An Existential Schizophrenic

She was a librarian
black hair pinned back
hands folded in lap.
She sat at the front desk
imparting her owl eyes and Gogh ears
on the domain that was hers
and only hers.
"DaVinci in Row Five," she declared,
"Machiavelli in Row Eleven."
"Kierkegaard, you ask? Row Zero."
Head held high,
she answered question after question,
solved mystery after mystery.
And what about you? a familiar voice inquired.
In which row do you belong?
It was a simple question, an easy one at that.
She opened her proud lips but no sound came out
Flustered, she snapped --
"There's no talking in the library."

Arrested Development

In an attempt to liberate his child from the all too well-known shackles of a high-expecting father (as well as a personal act of rebellion against his own father), Jason Bateman, a typical business-oriented man, watches in warm satisfaction as his son, a chubby-cheeked, pre-Juno Michael Cera, burns down the family-owned banana shack. The next morning, an orange-clad father of Bateman, imprisonated for defrauding investors and using his company as a bank for his family's personal expenses, looks his son straight in the eye and says with subdued tension, "There was $250,000 in cash lining the walls of the Banana Stand." You know, it's scenes like this that have me hooked on the TV show Arrested Development. There's something strangely heart-warming about an ecclectic family with wide-ranging personalities and incestual interests. Sibling competition, forbidden love, parental screw-ups...hello Wes Anderson? The narration/filming and quirky family dynamics remind me of The Royal Tenenbaums (one of my favorite films), and even the photo above is corroboratory of this statement. The absurd recurring jokes and foreshadowing techniques are sufficiently subtle to pass as just another one of Hurwitz's eccentricities, but noticeable enough to play catch-and-connect, which, I have to say, makes a non-frequent TV viewer like myself quite proud. Dixon introduced me to the show and I'm surprised I've never heard of it before, especially since the seriocomic humor is just my cup of tea. Usually, I'm not the most avid watcher of TV shows, but with the Velvet Underground playing in the background as the Bluth family members find themselves in the most realistically unrealistic situations, this might be an exception.

Hey Judas

When society becomes a burden,
look inside and find Tyler Durden
'cause you know he's the only one
who's brave enough to pull the gun

Forget the frail traitor -
the faceless narrator -
religion's no longer real
and anarchism's your last meal

Beyond the dull needle of prozium
lies the truth to Plato's symposium
so go ahead, put on your Fawkes mask
99 barrels will finish the task

They say it's not treason
if you got a good reason,
so when the world's in convolution
hell, why don't you start a Revolution

A Toast to the World

Currently listening to "The Gift" by The Velvet Underground. Good storyline. Very Tarantino-esque.

Once upon a time, I ate a cold black plum and I swear it was the greatest black plum Cain ever reaped from the ground. I drank a glass of milk and I swear it was the tastiest milk on earth. I sat on the balcony on an upside-down box and I drank the night air and I swear it was the most nitrogenated air I ever inhaled. I stared at the city lights and I drank them too. I told the person sitting on the right-side up box beside me that I believed in two realms of life. The first was materialistic and jealous of the second and would not let go of the physical particles it possessed. The second was spiritual and introspective and so accepted only the metaphysical assets of the world. I explained that the city lights were a reflection of the stars and that was why the light bulb above us was so fucking bright, because of that one star that shone bryter than the rest. To test my theory, I wished upon a stoplight, but the damn thing kept moving before I could finish my wish. I laughed to myself but secretly I was disappointed. And so that night I drank the stars and I swear they were the most beautiful I'd ever eaten. They tasted like one dollar tacos on a Wednesday night.

Tactfully,
T.J.