In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness

Christmas happened again (it does that), and amongst many other wonderful gifts from many wonderful people, one that stood out was a small book from my mother called You're a Genius All the Time; which is a collection of maxims that Jack Kerouac outlined in reference to writing. There are about 30 of them, but these are my personal favorites:

Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy

Submissive to everything, open, listening

Be in love with your life

Something that you feel will find its own form

Blow as deep as you want to blow

Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind the unspeakable visions of the individual

No time for poetry but exactly what is

Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog

The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye

Write in recollection and amazement for yourself

Believe in the holy contour of life

Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind

Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better

Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning

No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language, knowledge

Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it

Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form

In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness

Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better

You're a Genius all the time

This stuff hit me pretty hard, sad as it is to say. As someone who imagines herself to be a writer, I spend very little time writing; my new job at this coffee place downtown takes up a lot of my energy (I think during my interview I was a little too enthusiastic about the possibility of opening at 5:30 in the morning, but it's not so bad), and now that I have a somewhat social life, I spend my days off blustering around. Not that I'm wasting my time, quite the contrary; I've had a better Christmas season than the past two, when there was nothing to do and no one to do it with. But my New Year's resolution '09 was (I think) to publish something, and unless that Erotic Short that I wrote for that show in February was accepted, then we can count this year as un-resolved. In any case, it's inspired me to keep a writing journal, but it's been harder and harder for me to keep a clear head that would facilitate writing. In violation of my usual blog-rule of keeping my personal life out of my posts, here are some vague reasons why:

-Probably still bitter about getting my heart all broke this summer;

-Wanting to have financial independence but being unable to keep two nickels to rub together, hence too often being stressed about self-inflicted financial problems;

-Thinking that I have the best of intentions but then realizing possibly too late that I'm more selfish than I am generous;

-Having feelings I can't express for various reasons, leaving them like the bitter aftertaste of hazelnuts in my mouth;

-Being afraid of what I can't control;

-Refusing to accept that I can't control it;

-Hating myself for all of the above, and

-Causing myself undue stress, pain, and depression from all that self-hatred.

What sucks the most is that all of that crap is internalized--it isn't something that anyone else has anything to do with, and it isn't something that affects anyone else. This means that I have to take responsibility for and deal with it on my own. The horrible thing about 2009 is that, despite all the sea changes that I've experienced, it's been a grand old time for disappointments, or at least let-downs. I don't want to list them all, they'd end up being redundant, and a lot of them are either resolved or don't cause me any worry any more. But it's still weight that I've carried, and though I might be mostly relieved, a lot of the experience has left me weakened, which makes the whole internalization even worse: I can't ask anyone for help. I have to deal with it on my own.

This situation ought to be more of a challenge than a burden. I have caused or suffered all of my problems alone, I should deal with them alone, thus making me the only one who can give myself strength. I'm too good at doing the opposite; discussing my issues to the point of whining and then placing all my self-worth in the opinions that others have of me (though it isn't a peer-group thing, usually it's one or two people on whom all my happiness relies). My best friend, who is one of the people who I rely on, called this unhealthy, and I can't think of a better possible word. My refusal to rely on myself takes me too often to a perceived point of no return, and I end up drowning in myself. When I was a teenager, it was simple self-pity, but now it's self-loathing, which is more dangerous: I am the person I trust the least and fear the most.

And yes, this is all complete naval-gazing, but like I said, my problems demand such a vantage point. What I am going through is petty compared to what many others experience in their lives. There is no point where I can call what I feel sorrow. But this is all the more reason to confront it, and the perspective of "other people have it worse" changes the approach I take but it doesn't make the workload any smaller. And if I do want to, as Kerouac writes, be in love with my life, I have to find some sort of love for myself. And I can't do that simply by listing off my better qualities. I know that there are things that make me a good person. I strive to be a good person. But, as Owen Wilson said in Zoolander, I gotta straighten some shit out.

So this will be my pre-New Year's Resolution: by Friday, I will expand upon the above list of vague things that are wrong with me, and make an outline of what to do and how to approach each issue when it rears its ugly head. It's a very self-help-five-step-program way to do it, but I think that my happiness and the happiness that those I care about the most-- who are too often hurt by what I've done--is more important than my pride or my insistence on being tortured. I would rather get over myself and use that energy to be creative, and do what I'd hoped to accomplish this year. And it may have taken me a long time to figure all of this out, and it happened only because my life started to strain me more than ever, but at least it's happening. I intend to make the most of it.

Please don't whisper sweet nothings in my ear when the sound of shredding vocal cords is all I wanna hear

Hey guys, remember Desaparecidos? Probably not. The only people who remember Desaparecidos are likely just Bright Eyes fans who know the band through lead singer/lyricist/future folk monster Conor Oberst. Honestly, isn't that a little perverse? Congrats, Desaparecidos, you will always be known as "that band Conor Oberst was in that wasn't Bright Eyes, after he was/wasn't in The Faint, before he did solo stuff and way before Monsters of Folk." Tough break. When I was in my Saddle Creek Records phase (have I mentioned that before? I feel like I say it every third post), I actually liked Desaparecidos a bit; they were more awake and less thoughty than Bright Eyes, while still keeping Oberst's overwhelming defeatist angst that he carried so well in that part of the Aughts, before he was slightly miscast as our generation's Dylan.

Listening to them now, though, there are parts I snort at too easily; the overly-social lyrics ("opportunity, no it don't exist/It's the opiate of the populace"), Oberst's screaming that gets whiny so soon it just sounds like he's crying-fighting ("I don't think she likes me!"). But for what he and his band mates were doing, they did it well: almost-punk basement rock; which is what Punk should have turned into instead of getting sidetracked into New Wave (not that it was a mistake) or Grunge (which was a serious mistake).

The only ever released one album, Read Music/Speak Spanish, and it is–with the exception of the few disparages that I mentioned above–not that bad at all. You can almost feel Oberst's spit coming out the speakers as he mumble-screams about divorce and capitalism, the guitars are lo-fi enough to absorb but not be overwhelmed by, and the bass and drums sound more like they're coming up from the floor below instead of from iTunes. They play infomercials over their bridges, it's hardcore without being actually hardcore, and it's rock without having even a drop of douchewater. You could never imagine them being anywhere larger than a dive bar, and with good reason; this is the sort of music that stadiums ruin, the perfect argument against the wide open spaces of crap like Warped Tour.

It might be for this last reason that bands like Desaparecidos never really did make the big time, the music has been around for a long time, but it's hard to transport the songs out of the local venue and into anything else, and it's even harder to say of lo-fi rock that it's supposed to sound that way, especially when it can be done so poorly. But oh my dear reader, worry not. Because, after more or less forgetting that I wanted to listen to it, I listened to The Airing of Grievances, the first full-length by New Jersey's Titus Andronicus. And it is very, very good.

I don't really know that much about Titus Andronicus, so I won't pretend to figure out something biographical (everything that I mentioned above that is of that ilk is only due to my aforementioned Saddle Creek phase). I will, of course, note that in my previous post, I not only mentioned the Shakespearean play that the band took its name from, but quoted from a speech that singer Patrick Stickles himself recites at the end of the album's opener, "Fear and Loathing in Mahwah, NJ", a song which also might contain my favorite possible breakup lyric of the year: "the way we hold each other so tight would look more like a noose if held up to the light/because we betray each other in dreams every night/now let's never speak of it again, all right?"

Stickles' vocals are, as a matter of fact, closely interchangeable from Conor Oberst's baby-punk screams, but they seem to arise more out of desperation and a "fuck you" (or as he himself says, "fuck everything! Fuck me!") attitude instead of just straight up anger at the way things are, he sings with self-loathing and indulgence at the same time, shout-growling "there's nothing I've ever done I didn't learn to be ashamed of", and later, "I hope I never get my fill of pushing this boulder up this hill." And while we're on the subject of Sisyphus, I ought to point out that this album's got plenty for the tongue-in-cheek intellectual: not only does the band borrow from Shakespeare's tragedy, but Sickles also quotes from The Stranger, makes a semi-oblique reference to a W.H. Auden poem, and seems to be one of the few who can do Biblical referencing well. Go team.

Somehow The Airing of Grievances manages to be sincere and ironic, breakneck and thoughtful, angry and contemplative at the same time. And for once, it is a take on lo-fi production that I can get behind, like The Strokes' Is This It, only faster and less of a hipster. It seems to sound the way it does because that's just the best way to hear it; not because they couldn't afford better production, and not because they could afford better production but wanted to seem more indie. And, long story short, I want to see them live, it seems like I'd get bloody and like it, which is really not something that ever happens in my case. Where the audience at the Desaparecidos show bounced their knees and nodded to the beat, Titus Andronicus is more like when the Violent Femmes scream "When I say dance, you'd best dance, motherfucker!"

How do I just end this by geeking out over Shakespeare?

Though this is the Christmas season, where most people are supposed to be thinking on the greatest birth of births, here is a poem that exemplifies my hate-on for birth in general. It's one of those things that I don't like people getting romantic about. I cringe at the idea of home or natural births; when it comes time for me to have mine, I'm more than happy to get pumped full of drugs and get that child out no matter how. So long as the result is a healthy baby, I don't care how it's done.

Anyway, the poem:

We are born in a horrible blood-bathed world
(we would call it so had we seen it,)
pulled or ripped from shaven motherhood,
smelling like nothing human, if we are lucky
breathing, not covered in shit.
The world outside is too cold, it is no place
for a sensible person. Why were we so warm before?
Why live for months in a personal ocean,
needing no air or hands,
what joke was it that chose that for the prologue
and not the play?

Sliced and tied off like a tourniquet
Fresh meat ready to be rolled in bread-crumbs
before being placed in a second oven,
blind and ugly we enter the world, if we are lucky
(apparently) that is the best way to go,
asleep, as though there is nothing more to see.

They smack the air into us and it is a knife,
you know it is,
Our throats are castrated for our lungs.

Good? Bad? I kind of like it, though for some reason it makes me think of Benjamin Button a bit much, and also that whole "the luckiest man is the one who has never been born", which is just one of those philosophically pretentious cure-alls, like Absurdism. Seriously, fuck Absurdism. It is so lazy and yet still so pretentious.

Also, I've been in discussion with a friend of mine who is infinitely more knowledgeable about medical terminology than I, and apparently I'm not using the term "tourniquet" correctly, and this bothers me. I want to use the best sort of metaphor, but what is it? And why is it that every now and then the word "tourniquet" makes me think of the three Musketeers and D'Artagnan playing old fashioned doubles tennis? Does anyone else see that?

This poem will be, hopefully, an excerpt from a larger body of work that will be my take on the "Seven Ages of Man" speech that Falstaff does in Shakespeare's As You Like It. Here it is, as a refresher:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like a furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Man, isn't that depressing? I love how the comic relief characters in Shakespeare are usually the most upsetting to read or watch. I wonder if I'll actually do seven different poems for the seven different ages. Too obvious?

There's another Shakespearean inspiration for this work. It actually comes from Titus Andronicus, which might be my favorite tragedy; it is the most fucked up of them all, and if you want to see what I mean, just watch Julie Taymor's brilliant and beautiful adaptation. Just take a gander:

See what I mean? Messed. Up. Anyway, there's this part where the deliciously evil Aaron the Moor, who is escaping Rome with his newborn infant and is captured by Lucius, who has more than enough reason to hate Aaron. Aaron is a villain, who is more or less the cause for all the terrible things that happen to the good characters (he convinces Titus to cut off his own hand just for the hell of it), so Lucius decides to hang his baby in front of him, because even the good guys are sort of monsters. Aaron, despite being damnable beyond hell, loves his son, and pleads for Lucius to spare the boy, Lucius agrees to only if Aaron confesses everything that he's done:

Lucius
Say on; and if it please me which thou speak'st,
Thy child shall live, and I will see it nourish'd.
Aaron
And if it please thee! Why, assure thee, Lucius,
'Twill vex they soul to hear what I shall speak;
For I must talk of murders, rapes, and massacres,
Acts of black night, abominable deeds,
Complots of mischief, treason, villanies
Ruthful to hear, yet piteously perform'd:
And this shall all be buried by my death,
Unless thou swear to me my child shall live.

This is so wonderful to me, you guys! The juxtaposition of Aaron being such an awful person, and yet caring only for the life of his child! When I was in England, the kids in my Shakespeare class admitted that they did not get this character at all, and I was like "GODDAMMIT HE IS SO GOOD." Long story short, I am a fucking nerd. The stuff that Aaron confesses to, though is some of the wickedest shit Will S has ever come up with. My favorite:

Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves,
And set them upright at their dear friends' doors,
Even when their sorrows almost were forgot;
And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,
Have with my knife carved in Roman letters,
'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.'

Yeah, and then he's like "the only thing I hate is that I didn't get to do that a thousand more times" and then he gets buried up to his chest in sand and is like "whatever, I'll just scream at you the whole time."

So yeah, I want to write something that reflects the dichotomy of life being cruel and awful and our need for it to continue regardless. As exemplified by Aaron the Moor.

Sometimes I wish I'd just written a thesis so that I could get all this English Major talk out of my system. Vernacular, vernacular.

Is there anyone here who can tell me what making mixtapes is all about?

My birthday is today, which in my house means that the Holiday season officially starts on Tuesday, December 1 (which, to be fair, is when it should start. I enjoy the everloving tinsel out of Christmas, but I think it's ridiculous for the sales and decorations and Starbucks limited beverages to last more than three weeks). One staple of the Holiday season is music; every city has at least one station that plays nonstop Christmas music starting the day after Thanksgiving. Starbucks comes out with a new Holiday compilation every year. So I'm getting on the bandwagon for this one: presenting, for the first time ever....

An Arts Deux Christmas

Unlike most compilations that people like my dad will play endlessly through the whole month of December, An Arts Deux Christmas tries to stay away from the typical "standards" that dominate playlists and radio stations. The sad truth of Christmas music is that there are so few songs and yet so many versions of them, so though you get the variety, you still are bored to tears for hearing "Winter Wonderland" three times every hour.

Thus, though there are a couple typical Christmas tunes on this compilation, many of the others have little to nothing to do with Christmas whatsoever, and even those that do mention Christmas are not necessarily religious in any other way. I tried to put together a mix that reminds me (and you too, I should hope, dear reader) of the season: the weather, the mood, the darkness of winter and the cold of the wind, the crunch of the snow and the joy of a hot drink in your hands. Below I am listing the tracks and, instead of simply stating my purpose for them being in the mix, I'll just tell you the Winter scene that pops into my head when I hear them. If it sounds good, just click on the link above (or the one below, same thing) and enjoy! Remember, YouSendIt links expire after seven days, so if you happen upon this and would still like to download it, drop me a comment or hit me up on Facebook. Feliz Navidad.

1) This Christian's Hope
Denson's Sacred Harp Singers of Arley, Alabama
Walking by an old Baptist church on Christmas morning while going to pick up a few things in the store, when the streets are covered in snow and the voices of the chior resound out of a half-open door and reflect off the walls of the sleepy buildings.

2) God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen
Bright Eyes
At a holiday party with friends as well as the Ghost of Christmases Past, feeling happy from all the spiked eggnog, full of mischief and love and dancing continuously.

3) White Winter Hymnal
Fleet Foxes
Rolling down a snowbank in the middle of the night, landing winded and laughing on your back, looking up and seeing your breath dissolve into a perfectly clear sky.

4) River
Joni Mitchell
A few days before going home for the holidays, looking at storefront window decorations, remembering something that made you happy but you can't name, waiting to feel the warmth that December somehow brings.

5) Christmas Time Will Soon Be Over
Jack White
A happy gathering with the family, cheeks red from coming in from the cold, carrying bundles of gifts, singing together until it gets dark and everyone has to go.

6) Listening to Otis Redding at Home During Christmas
Okkervil River
Getting on the plane or train to go, remembering that what once made you happy is no more, and that some small part of home is different and gone; yet home is still home, and you will always feel right there.

7) Wither Must I Wander
Martha Wainwright
Taking a walk through the park under giant pine trees at dusk, remembering how the first Christmas tree was (apparently) a man trying to replicate the stars shining behind the tree branches.

8) Hallelujah
Leonard Cohen
Laying on your back early in the morning, after the tree is decorated but before there are presents under it, with no other lights on in the room, letting the glow eerily fill the space, wondering what it is that makes it so mysteriously beautiful.

9) December Will Be Magic Again
Kate Bush
Wrapping presents and baking, playing with all the kids who come to visit, pulling Christmas crackers and making jokes, putting up ornaments and smiling at the joy if it all.

10) Cosmia
Joanna Newsom
Snow angels and late-night explorations, followed by experiments with spiced hot chocolate and reading old stories by candlelight.

11) O Tannenbaum
Vince Guraldi Trio
Getting a coffee before going shopping or just browsing downtown, enjoying the cold hustle and bustle of a city, looking at the tacky yet still happy decorations along the sidewalks.

12) His Master's Voice
Monsters of Folk
Dawn on Christmas day, because you couldn't sleep, watching the world wake up and suddenly understanding things in a way that don't have explanation or reason, yet still fill you with joy and hope, even after a long dark night before, then pulling on your robe and running down to meet the rest of your family with hot coffee and breakfast.

Download Link:

https://www.yousendit.com/download/MVNmeW42bEpuSlJMWEE9PQ

Four Band Shirts I Would Totally Not Regret For That Long

Ah, band shirts: the one thing that, almost always, ends up being a bad idea. Even those of us who are nothing but fans of said bands, spending $20 at a show for a t-shirt that will eventually make you look like either an idiot or a snob (depending on how soon the band appears on the CW) always comes back to haunt us; after a while they are relegated to painting or cleaning clothing. Sometimes they become rags, or garage sale fodder.

However, after talking to a friend about getting band shirts for her younger brother for Christmas, I put some thought into it: are there any shirts that would tempt me at the show to throw away hard-earned money for intoxicants so that I can cover my body? Yes. There are four. That's it.

1. Octopus Shirt
Band: Okkervil River
Well, it is Okkervil River, and they are one band that I will get all dorky over. The design is both interesting and ridiculously indie, and was designed by William Schaff, who designed most of Okkervil River's covers.


2. Wolf Trap Shirt
Band: Beep Beep


Beep Beep was a band that I listened to when I was going through a phase of only listening to Saddle Creek, which led me to some good things (The Faint, Azure Ray) and some not good things (Cursive). Beep Beep, whose music I cannot find on my iTunes, were fun and bouncy, and I always wanted this shirt whenever I saw it online. It is so cute and also so gross lookin'! Coyote Ugly! The only downside is that this is one of those shirts that has nothing to do with the band itself, unless they are referring that either they are the type of band that would bite off their leg to escape a trap, or if one ought to react in such a way while listening to Beep Beep.

3. Ribbon Shirt
Band: Gogol Bordello


I was at the Gogol Bordello afterparty a couple weeks ago, and it was ten types of fantastic, and one guy from the band's entourage burned me with a cigarette accidentally and kissed where he did. He was wearing this shirt. I should not have to explain why this shirt is great.

4. Sphinx Shirt
Band: Neko Case
"I listened in when you thought you were alone / calling the sphinx on a tornado's phone" These lyrics, from "The Pharaohs" (a track on the wonderful Middle Cyclone) make no sense. They are pretty, and in the context of the song you sort of get it, but whereas the Gogol Bordello shirt was a reference to a song title, this one is not only harder to follow, but the payoff might not make bullions of sense. Me, though? I think it's hilarious. And clever. And I love it. Also, the fabric is apparently thinner and more washed looking, instead of the typical American Apparel fabric. Of all four of these, I would take this shirt overall.

Just some food for thought. My birthday is in a week!

In which I stick my nose

Okay, so Creationists are taking copies of Darwin's Origin of Species and passing it out to college students, with an added introduction that alleges Darwin as a racist, sexist, and the origin of Nazi ideology. I hate sticking my nose into these things, but should people who believe in evolution pass out copies of scripture with a foreward that sites all the crimes done in the name of Christianity? No. Because that would be missing the point of Christianity, just as Creationists are missing the point of Evolution.

I am not one to delve into the God question, I see myself as a Humanist, Agnostic, however you'd like to say it. The fact is that, if there is a God, I don't have any beef with them, and I have a feeling that She or He (or It, really) would be of a high and wise enough mind to place damnation on a level somewhere a bit higher than what we do and don't read. Censoring yourself from every possible outlet of information in this world is just as damning as watching pornography. The world is big and complicated, you can't root things out between Sin and Virtue. But these ideals are not, I think, sent down to us from a higher power. We see something that offends us, we call it wrong. Something makes us happy, we deem it right. eventually enough people see one thing as wrong or one thing as right that we assume it a universal truth. The Ten Commandments are a perfect example of this.

And don't think that I am only coming out against Christian Fundamentalism; I get just as irritated by Atheistic Fundamentalism, that teenage stubbornness where one refuses to read scripture or take any heed from it, and who assume that anyone–and anything–involved with the practice of religion is a result of boorish stupidity. I have read scripture, I have prayed, I have been to church. I have said grace at the table at Thanksgiving. And at no point did I feel that I was being simple or stupid, or oppressed. There are things to be found in faith that Atheism will never provide; and there are emotions that Atheism cannot explain. Is it possible, really, for me to look at Mount Ranier when I'm driving north and not have a fleeting thought of "Whoever made that is a damned good artist"? Or to know someone has died and not pray, secretly, quietly to myself, that they are in a better place?

Atheism rejects our human need for faith, for the belief in something greater than ourselves. This was not always the sky-cult of Judeo-Christian belief. Before that, it was the Earth and the deities that were wrought from it. But it has always been something; we always need a cosmogonic myth and we balance it with an apocalyptic myth. Science, with the Big Bang and the Universe's endless expansion and semi-predictable chaos, is another form of myth, though I will not say that it is false. All myths are true in their own way, all myths are useful. Science has proven to be one of the most useful because it denies that it is infalliable; its laws are subject to change upon each new discovery. I trust science to explain the workings of my world, and I admit (as most scientists do) that it does not explain everything.

Humans, when we get down to our core, are too complicated to accept a single explaination for the way things are. Only following a single doctrine, then, is going against what being human is. We did not fall from grace out of the blue. We got curious. But if it weren't for that curiosity (to use a Biblical metaphor), there would be nothing more than two naked people sitting in a garden naming animals. And I, for one, think that Original Sin did us a world of good.

So, back to the issue at hand: distributing copies of The Origin of Species explaining that, despite laying the foundation for modern Biology, Paleontology, and a host of other disciplines, gave Hitler a good reason for Genocide. Not only are these allegations false, but they go against everything that academia tries to promote. If these ladies and gentlemen (amongst whom is former Tiger Beat cover boy Kirk Cameron) really want to break into the academic world and make Creation level with Evolution in classrooms everywhere, they could start by promoting something that is less sensationalist and more guided by reason and willingly open for debate. Also, you have to remember that, though it is the basis for so much scientific study, it has always been called the Theory of Evolution, not the Indisputable Fact of Evolution. If Creation is to be taught, then it, too, must be posed as a theory, therefore negating its very purpose in the eyes of those who promote it so intensely. Academic institutions are places of debate and discourse, and therefore could never really promote fundamentalism in the classroom. Calling one of the most influential academics of all time a liar based on false accusations of racism is just childish.

I read a small portion of Sarah Palin's new book in a review of it online, where she says that she can't look at everything people have done and think that they were once fish crawling out of the ocean. We've heard that argument before; the assumption that Evolution is an insult to humanity since it infers that we are descended from monkeys and fish and not borne directly from the mind of the Almighty. Hogwash, I say. There's something, to me, that's even more beautiful about the idea of us, out of the billions of possible organisms, somehow changing and evolving, turning a simple backbone into a spine and a few electronic pulses into the most complex brain that's ever been known, to go from floating to swimming to crawling to walking upright when no other species really could, to grow hands for building and turn small families into civilizations, surviving mass extinctions throughout millions of years, until we reached the point where we could dream up hundreds of possibilities for our own origins and millions of hopes for our own future–is that not, Ms. Palin, the ultimate underdog story? Is Homo Sapiens not a cunning and wise and adaptive survivor? Have we not proven ourselves worthy of the Gods we create and hold fast to?

There is nothing to be ashamed of in the idea of once being small. Everything was once small, even in Genisis, there was chaos from which light and life was created. We are above throwing stones into the gears of other's ideas, and the only way to continue to evolve as a society is to allow free thought, as well as freedom of worship. But please, let's do it in an arena where we can at least be courteous to one another.

Because, really, I can't pick just one.

In the Spring of 2008, while living in the literal ass of England, my two best friends and I went on an adventure through France, Germany, and Vienna. Being the people that we are, we said some pretty ridiculous things. Here, thanks to Amanda's diligent recording, is the cream of the crop of words that came out of our mouths that fateful few weeks:


"It's all the New Kids on the Block in ONE GERMAN MAN!"

"Ahahahaha.........We're poor and sad."

"I can't remember who I'm sleeping with... oh wait, NOBODY."

"Good old patch-knees. Rawwhh!"

"Ssssir it's not hot enough in the hot tub...?"

"Vehre you guys just flashing zeh towns? Get your feet off zeh seat und stop flashing your tits."

"Well, what are you gonna do?"
"Pssh...Fuck a tree, apparantly."

"Get on the bus, douche. We're in hell."

"We got trouble! Right here in Nurnburg City! With a capital N and that rhymes with BEN and that stands for GETBACKHERE!"

"Danke....................

.....................................................................................................................schoen...?"

"God I love these ghetto fabulous Germans!"

"Hilton says 'no' to everything except being rich."

"Where is the key-"
"It's in my butt."

"How am I taking this badly? you're the one who put it up your butt."

"Ok It's an hour and 15 minutes until the next traaeeiighhhhhhch."

"You have good eyes, Meg. They're big and awesome."

"He's probably a perfectly nice guy, and here we are saying he's a dangerous muppet James Spader Javier Bardem."

"Oh shit, it's Napoleon."

"What is it?"
"Pshh, I don't know, gigantic?"


"...............SUGAR!!!!"

"Why don't you restock your cart before you come on this train and sell your wares!?!?!?!"