If the bailiffs come…

Written by

Dead Kennedys – I Kill Children

This repellent, yogurt soiled, boy. He wore lengthy vests and nothing more, pissed in boots and drowned puppies. He wore a patch, too, had a crooked eye and hit women.

Once (“often” may be closer to the aged-truth), I urinated in my father’s Wellington boots, or “wellies”. This action must’ve secured itself in retaliation for advances made upon my mother. I assume this to be true. Even a stolen kiss goodbye before work would’ve ensured I pissed in your boots, Father. I was to be the only man in my mother’s life. You become protective about those who carry you, you see. I understand cats slightly better now; corrupt traps though they sorely are.

The idea and its calculation, the execution and the aim; and aim is crucial. The one too many juice cartons downed in preparation. Hard not to be proud of a corrupt child. The boy punched women, too. Those related by marriage that got just a tad too close. I have never endeared a stranger to my fine self by pinching the flesh of their flushed cheeks – not outside the impassioned, at least. I expect the same in return. Space, please or so arrives the lesser documented baby-fist. Imagine a hard grape flung at you. Ask my Aunt. She knows.

There’s also a story – none of them mine – about a near-drowning of a litter of pups, or maybe just one or two. Can you be angry at a child whose years are shadowed by the numbers of fingers on a single hand? The idea of forgiving a child is spoiled with farce. I was with my cousin on the day. Not sure if the let’s-see-can-they-swim idea was mine or hers. Still, that the story is known I find her guilty. She’ll marry soon. Might be best not to lead with such a story on the day.

He was a scallywag, a rascal, and, at times, a pup-hunter. These are their memories, not mine, although I tell of them as a protector would. The outcome – the harvest – of those young and troublesome would do well to birth soon.

Black Star – Children’s Story

He smears them with surface damage, before they dare expose him. “That’ll shut them up,” he’d say. A tormentor in the guise of those tormented. What a shameless prick. Thankfully not incorrigible.

[Buy some Fresh Fruit…]
[Buy Mos Def & Talib Kweli .]

E o que eu sinto não mudará

Written by

UB40 – Where Did I Go Wrong?

I’m not sure that people know this song exists, like Robin Campbell paces around his living room, stops, sighs, “It’s our best song, you guys don’t even get it.” Sure, Kingston Town is lovely, pensive, the kind of song that makes you miss a place you’ve never been to, but this convinces you, guilts you, into missing a love that never existed, a warmth that never held you. Do not: play this on a bitter winter’s evening, thinking it will distract you from the brittle winds. It won’t. Do: play this at home, alone, don’t let anybody hear you listening to it, don’t let them imagine, assume, pretend that they know. They don’t.

Vanessa da Mata (feat. Ben Harper) – Boa Sorte

Harper plays translator for da Mata here, and vice versa. He crosses his legs, crunches his toes, runs his thumb along the edge of his notebook’s cover, listens, misses a word, listens again, repeats. He doesn’t know if he agrees, his tone is uncertain, wavering. She’s foreign, unfamiliar. She sounds sweet, crouched in the fields of Alto Garças, running her fingers through the grass and dirt and diamonds, but her words are sad. Is he visiting? Is he coming to Uberlândia to see her? Is she waiting for him? The verses won’t tell you, no matter the hours you spend knocking on their door, begging. The chorus laughs from the other end of the bar when it hears you muttering, wondering, silently and under it’s breath. Nobody gives. Not even the two of them. Until they’re falling, then they’re sure. He knows, she knows, they’re falling, and for seconds they speak the same tongue, they make sense of each other.

[Buy UB40.]
[Buy Sim.]

Had their way with your wife a lil’ bit

Written by

David Bazan – Wolves at the Door (KUT Radio Recording)

I’ve been sick. I wake up in the middle of the night coughing and hitting my chest to spit out the mucus clogging my throat. At night, when I lie down, I think it’s very possible I won’t wake up. It’s ok, I’m not too bummed out by the idea of dying; I feel miserable enough not to care too much.

I almost died later this afternoon too. Walking to get a late dinner (personal rule: put on clothes and leave the house every day, even when sick) I tripped near a gutter jutting four feet deep into the ground. I realized that yesterday I wouldn’t have had the strength to catch myself before falling in.

It seems such a waste to die alone in a gutter if not intoxicated.

At the small restaurants near me, the waiters look terrified and panicked whenever I sit down, uneasy with their English. In this Indian/Malay/Western food place, I slip into Malay without really thinking about it, and the waiter looks greatly relieved. He prances off to fetch a menu (why not just bring that in the first place if you fear a communication breakdown?) and the drinks I ordered.

Quietly I chew my murtabak and sip my Milo, only bothering to look up when the news shows highlights of a Standard Liege match.

I saw nurses gathering at the joint next door yesterday, which makes sense with the hospital just across the street, but today a patient walks in. The connecting hub of his peripheral IV line has a white bandage around it. His green hospital outfit is open at the chest, and I can see a few lonesome hairs. In one hand he holds a cigarette, in the other a white drink in a plastic bag, probably Horlicks.

Overall he looks calm, like he frequently steps out for a cig and some roti bakar (two pieces of toast with butter and some sort of Marmite, available for RM 1.40 (0.45 USD) a pop). His mustache is flecked with gray. Silently, he drops his cigarette on the tile floor in the middle of the restaurant and steps on it with a sandaled foot. The waiter next to him doesn’t seem to mind.

Behind them, an old Chinese man has one hand two knuckles deep into a plate of rice, the other holding a cigarette with an inch of ash perfectly still, the smoke wafting slowly around his ears.

Further down the road from the hospital looms the pink cement walls of the prison, the city and its hawker stalls pressed right up against the exterior walls. The location will surely prove fortuitous if I ever break the law and injure myself in the process.

On the walk home, dogs bark at me from behind gates and along the street. I make the same kissing noise used around here to hail waiters or pacify animals or, occasionally, catch the attention of pretty girls, if you’re a misogynistic jerk like that. [YOU’RE A GODDAM FOOL, AND I LOVE YOU.]

Grime and moonlight

Written by

Al Bowlly – Guilty

The audible crackle that clothes “Guilty”, and its restless fizzling layering of grime, is to music what the wash of black and white is to photography. It’s a quality fraught with permission to undermine any need for introduction of scene, instead offering in its place a time and location and specificity all through presence alone.

Bowlly’s voice is entirely triumphant, playing out stretched notes which build upon and caress vocal landscapes; those hovering above sprite piano fits, churning wisdom with every uttered word, and soaring with claims to the grandeur of his monumental love. “If it’s a crime then I’m guilty, guilty of loving you.” If persuasion was not intended, then it being a resulting emotion is surely proof of a core legitimacy. [Sweetest.]

Stay with him if you can, but be prepared to bleed

Written by

James Blake – A Case Of You (Joni Mitchell cover)

Here’s what freaks me about about modernity: How I perceive the events of my life has been affected by how narrative arcs are formed in movies. My grandfather looks at his own story differently than I do my own because of the influence of media. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to look out of his eyes. But I can’t. All I’ve got are my own. And, though I may envy the more “pure” experience he’s had, I can do things he can’t.

I can pause.

Movies have show us that time, or at least our perception of time, is malleable. We can make ourselves busy enough to help it speed by. We can skip months with just the visual cues of a weather change or a growing belly. And we can slow down the good moments.

Saturday was my first day of unemployment. James’ call woke me up into a hangover, and we congregated at a buddy’s place on the beach.

After the first round of Korean BBQ and enough cheap whiskey to numb my headache, I reclined in the beach chair, and I paused. The wind bent the trees around us, ruffled the bushes, combed through my thinning hair. I couldn’t smell any salt. Jelivia cut mushrooms with a pair of scissors. Bob fed one to his ladyfriend with chopsticks, her tongue sticking out comically and decidedly unromantically to receive it. Ming squatted in his sandals to fan the charcoal with a Styrofoam plate. I looked up into the cloudless sky and the buildings jutting up into it.

The moment passed, eventually; time always wins out. But that memory, yeah I guess it’s pure enough for me, for this generation. [Blue / ST]

Don’t sit down

Written by

I’m not happy and I’m not sad

Written by

The Smiths – This Night Has Opened My Eyes

Just one night: a taste of honey, flickers of light, spreading of legs, tired sleep, ringing alarm, unshared bed sheets, tangled legs, squandered youth, ennui on a mattress. It was fun, but the fun is done with. It’s awakening, sunken eyes, sullen cheeks, scrambling for crumpled clothes, hoarse excuses, lingering touches, strange bruises.

Just one month: unplanned rendezvous, heaving chests, explanations lies, guilty alcohol, sexless mornings, carnal evenings, bitten flesh, vicious intercourse, projected feelings.

Just one night: rinse soul, replace girl, repeat.

[Louder Than Bombs.]

I’ll kill her, I’ll kill her

Written by

Nobody ever says thank you

Written by

Emmy The Great – We Almost Had A Baby

At times you hear the sweetness of an assumed ditty and so are lured into the safe arms of not trying – not trying to assume that for three lousy minutes there may be something more to a song than immediate charm. More to a person than the aesthetic. And it doesn’t say much for the listener when he daren’t allow a piece of fervent art to steal him for three minutes. “We Almost Had A Baby” was to me, to my shame, simply a tap and clap along song of waltz and drawn out cello whisper, with twinkling piano, and sneaky electric licks, too. It was once that, but is now hauntingly affecting.

“Well you didn’t stop when I told you to stop, and there was a month when I wasn’t sure…” goes an opening line sold to us in an insouciant tone, yet rocking with harrowing suggestion. I’m thrown. How I expected such a line to be delivered I do not know. Maybe it can’t be delivered, just sung and then experienced. It’s almost poetry in its elemental presentation and involving response. From the forced claim of the partner and his unimportance, to the use of her situation for gain of pride and position, the entire piece is intricate and entirely brutal.

And then with a month came assurance. “I put my hand across my gut; I plan to feed it with a heart.” No; the false alarm. Nothing to feed. [Pledge to Emmy as she celebrates the Royal wedding.]

Customized eHarmony.com profile

Written by

Cat Stevens – The First Cut Is The Deepest

Favorite emotion: Nostalgia

Most commonly felt emotion: Shame

Most analyzed emotion: Loneliness

Favorite color: Pink

Color of eyes: Gray

Color seen the moment eyes are closed tightly: Violet

Color grandmother mistakenly took as preferable and, as such, the hue of the curtains she purchased for a Christmas present, because those first few forays into sarcasm were lost on most/all: Brown

Amount of enjoyment gleaned from each glance at those hideously fecal-colored curtains, left hanging for years afterward: 68%

Amount of happiness the preteen version experienced overall: 82%

Amount of happiness left now: 42%

Amount of heart available to give a potential lover: 37% on a good day

Amount of cities lived in for at least the extent of a week in the past four months: 12

Number of months since the realization hit that a transient lifestyle is irrevocably damaging to even the sturdiest of relationships: Nine

Time left before a hometown is chosen and roots set: ???

Number of lies told about meaning behind tattoo, simply because the real one takes too long to explain in the normal flow of conversation: Three

Extrapolation of the total number of lies told about tattoo this year, given its age at two months: 18

What this makes you: Liar

Where liars go: Hell

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Marry me?

[Baby, I know.]