Tuesday, July 21, 2009

in cold bloodsausage

My roommates and I recently started a book-club. A booze & brownie-soaked affair/excuse to get together and sound off smartly on books we not-so-smartly ditched out on reading for some reason, some way along the literary line.

Our first selection is In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. A true tale of a heinous crime committed (get this) in cold blood.

It's a serious story, and seriously frightening. It's the first book in a while that raised hair on the back of my neck even though I thought I had it pegged, handled, etc. And the first book in a while that's kept me up till 4 in the morning, wide-eyed and sick-stomached, thankful for the little glimmers of goodness that shoot through the bloody, brutal fabric of the story.

We do keep asking each other how the "muuuuuuuurrrrrder mystery" is going. Making ghostly howls in jest. Waggling our fingers like so mancy mincing ghosts out to fix you a cocktail.

But at the end of the night, curled up in our beds with this undeniable proof that people are cold and warm at once or else supremely cold, the goofy can't hold candles to the true.

Friday, July 10, 2009

we live in science fiction.

I sometimes get this wave of intense feeling when I'm on Facebook, liking someone's link or photo or gathering that someone else likes mine or has something to say about such or someone else's. You can break it both ways: anxious or insightful, plain and simple. Forget latest fads, this is the current state of communication. Pony express, parlor cards, even phone calls bow down to the infinitely intricate interactions played out on a binary chessboard with borders that stretch past the edge of forever. We sink so much into this, and being so self-aware snicker at ourselves for it, maybe never realizing that no matter how much we mock the state of affairs, they're still the state of affairs. It's modal, it's systemic, and it's becoming organic. Shit's not going to be unlearned any time soon.

And all the good and bad that holds (because I do believe there's both), I wonder what the future archaeologists and anthropologists of the world will think of us. Given they themselves aren't human/iphone app hybrids, will they find much left of us beside some cryptic references scrawled in the odd paper journal to a Status Change, a Deletion, a blog posting?

All that's everything we want anyone to know is hidden in plain sight, on sites. It's awesome, and mostly fun. But sometimes I think about how communication might be cheapened by it, because it's so damn easy, inconsequential, and easy to write off. Laugh at.