Tag Archives: Charles Bukowski

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Apr 8 2013

What I Drank All Weekend: SpeakEasy’s Big Daddy IPA aka Sex w/ an Ex you never want to be with


Speakeasy-Big-Daddy-IPA

Disclaimer: How these Beer Reviews Work

Beer review are shamefully boring. Basically every beer review speaks about how a beer looks when poured into a glass. Then you are exposed to a discussion of mouth-feel, aroma, carbonation and finally taste.

Personally if I wanted to listen to soul-crushing palaver I would sit in a bar in a more affluent or hipster area of town where I can be continually bombarded, like the city of Dresden, with beer recommendations by someone who looks like an acid -induced nightmare from 1972.  I have no malice towards hipsters. Without hipsters there would be no need to gentrify neighbourhoods and subsequently transform the good, original indigenous culture or sentimentality into a machine for the propagation of some surreptitious capitalistic aim.

To that end I make sure that each of my beer reviews are, free from any reference to patchouli oil, and fully engaged with the reality of the human experience.

Big Daddy IPA

waits

I’d rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy.

Tom Waits

I was done with IPA’s.  My life was bitter enough thank you very much. I had tried Stone IPA, Smuttynose Ipa, Racer 5 IPA, Harpoon IPA, Lagunitas IPA  and the list goes on ad nauseum. I don’t remember what the last IPA I had was, I just knew it was over. I moved on, dabbled in the  Quadrupels, Tripels, Barley-wines, and Stouts.

As chance would have it, this weekend my fridge was not stocked with libations well there was a Corona (don’t judge me).  It had been a long week, a tiring week, and to cap it off with drinking Bud Or Coors light would have add insult to injury. I rushed to the super-market and came across an inordinate amount of swill. I almost was resigned to my fate of a sober weekend when out of the corner of my eye I spotted Big Daddy IPA.  The rest is history. Literally I killed the whole six pack over the course of the weekend.

Official Review

speakeasy

This is amazingly drinkable. It is one of the most drinkable beers let alone IPA’s I have come across. But here is an official review for all of you who need overinflated jibber-jabber to validates your presumed self-importance

Aroma/ Look / Taste / Mouthfeel

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There is my favourite bottle opener given to me as a gift brought all the way from Scotland.

The aroma is predominantly that of hops finishing in particular. (By finishing hops I mean hops added in the final stages of a wort boil or dry-hopped in the fermenter for the purpose of lending hop flavour and/or aroma to the finished beer. -You will encounter the finishing hops again after your first sip.)

The taste is characteristic of what you would expect from an IPA. I was hit first with  a coppery, grapefruit pith, piney  taste common to IPA’s then I was accosted in the best way possible with a nice citrus note. The citrus note in this case was more of an orangey-floral note. You get hint of some malty sweetness.

The carbonation is very subtle, and that in combination with  the creamy texture/mouth-feel added a lot to the drinkability of this beer. The finish was a bit dry and bitter but not overpoweringly so. What stuck out to me the most was that I wasn’t over powered and prison man-handled by the hop profile and bitter after-taste.

Recommendations / Food Pairings

I would recommend this to someone who hasn’t tried an IPA yet. It has all the character of an IPA but it is not too bold. It is very palatable and drinkable.  I like drinking beer and I never felt the need to pair it with anything. It just so happened that  during the course of my drinking I do shovel food into my face. With that said I have to say that spicy foods – Indian style curries, Mexican food, grilled meat, hamburgers, pizza definitely something about the tomato and garlic  for me at least. Any kind of really sweet and spiced dessert should work as well, it will bring out the malt profile.

Overall Conclusions

bukowski

That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.

Charles Bukowski

You’re at a party. You been avoiding going out for a bit but today you finally made it. While you scan the room making  a mental note of who you will avoid, your eyes lock with another familiar pair. These eyes are familiar and while seemingly inviting there is an element of danger because they belong to an ex-lover (girlfriend or boyfriend).

You are both adults so you sit to chat and both of you instinctively ask for stuff drink before you get there. There is awkward chatter and more drinking. You don’t hate each other, and still have the fleeting thought that things could get back together at some rosy time in the future where communist where bright colors and aviator glasses finally go out of style and die for good. But now isn’t then.

Somehow the more you talk the more familiar habits resurface, and then there is an awkward pause where you both realize that the other person for years has been trained to please you, to give you just what you like how you like it.  Fun sexy times occur and its the best ever. You can curse and call the other person names and not act like you don’t mean it and are just babbling incoherently like biblical time possession. You can grab some hair (from the roots) and you both make sure  to help the other arrive.  You know you never want to see this muthafucker again but even while your heart is empty looking for love your loins are assuaged and that’s all that counts

That was for me what drinking this beer was like. I swore off IPA’s like I would a bad relationship. I ducked and dodged them in the market, at the bar, until it just so happened that my back was against the wall. It had everything I liked , how I like, when I needed it the most. Now my fridge is stocked with the stuff I like -easy access makes it all the sweeter.

Upcoming Reviews

Past Reviews

  1. What I’m Drinking Tonight: Samuel Adams Octoberfest or Memories of German ex Gf
  2. What I’m Drinking Tonight: Brooklyn Lager Aka the Post Honeymoon working couple Handjob
  3. What I’m Drinking tonight: Narragansett Cream Ale aka Lazy Self-Loving
  4. What I’m Drinking Tonight: Boddintons Pub Ale
  5. What I Drank Saturday: La Fin Du Monde Tripel Style Beer aka My 1st Canadian Erection
  6. What I drank Wednesday Night (1): Guinness Draught The Not as Good Looking Younger Sister
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hujnb
Feb 11 2013

A Friendly Prompt – Shout out to Marj and all my readers


hujnb

“The crazy ones only laugh when there is no reason to laugh.”
― Charles Bukowski
I used to get in trouble a lot for laughing. I in fact still do. Many times I have no rational reason  to laugh and that itself is a source of laughter. Other times there is a reason but no one finds that reason funny. Let me give you an example:
Friend: Hey Dave, saw a teaching job you might like
Dave: Uhm… I’m guessing prep school
Friend: Yeah, coed prep school in the city
Dave: < Laughter >
Friend: What’s so funny
Dave: If i apply and get hired I will get only half the salary
Friend: Why ? I dont see it
Dave: Well a coed prep school in the city means $$$ …  and a different demographic…. Im going to have to pay brolic looking lesbian to accompany me everywhere
Friend: I don’t get it
Dave: You’re a pasty looking over weight man, prematurely balding. Why don’t you eat your lunches on the benches at the play ground and see how quick everyone thinks you’re a child molester… now imagine you have a very masculine lesbian sitting next to you eating humus and dry bread because she is that tough
Friend: You have a point I guess…. Uhm…so does that mean you wont apply…
Dave: Sure I will just, need to remember to wash my hands after I self-pollute, that way my sperm wont end up on someone’s homework and I get an unsubstantiated rape charge <raucous laughter>
Friend:  … ??? …..

I think we think we have a lot of time on this earth. 60 years seems a long time when you’re experimenting with your sexuality and gag reflexes in college, I wouldn’t know, that’s just what picked up from Cosmo while on line at the grocery. Then of course your mid 30′s hit, some of your classmates have passed on to the great beyond. Your body feel different, etc then 60 or 85 isnt that far off. A human life is not that long I dont feel, and I am not counting the hours we are awake physically and metaphorically. An average human being is awake for maybe an hour in a life time perhaps? Well there is sleeping, eating, post- coital stillness, commuting… most of our life is accounted for before we get a chance to plan to do anything significant.  Don’t forget the time and effort spent hating eat other, discriminating against each other, abuse animals, littering etc.

I was awake today for a minute

I stumbled onto a post about me not written by me or my ex-gfs (court order) but by a blogger: Marj of Bohemian Sentiments.  She said nice things about me and it  roused me from the somnambulism that people mistake for daily life. I got so used to the stares and the awkward silences and the lady’s grabbing their purses when I enter the elevator, and the whole I can’t date you openly because my family wouldn’t approve of your being black  but if you want to.. thing, that I forgot that there are some people, a select few people out there who enjoy my company, and words.

I guess growing up Roman catholic compliments and an unperturbed anus are both frowned upon by the establishment, you know what the priest say: spare the rod spoil the child. Sorry I am being petulant, I do that when I get compliments in a public manner. It takes the heat off me.

Seriously Now

I dont know what to say really, so I will recite a quote:

“They say there is a doorway from heart to heart, but what is the use of a door when there are no walls?”
― Rumi

It’s amazing to look back and see how so many people around the world are connected to so many other people. I really felt for Marj when I learned that her father had passed. I felt moved by the sadness and pain of another person I hadn’t met. Thats the power I think of sincerity of emotion and sincerity in communicating them, if you are open to it, you can be moved. When I look out at the world I see that we all build more and more barriers  to prevent the activities and words of another from moving us. I really feel that we are all connected, not in the hallmark or a limited religious definition of connection, but in something that is much deeper and more profound.

Death is a difficult topic and subject. It forces us to ascertain to what extent are we alive, it also forces us to deal with loss in a real way other than building barrier to better protect ourselves from being drawn in the depths of the human experience.   I don’t think that Marj should be thanking me, we should be thanking her  and everyone that openly shares their pain and grief. Because in doing so they invite us into a deeper experience of being alive if we choose to accept the invitation.

I’ll tell you a secret. I may spoon out the sugar, here on the blog but the secret is that the sugar is given to me from all these nice invitations I get from you guys the reader to enter into a deeper experience of being alive and a human being really.

here is the post just in case you

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Dec 14 2012

Showing that Blogger Love: Who/what will you be humping this holiday-season?


I thought that with my Thanksgiving‘s Day post: This Thanksgiving I am Thanking All you Readers for Indulging me  it would be the last I would hear or write about dry humping people.

cats

Whenever I was in the mood for intimacy I would dry hump  my ex-gf and make loud animal noises like the National Geographic Channel was doing another one of their documentaries. The first few times it was funny, it was cute and almost charming. After a while it became childish, vulgar, and intolerable. Especially when I started to do it all the time and at a Duane Reade (a pharmacy).

But thanks to Daan, author of the blog I FKKN ROK  I will be dry humping a few blogs. Let me explain:

Daan had a stunning epiphany that Blogs need love too AND they’re humpable. This holiday season in a tremendous show of vigor, and sexual athleticism he has chosen 9 blogs to hump into submission one of which is this blog ASpoonfulOfSuga.

So first thanks to Daan, for being a gentleman and letting me know of his intentions first, giving me enough time to trim and clean-up all the hairy comments  and make things a lil more presentable.

So here are the Blog I will be dry Humping  this holiday season.

  1. DuhMerica   He is one of the most honest and straightforward people I know.  I collaborated with him once, and it was so good it warranted some Holiday Humping
  2. Blogdramedy  She came up with the idea of Blogfestivus and its been fun participating. Plus she rocks sunglasses like no one else I’ve seen in recent times. She is also funny and very witty
  3. Just Another Canadian Gurl  What’s not to like about this other Canadian girl. She’s funny, and is one of the few people that looks cool with both short and long hair. If your nice she’ll give you greats tips for taking care of your teeth
  4. javaj240   I was hooked when I read her about page. We have similar humor and we both like to read or have affairs with books. An she writes to exorcise her demons. I love a blogger/women with demons, and you will too, check her out
  5. AliceAtWonderLand    She is funny and witty and her blog has this cool phantasmagoric feel to it. She personal also advocates the pressing of her big red button, which means to be dry humping is tolerated nad appreciated especially before button  pressing or mashing. I havent asked yet.
  6. fixitordeal  I came across this blogger doing the blog festivus thing, she is funny and really positive person. She made me rethink my cantakerousness and bitterness at life with her culled for your enjoyment section of her blog
  7. SoIWentUnderCover  She is all kinds of awesome.  She pays me compliments and as a result I feel like buying her stuff and saying yes. But she hasn’t cashed that in yet.
  8. Rutabaga the Mercenary Researcher She is really interesting person. I like hearing what she has to say. She loves language, Charles Bukowski and of herself has said and I quote: ” I do use my tongue prettier than a $20 whore!”
  9. Lady From Manilla – She is really really nice, sweet and sincere, I dare you to read her November Babe Musings  and disagree with me

I will be featuring these blogs and bloggers on my blog unless they do not want me too  for the next few weeks.  If you are not following them you’re missing out.

Who/what will you be humping this holiday-season?

 

Dec 8 2012

ASpoonfulofSuga Vlog: Talking and Thinking Aloud 12.09.2012 …. (Say Hello To my Dog Happy)


imagesAnother Bed / Charles Bukowski

another bed
another women

more curtains
another bathroom
another kitchen

other eyes
other hair
other
feet and toes.

everybodys looking.
the eternal search.

you stay in bed
she gets dressed for work
and you wonder what happened
to the last one
and the one after that…
it’s all so comfortable-
this love making
this sleeping together
the gentle kindness…

after she leaves you get up and use her
bathroom,

it’s all so intimate and strange.
you go back to bed and
sleep another hour.

when you leave its with sadness
but you’ll se her again
whether it works or not.
you drive down to the shore and sit
in your car. it’s almost noon.

-another bed, other ears, other
ear rings, other mouths, other slippers, other
dresses

colors, doors, phone numbers.

you were once strong enough to live alone.
for a man nearing sixty you should be more
sensible.

you start the car and shift,
thinking, I’ll phone Jeanie when I get in,
I haven’t seen her since Friday.

Link to article about the dropping of classic Literature: http://news.yahoo.com/classic-literature-dropped-high-schools-favor-informational-texts-082338135.html

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Nov 13 2012

dreamlessly from Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame by Charles Bukowski


old grey-haired waitresses
in cafes at night
have given it up,
and as i walk down sidewalks of
light and look into windows
of nursing homes
I can see that it is no longer
with them.
I see people sitting on park benches
and i can see by the way they
sit and look
that it is gone.

I see people driving cars
and I see by the way
they drive their cars
that they neither love nor are
loved -
nor do they consider
sex. it is all forgotten
like an old movie.

I see people in department stores and
supermarkets
walking down aisles
buying things
and i can see by the way their clothing
fits them and by the way they walk
and by their faces and their eyes
that they care for nothing
and that nothing cares
for them.

I see a hundred people a day
who have given up
entirely.

if I go to the racetrack
or a sporting event
I can see thousands
that feel for nothing or
no one
and get no feeling
back.

everywhere I see those who
crave nothing but
food, shelter, and
clothing; they concentrate
on that,
dreamlessly

I do not understand why these people do not
vanish
I do not understand why these people do not
expire
why the clouds
do not murder them
or why the dogs
do not murder them
or why the flowers and the children
do not murder them,
I do not understand.

I suppose they are murdered
yet i can’t adjust to the
fact of them
because they are so many.

each day,
each night,
there are more of them
in the subways and
in the buildings and
in the parks

they feel no terror
at not loving
or at not
being loved

so many many many
of my fellow

creatures

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Nov 13 2012

Shit I say (or write) to my therapist


UnEdited Version

I don’t think we  have ever talked about it but I spend a lot of time in meditation any where from 4 to 14 hours a week. I don’t mean to say that I walk around with a shaved head, eat only vegetable and turn my nose up at  people whose colons aren’t as  clean as mine due to my insistence on high fiber in everything I eat. I leave that to Woody Harrelson to do when he isn’t busy working hard for another small part in a film. I also for the sake of clarity want to say I don’t wear tight pants that accentuate my shapely buttock and try to fold myself into a pretzel in a hot room or in the dark recess of my room utter prayer in comprehensible languages when I am not masturbating.

I jsut wanted to say that it is a very  difficult practice to maintain. In meditation there are moment tat last an eternity andthen it also seems sometimes that eternity itself it passes by all too quickly like Blake hinted at when he wrote:

To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour

It’s hard to go from experiences of nothing, or bliss (non-erection related bliss) to the hustle and bustle of Times Sq running trying to catch the shuttle train to the Number 4 train to change for the 6 train at 86 street to get to work quickly on the Upper East Side and do some bullshit I’m not passionate or the least bit interested in for a salary  that really isn’t worth it. It seems nowadays existence is bogged down by trivialities.

I saw this quote and picture on Facebook by Kurt Vonnegut that made me laugh and think

The last couple of weeks have bee pretty eye opening. A mass majority of the people (guys) I knew in high school and in college are all the same. They are all fat I’m talking odd number of chins fucking fat, they all have  2 kids, and all their wives all look the same passably ugly they are all angry  even though they have enjoyed so much success. They all seem to be part of that group of people who think minorities want stuff and that immigrants are lazy and leeching off our system but also working hard enough to steal jobs from hard working Americans. if your impressed at how they can hold two opposing views at the same time you should see these fucking beasts at a fucking buffet.

I don’t fault these guys for their politics people are gonna disagree and hold different opinion. I am sad for them because thats it for them. They have peaked. They don’t read anything aside from their work material, all the funny dreams and ideas they had when we were younger are swallowed up in their excessive corpulence. Whatever free time is spent drinking beer and watching bullshit sports games. I do know where my friends and class mates went ?

Or maybe I am fucked up and maybe I have drank a lil to much Guinness tonight. Either way there are more words to write and otehr words to remember

“there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock.

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other
one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners.

it hasn’t told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

watering a plant.”

Edited  version

Yeah all is well, was a great weak I voted  ate Mexican without getting sick, what more could be asked for?

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Oct 21 2012

What I’m Drinking: Upcoming Reviews


“That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”

-Bukowski

____________________________________

Guys and Dolls

I thought I would share with you a list of  alcoholic products I will be reviewing in the near future. feel free to make some suggestion or chime in about what you  think about a product. This is not the entire list there is more lots more :-) – Drink responsibly

- MrMary

Featured Spirit

Jack Daniels Tennessee Honey

Beer/Ales/Stouts

New Beers

Unibroue Blanche De Chambly

Tripel Karmeliet – Brouwerij Bosteels

Unibroue Maudite

Smuttynose IPA

Founder Curmudgeon (Old Ale)

Radeberger Pilsner

Stone Ruination

Stone Arrogant Bastard

 

waiting-for-godot11
Aug 15 2012

The Blogger’s dilemma – Serious Reflection


The Tweet that Opened My Eyes

Immediately after watching The Dark Knight Rises, I immediately tweeted a person I follow on twitter asking: ‘Hey! How did you like The Dark Knight Rises?‘ The person copies the URL to a tweet they wrote a bit ago where they shared their opinion on teh Dark Knight Rises and sends it to me. Do you see the significance of that ? Do you see the irony?The energy spent finding the URL and copying, pasting and sending i was to me equivalent in typing 140 characters or less. I laughed for a good long while and then really took a break from Twitter.

Conversation

A lot of times people ask a question not just for the answer alone. For example I see my homey hunched over his eye’s are blood shot, he looks dead tired. I go up to him and I saw: “What good boss?…….You look massively tired, whats up?”  Imagine then if he showed me a text to someone else  explaining how he has been working over time to help pay off some debt.The question wasn’t asked  just to be redundant.

I went to the movie theater less than 24/hours after the Colorado shooting and in NYC there was heavy police presence at all theaters. I unfortunately made a classic mistake.I was concerned in a friendly way about this person’s trip to the theater, and I thought it be nice to hear what they thought of the movie and how they were, but social media isn’t really meant to be social, it is meant to persuade you to consume some content.  Your clicking like or re-tweeting, etc is only the receipt of the transaction. I mean you can follow brands, celebrities bloggers etc and doing so increase or influence some sort of measurable out put from said person or corporation.

My Dilemma

See my problem is two-fold. I like blogging but I see the absurdity in it. Also ‘m overly caring, hence the sarcasm and vitriol when I see things like people getting hurt, or a system that screws over retirees, or people abusing animals etc.

MrMary is a character sorta. Yes I have done crazy things like walked the Bklyn Bridge only to pee more on City Hall than I would have if I took the train (let it build up its a better release) Yes I told a girl who was making me the butt of her jokes in church, that if she thinks I’m gay I’ll put my dick under her nose so she can see if she can smell shit. Of course I opted to not do so because her mustache tickling my sac would remind of Freddie Mercury and that would make me sorta gay. (I said that to her too – also I don’t discriminate on someone’s sexual orientation, but if someone is gonna make fun of me in church I will bring the heat. Being told her mustache turns straining guys gay kind of shut her up, my calling her Burt Reynolds helped but I digress….

My dilemma is that I like being able to connect to other people I wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to connect with, however most of those connections are to quote T. S Eliot:

Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

They are ultimately absurd. I do get a laugh or derive some sort of pleasure and satisfaction from blogging especially on here aspoonfulofsuga and oftentimes while writing some of the stuff i get some great comments. However I think its more than just about pleasure. If it was only about pleasure I wouldn’t have written almost four hundred posts (not counting all the draft of stuff I felt was too much even for me) in a year.

I mean there is always masturbation( I know all my tricks but still it’s fun….), there is the girl next door who needs more money for her drug habit, there is my bottle of Svedka Vodka (It’s not Grey Goose but it will do) my Bombay Sapphire Gin, my bottle of Ricard (Ricard Pastis anyone) there is my book of I’ve been working on intensely for 3 years now…. etc you get my point.

What is it?

I was thinking about this a lot today when I was writing about that high-school student I graduated with, with a history of mental problems that stabbed someone 40+ and killed them. To be clear I was wondering why do I even share personal things here, why do I even write here?

I think in some way there is this need for a sense of community, a need to he heard and to listen to someone else. Maybe it’s a personal flaw to feel that what I am saying behind the joking and making light of the world around me and my own idiosyncrasies and stupid decisions is being heard by someone other than the voices in my head, that it’s not just haphazard to find really cool blogs to follow and these really cool people follow me.

I don’t really have an answer and there is no real sense in trying to arrive at one. I always have endeavored to take things as they are, the words just come I suppose , …..

take a writer away from his typewriter 
and all you have left 
is 
the sickness 
which started him 
typing 
in the 
beginning.

index
Jul 24 2012

The Dark Knight Rises & I step over a homeless man on my way to the 7:30 Showing


I was running late to meet my brother. He isn’t my real brother but we have become so close over the years that he is considered family. On my way ducking and dodging people like OJ did  on the field and like he is doing now in prison, unfortunately when he gets sacked now the pain is psychological too, I managed to step over a homeless man.

The Homeless Man

I think that image of me stepping over a homeless man sprawled out on the street on the way to watch a movie that discusses/alludes to class warfare  is ironic and a subtle indication of something. That image stood out in my mind and if I could paint or draw I’d draw that scene. The fact that it was right outside Madison Square Garden would add an interesting backdrop to the  painting.

In the past I had had many homeless acquaintances. Homeless people I would meet on the route I would take to get home, or to work or to the places I frequent. Some homeless people are certifiable crazy  and need to be on medication. Other homeless people are drug addicts and drunkards. There are some homeless people though and they are the ones with whom I  find myself talking the most are those who don’t look homeless at all, but chose to live out of society. They have chosen to live off the grid. One of them lost his home and was an addict but got cleaned up but has nothing. No money no place and his family long ago cut all ties with him  and they have moved on.

He used to sit on the corner of Madison ave and 27th I used to take the BxM11 express bus from Manhattan to the Bx on Thursday nights. and I saw him for a whole Winter. I’d bring him a coup of times some McDonalds , turns out he used to sit there and sleep some  wrapped warmly in blankets. He had two other homeless friends that would join him. I sat with him once and brought him a number 7 at McDonalds which was an Angus burger with mushrooms and cheese. He offer me some Top Tobacco with rolling paper, I refused. We never had to  use words to communicate just nods. It was really interesting times.

The Reality of Our Times

The mid -life crisis or reading about it when I was younger was an eye opener for me. I saw that you could be living the American dream with a sort of decent looking wife that after retirement age would turn into a fat amophously shaped blob, half ugly kids, a house, a car, and a dog who does really like you. You could have financial success but be so utterly miserable and empty inside.  I got a scholarship to a prep school, and the kids of all these rich people were not happy at all. Of course not all of the kids there were rich.

We hear about class warfare, racism, ageism, sexism etc but all those things are secondary causes I feel of a power struggle. Its easy to exploit differences between us to exert power over groups of people. But beyond that there is something wrong with things now. Fundamentally wrong. Check this out and I will pick this up later.

I see men assassinated around me every day. I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead; men without eyes, men without voices; men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions; men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideas. – Charles Bukowski

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Jun 20 2012

Bee’s Fifth by Charles Bukowski and Beethoven Fifth Symphony


I heard it first while screwing a blonde
who had the biggest box in 
Scranton.

I listened to it again as I wrote a letter
to my mother
asking for 5,000 dollars
and she mailed back
3 bottletops and 
the stems of grandpop’s
forefingers.

The 5th will kill you 
in the grass or at the track,
the kitten said,
walking across the popinjay
rug.

if the 5th don’t kill you, 
the tenth will,
said the Caliente hooker.
as they ran up the
beautiful catsup red flag
93 thieves wept in the 
purple dust.  

the 5th is like an 
ant in a breakfastnook full of 
swaggersticks and 
june bugs
sucking
dawn’s orange juice coming.

and I took the 3 bottletops from my 
mother and 
ate them
wrapped in pages from
Cosmopolitan
magazine.

but I am tired of the
5th 
and I told this to a woman in 
Ohio once, I
had just packed coal up 3 flights
of stairs
I was drunk and
dizzy, and she said:

          how can you say you don’t care
          for something greater than you’ll
          ever be?

and I said:

           that’s easy.

and she sat in a green chair and 
I sat in a red chair
and after that
we never made love
again.  

dialoge
May 1 2012

Answering Questions in 600 words or less: The Myth of Social Media and the Character of MrMary


Questions: How much of you  is MrMary? Where do you get your inspiration from? What do you think about Social Media as a blogger that uses it ?

_____________________

I was looking for a definition of social media from which to jump into this post. The best I could find was this from Wikipedia which gave me ample ideas:

Social media includes web-based and mobile technologies used to turn communication into interactive dialogue between organizations, communities, and individuals.

The Myth of Social Media

Nothing say estrangement like a French novel, in particular for me The Stranger by Camus

Don’t get me wrong through social media, you and I can engage in a ‘dialogue’ of sorts. You can come to this blog and you can read my thoughts as filtered through the character of MrMary. Some of you gratefully leave comments or click the like button. But is this a real dialogue ?  This is an exchange of information of course but no matter how much information  we exchange do we really know each other?

We have all the elements of a dialogue we have a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people. But what is interesting, is where this exchange is taking place? it is not in a lecture hall, it’s not at a debate, it is in the public sphere sort (as it can be Google’d and accessible to any and everyone) and that carries with it some interesting things.

The growth of Newspapers and journals, reading houses, salons in the 18th century onwards after the fall or diminishment of the monarchical powers (French Revolution, Revolution of 1848, Rise of Marxism, The Unification of the Federation of the Rhine, The Napoleanic Wars, The Bolshevik Revolution) created a public sphere were topics were discussed and criticized and analyzed.

In our time the public sphere is used to sell things: hamburgers, posturepedic beds, mail order Russian Brides, music, ideology, striped-toothpaste, religion, politics, and information of all sort. We are very often either in a state of either consuming or working to consume. The frequency of being in such a state to me is what takes away the human element out of dialogue.

In my head whats makes us consume as much as we do is the hard-wired social conditioning we are inculcated for the younger among us, since birth or since we started sitting in front of the TV. One cannot converse dialogue with a conditioned habit.

The Character of MrMary

Like Celine writing as Ferdinand Bardamu or Bukowski writing as Hank Chinanski and some other writers  I have obscured the line between myself and MrMary. MrMary is very perverse, derisive, and in many cases quixotic.

I think as human beings we are all these things, every one of us is a Don Quixote waiting to be challenged. Look at our reality television and how popular it is. Think back on the last time you got wasted at a wedding party, or the time your heart was broken and you did something dumb and regrettable.

MrMary being an exaggeration of me, helps the process of satirizing and being critical of things. It gives me just enough space to paint a picture, and then using a few rhetorical tool deconstruct what has been created to expose something.

My inspiration comes from my own life, what I see on daily commute as well the newspapers, headlines and blogs in general.  Hope that works

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images
Apr 25 2012

My Favorite Bloggers As Songs I hear or listen too: TheSandyTongue


You might not be able to tell from my skin color but I love to sing. If you were able to discern such a personal tidbit of information you might be a fan of Mariah Carey. The post Tommy Mattola, Mariah who ate massive quantities of fried chicken, turning black chairs upside down to ride the legs and roll with Puffy

But, in order to steer the conversation back something non-offensive whenever I’m working  I find myself also singing. I’ve a  great love for music in all its shapes and forms and today while scrolling through all the blogs I like and subscribed while I was listening to music and there were a few songs which seemed to match the authors of the blogs  I was reading. So i though why not put together a blog post entitled: My Favorite Bloggers As Songs I hear or listen too:

The SandyTongue

TheSandyTongue has the testicular fortitude (aka cohones)  to speak his mind and be imperially who he is. He is one of the few people who I respect. He is on a continual search for clarity and sense, but isn’t stuck up about it; he is rather down to earth. We may articulate things differently, but we both know what’s up.

The similarities are too much to share:

  1. We both didn’t get the Dick Clarke Obsession
  2. We are both fucking tired of Al Sharpton. You maybe surprised to hear it but not every negro pledges their undying allegiance to him, until that is some cops fuck me up for no reason then I may have use for him
  3. We both can’t get down with Oprah both big and skinny Oprah
  4. We both don’t think the Kardashians should get airtime, especially for mouth milking a D class rapper ( It’s not the 80′s every girl does it )
  5. We both like the works of Charles Bukowski, Sublime, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn.
  6. GoldBond’s Medicated Powder – need I say more
  7. He recommend the Vol De Nuit bar in NYC – Belgian Beer and Pommes Frites – I didn’t know about this place before and I will be drowning some sorrows with some friends there this weekend.

The list goes on. I hope in the future to be able to interview the Big Homey, aka MrSandyTongue. Check out the related article section to see where we have collaborated in the past and other posts in common. In the meanwhile Enjoy these two song which in head  remind me of TheSandyTongue. Stayed tuned for the next blogger in the series.

One more time for comic effect

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