Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in mythologism's LiveJournal:

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Sunday, August 27th, 2006
3:00 pm [jlundberg]	irregardless Why did you bring me to this backwards little restaurant in this backwards little town? Why would you possibly think that having dinner with an ex-girlfriend of yours and her husband would be a good time for me? I'm stressed out enough dealing with your mother, who still seems to regard you as her little baby boy, her first-born, who treats you as though you were still in grammar school, making comments about your clothes or your hair, and all the while eyeing me, looking me over, judging, disapproving, dismayed that her daughter-in-law is Asian. And it's bad enough that she's making me jump through hoops for a wedding ceremony I don't want. You and I, we're already married, can't she accept that? Husband and wife for six months, but no, she has to plan another ceremony, one for your side of the family, one that will be a hundred times more extravagant and formal than the one back home. Why? So not only am I dealing with that, but having to plaster on a smile, a grimace really, for a girl you dated in high school in your backwards little town and her husband at the table right now, at a point when I'd rather just be soaking in the bath, or taking a walk somewhere. And the husband keeps looking at me, this look, this hunger in his eyes, a wanting that maybe his wife is unable to satiate, her being pregnant, very pregnant, the intensity of sex drives no longer balanced between them maybe, and maybe he's looking elsewhere to slake himself. He keeps touching his wife's arms and shoulders, his pregnant wife, your former girlfriend, stroking her back or rubbing her shoulders, and sneaking looks at me, at my chest, at the red silk cheongsam I'm wearing for the occasion, the dress a wedding present from my mother--you remember?--given before our real wedding. Can't you see how uncomfortable I am here? How much I abhor being asked where we met or what I do for a living or where my homeland is located on a world map. I fidget and tap my toes under the table, but you don't notice, too caught up in the good old days with the blonde planet across the table, and I'm wondering what you ever saw in this woman, someone who would probably use a word like "irregardless" or "unpossible," and I'm wondering if maybe she's not pregnant but just fat. This woman with the shrill laugh and loud questions, each more irritating than the last, a voice like a hyena, like a kookaburra, vapid, empty, trying to fill the silence with inane chatter. Her questions never beyond the surface level, unconcerned with the real truth, just scooping up the facts as fast as she can. Quantity, not quality. I'm starting to see why her husband might want to stray. But what really gets me is you, the change in you, your personality, your interests, they've changed around this obstreperous woman and her slimy husband. I can see you mutating into one of them, your Southern accent coming back on certain words, the return of "y'all," the chopping off of Gs, the shoppin' and gettin' and goin' peppering your speech now, and how your English students would have a field day with you right now, this lapse into patois, underlying everything you tell them about diction and enunciation and clarity. Your words slur together like you've been drinking, though all you've had tonight is a sweet tea. There you sit, devolving by the second into the little hick boy I see in the pictures your mother has shown me, teeth falling out of your mouth and onto your empty plate like pebbles, clothes becoming dirty, stained with mud and grass, and the smell, that little child smell of not having washed in several days. Your hair is greasy now, scalp flaky with improper care, and no, no I don't even want to see the lice squirming around, it's just all too much now, this window into your past, but I turn and the vision extends to your ex-girlfriend, and she's just as gap-toothed and unwashed as you are, and her laugh has risen into little-girl shrillness, a donkey on helium, a braying idiotic brainless-- The entrées arrive, braised duck all around. It smells almost as good as the kind back home, the kind you and I had that weekend when you met my parents. You remember that weekend, don't you? You were so nervous, but they accepted you right away, enfolded you into the family as if you had always belonged there. Such a different experience from meeting your mother, but-- The duck smells so good, and you look dashing in your blue suit, and maybe your ex-girlfriend's voice isn't so bad after all, her laugh perhaps more . . . contagious than I first thought, and her husband doesn't look so oily now as he kisses his wife, an expression of pure love. You smile at me and I smile back. The duck is delicious. Copyright © 2006 Jason Erik Lundberg (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 1st, 2006
1:30 pm [jlundberg]	dissemination The door irised open while the professor was teaching Orwell, and in clomped a slick-looking SF Party soldier, wearing a black overcoat, mirrorshades, and heavy boots. The man lurched to the teacher's desk as if each side of his body worked independently of the other. All the students leapt to their feet in the presence of the Party member, and stood at attention. "For extraordinary performance in the teaching and dissemination of Science Fiction to the students of America, the Party is happy to present you with the Order of Gibson Medal." The soldier produced the medal from within his coat and placed it around the stunned professor's neck. "Remember, kids," the man said, "Science Fiction is Watching You." "Science Fiction is a Way of Life!" they barked back in unison. "Keep Watching the Skies, professor," the man said and turned to leave. The professor felt an intense yearning for his youth then, when science fiction was fringe literature and popular culture, read and discussed only by a certain minority. Those were the good old days. Copyright © 2006 Jason Erik Lundberg (Comment on this)
Monday, August 15th, 2005
12:45 pm [jlundberg]	pari passu One would think that whilst moving apartments that services and utilities would pass continuously, uninterrupted, pari passu, at an equal pace with one's belongings. Hail the arrival of furniture and books and essentials, along with electricity, natural gas, water, phone, internet service. But no, it is not to be. The power and water, the most urgent, are thankfully to be turned on upon arriving with the first book-laden box. But the phone will take another day; the natural gas, four more; the internet service, never. Once the phone is connected, angry calls are made to the global conglomerate cable cabal, which provides one's access to the interconnected nets of the digital age. Managers are yelled at, but to no avail; there is no telling when service may be turned on. One is forced into cafes for their free wireless, provided, of course, with purchase, but even the Earl Grey is a dollar and a half. Email is checked and journals are maintained, but there is never enough time, never, before one is kicked out at closing time. But then, on that one fateful day, one can see through tear-blurred vision the white van emblazoned with the logo of the cable cabal. And one lets in the apologetic technician who, with a simple series of twists, releases the blockages and allows the data to flow free. One thanks him profusely, shaking his hand. And then one punches him square in the nose, closes the door, and says, "Have a nice day." Copyright © 2005 Jason Erik Lundberg (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 5th, 2005
4:12 pm [jlundberg]	claque Clique claque, they rode down the traque. They remarqued on the passing scenery, the war torn buildings, the grey skies, the earth scorched blaque. Their leader rose in the train qar, he intoned the Truth, he pronounced the way of the things, and his clique, his claque, they qlapped and cheered and qried. When it was time, they gathered their paques, full of briques, waited till the train stopped at Craquetown, and prepared to massaquer the inhabitants, who dared live sequuler lives, who spat in the faces of the claque by merely existing. The inhabitants, the Craquetonians, were ready for them, with rifles, and grenades, and they slaughtered the zealots down to the last man. Copyright © 2005 Jason Erik Lundberg (Comment on this)
Monday, May 2nd, 2005
12:02 pm [jlundberg]	rara avis George stood in front of the urinal and prayed to all the gods out there to help him piss. God, Allah, Buddha, Vishnu, Odin, it didn't matter who. Life had gotten so much harder after he'd turned 60. So many parts of his body wouldn't work for him now. Glasses for his eyes, calcium supplements for his bones, pacemaker for his heart. He found himself inextricably groaning every time he either sat down or stood up. His prostate was even a problem. He could feel the pressure building, absolutely knew that his urine longed to be free, but it would not come. He'd been standing there for five minutes already. And it wasn't as if it was painful, like that urinary infection he'd gotten in his mid-30s, it was just...hesitant. Even five years ago, he could have walked in, unzipped, drained the dragon, zipped back up, washed his hands, and walked out in less time than he'd been standing there today. And he was bored. It wasn't as if he could read a magazine or anything. He stared at the wall in front of him. It was painted the dullest of greys. The frequency of the fluorescents above caused the wall to flicker, and this, along with the seeming random brushstrokes in the paint itself, made his eyes unfocus. It was like those posters that had been all the rage ten years ago, daring you to see the three-dee object within the static. Only the wall was all static. He had the brief unpleasant sensation of falling. Though both his feet were planted firmly on the ground, his brain screamed at him that he was tumbling through the void. In his youth, George had had extreme perspective problems with his eyes, and until he'd built up the strength in his optic nerves, his life had been completely overcome by vertigo. Trying to sleep, he felt as if he were floating above his bed, spinning upward into the universe. His mother constantly kept a plastic trash can near him for the nausea. Now, both standing there unable to urinate and tumbling through the abyss of greyness, he felt himself slipping away, drifting off into a nothing reality. Would he ever be able to return? But then his eyes caught on a small knot in the paint, a rumple of hardened pigment, an imperfection in the wall. And in that moment, this mistake became the rara avis that brought him back to himself, the unusual visual marker as a life preserver. And something in him released. A few plinks, then a tentative splish, then a slow stream. He exhaled, his body lighter by the second. It took a long time to finish. He zipped up and ran a finger over the imperfection. It felt like the knot of an ancient tree. "Thanks," he said. He washed his hands and went back to work. Copyright © 2005 Jason Erik Lundberg (Comment on this)
Monday, April 18th, 2005
12:35 pm [jlundberg]	undo Jerry loved the Undo command in his CAD program. He might be drawing the electrical plans for a house, and in the event that he moved an electrical box to an incorrect location, a quick tap of the "U" key, then a thumbing of the space bar, and the box would be magically moved back. Drawings went so much quicker when he didn't have to erase his mistakes and redraw them, like he did when he was at university, doing architectural plans by hand. He often wished for an Undo button for his life. Such as the many times his ex-wife had asked him to move a piece of furniture, then decide to move it back. Or during the screaming matches they used to have when he would blurt out something he'd immediately regret. Or when he made the choice to sleep with his coworker Nikki, the redhead who favored push-up bras and high heels. In conversation after conversation, the phrase "I wish I could take it back" wore out its meaning. One day, Jerry made an innocent mistake on a plumbing drawing, accidentally placing a water heater within a basement wall, and when he hit Undo, there was an additional option: [Last] / [Previous 5] / [Previous 100] / [Previous Year] He hit "Y" and was overcome with a wave of nausea so intense that he fell out of his chair and crouched in a fetal position for a good five minutes before it passed. When he sat back up and looked at the monitor, the drawing had not changed, but there was a picture of his ex-wife on his desk that was not there before. On his left hand was the wedding ring he had thrown into the toilet after the messy divorce five months ago. He tapped "U" again. [Last] / [Previous 5] / [Previous 100] / [Previous Year] / [Previous Five Years] This time, it was "F." After the nausea subsided, his wedding band was gone, and the office was empty, the walls bare, the furniture gone. It was before his company had moved in to the building. Remarkably, his desk and computer, with the CAD drawing up, were still there. [Last] / [Previous 5] / [Previous 100] / [Previous Year] / [Previous Five Years] / [Previous Thirty Years] By his calculations, he had jus lost six years of his life, once again a twenty-nine year old single man. He had yet to meet his harpy of an ex-wife, or the woman who helped destroy his marriage. Could he relive all that again, making different choices now that he knew the future? Could he count on himself to do and say the right things? Or, was it more likely that he would make the exact same mistakes all over again? Maybe it was better to start all over, begin life again fresh. He was in a dead-end career, and seemed incapable of self-preservation. A fetus, he thought, is the most innocent of creatures. What he wouldn't give to get back to that innocence and that promise of something new. He took a deep breath, positioned his finger over the keyboard, closed his eyes, and stabbed "T." Copyright © 2005 Jason Erik Lundberg (Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 13th, 2005
1:31 pm [jlundberg]	detritus You knew this would happen, didn't you? I don't put it past you to have omitted certain facets of my existence, to leave me out of the loop. "Oh, I just didn't get around to telling you," you might have said, or, "Well, I really didn't think it was that important." But it is important. My dissolution is pretty. Fucking. Important. When you patched me together from the corpses of others, you knew I would have a shelf life, a termination point, a sell-by date. A decade of life may seem like a long time, but it's just a drop in the bucket, a cosmic blink. I'm disposable, the tissue you casually toss into the trash when it no longer serves your purpose. I've tried to hide it with baggy clothes, but people are starting to notice the pieces dropping off of me, like a snake's second skin, only this is my only skin, these my only parts, and I am slowly losing them all. It has been five years since I escaped from your laboratory, and the people of this lost European city have grown used to seeing me on the streets. But the smell is getting unbearable, this leprosy of the undead, and even when I try to buy bread or fish at the market stalls, the merchants see the trail, the long trail of detritus extending behind me, the rotted bits and pieces of me, and they deny me purchase, cowering behind their stalls, as if they could catch my affliction. It's hard to walk now that my toes are all gone. I sneezed last week, and my nose dropped into my lap. When I set out a saucer of cream yesterday for the neighborhood cats, my lower lip and one of my ears slid off my face and splashed into the whiteness. It can't be much longer now. What will be left of me when this is all done? How will I be found? An assemblage of body parts, now come unstitched. It seems such a senseless way to end this existence. I wonder what the gendarmes will think when they investigate my dissolution. Times like these, I wish I hadn't escaped. Maybe you could have fixed me, replaced the old bits with new. Maybe if you hadn't died of emphysema (I always scolded you for your cigars), I could have pleaded with you for a longer life. Maybe you would have agreed. But, it no longer matters. So I sit in my dusty hovel, and I read the broadsheets, holding the papers with my few remaining fingers. Every time I cough, bits of my lungs separate themselves from the rest of me. I sit here, and read, and slowly fall to pieces. Copyright © 2005 Jason Erik Lundberg (Comment on this)
Monday, April 11th, 2005
9:07 pm [jlundberg]	malapropos You know the guy. He's the one who shows up uninvited to parties and drinks all the booze. He hits on your wife right in front of you. One time, you even heard him remark at the funeral for your friend Lisa, "Damn, she was a nice piece of ass." Enough is enough. It has been this way since college. Somehow he insinuated himself into your group of friends and couldn't take the hint that he wasn't wanted. He's been fired from every job he's ever had because of his malapropos outbursts. It's as if the filter between brain and mouth was just never there. But he went too far last week, when, at the reading you were giving as part of the book tour for your new novel, he showed up halfway through, high on gasoline fumes or household cleansers, and declaimed to the entire audience that you once had sex with a dalmation. It doesn't matter that it's not true, it doesn't matter that he was on mind-altering chemicals. He has destroyed your career. And so you don't feel so bad when he whimpers through the urine-soaked hand towel with which you gagged him four days ago. There was a twinge of regret when you sliced off his nipples, but that went away. You've been cutting away at him for days, and you're astonished he's still conscious. He's lost so much blood. A dog barks outside, and you hear your wife's car in the driveway, home from a long weekend with her parents. She steps into the kitchen, and for a brief moment you're afraid she'll run away, call the cops. But then you remember the look on her face when the bastard in front of you grabbed her breast at a party long ago, and she seems to remember as well, because she gently takes the knife from your hand and smiles. Copyright © 2005 Jason Erik Lundberg (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 10th, 2005
1:24 pm [jlundberg]	hagiography His feast day is July 12. He widely believed in the power of his faith. He was a bishop. He stood up against a regime, preaching -- some said foolishly -- to the masses. When he was thrown in prison, he told his cellmate, another missionary, that he had a secret. "What is it?" the other man asked. "I'm a Buddhist," he said and smiled. "Don't tell anyone." The next day, he was thrown into a pit and torn apart by wild animals. His name means "healer." His name was Jason. Copyright © 2005 Jason Erik Lundberg (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 9th, 2005
6:00 pm [jlundberg]	sapid He watched, stared, peered into her face as she took a bite of the sapid green curry chicken. It was his first time cooking, beyond microwave vegetarian lasagna or macaroni & cheese right out of the box, the first time he had actually assembled all the ingredients from scratch, all these disparate elements, and combined them into Dinner. He was immensely proud of himself, but his wife insisted on the first taste. It was her recipe, and he knew she'd be most critical of his culinary performance. Had he fried the curry long enough? Added the right amount of coconut milk? Sliced the chicken into the right sized pieces to bring out the flavor of the curry? She chewed thoughtfully, taking her time, while sweat poured down his face. His knees were shaking. He might be having a heart-attack. But then she smiled and nodded, and he collapsed to the floor in relief. "But next time," she said, "try adding some Thai eggplant." Copyright © 2005 Jason Erik Lundberg (Comment on this)
Monday, April 4th, 2005
3:00 pm [jlundberg]	amanuensis I would prefer not to. Bart scribbled this line over and over with his quill pen, the incessant scratching from the nib an aural irritant. His hand ached, cramping up every half-hour or so. His eyes were going as well; the eternity in this pit had damned his sight, until his nose was only an inch from the paper. And even now, the words grew blurry. This was his punishment, karma for his crime, an everlasting existence as a powerless amanuensis, a scribbler, a scrivener, a copier. If he tarried, if he took too long in his writing, or if he wasted too much time massaging the feeling back into his fingers, the lashman behind him would let loose with the barbed wire cat-o'-nine-tails, tearing open the flesh of Bart's back. He wasn't sure how much longer he could last. All this for such a stupid ambition, the plagiarism of that famous Melville short novel, the one about that other scrivener withdrawing from the world, wasting away to death in a courtyard. Bart almost envied that fate as his hand seized up again, this time the knot of muscle not letting go, a shriek escaping his lips as the whips descended on his back. Why did he think everyone had forgotten that book, why had he been so stupid to copy a famous work of literature to pass off as his own? He gripped the quill in his deformed claw, and with shaking motion, started his letters again, changing the phrase slightly, writing now instead of scrivening, his deep regret and pain pouring itself onto the paper. I would prefer not to have done. Over and over and over. Copyright © 2005 Jason Erik Lundberg (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 3rd, 2005
12:20 pm [jlundberg]	magniloquent He stood proudly at the podium, back straight, chin up, pebble in mouth. The audience sat in rapt attention, eagerly anticipating the magniloquent oratory that they'd come to expect. The pebble was rough and gritty under his tongue, and he rolled it from one side to the other as he breathed, making the audience wait. He stared into the eyes of the crowd, took a deep breath, and began his eulogy. It was stirring. It was heartbreaking. He recalled the deceased's kindness, her compassion, her capacity for ebullience and good-natured trickery. Her endless font of energy and life, as if she knew how short her life would be, and wanted to live it to the fullest. The pebble under his tongue, his great challenge, the impetus to speak in concise and clear statements, enabled him the mastery of language that the most purple of speaker could not approach. He sobbed when detailing his personal relationship with the deceased, and the audience cried with him. She was one of his best friends, he said, and she was always happy to climb into his hand, nuzzle against him, crawl over every inch of his body. "She was the best hamster a man could ever hope to know," he said. "I will miss her for the rest of my days." Copyright © 2005 Jason Erik Lundberg (Comment on this)
Thursday, March 10th, 2005
11:15 pm [jlundberg]	lachrymose She started crying at the age of fifteen and could not stop. How it started not even she knew now; possibly getting dumped by that boy she liked, the one with the green eyes and chestnut hair, or it might have been that poetry contest she was sure she'd win but didn't, or it could have been just a burst of overwhelming hormones. Whatever the cause, she cried and cried, and then when she was ready to stop, she found herself unable. Her tear ducts locked open, the flow of saline a constant thing. The bucket that her mother placed by her bed was replaced by a larger bucket to decrease the trips to the bathroom to empty it. With no sign of stopping, her father bought an inexpensive bathtub and rigged up the plumbing so that the tears would funnel to the outside and connect up with the drainpipe. But the tears continued unabated, and soon the garden was flooded, and then the entire yard. The doctors were stumped, and angry at their shoes being ruined by the salt water. She wasn't getting dehydrated, they said, so we don't have any idea where the water is coming from. She was taken to the Grand Canyon, but she filled it. They placed her in the sewers, but she flooded them. Her parents drove her out to the middle of Arizona and left her there. Her tears overflowed the world, drowned out the buildings, the people. She floated on an oak door in the sea of her sadness, and cried for her solitude. But soon, survivors appeared on their makeshift rafts and said, "We are here to worship you, to tell you that you are not alone." She looked at the small band of travelers who had sacrificed so much to reach her, and she smiled. The tears slowed, then stopped. She was happy. Copyright © 2005 Jason Erik Lundberg (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 18th, 2005
10:55 pm [jlundberg]	hypomnesia We sit here, you and I, together in this cell, unknowing, unaware. I watch your jerky movements, spastic, the twitches of thousands of misfired neurons. I do not remember you, and from your blank look I can see that the feeling is mutual. I do know that I loved you, even if your identity is gone, like mine. The dry cake they feed us, delivered once a day through a wall tube, crumbles like ash, tasteless, void of nutritional value. Water drips somewhere, but I cannot locate its source. I am thirsty, my lips cracked, my skin parchment. I know nothing other than this cell, and you. Why do they, whoever "they" are, keep us here? Flashes of intelligence secrets linger in my hippocampus, though nothing I can grab on to, vaporous and ephemeral in the eye of my mind. Information important to the opposition, to the rebels. Haven't we given them everything they want to know? Whatever procedure they used to delete my memories seems to have overloaded your poor brain, and you can only communicate now in grunts, reversed down the evolutionary chain to your simian ancestors. Your movements become more erratic every day, and I fear you will turn violent. Perhaps they have forgotten about us, now that they know everything we know. Maybe our side attacked, and is unaware we are here. Or you were actually the interrogator, and I fought back. Or maybe the reverse is true. It's impossible to know for sure. The air grows thin. I have lost all hope of being released from this place. Either I will starve, or you will kill me in ignorant rage. I do hope it happens quickly. The one thing I hang on to is the knowledge -- perhaps false, perhaps true -- that at one time, long ago, I held you in my arms and kissed you, and you kissed me back. Copyright © 2005 Jason Erik Lundberg (Comment on this)
Monday, January 17th, 2005
12:50 pm [jlundberg]	lethe As you continue to lean against a thick and very old banyan tree (so it's not just a matter of losing all knowledge, since you can recognize the tree by the feel of its bark against your back, and you do know the names of things, so it's more of a selective removal of identity, which is even more disturbing), the grass coarse under your naked buttocks, you feel not so much a person as an assemblage of sensations. Faculties of the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind, all aggregated into . . . what? Not a soul, certainly, nor an identity. Drowned you are, lost in this river of forgetting, this Lethe of existence, unknowing. Pure. Reborn. You can be anyone you want. You can remake yourself. You can do anything. Copyright © 2005 Jason Erik Lundberg (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 16th, 2004
11:20 am [jlundberg]	printercide All Zed's hard work, all the blood and sweat and, yes, tears, all the creative and financial hardships he had suffered over the past five months in order to produce a book, his book, one of which he was immensely proud, one which his illustrator friend had adorned with beautiful cover art, one which he slaved over to get the typography and interior design just right, all of that effort was wasted. 2000 copies had been produced, copied from the portable digital format file he had compiled, and bound in twin-loop wire binding, a sly nod to one of the works within the book, and it all looked like shit. The color matching on the cover art was all wrong, shifted way too far into orange. The interior page text had been moved to the left or right, or cut off at the top or bottom, or at an angle. The wire binding was entirely too small for the book, which made even turning the pages a difficult task. Two thousand copies. The printer stood there behind the counter, dressed like a corporate salesman, a jeweled tie-tack winking at Zed, a navy blue suit that probably costed more than Zed's annual salary, he stood there waiting, waiting to get paid. To get paid for this shoddy, shitty work, a look on his face, a look that said, "What? This looks fine to me." And as Zed opened his mouth to express his disappointment, his supreme outrage, the printer said, "Will that be cash, check, or charge?" Zed reached across the counter, ripped the tie-tack loose, and stabbed the printer in the eye. Copyright © 2004 Jason Erik Lundberg (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 14th, 2004
11:00 pm [jlundberg]	bibliophile Stanley was always buying books. The trips he took out of town, for his company, a software developer, and Stanley was in tech support, on these trips he would seek out the bookstores. He sought out the independent stores if the town had them, but didn't discriminate if they did not. Stanley would stroll the aisles with a shopping basket, scanning the titles and authors, and after a half-hour would place the basket on the counter, full to the brim, and pay. Since he flew everywhere his company sent him, he would ship the books back home to his wife. Stanley's wife hated Stanley's book-purchasing habits. They no longer had room in their house for the shelves and shelves of books. She had nowhere to set up her drafting table, nowhere to hang the painting she had bought on their honeymoon in Bali. She felt like a stranger in her home. The books had taken over the house. So when Stanley came home after a week-long trip to Chicago, she presented him with a choice. Either the books go or I go, she said. Honey that's not fair, he said. Why can't I have both? Because that would be greedy, she said. We'd need to buy a bigger house at this point for all your damn books. What do you need all these books for anyway? Stanley was silent, not knowing how to fully express his love for books as physical artifacts, unable to articulate the comfortable feeling he got surrounded by books of every size and shape and genre. Thomas Jefferson was an avid book collector, Stanley said. Thomas Jefferson died broke, his wife said. What's it going to be? He looked around at the stacks of books piled everywhere, threatening to spill over, architectural feats of structure, pillars of books, all containing the knowledge, the wisdom of their authors. His wife's face was one big scowl. She let out a disgusted breath, and went into the book-crowded bedroom to pack her things. Copyright © 2004 Jason Erik Lundberg (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 7th, 2004
12:15 am [jlundberg]	epicene Designers from all over the fashion world wanted him for his epicene handsomeness; they sent him baskets filled with expensive watches and colognes made from yak placentas. Advertising agencies would send him on international jaunts to Paris, Milan, Prague, all expenses paid, including drugs and pleasurable company. His androgyne features attracted men and women alike. And through all this, he never worked a day in his life. The designers, the ad men and women, the film producers, all of them attempted to woo him with the spoils of consumer capitalism, just for the possibility that he might accept and make them wealthy beyond reason. He never promised his services to anyone, but he did accept their wonderful gifts, for he knew that beauty does not last long in this world, that fame is fleeting but infamy is forever. He partied in every exclusive location in the world, then, when his fifteen minutes were up, he disappeared quietly, and has not been seen since. He could be any stranger on the street, even that striking passenger next to you on the bus. Don't dare look straight at him, or you will swoon and offer him all your worldly possesions just to be near him. Copyright © 2004 Jason Erik Lundberg (Comment on this)
Monday, August 16th, 2004
9:45 pm [jlundberg]	pommel The pommel horse favors no one. You can be the world champion, but it will toss you off if you do not respect it. It knows your weaknesses. In the middle of your routine, it inflates its middle just slightly, enough that when you do your scissor-leg swing between the pommels, your groin will slam down again and again. You can never underestimate this most temperamental piece of gymnastics equipment, or it will buck you off, sending your gold medal hopes down to the chalk-covered blue mats. (Today's entry inspired by NBC's Olympic coverage of men's gymnastics.) (Comment on this)
Sunday, August 8th, 2004
11:30 pm [jlundberg]	mati We call the occupiers ulat, the word for maggot in Basa Kasar, the dialect of Balinese commoners. These interlopers, these maggots, they bombed us, they set fire to our homes, they wormed into our drinking water and breathing air with their pathogens, their Slow Plague. They killed thousands of us, and for what? For revenge. Javanese extremists blew up a pair of government buildings, a consulate and a training barracks, and the ulat decided all of Indonesia was at fault. That since we all come from the same country, we must all be the same. We are Bali and Sumatra and Java and Kalimantan and Sulawesi and Maluku and Irian Jaya. We have 365 ethnic and tribal groups: Acehnese, Bataks, Minangkabaus, Javanese, Sundanese, Balinese, Sasaks and Dani among the most recognizable. 216 million people over seven islands, but the ulat condemned us all for the actions of a few militants. It seems that SARS was not enough to brand us as subhuman, nor the bombing in Kuta Beach. We are feared for reasons beyond our control, doomed to suffer. Nowadays, those of us left can only survive, dependent on American antibiotic drugs that only suppress the symptoms of our shared disease. There is no cure. We are very angry and very tired. It is enough to incite one to rebellion. We are no longer seven islands. We are one country. We are mati, our word for dead. It is time for a change. (More on Indonesia.) Copyright © 2004 Jason Erik Lundberg (Comment on this)