Yo Quiero

As is my usual habit of arguing from a position of intuition and imagination when it comes to sociopolitical issues, I'm going to say something about Arizona's SB1070, and then, as is my usual habit, use that to make a broader point which may or may not have anything to do with the first point, depending on how much vodka I get in me by the end of this post. It's Thursday, 10:05 PM, and I'm staring at three olives.

Vodka and peppers - continental and Mexican

SB 1070 is problematic, and its problematic aspects have next to nothing to do with immigration.  SB 1070 is superficially an immigration bill, yes.  It has the word "Immigration" in it, and it talks about deportation and all that business, and yes, having lived in the Southwest for 3 years I can personally attest that it is all...you know...immigration-y down there, and I don't doubt that there are many, many illegals living and working in the region.

In the Southwest, this is how a lot of stuff gets done.  A former employer of mine hired day laborers frequently, and attested himself that a significant number of them were illegal.  They worked well and they worked cheap.  I'm not saying it's right - I'm saying it's the way it is.

Ketchup! 

And yes, let me agree that at face value these illegals are doing work that could be done by some of the thousands of unemployed Americans.  There is a job shortage in this country, nobody is denying that.  We have more people than work, and less money than either.  The situation is up Shits Creek and it sold its paddle to make a payment on its hyper-inflated mortgage.  Americans could do shitty day-labor too, and it might be the only thing that could reasonably keep people afloat through this recession.  

But the bill doesn't have anything to do with this, either.  Jobs and security and state's rights are the short issues, the scrappy tooth-and-nail issues.  The long-term implications are significantly more odious for America as a state and America as a culture.   

Let's start with America as a state.  We are, to quote the song, the land of the free.  Among the rights to worship and write and speak and assemble as we see fit comes the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.  In plain and practical speak, this means that when a cop comes up and asks to see some ID, you may, in so many words, tell him to go fuck himself.  

Puddin' Tame - ask me again and I'll tell you the same

This right is not only in the spirit of the law, but the letter as well, though it's been argued both ways, for and against, successfully.  Still, it's your right as a U.S. citizen to zip your lips.  Anyone reading this ever get arrested?  What's the first thing your lawyer tells you?  That's right - don't say nothin'. 

If a crime's been committed, the burden of proof is on the state from jump street.  That's why you can only be held for 24 hours without being charged, and it's why you don't have to show your papers to any John Q. Law off the street.  You are a free citizen, and if the state thinks you are an illegal, well, they can sting you or issue a warrant or arrest you just like they would for any other crime.  Until you are charged, your very existence is none of the state's fucking business.  

But not in Arizona.  Now, under SB1070, All Arizona agents can ask for your papers with "reasonable suspicion" that you are illegal (e.g., you look illegal). They may do this during any "lawful contact."  While arguably the police would determine probable cause during a traffic stop or some other response to infraction, "lawful contact" is apparently not a real legal term. 

It sounds all legal - it's got "lawful" in it, so that sounds important, but a lot of things are lawful.  Pulling over your car is lawful, but so is watching you walk down the street.  Supporters of the bill have been very quick to say "What part of lawful contact = you already committed a crime don't you UNDERSTAND you fukcing LIE-BERAL COMMUFASCIST?" but I haven't found anything in the Arizona law books that agrees with them.

You...er...you should probably just start running now

I believe that most cops are honest and hardworking, and are truly doing what they can to secure our southern border.  They're good cops with their feet on the ground and a sense of the uneasy and strained truce between the law and the illegals in the southwest.  If they have personal feelings on the matter, they push them down so that they don't interfere with protecting the populace.

In Arizona, the police can ask you for proof of identity.  Who you are, where you were born, and what you're doing now is very much a matter of interest to the state, and now they have the tools to get that data.  

Do remember, please, that all power ultimately comes from, or is upheld by, force.  I'm not saying that the police will shoot you in the face for failing to present papers - but don't doubt for a second that they can.  Not should, not are allowed to, but can.  Your legally-residing born-here Mayflower-sailing ass won't get more than a fine or a night in the cooler, but that's only because you've got enough English-speaking connections to make it sticky if you go missing. 

They hate freedom, ergo, they fucking love this

But fuck all that too, because it's still not the point.  What do expanded police powers mean?  Let's stay off the slippery slope, let's just look at what this one expanded police power indicates or reflects.  Don't even mind the peripheral consequences - don't even mind that you can get tossed in the pokey for not clapping and rolling over when the boys in blue tell you.  Nevermind the introduction of yet another law that ultimately curtails your freedom.  We're talking culture here!

SB1070 ostensibly means that the police can check your papers if they think that you are an illegal, and what that means culturally is that we are inking in the line between "us" and "them" with a thick black marker. 

America is no stranger to otherness - first Indians were "not us," so we slaughtered them nearly to extinction.  Then blacks were "not us," and so they were denied most basic human dignities until the 1960's.  Women?  Also not "us."  

In fact, there's not very damned many of "us."  White, male, property owning, over 21 years of age, and of course our emphatic fans - our wives, our children, our apologists.  They get to wear "our" clothes, and keep in "our" company, even if they get paid less per hour and don't usually get to hold high positions. 

The significance of this victory has nothing to do with policy

But brown is our big other now.  Brown terrorists from the middle east, brown Mexicans from the south.  They're not us - they speak funny languages, they're poor, they have different customs and traditions, some of them are very vocal about not liking us.  So with bombs and fences and guns and requests for identification, the schism widens, the fence is made stronger, and "them" changes from "not us" to "never will be us, ever."  

"We" are diminishing, and we are diminishing because we are ossifying.  We're waking up from the American dream.  The money is drying up, the resources aren't there, nobody is buying what we're selling, the morals and ethics have shifted.  The American identity is beyond the point of crisis - it doesn't exist.  Laws like SB1070 are desperate attempts to make it exist, to reaffirm "our" superiority. 

This is America!  We're the best country on earth! Jeebus loves us!  We win everything!  Except, of course, that we don't, and we're not the best country on earth, we're just another country in a long, long string of them.  It's the same bullshit story of rise and fall that's played out since the beginning of recorded history, but of course since we're in the middle of it we can't be bothered to see that we're just a statistic in a shifting cultural demographic; that in 1,000 years, anthropologists will talk about the caramel-skinned inhabitants of North America and demonstrate how interbreeding between different phenotypes of humans produced a new dominant set of traits, prevalent in Los Estados Unidos de 3010.  

I, for one, am totally fine with this

If you give people something to be afraid of, to really be afraid of, they will roll over and beg you to do whatever you want to keep them safe.  That's what I see happening not so much in Arizona, where the citizens of the state are trying to deal with a perceived problem, but mostly in the culture at large - people who want to discuss this case symbolically and use it as a symbol of American fortitude. In that case, all this hand-wringing over border security and jobs just comes down to the dreadful fear of extinction, biological and cultural, of people who eat more wheat than rice.

This is how it starts, and Godwin's law be damned - start up a little law to protect "us" from "them," and I promise that you'll learn in short order that you're not actually one of "us." In the author's defense - neither am I. That's why this law, and this part of the culture, sickens me.  Give authority an excuse to exert itself and see what happens, but kid, I guarantee you're not going to like it, and I'm going to god damned hate it.

A wall - how symbolic

Recommended viewing - it's busy and confusing and gory and even a little silly, but this video has been in the news and it's done a good job of sticking with me.  There's a lot going on in it, more than most casual critics would have you believe (but honestly, less than most of its fans are seeing), and I encourage you to spend 9 minutes with M.I.A.'s Born Free.

SPOOOOORTS!!!! SPOOOOORTS!!!! WOOOOOOO!!!

 WOOOO!!!

 

I know this makes me somehow deficient as a man, but I just really, really, really don't get the big deal with sports.

Can I watch a game?  Yes.  Hell, I'll even go out of  my way to watch the Pistons play...but only during the playoffs, and only if I really don't have something else to do, like writing, or reading, or catching up on some sleep.

I'm sure that sounds snobby to someone, but this is the point:  I would rather catch up no sleep than watch sports.

 Driving is a sport now

As ever, I want to be fair.  I don't want to just say "sports are boring."  Plenty of people find them just fascinating, ergo, it's not that sports are boring but that I am bored by sports.  Important distinction.  Another important distinction is that there are some sports I like playing.  I like sunny summer baseball games with my 17 closest friends, any sport that has a demonstrable correlation between drinking and improved performance (like bowling), and anything where you're for all intents and purposes trying to kill your opponent or preparing to kill a potential opponent (boxing, martial arts, shooting, rollerball). 

THIS is a sport, goddamnit - Nyearrggghhhh!

So I don't know exactly why I find sports boring.  I have two theories.

Theory one - I didn't see a lot of my dad growing up, and so I was never inculcated properly into the cult of sport.   This is actually pretty true, but then I know plenty of guys who also didn't spend a lot of time with their fathers, or whose father's aren't sports guys themselves, and they like sports just fine, so that leads us to...

Theory two - I fell in with the clove-smoking, smirking, coffee-shop, bad poetry, lazy, apathetic non-conformist loser crowd that thought sports were clearly for Nazis, and generally refused to play.  This is pretty much 100% true, and when you couple that with the influence of Theory one (above), you know why I don't care about the Superbowl.

So bad they know they're good, but unironically, so the lyrics are meta as all hell

But high school was something like 15 years ago, so it's not like I'm still dressed in black, drinking cappuccino and reading "Catcher in the Rye."  No, the whole enterprise has become something vaguely contemptible.  Sports, to me, have just become a reminder of my outsider status, a cultural identifier that for me offers no identity. It is a piece of flair that is conspicuously absent from my Chotchkie's uniform.

So these indifferences feed on another - I didn't get into sports early, so I'm not into sports, so I'm not a sports guy, so its hard to get into sports, etc, etc etc.

As papa said of gaming:

"Unlike all other forms of lutte or combat the conditions are that the winner shall take nothing; neither his ease, nor his pleasure, nor any notions of glory; nor, if he wins far enough, shall there be any reward within himself." 


Even when I was more competitive in my youth, I found this to be fundamentally true.  What's that you say?  You can't hear me over the hypocrisy inherent in my collection of little toy soldiers and polyhedral dice?  Yes, truly, for the wargamer or roleplayer there is even less at stake than for the athlete, but this in part is my point.

Football and fantasy together - nothing escapist about that

An afternoon of sport is, for me, good exercise and a tiring diversion from the everyday.  It's a chance to burn off some body fat and distract myself from the crushing agonies of existence.  To just make this absolutely clear, I like exercise, I like competing, I like playing! But -  it's nothing I would put up any real risk for, and in putting up no risk, I stand to gain no reward. 

Thus it was particularly odious to me that I should break my thumb in, of all things, a dodgeball game.  Suppose that the powers that be had ordained that I were to break my thumb in some fashion, and that it would have to happen in my 32nd year.  Did I break my thumb rescuing a young lady tied to the train tracks?  Did I break my thumb pulling orphans from a burning building?  No, I broke my thumb trying, and failing, to catch a rubber ball. 

 

 BLOOHGIEBLAH BLAH SPORTS!

So more than sports, it's "sports culture" that eludes me.  When the home team wins, what's in it for me?  Do I get money?  Do I get to go to Disneyworld?  Do we get to kill the other team and  mount their still-grinning skulls on pikes outside my front door as we take their fortunes, their lands and their women?  No.  For all the spectacle and advertising, the stadiums, the crowds, the traffic, the reward is trophy - a few bucks worth of tin, some commemorative rings from Jostens, and some intense cross-branding synergy with Budweiser, the king of beers, some shoe comany or another, a happy meal, y nada y nada y nada y pues.

If sports are your thing, man, more power to you.  I just don't see the appeal beyond a nice afternoon spent throwing a ball around.  I would rather watch Any Given Sunday than Monday Night Football, and roll some bones rather than toss a pigskin.  I suppose if I put money on these "big games" then there would be some risk, and thus some reward, but as it stands I'd rather play than watch, and read than play.

Drinking is probably in there somewhere too.  

How to Win - A Response to Being Described by Others as "Intense"

Before I start up a round of the usual blah-blah, an announcement:

Visions, the lit mag of NorthWest Arkansas Community College, will be publishing my short story entitled "Smokeless."  Naturally, I will post a link when it goes up.  For now, I'm just bragging about being published. 

This informs everything

This last weekend some friends and I threw a massive party, by which I mean that my friends who own the house in which I rent a room did all the work, and I pretty much just drank a shit ton of booze.  I also won an impromptu habanero pepper eating contest, which wasn't even actually a contest, just me eating habanero peppers alongside anyone else willing to do so.  

This also means that I have been, shall we say, "passing" an entire GI tract full of habanero peppers, which has led me to the conclusion that the only way to really win a habanero eating contest is to not play. 

 I'm just really impressed that they made 10 of these

I've spent the last 2 days in varying stages of recovery.  Sunday I slept until about 2:30 in the afternoon and then watched angry little misanthropes whine and trash talk on Spike TV's Deadliest Warrior for two hours. 

I have a love-hate relationship with this show.  It's got cool weapon demos and fun historical re-enactments, which are great, but it's also got the saddest collection of would-be tough guys this side of the internet. It's essentially an hour of hyperactive boy-men playing a game of "I shot you I shot you / No ya didn't no ya didn't" interrupted by pseudo-scientific weapons demos on ballistic gelatin and mannequins.  It made for a very lazy Sunday, and resulted in me not getting a lick of work done - you'd almost think I wasn't wholly committed to my job...

Next Week on Deadliest Warrior - Cannibals versus Girl Scouts

So here we are on Monday and I am still basically a gelatinous pile of gooey ick.  Despite 36 hours separating the events of Saturday's debauch and Monday's toil, I'm bleary-eyed, sore, and unable to focus.  This may have something to do with the two perfectly beer-can sized rings on my head.  

Mental note kids, there's a trick to smashing beer cans on your face, and by the time you get drunk enough to smash a beer can on your face, there's a chance that you will forget what that trick is and just wind up smacking yourself in the head with a hard piece of metal. 

Which brings me to the point of this post:  WOOOOOO!  

This kid is doing it right

In the course of Saturday's events, I was referred to as "intense."  It wasn't meant to be derogatory, and in fact I took it as a compliment, but it does have its own connotations which can be difficult to work around.  Intensity is not always appropriate.  It's hard to make small talk.  It's hard to care about things that aren't super-awesome.  It means that generally, you come across as boorish, ill-mannered, or poorly behaved, not to mention cripplingly self-centered. 

And I was thinking yesterday that of all the insulting things someone can say about another person, "well behaved" very nearly tops the list.  What a shitty, back-handed insult.  Well behaved - that's a compliment for a dog.  "He's so well behaved, he doesn't bark or anything!"* 

 Doesn't mean you shouldn't try, however

Life is art - in particular, it's performance art, and like the best performance art it should have a ridiculous title like "Fruit Serenade Number 7 for Two (Prophet of Understanding - Malaysia)" and should involve copulating with raw meat in a diaper made from the American flag.  There is only one go-round on this big blue marble, and it's going to end badly for you.  When you're time on stage is over, you go into a cold pine box for the rest of forever, or at least until an archaeologist digs you up and laughs at your five primitive fingers and dense cranial mass. 

So what do you want them to say about you?  That you minded your P's and Q's?  That you were obedient and polite?  I just can't get behind it.  

I think the appeal of warrior culture, and this directly informs The Deadliest Warrior is that nothing compares to the fleet-footed approach of death to let you know you're alive. But I'm here to tell you: you don't need swords and spears to know it's coming.  You can see it in the lines on your face and the crook of your knuckles.  You can feel it in the aches and pains of every day, and smell it on your own breath.  

So what do you do under the oppressive weight of mortality?  Punch a clock and wait for retirement?  Take up golf so you can suck up to your boss?

No - you make noise.  Be a pain in someones ass.  Bring joy and torment in equal measure.  Anyone can exist - it takes a little more effort to actually live. 

Life - it's THAT kind of party

*Speaking of dogs, whoever let their dog "go" in my bedroom?  I am displeased.  

Pour out a Little Liquor

I write today in memory of Carl Macek, who died this last Saturday of a heart attack.  Yes, I know this is by now sort of old news, but you should remember that I'm terribly self-centered and inconsiderate, so events in the lives of people that are not-me take longer to catch my consciousness. 

For those unaware, Carl Macek was the guy who, back in the 80's, superglued three disparate anime series (Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada) into one semi-coherent whole.  I say semi-coherent because I've seen the whole series (85 episodes) several times, read all the comics, played the role-playing game, and collected just about all  the toys and I'm still not 100% sure what's going on.

This is all apparently about a singing Japanese girl

I've been a Robotech fan for 22 years.  I'm self-deprecating about it because I've seen enough other stuff to know that it's confusing, inconsistent, and quite frequently rushed, but at the same time it's spectacular and exciting.  Yes, okay, the whole story is apparently about a spaceship filled with flowers that turn robots into super reactive combat machines with the energy they generate but also a singing Japanese girl and some crab-like bug things and old men in a spaceship that looks like a floating tumor - I told you it was kind of F'd up.

But there's also giant robots and space combat, an apocalyptic hell-scape, huge epilepsy-inducing explosions - it's kinetic and strange and it doesn't really matter if it's confusing because you get swept up in it so quickly that you just have to go along.  Unless you're some sort of boring douchenozzle, in which case, fuck you.

Nice Harley - my bike turns into battle armor and shoots missiles

Robotech launched my enthusiasm for giant fighting robots - although Voltron predates it in American release, I got into Robotech first.  Robotech had less robots than Transformers, but it also had a lot more people.  Unlike other cartoons, those people were mortal - they could die, and die they did, sometimes by the billions.  It was comparatively mature stuff, and nobody quite knew how to deal with it - it started out on Saturday mornings, then it got shuffled to after school, and then eventually the show quietly finished up its run as everyone sort of lost interest in the convoluted plot and inconsistent action.

Everyone that is except me and a few other nerds scattered around the world who found a sort of place in the series, a home-away-from-home.  Regardless of any failings it has as art, it's always been something special to me and to a lot of other people, be they relatively normal casual fans (like Toby Maguire, who purchased the rights to make a Robotech movie in 2007) or a frothing horde of obsessive basement-dwelling lard-butter weaboo neckbeards who like nothing better than to go on the internet and bitch about how Carl Macek is an idiot gaijin who spits in the face of Japanese culture with his craptacular show that they can quote by line, scene, and verse, or as I call them, the other 99% of the fan base.

It's a tank and it hovers - I can't help you if you need an explanation of why that's awesome

Still, Robotech was part of a huge boom of Japanese animation - back then we still called it Japanimation, and America still had a manufacturing sector, which should tell you how old I am.  Regardless, I think historically it got passed over as an also-ran.  It married one hugely successful Japanese series (Macross) to a couple of lesser-known contenders, and I think that hurt it in the long run.  Macross went on to spawn some very successful follow-up efforts (one was the gorgeous and powerful Macross Plus) while we didn't hear much more about Southern Cross and Mospeada on this side of the Pacific.  If you are still reading this, you are a weeaboo. Also: The Game. 

But RIP Carl Macek - I loved Robotech, and still love it to this day.  It's not Gundam, it's not Voltron, it is its own little thing, and I'm glad it's here.  For those of you reading this who don't know what I'm talking about, hulu has whole episodes available to watch, and for those of you who found something special in the Robotech universe, pour yourself a glass of Tirolian wine or Carbonaran ale, munch on some Flower of Life, and raise a glass to the guy who made it all happen.

Yes, it's all about the characters and the giant fighting robots are only stage dressing

I Would Kill You All for One Sweet, Sweet Puff

Evidently, it doesn't suck enough that I'm staring down the barrel of crushing poverty, bewildering uncertainty, and the cruel likelihood of going back to kitchen work for sub-standard wages and the chance to lose a finger to a deli slicer.  On top of all that, I'm also quitting smoking.

Some of you who have known me for a long time are all like "Durr durr durr, you quit smoking when you were 23" and then some of you are like "Herp a derp derp, you quit smoking when you were 28," but rather obviously I keep going back to it.

This is what every smoker looks like, especially me

And I'm pretty sure I'll go back to it again.  Why?  Because most smokers do this - they quit for a bit, then go back to it when things get tough, or it looks like fun, and then we're back up to half a pack or a pack a day before quitting again and restarting the whole cycle. 

I know someone is saying, I know people who've quit for good - so do I, that's why I said "most" smokers up above.  Also, before holding up your smoke-free messiah, you should ask a couple of questions. 

1) Did this non-smoker "quit for good" less than a year ago? 

If so, I'm not impressed. I started smoking when I was 11 years old, and the longest span I went without one was just under 4 years.  During that time, oh my god, I could not walk past a smoker without talking about how I was soooo strong and soooo much healthier because I'd quit smoking for good and would never, ever, ever in a million years go back to it, which brings me to the second question. 

The habits we learn early are the ones that FUCK YOU GIVE ME A CIGARETTE

2) Is the non-smoker a total douchenozzle? 

Because douchenozzle assholes can quit smoking pretty easily.  Blah blah willpower, blah blah dedication to healthy living - you're a fucking asshole and nobody likes you.  Congratulations, you're not going to die at 60 from emphysema - you're going to die at 30 from me stabbing you in the neck with a bic pen shiv because you won't shut the fuck up.  

That's why I'm so pissed about the Michigan smoking ban that will take effect in, holy fuck, 3 weeks.  Smokers are losing the right to smoke because self-righteous ass ranchers are all like "OMG teh CHILDRENZ!!!!11  Someone think of them and also waitresses!"  

Smoking hot and SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GIVE ME A GODDAMNED CIGARETTE

Hey, fuck you - you don't want to smoke?  Stay home.  Nobody likes you anyway because you're a non-smoking cock stapler.  Sit in your house, duct tape the windows shut, and breath through a gas mask.  Wear surgical gloves when you handle money, scrub yourself with bleach, and pad the corners of your house with foam rubber.  You want to live in happy candy-cane safe world?  Buy a house, make your own velveteen prison.

Right, getting off track - haven't had a cigarette in three days.  Urge to kill rising.  I'm quitting because it's super expensive (again, thank every non-smoking ass you've ever met) and because I can't run a mile without hacking up a lung.  I'm just trying to think of a way to not be an ass about it.  Wish me luck, don't mind me if I seem distracted and short tempered.  I'll probably be back at it in a few months, but for now it's time to get some lung power back.

Also, I just learned that April is Cancer Month.  

FUCK YOU. 

 AAGGGH FUCK YOU TOO

Spin Me Right Round, Baby, Right Round

In the heady maelstrom of activity that has been the last 7 days, I've not been able to put together a nice thoughtful essay or article because I've either been stressed out or falling down shitfaced.  Normalcy is slowly returning, and with it sobriety (but sobriety here meaning the rational level-headed thinking kind of sobriety, not the not-drinking sort of sobriety, which is lame). 

 I think, therefor I drink

In about 1.5 hours I'm off to a job interview - this may very well mark my triumphant return to foodservice.  I'm actually pretty thrilled about this because man, do I suck at working a desk job.  I'm pretty amazed at how people are able to dig and do stuff like this five days a week.  It just makes my eyes glassy and my ass sore.  I can manage straight work for about 1 hour and then I'm trolling on 4chan or checking my facebook status. 

I'm going to an open interview for a job I've kind of been tracking for the last few weeks, ever since I was sure I was going to leave my current position.  It's for a bartending spot about 1 mile from my house.  I do wonder about this place though - the ad started out "Experienced bartender needed - bring resume, references, and credentials," then it slid to "Experienced bartender wanted - open interview," and now it's finally "Any asshole with working thumbs should show up around noon-ish." 

Lucky for everyone involved, I am an asshole with working thumbs.

Better credentials than me - didn't bother to show up

So this tells me that there's a good chance the place sucks, but so what?  Does it suck more than sitting in this chair 60 hours a week crossing T's and dotting I's?  I find it hard to believe.  I work from home proofreading textbooks - it is like prison, but at least in prison you've got some other people around.  This is more like solitary confinement with emphasis on putting I before E and learning how to carry the one.

I have only a tiny bit of experience behind a bar - I mean like, I hope everyone likes beer, because that's what I'm making.  Still, I've cased this place before and I think if I'm going to do this sort of work alongside my writing and academic career, this should be a good place to start out.

This is all putting the cart before the horse.  It's just what's on my mind at the moment.  Wish me luck for now, because I'm off to the rat race!

Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, [I am] free at last!

 I quit my job!

I'd love to tell some cool exciting story where I was all like "No, screw YOU - my band is on FIRE! We're gonna burn up the WORLD" but since I haven't had a band since high school (whatup LSDean and the Flashbacks!) that would be a big huge lie.

No, it was an amicable parting with an invitation to do work for which I'm more suited, like writing, or knee breaking.  This is all at some point in the undetermined future, so I'm not banking on it.

Wow, random web clip art really delivered this time

Speaking of banks, I've got about 2 months living money.  In theory, I should be fine. This means that, yay, I get to re-quit smoking for the eight hundredth time as I can no longer afford it, and for my regular bar companions this does signal the return of the flask, allowing me to discretely sip cheap gin until I am no longer capable of sipping cheap gin from a flask discretely, resulting in my ejection from said bar and a good public pants-pissing.

I also have to work for another 3-4 weeks without additional compensation.  Does that suck?  Yes, but as I've already been paid for the work I'll be doing, it could be worse.

So what will I do when the money runs out?  I have no idea, but I'm going to guess it involves drinking.  Lots and lots and lots of drinking.

To all my frieeeeeeends

Oh, right, for money - well, at this point I'm making good on promises to myself to write, to create, and to hopefully not starve to death.

Did I mention the drinking?

Yes, I know there's a recession on, but I feel I should make clear that outside of academia, I am not looking for a career right now.  I don't need it, and I don't want it.  Kudos to everyone around me doing well, but this, to me, is doing well - just enough creature comfort to have fun, enough freedom to stay spontaneous, and absolutely nothing in my life that I can't blow off when it's time to knock out a chapter.

As Dave Hickey said (though he may have been paraphrasing, so hell if I know for sure) - "As a writer, you shouldn't have anything you have to feed, paint, or take care of," and I've found for the third time now that careers, real nine-to-five-plus-overtime-let's-meet-a-deadline sort of stuff is just a colossal undertaking. 

In my experience, having a career and being a writer means that you basically have two careers. Naturally, one of them has to give, and foolishly in this case I let my job win.  Rather than bail out at the first sign of real trouble, I tried to stick it out and tell myself "Oh, I'll write this weekend" or "No biggie, you'll get the hang of this and then you'll have lots of time."  That never happened, so now writing is my career and everything else is just where I go to make some spare change and meet new and weird people for a few hours a week.

Right now I'm looking for the sort of job that doesn't mind if you show up a little hungover and occasionally take notes in your pocket notebook as you work  I don't expect any such job to pay very well, but I don't need it to, so that's fine.  My five-year plan of writing, writing, writing is back on track.

In other news, I've pretty much sat out the last week culture-wise, so my apologies if this hasn't been the swinging hot spot for criticism.  I've been completely off my game, but  I'm plugging back in. Thankfully, I should have a lot more time to get some writing done as this foolish exercise in middle-class responsibility winds down.

Apt metaphor is apt

Oddly Personal

I keep trying to come at something funny, but I am way, way, way too preoccupied with something I have to do this week.

In the most severe recession in 20 years, there's a very good chance that I'm going to quit my job.

This is me, every day, but not as hot, but definitely punching myself in the face

Of course, this implies I've not already been fired from said job. I'm learning the rather roundabout hard way that I'm not much of an editor. My boss is evidently the kind of person that enjoys crossing T's and dotting I's. I have come to detest it.


As most of my ex-girlfriends will tell you, I've got a screw loose. I don't mind too much - the only thing damnable about the business is that the screw holds in the part of my brain that's supposed to want to grow up and get a job and a house and a nice car and all that crap.

We all have differing ideas of a good life

This is not to say I'm unambitious - when given my druthers, my creative output is tremendous.  I write and I paint to the exclusion of most anything else including meals and sleep, and when I finally crash I get that "restorative, vitamin-packed sleep" (to quote Phillip Roth) that is usually reserved for athletes and dogs. 

But for the last 6 months or so I've not had my druthers, so I've been busting my ass doing exactly what I told myself I wouldn't do, which is (and I quote from my now essentially defunct LJ):

...all I really wanted to do was come back here and work at something like Buddy's while I continued to send out submissions and work on my game. I didn't want to make a nice middle-class salary in exchange for 40 hours a week.

In short, I did not want to go back to the exact same shit that I left when I went back to school six years ago.

There are worse things for an artist than a job that just expects you to show up, and there are many better things for an artist than a steady and comfortable paycheck...

Lest anyone think this is another UAFNWFSUTGI, let me straighten that out:  If you can work a day job and still meet your social, personal, and creative goals, fucking do it.

This came up in a Google search for "Starving Artist."  I DARE you to make less sense.

Me myself personally - I either can't or won't and it's all the same. The more I work at this the more I hate it.  The more I hate it, the more bored I get.  The more bored I get, the more mistakes I make.


That's not necessarily a reflection on the job.  I'm no edi-phobic - some of my best friends are editors!  But at present, the idea of balancing this out with the dreamer's life I've committed to seems unlikely. 

 No good pictures - here's Allison Stokke

Now I know the usual suggestions in this case, and they go something like this (my responses follow): 

1) Suck it up, buttercup - that's what being an adult is all about. 

A - Well that sounds like shit to me, and also your hard time for buying a house and marrying the first girl you knocked up.

2) You should definitely have something else lined up first.

A - Here's a better idea: how about I DON'T line something else up first, and just go get really drunk instead.


3) What about just cutting back at work or something? 

A -  This is a big maybe - the problem with something like this is that as soon as you give an inch, someone wants a mile. My buddy Franky the Sinister Ninja is in on this gig too, doing it in his spare time, and there's this ever-mounting pressure to deliver more, more more...so I don't know.  Would this be better if I went back to the way it was before and just delivered what I could, when I could?  I don't know.  At present it looks like a 2-6 week phase out as I meet my contractual obligations for the month.

In short, I know I come across as reckless and impulsive, but I swear on the most holy Quran of merciful Allah that I've thought this through, and the more I think, the less I give a fuck. I'm probably spoiled by the academy, but so what?  We all want what we want, and it's up to us to take it. 

Stupid serious post - here's GARFIELD on a COMPUTER - What will that fat cat get in to next?  LOLO!!111one

Day Off

In the interest of not pumping out schlock, and as a result of a serious crunch at work, I am skipping today's post.  I'll be back on Wednesday.  In the meantime, watch the worst video in the entire world:



If it's off-center, go to the Youtube site and get your eyelids shocked.

The Train Kept a Rollin'

Since 7:00 last night, I've had the Aerosmith version of the song "Train Kept a Rollin'" stuck in my head.  As far as stuck-in-your-head songs go, you could do worse, so that's only on my mind insofar as it informs something that's been bugging me.

Baby Boomers.

 That was them then, this is us now

Every generation, I'm sure, chafes at the very presence of its parents after a certain age and I mean other than being pissed at your mom busting into your room when you're trying to wing one out into the unmatched gym sock you keep under your bed.  In this case I'm talking about the broader sociological context - their values, their beliefs, their tastes, all that business.

In that, I'm no different than my own parent's generation getting all blah-blah angry and bothered about my grandma and grandpa and their white picket fence / Oldsmobile / duck and cover...okay, I know nothing about my grandparents.

In a much older post, I talked about people my age rejecting the way the boomers dressed - they fought tooth and nail for casual Friday, we wear suits and ties with flair.  That seems to be about as far as it's going to go for now though, because the boomer's still wield disproportionate power, as they always have.

My old history professor, himself a member of the "greatest generation," meaning he was old as all hell, talked about the boomers as the "pig in the python" of American history.  As such, they are a disproportionately large segment of the population.  This doesn't mean that there are more baby boomers than Gen Xers or Gen Y kids - it means there are more baby boomers than there should be compared to other generations and other comparably aged cultures.  The nice, even graph of population growth over time has a huge swell in it that spans about 1945 to 1955, and that swell has moved as these people age.

This looks shopped - I can tell from some of the pixels and from seeing quite a few shops in my time

Now here's a bit of dime store sociology for you - don't take this as gospel, but take it as a writer's hunch:  large groups of people with something in common tend to reflect that something back to a point of narcissistic critical mass.  This goes beyond commiseration into extravagant vanity - when one person does something (like, say, graduate high school and go to college) then one person has done something.  When two people do that same thing, they compare their experience not only to what preceded it (high school, in our example) but also to others having that same experience.

Take a good look - they run the world now

Now, it's not just about having an experience.  Now, it's a case of "we had an experience that you didn't" and then eventually "we had an experience AND you didn't" - never mind that others may have very well had the same experience - it's not OUR experience. WE are doing this NOW and that makes it special!

And that's the way it's always been for the boomers - they are a giant swollen "we," and in that wallow of commiseration and shared experience, everything becomes unique and incomparable.  They'll say things like "remember not having a TV?" as if we ourselves could not remember a time without internet access.  This same generation talked about 1969 and the summer of love while at the same time moving to shut down rave culture in 1999. 

That's what I'm talking about here - that sort of narcissism of majority, this big swollen "we" that achieved critical mass and made up its own reality.

Now, of course, the boomers are the first generation ever in history to approach retirement age and the end of their lives, and predictably this mob clings tenaciously to control, to life itself, and they don't care who they smother in the process.

Or choke, amirite?

Our parents in their 50's and 60's are in many cases more virile than their parents were in their 40's, and on one hand I'm tempted to say "good for them," and also give a hearty pat on the back to modern medicine.  On the other hand:  WHEN are you people going to fucking retire?

Generation X males, per Wikipedia, make 12% less in real dollars than their fathers did.  Could this possibly be because their fathers are still in the work place, holding onto their jobs with an unfaltering iron grip?  It's not like half of these people are even qualified by virtue of experience -  I remember this from my time at GM, the menagerie of incompetent jack-offs hiding behind their seniority even as the company crumbled around them.  No, they are still working because "bawww, I can't afford to retire."

Aren't you boomers now the "tough shit" generation now?  The ones who want to disband unions and federal assistance programs?  The ones who want to close off the borders to immigrants and slash education funding?  Well tough shit, boomers - you should have known the whole thing was going to bust.  Your broken nest egg is not my problem.

 Love where this is going

Except, of course, it is my problem.  It is my problem and your problem and everyone's problem.  For better or worse, the boomers are going to hold on to power for another decade or two.  In their dotage they will continue to vote, to hold high-ranking corporate positions, to drive slowly in the fast lane with their blinkers on and, most terrifying of all, continue to fornicate with the help of increasingly potent boner pills.  

And we come back to Aerosmith - see how clever I am?  I can totally tie things up in neat bundles with cohesive beginnings, middles, and ends!   Aerosmith did not finish their 2009 album, but they did release Honkin' on Bobo in 2004.  Did you listen to it?  Do you know anyone who did?  Can you name any Aerosmith song produced after 1989 that doesn't make your skin crawl?  Yet they keep getting support from their label, they keep touring, they keep producing mediocre record after mediocre record, and getting paid for it while "fresh new talent" is given an increasingly short shrift.

For the remainder of our adult lives, we generation X'ers will be passed by.  The boomers will diminish, the culture will shift, and we will essentially be the bearings that the generation before us rolls over to get to the grave. Hopefully when that's done there will be some sort of peace and sanity.  In the meantime, enjoy listening to old hippies talk about how they thought the ended racism, and old fascists prattling about how we should have nuked Vietnam.  

Also, WHY should I have to press ONE to speak ENGLISH????

If you are over 50, this is what you look like to me

Leaving the Neutral Zone

Topping the short list of super-hot news stories that you probably aren't reading (other than that whole US Soldiers may have gunned down innocent civilians in Iraq thing) is this super awesome ruling that the FCC had no right to regulate Comcast when Comcast started throttling high-use connections back in 2008.

Wooo free market right?  Yeah, fuck you Gubmint, hands off my internets!   Of course, this does present another sticky problem:  now the big corporations, who are all evil, and corporation-y, can slow or accelerate your connection speed based on their own metrics.

Oh political cartoons - you really stick it to the man!

The big reason for this, apparently, is to crimp illegal downloading.  While yes, downloading pirated copies of Baby Geniuses from BitTorrent is illegal, the cautious consensus is that the FCC's inability to enforce Net Neutrality will lead to all manner of nefarious content restriction.  Either some websites will just be blocked (eg, you can't get to www.comcastsucks.com if you are a comcast subscriber) or sites will have to pay-to-play if they want their bits to ride on the internet fast lane, meaning that while you'll still be able to watch Fox News in real-time, it will take significantly longer for people to access your awesome homebrew Gary Busey / Judge Reinhold homoerotic character crossover fan fiction.

Had there been content throttling from day one, nobody would have noticed.  Big companies get faster service?  Shucky ding-dong, that's just how they get ya.  Lord have mercy on the workin' man and all that.  Hell, I don't have a TV station, right?  I never even question that except for every single waking moment of my life, and moreso when I watch UHF with Weird Al Yankovic.  But that's not how the internet works - a bit is a bit, and source and destination are irrelevant, and everyone is equal except for n00bs.  That's what we've had for something like 15 years, and now that is poised to change.

The most chilling commentary I've seen came in the form of a speculative, arguably parodic, graphic which had "pricing tiers" for internet access.  Things like Disney and major news channels debuted at tier 1 for 29.95 a month.  Disney, and Google came in a little higher, and stuff like Blogger came in at the final and most expensive tier. 

Behold, the last paragraph was unneccessary

This is basically the drug dealer model - give somebody something, get them hooked, and then charge more and more money for it.  The larger problem, I think, is that we'll actually see both restrictions unfold - first, internet access will be restricted, and second, it will become more expensive.  In other words, the internet will become like television with it's hierarchical content creation and distribution model.  This means that all the fun stuff that makes the internet one big nerd party, and all the useful and important stuff like wikipedia, wikileaks (wikianything, really) will be increasingly censored.

On the other hand, if writing for the internet is like writing for television, we writers stand to profit.  Of course, I could give a shit.  I don't make any money now, why should that change?

So there you have it - if this recent ruling is not overturned, get ready for content restriction and higher prices.  What was an open swim with people from all different communities splashing, playing, and dropping the occasional dooker in the city pool will become a nice organized lap swim where fitness-minded douchebags can vainly swim laps on your dime.

Like this, but with data and Orwellian overtones

 Now, you can say, the big Telco companies paid to put the wires up - shouldn't they have some say regarding what bits can go through them?  Haven't we been having a pool party all this time on their dime?  Well, look at your cable bill and then tell me just what "their" dime is worth.  You pay the fucking cable company!  Their money is your money!  This is what the consumer model is all about: getting your choices reflected in the service provided to you by your money.  These are not some benevolent service providers risking their own private estates to bring you sweet, sweet content, they are merchants, nothing more and nothing less.

At the risk of over-extending the "information superhighway" metaphor, imagine if you will that the contractors working on the freeway outside your house also manufacture a certain make of car.  This car has a notch in its tires that will perfectly line up with the razor-sharp daggers that the company has put in the freeway at regular intervals. Because different size cars have different size tires, that means that every size of car (there are only 3 sizes of car, by the way) has to drive in its own lane.  If you are not driving one of these special cars, or if you drive in the wrong lane, the daggers in the road will shred your tires and probably lead to your gruesome death. 

 Fat cats are fat

If any of this sounds like hyperbole, then by all means, do your own research on the deadly elixir of DRM and Net Neutrality (because really, it all comes down to content control).  I wouldn't have anyone ever just taking my word for anything, and all this is just my opinion.  Look it up for yourself and feel free to argue with me, but this all bodes very ill as far as I'm concerned. 

Unsolicited Advice for New Writers from Someone Unqualified to Give It, Volume 26 - A Recap and a Nightcap

First things first:  another publication!  This one is actually two months old, but I just now learned of it.  Hop on over to the November 3rd Club and read my short story, One Thousand Shekels, Fifteen Agurot now!

Second things second - while SSS continues, I'm no longer setting aside Mondays for UAFNWFSUTGI.  First of all, publication number three indicates that the self deprecation angle might be on its way out.  Second, while UAFNWFSUTGI was a great regular topic upon which to opine, I now feel obligated to write about writing every Monday, which was never my intention.  The stepping stone is becoming a bit of an anchor.

In short, while there will be other UAFNWSUTGI posts in the future, they will not be a regular Monday feature. 

So what is my last bit of scheduled advice be for new writers?  I offer this bit, which comes from my regular spiel for every class I ever taught, and is in large part cribbed from more accomplished writers than myself.


1) Read, read, read!

People have been writing for something like 7,000 years before you, and they have worked out a lot of the kinks.  By reading you learn how words behave on a page, and you can coast along sampling more experienced voices than your own.  This is a craft - study the work of craftspeople!  

2) Write, write, write!

Writing is an art, not a science.  You can't just sit in the wings all day and then expect to be great when the house lights go down.  Keep a notebook on you, scribble in margins, write good sentences and lines down when you have spare seconds, and write stories, poems, and chapters when you have spare hours.  If you don't have spare hours, make them - if you want to write, you must make the time and sacrifice to do it.

3) Edit in Stages.
The raw act of creation is one of the easiest parts of writing - you just vomit words onto a page more-or-less in the order that you'd like them to be and then go have a martini.  However, after that's all said and done you must go back and tidy up the whole thing.  Do it in stages:  Revise, rewrite, edit, proofread.

If you start with proofreading you will go mad chopping up letters and punctuation in paragraphs that you may well just cut.  Save proofreading for last.  When you revise, re-write.  Don't just move some words around and call it a day, actually type that shit back out.  Now, there's some overlap here - if you see a typo, go ahead and fix it in the early stages or else that itch is gonna drive you nuts, but don't hunt for them at too early a stage, because you're going to make more.

4) If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.  Then try some more. 

It's a rapidly shrinking market out there, oh writer - gone are the days of big checks and regular work.  If you're doing this, you'd better be doing this for love because money is a long shot.   That being said, don't stop - if you're heart is really in it, keep writing, keep sending - if it clicks, it sticks, and you'll get to see your name at the top of the page.  If not, well, what else would you really rather be doing?

There - if you can take nothing else from UAFNWFSUTGI, take that, and good luck. Remember that rejection is not a death sentence, your best work can always be better, and that a writer writes, always!

An 80's movie reference?  In this Blog?  The hell you say!