Sunday, August 29, 2010

The Age Of Lifeless Planets

When they opened the aperture of the historic lens, they discovered a lifeless majesty of planets as diverse and inconsolate as the hearts that spent years searching them out. It was an age of discovery of lifeless planets, Ursula Sea Breeze, Upper and Lower Escher, and Lawrence's World among many others.

The planets themselves were so much richer in complex elements and more varied in terrain than anyone ever imagined exo planets would be. Once Ursula Sea Breeze opened before the lens -- an endless expanse of rolling green hills and shallow dioxide seas -- they felt that the discovery of life was inevitable.

And so it was during the first five years, first ten, first 15, and still no life was found. Steve the space agency podium man with the familiar over enthusiastic affirmations and the sense of hygenic, non-sexual integrity, grew progressively more and more somber until finally the era was deemed by one and all, 'The Age Of The Discovery Of Lifeless Planets." The name, of course, was taken from a popular ludite documentary, but it only really stuck when Steve himself called it that in a moment of exhausted emotional candor.

"This age," he said, fiddling with his glasses, letting a foreign note of petulant irritation creep into his usually round, congenial voice. "This age of the discovery of lifeless planets..." He did not field any more questions from the press corps that afternoon.

Gradually, and incrementally more and more experts postulated a moribund universe of insensate phenomena. This may just be how the universe is after all, they said: the earth an anomaly in an otherwise sea of deadness. Philosophers suggested a sort of hubris in taking the dubious quantum building blocks as gospel macro truths and thereby creating grand, species-wide delusions, even hallucinations. Theologians were satisfied.

But for nearly a generation, it was a period of great optimism: the conflicts of the earth took second seat to the constant wave of photographs published night and day: beautiful, earth-like landscapes that weren't the earth. Valleys of grass that that wasn't grass at all, but a kind of emerald crystal that fed off the light of Ursula Sea Breeze's two suns, Pythagoras and Albion. The paper thin crystals even swayed ever so slightly in wind that was really scorching cyanide vapors blasting obdurate landscapes indefatigable and devastating like an ideal dream face.

The sea of Ursula Sea Breeze was perfectly clear, perhaps like the Aegean, although its chemical content precluded life. Scientists said it was as hot as molten led, as harmful as battery acid. But it looked beautiful, and its concept captivated and calmed. Whereas the lakes of the Escher planets, orbiting each other like tangoistas, were cobalt like Baikal in the spring after a hard rain. While Lawrence's world was a symphony of stone and ice, like a primordial ice-age earth but without the ceaseless change of species and climate.

The viewing apparatus itself was an electric lens, papery thin, unfurling at a snail's pace, extending itself into a kind of celestial larva as big as a sky scraper, powered by light, made to peer beneath the distant atmospheres, gather the light, and assemble the resultant data. They called it The Worm due to its resemblance to a huge, white meal worm.

After 15 years or so, most news agencies continued to broadcast 'news from the worm' as it was called, although funding ran low. The worlds were beautiful, yes, but this was beauty like chintzy airbrush fantasies, like half creations from out of cheesy science fiction. They were beautiful and boring. As much as people sought a purpose in their continual illumination, they were too far away to confirm with a touch. And their surfaces were too perfect suggesting their falsity: that they were conspiratorial lies designed from the start to shield mankind from a universe brimming over with life.

After 27 years, the worm's repairs were put on hold. After 35 years, a solar flare caused its orbit to degrade sharply, sending it hurtling into the atmosphere above Micronesia. Thus, the gigantic telescope became an oddity of technology, like the lunar missions, like the immortal monuments of history: imminently reproducible but for insurmountable practical and philosophical reasons. Then the Age of the Discovery of Lifeless Planets ended, and a new age that had no name began.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Some personality types

Fungoid



This is a man, the Robert Loggia type, who has a fungus growing in different regions inside his body. The fungus has over the years branched out creating an extensive network, subsuming control of other organs including the brain, but to no ill effect. Indeed, at this stage, it is hard to tell where the man ends and the fungus begins, or if that is even a useful question. Somehow, Robert Loggia's system can take it, as it has been taking it for nearly 80 years. This guy is a born shouter, and may confound eastern Zen type people with his longevity, seeing as he represents the pure occidental, newspaper tycoon, crazy fruit juice aficionado, the owner of many track suits.

Vaporous



In life, Telly Sevalis was the suggestion of a cleft pallet and some sort of super fluidity of blood and saliva which made him a being of odd, steaming, occasionally odoriferous liquidity, translating into an easy going demeanor and the overwhelming charisma of a potentially harmful yet colorful cloud of gas.

Symbolic




William H. Macy continues to remind everyone of miserable fringe movies that somehow creep into the notice of the general public which considers William H. Macy a stamp of high culture as it ambles along, full of self-satisfaction like an old timey American hobo tramping across the Midwest with a bunch of old bean cans threaded in a talismanic bunch clanking behind him. No one knows why.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Thomas Wolfe Sucks

Thomas Wolfe's disgusting, purple prose somehow escapes infamy: perhaps due to the fact religious adherents of Thomas Wolfe are, by nature, idiots? Then, of course, we are a nation of idiots.

The bulk of his sweaty, weird oeuvre lent him status as America's answer to Europe, as the bearded naturalist held up against candy ass France with all that existentialist crap. In other words, Wolfe emerged as the laughing, in-your-face voice of youthful American narrative. But what a god awful voice, as is apparent from a reading the first page of that great classic, Look Homeward Angel. He hem.

Virginal sunlight crept into the street in young moteless shafts. At this moment Gant awoke. He lay quietly on his back for a moment in the pleasant yellow-shaded dusk of the sitting-room, listening to the rippling flutiness of the live piping birdy morning. He yawned cavernously and thrust his right hand scratching into the dense hair-thicket of his breast.

The first sentence bears mention for a variety of reasons, perhaps most of all because it is ungainly in a way that can only be described as magical. Virginal sunlight spreads its young, dustless shafts. A mote of course means a speck of something. But if a sunbeam isn't full of motes, then what is it? And what about these shafts? Through which apertures does this young light creep its way onto the street? You just can't imagine it happening! But that's really beside the point because what Wolfe is after is establishing primal essentialness: the feminine virginity of a world soon to be plundered by the essential, protestant modern, Gant.

Gant! Can you think of a better last-name-first-name for Wolfe's essential American? Is Gant Italian, or perhaps of Slavic ancestry? Uh, no! He's, like, Gant?! Like Grant, or Giant. Gant. A kind of obdurate pillar of a name suggesting a paragon of modern, racialist ideas and ideals, Gant lounges, nervously? Uh, hello?! Gant fidgets? Are you fucking kidding? He lays quietly, basking in his state of Zarathustrian being, of East Coast breeding, listening to the rippling flutiness of the live piping birdy morning. I admire a man who has the audacity to use the phrase rippling flutiness. But that's nothing, because here we have a phrase as nutso as any written by the hand of man.


Live piping birdy morning.


Oh yeah. Forget modernities injunction to be spare. No sir! Wolfe, a man of the essences, is taking a cue from Joyce, maximizing the potential and the philosophy behind free-wheeling Americanish! -- no dead cadences of British English here! No sir! All is fresh and young and American! Last names are now first names! Presto! A mouthful of sludge is pure poetry! And thus he grinds out as bizarre an accumulation of rhythmless syllables as has ever been seen: as if he's playing the game Mad Libs. Live piping birdy morning. Roll the syllables around in your mouth. Delicious! Wolfe you wordsmith!

He thrust his right hand scratching into the dense hair-thicket. When you have a dense hair-thicket on your chest, you'd better believe you thrust your hand into it. If you don't thrust, you wont get it in there! It's too disgustingly dense! You've got to scratch your way into it, thrusting from the top down like reaching into a bag of apples, or else from the bottom up like fixing a heating duct. But it's not just about body hair. In fact, throughout your daily routine, you do a lot of thrusting. You thrust your hand here and there. You can hardly do anything without some suggestive thrusting. After all, you are modernity's essential man. And what does the paragon of manhood need more than anything?

The fast cackle-cluck of sensual hens. Come and rob us. All through the night for you, master. Rich protesting yielding voices of Jewesses. Do it, don't it. Break an egg in them. Sleepless, straight, alert, the counterpane molded over his gaunt legs, he listened to the protesting invitations of the hens.


!

What a great paragraph, Wolfe! Aren't you the bawdy answer to censored continental literature. You just make it yourself, don't you? Fast cackle-cluck? Sensual hens? Oh, I get it, the hens are like women, like these fickle, sensual Jewesses hungry for Gant's essential, thickety seed all in the piping birdy morning. They want! They don't want! Sensual, fickle, chickens with their fast cackle cluck! But aren't hens in themselves sensual! With their feathers and their clucking and their picking at things? Isn't the word choice great? Don't hens just seem to revel in the world of the senses, what with their scratching and squawking? Don't they just seem like they want to be touched? Doesn't this writing gibe with you? Aren't you all like, "Oh Gant, you old rake, you old rooster! Go and rape (in sort of the less harmful, classical Zeus way) those Jewish hens and make up their minds for them! The feathers and the flapping will all seem so sensual!"

From the warm dust, shaking their fat feathered bodies, protesting but satisfied they staggered up. For me. The earth too and the vine. The moist new earth cleaving like cut pork from the plough.

LOL. Sorry. Laugh attack at cleaving like cut pork. Yes. And here come the hens staggering up out of the dust, protesting but satisfied: kind of like the rape scene in Straw Dogs. Push em down again Gant! Don't take no for an answer! This is all so erotic and sensual! The hens love it! But wait! More eating, meat metaphors to add to the deliciously sensual mix.

Or like water from a ship. The spongy sod spaded cleanly and rolled back like flesh. Or the earth loosened and hoed gently around the roots of the cherry trees. The earth receives my seed. For me the great lettuces. Spongy and full of sap now like a woman. The thick grapevine--in August the heavy clustered grapes--How there? Like milk from a breast. Or blood through a vein. Fattens and plumps them.

What's going on? Rolled back like flesh. What kind of flesh? Human flesh? What a gorgeously sensual image to go along with the gentle hoeing of the cherry trees and those dogged, conflicted hens! The pork cleaving, the flesh rolling back revealing the glistening, sensual musculature. Is this Gant, or is this Wolfe getting hungry...or homicidal? Oh! It's Wolfe merging with Gant because, you see, Wolfe is the essential American spilling the veritable seed of Gant upon the fertile soil of the American creative climate which, you can be sure, is spongy and full of sap like a hungry, fast cackle-clucking Jewess who in turn is like a great lettuce. Great in the huge sense and the great sense, because, after all, what's better than a huge head of lettuce?

But don't forget the grapes! Or, rather, the vine because, for Gant/Wolfe, it's not just wine, but it's the God of the Vine, the Religion of Dionysus, a bacchanalian commingling of bodily fluids, milk, semen, blood. Yes! Essential liquids are so erotic! Slavish Jewish chickens rising from the dust, protesting yet satisfied. Heads of lettuce full of sap! A veritable Reverend Dimmesdale fever dream! A glorious psychotic break resplendent with hairy chests so hairy you have to thrust and scratch your way into them! And weird last name first names. Gardeners skinning things, heads of lettuce spongy and full of sap like cackle-clucking chicken women. Oh Gant! Oh Wolfe! Do it! Don't it!

Crossing his suspender braces over his shoulders, he strode into the kitchen and had a brisk fire of oil and pine snapping in the range within three minutes. He was stimulated and alive in all the fresh wakefulness of the Spring morning!


At this point I imagine some impertinent coonskin capped harmonica playing hobo interrupting a hopelessly pompous European train of thought with a refreshing, communistic ballad about the healthful glories of chastity, or celibacy, or regularity, or masturbation, or something. Do you think Gant would have problems hanging with any of Jack London's characters? I think not! He can light a fire with the rest of them. He was stimulated and alive in all the fresh wakefulness of the Spring morning! That's an understatement. Bravo! Bravo! Worst page ever written not by James Fenimore Cooper.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

The Dangers of Edging

This being Treebarkhelmet's first safety post, I want to write about an issue that has been grating on me for some time. And that issues is edging. How often have you been walking down the street, your eyes fixated on the edging? The diversity of edges? Some overgrown, some insanely trenched? How often did you look at certain lawns and think to yourself, "reckless vanity!" I am honestly surprised that my local congressman hasn't taken to heart the obvious danger deep edging poses to children and the elderly.

Would you leave a bunch of cracks in the sidewalk? No, of course not! You'd let them fill up with grass as nature dictates. As everyone knows, grass is a natural safety mechanism. Just as there is good fungus and bad fungus living inside each of us, so there is bad crab grass (the kind that climbs on walls, also known as ivy) and good crab grass, which plays a significant role in safeguarding the footfalls of the feeble and stupid.

Today, on my daily excursion around the block, I kept a lookout for examples of dangerous edging. My neighbors are generally safety-conscious people and so let their grass grow to a reasonable extent out onto the sidewalk to insure for safe foot traffic by the ignorant (children) and the rundown (the elderly).

An example of well-maintained edging.


There were, however, some glaring examples of reckless edge work.

It's as if the owner of these edges went just about as far as he could without directly spitting in our faces.


What kind of person digs edging like this?



I succeeded in getting a close up before the owner chased me away. Up close, this edging might be as wide and deep as the Grand Canyon! It may not seem like that to you, but that's how it feels for the old person or child that will inevitably fall victim.


I encountered some lawn maintenance people and was careful to harangue them on the necessity of letting the grass assume its natural safety function least they get carried away and dig deep, medieval moat-like trenches that extend inches and inches beneath sidewalk level, creating veritable gauntlets for oblivious pedestrians.


Grass as a natural, and renewable, source of safety.



As a society, it's time we wake up and recognize the danger reckless edging constitutes. And of course the best way to encourage edge safety is to educate children while they are still young, while their brains have the consistency of silly putty, the kind you rub against a newspaper when you want to make a fun little copy. Contrary to popular, big business-driven beliefs which seek to ram different notions of edge morality down our throats, lawn edge safety starts with the children in the classroom.

Another fact about grass is that it creates convenient lanes in the sidewalk. The grass demarks my lane so that I know where to walk and so that I do not intrude onto the lanes of my fellow pedestrians.


Of course, we need to also respect the constitutional Right Of Doing Whatever You Want On Your Property. We as a society should not force the compliance of property owners, rather, we should twist everyone's arm by making adequate signage mandatory so as to cull the attention of unwitting, foot dragging pedestrians who may be at risk of cataclysmic encounters with brazen edging not to mention the evil redicule of ignorant lawnmen themselves chuckling, concealed behind shrubbery.

A Perfectly Sane Lunch: Chili a la Chips

Are you dirt poor yet have not given up on the idea of whipping up delectable, convenient and healthy culinary treats that will not explode your waistline? New from treebarkhelmet! This is a section I like to call "A Perfectly Sane Lunch." Be assured, you are in no way insane for enjoying the following offering.

A Perfectly Sane Lunch #1

Stag Brand Chili with Ruffles Cheddar and Sour Cream Potato Chips




This Perfectly Sane Lunch will set you back approximately 2-3 dollars, depending on whether you are able to get a deal on the Stag Chili. The reason why I choose Stag Brand and no other is because it is comparatively delicious. Not only is it 99 percent fat free, but it improbably contains absolutely no corn syrup as, I assume other brands do, although I will probably never known for certain.

I have tried other Chilis, most notably Hormel, which in comparison tastes like dog food, although I have only ever sampled the dry dog food. I do however like the idea of the name "Hormel" as it seems to exude grossness, which in essence somehow embodies in the platonic idea of 'canned chili.' Although, Stag (The Chili-Lovers Chili) seems to break the mold.

Preparation is simple. Heat can of Chili and dump the potato chips on top. This is what it looks like when it is half-eatin:




The reason why I choose Ruffles is because they cost 99 cents and are damn good eating.

Altogether, this lunch contains 700 calories. Having skipped breakfast, I would say this is a perfectly sane amount of calories.

Let's do our food pyramid (The Food Pyramid is a Trade Mark of the Organization of Food Experts excluding fatty Dr. Andrew Weil) cross check.......working........check! It appears Stag Chili factors into the Food Pyramid right between the little cartoon drawings of the roast and the old timey bottle of milk.