Saturday, February 28, 2009

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Wednesday, February 25, 2009

king of the jungle

my aunt gave me this bottle opener when she came back from africa. the handle is made of bone, the smoothed tooth of a lion now gone. at the root now fixed a metal heart shape from which i crack many a beer. carved along the side the lion is mid-hunt, stalking toward whatever end he met. i like to think he's still out there, minus the tooth, but it's fixed so final, carved and smoothed and sold off. there ain't much hope for him. i scratch my head with the tooth, thinking what damage it might incur had the tooth still been attached to its owner. its just a thing now, no longer fierce, once torn through meat but now inert. an item in a drawer. necessity to novelty. maybe he got old, starved, too slow to hunt. maybe they cut him down in his prime. it's a trinket now, and will probably never serve me the way it did that beast. there is still a strength to it, a quality that recalls its former prowess. the curve of the tooth evoking the snarling maw. as if it might reconnect with its master and suddenly become a force to be reckoned with once more. maybe he still waits for it, poised like the carving on his own detached tooth. across an ocean and lost to new meaning.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

DIARY OF F. SHELMAN, FINAL ENTRIES, OCT. 2015


October 5th: Bad scene. Poloucas ordered the base on LD til they get a better idea of the situation in Delaware. My guess is, it's worse than here. If those things took Philly, what's to stop them from moving on to the next metropolitan area? Until we get some answers, we're on ice: no EL's, no RnR's, all AD's suspended. Typical. We've made it to the shit but the doors are locked.

October 9th: They caught Ramsley trying to make a run for it. Poor bastard didn't get but 2 clicks from base. He didn't even try to cut out his chip he was in such a hurry. Now that's just asking for it. Bollard says they're still deciding how to process him, says he lost family, maybe he lost it inside a little too. I say throw him into the hypereventuality chamber and see how many places his bones can occupy at once!

October 12th: Dead quiet. Still haven't been deployed to any AA's, though it must be getting worse each day. Govt is calling it a biothreat, asking for more time, more sitting on our asses while BOVAT mulls shit over. I don't buy it. All I know is we need to flush these fuckers out before they set up a permanent residence. Starting to sympathize with Ramsley: need to GTFO.

October 14th: It begins. 4 units deployed yesterday, 5 more today. Somebody figured out we need to start fighting these things.

October 19th: Have been on several limited recons in past week. Not pretty. Saw my childhood home in Edesville burnt to the ground. Must remember to pay somebody back for that. Govt waited too fucking long to do anything about this, now it's all over us. Northeast fubar. Delaware mostly gone. Welles and Chen both AWOL. Starting to wonder if maybe I'd be better off fighting these things on my own terms. p.s. The news (when we get it) finally came up with a name for these things: Dogriders.

October 25th: A day I did not expect to see. Poloucas fucking ABANDONED BASE. What a cocksucker! We have to stage just about the greatest fucking paramilitary rally in the history of America and fucker just up and leaves. Now Dader's in charge. Fucking peachy. Like replacing a vagina with a eunuch. Oh wait that's exactly what it's like.

October 26th: The Dogriders have got designs on the base. I've seen them on firewatch the past two nights. These are not our dogs. They're thinking somehow, strategizing. They know how to hide and when they've been spotted. They travel in numbers. And they're always just out of fucking range. Dader is considering setting a trap for them when they do come knocking. Must admit, like the idea.

October 30th: We are essentially alone. Everything north is OAC. Base is a tomb. Everybody either deployed or AWOL. Those who stayed behind have agreed not to go without a fight. They've given us every indication they're gonna hit us, so we can only return the favor. Have rigged West Mess with so much C4 you'd think it was Christmas. Sentry guns at West and East Gate. Infrared drones on a click radius every five hours (electric permitting). Have gained slightly more respect for Dader since he realized we're thru fucking about.

October 31st: HAPPY HALLOWEEN FUCKERS!!!


-recovered near former location of paramilitary base-

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Fibbonachos


I worry a lot about this concept of everything being mathematically definable. you know, the theory in which everything can be reduced to a series of mathematical equations that are just playing themselves out according to math's rigid bible of rules. it makes sense when you look around, trees are trees, the wind blows, everything in reality is definable within math's elegant tongue. but this concept, however sound, frustrates me as a human being of supposed free will.

if the idea was true, like einstein and everybody else said, and everything really could be boiled down to maths, then fate and destiny and unavoidable circumstance are all forced into being as well. if everything translates to an equation, then our lives are just one big equation that has a calculable answer like 2 + 2 or 7 - 4,770. a world completely bound in math is a world with no real freedom, every single action is part of an ongoing series of actions traceable by whatever exotic maths back to the point at which the equation began. think about it. if maths really are inherent in our entire reality, and there's nothing that maths can't account for, then everything that ever happens to us is just part of whatever mathematical system is playing itself out through the ages.

and this is where i take issue with this theory. i think there are undefinables, free agents if you will, that roam through an otherwise logically harmonious existence spreading chaos and uncertainty and perpetuating true freedom of one's will. i couldn't just list these things off to you, it's possible i've never even seen them, but they are out there, these unknown unknowns, and they disrupt the math in ways that make calculators say ERR. maybe you are scared of this, maybe you long for complete mathematical certainty in every facet of life, but believe you me when i say that things are the way they are because our maths are met by entities so chaotic they are rivaled only by math's rigidity. so just keep in mind my friends that sometimes, when x is supposed to equal something, there simply is no answer, no logic, no maths. and we're never going to have the slightest idea why. and maybe it's time we started being ok with that.

Monday, February 16, 2009

so much unfairness of shit


somebody at my office threw away a list of things i needed to do. it was all random video shit i had written over the course of several days and at least half the list is unrememberable to me now. when i found out about this i thought 'that's not fair'. by my reckoning, it was a harmless list intended to help me and somebody went and removed it from the world. then i started to think about the phrase: that's not fair. it's a hell of a phrase. that's not fair. it implies a wrongness of things with undercurrents of maliciousness and defeat. that's not fair, that's not the way it's supposed to be, this isn't right. i fuckin' hear you, man. shit certainly isn't fair, BUT

it is ever more apparent to me that "not fair" is the way many things are. things that run against your current are doing so because they have to run with some other current, and there really isn't any way for one bro to change this. unfairness happens every day. people disregard rules and ethics and suddenly there is a fatal imbalance to every mortal thing. the worst part about that's not fair is the more you use it, the less relevant it becomes. the more things you decry as "not fair", the more you construct an artificial way of viewing the world in which everything exists in opposition to you. suddenly "not fair" becomes a divine curse that contorts every situation into some kind of war being waged against you by invisible enemy armies. not me though, BECAUSE

after a while you kind of have to accept the unfairness as what it is: the other side of good livin'. many things are awesome in life, and many more are shitty, just as the yin yang has two distinct halves that together complete it. and while the darkness may shroud everything in seemingly irreconcilable ways, it often gives way to brilliant white light. and not in a gay jesus way either. i remain a firm believer in an ultimate balance to all things, so it is only fitting that so much unfairness of shit can only lead to supreme awesomeness of legendary proportions. that's how it works out, right guys?

guys?

Sunday, February 15, 2009

ode to my bike


bike

i fucking missed you

it was the winter and it was cold and even though i wanted to ride you i was held back by the weather. i'm sorry i left you in the garage for so long with your chain all twisted up. i thought of you often and our adventures together last summer.

when i rode you tonight, down broad street in high gear with the early spring wind in my face, i remembered: i love you. you are the only form of exercise i will ever truly enjoy and want to return to. you take me to work for free, and you are powered by my own energy, which is awesome. when i want to go fast, you go really fast.

and you are a mountain bike too. there is no terrain you don't mind attacking. jumps are nothing. your shocks absorb even the most tremendous of impacts. and when i'm riding you under the influence, you always seem to steer me away from parked cars at just the right moment.

thank you, bike.

it's good to have you back in my life.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

modern love


i went to a psychic with my ex-gf in our latter days. it was an outing i was somewhat opposed to, since every time i've had my tarot cards read i get "death" and "the devil" and that heart with all the swords in it. i feel like because my own personal beliefs are kind of hazy and change from day to day, that actual calculated mysticisms like the tarot & such will often look unfavorably at my life and condemn it with bad luck and evil that isn't really there (i mean some of it's there but according to the tarot i have the shittiest life ever that is slowly spiraling downwards).

so we go to this psychic despite my reservations and we both get some ten dollar premium palm reading with an outlook on love and life. to my ex the psychic says "you will find love with someone who is very close to you in your life". cool. then it's my turn and already i'm expecting her to shriek at my hand as the cross on the wall catches fire and melts. what i get is this: "you won't find love for a long time. but when you do, you will be very happy and will have a prosperous life"

not long after that night the axe came down and i once more found myself a single man in the world. so now i wonder if i have perhaps entered into this period of being without love and just how long this all lasts until i find someone and become happy and prosperous. the way the psychic made it seem, i have a long period of emptiness ahead. no love, no meaning, only wandering the path that will eventually lead me to Where I'm Trying To Get, which due to my shifting beliefs doesn't seem to be anywhere specific. i wonder about what will eventually become of me and my love life. i have believed in true love before and didn't that turn out to be a jolly load of shit. as far as karma goes, i've done things i'm not proud of as a so-called lover, so perhaps i'm experiencing a bit of divine retribution. in any case, i have entered a season of bullshit devoid of reason and direction. i don't know if having love would necessarily right whatever wrong is represented here, but it couldn't hurt right?

NO YOU ASSHOLE STOP BLOGGING ABOUT TRUE LOVE YOU'RE LIKE A DEPRESSED 13-YEAR-OLD GIRL ONLY WORSE BECAUSE YOU MASTURBATE A LOT AND DON'T SHOWER FOR DAYS AND JUST KILLED AN ENTIRE BOX OF TASTYKAKES IN LIKE 2 DAYS AND YOUR TASTE IN MUSIC IS THAT OF A GAY DJ FROM THE 80'S AND YOU SPEND WAY TOO MUCH TIME BROING AROUND AND TRYING TO ORGANIZE ULTIMATE FRISBEE TOURNAMENTS.

come to think of it, my life is really awesome right now. happy valentine's day.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

LIKE JAMMING YOUR FUCKING THUMB INTO A SHEER ROCK WALL


I went rock-climbing this weekend. for some reason my friends are way into rock-climbing now. they have membership passes to this rock climbing place that's like a gigantic warehouse filled with 150 foot climbing walls and other x-treme shit. i have been x-tremely hesitant to go on these rock climbing excursions because a) my arms are pale and lifeless b) yo, what if that shit breaks? and c) you gotta drop like $24 to climb for the day. and i could have just as easily stayed in bed and gotten another hour of sleep for free and casually smoked a bowl instead but NO. gotta mix it up. can't fall into routines buddy, that's where they get ya.

so i'm climbing with some bros and brodettes in this indoor climbing monstrosity (it's called island rock, it's on long island you'll love it) and we're doing free climbing. no helmets, no ropes, just a cushy mat under you that you have to fall onto to not break your world. there are different ascents up each rock wall marked by colored strips of tape. so we're all five of us trying to do this one particular free-climb path. when it gets to me, i fuckin give 'er my standard 85% and come close to the top of the path, about 12 feet up. i can't get a steady hold on the top spot but technically you just have to be able to touch the end of the path, which is marked by an X in whatever color you've been following. so instead of securely establishing my post atop the Red X, i kind of hoist myself up high enough to slap it five, then drop off into nothingness. i landed hard on the edge of the mat, slamming my back against the wall in the process. everyone was all like 'are you ok are you ok' and i'm all like 'im ok' and i start to get up and take stock of my various appendages when i realize my thumb doesn't feel right at all. not necessarily broken, but definitely not normal. the pain starts to grow and suddenly my thumb is swollen to twice it's size and hurts to move.

i decided to stop climbing for the day and dwell on the fact that my thumb was severely fucked up. rather than seek medical attention, i decided the best course of action would be to go to the movies, eat a large dinner, and get wasted. later, while wasted, my friend greg asks to see the thumb. after looking at it for like a second, he came to the conclusion that it was dislocated and would have to be snapped back into place in order to ever return to normal functionality. for those of you who have never had to re-locate your thumb into its socket, it involves yanking on your thumb as hard as you possibly can. there was no way i was going to do this to myself. 'you do it, man' i say to greg. 'just get it over with'. he takes my thumb, and after an ungodly tense few seconds, he pulls. the cracking sound that emitted from my thumb was almost worse than the pain itself, but all i could do at that point was deal with it and hope for better times and a working thumb. a few minutes later, greg decided that maybe the thumb was messed up on the lower joint and not the upper one, which would require a different kind of yank (lol). i hesitantly volunteered him to do it again, just to make sure my thumb wouldn't go further into its plump unfunctioning state. this time it hurt like a motherfucker, a moment that was captured in the picture above. it was a grueling gauntlet of pain to endure, but i honestly think it had to be done. now it's been about 24 hours since i let a guy yank me and i'm a lot less swollen. it was a weekend of pain, hilarity, and the ongoing reminder that yo, everything's a test. sometimes shit gets real and you have to pay a hefty price to get out of it, but man, once you do, you can look back on all that pain and all those trials and tribulations and be like yo, i fuckin did it. i fuckin did it.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Fear of What?!


you may recall from the last hatepost that interviewee lisa noble concluded her questioning by noting that she'd written an essay on fears (of which she has many). we've received a copy of this essay and present it here, unedited, for your consideration:

Fear of What?!

For a good part of my youth there were often nights when I would imagine myself rising from bed still asleep, and unintentionally hostile. I’d walk out of my room, creep downstairs, and find my way into the kitchen where there would be a knife or some other sharp utensil I could manage to grab depending on the position my somnambulism has placed me. I’d then walk through the main hallway of the house, all the way into the master bedroom where I would proceed to stab and kill my mother or my father or both, in a blind and bloody sleep-filled rage. Sometimes instead I would stumble down to the basement where my brother sleeps and I’d murder him. Other times I would be too disoriented to make it past the kitchen, and my subconscious would settle for killing myself. These were the nights I would need two Extra StrengthTylenol and sharp swig of Nyquil to calm my nerves get into a nice motionless sleep. Otherwise I’d be awake nursing a mild panic attack all night, fearing against all odds that such an improbable accident might ever occur.

I have never been a sleepwalker. The only instance of sleepwalking that has ever taken place according to my knowledge was once, when I was about four, my mother found me downstairs in the living room, helpless, crying, and evidently unarmed. Yet, after many years of replaying this unfounded but highly morbid vision and all its variations, I will not go to bed entirely comfortable until I have shoved the scissors to the back of my desk drawer and suggested to my roommate that she invest in the proper bedside armor.

It’s not always sleepwalking that triggers such, shall I say, paranoia. I’ve actually gotten over my potentially threatening subconscious for the most part by convincing myself that most people tend to wake up when someone is standing over their bed with a knife. I can only hope that I would wake up in time as well, if anything to save myself the embarrassment of accidentally slaughtering a loved one. These days, my fears are a little less drawn out in length and detail, and play out more like fleeting thoughts of probability. I experience what I can only describe as a two to three second flash of an images having to do with my present situation and what might come of its risks . And as low as the chances may be, the effect of consideration is paralyzing. For instance, I often wonder how many minutes exactly it takes standing in front of the microwave before the radiation gives me brain cancer, or skin cancer, or colon cancer or whatever. In the midst of a blink I’ll picture myself rubbing a tumor the size of my fist. However, this is a possibility that I cringe over briefly in the last few seconds it takes for some mozzarella sticks to finish cooking. I might scratch a fresh mosquito bite and the thought passes through my head that this pest has taken great pains to make his way transcontinentally all the way from Africa to my arm and now I’m sharing blood with a diseased child from Somalia. The bump starts to redden and selfish thoughts of malaria are overpowered by a minor irritation of the skin. As laziness would have it, in both of these cases the convenience of inaction overrides the need for resistance of what are already short-lived fears. This is how I came to make the distinction that these considerations are indeed fears, and nothing more extreme as would a phobia imply.

A phobia, I found out, is more than a fear; it is an attempt to avoid your fear at all costs. A phobia would cause me to not only not use a microwave but dodge its line of vision when inactive and burn the instruction manual, just to be safe. And while fears can be just as irrational and just as distressing as phobias, fears do not significantly compromise ones way of living (i.e. agoraphobia: fear of leaving one’s home, or kathisophobia: fear of sitting down). So my question is then, what do they compromise?

If my chronic fears ever did turn into chronic phobias I would never walk up stairs for fear of falling back down and breaking every bone in my body. I would stand a good 50ft distance from street curbs either to deny villainous pedestrians the satisfaction of pushing me into oncoming traffic, or any buses likely to tip over in an attempt to turn the corner, squashing me like the reckless bug I am for not taking better caution. I would be an expert on exotic spiders, knowing in detail the features of one whose bite might shock me into a state of paralysis (this is not to say that I don’t avoid spiders when I can. But the occasional spider bite won’t really need medical attention until it’s mutated the fibers of my DNA and I’m climbing up walls like a tormented comic book hero). If I were prone to phobias, I’d constantly be in search of the best possible maneuver to surgically attach a carbon monoxide detector to my nervous system. But the last time I skimmed the aisles of CVS and found these things were running for $25 each, I decided to wait hold out for the coupons. And as of now, I don’t even have one for my apartment.

I don’t even know why these anxieties are so specific in the first place. In all logic, it doesn’t really make sense to be scared of one thing and not of another. Heights, terrorist attacks, roller coasters, and drawing pints of blood from my veins don’t faze me. Yet I lose sleep over just thinking about the chance of a lighter getting to close to my face. There’s just so much randomness out there; so many chances for a lost limb or a punctured retina that we just don’t see coming. Sure there are plenty of means for fears to be induced. The media is constantly telling us we’re likely to be shot, bombed, or asphyxiated at any given moment. Rumor could be what makes us wince in the dentist’s chair, anticipating the moment that decides whether or not that dental hook will end up lodged in your esophagus. Maybe even some of these anxieties spring from a traumatic childhood experience. My parents’ house has several very large mirrors which were not installed securely enough by the previous owners. The mirror in my parents’ bathroom fell off of the wall, smashing and scattering into what seemed like a billion pieces one night. My mother avoided this incident that likely would have killed her, by about fifteen minutes as she was finishing up her favorite TV show in the other room. We had all of the mirrors replaced after that, but until then, I was always a little hesitant to check my own reflection for too long. And it can’t be that all fears work this way, ingrained by some existing form of experience. Like I highly doubt that 80% of adults who are now afraid of clowns were possibly abused by one as a child.

For me personally, I need those little panics periodically. Fearing something irrational somehow makes me feel as if it’s prevention in itself of having to come face to face with it; that letting the uncontrollable know that you’re keeping your eye on it, makes it back off, turn the other corner and focus its attention on someone who’s not going to expect it. It seems safer to expect the unexpected, because there are things that you just can’t control by force, avoidance, or even rationality. It may be that it’s the irrational that serves as your only means of defense. Furthermore, it makes me feel all the more accomplished, getting through each day, knowing all there is out there to survive.


lisa noble is a coffee production manager who hails from georgia

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

interview with lisa noble


i wanted to interview my friend lisa noble because she is a fascinating member of blogciety and i think one of the great minds of this or any decade. she makes coffee for a living but is a skilled writer by night. also she's really weird. we sat down for a chat recently on aim, and i decided to talk about being scared, as this is a situation i often find myself in:

(IHTFB) so what would u say is the scariest thing that ever happened to u?

(lisa) im done. cant think og anythign

u suck. wors interview ever.

yoir the worst inttertvie ev

why dont you actually try to think of something instead of being a rag doll clump

nuthin that scarys happened to me

nothing ever happened that freaked you out and you thought there was gona be a ghost or monsters or something?

once i fell into a wall really hard when my brother was trying to hypnotize me, but that wasnt really scary...it just hurt a lot

or like scary men with feely hands on the subway?

oh shit yeah! ihad some childhood fears...i just thought you meant like getting run over by cars

well anything super scary stories

i used to sleep on top of the covers because i thought scorpians were going to be hiding in my sheets

how come?

cause i lived in georgia where there were lots of bugs and my house was kind of embedded in the woods

were you scared a lot growing up?

yeah but i think most of my fears were/are irrational...or at least implausible for the most part

how do you reconcile the implausibility with the ongoing fear if you know its baloney?

mostly laziness

whats your biggest fear right now?

apocalypse

what sort of apocalypse?

usually earth being demolished by an asteroid or comet

why do you think that is?

i feel like we're due for another one

are you crippled by your fears?

no. except i dont light candles because im afraid my apartment will burn down. but other than that... i dont think so. i mean im definitely scared of a lot of things

what advice would you give to people who are scared all the time?

well most fears i usually only think about when applicable. for instance im scared of buses tipping over when they turn the corner. and i definitely think about it every time i see it happen...but i feel like thats some form of prevention in itself

how so?

i guess because alot of fears are random and mostly have to do with the unexpected freak-accidents in life...at least for me. so if you expect the unexpected... it probably wont happen.

i think that about wraps it up. thanks lisa!

i suck. actually ive written an essay about this exact topic before




lisa noble is a 22-year-old blog writer living in new york.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Found Note: December 2015


-found by a scavenge team outside a firebombed neighborhood in eastern Connecticut.-

Honey,

I don't know if you got the voice mails or if you'll ever return here to read this, but I'm leaving this here in the hopes that you can find it and we can reunite. The house has been without power for 6 days. I can't get any calls out, still those emergency messages. After what happened I don't know how safe it is to go out. All the neighbors are gone, DON'T GO INTO THEIR HOUSES, there's NO FOOD, nothing left. I don't even want to tell you what I saw in some of the houses. ALSO - Don't Go To New York. Whatever you do. The last I heard, and this was last week, those things overran the whole city. We thought Dana and Grover were sick, but it was something else. I can't explain it to you but it's something nobody expected. Those growths on their backs, I knew all along there was something off about it all. They were like tiny riders, controlling the dogs, communicating through them. It sounds absurd but I know if you've seen half of what I have this week then you suspect it too. You're so smart, baby, I know you found a way to make it through this. If


-the note ends without completing the sentence, nor any indication of who the author was.-