Futile Horn

10.31.2003 - 1:49 am (I hate the heathens and keep away)

I had a dream last night where I was at what was sort of a university, sort of a prison. The grad students/officers were given the task of strapping people into chairs and drilling holes their heads. At first they went at their tasks unwillingly and with a show of sympathy, but soon it was clear that there wasn’t enough time to punch all the skulls they needed to punch, and it quickly became an unceremonious melee of pop and drain pop and drain on a confused and horrified group of victims. Dinner, of course, was to be made from the gore of the aerated, the thought of which repulsed me considerably. But when I saw the meal prepared, ravioli in a red sauce which some snausage-like side dish, it looked pretty good. In fact I couldn’t wait to have some.

I wish I could say I had no idea what this dream means. Today I spent most of the ride home on the train thinking about the gorevioli.

I recognize the freedom of assembly, but if you hold a demonstration and nobody comes, the police should be able to make you turn off your megaphone. There was some ass in Union Square with a big “Stop Bush” banner, the ‘s’ in Bush a swastika of course. You can smell an ignorant “I hate my parents so I’ll punish you with my ill-conceived political views” speck by his use of metaphor. You’ll hear puerile remarks about the great nazi Stalinist mafioso, but not a single syllable you can confirm or refute by mortal means. “We’re talking about freedom here, people. Don’t you care about freedom? I guess you don’t want your freedom.” He kept saying things like “This is not a Broadway show” and “This is not the New York Times” until it had become quite clear that he had never been to a Broadway show or read the New York Times. He actually stood on a milk crate. Five. Maybe five listening.

I am so sick of downtown. I’m sick of the pretty faces, and the college students that aren’t interested in learning anything, and the people in cafes talking about theater as if anyone cared, and the girls talking about boys and the boys with the fop haircuts they think will get them laid, and the older people who pretend to be hip and witty and to understand urban planning. Washington Square is filled with people who only want to sing standards from the 70s and tell me inexplicable things about the rapture. Today I listened to some hole babble on and on naming and explaining Christian theories on the millennium and the second coming. Even if you excuse how these theories have no basis in even the voodoo logic of theology, how does one overlook the fact that the millennium has already come and past?

Gah, I have to do something about this. I am so filled with anger and disgust half the time it sucks all the life and creativity out of me.

Perhaps I’ll go back to meditating on that brilliant do-nothing, Quintus.

Odi profanum vulgus et arceo;
favete linguis…

I finished reading the third book of Odes the other day. Exegi monumentum aere perennius. I’m two-thirds convinced that Horace meant less than half of what he said, and most of it is one good humored aristocratic joke from the lowborn friend of the Emperor. I’ve a lot of ideas on that actually, but I think I’ll dull you with them tomorrow or the day after.

Born to play the funky céilí,
Futile Horn