Walter

My pet cactus Walter is thriving.

I bought Walter last year and he has been through a lot since then. He has been poisoned with cleaning chemicals, dumped in raw sewage and frequently crushed by the windowsill. He lost much of his original dirt and had to receive dirt from a bag. He has been exposed to every weather condition conceivable and he has gone many months without a drink.

But he is thriving. Walter is tough, just like me. He can "tough out" any and all situations and continue to thrive.

I may sound like a weird faggot just for writing about this, but what the hell - this is what writers call "vacuuming the cat." Anyway, at least I have been advancing my career lately. My short novel is on Kindle. To find it, just go to Amazon.com and type in "Will Johnson, Aliza" on the Search bar.

There is another writer named Will Johnson but he mostly writes Buddhist books on peace and love. Think of how I've been defaming the poor man!

Slaughter of the Lambs, Rough Draft

I'm apolitical. I'm so apolitical I do not even like to discuss what makes me apolitical. I suppose I see it as a hyperactive shell game, but that's besides the point. I hate political "poets", most of whom are rappers with a slightly larger vocabulary. A place like the Nuyorican Poets Cafe crawls with hateful, left-wing posers, hate-whitey types with Afros and Army jackets; frauds living in an outdated 1960s paradigm; unoriginal hacks who write the same preaching to the choir doggerel over and over again; any poem that praises the oppressed black or brown people is met with a lazy "that's deep." When I was in a bad mood I would go to places like Nuyoricans and read spoken-word pieces to the right of Ann Coulter and Adolf Hitler. I wrote pieces in praise of traditional values and Eurocentricism while lampooning revered figures like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. And why not? These people were always invoking Freedom of Speech! I was merely exposing their hypocrisy. Sometimes these "hippies" became violent and glass bottles would fly at my head. I learned to duck. Every once in a while a true hippie - some old, toothless East Village type - would approach me and say: "Way to go, man! You're giving them a taste of their own medicine!" Not that I'm some kind of right-winger, some kind of Rush Limbaugh jerk. As I said, I'm apolitical. I just don't like crybabies like Junot Diaz. "Oh, boo-hoo, boo-hoo! Christopher Columbus! Oh, boo-hoo, boo-hoo! Racism! Oh, boo-hoo, boo-hoo! Colonialism! Oh, boo-hoo, boo-hoo!" Get a life already and worry about yourself you neo-Puritan hatemongers. Every group has had a rough shake at one time or another and, what, the life of every white person is supposed to be the life of Reilly? White people struggle and have nothing too. So boo-hoo, boo-hoo! When I was in a good mood I would go there and read pieces about how there is nothing more important than one's own individuality and subjective will, how everyone must stay true to one's own self and not get caught in any crowds, groups, movements or isms. These pieces were not popular either (consider that I was reading them in front of a bunch of followers), but at least those performances did not end in violence. On Friday night the Nuyorican poets cafe held an open slam. For those of you who don't know what a slam is, allow me to explain: scorecards (like those used in an Olympic diving match) are handed out to random audience members. Poets will take to the stage and perform spoken-word pieces. At the conclusion of each piece, the audience members with the cards rate the piece and those with the highest scores move on to the next round until a winner is declared. In short, a simple concept and an example of democracy at its worst. After all, what does the average joker on the street know about poetry? I, of course, was knocked out in the first round. I read a fairly innocuous piece, Nietzschean-inspired spoken-word (now there's a concept) about the struggle of the individual against the herd and the eternal glorification of the subjective will. Of course, a bunch of non-individuals are going to have a natural hostility toward anything that celebrates individuality. The guy following me was a short little white guy with long blonde hair in a ponytail. "Lamb" was his stage name. What was his last name, Chop? Was he a smelly little hand-puppet made from a sock? Lamb? What kind of a stage name is Lamb. My stage name would at least be "Will the Butcher" or "Will the Thrill Who Loves to Kill" or at least "Baby-Slaughterer" or "The Rapist of Virgins" - you know, something to scare and unnerve the opponent! But Lamb? To me Lambs are meek little creatures made to be slaughtered, butchered and eaten! That dirty Jewish carpenter who hated everything good (aka Jesus Christ) was the Lamb! "Where are you from?" Someone in the audience asked Lamb. "Union Square." Oh, he was certainly not paying for that apartment (this nigga wasn't even shaving his downy white beard yet.) It's very easy to be a pussyshit when you've never had to worry about yourself! Lamb went up there and read a "preaching to the choir" piece about George W. Bush and his imperialist wars of aggression. Now, like I said, I do not care to comment on politics, but - this guy was reading a poem that hundreds of other Nuyorican poets had performed. It was the same poem by different authors. The same poem over and over and over again. George W. Bush, corporations, Iraq, oil, etc..., etc... That's not art! That's pontificating on the same thing over and over and over again. If you're going to criticize Bush or anyone else at least find a fresh angle. But to read the same piece over and over and over again... His George W. Bush poem was, of course, a huge hit and he was promoted to the next round. Damn Lamb! He was a lamb? Well, I was a wolf! And all I wanted to do was rip into him with my canines and watch his lily-white lamb ass bleed all over the pure white snow. Blood all over the snow, melting it as the lamb bleats from fear and pain! Bleh! Bleh! Help me! I'm just a little lamb! Bleh! The next round he read a piece about how much he hurts and suffers when he sees the homeless and how he wanted to devote his life to helping the less fortunate. This, of course, promoted him to the third and final round. What a lack of artistic integrity. Lamb was nothing but a white guy cheating a bunch of blacks and Puerto Ricans by telling them what they wanted to hear! If I told him this he would never believe me! Oh, the irony. Especially considering that his best was yet to come!

Ghost-Hunting Shows and Social Decay

Last week I watched a ghost-hunting show on the Travel Channel. I suppose anyone who buys fancy equipment can be a parapsychologist nowadays.

The leader of the expedition into a haunted insane asylum was a guy who looked like a typical L.A. metrosexual.

Every other word out of his mouth was a swear word. If there was a bump in the night or a good EVP (Electric Voice Phenomena) he exclaimed "Holy bleep! What the bleep was that? Oh my bleeping God! That was frickin' awesome!" Fratboys are now exploring the mysteries of life and death?

I wanted to wash o ut his filthy mouth with Palmolive dish detergent.

Is he a parapsychologist or just a bum on the street? Shouldn't a parapsychologist at least try to pull off a professional image?

Speaking of bums and sloppiness, the rest of his parapsychology team looked like rejects from a Sublime concert. They had beards, earrings, nose rings and tattoos (probably tribal and Cadillac tattoos) covering their arms and legs. How can I trust a team that looks like Limp Bizkit on crack?

What's most funny is that even the ghosts seem to have no respect for them. Don't forget that most of these people died before Kurt Cobain and reality television.

The EVPs seem to pick up voices that ask questions like: "Why don't you - static - wear a shirt and tie you - static - bum?" Or "Geez, why don't you - static - have enough respect - static - for the dead to - static - cover up your ugly - static - tattoos?"

Snooki from The Jersey Shore

Doesn't Snooki from the hit MTV show "The Jersey Shore" look like she'll grow up to be the kind of blue-haired dago cunt you see at Sunday Mass? You know the type: still stupid, still hateful, still bigoted, still shoving cannolis down her cocksucking pie-hole and talking to the gay Irish priest about her bunions. "Oh, Father, my bunions are killing me!"

That's all I really have to say about the Jersey Shore. For me it is now like the Dave Chappelle show once was: TOO MANY HERD ANIMALS ARE TALKING ABOUT IT FOR IT TO BE FUNNY OR ANY GOOD!!!

The Sundae, Part 2

My Dad seldom tired of ranting and raving about Sandy. Sandy was our neighbor, his cousin and a Born Again Baptist.

"Oh, she can go to church every Sunday, but she can't even say hi to her neighbor! That's not Christian! What kind of a Christian is she? But I am one of God's chosen people! I read the Bible," he would bellow in a Messianic voice.

"But Dad, you NEVER go to church!"

"Well, son, I'm saving the seats for people who need it more than me!"

I was confused. Whenever I had run into Sandy she had always been really nice and cutesy, in the way people are cutesy with little kids.

"Hey, so what are you up to, big guy?"

To whatever I would answer, she would say "Well, that's really cool!"

She seemed really nice and my instinct was to think of her as being really nice, but my Dad said she was nasty so she must be nasty.

"Oh, Sandy! She's miserable! Too miserable to even say hello to her neighbors! Some Christian she is!"

So my sister and I decided to "get her" with our milkshake.

We put it in the freezer and waited until morning.

There was only one problem. Our parents came home and found our creation.

To Be Continued...

The same person gets murdered over and over again. Every 19 year old hoodlum who gets gunned down over petty beef was "an aspiring rapper and basketball player who enjoyed video games."

Why such a lack of originality in hoodlum murder victims? Aren't there any "fervent Nietzscheans who despised video games and committed crime for evil's sake"? Or "guerilla ontologists who sold drugs for both fun and profit"? Why such unoriginal specimens?

However, yesterday at Grand Central I saw an inspiring sight: 5 or 6 thuggish-looking black men in baggy pants and du-rags playing the most beautiful chamber music I have ever heard on violins and cellos.

Hopefully they will never be victims.

The Sundae, Part 1

My sister and I took a large milkshake glass. We coated it with Hershey's syrup. Then we added a tablespoon of sugar, a tablespoon of salt, a tablespoon of pepper, a handful of dried elbow macaroni, a pinch of coffee grounds, a shot of milk, a shot of half and half, a shot of whiskey, a shot of Pepsi, a shot of orange juice, a pinch of flour, a pinch of powdered sugar, a pinch of cinnamon, a dash of oregano and thyme, a dollop of cottage cheese and sour cream, two or three green olives and one or two hot peppers. The we pressed it down and topped it off with several scoops of chocolate and vanilla ice cream. By the time we were done our concoction did, surprisingly, look like a real ice cream sundae.

We were planning to leave it on our neighbor Sandy's back porch in hopes that she would drink it.

To Be Continued...