Letter


You said to me if you write me
Don’t just use the typewriter
Add a line in your own hand
A word a nothing oh a little something
Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

But my Remington is beautiful
I really love it and the work goes well
My writing is sharp and clear
It’s very easy to see that I did the typing

There are white spaces only I know how to make
See how my page looks
Still to please you I add in ink
Two or three words
And a big blot of ink
So you can’t read them

- Blaise Cendrars, from Complete Poems, trans. by Ron Padgett

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

via wordle.net

I need to ask you a favor… All the great literary men of my age are gone. And I mean ‘gone’ like I mean the way I understand ‘All’ to the people around me. And more, maybe they were never there; whether to the cogs of reality or the mess of life—or both—or something else. But I want to give you things: writings, bits, prose, bobs, the like. And I don’t expect you to comment or read all (or any) of them—but I would like you to say something, real or straight-forward or imagined or reactionary. I don’t need faultless encouragement, and I certainly don’t need a critical analysis. But, I do need someone who can read and comprehend with the appropriate amount of humanity that allows me to feel like the drop-box has an inlet to someone’s empathetic heart.

Words are pretty meaningful on their own. I mean, stringing them together is inherently stylistic, don’t
you think?

Where have all the young, tough, literary men gone? And I mean ‘tough’ in the way that we should understand ‘punk.’ I don’t want to make a case for “re-branding” because that’s the wrong angle. But, I do think that when we use genres to expand understanding (I guess through subject-rhyming), we further the conceptual explication of the thing. And to know Mingus because of what you know in Miles, to know Pound to know Joyce, to know schooling and Gombrowicz, to know Lewis and prediction and vision, to know Musil and satire and memoir and what could never be memoir (but is)—is to know something empirical; something collective; something true in the most dishonest way: honesty. Long time passing.

The lines are only as blurred as you make them. This is something self-evident, but universally ignored in social communication. I taught my dog to get excited when it was dinner time. What I didn’t teach her was to be afraid of men. If you think I’m fishing—just wait. With “skin-tight bafoonery,” I assure you that, “I wouldn’t dare to bring out [your awfulness].” Mostly, because this is mine. Long time ago.

And not mine. ‘I know—profound, yeah?’ That goal, like that ship, has sailed. But not off into the sunset, nor the infinite ever-after, but to the distance that makes the world that much smaller. It’s the moments of global catharsis (especially ‘no-matter’ the concept of ‘world’, which is all the same) that push us toward the unknown. The void and its massive unpredictability; its size (depicted in an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven visual aid with colored arrows), its lottery against our ability to comprehend it, and our shortcuts in re: existence. Gone to young girls everyone.

Then, after, comes the song about somethingorother #9—but it sounds hopeful. Or I’m hopeful (“shhhhh”). I’m not going to preach to anyone about “the joy of comrades,” but believe that belief in the abstract is only a belief in the way of framing image-literacy on a dingus. That said, there’s nothing wrong with loving a dingus.

I just got off the phone with Comcast. I’m ready to set things on fire.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

In February of 2010 I received a bill for $684.36. This, obviously, struck me as wild and implausible considering I had been paying my balance in full, every month, up until this point. When checking my previous bill, notably January 2010, I saw that the total $54.40 had been paid in full and there were no outstanding charges. So how did my bill sky-rocket so instantaneously?

Apparently, Comcast had neglected to bill me correctly from September 2009 to February 2010 and had finally noticed the error and corrected it by tacking the entire ‘past due’ amount to my February bill. Now, immediately, I thought this an injustice. Suppose you go to the grocery store every week and buy 5 tomatoes for $5 and then one day you come up to the register and your 5 tomatoes cost $100 because the grocery store neglected to charge you appropriately for all of your past tomato purchases? Would you be willing to pay the $100? Right, neither was I.

So after spending 2+ hours on the phone (and being required to wait and be called back—which I never was), the problem was ‘escalated’ to a person that had a better job title than some other person and we ‘compromised’ on $300 to reset the balance to $0 and resume normal monthly charges. Here is the first lesson: always request and write down every person’s name and employee # for your recorded transactions and keep this information in a safe place. I did write this information down and subsequently misplaced the info between the middle of March, when the $300 went through, and now.

I was told, while speaking to several different representatives, that there were various notes being made in my account that reflected this transaction and even though I was reluctant to even shell out the $300, I did it to relieve the headache and general waste of my time that I had incurred up to that point.

Today I receive a bill in the mail that says if I don’t pay my balance ($541.55) in full, my account will be disconnected. I call the billing inquiry line—knowing the rabbit hole of frustration and incompetence I was to encounter—to resolve this problem. Before I even get to speak to anyone I know that the ‘notes’ that were supposedly attached to the account will not be sufficient to help the new representative understand what occurred in March, so I go about trying to explain it to him.

Unlike last time, where the problem was ‘escalated’ to a higher authority on the bureaucratic totem poll that is Comcast, he says there’s nothing they can do but charge me the full amount. He offers to give me a $50 credit, which pisses me off even more.

Ultimately, I’m handcuffed. I can’t appeal to a higher authority (he said he spoke to his supervisor), I can’t reference the transaction that occurred in March that encompassed the ‘compromise,’ so I’m stuck with paying the full amount or probably be hounded by creditors. Luckily, I have the money to pay the balance.

I will be quitting Comcast as soon as I line-up a new service provider. Thanks for taking advantage of me, Comcast; you monopolizing, finance-raping organization.

UPDATE: Comcast has contacted me via email and has called (alas, I was asleep and am heading to work so will not be able to speak with them until Sunday or Monday) and left a message saying they would like to work out something ‘amicable’.

UPDATE 2: Back to the customer service blackout. As for switching providers: I’m handcuffed. There are no other Internet providers in the area that can satisfy the necessary speeds I prefer. However, I will be killing off the cable portion of my bill and switch to Direct TV as soon as I have the patience and mental fortitude to call Comcast and deal with that process (which will, most likely, be an absolute clusterfuck).

UPDATE 3: I was contacted via email and phone by a representative at the corporate office. The email speaks for itself: So, in the end, I guess it all worked out. However, I do wonder how many people (perhaps unable to pay the incorrect amount instantly, losing their service, then being iced-out of mass communication) are caught in the black-hole and just don’t see a way out.

[the referee is a rotating lens that no matter how positioned contains a subjective element]
is to
[envisioning the action and producing that action to near perfection]
as
[eliminating an aspect of the game’s function]
is to
[replacing the players with programmed representations]

We already have video games.

What came before was the analogy. Right up there in the nut graph!

So, now we can focus on the issues of what makes the game: the game.

Hello, and welcome to Today’s Current Nagging Thought: (football related ironic/sincere podcast script title), OK!

For this discussion, I’m going to assume that the way in which one would view/observe/interact with a football ground on match day would include, at the least: a field (marked), players on each side (# of players to be addressed later), and a referee. In the way we understand “organized” sport, the referee is a notable part of the sporting event. Notable, because integral. This is not a race to the finish. Football is not relay, but rather an athletic strategy game overseen by a human lens (the width approximately: look at something right now——).

To use the delicate anachronism: what came first… the game, in its inception, had to be the activity first. The want to watch, or to regulate, came later.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

¹

If objectivity is the perfect judge, then the game could do without the passion from its followers. The abstraction has always been the goal of the observer. To accept the passivity of entertainment into the most volatile, emotional neighborhoods of the brain. It seems as though an inescapable part of human nature is to bond, form groups, and not only annihilate the opposition, but denigrate their followers/customs/culture/andthelike. We love it. I love it. It’s love. ²

Perhaps, it’s the frame all along. It’s no good without the frame—or rather—it’s not attractive ³

A guaranteed way in which to change the view of a football match is to have a player sent off. This simple act—comprised of witnessing two infringements which were deemed more heinous than minor infringements occurring continually and removing the offender from the playing—will tug at our probability sensors with an emphatic “>”. If the game’s already a madhouse cracker, it pisses on the knob already turned to 11. And in a world where it’s impossible to watch everything as it happens, but digest it in highlights and blog posts, while still watching at least one full match per game day and that doesn’t even account for the matches and replays during the week. (Yes, I think it’s absolutely hilarious to say that TV is the death of true football. TV is an advertising medium and it’s the death of a good idea, but without TV, I wouldn’t give a shit about football.)

Controversy. Give me more of it. It’s hip to complain about things like the “inter-lull” or to love (or hate) “beautiful football” and I’m happy with or have rationalized most of those thoughts/opinions, but I still want to witness a contested goal, ricocheting off the crossbar and into the hairy zone like a well-struck ball ought to do. I want to see both teams do the pageantry; the raising of hands; the perceived regional hand motions; the theater of contest. I also want guys to get up after a nothing tackle. I want all sorts of stuff, but I know that I don’t want something dramatic coming out of my dramatic activity.

I like bad calls. Except when I don’t.

Work Schedule, 1932—1933

—Henry Miller Miscellanea

1. Work on one thing at a time until finished.

2. Start no more new books, add no more new material to “Black Spring.”

3. Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.

4. Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!

5. When you can’t create you can work.

6. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.

7. Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.

8. Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.

9. Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day.

Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.

10. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.

11. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.