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My dream -
To see how much clean
Can be seen. 

The noise and lights and fumes and concrete grids everywhere like topographical scar tissue.  All will lose their grip on my Real – we’re going to scrub it up. 

Like when I wake up in the morning, and see my new puppy has pooped on the kitchen floor, but I keep him baby-gated on the tile overnight
*in anticipation of the situation*
and I’ve got a spray bottle with Pine-Sol and a splash of rubbing alcohol. 
Deluded, diluted, dialating water
misting over the mess,
binding with molecules one perceives as “soiled”
*transportation towards absentation of contamination*
and disinfecting.  Mopping floor is always good. 

After this, the air smells so good and clean and healthy.  I take pride in having animals in my house, but keeping the environment, the atmosphere, clean.  Two dogs and one cat and my sinuses are still clear…  It’s not much work.  Worth-it work. 

They are clear and I smell so well
*that’s pry swell*
because I bike every day. 

In the morning during the first few blocks, one glob of mucuous accumulates - than is expectorated.  My body’s tissues, vigorously rounding up all the dust, mildew, and dirt that has made its way from the atmosphere of my old, decaying house into me my
*Self*. 

My physiology, active and moving on the bike, my lungs and legs push all this crap into one gray, goopy ball, and I hock and spit it out.  The resin residue binds it all together, helping accomplish the task. 
*Scientifically speaking*
THC is a natural expectorant.  The pathways in my head are clear
*functioning at maximum flow*. 
I can smell grass and asphalt oil and impending or receding precipitation and all the particles suspended in the air.
*uninhibited sensory metabolism*

Than I must observe a four-way stop sign – I can’t peddle right here, right now, it says -
*in line behind*
a Dodge Durango. 

And the exhaust pours out of its openings and into mine, head and respiratory system’s fresh, pink linings, tingling with high-ness
(her highness the high-necked high-nexx?  why not?)
*call that tangental or non-sequit-ish or something just for fun*
and those fresh pink linings get coated in oily, rusty, metally tasting
*EXHAUST … ug.hack(ploouh!)*

I want this place cleaned.  I know from
experience
*the dish on how to fix this sitch*. 

Just last night, before beginning my homework, I washed a sink-full of dishes, picked up some items of dirty laundry
piled or scattered
on the floor. 
And I took out the trash. 
I did all these things before beginning my homework, because clean is nice, and straightening up is not hard, always
worth-it work. 
And I think better when Real is clean and straightened up. 

I dream that this theory will be our next

GREAT HUMAN EVOLUTION!

SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH!

We had that ol’ Industrial Revolution already.  Other times when things were new?  … :

Imagine if you had never talked on a telephone, than got one.  My parents remember not having television.  Of course the cell phone and the internet have changed everybody’s life
*better be for the better*
but I wish they were all wetter, because
water
short-circuits electronics and binds with “soiled” molecules and initiates
*transportation towards absentation of contamination*. 

It seems like we haven’t noticed how messy all our indrustiousnecessisosity (mechanical gratuitousness) is
*just all so messy ….

How the night sky is never completely dark, how the air always tastes like industrial residue and autobile’s expelled gases, how trains and semi-trucks and computer fans vibrate and hum and whisper and honk to our subconscious while we sleep and it’s all to messy

to hear or smell or think:

quiet.  dark.  clean. 

don’t exist anymore.

But we can clean it all up.  The next human innovation must not be another item, another mechanical process set in motion.  The next innovation must be an appreciation of a new (or just old and forgotten)
*revolutionary status*. 

Clean.  Things can be clean.  I think we’ll get there eventually.

** Brookings currently has a few opportunities for those who enjoy writing.  The SDSU Writing Center is hosting a contest.  Participants respond to the following quotes in 50 words or less of prose, poetry, witticism, or analysis.  The winner of the contest will have his or her piece published in that most prestigious of periodicals – The SDSU Collegian.  Email entries to iwc.competition@gmail.com.  Here’s the quotes:

“It’s a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.”  – Andrew Jackson

“I love talking about nothing.  It’s the only thing I know anything about.” – Oscar Wilde

 ** Any writer is invited to join the Brookings Fictioneers Club – a group currently forming to provide a forum for writers to share their work with others and get some excellent, enlightened feedback.  Even if you haven’t finished your novel yet (Yes, that was a joke.  Have you seen the shit I write?  Novel my ass), send in some journal entries, or a plain old fact-report of something going on in Brookings.  It’s great practice, the input you will recieve is mature and insightful, and taking one step in the process of getting your work out to someone, anyone, always leads to more opportunities.  Email alhanson1141@jacks.sdstate.edu or cuneiform.ation@live.com for details or with submissions. 

** If you need a little inspiration, this piece details Garrison Keillor’s creative process:

http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/features/comic-strip/

** Lastly, you – that’s right, you, boy or girl – should think about playing rugby.  The SDSU club is a great way to stay in shape, go a little crazy, have fun, make great friends, and learn one of this planet’s most elegant and brutal sports.  If you are interested in simply learning how the game works, this Saturday (Feb. 13) is the Rugby Sevens World Cup.  The SDSU Rugby Club will be hosting a Cup Watching Social – a chance to 1) watch the game with friendly people who love talking to strangers and 2) drink beer with the funnest people in the world to drink beer with.  If you don’t believe me, just email cuneiform.ation@live.com

This is what the sport looks like when it’s pretty: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odBhjElGaBY

This is what it looks like when it’s gnarly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcGNfG6oawI

Have a good hump day urbudddee!!

Former “Straight Talk Express” staff member and outspoken Sarah Palin supporter, Carly Fiorina, has apparently been working on her Palin-style rhetoric.  Her campaign for U.S. Senator of California has recently released this insightful, revealing study of Tom Campbell, who is also running for the Republican nomination.  Fiorina has also served as CEO of Hewlett-Packard and Executive Vice President of AT&T.  The people on the top of our country’s totem pole are very impressive.  Although I think the little fuzzy, masticating sheep are cute through the entire clip, it starts getting really good around 2:15.  Watch out for those nasty FCINOs, folks.  They’re everywhere. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2wgHwYC-ZE

And visit this site:

http://demonsheep.org/demonsheep/

If you’re interested in joining S.F.T.E.O.D.S.F.O.P.D., an organisation dedicated to combating demon sheep in their various manifestations.

“It’s a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.”  – Andrew Jackson

“I love talking about nothing.  It’s the only thing I know anything about.” – Oscar Wilde

This is the flavor I captured from Wilde’s quote, distilled through the membrane of my cerebrum and spread back out with the brush of free verse:
 
“Nothing to Say” 
 
“Experiencing a little confusion is
Having nothing to say is
Waiting
What um huh i
Just sat down let me
Crack this beer first
Oh yeah i was going to write that
 
That i can’t think what to write so the
Spaces in between motion
Create motion of their own
And i jones for a dip (won’t take it)
And sip beer in the back of the library
Trying to remember what i was going to say.
Pry nothin.”

-ps>flux, feb 2010

Loco Roco the Snow Buster

Recently I made friends with a unique entity – he called to me because he wanted me to take him out snow bustin.  I was leaving Briggs Library the other afternoon – I had happened to catch a ride to campus that morning because I woke up two minutes before my class started – and as I was leaving the library, planning on walking home, this bike and I caught each other’s attention. 

This bike was completely trapped underneath a huge snowdrift, except for its handle bars poking out of the disgusting snow – this drift was one of those beasts that’s been melting and refreezing for months, accumulating a porous crust of dirt suspended in diseased, late-winter sidewalk ice.  This bike looked like it had been burried up to its neck in sand by a tribe of malicious librarians – waiting for carnivorous ants or the scorching January sun to deliver a cruel death.  Little did the primitive librarians know how resilient this breed is; only weak bike species die this way. 

This one looks at me cautiously, but he recognizes something; he is both pleading and challenging.  An unlocked lock curls around one of the handlebars peaking out of the snow, flashing like a “Vacancy” sign on a seedy motel that doesn’t really need to clarify – it’s obvious no-one’s using or caring for this property. 

I plung into the drift, getting in up past my knees.  I can feel snow pouring into the tops of my shitty, unlaced Nikes.  I grasp the handlebars in one hand, plung my other hand into the snow and search around until I find a grip on the seat.  I wiggle it loose, than change position, jerking it out by the rear wheel like a Lab playing tug-of-war.  I finally drag it out of the snow. 

“Oh, thank you,” the bike says shakily as I pick it up and gently drop it on the concrete, bouncing it to shake off the snow and ice.  His voice sounds like the Tin Man, except he’s obviously Hispanic.  The brand is an unrecognizable Wal-Mart type with a blue-green color scheme and the kind of “X-treme” lettering I haven’t seen since the mid-nineties.  The handlebars are just straight, metal tubing, with no rubber or plastic grip-pads. 

“I’ve been in there since November.  I thought UPD picked up all us loose ones over Christmas Break”, he says.  

“I think the school is trying to cut a budget or somethin lately - everybody’s talkin about some recessed economy shit”, I explain. 

“Oh… Huh.  Hadn’t heard about that”, he ponders, “News about that stuff doesn’t make it into the cycle world really.  I don’t pay much attention – don’t concern me”. 

“I dig that”, I reply.  “Wanna ride?” 

“Fuckin duh, homes”, he chuckles and shivers with excitement.  “Let’s make this ice and snow our bitch.  I’ve got a a bone to pick”. 

I find out his name is Rocinante, and he is an amazing conqueror of winter terrain.  His gears don’t shift, but they’re pretty much locked in a one-to-one ratio, good for peddling in low traction situations.  Just one brake works, and that’s only if I squeeze with every muscle fiber in my forearm.  He’s heavy, but this, along with fat, thick wheels, makes him an unstoppable beast – crashing through drifts and over bumpy, wet ice patches.  Energy surges through my frame and his, fusing into a manic snow bustin session.  “I would have loved to meet you as a kid,” I yell down to Loco Roco, as I have started calling him.  I lean into a turn through a deep puddle in the MetaBank parking lot.  I feel a back wheel sliding from under me on a hidden ice patch as a wave soaks our left flank, than the wheel catches on a crack or bump down there.  I grip the handlebars and jerk Roco straight – somehow not crashing.  “Holy shit, you’re amazing”, I congratulate him on his rock steady handling.  

“That’s nothin bro”, he replies. 

When we get home, I clean his gears and oil is chain.  “Hey man, I don’t need no lube – What kinna jerk off you think I am?”, he pretends to be a tough guy, but I can tell he likes the loose-juice.  I can’t fix the brakes, but figure the intense grip required ascertains that anybody riding Roco is up to his standard of toughness.  It makes a loud, rusty squawk when it’s engaged – should alert any pedestrians that a crazy dude’s bustin through on a bike and may not be prepared to stop gracefully. 

So I’ve been snow bustin around on Loco Rocinante lately.  He’s not my bike, but I’m afraid to leave him sit somewhere.  I’d hate for some imperceptive soul to deem him waste and trash him.  But he’s not mine either, so I park it in front of the library, or the rotunda, or the coffee shop, or the bar, and I jam him in a snow drift – no kickstand or bike rack, just standin up straight and challenging with his tires half-stuck in the snow.  I leave the unlocked lock dangle on the handlebar, and when he wants, he’ll send that look at some other crazy mutha and they’ll take a new trip. 

If you’re that lucky one, I just ask that you oil his chain.  For me, please.  I don’t have to ask you to be crazy or ride hard on him.  The only people who get on bikes like this are on a different level, a higher energy.  Feel me if you got the vibe, keep lookin if you don’t.  But lube the gears and chain – it doesn’t have to be the perfect weight of bike chain oil; you can use WD-40, dribble some used motor oil or dab some Vaseline on the cassette, fuck, use lotion if that’s all you’ve got -

It’s better than nothin.  When you’re on this trip, you appreciate everything above nothin.  Roco’s a stallion of the streets, an alley-blaster, a curb-jumper.  His story is mine and yours – it’s the kid’s with thousands of dollars in credit debt, gettin kicked out of another apartment, had no money for years but always got a buzz - the single mom who works at the call center, livin with her three kids (three dads) in Mobile Manor, only in her thirties, but loosing her teeth and throat and organs and soul to menthol cigs, trippin cid on motorcycles, Southern Comfort, and that glass-nasty go-fast, but hasn’t touched a video lottery machine since she got a mouth to feed - steady loosing grip on the delicate margin between used-up junk and an angel of the streets – but the brightest burnin adrenaline buzz in a dull, slushy world. 

Ride him – listen to the story about bustin ice and stayin unlocked.

From Puddlin to Snow Bustin: Over A Decade of Manic Biking

When I was a kid, I used to go out on my bike right after a big rain – sometimes during.  I especially loved those psychotic thunderstorms with huge drops that somehow fall faster and harder than normal rain. 

I would go out and ride my bike and play this sport I called puddlin, which has really simple rules and appeals to a more-or-less universal audience.  In this sport, I would peddle my bike as fast as I could through the biggest puddles I could find, and there would be this huge splash and it would fly away from my tires like a speedboat wake and I would get soaked and have clumps of mud stuck to my face.  This activity triggers the purest, earthy-est adrenaline rush you can hope to ride.  I suggest trying it. 

There’s a lot of puddles on the ground around Brookings right now - and a lot of piles of slushy snow, and big ice patches, too.  If I thought puddlin was extreme, the game I now play every time I have to go to work or school is far more intense.  I call this sport snow bustin – it combines deep puddles of a February semi-thaw with the above-mentioned nasty winter riding habitat.  Although I only infrequently splash myself on purpose with mud and cold water these days, I still find the bike an ideal vehicle for navigating the sloppy conditions one encounters this time of year – especially big puddles.  I still think it’s fun to peddle through a puddle (just say it out loud), but I go slowly so I don’t get my jeans too wet if I have to be somewhere civilized, with normal people, later.  I still love watching the rungs on my wheels throw that distinct wake in the dirty water with a tight, rhythmic, wet flipping sound as the aluminum spokes splash down and up through the surface plane. 

Puddlin is an extreme sport.  One never knows what’s in a puddle that will create some excitement - a curb, a pothole, a stick.  Often as a kid I would find myself ripped out of a triumphant puddle-blast and thrown over the handlebars of my Wal-Mart brand mountain bike – skinning elbows and breaking fingers, having to endure the agonized, post-crash breathlessness rolling in a cold mud puddle, gasping painfully and looking back at my bike lying in similar condition, asking, “What the fuck was that?”  Recently I acquainted myself with this delightful nuance while snow bustin.  I jumped off a curb into a puddle, not realizing that it contained a beastly deep specimen of Brookings’ “innovative” storm drainage system.  I literally landed, and slid forward a foot or two, on my face, taking the full impact of the crash on my forehead.  This happened while I was biking with my dog; he laughs at me when I crash. 

Although this gritty biking style is fun and can really help navigating terrain that would require tedious, careful stepping and soaked shoes, obviously it presents some unique challenges.  During the current season, puddles can hold another, even trickier hidden obstacle – ice patches.  Water and ice combine in treacherous micro-geology with deep piles and ruts of slushy, heavy snow that can send you into a fishtail faster than a Blazer will pull out in front of you from a stop sign even though you have the unmarked intersection.  This weather doesn’t just present static challenges to dynamic activity; snow bustin is hard on a bike’s mechanics.  I find myself knocking crap off my gear cassette and oiling the chain almost every other day, and stopping in the middle of a ride to fix my brakes – either they won’t engage or won’t relax their grip on my back tire.  I’ve wrestled and played football and rugby  - with this background, I can honestly say this activity is the second must extreme sport I’ve played.  (Rugby’s still gotta take first place – but then again, I never have to manage the mechanical interface between water, ice, and moving metal parts when I play rugby.)    

I hope you take some time to practice this sport.  It enables a rider in very utilitarian ways to efficiently navigate hazardous pedestrian and road surfaces.  Not only will it make your trip from the library to the bar a lot faster, it’s a huge rush if you’re crazy enough to get on the ride. 

Read (6.b) for the story of the perfect vehicle for this kind of riding, and significant thematic development of the vibe in this game.

Here’s a beautiful poem.  May you contemplate love and the beauty of life, sacrifice, birth…. and also realize there are weirder people than that guy who drools in his beard during class.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=171427

The Pathway of Assertive Dominance

Alternatively: The Pathway of Righteous Superiority Complex

The Pathwy of Making an Intersection Your Bitch

As you approach the stop sign, inhale the exhaust deeply, and stare down the double-rows of rumbling trucks and cars, rusting in the grey slush.  A single driver sits in the seat of a minivan, sipping gas station coffee out of a styrofoam cup; feel the fumes eating away at your brain and lungs at the same rate as the ozone.

You’re on a bike and it’s hard to stop in snow anyways, so just time your speed so that you gun through in between vehicles.  All the cars will see you coming and they can’t do shit.  It’s not like they’re gonna run you over cuz you went out of turn. 

You’re on a bike.  It’s cold.  Fuck um. 

As you blissfully cruise along the sidewalk, imagining the poor motorists who get no fresh air before spending a day inside with gelatinous thighs and swivel-chair-riding, dimply asses, realize that people exist who ride bike everywhere, and some people hop in a car and listen to the radio talk about high gas prices, heavy involvement in the Middle East, and environmental collapse.   

“Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.  But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.”  James 1:23-25

I look through the windshield of offended motorists, upset that my imposition is delaying their search for a parking spot.  If I told them they should ride their bikes, they’d say they didn’t have enough time.  

In the glass – See a reflection of me, see a shadow of you.  

And those people who hear but don’t do?  Fuck um.

Here’s some cool stuff made available to us by our journalisticly-excelling friends at South Dakota Public Broadcasting. 

Blog entries from a South Dakota currently deployed in Afghanistan: 

http://www.sdpb.org/ActiveDuty/

SD Public Radio hosts “Jazz Nightly” with Uncle Jimmo broadcasting from the campus of USD.  Listen to Jazz if you’re beat like Kerouac or if you just got flo in a big brain.  Brookings residents can hear Jazz Nightly at 7:30 on 88.3 FM.

http://robertariail.com/2010/01/05/yemeni-cricket/

The above cartoon ran as a large center piece on the “Opinions” page of the Brookings Register last week.  This week (Jan 13), they run a cartoon by artist Mike Lester, portraying President Obama responding to Harry Reid’s apology with a “Fo shizzle”.  Apparently, this cartoon is too fresh to be available anywhere online free, and I am not interested enough in the Register’s rascist shit to subscribe.  So if you want to see the second one, you’ll have to find it in hard copy. 

This is a letter I sent to Register.  I doubt it will be published:

Dear Brookings Register,

            For two weeks in a row, the center cartoon on your Opinions page has been… well, “unaware”, at the least; “racist” or “stereotypical” may hit a little closer to the mark.  Concerning the images portraying Yemenis as following an inner mullah (mullah being any Islamic religious teacher) encouraging suicide bombing, and our President (who, incidentally, is half-African-American) engaging in hip-hop style street slang: The inclusion of these images in a newspaper indicates the intellectual development and age of the individual(s) editing the Opinion page.  These cartoons were probably selected by an old person who is not good at understanding outside perspectives, or how a non-typical Brookings resident (i.e. somebody who is not white, upper-middle class, and has lived in this town for his or her whole life) feel about issues.  I am sure this editor(s) was old, because unawareness like this seldom appears in younger generations any more.  

            Maybe that last line was insensitive, even stereotypical of older people.  Considering your paper’s readership, I’m not surprised if a line like that disqualifies my letter for publication.  That would illustrate my point even further. 

            It’s a new world out here; cartoons like you have been running don’t fly with we the people no more.  Please.  Knock it off with the racism.

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