In the life of this man, too, as well as in all things else in the world, daily use and the accepted and common knowledge seemed sometimes to have no other aim than to be arrested now and again for an instant, and broken through, in order to yield the place of honor to the exceptional and miraculous. Now whether these short and occasional hours of happiness balanced and alleviated the lot of the Steppenwolf in such a fashion that in the upshot happiness and suffering held the scales even, or whether perhaps the short but intense happiness of those few hours outweighed all suffering and left a balance over is again a question over which idle persons may meditate to their hearts' content. Even the wolf brooded often over this, and those were his idle and unprofitable days.

In this connection one thing more must be said. There are a good many people of the same kind as Harry. Many artists are of his kind. These persons all have two souls, two beings within them. There is God and the devil in them; the mother's blood and the father's; the capacity for happiness and the capacity for suffering; and in just such a state of enmity and entanglement towards and within each other as were the wolf and man in Harry. And these men, for whom life has no repose, live at times in their rare moments of happiness with such strength and indescribable beauty, the spray of their moment's happiness is flung so high and dazzlingly over the wide sea of suffering, that the light of it, spreading its radiance, touches others too with its enchantment. Thus, like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a single individual lifts himself for an hour so high above his personal destiny that his happiness shines like a star and appears to all who see it as something eternal and as a happiness of their own. All these men, whatever their deeds and works may be, have really no life; that is to say, their lives are not their own and have no form.

They are not heroes, artists or thinkers in the same way that other men are judges, doctors, shoemakers, or schoolmasters. Their life consists of a perpetual tide, unhappy and torn with pain, terrible and meaningless, unless one is ready to see its meaning in just those rare experiences, acts, thoughts and works that shine out above the chaos of such a life. To such men the desperate and horrible thought has come that perhaps the whole of human life is but a bad joke, a violent and ill-fated abortion of the primal mother, a savage and dismal catastrophe of nature. To them, too, however, the other thought has come that man is perhaps not merely a half-rational animal but a child of the gods and destined to immortality.

- Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

MAMA SE MAMA SA MAMA COOSA

It's a bitch to watch famous people die. By famous I'm not referring to some limp dicked reality T.V. asshole or Andy Dick (one and the same, really). I'm talking about the kind of famous where little Hmong children who've never heard music from a radio still knows your name. Ostensibly, that level of fame can only be attributed to one dude: Michael Jackson. It would be much more accurate for me to lament that, "It's a bitch to watch Michael Jackson die." Cause, you know, it has been. Last Thursday, I was happy as fuck eating FroYo when the news blindsided me like a cartoon grand piano from the sky. Ever since, I've been a miserable fuck, with an existential breakdown waiting to debilitate me at any time. Why is it that the death of a demigod, such as Michael Jackson, thrusts our pathetic obsession with celebrities into full throttle? I crucify my female friends any chance I get for wasting so much of their goddamn time getting wet over inane celebrity gossip. A week after the death of Michael Jackson, I sit here confessing my shameful hypocrisy. I'm hooked. I check CNN, WWTDD, TMZ, and even that fat turd Perez Hilton's blog two, three times a day. It's like 9/11 all over again! Footage of Palestinian women cheering and the Twin Towers being speared by jumbo jets are replaced with aerial shots of Neverland Ranch. And for the first time in years, MTV started playing music videos again. During this weeklong binge one thing became clear to me: The entire post mortem ordeal really irks me. In the morning, you're in a posh mansion in the Hollywood Hills being injected with surgical-strength pain killers. By the next, you've been gutted and your brain's being freeze-dried for laboratory examination. Your father's cheerily plugging his record label during interviews and the treacherous media who tarred and feathered, drawn and quartered you and made fortunes in the process, are now singing your praises. He-He!

I went through this phase of pathetic fanaticism during middle school when I discovered Cobain and Nirvana. I'm hoping I can salvage some shred of dignity by purging myself of all this hyper intensive media coverage as soon as possible.

Real motherfucking talk

Once upon a time, your shit was fresh and exciting. Alas, it could not endure time, repetition, and your short attention-span. Shit got old. It became part of the vicious cyclical monotony that you call your gig. When your shit is played out, staler than month-old saltines, the logical thing to do is to move on to newer shit. But you don't and won't want to. You're fatalistic and are satisfied with that which soothes your obsessive-compulsive desire to maintain normalcy. Day in, day out you're exhausting your shit's ability to entertain you. You are the idiot who doesn't have an e-mail address because you believe the internet is a conspiracy. The idiot who doesn't believe in global warming or believes that there are forces that govern our universe donning halos and wings. It's pretentious to say but I know this and you may not. I have self-awareness and you are a buffoon.

The first of each month

Summer, as of late, has given me some insight into how the 40 year-old fat dude living in his parent's basement spends his god awful day. Some call this a self-fulfilling prophecy, I say it's introspection. Whatever, fags. A moment before starting this post I was lying like a gelatinous blob on the couch, counting clusters of stucco on the ceiling with only a towel wrapped around my nether regions. Just a moment before that, I was pan frying dumplings. Shirtless. (Take it from me, as fun as it sounds, don't do this. You're going to look like you were sentenced to death by a kiddie firing squad strapped with airsoft rifles.)

You're allotted certain liberties when you're home alone during summer vacation: walking around the apartment in the buff and anxiety-free masturbation just to name a few. (Note to self: Self-deprecation is losing steam; it's no longer funny, just self-deprecating.) Moving in with my dad has been both a blessing and a curse, sort of like fucking Heidi Montag. I'm given a lot of freedom here at my dad's. I can come and leave as I please, sleep in until noon, park my car on the street without getting a fucking citation, the list goes on. But as with the houses and apartments we've lived at before, we get shafted with a shitty landlord. Each landlord more obsessive-compulsive, neurotic, and tyrannical than the one before. Apparently ours isn't well versed in housing laws or aware of her tenant's personal freedoms as guaranteed by the U.S. constitution. For brevity's sake I'll list her grievances:

1) She chided my dad for not throwing away his newspapers in the recyclables bin. I'LL SHIT IN MY TRASHCAN IF I DAMN PLEASE. Recycling is a personal choice. I will reduce refuse at my own pace. Frankly, I think Mother Nature's been a bitch with all this June Gloom bullshit lately. Fuck her.

2) She wouldn't allow me to park in the space behind our garage. "This is listed in the contract your father signed. I never agreed to let you park here." BUT WHY NOT? This one's borderline retarded but we complied like suckers and bought a parking permit. The Man with a capital M: 1 Tenants with a lowercase penis: 0.

3) She harassed me and Kat whenever we'd enter through the front gate. She'd say something to the effect of, "WHY ARE YOU TAKING THAT WOMAN INTO MY APARTMENT? WHAT KINDS OF SHENANIGANS ARE YOU TWO UP TO." She was obviously implying that we were going upstairs to my apartment to fuck our brains out all over her shitty wood panel floor. Landlord Nazi, you cannot seriously believe you can impose your Old World values onto a pair of Post-eBay-Google-Generation X-ers. MY PRESIDENT IS BLACK. MY LAMBO IS BLUE. Honestly, though. Bitch, I will accidentally hang myself via auto-erotic asphyxiation if I want. My father pays the rent, he leaves the sexually deviant behavior up to me. 

4) This may be the most egregious. The worst thing a landlord could do, short of massacring my whole family while tripping on PCP. The bitch had the audacity to complain about our water usage. WERE THE NEO-CONS CORRECT WHEN THEY SAID ELECTING A BLACK GUY WOULD RESULT IN COMMUNISM? First, we totally ignored the bitch because there's no way you're telling me I'm not allowed to take an hour long shower. I will fucking raise tadpoles in my bathtub if I want! 

Those of you who still live at home, consider yourself lucky. Unless, your parents happen to be fucked up landlords. 

Genesis

Two semesters are in the books and I'm a free man! Now that summer break's here, I'm not too sure what to do. I have been mulling over in my head a list of things I want to accomplish in the next three months. But you aren't privy to reading about those plans. Well, not yet. More to come, assholes!