StumbleUpon | dAtkRaK's blog posts

http://dAtkRaK.stumbleupon.com/review/34169221/

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 11:55:19 -0700

I may be in a bad mood today.

http://dAtkRaK.stumbleupon.com/review/31813785/

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:40:44 -0700

Now carry that line of logic even further. Why would you, CEO of PGB want to try to compete with me? American law makes it legal for you to wield your capital in the interest of your company on Capitol Hill. Your lobbyists argue that PGAs drug doesn't meet federal guidelines, experimentation wasn't conducted properly, worst of all, because it relies on New Scientific Process X, it's immoral. The politicians on Capitol Hill, who rely on PGBs campaign endorsements, and those of PGBs Board of Directors, who also happen to be on the Board of Directors for still other megalithic companies, would be reticent to hurt their chances of remaining in office. And, so, my drug is condemned through the clever use of superstitious rhetoric and a corrupted bureaucracy so large it's difficult to fathom.

But, really, PGB, my company, never existed in the first place because, like PGA, I know that curing the disease isn't cost effective. Look folks, it's not conspiracy. It's just plain old human greed and capitalism. No, I'm not saying socialism or communism is the right way. That's a false dilemma. It's not "this or that". At some point in the near future, however, we are all going to need to take a good hard look at the linkages between our industry and our government and try very hard to understand how that kind of shit kills innovation.

http://dAtkRaK.stumbleupon.com/review/25309150/

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:22:42 -0700

Fifteen years after the fact, I am listening to the music from the first CD I received for the first CD player I ever owned. Say what you want about him (and me, for that matter), there is something moving and emotional about Billy Joel. The album? River of Dreams. His lyrics were profound then, when I was an awkward 12 year old boy who had no clue of his place in the world around him.

They are profound now; it's different, but that doesn't mean I'll let you take the goosebumps off my fucking arms, thank you very much.

I can see myself, bony and insubstantial, before I got fatter and hairier, sitting on the floor of my tiny room in my parent's old house on North Dixon in Columbus. It was before the War on Terrorism stripped political idealism from me, turned me into this cynical shithead misanthrope. Before I knew what that word meant. This was before September 11th, the year I turned 21 and learned how to drink and learned about ecstasy and enjoyed a lengthy addiction to crystal methamphetamines, languishing under my inability to graduate from college. It was before the turn of the millennium, and a palpable cultural disappointment with the year 2000: no flying cars, no end to poverty, or famine, or disease; no space travel. No enlightenment. Nothing.

It was before I stood on stage for the first time, drinking your laughter and applause, listening to you tell me that I had talent. Before my grades and my SAT scores and awards and my parents and teachers called me a genius. It was before all that wasted potential. It was before the nights spent crying over the girl that broke my heart. The girl that cheated. And this one that cheated. And that one that cheated. And the other one, the one I still sometimes think about, masturbate about, dream about, and wonder about, the one where maybe things might have happened, if I hadn't played D&D too much or read too much. Or was me too much.

It was before all of that, it was just me, just a boy with no reason to be ashamed, because Billy Joel preached, man. Because No Man's Land, in all its simplicity, had an idle way with corruption that I semi-understood. Because Blonde Over Blue explained a few things about women that I hadn't quite gotten a hold of yet. Shades of Grey, All About Soul, Lullaby (I taught myself how to play it on the piano that year). Of course, there was In the Middle of the Night, too often played on those shitty adult contemporary stations John Tesh DJs. Too often dismissed. And Two Thousand Years, the song that started this whole post.

Damn you, Billy Joel. I believed you. I saw you handing the world off to me and my friends. You asked, "is it a curse or a blessing that we give?" and I said, "It would be a blessing". I swore that, no matter what, we would make it a blessing. There were supposed to be miracles, after the last war was won, Mr. Joel. You made it sound like it was my lifetime. "Science and Poetry, rule in the new world to come." And I sit here and I stare, day after day, at a page that never fills, and never will fill, because poetry, they tell me, is dead. "We're on the verge of all things new." You said that. I wonder if now, retired and aged, playing classical music on your piano for grandchildren, if you still believe that. Because, at the end of the day, I'm still just a 12 year old kid, listening to you sing with passion, picturing a river of dreams stretching out into infinity.

I'm not standing here naked before you because I have nothing left to write. I'm standing here naked because I like the way the air feels on my body. As Joel says: These are the last the words I have to say. That's why it took so long to write. There will be other words some other day. But that's the story of my life.

Mine too.

http://dAtkRaK.stumbleupon.com/review/23960503/

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 05:34:58 -0700

So, yes, I'll be changing some things around here. Please, allow me to explain.

dAtkRaK is a failed experiment, I think. The character started as a editorial writer for my college newspaper (sans profanity, of course), who I named Brill Lyle because the editor wouldn't allow me publish under the original name I had: Mr. Cranky. I'm not sure if it was because they required a real name or because of copyright infringement. Huh. I went out to get that link to discover that Mr. Cranky is going out of business. Maybe the model was destined for death.

Essentially, dAtkRaK, Brill Lyle and the original incarnation, Mr. Cranky, was intended to be a foul tempered rabble rouser. I used to sign off every editorial with "You aren't angry enough." I actually did that a couple of times with dAtkRaK, in the beginning.

I'm not sure where the idea to be a rabble rouser fell off the agenda. It might have been plain old dissatisfaction with the American political machine. I think I got too cynical, too dissatisfied and too apathetic. And apathy was the enemy in the first place.

Then I let the intelligence leak away, slowly. I'm reviewing video game memes and manga redraws of American cartoons. Shudder. I owe anyone who still reads this crap an apology.

Since a body can laugh at the dumbest things, I guess the humor was the last to go. But it's gone, that's for sure, a carcass of curse words and screamings are all that's left, reminiscent of where I got the moniker "dAtkRaK in the first place.

So, all that said, I apologize. Things are going to change. I'll try real hard to cut down on the cuss words, in deference to another stumbler and I will make a genuine effort to ensure these blog posts are intelligent, humorous and, above all, coherent.

http://dAtkRaK.stumbleupon.com/review/23894549/

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 05:06:09 -0700

I want to be able to comment on the comments of pages, and not the pages themselves.

http://dAtkRaK.stumbleupon.com/review/22961365/

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:48:56 -0700

I had a review up regarding an individual's statement about those of us with office jobs. For whatever reason, it really set the guy off in a weird and somewhat uncomfortable way. Now, normally, I don't really give a shit about that kind of thing, given that I tend to write for a theme on this blog, and purely for the five or six folks that come and read me. But, it resulted in some sort of queer pseudo flame thing, and since I typically abhor the "OMG LOL kekekekek" crowd, and would rather not see stupid shit like that on my blog, I'm pulling my review so the fucktard will just go back into his hole.

http://dAtkRaK.stumbleupon.com/review/22248041/

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:38:03 -0700

Holy shit! My wife comes up to me after dinner, slides in behind me and starts rubbing my shoulders. This is new, I say to myself, but shut my mouth in the off chance I scare her---like when you're trying to get your dog to shit outside and it jumps at every fucking sound---and she stops. After a minute or so, she breaks the silence.

"Honey... what are you mad about?" she asks, stopping the massage and slipping around to sit on my lap.

"Huh?" I reply, with my usual degree of witty fucking elocution.

"You're mad about something." She responds. She's being sweet so I don't go with the "Well, that's quite a trick, bend a fucking spoon, Uri."

"I am? Why do you say that?"

"Because," she says, "All your stumbles are thumbs down."

And, she is, of course, absolutely correct.

No I am not mad. I'm stressed out at work, so I tend to just shit all over things when I'm having a shitty day. In my defense, all that crap deserved thumbs down.

It's just, on good days, I tend to skip past the bad stuff and review good stuff. When I'm pissed off, I skip over good stuff and review the bad stuff. So, I apologize if I gave anyone the impression that I am a curmudgeon. I'm not. In reality, I'm a nice, funny, easy-going guy.

I just have a production schedule you would not fucking believe. It's so bad, I see my boss in my sleep.

http://dAtkRaK.stumbleupon.com/review/21572390/

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 06:18:51 -0700

Note: Apologize for the repost, but I needed to make an edit to the second part of this, in deference to a reviewer who called me out on something. In for a penny, in for a pound.

This is loooooooong. So, if you're not big into reading then... well, what the fuck are you doing here, if you're not into reading? Jesus H.

I think I'm beginning to see why poetry is dying. I spent the past hour or so stumbling through pages marked with the poetry tag and the results were mostly disheartening.

Here's the thing, guys. The worth of a given civilization can be ultimately weighed in the art it produces. Sure, sure, some of you are saying, "what about scientific achievement, or advances in human rights?" Those things are absolutely worthy. But art... art says something completely different about us as a people. Human rights are human rights and countries should provide them as a matter of course. It would be like someone giving you a reward for not killing or stealing. Those are things you're already not supposed to do.

And science? I am a lover of scientific advancement just as much as the next guy. I read science fiction, I follow emerging technologies, I even invest in new science. But, ultimately, scientific achievement is motivated not by altruism or by good will, but by laziness, greed and fear. I'm not going to qualify those statements, because this post is about poetry, not about science. Maybe I'll follow up on it later. Just think about the purpose of three of the larger technological communities: robotics, biotech and automotive.

Art is different than science and human rights. Or any of the other measures you might place next to a civilization. It says something completely different and something totally ephemeral. Something I can't put my finger on, in other words. I have nothing like a rational or logical explanation for why I think art is a better measure of worth than anything else, I just know it is.

Maybe it's this: creativity is not a survival trait. There's nothing about being able to compose a poem or write a book that makes you more or less fit, genetically speaking. So, creativity, in a way, is the furthest we can get from being the animals that we came from. After all, science just comes down to tool use, and "rights" just come down to upholding a harmonious community; monkeys use tools and most animal communities work together in harmony. Creativity, artistic endeavor is a measure of how far away from the animal we really are.

The problem, folks, is it seems like we've lost our creativity, both as a country and as a species. Look at what remains of "art". I remember an article a couple of years ago about some guy who got the national endowment for the arts that year. He designed a series of rooms that were completely bare, except for a single lightbulb in each room. So the fuck what? How is that art? How is the biblical figure of Mary fashioned from cow shit art? Sure, it's controversial, and people might talk about it, but it doesn't actually require any talent or skill or even creative thought. So it goes with this poetry that I keep seeing everywhere. We've lost the ability to craft art. Poetry has to be crafted. You can't just sit down, shit out ten or twelve lines about how lonely you are, post it to myspace and expect it to be a masterpiece. Good poetry takes time. Good poets agonize over every single word they write. Good poets take rhythm and word choice into account. Like any great painting, short story or novel, writing a good poem takes time.

Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I'm some sort of master poet. I'm not. I don't even really think my poetry is that good. I'm not fishing for compliments, either. Just stating fact. I'm relatively new to this, having only been seriously writing poetry for about four years. So, I can't be all that great, if only because I haven't had enough time to master my craft.

Continued.

http://dAtkRaK.stumbleupon.com/review/21565651/

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 06:18:39 -0700

There's this retarded notion out in the world that as long as it's "true" and as long as it "speaks from the heart" then it has to be good poetry. Fucking no, guys. That's not how it goddamn works. Look, poetry is not built for the masses. It's just not. And, as artists, we need to man up and be ok with that. It's not elitist, it just is. I encourage people to take up reading. To read a lot. To read... all the time. And everything, too. Not just science fiction (something I have a problem with, myself) or romance novels or fucking comic books or, hate of hates, anime.

Side note: Whoever started importing those incredibly retarded anime graphic novels needs to kill themselves. Seriously. Jump off a building. Japanime is fucking stupid. It's crap. The art is terrible and whoever is doing the translations has seriously lost their fucking mind. Ok, sorry, back to poetry.

So, yeah, read. And, guess what, if you want to be a good poet, you actually have to read poetry. And, see, that's the thing. If you don't like to read, poetry isn't for you. The majority of people don't like to read. If the majority don't like to read, then poetry isn't for the majority. Like I said, it's not elitism, it's just the way it is. [[Edit: A reviewer pointed out that this statement was, in fact, the very definition of elitism. And they are absolutely right. For whatever reason, I was trying to be less offensive which is fucking retarded, given the stance I take on this blog. So, yes, I'm an elitist. Especially about poetry. Go fuck yourself if it bothers you. And, thanks for reminding me, naeri.]] The people who are trying to make poetry, fiction, art in general, for the masses are just ruining it for the people who actually appreciate art. Who want to contribute to it. Who want to make it better.

Anyway, ok, I think I've pretty much petered out on this rant. Look, if you want to be a fucking poet, then far be it from me to prevent you from doing so. Just, you know, a couple of rules:

* Be willing to accept constructive criticism. You're in this to get better, even if you're fifty fucking years old. Frost had to deal with critics right up until his death. Don't be a pussy about it. Take the criticism in and use it.
* The poem is never finished the first time you write it. Guys, I said this a few moments ago, but it bears repeating. If you're not questioning every single word, then you're doing it wrong.
* Read, read, read. Read some more. One of the best exercises I ever did in learning how to write poetry was to take some of my favorite, published poetry and emulate the theme, form or what have you. My poem Bookstore, here, is a sort of an emulation of James Wright's Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota.
* Create a poetry anthology. Not of your crap. Your crap sucks and doesn't belong in an anthology. Copy your favorite poems into a journal, by hand. There's something about feeling the words hit the page that helps, in a way that's hard to describe.
* And, finally, this should be obvious: practice. Write all the time. Practice writing poems in various old forms, like sonnets, villanelles and the terrible and worthless pantoum. Only after you've mastered the old stuff should you try and break out into blank and open verse forms.

So, that's it. Real, true poetry requires a lot of thought and a lot of sweat. So, keep at it, because I don't want to see anymore of this bullshit poetry out on the internet.

http://dAtkRaK.stumbleupon.com/review/9122543/

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 13:24:29 -0700

On a more personal note, I'd like to extend a note of gratitude and well wishing to my friend, Samantha. A vibrant, expressive, indelibly sexy and impossibly intelligent young woman, Samantha is suffering from a deadly cancer. In spite of this, she marches on, hopeful and optimistic.

Sam, honey, stay strong. My prayers and thoughts are with you in this. Have a safe trip back to Spain, and with all of that spirit, fight. It may be a clich�d thing to say, now, at this late date in history but, I simply must:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Rage on, baby. Rage on.