i will be inside the one who holds you.

i voted early yesterday

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 19:34:56 GMT

it's a secret ballot, but who cares. here's how i excercised my civic duty:

PRESIDENT: john edwards
AMENDMENT 1: hell no
CITY COMMISSION AT LARGE: hawkins

my little baby niece got not one but two "i voted" stickers from the nice pollworker, "one for her baby book, if you young mothers still do that!"
marthe: "oh yeah, we do."
pollworking lady: "well here you go, beautiful little girl."

little did she know that mira was practicing a little voter intimidation on her mama in the voting booth, i swear i heard a gurgle of "vote for edwards or you sleep with the fishes!" ten months old and already pushy!

the happy voters.

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 02:53:23 GMT

my boyfriend is amazing.

i'm excited about my arrested development party. the trivia questions are coming along nicely.

i miss you, kristin and iris! my new job is at coffee culture (which is now at the bageland spot in goerings and doing really well!) and it's great.

mira was so freaking cute today. i love my neice so much, and i love how close she, marthe, eric, and i have been these past few months. maybe because i finally have a boyfriend whom they don't think is a good for nothing and i'm doing so well personally.

i love rain.

I WANT IT!

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 02:47:24 GMT

electricity-free washing machine

if jesse and i go halfsies on it when we have some money to spare from bills and things, it'll cost us $21 each. i love the idea of washing 3 or so days of clothes at a time, as i wore them, and drying them on my wooden clothes rack rather than devoting a whole day to overpaying for energy- and water-draining laundromats.

from the website:

Why Use the Wonder Wash?

* Washes a 5-lb. load super clean in just a couple of minutes.
* Has a patented pressure system that forces detergent into the fabric at high speed for a fast, efficient, economic and very easy wash
* Is ideal for campers, single persons and even for the housewife with small frequent loads like hand washables and diapers.
* Is ideal for delicates such as woolens, silks, knitted dresses and cashmere garments.
* Uses far less water than even hand washing.

* Only $42.95
* Uses 90% less water and detergent than conventional washing machines
* Requires no electricity
* Pays for itself after 8 weeks
* Save $150-250 per year on laundry costs
* Requires NO maintenance
* Many people use to wash diapers
* Used to avoid paying high prices at laundry rooms and laundromats in NYC and other pricey locales.

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 20:28:49 GMT

my friend adam made a badass film, which i am royally proud of him for (proud enough to end a sentence with a preposition)! it's called new personal worst, and gainesvillians can rent it at video rodeo. it's woody-allen-funny, and adam is impressive as an actor and director, but most impressive as a writer.

i've suddenly become a great housekeeper. i'm trying so hard to keep our home pretty, and i've been having daydreams about being a housewife.

i really want more picture frames. i have so many pretty pictures, but it's starting to look sloppy to just glue-stick them to my wall. so if anyone wants to donate any old picture frames you don't want anymore, of any size, i'd be happy to make you a mix cd or paint your nails pretty or something.

i finally made an email address i'm going to use.

ericalindseyw@gmail.com

i love hanging my blankets out of my windows on windy days, it makes everything smell good at night, snuggling in them.

i really really really hope my new job pays me enough to live comfortably yet frugally, and to learn to be better with money. i start tomorrow at seven am.

does anyone know a good, cheap way to make scented candles?

my splurge this week:

i've wanted a cocktail shaker for a long time, which would help with my quest to enjoy inexpensive drinks at home (while learning how to be a better entertainer), but they're more expensive than i thought they'd be. however, my favorite vodka to buy comes with a cocktail shaker currently as a promotion, at least at the abc on nw 6th street.

smirnoff raspberry vodka 750ml comes with an apparently high quality, large cocktail shaker with pre-measured recipes on the side. i once bought a shaker at target for $1, but it promptly fell apart, this one stood up last night quite well.

amanda jennings introduced me to my new favorite drink at ihi in december. it doesn't have any kind of cute name (suggestions are welcome), but it's my go-to cocktail because its only calories come from the alcohol itself, yet it doesn't taste strong. it doesn't give me a headache like sugary cocktails do, either. when i make it at home, i use smirnoff, but a call of stoli when you're out is usually just the same price as a call of smirnoff when you're splurging out on the town.

1 part smirnoff (or stoli) raspberry vodka
2 parts club soda (plain or raspberry flavored)
lemon slices (squeeze them because they really add a yummy, low calorie flavor)

delish!

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 20:27:28 GMT

i have a new blog, which i'll cross-post to this one. lj is great for some things, and not for others, so it's a nice mix.

if you're interested, http://everythingbagels.blogspot.com

when i was in my "women and poverty" class, i was reminded of something that goes largely forgotten (at least in my brain) when thinking of poor families. food stamps are an important part of government aid, but there's a ton of things one needs to live properly which are not covered. toiletries such as toothpaste, tampons, dental floss, shampoo, toilet paper, etc. can't be purchased with food stamps, and even those who receive meager welfare checks can rarely spare the cash after rent, utilities, school costs, and all the other small and large expenses which pile up day after day.

SOOOOO...

marthe had the great and giving idea to purchase two of each toiletry item whenever she goes to buy them. i know not everyone can do this, but it's a great rule of thumb and almost as importantly, it helped me be more aware of how much i take for granted and how often i buy these simple things.

st. francis house takes toiletry donations year-round, and i would like to give as much as i can. i know a lot of my friends have babies and other responsibilities, and making an extra trip is a much bigger hassle than it might at first seem. so, if you have anything to donate, i'm going to be picking up supplies once a month and dropping them off. let me know if you're interested.

supplies sfh is looking for particularly:

Linens
*Bath Towels* (new or gently used)
*Wash Cloths*
Pillow Cases
Twin Sheets
Pillows

Gift Cards ($25 or less)
Grocery Store Gift Cards
Gas Station Gift Cards

Furniture
End Tables
Lamps

Personal Hygiene
Toothpaste
Toothbrushes
Shampoo
Hair Combs
Soap
Lotion
Spray Deodorants
Disposable Razors
Shaving Cream
Tampons
Sanitary Napkins
Foot Powder
Toilet Paper

Other
Alarm Clocks
Bike Locks
Baby Powder
Baby Diapers
Garage Bags
Sandwich Bags
Wrist Watches
Plastic Grocery Bags

* = Always Needed

Medical Supplies
Tylenol
Aspirin
Ibuprofen
Tums
Pepto Bismol
First Aid Supplies
Cold Medicine
Cough Drops
Cough Syrup
Band-Aids
Rubbing Alcohol
Hydrogen Peroxide
Anti-Bacterial Hand Sanitizer

Clothes
(Men/Women/Children)
Undergarments
Socks
Work Boots

Winter Only
Jackets
Blankets
Knit Caps
Gloves
Sweaters

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 19:34:00 GMT

love.

baaaaaaaaaby otters

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 15:17:01 GMT

the nanny diaries

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 02:52:55 GMT

i just saw the nanny diaries with my sister.

it was really really intense. it was sweet and pretty funny, but also really really sad.

scarlett j. was amazing, and her outfits were SO CUTE. i wish i could find her exact lipcolor and wear it every day.

erica's twee alphabet - revised

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 20:15:19 GMT

a- animals on clothes, accessories
b- buttons oversized, bows, boatneck shirts, bright stockings, bangles, boutique clothing stores
c- candy necklaces, CUTE, cooing over baby animals
d- diary
e- economical
f- foreign films and magazines, flats, flavored lipgloss, first love, feeding ducks
g- galoshes, glasses, gingham
h- hats, harmonized aesthetic, hearts
i- ipod, internet, ikea
j- jeans (skinny), jumpers, jewelry, job at coffee shop, bookstore, or as nanny
k- kid-like, knapsack, knitting, kindergarten memories
l- little (diminutive), library card, livejournal
m- minimal makeup, mixtapes
n- natural haircolors, naievite
o- overcoat
p- polka dots, pretty prints, pink champagne, picnics
q- quilted
r- rickrack, ribbons
s- skimmers, sweaters, small things made out of felt
t- timepiece meant for children, twiggy skirts, true romantic, thrift stores, toy collection
u- umbrella, unicorns
v- vegan, vintage
w- wideeyed look, winter clothes
x- xylophones in all your music
y- youth, yellow (pale) nail polish
z- zines

with help from heart_of_butter

erica's twee alphabet

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 14:11:35 GMT

erica's twee alphabet
please feel free to contribute.

a- animals on clothes, accessories
b- buttons oversized, bows, boatneck shirts
c- candy necklaces, CUTE
d- diary
e- economical
f- foreign, flats
g- galoshes, glasses
h- hats, harmonized aesthetic, hearts
i- ipod, internet, ikea
j- jeans (skinny), jumpers, jewelry
k- kid-like, knapsack, knitting
l- little (diminutive), library card, livejournal
m- minimal makeup
n- natural haircolors, naievite
o- overcoat
p- polka dots, pretty prints
q- quilted
r- rickrack, ribbons
s- skimmers, sweaters
t- timepiece meant for children, twiggy skirts, true romantic, thrift stores
u- umbrella
v- vegan, vintage
w- wideeyed look, winter clothes
x- xylophones in all your music
y- youth, yellow (pale) nail polish
z- zines

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 18:23:35 GMT

i just accidentally ate a cat treat because i thought it was a craisin.

Tue, 29 May 2007 12:17:48 GMT

there's a commercial where these women say "i'm hungry! and i'm not going to starve myself anymore!"
it's supposed to be revolutionary and empowering.

it's fucking advertising cereal.

as a part of a good way "to diet."

not a part of a good diet. but to diet. verb.

we're supposed to be empowered by women who don't want to starve themselves.

but still want to buy some bland cereal that promises they'll lose weight.

buying red cell phones is not aids activism, and buying cereal is not a feminist statement.

Fri, 25 May 2007 20:26:16 GMT

i have a terrible migraine

Sun, 20 May 2007 04:32:59 GMT

We got quiet. The garden was combing her hair and putting on her earrings. The house was full of dancing creatures, not male not female but both, two lovers in one body. The books downstairs were reciting their poetry to each other, rubbing together, whispering through the leather covers. Wine was flowing through the water pipes. You had caught my leaping heart in your hand like a fish.

you were just a boy on a bed in a room, like a kaleidoscope is a tube full of bits of broken glass. But the way I saw you was pieces refracting the light, shifting into an infinite universe of flowers and rainbows and insects and planets , magical dividing cells, pictures no one else knew.

Tue, 15 May 2007 00:26:53 GMT

You still cry too easily, but without your tears, at least, everything would burn. You are spring in your jeans, in the laughing leaves. I think pearls melted over your bones.

Sat, 12 May 2007 16:44:08 GMT

twins are really remarkable.

i feel like if becca and zoe didn't have each other, they'd be really lonely. claire was happy to play by herself or with whichever grownup was taking care of her at the time, but the twins are such social babies. they want to play together all the time. if one wakes up first, she leans over the side of her crib to her sister's crib and says her name over and over until she wakes up. anne said she can't wait until they start really talking because it's going to be so fun to eavesdrop on them and i totally agree. they're the most sweet natured girls i've ever met. i love claire unconditionally, but i agree with anne that if there were two of her, i'd go insane. if you're going to have twins, beck and zo-zo are the girls you want them to be.

we went to the library yesterday and they climbed up and down the steps between the lobby and the children's floor over and over again. it's amazing that two months ago that would have been something they physically couldn't do. now they have preferences, they know their way around the house, they know people's names, they know each other's names.

one funny thing though is that when becca looks in the mirror, she says "zoe!" and when zoe looks in the mirror she says "beck beck!" i wonder when they're going to realize that they look exactly alike.

i'm taking postcolonial lit with scheuller summer a. i'm really stoked.

everyone have fun at the eyc show at john's house!

jesse is sleeping on my living room floor. soon to be her living room floor.

i'm hoping she wakes up soon, i wanna go to chopstix.

nicknames that my ladies are called on a daily basis by me:

CLAIRE: claire bear, clairius, clairius bearius, bugs, buggaboo, pooks, curly girly, lovey, grump girl

REBECCA: becca, becca beck, beck-beck, bee, buzzy, sweet girl, chubs, becks, tum-tum, the saddest firefighter

ZOE: zee, z z top, zo-zo, ziggy, charlie chaplin, star girly, la la, little dadaist, gobble girl.

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 18:08:27 GMT

uncles!

spiderman!

tubby time!

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 05:39:03 GMT

i saw the flaming lips for free tonight.

i love my school.

apparently i looked grumpy for a while.

but the flaming lips made me cheerful.

they made everyone else cheerful too, and excited about peace.

also, yesterday was the best long distance bike ride ever with bjørn and stephanie.

we took a lunch break halfway through, after i had ridden 23 miles apparently.

Mon, 09 Apr 2007 22:05:50 GMT

erica manga

erica botticelli

erica black

erica asian

erica old

http://morph.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk//Transformer/index.html go forth and transform yourself.
it's a picture heavy day.

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 15:56:35 GMT

i get to play with my girls today! i think we're going to the park and to get some pizza (cheeseless for me!) then maybe i'll help claire learn to ride her bike while the babies play in the grass.

zine almost done! i've been saying that for a while but it's totally real now!

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 13:29:37 GMT

weather conjures memories a lot.
that, mixed with pieces of experience like places and smells and people, bring me back.

this morning, driving home through deland and past stetson, i remembered this time last year, and it made me think of how i miss brittany so much it hurts. i love her so much, and as in love with davidson as i most certainly felt, it was brittany who gave me that rush of rare kindred recognition.

and over the past few weeks, it's been everything that's reminded me of that time. listening to mates of state, eating vegan ribs, sleeping in my backyard, skulking around stetson getting free coffee. it's accidental, that each of these things has lined up, but maybe not because everything does seem to come full circle.

most of the differences between now and then are positive.
differences: i drink and smoke less. i'm in school rather than taking a semester off. i'm biking more seriously and doing yoga every day. i'm miraculously not obsessed with my weight, even though i weigh more. i feel strong. i live in a good apartment where i feel comfortable. i'm an aunt (again)! iris, of course you count as the first.

speaking of which, daily niece (and honorary niece) pictures time.

MIRA

IRIS

she's my sunshine girl

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 01:28:31 GMT

who wants to get together a car with me and go? i'm serious. i'm looking at you, alex.

Mon, 08 Jan 2007 23:11:17 GMT

so i know i'm usually attracted to really nice guys, but i really need to marry him.

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 18:25:32 GMT

i'm kind of pissed that there's no good princesses anymore.
i mean, i want an idealized, classy, beautiful, gentle, angelic, philanthropist princess, goddammit.

all the princesses now are too old or too jaded or worldly, because the monarchy gets clogged up (thanks a LOT, longer lifespan...) and people are born into princess title faster than queens or whatever die so they can get promoted.

i want a real princess.

maybe not plastic, but she's going in the right direction with the hair and the dress. and the scenery.

princess kalina of bulgaria is okay. she is an unconventional royal, often expressing herself through fashion which includes unusual clothing, hairstyle, and makeup. she is a vegetarian, and her interests include fashion, art, furniture restoration, painting, and animal rights. so that's okay. but not exactly magical. there's no real romance, no adventures, no intrigue.

princess madeleine of sweden may direct their equivalent of "the make a wish" foundation, but she just looks like a normal girl who could go to your high school. and who is probably a bitch.

at least princess elizabeth of toro was exiled.

i guess i'm just putting my faith in princess ingrid alexandra of norway. the name's good, she's cute enough, and who knows, maybe in about 15 years, she'll be kidnapped by a dragon and rescued by someone's youngest son.

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 16:35:46 GMT

Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” As an Artifact of Queerness</font></p>

The Beat Generation as a loosely affiliated group of writers existed by reconstructing the methods of subversion. By directly resisting the 1950s conservative culture from which its writers sprung, all the while claiming passivity in the resistance, writers such as Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, and Allen Ginsberg redefined the boys’ club of American Literature. “Howl,” Ginsberg's epic poem of exalted allusions to the shady and spectacular facets of his own generation, creates an artifact of the movement which, through its context as much as its content, subverts the dominant paradigm to such a degree as to warrant the term “radical.” Even more importantly, the poem itself is an artifact of queerness, reciting and folding onto itself the "open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning...[that] can[not] be made to signify monolithically" (Sedgwick 8). It was the queerness evident in the literature of the Beat Generation, most specifically within “Howl,” that constructed the writers as the disturbance they required in order to become a cultural obsession. "Howl" is a powerful piece of queer literature because of the ways in which the author treated it, the ways in which it was received by contemporary audiences, and the ways in which it is continuously resurrected by readers whose own complicated meanings influence new readings and perceptions of the text today.

The ways in which Ginsberg himself is notorious for having nurtured and fostered his magnum opus are important in consideration of the text as a site of subversion. Specifically, the tradition of Ginsberg’s oral performance has significant impact the poem’s effect as a work of queer literature. In deciding to speak aloud the personal experiences, hallucinations, and critiques of industrial culture, Ginsberg asserts his queerness by disrupting the dominant discourse. By speaking the words aloud, Ginsberg laid that particular claim to his contemporaries, the ones “who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night,” and in doing so redrew both the site of his speaking, and the words themselves as locations of resistance (Ginsberg 62). The carefully chosen words, not just the “gyzm” and “sex,” but the “loveboys” and “Supercommunist” and “heterosexual,” invoke both a purposeful offensiveness to, and a defiant resistance in the face of, dominant, heterosexist culture. The “gyzm” and “sex” are typical censor-warning words. Ginsberg could have used them exclusively if his desire was to be simply held up at the inevitable obscenity trial. The other words, however, the “loveboys” and the “Supercommunist,” these are self-constructed compound words, the fusions of terms to create words unique to Ginsberg's poem. By juxtaposing these words into sits of linguistic perversion with a whole meaning greater than the sums of their parts, Ginsberg effectively makes a go at throwing any censors off in regards to the deeper meanings of his piece. It is this throwing off, even if it only works for a while, which protects the queer subject of the poems and the subjects who read it. If the concept of queer “seems to hinge much more radically and explicitly on a person’s undertaking in particular, performative acts of experimental self-perception and filiation,” then Ginsberg’s continuous performance of "Howl," made possible by the effects of his tender and startling treatment of the poem in its conception, constitute a radical act of subversion that manages to render perverse the flimsy constructs of American heterosexual hegemony. To speak his words aloud becomes an act of radical queerness.

Given that “Howl” was first performed by Ginsberg in 1955, the context of its writing bears much importance to the consideration of its function as a queer text (Charters 61). At the height of America’s 1950s containment culture, and at the height of an era in which homosexuality was in no subtle way equated with communism and perversion, "Howl" creates a microcosm unto itself. Part I of "Howl" is a litany of the injuries the Queer suffers as a result of this culture. In the notoriously conservative dank of 1950s America, which "wants its queer children to conform or (and this is not a figure of speech) die; and wants not to know that it is getting what it wants," Ginsberg disturbs power (and the reader) by listing the very ways in which the Queer is (has made himself) an uncomfortable, uncanny subject (Sedgwick 3). The queer in part I is juxtaposed between violent and tender language, effectively bringing a charge against the society which has battered him so. While Ginsberg sees the bodies and “best minds of [his] generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,” and while the reader is subject to the train of harsh, single-syllabled, past-tense action verbs to describe their current degenerations, he still steps back from the “poverty and tatters,” the “busted,” and the “expelled” to contemplate the “visionary Indian angels," the more tender actions of "leaving no broken hearts" (Ginsberg 63). The context in which "Howl" greets the world readies it (and the poet) for abuse. Following the indications within the poem itself, these abuses are nothing new, as the poet engages in the passive tense to describe his friends, the very ones who “were expelled” and “got busted” (Ginsberg 62). The passive tense here is not a shirking of responsibility. It is a poetic rendering of the very situations in which Ginsberg and his construction of queer find themselves pacing the world, simultaneously battered by and battering against it. The historical context in which "Howl" came to be is essential to its consideration as a piece of queer text, because at no more time in the recent collective memory would its right to exist have been more dismissed, its implications more feared. Ginsberg's role as the Beats' poet laureate is cemented by the very opposition toward his speaking at all.

While opposition to “Howl” never evaporated completely, its initial message over time has become less disturbing to the public psyche. The resistance, though, is still there. In the tradition of queer text, it does “make invisible possibilities and desires visible…tacit things explicit…[and] smuggle[s] queer representation in where it must be smuggled,” and in doing so reacts to time as a living breathing work of significant courage and weight (Sedgwick 3). Fame descended on the Beats as they frolicked through the American pantheon of exciting, dangerous, but eventually consumable figures. However, the realities and counter-realities Ginsberg relays in “Howl” are not the comfortable, consumable stuffs of marketed counter-culture. The ways, then, in which the poem affects the reader become the last defining characteristic of the piece. The reader might be startled into revulsion, or startled into radical self-identification with the moods and subversions of "Howl." Either way, though, the reader becomes a part of the piece and thereby exists as a part of Ginsberg's making that invisible visible. The "junk-withdrawal" might have been glamorized even in the conservative realm of mass media, but this glamorization is just a distraction from the real subversive danger of "intellects disgorged" and "supernatural ecstasy," of conversations "about America and Eternity, a hopeless task...[and of a] ship to Africa" (Ginsberg 63). It is the reader which has or has not developed “the ability to attach intently to a few cultural objects...whose meaning seem[s] mysterious, excessive, or oblique in relation to the codes most readily available" to them, out of necessity (Sedgwick 3). It is the reader who will decide if this subversive reading will become "a prime resource for survival" (Sedgwick 3). By becoming Sedgwick’s construction of a “perverse reader,” the reader of “Howl” can experience the ways in which the experience of consuming such a poem can "function in relation to queer experience," and thereby create a crucial component in the structure of "Howl" as a living piece of queer literature (Sedgwick 4). The queerness of a piece, and its effect as a piece of literature to those society most often regulates as queer, relies heavily on the perception of the piece by those who most fervently seek out the coded messages of queerness within cultural artifacts. For example, in a culture where "queer teenagers are two to three times likelier to attempt suicide, and to accomplish it, than others,” the queer reader, looking carefully through the fringes of his or her culture for a source of identification, reads about Ginsberg’s subjects “who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried” with the mixed exultation of finding treasure and the deeper understanding of the honesty with which these lines speak (Sedgwick 1; Ginsberg 65). The non-queer reader will not necessarily identify with the implications of this line and other lines, because the non-queer reader has not needed texts such as “Howl,” through all its self-righteous perversion, in order to survive. It is this crucial component of urgency which makes “Howl” more than the sum of its parts, but rather a text on the queerness and the survival of queerness, which are more often than not ignored within literary canons.

An honest look at the heterosexism in literature as well as culture reveals a "heterosexuality [that] may not function as a sexuality at all" (Sedgwick 10). Foucault's observation of heterosexual monogamy’s acceptance as the "internal standard" renders useless the very power this acceptance is meant to exert. Heterosexuality does not have to define itself, it is perceived as simply there, the standard against which all variations are, in discourse, deviations from a naturally aligned set of norms. It is the reversal of the stratification between heterosexually monogamous and queer constructions which causes the disturbance so familiar within the choppy, passionate lines of “Howl.” It is the tropic turn of sexuality and the construction of "Howl" as a poem of queer validation creates an artifact which is nothing less than revolutionary in the ways in which it asserts queer presence and right to exist. Heterosexuality so often disappears quietly into history, as it exists "under its institutional pseudonyms such as Inheritance, Marriage, Dynasty, Family, Domesticity, and Population, [and is] permitted to masquerade so fully as History itself…when it has not presented itself as the totality of Romance” (Sedgwick 11). “Howl,” however, disrupts this comfortable construction. It is a poem, a widely published one, and it is irrevocably, unapologetically queer in its conception and performance by the poet, in its place as an historical object and subject, and in the ways in which it serves as a text for those less catered to in the realm of literature. Though "Howl" is most often praised for the ways in which it passionately and skillfully realizes itself as a poem about the simultaneous darknesses and joys of bohemia, it is its other, less widely acceptable role as a queer text which makes it such a rich site of the perverse in poetry. Readers and censors alike can accept a lot more uncomfortable phrasing and subject matter from a piece if they perceive the piece to be about an easily defined Other, such as bohemia or the mentally ill. "Howl," however, pulls the greatest ruse on this comfortable excuse for obscenity by existing as a text which describes many, many more experiences than the ones which would come to be known as Beat.