Drive
Here in my car I feel safest of all I can lock all my doors it’s the only way to live in cars
Buk For The Right Reasons
Look, I’m 49 years old. I know Charles Bukowski was an asshole — a drunk and a bastard and a pig. I don’t even like poetry, and I spent long enough years living the life before I figured out that squalor isn’t romantic, it’s just squalor. I’ve long since grown out of needing to have heroes, and long since learned more than enough about the writerly heroes of my youth to be completely disabused of the notion that they were anything but human. Deeply flawed and weak and broken humans just like rest of us.
Every time Charles Bukowski comes up on the internet, though, at least the internet I hang out in, where people at least know who the fuck he was, comments invariably turn to the phenomenon of the young, dumb, drunk anti-bro who LOVES BUK and WANTS TO BE LIKE HIM because BOOZE UNLEASHES HIS CREATIVE POWER and STUFF. There’s nothing wrong with that, even if it can annoy, though. Most of them will grow out of it once they realize that a) the booze doesn’t make you a poet unless you’re a poet already or b) being a poet doesn’t fix your life when you break it with booze. There are people who dislike things because the… enthusiasm of other people who like those same things can get on their nerves — The Big Lebowski fans being a good example — but I do try not to be one of them.
So, like I said, I’m nearly 50, and I still occasionally read or hear something new-to-me or long-forgotten by old Charlie B that just sends chills coursing down my scarred-up old spine, like this poem I’m about to paste down below.
So, calm your shit down for second. Take a breath. Forget about the latest Twitter timeline top-up or Buzzfeed bullshit product placement. Rest your goddamned internet-shattered mind for a minute, and then just read this like you’re navigating the rock-strewn rapids of a river.
New and Possibly Improved
Hail friends, and well met! If you’ve stopped by on your annual rounds to see if I’ve written anything amusing since the last equinox (then clicked away, shaking your head slowly in mild but unsurprised disappointment), you may have noticed that things are looking new and shiny.
I’ve been meaning to do a redesign for a while, just to apply some of the new stuff I’ve learned, and for shits and, you know, giggles, but the great empire surveyed by my Vast And Trunkless Legs Of Web continues to grow and occupy ever-larger amounts of my freeish time, and I’ve been doing quite a bit of Paid Client Work For Cash Money Son, and so: I haven’t. How did this shiny and also new design appear then, you might well ask?
I bought it. It’s the first time I’ve ever used a non-homegrown theme on the ol’ Bottle in all these years, and I’m sure this one will slowly morph as I tinker and tweak away, but: spending less time farting around with the look and perhaps possibly more time writing words to amuse you — yes, you, my friend! — seems like a better use of my limited awake-time resources, at least in terms of emptybottling.
Anyway, enjoy. And if you’re reading this in an RSS reader, well, just nod quietly to yourself and imagine the eyeball-melting cascading stylesheety glories in your mind.