Stranger Stranger Danger

Welcome to Everydad's Den. The wood work reminds everybody of a neighbor's appropriately weathered shed. The leather upholstery is worn to perfect comfort, like a television biker's jacket-- curated prop selected by only the most sensitive production assistants, acquirable only at the most remote second hand stores. 72'' Smart TVs sit on propane-fireplace mantles.

That isn't very comfortable for me. Anxiety. I always forget to take my shoes off when I enter people's home-- shit kickers all soggy and wet. Maybe that's why Everydad/Uncle/Neighbor is looking at me all crotchety. Maybe its not crotchety-- but there's his distinct eye muscle accusing me, that inevitably, I'll ruin something. If only by sitting down too heavy-- off kiltering a fragilely balanced painting of the local beach hanging to the wall.

Well, then again those aren't my comforts. Forgive me as I struggle out a list of appropriately rarefied, but simple, semi/non-material pleasures-- things that will distinguish myself as apart, cleverly distinct and worth reading in comparison to Everydad (Fuck that guy):

1.Wearing nothing but sheets around the apartment when roommates are absent, parading about semi-nude in some softcore Hustler version of the early BCE Mediterranean. 2. The realization in a quiet morning, as work gets started, that I haven't masturbated in several days (probably out of town)-- and then setting things aright. This may be turning into an exhibitionism. I enjoy conversating about sex-- there is a delight in exciting thoughts in mundane and non-sexual situations. Ho ho ho. Mall of America transgressions. Anyway. Right, comforts. 3. The first cigarette after 6 months of none. The calm certainty when trying to quit anything addictive that starting again is simply achieved. 4. Putting on my old work boots, remembering I used to wear them everyday, then also remembering I no longer need to wear them everyday.

No more exhausting parenthetical, "meta-writing thoughts", they are as nauseating to read as to write.

I brought up comfort for purpose. I am thinking over it. Comfort. For many comfort can be an aspiration. Economic comfort-- security in food, living space, materials. Comfort of self-- freedom from abuses, impositions, associations. Perhaps by "Comfort of self", I am referring to the view from inside out-- the world's place as seen from the singular eyesocket. Then next would be the "Comfort from Other", freedom from abuses, impositions, associations muscled upon a person from the many forces exterior. 

It's interesting that Comfort is also viewed by another angle as oppressive. Or pacifying. Perhaps when taken as assumed? I cannot conclusion this one. Words such as "authentic" come to mind. Authenticity is a lonely judgment lens to perceive the world through. But perhaps in a limited way it implies or points to something incomplete to "apartheid style" Comforts. Everydad at rest in the barcalounger on the hill.

In a very different context, in very different conversations, I remember a quote--

"Secrecy and the absence of transparency is a great dividing force. It separates the informed from the rest of society. Society in the dark is left to act their lives with imperfect information. Made less relevant by accident and at times by design."

I'm inclined to think of Comfort as similarly divisive. The varying degrees of the comfort divide.

Comfort is a bad word. It covers trivialities, side by side to fundamental humanities. Both are served the worse by association-- maybe my own doing in presenting them according. I have had two mugs of wine and I am infuriated at this point. This is hardly even the tip of the bit beneath I wanted to mull over. The grand matter is where all these varied forms of Comfort intersects the dollar. 

Goddamn it, I believe my line of thought is growing tenuous-- I am rusty at this writing business.

For now, a lyric comes to mind:

"Nevermind what's been selling, it's what your buying." 

I buy a lot of comfort. I buy nearly all my comfort.

La Vie Comm

Look at it. How YouTube ads play. How targeted-- demographically-correct ads spice along your Facebook pages, the age targeted spam messages within an email inbox, the square pixel filling advertisements spaced between New York Times articles. We've all been pegged along a thousand-some passively collected data points. Every countablulated number, location, finger click and webpage in our monthly storied web histories has been calculated into profiles. Profiles worth advertisement budget points. It really does not matter how this digital profile differs from ourselves in action. What analogue action can rival the digital equivalent of our web-denizen shadow? It is a digital sun that casts the public self that remains.

There's little comfort in denial. What local micro-transaction act has the resonance of trans-continental-corporate data waves? At what point does a self-righteous divorce from modernity leave oneself a spinner's loom amidst laser processors? I hope not to be misunderstood. There is an attractive fantasy in simplicity. Some sort of projected nostalgia, tied to our own self-important delusion, which guides us. Even embracing our options, we are tempted to paint a large and unknown world in the light of our familiar local lives. Simplify to comprehension. Information corners us into innumerable passive decisions.

This is something contrary to how I personally lived. Technology and the algorithmic rhythms we leave in wake are a thing we can ignore to our own peril. The relationship to data, input from the world and output from ourselves, dictates our space and agency with it.  In the analogue space our greatest remaining resource is time.

I sat, organically speaking, in a bar tonight. Nursing a gin and ice, I looked to the women and men surrounding, and then to the walls of screens. Their screen's programming. I became entranced thinking. It was what I saw that led me typing tonight.

I think we may be living commercials. As late capitalism resonates with the rise of digital living, we've never been so saturated and so ill-equipped. Consider a message, and it's form. Consider the messages we emanate. At all moments. Passively. Look to the form of every Facebook announcement, it is the individual statement to our audience of acquaintances. We assert our lifestyle's viability and allure in words, pictures, locations, events and culmination of all these elements in concert. Commercials for others and ourselves. Proving to the world we are satisfied, interesting, energetic-- hoping to convince ourselves of that same image.

Along the lines of technology, I am not sure that the self-sales department we must maintain is wisely opposed. It is the terms of existence we accept in persisting. But in similar manner, to ignore these forces is to confuse for ourselves what space we occupy. To cut clean and abandon the modern world, I think, is no more meaningful than embracing technology-- In and of themselves. Either choice is perhaps worthwhile if chosen and navigated according. Agency is the greatest remaining aspiration I can conceive. Agency before circumstance is an active assertion.

Look. We are astride in time, and its demands are inconsistent. It is two worlds spanned and thoroughly mixed. Traces of the future lie parallel to  our oldest habits. Old tribe-bigots communicate with socially prejudiced populations around the globe-- perhaps using technology conceived, programmed and constructed by the very people they despise. Tech professionals withdraw to ranches and farms to work traditional tools into traditional crops in traditional arrangements, logically eschewing modern advancements as immoral. No one sees anything inconsistent within their actions.

Last night I sat in a local Irish bar. A sad small man, mid-30, lamented life and was desperate for connection. He leered at two girls who looked like a young cousin of mine. When they left, and we alone in the bar, he turned his attention to the bartender-- direct and insatiable was his eye, he wanted everything. She was married. At first tolerant and recognizing his plight, she grew tired. He was a proper sociopath in manipulation. I am embarrassed to admit how easily I may have been herded by his flattery if I hadn't overheard his early sickness in words. "He would be happy to corner the bartender in a dark alley and have his way by force". And so, he said this to me. There is a sincerity to desperation. I resented him accordingly. But in my own indirect manipulative nature, I acted his friend. Waved off his words and directed the conversation elsewhere than sex and the bartender. I convinced him to step out for a cigarette. The door was, wisely, immediately locked behind us. He stumbled. And I left him and walked home without another word.

Maybe he deserved a fist in his teeth. Maybe he only mouthed words that didn't mean a thing, except a cry for help of sorts. He had been a drummer, once had long hair, but had to pawn his set for money.

Analogue life, I believe, is nuanced and can only be herded indirectly by the boarder collies in our heads. I think the world dawning will be only more nuanced. I feel our ideals and desires may be incomplete, and perhaps will prove little use for what follows.

Dedication of the Cathedral of The Times

Delivered by Rev. Zimmermann on Tuesday, March 17th 2015,

Friends and Blessed Saints,
This night we consecrate the construction of a new temple to the aethers of the mind.

The Cathedral of the Times

Below the surface of Ancient Quincy, this sylvian chapel rededicates human aspiration before the void of natural mystery.
In the spirit of crucibles past-- notably the lost Church of Time's Dome--
these stone and timber walls will be anointed vessels to the thoughts and endeavors it shall foster and contain.

And so, we offer this chalice of Gordon's Gin, this bowl of Goya Black Beans water-- held in surviving relics of the beloved Time's Dome-- as sacrifice.

*Bowl is extended as gathered congregants drink of black bean water

May the uncomfortably warm, viscous and salty bean water-- remind us of the thick bitterness found in life's failures.
May it's bitterness drive us forward.

*Chalice is extended as gathered congregants drink of Gordon's Gin

May the sweet and smooth fire of gin remind us of the glow of friendship found in comradery.
May it echo the joy and heart of success, the glory in tasks complete.
May we chase it's warmth.

*Candles are lit. Congregants take hold and slowly spin across the cathedral ground. Attention is paid to all entrances and windows. The Toilets and Slaughterhouse shower are particularly blessed to ward evil.

May the spectral dead, May waking ghosts find sustenance and home here--
May they remain and guide our purpose.

*Chalice and Bowl are gathered, candles gathered. Relics exit and are stowed in sacred containers. Congregants walk Cathedral once more by candle light.

All light is extinguished.

Exeunt Omnes.








Softly Barrett's Privateer's was whispered in the style of Stan Rogers:

Drying Out

Dry Drunk as a metaphor. Clinging to the sources of our needs, living familiar only to wanting. Possessing anything becomes alien. Possession is left nine tenths of the laws that apply to those other folks-- them remaining of society. What really can't be unfortunate.

Dry Drunk as a metaphor. It wasn't until recent that I really cornered the concept. Archie Bunkers, men afraid of tomorrow. Living and dying, afraid of tomorrow. Old dead Uncle Wallace will tell you straight, all the things we leave behind are covered with the claw marks of our trying to keep hold.

Dry Drunk, that's an idea. We can change the behavior by will alone, but leave the source flowing same as it ever was. The source the same. Need is a pistol, sure thing. Same as it ever was, cold rifle grease lipstick kisses dotting the nape to the neck. A need to speak, needs to be heard, needs to possess.

It's fear. That dry drunk. That cyclical behavior and repeat to history. Those familiar glass cups, a familiar fight. I stood at Kelly's square the other night, trying to talk down one set of fists. But too bad, there are others. His nose was broken against the car window and the blood flattened out like a clown around his lips. Ollie was an ass and did something to deserve it. But we all watched from the corner in the rain, as he screamed and swore through his broken nose. Like a gargle. He knelt down in the middle of the street and washed off the blood from a puddle against the curb. That was beautiful to see, like Jesus doing feet. Tiffany said he deserved to die, with the conviction of a Pentecostal snake whisperer. I'm not sure if that were true or if she was autistic. She was autistic.
Who can be sure, Ollie was mostly guilty of smuggling gin in his pockets.

The Romans said, half our problems are sourced in mistaking one cause for things built of many.
 Maybe we aren't nearly so good as the take we operate from. Maybe that's fine. Cutting faces into the hill clay with safety razors-- a night is a thing like that. It's neither a straight line, nor is it a cycle. Maybe just a single cut that tends to stumble. But either way, there is one time to it and it's easy to knead out the same possessions rather than stake down those fears of tomorrow.

Dry Drunk, Alright.

Bail

Drying out tonight. Getting harder and messier picking up the puddle pieces days after a wet spree, goddamn it.

It has been raining for days, all week rather. Looking out the window seems the days were stuck on repeat-- same ol' mess of wet and yellows.

I went down to the Hotel for singing night-- I bumped into a guy named Ryan in the street.
He has the waist length Metal hair and a waist long Metal beard-- Ryan was supposed to be in Portland, Oregon with his band but his grandmother had died two hours before. We had talked about his grandmother when she was dying, before his tour-- her first husband was killed by fascists in Italy when she was 17. She immigrated alone as soon as the war ended.

There was some sort of autism to the air that night-- a girl was very upset a certain friend wasn't with me, she told me about liking Bob's Burgers and her fetish for feeding skinny looking men, how she had shredded threadbare pajama pants off in a fit of passion the night before, how shitting makes her feel empowered and how people frequently tell her she looks like Alanis Morissette. I honestly didn't see a resemblance.

A dealer with a bowl-cut admired my jacket. It was actually a work shirt from back on the farm, and the mistake confused me. Double so when he kept returning to comment again, nervous that he may have only imagined our earlier exchanges.

An old man named Kenny admired my shoulders and wanted to touch them. He touched them. He had the easy-comfortable bearing of a pedophile, the articulate and delicate aura of a man who'd burned live animals trapped in gas soaked sacs. He wanted us to be friends, and wanted me to know that I should always say hello if I saw him and that I should never avoid his company if we met in public. He wanted to hear me sing, and then touch my shoulders again.

I have taken to singing a sort of repeating repertoire of re-interpretations of good old favorites: Faster Than a Ray of Light by Madonna, Walking on Broken Glass by Annie Lennox, Proud Mary by Tina Turner and Bad Blood by Neil Sedaka. I tend to sing like Tom Jones having a Bruce Springsteen sort of aneurism-- tinged to a Morrissey-nian sense of shame.

 I frequently worry that my reputation as a heterosexual man about town has become a penny stock.

I drank and sung.

Millie has deep mental handicaps, she is a middle aged woman who walks around the bars and sells gimp bracelets. She gets impatient when her marks take too long with their change, but will smile and say "Yeah that's me" if you give her a cigarette. The sort of person who quickly embarrasses her altruistic defenders with fits of aimless violence. Millie and I danced to some song I cannot remember-- we spun each other in circles. Kenny said oh! a regular Clark Kent! American as apple pie!

I left out some back door, and then woke up this morning.

The Comedienne: Part Deux

Apparently I've been sleepwalking.

One of my roommates caught me the other night. Standing in her room, stuffing towels and tissues and her dirty panties into a dresser. I was muttering "it's not my fault, I just rented the shirt" over and over again. Mom was pretty freaked out (that's "Her" name by the way).

The next night, my other roommate ("Dad") had an early shift and was taking a shower. He was all dried off, doing the towel around the waist thing and opened the door-- a small grey and blue spotted snake was coiled up outside the door! There on the second floor, in America no less! In a paniky animal sort of mindset he mashed it to death barefoot. Mashed it! Barefoot! Right into the stained hardwood floors! Can you believe it? Well, that's how it happened. So me and "Dad" buried it in the sleepy morning haze (so the dog wouldn't get it). That would be a mess. We had to scrape up the wet snake bits and stuffed them into a plastic grocery bag-- as we carried it outside a clear-reddish mucus dripped off the bag's corner onto my foot. I have to assume that all of this is correlated somehow. The sleepwalking, the bloody snake oil dripping onto my foot, the drunken sleep apnea, the Civil War in Ukraine, the Gaza strip. Ferguson, Missouri. In America no less!

You sir, you know what I mean right? Of course you do, you got the professionally medicated eyes of a 30-something with a "bowel movement journal." You see it clear as anyone, but hard to recognize aint it? That vague rocky coast lurking through the fog? Eh?

And you, hello Sister. Out alone tonight? Be honest, is tonight any exception? Replacement blew, cant remember original. Well, that's fine. I got the look too. We need to stick together, build a formal sisterhood. A coven, or something like that.

I've been looking into buying cemetery plots online. I think it's important to always have enough cash in the bank to cover, you know, "The End": all the boxes and hinges and nails and after the fact landscaping. Eternal candles. Roadside crosses. I have $12.50-- that's enough for a cab from here to the east river, right? That's my price horizon these days. I mean, I could afford that much.

'Cause here's the thing-- (house, I'm gonna need another drink up here)-- I think organ donor's are idiots. And I mean that as kindly as possible people, they've been cornered by this shame-mafia into giving their future dead bits away-- for FREE! Can you believe that? They hack and pack your kidneys, heart, lungs and skin and bones and Young Jewish Craigslist Eggs or whatever into coolers and then insurance agencies trade $100,000s of dollars back and forth with hospitals over who "gets" stuffed full of your bits. And they charge, and they itemize the bill.

I thought about it a lot and for the kind of cash they pull over organs-- after "aquisition fees", transportation, administrative costs and before-death risk of damage-- I think $2000 is what it's worth. I'd sell my future dead organs, now (I'm saying, as in Today), for $2000. I could afford a little burial-at-East-river for that. I'd lie in a second hand dingy, pulled behind a trash barge. As we passed by Williamsburg, my friends would half-assedly toss sun-bleached wreathes stolen off the graves of 1990s gang-shooting victims. As we passed the Statue of Liberty they'd cut my dingy loose-- to lazily drift down the orange gold of that Atlantic sunrise (or to sink and resurface off a Jersey City shipping dock)-- the Staten Island Longshoremen would all be in a row along the beach, weeping. One of 'em that looks a lot like Artie Lang would shake his head and, wiping a tear, say: In America. No less.

**The Comedienne Bows**

G'night folks, you've been a great crowd!

Office Life?

7:00am: Almost simultaneously my alarm clock goes off and my dog pushes the bedroom store open to let me know it is time to arise. I want to hit sleep and push him off of me, but his rear is making this odd jiggly motion suggesting if I don't open the front door his bowels would evacuate like morning commuters rushing out of the subway stairs late for work.  So, I open the door and he runs outside but then just turns around and runs back in. Sigh.

7:15am: Feed 2 cats and 1 dog. Coffee is on. Is this what it's like to have kids? Nancy Pelosi is on MSNBC talking about the Middle East and the Malaysian plane that was shot down in the Ukraine. Too early to be this depressed. Switch to the Today Show. Some teenage/tween boy-band called "Summer Forever" or "Forever Summer" or "7up Forever" or something like that is about to perform. Too early to be this depressed.

8:00am: The cab I called to take me to the train station is 5 minutes early. EARLY!!!! WHY??? Now I'm going to be 20 minutes early for the train instead of my planned 15 minutes.  Sigh.

9:20am: I arrive to the office early (again) and looked for a coffee shop nearby to buy an iced coffee, but there is only McDonald's on the block. I think about it. The word "McCafé" literally runs through my mind. But alas, snobbiness (healthiness?) will not allow me to pass through the doors. Fitting, since yesterday I had an argument with a friend about Applebee's and chain restaurants in general.  He defended it, and called me a yuppy for refusing to go to chains, but he's the one who got married and moved to the Pennsylvanian suburbs - where they only have Applebee's - so really I think he's the yuppy. Or, is he just American? Do yuppies eat at Applebee's? I wouldn't think so. Maybe that I have to ask proves I'm not one (small victory for me!). Side note, is it possible to be a hipster and a yuppy? I was accused of both during this conversation. Or, does he just not understand the difference? Or, is there a difference? Or, are they both just meaningless labels? Or, do I just not understand the difference myself? Probably that last one.

9:30am: I arrive at my office for the day. Fit-modeling is an easy, but incredibly boring (and in my opinion, meaningless, although I'm not complaining) job. I am here to try on outfits for perspective buyers, but I mostly sit on my computer and play addicting, mindless online games and write inane blog posts when I should be writing emails looking for more "real" work. Perhaps even more inane, or insane, is that I am doing so from the storage closet of the office here because there was no desk space. One might think that if people in an office knew that the next day there would be an extra person in said office, that accommodations may need to be made....but then one might be over thinking. "The Office" is now a much more understandable television show.

10:45am: The first prospective buyer of the day wants to see me in a pair of jeans. "It's relaxed-slim-fit." the sales-woman tells him. "Oh! How modern!" exclaims the buyer. Back to the storage closet.

1:00pm: One of the random emails I sent, while not playing mindless online computer games or avoiding depressing current events, resulted in the hunt for a large sailboat for a photo-shoot. So, that is how I spent most of the morning not logged here - using social media and whatever other resources available to me to procure a sailboat for a photo-shoot for I don't know what, with I don't know who, on I only vaguely know when. Although I'm currently working on the how, I definitely cannot asses as to the why. Stay tuned for updates later in the day. In-between all of this I tried on another pair of jeans, and a shirt too.

2:00pm: After having been told I could take lunch at 1 o'clock, then at 2 o'clock, then back to 1 o'clock, then "Go eat now, but be back at 1:30 for an appointment!" (1:15pm) I left in a hungry hurry to get my food, and some non storage closet air. I wanted a sandwich, but I felt pressure to be fast and also did not want to spend too much money. It being midtown at lunch hour, those two things were basically impossible. Needless to say I ended up with Japanese curry-rice bought in Korea Town and eaten in a storage closet.

2:30pm: IMPORTANT UPDATE! I know it has only been half an hour since my last entry, but this must be recorded. I have been allowed to move into the main room of the office! That is to say, the storage closet is now only storing my belongings, pens, clothes, and other things that go in storage closets when they are not being occupied by 27 year old fit-models.  It appears I've managed to move from storage closet to corner office in the span of an afternoon. Now THAT is fit-modeling. So to the storage room, I'd like to say the following:

Over the course of the morning we grew close. Although initially dismayed for being forced upon like a wingman on a fat sister, I think in the end we did great work together. I found work (in boats) and love (in online games) and we even shared a meal.  In the end I had to move on. You're doing what you were made to do now, and I think it's better for you. Just don't be sad when I have to come back at the end of the day to get the stuff I left there the in the morning.  

With love always,

PM

3:30pm: I am back in the storage closet. Like a dog that shat on the rug I've been relegated to my crate. After the briefest glimpse of open fields and endless chew toys I'm back to confinement with nothing left to do but spin in a circle of despair and find a resting place until I'm let out again. 

Hi there again storage closet. I'm back. But you always knew that I would be. I could never leave you, not for long. Let's start over. Start fresh. A clean slate. It'll be like nothing ever changed.

Thankfully yours,

PM

5:30pm: 20 minutes ago I had a cup of coffee because I had nothing else to do and my head was starting to hurt from internetting for too long. Now I'm feeling neurotic and worried I will be up all night and late for office day number two tomorrow. Also, I know I got here at 9:30, but isn't the point of a 9-5 that you're done at 5? It's now 5:30pm, we're all still here. Even if you account for the half hour shift, I should no longer be here. I do not believe I understand Office.

6:30pm: I am finally done and leaving the office for the day. Running home to feed and walk my dog who is probably doing more weird jiggly things with his butt since he has not been walked in nearly 12 hours. Hopefully he hasn't shat on the rug, I'd hate to have to put him in the storage closet.