The only one who managed to escape, Brian Boucher, will never speak of his ordeal, or of watching the untimely demise of his fellow teammates at the hands of bloodthirsty, ravenous aliens who ultimately sought to acquire a large, metal cup shaped device to power their spaceship and return to their home galaxy.

But not before they acquire new victims.

An artist's depiction of the bloodthirsty dinosaur-like hockey player eating extraterrestials, also known as the Philadelphia Flyers

Real men grill their moms meat. Even when it’s 48 degrees out with 45 mph wind gusts.

In May

photo

Originally uploaded by stardove07

]]> http://imhappierwhenimbroke.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/86/feed/ 0 stardove07 http://imhappierwhenimbroke.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/sometimes-i-forget-about-the-rain/ http://imhappierwhenimbroke.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/sometimes-i-forget-about-the-rain/#comments Wed, 13 Feb 2008 06:44:16 +0000 stardove07 http://imhappierwhenimbroke.wordpress.com/?p=85 ]]> ocean swallows sun
forgotten warmth gives rise to
fog upon freeways

awake and alone
body satisfied, heart dazed
soul surrounding smile.

another promise made,
words drip needlessly from lips
wasting kisses’ breath

who is it you seek
when last nights’ countenance falls,
when new sun rises?

what color will you paint today?

or will you instead tomorrow’s lines pen?

February 7, 2008

Hello Mitten,

I wanted to drop you a line to thank you for getting your annoying jack ass self out of the public eye. It was quite a courteous gesture given I am a member of what appears to be a very large, growing, bipartisan conglomeration of people who are sick of hearing your voice, seeing your goddamn smirk, and watching you piss away your childrens’ inheritance, hell bent on further spending us into oblivion and fucking the whole world just a little bit harder – apparently the new conservative way – and who just want you to go the hell away.

On one hand, I am sad to see you go, because you would have been such an easy schmuck to ass-whoop in the general election, come November. I would’ve loved to have seen you spend even more money touring the country and defending the policies of someone with an approval rating that is nearing the single digits. Even though the foreign media seems to think you are somewhat presidential looking, I think you look like a tool. Box. You are a tool box, a box of tools.

Let’s take a look at your own words.

If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win.

And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.

Oh, no, you didn’t go there.

Are we really going to start blasting this shithead boom box toxic nonsense again? Are we really going to let assholes like Mitten here tell us that a democratic victory equals a terrorist victory? Didn’t they pull this shit with John Kerry, a freaking war veteran, and he just sort of bent over, and kissed his own ass goodbye?

You asinine fuck. How dare you imply that you and your narrow-minded bunch of insipid. warmongering fools are the only people that can mount a fight against other assholes in other countries. Are people really going to allow themselves to be scared into voting Republican once again? You are nothing more than another Osama W. Stupid Fuck Head Bin Ladin, who calls people like Rush Limbaugh and tells them to spread this message, because at least he realizes that if someone with a little bit of goddamn common sense and, say, perhaps some ties to Muslim countries and peoples, wins an election, then he is plainly fucked, since we will stop fueling his fires and giving him thousands of recruits the world over every fucking hour.

All I can say is, Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Obama, which ever one of you accumulates enough political geeks to get nominated, or if you team up, or if Howard Dean somehow combines you both into a clone cyborg named Hillarack Clobama in his mad laboratory, yee-ahHH!!, either way, please have the guts (notice i didn’t say “balls,” trying to be fair here) to shut stupid jackasses like this man the hell up – and better yet, prove them wrong.

You try to cloak your farewell message in a see-through blanket of ignorant bliss and blind, fervent patriotism, but you are nothing more than irrelevant.

Good-bye, Mitten. See you in hell.

Wait, do Mormons believe in hell? Who cares. Your religion at least made you stand out.

Bend over, America

in the Victorian era, here and elsewhere in the West, death was viewed as something intimate to be shared with the family at home.  the concept of dying alone and unmourned was foreign and strange.  so when the Civil War comes along, and more Americans lose their lives than in all the 20th century wars that followed combined, death becomes a detached, dark, and lonely endeavour.

the straggling Union and Confederate armies could not afford the time or manpower to give every fallen soldier a proper burial.  bodies were gathered and thrown haphazardly into half-dug ditches, covered with dirt and subsequently forgotten.  the author read part of a letter from a dying Union soldier to his father, in which he states his father can be “happy” knowing how his son had succumbed to death, rather than living with an unsolved mystery for the rest of his days.

i began to consider, with the author’s help, the factors at play in American culture at the time.  religiously, people as a whole believed in the resurrection of the body as well as the soul.  amputees then began to worry they would be resurrected in pieces.  at the end of the 19th century, the religious establishment clashed with growing skeptics as the Modern Age began over the theory of evolution; man resisted terming himself an animal, even as on the battlefield he insisted upon killing and dying like one.

now, i’ve never been a detractor of evolution, or a proponent of creationism, by any means.  but it is interesting to think that parallel to the rise of the Hobbesian man as “noble beast” was the climax of human animalisation, as we began to slaughter each other like lambs across the young United States.  as evolution began to take hold as plausible, the bloodiest century in human history began to unfold.  this undoubtedly coincides more with powerful nations attempting to unseat one another with increasingly more devastating weapons.  but perhaps just as we began to look at each other more as evolved beasts rather than spirits cloaked in flesh with a noble purpose (still descended from apes and primordial goo, of course: it’s a question of self-perception), so did we begin to view dying less as an honorable, intimate experience and more as just another process in the rapid evaporation of our lives.

so christmas came and went and this year i feel more detached from the season than ever. it is moments like this that i realise my life is really stuck in purgatory right now. i will be escaping that very shortly.

every year after christmas i generally lie awake in my bed pondering what it all means. i generally permit my hyperactive mental juices to saturate my cerebellum a little more than usual, since methinks this is sort of the purpose of this holiday, to reflect on what it signifies, again, both secularly and spiritually. this season i’ve read Saramago’s The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, a critical take on Christ’s life and ministry through the eyes of a socialist skeptic. i’ve also begun reading the Gnostic gospels and the Apocrypha, or sacred texts omitted from the “orthodox” Bible in an attempt to gain a wider understanding of how Christ was perceived in the early days of his nascent faith. those who know me well know that i am spiritual, but not religious, and my interest in religion is a strong academic one at heart. nonetheless i ordinarily delve into the christmas spirit, and this year has proved more difficult to do so.

but lying awake here at nearly 2 AM anticipating the sun to rise on Boxing Day, family having departed and mentally preparing to head several thousands of miles away back to my other home once again, after having bounced from a week in Washington, D.C. back to New Jersey, i’m reminded that the spirit of the season requires us to step away from ourselves and into the hearts of others. this makes me feel the pain that my family feels each time i leave and go further away, and it does not make living any easier. but despite the pain i must seek to understand how they feel; i must look at it through their eyes and hearts, or else risk creating a rift of selfish misunderstanding between us.

look, we are all a little selfish, and perhaps we need be to preserve our own lives and mental stability, for which we must assume the primary charge if they are to be truly “our” lives. and from a social perspective, it’s true that we cannot help others if first we cannot help ourselves. but we bear a responsibility to one another, and selfishness does not serve that duty well. christmas reminds us that we ought to think about what we can and should do for others in our lives and beyond. it’s a time for us to stop talking and start listening, and to maybe put aside our seemingly impenetrable priorities to be there for someone in need. it’s a time for us to remember those without whom we would not be who we are, but also to appreciate others for who they are and what they’re about. a time a shepherd lets rest his flock so he can go and watch over a little child sleeping in a barn, while he ponders who this child is and what he will amount to.

merry christmas to all, and to all a good night.

lately feelings of hopelessness have befallen me as i watch the world around us fall into further chaos and clusterfuck – the Middle East further unraveled, Iraq disquieted, North Korean sabre-rattling, Hillary and Huckabee gaining in the polls. my older contemporaries and mentors who have seen and survived what i view as much greater tribulations have unanimously remarked to me that this is the worst state of earthly affairs to which they have ever borne witness. on top of this, the other night i saw Morgan Spurlock’s (“Super Size Me”) newest documentary, entitled “What Would Jesus Buy?” which recounts the prevailing materialism that has, like an anaconda, encircled and suffocated Christmas out of any of its original meaning. As things worsen we succumb to further decadency; as our economy falters and is expropriated to faraway places with slave labour and private contractors, we rack up excessive, insatiable debt as the rich get richer and the poor, poorer.

Jefferson firmly believed in cyclical history, as do i, and remarked that things had been worse before and would be better (or worse) yet. many of my contemporaries have assured me of the same. i have been resolute in the opinion that balance, like Tao, restores and maintains itself through the ages.

yet, as of late i am guilty of beginning to fall into the black void of hopelessness that surrounds our dejected and misguided material society, one that borders dangerously upon the grey shores of the sea of apathy that seems to characterise our generation, at least to outsiders.  but now i am more aware that the fragile balance of existence is actually our responsibility.

Native Americans prophesied that the Seventh Generation would enter the fray and begin to heal the rifts and destruction caused by previous generations, and would at least temporarily (as history and time are a wheel ever spinning, not linear, and one never knows what lay around the bend) begin to drastically improve life on Earth.

we are the seventh generation, and at the risk of sounding pompous, dramatic, solipsistic, or all of the above, it’s up to us to make the changes we wish to see in the world.

our generation may have been labeled apathetic by the media, who themselves do little but dissolve the world of its common sense and propagate desperate events with little or no concern for the consequences, and continue to perpetuate the divisions between peoples. but this assertion fails all those of us who struggle with a shotty job market, dehumanising cubiclezation, exorbitant housing prices, college loans, and a failed political system. just as Italy struggles between a 68 and 71 year old, we have still entrusted leadership to an aging bunch of baby boomers who, 30 years later, are still kicking the same dead horse, and have blinders on to the struggles that modernity has propped upon us.

it’s time for our generation to usurp leadership from this peanut gallery of incompetent assholes and start fulfilling the prophesy and realising our responsibilities. this is why i’ve decided to support Barack Obama for President in 2008. he is the only candidate who, though he is not of our generation, doesn’t belong to theirs.  he is not bound by their Sisyphean struggle. we need hope and courage and unity, and from familiarising myself with his past and policies, i am increasingly certain that he, if anyone, can produce these.

i recommend Andrew Sullivan’s article from The Atlantic to further explicate my position. again, not to sound dramatic, but the fate of a whole lot of shit is in our hands, people. wake up and let’s be what we’re supposed to be.