See You When I See You

Something has happened to my family. I don't think I'll have anything to write in here for a while that's suitable for a public blog.

See you.

A Reminder

Stumbled on this today, liked it very much. Should serve as a reminder to just think for and be yourself.

Despite your pseudo-bohemian appearance and vaguely leftist doctrine of beliefs, you know nothing of art or sex that you couldn't read in any trendy new york underground fashion magazine... proto-typical non-conformist. You are a vacuous soldier of the thrift store gastapo. You adhere to a set of standards and tastes that appear to be determined by an unseen panel of hipster judges - bullshit - giving your thumbs up and thumbs down to incoming and outgoing trends and styles of music and art. Go analog baby, you're so post-modern. You're diving face forward into an antiquated past, it's disgusting! It's offensive! Don't stick your nose up at me. Yeah, what do you have to say for yourself?

You spend your time sitting in circles with your friends, pontificating to each other, forever competing for that one moment of self aggrandizing glory in which you hog the intellectual spotlight, holding dominion over the entire shallow, pointless, conversation. Oh we're not worthy.

When you walk by a group of quote, unquote, normal people you chuckle to yourself, patting yourself on the back as you scoff. It's the same superority complex shared by the high school jocks who made your life a living hell, makes you a slave to the competitive capitalist dogma you spend every moment of your waking life bitching about. Yeah, what do you have to say for yourself? You're free to whine. It will not get you far. I do just fine, my car and my guitar. I'm proud of my life and the things that I have done, proud of myself and the loner I've become.

Thanks TwelveImmaculateYesterdays's Xanga.

This Is Incredibly Interesting (Maybe)

This is incredibly interesting. My blog, I have just discovered, is on something called BlogShares (http://blogshares.com/blogs.php?blog=http%3A%2F%2Fmyspotlessmind.blogspot.com%2F), which is a fantasy market where you can buy and sell shares of many, many blogs, in many, many different industries, ranging from art to sarcasm. Of course, my blog is not exactly a blue chip, nor will it ever be. I serve a very small, distinct market. It's a niche blog, I suppose. Anyway, it appears I could waste another huge chunk of my life on this new diversion, but I'm going to try not to. However, if you are interested in owning a little bit of "Chewing Gum, Coffee, & Slim Jims," do not hesitate to purchase some shares. Analysts say the stock is underpriced. I'm just mad I wasn't invited to the IPO!

Hahaha!

The mental image I got from this made me laugh uncontrollably for a good 30 seconds. And then I got a grip on myself. Try it though, and let me know what you're most likely to utter during sex!

What Are You Most Likely to Utter During Sex by UMAJohnnie
Name
Sexuality
Age
Most Likely to Say	"I'm covered in BEES!"
Quiz created with MemeGen!

The Death Of Indie Rock

The death of indie rock is happening right before my very ears. The MTV-ization of emo, an increasingly popular style within indie rock, is clearly obvious to even the most casual observer. The success of Dashboard Confessional on modern rock radio stations and MTV has done most of the work, and their inclusion on a major Hollywood action blockbuster soundtrack like Spider-Man 2, as the lead single, no less, completes the process of "selling out." Is there still legitimate emo out there? For sure. But soon, the emo bands that completely lack indie cred and are in it for the money will so saturate the market that the genre will become a joke, a la grunge. This is an apocalyptic vision of mine that is already being played out if you pay attention. This is not my worry, whatsoever. I've already come to accept the corporatization of emo.

Unfortunately, it's happening in other areas of indie rock as well, namely, the garage sound made so popular by indie rock darlings the Strokes. I don't know what to call it, or if it even has a snappy name like emo, but this is most assuredly another style within indie rock, and I can already see the copycat signs from big corporations. First, it was Franz Ferdinand, who are a good band and make good music, getting a bunch of corporate support, being all over the radio, and having tons of CD's on display at the very front at Best Buy. This is not Franz Ferdinand's fault; this is simply a sign of recognition from Corporate Music, Inc. They have spotted their new style/victim for MTV-ization. Soon, the good bands with corporate backing will give way to the bad bands created by and for money-making machines. There's already one out there. I don't know what they are called, but I heard them on the radio today, singing with Strokes-like vocals, but with a little less edge and a little less care, strumming on their guitars that Universal or Capitol probably bought for them. They definitely weren't the Strokes, and they definitely weren't Franz Ferdinand; the song had that corporate feel of death about it. I can only expect that I will be hearing more and more such bad bands on the radio, as the garage style of the Strokes is easier to replicate than the pain and suffering in emo music. So that's two styles of indie rock that are being shot down by MTV already.

It's coming, inevitably. The death of indie rock. There will have to be another way for everyone to try to pretend to be hip and cool now...

Thanks Jason Mulgrew (He Said Sarcastically)

OK, so I totally got this idea from Jason Mulgrew's blog, but for the last couple of days, I've been using that "Next Blog" button at the top to browse other people's blogs. I commented only on the ones I had something to respond to, except for the blogs that were written in a completely different language. For those, I ALWAYS left a comment, something really stupid like "totally" or "sweet" or "fo shizzle," even though I couldn't understand a single word most of the time. I thought this was really funny, and it got funnier the more I did it, just as Jason Mulgrew said it would, and all was fun and games and happiness...

But I never realized that Jason Mulgrew's blog did not allow comments back! And mine does! So now I've been getting comments from foreign bloggers who are all confused, asking me who I am! This little side-effect has been great for site traffic, but terrible for me personally; it's like getting caught TP-ing somebody's house. I don't know what to do. I am thoroughly embarassed by their presence, but I'm also totally stoked about the extra site traffic. And it's still a funny joke.

So from now on, if you are a foreign blogger who has received a comment from me that makes no sense to you... err... just kidding? Heh heh?

This Blog Is Rated G For G A N G S T A

Just kidding.


What rating is your journal?
brought to you by Quizilla

General Audience. All ages admitted to your journal. This signifies that your journal contains nothing most people will consider offensive. Nudity, sex, and talk of drug use are basically absent; violence is minimal; snippets of your journal may go beyond polite conversation but do not go beyond common everyday expressions.

Oh wait, I almost forgot. Today I went to a nude beach where there were a lot of naked boobies, had spontaneous, unprotected sex with three random women at the same time, got a mixture of coke, smack, weed, acid, speed, ecstasy, Budweiser, shrooms, glue, Nyquil, and coffee injected intravenously through my testicles, ran around smashing people's faces in with a Louisville Slugger and shooting their toes off with a rifle, and then screamed really loudly:

"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!"

The Triumvirate That Rules My Brain

NOTE: This is not some twisted version of "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," which is an awesome show. This is actually rather personal, despite the ruse...

Chewing Gum: omg, so like, today, i like, totally was like what the hell, i dunno, maybe we should stop writing these stories you know? like totally just start writing about ourselves man, because writing about ourselves is so much easier, right?

Coffee: Easier is not necessarily a good thing, Chewing Gum. The artist can only truly create something compelling and meaningful through intense, genuine struggle. Look at "100 Years of Solitude" by Garcia Marquez. All about struggle. All beautiful. If we want something meaningful, we will continue to struggle in the recent vein of writing not about ourselves, but writing things that are completely made up. Unless, of course, we write about me. I am the artistic part after all, so if we only write about me, it'll also be meaningful.

Slim Jims: Coff, you're such a snob. Chew, you're such a ditz. Both of you are wrong. I hate living with you two, you guys are the shittiest roommates ever, you know that? We should just write whatever we fuckin' wanna write, whenever we fuckin' wanna write it. We can fucking take turns. No one has to dominate. The blog has all three of our names in it, it belongs to all three of us. So it should alternate among all three freakin' voices. Coff, you can keep writin' your story, or poetry, or whatever, I don't care. Chew, you can write whatever you want about what's going on in our lives, too, I don't care, as long as it's not too long. And I'll write whatever funny or sarcastic or profane or meaningless shit I'm supposed to represent, whenever, too. You know, I can't believe you two are both males, you both act like fuckin' bitches all the time.

Coffee: That is actually a very profound idea for our blog, Slim Jims. It would add a lot of fluidity to the writing process. My only reservation is that the division of voices not be so explicit next time, like it is here. This is extremely coarsely done, way too overtly obvious, and, quite frankly, somewhat juvenile. I can tell this was Chewing Gum's idea to do this... play dialogue thing...

Slim Jims: No, it was my idea. So fuck off, cockass. Then we're all agreed?

Chewing Gum: sooo... i get to like, talk about myself and stuff then right?

Slim Jims: Yes. Try to use capitalization, though. This isn't AIM.

Chewing Gum: omg totally awesome. ok i'm in.

Me vs. Blog, Round 2

Quoted from http://professordyke.blogspot.com, who is a very interesting read:

"My reasons for blogging (both pseudonymously and otherwise) are numerous and complicated, but in either case, I do know that I blog to engage in a public and informal mode of writing, to interact with an on-line community, and because it's fun. To be allowed a glimpse into other people's lives through the window of their blogs is endlessly fascinating to me. (Especially since I'm a writer, and therefore, a bit of a hopeless voyeur).

"And while I'm comfortable and pleased to have readers look inside the window of my blog, I certainly wouldn't want them actually standing around my real-life house, peering into the windows, and perhaps it's this metaphor of internet vs. real-life windows that best articulates my desire to blog pseudonymously."

Other things she writes are also pure genius. I am now currently battling an internal struggle of sorts concerning what to do with this stupid little blog of mine, again. In the end, all I want to do is write well, and the reason I stopped talking about my own life and myself was because I felt like that kind of self-indulgence wasn't allowing me to write well, and was causing the imagination-muscles in my brain to atrophy. But then I read these other blogs where the writers write about their own lives so easily, simply, elegantly, interestingly, and articulately, that it just blows my misconception of what writing "well" is out of the water.

So now I don't know what to do with this blog.

This Is Not A Test

This is not a test. I interrupt this irregularly scheduled program to bring you an important public service announcement: DOWNTOWN DALLAS SUCKS. Thank you for your cooperation. This is not a test.

For Joyce

"It was a bright, sunny day. I couldn't believe I was on a farm. And then I stepped on a pile of horsement and knew right then and there that it had to be true."

Chapter 2

If there was any doubt in the reader's mind, let it all be laid to rest here and now: this novel will not lie. Clearly, the book continues in Chapter 2 as promised. The reason this novel doesn't lie, incidentally, is because it hates liars. Once, when it was four, its mother told it that if it ever, ever lied to her, she would Fahrenheit-451 it in the furnace. She would know whenever it was lying to her, of course, because all mothers can read their children like open books, especially very young, inexperienced four-year-old children. (Remember those clips on America's Funniest Home Videos, formerly hosted by Bob Saget, where the kid has a face full of a chocolate but denies ever eating a single brownie?) From then on, it decided it would never lie, and has stayed true to its charge. The infallible, unfailing honesty of Mr. Thomas Woerth was also decided in a much similar manner at the age of four, due to an equally impressive mother, so instead of dwelling on this point, the narrative shall now focus on the incredible oddness of Mr. Woerth.

In the history of all men, there would be no one else quite like Mr. Thomas Woerth; those are the kind of men, after all, that are interesting enough to land themselves in novels. Thomas's understanding of human nature was so profoundly misguided and fundamentally flawed that every single dialogue he ever shared with another human being was a moment of utter bewilderment and befuddlement for both parties. It never came to pass, despite his constant confusion, however, that Thomas tried to avoid human contact or social situations; in fact, the more flat-out wrong he was about a person or situation, the more he seemed to want to talk or act, and the less he seemed to realize how wrong he was.

Let's have an illustrative, graphic example. On a cold December night, Christmas Eve to be exact, Little Thomas lie in bed awake, the covers pulled up to his chin, his eyes and ears as wide and attentive as the five-year-old could muster. Like most normal children, he had been fed the story of Santa Claus. However, unlike most children, he was not lying in bed awake, waiting for the slightest sound or hint that Santa Claus had arrived, so that he could clamber out of bed to catch a glimpse of this incredible legend. Thomas had no desire of the sort to catch a glimpse of Santa Claus. He didn't really care for the man at all. As far as he was concerned, the bloke could waste his time trying to stuff himself through their chimney as much as he wanted. The Woerth's didn't have one. No, on this cold December night, Christmas Eve, it was not fanciful thoughts of Santa Claus that were keeping Little Thomas Woerth awake. It was the rhythmic squeaking coming from his parents' bedroom next door. He listened to the squeaking getting progressively louder, faster, and more urgent for a good fifteen minutes before deciding that he couldn't just lie there listening and doing nothing. He had to take action.

Climbing out of his twin-sized bed, he surveyed his room for a moment in the gray-blue dim. He knew exactly where the door was, and could stride right to it confidently even in the dark, but he was hesitating right now because he couldn't remember if he had left a toy of some sort in the middle of the floor. He usually never did, because he was an extremely neat child who always put his toys away after he was done with them, but for some reason, tonight, a lurking doubt struck his brain softly like so many feathers. Had he put that yellow and black bulldozer truck away after playing with it this afternoon? He couldn't remember. He took one tentative step forward in the darkness. It was not pitch-black. He stared with wide eyes as hard as he could at the center of the carpet in his room, trying to see if he could catch a flash of something, some darker mass lying there, but it was impossible to see for sure. Finally, he decided that whatever was happening in his parents' bedroom was far more urgent than this worry, and strode quickly to the door. His carpet was clean.

He made his way swiftly down the hall to the other end, where the door to his parents' bedroom was firmly shut. Without thinking, he grabbed the doorknob, turned, and burst in on his father and mother under the bedsheets. They didn't hear him enter, because his father continued to do whatever he was doing on top of his mother, while his mother continued to wear an increasingly pained expression on her face. This must have been the source of the squeaking, thought Thomas. He's trying to kill her!

"Mommy? Daddy?" It would be another year, the moment he started first grade, when he would startcalling them Mom and Dad, but for now...

"Mommy? Daddy?" They had not heard him the first time. Suddenly, Thomas's mother's face dropped its look of pain and turned into a look of horrified mortification. This, Thomas's young mind did not understand, having never experienced shame like that before (actually, he would never understand such shame for as long as he lived), mistaking the look instead for one of extreme happiness mixed with relief. His father's expression, however, was unmistakable.

"Get out of the room, Thomas!" he said angrily, but not loudly.

"No! Why are you trying to kill Mommy?"

Clearly disturbed and confused as to what exactly was happening, his father yelled this time, "Just GET OUT! GET OUT, GODDAMNIT!"

"Never!" Little Thomas exclaimed with incredible gallantry for a five-year-old. And then he rushed towards the bed.

Chapter 1

Unlike most novels, this one does not begin with the introduction of a main character. There is no "Call me Ishmael" here, no Nick Carraway to act as a colored mirror through which the protoganist is filtered, no letters to Mrs. Saville to structure a frame-story within, no psychologically disturbed young man walking out onto a St. Petersburg street one hot July evening; in fact, the beginning of this novel is unlike the beginning of any other novel published because it fails to do what all beginnings ought to do -- and that is, to begin something. This introduction does not set anything in motion. It sets up no climate, no scene, and no character. The reader does not know if it was the best of times, or the worst of times. The reader, in fact, can't even discern whether or not this is fiction at all, except to trust that the work is calling itself a novel, and isn't lying. The author does not even make an appearance here to explain what he is trying to do, preferring to lurk back in the deep shadows of a completely detached third-person omniscient perspective, although his voice certainly pervades the entire work like thick, yellow fog.

However, there is a catch, caught most likely by only the most discerning literary critics, because, contrary to what the words say above, a case can be made that the beginning of this novel does indeed introduce a major character. In fact, the careful reader will realize that this first chapter does nothing but introduce the most major character in the entire book, as long as one is willing to read the word "character" none-too-literally. This character is, of course, the unshakeably self-conscious, self-knowing, and self-reflecting nature of almost every single bit of prose throughout. It is this Oroborus-like "character" of the text, of the language, and of the plot that makes this novel unlike any other, and thus this beginning suffices merrily to introduce that point. (Oroborus, by the way, is the idea of a snake eating its own tail; more generally, it is the ontological concept of self-devouring self-knowledge.)

So, having introduced the novel's first and most important character, Chapter 1 fulfills its purpose and, short as it is, must come to a close. The reader will be delighted, however, that the story appears to continue (or begin anew, whatever) in the following chapter.

Influences: Adaptation (Charlie Kaufman); A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius (Dave Eggers); The History Of The Adventures Of Joseph Andrews, And His Friend Mr. Abraham Adams (Henry Fielding)

Guess Who's Back?

Hint: not Slim Shady.

I suppose a few words about the trip are in order. However, the last month in China was filled with so many wonderful and terrible things that I don't exactly have the energy to convey anything at this time. I just spent the last 25 hours travelling, after all. You'll just have to ask me on the phone or on AIM or in real life or something.

Well, I'm sorry to say I have nothing important to write right now, i.e. I have nothing to write that doesn't concern my own piddlingly narrow life. So it ends here.