Now with italicized updates as DVDesque commentary! We here at Spike are proud to bring you the best in fourth wall/ violation.
If given the chance to summarize myself in four words, it would go as thus: "I'm a fucking mess."
Spike's Ironic Intellectual detachment:This is being said in the metaphorical tongue in cheekedness sense, as Spike is much less likely than the average undergraduate, much less hard core alcoholic/drug addict to be messed up at any given time. To tell the truth about Spike, he's not all that fucked up at all, even in the metaphorical tongue in cheek sense. What do you think, Kuromori-san?
Kuromori:Indeed, detached logical voice of Spike, Spike is only messed up in the sense that any "too smart for his own good" and over-read person in this post-modern age can be, namely in a sense where he takes his own modest neuroses and attempts to use it as creative fertilizer. The end result? Something pretentious and masturbatory, like my own birth and the written output derived from it! In reality, he is also fairly obsessed with personal hygiene as well, dresses like a dandy, despite having an obsession with filth and puts on airs of great taste, despite repeatedly eating sandwiches bought from vending machines! Mothers, for the love of God, don't let your children read Rimbaud. I tell you-
Iron Chef Floor announcer:Supaiku-san! Kuromori-san is absolutely in control of the game here in the Iron Will competition bowl. Right now you see him using his salariman katana of piercing clarity to slice through reams of post-structualist thought and is inserting them into prepacked tuna fish sandwiches of indeterminate age! What could be the symbolism between this interplay of questionable foodstuffs and dubious philosophical foundations?
SIID:I don't know, Iron Chef floor guy who's name I can't recall, let's go back to Spike to find out.
Nah, seriously though, I'm a grad student in Japanese Religion at the University of Hawaii. If you can believe it, my academic obession is studying elements of Japanese religion within Japanese pop-culture. Too bad my Japanese isn't at a level where I can just plow through the volumes of manga and anime needed to write at length on the subject. I'll probably be forced to do some "state of the question" bullshit about Shintoism outside Japan.
SIID:As we can see here, Spike starts slathering on some academic babble here. A "state of the question" research project simply means doing a report about what's going on in a certain subject area at the moment and then tacking on some BS thesis argument that's completely arbitrary. A common grad student thesis trick.
Kuromori:Indeed, if he was serious about going past his master's he'd be on the career track to Obscuritytown Community College where he'd hold "Special Non-tenured part-time chair in religious studies" and be doing in-depth research in self-degredation through part-time office temping to make ends meet. It's fairly obvious he's sick of school. After all, here he sits, giving me voice when he has a big seminar midterm coming up. Can anyone say avoidance theory? He's simply paralyzed in the face of the notion that he's intellectually inadequate compared to everyone else he knows, since he struggles to understand languages and can't wrap his mind around the higher theory. He'd much rather be out relaxing with the friends he doesn't have because he works two jobs and goes to school full time and imagines what it would be like to be in a relationship with someone who understands his quirks. All pretty sad, you know?
SIID:Now Kuromori, I know it's your job, but don't you think you're being a bit too hard on him for just this once?
Kuromori:Shut the fuck up. Your job is to deconstruct what he says, my job is to give voice to his incredible and painful self-awareness in an aesthetically meaningful and entertaining fashion.
I'm an obsessive writer. I'm also still in the process of filling this damn thing out. I can't believe I have to supply my own damn HTML markups. What a fucking pain in the ass. When it's done, expect these margins to be as filled as Proust writing on a three-day crack binge.
SIID:It's true that Spike here loves to write. It's one of the few things that makes him feel at peace, if only for a short while. Some might say it's just the nicotiene he's consuming while writing, but in actuality-
Kuromori:Why do you say that? He hasn't written anything in ages. His last story was almost a year ago, and last poem just before that. He's barely written in his livejournal. School consumes all his energy. He's just become another cliche, a writer who does not write. He might as well get his real estate liscense already. If I had space here, I would write about the corrosive effects of modern day life to creative consciousness, but I require him to give me voice and right now all he's doing is killing time, not actually being all that creative. Hell, the only reason I'm speaking right now is because he's lonely and wants someone, as always, to talk to. The sad thing is I'm a completely conscious creation, the solely imaginary friend of a man-boy who has complete control of *urk* Now for levity here's Dick Vitale!
Dick Vitale:Yes, Just as Meadowlark Lemon knows how to handle a ball, Spike here knows how to distinctly make any reader uncomfortable. You can just imagine him playing with your mind and his own to the tune of a guy whistling the Harlem Globetrotters theme! He's dead serious even when he's not! Is he making fun of himself, or pouring forth his soul to strangers? It's anybody's game and it's a happy-go-lucky mindfuck, baby!
You might know me from such self-published endevours such as "Cane-Fired Schizo" ..1 and ..2 and "Notes From Kuromori" ..1. If you have, then I probably already know you. I only printed out 25 of each damn issue and I still have over half of them.
SIID:These are all gone, people, thanks for the interest in them. Spike might print out more of them, but he'd prefer to move onto other projects.
KuromoriMMF, MMF!
SIID:It seems our Kuromori-san has been ball-gagged so I'll provide as imbalanced a commentary as possible. Yes, they're not Spike's best work, but he likes to think as far as Zines go, CFS is somewhat starkly confessional and NFK is more or less humbly revolutionary in how it attempts to turn narrative and biography inside out. Spike actually isn't suffering from multiple-personality disorder. He just thinks it makes a great tool to discuss the various facets of a person's complete personality, and how as one person we're constant battle of wills and awarenesses within each other. Like all hobbies, sometimes it can get a little out of hand. Kuromori is a "daimon", much the spirit of Socrates. A prize goes to the person who can figure out the origin of the name. Kuromori himself is rather ashamed of his name. He considers it much too geeky, despite his fearsome exterior. As one can see from Spike's own words, Kuromori exists as a constant aspect of his personality, if almost completely submerged in day to day life. Foul-mouthed and dismissive of conventional mores and morality, he seeks to tear down the world in order to rebuild it. He's an atheist mystic, the rationalist of illogical dialogue and can only be tolerated in small doses, as most people find out.
You might stand a greater chance of knowing me from poetry and fiction published in Windward Community College and UH Manoa Lit journals. Yeah, I'm actually fucking ashamed of what I published in those. The vast majority of you might know me from the fucking huge stain on the sidewalk in front of the bus stop by the public restroom on the Pali Highway. God knows what I drank that night, but it bleached that concrete white.
*slash slash*
Stan:OH MY GOD, YOU KILLED THE VOICE OF REASON!
Kuromori:Guess who's back? That story? A lie. He puked in front of a bus stop, but it didn't stain the sidewalk for more than a couple days, and he simply drank two bottle of wine and three beers. He left out the part about the annoyed lady sitting next to him and desperate attempt to get puke off his boots before the polish was damaged. Vanity doesn't suit the debauched, does it? Oh, and before you get big ideas about me, one could say I'm just a big fucking rip-off of Eminem, mixed with some mind-fuck anime and novel characters, with the inevitable dash of pretension. Oh, and those stories he wrote did suck.
Those of you who find this who knew me in High School are probably surprised with how depraved I turned out. It was only a matter of time, I tell you.
Kuromori:Keep telling yourself that, boring boy. It also boggles the mind that somehow you think talking like a cut-rate Bukowski will get you a girlfriend. The fact is you're so ineffably dull and conventional you'll never amount to anything and-
SIID:Haven't you learned anything, Kuromori-san? The voice of reason cannot be destroyed. If the totalitarian governments of history could not strike it down, the angry voice of self-doubt hasn't a chance in hell. You should stick to being my darker half. Your dissections of the neurosis inducing tendancies of the world, the vast panoramas of absurdities are far more interesting than you beating up on the guy who created you.
Despite the acerbic language contained herein, I actually do love puppies and teddies and brown paper packages tied up with string. Puppies make a good meal on a hot day, teddies remind me of roadside shrines where some shmuck got nailed by an SUV and brown paper packages tied up with string means my "medication" from Amsterdam has arrived in the mail.
SIID:And now for the man I like to call me, myself and I, as well as my father, as well as my son, the "I who is another"; Spike!
Spike: Hey all, I hope this little game hasn't left you disturbed. If you haven't run away creeped as fuck by now, I invite you to message me. I'm on AIM, handle Rimbaud971. Seeya in the funny pages!