Over It

I am sooo over yesterday. You ever had the experience where you wake up the next day, and it's not that you are somebody else ... it's, what makes you think a person is one single point of view. Hell, no. The art is to get bigger than all of it, you little hydra you, and like the membrane of a balloon, contain it. Affectionately. I am an asshole—now and then—and besides, I was dealing with a lawyer all day. A middle-aged white male lawyer.

Someone sent me a cartoon: a couple in a car, the wife is driving, and she says, “Oh, dear, I think I ran over a lawyer!” Husband says: “Well if you're not sure, dear, back up and do it again.”

Nothing personal, if you are a lawyer (and reading this blog? why?) but as far as I can see, these people are paid great sums of money to lie. And after a while, the lies kinda slip into the category of normal, and if that isn't morally compromising. How the hell do you keep track of right and wrong?

So about 3 a.m. I started at the beginning of Mystic Bourgeoisie, and right off, saw that the title means something! All these clever blog monikers. Honey, we are the mystic bourgeoisie and of course I am never going there again. Tomorrow morning, first thing: torch all those self-help books left over from Eighties. Marianne Williamson? Up in smoke. I bought that stuff whilst involved in a romance that should never have happened, which will make you grasp at any manner of crappy straws.

From October 2005:

“Forgive me if I've already told you this, but I have a plan to claim the local Target store for the Queen of Spain. I figure if I can get an outlaw biker gang to back me up with stolen heavy construction equipment, I might be able to hold onto it long enough to make CNN. I'll spend the rest of my life in the slammer, sure, but imagine the cred ... ‘What's he in for?’ ‘Who, that guy? Him and a bunch of berserker biker dudes claimed a Target store for the Queen of Spain.’ ‘Whoa! Far fuckin out.'“

What a pity. Finding the man you want to marry at my age, when I want to marry like I want to cut off my foot with the butter knife. It's a sentiment, but no less sincere. The way to a woman's heart is through her eyes and ears. What? No, never met him. That matters? Through their writing ye shall know them, and it was good.

No, it was Far Fuckin' Out.

There Be Dragons

My Dear Ms. Sessum,

Will you quit blogging such nice things about me ...

How much easier to give than to forkin' receive ...

Most people never get out from under the rainshadow of their parents' gaze ...

It's hard turf, hard to chart, hard to navigate. No maps. Lots of dark matter. A black hole or two, to marry.

Fate would bring a sweet soul into my life ...

That awful noise you hear is some rusted hinge inside. Damned Fate, prying it open again.

Yours Truly,
Zo

The Churn

(Fiction) ... It wasn't for many years that I got even a hint of a grip on Alec's issue with work. First, we start with the assumption that I am a sponge, a freeloader, then we move on from there. That was the current that ran below everything, a resentment, a form of hatred that I certainly sensed, and from the start ... yet what desperate young woman can afford the truth. I wanted to get married because that is what I knew to do, I needed help with my dear little children, I had no money ... and I suppose the truth is that in Alec, in his hatred, I was given yet another crummy gift. Why me, oh Lord, which is exactly the sort of plea that goes unanswered.

Because the real question is, why Alec.

Why men.

Why the hatred and no end of punishment to women in need.

Now that we know of some of the nastier attitudes of the really entrenched, okay, there's a tiny hue and cry. Perhaps it is not quite the thing, this stoning to death of the woman fucked out of wedlock. Bury her upright in a pit and batter her about the head. On the other hand, as Alec used to so cheerfully say, Better you than me.

Had I but known it, every hateful thing Alec said was a direct pipeline from ancient tribal feuds. The kind of hatred baked, after eons under the sun, into a shrivelled, bitter lump that once eaten, sits there in the gut, neither regurgitated nor shat. Churning. Churning like his old man, churning like Alec. Churning but stuck. Churning without hope of removal of the indigestible truth of their lives ...

So they strike out. Which relieves exactly nothing. Perhaps only aggravates the churn.

And women are so used to it, I am so used to it, tell me, does it not seem normal? This ... cycle of buildup and release? Don't we pity the poor souls, having no better way? Yes, we do. Pity which has no bearing on the fact, we are maimed. Pity, genuine pity, will get you killed. Hold up a sign, go around, “I feel for you.” See how long—with someone like Alec—see how long you last.

Run That By Me One More Time

“Prepare yourself to qualify for good work, treat work seriously, and don't put yourself in a position of unequal resources when you marry.”

Don't put yourself in a position of unequal resources when you marry?

Don't put yourself in a position of unequal resources when you marry?

Betty? Betty? Are you really gone?

Dear Mr. Fantasy

Doug's Darkworld writes: “Israeli militants have decided the time has come to destroy their enemies in Syria and Iran. In a desire to create a fantasy world where no Israelis can ever come to harm. Why is this a fantasy world? Because it is also a world where Israel is free to kill and maim their Arab neighbors any time they please.”

Sounds like my marriage.

All this war crap. Nothing but male umbrage, out of control.

Nothing more important to it than that.

Poor sods/stupid fucks. Take your pick.

I Am The STEVE your CEO

And the Steve spake unto Ari and Hyatt ... saying unto them,

Speak unto the children of Apple, saying, These are the browsers which ye shall use among all the software that are on the earth.

Whatsoever implementeth the tabs, and render the text, and render the CSS, among the browsers, that shall ye use.

Nevertheless these shall ye not use of them that render the text, or of them that implement the tab: as the Lynx, because he render the text, but implementeth not the tabs, nor render the CSS; he is unclean unto you.

And the Internet Explorer, because he render the text, but implementeth not the tab, and render not the CSS; he is unclean unto you.

And the iCab, because he render the text, but implementeth not the tab, and render not the CSS; he is unclean unto you.

And the Opera, though he implement the tab, and render the text, yet he render not the CSS and he creepeth on the page loading; he is unclean to you.

Of their code shall ye not use, and their executable shall ye not touch; they are unclean to you.

These also shall be unclean unto you among the creeping things that creep upon the page loading; the Netscape, and the OmniWeb, and the WebDesktop after his kind.

And upon whatsoever any of them, when they crash, doth fall, it shall be unclean; whether it be any disk, or CD, or server, or tape, whatsoever storage it be, wherein any work is done, it must be erased, and it shall be unclean until the even; so it shall be cleansed.

And if any browser, of which ye may use: blink; he that toucheth the executable thereof shall be unclean until the even.

For I am the STEVE your CEO: ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy: neither shall ye defile yourselves with any manner of creeping browser that creepeth upon the page loading.

For I am the STEVE that bringeth you up out of the land of Windows, to be your CEO: ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.

This is the law of the browsers, and of the software, and of every application that runneth on the client, and of every application that loadeth upon the server:

To make a difference between the unclean and the clean, and between the browser that may be used and the browser that may not be used.

Comments:
Would you please address the issue of shellfish? I know they have not scales and neither have they fins, and they liveth in the seas and in the rivers, but it seems to me that calling them 'abominations' is a wee bit harsh.

Also, why am I allowed to eat beetles but not ferrets?

Well, apparently my fond babies have gone, slipped away in the night, at some point in the last, oh, three or four years, so that I feel called upon to post and thereby mount for all eternity this page, from perversiontracker.com, and if ever there were a dot and a com ... my god, what raw talent. And the commenter! Who shall gather up these treasures. Oh, all fucking right, the Wayback Machine ... but since my authorial stance demands that this persona called Zo shall stand at the center of the universe, hey.

You really have to know and love Apple to appreciate the way in which put on and reality weave their way through this Morris Dance of a post, a spirit that Cringely, among others, has caught and does so well ... the worse Microsoft does, the better Cringely gets ... I was once married to someone like that, but in the least positive sense; the lower I got, the zestier his outlook (zestier? I don't know if I even want to make up that one.) Whereas Cringely has taste, and manners. Okay, class. Okay, more class than me, are you happy now? I still now and then recite to myself, for the sheer pleasure of it, “And Microsoft? Microsoft doesn't have a dog in this fight.”

Which captured the spirit of the moment with such perfection, it was as if I could see Gates standing on the sidelines, with the same entertained-yet-clueless expression with which some of us are so familiar, whilst Apple and Google get to do all the interesting things. Like live in and deal with the present. You Microsoft shareholders are fuckin' lucky that the software infiltrated business, but I do wonder what you're going to do when they come for you, I mean, when the operating system crumbles like ancient, ill-made papier mache. I care.

So there will be shit flung at this post, on account of this post, because, have you noticed, any sort of reverence, even a play upon reverence, a gentle making fun of ... is unbearable to those embedded in lives of nastiness of their own making. Ooooh, they hate anyone having a good time. Oooooh, they hate any fun that smacks of love.