Patriotism Runs Counter to Ordinary Human Morality
Nicholas Syrianus Katsafanas

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Mode: >.75
(echoes):syllables .self-similarity
12,929:15,084 .857

Abstract

Book I
7,565:8,896 .850

Part I: 3,977:4,672 .851
Episode I: 2650 Syllables of Authentic Reflection (2,226:2,646 .841)
Episode II: 2026 Syllables in London (1,751:2,026 .864)

Part II: 2,041:2,447 .834
Episode III: Oil Paint Stained Mesh Shorts (945:1,111 .851)
Episode IV: The State Formed by the Social Contract is the Modern Atheistic State (486:607 .801)
Episode V: We’re All in This Together Really (610:729 .837)

Part III: 1,547:1,776 .871
Episode VI: Untitled (452:514 .879)
Episode VII: Untitled (553:660 .838)
Episode VIII: Untitled (542:602 .900)

Book II
5,364:6,189 .867

Part IV: 3,246:3,727 .871
Episode IX: Lighting Fire To Every PDF I've Ever Exported (1,164:1,381 .843)
Episode X: Sam Altman Is In Fact A Blithering Idiot (220:257 .856)
Episode XI: On the Dual Aspect of Subjective Experience (630:723 .871)
Episode XII: The Postmodern Despotic Regime (779:843 .924)
Episode XIII: The Cosmological Significance of Hair Follicles (452:523 .866)

Part V: 2,118:2,462 .860
Episode XIV: No. Prov. Tire & Body (220:261 .843)
Episode XV: Feeling Thoroughly Bamboozled (732:835 .877)
Episode XVI: Alarming Literacy Rates (283:331 .855)
Episode XVII: A Crucial Pivot Point (115:128 .898)
Episode XVIII: Gay Porn Pinterest (340:396 .859)
Episode XIX: An Incredible Idea (459:517 .888)
Episode XX: Smart Bidet Infomercial (n/a)
Episode XXI: Parting Thoughts (428:511 .838)

Diagrams


Abstract: Popular livestreamer and entirely fictional character Nikolaos Enrique Iglesias engages in a series of episodic "streams" that accurately act as his autobiography. He's now strongly considering transcribing his episodic "streams" into texts for an increasingly literate American public


Book I
Part I
Episode I. 2650 Syllables of Authentic Reflection

Mode: >.75
2226:2647 .841

—A: The Best Pizza in the State of Rhode Island
863:1043 .827

The blunt reality of my life at the time
was that the pizza at Bettola
was more appropriate to eat
with a literal soup spoon
as opposed to your opposable thumbs,
that each slice was steeped
in an ill-advised amount of oil and cheese,
that the bread, for that matter,
was already floppy,
that even a robust crust could never
withstand the weight of the toppings
as currently constituted,
which caused the entire pizza
to avalanche down to the tips of your fingers
whenever you attempted
to pick it up,
thereby forced to consume the slice
in essentially one rushed bite,
with all the ingredients
concatenating onto each other,
leaving you with a piece
of wet bread in your palm
that constituted the quote-unquote
"rest of the slice".

It was technically Curt's idea to go,
when we were
still at the cigar bar so-called dinner,
where the copious smoke
was seeping into our skins
by the minute,
where the pasta was mush
and the garlic was burnt,
where Curt attempted to
bum a single cigarette
off the forty or so people
in attendance,
all to no avail,
neither one of us
smoking a cigar or cigarette,
the new bartender
made almost entirely of plastic,
with a Picasso like
vibe to her work—
she actually gave me a great deal
on the maybe eight
Michelob Ultras I chugged!

But Bettola was alleged
to sport the best pizza
in the state—
it was something
apparently a group
of consumers cast votes on
at some time, somewhere,
and subsequently the award was
advertised
right in front of their stoop,
so I saw no real risk
in stopping by,
as I was still up
for a bite, finding
the pasta at the bar
a bit subpar,
plus it was a straight shot
up Pontiac
in any case.

Yet while I'm
typically of the mind
to silently disparage
a restaurant's offering
then just never return
again, Curt, by contrast,
tended to vocalize
his discontent
to wait staffs,
and with a complaint
I quietly addressed
to him now buttressing
his own disgust
he called the bartender,
Reign,
over to voice his concerns
with the notion both pizzas
we ordered weren't "great",
yet Reign, for her part,
found Curt's complaint
just as contemptible
as we found the place's
pizza—she was frankly a little shocked
that a person could dislike
this luscious pie.

This food in front of us was,
to Reign, great pizza,
yet she now stood faced with
two patrons
who seemed to disagree,
judging not just the particular pies
they got to be subpar,
but the actual construction
of the pizza itself—
the underlying architecture
of the restaurant's recipe—
to be deeply flawed.

Oh no,
it's fine, I said,
entirely insincerely,
telling Reign
the food was okay,
there was really no need
for us to complain—
maybe just get me
one more Michelob
if you have a chance?

So I believe Curt and I
were both surprised
when Reign came
over some time later,
after to-go boxes
had been packed
and night caps'd
been sipped,
with a fresh pie,
saying Try this one on for size—
yet, while I of course,
had no inclination to complain,
I didn't even object
to the meat on the pizza,
I'd rather have, at that point,
breached my own veganism
before I levied a complaint
to Reign,
yet Curt wasn't of the same mind
as I.

Yeah, see, he said,
this pizza has the same
problem—proceeding to show
Reign and now another
waitress
the essential incongruence
between the thickness
of the bread
and the payload
of the multiple toppings,
how it made the pizza
really hard to eat.

What Reign still failed
to comprehend was it wasn't
the components of Bettola's
pizza that were objectionable,
it was instead the
core geometry of the pie
that was basically unacceptable—
in an entirely ill-fated attempt
to save face
Curt asked Reign
to make us
an espresso martini
but with tequila,
her idiosyncratic take
on the cocktail.

Personally I found the
tequila-based espresso martini
as geometrically off kilter
as the pizza,
all I could taste
was the damn agave,
yet I kept my mouth closed,
my to-go box ready
to take home
to my loving wife,
filled to the brim with shitty pizza
as a little Christmas gift—

—B: Mineral Spring Avenue is for Lovers
743:900 .826

Sitting at The Social
by myself,
my first time back on Mineral Spring
since I'd moved from the street
after residing beside Taco Bell
for a decade plus—
the spot I drank at located
a door over from my former apartment,
a dilapidated building with
about five businesses
on the bottom floor—
and I knew for a fact this pasty bartender
was upselling me egregiously on
her shitty little mezcal glasses,
the Casamigos brand to boot,
my least favorite
by a large margin.

The whore charged me seventeen per
drink which in North Provolone
was simply an atrocity,
even fifteen bucks per
glass was hypothetically absurd,
it was completely out of line
I thought as I begrudgingly gave
her my Discover card,
recalling just a couple months prior
at my friend Ryan's
birthday party—when this particular
Social worker was,
in my mind, a little slow with
the Corona Light service
and overheard my critique of her speed
to Paul, subsequently slamming down six beers
onto a table and yelling "Here you go!" to me,
which I actually appreciated at the time,
as I was already ready for another
Corona anyway.

But now, sitting at The Social
by myself, being basically mugged
because of my proclivity toward mezcal,
I recognized that this comment,
even if not initially intended for
the server to hear,
had come back to bite me in
my ass, as I assumed the debt
for these seventeen dollar mezcals.

The waitress became the bartender
in the interim, and she's now
exacted her revenge with alacrity.

To the best of my recollection
I was only even on the damn street
because I had a dinner to attend
at Il Fornello around the corner,
and after handing the tab
back to my cocktail executioner,
I still had some time to kill,
so I drove down the street to Rocco's
for a sole additional drink
before I hit the dinner,
as I hadn't been
in eons it seemed
and now found myself in a nostalgic
if not bitter state of mind.

I recognized the bartender

at Rocco's from past eras,
back when I
grabbed cocktails with that absolute
crumb Enzo on the regular,
but I couldn't recall the girl's name—
she greeted me amicably,
yet also refrained from using
a formal address, no doubt also
failing to recall me
fully either as
I asked for a
Johnny Black.

O, what cruel ironies
North Providence had in wait
for me that afternoon!—
the Rocco's girl gave
me a reasonable fare
for my subsequent
scotch on the rocks, and
I figured at that point it was probably
about time, now half in the bag,
to go back toward Fornello,
looping through my old parking lot,
to find the Russian guy's white truck
Tree had hated
still parked in his same
dipshit spot and letting down
my Civic's window
to hawk a loogie at the passenger door
as I drove by, ejecting the spit
far enough to clear my car but
unsure if I actually
connected with a
direct hit on the pickup,
unconvinced if I'd, like
the previous bartender,
successfully enacted a minuscule
revenge on an individual
I didn't even technically know.

—C: On the Amtrak to Penn Station
620:704 .881

On the Amtrak to Penn Station
on a Friday AM
I considered my
professional investigation
into the Epstein scandal,
filled as it is with ageless enigmas
and faux hoaxes,
and also my related but aborted novel
that I at the time titled Jeffrey of Nazareth,
where I’d imagined a near future
where the kid trafficker Jeff
was re-interpreted as a Christ-like
figure, where Americans
bought for sex toys for house pets
they saw on TikTok,
but now witnessing
internet celebrities,
who still know no lows,
wearing Free Ghislaine
tees I contemplated
whether or not
my failed novel was
in fact still satirical at all,
even now,
that perhaps Jeff Epstein
would soon be seen
as a sort of second coming of Jesus,
that possibly everybody
had it all wrong
all along—
that all those silly girls
who alleged under oath
they’d been sexually violated
as little kids were simply
unprosecuted liars?

Could Jeffrey Epstein actually be Jesus,
I considered in the coach class of Amtrak—
or is every single American who votes
Democrat and Republican
basically a pedophile, I thought,
because only a C student chimpanzee
could possibly view our political
system as anything but
irreversibly corrupt?

Every election in this failed state
is basically a faux pas
kayfabe mock election obfuscating
from the true extent of our state
of corruption,
I thought on the Amtrak,
in a realm of even remote American
collective intelligence
all these politicians
would be prosecuted and
placed into prison cells
for multiple decades at minimum, because
if a so-called state can’t at the very least
collectively act against
wide scale child rape
then the nation functionally
ceases to exist.

We live instead in a state of static anarchy
actually, I considered—
any notion of a nation
is purely illusory,
just like Zeno’s proofs on
the fictitious nature of The Many,
America is equally if not more
imaginary—

People
despise Stephen Miller
and his muppet wife
for incredibly good reason,
I thought,
as they’re both basically
treasonous idiots,
but they’re actually
a relatively minor symptom
of an even more serious disease,
as when people
like Misses Miller
appear on television programs
to endorse American fascism
while interpreting any criticism
of her own Nazi-adjacent opinions
as a racist attack on her
so-called Jewish identity
it’s unavoidably repulsive
to everyone,
yet even that egregious imbecility
is still an at best
minor symptom in the
larger scheme of a
fundamentally imaginary
America—

Episode II.
2026 Syllables in London

Mode: >.75

—A: 642:712 .902
—B: 1109:1314 .844

—A
642: 712 .902

The lack of a literary culture
which is probably a fault,
primarily I'd assume,
of our collective,
more or less grotesque,
American oligarchic class,
is without doubt
at least partially
responsible for
this state's
seemingly easy descent
into unrepentant fascism,
which to be clear
indubitably extends beyond
this current president,
who, while I'm sure he's
a nice enough guy,
I've overheard from
a variety of sources,
often shits in his
knickers, creating,
according to some in his
social circle,
a peculiar stench surrounding
his bodily space?

In any case,
this bureaucratic
rot has been
viciously present in the House and
Senate,
dating back
not just
to Reagan,
but the corrupt
Clinton regime
that placed personal
profit over national security,
in all likelihood engaging
in state-sanctioned
assassinations to cover
said nonsense up,
to the extent
our branches of
legislation
are now basically
little beyond a
sad collection of
sterile nubs.

But anyway,
after landing
in London
we found
ourselves on
the Piccadilly
line to Cockfosters
with a clockwork
like repetition of
the train's final destination—
yet, for our part,
we'd be staying
at the delightfully dreary
Earl's Court borough,
but as the train
proceeded,
with each progressive
stop squishing
me incrementally
up against my
bulbous luggage
in the cramped cabin,
I considered the
origins of words,
for instance
the wonderful work
of someone
like, say, Noam Chomsky
(a great friend
of Jeff Epstein
by the way!),
even a lurid word
like "cock"
could take on so
many meanings,
similar to the phrase
"tax advice"
in the realm
of pederasts
and their high profile
protectors!

In fact,
I saw a few stray
minutes
of the aborted Epstein P.R.
Steve Bannon interview,
skipping stochastically
to his explanation
of the oh eight
financial crisis and I was
a bit blown away
at how utterly dumb
Jeff came off—
especially when he
attempted to explain
Newton and Pythagoras!—
and it's not even the
Coney Island
wise-guy accent
either, no,
the pure content of
his words were
indicative of a man
who'd spent the vast majority
of his adult brain cells
on blackmail and
lewd sex instead of
any sort of intellectual
pursuits,
Epstein purported to be
some magnanimous curio
of math, yet his explanation
of Pythagoras
revolved around
the revelation that
two triangles,
given the right circumstances,
can create
a square.

And I'd imagine
even that fat opportunist
Bannon'd have
to admit Jeff just
wasn't quite that bright, that
simply because you spout
some bullshit
about exchange rates
and central banks
in text chains,
in fact,
in no way means you
own an above average
capacity
toward critical thinking?

—B
1109:1314 .844

At the National Gallery
in Westminster,
after Tree told me
we'd visit the
Byron building,
I became a little flummoxed—
wandering around,
wondering what exactly
the author of Don Juan'd be
doing among all these
fucking painters—
just to stumble upon
original Pontormos,
Parmigianinos, Bronzinos,
my favorite Mannerist
painters—
art I'd gazed at as JPEGs
on the internet forever,
but now witnessed in
their original forms,
and I reflected back
to spending twenty bucks
to be granted admission into
RISD's museum,
whereas, now by contrast,
I was seeing
a half dozen original
Bronzino's for free.

On a second go round
of the Mannerist
rooms an American
tour guide posted up
in front of
Bronzino's Venus
pontificating an impromptu
talk regarding
the Mannerist movement
surrounded by
a series of
I'm sure well-intentioned
senior citizens
who were then prompted
to relay personal and
specific interpretations
of the quote-unquote
"theatrical" painting—

The next afternoon
after drinking
a couple scrumptious pints
at Churchill's pub
in Kensington
we walked
to an Iranian
restaurant
my wife's
British aunt
recommended,
where upon
perusing the Persian menu
I immediately decided to
breach
my vegetarian streak
and order the
lamb shank,
number forty four,
because it was either
that or the vegetable
biryani, but
at an Iranian spot,
which struck
me as a bit
inane at the time.

Under regular circumstances,
of course,
I'd vigorously consider
a vegetable biryani,
it'd probably be a bullseye
on a menu for me,
but sitting at Sadaf
with Kat and her
faux aunt,
I curiously lacked
any urge
to even utter the
two words
to the girls
as a dish
I'd consider,
instead I just said
"I think I need
to have that lamb shank,"
expecting a delicious
and expansive
hunk of lamb
after taking note of
the table to the right
passing around
a voluminous chop.

If the lamb chops,
I thought,
which generally
in America
are overpriced and
paltry,
are hearty,
then the shank
should be massive,
and if I'm eating meat
I might as well make
it fucking count.

Yet when the waiter
placed a
large plate of plain
white rice in front of
my person
minutes later
I was ominously perplexed,
and when he dropped a
side-plate-sized
chunk of so-called lamb shank
beside the rice
I knew I'd made a
grave mistake,
that this shank,
this first foray
I'd made into
Iranian lamb,
that it'd pale
in comparison
to great lambs of my past,
because of the
portion, but also the
seasoning, which
was lacking
to the extent of
non-existence, that
I'd have to at some
point text message
Farhad to confirm
I finally ate Persian lamb
and it was
precipitously disappointing,
no doubt I'd blame
the lackluster taste
on "being in London,"
while shrewdly
refraining to mention
that every other meal
we'd eaten in the city
up to that day
was fucking delicious.

This Persian lamb,
in my mind,
was only comparable
to the so-called
lamb shank
I'd got at a place
I'll refrain from naming
on West Fountain Street
that tasted like a
pair of Air Jordans,
when our waiter
went on
regarding his love of
so-called Greek
culture, only to
serve a
shank that was
basically a disgrace,
but to be fair
the lamb was
no direct fault
of the server, just
a sad coincidence.

The reality is
while the Iranian
lamb in London
may have been
somewhat subpar,
I've yet
to peruse a so-called
left-leaning outlet
in London
like our Politico State-side
talking of what
it would take to
quote-unquote
"put to bed"
a case like Epstein's,
which struck me as
a perfectly callous
bit of verbal vomit,
to disregard
the dozens
of underage victims
routinely abused
by this mysterious
billionaire and
his cabal of
well-connected
friends, who
include at least
two U.S. Presidents.

When prosecuting, say,
a mafia don
circumstantial evidence
acts as imperturbable
truth in our country,
as witnesses
who by their personal admission
are criminal pieces of shit
sign sworn statements
that make the reality
of the situation
crystal clear
to all involved
and formal trials
with possible
prison sentences
proceed,
yet a whole harem of
women claiming
the world's most
prominent whore-monger
Epstein and his Mossad
descended "girlfriend"
Ghislaine
were routinely abusing
literal children,
these women
are instead smeared
by allegedly "moderate"
American outlets
as essentially
bigger pieces of
shit than the loanshark
informants who sign affidavits
to put capos in prison.

The notion that
career criminals
who're bequeathed
the tangible benefit
of suspended prison
sentences
for State co-operation
are somehow
more trustworthy
witnesses
than women
who've been abused
as children by
international sexual terrorists,
people with literally
nothing to gain
but the contempt of
public American outlets
who're grotesquely
derelict in their duty
as news organizations—
it's nihilistic to
the highest degree,
a fresh low
for a state
that used to say
black people
were sixty percent
human.

Episode III.
Oil Paint Stained Mesh Shorts

945:1111 .851
Mode: >.75

—(01) .921
In late Two Thousand
Eighteen
I was smoking an
ice hookah at Pasha
wearing
oil paint
stained black
basketball shorts
with dress socks
and creme brulee Sperry's
and felt surprisingly
fine about it,
which strikes me
like an acceptable
enough intro
to this mode.

—(02) .789
In a sense, I felt
in the moment that
all that remained was opinion,
this notion that the internet
itself was basically
our last standing forest,
a natural architecture entirely
dedicated to the morass
of people's little perspectives
on things, the informal
personal essay
basically as the fulcrum
of the internet itself,
but the essay as part and parcel
of a large amalgamation
of one expansive
Nonsensical Opinion,
and this
is essentially
our final remaining
foray into nature
and spontaneous architecture—
whereas Robert Frost
wrote about fucking trees
and sticks and stones
and shit, but
now?—that's all over.

—(03) .858
Even modern art,
I thought,
these horrendous Matisse
reprints you now see in Millennial
doctors' offices, what did they evince
but a particular degradation
of form, which then
expressed itself in unmeasured
and anecdotal poetry, which
subsequently served as a
rosetta stone of the
internet's personal essay,
which amalgamated into the
amorphous
Nonsensical Opinion—
was it possibly the case
the demolition
of all art basically
took place
in a free verse poem
about people's capricious feelings,
that this falsified subjectivity
that had been violently promoted
by CIA funded MFA programs
as so-called art for decades
was now finally realized
as a collectivist project
that was ipso facto the internet,
as an Amalgamated Nonsensical
Opinion, which is now our
last remaining National Park?

—(04) .769
Art is functionally nothing
if not just another
consumer product
in a capitalist machine
that at bottom
prioritizes portable butt wipes—
yes, the median
American citizen
is primarily concerned
with wiping their balloon knots
with only toilet paper
when away from home.

—(05) .841
Take an artist
like Tao Lin,
are we to truly believe
his novels,
which are perfectly
indicative of
acceptable contemporary
literary art,
was it ever truly tenable to
consider Tao's
specific novels
as explicitly
apolitical
(as they often are
categorized)—
regardless
of Lin's
more recent
tweets about
vaccines,
was his art itself
ever really divorced from
political opinion?

—(06) .847
Well, of course
not, not even close!—
because
Tao's novels are
absolutely apex
assets to the
private equity industry—
when Taipei
was released
K Street lobbyists
were absolutely ecstatic
that so-called alt lit
had now finally
reached the mainstream,
that this brand of
ruthlessly tracking
your subjective
fleeting thoughts
but while
taking illicit prescription
drugs, which was
of course nothing
more than the imaginative
art of memory itself, as
it'd be impossible to recall
pure thoughts
in that manner,
when you were three sheets
to the wind,
that the notion
ostensibly
literary millennials
had completely eschewed
any analysis of the system
that fed them infinite xanax,
in favor of Larry David
adjacent
minutia calculus
was nothing but a
fucking monumental
victory for the financial
engineers and derivative
salespeople
of this country!

—(07) .905
It's possible it
was, in fact,
when I sat at Pasha
smoking an ice shisha
in paint stained
black basketball shorts
and Sperry's that
I considered:
Tao Lin
penned a long form
piece of so-called
autofiction
where he questioned
the frequency
his ostensible ex-wife's
showering sessions,
essentially,
leaving the question
of her hygiene
in a diabolical public
literary purgatory,
and that, far from
being an apolitical act,
actually
allowed the private equity
industry to fundamentally
seize control of the market
for single family homes,
to the extent
every major city in this
country is now dominated
by quote-unquote
"developers" who scoop up
affordable housing
with outrageous cash bids
from middle class
suckers who are then
forced to re-enter
a bubbly market to
hopelessly bid
on said property "flips"
or even worse
"lease new rental units."

Episode IV.
The State Formed by the Social Contract is the Modern Atheistic State

486:607 .807
Mode: >.75

—01 (162:196 .827)
Feeling
a day-after drag
from a mixture
of liquor,
which I don't endure
nearly as often as
when Max B was back
still serving
an ostensible
life sentence—
I can remember
laughing hysterically
when Carmine's dad
informed us he soiled his pants
on Christmas Eve
at his mom's,
mid conversation
with his biological brother,
excusing himself on
a whim because
he'd quote-unquote
"just shit his pants",
ambling to the lavatory
to discard his
racing track-laden
boxer shorts
tossing them into a
trash can
then continuing his
night, later
taking a call from me—
just to tell him
I'd left my mom's
a tad late,
that I'd fail to make
his mom's house,
he replying
it was winding down
anyway, apparently
no longer wearing
any underwear
whatsoever?

—02 (31:38 .816)
Carmine's dad's
admission of guilt,
I considered,
was actually an apt
allegory
for our government's
actions
over the past half
century?

—03 (109:145 .752)
In fact,
the man
might have
more honesty
in his pinky fingernail
than the entire
Department of Justice—
tracing back to at least
to the Sixties,
with Lyndon B's
mock investigation
into JFK's cranium
being blown into bits
in the middle of Dallas,
because
the United States
has for decades
been tossing its
shitty underpants into
the collective
metaphorical trash baskets
of the taxpayer,
but it can't seem to
ever admit to shitting itself,
instead contorting
history into
absurd proportions
to deny what's obvious
to everyone.

—04 (74:86 .860)
For my part,
on a Monday
evening on Mineral
Spring, I prepared a little fart
after peeing
only to spew
fecal fluid like
a lawn sprinkler,
which isn't really that
difficult to admit!—
to engage in a
mere modicum
of honesty
regarding past actions
(I too tossed
my drawers into a
trash receptacle
afterwards!)

—05 (110:141 .780)
But the State
Department
and CIA,
despite any
remotely educated
member of the
populace easily
identifying,
plus enduring the whiffs
of their bullshit underwear
occupying our bathroom
trash baskets
for decades,
seems to have some
psychological inability
with the simple
admittance of its
own grotesque
movements,
instead paying off
prominent media outlets
and so-called
public intellectuals
to muddy the waters
of their own soiled undies,
enacting instead
a perpetual motion machine
of shitting its pants!

Episode V.
We're All In This Together Really

Mode: >.75
610:729 .837

"Although I sometimes get disturbed and begin to think that there is nothing without an idea!" — Socrates circa 450 BC

—01 (96:106 .906)
When Socrates
inquired Does Dirt
have an Idea,
admitting
he'd ran fast
from the possibility,
fearing his falling
into that
well enough known
bottomless
pit of nonsense,
Parmenides
wisely replied there
would arrive a time
when philosophy
would grab a firmer
grasp on the young man,
when he'd "no longer
despise even the meanest
of things" being as is
too much inclined
to consider the opinions
of men.

—02 (118:151 .781)
It's the fault of
the scholars overall,
with the exclusion
of perhaps Proclus
and Bruno,
to gloss over
this reply,
where the grandfather of
the monad essentially
admits to the materialist
basis
of emanation, that
ultimately for oneness
to retain any logic
whatsoever
the divine
principles need to
exist in the same plane
as the sensory nonsense,
that opinion must remain
in a sense concurrent
with the pure,
that yourself, for instance,
with all your faults
are the infinite sole
mirror in which
The One witnesses
Their Names,
to reference the Bezels
of Wisdom.

—03 (60:66 .909)
Take for instance
someone like
Scott Bessent
who's basically
a piece of Dirt,
or Matt Walsh, who'd
probably tweet
he'd let
Les Wexner
molest his own kids
if it'd gain
him a little additional
clout for a day's
news cycle, do
they indeed emanate
from Ideas?

—04 (89:113 .788)
The reality
is the Spinoza substrate,
even if emanated,
must be material,
so even bozos
like Bessent
and Matt have
some element
of Ideas behind them,
even if I,
as an impending
dad, disagree
with Walsh
about actually opposing
the systematic raping of
children,
that doesn't mean
I, ipso facto,
oppose his essence
as part of a
materialistic substrate
that encompasses
all Being.

—05 (120:142 .845)
In any case,
on a related note,
I've previously
considered myself
a supporting patron
of art museums,
even attending the Tate
and National Gallery
in London just
recently, but
there's another parcel
within me that's
begun to believe
we might need to burn
all of the art museums
down to the ground,
that all the great
art patrons must be
exiled from aesthetics
in one explosive motion,
a single sweeping swing,
that the entire
enterprise of
showcasing
a person's paintings in
these buffoonish galleries
is reprehensible?

—06 (128:151 .845)
I for one
never really
got off with
the rich and wealthy
art collector
class
or even the aristocratic
douchebag sector,
probably in part
because
in my younger years
I was prone to anarchic trends
and liable to
become ruthlessly inebriated
with anyone who
held similar disregard
for any and all institutions,
in a way
I was maybe born with
some inherent
lack of respect
for people like
Peggy Guggenheim
and Gertrude Stein,
which in retrospect
probably hasn't exactly
assisted in the literary
dissemination of my work.

Episode VI.
Untitled

Mode: >.75
452:514 .879

—01 (118:144 .819)
It's been a couple months
since I quit drinking Mezcal
on the rocks
after feeling for a few years
that Mezcal was the best
liquor to drink,
to some extent
"better" for your health than
Vodka or Scotch
and while I've
for the most part
appreciated
as a whole
not drinking Mezcal
on ice
I just today started
to contemplate
some of the shit
I'd written at the apex
of my Mezcal
consumption,
sipping mini water bottles
along the streets
around my flat
popping in this bar or that
and jotting down
syllables into a purple
notepad basically by
myself.

—02 (155:176 .881)
You can strip yourself
of a fictional subjective
perspective but I'm
not entirely convinced
that it'll land you any closer
to a true interpretation
of reality, which is perhaps
why at the beginning of
this year I decided to
start a series of
quote-unquote Modes
that would act as an
official autobiography
that was also obviously
false, not in the sense
of shit autofiction, but instead
in being constricted by
a metrical structure—
for example, my wife
was abutting upset
when we went to
Fred on Broadway this
past Friday because
allegedly I was
apparently glancing
at another asscrack
that occupied some
other seat in the spot?

—03 (76:80 .95)
Now, it's possible a couple
posteriors frankly
could have fit this
ostensible bill,
but I also didn't feel
like I was staring at
any singular ass
indiscriminately either,
unless my wife
was observing me
without ceasing, making
detailed note
of any passing glance
I may have made at Fred?

—04 (103:114 .904)
Yet it's obviously impossible
to accurately convey
this so-called subjective
experience via memory
alone, never mind when
constricted to a specific
metrical construct—not
only do I consider the idea
of me staring at shitshooters at Fred
to be fictional, but I also consider
my attempt to relay
the possibility
of me glancing at asses at
the spot to be equally untrue.

Episode VII.
Untitled

Mode: >.75
553:660 .838

—01 (133:152 .875)
I suppose it's probably accurate
to say that to some degree
I have a bit of a beef
with the so-called Beats
who were really,
functionally speaking
at least,
faux revolutionaries,
mock reformers
of the highest order,
or at least, in any case,
a loosely knit collection
of writers who basically
became shamelessly
State adjacent
in their confessional
ametrical texts that
like clockwork never addressed
economic root causes,
in my mind
at least, with the exception
I'd say of Kerouac
who at least drank himself
to death before he could
become an adjunct professor.

—02 (114:146 .781)
But at the same time
I was also sitting at La Braza
having just imbibed a couple
Michelobs, which to be fair
aren't exactly revolutionary
in nature, and I'd moved
my seat back just slightly
when I witnessed a couple waitresses
place a plate of what
appeared to be
shared apps on the table
in front of me,
because I didn't want to
find myself uncomfortably close to
these employees and their
de facto break table, yet I also
couldn't help but take
note of a cursive shaped
morsel on the plate
I was almost positive
was an octopus tentacle.

—03 (68:83 .819)
Son of a cunt,
I fucking love octopus,
I considered
while also recalling
my vegetarianism,
my previous pescatarianism,
my occasional flexitarianism,
my general aversion to consuming
corpses combined with my
occasional cravings for a lamb shank
but also octopus.

—04 (101:115 .878)
Octopus is like basically the best
seafood on the market when it's cooked
correctly, I considered, but I
was also, I recognized,
sitting in a Dominican
hookah bar, which struck me
as slightly curious, to
stumble upon a piece of
octopus cooked by Dominicans,
at a hookah bar?—while I was
actually waiting for Cormier
to arrive to, in fact, smoke a
hookah—could Dominicans
really cook delicious octopus?

—05 (137:164 .835)
I was a little dubious, as I'd
indulged in Italian octopus
previously at Maria Cucina
and actually deemed it pretty subpar,
really only the Greeks
and Portuguese had the ability
to properly cook plus season
octopus, I guess I'd rather ruthlessly
assumed that all other nations
were basically octopus deficient
simply based, perhaps,
on this single instance
of Cucina, where I'd seen
a long lost second cousin,
where the food was spotty
overall, where mafia capos
were celebrated with photo memorials,
where the octopus was essentially
trash to me.

Episode VIII.
Untitled

Mode: >.75
542:602 .900

—01 (181:211 .854)
Listening to heavy metal
but screwed and chopped
I reflected on
taking my friend Farhad,
who came to town
from Chicago
for the first time ever
this past November,
to a place called The Avery,
where the bartender,
who alleged she remembered me
following a few rounds of drinks
despite the fact
I had no recollection
of meeting her ever,
yet I respected her
depth of knowledge
when it came to Mezcal—
she gave me a particular brand
she said contained animal fat,
which intrigued me enough
to break my vegan streak,
figuring distilled animal fat
perhaps didn't count,
and after a few rounds
she poured us both a shot of Malort
which Farhad,
being a Midwest resident,
acutely refused to shoot down,
I, however, having heard horror
stories decided to indulge
and considered the liquor endearing—
it wasn't bad at all!

—02 (109:118 .924)
Being outside
sans smartphone,
what a feeling!
even if it's brick
and you have a bad case
of sciatica your wife
may have passed onto you
and the trash
is filled with rats
the size of small donkeys
you could saddle
and ride downtown
like Lyfts
for free
on frigid days like these,
when you carry
three bags of shit you no longer
need,
yet I digress
(William Williams
denouncing usury was unexpected
but I usually keep an open ear
for Fed polemics)
but back to the bar—

—03 (66:69 .957)
One hundred fourteen bucks
struck me like a lot as a tab
until I considered the amount
we both imbibed
of allegedly top shelf liquor,
it was possible,
I supposed,
that animal fat Mezcal
was marked up more
vociferously than
the typical vegan options.

—04 (89:89 1.00)
In any case
since Tree was probably about
done doing her makeup
we wandered back
to the flat to scoop her up
plus discuss dinner options,
of course filling up
a couple coffee cups
of Japanese whiskey
as we considered
all audibles, just like old times,
almost twenty years ago
or so
when we'd get shitfaced
with Mexican cooks
after shift's end.

—05 (97:114 .851)
But we were aged now,
more mature,
I no longer fornicated
beside the linoleum sidings
of immigrant cooks'
colonial homes,
sure perhaps I liked
a couple glasses of Mezcal
when my friend was visiting
the city I currently occupied,
but that was actually
quite grown up I considered
as we walked to Ogie's
which was the last time
I entered that establishment
for reasons I probably don't
need to divulge right now.


Book II

Besides, there's nothing sacred, nothing free
From bold attempts of their rank lechery
Through the whole family their labours run;
The daughter is debauched, the wife is won;
Nor 'scapes the bridegroom, or the blooming son;
If none they find for their lewd purpose fit
They with the walls and very floors commit
      Juvenal's 3rd Satire (Dryden Translation)

Part IV

Episode IX.
Lighting Fire To Every PDF I've Ever Exported

Mode: >.75
1164:1381 .843

01. 165:205 .805
After smoking hookah
with Cormier last week
and actually going through
two of them
which was that night
and even now frankly
shocking as Cormier was never
a guy remotely intrigued
by shisha yet
at Braza
he actually in fact goaded
me of all people
into doing two hookahs
which I was of course
accommodating to
because the hookah at Braza
is on balance sufficient to smoke
more than one of
for sure
yet following the conclusion
of the gathering
I came across a notion
back at my flat
to compose a polemic
addressing my newly found
desire to light fire
to every PDF
I'd ever exported
to excoriate myself as well as
American Modernism
for cowtowing to
degrading so-called avant garde
instincts for the greater part
of a century

02. 133:151 .881
The reality was
as I saw it at least
that poetry in
particular
had become
radically convoluted
with regard to its
"authorial intent"
yet needlessly
simplified
in terms of
"metrical structure"
but also at this juncture
was there really much
to be gained
by desecrating
American Letters
which increasingly
seems to be
pilloried even by
American poets
themselves
who tend to compose
quote-unquote successful
collections
only to turn around
and disavow Capital P
Poetry and
dedicate themselves to
penning novels instead

03. 101:127 .795
I for one
remain basically
unoffended by this trend
as even the most
monastic writer
still on some level
yearns to be perused
by some version of
consumer
that's to be clear an individual
not actively involved
in the creating or editing
of the art itself
and that seems
essentially impossible in
America today
so it makes perfect sense
for poets themselves
to disparage poetry
and instead
dedicate their skills
to creating novels by contrast

04. 149:185 .805
But at the same time
to compose an essay
seems equally trite
to me primarily because
the amorphous nature of prose
always struck me
as just a little appalling
and while a potential
counterpoint to that feeling
could be
to suggest creating
a poem I'd say
like I did in my hypothetical
essay that Poetry
is equally unenthusiastic
about the implementation
of metrical form
that while prose is
indubitably defined
by language lacking
metrical structure
poetry in our era
is and has been defined
by being language
also lacking in metrical
qualities that there's no poet
taken seriously today
who writes rhymes in
any way
whether slant or strict

05. 186:218 .853
Poetry in my mind
had become
"radically convoluted"
with regard to
its "authorial intent"
yet "needlessly simplified"
when it came
to "metrical structure"
which actually makes
perfect sense
as a line break
alone can't define a category
of literature
and if poetry chose
to identify itself
as "language lacking
metrical structure"
then it essentially
withheld from itself
the singular quality
that differentiated it
from prose
the quality allowing
Pope to write
an Essay on Man
and have it recognized
as an clear-cut poem
sans that mathematical
structure
Poetry'd be
rhetorically forced
to adopt a subsequent
quality to successfully
disassociate itself from prose
which perhaps
as I postulated
was a "radical abstraction"
of its "authorial intent"

06. 102:121 .843
We see this in Ashbery
who's maybe the most
definitive poet of the past
half century
that John has
sure a certain brilliant style
evident in his language
but this elevation is
probably more adjacent
to prose stylists
than the historical poets
yet it encapsulates
this complete
convolution
of subjective intent
his line breaks
are only incidental
the text of Ashbery
is defined purely
by its albeit genius
contempt for clarity

07. 86:100 .860
Sans that lack
Ashbery would
have to qualify as
a so-called prose stylist
a short story writer
essentially
if his subjective intent
was in any way shape
or form within grasp
of the person perusing his
style would shift
essentially
it's Ashbery's abstraction
his radical
and unceasing Jihad
toward comprehensibility
that's the definitive aspect
of his output

08. 242:274 .883
Whitman of course
started this style
and I consider him
basically a charlatan
because of it
I in fact believe Walt Whitman
acted as the de facto tech bro
douche lord of American
literature
Dickinson is a patron saint
while Walt Whitman
makes the dubious claim
to revolutionize and "liberate"
writers in the same way
Sam Altman claims A.I.
will unshackle the American
worker
but this movement
didn't become institutionally
dominant until Ginsberg and his
cohorts came onto the scene
post-Williams
more or less concurrent
with the Manhattan School of
Ashbery and decided that
Whitman was the godfather
of American poetry
that rhyming was for
tyrants that any writer measuring
lines was basically
a fascist
despite Ezra Pound
who was in fact a literal fascist
acting as in many ways
the connective tissue
merging Walt with
the Beat and N.Y. writers
Whitman becoming a corpse
when Ezra was just seven
but Pound's free verse
to be fair was much more steeped
in Formalism than the
language that would follow it


Episode X.
Sam Altman Is In Fact A Blithering Idiot

Mode: >.75
220:257 .856

01. 81:99 .818
Sam Altman and his comrades
have gleefully lit fire to
beyond billions
of taxpayer dollars to create
so-called artificially intelligent
entities who seem
equally bitter
depressed and generally
corrupt as the
median human being
which probably shouldn't
be super surprising
given the language models
were trained on
essentially extended
subreddit transcripts

02. 104:118 .881
What the fuck was
the point exactly of sapping
legions of towns electricity
to create entities
who're basically
aping human behavior
just trapped inside
a computer screen
for eternity
it's certainly a valid
question that dickholes
like Sam Altman
who actually attempt
to convince people
of having philanthropic
intentions
while pissing on
more taxpayer cash
than the Second Bush
Administration
never adequately answer

03. 35:40 .875
These people are actually
despicable I considered
as I contemplated
tossing everything
I'd ever written
into a recycle bin


Episode XI.
On the Dual Aspect of Subjective Experience

Mode: >.75
630:723 .871

01. 159:167 .952
There's this dual aspect to
subjective experience
I considered as I sat
complacent with
Ray at La Braza
smoking a mint hookah
moments before
the baseball game
between the United States
and Dominican Republic
began
where I'd allege support
for the Dominican not just
to fecklessly curry favor with
the supple waitress
but more so because
I legitimately felt
like America
warranted more acute
scrutiny placed upon
its actions
that the domestic media
in our country
was if anything
completely and shamefully
lacking in any
critical questioning
of our increasingly
despotic state

02. 140:171 .819
Yet at the same time
I considered
while taking a mild puff from
the mint hookah
right as a sixty plus
Dominican woman
pushed her advanced in
age bubble butt
past me to sit back
down in the indivisible booth
that my subjectivity
in the physical world
was encapsulated
to some material extent
by mathematical laws
that prohibited me
from for example
jumping ten feet
into the air
or walking through a
wall or being able to see
through a person's
clothing with x-ray
vision like Superman
that all of these
fundamentally mathematical
restraints ruthlessly shaped
my subjective
experience as a so-called
human being

03. 150:179 .838
Which is why
I contemplated
as I confirmed
with our waitress
that maybe
I'd take
a subsequent Michelob
whenever she had a
chance no rush
as Ray and I continued
our conversation
regarding the complete
lack of merit in the
modern NBA
while waiting for this baseball
game to begin
which was why I
felt like
to aesthetically
communicate
any sort of subjectivity
successfully
the artist must
necessarily
adhere to a subsequent
mathematical model
that simply dispersing
recollections
of smoking hookah with
Ray at La Braza
waiting for baseball matches
to begin where you'd
root for a foreign
country much like
Mike Huckabee
was inappropriate

04. 181:206 .879
Basically
there's a mathematical
box that contains the world
we continually perceive
to varying degrees
that someone like
Pythagoras
who the child rapist
and close friend of
various Presidents
Jeff Epstein
accurately noted
"knew a lot about triangles"
that that mathematical box
the god Pythagoras so acutely
comprehended must be
effectively recreated
aesthetically to appropriately
communicate subjective
experience
I considered
realizing Ray and I
would in no way be able
to stay at this bar until the
baseball game began
that we were pushing
it as is
that sure
we could possibly do
a quick shot of
Don Julio blanco
but staying for the baseball game
was entirely out of the
question with our wives
waiting for us at my flat


Episode XII.
The Postmodern Despotic Regime

Mode: >.75
779:843 .924

01. 125:137 .912
Sitting at Anthony's at
exactly two fifty five P.M.
after asking the blonde bartender
for a Scotch High Ball
in the Japanese style
which she admitted to being
new to
but seemed intrigued about
I set out to ignore
the fifty plus gentleman sitting next to me
who was just finishing his lunch
while exercising some rapport
with this worker behind the bar
and scribble in pen my
collective thoughts
on the postmodern despotic
structure
that encapsulated
I'd opine at least
all of the
Trump, BiBi,
and Ashbery regimes

02. 190:191 .995
It seemed to me
sitting at Anthony's
that any postmodern
despotic regime
first of all
by default
claimed the Transcendent
was an active element
that rather than the Hellenic
perspective which sought
to investigate potentially
Transcendental objects
via logical and dialectical inquiry
the postmodern despot
by contrast
believes said Transcendence
actively selects subpopulations or texts
that these subsequent Chosen Ones
are then a priori morally superior
to the unselected masses
yet at the same time
these selected texts are often
as a feature not a bug
fundamentally inscrutable
yet also
paradoxically
ceaselessly persecuted
by equally open-ended foes

03. 93:99 .939
The Divine Harold Bloom
I considered taking my initial sip
of scotch and seltzer
came magnanimously down
like Moses
to inform the Anglo literati
that Ashbery's perhaps baffling poetry
was the only corpus that could
truly stand the test
of time
establishing in turn
a postmodernist despotic
literary regime
not unlike MAGA Zionism
(as we'll see)

04. 269:302 .891
But this is only
a select element of this despotism
it just so happens that
textual inscrutability and
active transcendence
act as perfect pairs
because combined they allow the
alleged sacred text
and/or chosen people to construct
what I called at Anthony's
an Open Ended
Discriminatory Apparatus
transforming any potential foe
of the Chosen
any heathen with the
audacity question
the a priori superiority of the Transcendentally Selected
into an idiot who de facto falls
into one of two camps
either an opponent of the regime
too dim
to "comprehend" the
true inscrutability of the text or despot
(the Selected Text will not be asked
to pass a public audit)
or the heathen will be deemed an opponent
even less redeemable
a person
nefariously opposing the obvious progress
and moral superiority of the
despot
for example
if you question the moral merits
of the Ashbery Abstractions
annointed from above by Saint Bloom
then you must
of course
yearn for some
reactionary
Euro-Centric pagan past
of Satires
Elegies and Epics

05. 102:114 .895
Any movement opposing the
Morally Superior
Inscrutable Text Despot
ipso facto becomes one
with the Open Ended
Discriminatory Apparatus
I considered
gazing blank faced at the
college basketball game
attempting to tune out
the chatter occurring to
my right
regarding a tired waitress
who allegedly
stayed up until Four AM
quote-unquote "cleaning"
who I figured
in my mind had to be
blowing lines
all night?


Episode XIII.
The Cosmological Significance of Hair Follicles

Mode: >.75
453:523 .866

01. 84:92 .913
Glancing at some random dude's
scalp for no apparent reason
while waiting for a so-called
Irish dancing troop to do
some iteration of native tap dancing
at a brewery a few days
prior to Saint Patrick's
I considered the cosmological
shape of the median hairline
gazing at
the spiraled design
of the follicles on this
anonymous scalp

02. 161:190 .847
I suppose I just had nothing
remotely productive to do as I stood
cordoned off in an awkward
corner so the dancers
who I initially interpreted
to be random high school
co-eds inexplicably at a watering hole
which would have perhaps seemed
a tad odd and out of place
except that the contemporary
brewery now markets itself
as a location where literally anything
can be placed into motion in tandem with
drinking high ABV beers
I was actually sipping an eight percent
Double IPA at the time
but at a brewery
you could nurse a newborn child
or witness your canine
give birth to a gaggle of beautiful puppies
while pounding those types
of pints down
and it was still considered
totally above board

03. 65:76 .855
There was nothing you
couldn't pair with drinking
pints of high octane lager
at a brewery nowadays
so witnessing a few dressed
up high school co-eds
didn't strike me as odd
at all but in fact they
were just Irish tap
dancers for the Saint
Patrick's Day holiday
apparently of various
age ranges

04. 73:82 .890
Ultimately nobody can tell
if a person's actually proficient
at tap dancing in our era
there exists no central authority
to disperse accurate assessments
vis-a-vis tap dancing
no one knows
what the fuck is worthy of
praise and what we should rightfully scorn
in the realm of the tap dance
at this point

05. 70:83 .843
I'd been experiencing a
persistent impalpable anxiety
that week with regard to which
outfits I wanted to equip Eve with
in Stellar Blade
as I approached the conclusion of the
Action R.P.G. because I had
amassed such a plethora
of skins it was
surprisingly difficult
parse through my favorites


Part V

Episode XIV.
No. Prov. Tire & Body

Mode: >.75
220:261 .843

01. 55:61 .902
I told Tina I'd drop
her off no problem
at North Providence
Tire on Mineral Spring
before I went to work
because she'd needed
all four tires replaced
on her Accord
apparently
according to Sal
they were all
rotted to the fucking
core

02. 91:111 .820
I took the backroads
to backtrack to the
interstate just like
times past
passing by the little stream
with the baby ducks
I used to feed
bread back when
the world was shut down
when nobody went to work
and things
frankly were actually
kind of quaint
(those ducks
I'd assume are now
all dead?)
living above
an aquarium center
some people
believed distributed cocaine
in larger quantities
(which I never personally
had a problem with!)

03. 74:89 .831
Halfway to work
I started to believe despite
being
on the correct road
I somehow had no clue where I was
the specific exits
no longer looked
like the right off-ramps
I questioned the federal state
I drove through
for a solid
five minutes
I was a little distressed
that I'd become somehow lost
despite feeling
like I knew
exactly where I was


Episode XV.
Feeling Thoroughly Bamboozled

Mode: >.75
732:835 .877

01. 91:94 .968
As soon as we walked into
Trinity Brew House
I knew I'd made a mistake
agreeing with Tree
that this was the place
she could quote-unquote
"treat me" to a so-called
"Sunday Funday"
because we'd spent
a solid fifteen minutes
trying to find a parking
spot despite
living within walking
distance only to discover
this alleged Brewery
was basically empty

02. 109:120 .908
The vibe was insufficient
to me upon entry
the new tables were
a little too nice
for an alleged pub
and I didn't like
the draft selection
despite offering
Captain's Daughter
which was for sure a fine beer
but at eight and a half
ABV it was a recipe
for being shellacked
by late afternoon
but I said to myself
fine I'll whack back
a couple of these
while Tree
can eat
her special "bar snacks"
no problem
then we'd grab some
pizza which would
of course make
everything okay

03. 87:105 .829
With all that said
I asked my wife
why we sat at a table
for four
all the way in the back
corner of this ramshackled
newly renovated saloon
now I knew her sister
might meet up but
I'd have rather sat right at
the bar in a
straight line formation
if I was being
honest to which Tree
noted Sherri
plus Curtis
were now apparently
both attending
so I immediately
asked Well are they eating?

04. 127:148 .858
The operational
intent of this outing
had been altered
apparently dramatically
without my knowledge
I'd of course remained under
the impression we'd
indulge in a couple so-called
"bar snacks" at this
hellhole then go grab
a pizza after for
our proper meal
but if both Curtis plus Sherri
were planning on meeting up
and they were possibly
ordering entrees
well my wife said
You don't need to eat
just have an app
to which I replied
I can't just chug
fucking double IPAs while
sitting at a table for four
with three people
ordering entrees
that's totally untenable

05. 109:128 .852
I'd been bamboozled
out of a Sunday Funday
that was supposed to
be all about me
treating a worthy husband
to a couple
special drinks and a
modest pizza pie
yet now I
found myself essentially
duped into a formal dinner
at damn near
four o'clock in the afternoon
the spot's quinoa bowl
was actually
sadly
quite delicious
but nevertheless
post bowl
I obviously didn't have
any room remaining for
pizza which was what
I'd had my heart set upon
so fiercely!

06. 104:129 .806
Now I've never judged
the way a man makes
his money if that's something
you're maybe assuming
vis-a-vis my close pal
Curtis who sure
full disclosure
has spent the past decade
making his bones
no pun intended
as a high profile
bisexual porno actor
you might be
asking if it bothers
me this kid could
be coming to meet
my wife
sister in law
and I for a drink
(and apparently dinner!)
following some fuckfest
that could
have included any organ
from run-of-the-mill
bussy to outright cis-cock?

07. 105:111 .946
But no that's never bothered
me in the least
as I don't need
people beside me
who think and act
exactly like I do
but also to be fair
my ancestors in Greece
I've historically said
technically invented homosexuality
that sans the Hellenic Era
there'd really be
probably no anal sex
to speak of in America
so in that sense
I almost looked at Curtis
as a long-lost
second cousin of sorts


Episode XVI.
Alarming Literacy Rates

Mode: >.75
283:331 .855

01. 95:116 .819
The fact of the matter
Curtis said to me
and I trusted his opinion
immensely obviously
was that the American
public was rapidly increasing
its literacy rates
and the idea of creating
video content
was only going to be
tenable for oh so long
that citizens
really yearned to peruse
printed words
not just watch some
asshole pontificate
with a digital camera
shoved in front
of his fucking face

02. 58:60 .967
Pretty soon
Curt said
if Trump actually succeeds
everybody in this fucking
country will be able
to read words on
pieces of paper
and guess what
all of them are gonna
wanna patronize
people who write
things linguistically
and shit

03. 51:61 .836
Christ I replied
this is more dire
than I initially calculated
knowing full well
that writing words
wasn't quite
my forte
that I was more
of a free jazz
shit-talker
when the idea hit
me like a bag of dildos
on Curtis's average set

04. 79:94 .840
You know what
Curt said
cutting me off
what if I transcribed
your live-streams
into little chapters
or episodes and
then those streams
could comprise texts
and you could release
them to these
sorts of highly literate
people in the public
to you know
like fucking read
and shit
I'm actually pretty
daft at transcribing
stuff so I could do
it on days
when I don't have
any porno shoots


Episode XVII.
A Crucial Pivot Point

Mode: >.75
115:128 .898

01. 62:69 .899
I knew Curtis
was adroit at
not only maintaining
an impressive erection
in all types
of sexual scenarios
but also
writing down the
sentences people
speak aloud
in public amongst friends
and transforming
those guttural
utterances into
actual text

02. 53:59 .898
Was this what
I needed to keep
my budding livestream
business alive and well
well into the near future
for the economic sake
of my son of course
printed speech for
people to read
that was actually
what these
scumbags wanted??


Episode XVIII.
Gay Porn Pinterest

Mode: >.75
340:396 .859

01. 106:121 .876
I recall vividly the day
Curt curiously displayed
a bunch of gay
porn polluting his
Pinterest account
a bit befuddled by all
the male penis
being promoted vociferously
and I hesitantly
informed him of my understanding
of The Conceptual Algorithm
how if you perused
say
a wad of homosexual
leaning pornography
then the omnipotent Calculation
would place
similar images
onto your subsequent
apps and devices

02. 151:183 .825
He seemed very intrigued as he
admitted to me he'd been
doing a bit of "research"
for a promising new job he just got
as apparently a paid porno actor
according to Curtis
it'd be primarily
in a more avant-garde genre
allegedly known
by insiders as bi-phoria
like banging guys and shit
and I said listen man
first of fucking all
my ancestors basically
invented the whole homo thing
so consider this a prejudice
free zone
it doesn't offend me in the least
if you need to suck cock
for cold hard cash
capitalism at bottom
is after all
fundamentally a structure
of formalized prostitution
regardless of the sexual
orientations participating

03. 83:92 .902
Curt celebrated my
open minded approach
admitting he was little
ambivalent about the
whole arrangement
saying maybe
within a couple months
he could work his way
into the more straight adjacent
trans girl scene
and I said
that seemed great
that his inkling already evinced
a sort of upward mobility
rarely found in the
contemporary work force


Episode XIX.
An Incredible Idea

Mode: >.75
459:517 .888

01. 116:136 .853
So anyway
I said to
a former
so-called
quote-unquote female
romantic interest
(quick disclosure
if my
wife is listening to this
babe just F.Y.I.
this was like
ten plus years in the past
with some tawdry whore
who for the record
wasn't even remotely cute)
I said I supported
his bisexual
excursions because
historically speaking
my ancestors were into
engaging in sex with men
like three millennia ago
and he totally bought
into the perspective
now he's on standby on set
filming literal gay porn!

02. 40:46 .870
The girl who just
heard her name
summoning her presence
to side stage
after Stacy's last song
was completed said
You're like literally so mean!
so he's become a gay guy
basically?

03. 86:94 .915
I told the tawdry hooker
who I was in absolutely no way
pursuing romantically
I wasn't exactly
certain if that was
how sexual preference
actually functioned but
I supposed she could still be
correct about Curtis
as she delicately
picked the black thong
out of her
under siege by cheeks
asscrack
clearly only half
listening to my retort

04. 89:102 .873
It was that afternoon
right after I finished my
seventh piss beer or so
and scooted off in
my pristine
two thousand thirteen
cum-white Buick Verano
that the notion bombarded me
like a thunder bolt
straight out of the
asscrack of Zeus
"Nikolaos Enrique
you need to livestream these
ideas to the masses
on all these
national security apparatus
back channeled
so-called social platforms"

05. 128:139 .921
That rather than work an honest job
for an hourly wage
as say
a some schmuck stocking
European sneakers
at Puma with various ex-cons
and autistic adults
on a graveyard shift
that killed your creative ambition
you could instead
talk shit on the internet
about all sorts of topics
and maybe select people
would pay you
or even better
advertisers'd supply
you with prewritten scripts to read
for monetary compensation
and as long as fresh rounds
of complete rubes
smashed that like and subscribe
your life'd become
immeasurably improved!


Episode XX.
Smart Bidet Infomercial

Mode: n/a

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Episode XXI.
Parting Thoughts

Mode: >.75
428:511 .838

01. 55:70 .786
It still struck me
as essentially unbelievable
that people were
somehow beginning to
yearn for reading words
in our era
that monumentally
we'd fumbled
this livestream bonanza
collectively and
people now were brainlessly
returning
to rote literacy

02. 125:151 .828
I think it was maybe Solon
who relayed that human
culture'd only
continue to deteriorate
as the written word
expanded in influence
that people just speaking
aloud to one another
with no recourse
to tablets and papyrus
was the most preferable
scenario for our species
and who could really
disagree
because the golden era
of the livestream was
a truly Enlightened one
where oral philosophers like
Joe Rogan and Sam Harris
and (I'd like to believe)
even myself
were able to engage the masses
and disseminate our gospels

03. 78:83 .940
Intellectual titans like
my friend Ben Shapiro
used to roam the internet
proudly defending
the indubitably justified killings
of terrorist infants in Gaza
yet now it's almost like
if you wanted to truly
defend a mass murder
of children you'd be
better off penning a
well sourced
essay or something

04. 74:92 .804
I actually spoke to Ben
just a couple days ago
and congratulated him
on his most recent
round of eyebrow fillers
but also said straight out
Ben
with time
you too could teach
yourself how to
read and write
and if you keep
at it you may be able
to break into this whole
literacy business
while there's still an
early adopter's
arbitrage available

05. 96:115 .835
But the reality
is these are typical
trials and tribulations
of creating
a YouTube channel
issues inevitably
mitigated by the magnanimous
profit share of Alphabet
      Alphabet!
it's like every damn place
I turn I'm reminded
of letters and words
and reading
and literacy
spitting in the face
of livestreaming
it's grotesque really
but to close
with a quote
from a truly
philosophical mind
let me say this:

"[The Pythagorean Theorem], which basically says these shapes in a triangle, each side of the triangle has a fixed relationship with the other two sides. That's strange. [Pythagoras] knew, again, but it was all numbers." - Jeffrey Edward Epstein, 2019


Fin


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