An Offer

Just as I haven't, and will not, delete any of the comments left on the blog, I similarly refuse to delete my initial offending post. I will consider, however, removing or amending my most recent post, "Ex-Post Asshole" because of Lesley in Arkansas's very wise and reasonable treatment of this issue. But those are just logistics; here is my offer :

Lesley in Arkansas, my e-mail address is respectthefringe@gmail.com. I'd like to initiate some sort of conversation that does not go through the blog, and I'd like to do it for three reasons : 1. I think I could learn some things from you. I say this both because you possess wisdom--certainly wisdom beyond my own--and because you speak with moderation--I listen very poorly to people without it.
2. The blog is, necessarily, public, and I think a public conversation would be less meaningful or effective than a private one.
3. A conversation through e-mail is more mutual than one through the blog. Within "Go West, Young Man," I speak to a number of people on a number of subjects, whereas your comments are directed mostly towards me. I'd rather speak only to you, again for the sake of efficacy.

Any and all aside from LIA who read this and would like to engage in some sort of one-on-one correspondance, I'd be more than happy to. I won't respond to threats, whether active or passive, and I won't respond to attacks on my integrity. What I'm looking for is a discussion of morality and ethics.

-Alfonzo

Ex-Post Asshole

I recieved some seriously backdated comments just a few minutes ago, and I wanted to clarify the motivation behind my early January post, "Offend Everyone".

But first, let's go line for line :
"I am STUNNED at how you think your right to free speech means that you don't claim responsibility for upsetting people with your words."--Part of my intention in writing this post was, actually, to bring some of that responsibility onto my own head. The whole Angelman's fiasco was getting far too much attention, and it was becoming an emotional burden too heavy to bear. I aimed (and failed, I might add) to attract some of the attention away by writing an even more venemous and blindly ignorant rant. Is this not claiming responsibility? Was I not fully aware of the potential negative effects?

"Right to say what you want does NOT give you immunity from criticism."--I didn't say, or even imply, that it did; nor did I say or imply that the Angelman's fiasco was undeserving of criticism. What you may not know is that the Angelman's parents group went through three stages : first, they harassed and threatened; second, they petitioned the school to revoke student status and/or scholarships; third, they tried to inflate the issue further by getting a pointy-headed Post-Dispatch op-ed columnist to write about miscontextualized quotes. By all means, what is said can and SHOULD be criticized, but the behavior of the Angelman's parents goes far beyond mere criticism. Or wouldn't you agree?

"I find it funny that you and you fellow bloggers aren't making racial slurs, or slurs against ethic minorities, or slurs against homosexuals or any other marginalized group. Why?"--This is actually a sore point for me. I had intended to "Offend Everyone" but the process was so long and tedious (and, at times, heartwrenching) that I gave up on my greater goal and stuck to the birth defects. If you'd like me to write a post full of racial slurs, slurs against ethnic minorities, slurs against homosexuals or some other marginalized group, I'd be glad to do so, you nigger kyke fag with a lisp (just a guess).

"Yeah, the KKK marches in my town. That's their right. So does Fred Phelps and his bunch of idiots. That's their right.
And yes, I lump you into that group."--Who, me?

" Just because you can say something doesn't mean you should. And if you do, well, be prepared to deal with the consequences, which include pissed off people."--I beg to differ on the first line; I think no stone should go unturned, no hateful thought should be supressed, no inkling of resentment for another should go unexplored. If we give in to the society of political correctness, we'll reach a point where nobody can take a joke, or where there are certain colors of people who you feel you aren't allowed to criticize. If you keep all of your worst thoughts inside, they begin to rot and cause damage, and that's where the truly troubling thoughts come from.

You can hide your explicit thoughts, but you can't hide your feelings. I, for example, have a latent fear of African-Americans; the truth of my fear is that I feel guilty for being white, and I am constantly afraid of being criticized for the sins of my people (and myself. We all perpetrate these crimes, no matter how small). But, if I hide that thought away, don't allow myself to think about it, then I'll just be left with a fear of black people and no way to explain it. Sooner or later, I'll rationalize my fear with some ludicrous theory about the width of their noses being intimidating, or their preternatural strength being a constant threat to my well-being.

All of the worst, most misguided and irrational ideas come from not saying what you really think. If you get your tiny, stupid little hangups out of your system, then they can't grow up into bigger, more vehement ones. For everyone's information, I haven't had a malicious thought about the genetically disadvantaged since writing my post, where I used to be a strong advocate of late-stage abortions and post-natal euthenasia for socially non-functional genetically disabled children. Who knows what latent hate I had in me towards these children, but it seems to have been flushed out.

*Sigh* Another anonymous comment. I wish you people would at least use a pseudonym. Otherwise, you just come across as a torso with a metal rod up your ass.

That is all.

Collision

I can't explain the subject-line. I suppose it's because the entire week since I last posted will collide in this one (hopefully monstrous) post.

Taking time out from the quest for melancholy, I spent an awful lot of time in Maggie's apartment over the weekend. For those of you thinking, "But wait, I thought Maggie was Alan's friend," I point out that Alan has not been at his most social lately(though to say he's been completely out of touch would, as of Saturday night, prove false); Maggie stopped by for a sanity check and, gregarious and magnetic as she is, invited me to a small gathering for the purposes of getting stoned and watching movies. I suggested a film that I recently acquired, Wizards and, after hearing the plot, she quite enthusiastically accepted my film nomination. I met all sorts of dark and stormy individuals, many of whom are into BDSM-type stuff, and many of whom offered to try their best to make me hate life, if it should ever come to such a desperate stage. I had such a good time (who is this typing? is this even me?) that I came back the next night (third in a string of parties, the first two being goodwill appearances) and met even more great people. By the end of the night, I had invited Maggie and her boy, Grace, to see Sigur Rós with me this week, as I had four tickets but only one body. They agreed, and we recruited a fourth from the ranks of the party.

I have a habit, though, of fixation. If I see a girl often enough, I'll start to fixate on her. I find out her name, then periodically check their Facebook information; finding the name seems easy enough, but I do it without ever speaking a word. Well, eventually my fixation dwindles and I move on to another "lucky" lady. This is what I substitute for actual interactive relationships.

So, Saturday night, I met this freshman girl at Maggie's. She's hyper-socialized, the kind of girl who's an absolute social genius, only second term and she's already got veins of influence running all over campus. She's only 17, but it seems like she's already been around the block at least once, if not many many times. Kind of a goth-esque outfit; maybe more punk-goth, or just plain punk. Or maybe she was just.... cute. And she seemed like she was into me, maybe, just a little...

(..........fuck)

It's been five days, and I figured out that I've checked her facebook profile more than five times since meeting her. This does not bode well, as they say. If, and that's an if of a magnitude that Atlas could not comfortably bear... if I've got a shot at something, here, I really don't want to come across as the brooding narcissistic writer/stalker-type, but I don't know if I can lie well enough to come off as anything else. Agh, never has angst felt so.... spritely?

And so, Sunday and Monday preceded Tuesday. Tuesday was a plagued day, during which none of the small things that I take for granted worked properly (it's funny, because I just read a short story by a guy in my Fiction Writing class about a person who lost his mind under the same conditions) : My alarm clock reset itself during the night; not just the sort of reset that could have easily been my mistake, but a full blown memory wipe. By god's grace (Fuck You, Capitalist Deity), I woke up in time to get to class, but it was closer than I like to cut it. While scrambling to get my clothing on and properly adjusted, I realized that my driver's license had gone missing. I knew that my "wallet" (see, four plastic cards in my back pocket) had fallen out the night before, and I found every card but the license. I checked my pants and my room over three times, eventually shaking the pants upside-down before throwing them across the room.

After my long day, I was reminded that the door to the stairwell which leads to the suite doesn't like me. I swipe once, and the door won't open even though the light is green; I have to wait for it to turn red, then swipe again. It always works the second time, and never the first. I crumble into bed and unwind by playing SNES roms (Fuck You, Naysayers) until I get a phone call from the fourth Sigur Rós attendee. She tells me she is too sick to go, and makes mention of the concert being that night, Tuesday the 21st. Now, within the walls of my brain, every piece of paper or website or schedule I had seen had informed me that the concert was on Wednesday the 22nd. Even my memory of the tickets told me that the concert was in 25 hours and not, in fact, in 1. I checked the tickets again, just to be sure.

(........fuck)

Of course, at this point, I really need my driver's license. I overturned a chair in the hunt for it, and still couldn't find it. While resting from the frantic card search, I called my freshman fixation to ask her to fill the fourth position, but she didn't pick up. I was out of time, so I left without the license and immediately ran into the freshman on the way out of my building. But, alas, she was busy! I continued running, convened with Maggie and Grace, and made tracks to The Pageant. And though we had to stand the whole time, it was absolutely thrilling (with the notable exception of the opening group, the female string quartet that plays behind Sigur Rós).

I wasn't done with my homework until 2:30 a.m., at which point I stepped into the bathroom to have my pre-sleep piss and, lowering my pants, I heard the tap of plastic on the floor behind me. I turn to find my driver's license, fallen from some hidden inter-dimensional space within my pants. I think it would have benefitted my sanity more to have simply lost the license, rather than finding it where I looked most extensively. Though, with that done, I passed out and got a much-earned five and a half hours of sleep.

I'll keep you posted on the freshman. Cross your fingers, I guess.

-Alfonzo

Debris

I have a fluctuating ability to become invisible; not invisible as though I could photograph myself and I wouldn't appear, but in the sense that people who know me well can walk within a few feet of me without ever realizing that I'm there. Perceptive people. People who can't eat a meal on campus without stopping to talk to everyone they know. People who relish the opportunity to leap onto me.

It's not merely that I stand in the shadows, or that their opportunity to notice me was too brief. It happens even when people are walking directly toward me for hundreds of feet.

I've tested the degree of control I have over this ability: three months into a 5-day-a-week class, with 22 students packed into six columns and four rows of desks, the professor going systematically up and down the rows with his questions, jumped from the person behind me to the person in front of me. I had counted out the questions, and realized that I was to be asked one for which I had no answer. Rather than using my confirmable abilities to figure out the answer, I concentrated on becoming invisible. And it worked. I have no other postive confirmations of this ability.


I have a strange relationship with signal-recieving electronic devices. In High School, my "atomic clock" (which recieves a signal from the National Atomic Clock in Texas) gave me a series of strange omens. At around 11:45 PM, in March of 2002, it displayed the date "7/18". I marked my calendar accordingly, and around 11:45 PM on July 18th, it displayed the date "10/26".
I, of course, being the fractured soul that I was in High School, took this to mean that something big was going to happen on October 26th; my leading suspicion was that either I or the entire world was in mortal peril.

Then, on October 26th, around 11:45 PM, it displayed "d.34". That was, as they say, where I got off. If I had been less in-tune with reality, I might have sought some sort of psychotic interpretation of the mysterious letter and numerals, but even I wasn't crazy enough for that.

The other device which gives me pause is my cell phone. All last year, my cell phone would occasionally display phantom calls; a number would appear in my recieved or dialed calls list that I had neither recieved nor dialed. I made a point of confirming these phantoms by calling those who I had apparently been in contact with to make sure that no contact had actually been made. The most frequent phantom was a friend from Junior High, Noah, who I had all but abandoned by the end of High School. It was, of course, awkward when I called him up, after years of only minimal communication, to ask if he'd called me or if I'd called him. He said "no" every time, and the conversation was over.

A less frequent, yet repeated phantom is the little brother of my friend, Muriel. Upon upgrading my phone this Summer, the phantom Noah disappeared and was replaced by Muriel's little brother. He, too, awkwardly confirmed that our phones had not actually connected. I think these people must think I'm nuts.

Today's phantom was a new one, and by far the strangest. My phone was on silent at the time it occurred, but I so wish it hadn't been. The phantoms occur silently, showing up without ringing, but part of me wonders if this one would have rung.

I keep my own cell phone number stored in my phone, an artifact from a time when I couldn't remember it, under the name "Me". You can imagine my surprise when I saw I had a missed call from "Me". What's even stranger is that the number listed has a digit wrong; area code "504" instead of "404". I checked, and the listing is correct in my phonebook. So...well, that's odd, isn't it?


I don't know if other people's lives are haunted by technological spectres, but I believe I am a minority in my experiences. In searching for an explanation, I look to my ancestry. My mother's father was a farmer, a man of few words and simple means. And every watch he ever wore stopped dead within a few days.

I don't know if there's a connection, or even a rational explanation for these strange happenings, but I like to believe that there's something extraordinary going on.

-Alfonzo

No, Jesus, I Don't Want Your Card

I have been, as of my last post, seeking spiritual and philosophical guidance in the various nooks and crannies of Wash U's campus. For the most part, my pleas have fallen on deaf ears, with all the philosophy majors busy developing theses and wallowing in pits of self-loathing. However, I managed to find one second-year grad student willing to humor me. He prescribed a regimen of "smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, and staring off into the distance." It sounded simple enough, at the time, but a man searching for nothingness is like a beacon to the harpies of embraced existence.

Yesterday, I found a bench in the Brookings quad, sipped my mocha and took two drags before the pillars and stonework began to melt out of my consciousness. No sooner than the sky began to slip away, I was confronted by two young men; a skinny white boy and a chap who looked, for all the world, like a Philipino. They wanted to know if I would take their survey. Descending back into the cave of shadows, I said yes.

They asked me what three words I would use to describe my life : "Surprising," I said, digging for any other neutral adjectives at my disposal. "Perpetual," I said, again, aiming to outline the aspects of any life, not specifically my own. But I was out, strapped for neutrality. Instead, I let slip a tiny ember to fuel their fire. "Promising?" I said, shamed.

They asked me something I intend to do before I die : "Visit all 50 states," I said. The white boy asked if I'd been to Montana, his hailing peak, and I said no, but asked if he lived in the half that Ted Turner owns. Apparently he lives somewhere near the Ted-line. The Philipino then revealed that he was, in fact, Russian, which led me to amend my previous assessment and place his area of origin in Southeast Russia, near Mongolia.

They asked me what I believe exists after death, and still I remain oblivious to their aims : "I don't know, but if there isn't a hot tub, I'm not interested." The white boy laughed at this, but the humor was lost on the Russian. Perhaps his ancestors were the victims of an obscure genocide in which they were boiled alive; I didn't dare ask.

They asked me, if a friend of mine approached me for advice about becoming a Christian, what would I tell them. Their agenda revealed, I inadvertedly snapped my cigarette in half. They had trapped me : "I would tell him to make sure he was fully aware of the moral and ethical codes that he was agreeing to." This answer led the white boy into a monologue about how, to an outsider, it may seem that Christianity is forbidding and full of rules, but that the truth was in Christ's sacrifice; though there are plenty of rules, Christ martyred himself so that his followers could be forgiven for their trespasses. I listened, only so I could smile and nod at the appropriate places. His pupils were the smallest I'd ever seen, and I began to wonder if the spiritual ecstacy of Sunday Services was the only thing that dialated those pin-pricked eyes of his.

Finally, they asked me, on a scale from 1 to 10, how important it was for me to find God : "Seven has always been a good number," I said, and took a drag off my new cigarette. Though my answer had no hooks, nothing explicit to respond to, the white boy took off again on a rant about his courtship with Christ. Smile, nod, sip, drag, sip, smile, drag, nod, sip, nod, drag, smile. The Russian's name was Uri, and the white boy's name escapes me, now. They walked on, satisfied with their attempt to penetrate my soul, and I sat smugly, reinforced by the knowledge that one doesn't need to stare off into the distance when there's a perfectly good intellectual void right in front of you, singing the Gospel.

Still, I am afflicted by my reckless enjoyment of life, but I am beginning to see that it is not by isolating myself that I will escape. No, the best way to become disillusioned with humanity is to look it in the face, and listen to it prattle on about all the empty vessels it worships.

That is all.