Shorter, Faster, Louder

homg I hate this final paper. My mood is like that bartender in Boondock Saints who keeps yelling, “Fuck! ASS!” at random.

I was talking to my friend Jesse Ponkamo a while ago - he lives and attends school in Madison, WI - and I was reminded of the totally awesome band GORILLA BISCUITS (http://www.myspace.com/gorillabiscuits). They were a straight-edge (yeah!) 80s posi-core band from NYC that recently reunited to play a couple shows at CBGB’s before it closed down; their most famous album was called START TODAY - the message obviously being to, well, start today on making your life what you want it to be. I haven’t listened to them in forever, since the beginning of my senior year in high school maybe, but the message itself is an important one, especially to college students who (it seems to me) often lose sight of the rest of their lives by immersing themselves int the preparations for it.

Yesterday you were on my back just to
get my time. I guess it’s not as precious
as it seems. Because I found the time for
hangin out and talkin on the phone. What
should I expect, now that my time is free
and you’re nowhere to be found.
Next time I’ll try, for the first time in my
life. It won’t pass me by. Procrastinate it
can wait, I put it off.
LET’S START TODAY
My room’s a mess and I can’t get
dressed. I gotta be out by eight o’clock.
Deep inside I know the answer. Well
there’s no time like the present and I’d
like to hang out but who doesn’t. I’ve
made enough mistakes for this lifetime.
Now I’m here to make amends.
Next time I’ll try, for the first time in my
life. It won’t pass me by. Procrastinate it
can wait, I put it off.
START! STOP!

On a similar note, CBGB’s has recently been shut down, as some of you may have heard, to be replaced by a John Varvatos store. Frankly I think this is bullshit, and to all the people who don’t weep tears of blood at this, you can go suck a fuck…punk rock, REAL punk rock, was never about fashion, and for some rich fuck to sweep in and promise to keep the club the way it was - in order, of course, to sell more shitty pretentious hipster clothes - is like shitting all over Hilly Krystal’s face in absentia. So fuck you, John Varvatos, I hope you die.

Listening // Radiohead - In Rainbows // Brad Mehldau Trio - Live

First off, plus thirty punk points for the book sale downtown this weekend. I have been buying books like crazy the last week for this summer job I have (camp counselor…aw yeah) - so far my reading list/books bought recently list includes:

On the list: the Bhagavadgita; Thoreau’s Walden; Fouceault’s Discipline & Punish; the Tibetan Book of The Dead; Bill Bradley’s The New American Story; Kerouac’s Big Sur; Camus’ The Stranger; Wendell Berry’s Collected Poems; Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing…; Guy Debord’s Society Of The Spectacle; Allen Ginsberg’s Howl; Burroughs’ Naked Lunch; Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind; Orson Scott Card’s Enchantment; Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises; Joyce’s The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; and Salinger’s Nine Stories.

Recently bought: Hesse - Siddhartha, Salinger - Catcher In The Rye, Suzuki’s Zen Is Right Here, Rilke - Letters To A Young Poet, Lenin - The Tasks Of The Youth Leagues, Twain - Notorious Jumpin Frog of Calaveras County and Other Stories, Updike - Witches Of Eastwick, Pigeon Feathers, and Problems, Hemingway - The Sun Also Rises and A Moveable Feast, Asimov - Second Foundation, Kesey - One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Whitman’s Song Of Myself, Camus - The Stranger, Kerouac - Doctor Sax and Scattered Poems…AND, Thoreau - Walden/Civil Disobedience.

This has been an exercise in egotism, I suppose, but it’s been on my mind a lot, so…screw off, I guess. Anyway, let me know what you’re reading, or if you’ve got suggestions.

listening - Atmosphere / Live on NPR

OH MY GOD I HAVE NOTHING IMPORTANT TO SAY!

Go buy bread and books on the town green Saturdays.

Drink coffee at the Black Sheep and then throw up in the lawn.

wooo

listening: Buddy Wakefield - Run On Anything

I am going to try and transcribe this from my journal from two weeks ago. To set the scene, imagine me on a hot train through the woods of New England down to NYC, reading John Steinbeck’s “Travels With Charley Across America,” preparing to see Robert Glasper the next night.

“I’m just passing through a trailer park…Steinbeck would have spit in the dirt. There is a van half submerged in a swamp, completely rusted out.

I wonder about constructing all these details of life into a narrative. We want to draw morals and conclusions from everything, even from the simplest observations; we try to weave everythign together into one big, summarizable, comprehendable sotry - we cram it into a frame too small. Life isn’t meant to be understood, it’s meant to be lived. There is no absolute meaning to spring or moral to junkyards (passing one now) - they just are, they just are their own beauty, and they do not require our comprehension.

Life does not ahve themes. Life is not a narrative. Meaning is read into life, not read out of it; there is no objective anything because we are all subjective. That’s what was incredible about On The Road: there is no meaning of life except to live and be glad to be alive, to revel and BE. Meaning is a human thing; morals, narratives, these are not natural.

Maybe later I will organize this more, or at least just revise it into some sort of paragraph. I have to eat now.

Listening - Brad Mehldau: Places

Thank you Ryan Milov for introducing me to this charming new way to spend my time on the internet. Now instead of cruizin facebook for hours or watching youtube videos of monks being kicked in the balls repeatedly (http://youtube.com/watch?v=Yu_moia-oVI) I can just hang out here.

Since I don’t have anything interesting to write about, I am just going to plug the Amherst Students For A Democratic Society vigils goin’ on this weekend - Friday @ 7 on the Val Quad and Sunday @ 8 on the Amherst Town Green. Come along out, sing some songs and hold some candles with us, it’ll be grand.

Peace until next time,

max

Welcome to amhpub.amherst.edu. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!