WHAT AM I POLLUTING MYSELF WITH NOW?

What rankles us is the self-indulgence of saying that what one is about to do is self-indulgent, and then getting right on with it as if one had escaped the problem by stating it's presence. I'm going to list the books that seem to have had the most negative impact on me, on my psychological (mistrust the term though I may) well-being, my 'world-view', my basic functionality among fellow inhumans. What's torn my otherwise sweet and carefree nature into this neurotic little mass of twittering shame and timidity...



1. Number of books you have owned: I burn them after I read them. Ok, just kidding. I don't own them, I'm renting them from trees. Thanks, trees.


2. Last book I bought: “How to Read a Book” by Mortimer Adler. Impossible to read. I burned it. Just kidding.


3. Last book I completed: I’ve never completed one, the migraines prevent me.


4. Five (or so) books that mean a lot to me (because they’re directly or indirectly responsible for f-ing me up, or putting me in a bad mood (see 4 and 5)):

1. The Bible. (seriously – this book has started more wars than the writings of Lenin ever could)
2. Almost anything by John Calvin (the world would be a better place)
3. Descartes (idiot)
4. “Letters from a War Zone” by Andrea Dworkin
5. “Against Our Will” by Susan Brownmiller (gravely depressing)

4b. What are you currently reading?


1. Recipe books
2. Newspapers
3. Astrology stuff (it’s amazing how accurate it is!!!)


5. Which 5 bloggers are you passing this on to?

Nobody should have to read. Read books about wind patterns, if you must read something. Or the packages of industrial products. I don’t know.

ok, here's one

1. hemorrhoids!

Speed Limited on Concrete

Elias wasn't up to going out. In fact, he wasn't up to homeopathic tea either, but that's what he was drinking. Yesterday was like a lemon rind and today was like a purple isotope clattering against the memory of yesterday. Obscurity like that careened through him like the breeze of a bat you don't see passing. An airport shuttle bus creaked up the street. A foul death-cloud emission burst from the tailpipe. The raw power of the vehicle, it's roaring unassailability in an equally indifferent framework mouldered me sleepy. It was all so vulnerable, so exposed out here, all you could do was go to sleep, feel the battering convulsions as a mind-softening pastorale. Or you were just another bleating nerve ending wacking along against the pavement, being trod over by punk goths, ordinary citizens, survivors impervious to the violence in the air, on their way to a concert, a bar, a job, a rendezvous. Someone says physical pain is the mark of true emotion. At the end of the day, reeling with carcinogen intake, back aches, anti-depressant migranes - are we not letting ourselves go bullied by the highways, the shrieking vortex of trashed alleys, syringed avenues? We can't avoid becoming neurotics in our new tarmac speed limit world. We've made a spiritually unsurvivable world. If you're surviving, you might be dead. Thank God for medication.