Let’s have a mind and raise flowers.

***

a monkey’s floating head
in the void filled with glue
(the monkey’s head, not the void)
grabs some clay with its psychic
prehensile tail and forms it
into as much order as it can manage
since its brain is filled with glue and
the clay hates
its metaphorical guts

 Ryan McGivern

NEWSFLASH!! Mindflowers.net was recently voted The 2009 Most Influential Website on the Internet, beating down such luminaries as Foxnews.com and ReserveASpotInHeaven.com (poll sample deduced from a 2am post-coital conference call between three Mindflowers.net staff members; margin for error: plus or minus 69%).

So how did our speckle of a blog achieve such a dubiously distinguished honor? The answer is as simple as tic-tac-toe: gratuitous and strategic toilet humor. That’s right lads and lasses, during our six month lifespan we’ve intentionally spattered triple x speak throughout our wit, style and wisdom offerings. As a result, Mindflowers attracts plethoras of horny and confused web-surfers, and then our words proceed to change lives!!

And now, without further hesitation or commercial break, the moment your groin area has hankered for since you were twelve, our unveiling of the TOP TEN GOOGLE SEARCHES LINKING TO MINDFLOWERS (in non-chronological order):

8. best place to find cum filled condoms
1. how to film your wet dream
5. Adam and Eve having sex
10. Carolina girls sweeter than iced tea
3. I love being goddamn Batman
6. masturbating standing up
8. pictures of men giving birth
2. Mitt Romney is a God
7. drunk unicorns
[DRUM ROLL]
…and now, THE NUMBER FOUR GOOGLE SEARCH LINKING TO MINDFLOWERS…
[MORE DRUM ROLL]
4. Semen is the root of all evil

My friend Ross emailed me this poem by Daniil Kharms entitled Blue Notebook Number 10:

“There lived a redheaded man who had no eyes or ears. He had no hair, so that we called him redheaded provisionally. He couldn’t speak because he had no mouth. He had no nose either. He didn’t even have arms or legs. He had no stomach, and he had no back, and he had no spine, and he had no insides at all. He didn’t have anything! So that it’s unclear who we’re talking about. It’s better that we say no more about him.”

On Saturday March 22nd 2008, there will be massive pillow fights in cities around the world! Use this site to locate the nearest one. If you would like to learn how to organize a pillow fight, read the howto guide. Please note that some cities will not be participating on March 22nd, either due to traditions (such as San Francisco) or cold weather conditions, like most of Canada. Otherwise, see you at the pillow fight!

I’ve decided to become a patron of the arts. My action plan is to purchase one artwork each year — to support fine artists and to develop a collection that will make me happy as I get old and bitter, that will serve as an aesthetic time-line that’ll denote what I was into at points in my life. I recently purchased the giclee print below, by former tattoo artist turned painter Chris Conn. I’m so excited I’ll probably spontaneously combust!!! So sharpen your wooden stick and ready those marshmallows and soggy wieners. I ain’t yaw mamma’s campfire!

Morning poem by Ryan McGivern 

waking up before light 
eating Spam with hesitance
getting Peet’s coffee and talking
to the Peet’s guy
walking through the mist of the
giant street cleaner that’s scrubbing
the weekend puke and trash out
of the plaza
drinking coffee and passing the whistling
morning weirdos
the birds chirping like a bunch of maniacs
getting an emailed picture of you
blowing a kiss
too beautiful to fit in just one
morning

If Improv Everywhere where a woman, I’d have her babies. I’ll say no more.

Except this.

And this.

When I was younger, my mom used to hide all of our birthday presents in this fat old black pipe stove she had restored. She put them in the oven until the morning of that day, and then she’d bring them out like a fresh-baked cake or souffle. Even after I had long since discovered their hiding spot, I was still so excited to see those bright gifts pulled out from the cold oven’s door. Baking and rising in my mind, I couldn’t wait for the surprise. Surprises are the best part of being a kid, but also an easy way for parents to get children to mind. “You’d better watch out, you’d better not cry…”

I used to have a boyfriend I would do this to in a smaller way. On small scraps of paper torn from receipts, a printed page or a handy notebook, I would write lyrics on them and then place them in the pockets of his old jeans lying on the floor, or in his allergy medicines, sometimes in the tea. The words weren’t my own, but the sentiment was. For the longest time, it was hard for me to tell him I liked him without using a British accent. He was my first love, and you have to use caution going into those vulnerable situations. Real feelings incognito is the best way to delve into any sticky situation. These notes were a part of that. Jeff Tweedy, Elvis Costello, Jeff Buckley, that Lewis girl: they spoke my heart long before I had one. The first time he got one, he had pulled it out of his wallet at the grocery store. He called me right after and asked if it was me in my unmistakable handwriting who did it. My plaigiarism was adorable. These little leaflets were flying out of my own back pocket. I noticed this one day while walking along the street. I’d left two in my path, too late to backtrack. I couldn’t take them back, even if I wanted to. They blew away. Fell prey to seeing eyes. That boy didn’t stay. No number of surreptitious notes and hidden gifts would keep him. When we broke up, there were still notes waiting to be found. He had to have known. I always wondered how he dealt with the coming surprise.

Now that I’m all alone, I find myself inspired to hide again. Perhaps I am conspiring against myself and my desire to quit smoking, but I really enjoy it when I find a cigarette. A couple of weeks ago, I bought a pack, took all of the cigarettes out one by one, and found a hiding spot for each. A merry little grandmother, I skipped around my usual haunts, giving them a little mystery. I try to do it quickly, while I get ready to go to work or run an errand so that I was less likely to remember the spot of each one. I bought some plastic baggies. I thought it would be fun to hide them in restaurants and stores I like, too. I don’t know how successful my quitting smoking is, although I do it less because I can’t always find a smoke. In some ways, my want to smoke turns into me actually doing something else with my life. It’s like I’m using my addictions creatively against my hibernation-oriented, seasonally affective side. Those early moments of desperation found me digging around in my car, immediately finding the ones in the passenger visor or crammed in a British literature anthology. However, despite the predictability of some smokes, I am still surprising myself. A pack of cigarettes goes longer and has more when you spread them out, as opposed to when you keep them clammed together. I can’t even couch potato. I’ve got to find a cigarette. I will clean my apartment, go through old clothes to sell, organize my shoes, turn my socks right side out – anything! – just to find one sometimes. I’ve been putting them in my plant to remember to water it. The fridge has next to no food; it is rarely opened. Imagine my surprise at finding a little Camel just waiting for me atop the last slice of cheese. A signal, I had a smoke and a cheese sandwich. I found one in a DVD and watched it. Under insurance papers at work (mail those). Inside an unused file at the coffee shop (cleaned that shelf). I can’t wait to read the books I hid them in (motivation to read the copious literature I already own). I know they are in coat pockets and clean clothes, so I wear something different each day. New outfits can make you feel pretty again. The sensation of knowing something is there, waiting for you, is so exciting. The outcome is tangible. The search is never easy, but it gets stuff done. A lot of times, a find just happens. I find it mesmerizing how I am training myself behaviorally. My apartment is a nouveau kind of Skinner box.

I suppose we all need the training.

You Are Such A Brick Ryan McGivern

A pin dropped in a Greek amphitheatre I’m told
can be heard.
Who’s bringing pins there I’m not sure.
Maybe Athena, that goddess of household crafts.
That same pin driven into my eyeball
could be felt by me.
Whether in Greece or not.
Who would drive a pin into my eye,
I’m not sure.
Maybe Ares, that god of war and all around asshole.
And blind I may soon become, but I need it this way.
Ares’ way.
And you, you brick, make at once a prison wall
and cathedral tower.
Chartres and Babel.
You’re warm in the sun and I’ll
hide prayers in your cracks.
and like the tarot card, lightning will strike
you and “XVI” will appear above you
and I’ll come streaming out of you,
falling forever frozen in the air.
Tripped on the stumbling block

and crushed under the foundation stone,
I may soon become, but I need it this way.
Your way.

Back when I was a well-endowed six year old with few culinary sensibilities, my ideal breakfast was anything with a syrup slather — pine-nut waffles, three-day-old refrigerated McDonalds pancakes, banana splits, oatmeal with chopped bacon, orange juice from concentrate (with a shot of syrup!). And not that hipster-ass maple syrup bullshit, mind you; I wanted my morning meals oozing with two cups of thrice refined sugar per serving.

When I was twelve and on an efficiency and nutritional health kick, I discovered breakfast shakes. Milkshakes for breakfast!?! Sounds like a bit of harpsichord heaven to me. Of course, I had to balance out the milkshakes with a mouth stuffing of Big League Chew, the timeless Breakfast Food of Champions. It is the only gum you should swallow, you know?

I evolved into manhood at 26 when I moved to Seattle and discovered the regionally famous twelve egg omelet at the Hurricane Cafe. Because, as you all know, I am a large man — the size of two of you ducktaped together (I sometimes wear a car tire as a necklace) — and I can muscle up all the protein packed gelatinous aborted chicken babies you can slurp down my throat. The Hurricaine is marvelous in theory: open 24 hours, pinball galore, enough hash-browns to fill your bathtub. In practice, however, I’ve never been there.

But it wasn’t until yesterday that I arrived at true wisdom. I was on the treadmill at my gym and in life — there are LCD TVs attached to each of the machines. As per norm, I walked three miles per hour and watched the Food Network. I stared mesmerizingly at a woman on the TV screen named Paula as she designed and consumed The Lady’s Brunch Burger, an absolute zero Holy Grail archetype of perfection, serenity and the sublime: glazed doughnut bun, hamburger patty, fried eggs and sizzling bacon. Read the recipe here. Eat your heart out, baby! And I would love to hear from our esteemed Mindflowers readers about their personal paths to breakfast enlightenment.