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