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March 26th, 2009
March 14th, 2009
An epiphany: this is what I do when I should be doing something else.
Case in point: right now, what I should be doing is the dishes, squelching the resentment that comes with the fact that—of the rotting heap of plates, forks, knives, bowls and glasses in need of soap and water—only about two of them were used by me personally.
In the nag-o-sphere of “should,” I should be online with my checking account now, surveying the anemic aftermath of a balance post child support and rent payments, seeing how much is left to keep the lights on.
I should be calling old friends to apologize for my radio silence and to generally catch up. I should be tidying-up that white trash embarrassment of a back yard. I should at least be finishing that book.
“Don’t SHOULD on yourself.” That was the mantra given to a dear friend by a psychologist following a then-trendy treatment path called Something-or-Other™ (they all have names, those schools of treatment, all with a little ® or ™ following). The Fazukii Method®. The LoveScience™ Way. Whatever. Don’t should on yourself. I liked it then and I like it now. And unlike my friend, I didn’t pay a penny to co-opt the slogan.
But that doesn’t mean I can internalize it.
Some of us, unfortunately to our peril, are seemingly born to defy our “shoulds” (as well as our shouldn’ts) in a passive aggressive personality knot as dense and painful as the last lumpy krick you had in your shoulder. The previous post, wherein I wallow in the nagging suspicion that I “should be doing something” about my largely cavalier if not wholly absent approach to my health was just the tip, as they say, of the shitberg. I myself missed the point. It’s not about the “doing something,” it’s all about the “should be.”
Please remember, these at times navel gazing essays have but one ambition, and it is not to blather on ABOUT me TO me. I’m looking for just one person, somewhere out there, that can relate to the confession at hand and feel better about their own, in this case, inshouldedness. At my most hopeful, that reader posts a comment that, tit-for-tat, makes ME feel better. You know the old saying: You scratch my back, I’ll suck your cock. Or something like that…
For the record, some 20 minutes have elapsed since the close of that last, offensive paragraph and the commencement of this one: my bravely having taken the time to throw out the garbage (2 days overdue) and re-stock my cigarette supply (NEVER 2 days overdue, much as I may wish). So where were we…
Should.
That bit, just above, about my letting the screen go dark while I took out the trash and walked to the corner store? I should (here we go again) have said: Excuse me, dear reader, I have to go take a should.
Now if in writing these missives I’m doing something to fill the guilty void of not doing what I should, what are YOU not doing in favor of reading them? Yikes.
The mind reels.
It is not lost on me that I have lost readership. And I should have. Should.
There’s nothing like a spate of depressing, overly self-regarding entries to accomplish that, yes yes? Overly “happy” entries, especially those concerning being in love, are all the more guaranteed to alienate. Yet while never aspiring to more hits than The Huffington Post in the first place, I have nevertheless enjoyed periods of reasonably high traffic and the reader correspondence to prove it. Those times appear to be over. So much the better (sniff sniff).
While I know this outlet to be a healthy one; it being begun as a way to keep my mind alive in a very dead period of my life; while it provides for Illuminaught a way to scrape the muck from his frontal cortex I may rely upon this outlet, this pressure valve, more than I…
should.
This is not a commercial enterprise; the content is generated for free and the infinitesimal storage required to offer it to the world is free as well. Yet as a person who has forever paid the rent by ensuring his clients’ public entireties (for your money) could be considered commercial successes, I have attempted to better satisfy with the humorous fare for which this journal had originally become so famous and appreciated by approximately seventeen people. Now, my precious Illuminaughties, by all reckoning we’re down to about three. Should I care? Should I dance for the unseen King in hopes of garnering the approval and thus the attention of my primarily imaginary following?
I think there’s some dog should on my shoe.
What I should do is stop now. But why bother? There’s fuck-all to do except the things I should, and the remains of the day are spread before me with an emptiness to rival Nero’s soul. After all, I’ve tried brevity in these pages and that hasn’t seemed to invoke critical acclaim, either.
There is no shortage of what could be credibly defined as “important” text out there. And more often than not I myself am scared-off by too many paragraphs, too many words. When it’s a struggle to hunker down for a page or five penned by the Dali Lama himself, I should manage my expectations when it comes to just how many of you survive this depth into the written rants of an imperfect, unenlightened and occasionally downright hostile writer. I should. Shouldn’t I?
There is, in fact, an affliction called Hypergraphia: a mental/emotional compulsion to write. As there are similar “compulsions” to murder, steal and molest, I suppose it’s a relatively benign affliction to be afflicted with. But today, my 6-foot rabbit, I have decided I should bring it on. Full on. Simply stated, just for a gas, I’ve decided to make this—if it isn’t already—the longest fucking post in Illuminations, evaaar. Because I’ve come to the realization that I…should.
So many so-called bloggers lose steam due to what I’ve heard described, rather brilliantly, as the “Robinson Caruso Syndrome.” If you’ve ever kept an online, particularly a written-word space you know what that is: folding messages into a bottle, corking them up and hurling them into the ocean in hopes of a response. A response that rarely if ever materializes. So rather than make that pitiful outcry of “I’m quitting!” that I’ve seen others do too often and have in truth done myself at least once in this journals’ many years of existence, today I will write everything. Today I will retire, resurfacing only to impart short, glib takes on current events in a style one could accuse me of cribbing from The Onion, if only The Onion’s writers were as funny as I am.
Should I do this? Yes, I should.
There is no reason why the energy (minimal) and the dedication (Pavlovian) applied to these pages can’t be somehow better spent. “You should write a book,” so many have instructed me. “You should write a movie,” say the others. The remaining few typically scratch about for reasonable advice and say things like “You should really write… something.” All of which suggests that this URL POS ain’t quite the optimal venue.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not so enthrall of my gift that I’ve come to see this avenue of expression as somehow beneath me. Nor am I blinkered to the degree that I would become confused—as in confusing my own meager skills with those of a genuinely “great” writer. Me? I just like to chat. Without any annoying interruptions from you, frankly. And while I shouldn’t admit it, my favorite music is the sound of my own voice. But by now, even if you’re way late to the party, you’ve figured that much out. As you should.
Should.
But please, don’t should on yourself if you haven’t already.
I should commit to this now, and doing so has all the creepy elements of declaring we are quitting smoking or drinking, or are going to run five miles a day, or start meditating or eating better and that feeling is intimidating indeed; usually greeted with as much support as a New Year’s Eve resolution to stop partying when our head is hovering above a toilet bowl. That said…
I am going to write something.
And it’s not going to be available for your casual surfing here. And if there’s one whit of you that gives one shit for me, that should be good news.
Because what I “should” do doesn’t really involve the mundane. It’s not about how many vices I should abandon or how many sit-ups I should start doing. In the end, what we all should do is everything we’re able to do. And for too long, while this exercise began as and has accomplished its goal of keeping me from outright brain death, it is the equivalent of trying to piss marbles up a glass wall in a darkened room.
I should, in short, get serious.
If we intend to leave something behind for our children, for our loved ones and even for our enemies, be it known NOW that blogs, “journals” and all the wanky bullshit, word or image, that we post on our sundry social networking sites is fully, fundamentally worthless. The Cloud, as it is understandably christened, is naught but an Orwellian device that convinces us, disingenuously, that we are Doing Something when in truth what we are doing is nothing… at the expense of doing what we should.
My brother/cousin who more than once-upon-a-time called me in tears as an engineer asking for my help to enter the glamorous world of television is now a senior producer of one of the most successful reality shows running. What I told him then I will tell you, and myself, now:
It’s not about what we’re supposed to do. It’s what we should do. And if we don’t should for ourselves, there’s approximately jack-shit we can do for anybody else.
I’ll miss this venue, but only as a lazy man misses his submissive wife. And I’ll be back, here and there, to lampoon the absurdity in the daily news that even the best humor sites on occasion overlook.
If but once I’ve made you smile, or laugh, or even better cry then I am humbled and happy. Yet now I feel the circle completing itself, I sense the snake taking its tail into its own mouth.
I’m tired of jerking off when there’s real fucking to get in. And time, that bitch mistress, is bathing the back of my neck with her hot, smelly breath.
As a child, the shoulds surround and anger us. As a fading star, perhaps they can inspire us.
And at the end of the argument, isn’t that exactly what shoulds should do?
Amen.
And of course as yours always,
Illuminaught
March 11th, 2009
I increasingly feel that I need to do something.
Now by “do something” I don’t mean going to fly a kite in the park, skip stones across a lake or, maybe most sadly, do my laundry. I don’t mean going to see a movie, building a model ship or (sorry sweetie) the “doing something” one does when they go out dancing. I’m not even talking about the higher-minded doing something of the write-your-congressman or volunteer in your community variety.
Sometimes, “doing something” is as simple as going to see a doctor.
Simple maybe. Easy? Not so much.
For me, going to a doctor has all the appeal that going to school has to a dumb person; why bother when you know you’re just going to be yelled at? And that simile is as apt as they get, as any medical professional apprised of the facts would see me as very dumb, indeed.
While it’s unlikely that I’d be the ONLY middle-aged, near two pack-a-day smoking, alcohol-soaked sex addict they ever encountered, I’d like to think I’d be the BEST. Few of my fellow self-destructives go the extra mile by piling avoidable vice atop post-avoidance pre-existing conditions, not the only nor least of mine being a generally over-wound nervous system which full-bore, balls-out catastrophizes where casual worry would suffice.
Then again, I had more than my share of doctors—and some of the best New York City and environs could offer— just a few years ago. What it all amounted to, apart from a cloud shrouded mountain of bills, was just about nothing. But there I go with the rationalizing again, as educated as that rationalizing may be (and damnit! There I go again).
Currently inspiring this internal do something-ness are two coworkers: one about my own age and the other a mere sprite of twenty eight. The former was suffering from unexplained nose bleeds (an acute enough situation it may have brought even me to the doctor’s door). While the cause of the bleeding was deemed benign, very high cholesterol levels were detected. Since choosing life, he’s been on a healthy diet, has greatly reduced his drinking and as a byproduct even further reduced his waistline. The later was having some trouble with his vision and did, to my mind, the most outrageous thing as a result: he had his eyes examined! He was fine, and probably just needs to look away from his computer monitor more often, just as you do. So what’s the point?
Here were two men dealing with some health issues who actually did something about them, in one case discovering a potentially deadly condition that otherwise would have gone undetected, at least until the heart attack. The other guy just got to relax, which alone is worth the trip.
Perhaps it’s knowing that no physician on earth will ever again grant me the gift of relaxation, as in “relax, it’s nothing to worry about,” that keeps me off as many exam tables as often as possible. Perhaps that why I’ve constructed a State of Denial so well furnished and robustly protected it could credibly petition for membership in NATO.
Certainly I could plot a more responsible course without the intervention of the medical establishment. I could tell myself that I can wait another 15 minutes, 30 minutes then an hour or more for that next cigarette. I could remind myself that while Joe Six Pack is as celebrated an American weakness as playing the lotto, nobody ever talks about Joe Twelve Pack. I could at least try to stop eating, when I eat at all, like a cannabis crazed college boy at the snack counter. I could, but will I? Will I ever?
They say the odds of quitting smoking successfully increases 86% “after the first heart attack.” It sure worked for my mother.
Yet here I sit, a half-centurion still dragging around an adolescence that should have been allowed to retire, poor thing, decades ago. I sit, and fret, feeling a new twinge of pain here…and there…sometimes here AND there. There are times when I suspect I have a cold or upper respiratory infection of some kind or another, but after thirty five years of playing the Marlboro Man, how can I tell? The similarities between flu symptoms and those of a bad hangover are profound, as well. And is it that stomach bug that’s been going around or just the aftermath of the psychotic sandwich with processed meat, hot peppers and too much mayo I awoke to create and devour at 3AM?
Most often, I simply don’t know. And truth be told I like it that way.
Who wants bowel cancer, for example, when eating like a fool is more likely the cause of distress? Who would trade a mere hangover for renal failure? Or a perfectly normal smokers’ cough for the far more sinister COPD? As I’ve said on these pages before, not ME, that’s who.
“Damn doctors. Nothing’s ever wrong with you until they diagnose it.” My grandfather, who lived deep into his 90’s and at one time sat on the board of our largest local hospital had far more respect for veterinarians than for MDs ("their patients can't tell them where it hurts"). It’s possible I don’t come by this bias without a genetic predisposition for same.
But again, that’s just the smoke being blown, by me, up my own arse. I don’t like doctors (outside of emergencies) for the same reasons criminals don’t like cops. Period.
So what does it all mean, then? What is Illuminaught being, children, that’s more important than just being stupid? That’s right. He’s being selfish.
What can be more selfish, after all, than killing oneself out of stubborn adherence to habits bad that produce feelings good, albeit feelings as temporary as a Mayfly's courtship.
Due to unfair societal expectations in the area of domestic gender roles, it should be stated that my female companion, a lovely, centered and far more disciplined individual than myself, owns no smear on this relentless canvass of He Knows Betters. First, because He darn well does know better. Second and finally…
A dispassionate observer, including your garden-variety medical practitioner, could look at this entry and define it as, ahem, “a cry for help.” That it may well be. However a bear with its paw caught in a trap is crying for help, too. Those closest to me, like other well-intentioned campers, soon find what happens when they try to “help” the bear, cute and furry though he may appear.
Can everybody say, “mauling?”
This one’s on me. And me alone.
And speaking of this one’s on me, it’s still Happy Hour. Have a seat.
For as more than a couple friends and acquaintances have actually, honestly said during past periods of attempted lifestyle management: “I liked you better when you drank.”
Shit.
Popular and perfectly logical wisdom says you can’t please everybody.
The longer you live, the more you learn you can’t please anybody.
And maybe, maybe that’s why I just go ahead and please myself. As unpleasant as the consequences may ultimately be. Because any alternative would mean that I have to...
do something.
PS and an unrelated aside: To those motorists I see on a regular basis; how are those McCain/Palin bumper stickers workin' for ya'?
March 9th, 2009
OMAHA, Neb. – Amicable billionaire Warren Buffett has shed some light on the US economic downturn that proved surprising even to a frazzled public that has come to expect just about anything on the topic, as long as it’s bad. Appearing live on CNBC Monday morning, Buffett said of the economy, “It’s fallen off a cliff.”
Pressed for background details, the leader of Berkshire Hathaway Inc explained that some fifteen months ago the US economy accompanied then Vice President Dick Cheney on a hunting and fishing trip in Wyoming. After a brisk morning of birding, the pair enjoyed a light lunch at a friend’s lodge. Contacted after the Buffett bombshell, a spokesperson for that establishment insisted neither the economy nor Cheney had any more than “two or three beers each” during the lunch.
Heading off to scope-out an alleged herd of elk in the nearby, craggy cliffs, the economy apparently lost its footing, careening down a sheer precipice and landing in its present, critical condition.
Rumors first began to circulate when the VP returned from the trip some days after the incident without the economy he had been seen leaving with. Speculation was soon suppressed, however, when then United States President and long time Cheney employee George Bush announced that “The fundamentals of our economy are strong.”
Reached for its own comment, the battered US economy insisted the mishap was both an accident and the economy’s own fault, absolving Cheney of any suspicion and going so far as to apologize to the former VP “for any embarrassment this unfortunate event may have caused him.”
Mr. Buffett’s company, Berkshire, owns a diverse mix of more than 60 companies, including insurance, furniture, carpet and jewelry makers, restaurants and utilities. It also holds major investments in such enterprises as Wells Fargo & Co. and Coca-Cola. The billionaire offered no explanation of how he came into this eye-widening information, which has done more to elucidate the current economic situation than all previous revelations combined.
March 6th, 2009
March 4th, 2009
This rabbit hole just keeps going deeper.
Over the course of the last few weeks I have found myself amazed and not too delighted to note that my adoptive home base of Jacksonville, Florida is by far the single most featured location on the reality show “Cops.” Episode after teeth-grinding episode of trailer trash rednecks and crazy ghetto crack heads that I used to enjoy watching—from a safe distance—as a sort of exercise in urban anthropology is now a near nightly reminder of just how far I’ve come, and in what direction (they don’t call it “going south” for nothing).
This is no exaggeration, believe me. Every freaking night there’s a “Cops” episode, sometimes even three episodes back-to-back, that takes place right here. There is obviously such an abundance of Jacksonville footage that even the majority of the quick clips used as the show’s lead-in (you know, as they play “bad boy bad boy, what cha’ gonna’ do when they come for you”) were shot, yes, in Jacksonville.
I’d be better off in Scranton; at least my home towns’ TV presence is (1) fictional and (2) no less an award-laden comedy sensation than “The Office.” Minneapolis, called home for a couple years, was where The Mary Tyler Moore Show took place. The bedroom communities of southern Connecticut, where I slept for some 14 years, are the favored domicile locations for shows like “Mad Men” and movies like “Revolutionary Road” and New York City, well, forget that noise. It would be easier to list the shows that don’t take place in New York.
But now I’m in Jacksonville. And Jacksonville’s got star billing in “Cops.”
Today, I open my news browser to see the featured link: America’s Top 10 Unhappiest Towns, presented by Business Week magazine. I click. I read. Fears confirmed: Jacksonville does in fact make the list, and in a respectable 6th place, too.
From today’s local headlines, and it’s hard to pick just one I can assure you, we have “Gunman Steals Toilet Paper from Elderly Couple.” Now that’s harsh. You can be elderly or out of potty paper, never both.
I hope the production team for “Cops” got the no-doubt terrible aftermath of that particular Jacksonville crime on tape. We’re sure to find out later in the production cycle.
Funny thing is, I used to think those “Smile, You’re On Camera” signs you see at all the convenience stores and gas stations down here were referring to security cameras, not those of the TRU-TV network. You live, you learn…
And with any luck, if you live in Jacksonville and end up on “Cops,” at least hope you're wearing a shirt at the time. Oh, and if you can manage not to have a girlfriend/baby momma with blackened eyes protesting your innocence while you’re being cuffed, so much the better.
After all, it’s one thing to fit in, quite another to join the herd so completely you disappear.
February 24th, 2009
Want. Need.
Which? Which indeed.
Consumer Confidence, as announced by the Associated Press today, is at a record low. Seems people in perpetual fear of losing their livelihoods just ain’t very fast n’ loose with the green, and while I’ve seen little in the way of that mainly mythical “disposable income” for a few years now, I can track my own Confidence as a Consumer and see that, for once, I fit in beautifully with the crowd.
Take just the period of time encapsulated over the past two weeks. As already mentioned in a prior post my sons were here for ten days. I spent money on food, gas, food, food and, for one night, food and lodging that I would not have had to spend had they not been here. And more food. And there were the airline tickets to buy in the first place. But by the same token I spent considerably less money than I would have liked to. I would have liked to do a full day at one of the many Orlando theme parks with them; instead we just drove past mile after mile of giant, festive and increasingly imploring signs, much to the dismay of my youngest two. But as I had to explain, even if we had the time (which we didn’t), I didn’t have the money (which I didn’t).
One day during their stay the Daisy and I took them to one of the bigger local flea markets in an attempt to chase some cheap laughs. I knew that there they would find any number of must-have trinkets and they did, yet I was surprised when the two-hour excursion concluded with just two campy, Disney character CD cases, a single, sturdy wallet and one funky $3.00 belt in their shopping bags.
Even kids are pulling their cash pretty taut these days, and my offers to buy the stuff for them fell on largely plugged ears. When I insisted on buying my eldest a souvenir tee-shirt from one of the colleges we visited, he nearly clothes-polled me on my way to the bookshop cash register.
I bought it for him, anyway. But when I suggested doing the same at the next school he absolutely forbade the notion, saying something along the lines of “I’ve already got plenty of tee-shirts, dad.” Geeze. Is that my kid, or my grandfather?
During those college tours, I said not Word One about the money it would take to actually attend any of them: we’ll hang ourselves off that bridge when we come to it and I fully agreed with the Ex that his decisions shouldn’t be based on well-meaning sensitivity to price. Yet when I did slip and happen to muse on the vast difference in tuition for resident and out-of-state students (which was a truly astonishing several thousand dollars), he leapt in with gusto, cutting me off before I could finish the whole, honestly casual thought and rattling off the exact numbers for tuition, room and board and etc for students of different residency and/or scholarship status as if he had been taking detailed notes.
Clearly taking notes he had been, just not with a pencil.
Lest I be accused of putting my thumb to the scales, this doesn’t give Florida any leg-up when it comes to his choice of school anyway, as a well scattered family probably provides opportunity to claim residence in a number of states. Five that I can think of right now. Two if a parent has to reside.
From one vantage point, I’m delighted that my kids are mature, unselfish and perceptive enough to be aware of a…shall we say ‘fragile’ money situation, especially given the comparative level of privilege they were used to not so long ago. Hell, they still have cooler mobile phones and more heavily tricked-out iPods than I do. From another view, however, I feel something not-quite-but-close-to shame when I hear one of them castigate the other for wanting to order something “expensive” from the already not-fancy restaurant menu as if the difference between a six and an eight dollar entrée might break the family budget.
But I’d have a better chance of banning rock n’ roll than curbing coin-counting of that sort. Ebenezer Scrooge is America’s new role model, with fashionable ladies-who-lunch in NYC and LA declaring themselves “Ressionistias” and ultra high-end merchants like Barney’s and Bergdorf’s actually being so gauche as to include prices in their advertising.
Forefend.
And was there a single TV news outlet this past holiday season that didn’t do a human interest featurette with little kids telling Santa that they didn’t want much this year? That daddy lost his job and mommy worked two and they might have to move into grandma’s house and there were “poor” kids that needed stuff more than they did, anyway? Has it really come to this?
All that tear-jerk pandering that puts me in mind of depression era propaganda in its attempt to bestow a bravely tattered nobility on an entire citizenry at the very curb of homelessness due largely to their own bad decisions—up to and very much including the Evil Clown they put in office 8 and again 4 years ago. It only makes my hackles snap to attention and my fist clinch even tighter on those pennies and nickels because yes, it really has come to this.
Heh.
“Pennies and nickels.”
“Count your pennies and nickels, the dollars can look after themselves.” “Let’s nickel and dime this deal so we can come to terms.” Since childhood I’ve thought of phrases like that as metaphors; genteel and self-consciously quaint aphorisms that danced around the crude edges of talking about money. “Real” money. Which among Polite Company in any socio-economic sphere simply wasn’t talked about. Wasn’t. Now, I’ll bet more than one cat fight has erupted over who paid less for what at Henri Bendel’s. Now Ruth Chris sends me coupons (coupons!) for $19.99 steak frites. Now, towards the end of any given pay period, if I need a pack of smokes or just about anything else, pennies and nickels it is.
The first couple of times my boys came to see me down here we did the waterside restaurant crawl, we dined and souvenired with immoderation in Saint Augustine, even schlepped out to the little fishing village of Mayport for some fresh seafood at a place I‘d heard about but had never been to. This time...
I actually cooked.
Like with the oven and shit.
At home.
I made a meatloaf that, while nobody complained, turned out a little dry and dense. I also stuffed and roasted a whole chicken which turned out great, if a little small to yield enough meat for my own portion. Oh well, the cook miscalculates, the cook suffers.
Breakfast was mostly made at home as well. My signature Egg-in-a-Hole, like it or not. This created some amusement when the boys recalled how in more Confident times “breakfast” often translated to my handing them $40 and directions to Einstein Brothers Bagel Bakery. Even in these zany days, when any joy that Blue Ray players and flat screens are selling for a 5th of last year’s prices is mitigated by rampant commodity inflation, do you know how many Eggs—and Holes for that matter—can be purchased for $40?
Of course that’s bad news for Einstein Brothers AND Best Buy. Good news, I guess, for your supermarket’s dairy department and absentee fathers who can manage to remember which side of the frying pan faces up.
It’s not all bad though, this belt-cinching as necessity for most and fashion statement for some. Who could have predicted, at long last, a backlash against bottled water even among the trendy? Or, to answer my own question, that penny-pinching would itself become trendy? Who knew what a damn yummy, moist n’ tender chicken I could roast? I stuffed it with apples and onions so the skin could crisp while the meat beneath remained succulent, served it with drip pan-grilled asparagus and side salads and it was so awesome I may even do it again soon. My meatloaf, while okay, needs a little work: a lighter hand with the kneading and a less conservative stance on roasting time should about fix it. But imperfections included, it made a helluva’ fine sandwich the next day. And that, just as in turkey, is the most important thing about meatloaf, isn’t it?
Once again the boys’ departure was marred by a delay. Only an hour, but still, airport delays always suck. I can’t go with them to hang at the gate because they, by virtue of being over 10 years old, are considered “adults” by the idiot airlines. And just as I was asking if they had any money to help kill the time I realized that I, Big Daddy, had by that time little but pocket lint to offer. Luckily yes, they had money. Bright kids, not blowing all their dough at flea markets and college book stores.
Or theme parks.
Want. Need.
Pick one.
My personal brand of Consumer Confidence takes a stand for the new reality. As a Consumer, I am completely Confident that this economy and thus this country has been flogged, fucked and nailed up wet. I am confident that over the course of this year and well into 2010 more people I know will lose their jobs and I have a better than average chance of being one of them. I am Confident that I and millions of others will never again see their investments at the levels they enjoyed barely a year ago. I am Confident that if I ever so much as see one red penny, one single, solitary goddamned cent from that Social Security Ponzi scheme I’ve paid into for over 30 years I’ll be so surprised that I’ll shit myself.
Then again, by that time they will have pushed the eligible age to 84-1/2, so if I make it at all I’ll probably be shitting myself on a regular basis anyway.
See? As it turns out I am confident after all.
In fact, that’s my new Superhero name: CONSUMER CONFIDENT.
So full-price payers, Starbucks suckers and other evil doers beware, I’m watching.
Wherever there is premium cable where basic would do, I’m watching. Whenever a take-out dinner is ordered when there’s a perfectly good can of beans in the kitchen, I’m watching. Whoever goes out for lunch when they damn well could have brown-bagged should know…I’m Consumer Confident.
And I’m watching.
By way of full disclosure, I went out for lunch today. Even us Superheroes step out of character now and then. In my own case, maybe a little more now than then. In truth the Daisy and I eat lunch out every workday. But this most commonly involves ordering one sandwich and splitting it (she was doing the same with sharing one drink for a while, but on that practice I had to put down my foot). Point is, while waiting at the register to pay for our one sandwich and two (small) drinks, I saw a cookie out of the corner of my eye.
It was a cinnamon cookie.
And damn that cinnamon cookie looked fine.
It was $1.39. But all I could think about was the next time I’m buying that 12-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon and the dewd looks at me across the counter and says “You’re $1.39 short, buddy.”
Then I’d have to get the Miller High Life.
Fuck the cookie.
Want. Need.
Which?
Yes. Which indeed.
February 20th, 2009
Here’s this post again: my kids were here for the past nine days and at this very moment they’re in the air, jetting to JFK and—give or take an hour with Friday night traffic—home soon thereafter.
It would be pointless to say we had a “nice time,” but fuck you I’ll say it anyway. We had a nice time.
We had a mission this visit too; take my eldest for college tours that amounted, at their furthest, to a five-hour, one-way drive from home base. But we did it, damnit, and I had one giant-jumpin’-jeezus-help-me helluva’ time sitting next to a sixteen year old who was driving my car on I-fucking-95, America’s Most Populated Deathtrap.
He did an admirable job behind the wheel, especially with his old man having stroke after stroke after balls-out conniption fit in the passenger seat beside him. After this kind of training the kid could land the fucking Space Shuttle with no wheels and an unbalanced chimpanzee trying to bit his ankles off.
And for that, I am a Great Father.
Best part about your first baby driving? That little, wittle, pookie poo whose diapers you changed and whose wails you comforted with a gentle, rocking motion now drives half way. Maybe more if he’s in the mood.
Cool.
Weird, but cool.
It’s tough, and you know it is so I won’t blow much space on it but…
It’s tough to hope they’re happy while they’re here and tougher still to wave goodbye at the airport. If I could I’d wave my arm and make everything all right. But it’s not. It’s not all right and, for them, I can only dance, shuffle, waffle and when pressed apologize for being a failure. A failure in ways both real and imaginary.
They pretty much buy it.
They’re pretty cool kids.
And like all children, each of them deserves “alone time:” some portion of moments, no matter how small, that the parent devotes exclusively to them. And I know from experience that this isn’t any easier to pull off when one is a full-time, living-at-home-parent than it is now, as an absentee.
Whatever. You don’t give a shit. I’ll try to be funny from now on, okay?
We shared a hotel room in Saint Petersburg. It was really, uh…something. Two of mine are still at that [male] age wherein farts are about the most amusing thing to happen to mankind since Fire. And even back then the second thing mankind did [after roasting dinner] was to use that fire to light farts. More recently…
It got so bad I instituted a “fart on the balcony only” rule, only to see them taking much joy in sprinting across the room to poke their butts out the sliding glass doors every five minutes or so.
Who has to be a volunteer football coach to inspire athleticism in his children?
Not me. That’s who.
That balcony on St. Pete's Beach had an excellent view of the Gulf of Mexico and my children, my pride and joy, came very close to getting their nation embroiled in an “Acts of Hostility” situation with our neighbors to the south, depending on the prevailing winds.
I can’t help it. They fucking LOVE chicken wings and Diet Coke and according to their physician-prescribed diet plan that’s about all they’re allowed to eat.
What bugs me at this moment is the silence.
No farts with giggles immediately after. No sudden blaring of music from a distant corner or even a random “Dad?” from one of them who is, after all, just checking on my presence, just making sure I’m there.
Because most of the time I’m not.
I’m not.
There.
Most of the time.
Was I There while they where Here? Fuck I hope so.
I hope so.
Who can understand this feeling? When they’re here they make me crazy and when they’re gone it feels like my heart has been plucked out of my chest.
“We have to find a way to get you comfortable in your own skin, Mr. Illuminaught” a very highly regarded, Park Avenue physiatrist once told me. The better part of a million bucks later and that therapy has clearly born little fruit.
All relationships are flawed because all participants are flawed. Some of us are just a tad more flawed than others.
I got to spend ten days with my boys. And that’s awesome. And they’ve taught me one rather important thing: if you don’t think this spew was funny enough? Well then…
Your FACE is funny.
That’s right. Your FACE.
Powned.
Yo.
They've just texted that they've arrived in NYC. Safe babies. Home babies.
MY babies.
February 10th, 2009
KINGSTON— The Jamaican National Swim Team, responding to growing insinuations that record breaking gold medal winner Michael Phelps “may or may not” be allowed to compete for the US in the 2012 Olympics in London, have offered Phelps a slot in their lineup.
“No problem, mon,” said Jamaican head coach Dexter Wynter, “Dis sorta’ ting ain’t gonna’ take Michael off one, single box of Wheaties down here, let me assure you.”
Recent revelations that the American super human engaged in cannabis smoking while attending a college party several months ago have rocked both the sporting and advertising worlds, resulting in Mr. Phelps’ forfeiting of multiple-million dollars in endorsement contracts and leaving the United States Olympic Committee red faced with embarrassment.
“Wot de heck is wrong wid you people,” grinned Mr. Wynter, “dis mon produces more gold for your country dan the de Yukon Rush and you push him down like dat? No how dis makes sense. But so be it. We see you in London, mon. Be free.”
Pressed for details of the national team’s offer and the likelihood of Mr. Phelps obtaining fast-tracked Jamaican citizenship [as anything being accomplished in Jamaica in less than three years is considered 'fast track.' --ed.], coach Wynter just smiled a huge, infectious smile, tossed his ample dreds and walked calmly away towards the beach.
Humming.
Phelps could not be reached for comment.
Reporting by Illuminaught with inspiration from the Don't-You-Wish Foundation.
January 29th, 2009
ATLANTA— A near penniless intern at CNN headquarters here has revealed that Wolf Blitzer ate his lunch.
“I had just gone into the employee break room, where the refrigerator is, and was talking to some other people and counting my change to see if I could get a Coke from the machine, and Mr. Blitzer walked in,” said Mr. Thomas H. Fanning, 24, of 2626 Franklin Road, who agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity.
“We all got quiet because he never, like ever comes in there. He walks right up to the ‘fridge and opens the door. He pushes some stuff around and comes out with my sandwich. And I know it’s mine because it was the only one wrapped in tinfoil. I’m out of Saran Wrap and don’t get paid for another, like, two weeks.”
Fanning goes on to detail how Wolf Blitzer then ate his, that is to say Fanning’s sandwich. “It wasn’t even cut in half or anything because all my knives, even the plastic ones, were dirty. It was a baloney and cheese, only there was no cheese because I ate the slice of cheese on my way to work. And it didn’t have mustard or mayo, either; I only had ketchup at the house. So it was a baloney and ketchup sandwich, which even I think is disgusting.”
Blitzer, however, seemed to enjoy the young man’s culinary creation. “He looks at it, over his glasses like he’s reading fine print or something, then takes this huge bite out of it. Then he nods his head, looking around the room at all of us, making mmmm-mmmm noises and shit. Like it’s the best thing he ever put in his mouth. He acted like it was perfectly natural, like it was his sandwich.”
Asked why he said nothing to Blitzer before forfeiting his lunch, the young man confesses to more than a little fear. “He made eye contact with everyone in that room while he was chewing and mmmm-mmmmming, like he was daring any of us to say something,” said Thomas. “This job sucks, and maybe I have to watch more news than a lot of people, but even my Aunt Milly’s wart knows this is no time to be looking for a job.”
Others present in the break room at the time of the incident were unavailable for comment, with the exception of one attractive young lady who said the whole experience was a revelation. “We always assumed it was Ms. Giant Fatass who was stealing stuff from the employee refrigerator,” she said, “now I feel guilty for thinking that.”
Reached for a reaction, Blitzer’s publicist insisted on his client’s innocence. “Wolf, and many viewers don’t realize this, is Jewish. And while not strictly Kosher, he would never eat a baloney sandwich unless he was confident that it was all beef, preferably Hebrew National or, in a pinch, Boar’s Head brand”. Told of the witnesses, the publicist would only say, “Did you hear what I said? Hebrew National All Beef Bologna. There’s no way some punk-ass gopher in the tape filing department is going to be affording that premium level of cold cut anytime soon.”
Reporting by Illuminaught with additional reporting by Ted and Mary Anne Slocum, CNN’s brother/sister cleaning team/rumor vectors. This article cannot be authenticated nor has it been fact checked. All rights reserved © 2009 The Illuminaughty Media Cartel.
January 23rd, 2009
So we’re having a chuckle at the office this morning about the Highly Placed Executive Fucktard who “tweeted” his way into deep hurt with his client by disparaging this VERY LARGE advertiser’s home town moments after landing at said town’s airport.
There’s a reason that network is called Twit-ter after all.
This lead to a conversation about the many deeply stoooopid things people write, do and “share” via photos online as if they were safe at the breast of only their twenty-million closest friends.
Our head of client service spoke of a Facebook contact who sends a blast, every Friday at 3PM, proudly announcing that he’s in the process of getting shitfaced. “Good luck getting that next job, dude” said my coworker, shaking his head in disbelief and, to my dismay, employing the word “dude.”
The agency owner remarked that he “Googles” (c'mon, do we even have to put that verb in quotes anymore?) every applicant whose resume crosses his desk and is amazed by what he finds within mere clicks: “It’s like, I swear, every one of them has pictures of themselves getting tore-up with tequila and/or exposing themselves on top of bars. Whatever. No judgments in a private context. But putting that stuff online? I see it, and I’m no prude, but I think to myself ‘no thanks.’ If I can see that shit my clients can as well.”
This, of course, induced in me a mild-to-moderate panic that lead to my Googling myself the moment he, that is to say my boss, walked away. I’ve not done so in a very long time; my fear of developing hairy knuckles having kept that sort of self-searching mostly at bay.
Nothing but the usual suspects popped up: most of them the results of having written for a certain online magazine for so long and others attached to past, professional associations with film production companies, articles that mention me in industry news, my perfectly benign LinkedIn profile and even a history of my published Letters to the Editor in the New York Times.
Whew.
By design or happy accident it would take more digging than just typing my [real] name into the search field to find this Journal, and as far as I recall I haven’t pissed on many employers past or current in these pages. However there was for a few years—and for reasons long forgotten—a pic of my ass on my “user profile” page here. It was even captioned “My Ass.” It was in Black & White and, as such, automatically Art. But that’s the very sort of spontaneous, I-think-this-is-funny-at-the-moment thing that could really sour an interview. Or any relationship, for that matter.
“There’s a picture of your ass online.”
“But honestly, I don’t even HAVE an ass. Ask anyone. I’m even uncomfortable sitting on this well-cushioned chair.”
“I’m sorry. There appears to be a vertical crease or opening, perhaps a chasm, at the base of your spine and it’s right here…[turns computer monitor to face interview chair]…and it’s online. And I don’t think our anti online-ass clients—some of our largest revenue sources—would approve.”
And that, as they say, would be that.
Wearing a rare clean shirt and not drinking too much the night before all wasted because you thought it was funny to have a picture of your ass pop up when someone hit “user profile.”
Hey, we’re all getting used to Web 2.0. In public. It—like having reproductive organs before having real jobs—is the equivalent of unregulated gun ownership. And it’s not, like every other fucking thing in the news lately, “unprecedented.”
[Now you must visualize me banging my cane on the front porch floorboards for silence]
I remember when email was new.
The overwhelming majority of us only had it at the office, for the office. We were herded into groups and led to “classes” on how to use this new marvel of instant communication.
I still had an IBM “Selectric” on my desk (look it up, punk).
It was the biggest drag on productivity you could possibly imagine: sending jokes back-and-forth between office friends all day long and getting “ass cover” bullshit from account execs after 7PM (“But you KNEW this was due to the client today, I sent you an email yesterday!”)
Illuminaught will never forget how an otherwise smart and almost nice guy, our most senior account man asked, one Monday morning, if I would come to his office to “take a look at something.”
He looked uncharacteristically ashen, positively soul-clinched. What’s up?
“Read this,” he said, steering me in front of his monitor, “and tell me how fucked I am.”
This cat made enough money to have Internet access AT HOME. Not a small thing in those days, kiddies, when most of us were still intimated by the progress made in rapid-load carbines and surgical anesthetics during the Civil War. And what did he do with it? I mean besides the obvious porn?
Of a glorious Sunday afternoon, from his “study” in exclusive Westchester, he, after finishing the better part of a bottle of Scotch (WHY do account guys like Scotch so much?), decided to tell then Worldwide Chairman, Charlotte Beers what he REALLY thought of upper management.
Whoo boi!
It was quite the broadside, indeed. But I calmed him by saying she’d never read it. He might be a big swingin’ dick here on the 80th floor, but ain’t no Worldwide Chairman checking her own email—especially back when it was seen as little more than an elaborate string-and-can device with which to impress clients—and he could always claim one of his rotten teenagers had gotten at the home computer.
He smiled. He stretched his shoulders. It was as if I had lifted the very world from his hungover back. Nothing ever went down. And his career, far as I know, is still going strong and doing so within the same corporation.
But not all of us can or will be so lucky. Not anymore.
Our egos are at the mercy of our egos; our thoughts are encouraged and our opinions solicited by a vast army of Social Networking devices that require no consultation, no contemplation and no Breathalyzer tests. And our names, our REAL names are forever attached to those words and images (hey, YOU might not find this page with my actual name, but the IT guys I’ve known at the last few shops I’ve worked with could, no problem).
Great.
That oh so Catholic conception of misdemeanors fucking up the afterlife real estate market has come to roost in the Living Now. And usually, that unrelenting purgatory is stumbled into via a MySpace link.
Those "poor," usually drunk chickies successfully recruited by “Girls Gone Wild” cameramen? They’re on their own.
As are their unsuspecting new fiancées.
These things; these places these “spaces” including this one don’t care about us. Caring about us is up to us, as it always has been and ever will be.
“We don’t air dirty laundry in public!” cautioned my grandmother and yours alike. So remember. So listen.
Don’t be
a Twit.
January 20th, 2009
As we were grousing and grumbling over the moribund economy and the you-know-what fate of people in the advertising business at times like these, a coworker mentioned something to the effect of, “But why worry? The world comes to an end in 2012, anyway.”
Oddly, that comment cheered me up more than anything has in days.
Why, I reasoned, wouldn’t they eliminate the penalties for early IRA withdrawal if we’ve only got three years left? If that happened—and as a result we could all be reasonably sure we really were scheduled to go ass-up towards oblivion on December 21st, 2012—then go ahead and fire me. Fire all of us!
Even with the horrific beating the market’s taken, I’ve still got just enough socked away to carry me, my kids and a well-wisher or two for a lousy three more years. We wouldn’t be staying at the Plaza or racing Bentleys on our private island, but especially with the reduced appetites that must come along with impending, cataclysmic death, we’d be fine.
Excited by this prospect of End Times at the Right Time, I decided to do some research with which to pad my letter to the IRS, and if needs be, to the brand-spankin' new president himself. Sadly, my scheme, like so many others, was skewered by what appears to be (damnit) a perfectly sane and scholarly website. Here is a sample:
"…when a calendar comes to the end of a cycle, it just rolls over into the next cycle. In our Western society, every year 31 December is followed, not by the End of the World, but by 1 January. So 13.0.0.0.0 in the Mayan calendar will be followed by 0.0.0.0.1 - or good-ol' 22 December 2012, with only a few shopping days left to Christmas." - Excerpt from Dr Karl Kruszelnicki’s “Great Moments in Science.”
So, Dr. Karl, you’re saying the Mayan calendar doesn’t “end” on 12/21/2012 any more than Television “ends” when Stephen Colbert says “goodnight America.”
You, sir, are a rat bastard.
For a few minutes there I thought I finally had a retirement plan.
January 18th, 2009
Sunday, January 18, 2009—the New York Times
In this, what has been christened the “inaugural weekend” by CNN and others in anticipation of Tuesday’s process and Right Now’s advertising dollars, we have some amusements upon which to report.
Let’s leap right to today’s, that is the vaunted Sunday “The New York Times Magazine.” Right off the bat we have the expected OBAMA’S PEOPLE headline on the cover and some interesting, full-body portraits of the incoming cabinet inside. But as in all things what lies between the lines is more interesting still.
A few flips of the pages and we find an ad for eMusic.com, promoting the free download, to one’s iPod or equivalent, of “1 Free Audiobook” and the audiobook featured, as you’ve already guessed, is Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope.”
Four pages later we are confronted with a two-page spread from Steuben Glass offering a $7,500 example of the very sort of “commemorative plate” already familiar to consumers from the $24, strict-limit-of-two-per-household as-seen-on-TV variety from Franklin Mint or other such gilt-edged junk merchants. The Steuben version is audacity, indeed.
Barely one page beyond and we face Chevron’s ad; featuring a close-up shot of an attractive black woman and the subhead “And we will, too.”
Yes we can? And so can the fat-ass oil industry?
Then, on page 41, we have the ad for the Visa “Black Card.”
Oh fer christsakes.
Deeper in we are confronted with the Carnegie Hall/Bank of America full-pager flogging (sorry) HONOR! A celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy. One page beyond we see a fashion ad for a brand called Tallia, available at Macy’s, wanting us to know in both words (“standing behind President Obama and his team”) and pictures (a young, African American male model) that they’re ready to ride that Magic Negro wave.
But that ain’t all.
Right on Page 5 of the proper newspaper is a full page, full color ad for Ralph Lauren’s Polo line that is composed entirely of a mocha-hued child wearing an $800 polo shirt and straw boater hat in Lauren’s typical yacht club backdrop.
Like if.
Black, it seems, is the new black.
And that is starting to piss Illuminaught right off.
I voted for BHO not because he is “black” nor in spite of the same. I voted for him because he wasn’t [1] Bush or [2] a Republican and [3] the guy actually seems to have his shit together. This pathetic trolling for what Madison Avenue’s “consumer planners” are undoubtedly calling Black Gold is as unseemly as it is obvious.
It must hurt his back.
The other day an elderly African American lady (please note my delicate, politically correct phraseology) stopped me on the street to ask, “Do you know where them busses gonna’ be?” “What busses, ma’m?” I replied. “Them busses that for free gonna’ take us to the inauguration!” Nope. Didn’t know a damn thing about that. But I do know that this inauguration event is expected to draw at least as many people as JFK’s (2 million?) and I doubt the Secret Service is all about free busses from the ‘hood.
From the black Americans thinking “now it’s our turn” to the marketers happy to capitalize on that delusion this whole thing is frustrating for all the wrong reasons.
We didn’t elect a “black" man. We elected a smart man who’s stupid enough to believe he can change things for the better.
And we’ve done that before, even when the dude was only white.
Only white.
I lucked-out in high school when the primacy of musical acts like David Bowie and etc in the Glam Rock period made skinny, somewhat effeminate boys a desirable item on the girls’ checklist. Guess I’m finally, officially out of fashion.
Muscle I can build. Weight I can gain. But Black I’m not.
Is anyone else embarrassed by this blatant commercialization of skin tone? If not, please let me know the next time you see a black kid in a Ralph Lauren Polo Shirt, wearing a boater mind you, at the yacht club.
Peace out.
January 16th, 2009
The worst part about being a cynic is being right all the time. Eventually.
While I myself have escaped the knife for now, what amounts to 1/3rd of my agency’s staff will be let go today. As in laid-off. AKA fired.
We Lucky Few who remain do so at the pleasure of the King; at least for as long the King can still make payroll.
There is practically no such thing as a “new client” in times like these and every client on the existing roster has slashed their ad budget to the brittle bone. And here, as in most other businesses everywhere, more resources than human will be cut in parallel with client spending. Like trimming the office square-footage and reducing any hope of seeing that annual bonus to the laughable fantasy I already knew it was (and probably even dropping the number of pencils we can keep in our desktop coffee cups).
Oh God. Coffee. I wonder if we’ll still have coffee. The free candy and Nature Valley bars over the office ‘fridge are surely done for, and that stuff amounted to at least half of my weekday caloric intake.
This sucks.
What especially sucks is knowing that these people are dead before they know it. The boss and We Lucky Few had our dour, closed-door chat before lunch. It is now lunch. He will be doing the hard part when he gets back from lunch.
Tick, tick, tick…
Now he’s back from lunch.
And now I want to get the fuck outta’ here before these highly pressurized vibes give me a nosebleed.
My stomach has known something very much like this was going to happen for several weeks. And now that the rest of me has been forced to see my stomachs’ side of things at least I can prove my visceral paranoia is not of the delusional variety. Perhaps sadly, it never is.
Now it’s 4:30PM, that time of the work day—especially of a Black Friday—that just doesn’t know when to leave. As a [remaining] coworker just said, right now this place “feels like Detroit.”
Couldn’t have put it better. Won’t even try.
If there’s a next victim in this blood opera I’m it. They want me to stay, in fact I was asked to stay in spite of the stern realities as if I could find a better berth with a wave of my hand. If only. I bluntly asked if they could afford me and was assured that “after these cuts” everything will be back on keel. But the truth is that, for this little shop, I’m a big luxury. More of what they want than, come to brass tacks, what they need. So we’ll see. We always see.
From the very beginning of my career I was warned that advertising is not an industry that cares for its old. But that’s not something most of us think too hard on while we’re rocketing skyward in our so-called “peak earning years” and our capo di tutti i capi is an 86 year-old Englishman given to maintaining a tree-martini glow while paying a bagpiper to follow him around the office.
“I’m gonna’ be that guy one day” I would say.
Well, I mastered the drunk part anyway.
So tonight, as soon as I am free of this temporarily toxic environment, I will raise my glass (ok, my can) to those lost today, here and elsewhere, trusting that they would do the same for me and hoping they won’t have to anytime soon.
Fasten your helmet straps, kiddies. It’s going to one hell of a year. Trust me on that. Because don’t you know?
I’m right.
I’m right all the time.
Eventually.
January 14th, 2009
Welcome to LiveJournal, the hosting site you are now visiting, and what for me has been little more than a bookmark to click on when I’m feeling all writey and such. But lately, apart from my usual bouts of financial panic and general self-pity, I haven’t felt very writey. I’ve been uninspired. So for the first time in approximately ever I hit the ‘Explore LJ’ tab on my homepage here. There, in the ‘Today’s Highlights’ window, was found an assortment of journals ranging from exceptionally low quality to special-class-spastic.
And they were the highlights.
Suddenly I worried that I might be, if inadvertently, That Guy who’s a little too old to be hanging so close the schoolyard without drawing the attention of the crossing guard.
Lordy. Is LiveJournal the MySpace of blog sites? And if so, why am I always the last to know the Hot v. Not of interweb neighborhoods? Who are these people whose concept of a journal or a blog or a whatever consists of posting intentionally blurry photos captioned with non sequiturs pecked out in TXT language and peppered with links that, once chased, invariably arrive at celebrity gossip sites skinned in neon pink?
Earlier that day I had followed another link, one sent by a friend, to a site called DailyKoos, appearing to be also a ‘journal’ or, as they seem to prefer, ‘diary’ site and just about everywhere I clicked there was someone funny jabbering about something unusual; little to no drivel (or Hello Kitty graphics) in sight. Then again I didn't look very close and the place may be powered by professional writers. But here? One could find more art and insight in a Jr. High scrapbook and less drool in a stroke ward.
Here, I came across one feature that was at least entertaining even as it hardened my suspicion that Illuminations might be looking for a new home soon: the 'Random Journal' button. Once clicked, this magic switch will flick you to someone’s journal, somewhere on this site, and where she stops nobody knows. But most often she stopped in Russia. Da. Rossiyskaya Federatsiya. Or Российская Федерация, if you prefer.
The strangeness of all the Cyrillic on offer was just setting in when, thanks again to the Random Journal button, I found an entry in English. Well, sort of. But it was understandable enough to impart some interesting information by way of a link to a story with a lead stating: “LiveJournal, the San Francisco-based arm of Sup, a Russian Internet startup, has cut 20 of 28 U.S. employees — and offered them no severance, we're told.”
The whole, sorted tale is here. But unless you’re a fellow plugger on these same pages, it’s doubtful you care. Bottom line is I’m on a Russian hosting site. Who knew? You may have. As I said I trend behind the curve on web savvy and the Who’s-buying-Who in tech news one needs to follow to have any.
And unlike the majority of English-speaking contributors here, my Ruskie comrades may be quite talented, but as my foreign language skills are limited to asking for a beer in Spanish, French, Czech, Dutch and German there’s no way for me to know. (For a while, I could also ask for a beer in Chinese and insist on air conditioning in French, but that knowledge was purely tactical in nature and has since been flushed due to non-use).
Speaking of flushed, this getting to know my own web address occasioned in me some awareness of the tenuous nature of keeping one’s thoughts, photographs, even critical business and personal contact information in “the cloud.” It all feels so real, but it wouldn’t take much more than one major server crash for said cloud to earn its name.
Poof.
Then again, as we use sites such as this one for free*; other hosts such as FaceBook and Flickr and so on for free; provide content for free and access that content for free, it’s important to remember that we may ultimately get what we pay for.
Drift even the laziest glance to the right side of this very page and you’ll see how little advertising LJ has been able to attract lately. It wasn’t too long ago that you would have seen six or eight banner ads in that same space, most from major national advertisers. There’s no way for me to know what’s blinking over there at the moment you’re reading this, but I’m willing to bet it’s a blurt, maybe two, for LJ itself (the same way that TV and radio uses unsold ad space for self promotion) or for some nominal web store specializing in doggy treats or T-shirts.
So 'sup, Sup? If you’re so stressed you fired most of LJ’s US staff—with no severance and probably as much notice—will you simply pull the plug on all your contributors with equal nonchalance?
I seriously doubt anyone’s still reading this. Starting with an absence of writerly inspiration and ending up with a novella wasn’t the plan. In fact given the scarcity of unicorns, hearts and pinkness in this journal I sometimes wonder if anyone reads it at all (with the exception of The Daisy, of course. But my girlfriend reading my posts is sort of like my mom telling me how handsome I am; a compulsory kindness of dubious objectivity).
Here’s the punch line: if anyone out there knows how this material can be backed-up or perhaps even better, moved, please give me a shout.
It’s not like I’m under any illusion that my erratic key thumping is worthy of preservation for the wider world. I am very aware that I’m no Samuel Langhorne Clemens or even an Abigail Van Buren (thank god), but after so many years before its mast this journal has, for me at least, garnered some value of the emotional variety. And I’d like to believe that, someday, it will at least be there for those who might on occasion miss me.
There, whether they read it or not.
By the way, if there are any still-employed LJ moderators sniffing about, how do I order a beer in Russian?
Thanks, and udachi!
* "Free" if one doesn't count surrendering to these sites some degree of privacy. Because the sale of so-called User Data, not ad space alone, is how these things make money.
January 13th, 2009
Depending on what is available in the immediate surroundings, I fling a handfull of sand (or sod from a houseplant) into the persons eyes and make a run for it.
It is here. My mid-month monster. That phase of the moon wherein, having bled money profusely for two weeks in an attempt to appease at least the greater share of creditors, I run bone dry in the checking account.
Every month. Same time. That dreaded and painful financial menstruation that ravages me and therefore those in my physical vicinity with mood swings (from bleak to black), irritability (from cranky to homicidal) and bloating (from drinking the cheapest beer I can find).
And there is no Midol™ short of spending half as much or earning twice as much that can alleviate this discomfort.
Now I know what you’re thinking: He’s living beyond his means. And in the angry glare of all that red ink there is little I can say to disprove your assessment. But I rely on your generosity of empathy as I ask you to understand that, in present circumstances, living any more frugally than I currently do would place your scribe in an environment too close to Public Housing for his delicate nerves to handle.
Beyond that, it’s probably been a good year since I’ve dined at any restaurant that could be called “fine.” I purchased the very few Christmas gifts I bestowed last month with cash or it’s more web-friendly, debit card equivalent. I eat like a flea, shop like a thief and dress like a Gap ad from 1994.
Sure, there are areas where I could cut back, like separating myself from those draconian pick-pockets at Comcast Cable and Verizon Wireless. I suppose I could also divest myself of the car lease with some huge “early conclusion” penalty in favor of a bike or something. And wouldn’t that be great? No TV, no internet, no phone, no car…hey!
No lights! No phone! No motor car! Not a single luxury. Like Robinson Crusoe, as primitive as can be!
Sing it, bitches, because that’s about how this whole relocation experience has turned out: Gilligan’s Fucking Island. I may have started as Thurston Howell, III, but now I feel more like some slimmer version of the Skipper; by title responsible for the wreck of the SS Minnow in the first place and left pouring my heart out into the empty coconut shell that is this journal.
I just wish the Professor would weave some palm fronds into a machine that prints money, just like the one they apparently have in Washington, DC. (How’s that for a tortured segue back to the main topic?)
Yes, yes. I know.
I’ve made this very post in slightly different words before, likely just last month around this same time. But you’ll just have to forgive me. Because as you already know…
it’s my time of the month.
January 1st, 2009
We, mainly I, have been spending this first full day of 2009 watching the Barrett-Jackson Collector Car Auction on Speed Channel.
I’ve never thought of myself as a Car Guy. And certainly compared to those guys I’ve known who are Car Guys, I’m not. Aside from a bitchin’, Lotus Green “Baby Vette” Opal GT I owned, and cosmetically restored, then folded in half just after high school and my sorely missed Orient Red 1961 MGA 1600 Roadster that went with the divorce, I’ve never owned Car Guy kinda’ cars.
Like any other work of art, however, I can admire those masterstrokes of industrial design that have appeared on a regular if not reliable basis since the demise of the horse-drawn carriage. But honestly, Car Guy or not, looking at some of this iron makes me want to touch myself.
“Some” of this iron. But some of it reminds me of my youth, even my own youthful neighborhood and that has me thinking: WTF?
I’ve been watching automobiles sell for record-setting sums for a few hours now, and this marathon featuring the annual auction in Arizona is composed of repeats. Thus I was pretty convinced I was watching pre-financial meltdown gavel action. Until, that is, CEO Jackson himself expressed his joy at the “health of the collector market” in “today’s economy.” “We were concerned,” he said, “that we would be affected by the mortgage crisis and other things going on out there, but the totals we’re seeing are as good as or better than ever.”
For the record, the above statement attributed to Mr. Jackson, while in quotes, is a paraphrase. But you can be sure my verbal memory is worthy of Nagra recording equipment so it’s pretty darn close. And it is clear that whatever may be going on “out there” isn’t having much of an effect "in there," under the big top in the Arizona dessert, where people who look like your next door neighbors (but aren’t) are plunking down anywhere between $80 and 300-thousand dollars for machines they won’t be using to commute to the office.
Of course high end car collectors as a rule are not the type of individuals who might be worried about their mortgage. I should say their mortgages, plural. Any of them. Yet it still blows my mind to think that ANY form of wealth is unaffected by “what’s going on out there.”
So much for my all-too-human desire for suffering—if it must be—to be universal suffering. After all it was at least 20 years ago when the then boys of Monty Python’s Flying Circus explained to me that one could always spot royalty because they’re the ones that “don’t have shit all over them.” Still. Geeze.
Big on the block lately is so-called “Big American Iron;” the Super Bees, the Barracudas, the Shelby Mustangs and Chargers and Challengers those of my generation grew-up calling Muscle Cars. Those were the cars the Car Guys owned.
Moments ago, a 1970 Forrest Green Dodge Charger with a mighty 440 under the hood went for just shy of $80,000. I know that car well. They very same, inclusive of color, was owned (and I’m pretty sure still is owned) by my childhood next door neighbor, David.
David was several years older than I and was by every measure a Car Guy long before I ever bothered to get my learner’s permit. He seemed forever to be working on, restoring and thundering off behind the wheel of an endless line of automotive Teen Heartthrobs of the day. But when the showroom-new Charger came home after an insurance settlement for a motorcycle accident that nearly left him paralyzed, his quest for upgrades ground to a halt. That Charger was washed and waxed more often than a Playboy model. He did the occasional mod that always seemed to make the thing sound even ballsier than it already did. Even touched-up any marred white letter-paint on the tires with a tiny brush and something called "rubber paint."
It displaced his father’s car as sole occupant of their modest two-bay garage (he needed the “other spot” for all his Car Guy equipment) and, perhaps out of more respect for gleaming speed machine than his son, the old man never complained as he was chipping ice off his own windshield; he, the man of the house, exiled to a curbside parking space out front.
Apart from the Hurst short-throw shifter, Bumblebee distributer wire and some sweet chroming applied to the manifold, you can be sure David’s Charger was, and has been, kept in original condition. Or as is closer to the truth in these circumstances, original…only better. Lord knows he never drove it in the snow (he had a beater pick-up, all in primer black, for that). And last time I peeked through the windows of that garage off Schmidt Court (the ally behind our homes), it was still in there.
Does he know that a clone of that very car just went for that much? And, if not, what can I do to convince him to sell it to me? For, say, 5-thousand?
Lots of luck, buck. My neighbor David, the working class product of a Dairy Farm Inspector dad, a religious stay-at-home mom and sibling to a firefighter older brother somehow managed to live his life with no discernable vocation; no jobs to speak of. Between the insurance windfall and his parents eventual Last Will and Testament he never had to work. He went to Canada to fish. He went to Alaska to hunt. He went to more local, basically equally rustic environs just to camp. Between you and me? I think this guy presaged “Brokeback Mountain” with his, ahem, lonely macho tastes. But that’s neither here nor there.
He certainly wasn’t a “bum” or a lay-about, involved as he always seemed to be with avocations ranging from boat building (with his, ahem, buddy Ralphie) to wood furnace repair. The guy got up early, worked in the garden, the basement workshop (packing his own 30-0-6 and shotgun shells, for example) and, especially, the garage.
Especially the Charger.
So it’s more than simply likely that David knows exactly what’s parked in that old but well-maintained garage. And as he’s done his whole life, will at his need transform that hunk of steel in to his retirement fund. Which by my watch, should need tapping right about now.
Maybe?
You think?
Was the Barrett-Jackson Charger his Charger?
Oh well. I hope so.
Because if there are people unaffected by the current state of things, and there are, I can appreciate just knowing a couple of them.
Happy New Year, beloved reader.
And may the future bring you naught but beauty and treasure. Arrive as it may from the heart, the stock market…
or the garage.
Yours for yet another year,
come vroom vroom or gloom doom,
Illuminaught
December 29th, 2008
Ever since my return to life as a ground dweller, I have been alternately terrorized and infuriated by the animal sounds that all too regularly bellow, bark and bray their incessant way through my bedroom’s black air night after nearly sleepless night. And I’m not [just] talking about the Daisy’s kids.
I’ve lived in two-story homes in closely built, residential neighborhoods before. In fact the number of years—inclusive of my childhood years—that I’ve spent in such dwellings far outnumber the years I’ve spent as a tenant in the sky. But NEVER, as in never EVER have my resting hours been as commonly and casually disturbed by the neighbors pets as they are here, in Jackhole, Florida.
People here seem to just leave their ‘effing dogs outside all night long. And those dogs? They get to talking. It only takes one to set off the entire canine chorus and, once begun, the cacophony usually continues ‘til the sunrise. And NEVER, as in EVER does it occur to so much as one of those animal owners to DO A DAMN THING ABOUT IT.
I have opened the windows, thrown open the doors and screamed at these beasts to shut up, hoping that if the owners are so inculcated to and inoculated from the sounds of their beloved beasties then at least they’ll hear ME.
If they do, none of them give a shit.
As much curse as blessing, if there’s one sense I’ve got it’s the sense of hearing. I used to enjoy listening as a certain car would pull-up, the car doors close and, never looking up from my book, informing my parents that “Aunt Mary and Uncle Frank are here.” His face twisted in confusion, my father (who even now at age 85 has naught but normal-to-good results on his hearing tests) couldn’t even get out “Wha…?” before the doorbell would sound and…guess who would be there?
Admittedly it was as much Stage Magic as my own Super Sonics: Uncle Frank’s Chevy wagon didn’t sound anything like Uncle Neil’s Caddy sedan, but it was the even more distinct music of the closing doors that would tip me off every time. Cut to a life littered with ever increasingly esoteric hi-fi equipment and you get the picture.
Be careful what you think of me. I just might hear you.
So if a mouse breaking wind in my basement has a solid 40/60 chance of waking me from a sound sleep (oxymoron alert), you can just imagine the aural delight I experience with no less than three screaming fur-bags-of-shit within mere yards of my own back door and another four adding harmony in the not-distant-enough distance. And speaking of “in the distance”…
In the distance there is a rooster. Yes. That’s right. A fucking ROOSTER.
I have mentioned hearing this animal crow in the past to the Daisy, and could only take her lack of any response as an indication that she thought I was insane and just needed someone to talk to. But last night she heard it, too. And this is one mixed-up chicken stud because he starts his calamity at sundown, not sunup. Just my luck. Unpacking my stuff within hearing distance of the rare and illusive Nocturnal Rooster. Perhaps even a vampire rooster.
It should be clarified that, while this is a shit kickin’, four wheelin’, mud-splashed and tar-heeled backwater of an often shirtless and occasionally ignorant Right Wing bible-misinterpretation stronghold, I do NOT live anywhere in the vicinity of a farm. That would indicate that this particular barnyard Casanova is less an agrarian professional and is more likely employed in the cockfighting business, suggesting that his Cock-a-doodle-doo is, more accurately, Crack-a-doodle-doo.
Another lovely “what has become of my life” ornament to contemplate as I lay awake tormented by those much closer neighbors; the Hounds of Hell.
“It must be a Jacksonville thing,” I’ve said more than once to anyone who’ll listen (because as you all know, I say EVERYTHING more than once). Leaving domestic pets outside all night long and not acknowledging the slightest sense of civic or personal responsibility to control the animal’s ensuing opera of abandonment anxiety “must be a Jacksonville thing.” This assumption was only waxed to a high sheen during a verbal spar with the human [SIC] neighbors a couple months ago.
We, that is to say my Lady of the House and I, got into a bit of a tiff with our immediate neighbor about allowing her daughter to roam about their backyard screaming as though she were being murdered as late as (and later than) 9PM when the similarly-aged sprogs in our home have been in their beds, trying to sleep, for at least an hour. She countered that her little darling was “just having fun” and furthermore, unlike us mere renters, “we own.” For this I offered them our sympathies (that home being on the market for the past three years) and asked if, as owners, they likewise felt entitled to leave their two little lap dogs outside all night, barking like fraternity pledges over a toilet.
She just looked at me with the sincerely blank stare I’ve grown accustomed to down here and replied, “But they’re dogs. They BELONG outside at night.” To which I replied “They aren’t timber wolves, for christsakes! They’re Shitzhus!”
Then along came today and my recently acquired habit of skimming the local news for a laugh and lookie what I find!...
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - A man was found dead in a driveway in the 1100 block of West 9th Street Christmas morning -- hours after neighbors said they heard gunfire. Police identified the victim as 40-year-old Wayne J. Brown.” I knew something was going on because my dogs constantly barked, barked, barked all night along," a neighbor told Channel 4. "I thought it might be a trash can my dogs knocked over, but then when the sun came up, I looked out again and that is when I discovered the body."
I am NOT making that up. The report above is a direct cut-and-paste from local NBC Affiliate WXJT’s news site. And I’d like you to read it again. “…my dogs constantly barked, barked, barked all night long,” this deplorable dipshit is quoted as saying, “…but then when the sun came up I looked out…”
His dogs…all night…and he didn’t do a damn thing until the “sun came up.”
What The Hell Is Wrong With These People?
And just in case you think I’m pulling your leg about that news story, here’s another one, also spotted today, on the same site, under the title “Police: Shot Fired at Dog Hits Neighbor.”
For a second my heart skipped a beat. Have I, in a severe state of sleep deprivation, actually acted upon those violent fantasies I fabricate to console my boiling, 3AM hatred for the area’s dog population?
Nah. I don’t own a gun (although I’m thinking about it). And this incident occurred not in my supposedly urbane neighborhood but in a trailer park (although I may soon end up in one).
The article explains: “The bullet went through the wall of a nearby mobile home and stuck a woman in the back as she was holding her 18-month-old child. Officers investigating a previous crime in the neighborhood heard the gunshot and responded. The victim was taken to Shands-Jacksonville Medical Center where officials said she was recovering. While police said the neighbor's shooting was unintended, the woman who fired the shot could be charged with culpable negligence and discharging a firearm in public. Police did not release the names of either the victim or the woman who fired the shot.
Officers said the dog was gone when they arrived.”
Understandably you'll be all doe eyed about the fact that the victim was "holding her 18-month-old child" when the shot landed. But trust me, "holding" probably translates to "shaking" and in addition to the 18-month-old there were almost certainly a 4-month, 27-month and 6-year-old playing with cigarette butts in the same double-wide.
Let Darwin work.
If only I had the resources, I myself would mount this shooter’s legal defense. Because while she may have missed the dog, she at least pegged the owner.
Even better.
December 17th, 2008
BAGHDAD— The manufacturer of the shoes so famously thrown by Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi at President George W. Bush says business “has never been better.”
Shoe stores all over Iraq and neighboring countries are selling out of the model, originally called “The Carpet Cutter” but now unofficially re-christened as “Bush Beaters,” at a rate few shop owners can keep up with, or control of. “There have been riots. Shoe salesmen have been attacked. This is a piece of crap shoe,” said Khalil al-Obeidazhan, a shop owner in Baghdad’s Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah, “this makes no sense.”
“It was one of our nominal sellers, to be honest,” said Wisam al-Zubidiar, CEO/owner of the manufacturer Bali al-Araji Comfort Shoes, “cheap as Hell, so they were really only popular with hotheads who liked to throw them.” But to Mr. al-Zubidar’s obvious delight, “cheap” is no longer an accurate description of The Carpet Cutter (Model #2663C). "We’ve been well within rights to raise the price,” he said with a wide, tobacco stained grin. “Inventory is wiped-out, and re-tooling the factory quick enough to ride this wave is going to cost a butt-load.”
As is often the case in third world economies, the must-have shoe of the moment is being made available as a knock-off and business for those street corner capitalists is booming as well. One peddler who agreed to interviewed on condition of anonymity pointed out the paradox of knocking-off a product that was already a knock-off. “They took the design right from an 80’s Cole Hann bedroom slipper in the first place,” said the middle aged resident of south central Baghdad, “so being arrested for making my own would strike me as more than a little ironic.”
-- Report by Illuminaught with Quagmire al-Figalicious contributing
UPDATE: On Sunday, 12/21, The New York Times reported on Page 18 of the International Section: 'Bush Shoe' Gives a Turk Firm Footing In the Market'. Written four days later and in a somewhat more widely read vehicle, the column reads weirdly like my fictionalized account above. But this is not the first time I've scooped those fuckers. Won't be the last. Who says you have to leave the house to span the earth? Earth people are easy.