Still confused

While we are on the subject of "things that confuse el Monstro," I would like to open the table to an even more confusing subject than the war in Iraq: Cowboys.

Let me try to figure this out. They really like cowboys (circa 1864... The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, you may remember was set in the civil war), and so they dress up MODERN DAY as cowboys. Furthermore, since some modern conveniences weren't available to cowboys back then, they have had to invent some things. Essentially, cowboys would have driven pickup trucks if pickup trucks had been around. The reason I assume all this is because since, oh I don't know, the turn of the last century, there haven't been any cowboys only cowboy impersonators, and this is okay...Men walking around dressed in costumes from an historical epoch...that's okay. No cause for alarm here, Joe just likes to dress in his jammies everyday, and to make sure that Joe doesn't feel like he's ummmm....wearing a costume when its not Halloween, there's a whole culture of people who've fixated on this costume as well.

I can understand the costume thing. I've seen many a confused 16 year old dressed like Edward Scissorhands, but the thing is they know they're in a costume. That's part of the reason they do it, I imagine. They say, "like you society (in a real Radiohead-esque attitude) I too wear a costume, but I choose mine." Which isn't really true. It's kind of a goth uniform. Regardless though, the cowboy doesn't seem to want to acknowledge the fact that they're playing pretend. Also, Goths grow out of it, whereas cowboys seem to want to wear their costumes well into old age. Do they secretly wear Spiderman underoos so as to fulfill two childhood fantasies at the same time.

Is it a horse thing? I mean, much of what the cowboy look is about is horse riding. Big hat to block the sun when you're out on the range. Chaps, etc.. If so, why this horse rider costume? Why not jockeys or 12th century knights, or Samurai? That would be cool.

So to sum up. It is now 2005, not 1865. No one rides horses anymore except upper middle class girls. If I walked around all day dressed like a ninja and reading haiku, they'd lock me up. And finally, cowboys are ridiculous.

I'm confused

Earlier today, or rather 30 minutes before writing this, George W. Bush said that he had no timetable for leaving Iraq. Okay.

The reason that he has no timetable for leaving Iraq, or the reason he gave anyway, is that there are people who want us to leave Iraq, and as long as they're still around, we won't be leaving. Fine.

So, let me just get this straight--as long as there are people around who want us to leave Iraq, we won't leave. Once we've gotten rid of all the people who want us to leave, we'll leave. Is that right?

Does this honestly mean that if all the insurgents would just shut up, they'd get their way. I'm not sure I'm following this story correctly. Why doesn't Bush just say that as long as Americans are in Iraq, Americans won't be leaving Iraq. I mean, if you're looking for a system of perpetual occupation, why steep it in this schoolyard B.S..

M.I.A.

Hello Blog,

Where the hell have I been? I wish I had good answers for such a question. I have been many places and done many things. That's what happens when I don't check in for nearly a month. I doubt anyone's reading this thing anymore, but just in case...

So, I guess the big news is that the baby's a boy. Lynn and I have, I think, settled on a name, but we're keeping it secret. Ed, Lynn's father, has attempted to buy naming rights. An interesting proposition. It would certainly insure the child's college will be paid for, but something tells me that it just wouldn't be right to my Dad for his only son to name the first born after the other grandfather. Sure Dad wouldn't complain, but still... So, no, not Ed.

Before that, the Drivler and I made our trip down South to explore the great world of the ghost story. I think I have stumbled onto the many ways there are to tell a ghost story. In fact, I stumbled upon four--strangely, all of them are unique from the story that starts off with, "no, I've never seen anything out of the ordinary....except for this one night," to "nobody here has seen such a thing, now will you please leave." The theater owner in Birmingham was a charming man who was as proud of his theater as he was of its story, and for good reason. Somewhere during his tale, he informed us that the ballet schools in the area (which use the Birmingham theater for their dance recitals) have a legend of a red room in which a ballerina was carved up. Her blood evidently shows through whatever paint is applied to the walls. I thought that was funny given the red room of the Amityville Horror but then Cecil (the manager) informed me that there really had been a red room, that it had been painted over, and that he had no idea how the girls ever came up with that legend. Spooky.

All in all, I'd say that the best ghost stories came out of New Orleans because, unlike the other stories, they were entirely made up. New Orleans is designed to take your money away from you. They don't let the overall lack of haunted houses stop them from starting up a "ghost tour" company. Instead, they point up to a house and say, "yep, that one's haunted." Strange that all the haunted houses lie within a two block area.

We did not visit a house in New Orleans that I actually know to be haunted. The old slave house where my mother lived for a month is the stuff of family legends, but I was convinced that there would be no way to find it. After all, it has been six decades since my mother lived there. Unfortunately, when I called her on my return, she could remember the exact adress. How's that for a kick in the pants. Sorry Jason, we might really have found a ghost.

So since then? I've been attempting to get published. I don't have a clue as to what to say about this enterprise except that I'm on it. It generally involves looking at an essay about 60 times and then reading 10 books in order to write 2 paragraphs. Why? The academic essay always begins with the phrase, "recent criticism of _____ has discussed." You have to say that. You always have to say that. It's your proof that you've read the recent criticism even if the recent criticism has said nothing about what you're going to talk about.

"Recent criticism of Foucalt has shown that the man did not wear a toupee. My essay will not be discussing Foucalt, his alleged lack of toupee, or toupees in general but will instead concentrate on the pattern of capitalization in the poems of Emily Dickenson." Ridiculous, but that's what you have to do.

I have sent a paper on Litotes in Black No More to African American Review, An essay on The Scarlet Letter to American Quarterly, and an essay on Gravity's Rainbow to Twentieth Century Literature. I plan on soon sending a copy of another Gravity's Rainbow paper to American Literature, but I have to read a book on Pynchon and Nazi first that came out this year.

I am reading Faust, which is very funny and not at all what I expected. I am reading Turn of the Screw which is less funny and pretty much exactly what I expected. People think that James is this great modernist, but he isn't. That's not internal monologue; its just somebody going maybe/maybe not. Must have been big at the time.

As Lynn is currently working nights, I have attempted to rent films that I want to watch that she wouldn't and during that time I paint. The Pyre now has 21 miniatures all done up in orange. I've gotten to where I can get one of them done in an hour. Yeah.

When I say that I've been watching movies, I don't mean crappy movies. I mean foreign films--which as it turns out are not actually convenient for painting. People in foreign movies talk a lot, and since they talk in Polish, this requires you to read sub-titles. But I've managed. I've watched The Tin Drum, Rear Window (which isn't foreign, but I hadn't seen it), the first installment of the Decalogue, and Persona by Bergman.

What have I learned? I've learned that the darkness and hopelessness of foreign movies makes Radiohead seem like the Muzak version of "I Just Called to Say I Love You." This isn't just darkness, it's fucking DARKNESS. I think this level of investigation into the dangerous territory of human identity and God has only been achieved in America through literature. There is no comparison that can be made to American art, music, film, and certainly not television. It is possibly for this reason that so many Americans don't like literature, and not the whole lazy factor, to which American illiteracy is generally ascribed. I can't be sure.

Let's just say that in an American movie, a story is dark if a husband dies. Sob sob. In a foreign movie, the surviving wife then ignores her kid, but she's okay with that because the lack of God in her universe vindicates her total withdrawel from reason, until of course, she discovers that their is in fact a God but that he's ashamed of her just before her child is infected by her spiritual void and kills himself. And somewhere in there, there's a flash of someone hanging on a cross, just for a second or two.

Yeah, bleak as hell. Tonight I'm going for Fellini, I think. I'm thinking that the Italiens might be a little more light hearted, and if that doesn't work, its off to sunny South America. I'm not sure I'm ready for the Satyricon just yet, but that's definitely on my list.

In other news, my excuses are all gone. I know what the next chapter of Shock Tea will look like, and in all reality, I should stop everything else and just write it. Honestly.

Oh, and I almost forgot. I've started on my path towards non-smoker-ville. I smoked 8 cigarettes yesterday. It's 3:00 now, and I've only smoked two today. My goal is to move from an allotted 10 cigarettes a day down to 5 by the beginning of next month.

Having said all that, I reserve the right to talk at length later about any and all of the above subjects.