Invert(e)

NOT Coming Soon to a Theater Near You: My version of Demons and Angels, starring Jody Foster, Brad Pitt, and me

If I wrote a movie called Angels and Demons, it’d be the story of my life. God’s honest truth, fictionalized just enough that I could be played by Jodie Foster.

I’d be smart, capable, compassionate, and butch as fuck. I mean, she would be. Let’s make her an artist, an outsider queer. Give her a show at the Guggenheim, after struggling in obscurity for decades. Let’s give her one moment when she thinks she’s got it made.

When she isn’t painting or taking care of business, she visits people who are dying. She sits with them, makes tea, gets popsickles to soothe their throats, helps smokers have a cigarette without nodding off. She holds hands with people who are moments away from crossing over, and for this she is rewarded with visions. She only paints what she sees.

Most people do not get her work. She paints love and they see bodies. She paints life and they see blood. She paints addiction, but people don’t see shit. Still, she eventually figures out a way to use paint to convince her audience that Art might be the most authentic spiritual path for our plastic civilization and oily hearts. She is not sure, by the way, that she hasn’t made a deal with the Devil.

When the 7th person dies in Room 21 at Ward 63 of the County Hospital, Angels come and whisper in her ear:  nothingness.

Balance

February 21st was the last of this round.

It always starts on October 16th, the day I met my late partner, Jamz. That date marks a period of rollercoaster dips for me including his birthday, the day he fell ill and, finally, the date of his death. Most of the time I'm pretty good - depending on what else is happening in my life - and after seven years of this cycle, you'd think I'd be getting used to it. But each year is different and requires new coping strategies.

 Right after Jim died, I went to the gravesite at least once a week. I brought flowers. I sat on the ground next to him. I talked to him. I cried. That went on for three or four years. Then, I got to a point where I couldn't go anymore. I realized it was prolonging my grief rather than helping me resolve it. I stopped going, even on anniversaries where I wanted to. After all, I reasoned, Jim rarely visited his mother's grave. That assuaged my guilt enough.

On the 100th Anniversary of the Futurist Manifesto: The No-More-Future Manifesto

God is not dead. We are. God has yet to be fully born, whereas humanity is like a bacteria that threatened the host and is about to suffer the consequences of a planetary equivalent of antibiotics.

Intelligence is a sexually transmitted disease. Life is infinitely more beautiful without thought. Not to mention peaceful. Blissful. Spend the day up a tree. This is an order. Honor your superiors.

Plants were, are, and always will be the dominant life form on Earth. Animal life only exists to suck up the excess oxygen out of the biosphere.

Demand queerness everywhere. The 10 to 1 ration of straight procreational sex to queer recreational sex must be reversed. Knowing that it is too late to matter, ultimately, we still need to encourage the human race to decrease its number in the fastest manner possible, not only for our souls, but in order to take pressure off the life forms that will survive us. Suck more cock. Eat more pussy. Bang more butt. The penetration of the vagina by a penis must be seen as the tragic mistake it has always been.

Since the failed experiment of homo sapiens is coming to a conclusion, we are free to do anything. Politeness must be rejected. Fear is irrelevant. Obeying laws is absurd. War is too ridiculous to continue. Murder is redundant. Starvation is noble. In the very near future, we will all starve. It must become our new religion.

Only two paragraphs of one book will be relevant once the Earth becomes serious about the removal of humankind: pages 125-126 of The Last Three Minutes, by Paul Davies. Nothing will be lost. No one will get left behind. Only unanswered questions will send us back into the Hell realm once we find ourselves in the End of Time. "What if I had done this, that, or the other?" Stop thinking. Do it now.

The Lonesome Death of William Zantzinger

Some songs are with you forever. From the first moment you hear them, you recognize something. They speak to you insistently and intimately, in a language only you really understand, if understanding can be said to have a place in a connection so personal. And no matter where or when you hear them, they always take you back to the exact day and time you first met.

Bob Dylan's "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" is one (of many) of those songs for me. For those who don't know it, it's on Dylan's 1964 album The Times they Are A-Changin' (side 2, track 4) and tells the story of 24-year-old William Zantzinger, who assaulted and killed 51-year-old black barmaid Hattie Carroll in a fit of drunken rage at the Emerson Hotel in Baltimore. His trial was moved to Hagerstown, where he was convicted of assault and manslaughter, receiving a six month sentence. Volumes have been written about the song by critics who have covered it far better than I could.

30,000 DESIRES VS. 10,000,000 MISTAKES

If I had a magic wand
That worked in the field of careers
I’d make it so I could sit with people
Who are dying
Hold their hands as they crossed over
Be with them if they were alone
Or give the families a break
Or give the dying person a break
From the families
Some people refuse to die while a family member is in the room
I’ve met the family and I don’t blame them
I wouldn’t charge anything
Just take donations
Mostly I’d take next to nothing
But once a year some rich family member would pony up with $30,000
Enough to get by in San Francisco, just enough
To count myself among the richest people in the world
All I want to do is watch people die
I want to make friends with death
I want to practice
I want to turn the world upside down