Wednesday, November 11, 2009

the road to hell is paved with etc etc

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.

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.

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]:
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

  • 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

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

money-making schemes / how to fail at life w/o really trying

to celebrate the rude awakening [though to be fair i was expecting to be ill upon opening the envelope] brought on by the arrival of yesterday's bank statement, i have renewed efforts at procuring employment, dragging my motivation kicking & fizzling out of a fog of procrastination, subway envy, & the latest thomas pynchon novel.

& we have two options:
1. guinea pig for Eastside Medical Center, in which i have the exciting chance to test out a new & experimental medication & maybe die / undergo fucked-up neurological side-effects [but get 600$ as long as they don't randomly drug-test me at the wrong times]
2. write people's term-papers at a starting rate of $12/page, 20-40 pages a week. interview tomorrow. at an east midtown starbucks, fortunately one where i don't have a history of conducting illegal business transactions. email says i don't have to dress up but dear god where am i gonna stash my mind control equipment. honestly this job is perfect for me, especially since i don't really have to care about the end product since it's no longer my academic ass on the line. can churn out a reliable stream of learnèd bullshit quicker than you can shout FRAUD & douse me in kerosene.

flinging resumes into the ether was feeling way too much like primate excrement-throwing. craigslist "etc" come save me from myself. self-sinking battleship seeking same, let's talk about our futures together & see who vomits first. full disclosure: i just saw / felt a huge rubber band in front of me snap--symbolic or just my subconscious' evolution from throwing unexpected trains at my ass as i nod off on the job since i'm so friendly with trains these days

oh well. "you're only young once."

Monday, August 24, 2009

new leases on life, or how the hobbity smack dealer fled never to return

the hard drive once known as Patrick Bateman is now hooked up like a bag of IV fluids to this computer [known since 2005 as Laura Palmer, as in the welcome screen: "turn off Laura Palmer" ? don't mind if i do]--perhaps my habit of humanizing my electronics is what causes them to band together & combust out of spite at the same fucking time--but i have all my documents music etc etc etc. once more, narrowly averting all manner of heart attacks brain aneurysms & embolisms. now i can read the documents that i don't remember writing & find out what i've been doing while coasting precariously through the last six months;

TOTALLY UNRELATED ASIDE I SWEAR--witness a weird side-effect of the speed you took all through college--not remembering any of your millions of writing assignments--their contents, creating them, or otherwise. when my hard drive crashed i panicked not only at the thought of losing my music collection & my writing but even the memories of what any of them contained. i need neurotic self-referentiality to remember what my self even is. jesus fucking christ. couldn't remember the subjects or content of any of the 3 final papers i wrote last semester. let's hear it for the bonfire of the brain cells

but now that i have no more reason to panic time to write this overdue show review. fuck 18-year-olds that draw bigger audiences than my bands. seriously.

excessive verbosity kills

HARD DRIVE CRASH ALL SYSTEMS UNSTABLE FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT TRASH DELL COMPUTER HAS BREATHED ITS LAST BREATH COME IN GROUND CONTROL HELLO HELLO

while i was writing the last post, i abandoned my computer for about an hour, only to return & find it TOTALLY UNRESPONSIVE TO ANYTHING. yes, right after my mp3 player died, taking the majority of my music collection with it. 40 fucking gigabytes down the toilet. i am going to scream or shoot someone or shoot up or ALL FIVE i i i. holding off on the histrionics in case the knights in shining armor who are supposed to arrive at 3pm today to "look" at it for 95 fucking dollars are able to salvage the hard drive. i have everything backed up through the last time my hard drive crashed but nothing since then, which is terrifying & unseemly. fuck. fuck. more fuck.

typing on the zombie IBM which has now outlasted TWO dell hard drives. regardless of what happens re: data on that other piece of shit machine i'm buying a refurbished IBM like tomorrow. some dude i met 3 years ago then ran into at an art gallery a few months back--who recognized me sans crackhead-teeth, which were unfortunately a distinguishing factor of my appearance back then due to unparalleled dental laziness on my part--has spare copies of windows xp so i won't have to deal with bullshit vista or "windows 7" or whatever the latest crap version of this operating system is. seriously going to lose it if i can't get some music up in this bitch here. using the soundcard on this computer fries it--soundcard being located apparently right next to the vodka spill that caused its demise oh so many years ago--& will freeze the fucker so i can't even listen to what minimal collection i amassed on here. fit to be tied off. fucking stupid references to smack keep creeping up in here. kill 'em all.

[surprised the panic hasn't really set in yet, aside from my being utterly unable to sleep last night & subsequent exhaustion mixed with bizarre affection for the city buses undulating up Joralemon St. this morning. oh beautiful b38 you are so limited in your morning express runs to Downtown Brooklyn / Tillary St. oh glorious b45 you are so close to the end of your journey as Court St. is just a block away [insert gimme-shelter-&/or-death reference]. this strange goodwill even before i jumped through the last hoop of my current probation status by passing a drug test [!!!]. while we were tensely waiting for the test strips to hopefully show up negative the chip-eater was all "thc...negative...morphine...negative...& your friend coke..." give me a fucking heart attack please. i will take it & run far away. & will now going to be reporting only once a month to some other building where no chip-eaters reside. now to drown my sorrows like a burlap sack full of illegitimate children.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

LOLocaust, now with more joy division soundtrack

in one of my minimal slices of actual journalistic endeavor i set out to review a show at Don Pedro's last night for jezebelmusic.com. being the star reporter i am, i forgot my notebook & probably my dignity in my "other purse," & arrived sans both. the show started two hours late minus the "headlining" band i'd signed up to see & was opened by a punk band comprised solely of 18-year-olds. they had a bigger audience than we ever did when Ryder Pales played there, any of the shows. i mean i can only take so much consolation in the fact that we know at LEAST two more chords than they do. they weren't very good but loud passes for good often enough in that place that it didn't seem to matter for the audience. now i have to review the show based on the notes i scribbled on a loose piece of paper that was floating in my purse. FAIL.

on the way to the Lorimer J stop where i FLEW after watching the second band [who were much better, though still partially comprised of 18-year-olds], i was on the phone & someone behind me kept yelling, trying to get my attention. when it persisted for a whole block i figured i'd dropped something or maybe i knew this person & turned around. dude comes up to me all jovial, shakes my hand, introduces himself, makes abortive attempt at smalltalk by which point i have replaced my face with a question mark. then: "hey, uh, do you know where i could get some powder?" oh for the day when i could have just pulled a bag out of my purse & charged him something obscene. i explained consolingly that normally i'd be able to help him out but i had to pass a drug test for probation on monday. he was mildly intrigued & asked what i was on probation for. not wishing to get into the whole story--there had been a train to catch at some point--i explained that i did a very bad thing several years ago, but "he deserved it." dude was kind of unnerved & i took the opportunity to wish him the best of luck & escape while he yelled after me that i was totally rock'n'roll. i guess i should expect by now that i will be approached by complete strangers for drugs wherever i go, but. the fuck?

Saturday, August 22, 2009

snacktime in hell: a dramatic tale of love, loss, & lard on the BQE overpass

obese child fiending for corn syrup picks up an abandoned McDonalds cup sitting innocently unattended on the guardrail overlooking the Broadway BQE overpass while waddling down the street hand in hand with proportionally obeser manatee mommie

as the pre-moistened straw approaches his meaty lips Mommie's eyes widen with the monumental dread associated with hideous breaching of the all-powerful dictate Don't Eat Stuff Off The Sidewalk and she shouts with righteous anger DON'T TOUCH THAT and grabs it out of his hand

as they continue down the sidewalk, child recovered from the momentary shock of the bellowing maternal flabheap, said heap waits til Junior is distracted by a passing shiny object, & surreptitiously takes an experimental sip of the contents of the McDonalds cup, heated to seriously ungodly temperatures as they must be by any amount of time spent in the 90+degree sun

there is a moment of smugness as Mommie mentally pats herself on her expansive, fleshy back for the insanely excellent parenting skills she has just demonstrated, and a gradual slackening of face as the potent liquid in the cup floods her synapses with chubby ecstasy

the end
[true story brought to you by Fans & Friends of Human Extinction, Inc]

COOK UP YOUR LEFTOVERS, KIDS

contrary to what they might tell you in dark basement rooms, 24 hours is nothing to be proud of

in other, less cryptic news, i have officially placed the vast majority of my hopes on landing the internship at Reason in DC in the fall, because a) a change of scene, a change of style, an opportunity to quote my all-time favorite melodramatic Joy Division song b) no access to what's been fucking me up all summer while not on tour c) living with my ultra-fabulous godparents & their cats / intelligent human contact with people who knew me before i became the world's greatest fuckup d) did i mention the $5000, well there they are. all five thousand of them. if my pupils hadn't turned to dollar signs years ago they'd be doing it now.

[my pupils are currently two different sizes, since this morning. so i look suspicious even though i've been a painfully good girl all week in preparation for my cup-pissing performance on monday during which my probation officer will hopefully pronounce me worthy of lesser supervision & i never have to worry about anyone showing up at my door at 7 a.m. eating chips ever again. i love the song "ashes to ashes," but it's my ringtone, & hearing it right next to my head while i'm sleeping never fails to send me into paroxysms of terror. like hey guess what it's dawn time to throw on a bathrobe & look like the pinnacle of law-abiding humanity, OR ELSE. the way she eats those chips suggests the next one may be your head, legally speaking, & she's rotund enough to suggest that she's done this to plenty of other innocent little felons. maybe they're sitting in her stomach plotting or i can feed her a rock & induce greek-myth-type chaos. i'll miss the probation-waiting-room conversations, the 10th-floor-social-club, but not enough to fuck things up at this juncture. no i can't say the word 'juncture' out loud & keep a straight face, why do you ask?]

basically, i need to be kept busy at all times or old habits rise from the dead. does this make me weak & spineless? probably. at least i realize it. keep my itchy dialing finger away from the phone & on the keyboard, keep my ATM card locked in my wallet letting its hair down out the window & begging cash machines to climb up it, stretch metaphors unapologetically past the breaking point, etc. need to apply to grad school before all my college professors forget who i am, con them into writing glowing recommendations, & find a job so i don't actually have to GO to grad school. mostly i just want to quit living in fear of someone asking me what i DO all day, is that so much to ask.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

memo to blood: don't bother clotting, no one likes you anyway

in a triumph of journalistic aspiration over vegetable inertia, i applied for a fabulously rewarding internship at Reason magazine, rewarding being the key word to the tune of $5000. all these craigslist slave-labor "internships" can go fuck themselves with V-2 rockets, because [That Old Refrain Again] I Didn't Go To College For This. seriously, class credit for classless people is so old hat it's prehistoric. as in dinosaurs didn't wear hats. or if they did they were made of cloth, rotted with age & the bones left over show no marks of sartorial excellence. dinosaurs were probably quite well-dressed. goddamn comets set fashion back millions of years.

more importantly this internship would put me in DC for ten weeks, ie. Another City which is exactly what i need. it's not fresh country air, which is great--i'm allergic to nature--& i have people to stay with, thus avoiding the irritation of roommates/attempting to hold dual apartments/residential messes/tweaker zoos. remind me to never elaborate on any of this, ever.

aside from that unexpected glimmer of possibility there has been one [1] interview with a few Young Hip Creative Types at a bookstore in DUMBO, which marks my second failed interview with Young Hip Creative Types in that neighborhood. would actually be a nice place to work which makes my predictable failures even more irritating; the disinterested farewell of "we'll be in touch" without even a timeframe to give me an iota of false hope was a bit much, even if the guy was reasonably attractive & didn't seem to be a tool despite the YHCT designation. drowned my sorrows in overpriced earl grey gelato & a few hours of reading-without-buying in a local used bookstore, ended by my irritating tendency to nod off while standing up & almost fall down, several times. tilting over like a chopped down tree in a mysteriously vacant rainforest. common sense finally poked through & i sat down to keep reading, only occasionally twitching myself awake to the alarm / amusement of whoever happened to be innocently browsing. like oh no sir i swat the air with my arm for no apparent reason all the time. yeah i can control my braincells. just watch--*smack*
oh i'm so sorry sir i didn't mean to bitchslap your son

browsing as implied innocence : people are always "just" looking, even when they haven't been accused of anything at all. can i help you is only suggestive of criminal wrongdoing when it comes from the mouth of a menacing security guard who's caught you with your proverbial pants down climbing over a fence, dangling from a drainpipe, etc. not an underpaid retail clerk who somehow manages to delude herself into smily optimism every morning over a croissant eaten in surreptitious pieces out of a bag on the train. remember, when there are surveillance cameras everywhere "JUST LOOKING" can be interpreted as a manifestation of subconscious guilt, & your exit from the store where you were doing so will be marked by a special patrol of flying pigs assigned to find the source of this guilt & beat it out of you. or just beat it out of you, because this guilt is baseless & imaginary. childhood leftovers. if they can't find a crime you'll be assigned one from the lost & found. don't try to protest you're only making it harder for yourself.

paranoid fantasies aside. if they can ever truly be placed aside. i want this goddamn internship & i want to have my ticket out of the city for ten weeks. especially if Rasp can't fly over from London & the much-longed-for Ryder Pales east coast tour dissolves before even being constructed. otherwise i mean spending fall here, doing nothing, i can see where this is going & it's going to be messy

Friday, July 31, 2009

when good advice does bad things

1. old habits, spoken in disembodied cat head voice, for what has to be the tenth time this summer: "Why die hard when you can live forever?" We'll see who's laughing next weekend, won't we.
2. stepping out of the Bergen Street subway station, forever home of at least subconscious
Jacob's Ladder references & subsequent fear of vacant-faced demons piloting stray trains that just happen to run me over, a nervous-looking middle-aged guy with a reporter's notebook approaches me. "I'm writing a book about work. Are you just getting home from work?"
I was tempted to ask him exactly how the entire subject of Work was to fit in a single volume but just cheerily replied that no, I am very much unemployed, just like everyone else in this city, & he smiled. "That makes two of us!"
3. just as I'm starting to think hey, maybe I should get out more, this isn't so bad, I catch some scurrying crackhead on Atlantic Avenue with his hand literally centimeters away from the hole in the top of my purse from which this industrious fuck thinks he's about to retrieve my wallet. He hasn't been informed of the eyes in the back of my head & when I turn my head to catch his face practically in my fucking armpit he gets all wide-eyed & scurries away, as much as one can Scurry when dragging a giant fucking black duffel bag probably missing its old days of being stuffed with body parts as the possession of a far more interesting criminal than this tool.
4. what's with the numbers?
5. they say count to ten if you feel you're about to do something you regret.
6. your constant references to "they" could easily have you mistaken for a paranoid, delusional freak. & let's not get started on your appearance.
7. let's not take that village voice photo as representative of what I actually look like, ok.
8. can I just do something I regret now, without having to count to ten?
9.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Everything I Need To Know About You I Learned In Five Minutes, But Who's Counting

THE JOB INTERVIEW

...reminding us once again that if it walks like a Professional, if it talks like a Professional, it still won't get the job if it doesn't remember to blink once in a while. though it was mercifully dark in the room & maybe the protective resume-cloud in front of my face that beams messages of Responsibility, Punctuality, Organization & other corporate delicacies distracted them from my face. because i have NEVER gotten a job from a face-to-face interview. i could have a gold-plated resume that like delivered them bottles of dom perignon every morning & still if they want to talk to me in person? fuck THAT shit. my physical presence somehow a) creeps people out b) strikes a fundamentally Wrong chord somewhere deep in the reptilian part of their brains, causing inexplicable-to-them yet overwhelming repulsion c) projects a sort of malevolent incompetence that even the most eloquent, intelligent, COHERENT responses to their questions are eclipsed by it d) etc etc because I know it's not my voice. I get jobs when the interviews are conducted over the phone. maybe next time i'll try wearing a wig. or some sort of secretary glasses. I already wear a fucking secretary OUTFIT when I show up to these things, I mean, what else am I supposed to do, walk a typewriter around on a leash?

& it's also unnerving because I read that they look at the backs of your hands, this "they" whom I can no longer attribute to any specific class of people due to holes in my memory large enough to drive a truck through but there is a They who does this. & they had me write down my contact info & while I'm trying to manipulate the stubborn inkless sharpie as fast as possible the interviewer is like craning her head around to get a look at the back of my right hand. not to get all lady macbeth about it but. i'm SURE there's something incriminating on it.

amid my attempts to hide the invisible Damned Spot I was asked next to no questions while the non-interviewing woman in the room had a telepathic field day ransacking the singed corners of my poor brain, no doubt kicking back & relaxing with a cool beer to watch the fireworks as one neurological catastrophe after another detonated in a flurry of synaptic sizzling. interview most likely cut short because a piece of flying neuron hit her telepathic probe in the eye & all the needles came out of all the haystacks to join the party & it was just a huge mess & the maids refused to clean it up. because when you stretch metaphors THIS far, your brain does indeed develop its own cleaning staff. & you get to cut the hands off the ones caught stealing from your dopamine stash, because what point of metaphorical absurdity is complete without a little gratuitous violence?

[this is for yet another job I'm preposterously overqualified for but at least the commute is next-to-nothing & I don't have to talk to anyone. I'd be transcribing video footage concerning weird diseases & vanishing ethnic groups. don't all squeal in excitement at once now. it's better than being the personal assistant to a self-described "burgeoning media mogul" deargodwhatthefuckdoesthatevenMEAN or posing for a retinue of sleazy dudes whose devotion to ART is only matched by their devotion to TITS or whatever other shitty jobs I'd actually stand a chance at being hired to do]

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

not to mention

if at first you don't succeed, it might just be an excuse to do more drugs.

i mean, pardon the outbursts, they'll come right out of the carpet with a little Tender Loving Cyanide, but ideally this blog will be the one in which I'm perfectly capable of discussing Real Life & my Place Within It without perpetually lurking behind misanthropic one-liners & / or walls of eloquent yet opaque verbosity.

OH YEAH & THERE'LL BE PICTURES

now, for the six million dollar question: who am i kidding?

botched experiments in new beginnings

I was going to post some sort of introductory bit here, as if someone would innocently stumble upon this blog, but I have decided that innocence is a big fat myth & that cutting & pasting from the documents I've been writing in (as opposed to my increasingly anemic livejournal output, which, let's face it kids, no one ever actually read) is far more indicative of my current State. Without further convulsion, this is the start of a potentially epic drama:

SPEAKER: "As a shiny thing you are aware you’re the subject of a lot of people’s attention, in fact that you are in your very shininess DIVERTING attention from things/people/situations that are often much more important than you through no fault of your own. Is it your duty to provide some sort of moral guiding light to the people distracted by you, or is it not your fault that their decision to look at you causes a car accident / divorce / 20-story plunge into hard, unfeeling concrete? After all, you didn’t ASK to be a shiny thing. And you can hardly dull yourself—that’s the shiny-thing equivalent of becoming a nun, without the religious-salvation angle. But still, there's some part of you that feels guilt when that guy drives off the bridge because something sticking out of the crevice in the passenger seat caught his eye & he just had to find out what it was before his curiosity could be satisfied enough to drive.As a shiny thing, this is the moral quagmire you wake to every morning, if you fuckers ever sleep, that is--"

[a warning cough fat with cigars & unexercised / exorcised lungs is heard from the moderator, and the speaker moves on obediently to his next index card]


SPEAKER: "Then there are those people who move through their lives aimlessly except for the "progress" of chasing one shiny thing after another. This isn’t strictly money we’re talking about—besides, money usually has all sorts of other concepts embedded in it, sort of like an existential fruitcake of ambition, & is rarely shiny these days anyway. We’re talking instant-gratification-dealing stimuli—things that grab your attention & absorb it immediately without any thought except the most reflexive on the part of the viewer. To wit: “Ooh, shiny!” Is it possible to go through life according to the dictates of “Ooh, shiny!” ? Do we have a volunteer to try? Don’t all jump up at once now. No, seriously, don’t, our floor can’t take it you fucking fatasses."


[threatening gestures around the throat area are made by the moderator]


SPEAKER, winking impishly & perhaps unwisely at his captive audience: "Now let’s address the shiny things again before we go too much further. Does the idea of the pursuit of “happiness” being interpreted as the pursuit of the Next Shiny Thing make you uncomfortable? Proud? Nervous? Do other people’s curiously stark and impersonal life goals give you stage fright? Is it the good kind of stage fright that means you’ll be a damn excellent shiny thing thankyouverymuch, or the bad kind that means you’re going to stutter & forget your lines & maybe piss yourself while the audience chokes on its popcorn laughing at you? Again, remember, as a shiny thing you aren’t doing any WORK except being, literally, yourself. You don’t have to perform or give back to these unambitious individuals, but merely to stand/sit/lie in place, reflecting whatever light should hit you. Which is an involuntary function for you anyway, sort of like breathing and sweating for human beings or photosynthesis for plants. Which well do plants sweat? I don’t think so. Anyway [that was the thought-equivalent of a shiny thing, people! Pay attention! Then pay me extra!] [if it comes in a bracket it’s not real. This is where I’m gonna put all the subliminal messages. Just, like, heads up. Don’t tell anyone lol!!!!!!one] you can no more help but shine than a person can help but perspire. There are now surgeries to get sweat glands removed from certain parts of the body—sweaty palm surgery, says the near-illegible scrawl in the back of my notebook—but these are bizarre & unnatural & only carried out by extremely weird people. Likewise, removing the shiny from yourselves as shiny things leaves you merely a Thing, at best an ex-shiny Thing, with little or no other characteristics that separate you from the primordial junkie soup of the cosmos. Can you handle the demotion / divestment of all that you once held dear? Can you hold a deer? No seriously I think it would make a great shot. Shiny Thing: Deerholder. It could be like the next huge blockbuster. Think of your fame! The camera could like SWOOP--"


MODERATOR, speaking in a booming telepathic voice that causes all present to uselessly place their hands over their ears [or would-be ear-areas in the case of shiny things] & give little whimpers like puppies being stepped on: ""Ladies & gentlemen we’re sorry, but our speaker seems to have taken ill. We are going to escort him to the bathroom & inject him with a fatally large dose of heroin & call it a suicide. Please stand by while we find someone willing to step into his, uh, shoes [briefly eyes outlandish pink pointed alligator footwear on still-babbling speaker, who has been grabbed by the arm from either side by beefy bald men with no necks whose black t shirts could fit a family of five normal-sized people as, like, a tent].""


. . . to be continued, when I am not a lazy fuck & see fit to import the rest of this