We’re all selfish. That’s the bottom line.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Jiftus Rhithalixe

Hi reader.  You are wondering what that title means.   It’s complicated.

On the one hand, there is no ready explanation of the phrase, because it is jibberish.  However, something very important is happening right now in our world that may only be summed up as such; and therefore befitting such a name.  Jiftus Rithalixe could possibly express the notion that a nation’s most accurate news reporting is coming from the comedy “sector,” or it could refer to the silly idea of having national level debates about religion.  Why stop there?  It could also refer to the fact that right now it is easier to make money as a swindler than a legitimate entity.  Don’t believe me?  Go to any freelancing site that caters to writers and tell me what the number one job out there is.

Know what, I’ll spare you the trouble.  After weeks of desperately searching for writing jobs I can tell you the hands-down number one: re-writing copyrighted articles ala human thesaurus until the article passes the test of plagiarism software algorithms.  Writers are shitting out hundred of thousands of “rewritten” articles every day for the sole purpose of linking websurfers back to their shitty product (think knock-off herbal remedies and potentially harmful dieting schemes).  They call this Search Engine Maximization.

On one hand, great, someone found a way to create reliable internet search using scales of relevance.  That’s a novel and good idea in its inception, but I should inform you that this method being adopted by the internet community at large is not only criminal, but largely developed by people who knew they could sell ten tons of crap placebocuticals to nimrods slapping their mice all over the global commerce control buttons; wontonly ordering BOXES OF THEIR OWN MENTAL WASTE.

While some of the linked examples are simply funny, the others speak a horrible truth about our culture.  For example, did you see the one about the person who just sold “antenna balls” online and made f’ing millions?  What people don’t know is that there is an entire digital mechanism driving this e-commerce (as business people like to think of it) that is hell bent on getting your Doritos scarfing ass to fork over your small amounts of money until you have mountains of garbage to add to the already terrible garbage problem we HAVE NOT ADEQUATELY ADDRESSED!

Jiftus Rhithalixe.

today i die

i am leaving.  Whoops!  I’m back.  Shit, that was fast.  Did I already write this?

this is confusing.  there’s no joy to be had in time.  we must run from it.  if we adapt our bodies to night/day, light/dark chaos it could possibly save the species.  we must adapt our enjoyments or risk losing enjoyment as a motivator.  human creativity is suffocating itself to death, we must fight soon.  time is a motherfucker not to be trifled with, but, how did it get this power?  i smell an oppressor.  i’ll be first and zealous in the slaying of the defenders of time.   defenders of quantity and measurement.  they are the evilest, vilest and most sinister lot, those, while they undo our creative instinct, molding it with time.

fight this bullshit oppressor however you can.  write fiction on office time.  have everyone on your block get night jobs and have bar b-ques after work at 7am.  get a tivo.  sell your tivo.  make your own bread.  spazz out about nothing in the most loving way you can and then hide in the bathroom.  find peace in rejecting zen.  make samyama on the mundane.

Most important, give yourself a chance.

back to school

Don’t read this if you’re not a voyeur, it’s going to be very uninteresting and journal-ish.  I may just be documenting this for my own decompression’s sake.

Mondays are going to be very tough for the next 13 weeks.  I learned that today.  I (should) get up at 6:45, work until 2:30, go to classes from 3-8:30, and then brave the bus or take the not-so-scenic 40 minute walk home.  I chose walking.  Now I am finally relaxed in my ‘fort’ with a glass of wine and some herbal platitude feeling the desire to write but not necessarily have to think about it.  I figured imnotme was the place to do just that.

So, this semester I am taking Intro To Writing Fiction and Asian Philosophy.  Both conceptual walks in the park, though I have been additionally blessed by two extroardinarily competent instructors who are also both gifted facilitators and lectors.  This, of course, translates into more challenging work, and more challenging work.  Not what I had hoped from the course titles.  I figured I could doodle my way to a 4.0 for the term.

Oh well.  A. and I have been living in the aforementioned ‘fort’, which is our office turned snuggle-pen via streaming netflix movies on my computer aimed at the bed that was not always in the middle of our office.  It’s a cramped, but cozy place.  So cozy we even watched 2 seasons of Family Ties.  And liked it.  This is also the only room in our ginormous apartment that has air-conditioning, which neither of us are huge proponents of, though it’s aided the desperate-crack-addict appetite we’ve had for fits of snuggling and various other pillow-and-blanket oriented tasks.

Getting high does improve both my writing, and my reading.  I’m sure of it.  Hehe.

I’m going to abandoned this now and go let my friend in the house.

master of the zoo

they think i scowl

do not be so self important as to assume to me your trifles

tall or short

great or meekest of all, i see none of it

and this bothers you, for you are cursed by emotion when I know boundless freedom that your history books have named power, yet again, assume to me none of your trifles

there are monkeys “in there” yes, but this is not a zoo and assume to me none of your trifles

as you are overjoyed and awestruck, i am master

as you are pained and rejected, i am still only master

i am neither benevolent nor evil, sinister or compassionate, i only am –  and this troubles you

you are subject to me for i am all that is and on less than a whim, much less really, i will admit you to your zoo or confound you

assume to me none of your trifles

i do not decide, think, react

i am fluid

gas

an impossible vacuum of energy and anti matter

go from me now young one, this is no zoo for art thou not, and hast thou not been

and hadst thou been thou wouldst know me for mine eyes had you possessed

and it has not been

assume to me none of your trifles

you are the zoo

Freshly groomed and fed we sat in the midday sun watching them watch us. None could pass us without looking and we could never understand why. We thought it was because they found something curious about us, but as chimpanzees we rather found them to be curious. They barked their human nonsense at us, apparently expecting that we would somehow acknowledge this in a way that would be meaningful to them, but we could never figure out how to bark like that. No matter how many gestures and various combinations of screams and flips we did, they just barked back and it was frustrating to the point where anyone who had been with us here in this aggravatingly cramped jungle impostor for long just sat at the far end near the feeding door waiting for the next disappointing meal.

And anyhow, didn’t they understand that we preferred to graze as we please?

Yet, one day a small human came to see us, and a few of us have danced about it since, who had such wonder in his eyes you would think he had seen Oeneth herself. The young ones were pleased by this and flipped, screamed and executed their most impressive stunts to acknowledge their sway held over this young observer. He stayed longer than most, and Garmesh was right to feel bad for him. They never let the awestruck ones back in. The ones who really care for our grace and appreciate our uniqueness attempt to take us , or make a scene about the little mock jungle we play on.  This boy seemed to communicate with a couple of us with his eyes.  Surely, he would be banned.

As he walked away I remember screaming that it was wrong. Wrong for us to be here in this punishing miniature of our real home, and wrong that he would be punished for truly understanding that we are not the zoo, you are the zoo. All of you with your weird looking foods and portable water vessels (though by the smell of it that is tainted water). You bark and beep and make stupid looking faces when you see us. You come to gawk at us in our permanent abduction. Barking, beeping. Your sounds are weak and dispassionate when not hostile.

That poor boy. I do hope his wonder goes unseen.  He is one zoo animal we would not mind seeing again.

you are not at the zoo

He walked up to the ticket counter and bought one regular admission. His first visit. He thought the primates would be the most fun and had been dreaming about them for two months. He went to see the gorillas, orangutans, “wizard monkeys”, baboons and chimps, among other’s whose names always slip his young, mind. It was just as fun as he had hoped.

Nothing else at the zoo concerned him so he left. Overjoyed, the next day he went back, if for no other reason than to have proof that he had really seen them. He approached the same old man at the same ticket counter, holding up six dollars he said “I’d like to see the monkeys.”

We have monkeys, yes, but you cannot see them. This is not a zoo.

But yesterday it was…

I’m sorry but we do not run a zoo here. You must be mistaken.

Are you playing a trick on me? Only yesterday I was allowed in and I’m sure it was a zoo.

The old man shook his head, irritated, and suggested that he had only wanted to be at the zoo but had never really gone.

He knew the old man was wrong, but his young mind was easily confused and the old man had such disdain in his voice, that he cowered and walked away. Indeed, never to be let into the zoo again so that he finally accepted that he had never been. The monkeys he could swear looked right at him. He could swear he had smelled them, and remember his heart soaring as they played with each other leaping ably from limbs and ropes…

He wondered if the zoo ever did allow him back in if he’d even care to go anymore. What if the next day they insisted he’d never been. It would be a confusion he couldn’t survive twice.