion of a board swung by someone who must have emerged from behind the decorative brick wall i had just rolled past. the impact knocked me off my bike and as i regained my senses over the next second i assesed my situation: stunned, lying on the ground in the middle of the street, surrounded by pairs of legs delivering kicks to me en masse. "where that money," i was asked, "what you got in that backpack?" hands rummaged through my pockets, unopposed because my own were occupied fending off further blows to my head. "everything i have i need," i heard myself say. "i don't have any money."

but they found my wallet, containing the $20 bill i had almost just used to buy dinner but had instead saved for them by using credit. there were fewer legs around me now, and fewer kicks--i uncovered my head, just in time to look up and see one of my afflictors perched above me, crouching. looking up i realized that this lingerer, the only one whose footsteps and self-congratulations could not be heard departing down the street, was smiling at me. i could have killed him--i mean, i could have just reached up, grabbed his head, and twisted it in one quick arc to sever the conductance of his spinal cord to those impulses that propagate the continuation of an organism's "life"--he wouldn't have even had a chance to erase his satisfied smile before it would be preserved against his vanishing will. but as quickly as i realized his contentment, i realized as well that he couldn't have been older than 13.

instead, i just looked up into his eyes. "what the fuck?," i inquired, and though he gave no reply before he scurried off i understood all i needed to. "we fucked him up real good!" came from halfway down the block, along with an entourage of whoops and cheers. it sounded like a group of kids celebrating their victory at a game of playground basketball. in fact, none of the four that i had actually seen had looked older than 16, and i don't believe that any of them bore me any malice. none sounded angry; in fact they were laughing as they did it, a laughter as innocent as it was completely uninformed of any conventions of civiliization-preserving restraint. the really fucked up thing, it seemed, was that they had no concept that they were doing anything wrong, no concept of how any person besides themselves had a right to expect not being beaten, robbed, and abandoned in favor of the next amusement.

as i made my way back to my feet i noticed my face was wet with warmth. i still had my backpack, but my glasses were smashed on the ground and my bike was missing...down the block a figure could be seen riding it in circles around the rest of his group. i still had my cell phone so i dialed 911, whose dispatcher asked me a battery of questions as i watched them run off, ditching my bike because the chain had fallen off. i retrieved it and returned back to the saftey of the streetlight that had illumiated my experience. i could see all my id and credit cards left in the street as well--since my wallet is the unstitched, folded-up fat end of a necktie their vigor in acquiring it had served to disperse its contents. everything was there except for the $20.

some white kids who had seen everything from their friend's porch arrived in a car at that point and shuttled me to the hospital three blocks away. when they got me there my pulse was 80 bpm. five hours later, when i was finally seen (i highly recommend, by the way, never needing urgent medical care these days), my pulse had settled to a languid 46 that was not hastened by the application of needles or thread to the wound chance had determined would land a full half-inch below one half of my primary sensory apparatus. "you must be really healthy," the doctor commented, "or really unhealthy."

"probably a mixture of both," i replied.

outcome:
for $4 per thief i got to spend all night in the emergency room (i don't have insurance, by the way), passing time by taking pictures with the camera they had failed to discover or snatch off me. at least some of them turned out cool (and check out the portion of the board that didn't break over my face).

enjoy!

replicator, part two

the life and times of Uncle Ray

CHAPTER 14

Meets the Love of His Life

After I was discharged from the Navy in 1958, I came home to Detroit and worked as a baker. I bought a bright red 1961 Dodge Dart, and one morning I took it to the dealership for the customary 1,000-mile checkup.

Boarding a city bus for the ride home, I found it empty except for the driver and four young women. I took one look at Myrna Layton and knew where I would sit.

She looked surprised to see someone next to her on such a wide-open bus. I asked if she was going to work, but she didn't answer. Then I remarked on what a nice day it was, and she said, "Oh, quite."

"You must be from England," I said. She said she wasn't, and looked the other way, out the window. I told her I would like to buy her a cup of coffee, and, after a 30 minute ride, she finally agreed. At the coffee shop on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Cass, she gave me her phone number. I was so swept away that I left without paying.

(A week or so later I returned to pay for the coffee, but the restaurant had gone out of buisness. If the owner reads this, I owe you .20 plus interest. I have to admit that still bothers me.)

On my way to work on another bus four hours later, who should I see but Myrna, who was working a split shift at the telephone company. She was talking to a girlfriend. I asked the friend politely if she would mind sitting somewhere else. Myrna and I talked all the way to my stop.

We dated for about three weeks. One day I introduced her to my mother and father. Later, my mother told me that she thought Myrna might have TB.

I said, "Why would you say that?" She said, "Because she is so skinny."

Myrna and I married ten months after we met. She continued to work as a telephone operator, and I became a salesman for a bakery.

I would get home one hour before her. So I would cook dinner for her and I. (I was previously a cook on the destroyer USS Bristol.) A typical supper would be pan-fried chicken, milk gravy and biscuits, mashed potatoes, buttered carrots, and heat-and-serve rolls. We did not have money to eat out becausee we were saving for our first home.

After a year or so and many of my dinners, I asked my dear mom if she still thought Myrna might have TB. Myrna was not quite as skinny as before. Mom said she looked great. She still does, and she never had TB.

That was 38 years ago. After three children, Jennifer, Sandra and Ray Jr., and a lot of wonderful memories, Myrna is still the love of my life.

We know you have a choice when choosing potato chips.

From my family to yours, thanks for choosing Uncle Ray's.

Uncle Ray

man-the-myth-maker (i am a scientist, i seek to understand things)

many of you are familiar with the story of david and goliath, which appears in the hebrew scriptures (old testament). the armies of the philistines and the israelites were gathered for battle when goliath, a philistine, came forth and challenged the israelites to settle the dispute by sending out their best man to face him in a fight to the death. goliath it seems, was a man of great proportions, measuring over "six cubits" in height. if you consider that a cubit is the distance from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger, about 20 inches, this guy was over !0 feet tall! goliath was armed to the teeth with body armor, a javelin, and a sword. to face this giant, the israelites sent david, a young and diminutive shepherd, armed only with a sling and five smooth stones. here's how the action is described in the revised standard version of the bible (1 samuel 17:48):

when the philistine arose and came and drew near to meet david, david ran quickly toward the battle line to meet the philistine. and david put his hand in his bag and toook out a stone, and slung it, and struck the philistine on his forehead; the stone sank into his forehead, and he fell on his face to the ground.

now why, you might ask, are we giving a theology lesson in a neuroscience textbook*? the answer is that our understanding of the visual pathway offers an explanation (besides divine intervention) for why goliath was at a disadvantage in this battle. body size is regulated by the secretion of growth hormone from the anterrior lobe of the pituitary gland. in some cases, the anterior lobe becomes hypertrophied (swollen) and produces excessive amounts of the hormone, resulting in body growth to unusually large proportions. such individuals, who are called pituitary giants, can measure well over 8 feet tall.

pituitary hypertrophy also disrupts normal vision. recall that the optic nerve fibers from the nasal retinas cross in the optic chiasm, which butts up against the stalk of the pituitary. any enlargement of the pituitary compresses these crossing fibers and results in a loss of peripheral vision called bitemporal hemianopia, or tunnel vision. (see if you can figure out why this is so from what you know about the visual pathway.) we can speculate that david was able to draw close and smite goliath becuse when david raced to the battle line, the pituitary giant had completely lost sight of him.

*(bear, mark f.. 2003. neuroscience: exploring the brain. lippincott williams & wilkins. p. 319.)

i've started, lately, to wonder...

this morning as i lay in bed, during the depressive lull which enevitably follows milking myself, i stared at my bare chest and noticed, really noticed, for the first time the uncanny resemblance my moles bear to
extra nipples

once, at a party, i wanted to have sex with a girl, and somehow in the midst of all our flirting the subject of extra nipples came up. i wondered: what is the world record for extra nipples? determined to demonstrate my luminous sensitivity to the sufferings of all the wretched creatures of this world, i wondered aloud at the type of life this honor would hold hands with. determined to demonstrate my ability to find the truth i called information to get the number for the guiness book of world records.

unfortunately there was no one manning the phone that late night, and no one would be there later; the number only leads to a voice mailbox where some of the most bizarre and attention-deprived freaks in this wretched world have no doubt left their triumphant cries for help. i, however, like most times i've dialed a phone number to reach a girl, did not leave a message.

in case you were wondering, i did not succeed in my seduction schemes that night. as the morning pulled its head from the previous night's ass i found myself making out with some other girl, one who kept boasting about how she gave the best head in the world...but since she only told me instead of showing me i guess i'll just have to keep wondering until i see it in the record-books.

feminine odor (fresh & confident)

i just saw a television commercial in which a woman who had cleaned her vagina with a summer's eve deodorant wipe had the confidence to approach a man who was plugging his ears with headphones in what looked like an airport. the man was tapping his foot and the woman sat down next to him, clearly indifferent to his proximal bubble. she joined him in the foot-tapping, intimating that she was trying to listen in, until he relented and shared one of the earpieces.

would this woman's vagina normally smell so offensive that she can't be around other people? is this product designed so well that women thusly afflicted can now live the carefree life others take for granted? or is the point that women who regularly wipe themselves with moist towlettes can dedicate self-assured effort towards having sex with strangers knowing that there will be no deal-breaking discoveries once the panties drop? do women, on days when they are...not so fresh, think to themselves: today, if i meet an attractive man, i will not be able to have sex with him without him finding out that my vagina stinks? that would certainly be a shame, if GOD ON HIGH created cheeky kitty-cat girls only to stick them with a burden like that.

freeknik in june

mo love

my trials continue
on and on
now i'll see
how steady
my mind really is

murder should only be entertainment and not life

information for the conscientious objector because even if you are a sadistic monster you should sublimate and become a surgeon instead

on a dwarf-given mug

Thelma was at the mcdonald's by her apartment, at the foot of an on-ramp to an interstate highway that glanced over the outer suburbs of a fading industrial hub tasting post-post-industry's scorn at her lackluster potential like a piece of cosmic debris skipping off the earth's atmosphere, sipping from the morning's third filling of a styrofoam cup of coffee. in a room full of women everyone can always tell whose cup is whose, who left their cigarette in which crotch in which ashtray, by the color of lipstick smeared on each item's mouthpiece. thelma's shade of lipstick was a type of pink which resembled, in the way wind-chill or humidity can make one temperature effectively resemble another, a sort of endometrium-jerkey brown.
Mickey must have been there at some point that late morning, probably using his own mug rather than the derived petrochemical vessels provided by the management for the convenience of their patrons. perhaps he had two or more mugs at hand, a supply to give out to fans and freshly-minted friends, spread out on his booth-table--or, perhaps not. perhaps he just sat there dangling his legs over the floor beneath his seat. perhaps he initiated contact, instigated by lust for the comfort of pussy or a captive audience, or perhaps he was just being genial in the manner of a former performer who had decided to use his talents and developmental deficiency in the service of burial-preparation.
i imagine them sitting there, she, desperate for attention and the illusion of glamour, he, either the same or not, she, presumptiously touching his petit arm, cocking her head back in hyperbolic laughter regardless of stimulus, he, either caring or not, appreciating or not, in the end giving her a commerative mug that said "you might remember me from the wizard of oz," but not "i was the dwarf credited as 'second fiddle.'" i assume they did not discuss the dwarf harmed in the making of the film, immortalized as a shadowy pendulum in the background, the ghost in the vcr, aperiodically ticking away the few remaining moments we have left to dream before we have to decide what to put on our promotional mugs, on our gravestones.

cat & mouse

cat
mouse
cat!
mouse!

it's the predator/prey relationship
flesh scratches are yummy
padded paws, claws sure grip
bolus goes to tummy

cat
mouse
cat
mouse!

they hide found objects in my shoe
they hide in holes in walls that hold up roofs

clawing my feet through sheet
while i'm asleep
stealing cheese for a
swiss-miss treat
fox & hounds is a dangerous game
but this household scenario is deadly

cat
(cat_
mouse
(mouse_

i have a feeling that
death lurks in my basement
in my pantry
(i can smell_
cat grins bloody
(i can smell_
instinct fed it before me
(i can smell something funny)
natural delicacy
sinners, god have mercy

iams tortures animals in cruel experiments

Kool Keith on Writing Lyrics

I had a lot of inspiration in basketball when I was writing. I never really had no particular subjects. When we made those songs they were just so freestyle written. We didn't have any boundaries--we just wrote it because it sounded good. Eddie never said nothing, the company never said nothing, they never censored lyrics or nothing; it wasn't like we were cursing all the time or shooting people. Back then T La Rock, Just Ice, us, LL, everybody was using the big words. You know, "Construction!" "Destruction!" "Corruption!" Those were the words to rhyme with back in the day. Everybody was still using "...ation." "Concentration!" You know, like KRS. "Dedication! Frustration! Imitation!" We were the first guys to go into words that wasn't "...ation," but they were still big words. You know, "Circulatory." "Attitude." We took it to that level. I was just having fun. We were reading a lot of UFO books, satellite books, space books. Documentary stuff. We took words out of magazines. Popular Mechanics--I would read that. I was reading a lot of other stuff. Me and Ced would just read more books that had big words. And we would watch a lot of programs that were elevated. Like Star Trek.

from the liner notes to the Ultramagnetic MC's Critical Beatdown

my prize for being better than you is that i get to be alone and fucking miserable

invisible enemies

it is either said, or indeed should be so, that having invisible enemies is a bad sign. delusions of paranoia, hallucinations of persecution--you are not that special, you are only mad. no one likes those who inject their petty concerns into the already-complicated lives of others. shut up and stop creating fear; ghosts are metabolic by-products of your oxidative stresses.

stop swinging at foes that are not there!
stop dancing a tarantella swatting at flies only imagined!

the foetus drowns on its own urine, but can't die because it hasn't been born, and it has a snorkel.

my left pinky toe

in years prior, i could wiggle my left pinky toenail right out of my toe, leaving an eerie invagination behind.
i don't think i have the courage to try this feat anymore.

this morning i have been vexed by a mosquito drawn to my heat. it has dodged dozens of attempts on its life--it's very courageous. like a cock in the foxhole