Paradox of the post-modern worker/consumer

"Here in lies the present paradox: work has totally triumphed over all other ways of existing, at the same time as workers have become superfluous. Gains in productivity, outsourcing, mechanization, automated and digital production have so progressed that they have almost reduced to zero the quantity of living labor necessary in the manufacture of any product. We are living the paradox of a society of workers without work, where entertainment, consumption and leisure only underscore their lack from which they are supposed to distract us."

conspiring against my illness

Such a fun, fantastic weekend, has devolved into the horrible situation of having to deal with an irritated, sore throat. This throat's morphed into a raw pain, covered in phlegm. It's a fucking drama queen. It got "a due notice" and thinks it's the end of the world. This throat had never been unemployed before, but then came the downsize at the expense of a floundering economy; the local clam-bar and juiceria have fallen along with the government IT specialist. It used to work for the Dept. of Homeland Security, but the coup of the NSA lead to Beckström dragging it along with him. This was merely to cushion the fall. My throat got axed from its position based mostly on vague accusations Beckström made of its failure to efficiently manage intelligence during past risk levels. It was such a vague accusation but one to be expected from an agency that experimented with domestic data mining; people need to be fired or let go because of minor infractions when a vie for power's at hand. The changing of the guard is met with fatalities of a superficial kind, yet an evil power won't have sympathy. All the for best yeah? No problems with being freed from cold war, at least that's the way I'd feel.

It took all of three weeks for my throat to find a job as an IT specialist for New York Life. THREE bloody weeks! There are some financial specialists who've been looking for a job over a year. This fucking throat of mine is out of work for a mere three weeks and collapses into a frantic paranoid state. It feared coming down with yellow fever and then not having life insurance, and also something about germ-warfare in subway corridors. I would say to it, "You're fucking bonkers! Are you panicking because of the likely hood of total economic collapse, or are you just insecure about not having a pick-ax to hammer away at that mountain of debt you've been chipping away at? I've always told you the banking system would get you in trouble, but some people have literally been thrown out onto the street because they allowed the media to pander to their deepest wants and desires. These blind fools allowed themselves to be stabbed in the back while their hands were severed. But a large collapsible SUV was promised if they complied. And to tie my digression with you...how can you afford that huge collaspible Escalade with 30" rims?"

After I'm done with scolding, this throat I used to call my own becomes a skulking mess. It doesn't wash, it sits alone and plays the same old James Bond game for the Gamecube it's been playing for the past six some odd years. It takes rejection so fucking personally! I mean, it DID find more work. Motherfucker's just a stubborn insecure prick. I think my throat fears socialism the most. It listens to The Savage Nation periodically and keeps a lot of commemorative currency as collectibles. If some ridiculous coincidence occurs that a PIECE OF HIGH-GRADE STOCK PAPER LAMINATED WITH SILVER PLASTIC ever becomes valuable, I'll sell my vinyl sleeves for fucking sushi platters. Mad spicy tuna...mad spicy tuna.

Honestly, this douchebag simpleton of a throat I used to have is so easily jipped. And now that his creditors have repossessed its fucking Escalade, he's got no way of commuting to work. The subways are out of the question. Cab fair is just eating away at my throats savings. It's become a nuisance and a slug, slowly being dragged down amid the transition towards a high level of connectivity. I don't want to appear mean, but it's come to the point where I'm going to have to evict this throat I used to have.

Telepathy is not yet an evolutionary trait, is it?

Deprived

Freely accepting the remnants of coldness that blow from a northern latitude. Days have been unusually clear up until this past one. I have the urge to remain awake at all times. The brain's active and not affording me snooze time. A long bike ride is calling me.
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The dimple on the wall ... it must have been the sambuca/vodka shooters.

a mother rat had given birth to a small litter the week prior. There were tiny squeeks three nights in a row. M*A*S*H was on, Alan Alda was hatching some schtick to woo his secret admirer who'd sent him a love letter. It was past 2 AM and a sleep-deprived trance had set in. The TV began pushing itself away from me, it seemed tens of meters away. The image on the screen never fuzzed-out, my eyes focused on Hawkeye beginning to sound more and more like Groucho Marx. My eyes slowly move downwards, glazing over my stomach and chest. I saw little people mingling on a stretched out plain that was my gray shirt. They were feeling around my chest for a something, the glow of the TV illuminating their search.

My hands were now larger, vibrating gloves without motion. I couldn't see the ceiling. My perspective had now panned out, yet I looked at the screen and it was larger now. Jamie Farr was now on, clad in a sundress. His skin was tanned and oily. I marveled at his large schnoz. It matched his smile so well. His face filled up the screen without any problems. I couldn't tell what he was saying, but I knew when to laugh.

Hawkeye now had wine, waiting for his mystery admirer. Like a gray matchbox car bolting across the floor under the screen, the hypnotist snapped his fingers. Bolt up, stars etched onto my eyes. Walk two steps, see a tail. "WHAAAAA SHIT!" Like a hobbling hobo reaching for a machete, the small little league bat that was always in the same corner. The gray-tailed admirer was fast. It dodged a Nike, then the large textbook (was it Chemistry?) before flying under my legs. Straddling back and to the side, trying to wake up, hearing the laugh track in the background, the grayness now making its way under the desk. The computer was still on. You cannot escape through cyberspace.

I see this rodent cowering in a corner. It's young, without a mother. It cannot understand its fate. It is a foreigner, inferior. I wield power over it. Now i see the cardboard lid of a box. I take the bat and push the lid closer to the cowering grayness. It now is trying to climb up under the desk. I hesitate for a three seconds, before slamming the lid against the gray fur with the bat only one time. Rodent-cardboard-wood.

Skull. No movement. Remain squating, then fall on my knees, gradually slumping downwards and forwards towards the rodent. no laugh track, no cross-dressing, no admirer.

sambuca and luksusowa with one ice-cube x ~30. the dimpled-wall, that's lamenting the admirer. i hit it straight, open palm, wrist tilted 65º left of the normal. Spackling is cheap.

Summer has taken a hold of the city (reprise)

unusually warm day yesterday. but the coolness of spring has leveled. i hope things remain somewhat cool for a while before the heat sets in.

"Beautiful elms, English and American, Douglas Firs, birch and Hawthornes and of course, the Moses favorite London plane stood scraggly and poorly trimmed. I should not be presumptuous as to the condition of the London planes. In Paris they choose to trim them a certain way, the street side of the tree being flat with no branches hanging above the street. Here the branches are more natural, being trimmed only for practical and safety reasons.

"The walk wound me up by the reservoir. Two girls were jogging and gossiping in unison. The left one seemed to be more into the jogging part of the song. I would imagine she did not really know the girl on the right and only humored her if only to have a running partner. The reservoir seemed to be at low tide. This observation is, of course, erroneous; there is no outlet to the ocean known by me. Of course there might be one, which would lead my overall judgment to be wrong. In any case, there are several possibilities of me erring. This fact, once realized, can be used to fight evil everywhere.

"I decide to walk down the horse trail below the jogging path. It has since been used as a back road for the NYPD for park equestrian and beat patrol. Automobiles rested idly in the back of the precinct. The road would have been nicer with no people on it, or at least with shy peasant girls delivering bundles to arbitrary destinations. The overgrowth of brush amongst the many species of trees seemed peculiar. It is an artificial wilderness maintained by the city. It can be scene as a mockery towards us, humans, and our forgotten roots from the forest. I see it as an arboreal art form. Squirrels scampered here and there, disappearing farther along the road. When the point of disappearance is finally reached no small rodent is ever seen.

"The eastside emerged only a couple of minutes before my exiting of the park. Central Park is a modern marvel. Forested areas tucked away between posh residencies, tourist areas and poorer building projects carry nostalgia for those who are perceptive. My feet meandered along the path of east-siders content with their seemingly mundane rituals: walking dogs, strolling in money-threads, standing outside their buildings’ vestibules with cell phones to ears, haling hailed taxis. I would occasionally pass those curious outer-borough folk who are known to the residence here by various rapid transit coined colloquialisms. 103rd St. came upon the Ponies, moist from perspiration. Trekking continued eastwards. The contour of the land changed from being flat to somewhat dangerously hilly. A trestle emerged after a row of building projects, the Metro-North speeding to Grand Central atop medieval arches. Park Ave. precedes Lexington. I am sure Purchas had at one point meant for his accounts to change the world. “This small ash has been superceded by a larger hornbeam of the mightiest stature,” I imagined he would say in if such a sight were before him.

"The street signs on Lexington Ave. read “NO PARKING” very defiantly, unquestionably due to the steepness of the streets. Garbage pick-up must be a bitch. The subway station at 103 was narrow and warm. The area was above the Upper Eastside and Yorkville. I now wonder about the area slightly over from the ritz that is the Museum Mile, seeing several “Associated” grocery chains within walking distance, the George Washington Carver housing projects, the campy stylings of Kool-Man ice cream trucks. It may be Carnegie Hill. The city keeps reminding me of impoverished ancestry with modern, though esoteric, aesthetics."

The Altar of Pergamon (ars morendi)

Ars Morendi

I recently came across a book entitled "Old world death sequences in the everyday lives of Late Roman Empire hinterland tribes: vol. IV" that details ancient methods of dying without succumbing to temptation, juxtaposed with the consequences of dying in a poor state. It was interesting to read about the practices of the European tribes at the time, though undoubtedly influenced by Roman officers and lasagna collectors. (lasagna = retribution) Though full of in inaccuracies about the state of the empire, the book did feature, oddly enough, a section written by Ben Stein. It reads as follows:

The art of dying was practiced to simplify horrors in the world, as well as the tribulations that an average person of the time had to endure in everyday life. Yet, the actually commitment to a righteous ars morendi proved more difficult. Often times, people would just lie and have a witness advertise his somber, good death. This is akin to modern day obituaries of men and women in newspapers, giving them a sense of dignity even if they didn't rightfully deserve it."

What this fails to take into account is that most celebrities lie about their death so as to cash in on post mortem publicity. The common idea of the green-stuff (money) is synonymous to demons tempting a dying man with golden staffs or bejeweled crowns. Perhaps the man who once co-hosted Win Ben Stein's Money has already fallen into a Bardo of flesh, consumed by the greed of bills and notes.

A much more accurate text would be "The Craft of Dying: A Study of the Literary Traditions of the Ars Moriendi in England", among other texts.

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When I used to get t’wasted on mescal and IPA, there used to be a saying we all would chant, or sing, or just plain belch out like a Garfield filled with lasagna. It was "hey buddy, keep yer load!" this chant would signify all the girls to get naked, tie pillows over their vaginas and then dance about. then someone would shout, "HEY YOU!" and the chorus would chime in the rest: “KEEP YER LOAD!” It was usually pretty raucous, something reminiscent of the evil altar at Pergamon so callously written about in the Book of Revelations. We took it as something more along the lines of Zeus worship. KEEP YOUR LOAD! HAIL ZEUS!

These orgiastic parties were quite pointless, actually. We were kidding ourselves; through blind debauchery we were actually in a state of denial, living a false reality. One evening our friend G, who was feeling a bit ill at the time yet nevertheless still wanted to partake in our Pergamon party, collapsed in the middle of mounting a pillow-prostrate lady friend of ours. Everyone stopped, took him up to the bedroom and wanted for him to make any signs of life. His heart-rate was slow, but very steady. He woke when I alone was in the room with him and said he wanted to take some valium. I procured some from the host downstairs and let him take the pills. He died within about 20 minutes, insofar as the coroner could tell us. I knew the valium wasn’t what ended his life. I don’t honestly know for sure, but he died with some shred of dignity. Some month’s later during his roommate’s moving process out of their old apartment I was helping her take down her furniture. G’s old bed was to stay, yet I noticed a book tucked flush behind the bed posts. It was a copy of “The Craft of Dying.” He had written in it, all sorts of odd little cartoon characters as if these were his notes while reading it. Odd, but simultaneously, expected. The book now lies flush in back of my bed post, ticked away until I can realize the grandeur of such a practice.

detour (whole in the ground)

The feeling had changed from an amalgam of hope, passive joy and mild relief to a deep idleness, a dread of being left behind when all others were being washed towards the island of progress. Sabbatical? Sub-par performance? Poor writing? The supposed strength became an obvious weakness, as the lion sinks its teeth deep into the shoulder, rendering limbs lifeless and void of use. The mind is still in shock; there were no clues to be seen prior to the straightforward statement. You remember being told this, “Be ready for anything at anytime from anybody.” Have you forgotten it? Maybe you have had enough good fortune to forget it.

I undoubtedly have had good fortune, yet I don’t think this is the shock of receiving distraughtly sudden news. I feel I was in a perpetual state of passivity, as you have mentioned with my now dreadful feeling if idleness. In fact, I feel most of the time I am passively pensive, perturbed or downtrodden. Sometimes I feel as if I take the people I meet for granted. I do have an idea of poor states of the mind, of the heart, or of misfortune. I create my own misfortune that counters the positive actions done towards me. I feel it is my intrinsic reaction to embrace sadness through happiness. It creates a sense of being that I feel is who I am.

Well, all I am saying is misfortune is universal. And don’t get too emotional you damn vagina.

Takes one to know one, sunshine.

"the first of many goodbyes" (reprise)

I used to work at a gas station down on Nassau and North 15th-Banker Sts. The fumes would render my synapses limp by the time I would arrive home. my father suspected the fumes would make my hair fall out and replace the bare patch in the backyard. Luckily, they closed that station with a wrecking ball. The triangle lot still exists, barren, separating the "Billy Burg" scene from the Polish of Greenpoint. (the day they were filming the Substitute sequel in the vocational school across the street, they made us all fill up the deli trucks without them paying us) The view I used to have from the top of the tankers was a Manhattan skyline filled with fudged clouds of smog. I imagined what it would be like to eat a poison fudge brownie. The taste must be excellent for poison.

Arsenic in your coffee (Arsenic café...?) meets sulfuric brownies. It comes with a coupon where you get $1 off a pound of doughnuts at the Dunkin chain. Though, I must say, I was glad that the gas station was wrecked, since i wasn't making enough money to get anywhere fast. I'd have died before I found true love, as so many visionary artists who have stolen from each other over the years would say. I give them all credit for making some people cringe and cry with delight. After the wrecked N 15th station I had to go work at a printing company. The Gazette was smelly and foul with tiny mice living inside the back rooms where the giant ink cartridges were kept. i could get all the ink on my toast as I wanted, though! Black India! (no, not exactly) the interesting thing is, for some reason, they would grow bamboo in one room, cut it and split the ends in another room, before making brushes in a third. I always thought bamboo was rare, though it actually grows quite rapidly. It's been a major invading species since the colonies were set up back centuries ago. The 17th century must be grinning in it's grave. Technicolored morticians mesmerizing titular dignitaries from the western hemisphere sometimes seems unmitigatedly farcical. Pixelated screens mesmerize. I hear communication companies laughing in each others’ faces after the allusions to their divine plot are revealed through constant satire. Getting no where fast.

After I quit the Gazette, I had to go work in an office. I felt like I'd die from heat exhaustion in a fully air-conditioned room before getting any of the work done they wanted me to do. It wasn't even the fact that it was difficult; the tasks that were given to me were the easiest of tasks to tackle. The sheer boredom and mundanity of the work made brain cells pull a Cobain on Sunday. I lasted 2 years before the day came when I had to go learn things and pay for it afterwards. we all know what I mean by that.


Last I left it, the Greenpoint Gazette had burned down, the rainbow having cut a deal with the Gustapo in Greenpoint. Hey now, get me outta that deal! That’s the real reason I quite. No room for Mafioso. Find me a hat and I’ll forward you a new bit of string for the inner stitching. If you cut corners, your hat will fall off in the mildest of breezes.

So I’ve been dwelling on my failures at the Gazette for a bit too long. I can’t soon forget all that, the pulp and the endangered trees. I feel like it caused me to grow up too fast. I can always go back to a youthful existence, yet I suppose I chose not to and still do. Do I isolate myself purposely? Has it always been so? It’s all a blur really, everything from high school onwards. I can remember a lot from before that, but my perception was different then so it is all without much merit. I remember sneaking onto city buses because I felt since everyone else did it, I should simply follow along. I knew it was wrong, but it didn’t matter. I had a free pass, and the good seats by the air-conditioning would be taken up if I waited in the front of the bus. So sneaking through the back door really benefited me without taking anything away from anyone else. Of course, the person who would have sat in the seat prior to my decision to sneak through the rear door might not have air-conditioning. I was a little selfish then. But who cared? I didn’t know what I wanted, and life was dictated to me by others. It still is, but at least I know how things work and how I can change it. I was only ever bullied in junior high school, because I was white and had pimples and couldn’t play basketball or dance. Without a bit of chemicals in me, I decided to be content with videogames until I could think for myself. That came in high school, along with alcohol and drugs. Fuck all that now, though. If I need a drug, smell my hat, feed me some pumpkin bread and send out the pill to someone else.

Before the departure from the gazette, I had a man talk to me about life without pay, and how important it was to make sure you had continuous pay. I listened to every word he said, yet his meaning escaped me then. I know now he meant that I should always benefit from everything I do. For him, this mantra had monetary conditions of interest. For me, I know this is not always about money. In fact, it rarely is. I get satisfaction in the most mundane things. I woke up to a smiling chicken disguised as a cookie jar one morning and I couldn’t stop smiling for hours. The idea that you have happiness witin and that this intrinsic happiness is triggered by something is wonderful. It’s a love you always have, yet what or who can bring that out? (music, jars, de-foliated trees?) It’s the same thing with all emotions. What brings out the sadness, the anger, the regret? It’s not that simple, since it’s about ephemeral moments in our lives. Here is a little greeting, a short goodbye, and a long stare out the window. The long stare is you thinking about the greeting (the hello) and the premature goodbye (subtle rejection). This is what separates people of action and people of thought. Here is a hello, a goodbye, and now let’s go back to work. That cannot be me. No one asked me where I should live. I live in the most convenient setting so I can think of how I should live.

The Gazette left me feeling relieved that I had not learned much from it. I could never be stuck in a dead-end job like the residents surrounding me. I knew I had no idea what I could do, yet watching machines eat bamboo and tree trunks all day was not the way my life worked. The pegs they created and the empty tabloids for the residents were all products of controlled population anyway, or quotients of dividing up certain populations based on infrastructure and distance from economic strong-points. I cannot begin to imagine the genius needed to divide a metropolis. I now know the ghost of Robert Moses’ marmot haunted the hallways of that gazette. It’s been proven by crackpot alchemists, yet I believe them for Isaac Newton was also into alchemy. Well, so much for modern science and religion being two separate things. Try to organize science too much and you get things like the wacky-wall walker. Try the same thing with religion and you get everything from Calvinists to Mormons to automatons in pressed collars on television. Both are useless and boring. I say if we had a church of science nothing would ever be boring, since you can always love nature like a mother-god. -2141; Nov 15 05

"It's fun to dream." (a post-modern academic blurb)

So then the badger creates a cyclic Cycladean sphere from the clay found on Mílos, for a dollar. The sphere has hidden candies in it and everyone from the area eats and eats, sugar after sugary mouthful, the delicious treats from the Antiquity B.C. (based on current archaeological recoveries)

"...but with the exception of Naxos the soil is not very fertile: agricultural produce includes wine, fruit, wheat, olive oil, and tobacco. Cooler temperatures are in higher elevations and mainly do not receive wintry weather.

"A distinctive Neolithic culture amalgamating Anatolian and mainland Greek elements arose in the western Aegean before 4000 BCE, based on emmer wheat and wild-type barley, sheep and goats, pigs, and tuna that were apparently speared from small boats. Excavated sites include Saliagos and Kephala (on Keos) with signs of copper-working. Each of the small Cycladic islands could support no more than a few thousand people, though Late Cycladic boat models show that fifty oarsmen could be assembled from the scattered communities, and when the highly organized palace-culture of Crete arose, the islands faded into insignificance, with the exception of Delos, which retained its archaic reputation as a sanctuary through the period of Classical Greek civilization." (where is the "sanctuary" today?)

soft cell

Dead

Dead, a man’s best friend.

They picked his head, they stuck his feet in mud, they ran rivers over his back. He still could not hit a golf ball to save his life. Still, his best friend was dead, deader than Dan Quayle’s political career.

It appears his life was not exactly fit for foraging for compliments inside his wallet. His gestures were too subtle to be noticed by anyone, save his own mind and maybe the eccentric friend. But he knew only the crying game, the nude sculpture, and the lost-mold technique. Having seen him in deadly predicaments prior to his current eviction, I sent him candles: wick and wax in a box full of newspapers. He lights candles, jumps over them and places a piece of fabric underneath where his right foot lands. The fabrics are all chosen carefully based on hue, material and susceptibility to flame. He rhymes colors with genders.

Like genders, he is usually happy or sad. Two of the same means two different things to him. I first saw his inner conflict when he left a house with no sex. He walked straight for the nearest tree and burned it down with his Zippo. He planted a new tree within a fortnight. After leaving the house, sexless and disgruntled, he wanders to a liquor store, buys a fifth of vodka, usually, and drinks only one shot, vehemently. The remaining ethyl is then poured on a flower, usually a rose if he can find any, or else, as I have observed during later outbursts, a tulip, someone’s lawn, the windshield of a car, a pile of garbage, a fjord, a dog, a man, a little boy, a sparrow, a woman or a stop sign will take the place of the rose. The empty bottle is then filled with milk shakes and he mails the bottle to his failed lover. He sometimes, as he has told me, writes an original poem on the bottle; ties are permanently severed upon deliverance of the bottle. This does not always occur, this iterative tirade. His severance is usually followed by intervals of isolation. I once did not see him after he mailed a fifth of Smirnoff (filled with strawberry milk shake) to Leonard St. for one month and four days. When I do see him again, he is in denial of anything, carrying on his business without faintly any indiscretions, as if he had been working at the market for the entire month.

NO sympathy for the impoverished!

“I was not expecting this welcome. It was not the kind of words I was anticipating. They were harsh and unrelenting. I had to laugh, a reaction to the harsh words’ unexpectedness. It was deemed poor to the first son in his golden hat, this crying boy delving into a man’s hat. The tears washed down the cheeks, at first sliding down soft white skin, but falling from creviced tanned hide. His home is no where from safety. Caked and sodden grounds meet weary feet and limbs.

“In a dream the son felt he had been wounded by a great force. The cries were not his, but of those sympathetic towards him. He imagined the day when others would cry as a result of his pain. His dream ends with a ginko tree falling on his home, a stucco variety. He would awaken with no breath, wondering if anyone has had his dream before.

“One day the tsunamis arrived earlier than usual. The son saw no one around to comfort him. The golden hat was gone, but was replaced by a tambourine. Rain fell around the home, the stucco sides bleeding into the earth. He walked to his front gate and held his arms, tambourine in hands, over his head. The tears bled down to mix with the stucco, a hitherto unknown mixture of sadness and compassion. No words were uttered. The music played down from the sky. The setting sun kept my eyes open, and I am gracious.”