Of Poems

Here's a poem I wrote.

Candles
-----
I light my candles
and nobody touches me.
I am thus privileged.

Of Persona

I had to write a poem in the voice of a historical figure. Naturally, I chose H.P. Lovecraft. I wanted to give it some richness and modern relevance by working in some reference to the Rothschilds and their tentacular management of world banking, but couldn't do so without using imagery that was more Christian and European than Lovecraftian. We'll see what we can do in a second draft.


The Dreams of Lovecraft
-----
I have been inflicted
with a succession
of frightful dreams,
most details of
which blessedly escape me
but whose closing haunts
me yet.

My first sensation was
a brazen sky,
molten and roiling,
and under this untenable thing
did I first see
the countenance of unreason.

Rejection Register, Part the Second

Of Americans

This has been a very trying twenty-four hours.

I made the mistake of purchasing Twilight of the Assholes by Tim Kreider at the Emerald City Comic-Con yesterday. Like most of my best literary finds (The Myrkin Papers, I Was Told There'd Be Cake, et al.), I picked it up based mostly on the strength of its title. The accuracy and truth of the obese hag replacing Lady Liberty on the cover merely sealed the deal. This is a theme that would repeat itself throughout the book; Kreider has an uncanny knack for drawing the ugliest parts of this country.

It represents, essentially, the concerted efforts of a thinking person to keep himself from going completely batshit insane during a time when his country has already lost that fight. And I do mean his country, because it is clear that, despite all the vitriol he flings on the idiot public and our elected officials, he has a deep respect for the ideals that this place ostensibly stands for. In one essay, one downright harrowing essay, he asks what happened to the country that he grew up in. Typically when people ask this, they are wondering why it is that Kids These Days wear their pants so gad dang low, or why Them Faggits are suddenly allowed to touch each other in public. When Kreider asks, he wants to know how we went from a country where an anti-war comedy was the most beloved program on television to a country where people routinely suggest that 150,000 confirmed Iraqi civilian deaths are acceptable losses in the War on Terror.

It is a salient question.

The Rejection Register

Of Labor

My twelve-page research paper for English 102.  The longest thing I've written to date.  It turned out alright, I think, if you can make yourself care about the source material. I could easily write an entire paper just on the Pinkertons, but I'll save that idea for another assignment.

-----
Triumph and Failure: the Dichotomy of Labor in the East and West, 1870-1920


The mechanization of industry in the United States was a necessary step in the country's history. It allowed for us to achieve the economic dominance that has served our country so well, while also allowing us to avoid the overt belligerence that eventually proved to be the downfall of the British Empire. However, it was not without its costs: it exacerbated the already-inflamed labor disputes that had been brewing since the turn of the 19th century. It wasn't until the 1870s, however, that the labor disputes became routinely violent, as “the workers rose to protest violently against what they considered to be their ruthless exploitation by employers” (Dulles 108). For the next fifty years, the country was swept up in a class struggle that affected every worker from coast to coast, from factory worker to logger to coal miner and everyone in between. The 1920s were an era of relative calm, as a series of victories by the employers of the country had demoralized and weakened the unions, and the first great wave of American consumerism temporarily obfuscated the plight of the common laborer (Dulles 232-3). While the labor disputes from 1870 to 1920 in both the East and the West contributed to the eventual adoption of fair labor policies, the disputes in the West were fundamentally less successful than those in the East, due to more government intervention and stronger negative public opinion.

Of Food and Memetics

I helped at an event hosted by EdCC. It was called "A Taste of Sustainability" and focused on raising awareness of green living in general and sustainable food in particular. The work I did consisted of helping with decorations (balloons) and standing at a booth to answer questions about a local organic grocer (PCC), which, for the record, I had never heard of before that day. If this seems strange to you, rest assured you are not alone: it was uncomfortable.




As soon as I was informed of what I was doing, I set to reading all of the literature at my disposal as quickly and thoroughly as possible. This helped; I could now tell people what bulgur was. "Think if rice and couscous got together and had a baby," I prepared to say to anyone who asked (no-one did. Alas.).