as i was walking to work today i saw two "Homeless Outreach" workers in what looked like hybrid trenchcoat/hazmat suits made of brown plastic rather forcefully accosting a [presumably homeless] guy sitting on a plant, who was making his case as vocally as they made theirs though i couldn't stop to hear much of what he was saying. the hazmat suits were particularly nauseating--what's wrong, don't want to get homeless-juice on your Laura Ashley pullover? anyway, i hope the guy got only the help he wanted. i've heard stories from many people who've gotten on the wrong end of the city's "homeless services," thanks to my time in a multitude of court-ordered Programs, & that is not a nice place to be. The "cure" is a hell of a lot worse than the "disease" in many of these cases. FOR YOUR OWN GOOD is rarely for any good at all, & even more rarely for yours.
...& then was giggling incongruously the rest of the way to work because the incident reminded me of something that happened during my first trip to Montreal alone in the summer of 2006. i was crossing through a park to meet a friend when i was stopped by two concerned-looking social workers who asked me all puppy-eyed if i had a place to sleep, enough to eat, etc. They were creepy as hell but seemed well-intentioned--at least they weren't wearing hazmat suits like these fucks over by Grand Central--and i assured them i was just a dumb kid in a park while they tried to lure me in with offers of sleeping bags & warm coffee & sandwiches which were i assume somewhere in between the warmth of the bags & the coffee. it was pretty fucking warm that day, being JULY, but i can only assume "warm" was code for "methadone-flavored."
& about a year ago something similar took place--as i was exiting the Flushing Ave J train station outside Woodhull hospital, some sort of outreach worker tried to lure me into the facility for coffee & sandwiches, assuming [was it my silver vinyl pants?] that i was some directionless junkie the train had spat out by mistake. She kept naming things they could offer me [sandwiches! coffee! do these people have no imagination?] as i scurried down the street, almost running down two idiot kids who instead of walking like normal people did their part to stare at me & tell me it wasn't Halloween. THANKS FUCKERS.
there is a moral to this story but it got lured into a big white van with promises of coffee, sandwiches, & narcotic bedtime stories. LET THIS BE A LESSON.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
Big Brother is Bored [dispatches from last week]
I'd like to congratulate my fair city on re-electing our mayoral dinosaur for a dubiously legal third term. billions of dollars spent stuffing my mailbox with junk for the last several months have paid off, resulting in a real live gold star to hang in his office alongside the mounted heads of competitors. in the spirit of looking forward, i will share my predictions for the next four blissful years.
1. mayor Mike will have someone else painstakingly sift through election results in order to find the names of those who voted against him, then initiate another direct mail campaign twice the size of his election deluge. we have to give in to his papery statements of The Facts Of Life eventually. public statements will be made about the nature of the paper upon which these are printed, emphasizing its eco-friendliness without backing this up with coherent information. there will be smiling tree graphics.
2. surveillance initiatives will multiply like rabbits. well, maybe not exactly like rabbits, as that would be rather explicitly sexual & i don't really want to think about security guard orgies. [though i remember the one time i was able to go backstage at the Dragstrip in Trash City at Glastonbury & not have my 4 billion wristbands checked--because the two security guards were making out. that was actually pretty adorable. but NYPD types aren't something you want to catch in any sort of "act."]
anyway: Bloomberg's proposed footwear database* will make its auspicious debut, followed by a spike in crime rates as panicked criminals begin boosting shoes by the truckload, so as to have that crucial 'spare pair' around in order to change mid-flight. K9 units will mill around, barking listlessly & hopelessly confused, foiled by the overpowering aroma of That New-Shoe Smell. their masters will, in typical NYPD fashion, misunderstand the situation & kick them repeatedly, grunting. PETA will get involved. PETA activists will be tased, NYPD officers not counting on the sheer irrational force of PETA's convictions, which will come in handy here in that PETA activists will occupy all of the NYPD's manpower for long periods of time, leaving the criminals to revert to pre-footwear-database levels of shoecrime. The chaos will subside some time around the next mayoral election.
*priceless quote: "Even if a person did throw away their shoes you could tell that by looking at their other shoes." but what does it all mean???
3. Millions of mini-Bloombergs will be dispatched to infiltrate the lungs of city residents to make sure no cigarette smoke is able to get in there. Since even more tobacco products have been banned from NYC store shelves than in the already-fucking-insane rest of the country [see: no more pipe tobacco for you, "kiddies!"], & the no-smoking-in-parks movement actually, improbably, has supporters, it's time to take this battle to the streets. INSIDE OUR LUNGS, BABY. inhalable mini-Bloombergs, which come with fingers waggling & disapproving looks on their faces, will be mandated along with swine flu shots at the start of the 2010-11 school year. Get snortin' kids, your nostrils are about to get a workout that would make Tony Montana quiver...
4. Journalists intruding on mr. Bloomberg's privacy-sphere will be shot, first on sound if they are so bold as to ask him a question not pre-approved by his handlers, & eventually on sight once they've given up trying [verbal precedents set here, repeatedly]. journalists from all over the country, driven to despair by the pitiful state of their "profession," will make a pilgrimage to NYC to commit ritual mass suicide at the claws of the Great Dinosaur.
and there's more to come, of course.
1. mayor Mike will have someone else painstakingly sift through election results in order to find the names of those who voted against him, then initiate another direct mail campaign twice the size of his election deluge. we have to give in to his papery statements of The Facts Of Life eventually. public statements will be made about the nature of the paper upon which these are printed, emphasizing its eco-friendliness without backing this up with coherent information. there will be smiling tree graphics.
2. surveillance initiatives will multiply like rabbits. well, maybe not exactly like rabbits, as that would be rather explicitly sexual & i don't really want to think about security guard orgies. [though i remember the one time i was able to go backstage at the Dragstrip in Trash City at Glastonbury & not have my 4 billion wristbands checked--because the two security guards were making out. that was actually pretty adorable. but NYPD types aren't something you want to catch in any sort of "act."]
anyway: Bloomberg's proposed footwear database* will make its auspicious debut, followed by a spike in crime rates as panicked criminals begin boosting shoes by the truckload, so as to have that crucial 'spare pair' around in order to change mid-flight. K9 units will mill around, barking listlessly & hopelessly confused, foiled by the overpowering aroma of That New-Shoe Smell. their masters will, in typical NYPD fashion, misunderstand the situation & kick them repeatedly, grunting. PETA will get involved. PETA activists will be tased, NYPD officers not counting on the sheer irrational force of PETA's convictions, which will come in handy here in that PETA activists will occupy all of the NYPD's manpower for long periods of time, leaving the criminals to revert to pre-footwear-database levels of shoecrime. The chaos will subside some time around the next mayoral election.
*priceless quote: "Even if a person did throw away their shoes you could tell that by looking at their other shoes." but what does it all mean???
3. Millions of mini-Bloombergs will be dispatched to infiltrate the lungs of city residents to make sure no cigarette smoke is able to get in there. Since even more tobacco products have been banned from NYC store shelves than in the already-fucking-insane rest of the country [see: no more pipe tobacco for you, "kiddies!"], & the no-smoking-in-parks movement actually, improbably, has supporters, it's time to take this battle to the streets. INSIDE OUR LUNGS, BABY. inhalable mini-Bloombergs, which come with fingers waggling & disapproving looks on their faces, will be mandated along with swine flu shots at the start of the 2010-11 school year. Get snortin' kids, your nostrils are about to get a workout that would make Tony Montana quiver...
4. Journalists intruding on mr. Bloomberg's privacy-sphere will be shot, first on sound if they are so bold as to ask him a question not pre-approved by his handlers, & eventually on sight once they've given up trying [verbal precedents set here, repeatedly]. journalists from all over the country, driven to despair by the pitiful state of their "profession," will make a pilgrimage to NYC to commit ritual mass suicide at the claws of the Great Dinosaur.
and there's more to come, of course.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
compulsive updating must mean i'm avoiding something
...and we have a winner! can Sara Goldfarb please step forward to accept my refrigerator's medal of honor, or, wait...
basically the situation is this: my job is not terrible, because it involves a paycheck, no physical labor, and no handling of food. aside from that, i make slightly above minimum wage and work full time and am too brain-dead by the time 5:00 rolls around to do anything productive. Productive, in this case, includes stalking trains in the manner of my 90-page thesis from hell wherein i followed the N train around like a psychotic fangirl until it yielded all its secrets. So far i have only a few snippets for my 4 train dossier & the fucking Bronx isn't getting any closer, seriously. By the time i make it up there even the eerily monolithic Grand Concourse McDonalds at the 2/5 stop will be a fat smirking condo smoking a cigar & dropping the ashes on my head so that i suffocate while having blizzard fantasies. Last time i was there taking photos of the magnificently creepy ravine on the west side of the GC south of the park that looks like Dorothy's Yellow Brick Road minus the bricks [currently being sold in Washington Heights for $2k, if anyone's interested], & some guy came out of nowhere to tell me there were three enormous eagles sitting on an antenna protruding from the roof of the Catholic school across the street. out of the ?kindness? of his own heart, or perhaps hoping i'd get a better picture of his neighborhood than some unnerving cliff adorned with mangled shopping carts and mud-crusted baby clothes. unfortunately my camera zoom blows dead cats & the resulting photos show nothing aside from some nonchalant blobs but the fuckers were majestic as hell & i wouldn't have noticed if not for--you guessed it--the Kindness Of Strangers. more proof acting class in high school fucked with my head--"streetcar named desire" references crawling beneath the skin of EVERYTHING, if you look hard enough.
the point? Assisted eagle sightings > promotional fucking products any day. I'm lucky to have my job, especially since i'm perpetually late/slow/narcoleptic, but seriously where's that juicy journalism position. yes, i'm being sarcastic; no, i am not idealistic or dumb enough to think there is such a thing as a juicy [monetarily speaking at least] journalism position anywhere. i can live through the rest of the internship--it's two more months--but after this i really need the kind of job that doesn't send me screaming into a vegetable stupor every evening. spoiled brat? probably. so shoot me--i'm not going to feign contentment. i am mortally allergic to the Routine. popping out of the 4 train at Grand Central in the morning with all the other Inc. superstars on the clock is not something i want to be doing for the rest of my life.
bonus happyfuntime scheduling hilarity: tomorrow i have to get to midtown an hour early to appear in all my business-casual finery at a "marketing breakfast" at a 45th street hotel, mingling with wannabe Patrick Batemans & lamenting my lack of a business card til i sprain a smile muscle. needless to say this will be treated as a sociological study just like my appearance at a CMJ showcase last weekend. i can hardly wait to watch everyone not-eat as they worry about their performance reviews & receding hairlines. my boss was very careful to stress that we lowly interns dress up, & equally emphatic that we "don't need to wear suits." i'm wearing a fucking suit because we all know don't is the new do. & just think of the networking opportunities i'll be squandering if i don't! Plus, i have to scurry out of work at lightspeed to visit the lovely Brooklyn Municipal Building and have an intimate keyboarded dialogue with my new automated probation officer--the magnificent kiosk. i will not miss the hours spent in that waiting room at all. praise technology. and think of the networking opportunities i'll be missing THERE.
poof!
Halloween is the new New Year. hear that echo? that's my accountability in an EMPTY ROOM. i sense it is time to erase this blog & start over again because once more this is not going anywhere--livejournal redux anybody? all zero of you who i've informed of this site's existence? i have ALL the luck.
like a [broken] record baby right round
how do i fill my days? with gasoline. high octane, preferably, but i'll take what i can get [& then more when nobody's looking]
it’s october twenty-eighth two-thousand and nine do you know where your significance is? Hey man, we don’t need your money, we just wanna check your pockets for holes… is my head next? Please tell me my head is next. Drill a few exploratory wholes in there to see what makes me tick, find out it’s nothing, the illusion shattered [a scene]:
When the paper chase becomes literal—someone stop that bill! Mr Washington comebackyouleftyourovenon !!!
the obvious: i have a job. i write about promotional products for a company whose walls are plastered with motivational posters that worry me immensely whenever i read them. i sit at a computer until i resemble a vegetable. remind me again why i didn't go straight into grad school? oh right. my brain was fucking FRIED.
the less-than-obvious: i am actively applying for grad school, as in have applications open on three schools' websites, instead of staring mutely at the deadline all deer-in-head-lights-with-sunglasses like i usually do. fuck the adult world i'm not cut out for this shit, just pickle me in academia & stamp me irrelevant
...now, back to your previously scheduled silence. now with more regret, more insomnia, & less money, always less money. cheers!
it’s october twenty-eighth two-thousand and nine do you know where your significance is? Hey man, we don’t need your money, we just wanna check your pockets for holes… is my head next? Please tell me my head is next. Drill a few exploratory wholes in there to see what makes me tick, find out it’s nothing, the illusion shattered [a scene]:
the man behind the curtain has locked himself in the bathroom to shoot up uh oh what are we going to do now? A field trip full of kids & no one to explain to them how the world/machine works. I mean he’ll come out of the bathroom eventually, but meanwhile how are we going to entertain all these restless ten-year-olds? Cracking the requisite potty-mouthed jokes, taken to the 20th power because the guy is actually in the bathroom, we knew something was up with him long ago I swear but we thought he’d cleaned up his act. please don't fire me this job validates the very respiration of my CELLS---
...So! we come forward with a suggestion—how about a game of charades? Call it “life” but don’t put that on the box because you’re infringing on someone’s trademark. Which came first the cereal or the board game? Or, you know, actual LIFE? “getting people high since TK BC” favorite flavor tag line. Tag, you’re it, shhh. Tag, you’re shit, uh pardon my dyslexia it only comes out to play when I’ve had a few. A few what?
When the paper chase becomes literal—someone stop that bill! Mr Washington comebackyouleftyourovenon !!!
the obvious: i have a job. i write about promotional products for a company whose walls are plastered with motivational posters that worry me immensely whenever i read them. i sit at a computer until i resemble a vegetable. remind me again why i didn't go straight into grad school? oh right. my brain was fucking FRIED.
the less-than-obvious: i am actively applying for grad school, as in have applications open on three schools' websites, instead of staring mutely at the deadline all deer-in-head-lights-with-sunglasses like i usually do. fuck the adult world i'm not cut out for this shit, just pickle me in academia & stamp me irrelevant
...now, back to your previously scheduled silence. now with more regret, more insomnia, & less money, always less money. cheers!
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
illegal search, seizure optional
things i have done in the past week & a half that i ordinarily
a) wouldn't do
b) wouldn't admit to doing
c) wouldn't remember doing, thus being unable to admit to doing
tonight i win friends & influence people under the influence with "wandering violin serenades" at Winkel's "stranded" party. which has had the shit advertised out of it for the past month, so either we all get our artistic endeavors "discovered" or we get shut down stampeded crushed arrested & probably shot by a pile of overzealous nightlife cops. guess which one i'm expecting!!!!
no but really this'll be fun. just don't tell anyone
a) wouldn't do
b) wouldn't admit to doing
c) wouldn't remember doing, thus being unable to admit to doing
- passed 3 piss tests, the probationary equivalent of jumping through hoops [Broadway's own trained seal, at your service]
- saw a movie in a real live movie theater [district 9. download it instead, trust me, unless you relish paying for disappointing conclusions]
- admitted out loud the extent of my mining the smacktail during my last university semester, much to the sick fascination of those listening [inquiring about ingestion methods, etc--what am i supposed to do, advise you to make human pincushions of yourselves? because i will if i have to, my conscience got hit by a car a long time ago]
- got a library card [obligatory good-girl curveball of the list]
- took an ill-advised concert cruise which--while kicking great heaping piles of musical ass in the form of Amon Tobin--was a truly nightmarish experience in all other aspects, fraught with douchebags, $10 drinks, & histrionic bitches stomped to death on the dancefloor
- landed three job interviews
- was stood up for one of those three by a vaguely humanoid piece of shit who had me waiting in starbucks for 40 minutes like it was 2006 all over again & i was some second-rate slice of velvet underground lyric
- enrolled in two cash-heavy clinical trials, each of which disqualifies me from participating in the other, but they don't have to know that
- sleepwalked, apparently several times
- passed through the eye of a needle, but apparently it was the wrong kind, goddamnit
tonight i win friends & influence people under the influence with "wandering violin serenades" at Winkel's "stranded" party. which has had the shit advertised out of it for the past month, so either we all get our artistic endeavors "discovered" or we get shut down stampeded crushed arrested & probably shot by a pile of overzealous nightlife cops. guess which one i'm expecting!!!!
no but really this'll be fun. just don't tell anyone
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Miss Understanding 2009
last Thursday i participated in a subway-party-cum-art-exhibit that somehow spiraled into a sociopolitical morass, & now feel the need to explain myself:
people play music on trains. people play music on train platforms. these are both common occurrences, not requiring phone calls to the cops, the transit police, or the local militia. commuters who do not want to hear this music are generally out of luck, unless they've brought headphones or have selective hearing--i know, i've been one of these commuters many times, more frequently now that my mp3 player is busted & a new one has yet to present itself for an acceptable price. somehow, 99% of these musicians don't get called out by catty after-the-fact wannabe pundits who demean the entire affair as the brainchild of "privileged white hipsters" invading "their" territory with loud noise & circus effects. speaking from the back of the J train--which passes outside my window hello J train i live off you--i heard unamplified violin, guitar, & banjo music, a girl singing, people bustling around handing out donuts & juice, maybe flowers. not disruptive. didn't see any commuters getting any more pissed off than they'd been when they got on the train. no one raises an eyebrow when subway musicians commandeer a car, often with much higher volumes of noise--i can't be the only person who's almost gotten kicked in the face by a breakdancer, but done nothing about it except maybe move a few inches to the left--& "white" is a lazy descriptor by internet douchebags who can't even be bothered to look at the pictures taken at the event, not only irrelevant but completely wrong. i'm not a fucking hipster & plenty of people present were not fucking hipsters. lazy generalizations will be the death of responsible reporting.* same with privilege--sure, some people there were probably subsidized at least in part by their parents. plenty weren't. "trust fund hipster" at this point is such a cliche that unless you are using it to describe a single person, it's all but meaningless.
[the sociopolitical commentary re: "songs about money" supposedly made on the Broadway Junction platform is asinine, however, though i don't know who made it--i am assuming it was a to-remain-unnamed aspiring Rock Star who in his rush to the top tends to step in his own mouth. as for the "acrobats" doing flips over the subway railings & dropping change from their pockets, i wish i had been in THAT car. that change would be MINE, fuckers.]
*the author makes no claim as to the existence of responsible reporting on this site, & never will
people play music on trains. people play music on train platforms. these are both common occurrences, not requiring phone calls to the cops, the transit police, or the local militia. commuters who do not want to hear this music are generally out of luck, unless they've brought headphones or have selective hearing--i know, i've been one of these commuters many times, more frequently now that my mp3 player is busted & a new one has yet to present itself for an acceptable price. somehow, 99% of these musicians don't get called out by catty after-the-fact wannabe pundits who demean the entire affair as the brainchild of "privileged white hipsters" invading "their" territory with loud noise & circus effects. speaking from the back of the J train--which passes outside my window hello J train i live off you--i heard unamplified violin, guitar, & banjo music, a girl singing, people bustling around handing out donuts & juice, maybe flowers. not disruptive. didn't see any commuters getting any more pissed off than they'd been when they got on the train. no one raises an eyebrow when subway musicians commandeer a car, often with much higher volumes of noise--i can't be the only person who's almost gotten kicked in the face by a breakdancer, but done nothing about it except maybe move a few inches to the left--& "white" is a lazy descriptor by internet douchebags who can't even be bothered to look at the pictures taken at the event, not only irrelevant but completely wrong. i'm not a fucking hipster & plenty of people present were not fucking hipsters. lazy generalizations will be the death of responsible reporting.* same with privilege--sure, some people there were probably subsidized at least in part by their parents. plenty weren't. "trust fund hipster" at this point is such a cliche that unless you are using it to describe a single person, it's all but meaningless.
[the sociopolitical commentary re: "songs about money" supposedly made on the Broadway Junction platform is asinine, however, though i don't know who made it--i am assuming it was a to-remain-unnamed aspiring Rock Star who in his rush to the top tends to step in his own mouth. as for the "acrobats" doing flips over the subway railings & dropping change from their pockets, i wish i had been in THAT car. that change would be MINE, fuckers.]
*the author makes no claim as to the existence of responsible reporting on this site, & never will
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