Timewaster wordwaster

Dear diary,

What difference does it make? Whatever your passion is, nobody cares about it. I don’t mean to be a downer, but what I’m saying is true. If you think green is the best color for a tie, everyone else will choose purple.

The people who live along the mountainside distrust the people who live down in the valley.

Plus goats will eat anything. Why is that? Are the tongues of goats incapable of tasting the disgusting flavor of the things that they are chewing on? And what is a goat’s stomach made of? I bet they have diamond fangs inside their intestines. And these digestive fangs squirt out battery acid for venom. And their eyes are radioactive.

I hate seeing people argue about politics online, because it makes me feel worthless, because whichever side I agree with, I can’t even budge the scale. The only action that makes a difference is violence, and I prefer to act peacefully. So I guess I just have to wait until the human species matures. How long will that take? My guess is...

During his meeting with the big-shot record producer, Officer Rough says that he has been working on his hit song for TWO MONTH. (His French accent causes that last word to sound singular not plural. I’m referring to the 2013 motion picture Wrong Cops.)

It’s weird that I had a beginning, but I don’t remember anything about it. I mean, during infancy or before: it is all a blank. I can’t recall what life was like as an egg or spermatozoon, let alone as the junk food that comprised those things; my earliest memories are of klutzing about as a toddler, so my recollections of this present individuality are missing their initial chapters: any filmed re-enactment must begin with a hazy fade-in, like a crescendo of war drums...

And if you’re a prisoner one year, and then the next year you’re set free, your free self can’t really identify with your prisoner self: it considers the reality of its past the same way that it thinks of a fictional character in a storybook.

Yet preachers will approach you on the street and condemn you for writing irreligious texts. You’re not even the same mind that committed those views to paper, but now you’re being blamed for them. The preacher is a total stranger to you, but you are well-known to him: that’s the price of literary fame.

There’s this idea that we shouldn’t redistribute the wealth of rich folk in order to save the lives of poor folk, because that wouldn’t be fair: rich people worked hard for their wealth; that’s what wealth IS: proof of having worked hard; because hard work results in riches, one’s wealth increases in direct proportion to how hard one works. But is this true? The average upper-class person has ninety zillion times the amount of money as an average lower-class person. Did the upper-class person do ninety zillion times the amount of hard work as the lower-class person? That’s impossible: there aren’t even enough milliseconds in the day to account for the superfluous capital that they have. Their entire swimming pool is filled with gold coins.

But back to being a goat: If you’re a goat, do you plan what you’re going to do with your day? Or do you just get up in the morning and sniff the air and then amble in the direction of the most interesting smells? Do you prefer the repugnant odor of garbage that is heaped along the curb-sides of your village, or is the scent of fabric softener more appealing to you? It seems that the crows in my neighborhood are attracted to the smell of rotting meat, because they risk their life to get a bite of some roadkill, but they only go after it once it starts to putrefy – do you agree with the crows? Or do you like the smell of a new car with leather interior? How about the smell of a billionaire’s smoking jacket?

I’ve been on a Noam-Chomsky kick lately, because once you watch one video online, the streaming website continues to suggest to you further videos. So today I watched—or rather listened to—a radio interview from 1983. So whatever was discussed was dated. For that reason, I’ll relay one exchange. A person called into the show and said, “I happened to catch your program when you had minister Louis Farrakhan on, and he said that Israel wouldn’t have any peace as long as they wouldn’t negotiate; and I was wondering if your guest agrees or disagrees with that.” And Chomsky (the “guest”) answered: “Well, I agree. As long as Israel refuses to accept the right of self-determination for the indigenous Palestinian population, there will be no peace; there’ll be a situation of constant conflict. Ultimately, I should add, that’s going to lead to global war: it has repeatedly brought the superpowers very close to conflict...”

Does that interest you at all? Should I not have quoted that? I don’t usually mention the names Farrakhan or Israel or Palestine; it’s nice to be able to include them in the pages of this diary. Maybe I’ll gain a follower or two at the National Security Agency (NSA), the official U.S. cryptologic organization. I always wish that, whenever they are instructed to spy on me, the agents would fall in love with the way that I write.

This reminds me of the secret service workers who were employed as bodyguards for the candidates during the recent primary. I heard a rumor that when they were assigned to guard Candidate ONE, they accepted the duty reluctantly, because he or she, being a seasoned attorney, was rather cold to them; whereas, when the same bodyguards were assigned to accompany Candidate TWO, they said it felt like a vacation, because he or she would join the average citizens at fairgrounds and ride on merry-go-rounds with his or her grandchildren.

But I usually try to steer clear of divisive political opinions; I’m afraid to offend anyone, so I end up pleasing no one. For the record, I loathe Candidate THREE and I agree with those who revile his or her selfish behavior, but his or her former opponent from the general election is not the remedy: those two are both compulsive liars—one lies to us like a used-car salesman, whereas the other lies to us like a corporate lawyer. I would be happiest if our president were Nina Turner. It annoys me that so-and-so’s P.I.P. (Partner In Power) is in the news again giving feminism a bad rep. (Or is the term “bad wrap”—or bad RAP? Fine, let’s print all three.) So I want to engage in some mudslinging. The nickname of Candidate ONE should be Top Dollar Law Firm, because everything this person does is like the machination of a team of legal counselors. I think it is bad for our culture that, when running for office recently, he or she chose as his or her slogan “[REDACTED]” as if he or she possesses the copyright on humankind. Just as there is no matrimony in paradise, there is neither gender nor sex among law firms. [Matt. 22:29-30] Candidate ONE is simply a mind for whom power trumps all: everything is a play for dominance. Even when spontaneously kissing a loved one, his or her act is calculated with malice aforethought.

But do you know what my new favorite flavor of fruit juice is? Peach mango. I wonder how many goats would vote for THAT over, say, blood pudding.

And now that Twin Peaks is over, I don’t have to talk about David Lynch anymore. So let me rate all his movies with a simple hand-sign: I’ll give a selected filmography and tell you what is hot and what is not:

No, I’ll save this idea for a future entry. It’s too much work for this morning. But I will admit that I WAS WRONG in my judgment of the three sublime hours of 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return. I kept repeating that episodes 3, 4, and 8 were the only sublime ones. Well I’ve been sacrificing my evenings to suffer through a second viewing of the series, and I’m sorry to report that not even episode 4 is good. The third hour starts wonderfully, so I’ll allow it to keep its certification of approval, even though it contains some very tedious scenes; but the fourth is just plain awful from beginning to end. I think the reason I misjudged it with such undue friendliness and premature acceptance is that I initially watched it as a block with episode 3, so the double-hour event was like one feature film; but this time around I have the sum of the 18 episodes in my short-term memory, and I watched hour three on Tuesday and hour four on Wednesday, so there was no escaping the truth of the latter’s deficiency.

But I don’t want to end on such a critical note, so I’ll tell you about the dream that I had last night. I probably had a whole bunch of dreams over the course of sleeping; but this is the one that I remember, because I woke up in the middle of it this morning. I was with my old co-worker, whose name was John, and whom I always used to give a ride to work, because I owned a car and he didn’t. We went to a restaurant and ordered some food and then looked around at all the empty tables for a place to sit. There were only a couple other people eating in the room. But all the unoccupied tables were filthy. I gestured at the mess and complained to John saying: You’d think this place could afford to hire JUST ONE worker to clean up, so that we patrons would not have to dine in squalor. Just then a secret compartment near the corner of the back wall opened, and the manager came out and asked John if he wanted to “come backstage and meet the chefs.” And John nodded yes. So the two of them went over to the compartment, and, before they entered, the manager explained in embarrassment that “The staff can only be reached by way of the freezer.” And smoke from dry ice was billowing out from within...

Then I woke up. Sorry, it’s not too juicy of a tale; it’s just an example of the type of muck that my mind mulls over when left to itself.