A Misanthrope Walks into a Bar and Leaves

Tear the Veil of Pallor; an Anarchist Speaking on Other "Anarchists"

2011-03-09T03:05:00.003-05:00

Under the safe cover of holiday night, self-professed anarchists spray painted their sigil on buildings and broke windows. It was Christmas. The businesses were closed. People were away from their homes. The police presence was minimal. It was an easy crime. Cowardly vandalism committed when almost everybody was sure to have their attention cast elsewhere.
Locally owned businesses had their property, to a manageable but unfortunate extent, damaged. They were, on the large, "yuppy" establishments. I admit to having, at the time, found it funny that certain businesses were attacked. I, however, did not believe the acts were truly perpetrated by anarchists. I believed they were perpetrated by young people who could have just as well emblazoned the walls of these placed with black, spray-painted pentagrams. The encircled letter "A" meant nothing to me.
As time wore on, over the past few months, vandalism continued. Businesses were, once again, attacked and a low income housing facility had the message, "Wrong Neighborhood" spray painted on it. It was, later, discovered that the vandals believed it was a regular condo complex and did not understand they were vandalizing the homes of low income families. They thought, in all actuality, that every act of vandalism was one bearing an anti-gentrification message and agenda. They thought they were being anarchists.
I still, however, had my doubts.
Acts perpetrated on February 22nd, however, changed my feelings. An unfinished, unattended condominium was burned, in an act of arson. Three days later, letters began to arrive in the mailboxes of other tenants of the condominiums. This is that letter:

To the Tenants and Homeowners of East Hills Upscale Condominiums,

In the southeast corner of your suburbanite cul-de-sac, at approximately 4 a.m. February, 22nd, we, a group of anti-gentrification militants attacked an unfinished condominium. We placed 3 incendiary-devices throughout the first story of the household. This attack was not isolated , nor will it be the last. If you are holding this letter, you are a target. We announce with great volume our terms:

-The eviction /resignation of all lease-agreements in this cul-de-sac, and their occupants forced back into the suburbs.

-The immediate transition to low-income housing, both in this cul-de-sac, and in the surrounding East Hills area.

We are not peaceful. We are not willing to negotiate. You, your families and material possessions are at stake. Our demands are not implausible, and are expected to be carried out within a two-month period. Failure to comply will result in a multitude of repercussions, including, but no limited to: destruction of vehicles and houses, muggings, burglary, and kidnapping.

Sincerely,

The Old Neighbors

Upon reading this letter, I became very upset.
I, as an anarchist or, at least, anarchy-sympathetic, am tired of living behind the pallored veil of stigma that comes with the label of my beliefs. I found a local news link that allowed comments to be left and I left this comment:

As an anarchistic-leaning individual, I've been getting increasingly upset with this case and the nature of the crimes. A true anarchist operates through means of subversion; living their life as true to their beliefs as possible, in the hopes that seeing this lifestyle work will help propagate its ideals.
The letters aren't letters... of anarchists. They are letters left by socialists who have chosen to live under the guise of anarchy because anarchy is a word that bears a lot more edge than socialism, Marxism or communism.
I know. I used to be a socialist. I used to be a Marxist. I used to think I was a communist.
I turned away from those ideas, when I realized the real problems weren't addressed by such systems that, really, just put political power under a different name and control in different boots.
There are many socialists who believe they are anarchists or, at least, wish to be perceived as such.
Anarchy and the way it has been stigmatized is synonymous with punk rock, edge and attitude.
These people are not anarchists. They are people who want attention.
I'm not saying they don't believe in something. I think that they at least believe they believe in something.
The escalation of these crimes, however, displays all the steps of a criminal profile: the steps of somebody who has been getting up the "courage" to do something big. Much in the way serial killers start by lighting fires and hurting animals.
I doubt they planned on making demands and issuing threats, when the fire was lit. I believe it was their first grand act and they didn't decide to assign their credible agenda to the act until they had fully experienced the satisfaction of having done it.
Although counter-gentrification is a big part of the anarchistic philosophy, government provisions are not. Not in the sense of what they're asking. Real anarchists would not demand low income housing be built. Real anarchists would find a way to provide such housing themselves. After all, real anarchy is about proving that life can be lived without government or corporate intervention. Anarchy doesn't vote, because it knows it can affect the issues that matter on its own, without a political advocate. Anarchy doesn't create laws to address problems, because it knows that laws change nothing. And, as I said, anarchy does not demand the government or corporate parties provide housing for the poor, because anarchy knows that this, if it matters that much, can be done without such aid.

I went forth to offer a possible solution to local anarchist, Ryan Cappalletti, who had been interviewed in the news story. I sent him a letter, suggesting that the local anarchist community become actively involved with the non-violent (but not pacifistic) interception of these parties and the active intervention against them.
This can be done in cooperation with the local and federal law enforcement officials. I am not against that, either. I think such an act could help repair and/or improve relations between the local anarchist community and those who hold it suspect. I, however, believe it would prove a larger point, if we were capable of doing this ourselves.

There is no conclusion to this blog post. There is no point. All I offer is that, if you are an anarchist in Grand Rapids, please contact me and, together, we can devise a way to affect change and stop these people from sullying our name and way of life.
If you are an anarchist and do not live in Grand Rapids, please think about what you do. Don't just plan or plot. FUCKING THINK. Think hard. Think about why you are the way you are and why you believe what you believe. Question yourself and the purity of your state of mind and allow the tenets of your beliefs to be reflected in your actions. Respect other anarchists as you wish the world would respect you. Hold their reputation with regard, whenever you act. After all, you do not represent yourself in the eyes of the world, just as nobody else represents you in your own eyes.
If you are an anarchist and somebody you know is going to perpetrate an act against the community, please stop them. And, although I believe in vigilantism, keep vigilantism out of it. You represent a belief to the world and you, with every action, run the risk of making the political realization of those beliefs even more impossible than they already are.
Quit being assholes, kids.
Drop out if you can't deal with it.

My First Post In 5 Months: Part II - Joe Bob Briggs is My Dad

2011-02-19T19:08:00.001-05:00

When I was young, I had little patience for stuff scholastic. I was a late bloomer, when it came to literacy, and I would have stayed behind, likely, were it not for comic books. Specifically, the X-Men book, in the years the titles were largely helmed by writer, Chris Claremont, and the young, vibrant artists; Marc Silvesteri and Jim Lee. The artists have, since, become obviously comfortable and their work lacks the luster and imagination it once had. Many have said the same of the writer. Then, however, was a different time. In the years between 1988 and 1990, I was exposed to some of the most ripping yarns I'd ever read and the stories, themselves, were informed by a visually artistic vision that operated so unanimously with the script that the end result was a kind of storytelling that was inseparable from motion pictures, in its unique and crystalline presentation. Movies, even before I had heard of the concept being explored and expressed by others, were practically the same as comic books and the two media were in a band apart from all other forms of storytelling. The correlation between the two gripped me and informed my dreams. I knew what I wanted to do. Regardless of what I told my elders, when asked what I wanted to “grow up to be” was, I wanted to make comics and I wanted to make movies. That was it and it was all there was, inside. I liked doing other things, but I didn't care about them, whenever what I came to know as visual storytelling was on my mind. I liked girls. I liked them a lot and continue to do so. I, however, never tried to secure myself a girlfriend through all of high school. I never went on a single date until I was twenty and I have yet to go on any date more than once.

While my body was too paralyzed by the difficulty of cracking-into the world of comics or movies, my mind was too captivated for anything else to matter that much. It continues to be. The prospect of a long term relationship is something frightening. How could something that requires so much time and devotion do anything but obscure the path to my own goals?

I'm 28 years old and I've been a lot closer to having a girlfriend than I have been to directing my own movie or publishing my own comic book, but the warmth of the sun is far more intense than that of the moon and I am more fixated on my goals than I ever have been.

Amid all of the comic books, I continued to watch movies. As comic books informed my tastes, it seemed the what I was reading and what I was watching became increasingly similar. I would pick comic books from the news stands, while finding whatever movies most resembled Godzilla, at the video rental store my mom worked in. Sure, in attempts to feel more adult, I read more self-proclaimed independent comics and saw more self-proclaimed independent movies, in my late teens and early twenties. I liked some of them, too. My forays into the intellectual stimulating realms of each medium, however, just left me more cynical towards authors and sensitive towards pretense.

What, it turns out, would be the style of storytelling I was most drawn to was the styles of storytelling that first attracted me to movies and comics in the first place.

Around the same time my mom stopped working at the local video rental place, as a second job, my dad started to make more money and we joined the suburban masses as cable television finally became something I could experience outside of Grandma's house. Fledgling stations, TBS and TNT showed almost nothing but low-budget monster, slasher, science fiction, western, mystery and other b-movies every night and weekend. By the time I was in junior high (middle-school, if you insist), Joe Bob Briggs' “Monstervision” was being broadcast every Saturday night on TNT. I would stay up late, in my room, with a blanket draped over my 13” TV/VCR so nobody could see the flickering blue light under my door at 3am. I simultaneously watched and taped the show, every week, so as to have archive copies of anything I happened to like. I liked a lot of it.

Joe Bob's show eventually went off the air and TNT began to slowly shift it's programming agenda to more “legitimate” domains. I never forgot his show, however. Even as I began to dip my toes into snobbier fare, I still looked back on his show with a pretty severe fondness.

As I explored the world of independent comics and film, almost ten years ago, I also found myself exploring other semi-obscurities. George A Romero, Sam Rami, Sergio Leone, John Landis, John Carpenter, George Miller and David Cronenberg began to become meaningful names to me. As time grew on, these people, especially Romero, became major influences on my storytelling style. From their movies, I also came to acquaintance with the works of many other directors who have inspired and encouraged me, my work and my style. Directors like John Waters, Frank Henenlotter, Dario Argento, Larry Cohen, Kathryn Bigelow, Stuart Gordon, James Gunn and many others.

These directors and their movies helped inform my taste and my vision. The stories I write would not be the same without them, nor would the way I want to tell them.

As February, 2011, comes to a close, I am not only closer to the end of my unemployment benefits. I am closer to making my first movie. I couldn't be there without G_d, losing my job or without Joe Bob Briggs.

My First Post In 5 Months: Part I – This Ain't Maggie's Farm No More, So Why The Hell Should I Work There?

2011-02-19T19:06:00.000-05:00

In the course of having lost my job, several months ago, to the ubiquitous chameleon of political control maintenance, I have succumb to and initiated my share of personal shifts of paradigm. When the chameleon stomps you, after all, you are likely to either change along with it or change, in oh-so poetically a Newtonian fashion, in an equal and opposite way of the chameleon itself. I'm not sure which change I'm in the process of yet. Perhaps complimentary. Perhaps clashing. The time the chameleon was most recognizable, in recent history, was as the Red Scare. After a couple of decades, everybody learned to spot its spectral trail and it learned to start changing color, again. If you can't spot it, how can you point your finger at anything but the paranoid-sounding, conspiritorial multi-noun, “THEY”? Given I only know where it's been and I don't always know where it is, whether or not I know what I'm doing can't be said. I can say, however, is that these changes I'm making seem to be a lot more indulgent of my creative conscience. My lawful returns on the premium I've paid, over the years, to the Unemployment Insurance Agency are coming to a close and the resolutions I've come to regarding employment and income have begun to venture into the realm of ideas that would typically be out of character for myself. Upon the renewed realization that employment and income are more of a dichotomy than bedfellows, I've spent my time and mind on developing alternative resources. In the interest of maintaining the legality of these resources, I don't think I'm going to mention them, here, but I can say that I am finished with jobs. I am intent on working for myself and I will no longer submit to putting my livelihood in the largely incapable and self-serving hands of business people unless under the conditions of temporary economic duress. Such a resolution would not have been made by my previously employed self, months ago. Rather, those months ago, I would have written such a resolution off as irresponsible and bordering on scam. A job, however, seems to be more of a contradictory comfort, these days, than a necessity or the mark of a hard working and stalwartly ethical individual. The comfort of third party employment has, as of late, come to mean nothing more to me than artificial comfort much in the way that wax on an apple I could just as well polish, myself, would.

In an economic world, whether it it free market, socialist or otherwise, one comes to know one's income as their living; their livelihood. The idea of employment sullies this, I believe. After all, your living is not just a means of survival. Nor is it merely a means of acquiring comforts. If your money is your living, it should be, in one way or another, in service of your goals and dreams. If you are working for an employer, however, this is not as conceivably possible. After all, if you are employed, your time belongs to somebody else. If your time belongs to somebody else, the money you make is simply an exchange that is, somehow, representational of the time you have taken away from your aspirations and given to your employer. This means it is impossible, no matter how high your salary or wage, to make an actual living under an employer. Being employed does not mean you are earning a living, being employed means you are selling yourself so somebody else might make their living from the time and effort you've given them. So, not only are you selling yourself; you're selling yourself short, because who is to say their dream is of greater value than yours? Jobs don't earn you a living, they only represent a personal compromise. Although I don't think this compromise makes anybody weak or cowardly, I no longer intend to make that compromise.

Ever since I can remember, I have been gifted with tendencies towards two specific crafts: visual arts and storytelling. While friends and family suggested I work for Disney, to capitalize on my skills as a line artist, I found other outlets for my talent. I drew characters of my own and for each of them, I had concocted a story. These characters had pasts and their stories often intersected in different ways. After watching a movie that struck my fancy, I would often scurry to my bedroom, drawing pictures inspired by the movie and weaving stories that served as an artificial sequel, so I could continue to enjoy the movie beyond the restrictions of its run-time. I, later, understood this as fan fiction. When I was a child, however, it was simply an outlet for what I've been drawn to engage in for my whole life: visual storytelling. More than anything else, my creative mind was made to create comic books and motion pictures. Cut open my skull and pull out my brain and I can promise you that there will be a warning tag stuck to the bottom, stamped by G_d, informing the user that if my brain is used for any other purpose but visual storytelling that its performance, as an organ, cannot be guaranteed to the user and the warranty will have been voided. In the words of Dee Dee Ramone, interjecting his own performance of “Love Kills” during the Ramones' last show, “It's me; this is the way I am.”

Plants, Animals and Class Fortification

2010-09-02T22:11:00.007-04:00

It's been a minute since I've blogged, I suppose.
My life has been hectic. I've been busy. I've been living in a house I intend to buy, I've got two dogs, I've got my full-time job back, I'm working on some creative projects and, for the most part, I've been away from TV and Radio for a whole year. Since I've moved back out of my parents' house, I haven't had cable. The distraction of my television, thusly, for the past year has been limited to my desire to continue to feed my DVD player. Yes, my television still receives signal. That signal, however, is dead air; analog waves that have ceased to carry invading forces into my television's receiver and crash on the shores of my cathode ray tube with the white noise of static. It sounds like a beach.
My failure to obey the latest, increasingly enforceable consumer trends is, divisively enough, what brings me back to the old noise ratchet. Not that I haven't thought of blogging. No, sir, I have been aware of the inactivity and, on occasion, have bitten the flesh at the corner of my thumb, trying to think of a subject to bitch and fit about. Regardless of my thumb-biting contemplation, I have not been able to think of a goddamn thing to bring to my one-man quilting bee and harp on. This is, possibly, because I have been busy. Or, possibly, this has been because of my own self-professed punk-rock-ness; my own unwillingness to participate in large-scale arbitration like digital converter boxes, smoking bans and the like.
I feel happy because of this, though. In spite of my recent inblogabilities, I'm happy with my decisions. Not because of some non-conformist sense of superiority. No. I live in a populated world and, generally, I like considering myself as a member of that population no matter how disappointed or lonely it may make me feel, occasionally. And, although my failure to "conform to arbitrated consumer upgrades" does satisfy my punk desire to cut my nose off (in spite of my face), plant my middle finger through one of the severed thing's nostrils and wave that finger and that thing at authority, that satisfaction is not the source of my happiness.
My happiness springs from a well of classlessness. An economist may be able to take the statistics of my life and fit the peg he's made of me into a nice, little class-shaped hole, but I cannot - looking at my own lifestyle - assign myself a class. I am not in poverty. I am not rich. In spite of those, however, I am not middle class, either. Not for all the broadness of its spectrum can I understand myself as being middle class. And that works for me.
Why?
Class is the only thing in our society that is being successfully and perpetually fortified. Class has built walls, floors, ceilings and roofs. The fortification of class has been contracted out, literally and figuratively, to every single sector of the literal and figurative contracting world you can imagine. It has developers, excavators, engineers, architects, framers, mechanical workers, electricians, masons, sealers, millworkers, plumbers, finishers, investors, insurance, safety experts, foreman, pavers and the like. Frankly, the whole operation; the blueprints, the meeting minutes, the busy workers and the growing edifice they work in scare the living shit out of me. Because there is no "new world order"; only world order and it is shaping-up to be the universe's first, successful, large-scale perpetual motion machine.

The idea and fact of the "new liberal right" is, has and, I suppose, will be something that fascinates and frightens me as much as a black hole would to a physicist with ALS. I say "new liberal right" because I don't know what else to call it, although I suppose it isn't all that new.
In 1958, Mao Zedong declared war on 4 organisms he had deemed pests; flies, mosquitoes, rats and sparrows. He encouraged people to create a ruckus wherever sparrows congregated, to frighten sparrows from landing, in order to prevent them from eating farmers' grain. It worked. Having no place to rest, the sparrows flew themselves to death. Just as the Australians discovered, when they inadvertently poisoned birds while trying to kill rabbits, the Chinese discovered that the sparrows probably ate a great deal more insects than grain. As Mao realized the problem, insects ravaged fields and townsfolk gagged on the stink of carrion from piles of dead birds in their town, bringing maggots, flies and sickness. 30 million people died from the famine. 30 million people were too poor for grain, in a Marxist system that they, themselves, empowered because they believed they'd be treated equally. They thought communism would solve their poverty, so they mobilized. All communism ever did for the Chinese people, however, was keep them mobilized. It could be said that all of this was done for a sense of unity. I, on the other hand, would argue until my dying breath that this had nothing (not even initially) to do with anything but control and if there's one thing control depends on; it's class. This is why communism works so well for those in control; because communism fortifies class and unilateralizes it.
What the fuck does that have to do with a goddamn converter box or anything else, for that matter?
Everything.
Communist China, especially the Mao regime, is completely analogous to the consumer movements being spearheaded by those in power (the politically elite/government and the economically elite/companies and super-rich citizens working for the same end as the government). The converter boxes you bought weren't broadening your access to broadcast information, so you could live a more well-rounded, well-informed couch-potato life. Yes, there's more digital channels than there were analog. But how many of them do you get? I've often heard the complaint from people who used to receive signal without rabbit ears that, with the new digital signal, they can't get anything in without rabbit ears or other antennae. They were to stimulate the economy. Not your economy. You spent money. Not to get your job back. You, likely, don't work for one of the companies who made the converter boxes. No. This was to increase the State's sales tax revenue and the companies that help fund our military (what our government spends, annually, on defense is about exactly equal to what the government gleans from corporations in taxes). The government was so eager to make this happen, that they offered coupons galore, to promote the sales of these little boxes and the antennae that you'd need. Not to mention the fact that cable revenues have spiked since the news of the digital switch first started to spread, in 2008. Comcast, if you don't remember, has been such a rising corporate star that they bought NBC/Universal. That's a lot of tax power that the government needs and, when you're in a recession, what's the best way to get timid consumers to buy? Tell them they have to.
Government enforced consumer arbitration, like this, is only the beginning. The tip of the proverbial iceberg. The foreskin of the diseased, albeit enhanced, porn star's banana-shaped erection, throbbing and ready to blow all over your face, clavicle or tailbone (You choose. This is a democracy, after all).
Hope isn't just audacious. It's pushy.
Sorry, that might have been too politically specific. I've forgotten it isn't the rebelious vogue to hate on a president, anymore, now that a Republican isn't in office. I forgot this wasn't about what one actually believes and it's always just come down to what side one is on. Damn. So much for free thinking in this world of the "new, liberal right".
On that subject, I suppose I got a little side-tracked by Maoism. Not that I actually got side-tracked. But, for those who haven't gotten the point I was making, I say "new, liberal right" because I have a hard time calling liberalism "left" when its behaviors and principals are so fascistic. Fascism, by the way, is a class thing, too. It's just more obvious than "Communism".
The new-ish green movement and the burgeoning popularity of the animal rights movement are being watched closely by those in power and they are already beginning to be used by those powers to maintain, insure and ensure their positions of power.
If there's one thing that's green, in this world, it's the reassessment, reexamination, addressing and eventual curbing of consumption. The green movement, however, has nothing to do with anti-consumerism. The green movement is, in fact, a consumer movement. It is a movement designed to make you buy new products and throw away old ones...or, better yet, pay to have the old ones recycled.
The lifestyle changes encouraged by Green movement, as we know it, have practically nothing to do with the dispensation of anything. The only green movements that have anything to do with decreasing consumption are small, barely auxiliary to the mainstream and no larger or more successful than they were in the 1960's, 70's, 80's or 90's. The capital "g" Green movement is about the continued acquisition of product; and not cheap, established products. This is about newer, more expensive products. This is about simultaneously generating more tax revenue, more corporate revenue and a wider gap between the rich and the poor.
The animal rights movement has begun to work, in conjunction with the Green movement, much in the same way. We are being introduced to more earth-friendly products (which are rarely as friendly as they claim to be) as we are being introduced to more animal-friendly products. After all, animals kind-of are that non-plant, non-water, non-insect, non-microbe, face-having, intelligent, relatable part of nature that makes it easier to care or, at least, feel bad about yourself. And if an animal friendly lifestyle and an environmentally friendly lifestyle have anything in common, it's expense. These lifestyles cost quite a bit more than the lifestyle you were likely born into, if you're going to stick with it rather than treating eco/animal-friendliness like a Christmas charity. Not a big deal for those who can easily afford it. For those that can't wipe their ass with a five dollar bill when they run out of their top-of-the-line, soft, quilted bath tissue, however, these mild differences in price add-up. Especially if you have a family.
56% of Americans are in debt. 52% are recieving support, assistance, relief and otherwise supplimental income from the government. If you only allow for as much overlap as you have to, eliminating that extra six and two percent, all of America is dependent and, thus, under more influence and control of a corporation/bank and/or the government than they would be otherwise. These statistics are, like most statistics, largely based on information collected from 2009 or before.
Do you expect the imposed popularity of new consumer trends to change this? Do you expect a higher cost of living to help bring people away from debt and government assistance?
Call me paranoid, but this just looks like another issue of keeping the poor poor and the rich rich. It's a cliche for a reason and it's a dance that has been worn into the floors of the worlds ballroom since man invented money.
Frankly, I'm pissed about it. The apparent futility of being pissed won't change that. The apparent immobility of the force of nature that is class will not change how I feel about it.
If I am yelling at a mountain or a wall, then so be it. When my voice echoes back off of the stone, I hear what I've said and I fail to feel stupid. So what if it's a mountain. So what if it's a wall.
Fuck it. I'm yelling.
And not to change or save the world. I'm yelling because I'm pissed off and I don't give a damn if anybody agrees with me or not. I don't care if they think I'm crazy. I don't care if the cops knock on the door and tell me to turn it down. I'm pissed. And, yeah, it's a fit. But it's my fit and nobody owns it but me.

Mao's sparrows are collecting in your lawn, on your roof and in the streets outside your house. You might not smell them but, well, that's because you just bought them and they're still pretty new.
Mao's sparrows are collecting in your lawn, on your roof and in the streets outside your house. You might not smell them but, well, that's because you just bought them and they're still pretty new. Mao's sparrows are collecting in your lawn, on your roof and in the streets outside your house. You might not smell them but, well, that's because you just bought them and they're still pretty new. Mao's sparrows are collecting in your lawn, on your roof and in the streets outside your house. You might not smell them but, well, that's because you just bought them and they're still pretty new. Mao's sparrows are collecting in your lawn, on your roof and in the streets outside your house. You might not smell them but, well, that's because you just bought them and they're still pretty new.
Echo, Echo, Echo, Echo, Echo...fuck

Michael Jackson as an Argument for Anarchism

2009-07-03T20:50:00.004-04:00

We've all been either making jokes or trying to make it matter, so we can feel like somebody so "important" was actually a part of our lives and it wasn't all fantasy, but it's been a week since Michael Jackson died and people are still talking about it.
Why not me? It might get this bastard some actual visitors, if I talk about something cheap and topical. Maybe that's low, but his own family has sunk lower, promoting Joe Jackson's new record label, so - not only do I not give a shit, in the first place - I've got obtuse justification for not giving a shit.

Like I said, we've all been making jokes or playing sad. Nobody I've noticed, however, has been saying what I think should be more inevitable than it's proven itself to be; "There goes one possible Anti-Christ."

I know - I know, I said the stigmatic A-C-word & forever metal-branded my forehead with a big, red Bible-thumper scar. But, really, I'm not one to get riled up about the end of times. If I had a stopwatch, set to zero hour, things might be different . . . but I don't. Nor do I want one. I don't want the world to end, but I don't want it to just keep going. I care about the end of the world, but I don't give a damn if it happens in my lifetime or not. I don't care how it happens. I don't care if I'm raptured, or if I wake up with a suit of armor on, one day, and one of those sweet Desert Eagles that say "Sword" on the side, like in Romeo and Juliet.
I really don't care about how the book of Revelations bears fruit and I don't care when. But I do know that I can ditch the playful (but entirely logical) idea that Jacko might be The Jackal.

I don't think, across cultures, nations and peoples, there has been a single human being as loved, in my lifetime, as Michael Jackson. The man had power beyond Machiavelli's wettest of dreams, and he never had to be feared. Even in the face of diametric accusation of child molestation (one of the highest crimes, in the popular hierarchy of evil) the man was loved beyond love. People cried, in his presence. They wept. To see this man, people lost control of their bodies and their souls and they fucking wept. The only other footage I've seen of that kind of reaction was to The Beatles. And, then, even John Lennon - who was/is suspected of having sold his soul to the Lord of the Flies, himself - admitted, then, that The Beatles were bigger than Jesus Christ. And why not? We're not talking about freshly menstrual girls turning into teary, pink and turquoise blurs of sexual frustration, waving the current issue of Tiger Beat. We're talking about men, women and children of all ages responding to the presence of The King of Pop with a messianic overwhelming that would lead any onlooking seraph to expect the sonofabitch to pull a sword out of his mouth and open a bunch of scrolls.
He wasn't just an idol. Idols are unwitting chunks of inanimate material that are hewn into worshipped objects against their will and understanding.
Michael Jackson was a false god. And I'm not even talking about the Sunday school interpretation of a role model. I'm talking about somebody who was aware they were worshipped and used it. That laser-eyed monstrosity, in Las Vegas is an idol. Michael Jackson was C-3P0 among Ewoks (that's right, I used one of the worst parts of Return of the Jedi analogously. Live with it.)

Now, keep in mind, I'm not trying to posthumously vilify the once human wax museum we knew as King, but I'd like to take the next few paragraphs to actually itemize a little of what I'm talking about:

I'll leave out all of the stuff about him trying to put his penis inside of children, because the way it was handled by all parties and the public make it impossible to ever know the facts.
I think the most interesting thing about that time in his life was the fact that he was still so well loved. You could argue that all of his television interviews did so well, out of a morbid, public curiosity. But, then, why did his album climb back into the top ten? We were watching, because we loved him and we would tune into any image of his face we could find.
And, perhaps, our adoration is what he needed to bolster his kingly confidence back to its designated pinnacle. At the height of his lawsuit, he married a princess. She looked a bit too much like her dad, but that didn't matter. Who cares about looks, when you're using a human being to make a fashion statement? "I'm the goddamn King of Pop and I'm marrying me the goddamn daughter of the goddamn King of Rock & Roll!"
That poor, drunk-looking girl has spent her whole life getting passed around, like the mouthpiece of a fucking hookah, for who she is. I'd feel bad for her, but she wears that cowboy hat all the time, so I guess that means she's tough enough to take it.

That all was 1993 and 1994.

Enter 1995: Michael Jackson puts out HIStory: Volumes I & II. Although the name's a little goofy and slightly smacks of Mel Brooks, it's also a bit creepy and hints at a sort-of G_d complex. That, however, is beside the issue and treads a little too closely to Coast to Coast's territory for me to believe I'd actually be credible, if I went there. What's really interesting is the fact that we still loved this man - the whole world (with a few Afghani exceptions) loved this man - so much that we ate up whatever he could dish out. It wasn't just forgiving him for what he may have done. It was our outright refusal to be over-saturated. We just kept soaking him in. He was almost all that was on television for two years. He was the O.J. Simpson trial, before the O.J. Simpson trial. He was inescapable, but we still bought his double disc album, right away, and made it debut at #1, worldwide. It was the best selling multiple disc album of all time, and it wasn't even all original material. Half of it was a fucking greatest hits album! On top of that, he was scolding us for paying too much attention to him and we still had to hear it.
It was under the banner of that album that he also claimed to speak for all people of all beliefs and cultures, of all colors, in all the nations. Shortly before HIStory's release, The New York times cited "They Don't Care About Us" as being antisemitic. Rightfully so:
"Beat me, hate me
You can never break me
Will me, thrill me
You can never kill me
Jew me, sue me
Everybody do me
Kick me, kike me
Don't you black or white me"
When confronted on the topic, he had this to say; "The idea that these lyrics could be deemed objectionable is extremely hurtful to me, and misleading. The song in fact is about the pain of prejudice and hate and is a way to draw attention to social and political problems. I am the voice of the accused and the attacked. I am the voice of everyone. I am the skinhead, I am the Jew, I am the black man, I am the white man. I am not the one who was attacking. It is about the injustices to young people and how the system can wrongfully accuse them. I am angry and outraged that I could be so misinterpreted."

Subsequent apologies were made, but all-in-all, he continued to sell albums and continued to be stood-up for.

His tour that year played for 82 dates, in 58 cities. 4.5 million people attended the shows and made his tour the most successful he'd ever had.
The more people came up against him, the more others rallied to him.
He was the leader of the free world.
He was unaccountable. Maybe not untouchable, but the man was accountable to nobody.
The woman he hastily married, that year, gave him full custody of the children they had, together, without a fight. How many rich men does that happen to?

In 1997, he put out a remix album of songs from HISstory, which sold 6 million copies. It was a remix album of songs that came out two years before that. It was a remix album.

It was a remix album.

From here, I could go on. It's all recent enough, however, to be served pretty well by memory. Otherwise, look it up.

When you get down to it, though, it's just the story of a man with a cathedral-sized ego and the public adoration to match. That kind of thing scares the shit out of me.
Power is power. It doesn't have to be political. It can be anything.
The bottom line is, if people cry, when they see you, you know you're their god and, unless you're really G_d, that power is probably going to deeply corrupt you.

Watch interviews with this guy. He justifies everything. Nothing he does is wrong. He made mistakes and miscalculations, but the man really believed himself to be sinless. He didn't think he was accountable to anybody. He lashed-out, whenever his power was threatened, and maintained the reputation of a gentle spirit.

If anybody is/was a "living" argument for Anarchism, it was Michael Jackson.

I didn't hate the man, but I'm glad he's dead.

You Can Know You Suck Without Getting Up-Into White Guilt and it All Starts With Realizing You're as Full of Shit as That Other Paddy Bitch, Part 1:

2009-05-18T22:03:00.016-04:00

I never expected to be as much of a pop culture commentator as I have been on this blog. And I really don't want to be one of those overly overt punks who makes a point to make a point about how uncool they think television is, but I really would rather be inspired enough to make a blog post without television wetting the folds and lobes of my brain with its sneaky brand of foreplay. But enough bullshitty, hipster-cred insistent self-effacement. Too much of it will stink my blog up with an artificial sincerity that you could get much more easily from comments left on your Myspace profile.
I watch television. Even if I didn't live with my parents I would. I own one and, although it isn't fancy, its completely mine.
I was watching VH1's Charm School 3 (with Ricki Lake) not twenty minutes ago. It was probably the last 10 minutes of the show. All of the girls lined up, wearing their school girl fetish ball costumes, in two segregated rows. The largely blond Rock Of Love brats lined up like a white picket fence behind the Real Chance of Love bitches. And, before you ask, NO! My choice of words, there, has nothing to do with the personal distinction I make between brats and bitches, nor does it have to do with my preference for bitchery over brattyness. My choice of words, as well as this entire blog post, has to do with race. It's a fun card to play and white people (usually the only people who live boring enough lives to read and write blogs) don't have much of a sense of humor about it.
As a white male with friends (actual friends and not just people I ride the bus with or work with) of many different ages, creeds and ethnic backgrounds, I often feel at liberty to say whatever I want. I'm usually wrong in this assumption, but I'm white so I act on my assumptions anyway, because I'm too insecure to ask a goddamn question. So, as one of these busted crackers who makes too many bad jokes, I feel I've made enough room for myself to say that I really have a problem with white women. There I said it. I've got half a dickful of patience for them and, me being white and all, half a dickful isn't very much. I may boast a fairly diverse group of friends, but that doesn't change the fact that most of them are white. Being surrounded by all of this whiteness should have helped me acclimate to their pissy, little nuances . . . but I have yet to come to a cultural understanding with my fellow skim milk drinking, cozy-up-to-the steering wheel driving, Asian baby adopting people.
Does it make me a misogynist expressing my frustrations with white women? No. Although I, sometimes, understand misogyny, I find no excuse for it. In fact, the only thing that would probably make me a misogynist would be if I were to keep my feelings about white women to myself and let them fester. Well . . . either misogyny or accidentally/subconsciously fetishizing women of other races, but that's a phase (and I still can't say for sure whether the fact that I'm single does or does not have anything to do with the fact that I have such a hard time with white women) I already went through and I think that ethno-fetishism is just as disgusting and ignorant as misogyny or any other kind of bigotry. I'm all about diversifying the gene pool, but I'm not willing to endorse an Asian or Black Chick/White Dick porn site under the umbrella of racial and cultural double-dutching. But I'm sidling the track I've laid-out for myself, a little . . .

I just witnessed a microcosmic example of how white folk pretending that racism doesn't exist can be used to enact fascism. Shit yeah, I'm observant. I even noticed that the black dude was acting as the caddy in that Capital One commercial where the banker knocks the small business people out of his office with a golf club.
To give a brief summary of Charm School, Episode 3.02; Kiki instigated some verbal altercations that made the white girls feel unsafe, Ashley locked the emotionally vulnerable and maybe mentally unstable Britney Star in the bathroom causing her to cry, freak-out and pray on camera, and somebody who I already forgot the name of got too drunk. When I saw Ricki Lake (the Headmistress) call the bottom three down, so she could expel one of them from VH1's world renowned charm school, Kiki, Ashley and Drunks-Her-Face stepped forward. When Tequila Rose and Ashley were told Ricki's reasons for wanting to send them home, everybody kept their composure and acted maturely. When it came to Kiki, the one black girl out of the three, Bratty Bacchus starts trying to provoke her with some catty body language. When Kiki tries to assert herself and insist she can have her turn to speak in peace, it becomes a shouting match with all of the white girls ganging up on Kiki. When the rest of the black girls try to defend Kiki, all of the white girls but Brittany Star begin freaking out. Farrah begins to talk about how threatened she feels around Kiki, while she eyes all of the black girls. Finally, Farrah says something about her coming to VH1's Charm School and not VH1's Real Chance of Love and storms off the set with Body Shot Barbie and Ashley. When everybody calms back down and the three "protesters" are called back in, Ricki Lake decides to expel Kiki. Apparently her verbal confrontations with the girls were more dangerous and harmful than drinking one's self half way to the hospital or picking the most emotionally unstable member of the group and locking them in a bathroom. So Hood realized what I did, as soon as the editor cut to her for a reaction shot & stormed off the set.
Ricki Pamela Lake, you were in Hairspray and you should know better than that. Oh, wait, I guess that sentence could make me as bad as her.
You can't let the fact that you did this for so-and-so or babysat for what's-their-face or stood up for the cause of such-and-such convince you that you're not racist. Yes, white people, you can have a black friend and be racist. Chances are that they know you're racist. Maybe you're a little racist. Maybe you're more racist than you'd ever want to admit. The fact remains, however, that you are uncomfortable around certain demographics of people and that's actually not all that bad because, chances are, that they're cool with it. There's a difference between being racist and being a bigot. Fascism is bigotry and it can even happen on VH1.
As white people, we've learned to reject change by appearing to embrace it. We cozy up and soften ourselves to black folk, so they don't feel so much of a spirit of dissent against us and, maybe, stop trying so hard to move into our neighborhoods and schools and offices. We make special immigration exceptions for Latinos, because - well - who wants to deport our worker caste?
We're spiteful. We're deceitful. We're underhanded and passive aggressive. Between the United States and England alone, we've got an encyclopedic wealth of information on how to simultaneously be a imperialistic megalomaniac and a worthless pussy fart in the same act.
White women, unfortunately, have this quality in spades. In fact, it's so effective that the only men who are really as good at it as women usually become politicians.
Using this characteristic tool, Ricki Lake was able to look completely justified, as she took the side of the mostly white Rock of Love team. Aggression can be intimidating, but passive aggression scares the butt-fucking shit out of me.
Passive aggression is one of the worst traits any human can have, ever. A passive aggressive person is tactful in the way they choose their words, but they do not necessarily choose their words with the intent of them being understood as they are. A passive aggressive person would rather have you unravel a curtain than pull it aside. It makes them feel powerful. A passive aggressive person asks a rhetorical question and expects an answer, because they've endowed their rhetoric with nuances that imply a whole different question, altogether, between the actual words they spoke. A passive aggressive person endows the people who they are surrounded by with guilt and shame, which is a pretty fucking satanic quality to have.
Unfortunately, white women have a really strong tendency to be passive aggressive. Like, really, really, really passive aggressive. I wish it weren't true, but it is. Not all black people talk in the movie theater, but I've never been to a movie in a "black neighborhood" that had a quiet audience. Not all Italian guys wear too much product in their hair, but I wouldn't want to sit behind your average man of Mediterranean descent on a roller coaster. Not every white woman is a fake-laughing, competitive, passive aggressive brat . . . but enough are to make the good ones look bad. There's enough awful white women in the world that there's an entire generation of girls who are on the brink of mistaken identity because they hate how catty girls are and they only befriend guys.
I guess the reason it frustrates me most, aside from the fact that the way a white person of any gender acts reflects on me in one way or another, is the fact that I know women are capable of a lot more than their given credit for. Not just by society as a whole, but by each other & by themselves. Females amaze me. I understand that being what they are, physically, endows them with certain limitations, but -really- those limitations are nothing. I almost feel like man was the prototype and woman was the final product. Their brains can do more. Their bodies look better (and I'm not just saying that because I'm a heterosexual male). A woman has the emotional capacity to kill with one arm and tenderly rear a child with the other. And those are just the cliches. I'm not even going to get into the finer points, because they still confuse me.
Women are so much my favorite people that I didn't feel completely comfortable with my masculinity until I was about 23. Yet, still, white women continue to hold themselves back and put themselves in an easily vilifiable spot with all of their passive aggressive and catty behavior. Why?
Why not say what you mean? It isn't insensitive. Transversely, I'd argue it's insensitive to say something with such a sidewinding delivery that it will cause the person to trip up and make you angry. It's insensitive to find sly ways of testing somebody with loaded questions and planted mini-mind fucks. It isn't just evil against the people you're trying to manipulate, it's evil against yourself and any woman you can name.
White girls, does a black woman get upset when she sees a black man dating a white chick because she's racist? Does she get all hot and bothered, because she can't stand to see the black race get diluted? I don't know. As far as I'm concerned, it's all Ethiopian to me. We've all got African roots, if you want to nit-pick, so the black race has already been about as diluted as it could possibly be short of people having transparent skin and hair. The wager I'm willing to make is that it has less to do with the blackness of the baby and more to do with the whiteness of you. That mad black woman is probably pissed off because she can't imagine the idea of a black baby being raised by a game-playing, side-stepping, double-talking, white mother. There's a reason that the cheating husband's mistress, the villainess and the antagonistas in a lot of black movies and television shows are molded from such a specific archetype. It's the Hillary Banks girl. She's not just "light-skinded". She doesn't just physically represent a departure from black culture. She talks like a white girl and she acts like a white girl. I'm willing to bet that the chances are pretty high that you've watched one of these movies and hated that yellow skinned, homewrecker. Is it because she reminds you of that friend you wish you didn't have, girls? Does she remind you of that friend that you can't wait to talk about as soon as she leaves the room? Or does she remind you of all the girls that broke your trust to the point that you find it difficult to even make friends with girls in the first place?
Maybe that's a little harsh.
I don't know.
You can be insulted and take offense . . .
. . . or you can grow the fuck up.
Not that I think I necessarily deserve her, but I'm still waiting for my prize bitch to come along any damn how.
I'll see you next post.
Maybe I'll explain that whole brat vs. bitch thing, then.
Bu----ut, I bet I won't!

How ABC Murdered My Favorite Ghost:

2009-05-04T01:59:00.014-04:00

If you want to hear some music, while you read, scroll down to the illegally hotlinked Myspace music module I've put at the bottom of this post. It will start playing on its own.

Have you seen the man in the above picture? I haven't. Not ever. I used to talk to him pretty frequently, though. He's a spectacular line artist and a swell guy. He wrote and artistically rendered about two and a half years worth of material for New England Comic's famous, yet strangely not-that-successful series, The Tick. That isn't what made me like the guy, though. I actually didn't realize how much I appreciated his work, until I saw his non-Tick-related stuff.
Because of him, I sent in a submission package to New England Comics and, subsequently, never called them back when they showed interest, because I was "too punk" to draw what somebody else had written. Because of him, I found out about cool bands, like Cop Shoot Cop. Because of him, my parents found out I used to huff gasoline and other household ethers.
I never met Eli "5" Stone, but I miss him. If he knocked on my door, today, my couch would be his for the sleeping. I'd even consider taking the couch and letting him have my bed.

I haven't spoken with Eli in about seven or eight years. Our communications began to disintegrate, after he moved from Boston, MA to Venice, CA. He got married and, eventually, his e-mail address stopped working. He ran a flash site full of pre-production type stuff that he had laid out for a bunch of independent comic book projects. I kept checking on it, to see if he'd post anything new. He never did, though, and his domain eventually expired, as did the domain for distantcorners.com (a horror and sci-fi site for which he did a lot of design work). I found out that he may have done some layout work for Cartoon Network's "The Venture Brothers", in 2003, but where would that get me?
I thought I'd struck pay dirt, when I found his old friend and webmaster, from his old HTML site, Lee. I asked if he'd heard from his friend, at all. Not in years. This was discouraging, because Lee actually knew him in a four dimensional realm. Lee had seen him move through time and space just like the rest of us. Lee had heard his voice in non WAV file form. Lee may have even touched him, yet he did not know where Eli was. It was as if Eli had, altogether, disappeared.
Am I eulogizing him, right now?

Eli was a charming guy. He seemed to swim in a cocktail of problems, wielding a red, plastic sword and laughing about it. He was so public and open about how fucked up he was or may have been that the sickest bits weren't only acceptable; they were endearing. You never felt bad for him, and I'm pretty sure he wouldn't want you to. He'd invite you to share his problems. Encourage you to start smoking, drinking and doing drugs, but he never treated you like a snob when you turned down his terrible, terrible advice. He was a true bastard gentleman. I've met other human beings who have seemed as genuinely casual as Eli, but they've all turned out to be pathological sociopaths. Maybe Eli was, too, but I care about him more than all of the other pathological sociopaths.

I met Eli through what I have to say was the strongest influence on my storytelling style, at the time. He helmed The Tick for two-or-so years. When he stopped, I had randomly found his archive, online. It was chock full of old sketches he'd done, when he worked at a copy shop. Weird stuff. Stuff that was, frankly, a lot better than anything he'd done for New England Comics. I told him how much I liked his non-Tick-stuff and he sent me a signed copy of the first comic he ever did (a comic that he spent a rent check to print-up, just for the hell of it). He tucked a little sketch of the tick, on the inside. I still have them. I actually framed the sketch in a little, 3x5" frame.
He was 26 years old, when he started working on The Tick. He was at least two years older than that, when I started talking to him.
I was 16. I'm 26, now.

Every couple of months, or so, there's something that reminds me to look for him. I probably still think about him a few times a week but, every once in a while, there's something that will pop up and remind me of conversations I've had with him. The most recent one; the one that inspired this blog post was a picture of one of my friend's tattoos. It was based on a Derek Hess sketch. Eli was friends with Derek Hess. In fact, the conversation we had about Derek Hess is what got him started on telling me about Cop Shoot Cop. Derek had done art for the band & he was jealous of Derek, because he really liked that band. He also stressed to inform me that, even though Derek had drawn a picture of cops pointing guns at each other, the name of the band was not about cops at all but, rather, about the cyclical repetition of heroin addiction (copping dope, going somewhere to shoot up, and going back to the park, or wherever, to cop some more). I still have a lot of those e-mails printed out and filed-away, somewhere (including the e-mail where I talked to him about my former romps in the world of household inhalants that my parents had found)

For a while, it wasn't too hard to find Eli, online. I could never find a way to actually contact him, after his e-mail disappeared, but one could always find whispers of snippets of whatever he might be working on next, should one run a web search on him. There would be the occasional annoyance of some shitty band that shared his name. For the most part, however, there was always that glimmer of hope; that new piece of Eli data, that fresh breadcrumb, that link that might bring me one step closer to being able to say "hello" to my lost pal.

That all changed, last year, with the premier of ABC's "Eli Stone".
Really? A show about a character, named Eli Stone, called Eli Stone? What the fuck are the goddamn chances? At least it doesn't take place in Boston, I guess.
All I'm saying, though, is that it's really hard to find a reason not to hate the Disney Corporation when they even fuck with my own personal life. I was on my way to finding this bastard again, until this goddamn show ate a hole the size of Coca-Cola out of Google and any other search engine on the web. Now, I'm reduced to searching for Eli Stone on Facebook and sending personal messages to any one that might be him. "Is it you? No? Sorry."

Fuck you, ABC.
I mean it.
Like, really. From the bottom of my balls, FUCK YOU!

In the meantime, I implore anybody who might stumble on this blog to contact me, if they see a bald man who looks like he could be Grant Morrisson or the real life Spider Jerusalem drawing pictures on the bellies of young women.
Please.

You're my only hope.
Unless you work for ABC, then you're probably just fucking with me.

"You can't see me now, but I'm watching over you.
All the clocks are broken."

-Cop Shoot Cop

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Are You Following Me, Camera Guy?

2009-03-23T18:32:00.007-04:00

Screw all the philosophical crap, below. I want to talk about advertising!
Have you seen commercials? They're everywhere.
On TV, the radio, the highway, the movie theater, automobile bumpers, guitar cases, the backs of cereal boxes, the dentist's office, the Cleo Awards, pro sports, little league sports, yearbooks, Christmas, the little woman with the cups and toothpicks by the end cap . . .

. . . not to mention comedy.

Yes, professional or amateur, comedy is laced with commercials. How does this happen? Well, first, somebody makes a shitty commercial, like this.
Then, this happens.

It's easy comedy. I mean, the inspiration is bad enough that we've been making fun of it without the coercion of comic aid, already. Now, however, we don't only have a possibly new perspective from which to laugh at the advertisement . . . we've also got a secondary reference, so we're even more sure to remember the product forever. The worst part is that the comedy resulting from a commercial parody is usually sub-par, overly derivative and really dated.

Am I saying that comics are in some sort of crazy cahoot-riddled conspiracy with ad agencies? They might be, but I'm not saying so. But I am saying that you don't have to be Larry The Cable Guy to figure out that the same people who write those "hilarious"Geico commercials probably watch the same sketch comedy shows, online videos and movies that you do. So, it wouldn't be so ridiculous to say that some of these commercial geniuses are banking on their product being parodied by comedians you follow, further lubricating the membrane between your brain and a product placement implant.

So, around the same time that I'm realizing there's way too many Sham Wow parodies on Youtube, I see this commercial on cable television. I'm sure anyone in the developed world is familiar with the Vince Offer character and his current 15 minutes of immorality. Maybe you've even got your own Vince Offer impression. Well, believe you me, he's onto you! He's on to everybody.
Maybe he had it planned from the beginning. His fake-ish Boston accent coupled with his carny eyes and cellphone kiosk polo shirt could have all been part of a decisive scheme to be parodied; comically immortalising the products he sells and his personality as a television salesman. Maybe. Or, maybe, he was just savvy enough to realize the pot of gold dancing in front of his lazy eyes. Either way, we've apparently snagged his barbed hook on our respective scrotums and labia and eagerly tugged the line.
There have been some serious Youtube videos, like this'n, about the Sham Wow ads, but most of those are just as hard to take seriously as their subject matter.
Most of these homemade parodies, however, are like the videos I've taken the time to link and list, below:

Youtube Poop is a sublime and simple phenomenon and I think they always serve to make the best parodies.

Other, more structured Youtube videos are annoying and obviously made by college students who think they have well defined comical sensibilities, because they "lol" at Flight of the Conchords.

Others are amalgamations of clever amateur editing, a good eye and a taste for tedium.

Vince's latest commercial, for the Slap Chop, was seemingly made for parodies both Youtube and otherwise. The name of the product is funnier than "Sham Wow". Slap Chop sounds like a throw-away Bobby Lee character from the worst of Mad TV. On top of the funny name, the commercial is laden with awkward hijinks, like working "bikini" into a rhyme scheme with "linguine". He throws a competitor's product into the sink garbage disposal. He drops a bomb with "You're gonna love my nuts." The man may look a little - let's admit it - retarded, but he isn't naïve. The bastard knows kids are gonna laugh when they're told that they'll, somehow, derive enjoyment from his testicles . . . even if there's a really strong argument that said kids are taking his words far out of the realm of intended context. There's simply too many awkward and funny moments in this ad for me to explain and there's far too many for it to be unintentional.

Well, I say the game stops now. Right here.
I want you to close the Youtube tabs in your web browsers. I want you to get up from your computers. Find a window; open it. Open your window and yell out of it. I want you to scream at the top of your lungs "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna play dumb anymore!"
We're not gonna give Vince Offer any more of our time, or our minds, or our hearts.
We're not going to give any more of these advertisers the backhanded affirmation they're looking to get from our half-cynical senses of humor!
We're not going to give these bastards the time of day!
Yeah, that's right, Mr. Cash for Gold and Mrs. Tiddy Bear, we're on to your game and we're not going to play anymore.
No more jokes, in the office.
No more SNL sketches.
No more witty references on "Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me!"
No more tongue-in cheek "Daily Show" comments.
No more animated .gif files posted on our friends' Myspace profiles.
No more Youtube videos.
No more blogs . . .

. . . shit

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, I guess.

This blog post is brought to you by Youtube's Slap Chop Remix and has been posted in loving memory of Willard Scott, America's first and greatest commercial clown.

F(ucked)U(p) B(eyond) A(ll) R(esponsibility)

2009-03-19T22:18:00.004-04:00

I was gonna do a really cool blog post, a while back, but never got around to it. It was gonna be all to the point and shit.
Like, "Don't tell me the economy is shit, when the bank parking lots are plowed better than the streets."
But the snow is melted, now, and my hard drive is still inoperable.
Anyway . . .
So, like, I'm sitting on the couch, with my mother and the local news interrupts. The primary annoyance of what was on my screen was the simple fact that it wasn't a local story. I don't live in West Virginia. The secondary annoyance was the bigger one.
Read this story. It's short.
Right when I thought people were done using the word "hero" in any other context than referencing summer blockbusters and video games with gaudy, guitar-shaped controllers . . .
Man, I seriously thought 9-11 burned people out on the whole "hero" thing.
Nobody accepts the title, and we love them for it.
If they accept the title, they're probably an asshole.
How passive aggressive do we have to be? There's far more simple and less media-involved ways to test whether or not somebody has a shred of artificial humility, aren't there? That's a rhetorical question?

But, I suppose, in the current political/economic climate, it makes perfect sense to start calling people heroes.
Why?
We Americans hate doing shit.
We'd rather sign away our sanity than take responsibility for anything. We celebrate victimhood and the entitlement that comes with it, like it's a year long holiday. Fuck me, we've got a goddamn cable channel dedicated to it. The bitch even comes with a sexually insulting name, to help the victimization along:

And, why not?
Victimhood is like a self-loading absolution gun with a studded dildo pistol grip. It's a get out of jail free card that comes with a special clause that lets you use your favorite Monopoly piece every time! I could metaphor the shit out of it, until I sounded like a southern politician.

This kind of almost uniquely Western mentality makes the title of "hero" ideal to throw around like semen in the White House swimming pool. I mean, if you call a Regular Jo, who's "Just doing my job" or "what I expect anybody else would have done", it opens the window that you've been looking for, since your parents made you give that dog you never took care of away; run-of-the-mill responsibility is fucking extraordinary!
So, we've arrived at a mob consensus that dictates if anybody is caught being a Good Samaritan, or doing anything that requires serious effort, they're a hero. Sure as hell exempts the rest of us mortals from having to do that shit. We can sit around and not even look like assholes, because that five percent of us that have the will to effect something are so goddamn heroic.
Maybe we should make a TV movie about those guys.
Nah. You're right. I'd rather keep watching Lifetime, too.

Jerk a hero off as hard as you want. In the end, you're still just sucking your own dick for having the cleverness to avoid doing anything.

Man, I hate The News.

My First Retraction!

2009-02-01T05:20:00.002-05:00

In the post, titled Beaumont's Brains Out, I said this:

"Open a no-minimum savings account with no inactivity fees. They, more than likely, have one. Put five dollars in and never close it - just leave it. The paperwork and records they keep on that five dollars will cost them about as much every week. It might harm your credit, but only slightly. You don't need perfect credit. It only proves you're good at being in debt. It only proves you're a prime candidate to be taken for granted. If that sounds underhanded or passive aggressive, keep in mind that a bank is nothing but a reservoir of calculated risks. Let them calculate the risk they took in you, until you die. They're obligated to. Besides, you might be able to will eight dollars and six cents from that account to one of your grandchildren. Stipulate in your will that they frame it."

This, apparently, is no longer true. I suppose things have changed since I opened my first bank account (about 14 years ago, when I was still scheduled to be a minor for another 6 years). And, maybe, my memory just didn't serve me correctly in the first place.
I was talking to a friend of mine who works at the call center for the very bank I custom (although I'm closing my account, soon). It turns out that, after two years of inactivity, your account can be closed and the money in it can be given to the state.

So, as a bit of advice, don't go and take my advice without checking my apparent lack of facts.

I HATE what you people call LOVE these days

2009-01-26T17:31:00.012-05:00

First off, let's get it out of the way; yes, I am reading Slavoj Žižek's Fragile Absolute, right now. I am, however, only a couple of chapters in. I am also, however, borrowing it from a friend who lent it to me because I apparently say a lot of things he has to say . . . although that might not be a compliment, being that he's an Obama Supporter (don't fucking start with me!) and has some obvious Dispensationalist tendencies (from what I can tell). This post is far less of a reaction to Žižek than it is a reaction to bumper stickers, postmodernism and the taint of Apologetics. . .

. . . it has more to do with the fact that I think hate has become the misunderstood villain in a bad movie. We've failed to sympathize with hate, let alone empathize with it. We've failed to develop it's character for a fair presentation. We've failed to accept it. We've failed to embrace it, when we need to. All in all, we've failed to love our good neighbor, hate.

You don't know what I'm talking about, most likely. How can this bastard put hate on his roster board of virtues? Well, I guess we could go all of the way back to the beginning and talk about how G_d hates the devil and all that, but I think we can pick a more contemporary beginning: Apologetics.

Sure, sure, I'm a fan of C.S. Lewis. I'm also entitled to think he was a bit of a pussy. I've thought the same of myself, when I tried to rationalize my beliefs to those who do not share them. I've looked back on my attempts to appeal to questions that were asked in a certain way and had a prickle of regret scuttle across my scrotum as it drew walnut tight. In an imperfect world, accountability is not as universal as you might think it is. The only people that anybody needs to explain their beliefs or their actions, in relation to their beliefs, is other people who claim the same belief set. This doesn't just go for Christians. It goes for everybody. If a non-believer confronts you about what you believe, you have no reason to dignify them with a polite response. Why? You don't need to justify yourself. We live in a world that does not have to justify itself to us, yet we are constantly interrogated and persecuted. It's a double standard, and to use that hypocrisy to call you out on what they perceive as yours is nothing short of a hoodwink. Why be a party to it? Especially if you say you're a Christian or follower of Christ; a man who instructed us to be in the world but not of it? If you're confronted by a non-believer about your faith, you have every right to be reflexively combative. If they ask you to justify a certain point, feel more than free to point-out to them that it's politically incorrect for them to have to do the same for you, so if they're curious about what you believe, they can find a more honest and less pride-driven, insecure and passive-aggressive way to entertain their curiosities about your world. But we don't do this. We feel pigeon-holed into explaining ourselves to people who we do not answer to. We feel this every day and we cave-in to the weight of those feelings. This, among other things, has distorted how we view love.

The other great distortion comes from, I think, the postmodern synthesis of human emotion into something of material import. Human feelings have become a commodity in the modern, western social and philosophical dialectic. Political correctness is an almost universal paradigm in modern, western culture. Emotion is, somehow, sublime and seems to be at the center of the American and European thought process. But why? Feelings are fleeting! I've even been recently quoted as saying, "Peoples' feelings are supposed to get hurt. That's why G_d designed them to be passing." Still, who you offend seems to matter quite a bit these days. How you offend them matters just as much, if not more. So, is it any surprise that people have come to confuse love with a euphoric emotion? Yes, love can be a sure catalyst for this euphoric emotion but love is not this emotion, in and of itself. Love is a resolute decision to give someone or something priority over almost everything else, if not everything else altogether.
In a world where love is an emotion that makes you want to sing, laugh or involve your genitals with fluid, hate is just bad feelings. Hate is what offends. Hate is the opposite of love. Love makes me feel good (especially when my genitals are involved with fluid) so hate makes me feel bad. G_d is love, so hate must be really bad. Ha ha. Well, if G_d is just a good feeling, the Holy Spirit is a pretty capricious little slut. Isn't she? Fair weather friend to the end. But, if G_d is love, then that's impossible. The Holy Spirit must be with us all the time, whether or not it feels that great. So, we must be wrong about love.
I'm right, we're all wrong. Excuse the hubris (not that I'm really asking for you to excuse me.)
My third observation would be that Dispensationalism has contributed to the Christian misconceptions about love and hate, specifically. Most Christians, especially so-called Evangelicals, tend to forget the old testament existed until a Charelton Heston movie is on T.V. Do I have a problem with the New Testament? No, not entirely. I will, however, acknowledge that it is replete with punditry. The Old Testament is based almost entirely on actual accounts. Whether you believe these accounts to be fantastical or historical is completely irrelevant. The point is that the Old Testament is comprised largely of narrative accounts. Straightforward, even if not firsthand. The New Testament has some stories, yes. Quite a bit of the New Testament, however, is comprised of letters and sermons. The problem lies in the fact that the stuff that isn't in red print is not being said by Yehoshuah. It's being said by His Apostles. Men with fallible minds and opinions. Am I saying they're liars? No. I'm just saying that a lot of what they had to say came loaded with considerable bias. I'm saying that one should take what they say with a grain of salt. Fortunately, the entire New Testament was written by men who read the Old Testament a lot so, unless you have one of those weird New Testament only bibles, you've got your grains of salt in that really fat first half of the book in your hand.
We, however, seem to forget the Old Testament is there for anything other than adventure stories put there for us to censor and regurgitate for our children, so the young ones can have something adventurous and epic to hold their juvenile attention to the "boring, old bible". This New Testament approach has left us not only soft and diluted, but confused. We spend our time trying to follow the gospels and teachings of six-out-of-twelve apostles, and sort out the disparities between their opinions. No wonder it has become muddled into some sort of pre-digested mush we can all agree on. No wonder we've chosen the un-challenging, un-criticizable and unoffensive answers for every question.
This is what lead me to leave the church. In our search for answers for a political world, we've become a political organization. For the church, especially in a democratic west, that's a dangerous and unstable place to be.

But, what does all of this talk about love have to do with hate? Everything. To love, hating something is necessary. Not because the universe was built on extremes, but because we live in a universe that has been fractured. We live in a world that has been made imperfect. In this imperfect world, there are threats on the things and people you love. These threats can be real, perceived or merely plausible, that is, however, no reason to dismiss them. Yes, when or if you hate somebody, the risk of objectifying that person is very real. That, however, doesn't change the fact that forgiveness has nothing to do with the truth that, sometimes, a person becomes their actions. If I am striking somebody, they cannot stop my actions without stopping me. To love something, you must hate the concept of its antithesis. Without hate, love becomes corruptible, soluble and worthless, because you have no desire or passion to defend it.
Hate is not prejudice. Prejudice is a kind of hate that comes from ignorance and selfishness. Hate is not murder. Hate is the willingness to let that which you do not love die. Hate is not premeditated unforgiveness. Hate is the willingness to forgive yourself for choosing to love something first and forgive the other second.
Hate is a strong word and doesn't need to be avoided because it is strong. It needs to be avoided, so it's strength can be retained.
Vengance is the L_rd's. Anger is a sin, because we are failing to give our vengeful feelings to G_d. Grace, however, can sometimes be something we need to hand over to G_d as well. There's no point in claiming grace, when you don't understand it or when it stands between you and something you love. Love and hate are two hands on the same body, so why not keep them at two and ten when you drive?

Something I said a while ago (Sept 15, 2007)

2009-01-11T16:33:00.002-05:00

We all know Rupert Murdoch owns Myspace and, for some people, that's enough to give their profile the great, big piss-off. Over the past few years, however, social networking sites have become a crutch for venue owners - a crutch that alienates any band who doesn't want to fuck-around with these sites. Myspace is the most obvious example.
Before I explain, let me tell you a little about Rupert Murdoch.
After becoming a very successful media executive in his native Australia, he decided to globalize his assets (something that most people of the e-generation consider creepy and suspicious regardless of their politics, in spite of their own Google-oriented lives). The globalization started in the UK. He bought the British periodical, The News of the World, which was the single most read English language publication in the world, at the time. He sold his shares in his Australian companies to afford the buy-out of the paper. Once he was at the helm of TNOTW, he reclaimed his Australian assets, buying them out from under the people he sold them to.
From there, he bought another British paper, The Sun. Once his acquisition of The Sun had been made, he converted the entire publication to a tabloid format. This meant that the news could be more easily filtered because its circulation was less frequent than a daily paper and, although weekly, it had fewer pages. Not to mention the fact that tabloids focus on entertainment news and gossip, giving the publishers an even larger opportunity to isolate their readers from the world, what's going on and, ultimately, the truth.
Just in time for the Thatcher era, Murdoch bought the Times and The Sunday Times, giving him control of over almost all printed news, in the United Kingdom.
Once Thatcher was out of office, by the way, he became chummy with Tony Blair. Murdoch's media control may be attributed to Blair's success. To ice the cake, there was an ongoing scandal, in the UK, because Blair often included Murdoch in secret discussions about national policy.
Although Blair is, technically, a member of the Labour Party, in England, many people lost their jobs. The unions rioted, but to no avail. Murdoch introduced the automated, electric method of newspaper printing, used across the world, that can be credited to greatly reducing the manpower required to print a newspaper. Cost reducing, I suppose, but I haven't seen prices do anything but plateau, climb and plateau, again.
With the profits he accumulated from screwing so many Brits out of a living, he moved to America and bought the San Antonio Express-News. Then he founded the Star (that b.s. tabloid you see, at drugstores). He went on to purchase the New York Post, which, when founded by Alexander Hamilton, was a political broadsheet. Over the years, the tabloid has changed and become another giant, winding gossip column. Thanks, Rupert.
Maybe it was the tabloids that lent him the idea of numbing the public mind, but around that time he started buying the shit out of television properties. He bought Fox. He bought British Satellite Broadcasting and gained control of almost the entire British pay television market.
He went on to buy two record labels, in Australia. He merged them and gave them to his son.
Rupert Murdoch is one of very few multinational media execs who makes the decided effort to retain the major controlling stake in all of the companies under his gaze, by keeping everything in his family. This means almost every part of his empire is managed by a family member who, of course, answers to him.
Since all of this, he's bought the controlling stock in DirecTV, most Asian media and Intermix (the former owners of Myspace) and IGN.
Many credit Murdoch as being a GOP man. He was friends with the Regans, Pat Robertson and George Bush. But he also backed Hillary Clinton's re-election campaign for senate. He's also worked with third party groups, like the Libertarians.
If you ask me, his across-the-board interest in worldwide media and politics has nothing to do with conservatism. I'd say it had to do with his specific vision for the world. He wants a world that thinks and behaves his way. I really can't think of a businessman more megalomaniacal than him.
Keeping your Myspace profile is nurturing that power. Not only are you giving him a healthy stake in the youth culture that he previously had very little access to, but you're creating a system in the music scene that is completely dependent on his services. You are helping create a monopoly that reaches as deep as the local bands - unsigned acts.
Many venues, now, require you to have a Myspace profile, if they're even going to consider you. Not just so they can hear your demo, but so they can gauge how many people will attend one of your shows. Any band's music player shows daily plays, which really help venue owners make a more educated guess as to whether you're a viable risk, because it's a little more obvious how many kids have heard of you and are likely to go to a show with your name is on the bill. Honestly, although I have very mixed feelings about the method, it makes sense and it's very helpful.
But Myspace is not about music. It used to be. But, now and forever, it is a social networking site built around advertising. By depending on Myspace to book shows, bands and venues are setting up a monopoly, in an area of American culture that has, for the most part, retained a uniquely D.I.Y. approach for the last 30 years. It was spontaneous and alive and, although it had its failures, that was a large part of its success.
If you're going to use the internet to help with booking, do it old school. It's cheaper and easier to build your own website. Put your music up there. Put counters on the links of your songs. Create an on-site fan network for your band. Sure, it might be the same, in principal, but it's at least under your control and you can say you're the only one who owns the rights to the images and music on that page, which greatly reduces the risk of it becoming about much of anything other than the music.
If you want to use networking sites to do booking, fine. I can't argue with everybody that doesn't go out of their way to suit my out-of-date, knee-jerk, punk-rock sensibilities. But, seriously, ditch Myspace. We're setting the music scene up to be a wellfare state of Rupert Murdoch.
When you're dependent on something, you're in a position to be controlled. Once Rupert Murdoch's research and development team finds out how many venues are depending on Myspace, he will control them. In one way or another.

If you need me to put it in perspective for you, think of Myspace as Ticketmaster's still, small voice.

The do-it-yourself spirit of young people, even when that spirit is at odds with their own habits, is what makes the powerful figures on this planet nervous. Twelve-year-olds start their own charitable organizations. High school dropouts start magazines, record labels and clothing companies. Twenty-something musicians create a nationwide sense of solidarity for teenagers who feel otherwise alienated. In fact, entertainment and entertainers seem to be the cultural glue that bind the youth together. Entertainment is a zeitgeistal, motivational network for the youth of the "civilized world". More people voted for 2004's American Idol than they did for president. Retaining control over small, local shows may not seem like any kind of real issue but, when you take the power of entertainment into account, it is. The disassembly of a d.i.y. culture, like the local/unsigned music scene, would be a tremendous blow to the overall d.i.y. spirit of young people . . . and Rupert Murdoch has already received part of the message. He isn't unaware of his power potential over pop culture and youth culture. After all, the Fox network does own American Idol.

Keep Your Rabbit Tight In Her Hutch . . . She Wasn't Born To Be Wild

2008-12-12T19:27:00.009-05:00

About one in eight native, mammalian species went extinct, in Australia, after the arrival of Europeans. The whites didn't come with smallpox blankets, strip mines or fatally bland food. They brought rabbits. The rabbits got loose, multiplied and drew waste from their own fertile crescent. They ate crops. They ate grasslands. They gnawed rings of bark off of trees, killing forests and causing erosion. The poison farmers used to kill the rabbits killed birds as well, leaving other rabbits without avian competition for food. The rabbits were a vicious, undulating cloud of locusts that descended over Australia in a spiral. They were a plague on the proverbial House of Egypt . . . the only problem is, when you live on an island, where do you make your exodus?

Introduce a foreign organism into an established ecosystem and see what sticks. Usually, nothing does.

I think about cultures in the same way. I've lived in three boroughs of New York City. Each one was different. Not only was each one different, but they were laced with substrata of different cultures from neighborhood to neighborhood. From Long Island City to Astoria, Queens was not the same thing twice. Williamsburgh and Bay Ridge were like two different worlds at opposite ends of Brooklyn. Harlem and Inwood had an ocean between them, even though they are practically next door, at the upper end of Manhattan Island.
It goes on. Chicago is not New York. Grand Rapids is not Detroit. Atlanta is not Savannah. Portland is not Seattle. Miami is not Orlando. SanDiego is not L.A.

There is, however, one thing they all have in common. It isn't the language. It's the ubiquitous presence of national food and retail chains.

You've heard it all, before. Your fake-ass, dumpster-diver friends have screamed at you for getting a coffee at Starbucks, because they choke-out local business. But local business can do the same to other local businesses while, most likely, not treating their employees as well as Starbucks does. Anybody who has played a sport, entered a poetry contest or gone after "that one girl" knows they don't have a right to jerk their knee at fair competition. You've heard about Walmart, again and again. But, it wouldn't be there, if they didn't offer a service convenient enough to thrive. I don't really care about what these places supposedly do the economy. The economy is what you make it. The economy is an appetite without a stomach; a speculative panic engine . . . a mouse chasing irrationally fearful elephants.
I don't care about the goddamn economy. You weather it or it weathers you. It's completely intangible and it will rake you through the mud whether or not you think it's behaving.
I care about things that have fooled us into thinking they're intrinsically financial institutions. I care about what happens when something as physical as a literal invasion becomes confused with something as ghostly and jocular as the theory known as economics. I care about what these invading organisms do to your cultural ecosystem. Fins drink milk. Nigerians don't. I don't care about how much you spent on your food. I don't care about what you're eating. I care about who you are.

When an outside organism enters an ecosystem that wasn't designed to support it, something strange happens. Strange is one of two things, but both things are violent. Violence, in this case, not being something of blood, guts, fire and riot. Violence, rather, being something unnatural and abrupt, like a shaken bug realizing he's in a jar.

Introduce a foreign organism into an existing ecosystem and watch one of two violent things happen: One being that the organism either lays waste to the ecosystem, eating anything beneath it and killing it's competition or the ecosystem lays waste to it, because it has no room for outsiders. The second violent reaction being something more like a pustule or boil. The organism tries to assimilate as much as the ecosystem tries to assimilate it. Call it an attempt at some sort of covalent bond. It works until it doesn't work, because - when you get down to it - this organism doesn't belong. Except now, when the mutual rejection happens, the efforts the ecosystem has made to accommodate this outside thing have left it at a loss. It is crippled. It is weak. It's used.

It's for this reason I've been considering becoming a "Locavore". Unfortunately, I've eaten at Burger King three times this week, rather than packing my own lunch for work. I also did almost all of my Christmas shopping at the mall. But I don't fail to see the merit in doing otherwise. And I don't see it as a futile effort.
Unfortunately, the Local Food Movement has much more to do with the trend of environmentalism . . . which is a little too Maoist for my taste. As a means to an end, however, I think it can do much more cultural good than having the bragging rights of saving a little gasoline because you didn't buy food shipped from far-off places. Yes, it could, potentially, save fuel. Yes, if we were smarter than we are, it could promote the reintroduction of the novel concept of crop rotation. But it won't, for the same reason I went to Burger King three times this week.
We're consumers. We also put too much stock in theory. Theory like economics. Hell, it gets its own magazines, radio shows, newspaper columns, television shows, books, books on tape and seminars. We're a movable feast for the stomachless appetite of economics. We don't just let it chew us up. We follow that fucker around with our fingers around our ankles and our assholes bearing full-toothed grins. Maybe it's some sort of misplaced consumer guilt: We're consumers, so we must allow ourselves to be consumed.

Anyway . . .

Consumer, Locavore, Anarchist, Republican . . . All labels aside, we are what we eat. Your momma said it. Your schoolyard friends said it. You never knew what it meant, but you said it for no reason. It rolls off of the tongue like a Spanish swear word. Let me tell you what it means; if you eat, drink and buy from outsiders - from chains - you will be an outsider. Your house will be a haunt, in a no-man's land that used to be a city. Your identity will be lost, because you've sold it to Taco Bell and Urban Outfitters.

Am I smearing international trade? No. But I am saying that this whole "bail-out" probably would have never happened, if we didn't repeal all the crazy tariffs we used to put on international and cross-national goods. Am I saying you should feel like shit for eating Indian food? No way! Indian food is awesome. There's nothing wrong with enjoying another culture. But there is something wrong with propagation. A healthy plant's roots grown down. Vegetative propagation is an art reserved for nature's carpet. Grass is homogeneous and it chokes out anything that's different. It's also a simultaneous feed-trough and shit-catcher for livestock.

You don't have to be a delicate flower. Just don't be grass, either.

Pox Blankets and other Cynical Clichés

2008-11-27T18:58:00.004-05:00

I spent the night at my Grandparents' cottage home, overlooking a beautiful lake, surrounded by familiar things I never see anymore, feeling thankful that my friend was able to have Thanksgiving with their family after all. I was thankful that my friend didn't have to take me up on my offer to meal and relax with us. I was thankful that my friend didn't have to deal with the awkwardness I had forgotten and, had I remembered, never would have offered as an alternative to the awkwardness of being alone on a holiday. I was thankful that I got to look and feel like a good friend and be rescued from possibly looking and feeling like a horrible friend all in one week.
My father chose not to come, optioning to make himself a martyr to his feelings of failure and stay home. My grandparents were the usual poor hosts, acting like terrible guests with bad manners, demanding attitudes and abrasive habits that wear on their welcome . . . even in their own home.
I was thankful my friend was able to spend their time among their own family and not mine. I wasn't thankful for the meal, the relaxation, the lake or the cottage . . . which made me feel . . . selfish. Selfish in my own way.
It also made me feel the dull bite of my own cynicism.

I, this past couple of months, have been slowly shedding my cynicism, scale-by-scale. I had even started listening to a Christmas C.D. in my car, a little over a week before Thanksgiving. White after Labor Day, I know.
I've been choosing to accept the apparent foolishness of sentimentality over the brittle carcass I had been slowly putting on thicker and thicker under my own skin. Especially, after coming on quickly to Chanukah. I realized that I hadn't lit my Menorah last year, because I had felt so disheartened about my life at home.
I left home because G_d told me to move to Brooklyn. I moved to Brooklyn, without knowing why G_d told me to go. I moved back home, with my sister, knowing it was to bring my family back together. I did what I had to, but seemingly to no avail. I couldn't hold myself responsible for how they received the idea of my move only being a means to their ends. I couldn't be disheartened by what they chose to do with the fact that all five people were back in the same house for the first time in nearly four years. But I did. Last holiday season, I didn't light my Menorah once. My Shamash passed no flame. I said no blessings.
Late this Summer and early this Autumn, my sisters said they were moving to Chicago and my father said he was most likely moving out. I stopped going to worship, pray and commune on Wednesdays, at the place I had adopted as being my church. Wednesday night was my Sunday morning, until a few months ago . . . until I stopped thinking about attending until it was too late, as I walked my dog past the building.
It wasn't until last weekend that I had realized, in the presence of two friends praying over a meal I had cooked them, that I had even stopped praying before I ate.
I'd grown colder to the traditional holidays, recoiling at the sight and sound of anything remotely yule-oriented. I had stopped even telling people when my birthday was, for fear of having it thrown in my face with a smiling "happy birthday". I had stopped worshiping. I had stopped praying. I had stopped having any form of spiritual communion with anyone other than friends who happened to be believers anyway.

I had even forgotten my dreams.
Every one of them.
While discussing my misanthropic tendencies with my mother, after one of her therapy sessions, she asked me about my dreams. I said I had none. I even used G_d as a cop-out, saying I didn't want to get in G_d's way with my own plans and ambitions. The closest thing I had to a dream was buying an R.V. and spending my days as a vagrant citizen of the western hemisphere, staying anywhere just long enough to remain a ghost. My only dream was anonymity. I realize, now that it wasn't mere anonymity, it was a want to be forgotten. I didn't even want a funeral, should I die.

But I don't want that R.V. anymore. I'm praying, again. I'm planning on celebrating my birthday, in 2009, and throwing the first birthday party I've had in sixteen years. I've been listening to Christmas music and thinking about what to give my family and friends for more reasons than an aversion to the shame and guilt of being the only one to not give a gift. I'm looking forward to lighting my menorah. Maybe even rediscovering what it means to have a dream.
I'm also wondering about how I feel about how I felt today, at my grandparents' cottage.
Is it me, or the ghost of who I've been tainting his old haunts with an ectoplasmic bitterness?
The ghost of the boy who started this blog? A blog that I can only hope might contradict its own name before too long, even if it should retain a certain faithfulness to my lack of ever wanting to fully be a part of this society as a whole. A blog I started only a few weeks after I started spending massive amounts of time and conversation with a new and valuable friend. A friend who I don't know whether or not I should attribute these changes in myself to . . . but I can say that I at least appreciate the parallels. They know who they are and I know they'll be reading this, so they don't need to be cheaply named for just anybody to read . . . but they deserve a post, regardless, because I'm not just thankful that they weren't with me and mine, today. I'm thankful they're with their own, because they deserve more than awkward charity.

It's 8:15, Thanksgiving night, and I might need to be more grateful for what I have, but I'm grateful nonetheless.

A Mouth with Tongues

2008-11-19T21:34:00.007-05:00

Nobody has ever been more aware of their own mortality - I think - than a boy born with the name Yehoshuah. A man with a body that some have considered to be more divine than biological, a man who's name means "G_d rescues", interestingly enough was stricken with one of the most human traits in the universe; the understanding that he would one day die and the desire to use actions and words as a way to transmogrify his body from something physical into a pure, insoluble abstraction that would make his short life not only extend through the full figure eight of infinity but also matter the whole way around. Not the meekest aspiration, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
So, given this dude's bleak foreknowledge, is it any wonder that he might try to squeeze the full etymological and cultural values out of every word he spoke, like he was trying to press an olive to fill an entire jar? No. Of course not. He wasn't the first, last or only Rabi to have ever done it. It's called Remez; the art of intentful, biblical inference.
Before the postmodern vogue of political correctness and the conscious effort to say the right thing because the sayer is somehow responsible for how the saying is interpreted, even and especially should that interpretation be a misinterpretation, there were people - mostly Rabis and unwed, teenage mothers - who took strong notice of every way that what they said could be interpreted for more reasons than sociological insecurities and an esoteric sense of political guilt. These Rabis, zealots and reverse carpet baggers talked this way because they wanted any interpretation of what they said to mean something.

Yehoshuah died and became better known as Jesus, but I like to call him by his rightful birth name rather than calling him by a word people gasp or shout when somebody cuts them off and hits their brakes on the expressway. I mean, G_d did kind-of pick the name. But, anyway, before he died and became "The Dashboard Figurine Formerly Known as Yehoshuah" he was still Yehoshuah (Yehoshua) and he said a lot of things to a lot of people, especially if you consider the fact that he was saying a lot of things inside of those things that he said to a lot of people. Yehoshuah employed remez like it was his job or something . . . well, it kind of was, but that's beside the point I'm trying to make, here.

Over time, a lot of what Yehoshuah said has been forgotten. Not because it wasn't written down, but because it's lost its cultural context (which is a damn shame, but now is not the time or place to get nostalgic . . . get it?). When he said "Turn the other cheek, as recorded in Matthew 5:39 and referenced in Luke 6:29, he meant what he said. Yes, of course, a slap isn't going to threaten your life, so take it like a man. No need to get defensive and slap him back - then you might need to actually defend yourself. But he also meant it as a means of empowerment to the downtrodden people he spoke to. A backhanded slap, in the Roman empire, was a means of belittling somebody. If a poor person was in the way of a rich, white Roman, they would get slapped. If a poor person spoke to a rich person without permission, they would get slapped. Like a bitch holding out on their pimp, they would get smacked in the face. The back of the hand was the belittling factor in the slap. You eat with your palm, you caress the skin of your lover with it, you hold your children with it. You don't touch something lower than you with the palm of your hand. So, if you offered the other cheek, it was a subversive way to say, "I dare you to do it again, but if you do it, you're going to have no choice but to acknowledge me as your equal." Trust me, before the end of the Victorian era, that was a big deal.
The phrase "Walk a mile in another man's shoes" is a misstatement of the original "Walk another mile in a man's shoes." which was said by Messianic Rabis, in the early church, because it was a Centurion's right to commandeer any citizen to carry their goods, armor, or whatever else their trained muscles were too weak to carry. The stipulation of this right was that they could use it but not take advantage of it. Apparently, the main provision of this stipulation was that you were only allowed to commandeer a citizen for one mile. If you were caught with a tired citizen who'd been carrying your items longer than that, you would lose your job. The suggestion of walking another mile was a way of saying, "Yeah, the system sucks, but you can kill it with kindness. Get a cop fired and that's one less jerk to make you his slave for 10 blocks."

Enter, now, my offering; free of the arguable semantics of cultural subtext and all that stuff you might not be in the mood to take without an archaeological grain of salt:

Psalm 37:11/Matthew 5:5 - The Meek Will Inherit

In Psalm, G_d meant what he said the way it's traditionally interpreted, in relation to that specific verse (not the beatitudes). David was telling people not to spend their time bemoaning evil people for their success, because the schemes of evil people will slow them down in the end. He was just telling people to be patient.
In Matthew, however, Yehoshuah was talking to people about the gifts people would receive if they were willing to accept the abstract nature of a gift that happened to be metaphysical. But, as always, I think he was talking about some other things, too. Especially, when he borrows from the Psalms' passage about meekness.
Our picture of the meek is a varied image. We see gentleness, kindness and, sometimes, spinelessness. I don't think this is unique to modern times. I think it's pretty universal, historically.
When Yehoshuah said "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." I believe he was saying a couple of different things. The first being obvious; don't be boastful. If you're boastful, people won't want to give you anything. Not only because they probably detest you and your bastard attitude but also because they might think you already have it.
I, however, also feel that he was being a little sarcastic to all the people in the crowd who may have been spending their lives using legalism as an excuse for inaction. Keep in mind that Yehoshuah was a Jewish Rabi and most of his sermons were to and for Jewish audiences. Even when he was going out of his way to speak to Goyim, the fact is inescapable that the man was a celebrity Rabi and surely had a following. One of Yehoshuah's biggest issues with the Hebrew church at the time was the legalism, pride and lack of Maccabeean backbone. I think that, for these people, Yehoshuah was being decidedly sarcastic. He wasn't unknown to have a sarcastic sense of humor. Take into account "Render unto Cesar what is Cesar's" passage for example. The guy is hilarious and if you don't get it, I'm sorry. It would take a whole other excruciatingly long blog entry to explain the joke - besides, a joke isn't funny anymore when you have to explain it, anyway.
The meek will have to wait until the world is dead to get anything. Just like a trust fund child waiting for the oncologist to come back with grim results on that blood test, they have to wait until the end to get a damn thing. The apocalypse might not leave them much, but they are promised the gift of a new world after it, in Revelations. So, yeah, bless you for waiting. You have a real gift for patience.
Am I being ridiculous? No.
Maybe.
Probably.
Maybe not.
I don't know.
You tell me.
I just know that I had a totally irrational fear of success until lately. Even though that fear felt justified, I was still wrong. I was stealing control of my gifts from the god who gave them to me. I was using humility and strange, little, well-meaning excuses to make my inaction and resulting lack of success seem important and perfectly fine. And . . . I'm not telling you to kill, rape or steal here, but nobody put food on the table with meekness. From vegetables to meat, we kill to survive and that's pretty grim. Unless you're waiting for your food to fall off of the branch, but you'll be lucky if the birds, squirrels and other food don't get it first.
Am I saying it's a rat race? No. Am I saying I'm seriously considering Social Darwinism? No. What I'm saying is that I haven't observed a single sin that wasn't a mere perversion of the instincts G_d gave us to survive. When we ate from the tree of knowledge, we didn't become introduced to anything new inside of us, we just figured out that we could use these instincts in destructive ways.
We're all wired for survival because, for some crazy reason I haven't quite figured out, G_d wants us to survive. because (S)He loves us. And sometimes that means trying harder than you want to. Sometimes that means prioritizing your success over your sympathy for somebody's failure. Sometimes that means eliminating a threat to preserve life, even if it seems backwards to do so. Pacifism never got anybody anything except an Oscar and even that took the death of the real-life main character to make it happen. A mother who wouldn't kill for her child is no mother at all and a person who won't make sacrifices for their dreams has forsaken their gifts.

Beaumont's Brains Out

2008-11-17T23:21:00.003-05:00

"Mother taught us patience; the virtues of restraint"
That's what Mission of Burma told us
That's what Catherine Wheel, Moby and several others felt like saying again.
But they also said it because they felt it failed them. They said it only to say that it wasn't enough.

Yes, Mother did teach us patience. Hopefuly, Father did too.
But they also showed us when they knew to stop. They showed us when it was inapplicable. They showed us when they thought that patience, in one way or another, only would enable us.
Most typically, when we took something for granted.
Almost anybody can remember the first time they kept their mother up.
Not practicing guitar. Not listening to the T.V. too loudly. Not laughing with your friends during a pre-adolescent all-nighter.
When you kept her up by no noise of your own but a lack thereof.
You kept her up because you weren't there at all.
You didn't tell her where you were going, because it just kind of happened and everybody decided to do whatever they did that kept you all out, lost in time, lost in reverie and lost in yourselves.
You didn't call, because of whatever reason you thought it was when you had to explain yourself.
But you know why you didn't call.
You didn't call for the same reason she looked like she'd drank a bottle of gin through her ear canals.
Her eyes may have been puffy and red from crying with worry, but you knew better than to congratulate yourself for your ability to remain important to her even in your absence. You knew she wasn't just sitting there, in the kitchen chair, wearing a bathrobe and holding her knuckles just because she wanted to see you come home safe. She stayed up all those hours because she had something to say.
Maybe it was a lecture.
Maybe she slapped you in the face and shook you by your shoulders, as if she walked in your room and found you sleeping, breathlessly with blue lips and cold toes.
Whether it was words or actions, she told you the same thing your heart screamed the first time you felt neglected; "DON'T TAKE ME FOR GRANTED!"
She suspended her patience and a portion of her grace, because she wasn't going to wait for you to learn to care. Selfishness is too natural. Too primal. Too goddamn easy.

As adults we're taught the world is cruel.
And, from birth, we seem to be taught that the world is unchangeable and unaccountable.
So, as adults, it's easy to call something patience when it isn't because water always chooses the steadiest, easiest and most effortless path. Who cares if the path is downhill? It's nature. It's unchangeable and unaccountable.

But, if you're going to listen to me at all - if you're going to pick one kernel of my point of view to heart in this whole technological life of yours - let it be this:
Sometimes, patience isn't patience at all. Sometimes, it's just a polite lack of self respect. Sometimes, it's the easy way out. Sometimes, it's you taking that evolutionary leap we all call a backbone by it's cervical vertebrae and saying "I'm sorry, pal. You're not on the guest list."

Jesus turned the tables and threw a baby fit at the temple gates.
G_d smote the Egyptians, flooded Mesopotamia, breathed Fire on cities and called people to war.
But, here we are, tranquil pools of primordial, spineless patience.
When our time and effort gets taken for granted by an employer, educator, bank, government office, co-worker, co-habitant or colleage, we keep our inside voice on and tell somebody else.

Fuck that.

Fuck it hard, fuck it sideways, brick on it's tailbone and throw its phone number away.

Am I talking about wrath? No. That's stupid and about as counterproductive as a methadone clinic.
I'm talking about putting your foot down and stopping your enablement of the neglectfulness, selfishness and character demolishing behavior of your brothers and sisters.
Are you the first person your boss calls when he or she fucked up the schedule and need an extra person on Friday night?
Tell them you're not anymore. It won't get you fired. If it does, you're lucky. You're not paid for your supposed puddle of a personality. You're paid for your time and effort because you could be doing a shitload of other things with it.
Do you have a professor who acts like he's the only class you have? Tell him. Go over his head. Probably do both. It is not the curriculum eating you alive. It's a dragon, with a chalkboard and a satanic tendency to refer all question to "the book" or "your notes".
Does your bank have a double standard about mistakes in your account, when it comes to who makes them? Close your checking account. Open a no-minimum savings account with no inactivity fees. They, more than likely, have one. Put five dollars in and never close it - just leave it. The paperwork and records they keep on that five dollars will cost them about as much every week. It might harm your credit, but only slightly. You don't need perfect credit. It only proves you're good at being in debt. It only proves you're a prime candidate to be taken for granted. If that sounds underhanded or passive aggressive, keep in mind that a bank is nothing but a reservoir of calculated risks. Let them calculate the risk they took in you, until you die. They're obligated to. Besides, you might be able to will eight dollars and six cents from that account to one of your grandchildren. Stipulate in your will that they frame it.
Do you have to spend all Tuesday catching up, because the guy two desks down from you had a hangover Monday and didn't do a thing and, now, you're quietly and resentfully burning the candle at both ends so your supervisor won't yell at the whole office for the mid-week progress meeting on Wednesday? Do something about it. He clearly isn't.
Does your roommate always fall asleep on the couch, with his girlfriend, watching Adult Swim, right before your friend comes over for coffee? Do you call your friend and ask him if he wants to meet up somewhere closer to his place, so he doesn't have to drive so far? Don't pretend to be accommodating to your buddy just because you're afraid to tell your roommate that you actually exist and don't enjoy paying rent for an apartment you can never have guests in.

In Jackie Brown, Beaumont Livingston takes for granted that his employer is understanding towards criminals, just because he is employed for criminal purposes. He goes to jail. He gets bailed-out of jail. He gets a shotgun seat in the trunk of his boss' car. Ordell Robbie, Beaumont's employer, takes for granted that Louis Gara is trustworthy and competant because they're friends. The problem is, Louis just got out of jail. He can't be that compentant. The other problem is that Louis has sex with Ordell's girlfriend, Melanie ralston. Melanie takes for granted that she can do whatever she wants and men will still want her around because she's a quick and easy lay. She pisses Louis off and he shoots her. Ordell shoots Louis. Mark Dargus and Ray Nicolette assume nothing can get by them because they're elite, trained members of the ATF's police force. Ordell takes for granted that he's too intimidating for an old man to kill. Jackie and Max get away with everything they needed and wanted, because everybody took everything for granted, but they didn't.

Am I saying you should only look out for number one? No.
I'm saying that, cops aside, the only people in Jackie Brown that didn't get lead poisoning by the end of the movie were people who took everything into consideration. They weren't unbelievably sly. They weren't superhumanly capable. Shit, they were old, bored and not the products of a lifetime of shrewd decsisions. But they didn't take anything for granted.

Are you going to let the people who effect your life continue to take things for granted? Are you going to continue to show them patience? Are you going to patiently put up with their self-centered attitude? Or are you going to slap them in the face and shake their shoulders before somebody shoots them in the face or upper torso?

This Machine Pillow Fights Fascists

2008-10-30T00:40:00.005-04:00

Woody Guthrie sang about this land. He sang about this place we have the hubris to call America, as if it's the only one. He said it was mine. He said it was yours.
Woody Guthrie said that from California to New York, from the Redwood Forests to the Gulf Stream waters, it all belongs to us. Not us as any particular national origin, color, creed or gender. He just said that, in general, it belongs to us.
He also claimed to kill fascists. He said he was a machine, fired and oiled to grind fascism into oblivion. He wasn't a mercenary, a vigilante or a rogue soldier. He was, of course, speaking in purely abstract terms. He believed his music could be responsible for the destruction of fascism, if only the world would listen to it.

But what was he saying, about this land? It sounds so sweet, hopeful and brotherly when he sings "This land was made for you and me." Why, then, would he limit himself to the borders of a nation? Why not speak as a citizen of the world?

The borders we put around ourselves come from the same nationalistically separatist principals that fascism, itself is based on. The idea of a border; the idea of cloistering one's self off from the others, because the others are different is a fascist idea. Citizenship, furthermore, is a fascist idea. I didn't ask to be born an American. It wasn't my choice. It's just as unfair to ask me to leave, however, as it is to expect me to embrace the citizenship I was merely born into. This isn't a family and, as far as I'm concerned, the land that was "made for you and me" stretches away from you in every direction so far that it comes right back to the spot you stand.

I know I'm not saying anything new, but you can't really say that the idea of keeping those born on the outside of a certain place in a different class than those born within the borders of that place isn't fascist. It's the purest fascism.

I really like the music of Woody Guthrie. I even like the story between the songs; the man . . . but I'm not so sure he knew what he was talking about, when he'd start talking about fascism.

During this election year, it's this issue that makes me laugh. The issues of which concepts we simply accept are never challenged. The politicians simply wait for us to complain and, when the suggestion box is full, they read off their little cards and grope for answers or some sort of middle ground. We talk about immigration reform, but we don't talk about rethinking what it means to be a nation. We talk about protecting peoples' rights, but we don't talk about the Military Commissions Act. We talk about health care, but we don't talk about health. We talk about education, but we don't talk about actually learning.

We talk about the bad guys and not the good guys.

Because the good guys are impossible to identify, even when faced with a pane of reflective glass and a blinking, neon arrow behind their own head.

I don't know about you, but I think it's a damn funny coincidence that the only thing separating this coming election day from this coming Guy Fawkes Day is a single midnight.

Things the Grandchildren Should Know

2008-10-22T13:00:00.003-04:00

". . . I don't leave the house much
I don't like being around people
Makes me nervous and weird
I don't like going to shows either
It's better for me to stay home
Some might think it means I hate people
But that's not quite right

I do some stupid things
But my heart's in the right place
And this I know

I got a dog
I take him for a walk
And all the people like to say hello
I'm used to staring down at the sidewalk cracks
I'm learning how to say hello
Without too much trouble . . ."

-Mark Oliver Everett/Eels

If the Rainbow Tastes Like a Nine-Volt Battery, Why Bother Chasing it When You Can Suck on a Dime?

2008-10-16T00:48:00.002-04:00

I was a pretty cute kid, when I was young. I don't know what happened that changed things so much. I do know, however, that when I was that cute, little kid . . . I fucking hated my birthday. Seemingly since birth.
My mother says that, when I was born, I didn't cry. I just looked around, like I didn't know what the fuss was all about. When I was a toddler, I'd cry, out of distress, if I even heard "The Birthday Song" being sung in a restaurant. I don't remember any of that, really, but I do remember being at the zoo, for my seventh birthday, and being happy we finally left the picnic table, the cake, the crayons and the new toys. I remember being happy to walk away from it, leave it in the car and go in the zoo, where everybody could forget about me, while they gawked at the claustrophobic lions and hemorrhoidal spider monkeys from behind the safety of 4 inches of smeary, scratched lucite. I remember sitting on the kitchen floor, an hour before my school friends showed-up for my tenth birthday. I remember crawling out of my skin on the ugly, yellow linoleum, asking my mom to call everybody and cancel the party. I remember my ribs feeling like they were trying to close, like a clamshell, as I insisted to my mother that it was just another day.
I remember usually having fun by the end of the day, but I can't remember once, in 26 years, wanting any of the attention. Not for being me. Not for doing something I would have done if nobody was watching. I just got older. Whatever I did, I wasn't trying to do it . . . so why reward me for it?
It isn't an issue of self-consciousness or self hatred. It's an issue of practicality.
It isn't my desire to control my life, in spite of the coersive aspirations of my peers and family. It's an issue of sincerity; of me looking at all the goings-on and thinking, "What the fuck? Why? Does another year for me mean that much to you? You can't be for real. You can't be serious."

Herein lies my tingling fear of success.

My dad, I'm realizing, had me pegged very early on. He called me rebelious, since I was in the first or second grade. He was right. He said I was a control freak. Now, I might be pretty laid-back but, when it comes to getting shit done, I can be a total control freak. I've been getting better at reigning it in and refocusing it, but that still doesn't change the fact that my dad was right.
Don't get me wrong. My dad was and is a very loving and supportive guy. He never alienated me. He did tell me the truth, though.
Still, as a child, as a teenager, and through most of my adlulthood so far, I never understood where my dad was coming from when he told me I was afraid of success. It baffled me. It puzzled me. It made me angry, because I never understood why he was saying it.
But, now, I know he was right.

I want anonymity. I'm not a hero and I don't want to be famous. Most heroes, when you talk to them, claim that they just did what anybody would have done. They're uncomfortable with the attention.

Me too.

I'm not a hero. I know I'm not. That's why I said it. But, when I do what I do well, I'm just doing what comes natural to me. I'm just doing what anybody would do, in my position. It's not that I don't have ambition. I'm just . . . afraid of success.

There's a 50/50 shot that, if I mail-in my samples, Friday, I'm going to end up with a job in the comic book industry. Something I raised myself on. I'm the kid who got into rock-n-roll through some sort of cosmic connection. I'm the kid who didn't have any older brothers or sisters to turn him on to The Ramones. I'm the kid who just felt naturally drawn to that record shop, walked in and liked everything he saw and heard. I'm the kid who used every cent of allowance on albums. I'm the kid who'd stay up, all hours of the night, using his favorite albums to teach himself guitar.
I'm that kid, if that kid found comic books, instead of rock-n-roll.
I always liked to draw, but I didn't have any direction until I discovered comic books. I got my first comic book, in 1988 or '89. It was the prize I chose, after winning a ring toss at a school fair. It was a Marvel Mini Comics Reprint of X-Men #53

The story is nothing special, today. But, then, it was something new. It was like a cartoon, but smarter, edgier and completely private. You could read it, in a room full of people and not have to share any of it. You could laugh or gasp and nobody had to know why. You could share it, if you wanted. You could talk about it or show it to your friends, on your terms. But that's what made it special and, frankly, you always feel pretty cool being the bearer of things unknown (that new album, band, movie, coffee bar or whatever that none of your friends knew about)
I'd clean the whole house, sometimes, just to get my mommy to take me to the supermarket and let me pick out an issue of X-Men from the news stand (that's when Claremont, Lee and Silvestri were in their prime, by the way)
My kindergarten teacher didn't teach us how to read. My parents tried, but I did an alright job making it tough for them. So, when I transferred to a diferrent school, in first grade I was quickly discovered as anomalous among my classmates and put in a remedial reading class with kids that ate their snot, wet their pants and talked about the boners they'd get every time they saw a girl in a bikini on a beer commercial (yes, six-year-olds talk about their dicks, too). So, I happened to discover comic books and reading at the same time.
Comics made it interesting to read. I learned to read from comics. It was more fun that way. The words were way bigger than any word my classmates were reading in Dick & Jane books, but superhero books were still considered too lowbrow for my teacher to allow my parents to include them in my at-home reading journal. They stood alone and there was nothing that could ever tie them to school. To engage in something that was more acedemically challenging than school, yet still autonomous from the institution in every way was completely thrilling in every way.
My love of that specific storytelling medium put me on a higher reading level than my classmates and provided me with a passion and direction for my natural drawing skill that I had previously lacked.
So, when I doodle-up some sequential art, I'm just doing what comes natural to me. I'm doing what anybody else would do, in my position.
Enter the dilemma:
What if I get this job? What if the title I'm working on ends up gaining popularity? What if it goes nowhere but gets me noticed by another publisher? What if, a year from now, I'm sitting at a black-cotton-veiled folding table, signing things and talking to people I don't know between swigs from a flask I've been hiding under the table? What if, a year from now, I'm talking on the phone with some asshole from Wizard Magazine or The Comics Journal, while I'm smoking a cigarette on the toilet? What if, a few years down the road, I start my own creator-owned title (like I've been dreaming of) and it is greeted with great review and success? Or it's just a sleeper hit and gets huge, over the years? What if somebody makes a movie out of something I wrote and I get a school library named after me?
I don't want to be that guy.
I know most of that is unlikely to happen, but the thought of even the least of it is like a black, mummified monkey paw in my stomach, fingerbanging my esophagus one waxy, dry digit at a time.

I could say that I don't chase my dreams because my smoking habit's been leaving me a little too winded to chase anything. I could say that I won't chase my dreams because of some punk-rock, knee-jerk, anally-expulsive reaction to anything that makes me look like I'm trying or . . . maybe . . . selling out.
Shit, I'd like it to be either of those two.

But the truth?

The truth sucks.

The trugh hurts and Amnesty International could probably lobby to get it classified as torture.

The truth is I'm just balls-scared of success.
The truth is I'm too ungrateful towards the world to ever accept attention for doing something I'm good at or something that -god forbid- I actually like doing.

The truth is that it's been this way since I've been wearing rubber pants.
The truth is that 26 years is probably enough, and I should probably grow up, but I don't think I know how.

But do you wanna know the punchline? You wanna know what's really fucked up?
I don't mind being me. For some reason, I'm comfortable with this. For some reason, it doesn't bother me to be this way. For some reason, the only thing that really bothers me is you. When you say "Happy birthday!" it really bothers me and I'm asshole enough to ask you to stop. I'm asshole enough not to have a problem with that.
Isn't that kind of fucked up?

Crimeless Victim with a Job Complex who Should Probably Shut Up but the Ubiquitous Cathartium of the Interweb Makes it Too Hard

2008-10-08T02:48:00.000-04:00

Dad's probably moving out.
I probably can't.
Not just because I'm unemployed.
I can't leave Mom alone.
Can I?
I can't make her a burden.
I can't be simply . . . beholden.
But codependency might bear some malt if it were allowed to germinate, right?
Probably not.
Not anything I'd want to brew and bottle, anyway . . .
. . . let alone, swallow it.

Applied for unemployment, today.
Yesterday, technically.
Today is an error in semantics.
Probably something profound, there.
A nice, little sentence to be misconstrued by the postmodern public, wanton for meaning in the smallest things.
Looking for signs, when they'd probably see them anyway . . . if they kept their eyes on the road.
I think I'm staring at the yellow, dotted lines.
Rhythm.
Dash - Dash - Dash - Dash
Yellow - Black - Yellow - Black
Link - Link - Link - Link
One - Two - Three - Four
Hit it, CeeJay!

I made some money, today.
I made a logo for a friend's website.
Not a whole lot of money.
But today is probably just an error in semantics.

I took money for it because I kind of hate doing that kind of thing.
One-Two-Three-Four
Your guts are like (&)
Do a drawing for yourself
Dash-Dash-Dash-Dash
A cartoon about the things you hate
Link-Link-Link-Link
Make your guts like (o)

Applied for unemployment, today.
A sponsorship from my worst enemy.
I should look up child molesters on the local Sex Offender Registry, knock on their doors and ask for donations.
At least there's a small chance that they could be reformed.
They're redeemable.
You can cut their balls off and make a good citizen of them.
You can't do that to a neo-socialist head nurse who doles out your regimen of police, taxes, wellfare and chemically treated water.
You especially can't do it now. Not when the head nurse is pretending to castrate itself.

Sometimes I just want the personal freedom of being the destroyer.
I don't want to put a bomb in the mailbox.
I want to be the mailbox. I want to deliver good news and bad news, all jumbled together in a cloud of upwardly mobile smoke and orange heat.

I want to be ironic.
I want to be an Abercrombie tee on a fly-infested, starving child with a distended belly and white crust in the corners of his mouth and eyes.

I applied for unemployment today.
It might mean nothing to you, but as far as the modernly conventional use of the word "irony" is concerned . . . it's pretty damn ironic.

But it's alright.
I've got a gallows humor deep in my belly that the weak of heart could mistake for a death rattle, sometimes.

ha ha ha - ah-choo.

chortle, chortle, snort.

"Chin up kid . . . things can only get better."

Are you implying this is as bad as things can get?
The pitch blackness before the rising dawn?
But we still have our health!
I haven't lost a limb.
Wait a little longer. Who knows, our butts might fall off.

Free food, right?

I guess things can only get better :)

L'sha-na-na Tova-va-voom

2008-09-30T20:33:00.001-04:00

I spent the bulk of last night with a friend.
A sunshine and gumdrops kind of kid. Big, happy, Anime eyes kind of kid. The kind of kid who's smile looks like that goofy kid at the restaurant who took the lemon out of his mother's drink and shoved it in his mouth, stretching his lips wide, corner to corner. The kind of kid who doesn't fake it. She's just one of those folks who makes you feel like you're at a boring movie, throwing popcorn at the screen.
She's a fun person.
I saw her last night with less good to say about the world than I do on any day of the year.
I'd leave my fireplace roaring on Christmas Eve. I'd put a bear trap under my pillow for the tooth fairy. I'd even catheterize Cupid with one of his own little, red arrows. Last night, Jessi had me beat.
It was the first night of Rosh Hashannah and she was getting the last of her things taken care of, before she officially settled-in somewhere miles away from all of her friends. She didn't care. She didn't have any friends. Not even me. I'm not there for her, when she needs me. I'm hardly around at all. Too comfortable with routine to bother with friends, unless they fit into that routine. I consider her a friend and she does the same for me . . . but, really, I just called her on a whim. I was down town with nothing to do. She wasn't even the first person I called.

After I met her at her old apartment, after I saw how different she was, I went upstairs to help her clean up. She'd moved in with a fresh-out-of-highschool party girl who found out that partying was a lot more fun when she didn't have to worry about rent. Jessi was ditched by a baby girl who just wasn't ready. It was like a Niel Diamond song.
I helped her mop, clean the refrigerator and pick up the scraps and dregs of parties past. She almost cried.
She said she was wrong.
She said she had friends.
An easy thing to let roll off your back. "Shut up, baby. I know it." Easy to say it's no big deal. Easy, when you just called somebody up on a whim, because you were bored and didn't want to waste gas by leaving town when you had plans a few hours later.

She had the same plans as I. We went to a small get-together on the behalf of a mutual friend who was celebrating her birthday. Jessi wasn't sure it was important enough. She had friends, but not enough that she wanted to see.
She was self-conscious.

We arrived. We mixed-it up with the moderately sized crowd. We drank responsibly.

When I left, she ran in front of my car to stop me.
She had to thank me for reminding her that she had friends.

I didn't take the highway home. I didn't want to be around other cars. I took the scenic route . . . in pitch blackness.

I went down town on the first night of Rosh Hashannah to visit a friend in the hospital. He was discharged by the time I got there. A good way for him to bring in the new year, I suppose.
I called people to hang out with them, because . . . if I couldn't think of any apologies I had to make, I was going to do something else to make sure my friendships stayed in tact.
I was going to see people. I was going to be a friend. That would be the mitzvah of the occasion.
But the person I saw that night was an unplanned visit.

Was Jessi my mitzvah . . . or was G_d just calling me out on my own bullshit?