Posts
So. Here's some squid. They know not wtf they're in for (or I wonder if they do, and they bob in desperation... That would make me sad).
Travel
Shock isn't sudden. Not this kind, anyway. This kind slithers in, slips from periphery to focus, into the flesh of the place. It's an orchestra tilting into alignment around a single pure Clarinet's A, the moment when the blur of motes form the words on the highway sign: Chicago O'Hare Next Exit.
You get on the bus and swelter. The ceiling boasts Air Conditioning next to every pair of airplane-nozzeled fans, but you don't believe it. The bus isn't on yet, because the driver is busy feeding it luggage. So you drop your head back on the teal, swirl-patterned vinyl headrest and you dream of bathing in more than your own sweat. Then, eventually, the bus starts. The AC kicks on (not a lie!) and the air smells bookstore-stale. You fake conversations with the other travelers inbetween three minute naps.
It's little things at first-- how long the dotted white streetlines are, how the snap-together plastic barricades are blocky and crenelated, how the police officers flap white gloves at traffic and walk in unison. Then the larger things enter your field of vision: 25 exact replica apartment buildings (black steel balconies and sprayed on stucco exteriors). Brand names you don't recognize. How aggressively the bus ignores the lanes.
There are the obvious things of course-- the periodic refrain, "I can't believe we're in Korea!" from various voices all around; the sameness in hair color and height; and of course, the sudden onset of illiteracy.
When you arrive, you want nothing more than to fall asleep, but you can't. You can't because it's 8:50 am, and you have to get On Schedule. You're off, you lost a day, and your legs ache and your back spasms, but you're not On Schedule and you need to be On Schedule. So you stay up and take walks, slow and aimless. You work on getting money changed but for some inexplicable reason need your passport to do so. It's day 1, but you worry about being too insular.
But then again, you've written something for the fist time in months. So, you know, there is that.
You get on the bus and swelter. The ceiling boasts Air Conditioning next to every pair of airplane-nozzeled fans, but you don't believe it. The bus isn't on yet, because the driver is busy feeding it luggage. So you drop your head back on the teal, swirl-patterned vinyl headrest and you dream of bathing in more than your own sweat. Then, eventually, the bus starts. The AC kicks on (not a lie!) and the air smells bookstore-stale. You fake conversations with the other travelers inbetween three minute naps.
It's little things at first-- how long the dotted white streetlines are, how the snap-together plastic barricades are blocky and crenelated, how the police officers flap white gloves at traffic and walk in unison. Then the larger things enter your field of vision: 25 exact replica apartment buildings (black steel balconies and sprayed on stucco exteriors). Brand names you don't recognize. How aggressively the bus ignores the lanes.
There are the obvious things of course-- the periodic refrain, "I can't believe we're in Korea!" from various voices all around; the sameness in hair color and height; and of course, the sudden onset of illiteracy.
When you arrive, you want nothing more than to fall asleep, but you can't. You can't because it's 8:50 am, and you have to get On Schedule. You're off, you lost a day, and your legs ache and your back spasms, but you're not On Schedule and you need to be On Schedule. So you stay up and take walks, slow and aimless. You work on getting money changed but for some inexplicable reason need your passport to do so. It's day 1, but you worry about being too insular.
But then again, you've written something for the fist time in months. So, you know, there is that.
At the Fair:
There’s people necking in the poolhouse. I imagine they stayed behind to count up the coins and ones from todays entries and hotdogs. They pretend to hate each other just a little too much, so everyone knows. They think they’re being clever, but everyone knows.
The pool is located on a vast hill of gravel. I try to imagine the gravel being covered in grass and trees; when it rains, the water runs through the grass in little rivers instead of forming the dust blisters it does now.
Inside the pool house, the couple doesn’t have sex, just the clicks of saliva and the nostrils of excited breath to tell each other how they feel.
The fair smells of sweat and manure and cherry flavoring. It’s an honest scent-- that is to say, it’s a smell made with no thought towards it whatsoever. It’s a smell that rings of activities rather than intents-- kid wants to ride a pony, so the fair smells of manure; there's oil on the food and in the machines, probably from different sources; it’s summer and there’s people, and that equals sweat.
The noise is maddening if you don’t know how to listen to it. People who grow up in cities do it automatically. For people in a Smalltown, USA, it takes focus and dedication. There’s bells and buzzers and screams and music. There’s machinery thrumming and pony hoof beats. Cars in the distance, conversations up close, and above it all, the grinding of cicadas. But then, see, I’m already doing it. Taking the Big Sound and slicing it into its parts, sense for the senses. You can’t write it on a page, it‘s too big. It’s the oppression and the exhilaration of having no control over your environment whatsoever. It’s sound waves you feel, reverberations that hit you in your eyejelly and throat. It can’t be written, and can‘t be read; I don’t even know why I tried.
There’s lights and movement and hairdos-- oh! The hairdos! (Buzzcuts and bobs and mullets, oh my!) The fair has two ferris wheels; the couple one and the lunatic one. Couples take the huge tall one, the one that puts out 70% of the fair’s light pollution. It towers above the other rides, high above the crest of the fair’s hill, and moves at a crawl. It’s like sitting in an Applebee’s booth that spins over the town.
The lunatic one is different. It has cages-- roll cages designed to withstand being dropped from it’s crest (not sure why, falling from that height would turn ribcage to chunky salsa anyways). There’s motors and pistons all over its exterior, trying to convince everyone that’s how it moves, but I talked to the carney who runs it for a bit, so I know better. In reality, there’s a huge underground hamster wheel that they put all the fair’s methheads on. “To load the Paying Customers,” he says, Paying Customers is like some zombie mantra to these people, passed down from corporate, “to load Paying Customers, we let the big hunk of meth drop from the ceiling and let them salivate all over it to soften it enough to scrape bits off with their teeth. Then when the Paying Customers are all settled in, we pull the meth up and off they go.” This makes sense to me. Fair week is the week all the methheads are conspicuously absent from the QuickShop.
The pool is located on a vast hill of gravel. I try to imagine the gravel being covered in grass and trees; when it rains, the water runs through the grass in little rivers instead of forming the dust blisters it does now.
Inside the pool house, the couple doesn’t have sex, just the clicks of saliva and the nostrils of excited breath to tell each other how they feel.
The fair smells of sweat and manure and cherry flavoring. It’s an honest scent-- that is to say, it’s a smell made with no thought towards it whatsoever. It’s a smell that rings of activities rather than intents-- kid wants to ride a pony, so the fair smells of manure; there's oil on the food and in the machines, probably from different sources; it’s summer and there’s people, and that equals sweat.
The noise is maddening if you don’t know how to listen to it. People who grow up in cities do it automatically. For people in a Smalltown, USA, it takes focus and dedication. There’s bells and buzzers and screams and music. There’s machinery thrumming and pony hoof beats. Cars in the distance, conversations up close, and above it all, the grinding of cicadas. But then, see, I’m already doing it. Taking the Big Sound and slicing it into its parts, sense for the senses. You can’t write it on a page, it‘s too big. It’s the oppression and the exhilaration of having no control over your environment whatsoever. It’s sound waves you feel, reverberations that hit you in your eyejelly and throat. It can’t be written, and can‘t be read; I don’t even know why I tried.
There’s lights and movement and hairdos-- oh! The hairdos! (Buzzcuts and bobs and mullets, oh my!) The fair has two ferris wheels; the couple one and the lunatic one. Couples take the huge tall one, the one that puts out 70% of the fair’s light pollution. It towers above the other rides, high above the crest of the fair’s hill, and moves at a crawl. It’s like sitting in an Applebee’s booth that spins over the town.
The lunatic one is different. It has cages-- roll cages designed to withstand being dropped from it’s crest (not sure why, falling from that height would turn ribcage to chunky salsa anyways). There’s motors and pistons all over its exterior, trying to convince everyone that’s how it moves, but I talked to the carney who runs it for a bit, so I know better. In reality, there’s a huge underground hamster wheel that they put all the fair’s methheads on. “To load the Paying Customers,” he says, Paying Customers is like some zombie mantra to these people, passed down from corporate, “to load Paying Customers, we let the big hunk of meth drop from the ceiling and let them salivate all over it to soften it enough to scrape bits off with their teeth. Then when the Paying Customers are all settled in, we pull the meth up and off they go.” This makes sense to me. Fair week is the week all the methheads are conspicuously absent from the QuickShop.
Dear World Governments,
Do you remember the economic crash? Yes. The one we're still in.
Okay, good. Now. Do you remember the one reason for it, that was like "CEOs and other corporate execs. started doing what was in their best interests and not what was in the best interest of the country"? And you remember how that was such an (apparently) outlandish and novel idea, that no one had thought to make laws protecting company shareholders from things like that?
Do you remember that?
Guess what: THAT'S THE SAME FUCKING THING KHAMENEI AND AHMADINEJAD ARE DOING NOW.
See how they're alienating their entire population? And see how they don't seem to give a shit, because they're chasing after the shiny ball of power? The EU is looking at imposing sanctions, visa restrictions, and witholding ambassadors (http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL366850620090703?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews), and Obama finds the whole human rights violations "deplorable", but you know who doesn't care? Khamenei and Ahmadinejad.
So they can't leave their country anymore: I don't see them crying about it. They're selfish old men and will be dying soon (not soon enough). They don't care about the long-term repercussions of their actions on the Iranian people (apparently, they don't care about the short-term ones either).
EU, do your worst. No trade, no ambassadors, no visas. Obama, be as politically savvy and tactful, or as strong-arm and hardline moral as you want. You'll only affect the people beneath them; not the two dudes with all the money and all the power. And they have proven, they don't give a goddamn what anybody thinks, says, or does.
Okay, good. Now. Do you remember the one reason for it, that was like "CEOs and other corporate execs. started doing what was in their best interests and not what was in the best interest of the country"? And you remember how that was such an (apparently) outlandish and novel idea, that no one had thought to make laws protecting company shareholders from things like that?
Do you remember that?
Guess what: THAT'S THE SAME FUCKING THING KHAMENEI AND AHMADINEJAD ARE DOING NOW.
See how they're alienating their entire population? And see how they don't seem to give a shit, because they're chasing after the shiny ball of power? The EU is looking at imposing sanctions, visa restrictions, and witholding ambassadors (http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL366850620090703?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews), and Obama finds the whole human rights violations "deplorable", but you know who doesn't care? Khamenei and Ahmadinejad.
So they can't leave their country anymore: I don't see them crying about it. They're selfish old men and will be dying soon (not soon enough). They don't care about the long-term repercussions of their actions on the Iranian people (apparently, they don't care about the short-term ones either).
EU, do your worst. No trade, no ambassadors, no visas. Obama, be as politically savvy and tactful, or as strong-arm and hardline moral as you want. You'll only affect the people beneath them; not the two dudes with all the money and all the power. And they have proven, they don't give a goddamn what anybody thinks, says, or does.
Hiya folks,
My Peoplewatch Blogject's been on hiatus recently, mainly cuz 1) I wanted to spend as much time as possible with this one cool girl I know, and 2) I was in Ames livin with her and her folks.
I'll resume the blogject tomorrow, perhaps with a few changes to the format as it evolves.
-Christian
My Peoplewatch Blogject's been on hiatus recently, mainly cuz 1) I wanted to spend as much time as possible with this one cool girl I know, and 2) I was in Ames livin with her and her folks.
I'll resume the blogject tomorrow, perhaps with a few changes to the format as it evolves.
-Christian
