Eat "Phresh"

Homemade, yo! This is me and my making, kids. Try it at home.

People from the 'hood are all crazy, which is the point. Hate someone different than you? Disenfranchise them through systemic abuses that are also lawful, and then push them to the margins to suffer sight unseen, where they will languish until the next generation also has hurt encoded within their DNA, like a ticking time bomb. It's certainly one of the motives behind every mass genocide perpetrated throughout human history; to deliver wrongs unto you and your children that they won't recover from, except for one minor detail. We know about it, with the "we" being you and me and anyone else reading this, hip to the game that plays out between good and evil every day, on this chessboard that is life itself.

So, while the t.v. media machine churned out canned surprise, showy tongue-clucking, and a false show of horror at some well-known sandwich shills' public downfall, I chuckled wryly to myself as I watched what passes for news these days, having been down this road before. I had a friend who nervously spit out common sayings as a means of coping with stress, or when she couldn't quite figure out solutions to the problem at hand, and that was this: where there's smoke, there's fire. It's kinda like the "from the frying pan into the fire", which is also the name of a tugboat restaurant called "The Frying Pan" that's parked in New York's Hudson River. That was one of the last times I saw my poorly beleaguered friend.

You see, when I was still a junior designer in New York, I worked with a twitchy Italian-American woman who has a constant expression of wide-eyed tension on her face at all times, accurately reflecting her nervously compulsive state of being. She could do the same task twenty million times, but she was also co-dependent on the people around her to lean on when she gave out (as long as she paid them to be her allies and friends), when they were really supposed to be co-workers and employees. She was hooked on shopping (made worse by her studios' location in a building known for wholesalers who had seasonal sample sales all the time), driving her to create fake acts of kindness ("Let's close the studio and shop!"), when we really were just recycling our pay out of one pocket and into another.

I didn't really mind the break from my labors that were sometimes challenging but often somewhat mindless (I was still paying my dues in the industry) plus I'm no addict, but her longtime assistant fared worse under her strict guidelines, for living off of what she considered "her" dime: Carrie was overweight, divorced, and living with her mother, though when I was there, she was recently spared her free "Pizza Fridays" because our boss was on a new diet, one that depended greatly on buying this company's kind of food. It was baffling, just like her heated and almost daily arguments with her second husband, a stressed-out Italian-American cop who was clearly part of her pattern. She didn't have any children, and by the freaked out way she had about her all the time, I knew better than to ask. She was a woman at that age when being barren can crack a fragile woman hard.

Because of her touchy mannerisms, I made her at first for a pampered, kept woman, but over the course of my freelance employ there (she couldn't afford to pay me health insurance but kept me on as part of her office staff for two years, which is now illegal to do in NYC), I found out that she was just like any other New Yorker struggling with a big dysfunctional family and living in a small cheap apartment in Mount Vernon, like the rest of us. It was weird, but given her odd eccentricities, it made total sense. Her arrogant sense of superiority hid obvious insecurities, with her rather tenuous hold on reality.

After a time, me and the woman who worked for her at her design firm asked her a direct question one afternoon, emboldened with knowing looks we gave each other as we turned our office chairs to her, because our computers faced the walls with our backs to one another, leaving the owner to be the only one who could see all three computers at the same time, and that was this: what exactly do you intend to do when you stop paying some company to feed you? How will you feed yourself? She shrugged it off lightly, playing busy with never-ending deadlines, brushing off our serious question with a pointedly dumb shrug, "I guess I'll just have to keep buying their food," which was our exact point to her: you need to buy their chemically laden food to stay "thin" because you can't do it on your own, despite her status at the time as a publishing expert with access to just about any type of information that existed on the planet. 

Welcome to "AA" in this century, Carol! I'll see you later on, if you've indeed mastered food and nutrition, yet. I know I have. By the way, I know you scoped me out upon my return to New York City from out west, after I visited you openly in your office empty of employees, because your business went downhill when Vince's business dried up, and you were both coasting on back-list content created by a lot of other artists and designers, like me and Carrie. You thought you were spying on me during my visit to St. Patrick's Cathedral to light a candle but, my dear, I both heard and saw you there out of the corner of my eye, mumbling to yourself that I was still "too young" and "too pretty" for you to talk to anymore, because you felt that you didn't have any advantages over me anymore. Clever, girl. You never did. 

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

Intermittent Fasting

Fasting has deep roots in human culture, one that predates the selling of trendy "diet" books like we have today by many years. How do I know? Surely, you jest. As a publishing executive, it's part of my job, though not always to my liking, like when I worked in the past for other people's houses* and not mine. You don't have to be as gifted as me to succeed in business without even trying. Sometimes, you just need a rich white daddy who wants a tax shelter and a continued stake in the game, know what I'm sayin'? Sure, you do. We've all worked for people who are much less than talented than us because they had access to money that large sections of the populace do not, historically being women and minorities, and I am indeed both of those.

Which takes me back a few years to a gig at some broke unknown indie house, manned by the spoiled rich kid put in place by his daddy, with not much particular interest in the business itself, leaving about ten doors wide open for me to just stride on through, because I've always had to know my business better than anybody around, lest I feel the wrath for their continued incompetency, and I know you women out there can all feel me on this one. We do not have the luxury to not tend to our flock, not unless we want to dig holes to bury our children in, and I wouldn't recommend that for your continued peace of mind.

It was in this benign spirit of living that a complete piece of crap crossed my desk inaptly titled "The Starvation Diet", or some such crap that seems to exist only in New York City, Colorado, and SoCal (notoriously anorexic, ahem, "skinny" cities all of them). First, I took a good calm look at the rather bland and unusually thick (for the tri-state area) young girl who made the mistake of handing me that particularly unsavory turd. Oh, dear...you don't belong in New York City if you think this is what it takes to survive. Because I can make grown men cry (yes, even delusional rich white ones) I considered the best option, and that was to school this kid out loud and clearly in front of the whole office about the complete and utter condescension behind the titling of this piece of crap, especially since I was toggling homelessness in addition to hunger during the time of my employ.

I got the book back with (oh, my!) a much better title, because of my continued excellent use of office acoustics in open spaces (because they can't afford a really good and really expensive traditional office layout), instead choosing to cram cheap assistants into one big room (which was billed to me by the head sales guy as "fresh", that brilliant keyword for the inexperienced and stupid English Lit grads who flood NYC into a false sense of gentrification with their out-of-state trust funds), installed with a crazy series of bookshelves that make no sense in demarcating space, because unlike the fly fishing father who worked a respectable press many years ago, this bullshit son of his had first published his own harrowing tales of illness and insanity by purposefully choosing to breed even more crazy into his family line through another generation of ADHD/BPD-afflicted children (I caught one of his little blond girls staring blankly at a dead computer screen in the cubit next to mine; when I asked her where her shoes were, she gave me a blank stare and ran away), and that's hard, yo.

Starvation is most certainly not the same as the concept I introduce to you here today called "Intermittent Fasting" (yenta in fashion, I mean you), which does a lot of good things for the human body, that's why the most successful religious acolytes have it built into their disciplines: because it works. I've done it with great success. I do not eat breakfast every day, unlike that old motto, because I may not be hungry, or I'm busy, or coffee with milk will do until my next full meal. 
I've restricted calories for training purposes and cosmetic ones, and so there is absolutely no mystery whatsoever to me about either. Less food=less calories. But that is not an avocation to starve, like someone with a serious mental disorder effecting tremendous hurt on the body.

I know, because at the last "house" I worked for (they let me go right before the six month mark that would have granted me full health insurance benefits that they can't actually afford to pay), I was clustered next to a cadre of skinny and really nervous out-of-towners that included two generic white girls and one very gay white boy, all of whom spoke to one another in whispers about their secretive (and vomitous) bulimia that had to be done on the sly amongst them, because we only had one or two bathrooms to go around, and the sharp tang of puke wafts through a common-area office the same way gossip does: I could sense it right through the thin partition walls that barely separated us. Stranger still, they all worked compulsively repetitive jobs in production, like copy-editing and trafficking, low-end jobs that are more-or-less the same, day after soul-crushing day. Coincidence, right?

Right. And so, today's snap back to reality for all of you office workers out there in Readerland after yesterday's gluttony is not a call to starve oneself, but a "Call to Action", and that is this: why not be mindful about food all year long? What exactly do you have to lose? Heart disease? A mental illness or two? What exactly are you waiting for? Oh...I see. You want me to do it for you.

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

http://www.mercola.com/infographics/intermittent-fasting.htm

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

Mindful Eating

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

I'm often asked about common healthcare facets of our daily lives like diet and nutrition, which is baffling. Why? I kept a food diary way back in elementary school for a class project about healthy eating habits (which were turned in and graded by our six grade teacher) and by now, I can pull a book off of any available shelf to give you handsomely tailored advice, but that's not the problem, is it? No, like most of our typical societal woes, we suffer under the weight of other people's disorders because mental healthcare, like drug addiction, is kept in the closet like the deeply guarded dark secret we pretend it is. How can that be true, when so many people have diseases?

Most often, women are the ones who question me carefully about food and the body, looking for flaws in me that they see in themselves, through my careful presentation of information that defines my vocation (which is also my pleasure) to do so. I know it's because they have multiple afflictions, not least of which is centered around a serious brain disorder (or two, or three, or four). More curious to me is why they think they can solve any problems at all, rather than consistently questioning the good people around them, because they force us to serve as a mirror to their common dysfunctions and brain misfires.

I've tried talking young women through Anorexia Nervosa, bulimia, low self-esteem, Body Dysmorphic Disorder*, plus a few other pop culture terms that were so new to a master wordsmith like me, I had to ask for definitions to them, like "carbface" (reflecting trendy anti-carbohydrate beliefs) and "fathead": that's when a disordered person sees a fatter figure in the mirror than an accurate reflection of the self, made weirder because it was told to me by a deranged young woman who thinks of herself as a figurative artist. OK....that's really bad. I have to back away from social distortions of that magnitude because it crosses over into seriously professional expert care, and I don't have time to get a degree in every discipline on the planet just for your needs alone, though I suppose I could if I had the time.

These aren't the types of conversations that one can talk their way through. Why would you think anyone could? I can't speak magical words that are the equivalent of years of intensive medical care, though like any decent woman my age, I would cure you instantly if I could. Rather, I deliver my lifelong "prescriptions" for the Art of Living Well in sober tones that addicts loathe hearing: it's hard work combined with rigorous discipline and education.  

For you? Add several prescriptions given to you by seriously qualified medical personnel, plus a team of healthcare experts to watch over you and your every move, you irresponsible immature jackass. 
But that's actually the truth. In publishing, we try to modernize it to match your brain living in this time, though honestly, most of it's old information to us, carefully designed by the intellectual elite living in this century as thus: food is not new to humans, yo.

And so it was that I followed a very good and very strict training regime tied to my martial arts schedule, because I was raised as a young girl in a school of classical French Ballet taught by a former Rockette who danced at Radio City as a teenager, and I could have followed that path, too. Ditto with gymnastics, swimming, and any other sport I liked at the time. Could you do that? No? No kidding! And so I don't tell you that about me, because what would be the point? How would you benefit from my prowess in those areas when you don't have my body, brain, training, or skill sets? You wouldn't. 

Same with my occasional and sometimes seasonal use of a certain "Fat Smash" diet (heavy on the home-prepared brown rice as a staple for the program's introductory phase), one so severe that the excellent physician who penned the book (and all the recipes in it) does it on t.v. for major network programs tied to weight loss and body conditioning as professional media content. Still not you? No kidding! I tracked my food intake, nutritional requirements, and exercise regimen through an online tool for years, with an app downloaded onto my smartphone for added convenience, next to an app that tells me what fresh fruits and vegetables are in season locally, so I can prepare gourmet meals of my own creation. Not you either? Huh...isn't that odd. 

Of course it isn't! It isn't you or your life to lead. You have to figure it out like I did, through "trial and error" guided by my own expertise, but you don't have those facets, do you? Welcome to the Twin Arts of "Empathy" and "Perfection" that define my worlds in design and publishing. Feeling small in comparison? That's because you simply don't belong there. I do. Oprah once brilliantly said (more than once, as is common for those of us living our lives through the public media arts) that if the biggest problem you have today is that you have too much food to eat, then you don't have any real problems at all, because that's true. Hers aren't about food. She can buy and eat anything she wants. No, it wasn't food that greatly pained her as a young girl. 

You did, with your gross inappropriateness through your continued untreated medical disorders, the same ones that led her male family member to transgress against her in the worst ways that a sick adult man can against a vulnerable young girl whose only crime was pleasing an older family member, as she was taught to do. You wronged her through your constant, continued neglect in this world. Not me.

http://www.fox5ny.com/news/53558105-story 

http://www.foodbanknyc.org/ 

* http://www.adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/related-illnesses/other-related-conditions/body-dysmorphic-disorder-bdd

Homeless for the Holidays

Through no fault of my own, I was homeless a few years ago because my family turned their backs on me for being economically dispensable to the unsavory family business that I had worked hard for, a business that was struggling to stay afloat from all of their excesses and not mine. I developed a publishing program for bargain books sold at B&N stores worldwide that's made me infamous throughout the industry. They wasted tens of thousands every year on decorating expenses, stupid parties, pricey real estate, and fancy white gardeners for their office balcony (that I never really had time to use), before they gave us a real 401K plan that we had to ask repeatedly for. My dad had once asked me to sell books only for a dollar or for free, as some sort of test of my "worth" as a publishing executive, and it was one that I easily accomplished. When the economy tanked yet again, they cut the staff who weren't family (or married to family/friends) and jettisoned the rest of us, which surprised me not at all, because I know how people who are bad at business react to stress: they don't. You do. 

So began yet another typically old family pattern of dysfunction spurred on by the upsets present in my life, which goes something like this: if "Mama Marie" ain't earning, then she ain't eatin', and that was certainly true for me. I almost fainted from hunger on some of the worst days (during which my father had the gall to ask me if I'd ever gone hungry, after I'd exhausted all my funds, credit, and extraneous belongings, like any normal person would do to avoid being a burden to others), in between the outrageous emails I sent to my family that gave them full advance warning (because I can succeed at business without even trying, despite the lack of their expensively bought M.B.A.'s, thus adding more fuel to their envious fire) of my upcoming eviction due to lack of payment (with no legal advice offered from my lawyer uncle or the corporate lawyer my father has on retainer for his needs), even while my father congratulated me publicly for my success at earning a spot at a prestigious writer's colony (because he wanted me to teach him writing so he could pen his memoirs and brag about it), because I worked that hard to be good for them by compensating for their deficits during my homelessness, like any real mother would. 

In return, I got bizarre offers for a limo ride to some mental institution in Westchester for all my troubles, when I really just needed an expense check sent to me, like any other businesswoman in publishing who itemizes correctly and transparently. There's no secrets here, anymore. How else was I thanked? Well, every time they made the wrong decision about me, I told them the truth about their sicknesses, illnesses, deficiencies, disorders, impairments, addictions, and crimes against humanity that they owe me "big-time" for, because the only times I get pulled into badness of any kind is at someone else's say-so, and isn't that way it always is for people of good faith? We are tried and tested to see through all the badness around us by fighting our way through it, alone. It is in this way that you've come to be my adoring audience in the year 2015: because you asked me to undergo rigorous feats of strength that you can't do, like any true hero does, and I survived to tell you the tales about my amazing, death-defying acts of life, like an ever-ongoing Homeric odyssey of epic modern proportions delivered freshly and freely almost every day.

And so it came to pass that I found myself isolated and alone at some hotel room (during our most holiest of seasons) in the Sunset Park* section of Brooklyn, living by my wits and a tenuous room connection to the hotel's WiFi service, booking rooms at B&B's in the area so as to be ready to go to work on Monday morning, because I worked my way through it, just like I always do. Sure, a few days I had a small powder blue bag with me on the elevator in the morning that was remarked upon by one of my design assistants, but that was it. 

The holiday itself found me with absolutely no contact from anyone whatsoever: no good wishes, no phone calls of forced bonhomie. 
There was no gratitude or charity towards me of on any kind, except the G-dly ones I received by my own hand, because I walked several miles to be with my parish family at St. Francis of Xavier in Park Slope (where I was "shadowing" Sunday school teachers guided by Sister Kathleen, the former principal of the elementary school across the street, by following along with her lovingly designed children's curriculum) for church service on Sunday, because I said I would.  
I said I would be there.

http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org

 https://www.bowery.org/homelessness/

http://www1.nyc.gov/site/dhs/prevention/homebase.page

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_Park,_Brooklyn

Wild Turkey

"Wild Turkey Walking" by Wing-Chi Poon - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5 via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wild_Turkey_Walking.jpg#/media/File:Wild_Turkey_Walking.jpg

It's hard for me to describe my parents to friends and acquaintances. How to tell them that, entertaining as they may seem, these were the young people who were supposed to comfort me after school with a big warm hug and cookies with milk? "Ohhhmigoshhh...", as that dawning recognition spreads over their faces, I know I freaked out my new friend with that particular little exercise. Puts it in a whole new perspective, right? Exactly. And so I began a tradition of prep work before any family interaction, or, if this friend of mine is also a little dense or arrogant, I may toss them into it fresh, with no lube (as they say).

My dad lives in a place so extreme, that the people who live there ask me and my friends the same question every time we pop up there, like celebrities from outer space just there for their intense scrutiny: what do we think of West Texas? The same question, every single time, from people who see Rockefeller Center and other famous things only on t.v. What do you think we think?! It's weird, and it's the complete opposite of our reality as native New Yorkers. I turned the tables on my dad's liquored up friends the last time I visited him on Thanksgiving, by revealing the deep dark secret that my father and stepmother are actually New Yorkers (!!!), and that my dad actually gave birth to his kids while living there! That really threw them for a loop. I then asked them how they felt about New York City when they visited, to watch them squirm uncomfortably in their chairs this time, thrown as we were together from holiday invitations given out in desperation, rather than any type of familial loyalty.

On that visit, I gave my cousin a breast cancer tote bag that I bought for her, in support of her while she battled Stage Four lymphatic cancer (during which my dad frequently called me for advice), and she gave me her warm thanks, which is more than I usually get, strong-armed as I am into getting a two-way ticket to "Nowheresville", but not much else besides the obligatory room-and-board that comes with any hotel stay. My dad's weirdo friends gave my cousin obscene gestures behind her back when she wasn't looking (making her the focal point for their Conservative-fueled righteous indignation), choosing to attack her for being a societal dependent when, in truth, she doesn't choose to be an addict, which is weird coming from my father's mentally ill Vietnam vet friend with the long-term PTSD and his brittle yet openly mannishly aggressive wife. Who the fuck are they anyway? Better than us? They like to pretend New Yorkers are this disease that spreads, while they hide their trauma and sicknesses from full view, choosing instead to use them as weapons in their lives covertly. 

Me? I prefer the honesty behind my cousin's bubbly yet fake persona. Liar that she is ("When do addicts lie?" with the answer: "When they open their mouths", ba-dump bump), but at least I know that she's family. The rest of them try to pat me down for spare change that I don't have, while going on their expensively outfitted Californian pony rides and generically bland cruise vacations. Susan's at least upfront about her needs and what drives her real agenda. Not so with my dad and his crowd, people who buy heavily into the "rich white man game", which means they all pretend to be Conservative Right-Wing Christians* out west for money and job security. "Who's the bigger liar at the table?" is not a game that I like to play.

But, occasionally, when the moon aligns with the rest of the planets just right, we can have a good time, mostly by chance or my doing, or plain ole luck, because my family out west doesn't think I'm worth enough of their time to even plan events that I'd enjoy, open as I am about my lifelong preferences. I know, right? What's to miss?! Sometime our interests overlap, like my love of the outdoors and hiking, because it fits neatly within my dad's conformist "white man" persona, the one who likes to seem like a masculine hunting and fishing guy. And so, one holiday me and my ex (the upstate Indo-European) found ourselves in an old pickup truck following my dad and his family, while he picked up some domesticated animals to dump onto his ranch, because that's about as much as he does for other humans and lifeforms, sometimes. 

You just happen to be part of his schedule, like the delusional diva from "The Met" who thinks the spotlight is always on her. It's creepy, but that's his "Mad Man" generation to a "tee": they use old t.v. shows and movies like they're guidebooks to life, instead of entertainment with the occasional deeper fare thrown in, but mostly likely not, because my dad's wife doesn't "cotton to cussin'", which is part of the homespun act they put on for their new friends far out west, people who don't put together "New York" with "secretary" and "mistress" right away like we do. Wholesome, right? We usually play along with their routines because it's not worth pointing out, which is exactly why me and my ex made fun of my dad all the way from Colorado to New Mexico, about his next harebrained plan for restocking the world with hunted animals (like wild turkeys) on just his corner of the world, hoping that it spreads out from his ranch at the epicenter, so he can take all the credit for it. Professional, n'est-ce pas?

It's not exactly like working for the "Department of the Interior" for the U.S. government, is it? Nope, but that's exactly what he does: he forces his family and friends to witness him buying these poor animals and then releasing them onto his land (and his land only), to often be brutally slaughtered by the predators that live there, even as we tell him that animals migrate, and he doesn't own them or control them in any way, with extremely limited success. He may or may not understand the intent, or it might be him acting out in his delusion of grandeur because he simply doesn't care, so much does he want credit for his bizarre little experiments. It was horrifying actually. Over the years, he released Bighorn Sheep** and other animals without notifying anyone about his intentions, just to play G-d with His Creations.

That's why, over our Thanksgiving break, our dad made us watch him pick up some turkeys he bought to "grow" out at some dirty farm (the horses this farmer had were filthy up to their knees from the mud and feces he kept them penned in), by making us herd Wild turkeys onto his trailer. When we remarked on the unsanitary conditions to him as proof of his uncertain goals (he got caught behaving inappropriately and wastefully again, basically), he assured us that he would report the farmer he'd just paid thousands of dollars to do a job badly to the appropriate authorities, but I highly doubt that happened. We made fun of him with my youngest bro in the second truck all the way down to "his" ranch land (charmingly named "The Flying Asshole"), a place that's off-limits except to him and the county's Game Warden (by law), bumping over the hills and gullies to witness him doing yet another stupid thing that was waste of time and money.

On his signal, we manned the bolts to his trailer, and on the count of "three" we opened the gates to the it, to see a fast flurry of feathers pass briefly before our eyes, before the turkeys did exactly what wild turkeys do, and roost high on the treetops of the only tall trees that exist around there because it's near a pond; atop the ranch's small stand of big Cottonwood trees. For years afterwards, we jokingly asked him if he'd had any signs that they were still alive, and he'd do his "little boy" routine: pout while looking down at his hands, explaining to us one more time that they'd probably been eaten by predators, just like his foolish dreams about the non-native Bighorn sheep that we knew became coyote fodder under his watch, but we still allowed his big public display of making a show about caring for them by hiking us atop "his" mountain (competing with us the whole way uphill), with binoculars to look for them from afar.

He released them to get them killed, because he's too arrogant to consult an expert who'd guide him through it, just like his horse riding "lessons" and during a dozen other really dangerous activities where people in my family (including me) almost died under his watch. So, you can keep Thanksgiving this year, peeps. You can leave me the turkey and the "Indian" boy, though. I know what to do what them. They're the kind of natives I like.

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

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/wild-turkey/

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

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

Pot Roast

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

After college, me and my state school boyfriend once again lived in the same town; he after Montreal and McGill University, and me after R.I.S.D. and Providence, Rhode Island, except everything had changed. He struggled to define himself through MCAT's and what kind of grad school major he should choose from (he's now in that end of show business that enforces union contracts = ugh), and I was becoming an apprentice in publishing, which is about as far apart as the talent is from the office workers around them as it gets. One person watches the action safely from afar while hiding behind the scenes, or off-camera in the shadows, and the other person falls on her ass repeatedly in front of everyone, with jeers and cheers given out in equal measure.

Besides that, he hated art. After a time, my very open "Art Fag" fashion design friend from art school had moved into my aunt's apartment with me (I thought she could help me out with expenses), and he hated her, too, but he had opened the door widely to other personalities a while ago. He justified to me that his roaming eye for other girls was from being a virgin when we met, but that was years ago. He had attended a very expensive, all-boys Jesuit prep school in Manhattan, while I busted my ass working after-school jobs in a very good but very public school system here in 70s and 80s-era working class Rockland County. He lived in the house his grandparents had built for their family, with their prominently displayed, large, gilded Quebecois fleur-de-lis painted in the living rooms' four corners, while his very large French Canadian ex-Marine dad sat regally in his recliner watching whatever he said he wanted to, attended to by his much smaller and mousier Irish-American mother, who snapped briskly to whatever house chores needed doing.

They had six children who still lived with their parents, with the exception of their already-married sister, which is the tradition for most strict Roman Catholic families. His parents were very much that, and loudly proud of it, too. French Canadians, like Irish people, still suffer from the stigma attached to multiple child births without practicing birth control, which created a lot of largely impoverished families wherever we went around the globe, but such was not the case with his Union-funded father and his very large family. As the youngest, Bart did his chores like I did mine (he was assigned laundry duty = ugh), because all hands are needed to pitch in for a large house to run, and our families were no exceptions to the rule. Work hard, play hard. Got it.

Easy, right? But for him, it wasn't. He struggled with sometimes the simplest decisions, like what to eat and when to do it, or with whom and how many are invited? He justified his unfaithfulness to me in Montreal as necessary experiences that would satisfy me in his future as my husband, because I had been forced by circumstances not of my own choosing to become a "Lady of the Household" before I felt that I was really ready for it, which was part of the abuse behind it: to drive me out of the house and into much deeper adult waters in a world where I would get hurt and ultimately recover from, as is my natural way. I didn't really care about dating while attending in the world's hardest design university, as yet another high performing place where I worked three part-time jobs in between an unheard of school schedule that was just studio classes (please don't try it), which were much harder, longer, and labor-intensive, and which was the total opposite of his relatively easy studies that were typical for liberal arts students, where one could hide in the back of a darkened classroom taking notes and writing papers for grades; simple as pie on Thanksgiving for someone like me.

I knew back home in Brooklyn that I had to break up with him when school was done, because he wouldn't be able to move forward with me, and that he would make it prolonged for me to do so, by being his usual gruelingly overly verbal and excessively repetitive self, becoming highly difficult to handle emotionally because he cannot process change nor adapt to others around him well, or sometimes at all. It was painful and childish and I had grown up. Enough. He forced me into dating much more powerful academics than him while I was at R.I.S.D. and so I had, but that was that. I walked through a doorway you can't close shut, even as I warned him that that would be the case with me, because I know how to move on if I have to.

It became crystal clear to me about what I had to do with him, during one afternoon at a park in Bay Ridge down by the water, as we sat in the warm afternoon sun discussing the next weekend's plans. My roommate was busy getting her ass kicked at a sweater company in the city, where she was pushed to the side by better designers with much bigger personalities who fought way harder for what they wanted, because working class native New York kids have to do that just to get a seat at the table at dinnertime, and she had none of that. Neither did he, but because of his exclusive roots, he didn't need them. Plush union jobs during school were easy to get for him, at a rich-kid $20/hour working the door. Irish? You're in!

Not so with me, and I was getting pestered regularly by my friend who was already not making it in the city, because the hungrier and more talented designers were ripping her apart on the daily. She needed enabling, and with the fast track I was on as a publishing apprentice, there was no way I could tend to her on my own anymore, what with the amount of mental problems and breakdowns she was having without a full circle of friends to prop her up anymore to keep her going through her own life. And so, one sunny afternoon in Bay Ridge, I tried to introduce her into his routine badly, or as good as it was going to get given the concrete infallibilities that hid his compulsive routines. Could she come to dinner with me at your parent's place? Uh oh. He immediately stiffened, bristling at the amount of work and smoothing over that the introduction of a new person would be into his insular family circle; a stale, old place where all the grown working men still lived with their parents, with the exception of his older sister who was married. No way. Not happening, Marie. Not enough time to introduce it and then groom them with this new information.

OK....fine. How about the three of us go to dinner somewhere, like the working young adults we'd become? That was even worse. He reddened, looking away at the water, struggling to disseminate this new information given to him in his old neighborhood, "B-b-b-but I look forward to my mother's pot roast all week! I have to have my mother's pot roast every Sunday! I look forward to it all week long!", and that was it. I broke up with him the very next weekend, and I had to nurse my crippled roommate into helping me inform everyone in my circle that I had just broken up with my best friend from school, because he can't go the places I can go, and that was that. I spent the next years (YEARS) coaching everyone around me about why Bart and I had to part ways, because he isn't gifted enough to be in my world, and isn't that the way for each and every mother out there in the world, reading this right now?

You're trying to have a good cry over a glass of white wine alone in a room, and also comforting the dysfunctional people around you through your major life change. I made it through (this site is proof enough of that), but this year, guess what this hard-working girl's gonna be doing in her own apartment? Whatever I want to, friends, and "Amen" to that! I made it through alive to tell you all the tale, and thank G-d for that. There was never enough air in his parent's stuffy drawing room for me, anyway. Have one on me this year, girlfriend. You deserve it, too.

Share the Project

http://www.arcofrockland.org/

Do you remember that homework assignment from your elementary school days called "Show and Tell"? You chose an object from home, brought it to class, and then you got up in front of the entire class and your teacher to deliver an impromptu speech about it. For most of us, it was our first real experience with speaking in front of a crowd, and a nerve-wracking one at that. What to choose? What to say?! You spent your free time thinking about it, and then on the day of your speech, you second-guessed yourself all the way to the front of the classroom by fretting over each minute that passed by on the classroom's big clock, while another classmate did the talking. It actually does a lot of important tasks for human brains, organs that operate at their peak efficiency through utilizing all the advanced arts that are necessary for human communication.

It was the same thing for me in college. I took "Public Speaking" because it was required for all S.U.N.Y. school attendees, and then I "graduated" on to much harder skill sets, like talking about the projects I made all by myself at the world's premier art and design school. Bullshitting people you don't really care about for a good grade is an easy trick for most of us to pull off, but to be emotionally invested from your labors enough that you actually care about what you've made, and you want it to be well-received unanimously, is par excellence. A lot of people with some technical abilities do enough that passes off as skills people pay for, but a lot of the time, it's work we don't want to do ourselves because it's boring or dirty.

That's where we pick it up: you at the end of your rope, because you fear getting your hands really dirty, or because you're afraid of the risk that comes with those of us who are brave enough to fail in public without even trying. It means you're strong enough to survive a loss(es), so much so, you can visibly pick yourself up from the floor in front of a huge crowd, dust yourself off, heal, learn from your experience, and then get pissed off enough to do it better than next time. Some of us even publish the results. My father always told me that failure is essential to success, because it's true. If you win every single time you try something, then you aren't trying hard enough. Really brave warriors go out on a limb that can break at any time because that's where the sweetest, rarest fruit always is. So what if you fall down? Who hasn't?!

People afraid to fail in front of others are easily controlled through their visible fears. They're those athletes who illegally dose to have a secret edge over their opponents because deep down (or not so deep), they know they aren't good enough to succeed without rigging the contest to their advantage. They're the type of scumbag managers in your daily business who use access to your computer over a secure network to block or track your every move every chance they get, because they know they aren't good enough to be in your position of importance at a company. They're cowards, and cowardly people lie, cheat, and steal all the fucking time because they know they'd suck without you, their high performing muthfucka, to pick up their slack, and there's a lot of that to be had in this world.

I don't trust people who haven't been banged up enough by life because they're too afraid to live it. If you don't have war stories about your epic adventures (with some cool scars to show for your hard work), then you haven't lived enough, because you're too busy sitting on your fat ass peeking out from between lace curtains, like a punk ass bitch in your lazy cushy suburban home, passing judgement on those of us who love life enough to take risks, by taking a fall or two on our asses out in public. Ain't nuthin' but a thang to me, yo. In fact, in my chosen sport of MMA, we don't have "perfect" records (none of us do, really. Not one single athlete), because it isn't a fixed game like some of the shadier sports. There's no such thing as a "perfect" win in our world, because Samurai's accept that they are, like life, imperfect.

It can be jarring for fans of other sports that play dirty through drug use openly ignored, and/or with the assistance of funding from illicit gansta money to front their operation. Whachoo mean he lost? Whaaa....?! They can't even comprehend, because they've learned through a twisted game to expect a fake impression of perfection that's not real because it's a cheat. Some sports are choreographed for a narrative outcome like pro wrestling is, with it's funny over-acting and hammy role-playing, but make no mistake about it: when Brock Lesnar fought in the MMA, he fought a real fucking sport with skill sets so profound, it blows the minds of people who try it. There are just too many mathematical outcomes to predict statistically, and so our sport reflects the genius mentality of people who understand concepts like "hard" and "difficult to achieve" really well, because it's the life they live everyday: a tough game with the odds stacked so much against you, you can't help but draw on a crowd of admiring supporters.

And so it is with my charitable endeavors and active daily service to y'all. I do it because I love it, and I trained for it because I'm the best at it. But there are tons of fuck-ups. I don't have the money to operate a closed system of my own, so I "copy and paste" shit on some old fuckin' computer at the library, because it sucks too much to interact with my better (and older) plug-and-play Mac technology. I call them "Work-Arounds" that are essential to any "real world" type of living: those life situations that reflect the poorer thinking of the people around you who are too blind or dumb (or both) to put real money where it actually belongs. And so you see broken links with dead video uploads and missing photos (stuff I could never do for you at your rich white man's company without aggressive public censure in meetings or firing), because I'm operating under war-like conditions that accurately reflect the angst that I write to you about almost daily, on absolutely no budget whatsoever, because that's what the sick people around me choose in their deluded fantasies: a deliberately purposeful impoverishment that's my accurate lifelong reality.

I tell you this today, in this season of gratitude and thanks, because I don't ever want you to get it twisted with me, and because I care enough to commit my ideas and passion to you on this century's version of "paper" that is semi-permanent in this new digital age. This is my version of "Show and Tell" for you, because I care enough to humble myself by sharing broken work that is still better than any rich white muthfucka's gamed version that's aided and assisted by a thousand other people in support to just him and his goals (usually staffed with lots cheap women and other minority folk), who prop him up look like "Mr. Big Stuff", because he doesn't have the talent or the heart to fail publicly like I do. I want you to be clear about that moving forward, as we go forward on this enterprise that you support with your time and attention.

http://rocklandsample.org/

So, when you come across some joke of a "celebrity" who's puffed up with artificially padded social media accounts that are bought and paid for by advertisers and promoters (unlike yours, maybe), I don't want you to have any doubts about who they fuck they are, or how they got there. They're usually pumped up way beyond their actual skill sets, because most of them don't hold up to scrutiny up close and personal like I do, makeup-free on the daily and going on age 46, baby. That means no weirdo surgeries, no hidden cosmetic procedures behind closed doors, no airbrushing beyond all expectations tied to reality, no surreal overly moneyed shit to throw you off your game by bankrupting your pocketbook in service to someone else. I AM the real deal. Are you tho'? And why not, miss?

Because in my world, part of our "bragging rights" goes towards proud, prominently displayed post-fight photos that show you how we are never really injury-free from this life we battle through daily, smiling back at you through temporarily banged-up faces that show our hard-won war wounds, just like the bad-ass muthfuckas you know we are. I don't want you to be thrown by these supposed low numbers you think you see online, just like the too big ones represented by the false premise that some fat-ass porn star has got it all over you, because you care about teachin' yo kids right from wrong on the cheap, like my new friend Jeanne Newman does. Who the fuck are you compared to her, a woman who has devoted her entire life to public service through teaching and annual Thanksgiving dinners for her people? Just who the fuck are you, anyway? Because you ain't nuthin' to me.

You best be believin' that, because that's what time it is: only 350 followers on your page, or that many likes on your charitable site, or a paltry show of "thumbs-up" on your giving photo today? Oh hell, no. What the fuck is that, anyway?! Gone, baby. It's gone, gone, gone that-a-way. You are what's "it" to me. That's what's up. Same thing for my man Barnaby and his service to our beloved ARC friends, here in town (Hey, there Kevin! Mommy says "hi" and gives you big warm hugs all the time:), now takin' his act on the road to Massachusetts, armed with one of my lil' black stickers for prove positive of our unification. You know I do that, too! You think these people are unknown to me? Fuck y'all, then. You're a rock star to me in my world, baby. Don't think this false "divide-and-conquer" shit where you have to sweat it out alone on an isolated pocket is unknown to me as a strategy to keep you down. 

They're that afraid of us, my friends, because we are that strong and that good. Believe it. Believe in me. Believe. We've just grown out-of-bounds by one more person today, my friends. Yeah! That's it! We've grown by one, and now my wolf-pack is more full for it. Haha!

http://sharetheproject.org/20-2/

This one's for you today, Ms. Jeanne Newman! 

Thanks for all that you do daily. We see you!

https://www.facebook.com/sharetheproject/timeline

Cappucino

http://coffee.wikia.com/wiki/Espresso_Machine

Like I wrote in another post, jerk-offs have it really hard in our culture, particularly when they have to hide their fascination with stupid shiny gadgets, and so much so, I have invented a name for them that you may feel free to use with impunity called "Gadgeteers". Similar in douchebag intensity to "Marketeers" who serve to do those annoying sales jobs you don't have time for because you make the stuff they sell, they are equally creepy to be around for any real length of time.

I've crossed paths with many, many different types of douchebags in my lifetime, but for some reason (perhaps an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder with extreme Hobbit Hoarding built right in), people who are dicks about objects seem to strike an extra annoying cord with most logical, sane Homo sapiens (Latin: "wise person"). My friend with a rock n' roll name was just such a character. He's fun to drink with, but you don't want to take him home with you. You know? He has no real fucking clue about life at all, because he's the product of successful immigrant parents who coddled him like the half-retard he really is.

When I was forced out of economic necessity to couch-surf at my friend's pad for awhile, he wasted no time in telegraphing his disdain for my human life by immediately dragging me on an insane and totally unnecessary run to a big bargain center in the 'hood, after he forgot the club card for the store at the cash register loaded with his greedy goods, thus forcing us to double-back and pick it up at his boy's house, because he doesn't actually have a card of his own for real. This particular fucked up shopping trip was actually brought on by his stress/anxiety/excitement of having a woman as beautiful as me living in somewhat close proximity to him. 

After said completely unnecessary and totally fucking weird trip to his magically dull "Land of Programmable Hoarding Zombies" (I left empty-handed because I was shocked by the utterly uselessness that two pounds of fake orange cheese curls in a huge plastic tub actively leaking toxic fumes right underneath your nose represents to a healthy human like me), my friend proceeded to squirrel away his weird collection of towels and washcloths in his room, tucked away safely behind closed doors, a room that he actively keeps under lock and key (paranoid as that is in your own home), with a thick silver chain.

He also assured me with confidence that I no longer needed a doctor or real medicine anymore because he had a fully stocked "Pill Cabinet" stocked with the weirdest snake oil shit I have ever seen in my life, shit that he tried to sell me by describing the powerfully accurate phenomenon behind shark oil droplets, because he has never seen an old shark in his life, ever! He kinda felt bad for me (naive as I am), because my doctor has a thriving active practice with years of schooling and training done in New York's leading scholarly institutions and hospitals, because, like, they don't tell you the truth. Pharmaceutical companies do that! And then he showed the wacky fucking brochure that the crazy lady on the first floor of the apartment building I used to live in (but was forced out of, hence the couch-surfing phase I was forced into), peddles around the place to support her biracial boy who is sometimes in school, and sometimes not.

Oh, and I was also tasked with fixing his incredibly complex and overly expensive robot toy that never made a cup of coffee once, because (since I was staying there "rent-free"), I owed him a lifetime of service and slavery by daring to survive and thrive (I was already back at work) right underneath his nose and, disgustingly enough, in his own house! 
Of course, he rifled through my stuff while I was at work, stealing a cool bus sign that I found in this squalid tenement I'd been cleaning out to live in, as payment for his many "services" rendered to me, in addition to: my gift of many hardcover books to him and his cousin from the company I was working at while I stayed there, plus another rare gift I'd given him a few Christmases back of an original framed vinyl Elvis album that I took right off my own wall, the very same rock god he'd been named after by his sweet Puerto Rican mother.

It was an utter farce. I soon learned what every friend he'd ever had stay there with him knew (and there were tons: his brother surfed the couch before me, there was a recent ex-girlfriend brought down-low by a hurricane so she was ripe for the grabbing, and then there was little ole me...sensing a pattern here?), and that is this: Elvis is totally fucking insane and physically abusive, in between rounds of beers with some fun thrown into the mix by his eccentric personality. I fiddled with his overly complex, crazy piece of crap for awhile with the instruction manual, then I found an actual stove-top coffeemaker in the cabinets that operated solely on gas burner power and someone putting coffee in the top of it to brew, because I had to go to work in the morning.

He was so distraught by the long death of his robot toy, that he tried in vain to pull at least five other people into the situation while I stayed with him. First it was me, then his cousin who lives in an illegal apartment downstairs, then some of his contractor buddies (yeah, more stringent blue collar thought-building and a-happening types..this should totally work) who also grunted in anger at the thing, and then, most weirdly, his coked-up IT friend who took the same amount of time as me (Genius is great!) to finally deliver him the same bad news: this shit is broke, yo. After his shiny robot was finally pronounced dead at the scene forever, he admitted what his crew had known for years; his cheap-ass bought the thing after it had "fallen off the truck", which is a cutesy thug name for a "hot" stolen item, and given the banged-up nature of the box it came in, it had probably never worked, ever.

This, after he tortured everyone around him for years with some stupid fucking machine that had never worked, all because Elvis wanted to fuck around with us as objects for his curiosity in his stupid fucking "Demento World". In his weird world, smart people have to pay a stiff price for out-thinking him by performing magic tricks, like fixing something that never worked, as payback for his broken brain. 
He hadn't liked the hubris behind his coke dealer/IT service guy, so in retaliation for his gifts, Elvis would present his riddle within an enigma to solve, but not before he begged me to stay awake long enough to rake him over the coals intellectually as payment for his services. 
I didn't really have a choice because his guests were meant to torture me into staying awake in the living room where the couch is (and I had work in the morning), while he did cocaine with them all night.

I did stay awake on my own, and then I also found the little bag of coke from his dealer hidden underneath the illegal bootleg DVD's that he also hoards on his coffee table, which gave me all the leverage I needed to stay alive a little while longer under his roof. But don't you fret. It was interesting for me, too, readers! His coke dealer took the machine in payment for the drugs, and from there on out, for the rest of my time staying on his couch, a big empty space stood on his counter-top where that useless hunk of junk had been, and I was "allowed" to make my morning cup of coffee in peace while he hid in his room behind a closed door, under lock and key. 

He also has a security camera above his front door that shows a picture of who's there on his computer screen, an awning with the wrong street address prominently printed on it because he has made lots of enemies in his lifetime, and a conspicuously absent Master Illuminator from his life. That would be me, folks, the most important object that has ever been housed under his roof, except for this very key and quite central fact of life: I ain't no coffeemaker. You out, boy.

http://chn.ge/1RX52GW

 

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

This one's for you today, Ms. Rousey! It ain't no big thang in our world, girl. Shake it off, and get the fuck back out there. We all know you ain't a real Samurai Warrior unless you been tried and tested through failure. That's why we get all the good stuff in this life, yo. We don't take the easy way out ;)

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E4%BE%8D