The best miniskirts are knee-length

Dear diary,

The reason I’m always so nervous and uncomfortable is this: Living in the modern world is like trying to enjoy a feast at a table that is positioned inside of a spaceship that keeps doing loop-the-loops; so the food’s flying everywhere.

(The loop-the-loop, by the way, is a maneuver in which an aircraft describes, in midair, a curve that bends around and crosses itself.)

Also: the title of this entry is just click-bait. I remember reading something about miniskirts that contrasted them to knee-length dresses, and I found it funny to declare that the finest items of seduction are those that achieve the quintessence of their own sworn enemy. But to make miniskirts ankle-length would have been going too far.

(Did I mention that this entry is sure to suck? I am too stressed to be writing right now, but I have no option to dispel my stress other than writing. Thus the reader suffers.)

I’m kinda like that myself: someone who apes unintentionally his arch-nemesis. For I claim that I’m Antichrist but I act exactly like Christ. That is, IF Christ is Jesus of Nazareth. And only IF the accounts of Jesus can be half-trusted. I like a lot of what the gospels say, but then there’s details here & there that are best ignored. And lest ye think me conceited, I hasten to suggest that we all are pretty much like Christ. But we prefer to grant him his otherness, only because it’s hard to be your own imaginary friend. But Whitman accomplished it, in section 5 of “Song of Myself”:

I believe in you my soul

[ . . . ]

I mind how once we lay such a transparent
     summer morning,

How you settled your head athwart my hips and
     gently turn’d over upon me,

And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and
     plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart,

And reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you
     held my feet.

That’s more than an imaginary friend. That’s an imaginary lover. Another thing Jesus cannot do. (Or can he?)

Let me be my own police officer: This entry is getting too interesting. I wanted a stress-free entry that hovers low in the valley of boredom. Let’s keep it down.

Alright; what’s boringer than fine print? Good idea: I’ll add some addenda to stuff that I claimed in my last confession:

So I said in my last entry (at least I think I said it) that my lifetime can be divided into two parts: the art life and the dead life. Cuz from about age 17 to age 37 I mass-produced art — that is, homemade rap demos, and ultimately a bunch of weird books; also I was dabbling naively in drawing and collage throughout — then from 38 onward, I’ve been spiritually dead: I just write in this diary and fear the bitter end. For the end WILL be bitter.

The events from birth to age 16 in my bio are lost.

Also in that previous entry I likened my Art Life (the period from teen to middle age) to two totally incompatible states: that of formulating the brazen decor of a room high up near the top of a skyscraper that doesn’t exist, and that of working underground like a mad scientist upon an anti-bomb. Past scientists invented bombs that can annihilate all 490 worlds; whereas I invented a device called The Anti-Bomb because you whisper into its ear “Go get em!” and the thing anti-explodes ultra-nowhere (the counterpart of everywhere), spreading vibrations that have no effect on life beyond leaving it with a tingly cheerful feeling whereas all the actual weaponized bombs in existence get negated by these nice vibes. I got this idea from Mr. Butcher, my boss, who remarked, when we were discussing the atrocity of tear gas, that he wishes someone would invent an airborne antidote to neutralize its effects.

MORAL: it’s tricky to work underground on a sci-fi project while at once standing on clouds to decorate a nonexistent apartment.

But my point was to illustrate what my Moment of Catastrophe felt like (again, this label refers to that time just after I finished publishing my holy laughing scripture when I realized that the outside world was too sick to care about ART): I do not call it an awakening because that sounds too positive, nor do I call it an asleepening, because it felt far more like being jolted with electricity than drifting off into slumber: so I call it my Moment of Catastrophe, since that’s how God refers to his act of World-Creation, which is the same event as The Fall — the original sin was the LORD’s — cuz this realm, Reality, arrived broken, straight out its shipping package. (Perhaps some subtle pre-god set off an anti-bomb of her own, to forestall the disaster.) Anyway, I couldn’t continue to pursue the Art Life in innocence, after witnessing the bad truth of our dimension. And I can’t continue to contribute to utopia, now that I know how far away from it we are (I had assumed we were just at the base of its border wall, near the foot of the menacing statue that serves as its mascot) — I’m not saying that one shouldn’t pursue art unless the outside world is perfect; I’m only saying that there’s a level past which the spiritual realm can only declare a state of emergency, and the hideousness of our era clearly calls for one such RED ALERT.

But even alerts can be beautiful, I’ve found. (This is just a side note.) For I was half-sleeping in bed this morning, and I heard a police siren blast out in the distance. Normally this noise is plain annoying; but because my current neighborhood is so quiet, the sound of the squad car actually took on an unexpected beauty. The secret was its isolation: it was the only form that violated the silence. And the winter air plus the acoustics of the network of nearby houses gave this noise a pleasant reverb, like what a sonic engineer might add to an opera singer’s vocal. Thus the siren, in one lengthy decrescendo, took its leave in graceful curves, like the blade of a skate upon the ice rink of nighttime.

Back to Truth’s way of sneaking up behind one and scaring one: I said that being snapped out of the Art Life is like emerging from the ground after having tunneled for years: you’ve escaped from a wrongful imprisonment; or, even better, you’re a gravedweller resurrected — yet, instead of crawling up out of the earth to inhabit eternal glory, you find the entire universe is in shambles.

Also in that same last entry I gave my first impression (extremely favorable, by the way) of the Yellow Vests movement in France. Also known as the Yellow Jackets, which name I prefer because it makes them sound like hornets or wasps, which are sleek fierce creatures, very admirable unless you find them around your mansion, in which case you must exterminate them. As angels in heaven. (People think that the disobedient angels rebelled against the One True God and then got cast into the pit after a major battle, so now the rebel angels are demons or devils, and the obedient angels are airy saints who serve the LORD; but the truth is that all gods are created equal, yet one of these gods ventured a sneak attack on his fellows and played a dirty trick which imprisoned them wrongfully in Tartarus, and there are no obedient angels: ALL angels are devils; because nobody in heaven would take Jehovah’s side — therefore don’t look too close at his “heavenly host”, the angelic armies that he claims still serve him: they’re all androids painted yellow and black, remote-controlled. And we humans are ALL fallen angels, and this world that we live in is hell: invisible flames surround us, and we get burned every day.) (That last sentence combines a thot from Harold Bloom’s brief book Fallen Angels with a line from Officer Duke’s funeral speech in the 2013 film Wrong Cops, written and directed by Quentin Dupiuex.) Now I live in a quiet place in Minnesota, just outside of Southern Canada, where even emergency sirens sound vaguely pleasant, so we locals don’t get much news here about Frenchmen; and the news that we do get is more like rumors and legends than trustworthy reporting. So, since this present entry has dedicated itself, without my permission, to being one big footnote (a Bigfoot Note) to my last lousy entry, I might as well take a moment to explain my breathless approval of the recent foreign unrest. For I can’t stand when people misunderstand me; and I fear that this Yellow-Jackets business is prone to be misunderstood:

Yesterday I heard reports & watched brief videos & studied photos & read some articles about the Yellow Jackets in France. What I read enthused me: it warmed the cockles of my heart. But then, after exclaiming my solidarity with the movement, I began seeing news reports from other sources that claimed these Yellow Jackets were for what I am against and furthermore against what I am for. That’s when I rose to my feet, un-holstered my pistol, aimed its barrel at the television, and shot a bullet straight thru the glass of its news-reader’s head… Then I said to myself, in my gravelly cowboy voice “I need to write another blog post.” So now I’m here, hunting and pecking with my forefingers on my typewriter, with my gun by my side:

I wanna say that the Yellow Jackets movement seems commendable, because my understanding of it is that it’s a spontaneous gathering of regular people who are angry at their leaders and at the ultra-rich bigwigs who are ruining everything here on Planet Hades. It’s my understanding that these Yellow Jackets are protesting an economic system that makes life impossible for your average caring person. So I’m all for their protest, if this broad and sweeping take of mine is right.

But I could be wrong: as I admitted, we don’t get no trustworthy news round about these parts. We’re just peaceful country-folk who spend most of our days working on our rusty old pickup trucks. We feed our chickens and repair barn roofs. Galoshes and coveralls is our uniform. You never see us without a milk bucket in both hands. Our entire Sunday wardrobe is from Sears and Roebuck: a catalog shop. (Ordering from a catalog is like shopping on the Internet.) And we hate God but go to church regular on account of our customers. Gotta keep up appearances; and we’s mostly decent people. All our roads be plain loose dirt, like the moon, unpaved. Very slowly we drive green tractors into town, when we need to see the eye doctor. Our eyes ain’t too good nowadays. The doctor has this contraption that shoots a laser into the back of our brain-ball: he says it’ll fix our focus, or at least keep it from gettin any blurrier; but we ain’t seen much improvement along those lines.

Sorry; I was trying to write in a way that’s totally cliche while also drawing on details that I recall from the life of my grandmother. It’s hard to speak about her in a way that doesn’t sound hackneyed, because all my memories of her come from my early childhood, when everything seemed all dreamy and misty and dull. I hated going to her house: my parents forced us to visit her. Grandma was the nicest person on the planet, but children are evil — at least I was, and am — so we didn’t appreciate her compassion and loveliness one bit. All we did was complain in whispers to mom about how the silverware wasn’t washed properly. It was cuz grandma’s vision was failing; she was trying her best. But her house was so cold. And the type of toothpaste she bought was bland as bread. What a spoiled brat I was. I preferred the minty toothpaste with the French tricolors.

Come to think of it, tho, I bet grandma and grandpa’s house was a really fine place, for their own generation. And my own house would seem nasty and awful to my own grandchildren, if I hadn’t actively refused to comply with the debt one owes one’s parents by saying NO to fatherhood. But I hope I don’t jinx myself: for there’s still time — if some stormtrooper doesn’t ice me tomorrow, I could be like Abram from Genesis (17:1) and beget entire nations at the age of 99. For Jehovah might appear to me, and say “I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect.” And I might listen curiously instead of slamming the door in his face. And Jehovah might continue his sales pitch: “I will make my covenant between me and thee, and will multiply thee exceedingly.” But I would not fall on my face, over this. Fuck verse 3:

Abram fell on his face; and God talked with him, saying, “As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee.”

Did you catch that? Abram becomes Abraham. So for me it would be “Neither shall thy name any more be called Bryan Ray, but thy name shall be Bry Ham Ray Ham.” — I kinda like that name. Yeah, I’d go for that. I’d put up with having to father more stars than there are nations, if I could refer to myself by such a cool nickname, on résumés and official state documents like licenses for camel-herding. I guess I’d fall on my fat face, after all.

But this whole Yellow Jacket conundrum — I still haven’t told you what the news-reader (the one who made me slay my television) was saying that the movement really means:

There were actually two news-readers, a guy and a gal. Or, if you prefer, a gendarme and damozel. So the gal says “I think the Yellow Vests are all angry because their government is taking care of all their basic needs, and these protestors HATE having all their basic needs met free-of-charge: so they’re taking to the streets to demand that all government systems be privatized; because the free market solves all problems.” And, hearing this last point, I quipped, “Yeah, the market solves problems far more efficiently than government, until the government has to bail out the market.” And I thought that this quip was pretty clever, so I looked to my right and to my left, but there was no other person or god watching the television beside me, so I blushed and continued listening. Then the gal’s meat-head co-anchor said, “Yes, the ideas that here in the U.S. are being pushed by so-called progressive voices like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — shams like healthcare-for-all, and pipe dreams like free college — these programs have been implemented in France, so France right now is basically what the U.S. will look like if we don’t stop the aforesaid dangerous progressive agenda; because what happened is this: The people of France went along enjoying their healthcare and education, but then when the day arrived and they had to pay their taxes, they got angry because their bill was SO HIGH! So they put on bright yellow vests and marched in the streets. Thus these protesters are actually saying: Break the shackles of all these protective regulations and allow the Free Market to save us!”

So my point is that when you have the combination of a roughly anonymous, leaderless movement in a foreign country, and you don’t take the trouble to interview the individual participants or review the messages that they’re attempting to articulate, you end up filling in the mysterious blank of their presence with your own false doctrines: your preconceived assumptions and prejudices. So if I myself am guilty of doing that, of presuming that the Yellow Jackets want the same things as I, and jumping to the conclusion that they want me to be their leader, which is why they’re all carrying signs inscribed with variations of the message “We demand a New Brutal Dictator: BRY HAM RAY HAM for French Prez 2018!” & this would require the dethroning of the current whiz: Macron Cheez.

I just said that last joke because the name of their nation’s savior Macron reminds me of “macaroni & cheese” and also “whiz” instead of “Prez”, “King”, or “Christ”, on account of the brand name “Cheez Whiz”, which, in case you’ve been living in a cave underground for the Art Half of your Life, or atop an invisible building like a lonely ape without an army to attack it, is defined as a processed cheese spread that comes in an aerosol can. It does not normally double as a hairspary. It was developed by a team led by food scientist Edwin Traisman, who died in 2007 (one year before the last Great Embarrassing Failure of Capitalism which led to the most recent Lovely Recession). The can that contains it is under high pressure, so when you spray out the cheese, its long stringy rope of sauce can fly for meters before it lands on a burger. Orange in color, it also comes in a glass jar and is used as a topping for steaks (thus rechristening them “cheesesteaks”, or even “cheeseHAMsteaks”) as well as corn chips, hot dogs and other sacraments. It is marketed in Mexico, the Philippines, the U.S. and Venezuela. All these countries are friends now.

You won’t believe it, but I actually set out, in the beginning, to write a short, clear entry. I just wanted to get my thots down on paper, and let you know what’s in my heart. I want this journal to resonate with people. I want it to gain followers because it centers upon human concerns and speaks intelligently about issues that matter. If a kid is in grade school, and he’s sad cuz he doesn’t really fit in with any of the demographic groups that advertisers are trying to sell to, so he thinks there must be something wrong with him, therefore he begins seriously to entertain the notion of suicide, I’d hope that he would stumble upon my weblog here & become transfixed, so that he shouts into the mirror: “No, I’m NOT going to kill myself tomorrow; instead, I’m going to ride my bike to our local Big Box Church and ask the priest ‘Please don’t molest me, just lemme borrow a pen’; then I’ll take this quill pen home and steal father’s ink jar, and write down all my stormy thots on paper, to preserve my soul for the common record, so that any other weirdo who comes in contact with this here confession of mine will likewise place his doom on pause temporarily & attempt to fortify his fellow longshoremen overseas.” But instead of achieving any such Powerful Helpwork, I end up with these droning postmodern text-blobs. It’s like, I try to leave Utopia, but Utopia follows me. It tasks me, it heaps me… it creeps after me and stalks me. I need to get a restraining order on Eternity.

Which way I fly is Bliss; myself am Bliss;
And, in the highest height, a higher height
Still beckoning to amuse me opens wide,
To which the Bliss I savor seems but Heaven.

I’m plagiarizing Satan from Book IV of Paradise Lost, trying to reverse what he says about suffering and Hell. He and I both end with that last word “Heaven”, the difference being that he’s proceeding downward from it, I upward.

So what’s the secret of my success? I use emulsifiers such as xanthan gum to get the surrounding flames to stop flickering so sanely. Thus they slow down and seem to freeze. And the flavor of my voice comes from the addition of words that resemble iniquitous compounds. Thanks for touching my costume, by the way. Amaretto was used for the coloring.