here's a sample:
"After a robot told me in a very classy and placid voice that my phone call may be recorded for "customer service purposes" I then hit fifteen different commands on my cell that I believed would direct me to the wizard.
Emsa: Hello this is Emsa with customer service, how can I assist you?
ME: I want to talk to Stevey.
Emsa: Excuse me?
ME: I'd like to talk to my father Steven Jobs. "
Oxfam is a charity that helps people build/rebuild self-sustaining communities.
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rules for free-writing (bone-based)
(1) keep yr hand/fingers moving. do not stop, pause, hesitate for any reason, least of all to think.
(2) if you fuck up, leave it and keep moving. no editors allowed in this groovy clubhouse.
(3) set a time limit or page limit, and force yourself to keep going to that point, even if it drains all the juice from you.
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example:
i am high flying water oh ah oh eh hahaha nevermind munchkin kin ya feel it stop stop type faster faster harder harder errrrr i meanet error mcgovern mcmelon i said it was a gloombasement, base meat, stuck in walls like rats clawing like ratkin raking all of my dissent, decent, descent, scent scat scattking shitshit shitballs i mean COME ON COME ON. there was a riot a rat descent we burnt bridge b we falter fated altercated is this catered? come one. come call. to hip too fall. fuck it. lets revolutionize yr hair. THINK THIN! shit shit shit....my mother can cum fatster than STOP IT! Dirty dirty bad bad dont talk my mama like that is bad. secfret secret shupt shit. fuckt it up. this is bad example time for peepholes. is bad robot. no is bood cut leader. sneezer kneses, happy redskin, shut it. this is bad, keep bleeding. one more min to go before i hit the scarfoffogus. scrape the inside of my upperlip for food poisons. i meant to say meatantther tholl. doll. maybe youcan sex me up good this time, hahaha that is dumb. de dum dum dum. i slit my wrist to say howdy to mitochondria living in fashionable dining rooms inside. faster saster. shitshitshisthshististhistishi THIS IS SERIOUS! i am going to force feed you fruit looops. the king dom cometh for only the most inflexible rubber devices. shut yr stupid fucking pie hole. i am done here.
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as you can see, terrible psychobabble. however, in creating it, you're stretching my mind, and just as a runner stretches out, so must a writer. note that i stopped too early- things were just getting interesting- and also that it takes a lot of bad shit to get a few good lines in these. Note also the sexual/violence free-for-all. Free Association, a similar, oral version of this exercise, is used by physcoanalists (fraudians) to root out fucked up subconscious desires like father stabbing and mother fucking in patients. of course, variations on such horrid, embarrassing themes lurk in the back of most of our minds, and as writers we must learn to write about that which embarrases us, cuz ppl love that shit.
feat. hometown hero Alex Bonner anna buncha other assholes i dunno...
crimping is a style of a capella skat/beatboxing that can be improvasationalized or rehearsed. two or more crimpers speak it more or less in unison. often contain codes, inside jokes, stories, etc. rhyme and rythm are essential. often accompanyied by hand gestures to move the story along.
yr assignment: write an american haiku or a limerick based on this picture. Post a first draft of it in the comments section if you like.
Wist je dat?
This horrific specimen is the Rat King, a group of rats that have had the misfortune of getting their tails all mixed up. this phenomenon was first written up around the 1500s in Europe, and examples are very rare. The current hypothesis is that:
"for the formation of a rat king, rats should first huddle together as they usually do when sleeping in the nest chamber, especially when it is cold. If their tails become glued or frozen together, animals try to free themselves by moving in different directions. These chaotic movements may result in their tails becoming entangled in a tight knot. Even after removal of the initial cause (sticky substance or ice), they are no longer able to escape from the knot. The sticky substance may be blood, food items, [shit?], nesting material, etc.*".
A 2005 *paper regarding a living rat king found in Estonia describes a group of 16, with 9 living, half buried in sand under the floor of a peasant's house, (two of which had brains eaten out somehow by the time they got to the museum ((zombie rat kings? or cat kings?)).
The sight of one was taken as a sign of plague in medieval times- probably because a shitload of rats breeding in close conditions in your floorboards could spread the plague. go fig. Legends developed such as that the Rat King was really one creature with many heads. Literary characters from the Rat King villain in the Nutcracker ballet to the Rat King villain in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles may have derived some inspiration from this freaky phenomenon.
So it got me thinking of how many ways we can look at this incident.
You could say that this is an unfortunate accident, that the officer in question felt his life was on the line, that the man who was shot was out of control, and that the police responded appropriately to the best of their ability. Perhaps if the officers had not responded, the erratic man might have hurt someone, (although he had not done so yet and was unarmed), because he certainly did not hesitate to beat the shit out of two cops. after all, we do have these laws in place for a reason, because there are crazies out there who hurt people, and nobody wants to get hurt, so the cops were just doing the job we'd all asked them to do.
All the people in the cars who called the cops did so because they didnt want to get hurt, but they didn't want to let someone else get hurt either, or because they were angry and annoyed, but wanted to pass the buck, get someone else to handle it. unfortunately, sometimes when you call the police, you do more harm than good. So we could look at this incident as emblematic of a society of nonparticipation, noninvolvment, that the people who refused to let the crazy man use the phone should be held responsible, the people passing in cars should have lent a hand; or we could flip it and claim these people were overinvolved, that the man should have been ignored, left alone, that we shouldn't be so afraid of people acting strangely, even of possible injury, as to allow the government to gain so much power over us that they can shoot us in the street and ask questions later.
It is a natural reaction to resist imprisonment. Maybe the man would have desisted if left alone. Perhaps the man would still be alive if there were a peacekeeping force that could be dispatched instead of men with guns and tasers (which are often abused and have killed on their own). After all, he was confused, unbalanced, and seeking help- he just wanted to use a telephone. Perhaps he was going through that special psychosis that happens as a result of medication withdrawal. Hey, maybe we can blame the meds on this one!
Nobody sane would expect a man behaving in that manner to not have the cops called on him, especially since he was wandering the halls of a school and walking out in traffic; and you'd have to be blind, deaf, and dumb as rocks to not be aware that cops in chicago (or calumet) will shoot you if you try to beat them to death. So you could say he got what was coming to him, that he was acting like an idiot, that he was a crazy asshole to beat a guy half to death when all he had to do was go with them, spend maybe a day in jail, and work it out in the court room.
If it is found in a court of law that the cops acted improperly, they will be punished to at least a small degree, so it is not as though there is no safeguard at all against police abuses.
however, there have been cases where police officers got away with illegal/immoral behavior (and not just "in the past" either, shit happens all the time), so we could look at this as a situation of abuse of power.
You could even go long with it and say that this is yet another example of how much power we give up when we let the cops get away with whatever the hell they wanna get away with, when citizens have no right to stop them or question their actions, because they have the guns.
You could blame the guns. You could say that cops shouldn't have guns: or that nobody should, as it certainly doesn't seem much better for all the local loonies and crooks to have them too, but it also gives that second amendment a bit of shine; what happens when the cops get even more out of line? So you could even go further and say give everybody guns, or advocate for revolution.
Or maybe it's just another fucked up thing that happened in a fucked up world.
Caligula- This movie has it all- as decadent as the man himself was said to be, starring ultraviolent clockwork orange's malcolm mcdowell as the sister fucking, citizen torturing, senator murdering crazypants emperor.
House of 1000 Corpses- Rob Zombie's gruesome, tongue-in-cheek, bizarre Grade-A B-Spoof Horror flick includes gratuitous titties, necro(soft)porn, mutilation of the living and dead, hicks, mutants, face wearing, gimmicks, gaffs, and torture galore.
Reservoir Dogs- See "The Ear Scene"...this flick made the name Tarantino synonymous with violence. my big cringe is when Mr. Blonde splashes that gasoline (apple juice) on the gap where the ear used to be... the best trick of the film is that, like in psycho, you never actually see the most violent part- the camera pans away to a sign saying "watch your head". Tim Roth got stuck to the floor by the puddle of blood he was drowned in. A re-make of a Korean film that Glen says is way better.
Suicide Club: Japanese schoolgirls, wives, and businessmen, take vengeance on co-dependence with mass suicide, because "the children" told them too after they tied all their skin together in a bag, while a glam rock serial killer takes advantage of the situation...and that's not even the most gruesome bit, we'll let that be a suprise (hint: it involves cookies)...
honorable mention: Kill Bill
Another Chicago Magazine Jacob S. Knabb 2608 W. Diversey Apt 202 Chicago, IL - 60647
also don't forget about joe bly's roxbox open mic monday nite, featuring nicole wilson & jimmy schuyler. 2624 lincoln ave 10pm.
don't kill boggins!
