On hearsay and dog fighting or: vick and the dogs and the dogs and vick.

someone said the man should be put in the pit.
someone said the man should not serve a jail sentence but be forced into a public relations frenzy and go to talk to school children.
someone said something must have happened to him as a child
someone said his brother makes him look like a saint
someone said he'll never play in the nfl again
someone said he'll be back next year and he'll have a lot of time to think about it
someone said he apologized and he said he had to grow up
someone said animal rights is a relatively new idea
someone said there are too many people on the face of this planet
someone said its bad to care more for animals than for people
someone said people like him should be tortured
someone said that men in the nfl use their bodies like weapons
someone said there are enough people on the face of the planet being tortured already
someone said if you feel like you're being abused there's nothing stopping you from becoming an abuser
someone said animals don't have souls
someone said who electrocutes dogs
someone said the price of his card has gone through the roof
someone said they're sending his jerseys to clean out kennels
someone said all dogs go to heaven
someone said we need to think hard about what to do about this

Heart Revised by Fortune (any number of cookies)

The stagger in heat and misplaced aggression of wind

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world

Today is a puddle, muy grande, my face. Say you like it like this and the slapping will commence. I've been living for the summer with no fans and no conditioned air in my home. You may call that obscene, but the occupation of sweating is a good one.

There seems to be a cycle of talk about sustainability among people I know and respect. I can address some things but fail at many...the global economy is cloaked in oil--this affects the cost of production of just about any consumer good--as almost all things need to be transported and produced. The relation of the cost of transport to the cost at the shop may not be one that's always figured in, but it's there and it alters the price of the goods we buy--from food to flat screen tv's. And what's most important to the issue of sustainability, straight away, (and convincing people that convenience isn't always the best option) is cost. The benefits of altering our means of production and consumption may not seem readily accessible to most folk. Hell, it's more money. Look Ma, my pockets are thin. It's less choice. Where'd that mango come from anyway? We'd have to change a bunch of shit in order to make it happen. You mean I can't grab some hormone-injected, cornfed chickin anymore? Nobody likes change. Especially if it means that people will be less reliant on the larger distributors of goods and services, since this will undercut company-wide earnings and throw a wrench straight at the market's ballooning numbers. Oh and where's my retirement going to come from then? And there's really no good way to switch up our energy sources (or our farming methods and means of obtaining food) if the right people aren't concerned with doing this because it's way more fun to swim in money and burn it afterwards.

I know there's a lot of legislation leaning toward greener energy but I know very little about that legislation. I do know that if we continue to rely on non-renewable resources, eventually they run out. That's their story and they're sticking to it. Ah, but it's not close to happening, right? Even though it may not be in our particular lifetime (though it may well be)--this collective stick-to-it-iveness and shrug of non-concern will widen the gap in the distribution of wealth, and quite possibly lead to an utter economic collapse. (Secretly, sometimes I hope for this but don't really know what in hell I'd do if it happened--I can't make fire with my hands and eventually all the lighters would run out...) Why do people keep waiting? Good ol' TJ with the help of a few friends came up with this: "all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed." And suffer we have and will continue to: complacency, pharmaceuticals (those fricking confusing Cialis commercials--what do 2 people do in separate tubs outside with no plumbing?), convenience, disgust, war, iniquity...

It's like there's a building burning above us--or better yet, like the whole damn sky's on fire and we're all walking around saying, "Will you look at that, huh?" Oh, chickin little, I'm not generally an alarmist and I'm lazy as the day is hot and long (especially this one), but something's got to give here and I don't want it to be the future. Our future. The future of the neighbor kids and possibly your own. I know that there's no more or less matter on this planet than when it was first globbed together and when we're all fouled up and gone it's still going to be spinning until it explodes but I've got a mind that lets me know it's alright to be alive most days and don't want the people from the future to look back and hate what they have because of us. I mean didn't you all see Terminator? Gawd!

And my prattling has gotten nowhere. Time to go wash my clothes in the river.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could sustain the ideals we carry instead of tarnishing them with counterproductive actions? O, Laundromat, sing me a clean song. One that means OK is better than OK.

Selectively insistent neighbors

Goodnight droopy floorboard and the drag of chests

across you. Hear the train mark its stop from half a block

away and this is a beginner's window--to shop the street

and shout from--"lick me like you like it," or

for the last time "you'll cook this chicken and sing!"

They're rebuilding their doors and plumbing

a flight up. They're rebuking our rights to punch

pigeons that ring out through the walls

and plaster. The pigeons are never grateful.

Another man is bathing in his aches while he

waits for a woman to enter the building.

With all of us here, it's personal. Even

the conversation from the trashbin

and the cars asleep on their curbs.

One woman a block from here likes her feet

tickled. She walks with her hands

upturned and her children are learning

to crawl and curse in unison.

what does the fool with wings say when he's called a man?

Sat in the back for most of the show. Some guy kept coughing behind me. It sounded like his eyes were trying to make their way out of his body via some cavernous route through his lungs. And then there was all the tapping. I don't know about you, but some thing are almost enough to draw me into a cola fueled frenzy and incessant tapping is one of them. I'll double fist two litre bottles of cola until I'm ballooned up with enough gas and piss that it all comes out at once. Be wary. Don't sit anywhere near me. (overheard on the walk from 83rd to 7th ave)

It was a Tuesday. The sun had just risen over the city's slow buildings. Nobody was minding anyone else's business. Trains were running on schedule and a man with a cane stepped out into the street. There was nothing special about the cane or the light or the man. He'd made this step every morning. He could remember doing it in varying forms. Occasionally he'd pirouette just to see if anyone would notice. There was hardly anyone else out at that hour, but once he'd made a young girl smile and once a gruff young man almost bowled him over and called him foul names.


Your address changes only.
Your address and your demeanor are the only things to change.
Your address and the way you sleep at night and your bones and facial structure.
Your address and the name you're given and the name you take and all of the friends you'll ever have, but you'll never leave them.
Your address and the walk to the bathroom and the walk back to bed and who's there when you get up, but you will never. You will never change.
(overheard on a commercial for skin cream and throat losenges).

Jarmusch in Black and White

[Blake finds a revolver underneath Thel's pillow]
Blake:
"Why do you have this?"
Thel:
"Because this is America!"

If you listen enough to your tv you may hear a line like this:

ask your doctor if your heart is healthy enough for sex

forward thinking requires that there be a behind somewhere. now to think

engines are only pieces of metal and tubing.

when everyone is looking at her, you'll be looking like you're scared.

you also run the risk of very informal organ failure

before using boiled water. more juicy in the atmosphere

they're saying currently on the news.

since i can't put pictures of sex on the screen, and there's enough of it available on screens everywhere: