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."

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.

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?

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.

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