The only dream left worth believing starts with animal shapes
What does it reveal about your psyche when you actually like days like this? I know, I missed my meteorological calling, insisting instead on reducing myself to the most pedestrian things, like talking about the weather. But really: these days are more comforting, now; there’s nothing to really be won in them. Because it’s rainy and horrible, so how can you waste this day? It’s the lowest bar possible, where lying in bed all day is acceptable, because hey, man: it’s fucking horrendous out. Luckily, I have things to “entertain” me, some vague set list of things that I find acceptable, although I have to admit that I’m cultivating some sort of adult onset ADD. It’s all the garish imagery, the flashing lights, and aisles of grocery marts that I’ll blame it on. More and more now, I just can’t pay attention. It’s the fasted pace montage of modern day living, and it wears you down. If you’re talking to me, I may just wander off mid-conversation, being staunchly reminded, and grounded with the massive chagrin that has me apologizing, and saying, I’ve got the check, please. It’s not that what you’re telling me is boring, necessarily, it’s just that I’ve been hanging out in the grocery store, and what, really, is going to top that particular experience, in terms of pure and unquantifiable consumer experience? I could get a job in there, I guess. Grocery Packers, the local store is hiring. It was my first job of all time, actually. A cardboard caricature I made of it in art class, in the ninth grade. What it features, basically, is me standing there, with a horrible mock and long hair, wearing the traditional dork smock they insisted you wear. It was, probably, the worst job ever.

Sometimes they would let you go out of doors, to round up grocery carts, where you could sneak a cigarette and hustle a ride in a grocery cart, narrowly averting a customer’s car. Maybe they would take me back, along side the mentally handicapped people they have in there now. Those people seem to like it OK. I would get to know the customers, say hello as I deposit your lifestyle items neatly into a plastic bag. When the lights would become blindingly neon and begin giving you a spaced-look, they could send me outside. Hurtle myself across the lot in a grocery cart, where I would crash into a patron of ye olde store, busting and irrevocably damaging their knee cap, where I would have to spend the rest of my existence paying for their hospital bills. They would work it out with the store, and as penance for things done wrong in another life, I would have to serve out the eternity of all time by working at the store. By this time the lights indoors would become blindly neon, and I would cultivate an uncomfortable resemblance to my fellow handicap employees. My ADD would only worsen and the result would be more chagrin and horrible blog entries and future embarrassment. I had better get back to the drawing board, or whatever you call it. My drawing skills evidently need some honing.

Hold onto your genre/ your genre’s got a hold on you
There’s something irritating me today, and before long I realize that it’s the radio. I have written this same sentence before, I know, and I’m writing it again. It’s not a matter of pretension that has me thinking such things either; the radio really is just plain and terrible. I twitch a little bit in relation to its horribleness and then switch to something else. And then I change the station again. Every station has up for offer today some horrible simulacra of simulacra. Every group is some weird parody of a group that sounds like a group that sounds like Nirvana. And then, through the static, something weird happens. I switch to 103.9 (“The Edge,” a station named for its own sense of daring) and they’re actually playing something that I have some vague cultural affiliation with: an indie rock song. Which then has me positing the question, how “independent” can that band be, now that it’s getting commercial radio play? Is this station really that “edgy?” And furthermore, what does any of this really matter?

Hanging out in a bar in Albany, New York the other night, for what seemed to be some kind of record release party for a “punk rock” band. The band, fashioned in the way of your latest hipster aesthetic, was a group of 18 year-olds doing some parody of that Sum 41 version of punk that has gone some distance towards totally killing music as of late. The kids were into it, though. There was a circle in front of the stage, where crazified young men with muscles did a dance involving no shirts and running around in circles. My companion and I looked at each other in vague amusement. It’s always at least somewhat amusing when a bunch of people get together and run in circles while doing a flapping arm motion, even while horrible music plays. Although, what better music is there to accompany dancing that is so bad?

I’m easily confused these days, out in public. I’m not quite at the age where I feel the complete and total disconnect that has me saying things like, “crazy kids,” but I can definitely see the chasm, the pulling away of the ship from the docks, and the distance between. I can more easily recognize the ornate cultural mishmash, the various shapes and forms, and their corresponding titles. A review I read today on Pitchfork.com reads, “If you’re lucky enough to see this band when you’re sixteen, it’s going to change your life.” And it kind of makes you wonder if all of those labels weren’t there all along, taking so long in your 16 year-old head to catch up to the amorphous forms of what you were experiencing then. I remember talking to my friend Suz Massen about this same thing over dinner a couple of months ago. “Being into indie rock in 1995 was a totally subversive thing,” she said, “and there’s not really anything like that anymore.” And I guess I side with the amorphous and undiluted interpretation of experience inherent in her description of that period in time. But everything’s changed around these days, in the post facto, everything goes type of landscape we seem to be inhabiting. It’s weird, turning on the television set and seeing how your (sub) culture has been incorporated into primetime television. The music you thought was somehow subversive was in fact just waiting for the proper moment, the appropriate test market, and the corresponding labels that would push the product form.

A fanzine that I’ve recently read has touched on this same issue 10 years ago. The revelation was that when your subculture becomes commodified, and the people who were beating you up in high school start hanging around at the venues you do, how do you react to that specific set of incidents? Do you abandon your stances and jump ship, or do you stick to your guns? (Do you, in other words, start wearing khaki pants and playing lacrosse?) The malleable mainstream marketplace will listen to and embrace any trend or fashion thrown down the cultural conveyor belt. They will stand there with open arms, and even if it’s something that had those same people deriding you years before, they will consume blithely and plainly. It doesn’t matter what it is. If you were to contact a polling company and set up a test market with a total hoax of product form, selling the repetitious beating of a jack hammer on pavement, it would be enthusiastically purchased by the masses in time. This has already been proven with any number of “artists” you see and hear daily.

I’m not sure where I was when my revelatory experience occurred to me. It could have taken place at any number of all-ages shows, in the absence of a mosh pit or much of a crowd at all. The music coming through the speakers occurred to me then, and it had me looking around and thinking, this is where I belong. These are my people. Because outside of these four walls, in the world, with its everyday degradations, this is where those people are not. But what kind of revelation are these kids having, I wonder? They’re probably really big fans of The OC. And revelatory experiences, I think, should fall outside the timeslot of primetime television. But mostly, what it broils down to, is I don’t want to be associated with those kinds of people. Even after all these years.

Watching the band at the bar the other night, I tell C., “This sucks, I need to get out of here,” which we do. On the way out, some tricked out rock guy makes eye contact with me from the distance, mistaking me for someone else. “Oh, sorry, man, I thought you were my friend,” he says to me. It’s cool, though. I can take it. I give this whole thing another five minutes in the limelight, until it’s all really outdated, when these haircuts are considered really passé, and things get back to normal—which is already such a horribly compromised word.

This is the worst vacation ever/ I’m going to cut open your forehead with a roof shingle
Romantic notions I attach to certain work situations. It’s hard not to look at the librarian, stoically putting away books, and think that must not be too bad. Or the postal worker delivering mail on a sunny afternoon, showing up at your place of employ long enough for you to be envious of that same person disappearing back out of doors and into the afternoon, little glints of sunshine coming down and through the trees. And it gives me hope. There must be something out there that’s worth doing.

It is with this mantra in mind that I tell myself I am going to apply for a job at the Book House today. Here is what is good about this work environment: there are two coffee shops in the immediate vicinity; there is no dress code; there is no small modicum of attractive women going into the hair salon right next door, and some of them must read books, too. Additionally, I imagine, there must be some faction of people within the actual bookstore who may even share in a similar interest set (whatever that means). Which begs the question, who would be an ideal co-worker? Someone like me? Maybe yes and maybe no. I’m the kind of person who is hardly tolerant of other human beings, as has been recently been pointed out to me by my sister. “People like you, you asshole, but you always think everybody sucks,” she admonishes. That’s not entirely true. It’s not that I dislike others as much as it is that I cannot fathom why these people haven’t attended the same cult-deprogramming center that I’ve attended, which has them preening interests that seem to me worthy of laughing out loud. Although it’s hard, in lieu of this same discussion, not to think of Sartre, and his axiom-crusher of a proclamation, “hell is other people.”

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I gave myself a sweet haircut today, in anticipation of a potential job interview. It’s a totally haphazard process, and whether the ensuing result has me looking more employable is up for discussion. It does seem to be shorter, however, and so that’s something. Also, I do not iron, and so I put a jacket on over my wrinkled shirt, so that I am, at least to me, thoroughly employable-seeming, which is a nice illusion. When I find myself satisfactory, the smooth veneer of a young go-getter complete, I depart for the bookstore. Somehow, despite the fact that I could be there in minutes, I decide on taking the roundabout way of getting to the bookstore. A recent myspace bulletin has astutely pointed out that there are various ways to Stuyvesant, and why I take the longest way possible from my house is a total mystery. For the effort, I tell myself, despite having a lifesavings of $11.50, that I will reward myself for filling out the application by buying an album that I want, which is sadly tantalizing, but which propels me forward nonetheless.

Arriving to the store, I am almost promptly run over by a passing car. My own passing is something which fills me with horror, more now than ever. I imagine my paltry and wasted life put on display in some obituary somewhere and the thought of that fills me with the kind of legwork that has me dodging the vehicle and hustling to the curb, where I contemplate this some more. A human life, once passed, is measured in the most base and intangible ways. So condensed, it is, once gone, the small type print hammered out onto paper is all that is left. My life "accomplishments” might be meted out in the way of various schools I’ve attended. And that is, incredibly, it. Not exclusive would it be of things that actually mattered: the sweet dance moves I’ve cultivated over the years, a homeless person’s aesthetic, a magnetic hum which attracts women over the age of 40.

Shaking off this train of though, I go inside the store. My romanticized notions of hip bookstore clerk are quickly grounded with the sight of various older-looking woman, who stare at me as I enter. Quickly, I make a b-line for the non-fiction aisle. There are various people looking around the store, who are probably on a lunch break, languidly scanning the science fiction. Occasionally, a worker breezes by to put something away. And I suddenly realize, all at once, that this is the most mundane bookstore of all time. Not even the tinkling of jazz graces the store today, just the occasional customer ignominiously asking for a book he can’t find. And I realize, I cannot work here! This is horrible, which elicits another thought: Initially thinking of filling out the application has quickly segued into some vast rumination about filling out an application, and then that becomes one more layer detached as I think about all of that. It’s like the third tier of unemployability, which seems like it should come with a pretty good insurance plan. But it doesn’t, and even though there’s a record store on the corner, I realize, since I suck so thoroughly and completely, that I won’t be making a purchase today. And probably not tomorrow, either.

You're watching TV/ I stay up all night
Biblical buckets full of rain coming down, standing on a street corner, just because. And then, moments later, being snapped out of your reverie by people, who are your fellow humans, hustling on by to some obscure destination. Particles of moisture are collected in cloud formations and then released, to fall hundreds of feet down and get on your jacket as you jog to a lunch appointment, where you will be shifting in your seat because of that same water saturation. “Hey, what’s your problem today?” your companion will ask, and you will be at a loss for what to say— Not realizing, all the while, that it relates back to the soaked jacket you have on, your irritated skin, and moisture particles.

The balmy early spring weather of last week has been harshly juxtaposed with a duo of rainy days, encompassing your brain and making you wish for some small respite, a kiss on the mouth or otherwise. And I don’t know if it’s the weather, but everyone I know seems horrendously depressed. In fact, I can’t think of one person I know who hasn’t expressed a sentiment within the last few days that isn’t totally certifiable. And believe me, the bar is low. But even then we find ourselves with our legs just all caught up in it, falling to the surface and not too amazed by the results.

How can that be possible? Antidepressant commercials have broadened the diagnostic spectrum to include just about everybody in the viewing audience. No one, actually, is absolved from at least one of the symptoms they’re describing, as the cartoon iconography garishly dances around the screen, the lugubrious blue blob of a figure demonstrating a sad frown before being given the pill that has it smiling like a motherfucker. And it’s not hard to imagine that, before long, we’ll all be there, too.

One girl I know who used to take the aforementioned medication describes her experience in the following way: “It neutralized me to the point that you could have exploded a bomb next to my head and I wouldn’t have minded one bit.” And so I guess the consequence is yours (ours). The morning paper today reports that the USA comprises 5 percent of the global population and consumes a quarter of the world’s resources, making this country the most accommodated place on the face of the earth. In relation to that statistic, it’s kind of unnerving to realize that this same country spends in excess of 6 billion dollars a year on antidepressants. It’s pretty weird.

Meanwhile, as I stand there in the rain, a middle-aged man comes by. He looks familiar from somewhere, like a child star in older age. He has been through the wringer, maybe. The initial success of his sitcom did not entirely pan out. And now he is here and there I am. He looks twice as he’s about to pass by and then asks, “Buddy, are you OK?” Yes, I assure him, I am. But he is not assured. “Well, you were standing there the last time I walked by, and you’re all wet.” I was just about to go, I tell him, which I do, walking away, and realizing for the first time that I’ve never owned an umbrella.

School is out/ what did you expect
Nothing facilitates the springtime weather like Pavement coming through your well lubricated speakers, garnering that dumb as fuck dance step you do. You can almost see the specific notes coming through the air and making their way into your cranium, and as you do, making things cartoonishly OK. I’m old enough now to have seen some these albums reissued, and I’m sure admitting that I listened to Pavement back in the day is no better than listening to them now. But whatever. There’s a lot of messed up things in my life that I don’t want to own up to, and one of which is, well, never mind. One of those things, though, sadly—now that I can see you’re interested—is the fact that I missed the only Pavement show I had ever planned on going to, in the summer of the 11th grade, by sneaking out of the house to, among all things explicable, hang around outside a Grateful Dead concert. I can’t really relate the specific circumstances surrounding the executive decision to go to the Grateful Dead concert, but it may have had something to do with the fact that my best friend Jorge was living with my family at the time, and we had to keep our streak of 100 consecutive days of pot smoking alive. Either that or the more simple fact that it was really easy to sneak out of the house and there were two bicycles readily available and nothing better to do. We pedaled through a bad neighborhood that night, narrowly escaping the more literal stoning of rocks, and then stashed the bicycles in a hedge, to entertain the prospect of illicit drug purchases. This was my first revelatory cultural experience involving sucking the air out of a balloon, which had the ensuing result of walking out into traffic so plainly and calmly. Escaping the situation alive is in hindsight the real revelation.

Showing up at home the next day, languidly pedaling our way into the neighborhood as dawn crept into view, something definitely did not feel right. My mom, in the McGruff rime dog way of all-knowingness, had sniffed us out (asserting a certain paranoia towards the 1984-style of governing right off—my mom always had some amazing penchant for total omnipresence. There was really nothing you could get away with as a young juvenile, skipping school or anything else. If you had the car, it was pretty much assured that she would be at the stoplight next to you). Somehow, the missing bicycles, the disappearance, all added up to revoking the planned trip to New York City, and thus the prospect of seeing Pavement was dashed. It’s cool, though; Pavement will probably regroup in one of those lucrative late day career moves which has so many of your favorite groups getting back together. They’ll probably suck by then, but it’s cool because I won’t have to demonstrate my dance move, although “Summer Babe” will always make me think of far away things. Which, actually, aren’t too far away. And that's pretty good, I guess.

In a horror movie when the car won't start you give it one last try
The family unit seems to have sufficiently dissolved. When this happened, I do not know. One second it seems like you are ten and taking vacations to tropical southern locales, and the next thing you know it’s Easter Sunday 17 years later and you’re calculating the coordinates of disaster. The family unit is probably more closely akin to a burning building, now. I tend not to notice until it’s a holiday, and then it all becomes clear. I still hang out, make a go of the Easter brunch, but it’s hard looking at the fledgling form and the coming apart at the seams. “We are definitely a lively bunch,” I offer to the table today. Which may just elicit the kind of responses I’m more used to getting around the house these days. “Oh, it’s you,” my mom has said to me on entering recently. She doesn’t mean it, really. It pretty much all just broils down to her secret desire to run off with some sketchy hillbilly, and my further solidification of the overarching identity as Failure. It’s cool, I can take it—for about the duration of time it takes to get yelled at for eating all the pancakes. “See you around,” I say before making an exit.

Out of doors and into the sunny afternoon. Thankfully, there seems to be one location open today, as everyone I know seems to be involved in the intricate webs of social obligation and backyard barbeques that tend to characterize this holiday. That’s one thing I happen to be liberated from at the moment while simultaneously being burdened by at the same time. Border’s bookstore turns out to be my refuge. I can hang around in there, blend in with the sketchy vagrants, listen to albums I cannot yet afford at the listening station. That kind of thing. They are playing Cesaria Evora throughout the store today, and immediately I’m experiencing the placebo of context. The first girl I ever loved was into this album, and I remember listening to it on the floor of her dorm room at the elaborate liberal arts college she attended. The window was open and looked out over a courtyard, with the faint aria of college students coming and going. It did something to me, that song, which I had never heard before. It was a lightning rod of emotion that seemed to transcend genre and style and language, and hit me right between the eyes. And as we sat together on the floor that day, we cried and cried. And now, as a result, whenever I hear this song I tend to have the type of reaction that has me jogging for the exits. I know from my own experience a couple weeks ago that other human beings do not want anything to do with others who are offering up some wanton emotional display. And that’s understandable. So it’s out of the doors and into the world, crashing into people who are making an entry through those same doors, and getting in the car just in time to experience the paroxysm of emotion that seems to accompany listening to International music for me.

There seems to be no room for me outside of sadness today, on a day that is supposed to be about rebirth and rising up. I see a bumper sticker today that reads, Life is the school and love is the lesson. But mostly, the lesson seems to be alluding me. Or at the very least, showing up in song form long enough to remind me how sad things end up being. The gods, clearly, are messing with me, and they seem to be demonstrating a proclivity for Cesaria Evora. They could have better taste. But then, they could have worse, too.

I cold step to you with a fresh pack of gum
I have survived the week. “Trying harder,” sadly, has segued into lying in bed all day, as I’ve been hella-sick and just totally unable to deal with vertical positions. That’s OK, though, because I seem to have recuperated just in time for Friday night, which may find me in any number of local venues perpetuating “bad vibes” like the sporus fungi facilitated by a tepid rain. This is actually what I do. Sitting in a bar last week, dealing with the unambiguous pointing of strangers asking, “Is that him?” I’m used to this type of scrutiny, actually. I seem to resemble any number of anti-heroes, drawing comparisons to all types of miscreants worldwide, but more likely do I suspect that these are myspace voyeurs. And I’m always on edge, dealing with this micro-cosmic celebrity in the way that has me thinking of purchasing a baseball cap—which is the first time I’ve ever had to contemplate such a thing.

But that’s pretty rare, and it could have just been the paranoia which occurs when you mix certain cold medicines and other elixirs together. A more typical night out might involve hanging around in Lark Tavern and at some point wondering out loud what happened to that reptilian guy you used to see hanging around Albany, who later ended up on the Discovery Channel. Did he become Born Again? Take out all of his facial implants and is living a life of stoical subservience in suburbia somewhere, where he is calculating the precise coordinates of where things fell off the track for him—was it the insane primordial forehead implants that were the decisive factor or the full on body tattoo? Or more logically, did he finally make his way out to the wilderness to live among the snakes and lizards and things? Or is he reading this right now on some slow night five weeks in the future, and is looking up the requisite pictures which will be having him waiting outside of said venue, scaring the piss out of me on some other slow night five weeks from now? (further necessitating the need of a baseball cap). Other points of reference for tonight may include high-scoring on Mrs. Pac-Man and trying to impress random strangers with that same fact, who will blithely look back at me, wondering what the hell is wrong with me. Although, with any luck, those same statistics might impress someone. Something. Yeah, that sounds about right. Maybe I'll see you there.

I asked you a question/ I didn't need you to reply
I accidentally read the obituary for Timothy Moshier today. I didn’t mean to, and it’s easy to avoid. US news media outlets pretty much obscure the death factor, occasionally giving you an official tally if you’re really looking closely, but even then it’s just some number. It’s just some totally random figure you contemplate briefly before going back about your business for the day. And it’s easier that way. But it’s harder today, as I sit there in the waiting room of a doctor’s office reading the paper. It’s hard not to freak out at the notion that there really is no line of reasoning, and that nothing makes much sense of things.

Timothy Moshier was a captain in the US Army, who died flying a helicopter in Iraq. He was 25 years-old and was married with a child. His obituary describes him as a patriotic young man, who died doing what was asked of him and what he wanted to do.

It’s easy to find all kinds of holes in this argument. And depending on who you are and how you look at, you may have already located those things. Very few people I know would at this stage declare any kind of righteousness in terms of US foreign policy. What was laughably being called by some stations “Operation Iraqi Freedom” at the beginning of the invasion could at this point be considered full on hyperbole. And it’s easy to be so smart. But it seems to require something of you, too. Something more than just hanging around in a waiting room. But first I shed a tear for Timothy Moshier, and promise to try harder now.

If the clothes make the man/ then the moths make the holes
Michael, the cleaning kid at the gym, makes a b-line for me as I lift 145 lbs. (no kidding). It’s less endearing now that I know he will talk to anybody who will listen, and seeing as I’m not really in position to get away, I listen in. I don’t mind. I will listen to anyone, actually. You may have to take a number, though, because there seems to be no end to the que of people who are attracted to the magnet hum of my head which unknowingly transmits the message to the populace that I will hear them out on any subject matter, even as meanwhile I offer the most base advice even possible, and am then thanked gratuitously. Although, not in the currency I would actually prefer, which might not include a fruit basket.

Putting the weight down, he asks me, “What’s going on, buddy?” like he always does. I haven’t seen him in months, but he rejoins seamlessly. We talk things over: the bowling average, the girlfriend. “That sounds like an OK time,” I tell him, drinking a few beers at the Bowlers Club and cursing out loud as you throw a gutter ball. I mean, not that I do this kind of thing, the last time I went to a bowling alley being when they were having hardcore karaoke, which I watched from the sidelines as some perfectly deranged stranger monopolized the microphone all night, screaming Pantera songs, with full vocal shred. It was pretty great. But I don’t actually hang around in there. “I don’t really drink so much anymore, anyway,” he ends up telling me, which is comforting knowing that he’s sporting some type of incapacity. “Last year was crazy, though,” he says, “I was drinking the hard liquor, not showing up for work in the morning, and not remembering anything.” He rattles off the liquors he used to drink, and I take it all in. “Blackhouse?” I ask him, which sounds really sinister somehow, even though I’m pretty sure it’s some kind of after dinner drink. “Well, I’ll drink a Blackhouse for you, since you don’t drink it anymore.” He likes this response and then ends up inviting me to a party at the ‘rents house, when they go out of town. He doesn’t know where they’re going but is sure that it’s far enough away to have a killer house party before they return. “You know where I live,” he reminds me, as I have actually picked him up while hitchhiking in a downpour and transported him safely to his parents’ house (I will always pick up a hitchhiker, too, just to have them around long enough to confirm once again that it’s a bad idea). I imagine showing up at said party, and what kind of scene it would be. It’s a pretty safe bet that I won’t RSVP.

It’s hard, though, talking to Mike and then watching him shamble away, shirted not tucked and a three-days beard, not to realize the striking parallels which present. There’s just no denying that our tonsorial/ sartorial predilections remain somewhat consistent. My hair is in a constant state of concern, which is really no fault of my own, I tell you. Also, I have to admit, it is often the kind of thing I think of doing, when my parents make their way out of town, sizing up exactly how long they’ll be gone for before returning, to find the household drek. And as he parts, he enthusiastically lets me know that he’s going home to take a nap, a plan which sounds like a pretty good idea if you’re asking me. He gives me the standard hi-five as he’s leaving and then says see you later, buddy, which I reciprocate fondly before he disappears over threshold. I can’t help but shake my head a little bit as I watch him disappear. It's quite a startling realization that I seem to have stumbled on.

When I was in the seventh grade, I had to take the requisite Spanish class in order to make it to the next grade. As part of that class, you had to pick an ethnic-sounding name, and somehow I got stuck with Ricardo. The teacher, I guess, thought it was at least somewhat derivative-sounding of my actual name, and therefore that’s what I ended up with—which was fine, for all about ten minutes, until the late night Mike took over and I ended up watching David Letterman instead of doing any of the reading. I couldn’t remember a thing from class, and when it was my turn to deliver dialogue to the class the next day, I was a complete failure. I just stood there, uttering what I could, while the teacher unrelentingly grilled me. This may have gone on for any number of minutes, as I shifted from foot to foot. At which point in time, through the silence, someone yelled, “Retard-o,” which was my name for the remainder of the class. And, I guess, for the remainder of that year. Although, in the end, it’s hard to admit, that it just never went away.

Baby won't you take this magnet and put my picture back on the fridge
Rainy day, gray gloom, and the proverbial activity set. A friend has recently confided that he is confounded by weather talk. “People always want me to talk about the weather,” he says, “but I have no idea what to say about it.” But weather really just is the way to foment commonality and supply the amiable silence-covering conversational drizzle that has you saying to random strangers how crappy it is out. He is interpreting it a different way, however, positing the fact that if you have nothing to say, do not say anything at all, which might be largely indicative of any number of blog entries. “The next time someone says something to me about the weather,” he tells me, “I’m going to tell them, ‘fuck you.’”

But I really have just been having a glorious day, falling in and out of sleep long enough to realize how nice it is. I’m old enough now to have transcended the guilt complex my mom imbued on me as a child, always making you feel bad about sleeping in the day. There are things to be done, but fuck all that, I realize, falling back into a slumber. I have these dreams, too. And it’s kind of strange. There’s this one where I’m sitting on a toilet, and everyone is standing around me in a circle, watching. Which is kind of a werid thing to have a dream about.

The more we talk the less we understand
A woman crying in her car in a strip mall plaza. I have a coffee that will spill onto my lap, and so I have to sip at it until I can drive. As there she sits, at a slight angle to me, crying away. Strangely, human compassion seems almost nonexistent in this situation, as I think of how best to divert my eyes. Clearly, though, there’s no ignoring it, as we have made eye contact a couple of times now. I’m not sure what the prevailing etiquette is on the whole crying-in-a-car-in-a-strip-mall-plaza, but I guess I would be kind of weirded out if some random stranger tried to console me. Although, I guess that might be kind of nice, too. I don’t know. In the end, I opt for driving away and parking a few spaces down, so as to not deal with this situation. And in doing so, I spill hot coffee all over my leg, causing me to curse.

Explaining the whole thing to a friend later, I ask for reaffirmation that what I did was the right thing. “I mean, what was I supposed to do?” I say, “Get out and ask her what’s wrong?” He vacillates a moment, thinking it over. “I see what you mean,” he finally tells me. “That’s kind of a bad situation.” I remember a similar thing happening at my job at the university last summer. It was a long day, as per normal, when the floodgates of departure had finally opened. I was practically running out of there when I spotted someone who had literally fallen down the concrete stairway on a bicycle, blood everywhere. Whether it was the blood or otherwise, strangely, the first impulse that overtook me was still getting the hell out of there. There is, evidently, no end to the fucked up-ness.
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Interminable hell day. The cover of the clock must be wearing thin with the amount of time I spend contemplating it. And it makes me feel like a kid in a car ride, always waiting for the destination, except the scenery happens to be a windowless room and my traveling companions are prattling maniacs, which at least is somewhat consistent. When I’m not checking out how much time there is to go, I’m biding my time by entering Death Claims into a computer database. What this involves, essentially, is taking a folder off the never ending pile and typing a string of numbers into the computer for future referencing. I pick up a folder, look inside. It feels heavy in my hands, with the weight of a life expired. Sometimes there’s an obituary to check out, and it kind of makes me wonder what Danny Dang thought of it all. Or Carl Crapo. It’s pretty weird.

My niece Alex asks me on the phone the other day, “What do you do at your job?” This is incredibly, the first time anyone has ever actually ask me this question, and I’m blown away by it, if only because she’s five. I still don’t know if it’s the inquisitive genius of a kid who just must know everything or the fact that most people’s jobs are various euphemisms for doing the exact same types of paperwork I do all day and so they never bother ask. But whatever the case, I’m totally embarrassed by my response. “Well,” I say to her, opting for the short answer, “I work with computers, and sometimes I open and close envelopes.” She’s not impressed by this reply, pausing for a moment to think it over. “You only do three things?” she asks before inserting the crusher of a line that is just glaringly obvious: “That sounds kind of boring.” This child is obviously going to be a star, and when I ask her about her future aspirations, she tells me that Chucky Cheese sounds pretty good, which by comparison it really does.

The morning workload today was heavy. Ginny tells me that they’re thinking of making another fulltime position, and I feel bad that she has taken to me. We are shuffling through the endless mountains of paperwork this morning when she tells me about how busy it will be after the Memorial Day weekend, which represents some sort of deadline. “You should see it,” she tells me. But the whole thing is, I never will. I don’t have the heart to tell her, though. And so I leave it at that.

I'm going to get me a gold record baby/ 24 Karat hi-fi
Amherst, Mass., Friday night on a good night, stepping out in front of cars in this state just because you can. You never can underestimate the pedestrian, always with the right of way. I remember the last time I was in Massachusetts, with my sister, she would continually forget that you had to stop for people in the crosswalk, nearly running people over, were it not for my shrill reminders. In New York, motorists have the right to run you down and it’s just right and natural that as you’re proceeding forth in your oversized SUV you obey the right to crush jaywalkers like insignificant bugs. But not here, in Amherst, Ma., where you can dangle your toe out onto the pavement from the sidewalk and traffic comes to an abrupt halt. It’s kind of nice. And this town happens to be nice in all the ways that sleepy towns with liberal arts colleges at the outskirts are.

Everybody seems to be out tonight. We have made our collective way through the chasm, and have arrived here, to soak in the good weather of this night, wind blowing through your hair. And every girl is beautiful. The kind of girl who makes it proof positive that your there-is-no-god-and-it’s-pointless-and-grim stances crumble like some weak edifice. And the band’s not half bad, either. The singer keeps singing, “I’ve got my hands full,” which seems true of most people. Except me, of course, who is only holding a beer can. But that’s totally empty.

In my most private moments I stick my hands down my pants and get busted shoplifting by security guards
The days have become fast motion filmstrips that do not alter much. Sure, there are the subtle variations, someone at work I’ve never talked to before, a roadside cemetery I discover for the first time. But really, the days are just repetitious reels, self-destructively playing themselves out, Bill Murray Groundhog’s-style. I’ve suddenly begun to feel, sitting at the five minute red light outside the industrial park where I work, like the rest of my life has been deleted away, and the person doing the erasing has spared me this one moment to have the epiphany which I forget about as soon as I leave that window of time. What it features, essentially, is sitting at the red light and watching as the traffic proceeds by in its perpetual left hand turn, cascading by me as a steady stream of disgruntled faces. I follow each one long enough for the next one to be cued up, a continous stream of jabbering jaws, each one muttering things to themselves. Strangely, I notice every single person seems to be talking to themselves today, which is not very good PR for the early AM set, a demographic which I have found myself amongst.

I have cracked the shell of getting out of bed in the following way: by placing the alarm clock across the room as opposed to next to the bed. This way, when you’re in the midst of your early AM dream set, some exotic stranger cooing in your ear and feeding you tropical fruits, the insidious beeping of your alarm clock not only pulls you from paradise but also forces you to nearly break your neck as you run across the room to shut it down. There’s nothing quite like the jarring of context to pull you from your dreams. Which just may be something you learn early on. The next step, logically, is heading for the coffee pot (this is just plain and simple). A friend has recently brandished a coffee mug while on a visit to his house, and this is how he does it, in the following way of drinking a tankard of coffee, the mug a literal 3-cup affair. “I usually drink about two full ones of these,” he says holding up the cup, “and then I’m totally ready for the day.” Not only does this have the effect of totally clearing your synapses, it also features the added addendum of making the morning commute more comparable to an Indi500 race, swearing at motorists and passersby with the kind of vitriol that is just right and natural at 7:00 am. Arriving at the red light should probably contain the type of self-reflection which has me musing on how lucky I am to be alive. But instead, all I can do is curse the fact that the light is going to be red long enough to make me late. And then, as it turns to green, I find myself curing that too.

My coworkers are chiding me today with pretend-coughing after taking yesterday off. I don’t really make a good case for illness, telling them facetiously that I had an early tee-time. “Tomorrow is going to be even nicer,” they say to me laughingly. “Maybe you should have held out a few more days.” Actually, maybe I should have, I think, if only to make the movie more interesting. But it also occurs to me that Bill Murray only makes good by being good, and it seems like I have a long way to go. Which is, to be exact: 6 more days.

Any way you cut it I’m not afraid/ I know I’m gonna get it
It is nice out today, the first in what the weatherman on TV promises will be a succession of good days. Whether the accompanying day off from work I took today was the result of the weather or the more ostensible reasoning of the college transcripts I have to obtain will likely remain a mystery. But am I ever glad for this good day, if only because the parking lot of the particular college I went to happens to reside way out on the perimeter of the school, like they were building the campus with the solitary purpose of exercise in mind. I imagine the planners hanging around and thinking up this new concept: ah, yes: if you come to college here, not only do you get an education, you also get marathon training in the grueling form of trekking 3 miles to and from your car each day. But all that is quickly forgotten on a nice day. I double check, making sure I have the requisite ID in hand, and then begin setting out in the direction of the Registrar’s Office, raising my head to the heavens and giving thanks for this nice weather. It’s been a little while since I’ve been to college and so I waste no time in pretending that I am a student again. This lasts for about two and a half seconds before I am quickly grounded by the bizarre-looking masses of sweat-suited people walking around campus. I don’t remember people looking 100 percent like this when I went to college here, but it’s been a while. When did humanity bang the right hand turn that has them looking like they are headed for an early AM workout, I wonder? I’ve lived in Albany long enough to be desensitized to bad fashion, but this seems like something else entirely. Few students seem to favor anything but the peculiar breed of sweatpants that make the audibly swishy sound as they walk by. Also, despite it being 50 degrees, a lot of people have shorts on. What the hell is this, I think, before remembering that a lot of people commute, and the parking lot does happen to be a 2 mile walk from the main campus. And so maybe they had functionality in mind all the while.

I arrive at the Registrar’s Office to find a small line waiting. Handing over the appropriate paperwork at the counter, I am looking at my college transcript momentarily, which is stamped with an official-looking seal. I peel back the cover and look inside. Good god, I think, getting a look at some of my grades. I totally suck. A class called Computer Fundamentals and Application, I scored an obtuse D in. I only vaguely remember taking this class, I think, sitting next to a girl who would occasionally help me with my Excel formulations. She seemed to know what she was doing, I thought. Another class involving computers I scored a similarly low score point in. And then, there’s just no avoiding the fact that I withdrew from Desktop Publishing. Nope, that didn’t seem like a good one to me. I couldn’t make a heads or tail of what was going on in there. The classes I whipped ass in are things like Abnormal Psychology and totally esoteric Literature classes, where we read things like Huysmans’ Against Nature, which may have just been that same knowledge overlapping. I had a professor who was hearing impaired and carried a microphone-type box which you would have to speak into for him to hear you. He would stride around the classroom as he delivered his lecture, occasionally springing that device in your face. It was pretty awesome.

I am standing out on the platform, as the noon time bell starts going off. It makes this glorious sound which resonates in every direction. Well, this does not look good, I think, checking things over. Clearly I didn’t manage to learn anything in college, which may or may not contribute to my current situation. I do kind of want to go back to school, though. If only to vindicate the past. Like Saturday Night Live says, though, you have to hustle. And the whole thing is, I don’t even own a jogging suit.

Let's not wrestle Mt. Heart Attack
Saturday Night Live is chatting us up in Records Management today. She is sitting behind us at the fiche machine, while we proceed to make copies and copies, as she spontaneously bursts into song. She does the Chicken Dance Song, complete with the handclap part, and I am moved enough to ask about her workday enthusiasm. She is unequivicalably the most enthusiastic person here, and so I ask. “You’ve got to stay upbeat,” she tells me. “It’s the only way to be.” I goad her on by accident and as a result she ends up telling me her entire life story, as people often tend to do while in my presence for two minutes. That’s kind of the thing that I wonder about myself, in moments of deep self-reflection: one second you’re on the verge of tears because the lithium-addled woman on the fiche machine is doing the chicken dance song, and the next thing you know, she’s telling you about where it all went wrong. And that’s kind of the weird thing you tend to notice about comedians, is the fine line being walked between crying and laughing out loud. Look at Dave Chapelle if you do not believe: one moment he’s getting paid the prevailing wage, and the next thing you know he’s nervously chortling about his trip to Africa on Oprah. Things get blurred as Saturday Night Live gets into the details of her life, the musical theatre aspirations, the dropping out of school. The long road which has lead to this moment, talking to the guy making copies, who is me. I regale her a little by giving advice which I’m not exactly qualified to give but which still seems absolutely necessary. She is turning 40 next week, but it’s not too late for her, maybe. Beneath the piles of bills and lifestyle accoutrement payments there is a way, maybe. I don’t know. I’m just trying to make copies over here, really. In two seconds, though, it’s pretty much a moot point, as she’s right back at it again. People are walking by Records Management and wondering what the hell is going on in there, which if I could explain, carries a certain amount of complexity. She wants me to join in the clap, but I don’t really like the Chicken Dance Song. But, because Saturday Night Live is a friend, I do it anyway, which confounds me, as well as just about everyone in the office.

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.”