Red Light

At the same time I was feeling out my identity as a young illuminator (that came to a head over a collection of excellently preserved Gutenberg Bibles at the Trinity Library in Dublin), my college boyfriend decided it would be exotic for us to smoke pot in Amsterdam, rather than our less glamorous state-school dorm rooms. I didn't really think of it as "fun", so much as a really far away place to travel to, so we could smoke some hash that we'd get cheaper back in New York, but like his newly found discovery of sex (I was his first), he seemed to think that the world would totally change if he was high in another part of it, which it does not.

It's like getting drunk in a bunch of different bars; you just get drunk in different rooms. Accents and a hip European locale, was (and is) travelling to a lot of young tourists: places to get drunk and high for more money. It was stupid, wasteful, and stressful for me to be stoned in another language with an American passport back in the late 80s as a teenager, because you don't need to get a hangnail over and over again to know they hurt badly.

But, of course, who I was and what I wanted was much less relevant to him, since he was paying for the trip. So, before I could miss seeing "The Book of Kells" opened to a text-only folio because the library is closed on Mondays (and I had to fight to stay an extra day to see even that), I found myself sitting in a small commuter prop plane made for European businessmen after a long intercontinental flight from the U.S., exhausted and scared beyond belief at the jostling in a tiny plane, so my boyfriend could smoke pot in a bar.

We nervously went into a hash cafe and ordered pot off a menu from a bored hippie behind a plexi-glass window, to take a seat at a cafe table rolling smokes and drinking beer. Because smoking cigarettes in a bar was still legal back then, it felt exactly like sitting in a bar smoking and drinking, except pot was included with the beer and cigarettes. Just like Ireland is much more to me than a quaint pub to drink in, Amsterdam was punctuated by incredible artistic experiences for me as a college student, like seeing a Rembrandt for the first time, or Vermeer's painting of a milkmaid pouring from a jug by an open window.

There isn't any kind of smoke or lager to compete with that, and my non-artistic boyfriend knew it, hence his sniping sabotages and subterfuges that I'd outgrow right after college. It was the same with the much-hyped "Red Light District" of Amsterdam, walking its cobblestone streets at night alongside the winding, misty canals: if Bart hadn't stopped me at the end of a block to inquire, I'd never had known we just walked down a street with legal prostitution.

New York City hookers were loud, cat-calling addicts running wild through the streets, ready to jack the car of any trick who tried to run them over, not these genteel plate-glass storefronts with a chair in the middle of a window. He made me walk back down the block again, stoned and high as a kite, so I could take it all in, this time aware of what I was looking for. Well...what did I think? Of a beefy, middle-aged, frazzled-haired blond woman sitting alone in a window on a plain wood chair wearing ugly lingerie? Like it was quiet desperation mixed with incredible loneliness and a deeply penetrating sadness. Almost immediately, I missed the bright lights and big things of Times Square; of home.

Shock to the Heart

Back in the day, we used to say lines from the old show "Sanford and Son" to each other that we had memorized by heart (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanford_and_Son), having heard the same lines over and over again, like our parents compulsive "jokes" that were often told in times of stress and/or drunkenness, when they didn't know how to fill in conversational spaces with other humans correctly. 

"Old Man Sanford" would clutch his heart in mock anguish to deliver the well-honed line to his son that he was "on his way home" to see "Ouisie", his wife who'd passed on already, because he was "havin' the big one" that was so often threatened on the show but never actually came about. Oh...so, it's just a lie, then. We kinda felt gypped by the lack of "sudden death" action on t.v., like the nonsense our hysterical parents would blab out loud that was even less funnier than the sitcom stuff repeated for years on t.v. Yeah, sure. I know this line.

It became symptomatic of the psychological distress we'd see in the world that was the response of someone who uses their medical condition(s) as a manipulative tool(s) to get out of work, or human discourse, church on Sunday, or family visits. For a people who felt bereft of power, my parents and their friends employed a handy toolkit for the insane that included veiled threats (and not-so-veiled threats) that they often combine(d) with violent cursing and escalating acts of physical violence, which, rather than convincing us to obey their demands, made us want to stay even further away from their trouble spots. For them, their sickness became weapons for gaining leverage in the home and at work, with varying degrees of effectiveness.

It was silly and wasteful, but so were/are our parents, accustomed as they were to an ever-booming economy fueled through the machines of war. We wanted something better. We wanted something more from them and society, and the world at large. We wanted actual communication over the trite tricks brought on by so much t.v. viewing for the compulsively-addicted brain, followed by periods of paranoid non-engagements that could last just as long as their patterned routines that they inserted in lieu of actual thought. We talked to each other as a social group, and we wanted to see real conversation brought back, egged on as it was by the "shock" tactics of our disc jockeys and talk show hosts. A lot of it was the same old bullshit, but occasionally we broke through the static with our own hard work. See? Repetition does bear results, and I can talk about it at length, too.  
How's that for power tripping?

I Write the Book (Everyday)

 

For working class people like myself, our productivity serves as the vocation that directs and guides our lives, because labor is the greatest conduit to self-determination that we have. It was a really hard concept to describe to the average Americans I met earlier in life, like the feeling behind mia famiglia*, a shared closeness that bonds New Yorkers on a deeper level than your average cul-de-sac couple, because if you don't figure out how to live on top of one another in a small tenement flat with a shared bathroom on every other floor, you're fucked for life. You might just kill someone on the next "bad" day!

Much like our advanced solutions for recycling and re-purposing, our island nation began with limited space that demanded excellent and immediate solutions. While other Americans buried their toxic trash in empty fields that they hoped would just disappear like so much dust under a carpet, we were forced to live with our garbage strewn everywhere, as the price we paid for our failure to adapt. There was simply nowhere else to go. Our limited shared spaces created some funny dynamics, like the floating garbage barge denied docking pretty much everywhere (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobro_4000), and the infamous prison barge for our society's over-spill of convicts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_C._Bain_Correctional_Center).

When you can't take the train without a deep feeling of paranoia because the homeless drug addicts outnumber the people of the everyday working world, you've got a big problem, and when you can't walk down the street without the rank smell of a two-week pileup of garbage during the hottest season of the year (ah, August in the city...), you kinda want to solve those problems as quickly as possible. And so, we did. In the process, we became the world leader for innovation, adaptation, flexibility, and real change, because we had to. It's hard, and it's entirely human. But, on any given day, you'd find just as many working class people like me encountering the same situations with solutions already in hand (and cheaper than yours to implement, Baby Boomer) right now.

So, we waited. And waited. And then, we waited some more, for you to catch up to a reality that you check(ed) out of regularly with t.v., booze, pills, shopping, junk food, and whatever else the "idiot box" sells you, because you can't cope with the world you made—and then destroyed. Thanks for that, by the way. I heard one of the designers from the home-based reality show "Queer Eye for the Straight Eye" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_Eye) joke that he'd simply become the maid service for a bunch of dysfunctional shut-ins, and it was easy to see why. "You know your apartment needs cleaning when you have air fresheners plugged into every outlet", was the most direct way one of the designers could explain the concept of "clean" to a drooling chronic case of angst.

For me and my hard-working friends, the class system was completely different than the false realities sold to us in college and on the job through popular t.v. shows and movies. There were no more "blue collar" or "white collar" designations anymore. We were left with those who can, and those who can't, with a million problems needing solutions, and all of them were yours, not ours. In order to live, we had to solve your alcoholism and indifference for you, by managing it better than you did, with your greater share of power and money. In short, we became the ruling class from every great time in history, like the samurai warrior class of Japan, or the enslaved architectural scribes of Ancient Egypt. Because we had to. We had to work our way out of it. We simply had to. We have to work. There is no other choice.

Work for me has always held the power of self-determination, as the ability to rise above the shitty overblown titles of the inept office worker, or the ineptitude behind the egotistical fast-food restaurant manager, doomed for a life of gruelingly repetitive banality. Anything but this. That's how we felt about it. Anything must be better than this. And we were right. It was. Our lives were/are so much better than the people in our families that we grew up with back then. I always describe my group ethos as thus, for our motivation: I don't want to die. That was/is our motto. SO inspiring, right! Yeah, sure. It's a great bestseller, if you package it for demented retards. We rose above the labels and strata of the American Dream, because the fantasy was never real for us. We became the work, and in the process, we began to rule the world. Through popular vote, of course. What else is there?

Pope Francis Verified account ‏@Pontifex

People are the primary artisans of their own development, the first in charge!

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4:00 AM - 21 Jun 2016

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* la mia famiglia. my family.  

I Got the Will (Drive Myself Sleepless)

Most common "gym rats" are notorious addicts looking to divert their angst-driven energies into something else besides cocaine and alcohol, and the endless sleepless nights that accompany serious bouts with manic depression. When I trained in martial arts, the sales pitches mirrored the mentality of their community comprised mainly of high school drop-outs, with the occasional two-year college program for a sports-related major thrown in for a better salary, which meant that they tried to sell me on their type of packaging. I didn't "train" to lose weight from the holidays or from over-eating, I wasn't there to get ready to go to the beach for the summer (I'm a native, yo! My routine is: wake up, brush teeth and hair, put on a suit with a cover-up, grab a towel, and LET'S FUCKING GO!!), or counteract my hypertension and/or hyperactive disorders. I was actually much weirder for them.

I was there because I'm a fighter, and I fight everyday to make the world a better place through my works. I know! It was like I was so fucking alien and strange to them, that the sports kids working the joint finally gave up talking to me (a great sign that they finally "got it" about me), or trying to use some tired sales pitch to "get me" to buy more classes. I either have the time, money, and inclination, or I don't. There simply isn't anything some junior can do or say to me that will "get me" to do anything, which makes Gen X the most hated marketing demographic the modern world has ever seen, giving me and my friends a great deal to be proud of, as it reflects our angry young punk view of the world. "Fuck you! Feed someone!" <middle finger> You know? Just get real with it, already. I don't need your tired ass tryin' to pick my pocket, muthafucka. I already ride the subway every day.

That's how I felt about it back then. If you're not adding value to my life, you're gone from it. I didn't have anything leftover to give. I was already making beautiful books for the public as fast as I could, at a cut rate price point that was way below market-value, giving the rest away to rent, food, medicine, clothing, and some fucking gym(s). They weren't putting money in my pocket, you know? It was all one way with them, so no need to be so fucking coy about it. Anyway, it was a "no harm, no foul" kind of situation for me. You don't go out of your way to mess with me, then I will show up, take your class(es), train, and then leave.  That's what I give: a perfect, static-free ride that puts money in your pocket with my attendance. What more do you need?

But, that's not what an addicts sells. They always want more. Way more. When I "leveled up" to my brother's harder martial arts school for the seriously wealthy wanna-be and those athletes who are supported by their deep-pocketed fandom, I knew it was risky just being there. My brother routinely lies about how much experience he has as a martial artist with a lot of disposable income, and artificially lowers his belt rankings whenever he feels like, so he can appear more like a beginner, and win against more gifted fighters with less experience in class and in competition. He's also a lot bigger than most dudes, which makes him less injury-prone in BJJ, and he likes to hurt people. Badly. He's a dude with some serious issues.

And so, his "pro" school reflected this warped world at an insanely jacked-up rate, with a lot more intensity than the average McDojo at your local strip mall. Know what I'm sayin'? Our gi's were embroidered with the word "competition" emblazoned on them already, regardless of a student's level or skill, just to let newcomers know that they're all seen as "fresh meat". And the kooks were quick to come-out. My flushing mechanisms were well-honed by then, so I knew crazy bitches would try to hurt me. What can I say? I was already injured. I popped my own meniscus (already damaged) and my partial ACL tear to a full one at my own discretion, doing a class drill common for BJJ but killer on your knees. Most addicts immediately get surgery (and more than just one or two knee surgeries, these are hard-bitten junkies, after all), but I didn't have the time or money to do so.

Besides, ACL replacement surgery is this harmful roll of the dice where you can either 1) receive a cadaver graft (!!!) from a recently expired person, and hope it takes to your body post-surgery without rejection or 2) get a graft made from a ligament lifted from another part of your body, and then keep your leg almost completely immobile for an entire year, and that's before the grueling PT part of your rehabilitative process even begins. Oh, and then you re-tear and re-injure your knee soon after resuming MMA/BJJ training, anyway. It just buys you another year or two in the game.

Huh? Say wha', muthfucka? I ain't in this business gettin' rich! There was absolutely no reason for me to undergo some serious life-threatening procedure so some out-of-town muthafucka can nurse his growing bank account (including his posh pad in Rio), just so I can pretend to be some bad-ass bitch. I rehabbed my knee injury at the YMCA in Brooklyn, because I had to do a similar thing after my first knee surgery from my dog walking accident with Ted. And then, like my doctor said, I just changed sports. It was hard to do, but I did it. I did Tai Chi, an aerobic kickboxing class (for amateurs), swimming, weight lifting, yoga, Pilates, bag training, and running on the elliptical. Problem-solved.

I still have some knee instability, but I have a professional knee brace for more intensive sports (like, say, downhill skiing that I don't do), and a series of other types of commercially-made knee wraps to compensate for rough times, like spring, when the weather turns really wet and humid. Always bothers my knee. C'est la vie. Here I am still writing to you, and that's what really counts in my world. My life story is what I trained to be a sensei* in, not your broke-ass view of the world, rife with crime and drugs. Feel me? I'm not a gym toy or a work-out machine for a bunch of screw ups to use at their discretion, pro career or not. Seek yo' gym fodder elsewhere.

After my real agenda became known, the intensity of the "hard sell" upon the other gym clients became more intense. If they slept a decent 8-9 hours worth of sleep a night, then they were characterized as "shiftless and lazy" in some classes because (in the words of one famous athlete) "your competition is training while you sleep!" Uh, excuse me? That muthafucka in the UFC was out bangin' last night at some club with a bunch of ugly-ass hookers, and I know that because I saw the footage live on entertainment t.v., whacked out on coke and his own self-created case of OCD. Get the fuck out! 

But, the more susceptible people around me took such wildly-made and totally irresponsible claims to heart. For them, their newly adopted sport held the zeal of a recent religious convert, pouring their emotions about their lives into something that could be as banal as sweating it out on some funky blue mats on a Monday evening with an out-of-shape fat dude in a bright headband sporting a really bad attitude because he isn't a real athlete, or fighter, or warrior. The reality behind any kind of training is the regularity and repetition of it, though with the more advanced classes and sparring sessions of MMA, that boredom is alleviated by the harder challenges each fighter faces, whether they be emotional, financial, mental, psychological, or physical. 

At the end of my stints training in other people's places, I came out with the exact same sense of self that I had before (and after) my MMA training: if I work hard enough, I can do anything. Of course, age and injury visits us all at some point in life, but the awe the other martial arts students in class had for me—and my relative maturity, in comparison to theirs—in those highly stressful fight sessions (regardless of age), pointed out anew to me what every art and design studio I'd ever worked for already knew about me: that I was already a "black belt" in life, and that I'd been one for a very long time. It wasn't something you could buy, or earn at some gym. And dip-shit, get a good night's sleep. That's mandatory. See you out there!

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

for Cassius

Sleepless by Soul Coughing

I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless

So much time is cashed
So much smoke is wasted
Sudden disappearance
And the air is thick and cool

And I can't approach myself
Skidding over this perdition
And now I'm out on the veranda
When I should have gone to school

I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless

Well I call for sleep
But sleep it won't come to me
Shuffling in the hallway
I can hear him on the stairs

And I hear his lighter flicking
I hear the soft sigh of his inhale
And the whole width of my intentions
He exhales into the air, yea

I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless

I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless

I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless

Skeedunt, stunt the runt
Smoking Buddha blunt
Skeedunt, stunt the runt
Skeedunt, stunt the runt
Smoking Buddha blunt
Skeedunt, stunt the runt

I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless, sleepless, sleepless

I got the will to drive myself sleepless
I got the will to drive myself sleepless
Sleep, sleep, sleep
Sleep, sleep, sleep
Sleep, sleep, sleepless

Positivity Princess

Much like the word "healthy", the word "positive" has taken on an insidiously modern marketing meaning that degrades its usage, as is common for the average English speaker who understands commerce without having enough poetry in the soul to make an actual difference about how we feel. Anyone who takes on serious issues that are complex are derisively referred to as "Negative Nellies", so closely monitored must the "Thought Police" of the world be, in sullen reaction to mature adults. I'm often a favorite target for passive-aggressiveness because I am not typically "wrong" about anything, because it's part of my job to know you, which is also quite often followed by a schoolyard taunt of "Know-It-All" delivered as a sulky potshot given behind my back (in yet another nod to my power as a mother), in a never-ending posture that is the typical defensiveness of passive-aggressors.

I can digest content that's dark, troubling, scary, tough, difficult, or "grim" (as one hapless library clerk noted), because in the land of dissociative disorders, your closed-door horrors are the messes of the world for other, much more gifted people to clean up, much like your child abuse and domestic violence. One crazy design manager superficially characterized my cover designs as "gritty", which is pathetic and pointless to a native New Yorker working among blood-thirsty sharks, in the fiercest urban jungle on the planet. Huh...ya think? Uh, yeah. Life is gritty at times. She didn't last very long because she sucked at her job, which at one time meant styling chapter openers for a typographer to set and print: not exactly a set-yourself-on-fire kind of job, intellectually-speaking.

Noticing that a publisher like me can process those very acts of human horror wrought daily upon society (often directed at the infirm, elderly, and the very young) is the highest compliment you can give a master artist like me, because it means we can handle the subjects that you can't. Turning away from the darkness hidden away in the human soul does nothing to address it properly, let alone help problem-solve it out of existence. It's another reason that I'm consistently surprised when the ignorant uneducated drunk in our neighborhood has an arrogant sense of superiority over, say, someone like me. Only the craziest fuck on the block would try to place oneself above me, because they tap out of life on the regular over, say, walking beyond the corner to carry actual groceries, let alone being smart enough to sort trash properly, as is legally required. Checking out from life and realism means you can't do shit in human, and that's a serious fuck-up to me.

"Negative" has become the playground taunt du jour that refers to anything the mentally ill deem unfit for their lazy contemplation, in a twisted distortion about what a true sense of self means, essential as it is to be successful in this world. How much can you check out of life? You'd be surprised. Don't like your sister-in-laws keen observations about your eating disorder? Call her "mean" and cut her out! She's not fit to be in your bisexual bipolar cheerleader squad anyway (and thank G-d for that)! Don't like your niece noticing your wild hoarding disorder? That's okay. She once smoked a pot cigarette, so she's schizo, too (doesn't work that way, duh). Desperately insecure about your abilities and capabilities? Well, shame people into a dysfunctional tense silence that does nothing but abuse, so that you can feel better about your alcoholism behind closed doors.

I'm sure there's a book or a movie or a program somewhere that addresses what you lack, as a lifelong coward. That's okay. I'll fight your battles and win them all, by your lack of failures. In truth, it's the lack of a well-rounded life that presents itself most glaringly. The chick who can only handle rom-com's? Gay, deeply closeted, insane, and into cat hoarding. It's the art of reading people that I mastered a long time ago, like scoping out the musicians at a recording studio by their lyrics, clothes, and attitudes. I really didn't need to hear their bad Goth audio tracks in progress to know that the lead guy from the band dressed in all black and heavy eyeliner sitting at my art director's desk with devil art had some "issues" to work out (another carefully guarded, softly peddled euphemism for madness that's supposedly "rude" to say out loud in any real, honest way). By allowing the seriously ill to demonize our maturity and range of emotions, we allow them to manipulatively control us, which is not a warrior's way.

And that's what it's really about: their mental problems, not yours. It's a clinically immature way of saying "I know you are but what am I" over and over again until you feel you block out the world that seeps in anyway. It's a desperately deceitful way of guarding against improving through applied learning from an advanced understanding of the world's knowledge, which is real power. If I know (because I read the book) and you don't (because you're knitting the same cat hair sweater over and over again), then I win, and here's the kicker, because I always do. I'm not afraid to shine a light in the hidden corners of the human psyche, the same way the NYPD cleans up your gruesome murder scene involving a two year-old and his teenage mother, or a WWII vet relives the horrors of concentration camps, as they tenderly buried the corpse of a woman holding her child in your gas chambers of the world. Because it's real. That's why.

Art Fags

Attention all humans of Planet Earth: this is the official "Art Fag" hairstyle. Please note that it hasn't changed much through the years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Brooks.

People in genuinely creative industries like mine suffer from all manner of indignities and degradation, not least of which are the groupies and hangers-on that we call "Art Fags". They are: that chick who likes art, dabbled a little bit in oil painting during college, and then went on to the much easier Art History degree to work a vaguely arty job. Or, he's that overly-opinionated gay guy at the cocktail party; you know, the loud drunk one who thinks shopping is design, as he makes his way through his circle of friends, family, acquaintances, and fellow barflies to redecorate rich people apartments all over New York City. 

She's also that rich housewife "decorator" who wrongly assumes that design is searching for "rare" stuff that's sold in catalogs. To justify her time (and billable hours), she spends a lot of time finding old chairs in quaint little towns upstate, which she has reupholstered ridiculously in bright showy patterns, thus making the whole point behind this personality: it's an annoyingly immature "Look at me!" posture towards the world that marks the amateur every single time. Ditto with the "photographer" wife (with the rich husband who buys all of her over-priced camera equipment), who takes inane head-shots for other arty types with dreams of the theater and "trodding the boards" of Broadway, pretentiously wearing a showily bright and a pronouncedly jaunty ascot that may or may not be included in the onstage act. 

Same with the emaciated "Fashionista" who mistakes magazine work and extreme dieting for thousands of hours worth of pinning, sewing, cutting, and fabrication. Instant "art" career? Move to New York City, "pretty" girl! I've seen many an Art Fag go down that way. How do I know? These are all the types I encounter(ed) first-hand out there in the world, where the amateur mixes with the highly-trained professional every day, sometimes even getting away with it, especially if there's Nepotism* involved. How can you speak out against it, when your paycheck dangles in the balance? You can't, which is why the company's owner is such a fucking bitch to you and every other person in the office; she's not talented and she knows it, and it's all your fault because you're in the same room as her twisted ass. 

Luckily for me, the best art and design school on Planet Earth prepares us for mixing it up with the provincial locals by schooling us rigorously in techniques that do not come undone with time, money, or any type of rigged network connections. It just doesn't work that way for a Maestro. We do not come undone under stress or with distractions, nor with any other kinds of abuse that mark the amateurs' envious attempts at sabotage, which must be extremely irritating for all of you who try so hard each and every day to rock my boat.

I saw my very first pair of openly-sported assless chaps (worn by the slightly less leather-clad partner of a young "out" gay couple), at my first (and last) RISD Artist's Ball, so unless you plan on turning your office boardroom into the gayest drag show ever ("No T, no shade!"), with lots of rainbow feathers, weirdo angel wings and garish makeup, set to spinning strobe lights and people with really bad attitudes wearing brilliantly homemade costumes constructed by the fiercest creative minds in the world, drop the fucking act. Now. Because it will never work. It never has, and it never will.  Le Fin.

https://www.tumblr.com/search/risd%20artist%20ball

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

20 Years After Man

http://on.mash.to/1roxBi5

By now you know all about the angry zeitgeist behind GenX methodology, because we want to blow the whistle on how we see the world, which takes us to some very strange places indeed, first and foremost is the human condition as it exists out in the world, because we sometimes stand up openly and in violent contrast to pop culture and its' requisite artifacts around us. It's hard: you're the problem and we clearly know that, but how to change you, a broken human? Answer: through intelligent design, and very often mindless repetition, resulting in positive growth. 

It's excruciating slow in genius-time, which means me and my peer group often outsource intellectual capital (in the form of expert consultation) to do the more dreaded monotonous and daily grinding of your ax. We feel anger at you, but since you're the patient, we can't in all good ethics hurt you, so we seek to heal you. But, where does the energy go? Oftentimes, we channel it into our art, music, dance, clothes, speech, etc. You get the point: Mommy is mad, but it's against the law for me to slap the shit out of you at this point in time because I'm a registered human weapon, so I won't. Feel me?

With that in mind, take most local and evening news programs: it's made mostly for people who need the repeating of spoken words for their ADD/Dyslexia/BDP (like a lot of the anchors themselves), therefore it is the exact opposite of informative for someone like me. If I'm a regular viewer of television content, I often have to watch an alcoholic with shiny red-rimmed eyes sign his lack of comprehension live and on-air, in the form of the same question over and over again. Yes, it IS very painful. Thank you for not answering, and/or caring about me as a person, because your sickness takes precedence over me and my feelings each and every day.

So, I watch most stuff with a grain of salt. Oh, I know the anchors who are good at what they do, and the ones who are glorified actress/model/wannabes in tight dresses, but when I see and/or hear Ernie Anastos, that means "GREEK" to me in New Yorkese. He's been an anchor here for so long, that like The Mets or The Yankees, we would struggle with change; the real kind, not your temper tantrum over no chocolate ice cream left in the freezer.

It was with great trepidation and some degree of shock/awe/horror that I had to watch my man from New York sign weirdly easy questions at some New Age pale skinny gay gothic hipster in all black and some eyeliner from Ohio. Sorry, Middle American peeps, for your loss (sarcasm). The intellectual premise was thus: what to do when robots take over? I'm sorry....what the fuck did you just say? Did that fucking hipster just say "robots" in all seriousness to Ernie freakin' Anastos?! Dazed, I waited a bit, thinking this mess would right itself, but no; some 20-nothing "producer" even had the graphics guy throw up a cheesy (and quickly made) type graphic for this very serious and timely pertinent Robot Takeover story. Is it ethical to, like, be nice to them and stuff? Holy shit, yo. Excuse the fuck out of me? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?

By now, I'm very used to media dip-shits, because publishing isn't exactly filled with just Harvard, Yale, and RISD, so I know I can expect a complete fucking idiot at any time in life, but sometimes the very fact that some ass thinks that we would want to watch his gay friend mouth their shared mental disorder makes me, well...mental. And then I went off, shouting at the t.v. like any Mad Dog-drinking Times Square bum pissing his pants in broad daylight. That's how fucked up you and your choices are to me sometimes. I re-grouped, shouted many choice and very appropriate curse words at my t.v set, and then I did what I do best: I "depantsed" intellectually some kid who has the nerve to invade my space, just because I want free t.v. and not some rip-off cable channel that makes YOU richer, and not me.

So, here it goes: we humans make robots, we humans then service the robots, and (THIS IS FUCKING KEY) because machines break down all the time with or without humans, our metallic equipment doesn't last long. When I did have some satellite channels in Brooklyn, and heavily rocked the NatGeo channel (among a few other choice channels), I actually discovered things; you know, like you do with educational programming. Disclaimer: you should know upfront that I an a huger fan of free PBS channels, mostly for the nature specials, but some other stuff, too.

And so I realize that I had the privilege to watch informing and entertaining specials about what happens to our stuff 20 years after <insert latest type of Apocalypse here>, which formed this brilliant deduction: shit breaks down when we aren't there to take care of it. Your house falls apart, weeds sprout up everywhere, and wild animals nest in your old bedroom. Chernobyl is a radioactive human nightmare BUT wolf cubs are born there, irradiated. So it's like that, asshole.

The Mars Rover spent half the Martian year docked on the side of a small hill, parked there by code sent to it through NASA engineers, so that it's solar cells and other mechanical works won't get gummed up when they try to power it back up after the annual sand storm season, with, yes, yet more slow code sent to it via space. Except for that one time, when the images that came back to the control center didn't accurately predict the small depression in the sand, so the guys had to send it messages in painfully long Computerese to move it very slowly back and forth (like parallel parking in the city with an angry mad trucker cursing at you for blocking traffic), because if it breaks down, there goes $40 billion U.S.D. of our taxpaying money, and if the robot is done, it's fate is to be forever covered in sand.

Ditto with episodes of "Taboo" that highlight fringe carnival freaks as entertainment. Yeah, I know that guy jerks off in his car and pretends it's his girlfriend, but do you want him dating your daughter? Same thing with Diaper Boy; he can't talk to you, A PERSON, because some crazy human beat him every day of his childhood so, lo and behold, he wants to be held like a small child instead of loving you. It happens, it's disturbing, but at the end of the day, your stupid fucking robot toy that kicks a soccer ball to the President (you know, the man we freely elected to kick a ball AND save the free world on a shoestring. Yeah, that guy.) is just that: a very fancy and nicely designed piece of equipment that breaks down. And it doesn't get to save the world. No. It gets that crazy IT guy who costs $XXX/hour to fix it, because your dumb fucking machine costs us $XX billion dollars to make, no Presidential addresses included. How's that for a price tag? No?! 

Yeah, that's what I fucking thought. I have to monitor your usage of what becomes (conceptually to me) that fancy fucking color copier with it's own hard drive, and then fix it for you when you become weird about using it, because you are too cheap to outsource it to some wonk who specializes in gadget repair. Oh, then please douchebag me around in a phony budget meeting because you ONLY UNDERSTAND spreadsheet numbers from your learning disordered brain, (that's why you work in the text-based industry of literature) plus I'm way better looking than you, and you really hate that. I PASS. YOU FAILED.

Just learn some real shit by clicking through the links below, yo, and more importantly: LEAVE ME ALONE.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_After_People
• http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2014/10/nuclear-tourism/johnson-text
• http://www.space.com/11773-nasa-mars-rover-spirit-mission-ends.html 


“I’ll be in the paper, the news with Ernie Anastos
They’ll even print my recipe for pasta with pesto”
—“Finger Lickin’ Good” by The Beastie Boys.

Spoils of War

http://voc.tv/1jOnjUT

I watch and read a lot of content that isn't specifically designed for me, nor catered to my particular demographic, because it's part of my job to stay au courant of pop culture trends. Like my former job description as an Art Director in Adult Trade book cover design ("You can't judge a book by its' cover" for the umpteenth time. Haha...yes, you can, and you certainly should. That's why we invest so much into it upfront as our most important marketing material: to create enough visual interest on a bookshelf for you to pick it up and want to explore further, because we actually really fucking care about the books we make. But I digress, shit-heel...), people think my job is one thing over the actual reality of it: to be an expert who accurately judges and assesses any type of creative content, in whatever form it takes, in any language or country, on any device, for any audience. 

It's actually a lot harder than it sounds or looks, because you're big hit bestseller may, in reality, be a totally trite and highly repetitive piece of derivative shit for me; one that's almost exclusively driven by slavishly current marketing trends, which is a really bad sign in creative businesses, because if you can't come up with original ideas consistently, you're done. It means some asshole middle manager who is a big nobody has sapped your talent and then gets the pathetic joy of discarding you like you're a used car battery, which is the worst thing that can happen to any artist. You are no longer relevant culturally because you've lost your platform.

With that in mind, I always try to let my friends at the library know what I'm checking out as part of my job, and what I really like, because part of their job as librarians (who are some of the most important people in our audience to market to) is knowing my preferences and suggesting materials to me as recommendations, then talk to me intelligently about it (but really, you, not me, because I already know). We publish almost exclusively to libraries at times, in special Library Editions; maybe large print books for the blind or vision-impaired, or perhaps books designed to handle the rougher climate of a public library's bookshelf by using tougher binding materials manufactured just for them. They know me and my audience here, because I've published books just for them at certain times, or oversaw it as a supervisor at some point in time in my long career.

That's why I read the "Twihard" series to my great displeasure: because my weirdo aunt who is emotionally stuck at 14, due to the severity of her mental disabilities and impairments, desperately wants me to believe that I am just like her, through this obviously fake Christmas "gift" (because hoarders use objects to express their feelings for people....ugh): I'm permanently stuck on stupid with some "hot" vamps involved, just like her. Uh, great. It's a series, right? And so I read the entire series as part of my professional follow-though routine, and because it also became a wildly popular movie series of some of the worst tripe I've even seen marketed to teens, which really pisses me off. And the books really suck, too. Bad writing.

So, when I check out some white men war movies, it's always attached with the caveat that this content may or may not be marketed for me, which is fine, because I'm a grown up, and we might also have the added bonus of making fun of some really bad art at the check-out counter, because librarians are people, too! I digest way too much content that is throwaway junk, but that's no different than any other day for me: it's for you, kid, and not for me. Mommy has very few needs. And so it happened that I saw a string of war movies recently, representing different types of people (loosely drawn from the facts), in the form of wacky expensive movie fiction, which is problematic for a realist like me. If it's tied to actual human beings who exist(ed), then great; my job just got easier by cutting out the rich white man to go directly to the source. Moms also don't need puppet shows that are stand-ins for real people, kids!

"Unbroken" was about some small town guinea who was picked on for being Italian (yeah, me, too), which got him angry enough for his brother to use as an energy in the white man Olympics, in front of Nazi's who yearned to be the purest whitest people ever....uh oh, Dago Boy is in real trouble. And then he is: all of his fancy Olympian skills become fodder for some mentally ill jerk-off who wants to channel his homoerotic energy into breaking an American Olympian cleaning up shit in a Japanese prison camp. Tough guinea wins (we usually do), but he never gets the apology he wants by the mad rich Jap who heads for the hills in embarrassment after the war. Boohoo, bro. No guts, no glory. We women know boys find war games really fucking fun. Would you want to grind sawdust into the scant remains of the flour that you have on ration, while your children starve slowly in front of you? No?! And that was one of the easier WWII scenarios women had, back in the day. You don't want to know about the rest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbroken_%28film%29.

"Lone Survivor" is better: this tough muthafuckin' white boy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Luttrell) pulls through champion-style, too, but with a broken back and a new foreign friend. I like that he manages to rise above the spoils of a typical war by bonding with the villagers who hid him from the enemy, because they realize that the nasty war tribes around them are totally fucking nuts, regardless of nationality, and they would just as easily kill them as that broke-back white boy, because they're right. People are driven mad by war, because video games with real targets (like pregnant women and their nursing children) are really fucking hard to kill, even if you know that they are human smart bombs sent to rip you to shreds. Do you want want to be the person flicking the switch to that electric chair, you monster? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster%27s_Ball)

I know I'm a great warrior who would totally fucking kill you in a knock-down, drag-out battle to the death for survival, but it's a rare thing to have a fair fight, when the righteous wins over evil. What do you do when the sands shift under your feet? Or, how can I be a good guy when I just blew the head off of a defenseless woman? That's the kind of thing that stays with you, man, and sometimes it kills you back at home, where another type of war rages: the one that plays inside your shell-shocked and highly concussed skull, which is what this white boy played in this fucking war movie about how war may turn even your new war friend into a foe, in a heartbeat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Sniper.

Not so glamorous anymore, is it? These actors don't go home to nurse you through the after-effects of your war-induced illness, bro. I do that for you, people in social services do that for you, but this fucking celebrity gets to breeze through a photo op at the local VA, drop a check, and he is gone, gone, gone, girl. Then, the really bad movie starts to play in your head, once again...where will Hollywood be? Nowhere in sight. That's the true spoils of any given war; money you don't get and will never see, while you heart-breakingly watch (by yourself) your son or daughter struggle through yet another series of tremors that the Veteran's supposed benefits package just ran out on, and G-d forbid that they get their hands on that kitchen knife before you do. Who will be there in that room with you? 

Here's a wild guess: it won't be a Bradley Cooper type of actor. The man who helps you pick up the pieces later on will be your real friends, family, neighbors, and community activists. That's who you owe, and that's who I work for everyday, because that's who I am: your friendly fucking neighborhood war hero. But, like, so not with the actual PTSD that's so dramatic on camera, dude. That's, like, totally not cool, you know? Pay me, yo! I'll throw you a real party, man, with no weird gold statues that don't mean jack-shit, either. I promise ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Iraq_War_films

Crack the Whip

Lately I've been finding out how similar my experiences were to other alumni at the world's hardest school, through our magazine RISDXYZ (thanks to Amanda Blum for writing about it, in a piece called "Submission": http://issuu.com/risd/docs/risdxyz_fall-winter_2014-15?e=0/10291099), but at the time, we were deeply in "survival mode". I used to characterize my time there as "Art Boot Camp", because the purpose of our training was to weed out the weak and insane, leaving only the best and strongest among us to excel. And that's the point behind any really difficult process; it's similar to my martial arts training with its' belt ranking system, which is similar in tone to the military, and the same intense vibe as my former ballet studio. We all wanted to win at our chosen trade(s) and profession(s).

In that teeming cocktail of teenage insecurities and intensive learning is a road about a mile wide that goes right into the heart and soul of who you are as an artist/scholar/athlete/scientist/engineer/author/thinker. It's supposed to develop the strength and toughness that's necessary for us to go on. But not all of us make it. Just ask any Navy Seal: their C.O.'s tell them right beforehand that's the day's exercise is called "You Not Breathing" (thanks to Marcus Luttrell with Patrick Robinson for that scene from their movie adaptation's first few minutes, of actual Navy SEAL training footage).

We did exercises called "Drawing with a Blindfold" or "Figure Drawing from Memorization to a 5-Minute Timed Clock With Your Back Turned to the Model"; you know, the kind of stuff that gives most students the "heebee-jeebees". That's the actual phrase one of my former housemates from R.I.S.D used to describe how she felt about her experience, and what her time there brings about nowadays, like a shell-shocked soldier struggling with PTSD. She went to our school for "Fashion Design", so she could be the real-life version of a Bryant Park show during "Fashion Week" in NYC, or a leading contestant on a major show like "Project Runway". Guess what she does now? She surfs, repairs wet-suits, and knits the same wool hat over and over and over again. Yeah, like, that bad.

Another rich suburban kid I knew, whose F.O.B. Armenian parents bought him everything he could ever desire, now works for a big factory studio (run by someone else), where he sits at one desk among many, compulsively animating the exact same robot car and/or booby anime girl with rabbit hybrid ears for his fetish fans and addicted gamers every single day, much like a dysfunctional business manager I worked with who HAD TO eat the exact same turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread every single day, or he would freak out.

My "fashionista" seamstress friend had a nervous breakdown over "my" unwashed dishes in the common kitchen sink during my RISD experience; you know, when I had all studio classes to complete AND three part-time jobs. In truth, they were a combination of all of our dishes in the house, but my cleaning compulsive mother had told her to "teach me how to clean", even though I've done every house chore known for her all my life. I'm talking about a "gnashing-teeth, hysterical tears with hair-pulling" type of tantrum over dishes, kids. My animation friend couldn't handle the all-day wait for "The Cable Guy" while living in his nice, new, and very white Brooklyn Heights apartment (all expenses paid) that his parents gave him back then. They also wouldn't have been able to live or survive in NYC if it wasn't for me, but did they ever tell me that? Uh, no: http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2014/12/times-square.html.

And that was part of the challenge: surviving the little "psyche-out" head games and petty insecurities of the kids around you who fell down hard and didn't get back up. It wasn't just the students either. Wildly, obviously inept, mad teachers had open love affairs with their underage students, maybe even in violation of the state's minority sex laws, in clear view of the administration. It was somehow worse than my SUNY school as a violation of trust, because I paid for my education through my blood, sweat, and tears, and a diploma from this prestigious school could seal my fate among the elite for all times.

They knew that, and I got blacklisted with some other working class friends of mine for wanting a basic computer class as a primer for the real world, where I knew I had to work to survive and pay off my debt. Like, right away. There was much more at stake for me, because I had (and have) no safety net in my life but me, and so I risked much more by speaking out than my cowardly classmates.

It's what me and my childhood friends talked about (Hi, Donnel!), on all those night and afternoons when our parents were simply gone from our lives: how to go out into the world to make a difference, permanently. It's what my friends since Felix V. Festa Junior High remembered about me, as did all my friends from elementary school through to high school: leave no man, woman, or child behind. 

And so I give my service in honor of you today, and every day after, because I said I would. Our suffering hasn't been in vain.

http://becauseisaidiwould.com/