Yoda haiku

According to God
And Satan
Humanity is.

Attention Alice!

"The palace of power is a labyrinth of interconnecting rooms", Max once said to his sleepy child. She imagined it into being, walked towards it, half-dreaming half-awake. "It's windowless" Max said, "and there is no visible door. Your first task is to find out how to get in. When you've solved that riddle, when you come as a supplicant into the first anteroom of power, you will find in it a man with the head of a jackal, who will try to chase you out again. If you stay he will try to gobble you up. If you can trick your way past him, you will enter a second room, guarded this time by a man with the head of a rabid dog, and in the room after that you'll face a man with the head of a hungry bear, and so on. In the last room but one there's a man with the head of a fox. This man will not try to keep you away from the last room, in which the man of true power sits. Rather, he will try to convince you that you are already in that room and that he himself is that man."

"If you succeed in seeing through the fox man's tricks, and if you get past him, you will find yourself in the room of power. The room of power is unimpressive and in it the man of power faces you across an empty desk. He looks small, insignificant, fearful; for now that you have penetrated his defenses he must give you your heart's desire. That's the rule. But on the way out the fox man, the bear man, the dog man and the jackal man are no longer there. Instead, the rooms are full of half-human flying monsters, winged men with the heads of birds, eagle-men and vulture-men, men-gannets and hawk-men. They swoop down and rip at your treasure. Each of them claws back a little piece of it. How much of it will you manage to bring out of the house of power? You beat at them, you shield the treasure with your body. They rake at your back with gleaming blue-white claws. And when you've made it and are outside again, squinting painfully in the bright light and clutching your poor, torn remnant, you must persuade the skeptical crowd - the envious, impotent crowd! - that you have returned with everything you wanted. If you don't, you'll be marked as a failure forever."

"Such is the nature of power" he told her as slipped towards sleep, "and these are the questions it asks. The man who chooses to enter its halls does well to escape with his life. The answer to the question of power, by the way" he added as an afterthought, "is this: do not enter as a supplicant. Come with meat and a sword. Give the first guardian the meat he craves, for he is always hungry, and cut off his head while he eats: pof! Then offer the severed head to the guardian in the next room, and when he begins to devour it, behead him too. Baf! Et ainsi de suite. When the man of power agrees to grant your demands, however, you must not cut off his head. Be sure you don't. The decapitation of rulers is an extreme measure, hardly ever required, never recommended. Make sure, instead, that you ask not only for what you want but for a sack of meat as well. With the fresh meat supply you will lure the bird-men to their doom. Off with their heads! Snick-snack! Chop-chop until you're free. Freedom is not a tea party, India. Freedom is a war."

Blowtorch

"Frank settled down in the Valley,
and he hung his wild years on a
nail that he drove through his
wife's forehead.

He sold used office furniture out
there on San Fernando Road and
assumed a $30,000 loan at
15 1/4 % and put a down payment
on a little two bedroom place.

His wife was a spent piece of used jet trash
Made good bloody-marys, kept her mouth
shut most of the time, had a little Chihuahua
named Carlos that had some kind of skin
disease and was totally blind.

They had a thoroughly modern kitchen;
self-cleaning oven (the whole bit)
Frank drove a little sedan.
They were so happy.

One night Frank was on his way home
from work, stopped at the liquor store,
picked up a couple of Mickey's Big Mouth’s.
Drank 'em in the car on his way to the
Shell station; he got a gallon of gas in a can.

Drove home, doused everything in
the house, torched it.
Parked across the street laughing,
watching it burn, all Halloween
orange and chimney red.

Frank put on a top forty station,
got on the Hollywood Freeway
headed North.

Never could stand that dog."

Couldn't have put it better myself. No, really, I couldn't.
Picture by ~mtrutledge on DeviantArt.


TPH

She's my heroin

Therapy by derision

I find myself being dragged away from this persona to a more chivalrous one, day by day. It is not the first time it has happened, and by all means, it doesn't take much to make me shift and abandon different characters and views. However I feel I like this particular incarnation enough to allow it some sort of self-defense.

I came up with myself when I needed to cope with things in a spectacular way. There looms the possibility of me not having to do this anymore, the lure of a more tender emotion seems to be sneaking up on me. And it got me thinking - why should I activate different modules of myself with every other feeling that seems important enough to require emotional spring cleaning? If every time a bell chirped in my hat I'd suddenly turn to see it I'd probably just be stretched on some floor somewhere with my eyes long lost in permanent vertigo. And still, I seem to be doing exactly this on some level. I'm my own book of tricks.



Why would I suddenly write such a mushy post? Get over yourselves. I don't live in a conflict area and most ideas I have are stretched so thin they barely manage to link things together. Blogs inevitably fall in pits of personal confession, pathetic in nature and cozy for all those who wish to put off writing their own posts. I wish this was an exorcism.

TPH

The pros and cons of tanks

To have a tank - the dream of the founder of Virgin (the record-label, the legend, the myth) and by having it, knowing that it is yours to drive around in at any given moment is synonymous with security, control and "zazz".

To have a tank, in the most biblical of ways - the dream of a fellow harlequin, mostly charming, always full of presence - and to be able to run anyone down in it, at any given moment, becoming one with the motorized armored vehicle and feeling the bones crunch under your treaded soles, a certain gentleness involved - synonymous with the M.O. of any self-respecting sociopath bent on making the world a better place, even by self-sacrifice.

What else is there to hope for? Get a tank - paint it pink, make an impression, run everyone down in it, beginning with your best friend (he/she would go out with an orgasmic yelp, no doubt) and always avoiding those you despise most - the subtlety of knowing they know you could make guacamole out of them with the expense of nothing else than gasoline is punishment enough and it turns you in a sort of makeshift Batman.

This was me trying to empathize with my friend's dream. I would much prefer (much like Jesus) to have others blame themselves to the extent they'd jump in front of her tank, when she gets it. Such a creative partnership would indeed be our big show together...

TPH

Grin Reaper

It appears exactly when you'd think it's gone forever. It stretches from orifice to orifice on the horizontal and on the vertical, a leviathan of a cross cracking the head in four, like a knife drawing on a lemon. And then the chasm widens and sound comes out, cackling, snorting, bellowing, howling, contagious and infectious, bringing forth unrelenting deconstruction of all things serious, front row with popcorn, while at the same time underlining with many lines the very thing it mocks, much like a thong, all this somewhere in the vividly painted backdrop.

Cheese, Whiskey, Watch the Birdie (rough translation), etc - words that cut slits in peoples' faces like charm, magic words which bring the apocalypse of straight faces everywhere.

Serendipity

La sesizarea lui Hamlet, un control inopinat a constatat ca e ceva putred in Danemarca.

or, in the Bard's language,

Being called upon by Hamlet, a surprise inspection revealed that there was indeed something rotten in Denmark.

Words of wit from a high school graduate. I take a leaping bow.

TPH