Saturday, September 26, 2009

A short list of Books for my fellow New Yorkers

These are a few books that all New Yorkers would benefit from, and should read for their own benefit. These books are based off the observations of a certain self hating New Yorker who shall not be named.


1. The fine art of walking: How walking slow and stopping short increases your chance of being a victim of random violence.

2. The etiquette of riding the subway: Why urinating on the train may be a bad idea.

and while we're at it

3. Courtesy: It makes you less of a douche.

4. Lets go for a drive: Why doing things like cutting off a bus might not be a good idea (something for the taxi drivers)

And finally, something for the kids

5. Shut the fuck up!

And coming soon, a book list for all red blooded patriotic Americans

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening

Just so no one thinks I forgot about this place. Enjoy

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

tba

While I still may not have anything to say, I do have a lot of stuff to show. My college semester has begun so my lax updates will be even.....laxer. Doesn't mean I'll abandon this blog. It just means I'll be busier.

As another tribute to Senator Kennedy, here is an article done about him and his love of poetry. He was reading for The Academy of American Poets at Poetry & the Creative Mind, which is an annual fundraising benefit for the Academy of American Poets in 2004. The transcript of here can be found here.

Below is one of the poems senator Kennedy speaks fondly of. Its called "The gift outright" by Robert Frost.

~ The Gift Outright ~

The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia.
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak.
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

~ Robert Frost; 1874-1963 ~

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Senator Edward Kennedy

His speech at the Democratic National Convention this past August



Rest in peace

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

A Slacker's Aphorisms Part 2: The Mark Twain edition

"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."

"You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."

"There is nothing lower than the human race except the French."

"Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it."

"Love your enemy, it'll scare the hell out of him."

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."

"I've never killed a man, but I've read many an obituary with a great deal of satisfaction. (Also attributed to Clarence Darrow.)"

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."

"It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand"
-Mark Twain

Other Aphorisms.....

"There is nothing more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity"
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."
-George Carlin

Friday, August 21, 2009

Nirvana: Who the fuck knows.....

A jam that Nirvana did in a 1992 concert in either Sao Paulo or Rio De Janeiro.

Friday, August 14, 2009

Crossfade: Colors

I'm having a not so nostalgic moment. Enjoy

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Presenting Nero's haikus

I decided to start a project that involves the online social phenomenon twitter. For those who don’t know, twitter is a micro blogging service that allows users to send “tweets” that are no more than 140 characters. The only rule of this project will follow the only rule of twitter, which is to fit everything into 140 characters or less. I choose the form of haiku because they’re the easiest form of poems to fit into a twitter message, and thus follow the one hundred forty rule this project is based on.

In the future I would like to have everything cataloged and eventually published. I don’t know how many tweets could fill a book, but for now I’m only focusing on the writing part of the project.

I don't know if anyone else has done this already (I don't think I'm the only one who's doing this), but in the future I would like to collaborate with other twitter poets and have some sort of publication released based on this. Of course assuming that this is as widespread that I think it is.

Note: While the project is titled “Nero's haiku,” not all of these poems are true haiku's or haiku's at all. Some of the “haiku” are missing a syllable or has a syllable too many, and some are just based off the idea of a haiku. Also, the plural for "haiku" is actually "haiku." If it sounds weird blame the Japanese.

Here is where the project is: http://twitter.com/nero86
If anyone wants to subscribe please feel free to do so.

These are some extra haiku's Ive been working with. Mind you, this is all just for fun, so don't get offended by them. And again, not all of these are text book haiku's.

If I could write one thing
It would be a tale no one has heard of
It would be about me.

The noise of TV
Drowns out my thoughts
I don’t feel like turning it off.
I just turned it down.

An epic poem
Want to write a sestina
Because I’m so bored

Haikus about nothing
On electronic ink
Inspired by Jack Kerouac

A self indulgent
Anti altruistic man
Sits in his bedroom

And make you read it
For you are his twitter
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha

Oh, and the current listen can be found on Yu0tube: Jet-Look What You've done

Thursday, August 6, 2009

A dedication to Elliot Smith.....

.....Happy Birthday.

The sound of a strange parallel emanates,
from the basement in the hill.
As the tune of a blackbird lingers
in the collective mind within.

The waltz demands you the soul of an angel,
ignorant of the devils script,
while the heart of tangent beats,
with the candle that flickers in twilight.

Stupidity tries to hold you down,
but your distorted reality shows the way.
As guilt disappears between the bars,
you find some beautiful place to get lost

A fond farewell greets the last hymn,
played to the tune of figure 8.
The virgin in white disappears into that good night,
and your song rises with a New Moon.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Untitled

Pardon me, I have nothing to say.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Some sports photos and a poem

Note: This was suppose to be published last night, but a late assignment for my internship precluded that from happening.

The Spring Campaigns


Other men remember the false gardens
of love, and the days they were in love
or thought they were in love, and others
the books they read as children, books that marked
their lives forever, though they couldn't know
in those days how the real world operates.
And all of them take comfort in this way
and even grow enthusiastic when
they realize that memory can shape
itself at will and provide the things
that love and books and gardens can't provide.
I remember what I didn't undertake:
more than anything, the spring campaigns.

Julio Martínez Mesanza

All from a recent SI Yankees/Cyclones game.
Note: For legal purposes these pictures may not be reuse or redistributed UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE. If I find them anywhere else on the internet without my permission I will sue! Only me, the Yankees franchise and the Mets franchise have rights to these photos.

More here....

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Important message.....

Let me see how people react to this.....

Friday, July 17, 2009

The Damned, from Poetry Daily

Kitten curious, or roaring down drinks
in Soho sumps, small hours tour buses,
satellite station green rooms, or conked

out in the bathtubs of motorway hotels,
there you were, with muckabout kisses,
sharking for the snappers, before hell

opened up for you and the weepy sores
of after-fame appeared, the haphazardry
and dwindling after three limelit years,

recognised with catcalls, wads of spit,
a nightclub fist, the scant camaraderie
melts fast, like your flat on Air Street,

the lhasa apso pups, the wraps and lines
of chang, the poster pull-outs, spray tan
smiles. It's paunch and palimony time

on Lucifer's leash. But for a madcap few
who cling, thin soup, one pillow Britain
is simmering with hatred, just for you.

Roddy Lumsden

Poetry Daily

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Nondenominational Update

The Isley Brothers-Ohio/Machine Gun



Also, the first published poem of mine for the summer. Called "Ode to Madness." Naturally I have to post the entire poem in another place. Why? For money of course. Either way, support the slacker and enjoy the poem.

The piercing sound fades into the abyss,
where the cul-de-sac of an illusion
Meets the transepts of life.....

More Here

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

A Slacker's Photography: Part 1

A few things from my so far uneventful summer. Enjoy

Grand central Chandeliers

Girl Reading at Grand Central

Chinatown Animated

Flowers at a bodega

Brooklyn Bridge

Saturday, June 27, 2009

A Slacker's Aphorisms: Part 1

One of the interests I have in life is quotes. Quotes that describe the best of us and the worst of us, quotes that are insightful and philosophical, quotes that just rationalize everything. I compiled all of the good quotes I've heard so far in life, from royalty and musicians to artists and fictional tv characters. Even some of my own quotes. I just hope they are as insightful (or fun) to you as they've been to me. Enjoy....

"In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation."
-The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

"I'm disgusted with my own apathy too, for being spineless and not always standing up against racism, sexism and all those other -isms the counterculture has been whining about for years."
-Kurt Cobain

kurt-cobain-smokes

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."

"Work is a necessary evil to be avoided."

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man."
-Mark Twain

"It's important not to take yourself too seriously, ... and I think sometimes people take us a lot more seriously than we take ourselves, especially when it comes to politics. Politics, for me, is a reflection of the world I live in. But love is just as important as politics to me. They both exist in the world, you know? And if you don't reflect the entire world around you, then you're leaving something out."
-Daron Malakian

-"There's a fine line between genius and insanity, but if you know how to walk that line, no one can stand in your way"
-Brian Kendrick

"We need to eradicate the slander that a black youth with a book is acting white."
-Barack Obama, the democratic national convention 2004

"All men dream; but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible."
- T. E. Lawrence

"A lot of times nerds are really artist who listen to the beat of a different drummer"
-Roseanne

"Children are the vessels into which adults pour their poison"
(Midnight's Children)

"The only people who see the whole picture are the ones who step outside the frame"
(The Ground Beneath Her Feet)

"Orgasmically joyful"

"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist"
(From The Swedish "Censorship" Homepage)

"I do not envy people who think they have a complete explanation of the world, for the simple reason that they are obviously wrong"
(From an interview with David Frost (PBS))

-Salman Rushdie

salman_rushdie

"Poetry is the essence of everything"
-Henri Cartier-Bresson

04cnd-bresson184

more to come, watch out for part 2.....

Thursday, June 25, 2009

More Elliott Smith



I'm floating in a black balloon
OD on Easter afternoon
My mama told me
"Baby, stay clean, there's no in-between"

But all you ladies and you gentlemen
Between's all you've ever seen or been
Fit poorly and arrange the sight
Doll her up in virgin white

You disappoint me
You people raking in on the world
The devil's script sells you
The heart of a blackbird

Shine on me, baby
Because it's raining in my heart

Sun's rising on a choppy glare
Rain dropping acid bought up in the air
A distorted reality's now a necessity to be free

So disappointing
First I put it all down to luck
But God knows why my
Country don't give a fuck

Shine on me, baby
Because it's raining in my heart
Shine on me, baby
Because it's raining in my heart

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Between the Bars



Artist: Elliott Smith (RIP)
Album: Either/Or
Filmed At: 4334 West Sunset Boulevard Hollywood, CA

Monday, June 22, 2009

A message from George Carlin

A year ago today, a hero of mine passed away. He's where I got my sense of humor from, and whom influenced me a lot doing my teenage years.

Some time before his death, he left his words of wisdom for all of his fans and for all of those who are open minded and willing to hear what he has to say...

A Message by George Carlin:

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.
We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships.


These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete...

Remember; spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever. Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side. Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent. Remember, to say, 'I love you' to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you. Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will not be there again. Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.

AND ALWAYS REMEMBER:
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

George Carlin (May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008)


Monday, June 15, 2009

Bordem

Everytime someone asks how my summer is going I say "It's going fine/well/cool." In reality, I'm so fucking bored it's almost depressing me. I have an internship which allows me to preserve most of my free time, which allows me the opportunities to take pictures, write poems, and hang out with friend(s). I haven't written anything worth publishing and I'm waiting to get a job before I upload any new pictures (I want to buy a new flickr pro account. I have a lot of photos that need uploading). While I have been hanging out with several friends whom I enjoy and adore dearly, I can't escape this feeling of boredom, as if I'm destined to live a life of monotony. Someone please fucking help me!

Friday, June 12, 2009

About Me

The slacking will not be televised.....

Before I begin, yes I lifted the name from Michael Moore's film of the same name (Good film btw). No, this is not a Michael Moore affiliate blog nor do I endorse any of his films, books, products, or any other intellectual property that I'm not currently plagiarizing. I gave this blog that name because of what it means to me. I'm a natural slacker. That's how I operate. Even when I strive to do something
Usually when someone starts a blog, it's for some set purpose like politics or for a "non-partisan" cause or for self promotion. And to be frank, this is no different for there is no such thing as a purposeless blog. And if someone tells you there is, then they're a liar. The purpose of this blog is for the simple selfish reason of being an uncompromising, unapologetic individual because lets face it. In this post industrial society, people are expected to fall in line with the status-quo and act "normal." Something that I simply can't do. And I can't do it because I'm mentally incapable. I choose not to act what's considered normal. I have my own set of values, I have my own style and I have my own personality.

I don't consider myself an artist. I never liked the term nor do I condone the term. I do consider myself a creative person, because its how I express myself and creativity means something to me, which goes back to the purpose of this blog. Everything that I put up here (pictures, poems, links and all) are here because they mean something to me. Not for their aesthetic qualities or to prove some point, and definitely not for the validation of others. That doesn't mean I'm not open to constructive criticism. It means that I'm at the point in my life where I no longer allow others to define me nor my work.
Until recently, I've considered the ultimate slacker. I've been known to be lazy, unproductive, a habitual procrastinator, stupid and with no future. I allowed others to define who i was and I had no true sense of who I was as a human being.....until recently. Some time ago I had to look myself in the mirror, and I realized that I hated what I saw. Not the fact that I was a black male, or my size (although I am trying to lead a healthier lifestyle) but because I had allowed myself to be walked all over to the point where I was nothing more than a self hating loser who didn't even know what confidence felt like. And when you see that in the mirror, you can do two things; change, or wither away into nothing. I chose to change. I chose to allow myself to do what I want, and not do things just to please others. It has been an uphill battle yes, but it's an uphill battle that I've waged for myself, and that I'm happy to say winning. This is why I started this blog, to monitor my own uprising. A place where things that mean something to me can be seen without bias or criticism (that can't be deleted). A place where this slacker can finally rise up and say whatever the hell he wants. So in summation, let the Slackers uprising begin!

Further readings:
A partial portfolio of my written poetic works
My twitter-like micro blog on Artylizer
A portfolio of my pictures via flickr
My Deviantart page

Currently Listening to: Volume 2134

Serj Tankian, Empty Walls

Preview

Under Construction, Coming Soon.