A Broken Watch

Mom: Whatever happened to that boy, Jack?  He had such an active social life.  He was a lady-killer.  You know, I never saw him with the same girl twice.  What happened to him? Son:  He was a lady-killer, Mom. Mom: Do you still keep in touch? Son:  No, Mom.  I mean he was an actual lady-killer.  Convicted serial rapist and murderer.  You never saw him with the same girl because he killed them and buried them under his dad’s tulips.  It was in the news… Mom:  Oh my!  I just thought he couldn’t keep the same girl for more than a week. Son:  Well, as it turned out he kept them for much longer…

Squid-core:  A hip new post-punk indie sub-genre sweeping the nation.  It channels the inherent musical genius of cephalopods.  In this critics opinion, the freshest young maestros to come out of this underground movement has to be the unapologetic and relevant “Octopi Wallstreet.”  But, not to be missed are the delectable sounds of “Squidmarks” and the fast-paced hard-lining anthems from “Cuttlefist.”  After that, be sure to check out the rip-roaring good tunes from the Misfits-inspired comic-book horror group, the “Molluskeletons.”

AP - A downtown concert promoter says he will be lucky if all he gets is fired tonight after police and riot squad officers were deployed to break up the violence that erupted at his music venue.  “It seemed like it was a great idea,” says the promoter, Jimmy.  “A battle of the bands where all the bands play the same song so that it’s more fair and easier for the audience to judge who’s the best band!”  The lights from different emergency vehicles paint contrasting strobes in the cool night air.  An ambulance carries away a young man who tried to kill himself by plummeting from the balcony.  Police in riot gear load handcuffed assailants into vans while other cuffed music-fan-turned-rioters sit on the pavement in a line against the outside brick wall of the club.  Many are bruised and bloodied.  Most of the band members have already been taken to the hospital with severe injuries.  “It turned into complete chaos and I’m to blame,” says Jimmy. ...

Mass Media Marketers multiply mingling and co-opting critical counterculture, concocting cutting-edge creative capitalist crimes. Perfectly pensive, we ponder peaks and perfection, proving and perpetrating the perverse principles and placating our Prison Preservers for their protection. Exquisite emulation extols ever-extending exaltation. Forget flagrant fortuity. Decidedly deliberate decisions detract, derail, or direct disparate denizens to demon or deity. Circumstance surrounded, all sides, sadness and cipher. Tragically no room for cosmic travelers--treading transitional, treating time too transitory. While rectors readily reward rhetorical refuse.  

It doesn't have to be perfect. It only has to be beautiful enough. On a drive home, I realized that things--art, craft, results, don't have to be perfect.  A naive or even inchoate realization, perhaps.  I realized that the motions I go through when I drive are not an artful ballet by far, but they are enough to take me home.  Shifting gears, breaking, judging distances.  All done with relatively little long-term planning.  All done without regard to having to stare at it and fix it up.  All done without a constant drive (excuse the pun) to perfection.  I conduct a series of relatively imprecise physical motions, and the laws of force, momentum, the design and slope of the road, and mechanical elements in my vehicle respond to my orchestra to do the rest.  And the end result is a drive that is at least beautiful enough to take me home. In fact, a drive that looked too perfect wouldn't even seem as artful.  In the movies nearly missing a tu...