2.26.2009

Greenwald on Rove. Classic.


http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/02/26/rove/

Excerpt: Either way, Rove, as always, is the living and breathing embodiment of the limitless deceit which our political discourse not only permits but rewards. Just imagine what it says about our country that Karl Rove -- Karl Rove -- knows he can sermonize against people who "cheapen" rather than "enrich" the "dialogue of our age" without suffering any reputational damage for such side-splitting dishonesty. To the contrary, other than Matt Drudge, no individual is more adored by the establishment journalists of The Liberal Media. As Gloria Borger of CNN and U.S. News reverently put it: "when Rove speaks, the political class pays attention -- usually with good reason."

2.24.2009

Unedited Rant No. 1

Act 1: Outrage

You sycophant! How dare you jump me at the threshold, quarter after 11 with your pseudo adoration and your complete shimmering veneer, almost coated with sticky shitty shtick! I have a sudden flashback of when Mrs. Hohman would tell us to stand in the door frame in case of an earthquake.

It's like a play! Almost as if Arthur Miller wrote it with the skill of a fifth grader and the attention span of a 103-year old vocal sea turtle, shell cracked and swimming/floating on shoreline! My apartment might as well reek of carbon monoxide, but who's Willy?

Act 2: Homecoming

It's 11:45 pm. His boots are soaked. Half due to the Chicago bite and half because his walk from the blue is 15-20 and the webbing between toes is starting to drip.

He unlatches the door.

"Oh, hey!!!!!!!!!!! You just getting home too????????!!!!!!!?????????"

Just getting home - [juhst] [get-ing] [hohm]: to arrive suddenly, and generally within a time frame coinciding in a timely manner

Apparently this is not the case. In an attempt to show that the person speaking shares-in-the-14-hour-work-day, the person is obviously lying. If it was the case, the living room would not have her dinner (finished and probably well-cooked), her homework, and two beers deep while watching syndicated cop dramas.

But it does not really matter to him. He grunts and heaves his satchel onto his desk, knocking over a book and a bottle opener. Destination - bed, shower, beer. ETA - as soon as possible.

Another grunt and he is in the hallway. Almost to his room. Almost. And then.

"Oh hey, just a heads up, I had one of your beers. Sorry man, I just had to have one."

Flapping at the wind with helicopter arms, he's trying to make it to the fridge. Trying to see. Needs to know. Yes, he confirms it - the last beer is not there.

Act 3: Turn the key

He is now in the shower. The steam is rising high in the isolated space. Arthur Miller style. Only substituting waiting for death with sleeping, and the search for life fullfillment with being content to end the day with a frothy beverage. Both of which have escaped both Lohman and Spanner.

91 days until move out.

THE END

(Editor's note: This was not meant to be depressing, as it was a character study in the WHAT IN GOD'S GREEN EARTH IS WRONG WITH MY ROOMMATE sort of way. She's a nice girl, just out to lunch. Constantly)

2.21.2009

2.09.2009

Air Fire

South Korean tourists watched burning pampas grass during celebrations for the first full moon of the lunar new year at Hwawang Mountain in Changnyeong, about 215 miles southeast of the capital, Seoul. At least four people were killed and 35 injured when the fire started and a mountaintop stampede ensued.

-The New York Times

2.02.2009

Zombie Dream - last night.

Husk of a house - probably pre-built - maybe the blacken grit remains of my old house in Martins Ferry, Ohio. The more I think about it the more I care/then don’t care/then wish I had a real “hometown.”

It’s an epidemic. People are washing up on the hillside on cresting heapes of blood - the outline and the tide mark crusting over, creating a darker barrier in the grass. A sudden speedbump for corpses skidding onto the pavement, grey teeth grind like sidewalk chalk.

I am perched atop one of the higher beams of my house. There are no walls, no ceilings, nothing except who I am and what I am afraid of. I shake off cold hands, reminded of touching the seaweed and coral reef when my Dad and I had the “pure-luck” vacation in Oʻahu. I miss him.

I grab the ankles of man, jumping from a rafter. How did he get that high? I swing his body down through a floorboard with surprising strength - he cracks and breaks. Cracks and breaks. I am covered in him.

The setting changes and I am in my room here in Chicago. Seated behind me, my girlfriend, her sister, and her sister’s young 3-year-old son. Other survivors are there as well, and one comes into the room after using the hall rest room. The coast had been clear for the person to exit, but she did not shut the bedroom door behind her properly and a young zombie slides through the door and into the room. He does not go for any of us, but looks tirelessly beneath my dresser for something. He is whining and crying. Rag Clothes. It was an underground feeling, some odd sense of animalistic urgency. I grabbed him with my strongest arm around his neck and tugged him off the paneling, kicking into the air.

His skin was translucent and his sunken eyes black and flush against his brain. I saw it pulsating like a kick-drum behind the plastic forehead and his mouth clattered. His lower jaw, worn down to his molar, was smacking against my hand. I flung open the door and threw him overhand like a hatchet into the hallway - his body twisting then busting against the wall like a bright red paint can.

Slam. Lock. Re-lock. Look.

They were staring at me. I was staring at my wrist. There weren’t bite marks, but there were weak impressions like a pattern of reverse brail. A bite meant infection. Walking dead. Dead. But what was this?

I looked at her, she looked at her sister, the young boy was wailing, crying, and clamping his ears - trying to shove the memory of moments prior back again.

I remember from my dream, a distinct and sickening feeling. First, the overwhelming emotion was selfishness: I was not bitten. I will not turn into a zombie. I am a survivor like you. I promise. Then slowly, the bubbling thoughts of: What if I turn in seconds, and kill the people. I love them.

Silently, to no shouts or arguments, I unlatched the lock hammer, took a step out of the door, and waited in the dark. Waiting.

I saw a man on the El today, this is probably his story

He climbed the snow bank and checked the Shawnee compass his uncle had given him. Due south. What did that mean?

He was pressing, hard, the graphite tip, and muttering to himself, “What was Dad listening to on the news? What is the capital of that country?” Slipping away from the answer, which was Pyongyang, he began to daydream about Angela, the girl sitting in front of him. He swore he’s smelled that smell before. He thought she was pretty, the kind of pretty that would cause flattened pressure in this chest. But that smell, that purposeful smell....

Aunt Ellen.

He would ask Samantha to homecoming instead.

He would marry Elizabeth at age 37, a hasteful yet delightfully sobering decision. He’d missed the chance several years ago to pay for Emma’s coffee, which had cost him. He didn’t know her last name, or her hometown, or even the way she liked her coffee. But she had smiled at him. She has smiled, and he slinked out the door, late for work.

He’s 48 now, on the glimmering white squares at Target, quickly buying a blow up mattress. Elizabeth and him are nothing now, not after she took charcoal sketching. Or at least charcoal sketching with Dave. Either way, he’s got to buy an extension cord.

He began to write feverishly on the bus back to his flat. Rolling down thick brick banks by the river, the graphite again skimming the blue lines of loose leaf, the Gherkin in the background hiding the spiraling downfall of his optimism, until the No. 2 came to a rest in the middle of the page. Due south was that way, and he had wasted too much time already.