Let’s have a mind and raise flowers.

My Brothers, you’ve been washed in the blood of the land, my Sisters christened with names both fearful and murderous. Our altars, our prophets, our poets-they make promises of rest to the weary.

It will not be brought. The dice have been cast, the lots have been taken and we all, dear Jonahs, are cursed. But our curses, like blessings, are mixed.

Our Noahs watch the world drown, our Abrahams bind us for the slaughter and we thank them and toast to their good fortune.

The rhythm you feel in your tendons and heartstrings is the machines we run, grist mills of lust that we loathe and love and fuel. We are alternately ground to dust and the grinders. We are the electorate and the revolutionaries, between pestles we’ve made and mortars we love.

It is us who we meet on the mountain. It is us in the dark, like Smaug, with our treasure.

We will not be exorcized of our demons. Even if possible, we would not.

Our curses like our blessings are mixed.

There will be no death- only blood. No end to the world- only new ones.

Ryan McGivern
www.myspace.com/mckibbon

I don’t mean to sound complaining, but stalking you is a two way street.  This will never work unless we both decide to meet in the middle on this.

I’m willing to be flexible.  If I need to be more discrete when I hound your housemates about your whereabouts, I can do that.  But, it would be helpful if you told Justine that she’s not fooling anybody when she says she doesn’t know where you are, when its obvious that you’re hiding in the bathroom.

Communication takes two. And stalking is no different.  I remember when we first began our stalking relationship.  Everything was so fresh, new, and exciting! But I must admit that since you were fired from your job at Banana Republic because of my repeated phone calls and break-ins, things have lost their luster.

I’m trying to be understanding. But it seems that your family definitely does not accept me. I tried not to be offended when it happened, but the “Leave us alone and get a LIFE!”
note your mom left in the garbage for me to find was a little insensitive.

I know we’ll get through this rough patch. We’ve been through worse (your cat’s disappearance, etc.) and I know that we’re adult enough to make this thing work.

Ryan McGivern

http://www.antistalking.com/
http://www.ncvc.org/

These are Resolutions that we at Mindflowers propose you make.

1. Stop Tying Up Your Barking Dog In Front Of The Store.
There seems to be a class of dog owner that thinks their dog is so awesome that everyone
would just love to hear it bark relentlessly on a city street. This happens all the time. In front of Ralph’s, in front of the T-Mobile store: some jerko has tied up their mangy mutt and it is barking like the entire city is it’s own. What are the owner’s thinking? Are they in the store hearing this and thinking: “My gift to the world today is making it sound like a junkyard is being robbed!”

2. Closing Your Mouth When You Eat.
Or chew gum. I know you can do it.

3. Refrain from saying “That’s How I Roll”.
My suggestion for ’08 is replacing it with “This action is an example of my preferred and most common way of performing tasks.”

4. Not Acting Surprised When Religious or Political Bigots Get Caught Doing Exactly What They Rail Against.

5. Receive an Honorary degree from a private Christian college.
You’ll need to do something important like own a poor-performing professional baseball team.

6. Keep Your Eyebrows Believable
You know who you are. This year, if you’re gonna ink ‘em in-at least make it somewhat plausible.

7. Don’t Date My Friend Keith.
I’m tired of telling y’all “I told you so.” Listen: the guy is damaged goods. No offense, Keith, but geez, you’re a drunk and a slob. And you owe me and Ben a pizza. I also don’t think it’s any secret that you’re an inconsiderate lover.

8. If you are employed as a restaurant server and you have flu symptoms, do not go to work.
Unless you share a system of ethics with Mein Kampf.

9. At amateur night at your local stand-up comedy joint, throw vegetables at the comedians.
Because what is classier and healthier than pelting almost funny people with broccoli and arugula?

10. Please help me find my glasses.
When I don’t have them I can’t see. How the frickin’ hell am I supposed to find something when I need that something to allow me to look for it?

Ryan McGivern and J.J. Stein

There’s nothing more fun than a nice, old fashioned anonymous sexual encounter. Except for voting, that is.

I love the way I can step into a curtained off booth and do it so hot and fast without any thought and feelings of responsibility! And when I step out of the voting booth, I love the dirty feeling it gives me to see the unknowing but suspecting people milling around! Weeeeeee!!!!

I love it. It’s a rush.

Barack Obama doesn’t know me. And I sure as hell don’t know him. All I know is that he’s about ‘change’. Change for what, or change from what, I’m not sure-but who cares?! I’m high, horny, and votey!

People will tell me its dangerous. “You’ve got to be careful, Ryan. You never know who’s out there.” Lemme tell you: I’ve had anonymous sex with people that Bob Allen would turn down, and I’ve voted for two different Bushes on three separate occasions. I’ve seen it all, and I just don’t give a damn anymore! Weeeeee!

Are you running for a mid-level governmental job? Ohmygawd, that’s hot. Maybe I could vote for you right here right now!!

What I love best about anonymous sex and voting is the absence of consequences. Sure, I’ve been knifed while going to ‘second base’ in a Wahoo’s Fish Taco bathroom, and currently live in a country who arbitrarily invades third world countries on a whim, but that’s negligible in comparison to the rush I get by acting capriciously.

So, Mitt Romney: You’ve got my “vote” so long as you-

1. Don’t talk
2. Don’t look me in the face
3. Give it to me rough
4. Never try to find me at this bar again

Ryan McGivern

Bob Allen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Allen
Mitt Romney: http://www.mittromney.com/homepage

Since I have been in Hollywood, I’ve learned all kinds of things about acting.

From Hermione Granger (Emma Watson), I’ve learned that there’s no reason why your eyebrows should ever stop moving. Angry? Move your eyebrows on each syllable. Any emotion: same.

I’ve also learned that the most important part of being a successful actor is enunciation.
You can practice this at home by seeing if your ex can tell you’ve been drinking when you call them at 3 am. “Whh dn we evveh jsst thalk anmogh? YknowhatImean? Hngg out?”: Needs Practice.

When acting, its important to look like you’re not acting. You’ve GOT to look natural, people. This can be achieved in three ways:

1. run your hand through your hair while yawning.
2. scratch your face while coughing.
3.  pick your ear while whistling.

It’s hard to make an onstage kiss look realistic. Especially when your partner hates you and your ‘Americano Breath’. I’ve learned that making ‘yummy’ noises will not only ‘sell it’ to your audience, but it might get you a date with that acting class hottie who’s been telling you to leave them alone.

If you’re gonna make it in TinselTown, you’ve got to bring your ‘A Game’ to auditions. I’ve found that casting directors love it when:

1. Your headshots are not 5X7 pictures taken of you and your cousin at Christmas.
2. You complement them with: “You’re much more professional than the casting director for ‘Scrotal Terror 6′.”
3. Your cell phone doesn’t go off, and you don’t take the call, and it’s not a call from your landlord, and you don’t argue with Mrs. Bolanski about your April rent.

I wish all you aspiring actors and actresses the best of luck, and if you know anybody that’s hiring, I have barista experience.

Ryan McGivern
www.myspace.com/mckibbon

Jean Paul Sartre depicted the hell found in other people, but Stephen King has pointed out that hell can be easily found with only the company of yourself.

1408, like The Shining is an exploration of the horror available to a person if given enough time to be quiet with themselves. It is a psychological horror movie, and can be viewed as such. The personal demons of regret, of grief, of our own future decay into senility and eventual death are all here in 1408.

There is the philosophical element of the film which plainly takes on the consequences of solipsism. The hotel room, our self, is separate from the world torn from it and stands alone, an island of lonliness with a hateful and fearful population of one.

Is 1408 scary? No. Is it thought provoking? Yes, for the first half. Then it’s themes become too heavyhanded to allow one to enjoy the movie as a movie. It’s unfortunate that the great ideas that it leads its audience to entertain are waffled away from and it shies away from giving us the natural psychological and spiritual outcomes that it has been building towards: John Cusack’s cry to God, or his ability to find solace in another. Neither turning to the Almighty in repentance, or to a fellow human being, breaking out of his solipsism in a display of compassion and vulnerability, John Cusack is not given the most natural responses that the first two acts seemed to necessitate.

The movie’s weaknesses are displayed in the DVD’s ‘alternate endings’ feature that just goes to show that the production team had no idea of how to conclude the existential traps they’d set for their protagonist.  I imagine their scriptwriting sessions felt a lot like a certain spooky hotel room.

Final Word: A better use of your time would be to listen to Chingy’s “Holiday Inn” song for an hour and a half.

Ryan McGivern

Imagine being forced to wear a pair of translator earmuffs that would filter the dialogue from every movie you ever watched that would replace it with the same script. Or, a pair of goggles that reduced every movie’s images into what you wanted to see.

That’d be boring wouldn’t it? You’d never be surprised, challenged, changed, or moved by what you saw.

That is what seems to occur all the time when I hear of Christians reviewing movies. Since it’s been popular to do so of late, let’s use The Golden Compass as an example. These folks couldn’t see the movie because of all the filters they’d already put in place. I imagine that if it were not that Philip Pullman was atheist, or it was not known that he was, the movie would have garnered no real interest from Christian wack jobs. Or, if it turned out that C.S. Lewis was an atheist, his Narnia books could have got the same response: “Aslan is leading our kids into moral depravity! The ‘Beast’ has come, and he is a lion!”

So, let’s turn our attention briefly to I Am Legend. Aside from it being a good movie and the group of seven people I saw it with all agreed that it was a thumb’s up, it had a lot motifs in it that I saw as being “Christian”. Yup. Christian. Gulp.

As an Irish Catholic, of course I’m going to be always sensitive to the ways a movie could relate to the larger Western Myths, which happen to be largely Christian. And in this movie I found several.

I found it very interesting that Denny Wayman and Hal Conklin over at www.cinemainfocus.com decided to take their movie review the way that they did. Of all the themes that they could draw from the movie, the one they did choose to discuss was that of ‘genetic engineering’. The paranoia that some have about gene therapy and cutting edge technologies that can and do improve and lengthen life has obviously so pervaded these men’s perspectives that they could not see anything else.

Instead of coming out of the movie and saying “That’s what it looks like to be like Jesus” (finding the good) they said, “That’s what happens when you try to play God!” (finding a paranoid negative)

The movie carries a bit of Shyamalan’s Signs in it-the reestablishment of a character’s faith through ‘chance or random’ events. This was not picked up on in their review either.

So, what goggles and earmuffs will we choose to wear to the movies or when we meet those who differ from us? Does it matter? Who are the ’zombies’ in our lives who we view as ’less than’? What destroys and devalues life more-science and medical research or cluster bombs and the lies that leads us to drop them?  

Ryan McGivern

Denny Wayman and Hal Conklin: www.cinemainfocus.com