Cotto Cooks

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

When I worked out of the Brooklyn Public Library in Park Slope, I was often beset by the usual characters one would expect lurking idly about during the day, in a space designed for heavy public usage. My friend named "Cotto" was just such a person. He sat next to me huffing and puffing away to attract my notice, shuffling in his seat and looking around, until I finished writing my piece and my headphones came off. Now! He hit me up for my earbuds as soon as I laid them down to the right of me, next to his workstation. Sure...I was a little hesitant about loaning them out, since they're designed to go directly into dirty waxy ear canals but he looked decent enough, so I said "yes".

He thanked me and went back to his work, while I finished my day writing publishing-related emails and copyediting. After we were both done working on the public-access computers (just around the same time, wink wink), we easily struck up and conversation as he handed my little earbuds back to me. He was filling out a test online for a type of hygiene certification that was his boss' direct orders to him because (as he told me), he was a "chef". Aha! I always brighten up around other working artists, since we're rare in the real world. We have a lot in common creatively, and we share the same types of problems out in society. I told him about my website that has "food" built right into its subtitle because I'm on par with a low-level cook, even though I'm not certified to do professional kitchen work, which would be a whole other life trajectory that I do not have time for.

But he certainly did have available time, and from what he told me, it was definitely worth it, at least at first. He was working (at that time) in the kitchen that serviced the VIPs who came to see the Jets play football at the Meadowlands. Whoa! That's a big name to drop 'round the way. Good for him! Finding quality work is the biggest challenge a real working artist has. He said his boss was very strict while running his kitchen ("Top Chefs" usually are, since the competition is fierce and their reputations are always on the line), and he was "riding him" at work about his cleanliness. In order to keep this plush gig, he had to do coursework for a certain type of kitchen certificate, if he wanted to keep his job washing dishes (read more about Cotto's bottoming-out phase here: http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2015/10/dirt-weed.html).

It was a start. I gave him one of my black "Illumination" stickers with my email address written on the back, and told him to keep in touch with me. He was new to the neighborhood, and very excited to show me the place he scored through a bodega contact about ten blocks from my apartment building. After our first meeting for coffee, he told me that his rented room didn't have a kitchen, and he was worried about losing his skill sets as a chef. Could he use my kitchen? Okay, why not? I was in the middle of an eviction case and in serious limbo. Who knows how much longer we'd have access to it? Besides, I hadn't eaten all day and I was feeling lightheaded from hunger. It was worth a shot. He seemed clean and respectable, even buying me a Chai Latte at the local hippie cafe in the 'hood.

We went to a nearby grocery store, and that was when Cotto quickly began losing his bearings. The old Nuyorican neighborhood had slowly changed from gentrification, with the typical influx of rich white out-of-town hipsters and "wanna-be" art fags, which seemed to throw him off, plus the layout of the store had changed with recent renovations. Where to go? Also, he had no shopping list, preferring to dazzle me with his limited memory. I wasn't that worried, because his food was free for me with my kitchen use serving as his fee, so I tagged along as he aisle-surfed. We left, bought some wine, and then he hesitated outside the store again. I forgot something! And that wasn't something a pro would do. Ever. Without a firing. Huh...

He also made a relatively simple Italian-American dish called "Fettuccine Alfredo" that I could have made in my sleep, if I cared enough to do so, which I didn't. Let him try to "dazzle" me with his prowess! I happily played the role of "Sous Chef" to him as a kitchen second (I like being an amateur, at times), thinking he'd enjoy being the lead guy after working at the bottom of a creative hierarchy, like those in the top kitchens of New York. I chopped as he added ingredients to the pots and pans on the stove, but my kitchen quickly threw him as a new environment for him to maneuver around. I turned my back to empty off my cutting board into the garbage for a mere second and when I turned around, Cotto had a bizarre wide-eyed look about him, as we watched one of my tea towels go up in flames.

Oops! He'd used it as a pot-holder in lieu of my actual potholders within easy reach of the stove (it was a small apartment kitchen), which caused him to let the corner of the small flammable towel drop directly into an open flame. Uh, that's more than a ten-point deduction, dude. I calmly put out the fire in the sink within another couple of seconds, and before he knew what to do, I had another tea towel in his hands so he could get back to work. The dish came out lumpy and overly rich, with chunks of congealed cheese clumped together in sodden clumps, which was his ultimate finish for me as part of any ongoing "Demo Team" I might have. No "personal chef" work for you, esse! Besides, after we ate, he noticed me as I laid down on the floor with my feet propped up on my couch, where he took up residence as my house guest while I sat on the floor, and he began to notice my beauty, with first one comment followed fast by another that betrayed his dawning nervousness about me and my excellent home.

After my housing deal went bust and I moved into his "Casa Crack Shack", we had plenty of more time to get acquainted, which we did quickly as I lead our conversations. Turns out, Cotto had to pick a training program as part of his release from prison, so he picked "cooking" at random, though as he told me, he "never really wanted" to be a chef. This, as he played his video games, chain-smoked, and then blew part of his city funding for school on more tacky "hood rat" shit, like shiny new gadgets and other things dumb stoners really like, but that's a story for another day. 

Suffice to say, after generations of a paid education with special ESL classes, free cell phones and public utilities, mass transit, welfare, Section 8 housing, incarceration, rehab, drug and alcohol addiction recovery programs, medication, healthcare, psychotherapy, institutionalization, and crime, we New Yorkers managed to completely piss away millions of dollars on one very sick Puerto Rican guy whose greatest feat of cooking will be passing out underneath a palm tree somewhere near a turista beach cabana back on his warm tropical island home, waking only after one particularly large coconut falls hard on top of his big round head, finally rousing him from his comatose-like slumber brought on by his raging manic obsessive schizoid bipolar identity disorder (because he likes skipping doses to bring out the psychotic in him: much easier to commit crimes that way), preferring instead to "slow-roll homie" his way late in the afternoon to shake down the wealthy Americanos who are already a couple of drinks into their Puerto Rican beach "vacay", paying for his spot beneath the tree by helping the cabana cook crack open a couple of conch shells for the grill, because that's all he can really do. Really. He's that sick.

The real deal: https://www.nami.org/Learn-More/Public-Policy/Social-Security-Income-%28SSI%29-and-Social-Security-D

The scam: http://www.disabilitysecrets.com/mental-impairment-claims.html

Sacred Earth

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

Ever since I can remember, I've had values, ethics, and morality attached to conservation, with a genuine love for nature. It's like breathing to me. So, when I encounter ignorance (whether real or fake) about what it takes to keep our environment clean and safe for future generations, I know it's total fucking bullshit. Toddlers know not to litter, because fouling one's own nest is contrary to every living species on this planet, except for those sick humans who want to die from their own filth, which is about as contrary to any life-force as you can get, but that's the walking dead for you. Hard to talk to about, like, stuff.

One of the most successful anti-littering campaigns was widely aired during my prime t.v. viewing years as a kid, and as an adult GenX'er, I knew someday I would grow up to help my crying native friend, because I felt his disgust at this Hollywood version of Anglo hatred toward our planet as keenly as he did (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Eyes_Cody). Luckily in this century, we have genetic testing and a DNA database to protect our tribal affiliations. It was so powerful an experience for me as a little girl that I've never forgotten its impactful imagery. A lone "native" man stands looking at all the waste European colonists have wrought upon the landscape with a deep sadness, along with many other genetic diseases that we don't really need in this "new" world of yours discovered by humans more spiritual than you, motherfucker, but I digress.

Last spring, when I had a long wisdom tooth pulled, I sat watching a new flat-screen t.v. in a fancy dentist's office here in town as a welcome distraction, with the channel set to a Hudson Valley news channel. My procedure was over quickly, as I knew it would be, because the old tooth had descended fully and was weak from invading cavities. As I sat prone with instruments and humans poking around my mouth like they were interested cave explorers discovering an underground species of blind bats (I have some very unique and totally identifiable dental features), I was heartened to see a wonderfully inclusive ceremony involving a cute gaggle of kids, a rabbi, a priest, and a medicine man. Sounds like a fun joke, right? No joke!

A group gathered to bless our Hudson River in a honoring ritual that speaks of its importance to us as a giver of life. Uh uh! I grunted my recognition of such a great experience being filmed live and right near our shores. Yeah, fuckers! That's it!! You finally fucking did it! You got one thing right, and it's not a small one. Well done. It only took you a few centuries to catch onto our ancient relationship with this blessed Mother Earth, on this shining gem of a precious vessel that is your flying biosphere spaceship. Kudos. You're moving past children's entertainment to the real. Welcome to our happy valley, but be careful. We protect what we love here.

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

http://westchester.news12.com/news/blessing-of-the-hudson-river-held-1.10314127

Garbage Picker

I often find handy little critter signs around my environment that tell me you are a loud, abusive, crazy, chain-smoking drunk because I can mysteriously "read into" obvious cues like a stubbed-out cigarette butt (I don't smoke and when I did, it wasn't the "Ghetto Menthol" brand now made with even more harmful fiberglass, yo!) near the container made for plastic recyclables, because your broke ass is looking for bottle deposits to cash in. See, if you were legal, you could get a real job. In this case, I frightened away the crazy Hispanic female flipping the lid right next to my door in broad daylight by simply opening my door to let her know that I keep bottle deposits indoors to return myself because I understand that she's a sick illegal fuck haunting my 'hood. She chose to play the ever-handy "no habla ingles" routine followed by a wavering little smile delivered with the important casual shrug that lets me know she feels superior to me as a welfare queen picking through my fucking garbage. I don't see her around anymore. Huh.

Much like Donald Trumps' wildly trumpeted assertions that capture this country's imaginations daily, New Yorkers learned a lonnng fucking time ago that if we want any of our real cultural interests, influences, and/or lifestyles accurately represented, we need to speak up. LOUDLY. That includes bad minstrel acts with broadly comedic bits included for the crowd living in the provinces: there's no time for subtlety when your cabbie speaks Urdu on his Bluetooth all day long to his family back home, with the backseat t.v. blaring away. "Turn right! NOW!" Yes. You do this now. In addition to a daily influx of every single language currently spoken on planet Earth (plus a few phased out that only our excellent scholars still know), we learned how to communicate with "other" perfectly well, with or without our elegantly beautiful and highly educated Shakespearean flourishes added in expertly spoken "High English"...because you don't understand it.

We even adapt our native language to your foreign-import cab business, is what I'm telling you today, because we understand concepts like "world" and "trade" and "capital" and "empire" like it's written on the backs of our hands, because it is. It's in our very DNA. Suffice to say, grunts newly arrived to our mostly peaceful shores signal our unique status back to us by aggressively shouting thickly-accented words like "money" at us rudely and repeatedly, usually accompanied by a greedy, grasping, grabbing hand gesture of "give now" that are somewhat lost on our more delicate sensibilities, which is also why we deliver curse words in regional accents so very well, like I do. You evil fuck! You can't give everyone you meet a cultural lesson with each and every transaction, though Lord knows we try.  
We really do. 

That's why Chinatown has signs in Mandarin and Cantonese, and Spanish Harlem is bilingual with ESL classes for your Hispanic son ("Spanish" in NYC, get it?), plus restaurant signs in Koreatown are....? Right! Crafted with signs designed by us in both Korean AND English, because we do notice that you are not quite like us, and that's OK. Not in North Korea, of course, where you come from, but here in America, you can be free to be you and me here, and no, this is not some advertisement made just for t.v., like the trashy shows you pretend are representative of us and our genuine, caring communities. It's called the "House of Representatives" in our government. Scary, isn't it?

So, when I tried in English and Espanol to tell the disordered people around me and my environs that recycling is the law, the natural response in "evil" and "crazy" is to openly pick through my trash right in front of me, or pretend not to understand "Ingles" on this particular day, like a bad actress from an overly exaggerated show on an equally lame Spanish soap opera, because that's abnormal to do in any country, using any human language. I know, because I also wrote about other like-minded Hispanics who live right next to their trash and love it (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2015/08/hecho-en-mexico.html). They love it so much, they make "art" from their garbage for money!

But, we don't do that here, so adapt, you dumb-ass. Pick up your fucking trash, get a real job, or go home. You can do any one of those things here, because freedom really does mean "free", and not some perverted totalitarian version that you and your fucked up family pretend that it means, in your state-mandated history books. I understand that drones, minions, and slaves want someone to whip them in their dysfunction until they cringingly behave, like some horribly abusive slob in a weird S&M "scenario" that's been scripted with gay costumes and cues and special words and...wait, where the fuck are we?!

You're on my land, ass. You're living in New York and the Americas. Get with it, or get the fuck out. Simple, n'est-ce pas? If you like garbage so much that you want to live near a mountain of it, Paraguay has just what you need (http://www.landfillharmonicmovie.com/), and I am most definitely not some rich white businessman writing that to you today. It's all me, babies. This is all me and my values, plus all of yours, too, because in this Warrior of Nations, we fight for what we want, and that includes the right to recycle our own trash without funding your illegal move here and back from wherever the fuck you came from. We are a nation of immigrants. We know the routine. Trust me. We know every move you make. Twice!

As you can see in this case, a hood rat who managed to secure a very important government job picking up recycling (with a finely-paid full benefits package), decided it was okay to illegally hit me up around Christmas with a card meant to shake me down for extra "dinero". I sent him a very sincere holiday card back to him, taped to the inside of the paper receptacle where I found his card (mine has to be taped inside because people steal shit around here) thanking him for his service to the community and I meant it, because I do not hand out my favor lightly. This week, I decided to give him a beautiful travel brochure from a tour service that my family has used with great results, and some beautiful bookmarks from a woman's museum in our nations capital, to see if he was truly interested in "Americano". No, senorita. Huh. My mom loved the pretty bookmarks so much, she put them up on her well as part of a display (they are printed excellently as high-end color reproductions, which is a mark of quality to a refined mind, but I digress), and my father's family has visited many of the tours presented by our friends in Montana who book eco-friendly, one-of-a-kind tours all around the world (including Hispanica and its outlying areas), but they were obviously not good enough for Senor Correando, or "Eduardo the Recycle Guy", as he familiarly addressed himself to me in his Xmas card. I guess our real national treasures like beautiful bear cubs in Yellowstone Park, and our world-famous female artists (myself included) are simply not good enough for this superior recycler. Clearly that must be the case, because he carelessly flipped over the lid I prepared just for him, and left it out in the rain, making it soggy and no longer useful. Here's a handy tip for you: I AM NOT YOUR PERSONAL ATM.

"Buenos dias, Eduardo!"

http://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/wagestips

Wall Me In

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

Like the businesses I "manned" for other people who were often too incompetent to do so themselves, I'd just as often run into the walls of their ineptitude as quickly. Can't speak up? Force your underpaid minion to attend (that'd be me running your meeting better than you), for half the price. Having trouble with new ideas, concepts, technologies, and their executions? That's OK! Pretend superiority over your resident genius (I knew that, BTW) by airily flaunting your laziness with over-dramatic sighs that express your disturbed "businessman of importance" state of mind, someone with the weight of the world pressing down on his shoulders (like, paperwork related to book manufacturing), while passing off the real work that you are "too busy" to do onto the people in your workflow who are actually qualified in the industry, you ignorant hack, and when we do excel, feign indifference and ignorance while you check my email every 10 minutes because the office handbook said you could do so. Hi, there!

And so, when the last business I worked at full-time imploded on itself, after I fixed it on their deliberately abusive shoestring budget (which was my job to do), I simply sat back and watched the kooks kill each other off, in the calm wake that follows on the footsteps of my excellent leadership. I grew accustomed to a quick headcount of firings that I'd metaphorically mount in my office at the beginning of every new venture, one that naturally expanded outward to include environments I visited for my hobbies, too. Magnetic personalities draw out the crazies who need a strong identity to stalk around in an openly mad way, or else they are rootless, restless, and increasingly psychotic.

Of course, that means I have to support the weight of a thousand poisoned darts aimed at me at all times, and if I don't properly manage your psychotic house rat, she'll go batshit and tear into your throat, and since you're a coward, well....that just won't do, will it? Word quickly spread throughout my industry of choice (and now, to the wider world) that if a manager didn't fend off their own troubled employees, I fought back like a normal, healthy, high-performing muthfucka, which means you get canned wayyyy before I do, and with your prescription healthcare plan (that I pay for) you need a steady supply of pills for your cocktail of meds, or it will bring on serious withdrawal like the fucking junkie you really are, so I set my internal clock and wait.

Within weeks, the worst headcases "flip" on one another, like addicts trying to cop a plea for a better deal with the D.A. for a reduced prison sentence. It's become routine. At first, I was shocked when the last crazy little Jewish man I worked for (with the serious Napolean complex) decided to try and frame his rabid bitch of a secretary's schizo-bipolar behavior as some sort of "catfight" happening between us, I knew he was "in" on the office scams with her. Ah. Probably his mistress or a relative...or both, because they're so fucking weird. So what? Whatever crazy shit he and his freaks did behind closed doors meant nothing to me professionally. He smirked his phony bullshit suggestions at me, like putting up a bead curtain to give me some "privacy" when I told him she would attack in a continually more aggressive and openly aberrant way because she stopped taking her pills, on suggestion of a cult she attended called "Landmark", one that she actively recruited for within the office during daytime business hours and in between the calls they placed to her all day every day for recruitment purposes on the company's dime and office phone lines.

It broke at least seven workplace laws that I knew of as a layperson just after my first few seconds of thought, and that was without any outside legal counsel. After that, things went downhill fast. He thought he was going to see a "hot" girl-fight in action between me ("the hotness") and his weak, limp cunt of a receptionist. Not happening. I simply brushed up on modern OSHA standards about legal office behavior, after his legal publishing experienced nephew ganged up on me with their insanely gay production guy. I beat them with a few slips of paper I printed out minutes before our "meeting", and that was with them monitoring my every move over the company's computer network wired by the publishers' own son. Oh. Yeah, it's like that.

He grew fretfully desperate, because his fake yellow-haired bitch hatched a new evil ploy for stalking me in his office for every counter-move I made; that's how powerless he was with a typical office slut who traded on blow jobs over any real talent or work ethic. I knew I had everything I needed when they actually built a little fucking wall to obscure me from her increasingly paranoid stomping up-and-down the company hallways, just to get a glimpse of me during her ferociously psychotic break from reality. His simpering cripple of a crazy wife came back to see me in my newly-altered studio space (which she rarely did, so she could telegraph her obvious rich housewife disdain for "laborers" like me at every opportunity she had), with a strategy delivered in a fake, loud, stage voice (you know, because of my "hearing" problems): did I feel "better" with the wall in place?

Her typical condescension at having to even interact with a beautiful human like me made my flesh crawl, but since this was her big gay Broadway moment, I didn't want to let her down. Oh, yes! I smiled with my best phony bitch impression. It's soooo much better back here now. Her face caved in, and then she recovered quickly, pasting on another sickly smile. Oh, good! Psychologically, I bet this really helps you out. Yes, crazy bitch with the lying cheating family living in a nest of vipers. Your crazy lesbian mistress/sex worker/receptionist with the obvious mood swings is why you built a wall to block me from her crazy eyes, so I definitely think about $60 worth of particle board and spackle (that I actually helped the contractor put up, which was greeted with more derision by his nephew with the phrase "boy, you sure do seem to know your materials" line along with the information that he has a "gay best friend" he told me about on his very first day of his employment in a phony gushy TMI-kind of way) will cure her of paranoid schizophrenic bipolar obsessive compulsive personality identity disorder. Any day now. Should happen...right about....now....no...it never happened. Still no cure for you.

A recent ex-neighbor of mine who's also clearly troubled but can occasionally speak "human" back to me on his "good" days, laughed with me one warm spring afternoon last year, when he let me know that our resident fake blonde psycho-bitch wanted to draw an imaginary white line down the middle of a house that she merely rents space in, because every cave troll has to have its toll paid, and since I don't do that (because I'm not mentally ill to a room-bound recluse off her meds), I no longer have access to "her" side staircase to the back of the residence that the rest of the household can use, because she imagined a fake history between use. And don't you know, mes amis, I could practically see her erecting a crazy brick wall (made with the landlord's bricks and carried out on his property) behind my back? <sigh> Here we go again. I wonder who will win, don't you? No? Huh. Neither do I.

Fight back, friends. Our collective knowledge is power: https://www.osha.gov/

"No one should have to sacrifice their life for their livelihood, because a nation built on the dignity of work must provide safe working conditions for its people."- Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez

Better Safe Than Sorry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uber_%28company%29

In another highly coincidental sense of "timing" that's my life (we're calling it that today, right?), I planned to write this piece about common sense and excellent grandfatherly advice many weeks ago, one that dovetails nicely with current crimes in your tabloid media, but more on that a bit further in. Suffice to say, my original notes contained references to timeless classics like not having your head up your own ass, which works in any century. Much like the adage "don't take rides from strangers", it fits neatly into any time and any type of human life.

And so it was. I kept my bearings crossing city streets without developing weird tics like saying the street name three times before attempting to do so, which was also nicely contained within the phrase "always watch your back" and I did, so it worked. When our airspace was violated during 9/11, my then-boyfriend and I were already deeply invested in his flight training, which was part of our moving back to New York City. He and I spoke at length about American naïveté regarding travel and airplanes that was echoed around the world. A Yankee ballplayer had infamously flown a small light plane over the gusty East River and right into the side of a building years before the debate about our precious urban air-spaces entered into your mainstream lexicon.

My English-born boyfriend was aghast that a city as famous as New York would even allow anyone like a private pilot within range. It was a huge gap in our collective awareness that wasn't in step with the rest of the world. People from Israel are so accustomed to a strong military presence at airports (like other "hot zones" around the world continually rife with conflict) that they've long considered it an enormous problem for us that had to change. Ditto with England's airspace. In fact, many European-Americans feel comforted by military personnel on duty at popular public spaces, and so do I. 

I fucking love seeing buff dudes in tight outfits with big guns at the Port Authority (sorry, my hetero is showing), especially with their awesome K9 units. Yay! Big "papas" and their highly-trained, bomb-sniffing dogs!! I bet we'd have a lot in common, like dog training and special ops certification programs in the woods! I was immediately cheered on by the gearing up of a big TSA-based presence at our international airports, because it sends a message around the world that we care about our people and their transportation, because we do. It's an accurate reflection of our passion for life that was missing before.

That was the tone of my message before some pyscho-killer chose this week to be an evil fucking scumbag. We had a big, open, media conversation this past summer about Uber in New York City that I thought would quickly trickle down to this rest of the country, but I guess fucking not, so let's go over it again. Don't get into cars with strangers. Period. There's a reason why people need certification, licenses, DOT numbers, and photo ID's to drive people around the city, and this is it. Back in the day, we called sketchy-looking foreign dudes who drive around looking for fares "Gypsy cabs", which meant you had as much luck getting to your destination safely as you had getting advice from shaking a Magic 8 ball. It was "buyer beware" all the way there and back, because once you get into someone's car, they can pretty much take you wherever the fuck they want to, without benefit of a professionally-installed GPS like modern taxis have that marks the 21st century, you dumb fuck.

It is not at all like booking a room on a website that's certified to provide professional B&B service, because a room is not like a car (for obvious reasons), just like an unmarked car is not the same as a professional cab driver, you dick. For the record, AirBnB was created by two RISD-trained intellectuals who care about their business, so that's a big fucking difference right there. Mayor de Blasio said pretty much the same thing: it's not that we want to deprive any individuals the right to earn a living in a very competitive city, it's just that your lack of training is what made some Michigan nut into a killer, see? Do you now see how that works?! Good! Your nutcase is not the same as my kind Grandpapa from Queens with his Medallion-owned yellow cab. Get it? No?

OK, here's more: your ignorant, fucking welfare kook with a borrowed, uninsured car IS NOT THE SAME as a professional limo driver looking to pick up a few fares on his way back to the garage, by picking up a few tourists around Times Square in the middle of our hottest summertime days, with his plush-air-conditioned ride. Do you get it now? Of course you do, you insane fuck. Remember those shitty Chinatown buses from way back that took transplants from the city to Boston "on the cheap" until people died, which is exactly like those crazily over-stacked MegaBuses that advertise "holla for a dolla" rides around Chi-Town will do...until some cheap-ass muthafucka dies from what should be a standard commuter bus route. Pay the fuckin' full fare for a real bus or stay home, you broke-ass idiot. Fuck! I don't want to have this conversation again, feel me? Yes, you do. Now you do.

https://www.everipedia.com/jason-brian-dalton-1732170173668679/

Buses: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown_bus_lines
https://twitter.com/megabuscrashes

Cabs:
http://www.whosdrivingyou.org/rideshare-incidents 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_taxicab_operation 

Planes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_New_York_City_plane_crash 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibited_airspace 

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.

Death by Art Director

The Blood Vote: Anti-conscription handbill poem issued during anti-conscription campaign, 1917. Purportedly written by W.R. Winspear. Under Australian law this is now out of copyright and in the public domain.

Suffice to say, the disabled, disordered, demented, and delusional of the world are not sequestered together on one strange island by themselves, like ancient mythical lepers of Biblical days gone by. Besides, it doesn't work. Humans have mastered the art of moving around, sick or not. That means people with serious health problems are present in every sector of our daily lives, because no matter how weird of a shut-in that you style yourself to be, the world manages to seep in anyway. Life always finds a way, like Mother Nature itself.

In the work worlds of major media in New York City (and in "The Empire State", hint hint), we were (and are) not immune to smelly weirdos compulsively typing and muttering next to us at corporate-owned desktops everywhere. It's just that high performers like us don't have time to water the fucking company houseplants, and please shoot us if we ever do. Kidding. Don't do that, you fucking weirdo. We'd have lost all relevance in the human worlds by then if we're relegated to life's sidelines, which is highly unlikely as modern masters of this times' communication.

That doesn't stop resident nut-jobs from trying it anyway, dull as their unending mental problems are. Think I'm exaggerating? Imagine being sentenced to an eternity of "Dr. Phil" reruns, always with the exact same family of inbred hicks freaking out and living life as poorly as possible, in that ever-annoying regional twang they have, and you're not even close to the hell I'm describing at our work. Of course, transferring their homegrown pain onto as many healthy people as possible is part of the fun about having violently untreated psychoses, limited as those days now are, you blood-sucking freaks. 

Because the kicker is, for me to have received those plush newspaper union benefits of yore, I had to take a couple of piss tests at the drug-screening lab of their choice TWICE (paid by the union), so they would be reassured that their union-mandated income didn't fall into the hands of an addict who's so clearly fucked up, he/she couldn't even go two weeks without passing a urine sample cleanly. You dumb fuck. You don't deserve a job! And that wasn't all. 

I had to pass a psychological screening, too, further weeding out the crazies at other levels. That's right, jittery assholes: I had to fill out several multiple choice answer sheets, write out my handwritten answers to those essay questions that required it, and then mail it back to my potential employer in the time frame as requested in a sealed, time-stamped USPS package that was several pages long with clearly detailed instructions, and that was after I had two or three interviews appropriate to my level, which also included: answering the ad correctly with my relevant portfolio submissions included, meeting with the hiring creative and any of the other senior staff in the department, with yet another possible portfolio review that included other key members of my team, and that was before I even reached the Art Director's level. I actually had to pass (in my early 30s) a mental stability process that's more labor intensive than the process it takes for some Texan to walk into Wal-Mart to buy a handgun, just to design your special four-color newspaper inserts. Makes sense, right?

After my meteoric rise in any type of environment (set your internal clocks by it, grunts), the kooks come crawling out of the woodwork with full pockets and barely hidden agendas. Insult rock-star talent = handy firing with lazy benefits package included. In fact, it's become such an industry standard, we openly discuss it in offices as part of our managerial lives. At the end of my term in other people's offices, I "graduated" to the Maestro level, which means I am now the Grand Wizard of your fucking mental disorder, bitch. Get it? No more firings by pissing off that "pretty" girl in design who runs the show. Now, they just run in the opposite direction. That's what my former art school mentor meant when he said to me that "you are so made for this game, girl". Go get 'em! Ain't no one beatin' a working class New York kid. We work that fucking hard. See you in the funny pages.

Rush

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_%28biology%29

Close to the city as we were, my family were natural experts in the dramatic arts, seeking out occasions that best displayed those skills to an audience up close and personal. To this day, my mom still stages tense little dramas to give color to her day by using anyone available to her to indulge her weird whims. Lately, she's become a little too glittery and shiny in the eyes over me standing by her kitchen sink, which is one of the great joys of her life. She calls the mundane chore of washing the same pots and pans over and over again as "playing with the dishes", and in order to safeguard her treasure trove of washables for later on when she's alone to savor it gloriously, she monitors me moving around her small apartment-style kitchenette while I do something as banal as making her a cup of tea. Sometimes, she'll complain that I move "too quickly", which is her special top- secret kooky code for "I can't hypervigilantly follow your movements so as to draw freaky vibes from your handling of my precious dishes (she hoards paper in times of stress, too), so I will find some way to demean/abuse/harass you while you are in my area of keen interest."

Oh. So, I'm not your biological girl-child that you pushed out during childbirth, right? And that's actually the reality behind it. In the middle of my mom's worst head-case scenarios, I can be anyone who is blocking her road to success by "incorrectly" moving a pair of "her" glasses out of my way on "her" countertop. If I've learned anything from shows like "Hoarders" and "Taboo: Obejctum Sexuals", it's that people with compulsive obsessive addictive personality identity disorders over-personalize objects to such an extant that they exalt them far above over actual lifeforms as a priority in their lives, which is inherently incorrect in modern Homosapien. It's like this mad, sickening, crazy tilt-a-whirl of a ride that the afflicted can't get disembark from, covert as my mom's expert stylings have become over the years.

Like most seriously sick people, my mom has had to reorient her "fetishes" (her word for it, not mine, because I simply see dishes in a sink, not a soapy fairy tail of fun that's a portal to a mythical magical Neverland) in between the noticing of healthy sharp observers like myself, which is exactly why she abuses me (and anyone else) who encroaches upon "her" territories overmuch, like a rabid weasel protecting its young. She's turned boring household chores into quick conduits for biologically addictive chemical payoffs for her benefit only, like a junkie becomes an adept thief at stealing away in the middle of the night to shoot up in lots of creative ways that you and I would never think about, even during our most feverishly delusional states.

The other night, I saw an episode of "Law and Order: SVU" that totally blew my mind in its' accounts of dementia. While the detectives worked a murder case about a neurotic young woman pressed by her evil boss overmuch (they were "besties" at work!), who turned to the cold comforts of alcohol consumption and promiscuous sex over say, consulting a good doctor and getting a better job (locked as she was in a highly tense and very stressful lesbo push-and-pull with her crazy, short-haired boss over pressing deadlines that are such a rush in the workplace, if only you put off everything until the last minute), the medical examiner told them this handy little bon mot about drunks: that their victim hadn't been sexually abused by a stalking rapist. No, it was much fucking weirder than that. She used a wine bottle to push the booze directly up her butt to absorb its intoxicating elixir, which has the added bonus of keeping one's breath fresh, too. Neat, huh?

The resident M.E. went on to further explain other covert methods of alcohol addiction, like the ever-useful "Vodka Tampon" that some nifty co-eds like to use: simply soak aforementioned tampon in a glass of booze before hitting class, insert it, then go go go! I was like, what the fuck, people?! It's so fucking convoluted and weird, you should know that's why those girls wind up on a slab in their 20s and 30s; not because I forgot the key combination of event sequences for their maximum enjoyment, like the types of sponges I HAVE TO use at my mom's place (one sponge is for the dishes, and the other one is just for the countertops and they MUST BE disinfected in the microwave periodically because germs kill just like in that scifi show about zombies you got me hooked on and now I HAVE TO watch it and buy the books and all the paraphernalia and its all your fault because you're here and why are you here, no wait, it makes sense you HAVE TO let me explain it all to you in overwrought detail!), because I must be the reason that my mom does laundry and "plays" with her sink full of dishes every night until three or four in the morning. She just gets a mysterious jolt of energy at those times before the lethargy sets in every "morning" at noon, when she finally wakes up after 3 or 4 cups of black sugared coffee!

Just like any type of foreign criminal mindset that's completely batshit, it's not so much that my mom has cleverly hid her illnesses from me (hiding in plain sight as they are), it's just that it's so petty and strange to normal people like me that we could care less, and that's the point of it: if you hide your false enjoyment over common activities, you can get high from the tension that exists only in your stupid mind, because the person in "your" area doesn't know that you wiped your finger over your butthole in the bathroom, exited, then wiped your grody pinkie finger over said hated person's objects ("they" shouldn't be there anyway!), so only you know how bad it is when "they" dare to pick up "your" butt pen. It's sort of like being around that crazy bitch from a typical bunny boiler horror movie who sticks a toothbrush up her butt because that prettier roommate just has to go (tusually me in a staged role that only she knows about, teeheehee), especially if she's straight and there are "too many" handsome boys hanging around all the time, because she's just "too pretty, you know?"

Therefore, we must die, or at least get sick from your urine in the company coffeepot, because we also dared to live and breathe and not notice your crazy, or the highs you get from that huge bottle of mouthwash in the company bathroom, you fucked up, overgrown sorority girl, because deep-down you know we just don't fucking care about your weirdo routines, unless you make them an instrument of horror, devastation, and abuse. Then, after you've set the stage with your powerfully totemic "special" objects, you can kill me off or at the very least get my mom to snap out because you moved something around of hers that you know will cause a meltdown, Bernadette, you fucking bitch of a cave troll. No more "high life" from this clan, starting today. Go huff plastic from a bargain store elsewhere, hag. We get it. We know! And we can totally see all those invisible germs crawling over your skin, and the aliens are coming to take you away with those anal probes that they do because....the truth is out there. Love, X.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_%281996_film%29

Career Suicide

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

Believe or not, hatred disguised as competition runs rampantly through artistic communities, so if you are one (you art fag!), you already know all about it. Oh, on the surface they're touchy-feely and accepting about shit no one really cares about, like your gay nude crafts project (yawn, who cares?), but underneath, every single one of them is one bad painting away from a total diva meltdown. It's fun, once you get the hang of it. Slaying people who aren't cut out for the real game of it should be pressing on anyway. Think of it as a personal service.

I've taken out quite a few haters back in the day, because I've always been the target of bias and abuse, so bitchy psychological warfare is nothing new to me. Of course, I preferred the kind of weirdo hatred one finds among stacks of books, rather than the overtly bitchiness of a dance troupe, which is gayer than even I can stand, and I love me some drag modeling on the runways, trannies.

During college, they came out in droves, and not just the fun queers in assless chaps at artist balls. They were out before anyone else, working through their "issues" about looking at their naked boyfriends by drawing them for each and every figurative class. At one particularly small family publishing company, one junior staffer was so freed by the "gay card" at work that he openly mocked everyone walking by who might be on his "shit list" for the day, trapped as employers felt before we had federal protections in place for all types. He giggled viciously while he openly bragged at farting out loud every time a woman who worked in the office behind him dared to pass by his desk on the way to hers, something which she had no control over whatsoever.

He didn't speak to me unless he was practically on top of me, in case I had any illusions about how he felt towards "breeders" like me in the workplace, especially stinky female art directors who could get someone fired, if only she noticed your abuse, which I didn't. He was a pissant, what can I say? He did so little work, and had such a small impact upon our days as publishers, that he attracted very little of the attention he must have thought was his due in Chelsea in this century, which is a few centuries too late for the rest of the gays, I'm afraid.

In his desperation to get a rise out of me during yet another fake "war" over nothing that the crazies heated up whenever they felt "bored" (which was pretty much every single day of their miserable little lives), he called me over specifically to show me a close-up photo of a man's naked ass, with his hands spreading his cheeks apart to reveal a butt-hole, ostensibly to bitch to me about how lonely gay online dating was in the city. It didn't really phase me at the time (see the above: countless of hours of nude drawing classes from every angle) because he's so fucked up, that was considered a "good" day by our substantially lowered standards for the severely disordered, but it was the card I needed to get him fired in a sexual harassment suit that stretched back for years (you're welcome, Susan Norton).

But, he had no idea how far back really deranged scare tactics went with me. I went to the hardest school in the world, which meant that women in their thirties and forties thought it was acceptable to oust us by any means necessary, like those working class kids in their teens and early twenties without scholarships (hi, Cheryl!) from their highly coveted spots in the class. They took the only financial aid available to illustration students through phony trumped up "minority" scholarships (hi, Ellie!) and leads within the largest greeting card publisher (hi again, Cheryl!), supported as they both were by successful fathers who were professional illustrators, and that still wasn't enough to compete. Ohhh....hurts so bad, doesn't it?

The last card that was played out by one of the typical disgruntled 40-somethings living in my town was laid out for me before I left for my adventures out west, in what she perceived to be an unconscionable action of boldness for me to take after securing illustrator Cheryl (before she went back to school with us, she was professional graphic designer Cheryl supported by her computer programmer hubby Alan) her very first professional book illustration jobs while I worked at St. Martin's Press. Hey, you are most certainly welcome for that, too! Oh, wait. I didn't get that either. Huh. I think this might be some sort of pattern...anywho, I digress.

Cheryl had one last coffee with me in the Flatiron District (how chic, I know) during her not-so tearful goodbye to me. She was aghast that I would be leaving her for Colorado, as we walked back to the F train together. But, how could I be leaving? Didn't I know how hard she worked just to be here in New York?! Uh, right. In that cushy Central Park apartment you cadged off an old female friend with my work in your book as professional credits in the industry. Yeah, times are sure tough! I reminded her once again that she was in my home, and as such, I felt free to leave and return whenever I wanted to.

That incensed her even more. I could practically hear her teeth gnashing together in envy, the kind that destroys good careers, like the ones we created for her at school and in town. She seethed standing in her winter jacket, cold as the cross breeze is between avenues at that subway stop. She had to take her last shot at me quickly, because she was freezing in the strong wind, as she hopped around in her understated coat that was fit for her strict vegan religion. I could see her wheels grinding. Sure enough, inspirations struck this 40-something woman. Fear not, dear readers! She delivered her last real bit of conversation to me hurriedly, and then it struck me how much I had won.

"B-b-but, you're committing 'CAREER SUICIDE' if you move out west!" Awww. It was such a nice try that I had to laugh slightly. She was trying really hard. Yeah, I managed a shaky laugh. I'm worried about that, too! I honestly wasn't all that upset, because I knew I would be back someday. I said my goodbyes to New York over the next few days, taking in those tourist sites I normally avoided to light a candle at St. Patrick's and do a quick breeze-through Tiffany's, because in my heart I knew I'd be back. That's what being a New Yorker is all about. Just like my Catholic faith, you can always come home.

So, what happened to yet another bland but somewhat talented housewife artist? Well, her toddler cried until she packed up her drawing board for good (her pictures weren't worth the money she spent in daycare: nice work, Lachlan!), before leaving the city not long after I did for that place in space were all bad hippies go: a cool farmhouse just outside of rich Woodstock, a place where she can be free to espouse her harsh religion of no makeup ever, no meat ever for any type of reason, plus a rigidly enforced homeschooling process that would fully indoctrinate her one child into their fucked up faith of succeeding at all costs, friendships be damned. None of our classmates kept up with her but me, sadly, because I don't do gay "frenemy" shit.

No, this here Acadian mama takes care of her own, even Midwestern foundlings estranged from their own families through alcoholism and a solid case of the crazies that's taken serious hold. I always had the upper hand, dear, and this New Yorker is sorry about that for you, because no drawing can change the hate that goes on in your head, girl. I am sorry for you, truly. I hope it gets better for you soon. I'm still here working for you for free, ain't I? We're working as fast as we can, just like always. No hard feelings. We just don't have the time for it. Sorry.

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

Waste Not, Want Not

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

My grandfather told me everything I needed to know to live well: how to do what needed to be done, when to do it, for how long or by how much, and why for. Between he and my grandmother, there wasn't anything that they couldn't cover with their accumulated knowledge base over the years. It's also how I know when their remaining family are totally full of shit: because they told it to me first. It's freaky how often their skills come up in my life, like besting a cashier at the grocery store in, what is to me, a simple game of sorting shapes and sizes that allows me to expertly pack bags that they can't. See? Like that. You do your job like that.

It's not really a contest between us, is what I'm saying to you. Together, we packed up cars to go to the Jersey Shore with the diva belongings of every over-packed (and over-shopped) drama queen's stuff nestled perfectly in the back (just in case one of them, you know, actually got off his/her fat ass to interact with a living breathing human who did not give birth to them and/or nurse them daily), because if we didn't manage their belongings expertly, we'd have to sit on the hump in the middle sandwiched between their ill-bought fantasies. We've all been there with family like that, haven't we? Healthy people in sick families have their brilliantly exciting lives pushed aside by the sick, when they are the ones in the margins of life, looking at us from the sidelines while we excel behind their deliberately turned backs. Convenient timing, isn't it?

But like my fathers sayings, my grandparents never really died in me, and they're here with me now. I don't mean allegorically, like some overblown Off-Broadway "dramedy" with sighing ghost-rattled chains and showily exaggerated moans of disbelief, but actually embodied in my living faith that's theirs as well. What began (and ended) with your brief encounter at thrifty living during seventh grade  "Home Ec" class became the ethos we need(ed) to survive your major economic downturns, the very same that fill the sanitariums and rehabs with the many afflicted among us who cannot cope with change. FYI, I bought rice and beans during the last "economic downturn". When we need(ed) to save on your utility bills, we turn(ed) off the lights and looked for apartments on the cheap with large, tall windows that bring in the natural light of day, hated as that may be for cretinous behavior.

We're saying that we know your waste is manufactured to foul the earth deliberately and that it stops today, because we made laws (furtively and secretively behind your back....kidding! It's on the books because we made them, and like, wrote them out and stuff). Besides, your total dipshit ways aren't working anymore, or ever. From now on, restaurants and other food distributors will be penalized ($$$) every time they're caught throwing out food that can be used legally, without excessive spoilage, for human consumption. Ditto for all restaurants, food trucks, sidewalk carts, and other fine purveyors of foods. 

My grandfather often quoted a Barese saying at the beginning of each meal as "mangia tutta casa", which in direct translation means to "eat the house" but in actuality meant "take all you want, eat all you take" as in "don't eat us out of house and home" with your rampantly unchecked and aggressively compulsive eating addiction, yo. Because my grandparents raised themselves, their sick families, and their children's children in times of great depressions, they knew (like me) exactly what family members with severe addictive disorders do, in addition to what all those other highly toxic and deeply anti-social behaviors do to the rest of the members of a family: they unfairly tax those who of us who can control their consumption unchecked unlike say, a watcher of weight addicted to junk food. In the excellent words of my grandfather if you "waste not, (you) want not" and that's how we feel about life, because that's how we live it: without waste. Nothing goes to waste in our happy homes. Welcome to the New World Order. You're welcome, by the way!

http://www.usda.gov/oce/foodwaste/resources/donations.htm