So many pills/ so little time to do them
The inquiries about our mental health have been pouring in. We would like to take this time to express our gratitude to those who have taken the time to wonder if we are going to jump off a bridge. The answer is, no. We have many important things to do, like eat dinner at the Sitar tonight, and we think we may go to see a favorite band play in Amherst next week. That’s what. And god knows what other activities we indulge in on a daily basis, which may fall under some broad headline of things we might consider “life-affirming”. Also, we have not yet had time to kiss all of the girls we would like to kiss, and so there are endless amounts of activities the B-rist Board of Directors has to carry out on planet earth, thank you.
**************************************************************************************

Yesterday at work, the afternoon bustle. I am hiding out in my cubicle, as per usual, doing an almost embarrassing amount of nothing. What my job basically entails is a good amount of spacing out. The interior walls of my cubicle feature a blue-green impressionist-type pattern, and facilitated by the fumes I breathe all day, it’s all just really interesting, from an art historical perspective. When I catch myself getting a little out of hand with the aforementioned activity, I sally forth and check in on some of my fellow employees, who may be doing any number of insane tasks. I will not lie in that I feel a large chunk of compassion for these people. What will have been a very temporary peek into the dark corridors of the dispossessed will in fact be a lifetime for these people. And it’s something that registers a very strange amount of sadness within me. As a final blow to not only the aesthetic, I notice that the customer service people are wearing these badges which say, “Let them hear you smile,” accompanied by a smiley face. This is just another articulation of the office place misery, which totally undermines the ability of spontaneous happiness, the very existence of the badge which points that out. What is that even supposed to mean? I have to ask someone.



It is Friday afternoon, 2 hours and counting. And believe me, we are counting. You catch yourself looking at the clock repetitively, get up, make some copies. Shortly, the floodgates are going to be opened, and we will pour forth into the 2-day expanse of time which will constitute the weekend, where we will do god-knows-what before returning Monday morning. People should be ecstatic with ecstasy over this moment. But instead it’s characterized by the banal. All of my co-workers are standing around bemoaning what a horrible day it has been. We are well enough acquainted now that I can chide them about their bad attitudes. “Well I’m having a pretty awesome day,” I tell them cheerfully. This comment does not go over well with the masses, and I am told that there is enough work to be done that it can very swiftly be made a different way. I shut up quickly.

Back in my cubicle, I am pouring over the merits of Impressionist art when Saturday Night Live comes around to give me one of the free toothbrushes she is handing out to people. Attached is customer service card message, Let them hear you smile. I contemplate the card a moment before pasting it on my shirt, if only to annoy everyone I work with. Because for the first time, I appreciate the message as a non-ironic gesture. Which is pretty heroic, at least in this environment.

*

Drink a lot of soda so they call me Dr. Pepper
I don’t know if it’s because every other CD I own is trapped in some netherworld beneath the front seat in my car, which may feature the collected detritus of many months worth of Taco Bell consumption, and the only album currently at my disposal in the car is A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory, but this is what I’ve been listening to a lot lately. Listening to this album more acutely broils down to listening to the track "Buggin’ Out" on repeat over and over, which is a masterpiece of early ‘90’s hip-hop from my tremendously unversed understanding of rap music-- which is all about product endorsement from what I could gather. "Buggin’ Out" is more the type of song I can get into, the chorus eliciting in my sleep-addled brain early in the morning a bombastic break dancing funk of the synapses. While the whole album is insanely replete with references to the Arsenio Hall show and industry demands and stardom, "Buggin’ Out" is more definitively the track that doesn’t appear to have been exhumed from a time capsule buried in 1991 and part of an overall package which is just gut-bustingly funny. That’s kind of the thing you tend to notice about this genre, is that it is either so breathtakingly fast in its progression, making what sounds good one year by comparison just totally hilarious one year later, or the fact that it is so referential in its product endorsement that most of its potential becomes entangled with the fad it endorses, and thus its staying power becomes about as ephemeral as a pair of Air Jordans. Nevertheless, "Buggin’ Out", a song about freaking out in the face of industry stardom, happens to be the standout track on the album, if only for that same chorus, which just repeats, buggin’outbuggin’outbuggin’outyourebuggin’out. I get my day started to it everyday, appropriating a dance move which combines the traditional head-bobbing “rooster” with a horizontal back and forth shaking of the head which might look like someone affected with a severe case of Swimmers’ Ear. It really is pretty great. And additionally, it adds an almost thematic consistency to my day, because I actually am completely buggin’ out while on my way in to another 8 hour day. And that’s a sentiment which never seems to go out of style.

I am a dreamboat/ goodnight for now
If my current living situation could be manifested in disaster, it would most likely be a natural disaster. An 8 point earthquake situated along fault lines, the earth opening up and swallowing the house whole. Or alternately, a biblical-style flood, with the proverbial news reel showing no survivors on the rooftop. Or maybe even a fire, but started in the most mundane of ways, like falling asleep with a cigarette while watching Love Connection. Which, at least, would be thematically consistent.

Everyone in my life is totally insane, which must make me at least peripherally involved. I dream in real estate: a one bedroom apartment, with a window. And a store down the road. Or maybe even a back porch for late night contemplating. Or a front porch, actually—to watch passersby. I would like that. It’s not too much to ask, I don’t think. And I still think the future is going to be rad.

Before you die, everything you know will be decimated into dust. It will be held up before you and chopped at like a cheap piñata, which will fall to your feet, revealing cyanide pills. It will be destroyed methodically and slowly, right before your eyes. But if you’re lucky, it will be rebuilt into something you will marvel at once again.

One false eye forcing him to miss
Walking McBeans through the woods after work today, I notice there are two people on the side of the path. This is not uncommon. There are always people, usually teenagers who have come to smoke cigarettes after school. But these people are not teenagers, and they are not running away as they see me approaching. They are full grown adults, a woman emerging from a hedge as I come up upon them. Getting right up close, I notice that she’s fashioning a homeless person’s haircut, all shaved down, with various patches that are completely missing and a long strand that hangs down in front. Her cohort is also sketchy. He’s kind of this Phil Ek-looking character, wandering around in the leaves. She gives him direction from the path, and then he moves in that direction, always looking down. It seems completely strange to me, and so I ask, “What are you doing?” They give a little sign of embarrassment and then explain: “We’re looking for a canister,” the woman tells me. This doesn’t really explain it all, and so I enquire. “You mean, like you lost a film canister out here or something?” “No,” she says, “It’s a game. Someone hides a canister and then we try and find it.” Some internet website dedicated to the retrieval of various treasures, I reason. Do you win a prize if you find it? I want to know. “No, there’s no prize,” she says. “It’s just for the fun.” The fantastic element of fun seems reduced, however, out here in the elements, with the onset of darkness coming soon. All of this really does seem pretty bizarre to me. But they do have some sort of compass-type mechanism and are in the process of looking for something. Although, this could be the cover for the actual activity of exhuming the body they’ve buried out here and forgot to disarm of its jewelry. Oh, man, the days are getting weirder. The woman goes on to explain that there is actually a whole underground community dedicated to these treasure hunts. “It’s pretty cool,” the guy says chiming in. “We actually just came from one up in Bennington, Vermont last weekend. You get to know some of the people in the community and it’s a real good time. ” I look at him with a moderate amount of amazement. “Do you think you're going to find it?” I ask them. "Well, we might have to reposition our coordinates," he says. Well, I hope you find it, I say. And the weird thing is, I actually mean it.

The pattern on this rug tells a story
Another day in the hive, cultivating a hunchback over the Microform Duplicator. I love the name of this machine: the Duplicator. It looks like some kind of archaic German design, like they rescued it from post-war Germany, when even then they realized this technology was out of date. What you do is put a microfiche reel in the press and it stamps out a duplicate, as its name indicates. You then take the duplicate and develop that in a machine called the Diazo Developer, which uses ammonia to complete the final process. Five minutes in, you are totally high off the fumes, people coming in and greeting them with a lurid smile. Half the time I don’t even know where I am, I’m so stoned off the fumes. And that’s OK, because I’m the least miserable person in the building. I stumble around, take a break, work some more. “There used to be someone who did that job full-time,” Ginny tells me today. Are you fucking kidding me? I want to ask her. Are they brain damaged? Are they covered on the insurance plan. Zoning out has taken on new proportions. People come around my cubicle to find me half retarded and muttering things to myself. “—Oh, yeah: sure. I’ll get right on that copy project,” I let them know, wiping the spittle from my lip.

I really should quit soon. My sense of sanity really does seem to hinge on it. The temp agency really did grasp this one from the bottom of the barrel. Somebody, somewhere is having a good laugh right now, I imagine. “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Ginny says to me, “if you feel lightheaded, step away for a bit.” As if that’s the answer, which maybe it really is. She does, after all, have a lot of experience in this department.

When I’m not completely high, I’ve been spending vast amounts of time contemplating my coworkers and wondering just what’s Ginny’s deal? She really does seem to be harboring some incapacity that I can’t quite put my finger on, although it could just be the fumes. While outwardly she may appear innocuous and playful, she actually is some draconian caricature of the Skippy Peanut Butter mom, gleefully giving me things to do all day. As tends to be the case with completely subverted individuals, they end up carrying out similar acts of oppression, giving the poor temp worker endless variations of things to do. Even the smallest of tasks are explained in great detail, like how and why the envelopes are arranged just this way. Additionally, as a final blow, she has banned any and all music in our area, not even graced by the Muzak, which gives you the occasional Bowie number, which is something at least. Gracing the silence, you will sometimes hear her saying things like, “fiddlesticks,” as she date stamps the wrong document.

Working environments are weird because you end up being paired with people you would never otherwise actually associate with. You end up spending more time with these individuals than you do with your actual friends and family, and in that sense these people become as temporary in your life as you are in theirs. I just don’t know about this place, though. Everyone here seems completely alien and strange to me. My favorite person turns out to be Raymond in the Life Department, who always seems upbeat and enthusiastic, or the woman who evokes the Saturday Night Live skit. Although, the disgruntled employees are equally amusing from a critical point of view. I’m not really sure where I fit in, or how much of a legacy I’ll be leaving when I do go. I’d like to think that I’ll impart my own sense of self which is totally inimitable, but that’s not really the nature of this job. And even if it were, these people don’t really seem very impressionable. I will be imprinted forever, though, irreparable, I already know. If I even end up remembering anything at all. The fumes really are pretty intense. “—Ryan,” I hear being called from afar, “Are those done yet?” Piles of fiche are everywhere, with the tiny microcosms of information which will be really large soon: Life Insurance, Disability Coverage, it’s all there. And nothing will be excluded. “Almost,” I tell her. “Almost.”

Fast cars and fine ass/ these things will pass
Answering the phone against better judgment at 4:00 am. “How about a game of Jenga?” a girl’s voice says. “Well, it is 4:00 and I’m not exactly—” I am cut off at this point and random points of derision are inserted about my dedication to the game of Jenga. I’ve heard a lot more crushing things, I have to admit. But I do not hang up without asserting that I am in fact the Jenga Champion, which may well be going on my resume.


Driving home. No one is on the road right now, but I’m pretty much sure that a car is going to come out of the ether, crushing and killing me swiftly for not wearing my safety belt. I have received a ticket for this very same thing earlier in the day, while driving home on a lunch break. “Well, I was kind of in a hurry,” I tell the police officer, before inserting the nugget of wisdom which has been inhibiting not only my safety belt-wearing but a whole bunch of other activities as well: “My coat is just too big.” The officer is not impressed with this line of reasoning, dismisses herself, goes back to the car to write a ticket. “You can appear at the following court to protest the ticket,” she tells me. “Have a nice day.”

Throwing off the cloak of rationality which would typically have me cursing myself, cursing the fact that I have a job at all to come home from on a lunch break, I have decided to take another route. Instead, I have decided to process this as a symbol of good fortune, something that may in fact change my criminally negligent nature of not wearing the safety belt while there are so many other careless drivers on the road. Especially at this hour. There is nothing good that can come of it. There is probably a 70% possibility that some fraternity brother, traversing the road at way too quickly a speed after 5 keg stands is going to bring my life to an abrupt end. It can happen at any moment, and especially in a town like this, which has been nationally recognized for its revelry in major publications. What this all broils down to is that bars are typically open later here than in other cities and states around the nation, and thus the possibilities for nightlife options are innumerably greater when you have longer to hang out for. Or at least that’s my deduction. But it is after hours now, and when you calculate in the fact that the public transit here in pretty much non-existent, it really just does not look good on paper.

Buckling up then, over the big coat, constricting me in a way that definitely inhibits any and all ability to maneuver, as well as the ability to comfortably breathe. Will it be fast? I wonder. And how will it happen? All of the degredations I’ve had to endure through the succession of days which have lead me to this specific moment. Oh, man, what a rip-off it’s all going to be, I think. And then suddenly, it all becomes clear, there is only one thing to do at the moment, and I find myself turning in the direction of the Jenga house. Because it's totally on, if it doesn’t fall apart first.