Hatin'

This is a very rough first draft completed a few minutes ago in response to annoying poetry and poets that I hope never to write or become.

"Rock Bottom" or "Nothing Good Has Ever Been Written in a Coffeehouse."

I don’t write poems so much as

loaded prose with line breaks

to break with other writers writing,

trying to rhyme or protest problems

that they think they see through

unwashed bangs to get some spotlight

while they read their poems about injustice--

Washed up thinking it makes them so fresh and so clean clean

blasting ripped off hip hop chops amidst all their stagnant energy.

Not so eloquent but the message is clear--is it? whatever.

Like “Raise your fist and get behind the rhyme,

rep that solidarity; your eyes and hair and life’s like mine

so buy my book!!”

They suck it up but still can’t bare those teeth

past reactionary sneering, yelling shit nobody cares about,

put too much faith in bleeding hearts like it’s something we should care about

and scar those painted nails on purpose, break their own hearts to wear that pout

so pretty under Zelda hair and irony.

But you wear it well in coffeehouses

looking deep with pregnant pauses,

affectations for a round of applause--better yet, a hand job

keep those fingers doing something

(they sure as hell aren’t writing)

Energize your bunny keep on going going going

like your poem will sputter something if you keep adding adding adding

words, lines, and paragraphs

like a stone soup,

you’ve hit rock bottom

but keep digging.

Anyone* Can Grow Up to be President

And there's those times when something that actually is racist happens and you're like, "Wow. Not cool" and whoever you're with is all, "oh, lighten up."

Em

Drunk in the parking lot of Grumpy's--Roseville, 2008. We were like 80% sure we woke up the occupants of this RV.

Soft Handed, Callous

When I was in high school, our youth pastor told us about the summers he spent working construction to make ends meet. He would put in these long shifts carrying heavy things in the heat that kept him behaving himself since it was like a preview of the Hell he believed there was. He told us that, to cool off, what he would do is go sit in the porta-potty where the heat was intensified and the baked shit hung thick in the air. He would sit there for a few minutes and then go back to work feeling refreshed because, the air outside seemed cleaner and the 102 degrees didn't seem so bad next to the 115 in the plastic box.

I'm trying to figure out if there's a way I can use this method to increase my ability to channel that raw emotion I keep hearing about into writing. Is a porta-potty analogous to a passionate but short-lived relationship?

On a related note, there are times I wonder what the context was when someone uttered the words "true love always finds a way" because no one separated from what they think is their true love can be that optimistic.

Or maybe I'm just out of my element.

More Like a Tommy Gun

"FIVE CHAMBERS OF DICK."

-Jon Stewart on Chatroulette.

It all floats

There was that day when the oceans rose and flooded everything and drowned everyone and the last two people left were an environmental activist and a racial justice advocate and the racial justice advocate said to the environmental activist "well, I guess you feel stupid for trying to stave off the inevitable" and the environmental activist replied "the joke is on you; the sea equalized everyone better than you ever could."

Look both ways before you cross that street

This is a first draft I vomited out about twenty minutes ago. It'll probably get revised.

2/4 Flash Memoir (code for "untitled")

There was this girl in high school we all sort of made fun of. Either she was going for the goth look or it just came to her naturally and she figured she may as well embrace it. I mean, she was still a total poser since she came from a good home and had probably had a fairly easy life. Her parents might have gotten divorced and, yeah, that sucks, but this was 2002; grow a pair. I knew her through drama club--this was back when I thought I had what it took to be theatrical or expressive or artsy or any of that gay shit. She always pissed me off.

I guess she thought I was cool; I was one of two asian kids at my high school (we had as little to do with each other as possible) so maybe she thought we were both outsiders and marginalized. Sure I got called a chink once or twice and this kid I only kind of knew made a joke about me eating a dog (for more on this, see “The Only Fight I Ever Got In In high School”) but, for the most part, I had friends and was fairly content for a high schooler. This girl liked to refer to me as “her favorite asian” which was benign enough to just ignore. I want to make it clear I was never actively mean to her or anything--I don’t think anyone really was. We were all just like, “write your poems about crows and darkness. Whatever.”

So, some time senior year, she was absent for like a week, I guess. I had just developed this huge crush on Aimee Keys so random poser-goths weren’t my concern. Anyway, when she got back, she had these new bracelets which seemed to be there to hide the bandages on her wrists but they were jangly and shiny so all they really did was let us all know she had something under them to hide. The scuttlebutt was that she had tried to kill herself that weekend but fucked it up because she crossed the street instead of going down the road--dumbass.

My mom got a call from someone else’s mom and sat me down to talk about it and, you know, if this was a story or something, maybe I would have realized how I should have been there to be her friend and I’d have made that step to hang out with her so she had someone to talk to about... how she really wanted attention, I guess. But that’s not the case; that girl was fucking annoying.

Last I heard, she had gotten married to an accountant and they had a kid or two.

This is probably what I would look like if I was a white guy

Color Me Robotized

X Marks the Spot

There are these maps you can order that use various databases to create a neat, color-coded, block by block map of people's Faith in a given area. There is a free sample pack you can get but, if you want the whole set, that costs you. I'm sure there are some special deals you can get, though, if you are ordering them for a church. I guess they use some census data to reflect socio-economic status and independent survey data to reflect Faith involvement and Faith interest from household to household. This is, of course, all based on the head of the household.

Churches looking to increase their numbers in these rough economic times can utilize these maps so that they can plan programs to effectively engage the communities around them. Let's pray to their God-game that some of them are using this information to better serve the poor not by hosting youth lock-ins and spaghetti feeds but by seriously looking at methods to break the cycle of poverty.

This serious investigation into the staggering disparity between Christian-say and Christian-do could lead to a massive reconfiguration of the Church, transforming this group of people into a progressive, healthy movement in a world that has passed the point of dark to become almost farcical. With the largest religious movement in the richest nation in the world reconfigured to do good, suddenly, the world begins to smile.

It's a pretty picture to think about.

I like Humpty Dumpty better.

No one is going to claim that this blog is anything to speak of. When I began it, it was with an understanding that The Cold Shoulder blog, much like The Cold Shoulder writing, would probably be a late-bloomer and hit-and-miss at best. I really do know that drinking + carousing ≠ good writing (see overrated) but, damn it, I'm going to make absolutely sure.

This is not an apology for the early stages of a new blog so much as a promise of better things to come. Better real things. Lord help me if I begin to rely on a trademark gimmick to trick you into coming back. With any luck, my trademark will be consistently enjoyable writing.

Fuck Hat-guy.

I'd Hit That Business Model

Found in Newsweek:

"Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model."

-Robert Hintze, founder of dating site BeautifulPeople.com, on kicking off 5,000 members for having gained weight during the holidays.