We can pretend it’s slang for being crazy or something.
But we know the truth.
It means you went in a cup of shit.
A 3-foot cup of shit.
After being shrunk by a ray-gun.
A half full cup of shit. (Or half empty.)
That's in the corner of Steve's room.
So it can be looked at. Or eaten. Your choice.
You can do whatever you want with it.
In the Cup: bringing you shit in half full / half empty cups for 1 year! (Well technically this blog has been around since the 4th, but it didn’t take on its full cupness until the 9th, and I know it’s still the 8th, but better early than forgetting entirely…)
I think we can all agree that this has been an eventful year, and I know I’m glad the Cup was around to help us all share our adventures, writing, discoveries, marmots, etc with each other. Would the art form of pee-ku have ever been invented otherwise? I think not.
Back when we first started, I had no idea what to expect, but I definitely didn’t foresee us getting so much use out of this blog. I think it really has helped keep us all connected in spite of physical distance and hectic schedules. I especially didn’t expect the literary turn that it has taken at times, but I’ve really enjoyed getting to see Crow’s work, and this blog actually got me to try writing poetry again, which I highly doubt would have happened without a friendly forum in which to share it. In the Text was an interesting experiment that I think we should try again (maybe next summer when people have some time), preferably with a book I haven’t memorized this time.
And really, where else do you find blog entries labeled “Gollum-looking-mother-fuckers” and “Dan’s soul.” Good times. Happy birthday, Cup! Here’s to many more years of ray guns, shit, and of course friendship.
Ok, so they were technically your sister's, but I'm pretty sure everybody used them as ninja turtle mounts or attacked them with jurassic park dinosaurs. Anyway, best use of my little ponies evar:
There's also Batman and Joker, which looked familiar to me, but if someone already posted them here, I couldn't find them. Maybe it was Kotaku or something.
Children laughing playing hopscotch on a familiar sidewalk
Insane heat rises off shit black asphalt, boiling our blood and stimulating violence
Cool ocean breeze, swimming pools, running through the sprinklers, cheap plastic fans whizzing day and night, relief found in the shade of a tall building.
Shotgun shots echo through the alley behind your house, a dead baby found in a dumpster, handcuffs being placed on another juvenile, dope fiends scratching imaginary itches, begging for spare change in exchange for "God bless you"
Museums and universities crowded with eager minds, Mom's quesadillas after church, the freedom of skateboarding to nowhere with homies, Grandmother's rough touch as she crosses your forehead and recites "God keep you"
Smog the color of cigarette ash robs the sky of it's blueness and a generation of asthmatics are born gasping for clean in air in vain
Through the haze of the L.A. skyline a sunset becomes an explosion of pigment, a box of crayons melting in the sun, restoring our faith, reminding us, we are home.
So for the first time I went and worked the polls on election day. This picture is of the line at our polling place in the morning. People were already lining up to vote at like 6:30am! At one point there was an hour an a half wait.
Some people treated us like customer service workers with "I will have satisfaction" attitudes. More still were the people who realized that we were all volunteers trying our best to make things go smoothly. We got many thank yous for volunteering from people. One lady said she was going to go get us some cookies that she had baked. Within 10 minutes she was back with some tasty chocolate chip cookies for us. Another woman brought us cokes and bananas and offered to go pick up any food or anything we might want!
Everyone was expecting an after work 5pm rush to polls that never came. People made sure they voted absentee or early. So the last couple hours were a lot more relaxed than the huge rush of the morning. The most memorable moment of that time was when an excited flustered woman came in to drop off her absentee ballot. Her ballot was all crumpled up as was the envelope and we had to tell her she needed to put it in the envelope, seal it, and sign it, as she didn't seem to know what to do with herself. She asked us "you guys didn't hear?" We had all been required to be at the polls with no breaks from 5pm on so we said "no what's going on?" She said "He won virginia! McCain has to win the entire West Coast to even have a chance!" Needless to say we were all happily shocked blinking at each other and smiling ear to ear. When we were cleaning up after the polls closed one of the clerks said "hey guys want to see something?" We said sure and she showed us the screen of her iphone with a picture of Obama and little color coded bar graphs of the electoral votes: Obama 364 McCain 163. That was the happiest a graph had ever made me feel in my life.
And yet it still didn't sink in. I honked my horn with 20 other cars at MLK and University that night and it still hadn't sunk in. I talked with Adam late into the night, called my Mom, and went to sleep. When I finally woke up today it was because a group of children were walking by outside chanting "Obama! Obama! Obama!" It made me wake up with a big smile on my face. I went on with breakfast and the internet. I read on Crooks and Liars that people were standing outside the White House singing "Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Hey Hey Goodbye". Then I watched Obama's acceptance speech and was brought to tears several times. We did it. No third term for BushCo. There's a chance now for this country to flourish once again as a whole and not just 1% of it. Now he just needs to be the change we've been talking about for so long. We still have work to do and long roads to travel.
Well...I guess today is a pretty darn good day. I thought this morning I would find myself eagerly checking the news, waiting to see which contested states are filled with voter fraud. That I would have to hold my breath today in the hopes that Obama would win by a narrow margin...
So imagine my surprise when I overheard Obama's victory speech while exiting the YMCA around 9:30pm. While swimming and doing yoga stretches, I contemplated the election...the ramifications of an Obama loss or win. My own life and what's going on. It almost seemed surreal as I stepped into my car and heard cheers and honks in the distance. As I got home I realized that I was a little sad that I couldn't be with any of my loved ones for such a momentous event.
I don't drop a Divine Cosmos link too often on the cup. It feels like I'm proselatizing when I do so. But I just wanted to share that my (and Steve's) guy, David Wilcock, has been adiment that Obama would win. He's also been adament about an economic recession for the last few years =)
Anyways, a few days ago he posted a little blurb on his own break down on the current political climate..yeah, he throws in dreams, crop circles, the law of one, reincarnation, and all sorts of stuff that I LOVE. But I did feel it was worth sharing his break down of what the events leading to today have to say about peoples mindset.
Sexism and Equal Rights for Women: Hillary Clinton’s candidacy broke the male-dominated political world on the Democratic side, and now even the Neocons — the ultimate symbol of the patriarchy — have followed suit by bringing in Sarah Palin.
Knocking either Hillary or Palin for being a woman has become totally inappropriate. The focus has been on their experience and qualifications for public office.
Racial Intolerance: Barack Hussein Obama is half-Caucasian and half-African, with a Muslim-sounding name that reminds people of the two biggest bogeymen of the Neocons stage-managed War On Terror: Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden.
It is nothing short of astonishing that so many traditionally intolerant members of our society are letting go of their prejudices and voting for the candidate who is better for the country, rather than out of instinctive, xenophobic fear of a race or a purported religion.
The scars of the Civil War still remain in the division between the "red" and "blue" states, which in the 2000 and 2004 elections was practically an identical map to how the Civil War went down with the states that were a part of the US at the time.
The South, of course, was the side that was fighting (in part) for the right to keep the slave trade alive. Now we have an election where a half-African man is actually winning the election in these very same states. This is of unspeakably vast importance in the opening of the hearts within the Heartland.
Colin Powell’s recent statements about anti-Muslim prejudice are just the beginning of a healing process that will very likely continue — and expand — if Obama takes the presidency.
Plots to assassinate Obama, and / or racially-motivated acts of hate, have had the very strong effect of exposing the ugliness and discomfort of racism, so that more and more people can choose NOT to think and act this way.
Religious Extremism: Sarah Palin’s nomination was so blatant in its attempt to pander to the extreme religious right that even the Evangelical Christians themselves are awakening to the shortcomings of "clinging to guns or religion." Surprising numbers of them are changing their minds and actually waking up to how their extremist views have been manipulated to win elections.
Similarly, the people are now seeing the similarities between all different forms of religious extremism, whether Christian or Islamic. No one wants war — we are all wishing for greater peace and stability as a society.
The more we look at the relationship between government corruption, racism, us-versus-them thinking and religion, the more we realize that these great spiritual teachers would never have wanted us to turn against one another.
Generational Prejudice: Is it right to be prejudiced against people because of their age? With McCain being 72 years old, all these issues have been stirred up as well.
It has clearly been established that we should not be biased against McCain because of his age. Those attacks are simply not appropriate. It’s not about his age — it’s about whether he has the competence and vision to lead his country.
This is a valuable step, considering how many of us forget about elderly relatives once they are moved into ‘assisted living’ as if they are no longer thinking, feeling people who need our guidance and support.
Classism and Economic Segregation: The wealthiest members of our society have been able to turn us against each other, manipulating all the above prejudices as well as the basic concepts of "Republican" versus "Democrat," but now the game has changed.
More than ever, the spotlight is being turned on the entrenched power structures. The scope of the public uprising over the 700-billion-dollar bailout is unprecedented in any modern history. The fatcats have already received the "kill shot," and are now on the run, spilling blood as they go.
We shouldn’t gloat over their defeat, but rather be grateful that the public ignorance they have taken advantage of for so long is finally eliminating — and along with it comes freedom and a much greater prosperity in the long run.
Tomorrow is election Day! If you haven't already voted via absentee or early voting make sure you go do it! Hopefully props 4,6,8, and 9 will all be put down, and we won't have a third term of BushCo. I'll be working the polls all day long here in Berkeley and hopefully helping everything go smoothly. To the coffee drinkers out there, Starbucks is giving away free coffee all day tomorrow as long as you tell them you voted. Also the internet is giving away free copies of Cave Story to voters! Well technically it's free for anyone... shhh! The game and translation patch can be found at this tribute site. It's very fun stuff and a deserving reward to anyone who took the effort to vote! =D
UPDATE:If you're not sure where you're supposed to go vote, you can find your polling place here at govote.org.
This should have three more stanzas, but I'm stuck and I'm getting the feeling that this was way to rigid of a form for me to try at the moment since structured poetry is very much not my thing. So here is half of a sestina, or all of a nothing, to the crow that always squawks at me on the way to work and to the resident poet laureate of the cup, our friend Crow.
You lift your coarse voice from the sky above and throw yourself down on silent charred wings. Wind streams by me, the result of your fall, turning my hair to feathers that chase you. I am the colored shadow of your black; gliding, walking, we both travel this road.
Wind rushing by like a great storm of wings, Air becomes feathers all grasping at you. From the wire you watch this empty road As indistinct voices echo stark black, Murderous friends awaiting your fall; The moon also watching, soft light above.
Will you be here when warm days turn to fall Asleep on a wire, shadow cross the road? I will still be walking, watching for you Searching the shadows as clouds boil above We’ll be dreaming of a sky filled with wings Your wings above me, the sky also black.
The sly fox, cyclops we locked in the idiot box, the video slots broadcast the Waco Davidian plots they own YouTube, Myspace when this ignorant shit gon' stop? they monopolize and use your views and the channel you choose propaganda, visual cancer the eye in the sky, number five on the dial secret agenda, frequency antenna got the mind bender, remote control soul controller your brain holder, slave culture game's over what's a Fox characteristic? slick shit sensin', misinformation pimp the station, over stimulation reception, deception Comcast digital Satan the Fox has a bushy tail and Bush tells lies and Foxtrots so I don't know what's real
Watch what you watchin' Fox keeps feeding us toxin stop sleeping, start thinking outside of the box and unplug from The Matrix doctrine but watch what you say Big Brother is watchin'
Watch what you watchin' Fox keeps feeding us toxin stop sleeping, start thinking outside of the box and unplug from The Matrix doctrine but watch what you say Fox 5 is watchin'
the fear factor got you all rowed up O Reily, oh really? No rally needed, I'll tie you up network for child predators, settin' 'em up myspace pimps, hoes, and sluts yall exploit rap culture, then yall flip on us and you own the post, and yall shit on us what is they net worth? they gon' try to censor my next verse throw 'em off the roof neck first while I'm clicking my cursor reading blogs about the pressure they put on Universal it gets worse while I'm clicking my mouse while they kickin' my house they figured us out, why a ****** go south it's either he caught a body, no sleep they watchin' I watch CBS and I see BS, tryin' to track us down with GPS make a nigga wanna invest in PBS
Watch what you watchin' Fox keeps feeding us toxin stop sleeping, start thinking outside of the box and unplug from The Matrix doctrine but watch what you say Big Brother is watchin'
Watch what you watchin' Fox keeps feeding us toxin stop sleeping, start thinking outside of the box and unplug from The Matrix doctrine but watch what you say Fox 5 is watchin'
they say I'm all about murder murder and kill kill but what about Grindhouse and Kill Bill? what about Cheney and Halliburton? the backdoor deals on oil fields how's Nas the most violent person? yall don't know talent if it hit you bringin' up my criminal possession charges with a pistol I use Viacom as my firearm and let the lyrics split you, who do you rely upon? they shoot shells at Leviathan, I'm dealing with the higher farm fuck if you care how I write a palm only fox that I love was the red one only black man that Fox loves is in jail or a dead one red rum, political bedlam don't let the hype into your eyes and ear drum Murdoch on Fox, not 18 with barracas and he hate Barack cause he march with the marchers
