Procastinating

Got some work to do. Got a lot of work to do. Dug myself a hole, and I am trying to get out. TIme ticks, it erases. Why couldn't things be easy, like when my dad broke both his wrists in the snow storm of 98. I stayed home all day and played donkey kong country 2. 7 hours of laboring on a paper. I think not. 7 hours of Donkey Kong 2, fuck yeah. THey asked me if I had been doing that the whole time. I said no. I said that I had stopped for a period. I did go to the bathroom atleast once. Running down the hall. Could I run down the hall now? Wow, I remember playing till I just couldn't take it anymore, like I was going to shit my pants. It was torture. But golly, it felt better the more I waited. I would here "don't worry its not going anywhere" but why. After a dehydrated day of social inadequacy, what could be better than drowning your sorrows in a fistful of keebler cookies and hours upon hours of video games. I was a good student I guess, but I don't remember studying, just doing homework occasionally on the kitchen table after dinner. Nintendo would call my name. Games like River City Ransom, prevented me from concentrating in class on some days. I faked sick so I could go home and play Mario Kart for Supernintendo. Ah that perfect comfort space. On my couch with shoes off, sipping soda, and eating popcorn. Tv and video games were everything to me. Its easy to see why I would sometimes prefer to sit home on that saturday night, or find a guilty pleasure in playing old video games, eating cookies, or watching that hour of family matters on a sunday afternoon. To say that those games didn't significantly alter my subjectivity would be ridiculous. As a matter of fact, I can see that in a rather overdetermined world, where cause and effect is always a bewildering process, megaman and Donkey Kong influenced me more than my teachers. I fed into the exoticism of Thailand when M Bison smashed me through a native woman's statue. I learned gender roles from the princess, and sexuality from Chun Li. Let me not reify, they probably just helped either justify or reject my father's opinions on the subject, but beating up homosexuals, women, Latino gang members, and the homeless in Final Fight had to have reinforced some exogenous hegemonic influences. And yes, on the bay stage, there are dudes in yellow jackets sleeping on the bench, which you often beat up unprovked. And ofcourse there was that message, stay off drugs. And not only did you stay off drugs but you beat up potential drug users. Regardless of the exact elements and processes we can safely say that beat em up side scrollers, especially final fight, were of a revanchist nature. Cody Hagger, and Guy, took the city back for the decent, heterosexual, white, male haggar. So the leader of the gang was a guy in a wheel chair, not a Jamacian drug dealer (see Seagal). It really didn't matter. Yes, yes, at the end you climbed a penthouse and avoided falling chandiliers (an icon of the rich), but realistically what most people would probably remember is the first stage or two where you kick the living shit out of people hanging out on street corners in a city plagued with urban blight. Everything is boared up. These people aren't human (well neither is your character), but the punching off the screen phenomenon that these games were often crticized for is pretty signficant. Why even see your opponent, when you can kill them off the screen. Another interesting thread is the lack of blood, pain, or permancy your enemeies experience when you smash them with a weapon such as a pipe. Your enemies, your other, simply gets knocked down and pops back up. The fading phenomenon of the mad gear gang is especially intersting. You have injured, and killed someone, but no you don't have to deal with the body, or contemplate what you have just done, they dissapear in seconds. No dead body disposal. This gang member is an insect, literally indistinguishable from the rest of his kind, ready to respawned at the next possible moment. When the city is saved, you are faced with the same task again. The city is never safe. A constructed demon is always out there to kidnap your girlfriend, wife, or daughter. Life in fear and stick to consumerism. Keep on pumping those quarters into the machine.

I hope to do this more completely at a later date

A Whale and a Seagull

A whale and seagull
are spending time together
in the sea, the one
with whales and seagulls,
when the whale groans,
"I've a thorn in my fin."

"How'd you manage that?"
asks the seagull.

"Building a swingset
for the little ones,
the little whales. Can you
pluck it out?"

In the sky, the sun
is tired out. The sea
is too big to heat.

"No, I can't pluck it out.
I stand on your back
all day, scratch you
wherever there's an itch.
Isn't that enough?"

"It hurts," cries the whale,
freshwater rolling down
his blunt whale head,
disappearing like a leaf
on an autumn forest floor.

"Besides," gulls the gull,
"it's too dangerous. I'll be dragged
under when you turn over,
or slapped comatose
if you flinch."

"I will be so still"--
the whale.

"No thanks."

"Fine, could you scratch
around my blowhole, please?"

"What are friends for?"

There is no wind. All the seaweed
swimming on the surface gossip
about the good-for-nothing kelp.
A bottle floats by, a bee
inside tapping on the glass. And
when the seagull scratches his buddy's hole
he is blown straight up
into and through a cloud, right
to the face of the tired sun,
who feeds and dresses his wounds
and joins in when the seagull
points and laughs at the grumpy,
thorny whale.

Whatever's happening beneath our feet

Grass grew up to our waists,
tickled my thighs and the hair
on my calves, while you stood,

bent in half, touching your toes
and letting the green blades
lick and taste your soft face

like they were tongues of the soil,
or the Holy Ghost planted itself
and hit an underground vein.

In this dream, you only bend
and I watch. You let the grass
slip inside your mouth

and now you can taste it,
whatever's happening beneath
our feet, deep down,

and I wonder why
six eight and four
are suddenly consecutive, and how

a blade of grass won't cut your gums.