Five Little Known Facts About Me

I had a half-beagle whom I barely remember get run over by a UPS truck.

I dressed as Indiana Jones for my preschool Halloween party. Later that day I was fiddling with the gear stick in my mother's car while she was in the Post Office, and the car rolled down a slight incline into a lightpole. The lightpole was ruined so the City Of West Bend built a fountain there. A bystander claimed I was waving as the car careened into the lightpole. But I was scared shitless, so probably not.

I participated in an 'Underground Newspaper' in High School called The Night Crawler. The 'Proper Newspaper' was called 'The Night Crier'. My friend and I managed to alienate, piss off, slightly amuse or cause to remain indifferent all of Slinger High School. I did a horoscope where I tried to name every 'Social Clique' in the school. My idea was to tell everyone off equally.

I once masturbated in the back of a bus in Ireland. (This will be the only Item here that involves me masturbating.)

I have been threatened with a lawsuit four times in my life.

I tag:

Gina, Shafer, Sandra, DUCKPANTS BBPD, Haystack

One retaliation against Bush that either hasn't been tried hard ehoungh or has just failed completely is the willful conflation of his name with female genitalia. 'Lick Bush' etc. We need to shift the warlike energy associated with politician's names over to sexual energy. I resent that 'bush' may have come to connote 'president' more so than it does 'vagina' or for that matter 'shrubbery'. That slogan 'Stay Out the Bushes' doesn't work for me though because it suggests bushes are a bad thing. What did they ever do to anyone?

I think I'm losing all confidence in music based in rock precepts to be interesting. New stuff that is. Or maybe I just don't know where to look. Or maybe I just don't care as much. Before I started writing poetry, music was my main thing. I was a complete spectator though. My therapist asked me if I would be happy as a spectator in my life. Mostly I am happy as a spectator in my life. I think inaction can be a very radical act in fact. Channeling my Oblique Strategies.

When I was in grade school, kids used to say 'What team did you vote for?' instead of 'What team did you root for?' What team one rooted for was very important. I hated the Chicago Bulls. I literally cried when the Denver Broncos lost 55-10 to the 49ers. I was (being a rural 13 years old) shocked and confused when Magic Johnson retired. The day after Magic Johnson retired, alot of kids were saying he had 'AIDS because he's a fag'. I remember feeling personally hurt by that. Maybe one reason I stopped following sports is because I was tired of having my heart broken! That or puberty.

In films there are sequences, usually about the length of a pop song called montages. My main thing is poetry, so naturally I'm wondering if there is an example of poetry montage. For some reason what pops into my head is Deerhead Nation, by K. Silem Mohammad. But those poems, if considered montage, add a new element to it, which is to say many of them are scary montage. Are there examples of scary montage in films? And I mean montage in the modern definition, which is from the 80s. A montage that seems to transcend all manner of aesthetic speculation, just through its sheer ridiculousness, is in Rocky IV, the training montage. I'd like to write a poem that has a training montage, say Zack or Dustin or James Liddy as the coach. They would be driving a golf cart along side me yelling encouragements while I'm on my daily 10 mile run by the sea shore.

There's also a part in Rocky IV where one can very easily mishear Rocky's manager saying 'Take a crap!' between rounds.

Poets should say fuckface more. But Anselm's down. So is Bruce Bruce.

Hairdresser

Is NPR considered a genre of music?

Uncle Ez talked about the news that stays news, but what about the dudes that stay dudes?

The other week, on a Saturday night, I was driving with Brock to some person's house, where my friend Saul used to live. We were listening to Jesus Lizard and I was thrashing around alot in the car. One of my lenses was loose and it popped out which I didn't realize until the next day. I looked on the passenger side but didn't think to look on the driver side, which is where my lense was.

I used to write music reviews for my high school newspaper. What I really wanted to do (I think) was start a band that sounded like the Pixies or Helium or Sonic Youth or some other indie rock band of the time. But my friend Justin was really into Meatloaf, and my friend Dave was really into Sting... I found the first review I published in a copy of the Nite Crier that was in the boys' locker room garbage. It was of Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral. I compared Trent Reznor to Edgar Allen Poe, because I felt like I needed to say something like that, basicly. Again, I took it very seriously. I wrote a review of Loveless by My Bloody Valentine, where I conceded that their music did sometimes sound like a cat's head stuck in a vacuum cleaner but went on to praise it nevertheless. The most contronversial thing I wrote for the school newspaper was probably a thing called Mary Tyler Moore. It has a boy killing his father then, covered in his father's blood, running and throwing his hat in the air ala the Mary Tyler Moore opening credits. It was mentioned on the Mark Belling show. Another piece I had in the same issue was a description of a bug crawling out of a dead woman's vagina. It was called Mitosis and it ended with the line, "You are a rapist. Deal with it." I didn't suggest of course how the reader might deal with it, just that they deal with it. Oh and I wrote both pieces under the name Jello Biafra. I didn't really know who he was. I didn't really who I was. I was a poser. What else could I be?

Taste

Why does taste matter? Ok. If you like something and I like it too, that gives us something to talk about right? The reason I get along with some of my better friends has a little bit to do with our shared frame of reference. But then, we disagree alot too, and thats fine. I suppose if we disagreed on everything, that would give us alot less to talk about. And you might say, 'Dude, you like that? That sucks!' and I might say 'Dude you like that? That sucks!'

But really, what does liking something do? What are you doing when you like something? Nothing. Stating a preference maybe. But to stand in front of a person and say, 'I like this.' What does it really do unless you talk about why you like it. Is it because it doesn't suck, or doesn't blow, or because it influenced something that came after. I had a friend in High School, who was my best friend, who listened to music that I could not fathom listening to. And then I kind of started to like it, because I picked up on some of the energy he got from it. I also, however, thought during that time of my life that the music I was listening to was really important and that only idiots would listen to 'mainstream music'. But you get beyond your teens and realize that alot of the things that seemed really important to you at the time, don't amount to much. Its really not important whether the other person on the bus likes REM.

That said, I think there's a certain mindset one can get in, where they start to claim music as theirs. They use it not only to define themselves but to define themselves against other people. They start arguements over it, call people names over it. All over, basicly, CDs, 7" singles, who 'owns a copy' of what. I guess it's fun. Fetishization. Which means you use music or literature or film as a way to compensate for something else. I do it. I use art to stand in for whole lot of things that are lacking in my life. But then I also use it to make myself feel more free. And I think its incredibly interesting that other people like other kinds music, books etc.

But I ask you again, if I like something that you don't like, why would you care? Why does it matter to you?

I had a dream that Ron Silliman was my manager at McDonalds.

I'm sexually attracted to Nancy Pelosi. I know its fucked up.

Ys comes out tomorrow but I won't enough $ til Friday. Unless a certain Andy Mister wants to loan me the money...

Strangers With Candy quotes


"Only I can help you realize my dreams of yours."

"Jerri, most of your dad is in the belly of dog."

"How is everyone today? And how am I?"

"But please, no mylar balloons. They deflate. And I don't have the heart to throw them away."

"They only thing we hate more than a racist, is a spic."

"I'll make your pinky all stinky."

"Snatch it down."

"This photo will never see the light of freedom."

"I know you have a beef, Stew. But try not to stir things up."

"That albino is running away with my midget!" (actually censored)

This is cathartic: I also watched LA Law on a regular basis. I remember being very shocked indeed when Leland's mistress fell down that elevator shaft. And when Arnie Becker pulled a muscle in his scrotum from too much fucking. That stayed with me.

Clark Coolidge Listens To The Beach Boys

Its very wonderful to discover these kinds of connections. In The Crystal Text, there's a line, "The laughs come in hard in Auld Lang Syne." I knew I'd heard this but didn't know where from. And then I realized its from this song by this man and this man who worked with this woman on her new album. It just makes me feel good, like all the things I like are a little galaxy, stars all corresponding to each other.

Situation Comedy

Here's a list of some of the sitcoms I've watched on at least a partially regular basis, for the Mr.

night court
hungry cougars making sweet cougar love
the cosby show
seinfeld
rumsfeld
the simpsons (sitcom? its debatable)
strangers with candy (likewise)
curb your enthusiasm
wings
king of queens
alphaville
the andy griffith show
the dick van dyke show
leave it to beaver
silliman's blog
fawlty towers
mash
the mary tyler moore show
that boy shits more than a mule that got into a bushel of pears!
barney miller (very kickass themesong)
get a life
cheers
furry tuna taco
the office (brittish version)

sitcoms I've never watched on a consistent basis:
arrested development
fresh prince of bel air (is that what its called?)
deze nutz!

Today I bought The Crystal Text by Clark Coolidge and Homer's Art by Alice Notley at Woodland Pattern. Rob shaved. Chuck's letting his head fuzz get more longer. I didn't get a chance to say hi to Julie. Hi Julie! A certain local poet with an electrical last name said he bought Spicer's Language at a used bookstore, not really being aware of Spicer or his work. Said its not really his type of thing. Irritating. I want to have a poem that I read first in my 'normal' voice, then a sort of breathy coo. Poetry readings in general should be more sensual. Hard on. Can you imagine how awesome it would be if Lin Dinh for example who already has a breathy reading voice, read poems in a more sensual way. Or Lisa Jarnot? I've never (and this a gaping missing link in my desired life experience) heard CAConrad read but... You get the idea. CA? You out there? Am I trying to substitute poetry for sex? Do they stand in for each other? Well of course they do. When sex needs a rest, sex goes outside for some fresh air. And poetry (but other things too) may or may not stand in the spot in the light where sex was. And vice versa.

Oh yeah and my friend Elizabeth called me today and asked me if I voted. I friend her. I voted straight dem this time, cause its like what's the point of taking Governor Jim Doyle seriously and choosing him as an individual. I'm more into just voting against the republicans. Anyway my voting philosophy now is to just vote against the people and the shit that are fucking everything up. Strategic negation. For instance, there's a bullshit homophobic amendment up for the vote in WI. How this 'preserving the institution' bullshit is not seen as the straight up homophobia that it is, is truly gross. But yeah you should vote, if its not too late. Vote.

Maybe another time I'll go into my theory of how the dems are basicly just the Washington Generals to the Republicans' Harlem Globetrotters. Showing up as 'the opposing team' in a different uniform and not much else. Er, that basicly is the theory.

And I'm starting a blogzine called docent. Write to me at mthauser@uwm.edu.