Old Fashioned Hollow

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And yet I cannot look away.



I am connected to this monitor. As I lean in, wires extend to my cheeks and burrow up through my skull into my cerebellum. There, the ends of the wires split open and small pincers with soldering guns find the nearest nerve-ending and solder these wires on. The nerve-ending thinks it moves on, but it is now stationary as it’s gently pulled and swayed like a ship at port. The wires feed these nerve-endings through a tube and have a say on all their odd decisions. Sometimes I feel like this.


I sit cross-legged and watch, peacefully letting my brain intake all this horror on my huge monitor. Instead of comfort, they always bring me sadness. The world is sad, so they say. The Earth is said, I tend to think. So like a sad person, I distract myself through idle-input. Which the wires give to me so happily.



Simply being an Ice-Cream-Pail would mean it had no connection to anything larger, The Old-Fashioned-Ice-Cream-Pail, now that’s some historical eatin’. Have as much as you would’ve in olden-days. Feel free to shovel, as we’ve also included an old-fashioned ice-cream shovel. (When you need to move more ice-cream into your mouth than that new-fashioned spoon will allow, you now have a historically-minded way of doing it.) I know you don’t feel any sort of deep connection to the Earth on which you live, you haven’t been there that long, as a people, so allow yourself comfort by knowing that you can at least eat a pails-worth of ice-cream just like they used to did.

The wires are our new roots. They’re much more portable than roots.

A voice seems to whisper “Keep clutching that receipt from 7-Eleven, the one for seven seventy seven. Press it close, folded in your wallet, meditate on it’s collection of sevens for they mean something profound. They mean something about you as a person ripped free from all this watchin. Exhibit it on your wall with four nails, as if it were a butterfly you’d caught, for it is, A butterfly of chance. That luck, that coincidence, must mean something about your destiny.” it seems to whisper to me.

We used to have so much more time alone, our brains and I. Whole days would be spent listening to wind, stepping on bugs, and chatting with ourselves about the wind and the bugs in our feet. Now the only reflection we get is off our windshields. The energy of the Earth and the compulsion to love is being put on hold, for we, as a people, had call-waiting.

And so we eat and eat to fill ourselves up with a tangy sense of worth. But like the stomach, once digested, we are hollow once more. Oddly enough, our brains, with all their potential, like this stasis. In the mud, we allow the fog to roll in and whisper into our ears how good the mud is making our skin look. And the checks for 40k come in the mail for a used car that’s not even a check, and because it came to us, because it came to me, on this couch, I feel special. I feel needed.

I feel like getting another car.

So I’m sitting here, scooping from my pail, reading about all sadness in the world, which I feel all of in my heart. Or Brain. I am sitting here scooping and wondering what I could do to stop all this sadness, or at least keep it away from me, and, taking a cold-bite, I hope that my lucky receipt will keep it away and do all the work for me. If not I’ll just drive away from this monitor at lightening speed in that used-car I bought with that check they sent me. That’ll make me feel whole. Yes it will.

And this is what I will do today.

Upper Class Me

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Meredith and I had arrived to the airport late and stoned and were greeted by a shaming British attendant who seemed to know about a problem with my ticket. She said the plane was full and there was nothing she could do accept bump me up to First Class, which on Virgin Atlantic translated to Upper Class, a term I far prefer.

Meredith looked pissed, but I didn’t spend much time remembering how pissed as I made my way to what I learned was a secret lounge built into JFK. Like the entrance to Hogwarts. 4-stories up I sped-ordered roughly three drinks as “Chef” cooked me a 4-star meal. The food was so good it was actually made of 4 individual stars, thin-sliced and broiled over a vinegar reduction.

I made it back to the boarding gate just in time to see Meredith looking far less Upper Class than me, and in a slightly British accent I told her about the reduction.

We didn’t chat for long though, the plane began boarding and those posh enough were requested to board first. I scuttled towards the gate, and golden ticket in hand boarded the plane as if I could have flown it. As I slip-and-slided my way directly into my seat I took a moment to appreciate the act of sitting down the minute you step on a plane. There was no journey to the grumbling rear, running a slalom through the frustrated and the poor, just a wink and a point and a large seat with the Spice Girls’ choreographer sitting next to it.

Face and I got along like old mates. I learned she was the Spice Girls’ choreographer as a sexy number in a tight red dress and Virgin Atlantic pin asked me if I’d like my massage before or after my champagne. I said that after would be fine as %90 of my available brainpower was pouring over the degree to which I’d never been asked that question before. She slunk away as Face and I, tittering, cheeresed the champagne she had just poured. With a toast I clicked stems and settled into my upper class life - If the paparazzi was present I would have looked pissed, but grateful.

The night flew on as Face and I chatted about all sorts of things. Becks. The Girls. The new album. I suggested a sking trip to Luzerne.

A couple off hours in I peeked my head behind the double-mirror to see if Meredith had managed to make a crude shelter in the scorched deserts of coach. She looked uncomfortable, so pacified, I played Face in a game of Uno.

After a couple more rounds I grew weary from work and a steward came over and asked if I’d like to turn down. At that point I didn’t feel like turning anything down but then realized it meant go to sleep, and yawning, said yes. She disappeared behind the sauna and brought me back a small bag with these pajamas in them. I slipped them on in the grand bathroom and felt a deep sense of place. They were the most comfortable things I had ever worn. In these pajamas I was king of the plane, and Face was my queen.

We landed and Face and I traded mobile numbers, promising to keep in touch and stay mates. I texted a couple of times, but she never got back to me, which is fine because she must have been too busy with the Girls. I was sure she would soon.

As the years have passed since that Thanksgiving in London, I have worn those jammies into an abused submission, hoping to reclaim what once was. The cruel reality of my lack of a castle would come crashing in as my humble roots began to strangle the tree. I can only imagine the deep shame of those Jammies when landing in New York they were brought to farthest Brooklyn and not the Central Park East of their destiny. My abuse was palpable, my intent malicious. There’s no way those Jammies could know what I was feeling.

Five years later the patina of their once elegant existence is but a sad shadow of their workaday life. The bottom of the legs look like zombie pants, and the pull-string is pulled off - requiring this hobo belt I hijacked from a pair of cargo-shorts with no button. I cannot bring myself to throw them these jammies out, and I don’t think I will anytime anyway. They remind me too much of a time when so much worked, and so little mattered - a time when champagne was endless, and sleeping on a plane was possible.

A time when I was Upper Class.

And so, I sleep in these jammies, and dream, of tomorrow.

I’ll wear them until they whither and rot off of me.

Just like the Spice Girls did.


Number One Ben Morrison

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I hit search this morning and my slouch un-slouched… I ‘d finally became the number one ranked Ben Morrison on Google. Putting aside the obvious question of “Why were you sitting around Googling yourself?, I can finally say that no other Ben Morrison is more findable than I.

Now that I’m king of the Ben Morrison hill I’ll describe the virtual Fallujah It’s been getting here. We Ben Morrisons are a cunning group, and I’ve battled, and still battle, with a motley bunch of digital Ben Morrisons. They are as diverse as they are deceptive, among them a 16-year-old violin prodigy, the Ben Morrison Rhododendron, and long-time foe Reading based web designer and developer, Ben Morrison, to name a few.

Although I am impressed it made it up there in the first place, the Rhododendron was the first to go. “How,” you ask, “Can a Rhododendron be so popular?” “Well,” I answer, “For a little while there, the Ben Morrison Rhododendron was funnier than the Ben Morrison Comedian.” My life was a mess back then, and I vividly remember Googling myself and feeling trapped beneath the Rhododendron of my name. But, life grows the willing, and as dark gave to light, I grew taller in the rankings and saw how beautiful its petals actually were. I walked on peacefully, crushing nothing but it’s score.

A much greater adversary, 16-year-old violin prodigy Ben Morrison waits in the wings. Two years ago he released a self-titled CD entitled Debut (two tracks of which were recorded with the Royal Scots Dragooon Guards), and I’ve been doing battle with his vicious bow ever since. He’s a quiet and cunning foe, icy eyes issue a direct challenge to any who would share his name, and now that I have overtaken it, I must be doubly cautious. I will not let him out of my periphery, as he sits from behind his horse-hair lash, growing older and more talented by the minute. I have fought his CD for two years now, and we shall not forget our lessons when he releases his second. He also “Won the 2002 Chamber Music School Music Contest and has performed at many concerts". Watch him play.

And now we come to the Kingfish, Joker to my Batman, Reading-based Web-Designer Ben Morrison. A self-described "Motivated hard-worker with a logical and innovative work approach", we can see from Ben Morrison’s recently Flash-enabled website that his new approach to work probably includes crushing me. He has many charts, charts that spell one thing, trouble. While I found his old site cluttered, his new site, complete with “digital silhouette” worries me straight. It’s an impressive portfolio of work including The Parachute Club and Attitude, to name a few. Reading on I discovered that in addition to being a talented designer he's unfortunetly a good human working regularly with “recovering alcoholics in the UK and AIDS orphans in the South Africa”. I’ve never even seen an AIDS orphan. Ben Morrison, you’re good.

But not good enough.

And so my shaky grasp of the top continues. Like a king suspicious of his court, I wake every day preparing to be usurped. Especially if that fucker releases his second album. But until then, tell your friends, www.benmorrison.org... www.benmorison.org... www.benmorrison.ooooorrrrggg....

Impossible is Nothing

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Conceived as a flashy addendum to his Ivy league resume, my man Alexy has made this video to put him over the edge in interviews with financial firms. Motivationally titled "impossible is Nothing", among other thigns we see Alexy bench press a comical amount of weight, serve a 140 MPH tennis volley, and ballroom dance with a smokin' Asian chick as examples of how much more successful he is than the average Billionaire. Alexy proves everyone wrong, assuming everyone though he was a jackass, which they might after watching this. Either way, I have a certain amount of respect for our foreign friend that he had the balls and ignorance to ever think this was a good idea. Glastnos!

I came out of this a more inspired and humble person. I beg you watch the whole thing. It's worth it for the brick breaking, and yes, I said brick breaking. But Ben, brick breaking is impossible! But reader, Impossible is Nothing.

Why he don't RESPEC ME?!!

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If you ever thought you'd see something funnier than Aaron Carter giving a beat-down to his younger brother, and crying at the end (much like he did when he got Punk'd), then abandon that thing because it has just been owned. This man is a little bitch. And what's funnier is that his little bitch brother, while normally being the littlest bitch in the spot, is actually out bitched by his larger bitch brother. This is a family of Bitches, much like the family of Assholes from Spaceballs. But at least the Assholes could sing.

This will make you smile, because you have balls. Even if you are female, your balls will be larger then the atoms on display here. Hit play and find out why I am right. And I am.

Laughing with Jesus.

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This is, the single, weirdest thing, I have ever seen. Jesus, what's your take?