Posts Tagged David Foster Wallace
NaNo Etude 6 – Essay Time, Ha Ha
Today, all of the goo came pouring down through the top of my head. It became friendly with my throat. These moments when the dust floats off the blinds, the ear buds are blasting my brain, and my brain goes away. Far away. I want to write words that make people feel the way I feel when I hear my favorite music. This is what I want, keep wanting, want more than anything, and if I found it, I’d quit everything else and write, write, write for the rest of my days.
Stupid ass.
Words are limited, intentionally limited. Words aren’t meant to represent the spiritual. They can only point to the spiritual, and if you asked me to point to something spiritual, I would look at you with screwed-up eyebrows.
My hero said that fiction should be about what it’s like to fucking live. I love that inclination, especially for the 21st Century, but I will never be capable of doing what he did. Should I try? I suppose. It gives me a sense of purpose, but that goo tells me that I’m fooling myself. I’ve been fooling myself for decades. I feel as though I can do it, but it won’t come out. It’s stuck in the goo, the green goo of a stupid ass.
Dear IRS Man, I Made a Mistake (And So Did My Accountant)
Image via Wikipedia
DEAR IRS MAN, I MADE A MISTAKE (AND SO DID MY ACCOUNTANT)
(A) In general.
A business entity that is not classified as a corporation
under section 301.7701-2(b)(1), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7), or (8) (an eligible entity)
can elect its classification
for federal tax purposes [No Shit]
as provided in this section.
An eligible entity with at least two members can elect to be classified
as either an association
(and thus a corporation under section 301.7701-2(b)(2))
or a partnership,
and an eligible entity with a single owner can elect to be classified
as an association
or to be DISREGARDED [really?]
as an entity separate from its owner.
Paragraph (b) of this section provides a default
classification for an eligible entity
that does not make an election.
Thus, elections are necessary only when an eligible
entity chooses to classified initially as other than the default
classification or when an eligible entity
chooses to change
its classification. An entity
whose classification is determined
under the default
classification retains that classification
(regardless of any changes in the members’
liability
that occurs
at any time
during the time
that the entity’s
classification is relevant as defined in paragraph (d)
of this section) [end of parenthetical, remember line 24?]
until the entity makes an election to change that classification
under paragraph (c )(1)
of this section.
Paragraph (c ) of this section provides rules
[Haven’t we had enough F’in rules by now?]
for making express elections. Paragraph (d)
of this section provides special rules for foreign eligible entities
[The IRS nails nails you no matter where you are in the world!].
Paragraph (e ) of this section
provides
special rules [special stinky sauce]
for classifying entities resulting from partnership terminations
and divisions
under section 708(b). Paragraph (f) of this section
sets forth [in stone]
the effective date of this section [which section were we in?]
and a
special rule [what do you know?]
relating to prior periods. . . .
Couches and TV’s and Machines
In David Foster Wallace‘s The Pale King, the character becomes aware of how bad his nihilism is when he becomes aware that he is sitting on a couch, watching “As the World Turns,” and on every commercial, which happen quite frequently, the television man announces “You are watching ‘As the World Turns.'” The multiple layers of rich irony are too rich as Wallace himself points out. I was reading and realized that’s how I sit too, but I am such a nihilist, I don’t even make the choice to be a nihilist – Someone who truly doesn’t exist in a world that doesn’t exist.
I don’t watch soap operas. I love to watch race cars go round and round or wind their way here and there on road courses and rather than admit I’m doing nothing, I pretend and feel as though I am spectating great human drama and am gaining great insight into the nature of man and his machines. I never get to use this insight, so I presume I am doing nothing.
Painting Tedium
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We recently painted the living room. Since then, I open the book I’m reading and after reading for a while, I imagine painting over the page with a dark paint. It is as if this imagined act awakens me. I ask why this keeps happening. Does the book lull me to a semi-conscious state, and in that state, do I want to wipe it from my life? The book happens to have tedium as a main topic. Why can’t I stay awake? Why does my mind want me to be a painter? I presume it is because I don’t understand words.
Mark Your Wins, Boys!
Push, push, push! C’mon, boys! I live flat in a culture of ineptitude and watch others who live high drama. I want high drama, but I can’t stand losing. I never lose, but I never win. I could survive a meltdown, but I can’t stand losing. C’mon, boys! I am so lifeless without any competition, you might as well assign me a number, like 925768931, and watch me nine-to-five through a drollness until I fall dead in employee parking.
Failing My Way Into Monday
Posted by Carl in Essays, Finding Purpose on March 1, 2011
George Washington said, “Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.”
I read this in one of my many e-mail subscriptions as I was plunging into a Monday with a natural, persistent, heavy despondency from a deep and unknowable source. (It was a despair like the many of the past days, weeks, and months, like the one David Foster Wallace describes: “The word’s overused and banalified now, despair, but it’s a serious word, and I’m using it seriously. For me it denotes a simple admixture — a weird yearning for death combined with a crushing sense of my own smallness and futility that presents as a fear of death.”) How many times did I read this quotation, Washington’s, not Wallace’s, early this morning before the sun started to assail our dirty living room window, before I finally understood in my dim-witted fashion that not only am I a failure because of my diseases but I am a moral failure. A fucking moral failure. (Please excuse my language – this is serious.) I tried to reverse the nouns several times, but the conclusion is the same.
I’ve always wanted to be a man of integrity, a man Read the rest of this entry »
Bootstraps I Can Pull
Tomorrow Will Never Come
Yet early, opportunities abound.
Humming or moaning through loosened teeth.
Head is withering and banking with spirit, left and right.
Emptiness crawls through eyes that are ready for lively green.
Where does this come from, this sliver of light?
Hope. Tomorrow may well be smooth survival.
Tomorrow, hands will go out often and with warmth as offerings.
Some I encounter will take away experience and found hope. Joy.
I will play the part in the hospital, covered with creamy white petals.
Steadily inform the operators that I must get back to my hapless life.
People are counting on me. Ha-ha, tee-hee, ho-ho.
But tonight I am allowed to read the most delicious stuff.
Late to the game, but I thought I might submit this for One Shot Wednesday. Check out the fine art over there!
The Paralyzing Fear of Truth
Posted by Carl in Essays, Finding Purpose on January 8, 2011
This is another in the Who I Want to Be series, which seems to have gained a weekly rhythm. It’s a bit long, but if you are interested in pursuit of truth over the power of emotions and the pursuit of rationality over existential fatalism, it might prove interesting.
I’ve been thinking about the topic of truth for three solid days, a very complicated type of truth. This began with R telling B1 and me that B1 has no problem with seeing the truth even when she has powerful emotions; whereas, my emotions tend to be my truth. My natural reaction is a defensive one, to claim that there is no way that I am an emotional animal. I want to believe that I am smart enough not to let my emotions run my life or ruin my life. I’m smart enough to know that my emotions are only a psycho-physical reaction to how I perceive the world. My perceptions and the subsequent emotions can be various shades of right or wrong, but I can’t control them. I can control my reaction to the emotions.
R asked me and B1 the same question, “Do you think you can control whether or not you fall in love?” B1 answered quite quickly that she could. Read the rest of this entry »
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