Made in China

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipping_industry_of_China#

The post-Cold War era has given rise to some "new" (old) demons that feed from our collective fears and paranoia about walls we can't see past, and the loss of the self through mass conformity that's reflected in our consumer tastes. Buying, at least to many Ameri-Europeans, has long been touted by advertisers and companies as a way to freely express our individuality, with the unfortunate consequence of the exact opposite, as it so often works in generational trends. Some of it is justified: without world standards for consumer goods firmly in place, every import becomes a case of "buyer beware", with sometimes strange and/or humorous results.

East Asian people of Queens have a fun and actively-thriving "New Delhi" culture we enjoy greatly, with the unforeseen consequence of serious eye infections and other health issues, as the direct result of unchecked charcoal eyemakeup imported from India freely applied as a cosmetic, without the obligatory warning label. And it isn't just overseas goods. American cosmetics have more lead and mercury in them than any of their European counterparts, even "all-natural" products that are supposedly wholesomely made from at-risk bees with their ill-made wax. It's all inter-connected.

As businesses strive to supply already-strapped families affordable toys at Christmastime, so too do they open the door to Chinese plastic goods (or kitchenware with traces of lead) that do not require mandatory testing for stocking (and re-stocking) on our discount "Big Mart" shelves, leaving the average American to presume a level of scrutiny that bests or matches the mind of an actively researching scientist, leaving the hardest hit strata of our society even more vulnerable than ever, in their quest to find better deals priced cheaply.

And some of it isn't unintentionally dangerous either. You'd have to be extremely naive or delusional not to think twice about the pairing of poorly-made Japanese air bags stuffed into German cars sent to an American marketplace with murderous results that doesn't reek of vengeance for our role in WWII. Look what we did to them for their evil actions: we writ (some would suggest) an even bigger horror upon them with an atomic bomb and severe economic sanctions that lead to more hurt, rather than the healing of so many openly infected wounds. Certainly, Oppenheimer deeply regretted the militaristic use of his atomic discoveries all of his life.

It's saturated our consciousness at a deep level, too. Director/actor/writer/producer Robert Redford did a fascinating movie about one man's struggle against the elements while at sea, comically (at first) put into mortal danger by the floating of so many shipping containers from their loosening off a massive cargo ship, now left adrift and filled with those precious Chinese imports of common American brands. And it isn't as remote or exotic as that, either. 

As a production manager and art director, part of every job I worked in publishing is the factoring of their timetables into our U.S.-based manufacturing process, as we calculated the time and cost that it takes for shipments coming off "the slow boat to China" into warehousing and delivery, in order to save our beleaguered American houses precious U.S. dollars. It wasn't always worth it. 

When time was "of the essence", we went with the more direct and timely service that American and Canadian printers can provide. As our industry factored in overseas trade on the daily, we discovered that Asian printers produced low-cost 4-color work, but not the regular typesetting of black type on paper, which ideally marks the best thinking of our American intellects conducting trade, and I like to very much think that our Ivy League at work in media do that better than anybody. Actually, I know we do.

Because our labors are transacted on moral, ethical, and aesthetic levels, in addition to solely economic ones (because we make art and design), it lead to some very interesting discussions. In my early thirties, I violated my "don't date at work" rule with a handsome printing sales rep because he was a sub-contractor to my house, and as such, not technically an in-house employee or my direct report, though one could argue that increased "bonhomie" as the result of our brief coupling would put him in an advantage over me as a managing woman with everything to lose, and it did. Briefly. Fortunately, I'm surrounded by a lot of fuck-ups, and he went on to date his Asian counterpart at his job and our young part-time receptionist, which meant I had way more "dirt" on him and his at-work dating indiscretions than he had over me.

But I learned some really interesting facts about the huge Chinese printing conglomerate he represented stateside, because our original outside-of-work meetings were just that: questions-and-answer sessions between a buying manager and her main supplier, albeit in a hip "fusion" restaurant with moody dim lighting that used the blending of Brazilian food and Japan sushi to market themselves to craze-craving New Yorkers (usually from out-of-town) hungry for the latest exotica, and this Midwestern tool definitely fit the bill. 

Turn out, his company's highly competitive pricing was the direct result of China's mass-production mindset, which utilized an offshore island as their main base of operations for international buyers of their worldwide printing concern, which further meant (and always means) that they are violating human rights somewhere in their production queue at sometime, as they always do when they use their "extreme conformity at any price" mentality that the Chinese try to market as a social system of governmental reforms meant to combat oppression and corruption. Uh, no. 

He informed me that the Chinese people at the factory worked in 24/7 shifts, and that they could implement such an extreme rotation of their staff by supplying us with a total inconsistency in their staff  (because they always change hands), combined with a brutal enforcement of mandatory shifts that are "4-months on/4-months off" work schedules, in which employees are allowed back home to the mainland to recuperate and visit with their families. Wow...that sounds intense. "I know!" he told me enthusiastically. This was the kind of stuff tourists thrived on in our town, pre-recession. "It's nuts! Sometimes monsoon season cuts them off from the mainland for awhile, which means they lose the window of opportunity to go home and see their families for holidays!" Yeah, that would be communism for you.

It kinda dulled any zest I had for producing potential card packages from our lesbian designer, who wanted to push them through our gay sales rep, that resembled so many vagina shapes in cheesy flower photographs like the rip-off Georgia O'Keefe it was. The world could definitely do without these. No need for some horrow-show factory system. He told me that they slept on cots in constant day/night shifts that left them confused, sleep deprived, careless, and almost impossible to communicate with. Every layout went through several translations from English-to-German-to-Mandarin and back, because I saw the markups from our returned card and calendar layouts. What the fuck...

After awhile, I began to openly despise their stupid-looking calendars that we made for their similar conformity-minded and mass-produced wackos, at a price they could easily afford. So much pain and heartache for nothing that becomes so much toxic landfill after it's done. When every crazy employee at that small house turned on me, in an effort to push me out the door, I was horrified to discover that I might have to punch my way out of the job by besmirching my fellow employees, which they'd already done to themselves. I don't want to do that. I don't want to be like them. "Yeah, but you may have to," said our gay sales rep to me, in our last closed-door meeting before my supposed "ousting". Fine, if that's your twisted priorities over dignity and respect. You can have all that pain and hurt. I have this.

Beanie, baby

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beanie_Babies

I didn't blame my friends for all of their problems, because life isn't like that. Humans are social animals, and as such, we need a family group to survive those first fragile years, unlike other mammals that need to run within minutes of their birth. Our relative co-dependence compared to other animals is the price we pay for our big brains, which are given biological precedence in early development, hence the international symbol for "cute" as it is decoded within babies: overly large head, wide eyes, pert lil' features, and an adorable clumsiness. We've simply been bred to stick together in need, and it isn't wrong for us to do so.

But, my friend Dave's parents were way beyond anything I'd seen with my hardcore Brooklyn kids from "around the way". The first time me and Karen went to see him off-campus (we had, of course, early run-ins with the T.A.'s living in our respective dorms for freshman and sophomore year as required on-campus living, because we were seen by the state as being too young to maintain a household by law as teenagers, before we could escape to a funky old house off-campus), he offered to throw up a sheet to divide his off-campus room, and charge us rent for sleeping on his floor. Wow...touched by that. Thanks, dude.

To show our gratitude, we dutifully inspected his room for closet space and other living area features, which he was too slow to respond to. O...M...G....this kid has brand-new clothes with the price tags still on them hanging in his friggin' closet for his exclusive use! But...but...what the fuck? We were baffled, because Dave worked suck-ass summer jobs like the rest of us, except his jobs were upstate in Schenectady, where the pay is much lower than the rest of the state. How, muthafucka?! "Oh, that's nothing!" Dave went underneath his bed and pulled out plastic containers full of new underwear (still bright white and sealed in the packages, yo!), different types of socks, anything he could possibly need, like, bought for him ahead of time and everything.

Who has parents who even do that?! We were stunned. He felt kind of bad for his parents shopping habit strewn about his room so obviously, so he offered to give us a few of his shirts. "Go ahead! Take one! I've never worn them before!" Yeah, we could tell, but, like, fuck, dude...don't you get it? Yeah, he did. He knew they liked shopping more than caring for him, and that's why he was fucked. I mean, what kind of monster tricks you out at the mall in the summertime, so you can fail out of school in the fall?! Sick working-class people with GED's do that. Not really disciplined folks looking to get by and get better. You know? As bad as we felt about our write-ups, we were somewhat grateful for our educated parents from the city at that point, because at least they didn't buy backwards into life. This shit was so weird.

Who buys a 21 year-old guy living in a house with his friends "tidy whitey" underwear?! Is he too stupid to do it himself? WTF?! I couldn't remember the last time my mom actually bought me clothing, and I was still only 18 as a sophomore. You had to work at a clothing store to get new clothes with your employee discount that came out of your paycheck, right? Karen agreed with me, because she was also raised by wolves, so we shrugged noncommittally to Dave's half-ass offer of draining a couple of working teenage women whatever money we had left (deducting school supplies and food, naturally) from our summertime paychecks. Uh, thanks for nothing. Asshole.

We joked about that for awhile, and then we moved on. From the strangely arrogant demeanor of Dave and his wanna-be WASP sister, I thought they came from money, but the first time I ever saw Dave's parent's house, I couldn't hide my shock. What the....where's your...? This is it?! You grew up here?! It was baffling; a rather small, nondescript, squat one-level towards the back of a generically suburban block. Ohhh, shit, dude. It was then that I fully realized how "out of it" they were. Dave made it seem like his father spent like a surgeon, when in reality, "The Captain" is a big Polack
with power plant union money married to his high school sweetheart, a former head cheerleader at the local high school. Ahh....now, I understood it.

It was pure bullshit bravado by the undereducated, and it didn't end there. They had packed the basement of their little house with their dead relatives tacky furniture, also stowing a second refrigerator and freezer next to shelves filled with those huge vats of club-bought mayonnaise, like they were expecting the end of the world any day. They thought it was funny for me and Dave to "go shopping" downstairs in their rat-packed basement when we lived in Brooklyn, but I was never really sure why. How the fuck are we gonna carry this around in the city?! Why would anyone need this much stuff?

And that was far from the end of their madness. They took us along on a "shopping trip" to Amish Country, a dead place on the map for tourists where we wandered around some outdoor mall looking at the exact same stores as the ones in upstate New York. Why are we even here? We didn't really need anything, and we were on a serious budget besides. What the fuck is this even for? They paid for our motel room so they could pack it with more of their stuff, filling their big car with so much shit, that they laughed at us as they packed crap under our arms and feet in the backseat. Ginger had also picked up a raging "collecting" hobby on the side that excluded her husband, hoarding these small toy animals that came with fast food purchases.

She forced his dad to stop at every fast food joint we came across on the road, and when we said we weren't hungry, she shrugged it off: "Just throw it out. I don't care about the food." And that's exactly what we did. We made U-turns in the parking lots of these fast food places across America to dump perfectly good food into trashcans designed to curb litter, not feed addictions, but it made Dave's straits a lot easier for me to understand. I didn't exactly come from a totally healthy background, either. How they ever expected "college" from a life like this was yet another symptom in their family's downfall, comprised of one horrible decision after another.

Just when we thought his parents had gorged themselves completely, we were wrong. His mom shouted out "Stop!" from the passenger seat of their comfortable retiree car, so she could pick up a couple of those wooden cut-out reindeer for her front lawn. For Christmas. In the summertime. What a great vacation idea for us! His dad had finally had enough. "Where are we gonna put them? Come on!" She wasn't deterred at all. "We could strap them to the roof, maybe?" Me and Dave laughed, because we'd bought nothing. Not one damn thing, and we came home drained with less than nothing. We felt worse than before the trip by their unchecked excessiveness, plus all of the drinking and eating in bad strip mall restaurants that we were forced to go to with them, on their dime. We had less than zero.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsive_buying_disorder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retail_therapy

Express Yourself

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edward_Hopper_Summer_Interior.jpg

Given the surplus of most advertising budgets in this country (which speaks highly about Capitalism's importance within this society, and what our true priorities really are), it's no surprise that the average American thinks "shopping" equals "fun holiday vacation". It is, in fact, what my disordered aunt tried to sell to me as damaged goods for my entire young life, in her constant bid to have a co-dependent partner with her during her disillusioned mall-based fantasies; a meeting of a certain key demographic with one's core audience, if ever there was. 

Her late best friend filled up her mother's Bronx town-home with her hoarding disorder to live in a tiny rental, choosing instead to die from a bad surgery done cheaply, and one we all warned her about, so much so, that it was actually a form of assisted suicide. All she had to do was go through the contents of her own home to find the money for the top cancer hospital in the country, which is in New York and a subway ride away. Their hobby that began as a conduit to creative expression over any real discernible talents hardened with time, effort, and near-constant practice into a brain disorder so bad, it has become synonymous with heroin usage and alcoholism, with one of the lowest cure rates in all of psychotherapy.

Shopping has become so prevalent within our society that even our supposed higher institutions of learning devote entire curricula to it. You can degree in "Shopping 101", which is thinly disguised behind marketing and sales, but not by much. Asian/Asian-American preferences for goods and shiny objects are so well-known, that Manhattan's F.I.T. actively recruits makers of widgets and experts in object lure, touted as "Toy Design", a weird variant of Industrial Design marketing solely for children, and "Merchandising", which is typically a female who seeks to buy for stores. Oh, you can dress it up in holiday wrapping, but that's essentially the gig: score with a major supplier like Macy's, and that's the ticket into your shopper's paradise. In reality, it is a hellhole of a Christmas experience, like sweating with thousands of fat middle Americans who seek the ubiquitous brown paper bag, rubbing elbows with Mid-westerners who are too lazy to go uptown for Tiffany's better blue one.

And those are the high achievers in this particular sport: majoring in the big city retailers, minoring in the outer circles while awaiting your call-up to New York City, as a symbol of your advanced pocketbook pride. How glamorous! Shopping in "The City"! It's a rather sad and provincial characteristic naive out-of-towners have, wide-eyed with their recent fix, but "Shopaholics" (cutesy marketing term, don't you think?) are not new to me, as evidenced by my own family and their crippling dysfunctional patterns. Feel sad? Buy food! Instant fix. Feeling bored? Graze at the mall, until your identity reaches out to you in the form of some useless tchotchke with no real value, except the one the purchaser breathes into it, instead of loving the human they're with. "What's love got to do with it?" Exactly.

I worked with a typical Eurasian model at the city outpost for a rich German family, and within a week, she let me know we all had big targets on our backs (because she "made it" by working here at some company I'd never heard of before, until I interviewed for the job), and that she was "too cool for school"; meaning she was so inept, she actually failed out of a SUNY school known for "Fashionistas" who loooove to spend their rich Japanese daddy's money. Très chic, n'est-ce pas? It touts "worldly" in a bottle, like the trendy Eau de Parfum du jour, but unlike their skinny frames hidden underneath overly (but artfully) designed clothing, carefully nipped and ticked to disguise their boyish frames, talent wasn't something my viciously bitchy co-worker knew how to shop for. Not well, at least.

Oh, she positioned herself as the "Queen of Greeting Cards", based on her brief tenure at Boston's art museum gift shop, and it was enough to get her the cheap gig in the city, which (on the surface, if you squinted hard enough) passed for a somewhat respectable firm, if you overlooked it's inception as the NYC outpost designed to amuse the short handsome rich German playboy who is the second son to a family that crowned the older brother as the sober C.E.O., because they like the nobility that money can by. That, and the strength of the German Mark before Europe's unification process. Unfortunately for her and the rather pedestrian German-American guy (Hi, Harald) who managed the U.S. product line, I knew all about Deutsch Bank's tactics from my ferociously financial brother, who did his apprenticeship on their sweatshop trading floors, no veal pen divisions included. I know, because I visited my brother at the company when he worked there, to see it for myself. A little short on trust with American financiers and infamous Wall Street trade, I suppose.

Ditto with their group manager as it was with his head shopper. He shorted out when I presented him with numbers on purchasing a reconditioned color printer (why not squeeze the locals when you're an overseas firm, right?), asking me to flow the numbers into columns based on his type of accounting software, because he lacked the ability to comprehend numbers if they were presented outside of the casing he was used to. That's a serious kind of dyslexia, so I asked him again via em-mail. He responded dreadfully. Yes, please. For me? Oh. I guess when you have all the German money in the world backing you, you don't need to master reading and writing early on like I did (for publishing in New York, in English). When I told my brother about his peculiar behavior at a family holiday, he huffed derisively and said, "Yeah. That's classic for a typical 'Deutsch Bank' accountant". Indeed it was, because that's exactly where this manager began his career.

I guess that's why I sit here typing to you on a public library's company for pennies a week (for your great success), and why my brother lives in a very large (and rather well-appointed, or so I'm told) home in one of the rich, hilly, horse country towns of New Jersey; because me and my brother do a heck of a lot more in business than shopping and bean-counting (Hello again, Harald. Still living in New Jersey? How's work?) Everything I needed to know in business, I already knew, and do you know what, my dear followers? Because I wasn't a programmed, brain-washed tool like they were (and still are), in the exact same illiterate ways, they never saw me coming. Herr, Fuhrer! 

That, and the fact that the Edward Hopper Foundation (a famous Hudson River Valley painter with his home museum right here in Rockland County, within the town of Nyack's borders), does not sell the licensing rights to most of his work, as was mandated by his will. We are (and will remain) staunchly: by the people, and for the people. Always. Because there's nothing to buy-and-sell here, ami.  Snap! I'll bet you didn't see that one coming at you, did you?

 http://www.edwardhopperhouse.org/

 

A Thousand Points of Light

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot

Like a lot of native New Yorkers living outside of the country (or smack dab in the middle of it like I was), news of home and murder struck us deep at our core, and like many of my friends, we took it as a beacon of light in the fight against the dark that spreads through the human condition where we cannot see it, deep within our souls. I came home as soon as could, with a full grown Mal and man in tow, in a crazy road trip adventure that was fraught with many perils, but make it I did. 
Of course, that man soon realized all those t.v. shows and movies depicted a reality about my home that he was not prepared to accept, but I accepted the return to the homeland of my birth as a necessary burning up upon re-entry. Ain't nobody gonna move me from this.

And so I set out to reconnect with my old network of former classmates, college pals, and work acquaintances, trying to pick up the thread of life in our big city once again. It was overwhelming: I was flat broke (typical for single women), had one of the highest rents in the country to make every month (alone), on a paycheck that did not include food, or clothing, or electricity, because no one in the city gives a fuck about you or your comfort. It's sad in a way, I suppose, but everybody is just trying to keep their heads above water, in the most vicious waters urban man has ever created. Population and competition do that to people, like Rhesus monkeys fighting for peanuts at the local zoo: people zone out, stepping over homeless humans like they're a discarded pizza box, but what can you do? That bum is schizo and he might knife you. Besides, you'll get fired from the job that keeps your head just above the poverty line, and you'll soon be homeless, too, if you don't hurry into work.

That's life in "The Big Apple". It's a near-constant Round Robin* game of crisis care, like an Emergency Room on any given night throughout Gotham: who lives, and who dies? We call it "The Rat Race" here for good reason, because sometimes the vermin outnumber the amount of humans who give a rat's ass about you, and that's on a relatively peaceful day. Know what I mean? It changes you: how you think, look, and behave. Yeah, it makes you stronger, faster, smarter, and tougher, but you learn to let those little things go over the catastrophes, losing sight of the details that pile up in the face of neglect.

I certainly wasn't alone. As part of my "Reconnect" campaign, I briefly became a "joiner" of clubs and associations, at least temporarily, while I made crucial connections. With my safety, security, and money in mind, I forced myself out into the nightlife of Manhattan, typically after rushing home to Brooklyn from work to walk my dog, change my clothes, and take the train back into town, usually because people become snobbish about boroughs at the slightest suggestion from an out-of-towner. Yeah, I know. Women lead brutally hard lives. On one such night, I sat alone at the bar that some local actor bought with t.v. series money about life in the city. But not for long. Within minutes, I chatted with an attractive lady sitting next to me to learn that, yes, she too did design work. Well, yeah. Most of us do that at some point.

We quickly became friends, and branched out from our two bar stools to include other RISD alumni within our conversations. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a guy speed past me like a blur, and then I thought I heard my name. "Hey! Beau!" Turned out to be a guy I had gone out on a date or two with, made out with one time without sex, and then never dated him again. He avoided me in classes after that, and I never really knew why, although hardcore dysfunction was definitely part of my short list of reasons. He fit the criteria: well-to-do, infamous dad, artsy Jewish family with lots of creative connections, etc. You know the type. Handsome but distant, like he's got a million exciting things going on, but honestly, it's creative procrastination.

Anyway, we reconnected as friends, in the same dithering slightly romantic way we had made contact at school with. He was still attractive and young, and so was I. He was entering a Japanese firm through Marketing, that standby for artists when the art and design department thing doesn't work out for you. We were all trying to make our way in Post-911 New York. He'd come back from teaching English in Japan after the attacks to enlist in the NYPD. The force didn't work out for him, for obvious reasons, but I admired his response to a call-to-action. I felt the same way about my people, too. This is our home. 
We fight to defend it. Makes sense.

We became reacquainted and spent some time together, mostly drinking his food of choice, like Sake and Sushi, so he could show off his knowledge of Japanese to me, but we occasionally connected on a deeper level. One 9/11 night was one of those times, when we broke through the petty show-off competition of visual genius to throw some light on what it means to really belong to a culture, like he and I do. He was trying to work on series of paintings about his brief time on the force, like his Jewish Upper East Side gallery agent suggested he do, because his pretty but lackluster Japanese landscapes kind of fell flat. I didn't mind. His rich kid edge was the same energy I met with at school. Why would his life here be any different for him? It wasn't really, as I watched him muddle through his intense feelings about seeing murder and the worst of humanity firsthand, for hours at a time.

I didn't think it would go far due to his emotional constipation, hence the whole codependent thing he's got going on with his folk in their Village apartment, because processing wasn't high on his family's list of accomplishments. His sister still slept on his parent's couch at the time, supposedly because she was the victim of a sexual assault that left her traumatized, but after my brush-ups with the insane, I knew it could be untrue. Besides, his parents covered for her constantly in her infirmity, and I knew all about that, too. I covered up for my family more times than I could count, being an abuse survivor all my life. I knew the consequences for speaking up against mental illness in the home.

It was in that context that he invited me to see his cool art studio housed in a trendy brick building that was formerly a warehouse in the Meatpacking District, on the very night we mourn our dead. After touring the facilities, we made our way to the roof with a bottle of wine. It was cold out, as September nights that edge towards Fall are. Besides the uncomfortable fumbling around that passes for flirting with the disordered, I could see the twin lights of the former Trade Center site from atop the building, and I still can't really explain what I saw accurately. It was like there were a thousand little lights twirling, dipping, and swooping independently within the two upward beams, of their individual volition. It was eerie, fantastical, and utterly miraculous.

I asked him if he saw what I saw, and we spoke briefly about it. 
He dismissed it as dust motes, but what kind of matter moves like that?! I tried watching the evening news for days afterward, as well as intermittently searching the web for other witnesses to the events of that night, but I still don't know what happened. I don't know what I saw, except that it looked like the dearly departed souls had become a thousand points of light** in the night, a cluster of brilliant fairy lights brushing up against one another as they surfed the warm updraft of the hot spotlight currents. It was joyful and free, and I have the same chill goosebumps writing about it in this library's air conditioning as I did on that windy night in September, when I wasn't a human warrior on a mission to save the world with my friends, but an artist who could really see what life was about: the beauty of it, the pathos of it, the sometimes tragic and hopelessly beautiful quality to our unique lives that makes the world go 'round. Do you know what I mean? 

I hope you do, because that feeling was more real to me than any of the words spoken to me that night by a New York kid who would never make it out of his head to achieve great success, despite every advantage that was rigged for him through a Capitalist system designed for his particular benefit. He was a victim of circumstances beyond his control, like the synapses in his brain that constantly misfire, as mysterious to me as the cosmic forces that drive stardust across the night sky, but such is the mystery and marvel of our faith. Amen to you today who have suffered at the hands of others who do not love you like I do. I understand you, and I can feel your pain. I can help. We'll be here for you, when you're ready. I am the light at the end of the tunnel. Come home to me.

*    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round-robin
**  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand_points_of_light
 

Hecho en Mexico

Ever since the beginning of Donald Trump's campaign, the media has made much out of his Mexican immigration comments, like he exposed his genitals on live t.v., or something horrible like that. You may not like that he's blowing the lid off of your illegal $9/hour worker scam (because your basic business model sucks), but you have to see it from a native New Yorker's point of view. The nanny who raises your kid for you, so you can commute to some dull generic job, has no real stake in your child's future, because you can't even feel enough compassion to pay her health benefits, while she stuffs money in her bra on the sly to send to her poor extended family back home.

We have a wonderful recycling program in the city and state of New York, one that has created a false Banana Republic economy out of picking through our trash. The afflicted and addicted on my block are so bad about lifting bottle and can deposits from the county's recycling containers, that I have to use a separate indoor garbage can for just those types of returns, because I don't want some violent fucking drunk using the money from my garbage as an excuse to continue drinking. That's not what reusing our natural resources is about. 

Ditto with that tiny little lady pushing a shopping cart, stringing five kids along with her. Sure, she looks small and vulnerable, and you feel sorry for her, but do you really think "The American Dream" for her and her family should be taking our trash as a full-time job? Her children will never see us as equals, or treat us like friends, family, and neighbors. They see "white people" as money, which is laughable, since I see her as a desperate single mother of EUROPEAN descent that's Spanish-flavored, which definitely does not make her a minority. The numbers don't add up to her sense of self about stealing from our garbage.

The media is just as bad at holding up this phony sense of self, to make money off of us, because it's blatantly untrue that Hispanic Americans are some small poor underclass. One t.v channel did this whole piece on some music teacher in Paraguay who uses garbage to fashion instruments for his students because THE PEOPLE OF PARAGUAY decided that it's appropriate for their own people to live in filth. Did we do that to them?! And you know what they want, more than anything in this world? To leave their country ASAP for America. That's right, they want to come here instead of cleaning up the trash in their own community, because apparently they're too good to do what you and I do on any given day. So, I guess it's OK to come here illegally and riffle through our trash than pick up your own garbage? Does that make any sense to you?

The people in these shadowy underground networks adopt the same arrogant attitude as some stateside Chinese: they disdain learning English to favor their own language (something my grandparents didn't have the luxury to do, because they had to work in the city as minors to feed their families during The Great Depression), nor do they pay taxes, or take their children to our schools, just so they can feed off of our cast-off bits and pieces, without ever giving back to the very system that gives them life. They do not fund our hospitals, or vote in our elections, or work in our businesses, all because you want a cheeseburger for $5, a five dollars that will never be adjusted to current inflation rates, because you can't deal without your creature comforts.

Since I've been back in Rockland County and openly encamped in town, not once has that cute little Hispanic lady with five kids—the one who canvasses the block every week during recycling day with her shopping cart piled far above the rim with can returns—ever waved at me, or said "hello" to me, or acknowledged my existence in any way, shape, or form, because to her, I am nothing but a dollar sign. I am not human to her and her family. I am nothing but money to her.

The Mexican Wedding Dress: my mom bought it on a family trip to Cozumel many years ago and never wore it once, so she gave it to me. I love it!

Dark and Light

 

You might not know it, but advertisers fucking hate you. So do their useless product generators, and their insane marketing people. They hate you, too. I mean, really hate you. Your hair is bad, your skin is bad, your weight is bad....everything about you is bad, Bad, BAD!, in ever increasingly hysteric tones. I am (of course) the greatest evil in their Bizarro* world, because I am immune to programming, which sucks for them (or you, if you read this and recognize yourself in it).

Gen X'ers, like hep cats, jazz aficionados, flappers, and every other original generation before them, are particularly offensive to the "sell-at-all" costs crowd, because we are not a marketing trend. How do you reach a demo with no pigeon-holed stereotype? You can't, thus the hatred hardily mixed with fear and loathing (thanks, Hunter S. Thompson). No one can get inside your head if you know who you are, the essence that is YOU, because you can't be commoditized.

The chains that bind us to oppression are often of our own choosing. My father used to tell me that the greatest prisons are the ones people create in their own minds, and that is true. How can you be a wage slave unless you sign on the dotted line to the contract that binds you to someone else, most likely a stranger without your best interest at heart? When you do react against it, there's a steady stream of vindictive slurs tailor-made just for you, like "Darkie" or "Pasty".

Don't believe me? OK, check this piece of weirdness out. "Your skin is too dark! Buy this": (insert brand name here). "Oh, yeah? Well, I think your skin is too light. Buy this": (insert competing brand from same company here). Freaked out, yet? Welcome to my world. 

You can have all the lotions you want, if you'd only buy into it.

http://bit.ly/1jgA2FF

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bizarro_World

Take it to the bank

Traditional banking is going away for good, and I mean that sincerely. Why put your money in a safe house that's compromised? You don't. Banks were supposed to be the place where your paycheck was protected from the bad guys, but a fortress is only as good as its' security. As recent as two years ago, anyone could deposit money into any type of account, under any name, with no I.D. check. Yeah, that means what you're thinking. Your nice grandma with the fly car also has a grandson who deals drugs, and every week he'd put stinking cash reeking of pot smoke into her account, without anyone doing anything about it.

But that's why criminals worked as "inside men" at banks nationwide: that's where the money is, and that's what robbers steal. The banking industry has become such a magnet for illicit use (Off-shore banking, anyone? Sweden?), that the notoriously criminal firm of Goldman Sachs* recently announced their entrance into the banking game, for rich people only, of course: http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-chair-writes-anticorruption-letter-2015-2.

I had my own run-in with the old crime syndicate a few years back, one that has its' hooks into every con in town, real estate and the city court systems included. The system temporarily bankrupted me, but not before I made each one of their key players do every financial tap dance there is, because no one messes with me and gets away with it. I am always a native New Yorker, no matter where I go.  

As the world's capital, we've always been a very wealthy area. Commerce was my dinner table conversation growing up, hence the lack of a business school on my curriculum vitae, but you didn't know that about me, did you? No, you didn't. That's because my dad was a greaser who played suckers for pool, one of my granddads' was a bookie during the Depression (in between pony rides), and they both taught me how to shuffle a deck of cards, just in case that junkie in Times Square wanted to shake me down playing "Three Card Monty" back in the day. So, we're back to the beginning, right? Not exactly.

After a corrupt system robbed me of all my pocket change, I was forced to do what I do best: improvise under the gun in the tightest of squeezes, which is exactly what I did. It's called "High Performing" in the circles where strong games are played. I ditched all my accounts, ran on cash, lived off my tax refund with a debit card from a chain tax service, then ditched that debit card the next year for a hard check. 

Of course, the well-known tax service couldn't cash it for me, because they aren't a bank. I knew that already, because I know businesses from the inside-out, and that's exactly what was told back to me: my own answer coming out of some admin's mouth (sorry, I meant "Office Manager"), which is certainly not my first ride around the block.

So, if you think financial calisthenics is the type of bloodsport you can handle, have at it. I know I can do any kind of weird gymnastics the system wants to throw my way. Sick and tired of being played? I got your back.  Read, learn, then do.

http://comptroller.nyc.gov/takeittothebank/

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou_shalt_not_steal

   http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/cake/shortskirtlongjacket.html

Plastic

This year I got some beautiful stuff for Christmas, like floral bouquets, 
a wedding announcement from my dear cousin and his longtime girlfriend that's lovingly designed to be a two-sided keepsake ornament shaped as a pretty snowflake, and some cold hard cash (what any young publisher really needs), along with the usual tepid crap, like plastic cards.

What disturbs me most about it are the gaping vulnerabilities savvy companies use to exploit the mass consumer, and they do so with impunity. Here's a great example: on a recent shopping trip, I thought I expertly calculated my gift card usage down to cents, and I was right. In exchange for my shopping prowess, here's what I got back from my friendly neighborhood (and totally red-faced, embarrassed) cashier:

Wow....the a**hole is strong on this card!

That's right, the cheapskate asshole who designed this program for a local supermarket chain will not allow cashiers give back a mere .$36 in coinage to the consumer, you know, in case I went power drunk with my excess riches. Uh, thanks. And so, the average consumer gets tricked into giving cold hard cash to a faceless conglomerate instead putting it where it belongs: in the gift recipients' pocket. Not convinced by mere words? OK, let's do the math together.

For example: one very busy, successful store in my town (I actually LOVE it) sells about 1,000 of these cards in racks by each check out line, and after they're used, they each have a remaining $.36 on them. That's $360.00 profit for them, barring manufacturing costs for printing the card, and distribution to stores. Next up, 10,000 cards in my home county are sold throughout the holiday season. That's $3,600.00 for the company, and not you, the consumer, or your "loved one", and I am being generous with the amounts. Most folks leave a lot more on these types of cards, because it's too much of a pain in the ass to use up the $1 to $2 that's left on them. 

Feel me on this one? Good. I'm trusting that you understand the dynamic here, right? Great! Don't do it again. Bad shopper!  You're actually feeding an industry of crooks. Live and learn, folks, and then let's move forward together, conceptually-speaking. That's all is is.
Thank you.

Here's your homework: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/04/20/new-laws-mean-unused-gift-card-money-wont-be-a-gift-to-stores/ 

And: http://www.qualitylogoproducts.com/blog/secret-of-gift-cards-plastic-into-profit/ 

Christmas Movie

Two little Christmas trees: one for Bernard, and one for me (2014).

After my father left his family for points west, seeking fame and fortune with a new model wife that was (and is) his secretary, we were left to our own devices, and we knew that, because our mom repeatedly told us so. Mommie Dearest wasn't just some histrionic soap opera of a movie that appealed to gay men; we lived its' truth each and every day. Not long after my father left with his money, borrowing against the home we lived in, we almost immediately fell onto hard times financially, which was the exact revenge he was looking to put upon our heads, as a price for his supposed long term suffering. It was cruel, childish, spiteful, and mean, which was exactly what he wanted, because he wanted us to feel the same hurt he felt as the child of alcoholics, except this hurt he would deliver by alternating giving and then withdrawing money from us, giving him the power to hurt us and then publicly pretend to heal us whole with his generosity, as he saw fit: a cheap phony publicity stunt that fooled no one, and it still doesn't.

Suffice to say, my mother began having nervous breakdowns, which was the burden he wanted to fall on us, like reigning blows down upon our young heads, except this wasn't something he and my mom could get caught for by the local child protective services. It was cleverly vicious, secretive, and mean, which again, was the whole point: to make us feel that, whenever he wanted to, he could bring a sharp blade down upon our necks to hurt us from afar, if he so choose, for whatever reasons he saw fit, so that we could never win and "beat" him, sick as that is. And so began his pattern of control with money as a resource, always keeping us needy and afraid, the exact opposite of the comfort a father is supposed to provide for his children, so that we would forever relive the horrors of his childhood over and over again, using my mother's mental illness as the delivery mechanism he employed through covert manipulation. It became a simple equation: squeeze her = hurt us. Easy. He would continue to do that forever until his death that would reach to extend long after he was gone, until I finally put a stop to it, but more on that story some other day. His sneaky nasty behavior would be done quickly, shakily, and hastily, like that of a furtive sidelong glance over the shoulder, looking for witnesses to his crimes. He refused health care for his mental problems, again, to cause suffering through his arrogance and spite, like the mean drunks who so harassed and terrified him in his youth.

And so, my mother told us during one very histrionic episode, when my young teenage brother and I tried in vain to console her, we said we would chip in for all our household expenses by financially carrying our own weight, which we already did through household chores in excess, supposedly to "earn" our "allowance", but really, we kept the entire house going through our continued labors. In retaliation for the gift of offering her our services readily, (My brother: "Come on, Mom. It won't be that bad. We'll get jobs and chip in. It'll be okay."), my mother burst into childish angry tears, turning bright red, bringing forth the veins on her forehead, horribly contorting her features into a wrathful mask of hate, and spitting out curses at me when I backed him up. "YOU STUPID BITCH!" she screamed as she turned on me, "You don't get it!! We're broke!", slamming her bedroom door in both of our freshly frightened faces. My brother and I stood in mute horror for a moment, in the hallway outside her shut door, before slowly and quietly walking back to our rooms alone, to sit in quiet contemplation of our lives and this new found responsibility as heads of household. I was just 14 years old, and my brother 15. "What are we going to do?" I softly asked him. "I don't know. I guess we have to find jobs this weekend." I wearily sat down on my small twin bed, keeping my door slightly ajar so my Irish twin could see me and come talk to me, if he so chose. Oh. Yes. That. Work.

We had worked on and off since childhood, with our kiddie elementary school work permits for paper routes, but this was different. If we didn't figure it out, we could die, and neither of us really wanted that. We wanted to live. I began my official work history with Social Security services at age 15, as did my brother, which found me and my mother alone one Christmas day, because he had to go to work. You see, for many Jews in New York, Christmas is just another inconvenience of closed shopping malls and restaurants. Their holiday fare eventually became Chinese food, after discovering their shared non-Christian status in the "Open" sign glowing brightly in the window of the local Chinese restaurant in their neighborhood, such is the close proximity that is our vast Melting Pot in New York City, thus beginning their own New World tradition. 

But, that still left us to tend to them here in Rockland County, just as we tended to ourselves and every other person around us who needs us, and there were legions who sought us out, even back then, tender and young as we were as new parents, but we did do it, by the grace of G-d's gifts bestowed upon us, the least of which are our extraordinary patience, incredible work ethic, kind and generous compassion and empathy, with a deep sensitivity and regard for the suffering of others. I still thank G-d for keeping those qualities intact in us, especially in the soft bright blues eyes of a young boy who went to work for the local Jewish people here in our home county, as a clerk in a movie theater one rainy afternoon, returning home with a huge bag of popcorn to surprise us with, when we let out a sigh of relief at his safe return home, finally beginning our true Christmas Day together as a family, a holiday we could only start after his labors ended, alone and derided by the very people who understood our suffering the least. 
They mocked him for being slow behind the food counter (because he was working alone on a holiday, as a teenage movie theater manager), or if he got their order mixed up due to the sheer volume of their derisively snorted requests, or because he didn't take their money fast enough for their tickets, mocking him when he swept up the aisles of the theater for having the decency to tend to them on his holiday, while they rested in comfortable darkness to watch some banal movie onscreen, like a zoned-out legion of half dead zombies.

I want you to think of him this holiday, when you belligerently complain about the delayed or postponed or cancelled release of some stupid ass-kissing buddy comedy that you've been so "cruelly" deprived of this year. You see the pure face of a beautiful blue-eyed boy in a dark theater on a dark Christmas morning opening some mall theater alone, as I had to see him, with tears in his eyes, cleaning up the garbage that you threw at him when he walked past you slowly up the aisle to do yet another task for you, like clean the bathroom you fouled up with your mess of mocking graffiti and strewn toilet paper, mixed with piss and vomit and shit and stink and mess. You think about that this year instead, and May G-d have mercy on your soul for your cruelty, selfishness, false pride, and injustice. May G-d help you during His Final Judgement when He weighs your sins in front of you one by one, when you cannot turn away from them. May G-d be with you then. 

Amen to you on this Christmas in the year of Our Lord, 2014.  Amen to you, with my blessings for a safe, healthy, happy holiday.

Loosey Goosey

When the bottom fell out of my life financially and economically through spiteful intent and malicious design, after my supposed friends and family abandoned me, I found that abandonment embodied in a ramshackle tenement, in what was also supposed to be one of the "best" neighborhoods in New York City: Park Slope, Brooklyn. By no coincidence, it is comprised mostly of white out-of-towners who ask to be resettled there through their also-wealthy realtors and big money companies, so that they can feel some sense of security living in a town with a really bad reputation, much hyped as it is on t.v. and in movies. It is not my native New York.

It should then also come as no surprise to us, as New Yorkers, that we awoke Sunday morning to a loudly trumpeted double murder and suicide luridly served up and gleefully splashed across every local "news" program, a horror that was supposedly committed in response to "racism" (a divisive concept I do not believe in, because it is a human construct that does not actually exist in our blood that flows freely), but which is actually madness in the guise of evil. I was not fooled by the gunman's racist exhortations online, a mockery to all of us during this season of glad tidings and one very special birthday, but isn't that the point, the very hell that we women relive each and every day? We give birth, only to watch men and boys kill each other (our children) in each others' name. One life is given, and two are taken away, or two are taken and one is murdered, but the result for a woman is always the same: grief, pain, and mourning, as we watch our children taken away from us, after laboring so hard to keep them alive and safe under our charge, brief a time as it is.

And so it was with me, when I was forced into poverty and homelessness by the very people who pledged to give me life and succor it gladly in G-d's name, in His House, and standing on His alter; a move I made done in quick fear to a rotten, filthy hole of a building with horrors inside that also existed in full view of one of the wealthiest neighborhood's in the world, like a sacrilege to any who dared enter it, in the form of a roach-filled, rat-infested tenement that was the only thing I could afford to pay at the time before another corporate job started (at half the salary and below my level, you know, to fully take advantage of my vulnerable status). My labor only encouraged the tenants who lived there, beneath me in every regard, to feed off my body and blood as I worked unholy hours every day and night for them. I gave them everything: first as my money earned through my labor which is made from my honest and good hard work, my few scant hours of free time filled up with their petty tricks lies, deceits, and nonsense, all my best advice and attentions, my good wishes, all my richest and most worthy gifts freely given to them, and still it did no good. They still choose each day to waste G-d's precious riches.

The man who introduced me into his world and environment was recommended this dirty place through the local bodega, the very same place that sold him "loose" cigarettes, an unknown element to me before I came first to sleep on his floor in his sleeping bag and then, after I paid he and the super to help me empty out another filthy room adjacent to his little cell, was the same place I made clean so I that could sleep in that chamber of horrors that was padlocked with a chain instead of a doorknob before I went to work in the city, earning more for them to take from me cruelly, as they devised. 

This focal point of crime disguised as just another local bodega served as the community hot spot for criminal endeavors, because I asked my fallen friend to tell me about it. The same bodega owner who sold him cigarettes one by one in a small paper bag also took advantage of his derangement and continued poverty by directing him to an illegal tenement where he squatted, until the rich old white lady owner from Long Island found out that super was also in on the take, and kicked us out through some rich white lawyers working the city housing court system, because we hadn't given her enough to stay in her illegal building. After all my battles there were won, I actually paid what is considered "fair market value" for the privilege of staying in her squalor.

They told my mentally ill friend at the bodega (because he was new to this place that he always aspired to be, susceptible as he was: a broken ghetto kid from Brownsville) where to buy pot, and they advertised in their store window how they could illegal hack into your iPhone for a $50 fee (which was locked because you couldn't pay your phone bill) through something also unknown to me at the time that's called a "jailbreak". My friend and a neighbor had to teach me how to do it, where to go, and which man to ask for at the bodega for these services. They were that unknown to me at the time; these strange, foreign, shadowy, secretive underworld concepts that baffled me and still do, like the criminal who spends ten years plotting a crime that's over in ten minutes, never recouping his actual loss spent planning such hopeless endeavors. That's how wasteful and stupid it was to me, emotions not dulled or diminished today through the time and distance that has passed.

So the next time some carnival barker (with his obvious freckles and slick pompadour) appears on t.v., the same one who refuses to pay taxes in our home state and city where he also resides, tries to convince you that we exist in a society that's as flat and dull as any generic black and white cookie bought in a corner bodega that can easily be broken in half, remember my words here as you read my true life tale, before you rush to judgement about who is the criminal and who is the thief. Chances are that when you look in the mirror, it's you, and that this current tired rerun being played out on t.v. for sport and amusement is a phoney crusade made from fool's gold.

http://www.withsprinklesontop.net

Merry Christmas to you during His Holy Days
of Peace, Prosperity, and Love.

The Perfect Summer: August in New York

Beautiful fluffy clouds, after a recent, brief summer rain. So normal!

We've had a cooler than average summer this year, which has made me extremely happy. First of all, there's no power outages, outrageously high utility bills, or constantly running air conditioning that's smells moldy from old filters; a huge break indeed. 

A symphony of beautiful weather set in the skies.

But more importantly, this crucial respite from insanely high temperatures gives the Earth a chance to cool down after many years of escalating global warming, temperatures so high from human waste, that we have melted polar ice caps and destroyed entire coral reefs from artificially warm waters, as well as displacing human populations from their sea level homes.

Ah! Another gorgeous sunset behind a stand of large trees.

It comes as no surprise to me that it's been one of the best summers I've had in a long, long time. I sleep comfortably every night with a fan blowing and open windows. I wake up happy and refreshed from actual cooled air that I can comfortably breathe in when I open the curtains to let in the beautiful morning daylight. 

The  glow of an orange sunset; a New York summer's day.

This is the kind of summer I remember from my youth: warm, sunny days with cool, breezy nights. It's also no coincidence that these are optimal growing conditions for this area, as one recent broadcast on local news suggested. A berry farmer in New Jersey said this was by far the best bumper crop they've ever seen, with the longer season extending the harvest to December.

The daylight's music fades, as the night chimes in.

Still, true to a human's ridiculously selfish nature, many an idiot talking head has loudly grumbled on-air, like some grade-school fuck-up on summer break, that all this "horrible" cool air is wrecking their friggin' beach time, to which I say this: go fuck yourself. I mean it!

A cloud adds punctuation, a single note at the end of the day.

If your spoiled bitch ass is bothered by the planet cooling itself back into good health, then go buy yourself a stupid fucking tanning bed and burn yourself into a compulsively fried oblivion, because we've had enough of your stupid fucking bullshit.

The perfect light.

Or, go buy a cheapo ticket to Boca in Florida, where you can bake your brains out (what's left of them, anyway) in some generically bland condo, you short-sighted, evil, corporate-owned cunt. I hate you! 
This is war >:o(

The music winds down, and the light grows softer.

For the rest of the decent Americans and other people like me, I raise my glass of freshly squeezed organic lemonade in your direction, as I put my feet up on the wood railing of an old house somewhere in the Hudson River Valley region, watching another spectacular light show that's delivered free of charge by Mother Nature herself. 

Perfect pink and orange lighting.

It's some of the best light I've ever seen in our skies, which is also not a surprise to me, a long-time watcher of weather and clouds. I'm rooting for Planet Earth all the way, (which we are just a small part of, despite the blown up arrogance and tiny penis insecurity of some fucking on-air tool), every single day, with every seemingly "small" choice I make, many of them at the grocery store, when I choose local and fresh organic foods, higher priced as they may be than the high fructose shit on sale for a rip-off $.79, now that word has spread about food and beverage company's poison profits, the shit that also seeps into our groundwater and land with every acid rainfall we have, with yet another weirdo tropical storm that we endure. Who do you want to see win? I know my choice (and my conscience) is clear. Asshat.

Wow...

...pink and purple clouds say "goodnight"...

...to another perfect day in the Hudson Valley.