Tim Robbins gave a speech to the National Press Club recently, and this is part of what he said:

I imagined our leaders seizing upon this moment of unity in America, this moment when no one wanted to talk about Democrat versus Republican, white versus black, or any of the other ridiculous divisions that dominate our public discourse. I imagined our leaders going on television telling the citizens that although we all want to be at Ground Zero, we can’t, but there is work that is needed to be done all over America. Our help is needed at community centers to tutor children, to teach them to read. Our work is needed at old-age homes to visit the lonely and infirmed; in gutted neighborhoods to rebuild housing and clean up parks, and convert abandoned lots to baseball fields. I imagined leadership that would take this incredible energy, this generosity of spirit and create a new unity in America born out of the chaos and tragedy of 9/11, a new unity that would send a message to terrorists everywhere: If you attack us, we will become stronger, cleaner, better educated, and more unified. You will strengthen our commitment to justice and democracy by your inhumane attacks on us. Like a Phoenix out of the fire, we will be reborn.

And then came the speech: You are either with us or against us. And the bombing began. And the old paradigm was restored as our leader encouraged us to show our patriotism by shopping and by volunteering to join groups that would turn in their neighbor for any suspicious behavior.

Person A selects two numbers (x,y) both in the range [2,500] inclusive. He tells their sum to person S and their product to person P.

P says: I don’t know x and y.

S: I already knew you wouldn’t know.

P: Now I know x and y.

S: Because you do, so do I.

Can’t remember if I ‘blogged this before, and I’m too lazy to look it up.

You can sign a petition declaring George W. Bush to be a horse’s ass.

This petition copies a Washington state initiative attempting to declare Tim Eyman to be a horse’s ass. The story of Tim Eyman is an interesting one, but not what I want to ‘blog about.

I want to ‘blog about anything as long as it isn’t long. So that’s what I’ve done here now.

Ciao.

There’s this opaque song I know. It’s a little cryptic, it’s a little obvious, it’s a little funky, a little sad, a little joyous. It’s complicated and groovy. It contains the line ‘blessed with all the thunder in the world.’

The song is ‘Riverman’ by David Sylvian, and you can listen to the live version recorded in 1993 here.

This is from the Damage CD, which was re-issued in 2001.

Update:

Susu says she’s having trouble downloading the song, so if you care enough to try, and run into a snag or two, please let me know and I can re-up it.

I wrote this in the last few days of March. Sort of automatic writing. I forgot to check if there’s really a star called M-257, and when it comes down to it, who cares?

—

the stars are a diagram of the subconscious of the sky. roadmap with no roads. towns with names like M-257 and Betelgeuse.

places you’ll go, along the way, along the road that’s not on the map.

The nightsky is white with stars. An infinite number of other worlds. Far enough away, too far to see with the eye, but there. Every far away occupied waiting for us to visit.

the subconscious of the sky expands and contracts but stays lit. atomic warfare out there, the reliable nuclear energy program. waste matter filters down to us here, floating like leaves in autumn. cosmic debris as frank zappa says.

I’m tired and it’s cloudy out and I don’t feel like leaving the house. It’s like grief, only there’s no cause. The night sky is in my mind. It expands and contracts and maps my subconscious. In my mind I’m surrounded, like at a planetarium, but on all sides. I have constructed a universe which I project on the cave wall of my cranial cavity. I am the caveman who invented written language.

Written language is an extension of the collective nervous system of the human race. Slugs leave trails and humans leave writing. If the slugs were trying to tell us something, what do their trails say? We can’t read the slug trails, but we can read our writing, and it’s still a mystery. “There is no language in our lungs/To tell the world what’s in our hearts.”

I’m in my RV. I’m looking at the map. I hope they have diesel at M-257. I hope Orion’s arm is as nice a drive as everyone says.

We look into the nightsky and we see a warrior. Others look into the nightsky and see a butterfly. M-257 doesn’t have diesel but they have something better.

The moon appears. Prison guard. Map with only one kind of gas station on it. I remember the Esso maps my dad had on family vacations; they had little arrows pointing to which exits to take for Esso. This was back before Exxon.

The moon reduces the options. ‘Look at me,’ she says, and blots out the more distant, mysterious destinations from the map. Just go to the heavily trafficked tourist locations.

I’m tired and heavy. The nightsky turns on an axis, and I spin underneath it. Gentle beams of light poking through holes at the planetarium. Gentle points of light cover my body and warm me. It’s cold and cloudy outside. Expect rain tomorrow.

There’s a shape out there. A silhouette. A person’s outline. A void black hole with a human event horizon. Someone for me to fill, or to suck me in. I’m so alone in space.

Geez, what a pity party THAT was.

Not long ago I ‘blogged about executive dysfunction as it relates to housework.

I don’t think I made myself clear.

My life feels like shit if anything is at all messy. My life feels like shit if I’m incapable of transforming the mess into absolute perfection. My life feels like shit because I’m incapable of maintaining that kind of perfection, even if I manage to achieve it in the short term. My life feels like shit because I can’t even start trying because it will invariably make me feel like shit for the previous reasons.

I got a response and an email saying, essentially, ‘That’s no big deal. It’s called ‘housework.”

And AS I EXPLAINED, it’s not the housework. It’s the OBSESSIVE CRAP IN MY HEAD that CAUSES IT to NOT GET DONE.

And that, my friends, IS EXECUTIVE DYSFUNCTION.

So I’m living in a dusty house full of unwashed dishes and laundry and clutter, the exact oppsite of what I need, and yet it’s the only thing I can manage, despite my best intentions and effort.

No one gets it. Not a single fucking soul. Should I just not talk about it to avoid confusion?

I’m just so sick of thinking that no one will ever be able to relate, and that I’m trapped and alone in my experience. And I’m even more sick of finding evidence wherever I look that it’s true, and there is no hope whatsoever, and I’m going to have to be explaining this crap over and over and over to people throughout the rest of my cluttered unhappy life.

The unspoken assumption is: ‘Well, Homer, you could just, you know.. do the dishes and stuff. And then you wouldn’t have to explain.’ And that’s the freaking point: I end up feeling like shit if I do the dishes, because the pain of futility and imperfection outweighs the delight in clean dishes. I end up feeling like shit if I don’t do the dishes because then there’s no clean dishes. And of course this is all in my head… THAT’S THE PROBLEM.

So WTF am I supposed to do? I thought about hiring someone to clean for me, but that’s bux I might not really have, and I’d be obsessive and in their shit while they were doing the work.

Fug.

The funky new age web site I’ve been reading calls them red, orange, and yellow. I call them Below The Belt. They’re the most broken parts of me.

A friend of mine did a massage on me years ago, and he said that there was a barrier just below the diaphragm. Not like a physical thing, but a blockage of vital life force. I had known it to be true, but I really hadn’t talked to him about it. He arrived at it from his own perception.

Just a few days ago, another friend did another massage, and opened up some kinked up muscles along the spine and right around the kidneys. I felt the Big Potential Arc Of Existence flow through and around my abdomen and down my legs. Mostly on the left side.

Now I’m pacing around the house like a lion in a cage. It’s a big huge feeling, the kind that most people associate with life-changing experiences, but the feeling that my neurological system hands me on a semi-regular basis. Except there’s an open-ended-ness to this one, and it’s much, much deeper.

It’s hard to put my finger on it. It’s hard to explain why I feel so ecstatic and so melancholy all at once. Things haven’t settled down enough in my body (carnal or otherwise) for me to make sense of it, and, really, making sense of it and settling it down are the same thing. And I’m not sure that making sense of it is a worthy goal.

I’m about to write something, and usually when people write things like this, they’re being figurative. They want to express something in a way that can be understood. I mean it literally. I want to run around in the woods screaming at the top of my lungs until I fall over unconscious out of exhaustion. If I thought I could get away with it without waking people up and ending up answering some cop’s questions, I would do it.

That’s why the barrier’s there, and my life is not set up for releasing the floodgates just yet. I don’t know how to handle it, and I don’t feel like I can trust anyone with it. So I guess I’m just putting it out there by writing about it. I really don’t know what else to do, other than to scream until I drop, and that’s not the appropriate action to take at this time.

So for now, to make sense of the blockage, I’ll call it the psychic equivalent of a blood clot, holding the Juice back where it needs to be held back. But dayum… Where can that monster take me after I learn to dance it?

One of the things that sucks about not being able to smell is that I don’t know if my frequent headaches are a result of some serious health concern, or if it’s just that there’s something really rotten in the garbage. So I have to be obsessive about the garbage and the bathroom, which is, paradoxically, why they get ignored. I’d get really annoyed with myself if I were to end up taking every piece of garbage out to the outside can.

I really hate cleaning. I’m removed enough from reality that I do a poor job of it, and I’m obsessive enough that I end up chastising myself for a job poorly done. If I spend the time and effort it takes to herd my mind into doing the job properly, I’ll spend all day cleaning the bathroom, only to have it dirty again in a few days, resulting in exasperation.

This, my friends, is ‘executive dysfunction.’

Via the Institute of Official Cheer: