introit & two stories

i watched Harry Potter with a 9 year old and was more scared than she was. PS if the animated scene about the 3 brothers didn't blow your mind then please take this opportunity to go shoot yourself in the face twice, once where each eye should be. it's not a matter of taste it's just that yours are obviously dysfunctional which is totally ok but not point keeping them if they're feeding you mistaken signals.

STUPID THINGS YOU SAY TO RANDOM PEOPLE (USUALLY CHICKS) WHEN YOU HAVEN'T HAD A DAY OFF YOUR MEDS IN WEEKS AND CAN'T FEEL YOUR LEGS ANYMORE, TWO STORIES:

_____(i) first story
i'm staring at my phone as i say this while i eat a McDonald's cheeseburger, inside a gourmet burger place named Grill'd. hi says i, hi says she.
- as you can see i'm nomnoming a McDonald's cheeseburger in your fine establishment. i just want you to know this is nothing personal, i much rather be ordering a burger from you. only that my bromance movie date and i are having a domestic about whether we can take a Grill'd burger into the movies. and this is where you tell me i did the right thing buying a cheeseburger from McDonald's. [spoken about a mile a minute]
- actually, i've gotten food from here in. just gotta be a bit sneaky with it.
- i used to like you. i walked in and i thought, wow, there's someone i can have a meaningful friendship with. now look what you've done.
- [she smirks] so what you're saying is you can't have meaningful relationships with people who disagree with you?
- honesty is for masochists not lovers my dear how about i order now?
- sure
- [reading off the text message sent to me] may i please have one Grill'd burger with brie.
- sure
- and no retard tomatoes.
- what?
- don't blame me i'm just reading what it says here it says 'no retard tomatoes' and i want to be a responsible friend who orders responsibly for his friends. so make sure there are no retard tomatoes in the burger, is that cool?
- sure. i don't know if we have any retard tomatoes today, i'll just put in normal ones
- NOOoo!
- [she laughs] i'm not retarded, i know what you mean.
- ok fine we'll be deep and meaningful friends again. you've really come through for me today, how can i repay you?
- that'll be $13.50
- very good.

_____(ii) second story
10 minutes before story (i) happened, i walked towards a mobile phone accessories stand in the mall to get a cover for my newly acquired iPhone4. as i approached i saw two girls of youngish age (18-20) muchly concerned with their appearance and blocking the portion of plain coloured phone covers leaving me to peruse the glittery section.
- girls you're standing in the wrong spot
- what?
- look at where you're standing.
- uhm... we're looking at phone covers.
- right. exactly, but did you somehow fail to see that the one you really want is on this side.
- which one?
- dude, you must have noticed that this phone cover is a leopard skin pattern in pink and white diamantes with glitter, what more could a girl want?
- [they half laugh because they're still confused. i think they think i want to have sex with them which is what girls always think when you talk to them, especially if you're being facetious which is probably fair because if we didn't want to have sex with you why would we bother to leave the very comfortable quiet-think-space we were inhabiting to come forth and speak, but i promise dear GF i was not trying to have sex with them i was just being facetious and also because they were blocking the half of the covers i wanted to look at] [they laugh because they're still confused]
- ladies, i'm not actually kidding. i'm trying to do you a favour. consider this: in about 3 months, one day you'll pick up your phone, and it'll be black and it'll have a black cover and you'll think to yourself is this all there is to life? just... black phones and black covers? ew. how pedestrian right? and let me tell you what you'll think next, you'll remember that random dude in the mall who tried to save you from this fate, and tried to remind you that life can be excellent. it can be amazing. every time you wake up in the morning to your phone-alarm or receive a text message can be an adventure if your phone cover was pink and white leopard pattern diamantes. it would be like... an adventure a day. and people will be like oh em gee how cool is your freaking phone cover i wish i were as cool as you and the whole world would be sooooo not pedestrian and in 3 months you might actually be on the cover of a magazine because some talent-scout spotted your phone and thought what a champion who is that chick.
- [they giggle because girls like this are only capable of giggling, playing with their hair, giggling more]
- all i'm saying chickees, is don't be a phone-cover rascist. seriously uncool in this day and age to hate on a phone cover just cause it's pink and white leopard pattern diamantes. at least give it a go. at least give it a chance.
- fiiiiine! ok! [they walk towards me and leave the other half of the stall, i take a step back so they can fit and i walk to where they were standing. i pick up a plain black gel phone cover and say to the man behind the counter:
- i'll take this one thanks [handing him my credit card. he scans and i take my card back and my purchase. i hear the girls say:
- hey! you just bought a plain black one! what's that about?

...

by Bettina Komenda via BLDG//WLF


but i don't know the answer to that one he replied, and she nodded. (in between the music
sunrise sunrise sunrise. again always back
__when i hear the birds it's time to stop

what do you think of her? she asks i look over, it's my bank teller but in white stilettos and tight jeans and her breasts growing out of her shirt like ivy.
what she lacks in beauty she makes up in glitter.
__(and all those things we regret ever having said ,

__- you're not an artist
__- why?
__- because if you were an artist, you'd be an artist.
____(and all those things that make sense at 5:59am when you haven't slept more than 5 hours
____of the last 50

she wants to pray for a dead kangaroo. the one her mother cleared off the road a week before.

if you were here we'd dance as it begins to snow. you'd wear your bathrobe. i'd wear my worried look.
it'd be wednesday evening all the time, and on my designated come-down days i'd twitch in bed and stare at the fan turning for hours and crawl into your chest and close the door behind me

she asks but what should i get him then? and i say there's no one way.
she wants to know what i'm talking about but if you don't know you can't know -

this one night we almost had sex. so close i had my cheek up to the train-tracks. it was a full moon. the steps you take on this land echo for all eternity , the steps you take on this land echo for all eternity , the steps you take on this land echo for all eternity , over and over, it's all i could hear in my head.

but who are we now? that one i ask myself. and respond with characteristic silence. (i know you're about to go off he says to me. this amuses me, i respond oh yeah, how do you know that? he grins mischievously, you start to say something and then you go silent. i can hear it gathering steam in your head. it's like a run-up or... revving the engine. then. boom.

__i miss the feeling of youth.

__i promise next sun i see i'm going to sleep under.

anything i can't swim in isn't worth

____(the problem with honesty is people expect you to live up to it ,
____when it's hard enough just naming it, picking it up, knowing it's sitting besides you,
____contemplating you in its loneliness while you contemplate it in yours,

____the softest miscast shadow

____when i am hungry i can eat it - what i'd give for a morsel of it now - an answer you can
____hang your coat on

there's people dancing. i don't know where, but when i close my eyes i see them. they hold each other close, touch. they wear long dresses and tuxedos.
________(this girl walks ahead of me, she's thin and has brown hair and is dressed
________so plain i forget why i was looking in that direction to begin with,
____i'm ...
________it hurts sometimes.
beauty is like a pang.
honesty too. (when you can find it.
loneliness , rather <-- the realization of it. (she looks up at me from where her book sits atop the ______________________________table. almost as an afterthought she adds but i have
______________________________no friends. i'm surprised to hear this from her.
______________________________unsure how to respond, all i can think about is that
______________________________she has beautiful feet)

i blink and they dance.

__i keep thinking there's something i've misplaced.
__, a feeling

__________it's easy to sing about love.
__________so instead i sing about love today,

and i sing until the one overtakes the other.
today is an expanding concept.

____grows.

one today i said i'd take you to the train station. when we got there you said what's this? this isn't it. and i thought, no, i've lived here half my childhood, this is the only train station i know of. i heard someone gulp. in the white station wagon. (when i was 12 i asked my mom why we always had station wagons she said because your sister doesn't walk). when we got there it was last call we barely said bye.
____tradition born. not sure if i've ever said a proper goodbye

Mona stood there at midnight under the streetlight and looked at us as we stared into each others' eyes without knowing what to say, all this happening on this street that inclines at 45 degrees. we all just stood there silently, no one knowing how to do it or what to do it, or if there was something to do then how to do it. remember all that? get in the car you said. and i looked at you and you said it's time q. that's enough, get in the car. i looked back at her again and froze. it's time q, you've said your goodbye, get in the car.
and so i did.

______silent goodbye.

________________good silent bye.


i am a tethered sheepskin.
my soul will come back for me.
when it's done all it needs to do.
the errands i walk too slowly for.
when she comes back i'll say i didn't hear you go. she'll just smile and untie me,

a girl called wrote a thousand letters wrote a letter.
maybe it's not sadness ; __maybe it's age , __and we haven't learnt to differentiate them yet.

maybe it is [sadness], but in our bones. framework and scaffolding. the whole musical scale.
or longer seasons.
so long.

______the things i need to say i can only say to strangers.

after we hug we talk.
she says that's how i know you're smart , you're never happy . you always think you've failed,
everything's a failure with you , it's the only standard you'll accept.

[i came out the shower and you were sitting at my white desk crying. (your mom is sad you cry,
________________________________________________i love love)
just once in my life i know what the right thing is , feel it , know it ,
just once . i'll be damned if we don't comply.
grab your coat]


__________Anjali's under a grand piano somewhere.
__________my hands are more loyal than i am.
__________they're with her , playing Beethoven adagios for her.

i am anchored)
live off coffee and flowers.
my eyes breathe the hips of skinny 18 year olds that pass me.

__and you said it's time q. that's enough, get in the car.
and i did.
and here we are.
and i'm still holding the phone i cried into when i called Mar.

when i died that last time i'm not sure i ever woke up again.

____footsteps in an inch of snow make that crunching sound.
____it snows, a silent, slow-motion rain.
____you laugh, throwing your head back in delight.
____in your bathrobe still holding a mug tea that's too hot for you.
____i have my arms around you , inhaling your laughs
____trying to find a way to be absorbed into your body
____your arm around my neck with the mug occasionally tapping the back of my head.
____we're in black and white.
____it's the last scene of something ,
____soo beautiful i discover new bedrooms in my chest
____when i exhale tree-houses are born , red ferraris , the sahara desert , all known magic

__

4am

it's 4am and i am tired but not really and sad but not really and wish i had a cat to talk to but not really and feel like slow dancing and walking by the beach and going to get 13 cheeseburgers drive-through and have really quirky messages on facebook that i could respond to with equally quirky messages and meet new people at bustops and live simultaneously in NY, Adelaide, LA, Shanghai, Paris, and somewhere i've never been to yet but that will actually feel like home the way Haifa felt like home even though we all knew it wasn't except we all also knew our soul decides what's home and souls don't care soo much about hilly cities that are built on mountains so that your quadriceps hurt just to get to work in the morning they know better than anything how to pick a comfortable couch for a nest and i want a new suit and a new cardigan and i want a new job and a new name and i want to walk into something for the first time (again) and i want to not worry about: my grades, the sores in my mouth from drinking too much too hot tea, my lost (again) libido, that i have to put fuel in the car (again) tomorrow, this form i need to fill in and send back but i can't can't can't make myself do it because it's just too annoying to be done, feeling like a failure, like a phatso, like my glasses are dirty even when they're not so maybe my glass eyes are, about loneliness and whether i am (since i can't decide) and whether i will be (since i can't decide) and whether i should be and if not then what's the alternative i don't really know what the alternative is called or what it looks like and most importantly how not to be scared of that too because what's the point right?, i'm too broke to afford being scared of anything and i almost to be perfectly truthfully honest with you don't actually care enough about anything to be scared this way or that but it's just that you get into a habit and mine's just readreadread you keep doing it don't know what else to do anyway once upon a life ago i'd sit at 3beans coffee at 3 in the morning and read Precedent and the Law and Midnight's Children and the girl who worked the late shift would sit with me and smoke her cigarettes and we'd talk about how to pick up girls and about nighttime and about youth and where it comes from and where it goes and lots of the time nothing at all, she'd just sit at my table and smoke and watch me read and i'd know she was watching but didn't really care either way seemed harmless enough it in fact was harmless enough to find myself now in this room at 4:21am dear jeebus no i won't go outside have too much to do and work gets done better when you're in your PJs like cuddling and kissing and watching movies which all get done better in PJs maybe it's my body's way of suggesting something to me since my eyes won't suggest sleep and my heart beats soo fast on account of the last hit of amphetamines which got me through 11pm - 2am if only the world would keep up with it then we'd all already be 30 or 40 or 50 and we'd be wrinkly enough not to care about things like that anymore with our saggy boobies and our love-(well)handled abdomens and we'd sit on someone's porch and think how ridiculously we dressed and how silly it was all that worry we did about things that never eventuated and how naive we were to miss the tragedies that did and we all call each other Hamlet and Antigone and after sunset we sip tea and drift to a softer sleep we know now on account of having to slam our bodies into a wall of darkness every night goddamit just let me in over and over against mattresses and sheets and throwing pillows around and masturbating out of boredom or hoping the orgasm will calm our senses you win some you lose most it's 5am and the birds are out by the time i'm calm enough to know what was troubling me in the first place but when i wake up, sweaty from dreams i never can remember i forget what the troubling me in the first place thing actually was so tonight i get to play it all over again i want to sip my tea but it'll sting my mouth i put it off and the green pen lays across a piece of paper and wants to underline something dear jeebus give a stone a break.

poemette

vessel - time by anna☆morosini


falling asleep midafternoon he awoke to almost-nightness

___and now dreams out of sync, so he hopes what the old man hopes and

forgets to want what the young man wants,

___perhaps he is hungry, or at very least his skin is hungry

and skin eats only hugs and sex

___his neck contorted on his couch he opens one eye and calls his lover Polyphemus to his side

you forget you are in an empty room. you spend soo much time in empty rooms. you forget.

___how do you know when you love someone? she asks, and he shakes his head i never knew.

and this sickness is a question for tomorrow. tomorrow i will take less pills and jog and sit out in the sun so that i am not pale.

___(and stare at the long brown legs of young girls and their painted toe-nails and the white tan mark around their neck from where their swimsuit fastens and

youth is a miracle you carry only soo long

___i am concerned with being male. with being a new age i do not understand yet.

about being places i cannot describe and being a man i do not know in those places.

___and when he wakes his stomach is hungry, perhaps, it is a feeling he cannot describe, only

that he hates the lamp that beams on him and warms his cheek.

___i used to write you know. once upon a history. i would write and genuinely thought one day

someone might actually care to read it. i thought it was a part of my life.

___she wants to know if i'm sadder than i used to be.

maybe. maybe it's like when coldness gets down to your bones so you're always cold, so cold even sitting in front of a fire you're cold. soo cold you forget you are cold because it is just who you are now.

___maybe who i am.

soo much time in empty rooms you forget. you wake to one you sleep to one.

___(and he waits for Polyphemus, the one-eyed cyclops to come and whisper him his story

and tomorrow is too late.

___no point to it now.

no point at all.

a new post by apennyfortheoldguy

this is a picture by hollis thornton brown. he's awesome. if anyone knows him in reality land, please tell him a pennyfortheoldguy loves him and wants to give him money one day when he himself has money. kthanksbye.









monsters by hollis thornton brown


yes, thankyou, i know i know, it's great to be back and i wanna thank each and every one of you for braving the weather and the traffic and taking your ADD meds and making it out here so we could be together to celebrate this momentous event in typical internets style.

of course, you can understand i'm a little bit rusty. silence takes it outta you you know. so. just to stretch my literary legs let's start with a list. i think that's the right way to go about things. back up ladies and gentlemen it's about to get seriously up in diss...


RANDOM THINGS I FIND EMINENTLY INTERESTING AND READ ABOUT THEM ALL THE TIME ON WIKIPEDIA FOR NO REASON AT ALL, A LIST:

- chess grandmasters
- the Justices of the High Court of Australia
- spiders (freaking creepy)
- Bertrand Russel
- child geniuses, people who get perfect 1600s on the SATs, that kinda thing


PLAYLIST OVER LAST 90 DAYS (GENERAL), A LIST:

- Everyday Balloons, A Weather
- Klavierworke EP, James Blake
- I'm in a polaroid - where are you?, CALLmeKAT (thanks ashtree!!)
- oOoOO EP, oOoOO
- Songs from Before, Max Richter


*___*___*

it's ok for it to be today because today i'm not doing anything because i'm enjoying a massive dexamphetamine comedown which means i'm supplementing my newfound long stubble-->beard with two cans of redbull (enough umph) to give me the energy to go to the shops and buy muffins and grilled salmon (already grilled, as in fish&chips grilled) and yogurt and come back home (dear god that was exhausting) before collapsing on the couch to nomnom my foodfood and listen to Everyday Balloons by A Weather (a band which i lovelovelove) and think about all the tomorrows that might be as good as today while i hear the children next door yelping and screaming as they jump in their pool and i can hear the sunshine smiling and i can hear old men and women who still love each other smiling with pride at the fact that they do and giving each other old people smoochies and thinking hee hee hee, my bitch is fiiiiine to one another <-- want one. later my geek friends are coming over for geek-fest-2010, also known as: law nerds playing taboo which is really annoying because we all have vastly different fields of knowledge so no one ever gets anything and it ends up just shouting CLAUDE FREAKING DEBUSSY HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW THAT? EFF YOU DICKWAD YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE MAURITANIA IS! EXCUSE ME YOU DON'T KNOW WHO THE CURRENT CABINET MINISTER FOR TRANSPORT IS GO DIE. if that doesn't sound fun to you we're not BFFs. sorry. we can still be like random facebook friends or whatever.


*___*___*

i don't necessarily love this song but this filmclip is heaven in a tub of icecream. i'm seriously. it's more creative than you think you are i promise (click here for a vanilla flavoured surprise)


*___*___*

i'm looking at pictures of the biggest douchebags on earth on facebook and thinking how lucky i am to have severed all ties with those people about three semesters ago. i feel like i made some awesome sell on the social-share-market. sellsellsell these people are gonna suck in about 2 academic quarters!! sell dammit!

yah. i tots used to be friends with them. but now i hang with professors HLA Hart and Goodhart and Julius Stone who spent soo much time bagging the high court they eventually had to start citing him in their judgements. ps if anyone can get me into Yale hit me back ok? i want a tshirt and i wanna live somewhere quiet for a while. i think new haven will work out nicely. if it matters, i do actually wear bow ties all the time, so that should satisfy the admissions board. not sure if they look at anything else, but the bow tie component is definitely taken care of.


*___*___*

dear GF thanks for editing my tax-law paper. it was super helpful hints. i didn't realize i abused the comma soo much. but i decided to keep "a carbon tax is far simpler. it doesn't come with surround sound". i want her to read that be all like ghasp! well i ne-ever. i'm actually tempted to draw a little :) on the page next to that so she knows i'm going in for the kill.


*___*___*

is this too much apennyfortheoldguy all at once of a sudden? ok ok ok. fine. i'll go enjoy my come-down elsewhere if you think you're too kool for me.

peace out.

q