Journey to Ixtlan Revisited

Never been there.  Why am I talking about it?  It was and still is a book title, written by Carlos Casteneda.  I read it, and was reprimanded by a peer for mispronouncing 'Ixtlan.'   It's 'east-lahn,' in case you need to tell people about this.  The work of philosophy/fiction, Journey to Ixtlan,'  was discussed vigorously when I was in high school.

It was about western man's failure to come to terms with the supernatural, and was a handbook and an indictment.  I took it, to a small degree, to heart many years ago.  In hindsight, the whole world cultures  movement is like paying a plastic surgeon to make wrinkles on your face,  But only dimwitted creeps neglect to gather rosebuds of contention.   Alternative opinions have to be thought about and argued over.

The main character in the book Journey To Ixtlan is a sorcerer who mentors the narator through some sort of voluntary life change. This is how I got the idea that people may be making themselves worse for their need for improvement.  Yet one should never negate the entertainment value in people who are in need of change.

 There is so much more to it all, but the sorcerer refers to 'power spots.'  A sorcerer, or 'brujo,' has to find physical locations, highly specific ones, that refresh supernatural power.   You have to find your spot, and sit on it till your batteries recharge.  A diode on your ass lights up.  I'm on my power spot right now, and, Jesus tits, I feel grand. But it isn't power spots that matter all that much any more.  Times have changed a lot since the first printing of Journey to Ixtlan.

This time out of the cracker box,it's food.  Power foods.  You have to divine the comestibles that give you the most supernatural umph.  I found mine, and any at all can get theirs at the West View Dollar Tree Store, where I shop once a fucking week.  Their canned chicken tamales contain rare earth elements from Christ knows where, also there is this canned fish preparation that glows in the dark.  I've been doting over fifteen ounce columns of  meatball stew that ramps me up.  I'd  force feed it to  Lazarus, just make sure the poor prick can resume his normal activities.  It's that fucking wholesome.  And there's no denying that canned Chef Boyardee ravioli gets you into the spirit world quicker than snot in February.  Cans.  Canned foods.   In the can.  The connections telescope from the dildo that is  West View, Pennsylvania to the party doll that is the stars.    There are pink hearts and kisses.  Food power.  Canned foods.

Best, it doesn't matter where you eat it.   We don't have 'power spots' in my part of town.   Anyplace you aren't getting mugged or shot in will do just fine.  And the food is never off base.  Each can is exactly like the last one, all those ingredients radiant with the essence people need to be grand.  Eat the power!

The New Collectivism

It isn't one hundred percent anything.   If it was, this old cowboy would simply relinquish all worldly goods, and wander in synthetic fleece sweat clothing, while preaching the gospel of not owning anything.  Which would be asinine.  Unoriginal, too.   Mendicants try this stunt all the time, and so rarely to much fanfare.   I own some shit, and I'm not parting with much of it.  But I will be donating some musical instruments, for example, to people who might want them.  I digress.  Working on a newfangled way of looking at collectivism.  I'll start again.

The new approach to collectivism is to give away material wealth, but not completely.  The big trouble with communal living is that it takes all of a person's time and posessions.   This is not to disparage the concept of sharing,but in too many working models, communes can't sustain.  People need at least a small amount of autonomy and control.  People need their holdings.   But here again, I'm seeing mounds of confusion, like puckey, accumulate as I try to make my point.

The number one problem with socialism is that people tend to act in self interest.  Collectivism is a good idea, but people never get the hang of it,so it isn't worth taking one hundred percent seriously.  Unless you make a few logical little adjustments.  Maybe the new way of collectivism is in small parcels of time with other people, small material contributions to the common good.

I'm proposing that one of my pet projects, a stalled one, get revitalized through a talent collective.  I will be inviting people to be part of the collective that produces a podcast,online.  Youtube to start, maybe something more mainstream up the road, if the plan works.  The podcast is called The Not-Too-Social Hour, and should be news/views/entertainment.  Fun, fun, fun.  Join.  The project has been dormant for a while, but will re-emerge as the weather gets warmer.  Peace!

............the new look is called........Ming the Merciless

Your Man About Town

Looking straight out the front window there's the sight of a Carpet Remnant Warehouse, and I wondered if people still herded alpacas someplace less  developed.  For some reason the place seemed to have the same ugly merchandise since the 1930s.  It's like a Tarzan movie.    Maybe I feel this way because I don't buy carpet remnants.  Acquisition teaches people everything.  The place may be a Mecca.  

A bail bond office opened next block, in flashing lights, also neon liberation credos for a deposit on the bail money.   If you are in trouble, the fast food establishment I was hanging out in is very convenient.   I'd need a cup of coffee after getting bailed out of jail, but luckily I haven't had the pleasure.  As if, I needed the joe because I had to walk a few miles.  It's a tiresome, uninspiring hike along one of the 'Burgh's least decorous assets.   Starting at the East Busway at Herron Station, with it's juicy Check Point Charlie-ness, to Liberty Avenue, which is a purely linear approximation of Chernobyl, the pavement sucks the electrolytes right the fuck out of you.  That's a fact.  There are some nice little haunts.  I don't visit any of them.  Some of them have 'glory holes' in the boys rooms.  

What happened is that I didn't have change for the bus when I got to the terribly depressing, sterile East Busway.   Needs an antidepressant dispenser on both sides of the street.  No prescription needed.  If you're waiting there for a bus, no one doubts you are miserable.  One  ass-freezing winter night I was waiting for the P1 bus, the first letter always reminding me of the word 'penis,' guided by the phalic, flaccid hinged extra long bus.  An African American was there, too, and we were both freezing our ass off there.  He was genial.  We talked.  A procession of police cars, SUVs and city busses, with their marqee set for some sort of business sped down the wide smooth austere lanes.  The fellow turned and said, "They use this Busway to take people to jail."   Thick jurisprudential traffic.

I decided it would be salubrious to hike from Check Point Prozac to town, and don't regret having done it.  The ticker might be thanking me right now for the mildly unfresh air.  The fast food joint is awful nice.  More than worth hiking two miles.

I May Not Have A Master's Degree, But My Bullshit Counts For Something

A social scientist has to broach subject matter that may be too unpleasant for right before dinner.   Before you ask me for my credentials, I don't have too much of them, gots a stained BA from a dirty  college, did some field work in  shithole residential treatment facilities,  my opinion holds up in a round robin discussion at Wendy's, but this is amateur science, and I must contend that my science is just as good anyone else's.  I feel insecure about it, but there must be pro's at John's Hopkins who come up with worse theories.  Maybe not.  Here's why I'm wearing the white lab coat and jotting in my Big Chief note book:

I have a theory about changing societal customs.  An example of a common one is in saying "gesundheit" when someone sneezes.  Or, "bless you," which better evokes American hospitality.  'Gesundheit' sounds sorta Nazi, sorta' ethnic.  It's a nice custom.   I was walking along Liberty Avenue this afternoon.  A 'man,' I guess, or possibly a transexual, with shoulder length hair, drag make up, thin build, no tits, and a face like Holly Woodlawn, from Warhol's Factory, turned to me as he walked past and announced, "I just shit myself," and indicated with a fretillement  that he wasn't kidding.  He had an honest face. Kidding.  It's his frankness and openness with a total stranger, me, that lead to my new theory about etiquette.  It applies in all situations, even this one.  I didn't say anything, in return, but it occurred to me that maybe the right thing to say in a situation like that would be 'butt fucking lately?'
Not sure how clear this is, but I'm seeing a linguistic bonanza,   It's the same phoneme/morpheme relationship as in saying 'bless you' when someone sneezes.  Man is a social animal, and must reason with changing cultural norms.  

Wandering up Wood Street, the police out like walruses traipsing a fiorde, the traffic dense, obstructive  and too ferociously managed  for road rage, so bully for police presence, more reflections came to me.  I might have suggested he switch partners from basket ball players to football players.  Or asked if his opiod constipation med kicked in.  There was no need for me to be cold and uncaring  toward a friendly passerby.  But I was confronted with the moment, not of discovery, but of the need for it.  I love like cherries jubilee a brisk moment of discovery, and feel pain when at a loss  for an ass fucking decent greater understanding of daily life.  So the incident couldn't have worked out better.  

No matter what is going wrong with people, all the fuck over the place, everywhere, there is always a way to be courteous.   But it's more than courtesy.  We as a people need to unify, which is impossible to achieve unless everyone is under very tight police surveillance.   We need to form silly ad hoc groupings.   So everyone can talk about how they and the world can better socialize.  I'm calling my discovery the 'incontinence greeting.'  I think everyone should learn how to utter an incontinence greeting.

Bad Ettiquette

No, Virginia, the etiquette is good, here.   But it's different from Queen Victoria's wet dream of it. When Brits speak with traditional pomp and circumstance, it's as if she is staring at a poster of Michail Baryshnikov while working an extra large plastic vibrating John C Holmes with her right hand.  And she would have dried up and scowled  at the way people talk in my district.

 Yet it is a civil slum I dwell in.   Such as in a convenience store.   And, as in all societies, nonverbal communications is just as beefy necked as the spoken word.

 That latter item is best limited to primitive grunts and invectives, imperatives and vulgar common courtesies.  We smile a lot.  People open discourse with the word, "Gimme..."  Sometimes it is to obtain a box of Kool cigarettes.  Or cash from the cash register, and customers brandish a gun.   The gun is communicative, in its oiled, spring operated argot.

But I am a spoken word maven.  It's your inflections that sink or swim in the nattering, contentious water.  And your duds.  Oh so impactful.   Get a pocket square.  An ascot is nice.  Good posture helps.  Slouch like a street punk.  People like that.  Wear shades so it don't look like you're getting in people's business.  People don't fucking like that. And don't explain things in detail.  It fucks with people's head.

Soon as you've unpacked your pillow shaped luggage and get settled in, you'll want to refer back to this blog.  I'm a road map into better human relations, here on the North Side.   Welcome, influx.

A Few Stumbling Thoughts........

Not for nothing, chums, but I need to share that, at heart, I'm a parlimentarian motherfucker.  Not the grande latte of subject matter, nothing anyone should break a vessel over, but I've been feeling private revulsion over 'power to the people.'  In yesteryear, it seemed that any and all good folk doing their thing could result in a great and free society.  Currently, it looks like it may have been the ant-matter of a foundation upon which to operate a free society.  I've morphed into an establishmentarian ass motherfucker, and it matters too fucking little because it's just me jerking off in my stained ursine recliner.

I'm not endorsing any prez cand at all.  Will vote.  Won't say who for.   And this isn't the first time in yay long I've ruminated on this bovine socio-political cud.  The punching, kicking and hockering, of late, at Trump rallies made me regurgitate the whole line of reasoning.  Hecklers were blowing whistles to disrupt Donald's speeches, a low-life, snot head tactic to be sure.   People tried to shout the Donald down, and it looks like anti-Donalds were, maybe, even assaulting Trump supporters.  Donald, wisely or unwisely, exhorted retaliation on his behalf, offering to pay legal fees for anyone who slugs a agitator.  Sounds odd, heard worse bargaining methods.

  A protester was interviewed on the evening news, saying that protesters have to prevent, his words, 'this from happening.'  You gotta love the way certain people can window dress a loutish imfringement on free speech.  People who object to Trump's politics or rhetoric are welcome to write a trillion letters, e-mails, and call everyone from Wayne LaPierre to Dr. Suess on the phone, all words hot with bile over rotten, miserable Donald Trump.  People can blog themselves into a state of self-induced outrage satori.  But the Constitution still guarantees free speech, and fucking with Donald's isn't fucking cricket.

Urgency does not mitigate misconduct.  Liberal Democrats have been using the rationale, for ages, that the urgency of their missions mitigates disrupting any communications, any business initiative, any act of law enforcement, and the urgency mitigates spying, lying, and propagandizing everything from soup to nuts.  It usually doesn't. Anyone can claim they're goals are more important than everyone else's.   Foul play is foul play.

People should form conservative interest groups and engage in mass communication.  People shouldn't be acting like a high school re-enactment of Kent State.  Or the legendary Chicago Convention riot of 1968.  Nitwits are living in the past.  Obstruction is wrong.  Responsible political action groups are hunky dory.  I'm hunky dory. You are too.

Way the Hell Out in Upchuckia...

My Earth has become too dicey to speak of in material terms.   Fables have been written to throw some pillows and blankies over the facts too warty and gruesome to articulate like a normal human being might.  So all this shit takes place in an imaginary world called Upchuckia.

There was this candidate for Presidio Poobah, up here, down here, our position is so fucking relative to other shit, and peons were given pause at the behavior of the candidate.  Everyone has the right to vote for the prick, or not to, yet there has been broadening unease about this liberty.   Tronald, of East Upchuckia was running for top slot in government, which is just one wrung under Plutomatic, the Fat Intangible, or invisible personage to whom people pay their fattest, most emphatic respects.   Everyone in Upchuckia knows that the Presidio Staff Poobah talks directly to Plutomatic, soon as he gets voted in, once he is handed over the Red Plastic Smart Phone.

So I was watching this garbage transpire in words as I viewed Meet the Press this overcast pre-vernal morning.   Right the fuck now, all is fine in Upchuckia.   We peon motherfuckers wait the outcome of the free election process that could cause any of us to get beat to bloody pulp.   If Tronald wins the election, he may lay waste on vassels who piss his People's Ass off, so I'm trying to be politic about this load of horse puckey.

So nothing to heinous happened yet.  A few peasant cretins got drummed on.   At Tronald's behest.  No worries.  One metaphysical buggaboo.   Tronald looks like a space alien in a copper toned humanoid mask.   His eyes sink into the softest, whitest Silly Putty, while his make-up people did a bang up job spray painting the rest of his smug, vicious puss. Is a hair's tendency to grow into a helmet a sign that someone is violent by nature?  As if the very hairs on the head pose for combat against a benign, creative, social antagonist?   Tiresome.   This space-election process is draining my corpuscles something awful.

Crude Realities: I love them!

Maybe I should stay out of it, but I see some questionable parenting when I'm waiting for a bus at the Greyhound station downtown.  They need to be more authoritarian.  Like, when there's a family of eight  staring at their smart phones, and something gruesome comes on the screen, people should yell at their kids.  They should say, loudly, "Hey.  You don't be doing that, or I'll kick your ass."  That way your kids will know how you feel about them doing the fucked up things that go on all the time on portable internet devices of all sort.  Significant others and legal guardians should be supportive, saying, "Damn straight.  That motherfucker was wrong."  If people taught their kids civility in this simple, humane and well programmed way, there would be less shit.

Current Events Blow-out

Boring, boring, and with enough merit to half-fill Thumbellina's extra small styrofoam cup, I have been having wispy afterthoughts about the O.J. Simpson scandal of early 90s,  I already beefed about the latest mini series on pay television, bad acting, not needed, there's enough info on youtube to fill your heart.   Enough trash media is as good as feast of it.  If the mainstream media needs to make money off popular news and information, they should try to find something more relevant.  Like ordinary people getting tasered and beaten.  Or a food show.  Very few people get a dream team of lawyers to help them out of very serious trouble.  Virtually no court cases are likely to proceed like O.J.'s any time soon.  There's almost no danger of a super-jock stabbing you to death.  In the mildest of contradictions,  there's no harm in taking a niggling interest.  Something popped up in the popular media last week, and it tickled my fancy.

So the news articles were saying, someone came forward with a knife that was taken from the 'scene.'  Articles speculated the chance that the mystery blade is the murder weapon, which, per the news, has never been found.  My chunk of thinking is that there were a few news items not long after the trial about someone, unnamed then and now, who had possession of a Kissing Crane brand stiletto. My guess is that it isn't the weapon of note. I'm betting,if it's what I think it is, a law enforcement personage stole it from the scene, because Kissing Crane brand stilettos look cool, and make a groovy souvenir.  The reason I remember the news crap from way long ago is because I like that kind of knife, royally.  They're royal fun to play with when you're watching television, or posing in the mirror rehearsing invectives. If it was the murder weapon, I think the police would have chucked the knife into the big bag of evidence, and someone stole the knife knowing it had no relevance to the case.

Another reason I noticed the news articles, then as now, is that I have a lovely knife collection, I adore it the way stamp collectors like to put stamps in their little albums, There's a notable problem in the knife collecting biz, which is common theft.  Of all the things ordinary, slightly crooked people steal for kicks, very cool looking knives are primo, along with jewelry and super hip looking ash trays.  The problem that cropped up in my cheesy court proceedings is that I've had a few blades ripped off during a social event, such as an ordinary beer gathering.  If you interview a quorum of happy knife collectors, you will hear similar beefs and griefs.  Assuming I'm not in need of a big thorazine, a cop stole a souvenir, and the moon still rises and sets.  As for the whole ball of wax, the trial, the aftermath, it's like the Titanic.  It sunk, and your chances of being harmed by an iceberg are very slim.   My recommendation is to not worry about this crap.  Have fun with it.