Daniel Adler's Internet Warehouse is The Internet Warehouse

Guys, I moved. Blogger just doesn't get the respect from Google I need. When you Google search my name, you'll see that it's now at the bottom of the page, at number 9. I used to be number 6. This is one reason I'm moving to Wordpress.

Another is I want to change the format of my blog. I want you to be able to contribute and so it will now be The Internet Warehouse. Feel free to email me at danielryanadler@gmail.com if you want to submit. In the meanwhile, all of my content from Daniel Adler's Internet Warehouse is up on Wordpress at DanielRyanAdler.com. This will be better for my personal SEO and it will be more professional - cleaner and sexier. My personal site, DanielTheWriter.com is still up and running. Thanks for understanding and I'll see you soon.

Tazmanian Devilish vs. Hurricanal

Sometimes in an attempt to express myself I invent neologisms like “hurricanal,” meaning to feel like being trapped in a whirlwind. But as a colleague has pointed out, you can’t get away with just adding the suffix “al” der. Latin to any noun to make it an adjective. What would you say then I asked.

I don’t know, Tasmanian Devilish?

Of course! Because the Tasmanian Devil is so engrained into our cultural unconscious that we all know he arrives a flurry of dust from his rapid spinning.

But. What happens if I write this phrase in a certain post postmodern work of fiction, which I believe will be more closely aligned with classical styles of writing and postmodern styles of narrative than a continuation of postmodern stylization, then what will people who read it in two hundred years think? Will the image of Taz resonate as loudly with them? Or will they view it as an arcane 21st century allusion? And we all know Daniel Adler, the unpretentious does not want to seem arcane nor esoteric. 

So I will continue to use my poetic license however I deem necessary, and if an allusion to popular culture strikes me, you can bet your tootsie that people in a couple of hundred years will be able to identify. What do you think?

Daniel Adler's Survival Project

The smell of campfires is pleasant and if I were a woman, Matthew said, I'd be attracted to that natural smell. I agree.

Last night we went to 3rd Ward for Steven Brahms' The Survival Project. My favorites, and the centerpiece of the show were the 21 interesting photographs of all different long haired Asian men running away. I met Masa, Steven's friend, whose favorite was the one of him.

Fire is elemental to our survival. We watch it and we focus and appreciate it. Like a drug it acts on us. Immediate and instinctual, atavistic.

In the vein of the avant garde art theme, fire is survival and the warmth it provides is part of what allows humans to live, so we watch it and feel that it is a part of us and we a part of it. And toss in some corned beef with mustard and cabbage and boiled carrots and turnips and Italian sausage with red peppers over pasta with St. Andre cheese and spinach. And Jameson 12 year.  

Help: A Post Postmodern Dilemma

Bernini's "Apollo and Daphne"

Dear Gorgeous,

So far this has been my blog. I'm totally willing to publish anything you guys think is relevant. I mean, it is an internet warehouse after all, it's supposed to store a lot of different stuff.

Anyway I've been thinking about my book lately, the ol' Hot Love On The Wing. I've been trying to delve deep into the character of my female protagonist, Daphne. I've two main ways of approaching it:

1. Show Don't Tell: The way most good writing works. I show a scene where Daphne gets frustrated by the way menfolk don't take her seriously, even though she has good things to say, and you guys get an idea of what kind of woman she is.

2. Post Postmodernist: I point out to you that I can't truly know what Daphne is thinking, but based on the fact that I, the narrator and protagonist, have lived with and known Daphne for years, I have a good idea of what she might be thinking. While this can give you insight into the protagonist's psychology and his relationship with Daphne, it is a potential trap: I'm telling without showing.

Can you see my dilemma? If there are any ideas on how to solve this, or if any writers wanting to step up and suggest what I ought to do, please feel free.

All my love,
Daniel Adler

The Friendship Garden

Social class and similar interests are the most important fertilizers in the friendship garden, and sowing requires effort. From there, the sunlight of frequency and the water of luck bring forth agape flowers.

 Some people are grounded. You can tell this immediately from the flash in their eyes and their first words. But then they may be working on a different wavelength, which can be hard to negotiate. Others are attractive, and you think they may be okay, but you feel obliged to laugh at their jokes. Will this get in the way, you ask yourself? Perhaps it can change once you get to know them better? But eventually, the false laughter produce a friendship that lies like a fallen apple with sweetness clustered in one spot, bitter and rotten around. And so you go taking bites from all the apples, trying to eat your fill, but wishing that you might find one entirely ripe, sweet.

You scour the orchards, move into the vegetable garden. Hey, there, look at that ripe vegetation. You take a bite, revolted with its bitterness. Maybe the bitterness becomes tasty when cooked with the herbs of time. You watch outer layers wilt sweetly like the blackened leaves of a buttery baked brussel sprout. Covered in garlic and butter delicious, those crispy, tasty layers fall off and leave a greener core still tasty, more substantial.
 
-A post postmodern excerpt, by Daniel Adler

Color Theory, By Daniel Adler

    He looked like a turtle. Through the square framed glasses that rested on his chubby cheeks, he blinked slowly. His wide body and enormous back resembled a shell. And his favorite color was green, which made sense, according to my color theory.
   
Everyone has a favorite color. It happens back in pre-school, when everyone learns the the spectrum. Sure, maybe there are a couple of them that appeal to you now. But there's one you always really loved. Mine is red. Yours is probably blue. Buckley's was green - quirky, realistic, and intelligent.
   
When I went into his apartment and sheepishly greeted his mother, who looked if anything like a bird rather than a reptile, I was very queer. Parents made me uncomfortable as a child, especially fathers who came home in suits after selling bonds all day. Although they were welcoming and kind in the way parents of friends are when you are in their home, I couldn't help but compare them to the way my father came home in faded blue jeans and a toolbelt, and how much warmer and fluid my mother was than the avian woman with pearls.        

-Hot Love on the Wing, Daniel Adler

Ode to Marble

I wrote this for Amsum & Ash, a countertop company. I hope they like it.

Sweet marble. You are the saddest stone. Your icy-soft purity beckons us to watch. You resist time in a way we cannot. You harden, grow colder, but never coarser. You  last a thousand lifetimes, while we will die all too fast. Under the mountain sky your rest is soft. You are resilient and perfect for daily use. To counter you is to appreciate you, use you. Marble countertop, you are strong.

Before you were quarried, to how many storms were you witness? Aching-hot days? You felt nothing, you simply were. In the kitchen how many spills can you withstand, you luxurious stone, ancient and weathered with your dark veins of prescience?

How base of you to discount desire, temptation! Would you trade your centuries of plenitude for one of our chance-filled lifetimes? Would you understand love if you could? Alas, you are stone ideal for the bathroom vanity. You counter our concupiscence, and give us firm ground on which to lean. And I have not a qualm against you for it, dear marble. Should I have chosen one of the granite varieties, I'd be no happier. i surround myself with tokens of immortality; it reduces my arrogance and humbles my being.

-Daniel Adler

The Mole People

As he scribbled the last flourish of his name, Gabriel asked, "Jimmy, what's with that man with the sunglasses?"

Jimmy looked up from the clipboard, stared ahead, and looked at Gabriel, "You mean, Nehamaseh? With the black beanie?" Gabriel nodded. "He's been in and out of here for about ten years. He's had a hard life, man." Gabriel wondered if his foreign-sounding name had contributed to its difficulty.

"Okay, see you tomorrow."

"Bye-bye, Gabriel."It didn't occur immediately to Gabriel that the man with the sunglasses was crazy, but when the man didn't show up the next day, the thought crossed his mind. That night he told Stella about him.

"He's probably crazy, Gabriel," she said, hanging her head and shaking it quickly. "It's sad. Sometimes, you have to thank God, and say a prayer that you're not one of the four who have problems. Mother of Gaw-awd, between them and the mole people."

"Mole people? What do you mean?"
She was surprised. "You don't know about them? They live underground in the subway!"
"What?"
"Yea-ah! There are thousands of them, and they use the sewer system and have underground cities. A lot of them are demented and incapable."
"So they live underground?"
"Yes!" she said, half-exasperated, eyes wide. "They're the mole people! They can't see the sun or they'll go blind."

He wondered if this were another of his mother's superstitions.

-Wondering myself,
Daniel Adler

A Retrospection

Jimmy was the guy in charge. Whenever he alluded to the luck of the draw or the devil's cares, he smiled to reveal a gap where his front left incisor once had been. His skin was naturally orange. He had a broad nose and flat black hair.

He directed Gabriel to stack the wooden chairs on the tables in order to sweep the floors, then chop the brown-speckled vegetables that made him think about O' Donnell's pristine green peppers and long ridged carrots.

At 5:30, the food was ready, and the homeless people lined up. They were gray, black, brown, white, orange, yellow, etc. Their clothing hung limp and dirty on their hollowed bones. Scents of barreled whisky, vomit, urine, (feces?), and other bodily fluids clung to the air. Their bandaged dirty fingers caused you, unknowingly, to stare. Their hair hung scraggly by their crusty-downed cheeks. Gabriel thought disgustedly that there was no way to help them; they had done this to themselves.

After they finished their dinners, they had to stand in line if they wanted seconds, so that everyone would have their turn. Most got seconds; some got thirds. Those who left immediately after were probably drifters, floating wherever they could get a hot meal.

-Ironically,
Daniel Adler

Cities

The cliffs of Lima, Peru.

The centuries built made men die. The brick, the steel, the warmth, the bitter wind, the snow creased into the manhole filling the stitches, blackened and filthy in the crevices. Yellow lights glow underneath red and white. There is motion everywhere, the cars, people, planes with blinking red and white lights high above all pass. Even where it is still movement is near. People are within brick hovels, stories high. There is emptiness in this plan made by them, hundreds of years of them. It is the fullest of life anywhere could be.

These cities are all different. Sprawl, with used leg-extending child pushing mothers in line the link-chained swing sets clink, with moist hills unburdened by cement behind them and orange painted trucks rattle; with hotels with skinny pools and gold embrasures, with vistas of the ants beneath unknowing they're being watches, and coopered oak water barrels, cobbled ground, and snaky rivers like gray eyes. Bathers plash in the reeds in man-made lakes underneath white-mooned skies. The chocked heavy cliffs fumble over gray interminable, implacable scrollwork of ocean. 

Cruelly
-Daniel Adler

Daniel Adler's Room in Post Postmodernism

So remember Christmas in Post Postmodernism? I'm getting a $40 gift certificate for pretty much anything I need.

I need a dresser. The two small endtables I have in my room in which I store my undergarments are literally overflowing with clothing, especially after having visited my Uncle Jacques and receiving a number of cashmere items.

So I'm going to get a dresser. This will be good for a couple of reasons. 1. It will organize my clothing and 2. it will prevent me from owning another pair of shoes (boat). In the meanwhile, boxers pile high on top of my open drawers, and turtlenecks are drowning under t-shirts and sweaters.

I'll also be able to store more books on top of my new dresser, which will be a boon. I'm starting Thomas Wolfe's (not to be confused with the asshole in white pants) Look Homeward, Angel. It is a serious American bildungsroman that takes place in North Carolina and Harvard. You can look forward to many posts about post postmodernist examples from this book.

The Value of Experience

"Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience."
-George Bernard Shaw, The Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion, "Man and Superman"

Unless I am wrong, which I often am, this means that the wisest men are the men who are most willing. Which means that those who have tried the most drugs, had the most lurid sexual adventures, and have lived most unlawfully are the wisest. Surely this is not what Shaw meant? Or is it?

Central to the Shavian paradigm is the idea that man wants to better himself. So all of the experience that can, and does, benefit man will also enlarge his wisdom, right? Take hard drugs for example. The willingness to encounter alternate states of mind must be worth something, but not to the point of detriment. Robbing banks would be applauded by Socialist Shaw, but if it endangered your life, which it most likely would unless you were a professional, the act would be condemned.

It seems then that we, and I, Daniel Adler especially, have to strike a balance between breaking down our most rational thoughts and fears, and understanding what will harm our being in the long run. In other words, as long as you try what comes your way at least once, you won't be lame.

The Cockroach Knows

    How often have you walked down the street, completely tuned out to your surroundings, focused on what's ahead, or worried about some arcane blasphemy that will never pass? That is the opposite of philosophizing.

The philosopher admires the wind blowing the tree limbs, the orange clouds of sunset floating across an azure sky, and thinks to himself that this is life. He remembers death, and understands life. This is what it means to be in the now, and the birds know it, and the dogs know it, and even that three inch long cockroach that sat on top of the manhole, waving its antennae around in the air, breathing in all the beauty of the midsummer - he knows it too.
 
That's why I couldn't kill him. Oh boy was I tempted, as he perched there fluttering his tentacular antenae, and I looked at the older man sitting on the stoop, a cigarette hanging from his lips, his salt and pepper hair whiting from the roots, to see if he saw this creature, this enormous confident creature. He didn't, but he looked at me and nodded. And I looked back at the cockroach, staring at him, and I said to him, "You can stay. You have the right." And I walked on down the street, with my hands in my pockets, admiring the night and examining the people, my neighbors.

-Welcome to Post Postmodernism, or maybe Metamodernism. This will be addressed tomorrow,
 Love,
Daniel Adler

The Strabismics Pt. 5

  There is a violence to snorting. It takes physical force to ingest, more than smoking.  Buckley licked a wet finger to make stick the little granules that didn't make it into his nose. He gummed them with a finger like a fishhook. He pressed one nostril and sniffed, and did likewise to the other before looking to to the ceiling. Gabriel watched his friend's Adam's apple bob and tried to control his shock.  Buckley looked at him with the look of people who have just removed their glasses but he was still wearing his glasses.
   
Kevin snorted a line. They leaned back into their respective couches and relaxed. Gabriel smoked another bowl and watched wisps billow from the huge bong's mouth. After a few minutes of relaxation and mental labyrinthing they stood up to leave. They dapped Kevin, saying thanks, and nodded at the kids on the couch.
   

There's no doubt that drugs are a social cohesive. Alcohol is a social lubricant - you drink to make friends easily. If you are with people as they try a drug and you don't partake, you are on the outskirts of their social circle – you aren't able to relate over the most basic feelings; you are on a different plane. As a result, you grow farther apart, watching them herd buffalo, you cry like an Indian on a ledge, judging their actions, dissociating yourself (that fundamental human instinct of categorizing and differentiating that has created such vast gulfs between groups and classes, races and ethnicities, creeds and beliefs) as patently different because they separated themselves by choice.

Due to that choice they fundamentally disagree with you, since you were offered it too and rejected it. So it's not surprising that Buckley and Gabriel grew apart over the course of time, especially when Buckley got deeper into opiates.

Your comments and critiques on this vignette are appreciated.
Love,
Daniel Adler

The Strabismics Pt. 4

 During the meanwhile, they load the bowl of the largest bong, and smoke it. Reality goes hazy at the edges and expectation about the future becomes anxiety about the present, what are those kids thinking, no, don't worry about them, building tension settles into complete relaxation and mental wandering, whose cat is that?

Gabriel stands up and moves towards the cat. He had a cat growing up. You have to work for their affection; running to them and rubbing them like dogs doesn't work. Cats and animals in general, but especially cats, are super-sensitive to energy. They have to be relaxed to permit your touch and only feel relaxed if you feel relaxed.
  

This cat is large. It has a clearly unhealthy paunch, but he is good natured and lazes sleepily. Gabe plays with the cat by sliding it back and forth on its excess skin and fat. He does this for about a minute, then scratches the cat's head one last time before he sits back down.
   

Buckley and Kevin finish preparing the powder. They chop it up with credit cards until it is fine. They analyze the color, decide it is too dark and swear. Like chemists, they pipette four drops of water. This is perfect. They chop it again and then again. Now it looks like umber salt. Buckley produced another Jackson and Kevin weighs him out its worth on the cleverly disguised Neil Young CD case scale. Buckley waits patiently, watching the powder the while. When it's in his hand he empties some onto the table and with his credit card, lines it up, chop...chop. He rolls his last 20 tight, puts his nose to it as he leans to inhale and jerkily snorts it in a spray and a twitch.

Pt. 4 of 5 -Daniel Adler

The Strabismics Pt. 3

    Kevin wore a black hoodie with an American flag bandanna and thin gold rimmed glasses. He strutted toward them and they began introductions. He was medium height with a short aquiline nose, sallow cheeks and sleepy eyes. His fuzzy hair fell to his shoulders under the rag Gabriel complimented for its patrioticness, for which Kevin thanked him. As they turned to walk back to Kevin's apartment,which was the same building they had leaned against, Kevin lit a cigarette. Gabriel noticed two natty dredlocks resting on his left shoulder.

They turned the corner and waited for Kevin to smoke his cigarette to the filter.
 He opened the door and led them up two flights of stairs and along a badly scratched wooden floor. Long spartan-gray walls showed a hallway without any signs of life. When they stopped Kevin opened a door to expose a room clouded with cigarette and weed smoke. The loft had a staircase that overshadowed the vestibule. Chili pepper light bulbs hung on a string over the large bright windows at the room's opposite end.

They walked to the seating area where there was a record player, a couch with two kids with half-closed eyes who nodded at Buckley and Gabriel as they sat down next to them, and an armchair for Kevin.  The coffee table was littered with bongs, scattered and trayed ash, empty cans of cheap beer, and cigarette cartons.  From where they sat they saw, on the other side of the staircase, a kitchen with exposed shelves of granola, cereal, and canned goods of a various assortment.
   

Kevin extracted what must have been about half a pound of weed from an open backpack that courted his chair's leg, looked up at our two friends, and asked how much. Buckley looked at Gabriel and said “Eighth?” Gabriel nodded and took out a twenty. Kevin placed clots of green onto his digital scale, picking up and removing, replacing like a great chef. He handed Buckley a drug-filled plastic sandwich bag, which he had rolled up and licked to keep sealed, the way most drug dealers do.

Gabriel took it from Buckley, who was thinking about his ultimate goal of the trip. He unrolled the bag and inhaled. It smelled like Jamaican petrichor – the way Bob Marley's backyard would smell after the first rain of the season. When he looked up, Buckley was pointing to Kevin's lap at two different viscous liquids, one russet, one chocolate colored. Kevin pointed to the chocolate one. Gabriel asked what these liquids were. Buckley, without looking at him said, "Resin. They need to dry a little before we add Tylenol PM."
"Why do you add Tylenol?"
"It allows for easier nasal ingestion."
"Oh."
"Once we add it, we chop it up to create a powder. It'll probably take 20 minutes."

3 of 5- Daniel Adler

Daniel Adler's 100th Blog Post

Hey Guys and Gals,
This is my 100th blog post, and it has been nearly a year since I started this thing. I want to thank y'all for staying tuned, and I want to reassure you that there's a lot more good stuff to come. I hope you've enjoyed reading excerpts from my forthcoming novel, Hot Love on the Wing (which believe me, still needs about a year of work). My ideas and thoughts on our moment of late postmodernism, post postmodernism, metamodernism, or whatever you want to call it, are always subject to interpretation based on our the definitive quality of our interaction. And my hopes and love for Brooklyn and New York can always be enhanced with more information.

If you have any ideas for me as to what I should blog about, feel free to drop a comment. To all you new viewers, don't be scared to follow me. I'm working hard to make my blog the most interesting one on the internet, and with your help and my hard work, it will be.
All my love,
Daniel Adler

Lunch Time in Post Postmodernism

Gabriel enjoyed lunchtime the most. For thirty minutes every six hour shift, he was allowed a meal, usually a hero, or a sub - a sandwich, for those who don’t understand late 20th century regional dialects that have probably died out by the time you’re reading this. Interesting how certain accents are becoming less and less prominent today. The American Southern accent is becoming increasingly infused with that California lilt that ends sentences in a slightly interrogative tone. If you watch the old Hollywood movies with Katharine Hepburn, you can see the pronounced rigidity of her New England accent “William, my dear, I absolutely love you.” Try it yourself with your jaw unmoving, admire Cary Grant's perfect Mid-Atlantic accent, the one they taught in acting school. By the time you future generations read this, there will probably be an American accent that has taken the place of regional dialects, or who knows, those regional twangs may become more prominent due to the regionalization of our huge country.…anyway, where was I, yes, the hero.
  

 It was toasted so that the bread sometimes burned and cut the roof of your mouth if you weren’t careful. And of course Gabriel added all the trimmings - mayo, mustard, pepper salt, oil vinegar, lettuce tomatoes, pickles, red onions, jalapenos and bell peppers, provolone.  If his shift were five and a half, he would stay on extra to get lunch, which did not bother O’Donell in the slightest; he enjoyed watching the lad eat. It reminded him of his own youth and  the nostalgia he felt took the place of the son he had never had. Gabriel ate ravenously, scarfing the sandwiches as if they were his last. O'Donnell pretended to chop, but actually watched tv and glanced at his employee to make sure he was enjoying his idea of fine food. Gabriel usually worked weekend afternoons, which was enough to give him money and the nighttime to play when he wanted.
  

-Hot Love on the Wing,
Daniel Adler


Resignation

Endless ages come slow to those who fight,
Sweet sadness' inevitable delay;
Courtly gardens bloom throughout the dark night.

Old men and young carry venomous spite,
Because they know dusky soft ends of days,
Endless ages come slow to those who fight.

In their longings for clear foreboding sight
They drop to their knees, count red beads and pray.
Courtly gardens bloom throughout the dark night.

Even the men who lived lives full of right
A lovers'sharp glance makes them beg to stay,
Endless ages come slow to those who fight.

And in the blinding brightness of sunlight
She calls it off and it begins to fray
Courtly gardens bloom throughout the dark night.

And when our crops have pestilence or blight,
We hope for a ripe, more bountiful day.
Endless ages come slow to those who fight.
Courtly gardens bloom throughout the dark night.

-Daniel Adler

Stella's Birth

Another passage from Hot Love on the Wing, describing Stella's birth:

In the humid July heat of 1956, Tessie's hormone swollen face flushed pink with pain. She called my eldest aunt, who kept the other five children at bay and led my grandmother down the five flights of their Morningside Heights apartment building. A 12 year old has trouble hailing a cab while balancing a belabored Irishwoman. Amid the traffic and the busted-pouring fire hydrants, a mustachioed Italian man driving a Wonder bread truck – a bread that my mother and her siblings longed for while growing up instead of the 3 for $1 wheat bread loaves from the A&P that Leo bought and which they despised as a sign of their inability to assimilate – slowed to a stop and worriedly said, “Ya mutha? She gonna have a baby?”  Maureen led her wobbling mother into the truck and she and the mustachioed man zoomed away to an uptown hospital that no longer exists.

These Irish born children had no idea at the time, but when Tessa was birthing them with a midwife in a cabin in Mayo, there were no drugs to induce the process. The only thing utilized was a nice warm stout to ease the flow of breast milk after the stress and pain of parturition. When my narrowback mother (so called because she never had to experience the pear shaped disfiguration of working the potato fields) was born as the first in the United States, they gave her mother scopolamine. This drug in high doses causes extreme euphoria, much like an opiate. In a transdermal patch the average dosage is .4 mg and can often cause memory impairments. It is no surprise that it was used to ease the pain of my grandmother when her fourth child was brought into this world.
   

When they whirled Tessie into the obstetrician's office, she felt precipitously like there was a dramatic difference with this one; oh yes, a definite firestarter, a real hellacious one. Without going in to the unsavory details of childbirthing, I will say only that my mother immediately began a route on which she would stay for the rest of her life – one of howling and rubicund fury mediated only by her feminine capacity to love and shelter.     

Two months later, my mother was in her pram enjoying the late summer sun just outside of Van Cortland Park in the Bronx (funny how THE Bronx is the only borough with an article in front of it; in a way that makes it less particular, as if there could be another one somewhere). Suddenly, a Wonder bread truck slowed to a stop, and a mustachioed man yelled, “Ey, so wuzzita boy or girl?”

-Daniel Adler