Hi, My Name Is Jesus H., and I’m a Sheepaholic
Current mood: cranky

Anyone who's been on MySpace for a while and has over, I dunno, 200 friends, has probably seen a bulletin like this one: it's titled something to the effect of "Sad News" or "You Need To Read This." You know, something to pique your curiosity without tipping off what the post is in regards to. You open it, and it reads like this:

There are so many people on this list. I guess alot of people aren't ashamed to stand up for what they believe in. You opened this because it said "sad news" ......but if it said "Jesus Christ our Lord" would you have opened it? Jesus said, "If you are ashamed of Me, I will be ashamed of you before my Father." It's your choice. If you aren't ashamed to do this, repost this as sad news at ( name of your school) and put your name on the bottom.

Then there follows a list of the last several hundred lemmings who did just that. I almost universally delete whomever posted the bulletin last.

I have never been impressed by chain letters. They're wastes of time, energy and even money. If I send someone an email or message, it's because I have something to say to that person. Bulletins are a bit of a cypher, because it's just info you leave in plain view, but there are plenty that also cross the line, ie, the "Tom is deleting people and only by forwarding this barely literate message will you be spared!" or "There's a killer loose on MySpace!" schmuckeries that flare up every six months or so. Recently I saw one about copperheads and heroin syringes in Chuck E. Cheese ball pits that almost had me going until it alleged that what killed a kid from East Bumblefuck pricked on the heinie wasn't gangrene but a heroin overdose. All it takes is one very obvious piece of bullshit to bring a house of cards down.

The same person who'd posted that one is also the one who posted the one I cited above. The only reason I haven't yet deleted her is that got a nice message from her on my birthday. See, my worldview, even it only is answerable to me, does not preclude the possibility that I might be wrong. From the tone I read in these messages, I don't detect any such humility in those that author them.

Let me explain exactly why these messages rub me the wrong way. I am not a Christian. I have never been a Christian. So I'm not even someone who came from that background but left it; there wasn't anything to leave. My actual religious background, Judaism, was rarely anything more than the sports team I used to root for. (If the question arises why I don't anymore, you obviously don't pay much attention to what's going on in Israel. If you do and still ask that question, go fuck yourself.) There came a point when I understood that the nature of the universe was entirely too complex for any one book to attempt to encapsulate. Shit, the entirely of man's works is insufficient as anything more than a sliver of a reflection thereof. The search for just a speck more knowledge is what ennobles mankind, not settling for pat answers in pretty tales that have been so redacted and rewritten that they're next to meaningless. Down that path lays intellectual entropy and very likely extinction.

Still, I do not begrudge anyone their respective reality tunnels, so long as they understand that that's what they are: theirs. They are in no more possession of the facts than anyone else. In fact, that they've accepted a story that so many else have settled upon seems to imply even less curiosity about the universe around them, and thus have nothing new to contribute on that front. Again, that's their right. Conversely, it saddens me that my own father is a stated atheist; that also betrays both a lack of curiosity and a hubris of certainty his scope does not afford him.

And yet, for the most part, you do not see atheists, agnostics, or even Jews, Muslims or Buddhists posting bulletins on MySpace using emotional blackmail in the form of Pavlovian call-and-response to confirm common imprinting. In other words, I very much doubt a bulletin saying, "BOY I LOVE SATAN HE GAVE US ALL PONIES SIGN THIS AND PASS IT ON OR HE'LL SELL YOUR PONY TO A DOG FOOD COMPANY" would go unremarked upon; you'd probably lose a good number of friends unwilling to participate in your Mickey Mouse Club roll call entrainment.

You may think these people are "sinners" or otherwise hate that for which you're declaring your love, but you're off. What they hate is YOU, the person who posted that bulletin. You're the insecure narcissist who needs an echo chamber so the logical inconsistencies of your mythologies don't seem to matter so much. You're the one who suggested that your reader is the misanthrope for not believing as you do, rather than you for taunting them with the promise of divine castigation for not circulating a chain letter on a social network (because that's how the Creator decides such things; you prove your faith by copying n' pasting a field of text, ooo). And you lure people into that philosophical trap, flimsy as it may be, with a vague title that on first appearance seems like a legitimate concern on a human level, as though only through deception will the "true" be separated from the "false." If that's what your idol requires of you, all the more reason why anyone of merit would want to stay far, far away.

By all means, find one another and chatter happily about how much you love your mutual perspective in the proper milieu. But the expense of the alienation of all others when you evangelize, especially this crudely, ought to weigh upon you if you indeed have a conscience which these perspectives inform. Any convoluted justification you employ to excuse the short-term ramifications in favor of your supposed goal is just mental masturbation to bury your immediate empathy. It's a placebo that feels like fulfillment, but it's lightyears away from any feeling at all.

Currently reading : Terra By Stefano Benni Release date: 12 September, 1985

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Would I Lie To You?
Current mood: selective

There seems to be a certain necessity most people have in order to function, or dysfunction, or whatever it is they do other than hiding in a corner, to be bullshitted. At the very least, they don't wish to consider others' outside observations of their behaviors, lest their reflection, no matter how distorted it may or may not be, causes their entire worldview to shatter like it was the mirror in the first place.

Was that metaphor too strained? You can tell me if it was. I won't be crushed. I value your input.

The latest victim of this conundrum was a "friend," more of an aquaintance, really, who has, in the eight months since we last encountered one another, made multiple overtures to socializing outside our previous context, and has followed through on none. The cycle universally goes like this: she will either email or text message me, never call, with some variation of the salutation: "Hey, stranger! How have you been? It seems like forever since we last talked! Etc." Oaths will be sworn that we MUST hang out, which is entirely feasible since we both drive and live within roughly 20 miles of one another. When I reply, I suggest multiple ideas of when we should meet and what we might do. A grand time out is imminent, no?

No. Because at that moment the line goes dead, and it stays dead usually for about two months on average. When contact is re-established down the road ("Hey stranger! How have you been? Blah blah woof moo honk…") the explanation, if that consideration is given, is that she ran out of minutes on her phone, or had to move, or has been working a lot, or she's been tight on money, or something or something or something.

I am a very forgiving person. Some might accuse me of being too forgiving, which is why so many people appear to think nothing of trampling on my concerns. But I understand that shit happens, and that's all right. Deal with your shit happening. Get back to me when shit has happened. Conjugate "shit to happen." I even accept that sometimes, different shit happens coincidentally conflicting with a similar situation as happened previously. Again, do your thing.

But there's only so many times in a row that you can try that before I get hip that you are a big self-involved narcissist who doesn't give a fuck about me. And you know what? That's even okay, too. Just don't bullshit me about it. I get people blowing me off and ignoring me all the time, and then when I come face to face with them again they act like my long-lost pal, or they just avoid me to avoid choosing between truth and bullshit, which is just bullshit of omission. Every once in a while, though, someone will drop the act and just tell me straight out, with as little malice and as civilly as possible, "I don't like you and I don't wish to associate with you any further."

And the funniest thing is, though I may be disappointed and offended for that, I'm even more grateful that someone cut the bullshit and made themselves crystal clear. And almost universally I back off and walk away and do my best to never have anything else to do with them. Oddly enough, it's these people I kind of wish I could have made good with, because honest people are such a rare commodity, but as I'd hope to reinforce that trait I abide by their wishes. It's the cowardly bullshit artists who assure me, no, it's not you, I have this thing I gotta take care of, but give me a call sometime and we'll do it then, those people I will fucking hound until they give it to me straight… or I get too bored to try anymore. Sadly, it's usually the latter.

Nobody learns from bullshit. Other than literally, bullshit doesn't facilitate growth. Decisions based upon a foundation of bullshit will inevitably, invariably turn out wrong. (Exhibit A: The Bush administration.) It's not pretty and feelings get hurt, but the long-term ramifications of brutal honesty vs. pretty lies speak for themselves. Anyone who wants you to lie to them, to tell them what they want to hear, is actively courting disaster like a smitten French skunk.

So, in the case of this "friend" I mentioned, when I got her latest "Hey stranger" psyche-out today, I knew it was time to call her out. I wrote back:

I don't want to be an asshole, but every time you message me saying, "Hey stranger! How have you been? It seems like forever..." it's because you dropped the ball on getting back to me, not vice versa. I did send you a message about NYC, and I sent you a text message a couple weeks ago asking whether you wanted to go see Jumper. I don't assume anything about your life and your obligations, so I don't press the issue, but please don't act long-lost when I've been here with the same account and phone number this entire time. I'm not going through this song and dance routine again. If you have a genuine interest in being more than a passing acquaintance, you'll talk in specifics; otherwise, quit jerking me around.

When I checked into MySpace several hours later, I had one less "friend." Conversely, she has one less friend. Viva la difference.

Currently reading : Ruining It For Everybody By Jim Knipfel Release date: 06 May, 2004

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Five Years
Current mood: hopeful

When I think about all the changes my life has undergone in the past 2+ years alone, it's pretty remarkable. Granted, they've not all been good changes, but many have been. I think many other people would also note that their lives seem to have altered drastically in the past several years, also.

This may be a trite statement on its surface. After all, they say the one constant in life is change. But I think that's an ethic that probably wouldn't have been as apparent to people living in earlier times, certainly before the Industrial Revolution. People's lives were routine and uncomplicated, a state idyllicized by social conservatives and hippies alike. Now in this period of the Information Revolution, information describing our world comes at us fast and furious, and often is contradicted faster than we can process it. It's enough to make one pine for the simplicity of one phone, three channels and a single newspaper of record.

This increase in change, both personal and societal, may be as a result of something the late ethnobotanist and anthropologist Terrence McKenna called Timewave Zero. The jist is that throughout human history, there has been an algorithm, curiously corresponding with both the Mayan calendar and the I Ching, for the rate of novelty on Earth, which up until relatively recently was more or less in equilibrium. Starting with the Renaissance, however, this algorithm seemed to gain steam, and continued to exponentially increase in coordination with other major changes, ie, the Enlightenment, the birth of modern democracy, the Industrial Revolution, etc. One cannot deny that our world has never been more in flux and full of potential, be it for good or ill, than it is right now. Recently there was a report issued that human evolution is markedly increasing in clip. According to McKenna's math, the algorithm will all reach a boiling point on the morning of December 22, 2012, five years from today. This moment is variously known as the singularity, the eschaton, or The End of History, among others.

Naturally, this is frightening to people. The more traditional types, unable to break from dogma, see this as auguring Apocalypse or Armageddon or Ragnarok or your choice of cataclysm here, at the end of which their choice of Messiah will return and reward them for being the very specific type of good people they think themselves to be and punish everyone else. Sadly, this is born out of both insecurity in their choice of faith in a system unquanitifiable beyond their books of circular reasoning as well as a stridently vicious mob mentality stemming from that insecurity that they are determined to be the ones finally proven "right" so no one ever will doubt them again, including themselves.

Lest you think I'm speaking solely of religious fundamentalists, it ought to be noted that An Inconvenient Truth is also a book.

Certain spins on this scenario have gained coin in the past couple decades, wherein no one holds anyone above or below whatever this singularity point may be. Either the seas are going to drown everyone, or Qetzalcoatl will return to give everyone lollipops; some nut will start thermonuclear war and annihilate us all, or Horus will ride down in his chariot, which is really an interdimensional flying saucer, and we'll all do bong rips together into eternity.

I don't pretend to have any further insight than anyone else into this situation, if there is one. Catch me one day and I'll assure you we'll all be flying jetpacks to the moon and functionally omnipotent through nanotechnology; catch me the next and I'll be convinced a massive compromise in our electoral process will put someone even more batshit insane in the Oval Office whose first order of business will be to burn us in our beds by breakfast (I'm lookin' your direction, Mike Huckabee). I'm no seer, and whatever happens could snowball in the next five years or be a fluke that happens in an instant.

Obviously, it's ridiculous to live one's life in anticipation of an event that one cannot describe and may or may not happen. There have been countless predictions of "the end of the world" that have come and gone with nary a peep, and there's little to suggest this time will be any different. Occam's Razor dictates that the more likely explanation is that people are massively unhappy with their lives and the world in which they live, and they're hoping that some deus ex machina event will free them of the personal responsibility of changing either. If the world is going to end anyway, what's the point of engaging in it?

Well, then, what's life? All our worlds end. I might die before I finish this blog entry, though the odds seem against it (and if you're reading this I managed to hold onto life long enough to post it). I could croak before I reach 2012, making this entire thought experiment moot, at least to me. A legacy is all well and good but ask any artist who's been acclaimed after his death whether he'd have preferred that recognition during life and I think you know what he'd say: Nothing. Because he's dead.

So let's just say that we will all cease to be in 2012. We know it for a fact, and there's no avoiding it. What do you do, then? Do you go on a killing spree? Do you write the novel that's been living in you your entire life, if within five years there'll be no one left who'd have ever read it? Do you travel the world? Do you strive against the inevitable in the belief that there must be something you can do to avert or at least mitigate this catastrophe? Would you have children, knowing full well that they won't reach their fifth birthday? Do you paint the walls with your brains? What do you do, hot shot?

Meditate upon that in coming days. Our lives are finite, and they are their own monuments. Epistomology says that once we close our eyes that last time, the world is no more and perhaps never was. In the words of one of the greatest losses of this past year, Robert Anton Wilson, "There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free." How will you build your monument? Is there one larger than that which just your life can produce to which you can contribute? Could you do it justice in just five years? Could you live ten lifetimes in that span? Could you make utopia in that time, and would you if you knew you'd only have it that long? Could you go into that unknown with the honest certainty that you'd given it everything you could?

I chose to speak on this today because I thought it made a poetic sense with the lyrics of one of the more talented and multi-lived artists alive today, David Bowie, in his song "Five Years." If you're not familiar with it, you can probably find an mp3 of it here. For the sake of closure, here are the lyrics. Do you know if you're in this song?

Pushing thru the market square, so many mothers sighing
News had just come over, we had five years left to cry in
News guy wept and told us, earth was really dying
Cried so much his face was wet, then I knew he was not lying
I heard telephones, opera house, favourite melodies
I saw boys, toys electric irons and t.v.s
My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare
I had to cram so many things to store everything in there
And all the fat-skinny people, and all the tall-short people
And all the nobody people, and all the somebody people
I never thought Id need so many people

A girl my age went off her head, hit some tiny children
If the black hadnt a-pulled her off, I think she would have killed them
A soldier with a broken arm, fixed his stare to the wheels of a cadillac
A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest, and a queer threw up at the sight of that

I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour, drinking milk shakes cold and long
Smiling and waving and looking so fine, dont think
You knew you were in this song
And it was cold and it rained so I felt like an actor
And I thought of ma and I wanted to get back there
Your face, your race, the way that you talk
I kiss you, youre beautiful, I want you to walk

Weve got five years, stuck on my eyes
Five years, what a surprise
Weve got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, thats all weve got
Weve got five years, what a surprise
Five years, stuck on my eyes
Weve got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, thats all weve got
Weve got five years, stuck on my eyes
Five years, what a surprise
Weve got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, thats all weve got
Weve got five years, what a surprise
Weve got five years, stuck on my eyes
Weve got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, thats all weve got
Five years
Five years
Five years
Five years

Currently reading : The Hacker and the Ants: Version 2.0 By Rudy Rucker Release date: 31 December, 2002

8:28 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Exactly What Meets The Eye
Current mood: restless

Thursday evening I was hanging out at the inferior comic shop with which I've made do for the past several months, when I got involved in a conversation with a guy who otherwise struck me as OK, his need to justify the Tim Burton version of Planet of the Apes and the TV series of the same name notwithstanding (he balked when I brought up the best forgotten cartoon). The issue that bugged me, however, was that he was kvetching over this past summer's excellent Transformers flick. It wasn't his complaint about the characterization (or, in some cases, lack thereof) of some of the canonical figures; I understand and, in some places, agree with this gripe. (Most offensive to me, and possibly only me, was the recasting of Megatron with Hugo Weaving, a fine actor, but nevertheless both underused and somewhat insulting when Frank Welker, the character's original voice, is still very much active in the voiceover biz, if not practically ubiquitous, a strange move considering the hurrah that went up when Peter Cullen, the original voice of Optimus Prime, was cast. Checking his IMDB profile, I see he was cast as Megatron in the videogame tie-in to the movie, which seems insult to injury.)

No, what irked this fellow was the movie's more "mature" elements. This was a movie, I should stress, that was rated PG-13, yet he'd apparently brought younger children to see it. His exhibit A was the discussion Sam has with his tipsy mother whether he was masturbating. According to this guy, his kids immediately wanted to know what that was. His resentment was that he was forced into that conversation by the movie.

Now, I have been guilty myself of taking a child of considerably less age to a PG-13 movie; I took my nephew to see Spider-Man 2 when he was only 4 years old, and while most of the movie was fine for him, he did freak out a little during the scene when Dr. Octopus wakes up on the operating table and goes apeshit. That's my cross to bear; as far as I'm aware, the kid hasn't been permanently scarred by the experience. Which could be exactly why I'm not as impressed by the damage wrought by a fairly tame and unspecific reference to masturbation. His argument was that in a film that was likely to be seen by those under the age of 13 that sort of thing was unnecessary and was done to give it an artificial edge. And I do understand it from that perspective. But really, given the choice, would you rather your children be exposed to a psychopath murdering doctors with his steel tentacles or a humorous ribbing over autoerotica? I'm not saying anyone needs to endorse it (and really, no one NEEDS to endorse masturbation; I figured that shit out on my own by the time I was 7); just don't stigmatize it as though it were akin to spraying napalm on Vietnamese villagers. Your prudishness and discomfort is your baggage alone. Kids are smarter than a lot of people give them credit, and it's far better that they hear it from their parents than stitching together a Frankensteinian concept from the media and their friends that will likely bear only a passing resemblance to the truth.

Our society in general could bear with greater transparency. Not to come down on the side of the doublespeak spooks in Homeland Security who wish to know all our dirty little secrets but divulge none of their own, but the concept of privacy, which is, in Catholic terms, a lie of omission, is an increasingly anachronistic one. Long ago I came to the idea that much of the world's ills are caused by decisions being made on erroneous or incomplete information. It is only with bald-faced honesty that many mistakes can be avoided (koffkoffInvasionOfIraqOnTrumpedUpReasonskoff). Of course, in order to accomplish that sort of transparency many incumbent systems that thrive on their activities being obfuscated would need to be overthrown, and they won't do that without a fight, and a dirty one at that, which unfortunately doesn't jibe with the whole idea of converting our systems to open scrutiny. These sorts of philosophical clashes don't much work when the status quo has no true philosophy beyond "Stay in Power At All Costs".

So, instill honesty where you can, and if that only means not recoiling from as innocuous a question as that about masturbation from a kid, it'd be a good start. Honesty is not an easy road, as I've long known, but like all good and right things in the end equation it benefits both the individual and the group far greater than evasion and prevarication.

Currently watching : Fight Club (Two-Disc Collector’s Edition) Release date: 06 June, 2000

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Our Precious Bodily Fluids
Current mood: tired

I just saw a text ad in the margins on here that read: "Can Jews use drugs?"

Brother, CAN they.

(Haha, look at my braggadoccio, when my life for the past nearly 17 months has been nigh monastic in its asceticism, less by choice than by opportunity.)

And on the topic of hedonism, I earlier spent probably no less than 90 minutes furiously hunting through at least two different porn blogs due to a single thumbnail from a supposed series in which I thought I spotted someone I know. Not know OF; know. It's a good thing I don't have anything else to do with my time than to scroll through endless pages of flesh in hopes of spotting one specific specimen thereof.

Which leads us to tonight's lesson. Want to find erotica online? Shit, baby, ain't no thang. In all likelihood, it'll find you. Find a site that more or less reliably trips your trigger? Bookmark that, you hornball. But stumble upon an outdated link to a specific piece of ass without any identifying tag and hope to track it down, hell, you might as well be looking for a specific glass of water that you dumped in the Mississippi six months ago. Even when you're searching within a certain URL, there are terms that aren't likely to yield you anything less than the entire site's contents.

I'm sure this is applicable to other pursuits, but this is the metaphor in which I've been the lead most recently, so you write your own parallel.

I've been remiss in adding to this blog for several months. I've got a few longer pieces I've started and then abandoned which I plan to revisit soon, especially as I intend to use one as the basis of my next minicomic, which I aim to complete in about eight weeks. If you found this entry too explicit, you're definitely going to want to skip that one.

Currently reading : East Coast Rising Volume 1 (East Coast Rising) By Becky Cloonan Release date: 11 April, 2006

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The beast stirs, grumbles, returns to its slumbers
Current mood: listless

Huh. Yesterday was my half-birthday. Funny what'll escape your notice when you're having so much fun. Yes, that was sarcastic.

Sigh. It's not so much that I'm unhappy with a number of situations as they stand, though there is that. It's more that every time I think I see an exit within reach, it vanishes as I approach it. On the other hand, there's been a couple I've not approached and they've gradually faded from view. I don't expect that to make much sense to anyone who's not me, up at 2:40 am.

An entry is in the works on one such opportunity that's gone tits up lately, though at least it did so halfway colorfully, and in such a manner as I hope to parlay the experience into a good yarn.

Meanwhile, hey, howsabout them Republicans, huh? I'd gloat more, but their opposition aren't exactly distinguishing themselves in the meantime. So far all I hear are fairly empty platitudes. I guess we're in for another 14 months of some exquisite bullshit all around. Having just passed the 14 month mark down here myself that can be surprisingly quick or an eternity simultaneously.

Currently watching : Hot Fuzz (Combo HD DVD and Standard DVD) [HD DVD] Release date: 31 July, 2007

11:34 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

NYC this weekend: MoCCA and me
Current mood: hungry

My precious, precious babies, Daddy is coming home to NYC this weekend.

As those of you with class and distinction know, this weekend is the annual Museum of Comic & Cartoon Art (MoCCA) Festival at the Puck Building on Houston St. Last year I was forced to forego the show, as I was suffering from a congenital case of poverty and homelessness. That was the first time I'd missed MoCCA since it began, and it's an interruption in my streak I hope to never have to unwillingly make again.

What makes MoCCA different than your run of the mill comic convention (one of which is also happening this weekend, but never mind that)? For starters, it's almost ALL comics; no bullshit coattail riders like wrestlers, prop-makers, has-been sitcom actors and porn stars (sorry). Also, there's no endless tables of back issue bins; this event supercedes the insane collector mentality that weakens the medium and industry every time it flares up again. No, MoCCA is specifically for the people who make comics, often at a financial loss, who love comics just for being comics, and who want for little else. And real people, which includes the ladies, are behind and in front of the tables.

I'd hoped to have a minicomic finished in time to print up and sell there, but that seems not to be in the cards this time around. (I've got my eye on you, Small Press Expo!) I will, however, have the previews of my upcoming comic License Farm for free, as well as some samples of my art, though at no fixed location in the show.

One of the perks of the modern comic con is that there are a buttload of affiliated parties, and in my experience nobody partys harder than indie comic kids. It's worth noting that this weekend is also National Gay Pride and the infamous Coney Island Mermaid Parade, so there's certain to be even more than your usual amount of NYC weekend shindigs, which is already substantial.

Here now is an early, unconfirmed itinerary for my weekend:

FRIDAY:
• Arrival, late afternoon. I'd previously thought the release party for my boys in HeadQuarters would be happening this night, but it would seem that was rescheduled for next Saturday. Sucks to be me. So instead, I'll be attending:
• Party at Rocketship comic gallery, 208 Smith St., Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, 8 pm.

I may only do this one event, but I've been informed there is also:
• "New Mutants" opening reception, 7 - 9 pm @ Canada, 55 Chrystie St.
AND
• Windy Corner release Party, 8 pm @ Union Pool, 484 Union Ave, BK
Barring further adventures, I'm likely to turn in relatively early after a long day so as to be fresh as a daisy for:

SATURDAY:
• MoCCA Fest, 10 – 4? 6? Time of depature depends on whether I go to see:
• MC Chris and MC Frontalot @ Passout Records, 131 Grand Street b/t Bedford & Berry, Williamsburg, BK.

If you're not familiar with the nerdcore rap scene, I can't think of a better time to get hipped than in conjunction with a comic convention and with these two pillars of the subgenre. Speaking of which, there's also
• Mauled #4 release party/MoCCA after-party, 8 pm @ R Bar


AND
• The Art Army New York launch party @ Toy Tokyo's The Showroom, 121 2F 2nd Ave. (I think b/t St. Marks and 7th St.), 6pm. Art Army is an L.A.-based toy customizer who specializes in celebrity customs and homages to luminaries of urban culture, especially graffiti artists.

Supposedly there's a 2 foot tall wooden Andy Warhol!
While I may not make it to either of these, I also know there's:
• Free Ice Cream Day exhibit opening reception, 6:30 - 10 @ GRNY

AND
• The Top Shelf Publications 10th anniversary party: 6PM - After Hours @ GSTAAD, 43 West 26th St.
There might be a couple other gatherings affiliated with the show, and I'll let you know if I hear of more, but my ultimate destination for the evening will be
• The Rated X Panty Party at Luke & Leroy by 2 am, when the infamous Hot Body Contest takes off (its clothes).

SUNDAY:
MoCCA Festival, likely hungover, late and/or asleep, 10 - 6

I'm uncertain whether I'm definitely staying in town until Monday, pending confirmation of a crash pad for Sun nite. Volunteers? I'll let y'all know whether that happens and we can plan for further frolicking if I remain. Not too late, because most of you have work in the morning, and I have an interview!

Would love to see as many of you as possible while I'm in town, as I'm unsure at this moment when I'll be back next. There's already at least a few of you I know I'll be missing and that bums the shit out of me, but what are you going to do. As for the rest of you, let's make this time count as much as possible. Excelsior, bizzatches.

Currently listening : In Glorious Times By Sleepytime Gorilla Museum Release date: 29 May, 2007

12:26 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Putting it out there, seeing what's what
Current mood: full

Fiends, Cro-Magnons, country clubs, rend me your fears:

As many of you are aware, I've been on something of a sabbatical from NYC for over 10 mos in the rolling hills of south central PA. Another way of putting it might be more of self-imposed exile. I'm very grateful to my dad and stepmom for catching me when I fell last June, otherwise I might today be "living" (if you can call it that) in a shelter or even on the streets. Though when I came down I never expected to be here nearly as long as I have (I originally figured two months, then six, and now, well...), it's been mostly a constructive period: I've been working for much of the interim, building back up some independent wealth, and even trying my hand at some personal projects along the lines of my career goals which I hope will bear fruit in the near future. I'm getting myself much more physically and mentally fit, and I even completed my coursework for my BA, which had been hanging over me for about seven years. Though I hated the conditions which made it necessary for me to come down here, it has been a good, important time.

BUT

I am not meant for this place, and it is not meant for me.

My inclination is to return to NYC. I'm a third generation New Yorker and I'm constitutionally better suited to the big city pace and viewpoint. There's a large concentration of people in the field I'm looking to pursue, to say nothing of friends I've accumulated over the past few years. There's also a wonderful little boy who turns 7 in a couple weeks to whom I've missed being an uncle for almost 11 months.

I do recognize a certain virtue in starting over elsewhere, so I am not opposed to that angle if the stars align correctly, but I think there's often just as much difficulty. For instance, I've had almost nothing resembling as social life since being in this area. (This may be chalked up in part to my belief that my sojourn here, however long it lasts, is purely temporary, but you could probably say much the same about being anywhere, and it's not as though I haven't made some efforts.) Also, somewhere that I have preexisting contacts helps line up the essentials before I commit to moving there.

Which brings me to the point of this: before I resettle anywhere, I need to have arranged a) a full-time, permanent job, preferably in one of my fields of interest, that will net me no less than a salary of $35K/year plus benefits; and b) a living arrangement on the cheaper side (I know, fat chance in NYC), preferably alone but with other(s) if the situation isn't too cramped and hostile, and near public transportation. a) comes before b), naturally, though once a) is confirmed b) would need to fall into place fairly quickly. There isn't any rush; my folks aren't itching to toss me out on my ear one moment before I'm ready to go. Unlike last year, this isn't the sort of thing I need yesterday, so take your time, ask around, put out feelers on my behalf and let me know what you hear. I'm working now, and though the work is generally unsatisfying it's something I can do more or less indefinitely (though as the more competant people seem to either be fired or quit on a near weekly basis I better continue to play dumb). Rather than a troop surge born out of desperation on shaky grounds, shrewdly gather intelligence and slip me your findings on microfiche hidden in a sauteed flounder in a bistro filled with enemy agents. The code phrase is, "Your dry cleaning has been lost, Mr. Nogatco."

Get in touch if you want to see an updated resumé. Help me write the preamble to the next chapter in my life.

xo
Ken

PS: I will be coming up to NYC on June 22-25 for the MoCCA Festival and the record release of HeadQuarters' "O and O" EP, so I'd love to see those of you who'll be in town at one or both. I'll also need someplace to stay those three nights. While I have my usual fall backs for couches to surf, anyone who may never have done me the honor before who'd be willing now are encouraged to get in touch so I needn't exploit the same people over and over. Thankew.

Currently reading : The Big U By Neal Stephenson Release date: 05 February, 2001

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Shining Time Anal Fixation
Current mood: irritated

For every three cute kids with a priceless one-liner we get in the store, there's an ugly example of the species known as an "adult." I say species because I don't think there's anything short of a different evolutionary path that can account for the difference between the pure joy a kid usually experiences at the utter chaos in their section and the reactions of anything but by the species Adultis Dumphuctica at said same, especially considering the obscenely low prices we ask for our stock.

Because everything is so cheap, there might be a perception that somehow it is nearly worthless. This supposition disintegrates as soon as you focus past the mass of undifferentiated product to individual items: Sports Illustrateds from the '70's, Lifes and Saturday Evening Posts from the '50's and '60's, National Geographics from the '20's, VHS tapes of TV series long-cancelled and unlikely to be released on DVD anytime soon, heirloom-quality encyclopediae, what appears to be a nearly complete run of Doonesbury collections (at least up to perhaps the reign of Bush 41), many, many unused books remaindered from their publishers and so much more. Naturally, much of the value is a subjective judgment, which is why I think everyone ought to view the store as a personal Rorschach test. Following that metaphor to its logical conclusion, the "adults" who whine when they're already getting books for a dollar need to be medicated and observed for the sake of general sanity.

This is not the story of that specific dysfunction, but it's in the right neighborhood.

Thursday our manager dropped a stack of videos and audiobooks at the counter, promising that there was a regular customer in the stacks who'd be up with more soon. Leisurely perusing through what had been picked out, my eyes bugged when I discovered one was a set of tapes by the late Terence McKenna called History Ends In Green. I cursed myself that I'd not found them first, especially since I'd been the one with enough initiative to clean up the audiobooks section about six weeks ago, neglecting the oversized cases that rested atop the bookcases, of which it had been one. I momentarily considered slipping the set out of the general pile for my own nefarious purposes, but decided the risk of discovery, coupled with a damnably strong moral compass, made such a move foolhardy. Besides, you never know who you might be depriving of the privilege of that material. Spotting a few likely types in the store who might be the culprit, I thought perhaps I could use the tapes as an icebreaker when they came up to pay; I pride myself on being a personable cashier.

Instead, it was a loathsomely fat toad of a man I recognized, who bears a strong resemblance to Larry Flynt, save for his independent mobility. Like Bill Hicks' impression of Rush Limbaugh as the type who in public dishes out abuse but behind closed doors craves to be humiliated himself (specifically, "laying in a bathtub while other men pee on him"), he gave off a questionably smug air of superiority at odds with his ghostly pale legs, nigh-Hawaiian shirt and sandals with socks. Perhaps his association with persons of my acquaintance with similarly undeserved senses of entitlement colored my view, and I hope that between this and the previous entry I don't give the impression that I'm negatively predisposed to persons of size, but the conversation we had did nothing to combat certain gluttonous stereotypes.

"I gotta machine at home that'll take all these tapes and copy them all onto disc," he crowed.

"That's cool," I shrugged. (A machine? You mean like a computer? Because if it's some sort of equipment that specifically only transfers tapes onto CDs that would seem tellingly specialized and anachronistic in this day.)

"Yeah, that way I can listen to them in the car, and then I can sell the tapes."

EW. I have no interest in what our customers are going to do with our products once the exchange is completed; if there's a kink involving old leather binding or magnetic tape I'm just as happy to be spared the gruesome details. While I've no doubt some are cashing in on our cashing out, reselling our products at a mark-up, I respect that from an entrepreneurial standpoint. This just struck me as greedy, like the types I'm sure buy VHS tapes from us, copy them and then return them.

I tried to steer the conversation back to fulfilling a niche. "You could always digitize the ones that are out of print and put them online. The ones with a really lapsed copyright you might be allowed to sell."

"Oh no no no," Jabba chortled, "I'm not sticking my neck out like that. See, I'm a lawyer, so I'm well aware of what I can get away with and what I can't. Making a copy for me alone falls under the terms of 'fair use.'"

If I was thinking a little more critically (rather than a mental mantra of "get it away GETITAWAY") I might have pointed out that his precious "fair use" only applies if he still has possession of the source; as he readily copped to disposing of the tapes, possibly even at a profit, that contract would be rendered invalid. Some lawyer. Instead, I pointed out that many in the audio publishing biz would like to deprive him of the ability to do even that.

He was non-plussed. "So what? Let 'em do what they're gonna do. I'll do whatever's technically legal at the moment. See, I'm originally from New York—"

"I'm from New York."

"I mean, New York City."

"I also meant New York City." I'm not sure what reaction he was hoping to evoke, be it rapturous bliss at a visitation from the city upon the hill or a Pace salsa commercial-type bellow of "NYEW YORUK CITY?!?", but I didn't give it to him. "There's a lot of discussion about revising outmoded copyright law to better reflect the current state of media recording, which is moving away from a physical unit you can sell individually to a more vague, bottom-up , distributed system where authorship is a more valuable asset than bean-counting the compensation."

I wonder, perhaps, whether the fundamental disconnect that he and I were experiencing is akin to the last of the dinosaurs, stuck in their patterns, being outmaneuvered by smaller, more nimble, cleverer mammals. Indeed, he looked fairly reptilian as he shrugged his waddle and reiterated, "If the law gets changed, I'll follow it." He was non-committal either way you slice it, expressing no preference and certainly no intent to influence the debate, despite its direct impact upon his habits.

Even the fact that he was patronizing a second hand bookstore is a politicized one: in several states, most recently and egregiously Florida, legislation has been passed to make the sale and purchase of used media excruciating arduous. This is ostensibly aimed at curtailing fenced goods (because why steal a stereo when you can hock an ungainly CD collection piecemeal?) but it has the stink on it of the recording industry's more desperate and draconian measures to salvage its faltering bottom line. Many publishers would only allow the original primary customer access to the content on their narrow terms alone; hell, some would like to make pay-per-play mandatory. How'd he like to be universally crippled with that sort of "copy protection"? Florida now requires permits, fingerprints, waiting periods and payment solely in store credit, which will more or less destroy the second hand media business in that state. How much would you like to bet an audit of state senators reveals some payola from the RIAA? All offenders ought to be required to pay by pawning their own music collections at pennies on the dollar. Honestly, the industry ought to be glad for used CD resellers; I might get almost all my music exclusively online and through less official channels otherwise, and eschew anything with their tainted seal of approval on it.

Again, I mentioned none of this to Attorneysaurus Rex; instead, I figured people whose jobs it is to explain these sorts of concepts to denser types might have better luck than me. As he was collecting his purchases and heading for the door, I told him, "You should look into some of the work being done by the Electronic Frontier Foundation—"

"Oh, yeah, the EFF, I know all about those guys! They're a buncha communists! They want everything to be free. Every idea they've got is crap. Maybe they'll come up with something useful in fifty, a hunnerd years, but I don't think so, and I sure don't expect to be around to see it." And with that he trundled his ass out the door.

Am I the only one who sees the irony of an obvious fan of capitalism deriding supposed "communists" while patronizing an establishment that specializes in the redistribution of material goods on a more level playing field? Hands?

Currently reading : What the World Needs Now By Steven Johnson Release date: April, 1984

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Out of the mouths of boobs
Current mood: blah

I've now been working at this gig for nearly four months, and it's okay. That may be a woefully inadequate description, but I'd say the positives and the negatives more or less balance out to gray. It's sufficient, though nothing I hope I'm doing by this time next year. Even the fact that I've received a moderate promotion (such as it is: it entails all the responsibilities of a titular assistant manager, but called a "supervisor", likely to justify a lower pay rate) isn't enough to elevate this beyond tolerable. The best part of the job is the purely accidental finds I make in our hopelessly jumbled stacks, made all the more incredible by how cheaply I can get them: at $1 a book for the public and 70 cents for employees, I still may have dropped up to $100 on books since beginning there. Many of my qualms rise out of certain personality clashes with a select few who seem blissfully unaware of their own incompetence as well as the niceties of the world around them, both immediate and broader. Any management who seems to have an inkling of what they ought to be doing either a) gets fired for the merest infraction or b) quits for a better job; this makes room for new people hired off the street who rightfully should be scrubbing bathrooms.

I am, to no one's surprise, ambivalent about people in general. Some are perfectly pleasant, especially once you get past initial awkwardness. Others need to reapply the spirit gum that's supposed to keep their human disguise affixed over their demon faces. One old man who's been in a couple times, his nose red and veiny, likely from a lifetime of liver-destroying boozehoundery, seems constitutionally incapable of stating whatever it is he wants of you, and every time you try to follow the logical thread of his gibbering to a question you can answer, he'll belch, "No, no, I'm not making myself very clear, let me start over…" (One fellow employee noted that I was visibly using every ounce of self-control to not leap over the counter, grab him by the collar and scream in his face, "WHAT DO YOU WANT?!?!?!? Use whatever's left of your pickled brains to summon up a specific question so I can answer it and you can get out of my life!!!!") Except he HAS made himself clear: he wants to know the exact day and time he should come in when we'll have given up trying to sell our sizable library of remaindered VHS cassettes at their extraordinarily marked down prices (3 for $6, anyone?) and will give them all away to the first lush who staggers through our door. And he doesn't seem to believe when I tell him we have no plans for those tapes beyond that sale, that we don't even know for certain when we're closing that location (we've put it off for six months with no end in sight), and that no matter when he comes in or to whom he speaks nobody is going to give him a more specific answer than that. When I reiterated that to him yesterday, he regarded me suspiciously through squinty, bloodshot eyes and blathered, "Oh, sure, I get it, I guess I'm not important enough to let in on your plans."

I looked him dead in the eyes and said, "This has nothing to do with you, sir. There is no planned change for the VHS tapes."

"Yeah, like if your brother-in-law came in here you wouldn't cut him a deal."

(Never mind that I don't have a brother-in-law anymore, but family gets to share in our employee discounts, so yeah, I would cut him a deal, but that's by policy, not under the table grey marketeering.)

"Sir, I do not appreciate your implication. I am not party to pricing decisions. You have insulted me."

"I go around to all the video stores and talk to all their staff, and I never have a problem with any of them." (Oh yeah? Why don't you go have a nice chat with one of them, then?) "You obviously don't want my business." (I have never witnessed this man spend a penny with us.) "So I'm going to take it elsewhere, and I wish you good luck." (Ooo, burn! No, please, come back and annoy me more!)

And as he heaved himself out the door, I distinctly heard him mutter under his breath, "Fuckin' idiot…" I turn around to my manager who has been sitting in the office behind me the whole time, gobsmacked at this asshole's nerve.

Working retail puts me back in touch with why I hate people in general so much.

Thankfully, it's not all desperately transparent cons. We get a lot of kids in the store, and they can be a laugh riot.

A few weeks ago I was helping a kid who turned out to be 8 years old, though I took him for 11. He had just seen the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie and wanted to find some books about them. When I guided him through our (admittedly utterly mixed-up) kids books section, he said, "Wouldn't they be in the Classics section? Haven't they been around for, like, 90 years?"

I smiled. "Um, no."

"Seventy?"

This went on until I had to assure the kid that the Turtles had been around no longer than 25 years. Which I'm sure to an 8 year old is a trivial distinction. We searched unsuccessfully for Turtles books that I knew we had. "Sorry," I said, "sometimes these things are just the luck of the draw."

"Oh, my parents don't believe in that."

"What?"

"Luck. We're Christians."

I checked my natural inclination, and just said, "I'm not sure one has anything to do with the other." At least I know why his sense of time is off: seeing as the world only began 7000 years ago by their reckoning, 90 years is a far more accurate estimate on that margin of error. I'm put in mind of Elias from Clerks 2, who had to use convoluted mental gymnastics to somehow reconcile Transformers and Lord of the Rings with a devout fundamentalist faith. I wonder how this kid and his family will fit the Turtles into their cosmology. There but for the grace of a fictional God go I.

I appear to be in the minority of people who don't regard children as this alien lifeform or a delicately-protected species. One day I was working the counter and chatting with a little boy, when his mother exclaimed, "Nobody does that!"

"Does what?" I asked.

"Talks to him like he's a person!" Because, you know, heaven forbid they should get THAT impression.

Yesterday a little girl in cornrows and missing two of her front teeth exploded out of the kids section, exclaiming, "…and then it'll be BOOYAH TIME!" When I asked incredulously what that was, she got shy and said, "Oh, did you hear that? Well, I can't tell you." I kept guessing, and I suppose to placate me she finally said, "OK, that can be booyah time for you."

It's sometimes the kids who look as though they learned to speak in complete sentences in the last, oh, week that provide the greatest entertainment. One little girl who was shy of two was looking at a Golden book. "Is that Baby Mickey on the cover?" I asked her.

"Oh, I don't know about that…" Which was, as I would discover, her standard answer to every question I asked her about what she was looking at.

The best, however, was the other night: a father and his little redheaded daughter, who was probably freshly three, were paying for a purchase, and I could hear her singing something softly. When I finally made it out, my jaw hit the floor:

"Biggie Biggie Biggie, oh can't you see…"

I looked up bug-eyed at her father. "Is she singing The Notorious B.I.G.?!?"

He rolled his eyes. "Unfortunately."

I said to her, "Do you know the next line of that song?"

She stared at me blankly.

Sometimes your words just hypnotize me

Currently reading : New Hat Stories: Banks/Eubanks By Tom Hart Release date: 01 January, 2000

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