A Finite Number Of Infinite Possibilities

There’s a trend happening here on Xanga, with lists of 101 things. Some folks have started lists of simple pleasures.

I dig simple pleasures, perhaps in a way that keeps me from digging things that are larger and more profound. Such is the situation with the obsessive and autistic.

For instance, if you give me a warm croissant and a double tall soy latte, you have equipped me with two very pleasurable simple pleasures. But I tend to get trapped in a desire to constantly have croissants and lattes, making the experience neither simple nor pleasurable.

I also like to go to used book stores. But I go all the time. Back when my van was running, I’d end up at a given bookstore two or three times a week, and that’s just one of the handful I frequent. I rarely buy anything, and I already know what’s there, but it’s a ritual, and as such ceases to be a simple pleasure.

I know, I know. I’m the guy who shits on hope and sees the bad side to simple pleasures for chrissake! But it’s not simple pleasures that I see a bad side of; it’s just me trying to understand my own nature. I could list a zillion things that make me happy, but then I’d go and make rituals about them. I run this risk in all aspects of my life.

Thankfully, being obsessive in this way is a bonus to a computer programmer, so I can do that work and give Obsessive Codehead Homer something to do while the rest of me engages in hedonism. It’s still an effort, though, to keep it compartmentalized, and I’m not sure how successful I’ve been.

Anyway, with that in mind, I’ll list some simple pleasures. They’re general to a fault, probably rather unique to me, and maybe not even all that simple. But why make a list otherwise?

Defecation. I’m fascinated by the whole process. Part body-awareness, part breaking of social taboo, part wonderment at the complexity of the human biomachine, part meditation on everything you’ve eaten in the past few days. And a good time to finish a crossword.

Bathing. Dr. Bronner’s peppermint soap, hot shower, natural sponge.

Walking. Walking is the essential human endeavor. We evolved to be able to walk. I was talking to someone who said that humans were unique among animals because their upright spine aligned the chakras in a vertical line, connecting heaven to earth. No more knuckle-dragging after that, eh? Walk amongst your neighbors and learn what’s going on.

Arguing. I can’t make an argument in real-time; I’m too easily flustered by any social situation. But usenet lets me put my peacock’s-tail of rhetorical ability on display. Not that it’s all that good a place for me to focus those energies, but it’s certainly a pleasure, and most other participants are simple, so I guess it qualifies as a simple pleasure.

Alone. This is different from loneliness. Alone-ness is when you don’t want or need to be around other people. I’m thinking specifically of the last time I was driving alone up the northern California coastline. I stopped at a public campground on whichever river 101 goes next to at that point, and piled rocks in a streambed, making statues and monuments to nothing in particular. Some were exquisitely beautiful. I had the whole place to myself; there wasn’t even any traffic on the highway.

Connections. The almost invisible. The things that most people ignore because they’re too busy carrying an agenda around. Like when I was driving up the California coast, my alone-ness experience was facilitated by everyone who made the road, everyone who made my van, everyone who made the gas I was burning, everyone who made the campground, and everyone who was driving somewhere besides highway 101. So I wasn’t, strictly speaking, alone, exactly. To me, that sense is a simple pleasure, and one not to be taken for granted.

Ok, so having had an on-again off-again bronchial infection, I can safely say that it sucks. I can also say that it’s getting better pretty rapidly today, so those of you who have been worrying can stop. You know who you are.

Dayum. I hate being sick. It’s not that it ruins my day by forcing me to sleep or anything (that part I rather enjoy). No, the problem is that I have to be all achey and bleh. I feel like an old, old man, like a character in a Franz Kafka story who isn’t allowed to stand up fully straight because of the sins embedded in his chest or something.

I used to write these weird Kafka-esque stories. And at the time I hated the term ‘Kafka-esque,’ because it was so trite, and that would mean my stories were trite, which they probably were.

Then I started reading J.G. Ballard, and I discovered that a) either I was aping Ballard without having read him or Ballard was reading and aping me, or b) we were both aping Kafka.

I mean, here’s how the best of those stories went:

A nameless man is on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean. No mention is made of how he got there, other than that the story is called ‘After The Shipwreck.’ The whole story is about his state of mind. In fact, it’s not really a story, it just relates this guy’s memories. Only they might be hallucinations. He believes, for instance, that everything on the island caught fire at once, even him, and after he ran around screaming for a few hours, he discovered that the only way to deal was to sit in his lean-to and consider why his skin wasn’t burning. He would also go to the book tree and pick books and read them and then throw the ones he didn’t like into the ocean. Stuff like that.

And so just a few weeks ago, I got a copy of Ballard’s ‘Concrete Island,’ which is about a guy who crashes his car into a freeway interchange island and can’t escape. It was written at about the same time. For the first half of the book, Ballard leaves it up to the reader to figure out what’s an hallucination (the guy’s in severe pain with a fractured pelvis and doesn’t have anything to eat) and what’s not. A general theme of alienation. Really good mindfuck, though I thought the book could have done without the other characters who show up.

And I read some of his collection of short stories called ‘War Games,’ and most of these stories are ones I could very well have written during my 20s. I remember posting something somewhere on some BBS about how we’d have live, up-to-the-second EKG readouts of Ronald Reagan’s heart condition in the corner of every TV screen, and lo and behold Ballard has made a whole story about just that! In the story, no one noticed that there was a war, because they were too busy watching Reagan’s heart rate rise because there’s a war on.

So on the one hand, I feel relieved. Someone was writing about that particular zeitgeist. But on the other hand, of course, it wasn’t me. I’m glad I get to pretend I’m half as accomplished as Ballard for the purposes of this ‘blog, too.

There’s also a funny story about the ‘War Games’ book I got. I took it with me on my Christmas flight to Texas. I was actually worried that someone might freak out about it, because it has the word ‘WAR’ on the cover, and a picture of a nuclear mushroom cloud. It wasn’t that long after Sept. 11th, and all the security was on a heightened status at airports and so forth.

I was reading ‘War Games,’ and I got up to go to the bathroom on the plane. I put the book in the elastic pouch on the back of the seat in front of me. It may very well be there to this day, because I forgot about it, and switched seats at one of the stops. I remembered it just before I got to Phoenix, but then I thought, uh.. “Pardon me, did you see a book with a nuclear explosion on the cover? It’s mine, and I left it at YOUR SEAT… Oh, and an Anthrax CD, too…”

Many thanks to all the folks who have wished me well during the trying few hours while I had a minor sore throat.

This phlegm’s for you!

I’m busily putting the finishing touches on yet another REALbasic plugin, this one dealing with the InternetConfig API (technogeek babble…). Woop!

I’ve also been poking around with Xanga skins, to no positive result, other than just getting to know the possibilities. Xanga skins: Making it possible for your Xanga site to be PROFOUNDLY ugly!

Maybe I’ll hold an Ugly Xanga Skin contest. Hmm.

Some folks were kind enough to inquire about my developing cold. Well, it’s not just a story of a guy getting a cold; it goes like this:

About a week ago, one of my housemates came down with a horrible spell of vomiting and general sickness that lasted a few days. Then when she was mostly better, the other housemate who’s here came down with the exact same symptoms.

I sat in the corner and prayed the prayers of a condemned man, to whatever gods there are… I felt something coming on, but I didn’t want to be vomiting and dry-heaving for two days.

So lo and behold I got a sore throat, and that’s been it. And I like this sore throat. This sore throat is my friend, because it doesn’t make me need to puke all the time.

It’s also mostly gone at the moment, thanks to pho therapy. (Pho, pronounced ‘fuh,’ being Vietnamese noodle soup purchased at a pho house down the street.)

According to The Onion, Americans would be outraged if they had a basic grasp of the details of the Enron collapse.

So the deal is that it’s 1:50am, I’m coming down with a cold, and I’m listening to Peter Gabriel’s ‘Lead A Normal Life.’ (“eating with a spoon/they don’t give you knives..”)

Visiting a few web sites, and I come across an image of Gary Condit. Now, usually I flee such faces in terror, but I sat and looked at this face for a while, because there’s something absolutely intriguing there.

This man’s face is a mask of teeth. Teeth are what you show when you smile, but they’re also what you show when you grimace and threaten.

Large teeth are thus a mixed message… On the one hand, a big smile shows all the way across the meeting hall, and people will see it and vote for you. On the other hand, overwhelming dental presence allows you to threaten your way to the position of Alpha Male Primate.

Condit’s eyes are way back there behind the rest of his face. Those eyes peer out over the mighty teeth to gauge whether the mighty lips should contain the teeth’s power, or cover it and keep it in reserve.

Essentially: That picture frightens me.

Here’s another thing I re-learned recently:

The most important thing you can do in any circumstance is pay attention.

Because if you’re making those minimum payments, the interest rates will KILL YA!

Things I’ve Learned Recently

Be available to people you want to be available for you.

Beauty isn’t skin deep. Beauty is beauty, and everything else is incidental.

“I’m not against collecting stuff. But it’s all incidental, not integral.”

Shaming a man doesn’t accomplish anything, especially if he’s too stupid to know how to properly be ashamed.

Judging someone by their circumstance invites them to judge you by your circumstance.

Power doesn’t corrupt. Power tempts people, who corrupt themselves.

Words are the single most powerful thing humans can weild.

Hope Is For Suckers

No, really, it is. I give up. I hereby officially state that Pandora was right to lock hope away in her jar (or box, depending on which version you’ve heard). It was no accident. She saw that hope is the most potent and awful of all human states, and tried to protect us. Evil and malice and horror she let escape, because compared to hope, they’re just kid stuff.

Evil and malice and horror you deal with. You see something, it’s horrible, you deal. Beauty and truth are the same way. You deal with it. It’s there, it’s in front of you.

Hope is a mugger around a corner. May be there, may not. You can only deal by preparing for the worst, or the best. Either way you don’t know, and you’re probably wrong. You can hope you’re not wrong, but then you’ve got hopes built on hopes.

As a strategy, hope just plain sucks. It’s like getting stoned before your oral exams for your PhD. You need clarity, but there’s none to be found.

You may be asking yourself, “Geez, why is Homer always shitting on hope?” And the answer is simple: Hope shits on me all the time.