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January 30, 2003
The French Love You.
Go to! it’s time for some serious laughing – been crawled across each one for the foto corps; the bathos got measured & sold by atomic weight… no flop-dicking around: kill the laff riot. Delphic mountains delivered daily the satiated on annoyance -vs.- boredom –“mystifying WASP legend”— paid in kind, paid in chuckles you can be so funny but, that’s not what we’re looking for at this time.
WHITE CASTLE LETTER
December 23, 2002 White Castle System, Inc. Recipe Contest 555 W. Goodale St. Columbus OH 43215 Dear Sirs, Here is my recipe submission for the contest. Hope you like it! --White Castle Martinis-- These are a huge hit at my college fraternity. The great thing is, they're so simple to make! And they get you plastered. Ingredients: (1) sack of White Castles (1) bottle of Gordon's vodka (or gin) (1) jar of cocktail olives Place the White Castles in a large bowl. Pour the vodka over the burgers, working the alcohol in manually with your hands. Place in freezer for one hour. Place White Castles on serving tray and use toothpicks to affix olives to them. "Bottoms up!" Best wishes and Happy Holidays, J. Niimi
January 29, 2003
Id wants its own digs – id wants idsville – id can’t leave its jail cell any more than I can leave mine so it brings its prospective environs to me in the poverty of dreams – eyes some property, dark real estate projected – I gingerly bring this memory up off the cot and over to the desk, knowing that merely looking at it for too long is enough to dissolve it – id will kill it as the tainted kitten is slain by its mother –
it’s no fun to write when the ink becomes thus – a garbage tableau limned in words, dusted in the liquid rustlight of the wild westside, at perigee – vacant lot coming, annihilated by night, kickerbox thumpings shock the july air like dread – stifled wreckage of an el train went by – umber glass shards cloaked in the weeds, they shimmer like dew – cursed giacometti figures on a plane – shadows yawn – repose is sold here, I know it – pink from a colorized movie – the night air sweats idful possibilities, drownings, all the transgressions conceived – leaving my darkness done in real estate, incarnadined – grows quietly under the black years like mold, with dim age-friendly luster – I partly dwell there –
CRUISE SHIP COMMERCIAL
The song "Settling," by the group Spokane, begins to play. Shot of window cleaner, pulling half a bent cigarette butt from behind ear and putting in mouth. Tries to light it but wind keeps blowing paper matches out, one after another. Revealed to be dangling from rope against side of huge oceanliner, nearly color of water below from heavy blue filter lens. Morose seagull pecks absently at shuffleboard puck on abandoned ship deck. Collapsed tourism economy combined w/ continued inexplicable disease outbreaks on luxury liners causes pleasure cruise industry to bottom out. Ships depart at 15% capacity, scattered with Gatsbyesque new romantics longing for departed middle class, like morose seagulls. Travel advertising takes on former perfume commercial aesthetics and attracts seafarers in cobalt monochrome wardrobes, like they were born in the camera's cheap winsome effect. A lot of wool. With its aesthetics having been appropriated, perfume commercials now steal from former car insurance ads. Lots of guys with greasepaint mustaches and plastic joke cigars chasing superhero chickens around the insides of woodpaneled trailers. A weird new tragic aroma. Inside the ship's bingo parlor a guy who looks like Harry Dean Stanton but skinnier and less healthy is sipping a Cosmopolitan, the only object not in blue filter. A young couple cleans up and bounces past him with a newly-won boombox, in excruciatingly slow motion. Harry throws the Cosmo at the young couple. "You stole this from Raymond Carver!" he stammers. BINGO, a cheeky female voice whispers offscreen. The room darkens as the ship slides into the shadow of a glacier. The crew is all dismissed. Fade out. Next ad is for a cologne called Genius.
January 13, 2003
KIERKEGAARD AND BLACK SABBATH
My essay "The Tonic for a Weary Soul: The Aesthetic Sphere of the Hook" appears in the new issue of the Seattle-based Matte Magazine (No.3, Fall/Winter 2002-03).
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