See Rock City! The Heartbeat Of America! Today's Chevy Truck fights terrorism!

I need a vacation. Badly. With thoughts of said "vacation", completely unattainable, dancing in my head for no good reason , I decided to Google the one place I know would be a decent day's trip and also encapsulate my redneck youth, something I could technically consider "research" for my memoir...

rock city!

For those of you who don't have a Southern United States redneck past nipping at your heels, this is a brief description of the "wonders of SEEING ROCK CITY", note that it means seeing as an act you are doing not that the rock city itself is seeing because they are ROCKS they don't see a GOT DAMN THING SON, from the seerockcitydotcom website:

Start your morning with a biscuit and hot coffee at the Big Rock Grill. Journey along the Enchanted Trail through the Grand Corridor. Follow the stone path that winds through massive rock boulders. Each step is a discovery!

Thread yourself through the amazing Needle's Eye, shoulder-to-shoulder with tall boulders that allow only slivers of sunlight to penetrate the shadows. Listen to the hush of nature where cardinals and finches flutter. Will you cross the thrilling Swing-A-Long Bridge or rock-solid Stone Bridge? Either choice rewards you with awesome views.

Cast your wish upon the 140-foot High Falls. See if you can spot the Stone Face, keeping watch over the Chattanooga Valley and Missionary Ridge. Stand mightily upon world-famous Lover's Leap or Eagle's Nest and wrap yourself in the magnificent view. Remember to stop by our Gift Shop and buy a world-famous See Rock City birdhouse!

now, pictures:

THIS IS A PICTURE OF AN ELF GNOME THING.



THIS IS AMERICA! AND ALSO JESUS!



FALLOPIAN TUBES? NOPE, A MAP OF "LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN, GA"



America, Freedom, and the free market all slumber inside these:



In the early days, Colonial Buford C Butternutt of the Southern Fried Order of Hominy and Grits Incorporated, named "rock city" the 9th wonder of the world. they took another count, killed some folks, and suddenly it moved up a notch!



THIS IS SO MUCH FUN YOU GUYS I CAN SEE A SAMMICH DOWN THERE!



"we came here to save our marriage by doing furries, apparently"





Also, wasn't ruby falls, like, just a tap-water fountain with rave lights? We only had the $$$ to actually go to *that* part of the tour once in my youth, and I don't remember it looking like this:



which is something I'd expect, like, Jill to photoshop Bono jumping out of.

Anyway. I want to go to Rock City again is all I'm saying.
Continued...

Debate thoughts upon waking

I am reading so much about last night, and I don't understand anyone, especially folks on my big blue socialist side of the fence, who think Obama scored some sort of massive, knock-down drag-out victory.

He proved again that he is who he is and who we've fallen in love with: someone brilliant, thoughtful, an engaging speaker and an orator on-par with the best of them. However, it's reaching out into hayseed America that wants blood, white and blue, because this is 'merica and 'merica is 'merica, who only respond to teeth and claws. Mccain is psy-fucking-chotic, and, yeah, by just refusing to press his buttons and staying cool, calm, and collected, even being overly humanist, Obama let some of Mccain's frankenweenie tendencies shine through. but how, how how how, did they come to a middle-ground that is that America, as a country, is SAFER than it was years ago on ACCOUNT OF the massive government invasions of privacy into our everyday lives? Obama, this is NOT what we stand for, we're better than this and you know it.

Grace is a simple, beautiful and powerful force, and Obama applied it last night in debating a human being while John Mccain acted like Grandpappy Sourmilk. Yes yes yes, we know there was no eye contact from Diaperville to the Hope-Train, but haystack America? The folks who play "born in the u.s.a" at weddings graduations funerals church sunday suppers and have never once realized Springsteen's blood beats as blue as the fucking ocean? They don't respond to gestures, to the theater of politics. they need words, bold ones and not big ones. And Obama's still just pandering to those of us who are fucking going to vote for him anyway.

Now, I hold out hope for two things. thing 1: bama and Uncle Longpants have two more rounds. I'm hoping that, like the drama geek he is, Obama's setting John up for a massive fucking "WTFEV, go on HOME, pappa warbreath, your bedtime's long since come and gone" trouncing in the next two, maybe even leading up to a "bitch, PLEASE" in the final debate when Mccain's like "OH HAI GUYZ I CAN HAZ PEEE OWWWE DOUBLEWE!?!?!" (one of the best moments of the night: "fool, shut your whore trap. i have a fucking bracelet too").

The second, and honestly this remains regardless: Biden vs Palin. Oh GOD THAT WILL BE AMAZING. I hope she brings a puppy, a stick of dynamite and three unwed 16 year old mothers-to-be as back up, she'll need them.


Continued...

On David Foster Wallace, or Something I'm Unqualified To Write

David Foster Wallace is dead, and on the floor by the bed lays my copy of Infinite Jest, unloved since I first bought it when I thought that, maybe one day, I'd fall in love with someone who'd be attracted to me solely for my owning the book.

Fortunately, that didn't come to pass. What did come to pass, however, last night, as I too-drunkenly and too-full thumbed my way through the pages, is the stark and utter realization that things like this happens. Great minds expire in a puff of smoke. And this, this happening on the same day I first turned the first page in the first Amy Hempel book I ever picked up, only to, two pages later, have to throw the book on the floor from the inability to not shake from the fucking beauty her sentences unleash in the world.

Someone comes to town, someone leaves town-that, apparently, is how it goes.


DFW's non-fiction and short stories had placed him in my top 10, with Infinite Jest being that work that always hung around, that was always on the bookshelf but had never made it any closer to the bedside, if only because the time was just never there. I feel like it's a neglected friend now that I'm supposed to say a few kind words about when the neglecting had been entirely my fault. That's insane, I fucking know, but if you don't have personal relationships with your books I don't understand you and would rather not try to.

I spent last night drunk, seeking consolation from the cold stark-bare minimalism of Amy Hempel's "at the gates of the animal kingdom" stories (thank you Mister Palahniuk for that), finding nothing but bones and limbs and this

"I want him to know what it clearly seems to me: that if it's true your life flashes past your eyes before you die, then it is also the truth that your life rushes forth when you are ready to start to truly be alive."

A friend's blog reminded me about the existence of Dear Mr Henshaw, and how I desperately want to read that book again. It was always a favorite of mine since long before I could understand what it meant-everyone comes from mire and muck, there's hope nowhere unless you find it-and it seems about right right now.

I've had several people-old colleagues, etc-tell me how DFW's death being suicide has placed him in questionable status for them, for their students, for his students, for anyone who looked up to him. I recognize that, I do. I won't get into a dissection of suicide, other than to say that there's not a person who can say they've never thought of it. No one. Not a soul. But there's a difference...thought vs action...and it's his work that's going to live on, as Infinite Jest continues to stare up at me from the floor by my bedside.

I will find the time.
Continued...

Oh Tori, Where Art Thou?

Dear Tori Amos:

WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU? No, really, I know that you were last seen sporting a trash bag on loan from Missy Elliot and signing comic books inspired by what happens when artists listen to ecstasy and take Boys For Pele…or, wait, maybe it’s the other way around. Anyway, you’ve been M.I.A. in a way that only she should be, but even Maya Arulpragasam’s been more up in my face this election year, talking about “blop blop” and “pow pow” and probably something about Mr Plow, also, cause that’s his name, that name again is Mister Plow...



(L-R: some guy, some guy, a woman, Tori and her Hefty Synch-Sack, Some Guy, Baseball cap dude)
Regardless:

SARAH FUCKING PALIN. I know you’ve heard of her, Trans-Am. I know you have. She’s from a state so boring even Sufjan Stevens refuses to write a song about it, she wouldn’t let her daughter have an abortion even if the baby was conceived via rape, and, oh, yeah, she thinks doing public or community service work is for “pigeon-toed sissywhackers ( I may be misquoting).



(l-r: A bunch of guys named Njord or Thor or Thjord, Sarah Palin, more guys named Fnjord)
That’s the sort of utter and complete assbag insanity that would normally have you frothing at the mouth, Tee-Aim. Isn’t this where you hop on some platform, either Letterman or Leno or something fat dude with a lisp in a baby blue/black ringer tee three sizes too small who writes for a fanzine called “Breakfast Every Hour”** or “Civilized Syllabub”*** or “Freakish Pancake Amistad”**** clutching a voice recorder, a pen and a doll he made from scraps of your hair he gathered over the course of sneaking backstage approximately five hundred and seventy two times in the past six years (and he can tell you about each and every time-what shoes you were wearing, how many choc-o-nana-crispies he had to bribe the guards with, whether or not you played “leather”…and you always played “leather”), and start spouting complete and utter nonsense that ends up with deep, passionate truth attributed to it out of sheer and utter incoherence? Stuff like “if I was a tigress, that bitch would be a panda cub and in my safari…no, no, listen…in *my* safari, we eat the flesh. We. Eat. The. Flesh” or “It’s like the state of ketchup being met with a ice cream float on a tuesday…and I will not stand for anything less than a hamburger. We have to protect our sundaes, and our meats, before the convenience-stand vendors in power begin coleslawing through the milk chocolate.” Or something like that.



(Hey Y’all Tori Amos dressed like a sheep once)
WHERE ARE YOUR POLITICAL QUOTABLES, Tiggity-T? where is your “I would set fire to that bitch’s igloo with the pom-pom in my wampum”? I GREW UP THINKING THAT THE ONLY OPINION THAT MATTERED WAS YOURS, which is why i care SO MUCH ABOUT ICE CREAM FLAVORS, SHOES, and LED ZEPPELIN. In what could possibly be the most important, at least the most memorable, election of my generation’s lives, I want to hear you mutter completely senseless but partially and almost-epically brilliant noun/verb/wild animal/clothing store half-phrases that both empower and befuddle.



(optional caption 1: “KEEP YOUR LAWS OFF MY SWINE”

optional caption 2: “AMERICA FUCK YEAH”

optional caption 3: “This is a statement about the current political climate, the bush administration, and oh crap that’s areola”

optional caption 4: “it’s the economy, stupid”)

Fuck, Ori-Tay, you shoulda been a pundit. You make at least as much sense as O’Reilly, and I’m fairly sure at one point or another you compared evil drunken Grandpa Bill to “a lost goose sliding down a mountain of graham cracker pudding into a world of shitstorms and bound feet” OR SOMETHING. AND THAT IS BRILLIANT. People think “it’s the economy, stupid” is quotable til infinity? Give you a half-bottle of red wine, two lines and the opportunity to use the words “shoes”, “track-horse” and “milk-maid” in one sentence and we’d all have our new political mantra.

In the words of the great god-poet of the sky Yeezy: tori, we needja right now.

Tuna rubber a little blubber in my igloo*****, which probably means OBAMA 08 MUTHAFUCKAS,
-Shaun

**an actual tori lyric, probably not a fan-zine name

***see above

****i’m just fuckin’ with you now.

*****nope, she said that.



Originally posted at Resonator Mag
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