Hack

I have recently lost my lungs. I'm not exactly sure where they went. I suspect that they fled some time during the night, probably while I was under the throes of a dream-like, extended coughing fit. My lungs may be a little abused and worn from years of inhaling smoke, chemicals, and the bilious vile that occasionally wafts through my apartment halls, but they are my lungs and I'm quite attached to them for obvious reasons. I suppose some of you more literal readers are wondering how I could subside without a pair of lungs. I assure you that I exist on pure spite. I'm not exactly sure who I'm spiting, but I guarantee you that there's someone out there worthy of my spite. So, to whomever you are, I live!

Last night's wave of death-like sickness and dry hacks attempting to pass themselves off as coughing sent me to bed well before midnight. Believe me, I'm just as shocked as y'all. I can't even remember the last time I went to sleep before midnight. Then again, I can't really remember the last time I felt so violently ill. Of course, my sickness leads me to blame. Since there's no one around who is really sick, or sick enough to make me sick, I need to blame my sister. Some how her damned germs have traveled 1,500 miles just to infect me. I'm thinking that somewhere in my lungs, at least one germ, high on amps, is wailing away at some crotch-ridden keyboard. It would be my luck to have some kind of fucking viral Jack Kerouac flinging hubris at my lungs' preciously tarred cilia. Upon finding my lungs, I will disinfect them of any potentially fatal author-creature by pouring down a bit of alcohol. It is a well-known fact that any author worth their salt perished of alcohol related causes. Hemmingway was a boozehound. Kerouac was a bottle junkie. Ginsberg just liked dick. But, in any case, we need cleansing, or at least more sleep.

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My Latvian Penpal took a bit of time to tell me that she loved me and that she was panting as she wrote. I might be a horrible, horrible creature, but that letter made me laugh out loud. First of all, I find it highly susceptible that someone would fall in love with another after only two weeks of correspondence. While this may be possible among the horribly desperate and lonely, my pen pal’s pictures (fake tits!) clearly show her to be one that shouldn't be horribly desperate and lonely. I'm thinking that if she really is that good looking, and if she falls in love with an American schlep in the process, then there must be some kind of character flaw that prevents her from finding an appropriate European man. I spent some time scanning her pictures, looking for gout, colostomy bags, lazy eyes, or any other physical flaw that might render her un-fuckable to her Latvian counterparts. Maybe she has man-hands, or her voice sounds like Fran Drescher on the rack, but that can't be verified until I make my way to Latvia.

Another possibility is that my pen pal is just another scammer looking for lonely American men from which they can mooch. If that may be the case, then my pen pal is out of luck. I am not desperate. I am not lonely. I do not lack for female companionship. I do not have money. If she is indeed looking for money, then I feel bad for her, because she's wasting a lot of time on a lost cause. Perhaps, and along similar lines to money, she wants a green card. If this is the case, I wish she would cut the crap and come out quickly. I have been giving this some thought, and I would have no problem marrying her just so that she could acquire a green card, provided that I dont have to support her in any form. She can come here of her own accord, find a job and a place, and divorce me after the required amount of time passes. If I feel like it, I might inquire as to whether conjugal relations are acceptable, because hey, if she does look like her pictures, I'd like to take a shot.

There is a chance that she doesn't look like her pictures, or that she is definitely not of the female persuasion. That, I can't do anything about until I land in Latvia. Luckily, if the above holds true, there are a multitude of hostels that will allow me to stay for as cheaply as $11usd a day. I can enjoy the wonderful city of Riga, and perhaps hop over to Mir, in Belarus, to see my family's old hometown.

Last night, Wenchy inferred that there was a chance that my Latvian pen pal had actually fallen in love with me. This left me baffled and possibly scared. I'm scared of anyone who wants to fall in love with me. I'm so gloriously inept and independent that a girl who wants to attach herself to me must be a few shades off sanity. I now question my pen pal's mental state. Perhaps she may be beautiful, but she enjoys eating shit and drawing in her urine? Maybe she rejects all forms of personal hygiene? That cannot be because I have seen her tits and they are quite fake.

The truth of the matter is we are very much perplexed and are curious as to how things will turn out.

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I'm off to take my second nap in three hours. I'm quite ill, see, and I'd like to get better as soon as possible, especially since my friend Em is coming this weekend. Em has plans to kiss me, which means that I'd rather not hack in her face while she's attempting to pucker up.

Let's set up a literary tautology.

Sleep = Good.
Sleep while Coltrane plays = Best.
Sleep with an attractive girl in a queen sized bed, while Coltrane plays = Heavenly.

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Lungs!

Weekend Blahs

It's 12:14am on a Monday morning, and I'm listening to John Coltrane. I have been following the piano solo of this particular piece and am greatly intrigued. I want to say that the pianist is Herbie Hancock, but I can't say anything because the song came off a compilation CD and I wouldn't want to be wrong about such matters. That piece is past and I'm listening to a new song. Coltrane really knows how to solo, especially when he's trying to convey emotion rather than technique. The other day, my thesis director and I had a discussion on the use of music as a transporter of complex emotion. She notioned that music had a way of hitting primal emotive centers. that make feeling distinct from language. That is not to say that music is beyond language, or that it isn't a form of language. It is quite certain that music is language, using chained notations rather than certain staccato cracks, as speech is wont to be. Surely, music and language are too entwined to separate. My thesis director, however, emphasized that certain elements of music are sub-language. That is, they exist on a different level than language and affect primitive areas of the brain not subject to linguistic dissipation.

The whole conversation came about because my thesis is on Susanne Langer's theory of symbolic expression. Really, I won't go into detail on that right now, but rest assured that there will be plenty of inferences to this particular theory of art because I have a forty-page paper due on her in a few weeks. Yeah. In order to graduate, I need to know art theory front and back. Not bad for a guy who can barely manage to produce coherent stick figures.

Some have tried to teach me how to draw. Each met with miserable failure (Sorry, Rosencratz). I remember my psychology teacher in high school telling me that everyone can draw. Somewhere along the line, though, we were told that we either could, or could not draw. If we were told that we could not draw, then our art skills crystallized at that moment and did not evolve further. Well, I drew for him and even he had to admit that whatever art skill I had died when I was a very young kid. This is kind of odd, because when I was a child, I drew all the time. I even had my own comic series. I had the amazing Splat, and Captain Banana. Captain Banana was my favorite. Most strips with him involved some kind of puns relating to Bananas. Of course, there was the Bananamobile, and the Bananaphone. Often, he had to Banana split, before getting his Banana-assed kicked by bad guys. It's strange, you know, how an eight-year old kid has an anti-hero for a comic strip character. But, occasionally, while doodling in class, I draw Captain Banana. The sad thing is I think that I drew him better back then than I do now.

I find it interesting that most of my drawing pleasure came from drawing comics. I wasn't a really big comic book fan. Sure, I enjoyed them, but I never liked the idea of lack of continuity. I like stories to begin and to end. I don’t want a story to begin, and then end five years later. That's probably one of the main reasons I wait for trade paperbacks. I get my comic, but I get it with beginnings and ends included. I have of late been collecting Hellboy comics. I have the first and last, but nothing in between. I shall have to remedy that. Also, I am interested in purchasing an indie comic collection called Flight. The comic geek in me revels.

Rosencratz and I half-started our own comic series earlier in the year. It was kind of amusing, and I played with philosophical terms such a dualism, by having my mind escape my body, only to be leashed. It was funny. Seriously.

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The weekend wasn't very interesting. I spent most of it attending parties and exercising. The most exciting thing that happened to me, other than ending up in a good friend's bed, was that last night, while quite inebriated, I accidentally pulled the bathroom door off its hinges. Now, people have been telling me that I've been bulking up, and that I've been getting stronger, but I had no idea that I was strong enough to pull a fucking door off the hinges. After it happened, I was wont to check my skin for green tinge. There, however, was no urge to go rampaging around the apartment shouting such gems like Jon Smash!, or warning people not to make me angry because then my pants would split at the seams and everyone would see my angry beast. Of course, Rosencratz cannot deny himself the opportunity to mock me for my mishaps.


Concrete Hipster: I'm reminiscing, badly
Rosencratz: "I kissed her passionately on her lips, and felt her hard knob, which was now warming up to my touch. She quivered and I touched her flat chest, then ripped her off the hinges."
Concrete Hipster: "She splayed succinctly across the bathroom wall, exposing her naked holes for my visceral pleasure. I ran my fingers alongside the cool, metallic sheen of her skin and then cursed her for falling. I was not a man for coming undone."
Rosencratz: We're sick :-D
Concrete Hipster: That we are

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Tomorrow is a day unto itself. I shall do laundry because quite frankly, sniffing my socks for garment approval is becoming annoying. I am tempted to simply go out and buy another bag of socks, but I am also running low on underwear. While the idea of going commando does not bother me, it does not appeal and therefore should be prevented at all cost. I will also clean my room because it is becoming cluttered with different apparatus and I am starting to feel cramped by the effuse of my life. I shall also send another card to my Latvian pen pal. She has written, asking for a bit of cheerfulness. The knight complex in me is rearing and I fret over what I might do for this apparently helpless girl. Que sera sera?


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The Eagles have not landed. Millions of fans in Philadelphia attempt suicide by Cheese steak. In the morning, bodies are found next to two, or three empty sandwich wrappers, depending on the deceased's tolerance for heart-attack inducing foods. By the end of the week, amid mounting casualties, President Bush calls in the military, and then promptly chokes on a pretzel or something.

In Boston, people go about their daily business, muttering about chowdah and damnyankees.