1/28/10

how to tell if someone is a douchebag just by looking at them....

and other great shit at buddhalunchbox

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. "

=noise extrava-gander=

1/26/10

RockBox

"Februrary 1st (930-4am) at The Rockbox (2624 N Lincoln) will be a blow out. Featured readers include Matt Anderson, Alex Bonner, Nicole Wilson, and a selected recording of James Schuyler's "The Crystal Lithium." You don't want to miss this poetry event, that would not be okay. Watch the February gloom transform in poetry's beautiful eyes. The open mic list is stacked with talent, come and put your name down. Bring work by your favorite poet and your own. As always, $3 drafts and $4 Jameson shots, 21+. iloveyou" -Joe

1/22/10

got five bucks to spare?

send it here.

Oxfam is a charity that helps people build/rebuild self-sustaining communities.

1/21/10

Beat the Block: Ride the SOC

The SOC is the mad acid highway of jumbled brain wires in yr skull. Stream of Consciousness writing, also called freewriting, taps into your subconscious by beating and drugging your internal editor and shoving him (he is definitely a him, as in The Man, Getting You Down), gagged and ducttaped, into the closet, where he'll probably beat off in exstacy. now I'm no refined, pedigreed, medal-bedecked literary giant, just a dirty, starving word junky; but this is a great way to get a fix as well as a fucking amazing high. it's also something a lot of the legends exercised. and it's fun to do when yr board (that is not a spelling error, i meant to say when one is being a board, for commercial porpoises).

*

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.

*

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.

*

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.

1/20/10

live nude girls unite

http://www.livenudegirlsunite.com/

1/18/10

voter registration info

Grace period registration info for the February 2, 2010 Gubernatorial Primary Election.

1/17/10

Windy City Story Slam

2/26 8pm Double Door $7

feat. hometown hero Alex Bonner anna buncha other assholes i dunno...

1/14/10

PostPilsen Craft Fair

Feb 20th Free postpilsen@gmail.com for info

1/13/10

DIY: Crimpin aint easy

crimpity crimpity crimp

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.

1/10/10

Loving Brothers

Saw this on Evan's blog, thought it was sweet:

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.

1/9/10

New Year's Resolution

Learn More Spanish

saul williams in streetwise

it might be too late, but if you do happen to see a streetwise guy out there, he's on the cover this week.

De rattenkoning

Caution: this is nasty:

beware the rat king!
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.*".

The idea of the Rat King is so grotesque that many people disbelieve it even today, despite scientific samples that have been photographed and displayed in museums. One of the largest, pictured at the top of the page, was found in the 1800s and displayed in a museum in Germany. Another was shown to have callouses on the tails, showing that the nice rattus rattus had been able to live, eat, and move around while attached for some time. 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.

1/6/10

jettison

got to this too late, but the new ish is out, so groovy!

games are fun

word game

trigger-happy cops

PJ Piety's ridiculous, self-important, crazy-as shit ass has been an endless source of amusement for me, but his take on this recent incident was interesting to me in a different way because he makes it sound like it's common sense that no one should ever call the cops, an opinion shared by anarchists and gangstas. This is in contrast to the official position of major newspapers (they always seem to have bland, unimaginative, "official" ways of looking at things, don't they?) and the law of the land which tells us always call the cops.

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.

1/5/10

Five Gloriously Violent Films

Titus- based on a play so over-the-top with the butchery that many scholars denied Shakespeare's authorship of it, the film blends ancient and modern in a playfully decadent way that makes all the murder (often of one's own children), rape, madness, mutilation, racism, politics and cannibalism (starring Anthony "they're in the pies!" Hopkins in this classic pride & revenge tragedy) fun like family game night (if you happen to be an Aristocrat). The play starts off with the death of 20 sons in war, and Titus kills yet another of his sons in the first act when the uppity lad defends his sister's right to not be forced to marry/fuck some dude she doesn't like (the nerve!). If you've seen South Park's "Scott Tenorman Must Die" you may see a connection.

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

1/3/10

chicago writers: last chance

if you're a native, submit your story to ACM by tuesday jan 5th for the Chicago issue.

Another Chicago Magazine Jacob S. Knabb 2608 W. Diversey Apt 202 Chicago, IL - 60647

1/2/10

roche moche at postpilsen

haven't seen roche moche? havent been to postpilsen? see 'em together! it's like amsterdam hash in devils food cake. thursday, jan 7 @9pm POSTPILSEN 1816 S. Racine

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!