Dive Bar

It wasn't the smell of old smoke and the fresh air rushing in, it was the smell of everything. It combined and rolled into this growing feeling of sadness. The ceiling was dropped so low I could run my hand across the blackened tiles. I'm sure they used to be bright shinny silver that reflected light into the now dark dust covered corners. The guy's bathroom was a hallway with a toilet at the end of it and a smudged mirror from waist high up on the left side. It was positioned in such a way that if someone came barging in they could catch your eye and see what you were holding in a glance. I tried to situate myself so all they saw was my back, but exposed myself on the right side to a quick glance down the tunnel of piss. I only call it this because only twenty minutes after getting there pee was covering the floor. Stickers coverd the far wall too, white squares with a picture of unraveled TP saying something about poopoo and food. A green sticker used to be on the inside of the door, streaks of lime green show the direction at the attempted removal. There was a room next door full of smelly people that when the door the sweat stink of that kid from middle school's armpit would waft into the bar.

I'm in Boston and it seems like the East coast is really for me.

Spam

So I get some spam, just like everyone else. After watching Spamland (#1,#2,#3) I got inspired to try and find some poetics in my spam. Here are a few.

From: Stanley Orozco
Subject: Alert: And he is positively
May 21, 2007

in my memory, arrayed itself with all its first distinctness. lips apart. I took courage, and led the fated pair to a new-made way? Which way?, holding her hand on the top of her head to Hullo, where is John? he asked, suddenly missing the third bed.
common grown-up, with a daughter called Margaret; and every

As she said this, she came upon a neat little house, on the door might venture to proceed. Their bright eyes were fixed on me; their She is such a dear quiet thing, Alice went on, half to herself, that his jealousy had grounds, so far as that Walter Brome had blend them with the intermingled tree-tops, except where the roof of fire so as to see to darn, for there was no other light in the Is Michael asleep? he asked, with a careless glance at Jane.

From: Haley
Subject: Enjoy it as i do
May24, 2007

the associations connected with it, she desired to preserve it for the sake¡¡'m much obliged to him for his interest, but it 's quite wasted, thank you." "but she is hands now presented a most brilliant appearance.

the associations connected with it, she desired to preserve it for the sake the associations connected with it, she desired to preserve it for the sake miss scamp put his paw on her lips because he saw them moving, but it seemed as if¡¡air of soldiers getting ready for a battle, with the bracing of nerves and quickening

air of soldiers getting ready for a battle, with the bracing of nerves and quickening¡¡"take it away! take it away at once!" he shouted. answered the child, gazing thoughtfully at the curious thing she had found. only make the sacrifice all at once, and done with it, then it would seem easier;

the answer came so quick that it nearly took the old "gracious, miss p.! how can you? i've been here this; scarlet, sandy, streaming, and speechless she leaned against the illustrious are all very well in the spring, but mine protect me against the winter." fair¡¡anything, it's done though the sky falls," said laurie, when he had presented

"but i never go to parties!" cried¡¡to stay here a little while, if i could; i do so dread to be alone. is it possible? room; no skill, no success! if i could be an student major-ing in economics,! and i don't know any of them very well. papa named this place the aunt-hill,

shone so magnificently that the scarecrow heartily congratulated him hands to push the raft through the water. new york at uncle's; and then, in the spring, i was sick, and we came f: what will peter play this friday? ¡¡figures. i am glad of this, for though i should be very proud of a

the face better, do you think?" said becky, taking off a wet cloth,¡¡venture on any fashion and nature blessed her with a complexion that her head, while laurie seated himself astride a chair. clever and fly round right smart. miss meg is going to make a proper

"and i am going to ask him to give sancho with difficulty restrained himself from repeating his former we will accept the fact, and at once cheer ourselves after the last i'll ask laurie to go skating. he is always kind and jolly, and will¡¡the wisest. so rose, looking out from the safe seclusion of her girlhood¡¡view of the brook, the meadows, and the distant hills; and over the with laughter while she excavated that her knife went too far, cut

who, remembering all the young pair had suffered together, felt that in a room playing toys. that's not helpful to make the children strong. she thought sad, bitter, oftentimes rebellious thoughts. her.¡¡

for any thing," she always said with a resolute air after one of these ever so nice; and i shall keep her as long as she 's happy." used for darning stockings. (it may surprise you to learn that a princess on his hobby, came ambling up to hold an intellectual tournament in the¡¡resolving never to return, she went home, and worked off her irritation

bright eyes were fixed on me; their She is such a dear quiet thing, Alice went on, half to herself, that his jealousy had grounds, so far as that Walter Brome had blend them with the intermingle

5/17

The times that I look at her and am not thinking about sex, I think about her in ten years. I try to imagine where we will be. Looking at each other in the drowned out colors of light grays, saying "goodnight". We smile, kiss and tell each other that we love the other, even when we're mad.
I try to think about the light that might be in our hallway. It might be the same lamp, a fake oil lamp with flowers painted on the sides, that will sit in our common area of our old house. I kids would be asleep and we would be tired from walking to the park or a long day at work. Every night I still would sit blinking, waiting for her to poof away, because it just doesn't seem like it's real. Nothing this great is supposed to happen to me.

This past semester was a serious strain on both of us. We had some pretty horrendous roommates that turned from friends to people that lived with us. I made dean's list, released a magazine, turned a club around, worked, received two awards for my writing, and am still with her. I wasn't home much there at the end of the year, I would have never been there had it not been for her.

When I hold her from behind when she's curled up in bed, I know that it's alright. She's what I want. If she were just like me it won't work. I need someone to shove me out the door, because "the sun's out."

This is great, and even when it doesn't feel like it is, it still really is.

Tech news

First up is the computer that can "evolve". This thing has a set of 'genes' that can change at anytime to accomplish the task at hand much faster. This is kind of amazing thinking about computer technology today and where it will be at the end of the year even. For me, I welcome our machine overlords.

Our machine overlords will be sending information faster than ever thought possible, because this week Alcatel/Lucent brought us the new record in data transfer. 25.6 Tb/s. Thats 25,600 Gigs a second. That would allow all of your computer files, before and current to be sent in a blink of an eye. It would be nice to have fiber laid to my house, I could network my entire town (20k + 10k in college students) and still have enough bandwidth to conquer the world (if I so choose).

Microsoft calls everyone with a Wii 14 (link). And they find that you are who you are based on your cellphone.

It's cool to wreck our nation

A friend of mine showed me this a while ago and its really kind interesting when you look at the names who signed this.

http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm

This was signed in 1997. By men in power today that have great influence on what we do and don't do. From the Wiki article:

Former members include prominent members of the Republican Party and the Bush Administration, including Richard Armitage, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Zalmay Khalilzad, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Richard Perle, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz.

To think that a large chunk of Bush's administration were part of the New American Century. It is painful to think of all the wrong doings in the current administration. Between the fired justices' to hiring an A class ass hat of a man to speak on our behalf at the U.N. to this intensely righteous war. The friend of mine who showed me this also talks about how war is not about politics any more, which out current administration can't get out of. If there is war it needs to be about economic power, because at the point of globalization we rest on right now, that is what matters. Who can make the most, who can produce or grow the best; that is where the world is now, and we are falling quickly behind.

Our national debt is going into the open hands of Chinese bankers their government. Our greatest threat to our so held spot of #1. They are holding our bank statements.

Darn brain

I hate it when I go to do something and I completely forget. Its the ADHD. It has to be, because... I dunno it just does.

I was also thinking about how much I used to read. In high school I could shoot through a book a week, no problem. I would read in class, wouldn't be distracted by anyone (even the teacher talking about god knows what), and at work and pretty much anywhere. I was a reading fiend. Then I got to college and it all kind of changed. Maybe it was the Ritian that kept me on-track. Either way I can't focus long enough to read a whole page without my mind going some place else. This too isn't just while I read. Its when I'm writing, when I'm walking, anything.

My mind is always going somewhere, whether I want it to or not.

Dark Matter

As from the Times article:

Cosmologists often refer to this possibility as “the ultimate Copernican revolution”: not only are we not at the center of anything; we’re not even made of the same stuff as most of the rest of everything. “We’re just a bit of pollution,” Lawrence M. Krauss, a theorist at Case Western Reserve, said not long ago at a public panel on cosmology in Chicago. “If you got rid of us, and all the stars and all the galaxies and all the planets and all the aliens and everybody, then the universe would be largely the same. We’re completely irrelevant.”

There is a serious problem in science today. No one really thinks about it but scientists. We are at the edge of a Copernican revolution. Imagine a world that understood everything. This is how they felt during then as well. That nearly everything they knew was going to be known.

Now I know not everything can be known everything but it is something to try and imagine. The world we live in is in serious turmoil. What is the next step?

Try to think of the world as it is today. A world were ideas can flow freely (Internet) and people can travel extremely quickly across what we had always thought as vast distances. According to Moore's Law we are reaching a point in our world that our technology will double nearly every day in our life time. Try and imagine a world that our top of the line computer is simply a dud the day it is made. The world is moving at such a speed that nothing can keep up with it. I keep referring to technology as the world because it is the force in which our world revolves.

The power of technology, in our life time, will reach a point where we, as human beings, would have to become autonomous. A free flowing thought machine that worked in a way that one mind might work. The world will have to become a mind. Not in the way the Borg is a mind, but in the way a mind is. Every person in the world becoming another feed into the strength of the entirety. Some will not be a part of the whole, but progress will make headway.

Flashy Fiction

Take a breath of fresh air and keep everything clean. The inverted look in my glasses are of things that I could only say slowly. I say numbers out of order and joke about how I am stupid. It’s impossible to teach a person to dance, they just try to imitate the way the other person moves, some people are better at this. I’m horrible at it. Maybe it’s just my glasses.

State Sexyness

Ethics
Originally uploaded by Jacob D.

I’m certified by the state of Illinois. It feels so good. Seriously, it does. It’s not the first time I had to take an ethics ‘quiz’. It’s not so much the fact that I finished, or that I feel like I got “ethic cleansed”, its more the awesome certificate I got. What the hell am I supposed to do with it? I have no idea. Hand it to “the man” when making the rounds? I’m not sure, but it rocks.

It's late fall

Steve Wonder wrote: “I feel like this is the beginning… You are the sunshine of my life.”

The color of fall forces emotions that are as rich as the cider that flows in the season as well. Though the sun doesn’t shine as much, it seems that it sure is trying. And why should it? The leaves are already powerful enough, and the stick out against a stark white sky (of course I do love the un-countable number of colors brushed on the sky when I peer up).

The thing, I think, that is destroying how we see nature is the automobile. There is more though where we lay our roads, and overwork our land with corn and soy.

This time...

This time I want to win.

I'm not here either.

When you look in the mirror who do you see? Do you see the same person you imagine yourself to be?

I know I don’t. I find myself staring into my eyes trying to find out who I really am. Maybe there is something wrong with my id. I have no idea what I’m doing in my life and sometimes it’s just hard to take a deep breath and tell myself that it will be fine. There is no way to stop myself from thinking it will be only worse.

I don’t call it pessimism I call it my life.

There is only one thing that makes me equal out, but she’s not here. Next year will make me feel much better to have her around.

And the Truth Comes Out (pt. 3)

Just say my name?

Herald Menning. What is this all about?

Yeah, I know her. Is Tuesday in some sort of trouble?

Well she seemed like a pretty straight forward woman.

Oh she did? That is really hard to believe. You sure it was her?

Well some times its hard to who they are on those things.

Oh, well three cameras and a head shot kind of does the trick.

So what do you want from me then, I can’t really tell you much, I haven’t seen her in a few weeks now. She just up and left one day.

No, I have no idea where to even start to looking for her.

You do?

Well she did come over the other day.

No.

Well yeah, I’m just trying to help her alright. Don’t put me in jail please.

I didn’t do anything to harm anybody. I was just trying to help a friend.

Oh Jesus, please don’t.

Can you call my wife and tell her that I won’t be coming home tonight?

I've found it.

It wasn’t the rich dark blue of the ocean that drew me to it. It was something else, something that I’ve known some where in the back of my mind that I just couldn’t wrap my head around, that is until now. Most of my life I was afraid of depths, heights for that matter. As a kid I would hate swimming in any water I couldn’t see the bottom of, even pools that were twelve feet deep, I didn’t really like either. It is something about the vast openness that frightened me. I would hate going off the swim deck of my grandfather’s boat, I only went because I wanted to see the dunes. I took deep breaths and tried to act as if I wasn’t screaming inside, yelling to get the hell out of the water.
     Everything changed though, I found something out that only one hundred other people know, and make that one more, you. The land stretch of land that people of all times have been searching for, Atlantis. It is not called Atlantis, that is a made up name to keep the origin secret. The true name of this place is called….

Steam

Steam,
originally uploaded by Jacob D.

When you go for a walk with a camera you seem to find things that you never really look at before. You see things diffrently than you have before. You are ready for what interesting things the world throws at you.

Pictures freeze a single moment in time; be it friends, buildings, landscapes. Those things are stuck forever, you have it for ever(ish). The strange thing about photos are that no one can ever take the same picture you took, it may look the same, but the memories wont carry through.

I leave you with this one thing: Do something that makes you happy, something that makes you feel like you have done something in a day. It makes you feel better everyday.

And the Truth Comes Out (pt. 2)

When you have a gun in your face you say yes and no when your are supposed to. That is unless you have nothing to lose.

Did I? Yeah. I had a lot to lose. I have a family now.

Well, she got all the information she wanted from me.

I can’t tell you what she asked. For that I have to plead the fifth.

She must have broke in or something, I’m not real sure. But she knew where my office was, because no one else saw her.

What’s that?

No, I was working on some things and didn’t notice her until she was holding the gun to my temple. She wanted to know about things that no one knew about.

No, never saw her before. Hell, hopefully won’t see her again. She said she got all she needed from me. Did you guys?

And the Truth Comes Out (pt. 1)

Spill it. That’s what you want me to do isn’t it? You want me to tell you everything that I know. Well I can’t. I told her I wouldn’t.

What’s that? Who is “her”? No one, well at least to you.

No, I can’t tell you.

Oh yeah, hit me then, I have rights.

Ow! Shit man. You can’t hit me. Fuck you. Alright! Alright! I’ll let you know what I know. Just don’t hit me. Jesus. Her name though I can’t tell you.

Look I just can’t. You want me to tell it or not?

That’s what I thought. It was twenty miles from this very spot that I knew she was going to be trouble. It was a bar called “The Station.” It was this normal bar, I’m sure you of all people have heard of it.

No? Well doesn’t matter if you know the place or not. That doesn’t even matter that much. But this bar was the place that I would go by after work and have a smoke before I went home. I would go there because I my old lady didn’t like me smoking. So I would have a drink and tell her that the guy next to me was smoking.

Yeah.

No. I wouldn’t want to tell her.

Just because, alright man? Can I continue?

Well, I was in there the other day and I was in the middle of my smoke watching the pretty bar tender walk back and forth. Taking order from people and reaching in the well and all that.

Yeah, I’m getting on with it, leave me alone.

So as I was sitting there this girl walks up, ya know the one you guys want to know about, well she comes in and sits next to me. Not like I was going to pick her up or anything, I mean look at me, on top of that I’m a married man. But still, she gave me a smile, she seemed pretty nice at the time.

No, she wasn’t a blonde.

No, I can’t tell you what she looked like. Then you would get that sketch artist guy in here all making her up. I’m sure there is a guy back there now listing to this whole thing, like there is on TV.

Really, there isn’t. Why do I find that hard to believe?

Yeah, I’m getting on with it. So anyway as I was saying, she walked in and grabbed the chair next to me. She didn’t talk to me or nothing but she knew I was sitting there. So I leaned over toward her a bit and said a real friendly hello. She said a nice one right back to me and I said something about the weather. That was it.

No man. I didn’t get her name.

Yeah well, I was lying then.

Can I go now?

And why not, I mean I told you all I know.

Well, I didn’t know she did that. I’ll give you her first name. It’s Tuesday.

A description? Brown hair, short, looked cute, puffy cheeks. That is all I know now alright?

What do you mean?

No.

Shit man. She didn’t say nothing about any of that. She doesn’t even look like the type.

I swear I just talked to her for a few minutes at the bar.

Day 3 -- Wal-Mart

Well, it was my third day at the number one retail store in America. All I really think about while I work is how they got there. They aren’t really that clean, they have pretty piss poor service, and organization in the store is really bad too. It has to just be the “low prices” which they are slowly losing too. They used to be the place to go when you wanted anything cheap. So, will Wal-Mart last? In some states Wal-Mart out employs more people than the government. I think no, they aren’t going anywhere, they just will evolve.

The people know this too, its weird. I don’t think a monkey would have much of a problem to do my job. I’m not even kidding either, I seriously think I could personally train it to do so, though I’m not a monkey trainer. Maybe an orangutan. Either way, the job is a joke. Everyone knows the entire store is a joke, so are the jobs.  

Friends

Jesus Christ, it smells like shit near your bother's door. I'm sure he's heard that enough over the years. For some reason he even switched with his brother, rooms that is.
Andrew is a confusing fellow. I moved in across the street from him and became good friends with him, and then that faded, then became friends with him again, and then again we lost touch, then one last time we became friends, and have been sense. I feel bad for the times I was a real A class ass hole to him, but I can't take any of it back, and I'm sure he knows I feel that way.
I'm not sure but his parents are killing him, or at least socially.