Guns Don't Kill People, Overpopulation Does

FRIENDSHIPMATES,

Hi. How are ya. I'm fine.

I know you're wondering why I've taken on yet a new blogger name--Valentine Tremens--and I'll tell you:

It's for purposes of anonymity. As I become a more serious writer, and a more mature* citizen of this nation exercising my 1st amendment rights, and more infused with the paranoia of living in an electronic age, I don't want my personal-ranty-ravey-silly-place to be the first thing that comes up when my name is searched. That's all.

*mature in years not attitude

Here is part II of my gun poem series

**********

ARMS & ARMS WITH LEGS

I knew the story from the song

She didn't like Mondays, she shot the whole day down

Boomtown Rats stole the summer of '79

Kicking disco in the balls til Reagan's 80s

Flashed into existence

Nobody really hated anything enough to shoot it 

Into TVs main artery

Everyone busy (sniff, sniff, swipe) making

Powder into gold

Kids were happy in the 80s!

Chopping up their hair and holding

Out their hands for daddy's trickle down allowance

Guns were in the house but they didn't come

To school

Clinton's 90s--what a happy time!

Every baby a miracle!

Every child a precious helmeted trophy snowflake!

Those cognitive enough to watch

Such stellar lives burst onto the scene

Gagged a little at the goo goo ga ga glory

Resistant to their incipient grunge

Baby on Board, please…

I'll be happy to put your baby on a board

One clean cervical stigma

And a whack at your skullful of hormonal glitter

Come as you are to my art installation

Then I grew up & all the babies on boards

Meant something new--

They'd gone back to their Empyrean starting gates

And I was there to care for their remains

Babies on metal trays

Too small to withstand the force of our machines

We embalmed with carefully aimed

Horse needles

In the news one day a gun went bang in Kentucky

Killing a pile of rascals too old to be babies on boards

Too young to be the centerpiece on

Our porcelain slabs

We sympathized with those in our profession

That Kentucky location

Got a terrible death call in 1997

Then it happened in Arkansas,

1998, and we sympathized

And then Columbine 1999

Columbine forever until 9/11

Then we forgot

Kentucky made room for Virginia, meanwhile

Amendment 2 was being stretched like canvas

To cover the long hypotenuse

Spanning the right-to-bear angle

Criminal backgrounds searched but not seized

Mental illness wouldn't fit inside the bill

No school system trained in clairvoyance

Though it was suggested as the only real solution

You cannot pull my arms from their inalienable sockets

You can however learn not to be shocked

When you're about to get shot

Draw your arm, thinking on the right side of your feet

Meanwhile,

Chicago erupted in deadly locks & pops

New venues plowed for random violence:

Malls 2008

Military base '09

TV studio '10

Political rally '11

The theater in '12

Then the supreme Hook

Embedded in the leviathan's jaw

The Hook that punctured our raw bare feet

Because we never saw it w/ our psychic scholastic elementary

Vision

A vengeance so unthawed

The frozen finger that fell on the trigger

And stuck there like a Connecticut tongue 

In winter's vomitorium

We never saw that day until it came

We pulled the sheets over their heads & ours

Bodies who had the right but no desire

To bear the third arm all good guys must grow

Right out of their sandy hearts

I am good w/ my gun and I shoot your bad arm

With my impeccable aim

And reputation

Where do I get my badge of honor

The certificate that states

Good Guy #808 saved the day?

St. Elliot the Master Manifesto Bro amended

His arsenal in '14

With cutlery and automatic transmission

But it was still his right to own the fire in his mind

And Charleston's burning hot '15 summer

Blue eyed visitor bridging gaps

With Bible verse hypotenuse and

Bang! and Pow! and rat-tat-tat-tat…

So, what about those good guys 

Protecting on duty and serving on camera?

Projecting & perverting

A bias cut through black fabric that bleeds

But doesn't fit the

Hypo-criteria

For tragedy's patterned genre?

1-27-16

***********

Thank you for reading this long piece. You won't regret it when I'm a famous poet. Err…whatever.

p.s. I just heard there is a moratorium on childbirth in Central American due to this new virus that causes babies to be born with tinier-than-normal heads.

I've always though a childbirth moratorium would be a wonderful way (possibly the ONLY humane way) to get the population of the planet down to a reasonable number of people. 

Because guns don't kill people, overpopulation does.

This Is An Octopus Diary, Not a Kraken Journal...

...or a Squid Manifesto.

FRIENDS,

Though the new year actually begins on Mar 21, I will conform to the bank's decree & wish you an all-caps HAPPY NEW YEAR right now!

And though I don't believe in new years that start in January, I do know that the end of December is when America goes underground to have its spiritual orgasm. And there's no better time to reset all your dials than after a spiritual orgasm, so that's what we all do.

We make new pacts with ourselves. We decide we're going to do better things, be better creatures not so beholden to habit. I have no problem with this aside from the obvious one-- we should be having spiritual orgasms far more often! Then we could decide to better ourselves more than once a year.

What have I resolved to do in this new year? 

1. Return to writing for editors rather than myself. Last year, writing got very loud and ugly. I stopped submitting work and tried to remember why I ever started writing in the first place. I couldn't remember. 

I realized that my years as a student, an apprentice, an audience are over. At my poetry firm, I am the coffee person, because I can't say whore, slave or blower w/out getting fired.

2. Forget more stuff. Because remembering stuff is for losers, apparently. Remembering is a lost art. Only forgetful people get far in life.

3. I can't remember what else I wanted to do this year. I guess that's a good start.

Pixel is God and music is an Aquarius

****************

One thing I usually do at this time is list the music I liked most from the previous year. Did I forget to do that last year? Yes, because I was still crying too much to make lists of music. 

So here is a list of my favorite music from the last TWO YEARS!! Maybe not newly released, but newly discovered by me:

1. ANALOG REBELLION = this guy Daniel Hunter was a MySpace phenomenon. Now he's an independent nontractor. Check out 'Full Frontal' and 'Ancient Electrons.'

2. COEUR de PIRATE = do you love beautiful pop songs sung sweetly, sickeningly in French? I thought so.

3. DAMAGED BUG = slightly experimental, slightly discordant, jangly bug wing of delight

4. DAMON ALBARN =  'Everyday Robots' was Albarn's 2014 release that really charmed me through my nervous shakedown.

5. DE-PHAZZ = they landed on my radar well past their heyday, but if they haven't landed on your radar yet let me just say "better late than never."

6. ELECTRIC PRESIDENT = do I like EP because they remind me of Analog Rebellion? Probably.

7. EXCUSES FOR SKIPPING = punky one minute, poppy the next, always enjoyable. Check out 'Tonic For Hysteria.'

8. GUTS CLUB = I can't describe it--you'll just have to listen for yourself (I'm sure it fits into some sub-sub-genre but I haven't memorized all of those yet!!)

9. HOP ALONG = Do you enjoy gritty, range-y, joyously pissed off girl singers? Me too.

10. MORNING HARVEY = remember a few years ago when I was obsessed with dreamy beach pop (how's that for a sub-genre?) Well now I'm kinda favoriting upbeat mod psyche-street rock like Morning Harvey!

11. PARQUET COURTS = the U.S. version of Morning Harvey (who are Australian)

12.  And speaking of Australia--new releases from COURTNEY BARNETT and TAME IMPALA last year were much appreciated

13. While here in America we heard from THE DEAD WEATHER, METRIC, and PHANTOGRAM much to my auditory pleasure.

*******

Okay friends…I didn't have much to say except "Happy New Year and here's a list of music" so I'm gonna go now.

You can rest assured that I will find things to write or draw about as the year chugs along. Patience, my darling owl-faces.

Photoshop a dick to this and call it art!!

Tentacle Porn: A Lengthy History of The Octopus Diary

FRIENDLINGS!

Happy week before Xmas. I hope your credit cards are all maxed out and the scent of pine has wiped out all traces of pumpkin spice around you!

I just wanted to stop by the Octopus Diary for a nice fireside chat. 2016 will mark the 10-year anniversary of my blogging habit. It has been a wonderful thing for me to have this forum/format in which to communicate and I have no plans to quit, though I would like to make some changes. Upgrade. Renovate. Reinvent.

Octopus Art from 2012

My very first blog was written in 2006 on the hushed aquamarine backdrop of MySpace. It was just an empty shout-out to a galaxy known as cyberspace and it didn't get much of a response. But I kept at it, and soon I had a small circle of bloggers I shared my thoughts with--mostly my take on politics and the social constructs that made me go "WTF??"  Oh, and my morbid fascination with America's Next Top Model!

It was all fun & games back then.

The Octopus Diary didn't get its name until 12-19-08 when I branched off from MySpace and onto Blogger, where you still find me today. I kept to my satirical politics and social commentary, but also added some personal elements, which everyone loved.

Then in 2010-2011, things got really personal. The blog became my therapist and basically I wrote what I now know to be my "Bro Manifesto." [Always ahead of the game] : )))

My manifesto was much more literary and creative than most manifestos I've read, but the spirit of it was there. My fragile male ego was lashing out of its feminine entrapments and making everyone else go "WTF??"

Ahhh, those were lonely times in the blogosphere. And unlike the other bros with manifestos, I actually had a grand epiphany that did not lead to mass murder, but rather to a place of growth & forgiveness.

Octopus Art from 2015

At the end of 2011, as a reward for your patience, I decided to branch out again and include artwork with all the monotonous text I fed you. I tried a Wordpress location for my new venture & made a valiant effort to BRAND myself & become a Blog Emperor!!  [remember how big "branding" was in 2011??]

I renamed The Octopus Diary "The Centipeep Show!" and burrowed deeper into the soft tissues of the internet than ever before. What I found were lots & lots of people doing the exact same thing and doing it way better than I was. 

I was more of a Sultan than an Emperor. But I was enjoying my delusions of grandeur and just kept at it.

It wasn't until 2013 that I asked myself WTF am I doing here? Is this even a thing anymore? Do I have anything to say? Does anyone care? Do I still feel the need to dump the contents of my head onto this phantom platform?

And the answer was No. And Yes. And no. And yes. And…well…I'm still here.

Art from The Centipeep Show 2011

2014-2015 gave me (and everyone else) lots of heavy shit to handle. Lots of new scary things to consider about ourselves and the world. It was hard for me to coordinate my senses into anything resembling communication. It was hard to know where to begin a sentence let alone string a bunch of sentences together into something that made sense.

So I made even more art & put it here between my words just in case my words were big unreadable clots of thought that had no meaning the way I'd arranged them.

Somehow I kept doing that until I felt a little better and could see the meaning in words again.

Now I have begun a new journey that would be very interesting to document. Much more tangible and visual than some of the abstract, esoteric journeys I've documented here before. I'm changing. Upgrading. Renovating myself. It's a little scary to think of sharing this new journey, but I probably will…

…and if I can't muster the courage to do that, well, there's always the state of our world to report in a scathing unsentimental fashion with all traces of humor removed because...

…NOTHING is funny anymore. Not politics. Not cats. Not even dicks are funny anymore.

Will we (I) ever laugh again??

Find out here…

in the OCTOPUS DIARY 2016. 

Art from the 1990s before anyone even knew what a blog was

Art from 2014 when shit got weird

Art from 2006 when I was drunk all the time

Art from 2013 when life was good

TARANTULA VACCINATION

FRIENDS,

I've been threatening to write something serious about mental illness/depression/anxiety for quite awhile now. This is a topic that everyone should have an opinion about, if not a firsthand account of.

I was a person who struggled pretty hard against depression & anger & gender dysphoria all my life. Sure that sucks, but the beauty I now see in it is that I was ABLE TO STRUGGLE AGAINST IT. I fought it on my own with a very determined nervous system, a heaping self-prescribed dosage of alcohol, and ART of all kinds.

On top of (or in spite of) all that, I found someone to be in love with and to share the dreams and disappointments life serves up in unscheduled increments. In other words, I was finally able to feel that thing called "happiness"--the thing I saw other people enjoying all around me for years. The thing my mom practically demanded of me but I could never deliver. Happiness.

I treasured my happiness, and I even took measures to guard it from the world by retreating more into the love & art and backing away from society's noise. 

I believed that as long as I was surrounded by art & love & quietude, the happiness would keep paying its dividends into my nervous depository. And it did for a long time.

Beautiful cherries

Then in 2014…something happened. I don't really know what. I won't even try to describe it, but something in my nervous system went haywire and no art, no love, no amount of positive thinking, no amount of delirious exercising or exorcising could make it go away.

And though I'd sworn off the mental health professionals many years ago (for good reason), things finally got critical enough that I surrendered to those very professionals. I probably surrendered to them in the nick of time too--I couldn't have gone another week without the medication I was given. I wouldn't be here now writing this enchanting & profound piece of bloggery.

[As unserious as that sounds, I am totally serious.]

But here's what I'm seeing & hearing all around me: more people than ever struggling with a degree of depression or anxiety that cannot be conquered in old familiar ways. 

We all struggle. Struggling is what we do most. But we're usually up to the task. We don't like it, but we put one foot in front of the other until we can have that drink, or call that friend, or gaze at that porn video rubbing our gooey crotches until they explode.

All that self-ministration is failing to deliver the needed respite from stress levels that can barely be graphed.

Alien ministrations

Here's another thing--I see men struggling more. More than women. More than I've ever seen men (admit to) struggling. 

I think mental health is something women may have a leg up on because they've historically been allowed to explore it. To be vulnerable, needy, or emotional. To seek help. I see women more able to handle stress in these times because they have done the hard work of evolving through the stigma of it.

I don't want to "genderify" mental illness too much. But in this age of the "internet confessional" I have feasted my eyes on lots of male vulnerability I didn't know was there. I've read your manifestos, bros.

And I feel your pain. I am a feminist who also champions men's rights. Or am I a "masculist" who champions women's rights? I'm not sure yet. But…I've slipped & slidden across the gender divide many times and I get that society places a lot of pressure on both genders to be a certain way. 

I can also see how these enforced, abstract gender roles can easily go from complementary to antagonistic. This is another thing I've seen flying around on the internet too much--lots of rancor in the binary. 

It makes a genderqueer like me very sad. But I'm also hopeful that this is just a big paroxysm of evolution. Women have fought hard to have their voices heard, to be granted the rights and the protections they've been granted. And I have been in that fight from the time I was a small child who was told that girls & women were some sort of "inferior other." 

Gender roles as presented to me when I first arrived on Earth

Now women are tough, bad ass bitches--though there is still much to fight for. 

I think we've reached a plateau where women will not be able to advance until men are able to fix what is wrong on their side of the binary scale. These sprees of violence perpetrated on large groups of people and often ending in suicide, this backlash against political correctness, the abuse of power in business and law enforcement, the fact that we've been at war for 15 years--

--these are all largely "men's issues." And they have grown to monstrous proportions. These things will not change unless men are allowed to let their inner momma's boys be heard. This may be quite annoying until we get used to it. Remember how women were called "shrill" when they spoke up about abuse & inequality? Well…men will probably be called "whiny" if they speak up about what they need…I have heard/seen the word "whiny" applied to men who speak up about…anything.

We don't like a whiny man in our society. Just like we don't like a shrill woman. Too bad. We need to whine & be shrill when the greater good is at stake. So…next time you hear a man whining---listen. Try to respond with something besides "Stop whining & man up."

In the 90s & 00s I remember the benevolent "male feminists" who fought alongside women in their riot to be heard. Sure they may've just been in it for the sex, but I think we've evolved past that insipid pay-off mentality, (haven't we??) I think it's time for women to "woman-up" and be "female masculists" or whatever we want to call it.

Fight for the rights of all of us to be equally tough/ equally vulnerable/equally paid/equally responsible for the human race. Fight for the right of all of us to be sane & healthy & at peace with ourselves so that we may be at peace with each other.

Well…that was my big important blog about mental health, as always viewed from my gendery microscope. All opposition in the world begins & ends with that most fundamental double standard of all…

********

AND NOW!!!! If your attention span is not spent like a $1.97 at Wal-mart…here is some stream of consciousness:

Excessive force from the spirit world. As opposed to a war in the flesh it is appropriate to bare all. To lay all your cards on the bathroom floor and wear your uniform in the shower. Unlike hand to hand combat there is only one mortal in the game---and you're it. In both types of war you must be on high alert, listening for bootsteps, crunching leaves, pindrops or IEDS. But spirits will show you pictures in your dreams, and you must follow their command. There will be no shouting sergeants or practice raids. Only a soggy pillow and the haunting sense of deja vu--you've done this before in broken frames. Now you have to do it in one take. 11-9-15

*****

Yesterday,

I was injected w/ tarantula venom. Those of you who think I always speak in code be gratified for this is code for something. And those of you who know the code--I accept your congratulations. Code is metaphor for code; metaphor is code for metaphor. But it's all imagery to me. And it's powerful & evocative & disruptive & clever & it's not quite as forgiving as political correctness, yet it's not as fascist as blowing hard just because you can afford to get sued by a globeful of people and not be eating from a dumpster.

Hooray for tarantula venom!

XO,

Today 12-8-15

********************

Cecil & Pixel

Bye, folks, bye! bye! bye!!! I'll see you next time in the Octopus Squishery

UNCONDITIONAL BLOG

Friends,

*PLEASE READ THIS BLOG IN SARAH SILVERMAN'S VOICE*

[I the undersigned agree to this term and condition] X______________________________

Well, friends, in about a week or so I will be going through puberty again. This may sound like one of my super-secretive ultra-witchy coded-backhanded attempts at surrealistic realism. But honestly, you can take it at face value. Don't read between the lines (in Silverman's dulcet-electric tones).

Here's another thing--I forgot to worry about polka dots. When I take the time to worry about every tiny thing that could possibly go wrong in any given situation, then usually nothing goes wrong. But it didn't even occur to me to worry about the dots. Now they are here, doing the polka on my flesh. Uh-oh. And it's too late to worry so I'll just have to deal…

Here's another thing: Thanksgiving is all about shopping and football. And gluttony. But for me Thanksgiving has always been a secure place from which to assess the entire year & decide what to be most thankful for.

I saw lots of thankful posts on Facebook yesterday & I loved seeing that even if I didn't comment or hit the 'like' button as many times as I wanted to. I think we really have shifted from being an ego-driven species to being a spirit-driven species in just a matter of years.

I like to say this shift started happening around 12-21-12. But it really started right after 9/11. It has just taken this long for enough of us to get it. And we couldn't have done it without Facebook (or MySpace. Don't forget about MySpace. MySpace is the Mary to Facebook's Jesus). 

And we couldn't have done it without making mistakes. Oh, I've made many mistakes in this life! But I've been watching you & you have made many mistakes too. But I don't feel as horrible about my (or your) mistakes as I once did.

It's all okay. And the millennials will do a much better job at facilitating evolution than any other generation. Once they turn 40, that is. They still have to go through their own generational puberty pangs.

So…yeah…thankful for Humanitor surging ahead in its evolution.

Another thing I'm thankful for is that 2015 was not 2014. 2014 was unspeakable. But I will never forget it. Never bury it deep in my anatomical graveyard. And I will indeed speak about it. Someday soon--

--because I've seen & heard a lot about anxiety & depression going off the charts recently. And I have my little 2 cent contribution to that conversation. But not today.

Today I want to enjoy how thankful I am for many things, not just the date on the calendar ( and in spite of these hideous polka dots!)

*********************************

During our move I found lots of old boxes of stuff. Including some Childhood Art!! Here we see a very old version of Vin & Juliet. In 1st grade I became obsessed with wanting to be Chinese. [This was well before the Michael Derrick Hudson scandal or the Rachel Dolezal fiasco] I was not only gender dysphoric, but racially distressed. I think my yearning to be Chinese had more to do with past life remembrances than any real understanding of race. But all of my artwork from 1st-2nd grade was Asian inspired.

NOW--HERE IS SOME SURREALISTIC REALISM TO SINK YOUR EYEBALLS INTO !

How do you make new friends? How do you recover from 40 years of grief that welled up overnight and spilled from the rotten core of your soul all at once? What is this boulder left sitting in my chest? Who do I call to haul it away? Surgeon? Saul? Jim Beam? I'll just sing through it--my boulder song. The rock song that'll finally make me a star. Just in time to save the world from Hard Sparkle Countrycore and Postgangsta Gratitude List Hiphop. How do you make new music? How do you know where to put the words you want to say? How do you know you've wandered to the ends of the internet? How do you ask your imagination for forgiveness? 10-30-15 

*****

Forced spontaneity is ripping at a fog east of the highway. It's tying a spider web at all four corners of my mind with the pair of hands I keep in my skull. It's pretending there's no spider in any of the silken strands. It's pulling teeth from that spider's phantom jawline. It's chewing on a rough idea that tastes like a cow pie in July. It's November with 80 percent humidity and moderate chop. It's 50 percent anxiety in the morning--down from 100 percent a year ago. [Yay] 11-4-15

*****

Even the Cat In The Hat had to be Asian

Aggravated apiary blessed by cathartic calm. Deafening didact eliminated early from fatal germ galaxy. How hexagonal it is juggling javelins, kidnapping killjoys, letting loose…My maudlin neighbor narrates octopus obituaries. Purple pansies quell quarrels, relieve riots. Savage songbirds tag trenchant uvulas under 'vintage vomitoria.' Why would xylophones Xray young yaks, zone zodiacs? 11-19-15

*****

Pixel rolls on the patio, belly up, purr-meowing in permutations of sunlight that penetrate this thick rainy day. Eloise is about to step outside when an airplane growls by. She waits with her ears on crooked then joins us shyly.

Pixel eats a spider right out of its web. Eloise sits, gopher-like, attentive, her big pink schnozz enraptured by something I can't see.

There is lots of debris on the porch. I think it is mud and leaves from the rain. It is really a bunch of dead frogs.

As I sweep I realize some of the frogs are still alive, and it becomes a rescue mission. Pixel gets a frog before I can save it and a leg goes missing. Eloise, more enchanted by the birds & squirrels beyond the screen, is missing out on easy meat. She chatters back at a squirrel. It tells its friends about the dangerous psychopath in their midst.

I go get my computer and some coffee. I sit at the picnic table and type something about my cats.  11-22-15

*****

A fun drawing from 3rd grade

Where is the edge of this existence and how do I get there? Or, rather, how many times have I been there? I think the edge isn't so much a distal drop-off as it is these bodies we live in. When you live in a body that doesn't match your soul, you live in mid-fall. A dead leaf who will get raked into a mass grave if it ever touches land. You fall a hundred times a day as people call you "miss, miss, ma'am." You refrain from shooting anyone but you hiss and spit like a cobra-panther. You bury yourself in a grave of flannel 2 sizes too large and you fill your head with another world. In your head-world, there is no country music. There is no hormonal divide. And there are no people, only angels sharing space like pie. Every living moment an act of divine street performance. 11-27-15

*****

And here's the very first incarnation of the Flowers in the Attic drawing. Probably 11 or 12 years old, but the drawing skill looks about Kindergarten. I added a 5th person to the line-up, because I always saw myself as the 5th Flowers in the Attic sibling. I'm the boy on the right.

The most recent Flowers in the Attic sketch. From 2011 Brooklyn Art Library Sketchbook Project.

See you soon Octopus Diary-snoopers. I hope you enjoyed the childhood art gallery too!

STREAM OF SOLEMNITY

Friends,

I hope you are alive and well.

Today I was going to launch the Serious Topics series with a ramble about the stigma of mental illness. But some events have taken place in the world and I feel like I should say something about that:

Terror, people. If it takes a well-coordinated, large-scale attack on a city that is the designated hub of culture and romance on this planet to get people to understand that ISIS is everywhere, then I won't be upset about the "selective outrage" that follows.

I understand that most people in the U.S. don't dream of honeymooning in Beirut or have close friends spending Thanksgiving in Kenya. Beirut & Kenya are not hubs of romance, and that's okay. But ISIS did strike those places too and it didn't quite make the headline news here. And if it had made the news, would we have cared so much? No, we wouldn't.

In the last week though, ISIS has been very busy and very successful in doing harm in many places, including (now confirmed) planting a bomb on a Russian airplane, killing 200+ people.

And ISIS is here too, people. In our country. Right now. Masterminding the next big strike on their Playstation grapevine. 

Anti-Culture Conversations w/ Vin and Juliet. Realistic panel.

What can we do? Well, for one, we can all get on our Playstations and become citizen spies. We can all stay home which is a good idea but would contribute to the death of society {Meatspace!). We could censor ourselves and never talk about what a douch-y prophet of god Muhammed is, but then the terrorists would be winning. We could outlaw all religions, but that wouldn't stop people from doing things in accordance with what they believe.

Or how about this--We could live in a strict police state where everyone was heavily surveilled and every enclosed space was patrolled by "good guys with guns" and metal detectors and bomb-sniffing pooches.

If we want to know how to live in a world where radical terrorism could overshadow the "lone gunman who never got laid" at any moment, we could ask an Israeli or Palestinian how they live in such a world.

The fact is--there are too many people in the world. Until we understand how to populate the earth in direct proportion to its resources, there will always be an overflow of humans into the margins where anger, poverty and desperation live. Hoplology 101.

Cartoony panel. With visible brain activity.

********

There. Sorry to get preachy about shit that has yet to affect me personally. But I truly do see the potential for it to affect everyone (American, Canadian, Venezuelan, Australian, East European, British, South African, et al…) Global threat. Hoverboards be damned. Jet packs too.

Surreal panel. Enjoy.

NOW HERE'S SOME CREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS (CONDENSED):

I can't decide which I fear most--the world or my mind. Lately I'm caught in this full-size Chinese handcuff. A painful isolation drives me outside to see other faces, hear other voices. But what I see & hear is humanity's fading beauty, skins with customized lesions & shrapnel caught in the throat. Monstrous Humanitor, cackling inhumane at itself in the mirror. Robbing itself at grin-point. Selfishness ringing in operatic mezzo-soprano sing-song conspiracy notes. A cordial baritone dictatorship linking the food-chain to the fence. I run barefoot and destitute back to my cavernous skull, where once I found whatever I wished to be true. Where fantasy now meets solitary confinement.  10-14-15

Don't dilly dally with that ball and chain. Step right up to the plate glass sunrise. Answer your phone on the first prophetic ringtone to take down dictation to a crumbling dictatorship in an Arabian Springtime for Hitler--what a jerk! Get to work on your new screenplay about the guy with the car, and the gun, and the ego. Be sure to find time to masturbate to your coworker's wardrobe malfunction, whatever it may be--running hose, missed tampon, open zip bar code for I'm in the closet but get and come me in the bored room. 10-23-15 

Morning grey as a twisted spine. That's more like it, November. I've slumped in this waiting room crushed by eye contact and body odor so long I can't remember how many times I sang Happy Birthday into debt. Copy right, copy left. Over the shoulders of dying doctors shake the salt. Put some pepper in your step and in your diet to live forever. I only have the appetite for waiting. A trapezoid once so triangular. A mountain moved by humans becomes a plateau. A tablet crushed and snorted becomes your wild imagination. 11-10-15

**************

Good-bye Friends. I send you love through my computer screen, because that's the best I can do right now.

Another Layer of Words & Images Polluting Your Spotless Screen

FRIENDS,

How are you? I hope you are well. I can honestly say I feel better than I have in a year & a half. For this I am unspeakably grateful…not just forced-gratitude-list-grateful, but really, really, really fucking off the charts thankful.

If this life were a gratitude contest, I would be winning.

And I say that with more humility than you can read into a simple blog post.

[it's okay, you can laugh here]

I know I said that when we were settled in the new house I would be talking about some more serious issues here in The Octopus Documentary. And I'm working toward that. There is a lot of serious shit to address in the world. But I'm not ready to be serious yet. 

So please enjoy this backlog of Streamed Consciousness until I'm ready:

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And so I leave behind another haunted house. Who knew I had another family of ghosts tucked between heart and lungs. Fat, ugly emotions lodged like unchoice meats in that critical cavity. Intangible residents, still getting mail from Victoria's Secret and huckster dental associates. No resistance from elastic ribcage. Breathing became a worn out pair of underpants. All egos are dead. Yours too. Columbus is coming to get us again, only his ships will fly in from above: The Nina, the Pinta and the Droning Maria. 10-12-15

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Like settlers we crossed the highway in our covered wagon/SUV hybrid. Left behind the genteel plains of Southern Pine, the numerology of eleven-eleven. Just as we left the wild, wild ghetto three years prior. The only soldiers we left behind were figurines. We foraged for mattresses and food. Our cats fought over the empty space by our sides, then shrunk to their haunches in the screened wilderness. We met other settlers who claimed our happiness would be arriving shortly. We explored on foot, found some old bones and a fresh corpse hanging. The turquoise walls closed around me like a storm of calm cement. 10-20-15

Lower Life-forms play Jeopardy!

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I used to deal in words/I used to heal in images/Now there is layer of words & images polluting the skies of the minds and oceans of eyes/Now I need to find a bigger band-aid, a quieter rave/Now i sing my swollen heart back down to size/Now I stay home every night trying to solve discordant equations with my tiny dried up peanut brain/Now I will consult the Emotional Thesaurus whenever the dictionary won't do/Now I will fail as a human because my senses got the memo 10-24-15 

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Feeling numb in sensational places. I know each zip code boasts a bottle of top-shelf loneliness shaped just like me. Our own special brand--shared just out of reach. On the label--a sand spur, a bloodstain, a centipede. A silver border keeps it all in check like an electric fence. Throat of glass, tightened not by fire but fear. Belly vaulted against emotional extremes--joy is the enemy. Who could fall from that plane once more? Only a robot who doesn't care, whose belly doesn't tighten right before the climax. Only an auto-pilot's empty cockpit. 10-26-15 

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Warm on the porch…where are you November? I watch the windfall like wind made of anvils…the humidity a punching bag I can't hit hard enough…the sun a loud outgoing neighbor coughing in my face then asking me to help move potted plants across the yard. Useless work…concentration camp monotony…stone piles trading spaces then going home again to broth and rat turds…where is my October…the month I masturbated my mind back to happiness…how can I be happy when the weather won't cooperate? 11-2-15

It's a Potty!

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So…."Molly" is just the new name for Xtasy? I thought Molly was a whole new drug tweaked by the underground chemists for a new generation of tweakers. But it's pretty much the same chemical compound as Xtasy--the rave drug of my humble X-generation. If you know me at all, you know I dream of the invention of a new drug that solves all the problems of Humanitor. It would have to be a psychoactive happiness-maker as well as a pain-remover. It would have all the good properties of Xtasy, alcohol, marijuana and cocaine without being addictive or hangover-inducing. And let's just say it would cure cancer too! Oh, what a world we would live in if someone--anyone!--could concoct, finance, market, package & distribute such a product! When there is a presidential candidate whose main mission is to do this--why, then I will be so so INTERESTED in politics. Until then I will dream of an Ayahuasca adventure in Peru & continue to regard politics with satirical ennui. GOOD DAY. 11-5-15

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Whew, that was a long stream! I promise to keep up in the future so I don't burden you like that again.

Enjoy everything you can…

Love-Vin