dreamstate writing 28 Feb 2018

[This dream occurred at roughly 7am, after I had crawled back into bed following completion of all twelve steps of my morning qigong meditation.]

We were driving down a steep hill in a grey vehicle. I was in the passenger seat greatly concerned that we would crash into the debris that dotted the grassy hill - beams and bars of steel, piles of sandstone blocks, and stacks of cut wood. At the top of a rise we stopped, where I voiced my concerns to the driver, who merely stared forward, his face an unreadable mien. Below the rise stood the first tee of a disc-golf course next to a dead tree, but my companion turned and walked back up the way we’d come. I followed him back upward onto a dirt path that lead along a ridge covered in snow, from which we surveyed the surrounding countryside of cultivated fields, scattered woods, and distant farm houses.

Walking back down to the tee, we came upon a half dozen other persons kitted out for disc golf. Somewhere nearby but out of sight a person was screaming with horrible urgency, which scared me enough that I ran for shelter. The formerly dead tree had grown tremendously, great reaching tendrils of a hardened, textured, grey plastic that dug back into the ground, forming a wall. Finding my exit blocked, I turned to find the others standing close by, a massive newcomer in their midst. (He reminded me of a figure from my childhood, a giant scotsman dressed in battle fatigues.) The newcomer apologized for the screaming in a way that took my fear away, at which point the dream changed radically.

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

on reducing stress

There’s a disc golf course in Montebello Park, Baltimore City, MD. I go there at 5pm, after a day’s work, to throw plastic. I find disc golf to be a cheap way to get exercise, hone my skills, challenge myself, and practice patience.

Until the past weekend, however, the path I took to bicycle there lead through gang-controlled neighborhoods and busy intersections. I’d arrive at the park agitated and stressed out from not only trying to avoid aggressive, distracted, and inconsiderate drivers but also worrying about drug-dealer hostility. Hence, my disc golf game suffered, and my peace of mind was compromised.

After consulting with a psychiatrist, I have decided to take a new route, one that skirts the rough areas and the hurtling, gasoline-powered, one-ton, steel battering rams driven by people ignoring their surroundings in favor of looking at their mobile phones. In terms of distance travelled, the new route is actually shorter than the old one, with fewer hills. Now, when I step up to tee off, my my anxiety levels low and I can disco stress-free, and contented.

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

men make moans

Recently, while out disc-golfing in a nearby state park, some friends and I came across a guy and his gal being professionally photographed. The couple would walk a few paces, fall into each others' arms, kiss, hug, and lean, generally acting in the manner of drunken fools with smiles plastered on their faces. Then, as we were kicking through the dry leaves trying to find our discs, the man got down on one knee, took the girl's left hand in his, and pretended to slide a ring onto her finger. I have never been married, I do not plan to ever get married, and I don't think much of the ordeal; therefore, I put my head down, kept walking, and ignored the love-fest going on up the hill. Two of my companions, however, an overweight man in his late thirties and his overweight son, upon seeing the man drop to one knee, began to moan and coo and aw, punctuating their girlish behavior by stopping in their tracks and applauding. The love-struck man then stood up and made it clear through a few brief words and hand gestures that he was not in the act of proposing and that he and his betrothed lass were merely having their pictures taken as if they were, which dampened my companions' spirits considerably. When, later, I asked the man and his son why they had applauded the lovers' actions, they said because they thought it was “Nice.”

At sometime in the past, I fell for the lie that I had to express my emotions out loud and show everyone my sensitive side, that my feelings were things that had to be expressed and talked about, that vulnerability was a masculine virtue. I have found the exact opposite to be true: the more I have tried to express my feelings, the less control I've had over them, and the more I've tried to show my sensitive side, the sooner my past girlfriends have left me. In part, I blame modern Western society's lack of manhood rituals for teaching boys how to become men, rituals in which their role in society is explained to them and the dos and don'ts of the self-respecting male are spelled out. I've had to try to figure these rules out for myself, stumbling blindly down one dead-end after the next; I wouldn't have minded being suspended from a tree by hooks looped under my pectoral muscles and beaten with buffalo femurs so long as, afterwards, my uncles had told me what was up. As far as why Western men have begun to act in the manner of women, research points, in part, to our increased exposure to plastics: we eat off them, heat them in microwaves, wear them, sleep in them, and add them to our soaps, poisoning our bodies in subtle yet powerful ways and causing our boy children's genitalia to shrink. In part I also blame our society's obesity rates, with expanding waistlines signaling men's bodies to increase estrogen production, Mother Nature cursing pear-shaped dudes to act as if they were women. (I have no problem with women, or with women acting womanly, only when men do the same.)

Whenever I see couples acting romantically and looking at each other with stars in their eyes, with hands tightly intertwined and cheeks flushing with excitement, I immediately think of Doug Stanhope's bit regarding the ultimate conclusion to every single such instance of foreplay, that being male ejaculation. All the chocolates in the world, and all the bunches of roses, all the time spent talking on the phone, and all the pronouncements such as “I miss you” and “I love you” lead to one thing: the man shooting his sperms into or onto the girl's body. (I am neither gay nor lesbian, and so I cannot really speak to homosexual liaisons.) Since getting in shape, simplifying my life, and putting myself through a number of manhood rituals, I have found it easier to reject the old ways and to replace them with ones that play to my inherent masculine strengths; next time, then, I'll skip the foreplay and go straight to sleep. Mahalo.

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥

on idling enemies

From oil (as in crude oil, sweet crude, Big Oil, oil wells, the British Petroleum Gulf Disaster of 2011, and the like) we get gasoline. From oil we also get plastics (which are used to make water bottles, baby toys, toothbrushes, car seats, laptop cases, lampshades, bottlecaps, pens, linoleum, clothing, shoes, and the like). Oil is a precious and a strategic national resource of the United States of America, and it is the duty of each and every citizen to protect his nation's precious resources. Therefore, the patriotic citizen never allows his gasoline-powered vehicle to idle for longer than 30 seconds, since idling past 30 seconds compared to turning off and later restarting the vehicle wastes gasoline, and gasoline, as it is a derivative of oil, is a strategic national resource. (Idling while stuck in traffic may seem unavoidable until one sees bicyclists flying exuberantly by, unopposed.)

The patriotic citizen educates himself about his use of this precious national resource – he does not waste it, because wasting it would mean that the brave men and women fighting America's war would perhaps not have enough gasoline to complete their missions. If a person were to wish to harm the United States of America and to make her less able to provide for the common defence and the general Welfare, that person would drive an unnecessarily large, gas-guzzling vehicle. The person who drives a vehicle disproportionate to his “need” to get around (such as a lone person driving a Ford 350 or a Dodge 3500) is an enemy of the state, because he burns more gas moving himself around than he might if he were to make a small personal sacrifice and drive a smaller car with a smaller engine. (Today's homo non-sapient accepts readily the lie that she might commute to her job by car, drive her car to the store, drive her car to the gym, drive her car to school, all without consequence; at least in America, we can no longer afford to be lazy, worthless people who drive our cars fucking everywhere.) In order to protect his nation's future (and to make sure the troopers fighting our wars have enough gasoline for their military vehicles), the true American patriot rides a bicycle whenever possible.

Life requires water. Without water, there is no life. Without water, humans die. Because it is a component essential to maintaining the general Welfare, and since it is needed to effect the Safety and Happiness of the American citizen, water is one of this nation's precious and strategic national resources. Businesses that waste water are enemies of the state. Persons who waste water are enemies of the state. Persons who allow the faucet to run while they brush their teeth; who run the tap while shaving; who hose down a driveway instead of sweeping it with a motherfucking Broom; who maintain lawns in the desert (instead of planting drought-resistant, native species); who toss cigarette butts into lakes; these persons are all enemies of the state. Please, dear reader, if you consider yourself a patriot, please examine your use of America's precious resources, and adjust your habits so as to improve this country's ability to survive in the future and to fulfill the parameters of the Constitution.

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit