haiku 26 Mar 2018

These moving temples
Blood and bone; thought and spirit
Treat them well - with joy

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

bones of blog

Where will my blogs go once I stop updating them fifty years from now? And where will they go if the Interweb stops working, crashes, or is wiped out by virus or alien invasion? When elephants feel death approaching, researchers say they often remove themselves to secret areas littered with the bones of their pachyderm forebears, graveyards piled high with the massive skulls and valuable tusks of these smart, lumbering beasts. My blogs, I fear, are not much different: when their time is up and their duties have been served, they will either retreat quietly into the digital forest, randomized clusters of ones and zeros waiting to be re-born as a toddler's social media account, or they will sink forever into the shiny black carapace of some server tower humming away dutifully in the climate-controlled warrens of any one of countless South Asian server farms.

All the writing this author posted on those blogs will be gone if they themselves go: there are no hard copies of his body of work; no printed copies of the Grigovian fairy tales he composed; no tactile versions of the vituperative barbs he hurls at politicians and powerful persons alike; his legacy is 50% ethereal and 49% vacuous, and the few items that do exist for real resemble the ruined detritus of a foolish nonce who cowers in the dark shadows of the past while cursing the skies for making thunder and sending rain. No, his artistic effort will vanish when the systems crash, when the sky-brothers return for gold and human women, or upon the Singularity, whichever comes first, and he wouldn't have it any other way. Huzzah.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on the fade of the recession

A certain coiffure has been sweeping the modern American hair landscape, or hairscape – the Fade of the Recession. Similar to that style favored by persons alive during the Great Depression, our Great Recession's preferred mode is cut very close to skull until perhaps eye-level, at which point it fades quickly into a most unruly patch of long top-hair kept in place with an arresting, spiking, or otherwise binding hair product.

Persons sporting the fade of the recession are more than likely frugal, upright, and self-loathing individuals who have finally come around to notion that their best hope for making it through such global wars as nearly always follow in the wake of world-wide economic turmoil is to start relying on as few people other than themselves to complete simple tasks such as hair-cutting, lawn-mowing, cooking, cleaning, transportation, and self-defense. By affecting such severe cuts to the head-bound chitinous offshoots, these people demonstrate a propensity for self-mockery and lightheartedness that is useful when facing impending physical, emotional, or financial ruin.

The author adopted this particular pompadour after seeing a wild-eyed, chain-smoking gentleman of Chinese ancestry who had exited from the dirt-caked side door of an otherwise nondescript, rundown building in one of America's more bustling cities. The man, himself having surpassed at least the age of forty-five, was wearing an ill-fitting overcoat and staring menacingly at everyone passing him by. The nape of his neck was shaved to the bone, and a wild patch of hair sprouted from the top of his head, but his Recession's Fade stood out because of the violent, severe, and apparently hastily-made cuts that defined the area of the fade itself.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

encylopediamericanifesto - phaltscape withdrawal

  The phaltweary smog rider proves her phaltworthiness by bicycling the phaltscape. The evidence of her efforts lie in her callused hands, in her creaking bones, and in gritty, fleeting smiles that threaten sometimes to skate across her youthful and vibrant face. She accepts her station in life so long as she is allowed the exhilarating freedom of gliding around town atop a skinny metal sled. If she can ride smog in the city of her choosing, she has beef with no man.

  But what happens when injury, weather, or mechanical failure incapacitate the smog rider, and keep him from his Rounds? He will descend slowly but surely into the same type of madness that inflicts any proud and majestic beast that is kept away from its preordained way of life. Similar to a tiger taken from the jungle, the smog rider who cannot ride will develop a variety of diseases, among them shingles, bulimia, and long spells of wild-eyed, howling insanity. He will move about the area in which he is confined with increasingly erratic and violent movements until such time as he must be contained to avoid damaging himself. The color will flee from his once-rosy cheeks, he will put on weight, and his overall happiness will decrease markedly.

  If your smog-rider begins to develop symptoms similar to those mentioned above – if she turns cranky, impatient, or bossy, or if she loses sight suddenly of the horrible beauty of life itself – get her onto a bicycle and out in the phaltscape as quickly as you can. Every school-aged child knows that to keep an animal locked up far from its usual habitat is cruel and unusual punishment. She who smog-mashes, her insanity dashes.

  Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp