A Collection of Angelfire Posts for Posterity pt 3 - 2005

Thee Archives de '05

11-28-05

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,

vacation with pay. Want more

of everything ready made. Be afraid

to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery

any more. Your mind will be punched in a card

and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something

they will call you. When they want you

to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something

that won't compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace

the flag. Hope to live in that free

republic for which it stands.

Give your approval to all you cannot

understand. Praise ignorance, for what man

has not encountered, he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest.

. .. . .. .

Swear allegience

to what is nighest your thoughts

As soon as the generals and the politicos

can predict the motions of your mind,

lose it. Leave it as a sign

to mark a false trail, the way

you didn't go. Be like the fox

who makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection

 - more Wendell Berry

11-19-05

Sometimes he thinks the earth

might be better without humans.

He's ashamed of that.

It worries him,

him being a human, and needing

to think well of the others

in order to think well of himself

And there are

a few he thinks well of,

a few he loves

as well as himself almost,

and he would like to say

better. But history

is so largely unforgivable.

  -   Wendell Berry

(enough?)

11-11-05

Darkness, Darkness, be my pillow, Take my head and let me sleep

In the coolness of your shadow, In the silence of your deep

Darkness, darkness, hide my yearning, For the things I cannot see

Keep my mind from constant turning, To the things I cannot be

Darkness, darkness, be my blanket, cover me with the endless night

Take away the pain of knowing, fill the emptiness with light

Darkness, darkness, long and lonesome, Is the day that brings me here

I have felt the edge of sadness, I have known the depths of fear

Darkness, darkness, be my blanket, Cover me with the endless night

Take away this pain of knowing, Fill this emptiness with light

Darkness, darkness, be my blanket, cover me with the endless night

Take away this pain of knowing, fill this emptiness with light

Darkness, Darkness, be my pillow, Take my head and let me sleep

In the coolness of your shadow, In the silence of your deep

10-31-05
Halloween entry 2-aught-aught-5:
what is this day about? why do we have pumpkins and dead things? My pumpkin has two faces but I've been working so much, I haven't even had a chance to light it at night. Check this out from http://www.rumela.com/events/events_october_halloween.htm (abridged):

History

Around the eighth century, the Christian church made November 1 All Saints' Day to honor all of the saints that didn't have a special day of their own. The mass held on All Saints' Day was called All Hallowmas (the mass of all Hallows -- saintly people). The night before was known as All Hallows Eve. Eventually this name became Halloween.

In the 5th century BC, in Celtic Ireland, summer officially ended on October 31. The holiday was called Samhain , the Celtic New year. On that day, the disembodied spirits of all those who had died throughout the preceding year would come back in search of living bodies to possess for the next year. It was believed to be their only hope for the afterlife. The Celts believed all laws of space and time were suspended during this time, allowing the spirit world to intermingle with the living. Naturally, the living did not want to be possessed, so on the night of October 31, the villagers would extinguish the fires in their homes, to make them cold and undesirable. They would then dress up in and parade around the neighborhood, being as destructive as possible in order to frighten away spirits looking for bodies to possess.

The custom of Halloween was brought to America in the 1840's by Irish immigrants fleeing their country's potato famine. At that time, the favorite pranks in New England included tipping over outhouses and unhinging fence gates.

The Jack-o-lantern custom probably comes from Irish folklore. As the tale is told, a man named Jack, who was notorious as a drunkard and trickster, tricked Satan into climbing a tree. Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree's trunk, trapping the devil up the tree. Jack made a deal with the devil that, if he would never tempt him again, he would promise to let him down the tree.

According to the folk tale, after Jack died, he was denied entrance to Heaven because of his evil ways, but he was also denied access to Hell because he had tricked the devil. Instead, the devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the frigid darkness. The ember was placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing longer. The Irish used turnips as their "Jack's lanterns" originally. But when the immigrants came to America, they found that pumpkins were far more plentiful than turnips. So the Jack-O-Lantern in America was a hollowed-out pumpkin, lit with an ember.

09-14-05
Wow, so I totally missed my chance. Lee you aren't engaged anymore. Sorry to hear. Now there is a rabbit trail that never runs out. And according to Ima Robot, ex-girlfriends like jettas. Does anyone read this anymore? I guess not. That's cool. I can say whatever I want then. I laugh when old people fall. But not really. I don't remember what I meant. But that's ok because I can, without fail, start typing to fill space. Maybe it will all come back to me some day. But right now everything creative I ever wanted to do and forgot about is blocking up the plumbing in my brain's sewage system .I swear I must be almost a year behind on Sluggy Freelance but I just can't make myself read it anymore. Its gotten too serial. I mean Pete's art has advanced by leaps and bounds but I miss the shitty bun-buns and the terrible puns. Whatever happened to Ka-Click?

04-29-05
I completely forgot that I went to Ray Bradbury Day downtown Chicago, and since its May in a day or so, now is my chance to pass those savings on to you. It was essentially a congregation of hangers-on. A guy who wrote the biography on Ray Bradbury, the woman who interviewed, for the paper, the guy who wrote the biography on Ray Bradbury. The guy who introduced the woman who interviewed the man who wrote the biography on Ray Bradbury. Some re-enactors. And finally the conference call over the hi-fi to the man himself. He wasn't trying to sell a book or a subscription, or the idea that he had a personality. He was just a weird creative old guy. Ghostfully disembodied on the speakers. "Go to the library and stay there" he said. We were already there. I've taken to calling Rachel the imaginary girlfriend when I'm at work. I hate letting people that have almost no input at all in my society pretend that they know her. It seems to cheapen her. So I won't even tell them her name. I just dub her the imaginary girlfriend when I feel so compelled. So piss off, pissers, piss off, choke, and die. After the 'celebration' we wandered around Chicago. Monday nights are mighty empty between the ears of the city of big shoulders. Nothing was open except for Subway and another Subway, etc. I think we counted four in 10 minutes of walking. SICK. So no one was on the street except for the people who had also been in the presentation and guys putting up awnings. They at least would talk to us. If only to warn us not to get hurt on scaffolding pieces. So we wandered around alone for awhile. My God, I thought, I'm alive. What a strange thing it is. (another Bradburyism)

04-06-05
I totally forgot that I did this. I saw these and couldn't remember doing this. Then it came to me. I can't see beauty anymore.


03-03-05
Look, if this page was meant to be more alive, it would be by now. I guess I've really given up the zeitgeist with this one. I'm looking into buying a bike. New or used? Big or medium? Cheap or medium? Big store or medium? This choice pretty much feels like a precedent for the future, buying cars, homes, the like. Very medium, very mediocre. Argh..

01-10-05

This is really a very lonely page. Everything all around this entry is meant to crowd it in with noise and chatter and anything to let me remember that its not alone. Or I'm not.

But things were already busy getting out of hand...

Books I read in 2005:

J.R.R. Tolkien - The Silmarillion
J.R.R. Tolkien - The Return of the King
J.R.R. Tolkien - The Two Towers
J.R.R. Tolkien - The Fellowship of the Ring
J.R.R. Tolkien - The Hobbit
Wendell Berry - Selected Poems
Ayn Rand - The Fountainhead
Yevgeny Zamyatin - We
Dante Alighieri - The Inferno
Michael Crichton - Disclosure
T.H. White - The Once and Future King
George Bernard Shaw - Pygmalion
Dalton Trumbo - Johnny Got His Gun
J.D. Salinger - Nine Stories
Howard Zinn - A People's History of the United States

Chuck Palahniuk - Survivor
Franz Kafka - The Metamorphasis (+ others)
Arabian Nights (traditional)
Harvard Lampoon - Bored of the Rings
H.G. Wells - The Invisible Man
John Steinbeck - East of Eden
Richard Adams - Watership Down
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe - Faust (part I)
Tom Wolfe - Bonfire of the Vanities
James Welch - Fools Crow
Judith Reisman - Kinsey: Crimes & Consequences
Manson/Strauss - The Long Hard Road Out of Hell
Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Crime & Punishment
Joe Meno - Hairstyles of the Damned
Annie Dillard - The Living
P.G.Wodehouse - Psmith in the City
Lemony Snicket - The Miserable Mill
Henry David Thoreau - Walden
Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451
Dan Brown - The DaVinci Code
Raymond Carver - Shortcuts
Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Michael Crichton - The Andromeda Strain
Ray Bradbury - Dandelion Wine
Viktor E. Frankl - Man's Search for Meaning
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse Five
E. Michael Jones - Living Machines
Alexander Solzhenitsyn - Cancer Ward
Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness
John Steinbeck - The Red Pony
J.R.R. Tolkien - Unfinished Tales
J.R.R. Tolkien - The Silmarillion