30 Sept 2017 | DC> Typing this on new laptop since our last 1 was DOA when we got back from Mexico. Blogging on a laptop don't mean we're traveling, tho our bedder-½ is @ it again... now in Tanzania + then Bhutan or Nepal... hits gotten to the pt where she just makes hit up as she gose along... + here we remain, gearing up to embark on volume 2 of 'SSES" 'SSES" ^"SSEY'... mostly in intel gathering + outlining mode, organizing notes in 3-ring binders + trying to figger where we last left off. Start'd to read Last Bongo Sunset by Les Plesko cuz hits about junkies in Venice in th '90s, where Chaulky also lived round about dat time aft'r he graduated from Pasadena ArtCenter.... speaking a wich, a friend of Chaulky's from them yrs sent us dis last week, evidently they put a plaque up in his honor @ ArtCenter:

Aft'r graduating from ArtCenter, Chaulky moved to Venice + work'd @ Small World Books... maybe he crossed paths /w Les Plesko, who nose. Think we 1st herd of Plesko when he killed hisself a few yrs ago, by jumping from a rooftop in Venice. We wasn't into th book so much, th writing is overly descriptive, kind of language dat feels like sum1 trying to write how a "writer" is xpected to write. When we got to the part where they basickly abduct a 13-year old Mexikin girl, pump her w/ heroin + pimp her out as a prostitute we sorta lost intrest... maybe we're just burning out on these junky books, specially if they just glorify the lifestyle + dont a'dress the nature of addiction + whatnot... seems Plesko—@ least based on the narrator of th book—chose the lifestyle to be kool. I'm sure an internal conflict might eventually arise (likely the narrator (who goes only by "College") will be the hero that saves poor little strung-out Maria from such a horrid life) just not sure we have the payshints to see her thru.

So we switch'd insted to The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. Rumor is dat Sisyphus is actually the father of Odysseus, not Laërtes... @ least a'cording to non-Homeric scuttlebutt Sisyphus knocked up Anticlea, Odysseus's mum, raped her to git even w/ her pop, Autolycus, cuz he rustled Sisyphus's oxen or sum such shit (he cot the culprit by inscribing SS on th inner-hoofs of his cattle... sorta like Jack in Chinatown knocking out the taillight of dat car to trail hit... Sisyphus was crafty like dat). Who knows the reel story. Camus's book is hardly about Sisyphus, but mostly essays about the absurdity of sewerside + only a few pages about Sisyphus. Guess the implication is clear, not only of the absurdity of his punishment (to roll a stone up a hill ova + ova) but why Sisyphus was punished—for choosing life. Trickster dat he was, when his # was up he tole his wife not to give him the usual death rites + offerings (they did shit back then like put a coin on your tongue so u cd pay whatshisname to ferry u cross the river) so when he got down to the underworld he cry'd foul, bitchin' dat he weren't bury'd in th proper way + dint have coinage to pay the Styx Xing toll. He conned them into letting him go back just for a few days to punish his wife + make proper arrangements but off corse he stay'd + got a whole 2nd life outta the con-job, wich is what pissed off the gods... dis is our take a'way, Camus niglected to menshun dis, maybe he figgerd every1 is already well-versed in Greek mythology. Albert's take gits off to an ok start, bud we sorta got bored + spaced out when he started going on + on about "God" + high-bro philosophickle discorse. When we 1st red the book in the early '90s or so, it brot sum consolation + helped us understand our father's sewerside, but now we aint so sure what the pt is of th book xcept to pontificate + name-drop in dat high-flutin' french way. He starts off by famously saying «There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide» but i dunno, dis is ∀ll fine + dandy, but seams a bit of a luckshorey to dwell on such things, no? I dont think sum1 like Aaron Swartz stroked his chin + thought long + hard on the philosophickle implications of hanging hisself. Or what about sewerside bombers, or them Tibetan monks who lite themselfs on fire, let alone regular folk who just have a psychological illness or physiological chemical imbalance... hit aint always so cut + dry, black + white, life or death... + what of folks who do self-destructive stuff knowing fool well the risks? We aint just talking about impulsively doing H or free-soloing, but flying in airplanes, or even driving in cars freaks the shit outta us... how Camus met his maker actually. Aint accepting a ride in a car a form of slow sewerside? Ironically they found an unused train ticket in Camus's pocket, for the same fateful journey he voyaged en voiture, but he chose to ketch a lift w/ his buddy rather than ride by train w/ his family. Not dat trains dont crash neither. About her daily commute by rail—when we lived in Rome or now when she has to commute to Baltimore—our bedder-½ always says dis be the kinda shit that slowly kills u. By living we ∀ll choose death. «My life's the disease» as the Bunnymen echo:

My life's the disease
That could always change
with comparative ease
Just given the chance
My life is the earth
'Twixt muscle and spade
We wait for the worth
Digging for just one chance
As prospects diminish
As nightmares swell
Some pray for Heaven while
We live in hell
My life's the disease
My life's the disease
If you get yours
From Heaven
Don't waste them

Everything we do is sewersidal—playing drums, grinding a 9-5, sitting around doing nada... by living we ∀ll commit sewerside bit by bit, poli poli. To present sewerside as a rational question est absurde (in part, Camus's point) but also dishonors them who dont god no choice in the madder, but are driven to «just do it» for the same raisons writers are compelled to write. «A book is a postponed suicide» comme le dit E.M. Cioran. And why not? To keep on living day-to-day is postponing the inevitable, tout we do is as fruitless as sewerside or rolling a rock up a hill ova + ova. I dunno, if we had le monde's ear (let's face it, Camus was 1 of the youngest to git a Nobel prize, to be recognized in his lifetime) the 1 "truly serious philosophical problem" weed address is dat of human procreation—why we shd even bother to reproduce. More folks shd be aksing themselves dat question. Lord knows le monde wd be a bedder place if we did. We doubt Camus aksed hisself dat... sans googling we know he had kids cuz we met a granddaughter of his once, when she swam up to us topless on a surfboard in Tahiti. + seems most folks when seriously cunfronted w/ the question of weather life is worth living choose to to skirt the issue by popping out bambinos left + rite toi let them antswear dat questshun for them, who in turn keep doing the same, living in denile, fuckin' ova + ova unchecked ... weed say "like rabbits" but dats an insult to bunnys + bunnymen. Humanity is a disease. May-b we shd aks why it is dat no udder animals on dis here planit contemplate sewerside... @ least for philosophical raisons, evulotion + selection naturally puts checks on sum species to altruistically abate overpopulation... xcept for humuns cuz we think we be smart philosophers above hit ∀ll.