4 am blog post.

I just watched a cool xx video that I wasn't really sure what to make of. I actually fast forwarded to the 2 minute mark, to see what would happen without having to understand the sadistic decay of motion. That's part of our digital age I guess, take it or leave it. And what else, we had this paella tonite for dinner that was called Soccoran which means the bottom layer in a paella that soaks up all of the delicious juices from the baked ingredients, among which were shrimp, scallops, mussels, clams, scuttlefish and pistachio colored lima beans. To drink we had a Ondarre wine from the Rioja region of Spain. Even with the seafood, it was a classic comparable to Tuscany's Chianti.
After a night on the L.E.S., I skated to the J train and whipped out my mouth harp while waiting. I'm learning "John Wesley Harding" (just wait through the German ad - it's 4:23 and I'm not about to sift through YouTube covers and that shitty band with the same name). Flushing St. Down many stairs and onto Humboldt, smooth skating, minimal pieces of glass, and undulations in the road that keep my bearings happy. Teeth brush. Wat drank. Bloggy wog. Sleepybie.

Flarf

Flarf: a kind of corrosive, cute, or cloying awfulness. This is a strain of avant garde poetry that began around 2001, in which Gary Sullivan, the coiner of the phrase, intentionally submitted bad poetry to Poetry.com to see if their standards held any ground. This is where poetry is headed in our digital age. Now I’m all for post postmodernism and the suggestiveness of Internet speak, but I don’t know where to put my finger on this one. I guess I’ll have to try.

If Yzerman and Kwame Kilpatrick
Don’t launch me to Google’s top spot,
Lindsey Lohan ankle bracelet is a searcher
that’s hot, and it might. Babelfish can help me translate this line of verse I wrote into… fuhgeddid.
Animals strike curious poses observed the heat between me and you.
Oh, but when they saw my penis strike a lampcatcher,
they wanted more. So I gave it to them, right up the Ace.
Hotels with coffee bars
make my jiggly wiggle, figglety figgle. Spigglety spiggle.
It was just for jizz and giggles that I did it. No I like girlz, as long as dey HOT. Hot, hot.
Lost series finale, n korea, safina, us soccer, ronald defeo jr, maybach 57s…

Not bad right? I kind of like this flarf movement.

Daniel The Writer

I have a website! It features some of my favorite writings, some compiled from this here blog, and others previously unreleased. It includes a short biography of my life, some of my favorite quotes, and some really nice scroll bars.So check it out, and browse through the goodies. There may still be a couple of writings that haven't been filled in, but you can now officially call me Daniel The Writer.

A Brooklyn Discourse

I was born in Brooklyn. Once its own city, it was consolidated into New York in 1898.  That is not to say that its character as a city has become subsumed, leaving it as nothing more than a borough. Instead of being competitors like San Francisco and Oakland, or Baltimore and D.C., Brooklyn and Manhattan are sisters. One is the runway model, the other is the athletic one, bound for the big leagues. She's a cauldron of pluck and bubbling verve that enjoys being removed from the limelight that bathes Manhattana. And geography plays into it too. Manhattan is patently phallic. It was gridded more than 400 years ago because the Dutch settlers knew that it would fill with people, and that all of them would eventually vie for space. In Manhattan, it's not possible for a building to take up more than a square city block. It is a city of autonomies, of arid scimitars. Brooklyn, south of Manhattan, also has easy access to the River and spreads, north to Queens and the Island. But it's vulvular. All of the streets come together to form a V, slanting and coy, taking you from one neighborhood to the next, as long as you know your way. They'll accept you, even if it is with a raised brow or an evil eye. And because I was born there, not in the graceful cradle of pomp and circumstance, it comes  reflected in my character. It's why I'm adventurous, yet wary of standing out, because Brooklyn is not about standing out like Manhattan, it's about who can stand out the best while blending in. Sometimes I press on with insouciance away from the stage, preferring instead to revel in the glory of size, biding my time quietly, comfortably, in the way Brooklynites are proud. I live for authenticity, because that is a true New York characteristic, and Manhattan is ready to deceive with illusions of grandeur and bright lights. Brooklyn can't be swindled. The former is a place for work, and tourists, and millionaires. The vast ocean of Brooklyn lies removed from the hubub and centerpiece of Times Square and the financial center. Across the East River, well into the 21st century there are neighborhood enclaves of immigrants, and they point to the old bubushkas with pushcarts and the slick haired kids elongating their vowels outside of salumerias, the affordable brownstones, the Puerto Rican auto body shops; that it is here where the poor immigrants came and slaved all away to make it in the world delivered upon them. 

Inanimate Urban Wildlife

Sometimes, when I’m walking down the urban streets, I see a flurry of movement, a flutter in the wind, and my attention catches. Is it a bird? A mammal of some kind? What is going on over there anyway? I wonder. Then the wind picks up and I see what it is.

Plastic bags scuttle like ragged claws over a pavement floor, they nest high in the branches of trees, and when kicked loose, they float and soar on thermals, with nothing but pride weighing them down. Bread bags, staple packs, newspaper bags – they’re all different species, commingling together in a concrete jungle.  Their only predators are the garbage men, those recycling can wielding fiends. If they got the chance, they’d burn them all into compost.

When I watch black or clear plastic bags get stuck somewhere, it’s like they’re hiding, resting, or biding their time, whether it’s under the wheels of a car, or the chimney of an apartment building. Then I watch them get rolled over or stepped on, and  I’m reminded of their inanimateness. It's a post postmodern homage to industry. I think, how natural it is for humans to assign our characteristics onto things over which we have no control.

Speaking Engrish

When I visited China in 2006, I was appalled at what they ate. Speaking no Chinese did not help the situation, and for our first dinner, I was able to physically communicate that I enjoyed chicken. I was brought a steaming tray of chicken paw.

Needless to say, there are many other differences that separate east and west. Toilets, subjugation of women, and most obviously, language. Here are some of the worst malapropisms popping up in China these days.

Whodoesn’t like a cup of Marxism in the morning?

It seems so simple…but then again, I don’t know Mandarin.Maybe they confused incontinent with impatient?

It upsets the deities.  

                                                            Mmm…thirst quenching.

Some of these signs could pass for avant garde art.